The world is up in arms over the nuclear arms race. North Korea attempted to launch a satellite on Sunday to test its ability to fire nuclear weapons in the future, leading to Obama’s declaration of the U.S.’s “determination to prevent the spread of these weapons.”
Yet to condemn other countries for nuclear proliferation, we must first fully disarm ourselves. And it’s important to make sure we’re pointing the finger of accusation at the right nuclear criminal.
This criminal is closer than you’d think. Not North Korea. Not the United States. Not the state of California. But our own, dear University of California.
Perhaps you’ve heard of a little science experiment called the Manhattan Project. The project produced the world’s first atomic bomb under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist at UC Berkeley.
The development and design site of this first WMD was at a UC laboratory, established for the sole purpose of creating the world’s first nuclear warhead. Also, every single nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal has been researched, designed and tested in one of these UC laboratories.
Needless to say, our university is in a long-term nuptial agreement with nuclear proliferation to this day because our regents are typical gold diggers.
“For two decades, the chair of UC Regents has been a male business executive with a direct financial stake in a nuclear company,” said Darwin BondGraham, a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara and UC student Department of Energy Lab Oversight Committee member. “They have very deep financial ties to the nuclear weapons complex.”
Since 2005, the labs have been co-managed by the UC and other war profiteers such as the Bechtel corporation, whose namesake, Steve Bechtel Sr., was quoted on the UC Nuclear Free site as saying, “We are not in the construction and engineering business. We are in the business of making money.”
And like any true gold digger, our university is providing the other half with superficial arm-candy.
“The reason they want these labs associated with the UC is because they receive an air of academic legitimacy,” said Steve Stormoen, a UC graduate and the Youth Empowerment Initiative coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. “We contribute to it in every class we take, paper we write.”
Yet I don’t know a single student who is pro-nuclear proliferation. So much for living in a democratic state.
Even with as much UC pride as many of you have, you likely didn’t even know about this disastrous union. Propaganda from the UC has obscured the truth about these labs being key components of the U.S. nuclear weapons institution.
If it weren’t for organizations like UC Nuclear Free, a conglomerate of university organizations against the UC labs, the truth would likely be lost.
The UC’s nuclear involvement relies on our ignorant docility. It’s time to pull the wool from over our eyes and tell the regents enough is enough.
Our government aims to deceive us and the world as well. BondGraham and other like-minded individuals believe U.S. anti-nuclear rhetoric to be part of an “anti-nuclear nuclearism/imperialism” campaign.
“The danger is that they’re going to be doing a lot of talking and taking a few baby steps on the part of the U.S.,” BondGraham said. “But they’re going to be doing this as part of a larger political strategy that will allow them to be more aggressive with other nations. It sounds good, but the actual purpose is to project overwhelming U.S. force either militarily or economically on the rest of the world.” Thus, this anti-nuclear rhetoric is just a method of diverting attention away from the U.S.’s own nuclear arsenal.
If the U.S. really wants to stop nuclear proliferation and show North Korea how to be a nuclear-free world power, it’s imperative that we stop provoking them by manufacturing new nuclear weapons. As UC students, we have more pull than almost anyone else.
The first step is to get informed. Student campaigns such as UC Nuclear Free (ucnuclearfree.org) put out a lot of shocking information that should be avidly publicized and ranted about.
The more we talk about this issue, the closer we’ll get to creating a truly anti-nuclear generation.
We can organize protests, like a UC-wide hunger strike that took place in May of 2007, resulting in public regent-made nuclear abolition statements. Anything that is eye-catching is a step in the right direction.
Perhaps the most effective thing to end the UC’s involvement in U.S. nuclear proliferation is to sign a petition pledging to never work for either of the UC nuclear facilities. The labs actively recruit UC students, and though the paychecks may look good, global responsibility looks better.
If we no longer produce nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear proliferation will eventually be off the table.
Our cockamamie “missile defense program” should be recognized as what it is, an offensive program, which will remain as such until we retire our nuclear arsenal and nuclear labs.
Thus, it is crucial at this moment for us UC students to put pressure on our regents to close the doors to the nuclear labs for good. Without effective action, we’re as good as nuked.
Are you ready to work toward becoming a nuclear-free nation? E-mail Hein at nhein@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.