Ensign Peak Investing in Northrop Grumman

[Rain]

Northrop Grumman just announced 543 possible layoffs.

[bluebell]

4 minutes ago, Rain said:

Northrop Grumman just announced 543 possible layoffs.

I just saw this.  This round sounds like it's exclusively affecting Arizona but they've laid off over a 1000 in California earlier in the year if I remember right.  

I've been trying to figure out what's driving the layoffs but they haven't shared much.  One paper claimed "chief financial officer Dave Keffer noted some shifts in space budget priorities by government agencies. “A lot of our customers are having to address budget prioritization, particularly as it relates to 2025 and beyond,” he said."

So it sounds like NG is blaming this on their customers' downsizing their demand for NG services and products, which is then trickling downhill to affect NG employees.

[Stargazer]

On 6/9/2024 at 9:15 PM, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Yes. My wife has family in both Korea and Japan. I have visited memorials in both countries including the peace park in Hiroshima. As you say it’s not the best place to debate such things, but I will state that war crimes committed by one country does not excuse the mass torture of civilians ( slow death by radiation poisoning) by another country. And while the end result was could be called good (I.e. unconditional surrender of an evil regime) I do not believe that the ends justify the means. Nor do I believe that  all other avenues were explored. Ultimately it is impossible to determine a counterfactual history where the bomb wasn’t used. 

 

Not arguing with you, here. I just felt the need to add something.

My late wife (4 years old at the time) and her family lived in East Prussia during World War II. They got to experience the Soviet onslaught as the Red Army plowed through on their way to Berlin. Both parents were taken by the Soviets for forced labor, leaving their four little girls to try to survive in a bombed-out town (all four managed to survive). Their mother spent 3 1/2 years in the Ural mountains felling trees and other labor in horrible conditions before she was freed and sent back to what was left of Germany. Their father never returned. Something like half of German civilians taken into forced labor by the Soviets died during the experience. The Soviets said that they carted away "only" 271,672 civilians, and "only" 24% of them died while in captivity. But based on my mother-in-law's recollection, those figures are wildly understated. In the boxcar in which she was transported into the Soviet Union, with standing room only, only about a third reached the intended destination. The rest died enroute and their bodies were tossed out of the boxcar when the train paused along the way. Probably buried (or burned), and likely not even counted.  Not that I'm trying to sell you anything, but I published the memoirs of the mom and my late wife's elder sister. Actually, I wrote (or rather ghost-wrote) the mom's memoir (from a transcript of her telling her story). One might say that the German leaders sowed the wind and their people reaped the whirlwind. Should the Soviets have come through eastern Germany handing out candy and party favors instead? Of course. But they gave the German people exactly as much consideration as the German army handed out to them.

I would modify the concept of ends not justifying the means, by saying ends don't necessarily justify the means. If I kill a person whose attack would otherwise kill me, am I wrong to defend myself even if that defense results in the attacker's death? Some pacifists say "No." But I suspect most people would disagree. 

I know people get very worked up about the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. And it was a terrible thing, no doubt about that. But what people fail to consider is that "only" 129,000–226,000 people died (including from radiation) at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A much greater toll was had in the conventional bombing of Japan, which is estimated to have cost 241,000 – 900,000 lives, with 213,000 - 1,300,000 wounded, and 8,500,000 rendered homeless. In this case, the unconventional nature of those two bombs gets all the notice, as if it were somehow worse to be burned to death at Hiroshima than to be burned to death in Tokyo. But it's all horrifying.

According to then future US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who served as an officer in the Army Air Forces under General Curtis LeMay (commanded US Air Forces during the conventional bombings of Japan), LeMay once said that had the United States lost the war they would have been tried for war crimes. McNamara agreed with this assessment, and said "He (LeMay), and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals." and that "LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost." The same, I suppose could be said of the Allied bombings against Axis targets, and the death toll was something in the range of 508,202 - 841,067. I didn't find estimates for wounded and homelessness.

I'm living in the United Kingdom at this time. Though most English people who personally lived through "the Blitz" have since passed away, the social memory of that time still colors society here. But how many people died in the Blitz? "Only" 40,000 to 43,000 civilians were killed during German air raids, with "only" 46,000 to 139,000 injured, and about 2 million houses damaged or destroyed. Allied bombings on Axis targets were far, far worse. 

The whole subject is depressing as hell. But it could have been worse. Consider Genghis Khan and the rise of the Mongol Empire. One estimate is that about 10 percent of the world's population was killed either during or immediately after the Mongol invasions, around 40 to 75+ million people in Eurasia.

It's all sickening. 

