Cheers mate (or its Welsh equivalent)! I lived in Quebec and spoke their French for 20 years in my formative years. And the few times I was in France on vacation, people everywhere gave eyerolls and faces that say to me "what campagne this bozo's from with that accent?"

Congratulations! Your video, Welsh Seagull Steals Tourist's Sausage Roll, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

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Your video, Welsh Seagull Steals Tourist's Sausage Roll, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Congratulations! Your video, Seagull Swallows a Whole Rabbit on Welsh Island, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 455 Badge!

Your video, Seagull Swallows a Whole Rabbit on Welsh Island, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

NZ/OZ/Welsh pov porn.

Ian Welsh reminds us of a quote by Mark Twain:

There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror – that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

Irish, German, Cherokee, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch with a Vietnamese wife -- what the fuck does tradition even mean to me?!?!?!?! IT MEANS NOTHING. You started this, you fucks. All throughout history!!! Your culture is FALSE and FAKE.

In Canada we reference the "Lily Thistle Shamrock and Rose" so before they explained it I was wondering, what's up with the "Lily Thistle Shamrock and Pineapple". Is the Welsh leek actually a thing.

Nope, me neither.

Which is sort of the point. It's unheard of that all of these agencies came to the same conclusion on a specific matter. Some may take this as an indicator of how damning the evidence really is, others see this as an indicator that the "assessments" were made on hierarchical levels reserved for political appointees.

The absence of dissent supports the second point of view. No group of analysts in their right mind would create a report without also strongly pointing out contradictory facts, inconsistencies, and separating fact from interpretation. That's what Hersh is referring to. This is not an NIE, it's an opinion piece. This memo by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (wierd name) goes down the same route:

As you will have gathered by now, we strongly suspect that the evidence your intelligence chiefs have of a joint Russian-hacking-WikiLeaks-publishing operation is no better than the “intelligence” evidence in 2002-2003 – expressed then with comparable flat-fact “certitude” – of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Now, an opinion piece might be sufficient if it came from credible institutions and had a moderatly important subject. But this is throwing serious accusations at a sovereign nation in times when diplomatic relations are stressed as it is. And that's not going into the credibility problem of many of these agencies, who have a very dubious track record on these issues.

Ian Welsh had a piece the other day on the CIA vs Trump, and his take on intelligence agencies is pretty close to what mine has been since I learned about the Stasi some 20 years ago:

The CIA and NSA are not the friend of any left-wing worth having: they are innately anti-democratic, anti-privacy, and anti-rights. Secret agencies are anathema to any open government. At an existential level, intelligence agencies are at best a double edged sword, and by their nature, they always wind up serving the interests of the few, against the interests of the people.

The Welsh produce high quality eccentrics!

Brother, do you feel depressed today?

No? Then take a look at this short piece by Ian Welsh and/or this long(!) piece by Matt Taibbi.

Jesus Christ, guys. They're Welsh.

Well, I don't know what this is worth but I live within a 100 miles of Llanfair and this pronunciation is about as right as it gets. Saying the full place name is something of a challenge and I was taught it by a teacher of mine who was very Welsh. I got bonus points as a kid cos I could remember the English translation as well. I'm going to bet that the only reason they bothered to put this village on a national weather map was because they knew the weatherman is one of those that have taken the few hours of time it takes to commit it to memory and wanted a Youtube moment.

Once there, it is so weird it rarely leaves.

It sounds like he learned this the way I did: break it into sections. For help I memorised English ish words to guide me through the journey:
Llanfair (lllllLand fire!)
pwllgwyngyll (pullll Gwen Gilllll)
gogerychwyrn (Gagarin twin)
drobwll (doubllllll)
llantysilio (llland silly Oh or silo if you prefer)
gogogoch (Go! Go! Goch!)