The Witness Chronicles 1/23/2023
Russia, the GOP, and Chat GPT, strange bedfellows
For those who didn’t see my first issue of The Witness Chronicles, this biweekly companion to The Grasshopper displays some of my recent writing on Medium, without the paywall.
In the past two weeks I published about 15 articles. Two of these were the most popular based on total reads and revenue. The other was a fun piece that, of course, I thought should have been a hit. So it goes…
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This dreadful war is escalating and the NATO alliance is working to help Ukraine defeat Russia in a war they never asked for. The challenge in writing about this is parsing a lot of speculative writing and rumor to try and penetrate Russia’s information iron curtain.
The NATO Alliance is Training and Equipping Ukraine for a Next Level War
It’s going to be springtime for Putin in 2023
Understanding what is going on in Russia and Ukraine, for a western observer without a military or intelligence background, is a real challenge. What sources are legitimate and what are Russian or Ukrainian spin? There is a constant propaganda war going on, in parallel with the real war.
But sometimes a story emerges not from one source, but from all over the place. And the big one right now is the reported major effort by NATO allies to train and equip the Ukraine army for large scale armored assaults with a mechanized brigade of tanks and a wide variety of state of the art support weapons systems designed for that kind of fighting.
Fighting designed with one objective in mind: complete liberation of all historical Ukraine territories occupied illegally by Russia in the earlier invasion eight years ago. This has been the clear objective of Zelinskyy from day one and constitutes a non-negotiable requirement for peace.
Total defeat of Vladimir Putin, in other words. If he loses these regions his reign of terror will be over. Likely to be replaced by someone else’s version. But by then the world will recognize that Russia has not been a world power for many years.Their myth of invincibility was a sham concocted by the oligarchs, who made their millions from unfulfilled military contracts paid for by regular Russian citizens.
To keep the gravy train going they had to keep up the farce that their military was still a fearsome global power, not just for the world but for their own leaders, who seem to have believed.
This is the only explanation I can come up with for why Putin made this colossal blunder last year when he invaded a sovereign country. But, in hindsight, Putin has been blinded by his own arrogance. For example, he was sure NATO’s resolve would quickly fall apart when faced with losing Russian oil and gas.
It didn’t and Joe Biden gets a lot of credit, another Putin underestimation. Track record: not so good so far. But now it is going to get a lot more real.
Reliable news reports show a major effort by the West to train a core group of Ukrainian fighters in large scale battlefield tactics and equipment. Reportedly 500 are undergoing intensive training in Germany right now by NATO, using modern NATO weapons including masses of British tanks, American Bradley fighting vehicles, air support, and the other ingredients of war on a massive scale.
Ukrainians are reportedly being trained in Oklahoma in the use of modern weapon systems including Patriot missiles and other technologies we don’t know about for good reason. We have a lot of bad stuff.
Meanwhile, we hear stories of Russian leaders building private armies of their own, of partisan attacks on military infrastructure including railroads used to transport troops and equipment, and Russian conscripts abandoning battlefields and going home, some with their weapons.
That sounds like a formula for turning Russia into an even more unstable state on the verge of splitting into civil war. Or another Revolution, which is more their speed, historically.
We are approaching the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the spring strategy for the Ukrainians and the West is coming into focus:
Weaken the Russian economy with economic sanctions and a technology embargo. Arm and train the seasoned Ukrainian military with modern warfare tactics and equipment. Undermine Putin and encourage a coup from within by creating distrust at every level. And show the Russian people the reality behind the special military operation that has cost over 100,000 Russian lives, if not more.
Putin’s strategy: the blunt instrument approach. Simply bomb Ukraine into non-existence through brute force with missiles and artillery. The world watches for escalation into chemical weapons and the threat of tactical nuclear attacks. A war of attrition.
It’s a weak strategy that they cannot maintain. Using forbidden weapons will turn all of the world against them. Their support in China will fade if they seriously disrupt the stability of the global economy. India has already warned Putin personally that they believe this war is wrong.
India and China are Russia’s only major allies and his major trading partners. They can shut him down economically, resulting in the destruction of an economy already weakened by Western sanctions and a costly war.
