It’s cold in Manizales, a city in the sky set high in the central range of the Colombian Andes, although it dawned hot and sunny. Well, relatively hot. It’s about nine o’clock in the morning on the last day of November in a year that has seen the very worst of humanity triumph all over a sad and abused planet.
In Manizales it never really gets too hot or, truth be told, too cold. Just different ranges of spring although the humidity varies, frequently by the hour. Still, it’s chilly right now. Today I’ve layered up: tee shirt under shirt under sweater. That’s all I need here to escape the chill. The morning has turned foggy, visibility outside is nil, but it involves low lying clouds more than fog, as occurs when you’re in a city higher than the seven thousand foot mark, an interesting albeit common phenomenon in this city in the sky set amidst mountains usually dressed in myriad shades of green. The sight is eerily beautiful. It’s as though the city repented of having woken early and pulled its ethereally fluffy white blankets back up over its head.
It’s a good day for a fireplace. For several fireplaces. We have a small one set high on a wall in the living room but it’s not wood burning, it’s powered by a relatively small propane gas cylinder, not a fireplace Santa would appreciate but very pretty when it’s lit. Something we seldom do. If I were to build the perfect house it would be set amidst waterfalls and deep caverns and lakes but near the ocean, and would have fireplaces all over the place, and large rooms with balconies, and the roof would be a park-like terrace full of plants but with a Jacuzzi and would feature wrought iron outdoor living room furniture of sorts, and a wrought iron desk with a glass top so I could work outside, and an outdoor fire pit nearby.
But, for now, no such luck.
Still, I can’t complain, I have a large tenth floor apartment that occupies the entire floor giving us a three hundred and sixty degree view of the city and of the surrounding mountains, many clad in snow, and of the neighboring city set below, far below with a tall cathedral set not very far away, and a small park set outside of the front door. And with a used-book store set aside our lobby. The city’s cultural center with its large performing arts center is across the street and a block away we have the city’s initial aerial cable transport station, gondolas taking us to the nearby bus terminal and then to the neighboring municipality. And, two blocks from our front door, a small modern shopping mall.
What I don’t have is my three sons, now all grown; two with children of their own. They live a continent away in the Global North and I never see them now; well, except every once in a while in a video call. We’ve lived apart for a very long time now, decades. I’ve remarried to a wonderful woman, not just attractive but spiritual and intelligent and eclectic, and she fills a lot of the void I’ve created for myself after leaving most of my past behind, as do the wonderfully kind, talented and artistic people of Manizales, and as do my few expatriate friends, traces of my old life, but nothing can replace my sons. I think of them daily. And I think of the many, many people I’ve known, some of whom I’ve loved. Most of them have long vanished from my life but not from my memory.
It’s been a full life, one full of blessing and of challenges, most of which (the challenges) have been overcome. It frequently feels as though it’s been too full but today, for some reason, it seems hollow. Perhaps it’s the weather but, although the low lying clouds still have everything covered so that it seems as though the world outside my windows has been erased, a bright spot in the white, a brighter white, seems to be trying to break through. Of course, eventually it will. It always does.
So, why does today still feel so gloomy?
It must be missing my sons and the grandchildren I’ve never really gotten to know which sculpts the day in hollow tones. And the echoes of old relationships turned acrid which, at least from time to time, still cast long and somber shadows.
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/.
I am drawn to the concept of giving thanks rather than asking for boons from the divine. It was something I felt strongly at times of spiritual longing while I was still more of a traditional believer, times long gone. I am still drawn to the concept, albeit in a more generic form while concurrently more specifically. While reflecting on towards what and towards whom my thanks should be directed.
