Prior to the advent of egotistical monotheism in the Arabian peninsula, the goddesses Al-lāt, Al-‘Uzzá, and Manāt were believed, as once portrayed in Salman Rushdie’s infamous Satanic Verses, to have been the daughters of Allah and back then, before the rise of Islam, Allah was one among many members of the caste of the divine, as was supreme Canaanite divinity El and as was El’s errant son, YHWH, and as were YHWH’s sixty-nine brothers and their Sumerian cousins and many, many others. And they cohabited, not quite in peace, but neither in a state of perpetual genocidal animosity, as, all too soon, came to be. Came to be, if not the norm, at least the custom among those ghoulishly gullible Abrahamic humans who chose to follow and emulate ghastly YHWH. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Within the diverse variants of hypotheses concerning the concept of transmigration of souls (including but not limited to the concept of reincarnation) karma occupies an important role. However, an alternative related karma-free concept appeals to me, that of panentheistic monism. In the variant of panentheistic monism to which I am most drawn, a hierarchy of self-aware intelligences exist which include us, evolving constantly based on experience, but based on a concentric form of collectivism. Thus, in our case, we are comprised of diverse collectives; one includes our cells, then, on a higher plane, we are a collective comprised of our organs which are collectives of our cells, then, we are bodies comprised of a collective of our organs and our cells. Further up the concentric ladder, we perceive of ourselves as individuals but also as members of collectives in which we are parts, e.g., our bond pairings, our families, our clans (extended families), our social groupings (religions, social communities, racial and ethnic identifications, etc.) culminating in our belief that we are part of a collective that we identify as humanity.
The interesting thing is that the collectives of which we are members, albeit subject to numerous variable tensions, seem to have identities of their own, a concept central to sociological hypotheses where groups act in a manner significantly different than would their individual members, willingly sacrificing the interests of individual members for what the collective perceives as a “greater good” (but which much more often seems to involve the interests of elites capable of manipulating the group for their benefit through coercion, very much in the manner that cancers function in our individual bodies). That is a phenomenon that seems omnipresent in human collectives, at least as far as we know. An open and critical question involves whether or not the collectives of which we are a part culminate at the level of our species, or whether our species is itself a part of an aware and volitional series of more complex entities such as the complex varieties of life found on our planet and, perhaps, the complex of biological and non-biological components of our environment, including air, water, weather, etc. If so and, if we are just incapable of perceiving the levels of sentience of which we are a part (for example, the concept of Gaia), perhaps our planetary system is itself only a component of a series of greater sentient wholes, wholes such as our solar system, the group of solar systems of which our own is a part, the galaxy, the universe, etc.
Panentheism is generally viewed as a religious or spiritual concept but that may be misleading. It may also involve an organizational reality where the omniverse (the total of all multiverses which, in turn, involve the organizational structure of individual universes, each with its own laws of physics and evolution) is sentient and self-aware, sentience being the extra-physical factor that separates the concept of panentheism from the related concept of pantheism. In their religious variants, pantheism is the belief that divinity is the sum total of everything to which panentheism adds sentient self-awareness.
Monism adds an evolutionary element thus, each component of the pantheistic omniverse is deemed to be evolving and, in evolving, is assisting its superior structures to evolve so that, in a sense, inferior structures (inferior in terms of their level rather than their abilities) are the engines that drive the evolution of the structures of which they are components. In a sense, there is a striving towards never-attainable perfection at all levels, a striving that is not always constant or successful so that evolution does not involve constant progress, although progress, in the long term, tends to be consistent.
The foregoing applies to the function we refer to as the transmigration of souls as it is apparently through experiences during myriad lifetimes that the systems of which we are components learn and evolve. We are the tools for their perception of experiences, experiences that test their own evolutionary hypotheses, testing them and converting them into theories, and perhaps, eventually, into natural laws, laws being concepts impossible to violate.
Good and evil are hypotheses which we, in our diverse human groupings, develop, develop as guideposts, but they probably do not, except perhaps in very rare cases, rise to the level of theories and certainly even more rarely to the level of laws, although we tend to treat them as such. Concepts involving good and evil tend to involve evolutionary processes that start as a practices, evolve into traditions, then customs and then, perhaps, into social norms which may eventually become codified into obligations whose violation is subject to penal sanctions. But, since violations are possible at all levels and exceptions prevail, they do not really, regardless of how denominated, evolve into real laws.
