Operation Misery: Month 8, Week 2, Day 2.

On October 19th (19/10/13) Rihanna will perform a concert in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This one concert encapsulates all that has happened in Rihanna's life since she performed at the 2012 para-Olympic closing ceremony.

Through the renewal of Rihanna's relationship with Chris Brown, the recording of the less then strong "Unapologetic" album, the 777 Tour, the relationship with the UK retailer River Island and this Diamonds World Tour the people who make these sort of decisions on Rihanna's behalf have been trying to destroy her both professionally and personally. Initially we were told this was being done to punish Rihanna for her role in cause the UK's August 2011 riots. Then after it was established that Rihanna had nothing to do with those riots we were told it was being done to punish Rihanna for causing the so-called 'Arab Spring.' Then after it was established that Rihanna had nothing to do with either the Tunisian or the Egyptian revolutions we were told that it was being done to appease the Gulf Monarchs (Emirs) while the US was standing up to them over Syria's civil war.

In reality though it is being done to punish Rihanna for enjoying the level of fame and adulation that Monarchs across the globe believe is their exclusive god given right. Therefore the crowning glory of this last year's efforts is put Rihanna under so much stress that she is driven to a full scale nervous breakdown whilst she in the UAE. Short of actually killing Rihanna this is the closest that the Gulf Monarchs can come to seeing their great rival defeated and humiliated in front of their eyes. Of course the fact that the US has been prepared to go along with this morally objectionable plan not only makes them look as vicious and spiteful as the Gulf Monarchs it also makes the US look as though it is too weak to stand up to the Gulf Monarchs on even the smallest of issues.

Being Rihanna's final scheduled stop before the UAE the current trip to South Africa is vitally important to the success of that plan. Therefore Rihanna's CIA handlers/Live Nation (the management) are working very hard to make Rihanna's stay in South Africa as stressful as possible in order to make sure Rihanna is at her most vulnerable when arrives in the UAE. Most people would have thought that the trip to South Africa itself would be stressful enough for Rihanna. That's because the revenue generated by the two concerts isn't enough to cover the cost of the fuel required to put them on meaning that these concerts alone should be enough to stop the entire tour making a profit and could even be enough to cause it to make a substantial loss. As Rihanna is not as stupid as she sometimes behaves this means that throughout her stay in South Africa there should be a constant little voice at the back of her mind reminding her how much money this all costing her.

That little nagging doubt clearly wasn't enough for the management so following Rihanna's final performance in Auckland, New Zealand on October 8th (8/10/13) rather then allowing Rihanna to travel on to South Africa in plenty of time for her first concert there they instead flew Rihanna back to Sydney, Australia for absolutely no logical reason. As I explained when I found out about this on Friday (11/10/13) this was primarily done to destroy Rihanna's sleep patterns meaning that she would be heavily affected by jet-lag which will only get worse once she has to travel on to the UAE. However it was also done to trick the South Africans into thinking it was a good idea for them to take part in the Diamonds World Tour by being able to use the speculation about when Rihanna would arrive in South Africa to be the centre of attention at the African Union (AU) Summit that was taking place in Ethiopia over the weekend.

Although I've been ranting about it for the best part of three days now I still cannot get over how utterly stupid Rihanna's detour to Australia was. Not only did put unnecessary stress on Rihanna but as it turns out the South Africans didn't even want this particular 'gift' from the US and rejected it very loudly by making sure everybody knew when Rihanna finally arrived. The other big problem this created is that while the South African concert promoter's (Big Concerts) decision to stage the Rihanna shows was driven by naked greed and the South African government's decision to get involved in the politics of Rihanna's tour was equally idiotic South Africa is a country of around 52 million people A significant number of them have actually been putting in a lot of work preparing for Rihanna's visit to make sure it was as enjoyable and stress free as possible.

So for example there was more then a weeks worth of excursions to restaurants, shops, tattoo parlour and tourist attractions lined up for Rihanna to go on if she so wished. By failing to turn up in South Africa until Saturday (12/10/13) Rihanna meant that all that work was for nothing and robbed herself of the opportunity to enjoy herself.

