Puppets on a string

If you want to know which states like or dislike your state, which states have alliances with other states and which states will take the opportunity to cock a snoot at your state then simply take part in the Eurovision Song Contest.

As members of the European Broadcasting Commission Australia and Israel also compete in the competition.

Five states have so far declared that they will boycott Eurovision if Israel is allowed to participate in 2026 because of the genocide being carried out in Gaza by Israel as acknowledged by a United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry in a report issued on 16 September.

Yeah, a boycott, wow, that will really make Israel sit up and take notice.

That the event, which began in 1956, is as much, if not more, as a nationalistic flag waving event as it is about music is beyond question.

For anyone who cares the UK last won in 1997.

As a result of the military operation in Ukraine Russia has, since 2022, been banned from taking part in Eurovision. So, on 20 September Russia held its own version of Eurovision called Intervision.

With slight variations, for example the contest was judged by individual judges from the twenty three countries participating thus no public vote, the contest was very similar in format to that of Eurovision. Lots of pictures of exited individuals in the audience hold or waving their flags from whichever state they were part of.

Politics, as in Eurovision, reared its ugly head when the singer representing the USA was banned by Australia from doing so as she had dual American Australian citizenship.

The twenty three countries participating in Intervision came from China, India, South American, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. The Russian singer asked not to be judged because it would be against the rules of hospitality.

The contest was won by a singer from VietNam.

For those interested the complete programme can be viewed on the Internet.

So obviously it was a Russian organised ‘up yours’ to those states opposed to Russia in America, Europe, East Asia and the Pacific.

Intervision was not, however, without interest as putting all the jingoist nonsense to one side it was an opportunity to experience, and enjoy even, the opportunity to view a cultural perspective from states that one would not perhaps otherwise encounter without doing some in depth internet research.