Category Archives: Historical

Reflexiones sobre la decisión en el juicio contra el expresidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez

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28 de julio, 2025, Manizales

La justicia colombiana ha encontrado culpable de delitos penales a quien ha sido el hombre más poderoso del país, el ex presidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez. La decisión me sorprendió porque la justicia en Colombia tradicionalmente ha ignorado abusos del poder por parte de su clase dirigente pero, a la vez, la decisión duele porque, por correcta que sea, muy probable es que nos dividirá aún más como pueblo. 

Un víctima de la injusticia tan común en Colombia, mi amigo Luis Fernando Rosas Londoño, un hombre talentoso, inteligente y honrado quien fue injustamente privado de sus derechos políticos y de su libertad, lleva tiempo rogándoles a los dirigentes políticos de nuestros partidos que para sanarnos como pueblo, para realmente lograr la paz, necesitamos una amnistía general, algo que, irónicamente, entiendo fue rechazado por el ex presidente Uribe. Luis Fernando no lo propone por su propio beneficio.  Lo hace teniendo en cuenta las personas inocentes que han sido castigados en procesos jurídicos injustos y, a la vez, entendiendo que con tantos pecados por todos lados de nuestra política, se necesita “reformatear nuestro disco duro” e iniciar de nuevo.

No obstante lo anterior, reconozco que aunque el concepto de un perdon general es importante para re-direccionarnos hacia un futuro más civil y más decente, la corrupción, sea política, económica, académica o militar, etcétera, la corrupción que infecta a nuestra sociedad en forma tan profunda se tiene que minimizar, entendiéndose que acabar con ella es improbable, si no imposible; entendiendo que en un sistema político funcional, la violación de responsabilidades públicas tiene que ser el mayor delito con los castigos más serios.

Entonces, en este instante, nos encontramos en una situación, a la vez tan positiva como amarga. Una situación probablemente sin solución.  No estoy feliz que el expresidente Uribe se haya encontrado culpable de violar leyes esenciales para el funcionamiento de nuestro sistema legal, pero estoy aún más triste que él nos ha puesto en la situación en la cual nos encontramos, que él ha violado sus más sagrados juramentos.  Y me entristece profundamente que, en toda probabilidad, el expresidente Uribe insistirá, o en forma directa o indirecta, que sus seguidores rechacen la decisión en su contra no obstante el impacto que tenga esa reacción con respecto al bienestar popular.  Espero que, en forma directa o indirecta, el expresidente Uribe insistirá en que sus seguidores organicen protestas y manifestaciones masivas en las cuales la violencia será probable.

Claro que es posible que si el expresidente es tan noble como creen sus seguidores, pondrá el bienestar de nuestro pueblo por encima de sus intereses personales.  Él podría, sin admitir o negar las acusaciones en su contra (que ahora son sentencia), aceptarlas y pedirles a sus seguidores que también acepten la decisión jurídica existente.  Y quizás, para minimizar la polarización, si el presidente Gustavo Petro también es tan noble como creen sus seguidores, él podría otorgarle al ex presidente Uribe clemencia en forma de un perdon ejecutivo, no en forma de algún tipo de negocio extrajudicial, pero como una ofrenda de paz para todos los colombianos en la cual, las horribles brechas entre nosotros se puedan realmente empezar a sanar y la desconfianza que nos ha dividido por tanto tiempo impidiendo las reformas esenciales en nuestras políticas públicas que urgentemente necesitamos, se pueda remplazar con un espíritu de colaboración.

No veo lo último probable pero hoy, por medio de nuestras reacciones con respecto a este juicio, se podría crear una oportunidad casi única para reconocer que los colombianos todos somos hermanos, no obstante nuestras diferencias de opinión, y que ya es tiempo que rechacemos el ejemplo mítico de Caín y Abel en favor del ejemplo de ese antiguo nazareno que tantos colombianos supuestamente aman.

Ya pronto veremos que va a ocurrir. 

Temo que será lo peor pero, a la vez, aspiro que en eso yo esté equivocado.  Yo salí de Colombia, como tantos otros, a los seis años, salí no en forma voluntaria pero por una decisión de mis padres basada en la violencia en la cual se encontraba nuestro país.  Pero nunca olvidé que yo era y siempre seré colombiano, y que desde ese país hacia el norte que tanto daño nos ha hecho, me era muy difícil entender cómo, en un pueblo como el nuestro, un pueblo lleno de lo mejor que puede brindar la naturaleza, nos encontrábamos tan infelices el uno contra el otro.  Y que muchos de los mejores ciudadanos nuestros, los más educados y los más nobles, huían en un flujo permanente hacia el norte donde eran despreciados e insultados, doctores trabajando como meseros.

