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Saturday, December 16, 2017

What peace process?

The hullaballoo in Israel about Jerusalem's now being the official capital is laughable.  "It will impede the peace process," said someone-or-other.  All I can say is, what peace process?  Never going to happen.  One of my closest friends from our university days moved to Jerusalem almost 50 years ago, so if anyone knows what's going on it's she. 

"Unofficially, Jerusalem has been the capital for 3,000 years," she wrote me the other day.  "Mostly it just provoked the Palestinians into violent demonstrations and kept the army and police busy.  Just another reason to demonstrate.  Neither side really wants to sit down at the negotiating table.  In order to hold political power, both need to incite against the other because both will need to give up more than they want and take less than they promised.  The old guard has to die off before there's any hope," she concluded. 

Maybe she's right, but I doubt it.  Palestinian mothers raise their children to hate Israelis; not sure how Israeli mothers handle it?  Mothers have a huge responsibility in all this, but no one ever mentions it.  I also think the tons of too-much, super-strong coffee they drink doesn't help.  (I'm serious about that last sentence, by the way.) 
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But what I really want to talk about is Beverly McLachlin.  Adrienne Clarkson, a previous GG, wrote a worship-piece in the Globe and Mail the other day and it's nauseating in its fawning.  "What you've always been able to do, my dear Chief Justice, is to(sic) make us understand as Canadians that the Supreme Court is not only a superbly important Canadian institution, but(sic) it has(sic) a dramatic impact on all of our lives.  It is a guarantor of our democratic process.  You in your 28 years on the Court have embodied this."  (Note:  Clarkson went to the same high school as I, one of the best in the country, but sadly, she cannot write.)

Basically, Clarkson is lauding herself as a superb Canadian pioneer and leader, something with which I beg to differ.  In my view, McLachlin thought she was making law, instead of interpreting it.  Laws are made by Parliament, not the Supreme Court.  The new Chief Justice is the son of Claude Wagner, one of the toughest politicians ever to hit the Quebec legislature.  I just hope his head isn't as big as McLachlin's. 

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