War and remembrances

 Here's a story about a black bear that came out of the woods in West Hartford, Connecticut, stole some cupcakes laid out for a little boy's second birthday party and left.  Isn't that adorable?  Is that icing on his snout?

The world is just as weird and ugly as it was before, but Ursus americanus made it a little easier to, uh, bear.

Britain's new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (2022) is apparently being used against people who are insufficiently mournful about the death of the queen or unimpressed with the idea of monarchy in general.  As in, a woman in Edinburgh handcuffed for holding a sign that said "Fuck imperialism, abolish monarchy."  (A man was also arrested for shouting abuse of a personal nature at Prince Andrew.) There have long been republican Brits -- one Labour MP always made a big deal of yelling something snarky as the members (himself included) paraded over to the House of Lords for the Queen's Speech.  But there seems to be a sense that mournfulness (as opposed to mourning) must be enforced, down to on-air BBC personnel required to dress in black until after the funeral.  I guess you can police public expressions of "Who gives a damn?"  Policing the feelings of the people will only result in more resistance to the whole royal pageant industry.  

Two hundred days in, what has Vladimir Putin accomplished?  Well, a significant portion of the world's population hates his guts.  Many thousands of people are dead.  A nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhya -- Ukrainians, we really have to talk about these names -- has been seriously damaged; we won't know how seriously until it can be properly examined.  Ukrainians, including children, are missing, presumably in the gulag.  There is plenty of evidence of those beloved Russian military tactics rape and torture.  We know the names of those Americans who approve of all this including members of Congress.  If they're allowed to see their tax rubles abandoned by the troops, I wonder what Russian taxpayers think of it all.

 

   All so Putin (5'7") can pretend he's Peter the Great (6'8"). 

Yesterday a different group of mourners gathered in the rain to commemorate the twenty-first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.  All the names of the dead were recited and speeches were made.  One tradition, however, was missing.  Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush's press secretary, has always tweeted a minute-by-minute account of that day.  This year he said, "It's time to let it rest.  There is nothing new to say or reveal."  And especially not the document unsealed by the FBI detailing contacts between Saudi Arabia and some of the hijackers.  Fleischer Communications takes up all his time as it fronts for the LIV Golf Tour and he just didn't get around to it.  Nothing suspicious about that.  Look, it's Phil Mickelson!

Trump's involvement with 9/11 was to collect $150,000 out of a fund to assist small businesses because he owned a building a mile from the World Trade Center.  He also promised to donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund but it slipped his mind.  Perhaps he was too busy lying about how he saw "thousands of Muslims" celebrating in the streets of Jersey City, or about the scores of memorial services he attended for lost "friends."  But you can always count on him to make any public occasion about himself.  Last week he insisted that the Queen had "privately" knighted him during their meeting over tea, and clearly liked him more than any other president -- maybe more than any other person -- she met.  And he's crazy to go to her funeral.  On CNN, which is becoming Fox Lite before our eyes, Jake Tapper said it would be "a clever move" for Joe Biden to take him along, fueling his delusion that he is still president.  To forestall this, the Palace issued individual invitations to President Joseph Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, period.  No delegation, with or without the clod who kept the Queen waiting and didn't even know where to stand while they reviewed troops.  That's how courtiers say "Sod off."

I was born in the same year as Princess Anne.  I remember the mild sensation when a classmate wrote to her (maybe on her tenth birthday) and got an actual response from her lady-in-waiting ("I am commanded by Her Royal Highness...").  It was passed around.  We were impressed -- not too much but imagine having a lady-in-waiting!  So I was a little misty to see her join her brothers in the Vigil of the Princes at their mother's casket in St. Giles Cathedral, in full military uniform.  Unprecedented, a word that is becoming commonplace.  Anne the dowdy show jumper was always downgraded by the public, even before Diana sucked all the air out of the room.  She's the hardest-working of the family, a fact her mother acknowledged by making her Princess Royal.  (Famously she declined titles for her children and chose a quiet country life for them.)  I think the Queen decided to have more children in the 1960s in part to ensure that Anne would never have to become queen as she had.  I've read that she was Philip's favorite.  Dads and daughters.