Blog purpose

This BLOG is for LLNL present and past employees, friends of LLNL and anyone impacted by the privatization of the Lab to express their opinions and expose the waste, wrongdoing and any kind of injustice against employees and taxpayers by LLNS/DOE/NNSA. The opinions stated are personal opinions. Therefore, The BLOG author may or may not agree with them before making the decision to post them. Comments not conforming to BLOG rules are deleted. Blog author serves as a moderator. For new topics or suggestions, email jlscoob5@gmail.com

Blog rules

  • Stay on topic.
  • No profanity, threatening language, pornography.
  • NO NAME CALLING.
  • No political debate.
  • Posts and comments are posted several times a day.

Monday, February 22, 2021

War over free speech in Los Alamos.



https://ladailypost.com/stradling-response-to-county-councilor-david-izraelevitz/

https://ladailypost.com/letter-to-the-editor-confronting-mistaken-allegiance/

The city councilor Izralevictz wrote some letter about Trump supporters being on the wrong side of history and their grandchildren will be ashamed of them. Gary Stradling came back with free speech. Both these guys have been topics of this and the old LANL blog for some time. This is all over somebody leaving up their Trump signs which I guess in the light of Jan 6 is a form of violent incitement or provocative. Since we are coming up to grant season in Los Alamos we need to find out who supported Trump so it will be a moral duty to make sure they do not get money and are canceled in some way.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

"we need to find out who supported Trump so it will be a moral duty to make sure they do not get money and are canceled in some way."

You need to take a refresher course in freedom and democracy. It's ok now in the US to "cancel" anyone you disagree with? I'm hoping you are just another of the many trolls here who get taken seriously.

Anonymous said...

The big giveaway here is the sentence:

“It will be a moral duty to make sure they do not get money and are canceled in some way.“

People who are progressive, woke, or whatever you want to call it never use the word “cancelled”. It’s used exclusively by the right to claim a victim status in the future wars. Sorry, I can’t believe your post was sincere.

Anonymous said...

2/23/2021 1:41 PM

What are you talking about? The left uses the term "cancelled" all the time, in fact they made the term up. There is a whole slew of terms they use such as "shut it down", "cancel " "decolonize" , "defund" "abolish" and so on. The term cancel is not used exclusively by the right.

Anonymous said...

“Cancel culture” is really a right wing attack:

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/965815679/is-cancel-culture-the-future-of-the-gop

Conservatism has devolved into right-wing talk show celebrities saying stuff to boost their rating. “Cancelled” is another verbal device they use to pander to their readership or viewership. I’m not saying people don’t get “cancelled” but when you hear that word it’s using a right wing columnist complaining about things and preaching to the choir.

Unknown said...

Of course the left doesn’t use the term “cancelled”. They aren’t going to out themselves. Duh.

Anonymous said...

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/965815679/is-cancel-culture-the-future-of-the-gop


The NPR story is just wrong. Current cancel culture is a left wing thing, they actually have been using the term "cancel" for some time. In fact it started about 6 years ago with strong push to "cancel" speaker slots at universities. These where speakers like Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, but also included former cabinet Reagan members. They would have flyers all over the campus saying "help cancel". Also amongst professor the term "cancel" become very popular when it came to trying to stop certain studies or having papers retracted or have other professors removed. There would be these emails to sign letters to "help cancel Professor so and so". The whole term "cancel culture" was brought up my moderates and and conservatives because the far left was always using the word "cancel".

Another thing the NPR story and other recent counter attacks on the term "cancel culture" is that it is used by the right. This again is out and out wrong. The term "cancel culture" us commonly used by moderates and many left leaning people including faculty who simply find the idea of shutting down dialogue abhorrent as traditionally free speech and open dialogue are in fact liberal ideals. For example, Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, and Brett Weinstein are all liberals, and commonly talk about cancel culture and its dangers.

Now there is some confusion because many of the actions of what people used to associate with highly conservatives groups was indeed something like a cancel culture where they would try to ban things, shut things down, etc like in the 80s and early 90s with very strong religion overtones. However the roles are reversed now where the "new left" is much more like the old right, in that they want to reduce freedoms, reduce speech, punish wrong thinkers, believe they are morally superior and judge others, and have almost religious like belief in their cause. On the other hand today large portions of the people who simply are pro freedom, free speech, leave every one alone, judge people as individuals, in other words the liberals of the 80s and 90s are now considered far right.

A more speculative opinion on my part is that there is simply a human need for religions like thought where one becomes lost in a larger organization that gives certainty to all moral questions and directs actions for your life without questions. In other words a need for "us" versus "them. People simply think that this is a conservative and Christian phenomena because that is how it has been since the 50s in the US, but you consider the wider context of the world it it will be clear that that is can be right or left wing and can be bases on religion or ideology and can also shift over time. We have now seen that shift where it is nowLeft is fighting to get rid of rights, stamp out speech, cancel people and ideas and so on, and doing it with a religious like zeal.