Famous (or infamous, your choice) Dr. Jordan Peterson has said that many of us here in our "enlightenment" imagine to ourselves that if we were involved in those times that we would have resisted the impulse to be brutes, that we would have done the noble thing and refused to be war criminals. He says that if we think that, we are kidding ourselves. I'm one of those who likes to think that I would have refused to do the evil. But I truly don't know. What would I have done if I were General Curtis LeMay? Or Colonel Paul Tibbets who commanded the bomber that hit Hiroshima? Especially after going through 4 brutal years of war? I spent 8 years in the US Army and was never called upon to go into harm's way. If I had been called upon, would I have behaved honorably towards all? I truly don't know.

And for that reason, I feel entirely unqualified to judge those who were there, and who were faced with those choices. And thank God it's not my responsibility. 

[Stargazer]

On 6/10/2024 at 4:30 PM, the narrator said:

I'll tell you what "always" doesn't mean. It doesn't mean "exclusively."

Nonsense.

Consider "I always eat my soup with a spoon." vs "I exclusively eat my soup with a spoon." They seem pretty much identical to me. 

But feel free to disagree if you must.

On 6/10/2024 at 4:30 PM, the narrator said:

Again, enjoy beating your strawman. Must make you feel real big and strong.

As big and strong as you feel? 

[Stargazer]

On 6/10/2024 at 4:38 PM, the narrator said:

Japan was ready to surrender, but the US was too eager to test/prove the atomic bomb on a civilian population to scare Stalin and force an even more humiliating surrender from Japan.

Ready to surrender was it? 

I know there is plenty of opinion that agrees with you. But why are you so concerned with Japan not being humiliated? And why do you think that dying  by atomic bomb is somehow immeasurably worse than dying in an incendiary attack, like happened in the fire bombings of Tokyo and other places, where far more people died than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined?

Let's consider why there were so few Japanese soldiers captured as POWs. It wasn't because American soldiers refused to take prisoners. Ever hear of bushido, "the way of the warrior"? It was a Samurai creed, and the leaders of Japan sought to instill it into the entire population, and not just the military. According to bushido it was shameful to be captured, and suicide was preferable. Bushido regarded surrender as cowardly. Those who did forfeited their honor and lost dignity and respect. This is why why the Japanese  so mistreated POWs in their custody. Those who had surrendered to the Japanese — regardless of how courageously or honorably they had fought — merited nothing but contempt; they had forfeited all honor and literally deserved nothing. Consequently, when the Japanese murdered POWs by shooting, beheading, and drowning, these acts were excused since they involved the killing of men who had forfeited all rights to be treated with dignity or respect. This is what motivated the kamikaze program. 

The first part of the US plan to invade Japan involved landing on the island of Kyushu more troops than were involved on European D-day. The Japanese military was well aware that that was the most likely first invasion site. By August 1945 they had moved 14 divisions onto Kyushu, with a total of 735,000 soldiers on that island. They planned to have 900,000 troops on Kyushu by November 1945. That definitely sounds like they were ready to surrender! 

Try this on for size:

 

[Stargazer]

On 6/10/2024 at 10:34 PM, LoudmouthMormon said:

Y'all talking about how defeated and done Japan was, and yet Hirohito escaped war crimes charges from the Tokyo tribunal.

That was the decision of General MacArthur, who seems to have believed that the Emperor was important to the pacification of Japan, and to its survival as an eventual allied nation. And that it was best not to humiliate Japan any worse than it already was.

 

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

In this case, the unconventional nature of those two bombs gets all the notice, as if it were somehow worse to be burned to death at Hiroshima than to be burned to death in Tokyo

The horror that was conveyed to me growing up and as a young adult was the longterm effects, the illnesses that came later, not only to those alive at the time, but to those not yet conceived.  Thankfully it appears such defects did not appear in the young, but it may be the changes are too subtle to show up quickly.  They are researching with better tools now and hopefully the results will be the same.  I was quite shocked when I first learned this, it was taught as a certainty to me there would be centuries of suffering from the bomb.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17019054/

This information may affect how the atomic bomb is perceived by those young enough not to be concerned with including aftereffects in comparison with conventional bombing.

 

Edited June 14, 2024 by Calm

[MiserereNobis]

On 6/10/2024 at 12:43 PM, bluebell said:

For anyone interested, Netflix has a fascinated series on the end of WWII and the birth of the Cold war called Turning Point that provides a lot of context and information.  It's got multiple episodes, highlighting how complex all of this history is.  I'm not saying it's the last word on the subject or anything, but it's really interesting for those who like this topic.

Thank you for this! I'm currently out-of-town at a teachers union conference and need something to pass the time in the evenings in the hotel. I love this period in history so this is perfect.

