it's the weekly here in r.t. the latest news and of course the week's top stories and tonight's debate you found those main stories a bloodstained end to an era in libya with allegations colonel gadhafi was executed by the interim government troops. breaking point this week violent clashes erupted in greece as people were hit with more austerity measures but the e.u. leaders up against the clock to try and resolve the debt crisis. battle over barricades nato forces failed to remove roadblocks of the disputed serbia kosovo border ethnic serbs got the blockade to stop the peacekeepers but. not sit for me today my colleague she'll be here in less than thirty minutes as the news continues in the meantime it's our special program for you report where brings to light the developments on the american military's nuclear program and the role that the university of california has played in it that's next for you.

he actually got. money into this thing you know. make. sure that. all the lies. there you know you got to buy or you know they're being deceitful you subregions through in the minutes with you with this letter no this morning this morning and the university is basically doing science. so chancellor yang promised us on monday that you would personally deliver our

demands to the u.c. board of regents i just want to read arguments stary one here basically so that you all know it's being forwarded on. we call on the university of california corporations to withdraw fully and immediately from their contracts to manage the los alamos national laboratory and lawrence livermore national laboratory on the grounds that the level replaces now or in a program. the most ongoing preparations to conduct plutonium manufacture and also clearly violate article six of the nineteen seventeen nuclear nonproliferation treaty. it's almost inconceivable to realize that there we go to work in the world to go. to. the universal. university of california from the inception of nuclear weapons has been right there

and by. you see since day one has been in charge of researching designing and testing nuclear weapons and to some extent producing weapons every single nuclear weapon in surveys arsenal was designed by university of california and played every nuclear weapon. from the days of the manhattan project in one nine hundred forty two the university of california has been involved through the science its provision of scientists and their relationship to the university. in the late one nine hundred forty two disease site which is now also almost was selected by the arm for. a place to assemble the first of all of the work from the scientific problems

associated with. the university of california who was selected as the contractor to run the stuff that was considered important because our meat needed scientists to meet their university positions they have come to a place that basically we know about. u.c. berkeley had built up an unparalleled scientific organization within the united states at the u.c. radiation laboratory where sureness over warrants was the director of there was the most cutting edge research in the country all the types of science that eventually led to the development of nuclear bombs and clued in theoretical forms of physics that shia robert oppenheimer was one of the premier scientists in the country in regard to you had oppenheimer who was kind of chosen and i was the science of the leader had to go the scientific team robert oppenheimer was the pick because he was

. not only a really sophisticated leading scientists involved with nuclear physics but he was also an administrative position at u.c. berkeley so he worked closely with leslie grows he was the leader of army corps of engineers at the time. that had been a university involved roosevelt. scientists would want to leave the university and go work for a private defense contractor in the middle the desert in the middle of nowhere. and they liked little solomon site in part because there were some buildings already and they figured if you get started in those buildings. so he had his universe. moving toward then both the first bombs and the first few.

thousand nine hundred forty five players states used those first atomic bombs. the first line i needed here hema panels like a six thousand nine hundred forty five. and one hundred forty thousand people more or less were incinerated or dead by the end of nine hundred forty five tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of others injured and people today still suffering from radiation related illnesses and i know if that's to subsequent generations then the second round was dropped by the united states and that assassin on august ninth one thousand forty five with a similar catastrophic results. that world war two came to an end rather rapidly and instead instead of ending the manhattan project the united states government decided to make it permanent right

creating an institution called the los alamos national laboratory in the mexico at the original home and project but as whole relationship. were mentioned earlier should never existed in the universe and gentian in after world war two about nine hundred forty seven was to terminate it. robert sprawl president of the university california said i've had enough of mexico plutonium and bulbs. they were worried about liability they were worried about the oral implications but that changed quickly after the cold war began. you see it was then primarily researching designing the weapons and after you know like the first decade of the law there really wasn't any question from them. and those are circles that you see about whether you can see should run this or not i mean you talk about a guarantee and stream of revenue so it was a no brainer for the regions to route its contracts and. then of course they were

joined by a livermore whose purpose was to develop the h. bomb. which was a thousand times more powerful than the a bomb on the destroyed the second one it comes to the lawrence livermore national laboratory that was basically a pet project of chris lawrence and it was also a project of a guy named edward heller they lobbied the government to create the lawrence livermore laboratory in the government they created the lawrence livermore national laboratory it's sort of the you see naturally be here the matter up facility to. what was clear at that time and it's still clear that for instance or major reef lighting a couple of major reasons why. people want to keep them on the one hand they got a certain amount of money directly from allegedly managing the labs in fact they did very little. oversight but for lending their name to the nuclear project

