Our WPS Situation

Its hard to foresee 10 years into tomorrow what the situation shall be in the WPS.

I think this is so because the strategy playing out upon those disputed waters are practically beyond our effective control. We may only play a passive deterrence.

Our ability to project a credible military presence over those waters are completely preempted by the rising tensions. However, through good planning and good foresight, I am of the opinion that we can structure a defense-in-depth in the WPS that over time will allow this Republic the option of credible deterrence even in the absence of a near-par force. This in turn would afford us with better diplomatic choices.

For now, our best defense is to consolidate and to build.

Let us not forget where our strengths lay. National development and human progress are still our most reliable allies; sound economics partnered with a cohesive, inclusive, internal strategy on nation-building.

I am still of the opinion that the true nature of the issue central to the predominating crises in the WPS  is one that is economic only. If things seem to be taking a turn for the worse, it is because this basic nature is now being transformed into reasons more compatible with active warfare.

Deescalation and demilitarization are still the better of our most immediate COAs open to preserving our advantages in the current form. Artificial islands are not conferred EEZs the same as natural islands per UNCLOS but still, I am personally at a loss as to how to perceive the PRC build up as nothing else but another subtle form of aggression.

What Countries do are always more telling than what they say. 

The language of States is rule and always involves the expenditure of national power. What power does or does not do is always more real and immediate than what its representations in the diplomatic realm indicate or does not indicate. Our experience at Bajo de Masinloc and at Mischief Reef are proof of this. National power unfortunately always involves the burden of arms and all nations know it.

Conversely, our allies among the nations also express in the same manner, the will of their States - but in a way consistent with the friendship between our peoples. Imperfectly at times but never deceptively.

I can not help but interpret the PRC efforts at expansion in the WPS as aggressive. 

I wish it were otherwise. But as they say, hope is not a method. Hope is a means, yes. Any good leader's gravitas must inspire with hope precisely because of situations such as these. But a method, no. Method is what we do with hope.

Our hope is still a peaceful resolution of the WPS imbroglio - with the PRC and all across ASEAN. My own hope is to expedite resolutions in the latter first and then with the former.

Again, our best defense is to consolidate and to build.

We seem to be in the front-line of a number of things. Climate change, peace reform, and international relationships - these are not necessarily bad and war will not necessarily proceed from any of them. So we have to be wise as to what we do. Never falling short nor exceeding the spirit of the defense.

We can not take our allies for granted so we have to look into ourselves as well. 

We must see what we too may contribute not to fan the flames of war though at times this not a choice, but to help bring our world into the new age. When we are joined with our allies - in peace and in war - if we do all we can, we will stand with them honorably.

Yes, because we can.
---<--@

Dredgers deposit sand on the northern rim of the Mischief Reef, located 216 km west of Palawan, in this Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative satellite image taken on February 1, 2015 and released to Reuters on April 9, 2015. REUTERS/CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/Digital Globe/Handout

The Burden of Democracy

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Liberty is the light that guides our freedoms together.
This unifying light is the burden of our Democracy.
It is a burden that builds. And makes strong the nation.
It makes right our freedoms and steadfast our spirit.


Of the Burdens that we, the people, must within our Democracy through individual freedoms as citizens bear, there are Five that are common (Arms, Justice, Liberty, Wealth, and Posterity) and Four that are personal (Superior Command, Enlightened Citizenship, Uncommon Exceptions, and Equal Taxation).

According to their relationships arranged as thus -

       The burden of Arms
              The burden of Superior Command
       The burden of Justice
              The burden of Enlightened Citizenship
The burden of Liberty
              The burden of Uncommon Exceptions
       The burden of Wealth
             The burden of Equal Taxation
       The burden of Posterity

We shall expound on these burdens as we go...
---<--@

GunSMART: A Mature Steward

Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is a -

S - Safe
M - Mature
A - Able
R - Responsible
T - Trustworthy

Steward of the Gun.
---<--@



Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is therefore -

2. A Mature Steward
adequately cognizant of his or her
personal role in the keeping of the Public Trust
as a public Citizen bearing private witness
of our Liberty in the Virtue of Arms.

That the Vision of Gun Maturity is - in spirit -
fully realized in the National Remembrance
and in the living Traditions of the Republic
as a common duty to the Common Defense
and the Stewardship of the National Arms.

Mature Stewardship 
fully cognizant of the antecedent reality 
that continually forms and informs the Gun culture
stands to safeguard this reality at its source.

So that all evil
as it pertains to the Gun culture
as it should - presently must always exist - may
ever find its efficacious remedies not through Laws
that endanger its intrinsic accountabilities in Liberty
but through Mature Stewardship of its Freedom
and the Duties and Responsibilities particular to it
that are in keeping with the National Common Weal.

