six-degrees-from-me

[six-degrees-from-me]

This is some next level satire

[six-degrees-from-me]

[six-degrees-from-me]

Harold and Meghan are totally broke and want to go back, right? Because the “BRF are racist and conspired with the Royal Reporters to lie and destroy our shine” has been H&Ms bread and butter PR strategy since 2020. FF’d to January 2023: Harold makes it clear he’s totally in support of the monarchy and wants back in, even claiming the BRF aren’t racist; and (intentionally or not) confirms that about 95% of the “tabloid lies” from the “courtiers” about Meghan and/or Harold/Meghan were true.

I don’t think they are totally broke yet, but they now know their only marketable product is the royal connection. They need the “half-in and half-out” to have something to monetize.

Specifically, he wants the Commonwealth Trust and the Youth Ambassador status back. That way he has funds for travel and content he can sell to Netflix.

[six-degrees-from-me]

Social Etiquette 101

Do not manifest impatience. Be present in the conversation.

Do not engage in argument.

Do not interrupt someone else while they are speaking.

If you must, gently critique.

Do not talk of your private, personal or family matters.

Do not appear to notice inaccuracies of speech in others.

Do not allow yourself to lose your temper or speak excitedly.

Do not allude to peculiarities of the people present.

Do not introduce topics the people you are with have no general interest in.

Do not speak loudly.

Do not try to force yourself, or be intense, into the confidence of others.

When they give you their confidence, don't betray it.

Keep it light. Do not aspire to be a story teller. Tell short, light stories, appropriate with the current temperature of the rest of the party involved.

Use clear, distinct, gentle and firm words to express your ideas.

Be cool, collected and poised, using respectful and appropriate language.

Always defend the absent person who is being spoken about, as far as truth or justice is concerned. If you have nothing positive to add, leave the conversation.

Allow other people to share.

Don't talk about yourself so much. Your merit will be found in your expression of a subject without having to constantly praise yourself.

Slight mistakes and inaccuracies should be overlooked for the sake harmony and natural flow.

Adapt your conversation to the flow or level of the people you are speaking with. Do not under or over value them. Speaking to them how they understand, will provide more trust and comfort.

[six-degrees-from-me]

When tenants can’t pay rent, landlords can’t pay mortgage.  When landlords can’t mortgage properties foreclose, leaving tenants (and landlords alike) in unfavourable conditions, not to mention a multitude of other repercussions.  Everything is connected.

Not sure how you could interpret this information as landlords being the ones facing a crisis, but go off.

[six-degrees-from-me]

A few lines from Charlie Brown's America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts by Blake Scott Ball.

The more things change…

[six-degrees-from-me]

Who will survive in America

https://archive.ph/cfcia

Quality and America are two words that have struggled to maintain a connection for quite some time now.  Nice to see they can acknowledge it, but you can’t help but wonder if that changes anything.

[six-degrees-from-me]

BRI Project

https://archive.ph/ee5HC

“ China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived. Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives would stretch from East Asia to Europe, significantly expanding China’s economic and political influence.Some analysts see the project as an unsettling extension of China’s rising power, and as the costs of many of the projects have skyrocketed, opposition has grown in some countries. Meanwhile, the United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion. Under President Donald J. Trump, Washington has raised alarm over Beijing’s actions, but it has struggled to offer governments in the region a more appealing economic vision.

What was the original Silk Road?

The original Silk Road arose during the westward expansion of China’s Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), which forged trade networks throughout what are today the Central Asian countries of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as modern-day India and Pakistan to the south. Those routes extended more than four thousand miles to Europe. Asia was thus the epicenter of one of the first waves of globalization, connecting eastern and western markets, spurring immense wealth, and intermixing cultural and religious traditions. Valuable Chinese silk, spices, jade, and other goods moved west while China received gold and other precious metals, ivory, and glass products. Use of the route peaked during the first millennium, under the leadership of first the Roman and then Byzantine Empires, and the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) in China.But the Crusades, as well as advances by the Mongols in Central Asia, dampened trade, and today Central Asian countries are economically isolated from each other, with intra-regional trade making up just 6.2 percent of all cross-border commerce. They are also heavily dependent on Russia, particularly for remittances—they make up one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. By 2018, remittances had dipped from their 2013 highs due to Russia’s economic woes.

