welcome back here with the weekly here on earth you have the week's top stories now rescue. crews from the bottom of the volga river in a matter of minutes lost something claiming around one hundred thirty lives and so will provide answers as to why the catastrophe happened. apologies keep on coming from rupert murdoch for the unethical practices of one of his newspapers the news of course is now desperately trying to rescue his media empire reputation which is

green severely damaged by the phone hacking scandal. libyan rebels now have full diplomatic recognition from washington and with access to these assets frozen in the u.s. meanwhile nato has intensified its attacks on the capital tripoli in an effort to oust the libyan leader you've never seen. plus intercontinental cash crunch as america faces up to the possibility of the full of europe's debt crisis stage and piles more pressure on the euro and u.s. congress needs to raise the debt ceiling to avoid financial disaster on the verge of meeting a failed. i call that. followed. by citizens against their governments it's part two of our special report. the follow up from the french tests went beyond the polynesian islands it caused outrage in new zealand which took the lead in the n.t. nuclear movement and became

a black sheep among western countries yes unlike any other country new zealand refused to rely on nuclear weapons for its security but here nuclear technology is banned it's the law. i think a lot of the young people do feel proud about new zealand especially if reports say that people have come a bit complacent and feel but as foreign we're safe there are these other she said i mean a lot of people to say the people in the peace movement has had a certain out of me as graveyards reserves and that's what people say. even in new zealand it's difficult to find young people concerned about this issue they are more sensitive to the melting of the antarctic and he wants to revitalize the ageing pacifist movement when i'm working at peace foundation in my role as the huge outreach coordinator. of the race and they are going to type easy to be pacific northwest of all ends basing all these amazing people from twenty seven

different countries in the pacific and i felt for the first time in my life that new zealand was not remote and that we were big compared to. some of the things out that was so for god's country. i was brought up on the higher the peace activist mother she's been around to turn priests it took his last thirty years starts in my blood and i feel a responsibility to continue that work. i have this funny memory of mum buying a crane piece stick of it put on it went out and it was of the rainbow warrior and the face of terrorism and now are in harbor on a pike that was on a peaceful mission really a strip show clients here living in a site come. but i'm it's the younger generation that teaching the next generation the legacy of hope really the thing that we have given young people especially on actually be posix is twenty is it's we actually pass the rule we want to young

people to know about the law because any was only four when the law was passed. and the old times as i see it it's just and i swear it is. not and that's. what. i have the feeling is. that they were. the first. thing they knew that if all. listening to the story is both people that mum and peacemakers and israel and they've done is me hope and i think that what i've seen what ordinary citizens can do make a difference and i feel that i can try. to prevent the young people from feeling a sense of powerlessness a pacifist remind them of the long crusade that made their country nuclear free and under neither confirm or deny even feel the pride in me that we had governments and

politicians prepared to go on those boats to go out and protest i mean it was something we did as ordinary citizens working with governments you've got a partnership model that they have it is unusual i think right around the world. to notice it took another twelve years to get along in government and actually ran on a clear ticket that won. and then it was consolidated by the stupidity of the french in thinking that they would somehow stop this problem. but doubling the road warrior what it did instead was absolutely cemented hope. remember that the british and australia on aboriginal blamed for that that came from near actually came over to new zealand not just from what was happening by the french until he. the british preceded the french and its effect beginning in one thousand fifty two they tested their way into the very restricted nuclear bomb by

the u.s.s.r. . with the assistance of the australian and new zealand military. and studied. the results demonstrated the presence of elements of common. sense and if. so the best thing i have suffered any damage. recently national conference here on disarmament when the daughter of one of the patrons spycatcher father was too old to speak and she talked about growing out of fear of having my child own food even in new zealand because of the effects of radiation from. exposed to nuclear tests in the pacific. and i'm lucky. i have three children. and i don't live with the.

i was so it was normal until i until i got disco and sit on the net. so it would appear. so and also because with so i my mother's a take. and they're not so i and my mom trust start nuclear. because that's how i understood. prop crane is an ex navy commander who's now working at the salmon to security. back in the nine hundred seventy s. when i was in mt submarine helicopters i was required to train my air crew in using as nuclear depth bomb which we were given. if we ever had to release it but from a helicopter we could not escape for it doesn't it and so it was

a suicide mission i asked a few questions i was reassured that we probably would never really have to use it it shocked me but i was ambitious and no one else was complaining i mean were told that this is the only way that britain could keep her independence i realize that. only later many years later that. this was completely untrue. as a new convert against nuclear weapons i was looked upon with great score by the. peace movement in britain i tried to explain first i was not a psychopath my friends we are psychopaths and we are professional military men. who thought free deeply about what we did but i do agree with them the nuclear weapon it was an aberration. for. them playing thank god i thought he had a conscience to do something about things that i can't imagine

a guy around it's. just can't imagine and i see him so now so pessimistic that what he does best. said another rob well it's the ultimate cautionary tale but whatever they say it's nothing like convert. they're always tend to overdo it because you really understand you know much of what spring proposed the pentagon others will say oh don't worry we have everyone well trained we have plenty of safety systems there can not be a accidental start of a nuclear war but nuclear weapons are built to be used the risk is not zero that something might be going off by mistake specially rather thousands of the nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert in the us and in russia the united states has dropped