A Gun Mature Steward
therefore, exercises Gun Maturity
as an affirmation of the Second Amendment.

And recognizes from this Maturity 
- in the spirit and virtue of the Nation's Arms -
what is necessary in Liberty and what is extraneous in Legality
specifically as it pertains to the Gun culture in the Republic -
its conservation, adaptations and necessary evolution.
---<--@



To my beloved nieces 
- Aleksis, Clara and Leila -
and their common generations
utterly deserving of safer schools,
saner communities, and abler mentors -
upon a brighter world, under nobler skies.

GunSMART: A Safe Steward

Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is a -

S - Safe
M - Mature
A - Able
R - Responsible
T - Trustworthy

Steward of the Gun.
---<--@

Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is therefore -

1. A Safe Steward 
and knowledgeable of Gun Safety
rules and principles - specifically
in the National sense.

That the Vision of Gun Safety is - in principle -
fully expressed in the Second Amendment
as necessary to "the Security of a Free State".

This implies
that the Gun is - firstly -
an instrument of the Common Defense.

And
that the Gun is - lastly -
only the extension of its first purpose.

So that all evil 

as it pertains to the Gun per se

that is specific to the free expression 

of the National Spirit and its Sovereignty

begins from Unsafe Stewardship.

- selah -

A GunSafe Steward 
therefore, exercises Gun Safety
as a vindication of the Second Amendment.

And recognizes from
this awareness in the Nation
what in spirit must animate all other
derivative Gun Safety rules and principles
in their individual and personal sense.
---<--@



To my beloved nieces 
- Aleksis, Clara and Leila -
and their common generations
utterly deserving of safer schools,
saner communities, and abler mentors -
upon a brighter world, under nobler skies.

Salutation #185

If you have been learning with me about politics,
you must now be able to agree
- with conviction - with me - and with each other
that our politics is an authentic human right
and therefore, a duty - expressed in our freedoms,
particular to each of us as citizens
integral to whose calling it is (within our Republic)
to be able to articulate and profess it
freely and accordingly.

(Politics and Violence)

The National Politics, our politics,
is not the rarefied domain of politicians.
We each, as citizens of this Republic of ours,
have a right and a duty to express our own politics.

Where politicians are our political thought leaders,
and very important to the vital workings of our Country -
they are only so because, we the people, must think politics.

And we must think politics to become convinced
- first and foremost, that they're truly ours -
more so than to convince others (that it's theirs).

Our politics must make us convinced citizens
and convinced citizens are citizens with conviction.

And these convictions
should make our politics clear - to each of us
for civic clarity and moral decisiveness are its first fruits.

- selah -

We do not as a Nation
possess in ourselves the National Politics
to argue endlessly about necessary matters
that involve the living life of our national communities
- at all levels across our fullest entirety, seen and unseen -
but to lend to these matters substance and popular weight

first and foremost - steadfastly, purposefully, and certainly

so that by sheer weight of our independent convictions alone

no matter how radically different they may naturally be

the Nation's priorities are accordingly and practically arranged
according to their constantly changing and dynamic realities -
from the ground (the very soil) of Country upward.

(And those of us who are formally called to be our politicians
by their vocations are the shepherds of these national priorities.)

For in politics,
we shall always have healthy disagreements
but we must - know and recognize - these disagreements
in the first place, by bearing the first fruits of our politics - first -
for these disagreements are like the natural bends in a river that flows,
futile without the water that must first agree on a direction forward.

Political disagreements are a natural consequence
of our common freedom of political thought and expression
and can not first exist without mechanisms of political agreement
for these disagreements are a consequence only of our much thinking
(of the things that the water seeks to avert and avoid at the river bends)
and are not by any means the fruit of meaningful political participation.

It is a strange feature of the realm of political thinking
that agreements - to responsibly own up to our Republic Vision -
must consequently lead to disagreements - but, brothers and sisters, they do -
for the strength of our will of politics must be constantly tempered and refined
by the disagreements that give itself sincerely as fuel that serve to fire the flames
of the vital national processes that lead to the betterment of our own convincing
so that in knowing where we stand across the political spectrum that define
the totality of the near infinite reach of our own Republic Vision -
we are reminded by our own freedoms - where we agree in principle -
and that our politics can only be strong - in as much as they shall agree
that within our Republic, under the sheltering skies of our Peace,
there is a season, a time, and a place for each and every good thing.
under heaven.

We who know our politics
know we implicitly agree on something -
that we are.

