What the World Needs Now

What the world needs now is a $3499 virtual reality headset.

That's the idea one might get from reviewing all of the breathless coverage granted to the latest product announcements touted by Apple during its World Wide Developer Conference 2023 held June 5, 2023. What's really going to take people to the next level is a Vision Pro headset that looks like a battery powered set of ski goggles with advanced technology that can focus its image rendering computing power only on the areas your eyes are watching on the inside hi-res screen as you watch areas you're staring at become larger so you can reach out in mid-air to pinch them to launch an app or send a tweet. And if that wasn't enough innovation, you can consider buying the latest Mac Pro laptop which is a mere 11.5 millimeters thick, cuz a 15.5 milimeter thick laptop is such a burden.

What? Not interested in a $3499 gadget for gamers?

How about bringing the world together with GOLF? Can't we stop fighting over top men's golf talent and merge the PGA and LIV golf tours so we can just focus on selling Viagra, luxury cars, and consulting services to executives? For a game supposedly focused on honor and moral rectitude, America's PGA has made it crystal clear where those priorities sit in comparison to money. There is no other priority other than money if you are willing to split the take with an organization fronting for a criminal family regime that funded the September 11, 2011 attacks and has zero qualms about silencing one of its own dissident Saudi citizens -- one working in the US -- by luring him to a Saudi embassy in a third country to strangle him, chop him up into small briefcase sized pieces and fly back the parts on a private jet from Turkey to Saudi Arabia.

Are these really the types of problems that should be occupying our focus and emptying our wallets? Having hundreds / thousands of engineers devising hardware and virtual reality algorithms for game players trying to avoid dealing with the ACTUAL reality surrounding them? Merging golf associations to create more tournaments with multi-million dollar purses to attract players and fans to courses in the desert so billionaire terrorists can launder their money?

As events turned out, it seems June 5 and 6, 2023 might have been a very apropos period to ask people to ponder that question. At 2:50am local time on June 6, 2023, explosions in the inner engine room of the power station of the Kakhovka damn in Ukraine compromised the upper section of the dam, beginning a catastrophic release of roughly ten meters (maybe more) of water to parts of southern Ukraine, threatening at least 80 towns and villages. Ukrainian and Russian officials both released statements blaming the other for the blast but an analysis of events leading up to the failure and its impacts seems to point towards Russia purposely triggering the failure.

• witnesses report no sounds of incoming artillery fire or incoming missiles
• incoming artillery shells or missiles are unlikely to be able to produce the damage as far down as the explosions encountered
• Ukrainian intelligence claimed that Russia rigged mines throughout the interior of the dam after seizing it in November of 2022 as a defensive measure
• Initial downstream flood damage will initially be worse in lower elevation areas occupied by Russia (implying a possible Ukrainian motive) but that really doesn't mean anything if Russia has given up hope on controlling that territory and instead just wants to "salt the earth" as they retreat back through Crimea

It must be mentioned that Ukraine does not have a completely empty record of eco-terrorism in wartime either. Coincidentally, also on June 6, 2023 The Washington Post published a story summarizing intelligence the US and Western allies had as of mid-2022 that Ukraine was planning an attack on the new Nord 2 pipeline that was about to go live delivering gas from Russian to Germany. The pipeline owner was 51% controlled by Russia's Gazprom but the minority ownership was split between German, French and Dutch firms that stood to make billions in fees previously paid by Russia to Ukraine to use Ukranian pipelines. The original plot was slated to take place around June 5 of 2022 but was thought to have been put on hold, possibly due to subliminal (or not so subliminal) requests from the US to avoid such an outright attack on a Russian asset. The Post story states the events of the eventual attack in September 2022 matched many of the tactical steps of the original plan that had circulated earlier in 2022 and the team operated explicitly at the direction of Ukraine's top military leader while leaving President Zelensky out of the loop for deniability with the West. At the time of the bombing in September 2022, the technically idle pipeline had already been charged with about 300 million cubic feet of gas in preparation for going live, so the bombing released at least that much hydrocarbon gas into the atmosphere.

Destruction of the dam also completely destroyed a lock system that supported upstream shipping traffic which will cripple transportation for the rest of the war and whatever lies beyond. Unleashing the reservoir also eliminates the water source for canals which provide water for irrigation throughout the southern tip of Ukraine and into Crimea as well, providing further evidence that Russia may have zero intent on trying to retain control of any of the territories. The consequences of this blast instead imply Russia is bent on simple destruction. If Putin cannot have it, NO ONE will survive and no one else will be able to live there for decades -- if not centuries.

Sadly enough, the catastrophe currently washing over southern Ukraine is not remotely close to the worst case scenario. About 120 miles northeast of the destroyed dam is the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which relies on the elevated water levels of the reservoir behind the dam for intake of cooling water for its six nuclear reactors. As a result of shelling around the nuclear plant earlier in the war, all six reactors were taken offline for power generation and five of the six were reverted to a "cold" state. However, one reactor was kept in a slightly "warmer" state to make it easier to spin back up to online status if the war progressed in the right direction to allow safe operation. As a few engineers have calculated, all six reactors SHOULD be at a temperature now where a garden hose could provide enough water on a daily basis to keep spent rods and currently loaded rods cool. However, the drop in the reservoir level now likely means none of the reactors can be powered up after hostilities end to supply energy for the country.

