terror – mackaycartoons

Wednesday May 22, 2024

May 22, 2024 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 22, 2024

Ebrahim Raisi’s Demise: Justice for Victims, but No End to Oppression in Iran

April 6, 2024

The recent demise of Ebrahim Raisi, often dubbed “the Butcher of Tehran,” has sparked a mix of emotions across the globe. For many, it serves as a form of comeuppance for the countless murders and atrocities inflicted upon innocent people during his tenure as a key figure in Iran’s oppressive regime. However, we must also recognize that his death does not mark the end of the suffering endured by the Iranian people under the rule of the Islamic Republic.

Raisi’s legacy is stained with blood, stemming from his alleged involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988. As part of a “death commission,” he played a pivotal role in carrying out the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini to purge Iran’s jails of dissidents. Thousands of lives were unjustly extinguished under his watch, leaving families shattered and communities scarred.

Furthermore, Raisi’s leadership during the investigation into the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in 2020 only added to his legacy of injustice. By absolving the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of any wrongdoing, he perpetuated a culture of impunity within the Iranian government, denying closure and justice to the families of the victims.

Opinion: Do not weep for the Butcher of Tehran

October 18, 2022

His ascent to the presidency in 2021 sent shockwaves through the international community, highlighting the resilience of a system built on oppression and fear. Despite widespread condemnation and calls for accountability, Raisi remained defiant, openly proclaiming pride in his actions and vowing to defend the regime at any cost.

Tragically, Raisi’s demise came in the form of a helicopter crash in Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan region on May 19, 2024. The crash, which occurred in a fog-shrouded mountainous area, claimed the lives of all nine individuals on board, including Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

While some may view this as a twist of fate or a stroke of karma, it does little to alleviate the pain and suffering inflicted upon countless individuals by his ruthless regime.

December 18, 2020

While his demise may bring a sense of relief to some, we must not lose sight of the harsh reality that awaits the Iranian people. Raisi’s replacement, likely to emerge from the same ruthless governing structure, offers little hope for meaningful change or reform. The machinery of oppression that has plagued Iran for decades continues to operate unabated, casting a dark shadow over the country’s future.

As we reflect on the downfall of Ebrahim Raisi, let us remember the countless victims whose lives were cut short by his tyranny. Let us stand in solidarity with the Iranian people as they strive for freedom, justice, and dignity in the face of adversity. And let us remain vigilant in holding accountable those who perpetuate oppression and deny basic human rights to their own citizens. (AI)

Wednesday April 6, 2022

April 6, 2022 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 6, 2022

In Bucha, death, devastation and a graveyard of mines

March 12, 2022

The Russian forces had not been in town for long before they came to the home of Volodymyr Avramov, a resident of Vokzal’na Street in the quiet Ukrainian suburb of Bucha.

Three Russians kicked in the doors and threw in a grenade, the 72-year-old Avramov said. Inside were Avramov, his daughter, and his son-in-law, Oleh.

They dragged Oleh outside and made him kneel – then shot him in the head as Avramov and his daughter watched, he said. The two then had to shelter in a basement for weeks as the fighting continued.

“Oleh was laying on the street for a month. I could not come close or bury him, nothing,” he said.

Images of dead civilians lining the streets of Bucha have shocked the world in recent days and heightened concerns that Russian soldiers are committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called it genocide.

March 1, 2022

“There were piles of dead corpses lying here, without arms, without legs, without skulls,” Avramov said. “You wouldn’t see it in a nightmare. It’s horror.”

Stories resembling the one told by Avramov have been documented by Human Rights Watch, which found evidence of execution-style killings of civilian men in multiple Ukrainian cities, including Bucha.

Now Ukraine has intensified its calls for the West to provide more military aid and take greater action against Russia, in hopes of tipping the scale as the fight shifts from Kyiv to eastern Ukraine.

“If we had already got what we needed – all these planes, tanks, artillery, anti-missile and anti-ship weapons – we could have saved thousands of people. I do not blame you — I blame only the Russian military. But you could have helped,” Zelenskyy said in a speech Monday.

February 20, 2014

As part of the effort, Ukrainian authorities have organized tours for foreign journalists to see the extent of Russia’s devastation of Bucha: Destroyed homes, blackened buildings, blown out windows, and the apocalyptic Vokzal’na Street – a half-mile-long graveyard of burned out tanks and cars.

Amid the ruins, members of a demining crew showed journalists some of the explosives that have been recovered from homes in the city. About 4,000 were found on Monday alone, officials said, a mix of mines, ammunition and unexploded missiles.

The bodies of some 200 civilians have been recovered so far in the Bucha area, officials say, and more are uncovered each day as crews work to remove mines and clear rubble. (NPR)

Friday November 5, 2021

November 5, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 5, 2021

Ontario and Quebec bow to anti-vax hospital workers

Chalk up two big points for the nation’s anti-vax brigade. And two ridiculous own-goals by the governments of Ontario and Quebec.