Anonymous said...

2/25/2021 11:51 AM

There are many prominent people left of center that are saying cancel culture must be stoped. Bill Maher and Steve Pinker for example talk about this all the time and they are certainly on the left. Cancel culture really rubs people many people on the center or left the wrong way as more and more people on left find themselves targets of cancel culture from the radical left.

Anonymous said...

9:10 PM has made my point perfectly by trotting out a list of right wing entertainers who complain about being cancelled. The people who supposedly cancelled them never explicitly use the term “you’re cancelled”. You never quote a left-leaning individual saying this.

The list of right wing entertainers is impressive though. My favorite is Ben Shapiro who makes his living by talking really fast so nobody has time to counter him. It’s all a game.

Anonymous said...

2/26/2021 12:21 PM

I simply do not understand your point.

Ben Shaprio and Ann Coulter can certainly be considered right wing entertainers. But Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Jordan Peterson and Brett Weinstein are left wing people. Not to mention known lefties like Bill Maher, Pinker, and even Bernie Sanders have all specifically come out against cancel culture and use the term "cancel culture". There is endless stuff out there I can just leave a few links, but come one man. There are also lots of images of protestors carrying signs saying "Cancel so and and so" and "shut down so and so"

https://sfist.com/2017/04/23/bill_maher_and_bernie_sanders_slam/

Look at the picture below where the protestor has the word cancel on their sign for Ann Coulter. This was from 2017. There are endless other pictures like this. The term cancel in reference to stopping speech was a term started by the left.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-coulter-speech-berkeley-20170425-story.html

It is a bit off topic but it does how how the media gets things wrong all the time whether deliberately or just bad reporting. We have seen this time and time again in reference to reporting on the labs. My favorite was the 10000 pounds of missing plutonium. People simply read about and say "it must be true".

Anonymous said...

And this thread is relevant to LLNL/LANL how?

Anonymous said...

And this thread is relevant to LLNL/LANL how?

2/26/2021 5:57 PM

To bring it full circle since LLNL/LANL are science labs and have academic connections so it is reasonable to think that some of the current issues and culture that is now occurring in academic settings will have some bearing on the labs. In academics the idea of "canceling" other professors, research areas, or imposing heavy handed ideas of "woknes" is very prominent. If you follow what is going on in the academic world you will know that it is now being seen to be morally permissible to try and de-platform, purge, or un-person any people who do not go along with this. You are now seeing serious discussion in academics on how certain people should not be allowed to have grants, speak, or publish if they have the wrong politics. The question is if and when this practice starts to occur at the labs. In fact if you have been paying attention some of these issues are already starting to occur a the labs, for example remember the critical race studies issue at Sandia last year. Also if you listen to various questions during recent all hands talks we are seeing more and more of the "woke" culture questions by people who see which way the wind is blowing and want to position themselves to take advantage of this. In recent meetings this is now the focus of the majority of the questions.

In short "cancel culture" could become very relevant to the labs. If you have any doubt about what is going on I suggest you read "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles Mackay. These kinds of purges, or "cancellations" have a tendency to grow increasingly worse over time before they burn themselves out. Remember the Joe McCarthy, communists trials, during the red square, the French Revolution or the Salem with trials. There is no reason to think the labs will also not be caught up in this madness.

Anonymous said...

Cancel culture is alive and well in the DOE. Try getting an LDRD proposal past Division Leaders who view all proposals through political glasses. Try to get energy work that isn’t, “green”, funded. Heck, just try to get a decent raise if your views don’t align exactly with those in the seats of power. Gone are the days when objectivity ruled scientific endeavors. Even peer review is a thing of the past.

Anonymous said...


Bill Maher the well known far right comedian, (thats a joke), just yesterday had funny take down of cancel culture and how it starting to look more and more like Onion headlines. To keep this relevant to the lab I have heard there is talk that you must have your pronouns in your email. I am not sure how you enforce that of the lab sig files will just have this. I could make fun this and say that you the next thing will be your P number or privilege number, the higher the number of the worse. The problem is that lately if think of something so crazy that it is funny that in a couple of years it becomes true. In other words the Onion articles become reality .

https://www.thewrap.com/maher-on-cancel-culture-when-what-youre-doing-sounds-like-an-onion-headline-stop/

Anonymous said...

Even peer review is a thing of the past.

2/28/2021 9:34 AM

Hyperbole much?

Anonymous said...

Hyperbole much?

3/01/2021 5:49 PM

I would explain it to you but it is not my problem you could not understand the point.

Anonymous said...

As far as I know, peer reviewed journals are still a thing.

Anonymous said...



As far as I know, peer reviewed journals are still a thing.

3/02/2021 5:20 PM

Any peer reviewed journal must prove that it promotes equality or it should be canceled.

Posts you viewed tbe most last 30 days