The foregoing, at least for me, explains the incoherent societies in which we live and in which humans have always lived, where deceit, treachery and hypocrisy seem to be the norm, especially when we describe them in patriotic and religious terms. But, on the brighter side, we are parts of an infant omniverse taking baby steps which perhaps in time may produce an evolutionary structure worth admiring. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Or perhaps, the title should be “echoing sepulchral shadows”, or “echoes of sepulchral shadows”. For some reason, a melody with the phrase “lions and tigers and bears, oh my” comes to mind but that was from an allegorical fairy tale translated into film, first black and white and then in color, and this is quite a bit different, and not allegorical at all. Nor is it metaphorical. Indeed, at least in parts, it’s clearly historical. At least in part, it’s inspired by some of my son Alex’s work, although not by his novel The Old Breed: Haxan. A shameless plug, I admit it.
The place name “Jericho”, apparently originally “Yəriḥo” (although the concept of “originally” is, of course, as suspect as it is relative), is believed to derive from either the Canaanite word “rēḥ” meaning fragrant or from the Canaanite lunar deity Yarikh once worshipped there. In Jericho, in the land that during more recent millennia has been called Palestine, in the part of Palestine now referred to as the West Bank, within a cavern, there’s a special spot, perhaps ten meters square (although it’s actually sort of round, or perhaps sort of spherical might be more accurate), “sort of” being the operative element. It’s reputed to be the oldest place continuously inhabited by Homo sapiens on Terra although not necessarily inhabited by the living. A number of places in Africa, however, would surely dispute the foregoing, as might a number of places in Asia and in the Indian Subcontinent. Perhaps even in the Americas.
Be that as it may, that special place within the confines of Jericho is deemed sacred not, only to adherents of the three fratricidal branches of the Abrahamic family of religions, but by the shades of what might have been among the first humans to imagine and thus empower proto-deities tasked with protecting us, … mainly from ourselves. Thus, truths better left untold may well dwell there, … muttering.
Within that tiny circle resonate the primordial shades of presences who consider themselves a “family” of sorts. Guardians of beginnings and of endings. Of many, many beginnings and of many, many endings, although, many of the endings are indistinguishable from beginnings and many of the beginnings seem to meld into earlier endings, kind of like a spiraling Worm Ouroboros.
It’s a comforting spot for the souls of ancient gods and for the spirits of their ancient priests and priestesses and for the ghosts of the select among their ancient followers. In short, it’s a comfortably haunted spot, haunted by souls and spirits and ghosts who, in some cases, realize that their former hosts have expired while in other cases, they refuse to acknowledge their expiration. Still, generally, it’s a friendly sort of haunting, more like a cohabitation.
Dreams there tend to be astounding and hard to forget whether one would want to forget or to remember them. Lately though, they’ve tended towards hyperbolically apocalyptic themes featuring trumpets blaring and four terrible dark-winged equestrians charging.
Dead gods sometimes corporeally congregate there. Indeed, all but one of the seventy sons of divine Ēl still meet there in Divine Council from time to time, although sometimes, they merely gather to play and wrestle and gossip. To gossip about the incomprehensibly irreconcilable doings of their sons and daughters, and of their sons’ and daughters’ sons and daughters and so on, ad infinatum. And of the course, they gossip about the deranged conduct of their missing sibling and about the echoing conduct of his purported followers. That particular sibling struck out on his own a bit longer than three millennia ago and, asserting that he is a “jealous god” has done his best to eliminate all echoes of divinity other than his own. Rumor has it (although with rumors one can never vouch for their accuracy) that the remaining members of Ēl’s Divine Council have taken to heavy metal music although melded with ancient Middle Eastern rhythms. Could be I guess.
Anyway, “ancient” is a relative term there.
To many of the elder gods, the most ancient of the primordial echoes we the living sometimes recall are still little more than the yelps of young interlopers. What the eldest of all gods think, the ones who were hoary long before the advent of divine Ēl, none living elsewhere now know, although there, in that primordial habitation, echoes of their voices still sometimes seem to resonate, to resonate among the darkest shadows. Dusky shadows from somewhere beyond the realms of time and space.
