I got to tell you, if you ever want to know what it looks like inside the mind of a person with severe schizophrenia, try reading the Moldovan news these days.

In fact, it’s creepy and downright disturbing to see what the two “halves” are doing, split right down the middle based on the language used by the media source in question. For the record, I’m talking about Moldovan media, not sources from or funded by other countries.

Here’s the Romanian-language side:

• Oligarchs only exist in Russia, and they’re all evil
• Civilian targets in Ukraine are being relentlessly bombed by Russia
• The letter “Z” is somehow a swastika
• Photos and videos recycled from other wars/incidents, credited as being from Ukraine
• The USA and EU are the only ones who ever help Moldova and Ukraine
• Ukrainian forces are consistently winning battles
• Ukraine’s government is and always was a democracy
• There are zero Ukrainian refugees going to/in Russia
• Everyone in Russia (except Putin and the oligarchs) is against the war
• Everyone needs to defend Stalin’s demarcations of borders because they are INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED and set in stone forever and ever, amen
• The whole world unambigously supports Ukraine and is against Russia
• Literal neo-nazis with real swastika tattoos do not exist in Ukraine
• The Ukrainian police and border patrol are all helpful, honest folks
• President Zelensky just wants peace and nothing else, especially not another bumper of cocaine
• Biden wants to help bring peace to the world
• The war in Ukraine started two weeks ago

Meanwhile, here’s the Russian-language side:

• The war in Ukraine began in 2014 and has continued non-stop to the present day
• Ukrainian police and border guards and the SBU are doing really nasty things, including torturing and executing people
• Ukrainians are surrendering in large numbers, and gargantuan quantities of weapons (much of it delivered in the past two months by NATO) are being picked up right where the troops left them
• Armed men in Ukraine (from various units) are preventing civilians from leaving cities
• Russian forces win some battles and lose some others
• The malign influence of Ukrainian oligarchs like Igor/Ihor Kolomoyskyi are worth learning about
• Yeah, it is kinda weird that both Kolomoyskyi and Zelensky are (non-religious) Jewish, but it is nonetheless true that they’re financing and supporting the Nazis in Ukraine, so let’s find out why
• Russia is providing huge amounts of humanitarian aid to Ukrainians on the ground
• Russia is going out of its way to NOT target civilian areas
• Russia’s goal is to end the eight-year-long slaughterhouse in Ukraine
• Video testimony from refugees in encircled cities talking about Azov/fascist atrocities against civilians
• Biden thinks Putin invaded Russia, and nobody has the guts to tell Biden that his brain is a bowl of oatmeal

Obviously, the truth is somewhere in the middle, but it’s a hell of a lot closer to the Russian-language side.

For one, the Russian-language side is where almost all the videos and images come from. Real video and images, I should add, not old crap that is clearly recycled from videogames, other conflicts and natural disasters.

I got to tell you, the testimony I saw this week from two different families about what’s going in Mariupol shook me to my core. If that’s some kind of “staged video” or used crisis actors, then they fooled me, for sure.

Secondly, while I’m no expert on Ukrainian politics, I sure as hell remember the SBU staging fake murders for no logical reason and encouraging horrific violence against gypsies and arresting people who don’t want to be vaccinated, accusing them of being Russian agents, arresting journalists, and demonizing and arresting hundreds of people for “treason” on the flimsiest of excuses.

Jesus fucking christ, this week alone they murdered Denis Kirieiev (various spellings), a guy they trusted to negotiate for peace just a week ago.

My own personal dealings with Ukrainian men carrying guns have always been tinged with fear, even though I was always entering the country on public transportation, with not even a knife in my pocket, and a passport from a friendly country.  Oh yeah, I’m also not a Person of Color.

I’ll never forget the Ukrainian border guard armed with a fucking automatic rifle, boarding the train inbound from Moldova in 2015 or 2016, with a grand total of three passengers on board, and the guy was screaming at me in Russian about whether or not my parents had ever been to Ukraine (wtf?). The answer is no, and I don’t even see how that’s relevant, but that’s the Ukraine security forces for you.

