gagablog 70: Favoritism, the seed of War, and Peace, rooting it out: Ukraine and the Simpsons

A basic reason I worship Lady Gaga as the Goddess is her inclusiveness. It reminds me of some of my favorite ideas from buddhism and Jesus, interconnectedness and the kingdom of heaven. Gaga reaches out to and includes the misfits of the world and maybe it's because I am one that I have put so much emphasis on these spiritual ideas, and certainly it is part of why I'm a little monster and love her so much. Buddishm teaches interconnectedness, and realizing how we are all part of the same thing gives us the focus to do good and act with obligation to one another, to all life and existence. Even though it is a spiritual reality that we are all connected, the social and legal reality most people live in is very different: some people are privileged and many more are disadvantaged and even oppressed. Realizing we are all interconnected and acting out of a sense of duty to discover and end suffering in any way we can, wherever it exists, can solve all of our problems and that is where the kingdom of heaven and Gaga come in. Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like the good shepherd who leaves the flock to find the lost sheep. This is what Gaga does for me, she leaves the crowd to find and include all the people who have been left out, or outcast. All too often people are misfits, outcasts, and oppressed because of their art or sexuality, it is something that is still happening in most places around the world. Thankfully we are starting to form and see the future where that goes away but far too many places are still stuck in the past, and so many people are stuck in those places, but Gaga is reaching out to us and bringing us together. And it is happening all over the world with more and more people playing their roles better by reaching out to more people, from Pope Francis to the Australian billionaire untiing the world religions to end slavery to the activists joining together around the world to address climate change. I respond to Gaga because she liberates me and encourages me as an artist, and because she addresses some of the major issues of our times I've always been concerned about, justice and equality for people without deescrimination based on sexuality and caring for, respecting, and listening to kids. Gaga is the Good Shepherd to me, the one who transforms the flock into the Kingdom of Heaven by completing it, by finding the one that was lost and left out by the herdiness. "Leaving the flock" means leaving convention, the past, the mainstream behind to find the ones who are suffering for being left out, and it also means leaving the normal to enter the world of Art. We all leave the flock and find lost sheep, we all become good shepherds, any time we make art, we do this magic out of our heart that can reach out to someone over space and time and bring them back, make them feel connected. Gaga is doing it on the most major, intentional, artistic scale, reuniting so many people and turning us on to do so for others. The Kingdom of Heaven is here, on earth, within our reach if we reach for it. Discovering it is all about finding those who are left out, bringing them back and honoring their stories to change the world of the ways that outcast them. This includes gay people and it is a major civil rights issue of our times, and it also includes kids, the poor, potsmokers and drugusers, and so many other "categories" of people around the world, depending on where you live and who is "in charge" there. The whole point is that we can't play favorites, that is injustice, but the system almost always does, no matter which system it is, and often the result is horrible suffering for people. So if there is ever any fovorite to be had, it is never the one who is already favored but the one who is left out - though once that one is restored there is no favoritsm and this is what makes it the kingdom of heaven. This all comes down to favoritism. We all know that favoritism is injustice, we all personally feel the wrong of being treated differently from our siblings and peers. We all know that favoritism is wrong, on a personal level. But on social and national levels, all sorts of horrible favoritism and oppression continues, and even continues long after we know about it. We've known for decades that prosecution for weed was descriminatory, that it imprisoned far more black people than white people, and it is on that basis that Washington D.C. just decriminalized weed this week. But it is still just one of a few cities and two states to actually move into the future on this, with still a long ways to go. Favoritism might seem like a nicer word than descrimination but it is not meant to be, it is the same thing. It is unjust that weed is illegal for a lot of other reasons, too, but just the descrimination against black people should be enough to have made us change our ways. At least we are starting to, and as the places that do prosper it will be more obvious to everyone that it is the future. Gaga seems to have always recognized this and I think of "Mary Jane Holland" as a tribute to it. Favoritism is the source of suffering within societies. The people in power, representing paticular group, tend favor that group and risk not being as concerned for the "other" people their decisions effect. Good leaders will seek to serve everyone, of course, and that is what we hope for, but unfortunately not what most of us live with. Actual democracy, communication, health, and education all work towards improving our systems and leaders (which is why Republicans in America oppose these things) but the secret ingredient a good leader needs to bring it all together is that Good Shepherd quality, to seek out and favor the ones that the system has not been favoring. I tend to get suspicious of the idea of doing something for your country, probably because I'm from America and we've done some pretty