A deity is evoked by most for purposes of giving thanks on this holiday, at least in the parts of the world where I’ve lived, in Europe and in the Americas. It is an Abrahamic deity worshipped by three antagonistic branches, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and that deity is purported to possess five principle unique attributes. He (the deity is identified as masculine for the most part) is eternal, he has always existed and will always exist; he is omnipresent, i.e., he is ubiquitous, concurrently everywhere; he is omniscient, knows absolutely everything not only with respect to the past and the present, but also the future; he is omnipotent, all powerful, capable of anything and everything without reservation; and, he is omnibenevolent, all good without a trace of evil or negativity.
I guess, if we humans did not exist, if our world did not exist, the concurrence of such attributes might conceivably be possible. But we do exist, our world exists, and evil certainly exists and, on this Thanksgiving Day, evil seems to predominate, especially in the so called Western World. And that evil seems to emanate directly from the purported Abrahamic Holy Land in the Middle East.
Today and for many years, decades really, It has been difficult, actually, impossible for me to be thankful to that incoherent complex of attributes that purportedly constitute “our” deity. Or to believe that such an entity exists. The three attributes most impossible for me to reconcile are the “omnis”: omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. When effective, logic, a premise based form of analysis that purports to lead to accurate conclusions, could accept an evil or amoral omniscient, omnipresent omnipotence; or, it could accept an omnibenevolent, omnipresent and omniscient but impotent reality. But not the confluence of all three attributes. In general, the logical exercise in which we claim to believe and which we use, or more accurately, misuse and abuse, rarely works because, when its conclusions are put to the test and fail, rather that reexamine the premises and the analysis which led to the deficient conclusions (as tested against reality), we rationalize and make excuses. We do so with respect to our Abrahamic concept of divinity by introducing the concept of purported “free will”, an oxymoronic absurdity when its exercise is subject to horrific and perpetual punishment.
The Abrahamic faiths are, not surprisingly given the forgoing, fratricidal, albeit usually sequentially so. And hypocrisy reigns among at least two of them, Christianity and Judaism, the polar aspects of Abrahamic religion with Islam, strangely, being the bridge between them but, frequently, the most despised, belittled and calumnied by the other two.
Take Christianity for example. It was purportedly founded by followers of a gentle and loving Hebraic Palestinian from the small town of Nazareth during its Roman era but in reality, the religion as it has almost always existed was the creation of a misogynistic Hellenized Jew, Saul of Tarsus who eventually used a more politically convenient Roman name, Paulus. The original Nazarene variant was centered in a small communist community in Jerusalem led by a certain James, cognamed “the Just” and comprised of the original disciples and apostles of his brother, a certain Yešu (today Latinized to its Hellenic variant, Jesus). The bastard Pauline variant quickly deformed into a traditionalist hierarchical control mechanism used to accumulate wealth and power, so much so that it eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Today, “evangelical and other so called Christians have completely rejected the communist economic premises of the original followers of Yešu, in part, because of the distortion of a statement by the founder of modern communism, an atheistic Jew, Karl Marx, to the effect that “religion was the opiate of the masses”, a statement contextually related to Marxian dialectic theory concerning economic evolution rather than to criticism of religion by which he meant that, at a certain point in economic history, religion was essential to survival making terrible conditions tolerable in the way that modern medications and medical treatments aid in our survival. Through distortion and manipulation, modern Christianity, at least in the United States, has become the opposite of what Yešu espoused. It has become a selfishly capitalistic, xenophobic philosophy apparently enamored of mass murder under the guise of capital punishment and perpetual war. Judaism has also undergone drastic devolution with a significant component splitting off into an atheistic political Zionist variant espousing genocide, ethnic cleansing and even rape as a legitimate control mechanism for dealing with non-Zionist dissidence. To those Abrahamic variants, Thanksgiving Day has become a de facto celebration of injustice, inequality and inequity, but that is something the original celebrants of the holiday in New England, the religiously intolerant Puritans would likely have ascribed.
