E Newsletter

False Flags, False Narratives

2014 Maidan, 2022 Mariupol and Bucha. One is a proven false-flag massacre perpetrated by the Ukrainian far-right. The others fit similar patterns. Having already made a case for why this is not a coincidence, I discuss further implications.

AI

AI

— 20 min read
False Flags, False Narratives

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A newsletter edition of Business Games, where we teach critical and strategic thinking.

This is a fifth entry in our Geopolitical and Propagandistic Season, where we start of with the Ukraine situation and zoom out to the geopolitical situation in the world, along with the role of media in it.

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Content

False Flags: Censoring Peer-Reviewed Academic Study as a "Political Decision" [00:00]

By all accounts, Ivan Katchanovski is a world-leading expert on Ukraine.

Based at the University of Ottawa, formerly of University of Toronto, Harvard, SUNY, and the Library of Congress, he has countless peer-reviewed articles and media appearances at all the "right" places: AP, BBC, CBC, CNN, Guardian, Reuters, Washington Post, Kyiv Post, Ukrainska Pravda, and many others (see the footnote for completeness[1]).

The guy is genuinely freaking impressive.

He had published a number of articles on the Ukrainian far-right already.

His latest piece was peer-reviewed and accepted by the Editor of a prestigious academic journal, with the Editor's comments like:

"evidence that the study produces in favour of its interpretation […] is solid,” “on this there is also consensus among the two reviewers”

“there is no doubt that this paper is exceptional in many ways,” that dislike of geopolitical implications of my [IK's] study by one of reviewers is not its valid criticism and "decision needs to be based on the scholarly merits of the article rather than politics"

As one "world-famous professor from US Ivy League university wrote":

that my [IK's] new […] article is "superb," thoroughly documented, very important, rigorous, and substantial," "on a topic of great significance" & *should be published for reasons of its excellence, rigor, and prior acceptance by the journal with minor revisions. The journal will only benefit from publishing such a work of importance and excellence, which will further the scholarly understanding and debate regarding a very important moment of modern history."

Yet the accepted-for-publication article was pulled by the board of the journal.

Why?

Because a "political decision".

What was so politically dangerous in the article?

The author showed, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the 2014 Maidan massacre where 100 protestors were killed had been perpetrated by the Ukrainian far-right and related Maidan forces as a false flag operation in order to frame Yanukovich in the eyes of the Western governments, such that the latter turn on the former.

The Western governments' condition for turning on Yanukovich, communicated prior to the massacre was: the tally of victims must reach 100:

All the quotes above are from Ivan Katchanovski's Twitter thread with all the evidence presented + the article here:

False Narratives: War Crimes [04:32]

You probably have by now figured out why the above article (the news of which we've learnt on 6 January 2023) about a false flag massacre from 2014 is of central importance to the question of Bucha.

In July 2022, I wrote my piece Mariupol & Bucha: Narrative v Reality, where I critically analysed the information about the shooting at the Mariupol humanitarian corridors and the crimes in Bucha, presented in the Western and Ukrainian mainstream media (and public channels of the Ukrainian far-right).

I'd spent several months analysing the media by then, with my conclusion being: on balance of evidence and rational incentives, it is more likely that the Kyiv forces perpetrated both crimes, for which the Russian and Donbass troops had been blamed.

And while I was convinced beyond any reasonable doubt in case of the Mariupol situation, I was closer to 80-20 on Bucha. Likely, but still had doubts.

Three things happened in Autumn 2022 and January 2023 that pushed my conviction to be beyond any reasonable doubt on Bucha:

  1. In September, after the Kyiv forces had taken Izyum and Kupyansk in the Kharkov Region, there popped up videos of civilians being mass-killed by the troops—and while the veracity of these videos (in particular, the identity of the troops) were debated, there also popped up several Ukrainian ultra-nationalist public Telegram channels that were doxing civilians who were accused of "collaboration". Such civilians included an old lady born in 1947, a young mother with a toddler, and many other such people. From the Ukrainian far-right public channels it was clear that "collaborationism" included taking humanitarian help from the Russian troops during the 6 months that they were in Izyum. Or teaching children in a school. Kyiv officials were bragging that many of the ones who were accused of "collaborationism" simply didn't make it to the interrogation.

