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reducesuffering

Saudi's murder of Khashoggi in Turkey.

Russia's poisoning of the Skripal's in England.

Now, Iran's attempted kidnapping (probable murder) in the US.

These repressive regimes sure are getting desperate...

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Or perhaps they have realized that there are few negative consequences to these actions?

Or perhaps you guys just need a history lesson, this is all very mild stuff as far as repressive regimes go.

It’s not like as if they’re deliberately blowing up passenger aircraft https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

That was in 1988, quite a lot has happened since then. In the aftermath of it, Gaddafi was cowed and sanctioned. Libya became less far provocative and accepted blame for the incident. By the mid-00s, it seemed like the demise or reform of oppressive regimes like Libya was inevitable. America took Libya, still under Gaddafi, off it's list of state sponsors of terror. Gaddafi's reputation never really recovered though, and that reputation probably played a role in his eventual death (nobody cared to save him.) It seemed as though other leaders of repressive regimes were laying low, hoping the same wouldn't happen to them.

What we are seeing now seems like a return to form. Obviously all of this falls well short of the political violence seen in the 20th century. That's not an interesting observation. By that standard, literally everything after WWII has been a huge nothing-burger. That shouldn't stop us from observing worrying trends in the present.

It remains to be seen if there has been an uptick in such activities. I'd argue that they have never stopped, but most of them are lower profile cases that the mainstream barely notice.

There’s only an uptick in reporting.

So what changed and when? Russia never stopped assassinating their enemies in foreign countries, Litvinenko was killed in 2006.

Saudis maybe funded 9/11.

I don’t believe there’s been any kind of a return to form, there was never any quiet period. It’s just pure coincidence that a couple of these stories got reported recently.

The US hadn't recently decorated anyone for blowing up passenger aircraft either, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655.

Lately I think a lot about stuff like that (luckily I start a new job tomorrow so I will less time for that). And to me it seems that the West / Nato opened the gates with the war on terror, Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons and everything else. Nobody opposed that, even when own citizens were affected, like happened in Germany. Now a whole lot of people that are a lot more ruthless are using these measures, and the democratic west has no ground to stand on to do anything about it.

Open the gate? If you read about Cold War history you'd find endless stories about kidnapping for political reasons.

One of a more famous example:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eichmann-capture...

And a more recent one:

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

> Nobody opposed that, even when own citizens were affected

I know that many of us bridle a bit at that. I recall being furious about it, and writing to representatives, and voting for people who I thought might do less of it. It's deeply frustrating that the results of that seem to have been completely ineffective, but it still hurts to hear that characterized as "not opposing" something.

It's wrong when we did it, and it's wrong when others do.

I was furious as well. With "we" I meant our democracy defending countries and governments. Personally, it took the rise of an alt-right party that got above the 5% limit to win seats in parliament for me to vote again.

Desperate? That's a positive spin to put on this. I'd say they're getting bold. They've always done stuff like this, but now they seem to care less about hiding it.

I don't think this is "caring less about hiding it". They lied to the private investigators they were using. I think this is just "getting caught".

Or they have become emboldened because there has been a vacuum in global moral leadership the past 4 years

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