Category Archives: Religion

A Beautiful Day in the Central Range of the Colombian Andes, As the World Burns

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It’s a beautiful, sunny Saturday in the city in the sky.  The one set among snow clad peaks and thermal springs near an adjacent volcano or two and the remnants of several glaciers.  The one set atop the central range of the Colombian Andes in the midst of a sea of mountains dressed in diverse verdant shades.  It seems summery although in the Northern Hemisphere, the part of our planet in which this part of Colombia is set, it is late autumn, just short of winter.  But then, this close to the equator, seasons tend to meld and shift and be measured in hours rather than months.

The world seems as bad as it’s been since the second war to end all wars a bit over three quarters of a century ago, all the lessons it purportedly taught at best unlearned but more they were probably just fictitious attempts at justifying unjustifiable terminal follies.  Again.  After all, the second war to end all wars took place less than two decades after the first war to end all wars ended.  And wars?  Well, they’re just fine, in fact, perhaps healthier than ever.

Still, … as individuals here and there, life plows on, life: full of interpersonal challenges and triumphs, its own interpersonal beauty and mystique artfully masking our own errors and mistakes.

The Global South (which ironically includes Russia and China and Iran but definitely not the Ukraine) seems to be making headway in its quest for liberation from the constant abuse, humiliation and looting that flows from the North.  But not without severe challenges as the Global North has no intention of brooking what it considers insolence by lesser species.  By people almost but not quite human. 

Notwithstanding the hypocritical “woke”, condescension still rules. 

Still, … there is a scent of a different sort of future and lingering echoes seem to wonder whether such future will be better or just filled with shadows from the past, and whether the images we’ll see in our future mirrors will reflect who we’ve been, or we claim to have been, or who we wish we had been, or who we’d like to be, or who we’ve been forced to become.  Hopefully the images that stare back at us will not be too much like those of those who for so long have oppressed so many.  Wishful thinking, I know, but “if our reach does not exceed our grasp, then what’s a heaven for”, as Robert Browning wrote.  But then, he was a poet, not a politician, a journalist or a historian (the illusory professions).

Omnipresent, dystopia seems to rule.  We seem to be a people in transition, greedily tearing down the past without any agreement on what will replace the corrupt social institutions that have been decaying, putrefied for millennia.  Decaying but refusing to die.  That confuses and polarizes us as we’re manipulated by the worst among us, the Northern hegemonic wannabe leaders who refuse to let go and definitely decline to share, but who still exercise almost total control.  Yet, “almost” is an optimistic harbinger, a qualifier that hints at possible changes, perhaps even beneficent changes.

Who can tell? 

But we can hope. 

Especially on a beautiful sunny Saturday in early December, one in which at least some of us are safely ensconced among some of those we most love, … at least for the day. 

The carnage, genocide and ethnic cleansing underway in Palestine by the worst cultural descendants of the tribe which, after looting Egypt, went on to plunder and murder every man woman and child in ancient Jericho, continues unabated despite popular condemnation in the Global South and even, among an enlightened minority in Europe, the United States and even Israel, although, from here in the heights of the Andes, as in the United States and Europe, to some, that all seems very far away.  Far enough away so that the screams of pain and dying gasps and mourning and lamentations are barely audible and thus, perhaps, at least for them, can be sanitized and washed away.

Or at least shouted down and obfuscated through carefully crafted rhetoric, with reckoning postponed, if not for ever, at least for another day.   

After all, who mourns for ancient Jericho today?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Reflections on Thanksgiving Day, 1621 – 2023

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Another strange Thanksgiving Day is on the horizon.  They’ve all been strange though.

It’s always been a day in which descendants of European colonists enjoy gorging themselves in banquets and eventually, watching football games, but one in which indigenous people in North America reflect on how their generosity was repaid with ethnic cleansing and genocide.

North American indigenous people can probably empathize with Muslims who sheltered and protected Jewish people for over a millennium but were then rewarded with the theft of Palestine and, of course, with ethnic cleansing and genocide as well.