What are China’s plans for its New Silk Road?

President Xi announced the initiative during official visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013. The plan was two-pronged: the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. The two were collectively referred to first as the One Belt, One Road initiative but eventually became the Belt and Road Initiative.Xi’s vision included creating a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings, both westward—through the mountainous former Soviet republics—and southward, to Pakistan, India, and the rest of Southeast Asia. Such a network would expand the international use of Chinese currency, the renminbi, and “break the bottleneck in Asian connectivity,” according to Xi. (The Asian Development Bank estimated that the region faces a yearly infrastructure financing shortfall of nearly $800 billion.) In addition to physical infrastructure, China plans to build fifty special economic zones, modeled after the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which China launched in 1980 during its economic reforms under leader Deng Xiaoping.Xi subsequently announced plans for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road at the 2013 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia. To accommodate expanding maritime trade traffic, China would invest in port development along the Indian Ocean, from Southeast Asia all the way to East Africa and parts of Europe.China’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, more than sixty countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so. Analysts estimate the largest so far to be the $68 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of projects connecting China to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. In total, China has already spent an estimated $200 billion on such efforts. Morgan Stanley has predicted China’s overall expenses over the life of the BRI could reach $1.2–1.3 trillion by 2027, though estimates on total investments vary.

What does China hope to achieve?

China has both geopolitical and economic motivations behind the initiative. Xi has promoted a vision of a more assertive China, while slowing growth and rocky trade relations with the United States have pressured the country’s leadership to open new markets for its goods.“ To date, more than sixty countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so. ”Experts see the BRI as one of the main planks of a bolder Chinese statecraft under Xi, alongside the Made in China 2025 economic development strategy. For Xi, the BRI serves as pushback against the much-touted U.S. “pivot to Asia,” as well as a way for China to develop new investment opportunities, cultivate export markets, and boost Chinese incomes and domestic consumption. “Under Xi, China now actively seeks to shape international norms and institutions and forcefully asserts its presence on the global stage,” writes CFR’s Elizabeth C. Economy.At the same time, China is motivated to boost global economic links to its western regions, which historically have been neglected. Promoting economic development in the western province of Xinjiang, where separatist violence has been on the upswing, is a major priority, as is securing long-term energy supplies from Central Asia and the Middle East, especially via routes the U.S. military cannot disrupt.More broadly, Chinese leaders are determined to restructure the economy to avoid the so-called middle-income trap. In this scenario, which has plagued close to 90 percent of middle-income countries since 1960, wages go up and quality of life improves as low-skilled manufacturing rises, but countries struggle to then shift to producing higher-value goods and services.

What are the potential roadblocks?

The Belt and Road Initiative has also stoked opposition. For some countries that take on large amounts of debt to fund infrastructure upgrades, BRI money is seen as a potential poisoned chalice. BRI projects are built using low-interest loans as opposed to aid grants. Some BRI investments have involved opaque bidding processes and required the use of Chinese firms. As a result, contractors have inflated costs, leading to canceled projects and political backlash.Examples of such criticisms abound. In Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, elected prime minister in 2018, campaigned against overpriced BRI initiatives, which he claimed were partially redirected to funds controlled by his predecessor. Once in office, he canceled $22 billion worth of BRI projects, although he later announced his “full support” for the initiative in 2019. In Kazakhstan, mass protests against the construction of Chinese factories swept the country in 2019, driven by concerns about costs as well as anger over the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang Province.