  2. In November, Scott Ritter[2] (former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and former UN Special Commission weapons inspector) and Brian Berletic[3] (aka Tony Cartalucci, of The New Atlas), independently from each other, critically broke down a 6-month-long joint Associated Press / PBS "investigation" titled Putin’s attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes[4] and found absolutely zero evidence of Russian war crimes presented therein.

    They each confirmed some conjectures that I had presented in my draft in July 2022, and while I had some suspicions, they presented the evidence from the AP / PBS Frontline piece that confirmed Ukrainian civilians being used as spies and combatants by the Kyiv side.

    Brian also critically broke down the fléchettes argument that I also independently made in my piece, namely that the Western media said that the Russians were shooting at their own positions with unguided cluster nail-like munitions (which never made any sense to me).

  1. In early January 2023, I came across the Ivan Katchanovski story that proved false-flag massacre by the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists in the past.

These pushed to "beyond any reasonable doubt" my cumulative confidence that Bucha was indeed perpetrated by the Kyiv-associated forces—be it as a retribution or staging or a false-flag operation to blame the Russians or all the above.

It also confirmed the sheer strength of the one-sided narrative that had been activated in the Western mainstream media.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent [09:16]

Whether it's the Maidan massacre, Odessa massacre, Lugansk bombing, MH17 downing, Russians allegedly using rape as a weapon of war, Bucha killings, Mariupol events (humanitarian corridors shootings, hospital bombing, theatre bombing), Zhaporozhie Nuclear Power Plant shelling, Nord Stream 1 & 2 bombing (and environmental terrorism), a rocket killing farmers in Poland…—all of these have the same 6 things in common:[5]

  1. They are all terrible events that the Russian / Donbass side had absolutely zero motive to execute;

  2. They all immediately benefited somebody else, primarily the Maidan insurgents-cum-Kyiv-coup-regime but also sometimes the US (especially the Nord Stream bombings);

  3. They all immediately hurt Russia in the form of reputation loss, sanctions, military support for Kyiv, economic loss, and in a myriad other ways;

  4. They all were immediately blamed on the Russian or "pro-Russian" side by the Western officials and the mainstream media, before any evidence was presented (including a fast walking back by the West in the Polish case that was initially blamed on Russia, though Zelensky kept on insisting on the Russian culpability);

  5. In every case from 2022 (and most from 2014, except for the Lugansk bombing), the Western mainstream media and power structures shut down, excluded or simply censored any challenge to, or even questioning of, the official narrative (apart from the fast walking back in the Polish case);

  6. After the 2014 Maidan massacre, there's a proven track record for a side other than Russia in perpetrating similar or identical crimes in the past (or "mistakes" leading to disasters).

For some of them (Maidan massacre, Lugansk bombing), we now know beyond any reasonable doubt from the Western sources alone that Maidan-cum-Kyiv regime was behind these. For the mass rape allegations, we know from the Ukrainian mainstream media and from the (fired) former Ombudsman for the Human Rights Denisova herself that this was a pure fabrication.

Do you doubt that the others can be proven to be somebody else's doing (mostly Kyiv, sometimes US, sometimes pure fabrication)?

Personally, I do not doubt that at all. Based on the evidence I've seen come up over the past 10 months, I am now confident that the other alleged crimes of Russia can and will be proven to be somebody else's.

From any objective looking at the facts, there is no case against Russia in any of those—there is absolutely no motive.

In each case, a player other than Russia (mostly, Kyiv regime, sometimes the US) has all 3 of means, opportunity, and motive.

We also now know that the same player other than Russia has a track record of doing all of the above in the past:

  • Maidan-cum-Kyiv regime in all cases of massacres of civilians;

  • US in the Nord Stream case with the prior CIA involvement in the Siberian pipeline malfunction in 1982;[6]

  • Ukrainian military also has a track record of shooting down a civilian airplane and then vehemently denying it prior to the MH17 disaster (the 2001 was apparently an accident but Ukraine denied responsibility for days);[7]

  • Kyiv has a tendency to always deny any wrongdoing even for accidents (2001 civilian plane downing, Polish farmers deaths in 2022 by a Kyiv air defence rocket, likely rogue).

And yet, there's an immediate and vicious knee-jerk tendency to always blame Russia; "guilty until proven innocent" is apparently the new norm.