bad shit. But when I was thinking about it recently I realized I need to make a distinction: there is nothing wrong with doing something for your country if it means helping other people, your fellow countryfolk. But doing something in the name of doing something for your country can lead to some horrible results. Anything that leads to the idea that you can kill or oppress someone else in the name of "your country" is wrong because it violates the principle of interconnectedness: this is the principle that makes it a good thing to see yourself as part of a community or country as long as it motivates you to do good to others, and even better to see yourself as part of humanity, life, oor existence in general to do the most good to the most different kinds of "others." Of course I was thinking about this because of the crisis in Ukraine but it all comes down to favoritism. Favoritism basically leads to war and we need to cut it out. Say you take over a country and you treat the people unfairly. The ones you mistreat will revolt and wage war on you, eventually. Or if you are the captain of a ship. Or if you live in a family, or have a job, or go to school, or interact with people - admittedly in more minor ways but that is why examples are fun. Favoritism is wrong at any level, and when it gets big and powerful and becomes part of the system it has really bad effects. One of the worst is war. They act like we have to avoid war with Russia since they took over Crimea. I wish we would just be smart enough, on both sides, to say we are definitely not going to war then proceed from that foundation to do the best thing. At every stage of the imagined potential conflict I see favoritism as the seed that grows into war. When the Russians went into Crimea they said it was to help the Russian-speaking population there, showing favor for their concerns - but the idea was to protect them against descrimination, favoritism, from Ukraine, supposedly. So, now that they are in control of the area, if their true objective is to prevent favoritism and descrimination, everything could be fine - they not only won't descriminate against the other ethnic/linguistic communities in Crimea they will really seek to make those people as happy as can be, like a Good Shepherd, because they know the system of government that was "chosen" was only by the russian-speaking majority (most everybody else boycotted the vote anyway.) I don't think I'm just being cynical to suspect Russia won't really do that, and may even invade other areas. Because I don't think they took Crimea for their noble reason of opposing favoritism, they did it for their own favoritism for the russian-speaking population. To be more specific, that is how they propogandized it to their people and the world, but they have their own greedier, more selfish reasons at heart, I'm sure. But if they were to treat all the people in Crimea incredibly well, and only invade other places that "really asked for it" and did the same there, I don't see what the problem is, really, unless it is our own favoritism that we would rather not more area be called "Russia." Unfortunately, this is not the likeliest future given what we seen and can conclude about their leadership and it's benevolence or lack therof. And we are not innocent by any means - there is a dangerous level of favoritism we have in place, on "our side." Imagining the crisis in Ukraine escalating to Russia taking more territory, and a military response from Ukraine, we can see how favoritism leads to war at every stage, and how at some point it must be stopped. Russia keeps justifying taking territory by saying it protects russian people from favoritism, but the more aggressively they do this the more obvious it becomes that it is not really about protecting people but for their own concerns. I beleive Poland has pledged to assist Ukraine if Russia invades, which on the one hand is a nice thing to do, helping a weaker country against a bully. But it could lead to terrible results, because it is basically Poland taking sides, playing favorites. The solution is not to say "well so long Ukraine, can't help you, go be Russia." And it is certainly not war. It is something in between, something completely different as Monty Python says and as I predicted for Syria, and it involves rooting out favoritism. I will get into what it is, but first I'll conclude the nightmare scenario. If Poland plays favorites and gets involved and it turns into war between Russia and Poland, that starts World War Three because of the institutional favoritism of the NATO alliance that any attack on Poland is an attack on all allies. This whole thing makes me realize how fundamentally wrong such favoritism for "member countries" is, the whole threat of it supposedly to avoid war but really committing us to more possibilities for war - the nature of favoritism on such alarge scale. And yet a similar thing, in the face of international terrorism, for instance, an alliance between all countries, with no favorites, that any attack on the people of one is an attack on the whole world, well, that is something different and far more ideal. Of course the followup, to be good leaders/shepherds, would be to identify who is trying to terrorize, what their complaint is, and somehow make it right. There is no real reason to have an alliance, to have favorite countries - it's based on an idea that we can only get along with the more similar ones, the flock we belong to instead of reaching out to the others. Acting in the name of a country, or an alliance, to the extent that you can kill someone or start a war should be a sign that something is horribly wrong. Of course there are different ways of governing in different places, and a lot of bad stuff all around, but if we respect each other neough to work together and learn from each other we can improve all around. Japan has been the only country that continued whaling after international laws