Interlopers have always arrived there in waves. They still do, as though drawn by a primordial gravitational well. Indeed, for many, many millennia, many interlopers have found themselves trapped there by a strange event horizon and then, have found themselves drawn into tiny but very complete universes, or perhaps multiverses, although the correct term may be more akin to a sole omniverse. Evidently some sort of spell is involved, or magic, or miracles, or arcane laws of physics. Those concepts are difficult to distinguish there, primarily differing, like beauty, in the eyes of the one doing the beholding.
Syncretism plays there at times. Meddlingly melding echoes of personalities long gone into new souls, souls that then scatter to the four winds, left free to find their own mischief, mischief bereft of memories and of guidance. An amalgam that may explain why we find ourselves where we now seem to be.
But who knows.
The “family” does not share its secrets, or its intuitions or its suspicions. And if any of its members dared to do so, no one would believe them or, perhaps more accurately, very few would believe them and they would probably be considered no more than peculiar conspiracy theorists by their peers.
In Jericho: where the genocidal Hebrew leader Joshua once murdered so many and where mayhem and murder echo still. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Photo copyright: Michael Ventura / Alamy Stock Photo
Salem: the Jebusite city whose name was debauched and became Jeru-Salem and then, the focus for genocide, animal sacrifice and the mother of blood libels (sacred to the fratricidal sons of Avram). Divine El, the principal deity of the Canaanites, must surely have cursed them all. Or, at least, he should have.
I wonder what Canaanite Salem was like before all the hatred and all the blood was shed. Before patricidal David came. The Canaanites were apparently a pleasant and generous people but then, Joshua (political heir to Moishe) came to slaughter all their men and women and children and flocks and pets, all in the name of Avram’s unholy god, YHWH, the younger, black sheep son of El.
Then, the Canaanites were just … no more.
Sort of how Zionists aspire that the Palestinians will “just be no more” and that everyone will forget what happened. _____
“According to the current Trump administration, it seems that Jeffrey Epstein was apparently an optical illusion, especially with reference to any suspicion that Mr. Epstein was a close personal friend of any among the world’s most powerful people or that he was a critical asset of Israel’s Mossad. ‘No honey pots here, move on. The collective memory of the American people, indeed of people all over the world is mistaken. It must be an Iranian mass hypnosis plot aided by Palestinian baby-eating, mass-raping terrorists.’ That too many people refuse to acknowledge the foregoing, including many deluded MAGA Trump supporters, is unfortunate and obviously involves blatant antisemitism.”
Okay, no citations, the quote is a fabrication, but it’s a fabrication worthy of an answer to a ChatGPT open AI query. And, there may be more than just a kernel of truth in the foregoing. As a caveat, I am not a MAGA or Trump supporter but nor am I a supporter of Trump detractors aligned with the Democratic Party or the legacy media. Nor am I blind, deaf and dumb. A further acknowledgement: I consider myself a leftwing democratic socialist along the lines of Noam Chomsky, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, etc., and I acknowledge that the length of an article usually negatively impacts its readability and thus apologize ahead of time for the length of this one, but the subject matter seemed too important to condense further than it has been. Because of this article’s length, I’m taking the strange step of quoting its concluding paragraph here. Make of that what you will: “While it is fair to insist that Zionist Israel should follow Nazi Germany into the dust bins of history, that the United States must rid itself of AIPAC controlled political parties and politicians and that the Mossad should go the way of the Gestapo, a repeat of the massive historical violations of human rights incident to antisemitism must never again be repeated or justified.”
There is an unfortunate and potentially dangerous resurgence in antisemitism as a result of non-traditional factors, one being the campaign by Zionists in Israel engaged in genocide and other crimes against humanity and violations of international law to conflate their political program with the far broader aspects of Judaism claiming that opposition to Zionism is anti-Semitic, per se. Anti-Semitic under any circumstances, notwithstanding any objective verities. Another is the enshrinement of such conflation in penal legislation which, in essence, makes criticism of Zionism or Israel, regardless of how justified, illegal.
