world

Thursday July 23, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 23, 2020

Cyber attack agreements needed to avoid mutually assured destruction, Blair says

Countries around the world need to form cyber attack agreements to avoid going down a path to “mutually assured destruction”, Tony Blair has said.

August 1, 2019

In the wake of the report into Russian interference in British democratic processes, the former prime minister called for states to “push for some common form of standards”.

Without such a framework, he warned, countries would be carrying out cyber attacks the “entire time to each other”, putting global security at risk.

In an interview with the PA news agency, Mr Blair, who was a leading Remain voice in the 2016 referendum, said he was “not one of those people who thinks the Brexit result came about as a result of Russian interference”.

March 21, 2018

But he said: “If they are interfering, and they will want to interfere, because obviously it is the policy of the Russian government to have a weaker West, and so you can see why they might want certain results to happen in politics.

“If they are trying to do it, then you need to take countermeasures.”

Mr Blair said that the “heightened ability to use cyber in destructive way” meant that at some point “the world is going to have to come to a set of agreements and protocols on this because otherwise you are going to be down a path of mutually assured destruction”.

“These capabilities are only going to grow, they are going to become more and more sophisticated, and governments are going to use them.

COVID-19 Cartoons

“But to be clear, that capacity has got to be developed in order to defend yourself as a country and then you’ve got to know how to both thwart interference and cyber attacks.

“And in the end you are going to have to push for some common form of standards here, otherwise countries are going to be doing it the entire time to each other and then the security of the world gets put at risk.”

Earlier this week, the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) accused the Government of being slow to recognise the potential threat posed by Russia to British democratic processes and of not properly considering whether Moscow could interfere in the Brexit referendum until after the event.

Mr Blair said: “I don’t know that people turned a blind eye deliberately – but the fact is that if a foreign government is essentially engaged in trying to disrupt our democratic process, whether they are successful in it or not, of course you’ve got to act. (Newschain.uk) 

 

Tuesday July 14, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday July 14, 2020

When will it be safe to reopen the U.S. border?

How much longer can this go on? How much longer can the world’s longest undefended border remain largely sealed? 

April 18 2020

It’s an increasingly urgent question facing Canadian governments. Even with the U.S. border open for commercial business, and exceptions being made to allow families to reunite, our joint border is mostly closed. And the impact is huge.

This discussion is relevant this week for a couple of reasons. First, the current emergency border-crossing restriction package is set to expire July 21. Second, the government is facing mounting pressure from commercial interests.

The Canadian Travel & Tourism Roundtable, a coalition of 120-odd travel and tourism companies including Canada’s major airlines, last month sent an open letter to the government calling for the loosening of travel restrictions. 

A second open letter was sent by Canada’s airlines and many of Canada’s biggest companies including banks and telecoms.

On one hand it is hard to blame the tourism sector, which has been among the hardest hit by the pandemic, for putting its economic interests first. But it is also more than a little troubling that airlines were quick to do away with social distancing minimums when we know they are crucial in slowing the spread of COVID-19. 

May 24, 2020

Fortunately, it’s not up to the tourism/travel sector to make public policy. That’s up to the government, and based on what top officials such as Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland are saying, protecting public health is still the top priority. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: “We are going to be very, very careful about when and how we start reopening international borders.”

Something most people do not recognize is that cross-border traffic is already increasing thanks to loosening of some restrictions. The volume of traffic crossing land borders has increased from about 115,000 a week from late April to early May to 175,000 a week in late June. Officials say those figures include commercial and non-commercial traffic. The number of non-commercial highway travellers entering Canada has nearly doubled over that period, going from about 3,300 a week to about 6,500.

June 2, 2017

At the same time as Canada is allowing more cross-border traffic, the situation in the U.S. is deteriorating. As recently as the weekend states like Florida were announcing record new infections and deaths. Florida alone reported more than 15,000 new cases. American leadership is polarized, with the Trump administration basically in denial. Some states are rolling back reopening, others seem unwilling to do so despite exploding infection rates.

Worst of all, America has no apparent unified strategy to regain control. Even if Trump loses the November election, it’s predicted to take months to change direction and get COVID under control. 

Under these circumstances, how on earth could Canada even consider significantly loosening border controls? Doing so would literally put at risk everything this country has done right to flatten the pandemic curve. All the work and sacrifice Canadians have endured would be at risk. 

It is said that governing in these times is an ongoing struggle to balance safety with renewed prosperity. Fair enough. But on some fronts there can be no overall compromise. The U.S. is not a safe place to be, and Canada should not face further exposure until things change. That could easily keep the border closed until the end of this year, at least, say infectious disease experts.

It’s a sad reality with a great cost to Canadians and our economy. But we have no choice. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Wednesday March 24, 2020

March 16, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 24, 2020

Tokyo Olympics officially postponed to 2021

Coronavirus cartoons

The International Olympic Committee announced a first-of-its-kind postponement of the Summer Olympics on Tuesday, bowing to the realities of a coronavirus pandemic that is shutting down daily life around the globe and making planning for a massive worldwide gathering in July a virtual impossibility.

The IOC said the Tokyo Games “must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020, but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.”

It was an announcement seen as all but a certainty as pressure mounted from nervous athletes, sports organizations and national Olympic committees — all confronting the reality that training and qualifying schedules, to say nothing of international anti-doping protocols, had been ruptured beyond repair.

The IOC also said the Games will still be called the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee announced a first-of-its-kind postponement of the Summer Olympics on Tuesday, bowing to the realities of a coronavirus pandemic that is shutting down daily life around the globe and making planning for a massive worldwide gathering in July a virtual impossibility.

The IOC said the Tokyo Games “must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020, but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.”

