Fullerene

By that stage the UK public were totally fed up of Germany. It was incredibly obvious Germany had lost the war, a war they started with the deliberate intention of killing millions of people and yet they continued, even invading their former ally Hungary to round up 400,000 Jews and have them sent to the gas chambers. Slightly bigger scale to what is happening just now.

A lot of that rapprochement was to do with common enemy - especially Iran. If Hamas is still perceived as an Iranian proxy, these other countries will still side with Israel, albeit more quietly.

Johnson will also be remembered for promoting Brexit when he didn't believe in it simply to help him become prime minister.

Yes, I suspect the ethnic tensions were always there but someone like Tito could suppress them or at least hid them from the rest of the world. Once he was gone, Yugoslavia broke into its constituent parts. Fair enough. The real crime was trying to redraw the borders on ethnic grounds along with ethnic cleansing where required. As well as the brutality of war, this encouraged the idea that different people cannot live side side even if they had been doing so for centuries. I despise ethnic purity and the "we are one folk" rhetoric. I thought it had been thoroughly defeated in WW2 but apparently not.

Historically before Yugoslavia was created, Montenegro was a separate country. Fun Fact: When it became independent, its internet domain switched from .yu to .me

Herzegovina is just a sub-region of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Maybe it has more Croatians but that is because it is closer to Croatia.

It was more complicated than that. Yugoslavia was created as the Kingdom of Southern Slavs taking parts of the Hapsburg Empire and parts of the Ottoman Empire. There were 6 states within that and Serbia had to autonomous regions (Kosovo in the South and Vojvodina in the North). Even then the Serbs were not exclusively in Serbia or the Croatians exclusively in Croatia. Somehow they managed to get along and even had the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo in Bosnia. Then hotheads like Milosovic and Tudjman wrecked it all and caused one war after another. Imagine you can no longer live next door to someone because they use a different calendar. Pathetic.

I am not an expert on the matter but I had the opinion that Bosnia or even Yugoslavia worked reasonably well until troublesome leaders made a determined effort to exaggerate all differences and demand ethnic purity wherever possible.

That attitude led to the partition of India into a supposedly Muslim bit (or two bits) and a supposedly not so Muslim bit. Nowadays these bits are fierce rivals and have nuclear weapons pointed at each other. The idea that nations should be defined purely on religious grounds is a bad one. I can also think of another place much closer to Scotland.

I see Aberdeen were supposed to be playing Dundee today. That's a lot of people.

Seriously underestimating the power of water. Three inches is enough to knock you off your feet. That was shown in a BBC program called "Extreme Weather". IIRC

"Return to the batcave" was made years later and is also amusing.

I recall talking to some Americans who say that American Jews are often embarrassed by what Israel does but it is Evangelical Christians who support Israel more because some book says the Jews should be there and if some "not-chosen ones" come to harm then that is unfortunate but maybe part of the master plan. The same book has no mention of Vietnam, Berlin or Northern Ireland. If there was any truth in this then it might explain why nobody is rushing to solve the situation.

Fair point except Israel claims to be a Western style democracy aspiring to be just like us whereas these other countries don't give a shit what anyone thinks. Guess Israel doesn't care either.

Well he did but that came up as a delineation of duty issue and he has had to desist until the whole thing has been arbitrated properly with Zeus himself officiating the matter. HTH.

So you say but actually it is!

.. and so is January.

Fun Fact: Janus was the Roman God of Doors. He was also in charge of Windows, Gates, Passageways, Doorways, Archways and Frames. Not exactly sure what all that entailed but it sounds like a lot of responsibilities to me.

After the Holocaust, with so many dead, it was understandable that the world might want to give the Jews a homeland of their own. Unfortunately the area chosen was already somebody else's home. The combined population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is comparable to that of Scotland and there are more than a million Palestinians in Israel itself. That is a lot of displaced people and by all accounts they appear to be second-class citizens in the eyes of Israel. Obviously the actions of Hamas should be condemned but what does Israel propose to allow ordinary Palestinians to have the same quality of life that they think Israelis are entitled to?

He is going to repair the timeline!

It is useful that he points out how many people live in Gaza. For context, It is about the same area as Glasgow but with three times the population. It is one of the most densely populated places on earth, comparable to Singapore or Hong Kong but with none of the wealth. Half the population are unemployed and obviously the infrastructure is a disaster. You don't have to agree with Hamas in any way to realise it is probably not a nice place to be.

Most parties are punished when they cause an un-necessary by-election. A lot of people were deeply offended by the actions of Margaret Ferrier during lockdown, including those who would normally vote SNP. (Dominic Cummings may have been wreckless driving up to Durham but she went further and used public transport as well.) Their one opportunity to give her a massive kick up the backside was to abstain from voting in a by-election for the party she represented. It doesn't mean they won't vote SNP again.

Yes but it is actually Aluminium. Totally ineffective.

Similarly the actor Jon-Erik Hexum who, on set, held a gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. It contained a blank but that was still enough to kill him.