There are four elephants in three rooms that the world pretends not to see. I'm not sure what your and my voices might mean, but I urge you to raise yours -- to your editors, your Congress-person, your Senators. I will if you will.
Two elephants hang out in Kashmir. India and Pakistan are increasingly hostile and irrational, each whipping up religious intolerance against the dangerous "other" to marshal patriotic and nationalistic support for their regimes. Both India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear warheads mounted on long-range ballistic missiles. The one is infested with terrorists; the other with fascist intolerance.
Another elephant lurks in an Ukranian room. Russian troops have taken the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. According to the IAEA they are running it sloppily, holding Ukrainian operators at their stations under the barrel of a gun, working them understaffed and overtime. The cooling water reservoir has been drained, the power supply jury-rigged. Were cooling to be disabled, Europe and the world might face a catastrophic nuclear melt-down exponentially worse than Chernobyl's.
The fourth elephant is in an Israeli room. Israel is the only mid-east nuclear power; they reputedly have an inventory of warheads that sit on long-range missiles, smaller tactical warheads in air-delivered bombs, and nuclear artillery shells. Their center is Dimona, in the Negev, just 30 km south-east of Be'er Sheva and even closer to the Jordan/West Bank border within easy reach of Iranian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Saudi, or Yemeni rockets. And given the rage Israelis are in, . . .?
The world leaders are acting as if they do not see these elephants, but they must. I cannot believe they do not. But what are they doing???
That's what I have written about, to my two Senators and to Adam Smith, my Congressional Representative and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. Call out these elephants, demand action -- at least, talk about them. How is the world to tie them down? Who can tranquilize them? Alarms need to be rung -- perhaps our voices can set them off.
Have you ever written your Senator or Representative? As we used to say at Kenner: It's easy, it's fun! Go on the web; give it a try. You might be surprised. Enough small voices can add up to a thunder that cannot be ignored. (Just ask Seahawks' opponents playing here in Seattle.) Let's get started.