That version of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, the one celebrated today, Thursday, November 27, 2025, is not one I can subscribe to, although I do enjoy some of its incidentals, like football games designed to draw our attention and energy away from our quotidian problems. Thus, while in my moments of most intensely positive feelings towards divinity during a time long ago when I accepted the traditional Abrahamic version of divinity as possible, back when I gave thanks to “whatever gods may be” (a phrase from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley), today, my attitude is profoundly different. Today, my thanks are limited to more tangible subjects. To people I’ve known and to people I’ve never met but admire. To those among the subjected and abused and downtrodden and tortured and maimed and killed who struggle to protect those they love and to stand for principles of equity and justice and compassion and generosity and peace, today something that applies most clearly to the Palestinian victims of Zionist genocide as it once stood for the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide, or to the Armenian victims of Turkish genocide, or to the indigenous victims everywhere of European genocide. To all the economically deprived parents who work constantly to provide for their families as best they can. To the Quixotic who struggle for “the right” against invincible odds, knowing that they themselves will never see the fruits of their labors. But also to those who, for whatever reason, earned or not, I just love. Those special people who were my classmates at the Citadel, and those fellow Citadel graduates who preceded and followed me, the same being true with respect to the now long departed Eastern Military Academy. But also to my former students and colleagues everywhere.
Today I give thanks to and for my family, especially my late mother Rosario and my late grandmother Juanita and my late aunt Carola. To the many fellow travelers in the quest for a more equitable, more just, more peaceful, more compassionate, more peaceful and more loving world; those I know and who I can call friends as well as those with whom I am only acquainted and those who I’ve never met but who I know exist, have existed or will exist.
That seems a great deal for which to be thankful, even in these truly terrible times where orchestrated polarization for fun and profit regardless of the cost is the rule. When the United States I love, indeed most of the Global North, is ruled from abroad by an ethics free elite. Perhaps it always been this way. But perhaps, the wonderful has always coexisted with the horrendous among the strange life forms who now refer to ourselves as humans.
So, … about the poem “Invictus”, one of my favorites. It seems appropriate to close out these reflections by sharing it, albeit reformatted into a more narrative, rather than verse format:
Out of the night that covers me, black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the Horror of the shade, and yet, the menace of the years finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
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/.
In Abrahamic mythology (which billions treat as revealed truth) Eve, the primordial mother, enabled herself, her husband and their descendants to discern between good and evil, for which, the petulant Abrahamic divinity punished them by afflicting them and all of their descendants with mortality and perpetual misery.
Strange that it was so essential to the purported Abrahamic divinity that its creations remain ignorant as to the difference between good and evil but, ironically, given Zionist perspectives, both of the Jewish and Christian variant, it seems that those two groups have taken it upon themselves to correct Eve’s indiscretion and lo and behold, evil flourishes, not only in the purported Holy Land but in Europe and North America as well. And it flourishes purportedly in a quest to re-attain the immortality once lost. What a strange spiritual philosophy, what a weird (in the original sense of the word) form of spirituality.
It makes some of us wonder at what motivated Karl Marx to postulate that “religion was the opiate of the masses”, today a deliberately misconstrued reflection as, when it was uttered, opiates were considered a positive blessing that permitted those afflicted with painful diseases to survive, rather than, as suggested by critics of Marx’s economic and political perspectives, as a criticism of religion.
The problem with opiates is, of course, that they distort perceptions of reality and make users numb to pain. Does Zionism do the same with respect to morality and ethics? Has the reflection concerning divinity by Karl Marx attained added relevance given the current Zionist proclivity for genocide and ethnic cleansing, for theft of Palestinian lands and assets, for rape of Palestinian hostages as a legitimate instrument of control and even for the involuntary harvesting of Palestinian’s human organs and skin, all purportedly in the name of a promise made by their strange divinity, although not to them but to their victims?
Or is it perhaps past time for a new mother Eve, in her gnostic variant this time, to arise and to feed us all apples? _____
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/.