interest basically why the government wanted. to give a white coated scientific. or a to what is actually a process like that of the final solution overcalls. in order to render any reason right. this officers big. somebody you can probably know this because seven trillion dollars of us since we can see the truth. slot of money when you get that kind of money floating around there's a lot of people who trust each other and keeping good position they're out to create a powerful universities as university administrators their goal is growth just like corporation the row get bigger get more powerful bring in more revenue bringing more students believe that the region see this as a success most of them as a successful business feel that is helping american national security. and that is

you know just part of the national patriotic project the right thinking people with national support. but. you see is run by the board meetings these twenty six individuals determine all of the major policies and the structure of the institution as a whole that's grounds in the wings finance and missions policies. and of course the nuclear weapons of its audience. eighteen of them are appointed by the governor and then seven of them are official members of the state bureaucracy that are outside us krefeld members of the board of regents the

governor selects the regents and he tends to select guys or every once in awhile one and two but mostly guys who are big campaign contributors or who are allies politically influential allies of of the governor ever since these he was founded one hundred forty years ago the regions have been appointed by the governor primarily on the basis of political patronage corporate elites who have given tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to the governor and his political campaigns usually get rewarded with a seat on the board of the regions. and essentially at that employment a free agent because then sort of. a reward if you well for a service to the governor or service of the state. you see regents are basically the economic leaders of the state of california these

are the guys who are the directors most often of the major industries that are prominent california in any given time. the regions are in most cases the wealthy business elites who are in some cases c.e.o.'s of major war profiteering multinational corporations. you see a lot of regions who are in charge of big media companies military industrial firms real estate for arms is really like a circle at the top that dominates the. goings on the circles generally composed of the. chair of the regions in the past chair the president and a few of the executive officers. the current chair of the board of regents is

richard blown. richard lum is someone who i see as a very conflicted individual on one hand he has a free tibet bumper sticker on the back of his b.m.w. he has said on several occasions that he is a passionate advocate for the abolition of nuclear weapons on the other hand he was deeply invested in the your ass corporation and queenie corporation both of whom received construction contracts to rebuild iraq after u.s. imperial forces leveled that country on the other hand richard long as the chairman of the board of regents who is managing the national nuclear weapons labs are a lot of business connections good men for example arnold schwarzenegger's personal financier paul wachter who is second only to his wife in terms of people who have influence and sway over governor schwarzenegger. paul walker is a new senate regent it's that sort of connection that gets people pointed you

serious. the large body of people at the university are reaching out to the region set asking them and trying to get them to understand some of the problems of the university fundamentally and yet the regions they and they don't listen to centrally serve our rank and file people on the guy at the university they don't represent the students the faculty the staff they don't actually represent their constituencies and the question is can the regions have the courage in the insight to recognise that the best thing if they truly care about about abolition of nuclear weapons is to end their management of the lap and right now they have been i think there's a little bit of denial there they don't see that and the question is can we persuade them of that long term change in universities cannot be affected by people who assume that it is a graeme a creditor institution you have to be worked through

a back channel bureaucratic methods which is how normally operates or through public pressure thank you thank you thank you because he was who he was i fear i actually want people to come around and at the end the community. was beautiful for my feet thank god. i was. a little phrase that you see. campaigns like you seen it for free and together. and the early part of the two thousand and especially we enough so the iraq war when we started the campaign we believed that if students found out about this if

they knew more about it they understood that their university was involved with making nuclear weapons and those dangerous and destructive weapons ever created by humans that the students would want to respond to that that they would want to react to that and protest it i decided to get involved in the you see nuclear free campaign because i feel very passionately that universities should educate and work for peace and justice sustainability in the commonwealth and managing nuclear weapon land with the exact opposite. i try not to get involved in anything that i don't think i can have an impact and i feel it has i mean you see student because i'm you know essentially a part of this machine. that they have the power to stand up and say hey there's a part of this machine i'm not ok with the way business is running.

