Cogitation in the Time of War #12 - Symbologies

The Z letter seen on the Russian vehicles that invaded Ukraine is by now likely familiar to everyone. It even became a symbol in both Russia, where it is used by those supporting Putin and his "special military operation", and in Ukraine as a symbol for tyranny, in the same way that the swastika was a symbol for the Nazi Germany as seen on the collage on top.

Cogitation in the Time of War #11 - Tomorrow is Sunday

Personally it was a nice day for me. It's still cold at night but the sun has been out and shining for 4 days now. We inaugurated the barbecue season, with a mix of meats but also sardines. I spent almost the entire afternoon without checking my phone for news on Putin's Invasion.

The only downside today was that my bicycle's chain broke cycling home (3rd consecutive mechanic failure when riding with my son).

Cogitation in the Time of War #10 - The boys inside the tanks

Yesterday shared on Facebook a video of an allegedly Russian tank being hit/destroyed by an anti-tank missile fired by the Ukrainian forces (the view point is from the sighter, or visor, from the launcher) and I wrote the following joke (now slightly improved):
- Dad, what did you hunt for dinner today?
- A tank, son.
- And can we eat it?
- Not sure, I guess. The turret is already fully cooked.

From the comments on the different Twitter threads where I saw the video being shared, and since the tank seems to be stuck, I simply assumed that it had been abandoned. I did the joke when sharing it myself because it didn't cross my mind that the video could be directly showing the death of the tank's crew (at least the 2 that sit in the turret).
But that was a assumption not a certainty. I didn't remove the post because I couldn't verify later more details on the video and the strike's outcome. I actually encountered some comments claiming that what we see is a sort of bunker and not even a tank! Anyways, this video and my post generated 2 interesting reactions (via comments) that I decided to expand in a dedicated cogitation.

Cogitation in the Time of War #9 - Die of the cure?

This might be mostly based on personal perception but it seems that the general opposing, or the contrarians, view, (as opposed to the main line from Western governments) moved from "NATO caused this war by expanding and forcing Putin's end" to "NATO is leaving Ukraine alone to fight and must do something". Then the "opposition" asks for a no-fly zone (something they picked up somewhere but have no clue about what it really is) or even asks for troops on the ground.

Cogitation in the Time of War #8 - A meme, a summary and a personal thought

The image above is a new Russian meme, apparently doing the rounds in Moscow. Part of the photo widely shared all over the world, with Puting meeting his top 2 generals (Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff) but them sitting opposite ends of the (extremely) long table

This is a translation of the text (since I don't know Russian nor cyrillic) to English:

- "You are sitting closer to him. Hit [the fuck out of] him with something."

- "Hit him with what, from 20 meters?"

But day #8 of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine is gone and I'm just sharing some thoughts before going to bed.

Cogitation in the Time of War #7 - Was this a premature glimpse of a future?

RIA Novosti  is a Russian state-owned domestic news agency, that belongs to Rossiya Segodnya,  owned and operated by the Russian government.

On the 26-February, a little more than 48 hours after the start of the so-called "special military operation" by Putin's Russia, an article was published on the RIA Novosti website entitled "The new world order". This article was later taken down but it was up long enough for it to be saved under WebArchive. An English version of it was also shared around the same time in a Pakistani-based website named The Frontier Post and that page is still available.

The article gives an explanation for the invasion and in a way it gives the main reason behind it. It is very much aligned to Putin's speech from the 21-February, where he mentioned the need to correct the errors from the past in regards to Ukraine that, in his own words, was not a real country.

Gone with the War

One week ago I was planning to write a text about a prediction I made 7 years ago (February 24, 2015) in regards to electric cars. I'd already thought and structured the text in my head and even made a research to confirm the data but with the daily stuff hadn't found the time to sit at the computer and start writing it down. The main reason behind writing about this subject was to not keep banging on the same key over and over about the usual subject, the pandemic. But in reality I still had a draft about the pandemic, namely about its announced ending and what was coming with it, almost like a season finale as I wasn't planning to return to it for weeks and months to come.

But then the war came and all plans went up in smoke...

Cogitation in the Time of War #6 - Shocking and surreal

In addition to the videos and photos in the social media, including TikTok, of civilians stealing/recovering russian military equipment, with the emphasis on the Ukrainian farmers towing armoured vehicles among others, I'm in awe with what I just seen on Twitter.

Putin's Russia has been using analog radio communication in their operation and there is a worldwide community of radio amateurs and translators that are listening and documenting their comms; they are also jamming the frequencies thus disturbing even further the operations on the field. This group alone already have hours of comms and will share them online at some point!

More details on this can be seen in this tweet.

I will use again an adjective that will probably become one of the 2 words to define my reaction to this entire conflict: shocking!

Together with the OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) community, and the Anonymous collective, we have several civilian groups "fighting" a non-kinetic action against Putin's Russia. Surreal!