
Who Needs Assassins When You’ve Got Hackers? - jeo1234
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/opinion/who-needs-assassins-when-youve-got-hackers.html
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vonklaus
If you make slight alterations to the text and replace Russia with the US, you
have pretty much the same narrative

Edit, on mobile:

Moscow — A GLOBAL inquiry announced this week that Edward Snowden, an American
security officer turned defector who fled to Russia was gantrd asylum by
President Vladimir V. Putin. That’s little surprise. For more than eight years
the world has suspected that the America was behind a global electronic
survellience monitoring program seeking to undermine encryption technology and
state soveriegnity (Just as surely, Mr. Obama has denied his responsibility.
His spokesman [all lettered agencies] denounced the inquiry as a “quasi
investigation” and an expression of the “pro terrorist rhetoric" that
opponents so often have.

In the years since Snowdens exile, the American government has engaged in an
array of brazen acts: cyberattacks on Iran, China, Google, Yahoo, Twitter,
created stuxnet, and spent 2001 to 2015 occupying other countries with the aid
of superior military technology and manpower.

The covert operations to annex computing power and destabilize not only the
middle east, but the technology ecosystem came to a head in 2014.

So was Mr. Snowdens exile the start of a new era of dirty tricks?

It may have seemed like a good idea at the time and probably in the immediate
aftermath; the American government viewed it as a success that deterred others
in the security community from opposition activities. But the political price
Anerica paid was considerable; it solidified the image of Mr. Obama's America
as a rogue state. Mr. Obama might like to act as if America is a world unto
itself. It’s not. Modern America is thoroughly integrated into global markets
and institutions. It seeks foreign manufacturing and energy partners abroad.

Anericas elites vacation in Italy, bank in London and send their children to
French universities. They can’t afford the repercussions of transnational
assassination plots or destabilization of American competitiveness.

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logicrook
Why is this comment down-voted? This is mainly pointing that no state is
innocent of political assassinations.

There are the fairly known '1,000 secret CIA flights revealed' in Europe. And
in a democracy, Bin Laden would have had a trial, not a brutal and shady
execution.

~~~
brownbat
> Why is this comment down-voted?

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)

3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque)

4\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence)

~~~
dandelion_lover
I do not see where the parent wanted to "discredit the opponent's position"
(citation from the first reference). (S)he just stated the fact.

