Walbran Valley

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE! BC SUPREME COURT STYLE!

Well, the appeals court brought down their verdict yesterday morning concerning whether it was all right or not for the attorney general, the courts, the RCMP and the Burnaby correctional Centre for Women to hold me for three weeks without charge for blockading in the Walbran Valley two years ago. The judges that yes, it was okay, notwithstanding that my rights under the Charter were violated. Notwithstanding? Was I surprised? No. Disgusted? Yes. Totally disgusted? Oh, yes.

The reason for my disgust is because of the history of how the BC judicial system has protected the logging companies from the very beginning. It began back in the 1950's with the first Minister of Forests, Robert Sommers. Sommers gave out a huge tree farm license on Vancouver Island to BC Forest Products in exchange for money and goods and favors. This exchange came to light largely due to the perserverence of one man, Gordon Gibson.

Gibson was called "the Bull of the Woods" and while a logger himself, he was dismayed by the large tree farm licenses being given out by the government of W.A.C. Bennet. But Sommers was eventually brought to trial and sentenced to five years for bribry and guess what? The trial judge said that while, yeah, Sommers was guilty of taking the bribes and had to go to prison but BC Forest products could keep the tree farm license. Why? OH, just because the owners of the logging company had so much money and influence. And the Attorney General didn't say "boo". He didn't lay any charges at all against BC Products. Thus a criminal judicial decision made by a BC judge, influenced by power and the attorney General of the day, who was influenced by the same things, allowed the recipient of a huge criminal activity to keep the proceeds of the criminal acts.

Every tree farm license in BC today is tainted with BC judicial protection of criminal acts. So the appeal judges who decided my case would certainly follow along in this same vein, the precedent having been set long ago. While the appeal judges said that while in my case my rights under the charter may have been abridged, they weren't going to overturn the original decision. And I know the reason why, If the judges decided that the way in which BC courts have historically protected the logging companies was unlawful, then were would the courts be? My God, the entire judicial system of British Columbia would fall!

When judges can't decide a case on it's merits because of their court's own history of prejudice, and then when they turn around and use these precedents of prejudice to decide very similar cases before them into eternity, then there should be some way that citizens can say, okay...If all you judges can do is bring down precedent of what's gone on before when citizens try to protect public property, then let's look at the history of how the courts have protected the logging companies in extremely questionable ways, dating back to the Robert Sommers case.

So. We'll be off to the Supreme Court of Canada. Of course we're going to appeal. I'll be so happy to be in a Supreme Court Building outside British Columbia I think I'll lean down and kiss the courtroom floor, first thing. But an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada will take a bit of money as this occurs in Ottawa and my lawyer, Cameron Ward, can't work for next to nothing forever for me, as much as he believes in this. But I have confidence we'll find the money somewhere. As this case concerns not only the public forests of BC but everything and everybody within the public forests including First Nations People and Claims, non=native communities, wild life, salmon streams, endangered specie, watersheds...This case touches everybody in British Columbia. When logging companies are given free gratis to wipe out the public forest that the government is supposed to be holding in trust for our children, then let's get on with this...Let's everybody get on with this.

CORPORATE GREENPEACE!
Whatever happened to you, Greenpeace? You big, brave eco-warriors of old have seemingly turned into backroom corporate dealers. You made a deal with Gordon Campbell and the logging corporations not to make a fuss about clear cutting the rest of BC public forests in exchange for protecting a part of the Great Bear Rain Forest. Correct me if I'm wrong.

But is this a fair deal? Even disregarding that part of this deal was done in secret, what makes you think that Gordon Campbell will honour any agreement he decides not to? I'm sure you've heard that he's just announced that logging will commence in provincial parks. Do you not see any connection here? Does his history of tearing up any and all agreements not fill you with some tepiditon? And suppose Campbell's government does start logging in some part of the Great Bear not agreed upon? What will you do about it? Not much, because you've given your big gun away, that great weapon of the threats of blockades. After you've spent all this time convincing eager young people that blockades are passe, that the corporate methods of doing business is the smart way to go, and that only Netherndal environmentalists do that
tacky blockade thing? After all this indoctrination, how are you going to whip up any enthusiasm for blockades when they're absolutely needed?

