A continuation of Part 2; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest-stand_6.html
The Netherlands: The big idea behind their idea was nostalgia. Nostalgia for a bygone era before technology and fast food when life was simpler. What went unspoken though was the phrase; "Before all the immigrants turned up."
In the early stages of the video in support of the song Douwe Bob and his band are seen sitting on the steps of an early 20th Century building wearing suits in a very 1960/70's style. Around them in sped up footage hectic life goes on in the modern Dutch city which I assume is Amsterdam. You know they spent an entire day filming that street scene to make sure they could capture footage of an Asian woman wearing an Islamic hijab.
The first 5 seconds of the song features a very loud ticking clock. It would be very easy to interpreted this as the ticking clock of a timebomb in reference to the threat of Islamist terrorism. However I think it was also intended as a reference to what is termed the; "Population Timebomb."
Most societies - not just the capitalist ones - rely on a population shaped like a pyramid. At the top of that pyramid you have a small number of very old citizens who are too old to work and often require complex medical and social care. They are supported at the base of the pyramid by a large number of young healthy workers who pay the pensions and healthcare costs of the older generation.
The problem is that in many western societies healthcare has improved to the point that there is now a much larger number of very old citizens at the top of the pyramid. At the same increased use birth control and longer periods in education and employment before people choose to have children means that the number of younger workers at the base of the pyramid is shrinking.
With the top of the pyramid becoming much larger and the bottom becoming much smaller the whole thing is in danger of collapsing in on itself.
Obviously no elected politicians is going to turn around and tell the cancer lobby that for the good of humanity they really need to stop whining. So in order to stop them collapsing in on themselves western societies need to import large numbers of young workers from abroad to shore up the base of the pyramid. These people are sometimes referred to as "Immigrants" or more accurately "Economic Immigrants."
Unfortunately as with the cancer lobby western political leaders hate making this pro-immigration argument to voters. After all when things are going badly the immigrants make a convenient scapegoat for less than talented politicians.
The prime example is Britain's National Health Service (NHS). Particularly in the run-up to the referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) the problems in the NHS are apparently nothing to do with a right-wing government that is ideologically opposed to the NHS and is therefore starving it of money in order to cause it to fail. Instead it's all the fault of the immigrants.
Being in desperate need of economic migrants but being unwilling to make that argument to voters has led to many political leaders - particularly in the EU - to cheat the Asylum system for refugees. So rather than issuing more work permits to economic migrants governments have been falsely admitting them as refugees. This allows them to claim to voters that there is nothing they can do to stop these poor wretched souls in need of refugee.
This widespread institutionalised abuse of the asylum system has been going on for years.
Although I think Angela Merkel's shambolic response to the current refugee crisis has been largely driven by a complete lack of thought rather than some sinister master plan this has certainly been a factor in her curious behaviour.
Of the EU nations Germany is probably most in need to economic migrants therefore Merkel seems to have spied a way to import these migrants while pretending she's nation a compassionate stand for those whose lives have been destroyed by war. There actually seems to be a bit of an argument brewing because under the migrant deal Turkey is sending the EU to absolute dregs of society rather than the highly skilled economic migrants Merkel wants.
With Europe now facing an actual refugee crisis these years of lying an cheating have really come home to roost. With EU governments refusing to make any distinction between economic migrants and legitimate refugees EU voters haven't either leading to much opposition to refugees.
Fortunately this is slowly starting to change as people come to understand the difference between economic migrants from place like Albania and Syrians who are literally running away from psychopaths with assault rifles who've burnt down their homes.
So not bad going for the first 5 seconds then.
The title of the Dutch song "Slow Down" is one of those wonderful Song Contest statements that can mean numerous different things to numerous different people.
When voters in EU states complain about immigrants they're not really talking about illegal economic migrants. Nor are they really talking about refugees. Instead they're talking about citizens of other EU states that are migrating perfectly legally under the EU's free movement of peoples policies including but not limited to the Schengen passport free zone.
In theory this is a wonderful idea. It allows young workers from nations with high unemployment to migrate to countries in order to help them prop up the base of their pyramid. It also allows older people to retire to more pleasant countries where their pensions and savings go further.
The problem though is the frantic speed at which the EU is constantly expanding.
This means that no sooner has a nation like the UK had to come to terms with a massive wave of Polish immigrants it's forced to come to terms with a massive wave of Lithuanian immigrants. Before British voters have had time to absorb those Polish and Lithuanian migrants they're being forced to come to terms with a massive wave of Romanian migrants. Although they weren't represented this year Romania's entry last year was largely a plea for all their young workers to return.
Despite what the vote remain campaigners in the UK referendum are claiming we're soon going to be forced to absorb a massive wave of Turkish immigrants. Due to the lunacy of Merkel the EU is going to accept Turkey into the Schengen zone long before they ever become a member of the EU. This is likely to be announced a week after the referendum.
Driven particularly by the immigration issue on April 7th (7/4/16) the Netherlands held a referendum on the association agreement between the EU and Shamali Province (nee; Ukraine). In this referendum Dutch voters decided to reject this association agreement. However demonstrating why people are starting to a get more than a bit p*ssed off with the EU the EU decided to reject the referendum result and press ahead with the association agreement anyway.
In this context "Slow Down" sounds like a desperate plea to the EU to at least suspend its desperate quest for new members. It is a particularly sharp insult to Shamali Province.
"Slow Down" could also be interpreted as a bit of friendly advice to nations like Russia and Israel. As I've said before the challenge for those nations isn't to come up with an idea for a Eurovision entry. Instead the challenge is to then dumb down that idea to the point that mere mortals can understand it.
In that context "Slow Down" sounds like the Netherlands going to Russia; "We're really sorry about the MH17 nonsense and we want you to win this year. However for that to happen you have to slow it down so people can at least understand some of your entry."
The "Slow Down" could also have been a warning to people like me.
Although it's not something I would ever contemplate doing in theory I could spend the week running up to the contest going through all the entries and writing up my analysis. I could then post that analysis at the start of the opening gala. Thus killing the competition stone dead.
Instead what I try to do is gently help things along by dropping in coded and cryptic hints. However the challenge then is not to be too cryptic or too coded. Particularly if I've had an *ahem* drink. The majority of the video was set in a bar. There the patrons were shown sipping from glasses of beer that are significantly smaller than the pints that are served in British pubs and I have a tendency to almost inhale.
Despite a concerted effort on my part and the Dutch advice I am becoming increasingly worried that I did make quite a serious mistake this year.
The jury vote for the Grand Final takes place on Friday afternoon/evening following the full dress rehearsal. During this time I was writing about how Norway's entry referenced ABBA's victory in the 1974 competition. This of course was the year that the Song Contest was used to trigger the overthrow of Portugal's fascist dictator Marcello Caetano. I'm worried that might have inspired the juries to try and award victory to Shamali Province in sort of a frenzy of political activism.
What I perhaps should have made more clear is that throughout late 1973 and early 1974 the intelligence agencies of the NATO nations - including Portugal - had been meeting to decide that it was time for Caetano to go. They then chose the Song Contest as a way to make that happen. On this occasion Eurovision seems to be demanding that Europe's intelligence agencies go off and fix Shamali Province. That is something they've been trying to do for a couple of years now without much success. The extra pressure of the Song Contest is unlikely to help.
The style of the song was very much Country music. Although originally from the US this style of music is actually quite popular in the Netherlands. In 2014 the Netherlands were represented by the Common Linnets with a similar country style song that had already been a big hit.
Country music is also quite popular in other Eurovision nations - particularly the Republic of Ireland. Recently a Country music channel started broadcasting on my TV package. Seeing it on the program guide I remember thinking that I probably won't watch it but at least it will give me an idea of what's going on when Fox News started obsessing about the annual Country Music Awards. It turns out though this channel is the most Irish channel ever. Somehow managing to be even more Irish than another channel called "Irish TV."
With Douwe Bob standing there in a country style suit playing a country style song on his country style guitar it was easy to start speculating about what other famous male country stars he resembled. The obvious choice of course would be the genre transcending Johnny Cash.
However Johnny Cash's big thing was that he always appeared in a black suit and often a black shirt too. Hence the nickname; "The Man in Black." In the video Douwe Bob was wearing a pinkish/brown suit so I think he was quite clearly signalling that he wasn't referencing Johnny Cash.
It is more likely that he was referencing another country star Conway Twitty who made a signature of wearing quite outlandish pink suits. He will be familiar to fans of the US TV show "Family Guy." It's a running joke of theirs that they randomly cutaway to old TV footage of Conway Twitty performances.
Conway Twitty also regularly tops polls of the best song title ever for a duet he did with Loretta Lynn entitled; "You're the Reason Our Kids are Ugly." Along with the references to the need to slow down EU expansion and the recent referendum on the subject that sounds like a major insult to Shamali Province.
Douwe Bob could also have been referencing Hank Williams who has returned to public attention through the biopic "I Saw the Light" in which he is played - badly by all accounts - by British actor Tom Hiddleston.
Tom Hiddleston recently starred in the British TV show "The Night Manager." The central story to The Night Manager are attempts to illegally smuggle weapons from a terrorist training camp in Turkey across the border into the hands of terrorists in northern Syria. I really have no idea where they got their inspiration from.
As part of this conspiracy they refer to these weapons as "Agricultural Equipment." One particular type of weapon is referred to as; "A Combine Harvester." There is an Irish rebel song called "Kinky Boots" that is set to the tune of the Wurzels song; "I've Got a Brand New Combine Harvester." It was about an hour after making reference to that song in relation to the war in Syria I sat down to watch the first episode of The Night Manager. The look on my face.
During his semi-final and Grand Final performances Douwe Bob chose to wear a blue suit almost exactly like the one Tom Hiddlestone wears in The Night Manager. Just in case there was anyone not familiar with the I Saw the Light movie.
I really hope that for his live performances Douwe Bob didn't have a rose tattooed on his throat in specific reference to the Dropkick Murphy's video "Rose Tattoo" that I elaborately used to mock Mans Zelmerlow last year.
At around 17:10 on 7/6/16 (UK date) I try and be back to do Malta after dinner. After all they are good. But tiny.
Edited at around 19:15 on 7/6/16 (UK date) to add;
Malta: This year they were represented by Ira Losco who is a massive star in Malta.
Apart from finishing second in the 2002 contest she has released 5 albums, received 20 awards and opened concerts for the likes of Elton John, Katie Melua, Maroon 5 and Enrique Iglesias to name but a few. Unfortunately Malta is a very small island. So despite all of this success the chances are that very few people outside of Malta have heard of her.
In their Grand Final performance the Maltese made a joke of this. At the start of the performance they projected an animation of Ira Losco's massive face onto the stage. This was so big it seemed to resemble a small island. It's quite hard not to giggle at that sort of thing.
This year's song "Walk on Water" was very clearly about the migrant crisis. Particularly migrants from Africa trying to make their way to the EU across the Mediterranean Sea.
However it is also a reference to the miracle of Jesus Christ walking on water that is detailed in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John in the New Testament of the Bible. Although there isn't a definitive image depicting this miracle in art most representations feature Jesus wearing white robes with a red sash. In the video in support of the song Ira Losco is shown wearing a similar looking white diamond and red cloth dress.
In 2013 2,204 migrants claimed asylum or refugee status in Malta. In 2014 the figure was 1,280. In 2015 it was 1,692. Already in 2016 494 people have applied for refugee status and that is before the summer migration season fully gets under way. These figures do not include the roughly 4,000 unidentified people that the Maltese coast guard are recovering dead from the sea each year.
Based on 2013 figures the nation of Malta has a population of 423,282 people. As a result due to the migration crisis alone Malta has seen its population increase by 1.2%. That might not sound like much but with a population of around 64 million the UK only pledged to accept 20,000 refugees by 2020 - roughly 0.03% of the population.
As such this is Malta as a majority Christian country posing the question of whether it is un-Christian or un-Charitable of them to plead for just the relentless onslaught of migrants and corpses to stop.
However elsewhere in the Eurovision area you have nations such as Poland who are refusing to accept any refugees because they don't want Muslims undermining the Christian character of their nation. Quite how Poles and Hungarians interpret Malta's invocation of Christianity is likely to be quite revealing about those nations attitudes towards refugees.
Following the first semi-final in which they appear I might have given the impression I was annoyed that Malta had gone through to the Grand Final. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
In that first semi-final in particular having decided that for political reasons nations such Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia absolutely had to be included in the final it became extremely tough to decide then who shouldn't go through. Rather than choosing the worst contestants it genuinely became a case of identifying the least best. And even that had to be done on some pretty spurious reasons.
Personally though if the decision was entirely up to me and we absolutely had to get rid of someone I would have preferred Bosnia & Herzegovina go through rather than Malta. That was simply because that all the other former Yugoslav republics and the Czech Republic had connected their entries to Bosnia & Herzegovina in some way.
As such they helped to explain the general themes of the contest to final viewers more than Malta did.
20:10 on 7/6/16 (UK date).
Tuesday, 7 June 2016
Monday, 6 June 2016
The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: The Stand Outs. Pt.2
A continuation of Part 1; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest-stand.html
Israel: This year they were represented by Hovi Star. Having provided the Hebrew voiceover for big Hollywood blockbuster animated movies such as "Frozen," "Inside Out," "The Lego Movie" and "Cinderella" this saw Israel dominate the animation trend.
The song "Made of Stars" seemed like a menacing reminder to Israel's prodominately Muslim Arab population that they will only ever be second class citizens in the Jewish state. As such Israel also dominated the immigration/integration theme by providing a prime example of how not to do it.
The Israelis then decided to start lapping everyone. Presumably because they got bored.
The video in support of the song featured dozens if not hundreds of small commercial drones. These are the type of things you can buy from any number of electronics/hobby shops or off websites like Amazon.
This type of drone has absolutely revolutionised the way people make television programs. Before if you wanted to include a grand aerial tracking shot in a program you would have to hire a camera equipped helicopter at a cost of around USD30,000 per hour. Nowadays you merely have to buy a small drone for USD2,000, mount a camera on it and you can use it over and over again for next to no cost.
As such through their use of drones Israel introduced an important talking point about the technical aspects of broadcasting that are important within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) that stages the Song Contest.
As always when there is a new technology the widespread availability of drones has posed a lot of new questions for legislators about how to make sure they're used safely. The US has already introduced a registery of drones and their users while the UK Parliament along with many other European governments have established committees to examine the best way to regulate drone use.
In the background to Israel's semi-final and final performances there was a lot of discussion about whether the Israelis would be allowed to use their drones inside of the arena. As with Belarus' request to use live wolves the health & safety department said no. This led to another discussion about whether the effect the Israelis were going for could be technically recreated through the use of boom mounted or wire mounted cameras.
When it comes to Israelis and drone use they have something of a controversial reputation. This stems from their use of military drones to drop bombs on Palestinians.
Every time that happens - every two years or so normally - protesters immediately demand that governments stop selling weapons to Israel. In the case of the UK this is a particularly futile demand because due to their dominance in high-tech systems like drones and communications equipment Israel exports far more weapons to the UK than it imports from the UK.
One particularly unpleasent sounding military drone the Israelis have developed is the IAI "Harop." This is known as a Kamikaze drone because rather than dropping a bomb on its target and returning to base the Harop is the bomb. It's job is to fly into its target blowing it up. Although the guidance system is a lot more sophisticated this is not that different from the V1 Rockets Nazi Germany used towards the end of the Second World War.
The Harop recieved its first operational use in April 2016 when it was deployed by the armed forces of Azerbaijan against the armed forces of Armenia during the recent upsurge in fighting over the Nagorno-Karabkh Region (NKR).
I think a lot of lesser nations would have preferred to have glossed over this little detail and hoped no-one else brought it up. The Israelis though almost made it front and centre of their entry to raise the issue for discussion.
Hovi Star is male and proudly homosexual. A trained hairstylist an make-up artist he also seems to have quite a feminine demeanour to him. As such if you are new to Eurovision - i.e An American - you may have been tempted to suggest that maybe Hovi Star is transgendered. If you had the Israelis would have then proceeded to laugh in your face and make fun of you for knowing absolutely nothing about transgender rights.
Way back in 1999 Israel won the Song Contest with the post-transition female singer Dana International. As they went on to host the contest in 2000 this led to them spending more than a year fielding questions about transgenderism and transgender rights. Dana International was Israel's representative at the Song Contest in 2004. The week after this year's Song Contest Israel held the "Miss Trans-Israel Pageant" for post-transition Transgender women. It was won by Talleen Abu Hanna - a Catholic Israeli Arab.
As such I think it is fair to assume that there is very little that Israel doesn't know about trangenderism and transgender rights. In fact they seem to be getting a bit bored of it all.
What the Israelis will likely tell you is that there are just two genders; Male and Female.
However in much the same way you get babies born with only one lung rather than two or a hole in their heart sometimes you get babies born who are neither distinctly female nor male. Some of these babies are born with both sets of genitals and are known as hemaphrodites. In others the lack of a distinct gender is less obvious.
By definition these transgendered people are neither hetrosexual nor homosexual. Instead they are forced to adopt the gender the feel most comfortable with and try to live their lives accordingly. Although as with homosexuality I want to avoid over medicalising it being transgender is technically a form of developmental disability presenting all the obstacles that come with living with a disability. As such transgendered people do need special protection and support as they live their lives.
