Today’s update. Here are the discussion points:
Continuous drone activity over Kyiv, with air defense sounds overlapping with thunderstorms
A Substack account spreading Holocaust denialism and a fabricated Ukraine child organ trafficking claim
The account’s connection to my October 2023 article on children taken from families during the war
The person behind the account, who goes by Maddie
Other Substack accounts I consider disinformation sources, including Michael Flynn and Caitlin Johnstone
A specific account called Books Behind Borders, which I say spreads anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism
An AI detection tool flagging Shaun Pinner’s own writing as AI-generated
A Tucker Carlson clip on alleged Christian oppression in Ukraine
My cat, Mavka
A framework I call the three layers of participation in the Ukraine conversation
A framework I call cat chess, and Soviet reflexive control
Scott Bessent’s false claim that Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure are driving up US gas prices
Tonight’s live show with Shaun Pinner and Simon Ostrovsky
I’m writing this from Kyiv, where it’s been seven straight days of drone activity. At one point today, a thunderstorm rolled through at the same time as air defense was working, and I had to go out on the balcony to tell the two apart.
Writing is how I deal with the stress of it. This morning I noticed outrage building around a Substack account and went looking into it. What I found was a pattern of Holocaust denialism, monetized at $5 a month or $40 a year. I don’t think Substack should be platforming that, or the kind of disinformation that’s easily debunked.
The piece I published today is what I’m calling part one. It focuses on a claim from that account that Ukraine is harvesting children’s organs. I tied that back to an article I wrote in October 2023 about children taken from families during the war, including categories the government tracks: kids whose families know where they are, and kids nobody is looking for, which I’ve called human trafficking. The Holocaust denialism itself is a separate piece I’m working on next.
The person behind the account goes by Maddie. I said I have a background in the kind of work people call doxxing, though I draw a distinction: my database is private, and I’ve used those skills professionally to help people deal with stalkers, separating real threats from people who are just posting. I said what Maddie’s doing likely isn’t illegal, since being a Nazi isn’t illegal in America, but that I’d challenge it on facts.
I also named other Substack accounts I think are problems, including Michael Flynn and Caitlin Johnstone. And I called out a specific account, Books Behind Borders, which I said spreads anti-Semitism disguised as criticism of Zionism. I said you can criticize the Israeli state without hating Jews, and that I have no patience for anti-Semites regardless of who they’re targeting. I said the account’s writing is largely plagiarized, including from a writer named Barbara on Medium who I described as long pro-Soviet, and I cited a line from the account blaming Jewish Bolsheviks for killing 60 million Christians as, in my words, pretty fucking Nazi.
On a lighter note, Shaun Pinner had one of his own articles flagged by an AI detector as AI-written, even though he wrote it himself. I used that to explain how I actually use AI in my own workflow, exporting Telegram material, combining sources, and writing from that.
Someone sent me a clip of Tucker Carlson interviewing a woman about alleged Christian oppression in Ukraine under Zelensky. I brought up Carlson’s own past court statement that his show is entertainment.
For anyone asking, my cat is named Mavka. I’ve written about the name before, tied to the Lesia Ukrainka play and to a partisan group I monitor called La Mavka. She doesn’t react to the air defense sounds.
I talked through a framework I use for what I call the three layers of participation in conversations about Ukraine: people born Ukrainian, people like myself and Shaun who’ve been accredited by experience here, and outside supporters. I also talked about a framework I call cat chess, for understanding audiences that don’t operate on logical argument, and connected it to Soviet reflexive control, naming Ivan Agayants as the founder of the Soviet active measures department.
Toward the end, I addressed Scott Bessent’s claim on Fox that Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure are behind higher US gas prices. I said that’s false, and that the real driver was the Iran conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. I mentioned growing up in Houston’s District 29, the US oil district, and my late father-in-law’s career at Lyondell Petrochemical, as background for that.
Tonight’s show is at 5pm Eastern, midnight Kyiv, 10pm UK, with Shaun Pinner joining from Dnipro and Simon Ostrovsky from the US.