i think it's eleven point zero make bombs accidentally. we dropped four off of spain we have dropped one nuclear weapon in a marsh here in the united states now still there are a number of. nuclear. weapons are such a huge issue with such high risks associated with on that there's a natural tendency to play both sides which a way they say they're coming back but at the same time they maintain extremely high numbers of weapons if. given the number of near misses we are lucky to still be here right the activists are convinced that an accident is ending ok and that the only valid security system is the total abolition of nuclear weapons and ninety six when we began the project tightly and it was a strain as you say i'm going to clean you can we can certainly go in everywhere

else in the world to five going to the world course we could get the conscience of the ordinary citizen around the world saying these are against the moral conscience of people it's an illegal to use nuclear weapon tomorrow and the dream was that it would be easy to get it through the and. they were of course and that eventually these weapons would be to clearly go as we had on an hour and country and thank goodness that we were dreamers and i'm realistic and. thought that we were posted by the sense of how this could happen but the real sources are international law apart from treaties customary international law and the general principles of law recognized by the legal systems of the world. that quite categorical on the batting order to carry weapons and the legality of nuclear weapons the fact that nuclear weapons cannot be used either by way of a strike or by we are straight you know you mustn't.

let only use of force. by means of nuclear weapons and that is going to lead to article. all of the united nations charter and article fifty one is unlawful. nucular deterrence says we have nuclear weapons but our goal is not to use them if. your goal is to have them at our disposal. this means that we are not in the realm of the real we are in the realm of the virtual need don't know what you just read it is contrary to international law even to add in one's assonance this referent because the purpose of the weapons to use it either as a threat or as an actual weapon the nuclear powers or alliances like nato still rely on nuclear deterrence which is threat and so the fight continues i was on

a panel with a senior advisor to the british government about nuclear policy and he's pro nuclear. and we were debating about. the world court opinion and whether nuclear deterrence was legal and he was extremely cynical he said that . it was a mistake to go into the course but governments would ignore it and that's true they have. and he of the relied on all the time was he said and of course we never actually will have to use them and this to me is the heart of the problem for the people who brought me to terms is that if they tried terrible abuse and then turns to support that women who would argue that terence doesn't use absolute is a use of nuclear weapons which the threaten to use them and that's when you read to the will court the first time you want to keep it through it you know and that's

the thing it was the south pacific noise in the activist that i used to have threesome clued in the original question is if you have to give a threat then the. nuclear states can but argued well we're only relying on terence which is threat and so we're not ready so i waited for him and. me too from years ago to go back to the court personnel speech and. at the time the judges agreed unanimously on the requirement for total nuclear disarmament the activists are fighting ted opinion on. this based on. what i understand that they knew is another's wanting to do is to use the unanimous parts of the opinion and i wanted to say to new zone how can we might that stronger how can we and what are they doing that state practice that is still illegal. is that your understanding of it as a member looking for some new lever to put more pressure on your group states to

comply and design completely not just to reduce new yes but nuclear weapons if it's reverse since the world court decision and the americans particularly come out and said that. they see new roles for nuclear weapons and so we're back to almost like a sort of cold war situation again but with the war on terror instead and so it's going to be far more difficult to get governments to put their heads over the parapet looking nonproliferation treaty does provide a framework for ending the threat of destruction stringency we were assigning sinar states they agreed to take good for later efforts to a limited nuclear weapons now none of them lived up to them and now of course we focus on regulations by others those who are like policemen on the world scene and

i'm talking of the nuclear powers they are violating this very lot which they want other countries to observe now what if a policeman but it's the law you cannot expect the rest of the world to complain but the law of the only thing that would work would be one that is perceived to be nondiscriminatory and fair and equally applied to all countries one approach that has followed this is is you know dividing the world between friends or concord good countries and court and court bad or rogue countries or evil to do with that approach doesn't work it doesn't pay too much to remember that in the one nine hundred eighty s. the babel sand in iraq was a friend of the west. of. the intelligence agency of the invasion of interact with spur nuclear proliferation and terror. for good reasons and these are the needs of the turn. no

one is going to through the night stands with. us spends about as much as the rest of the world combined with responding to me only with a simple turning of. the phone records for. the activists are understandably anxious as a result of the nuclear posture review in this classified u.s. military document the security guarantees that protected countries without nuclear weapons against a nuclear offensive are cancelled a strategy of action is being adopted in addition to deterrence so the arsenals must be upgraded to make them easier to use france and britain have responded with surprising enthusiasm to this nuclear renaissance that the united kingdom is going to pretend that it needs nuclear weapons for its survival or its security it was attacking the united kingdom some have got the very strange idea that

because there's terrorists in the world we need to have nuclear weapons can be used nuclear weapons against terrorists but it would that not be rather like shooting most skeeters with cameron's i think the british would make a much bigger splash in the history of the world if they decided that they let the program expire we are still fighting in the valley war between britain and france because when i finally cornered. any senior british military man these days and asked why do you need nuclear weapons they say every time it's nothing to do with security it's nothing to do with the russians it's to do with the french we cannot allow france to be the only european you're clipper. and there is this fear that britain will become like resilient if they can if you free they will be of no consequence in the world.

