On Tuesday (7/5/13) Rihanna played the final concert of the US leg of her Diamonds World Tour in Brooklyn, New York City. The main pressure ahead of the concert was the fall out from her disastrous concert in Boston the night before. This was made worse by my review of that concert that not only repeated what a stupid idea it was to keep her fans waiting for three hours in Boston but went on to explain that the political reasons why Rihanna had been instructed to do this were far more sinister than her CIA handlers had led her to believe. You can read that post entitled "Operation Misery: Month 2, Week 5, Day 2" below so I see no point in repeating myself.
The other major pressure ahead of the Brooklyn concert was the TV premiere of the video to the UK boyband "The Wanted" new single "Walks Like Rihanna." Although this video was only shown on UK TV it was trending on Twitter for most of the evening and was discussed on social media across the world. With the chorus of the song being; "She can't dance, she can't sing but she walks like Rihanna" this song is clearly intended to mock Rihanna. However the video attempted to disguise this by mocking a wide range of US boybands from the 1990's such as "New Kids on the Block," "Nsync" and "The Backstreet Boys" while generally mocking the US pop industry. The main target of the videos insult though seemed to be women in their twenties and thirties who still idolise boybands as if they were still teenagers. As these women make up the portion of The Wanted's fanbase with the most disposable income this raised questions about whether The Wanted were trying to do themselves out of a job. Towards the end of 2012 The Wanted recorded a song with Chris Brown but decided against releasing it in order to avoid damaging their reputations. Therefore the complete song and video package seemed to me to be the UK pop industry protesting about being asked to damage their reputations by working with Chris Brown. This obviously leads onto a discussion about the number of collaborations that Chris Brown has done with US (based) artists such as Pitbull and Nikki Minaj in order to give the impression that Chris Brown is viewed as a credible artist. The fact that the video for Pitbull's collaboration with Chris Brown "International Love" seems like a big joke at Chris Brown's expense suggests that even US artists and label mates are getting sick of performing this sort of charity work to help keep Chris Brown's career going. That is obviously an unsettling thought for Rihanna because even if you don't believe the rumours about them breaking up she clearly doesn't hold the level of malice towards him that would see her enjoy watching his career collapse.
Rihanna clearly didn't let this affect her performance arriving on stage at roughly her unofficial start time of 22:00 and delivering a vocally strong and capable performance of the usual set-list and costume changes. If I had to come up with a criticism of the performance and it is an effort I would say that Rihanna seemed dispassionate throughout. However this is not the same as saying she displayed the same aloofness that marked her performances in Atlantic City, Newark and Washington DC. In fact she seemed to be making a conscious effort to connect with her fans. After the Boston debacle it would be cynical to say this was simply a good business move but having watched Rihanna as she was doing this it struck me as genuine and highlights that the disregard she showed her fans in Boston was the result of orders from her CIA handlers rather than something Rihanna herself wanted to do.
The fact that the concert had been rescheduled from Saturday (4/5/13) meant that a lot of people who had VIP passes were unable to attend but being one of the finale shows in New York City celebrities such as Kylie Minogue, Katy Perry and Riccardo Tisci were in attendance but didn't appear to be invited backstage. The fact that Katy Perry and Rihanna kept their distance seems to suggest that while they are back on speaking terms they're clearly not as close friends as they once were. Following the concert Rihanna attended a party at the Greenhouse nightclub. This was supposed to be the album launch party for a rapper called Talib Kweli but Rihanna seemed to hijack it for an end of tour blowout.
That party seemed well deserved and I for one am most certainly celebrating the end of the US leg of Rihanna's tour. Not only does it mean that I get two and a half weeks off it also means I no longer have to worry about Rihanna performing a concert outside of my approximate time zone until September. In political terms this is amazing news because it means all of Rihanna's concerts will appear during what I term "economic slack water" - the three to four hours every day in which most of the global financial markets are closed. Up until now Rihanna's concerts - good or bad - have taken place during the opening of Asian markets putting great pressure on traders and financial institutions across the continent. Now that is over the chances of Rihanna p*ssing of people with lots of guns has been significantly reduced.