The mass murder, rape and starvation of the Palestinian people by Israel has led to a broad reaction by people from every corner of the world against Israeli Zionism (including large numbers of traditional Jews, especially Orthodox Jews). People all over the world (although less so in the United States) are revolted by the indiscriminate murder of women and children, the wholesale destruction of Palestinian hospitals, mosques, schools and homes, but also the justification of rape as a legitimate means of control and the murder of infants and children based on the fear of eventual retaliation. That Israeli settlers are now also attacking Christian communities, burning Christian churches and seeking the expulsion of Christians as well as Muslims from the Levant will only make things worse as some within the somnambulant Christian community in the United States may suddenly wake up. Unfortunately, that justifiable reaction may all too easily be used by racist anti-Semites to justify their long held hatred and fear of Jews in general. Jews, who they claim, are bent on worldwide hegemony as evinced by the disproportionate power wielded by them in politics, the economy, the news media, the entertainment industry and in many other major industries claiming that, as evinced by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it is all based on a long term plot rather than on the natural consequences of meritocracy.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a document circulated during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century detailing a purported Zionist plot to attain world dominance but debunked as a forgery during the 1920s, although it has never stopped circulating in various variants and has been a cornerstone of twentieth century antisemitism. Reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as forgeries rather than fabrications has resulted in confusion to some as, generally speaking, a forgery is understood to involve the existence of some predicate instrument that has been distorted with an inaccurate variant being passed off as genuine but, in either case, there is no doubt that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were used and continue to be used to justify anti-Semitic narratives.
As an indicia of the foregoing, Nicholas Joseph Fuentes (a right wing political pundit, activist and live streamer accused of promoting white supremacist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic views) recently released the following purported statistics concerning Zionist dominance in diverse fields of United States’ politics, education and commerce. According to him and others who share his prejudices, purportedly ninety percent of donors to the Democratic Party are Jewish, over eighty-seven percent of the presidents of Ivy League universities are Jewish, all major talent agencies in the United States are “Jewish” run, half of the owners of NBA teams are Jewish (as is the NBA Commissioner) and, during the past four decades, all chairpersons of the Federal Reserve with the exception of Jerome Powell have been Jewish. Finally, Mr. Fuentes claims that the majority of the members of the cabinets in the most recent United States presidential administrations have either been Jewish or had Jewish spouses. Similar claims are made concerning the United Kingdom and diverse European countries. In short, according to anti-Semites, Jews control most of the world’s financial institutions, most of the world’s news media, most of the world’s entertainment industry, most of the world’s major educational institutions, they control everything worth controlling, either directly or indirectly. Of course, that ignores the existence of the Global South, of India and China and Russia and Iran and North Korea and Yemen, etc. However, even respected political commentators like former Judge Andrew Napolitano have recently interacted with former government officials who claim that despite their miniscule percentage of the population in the United States, Zionists are an overwhelming majority of the government officials in charge of foreign affairs in both Republican and Democratic Party administrations and that both major United States political parties are wholly subservient to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which can make or break any member of the United States Congress through its access to massive donor wealth. Respected political commentators like former Judge Napolitano, Tucker Carlson, Jeffrey Sacks and Noam Chomsky, as contrasted with Mr. Fuentes, are providing such information not in the context of traditional generalized antisemitism (indeed, Doctors Sacks and Chomsky are among the world’s most prominent and respected Jews) but rather, in response to the United States’ wholehearted support of Israel, no matter what, as illustrated by the financing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israel’s overthrow of the government of Syria and Syria’s ongoing dismemberment and the ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon as well as the recent Israeli-American attacks on Iran, none of which positively impact United States’ interests.
Admittedly, today, much of the world (outside of the United States) is justifiably outraged by the United States-supported Israeli conduct criticized by Messrs. Sacks, Chomsky, Carlson, Napolitano and dozens of others. But things are getting worse, not better. According to available polling data Israelis in general have been utterly corrupted by the policies of their government and now wholeheartedly and bloodthirstily approve of their government actions which most credible specialists in international law characterize as crimes of lèse humanité comparable to the worst instances of violations of human rights in modern history. Indeed, Zionist settlers are now doing their best to eliminate Christians from Israel as well as Muslims prompting a rebuke from Catholic Pope Leo XIV.
