God Emperor Trump - Posts - "Google autocomplete results: jeffrey epstein
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"Who are they protecting?"
Wikipedia Editors Battle to Hide Bill Clinton’s Link to Jeffrey Epstein - "Clinton flew on Epstein’s ‘Lolita Express’ private jet at least 26 times and this was reported by multiple media outlets in 2016.However, any reference to this on Epstein’s Wikipedia page disappeared for a time yesterday before being added back in.The current Wikipedia page for Epstein does mention his link to Clinton but devotes more words to the billionaire’s ties to Donald Trump, which were less direct... it fails to mention that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago as soon as he discovered Epstein had hit on a young girl.The page also fails to mention the assertion of lawyer Bradley Edwards, who represented one of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and said President Trump was the “only” high powered person to help him with his investigation.This entire farce once again underscores how Wikipedia is no longer an impartial repository of knowledge but yet another partisan tool which is being manipulated to obscure and dictate reality."
‘Reputation managers’ get to work scrubbing Clinton-Epstein connection from Wikipedia - "The fact that Clinton had flown on the jet 26 times, despite being well-sourced and not in dispute, was “not relevant to [Epstein’s] personal life,” editor ‘Joeblacko’ complained, calling it “a smear toward bill Clinton.”... Google was accused of undertaking its own information warfare on Clinton’s behalf, tweaking its inscrutable algorithm to return photos of Epstein with President Donald Trump when users searched “Jeffrey Epstein Bill Clinton.”... Google’s search-tweaking shenanigans are legendary and were confirmed in a video released by Project Veritas last month, which claimed Google’s “Machine Learning Fairness” algorithm was responsible. The algorithm is reportedly designed to replace results that are “factually accurate” but “unjust or prejudicial” – like an image search for CEOs that returns primarily men – with Google’s ideal reality."
FBI studies two broken cameras outside cell where Epstein died: source - "Two cameras that malfunctioned outside the jail cell where financier Jeffrey Epstein died as he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges have been sent to an FBI crime lab for examination... Epstein’s lawyers Reid Weingarten and Martin Weinberg told U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan on Tuesday they had doubts about the New York City chief medical examiner’s conclusion that their client killed himself.The two cameras were within view of the Manhattan jail cell where he was found dead on Aug. 10. A source earlier told Reuters two jail guards failed to follow a procedure overnight to make separate checks on all prisoners every 30 minutes."
One thing interesting about this case was seeing that some people hate "pedos" more than they hate elites - there was a contingent that cheered his death, even though that severely complicates investigations about the elites the same people presumably hate too - but not as much as they hate "pedos"
Jeffrey Epstein told guards that someone tried to KILL HIM weeks before he hanged himself - "According to the documents, Giuffre claimed she also had sex with Epstein's friend Prince Andrew on multiple occasions, including once in London when she was 17 years of age"
Epstein Had Multiple Broken Bones In Neck, Common In Homicide By Strangulation, Experts Say - "The revelation about the broken bones that were found in Epstein's neck followed the revelation on Tuesday night that the two guards who were supposed to be monitoring him fell asleep for three hours and allegedly falsified prison records to cover up their actions... varying studies those who have committed suicide have found that 6-25% of them break the hyoid bone, which is one of the broken bones found in Epstein's neck. Epstein's suicide came after the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) unsealed more than 2,000 documents in the case on Friday, including affidavits and depositions of key witnesses in a lawsuit against Epstein and socialite Ghislane Maxwell.Included in the released documents were multiple high-profile people who are accused of engaging in sex with a woman who claims that she was forced to work for Epstein.Among those accused by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 33, are "prominent Democratic politicians — former Sen. George Mitchell and ex-New Mexico governor and Clinton cabinet official Bill Richardson""
WaPo's Carol Leonnig: ‘People Close to Epstein Fear He Was Murdered’
Jeffrey Epstein's last words before his jailhouse death - "Jeffrey Epstein was confident he could fight the child sex trafficking charges against him and was in “great spirits” just hours before his jailhouse death on Saturday morning — even telling one of his lawyers, “I’ll see you Sunday,” The Post has learned.The convicted pedophile also told his lawyers that the neck injuries he suffered in an earlier incident at the Metropolitan Correctional Center were inflicted by his hulking, ex-cop cellmate, which led the lawyers to request that he be taken off a suicide watch... "What he really wanted to do was get bail so he could cooperate""
Prison experts are stunned and angry that Jeffrey Epstein was taken off suicide watch - ""For them to pull him off suicide watch is shocking,” Cameron Lindsay, a former warden who worked at three federal facilities, told NBC News. “For someone this high-profile, with these allegations and this many victims, who has had a suicide attempt in the last few weeks, you can take absolutely no chances.”... Bob Hood, a former federal Bureau of Prisons chief of internal affairs and former warden at the ADX Florence "supermax" prison in Colorado, said he also was perplexed by the decision to remove the suicide safeguards.“Under the circumstances, I would have a staff member sitting there or have a camera on him 24/7 while he was in my custody, purely to cover my butt,” Hood said. “I know that sounds tacky, but this is not your average inmate.”"
Jeffrey Epstein’s Bodyguard, Igor Zinoviev, on His Old Boss - "Q: One thing you told me, for instance — okay, one thing you told me is he got a heads up when the authorities were going to come to his house the night before.
A: Listen, what you say is between you and me —
Q: You told me he would get phone calls the night before and eight o’clock the police are going to come. He would get a heads up from local police.
A: [Silence.]
Q: You told me that, Igor. Want me to read the quote?
A: Well, you can read whatever you want right now. Don’t just — you can put yourself in big trouble.
Q: You said: “He always do something wrong. There was some nights in question. There was at home arrest and police, before they come to the house, they call him and tell him they coming in at eight o’clock in the morning. It’s all corruption you know. It’s all bullshit.”
A: Listen, don’t put yourself in trouble. Seriously...
Q: I’m telling you to give you a chance to remember because we talked about this stuff. I know it’s hard. I don’t know what you mean about “put myself in trouble.”
A: Let that go. Seriously. Let that go.
Q: Why is it so important? Are you worried about the local cops?
A: Listen, you’re really smart and I’m not going to offer that over the phone right now, okay? You’re really smart. You have no idea. Please!
Q: What do you mean by that?
A: I can’t explain you. I can’t explain you over the phone any of this...
Q: I totally understand that you think he could have had help committing suicide.
A: First of all, I have to go right now. I have another client.
Q: Still training people?
A: Yes. But just be careful. I’m not kidding...
Q: Have you been talking to anyone in the government, the FBI? Have they come to you?
A: [Long pause] Um. Great talking to you. Seriously. We talk later."
Jeffrey Epstein Had Painting of Bill Clinton in a Blue Dress - "The painting — which features Clinton lounging in red heels over a chair in the Oval Office — was “hanging up there prominently as soon as you walked in in a room to the right,” the source said. “Everybody who saw it laughed and smirked.”"
What Censorship? Twitter Removes #ClintonBodyCount with 84,000 Mentions from Trending List After Epstein Death - Replaces with Trump, Barr Hashtags - "Trump Body Count… That makes no sense — was still up despite having less than a third number of mentions as the Clinton hashtag."
Jeffrey Epstein's autopsy more consistent with homicidal strangulation than suicide, Dr. Michael Baden reveals - "He noted that the 66-year-old Epstein had two fractures on the left and right sides of his larynx, specifically the thyroid cartilage or Adam’s apple, as well as one fracture on the left hyoid bone above the Adam’s apple... “I’ve not seen in 50 years where that occurred in a suicidal hanging case""
Jeffrey Epstein: ABC stopped report 'amid Palace threats' - "Leaked footage shows a US TV anchor complaining that editors "quashed" a story about paedophile Jeffrey Epstein due to pressure from the Royal Family.ABC's Amy Robach is seen in the clip griping that her interview with an alleged victim of Epstein and Prince Andrew never made it to air."The Palace found out and threatened us a million different ways""
Jeffrey Epstein, Amy Robach & Project Veritas -- ABC’s Excuse for Failing to Report Makes No Sense - "We certainly know that ABC didn’t need “everything” — or much of anything, for that matter – when it was running scores of pieces online and on television, highlighting every risible accusation against then–Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I’m not even talking about the prime accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, whose allegations still haven’t been corroborated, but rather about someone such as Julie Swetnick, who was all over the ABC News at the height of the confirmation battle. Swetnick accused Kavanaugh not only of sexual assault but also of being present at parties where women were being drugged and “gang raped.” She wasn’t even remotely credible... Paired with NBC News’ burying of the Harvey Weinstein story, we now have evidence of two major media institutions protecting serial abusers"
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "1 ABC spikes story on Epstein
2 ABC goes apeshit when video leaks of reporter griping about it
3 ABC hunts down suspected video leaker, now at CBS
4 CBS fires "leaker"
5 she wasn't the leaker
6 media, everywhere: *crickets*"
Can't Dump the Trump on Twitter - "Hey feminists! An brave woman just got fired because she tried to protect girls from sexual abuse by a real-life patriarchy! Get marching, protect her! If you fail, you serve the patriarchy. CBS News fires staffer who had access to leaked Amy Robach"
ABC News airs Kentucky gun range video as Syria bombing footage - "ABC News apologized Monday after airing a video that it originally purported to be a depiction of a Turkish attack in northern Syria against Kurdish civilians after some raised concerns about its similarity to a 2017 video of a Kentucky military gun show"
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "That Epstein killed himself isn’t news. He was one of several prisoners who commit divide every week in our nations jails and prisons. In Rikers, a man committed suicide with cameras running and guards watching. Like Epstein’s detention facility, Rikers has a long history of being a poorly-run facility."
Barr Says Epstein's Suicide Resulted From 'Perfect Storm of Screw-Ups' - "Attorney General William Barr said in an interview published Friday that the death of Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of sex trafficking, in a secure federal prison resulted from “a perfect storm of screw-ups,” rather than any nefarious act.Barr’s statement refuted suggestions from members of Epstein’s family that he may have been murdered. His remarks came the same week that two prison guards were criminally charged, accused in an indictment of failing to check on Epstein every half-hour as they were required to and then lying about it on prison logs.“I can understand people who immediately — whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario, because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups”... Barr said that he, too, was initially suspicious. How could someone who had been on suicide watch kill himself in one of the most secure jails in the U.S.? In the interview, he said that his concerns were sparked by the number of irregularities at the jail, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Epstein was being held awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges. But investigations by the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general have put to rest those suspicions, proving Epstein’s death was a suicide, Barr said. He said that he personally reviewed security camera footage showing that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died... Typically people at risk of suicide are not housed alone... Federal prosecutors accused the guards of shopping online, browsing the internet and sleeping while they should have been conducting regular checks of Epstein’s cell... The report cited multiple problems in the federal prison system, including faulty security camera systems, poor inmate monitoring and insufficient staffing. Suicide rates nearly doubled between the 2016 fiscal year and the 2018 fiscal year"
Surveillance footage outside Jeffrey Epstein’s cell during suicide attempt is missing - "Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Swergold, during a hearing in White Plains District Court, admitted nobody can find the footage of the outside of the cell the multimillionaire shared with accused quadruple murderer Nick Tartaglione. Tartaglione, a former Briarcliff Manor cop, faces the death penalty for the alleged murders in a drug deal gone bad... Tartaglione’s attorneys filed a request for the footage to be retained two days after Epstein’s attempted suicide on July 23, Barket said... The video footage was relevant to Tartaglione’s defense because it is potentially evidence of the ex-cop’s good character. In the event Tartaglione is found guilty and reaches the death penalty phase, the Epstein incident could possibly be evidence showing why he doesn’t deserve to die."
A series of unfortunate events, apparently
Jeffrey Epstein suicide bid jail video was deleted - "Surveillance video footage from outside the jail cell of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein during his first reported suicide attempt in July has been inadvertently deleted, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday.Prosecutors, in a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, said the video was deleted as the result of a jailhouse computer error about the location of Epstein’s cellmate at the time Epstein tried to kill himself.A lawyer for Epstein’s former cellmate said that it was “deeply troubling” to learn that the footage no longer exists... Barket, complained in December that he had been told the video was missing. Barket wanted the video as possible evidence in the event that Tartaglione is convicted and faces a possible death sentence. Video of him saving Epstein could help an argument that he should be spared execution.A day after Barket complained about the missing video, prosecutors from the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said that the footage had been found by MCC staff.But in their court filing Thursday, prosecutors said that in reviewing the video last week, they realized that the footage, while being from the correct date and time period, “captured a different tier than the one where” Epstein and Tartaglione’s cell was located.The video that was preserved showed “a different, incorrect cell for Tartaglione” — which the MCC computer system had mistakenly listed as being occupied by Tartaglione, prosecutors wrote.The filing says that when Barket first request the video in July, a lawyer for MCC “looked up [Tartaglione’s] cell number in the MCC computer system and thereafter requested that MCC staff preserve video from outside of that cell for the requested time period.”... Prosecutors also said that although there was a “backup system in place that housed all video for the Special Housing Unit” where Epstein was being held, “including the video requested by” Barket, the FBI has found that the “requested video no longer exists on the backup system and has not since at least August 2019 as a result of technical errors.” In a statement to CNBC on Thursday, Barket said, “The various and inconsistent accounts of what happened to that video are deeply troubling”"
When you can't live without bananas
Saturday, February 08, 2020
Supernova in the East III
Hardcore History 64 – Supernova in the East III
"The whole dysfunctional Japanese government and all the reasons it was. Let's not forget, for example, about assassinations, and how much of a tool to prevent thinking that wasn't patriotic enough from being, you know, publicly expounded upon. I mean, there was a period in Japanese history that we talked about, where historians sometimes call it government by assassination. And it was the most extreme in Japanese society sort of driving the bus...
I was interested in the similarities between the university and high school professors in Germany in the First World War, and in Japan before the Second. If you go read any number of accounts, but All Quiet on the Western Front is the most famous. They all talk about how their professors. It's funny, it's like the opposite of today's stereotype of the Marxist leftist professor that corrupts the young minds that come into the classroom and makes them anti government...
The Japanese do not see themselves as the equals of all these yellow peoples in Asia that they are ‘freeing’, using my fingers as air quotes, from their European colonial masters... They see themselves as superior to them in a racial and ethnic sense, the same way that the Germans see themselves as superior to the Slavic people...
‘Remember, the adjective attached to this fortress city of Singapore, the Gibraltar of the East, right? It's a fortress city. And Churchill says, in my defense, I basically didn't think to ask whether something called a fortress had defenses. He said I would no sooner ask if a battleship that you had just launched had a bottom. So why were there no defenses? It's complicated. Some of it was part of a particular branch of the military theories right, at the pre war.
You saw in the First World War too, this idea that defenses are bad for morale. Troops get accustomed to the safety of living behind trench walls or fortifications or whatever, then you need them to go on the aggressive, they're soft. Another reason some of the generals in Malaya said that they didn't want defenses. They thought it was bad for the morale of the civilians that the troops were protecting. There's a lot of reasons. Problem is, is that if you turn out to be wrong about that, if the acid test of combat proves that it would be very nice to have some defenses and they're not there, once again, who gets screwed in that situation? And the Allied troops will be forever trying to build ad hoc defenses in pouring rain as quickly as they can five minutes after escaping combat with the Japanese still on the way. You know, often at night'...
‘MacArthur’s great stature in the United States was in part due to his own highly efficient public relations organization. Most of the war news from the Philippines which the American public read came from MacArthur's communiques and press releases. Of 142 communiques released by his headquarters between December and March, 109 mentioned only one individual: MacArthur’... MacArthur had a way of getting his name into the press releases in multiple places even when it's not about him. Particularly like instead of saying, you know, the US Army's right flank on Bataan, the press release would say MacArthur’s right flank on Bataan'...
'If I told you on the Western Front, maybe in 1944, when the Germans and the Americans are facing each other in France, that there was a German unit that was there to terrorize the other side and hurt them around and freak em out. And they would come out of their foxholes at night, sneak over no man's land jump into an American foxhole, butcher the GIs in there, put them in obscene positions right on the side of the foxhole in blood and then go back to their own trenches at night. And if I told you they called themselves the werewolves and the vampires because that would freak everybody out, that's not too hard to believe is it? You'd probably go to the movie or read the book about it because the second world war has all kinds of wild things like that, right? But it's crazy, right? It's different. I mean, it's freaky. You imagine that people on the ground would probably be talking about it in the sector where it happened: did you hear what happened? The werewolves struck again, you know.
But I had to think about it like that to realize how freaky it is because in the Pacific that happens all the time. The Japanese do this routinely. They jump into the foxholes at night and they butcher people. They disembowel them, they stuff the genitals into the mouth and the stories are all over the place...
