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CBS' 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…
"Not as brave as MLK" does not make much sense as a put-down.
You can also sneak out of Hong Kong easily, and it is an hour ferry ride a to Macau or Guangzhou or a bus or taxi ride to Shenzen. Hong Kong has very loose exit visa policies on western passports. You can jump on a plane to some destinations with your passport only being checked at checkin (which is of the ticket). It is very simple to get to any number of ~50 countries in the space of hours and not having your ident…
Most smugglers go through Sha Tau Kok in the north east, but you need a permit to even enter that area.
I think Snowden didn't have a lot of choices of places to fly to from Hawaii, where he was last based. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5854562 Some of the rationales for being in Hong Kong we see attributed to interview statements by him sound like statements by a person who knows a lot less about east Asia than he thinks he knows. In the six years that I lived in east Asia, all spent there after first learning…
I want to explain why I think you are wrong in terms of it being thought out. I think it was very carefully thought out and it fit into his plans very well. Whether it was "brilliant" or not I suppose depends on what you think of the game he is playing. If you carefully look at Snowden's actions and his statements to various press establishments, his entire strategy is based on playing one group off another. He got t…
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And probably not even by the guy that went to prison for it.
Eh? What evidence is there for this, or is it like the JFK conspiracy theories?
The jury–six blacks and six whites—found that King had been the victim of assassination by a conspiracy involving the Memphis police as well as federal agencies. [1]
The judge continued: “Do you also find that others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant?’ Your answer to that one is also ‘Yes.’” [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_...
[2] http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/MLKconExp.ht...
I submitted reference 2 as a HN story. For further discussion of the MLK conspiracy go here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5891883
I don't live in India, but I do live in Argentina, and there are guys selling SIM cards on the subway and outside the train stations for, I think, AR$5, which is about US$0.76. No registration, no questions asked. If you instead go to a cellphone store, not only do you need to register, but they want ID.
I suspect that India is porous enough that there are similar holes in whatever controls they have to require registration.
I don't get 250Mbps in my house though; maybe 1Mbps to the US. And the murder rate is a little higher than in the US.
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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.
Snowden is not proficient in Chinese, no way. (I am, by test.) As Confucius said, in one of his most famous take-downs, "始吾於人也、聽其言而信其行、今吾於人也、聽其言而觀其行。At first in dealing with people, I would hear their words and trust their deeds, but now my way of dealing with people is to hear their words and observe their deeds." We'll see what appears about his planning and his view toward China and a lot of other things about him…
Sorry, if it sounds personal but I have to ask: How do you know he's not proficient and what does your proficiency have to do with it?
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> New Zealand is the land of night-raids on Kim > Dotcom's home to please American corporations > -- not exactly a prime candidate. That has caused a bunch of blow-back in NZ though. I'd say it's up in the air as to whether or not another such incident will occur.
Yes, but I don't see NZ ever abandoning their strategic intelligence alliance with US and UK (which produced, among other things, the original Echelon). Blowback all you want, Snowden would still be sent straight to Washington.
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Well, it sounds like their system is the polar opposite of the US: they can't choose their government, but it does what the people want.
That's what it appears on the outside - The Hong Kong government and Chinese government spend a lot of effort to maintain this image. Take a deeper look and you will see this isn't the case. The government has previously tried to sneak Chinese propaganda into primary schools as well as pass copyright laws that will outlaw (often political) satire and allow governments to sue on behalf of companies(!!). It was only fr…
And it's not because the US government isn't doing some pretty horrible things, as we can see.
If the article makes a case that in Hong Kong people can take to the streets, it so happens that they did in Delhi [1]. Hell, India has a superior record of amnesty than most other countries [2].
Plus, the tech work scene is undoubtedly better in India as well as .... um... not being 100% undemocratic.
I personally am of the opinion that one of the big reasons could be that the pay is potentially better in Hong Kong - especially for someone from Booz Allen.
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2013/0315/Reacti... [2] http://www.unhcr.org/50001ec69.html