The opening shot of Star Wars: a small rebel spaceship passes overhead, pursued, a few moments later, by Darth Vader’s ‘Star Destroyer’, and – famously – the latter ship just keeps coming and coming. No words are spoken, but that first thirty-second shot gives us everything we need to know about the situation: the rebels are small and ill-equipped; the Iron Curtain Empire is huge and terrifying. What’s more, this vast disparity in scale humanises what could otherwise be a rather cold and mechanical spectacle, and before a single character appears on screen, we already know which side we’re on The Tortoise and the Hare ~ Media Dragon could do worse than to get writing advice from the likes of these very successful scribes
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The entire basis of espionage is trust. Spying could not exist without it. If such trust is imperfect or not quite complete, then it is like all other varieties of trust. Ask yourself—do you, does anyone trust absolutely his spouse, his doctor, his lawyer, his best friend, his employee, his mother? Trust is selective. In practice, the agent trusts his case officer to protect him, to keep secrets that are a threat to his life and the lives of his entire family. . . . In return the case officer trusts the agent not to set him up for capture, torture, imprisonment, and perhaps death. . . . Within an intelligence service, colleagues may dislike one another and often do, but they trust one another absolutely. It is part of the contract, part of the mystique. It is the indispensable element. Its perversion makes treason possible and all but undetectable among professional spies, but when uncorrupted it is the code that drives the system.Bookshops at KGB And Stasi and bezpesnost