When you met veterans when I was growing up, the more combat they saw, traditionally, the less they would talk about it, but the vibe was different between people who fought in the Pacific and people who fought elsewhere. And the one thing that overwhelmingly was different was you could meet people who fought elsewhere that sometimes didn't like their opponents very much or sometimes hated them, but almost to a person, I didn't meet anybody who fought the Japanese, who didn't harbor really still bitter feelings decades and decades later...
Lord Russell of Liverpool was looking at the stats compiled at the Tokyo war crimes trials and came up with a doozy... a British or American soldier who fell into captivity by the Germans are the Italians had a 4% chance of dying while in captivity. A British or American soldier who fell into Japanese hands had a 27% chance of dying before being returned home and it's not even close. The most gentle thing you could probably say is that the Japanese had a much lower level of priority in terms of attention and resources towards POW than the other major powers did.
The truth is, is that guys like General Yamashita, who led the Singapore campaign, and General Hama, who led this Philippines campaign will both be executed by the Allies after the war for war crimes. And probably neither one of them deserve that. If you examine it closely, both of those generals, I mean Hama had it set up so that they were hospital stops and rest stops and food, but only for about 24, 25,000 people. They had the same problems with the exposure moment and the acid tests of combat. They win, but they plan for 25,000 prisoners and they end up with 78,000"
Today liberals claim university professors and students are liberal because they're smarter. So...
So much for burning the boats being the key to success
"The whole dysfunctional Japanese government and all the reasons it was. Let's not forget, for example, about assassinations, and how much of a tool to prevent thinking that wasn't patriotic enough from being, you know, publicly expounded upon. I mean, there was a period in Japanese history that we talked about, where historians sometimes call it government by assassination. And it was the most extreme in Japanese society sort of driving the bus...
I was interested in the similarities between the university and high school professors in Germany in the First World War, and in Japan before the Second. If you go read any number of accounts, but All Quiet on the Western Front is the most famous. They all talk about how their professors. It's funny, it's like the opposite of today's stereotype of the Marxist leftist professor that corrupts the young minds that come into the classroom and makes them anti government...
The Japanese do not see themselves as the equals of all these yellow peoples in Asia that they are ‘freeing’, using my fingers as air quotes, from their European colonial masters... They see themselves as superior to them in a racial and ethnic sense, the same way that the Germans see themselves as superior to the Slavic people...
‘Remember, the adjective attached to this fortress city of Singapore, the Gibraltar of the East, right? It's a fortress city. And Churchill says, in my defense, I basically didn't think to ask whether something called a fortress had defenses. He said I would no sooner ask if a battleship that you had just launched had a bottom. So why were there no defenses? It's complicated. Some of it was part of a particular branch of the military theories right, at the pre war.
You saw in the First World War too, this idea that defenses are bad for morale. Troops get accustomed to the safety of living behind trench walls or fortifications or whatever, then you need them to go on the aggressive, they're soft. Another reason some of the generals in Malaya said that they didn't want defenses. They thought it was bad for the morale of the civilians that the troops were protecting. There's a lot of reasons. Problem is, is that if you turn out to be wrong about that, if the acid test of combat proves that it would be very nice to have some defenses and they're not there, once again, who gets screwed in that situation? And the Allied troops will be forever trying to build ad hoc defenses in pouring rain as quickly as they can five minutes after escaping combat with the Japanese still on the way. You know, often at night'...
‘MacArthur’s great stature in the United States was in part due to his own highly efficient public relations organization. Most of the war news from the Philippines which the American public read came from MacArthur's communiques and press releases. Of 142 communiques released by his headquarters between December and March, 109 mentioned only one individual: MacArthur’... MacArthur had a way of getting his name into the press releases in multiple places even when it's not about him. Particularly like instead of saying, you know, the US Army's right flank on Bataan, the press release would say MacArthur’s right flank on Bataan'...
'If I told you on the Western Front, maybe in 1944, when the Germans and the Americans are facing each other in France, that there was a German unit that was there to terrorize the other side and hurt them around and freak em out. And they would come out of their foxholes at night, sneak over no man's land jump into an American foxhole, butcher the GIs in there, put them in obscene positions right on the side of the foxhole in blood and then go back to their own trenches at night. And if I told you they called themselves the werewolves and the vampires because that would freak everybody out, that's not too hard to believe is it? You'd probably go to the movie or read the book about it because the second world war has all kinds of wild things like that, right? But it's crazy, right? It's different. I mean, it's freaky. You imagine that people on the ground would probably be talking about it in the sector where it happened: did you hear what happened? The werewolves struck again, you know.
But I had to think about it like that to realize how freaky it is because in the Pacific that happens all the time. The Japanese do this routinely. They jump into the foxholes at night and they butcher people. They disembowel them, they stuff the genitals into the mouth and the stories are all over the place...
When you met veterans when I was growing up, the more combat they saw, traditionally, the less they would talk about it, but the vibe was different between people who fought in the Pacific and people who fought elsewhere. And the one thing that overwhelmingly was different was you could meet people who fought elsewhere that sometimes didn't like their opponents very much or sometimes hated them, but almost to a person, I didn't meet anybody who fought the Japanese, who didn't harbor really still bitter feelings decades and decades later...
Lord Russell of Liverpool was looking at the stats compiled at the Tokyo war crimes trials and came up with a doozy... a British or American soldier who fell into captivity by the Germans are the Italians had a 4% chance of dying while in captivity. A British or American soldier who fell into Japanese hands had a 27% chance of dying before being returned home and it's not even close. The most gentle thing you could probably say is that the Japanese had a much lower level of priority in terms of attention and resources towards POW than the other major powers did.
The truth is, is that guys like General Yamashita, who led the Singapore campaign, and General Hama, who led this Philippines campaign will both be executed by the Allies after the war for war crimes. And probably neither one of them deserve that. If you examine it closely, both of those generals, I mean Hama had it set up so that they were hospital stops and rest stops and food, but only for about 24, 25,000 people. They had the same problems with the exposure moment and the acid tests of combat. They win, but they plan for 25,000 prisoners and they end up with 78,000"
Today liberals claim university professors and students are liberal because they're smarter. So...
So much for burning the boats being the key to success
Post ID: 6698635757559200167
Links - 8th February 2020 (1) (Meghan & Harry)
BREAKING: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are moving to Canada - "The Evening Standard has also reported that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has agreed to put the hefty security bill for the couple on Canadian taxpayer’s dime. That has been disputed by Finance Minister Bill Morneau, though, who has denied whether or not Ottawa has made a decision to help cover the bill.The security would demand round-the-clock protection while they stay in the country, which could cost Canada “an estimated £1 million, which would equal out to roughly $1.6 million Canadian dollars...
'we would have preferred them to remain full-time working Members of the Royal Family... Harry and Meghan have made clear that they do not want to be reliant on public funds in their new lives.'"
I guess Canadian public funds don't count as public funds. At least this may be a win for British taxpayers
WATCH: Prince Harry pitches Disney head to give Meghan Markle work - "“You know she does voiceovers, right?” Prince Harry can be heard saying at a red carpet event to Iger. “Oh, really?” Iger responds, looking uncomfortable. “I did not know that.”... Despite Prince Harry and Markle saying they want to distance themselves from the Royal family, they still appear to be wanting to leverage their star power derived from their former titles in order to make money."
Racism is not to blame for Meghan Markle’s behaviour - The Post Millennial - "Ever anxious to find another thing to blame on bias, The New York Times, CNN and other outlets are blaming #Megxit on racism... This latest theory is that the racism inherent in British society and in the royal family itself was so horrific that the couple had to move to a country where the Prime Minister donned blackface for a laugh at parties... There’s a drive in media to control this narrative, to make it about race. So much so that when the BBC declined to do so, that was the story about the story. CNN points out that “As Duchess, she hasn’t made race an issue. Others have.” And that’s exactly what so many outlets are doing."
Meghan Markle And Prince Harry UK Royal Reporters Coverage Compared To Kate Middleton And Prince William - "Here Are 20 Headlines Comparing Meghan Markle To Kate Middleton That Might Show Why She And Prince Harry Are Cutting Off Royal Reporters
Over the years, Meghan has been shamed for the same things for which her sister-in-law, Kate, has been praised."
Even from the headlines and screenshots alone, it's clear that in more than half these cases there are no double standards. Imagine what one would find out going into the details
A woke Wallis Simpson - "They’re going to split their time between the UK and North America – think of all the CO2! – and become more ‘independent’. .. Megxit, as this royal bombshell is wittily being called, is a striking sign of the times. What Harry and Meghan are doing is virtually unprecedented in the history of the royals. They are jacking in their jobs (I say jobs) as senior royals and pursuing a more ‘financially independent’ path that will allow them to earn, travel and – this is important – jabber on about their pet concerns and causes as much as they like.Even leaving aside the fact that they won’t actually be financially independent... still their move is a startling and concerning one.What it fundamentally reveals is the incompatibility of the modern culture of narcissism with the values of duty, loyalty and self-negation traditionally associated with royal life. To someone like Meghan, who sprang from celebville, who sees herself as the embodiment of right-on goodness, and who loves nothing more than advertising her eco-virtue and performing her PC credentials, life in the British monarchy was never going to be a good fit. Yes, the woke agenda Meghan expresses so well shares much in common with the old-world elitism of the monarchical system. Both obsess over inherited characteristics (the woke bang on about race and gender, the monarchy is all about bloodline). Both have a penchant for looking down their noses at the little people. And both have an instinctive loathing for modernity, from Charles’ longstanding conservationism to H&M’s humanity-bashing eco-hysteria.But there’s one big, irreconcilable difference: where the woke value the self over everything else, senior royals are meant, ostensibly at least, to be selfless, to submerge the self into the crown. It looks like this is a deal-breaker for the younger, more celebrity-oriented royals, especially newcomer Meghan but also Harry, too. Their unprecedented ‘stepping back’, and the fury this has allegedly caused in the Palace, suggests the cult of the self that Meghan and other showily virtuous celebs embody and promote, does not work within an institution whose ideal is the Queen: opinion-free, emotions hidden, dutiful, unquestioning and in it for the long haul. Duty is anathema to a new generation whose chief goal is often self-realisation... Indeed, the most striking thing about Harry and Meghan’s bombshell is the way they talk about the royal family as if it is little more than a stepping stone to their self-realisation... Even more startling is the way they talk about the queen. They say they will ‘continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen’. Collaborate with? They sound more like Kendall Jenner talking about her adverts with Pepsi than individuals who are meant to devote themselves for life to royal duty and the preservation of the crown... Of course, the Meghan-loving liberal set are responding to Megxit by chastising the British tabloids and, by extension, the riff-raff who read them. You racist shits drove this wonderful woman away – that’s the undertone, and sometimes the overtone, of what they’re saying. It captures how snooty the woke brigade is, where they are essentially reprimanding the masses for daring to criticise their royal superiors. Overlooking, of course, that there was a lot to criticise about H&M, from their moaning about their privileged lives to their hypocritical jetting around the world to make platitudinous lectures about climate change... They’re going to become even more insufferable. And here’s the thing: they will trade on their still existing royal titles to do so."
Piers Morgan says criticism of Meghan Markle is not racist - "Northampton Saints rugby player Courtney Lawes, who is mixed race, also responded to the NYT story, saying: 'Is it any wonder nobody takes the word racism seriously anymore? The misuse of this word nowadays is genuinely embarrassing.'... 'What Meghan's forgotten, or simply doesn't understand, is that she and Harry aren't important royals, they're minor players with no chance of ever acceding to the throne... 'But what genuinely worries me now is that the very future of the Monarchy may be in serious jeopardy if these two renegades have their way and become effectively a pair of rival royals bestriding the globe acting like they're the big dogs, doing what the hell they like and using their royal fame to line their own pockets to the tune of millions like a pair of greedy, grasping hustlers, destroying the royal brand one grubby deal at a time. 'It can't be allowed to happen. Nobody tells the Queen what to do. She's the most powerful, respected person in Britain. And right now, she's facing a direct threat to everything she has worked so hard to maintain. 'Harry and Meghan's astonishingly brazen and selfish antics have left her no choice but to cut them loose and fire them both from the Royal Family. Get rid of these whining, ego-crazed, deluded leeches Ma'am - before it's too late.'... it emerged the Duchess of Sussex had returned to Canada as the Queen and other senior royals took decisive action and ordered their teams to find a 'workable solution' to Harry and Meghan's future roles."
Harry and Meghan have become the petulant 'enfants terribles' of the family firm - "They even pledged to "collaborate" with the Queen, a relationship more akin to Stella McCartney helping to dress a celebrity for the red carpet than the sharing of royal obligations.Make no mistake, the public will interpret this as yet more evidence that Meghan and Harry are the enfants terribles of The Firm, with a remote and tone deaf idea of their role. Instead of supporting their relatives, working for charities, and accepting the privileges and responsibilities that come with it, they have instead chosen to navigate an opaque new course between royalty and celebrity. Their statement roughly translates as “boohoo, nobody loves us”, like a teenager testing his or her parents’ affections. The hope is that the Queen, media and public will beg for their return - “don’t go, Harry and Meghan! We love you really!” - and uncritically accept their woke agenda... Clearly an element of the semi-resignation was meant as payback for the media, whom the Sussexes think have been big meanies to them (clearly they have never seen Sarah Ferguson called “The Duchess of Pork” and missed the furore over Pippa Middleton’s Waitrose deal). The Duchess of Sussex has never really understood that criticism was part of the job, having believed that being on Suits was some sort of immunity badge. The couple are so angry with newspapers, in fact, that they’ve created their own “media” page on their Sussex Royal website, setting out, in Trumpian style, who they will deign to speak to. Top of the list are “grassroots media organisations and young, up-and-coming journalists”, whom they hilariously assume will not scrutinise them. Elsewhere, the royals, with no apparent sense of irony, claim to “believe in a free, strong and open media industry”, all the while trying to micromanage it. Meghan and Harry embody many of the most negative stereotypes of the Millennial age group: that they want everything easy; that they have no sense of duty, commitment or idea of the greater good. A dose of stiff upper lip wouldn’t go amiss. They imagine life as an Instagram story in which they can chop and change the narrative... Stoic and dutiful, the Queen has always embodied the sentiment noblesse oblige. But it is one that her relatives clearly struggle to understand."
Harry and Meghan’s bombshell announcement is a discourtesy to the Queen – and smacks of millennial self-absorption - "It was claimed the Duke had ignored a personal request from the Queen not to go public with his plans until he had properly consulted with his father. The Queen is said to have made it clear to the Duke that he should not reveal their intentions with so many questions yet to be answered – and yet the Sussex’s did it anyway.Not only was this a huge discourtesy to the monarch from whom they derive their titles and public profile, it was hurtful, cruel even, to deal such a blow to a 93-year-old lady who has only recently had to ask her errant second son to relinquish his Royal duties.Faith in the Firm, as the Windsors call the family business, has already been shaken. The last thing the Queen needed, at the start of a new year’s trading, was the defection of two key personnel who seem to be threatening to set up a tacky rival company in north America: Royals R US. If the Sussexes had bothered to show up at Sandringham for Christmas with the rest of the family, witnessing the pressures that the stoical, snowy monarch was under might have inclined them to think again... Do the the ultra-woke Sussexes think the Cambridges are not “progressive” as they go about their boring old duty of supporting the Queen and keeping their political opinions to themselves?Not for the first time, we can thank our lucky stars that it is William who is the elder brother and future King, and steady Catherine who will be our Queen, not Harry the petulant boy and Duchess “I don’t like this new part, let’s tear it up and rewrite it” Meghan. The idea that the Sussexes can cast off their main responsibilities yet retain a place within “this institution” is downright baffling. Royalty is like virginity; you can’t be a bit Royal. When Edward VIII abdicated the throne for Wallis Simpson, he made the error of assuming that he could continue to play a significant role as the new monarch’s brother. The Windsors had other ideas. Remember that Princess Elizabeth spent her formative years with a seething mother who could never forgive her brother-in-law’s betrayal. Today, the Queen will be saddened by the behaviour of the grandson with whom, until his wedding in 2018, she enjoyed an immensely fond and teasing relationship... As one exasperated Palace aide is reported to have said: “People had bent over backwards for them. They were given the wedding they wanted, the house they wanted, the office they wanted, the staff they wanted and had the backing of the family. What more did they want?”What indeed. After that heavenly wedding on a glittering May day just 20 months ago, the Queen made the newlyweds Youth Ambassadors to her beloved Commonwealth. It was a brilliant appointment for Meghan and Harry and displayed great thoughtfulness, affection and respect on the monarch’s part. Shame they couldn’t show the same in return.I’m afraid their bombshell announcement smacks of millennial self-absorption, of values that prize identity, the expression of emotion and personal happiness above all else. The exact opposite, in fact, of the Queen’s wartime generation which believed that you didn’t throw in the towel, you stuck at things through good and bad... Meghan Markle never wanted to be a Royal, she wanted to be Michelle Obama. The mistake was to think she could bend a centuries-old institution to that end... Had he married a different sort of girl, would Harry be stepping away from the Royal family now? I seriously doubt it... You know, I am sure there would have been considerable sympathy if Harry and Meghan had gone to Her Majesty and declared a desire to live more privately abroad, with a scaled-down profile, forsaking family money and privileges. The Palace could have helped draw up a plan. Instead, they have acted with a breathtaking self-centredness, announcing their decision to the public first and clearly hoping to bounce the monarch into accepting their “progressive” new role, which keeps the perks of Royalty while shirking its duties. The Queen doesn’t deserve that. She really does not. Her grandson and his wife may like to style themselves as humanitarians, but it’s hard to detect much humanity in their treatment of a vulnerable nonagenarian who may soon be a widow. With their new freedom, I suppose the Duke and Duchess of Sussex could always audition to play the parts of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in Season 8 of The Crown."