To paraphrase Dr. Sean Guillory's—a Russia expert at the University of Pittsburgh—insightful writing from 2019, I'm increasingly inclined to see this as racism:[8]

Given that Russophobia suggests an irrational fear of Russia’s “Otherness,” how much of this is really about Russia?

Discourses of otherness are always expressions of identity and power. The tendency to paint Russia as eternally backward, barbarous, despotic and even evil, is fundamental to the “West’s” construction of itself. Just note how the imagined borders of “Europe” or the “West” have shifted over the last century based on membership in and aspirations to join NATO/EU vis-a-via Russia.

Russia, in the words of one historian, serves as a “dark double” through which the “West” tempers its own darkness while simultaneously blackening the Russian Other. Russophobia serves as one of many discursive mechanisms in which the “West” consolidates itself, sublimates internal difference and reaffirms its universality.

One of the most controversial aspects of Russophobia is whether it’s a form of racism. Russians are not a race. However, Russophobia utilizes racist language and concepts. I’m increasingly inclined to see it as racism.

As an aside, the damage from this form of racism is not only to Russia—the real damage might be to the West itself:[9]

But what about the legions of high-ranking intelligence officials, politicians, editorial writers, television producers, and other opinion-makers, and their eager media outlets that perpetuated, inflated, and prolonged this unprecedented political scandal in American history—those who did not stop short of accusing the president of the United States of being a Kremlin “agent,” “asset,” “puppet,” “Manchurian candidate,” and who characterized his conduct and policies as “treasonous”? (These and other examples are cited in my book War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate, and in a recent piece by Paul Starobin in City Journal.) Will they now apologize, as decency requires, or, more importantly, explain their motives so that we might understand and avoid another such national trauma?

[…]

This is an exceedingly grave danger, because the real costs of Russiagate are not the estimated $25–40 million spent on the Mueller investigation but the corrosive damage it has already done to the institutions of American democracy—damage done not by an alleged “Trump-Putin axis” but by Russsigate’s perpetrators themselves. Having examined this collateral damage in my recently published book War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate, I will only note them here.

As the impact of hatred and racism on the West is not the focus of this piece here, I shall leave you to follow the links and I might come back to this topic later.

Critically Thinking [18:52]

Now that we've established a pattern of false flags and false narratives, we can start to check our own biases and objectively look at the available evidence on Mariupol and Bucha, as we know from the Western mainstream media.

As I said many times elsewhere, I'm purposefully handicapping myself to look only at the evidence from "reliable" sources: Western mainstream media, Ukrainian mainstream media, Ukrainian far-right public channels.

The logic is simple: if I can disprove the mainstream Western narrative using their own sources only, then it must be false.

The primary educational purpose of this handicap is also clear: we're trying to learn to make sense of the information that we have access to.

We are not trying to get to better sources in other languages, because most of you do not have that option. What if you have access to only one type of media?

From this light, the Western mainstream media is just a useful example as it's the one with the widest access for an English-language podcast.

Also: nobody in their right mind can accuse me of using "Russian propaganda"—how can I, by using the Western mainstream sources?

None of this can stop highly emotional people who want to believe a deeply one-sided narrative or people whose reputation and income depends on promoting said one-sided narrative—but they are not the target audience, and you are not like that.

Actually, disproving isn't even necessary—acting as if I were a defence lawyer in a criminal case, all I need to show is reasonable doubt in the prosecution's case.

As it happens, there's a lot of mainstream Western and Ukrainian evidence that disproves their case, one just needs to apply our "dirty dozen" critical thinking principles and patiently sift through the available evidence.

On Mariupol and Bucha, I do all of that in a fairly long and comprehensive article I highly recommend reading on www.business-games.ai called Mariupol & Bucha: Narrative v Reality.

Here, I'll just copy-and-paste the summaries verbatim from the blog—do read the blog entry for the details.

Who Shot at the Mariupol Humanitarian Corridors [21:28]

So, what have we shown?

We've taken almost all our "dirty dozen" thinking principles and applied them to a question of "Who shot at the humanitarian corridors in Mariupol?"

We've shown:

  • History: starting point is 2014, not 2022.

  • Context:

    • Minority supported Maidan, very few supported violence.