Desde lejos era fácil percibir que unidos, aunque con diferencias en temas de creencias y opiniones, seriamos entre los pueblos más exitosos del mundo.  En parte, para ayudar a lograr eso, fue que siempre quise volver a mi patria, algo que logré en el 2007, ese año tan especial en el cual nuestro pueblo, en masivas manifestaciones, demostró que estaba harto con nuestros eternos conflictos internos.  Al volver, tuve el privilegio de trabajar por una década en la Universidad Autónoma de Manizales con estudiantes de diversas perspectivas políticas, pero unidos en el respeto por sus diferencias mientras dedicados a superarlas para lograr el bienestar común, estudiantes enamorados con su pueblo, estudiantes que ya están ascendiendo las laderas de las responsabilidades políticas y en la gran mayoría de los casos, haciéndolo en forma ética y eficiente.  Esos ex estudiantes míos y otros jóvenes que he conocido me hacen pensar que la Colombia que merecemos no solo es posible sino probable, probable si evitamos seguir enmarañados en las mallas del pasado. 

Hoy, haremos importantes decisiones, quizás existenciales, como individuos pero también como pueblo.  El desastre del juicio en el cual se encuentra el expresidente Uribe no es ocasión para sentirnos o vencedores o vencidos, no es ocasión para ser felices o sentirnos heridos.  Es una ocasión excepcional para reflexionar y mirar hacia el futuro, recordando la regla de oro: tratando a los demás como quisiéramos que otros nos trataran.  Entonces, como tantas veces decimos en ocasiones más positivas, “que viva Colombia” y “que vivan los colombianos”, … todos.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; todos derechos reservados.  Permiso para compartir con atribución.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé es escritor, comentarista, analista político y académico residente en la República de Colombia. Aspira ser poeta y a veces se lo cree.  Hasta el 2017 coordinaba los programas de Ciencia Política, Gobierno y Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. En la actualidad, participa en entrevistas radiales y televisadas, foros, seminarios y congresos cívicos y edita y publica la revista virtual, The Inannite Review disponible en Substack.com/.  Tiene títulos académicos en ciencias políticas (del Citadel, la universidad militar de la Carolina del Sur), derecho (de la St. John’s University en la ciudad de Nueva York), estudios jurídicos internacionales (de la facultad posgrado de derecho de la New York University) y estudios posgrado de lingüística y traducción (del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de la Florida).  Sin embargo, también es fascinado por la mitología, la religión, la física, la astronomía y las matemáticas, especialmente en lo relacionado con lo cuántico y la cosmogonía.  Puede ser contactado en guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com y gran parte de su escritura está disponible a través de su blog en https://guillermocalvo.com/.

The Great Shell Game: Illusion and Delusion — “Pick a Card, Any Card”

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On July 21, 2005, Patrick Lawrence wrote a commentary concerning Gaza, income inequality, Israel and politics entitled “Sun Valley vs. Queensbridge”.  It was published in Consortium News, one of the very few still reliable independent sources of information (Volume 30, Number 202 —Tuesday, July 22, 2025).  To a great extent the article dealt with the cataclysmic victory of Zohran Mamdani in the recent New York City Democratic Party mayoral primary, apparently as unexpected as the purported victory of the mythic David over the equally mythic Goliath over three millennia ago.  The article brought to mind, at least for me, how deluded, confused and manipulated most of the United States’ electorate has always been and the panic which the awakening of even a portion of that electorate is generating among the corrupt elite who has maintained us politically and economically enslaved since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.  A sign I for one view as positive.

To many of my friends, especially among well-educated and intelligent fundamentalist Christians (as well as to many among some of my Jewish friends), Mr. Mamdani poses an existential threat because he is a vocal critic of the abuses of what passes for capitalism (but is in reality kleptocracy) as well as because he vocally opposes the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people orchestrated by American and Israeli Zionists.  He is thus, in their perception, a “communist” anti-Semite.  Those “buzz” terms are essential in order to deflect from factual analysis of his beliefs, beliefs which coincide with the premises underlying the economic and civic philosophy of the “messiah” who my Christian friends claim to worship and adore.  Ironic, but that pavlovian reaction had been carefully crafted using behaviorist psychology long before B.F. Skinner invented that art form.  It is essential in order to secure the counterintuitive support of decent people for indecent realities and for policies that are clearly against their own interests, policies such as universal healthcare and universal education at all levels and a real social safety net, something artfully crafted by the kleptocrats who rule us.