Transgenderism isn't even a particularly new phenomenom. The Indian sex manual Kama Sutra actually has an entire section dedicated to sexual relationships with transgendered people. That was written way back in 400BC, some 2,400 years ago. Therefore transgenderism is actually something so old we seem to have forgotten about it amid the mists of time.
Transgenderism however is extremely rare. Even the most liberal studies place instances of transgenderism in the general population at less than 0.03%.
However in the early part of this year a number of US universities including the formally prestigious Yale published a guide to the nine different genders it now recognises.
To use the correct medical and scientific terminology this is; "B*llocks. Utter F*cking B*llocks."
The problem seems to stem from the fact that growing up gay is difficult. Although it is more prevelent than transgenderism homosexuality only occurs in about 1 to 3% of the population. However as with all statisical averages this does not mean that 1 in every 100 people is gay. In fact it is entirely possible for a school to have only one or absolutely no gay students.
Being that one in a thousand can be extremely isolating. Particularly during puberty when all of your peers are obsessed with chasing girls or being chased by boys.
As such young gay people are forced to establish their own identity rather than going with the flow of what everybody else is doing. This is compounded by the fact that very often young gay people choose to leave their home towns to live in areas where there is a higher gay population.
As with students going away to university moving to a new town also forces to reinvent your identity. Whilst doing this is becomes all too easy to over analyse your personality traits.
So for example if you are a girl who likes having sex with girls you might get to thinking that you're a bit of a boy. After all it's boys who traditionally have sex with girls. Likewise if you are a boy who is camp and a bit flamboyant you might get to thinking that you're a bit of a girl. After all it's traditionally girls who are obsessed with fashion and crying over nonsense.
However having personality traits that do not correspond with traditional gender roles is not the same thing as being transgendered. Nor is it an excuse for not having much of a personality.
This brings me onto the gender-neutral bathrooms debate that the US has become obsessed with of late. As far as I tell this has absolutely nothing to do with either transgenderism or transgender rights.
Instead you've got the gay-rights-for-gays mob. Having achieved marriage equality these sad and lonely people have committed themselves to turning every bathroom in the nation gender neutral. That is because in gay clubs and bars you have gender neutral bathrooms. After all forcing gay men to go into the bathroom with gay women rather than lots of gay men makes the whole process distinctly less sleazy.
However you've got the other 97% of the population for whom the current gender segregated bathrooms work just fine and something the trade union movement have actually battled for over many years. Plus there is a bit of a public safety issue because what might be appropriate for an over-21's gay bar is less appropriate for the bathroom in a toy store.
As for the genuinely transgendered it strikes me as something of a moot point. Due to it being so rare it is extremely unlikely that your average American will meet a transgendered person at any point in their lives. Let alone when they're using the bathroom.
Also a genuinely transgendered person would have gone through decades of psychological screening to confirm their transgendered status followed by years of expensive and painful surgery. As in the fleeting privacy of a trip to the bathroom its unlikely that anyone else will notice that they're transgendered. Let alone challenge them.
As for the people who use terms like; "Non-binary Gender" or "Pangender" I think that societal pressure plays an important role in forcing them to grow up and get on with it.
So by laying this transgender trap the Israelis were preparing to have a big old laugh at US President Obama's expense.
Obama then proceeded to walk straight into that trap by declaring that he was going to sue a number of US states over gender-neutral bathrooms during Eurovision in an effort to Pinkwash his reputation amongst the Song Contest crowd.
Intrestingly France also appears to have fallen into the trap.
The video for their song "J'ai Cherche" featured a boy learning ballet and a girl learning Taekwondo is a reversal of traditional gender roles. Although male ballet dancers can play very masculine roles the boy in the French video was shown very feminely apply make-up in front of a mirror. The implication being that he was transgendered.
Invoking the astronomical theme of Made of Stars the French song featured lyrics such as; "Split into two hemispheres // Like a mistake of the universe" which seemed to allude to terms like non-binary gender.
After all as anyone whose crossed the equator knows the division of the earth into hemispheres is far from binary.
20:35 on 6/6/16 (UK date) spellcheck pending.
Israel: This year they were represented by Hovi Star. Having provided the Hebrew voiceover for big Hollywood blockbuster animated movies such as "Frozen," "Inside Out," "The Lego Movie" and "Cinderella" this saw Israel dominate the animation trend.
The song "Made of Stars" seemed like a menacing reminder to Israel's prodominately Muslim Arab population that they will only ever be second class citizens in the Jewish state. As such Israel also dominated the immigration/integration theme by providing a prime example of how not to do it.
The Israelis then decided to start lapping everyone. Presumably because they got bored.
The video in support of the song featured dozens if not hundreds of small commercial drones. These are the type of things you can buy from any number of electronics/hobby shops or off websites like Amazon.
This type of drone has absolutely revolutionised the way people make television programs. Before if you wanted to include a grand aerial tracking shot in a program you would have to hire a camera equipped helicopter at a cost of around USD30,000 per hour. Nowadays you merely have to buy a small drone for USD2,000, mount a camera on it and you can use it over and over again for next to no cost.
As such through their use of drones Israel introduced an important talking point about the technical aspects of broadcasting that are important within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) that stages the Song Contest.
As always when there is a new technology the widespread availability of drones has posed a lot of new questions for legislators about how to make sure they're used safely. The US has already introduced a registery of drones and their users while the UK Parliament along with many other European governments have established committees to examine the best way to regulate drone use.
In the background to Israel's semi-final and final performances there was a lot of discussion about whether the Israelis would be allowed to use their drones inside of the arena. As with Belarus' request to use live wolves the health & safety department said no. This led to another discussion about whether the effect the Israelis were going for could be technically recreated through the use of boom mounted or wire mounted cameras.
When it comes to Israelis and drone use they have something of a controversial reputation. This stems from their use of military drones to drop bombs on Palestinians.
Every time that happens - every two years or so normally - protesters immediately demand that governments stop selling weapons to Israel. In the case of the UK this is a particularly futile demand because due to their dominance in high-tech systems like drones and communications equipment Israel exports far more weapons to the UK than it imports from the UK.
One particularly unpleasent sounding military drone the Israelis have developed is the IAI "Harop." This is known as a Kamikaze drone because rather than dropping a bomb on its target and returning to base the Harop is the bomb. It's job is to fly into its target blowing it up. Although the guidance system is a lot more sophisticated this is not that different from the V1 Rockets Nazi Germany used towards the end of the Second World War.
The Harop recieved its first operational use in April 2016 when it was deployed by the armed forces of Azerbaijan against the armed forces of Armenia during the recent upsurge in fighting over the Nagorno-Karabkh Region (NKR).
I think a lot of lesser nations would have preferred to have glossed over this little detail and hoped no-one else brought it up. The Israelis though almost made it front and centre of their entry to raise the issue for discussion.
Hovi Star is male and proudly homosexual. A trained hairstylist an make-up artist he also seems to have quite a feminine demeanour to him. As such if you are new to Eurovision - i.e An American - you may have been tempted to suggest that maybe Hovi Star is transgendered. If you had the Israelis would have then proceeded to laugh in your face and make fun of you for knowing absolutely nothing about transgender rights.
Way back in 1999 Israel won the Song Contest with the post-transition female singer Dana International. As they went on to host the contest in 2000 this led to them spending more than a year fielding questions about transgenderism and transgender rights. Dana International was Israel's representative at the Song Contest in 2004. The week after this year's Song Contest Israel held the "Miss Trans-Israel Pageant" for post-transition Transgender women. It was won by Talleen Abu Hanna - a Catholic Israeli Arab.
As such I think it is fair to assume that there is very little that Israel doesn't know about trangenderism and transgender rights. In fact they seem to be getting a bit bored of it all.
What the Israelis will likely tell you is that there are just two genders; Male and Female.
However in much the same way you get babies born with only one lung rather than two or a hole in their heart sometimes you get babies born who are neither distinctly female nor male. Some of these babies are born with both sets of genitals and are known as hemaphrodites. In others the lack of a distinct gender is less obvious.
By definition these transgendered people are neither hetrosexual nor homosexual. Instead they are forced to adopt the gender the feel most comfortable with and try to live their lives accordingly. Although as with homosexuality I want to avoid over medicalising it being transgender is technically a form of developmental disability presenting all the obstacles that come with living with a disability. As such transgendered people do need special protection and support as they live their lives.
Transgenderism isn't even a particularly new phenomenom. The Indian sex manual Kama Sutra actually has an entire section dedicated to sexual relationships with transgendered people. That was written way back in 400BC, some 2,400 years ago. Therefore transgenderism is actually something so old we seem to have forgotten about it amid the mists of time.
Transgenderism however is extremely rare. Even the most liberal studies place instances of transgenderism in the general population at less than 0.03%.
However in the early part of this year a number of US universities including the formally prestigious Yale published a guide to the nine different genders it now recognises.
To use the correct medical and scientific terminology this is; "B*llocks. Utter F*cking B*llocks."
The problem seems to stem from the fact that growing up gay is difficult. Although it is more prevelent than transgenderism homosexuality only occurs in about 1 to 3% of the population. However as with all statisical averages this does not mean that 1 in every 100 people is gay. In fact it is entirely possible for a school to have only one or absolutely no gay students.
Being that one in a thousand can be extremely isolating. Particularly during puberty when all of your peers are obsessed with chasing girls or being chased by boys.
As such young gay people are forced to establish their own identity rather than going with the flow of what everybody else is doing. This is compounded by the fact that very often young gay people choose to leave their home towns to live in areas where there is a higher gay population.
As with students going away to university moving to a new town also forces to reinvent your identity. Whilst doing this is becomes all too easy to over analyse your personality traits.
So for example if you are a girl who likes having sex with girls you might get to thinking that you're a bit of a boy. After all it's boys who traditionally have sex with girls. Likewise if you are a boy who is camp and a bit flamboyant you might get to thinking that you're a bit of a girl. After all it's traditionally girls who are obsessed with fashion and crying over nonsense.
However having personality traits that do not correspond with traditional gender roles is not the same thing as being transgendered. Nor is it an excuse for not having much of a personality.
This brings me onto the gender-neutral bathrooms debate that the US has become obsessed with of late. As far as I tell this has absolutely nothing to do with either transgenderism or transgender rights.
Instead you've got the gay-rights-for-gays mob. Having achieved marriage equality these sad and lonely people have committed themselves to turning every bathroom in the nation gender neutral. That is because in gay clubs and bars you have gender neutral bathrooms. After all forcing gay men to go into the bathroom with gay women rather than lots of gay men makes the whole process distinctly less sleazy.
However you've got the other 97% of the population for whom the current gender segregated bathrooms work just fine and something the trade union movement have actually battled for over many years. Plus there is a bit of a public safety issue because what might be appropriate for an over-21's gay bar is less appropriate for the bathroom in a toy store.
As for the genuinely transgendered it strikes me as something of a moot point. Due to it being so rare it is extremely unlikely that your average American will meet a transgendered person at any point in their lives. Let alone when they're using the bathroom.
Also a genuinely transgendered person would have gone through decades of psychological screening to confirm their transgendered status followed by years of expensive and painful surgery. As in the fleeting privacy of a trip to the bathroom its unlikely that anyone else will notice that they're transgendered. Let alone challenge them.
As for the people who use terms like; "Non-binary Gender" or "Pangender" I think that societal pressure plays an important role in forcing them to grow up and get on with it.
So by laying this transgender trap the Israelis were preparing to have a big old laugh at US President Obama's expense.
Obama then proceeded to walk straight into that trap by declaring that he was going to sue a number of US states over gender-neutral bathrooms during Eurovision in an effort to Pinkwash his reputation amongst the Song Contest crowd.
Intrestingly France also appears to have fallen into the trap.
The video for their song "J'ai Cherche" featured a boy learning ballet and a girl learning Taekwondo is a reversal of traditional gender roles. Although male ballet dancers can play very masculine roles the boy in the French video was shown very feminely apply make-up in front of a mirror. The implication being that he was transgendered.
Invoking the astronomical theme of Made of Stars the French song featured lyrics such as; "Split into two hemispheres // Like a mistake of the universe" which seemed to allude to terms like non-binary gender.
After all as anyone whose crossed the equator knows the division of the earth into hemispheres is far from binary.
20:35 on 6/6/16 (UK date) spellcheck pending.
The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: The Stand Outs.
Across 10 agonisingly long episodes I've laid out the main themes of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest.
Tradition now dictates that I now spend some time talking about the acts that really stood out from this year's contest.
As always what makes those acts outstanding is the creative way in which they dealt with the main themes of the competition. Or that they introduced separate issues that were unique to them in a creative and fun way.
Belgium: This year they were represented by Laura Tesoro who was really a remarkable find.
In her face Laura Tesoro resembles the British actress Hayley Atwell. While I think the show was actually cancelled during the Song Contest Hayley Atwell is probably currently most famous for playing the lead in the US TV Show "Agent Carter." This is part of the Marvel comic book universe and really the sister show of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."
Despite a disappointing second season Agents of Shield has received some recognition at previous Song Contests. In the UK the current third season was broadcast in the Sunday night 9pm drama slot where it was in competition with shows like "War & Peace," "Deutschland 83" and "The Night Manager" to name but a few. As a result I have almost the entire second half of that season lined up on my DVR waiting to be watched.
However one of the main characters is Sky/Daisy who has short, bob-like dark hair and a distinctly Mediterranean skin tone. Her superpower is that she cause inanimate objects to resonate at a set frequency. In one sequence in the third season she's trying to get that frequency right and says; "Don't worry. I'm just tuning up." Her nose then starts to bleed dramatically.
Watching that sequence you can't help but wonder if the show is perhaps being a little bitchy about the musical talents, faux bisexuality and Cocaine habit of Demetria (Demi) Lovato. After all if they were that is exactly the sort of thing the Song Contest would approve of.
Much of the Marvel universe centres around the battle between the Avengers backed by Shield and Agent Carter's Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) and Hydra - a fascist organisation that worked with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The big scandal in the latest edition of Captain America comic book released about the time of the Song Contest is that right at the end Captain America is seen pledging allegiance to Hydra suggesting that he was a Nazi all along.
Both Agents of Shield and Agent Carter spun off from the Avengers movies. These feature the character Black Widow being played by Scarlett Johansson.
Hayley Atwell first really rose to prominence in the historical mini-series "The Pillars of the Earth."
This was a Canadian, German and Hungarian co-production that was based on an novel by British author Ken Follet and featured a largely British cast despite being filmed in the UK, Austria and Hungary. That is the type of pan-European creative co-operation that the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which stages the Song Contest gets very excited about. The TV monster "Game of Thrones" can trace its roots directly back to the Pillars of the Earth.
The Pillars of the Earth is centred around the pillars that hold up society during that period of history. So you've got rival Kings representing monarchy, and various Bishops and Monks representing politics and religion. Hayley Atwell's character Aliena represents the pillar of love or lust. As result there are numerous scenes when men and boys are shown lustfully spying on her as she gets undressed or swims in a lake.
Although it's nowhere near as salacious as Game of Thrones The Pillars of the Earth does feature a significant amount of violence and nudity. However whenever Hayley Atwell is in a scene where you would naturally see her breasts or her buttocks the shot is edited to you don't. Not only that the edit seems so abrupt and clumsy it sort of breaks your concentration taking you out of the story reminding that you're watching a TV show.
Over the course of 8 hour long episodes this does lead you to speculate whether despite a degree of nudity being essential to the story after being chosen for the role Hayley Atwell insisted on a no-nudity clause in her contract. That in turn leads you to speculate about whether she's actually a bit of a bitch and quite difficult to work with.
It turns out though that it was all just one extremely elaborate joke. In the final episode Hayley Atwell features in quite a hot and heavy sex scene where you get to see pretty much everything. Just as the sex scene is reaching it peak there's another abrupt edit with the action cutting to the immediate aftermath of a pre-pubescent girl having been raped.
It did seem to be the director having a laugh at his audience by going; "Dirty B*ggers!" That is exactly the sort of joke that goes down rather well with the Song Contest crowd.
With The Pillars of the Earth actually starting to come up on the fringes of particularly European Union (EU) meetings I did write about this in detail closer to the time in a post entitled; "Hayley Atwell's Boobs." By a magnitude of about a thousand that post was the most read thing I have ever written on this blog.
That obviously sort of contributes to the discussion about the way that in societies which have quite prudish attitudes to sex and nudity any mention of the subject causes this sort of repressed excitement. After all rather than reading a post entitled Hayley Atwell's Boobs everyone could have used their Internet connection to instead watch a mind boggling array of pornographic videos including the sequences from The Pillars of the Earth I was talking about.
In terms of appearance the big difference between Laura Tesoro and Hayley Atwell is that Laura Tesoro is ginger-haired.
The big movie at the 2016 Oscars was of course "The Revenant." As I explained at the time this was a metaphor for the efforts to combat climate change which unlike the movie ended in failure at the COP21 Summit in Paris, France in December 2015. The movie The Revenant was heavily influenced by a French TV Show "Les Revenants (The Returned)."
Two of the central characters in Les Revenants are ginger-haired twin sisters. One is killed in a traffic accident to return as a zombie while the other is allowed to grow up and mature as a normal young woman. At the end of the first season of Les Revenants the zombies start to emerge as a separate tribe apart from the humans.