Some governments, in places such as Kenya and Zambia, are carefully studying BRI investments before they sign up, and candidates in Malaysia have run—and won—campaigns on anti-BRI platforms. Chinese leaders were reportedly surprised by such pushback, and BRI investment began to slow in late 2018. Yet by the end of 2019, BRI contracts again saw a significant uptick.

How has the United States responded to China-led regional integration?

The United States has shared other countries’ concerns about China’s intentions. Developing the economies of South and Central Asia is a long-standing U.S. goal that intensified after the start of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia. The Obama administration frequently referenced the need for the Afghan economy to move past foreign assistance, and in 2014 then-Deputy Secretary of State William Burns committed the United States to returning Central and South Asia “to its historic role as a vital hub of global commerce, ideas, and culture.” In this spirit, the Obama administration supported a $10 billion gas pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. It also spent billions of dollars on roads and energy projects in Afghanistan and used its diplomatic muscle to help craft new regional cooperation frameworks to foster Central Asian economic links.Some analysts have called on the United States to deepen its ties with Asian partners, as the Obama administration tried to do with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a deal rejected by Trump. The Trump administration has instead tried to counter the BRI with the BUILD Act. This consolidated the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government agency for development finance, with components of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) into a separate agency with a $60 billion investment portfolio. Although this pales in comparison to the more than $1 trillion China is expected to spend on the BRI, advocates say it seeks to crowd in a larger pool of private investment by underwriting risk.Some have argued that the United States might find a silver lining in the BRI. Jonathan E. Hillman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the United States could use BRI projects as a way to have China pay for infrastructure initiatives in Central Asia that are also in the U.S. interest.

What is the role for third countries?

Other countries have sought to balance their concerns about China’s ambitions against the BRI’s potential benefits.India. India has tried to convince countries that the BRI is a plan to dominate Asia, warning of what some analysts have called a “String of Pearls” geoeconomic strategy whereby China creates unsustainable debt burdens for its Indian Ocean neighbors in order to seize control of regional choke points. In particular, New Delhi has long been unsettled by China’s decades-long embrace of its traditional rival, Pakistan. Meanwhile, India has provided its own development assistance to neighbors, most notably Afghanistan, where it has spent $3 billion on infrastructure projects.The United States views India as a counterweight to a China-dominated Asia and has sought to knit together its strategic relationships in the region via the 2017 Indo-Pacific Strategy. Yet, despite U.S. misgivings, India was a founding member of China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and Indian and Chinese leaders have invested in developing closer diplomatic ties. “India does a lot with China in the multilateral arena for its own reasons,” says CFR’s Alyssa Ayres.Japan. Tokyo has a similar strategy, balancing its interest in regional infrastructure development with long-standing suspicions about China. In 2016, Japan committed to spending $110 billion on infrastructure projects throughout Asia. Japan has, with India, also agreed to develop the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), a plan to develop and connect ports from Myanmar to East Africa.Europe. Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe have accepted BRI financing, and Western European states such as Italy, Luxembourg, and Portugal have signed provisional agreements to cooperate on BRI projects. Their leaders frame cooperation as a way to invite Chinese investment and potentially improve the quality of competitive construction bids from European and U.S. firms.Others disagree. French President Emmanuel Macron has urged prudence, suggesting during a 2018 trip to China that the BRI could make partner countries “vassal states.” Other skeptics connect the BRI with climate change. The Institute of International Finance, a research group that analyzes risk for large Western banks, has reported that 85 percent of BRI projects can be linked to high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Others claim that China is using BRI funds to gain influence in Balkan countries that are on track to become EU members, thereby providing Chinese access to the heart of the European Union’s common market.Russia. Moscow has become one of the BRI’s most enthusiastic partners, though it responded to Xi’s announcement at first with reticence, worried that Beijing’s plans would outshine Moscow’s vision for a “Eurasian Economic Union” and impinge on its traditional sphere of influence.As Russia’s relationship with the West has deteriorated, however, President Vladimir Putin has pledged to link his Eurasian vision with the BRI. Some experts are skeptical of such an alliance, which they argue would be economically asymmetrical. Russia’s economy and its total trade volume are both roughly one-eighth the size of China’s—a gulf that the BRI could widen in the coming years.”