The foregoing has led me to reflect on the strange distortion of terminology that the kleptocratic corporate media has imposed on us.  For example: “antisemitism” now means opposition to mass murder, torture, rape as a political tool, ethnic cleansing, organized mass theft and genocide.  And “communism”?  Well, that now apparently means daring to support mercy, equity, meritocracy, economic justice and the golden rule, but especially, the economic doctrines espoused by that certain Palestinian who, two millennia ago, taught that hoarded wealth was the surest route to perdition.  You may well have heard some of the sayings attributed to him in the Christian gospels, “that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a hoarder of wealth to enter into the kingdom of heaven” and promising that “the meek shall inherit the earth”.  Evidently horrible ideas.

Mr. Lawrence´s article, for some reason, also made me reflect on another hysterical current campaign, one again attributable to the kleptocratic elites who control us, in this case, through their so called Democratic Party (the kleptocracy of course controls both the Democratic and Republican parties).  In this ancillary campaign, massively hypocritical outrage is being expressed at the association of Jeffrey Epstein which took place prior to 2003[1] with Donald Trump, ignoring Mr. Epstein’s similar association with myriads of Democratic Party heroes.  It seems designed specifically to distract from the real scandal associated with the late Mr. Epstein, that being his role as an agent of the Israeli Mossad in which he used and abused under age men and women to obtain compromising material on leaders in politics, industry, commerce, etc., all apparently in order to blackmail them into supporting Israeli goals, a role which led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and millions of innocent people in the Middle East and elsewhere through perpetual wars whose primary goal has been the implementation of the Zionist final solution to the Palestinian problem and the creation of the “Greater Israel” to which Zionists aspire.  Indeed, the Democratic Party’s orchestrated outrage seems designed to deflect consideration of related, recently declassified information concerning probable Mossad involvement in the assassination of United States President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (ironically a Democratic Party hero) as well as concerning likely Mossad involvement with the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  That same campaign, of course, also deflects attention from the genocide that has been perpetrated on the Palestinian people by Israel during the past seventy-five years, genocide affected with the full cooperation of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany as well as with the tacit assistance of the Middle East dictatorships such countries established and maintained following the Second World War.  You know, the war purportedly fought to eliminate the threats to human rights posed by the Nazis and their allies.

Not that Mr. Trump does not deserve serious criticism but, that the foregoing criticism is directed at his amorous misadventures during the past century rather than his current support for Zionist genocide or his increasingly incoherent international economic policies or the betrayal of his promises not to perpetuate the cycle of endless wars and foreign military interventions in which the United States has been engaged during the past century, is not only ludicrous, but is blatantly malevolent.  Then again, the Democratic Party is at least as guilty as Mr. Trump with respect to much of the foregoing so, … birds of a feather, … in every respect.

Caveat: 

  • I am not a fan of Mr. Trump, who, for personal reasons, I dislike. 
  • I am not a believer in any organized religion and find the Abrahamic religions especially disturbing and, inter se, incoherent.  Especially given that of the three Abrahamic branches, Islam is the most reviled while being the closest to both of the others.  Indeed, it is the bridge between them. 
  • I am bitterly opposed to most political parties, both in the United States and abroad, finding that they are the embodiment of the “factionalism” rather than statesmanship that, in the Federalist Papers, James Madison promised would not occur. 
  • As a historian, I am not a respecter of the collection of fallacies peddled to all of us as history but designed, not to elucidate, but to keep us deluded. 

As I write this I am completing my seventy-ninth year on our planet, most of them depressed by how consistently we devolve into the people we would least like to see staring back at us from our mirrors.  Nonetheless, it seems that hope is not yet altogether extinguished, especially when people like Mr. Mamdani continue to appear from time to time, although admittedly, usually only briefly and all too often all to quickly converted into that against which they once railed.

But, back to Mr. Mamdani who has become the focus of hate, fear and despair from followers of Mr. Trump and especially from traditionalists in the Democratic Party.  He is, at least for now, perhaps a sign that, paraphrasing the articulate albeit hypocritical Abraham Lincoln:

“Perhaps the kleptocracy cannot fool all of us all of the time.”

Fortunately for the kleptocracy, because he is a naturalized rather than native born United States citizen, Mr. Mamdani can never become president.  But, then again, perhaps sometime soon, someone who shares his values will appear on the national stage and, unlike Mr. Trump, will not so quickly betray the principles he promised to sustain.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] Mr. Trump purportedly ended his fifteen-year friendship with Mr. Epstein that year, barring him from Mar o Lago because of an incident involving unwanted advances towards the fourteen-year-old daughter of another of Mr. Trump’s acquaintances.