    • South-East did not accept the US-instigated coup in Kyiv in 2014.

    • as a result there had been popular Anti-Maidan movement and referendum on autonomy in Donbass.

    • as a result the post-coup Kyiv regime came to Donbass to bring them violently to heel.

  • Donbass Defenders:

    • NY Times and others showed Donbass Defenders as civilians who took up arms against the Kyiv aggression.

    • Kyiv ran a campaign to dehumanize Donbass as "terrorists", "separatists", and "useless".

  • Framing:

    • Reframing the understanding of the conflict to that of the "Ukrainian Civil War", we've seen that all the evidence makes much more sense in this frame.

    • In return, this alternative frame (Ukrainian Civil War) also makes more sense given the evidence.

  • Under what conditions would this be true? Alternative explanations:

    • We've seen that "Russian troops shooting at civilians after having organized humanitarian corridors while trying to take Mariupol" narrative only makes sense if Russians are suicidal or insane.

    • We've also seen logically, and later supported by eyewitness evidence as well as Zelensky's and other Kyiv officials' statements, that the Kyiv troops and far-right paramilitaries have more incentive to use civilians as human shield. There's by now overwhelming evidence (Amnesty International, UN, eyewitnesses, direct quotes to media, logic) that Kyiv regime does, in fact, do exactly that.

  • Being a detective: means, opportunity, motive—both sides had the first two, yet only Kyiv forces had the motive to shoot at the civilian corridors.

  • Multiple types of evidence: logical, eyewitness, Amnesty, UN, quotes by Zelensky and other Kyiv officials, historical, modern, incentives are aligned with the actions…

  • Note: I haven't even touched on the US involvement and the geopolitics. I only explained the background of the Ukrainian civil war in Donbass and Russia's involvement in it. Geopolitical and international economy views I'll cover later. They have little to do with Mariupol itself, and much to do with the genesis of the Russia's involvement in the conflict. For now, most is explained with the frame of the "Ukrainian Civil War".

I leave it up to you if you think the case I presented for who really shot at the humanitarian corridors in Mariupol is convincing.

[Obviously, you can only do that if you've read the full article, as this is only a summary.]

What Really Happened in Bucha [25:22]

So, what have we shown?

We've again taken almost all our "dirty dozen" thinking principles and applied them to a question of "What really happened in Bucha?"

We've shown:

  • Context: a split civilian population with respect to the pro-Kyiv versus pro-Russian loyalties.

  • Being a detective: both sides had means and opportunity, and both sides could've had motive to "punish" the non-loyal civilians.

  • Being a detective 2: pattern of behaviour. We saw that the Ukrainian far-right has a proven track record of staged false flag massacres going back to their Maidan days in 2014.

  • Recent history and new laws…:

    • …made it easier for the pro-Kyiv civilians to participate in the military conflict ("either spies or what is known as francs-tireurs—illegal combatants").

    • …made it illegal to "deny Russian aggression" thereby biasing any evidence given (or else a person can end up in a criminal court).

  • Using all the evidence we have about murder lists and doxing in Izyum, extra-judicial "disappearances" of people suspected in "collaboration" in Kupyansk, unlawful killings by the SBU, cracking down on "traitors" articles… it paints a picture where mass murders of "collaborators" in Bucha would be par for the course for the Kyiv regime and pro-Kyiv militias.

  • What would need to be true? and Alternative hypotheses:

    • Russian culpability for Bucha can only be proven if you accept that Russians are somehow all of them bloodthirsty orcs rather than human beings.

    • We've also seen that in Kherson and Melitopol and in other places, Russian soldiers behave completely differently, invalidating the "bloodthirsty orc" hypothesis.

    • So, why Bucha?

    • What's similar between Bucha and Izyum and Kupyansk but different in Melitopol and Kherson is that in the first 3, Kyiv forces captured them back, Melitopol and Kherson were (relatively) peacefully transitioned, and Russia evacuated the vast majority of the pro-Russian civilians from Kherson's Right Bank of Dnieper to the Left before leaving the mostly empty city to the Kyiv revenge. Or to be more precise: the vast majority of the Kherson civilians, period, as they are also vastly pro-Russian; most of the people who stayed were fiercely pro-Kyiv.

    • There's more evidence for systemic viciousness of the pro-Kyiv ultranationalist and far-right forces as opposed to the Russian troops.

