Eurovision: Love Love Peace Peace

Shoulda won.

If everyone's in on the joke, is it still a joke?

PS RIP Eurovision 1956-2016. Neil Clark on the conspiracy to stop Russia winning, and to let those eastern European darlings of the West, Ukraine, win.

Jamala did not win either the audience vote - won by Russia - or the jury vote - won by Australia.

Amina: The First Casualty?

"It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Amina Abdalla Arraf affair has been one big elaborate hoax, designed to further discredit the Syrian regime abroad. If that's the case, it wouldn't be the first time that gullible westerners have been taken in, hook, line and sinker, over alleged human rights abuses in far-away countries which are not in the West's good books...
"Of course, the regimes in Syria, Iran and Iraq have been responsible for human rights abuses. But the willingness of western journalists and bloggers to suspend their critical thinking when stories of alleged abuses from the 'Official Bad Guys' emerge, as they've apparently done in the case of Amina Abdalla Arraf, plays right into the hands of those who have an agenda to isolate or even use military action against the countries in question.
"As Alexander Cockburn highlighted on The First Post yesterday, whereas 'Libya' appears at least 14 times in the three major declarations issued at the recent G8 summit in Deauville, and 'Syria' 12 times, 'Bahrain', another state where anti-government protesters have been brutally repressed by the authorities, appears not at all.
"By obsessively focusing on human rights transgressions in certain countries at the expense of others, bloggers and journalists, many of whom no doubt consider themselves to be left-wing, are in fact furthering an agenda which is anything but progressive."

Neil Clark writing for The First Post. He blogs at NeilClark666.

Update: Another view from al-bab.com. "But let's consider another possibility: that the writer, who had originally only intended to give her thoughts on life as an Arab lesbian, decided that with all the media attention and worsening events in Syria, it was getting out of hand and the time had come to stop, and perhaps even go into hiding..."

Update 2: Sunday June 12th. 'New evidence about Amina, the "Gay Girl in Damascus" hoax' from The Electronic Intifada.
This seems to out the real blogger - Fagburn can not verify any of its assertions.