On 9 June 2013 17:43, Matt Johnson <railm...@gmail.com> wrote: > I have to say going to Hong Kong for free speech and safety seems like > a very odd choice to me. What was he thinking?
I actually think Hong Kong seems pretty smart. Parroting the news organizations, Hong Kong has some extradition protection against political crimes. Likewise, Hong Kong is pretty free, it's not mainland China. It has a high quality of living, tolerates a lot of political dissent, and it'd be pretty easy to stay lost there (well, if you hadn't told people where you were going anyway.) Plus, the fact that it's China. HK is a Special Administrative Region, but Capital-C China would not take kindly to any mucking about there. It seems like it would cause a pretty big incident if the US snatched him from there or tried to inappropriately exert pressure. China is on the UN Security Council and is not likely to play nice if the US affronted it's sovereignty. And they have a lot of ways they can hit the US back too: UNSC, trade sanctions, debt or currency manipulation, the North Korean situation, not to mention (more) cyber espionage on the government or corporations. (I refuse to say cyberwar, it's espionage.) Compare than to Iceland: if the US pisses off Iceland, what's Iceland going to do about it? The major disadvantages I see are that 1) it makes him look a little bit more like a Chinese actor/spy/etc. And 2) There is probably a decent chance the Chinese would hand him over as part of a handshake and a nod type deal where they're going to get... something, but we may never know what. Anything from tarif exemptions, returning Chinese spies, backing off on some US military (cyber?) operation or something else. -tom -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