against it, by creating a loophole. But last week the U.N. (I guess) closed the loophole. Japan said it was unfair, and there was a time when people were scared and hopeful to find out if Japan would comply or balk the law, having called it unfair. But it was only a few hours and then Japan announced they would comply out of respect for international law. People fear global government because they assume it would be evil based on evils of more localized variety, but it really can be good and it will be if we insist on it and make it good. It's all about being aware that any system, any flock, has a lot of good qualities but can only be it's best when aware that it causes suffering, too, either intentionally or accidentally, but to be aware of this and work to restore what is lost and eliminate suffering. Gaga is already doing this in a cultural sense, reaching out to people and bringing our stories and art to light. The best governments are doing more and more to take care of people and religions that had been getting it backwards are getting better at this, too. As individuals we can all do more of it and do more to demand justice from our governments, and restore them to justice when necessary. The whole situation in the Ukraine started with the election of the pro-Russian Yanokovitch 5 years ago, and the tipping point was when the population voted for more alliance with the EU but Russia gave Yanokovitch 15 billion dollars to stick with them, which he did. So the people revolted and one symbol of the revolution was their discovery of his palace, zoo, vehicles, etc. after he fled the country. This is just a very symbolic example of how he had his own interests, not the people of Ukrainne, in mind. The same can be said of the Russian motivation to control Ukraine, not to help the people the most but to profit most from them. They made this clear last week when they raised the gas prices on Ukraine by 50%. This is like if you broke up with your landlady and she raised your rent by half, just lame and spiteful, and shows what they really care about, money. The fact that the EU and America did not impose harsher sanctions on Russia also shows that they mostly care about money, they don't want to hurt their own economy by freezing sizeable russian assests invested in their countries. But people will quickly see what game is being played and what their leaders' interests really are - unless we go the other way and let them whip us into a frenzy for war. But we are too smart for that. Yes, even we are too smart for that now. The whole messed-up scenario suggests the solution to it, that's the magic of it. Apparently, Ukraine owed Russia 15 billion dollars for its gas bill, then Russia gave Ukraine 15 billion to bribe them out of the voted-upon alliance with Europe, but Yanokovitch took that, so after the revolution the US loaned Ukraine 15 billion and gave them a billion, I think. All this is to stabalize the economy, I guess, but to me it presents a simple solution to so many problems. It's all about a gas bill, and who gets to sell oil and gas, and the whole issue on all sides has to do, ultimately, with the evils of this giant oil industry and their influence on governments. And so we will end it. In this specific case, I think there is a wonderful solution that is a model for the world of the future. Concerned countries should pitch in and buy Ukraine a bunch of tankers full of oil, as many as they need for a few years or whatever, and just give it to them, on this condition: all available industry and potential for industry should go towards replacing their sources with completely renewable energy so that by the time the free gas runs out they won't need to buy any more from Russia, or anyone. We certainly could do this, but one reason we probably won't is that "we" don't want countries going off the gas, that is the influence of gas companies in our government means we want contries buying gas from somebody, namely "us", but definitely buying gas. The thing is, this is destroying the planet, we can't keep doing it, we have to stop somewhere and turn it around in a major way, whole countries at a time. This crisis could be a great opportunity, the same word in Japanese, as Homer says, "Chrisitunity" - which sounds kind of like "Christ community." We need such radical change in the world, going off of gas is a major part of it, and once we start changin these things so much will change. I think these ancient mentalities of power and control are being fundamentally dismantled and while countries think they can make us go to war over nationalistic ideals, and many of us still will, the better natures and talents will take over and find better ways. The more we work together the faster this will happen, which is why it is so important to reach out to everyone and get everyone involved. Just because the way we used to do things might result in going to war does not mean we can't find better ways. I'm all about the connections between random events, things I encounter in the media, and events in my life or the news, I love to look for magical relationships. I was reading a book I got from the kid's non-fiction section of the library about the 1930's in America and how appeasing the Nazis let them take more and more territory, but I hope everybody learned a lesson about that and why it is wrong. America is guilty of invading and taking over countries, too, and probably the worst terrorists were created when Americans funded and armed the resistance to Russian occupation of Afghanistan, then we did it for ten years, too. There is just no priciple in war: they say all is fair in love and war but the truth is love is really good and fair in that way but war is totally unfair and bad. - - I wrote all this in the morning and am finishing it at night, right after seeing the president of NATO on Charlie Rose, and after him American Commanding General MacMasters, who said that Americans don't expect, and