The Lords of Darkness (Kochs) that threaten Dick Cheney's claim of master of American evil, have stretched their slimy tentacles into a couple of Americas greatest scientific educational institutions. It isn't enough that they feed the Right Wing propaganda machine with their fake think tanks and their oil company sponsored "studies" of global warming, they are now reaching into the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the Smithsonian to warp reality to their twisted view.
From Mary Emily O'Hara for Vice News we get a report of how the Kochs are sitting on the boards of a couple of our most prestigious museums.
But ask Brooklyn arts collective Not An Alternative, who are launching a new project on Saturday with a kickoff event at the Queens Museum, and they’ll tell you a science museum should be on the front lines of addressing issues that affect the natural world, like climate change. And, they say, what it most definitely should not be doing is taking huge donations from oil companies that are behind the climate change denial movement.
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Ethics undoubtedly come into question when you consider that oil magnate David Koch of atmosphere-clogging Koch Industries sits on the boards of both the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the Smithsonian.
Beka Economopoulos told VICE in an interview. “Why would one of the biggest funders of groups that deny or misrepresent climate science and biggest contributors to climate pollution be sitting on the board of a museum whose mission is to celebrate nature?”
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a Drexel University study found that of the $558 million in funding provided to climate denial groups between 2003 and 2010, the biggest donors were ExxonMobil and—you guessed it—Koch Industries.
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“If a major executive of a tobacco company offered to serve on the board of a children’s museum,” Merritt continued, “wouldn’t that be a mismatch between the mission of serving the health of children and that company’s mission?”
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One of those scientists is meteorologist and author Michael Mann, ... “We cannot allow agenda-driven oil barons like the Koch brothers to be self-appointed arbiters of what the public is taught about science,”
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In an April 2010 video, climatologist Joseph Romm walks through the Smithsonian’s David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins and ‘learns’ that human evolution was at its best during times of extreme climate shifts. He suggests that the entire exhibit was a front for denying the potential dangers of climate change—and for boosting the perception that global warming is not only harmless, but maybe even beneficial to humanity.
“The exhibit puts the credibility of the entire Museum of Natural History and science staff on the line,” Romm wrote in an accompanying article. “Either the exhibit should be completely reworked or they should give Koch’s money back so as not to taint this exhibit. Or both.”
So this is how the game works. First the Kochs buy elections from state Assemblies to congressional puppets, then they order their minions to fight for budget cuts and sequesters (which hit science very hard), then they buy into the boards of museums that are supposed to be presenting the reality of science.
Now don't think the museums will simply put the same Bull Shit in their museums that the Kochs push in their fake think tanks and fake "science" reports, of course not. But the pressure will be there to not talk about the greatest threat to civilization ever (Global Warming) and through the sin of omission, the people visiting those museums will be misinformed and will ignore this pending disaster.
The way to stop the Kochs is to elect the politicians that will fight the corrupting influence the Oligarchs are having throughout our society. And that fight will leave a critical mark on our future with the elections in Nov. It's up to all of us to fight back, and we do that by voting and getting others to vote.
GOTV! GOTV! GOTV! GOTV!