And that from these agreements must proceed,
even without resorting to any formal debating and/or open discussions
just by our standing still and embracing the reality of our citizenship together,
the challenge to further agree - over and above our disagreements -
because we must.

And therefore,
like Jacob and the Angel,
with every present generation,
come prepared for the necessary battle
of winning together from Providence, our Republic Vision.

- selah -

Citizens who know their politics never sell them out -
neither are their votes for sale nor do they vote on mere whim.

These are souls who walk the ground of Country with gravitas and purpose
and breathe from the very land and air and sea of our people, our sovereign spirit.

And so,
when, we the people, should think of - our politics -
we should not think that the National Politics is somehow dirty
or beyond the capacity of us lesser mortals to understand
(and give its intended victory without challenge
to the unversed, the uncouth and the pretentious)

we think - we are - and therefore, we must.

After all, my fellow Filipino compatriots,
are we not all commissioned by Providence Divine
to be citizens of this exact place in time?

- selah -

With an eye
toward the upcoming Barangay elections
this October 28, in the Blessed Year of our LORD, 2013
- in the Third Millennium of the Common Human Era -
I should like to be able to articulate another truth
about our politics - and one which proceeds
from the thoughts we have outlined above.

Violence (of the physical kind) and our politics
are like oil and water - tubig at langis.

They are two immiscible realities -
to mix them, my brothers and sisters of the Promise,
without stirring against the peace of our national communities
is impossible - one is a break from the other,
each takes different paths that lead to different outcomes.

It is said, my brothers and sisters,
that politics is a contact sport, this is true -
but it is not a sport of brutes - as brutes would like it to be -
the battle of our politics is played out in a human arena
and is a contest, because of the magnitude of its inherent good,
that must always and everywhere inspire the nobility of human beings;
spirit, virtue and truth are its ultimate measures -
and we enter into it because, we love.

Truly, political violence is ruinous to the Nation - to any Nation -
(we may feel this at present at the sad plight of the one Syrian Nation).

For as we are a labor of not a few - or even the many
but a labor of the millions across our generations - far into forever -
an inspired work of the citizenry - and a labor of enlightenment,
unto the very last of our generations - unto the Last Day,

we exist for the continuance and preservation of Sacred Life

as a Pledge not on behalf of Humankind's final defeat
but of the ultimate Triumph of our Cause to exist -
in the everlasting fullness of the Truth.

Violence - it's existence, outbreaks, and continuance -
and the harm it inflicts upon the dignity and promise of Man
- is - what our politics must always and everywhere together oppose
within our Nation and between the Nations within our Family of Nations.

The politics we must profess must unanimously consider violence as evil
unless in order to prevent its own demise, violence itself is deemed unavoidable

and thus, becomes a lesser evil undertaken to save the body politic.

This always holds true
in the case of those outbreaks of armed conflict
- that only becomes necessary -
when the existence of the Republic itself
comes into terrible and mortal danger of War
as an unavoidable duty of the Common Defense
and anywhere violent forces willfully breaks into our reality
against both our sovereign will and our deepest wishes -
as an integral part of our civic responsibility
to universally defend and preserve the National Peace;

a fact that was clearly recognizable just quite recently
by the crisis at our beloved City of Zamboanga.

(The craft of all nations is Peace - therefore,
not all wars must be fought - for not all of them can be just.)

Outside the manifestly ethical considerations expressed

in the duty of the Common Defense and the integrity of the National Peace -

All forms of political violence shall always be the sport and hidden recourse
of those adulterous brutes who have slept in their hearts with the Dragon of War
and shall always and forever - and everywhere - as far as our Nation is concerned
be considered for what it truly is - an abominable crime - a crime against all Nations.
---<--@

Fuel for Civic Thought

The question here is,
as we are cut from the same cloth as the American Republic -
(and can learn from their expression - if we are wise, God-helping,
to better express our own expression of Country):

Where and when will this revolution become an evolution?



This is not just a circle.

Let us not forget that this is also a spiral; an ascent
into the summit of our completion (or a descent).

For there are endless forms of Abundance
(once the material veil of these things
have been successfully breached by the national culture)
and all of these ultimately lead to absolute freedom
and ultimate forms of happiness.

BUT there are also - upon this world - endless forms of Bondage
(the existence of which is the exact reason why we are a Nation -
for we are meant to strive against it - not bow to it - or appease it).

When non-state actors detain individuals, do they adhere to international laws?

When non-state actors detain individuals, do they adhere to international laws? That question needs more research, argues Bruce Oswald. (United States Institute of Peace) http://owl.li/nwEVd

 

Sovereignty emanates from the will of the international community of nations, who in turn, in our will of recognition of each other, must likewise recognize in each other - each other's sovereignty.

