Plus: Tweet of the day
IN TODAY’S EDITION
1️⃣ Eight signals sent at Eurovision |
2️⃣ Another parliament dissolved in Kuwait |
3️⃣ Tweet of the day |
Hi Intriguer. I’ve slowly come to appreciate the kind of impact that sport can have in our world. Eg, I was in Honduras when the country played its first FIFA World Cup match in decades – interestingly, crime plummeted that month. And I saw elsewhere how surfing offered local kids a sense of community and purpose that might’ve otherwise been lacking.
Of course, the other piece here is around how governments use sports to build influence, and we’ll bring you some of those insights when Paris kicks off the Summer Olympics in July.
But what about the arts and entertainment? Well Eurovision, the world’s biggest live music event, just wrapped in Sweden, so today’s briefing walks us through some of the international messaging on display.
PS – The world’s largest-ever elections are happening in India right now, and we’ll soon send a very intriguing special edition to any folks who share Intrigue with two friends (using your unique referral code down below).
Israel expands Rafah operation.
The Israeli military has ordered more Palestinians sheltering in Rafah to evacuate after announcing plans to expand its ground offensive in pursuit of Hamas. Meanwhile, fighting has restarted in areas of Northern Gaza the IDF cleared months ago. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged the Israeli government to put forward a sustainable long-term plan for the Strip or risk being confronted by “chaos, by anarchy and ultimately by Hamas again”.
Putin replaces defence minister.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is replacing long-time Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu with economist and former deputy prime minister Andrei Belousov. The outgoing Shoigu will be the new secretary of Russia's powerful security council – the move reflects Putin’s dissatisfaction with the war’s progress, while acknowledging Shoigu’s loyalty.
China to sell ultralong bonds.
Beijing has announced plans to sell its first batch of long-term bonds worth $140B this week as authorities move to boost government spending to stimulate the economy. Bonds with tenors of 30 years will go on sale this Friday, while 20 and 50 year bonds will follow in the coming weeks.
UN votes to upgrade Palestinian membership.
The UN General Assembly voted 143-9 on Friday to grant new rights and privileges to the State of Palestine, and urged the Security Council to reconsider the Palestinian bid for full membership. The State of Palestine is currently a permanent observer at the UN. The US, Israel, and seven other countries voted against the motion, while 25 abstained.
Internet goes down across East Africa.
Internet users in East Africa have reported widespread connectivity issues after damage was reported to a key submarine internet cable.
TOP STORY
Eight intriguing signals sent at Eurovision
Switzerland’s Nemo won in Sweden on Saturday night, with the song ‘The Code’.
If you live in Europe, chances are you joined a couple hundred million others and tuned into Eurovision on Saturday night – the world's largest and longest-running annual TV music competition.
Where's the intrigue in that? While we usually trudge through 200-page reports to get you briefed, this weekend we arguably endured something more: hours of smoke machines, sax solos, epic key-changes, latex vests, people on stilts, silky-smooth synth, gravity-defying sets, flute-wielding rappers, novelty trampolines, and glitter cannons. That's how committed we are to you.
But if you think about it, Eurovision really is political by definition: born in 1956, it's run by the Swiss-based European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The EBU initially had modest technical aims (figuring out cross-border broadcasts) but really, Eurovision quickly became about building post-WWII unity and solidarity.
And sure, there's a litany of 'no-politics' rules: organisers have deployed ‘anti-booing’ tech, and once banned Georgia for its 2009 song against Putin ('We Don't Wanna Put In' 🥁). They even published a list of banned non-national flags that casually lumped together (for example) the banners of both Scotland and ISIS.
But even with all these rules, the whole exercise absolutely oozes geopolitics. Here are just eight of the kinds of signals routinely sent via Eurovision.
1️⃣ There've been bans (eg, against Russia) and calls for bans (eg, against Israel this year), while regional rivals often trade boycotts. Jordan once even cut the contest's local transmission when Israel won in 1978, and casually (if wrongly) told Jordanian viewers that Belgium had won.
2️⃣ For those that participate, it's often about projecting 'soft power'. And of course, it works the other way, too: France's foreign minister once got so outraged by his country's poor performance, he got his foreign ministry involved. For many post-Soviet countries, Eurovision has also helped project national identities to the world.
3️⃣ But still, Eurovision acts have sent plenty of specific political messages over the years – whether the love ballad about the Maastricht Treaty (sounds catchy), the debt crisis (🤘), health policy (what a banger), and beyond.
4️⃣ Sometimes the signal is so subtle, folks still debate if it even happened – eg, was Spain's 1982 rendition of a tango (the genre born in Argentina) a subtle protest against the UK's role in the war with Argentina?
5️⃣ And sometimes, the signal is unintentional: Portugal's military secretly chose the country's 1974 Eurovision entry as a covert signal to commence its operation to topple the country's dictatorship (which is exactly what then happened).
Or take Azerbaijan, which fire-hosed a record $180M at its 2012 host duties, only to then undo any branding benefits by detaining 43 of its own citizens who had dared to vote for regional rival, Armenia.
6️⃣ Sometimes, it's about the signal that viewers want to send with their vote, such as the way Ukraine's 2022 win reflected Europe’s post-invasion solidarity (though Ukraine was already a serious Eurovision player).
7️⃣ And sometimes those audience signals are unplanned – there was a stunned silence in 1993 when the hosts invited votes from besieged Sarajevo, but the line went dead; then a big audience cheer erupted when a voice finally came through. That local audience reaction signalled solidarity with a place enduring a brutal, years-long siege.
