Spy Game - Netflix Movie

Spy Game (2001) - Official Trailer - Brad Pitt Movie HD
Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers

Directed by Tony Scott famous for any number of films but I'll just mention Top Gun. He is also the younger brother of Ridley Scott famous for Alien.

The story recounts Nathan (Robert Redford) and Tom's (Brad Pitt) history of working together as spooks for the CIA. Now Tom has tried to pull off a stunt to rescue his girlfriend and gotten himself in a terrible jam. The big-shots at the CIA aren't willing to try and save him because reasons, so Nathan uses his retirement fund to engineer an op to rescue him. It's probably going to land Nathan in hot water, but he's a spook, he'll elude his pursuers. And Tom and his girlfriend will owe him.

Found a more complete synopsis here with the catchphrase: 

A thriller than seems more real than fiction

which is pretty accurate.

Can't tell who wrote it. It's a website with one review of this one movie. It uses the acronym MACV-SOG without defining it, so I asked Google:

MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group)

Espionage is a dirty business. Assets in the spy trade are people who can get the information about the enemy that the agents want. However, to spooks, assets aren't people, they are just objects to use to get what you want and as soon as they are no longer useful or you have gotten what you want, they get dropped. If they fall into a burning pile of shit, well too bad. Good agents are not going to waste any tears for them. No wonder the CIA is so popular.

Cast I recognized:

• Robert Redford as Nathan Muir
• Brad Pitt as Tom Bishop
• Catherine McCormack as Elizabeth Hadley
• Michael Paul Chan is familiar to us for his role as Lieutenant Michael Tao in The Closer
• Marianne Jean-Baptiste is familiar to us because we've seen her in like a zillion different shows.

Volga Hydrofoil 70
Wm Schimmel

Somewhere around the 1:10:00 mark, the Sheik catches a ride from Cyprus to Beirut, a distance of  maybe 120 miles, in speedboat equipped with hydrofoils. Never seen the like. Google thinks it might be a Volga, a Soviet boat.

Strange Days

Memorial bust honoring Ivan Kokovin (L) and Michael Gloss in Donetsk, Russia, December 9, 2025. ©  Donetsk Mayor Aleksey Kulemzin / Telegram

This is just the strangest thing I have seen in a while.

Memorial to slain son of senior CIA official unveiled in Russia

Michael Gloss volunteered to fight in the Ukraine conflict and was killed liberating Donbass

A memorial bust honoring Michael Gloss, the son of CIA Deputy Director Juliane Gallina who died while fighting for Russia, was unveiled this week in Donetsk.

I Want A New Drug

History of US involvement in narcotics smuggling - Aljazeera

Near as I can tell, the whole point of the War On Drugs is to keep the retail price of narcotics high enough that the drug lords' party fund never faces a short fall.

Aljazeera, like most of the Mideast, suffers from a personality disorder. The farther you get from Qatar, the clearer their thinking. The closer you get, the more deranged.

Has the CIA been involved in smuggling narcotics? I dunno, but we've hearing these stories since forever.

The Night Agent: Season 2 - Netflix Series

The Night Agent: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

It's still a dumb show, but it sucked me in. I suspect the good part is that, once again, we're trying to figure what's going on, i.e. we have a puzzle to solve. Not only are we trying to figure out who the villain is, but we're also trying to figure out just what their crime was. Adjacent to this is are the very subtle clues we get as to who the bad guy(s) is/are. In season one I was immediately suspicious of the White House Chief of Staff, but for the first half of the series she seems to be a straight-shooter, a hard-ass, but a stand up girl. We don't get any real evidence to her culpability until we get half way through, and even then we aren't sure just what kind of bad behavior she was involved in.

We've got the same thing going on again here. Once again, our guy's boss is suspect, but all the clues are superficial, i.e. she's a bitch, but being a woman in charge of security, you probably need to be. Besides, our guy's boss in the last season turned out to be the villain, and the producers wouldn't pull this same stunt again, would they?

There's plenty of action, fights, chases and gun battles. There was a great scene near the end of season one where our guy and his buds are pinned down by the nasty girl operating a scoped rifle from the top of a tower overlooking a shipping container depot. Things are looking grim for our guys, but then the good girl, who was supposed to wait outside, manages to climb up that tower without being observed and knocks nasty girl over the railing and she plummets to her death. It was such a surprise that I howled.