It was an announcement seen as all but a certainty as pressure mounted from nervous athletes, sports organizations and national Olympic committees — all confronting the reality that training and qualifying schedules, to say nothing of international anti-doping protocols, had been ruptured beyond repair.

The IOC also said the Games will still be called the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. (CBC) 

 

Friday March 13, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 13, 2020

Trump’s European Travel Ban Doesn’t Make Sense

Last night, a few thousand Atlético Madrid supporters crammed into a corner of Liverpool’s Anfield stadium to watch their soccer team knock the reigning European champions out of the continent’s premier competition, the UEFA Champions League. As they woke in their hotel rooms and Airbnbs this morning, they discovered, as Madrileños, or, more important, Europeans who live in the no-border Schengen Area that operates on the continent, that they are now barred from traveling to the United States. The 50,000 Liverpool fans who were also in the stadium last night, or at least those who happen to be British or Irish, awoke chastened by their team’s defeat—but not banned.

January 13, 2018

If there is an award for the most absurd spectacle capturing the arbitrariness of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, this surely wins it.

President Donald Trump’s decision to ban most European citizens from traveling to the U.S., except those from the United Kingdom and Ireland, appears to make no sense, and to inject past grievances and prejudices into delicate scientific and political equations. In this spiraling thriller–cum–horror novel, Trump’s emergence, full of hostility and conspiracy, with warnings of foreign viruses, heralds a darkening turn—an early indication of the power of a pandemic to infect global decision making and international relations.

December 16, 2019

Politics, domestic and international, is already morphing under the strain of the coronavirus, and all signs indicate that it will continue to do so. Some governments will rise to higher ideals, to duty and justice, equity and science; others will simply be unable to meet the test or, worse, disgrace themselves. Some systems will allow combinations of various measures, and some political leaders will take decisions in good faith, based on good science, but still get it wrong. This, though, is the stage when politics comes to the fore, when the values of those with power are revealed. More than that, this crisis is becoming a test of the international order, formal and institutional or informal and cultural, to cope with the pressures placed on it by nationalism, quackery, corruption, ignorance, and malevolence.

Yesterday, the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, slashed interest rates in a coordinated stimulus effort with the British government. He declared that 2008 had revealed the danger that the new globally integrated financial system posed, but that today this very system could help, not hinder. In his world, global institutions and a culture of coordination had developed. The giants of the financial crash had learned the lessons from the 1930s and moved quickly and globally in the knowledge that a beggar-my-neighbor policy in a global depression beggars everyone in the end. Today, it is sobering simply to wonder whether anyone is applying this lesson to the pandemic—an even more obvious case of the stupidity of petty nationalism.

November 14, 2019

And yet, as ever with the American president, the rationale for his decision carries its own peculiarly Trumpian worldview, exposing both how he sees the world and the weaknesses of who he sees as his adversaries. Trump is nothing if not alive to the flaws of his enemies. In this case, it is not without logic to treat the European Schengen Area as one country. While it clearly isn’t one and doesn’t overlap neatly with either the euro or the European Union (Norway, which is not an EU member, is part of Schengen; Ireland, which is both an EU member and part of the eurozone, is not), it is a core feature for almost all EU member states, a common travel area in which there are no internal checks. Schengen is one of Europe’s core strengths and accomplishments, but also a structural weakness that continues to challenge its legitimacy in the eyes of many of its citizens.

The EU is a proto-state. It has the institutions of a state, a central bank and parliament, currency and court. And yet it is weaker than a conventional state, mostly unable to take effective collective action in times of crisis, whether diplomatically, fiscally, or militarily. Its weakness is in handling migration and debts, refugees and Russian aggression. The worry today is that this weakness will be exposed, even though the coronavirus is exactly the type of cross-border challenge that highlights one of the EU’s fundamental strengths: its ability to coordinate continentally. (Continued: The Atlantic) 

 

Wednesday January 8, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 8, 2020

The Trump We Did Not Want to See

Much of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, an American horror and science fiction writer who worked during the first decades of the 20th century, is defined by individual encounters with the incomprehensible, with sights, sounds and ideas that undermine and disturb reality as his characters understand it. Faced with things too monstrous to be real, but which exist nonetheless, Lovecraftian protagonists either reject their senses or descend into madness, unable to live with what they’ve learned.

June 25, 2019

It feels, at times, that when it comes to Donald Trump, our political class is this Lovecraftian protagonist, struggling to understand an incomprehensibly abnormal president. The reality of Donald Trump — an amoral narcissist with no capacity for reflection or personal growth — is evident from his decades in public life. But rather than face this, too many people have rejected the facts in front of them, choosing an illusion instead of the disturbing truth.

The past week has been a prime example of this phenomenon. On Thursday night, the United States killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran leader of the Islamic Republic’s Quds Force and one of the most powerful military leaders in the region. The strike was sudden and unexpected. The White House notified Congress only after the fact, with a brief, classified document.

May 11, 2018

The assassination of Suleimani was tantamount to a declaration of war and has escalated tensions between the United States and Iran. Tehran has already promised “harsh revenge” against the United States, while Trump said he would  “HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD” if Iran made good on its threat, vowing an attack on “52 Iranian sites” including locations “important to Iran & the Iranian culture.”

This standoff, which in its latest incarnation saw Iranian missiles sailing toward bases in western Iraq on Tuesday night, is so consequential that it’s been hard not to impute some logic to the president’s actions, even as many observers acknowledge the lies and dysfunction surrounding the attack. It’s only natural. As humans, we want to impose order on what we see. As Americans, we want to believe our leaders understand the gravity of war. Traditional news outlets published detailed descriptions of the president’s decision-making process. Sympathetic observers, like Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon, hailed the strike as a “stunning blow to international terrorism and a reassertion of American might.” Cable news analysts spoke as if this was part of a considered plan for challenging the Iranian government. (Continued: New York Times)