Vladimir Putin

Friday August 15, 2008

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 15, 2008

There’s a Bear in the Woods!

The guns of August 2008 have in a matter of a few days significantly changed the world we live in. It is now clear to almost everyone that Russian objectives go well beyond the issue of the ethnically Russian citizens of South Ossetia. Moscow’s swift military gambit clearly includes “regime change” for the entire nation of Georgia.

That is important not simply because Georgia’s democratically elected president, Mikhail Saakashvili, is far more pro-western than his eventual Russian-picked successor will be, but also because it sends a clear message throughout the region that Russia can do what it pleases—and that the United States is too weak, too overstretched, too unpopular, and too weary from years of failed international exploits to act.

Marvellous Maps

That is a message that will be heard first in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Ukraine. Leaders such as Azeri Prime Minister Ilham Aliyev will go to considerable lengths to avoid the fate that apparently awaits Saakashvili. They will see the value of alliance with the United States in greatly diminished terms. All will urgently seek ways to accommodate Russian interests.

But the message will extend beyond those countries. Iran and Turkey will be forced to recognize that Russia is reemerging as a force in their region, and that their economic and security interests in the future will have to be more closely harmonized with those of Russia. Former Soviet Republics such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will be far wearier of entanglements with the United States that might provoke Russian displeasure.  (Source: American Progress) 

 

August 14, 2007

Last week I did a cartoon showing Vladimir Putin atop Lenin’s tomb reminiscent of photos we’d see of Soviet leaders during the cold war years. I was inspired to draw it following renewed interest by the Russians in the Arctic from the North Pole to the Mediterranean via the Caucasus. It made me think back, before Boris Yeltsin, to the last time I drew Lenin’s tomb back when Mikhail Gorbachev was in power, as he warming up to the west with Glasnost, and implementing political and economic reforms otherwise known as Perestroika. The year was 1989, democracy was spreading throughout Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall had just come down, and I was a student at the University of Ottawa. I was just starting out getting my worked published in the student press, through the campus newspaper called The Fulcrum. I had a cartoon strip called:

It was modern day (mostly Canadian) political news placed in a medieval setting. Brian Mulroney was the King of Canadaland, Gorbachev was the Russian Tsar, they rode around in horses, they spoke in Monty Pythonesque olde englishe. For most of the time it existed between September 1989, and April 1991, I collaborated with my friend, Paul Nichols, who was a fellow history student. He helped write it, and I drew it. It was published for each weekly edition of the Fulcrum.


Click here to see a larger version.

In retrospect, they were a bit wordy. The jokes were corny. The drawings were a bit crude, but keep in mind that we were twenty year olds. At the time home computers were still very basic word processors, there was no Internet, and early versions of Photoshop were still half a decade away. The inking of Alas & Alack had to be configured with exacto knives and glue stick. Tones were done using Chartpak shading film, and some special text was incorporated using Letraset transferrable lettering. It was all very time consuming work to put together a single Alas & Alack cartoon. A perfect excuse to keep me from reading textbooks, writing essays and studying for exams.


Click here to see a larger version.

Throughout the series I portrayed former Canadian Prime Ministers Clark and Turner, who were still active in politics at the time, as “erstwhile kings” who would show up every now and then carrying the crowns they once wore when they were in charge. Pierre Trudeau would show up portrayed as some sort of God-like character who lived in an acropolis type of temple on Mount Royal.

More Alas & Alack in the days to come….

FEEDBACK

I remember Alas and Alack quite well, Mr. Mackay. I started studying at U of O in 1990 and I remember seeing it and a whole bunch of other cartoons of yours in the newspaper. Looks like you’ve done pretty well in cartooning eversince. Not surprising! Glad I can keep enjoying your work.

Marc LeBlanc (August 16, 2007)

Friday August 10, 2007

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 10, 2007

Russian bombers resuming Cold War patrols

Russian bombers have resumed Cold War-style long-haul missions to areas patrolled by NATO and the United States, top Russian generals said Thursday.

A Russian bomber flew over a U.S. naval base on the Pacific island of Guam on Wednesday and “exchanged smiles” with U.S. pilots who had scrambled to track it, said Major General Pavel Androsov, head of long-range aviation in the Russian Air Force.

President Vladimir Putin has sought to make Russia more assertive. He has increased defense spending and sought to raise morale in the armed forces, which were starved of funding after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The bombers give Russia the capability of making a nuclear strike, even if the nuclear arsenals on its own territory are wiped out.