The Ides of July, 2025, an All Too Personal Introspection

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The Kalends and Nones have passed and now the Ides have arrived.  In a week, I’ll start the last voyage around our star, Sol, of the eighth decade of my life on Terra.  A lot has been crammed into those almost seventy-nine years, much of it difficult, some unpleasant, too much perfidious, but I’ve seem to have somehow managed to cope with it all and, a great deal has been undeservedly positive, amazingly so.

It appears, at least to others, that I’m unusually healthy for someone almost seventy-nine years old, unusually active with unusual stamina.  I still play tennis and when I do (three times a week), it’s for at least two hours, sometimes followed by an hour’s walk.  And my hair, though streaked with silver is both plentiful and still dark.  After a long life in the United States, I’m back where I started, in a celestial city high in the central range of the Colombian Andes, living on the tenth floor of a large and comfortable apartment only a few miles from where I first entered this world.  Still, slowly and intermittently, strange aches are making an appearance and, in addition, strange observations are occurring to me such as that “Jack Bunny” (or perhaps “Bugs Benny”) would be a fusion of Jack Benny and Bugs Bunny, and would make an awesome character: as “frugal” as he was witty and droll while concurrently being penurious and ever so lightly pernicious.  I confess that I loved them both although those who remember them tend to be fewer every year.

I’ve succeeded in many things, many of them unexpected.  I’ve taught American History and Problems of American Democracy, among many other things, to citizens of the United States, observing to myself the irony involved in that being done by someone who started life as a young boy from Manizales and that, as a serious historian and researcher, I’ve found that, more often than not, what I taught as a young historian was utterly false.  Indeed, while many feel we’ve recently entered the post truth era, to me, it seems that we as a people have been there since we invented language.  Not something of which I am proud although I’m proud to now understand that history has little to do with reality but a great deal to do with ever-present propaganda, and that “news” reporting has a lot to do with that.  It’s not for nothing that journalism’s most prestigious awards are named after Joseph Pulitzer, an entrepreneur who felt that fiction, presented as news, was an extremely profitable art form and, in that, he was not the first.  Not by far.  Especially in the Anglo-Saxon mythos bequeathed to the United States by the United Kingdom.

Since the early 1970’s I’ve been focused on issues involving the blatant hypocrisy with respect to the two “world” wars of the twentieth century and the related so called “cold war”, as well as on the myriad invasions of foreign countries by the United States to enforce a colonialist economic system deceptively labeled capitalism, amazed at to how easy it’s always been in systems falsely labeled as “democracies” to deceive the populace into accepting what should be unacceptable.  Today, that is especially obvious as the purported victims of the Nazi “Holocaust” engage in a holocaust of their own, one against the Palestinian people, a holocaust fully supported by the United States, the United Kingdom and their NATO allies, a “project involving attempts to implement the Zionist goal of a “Greater Israel” throughout the Middle East and I have consequently come to suspect that too many of the lives lost on every side of most of the conflicts since the dawn of the twentieth century in one way or another involve that hideous Zionist project.  As a young man I was horrified by the Nazi Holocaust and reflected a great deal on what I would have done to protect its victims, had I been born a few decades earlier than my birth in 1946.  After a good deal of reflection I naively concluded that it would have been my ethical and moral responsibility to have done everything in my power to save as many of the victims as possible.  Well now that responsibility is squarely on my shoulders, on our collective shoulders but, no matter how hard those of us who seek justice, equity and peace try, our efforts are nullified by the worst among us and I am coming to understand how the German people, previously among the most moral, ethical and socially conscious people in Europe, indeed, the ones who most fairly treated Europe’s Jews, so permitted the perversion of their values.  It seems, as the old refrain goes, “the more things change the more they stay the same”.  What a depressing realization.  Perhaps that realization is what metaphorically led the Hebrew Archangel Hêl él (inappropriately identified with the Roman god Lucifer) to futilely rebel against the vicious YHWH.

In addition to history I’ve taught comparative mythologies and comparative religions, comparative politics, comparative political systems and comparative constitutions; I’ve also taught democratic theory, international law, human rights law, constitutional law and the history of political ideas.  And I’ve written and lectured as a political analyst and commentator about United States and Colombian politics and about international affairs, about justice and injustice and about the futility of the antithesis of Kant’s perpetual peace.  For a while, I practiced law in New York and then in Florida, admittedly not all that successfully, and I’ve engaged in political consulting devising unusual solutions to mundane problems.  Notwithstanding the foregoing, I’ve not really succeeded in those things that most mattered to me, in my personal relations, although, during the past five years I seem to have finally experienced domestic bliss.  Hopefully, this time is the charm.  I’ve lived with too many women, too many of whom I’ve hurt although, in at least a few instances, failed relationships have matured into warm friendships.  And, in at least one case, a special relationship has lasted for more than six decades.

