GUEST BLOG: LEE CANTELON ON BUSH AND THE NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY

Lee Cantelon is a talented photographer and film maker who is best known for his mesmerizing pictures of the Rwandan diaspora and for the award-winning art work he has done for Tracy Chapman and Rickie Lee Jones. Yesterday Lee wrote this piece for DWT on the dangers of what Bush is up to in India.


In July 2005, President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Singh announced a new deal to allow the resumption of full civilian nuclear cooperation between the two countries for the first time since India improperly used US nuclear material for its 1974 bomb test. I do support the idea that the US should work to strengthen ties with India through expanded cooperation in trade, scientific and medical research, energy technology, education, and humanitarian relief. In my work on The Words site, we have had many dialogues with thinkers in India. In 2001, Chris David visited with me in Olympia, Washington, and we spent a week discussing this and other topics. I do not believe, however, that we should expand nuclear cooperation if it comes at the expense of efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

For many years, India has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has blatantly detonated nuclear bombs, and refused to accept International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards over all of its nuclear facilities. As a result, India does not qualify for full civil nuclear cooperation under existing US laws and global nuclear export regulations. India also refuses to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and to stop producing nuclear material for its expanding arsenal.

Even if India agrees to meaningful safeguards on its "civilian" facilities, US nuclear aid will free up India's existing capacity to produce highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. According to Indian nuclear hawk K. Subrahmanhyan, in order to expand India's nuclear arsenal, it should "categorize as many reactors as possible as civilian" to facilitate foreign refueling and conserve India's scarce "native uranium fuel for weapons-grade plutonium production."

In December 2005, Republican Congressmen Fred Upton (R-MI) introduced a bill that expressed concern regarding nuclear proliferation with respect to the deal and stating that any deal with India should respect the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Our decision to share nuclear weapons information with India operates outside the established rules, and could contribute to a situation that is already tenuous and destabilized. In my view, it allows rogue nations, such as Iran, further latitude to experiment with nuclear weapons development.

I believe we should do all in our power to share constructive information with other nations, especially in those areas of the world where energy solutions could save hundreds of thousands of lives. We have had dialogue with corporate leaders who are already doing this as NGO contributors to world relief. One such individual, who has been in regular contact with my friend Richard Shaw, is building and distributing low level power stations to provide electricity and clean drinking water in developing countries, with great success.

There are positive steps that can be taken and we must do all that we can to make these options possible. At the same time, we must work and pray for peace and for limits to the spread of nuclear weapons development.

L. C.


AFTERNOON UPDATE: THE ADVENTURES OF A LAME (AND TONE DEAF) DUCK IN INDIA

There was another tragic aspect to Bush's calamitous visit to South Asia this week. While Bush was endangering global security to make his cronies in the nuclear energy richer, he was also selling out American workers and the middle class who are losing good paying jobs to third world countries whose workers get near slave-labor payment for the same jobs. As today's NEW YORK TIMES pointed out, the clueless and heartless multi-millionaire-never-earned-an-honest-dime-in-his-life president of the U.S. said "People do lose jobs as a result of globalization, and it's painful for those who lose jobs.". Bush was speaking at a meeting with young entrepreneurs at Hyderabad's Indian School of Business. Still, offered Bush lamely, "globalization provides great opportunities."

Bush has been welcomed to India with widespread and deadly protests, with mass demonstrations everywhere he goes. Today he examined a water buffalo. The TIMES went on that he "strongly defended the outsourcing of American jobs to India as the reality of a global economy, and said that the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods. Hyderabad is a center of India's booming high-tech industry."