All of this adds up to a compelling argument for the forthcoming larger scale fighting we are training the Ukrainians for. While NATO is understandably reluctant to get directly involved in fighting, in Ukraine they have an ally willing to take on the task to protect their country.
One last tidbit of information I gleaned from the news and military pundits this week: Ukraine has a pool of nine million men that could be called up. And unlike the poor Russian conscripts press ganged into unwilling service, those Ukrainians are highly motivated and righteously pissed off.
Springtime for Putin is coming.
This article first appeared on Medium.com on 1/17/2023
An interesting publishing conundrum follows this piece about the chaos in the House of Representatives. A free news site called smartnews.com scraped this piece off of Medium and published it without permission. The result skewed my Medium stats and made it look like it went viral.
Unfortunately the Medium payment system does not payout for views outside of the platform. Fortunately, the piece is continuing to get read on Medium, which does generate revenue.
The lesson here is that you cannot always control what happens to online content. I don’t have the means or the time to go after these scum who are infringing on my copyright. So it goes.
The Republican Party is Doing Us All a Favor
They’re showing us their true face
“Voters are predictably disgusted. Navigator, a Democratic polling and messaging operation, found that “sizable majorities believe Republicans are focused on consolidating their power and fighting among themselves rather than serving the public.” Only 14 percent want Republicans to spend time investigating the Bidens. And just 44 percent of independents view McCarthy favorably, a 20-point drop from November.”
Jennifer Rubin, in the Washington Post
I want to write attack pieces for the Democratic candidate in 2024. Any Democrat candidate, leftist, moderate, even conservative, sort of. Old school, young hot shot, angry about everything, laid back and calm.
It seems like a strange desire given the extreme electoral environment building up between the Republican Party (not Trumpist), the MAGA-Q Republicans, the Freedom Caucus, and the Democrats.
It’s anyone’s primary race at this point, with both presumed early candidates, Trump and Biden, sidelined by the document scandals and Trump’s long list of legal issues.
I can’t see either one getting to first base, much less home, at this point.
So, things are wide open and we will see folks on both sides starting to make noises on a national level. Not announcements; you don’t want to look too eager or risk wearing people out too early. Ron DeSantis, do you get that message? Trump didn’t.
So, what possible favor could the Republicans be doing for us, as a country, right now? It’s pretty simple. They’re showing us their true colors, their loyalties, their individual ethics, and their extreme desires, and there are a lot of them.
What we are not seeing is party loyalty, discipline, reliable stances they care strongly about, or any attempt to be honest or own their mistakes.
Normally, whatever that means, there would be leaders who represent GOP ideals that a majority of the Party largely agrees with. Those leaders would have the clout to rein in fringe elements for the greater good of the Party.
There are no such persons calling themselves Republicans. That’s the first part of the favor.
There is no loyalty even to their own ideas or beliefs. Or too each other.
Promises are meaningless. Running the country is not a priority. Even having a functioning government in place is not important.
The economy? Reining in dictators and warlords? Dealing with, don’t say it, climate change?
No, no, no.
A substantial group of House members have made it clear they would like to see the federal government go up in flames. They’d take away social security, Medicaid and Medicare, and eliminate taxes on wealth while passing the bills down the economic ladder.
The usual extreme right wing stuff that we normally can ignore, while they steam and stamp. Except they each now have the ability, as individual members, to take down the Speaker of the House, the person who is supposed to rein in the outliers and stick to the Party Platform.
Btw, there literally is no Republican Party platform. They haven’t bothered to create one for the last few years. We have no idea of even one thing they are united about, not one unified idea, or any forward-looking plan for improving anyone’s lives.
If they have any loyalty it is to those who write the checks and to their own individual egos. First and foremost. They do have one area of agreement. They want revenge for perceived wrongs done to them in the past.
So, the only actions of their agenda are attacks on everything any of them disagree with. Which gets me to that favor in the title.
We are seeing their true colors, worn proudly, and divisive in every way possible.
They show no interest or pride in America as a nation or the American people as a whole.
Ironically, claims to be more patriotic have historically been a central point of the Party. That used to mean something, vague as it is.