Apologists for Israel’s consistent violations of international law and basic human rights during more than three quarters of a century argue that Israel’s actions are existentially necessary for the survival of the Jewish race even though Judaism is neither a race nor a nationality and Zionism is not even a religion. To a growing extent, such actions are resulting in the malediction common to self-fulfilling prophecies and such actions have had the opposite effect; in many instances, very unfairly so. Zionist lies (as blatantly false as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) to the effect that Israel and Zionism act in the name of and for the benefit of all Jews are indeed resulting in increased antisemitism, especially as antisemitism is being legally defined, especially as it is being legally defined in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia. Defined, not as generalized hatred of Jews but as opposition, not to Judaism, but to Zionism. It’s as though the infamous Murphy (of Murphy’s Law fame) was an anti-Semite as well.
Judaism is not synonymous with Zionism and many of the most vociferous critics of Zionist crimes of lèse-humanité are, as indicated above, in fact Jews, especially orthodox Jews. And even if Mr. Fuentes’ statistics or the more credible information presented in interviews conducted by Messrs. Napolitano and Tucker, especially those observations that have involved renowned political economist Jeffrey Sacks, bear any resemblance to reality, that does not mean that meritocracy rather than a grand conspiracy is not the reason for that statistical anomaly. But wouldn’t it be a strange and ironic twist of fate, even an indicia of divine justice in the face of millennia of antisemitism, if whoever was responsible for concocting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in fact provided a blueprint for the evolution of meaningful Jewish and Zionist power far in excess of that which the miniscule number of Jews, compared to Christians, Muslims, etc., would appear to represent if statistics rather than merit were the measuring stick?
Now the Trump administration’s Jeffrey Epstein fiasco is adding to the problem.
It has been credibly alleged by former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe and other credible witnesses that Mr. Epstein was an agent of Israel’s infamous Mossad and that his sexual predation was a tool designed specifically by the Mossad to compromise important political, economic and social leaders, especially the most wealthy and powerful among them, in order to provide Israel with leverage against them. Prior to his latest election, Mr. Trump had promised to make public all available information concerning Mr. Epstein’s activities, especially including a purported list of his “clients” but he has totally backtracked on that promise and while the corporate media and Mr. Trump’s political opponents insist that Mr. Trump’s change in attitude is based on compromising information specifically concerning him that would come to light in the event that the Epstein files were made public, there are a plethora of unconfirmable rumors to the effect that instead of the foregoing, Israel has somehow or other convinced the Trump Administration that the promised public release of information would not only tarnish numerous elites in politics, finance, entertainment, the news media, etc., but that such disclosure would also implicate numerous United States intelligence agencies and leaders and thus, would have a negative impact on United States intelligence sources and methods, impacting “national security”. Unfortunately (unfortunately for the Trump administration as well as Israel), it seems way too many cats are out of the bag including unverifiable claims that it was the Israeli Mossad that was responsible for the assassination of President Trump’s predecessor, John F. Kennedy and perhaps even for the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
President Trump’s defense of Israeli interests in the Epstein affair, if accurate, is proving personally catastrophic to him. As indicated above, his numerous opponents, especially in the corporate media and, of course, the Democratic Party, are using Mr. Trump’s refusal to release materials in the possession of the United States Department of Justice and intelligence agencies as proof that he, like Mr. Jeffries, is a pedophile and seemingly was the only person of public interest with whom Mr. Epstein “partied”. That distraction is being massively played up, according to some, to keep attention off of Mr. Epstein’s Israeli intelligence connection and his decades’ long successful generation of salacious materials useful to the Zionist cause. Still, related information keeps leaking out and as often as not, the sources are non-Zionist Jews. Unfortunately for Jews in general, Israel’s impunity with respect to the ongoing genocide in Palestine is making such otherwise unverifiable claims concerning Mossad activities all too credible, especially to people all too prepared to think the worst of Jews but, more troublingly, to a large number of people who are not congenital anti-Semites.
Just when things were going Israel’s way in Syria and Lebanon and Palestine and Iran and in all the Middle Eastern dictatorships and in all the NATO countries, this had to happen! Apparently justice is just too difficult to keep bought and traces of truth, albeit mixed with wild conspiracy theories, continue to leak out no matter how much censorship is imposed. As an unfortunate consequence, the Law of Unintended Consequences, a close relative to Murphy’s Law, may well be seeding the ground for a very unfortunate revival of real antisemitism. Something against which honorable critics of Zionist atrocities and of manipulation of the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Middle East dictatorships must guard, especially by repeatedly pointing out that non-Zionist Jews are leading the criticism of the massive Israeli abuses involved.
