Stampede in the Ivory Coast.

Back in the winter of 2010 Cote D'Ivorie was very nearly sucked back into civil war after Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede the Presidency to Alassane Ouattara following an election. Due to the high-profile intervention in Libya which took place at the same time France were eventually pressurised into using military force to arrest Gbagbo. As I largely got the blame for this the French went on to use Gbagbo's indictment at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to address the legal question of whether a person is considered to be under arrest if they are detained regardless of whether the correct procedure has been used which. This was central to my grandmother's Court of Protection (COP) case that was held in December 2011. The ICC agreed with me.

While I was going off on one on Sunday (30/12/12) Chris Brown was accompanied by Rihanna to the KORA awards in the Ivorian capital Abidjan which had been specially re-arranged to accommodate his attendance. Today (1/1/13) at least 60 people (primarily children) were killed and a further 100 injured during a stampede at a New Years Eve fireworks display at a stadium in Abidjan. Now across the developing world safety standards at public events of this type are not as high as they should be. However children being crushed to death during a fireworks stampede does seem a very apt metaphor for the African leg of Brown's tour.

I am though hesitant to blame the Ivorian authorities for the tragedy because to create this type of disaster literally all you need is for one person to shout "Fire!" in a crowded room. The US themselves may actually be to blame because it does fit into the public order policing/public safety theme which was a central part of Brown's visit to South Africa. Britain is also always a likely suspect because it would feed into the fake argument that Britain is trying to convince everyone it is having with France over the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) along with the Hillsborough football tragedy which has been a long running means of discussion between the UK and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.


13:05 on 1/1/13.

Edited at around 14:50 on 1/1/13 to add; Seeing how I've already spoilpt everyone's day I might as well properly go for it.

Britain is claiming that it has lost Ibrahim Magag a terrorism suspect who was on Terrorism Prevention Investigation Measures (TPIM). He was last seen in the Camden area of London which is a famous celebrity hangout being home to the late Amy Winehouse amongst others. The replacement to control orders TPIM's are a way to monitor and restrict the movements of terrorism suspects who cannot be brought to court without jeopardising secret intelligence. They are essentially restraining orders of steroids proscribing who a person can and cannot contact, where they can and cannot go, placing curfews on them and even forcing them to move to different areas of the country. So like I said on Saturday (29/12/12) a restraining order preventing him from contacting Rihanna even at music industry events is the absolute barest minimum action the US is expected to take against Chris Brown. 

As for the Ivorian thing the more and more I think about it the more I'm convinced the US had a hand in it. Not least because they've already issued a denial. The purpose of Brown's Africa tour was to put pressure on African governments in order to crush information out of people who are seen as less mature then governments in developed nations. So by putting this right at the end the US seems to be trying to find out if it achieved that objective or whether it's simply being made to look like they did.

(Originally posted on 1/1/13)