Meaning something is low on the priority. Ethical and respectful behavior is out too.
It all says one thing. This Party has disintegrated into chaos in a matter of weeks and shows no sign of changing that.
It’s pretty easy to make that attack case against them because they have forgotten what ruling and governing even mean. They fight among themselves and they promote racism, playing American differences against each other.
No melting pots anymore. I honestly doubt many of my readers, mostly liberal, even know what the melting pot ideal was. It was an idea, central to the notion of America, that all kinds came here, were melted together and cast as new creatures, Americans.
People who did not look back but looked forward and worked together to solve problems and improve the country.
The Republican Party does have one unifying theme these days. They don’t believe any of that melting pot, American uniqueness stuff. Divide and conquer served them well during the Trump years.
Too well. There is no Republican Party anymore. So, as voters, our choice will get clearer and clearer: Do we really want the future they represent?
The favor is we are seeing their true colors, without filters, the unvarnished truth about who they are. And it is not pretty.
This first appeared on Medium.com on 1/17/2023
Finally, a bit of a goofy piece detailing an experiment I did with ChatGPT, the AI bot that writes responses to prompts about anything. There is a tsunami of articles about these things, both alarmist and overly positive. They are still primitive as you’ll see.
How dare they imply I do not exist?
ChatGPT Goes to Hell and Back
And apparently, I no longer exist
I spent some time this morning with my new pal, ChatGPT. I do not know their gender so I will refer to them as it. I asked it to write a biography of myself, Martin Edic. For context, a Google search on my name generates 1.9 million results and as far as I can see, a lot of them are me.
But according to ChatGPT, I do not exist. It was unable to find any information about such a person. I tried adding more info but I still do not exist. Which makes me wonder where I actually am. And for that matter, where is ChatGPT?
I’m a Buddhist so this got me thinking about the Bardo, that in-between place where we find ourselves after death, while our karmic crap is being calculated. To clarify what the Bardo is, I asked ChatGPT to describe it. Here is what it wrote:
ChatGPT, author:
“Bardo is a term used in Tibetan Buddhism to refer to an intermediate state between death and rebirth. The concept of Bardo is based on the belief that after a person dies, their consciousness goes through a series of experiences and states before being reborn in a new body. These experiences and states are known as the Bardos.
There are several different Bardos, including the Bardo of dying, the Bardo of the moment of death, and the Bardo of the clear light. Each of these Bardos is believed to present different challenges and opportunities for the individual, and it is believed that the way in which a person navigates these Bardos can have a significant impact on their future rebirth.
In addition to the Bardos associated with death, there are also Bardos associated with other stages of life, such as the Bardo of dream and the Bardo of meditation. These Bardos are understood as different states of consciousness that can be experienced during different stages of life, and it is believed that understanding these Bardos can help individuals to develop spiritual insight and understanding.
The Bardo teachings in Tibetan Buddhism are considered as the most profound and secret teachings of the tradition, and are typically only studied by advanced practitioners or those who have received specific transmissions and permission to study them.”
That is as good an answer as anyone could give, covering the general concept, and delving into just enough detail to be interesting. I’d be happy to have written it, though I might not have been able to resist humanizing it a bit with the occasional tart observation or play on words. And a few snide asides.
I find ChatGPT a tad on the humorless side, which may be its reveal, the tell that tells us we may not be dealing with a human who is an exceptionally fast typist. It is pretty sci-fi to see an article like the above spit itself out as fast as you can read it. And I am a natural speed reader, so I could keep up, but barely.
But I’m guessing its speed was hampered by the rendering ability of the browser I was using.
There are lots of people playing with this thing right now and our games may be teaching it, if that faculty is still turned on in the trial version (note, it is not). To be defined as an intelligence, the thing must be constantly learning, if humans are the standard for judging the meaning of that term.
So if that ability is turned off, is ChatGPT alive, or am I talking with an AI soul speaking with experience of what a bardo state is?
Food for thought on a cold Saturday morning. I think I need a coffee.
This piece first appeared on Medium.com on 1/11/2023.
That’s the second issue of The Witness Chronicles. Hope you found something interesting in it. M