Operation Misery: Month 12, Week 2, Day 4.

Sub-titled: "Now I've Gone to the Effort of Blowing the Dust Off I Can't Be Bothered to be Imaginative."

On Friday (14/2/14) Miley Cyrus will begin her Live Nation organised world tour in the 2010 Winter Olympic host city of Vancouver, Canada. I honestly think that are large part of the thinking behind this was Live Nation looking back at their Rihanna operation and going; "That went amazingly well. Let's do it again!"

Apart from the obvious the main problem with this is that Miley Cyrus is nowhere near as politically divisive as Rihanna. For example I'm not aware of Miley Cyrus being beaten half to death by any ex-boyfriends or being accused of starting any riots or popular revolutions. In fact I would go so far as to say that although a little bit louder Miley Cyrus is just your typical American teenager/young adult.

Of course a typical right of passage for an American teenager/young adult is a phase in which they come to terms with their sexuality and freshly developed adult bodies. As with many Miley Cyrus is going through this phase by showing off her body and posing naked for photographs. Therefore I think the primary objective of this tour is to use Miley Cyrus as a way to examine the growing trend in post-revolutionary Arab societies for young women to campaign for their sexual rights by showing off their bodies on the Internet. In this throwing off of traditional Islamic modesty standards young Arab women have been heavily influenced by western campaign groups such as Femen from Ukraine and the "I Am Not Naked" campaign. That campaign has its roots very firmly in a US feminist campaign to desexualise women's breasts by challenging the taboo of the female nipple being shown in public and Miley Cyrus has herself being a very vocal supporter of this "Free the Nipple!" Campaign. As such it is possible to suggest these type of campaigns for women's rights represent the westernisation of Muslim youths.

I hope that Arab governments and commentators don't fall into this trap because the second objective of Miley Cyrus' tour is to draw attention away from Rihanna. According to the original plan for Rihanna this period would have been used to quietly cement her damaging relationship with Chris Brown through things like marriage and possibly children although I believe that events have forced Brown to be replaced by Drake in the boyfriend role. Then over the course of Miley Cyrus' tour the US were hoping to use to the obvious comparisons between Rihanna and Miley Cyrus to build a consensus that Rihanna has played a central role in corrupting many Muslim youths and therefore deserves to be punished. At this point Rihanna would release another weak album and with her career effectively being over would instead be forced to go on a tour of charity projects in poor, unpleasant and dangerous parts of the world.

The third objective is of course that having to keep an eye on what both Rihanna and Miley Cyrus are up to will certainly stretch my resources if no-one else's. As a result while I might cast my eye over Miley Cyrus' show if video becomes available it is unlikely that I'll actually bother review it and I certainly won't be giving Miley Cyrus' tour the same level of attention I gave Rihanna's. After all I suspect Miley Cyrus' people will be a lot harder for Live Nation to push around then Rihanna's.

If the timing, the link with Rihanna and the use of the 2010 Olympic host city wasn't enough to draw Olympic delegates attention to Miley Cyrus' tour US ally Lebanon have been helping to force it onto the agenda through the exploits of downhill skier Jackie Chamoun. As is pretty typical for Olympians Chamoun recently posed for a sexy photo-shoot to raise both her profile and the profile of the games. Although the photographs that were officially released were relatively tasteful with Chamoun posing topless but not exposing anything other then her back the behind the scenes video of the shoot was more revealing. In that video Chamoun's buttocks are clearly exposed and there are brief glimpses of her naked breasts including some of which that show her nipples. In western societies this would considered pushing the boundaries of taste and decency but in Arab societies it borders on the downright pornographic. 

However before anyone really had time to notice Chamoun's photo-shoot the Lebanese Sports Minister publicly criticised it and promised a ministerial inquiry forcing an apology from both Chamoun and the Lebanese Olympic team. This harsh reaction in turn prompted a wave of protest from young Lebanese women who decided to take part in the "I Am Not Naked" campaign.

The reason why the Lebanese decided to help the US out in this way is far more interesting then the story itself though. Even at the best of times Lebanon is not famed for having a strong and stable government. This is most certainly not the best of times what with Lebanon getting increasingly dragged into the conflict in neighbouring Syria. Firstly the Shia Lebanese political party/militia Hezbollah started to provide military assistance to the Shia dominated Syria government. This prompted the Sunni dominated Syrian insurgents to start attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon. In response Hezbollah have started attacking Lebanese supporters of the Syrian insurgency including the large number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. As a result there is now a real risk of the Lebanese government collapsing and the conflict in Syria spreading across the entire medieval region of the Fertile Crescent and the Levant. Therefore the Lebanese government is keen to support the US in whatever it is doing in the hope that in return the US will support them.

On the topic of topless women while researching the Chamoun scandal I discovered that after winning a surprise bronze medal in the 3000m speed skating on Sunday (9/2/14) Russian skater Olga Graf unzipped the front of her race suit only to suddenly realise that she wasn't wearing anything underneath. Far from being anything political I think she just got caught up in the excitement of the moment and briefly forgot herself. It was quite funny though. 

20:10 on 13/2/14 (UK date).