Honor and integrity are in short supply nowadays. Politicians and scientists in particular have a huge influence over the course of human events. Irresponsible no-integrity sellout Scientists especially have the ability to do severe damage to humanity and the earth itself. A puppet politician with limited intelligence can only do so much damage to humanity and the world but scientists can invent/create things that can potentially destroy everything in existence!
The thing that both entities have in common are the rich corporations and the elite evil 1% that run these corporations that pay them. Both politicians and scientists sell their souls to in order to be part of the bourgeoisie and take care of their trophy wives, 3 kids, a McMansion in the suburbs, two cars (SUV) and maybe a boat etc. Some call it the American dream - but the toxic products these scientists create 24/7 to make their corporate bosses happy are more like the American Nightmare - for all of us!
You can run but can't hide from nuclear power, GMOs, potential virus releases under weak lab protections, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, 80,000 toxic, cancer causing chemicals - only 200 of which have been tested for safety, fossil fuels and all the pollutants that go along with them - plastics in our landfill and our blood, tons of toxic industrial waste and pharmaceuticals in our drinking water (blood), nuclear waste in our blood and seafood from testing bombs and Fukishima, Japan's reactor melt downs, and on and on the list goes. Brilliant writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote the book Cat's Cradle about ice-9, a toxic man-made chemical spreading rapidly and destroying the world in its wake. A dark comedy of errors otherwise known as the Human Condition.
I have chosen to feature here three examples of high integrity and goodness and three of no integrity and straight up selfish evil characters. Political figures and Scientists from each side of the divide of good and evil.
Let's start with the good. I will mention in historical order. First on the list is one of our founding fathers - elderly statesmen, entrepreneur and inventor Benjamin Franklin. Ben Franklin was a co-writer of our constitution and the only founding father with his signature on the 5 core documents that created the USA. And if not for the French people, and especially King Louie's love of this man, and his willingness to aid Washington's Revolutionary army near the end of the fight for independence from Britain - the USA may never had happened. I mention this self-made, super successful man of high integrity for just one of his inventions - probably the most important in terms of conservation of nature in America - the Woodstove - otherwise known as the Ben Franklin Stove. A much more efficient heating/cooking device, rather than the traditional and very wasteful fireplace where most of the heat energy goes up the chimney. The power/heat source in the colonial days was firewood - from felled trees. However, the rapid spread and adaption of his Franklin Woodstove saved millions of trees from being wasted and or chopped down. All of our countryside could now look as barren as England's, which used up most of their trees over the last couple thousand years (pre-fossil fuels). The big, not-greedy, high-integrity, unselfish aspect of this story - is that Mr. Franklin did not pursue a patent on his brilliant, yet simple invention that millions quickly converted to. He openly admitted borrowing ideas from Europe and figured that the country would benefit from it, and the name recognition would be satisfactory for his healthy ego.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_stove
Now let's shift to the dark side. Another more recent statesman - Dick Cheney - two time Vice President to President George W. Bush and executive head of Halliburton Fossil Fuel Corporation with tentacles in many dirty energy endeavors all over the globe. Dick worked his way up the neo-conservative ladder from all the way back to the Nixon Administration. This man is straight-up evil. However - he may be psychopathic and not even realize how evil he is. He is so steeped in denial of his evil actions that he has no remorse for being the top driving force that led America in to a needless and stupid ongoing war with Iraq - longest in our history. He pulled the strings and manipulated the top brass behind the scenes of the government and hyped false information/lies such as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and the uranium cake from Africa story. He even had the nerve to link Iraq to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks - and many actually believed him! This creep was another mediocre student from the Yale club. Yet he comes from humble roots in the Midwest. Thus his huge destructive and relentless ambition to become super rich and powerful - with no regards to anyone else but himself. Well he definitely has succeeded, but at the expense of millions of lives world-wide. Mr. Cheney, and by proxy and collusion President Bush are guilty for the totally unnecessary deaths of around 5000 American soldiers with thousands more paralyzed and or mentally damaged, 250,000 innocent Iraqi civilians and the ruination of millions of lives in Iraq (and Afghanistan). The big selling point of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan was to make the world safer from extreme Muslim terrorists. The opposite has happened - there are now more terrorists world wide than ever before. However, this was probably the intentions of Dick Cheney and his cohorts at the American Enterprise Institute, and amongst the Military Industrial Complex to have a new US enemy post the Cold War. These new secular 'Crusades' have worked out splendidly for these evil imperialist creatures that pretty much run the world and derive much power and monetary fortunes from ongoing perpetual wars (1984). I would love to be able to witness Dick Cheney's day of reckoning with God. Because if there is a God and I am 110% sure that there is - justice will be done on Dick and all the other evil Dicks out there.