So every so often there is one of these unexpected bits that make the whole thing worth while.

Lunacy on Parade

SWAT team at CIA Headquarters - Andrew Harnik / Getty Images

I just had to laugh when I saw this headline:

SWAT Team On Scene At CIA Headquarters Over ‘Barricade’ Situation by Ryan Saavedra

I mean, WTF?  CIA headquarters, bastion of National Security, has got loose screws running around, um, er, loose? You don't suppose this has anything to do with Trump releasing the JFK assassination files yesterday, do you? No, it couldn't possibly be, could it? I dunno, we'll have to wait and see. It might be a really good show.

The Recruit: Season 2 - Netflix Series

The Recruit: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

This is an action thriller. Our boy is a lawyer working for the CIA and he's gets dispatched to deal with a legal problem in far away places, but when he pulls on the legal problem, reality intrudes.

This time the Yakuza (Japanese gangsters) have kidnapped a woman working for some charity outfit delivering food somewhere on the east coast of Russia. Initially, it is not clear what has happened to her, she has just vanished. Eventually we hear that her deliveries were somehow interfering with their smuggling operation. Basically, the kidnapping was just an excuse for our boy to unleash mayhem on the Russkies, which he does in fine style.

Curiously, the CIA is portrayed as being full of evil and corrupt people who aren't above killing co-workers if it means they get a shot at a promotion or a better office. They are some real scum bags.

Tudum has a review.

Season 1 here.

Qatar & CIA Kissing in a Tree

Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Khulaifi was awarded the CIA's George Tenet medal this week [File: X/@AJArabic]

Aljazeera has the story. Qatar, the biggest producer of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) in the Persian Gulf. Qatar, host to Hamas leadership. Qatar the magnificent, Qatar the despicable. And now they're in bed with the CIA. I pitty al-Khulaifi. I suspect there are a number of people who want his head, literally, but maybe growing up in a snakepit he has learned to dodge and weave.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

A little banana history lesson, stolen entire from Joe Pastry.

The Banana as Post Colonial Neo-Imperialistic Metaphor

The primary port of entry for bananas coming into the US from Central and South America in New Orleans. Why? Because New Orleans is at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which is a terrific distribution point if you’re selling bananas to consumers in the American interior. No wonder then that the fabled (and infamous) United Fruit Company was headquartered in New Orleans from 1933 to 1985.

Now, mention the United Fruit Company to anyone with much knowledge of Central American history, and they’ll either a.) engage you in a lively discussion on the socioeconomics of fruit growing in Latin America, or b.) launch into a tirade about American economic imperialism. The United Fruit Company was that sort of outfit. One of the first major economic powers — and it was a power, not just a company — to exploit the agricultural resources of Central America, it polarizes people in the same way Cecil Rhodes polarizes scholars of African history. Either Rhodes was a visionary modernizer who brought infrastructure, jobs and growth to underdeveloped territories, or he was a vainglorious, racist exploiter of virgin lands and peoples. It all depends on how you feel about the relative blessings of modernity, and/or which side of the great Western cultural/political divide you happen to stand on.

The United Fruit Company was founded in 1899. Yet what that “founding” actually represented was a great merging of various banana interests that had been thriving in Central America and the Caribbean since the 1870’s. At its height, the United Fruit Company’s land holdings sprawled over huge swathes of Cost Rica, Panama, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Jamaica (it was known to many as el pulpo, “the octopus”). Yet the country that UFC is most frequently associated with is Guatemala. Guatemala was responsible for producing at least 25% of UFC’s banana crop at the turn of the century. Conversely, UFC was responsible for a gigantic portion of Guatemala’s fledgling economy. It had a hand in virtually everything that happened in Guatemala, from the building of roads, schools and hospitals right up to foreign policy. UFC even delivered Guatemala’s mail. When, in 1944, “spiritual socialist” Juan Arevalo was elected president following the ouster of dictator (and UFC puppet) Jorge Ubico, UFC was displeased to say the least. They lobbied heavily in Washington for American intervention, especially when Arevalo’s successor, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, threatened to nationalize UFC’s plantations and strategically align Guatemala with the Soviets. By that time Eisenhower and the CIA were only too happy to oblige, and in 1954 toppled the Guatemalan government via covert action.