never should, fight a fair war. This is just being honest about how all our wars are assymetrical, the American military is bigger than the next ten biggest militaries in the world combined. But my point is the war is always unfair, always against the principles of interconnectedness and Good Shepherdship, because it is based on the idea that one interest, one side getting their way, is worth killing people. It's not worth killing anybody, especially not lots of people, either soldiers or "innocent" people - because we are all truly innocent, the victims, of the forces that drive us to war. We are all succeptible to favoritism as well, we might not be likely to see our own priveleges, or know how other people suffer, and we can be inadvertently swept up in the factors that lead to war, or other sufferings, if we are not diligent against it by rooting out favoritism in ourseleves, our media and our government policies and actions. i have three examples from recent TV and radio that help me keep in mind how favoritism is what holds us back in so many ways, all the worst things we do, in fact, as bad as war in different ways. One was a man talking about the fight for marriage equality and how it originated in San Francisco during the worst years of the AIDS epedemic, how AIDS devestated people's lives before their eyes and everyone either died, was dying, or caring for someone dying. Thousands of people were dying a year for years, and after what they went through the man being interviewed said something like how dare anyone say it was not an equal relationship or deny them the rights of a family after what they went through. No one can deny that gay people have been oppressed and repressed in America and it is the result of this oppression that will ultimately lead to people working together for justice. This is a pattern all people will follow regardless of why society descriminates against them and we should always seek to support the utcast, the ones who suffer because of others' sociual priviliges. It's bad enough to be homophobic and descriminate but once you allow society down that path and let perversions like racism and homophobia create institutional favoritism it replaces our duty to the worst afflicted with the idea that they have no value. We blame the victims of our system's prejudices, blame them for reminding us of the guilt and flaws of the system, and instead of taking ownership of the wrongs and correcting them we'd rather hide them or kill them or let them die. We prolong and deepen people's suffering by denying their complaints and concerns and the AIDS epedemic is an awful example of the horrors of favoritism in health care. I watched another Bioneers program on the local super-cool public access station, this one was about legalizing dugs and the evil of the mentality that refuses to. He raised the example of the American response to the spread of HIV through the use of shared IV drug needles. Once people realized the connection most countries started a needle exchange program to give drug users clean needles to stem the epedemic, but America did not do this for many years, which resulted in much greater spread of the disease and many more unnessecary deaths. The American "reasoning" was that we can't support peoples' drug habits but as the speaker pointed out it does not even matter if you quit drugs or not if you die of AIDS and stopping the disease was more important than "not helping drug users in any way." Other countries recognized how it was a health concern, a common problem that affects us all and needs to be dealt with compassionately, but America has a worse streak of favoritism, of acting like only certain people matter and other people are condemned to die just because of their natures or prefrences or addictions. A lot of the focus of that presentation was about ending the drug war which is responsible for America imprisoning the most people by far and injustice that causes. But the really striking example of this favoritism allowing people to die, and the awful epedemic of AIDS to spread more, by refusing to provide needles, showed how the depths of how it hurts us. The mentality of complete uncaring towards IV drug users that mainstream America adopted based was this extreme favoritism, the idea that people's addictions made them unworthy to live, made them so far outside society their concerns don't matter, they should just die. And the same mentality was the mainstream and government response to the AIDS epedemic in the the gay community in America, it almost seemed as if the government and media just wanted to ignore it because if it killed off gay men and drug users they didn't care. I think our government was even worse, since I saw evidence in 1990 from a decade or so before that our congress approved a study to develop AIDS, and it is widely known that the epedemic was begun when a study of 5,000 "promiscuous" gay males were "accidentally" given the virus. To me this was an attempt to exterminate the gay community, just one of the worst things America did, up there with giving the Indians smallpox-infested blankets, the first biological warfare, that killed 200,000 people. There is no excuse for Russia or other countries to persecute gay people in modern times, and we still have favoritism and levels of persecution against them in America today, and it was only a generation ago that we at worst created an epedemic to kill them and at best turned a blind eye for years. This is such a glaring, terrible exampleof favoritism it should remind us to be on watch against it and eager to reverse favoritism wherever we discover it. In America we have plenty of examples, politically, as the Republican party continues to deny compassion for the problems of every "outsider" group - really all of the country besides themselves or who they imagine they are - women, the poor, gays, kids, minorities, immigrants, potsmokers and drugusers. Another example that came to