But even THAT is not the worst-case scenario. Putin has already allowed shelling within YARDS of that nuclear plant when it WAS online at the beginning of the war. Risk to the containment buildings, supporting grid infrastructure required to power the plant's own safety equipment or the integrity of the cooling ponds for spent fuel were of zero concern to Putin as artillery shells and missiles were fired near the plant within three days of the war starting on February 22, 2022. According to a 2017 document submitted by Ukriaine to the IAEA, the plant houses roughly 2200 tons of spent fuel, 1984 modules in cooling ponds and 3354 modules in "dry pools." If the integrity of those pools was compromised, the material would leak into the Dnieper river, flow down to the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea and contaminate both for centuries.

Putin was thought to have mined the Kakhovka dam back in November 2022 in anticipation of this scorched earth retreat tactic and now appears to have done it. Would Putin employ the same tactic at a nuclear power plant? At this point, EVERY bit of Putin's conduct over the last thirty years confirms that every nation has to assume Putin would consider such actions and that the risks are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than zero percent.

Americans have a unique role to ponder in the evolution of Putin on the world stage. Since Putin emerged as a dominant figure in Russian politics in the mid-1990s, three different Presidents have adopted catastrophically flawed strategies for dealing with Putin. George W. Bush met with Putin on June 16, 2001 for initial talks about arms treaties, spheres of influence, etc. At the conclusion of the meeting, a press conference was held, one famous for a remark made by Bush in answer to a reporter's question. The question was this:

A question to both of you, if I may. President Putin, President Bush has said that he's going to go forward with his missile defense plans basically with or without your blessing. Are you unyielding in your opposition to his missile defense plan? Is there anything you can do to stop it?

And to President Bush. Did President Putin ease your concern at all about the spread of nuclear technologies by Russia, and is this a man that Americans can trust?

The answer everyone remembers from Bush was this:

I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.

There was no kind of diplomatic chit-chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue. And that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him.

What few remember about that event was that Putin answered his question FIRST and the last words of his response just before Bush spoke were these:

Can we trust Russia? I'm not going to answer that. I could ask the very same question.

There was ZERO sign of warm and fuzzy bonhomie there. Bush, forever clueless, missed that signal and launched into his bit about looking into Putin's soul. Before any reporter questions, Bush also said this as part of prepared remarks, further confirming his mis-read was not an off-the-cuff mistake but systemic throughout his team:

This was a very good meeting. And I look forward to my next meeting with President Putin in July. I very much enjoyed our time together. He's an honest, straightforward man who loves his country. He loves his family. We share a lot of values. I view him as a remarkable leader. I believe his leadership will serve Russia well. Russia and America have the opportunity to accomplish much together; we should seize it. And today, we have begun.

Obama was under no illusion about Putin having a soul but assumed Putin could at least be counted on to act in a vaguely rational manner, albeit in line with pretty warped criminal priorities. Obama hoped Putin's ability to act "rationally" in the context of stateless terrorism in the form of ISIS would drive Putin to contribute to international efforts to defeat ISIS within Iraq and Syria. In reality, Putin used the opportunity to simply prop up Basheer Asad in Syria to defend Russian interests in having a presence there. At the same time while America was distracted by doing more of the lifting to defeat ISIS, Putin started interfering with Ukraine, eventually invading Crimea and meddling with eastern regions.

Finally, there's Donald Trump… A man so mentally deficient he is unable to identify even the most obvious mental manipulations of an enemy… A man so envious of Putin's authoritarian power over his enemies that he acted publicly like a fanboy, even publicly encouraging Putin to meddle in the 2016 election ("Russia, if you're listening…")… A man impeached for actions tied to extorting the President of Ukraine on a "perfect phone call" for campaign dirt on his upcoming 2020 opponent Joe Biden in exchange for supplying Ukraine weapons Congress had already directed to be supplied at a time when Ukraine needed them to attempt to deter the escalating threat of invasion from Russia. The first impeachment made it perfectly clear to Putin how successfully he had compromised Trump as President. The acquittal in that first impeachment made it perfectly clear to Putin how successfully he had compromised the entire Republican Party. The events of January 6, 2021, the second impeachment, the second acquittal and the unprecedented "hostile" change of leadership on January 20, 2021 led Putin to conclude America would be paralyzed by internal division he had helped to sow since 2015 and would refuse to engage if he pursued an invasion of Ukraine. He continued massing troops and equipment in Crimea and the Donbas regions over the next twelve months and was ready to invade by February 24, 2022.

No, the world doesn't need a new virtual reality toy. The world doesn't need more golf tournaments in the desert. What the world needs right now is an injection of actual reality into the priorities and decision making of the leaders of the so-called "free world" that can eliminate the gun violence, social media and nano-divisions of political correctness that are taking our eye off the ball and preventing the creation of real strategies for solving REAL problems. Like an addiction to toxic hydrocarbon energy that poisons the planet and funds despots and criminals who are actively sowing economic and social chaos throughout the world. How many more reminders of the REAL needs of the world are required to shake the public out of its stupor? How many more will we get?