even though i do this work i constantly get overwhelmed minute discussion that we were having talking about the reality of nuclear weapons and three sometimes i just want a list i've had enough. and lose heart but at the same time i think. something has to be done in a five minute recess but i can do something i what. it even though now it's generations go out in a middle of the woods and pretty soon as now you know i don't know maybe you guys from one of the people i speak to a movie night go out and purchase such. also for different names also used in the song engines you can sign it and i got a shame. that belonging in a business which comes from livestock active projects is gone and people solidarity

emerges from it which i don't think exists so much among young people that it might be just a shack she sat as it's for the invasion of iraq there were millions of people are just dying and still you know there's a million people around and i'm here to stay one for water so i mean it's not necessarily you go to convince the public the city mayor or the pope said suddenly we're going to be. here we're going to be here and we're going to be really strange rubber tree and i think they mobilize action that would occur would be huge massive here like no one's telling you what it is mostly because it's kind of a feeling it's still be a kind of place. to it but i also think that a lot of young people that aspect might be interested in some of these issues but not comply so overwhelmed by all of us here is the money but the made them and what do you think is an example of course the peace movement can say to humanity you know if you keep spending a trillion dollars

a year on weapons eventual you're going to blow everybody up you you know people are dying from these weapons but until we actually see it people don't don't wake up to it. in two thousand and six canadian activists trying to drum up public interest in nuclear disarmament worldwide military expenditures had risen to more than one trillion dollars this was a traumatic event for those who took to the streets during the cold war. you know where i'm from nothing really and i think it's probably. the largest and most affected if not by a lot of peace movement in history and successful i'm in the united states was moving towards sharp increase in offensive nuclear capacity was and it was forced to back down and for right now the reagan administration was forced to adopt the rhetoric of the peace movement in order to continue with their programs and that's where our star wars comes from and we're

not planning to attack anyone which is planning to eliminate nuclear weapons if you measure the peace movement by the number of people who march in one thousand nine hundred two their one million marched in central park in new york at the height of the cold war. last year there were forty thousand who marched at the review conference of the nonproliferation treaty well the big difference in numbers true. was we're going. to significantly up the west and there it's very clear. from can change your own. state the importance of nuclear proliferation i very much . aware or concerned was surprised to discover a fifteen year old concerned by the outcome of the nonproliferation treaty is name

is rafael even though. i'd just like to say that you and your speech is now serving the. people and. i like to play. the rights to one side i actually found out that it was three different people who really made that clear to me speakers. and such which it shocked me and i watched it smash were very last stage to have a speaker all the way from new york. she is a nationalist disarmament educator producer and your advisor and let's just keep going there's never a warm welcome for kathleen. ok the effectiveness of a social movement is sometimes very surprising and hard to track but it also depends on the creativity of the of the social movements themselves in the activist involved with ideas and images and stories and that's why we sailed folks into

nuclear test songs they've kind of surmised that all the weapons used in the second world war are equivalent to say three megatons that includes two nuclear weapons used here same in other saki all the bombs and the bullets. that represents all of the firepower of the second world war ok so now i'm going to give you another sound and this second sound is the equivalence firepower of the world's nuclear arsenal today.

the only way forward that would make sense and would stop this nad rush for seeking the capability to make nuclear weapons is for those countries that have nuclear weapons to find a way to give them up and to rely full security on non-nuclear means. but when i say a mad rush over the past couple of weeks five or six countries have indicated that they might be interested in the bout of being a capability to enrich uranium australia canada ukraine kazakhstan

south africa. these countries that's sad why should they be left behind characters and facility and a small level of recruitment very far away from a nuclear weapons capability but the technology for enrichment under less is the same we sometimes refer to it as a latent proliferation you put in place all the technologies to make nuclear weapons but you stop at a much lower level the borders today is part of the old us we were third world but that our dedication to peacekeeping as a percentage of the gross domestic product is now dropped down to like. we used to be leading the world in the battle against nuclear proliferation and we were little leading countries in the world in the battle against weaponization of space canada has very little space in which to. make progress because. it's

a member of russia and later is a nuclear alliance just like matthew they have signed on to which clearly made for paul sort of the best policy military policy is going to change dramatically and we canadians are big trouble in terms of are historical commitment to peace and deserve them. everything is in place to proceed with disarmament one hundred eighty countries committed to disarm they said a shining message that goodwill could prevail but so far the governments choose to spend billions perfecting this terminal threat rather than fighting poverty or global warming. will future generations heirs to the thousands of bombs be as lucky as their parents will be live without seeing a nuclear explosion either by accident or by design maybe maybe not. but in cuba treaties and international law are all. made of bombay with.

see. the latest in science and technology from. the future of. india she's available in the movie joyce the hotel.