 On Sunday (13/10/13) in the hours before her concert Rihanna was forced to make a compulsory trip to a wildlife sanctuary/safari park. This is of course one of the most popular things for tourists in South Africa to do but as I've explained wildlife conservation has been one of the main bridges through which South Africa has been discussing Rihanna with other nations. It is particularly important when it comes to the relationship between South Africa and Israel which of course will be Rihanna's next stop following the UAE. Therefore the US and the UK have been trying for months to break into this communication channel in order to make that it isn't used to make Rihanna's trip to the UAE run as smoothly as possible. With it not being possible to hide Rihanna's trip to the safari park amid a range of other excursions this forced that issue into sharper focus then I would have liked. Therefore I think it would have been better not to do the trip at all and instead allow Rihanna the day to try and sort her sleep patterns out a bit.

As you've probably guessed there is an awful lot more for me to say but I've now got to stop. I'll try and get back to this after dinner and might even mention something to do with yesterday's concert.


17:20 on 14/10/13 (UK date.)

Edited at around 19:00 on 14/10/13 (UK date) to add;

One effect of the tight focus on wildlife conservation is that Thailand today arrested the owner of a bar where Rihanna watched a sex show during her recent visit  for putting on a lewd performance. Basically Thailand is experiencing a significant drop in it's popularity and regional influence due to its involvement in Rihanna's tour. Therefore it has made these new arrests in an attempt to further distance itself from Rihanna and share some of the blame with South Africa which angered Thailand by using elephant conservation as a way to track Rihanna during the South-East Asian portion of her tour. The management of course had promised the Thais that it would be getting exclusive access to Rihanna during this time.

Even before Rihanna had left for South Africa the US was continuing to increase the pressure on her through a Court in Los Angeles granted Rihanna a temporary restraining order against Jonathan Whopper who attempted to break into Rihanna's home on September 29th (29/9/13) and October 4th (4/10/13). According to the application Mr Whopper believed that Rihanna was to be his future wife and on the October 4th visit threw a garden chair through a glass door at the address. As since the 2012 para-Olympic closing ceremony I have taken to referring to Rihanna as my 'Twittter wife" and am currently facing charges over some glass smashing related matters this clearly seems to be intended as a reference to me. As such the attack on Rihanna seems to have been carried out in order to leave Rihanna with no other option then to apply for a restraining order against Mr Whopper. The intention being that in low level gossip this will be interpreted as Rihanna rejecting me and my views and fully endorsing the management's plan for Rihanna's tour and her relationship with Chris Brown.

Coming on  the International Day of the Girl when her western puppeteers were hoping that Malala Yousafzai would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaign for women's education the management were hoping that in more intellectual circles the restraining order hearing would be viewed as part of the "Rehabilitation of Rihanna" narrative that they've be trying to run since roughly the 2012 para-Olympic closing ceremony. The idea being that they are setting Rihanna these sort of challenges in order to empower her by teaching Rihanna to take responsibility for aspects of her own life through things like applying for a restraining order against Chris Brown. This "Rehabilitation of Rihanna" narrative is of course a nonsense intended to give a fig leaf of respectability to what is in reality just an attempt to inflict pain for the sake of inflicting pain.


Being forced to think about me increases the stress on Rihanna because I have long been a source of tension between Rihanna and her tour party. Also while I really like Rihanna at the moment the only way I'm able to express that seems to be constantly telling her where she has screwed up and publishing her deepest darkest secrets on the Internet. Although I'm sure Rihanna understands that I'm doing this out of affection rather then malice this seemingly constant stream of criticism and violations of privacy will put a strain on any relationship especially one as tenuous as this.


With Rihanna arriving in South Africa on Saturday (12/10/13) the management's main effort to exert pressure on Rihanna and her hosts was through the arrest of a suspect in the "Baby Hope" murder. If you're not familiar with the case "Baby Hope" was a Hispanic infant girl whose was found dumped in a picnic cooler just outside New York in 1991. Although I was about 10 at the time and Rihanna must have been all of 3 or 4 I strongly suspect that this case took on all sorts of significance during the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union that was going on at the time. The end of the Cold War was of course one of the factors in the end of apartheid which apparently was quite a big deal in South Africa.