With the US phase of Rihanna's tour now over it would be a good time for her CIA handlers to stop, take a breath and assess whether or not their efforts have been in vain before deciding if it is worth continuing with the next phase of their plan. Unfortunately through things like the visit of UK Crown Prince Henry/Harry to the US, the upcoming meeting between US President Obama and UK Prime Minister Cameron and the ongoing Amanda Berry/Cleveland kidnap story show no sign of doing this. It's almost as if they're afraid that if they break the momentum of the operation they'll be forced to realise that it's already failed and they have no option other than to give up. The Amanda Berry/Cleveland kidnap story is of course intended to make us speculate widely about the whereabouts of Rihanna and mysterious, unidentified members of her core tour party (the kidnapped women) along with the whereabouts of Chris Brown and mysterious, unidentified members of his core group (the three brothers) along with salacious details of Rihanna and Chris Brown's sex life (whips, ropes, chains etc). As far as I can tell Chris Brown is currently on the west coast of the US in California while Rihanna is on the east coast in New York City where I hope she will eat something because annoyingly even her skin tight catsuit for the "Jump" act is looking a bit loose these days. Obviously though a lot of the drama of the tour break will come from speculation about whether they will remain in those locations and if they do the Amanda Berry/Cleveland kidnap story will develop into other things.
Although the US seem intent of keeping the momentum of the operation going other nations have used the opportunity of the tour break to give their verdict on the first phase of the operation. First up were those old Europeans Belgium and Switzerland who on Wednesday (8/5/13) arrested 31 people in connection with a diamond robbery in February. This was intended to encourage the US to continue by making it look like the Swiss and the Belgians were so confused by the Amanda Berry/Cleveland kidnap story that they'd been forced to put on their own confusing story in an effort to gather information. This of course was huge bluff and the fact that they story was phrased in terms of the arrest of a large criminal network was the Belgians and Swiss conceding that if the operation is going to go ahead something has to give either with the large criminal network surrounding Chris Brown or the large criminal network that has been trying to put pressure on me through threats of violence etc need to being shut down. Also encouraging the US to continue with the operation has been China through a story of a young girl (around 12) who murdered two of her class mates because they were more attractive than her. That is obviously a reference to the three mysterious, unidentified members of Rihanna's core tour party.
By contrast Brazil has encouraged the US to shut down the operation by openly mocking the suggestion that anyone is that confused or interested in the details of Rihanna and Chris Brown's sex life through a story of a woman who survived being shot in the throat with her husbands giant spear as he was cleaning his weapon. Australia has also discouraged the US from continuing with an Australian choreographer who spoke in Micheal Jackson's defence at his 2005 child-sex abuse trial changing his story and now admitting that Jackson did sexually abuse him. The message from Australia there being that they fully understand what is going on and are not prepared to help the US cover it up this time. This prompted quite an angry reaction from the US who responded by forcing the Australian authorities to search for two people who supposedly fell from the Carnival cruise ship "Spirit" as it docked in the infamous Circular Quay. This got the UK all confused so they responded with any story they can think of about people falling off things including a man who fell from a hotel balcony in Dubai back in April and man who fell from a hotel balcony in Cumbria, UK today.
Finally demonstrating how the Amanda Berry/Cleveland kidnap story can shift as needs must a lot of the talk on Tuesday (7/5/13) was about how "the women were allowed in the garden but only as far as the garage." The was the US trying to promote discussion about how far onto my property the local criminal network are allowed to encroach in order to intimidate me. By today this had shifted into a discussion about two of the Castro brothers being arrested and charged with minor offences such as having an open container of alcohol in a public place. That appears to be the US now suggesting that the local criminal network should be contained by British police opening a gang related murder investigation into my grandmother's death. That would allow them to pick up any and all suspected members of the gang. They would then be charged for any and all possible criminal offences not matter how minor and arraigned in Court for a trial to take place long after Rihanna's tour ends. They can then either be remanded in prison or placed on bail conditions that prevent them entering an exclusion zone around me or my property - the area of "Thornton Heath" would be an example but the area of "Croydon" would be preferable. If they break those bail conditions they would then be held in contempt of court and sent straight to prison. This is a pretty standard policing tactic that my associates and I deal with on a daily basis.
19:45 on 9/5/13.
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