This poses lots of questions about tribalism and otherness that are at the heart of most wars and racism - particularly the Nazi Holocaust. During this period of the story the ginger-haired zombie emerges as the most prominent - almost the leader of the tribe.
In fact I seem to remember joking at the time that if the Nazi Holocaust had only killed ginger-haired people no-one would have minded that much. A ginger-haired ex-girlfriend may have been involved.
The second season of Les Revenants centres around the French town where it is set being flooded by heavy rains and taken over by the army. In the weeks following the Song Contest the weather itself seems to have been trying to recreate scenes from the show.
With her very curly hair and dare we say annoying demeanour Laura Tesoro resembled Fleur East who was a contestant on the 2014 series of the X-Factor in the UK.
Fleur East's big sob-story in the competition that for years she'd been trying everything to break into the music industry. The X-Factor was her last chance and if she didn't do well she would be forced to quit. After coming second she released her first album "Love, Sax and Flashbacks" prompting everyone to go; "Are we sure the music industry isn't better off without X-Factor."
Obviously if the UK were to send someone like Rihanna, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones or The Who to represent them at Eurovision it would be massive overkill and not really fair on the other contestants. However for the UK to say that an artist of the calibre of Fleur East is too good for Eurovision can only be viewed as an insult.
So even before they'd got onto their main points the Belgian Song Contest entry brought all this to the table. In case anyone wanted to discuss it while sticking to the informal; "You may only talk about Eurovision" rule.
The big controversy about Fleur East's X-Factor final performance is that she performed the Bruno Mars song "Uptown Funk" and then released it as a single on iTunes. This was done several weeks before Bruno Mars released the single forcing his record company to bring forward the release. Neither Fleur East nor X-Factor won themselves any friends that week.
The half-time show of the 2016 Super Bowl was of course performed by the British band Coldplay.
However the bit everyone seems to remember was that they invited Beyonce to perform her single "Formation" which was intended as a show of support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and Huey Newton's Black Panther Party. As Beyonce abandoned her fringe, extremist nonsense and was welcomed back into the mainstream by Coldplay and Bruno Mars Uptown Funk was played to lighten the mood.
As such Belgium didn't so much nod at this years trend of "The Black Music" they utterly dominated it by invoking the Super Bowl half-time show. The song itself was basically every Bruno Mars song ever smashed together into a three minute song.
The title of the song was "What's the Pressure."
In August 2015 an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a failed terror attack on a Thalys train travelling through Belgium between the Netherlands and France.
In November 2015 an ISIL terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a terrorist attacks against multiple locations in the French capital Paris. They murdered 130 civilians.
In March 2016 an ISIL terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a terrorist attacks against the Zaventam Airport and the Brussels underground rail (Metro) system. They murdered 35 people.
As such I think the question posed by the Belgian entry this year was rather rhetorical.
Featuring lyrics like; "I see massive walls weighing down the people all around" and "And I will try to stand my ground // Won’t be bound" the song sounded like a plea for ethnic and religious harmony in defiance of the rhetoric of people like Donald Trump with his calls to ban Muslims from the US and build that wall against illegal immigration.
However the singer Laura Tesoro is only 19 years old and in her performance seems much younger and immature. Against the backdrop of all the terrorist attacks and the general cheesiness of the entire package this seemed to be done in mockery of the European left who argue that you can't say anything critical of Islamist terrorists because it is Islamaphobic. At the same time these leftists seem happy to blame everything on the Jews and the Zionist conspiracy.
A prime example of this would be Belgium's response to the Paris Massacres. I would have liked to see the Belgians respond to that in the same way the Americans responded to the Boston Marathon bombings. They locked down the entire Watertown suburb of Boston and then conducted house-to-house searches until their suspect had been apprehended.
I really think that the Belgians should have done the same thing in Molenbeek. Rather then searching each house for contraband what they should have done is clearly identified every single person living in every address in the suburb. Obviously if they are wanted for connections to ISIL or associated groups they would immediately be taken into custody.
However the Belgian liberals rejected this idea on the grounds it was Islamaphobic. They argued that it would tip the residents into terrorism or cause them to join ISIL in Iraq and Syria. I think that argument is rather moot because if Molenbeek residents did then decide to engage in terrorism the security services would already know who they are and be able to quickly take them into custody. If they decided to travel to Syria or Iraq it would hardly be a great loss to Belgian society.
During the Song Contest Belgium announced that they would be starting airstrikes against ISIL in Syria eliminating the threat of any Molenbeek residents who had travelled there. The Belgians authorised these strikes under United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2249 (2015). This seemed done in mockery of the French.
All military action against ISIL anywhere in the World is authorised under UNSC Resolution 2170 (2014). As a Chapter 7 resolution this not only allows nations to fight ISIL it actually obligates them to do everything in their power to defeat them.
Following the Paris Massacres France introduced 2249 (2015). This has no legal validity precisely because it undermines the authority of 2170 (2014) by suggesting that nations can opt out of their Chapter 7 obligations if they find defeat ISIL too Islamaphobic or otherwise upsets their liberal sensibilities.
However with its domination of the theme of "The Black Music" Belgium's main target of mockery was US President Barack Obama.
He was being portrayed as the immature, self-absorbed, stage school brat who really can't understand what the pressure is and why urgent action is required.
Despite the brilliance of Belgium's entry this year I think that as a sign of friendship everyone started them off at minus 12 points in the voting.
After all understanding the pressure no-one was going to force Belgium to provide security for the 2017 contest.
17:25 on 6/6/16 (UK date).
Tradition now dictates that I now spend some time talking about the acts that really stood out from this year's contest.
As always what makes those acts outstanding is the creative way in which they dealt with the main themes of the competition. Or that they introduced separate issues that were unique to them in a creative and fun way.
Belgium: This year they were represented by Laura Tesoro who was really a remarkable find.
In her face Laura Tesoro resembles the British actress Hayley Atwell. While I think the show was actually cancelled during the Song Contest Hayley Atwell is probably currently most famous for playing the lead in the US TV Show "Agent Carter." This is part of the Marvel comic book universe and really the sister show of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."
Despite a disappointing second season Agents of Shield has received some recognition at previous Song Contests. In the UK the current third season was broadcast in the Sunday night 9pm drama slot where it was in competition with shows like "War & Peace," "Deutschland 83" and "The Night Manager" to name but a few. As a result I have almost the entire second half of that season lined up on my DVR waiting to be watched.
However one of the main characters is Sky/Daisy who has short, bob-like dark hair and a distinctly Mediterranean skin tone. Her superpower is that she cause inanimate objects to resonate at a set frequency. In one sequence in the third season she's trying to get that frequency right and says; "Don't worry. I'm just tuning up." Her nose then starts to bleed dramatically.
Watching that sequence you can't help but wonder if the show is perhaps being a little bitchy about the musical talents, faux bisexuality and Cocaine habit of Demetria (Demi) Lovato. After all if they were that is exactly the sort of thing the Song Contest would approve of.
Much of the Marvel universe centres around the battle between the Avengers backed by Shield and Agent Carter's Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) and Hydra - a fascist organisation that worked with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The big scandal in the latest edition of Captain America comic book released about the time of the Song Contest is that right at the end Captain America is seen pledging allegiance to Hydra suggesting that he was a Nazi all along.
Both Agents of Shield and Agent Carter spun off from the Avengers movies. These feature the character Black Widow being played by Scarlett Johansson.
Hayley Atwell first really rose to prominence in the historical mini-series "The Pillars of the Earth."
This was a Canadian, German and Hungarian co-production that was based on an novel by British author Ken Follet and featured a largely British cast despite being filmed in the UK, Austria and Hungary. That is the type of pan-European creative co-operation that the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which stages the Song Contest gets very excited about. The TV monster "Game of Thrones" can trace its roots directly back to the Pillars of the Earth.
The Pillars of the Earth is centred around the pillars that hold up society during that period of history. So you've got rival Kings representing monarchy, and various Bishops and Monks representing politics and religion. Hayley Atwell's character Aliena represents the pillar of love or lust. As result there are numerous scenes when men and boys are shown lustfully spying on her as she gets undressed or swims in a lake.
Although it's nowhere near as salacious as Game of Thrones The Pillars of the Earth does feature a significant amount of violence and nudity. However whenever Hayley Atwell is in a scene where you would naturally see her breasts or her buttocks the shot is edited to you don't. Not only that the edit seems so abrupt and clumsy it sort of breaks your concentration taking you out of the story reminding that you're watching a TV show.
Over the course of 8 hour long episodes this does lead you to speculate whether despite a degree of nudity being essential to the story after being chosen for the role Hayley Atwell insisted on a no-nudity clause in her contract. That in turn leads you to speculate about whether she's actually a bit of a bitch and quite difficult to work with.
It turns out though that it was all just one extremely elaborate joke. In the final episode Hayley Atwell features in quite a hot and heavy sex scene where you get to see pretty much everything. Just as the sex scene is reaching it peak there's another abrupt edit with the action cutting to the immediate aftermath of a pre-pubescent girl having been raped.
It did seem to be the director having a laugh at his audience by going; "Dirty B*ggers!" That is exactly the sort of joke that goes down rather well with the Song Contest crowd.
With The Pillars of the Earth actually starting to come up on the fringes of particularly European Union (EU) meetings I did write about this in detail closer to the time in a post entitled; "Hayley Atwell's Boobs." By a magnitude of about a thousand that post was the most read thing I have ever written on this blog.
That obviously sort of contributes to the discussion about the way that in societies which have quite prudish attitudes to sex and nudity any mention of the subject causes this sort of repressed excitement. After all rather than reading a post entitled Hayley Atwell's Boobs everyone could have used their Internet connection to instead watch a mind boggling array of pornographic videos including the sequences from The Pillars of the Earth I was talking about.
In terms of appearance the big difference between Laura Tesoro and Hayley Atwell is that Laura Tesoro is ginger-haired.
The big movie at the 2016 Oscars was of course "The Revenant." As I explained at the time this was a metaphor for the efforts to combat climate change which unlike the movie ended in failure at the COP21 Summit in Paris, France in December 2015. The movie The Revenant was heavily influenced by a French TV Show "Les Revenants (The Returned)."
Two of the central characters in Les Revenants are ginger-haired twin sisters. One is killed in a traffic accident to return as a zombie while the other is allowed to grow up and mature as a normal young woman. At the end of the first season of Les Revenants the zombies start to emerge as a separate tribe apart from the humans.
This poses lots of questions about tribalism and otherness that are at the heart of most wars and racism - particularly the Nazi Holocaust. During this period of the story the ginger-haired zombie emerges as the most prominent - almost the leader of the tribe.
In fact I seem to remember joking at the time that if the Nazi Holocaust had only killed ginger-haired people no-one would have minded that much. A ginger-haired ex-girlfriend may have been involved.
The second season of Les Revenants centres around the French town where it is set being flooded by heavy rains and taken over by the army. In the weeks following the Song Contest the weather itself seems to have been trying to recreate scenes from the show.
With her very curly hair and dare we say annoying demeanour Laura Tesoro resembled Fleur East who was a contestant on the 2014 series of the X-Factor in the UK.
Fleur East's big sob-story in the competition that for years she'd been trying everything to break into the music industry. The X-Factor was her last chance and if she didn't do well she would be forced to quit. After coming second she released her first album "Love, Sax and Flashbacks" prompting everyone to go; "Are we sure the music industry isn't better off without X-Factor."
Obviously if the UK were to send someone like Rihanna, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones or The Who to represent them at Eurovision it would be massive overkill and not really fair on the other contestants. However for the UK to say that an artist of the calibre of Fleur East is too good for Eurovision can only be viewed as an insult.
So even before they'd got onto their main points the Belgian Song Contest entry brought all this to the table. In case anyone wanted to discuss it while sticking to the informal; "You may only talk about Eurovision" rule.
The big controversy about Fleur East's X-Factor final performance is that she performed the Bruno Mars song "Uptown Funk" and then released it as a single on iTunes. This was done several weeks before Bruno Mars released the single forcing his record company to bring forward the release. Neither Fleur East nor X-Factor won themselves any friends that week.
The half-time show of the 2016 Super Bowl was of course performed by the British band Coldplay.
However the bit everyone seems to remember was that they invited Beyonce to perform her single "Formation" which was intended as a show of support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and Huey Newton's Black Panther Party. As Beyonce abandoned her fringe, extremist nonsense and was welcomed back into the mainstream by Coldplay and Bruno Mars Uptown Funk was played to lighten the mood.
As such Belgium didn't so much nod at this years trend of "The Black Music" they utterly dominated it by invoking the Super Bowl half-time show. The song itself was basically every Bruno Mars song ever smashed together into a three minute song.
The title of the song was "What's the Pressure."
In August 2015 an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a failed terror attack on a Thalys train travelling through Belgium between the Netherlands and France.
In November 2015 an ISIL terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a terrorist attacks against multiple locations in the French capital Paris. They murdered 130 civilians.
In March 2016 an ISIL terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a terrorist attacks against the Zaventam Airport and the Brussels underground rail (Metro) system. They murdered 35 people.
As such I think the question posed by the Belgian entry this year was rather rhetorical.
Featuring lyrics like; "I see massive walls weighing down the people all around" and "And I will try to stand my ground // Won’t be bound" the song sounded like a plea for ethnic and religious harmony in defiance of the rhetoric of people like Donald Trump with his calls to ban Muslims from the US and build that wall against illegal immigration.
However the singer Laura Tesoro is only 19 years old and in her performance seems much younger and immature. Against the backdrop of all the terrorist attacks and the general cheesiness of the entire package this seemed to be done in mockery of the European left who argue that you can't say anything critical of Islamist terrorists because it is Islamaphobic. At the same time these leftists seem happy to blame everything on the Jews and the Zionist conspiracy.
A prime example of this would be Belgium's response to the Paris Massacres. I would have liked to see the Belgians respond to that in the same way the Americans responded to the Boston Marathon bombings. They locked down the entire Watertown suburb of Boston and then conducted house-to-house searches until their suspect had been apprehended.
I really think that the Belgians should have done the same thing in Molenbeek. Rather then searching each house for contraband what they should have done is clearly identified every single person living in every address in the suburb. Obviously if they are wanted for connections to ISIL or associated groups they would immediately be taken into custody.
However the Belgian liberals rejected this idea on the grounds it was Islamaphobic. They argued that it would tip the residents into terrorism or cause them to join ISIL in Iraq and Syria. I think that argument is rather moot because if Molenbeek residents did then decide to engage in terrorism the security services would already know who they are and be able to quickly take them into custody. If they decided to travel to Syria or Iraq it would hardly be a great loss to Belgian society.
During the Song Contest Belgium announced that they would be starting airstrikes against ISIL in Syria eliminating the threat of any Molenbeek residents who had travelled there. The Belgians authorised these strikes under United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2249 (2015). This seemed done in mockery of the French.
All military action against ISIL anywhere in the World is authorised under UNSC Resolution 2170 (2014). As a Chapter 7 resolution this not only allows nations to fight ISIL it actually obligates them to do everything in their power to defeat them.
Following the Paris Massacres France introduced 2249 (2015). This has no legal validity precisely because it undermines the authority of 2170 (2014) by suggesting that nations can opt out of their Chapter 7 obligations if they find defeat ISIL too Islamaphobic or otherwise upsets their liberal sensibilities.
However with its domination of the theme of "The Black Music" Belgium's main target of mockery was US President Barack Obama.
He was being portrayed as the immature, self-absorbed, stage school brat who really can't understand what the pressure is and why urgent action is required.
Despite the brilliance of Belgium's entry this year I think that as a sign of friendship everyone started them off at minus 12 points in the voting.
After all understanding the pressure no-one was going to force Belgium to provide security for the 2017 contest.
17:25 on 6/6/16 (UK date).
Sunday, 5 June 2016
Muhammad Ali and Islam.
Yesterday American boxer Muhammad Ali died aged 74. He was undoubtedly the greatest heavyweight boxer to enter the ring.
As an amateur Ali won gold for the United States at the 1960 Olympics. As a professional he won 56 of his 61 fights including 37 by knockout becoming World Champion in 1964. After losing and then regaining his boxing license Ali regained the World Champion crown in 1974. He was also the father to 9 children and grandfather to numerous grandchildren.
Ideally that is where I would like to end his obituary.
However the coverage around Ali's death has been relentless. CNN in particular yesterday broke away from their wall-to-wall coverage of the US election to provide wall-to-wall coverage of Ali's death. Much on this focused on his political activism and his controversial religious beliefs.
This unfortunately is rather relevant to both the current fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the US' own Black Lives Matter (BLM).
Despite legally changing his name from Cassius Clay Muhammad Ali never converted to any recognised form of Islam and therefore cannot be described as a Muslim. What he did do was join an organisation known as the Nation of Islam which I think is probably best described as a cult.
The Nation of Islam does require that its followers adhere to the five pillars of Islam. Beyond that though the group's belief system is what would be considered by Muslims as blasphemy. And pretty sketchy blasphemy at that.
Devout Muslims like Christians and Jews believe the Biblical book of Genesis to be a truthful account of how the universe and the Earth came into being having been created by God in seven days. God went on to create Adam and Eve and the entire human race is descended from them. The Nation of Islam consider this to be a lie.