August 31, 2021

In a dispiriting display of spinelessness, both provinces decided Wednesday against requiring their health care workers to do the morally right and medically necessary thing — and be vaccinated against COVID-19. While Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced he would not proceed with a vaccination mandate, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube actually scrapped a vaccination edict already in place.

Both decisions will worry and, yes, endanger patients. They won’t know whether the person treating them has had the jab and whether, if unvaccinated, that individual might put them at heightened risk of catching COVID-19. Both decisions also do a profound disservice to the overwhelming majority of health care workers who’ve acted responsibly by taking their jab. They should have the right to work in the safest environment possible, something only possible after mass vaccinations.

April 1, 2021

So why did it come to this? In both provinces, the decisions were motivated by the unsubstantiated fear that vast numbers of hospital workers would quit rather than be vaccinated. Ford cited “the potential departure of tens of thousands of health-care workers” if his government mandated vaccinations instead of leaving the decision to individual hospitals and health organizations, many of which have imposed their own vaccine requirements.

But the Ontario Hospital Association and the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario both pleaded with the premier to set down a consistent approach across the entire provincial health care system. Instead, Ford has, by default, saddled Ontarians with a confusing, far less effective, patchwork of rules. As for the premier’s numbers, they’re outdated. His own health minister, Christine Elliott, said so. And while she agreed the number of potential staff losses would have been “significant” she failed to provide precise numbers to back up her assertion.

September 15, 2021

To be fair, it’s true that at least some health care providers would be stubborn enough lose their jobs rather than be vaccinated. But rather than cave in to their threats and irrational, irresponsible behaviour, the governments of Ontario and Quebec should have stood firm and called their bluff. No health care worker would ever be forced to have a vaccine injected into their arm. But those who refused would deal with the consequences.

In marked contrast, Air Canada has stuck to its vaccine-mandate guns and suspended 8,000 of its 27,000 employees for refusing to get the jab. Its planes are still flying. The Toronto District School Board has put nearly 800 workers on unpaid leave because they failed to disclose their vaccination status. The schools remain open. If an airline trying to protect its customers and staff and a board trying to guard its students and employees are willing to go to these lengths, so should the Ontario and Quebec governments when the integrity of their hospitals is at stake. Their health care systems would have gone on, too, likely with more fully vaccinated workers.

January 27, 2021

Ford’s decision is especially puzzling considering that another branch of the provincial government, the Ministry of Long-Term Care, has mandated COVID-19 vaccines for anyone working in care homes. Workers in these facilities face termination unless they show proof of vaccination by Nov. 15. Go figure. Why do some of our key leaders seem incapable of running a mass vaccination initiative?

It now seems only a matter of time before Canadian children aged five- to 11-years-old will be eligible for a COVID vaccine. But parents aware of Ford’s laissez-faire approach to vaccinations might erroneously conclude it’s no big deal to spare their children from the jab. If that happens, the hope of reaching the 90-per-cent vaccination level that would make this province truly safe will have faded. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

Saturday September 11, 2021

September 18, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday September 11, 2021

The 20th anniversary of 9/11: no end in sight

Wednesday September 12, 2001

A new and deadly era began when the planes sliced into the twin towers on the morning of 11 September 2001. That evening, the historian Tony Judt wrote that he had seen the 21st century begin. The nearly 3,000 lives stolen by al-Qaida were only a small part of the toll. The horror began a chain of events that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, including huge numbers of civilians abroad and many US military personnel. It is still unfolding.

If the killing of the plot’s mastermind Osama bin Laden a few months before the 10th anniversary perhaps let some hope that an end to that new era might be in sight, there can be no such false confidence at the 20th. The establishment of a Taliban government in Kabul, two decades after the US ousted the militants for harbouring Bin Laden, has underscored two things: that far from reasserting its global supremacy, the US looks more vulnerable today; and that the echoes of 9/11 are still reverberating across the region – but will not stay there.

September 11, 2006

Al-Qaida itself survives and others claim its mantle. In the west, the threat from Islamist terrorism endures – from 7/7 and the Madrid train bombings, to the attacks at Manchester Arena, the Berlin Christmas market and Vienna – though the nature of the threat has shifted, from a heavily financed, complex and internationally organised plot to more localised, less sophisticated attacks. This week, 20 men went on trial over the 2015 massacre at the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris. Ken McCallum, MI5’s chief, said on Friday that the agency had prevented six “late stage” terrorist plots during the pandemic, and that with the Taliban’s triumph, “more risk progressively may flow our way”.

The determination to pursue a military solution fed the political problems, as history should have warned. (A Rand Corporation study of 248 terrorist groups worldwide suggested that only 7% were ended by military force.)

September 11, 2011

In Afghanistan, the refusal to accept a Taliban surrender paved the way for America’s longest war and ultimate acceptance of defeat. Islamic State arose from the ashes of the invasion of Iraq. Extraordinary renditions, torture, the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the unwillingness to acknowledge or atone for civilian deaths at the hands of US forces or their allies all stoked the fire. These abuses and crimes were not anomalies but intrinsic to the war on terror. Men swept up in the aftermath are still held at Guantánamo Bay.

