A Short Message to the UC Regents: Get Out of the Nuclear Weapons Business
By admin | July 20, 2008
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/19/10461/
by David Krieger
Designing and developing weapons of mass annihilation should not be business as usual, especially for a great university. And yet, for the UC, it is business as usual. Since the beginning of the Nuclear Age, the UC has been in the business of providing management and oversight to the nation’s principal nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The UC is now in that business with corporate partners such as Bechtel.
Your involvement with the weapons labs is arguably illegal under international law, is certainly immoral and, from a security perspective, perpetuates US reliance on nuclear weapons, which undermines US and global security. It also sends exactly the wrong message to the young people who are educated at the University of California. It suggests to them that it must be acceptable to create weapons capable of destroying civilization when a great university engages in doing so.
The UC shares in the responsibility for creating all nuclear weapons in the US arsenal. Should these weapons ever be used, by accident or design, the responsibility and accountability for that use will rest not only upon decision makers in the US government, but upon the UC system - including upon those who remained indifferent or apathetic in the face of the UC oversight of the weapons labs.
Some at the UC refer to its work on nuclear weapons as a “national service.” I would say it is a disservice, both to the nation and to the University.
The most important thing that can be said about nuclear weapons is that they do not and cannot protect their possessors. By continuing to rely upon these weapons, a prospect furthered by the nuclear weapons laboratories, the US upholds nuclear double standards that encourage nuclear proliferation.
I suggest to you that a day will come when the UC will deeply regret having sold its good name to provide respectability to the creation and maintenance of nuclear weapons. In the interests of the UC and the country, I would urge you to take the following three actions:
First, support the Student Department of Energy Lab Oversight Committee, which has already demonstrated serious intent and done important research on the weapons laboratories and how their work negatively impacts national and global security.
Second, follow the example of the Norwegian government pension fund and divest the UC investment portfolio of corporations involved in creating nuclear weapons and their component parts.
Third, withdraw from the management and oversight of the weapons labs on the grounds of legality, morality and human security. By doing so, you would be setting an invaluable example for UC students and for institutions of higher education in our country and throughout the world.
Such acts of conscience by the UC Regents would help spark a national discussion on the need for US leadership for a world free of nuclear weapons.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). On July 17, 2008, members of the public were allotted one minute each to express their views in the public comment portion of the UC Regent’s meeting.
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Tution Goes Up, Again
By admin | June 14, 2008
TOPEKA — The state Board of Regents on Thursday approved tuition and fee increases at Kansas University and other public colleges, but several regents said they feared students were being priced out of an education.
For KU, the incoming freshman class will see a 7.6-percent increase in the tuition compact rate. Under KU’s 1-year-old tuition system, each group of freshmen will see a new increase that will remain locked in for four years.
For non-compact students — juniors, seniors, transfer students and graduate students — tuition will increase 6 percent, according to the regents action.
The increases take effect this fall.
Read more here.
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Building A Better Worker
By admin | April 28, 2008
Once a Kansas University research team has completed its work, no longer will you have to wonder how much faster a construction project could be done if workers didn’t take so many darn coffee breaks.
You’ll know exactly how much faster.
Assistant professors Yong Bai and Luke Huan and graduate students Seong Hoon Kim, Yue Li and Abhinav Peddi are nearing the completion of a two-year study to record and evaluate construction project efficiency. They’re using the reconstruction of the Iowa Street bridge over the Kansas Turnpike to develop and test their system.
Read more here…
Topics: Research | No Comments »
KU computer science graduate student wins federal SMART fellowship
By admin | April 13, 2008
AWRENCE - A University of Kansas student is among a select group of
students nationwide to receive a 2008 Science Mathematics And Research
for Transformation (SMART) Defense Fellowship.
Mike Wasikowski, a master’s student in computer science from Omaha, will
receive a $25,000 stipend, book allowance, health insurance and full
tuition and fees as part of this Department of Defense program.
Topics: Military | No Comments »
KU Watch in the news…
By admin | April 5, 2008
Here are a couple very brief articles mentioning the recent anti-war protest and KUwatch in particular.
Link to KJHK coverage of protest with video
Link to University Daily Kansan article about KUwatch, Mexico Indigena, and the protest/teach-in
Topics: Military, Research | No Comments »
City, KU review 2 bus proposals
By admin | April 4, 2008
Those interested in public transportation should stay updated on these happenings.