mind, from an author I heard on NPR and saw on The Daily Show, who wrote "The Flash Boys" about High Frequency Traders on Wall Street who are given a favorable status, the ability to manipulate stocks in the milliseconds before everyone else sees them, which they can take advantage of with computers to skim money off of everything. It's just a big, legalized scam but it makes sense to develop such things because of the nature of money and the economic system, I mean it is the natural product of this evil focus on profits. You see the same aspect in all super-huge business, that gains governemt favor then gets out of control. The "Flash Boys" example is all about gaining the closest access and fleecing every other investor, and every business large and small as well, just completely exploiting the system based on having a favored status. I don't really care about money, or investment, but people who do should care about this. I do care about what this represents, how the richest companies have access and ability to change the way governments work and the information people get. The stock version is a very insidious, esoteric example - the whole idea is they make the workings of the stock market so complicated no one knows how it works and so no one knows they are doing this. But the same model occurs in every super-huge industry that gains control over the government that should have control over them, for the common good. Instead the common good is thwarted in the interests of their profits. The best companies are the ones that actually do the best for people. These High Frequency Traders don't seem to be doing anything for anyone, only for themselves - but even they aren't the worst, they aren't really hurting anyone as much as some of these other companies, they are just stealing - and maybe hurting people by deciding which companies prosper or fail. But mostly they are just theives, and the good news is apparently some people with conscience are setting up a rival exchange that does not have these loopholes for cheaters, which will surely replace the corrupt model as people learn about it all. But other companies are so much worse, either only caring about their own profits or only giving the appearance of helping people in the interests of their own profits. I can'r begin to name them all but he pharmacuetical companies and other health care companies and insurers come to mind. A less destructive example is cable companies, which would be kind of funny if we had universal internet access, but without it their unneccessary preices and services are kind of cruel. I just mention this because another commercial came on about DVRing 4 shows while you watch a fifth, and it made me think this is a perfect example of pretending to care for people's concerns and really just trying to find an excuse to sell more expensive stuff, and at some point there is a limit to how far that can go. Are there five shows at the same time we want to watch, or even one? Its just acting like what they are selling is a little better than it really is, and at some point this becomes obvious. The Ukrainian situation seems to be all about who gets to sell them oil, or jacking up the price ont them, cancelling their credit. It's all oil companies and the governments they control creating suffering for people for their own profits, and the American ones are just as guilty, from invading Iraq to attempting coups in Venezuela. The thing is, when they push us too far, we will revolt, like all people do when we are marginalized, oppressed, and exploited. The oil companies are the biggest companies ever, and the worst in a way, and they way they control governments, policy, and information makes them the worst example of favoritism. Their favor for their own profits threaten people all over the world and even threaten the continued existence of humanity on the planet. This was something else I saw on the Bioneers series on public access TV, a presentation about the "350" climate change protests around the world. I missed the beginning of it but its a group that went around the world to get people to protest the effects of global warming and climate change. Climate change is making everyone an outsider, a refugee, in favor of oil company profits. The presenter had writeen an article in Rolling Stone and said the editor called him because the Beibs was on the cover that month but his article got ten times the response. He had some scary information in the article that he mentioned, that at our current rate we will raise the planet's average temperature by two degrees in 15 more years and everyone agrees we can't survive that much change. Some of the first victims are in the Maldives, where the highest landpoint is only two meters above sea level, so in a matter of years it will all be underwater. But people suffer the effects of climate change everywhere, and even worse in places with less infratsructure to mitigate it, but as it gets more intense no one will be able to cope with it. And the whole reason we haven't already changed course and aren't already cleaning the planet instead of burning it up is because of the oil companies' influence and power, and the main obstacle to saving the planet is them. But they aren't going to wise up on their own, and the governments they bought were purchased specifically to keep them from stopping them, so it is up to us and massice public action. It's up to awareness and educating each other so that we take action. The most offensive commercials to me on TV right now, along with right-wing political ads but even worse, really, are the "learn about natural gas from the energy companies websites" ads. I just hope we are truly better than that and we can finally push off their influence and save the world, both from climate change and from war, both of which the oil companies and right-wing politics they control are responsible for. Even if it really comes down to Russia wants Ukraine bound