  • Debunking the Western mainstream media "fact-checkers" with simple logic, like for example applying simple self-preservation logic, it's clear that Russian troops wouldn't be shooting at their own positions with unguided nail-like fléchettes.

  • Using all we know about the "dangerous nationalists" from NY Times, it is also highly likely that Bucha was used to destabilize a potential peace agreement reached in Istanbul.

  • Even after 6 months, Western "investigative journalists" failed to provide any evidence of the war crimes being committed by the Russian soldiers.

  • Combining legal setting using Kyiv own laws and criminal cases, with the actors' incentives, with what's been said officially and which statements we can believe and which we cannot, the cumulative evidence points away from Russia and rather at the high likelihood of the Kyiv regime being behind the Bucha war crime (or staging).

Again, I leave it up to you to review all and think for yourself if you find my case convincing.

[Obviously, you can only do that if you've read the full article, as this is only a summary.]

Conclusion [32:35]

The general problem with the "Russia bad" knee-jerk reaction is not even that it's Russophobic and therefore racist.

No. The general problem is that it presupposes the culprit for literally anything and therefore exonerates the other side from any transgression from energy price inflation to crimes against humanity.

High inflation? "Putin's inflation!"

Many Syrian refugees? "Putin is shipping them via Belarus into the EU!" (I saw this for real on German TV literally two days ago)

Don't like the result of the US election? "Putin stole it!"

This "Russia bad" framing is chosen by default, and all the "evidence" is presented through this frame, leaving the real culprit to do whatever they want.

If you switch on your brain, you know "Putin bad" is pure crack BS just because, simply put, no single person can have that much power as to shift so much everywhere all at once.

Luckily, all these narratives are also provably false with an overwhelming amount of evidence that goes way beyond "this makes no sense". I present a lot of this evidence for your perusal, and there are other people doing this, luckily.

For all my criticism of the official US, there are many American dissenting voices still able to publish and speak out. Much less so than before, but much more so than in the EU and the UK, not to mention NZ, which is personally deeply disappointing. But credit where credit's due: US is still the bastion of free speech, comparatively speaking, on balance. Though clearly it's not as absolute as many Americans would like to believe.

Some other thoughts of what we showed or mentioned:

  • There are provable false flag operations including massacres that the Kyiv regime perpetrates;

  • There is a massive Western propaganda machine involving governments, secret agencies, media and now academia, and it works really-really well in the sense that it gives results in manufacturing consent;

  • Russophobia is a form of racism that is dangerous not only to Russia, but also to the West itself; you cannot build a culture based on hate: look how it's working out for Ukraine. This is a major topic for another time.

That about does it for now.

Please, like this episode, share it with others, comment, recommend.

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Cheers
AI

Footnotes

  1. This from Ivan Katchanovski's University of Ottawa page:

    Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies & Conflict Studies and Human Rights Program at the University of Ottawa. He was Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Politics at the State University of New York at Potsdam, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and Kluge Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He received his Ph.D. from the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

    Ivan Katchanovski is the author of Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova (Ibidem-Verlag) and co-author of Historical Dictionary of Ukraine (2d edition) (Rowman & Littlefield) and The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do, But Join Much Less (Cornell University Press). His articles were published in such refereed journals as Canadian Journal of Higher Education, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, European Politics and Society, International Journal of Public Administration, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Journal of Labor Research, Journal of Labor and Society, Journal of Public Policy, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Nationalities Papers, Post-Soviet Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism, Relations industrielles/Industrial Relations, and Ukraina moderna.

