My guess is someone gave him advice on it because at first sight Hong Kong isn't the most obvious choice at all.
The infographic explains how it all works but if someone had asked me something like that, I wouldn't even be able to answer it for my own country.
Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
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Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#62I've been thinking of alternative destinations. New Zealand, home of exile Kim Dotcom, could work. But what about Sweden? Aren't they very neutral? Or Switzerland, the nation that's synonymous with neutrality?
Are you serious?
New Zealand is the land of night-raids on Kim Dotcom's home to please American corporations -- not exactly a prime candidate.
Sweden is the country currently responsible for Assange's plight.
Switzerland, as I said elsewhere, is now an EU state in all but name, and their security services are laughable anyway.
What Snowden needs is not "neutrality" in a Cold-War sense. Strictly speaking, no government will ever defend the ideas he's fighting for; he can only choose the lesser evil, the place where he gets the most leverage out of his stance (i.e. most non-US-friendly nations) without losing his rights (i.e. most democratically-run nations with a respectable legal system). There's only a handful of countries in this peculiar intersection, and HK is definitely one of them.
Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#63CBS' Bob Schieffer on Snowden's junket: "For one thing, I don't remember Martin Luther King, Jr., or Rosa Parks running off and hiding in China. The people who ran the civil-rights movement were willing to break the law and suffer the consequences." "That's a little different than putting the nation's security at risk and running away." "What I see in Edward Snowden is just a narcissistic young man who has decided he…
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Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#64There is another big reason why Snowden may have chosen HK. A few months ago the HK high court ruled that the process for applying for asylum needs overhaul, and until that happens all extradition proceedings for asylum seekers are on hold. So Snowden simply needs to apply for asylum in HK to significantly delay things:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific...
I haven't seen much coverage of this in the US press, aside from Slate & CSM. The rest of the media seems more interested in Snowden's girlfriend and scholastic record instead (sigh).
Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's striking how one obscure blog post can be more valuable than all the media speculation on this question (that I've seen) put together. The infographic is taken from the South China Morning Post, a mainstream media outlet. It's followed by some verbiage about the speed of the Hong Kong judiciary and then a mention of a murder trial (actually, two trials) that's gone on for nearly 10 years - but that's a murder tr…
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. I don't imagine an "interest in Chinese language and culture" would have anything to do with this decision.
He mentioned picking up Mandarin in one of his Ars posts, I think. Not "fiendishly" clever, just apparently more clever than the folks running our intelligence services.
Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
- If the country he moves to doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US, that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. If the country is small enough politically, then they will either be pressured into giving him up, or the US will just send in a strike team to kill/capture him. Heck, the US had no qualms about sending a strike team into Pakistan to assassinate Osama bin Laden, do you think that some country a lot…
This is in conspiracy theory territory. You really think there's no difference between sending strike teams to kill (a) the number one wanted war criminal responsible for the second biggest attack on your soil into a country where you already have troops for the same purpose, and (b) a regular old whistleblower into an independent country that owes you nothing?
We might have some troops running around in the TAR of PK but that's not exactly where OBL was hiding.
Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#67I've been thinking of alternative destinations. New Zealand, home of exile Kim Dotcom, could work. But what about Sweden? Aren't they very neutral? Or Switzerland, the nation that's synonymous with neutrality?
I don't believe there is any country in the world, except Russia and China, that will not kowtow to US when pressured. Snowden made a very smart choice by going to HK.
Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about Bradley Manning? That's as pristinely analogous a case as it gets to Snowden's, with diametrically opposed approaches the actors took to pursue their causes. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bradley_Mannin...
Why should we want him to end up like Manning? Why would anybody wish that upon another human? It is a barbaric thing to suggest.
I do not wish (or expect) for Snowden to be sentenced with capital punishment if he were to turn himself in.
However any attorney or advocacy organization will find it extremely arduous to prove that he did this in good faith.
Fleeing only makes it worse.
It is universally considered a symptom of insincerity.
An insincerity of mission and an insincerity of motive.
It will be an entirely unconvincing case even if it were made in the court of public opinion much less closed-door hearings.
Had he even made the slightest of effort to reach out (to whatever institution, individual or group that he trusted, based in the United States) he would have left an indelible impression on privacy advocates, news organizations and the larger public, even if his criminal fate eventually remained unmitigated, by that act of outreach.
Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#69My guess is someone gave him advice on it because at first sight Hong Kong isn't the most obvious choice at all. The infographic explains how it all works but if someone had asked me something like that, I wouldn't even be able to answer it for my own country.
It's 2013, we have the internets, 24/7 news and no end of sources on everything related to politics of any country on the planet.
If something you don't know becomes vital to a project you're planning, you fire up Google every day for a few hours and learn what's going on. It's clear he didn't leak on a whim: he planned it over a certain period of time and, being a smart fellow, had all the time in the world to read up on the fine points of US international diplomacy, which would significantly narrow down his research pool on extradition systems.
Re: Choosing Hong Kong Is a Brilliant Move by Edward Snowden
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason why propaganda works, in my opinion is, you send a "simple" message a 1000 times. Here the message is "young narcissistic man, who ran away" "But bob, you are only arguing the means, not the end. Do you think, the idea of a surveillance-free America should be stiffled ?" That question, will never be asked with equal flair, in a one way propaganda.
Yeah, the greatest accomplishments in history are often linked to narcissistic personalities, generally because the person needs to prove something to the world to make up for their secretly poor self-esteem.
Please don't think that I am trying to correct you. But narcissism has nothing to do with our Snowy. It's inception,
by brute force.
What Bob is doing is, he is compressing the issue to a trifle.
It's the reporter equivalent of calling "LOL OP, you are such a short sighted faggot" and receiving precious HN karma for it.
When you can't win a debate, you win by stinking it up and making others leave.
That's how trolls killed love4eva-forum.
Every sell-out reporter is doing it, for quite some time actually.
Edit: Does anyone remember the sheer Debauchery of the press, during the Occupy movement ?