I mean, we're already in a trade war with them. I'm struggling to understand why, after 50+ years of trying the same thing over and over again and seeing downright horrible results across 3 continents, people still advocate the tried and true method of "just send in CIA".

American medias have been singing the power of the US for so long now that their population really believe they are capable fixing everything with their hammer.

We don't know what would have happened without sending in the CIA.

Maybe the USSR becomes the global superpolice...

It doesn't matter how bad its economy is if it controls all the militaries and secret polices!

/s

Sanctions didn't work for Russia.

7 millions people in Honk Kong cannot win against 1.3 billions of people from main land, no matter how many weapons you provide.

"Making a second Tiananmen Square painful for Beijing is not" could be a good strat, but something tells me they learned from that one and have a plan for it this time.

> Then they figured out how to use Facebook to get themselves a POTUS

One might wonder why didn't Hilliary figure out how to use Facebook. The answer might be, that she did, but just like with the Russia buying their own ads with peanuts money compared to the DNC spend - it didn't really matter. Seeing people parrot the Russia narrative, the same day the Man himself testified that it didn't actually happen, entertains me a bit.

Maybe FB propaganda was simply more effective in motivating Rep voting. (Fearmongering about vile brown migrants raping our beautiful white women works better than fearmongering about climate change and the lack of structural health care reform, who knew!?)

Anyway, you are completely right about how overused the Russia line is without data on its interference effectiveness.

Robert Mueller, yesterday: "our investigation found that the Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion"

So... That did happen.

There is no question it happened -- we know for sure the Russians were pushing hard on this. Most nation-states push propaganda, this was just especially hard and blatant. The question is how much did it help, and were other players, like the NRA, Koch Bros, etc. also involved?

With sanctions freezing huge amount of their assets the Russians didn't really have any serious plays against the US except pushing the soft-power propaganda angle[1]. Essentially they (Russians) just kept trying lots of random things[1], in high volume, until something stuck -- and it worked, spectacularly well too, mostly due to decades of propaganda already shaping the Republican base.

Hilary was marketing hard on all platforms, but some estimates put the Russian spend at $400k USD per month, on top of NRA, GOP, and other heavy Right-Wing spends.

[1] see RAND Corp research about this: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

How much money was spent in the 2016 election cycle? It was at least $1 billion. $400k/month, even for 24 months, is $9600k, or about $10 million, or 1% of the total spend. It is not by tipping the spending balance that the Russians had however much effect they had.

> Making a second Tiananmen Square painful for Beijing is not

That would be in no-one's interests.

Immediately after the Tiananmen Square events in 1989 the US sent a high ranking general to Beijing to reassure the Chinese that this changed nothing.

The situation has changed because now China is seen as a real rival but the US and the West still have zero interests in going down that route. Not least because China is not a small country, it's the second economy on Earth.

I think the events in HK are being spinned and that some people are really losing their sense of proportion.

Bluntly speaking: The events in HK are irrelevant globally and are regional news at best. They are not a global issue that deserve international involvement.

At the same time, it is very difficult to understand the message and aim of the protesters, and their violence made them lose a lot of credibility.

Wouldn't China being the second largest economy in the world make it more interesting to make a second Tiananmen Square costly? Because democracy is very important for the stability of the West and having a powerful dictatorship steamroll a democratic movement while we just watch looks really bad for us and the credibility of our governments.

And, it also gives the West less credibility internationally. The US has been very clear that it was behind "one China, two systems" since the 80s a dramatic policy change would make every other country think "ok, so why should we expect that any treaty we or alliance we form with the US will hold?". If countries don't trust the West they stop working with the West and that reduces its power by orders of magnitude.

"One country, two systems" is a domestic policy of China. It's not any other country's business.

People seem to be outraged by vague allegations of Russian meddling in other countries' affairs but China should be treated like a colony by the West... That's highly hypocritical (if not racist).

> People seem to be outraged by vague allegations of Russian meddling in other countries' affairs but China should be treated like a colony by the West... That's highly hypocritical (if not racist).

If your core values are freedom, democracy, and the right of the people to choose who governs them, then it does not seem hypocritical at all.

”One country, two systems” is originally an agreement between the UK and China before the handover. Violating a treaty with another country makes it an international affair.

> ”One country, two systems” is originally an agreement between the UK and China before the handover.

That agreement was predicated on a belief that over time, China would open up and become more democratic and Hong Kong would smoothly merge cultures.

Unfortunately, that assumption was entirely false. It's been 20 years since the handover, and China has not at all moved towards freedoms generally considered a pre-requisite to social society in the west.

Hong Kong has completely different values than mainland China. Even if the current events fade away, they are on an unavoidable collision course.

Absolutely, I would say they’ve already collided, and I’m arguing it’s time for the West to acknowledge that fact and act, such as making Tiananmen Square 2.0 more costly in order to protect our core values such as rule of the people and fair trials. I think that would be well within our interests.

I’m Swedish, a person with the same passport as me was kidnapped from Thailand and imprisoned in China probably after hours of torture because of something he published and his democracy activism in Hong Kong. The sentiment in Sweden is that it would’ve been nice for China to not say that Hong Kong would be under ”one China, two systems” if that’s not how things would turn out. Kidnapping Swedish citizens in Thailand for something they are legally allowed to do in Hong Kong doesn’t look like a domestic issue to me.

The British handed back HK to China and China said they would keep it largely autonomous for 50 years.

That's what happening and I don't remember that the Chinese government tried to renege on this.

But again, ultimately this is a domestic issue. Britain is out of the picture.

When people can be extradited to the unfair, Chinese domestic courts or failing that kidnapped by the Chinese government I would say that’s not ”largely autonomous” anymore. There’s no way for the kidnapped Causeway books employees to use the HK courts to get them out of Chinese courts, even though they committed their ”crime” in HK.

The respect of ”one country, two systems” was something China promised the UK. The international community is absolutely remaining in the picture.

HK courts would have decided whether to extradite to the mainland in the same way they do now when deciding whether to extradite to the US or any other country HK has an extradition treaty with.

China has also extradition treaties with some western countries. Does that mean that e.g. France is no longer 'autonomous'?

This extradition bill does not impact HK's autonomy at all. This is very transparently a pretext.

One has to wonder who's behind all of this because this is really getting more farcical by the day.

It is also very interesting that western media tend to use the terms 'China' for the mainland in their reports on these events. Clearly this is not neutral and makes Western opinion believe that HK is not China.