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Comment by spoonjim | Hacker News Reader

Even worse — YouTube approved ads from the US government, who forced down not an ordinary passenger plane but the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales on a bad hunch that Snowden was on board. So YouTube has been advertising for terrorist regimes for quite some time.

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Did the US government ads show a tortured hostage forced to "confess" to something?

No they didn't.

You are comparing apples to oranges.

We are seeing a dicator state broadcast their use of torture on a dissident via Google ads.

I'm appalled that you would trivialize this like it's a "business as usual" scenario.

I’m not saying it’s “business as usual” — I’m saying that the US government is the world’s most active and most effective terrorist operation, effective to the point where its terrorism is normalized as just part of life.

I remembered that incident and searched Google for more details. According to Wikipedia[0], the plane was not "forced down" — it was denied air space by several countries, requested an emergency landing in Austria, and was searched in the airport. At no point were any American or NATO jet fighters involved in forcing the landing.

[0] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident...

The entire thing was at the direct orders of the US. What isn’t “forced down” about being denied airspace until you need to make an emergency landing?

> What isn’t “forced down” about being denied airspace until you need to make an emergency landing? reply

I thought "forcing down" implies that the enforcer decides when and where you land. For all we know, Morales' plane could have turned around and flown back to Russia, I suppose? I don't know what his options were. But that Ryanair plane, as far as I understand, didn't have any options.

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