Instead the Nation of Islam believe that the Earth is 76 trillion years old. 66 trillion years ago the Black race arrived on Earth aboard spaceships known as "Mother Planes." Having arrived on Earth the original scientists of the Black race built more of these spaceships and used them to create the topography of the Earth as it exists now. This included separating the Moon from the Earth through a giant explosion.
The Nation of Islam believe that the White race was created by the devil Jew Jacob on the Greek island of Patmos. This is where John the Apostle of John of Patmos is believed to have written the Biblical book of Revelations. However the Nation of Islam believe that it was here that Jacob began a 600 year program of eugenics that saw him murder dark skinned children until a light skinned, white race was created.
No explanation of how Jacob came into being is offered. However with him seeming to be the same Jacob who is considered the Father of the Jews in Genesis this appears to be the Nation of Islam implying that the Bible and by extension the Qu'ran were simply made up by this devil race in order to suppress the superior Black race.
Of that superior Black race the Nation of Islam consider 85% of it to be the deaf, dumb and blind masses. A further 10% of the Black race are made up of so-called "Slave Makers" who are constantly trying to enslave the 85%. The remaining 5% are the members of the Nation of Islam and referred to as the "Righteous Teachers." They consider themselves at war with the Slave Makers in an effort to free the minds of the 85%. There is a breakaway faction of the Nation of Islam that calls itself the 5% Nation.
So Muhammad Ali's refusal to fight in the Vietnam war stemmed not from some conscientious objection to violence as a concept. After all as a professional fighter violence was a big part of Ali's life and identity. Instead it stemmed from a belief that as part of the elite 5% of the master race he should not be called upon to fight in a war between the lesser races. Apparently his own father disowned him for this.
The Nation of Islam consider their founder Wallace Fard Muhammad - "The Master" - to be the Mahdi of Islam. The role of the Mahdi is an extremely controversial one within Islam. Although most Muslims believe in the Hadith prophecy of a redeemer of Islam none believe that he will appear until right before Judgement Day where he will join forces with the returning Jewish Messiah to battle the anti-Christ.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's declaration of himself as the Madhi led to his Ahmadiyya sect to be declared Non-Muslim heretics in Pakistan and their killing is advocated by large sections of Sunni Islam.
The Master Fard Muhammad also believed himself to be the Jewish Messiah. Although they do not consider him to be the Son of God Muslims consider Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah. As such Fard Muhammad's declaration of Jesus to be a false Prophet and himself to be the true Prophet is pure sacrilege.
The most famous member of the Nation of Islam is probably Malcolm X. However in 1964 Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam in order to convert to Sunni Islam and become a Muslim. It was the Nation of Islam that assassinated Malcolm X in 1965 having tried and failed in an earlier attempt to bomb his car.
In paying tribute to Muhammad Ali yesterday US President Barack Obama spoke about his Muslim faith and lauded him as a champion of racial equality and civil rights. If Obama cannot distinguish between a violent racial supremacist cult like the Nation of Islam and the religion of Islam it goes a long way to explain his support for ISIL.
Likewise with the violent rantings and ravings of the Nation of Islam being considered the only form of Islam by much of Black America it highlights the risk of those whipped up into a frenzy by the Black Lives Matter campaign also falling under the spell of ISIL.
As for Ali himself a number of his children went onto inter-marry with the devils of the White race producing mixed race grandchildren. This included Kaliah Ali who went onto marry Spencer Wertheimer and raise their children as Jewish. In 2012 Muhammad Ali attended his grandson Jacob Ali-Wertheimer's Bar Mitzvah.
So it seems that rather than being a true believer of the Nation of Islam Muhammad Ali seemed to be a genuine kind-hearted man who wanted to do the right thing. Unfortunately in his naivety he allowed himself to be manipulated by some extremely unpleasant people.
To my mind that makes him more of a figure of pity rather than some sort of political champion.
16:40 on 5/6/16 (UK date).
As an amateur Ali won gold for the United States at the 1960 Olympics. As a professional he won 56 of his 61 fights including 37 by knockout becoming World Champion in 1964. After losing and then regaining his boxing license Ali regained the World Champion crown in 1974. He was also the father to 9 children and grandfather to numerous grandchildren.
Ideally that is where I would like to end his obituary.
However the coverage around Ali's death has been relentless. CNN in particular yesterday broke away from their wall-to-wall coverage of the US election to provide wall-to-wall coverage of Ali's death. Much on this focused on his political activism and his controversial religious beliefs.
This unfortunately is rather relevant to both the current fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the US' own Black Lives Matter (BLM).
Despite legally changing his name from Cassius Clay Muhammad Ali never converted to any recognised form of Islam and therefore cannot be described as a Muslim. What he did do was join an organisation known as the Nation of Islam which I think is probably best described as a cult.
The Nation of Islam does require that its followers adhere to the five pillars of Islam. Beyond that though the group's belief system is what would be considered by Muslims as blasphemy. And pretty sketchy blasphemy at that.
Devout Muslims like Christians and Jews believe the Biblical book of Genesis to be a truthful account of how the universe and the Earth came into being having been created by God in seven days. God went on to create Adam and Eve and the entire human race is descended from them. The Nation of Islam consider this to be a lie.
Instead the Nation of Islam believe that the Earth is 76 trillion years old. 66 trillion years ago the Black race arrived on Earth aboard spaceships known as "Mother Planes." Having arrived on Earth the original scientists of the Black race built more of these spaceships and used them to create the topography of the Earth as it exists now. This included separating the Moon from the Earth through a giant explosion.
The Nation of Islam believe that the White race was created by the devil Jew Jacob on the Greek island of Patmos. This is where John the Apostle of John of Patmos is believed to have written the Biblical book of Revelations. However the Nation of Islam believe that it was here that Jacob began a 600 year program of eugenics that saw him murder dark skinned children until a light skinned, white race was created.
No explanation of how Jacob came into being is offered. However with him seeming to be the same Jacob who is considered the Father of the Jews in Genesis this appears to be the Nation of Islam implying that the Bible and by extension the Qu'ran were simply made up by this devil race in order to suppress the superior Black race.
Of that superior Black race the Nation of Islam consider 85% of it to be the deaf, dumb and blind masses. A further 10% of the Black race are made up of so-called "Slave Makers" who are constantly trying to enslave the 85%. The remaining 5% are the members of the Nation of Islam and referred to as the "Righteous Teachers." They consider themselves at war with the Slave Makers in an effort to free the minds of the 85%. There is a breakaway faction of the Nation of Islam that calls itself the 5% Nation.
So Muhammad Ali's refusal to fight in the Vietnam war stemmed not from some conscientious objection to violence as a concept. After all as a professional fighter violence was a big part of Ali's life and identity. Instead it stemmed from a belief that as part of the elite 5% of the master race he should not be called upon to fight in a war between the lesser races. Apparently his own father disowned him for this.
The Nation of Islam consider their founder Wallace Fard Muhammad - "The Master" - to be the Mahdi of Islam. The role of the Mahdi is an extremely controversial one within Islam. Although most Muslims believe in the Hadith prophecy of a redeemer of Islam none believe that he will appear until right before Judgement Day where he will join forces with the returning Jewish Messiah to battle the anti-Christ.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's declaration of himself as the Madhi led to his Ahmadiyya sect to be declared Non-Muslim heretics in Pakistan and their killing is advocated by large sections of Sunni Islam.
The Master Fard Muhammad also believed himself to be the Jewish Messiah. Although they do not consider him to be the Son of God Muslims consider Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah. As such Fard Muhammad's declaration of Jesus to be a false Prophet and himself to be the true Prophet is pure sacrilege.
The most famous member of the Nation of Islam is probably Malcolm X. However in 1964 Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam in order to convert to Sunni Islam and become a Muslim. It was the Nation of Islam that assassinated Malcolm X in 1965 having tried and failed in an earlier attempt to bomb his car.
In paying tribute to Muhammad Ali yesterday US President Barack Obama spoke about his Muslim faith and lauded him as a champion of racial equality and civil rights. If Obama cannot distinguish between a violent racial supremacist cult like the Nation of Islam and the religion of Islam it goes a long way to explain his support for ISIL.
Likewise with the violent rantings and ravings of the Nation of Islam being considered the only form of Islam by much of Black America it highlights the risk of those whipped up into a frenzy by the Black Lives Matter campaign also falling under the spell of ISIL.
As for Ali himself a number of his children went onto inter-marry with the devils of the White race producing mixed race grandchildren. This included Kaliah Ali who went onto marry Spencer Wertheimer and raise their children as Jewish. In 2012 Muhammad Ali attended his grandson Jacob Ali-Wertheimer's Bar Mitzvah.
So it seems that rather than being a true believer of the Nation of Islam Muhammad Ali seemed to be a genuine kind-hearted man who wanted to do the right thing. Unfortunately in his naivety he allowed himself to be manipulated by some extremely unpleasant people.
To my mind that makes him more of a figure of pity rather than some sort of political champion.
16:40 on 5/6/16 (UK date).
Tuesday, 31 May 2016
The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: Grand Final Pt.10
This must be read as a direct continuation of Part 9; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest-grand_30.html
In terms of the threat from Islamic terrorism the only country in the Eurovision area that comes close to Israel is France.
To give you idea just last Friday (27/5/16) a French soldier was wounded in a knife attack carried out by two men who wished to avenge the killing of Muslims. This is such an Israeli story that if the headline hadn't told me that it was a French soldier skimming the article I probably would have just assumed that Tarn was somewhere in Israel.
A recent terror attack in France that is particularly relevant though is the January 9th 2015 (9/1/15) siege at the Hypercacher Kosher supermarket in the Port de Vincennes area of Paris. This is widely considered part of the Charlie Hebdo series of terror attacks that began on January 7th (7/1/15).
In Port de Vincennes Ahmedy Coulibaly entered the supermarket and immediately killed four French Jews. He then took 15 others hostage before being killed when the police raided the building. Coulibaly claimed the attack in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
With the attack taking place in the middle of an Israeli election campaign the incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately flew to France to take part in a memorial service for the dead. There he urged all of France's Jews to return with him to Israel where they would be safe from such anti-Semitic attacks.
At the Song Contest later that year Israel was represented by Nadav Guedj.
Originally born in France Guedj and his family were a perfect example of French Jews who had followed Netanyahu's advice and migrated to Israel. The song "Golden Boy" seemed to be a savage mockery of Netanyahu's attempts to portray himself as the leader of God's chosen people or golden boys and girls as they return to the Jewish homeland.
As such France's entry this year saw them exercising their right of reply.
France: This year they were represented by Amir who like Guedj is Jewish and had been born in France before his parents had migrated to Israel. However unlike Guedj Amir had migrated back from Israel to France specifically to represent them in the Song Contest.
Apart from his travels between France and Israel everything about Amir's biography screamed immigrant.
His father was born in Tunisia which explains his Arabic sounding name while his mother is herself the result of a mixed marriage between a Moroccan and a Spaniard. That helped to highlight that excluding Israel not only does France have the largest Jewish population in the Eurovision area it also has the largest Muslim population. A very large part of that Muslim population comes from the former French colonies in North Africa such as Tunisia and Morocco.
The reference to Spain was a reminder that the Medieval Caliphate that ISIL claim to be trying to recreate actually included Spain. Technically currently Spain actually extends into Morocco with the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Therefore amid all the chaos of the Balkan route for migrants from Turkey it is important not to forget that there is also a security risk much closer to home. I think it was Winston Churchill who stressed the importance of North Africa as a way to attack Europe's soft-underbelly via the Mediterranean.
If you really want to dig down into the Jewishness of it all in 1492 the Catholic King & Queen of Spain expelled all of the country's Jews under the Alhambra Decree. It is only in 2014 that Spain passed a law allowing the descendants of Spanish Jews known as Sephardi Jews to return as Spanish citizens.
The video in support of the song was a direct rip-off of the video for "Hall of Fame" by The Script featuring Will.I.Am. So complete was the plagiarism it served as a coded warning. Under absolutely no circumstances did France want to win this year and thus be forced to provide security for the 2017 Song Contest on top of everything else.
The Hall of Fame video of course featured a young man learning to box and a young deaf woman learning to ballet dance. The only difference in the French video is that is featured a young black man being taught to ballet dance and and young white girl learning Taekwondo. This reversal of traditional gender roles obviously tapped into the Non-Binary Gender issue that Obama's got is panties in a bunch about of late.
Elsewhere in the contest where this topic was referenced it was done so in mockery of Obama. Unfortunately France seems to have missed the joke. Sadly I don't even think it was a deliberate mistake to highlight how much France needs its Jews back from Israel - the land of Dana International.
The reason why taekwondo was chosen rather then say boxing, judo or karate is because of Belgian taekwondo fighter Mourad Laachraoui. His younger brother Najim Laachraoui is suspected of making the bombs used in the November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) Paris Massacres and on March 22nd 2016 (22/3/16) blew himself up in Brussels Zaventem Airport killing 17 people in the name of ISIL.
As such the Laachraoui brothers provide a talking point about integration with Mourad Laachraoui being held up as a shining example of its success and Najim Laachraoui being condemned as an example of its failure. Following the Song Contest Mourad Laachraoui was selected to represent Belgium at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
I just have a tiny, little bit left to do. However at around 17:00 on 31/5/16 (UK date) I seem to have completely run out of talent. I'll try and get back to this later.
Edited at around 19:00 on 31/5/16 (UK date) to add above and below;
The French song itself was "J'ai Cherche" which roughly translates as; "I've Been Looking For You."
Featuring lyrics such as; "You gave me the will to be myself // Gave a meaning to my questions // You have killed the fear that was sleeping here // that was sleeping here, in my arms." it seemed to express a desire to unite all of France's different religious and ethnic groups in a warm embrace.
However with lyrics such as; "That we find a lost paradise inside ourselves" and a title that sounds a bit like "L'Chaim" which is broadly Hebrew for "Life" it seemed particularly aimed at French Jews who may have been tempted to follow Netanyahu to the promised land.
The chorus of the song; "You // You're the one that's making me strong // I'll be looking looking for // You // Like the melody of my song" was sung in English rather than French. It is hard to understate just how earth shatteringly dramatic a Frenchman choosing to sing in English truly is.
One thing that really annoys me about all these various terrorist attacks, riots or racist incidents that occur in France is that invariably some moron on social media will immediately say; "Further evidence that Multiculturalism just does not work!"
What is so annoying about that attitude is that France rather famously rejects the philosophy of Multiculturalism. Instead they adopt an aggressively secular approach to immigration that forces all immigrants to completely abandon their own culture and fully embrace French culture.
In the UK or the US when we talk about secularism we mean a society where the practice of religion - any religion - is actively encouraged. So much so that the government is not allowed to discriminate against anyone based on the religion they practice. The French interpretation of secularism though means a society where you are not allowed to discuss your religion in public at all.
An example of the difference is that in the UK whenever you access a public service - even accessing the police by being arrested - you are forced to fill in this almost an essay question about your ethnic background, your religion, your gender, your sexual preference, any disabilities you may have and even your economic background. This data is collected to make sure that the public service in question isn't discriminating against any of these minority groups.
Under French law the government is simply not allowed to ask these sort of questions about the people using its services. As a result the French government doesn't have any empirical way of determining whether say young black men are being unfairly treated by the police or the Courts.
The French can't even tell you how many male Muslim prisoners they have at any given time. As the examples of the Coulibaly brothers, the Kouachi brothers, the Abdeslam brothers and the El Bakraoui brothers amongst others demonstrate this is extremely important in terms of identifying young prisoners who may be at risk of being radicalised into Islamist terrorism so they can be protected from more militant inmates.
France's aggressive secularism is a particular issue within the school system. This is an area that the UK of course sees a key to helping promote ethnic/religious integration and social cohesion. French law - specifically 2004-228 - however expressly forbids any display of religious or cultural difference within the school system.
Unlike in the UK French school children tend not to be forced to wear a school uniform instead being free to chose their own clothes. As such this ban on the display or religious symbols presents particular problems when it comes to Islamic modesty standards of dress. Obviously the wearing of the Hijab in French schools is completely forbidden but certain schools have taken it much further to forbid female students from wearing dresses that are considered too long or sleeves that cover too much of the arm.
This ban on displays of religion or culture even extends into the school lunch room. It is actually against the law for French schools to provide a Halal option for Muslim students or a Kosher option for Jewish students. Vegetarian options only seem to be permitted because no one culture or religion can claim a monopoly on not eating meat.
The ban on the serving of certain types of food in schools is not only limited to religion. Certain French schools have been known to ban the serving of tomato ketchup because it is seen as too American and therefore an insult to French culture.
The problem with this type of law is that when you start telling people that they can't wear certain types of clothes of eat certain types of food you are also telling them that they are not part of society.
Once you start telling people that they are not part of the society in which they live they start looking for other societies such as ISIL where they will be accepted. They also become much more willing to attack a society which has so clearly rejected them.
Another area where the French are particularly protective of their culture is language.
This is very clearly on display at Eurovision where much like in Canada everything has to be said twice. Once in English and again in French. For the benefit of all the French people who speak English perfectly well but just refuse to do so.
When it comes to immigration and integration language is an extremely complex issue.
Despite my support for the philosophy of multiculturalism I still think that immigrants should be strongly encouraged to learn the native language of the country they are migrating into. After all if you don't understand the language you won't be able to read the advert for the apartment to rent outside of the ghetto, you won't benefit at all from being at school and you certainly won't be able to find a job.
However saying that you should learn a second language is not the same thing as saying you should be forbidden from speaking your first language.
As such I feel much more comfortable about supporting government funded language lessons for immigrants than I do about the recent German proposal to strip welfare payments from immigrants who fail to learn German. However I don't feel so uneasy about that I'm about to raise a flag of protest against it.
The French however are so protective of their language that there is a specific law - the Toubon Law - that stipulates that a set quota of songs sung in the French language must be played on French radio.
From an artistic perspective this is utterly infuriating. Particularly for French rappers of North African origin who tend to blend French and Arabic together in the same song. This forces the censor to tot up the exact number of French words versus the exact number of Arabic words used to determine whether a certain song can be added to a radio playlist. It makes everybody's blood boil.
As such Amir choosing to sing part of his song in French and part of it in English provides a convenient way for France to signal to the Eurovision audience that they may have made a mistake by rejecting the philosophy of multiculturalism.
I am worried though that this French embrace of religious and cultural tolerance may have led to the Eurovision juries making an absolutely horrific mistake in voting for Shamali Province.
Their ineligible entry this year also mixed two languages. English and Tatar which is more commonly referred to as; "Crimean Turkish." Under President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey has become a state sponsor of Islamic extremism and terrorism.
The specific words that Jamala sang in Turkish were; "I couldn’t spend my youth there // because you took away my peace."
To me that sounds like a stage whisper to the Muslim audience going; "I want to sing in the Muslim language // I want to wear Muslim dress // The Zionists though they stop me // They stop me."
To my mind that is the complete and exact opposite of calling for religious and ethnic tolerance.
My concerns were deepened in the post final press conference when a Turkish journalist asked Jamala what her star sign was.
Although I don't think anyone seriously believes in astrology this is generally considered quite a fun getting to know you question. The interloper Meghan Trainor even referenced it as a potential chat-up line in her recent song; "No."
Jamala though responded by scowling at the journalist as if he'd caused her the greatest offence possible by suggesting she was a Pagan and and as such worthy of execution by all good Muslims. She responded curtly;
"I Believe in Allah."
And there it is. After two weeks and ten episodes I have finally completed by post on the Grand Final of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest.
There remains of course the stand-out entries from this year. However what makes them outstanding is the creative way in which they invoke the themes I've spent all this time detailing. Therefore you will excuse me if I gradually cover them as and when I get a bit of free time.
After all at this point, for the sake of my sanity if nothing else, I really need to talk about something else for a bit.
21:20 on 31/5/16 (UK date).
In terms of the threat from Islamic terrorism the only country in the Eurovision area that comes close to Israel is France.
To give you idea just last Friday (27/5/16) a French soldier was wounded in a knife attack carried out by two men who wished to avenge the killing of Muslims. This is such an Israeli story that if the headline hadn't told me that it was a French soldier skimming the article I probably would have just assumed that Tarn was somewhere in Israel.
A recent terror attack in France that is particularly relevant though is the January 9th 2015 (9/1/15) siege at the Hypercacher Kosher supermarket in the Port de Vincennes area of Paris. This is widely considered part of the Charlie Hebdo series of terror attacks that began on January 7th (7/1/15).
In Port de Vincennes Ahmedy Coulibaly entered the supermarket and immediately killed four French Jews. He then took 15 others hostage before being killed when the police raided the building. Coulibaly claimed the attack in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
With the attack taking place in the middle of an Israeli election campaign the incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately flew to France to take part in a memorial service for the dead. There he urged all of France's Jews to return with him to Israel where they would be safe from such anti-Semitic attacks.
At the Song Contest later that year Israel was represented by Nadav Guedj.
Originally born in France Guedj and his family were a perfect example of French Jews who had followed Netanyahu's advice and migrated to Israel. The song "Golden Boy" seemed to be a savage mockery of Netanyahu's attempts to portray himself as the leader of God's chosen people or golden boys and girls as they return to the Jewish homeland.
As such France's entry this year saw them exercising their right of reply.
France: This year they were represented by Amir who like Guedj is Jewish and had been born in France before his parents had migrated to Israel. However unlike Guedj Amir had migrated back from Israel to France specifically to represent them in the Song Contest.
Apart from his travels between France and Israel everything about Amir's biography screamed immigrant.
His father was born in Tunisia which explains his Arabic sounding name while his mother is herself the result of a mixed marriage between a Moroccan and a Spaniard. That helped to highlight that excluding Israel not only does France have the largest Jewish population in the Eurovision area it also has the largest Muslim population. A very large part of that Muslim population comes from the former French colonies in North Africa such as Tunisia and Morocco.
The reference to Spain was a reminder that the Medieval Caliphate that ISIL claim to be trying to recreate actually included Spain. Technically currently Spain actually extends into Morocco with the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Therefore amid all the chaos of the Balkan route for migrants from Turkey it is important not to forget that there is also a security risk much closer to home. I think it was Winston Churchill who stressed the importance of North Africa as a way to attack Europe's soft-underbelly via the Mediterranean.
If you really want to dig down into the Jewishness of it all in 1492 the Catholic King & Queen of Spain expelled all of the country's Jews under the Alhambra Decree. It is only in 2014 that Spain passed a law allowing the descendants of Spanish Jews known as Sephardi Jews to return as Spanish citizens.
The video in support of the song was a direct rip-off of the video for "Hall of Fame" by The Script featuring Will.I.Am. So complete was the plagiarism it served as a coded warning. Under absolutely no circumstances did France want to win this year and thus be forced to provide security for the 2017 Song Contest on top of everything else.
The Hall of Fame video of course featured a young man learning to box and a young deaf woman learning to ballet dance. The only difference in the French video is that is featured a young black man being taught to ballet dance and and young white girl learning Taekwondo. This reversal of traditional gender roles obviously tapped into the Non-Binary Gender issue that Obama's got is panties in a bunch about of late.
Elsewhere in the contest where this topic was referenced it was done so in mockery of Obama. Unfortunately France seems to have missed the joke. Sadly I don't even think it was a deliberate mistake to highlight how much France needs its Jews back from Israel - the land of Dana International.
The reason why taekwondo was chosen rather then say boxing, judo or karate is because of Belgian taekwondo fighter Mourad Laachraoui. His younger brother Najim Laachraoui is suspected of making the bombs used in the November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) Paris Massacres and on March 22nd 2016 (22/3/16) blew himself up in Brussels Zaventem Airport killing 17 people in the name of ISIL.
As such the Laachraoui brothers provide a talking point about integration with Mourad Laachraoui being held up as a shining example of its success and Najim Laachraoui being condemned as an example of its failure. Following the Song Contest Mourad Laachraoui was selected to represent Belgium at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
I just have a tiny, little bit left to do. However at around 17:00 on 31/5/16 (UK date) I seem to have completely run out of talent. I'll try and get back to this later.
Edited at around 19:00 on 31/5/16 (UK date) to add above and below;
The French song itself was "J'ai Cherche" which roughly translates as; "I've Been Looking For You."
Featuring lyrics such as; "You gave me the will to be myself // Gave a meaning to my questions // You have killed the fear that was sleeping here // that was sleeping here, in my arms." it seemed to express a desire to unite all of France's different religious and ethnic groups in a warm embrace.
However with lyrics such as; "That we find a lost paradise inside ourselves" and a title that sounds a bit like "L'Chaim" which is broadly Hebrew for "Life" it seemed particularly aimed at French Jews who may have been tempted to follow Netanyahu to the promised land.
The chorus of the song; "You // You're the one that's making me strong // I'll be looking looking for // You // Like the melody of my song" was sung in English rather than French. It is hard to understate just how earth shatteringly dramatic a Frenchman choosing to sing in English truly is.
One thing that really annoys me about all these various terrorist attacks, riots or racist incidents that occur in France is that invariably some moron on social media will immediately say; "Further evidence that Multiculturalism just does not work!"
What is so annoying about that attitude is that France rather famously rejects the philosophy of Multiculturalism. Instead they adopt an aggressively secular approach to immigration that forces all immigrants to completely abandon their own culture and fully embrace French culture.
In the UK or the US when we talk about secularism we mean a society where the practice of religion - any religion - is actively encouraged. So much so that the government is not allowed to discriminate against anyone based on the religion they practice. The French interpretation of secularism though means a society where you are not allowed to discuss your religion in public at all.
An example of the difference is that in the UK whenever you access a public service - even accessing the police by being arrested - you are forced to fill in this almost an essay question about your ethnic background, your religion, your gender, your sexual preference, any disabilities you may have and even your economic background. This data is collected to make sure that the public service in question isn't discriminating against any of these minority groups.
Under French law the government is simply not allowed to ask these sort of questions about the people using its services. As a result the French government doesn't have any empirical way of determining whether say young black men are being unfairly treated by the police or the Courts.
The French can't even tell you how many male Muslim prisoners they have at any given time. As the examples of the Coulibaly brothers, the Kouachi brothers, the Abdeslam brothers and the El Bakraoui brothers amongst others demonstrate this is extremely important in terms of identifying young prisoners who may be at risk of being radicalised into Islamist terrorism so they can be protected from more militant inmates.
France's aggressive secularism is a particular issue within the school system. This is an area that the UK of course sees a key to helping promote ethnic/religious integration and social cohesion. French law - specifically 2004-228 - however expressly forbids any display of religious or cultural difference within the school system.
Unlike in the UK French school children tend not to be forced to wear a school uniform instead being free to chose their own clothes. As such this ban on the display or religious symbols presents particular problems when it comes to Islamic modesty standards of dress. Obviously the wearing of the Hijab in French schools is completely forbidden but certain schools have taken it much further to forbid female students from wearing dresses that are considered too long or sleeves that cover too much of the arm.
This ban on displays of religion or culture even extends into the school lunch room. It is actually against the law for French schools to provide a Halal option for Muslim students or a Kosher option for Jewish students. Vegetarian options only seem to be permitted because no one culture or religion can claim a monopoly on not eating meat.
The ban on the serving of certain types of food in schools is not only limited to religion. Certain French schools have been known to ban the serving of tomato ketchup because it is seen as too American and therefore an insult to French culture.
The problem with this type of law is that when you start telling people that they can't wear certain types of clothes of eat certain types of food you are also telling them that they are not part of society.
Once you start telling people that they are not part of the society in which they live they start looking for other societies such as ISIL where they will be accepted. They also become much more willing to attack a society which has so clearly rejected them.
Another area where the French are particularly protective of their culture is language.
This is very clearly on display at Eurovision where much like in Canada everything has to be said twice. Once in English and again in French. For the benefit of all the French people who speak English perfectly well but just refuse to do so.
When it comes to immigration and integration language is an extremely complex issue.
Despite my support for the philosophy of multiculturalism I still think that immigrants should be strongly encouraged to learn the native language of the country they are migrating into. After all if you don't understand the language you won't be able to read the advert for the apartment to rent outside of the ghetto, you won't benefit at all from being at school and you certainly won't be able to find a job.
However saying that you should learn a second language is not the same thing as saying you should be forbidden from speaking your first language.
As such I feel much more comfortable about supporting government funded language lessons for immigrants than I do about the recent German proposal to strip welfare payments from immigrants who fail to learn German. However I don't feel so uneasy about that I'm about to raise a flag of protest against it.
The French however are so protective of their language that there is a specific law - the Toubon Law - that stipulates that a set quota of songs sung in the French language must be played on French radio.
From an artistic perspective this is utterly infuriating. Particularly for French rappers of North African origin who tend to blend French and Arabic together in the same song. This forces the censor to tot up the exact number of French words versus the exact number of Arabic words used to determine whether a certain song can be added to a radio playlist. It makes everybody's blood boil.
As such Amir choosing to sing part of his song in French and part of it in English provides a convenient way for France to signal to the Eurovision audience that they may have made a mistake by rejecting the philosophy of multiculturalism.
I am worried though that this French embrace of religious and cultural tolerance may have led to the Eurovision juries making an absolutely horrific mistake in voting for Shamali Province.
Their ineligible entry this year also mixed two languages. English and Tatar which is more commonly referred to as; "Crimean Turkish." Under President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey has become a state sponsor of Islamic extremism and terrorism.
The specific words that Jamala sang in Turkish were; "I couldn’t spend my youth there // because you took away my peace."
To me that sounds like a stage whisper to the Muslim audience going; "I want to sing in the Muslim language // I want to wear Muslim dress // The Zionists though they stop me // They stop me."
To my mind that is the complete and exact opposite of calling for religious and ethnic tolerance.
My concerns were deepened in the post final press conference when a Turkish journalist asked Jamala what her star sign was.
Although I don't think anyone seriously believes in astrology this is generally considered quite a fun getting to know you question. The interloper Meghan Trainor even referenced it as a potential chat-up line in her recent song; "No."
Jamala though responded by scowling at the journalist as if he'd caused her the greatest offence possible by suggesting she was a Pagan and and as such worthy of execution by all good Muslims. She responded curtly;
"I Believe in Allah."
And there it is. After two weeks and ten episodes I have finally completed by post on the Grand Final of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest.
There remains of course the stand-out entries from this year. However what makes them outstanding is the creative way in which they invoke the themes I've spent all this time detailing. Therefore you will excuse me if I gradually cover them as and when I get a bit of free time.
After all at this point, for the sake of my sanity if nothing else, I really need to talk about something else for a bit.
21:20 on 31/5/16 (UK date).
Monday, 30 May 2016
The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: Grand Final Pt.9
This must be read as a direct continuation of Part 8; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest-grand_29.html
With Finland throwing the floor open for the United Kingdom to share its experience of immigration and integration the UK's entry was particularly disappointing this year.
United Kingdom: Their song "You're Not Alone" was a barely disguised assurance that the full apparatus of state have been ranged to ensure that the UK's June 23rd (23/6/16) referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union (EU) will result in a vote to remain.
I say barely disguised because the UK was represented by Joe & Jake.
The guitar player Jake is in fact male. However he is so young and fresh faced a Song Contest crowd may mistake him for a lesbian who was trying to make herself appear as masculine of "butch" as possible. This in turn could lead into a discussion about what is being termed; "Non-binary Gender." That is a topic that is currently all the rage in British universities having been needlessly imported from the US.
US President Obama seems to view men's right to pee in the ladies room as the next battle in the crusade for civil rights which is up there with the abolition of slavery. The Eurovision community is of course much more relaxed about the issue because way back in 1999 the Song Contest was won by post-transition transgendered woman Dana International.
As such the Eurovision community is so knowledgeable about transgenderism and transgender rights there is absolutely no way it is going to fall for nonsense terms like "Non-binary Gender."
Therefore I don't think anyone was seriously expected to believe that the UK was declaring itself the champion of Non-binary Gender rights across the Eurovision. Instead I think they were intended to giggle down their sleeves at Obama and his latest round of childish nonsense.
Joe the singer very closely resembled Cillian Murphy in his role of "Thomas Shelby" in the UK TV show "Peaky Blinders." This was the UK attempting to refer all questions to that TV show. With everybody else being limited to one 3 minute song the UK trying to enter a 15 hour TV show seemed to be taking something of a liberty.
Although production has finished the second episode of the third series of Peaky Blinders only premiered in the UK during the second semi-final on May 12th (12/5/16). As such I think they were really referencing the second series that premiered in 2013.
Despite the fact it has been shown in other countries this series was debuted on Netflix the week after the Song Contest. That obviously feeds the technical EBU discussions surrounding the contest because there is a proposal by the EU that online viewing platforms such as Netflix are set a quota to show programs made in the EU.
As far as I can remember there are two main storylines in the second series of Peaky Blinders.
The first revolves around the Birmingham based Shelby crime family trying to expand their operations into London by joining forces with Jewish gangster "Alfie Solomons" played by Tom Hardy. This touches on the migration issue because the very Jewish area of east London where Solomons is based in the 1920's is in fact now a very Muslim area. It also touches on elements of Jewish culture. For example the Solomons character wears the Tallit prayer shawl at all times.
The second revolves around what is termed "The Irish Business." Essentially in return for their criminal activity being tolerated the Shelby's are being pressured by the UK intelligence services to use their gypsy connections to gather information on the Irish civil war between the pro-treaty Fine Gael and the anti-treaty Fianna Fail. Obviously British intelligence wanted the Fine Gael side to win.
What stuck in my memory about series two of Peaky Blinders is that about a week after it ended I had to appear in Court wearing a dark suit and a dark flat cap of the sort that is synonymous with Thomas Shelby. I then had to try and convince everyone that I was completely innocent and all those rumours about me being linked to Irish organised crime were just that. Rumours.
As for the third and current series you may remember that a big theme of the 2014 Winter Olympic ceremonies was Russian history. I think at the time I described it as; "Russia: There for a thousand years before Communism. Still here now."
Inspired by that in January 2016 the UK's participating broadcaster - the BBC - broadcast a very lavish adaptation of "War & Peace." This obviously deals with a very large chunk of Russian history building up to the 1917 Communist revolution and the end of the Russian Empire. Series three of Peaky Blinders seems to continue that theme with a plot to smuggle weapons to Tsarists - known as "White Russians" - so they can launch a counter revolution against the Communists - known as "Red Russians."
The particular group of Tsarists they're working with were exiled from Georgia. In 2008 Georgia launched an attack on its ethnic Russian population thinking that NATO would leap to their aid. NATO didn't and as a result Georgia have been out in the diplomatic cold ever since.
They have a particular notoriety in Song Contest circles because in 2009 their song; "We Don't Wanna Put In" was deemed to be overtly political and therefore ineligible for competition. With Georgia declining to submit an eligible song they did not participate in the contest that year.
Although there might be some surprises in the remaining two episodes Peaky Blinders doesn't seem to be doing very much with the Georgian link. In fact it only seems to be referenced to remind people how large the Russian Empire was and much like the Song Contest itself force most viewers to go look on a map to find out where Georgia is. Between the Russian Caucus' and Armenia/Azerbaijan btw.
The only other thing of note about the UK's entry was that amid the obligatory references to "the black music" Joe & Jake cited the British dance act Rudimental as one of their influence. Rudimental have a reputation for making fairly average female vocalists such as 2012 UK X-Factor contestant Ella Henderson look extremely good. Signing them up for 2017 would be a big indication that the UK is starting to take the Song Contest seriously.
Having declined to enter a particularly good song this year the UK instead focused all its efforts on staging a series of events outside of the Song Contest in the hope they would force their way though the Eurovision bubble. I covered many of them here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest.html
One thing I didn't get around to covering though was the uproar leaking of the mandatory Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) for 10 and 11 year olds of May 10th (10/5/16).
As I've mentioned two key planks behind social/racial cohesion in the UK are housing and schooling. The problem is that the current Conservative government of the day seems to despise both of these areas.
On the issue of housing they have already introduced the Housing & Planning Act 2016. This significantly weakens the Section 106 provisions of the Town & County Planning Act 1990. For example it gives developers much more opportunity to challenge Section 106 provisions imposed upon them. It also provides the option for them to opt out of Section 106 provisions after five years. That means they can convert affordable, social housing into premium, private accommodation five years after completing their development.
The Conservatives have also done away with Housing Benefit replacing it with a Universal Credit payment that is capped. This prevents Universal Credit being used to top up the wages of the low paid to help them afford private sector rents in the way that Housing Benefit was. You may have heard about the widespread protests against what was dubbed; "The Bedroom Tax."
In the 2016 Budget the Conservatives announced plans that it was going to take all schools out of local authority control and turn them into autonomous Academy's. That would obviously render the Oldham example impossible.
Unlike changes to Housing Benefit and planning legislation the issue of education is one where middle-class voters who make up much of the Conservatives powerbase are heavily engaged in and there have been very polite, middle-class protests against the government's policies. The leaking of the SATs gave those protests a little bit of help to remind the Conservatives that in future for the good of the nation the Queen may exercise her right to decline to sign some of their proposals into law.
The scandal also touched on the election of Sadiq Kahn as Mayor of London on - technically - May 7th (7/5/16).
There were really two planks to Kahn's campaign platform. The fact that he is a Muslim and his promise to build more affordable homes in London. As the London Mayor has no authority to give permission to others to build homes affordable or otherwise let alone build them himself I think it is fair to say that Khan's only campaign platform is that he is a Muslim.
The infinitely more powerful UK Secretary of State for Business Sajid Javid is also the Muslim son of Pakistani immigrant parents. As such the fact that Sadiq Khan is a Muslim really shouldn't be an issue in Britain. Particularly in London. However the UK Labour Party have got absolutely nothing else going for them so decided to run a nasty racist, homophobic Mayoral campaign.
This began way back in March when unprompted the Khan campaign announced that it was sacking Shueb Salar. They announced to the world that they were doing this because Salar had made a series of very offensive comments in which he accused all immigrants from the Bengal area of India of being smelly, declared that gay people deserve to be beaten up in public and the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby had been faked by the Zionists to smear Islam.
The subtext of this announcement was that as a good Muslim Khan is a close friend of this man and wanted to continue employing him. However the vast Zionist conspiracy wouldn't allow him to become Mayor if he did.
With the Khan campaign being focused entirely on race the rival Goldsmith campaign started to reach out to London's Jewish, Sikh and Hindu communities. This was quickly labelled racist and hateful by the Khan campaign. What a lot of people failed to realise is that what the Khan supporters found so offensive and Islamaphobic was the suggestion that Jews, Sikhs and Hindus were allowed to vote at all.
Then of course there was the anti-Semitism scandal in the weeks leading up to the election. What Labour were trying to do there was send the message that while the Grand Zionist Conspiracy wouldn't allow Khan to come out and declare himself to be an anti-Semite he was certainly friends with a lot of anti-Semites.
The fact that the Labour Party were prepared to run this type of appalling campaign and the fact their supporters didn't pick up on it really highlights the UK lefts Islam problem.
Fortunately the British Establishment left a foot in on election day when thousands of Jewish voters in Barnet were denied the right to vote. This obviously gives the Courts opportunity to overturn the election result.
The hope being that in response to "the Jews" challenging Khan's election Labour supporters would start ranting and raving about the Zionist Conspiracy against Muslims. That would certainly have been a fun topic of conversation for Song Contest week.
However so far voters in Barnet have declined to challenge Khan's election. So the SATs scandal was also the UK lamenting what might of been. Khan though will do well to remember that the option of a challenge remains open.
At around 16:35 on 30/5/16 (UK date) I'll be back to finish after dinner once I've cleared my head a bit.
Edited at around 18:50 on 30/5/16 (UK date) to add;
Also on May 10th (10/5/16) police in Manchester, UK released footage of an anti-terrorism training exercise they'd conducted the previous night. Sadly it is part of the world that we now live in that the police do need to conduct this sort of training exercise from time to time. Back in December 2015 a similar exercise was conducted in London.
Manchester of course is under the control of a completely different police force so they also had to conduct their own training. I think this exercise was timed to take place before the England v Turkey football friendly that was held on May 22nd (22/5/16). That match was part of the warm-up to the Euro 2016 football tournament being held in France.
So while the timing was convenient rather than being something to do with the Song Contest directly this seemed to be part of an urgent conversation that needed to be had between British and French police ahead of Euro 2016. After all if things get really bad British police/troops can be deployed on the ground in northern France in about three hours.
I suspect that once the security nightmare that is Euro 2016 is over the men with guns would like a few strong words with the Eurovision organisers.
What happened next though seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to everyone.
In order to make these training exercises as realistic as possible they are often based on previous attacks that have taken place. This exercise was clearly based on the September 2013 Al Shabaab attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. As happened in the Westgate attack one of the police officers playing the role of the terrorists shouted; "Allahu Akbar!" as he detonated his 'suicide bomb' to indicate that the attack was being carried out in the name of Islam.
This provoked a massive backlash on social media from much of the British left. Greater Manchester police were forced to issue an apology for racistly and Islamaphobically suggesting that the Westgate Mall attack had been carried out by Islamic terrorists.
As such it became further evidence of the European left's Islam problem. When it comes to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) there is a very strong argument put forward by leading Islamic scholars that the group is in no way Islamic. This is borne out by the fact that many ISIL fighters seem to know absolutely b*gger all about Islam.
However there are other groups like Al-Shaabab, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al- Islamiyya (Ahrar al-Sham) and the Army of Islam/Jaish al-Islam (JAI) who are most certainly Islamic terrorist groups. To attempt to try and claim otherwise is just utterly ridiculous.
It actually strikes me a snide little trick by Muslims who do support the views of these extreme terrorist groups to shield the terrorist from legitimate criticism. Sadly though it's one the European left seem to have fallen for hook, line and sinker.
With the UK more or less declining the opportunity to participate in discussions within the Song Contest bubble it fell to Israel to provide everyone with a spectacular example of how not to go about integrating large numbers of predominately Arab Muslims into society.
Israel: This year they were represented by Hovi Star.
If you want an idea of how famous Hovi Star is within Israel apart from being a chart-topping popstar since 2009 he has also provided the Hebrew voiceover for a host of blockbuster movies such as The Lego Movie, Cinderella, Inside Out and particularly Frozen. Israel made much of his role in Frozen with the style of the song very much in keeping with that movie and animated snowflakes and icicles being projected onto the stage throughout both of the live performances.
With Hovi Star providing the Hebrew voiceover for Frozen the Arabic translation was of course provided by subtitles at the bottom of the screen. This is the sort of thing that is extremely infuriating for Israeli Arab parents because they can't take very young children who don't speak Hebrew to see the movie because they can't yet read Arabic. They can though recognise the pretty pictures on the adverts that are specifically designed to get young children to pester their parents to take them to see the movie.
Although more liberal minded Israeli Jews and Arabs have got together to get more children's movies dubbed into Arabic there is a suspicion that the Jewish, Zionist right are doing this on purpose. It is just another one of the subtle little forms of discrimination they employ to make it extremely difficult for Arabs to live within Israel.
With lyrics such as; "You speak, I listen, I'm your friend" and "Come in close and take my hand" on the surface the song sounded like a plea for Israeli Jews and Arabs to live together in peace and harmony.
However the title of the song "Made of Stars" was a clear reference to the Star of David which is the universal symbol of Judaism. The lyrics also made discreet reference to a people escaping slavery due to a secret promise (with God). Therefore the tone was very clearly intended to remind Israeli Arabs that they will never be anything but second class citizens in a Jewish state.
To remind you of the problems this sort of attitude has brought to Israel in terms of terrorism and security much of the video in support of the song seemed to have been shot along the Tel Aviv seafront. This was a reference to the March 8th (8/3/16) terror attack in which US citizen Taylor Force was stabbed and killed close to where US Vice President Joe Biden was having dinner with his family.
If you need a further reminder of the price that Israel is paying for this attitude while I was writing this there was another stabbing attack on an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv. They seem to be averaging about one per day since September 2015.
20:10 on 30/5/16 (UK date).
With Finland throwing the floor open for the United Kingdom to share its experience of immigration and integration the UK's entry was particularly disappointing this year.
United Kingdom: Their song "You're Not Alone" was a barely disguised assurance that the full apparatus of state have been ranged to ensure that the UK's June 23rd (23/6/16) referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union (EU) will result in a vote to remain.
I say barely disguised because the UK was represented by Joe & Jake.
The guitar player Jake is in fact male. However he is so young and fresh faced a Song Contest crowd may mistake him for a lesbian who was trying to make herself appear as masculine of "butch" as possible. This in turn could lead into a discussion about what is being termed; "Non-binary Gender." That is a topic that is currently all the rage in British universities having been needlessly imported from the US.
US President Obama seems to view men's right to pee in the ladies room as the next battle in the crusade for civil rights which is up there with the abolition of slavery. The Eurovision community is of course much more relaxed about the issue because way back in 1999 the Song Contest was won by post-transition transgendered woman Dana International.
As such the Eurovision community is so knowledgeable about transgenderism and transgender rights there is absolutely no way it is going to fall for nonsense terms like "Non-binary Gender."
Therefore I don't think anyone was seriously expected to believe that the UK was declaring itself the champion of Non-binary Gender rights across the Eurovision. Instead I think they were intended to giggle down their sleeves at Obama and his latest round of childish nonsense.
Joe the singer very closely resembled Cillian Murphy in his role of "Thomas Shelby" in the UK TV show "Peaky Blinders." This was the UK attempting to refer all questions to that TV show. With everybody else being limited to one 3 minute song the UK trying to enter a 15 hour TV show seemed to be taking something of a liberty.
Although production has finished the second episode of the third series of Peaky Blinders only premiered in the UK during the second semi-final on May 12th (12/5/16). As such I think they were really referencing the second series that premiered in 2013.
Despite the fact it has been shown in other countries this series was debuted on Netflix the week after the Song Contest. That obviously feeds the technical EBU discussions surrounding the contest because there is a proposal by the EU that online viewing platforms such as Netflix are set a quota to show programs made in the EU.
As far as I can remember there are two main storylines in the second series of Peaky Blinders.
The first revolves around the Birmingham based Shelby crime family trying to expand their operations into London by joining forces with Jewish gangster "Alfie Solomons" played by Tom Hardy. This touches on the migration issue because the very Jewish area of east London where Solomons is based in the 1920's is in fact now a very Muslim area. It also touches on elements of Jewish culture. For example the Solomons character wears the Tallit prayer shawl at all times.
The second revolves around what is termed "The Irish Business." Essentially in return for their criminal activity being tolerated the Shelby's are being pressured by the UK intelligence services to use their gypsy connections to gather information on the Irish civil war between the pro-treaty Fine Gael and the anti-treaty Fianna Fail. Obviously British intelligence wanted the Fine Gael side to win.
What stuck in my memory about series two of Peaky Blinders is that about a week after it ended I had to appear in Court wearing a dark suit and a dark flat cap of the sort that is synonymous with Thomas Shelby. I then had to try and convince everyone that I was completely innocent and all those rumours about me being linked to Irish organised crime were just that. Rumours.
As for the third and current series you may remember that a big theme of the 2014 Winter Olympic ceremonies was Russian history. I think at the time I described it as; "Russia: There for a thousand years before Communism. Still here now."
Inspired by that in January 2016 the UK's participating broadcaster - the BBC - broadcast a very lavish adaptation of "War & Peace." This obviously deals with a very large chunk of Russian history building up to the 1917 Communist revolution and the end of the Russian Empire. Series three of Peaky Blinders seems to continue that theme with a plot to smuggle weapons to Tsarists - known as "White Russians" - so they can launch a counter revolution against the Communists - known as "Red Russians."
The particular group of Tsarists they're working with were exiled from Georgia. In 2008 Georgia launched an attack on its ethnic Russian population thinking that NATO would leap to their aid. NATO didn't and as a result Georgia have been out in the diplomatic cold ever since.
They have a particular notoriety in Song Contest circles because in 2009 their song; "We Don't Wanna Put In" was deemed to be overtly political and therefore ineligible for competition. With Georgia declining to submit an eligible song they did not participate in the contest that year.
Although there might be some surprises in the remaining two episodes Peaky Blinders doesn't seem to be doing very much with the Georgian link. In fact it only seems to be referenced to remind people how large the Russian Empire was and much like the Song Contest itself force most viewers to go look on a map to find out where Georgia is. Between the Russian Caucus' and Armenia/Azerbaijan btw.
The only other thing of note about the UK's entry was that amid the obligatory references to "the black music" Joe & Jake cited the British dance act Rudimental as one of their influence. Rudimental have a reputation for making fairly average female vocalists such as 2012 UK X-Factor contestant Ella Henderson look extremely good. Signing them up for 2017 would be a big indication that the UK is starting to take the Song Contest seriously.
Having declined to enter a particularly good song this year the UK instead focused all its efforts on staging a series of events outside of the Song Contest in the hope they would force their way though the Eurovision bubble. I covered many of them here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest.html
One thing I didn't get around to covering though was the uproar leaking of the mandatory Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) for 10 and 11 year olds of May 10th (10/5/16).
As I've mentioned two key planks behind social/racial cohesion in the UK are housing and schooling. The problem is that the current Conservative government of the day seems to despise both of these areas.
On the issue of housing they have already introduced the Housing & Planning Act 2016. This significantly weakens the Section 106 provisions of the Town & County Planning Act 1990. For example it gives developers much more opportunity to challenge Section 106 provisions imposed upon them. It also provides the option for them to opt out of Section 106 provisions after five years. That means they can convert affordable, social housing into premium, private accommodation five years after completing their development.
The Conservatives have also done away with Housing Benefit replacing it with a Universal Credit payment that is capped. This prevents Universal Credit being used to top up the wages of the low paid to help them afford private sector rents in the way that Housing Benefit was. You may have heard about the widespread protests against what was dubbed; "The Bedroom Tax."
In the 2016 Budget the Conservatives announced plans that it was going to take all schools out of local authority control and turn them into autonomous Academy's. That would obviously render the Oldham example impossible.
Unlike changes to Housing Benefit and planning legislation the issue of education is one where middle-class voters who make up much of the Conservatives powerbase are heavily engaged in and there have been very polite, middle-class protests against the government's policies. The leaking of the SATs gave those protests a little bit of help to remind the Conservatives that in future for the good of the nation the Queen may exercise her right to decline to sign some of their proposals into law.
The scandal also touched on the election of Sadiq Kahn as Mayor of London on - technically - May 7th (7/5/16).
There were really two planks to Kahn's campaign platform. The fact that he is a Muslim and his promise to build more affordable homes in London. As the London Mayor has no authority to give permission to others to build homes affordable or otherwise let alone build them himself I think it is fair to say that Khan's only campaign platform is that he is a Muslim.
The infinitely more powerful UK Secretary of State for Business Sajid Javid is also the Muslim son of Pakistani immigrant parents. As such the fact that Sadiq Khan is a Muslim really shouldn't be an issue in Britain. Particularly in London. However the UK Labour Party have got absolutely nothing else going for them so decided to run a nasty racist, homophobic Mayoral campaign.
This began way back in March when unprompted the Khan campaign announced that it was sacking Shueb Salar. They announced to the world that they were doing this because Salar had made a series of very offensive comments in which he accused all immigrants from the Bengal area of India of being smelly, declared that gay people deserve to be beaten up in public and the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby had been faked by the Zionists to smear Islam.