Queen wants rift repaired in 72 hours as Harry prepares to leave the country with no return date - "The Duke of York has courted controversy in the past for insisting his daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, could have both careers and quasi-royal roles.In 2011 they were stripped of their 24-hour bodyguards following a row over their living and travel expenses. The Queen’s youngest son, the Earl of Wessex, and his wife, Sophie, were both instructed to give up their jobs following their marriage in 1999 amid criticism that their careers in television and public relations conflicted with their royal interests."
Too bad the others can't blame racism
UK monarchy scrambles for solutions after Harry, Meghan bombshell - "Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, rocked the monarchy on Wednesday with an announcement made without consulting any senior royals from the sovereign downwards... They released their shock statement on a pre-prepared new website, their Instagram account and through Buckingham Palace's email communications system. The mood in the palace was understood to be one of disappointment and even "hurt", according to the BBC, while Thursday's newspapers were full of reports of a family "split" and the queen's "dismay". London's Evening Standard newspaper said they had "defied clear instructions from the queen" not to go public about any future plans at this time. It added senior courtiers had warned the couple "will be punished for this". Meanwhile Madame Tussauds London said it was moving its waxworks of the pair away from other top family figures "to reflect the upcoming change in the royal line-up". Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams said Harry and Meghan announcing this step without the 93-year-old monarch's blessing was "extraordinary"... "They've chosen to... go rogue. The result, therefore, could have very serious consequences."... Royal analysts said the changes were unprecedented for senior family members."
‘Independent’ Royals… really? Why don’t Harry & Meghan go all the way and quit the family? - "They want royal perks and freedom on their terms. (Well, Meghan’s terms. Ex cheeky chappie, happy-go-lucky Harry looks shell-shocked since wedding his pant-wearing feminist wife.) It's like when you go to a fancy buffet: We'll keep the titles and Frogmore cottage, the couple's official residence, which cost £2.4 million of public funding to do up last year, and keep the income from the Duchy of Cornwall, Prince Charles' private estate, but we want privacy when it suits and will avail of security on royal business, which will also be paid for by taxpayers. The couple will kindly be giving up a slice of the Queen's Sovereign Grant, a payment they get for official duties, which covers the upkeep of their home. But they'll be doing fewer duties, so that's fair enough. It's as independent as Marie Antoinette creating the peasant village of Hameau de la Reine in 1783. Just like Meghan, she was sick of the perpetual structure and demands of the title, and created a little rustic retreat in the park of the Palace of Versailles in order to feel free and peasant-like. Marie Antoinette sought refuge dressing up as a milkmaid or a shepherdess, strolling around in peasant garb, milking cows which were cleaned by hired hands, while still enjoying the privileges of royal life and keeping the masses out of the gates... Royal commenter Penny Junor said the couple's actions to not inform members of the Royal Family were "beyond bizarre," stating that they are working for the palace and not self-employed. You'd wonder why not, if you don't like Royal life, just denounce your titles? As an empowered post #MeToo feminist, why is Meghan seeking special treatment based on an accident of the birth of her husband?... 'Girls with dreams become women with vision,' and she's staying true to her word. Well – Plan C of her vision. Plan A was to make the royals more woke, which didn't pan out, Plan B was playing the victim in a recent ITV documentary about the couple, describing motherhood as a 'struggle' due to intense media interest. 'Not many people have asked if I'm OK,' she said. That didn't go too well either, what with the castles, the hired help and the privileges the rest of us could only dream about. Now, there's nowhere else to go but the US to be independent, while keeping her husband's title – what's feminist about that? The self-serving narcissistic hypocrisy is thundering. You can only admire her, though. Most women have to put together flat packs and go Dutch on dinner in the name of female empowerment. The 'Duchess' gets her man to leave the House of Windsor on her terms because the family didn't take to her post-MeToo Hollywood feminism... the question is – do they have the courage to be truly independent or do they just want to conquer and divide?"
PIERS MORGAN: The Queen must FIRE Prince Harry and Meghan - " if I were Her Majesty the Queen, I would unceremoniously strip Harry and Meghan of all their titles with immediate effect and despatch them back into civilian life. These two deluded clowns announced yesterday they were quitting life as senior royals. In a series of staggeringly pompous statements on their gleaming new Hollywood-style website, they laid down the law to the Queen and to the rest of us about exactly how things are supposedly going to work from this moment on. To summarise, they want to stop being 'senior royals' with all the tedious duty that entails. And instead, they now want to be a 'progressive' force within 'the institution'. In other words, they want to be super-woke celebrities (with all the outrageous 'Do as we say not as we do' hectoring hypocrisy they've already brought to that status) who get to keep all the trappings of royal life without any of the hard, boring bits and the right to cash in on their status however they choose. So, they want the glitz, the glamour, the splendour and the stupendous wealth….they just don't want to have to actually earn it... In their lengthy list of pronouncements, Harry and Meghan say they will now be spending much of their time in North America, where they've just be lounging on their lazy backsides for six weeks 'much-needed holiday' – a holiday from what, exactly? - at a multi-millionaire's waterside mansion in Canada. Oh, and they're going to seek to be 'financially independent'. It's only when you read the details of this 'independence' that you realise what it actually means is they want to live off Harry's dad's money, from Prince Charles and his Duchy of Cornwall – which he only possesses by right of being the Queen's heir... They also, hilariously, laid down their new rulebook for the media, saying they're getting rid of the traditional Royal Rota system and will instead be inviting special favoured journalists to attend their events and only write nice positive things about them. I chuckled with disbelief as I read this. Even Vladimir Putin wouldn't pull a stunt to control the press like that... It was shocking enough that Harry and Meghan didn't even have the courtesy to tell either Prince Charles, who they sponge off, or Prince William of their grandiose plans. But it was absolutely appalling that they failed to notify the Queen. This woman is not just Harry's grandmother, she's the Monarch for god's sake... How the hell has it come to this less than two years after a wedding that was greeted with global excitement and praise? Two words: Meghan Markle... I never heard from her again, and when I saw her do the same to her own father Thomas, I realised this is what Meghan does when people are either no longer of use to her or might be 'problematic' to the bigger prize. To put it bluntly, she's an unsavoury manipulative social-climbing piece of work who has inveigled her way into Prince Harry's heart and used his blind love as a platform to now destroy everything he once held so dear. She's caused a tremendous rift between Harry and William. She's ruined Harry's reputation with the public as a hugely popular fun, carefree soul, turning him into a miserable-looking, virtue-signalling laughing stock. And now she's ripped him away from his beloved grandmother, the Queen. None of this has surprised me. Meghan's been doing this kind of stuff all her adult life. She's disowned 99 per cent of her own family. She's ditched and ghosted numerous old friends. She got rid of her ex-husband when she tasted TV stardom. And the former Deal or No Deal suitcase girl has done all this with barely a glance back to her past. Nothing said more about Me-Me-Meghan than her wedding day when she plonked newly-acquired A-list celebrity friends like Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney up the front where most brides usually put their family... I had lunch with a good friend of Harry's soon after the wedding and he said that he and various other very close mates of the Prince were stunned not to be asked to the spectacular evening wedding party, and even more dismayed when they discovered a load of celebrities had got their invitations instead. 'We realised then that Meghan's calling all the shots,' he said. And the 38-year-old divorcee has carried on calling them ever since. As Harry reportedly told courtiers during an argument before the wedding day: 'What Meghan wants, Meghan GETS!' Well now she wants to have her royal cake and eat it... she doesn't want to get her hands dirty opening a community hall on a wet Wednesday in Stoke-on-Trent. That's for the little royal people, not a superstar Princess like her."
Meghan and Harry's 'threat of a no-holds barred interview' - "Journalist and close confidante of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Tom Bradby has warned that if the Royal couple are left feeling hard done by, they may give a 'no-holds barred' interview which would could further damage the monarchy... Courtiers fear that Meghan would brand the royal household racist and sexist, according to the publication... William 'did try' to make amends with the Duke and Duchess but 'for the moment, at least, things have gone too far to be retrieved.'... The Duke of Cambridge has said he is unable to even 'put an arm round' his younger brother nowadays, after a rift saw them drift apart over the past year. Harry and Meghan's intention to quit as senior Royals has widened the gulf between the two siblings, with William understood to be 'incandescent' over his brother's blindsiding of the Family... The Queen, who was pictured ashen-faced behind the wheel of her Land Rover today, is also said to be concerned for the mental fragility of her grandson Harry... Growing up, William and Harry's brotherly love seemed unbreakable, with the pair supporting each other in the wake of their mother Diana's death. As they both developed into their roles as senior members of the Royal Family, they became a somewhat double act who would do engagements together. Even when William married Kate, they would often attend events as a trio. But during the past year rumours of a brewing row between the brothers began to bubble up, eventually boiling over when Harry and Meghan quit the charitable entity they spearheaded with the Cambridges and branched ff to form their own... Meghan and Kate Middleton have not spoken in over six months after ceasing communication on their WhatsApp group... The break-up of the so-called Fab Four, which was cemented when the Sussexes left Kensington Palace, weighed on Harry immensely at the time"
When you let a troublemaker in...
When did criticism of Meghan and Harry become racism? - "that the Duchess of Sussex wouldn’t make the effort (or was too cowardly) to fly in and thrash out a plan with the Queen – but was happy to fly to New York to watch her pal Serena Williams in the US Open finals when Archie was four months old – is a defining fact in a long list of facts that have defined Meghan Markle in my eyes... we sighed, snarked and snorted about silly things, like Markle closing her own car door, the fact that in six months this woman spent five times what any royal in the whole of Europe had on clothes, and various Marie-Antoinette-isms involving things like penning empowering messages on bananas for sex workers... Remember that Saturday, when we welcomed Ms Markle into the fold? I was in the grounds of Windsor Castle. I saw the Brits who had travelled to be there celebrating the arrival of the first African-American member of the Royal family – many of them mixed-race couples (estimated to be 9 per cent of the population in the UK, as opposed to just 4.6 per cent in Wokeville, Canada, and 2 per cent in the US).And what struck me then, as someone who has lived in the US on and off for the past decade, was how blissfully uncluttered and unpolarised we were by racial issues in comparison. How very – to coin Megxit terminology – naturally and unselfconsciously “progressive”: a thought echoed by Trevor Phillips this month, who called Britain “the only country in the world where a sizeable mixed-race population has come about as a consequence of love, rather than coercion or slavery”. It struck me, too, that we were very optimistic about a woman we knew so little about. Over time, that optimism was eroded not by the occurrence of rapid-onset racism, but by Markle’s actions and behaviour. The capriciousness over Frogmore Cottage, Archie’s hide-and-seek christening and the ghastly press, who simply would not pander in the way that they were ordered to.Oh, and the overt whinging about us to everyone from Pharrell Williams (“they don’t make it easy”) to Tom Bradby: “Not many people have asked if I’m OK,” she told the journalist as – in an eye-watering feat of narcissism – she managed to eclipse every cause she and her husband had gone to Africa to highlight, and make it all about her.In toddler tantrum-style, the list goes on, ending only with yesterday’s emergency summit"
It is absurd to blame the Harry and Meghan fiasco on 'British racism' - "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's extraordinary announcement – evening timed for the American audience – may have blindsided the Crown, but the liberal narrative setting in is utterly predictable... This is not only a fundamental misreading of the public’s frustration with Harry and Meghan’s conduct, but also an analysis that suffers from a short memory. When Meghan and Harry announced their engagement, both Middle England and the media fawned over the couple. Faithful monarchists toasted their wedding day in Jubilee-style street parties. The press hailed her as a “breath of fresh air”. But it wasn’t long before the whiff of rot started to seep from the Sussex’s tacit social contract with the country; the secrecy over Archie’s christening did not sit comfortably alongside revelations about the £2.4 million refurbishment of Frogmore cottage. Nor the career shift to heckling the public on climate change while zipping around on private jets.Britain’s frustration with the Sussexes thus centres around their naive hypocrisy and self-destructive determination to have their cake and eat it... the couple seem to live on another PR-oiled, celebnocratic planet... The Middle English instinct is that we should aspire to a colour blind society. This is partly because, unlike America, the UK has not need to find a language of ‘empowerment’ or a legal framework for affirmative action, to cauterise deep wounds from an incendiary race relations history. But also partly because – ironically enough given the royal subject-matter – Britain’s demons are entangled in class rather than race... Such is why that Vogue magazine cover – which featured 15 inspirational women – ruffled so many feathers. The celebration of “black” ballerinas and “Somali” boxers was weightily cadenced poetry to the pious wokeocracy. But to the rest of us, it exposed a lightweight and flippantly tokenistic attitude... one wonders whether the modern phenomenon of victimised narcissism is actually the culprit here. Eyebrow-raising elements to this story – from their discourteous behaviour towards the Queen to the decision to quit their apparently taxing public role after a six-week luxury holiday – all hint at a lack of self-awareness. Relieved of their royal duties, one can only hope they find the time to indulge in some soul searching"
Sadly, the UK is imported the US culture wars
Why the New York Times has got it wrong about the Sussexes and racism - "Ms Hirsch’s narrative conveniently overlooks the overwhelmingly fawning coverage that the Duke and Duchess enjoyed, from their engagement to their wedding day. Her article also neglects to mention that the collapse in support for the pair coincided with a string of bewildering acts of self-sabotage, from banning spectators from taking photos at Wimbledon because the Duchess was present, to sniping at the public about global warming while whizzing around in private jets... the most disturbing aspect to The New York Times’ thesis is that in Britain, there is “a deep correlation between privilege and race”. This statement crumbles on first contact with basic facts – among them that white working-class boys perform the worst of any group in our schools. It also overlooks an intriguing British quirk. Emotional baggage from our country’s legacy of aristocratic privilege has endowed Middle England with the kind of stridently meritocratic values that are a complete anathema to judging people by their colour.But, as these meritocratic principles are also incompatible with the kind of tokenistic multiculturalism that people like Ms Hirsch champion, it is being written off – on both sides of the Atlantic – as racism."
The monarchy already has a model for its continued success: the Queen - " the issue isn’t Harry and Meghan’s desire for independence.It is the way they have gone about it. It was disrespectful to the elders; it was “me, me, me”. And their announcement that they were looking for a “progressive role” implied that the one they left behind was regressive and archaic.They misunderstand how the privileged exercise leadership.The monarchy cannot go around justifying itself: the moment it does that, it becomes political. So instead it proves its worth by what it visibly does.“I have to be seen to be believed,” the Queen famously said. She is active, yet almost silent – and into that silence, we read a great deal. That the Queen doesn’t make a fuss; that she puts duty before self, that Her Majesty isn’t part of this wretched modern culture of falling apart every time you don’t get exactly what you want.
