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Hi from Croatia!
I left Switzerland, but Switzerland cannot leave me.
It turned out that the Baby Lasagna controversy, which Pipeaway was the first (and so far the only one) to cover, is a Eurovision drama that just keeps unfolding.
Just last week, this is what happened:
– videos containing subliminal messages calling for Islamic struggle funding were blocked on Swiss YouTube, “due to a legal complaint from the government”
– Basel City finally issued a statement on the Arena Plus incident, pulling the National Cyber Security Centre into the story
– NCSC denied its involvement in the video takedown
So, what we have today is the largest Eurovision public viewing event essentially being deleted from memory, and a government entity that pulled the strings not having the balls to explain this Swiss-wide YouTube censorship. With the lack of media pressure, they surely won’t feel the urge to do it, anyway.
This is not the first time that governments (or governing bodies) have gotten confused while trying to achieve the perfect balance between political correctness, the most rewarding actions (or lack of action), and doing the right thing.
While we still speak Eurovision, my hometown of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, hosted the 1990 contest. At the end of the communist era, the Italian winner Toto Cutugno sang about a united Europe.
Now, 35 years later, despite its “United by Music” motto, Europe is not insieme. It was exactly Italy, together with Germany (countries known for choosing the right side of history, as some online commenters noticed), who supposedly took bullets for Israel when members like Spain, Iceland, and Slovenia pushed the topic of the Eurovision Israel boycott at last week’s EBU‘s General Assembly.
With the help of the UK (BBC, once considered the bastion of professionalism, now faces over 100 of its journalists admitting they are forced to do pro-Israel PR), Israel found new reserves of international patience, with its destiny at the song contest postponed until winter, when Gaza situation (or what is left of it) will be reassessed.
Did you expect anything different? If official Europe can tolerate a genocide at its doorstep, it can certainly clap to the genocider’s songs too.
Croatia also showed its weaker colors this weekend, exposing how easily politics exploits music for achieving dubious goals. Marko Perković Thompson, a singer generously labeled as controversial, held what wants to promote itself as the largest paid concert in the world, while igniting the most primitive set of national passions. Half a million attendees is an inflated number, but it still shows how massive and profiteering the performances of nationalism can be.
Revived fascist shouts and songs, dressed in a patriotic-religious theater, with a drone-apparition of Our Lady in the skies, isn’t just a highly produced kitsch (its extremity comparable to the amount of real trash left by the concert attendees). The silence of political voices, as well as turning a blind eye by those in power who would love a bit of that profit, shows how easily we can sell the most cherished ideals and buy some fake lie as a cornerstone of our beliefs.
Speaking of these trades, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, explained how corporations sustain and profit from genocide.
In what she calls occupation tourism, major online travel platforms, such as Booking.com and Airbnb, list properties in Israeli colonies, which restrict Palestinian access to land, and whitewash Zionist settlers as a “warm and loving community”.
If you need more resources on how your money funds terrorism, you don’t need to look for subliminal messages in popular events. Here is one ethical consumption guide to consult.
Our leaders, our companies, and our song contests find the complicity profitable. It doesn’t matter if they are bought, blackmailed, or brainwashed. Choosing silence is always choosing the wrong side.
In a hen full of chickens, our civilization cries for roosters.
Have a loud week,
Ivan Kralj
Pipeaway.com
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