http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/1/208.full
http://thepassionateattachment.com/2013/03/07/chomsky-acknowledges-the-neocons-as-the-dominant-force-in-pushing-for-iraq-war/
http://world.time.com/2013/02/15/viewpoint-why-was-the-biggest-protest-in-world-history-ignored/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/iraq-war-spin-bush-david-corn
Let's lighten it up now with a brilliant scientist who literally gave away his greatest achievement to help make the world a better place. I am speaking of Jonas Salk, discoverer of the cure/vaccine for Polio. Polio is unlike most deadly viruses because it not only kills but paralyzes those who contract the disease and survive. Of the many controversial vaccines ever created - this is one most can agree is a miracle cure for an otherwise totally debilitating virus. Jonas Salk was a good, unselfish man. He could have patented this cure and made a fortune - but he gave the world the cure seeking no monetary ($) award. He humbly and righteously said "There is no patent, could one patent the sun?".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
Back to darkness. Dr. Frizt Haber was another overly ambitious man. Mr. Haber was a brilliant chemical scientist who eventually won a Nobel prize for his figuring out how to extract nitrogen form the air, which later gave birth to the synthetic fertilizer industry, and is one of the main reasons for the population explosion in the 20th century. Mr. Haber was Jewish - although he was by no means a religious man - in fact like many scientists he rejected religion completely. His negative actions in life were a reflection of this dismissal of any guiding moral authority. He was also a German citizen who worked for the Kaiser during WW I. His work led to the creation of Zyclon-B, one of the first chemical gas weapons used in WW I and later in WW II as the poison that would kill millions of his fellow Jews in the Gas Chambers. Supposedly he also drove his wife insane (literally) as well. This guy had lots of bad karma.
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/06/fritz-habers-experiments-in-life-and-death/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-13015210
Back to the light! Here I will mention two personal scientific heroes of mine who were contemporaries during the mid 20th century. Clair Patterson and Rachel Carson. Mr Patterson was a Geo-chemist and Ms. Carson was a Biologist. They were also the first Scientist environmentalists. They were folks of high integrity who never sold out to evil corporations and the evil men that run them. Clair Patterson is actually famous for discovering the true age of the planet after many years of hard work and perseverance studying meteor rocks with the latest technology of the time. Only later in his career did dedicate himself to the study of toxic lead (man-made) found in the atmosphere, land, water and oceans. Until his work drudging samples from the sea and digging from ice caves around the world - it was thought that ubiquitous lead levels were natural. Mr. Patterson discovered they were not. Many products on the market such as gas for cars and household paints were made with toxic and deadly lead in the early to mid-20th century. It was a huge, dirty and nasty industry that tried to bribe Mr. Patterson not to pursue his work on poisonous lead levels in the environment. He refused based on his good conscience, solid character and scientific knowledge that lead was very toxic and dangerous to all animals health. For 20 years he kept up the fight and eventually ended up testifying to congress. Soon after his solid science on the matter was presented to the government, federal laws prohibiting anymore use of lead products were established. Rachel Carson was another great scientist that fought to ban DDT around the same time - a pesticide she discovered caused cancers in the lab and therefore were harmful to humans as well. She wrote of her findings in her seminal book Silent Spring, which really influenced the near future environmentalist movement that led to Earth Day, the EPA and major federal anti-pollution Clean Air & Water Acts in the early1970s. Because of the mass use of this nasty pesticide, corporate resistance was strong but common sense won out and the DDT was banned from the market. Imagine how much more toxic pollution would now exist if not for the courage and strength of character of these particular scientists and all the environmental activists that heeded their call? These are the types of scientists/heroes the world needs more of!
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/cosmos-neil-tyson-lead-industry-science-denial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson
The most recent battle of corporations trying to suppress science for the common good are the Fossil Fule Corporations. The UN council on Global warming and the top climate scientists in the world have been telling us for over 30 years - that based on ever increasing Co2 levels from fossil fuel use, a green house effect is causing global warming and thus extreme weather events, the polar ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising accordingly, which will cause many major Geo-politcal problems in the near future. Yet leaders are reluctant to act in the West and China because they are beholden to corporations who manipulate the politicians like puppets on strings to promote and secure their greedy 'profit by any means necessary' evil agenda. Unfortunately, history repeats itself over and over again. Do we ever learn? Apparently not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/03/world/europe/global-warming-un-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change.html
Bringing up the creepy and evil Fossil Fuel industry is a perfect segue into our final bad character, 0 integrity scientist. He is Professor Joel Kostca, a micro-biologist who sold his soul to BP - British Petroleum Corporation. In wake of the desperate clean up after the nightmarish BP oil spill in 2010 from the Horizon deep water drilling station (connection to Halliburton as well!) in the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Kostca was hired by BP indirectly as a valid scientist via a multimillion dollar donation/grant to the Professor's branch of the Georgia Institute of Technology. He went on a paid for PR media campaign and claimed (fabricated a hypothesis/lie) that bacteria in the sea were eating up most of the 170-200 million gallons of crude oil spilled (continues to leak to a lesser extent). The real truth is that BP used and continues to use a toxic chemical dispersant called Corexit - outlawed in their own country, to break up the huge floating oil slicks into little bits that have sunk to the bottom of the gulf and formed a huge oil island. To add insult to injury - even intelligent President Obama sold out during an election season and said the Gulf was clean and back to normal. It all adds up to deception because of the sickness of greed and lust for power.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/corexit-bp-oil-dispersant_n_3157080.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuSlXs5AG_s
http://www.nrdc.org/energy/bpoildisasteroneyear.asp
Finally - what kind of scientist or person are you? Do you have integrity? Do you have a strong character and sense of right and wrong? Do you care about things outside yourself? Time is of the essence and we all need to do something to alter our unhealthy toxic consumer behaviors and fight the corporations that want to keep the status-quo, and drag us all down to hell with them. Speak truth to power! Fight the good fight. CS Lewis was right about the fact that there is an epic battle of Good and Evil being waged on this earth - which side are you on?
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