And yes, as a full-grown adult, I’m aware that nothing that is going on is some kind of black and white situation. I could tell you a long list of ugly and unpleasant stuff about Russia, a lot of which I learned from a good friend of ours in Chisinau who is from Moscow, but it’s all substantive, nuanced, and grounded in reality, not blatherskite about “Putin is a madman who wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union.”

The very fact alone that one side is saying “we’re all innocent angels,” is proof positive that it’s a childish lie designed for gullible people. Everything is complex, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to your face for fun and profit.

Numbers Game

The groom of the stool to the Empire of Lies, Anthony Blinken, deigned to pay a visit to widdle ole Moldova yesterday.

Showing typical Imperial contempt, he arrived in the middle of the night, forcing a whole bunch of dignitaries and VIPs to stand around in the bitter cold, waiting for his ass.

He then held a press conference with the prime minister. Nothing too unusual to note, except for this weird remark by the PM:

As of this morning, we had more than 230,000 people who have crossed the border from Ukraine, and 120,000 stayed in Moldova; 96,000 of them are Ukrainian citizens.

She was speaking in pidgin English, but the semicolon in there lends me to believe this was a prepared speech. So, if 120k people are “staying” in Moldova, and only 96k of them are Ukrainians, then who are the other 24k people?

Remember, we’re not talking about non-Ukrainians transiting through Moldova. I fully understand that part. What I’m curious about is identity or origin of the 24k people now “staying” in Moldova who aren’t Ukrainian.

Oddly, the PM’s own press release on the meeting with Blinken is missing that part.

Frankly, I don’t know what the answer is. I just thought it was really weird as I hadn’t heard about that before from anywhere.

KISS

Look, I get it. If you’re living in the Empire, from your perspective, Ukraine was just minding its business last month and then along came Russia, launching a war “out of the blue” for no good reason at all.

Instead of me writing another 14,000 words with links and the rest, let’s just focus on a couple of numbers that anyone can understand.

Which is worse, War A or War B?

War A in Ukraine has killed 15,000 people, two-thirds of them civilians, and forced 2.2 million people to flee as refugees.

War B in Ukraine has killed fewer than 2,000 people, the vast majority of them armed combatants, and forced 1.1 million people to flee as refugees.

For the record, War A is the fratricidal Ukraine-on-Ukraine violence that has been going on since 2014. War B started two weeks ago when the Russian military crossed into Ukraine.

Again, you don’t have to like it or agree with it, but certainly from President Putin’s perspective, the “new” war (War B) is actually for the purpose of ending War A.

And again, you’re free to disagree, but I guarantee that “War B is to put an end to War A” is exactly what is going through the minds of every single Russian soldier currently in Ukraine.

Squaring the Circle

Just like with everything else (Covid on down), there can only be one of two explanations for what is happening. One explanation invites debate, criticism, and context while the other asserts laughably false claims and then accuses you of being some kind of devil if you dare to disagree.

Speaking of demonizing folks, plenty have been trying to do that to me this week for telling my truth. Well, guess what? I’m long past giving a shit.

After all, it’s not my fault that you didn’t hear about War A in your news. The United Nations has been talking about and dealing with it for years.

It’s not my fault that the same countries which signed a binding document to achieve a peaceful and democratic end to War A (France, Germany, and the United States, plus the Ukrainian government) have done literally nothing to stop it, and plenty to continue the slaughter.

It’s not my fault that no one has told you that 1.1 million Ukrainian refugees (before this year!) were hospitably and warmly welcomed in Russia (the other 1.1 became Internally Displaced People), or that Russia has continued to be a destination for Ukrainian refugees even now.

It’s not my fault that you’ve never bothered to ask why so many Ukrainians are fleeing to the same “barbaric” country that is “invading them” and engaged in a “genocidal” war.

It’s not my fault that you’re too lazy to read President Putin’s explanations in perfect English on the Kremlin’s official website, and instead rely on someone else to do your thinking for you.

It’s not my fault that you cheer as your governments censor opposing viewpoints, media sources, and information because they know their arguments are too weak to stand up to scrutiny.