8️⃣ And yes, sometimes the signals are undesired. When Sweden didn't allocate any votes to local rival Norway in 1995, Sweden's ambassador had to spend days calming tensions. Likewise when Azerbaijan didn't cast any votes for Russia in 2013, Putin dispatched his foreign minister to Baku to object to this "outrageous action".
All these high stakes partly explain why the voting rules have changed a couple of dozen times since 1956. They also help explain why a couple hundred million folks keep tuning in each year. People – and governments – really care.
INTRIGUE’S TAKE
So once you see Eurovision in the above context, it feels a bit obvious to declare that geopolitics permeates the song contest. Like soccer permeates the FIFA world cup, or chicken permeates KFC, geopolitics is arguably the whole point – in this case, to put wind in the sails of the European project.
But the contest's success has still raised some interesting dilemmas.
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For some of the more authoritarian participants, there's tension between wanting to reject the liberalism on display, fearing the popular rejection that lurks, and yet craving the affirmation on offer
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For the founding Western European countries, there's the cultural triumph in expanding the Eurovision orbit and yet, as more countries join, there’s also a loss of control (a rather neat echo of the EU itself), and
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At its heart, Eurovision is still weighing in on big and fundamentally political questions, like… what's Europe? With (for example) Australia now participating, is Europe now more an idea than a location?
Oh, and so who won this year? As Europe grapples with its biggest land war since WWII, there’s something almost inevitable about the fact that a country relentlessly devoted to neutrality ended up taking home the glass microphone: Switzerland.
Also worth noting:
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Sweden (last year’s winner) hosted this weekend’s final, with Sweden’s Crown Princess (Victoria) kicking things off on Saturday night.
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There’ve been attempts at launching rival contests over the years: the Soviets tried the Intervision Song Contest which lasted four years. And after Turkey left Eurovision in 2012 it tried Turkvision.
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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE…
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🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: Armenia and Azerbaijan held peace talks in the Kazakh city of Almaty on Saturday aimed at reaching a lasting agreement, but talks concluded with unresolved “differences”. Both countries have agreed to continue negotiations despite protests in Yerevan calling for the Armenian leader's resignation following territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
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🇻🇦 Vatican: 49 Vatican Museum employees have filed a lawsuit against the Pope Francis administration for “unfair and poor conditions” in the workplace. The workers say their suit comes after their requests were “left unanswered for years”.
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🇵🇭 Philippines: Manila has moved to tighten visa rules for tourists from China to help protect “national security”. Its foreign ministry denies any link to tensions in the South China Sea, instead citing reports of “illegal activities” such as kidnapping and fraud committed in the Philippines.
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🇵🇦 Panama: President-elect José Raúl Mulino says he’ll try to shut down the notorious Darien Gap migration route that saw more than half a million people enter Panama en route north last year. Mulino, who made this promise on the campaign trail, takes office on July 1st.
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🇰🇼 Kuwait: The emir dissolved Kuwait’s parliament on Friday, just days before the body was set to meet for the first time since elections last month. Emir al-Sabah and his appointed cabinet will assume some of the assembly’s powers, citing a “spread of corruption to reach most state facilities”.
EXTRA INTRIGUE
🤣 Your weekly roundup of the world’s lighter news
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A German political party is debating subsidising doner kebabs in the country.
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Airport security officers in Miami have discovered a bag of snakes in a passenger’s pants.
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An Afghan diplomat has resigned after being accused of smuggling nearly $2 million worth of gold into India.
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An Australian is now driving around town with a deadly snake in her car, after four failed attempts to remove it.
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And legendary Swiss company Victorinox is soon releasing a Swiss army knife without a knife.
TWEET OF THE DAY
Usually you send someone a congratulatory message when they win an election, but sometimes the EU prefers to send a cranky tweet instead. North Macedonia’s new president, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, caused a kerfuffle yesterday (Sunday) by referring to her country as ‘Macedonia’ rather than its constitutional name of ‘North Macedonia’.
Why all the fuss? Greece has objected to North Macedonia’s NATO and EU accession for decades, insisting that by calling itself Macedonia, the country was (mis)appropriating Greek heritage. So in 2018 the two neighbours agreed to add the ‘North’. Maybe the new president didn’t get the memo?
DAILY POLL
Do you think art and politics can ever be separated? |
Last Thursday’s poll: Where do you see this TikTok saga landing?
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ ⛔ TikTok will lose the court case and be banned in the US (34%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤝 It'll lose the court case then sell to a US buyer (without the algorithm) (46%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏆 It'll win the court case and survive unscathed (15%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (5%)
Your two cents:
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🤝 H.C: “Not clear about this court case, but there is simply too much political hay to be made in an election year for ByteDance to escape unscathed. Plenty of US buyers await, so at some point, either: (1) TikTok's true owners do an economic calculation and cash in their enormous pile of chips, or (2) TikTok's true owners reveal other-than-economic motives, which would retrospectively justify the ongoing legal harassment.”
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⛔ B.C: “If ByteDance does lose the case, they'll just bite the bullet and lose the US market. TikTok's biggest market is in the US, but it isn't their only market, so they'll just cling onto whatever markets they have left.”
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🏆 S.C: “I highly doubt the SCOTUS would allow the US government to seize a company or force it to close. There have been plenty of cases in the past reinforcing the 1st and 4th amendments.”
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✍️ R.J.K: “The TikTok uproar seems to highlight and downplay the personal intrusion of all social media platforms. Your private data siphoned to PRC or Meta? What's that worth? Should we be concerned? I guess the consensus might be meh.”
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