Professionally I’ve enjoyed impressive successes and devastating failures although in neither case were the results deserved, not really.  I started my professional career after graduating from both the Eastern Military Academy (where I also taught) and the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, firmly convinced that our government was beneficent and that the sacrifices it demanded of our best and brightest were really for the common good in a quest for justice, equity and peace.  Unfortunately, as I eventually discovered, I could not have been more wrong.  I found that out when, being true to the honor systems in which I’d been raised, I sought to expose government corruption only to find that corruption is the rule and that it does not take kindly to being exposed.  

You know, naiveté, when it impacts others, is as much a problem as is corruption.  Still, on reflection, my setbacks are the things that most improved me as a human being, the experiences that evoked wisdom and growth and an understanding of the reality in which we live and brought me closer to becoming the person I always hoped I would be: a person focused on others, on justice and equity and fair play, on compassion rather than on conspicuous consumption (although the gravitational well of conspicuous consumption still exercises a strong draw on my fantasies).  In those fantasies I’d be immensely wealthy but dedicated to philanthropy, to providing shelter and food for the homeless, education and healthcare for all, and the opportunity for everyone to attain everything of which they are capable, I would manage to assure a world free of violence and to minimize suffering, although I would still live more than just comfortably.  I wonder how many of today’s greediest billionaires once shared similar fantasies.

In reality though, my greatest fantasy has always been to return to the past and to correct my errors, albeit a return preserving everything I’ve ever learned.  Not at all likely.  An unrealizable chance to have been a better son and a better brother and a better husband and a better father and a better friend and a better teacher and a better lawyer, but not to have been quite so naïve or so trusting, or, with women, not to have so often been so cavalier.  Still, I seem to have learned from my mistakes and while still far from the person I’d like to see looking back at me in the mirror, I’m now perhaps the best version of myself that I’ve ever been, and that’s something not all of us achieve as the years grow heavier on our shoulders.

I’ve written quite a bit during the past two decades since the demise of my marriage to the mother of my three sons and among the things I’ve written is that, if there’s a karmic afterlife along Abrahamic lines, something in which I do not believe, then in order to attain a paradisiacal afterlife, two things would seem necessary (and perhaps only two things), two things somehow echoing a portion of what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer: first, to have forgiven everyone who has wronged me or caused me harm, intentionally or not, and second, to have received sincere forgiveness from everyone who I’ve harmed in any way, intentionally or not.  Unfortunately, I fear I would fail in both respects.  Most of us, unfortunately, would which is why, if a heaven and hell exist, heaven would be tiny and hell enormous.

My atonement for such failure, in another nightmarish fantasy, would be to be left as the final guardian of the omniverse, to live on and on, alone, incorporating everything that ever was or ever would be, reliving it from the perspective of every being that had ever been or ever would be, over and over again, but absolutely alone, the only remnant of everything that had ever been or would ever be, but without the capacity to attain insanity.  To become infinitely bored and alone.  Totally and completely alone.

Yuck!

I sometimes speculate that, if the evil Abrahamic deity in fact existed, something I cannot believe, an experience similar to the afterlife I’ve just described had turned it into the vicious deity reflected in the Tanakh, the one against whom Hêl él rebelled, the one who revels in genocide and demands ritual castration of its male followers and seems to enjoy deceit and trickery and the blood of sacrificed animals and murdered human beings as well.  And if that were the case, I wonder how it escaped the punishment that turned it into what it became, speculating that perhaps the creation in which we find ourselves is just its nightmarish fantasy.  But then I wonder if it’s all my own nightmarish fantasy and I wonder if perhaps I’m not already serving my sentence as the final guardian of the omniverse.

I think not.  I certainly hope not.

I believe that I still have quite a while to live.  That’s something I’ve promised my much younger wife, my very special wife, my wife who seems the embodiment of everything positive, a source of beneficence to everyone with whom she comes into contact, the woman who somehow or other found me and seems determined to love me and even to admire me. To trust me and to have faith in me.  And that has made me a better person than I’ve ever been before even if it’s a lot to even try live up to.

What a strange life my life has been.  Like Pablo Neruda’s, although not as nobly, my life has been much too full and with quite a bit of time still apparently left.  Which leads me to wonder just who and what I am and what my purpose in having lived has been, and what purposes still remain to be fulfilled.

Anyway, ….

Seventy-eight bottles of beer on the wall, seventy eight bottles of beer … and still counting.  As a seventy-ninth bottle seems about to arrive.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. 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/.