It’s not my fault that one of the last places for American, British, French, German, Irish, Latin American, and Arab truth-tellers is on Russian-hosted media after Big Tech deplatformed them from everywhere else.

It’s not my fault that you think Russians are subhumans while Ukrainians are “our people.” That’s a stain on your racist soul.

It’s not my fault that every Russian thinks of Ukrainians are their brothers and sisters, while vast numbers of Ukrainians in the western part of the country think they’re part of the Aryan Master Race.

It’s not my fault you don’t know who Arsen Pavlov and Vladimir Zhoga were, or why they are heroes to millions of people.

It’s not my fault that you’re unaware of who Maxim Ryndovskiy is or why he’s being tortured right this minute by the Ukrainian government, or why they’re disseminating photos of his bloody body all over the internet.

It’s not my fault that you’re too lazy, arrogant, or indifferent to understand why Russians don’t want a nuclear-armed military alliance that includes Germany right on their damn doorstep YET AGAIN. It’s also not my fault that you forgot that Hitler was fighting against Britain and America with the aim of incorporating them into his empire while he was fighting against the Russians to exterminate them from the face of the planet.

It’s not my fault that you don’t see all the pro-Russian demonstrations in literally every place that the United States has bombed in the past 30 years.

It’s not my fault your news showed a pro-Ukraine protest in Prague, Czech Republic, without telling you that showing support for Russia (even on social media) is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

It’s not my fault that the United States continues to buy oil and other products from Russia while arming Ukraine to the teeth, thus funding both sides of the conflict.

It’s not my fault you sat on your ass as Armenians were slaughtered last year in Artsakh, as Yemeni children starve by the millions as your weapons obliterate their schools and hospitals, as America continues to loot and pillage Syria in complete defiance of both the UN and international law, as indigenous communities continue to get massacred in Colombia every fucking week, as Haiti descends into the maelstrom after being devastated by a powerful earthquake, as Lebanon runs out of food, as Kashmir has become an open-air prison of the Indian government, as millions of Palestinian refugees continue to suffer, as Ethiopia commits genocide against the Tigray people, as Cameroon’s dictator inflicts violence against Ambazonia with the open support of the UN Secretary-General, as the Solomon Islands are being destablized thanks to US-China tensions, as Myanmar’s military brazenly overthrew the government and then promptly disappeared off of your radar, as the Australian and Canadian police used LRAD weapons against peaceful protesters, as New Zealand police brutally dismantled Freedom Camp, as Facebook continues to be a haven for child pornographers and sex traffickers, as Thailand and the Philippines use force to quash all dissent from anyone, including their indigenous Muslim citizens, and as the people of Madagascar starve to death while the UN begs people for donations.

It’s not my fault you’re too lazy, arrogant, or incompetent to find photos of Ukrainian President Zelensky shaking hands with neo-Nazis after awarding them the country’s highest honor.

And it damn sure isn’t my fault that you don’t know what Zelensky wanted to rehabilitate literal Nazis from World War 2!

If there’s a funny, angry feeling growing inside your chest right now, that’s because you’re a child throwing a tantrum. You can grow the fuck up, or you can go back to your censored digital playgrounds and eat your genetically modified junk food as you pump poison into the oceans, lakes, rivers, forests, and even your own bloodstream all in an effort to squeeze out a few more days on this planet for your spiritually dead, rotten soul.

This is How the Adults Do It

Thankfully, I live in a nation where the adults are in charge.

Two days ago, some enthusiastic pro-Russian folks wanted to hold a rally to show their support for War B. Since we’re all supposed to be “Russian stooges” here, it may surprise you to know that the authorities shut down this protest.

Why?

Because obviously, it would inflame tensions and promote inter-ethnic hatred. This is the official communique from the PMR government, translated by computer into English:

Amen to all of that.

Remember that, the next time a cowardly fascist tries to tell you otherwise about this place.

And especially keep it in mind if you hear yet another unfounded rumor about the PMR military performing hostile maneuvers, launching missiles, starting an assault on someone, or anything else of that sort.