311–320 of 502 posts
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I too can guess that the point of the ID block was for Russian migration controls to more easily understand that "these people are special", but that would be idiotic whether it was done in 1950, in 1970 or in 2020.
And what's the point of Russian border control having them know? They are Russian citizens with a Russian passport, they can enter their country without issues.
This is my semi annual plug for all of you to watch the fantastic and somehow forgotten FX network TV show, The Americans, A spy drama set in Washington DC in the 1980s about KGB “illegals” posing as travel agents. It’s way better than any basic cable TV show had any right to be. Plus, all seasons are streaming on Hulu, so you don’t have to worry about whether the story will be completed. https://www.hulu.com/series/…
HIGHLY highly recommend The Bureau, which is the most real spy show I have ever watched. The Americans is excellent (i've watched all of it) but has some unreal TV-like drama that The Bureau is able to avoid and is imo the pinnacle of spy genre. George Clooney is apparently making an American remake of The Bureau (which is in French).
"Tehran" (Israeli spy thriller) is another really good spy series. You really get a feel for the oppressive environment in Iran under the thumb of the IRGC.
Also "The Spy" with Sascha Baron Cohen is excellent too.
> Travel and border crossing data, recently made available thanks to an avalanche of terabytes leaked from Russian government databases, showed that Elena Šapošnikova is in possession of a secret Russian passport. Critically, her nine-digit passport number is part of a numerical range reserved exclusively for members of Unit 29155, differing from those of her colleagues only by its last two digits. Šapošnikova’s is 6…
> That is very sloppy of Russia. Why even bother doing something so dumb? Because the scheme predates today's digital capabilities.
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The Americans is a highly sensationalized and fictionalized retelling of the life stories of Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov. From a historical/accuracy perspective, there’s basically zero resemblance of the show and the source material beyond the premise. As drama, it excels in the drama around the marriage rather than the actual fact of them being spies, and has been praised as “fundamentally a show about a marr…
I watched the entire series, The Americans . It's thrilling and well-crafted television, but totally bogus as a representation of how illegals worked in the USA. Illegals were/are special assets that would never be concurrently running so many different operations and engaging in risky wet (i.e. assassination) operations right and left. More likely they would spend many boring years cultivating their positions in soc…
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Haven’t you inverted it rather flagrantly? In this scenario it is Russia that attached the Czech Republic. > Wars are never waged as responses to attacks or insults, they are waged when the rulers have determined that they will be profitable It is a meaningless truism that nations don’t start wars they don’t think they can or will win. No need to dress that up as any sort of profound insight.
Winning the war isn't enough if you suffer greatly to win it and get little if anything to actually show for your victory. "Profit" is necessary. In this case, the cost of ignoring Russia's attacks is far less than the cost of winning a war against Russia. If this relationship flips, then we might get war.
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Tremendous wasted potential. You could be living the kind of life Norwegians are enjoying, but you are unable to climb out of the self-destructive pattern that leads to low development, lack of freedoms, retarded economy and general despair that makes 1 in 4 men to drink themselves to death before the age of 55. As much as you like to shake fists at the "rotting West", in the end it's you who are living shorter, unhappier and less productive lives. It's true now, it was true in Soviet days, and it was true during czars and empresses.
The rest of us would happily leave you alone in that misery if only you stopped trying to drag us down with you.
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I had initially ignored the show because they had cast Keri Russell which I had assumed to be a total light weight. So I missed it the first few years and then I realized after its fourth renewal - gee maybe its good - and well - I was completely wrong. She was amazing. The show was terrific. But I'm a sucker for 80s cold war dramatics.
Keri Russell a lightweight? I’m curious what gave you that impression as I’ve always thought of her as an excellent actress. Probably missing out on The Diplomat too if you like political intrigue at all.
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>we the members of NATO sometimes sabotage other members, like when some pipes of the Nord Stream pipeline were destroyed two years ago Damn! You have evidence of that? That must be worth a fortune.
You mean we don't know who managed to blow up the pipeline that some NATO members threatened to blow up several times? Yes, we only have this official investigation from two ""independent"" countries that wouldn't hesitate to point their finger at Russia if they had any evidence, no matter how weak, yet they closed it "without identifying perpetrators". You're right, no clue!
For a NATO ally to do it would be extremely risky -- what if the others hadn't kept quiet? (You can't always predict what your allies will do)
This is my semi annual plug for all of you to watch the fantastic and somehow forgotten FX network TV show, The Americans, A spy drama set in Washington DC in the 1980s about KGB “illegals” posing as travel agents. It’s way better than any basic cable TV show had any right to be. Plus, all seasons are streaming on Hulu, so you don’t have to worry about whether the story will be completed. https://www.hulu.com/series/…
So many good series made involving the subject though. Both drama and documentary. I mean, you do want drama and not documentary? Cause the story The Americans is inspired by is documented.
For drama, check Deutschland '83 and the two successors. Has a great cast.
And of course there is Clifford Stoll's book about how he caught Hagbard Celine (see the movie '23' with a young August Diehl who later broke through in Hollywood).
German cinema, both West-German and modern, has gems regardless (I am not German btw, subs are easy to come by).
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No. Every season ends on a cliffhanger that seems critical to the story and then is quickly resolved as if it were some minor point in the first episode of the subsequent season. This is the nature of this type of episodic television that runs for an indeterminate time and therefore has no real overarching story (but pretends to) like soap operas do. I only know of a few examples where writers escape this. The first…
I think you're confused about what episodic TV is. Star Trek is (or was) (generally) episodic. The Wire is serialized, as is most TV these days. Some people like episodic TV, some people prefer serialized.