    His publications, interviews, and comments appeared in more than 1000 media outlets in over 60 countries. They include the following media: Associated Press, BBC Ukrainian, Canadian Press, CBC, CBC News, CBC Radio, CTV, CTV News, Financial Post, Fox 9 News, France 24, France Télévisions, Daily Beast, Global TV, Globe and Mail, Guardian, La Presse, Métro, Omni Television, National Post, Radio Canada International, Reuters, Vice, Voice of America, Washington Post, Washington Times, Yahoo News Canada, ABC Radio, Al-Jazeera, Annahar, ARD radio, Canadian Dimension, Channel One, China Newsweek, CNN Brazil, Consortium News, Deník N, Der Standard, East & West, Expresso, Euronews, Frettabladid, Jyllands-Posten, La Razón, Metro World News, Moscow Times, Nacional, NIUS diario, OpenDemocracy, OstWest, Prague Post, Pravda (Slovakia), R24, Radio National, Real News, RT, Rubikon, Sky News Australia, Telepolis, Transitions Online (Central Europe Review), TRT World, Truthout, Veja, WION TV, 112 Ukraine TV, 24 Channel, Apostrophe, Avers TV, First National Channel, ICTV, Holos Ukrainy, Kommentarii, Kyiv Post, NewsOne, Radio Liberty, Priamyi Kanal, Radio Svoboda, RBC Ukraine, Strana, STB, Volyn TV, and Ukrainska pravda.

    ↩︎

  2. Throwing down the gauntlet on Bucha where "Scott Ritter challenges Andriy Shapovalov [Acting Head of Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD)—AI] to debate war crimes allegations". This coincides with many points in my analysis, highlighting furthermore a major point I identified as likely, except now with concrete evidence beyond any reasonable doubt, namely:

    As for Bucha and Zdvyzhivka, the AP/Frontline reporting underscores another uncomfortable truth—the Ukrainians identified as being killed in both locations were either spies or what is known as francs-tireurs—illegal combatants, and as such subject to summary trial and execution.

    ↩︎

  3. US-Funded Media Fails to Produce Evidence of Russian "War Crimes"—where Brian goes into many more details than Scott, including the fléchettes discussion that I also wrote about (except Brian also adds more context by citing an Agence France-Presse / AFP article that confirmed Kyiv forces using fléchettes munitions in Donetsk in 2014—see around the 17:45 mark in the video):

    ↩︎

  4. Putin’s attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes ↩︎

  5. I go into the details of Denisova's lies about systemic (or, any for that matter) rape in Part 3: Verifiable Lies as Exemplified by the "Systemic Rape as a Weapon" Hoax of NY Times: Disinformation Central? Or: How I Lost Trust in the Western Mainstream Media and What to Do About It ↩︎

  6. Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets from Washington Post; 27 February, 2004. ↩︎

  7. Ukraine admits it shot down Russian airliner from The Telegraph; 13 October, 2001 ↩︎

  8. The quote is from an opinion piece titled The Paradox of American Russophobia from the Moscow Times; 3 July, 2019.

    A profile on Dr. Sean Guillory from the University of Pittsburgh website:

    Dr. Sean Guillory is the Digital Scholarship Curator at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and host of the SRB Podcast (https://srbpodcast.org/) a weekly interview show on Eurasian politics, culture and history. He received his Ph.D. in Modern European History with a focus on Russian/Soviet history at UCLA in 2009. Before joining REEES, Dr. Guillory was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northern Illinois University (2010-2011) and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh (2011-2014). He has published in a number of academic and popular venues, including the Slavic Review, Diplomatic History, the Carl Beck Papers, the Moscow Times, The Nation, Jacobin, the New Republic and others. He has given many interviews and talks on Russian history and contemporary Russian domestic and international affairs. In 2015, he started the SRB Podcast, which has since released over 220 interviews with scholars, journalists and policy makers on the former Soviet Union that have been downloaded over 1.3 million times. As the Digital Scholarship Curator, Dr. Guillory is responsible for organizing, recording, and producing thematic speaker’s series and releasing them as podcasts to reach a wider public. He is currently producing two audio documentary series: Teddy Roe Goes to the USSR, a six-part series about American tourism to the Soviet Union in the late 1960s; and The Reddest of the Blacks, a multipart series on African Americans, communism, and the USSR told through the life of Lovett Fort-Whiteman, the only known Black American victim of Stalin’s Terror.

    ↩︎

  9. The Real Costs of Russiagate By Joseph F. Cohen for The Nation; 27 March, 2019. ↩︎

Mariupol & Bucha: Narrative v Reality
Who shot at the civilian humanitarian corridors in Mariupol? What really happened in Bucha? How to use critical thinking and game theory principles to sift through BS and separate reality from narratives.
Business GamesAI
A Dirty Dozen (Thinking Principles)
How I process information: a dozen principles. This piece builds on the NY Times Disinformation article and expands the principles I apply when processing information.
Business GamesAI

Read more