I became a Yankees fan in either the fall of 1952 or the spring of 1953, … accidentally. I’d immigrated from the beautiful city of Manizales in the Republic of Colombia with my sister to the United States to join my mother and her new husband on what was then called Columbus Day and had been immediately enrolled in school, a traumatic event as though I was both literate and fluent in Spanish, I knew absolutely no English. At some point during an absolutely confusing first grade, during physical education, the instructor had lined us boys up and was asking us which our favorite baseball team was. It was in Miami Beach which was, at the time, primarily a strange blend of Cuban immigrants (before Castro) and Jews, mainly from New York. I was a Colombian of French and Spanish descent, adopted into a Greek household so I was a sort of anomaly. I was third in line for the selection of favorite baseball teams and my classmates ahead of me had already selected the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankees were the only New York team left and I’d only heard of New York teams so I selected them and have stayed loyal to the Yankees, profoundly so, through thick and thin ever since. I was so attached to them that as an adolescent, when they lost a game I’d fall ill. Fortunately, back in the 1950s, losses were rare and championships the rule. I have followed the Yankees passionately ever since.
I recall the terrible end to the 1960’s World Series when, after the Mick had saved the game in the ninth inning by diving back to first base on a line drive, Bill Mazeroski ruined the year for me with his walk off home run in the bottom of the inning. I was fourteen at the time, a freshman in Jamaica High School in Queens, New York, and I’d been watching that inning on a television in an appliance store along with a small group of other students on a street corner on my way home from school. But then came 1961.
At the end of the decade, the Mick was gone and the Yankees’ glory days soon morphed into an epoch of disappointment, Joe Pepitone and Phil Linz never panned out, nor did Tom Tresh. Those were the days of Sandy Alomar (senior) and others whose names no longer spring to mind, and I suffered through them with the Scooter somehow keeping my spirits up; I recall the thrill of returning to .500 baseball. Those were not good times, the CBS years, but somehow, they were not as depressing as this millennium’s Yankees, perpetual also rans, except for 2009, but especially since the arrival of Aaron Boone to join Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner at the helm. This period has been more depressing, perhaps the absence of Phil Rizzuto at the mike and on the screen has something to do with it, and the lack of honest evaluations from most of the other announcers. And it has lasted so long and seen a much greater breakdown, one involving tradition as well as performance, and perhaps it0s been aggravated by the difference in attitude between George the father, for whom the Yankees seemed held in trust for the fans, and Hal the son, a businessman interested primarily in merchandise sales and profits.
So, … 2025, … like 2024 and … 2023, and … 2022, and … 2021, etc., going back to 2010, was supposed to be the year of the 28th pennant, but it turned out in a manner reminiscent of Charley Browne trying to kick a field goal while Lucy pulled the football away at the last moment, or, like being a New York Jets’ fan suffering through another Jets season since we promised the Divine that if he gave us Super Bowl III, we would never ask for anything again.
Anyway, … the foregoing is context for what follows: an analysis of sorts of the 2025 season and perhaps one more attempt at that field goal, trusting Lucy one more time.
2025 has become the year of the Dodgers, the first repeat World Series champions since the Yankees in 1999 and 2000. The Dodgers 2025 World Series triumph was largely based on the performance of the series’ MVP, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, once more highlighting the ineptitude of Yankees’ general manager Brian Cashman who was too “frugal” to sign him, although perhaps that was Hal Steinbrenner’s decision. Not only is the Cash Man’s decision making, at best, poor, but because of his legendary hubris, many excellent players prefer not to play for the Yankees, all things being even. Which means even overpaying will not always draw them I, and neither Hal nor the Cash Man are fond of overpaying as, when they have, it’s usually been a huge mistake. The Cash Man’s hubris is especially evident during negotiations with existing Yankees’ players, a prime example being his mistreatment of Derek Jeter during contract renewal negotiations. Cashman’s “let prospects rot on the branch” approach while overhyping them has also been a disaster, notwithstanding a huge payroll, a payroll paid for, not by the Steinbrenner family but by the fans who make Yankees’ owners a fortune year in and year out. The new Yankees’ motto seems to deal, not with excellence and tradition, but with what purported “real fans” will buy at the Yankees’ stores, especially email and online mail-order offers.