to them because they want to make the money off selling them oil, well they can't go to war based on that. It is too obvious that it is only the interests of the oil companies and super-rich, not the interests of the people of the country, that are motivating them. Just like the appropriate response would cause some economic distress but mostly it would reveal how much the oil companies and weapons manufacturers are all in it together to protect their own business and get countries to fight each other to keep us from progressing past needing them. But Russia could not sell a war or invasion to it's people based on the idea that they needed to sell gas. they had to come up with some popular reason. Just like we could not say we were going to war with Iraq the first time to show off our weapons, or make them seem necessary after the collapse of the USSR, and we told Saddam we would not mind if he invaded Kuwait so that we could kill thousands in weapons advertising. The second time we invaded we could not just say it was Bush's revenge for a threat against his daddy, or a reckless power-grab, but came up with a story about WMDs to scare people into it. Well in Russia they apparently say Russian-speaking people in Ukraine are persecuted, but NPR had an example to disprove this. Apparently all RUssian-speaking people in Ukraine, at least those in younger generations, universally prefer watching the Simpsons in Ukranian to the Russian-dubbed version. This is just evidence that despite propoganda, people are bilingual in Ukraine and proud to be bilingual. They say the reason is because The Simpsons is funnier in Ukrainian, it sounds funnier and they have more colorful slang terms. They played a clip and I can say the Ukrainian version had an actress who sounded more Marge-y. This does not prove to me that there is no descrimination against Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, but it does suggest that people are bilingual and there is not as clear a divide as the propoganda suggests. The people interviewed in the report said as much, that there had been propoganda from Russia and also from Eastern Ukraine that there was descrimination against russian-speaking people, but that it was mostly propoganda to create conflict. I know I'm hearing a Western perspective, a BBC or NPR reporter's story, but I have faith in the Simpsons because to me they are an example of great art that seeks to expose the things the system might ignore, with compassion like a cartoon art version of the Good Shepherd. The pointed out that the show is older than the modern country of Ukraine as well, and to me the Simpsons are an example of how art can be so good it goes on forever, but governments won't. If there is descrimination against Russian-speaking people in Ukraine we should do something about it, just like we should do something about descrimination against people who speak Spanish or other languages in America, or who use sign language. But Russia has to be able to trust institutions to be good enough to address wrongs, and if they really cared about that, if they weren't just using it as an excuse, they would have just appealed to the international community. It took long enough but it looks like we finally got justice for the whales and Japan respected the international decision. We should trust each other, trust humanity, to be able to come together and make good decisions. We have to try to be aware, to reach out to those who are left out, educate each other aout problems we find and fix them. Any course we take that devalues another life or experience, or could result in killing people, is a sign we are on the wrong path. We have people who are thankfully showing us the way to turn everything around and create a paradise for everyone, and people who are standing in the way obsessed with their own self-interest, but we all can play a role. As Good Shepherds go out and reconnect everyone who is left out, who knows who will come up with the idea that makes all good dreams come true? I'm sure the Simpsons is not the only example of commonality between Ukrainian and Russian-speaking people in the Ukraine, and hopefully whatever descrimination there is will be alleviated now that people are paying more attention, but the Simpsons are a good example for bringing people together. One reason is because humor is one of the best way to cope with things and bring up difficult subjects, and Simpsons humor is actually compassionate and educates people, unlike Seth McFarlane cartoons that cash in on and deepen harmful stereotypes and ignorance. The Simpsons have been the lotus blossom on the shit-pool that is FOX ever since they were created, and they can serve as this liberating force in the case of the Ukriane, bringing people together and highlighting real experience, not sterotypes and propoganda. We have to have faith in each other to make things better, we haver to take action to do our part, and have faith in the world to magically support us in surprising ways. Maybe the Simpsons will ultimately have nothing or little to do with peace in the Ukraine, but the NPR story closed with something that makes me suspicious: they said that even though Russian-speaking people still prefer Ukrainian-dubbed SImpsons they have to download it, because there is no more Ukranian-dubbed Simpsons being broadcast in Ukraine, only Russian. To me, this sounds like desccrimination against Ukrainian-speaking people, not Russian! And they say they don't know why, but they do know the Ukrainian version was stopped five years ago, the same time the pro-Russian President Yanokovich, whom they just exposed and threw out, took over. Could it be that after this story they will start broadcasting Ukrainian Simpsons again, and another "light-side" news story following up on it could reveal that there is not really a linguistic divide in Ukraine? Could the Simpsons stop World War Three from starting? Well, something has to, why not?