How the royals gave Harry and Meghan everything they wanted - but they still wanted more - "Telling one of the Queen’s most senior aides: “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets”, in the run up to their Windsor wedding in May 2018, the ill-tempered comment is understood to have prompted a rare rebuke from the 93-year-old monarch.Yet ever since that glittering ceremony at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the royals have been uncharacteristically accommodating of the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ demands - which makes their decision to step down as senior royals without consultation all the more baffling.It started before the couple had even got married when the Queen broke with royal tradition to invite American divorcee Meghan to spend Christmas at Sandringham in 2017, even though she was only engaged to Harry at the time.Recognising that the former Suits star had not just moved to the UK but also given up her blossoming acting career to marry into the Firm, the royals bent over backwards to make Meghan feel as welcome as possible - as did the British public. The Cambridges even allowed the lovestruck pair to stay at Anmer Hall, their private bolthole on the royal estate in Norfolk and the ‘Fab Four’ were famously captured by amateur photographer Karen Anvil walking arm in arm to St Mary Magdalene Church on Christmas morning... When cracks started appearing in their relationship with the Cambridges amid rumours of a rift between the royal brothers - and a tearful incident between the sisters in law at a bridesmaids dress fitting for Princess Charlotte - efforts were made behind the scenes to patch things up... They were allowed to keep the location of the birth secret (until it was later revealed on the royal baby’s birth certificate) as well as breaking with royal protocol by also keeping the identity of his godparents under wraps.And when it came to their first royal tour as a family - following a hugely successful visit to Australia in 2018 - the Sussexes were permitted to take Archie to Harry’s beloved Africa last autumn.Almost everything that Meghan (and Harry) wanted, they got. And yet it still didn’t seem to be enough. Giving an interview to ITV’s Tom Bradby during the African tour, Meghan hinted at a lack of support from her royal relatives, tearfully declaring: “Not many people have asked if I’m ok.”Harry later issued a statement attacking the press for “bullying” Meghan - without the prior knowledge of the Queen or her successors in a growing sign of what was to come... the couple has never looked more isolated.And not just from their nearest and dearest but their own advisers. Their PR chief Sara Latham now appears to be playing second fiddle to US based master of the dart arts Ken Sunshine, David Beckham’s former publicist Izzy May and talent agent Nick Collins - all of whom now appear a part of the Sussexes’ inner circle amid claims royal aides have been “frozen out”.“The couple have been ignoring the advice of their palace staff,” revealed an insider... The simple truth is, in giving them what they wanted, the royals only succeeded in leaving Harry and Meghan wanting more."
Does Harry really want to follow Edward VIII, says VIRGINIA BLACKBURN - "It’s hard to escape the conclusion that having grown up in a country that considers the Kennedys to be aristocracy, Meghan didn’t understand that being a Windsor is not like being a celebrity. It wasn’t about wearing the latest designer clothes to awards ceremonies. It was about getting on with the job. Meghan might not have known this but Harry did. What was he thinking? Presumably, unless the rift with his brother is an awful lot worse than we’ve been led to believe, he wants the institution of monarchy to flourish as much as anyone. How does he think he’s helping that? Harry was one of its most popular members, adored by all and sundry. We forgave him readily for the Vegas antics. We were even sympathetic during his photographer-punching stage. He was a prince looking for love, just like the rest of us. And now what?"
'We have lost respect for you': Military figures dismayed by Duke of Sussex's behaviour - "One of the Army's most senior former officers urged the Duke of Sussex to "put Queen and country first", as a former officer in the Royal Marines, of which the Duke is Captain General, said he would not raise a toast to him."
Meghan Markle's former aide lands a new job with Cliveden clan - "Since Meghan Markle joined the Royal family she has had three staff members step down.
Amy Pickerill was appointed as Meghan’s assistant last year and is now set to step down from the position... long time staff member Samantha Cohen would be leaving Kensington Palace. Samantha, who is originally from Australia said she would leave the royal household once the new baby had arrived. She had previously worked as Queen Elizabeth II’s private secretary, but announced her resignation from that role in 2017 in order to join Meghan and Harry. Meghan had hope to keep Samantha on her team permanently as she had previously advised her on the jump from Hollywood to royal life. Samantha’s resignation was revealed as Meghan was bombarded by rumours that she was difficult to deal with... PA Melissa Touabti left six months after the Royal wedding and was key during the build up to the event."
Are cracks already beginning to appear in the Sussexes’ North American dream? - "The newly freelancing Sussexes are planning new rules of engagement which will see traditional royal reporters cast aside in favour of “specialist media”, “young up-and-coming" reporters and outlets they consider “credible” (including the Daily Telegraph).Yet how did it come to pass that a prince who has largely enjoyed positive coverage - except the odd occasion when he decided to wear a Nazi uniform, or no clothes at all, has now turned on the very press pack that has helped to propel his popularity?... "Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces."It is a sentiment few could fail to sympathise with, yet in persistently tarring the entire media with the same brush, Harry weakens his argument by failing to distinguish between legitimate reportage and online invective. The royal couple have been specific in their suing the Mail on Sunday and its parent company Associated Newspapers for what they claim is the unlawful publication of a letter Meghan sent to her father Thomas Markle.But the action - designed to protect the Duchess’s privacy now looks set to have the adverse effect of prompting Mr Markle to spill all of their most intimate secrets in court. It will be open season for all the press - including those 'game-playing' outlets that he holds is particular contempt... Harry has spent almost his entire life barely able to disguise a visceral hatred of the media - betraying his true feelings in ill-tempered remarks to Sky News reporters who deign to ask him an off the cuff question to joking with baseball players in Harlem that they should aim their shot at the waiting press pack.At one point, the jibes came so thick and fast that aides had to ask the former Army captain to tone it down a bit.With a reputation for not only reading websites like MailOnline but actually scrolling through the comments section, the sixth-in-line to the throne would regularly phone PR advisers, often late at night, to admonish them for what he perceived as negative headlines. “There is something approaching paranoia about his attitude to the media,” said one royal insider. “He believes they are out to get him. And because he can be ill-tempered and petulant and hot headed he would react to stories almost as soon as they broke whereas William would be a lot more considered and sleep on it before forming an opinion.”... What remains to be seen is how Harry will manage his new-found relationship with the global media without the careful guidance of the well-oiled palace spin machine. For someone who has never been particularly good at taking PR advice, it seems a little counter-intuitive for him now to be entrusting his reputation to spinners, lawyers and business managers more concerned with their 10 per cent cut than an allegiance to Queen and country.Since his days at Ludgrove Prep and Eton College, the former Army captain has carefully cultivated a watertight inner circle that has always been impervious to leaks... Now largely cut off from his family and closest friends, Harry will be entrusting his secrets to the kinds of ‘friends’ who gave gushing interviews to People last February revealing that Meghan had penned her father a handwritten letter. The US magazine this week reported that the Sussexes felt their “hand was forced,” because: “There is so much bad blood in that family — it’s toxic.” It's hardly the sort of stuff HM wants to read over her Tupperwared breakfast cereal. And here’s another dilemma. Having touted his wife for voiceover work with the likes of Disney boss Bob Iger - is Harry certain he is comfortable potentially playing second fiddle to Meghan as they launch their assault on North America?Notwithstanding the problems the Prince of Wales faced when he perceived Princess Diana to be hogging the limelight, part of the reason Harry chose to split from Kensington Palace, the household he shared with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is because he felt overshadowed by his brother and sister-in-law.Moreover, with former Suits star Meghan a veteran of the red carpet who willingly chose a career in the spotlight, how is Harry going to cope with the paparazzi if, as rumoured, they end up settling in the Duchess’s native LA?... if the couple think they are going to avoid negative publicity by only briefing journalists who have sold their souls to give them sycophantic, one-sided, coverage then unfortunately they may also prove mistaken.Because it isn’t only the regulated, mainstream media that wants a full picture to be painted of high-profile people in positions of immense privilege but also the public - not least when those people are claiming to be innocent victims of their circumstances"
Court documents detail Meghan Markle's deteriorating relationship with her father Thomas Markle - "The defence document lodged on Tuesday in the High Court in London exposes in full their deteriorating relationship while accusing the Duchess of allegedly being - in part at least - an architect of her own breach of privacy. It suggests that when she wrote the letter to her father, she was aware it would likely end up in the public domain... After days of largely excoriating criticism of the Duke and Duchess for wanting to quit as ‘senior’ Royals, the Mail on Sunday’s legal defence is probably the last thing they needed. The newspaper is refusing to back down and has seemingly signed up Mr Markle as its star witness. The court case, whenever it should take place, is likely to be the trial of the century with the Duchess pitted against her father in the witness box. It won’t be pretty and the loser will be facing a legal bill running into the millions. The defence document is quick to point out that the Royal family are public figures supported “largely by public funds”... “The Claimant’s privacy rights do not extend to silencing her father.”... “The Letter does not appear to contain the Claimant’s deepest and most private thoughts but to be an admonishment by the Claimant of her father for failing to behave as she would have wished.“Amongst other things, she accused him of breaking her heart, manufacturing pain, being paranoid, being ridiculed, fabricating stories, of attacking Prince Harry, and continually lying.”The newspaper alleges that the Duchess had taken “great care over its presentation” adding: “The Letter appears to have been immaculately copied out by the Claimant in her own elaborate handwriting from a previous draft. There are no crossings-out or amendments as there usually are with a spontaneous draft. It is to be inferred also from the care the Claimant took over the presentation of the letter that she anticipated it being disclosed to and read by third parties.”The defence claim goes on: “It [the Letter] rehearses the Claimant’s version of the history of her relationship with her father and her family in a way that strongly suggests the Claimant wanted or expected third parties to read it.”"
Duchess of Sussex moves business interests to Delaware, the US 'corporate haven' beloved by the super-rich - "The Duchess of Sussex has moved her business to a US state used by the super-rich to protect their interests from scrutiny.The Duchess’s company Frim Fram Inc was moved out of California in December and incorporated in Delaware, which tax experts suggest could be done to avoid being hit with tax liabilities in California."
73% of Canadians don’t want to cover costs for Prince Harry, Meghan Markle: poll - National - "The overwhelming majority of Canadians aren’t on board with paying for costs associated with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle living in the country... Only three per cent of Canadians said they would be open to footing the bill for the couple and their son, Archie. Nineteen per cent of respondents said they would be OK with paying some costs, but not all... A former member of the RCMP also said the royals cannot technically refuse security... 47 per cent of Canadians indicated they think of Prince Harry as more of a celebrity; 41 per cent considered him to primarily be a working member of the monarchy.Other members of the family are considered to be working royals. For example, 66 per cent of Canadians think of Prince William as a working royal... All this begs the question of whether Canadians truly see a future for the monarchy — and according to this survey, maybe not.Two-thirds of Canadians said they think the monarchy has lost or is losing relevance, with 41 per cent saying it is “completely irrelevant.” However, 61 per cent of Canadians say they are OK to continue supporting the Queen, including swearing oaths to her, putting her on the currency and recognizing her as the head of state. The survey points out, though, that Prince Charles would likely not have the same support as king — only 43 per cent would back him. The desire for Canada to be a constitutional monarchy is also fading, the survey noted. In 2016, 38 per cent of Canadians said the monarchy should not continue, but that number is now 45 per cent."
Prince Harry is British royalty, but Canada?s immigration system likely to treat him as commoner - The Washington Post - "“In order to become legal permanent residents of Canada, they would need to apply through our normal immigration processes,” said Béatrice Fénelon, a spokeswoman for Canada’s immigration agency. “However, members of the royal family are not required to seek authorization to come and stay in Canada as visitors.” She did not respond to questions on whether Harry and Meghan could stay indefinitely as “visitors.” As tourists traveling on British (Harry) or American (Meghan) passports, they could stay in Canada for up to six months, but then they’d be expected to leave. And without work permits — which can be complicated to get without job offers — they would have difficulty earning a living... Audrey Macklin, a law professor at the University of Toronto, has “no doubt” the couple could secure permanent residency if they planned to live in Canada over the long term. They could even request it on humanitarian or compassionate grounds — a route available to foreigners working on temporary permits or asylum seekers who have maintained solid work records in Canada... The queen herself isn’t a citizen, he noted. But she does have a status here: She’s “the personification of the Canadian state.”Still, she can’t grant Harry and Meghan citizenship, Lagassé said, because she remains bound by Canadian law, which “is very clear that discretion belongs with the [immigration] minister.” Depending on their plans, Grewal said, the couple have the option of applying through a business immigration program... Moving to Canada could jeopardize Meghan’s chances of getting British citizenship. She will need to have spent a certain amount of time in Britain to qualify."
PIERS MORGAN: Prince Harry's ditched UK for Meghan Markle - "Prince Harry is very sad.In fact, he wants us to know he feels a 'great sadness'... he wanted everyone to be in no doubt who to blame for this:'You looked out for me for so long, but the media is a powerful force.'... Oh, I know, I know…the only accepted narrative, certainly on Twitter, is that the mean, beastly, racist media has driven out poor Harry and Meghan with our despicable antics.We shamefully refused to let them lecture us about the environment AND use private jets like taxis!And we had the audacity to think a $500,000 star-studded, baby-shower party in New York was a tad inappropriate given that Harry and Meghan were busy urging us on Twitter that same week to pay more attention to poor people.Oh, and we shockingly suggested that if you’re going to have the taxpayers fork out $3 million on refurbishing your home, you should probably not hide photos and details of your son's birth or stop the public taking your picture at Wimbledon.Yes, the 'bullying' media's treated them appallingly, and it's all because Meghan has a black mother – despite the fact we all fell over ourselves for 18 months to say how fantastic it was to have a bi-racial woman enter the Royal Family.So, on behalf of the disgusting British media, I humbly and sincerely apologise for holding these two rich, privileged public figures to any kind of accountability. We're a disgrace – and it's only right that they should now be free, as they have indicated, to only invite friendly sycophantic journalists to cover their lives in future... It could just be that Meghan and Harry are a pair of spoiled, entitled, hypocritical brats who decided to hold the Queen and Monarchy to ransom so they could have their royal cake and eat it, and have now had their bluff called and been sent packing... You can't have senior members of the Royal Family living in North America flogging themselves to the highest bidders like grubby tiara-clad second-hand car salesmen... It was going to be their two-faced virtue-signalling way or the highway... You’ve spent your entire married life whining about everything and everyone, and plotting to get out of 'flying the flag'.Harry told the charity crowd: 'Once Meghan and I were married, we were excited, we were hopeful, and we were here to serve'.Yet he then said their decision to quit comes after 'so many months of talks.'Now, I'm not the world’s greatest mathematician but they were married in May, 2018 and it’s now January, 2020.So that’s a period of just 18 months between the pair of them excitedly looking forward to serve - and quitting.And for 'so many' of those months, they’ve been planning to quit.Which beggars the question: how many seconds did they actually excitedly serve before wanting out?... We’ve already seen from the cringe-making clips of him (successfully) hustling the boss of Disney for Meghan for voiceover work, that the only 'service' on their minds is to commercially exploit their royal status and promote her acting career.They’re going to be the royal Kardashians, and no amount of doe-eyed victimhood whimpering can change that cold hard fact.They’re also going to very soon discover what the real world’s like.Despite their constant bleating about the media, Harry and Meghan have actually been afforded huge privacy, protected by new rules of engagement between the royals and British press established after the death of his mother.That’s why not a single photo of them appeared during their recent six-week holiday. But once they become just another pair of grasping money-chasing celebrities, they will find themselves at the mercy of the merciless US tabloid media and paparazzi.Harry’s wish for a new 'peaceful life' is thus utter delusion.As, frankly, is almost everything about his view of all this saga."
The Duchess of Cambridge shows how to wield influence subtly - "Lending your voice as a royal to causes with a political edge is a tactic that can all too easily backfire – as the Sussexes discovered to their peril last year. Yet the Duchess of Cambridge, in her series of moving photographs of Holocaust survivors, walks this tightrope with perfect ease, drawing attention to the lessons of history whilst preserving political neutrality. In one fell swoop, she has shown us that the Royal Family is in safe hands... Kate’s careful use of symbolism demonstrates how she has chosen to show rather than tell. As she reveals her artistic side to the nation, she would surely approve of Anton Chekhov’s sentiment: ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.'Her example paints a clear picture of how the royals can operate in future – lending support to the issues that count in a manner that, rather than seeking to be pejorative, opens up an opportunity for national reflection and discussion"
Meghan Markle's downfall: Why the world turned against the Duchess - "NOVEMER 2018: Swift exit from Kensington Palace
This is the exact moment when things started to shift...
MID-DECEMBER 2018: The staff start to turn...
Whether or not the Sussex's Christmas photo was an intentional snub, there's no denying the press has changed their tune and royal fans are following suit.Just look at this side-by-side image showing the difference in media coverage between Harry and Meghan's engagement, and now...
William and Harry. They may have walked together like they did last year, but the two royal brothers kept their distance with their wives in the middle and did not interact at all. In fact, body language expert Judi James says it's a very different scenario to their normal relationship...
EARLY JANUARY 2019: Another aide quits
Meghan can't seem to escape the theory that she is difficult and demanding, particularly to her staff.That rumour doesn't seem to be dying down any time soon, with yet another royal employee resigning - her female bodyguard... While there are no claims that Meghan and her chief protection officer (who is not being named) clashed, the resignation comes after the recent departure of Meghan's personal assistant, Melissa Touabti and speculation that private secretary Samantha Cohen had also resigned from her duties."
Strange. We are told that the racist British press have always hated her
'we would have preferred them to remain full-time working Members of the Royal Family... Harry and Meghan have made clear that they do not want to be reliant on public funds in their new lives.'"
