Out Of Place

I awake to the launch of the civil disobedience in Hong Kong in the morning. 

This is almost my third week in Australia now. Similar to St Andrews, I am cushioned in a bubble. I relish a comfort of being financially secured, a relief from a necessity to internship or part time, and a liberty to travel around on shoestring budgets. However, what I enjoy most is an absence of internet that makes my life so reclusive. Australia, being one of the most developed countries on this planet, is appallingly undeveloped in internet. It takes me half-an hour by bus to a cafe in town to check email. Usually I cannot bother. Apart from skyping with my father, and maintaining necessary contact with a few friends, I fond of taking a refuge from the internet. 

An absence of internet gives me a blend of guilt and pleasure. I entered into a lethargy from tragedies, and self-deluded complacy of living in a small bubble. It pains me to see regular updates concerning how rampant lies and how impassive people act in Hong Kong, on facebook from a few of my socially active and politically conscious friends. I am also disgusted by the blatant audacity and lies pouring out of the mouth from many public figures and government officials whose salaries are paid by us. These people betray no shame when they bluster, as fig leaves are not even needed. Whilst they can take a deaf ear to voices of just and conscience, I feel there is very little I can do save switching off my laptop and TV since I realise I can hardly turn a blind eye to these repulsive acts without being helplessly furious. This, accounts for my cowardice and a corrupt pleasure of taking a haven from the troubled world, by sneaking from a world of lies, to a world of partial truth.  

Hong Kong, where the majority readily recognises the rule of lies, make me feel dishonest. Living abroad is not honest either, where comfort has an expiry date. I hate to turn my life, like many Chinese counterparts, into a set-out for obtaining a Western-country passport since I consider this unjust, nor do I want to live passively under lies, dishonesty, and corruption. The HKSAR passport carried in my pocket, it occurs to me, does not really represent me as I look at "PRC". I then question if that justifies me to secure a foreign citizenship, I have thus far failed to arrive a sufficiently staunch defence for such deed. The BNO, which I have not renewed since five years old, hardly has any national attachment to me either. Yet, to live and stay in a prison where I struggle to capture even a gleam of hope, and to endure the utmost indifference of the public toward injustice and lies, I feel tormented. To endure and embrace this truth is too painful, for it implies an self-imposed imprisonment of lies and dishonesty and inhumanity. To exile, it appears to me an equally painful option, for I resent being an outsider of witnessing a daily routines of tragedies of unjust. To make a difference, against the ever-rising authority and party machine of the CCP, that sounds worse than a slogon and soundbite from the Westminister elites. The authority is a collective, absorbing, and staunch power machine. To live with an harsh truth, one has to learn to dream, especially when nightmares take place under the broad daylight. I wish the civil disobedience participants, and Hong Kong well. 

Foreign Affairs - Size Doesn't Matter - Jeremy Shapiro

Jeremy Shapiro, explains that the Scottish Independence Referendum was not only about a festering governance crisis at the national level between London and Edinburgh, given Northern part of England shares similar concern with such detachment, but also, an political evolution made possible by the European Union. The EU, serves, as a "key plank on the platform of independence movement."

Quote. "The main difference is that Scottish nationalism and the political framework of devolution have given Scotland a vocabulary and platform for doing something that people elsewhere in the United Kingdom cannot: seek independence from London."

Shapiro also proposes the doubt if smaller community needs a larger national entity to thrive, and "exercise the function of nationhood." The question concerning if size matters to the viability of state, is therefore misplaced. This was explained by the case of Luxembourg, where 50,000,0 population is resided. This is made possible under globalisation and the potential membership of the European Union, and was made more apparent when the United Kingdom are more euro-skeptic generally. 

There are three things to be addressed. The rise of regionalism that flared up from frustration at centralised state government, against the background of a common market built by the semi-federal European Union. It is a piecemeal progress of political system evolution, as embodied as devolution. The Scottish Referendum will not be the last, it is a beginning. 

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141981/fiona-hill-and-jeremy-shapiro/size-doesnt-matter

Summerisation - FA - ISIS Gruesome Gamble

Foreign Affairs - ISIS Gruesome Gamble

Theme
Barak Mendelsohn explains why an overreaching expansion and confrontational stance posed by ISIS is not a miscalculation, and why US should take action to roll it back, despite the potential resentment toward its intervention.

Background
The boldness of ISIS of taking on a broad array of enemies, including the US, Syria and Lebanon. It also targets American Alliance such as Jordan, and the Kurdish. Peshmarga and Iraqi National Armed Forces failed to serve as a strong deterrence from ISIS unimpeded expansion. From a military perspective, the rapid expansion of ISIS is impressive and shall be explored and explained later.

Main Argument - It was not a miscalculation.
ISIS perceives an obvious distaste and unwillingness of American's entanglement in Iraq. Obama administration reluctance to intervene in Syria reassures ISIS that it is unlikely for the US to intervene.

On the other hand, if the US does intervenue, the bombing and airstrikes can serve as evidence of the US waging on against the Islamic World, and therefore, strengthens the support for ISIS within the jihadist camp.

It was miscalculation - potential risk
ISIS does not have an answer to the American air force, furthermore, they are also running the risk of being reversed their advances by the US, if, the American put the troops on the ground.

Fulfillment of ISIS ideology 
the persecution of the minorities can be seen as an accomplishment of its ideology. It is of exclusive and expansionist

Conclusion
The author admits the risk of which an American intervention shall carry, however, "the danger that would result from allowing ISIS to expand unchecked is far worse."
A lasting solution to such problem runs deep in the political situation in Iraq.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141884/barak-mendelsohn/isis-gruesome-gamble

why a blog again

If life and plan had gone hand in hand together, things would have been much simpler. But it isn't, as I have learnt again this summer, in August.

I aim to maintain an academic discipline by constantly putting my train of thought and array of random ideas, into a structured and logical way, whereby this blog is therefore born. Despite an unexpected gap year, I hope there will not have a wide gap channelled between and my counterparts at St Andrews after a year. I shall make it as fulfilling as possible. This is, after all, what this blog is all about. 

To cut to the chase, reviews upon current affairs and books I have pored over shall be the topic which I aspire to write about mostly. This is written a day before my trip flying to the my dearest brother in Australia, and on this day, with firm and grateful mind, I truly wish the coming year, my brother will have better idea of which he is going to do and be a happier and more responsible person. Whilst, my parents shall have less stress in life. As for myself, who is not so important, will have serene but rewarding life in Adelaide and other parts of the world.