Thanksgiving Day will probably be remembered this year by indigenous people everywhere, remembered but not celebrated.  Indigenous people whose lands were stolen and who were subjected to ethnic cleaning and genocide, a day like Columbus Day.  One in which to reflect on the hypocrisy inherent in colonialism, whether in the Americas, in Africa or in the Middle East.

Today, this year, 2023, it’s a day on which to reflect on the hypocrisy associated with the phrase “never again” and with other days remembering holocausts.  Holocausts as ancient as Jericho and as new as the one during World War II.  Or the one that has been occurring in Palestine since 1948.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Not in our Name

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Israel, the land of nine million Eichmanns who can’t grasp that Palestinians rightly feel for them the emotions that survivors of the Holocaust felt for the worst of the Nazis, and that those feelings are spreading to people all over the world, but especially in the Global South.  And that those feelings are not expressions of antisemitism but of disgust with Israeli genocide, mass murder and ruthless ethnic cleansing.

Too many people of Jewish descent respond to criticism of the new holocaust, the one perpetrated by Israel on Palestinians, by asserting that only Jews can understand the justification for what are to others obviously crimes of lesse humanidad, but how would they answer a Nazi sympathizer who made a similar claim to a Jew, that not being a German Nazi, a Jew could never understand the justifications for what the Nazis did. 

Too many people of Jewish descent may feel that way but far from all as a resounding echo answers loudly from far and near: “not in our name!”
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Jericho and Gaza, Bookends of Sorts

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Today, the destruction of Gaza and the mass murder of women and children, the aged and the infirm by people from whom one would expect empathy and decency based on their own experiences appalls the decent among us.  But who speaks for those who suffered the same fate over three millennia ago from the ancestors of those today committing genocide?  From those who had purportedly just escaped from slavery in Kemet. 

Who grieves for the ancient but brutally murdered denizens of ancient Jericho? 

Who reflects on the reality that divinely inspired genocide was as acceptable more than three millennia ago as it is today for those from whom, based on their censorious sacred books, one would have expected at least a semblance of decency instead of barbarity, murder and mayhem.

One wonders if there were any descendants of Abram back then who recoiled at the atrocities committed in their names, as so many decent Jews do today.

Evidently though, for too many, the more things purport to change, the more they’ve stayed the same.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Bittersweet Reflections on an Autumn Morning

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I woke up this morning dreaming of the “The Bells of St. Mary’s”, a film starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman that I probably first watched as an eighth grade student at St. Gerard de Magella, a Catholic school in Hollis, Queens, a neighborhood in New York City.  It’s been a favorite of mine ever since, though hard to view now; times have changed and the values reflected in that film no longer predominate.  It reflects a sort of idyllic yet plebian epoch where we believed we stood for decency, ignoring the cultural cancers that afflicted us, the genocide of indigenous Americans and racism based on our history of unrepentant abuse of Africans, as well as our penchant for intervening militarily in the affairs of others in order to appropriate their natural resources. 

St. Gerard’s though seemed reflective of a streak of decency, as was Father O’Malley’s and Sister Mary’s St. Mary’s.  My best friend at the time, albeit briefly, was an African American of Jamaican ancestry whose name was Cuthbert Williamson.  Other close friends were Italian and Irish, and I had a serious crush on a girl whose ancestry I never knew, but whose name was Patricia Maher; all of us happily melding, unaware of how much our world would change or just how hypocritical the country we loved was and had always been. 

I think we’ve strayed from the path that might have led from there to the best version of who we should have become.  Instead of curing our societal ills, we glossed over them self-righteously and became a more and more polarized society and a larger and larger danger to ourselves and even more so to the rest of the world.  Indeed, we became that which we claimed so many of the best among us had died to prevent in the second of our wars to purportedly end all wars and today, our government, if not all of our people, avidly supports ethnic cleansing and the mass murder of civilians that most of the world, at least in the global south, considers genocide.  And, of course, our government seeks to embroil us in wars all over the globe in order to attain the worldwide hegemony that we purportedly disdained when I attended St. Gerard. 

Shortly after I graduated from St. Gerard, a sort of poetic prophet playing a harmonica and a guitar, and singing what seemed like the hymns of our generation (albeit sort of off key), arose and stirred us towards a better world, asking “when will we ever learn” and declaring that the “times they were a ‘changing”.  But we haven’t and they didn’t; … not really.  And the innocence of St. Mary’s is gone.

My mood as I awoke this morning was nostalgic and melancholy, as tends to happen as we mature, and I reflected on my personal failures and on my regrets instead of on the successes I’ve attained and the blessings I enjoy; on the many friends and relationships that have vanished and which I did not appreciate as much as they deserved.  Bittersweet memories, reflections and introspections.  But I also focused on the hope Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman generated when I watched their interplay, a sense of hope they still inspire whenever I manage to revisit Father O’Malley and Sister Mary. 

A sense of hope we desperately need today when their like seems all too hard to find.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Of Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, Hubris and Impunity

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As of October 29, 2023, nearly 3,500 Palestinian children had been murdered by Israeli military personnel and an additional 1,000 are missing, presumably buried in the rubble of Gaza during the preceding three weeks.  An additional 6,000 Palestinian adults were also liquidated and an unknown number are missing, while almost a million have been uprooted from their destroyed homes.  Of course, that is sort of traditional, immediately after its founding Israel expelled more than 800,000 Palestinians from their homes almost overnight during 1948 and “appropriated” (stole) their land and possessions, an event known as the Nakba.  One might call the past three weeks Nakba II, or more accurately, the Nakbanth.  There have been too many Nakbas to accurately keep track.

While the past three weeks have involved a significant increase in indiscriminate extra judicial killing of Palestinians by Israelis, it was merely a continuation of official Israeli policy since 1948, with peaks and valleys to be sure, but such attempted annihilation of Palestinians, glossed over as merely “ethnic cleansing”, has been unabated.  The hunting of Palestinians by Israeli military personnel and settlers is a sick reality akin to the worst historical violations of human decency, let alone rights, actions akin not only to those of the Nazis but of the Huns and then the Mongols, and to United States’ soldiers and settlers with respect to the indigenous population of North America were bounties were paid for indigenous scalps without differentiation between age or gender. 

In the case of Israel, the justification for such inhumanity goes back millennia to old Hebrew genocidal traditions, traditions which are biblically recorded as far back as the genocide committed against the inhabitants of ancient Jericho, and involves a Hebraic version of the Nazi policy known as Lebensraum, one not only sanctioned, but commanded by the Hebrew deity, Yahweh, a deity who, ironically, is the same deity worshipped by Israel’s current Palestinian victims.  Perhaps the saddest irony is that Palestinians are much closer genetically to ancient Hebrews than are the Israelis.  They are the descendants of the Jewish people who stayed in the “Holy Land” instead of migrating away after the Roman destruction of the second Hebrew Temple, and who were, in large part, first forced by the Romans of the later Christianized Empire to convert to Christianity, and then, forced to convert to Islam by conquering Arab Muslims, a faith much closer to their original Judaism than was Christianity.  Current Israelis on the other hand are an amalgam, with Hebrew roots, to be sure, but primarily comprised of converts to Judaism from diverse European ethnic groups, primarily descendants of the ancient Eurasian Khazars but including many others. 

Still, murder is murder, genocide is genocide and impunity is impunity.  Hypocrisy reigns, seasoned with hubris, especially with reference to the phrase “Never Again” and to memorials remembering and honoring one segment of those who perished in the series of events during the first half of the twentieth century collectively referred to as the Holocaust, memorials that do not include remembrance of the Soviet citizens slaughtered, or the residents of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or of Dresden or Tokyo.  The height of such hypocrisy, of course, in addition to the creation of the embryonic State of Israel by the United Nations in 1948, in Palestine rather than say, in Bavaria, involves the decisions of the tribunals established by the victors in the second war to end all wars in the cities of Nuremburg and Tokyo which authorized selective additional murder and torture, in the name of justice and humanity and, of course, as deemed necessary to assure that what is happening in Palestine today, would never occur.  Not all that successful I’d say.

Odd how the term anti-Semitism has morphed from an attitude of unjustifiable actions and attitudes against members of the Jewish faith based on their religious beliefs into defense of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and opposition to truths concerning related realities.  Fortunately, a great many Jews refuse to accept the commission of genocide and ethnic cleansing in their names and are prominent among those protesting against Israel.  The same is true of the populations of many of the countries supporting and defending the Israeli annihilation of Palestine and the Palestinian people.  Perhaps they’ll remember the forgoing when next they vote in purportedly democratic elections.

Something to think about as the descendants of the victors in the second war to end all wars employ the same tactics and excuses as did the losers, and as a third “war to end all wars” becomes more and more likely.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Minutes of a Strange Sort of Synod

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The sacred body of Yeshua (minus two) was called to order by the sacred foreskin as the senior member to have been separated from the sacred body, with the exception of the sacred umbilical cord (who had excused itself due to pressing personal business elsewhere) and, a quorum being present, the sacred foreskin of Yeshua declared the meeting duly convened.  The sacred heart, being the subject of the meeting, had neither been invited nor informed of its convocation, anyway, being too busy with all of its personal endevors and appearances at festivals, etc., which was the reason for the meeting as it was a sort of revolt directed at the heart’s vainglory with respect to sacred days, the “carnivals” dedicated to the sacred heart being repugnant to the rest of the sacred body. 

The sacred liver initiated the business part of the meeting by making a motion, seconded by the sacred spleen, to officially censure the sacred heart for pomposity.  The motion was carried unanimously but with abstentions for some unknown reason by the sacred stomach and the sacred intestines. 

The sacred prostrate, joined by the society of sacred twins comprised of the sacred lungs and the sacred kidneys, then asked the sacred brain to make a speech, to which the sacred larynx objected, feeling that role was best reserved for the sacred vocal cords.  The sacred foreskin called for a vote but everyone decided to abstain and the vote was postponed on a motion by the sacred testicles, one having made the motion and the other having seconded it. 

The sacred foreskin as the presiding organ (sort of) then noted that the business of the revolt had been concluded, and asked that a motion be offered to send a note of reprimand to the sacred heart and, upon motion duly made by the sacred penis, seconded by the sacred left tonsil (the more revolutionary of the two), and, being unanimously carried this time joined into by the sacred stomach and the sacred intestines which appeared to have urgent business elsewhere, the meeting of the sacred body minus two was duly adjourned.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

A Brief Reflection on the Latest Rationalization for Genocide

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I wonder if the Israelis murder Palestinians with a joy similar to that ascribed to the Nazis as they murdered Jews (and many, many others).  Or whether instead, when the Nazis did what they are credited with having done, they did so with remorse, considering it a necessary evil, as apparently some Israelis do today.  Just how different, really, are Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolf Hitler and Harry Truman and Winston Churchill and Joseph Biden and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, et. al.?  Interesting that they’re all political rather than military leaders.

It is horribly ironic that, as human beings, Nazis and Zionists share so many qualities and experiences, but terrible that they are not the only ones.  Terrible that their shared emotions, attitudes and actions flow throughout our history and prehistory as one group of humans finds it essential to destroy another.  As the Jews did millennia ago at Jericho and elsewhere.  As the United States did first with its indigenous population and then at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  As so many groups of humans coalesced into societies almost always seem to do. 

Obviously, despite the hypocritically noble proclamations by the victors of the second war to end all wars, like those by the noble victors of the first war to end all wars, and like those by the noble victors in so many armed conflicts before and since, the human capacity to rationalize evil has not changed at all.  It may be what defines us.  It’s who we’ve always been and seems as though it’s what we’ll always be.

We seemingly are what we are, and that has too little in it of the truly noble and perhaps none of the equitable or just.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Reevaluating Genocide during and after the Second World War: a Critique of History and Historians

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On Tuesday, October 17, 2023, Jonathan Cook published an article in Consortium News (Volume 28, Number 284), entitled “Israel’s Official Ethnic Cleansing Program”.  He’s absolutely correct, but reacting to the long term consequences of root problems is inadequate without addressing the root causes.  In this case, we historians and journalists are the great facilitators, and the hypocrisy following the second war to end all wars, popularly referred to as the Second World War or World War II, is the root cause.