I guess Canadian public funds don't count as public funds. At least this may be a win for British taxpayers
WATCH: Prince Harry pitches Disney head to give Meghan Markle work - "“You know she does voiceovers, right?” Prince Harry can be heard saying at a red carpet event to Iger. “Oh, really?” Iger responds, looking uncomfortable. “I did not know that.”... Despite Prince Harry and Markle saying they want to distance themselves from the Royal family, they still appear to be wanting to leverage their star power derived from their former titles in order to make money."
Racism is not to blame for Meghan Markle’s behaviour - The Post Millennial - "Ever anxious to find another thing to blame on bias, The New York Times, CNN and other outlets are blaming #Megxit on racism... This latest theory is that the racism inherent in British society and in the royal family itself was so horrific that the couple had to move to a country where the Prime Minister donned blackface for a laugh at parties... There’s a drive in media to control this narrative, to make it about race. So much so that when the BBC declined to do so, that was the story about the story. CNN points out that “As Duchess, she hasn’t made race an issue. Others have.” And that’s exactly what so many outlets are doing."
Meghan Markle And Prince Harry UK Royal Reporters Coverage Compared To Kate Middleton And Prince William - "Here Are 20 Headlines Comparing Meghan Markle To Kate Middleton That Might Show Why She And Prince Harry Are Cutting Off Royal Reporters
Over the years, Meghan has been shamed for the same things for which her sister-in-law, Kate, has been praised."
Even from the headlines and screenshots alone, it's clear that in more than half these cases there are no double standards. Imagine what one would find out going into the details
A woke Wallis Simpson - "They’re going to split their time between the UK and North America – think of all the CO2! – and become more ‘independent’. .. Megxit, as this royal bombshell is wittily being called, is a striking sign of the times. What Harry and Meghan are doing is virtually unprecedented in the history of the royals. They are jacking in their jobs (I say jobs) as senior royals and pursuing a more ‘financially independent’ path that will allow them to earn, travel and – this is important – jabber on about their pet concerns and causes as much as they like.Even leaving aside the fact that they won’t actually be financially independent... still their move is a startling and concerning one.What it fundamentally reveals is the incompatibility of the modern culture of narcissism with the values of duty, loyalty and self-negation traditionally associated with royal life. To someone like Meghan, who sprang from celebville, who sees herself as the embodiment of right-on goodness, and who loves nothing more than advertising her eco-virtue and performing her PC credentials, life in the British monarchy was never going to be a good fit. Yes, the woke agenda Meghan expresses so well shares much in common with the old-world elitism of the monarchical system. Both obsess over inherited characteristics (the woke bang on about race and gender, the monarchy is all about bloodline). Both have a penchant for looking down their noses at the little people. And both have an instinctive loathing for modernity, from Charles’ longstanding conservationism to H&M’s humanity-bashing eco-hysteria.But there’s one big, irreconcilable difference: where the woke value the self over everything else, senior royals are meant, ostensibly at least, to be selfless, to submerge the self into the crown. It looks like this is a deal-breaker for the younger, more celebrity-oriented royals, especially newcomer Meghan but also Harry, too. Their unprecedented ‘stepping back’, and the fury this has allegedly caused in the Palace, suggests the cult of the self that Meghan and other showily virtuous celebs embody and promote, does not work within an institution whose ideal is the Queen: opinion-free, emotions hidden, dutiful, unquestioning and in it for the long haul. Duty is anathema to a new generation whose chief goal is often self-realisation... Indeed, the most striking thing about Harry and Meghan’s bombshell is the way they talk about the royal family as if it is little more than a stepping stone to their self-realisation... Even more startling is the way they talk about the queen. They say they will ‘continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen’. Collaborate with? They sound more like Kendall Jenner talking about her adverts with Pepsi than individuals who are meant to devote themselves for life to royal duty and the preservation of the crown... Of course, the Meghan-loving liberal set are responding to Megxit by chastising the British tabloids and, by extension, the riff-raff who read them. You racist shits drove this wonderful woman away – that’s the undertone, and sometimes the overtone, of what they’re saying. It captures how snooty the woke brigade is, where they are essentially reprimanding the masses for daring to criticise their royal superiors. Overlooking, of course, that there was a lot to criticise about H&M, from their moaning about their privileged lives to their hypocritical jetting around the world to make platitudinous lectures about climate change... They’re going to become even more insufferable. And here’s the thing: they will trade on their still existing royal titles to do so."
Piers Morgan says criticism of Meghan Markle is not racist - "Northampton Saints rugby player Courtney Lawes, who is mixed race, also responded to the NYT story, saying: 'Is it any wonder nobody takes the word racism seriously anymore? The misuse of this word nowadays is genuinely embarrassing.'... 'What Meghan's forgotten, or simply doesn't understand, is that she and Harry aren't important royals, they're minor players with no chance of ever acceding to the throne... 'But what genuinely worries me now is that the very future of the Monarchy may be in serious jeopardy if these two renegades have their way and become effectively a pair of rival royals bestriding the globe acting like they're the big dogs, doing what the hell they like and using their royal fame to line their own pockets to the tune of millions like a pair of greedy, grasping hustlers, destroying the royal brand one grubby deal at a time. 'It can't be allowed to happen. Nobody tells the Queen what to do. She's the most powerful, respected person in Britain. And right now, she's facing a direct threat to everything she has worked so hard to maintain. 'Harry and Meghan's astonishingly brazen and selfish antics have left her no choice but to cut them loose and fire them both from the Royal Family. Get rid of these whining, ego-crazed, deluded leeches Ma'am - before it's too late.'... it emerged the Duchess of Sussex had returned to Canada as the Queen and other senior royals took decisive action and ordered their teams to find a 'workable solution' to Harry and Meghan's future roles."
Harry and Meghan have become the petulant 'enfants terribles' of the family firm - "They even pledged to "collaborate" with the Queen, a relationship more akin to Stella McCartney helping to dress a celebrity for the red carpet than the sharing of royal obligations.Make no mistake, the public will interpret this as yet more evidence that Meghan and Harry are the enfants terribles of The Firm, with a remote and tone deaf idea of their role. Instead of supporting their relatives, working for charities, and accepting the privileges and responsibilities that come with it, they have instead chosen to navigate an opaque new course between royalty and celebrity. Their statement roughly translates as “boohoo, nobody loves us”, like a teenager testing his or her parents’ affections. The hope is that the Queen, media and public will beg for their return - “don’t go, Harry and Meghan! We love you really!” - and uncritically accept their woke agenda... Clearly an element of the semi-resignation was meant as payback for the media, whom the Sussexes think have been big meanies to them (clearly they have never seen Sarah Ferguson called “The Duchess of Pork” and missed the furore over Pippa Middleton’s Waitrose deal). The Duchess of Sussex has never really understood that criticism was part of the job, having believed that being on Suits was some sort of immunity badge. The couple are so angry with newspapers, in fact, that they’ve created their own “media” page on their Sussex Royal website, setting out, in Trumpian style, who they will deign to speak to. Top of the list are “grassroots media organisations and young, up-and-coming journalists”, whom they hilariously assume will not scrutinise them. Elsewhere, the royals, with no apparent sense of irony, claim to “believe in a free, strong and open media industry”, all the while trying to micromanage it. Meghan and Harry embody many of the most negative stereotypes of the Millennial age group: that they want everything easy; that they have no sense of duty, commitment or idea of the greater good. A dose of stiff upper lip wouldn’t go amiss. They imagine life as an Instagram story in which they can chop and change the narrative... Stoic and dutiful, the Queen has always embodied the sentiment noblesse oblige. But it is one that her relatives clearly struggle to understand."
Harry and Meghan’s bombshell announcement is a discourtesy to the Queen – and smacks of millennial self-absorption - "It was claimed the Duke had ignored a personal request from the Queen not to go public with his plans until he had properly consulted with his father. The Queen is said to have made it clear to the Duke that he should not reveal their intentions with so many questions yet to be answered – and yet the Sussex’s did it anyway.Not only was this a huge discourtesy to the monarch from whom they derive their titles and public profile, it was hurtful, cruel even, to deal such a blow to a 93-year-old lady who has only recently had to ask her errant second son to relinquish his Royal duties.Faith in the Firm, as the Windsors call the family business, has already been shaken. The last thing the Queen needed, at the start of a new year’s trading, was the defection of two key personnel who seem to be threatening to set up a tacky rival company in north America: Royals R US. If the Sussexes had bothered to show up at Sandringham for Christmas with the rest of the family, witnessing the pressures that the stoical, snowy monarch was under might have inclined them to think again... Do the the ultra-woke Sussexes think the Cambridges are not “progressive” as they go about their boring old duty of supporting the Queen and keeping their political opinions to themselves?Not for the first time, we can thank our lucky stars that it is William who is the elder brother and future King, and steady Catherine who will be our Queen, not Harry the petulant boy and Duchess “I don’t like this new part, let’s tear it up and rewrite it” Meghan. The idea that the Sussexes can cast off their main responsibilities yet retain a place within “this institution” is downright baffling. Royalty is like virginity; you can’t be a bit Royal. When Edward VIII abdicated the throne for Wallis Simpson, he made the error of assuming that he could continue to play a significant role as the new monarch’s brother. The Windsors had other ideas. Remember that Princess Elizabeth spent her formative years with a seething mother who could never forgive her brother-in-law’s betrayal. Today, the Queen will be saddened by the behaviour of the grandson with whom, until his wedding in 2018, she enjoyed an immensely fond and teasing relationship... As one exasperated Palace aide is reported to have said: “People had bent over backwards for them. They were given the wedding they wanted, the house they wanted, the office they wanted, the staff they wanted and had the backing of the family. What more did they want?”What indeed. After that heavenly wedding on a glittering May day just 20 months ago, the Queen made the newlyweds Youth Ambassadors to her beloved Commonwealth. It was a brilliant appointment for Meghan and Harry and displayed great thoughtfulness, affection and respect on the monarch’s part. Shame they couldn’t show the same in return.I’m afraid their bombshell announcement smacks of millennial self-absorption, of values that prize identity, the expression of emotion and personal happiness above all else. The exact opposite, in fact, of the Queen’s wartime generation which believed that you didn’t throw in the towel, you stuck at things through good and bad... Meghan Markle never wanted to be a Royal, she wanted to be Michelle Obama. The mistake was to think she could bend a centuries-old institution to that end... Had he married a different sort of girl, would Harry be stepping away from the Royal family now? I seriously doubt it... You know, I am sure there would have been considerable sympathy if Harry and Meghan had gone to Her Majesty and declared a desire to live more privately abroad, with a scaled-down profile, forsaking family money and privileges. The Palace could have helped draw up a plan. Instead, they have acted with a breathtaking self-centredness, announcing their decision to the public first and clearly hoping to bounce the monarch into accepting their “progressive” new role, which keeps the perks of Royalty while shirking its duties. The Queen doesn’t deserve that. She really does not. Her grandson and his wife may like to style themselves as humanitarians, but it’s hard to detect much humanity in their treatment of a vulnerable nonagenarian who may soon be a widow. With their new freedom, I suppose the Duke and Duchess of Sussex could always audition to play the parts of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in Season 8 of The Crown."
Queen wants rift repaired in 72 hours as Harry prepares to leave the country with no return date - "The Duke of York has courted controversy in the past for insisting his daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, could have both careers and quasi-royal roles.In 2011 they were stripped of their 24-hour bodyguards following a row over their living and travel expenses. The Queen’s youngest son, the Earl of Wessex, and his wife, Sophie, were both instructed to give up their jobs following their marriage in 1999 amid criticism that their careers in television and public relations conflicted with their royal interests."
Too bad the others can't blame racism
UK monarchy scrambles for solutions after Harry, Meghan bombshell - "Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, rocked the monarchy on Wednesday with an announcement made without consulting any senior royals from the sovereign downwards... They released their shock statement on a pre-prepared new website, their Instagram account and through Buckingham Palace's email communications system. The mood in the palace was understood to be one of disappointment and even "hurt", according to the BBC, while Thursday's newspapers were full of reports of a family "split" and the queen's "dismay". London's Evening Standard newspaper said they had "defied clear instructions from the queen" not to go public about any future plans at this time. It added senior courtiers had warned the couple "will be punished for this". Meanwhile Madame Tussauds London said it was moving its waxworks of the pair away from other top family figures "to reflect the upcoming change in the royal line-up". Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams said Harry and Meghan announcing this step without the 93-year-old monarch's blessing was "extraordinary"... "They've chosen to... go rogue. The result, therefore, could have very serious consequences."... Royal analysts said the changes were unprecedented for senior family members."
‘Independent’ Royals… really? Why don’t Harry & Meghan go all the way and quit the family? - "They want royal perks and freedom on their terms. (Well, Meghan’s terms. Ex cheeky chappie, happy-go-lucky Harry looks shell-shocked since wedding his pant-wearing feminist wife.) It's like when you go to a fancy buffet: We'll keep the titles and Frogmore cottage, the couple's official residence, which cost £2.4 million of public funding to do up last year, and keep the income from the Duchy of Cornwall, Prince Charles' private estate, but we want privacy when it suits and will avail of security on royal business, which will also be paid for by taxpayers. The couple will kindly be giving up a slice of the Queen's Sovereign Grant, a payment they get for official duties, which covers the upkeep of their home. But they'll be doing fewer duties, so that's fair enough. It's as independent as Marie Antoinette creating the peasant village of Hameau de la Reine in 1783. Just like Meghan, she was sick of the perpetual structure and demands of the title, and created a little rustic retreat in the park of the Palace of Versailles in order to feel free and peasant-like. Marie Antoinette sought refuge dressing up as a milkmaid or a shepherdess, strolling around in peasant garb, milking cows which were cleaned by hired hands, while still enjoying the privileges of royal life and keeping the masses out of the gates... Royal commenter Penny Junor said the couple's actions to not inform members of the Royal Family were "beyond bizarre," stating that they are working for the palace and not self-employed. You'd wonder why not, if you don't like Royal life, just denounce your titles? As an empowered post #MeToo feminist, why is Meghan seeking special treatment based on an accident of the birth of her husband?... 'Girls with dreams become women with vision,' and she's staying true to her word. Well – Plan C of her vision. Plan A was to make the royals more woke, which didn't pan out, Plan B was playing the victim in a recent ITV documentary about the couple, describing motherhood as a 'struggle' due to intense media interest. 'Not many people have asked if I'm OK,' she said. That didn't go too well either, what with the castles, the hired help and the privileges the rest of us could only dream about. Now, there's nowhere else to go but the US to be independent, while keeping her husband's title – what's feminist about that? The self-serving narcissistic hypocrisy is thundering. You can only admire her, though. Most women have to put together flat packs and go Dutch on dinner in the name of female empowerment. The 'Duchess' gets her man to leave the House of Windsor on her terms because the family didn't take to her post-MeToo Hollywood feminism... the question is – do they have the courage to be truly independent or do they just want to conquer and divide?"
PIERS MORGAN: The Queen must FIRE Prince Harry and Meghan - " if I were Her Majesty the Queen, I would unceremoniously strip Harry and Meghan of all their titles with immediate effect and despatch them back into civilian life. These two deluded clowns announced yesterday they were quitting life as senior royals. In a series of staggeringly pompous statements on their gleaming new Hollywood-style website, they laid down the law to the Queen and to the rest of us about exactly how things are supposedly going to work from this moment on. To summarise, they want to stop being 'senior royals' with all the tedious duty that entails. And instead, they now want to be a 'progressive' force within 'the institution'. In other words, they want to be super-woke celebrities (with all the outrageous 'Do as we say not as we do' hectoring hypocrisy they've already brought to that status) who get to keep all the trappings of royal life without any of the hard, boring bits and the right to cash in on their status however they choose. So, they want the glitz, the glamour, the splendour and the stupendous wealth….they just don't want to have to actually earn it... In their lengthy list of pronouncements, Harry and Meghan say they will now be spending much of their time in North America, where they've just be lounging on their lazy backsides for six weeks 'much-needed holiday' – a holiday from what, exactly? - at a multi-millionaire's waterside mansion in Canada. Oh, and they're going to seek to be 'financially independent'. It's only when you read the details of this 'independence' that you realise what it actually means is they want to live off Harry's dad's money, from Prince Charles and his Duchy of Cornwall – which he only possesses by right of being the Queen's heir... They also, hilariously, laid down their new rulebook for the media, saying they're getting rid of the traditional Royal Rota system and will instead be inviting special favoured journalists to attend their events and only write nice positive things about them. I chuckled with disbelief as I read this. Even Vladimir Putin wouldn't pull a stunt to control the press like that... It was shocking enough that Harry and Meghan didn't even have the courtesy to tell either Prince Charles, who they sponge off, or Prince William of their grandiose plans. But it was absolutely appalling that they failed to notify the Queen. This woman is not just Harry's grandmother, she's the Monarch for god's sake... How the hell has it come to this less than two years after a wedding that was greeted with global excitement and praise? Two words: Meghan Markle... I never heard from her again, and when I saw her do the same to her own father Thomas, I realised this is what Meghan does when people are either no longer of use to her or might be 'problematic' to the bigger prize. To put it bluntly, she's an unsavoury manipulative social-climbing piece of work who has inveigled her way into Prince Harry's heart and used his blind love as a platform to now destroy everything he once held so dear. She's caused a tremendous rift between Harry and William. She's ruined Harry's reputation with the public as a hugely popular fun, carefree soul, turning him into a miserable-looking, virtue-signalling laughing stock. And now she's ripped him away from his beloved grandmother, the Queen. None of this has surprised me. Meghan's been doing this kind of stuff all her adult life. She's disowned 99 per cent of her own family. She's ditched and ghosted numerous old friends. She got rid of her ex-husband when she tasted TV stardom. And the former Deal or No Deal suitcase girl has done all this with barely a glance back to her past. Nothing said more about Me-Me-Meghan than her wedding day when she plonked newly-acquired A-list celebrity friends like Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney up the front where most brides usually put their family... I had lunch with a good friend of Harry's soon after the wedding and he said that he and various other very close mates of the Prince were stunned not to be asked to the spectacular evening wedding party, and even more dismayed when they discovered a load of celebrities had got their invitations instead. 'We realised then that Meghan's calling all the shots,' he said. And the 38-year-old divorcee has carried on calling them ever since. As Harry reportedly told courtiers during an argument before the wedding day: 'What Meghan wants, Meghan GETS!' Well now she wants to have her royal cake and eat it... she doesn't want to get her hands dirty opening a community hall on a wet Wednesday in Stoke-on-Trent. That's for the little royal people, not a superstar Princess like her."
