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Weapons Lab and the inconvenient truth

Anonymously contributed:

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/weapons-labs-and-the-inconvenient-truth

Comments

Anonymous said…
Again, I repeat:

NO ... ONE ... CARES.

Not trying to be cruel or anything, but that is just the way it is.

You can document this stuff about the destruction of LANL (which is all too true) as much as you want but nothing will stop the downward spiral that this lab is going through. The last decade is evidence enough to prove this point.

Report after report has documented the dismal staff morale and the broken, highly dysfunctional management style being enforced on the lab by DOE, NNSA and the for-profit LLCs. These reports have stopped none of it. It's only become worse with time.
Anonymous said…
You can document this stuff about the destruction of LANL (which is all too true) as much as you want but nothing will stop the downward spiral that this lab is going through. The last decade is evidence enough to prove this point.

March 1, 2012 7:19 PM

Absolutely true. If you work at LANL, it is time to just shut up with your whining and get the hell out. No one will ever hear your cries of outrage, your tears, or your victimhood. Nobody gives a crap about you or your problems. And they don't even care about LANL or about the US nuclear deterrent, or about anything to do with nuclear weapons. YOU ARE ALL IRRELEVANT to mainstream US society. Sorry, but it's true. Get a clue about how everyone in the country feels except in Los Alamos. They couldn't care less about you, or Mcmillan, or Knapp. Who do you think is listening?? Get a grip on reality, go find a better life for yourself and wife and kids away from the LANL cesspool. Guess what? Most people in this country don't even remember that there is a federal government until tax time. It is not relevant to their daily lives. Take your blinders off and go live a free life somewhere.
Anonymous said…
Hey March 1, 2012 8:47 PM! Your an optimist, things are a lot worse than you say.
Anonymous said…
Hugh is spot on again.
Anonymous said…
In laying the entire blame on NNSA while completely exonerating Bechtel, Shank and Curtis are giving us a spectacular example of doublethink.

Here is the definition, straight from Orwell:

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, [...] to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself ..."

In this sense, are the guys who wrote the NAS report really all that different from the NNSA or the LANL upper management?
Anonymous said…
"Doublethink" is just what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance" - having in the mind simultaneously two opposite and mutually exclusive beliefs. It is not all that rare, and accounts for much of petty crime, crimes of passion (those not involving alcohol), and most of what is said during presidential campaigns.
Anonymous said…
One thing we learned from Hugh Gusterson's analysis of the NAS report is that Doublethink is contagious. While investigating layers of Doublethink created by NNSA, the investigators got caught up in Doublethink themselves.
Anonymous said…
Sen Domenici: past Directors referred to him as St. Pete, he funded LANL, as no one else could, maybe over-funded the Lab, but those days are over. The congressional delegation that represents New Mexico have no clout, nor do they have the drive that Domenici had for LANL. Everyone knew what was coming after he decided to retire. This to has come to pass.
Anonymous said…
Received a "legislative update" in today's mailbox from Northern NM Congressman Ben Ray Lujan (D). What a huge disappointment this boy has been!

His Congressional mail, however, won't go to waste. I plan on placing it in the bottom of my bird cage... with his boyish face pointing upward under my big parrot's fat ass!
Anonymous said…
Ah, yes, Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, Democrat from Santa Fe. What a complete waste of human material.

There is no way this boy would have procured this job in Washington DC except for the fact that he is son of famous NM State Senator (and NM Speaker of the House), Ben Lujan. Nepotism is a favorite sport of the Democrats of New Mexico.

It is well know by those who hang around this boy that he hides his "peculiarly qualities" (as they say in polite crowds), so as not to embarrass his daddy. In a word, this boy has no balls at all.
Anonymous said…
It is well know by those who hang around this boy that he hides his "peculiarly qualities" (as they say in polite crowds), so as not to embarrass his daddy. In a word, this boy has no balls at all.

March 7, 2012 8:36 PM

I don't believe "they" say that. I believe "they" would use better English. Misogynist homophobe. Want to be more explicit about why you hate gay people?
Anonymous said…
The Democratic coalition that represent New Mexico has let Northern New Mexico down. Worse, they seem to have gone into hiding about this whole downsizing affair at LANL. It's as if the place doesn't even exist!

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