Dateline: 3 February 2006
Roundup is the world’s most commonly used herbicide. It’s made by the corporate giant, Monsanto. One of my neighbor’s is a farmer. I’ve seen him spray Roundup on a perfectly healthy hay field. A few days later, the whole thing was dead and brown. Then he planted a crop into the dead field without plowing or preparing it. It’s called no-till farming.
Some crops, like corn are genetically modified so that they are not affected by Roundup. So the farmer can spray the corn field and kill weeds without killing the corn. I’ve read that Roundup is sprayed on 140 million acres of genetically-modified crops around the world each year.
Since Roundup was invented (It has been around for a couple decades now) the company has made a fortune for its stockholders, and the company maintains that their killer chemical is perfectly safe, if used according to their guidelines.
I’ve expressed concerns about Roundup to two farmers I know and they have assured me it is indeed perfectly safe, and then they give me some spiel about why it is safe. I don’t believe these people. I think they have been duped by the chemical companies. Anything that can kill a whole living field like that is not safe for people.
And now the independent studies are coming out to show the dangers of Roundup. It turns out that that Roundup damages human placental cells, even at 1/10th of the exposure that the company claims is safe. They have also found it kills tadpoles in water around the fields. What else does it kill? What other damage does it do to people once it’s in the environment and the food chain?
How could Monsanto claim Roundup was safe when it damages humans? How does any chemical company claim that their chemicals are safe? Someone must study the safety of the chemical. And that brings me to a little story that I feel compelled to share with you. . .
I know a guy who works in research at a well-known agricultural college. You would instantly recognize this school's name. This guy and I are on friendly terms. I won’t tell his name and I won’t tell the school and I won’t tell much about the details of what he does because I don’t want him to loose his job. But I will tell you about a conversation I had with him not too long ago.
He was telling me that he was helping with a new field study. It involves the planting of crops and the effects of a new chemical herbicide. It is a multiyear study. I asked him who commissioned the study. He told me it was the chemical company that made the herbicide.
I asked him if he thought the study would, in the end, prove very favorable to the chemical herbicide. He laughed out loud and said, “What do you think?” The point being that of course the study would prove the herbicide everything the company wants it to be.
To this I wondered if the college with the world-renowned reputation was prostituting itself? He responded, a little subdued in his tone, “Well, you wouldn’t want to tell them that.”
Then he told me that the chemical company gave the school a grant of several million dollars to study the herbicide. The point being, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. After all, research—even academic research—is a business that needs satisfied customers to survive and prosper.
This conversation was something of a revelation to me. Most people like to think that institutions of higher learning and their research departments are morally neutral when it comes to the scientific research they do. But I think that is being very naive.
Surely, no researcher would find an herbicide with obvious and immediate shortcomings to be safe. But what about the hazards and dangers that are not immediatly obvious; the ones that go undetected for years or, even, forever? Do the research companies that are in the back pocket of the giant chemical corporations really study those things? I don’t think so.
I do not trust the multinational corporate Industrial Providers. They are not human. They do not think and act like real people. They are artificial entities. They have artificial hearts and artificial consciences. Nothing is more important to them than making money. That is their whole reason for being. It is their only reason for being. They are not human. They are not my friend. They are not your friend. Don't ever forget that.
Herrick
ReplyDeleteI've been saying for a long time now that, "if it doesn't make sense, it must have something to do with money".
Russ
I'll put that one in my Elephant Suitcase some thing I never forget to carry..........
ReplyDeleteHerrick,
ReplyDeleteAs the saying goes..."follow the money"...anytime someone quotes a "study" I look to the source who paid for the study...I am rarely surprised!
You have put your finger on the problem with corporations. They are not human, but in the eyes of the law they have all of the rights of a human without the burden of human responsibility or normal human limitations like death. I am convinced that they are an enemy only God can destroy.
ReplyDeleteI am equally convinced that He will someday do so.
Great post!! Roundup will soon be proven to be yet another ecological disaster, though one that brought literally hundreds of billions of dollars into the hands of its corporate perpetrator.
ReplyDeleteThrough various legal fictions, fallen man continually invents new ways to circumvent God’s law by creating new entities that “technically” are not human and, thus, in their own crafty thinking, exist outside the scope of His law and rule, which they claim applies only to real men and women. Let it be said before looking into these entities that mankind is permitted by God to organize various human entities, such as partnerships, proprietorships, etc., to help govern himself and assist in the daily affairs of human life, so long as these created entities do not violate God’s law or obviate its purposes. But mankind is not permitted to create any entities or, in the case of the corporation, new “persons” after his own (fallen) kind who answer to him only, so as to fall outside the scope of God’s law that deal with true persons of His creation. Ever since the fall in the garden, man has been seeking to hide behind something to avoid the personal liability and consequences of his sin (as defined by God’s law) and to protect himself from the consequences that comes when his fellow man sins. For example, take the corporation (bolding is mine TCM), a creation of mankind that limits the liability of personal sin.