Meghan and Harry's 'threat of a no-holds barred interview' - "Journalist and close confidante of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Tom Bradby has warned that if the Royal couple are left feeling hard done by, they may give a 'no-holds barred' interview which would could further damage the monarchy... Courtiers fear that Meghan would brand the royal household racist and sexist, according to the publication... William 'did try' to make amends with the Duke and Duchess but 'for the moment, at least, things have gone too far to be retrieved.'... The Duke of Cambridge has said he is unable to even 'put an arm round' his younger brother nowadays, after a rift saw them drift apart over the past year. Harry and Meghan's intention to quit as senior Royals has widened the gulf between the two siblings, with William understood to be 'incandescent' over his brother's blindsiding of the Family... The Queen, who was pictured ashen-faced behind the wheel of her Land Rover today, is also said to be concerned for the mental fragility of her grandson Harry... Growing up, William and Harry's brotherly love seemed unbreakable, with the pair supporting each other in the wake of their mother Diana's death. As they both developed into their roles as senior members of the Royal Family, they became a somewhat double act who would do engagements together. Even when William married Kate, they would often attend events as a trio. But during the past year rumours of a brewing row between the brothers began to bubble up, eventually boiling over when Harry and Meghan quit the charitable entity they spearheaded with the Cambridges and branched ff to form their own... Meghan and Kate Middleton have not spoken in over six months after ceasing communication on their WhatsApp group... The break-up of the so-called Fab Four, which was cemented when the Sussexes left Kensington Palace, weighed on Harry immensely at the time"
When you let a troublemaker in...
When did criticism of Meghan and Harry become racism? - "that the Duchess of Sussex wouldn’t make the effort (or was too cowardly) to fly in and thrash out a plan with the Queen – but was happy to fly to New York to watch her pal Serena Williams in the US Open finals when Archie was four months old – is a defining fact in a long list of facts that have defined Meghan Markle in my eyes... we sighed, snarked and snorted about silly things, like Markle closing her own car door, the fact that in six months this woman spent five times what any royal in the whole of Europe had on clothes, and various Marie-Antoinette-isms involving things like penning empowering messages on bananas for sex workers... Remember that Saturday, when we welcomed Ms Markle into the fold? I was in the grounds of Windsor Castle. I saw the Brits who had travelled to be there celebrating the arrival of the first African-American member of the Royal family – many of them mixed-race couples (estimated to be 9 per cent of the population in the UK, as opposed to just 4.6 per cent in Wokeville, Canada, and 2 per cent in the US).And what struck me then, as someone who has lived in the US on and off for the past decade, was how blissfully uncluttered and unpolarised we were by racial issues in comparison. How very – to coin Megxit terminology – naturally and unselfconsciously “progressive”: a thought echoed by Trevor Phillips this month, who called Britain “the only country in the world where a sizeable mixed-race population has come about as a consequence of love, rather than coercion or slavery”. It struck me, too, that we were very optimistic about a woman we knew so little about. Over time, that optimism was eroded not by the occurrence of rapid-onset racism, but by Markle’s actions and behaviour. The capriciousness over Frogmore Cottage, Archie’s hide-and-seek christening and the ghastly press, who simply would not pander in the way that they were ordered to.Oh, and the overt whinging about us to everyone from Pharrell Williams (“they don’t make it easy”) to Tom Bradby: “Not many people have asked if I’m OK,” she told the journalist as – in an eye-watering feat of narcissism – she managed to eclipse every cause she and her husband had gone to Africa to highlight, and make it all about her.In toddler tantrum-style, the list goes on, ending only with yesterday’s emergency summit"
It is absurd to blame the Harry and Meghan fiasco on 'British racism' - "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's extraordinary announcement – evening timed for the American audience – may have blindsided the Crown, but the liberal narrative setting in is utterly predictable... This is not only a fundamental misreading of the public’s frustration with Harry and Meghan’s conduct, but also an analysis that suffers from a short memory. When Meghan and Harry announced their engagement, both Middle England and the media fawned over the couple. Faithful monarchists toasted their wedding day in Jubilee-style street parties. The press hailed her as a “breath of fresh air”. But it wasn’t long before the whiff of rot started to seep from the Sussex’s tacit social contract with the country; the secrecy over Archie’s christening did not sit comfortably alongside revelations about the £2.4 million refurbishment of Frogmore cottage. Nor the career shift to heckling the public on climate change while zipping around on private jets.Britain’s frustration with the Sussexes thus centres around their naive hypocrisy and self-destructive determination to have their cake and eat it... the couple seem to live on another PR-oiled, celebnocratic planet... The Middle English instinct is that we should aspire to a colour blind society. This is partly because, unlike America, the UK has not need to find a language of ‘empowerment’ or a legal framework for affirmative action, to cauterise deep wounds from an incendiary race relations history. But also partly because – ironically enough given the royal subject-matter – Britain’s demons are entangled in class rather than race... Such is why that Vogue magazine cover – which featured 15 inspirational women – ruffled so many feathers. The celebration of “black” ballerinas and “Somali” boxers was weightily cadenced poetry to the pious wokeocracy. But to the rest of us, it exposed a lightweight and flippantly tokenistic attitude... one wonders whether the modern phenomenon of victimised narcissism is actually the culprit here. Eyebrow-raising elements to this story – from their discourteous behaviour towards the Queen to the decision to quit their apparently taxing public role after a six-week luxury holiday – all hint at a lack of self-awareness. Relieved of their royal duties, one can only hope they find the time to indulge in some soul searching"
Sadly, the UK is imported the US culture wars
Why the New York Times has got it wrong about the Sussexes and racism - "Ms Hirsch’s narrative conveniently overlooks the overwhelmingly fawning coverage that the Duke and Duchess enjoyed, from their engagement to their wedding day. Her article also neglects to mention that the collapse in support for the pair coincided with a string of bewildering acts of self-sabotage, from banning spectators from taking photos at Wimbledon because the Duchess was present, to sniping at the public about global warming while whizzing around in private jets... the most disturbing aspect to The New York Times’ thesis is that in Britain, there is “a deep correlation between privilege and race”. This statement crumbles on first contact with basic facts – among them that white working-class boys perform the worst of any group in our schools. It also overlooks an intriguing British quirk. Emotional baggage from our country’s legacy of aristocratic privilege has endowed Middle England with the kind of stridently meritocratic values that are a complete anathema to judging people by their colour.But, as these meritocratic principles are also incompatible with the kind of tokenistic multiculturalism that people like Ms Hirsch champion, it is being written off – on both sides of the Atlantic – as racism."
The monarchy already has a model for its continued success: the Queen - " the issue isn’t Harry and Meghan’s desire for independence.It is the way they have gone about it. It was disrespectful to the elders; it was “me, me, me”. And their announcement that they were looking for a “progressive role” implied that the one they left behind was regressive and archaic.They misunderstand how the privileged exercise leadership.The monarchy cannot go around justifying itself: the moment it does that, it becomes political. So instead it proves its worth by what it visibly does.“I have to be seen to be believed,” the Queen famously said. She is active, yet almost silent – and into that silence, we read a great deal. That the Queen doesn’t make a fuss; that she puts duty before self, that Her Majesty isn’t part of this wretched modern culture of falling apart every time you don’t get exactly what you want.
How the royals gave Harry and Meghan everything they wanted - but they still wanted more - "Telling one of the Queen’s most senior aides: “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets”, in the run up to their Windsor wedding in May 2018, the ill-tempered comment is understood to have prompted a rare rebuke from the 93-year-old monarch.Yet ever since that glittering ceremony at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the royals have been uncharacteristically accommodating of the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ demands - which makes their decision to step down as senior royals without consultation all the more baffling.It started before the couple had even got married when the Queen broke with royal tradition to invite American divorcee Meghan to spend Christmas at Sandringham in 2017, even though she was only engaged to Harry at the time.Recognising that the former Suits star had not just moved to the UK but also given up her blossoming acting career to marry into the Firm, the royals bent over backwards to make Meghan feel as welcome as possible - as did the British public. The Cambridges even allowed the lovestruck pair to stay at Anmer Hall, their private bolthole on the royal estate in Norfolk and the ‘Fab Four’ were famously captured by amateur photographer Karen Anvil walking arm in arm to St Mary Magdalene Church on Christmas morning... When cracks started appearing in their relationship with the Cambridges amid rumours of a rift between the royal brothers - and a tearful incident between the sisters in law at a bridesmaids dress fitting for Princess Charlotte - efforts were made behind the scenes to patch things up... They were allowed to keep the location of the birth secret (until it was later revealed on the royal baby’s birth certificate) as well as breaking with royal protocol by also keeping the identity of his godparents under wraps.And when it came to their first royal tour as a family - following a hugely successful visit to Australia in 2018 - the Sussexes were permitted to take Archie to Harry’s beloved Africa last autumn.Almost everything that Meghan (and Harry) wanted, they got. And yet it still didn’t seem to be enough. Giving an interview to ITV’s Tom Bradby during the African tour, Meghan hinted at a lack of support from her royal relatives, tearfully declaring: “Not many people have asked if I’m ok.”Harry later issued a statement attacking the press for “bullying” Meghan - without the prior knowledge of the Queen or her successors in a growing sign of what was to come... the couple has never looked more isolated.And not just from their nearest and dearest but their own advisers. Their PR chief Sara Latham now appears to be playing second fiddle to US based master of the dart arts Ken Sunshine, David Beckham’s former publicist Izzy May and talent agent Nick Collins - all of whom now appear a part of the Sussexes’ inner circle amid claims royal aides have been “frozen out”.“The couple have been ignoring the advice of their palace staff,” revealed an insider... The simple truth is, in giving them what they wanted, the royals only succeeded in leaving Harry and Meghan wanting more."
Does Harry really want to follow Edward VIII, says VIRGINIA BLACKBURN - "It’s hard to escape the conclusion that having grown up in a country that considers the Kennedys to be aristocracy, Meghan didn’t understand that being a Windsor is not like being a celebrity. It wasn’t about wearing the latest designer clothes to awards ceremonies. It was about getting on with the job. Meghan might not have known this but Harry did. What was he thinking? Presumably, unless the rift with his brother is an awful lot worse than we’ve been led to believe, he wants the institution of monarchy to flourish as much as anyone. How does he think he’s helping that? Harry was one of its most popular members, adored by all and sundry. We forgave him readily for the Vegas antics. We were even sympathetic during his photographer-punching stage. He was a prince looking for love, just like the rest of us. And now what?"
'We have lost respect for you': Military figures dismayed by Duke of Sussex's behaviour - "One of the Army's most senior former officers urged the Duke of Sussex to "put Queen and country first", as a former officer in the Royal Marines, of which the Duke is Captain General, said he would not raise a toast to him."
Meghan Markle's former aide lands a new job with Cliveden clan - "Since Meghan Markle joined the Royal family she has had three staff members step down.
Amy Pickerill was appointed as Meghan’s assistant last year and is now set to step down from the position... long time staff member Samantha Cohen would be leaving Kensington Palace. Samantha, who is originally from Australia said she would leave the royal household once the new baby had arrived. She had previously worked as Queen Elizabeth II’s private secretary, but announced her resignation from that role in 2017 in order to join Meghan and Harry. Meghan had hope to keep Samantha on her team permanently as she had previously advised her on the jump from Hollywood to royal life. Samantha’s resignation was revealed as Meghan was bombarded by rumours that she was difficult to deal with... PA Melissa Touabti left six months after the Royal wedding and was key during the build up to the event."
Are cracks already beginning to appear in the Sussexes’ North American dream? - "The newly freelancing Sussexes are planning new rules of engagement which will see traditional royal reporters cast aside in favour of “specialist media”, “young up-and-coming" reporters and outlets they consider “credible” (including the Daily Telegraph).Yet how did it come to pass that a prince who has largely enjoyed positive coverage - except the odd occasion when he decided to wear a Nazi uniform, or no clothes at all, has now turned on the very press pack that has helped to propel his popularity?... "Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces."It is a sentiment few could fail to sympathise with, yet in persistently tarring the entire media with the same brush, Harry weakens his argument by failing to distinguish between legitimate reportage and online invective. The royal couple have been specific in their suing the Mail on Sunday and its parent company Associated Newspapers for what they claim is the unlawful publication of a letter Meghan sent to her father Thomas Markle.But the action - designed to protect the Duchess’s privacy now looks set to have the adverse effect of prompting Mr Markle to spill all of their most intimate secrets in court. It will be open season for all the press - including those 'game-playing' outlets that he holds is particular contempt... Harry has spent almost his entire life barely able to disguise a visceral hatred of the media - betraying his true feelings in ill-tempered remarks to Sky News reporters who deign to ask him an off the cuff question to joking with baseball players in Harlem that they should aim their shot at the waiting press pack.At one point, the jibes came so thick and fast that aides had to ask the former Army captain to tone it down a bit.With a reputation for not only reading websites like MailOnline but actually scrolling through the comments section, the sixth-in-line to the throne would regularly phone PR advisers, often late at night, to admonish them for what he perceived as negative headlines. “There is something approaching paranoia about his attitude to the media,” said one royal insider. “He believes they are out to get him. And because he can be ill-tempered and petulant and hot headed he would react to stories almost as soon as they broke whereas William would be a lot more considered and sleep on it before forming an opinion.”... What remains to be seen is how Harry will manage his new-found relationship with the global media without the careful guidance of the well-oiled palace spin machine. For someone who has never been particularly good at taking PR advice, it seems a little counter-intuitive for him now to be entrusting his reputation to spinners, lawyers and business managers more concerned with their 10 per cent cut than an allegiance to Queen and country.Since his days at Ludgrove Prep and Eton College, the former Army captain has carefully cultivated a watertight inner circle that has always been impervious to leaks... Now largely cut off from his family and closest friends, Harry will be entrusting his secrets to the kinds of ‘friends’ who gave gushing interviews to People last February revealing that Meghan had penned her father a handwritten letter. The US magazine this week reported that the Sussexes felt their “hand was forced,” because: “There is so much bad blood in that family — it’s toxic.” It's hardly the sort of stuff HM wants to read over her Tupperwared breakfast cereal. And here’s another dilemma. Having touted his wife for voiceover work with the likes of Disney boss Bob Iger - is Harry certain he is comfortable potentially playing second fiddle to Meghan as they launch their assault on North America?Notwithstanding the problems the Prince of Wales faced when he perceived Princess Diana to be hogging the limelight, part of the reason Harry chose to split from Kensington Palace, the household he shared with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is because he felt overshadowed by his brother and sister-in-law.Moreover, with former Suits star Meghan a veteran of the red carpet who willingly chose a career in the spotlight, how is Harry going to cope with the paparazzi if, as rumoured, they end up settling in the Duchess’s native LA?... if the couple think they are going to avoid negative publicity by only briefing journalists who have sold their souls to give them sycophantic, one-sided, coverage then unfortunately they may also prove mistaken.Because it isn’t only the regulated, mainstream media that wants a full picture to be painted of high-profile people in positions of immense privilege but also the public - not least when those people are claiming to be innocent victims of their circumstances"
Court documents detail Meghan Markle's deteriorating relationship with her father Thomas Markle - "The defence document lodged on Tuesday in the High Court in London exposes in full their deteriorating relationship while accusing the Duchess of allegedly being - in part at least - an architect of her own breach of privacy. It suggests that when she wrote the letter to her father, she was aware it would likely end up in the public domain... After days of largely excoriating criticism of the Duke and Duchess for wanting to quit as ‘senior’ Royals, the Mail on Sunday’s legal defence is probably the last thing they needed. The newspaper is refusing to back down and has seemingly signed up Mr Markle as its star witness. The court case, whenever it should take place, is likely to be the trial of the century with the Duchess pitted against her father in the witness box. It won’t be pretty and the loser will be facing a legal bill running into the millions. The defence document is quick to point out that the Royal family are public figures supported “largely by public funds”... “The Claimant’s privacy rights do not extend to silencing her father.”... “The Letter does not appear to contain the Claimant’s deepest and most private thoughts but to be an admonishment by the Claimant of her father for failing to behave as she would have wished.“Amongst other things, she accused him of breaking her heart, manufacturing pain, being paranoid, being ridiculed, fabricating stories, of attacking Prince Harry, and continually lying.”The newspaper alleges that the Duchess had taken “great care over its presentation” adding: “The Letter appears to have been immaculately copied out by the Claimant in her own elaborate handwriting from a previous draft. There are no crossings-out or amendments as there usually are with a spontaneous draft. It is to be inferred also from the care the Claimant took over the presentation of the letter that she anticipated it being disclosed to and read by third parties.”The defence claim goes on: “It [the Letter] rehearses the Claimant’s version of the history of her relationship with her father and her family in a way that strongly suggests the Claimant wanted or expected third parties to read it.”"