Around the world, basic rights were erased at home too. The US saw a massive expansion of presidential power; the veneration of secrecy; the destruction of norms; the normalisation of Islamophobia; the promotion of a narrative linking immigration and terrorism, breeding broader intolerance; and the encouragement of the belief that ordinary citizens were in a state of war. It is not hard to draw the line to the rise of Donald Trump and white supremacy, or rightwing populism elsewhere. In the US, far-right terror groups were behind most attacks last year; in the UK, police have said that the fastest growing terror threat is from the far right. The biggest perils to the US now appear not external but internal. The future of a divided and distrustful country looks increasingly precarious, its status in the world weakened.

August 18, 2021

Whatever many in the country once believed, American citizens cannot be isolated from the dangers of the outside world; trouble is not “always someplace else”. On 9/11, the country transitioned from a dream of unending tranquility at home to a nightmare of forever war. With the return of soldiers from Afghanistan, the US is more distanced from the enemy. But the conflict continues by other means, and without boots on the ground, drone strikes are more likely than ever to claim the lives of civilians as well as terrorist suspects. The US, and the west, cannot be safe at home while insecurity reigns abroad. (The Guardian)

Friday August 20, 2021

August 27, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 20, 2021

Not the Bad Guys Anymore

When the Taliban first sacked Kabul 25 years ago, the group declared that it was not out for revenge, instead offering amnesty to anyone who had worked for the former government. “Taliban will not take revenge,” a Taliban commander said then. “We have no personal rancor.” At the time of that promise, the ousted president, Mohammad Najibullah, was unavailable for comment. The Taliban had castrated him and, according to some reports, stuffed his severed genitals in his mouth, and soon after, he was strung up from a lamppost.

November 14, 2001

The reports from Kabul are probably more reassuring to those unfamiliar with this history. The Taliban has once again declared a general amnesty, and asked everyone to show up for work in the morning and prepare to unite behind a Taliban government that will rule according to Islamic law—but perhaps, the group has suggested, not in the harsh manner that made it infamous during its rule from 1996 to 2001. Women can continue their education so long as they wear the hijab, and the Taliban will guarantee human rights and freedoms of speech and expression, it said, so long as they comply with sharia. (Spoiler: The Taliban does not believe they do.) A Taliban spokesperson consented to an interview with a female television presenter whose face was visible. During the Taliban’s previous regime, it discouraged depiction of the human form, and would certainly not have countenanced the broadcast of a woman’s face to the entire world.

The Taliban now owns Afghanistan, and its first priority is avoiding anything that resembles chaos. In 1996, the group’s leader, Mullah Omar, told residents of Kabul to resist the temptation to flee, that the Taliban would keep them safe. Omar died in 2013, but his successors—who include his own son, the Taliban’s top military official—are saying exactly the same thing now. They have made sure the police phone number works, and they are calling for workers, including cops formerly loyal to the previous government, to report for duty. The Afghans I have reached by phone in Kabul say the same: Taliban are in the streets, acting not as avengers but as guarantors of public order. They are not executing people on street corners; instead they’re watching for looters and troublemakers. (The Taliban has always returned to this core role, since the movement’s founding: In the 1990s, when the Afghan countryside was beset by highwaymen, murderers, and rapists, the group won its first followers by securing the roads and providing order where the worst kind of anarchy had reigned.) (Continued: The Atlantic)

August 17, 2021

Meanwhile, in Canada, there may be no better example of the unique and difficult challenge Erin O’Toole faces as leader of the federal Conservative Party than his recently announced policy on mandatory vaccinations.

Mr. O’Toole is against measures that force Canadians to get vaccinated, regardless of what line of work they may be in. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has said federal workers must be vaccinated, as well as anyone who wants to fly or travel by train.

The Conservative Leader says he believes in the power and safety of vaccines, but doesn’t feel people should be forced to take them. Mr. Trudeau doesn’t believe people should be forced to take them either, but nor should the unvaccinated have the right to potentially pass COVID-19 on to others. Thus, the mandate.

July 15, 2021

A majority of Canadians are fully or partially vaccinated. And most of them, polls suggest, support vaccine mandates or vaccine passports that bestow certain rights and privileges on those who have chosen to get jabbed. In his heart, I think Mr. O’Toole believes this also. He just can’t endorse that policy because it would alienate a faction of his base – the libertarians and vaccine deniers – who think the state has no right imposing restrictive measures on anyone. These are voters Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party of Canada are trying to steal away from the Conservatives.

Welcome to Erin O’Toole’s world – or rather, his nightmare. While his central challenger in this election, Justin Trudeau, can be many things to many people, the Conservative Leader does not have that option. He is bound, in many ways, to a segment of the population resistant to change and who are suspicious of government intrusions of any sort into their lives, regardless of the reason. (Continued: Globe & Mail)

L E T T E R S to the E D I T O R The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday August 21, 2021

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, August 23, 2021

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, August 24, 2021

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