CORPORATION. An artificial person or legal entity created by or under the authority of the laws of a state or nation, composed, in some rare instances, of a single person and his successors, being the incumbents of a particular office, but ordinarily consisting of an association of numerous individuals, who subsist as a body politic under a special denomination, which is regarded in law as having a personality and existence distinct from that of its several members, and which is, by the same authority, vested with the capacity of continuous succession, irrespective of changes in its membership, either in perpetuity or for a limited term of years, and of acting as a unit or single individual in matters relating to the common purpose of the association, within the scope of the powers and authorities conferred upon such bodies by law. (Black’s Law Dictionary, 4th edition – bolding by TCM)
A corporation is an artificial person created by the state, which acts as a body politic, having been granted special authority, rights, and privileges to fulfill its stated purpose and to insure a continuous succession irrespective of the individual actions of its human members (or the judgments of God that may come upon them). Since this artificial person known as the corporation is created by the State and exists only by its permission, by law it answers first and only to the State as its sovereign, which conflicts directly with the absolute sovereignty God exercises over the earth, the world, and mankind, as clearly declared in the Scriptures (Mat. 28:18, Eph. 1:19-23, Jude 25, Rev. 1:5). How is this conflict so? All corporations exist by an exclusive covenant with the State and any covenant, no matter whether it’s Christian or secular, which does not recognize God as the Supreme Sovereign and His Law as the final standard for its terms, is in violation of God’s Law and subject to His righteous judgments for . . . The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, The world and those who dwell therein (Psa. 24:1) and The wicked shall be turned into hell, And all the nations that forget God (Psa. 9:17). This effort to run society by a means which excludes God and His law is but a continuation of the rebellion of man, started in the garden of Eden long ago.
Fallen man is forever in the quest to throw off God’s law since it restrains him from seeking “his fortune” in his own “free” (depraved) way. Though these quests may bring riches for a season, as we have seen with our incredibly powerful and well organized debt-based system, they always lead to generational destruction and sorrow in the long run. A man with an evil eye hastens after riches, And does not consider that poverty will come upon him (Pro. 28:22). With history having proven this agonizing truth time and again, has mankind wizened-up to the point where he now acknowledges God, as the Supreme Sovereign, in the various covenants he makes? The answer is obviously NO, as this acknowledgement would, in their perverted thinking, relinquish to God the independent, sovereign power that he thinks he has already gained in denying Him. Of course, man greatly deceives himself when he thinks he has such independence and power; he has always been absolutely subject to God and His righteous Law (Psa. 2).
The modern corporation, empowered by debt-based economics, is to date the most powerful entity to enthrone man as god over the earth and his fellow man. It too, like all others, will utterly fail in God’s Providential timing.
I appreciate everyone's comments here!
ReplyDeletePastor Mc Connell, you are a rich resource of knowledge and wisdom. I always enjoy hearing your in-depth perspective.
Missouri Rev, your comments were excellent. I clearly see the unmistakeable imprint of the study of Biblical Law (Rushdoony) on your worldview and completely agree with your exegesis of the scriptural case against fallen men hiding behind corporate entities in vain attempts to shield themselves from the consequences of the sin of our first father, Adam.
ReplyDeleteGen 3:17-19 "And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.
Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return."
This is important because exercising dominion "in the sweat of thy face" is a means of sanctification, since the elect accept God's punishment and look to Christ for salvific justification only. Little sweat, little sanctification. (Agrarianism vs. ??)
However, Roundup is also a rejection of the blessing of God pre-fall Gen 1:27-28
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
When Roundup kills anything, even tadpoles, this is not replenishing the earth AND subduing it.
In summation, the main case against Roundup is that it:
1) Severs man from both the pre-fall blessing of God by blocking the replenishment (fecundity) of the earth
2) Attempts to evade the post-fall curse of God pronounced on Adam (and us as his descendents) as the just judgement for our transgressions.
3) Denies men necessary sanctification via agrarian labors (yes this means sweaty hard work) which help modern man to better understand their fallen state and the Biblical instructions of their agrarian patriarchs (ex. Elisha)