i am moving they need someone to sort of work against and that incredible unfairness of the u.c. regents is the perfect target for a broad based student. social movement. in the name it sounds like our ultimate goal is just to make the singapore free but everyone has been involved with the you see nuclear. as a nuclear movement within the you see. i've yet to meet one person who thinks that's the actual goal. we all tend to agree that the actual goal is the abolition of nuclear weapons the university of california severing ties with the nuclear weapons labs i think would have a very a very important impact on the united states and beyond the united

states trained. in the united states and around the world in the least in modern times have almost always been led by people. so young people. and students have a significant role to play baseball students have been the backbone of some of the most powerful movements in american history the civil rights movement the free speech movement these are forces of history that we learn about now and i think that students have just as much power as they say. and it turns out that our going to school. to something that is as important as this gets me to stop using the nuclear weapon. as a possible war strategy and we're going to start by divesting educational institution that's supposed to further that's supposed to further this country is best for the state it's supposed to further every single one of us.

divest that institution from nuclear weapons we need to completely make display the students could be the spearhead of the campaign for u.s. leadership for a nuclear weapons free world we're not going to get to a nuclear weapons free world without u.s. leadership and we're not going to get u.s. leadership unless the citizens of the united states begin to demand such leadership and wouldn't it be wonderful if the students at the university of california awakened and helped lead that movement for u.s. leadership for nuclear weapons free world. if you look at just how much the newman has grown in life in the four years that i went to school it's really amazing looking back because my freshman year is really

started out and there were like five of us on campus plus what was going on with the university and it seemed almost like just like when i was at the club that i had this amazing secret and we just need her on campus and look each other and go. you know and i know what's going on and i mean out.

during the seventy's and eighty's and ninety's there were questions about whether the university should. manage on the corruption sort of records as the center court of principle and they can seventy seven which is the faculty record and they can somebody said something about the whole range windows and university of california is not going the route of it is simply fine when you're in the winter. i think is one famous one with is that i describe the university oversight of the larger touring as being so permissive as to be licentious the university of california was sort of an absentee landlord and it was a. you know it was the source of a great deal of profit. working closely in the weapons

program for quite a while you become aware that. you know nuclear weapons the materials that are used to make their money by nature kind of are hazardous and. you have to be. careful with a. number of bizarre terrible accidents up their arch every six weeks or so there'd be something happening that this had of had a bad effect on the health effect on some of these on at least one person. and it's a service that was almost is not operating to nuclear industry safety standards they actually found that ever more like they were storing plutonium in paint cans food cans the thing about plutonium is it has to be stored in an airtight container . i worked and the petroleum facility in p a four in the glove

boxes. there were a number of incidents in the glove boxes there were accidents actually they weren't incidents they were accidents they resulted in people being exposed to plutonium in various forms. there was a pretty. big your radio noise all over this is on fire they were worried that there would be a sampling rate is now living in the more signorino because it was completely out of control as a community we were extremely lucky that there wasn't just sacking even larger criticality. but it really illustrates the extreme houser of nuclear weapons development activity i met one young man who is rife died at her late twenty's and says high school sweetheart.

she had skin cancer and she lived across the street from a park that they call big trees park but a lot of people in livermore call it plutonium park because for decades furthermore allow the release plutonium to the city sewage so we're in big trees park here in livermore and when the e.p.a. leave here and take the soil sample them right over here and down in the wages of dirt. they found elevated levels of plutonium that obviously came from livermore laboratory. as far as the publisher be in accidents. yeah i would say that it each lab we've certainly had our fair i've been lucky enough not to be involved in any of

them but especially with the livermore lab being right next to a population center preventing those things has to be not a top priority but the top priority is just the way it has to be what is fairly dismaying in recent years is that as the role has been questioned for entirely different reasons namely that security was bad. people were careless and they're safe so their handling of classified and materials and information. could livermore and most of those where the question was raised for that reason the university for hard to keep keep control of it rather than letting it go if you went up there and actually noticed and actually could investigate their security and. they were not happy. in an area that's

a lot of people are notices the corporate trudeau's nuclear plants you know. the primary pits primary that is the first stage of reform and. earlier this year two thousand and eight the department of energy sent a mock terrorist team to livermore lab. livermore lab knew the mock terrorists were coming over more lab knew almost a year in advance and new to within two hours of when the mock terrorists would arrive and get the mock terrorists were able to carry out their to mean of japhet terrorist came in the. terrorists came in and succeeded at some things that we didn't really want them to succeed at. in spite of so many. precautions that it had been.

there first jack here was to get access to livermore labs the tony i'm and to hold their ground long enough to create an improvised nuclear device which is a not just a dirty bomb going to an actual crude nuclear bomb there step into jacket that they also were able to carry out was to steal and they were using simulated plutonium but essentially they were in the super bowl in the building if they had been real terrorists it would have been the real deal they were able to steal the plutonium and take it off site get off site with it so that they could detonate a bomb out a later time in place of their choosing.

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