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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Sikskiyou students embrace Middle School Fridays ... What are your plans for Super Bowl Sunday? ... Inner Peace: How can politics promote inner peace? ... Sikskiyou students embrace Middle School Fridays ... What are your plans for Super Bowl Sunday? ... Inner Peace: How can politics promote inner peace? ... RELOCATIONS Herb Rothschild Jr.: Abolish nuclear weapons Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Feb. 6, 2016 at 12:01 AM Posted Feb. 6, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Social News If you moved to this valley after 1982, you may not know that Ashland is a Nuclear Free Zone. In a hotly contested referendum that year, Ashland voters banned all activity within the city related to both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. It was the third U.S. city to do so; only Missoula, Mont., and Garrett Park, Md., preceded Ashland. The grassroots nuclear disarmament movement rescued the world from the ambitions, fears and moral stupidity of the governments of the nuclear weapons states. Lawrence Wittner ends his monumental study "The Struggle Against the Bomb" with this assessment: “[T]his book indicates that most government officials — and particularly those of the major powers — had no intention of adopting nuclear arms control and disarmament policies. Instead, they grudgingly accepted such policies thanks to the emergence of popular pressure.” That pressure is needed once again, especially in our own country. In Barack Obama’s April 5, 2009 speech in Prague, which helped him win his ill-deserved Nobel Peace Prize, he declared, “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He fulfilled his pledge to negotiate with Russia a second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, but the reductions were modest and didn’t hamper either side’s capacity to destroy the world. More tellingly, since he assumed office Obama has presided over continuous work to “modernize the nuclear weapons stockpile and infrastructure,” as his annual budget requests express it. Over the next 10 years we will spend about $1 trillion on new tritium and plutonium production as well as other aspects of nuclear war-making. To his credit, Obama embraced diplomacy to end the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. But given his support of Israel’s nuclear arsenal by obstructing efforts to create a nuclear-weapons free zone in the Middle East, his 2010 reversal in the case of India of U.S. policy banning nuclear assistance to nations that acquire nuclear weapons, and especially his refusal to honor our own requirement under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to move rapidly to nuclear abolition, Obama’s behavior toward Iran hardly reflects “America’s commitment to seek ... a world without nuclear weapons.” We merely declawed a perceived enemy. It is time to declaw the governments of all the nuclear-armed states. As long as they possess nuclear weapons, they all threaten our futures. We the people saved the world once, but these governments are still addicted to the illusion of power their arsenals provide. Dangerous in itself, that addiction symbolizes what is fundamentally wrong with our national government and many others: their raison d’etre is power, not service. Climate change now exceeds nuclear arms as a threat to humankind. But the two concerns are related. They’re related inversely in the U.S. budget. In his FY2016 budget for the Department of Energy, Obama requested $12.6 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, a year-over-year increase of $1.2 billion. By comparison, he requested $2.7 billion for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act (H.R. 1976), introduced in April 2015, would re-invert that relationship. It calls for nuclear weapons abolition and environmental clean-up while re-directing our nuclear labs and industries to research into and production of carbon-free, nuclear-free energy. H.R. 1976 can become the organizing focus of renewed activism on nuclear abolition combined with efforts to slow global warming. Go to the Peace House Facebook page to express your support for it. Herb Rothschild's column appears in the Tidings every Saturday. DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Feb. 6, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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