That Aaron “speak no evil” Boone is the Yankees’ field manager makes things worse. His ineptitude was highlighted again in this year’s World Series by the performances of both the Blue Jays’ and Dodgers’ managers who, while not perfect, demonstrated excellent managerial knowledge and instincts rather than reliance on a by the (analytics) book approach.
As for the future, the Yankees seem to have players currently on the roster and in the minors enough to win without major trades or free agent signings, a good thing, but we’ll see where that gets us. The only current free agent I’d like to see resigned is Cody Bellinger because of his 1st base/outfield versatility. And it’s certainly time to bring up Spencer Jones.
My two cents, and, … I know, I know, worth exactly that, especially to Yankees’ management where fans only matter as cattle of sorts. _____
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/.
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/.
Old Corps: Something that in our day, the 1960’s, we looked up to and admired but which, with the passage of time, has somehow become a pejorative. The uniforms have changed: first the silk full dress sashes were gone, then real sashes of any kind; then the blitzed brass; then the so-called grey nasties and the cotton uniform trousers and now, epilates sprout on sort of grey shirts, none of which are drastically starched, but perhaps that part is superficial. The family mess is gone and that had a value none now understand, as is the strict daily formation schedule. And today’s version of fatigues, without even spit shined boots, are the daily norm. The honor system we revered, if not the words of the Honor Code, has also gone the way of the Dodo, as it has in all the senior military colleges being deemed much too inhumane and inflexible.
Standards have changed. They are imposed from above rather than percolating from the corps and that is a shame. We grew together as a corps and discarded grievous errors, like racism, because we were taught from within by people like Charley Foster that it was not only immoral and wrong, but stupid and wholly inconsistent with the Honor Code which was our core. Hazing was abused in our time but served a purpose as those held in captivity during the stupid wars in Southeast Asia made clear. And the rigors of our year-long fourth class system were not forced on us but demanded by us; we wanted the most profoundly challenging plebe system in the world.
Times have changed. Today, October 11, 2025, we demolished a mediocre Division II school in football and the corps was proud. I was ashamed. As I wrote, I much preferred when we went against the very best and had our butts kicked to being bullies. I would have been horrified had we lost today but, when did we set our standards that low? And it was not a victory for the corps but one attained by de facto non-cadet mercenaries we sort of hire to make it seem as though we really compete.
I do take great pride in our academic achievements but believe that they could be attained, and even surpassed, if they were set in the context we treasured where we demanded to be challenged so that the impossible was merely challenging, But those days are no longer with us and perhaps will never return.
Today’s Citadel is a fine institution but it’s not the institution many of us, most of us, hoped it would remain or, even more, the institution so many us believed it could become. The excuses are myriad but they’re excuses and I believe in my heart of hearts that today’s corps of cadets, like ours, would prefer the environment we felt we had bequeathed it, and that they would make us proud.
I don’t know where the responsibility lies for the foregoing dilution in values and traditions. It’s hard for me to accept that it lies in a four star Marine Corps general who is also a Citadel graduate, or in the members of the Board of Visitors we elect. It was not sudden but rather, gradual, one change deemed insignificant after another until our beloved alma mater became something different. Not totally different, the spirit of the corps of cadets remains, or so I believe. But the leadership is something else. As is the experience and inevitably the product
Somewhere in time and space generals Summerall and Clark spin in their graves as does the Boo, and as do many of our classmates and those who went before us. And it seems there is little we can do but hope that this is a cyclical phenomenon and that sometimes soon, the pendulum will right itself. But perhaps that hope needs a bit of help from those of us in a position to make a difference. _____
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/.
