New Quaker Notebook

When the stars get aligned in a certain way, distinctively human events can come together in a weird juxtaposition. Take yesterday, for example, when it was announced that the Bush administration is moving quickly to okay the sale of advanced warplanes, nuclear weaponry, and other high-tech arms to India.¹ Why, not quite four months ago R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, and our beloved Donald Rumsfeld were at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to defend and discuss plans for the commercially peaceful US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative. At that meeting, Field Marshall Rumsfeld said:

"We decided that it was in the American interest to bring India into compliance with the standards and practices of the international nonproliferation regime. And, we decided that the only way to reach that goal was to end India's isolation and begin to engage it. India will soon have the largest population in the world, and to consign it to a place outside that system did not appear to be strategically wise and has not proven effective."²

So now the nonproliferation plan is to include giving them more atomic bombs and stuff. And when questioned about this wacky plan to let India have both nuclear weapons and a favored trade partnership with the US, while at the same time insisting that Iran and other "rogue states" stand down from their nuclear ambitions, Burns said in a telephone interview:

"The comparison between India and Iran is just ludicrous. India is a highly democratic, peaceful, stable state that has not proliferated nuclear weapons. Iran is an autocratic state mistrusted by nearly all countries and that has violated its international commitments. I mean, that's like comparing the two countries to the United States. America was once a highly democratic, peaceful, stable state that did not proliferate nuclear weapons. Now America is an autocratic state mistrusted by nearly all countries and that has violated its international commitments."³

But there's more to this. Our president also wants to see more American business outsourcing go to India. Although jobs are lost because of globalization, "great opportunities" can also happen. Speaking today at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, he said: "The classic opportunity for our American farmers and entrepreneurs and small businesses to understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable."⁴ And what I find weird is the email I got from my router manufacturer yesterday. This company's been outsourcing its technical support for about a year now. I wanted to use my broadband router as a hub, so I asked them what I thought was a simple question. Here's what I got back:

3/2/2006 6:45:00 PM

Dear Merle,

Thank you for contacting Router Support. My name is Pooja & I will be handling your enquiry. I understand your concern and appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

Regarding your concern, if you are connecting with the PC that is configured for dial-up connection with the router with a wireless connection you will not be abel to use the router for internet sharing with your PC.

If you have ICS installed on your second computer then you will require to connect that computer hard wired to the router and disable the dhcp on router and configure it like a wireless switch to share internet from your computer which you can either connect wired or wireless to the router.

If you have any further concern please revert back.

Regards

Pooja Chakraborty
Router Support

Surely this is an opportunity to get those English factories going again. If there's anything America does well, it certainly includes words and bombs.

1. Reuters, March 2, 2006.
2. See "Remarks as Prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee," Hearing on US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative, US Department of State, November 2, 2005.
3. Okay, Burns didn't speak the last three sentences: I made that part up for ironic effect. See New York Times, March 3, 2006. News article is archived at Truthout.org.
4. New York Times, March 3, 2006. Article is archived at Truthout.org.

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