[Stargazer]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

The horror that was conveyed to me growing up and as a young adult was the longterm effects, the illnesses that came later, not only to those alive at the time, but to those not yet conceived.  Thankfully it appears such defects did not appear in the young, but it may be the changes are too subtle to show up quickly.  They are researching with better tools now and hopefully the results will be the same.  I was quite shocked when I first learned this, it was taught as a certainty to me there would be centuries of suffering from the bomb.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17019054/

This information may affect how the atomic bomb is perceived by those young enough not to be concerned with including aftereffects in comparison with conventional bombing.

 

I recall hearing that as well. At the time the bombs were dropped, radiation sickness was not fully understood -- the gross immediate effects were the ones that everyone focused on. 

When Neil DeGrasse Tyson was being interviewed on Bill Maher's show, the topic of nuke warfare radiation came up, and Dr. Tyson said that modern thermonuclear weapons are much "safer," from a radioactive fallout perspective than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, which were incredibly "dirty" in that regard. The Soviet "Tsar Bomba" weapon that was tested high in the atmosphere in October 1961, for example, was extremely "clean." more than 97% of its explosion power was provided by a thermonuclear fusion reaction, which does not create a significant amount of radioactive contamination. This is not to say that nukes are A-OK. Let's hope we'll never see another one used in war.

 

[Stargazer]

On 6/10/2024 at 5:29 PM, the narrator said:

 

 

https://origins.osu.edu/history-news/hiroshima-military-voices-dissent?language_content_entity=en
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/japan-was-already-defeated-the-case-against-the-nuclear-bomb-and-for-basic-morality/

Eisenhower's, Halsey's, and other opinions are just that: opinions. It's entirely possible that their opinions were uninformed by facts.

I don't doubt that Japan was putting out "feelers" for an end to the war. Before the war, they were trying to put out "feelers" to get the US to stop obstructing their rape of China -- that's why Pearl Harbor happened, because those "feelers" weren't working, and they needed to shock the US into letting them continue to ravage Asia without opposition. So, I suppose that the US should have just responded to those first "feelers" and let them get on with it? Would have saved a lot of American lives to just let them run riot like they did at Nanjing.

Japan's "feelers" were intended to end the war without major repercussions on Japan's leadership. Tojo certainly knew that an unconditional surrender would put him and many of his compatriots on the wrong end of a hangman's rope, and do you really think he intended a surrender that would lead to that outcome? He would have wanted to negotiate that fate out of the question. Ask yourself: would the Allies have let Hitler stay in power through a negotiated surrender? That was never on the table -- Germany deserved and got an unconditional surrender. The same with Japan. Collectively, Germany and Japan started the most brutal and costly war since Genghis Khan, and there was no way in hell they deserved a negotiated peace. Evil has consequences, and when consequences can be avoided, evil has latitude to do more evil. 

One can cry over the fate of all the enemy civilians who died in the war; I certainly do. My ancestry is half German. I have cousins that still live there, and they suffered because of Hitler. My German-born late wife's family suffered because of him, for the same reason. I never met my father-in-law because he died in Soviet slave labor camps as a result of Hitler's starting a war. 

 

Edited June 14, 2024 by Stargazer

[the narrator]

15 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Nonsense.

Consider "I always eat my soup with a spoon." vs "I exclusively eat my soup with a spoon." They seem pretty much identical to me. 

But feel free to disagree if you must.

Okay. I'll disagree.

Consider "I always wear a shirt when I go to the grocery store." vs. "I exclusively wear a shirt when I go to the grocery store." Fellow store patrons would probably not see those as identical.

[the narrator]

15 hours ago, Stargazer said:

But why are you so concerned with Japan not being humiliated?

Because I'm not a monster who thinks that "yellow" "nip" and "dog" civilians ought to be brutalized because of the actions of their leaders.

15 hours ago, Stargazer said:

And why do you think that dying  by atomic bomb is somehow immeasurably worse than dying in an incendiary attack

I don't. In fact, I have been quite the advocate of people needing to know more about the many firebombings targeting and killing hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of civilians in Japan--especially when my own family was nearly killed in them, some of whom risked their lives as part of an underground antiwar movement.

Also, you don't need to lecture me on the brutality of centuries of Japanese culture.

[the narrator]

5 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Eisenhower's, Halsey's, and other opinions are just that: opinions. It's entirely possible that their opinions were uninformed by facts.

 

Yeah, I'll just take the opinions of those who were at the top over yours.

[LoudmouthMormon]

3 hours ago, the narrator said:

I'm not a monster who thinks that "yellow" "nip" and "dog" civilians ought to be brutalized because of the actions of their leaders.

On 6/11/2024 at 9:06 AM, the narrator said:

Nobody is defending the evils that the Japanese did here.

Just conveniently ignoring them when it suits your purposes?  You know it wasn't the leaders who did any of that jargle in my post that you ignored, right?

I mean, I understand and agree with your point about demonizing and brutalizing civilians.  But how do you reconcile the seeming discrepancy with saying "actions of leaders" in one breath, and acknowledging the evils of an entire people with another?