During the Cold War, Soviet pilots played elaborate airborne games of cat and mouse with Western air forces.

The current state of Russia’s economy, which is booming for the eighth year in a row, has allowed Russia to finance such flights, said Safranchuk of the World Security Institute. (Source: Herald Tribune)

Between 1989 and 1991 Graeme MacKay illustrated and, along with writer Paul Nichols, co-wrote a weekly comic strip, entitled “Alas & Alack”, a satire of current day public figures framed in a medieval setting. It was published in The Fulcrum, the English language student newspaper at the Univesity of Ottawa. In total, 46 strips were created.

Last week I did a cartoon showing Vladimir Putin atop Lenin’s tomb reminiscent of photos we’d see of Soviet leaders during the cold war years. I was inspired to draw it following renewed interest by the Russians in the Arctic from the North Pole to the Mediterranean via the Caucasus. It made me think back, before Boris Yeltsin, to the last time I drew Lenin’s tomb back when Mikhail Gorbachev was in power, as he warming up to the west with Glasnost, and implementing political and economic reforms otherwise known as Perestroika. The year was 1989, democracy was spreading throughout Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall had just come down, and I was a student at the University of Ottawa. I was just starting out getting my worked published in the student press, through the campus newspaper called The Fulcrum. I had a cartoon strip called: Alas & Alack.

 

Wednesday June 6, 2007

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 6, 2007

‘No G8 deal on climate change’

World powers will not agree to firm targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions during the G8 summit, a senior US official has said.

May 25, 2006

World leaders are meeting in Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast for the annual Group of Eight gathering which comprises of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Chairing the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had hoped the US would back a pledge to have emissions halved by 2050 and limit warming of global temperatures to a key scientific threshold of 2C.

The Kyoto Protocol, the global climate change pact which the US is not a part of, expires in 2012 and leaders hope the summit can send a signal about their desire to come up with a successor to the deal.

Senior climate adviser to President George W Bush, James Connaughton, said: “We have opposed the two degrees temperature target, we are not alone in that.

“Japan, Russia, Canada and most other countries that I have spoken with do not support that as an objective for a variety of reasons. At this moment in time on that one particular issue we do not yet have agreement.” (ITV News)

 

April 23, 2007

Boris Yeltsin is dead. Many, I think, were surprised he was still alive. Perhaps he was pickled by the constant flow of alcohol he evidently consumed midway through his Presidency of Russia towards the end of his retirement. Who knows? The fact is after he handed the Kremlin keys over to Vladimir Putin in 2000 he never really resurfaced in the public limelight again, becoming largely forgotten.

It’s only on reflection that I realize he was a character that shaped many editorial cartoons. Here are just a few I drew as he neared the end of his reign in a drunken stupor:

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Of course there must be credit given to the man who began his rise to stardom by toppling a Communist coup designed to reverse the democratic reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev.

While he will undoubtedly go down in history for liberating Soviet citizens, he may be better remembered in the old “free world” for his trashing the old USSR, and thereby ending any remnants left from the cold war years. He oversaw the disintegration of the old Soviet Union and became Russia’s first democratically elected leader. Then he tried to bring in goofy economic policies which only empowered corrupt oligarchs and angered legislators, and when things didn’t go his way he brought back old style Soviet tactics to deal with dissent and ethnic unrest. Blasting the Parliament buildings with cannon fire isn’t exactly the most democratic way to debate things with opponents, although Yeltsin seemed to think it was, and he got away with it. He also got away with pinching the bums of women politicians and bureaucrats; hamming for the cameras while visiting Berlin and by grabbing a conductors baton and leading an orchestra; playing the spoons on the head of Askar Akayev, the president of Kyrgyzstan; and staggering around in his underpants shouting for pizza in the hotel room during his first summit meeting with Bill Clinton.

Upon further reflection I connect the Yeltsin years with the Clinton years… and can’t help associating those figures, as much the buffoons they were, to that relatively harmonious period of time in the pre-9/11 world. No wonder Bill Clinton loved to bear hug Yeltsin. But once Boris was gone, the good old days of close relations clearly started to wane. Seven years on Vladimir Putin continues to rule Russia at a far sobering and utilitarian pace. What freedom Yeltsin brought in, much has been clamped down upon by his successor. Here’s one I drew shortly after Putin came to power in Russia: