Yes, it was. And it was even more in-your-face political that the preceding years, which is not surprising since we are in the crescendo of the infowar against Russia (next round of fire will come during the Olympics - another highly-politicised event).
Here is a good analysis of what was going on during EuroVisioon 2016:
Eurovision’s Dirty Secrets: Another Instrument in anti-Russia Proxy War and Crimean Tartar Cardhttps://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/dirty-secrets-of-eurovision-another-instrument-in-a-proxy-war-against-russia-how-jamala-won/A few telling excepts:
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‘Repeat after me: NATO loves Jamala and there was absolutely nothing political about her win’ (via @marcelsardo)
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Eurovision announced that the final result of the 2016 contest would be calculated based on two things: popular vote in each country and a secret judging panel of five in each country. The judging panel was not announced publicly and it met behind closed doors. This arrangement posed a lot of questions as to who were the judges, who named them, and who influenced their opinion. The unknown judges’ marks were pompously presented during the final TV vote as the marks of the country in question, which negated the system of public voting.
News-Front Agency, whose material I sometimes post on FT, has interviewed a member of the German judging panel, who said that they met and voted a day prior to the actual final performances. You decide what this means: that 5 judges times 40+ countries were all clairvoyant? Or, more plausibly, they were simply told how to vote?
Oh yes, before I forget, according to rules, the songs must not be political. After all, Eurovision is all about ‘cooperation and building bridges,’ right? The winner of this year’s Eurovision outright broke this rule with her openly political song.
Another rule: countries cannot vote for their own singers; they must vote for other countries. And so they did.
According to Eurovision’s own tally, the all-European popular vote across the board was given to the Russian performer Sergey Lazarev. However, for some ‘strange and unexplainable’ reason Lazarev across the board received extremely low scores from the national judging panels. For example, in Ukraine popular vote gave him 12 – maximum, while judges gave him 0.
The video above (watch from 3:55 onward) gives a list of strange disparity between the popular and judge vote in various countries when it came to judging the Russian singer’s performance. On the list: Armenia gave Russia: popular vote – 12, judges – 2; Estonia 12 vs 0, Ukraine 12 vs 0; Czechia: 10 vs 0; Georgia: 8 vs 0; Germany and Serbia both: 12 vs 1.
Belarus, Azerbaijan, Greece and Cyprus gave Russia the highest score, 12 points, on both sides.
Meanwhile, the judges routinely gave their highest score to a participant from… Australia. I haven’t listened myself, but I am sure the charming Korean girl from Australia deserved such high score and her performance was lovely… That said, I must have missed the Great Earth Shift in the past few weeks. Did Australian continent suddenly move from its usual place is southern hemisphere and somehow became co-joined with Europe? After all, Eurovision, as so many Europeans like to insist, is a EUROPEAN contest.
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But let’s get back to the judging results. So, Russian singer gets the popular vote and Australian singer gets the judges preference. Now, a wild guess who actually won? That’s right, Jamala, a Crimean Tartar singer from Ukraine. Australian singer was second and Russian Sergey Lazarev ended up third.
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The song Jamala sang was called ‘1944.’ It talked about tragic experiences of Crimean Tartars during WWII, when the entire tribe was deported to Central Asia. Let me again point out that political songs are not allowed at this competition, yet this rule is routinely broken. I think next time Russian singers should sing about the 27 million Russians/Soviets killed in WWII, or about Mongol-Tartar invasion and the devastation Crimean Tartars inflicted on Russians throughout history; Brits should sing about bombings by German aviation of Coventry and London, while Germans should sing how US/UK bombed to the ground Dresden. Serbs should sing how NATO bombed their country; Czechs – how Germany and Poland invaded them and tore the country apart; Greeks, how Ottoman Turks invaded and killed them, and so on. If some can do it, why can’t others? It’s a democracy and same rules apply to all, don’t they?
And some historical background on the 1944 events, with the much needed context:
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But because the real history was so severely re-written or silenced due to West’s relentless desire to malign everything Russian, let me say a few words for clarity’s sake. The gruesome truth is that when Crimea fell to Hitler and German Nazis in 1941, Crimean Tartar leadership greeted the invaders with great enthusiasm. Under occupation, many Crimean Tartars served as snitches, concentration camp guards and executors of Russians and Ukrainians. The situation in Crimea was quite similar to western Ukraine and Bandera ukro-nazis. Many, many Russians were tortured and executed by, or with the help of, Crimean Tartars.
When Red Army returned in 1944, local witnesses told stories of the brutal genocide Crimean Tartars inflicted together with Hitler’s troops. When volumes and volumes of evidence were collected, the decision was made to relocate all Crimean Tartars to Central Asia, mainly Uzbekistan, partly for their own safety, because Crimeans might have torn them apart if they remained. Let’s recall, it was still the middle of WWII and parts of Soviet territory were not liberated yet. Russians could hardly spare many resources for such a massive endeavour. They acted in the best possible way with the information and capacities they had at the time. Also, considering the brutal invasion Russia/USSR was still under, 27 million dead, cities and infrastructure destroyed, the overwhelming tragedy and devastation, just look at the humanity with which it was handled!
The relocation destination was not the cold Siberia or Kazakhstan, but the warm and sunny Uzbekistan, where there is plentiful food that grows all year round and the climate similar to Crimean. Plus Uzbeks are Muslims, with similar enough customs to the Crimean Tartars, so it was reasonable to assume they would get along.
Granted, just like in the case of Western Ukrainians, not every Crimean Tartar was a snitch or war criminal/mass murderer, but it was the middle of the most brutal war Russia has ever known. There was no possibility to investigate who was who and who did what. It was known that many were and many more supported it. Was it cruel to relocate people so suddenly? Yes, it absolutely was. Now let’s ask ourselves: how would you react if you found out that these people caused thousands of your people to be executed, if you knew many of them looted the homes and buildings retreating Russians were forced to abandon, thus preying on the common tragedy? How would you react if your family was dead because of them? How does the deportation look compared to that inhumanity and cruelty?
On top of it, there was another reason for deportation: as Red Army continued advancing to chase Hitler out of the country, it was legitimately feared that Crimean Tartars may betray again and strike from behind. With no possibility of keeping enough forces to guard Crimea, when all resources were necessary in the advancing western front, when it was impossible to investigate which of them were implicated in treason and which weren’t, the most humane and expedient way to solve the problem was to relocate the entire tribe far from the danger zone. Note also that this way families weren’t separated (which would occur if males, who potentially presented more risk as combatants, were placed in concentration camps till further investigation) and were able to continue living a normal life after relocation.
I’ll just add that during medieval Mongol-Tartar invasion, the nomadic Tartars invaded Russian steppes from Asia. Some of them took over Crimea and settled there, thus becoming ‘Crimean’ Tartars, as opposed to other Tartars living in Russia, such as Volga Tartars. Crimean Tartar Khanate, ruled by a war lord referred to as ‘khan,’ made a living by periodically invading Russian cities (they went as far as the rich Kiev and Moscow). They would loot, kill, burn down cities and kidnap as many Russians as they could, to sell them as highly prized slaves in the Middle East. There is much more to the story, and books could be filled with sordid details.
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A few closing notes and news:
There is a petition (could be more than one), started by an Armenian, which demands that Eurovision 2016 results be annulled. This petition as of yesterday gathered over 100,000 signatures.
Winner Ukraine is supposed to host next year’s Eurovision. Hosting Eurovision 2017 in Ukraine, a country in a state of civil war and rapidly falling apart? Why not, after all they did have presidential elections during civil war.
Jamala has hardly won, but Ukraine already announced that only those Russian singers would be allowed to participate in Eurovision 2017, who are ‘against Russia’s annexation of Crimea and who support this Kiev regime.’ This is in direct violation of Eurovision rules.
It is universally known that Ukraine has absolutely no funds to host Eurovision next year – a very expensive undertaking. All this was predictable and goes to show how little the Eurovision organizers are actually concerned about the quality and success of their competition. Looks like they are much more concerned about humiliating Russia.
Incidentally, in my personal opinion, Russia should stop participating in Eurovision and spend that million euros annually, or whatever the current fee is, on something useful.
Read the full article at
https://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/dirty-secrets-of-eurovision-another-instrument-in-a-proxy-war-against-russia-how-jamala-won