 

On 6/11/2024 at 9:06 AM, the narrator said:

On 6/10/2024 at 3:34 PM, LoudmouthMormon said:

blah blah blah

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the dismissive sneer of someone whose only real experience with terms like "evil empire" or "god emperor" comes from fictional stories of lightsabers and sandworms.  Perhaps a dry history book, or maybe even a few rants from an elderly grandparent or uncle.  But no real understanding.

 

Edited June 14, 2024 by LoudmouthMormon

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Just conveniently ignoring them when it suits your purposes?

Not at all, but by all means don't prevent me from allowing yourself to drift further into Imaginationland.

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

acknowledging the evils of an entire people

And now I see no point in any further discussion. Bye.

[Stargazer]

On 6/14/2024 at 4:38 PM, the narrator said:

Okay. I'll disagree.

Consider "I always wear a shirt when I go to the grocery store." vs. "I exclusively wear a shirt when I go to the grocery store." Fellow store patrons would probably not see those as identical.

In computer programming there are two kinds of OR. They are regular OR, which produces a true result if either or both alternatives are true. Then there is the XOR, or Exclusive OR, which is true only if only one of the alternatives is true. 

Your always/exclusively is the XOR. Mine was the OR. In other words, we're arguing over a technicality, in this case.

[Stargazer]

On 6/14/2024 at 4:47 PM, the narrator said:

Yeah, I'll just take the opinions of those who were at the top over yours.

Feel free.

But even those at the top are experts only in partiality. They don't always see things for what they are, and this is especially true in cases where they are not deeply involved.

For example, in WW2 in the Pacific, Vice Admiral Fletcher was criticized by his commander, Admiral King, for the outcome of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, in which Fletcher's fleet fought off a superior Japanese fleet. It was arguably a US tactical and strategic victory, but King was annoyed that USS Enterprise had been seriously damaged and was offline for several months being repaired. King was disappointed that Fletcher had not pursued the withdrawing Japanese carrier fleet, and after relieving him of command stuck him into a relatively unimportant post, where he remained until the end of the war. The plain fact was that King was wrong, something that has since been more generally realized. 

And in this matter, aren't you being guilty of cherry-picking opinions of those who confirm your bias?

[Stargazer]

On 6/14/2024 at 4:46 PM, the narrator said:

Because I'm not a monster who thinks that "yellow" "nip" and "dog" civilians ought to be brutalized because of the actions of their leaders.

Neither am I. And I agree that they should not be brutalized because of the actions of their leaders. 

But humiliation is hardly fatal. And may in fact be necessary in some cases. Did we not make sure to rub the German peoples' noses in the Holocaust after the war? For what reason, do you think? In order to do whatever we could to make sure they knew not to do it ever again. This is because negative behavior that is not discouraged is encouraged to be repeated. Or, as more commonly expressed, "He who does not learn from history, will repeat it." Japan has been notably free of militarization as a result of the war, so perhaps their humiliation as a result of WW2 had a good outcome.

Japan still refuses to acknowledge much of its brutality before and during WW2. For example, take the case of the "comfort women," mostly from Korea. After the war, Japan's acknowledgment of the comfort women's plight was minimal, lacking a full apology and appropriate restitution. Only in the 1990s did the Japanese government begin to officially apologize and offer compensation. However, apologies from Japanese officials have been criticized as insincere. Insincerity continues with the example of the massacre of civilians at Nanjing in 1937.  There is still a strong degree of denialism about that event in Japanese governmental circles. In May 1994, Justice Minister Shigeto Nagano called the Nanjing Massacre a "fabrication". On February 20, 2012, Takashi Kawamura, mayor of Nagoya, told a visiting delegation from Nanjing that the massacre "probably never happened". They are hardly alone. 

So, perhaps Japan's humiliation didn't go far enough? We let them keep the Emperor, did we not? What would we say if the German government were to become holocaust deniers?

On 6/14/2024 at 4:46 PM, the narrator said:

I don't. In fact, I have been quite the advocate of people needing to know more about the many firebombings targeting and killing hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of civilians in Japan--especially when my own family was nearly killed in them, some of whom risked their lives as part of an underground antiwar movement.

There were plenty of German civilians who were involved in underground antiwar movements, too, and of course they suffered with everyone else. As I've mentioned, my own family suffered in WW2 as well, and for the same reasons. In the fire-bombing of Leipzig, for example.

On 6/14/2024 at 4:46 PM, the narrator said:

Also, you don't need to lecture me on the brutality of centuries of Japanese culture.

Did I lecture you? Don't recall if I did, but it would be hardly necessary. There has been plenty of brutality everywhere over the centuries. I've mentioned the Mongol Empire, for instance, which managed to kill about 10% of the then extant humans, including some genocides of entire peoples.