As the hunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was reaching it's dramatic conclusion
in Boston, US on Friday (19/4/13) a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck
Sichuan province in China. Although this was only considered a medium
'quake as it struck in a region with loose to non-existent building
regulations it did a lot of damage killing some 192 people, injuring
11,000 and making tens of thousand homeless. However as with the death
of the Chinese national in the Boston marathon bombings this was more of
a disaster for the US then it was for China.
By carrying out the Boston marathon bombings, the Ricin letters
conspiracy and the explosion at the Texas fertiliser factory the US was
trying to make itself the centre of attention and open a series of
so-called diplomatic bridges of communication with its allies. China
would obviously be excluded from these bilaterals and therefore be
forced to try and break the code to find out the contents of these
discussions. Through the Sichuan earthquake the environment, god or just
plain dumb luck handed China its own rival disaster through which to
have coded discussions with its allies. So we had things like a female
TV reporter doing live on-scene reports whilst wearing a wedding dress
and a 'miracle baby' that was delivered amid the rubble and could have
been a reference to the West element of the Texas explosion. My
favourite bit though was that the epicentre of the 'quake was within
Lechuan county which is very rural area. This led to lots of talk of
Country Roads being blocked, Country Roads being made unstable and
Country Roads having to be destroyed. There is a famous American Country
& Western song called "Country Roads" which is about someone
driving back to their home town in the US state of West Virginia. As
West Virginia is Chris Brown's home state 'Country Roads' is one of my
favourite codewords for him with the emphasis on the first syllable.
If I was a western intelligence analyst being paid to decipher all this I
would be very worried that the Chinese were using the earthquake as a
way to discuss the US' "Pivot towards the Pacific" policy with India -
the other economic powerhouse in the region that shares a lengthy land
border with China. Essentially the Pivot towards the Pacific involves
using the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a bogeyman to
wrestle unpleasant regimes such as Burma (Myanmar), Vietnam, Cambodia
and Laos out of China's sphere of influence and into the protection of
the US. In return for this protection those nations are expected to open
up their labour forces to US manufacturers under-cutting wages in India
and China preventing those nations from getting too economically
developed.
So on Wednesday (24/4/13) an 8-story factory building collapsed close to
the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka killing 238 people and injuring some 600
people so far. This perfectly recreated scenes from the Sichuan
earthquake and highlighted the issues surrounding low cost manufacturing
across the Asian sub-continent. It also highlighted the main reason
that many people think Burma has not been rehabilitated enough to be
welcomed back into the international community. Over the last year or so
Burmese nationalists have been trying to violently ethnically purge a
group known as the Rohingya. The nationalist mobs consider these Muslims
to be Bangladeshi rather than Burmese. As it used to be known as
East-Pakistan it should be obvious that along with Pakistan Bangladesh
used to be part of India under British colonial rule.This colonial
history means that modern day Pakistan, India and Bangladesh all have a
complex relationship with the UK.
The big news story in the UK on the day of the Bangladesh factory
collapse was the collapse of a deal between Lloyds Bank and the Co-Op
Bank. This was obviously intended to look as though it was a coded
reference to the UK having prior knowledge that the factory was going to
collapse. If you'd looked closely at the Tuesday (23/4/13) night Tweets
of people such as Kim Kardashian and Susan Rice you'd know a lot of
people had prior knowledge that the factory was going to collapse.
However the idea of getting the colonial-era India (including Pakistan
and Bangladesh) to focus on the UK's news output for clues was to draw
them into a series of nasty and confusing news stories that the UK had
prepared in advance. This began on Tuesday with the Godolphin horse
racing scandal that I've already explained and the James McCormick bomb
detector fraud case that could be interpreted in any number of ways (he
could look a bit like George Galloway MP) but struck me as a general
(and false) apology by the UK for it's poor relationship with reality on
a whole number of issues. These stories continued into Wednesday and
were added to with the latest round of Abu Qatada nonsense and plans to
regulate the cosmetic surgery industry in the wake of the PIP breast
implant scandal. That story could have been a coded reference to the
shift from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independence
Payments (PIP) that is scheduled to affect me in 2015. It could also
have just been a reference to cosmetic surgery and breast implants in
particular. After all in the original script I should have spent Tuesday
night watching Internet pornography.