[six-degrees-from-me]

Blind Gossip Items

For the new readers, here’s a list of all the BG blind items I could find, If I missed any, please let me know.Thx.

November 14, 2016: No Dignity

https://blindgossip.com/no-dignity/

November 30, 2016: Family in a Tizzy

https://blindgossip.com/family-in-a-tizzy/

December 20, 2016: Christmas Tea 

https://blindgossip.com/christmas-tea/

December 23, 2016: Everyone Loves Classy

https://blindgossip.com/everyone-loves-classy/

December 29, 2017: Rescue Me

https://blindgossip.com/rescue-me/

January 2, 2017: Beware The Beehive

https://blindgossip.com/beware-the-beehive/

January 3, 2017: Turmoil in The Family

https://blindgossip.com/turmoil-in-the-family/

May 18, 2017: A Royal Pain for Producers

https://blindgossip.com/a-royal-pain-for-producers/

August 2, 2017: Vacation Integration

https://blindgossip.com/vacation-ingratiation/

January 26, 2018: Here Comes The List

https://blindgossip.com/here-comes-the-list/

April 12, 2018: Fast Baby

https://blindgossip.com/fast-baby/

June 19, 2018: Hush Money Dilemma

https://blindgossip.com/hush-money-dilemma/

October 12, 2018: Royal Wedding Snub

https://blindgossip.com/royal-wedding-snub/

December 19, 2018: Appalling Frustrating and Embarrassing

https://blindgossip.com/appalling-frustrating-and-embarrassing/

June 3, 2019: See the Baby

https://blindgossip.com/see-the-baby/

June 17, 2019: Faster Baby

https://blindgossip.com/faster-baby/

September 5, 2019: Family Feud Vacation and Competition

https://blindgossip.com/family-feud-vacation-and-competition/

September 6, 2019: Family Distraught Over Her Control

https://blindgossip.com/family-distraught-over-her-control/

September 16, 2019: Big Baby Bucks

https://blindgossip.com/big-baby-bucks/

October 3, 2019: Her Own Game

https://blindgossip.com/her-own-game/

October 22, 2019: Wounded Little Boy

https://blindgossip.com/wounded-little-boy/

November 14. 2019: The Enemy Diaries

https://blindgossip.com/the-enemy-diaries/

November 18, 2019: The Rules

https://blindgossip.com/the-rules/

December 23, 2019: The Pregnant Pause

https://blindgossip.com/the-pregnant-pause/

December 28, 2019: The Big Plan

https://blindgossip.com/the-big-plan/

January 14. 2020: Stockholm Boy

https://blindgossip.com/stockholm-boy/

January 20, 2020: Shut Down The Crisis

https://blindgossip.com/shut-down-the-crisis/

February 14, 2020: She Floated Her Buyout Number

https://blindgossip.com/she-floated-her-buyout-number/

February 15, 2020: The Noisy Spotlight

https://blindgossip.com/the-noisy-spotlight/

March 11, 2020: The Popularity Contest

https://blindgossip.com/the-popularity-contest/

March 30, 2020: We Are Exceptional People

https://blindgossip.com/we-are-exceptional-people/

May 19, 2020: The Switcheroo

https://blindgossip.com/the-switcheroo/

May 1, 2020: Her Circle of Friends May Not Hold

https://blindgossip.com/her-circle-of-friends-may-not-hold/

June 2, 2020: Alarming Around The Children

https://blindgossip.com/alarming-around-the-children/

June 18, 2020: Eagle and Goose

https://blindgossip.com/eagle-and-goose/

July 20, 2020: Doggy Dilemma

https://blindgossip.com/doggy-dilemma/

July 29, 2020: Benjamin Franklin and The Sisterhood

https://blindgossip.com/benjamin-franklin-and-the-sisterhood/

August 7, 2020: Three Moves

https://blindgossip.com/three-moves/

August 27, 2020: Baby Needs to Start Earning

https://blindgossip.com/baby-needs-to-start-earning/

October 9, 2020: Spotlight Stealer

https://blindgossip.com/the-spotlight-stealer/

October 26, 2020: Famous Son Got Very Rough

https://blindgossip.com/famous-son-got-very-rough/

December 23, 2020: We Told You About Money Baby

