Dear Jack,
Yes, there really is a “THE SYSTEM”. When I wrote about Alouette Correctional Centre for Women you remarked in your public letter that you found my letter describing conditions at Alouette totally alarming “despite the writer’s (reference to me) past extravagant condemnations of “THE SYSTEM”). This suggests that either you don’t believe there is a system of corporate and governmental oppression, or that you think I exaggerate in my writings.
First, I am a professional writer. As such, I strive to make my writing as vivid and compelling as I can. But exaggerate? My dear fellow, one could paint paper pages blue and electronic mails purple and all the billboards leading into Vancouver blazing scarlet with expletives and come nowhere near accurately describing the wretched, black bottomed truth of what is happening to our earth and all the creatures on it. And this wretchedness isn’t something that is going to happen tomorrow. Or is not going to happen unless we do this or that. It has already happened. And is happening.
For instance, I surmise you are a young man. As such, are you aware that your sperm count is roughly half of what your grandfather’s was? And that not only your sperm count and those of the other males of your generation are falling approximately 2 per cent a year and that nobody knows how to stop the sperm count fall? And that along with this fall in sperm count there is the added phenomenon of the actual chromosomes of the sperm changing?
Historically, there are more males than females born but because more males die in infancy and adolescence the numbers even out in adulthood. At least they have in the past. But no more. The estrogen compounds that are sloshing around the globe due to the chemicalization of industry are feminizing human sperm by causing more XX chromosomes to be produced than XY’s. Males are now losing their numerical advantage at birth which means that in the future there will be fewer adult men than adult women.
These same compounds that mimic estrogen are now also being directly linked to prostate and testicular cancer in young males, along with breast cancer in young women. There is an epidemic of cancer on this continent that is now being directly related by some researchers to the problem of artificial estrogen compounds and this includes the herbicides and pesticides that are planted and/or sprayed in public and private forests after clear cutting when the young trees are planted. These chemicals seep into the topsoil and groundwater and some even become air borne. But these compounds are also found in plastics, industrial effluent, and lots of cosmetic and household items. This plethora of artificial estrogens in our environment is affecting other animals besides humans.
In a Sept 6 ABC News report there is an article about the new “Intersex” Fish found in the Potomac River in Washington and I quote: “Last month’s testing at three tributaries emptying into the Potomac revealed that more than 80 percent of all male smallmouth fish found were growing eggs, according to Vickie Blazer, a fish pathologist with U.S. Geological Survey. The article goes on to say “That although scientist have not identified the source or sources of the problem, the result appear to suggest that the Potomac River and it’s tributaries have a problem with so called “endocrine disrupters” which can tamper with natural chemical signals.” And when Thomas Jacobus, general manager of the Washington Aqueduct, which filters river water for resident to drink in the District of Columbia was asked about the possible effect on humans who drank the water replied “I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that question right now.” End quote.
But we do know. At least enough. Because there are numerous other accounts of fish and birds and frogs and other species where the males are growing eggs and/or the females are growing male appendages. Animal and Human bodies are being radically transformed right now, not only by industrial effluent and pesticides but the chemicilzion of our food, water, medicines, utensils and household products. Combine this with the deforestation of the globe, disappearance of species, diseases that are wiping out entire populations, crazy fratricidal wars, and the explosion of heroin, crack, and other chemical street drugs, not to even mention the pharmaceutical drugging of depressed and dispirited populations by doctors who are invested in pharmaceutical companies, the growing hordes of poor, hungry people and the growing hordes of money and resources harnessed by a few and I ask… does this not indicate that there is a THE SYSTEM at work here?
I think so. And THE SYSTEM is one composed of corporate profits and corporate values, one in which all of the world’s governments either concur in this value system, like our own, or others who have deep reservations about THF SYSTEM but who feel they must make some accommodation such as a growing number of Latin American countries are being forced to do. THE SYSTEM operates to not only keep the corporate class in power, but to grow their holdings. Is there deliberate collusion between say, the chemical and pharmaceutical companies, the logging companies, constructions companies, the governments, the judges, the police forces, the war lords, drug lords and the militias?
Sometimes, yes. But not all the time. In fact, deliberate collusion isn’t even necessary. In our own country there are no war lords per se but we know there are drug lords operating behind the scenes because we see the fruits of their commerce on the East Side of Vancouver. And less visibly perhaps, but also in more affluent neighbourhoods of young and not so young people whose drugging is making for increasing unbalanced, bizarre and violent human behavior. And the beat goes on. To the tune of THE SYSTEM.
Right here in British Columbia the Attorney General will deny he instructs the police how to arrest protesters so that they will be divested of a fair trial when they get to court, but he does. And the judges who receive citizens trying to protect a bit of the planet also know to which class they belong and will act accordingly when such citizens are brought before them. It has been the judiciary of British Columbia who has protected the logging companies and allowed them to deforest this province so egregiously. And it is within this moneyed class that through working together, however closely or loosely, in an interlocking system creates, domestically and globally, a system of power that comprises corporate culture.
THE SYSTEN is at war with the earth. It is only by recognizing this war that we know where we, as fully cognizant human beings can stand. And it is only when we know where we stand that we know how to fight. Of course in the end, Mother Nature may defend herself in such a way as to repudiate the human race altogether but until then we need recognize that humans have made this society, this system, and if we don’t like it we can dam well upmake it and make another one more agreeable to ourselves and to the earth. But we won’t do it simply by conversing ever so knowledgably with each other through computers. Write, yes. Reason, yes. Research, yes. But in the final analysis, it is of necessity that we must act. Action liberates us from the dark feelings of helplessness and despair. Action floods our hearts with energy and hope. Action is the very mother of hope. Betty Krawczyk