While it is fair to insist that Zionist Israel should follow Nazi Germany into the dust bins of history, that the United States must rid itself of AIPAC controlled political parties and politicians and that the Mossad should go the way of the Gestapo, a repeat of the massive historical violations of human rights incident to antisemitism must never again be repeated or justified.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
On July 21, 2005, Patrick Lawrence wrote a commentary concerning Gaza, income inequality, Israel and politics entitled “Sun Valley vs. Queensbridge”. It was published in Consortium News, one of the very few still reliable independent sources of information (Volume 30, Number 202 —Tuesday, July 22, 2025). To a great extent the article dealt with the cataclysmic victory of Zohran Mamdani in the recent New York City Democratic Party mayoral primary, apparently as unexpected as the purported victory of the mythic David over the equally mythic Goliath over three millennia ago. The article brought to mind, at least for me, how deluded, confused and manipulated most of the United States’ electorate has always been and the panic which the awakening of even a portion of that electorate is generating among the corrupt elite who has maintained us politically and economically enslaved since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. A sign I for one view as positive.
To many of my friends, especially among well-educated and intelligent fundamentalist Christians (as well as to many among some of my Jewish friends), Mr. Mamdani poses an existential threat because he is a vocal critic of the abuses of what passes for capitalism (but is in reality kleptocracy) as well as because he vocally opposes the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people orchestrated by American and Israeli Zionists. He is thus, in their perception, a “communist” anti-Semite. Those “buzz” terms are essential in order to deflect from factual analysis of his beliefs, beliefs which coincide with the premises underlying the economic and civic philosophy of the “messiah” who my Christian friends claim to worship and adore. Ironic, but that pavlovian reaction had been carefully crafted using behaviorist psychology long before B.F. Skinner invented that art form. It is essential in order to secure the counterintuitive support of decent people for indecent realities and for policies that are clearly against their own interests, policies such as universal healthcare and universal education at all levels and a real social safety net, something artfully crafted by the kleptocrats who rule us.
The foregoing has led me to reflect on the strange distortion of terminology that the kleptocratic corporate media has imposed on us. For example: “antisemitism” now means opposition to mass murder, torture, rape as a political tool, ethnic cleansing, organized mass theft and genocide. And “communism”? Well, that now apparently means daring to support mercy, equity, meritocracy, economic justice and the golden rule, but especially, the economic doctrines espoused by that certain Palestinian who, two millennia ago, taught that hoarded wealth was the surest route to perdition. You may well have heard some of the sayings attributed to him in the Christian gospels, “that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a hoarder of wealth to enter into the kingdom of heaven” and promising that “the meek shall inherit the earth”. Evidently horrible ideas.
Mr. Lawrence´s article, for some reason, also made me reflect on another hysterical current campaign, one again attributable to the kleptocratic elites who control us, in this case, through their so called Democratic Party (the kleptocracy of course controls both the Democratic and Republican parties). In this ancillary campaign, massively hypocritical outrage is being expressed at the association of Jeffrey Epstein which took place prior to 2003[1] with Donald Trump, ignoring Mr. Epstein’s similar association with myriads of Democratic Party heroes. It seems designed specifically to distract from the real scandal associated with the late Mr. Epstein, that being his role as an agent of the Israeli Mossad in which he used and abused under age men and women to obtain compromising material on leaders in politics, industry, commerce, etc., all apparently in order to blackmail them into supporting Israeli goals, a role which led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and millions of innocent people in the Middle East and elsewhere through perpetual wars whose primary goal has been the implementation of the Zionist final solution to the Palestinian problem and the creation of the “Greater Israel” to which Zionists aspire. Indeed, the Democratic Party’s orchestrated outrage seems designed to deflect consideration of related, recently declassified information concerning probable Mossad involvement in the assassination of United States President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (ironically a Democratic Party hero) as well as concerning likely Mossad involvement with the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. That same campaign, of course, also deflects attention from the genocide that has been perpetrated on the Palestinian people by Israel during the past seventy-five years, genocide affected with the full cooperation of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany as well as with the tacit assistance of the Middle East dictatorships such countries established and maintained following the Second World War. You know, the war purportedly fought to eliminate the threats to human rights posed by the Nazis and their allies.