This enabling sovereignty then is a common trust, shaped and defined by how each our nations, in reciprocity of this trust, wield it from within - in order to establish - on behalf of all our nations as one family - a just and lasting order among each our peoples.

Sovereignty then is all about peace (entrusted to each other) and the good will that MUST proceed from peace (as a common trust) - both within as well as without.

The prevailing of this good will then is that which makes any human community sovereign. For all sovereignty emanates from the people inasmuch as the reality of each their nationhood is alive and aware in them and the remembrance of their generations dwell in greater harmony with the peace of other nations.

Because the truth that is essential to the spirit of all that which is sovereign - which is also the only fruit fitting and proper to it - is peace - peace tempered and refined and translated from spirit and will unto matter and form - peace a priori manifest as truth in the heart of all nations forever and peace as the labor of the life and good will of each our nations, each arrayed in time and across all our generations as each our own particular undertaking of Country, each in our own particular Ages in time, each in relation to each other - and - All in relation to the one God of All Nations.

Nations and their Responsible States belong to each other in this relationship of mutual trust in behalf of all our nations who recognize each other through a sovereign bond of a common and universal peace.

Governments do not only have their respective elections, but just as importantly are also possessed of each their particular mandates to the people - both of which truths are necessary for the Responsible State to faithfully carry out and fulfill their functions effectively as well as efficiently - toward those true and human ends for which all earthly governments are raised, each from among their nations, by the will of Providence.

Non-state actors do represent a sovereign will and therefore, intrinsically lack the authority to act on its good behalf and so transgress a particular sovereignty when detaining a citizen of any particular nation when the detention of said person is an act intended absolutely, as an end, and not merely as a means, in order uphold the higher law of the nations.

My answer here is a resounding NO: Non-state actors not only transgress the rights of human individuals by unlawful detention of any of their peer in creation, they offend the sovereignty of All Nations.
---<--@

To each nation, a particular state -
these two components of Country
fit like lock and key... to succeed
or to not succeed
inasmuch as they belong.

To all nations, a particular way -
upon this way all are gathered together
through our knowing one another
and in our choosing to belong
in the Truth.

Salutation #163

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution introduces to the people - equally engaged in that Republic undertaking of Country - the right (and the duty) to bear arms in the common defense of the nation.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

It underpins two essential concepts of American Constitutional Liberty - Freedom and The Common Defense (of Freedom) - concepts which must be well defined for its essence to prevail as truth in the will of the people.

(I recall to mind the US Army motto: "This we shall defend".)

For the bearing of those arms - in and by itself - does not guarantee the life of liberty. Indeed, it might prove to be the death of it.



(On the Bearing of Arms)

Do I believe in guns? No.
Do I believe in the necessity of guns? Yes.

Furthermore,
I believe that the loftiest vision of weaponry
and its development in our world is to make itself obsolete -
in time.

I believe the necessity of bearing arms
provide the means to finally and eventually surrender their utility -
in time.

   (In the last great age of war
   that culminated in the Cold War,
   the nations built and developed weapons
   without an ultimate purpose in mind and heart
   and therefore, mindlessly submitted themselves
   to the truth which is implicit in the nature
   of all weaponry - destruction.

   Weapons were developed
   and refined to such a fine degree
   so as to make it - entirely possible -
   to make our humanity utterly obsolete.

   Weaponry were made to be the ultimate means
   to our own final and complete destruction
   and not the other way around.)

- selah -

Do I love guns? No.
Do I love what guns defend? Yes -
Most certainly.

I believe the means and the resources - to develop -
as well as - the will to wield - weaponry is entrusted to the nations
because the dream in making these weapons is to make safe our world -
not to undo it.

And that only its virtuous use (in the defense)
will lead all Mankind to this greatest of all desired (temporal) ends -
a world where (short of the appointed time, known to God alone,
when heaven and earth are made into one), God-helping,
peace is the rule and - not anymore -
the exception.

- selah -



I believe in a local defense industry
infused with this ethos and professing this motto:

"Filipino arms for the primary defense of the one Filipino nation".
---<--@



Bedevil the gun! 

Let us fear it,
let us make it a thing of mystery,
let us pour all our blame on it -
let us not understand it, 
that we may lay ourselves prone
to higher forms of slavery.



"The gun has played a critical role in history. An Invention which has been praised and denounced, served hero and villain alike...

and carries with it moral responsibility.

To understand the gun is to better understand history."

- Tales of the Gun, a History Channel series