Duchess of Sussex moves business interests to Delaware, the US 'corporate haven' beloved by the super-rich - "The Duchess of Sussex has moved her business to a US state used by the super-rich to protect their interests from scrutiny.The Duchess’s company Frim Fram Inc was moved out of California in December and incorporated in Delaware, which tax experts suggest could be done to avoid being hit with tax liabilities in California."
73% of Canadians don’t want to cover costs for Prince Harry, Meghan Markle: poll - National - "The overwhelming majority of Canadians aren’t on board with paying for costs associated with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle living in the country... Only three per cent of Canadians said they would be open to footing the bill for the couple and their son, Archie. Nineteen per cent of respondents said they would be OK with paying some costs, but not all... A former member of the RCMP also said the royals cannot technically refuse security... 47 per cent of Canadians indicated they think of Prince Harry as more of a celebrity; 41 per cent considered him to primarily be a working member of the monarchy.Other members of the family are considered to be working royals. For example, 66 per cent of Canadians think of Prince William as a working royal... All this begs the question of whether Canadians truly see a future for the monarchy — and according to this survey, maybe not.Two-thirds of Canadians said they think the monarchy has lost or is losing relevance, with 41 per cent saying it is “completely irrelevant.” However, 61 per cent of Canadians say they are OK to continue supporting the Queen, including swearing oaths to her, putting her on the currency and recognizing her as the head of state. The survey points out, though, that Prince Charles would likely not have the same support as king — only 43 per cent would back him. The desire for Canada to be a constitutional monarchy is also fading, the survey noted. In 2016, 38 per cent of Canadians said the monarchy should not continue, but that number is now 45 per cent."
Prince Harry is British royalty, but Canada?s immigration system likely to treat him as commoner - The Washington Post - "“In order to become legal permanent residents of Canada, they would need to apply through our normal immigration processes,” said Béatrice Fénelon, a spokeswoman for Canada’s immigration agency. “However, members of the royal family are not required to seek authorization to come and stay in Canada as visitors.” She did not respond to questions on whether Harry and Meghan could stay indefinitely as “visitors.” As tourists traveling on British (Harry) or American (Meghan) passports, they could stay in Canada for up to six months, but then they’d be expected to leave. And without work permits — which can be complicated to get without job offers — they would have difficulty earning a living... Audrey Macklin, a law professor at the University of Toronto, has “no doubt” the couple could secure permanent residency if they planned to live in Canada over the long term. They could even request it on humanitarian or compassionate grounds — a route available to foreigners working on temporary permits or asylum seekers who have maintained solid work records in Canada... The queen herself isn’t a citizen, he noted. But she does have a status here: She’s “the personification of the Canadian state.”Still, she can’t grant Harry and Meghan citizenship, Lagassé said, because she remains bound by Canadian law, which “is very clear that discretion belongs with the [immigration] minister.” Depending on their plans, Grewal said, the couple have the option of applying through a business immigration program... Moving to Canada could jeopardize Meghan’s chances of getting British citizenship. She will need to have spent a certain amount of time in Britain to qualify."
PIERS MORGAN: Prince Harry's ditched UK for Meghan Markle - "Prince Harry is very sad.In fact, he wants us to know he feels a 'great sadness'... he wanted everyone to be in no doubt who to blame for this:'You looked out for me for so long, but the media is a powerful force.'... Oh, I know, I know…the only accepted narrative, certainly on Twitter, is that the mean, beastly, racist media has driven out poor Harry and Meghan with our despicable antics.We shamefully refused to let them lecture us about the environment AND use private jets like taxis!And we had the audacity to think a $500,000 star-studded, baby-shower party in New York was a tad inappropriate given that Harry and Meghan were busy urging us on Twitter that same week to pay more attention to poor people.Oh, and we shockingly suggested that if you’re going to have the taxpayers fork out $3 million on refurbishing your home, you should probably not hide photos and details of your son's birth or stop the public taking your picture at Wimbledon.Yes, the 'bullying' media's treated them appallingly, and it's all because Meghan has a black mother – despite the fact we all fell over ourselves for 18 months to say how fantastic it was to have a bi-racial woman enter the Royal Family.So, on behalf of the disgusting British media, I humbly and sincerely apologise for holding these two rich, privileged public figures to any kind of accountability. We're a disgrace – and it's only right that they should now be free, as they have indicated, to only invite friendly sycophantic journalists to cover their lives in future... It could just be that Meghan and Harry are a pair of spoiled, entitled, hypocritical brats who decided to hold the Queen and Monarchy to ransom so they could have their royal cake and eat it, and have now had their bluff called and been sent packing... You can't have senior members of the Royal Family living in North America flogging themselves to the highest bidders like grubby tiara-clad second-hand car salesmen... It was going to be their two-faced virtue-signalling way or the highway... You’ve spent your entire married life whining about everything and everyone, and plotting to get out of 'flying the flag'.Harry told the charity crowd: 'Once Meghan and I were married, we were excited, we were hopeful, and we were here to serve'.Yet he then said their decision to quit comes after 'so many months of talks.'Now, I'm not the world’s greatest mathematician but they were married in May, 2018 and it’s now January, 2020.So that’s a period of just 18 months between the pair of them excitedly looking forward to serve - and quitting.And for 'so many' of those months, they’ve been planning to quit.Which beggars the question: how many seconds did they actually excitedly serve before wanting out?... We’ve already seen from the cringe-making clips of him (successfully) hustling the boss of Disney for Meghan for voiceover work, that the only 'service' on their minds is to commercially exploit their royal status and promote her acting career.They’re going to be the royal Kardashians, and no amount of doe-eyed victimhood whimpering can change that cold hard fact.They’re also going to very soon discover what the real world’s like.Despite their constant bleating about the media, Harry and Meghan have actually been afforded huge privacy, protected by new rules of engagement between the royals and British press established after the death of his mother.That’s why not a single photo of them appeared during their recent six-week holiday. But once they become just another pair of grasping money-chasing celebrities, they will find themselves at the mercy of the merciless US tabloid media and paparazzi.Harry’s wish for a new 'peaceful life' is thus utter delusion.As, frankly, is almost everything about his view of all this saga."
The Duchess of Cambridge shows how to wield influence subtly - "Lending your voice as a royal to causes with a political edge is a tactic that can all too easily backfire – as the Sussexes discovered to their peril last year. Yet the Duchess of Cambridge, in her series of moving photographs of Holocaust survivors, walks this tightrope with perfect ease, drawing attention to the lessons of history whilst preserving political neutrality. In one fell swoop, she has shown us that the Royal Family is in safe hands... Kate’s careful use of symbolism demonstrates how she has chosen to show rather than tell. As she reveals her artistic side to the nation, she would surely approve of Anton Chekhov’s sentiment: ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.'Her example paints a clear picture of how the royals can operate in future – lending support to the issues that count in a manner that, rather than seeking to be pejorative, opens up an opportunity for national reflection and discussion"
Meghan Markle's downfall: Why the world turned against the Duchess - "NOVEMER 2018: Swift exit from Kensington Palace
This is the exact moment when things started to shift...
MID-DECEMBER 2018: The staff start to turn...
Whether or not the Sussex's Christmas photo was an intentional snub, there's no denying the press has changed their tune and royal fans are following suit.Just look at this side-by-side image showing the difference in media coverage between Harry and Meghan's engagement, and now...
William and Harry. They may have walked together like they did last year, but the two royal brothers kept their distance with their wives in the middle and did not interact at all. In fact, body language expert Judi James says it's a very different scenario to their normal relationship...
EARLY JANUARY 2019: Another aide quits
Meghan can't seem to escape the theory that she is difficult and demanding, particularly to her staff.That rumour doesn't seem to be dying down any time soon, with yet another royal employee resigning - her female bodyguard... While there are no claims that Meghan and her chief protection officer (who is not being named) clashed, the resignation comes after the recent departure of Meghan's personal assistant, Melissa Touabti and speculation that private secretary Samantha Cohen had also resigned from her duties."
Strange. We are told that the racist British press have always hated her
Post ID: 9146873079348091276
Friday, February 07, 2020
Links - 7th February 2020 (2) (China's 'Peaceful' Rise)
How much has the US lost from China's intellectual property theft? - "The United States Trade Representative, which led the seven-month investigation into China's intellectual property theft and made recommendations to the Trump administration, found that "Chinese theft of American IP currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually."... "China has sought to acquire US technology by any means, licit or illicit," James Andrew Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a blog post Thursday."Espionage and theft were part of this, but so were forced technology transfers or mandatory joint ventures as a condition for doing business in China," he wrote"
Wikipedia blocked in China in all languages - "All language editions of Wikipedia have been blocked in mainland China since April... The country had previously banned the Chinese language version of the site, but the block has now been expanded."
New Horrors: China Harvesting Muslim Organs in Concentration Camps. - "As for claims, China is removing live organs from executed Uyghur Muslims and marketing them as “halal” and then distributing via a network to wealthy Saudi clients, we know that China has taken the biometric data of the upwards of 2 million Uyghur it holds in its concentration camps, along with those of millions of others in Xinjiang, and we also know that as many as 100,000 organ transplants are carried out each year in China, according to the authors of Bloody Harvest/Slaughter."
China harvested organs from political prisoners on substantial scale, says tribunal - "Forced harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience in China has been “substantial,” says an interim judgment of an independent “people’s tribunal” set up to determine whether the country’s transplantation practices breached international criminal law."
The long march from China to the Ivies - "It is one of China’s curious contradictions that, even as the government tries to eradicate foreign influences from the country’s universities, the flood of Chinese students leaving for the West continues to rise. Over the past decade, the number of mainland Chinese students enrolled in American colleges and universities has nearly quintupled, from 62,523 in 2005 to 304,040 last year... Even the daughter of Xi Jinping, China’s president and the man driving the campaign against foreign ideas, recently studied – under a pseudonym – at Harvard University. Among Western educators, the Chinese system is famous for producing an elite corps of high-school students who regularly finish at the top of global test rankings, far ahead of their American and British counterparts. Yet so many Chinese families are now opting out of this system that selling education to Chinese students has become a profitable business for the West... Even as Xi’s daughter took seminars at Harvard, his government cracked down on university faculty and curricula “corrupted” by foreign influences – with the exception of a thickly bearded German philosopher.As part of this campaign, Beijing decreed last year that international wings in public high schools should be shut down, or at least moved away from their host schools... American universities, too, have learned to mistrust applications coming from China. Their suspicions are often grounded in unpleasant experience, most commonly with Chinese students whose high TOEFL scores or eloquent personal essays are betrayed by an inability to form coherent sentences in English. Few universities have the resources to check up on each of their applicants’ claims – and indeed, with the amount of cash full-tuition-paying Chinese students are bringing in, some don’t have much incentive either... Chinese teachers as a rule don’t write recommendations, so students must conjure them up themselves, treating it, according to a consultant, “as a creative writing sample in which you have to write in another person’s voice”. Mistrust of Chinese applications has spawned a small “verification” industry in China... several firms, such as the Beijing-based Vericant, now conduct video-taped interviews with applicants, in English, and post them online so that colleges and universities can evaluate whether their ability matches their test scores... Most students have had little chance to develop outside interests, so are trying to create rounded personalities from a standing start... A Beijing school official told me about a boy from north-eastern China whose father flew him in a private plane to Tibet – for just a day – to make a video of him aiding poor minorities"
More Than 1,200 Buddhist Statues Removed - "The destruction of large Buddhist and Taoist statues has become an ideological matter for the Chinese authorities, an integral part of the unprecedented struggle to rid the country of anything religious that is not controlled by the CCP. In the past year, numerous Buddhist statues have been removed or demolished; temples shut down and destroyed"
Maybe according to China shills this is to stop terrorism
A Brief History of Vietnam: The 4 Periods of Chinese Domination - "For over thousands of years, China ruled over Vietnam from 111 B.C. — 980 A.D.... During the conquered period, Vietnam had to adopt the Chinese writing system, Confucianism, arts, and literature. A part of the conquered Vietnam lost their native language, culture, and national identity until the revolt of Trung Sister in 40 A.D... The Ming Dynasty took Vietnam and suppressed it even further by the emperor’s command:
兵入。除釋道經板經文不燬。外一切書板文字以至俚俗童蒙所習。如上大人丘乙已之類。片紙隻字悉皆燬之。其境內中國 所立碑刻則存之。但是安南所立者悉壞之。一字不存。
“Once our army enter Annam (Vietnam currenly), except Buddhist and Taoist text; all books and notes, including folklore and children book, should be burnt. The stelas erected by China should be protected carefully, while those erected by Annamese (Vietnamese currently), should be completely annihilated, do not spare even one character.” Vietnam’s economy suffered greatly. Valuables artifacts, gold, gems, jade, pieces of arts were transported to China"
So much for the myth of a peaceful China
In Hong Kong, battles grow over identity and future of special status within China - The Washington Post - "Sitting on a bus in Boston, thousands of miles from her home in Hong Kong, college student Frances Hui crossed paths with an inquisitive fellow passenger.Where are you from? the passenger pressed.When she eventually replied “Hong Kong,” the man started to get aggressive, Hui recounted. He insisted that she should define herself as “from China” — which was handed control of the former British colony in 1997... Hui penned a column at Emerson’s student paper, titled “I am from Hong Kong, not China.” She opened with the line: “I am from a city owned by a country I don’t belong to.”It was soon followed by an intense and, at times, threatening backlash from mainland Chinese students at her college... The terms of Britain’s handover were meant to guarantee Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, allowing the territory to keep its own political, judicial and economic systems until 2047.But Beijing’s controls stepped up after the 2014 street protests... Hong Kong courts have charged and imprisoned the pro-democracy movement’s leaders for up to 16 months despite the protests being overwhelmingly peaceful... a party that advocates for Hong Kong’s independence was banned, and a senior Financial Times editor was expelled. No official explanation was given for the editor’s expulsion, but he had hosted a talk with the founder of that independence party just weeks before at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.The Hong Kong government also is pushing through a bill that would make insulting the Chinese national anthem a criminal offense... The most jarring comment came from a Chinese student at Emerson, who made Hui’s personal Facebook posts public. In one post, he wrote a comment that translates to: “Whomever opposes my greatest China, no matter how far they are, must be executed.”... Her experience... mirrors that of other Hong Kongers at overseas universities."