If Only “the Times Were Really A’ Changing”

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On June 28, 2025, Christian Paz published an article on Vox.com entitled “The Democratic Party is ripe for a takeover”.  Apparently, the primary victory of Zohran Mamdani is the catalyst, or the symptom, or something.  Except for the author’s apparent Trump derangement syndrome in which the Democratic Party’s sole goal should be to confront Mr. Trump, a situation historically reminiscent of the old Whig party’s focus on opposing Andrew Jackson, the article posits interesting possibilities, although possibilities in which I don’t believe or rather, possibilities I don’t believe are likely.

It is a positive that at least in the city of New York so many voters are apparently rejecting the calcified and corrupt leadership of the Democratic Party, a leadership without real ideals other than the attainment and maintenance of power in order to syphon off the country’s wealth to fund perpetual wars in a quest for hegemony, albeit under the control of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  But the Democratic Party is so tainted by historical sins and so cancer ridden with corruption that a Tea Party-like revolution ought not to save it, even if it could.  The dust bins of history have been all too empty for too much time.  Rather, as an apparent majority of the United States electorate frequently acknowledges (although it never does anything about it), what real liberals and real progressives and real leftists trapped in the quicksand that characterizes the Democratic Party need is a new political party of their own, one independent from AIPAC, the Deep State, the billionaire class and the forever war quest for hegemony that characterizes both the Democratic Party and most of the GOP.  A political party that really prioritizes the needs and aspirations of its members, the reality being that the United States political system is a factionalist collective rather than a grouping of altruistic political movements concerned with the common good and the general welfare.

The current Democratic Party, at least since 1992, has been reactive rather than proactive, with faux political goals and slogans echoed by a captive corporate press successfully enough to delude the more noble elements of its membership.  It went from GOP lite in the Clinton era, to a political hodgepodge during the Obama era more thoroughly controlled by the Deep State (an informal coalition comprised of unelected bureaucrats and judges) than is the GOP, amazing as that may seem.  And today, its principle goal is to oppose Donald Trump, no matter what he does, unless it aligns with AIPAC goals, but then again, AIPAC virtually owns both the Democratic and Republican parties.  And if opposition to Mr. Trump by any means, legal or not, has become the Democratic Party’s fixation, it is failing in that goal.  Failing dismally, and floundering.

That echoes what happened to the Whigs with respect to their hatred of Andrew Jackson during the mid-nineteenth century, when irate voters with specifically defined goals and ideals abandoned both the Whigs and the Democrats to found the Republican Party, although it too was eventually taken over by the values it was created to reject. 

The GOP too, like the Andrew Jackson controlled Democratic Party of the same mid-nineteenth century, has shifted its axis and threatens to splinter into various segments: one deemed traditionalist which tends to echo the current Democratic Party’s devotion to the Deep State and opposition to Mr. Trump;  a wing that seems to worship President Trump the way Democrats once worshipped President Jackson; and a libertarian wing that rejects forever wars, foreign intervention and the abandonment of the liberty purportedly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.  That libertarian wing would also do well to strike out on its own as an independent political party guided by real ideals and real goals, while the traditionalist wing should just meld with the current leadership of the Democratic Party, a leadership seemingly in conflict with a substantial number of younger Democrats who, according to Mr. Paz (cool name, it means peace in Spanish) seem to be rebelling.

The electorate in general appears to be angry and dissatisfied but has been manipulated and confused by false news and the false narrative that masquerades as history so that its ability to make electoral decisions has become nonexistent.  We have been led to confuse the essential political concepts of democracy, liberty and pluralism because confusing them was essential for the small elite who rule us to attain and maintain political and economic power, not quite bleeding us dry, rather, like intelligent vampires, they understand that their victims, those who provide their sustenance, must be maintained at least barely alive.  Barely alive but without realizing their condition or who is to blame, being led to believe that they actually have a voice in their own affairs through a system that sort of smells like a meld of the adversative concepts of democracy, liberty and pluralism, a useful illusion.  A system that argues that peace can only be attained through perpetual war and prosperity through the diversion of taxpayers assets to defense contractors and their cronies.  That Christian values are now premised on acceptance of genocide and ethnic cleansing as well as capital punishment.  Somewhere, George Orwell weeps.

Democracy is the rule of a majority (more than 50%), not a plurality, and it does not guarantee that decisions will be correct, or just or equitable.  Liberty is a diametrically opposed concept that insists that no matter what a majority decides, or even what everybody else decides, every individual has sovereign and autonomous inherent rights that cannot be curtailed.  And pluralism?  That too is an antidemocratic concept but one involving the right of collectives to be different and to have a say in their affairs notwithstanding majoritarian opinions.  All three of those contradictory concepts are desirable so constitutions, in part, or at least in theory, exist to reconcile and prioritize them into some sort of workable political and legal system.  Unfortunately, like the quest for a unified field theory in physics, it has always been a utopian ideal distorted and manipulated by elites, except that physicists by and large tend to acknowledge that their goal has not been attained, while most of the electorate everywhere in our planet believes that the particular political systems through which they are ruled are really theirs and that their leaders have their best interests at heart, after all, in most countries, it was purportedly that electorate who selected them.