If you had blamed the Dhaka attack on the UK - I very nearly did - you
would have been wrong. It was a US-led US/UK co-production. The
particular building was only targeted because it was the easiest one to
convince people had fallen down by accident. Beyond trying to crush
colonial-era India the US was also trying to give it's allies a sneak
preview of what it has got planned for the Chris Brown/Rihanna operation
once this current tour ends. As with a lot of US celebrities both Chris
Brown and Rihanna have their own clothing lines. I've not been bothered
to research Chris Brown's "Black Pyramid" brand. However from what I
can tell Rihanna's arrangement with River Island is a simple licensing
agreement. That is to say River Island have simply paid Rihanna to use
her brand to sell their products. As a result Rihanna has no say in how
or where the actual products are manufactured. However River Island did
not manufacture any of it's products at this particular factory.
Once Rihanna and Chris Brown's days of sell-out world tours are over (on
current schedule 2014 for Rihanna, for Chris Brown mission
accomplished) and they're left slogging their way around unprofitable
parts of the developing world the income from this type of clothing deal
will become increasingly important to them. Having dubbed herself
"Fashion Killa" in response to the Bangladesh factory collapse Rihanna
is clearly at least slightly concerned about the conditions in the
factories in which her River Island line is manufactured. Therefore the
CIA handlers intend to push her into future clothing deals that won't
make her much money but will raise the ethical and political issues
involved in the globalised manufacturing trade. Addidas' decision to
move production the Philippines in response to Nike pressure is a good
case study if you're interested in that sort of thing. Here I have to
point out that Chris Brown's ex-girlfriend Karrueche Tran also has her
own clothing line. Being half-American and half-Vietnamese Tran seems a
much more fitting choice for this type of mission. However feel I don't
know her well enough to suggest Chris Brown is inflicted on her for a
second time.
On top of all this Rihanna's handlers also made more specific attempts to knock her off balance in order to ruin her Baltimore
(24/4/13) concert. Firstly someone started a rumour that Rihanna had
spent USD8000 at a Miami strip-club on Saturday (20/4/13). The intention
here was to make Rihanna appear spoilt, selfish and feckless with
money. It is also simply not true. If you look at the Twitter/Instagram
pictures of the evening that Rihanna herself posted you can see she was
tipping the strippers with $1 bills. A stack of 8000 $1 bills stands
about 1'6" (50cm) high and is far too heavy to carry around on a night
out. So in reality Rihanna spent - at most - USD2000. Considering how
much Rihanna earns compared with how much as stripper earns for pretty
much the same job this seems more like a charitable donation to the less
fortunate. However I get the feeling me saying that is only going to
make Rihanna's next trip to a strip-club that little bit more expensive.
Also the website TMZ.com reported that Rihanna was joined at the
strip-club by Katy Perry. As Katy Perry was in California on the other
side of the US on Saturday this was clearly untrue and quickly denied by
both parties. You may remember that towards the end of 2012 Katy Perry
and Rihanna reportedly fell out as friends over Rihanna's decision to
reunite with Chris Brown. Therefore this rumour was started to force
both Katy Perry and Rihanna to comment publicly on the status of their
friendship. I honestly don't know the status of their friendship and
could you honestly define the status of one of you friendships? However
if Katy Perry and Rihanna are having a conversation about spanking each
other I'm most certainly getting involved.
As for how all this affected Rihanna's performance in Baltimore I
genuinely haven't had time to look. However as I've not even heard
rumours of any disasters I'm assuming it went fine. I honestly hope to
add to that tomorrow (or Saturday) when I've had a chance to catch-up. I
will though have to spend at least part of tomorrow giving Rihanna a
lot of stick for being too posh to stay in New Jersey.
(Originally Posted) 21:35 on 25/4/13.
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