Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
Comments
3/14/2023 6:23 AM
Besides we need the troops and money to send to Ukraine.
3/14/2023 6:23 AM
Or any free democratic country from any totalitarian dictator invading them? You wish you spoke German from birth?
3/15/2023 6:12 PM
The old Germany argument. You are appear to be rather ignorant of all the brutal dictators the US supported in the last 100 years. If it is a dictator that works for our interests we will support them. You keep looking at history and the US in moral terms of "good" and "evil". This is simply not how history or humans have ever worked. If you have any doubts about this consider that the US supported dozens of dictators. Heck even South Korea up to mid 90s was hardly democratic. We supported Saddam against Iran and even the Taliban against Russia. Look at Central America, South America, the Middle East, and South Asia to see just who the US supported. We invaded how many countries since ww2? I will let you guess and the number but it is larger than you think.
I have no problem with US involvement when it comes to our political and imperial interests that sustains the western worlds way of life but I do have problem when midwit or kindergarten analysis of geopolitics. We are not in South Korea to defend democracy we are there for influence. We are not interested in helping the freedom peace loving paradise nation of Ukraine fight evil we in it to take on Russia and put pressure on China. At no point other than propoganda are considerations of "right" and "wronger" part of this.
Evil will occur when good people do not stand up to it. When did the US ever invade another country, when did we ever support a dictator,
did you ever go to grade school? Putin is a threat and needs too removed any one with a brain sees this.
3/16/2023 6:52 AM
Wow, I guess you have access to all of history and how history and humans have always behaved, and why. Thank you for your omniscient wisdom, oh Great One.
3/17/2023 7:17 PM
I am shocked time and time again about how little history many Americans have. It is particularly problematic among young people. Even at the labs is very telling how little people understand the history of the labs both in terms of national security science and basic science. To them it is just a job. As for history we simply repeat what we find on twitter.
As for my opinion on history, one does not nee to have access to all history, one only needs to have subset of history and clear reputable patterns arrises. Modern recorded history only goes back 4000 years, but universal behaviors and actions can be found. Also from studying tribal people we can get a pretty good idea of how pre history people also acted. As for US history it is only 250 years and you can have a pretty good idea of what happened. My stance is not controversial by any means and if you happen to know any historian or political scientists they will also agree. Viewing history through a moral lens is neither accurate or useful.
To be clear North Korea has no chance against South Korea in an armed conflict. The problem is it would be a lot of deaths but South Korea has a much stronger and better armed military. The US force is already pretty small. Of course in a conflict you take whatever you can. North Korea actually has nukes because it fears South Korea will one day just invade it. In that case China may throw some troops in like they did last time but South Korea of 2023 is nothing like SK in 1950.
The US presence in our 800 bases around the world is about maintaining the US empire and dollar. We can just print money all we want because so many nations use our currency. The idea that this is to "spread" democracy or freedom is nonsense. It is about power. Fair enough in my mind, we will do a better job than China, however the US is starting to inch toward China in terms policy such controll of information, arresting its citizens, merging the state and the media, getting young people to completely back the state narratives, having large sections of the US population seen as an enemy. We thought may China would be more like the US with free markets but it turns out we want to be more like China. I can just picture DC politicians or corporate businessman going to China and thinking "it would be so great if we had this in the US!!! China handled Covid way better, they do not have insurrections, they do not have mass shootings, they do have division amongst their people, and at the same time they plenty of rich people. The quality of life is improving and maybe in some ways it is already better.
3/19/2023 5:09 PM
Thank you for offering a very deep, knowledgeable and non partisan contribution. It is so good to have your insight I really appreciate your point. Oh yes you do not have point, you never have a point. You just attack other peoples points but even than you do not really attack them with any real argument.
The bigger point about South Korea is of course, this could mean Japan could soon follow, Australia is already amping up its military. In any case this is not at all about NK. This simple to understand (1) NK military cannot beat SK, in any kind of conflict. (2) NK does not even have a viable nuclear threat to SK. It would be ugly nut SK easily wins any conflict. It simply sounds better for SK to say NK is the problem then to say it is about China. Japan wants nukes also because of China. We are entering a new cold war. The Russian thing is sort fo distraction, China is trying to get them on their side and we are trying to take it over. If we can take Russia out in the next two years we have about 5 years to beat China in armed conflict after that they will be too well armed. The issues we have with Russia are all about China. Russia has no ambition to take over the world but China does. Of course Biden cannot go to the public and explain it like this but if you have any knowledge of history it is pretty obvious what is going on. Yes all this is relevant to the labs.