Well, Greenpeace, you've lost my high regard. You arrogantly assume that you speak for all enviromentalists, at least all the important ones, when you court deals with the Gordon Campbell government. But you don't. And I want to point out that by not protesting vigorously the proposal by Gordon Campbell to privitize all of the public forests through his proposed Working Forest plan that you seem to have actually jumped on the side of the government. Certainly you left the fight against the Working Forest Proposal up to Ken Wu and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. And to me and Women in the Woods. We brought this issue into the court room. I spent ten and a half months in prison and in the court room talking about the Working Forest Proposal in the Supreme Court of British Columbia and you didn't say "boo".

The clear cutting of public forests is accelerating. Many citizens are getting agitated with the realization that we're in the midst of a huge deforestation, a huge fouling of water tables and fish streams, a huge chemical saturation used by corporate logging and you pick this time to make back room deals. Greenpeace, you are a huge disappointment to me.

GAIA DOWNSIZING THE MALE POPULATION?

Is this a ridiculous question? I hope so. I sincerely hope so. And while in the past I have been hesitant to bring up the subject of recent biological changes in men because it makes both men and women uncomfortable. But Gaia seems to be insistent by throwing the subject out there with her responses to the chemicalization of industry.


Sun Peaks, Shuswap Protest 2004

And the issues Gaia raises are now being briefly mentioned in some newspapers and more briefly on TV and radio. The media is necessarily brief because they don't know for sure what the stats mean and their suspicions are too horrible to think about. The scientists seem equally horrified and don't insist that the public
be informed of some of the ramifications of the recent drop in male sperm count. But the message is this: increasing numbers of couples in the western world are having trouble conceiving. In the States, one couple in four are having trouble conceiving and we can only assume it's roughly the same in Canada and other western countries. I think we can assume this because of the drop in all western countries populations and their increasing reliance on immigration for their work forces.

Of course, none of the western nations have discussed the problem in terms of the rapid changes in male biology. All, without exception, explain their problems with declining populations in terms of affluence. When populations become prosperous so that children are fed properly and can be expected to reach adulthood then women don't have so many, they reason. And with increasing participation of women in the work force, declining populations is just the natural outcome of economic prosperity.

But is the population decline in the western world only caused by affluence? Are we to believe that working women and later births and more money are the cause of this? If the human sperm count has dropped fifty per cent in the last fifty years, are we to believe that national decreases in sperm count have nothing to do with the dearth of babies? That the billions of dollars being spent annually on medical professionals by couples trying to conceive with low sperm counts has nothing to do with the sperm counts? Give me a break. And let's consider this ourselves if the media is not going to.

A fifty per cent decline in male sperm count in fifty years and still declining is not just a STATS to toss around at some party. Nature doesn't just arbitrarily cut in half a reproduction strategy that she has evolved over millions of years. Anything that has to do with the reproduction processes of any species changes slowly over eons. And it isn't just the fifty per cent drop. Something is happening to the chromosomes that makes up male sperm.

Historically, one hundred and four males are born to every one hundred females. By giving males a numerical advantage, nature recognizes that more males die before reaching adulthood, either by illness or reckless behavior. So the ratio between males and females rather evens out in adulthood, with females retaining a slight edge. As far as anybody knows, this ratio has been the norm from the beginning of humans. But now this ratio is rapidly changing. Most researchers writing on the subject attribute this change to how chemicals in male bodies affect the chromonsomes of the sperm. They believe that chemicals that mimic the female hormone estrogen is not only the main reason for the decrease in sperm count but is messing with the chromonsomes that make up the sperm.

How are hormone disruptures and mimickers from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries messing with the chromosones of men's sperm? By feminizing the sperm. Now there seems to be more female chromosones in the sperm (XX) to male chromosones(XY) than ever before which is resulting in a change in the rate of girl babies being born to male babies. Recently some researches are claiming that males are losing their historical numerical advantage. In fact, that males have already lost half of this advantage, and it's still on the way down. Why aren't men out there screaming in the streets?

I would be the first to admit that there might be some social advantages to having fewer males in the world such as less crime and less need for police, less corruption, less religious fanaticism, less violence, less cruelty in the world. But this wasn't Gaia's intent obviously, she wanted a balance or she wouldn't have designed a balance. And I don't want a world with less little boy sweetness in it, less male strength. I just wish men would stop being distracted by games, cars, porn, and electronic toys and put their minds to what is happening to them biologically. We should all be screaming in the streets.