That is certainly true in the United States and has been true for most of its history.  For most of its history, the United States political system has seemed like a duopoly (a two party dictatorship) but rather, has always been a vehicle for the concentration of wealth and power by an elite few, today, not even an elite few in the United States but sixteen families that effectively rule the world and are responsible for almost all of the world’s poverty and for all of the world’s war and for all of the world’s disparity.

With reference to the surprise victory of Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic Party’s recent New York City mayoral primary, many Democratic Party leaders as well as most people who identify with the GOP are suffering AIPAC sponsored apoplexy because Mr. Mamdani is a Muslim with parental roots in Africa and opposes Zionism and genocide and ethnic cleansing and champions the working class and the downtrodden masses described in Emma Lazarus’ poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty and thus, he must be a godless communist, although he identifies as a democratic socialist as did Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, and as does Noam Chomsky today.  And the opposition of the moneyed classes to Mr. Mamdani led by AIPAC may well result in his defeat in the general election, whether by the opponents he just defeated running as independents or even by a Republican if the GOP proves Machiavellian enough to select a moderate candidate.  And perhaps the politics as usual crowd in both the Democratic Party and the GOP who Mr. Mamdani’s success has mortified have “nothing to fear but fear itself”.  But it seems to me a positive sign that in the city that boasts the largest Jewish population of any city in the world, a significant portion of that religious group (it’s not really an ethnicity and certainly not a race) may have taken up the antizionist slogan “not in our names” and rejected the distortion of Judaism marketed by AIPAC and its Israeli masters and voted their consciences and in favor of real classical Judaic values and traditions which, perhaps ironically, it is Mr. Mamdani who represents.  Or perhaps it’s not ironic.  The reality is that no religion is closer to real classical Judaism in all respects (except perhaps in the respect that it renders to that certain Jewish Nazarene), than is Islam.

Because of the foregoing, according to Mr. Paz and other optimists, it sort of smells a bit like the “times may be a’ changing”, at least in the desperate Democratic Party, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. 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/.

Initial Reflections on Pope Leo XIV

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Raining on parades is not something of which I’m fond, especially given how many parades I participated in during my youth while a cadet, first at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York, and then at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, which is not to say that I and my fellow cadets were not, at times, very grateful for rain that resulted in cancellation of weekly parades permitting us to enjoy additional leave time.  Today, however, as I reflect on the passing of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis I, and of Jose Mujica several weeks later, I find myself doing just that, although perhaps it’s just tears cascading I hear.  That we were privileged to share this world with two souls as purely beneficent as theirs has been an amazing blessing.

Following Francis I will not be an easy task, it may well prove extremely challenging as there is little hope of equaling his charismatic humility and the aura of human decency he generated.  It is unlikely that Robert Francis Prevost will follow the examples of humility and personal frugality that Jorge Mario Bergoglio set, both before and after he attained the papacy.  It is interesting, in a very sad manner, to note with profound regret that we lost both Pope Francis and his political homolog, Jose Mujica, the late, former president of Uruguay, within several weeks of each other.  That is an immense degree of decency lost in a very brief period, especially when human decency and humility among those who currently lead us is in such short supply.

My first impression of the new Pope was not positive but I admit that after Francis probably no one would have seemed comparatively positive to me, at least at first blush.  However, I fear that my unfair initial reaction may unfortunately have been instinctively and cognitively perceptive, especially after rumors that pressure to select Cardinal Prevost were exerted, who knows how, by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and by neoliberal and neoconservative elements in a number of governments, especially that of the United States.  But I guess it would be extremely naïve in a professional political analyst to believe that the election of a new pope would be free of geopolitical pressure from many sides.  Especially if one has studied papal history.

Cardinal Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, has aspects that should appeal to me emotionally.  He is a Peruvian as well as a United States citizen, the son of Louis Marius Prevost of French and Italian descent and of Mildred Martínez of Spanish descent and it appears that his maternal grandparents, Joseph Martinez, born in Haiti, and Louise Baquié, a Creole a native of New Orleans, were partially of African descent.  Like the new Pope, I’m also a dual national, having been born a citizen of the Republic of Colombia and naturalized many decades ago as a citizen of the United States of America.  And I share at least the Pope’s Spanish and French roots.  But for some reason, the ethnicity and dual citizenship that we share did not impact me in the way that Pope Francis’ Argentinian birth did.  It should have.  Instead, the fact that he is a United States native seems a double edged sword.  He is viewed with pride by United States’ citizens as the first United States born Pope but with suspicion by many throughout the world, fearful, as noted above, that his election was impacted by United States and especially, Israeli pressure.  Something that is given at least some credence if one reads between the lines of some of his public statements involving international affairs, both before and after he became Pontiff.

