SSG: Spy/Spec-Ops Group discussion

"Darling, what's the time--gee, that late? Better get a wiggle on! We don't want to be the last ones to arrive. You always do this to me!"

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

"Oh go on, you big wind. You wear me thin! You always get in a snit over nothing. I hear it's just a repeat, anyway!"

Another dissident poisoned under the current 'enlightened regime'

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/wo...

There's no changing these people, I tell yuh. That's the way things are done over there.

What galls me is that everyone always pinpoints the lone leader, as the problem. Hitler. Stalin. Mussolini. It's not these isolated madmen that are the problem; it's the whole thuggish population under them who obediently carry out their orders. These cultures are steeped in shedding human blood.

the gang's (almost) all here

italy returning to her fascist WWII roots

ap wire:

https://apnews.com/article/elections-...

You forgot Asia's standing gang of thugs in uniforms: the junta in Myanmar. The problem is that everyone is saying that they are awful and despicable but nobody is willing to do anything about them...or to them. And let's not forget our handful of South American tin pot dictatorships/narco-states (Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador), which are pushing tens of thousands of poor people to try to flee to the United States. This is enough to discourage anyone. Maybe some fiction author will please us by writing a story where a no-nonsense U.S. President will tell the CIA, backed by the U.S. Air Force, to go do a clean-up job in those trash bins, à la 'Clear and Present Danger'.

Leopards can't change their spots. Russia, Italy, Germany. This-or- that Axis will always rotate back around sooner or later. Brutal, 'strong man' regimes are part of their cultural, social, and national heritage.

I recently read the original Deric Washburn screenplay for, 'The Deer Hunter'. Staggering. Very wordy but still only 105 pages. No wonder Cimino tried to steal all the credit. Much more present in it than got on screen, too. Contemporary criticisms were silly. "Oh, here's another film that paints Asian soldiers as fiendish inhuman devils". Sure, that can and has happened --happened too often. But there was a Bataan Death March and Japan did have a medical experimentation unit and atrocities did happen (on both sides) in Vietnam and Korea. 'Deer Hunter' is about POWs; and the story wouldn't have worked any other way except with depictions of sadistic brutality.

The net result is that hard-hitting stories like that just don't get made anymore.