Some people claim that while the government is brutal, Chinese people are reasonable. Yet, it doesn't take many nasty people to ruin your day
Hong Kong: Leaked police manuals show officers often ignored guidelines in protest crackdown - Washington Post - "As violence escalated in Hong Kong over recent months, senior officials repeatedly ruled out a full inquiry into increasingly aggressive police tactics toward pro-democracy demonstrators.Independent scrutiny would be an “injustice” and a “tool for inciting hatred” against the force, commissioner Chris Tang said recently, echoing the refusal of Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-appointed leader, to meet one of protesters’ key demands. A police spokesman emphasized that the force is adhering to “strict” guidelines in policing the protests, “benchmarked against international standards.”A review of more than 100 pages of police guidelines and training manuals obtained by The Washington Post details these protocols surrounding use of force. The guidelines, however, were often ignored by police, who have misused chemical agents and used excessive force against protesters not resisting, according to experts in policing who examined dozens of incidents in consultation with Post journalists and in comparison with the police protocols... Concerns over a lack of police accountability underpin the sentiments fueling the unrest — growing fears that Hong Kong’s rule of law is being eroded as Beijing tightens its grip over the territory. Many in the city’s pro-democracy camp view the Hong Kong police as a means for China’s Communist Party to suppress unrest without resorting to direct intervention that could provoke an international response.A police spokesman said no officer has been suspended from duty in connection with “any incident relating to the protests,” a step taken when an officer is being investigated for serious wrongdoing. No officer has been charged or prosecuted over protest-related actions... A culture of impunity now pervades the force, according to a current and a former officer, emboldening riot police to disregard their training or lie when asked in official reports to justify excessive force... An officer who left the force recently, dissatisfied with police conduct, added: “All those disciplinary rules are just being ignored now. The higher-ups are afraid to use them.”... The indiscriminate use of force has led Hong Kongers to tolerate protesters’ increasingly violent reprisals against police. As demonstrators resorted to gasoline bombs and bricks, polls showed that far more people blamed the government and police for the worsening situation... The experts, who each reviewed a different set of videos, said they thought that Hong Kong police went against their rules in about 70 percent of the incidents reviewed. In 8 percent of incidents, the experts said the use of force could be justified under police guidelines... Lam, Hong Kong’s leader, has urged the public to trust the Independent Police Complaints Council to address police behavior. Yet the council — whose chairman Lam appointed in 2018 — has no power to call witnesses. Between 2010 and 2018, the council recommended criminal proceedings against only one police officer. In September, Lam said she had formed a five-member international expert panel to provide advice on the council’s findings, which are due in the coming weeks. In a November progress report, those international experts warned of limitations in the scope and powers of the council inquiry. They said on Dec. 11 that they were standing aside, citing disagreements with the council over the scope of the exercise. "
Maybe the China shill excuse is that the HK police guidelines are outdated colonial rubbish, and the police needed to adapt to the realities on the ground. And that Hong Kong people have all been brainwashed by the foreign media and foreign agents since they don't blame the protesters for the situation
Muhammed on Twitter - "So #Beijing has been aggressively pumping out staged propaganda videos like the one below, hoping the world will start buying into its unjustifiable claims of counter-terrorism. Unfortunately, with all the arguments so perfectly contradict with existing findings, there is little chance that the world will start looking at the #Xinjiang crisis differently.
@WangGuanCGTN, I wonder how much you believe in the words you said in when all evidence show that the re-education program is essentially a religious and cultural cleansing operation."
"What lies! I hate how propagandists repeatedly use numbers game. I know first hand that Xinjiang has the mosques closed, just the Id Kah mosque is open now -- tourists pay a fee and locals show ID. Tourists cannot pray and if locals pray they will be profiled and sent to camps."
"Did you go there? China shills like to tell me to go to xinjiang and look for myself. When I ask them if they've done that they keep quiet"
"Yes"
"I guess the China shills will just have to fall back on claiming you've been deceived by Western propaganda, or that you're a paid agent"
Bob Malak on Twitter - "Scientists discover China has been secretly emitting banned ozone-depleting gas"
"At least they didnt back out of the Paris Accord"
Chinese MMA Fighter Xu Xiaodong has social credit score lowered to “D”, is barred from buying plane tickets and real estate - "Chinese Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Xu Xiaodong’s social credit score has been lowered to “D” following a court order.Xu became an internet celebrity in 2017 when a video of him defeating a tai chi grandmaster in just 20 seconds went viral.Xu is a fierce critic of what he calls “fake kung fu.” He claims that Western-style MMA is superior to traditional Chinese martial arts, a point of view that in the increasingly nationalistic environment in China is often unwelcome. To prove his point, Xu challenged tai chi grandmaster Wei Lei to a fight. The bout, which took place in a basement in the city of Chengdu, lasted only 20 seconds. Wei’s defeat shocked China and drew the ire of many Chinese, who viewed the fight as a battle between East and West. “Chinese traditional wushu like tai chi is a philosophy and social medium. It’s not martial arts”... A credit score “D” means that Xu will no longer be allowed to buy plane tickets or train tickets, purchase real estate. He also will be banned from star-rated hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, and his children will not be able to study in private schools. In 2014 China announced the launch of a pilot scheme to create a nationwide social credit score system, which will be fully implemented by 2020. The system aims to evaluate the behaviour of citizens and punish those who have a low score."
China lovers will just say that he deserves it and this is totally not an abuse of the social credit system but justification for it since he made China look bad
China Bans The Intercept and Other News Sites in “Censorship Black Friday” - "people in China began reporting that they could not access the websites of The Intercept, The Guardian, the Washington Post, HuffPost, NBC News, the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, and Breitbart News... Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire.org, an organization that monitors Chinese government internet censorship, said that the apparent crackdown on Western news sites represented a significant new development and described it as a “censorship Black Friday.”“This frenzied activity could indicate that the authorities are accelerating their push to sever the link between Chinese citizens and any news source that falls outside of the influence of The Party”"
Wikipedia blocked in China in all languages - "All language editions of Wikipedia have been blocked in mainland China since April... The country had previously banned the Chinese language version of the site, but the block has now been expanded."
New Horrors: China Harvesting Muslim Organs in Concentration Camps. - "As for claims, China is removing live organs from executed Uyghur Muslims and marketing them as “halal” and then distributing via a network to wealthy Saudi clients, we know that China has taken the biometric data of the upwards of 2 million Uyghur it holds in its concentration camps, along with those of millions of others in Xinjiang, and we also know that as many as 100,000 organ transplants are carried out each year in China, according to the authors of Bloody Harvest/Slaughter."
China harvested organs from political prisoners on substantial scale, says tribunal - "Forced harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience in China has been “substantial,” says an interim judgment of an independent “people’s tribunal” set up to determine whether the country’s transplantation practices breached international criminal law."
The long march from China to the Ivies - "It is one of China’s curious contradictions that, even as the government tries to eradicate foreign influences from the country’s universities, the flood of Chinese students leaving for the West continues to rise. Over the past decade, the number of mainland Chinese students enrolled in American colleges and universities has nearly quintupled, from 62,523 in 2005 to 304,040 last year... Even the daughter of Xi Jinping, China’s president and the man driving the campaign against foreign ideas, recently studied – under a pseudonym – at Harvard University. Among Western educators, the Chinese system is famous for producing an elite corps of high-school students who regularly finish at the top of global test rankings, far ahead of their American and British counterparts. Yet so many Chinese families are now opting out of this system that selling education to Chinese students has become a profitable business for the West... Even as Xi’s daughter took seminars at Harvard, his government cracked down on university faculty and curricula “corrupted” by foreign influences – with the exception of a thickly bearded German philosopher.As part of this campaign, Beijing decreed last year that international wings in public high schools should be shut down, or at least moved away from their host schools... American universities, too, have learned to mistrust applications coming from China. Their suspicions are often grounded in unpleasant experience, most commonly with Chinese students whose high TOEFL scores or eloquent personal essays are betrayed by an inability to form coherent sentences in English. Few universities have the resources to check up on each of their applicants’ claims – and indeed, with the amount of cash full-tuition-paying Chinese students are bringing in, some don’t have much incentive either... Chinese teachers as a rule don’t write recommendations, so students must conjure them up themselves, treating it, according to a consultant, “as a creative writing sample in which you have to write in another person’s voice”. Mistrust of Chinese applications has spawned a small “verification” industry in China... several firms, such as the Beijing-based Vericant, now conduct video-taped interviews with applicants, in English, and post them online so that colleges and universities can evaluate whether their ability matches their test scores... Most students have had little chance to develop outside interests, so are trying to create rounded personalities from a standing start... A Beijing school official told me about a boy from north-eastern China whose father flew him in a private plane to Tibet – for just a day – to make a video of him aiding poor minorities"
More Than 1,200 Buddhist Statues Removed - "The destruction of large Buddhist and Taoist statues has become an ideological matter for the Chinese authorities, an integral part of the unprecedented struggle to rid the country of anything religious that is not controlled by the CCP. In the past year, numerous Buddhist statues have been removed or demolished; temples shut down and destroyed"
Maybe according to China shills this is to stop terrorism
A Brief History of Vietnam: The 4 Periods of Chinese Domination - "For over thousands of years, China ruled over Vietnam from 111 B.C. — 980 A.D.... During the conquered period, Vietnam had to adopt the Chinese writing system, Confucianism, arts, and literature. A part of the conquered Vietnam lost their native language, culture, and national identity until the revolt of Trung Sister in 40 A.D... The Ming Dynasty took Vietnam and suppressed it even further by the emperor’s command:
兵入。除釋道經板經文不燬。外一切書板文字以至俚俗童蒙所習。如上大人丘乙已之類。片紙隻字悉皆燬之。其境內中國 所立碑刻則存之。但是安南所立者悉壞之。一字不存。
“Once our army enter Annam (Vietnam currenly), except Buddhist and Taoist text; all books and notes, including folklore and children book, should be burnt. The stelas erected by China should be protected carefully, while those erected by Annamese (Vietnamese currently), should be completely annihilated, do not spare even one character.” Vietnam’s economy suffered greatly. Valuables artifacts, gold, gems, jade, pieces of arts were transported to China"
So much for the myth of a peaceful China
In Hong Kong, battles grow over identity and future of special status within China - The Washington Post - "Sitting on a bus in Boston, thousands of miles from her home in Hong Kong, college student Frances Hui crossed paths with an inquisitive fellow passenger.Where are you from? the passenger pressed.When she eventually replied “Hong Kong,” the man started to get aggressive, Hui recounted. He insisted that she should define herself as “from China” — which was handed control of the former British colony in 1997... Hui penned a column at Emerson’s student paper, titled “I am from Hong Kong, not China.” She opened with the line: “I am from a city owned by a country I don’t belong to.”It was soon followed by an intense and, at times, threatening backlash from mainland Chinese students at her college... The terms of Britain’s handover were meant to guarantee Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, allowing the territory to keep its own political, judicial and economic systems until 2047.But Beijing’s controls stepped up after the 2014 street protests... Hong Kong courts have charged and imprisoned the pro-democracy movement’s leaders for up to 16 months despite the protests being overwhelmingly peaceful... a party that advocates for Hong Kong’s independence was banned, and a senior Financial Times editor was expelled. No official explanation was given for the editor’s expulsion, but he had hosted a talk with the founder of that independence party just weeks before at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.The Hong Kong government also is pushing through a bill that would make insulting the Chinese national anthem a criminal offense... The most jarring comment came from a Chinese student at Emerson, who made Hui’s personal Facebook posts public. In one post, he wrote a comment that translates to: “Whomever opposes my greatest China, no matter how far they are, must be executed.”... Her experience... mirrors that of other Hong Kongers at overseas universities."
Some people claim that while the government is brutal, Chinese people are reasonable. Yet, it doesn't take many nasty people to ruin your day
Hong Kong: Leaked police manuals show officers often ignored guidelines in protest crackdown - Washington Post - "As violence escalated in Hong Kong over recent months, senior officials repeatedly ruled out a full inquiry into increasingly aggressive police tactics toward pro-democracy demonstrators.Independent scrutiny would be an “injustice” and a “tool for inciting hatred” against the force, commissioner Chris Tang said recently, echoing the refusal of Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-appointed leader, to meet one of protesters’ key demands. A police spokesman emphasized that the force is adhering to “strict” guidelines in policing the protests, “benchmarked against international standards.”A review of more than 100 pages of police guidelines and training manuals obtained by The Washington Post details these protocols surrounding use of force. The guidelines, however, were often ignored by police, who have misused chemical agents and used excessive force against protesters not resisting, according to experts in policing who examined dozens of incidents in consultation with Post journalists and in comparison with the police protocols... Concerns over a lack of police accountability underpin the sentiments fueling the unrest — growing fears that Hong Kong’s rule of law is being eroded as Beijing tightens its grip over the territory. Many in the city’s pro-democracy camp view the Hong Kong police as a means for China’s Communist Party to suppress unrest without resorting to direct intervention that could provoke an international response.A police spokesman said no officer has been suspended from duty in connection with “any incident relating to the protests,” a step taken when an officer is being investigated for serious wrongdoing. No officer has been charged or prosecuted over protest-related actions... A culture of impunity now pervades the force, according to a current and a former officer, emboldening riot police to disregard their training or lie when asked in official reports to justify excessive force... An officer who left the force recently, dissatisfied with police conduct, added: “All those disciplinary rules are just being ignored now. The higher-ups are afraid to use them.”... The indiscriminate use of force has led Hong Kongers to tolerate protesters’ increasingly violent reprisals against police. As demonstrators resorted to gasoline bombs and bricks, polls showed that far more people blamed the government and police for the worsening situation... The experts, who each reviewed a different set of videos, said they thought that Hong Kong police went against their rules in about 70 percent of the incidents reviewed. In 8 percent of incidents, the experts said the use of force could be justified under police guidelines... Lam, Hong Kong’s leader, has urged the public to trust the Independent Police Complaints Council to address police behavior. Yet the council — whose chairman Lam appointed in 2018 — has no power to call witnesses. Between 2010 and 2018, the council recommended criminal proceedings against only one police officer. In September, Lam said she had formed a five-member international expert panel to provide advice on the council’s findings, which are due in the coming weeks. In a November progress report, those international experts warned of limitations in the scope and powers of the council inquiry. They said on Dec. 11 that they were standing aside, citing disagreements with the council over the scope of the exercise. "
Maybe the China shill excuse is that the HK police guidelines are outdated colonial rubbish, and the police needed to adapt to the realities on the ground. And that Hong Kong people have all been brainwashed by the foreign media and foreign agents since they don't blame the protesters for the situation
Muhammed on Twitter - "So #Beijing has been aggressively pumping out staged propaganda videos like the one below, hoping the world will start buying into its unjustifiable claims of counter-terrorism. Unfortunately, with all the arguments so perfectly contradict with existing findings, there is little chance that the world will start looking at the #Xinjiang crisis differently.
@WangGuanCGTN, I wonder how much you believe in the words you said in when all evidence show that the re-education program is essentially a religious and cultural cleansing operation."
"What lies! I hate how propagandists repeatedly use numbers game. I know first hand that Xinjiang has the mosques closed, just the Id Kah mosque is open now -- tourists pay a fee and locals show ID. Tourists cannot pray and if locals pray they will be profiled and sent to camps."
"Did you go there? China shills like to tell me to go to xinjiang and look for myself. When I ask them if they've done that they keep quiet"
"Yes"
"I guess the China shills will just have to fall back on claiming you've been deceived by Western propaganda, or that you're a paid agent"
Bob Malak on Twitter - "Scientists discover China has been secretly emitting banned ozone-depleting gas"
"At least they didnt back out of the Paris Accord"
Chinese MMA Fighter Xu Xiaodong has social credit score lowered to “D”, is barred from buying plane tickets and real estate - "Chinese Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Xu Xiaodong’s social credit score has been lowered to “D” following a court order.Xu became an internet celebrity in 2017 when a video of him defeating a tai chi grandmaster in just 20 seconds went viral.Xu is a fierce critic of what he calls “fake kung fu.” He claims that Western-style MMA is superior to traditional Chinese martial arts, a point of view that in the increasingly nationalistic environment in China is often unwelcome. To prove his point, Xu challenged tai chi grandmaster Wei Lei to a fight. The bout, which took place in a basement in the city of Chengdu, lasted only 20 seconds. Wei’s defeat shocked China and drew the ire of many Chinese, who viewed the fight as a battle between East and West. “Chinese traditional wushu like tai chi is a philosophy and social medium. It’s not martial arts”... A credit score “D” means that Xu will no longer be allowed to buy plane tickets or train tickets, purchase real estate. He also will be banned from star-rated hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, and his children will not be able to study in private schools. In 2014 China announced the launch of a pilot scheme to create a nationwide social credit score system, which will be fully implemented by 2020. The system aims to evaluate the behaviour of citizens and punish those who have a low score."
China lovers will just say that he deserves it and this is totally not an abuse of the social credit system but justification for it since he made China look bad
China Bans The Intercept and Other News Sites in “Censorship Black Friday” - "people in China began reporting that they could not access the websites of The Intercept, The Guardian, the Washington Post, HuffPost, NBC News, the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, and Breitbart News... Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire.org, an organization that monitors Chinese government internet censorship, said that the apparent crackdown on Western news sites represented a significant new development and described it as a “censorship Black Friday.”“This frenzied activity could indicate that the authorities are accelerating their push to sever the link between Chinese citizens and any news source that falls outside of the influence of The Party”"
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