https://blindgossip.com/we-told-you-about-money-baby/

December 28, 2020: Cucumber and Avocado

https://blindgossip.com/cucumber-and-avocado/

February 17, 2021: The Calculated Baby

https://blindgossip.com/the-calculated-baby/

February 19, 2021: The Titles, The Titles, The Titles

https://blindgossip.com/the-titles-the-titles-the-titles/

March 3, 2021: The Mean Girls Strategy

https://blindgossip.com/the-mean-girls-strategy/

[six-degrees-from-me]

Hello Plant. I noticed that James Middleton had bad depression and such. Do think Kate maybe tried to help Meghan since it hit close to home?

I doubt she tried to help with Meghan's depression because it sounds like Harry didn't tell anyone in the family about it. You can't help if you don't know.

But I do think she had sympathy for Meghan. She also suffered at the hands of the press and the tabloids came up with some very embarrassing reveals about her uncle right before her wedding. And she did try to help improve Meghan's image by inviting her to her sister's wedding and to Amner Hall and Wimbledon, doing the forum with her, and doing all the Christmas walks.

We forget how much the Royal Overton Window changed after Meghan. Before she came along, it would have been unthinkable to (i) issue a statement protecting a girlfriend of a few weeks, (ii) let a girlfriend of a few months move in to Nott Cott, (ii) let a girlfriend leak family stories to legitimize the relationship, (iii) let a girlfriend of a few months attend a family wedding, (iv) let a girlfriend do an interview with Vanity Fair, (iv) allow an engagement after a mere year of long-distance dating without the royals having met the family, (v) have a fiancée attend Sandringham, (vi) have a fiancee attend formal forums and Commonwealth events, (v) give a fiancee a royal baptism before the wedding with the POW present and a royal gift, or (v) have post-wedding events with the entire family to support the new member. This was unprecedented. Will and Kate got a reception with the Obamas (on their own!) and then were shipped to Wales for months. Kate's first event with the Queen was like a year later and she did a solo reception for Charles before that. Kate had to be confirmed before the wedding and Will was the one there.

The level of family and institutional support for Meghan was insane. They pulled out all the stops supporting her, which is why she was getting such good press at the beginning. They were literally having family events with her every two weeks or so, to keep the press sweet. That was unsustainable to begin with, then her dad drama (and Harry and Meghan complaining to IPSO about it) and the conflicts with the staff messed it all up.

[six-degrees-from-me]

Can’t overstate my excitement to see plant back ♥

Wow. Patti Davis, progressive daughter of Ronald Reagan, has an op ed piece in The New York Times (as a reminder, Roxane Gay’s piece was also a NYT op ed)

https://archive.fo/Yv7XQ

“Prince Harry and the Value of Silence”

During the early stages of my father’s Alzheimer’s, when he still had lucid moments, I apologized to him for writing an autobiography many years earlier in which I flung open the gates of our troubled family life. He was already talking less at that point, but his eyes told me he understood. …

My justification in writing a book I now wish I hadn’t written (and please, don’t go buy it; I’ve written many other books since) was very similar to what I understand to be Harry’s reasoning. I wanted to tell the truth, I wanted to set the record straight. Naïvely, I thought if I put my own feelings and my own truth out there for the world to read, my family might also come to understand me better.