Republicans are absolutely correct, the Democratic Party is horrible but, then again, so are Democrats, the Republican Party is awful. Interestingly, both are subservient to the same master and it is not the United States’ citizenry.
The second Trump administration is a disaster, domestically and internationally, but, in all honesty it’s not a worse disaster than the Biden administration, and, internationally, while terrible, it is no worse than the prior Obama and Clinton administrations which planted the seeds for so many of today’s problems (think of the Ukraine, and Libya and Syria and Yemen, etc.). And of course, the administration of George W. Bush was as terrible and inept as any of them, although, in each case, “inept” is measured only with respect to how such administrations benefit United States citizens. Each was highly apt as far as the billionaire class was concerned and with respect to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The sad part is that Mr. Trump’s inane behavior, rather than usher in a real independent and pro-United States administration comprised of people like former Congressman Dennis Kucinich or former Senator Jim Webb, real statesmen, it is very likely to usher in a new Democratic Party administration led by the Clintons and the Obamas and Pelosi, etc., also foreign owned, rather than one dedicated to world peace, domestic tranquility, prosperity and freedom from AIPAC domination. Thus, the more things purportedly change, the more they stay the same and it is our fault, yours and mine, both individually and collectively, for being so consistently gullible. Of course, things don’t quite stay the same as each subsequent administration becomes more vitriolic and more seriously abuses our civil liberties and constitutional rights, more thoroughly perverting and subverting the institutions and customs meant to preserve and protect us while the previous administration hypocritically laments the sad state of affairs.
For decades public opinion polls have shown that the United States electorate would prefer a political administration other than one controlled by either the Republican or Democratic parties but every election, thanks in large part to the AIPAC controlled corporate media, we are convinced that those are our only two choices and that voting for third parties or independents is merely wasting our votes, and that we thus have to vote for one of the two AIPAC owned political parties so that the other does not attain power. Thus, rather than voting our conscience and with our intellect, we tend to vote from artificially induced fear.
The stupidity involved is incredible! Albert Einstein would have described it as insane. But it is constant and consistent and anyway, it’s probably already too late to change things since, as may well have occurred in the United States already and as is occurring in Europe west of the Caucuses, electoral manipulation through distortive news reporting and, when that is not enough, electoral manipulation through abuse of the judicial system (as recently occurred in Romania) or, as a last resort, through electoral fraud involving destruction of inconvenient ballots (as was apparently again the case today in Moldavia) and through manufacture of necessary ballots, or else, through the hacking of electronic voting equipment will prevent changes opposed by the alliance of Deep States that makes a mockery of even the illusion of democracy.
For decades, especially since Eric Arthur Blair (writing under the pen name George Orwell) in his dystopian epic 1984 (published in 1948) warned us, we have been completely manipulated, duped, and our intellect and ethics have been insulted. We not only “should” know better, we in fact “do” know better, but somehow, that makes no difference. The genocide against which we purportedly fought a world war has now become acceptable, although, the reality, when one examines history, is that genocide has always been acceptable, one need only note the celebrated instances of genocide in the Tanakh (Old Testament), e.g., Jericho, or much more recently, the genocide perpetrated against indigenous Americans by European colonists, the genocide in the Congo perpetrated by the Belgians, the genocide in India and Africa perpetrated by the British, the genocide in Armenia perpetrated by the Turks and the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second war to end all wars, thus, the genocide engaged in by the Nazis was apparently only horrendous because the Nazis lacked sophisticated public relations such as those employed by Zionists and, of course, the Nazis lost a major war.
So, … we rush towards Armageddon, many Christion Zionists with open arms in the hope that Yešu the Nazarene will deem it prudent to return and reward slaughter and mayhem with his holy presence. We rush towards Armageddon oblivious, polarized and incoherent but, apparently, blissfully so. Or, perhaps, we’ll just blissfully remain enslaved to our betters who apparently deserve to use us as they will. _____
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/.