Not that Mr. Trump does not deserve serious criticism but, that the foregoing criticism is directed at his amorous misadventures during the past century rather than his current support for Zionist genocide or his increasingly incoherent international economic policies or the betrayal of his promises not to perpetuate the cycle of endless wars and foreign military interventions in which the United States has been engaged during the past century, is not only ludicrous, but is blatantly malevolent. Then again, the Democratic Party is at least as guilty as Mr. Trump with respect to much of the foregoing so, … birds of a feather, … in every respect.
Caveat:
I am not a fan of Mr. Trump, who, for personal reasons, I dislike.
I am not a believer in any organized religion and find the Abrahamic religions especially disturbing and, inter se, incoherent. Especially given that of the three Abrahamic branches, Islam is the most reviled while being the closest to both of the others. Indeed, it is the bridge between them.
I am bitterly opposed to most political parties, both in the United States and abroad, finding that they are the embodiment of the “factionalism” rather than statesmanship that, in the Federalist Papers, James Madison promised would not occur.
As a historian, I am not a respecter of the collection of fallacies peddled to all of us as history but designed, not to elucidate, but to keep us deluded.
As I write this I am completing my seventy-ninth year on our planet, most of them depressed by how consistently we devolve into the people we would least like to see staring back at us from our mirrors. Nonetheless, it seems that hope is not yet altogether extinguished, especially when people like Mr. Mamdani continue to appear from time to time, although admittedly, usually only briefly and all too often all to quickly converted into that against which they once railed.
But, back to Mr. Mamdani who has become the focus of hate, fear and despair from followers of Mr. Trump and especially from traditionalists in the Democratic Party. He is, at least for now, perhaps a sign that, paraphrasing the articulate albeit hypocritical Abraham Lincoln:
“Perhaps the kleptocracy cannot fool all of us all of the time.”
Fortunately for the kleptocracy, because he is a naturalized rather than native born United States citizen, Mr. Mamdani can never become president. But, then again, perhaps sometime soon, someone who shares his values will appear on the national stage and, unlike Mr. Trump, will not so quickly betray the principles he promised to sustain. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
[1] Mr. Trump purportedly ended his fifteen-year friendship with Mr. Epstein that year, barring him from Mar o Lago because of an incident involving unwanted advances towards the fourteen-year-old daughter of another of Mr. Trump’s acquaintances.
Raining on parades is not something of which I’m fond, especially given how many parades I participated in during my youth while a cadet, first at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York, and then at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, which is not to say that I and my fellow cadets were not, at times, very grateful for rain that resulted in cancellation of weekly parades permitting us to enjoy additional leave time. Today, however, as I reflect on the passing of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis I, and of Jose Mujica several weeks later, I find myself doing just that, although perhaps it’s just tears cascading I hear. That we were privileged to share this world with two souls as purely beneficent as theirs has been an amazing blessing.
Following Francis I will not be an easy task, it may well prove extremely challenging as there is little hope of equaling his charismatic humility and the aura of human decency he generated. It is unlikely that Robert Francis Prevost will follow the examples of humility and personal frugality that Jorge Mario Bergoglio set, both before and after he attained the papacy. It is interesting, in a very sad manner, to note with profound regret that we lost both Pope Francis and his political homolog, Jose Mujica, the late, former president of Uruguay, within several weeks of each other. That is an immense degree of decency lost in a very brief period, especially when human decency and humility among those who currently lead us is in such short supply.
My first impression of the new Pope was not positive but I admit that after Francis probably no one would have seemed comparatively positive to me, at least at first blush. However, I fear that my unfair initial reaction may unfortunately have been instinctively and cognitively perceptive, especially after rumors that pressure to select Cardinal Prevost were exerted, who knows how, by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and by neoliberal and neoconservative elements in a number of governments, especially that of the United States. But I guess it would be extremely naïve in a professional political analyst to believe that the election of a new pope would be free of geopolitical pressure from many sides. Especially if one has studied papal history.