Of course, people generally don’t respond well to being embarrassed and exposed in public. And in the ensuing years, I’ve learned something about truth: It’s way more complicated than it seems when we’re young. There isn’t just one truth, our truth — the other people who inhabit our story have their truths as well.

Prince William has, I’m sure, his own take on the physical fight that Harry has described. To really understand the dynamic between the brothers, to broaden the story and make it more complete, William’s truth has to be considered as well. Harry has written that, after William hit him, William told Harry to hit him back, which he declined to do. But by writing about the fight, he’s done exactly that.

Harry has also expressed a wish that his relationship with William, and with his father, heals. Maybe that will happen, but they’ll have to walk a long distance across a battlefield that he has now expanded.

Years ago, someone asked me what I would say to my younger self if I could. Without hesitating I answered: “That’s easy. I’d have said, ‘Be quiet.’” Not forever. But until I could stand back and look at things through a wider lens. Until I understood that words have consequences, and they last a really long time.

Harry has called William not only his “beloved brother” but his “arch nemesis.” He chose words that cut deep, that leave a scar; perhaps if he had taken time to be quiet, to reflect on the enduring power of his words, he’d have chosen differently.

Silence gives you room, it gives you distance, and it lets you look at your experiences more completely, without the temptation to even the score. Sometime in the years ahead, Harry may look back as I did and wish he could unspeak what he has said.

I’ve learned something else about truth: Not every truth has to be told to the entire world. People are always going to be curious about famous families, and often the stories from those families can resonate with others, give them insight into their own situations, even transcend time since fame flutters at the edges of eternity.

But not everything needs to be shared, a truth that silence can teach. Harry seems to have operated on the dictum that ‘Silence is not an option.’ I would, respectfully, suggest to him that it is.

______________________________________________________________

Holy. Shit.

Okay, this is one of those times when I freak out, and you guys have no idea why I’m freaking out because it’s just Patti Davis and not a big star like Michelle Obama. Well, this is big. This is a celebrity un-endorsement, but bigger. This is the Establishment talking. They brought in a presidential kid to tell Harry to SHUT THE EFF UP.

I remember way back then Michelle Obama also told them to stop rocking the boat and they didn’t pay attention. I think the powers that be are over these two idiots now.

[six-degrees-from-me]

Such an interesting take… most of it seems assumptive though; there are a lot of contingencies in your statement that are based on things we can’t know. 

On the surface, telling someone they have “baby brain” is in essence telling them, “you don’t know what’s going on” or “you only think that because you’re not in your full capacity right now”  It’s the definition of gas lighting by invalidating whatever it is they are speaking to.  We may not think of things like that ahead of time, but it’s definitely a rude thing to say to another person. 

Saying that to someone you are trying to form a relationship with seems like a strange way to go about things if your intent stems from a positive nature.  Could be Meghan said it without thinking, but it doesn’t conjure respect from others to dismiss their thoughts, or feelings.

Is the baby brain comment really that rude? ok maybe Kate is sensitive to it bcus of her condition but I don't think that it's a rude thing to say.

Maybe she was triggered by someone blaming her hormones because a certain husband of hers had attempted to gaslight her into believing her valid emotions were due to hormones.

I get really irritated when people mention to me that I seem tired or blame my emotions on a lack of sleep because i had a toxic boyfriend who would literally bait me into fights at 3am when i was exhausted. Then if I took the bait, he'd sit back and tell me that I needed to get some sleep and that was to blame for my reaction, not what he said.

Imo Meghan did Kate a favor by blaming baby brain for Kate being forgetful instead of actually holding her accountable. And Kate being so insulted by it tells me that her reaction was not about Meghan or what Meghan said at all, it's much deeper than that.

[six-degrees-from-me]

Mama Tiger gets scared intentionally

[six-degrees-from-me]

Some of the most famous women of anicent times👑