With all that happening in Hong Kong, i wonder why UK and US are not at all involved?
Just like China likely has spies abroad fueling the counter protests.
> Claim: The US is supporting and encouraging Hong Kong protests.
> Verdict: Conspiracy theory without evidence.
> For years, pro-Kremlin media has used the narrative about anti-government protests being funded by the US. Examples include colour revolutions in post-soviet states, the “Arab Spring” revolts, and Euromaidan in 2014.
> The Hong Kong protests began in June 2019 because of a controversial extradition law that would allow for the transfer of suspects to face trial on the Chinese mainland.
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/the-us-is-supporting-and-encou...
[1] https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
Really no better than: "Let's discuss: Employee China stole something from the communal fridge." "Sure, but what about Employee US? I judged him stealing last year. I assume it very probable that Employee US is stealing from Employee China right now. Maybe that's why Employee China was so hungry, he was forced to steal, because Employee US started it. Maybe Employee China did not even steal anything, just took the blame for an unredeemable thief. Let's discuss and pontificate about that hypothetical instead!"
This wasn't the claim, so please don't quote it as it were. That's not a quotation from anyone here.
> later on
That's not how induction works. What we're doing is making a prediction. When we observe that something happens with a certain frequency, we judge that the probability of it occuring in the future is proportional to that frequency. I'm not saying the US is involved in HK. I'm saying it's justified to conclude that the US probably is involved in HK (and to be explicit: this is not equivalent to saying that the US did or did not cause HK.) People do not wait for an object to fall before they make their prediction and that's because we have sufficient historical data as well as explanatory theories to support our expecations.
> without any evidence
The evience is the history of the US's behavior and their current incentives to do so.
> arbitrary priors
The priors are not arbitrary. They are consistent and theoretically accounted for by several branches of IR theory.
> conspiracy theory
Geopolitical neorealism, for example, is not a conspiracy theory, it's one of the leading schools of thought in IR theory at the moment.
> propaganda with an aim to erode trust in the US
What "erodes trust" in the US is the US's behavior, not pointing out facts about it.
> stealing last year.
We're not talking about one incident. We're talking about an extensively documented history amounting to a consistent pattern of behavior which is trivially explainable using mainstream IR theory.
Nobody is denying what China does. To point out additional facts is not to contradict any other facts.
One is not justified in belieiving anything one pleases. There are things which are justified and things which are not and a coherent epistemology distinguishes between the two.
It doesn't. It's just a summary, akin to a comment.
> evidence for
It wasn't intended to be evidnence for anything but a reminder of the pattern of behavior that the US is throughoughly documented (elsewhere) to have engaged in over the years.
China is simply a much bigger power than the UK these days (in fairness, as it should be).
I'm not a fan of our government at all, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how they've managed to stay out of this situation (publicly, at least).
Weird that he's not tweeting about it though. Maybe because a standoff lacks the immediacy of specific punctuated incidents.
And ultimately it's an issue between one and a half foreign countries that doesn't really impact US interests so much compared to much larger issues with China.