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January 5[edit]

James Bond's fruit basket[edit]

I remember that in one of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, Bond finds a welcome fruit basket in his hotel room. Cautious, he sends the basket back to MI6 to be analysed. The analysis report reads "Every piece of fruit contained enough strychnine to kill a horse. We recommend switching to another greengrocer."

Do real-life secret agents have to be this cautious every time or was this something Fleming added for dramatic effect? JIP | Talk 10:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. --Viennese Waltz 11:40, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most secret agents are not globetrotters like Agent 007, living the high life while hunting or being hunted by intriguing knaves. Most are only engaged in collecting information and transmitting it to their contacts. To be successful, they need to build up a network of informants by whom they are believed to be trustworthy and to whom it must therefore remain hidden that they are actually informing an agent. This requires both a relatively stable residency and a believable cover as an ordinary honest citizen. So only their contacts higher up in the organization should know their secret status and there is no reason to be particularly distrustful of things that are not out of the ordinary.

The situation is somewhat different for operatives engaged in clandestine operations such as sabotage and assassinations, a small minority among secret agents. The operatives may rely more on travelling incognito in disguise to avoid being recognized and targeted themselves by counterintelligence and will need to be more on guard. But even then, I think that at the moment they have little to fear as long as they operate with prudence and caution, so that their cover does not get blown. For example, they should not use and reuse a specific modus operandi so that it becomes their trademark, so to speak. As surveillance AI gets better and ubiquitous, this may change; it may become impossible to use any given operative for more than one clandestine mission. --Lambiam 21:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But User:JIP, consider the case of defected Russian agent Sergei Skripal, who was nearly killed by a poisoned door knob. Alansplodge (talk) 11:09, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not only was Sergei settled in one place, his email was also hacked. The would-be assassin became famous for his remark that he visited Salisbury to admire the beautiful cathedral. 2A02:C7B:228:3400:6512:B1E5:DFB6:B10B (talk) 11:38, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was expecting a mention of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. --Error (talk) 13:05, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I remember that one agent died when an umbrella tip filled with ricin was jabbed into his leg while crossing London Bridge with other commuters. 2A02:C7B:228:3400:6512:B1E5:DFB6:B10B (talk) 13:13, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:19, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you found a door knob in your fruit basket you might well be suspicious? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:14, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's from Dr. No (novel). --Amble (talk) 20:58, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Paying for Disney+ only[edit]

If you have payed for Disney+, why won't you pay for other streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and Paramount+?86.130.185.152 (talk) 21:51, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe because you don't want them? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:30, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or you have run out of money. --Lambiam 08:28, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you are led to believe that all streaming services are complete junk. In which case you maybe only got Disney+ because your kids begged you to get it so they could watch their favourite Disney films. Pablothepenguin (talk) 16:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]