Click here for the LJWorld article.
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KSU in Bidding for Bioterror Lab
By admin | March 27, 2008
The Germs Next Door by Stan Cox
Counterpuch.com
What would it take to convince you that your town should play host to the world’s most feared human and animal pathogens? Believe it or not, five states are locked in fierce competition over a proposed bioterror lab that would have them doing just that.
In 2002, the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was given control of Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York. Now DHS is seeking a home in the heartland for a National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) that would take over Plum Island’s work, along with its potent microbial cultures. The fact that many diseases are now known to jump between humans and animals, combined with this decade’s terror-fixation, has led the federal government to convert the agricultural problem of sick livestock into the national-security problem of bioterrorism.
Do I hear a bid?
Lying off the east end of New York’s Long Island, Plum Island (which was under the Department of Agriculture until 2002) is the only place in the nation where scientists have previously been allowed to handle the pathogens that cause foot-and-mouth disease, rinderpest, Rift Valley fever, African swine fever, and other horrific maladies that, if let loose on the mainland, could cause billions in agricultural losses and even threaten human populations.
NBAF will be a “biosafety level 4″ (BL-4) facility, providing the highest degree of isolation for the world’s most dangerous organisms (Plum Island was one notch down, at BL-3, because it was isolated by water). Locations being eyed as possible sites include the University of Georgia campus in Athens; the campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan; Flora, Mississippi, near the capital city of Jackson; a research farm 17 miles northeast of Duke University in North Carolina; and a former ranch near San Antonio, Texas.
Read more here.
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Violence in Robinson? Cadets learn hand-to-hand combat
By admin | March 8, 2008
We haven’t posted anything in the last few days, but please keep checking back in. You’ll notice the blog’s new look, hope it’s a little easier to use. The website is also taking shape; please feel free to send in anything you’d like posted on the site.
Take a look at this story about Air Force ROTC cadets moving through their “syllabus” of “kicks, chokes, punches and other maneuvers that, if executed properly, will maim or kill”. Be sure to check out the video on the left hand side, I’m sure some of y’all have classes in that gym in Robinson.
Click here to read the article.
-KUWatch
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The Rising cost of Tuition (i.e. the Biosciences Industry)
By admin | February 12, 2008
A recent article in the LJ world focuses on the discussion surrounding rising tuition rates at Kansas institutions of higher learning. Tuition has doubled in the last five years and is far out pacing the inflation rate. In what seems like will be an environment of economic crisis in coming months, families and students will find themselves pulling together finances on a tighter budget. By no means should an education be a source of stress for these families.
Despite the grievances of families and students struggling to make ends meet to get a university education, the state and university system have decided to direct much of this increased revenue towards publicly funded research. Research is one of the main components of what policy makers and university administrators see as the benefit of rising tuition rates. Is it a coincidence that they are investing in the bio sciences, especially at a time when the state has decided to make the Biosciences Industry a priority economic industry?
*click here for a quick rundown on the Lawrence chamber of commerce’s research on how to make Lawrence more available to corporate and industry interests.
More on this subject can be found on this blog soon.
You can find the rest of the story here
Topics: Tuition | No Comments »
Kansas Geological Survey’s expertise tapped
By admin | February 6, 2008
This article from the Lawrence Journal World fits nicely with other recent decisions KU has made to work more closely with the armed forces; add the department of homeland security into the mix…!
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By Mike Belt
February 4, 2008
The key to finding secret, underground tunnels along the U.S. border might be parked in a Kansas Geological Survey garage in Lawrence.
It’s a converted Bobcat loader packed with electronic gear and a computer. On the front is a 60-pound weight inside a cylinder and on the back is a spool of old fire hose fitted with sensors.
KGS, which is based at Kansas University, has for years been testing the effectiveness of seismic sound waves to determine what’s under the ground. Since the late 1990s it has periodically received requests from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do that testing along the California-Mexico border.
The information obtained by KGS was passed on by the Army to other agencies, possibly the Border Patrol or the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said Rick Miller, associate scientist with KGS.
The seismic equipment has been used to find abandoned mines in Kansas, but KGS doesn’t always know the outcome of their work on the border.
“A lot of the stuff we work on and the information we get just goes into a black hole,” he said. “We will never know what happened.”
read the rest of the article here
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