Showing posts with label Cityhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cityhood. Show all posts

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Thoughts on the City Community

First of all, let us recognize the life of a City community with a separate peace, apart from the peace that we must together as one Republic accord to each other also as human persons and individual citizens. 

Let us love and regard the being of a City community as if it were a single person - born with a similar nature it shares with other Cities in our Republic as well as unique characters special to each one.

At the heart of every City is a promise. 

This promise is directly related to an old Chinese saying, "to get rich, build roads first."

When I reflect on this proverb, I am reminded of our Cities; that the orderliness and efficiency of their roads are a direct reflection of their health and well-being.

For our Cities are where our people work. Our Cities build together the national wealth. 

Self-interest is not the rule in any City community.


Wealth is the rule. 


People may come to be greedy. But a well-established City community prospers only in liberality.

For a City is never build. It is envisioned. 

Problems do not manage a City, it subdues its nature. Greed subverts its character and promise.

The City Executive is a manager of the City wealth. He or she must deal everyday with a restless kind of wealth, seeking always to break new ground and conquer hitherto unknown boundaries.  

He or she is not a manager of problems. The Mayor wisely envisions his or her City, manages its wealth, and the problems, whenever they shall arise, are managed by it. 

Sheer momentum of prosperity will repel most of it. 

Therefore, if one seeks to see into the heart of a City, bring it better wealth.

That each City may consistently be a realization of itself - shared by all.

Taken the right way, this is always true.

The way through a Mayor's heart is through his or her City. 

Right now, I am of the belief that our traffic problems are managing us. We are not managing it. It is essential that our City Executives come together in behalf of their communities and work it out... 

Envision it. 

I know we can. I believe it.
---<--@

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Zamboanga Burning

Every city conceived
within our Republic undertaking, 
my brothers and sisters of the Promise, 
is a city built upon a hill - meant to shine forth!



The Strategy paper I am working to complete for the "Defense of the Republic of the Philippines", draw its main lessons from the Battle of Manila. This is a national strategy of the conventional defense that includes a theater-level doctrine of joint (or inter-service) and coalition operations (Integrated Defense Battle or IDB) intended to accomplish one thing - to fight the common defense of our cities in wartime (as well as during times of extraordinary duress) and in the conduct of the defense, effectively possess the means to shelter and preserve their collective life (preparation of the defense).

For the life of our cities 
is the well-spring of our sovereignty.

(They are places in time
busy with the actual labor of the Dream -
where each our dreams become embraced 
by the greater dreaming of Country.)

Indeed, times have changed, the earth and the heavens have shifted - but after seeing Manila burn in my remembrance, after seeing the stream of terrified refugees, after all that war - I do not think it right anymore to willingly (strategically) abandon our cities in the press of the fight and leave our population naked and shivering against enemy aggression and the random brutality of war.

Every one of our cities, in this Republic, were never meant to burn.
---<--@

And so - 

I hope and I pray that this stand-off in Zamboanga is swiftly and decisively resolved.

Please - (1) do not harm the hostages, (2) do not harm innocents and those on the ground who are working for the common good - the press, emergency workers, first responders, (3) do not harm the structures of the City, (4) do not prolong the battle, (5) do not recklessly exhaust all avenues of political resolution and diplomatic mediation.

There is no such thing in our vocabulary as collateral damage: All will be accounted for.