The subtext of this announcement was that as a good Muslim Khan is a close friend of this man and wanted to continue employing him. However the vast Zionist conspiracy wouldn't allow him to become Mayor if he did.
With the Khan campaign being focused entirely on race the rival Goldsmith campaign started to reach out to London's Jewish, Sikh and Hindu communities. This was quickly labelled racist and hateful by the Khan campaign. What a lot of people failed to realise is that what the Khan supporters found so offensive and Islamaphobic was the suggestion that Jews, Sikhs and Hindus were allowed to vote at all.
Then of course there was the anti-Semitism scandal in the weeks leading up to the election. What Labour were trying to do there was send the message that while the Grand Zionist Conspiracy wouldn't allow Khan to come out and declare himself to be an anti-Semite he was certainly friends with a lot of anti-Semites.
The fact that the Labour Party were prepared to run this type of appalling campaign and the fact their supporters didn't pick up on it really highlights the UK lefts Islam problem.
Fortunately the British Establishment left a foot in on election day when thousands of Jewish voters in Barnet were denied the right to vote. This obviously gives the Courts opportunity to overturn the election result.
The hope being that in response to "the Jews" challenging Khan's election Labour supporters would start ranting and raving about the Zionist Conspiracy against Muslims. That would certainly have been a fun topic of conversation for Song Contest week.
However so far voters in Barnet have declined to challenge Khan's election. So the SATs scandal was also the UK lamenting what might of been. Khan though will do well to remember that the option of a challenge remains open.
At around 16:35 on 30/5/16 (UK date) I'll be back to finish after dinner once I've cleared my head a bit.
Edited at around 18:50 on 30/5/16 (UK date) to add;
Also on May 10th (10/5/16) police in Manchester, UK released footage of an anti-terrorism training exercise they'd conducted the previous night. Sadly it is part of the world that we now live in that the police do need to conduct this sort of training exercise from time to time. Back in December 2015 a similar exercise was conducted in London.
Manchester of course is under the control of a completely different police force so they also had to conduct their own training. I think this exercise was timed to take place before the England v Turkey football friendly that was held on May 22nd (22/5/16). That match was part of the warm-up to the Euro 2016 football tournament being held in France.
So while the timing was convenient rather than being something to do with the Song Contest directly this seemed to be part of an urgent conversation that needed to be had between British and French police ahead of Euro 2016. After all if things get really bad British police/troops can be deployed on the ground in northern France in about three hours.
I suspect that once the security nightmare that is Euro 2016 is over the men with guns would like a few strong words with the Eurovision organisers.
What happened next though seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to everyone.
In order to make these training exercises as realistic as possible they are often based on previous attacks that have taken place. This exercise was clearly based on the September 2013 Al Shabaab attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. As happened in the Westgate attack one of the police officers playing the role of the terrorists shouted; "Allahu Akbar!" as he detonated his 'suicide bomb' to indicate that the attack was being carried out in the name of Islam.
This provoked a massive backlash on social media from much of the British left. Greater Manchester police were forced to issue an apology for racistly and Islamaphobically suggesting that the Westgate Mall attack had been carried out by Islamic terrorists.
As such it became further evidence of the European left's Islam problem. When it comes to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) there is a very strong argument put forward by leading Islamic scholars that the group is in no way Islamic. This is borne out by the fact that many ISIL fighters seem to know absolutely b*gger all about Islam.
However there are other groups like Al-Shaabab, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al- Islamiyya (Ahrar al-Sham) and the Army of Islam/Jaish al-Islam (JAI) who are most certainly Islamic terrorist groups. To attempt to try and claim otherwise is just utterly ridiculous.
It actually strikes me a snide little trick by Muslims who do support the views of these extreme terrorist groups to shield the terrorist from legitimate criticism. Sadly though it's one the European left seem to have fallen for hook, line and sinker.
With the UK more or less declining the opportunity to participate in discussions within the Song Contest bubble it fell to Israel to provide everyone with a spectacular example of how not to go about integrating large numbers of predominately Arab Muslims into society.
Israel: This year they were represented by Hovi Star.
If you want an idea of how famous Hovi Star is within Israel apart from being a chart-topping popstar since 2009 he has also provided the Hebrew voiceover for a host of blockbuster movies such as The Lego Movie, Cinderella, Inside Out and particularly Frozen. Israel made much of his role in Frozen with the style of the song very much in keeping with that movie and animated snowflakes and icicles being projected onto the stage throughout both of the live performances.
With Hovi Star providing the Hebrew voiceover for Frozen the Arabic translation was of course provided by subtitles at the bottom of the screen. This is the sort of thing that is extremely infuriating for Israeli Arab parents because they can't take very young children who don't speak Hebrew to see the movie because they can't yet read Arabic. They can though recognise the pretty pictures on the adverts that are specifically designed to get young children to pester their parents to take them to see the movie.
Although more liberal minded Israeli Jews and Arabs have got together to get more children's movies dubbed into Arabic there is a suspicion that the Jewish, Zionist right are doing this on purpose. It is just another one of the subtle little forms of discrimination they employ to make it extremely difficult for Arabs to live within Israel.
With lyrics such as; "You speak, I listen, I'm your friend" and "Come in close and take my hand" on the surface the song sounded like a plea for Israeli Jews and Arabs to live together in peace and harmony.
However the title of the song "Made of Stars" was a clear reference to the Star of David which is the universal symbol of Judaism. The lyrics also made discreet reference to a people escaping slavery due to a secret promise (with God). Therefore the tone was very clearly intended to remind Israeli Arabs that they will never be anything but second class citizens in a Jewish state.
To remind you of the problems this sort of attitude has brought to Israel in terms of terrorism and security much of the video in support of the song seemed to have been shot along the Tel Aviv seafront. This was a reference to the March 8th (8/3/16) terror attack in which US citizen Taylor Force was stabbed and killed close to where US Vice President Joe Biden was having dinner with his family.
If you need a further reminder of the price that Israel is paying for this attitude while I was writing this there was another stabbing attack on an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv. They seem to be averaging about one per day since September 2015.
20:10 on 30/5/16 (UK date).
Sunday, 29 May 2016
The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: Grand Final Pt.8
This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 7; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest-grand_24.html
Although they had some fun with it the Balkan nations used the Song Contest largely to protest the migration crisis that has been thrust upon them by the western European states. That is because they are still dealing with the consequences of the last time the western European states thrust a migration crisis upon them in the form of the Greater Albania movement.
For many of the western European nations the mass migration of predominately Muslims is still considered something of a novelty.
So they concentrated their efforts on exploring the aspects of this strange new phenomenon with a view to offering a solution. After all the way that you integrate large numbers of Muslim migrants is more or less the same as the way you stop native born Muslims migrating away to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated terrorist groups.
Finland: As I mentioned at the time of the first semi-final they were represented by Sandhja who is half-Finnish, half-Indian. Her look borrowed heavily from British Tamil (Sri Lankan) star M.I.A and the video in support of the song owed a lot to the imagery of Britain's - particularly London's - multicultural inner-city housing estates.
This was done to highlight that due to its links with the UK Commonwealth the UK has a long history of non-white immigration. Despite coming from a vast range of ethnic and religious groups all of these immigrants have been rather successfully integrated into British society. As such very white Finland was hoping the UK could share its experience with the group.
In her stage performance Sandhja kept raising her fingers in the form of a pistol as if she wanted to start singing; "Braap, Braap!" in the middle of her song. This is something that is synonymous with American hip-hop music - "the black music" as it was referred to this year. As such Finland seemed to be openly mocking US policy - particularly that of US President Obama.
However it also seemed to be Sandhja firing the starting gun for the discussion about racial integration.
Although I wouldn't go so far as to describe race relations in Britain as being perfect it is certainly doing a lot better than a lot of other nations. The key to the UK's relative success lies in four main areas;
1.Housing: Obviously the first challenge in integrating immigrants into a society is getting them to live within that society.
If that fails to happen then a phenomenon known as Ghettoisation emerges where all the immigrants from a certain country/culture all live together within a distinct area of a city/country. With no reason to leave their ghetto the immigrants really exist as citizens of the country/culture they've come from with no meaningful contact with the society in which they now live.
Regardless of whether you're talking about Muslims in Molenbeek, Belgium. Tamils in Tooting, UK or African-Americans in Atlanta, US the main driver behind ghettoisation is economic. Newly arrived migrants tend to be poor meaning that they can only afford to live in the cheapest areas of a city.
To combat this the UK operates an integrated planning policy that is largely laid out in Section 106 of the Town & County Planning Act 1990. Broadly speaking this states that if a property developer wants to receive permission for a construction project it must include provision for affordable social housing.
This policy means that even in the richest areas of the UK such as central London you still find properties owned by the local authority or as now more often the case local housing associations. Despite being in some of the richest areas these properties are available at the cheapest rents in the entire country.
As a result no matter where you go in Britain you will find very poor people living right next door to very rich people. This stops poor immigrants clustering together and stops either the rich or the poor forgetting that the other group exists.
The Section 106 provisions are backed up by what is known as Housing Benefit. This is a social welfare payment that is most often used to top-up the wages of the very low paid in order to allow them to pay the higher rents in the private sector away from the social housing sector.
Unfortunately Muslim immigrants pose a particular problem when it comes to housing policy.
That is because they are very heavily influenced by Arab society where the tribal system is extremely prevalent meaning that strong family links are highly valued. As a result if you go to areas of Britain where there are large Muslim populations you will very often find that not only is everybody on a particular street Muslims they're all actually members of the same extended family.
There is also a specific problem with certain sects of Islam such as Deobandi sect which is prevalent amongst Pakistani Muslims. Often confused with the Wahhabism that is actively promoted by Saudi Arabia this sect actually discourages contact between Muslims and non-Muslims whom Deobandis consider disgusting.
2.Schooling: As with many Eurovision nations the schooling of children is compulsory in the UK. Although a great deal of work by Local Authorities and Social Services goes into avoiding things escalating to that stage under law the power does exist for officers of the Court (Sheriffs) to go into homes and physical drag children out in order to force them to go to school.
This obviously provides a useful mechanism to ensure that children are forced to interact with other children from different ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds from a very young age for at least 10 years.
The example that's sort of on the tip of my tongue at the moment comes from the British city of Oldham.
Here following the 2001 race riots the local authority discovered that it had two schools. One was in the middle of a catchment area that had an almost exclusively Muslim population so the school was made up of exclusively Muslim students. The other was in the middle of the neighbouring catchment area that had an almost exclusively white population. As a result that school was made up of exclusively white students.
What the local authority did was shut down both schools. They then opened one big school - the Waterhead Academy - that sat on the border of both catchment areas and mixed all the Muslim and white students together. This not only forced the children to interact with each other it also meant that the parents had to start interacting with each other through things like the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and the school board of parent governors.
Even taking Islam out of the equation integrated education and school has long been recognised as a mechanism for social cohesion. It is being particularly pursued in Northern Ireland through the governmental Integrated Education Fund (IEF) and the non-governmental Northen Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE).
3.Employment: As with schooling employment provides an environment where people from different ethnic, religious and to a lesser extent economic backgrounds are forced to interact with each other on a daily basis.
However in a freemarket economy it is one where the government and Courts as less able to intervene in order to ensure social cohesion. In fact particularly with the European Human Rights Act and other anti-discrimination legislation it is an area where governments are actually specifically forbidden from interfering.
However it does give me an opportunity to discuss something that has been troubling me for a number of years now. The Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) campaign against illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory.
In my younger, more active days I actually did a lot of work alongside BDS activists particularly in relation to the Defence Systems Exhibition International (DSEI) arms fair that takes place in London, UK every two years. Not only were many of these BDS activists Jewish many of them were actually natural born Israeli citizens.
What these BDS activists would do is carefully research all those companies involved in or profiting from the establishment of illegal Israel settlements in Palestine. That research would go to the extent of looking at the entire corporate culture of those companies.
So if an extremist Zionist in the sort of Avigdor Lieberman mould was looking to replace a more moderate Director on the board of one of those companies the BDS activists would buy up shares in that company and make sure that all other shareholders were aware to the prospective candidates political views. The idea being to make sure the appointment was blocked and prevent the company moving in a more extreme direction.
BDS activists would also look carefully at what each of these companies were actually doing in the occupied territories and prioritise them accordingly.
An example of a company that would be given a high priority for campaigning against would be the US construction machinery company Caterpillar. After all their involvement is limited to simply making profit by selling the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) bulldozers to smash down Palestinians homes.
An example of a company given a much lower priority by BDS campaigners would be SodaStream.
Their involvement in the occupied territories is much more significant than Caterpillar's with them operating a factory in the West Bank.
However by operating their factory there SodaStream were providing employment for Palestinian workers where jobs are scarce. They were also providing an environment where Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arab were working together in peace and harmony free from the violence and intolerance that plagues much of the rest of Israel/Arab interactions.
Unfortunately in recent years almost all of that precision has completely disappeared from the BDS.
Where before there was lots of research and the careful application of pressure to force companies to consider the ethics of their involvement in the occupied territories there now seems to be an utter hatred of not only all Israeli companies but also all Jews worldwide.
For example having become a major target for BDS SodaStream closed their West Bank factory in March 2016. The 70+ Palestinians who are now unemployed as a result are hardly giving thanks to BDS activists and a lot of people are left mourning this example of relative harmony between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Caterpillar still makes a fortune selling bulldozers.
In 2014 the actress Scarlett Johansson did a controversial Super Bowl commercial for SodaStream that seemed to gently mock the increasingly hysterical BDS campaigners.
What I found interesting is that amid all the controversy is that even amongst the more extreme Arab press where highlighting someones Jewishness is still considered a form of insult because of her blond hair and blue eyes very few people actually picked up on the fact that Scarlett Johansson is Jewish.
I would make a joke about the Nazis making the same mistake about her ancestors. But there's probably some truth in that.
The Eurovision community itself has rather suffered from this rising tide of anti-Semitism is recent years.
For a long part of the Song Contest's history Israel's fortunes were carefully tied to their aggression towards the Palestinians. So for example if the Israelis were being particularly aggressive a good song would be marked down accordingly while if they were being more peaceful a bad song would be marked up. How good an entry Israel made in relation to their Palestine policy was one of the areas of great political artistry within the contest.
In recent years though that too has disappeared to be replaced by a deafening chorus of: "Kill The Jews!" and last year Israel threatened to quit the contest if they didn't start receiving more equitable treatment. As such it was reassuring that their particularly strong entry this year did deservedly make it through to the final.
Most worryingly this rising tide of anti-Semitism seems to have spread beyond the BDS campaign and Eurovision to infect large parts of the European left.
A prime example of this was the recent suspension by the UK Labour Party of Naz Shah for making extremely anti-Semitic comments. This was followed up by senior Labour Party figure Ken Livingstone attempting to defend her by claiming that Adolf Hitler was a secret Zionist because of the Haazara Agreement.
In both cases Labour supporters lept to both Ms Shah and Mr Livingstone's defence claiming that there was absolutely nothing anti-Semitic about their comments and they were merely protesting Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Ms Shah in particular had attempted to deny the entire history of not only the middle-east region but also of the entire Jewish religion.
If people cannot identify that as anti-Semitic then they are either aggressively anti-Semitic themselves or are so extremely stupid that they have no understanding of the situation whatsoever. Either way as a Socialist I want absolutely nothing to do with them.
I think the problem with the European left really began following the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terrorist attacks against the United States. In response to this the American right seemed to declare every Muslim - and a fair few Sikhs - to be terrorists.
In response to that to show their opposition the European left sort of started to bestow this almost Messianic status on Muslims whereby they're all sainted, good people who cannot possibly lie and don't engage in terrorism. Those who do are simply freedom fighters responding to the oppression of Guantanamo Bay and American Imperialism.
Even after Mohammed Emwazi had been revealed as ISIL's self-styled executioner-in-chief "Jihadi John" there were still those and are still those amongst the British left prepared to defend him. They claim he is merely an innocent victim of British Islamaphobia and racism rather than the a*rsehole he very clear was.
The reality of course is far more complicated than either the American right, the European left or anyone else who engages in this sort of school yard nonsense could bring themselves to understand.
There are roughly 1.7bn Muslims on the planet with big divisions between not only the Sunni and Shia branches but also between the Salafi and Sufi interpretations of those branches to name just a few.
So as with Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus and all the other religions the vast majority of Muslims are kind, peaceful, reasonable people.
However there is a tiny minority who are utterly opposed to things like religious freedom and ethnic tolerance. Some of that minority are prepared to use violence to achieve their aims so pose a significant security risk to those who don't agree with them.
In fact I would go so far as to say that the European left's insistence that all Muslims are one thing or the other is in itself a form of racism.
The fourth main plank of Britain's success in race relations is the policy of multiculturalism. At around 16:55 on 29/5/16 (UK date) I will try and deal with that along with a bit of a tidy up after dinner.
Edited at around 18:10 on 29/5/16 (UK date) to add above & below;
4.Multiculturalism. This is something that has been practised by successive British governments since at least the 1970's. Far from being just a mere buzzword it is actually a carefully developed political philosophy.
Essentially it dictates that rather than being forced to adopt the cultural practises of their new homeland immigrants are free to continue practising their own culture. Provided their culture doesn't impede on the rights of other people in their adopted homeland.