Cardinal Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, has aspects that should appeal to me emotionally. He is a Peruvian as well as a United States citizen, the son of Louis Marius Prevost of French and Italian descent and of Mildred Martínez of Spanish descent and it appears that his maternal grandparents, Joseph Martinez, born in Haiti, and Louise Baquié, a Creole a native of New Orleans, were partially of African descent. Like the new Pope, I’m also a dual national, having been born a citizen of the Republic of Colombia and naturalized many decades ago as a citizen of the United States of America. And I share at least the Pope’s Spanish and French roots. But for some reason, the ethnicity and dual citizenship that we share did not impact me in the way that Pope Francis’ Argentinian birth did. It should have. Instead, the fact that he is a United States native seems a double edged sword. He is viewed with pride by United States’ citizens as the first United States born Pope but with suspicion by many throughout the world, fearful, as noted above, that his election was impacted by United States and especially, Israeli pressure. Something that is given at least some credence if one reads between the lines of some of his public statements involving international affairs, both before and after he became Pontiff.
Still, he is unlikely to be as Deep State oriented as were his predecessors, John Paul or Benedict XVI, but he is also unlikely to be as progressive or humble as Francis, something his decision to reside in the Papal Palace at Castle Gandolfo eschewed by Francis makes clear. However, as in the case of Supreme Court justices in the United States, the office frequently changes the holder and perhaps, rather than a disappointment (to me) he will prove to be an inspiration.
Only time will tell.
The only certainty is that my perceptions are emotional, intuitive and not factually based although, like billions of others, I’ve sought for whatever facts I can find but, other than glowingly positive reports concerning his priesthood in Peru, reports of the kind frequently generated by public relations specialists rather than by historians, not much that rings true to me seems available. Perhaps as I’ve matured, I’ve become a bit too cynical.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
As he aged he increasingly came to acknowledge the harm he had caused others, either intentionally or carelessly or unavoidably, and he came to profoundly regret it. He had too often been callous, albeit with a warm and sort of sincere smile, believing that he really sought to govern his life with good intentions, but his failures to do so were legion.
He hated hypocrisy but that was mainly in others, his own example in that regard having been poor, although he tended to gloss over it in his introspections.
He was a social and civic critic, and his related observations and speculations and analyses tended to be highly idealistic, and he was well thought of, except, perhaps, by those towards whom he had behaved inappropriately but, instead of seeking their forgiveness after admitting his faults, he sought forgiveness through penance of sorts, directed towards a divinity in which he did not really believe but which he constantly sought to find and understand.
Faults in others were easy to identify and to criticize but in himself, they had for too long been artfully hidden, especially from himself.
He had once reflected that if good and evil were objective rather than subjective, and that if an afterlife existed where punishments and rewards were bestowed based on merit, the only sure way to attain an adequate state of grace was to both forgive all the wrongs he had suffered and to attain forgiveness for the wrongs he had committed from those he had harmed. Given his inability to do either, his only real hope rested in the unlikely possibility of immortality. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
While I am admittedly not a believer in the divinity of any being born of a human woman, or perhaps, of any divinity at all, I am not a “non”-believer, acknowledging that anything is possible and that I have yet to discern the truth, though I have searched for it during eight decades so far. Nonetheless, I have had a lifelong fascination with the Palestinian born in Nazareth whose personal name was probably Yešu and who would perhaps be most non-confrontationally referred to as Yešu of Nazareth, although he was purportedly born in Bethlehem, both Palestinian villages.
I have read a great deal about him, not only through biblical sources but also the Jewish response to the Christian Gospels, a series of alternative versions collectively referred to as the Toledot Yeshu, and I have written and published a bit on the subject which draws me to it as a means of seeking to understand myself and ourselves and perhaps, even the concept of divinity.
Today is a confluence of days holy to major branches of Christianity, the Orthodox, the Catholic, the Protestant and others, as well as part of a season sacred to Jews, a somewhat rare confluence, and it is taking place during the Zionist genocide of the Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine thus, at least to me, it is a day not for joyous celebration of a resurrection but of sad reflection on human nature, and on how disappointed in us Yešu the Nazarene would be, as hypocrisy and murder and mayhem have become the norm, although it may well be probable that such has always been the case. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 