The second war to end all wars was followed by a series of trials based on application of promising ex post facto ius cogens that proclaimed that genocide was impermissible under any circumstances and that violators could be subjected to the death penalty, notwithstanding provisions of domestic law under which their actions were obligatory.  The trials were held in the cities of Nuremberg in Germany and Tokyo in Japan and purportedly established the framework on which future interstate belligerency would be judged.  A number of former Axis political and military leaders were executed and, in the ensuing decades, numerous lower level personnel were convicted and punished for following orders deemed violative of the new norms for armed conflicts, even though such norms did not exist at the time the conduct in question took place.  The repugnance with which such conduct was to be judged henceforth justified the violation of the prohibition of ex post facto penal law.

Subsequent history has demonstrated that the foregoing scenario was a fraud and that the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were mere expressions of the vengeance of conquerors on the conquered, albeit packaged in beautiful and inspirational camouflage.  That should have been obvious given the reality that both sides in the second war to end all wars engaged in blatant genocidal actions: consider Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also the obliteration of German and Japanese cities from the sky and the utter absence of related accountability, so it ought to be no surprise that subsequent more neatly packaged and sold examples of genocidal conduct continue, not only unpunished, but as in the case of Israel and the Palestinians, even extolled.

The only real lasting consequence of the second war to end all wars seems to have been that the British quest for global political and economic hegemony was transferred to the United States and that hypocrisy continued its unabated bludgeoning of truth in what passed for journalism and history.  Genocide continues to be celebrated, most notably by adherents of the primordial Abrahamic faith during Hanukkah and Passover while the same cultural group constantly decries the genocide practiced on it (and others) by the Germans, incoherently using it as justification for its own long term campaign of genocide against Palestinians and other adherents of the junior branches of the Abrahamic faith.  One wonders if Abram realized the horrendous long term consequences of his sexual abuse of his wife, Sarai’s, handmaiden Hagar.

I have taught and researched international law at the university level and have sadly concluded that, as with so much that purports to involve moral, ethical and legal norms, it exists only as an aspiration, but an aspiration carefully kept at bay and pulled out only when it is convenient for those who wield sufficient control over the use of force to force their will on others, but who insist on being portrayed as morally and ethically justified.  We historians are largely at fault for being so inept and hypocritical in our chosen avocation, as are purported journalists for the same reason.  Indeed writers of acknowledged fiction, writers such as, for example, Gore Vidal, come much closer to the truth than we ever do, earning us a place in a Shakespearean hell alongside lawyers, clerics and politicians.  Rather than eulogized, we deserve disdain and worse because the genocidal murder of so many rests all too comfortably on what passes for our consciences.

Something to think about as we attend and participate in seminars and congresses and teach our classes and publish our articles and books and accept the compensation we are awarded for the foregoing, and perhaps, hope that there is neither a Heaven nor a Hell, other than the one we help create and perpetuate here on earth.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

A Brief Reflection on Distressing Historical Realities

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How would Zionists have perceived of Adolf Hitler if instead of a final solution to the Jewish problem, he’d sought to implement a final solution to the Muslim problem?  Not using the same tactics but rather, a more subtle and gradual form of violent genocide with much better public relations?  How would the United States and the “Western Europeans” have perceived of him and his henchmen?

That seems worth considering as we see just that taking place in the tiny Gaza Strip, indeed, throughout Palestine, and in Lebanon and Syria too with Iran on the wish list; as we witness how Benjamin Netanyahu and his henchmen are perceived by Zionists, the United Kingdom and the countries that make up the NATO alliance.

The answer to the foregoing is deeply disturbing as we see the reflections of those we’ve characterized as history’s worst villains reflected in our own mirrors.  It says a great deal about the hypocrisy inherent in our purported value systems and in the history we are taught and then, in turn, teach.  Is it any wonder then that, not recognizing them, we seem utterly unable to learn from our past mistakes, to correct them, instead endlessly repeating them?

How would the “holocaust” be remembered had the foregoing scenario been the one that took place in the decade from 1936 through 1945? 

Probably a great deal like Hanukkah and Passover are celebrated today, and that is a terrible reflection on who we’ve become.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.