As always when it comes to balancing the rights of different individual citizens within a society what sort of compromises are considered reasonable under multiculturalism is an extremely complicated and evolving set of legal, moral and political questions. I am certainly not going to be able to give a definitive answer here and I don't think anyone ever will.
Obviously there are some situations where the answer is easy.
For example if you don't want to eat pork or a woman wants to wear a headscarf it makes absolutely no difference to me. However if you are starting to talk about passing laws or even creating a societal peer pressure whereby nobody is allowed to eat pork and all women must wear a headscarf then you are starting to behave unreasonably by impeding on the rights of others.
By the same token you couldn't suddenly declare that rape, murder and theft are part of your culture and therefore your right to commit those illegal acts is protected under multiculturalism.
Quite an interesting example from British law that's built up over recent years relates to Sikhs and the carrying of offensive weapons.
It is one of the five articles of the Sikh faith that men must carry a sword or knife known as a "Kirpan" with them at all times. However British law prohibits the carrying of most knives in public in order to reduce violent crime such as murder, assault and armed robbery.
Although I can't pretend I'm up to date on the latest guidance to prosecutors there has been extensive debate over the years as to how reconcile Sikh's duty to carry a Kirpan with the offence under Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
I seem to remember that a specific design of a Kirpan is defined in case law. Therefore if a clearly very observant Sikh man who is upholding the other four articles of faith - Kesh, Kangha, Kara, Kachera - is found in possession of a Kirpan which is say 4 inches rather than the permitted 3.5 inches in length it is impossible for them to have committed the criminal offence.
However if they suddenly start carrying a machete up and down the High Street or use their Kirpan to murder someone they're still going to go to prison.
Another quite interesting example that's cropped up in London recently concerns Pentecostalist Christians from sub-Saharan Africa. Although there doesn't seem to be any fixed rules for Pentecostalism many practitioners still believe in demonic possession. As such they regularly conduct exorcisms to rid naughty children of evil spirits.
Many of these exorcisms can be both physically and psychologically extremely violent. Therefore they break various UK laws against child abuse. It is becoming an increasing problem for child social services to know when to step in to protect the children and when to stand back and respect the cultural practises of their parents.
A current example from the Eurovision area that does directly relate to Muslims in particular comes from Switzerland.
Here two Muslim boys - of unspecified sect - aged 14 and 15 refused to shake the hand of their female teacher as is expected under school rules. They argued that their interpretation of Islam forbids them from that type of physical contact with members of the opposite sex whom they are not related to.
The school in the town of Therwil in the Basel-Country Canton caused uproar by accepting this argument and refusing to punish the boys for violating school discipline.
The national education authority then got involved. It ruled that the local authority had violated the teacher's right not to be discriminated against at work on the basis of gender by not disciplining the boys and threatened a USD5,100 fine if the school did not reverse its decision.
I understand that this is an ongoing debate within Switzerland. However at the risk of being ostracised by the European left I think that the boys should do what they are told.
After all if they can't find a way to reconcile that sort of completely non-sexual touching with their religion they are going to have extreme problems both with women and living in a European society for the rest of their lives.
19:20 on 29/5/16 (UK date).
Although they had some fun with it the Balkan nations used the Song Contest largely to protest the migration crisis that has been thrust upon them by the western European states. That is because they are still dealing with the consequences of the last time the western European states thrust a migration crisis upon them in the form of the Greater Albania movement.
For many of the western European nations the mass migration of predominately Muslims is still considered something of a novelty.
So they concentrated their efforts on exploring the aspects of this strange new phenomenon with a view to offering a solution. After all the way that you integrate large numbers of Muslim migrants is more or less the same as the way you stop native born Muslims migrating away to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated terrorist groups.
Finland: As I mentioned at the time of the first semi-final they were represented by Sandhja who is half-Finnish, half-Indian. Her look borrowed heavily from British Tamil (Sri Lankan) star M.I.A and the video in support of the song owed a lot to the imagery of Britain's - particularly London's - multicultural inner-city housing estates.
This was done to highlight that due to its links with the UK Commonwealth the UK has a long history of non-white immigration. Despite coming from a vast range of ethnic and religious groups all of these immigrants have been rather successfully integrated into British society. As such very white Finland was hoping the UK could share its experience with the group.
In her stage performance Sandhja kept raising her fingers in the form of a pistol as if she wanted to start singing; "Braap, Braap!" in the middle of her song. This is something that is synonymous with American hip-hop music - "the black music" as it was referred to this year. As such Finland seemed to be openly mocking US policy - particularly that of US President Obama.
However it also seemed to be Sandhja firing the starting gun for the discussion about racial integration.
Although I wouldn't go so far as to describe race relations in Britain as being perfect it is certainly doing a lot better than a lot of other nations. The key to the UK's relative success lies in four main areas;
1.Housing: Obviously the first challenge in integrating immigrants into a society is getting them to live within that society.
If that fails to happen then a phenomenon known as Ghettoisation emerges where all the immigrants from a certain country/culture all live together within a distinct area of a city/country. With no reason to leave their ghetto the immigrants really exist as citizens of the country/culture they've come from with no meaningful contact with the society in which they now live.
Regardless of whether you're talking about Muslims in Molenbeek, Belgium. Tamils in Tooting, UK or African-Americans in Atlanta, US the main driver behind ghettoisation is economic. Newly arrived migrants tend to be poor meaning that they can only afford to live in the cheapest areas of a city.
To combat this the UK operates an integrated planning policy that is largely laid out in Section 106 of the Town & County Planning Act 1990. Broadly speaking this states that if a property developer wants to receive permission for a construction project it must include provision for affordable social housing.
This policy means that even in the richest areas of the UK such as central London you still find properties owned by the local authority or as now more often the case local housing associations. Despite being in some of the richest areas these properties are available at the cheapest rents in the entire country.
As a result no matter where you go in Britain you will find very poor people living right next door to very rich people. This stops poor immigrants clustering together and stops either the rich or the poor forgetting that the other group exists.
The Section 106 provisions are backed up by what is known as Housing Benefit. This is a social welfare payment that is most often used to top-up the wages of the very low paid in order to allow them to pay the higher rents in the private sector away from the social housing sector.
Unfortunately Muslim immigrants pose a particular problem when it comes to housing policy.
That is because they are very heavily influenced by Arab society where the tribal system is extremely prevalent meaning that strong family links are highly valued. As a result if you go to areas of Britain where there are large Muslim populations you will very often find that not only is everybody on a particular street Muslims they're all actually members of the same extended family.
There is also a specific problem with certain sects of Islam such as Deobandi sect which is prevalent amongst Pakistani Muslims. Often confused with the Wahhabism that is actively promoted by Saudi Arabia this sect actually discourages contact between Muslims and non-Muslims whom Deobandis consider disgusting.
2.Schooling: As with many Eurovision nations the schooling of children is compulsory in the UK. Although a great deal of work by Local Authorities and Social Services goes into avoiding things escalating to that stage under law the power does exist for officers of the Court (Sheriffs) to go into homes and physical drag children out in order to force them to go to school.
This obviously provides a useful mechanism to ensure that children are forced to interact with other children from different ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds from a very young age for at least 10 years.
The example that's sort of on the tip of my tongue at the moment comes from the British city of Oldham.
Here following the 2001 race riots the local authority discovered that it had two schools. One was in the middle of a catchment area that had an almost exclusively Muslim population so the school was made up of exclusively Muslim students. The other was in the middle of the neighbouring catchment area that had an almost exclusively white population. As a result that school was made up of exclusively white students.
What the local authority did was shut down both schools. They then opened one big school - the Waterhead Academy - that sat on the border of both catchment areas and mixed all the Muslim and white students together. This not only forced the children to interact with each other it also meant that the parents had to start interacting with each other through things like the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and the school board of parent governors.
Even taking Islam out of the equation integrated education and school has long been recognised as a mechanism for social cohesion. It is being particularly pursued in Northern Ireland through the governmental Integrated Education Fund (IEF) and the non-governmental Northen Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE).
3.Employment: As with schooling employment provides an environment where people from different ethnic, religious and to a lesser extent economic backgrounds are forced to interact with each other on a daily basis.
However in a freemarket economy it is one where the government and Courts as less able to intervene in order to ensure social cohesion. In fact particularly with the European Human Rights Act and other anti-discrimination legislation it is an area where governments are actually specifically forbidden from interfering.
However it does give me an opportunity to discuss something that has been troubling me for a number of years now. The Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) campaign against illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory.
In my younger, more active days I actually did a lot of work alongside BDS activists particularly in relation to the Defence Systems Exhibition International (DSEI) arms fair that takes place in London, UK every two years. Not only were many of these BDS activists Jewish many of them were actually natural born Israeli citizens.
What these BDS activists would do is carefully research all those companies involved in or profiting from the establishment of illegal Israel settlements in Palestine. That research would go to the extent of looking at the entire corporate culture of those companies.
So if an extremist Zionist in the sort of Avigdor Lieberman mould was looking to replace a more moderate Director on the board of one of those companies the BDS activists would buy up shares in that company and make sure that all other shareholders were aware to the prospective candidates political views. The idea being to make sure the appointment was blocked and prevent the company moving in a more extreme direction.
BDS activists would also look carefully at what each of these companies were actually doing in the occupied territories and prioritise them accordingly.
An example of a company that would be given a high priority for campaigning against would be the US construction machinery company Caterpillar. After all their involvement is limited to simply making profit by selling the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) bulldozers to smash down Palestinians homes.
An example of a company given a much lower priority by BDS campaigners would be SodaStream.
Their involvement in the occupied territories is much more significant than Caterpillar's with them operating a factory in the West Bank.
However by operating their factory there SodaStream were providing employment for Palestinian workers where jobs are scarce. They were also providing an environment where Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arab were working together in peace and harmony free from the violence and intolerance that plagues much of the rest of Israel/Arab interactions.
Unfortunately in recent years almost all of that precision has completely disappeared from the BDS.
Where before there was lots of research and the careful application of pressure to force companies to consider the ethics of their involvement in the occupied territories there now seems to be an utter hatred of not only all Israeli companies but also all Jews worldwide.
For example having become a major target for BDS SodaStream closed their West Bank factory in March 2016. The 70+ Palestinians who are now unemployed as a result are hardly giving thanks to BDS activists and a lot of people are left mourning this example of relative harmony between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Caterpillar still makes a fortune selling bulldozers.
In 2014 the actress Scarlett Johansson did a controversial Super Bowl commercial for SodaStream that seemed to gently mock the increasingly hysterical BDS campaigners.
What I found interesting is that amid all the controversy is that even amongst the more extreme Arab press where highlighting someones Jewishness is still considered a form of insult because of her blond hair and blue eyes very few people actually picked up on the fact that Scarlett Johansson is Jewish.
I would make a joke about the Nazis making the same mistake about her ancestors. But there's probably some truth in that.
The Eurovision community itself has rather suffered from this rising tide of anti-Semitism is recent years.
For a long part of the Song Contest's history Israel's fortunes were carefully tied to their aggression towards the Palestinians. So for example if the Israelis were being particularly aggressive a good song would be marked down accordingly while if they were being more peaceful a bad song would be marked up. How good an entry Israel made in relation to their Palestine policy was one of the areas of great political artistry within the contest.
In recent years though that too has disappeared to be replaced by a deafening chorus of: "Kill The Jews!" and last year Israel threatened to quit the contest if they didn't start receiving more equitable treatment. As such it was reassuring that their particularly strong entry this year did deservedly make it through to the final.
Most worryingly this rising tide of anti-Semitism seems to have spread beyond the BDS campaign and Eurovision to infect large parts of the European left.
A prime example of this was the recent suspension by the UK Labour Party of Naz Shah for making extremely anti-Semitic comments. This was followed up by senior Labour Party figure Ken Livingstone attempting to defend her by claiming that Adolf Hitler was a secret Zionist because of the Haazara Agreement.
In both cases Labour supporters lept to both Ms Shah and Mr Livingstone's defence claiming that there was absolutely nothing anti-Semitic about their comments and they were merely protesting Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Ms Shah in particular had attempted to deny the entire history of not only the middle-east region but also of the entire Jewish religion.
If people cannot identify that as anti-Semitic then they are either aggressively anti-Semitic themselves or are so extremely stupid that they have no understanding of the situation whatsoever. Either way as a Socialist I want absolutely nothing to do with them.
I think the problem with the European left really began following the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terrorist attacks against the United States. In response to this the American right seemed to declare every Muslim - and a fair few Sikhs - to be terrorists.
In response to that to show their opposition the European left sort of started to bestow this almost Messianic status on Muslims whereby they're all sainted, good people who cannot possibly lie and don't engage in terrorism. Those who do are simply freedom fighters responding to the oppression of Guantanamo Bay and American Imperialism.
Even after Mohammed Emwazi had been revealed as ISIL's self-styled executioner-in-chief "Jihadi John" there were still those and are still those amongst the British left prepared to defend him. They claim he is merely an innocent victim of British Islamaphobia and racism rather than the a*rsehole he very clear was.
The reality of course is far more complicated than either the American right, the European left or anyone else who engages in this sort of school yard nonsense could bring themselves to understand.
There are roughly 1.7bn Muslims on the planet with big divisions between not only the Sunni and Shia branches but also between the Salafi and Sufi interpretations of those branches to name just a few.
So as with Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus and all the other religions the vast majority of Muslims are kind, peaceful, reasonable people.
However there is a tiny minority who are utterly opposed to things like religious freedom and ethnic tolerance. Some of that minority are prepared to use violence to achieve their aims so pose a significant security risk to those who don't agree with them.
In fact I would go so far as to say that the European left's insistence that all Muslims are one thing or the other is in itself a form of racism.
The fourth main plank of Britain's success in race relations is the policy of multiculturalism. At around 16:55 on 29/5/16 (UK date) I will try and deal with that along with a bit of a tidy up after dinner.
Edited at around 18:10 on 29/5/16 (UK date) to add above & below;
4.Multiculturalism. This is something that has been practised by successive British governments since at least the 1970's. Far from being just a mere buzzword it is actually a carefully developed political philosophy.
Essentially it dictates that rather than being forced to adopt the cultural practises of their new homeland immigrants are free to continue practising their own culture. Provided their culture doesn't impede on the rights of other people in their adopted homeland.
As always when it comes to balancing the rights of different individual citizens within a society what sort of compromises are considered reasonable under multiculturalism is an extremely complicated and evolving set of legal, moral and political questions. I am certainly not going to be able to give a definitive answer here and I don't think anyone ever will.
Obviously there are some situations where the answer is easy.
For example if you don't want to eat pork or a woman wants to wear a headscarf it makes absolutely no difference to me. However if you are starting to talk about passing laws or even creating a societal peer pressure whereby nobody is allowed to eat pork and all women must wear a headscarf then you are starting to behave unreasonably by impeding on the rights of others.
By the same token you couldn't suddenly declare that rape, murder and theft are part of your culture and therefore your right to commit those illegal acts is protected under multiculturalism.
Quite an interesting example from British law that's built up over recent years relates to Sikhs and the carrying of offensive weapons.
It is one of the five articles of the Sikh faith that men must carry a sword or knife known as a "Kirpan" with them at all times. However British law prohibits the carrying of most knives in public in order to reduce violent crime such as murder, assault and armed robbery.
Although I can't pretend I'm up to date on the latest guidance to prosecutors there has been extensive debate over the years as to how reconcile Sikh's duty to carry a Kirpan with the offence under Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
I seem to remember that a specific design of a Kirpan is defined in case law. Therefore if a clearly very observant Sikh man who is upholding the other four articles of faith - Kesh, Kangha, Kara, Kachera - is found in possession of a Kirpan which is say 4 inches rather than the permitted 3.5 inches in length it is impossible for them to have committed the criminal offence.
However if they suddenly start carrying a machete up and down the High Street or use their Kirpan to murder someone they're still going to go to prison.
Another quite interesting example that's cropped up in London recently concerns Pentecostalist Christians from sub-Saharan Africa. Although there doesn't seem to be any fixed rules for Pentecostalism many practitioners still believe in demonic possession. As such they regularly conduct exorcisms to rid naughty children of evil spirits.
Many of these exorcisms can be both physically and psychologically extremely violent. Therefore they break various UK laws against child abuse. It is becoming an increasing problem for child social services to know when to step in to protect the children and when to stand back and respect the cultural practises of their parents.
A current example from the Eurovision area that does directly relate to Muslims in particular comes from Switzerland.
Here two Muslim boys - of unspecified sect - aged 14 and 15 refused to shake the hand of their female teacher as is expected under school rules. They argued that their interpretation of Islam forbids them from that type of physical contact with members of the opposite sex whom they are not related to.
The school in the town of Therwil in the Basel-Country Canton caused uproar by accepting this argument and refusing to punish the boys for violating school discipline.
The national education authority then got involved. It ruled that the local authority had violated the teacher's right not to be discriminated against at work on the basis of gender by not disciplining the boys and threatened a USD5,100 fine if the school did not reverse its decision.
I understand that this is an ongoing debate within Switzerland. However at the risk of being ostracised by the European left I think that the boys should do what they are told.
After all if they can't find a way to reconcile that sort of completely non-sexual touching with their religion they are going to have extreme problems both with women and living in a European society for the rest of their lives.
19:20 on 29/5/16 (UK date).
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