However the Baby Hope story's main purpose seemed to be just to cause confusion. For example saying that they've found the man who killed baby Hope could be interpreted as a reference to the hope that the handlers had that Rihanna's little liaison with Chris Brown in New York would leave her pregnant with a baby. Announcing that the US have arrested the man who killed hope could also be interpreted as an indication that the US now intends to do something about Chris Brown. After all I feel hope dying pretty much every he speaks.


In the hours leading up to Rihanna's Sunday (13/10/13) performance the main pressure was being exerted by Chris Brown's sometimes girlfriend Kerruche Tran doing a charity walk to raise money to help with HIV/AIDS. In South Africa I think the HIV/AIDS connection is pretty obvious but this particular walk was organised by the Symphonic Love Foundation which Chris Brown also does a lot of work with. Therefore the intention was that Rihanna would view this as a sign that Brown and Tran are becoming closer and that would upset her.


As for the concert itself it didn't go fantastically but that was not through any fault of Rihanna's who took to the stage around 30 minutes late. This is slightly longer then the expected 15-20 minute delay but not really enough to constitute a problem especially as I was mucking about on Twitter at the time in an effort to wind up the live results show of the UK version of X-Factor. Rihanna then competently rather then spectacularly worked her way through the standard set-list but that's just the way that quality varies between performances rather then saying Rihanna's performance was poor. The problem was that organisational failings such as relatively high priced tickets, the lack of a second support act and the great weight of expectation meant that many were left feeling disappointed and left early. Contrary to Rihanna's claims the concert was not a sell-out even though the capacity of the stadium had been reduced to increase demand. However I hope that when it comes to Rihanna's share of the revenues the management will be making up the difference.


The big talking point of the concert was that Rihanna dispensed with the usual stage costumes and instead wore one outfit throughout the performance. I actually think a large part of the reason for this was to annoy me. After all I said befor hand that this would be the sort of thing that forces me to stay up far too late in order to comment on it. Funnily enough as the management have been failing to meet more and more of their political objectives of this tour annoying me has become an ever bigger objective of the tour.


The outfit Rihanna wore consisted of a black bomber-style jacket, tight fitting black trousers, a tight fitting black top and a black sun visor although at some Rihanna removed the trousers revealing her legs which certainly made me happy. All of these items were decorated with bits of metal and crystal in the style of the Givanchy cloak Rihanna normally wears during the opening act. The first thing you would notice about this outfit is that it very closely resembles the outfits Rihanna's backing dancers/singers wear during the opening act. The intention here being to trigger bitchy discussions about anyone would notice if Rihanna simply didn't bother to turn up for a concert and sent a backing dancer on in her place.


The second thing you would notice about the outfit is that it is similar to the baggy early-1990's style which is used throughout Rihanna's River Island line. As this one outfit was never going to be as spectacular as the usual five the intention seemed to be to trigger bitchy discussions about the River Island line not being particularly great. After all while it's considered affordable fashion in the developed world Rihanna's River Island line is far too expensive for many South Africans.


The combination of the black bomber jacket and the metal detailing is very reminiscent of the neo-Nazi uniform of jeans and a bomber jacket adorned with metal badges, often Nazi insignia. Therefore this seemed to be intended to promote bitchy discussions about the fascist overtones of Rihanna's tour. I don't know who designed the outfit but judging by the quality and the similarities between the Givanchy cloak I hope it was actually Givanchy having a little bit of a swipe at Rihanna. However if this is the case it seems intended as a friendly little nudge rather then a full scale, lunging attack. That's because through the "G4Life" slogan on the River Island line Rihanna is getting dangerously close to trading on Givanchy's name meaning that damage to Rihanna's reputation also damages Givanchy's reputation.


The other little talking point is that Rihanna apparently draped herself in the South African flag at the end of her performance. This was after posting Twitter/Instagram pictures of her nails being painted in the flag colours. I think these were both genuine attempts by Rihanna to show that she does like South Africa despite all the cr*p she brings with her. The problem is that all that cr*p means that people could misinterpret it all as a cynical attempt at overcompensation. Not that it matters much.

(Originally Posted 14/10/13)