Yet even then, the writing was on the wall for UFC as a power player in Central America. As the economies it helped to found grew and diversified, it held less and less sway over what went on within them. Today UFC is just another large multinational known as Chiquita Brands International. Where do you come down on an enterprise like the United Fruit Company? Kinda hard to say. On the one hand you have monopoly, political repression and economic exploitation. On the other commerce, transportation, education and healthcare. I dunno, you be da judge.

Oh, and what do you call a small, underdeveloped, politically unstable country whose masters are foreign agricultral and/or business interests? Why, a Banana Republic, of course.

The Gray Man - Netflix Movie

THE GRAY MAN | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

An action packed thriller. You might think it is reminiscent of James Bond, but the violence is so over the top, so gratuitous that it is ridiculous. Ryan Gosling is Sierra Six, a secret CIA assassin. His last mission was to kill another guy who's dying words are that he is Sierra Four, another one of these secret CIA assassins. Hmm, maybe his boss isn't being entirely truthful. Well, since the CIA is known hot bed of prevaricating slimeballs, that's not much of a stretch. Sierra Four hands Six a memory card containing a bunch of documents that supposedly incriminate the boss. The boss wants that card back in the worst way and since Six is not forthcoming, he calls up Mr. Mayhem himself and gives him an essentially unlimited budget to get that card back. This whole business is basically ridiculous. Since digital media is so easily copied, why would anyone think this is the only copy in existence?

When Mayhem's crew makes an attack it looks pretty ridiculous. I would think one person with a little slight of hand would be a better choice for recovering a trinket, but these guys go full metal jacket, laying waste to people and buildings with heedless abandon. But isn't it the nature of bureaucracies that they promote stupidity? The CIA guy has a practically unlimited black ops budget and if the information on that card finds its way into the hands of his boss, that gravy train might come to a stop, so he's pulling out all stops to get it back and he gives Mayhem $10 million to do the job. $10 million dollars can buy a lot of mayhem. And how do you explain this catastrophe? You blame it on unknown terrorists.

Makes me wonder how many 'terrorist attacks' were actually done by some country's government.

Death To Polio

Aljazeera reports:

The opposition to all forms of inoculation grew in Pakistan after the CIA organised a fake vaccination drive to help track down al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama Bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad.

Good job, spooks.

 

 

Swan Island Radio

Swan Island Radio was started by the CIA in 1960 as part of the U.S. Government's effort to dislodge Castro's Communist regime.

Radio America QSL card from 1966

Radio Americas Map

Swan Island Postcard 1961

Swan Island Radio eventually became The Voice of America and moved to Miami. Since then ownership of the island has been transferred to Honduras, which maintains a navigation beacon, or at least did. A few scientists and cruisers visit occasionally.

Rotating Navigation Beacon Light 1986 Edwin P. Cutler

Dr. Sylvia Earle Explores a coral reef at Swan Island, (c) Kip Evans Photography 2011

Aerial View of the Swan Islands, (c) Kip Evans Photography 2011
We are looking east. Big Swan is in the foreground, Little Swan in back.

cGPS site CN18 on Swan Island, Honduras. Photo by Michael Fend, UNAVCO 2014
Used to measure Caribbean plate movement

Aerial view of Swan Island, Honduras. Photo by Michael Fend, UNAVCO 2014

Living quarters for the Honduran navy while stationed on Swan Island
2015 Barbara Duhn

Honduran sailors on the wharf

Radio Havana had a page with this map, but it's been deleted.

Quotes of the Day

Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn. If the world were peaceful, we would never put up with this kind of ruinous expenditure on arms at the cost of our own lives. This is where the thousands of CIA destabilizations begin to make a macabre kind of economic sense. They function to kill people who never were our enemies-that’s not the problem-but to leave behind, for each one of the dead, perhaps five loved ones who are now traumatically conditioned to violence and hostility toward the United States. This insures that the world will continue to be a violent place, populates with contras and Cuban exiles and armies in Southeast Asia, justifying the endless, profitable production of arms to ‘defend’ ourselves in such a violent world. - John Stockwell

Found in Why the Deep State always Wins by William A. Blunden / September 1st, 2014. The article is pretty grim. He's got a bunch of footnotes, and he mentions a bunch of people I'd never heard of, actual people who are (were) important enough to rate their own Wikipedia page.

Via Detroit Steve.