LongTimeLurker

The Brexit chickens are coming home to roost.

This seems like a very optimistic assessment:

Says a guy from Dundee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy

Armenia with no help coming from CSTO has very little leverage in all of this and basically has to lump it where losing "Artsakh" and accepting some sort of transport corridor between Nakhchivan and Azerbaijan proper is concerned. On the plus side for them if they can get the Turkish border opened to trade through to the EU via both road and rail their state has a future in economic terms.

He wasn't shy about interning and hanging them once he made it into power. Fianna Fail tended to be quietly happy with a 26 county state because they were the natural party of power in that context. Haughey and Blaney excepted obviously.

They are more into baseball so unlikely.

Who was the Indian equivalent of John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party holding the balance of power at Westminster in the years immediately preceding WWI? RIP Ronnie Hill.

Think if you tested that out somewhere like Harthill you would quickly find out that's a dubious assertion at best. A small group of extremists murdering people to achieve political goals was just as wrong in 1916 as it was in 1968 because there were other avenues available in both eras to bring about change that would have left people less bitterly divided.

...and later on: Loretta's lyrics are a reminder of what people who crow about demographic shifts based on differences in birthrates are willing to inflict on others to get what they want.

Worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Rings as mentioned above the trees not surviving without the power of the rings fits with Tolkien's LoTR text on what happened to Lorien after the one ring was destroyed. Given the origin story they have for mithril revolves around a simaril and hence from the light of the two trees of Valinor they showed in the first episode, I guess it's possible to see where they are going with that because it implies that light source still being needed to keep Middle Earth the way the High Elves such as Elrond and Galadriel like it. Think the trees starting to die was related to Sauron being back even though Gil-galad wanted to pretend he wasn't and sent Galadriel to the Undying Lands to get rid of her for contradicting him on that. Enter Halbrand on a raft...

To paraphrase Newton Emerson in The Portadown News, after first wiping most of the blood off his hands Gerry Adams offered the hand of friendship to Northern Ireland's Unionist community... What's pathetic more than anything else is the way some people on here seem to view politicians like Gerry Adams as progressive leftists and are clearly mystified why there is still no huge surge of enthusiasm for a United Ireland from the people who were targeted in this manner in the era of the baby boom and the armalite. Half of that we don't need to persuade them as part of a democratic process we'll just outbreed them and murder them until we get what we want equation is still on display in this thread. Slow learners indeed.

Imagine if they had Himars equipped with these missiles when the 40 km column formed north of Kyiv at the start of the war. From what I've read the main reason they are receiving them now is that the US army have 500,000 of them lying around doing not very much so sending these missiles ends any concerns there may have been about Ukraine burning through their available stockpile.

Think it's OK if that's the end of it now. It shows Durin III is right to be concerned and ties into the LoTR movie for people who don't remember the back story. The mithril angle helps explain why it was something so valuable and they can always use a just because Tolkein never mentioned it doesn't mean it couldn't have happened approach as they are no doubt going to do with Celeborn disappearing for a bit in the Second Age. Tricky bit though is how the Wood Elves from the Hobbit fit in given they were never anywhere near Moria and the "Rings of Power", so maybe the Elves perishing isn't the full story and they are using that to guilt trip the Dwarves (mainly Durin IV) into supplying it for some other reason related to creating the rings.

Gandalf is not supposed to be in Middle Earth until the Third Age and was secretly given one of the "Rings of Power" when he arrived so purists would flip their lid if they did that. They are already unhappy about Galadriel's husband who features in the LOTR being MIA in this series. Radagast isn't supposed to show up until later either but is such a minor character that it would make less of a difference to the established book canon. Radagast is supposed to be big on protecting wildlife so bringing the trees back to life in the last episode fits his character in a big way.

The SPFL have already signed off on the associated rule changes so this is a non-issue. Only awkward thing that might come out of this season is that if Brechin City get promoted it potentially muddies the waters to a slight extent on what the boundary is between the LL and HL in future.

Odds on Belarus would have already joined in by now if they were going to. From time to time Lukashenko says these sorts of things to avoid making it onto Vlad's regime change list.

If it was the HGV it raised very awkward questions about whether the driver was duped into driving that particular load. Have seen other people claim that the blackened road surface points strongly to a strike from above:

The reason for the crazy looking detour taken by the plane from St Petersburg to Stavropol in an earlier post is that these cruise missiles are normally fired from planes over the Caspian Sea near Astrakhan. The reason for the Iranian flying lawnmowers entering the fray was said to be that the Russians were running out of these missiles, so probably safe to assume that they are hitting random civilian targets because they aren't able to accurately target them at the key infrastructure they want to strike. That no doubt detracts considerably from the shock and awe effect they were going for.

^^^given there is clearly a crane on the other line at 0:05, it's difficult to see how the railway is open for normal traffic at this point.

I'll assume everyone is familiar with LoTR and The Hobbit so nothing that happens in that can be viewed as a spoiler. Think the Stranger should wind up being Radagast now given he's heading towards what will become Mirkwood where he was based in the Third Age. The Harfoots will probably settle down beside the Anduin close by given that's where Smeagol kills Deagol to steal the ring, which could conceivably happen not too long after the timeline of the series. Think Halbrand is going to turn out to be Sauron and he was never a refugee from an orc attack and didn't float into Galadriel by some fluke random accident. Introducing him to the Elf with the big forge is going to be a very bad move for the future of Middle Earth. All seems very well done so far and close enough to Tolkein's writings to be an acceptable expansion of his world building. Especially enjoy the bits that make the MAGA types on youtube who conveniently forget what Tolkein did with Eowyn as a character seethe.

Elsewhere:

Think it had to be a suicide mission if the lorry was involved. What seems to contradict that though is that the lorry was inspected before starting to cross and the first clip below (ignoring the drivel tweeted as accompanying text) shows towards the end that there are two sections of downed bridge between a section that appears OK:

The rail bridge is also double track so doubt that's out of commission for too long unfortunately. The road bridge appears to have been the main target though. If it was ballistic missiles rather than the lorry, there's probably not much Russians can do to prevent a repeat as happened with the bridge over the Dniepr near Kherson.