Still, he is unlikely to be as Deep State oriented as were his predecessors, John Paul or Benedict XVI, but he is also unlikely to be as progressive or humble as Francis, something his decision to reside in the Papal Palace at Castle Gandolfo eschewed by Francis makes clear.  However, as in the case of Supreme Court justices in the United States, the office frequently changes the holder and perhaps, rather than a disappointment (to me) he will prove to be an inspiration.

Only time will tell. 

The only certainty is that my perceptions are emotional, intuitive and not factually based although, like billions of others, I’ve sought for whatever facts I can find but, other than glowingly positive reports concerning his priesthood in Peru, reports of the kind frequently generated by public relations specialists rather than by historians, not much that rings true to me seems available.  Perhaps as I’ve matured, I’ve become a bit too cynical.

I certainly hope so.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. 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/.

Reflections on an Easter Sunday

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While I am admittedly not a believer in the divinity of any being born of a human woman, or perhaps, of any divinity at all, I am not a “non”-believer, acknowledging that anything is possible and that I have yet to discern the truth, though I have searched for it during eight decades so far.  Nonetheless, I have had a lifelong fascination with the Palestinian born in Nazareth whose personal name was probably Yešu and who would perhaps be most non-confrontationally referred to as Yešu of Nazareth, although he was purportedly born in Bethlehem, both Palestinian villages. 

I have read a great deal about him, not only through biblical sources but also the Jewish response to the Christian Gospels, a series of alternative versions collectively referred to as the Toledot Yeshu, and I have written and published a bit on the subject which draws me to it as a means of seeking to understand myself and ourselves and perhaps, even the concept of divinity. 

Today is a confluence of days holy to major branches of Christianity, the Orthodox, the Catholic, the Protestant and others, as well as part of a season sacred to Jews, a somewhat rare confluence, and it is taking place during the Zionist genocide of the Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine thus, at least to me, it is a day not for joyous celebration of a resurrection but of sad reflection on human nature, and on how disappointed in us Yešu the Nazarene would be, as hypocrisy and murder and mayhem have become the norm, although it may well be probable that such has always been the case.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. 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/.

Brief Reflections on the Ides of March in 44 BCE almost 2069 Years Later

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The Ides of March, again, sort of.  

But how long has it actually been since that fateful 15th of March in the year 44 before the dawn of what we, for some reason, refer to as the Common Era? 

Actually, because of changes in the nature of our calendar, the 2069th anniversary of the assassination of Gaivs Ivlivs Caesar on the Ides of March in 44 BCE, as calculated under the Julian calendar adopted the year prior to Caesar’s death, would today yet be almost two weeks away, on the 28th of March in our current Eurocentric calendar. 

A tidbit to be sure but perhaps interesting given the nature of our world today, a confusing complex of false history and false news with just enough verisimilitude to make it sufficiently credible to aid in our perpetual manipulation.

Interesting also given how many among our polarized citizenry are reflecting favorably on the events of that day, without considering its consequences.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. 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/.

Perniciously Concupiscent Parodies, Volume One

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Biggus Dickus, a character eventually revealed (albeit tangentially) in Monty Python’s documentary on the Life of Brian (which dealt with purported events during the first century of the Common Era), may or may not have involved a parody of the infamous Roman Casanova-wanna-be, Primus Phalux Maximus Quintus (who may or may not have actually existed), and who if he did exist (improbable but one never knows), but for temporal improbabilities, may or may not have been the secret hidden triplet of Publius Clodius Pulcher, the third member of which was the audaciously beautiful, sensuous and libidinous Clodia Metelli, sometimes known as Quadrantaria, of whom the Roman eroticist poet Gaius Valerius Catullus longingly wrote dramatically ambivalent vignettes comprised in equal parts of love, despair and deprecation.  At least that might have been the lead story in the media in the late Roman Republic, circa sixty years before the Common Era, had its journalistic ethics born a resemblance to that of today’s maliciously creative corporate media, which, come to think of it, it may well have, both having prioritized creative writing.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. 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/.

Thoughts on a Winter’s Day High in the Central Range of the Colombian Andes in a City in the Sky in early 2025

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I sometimes listen to Paul Simon’s album Graceland when I’m making my bed and arranging my bedroom for the day ahead.  I tend to dance exuberantly (if not well) as I do but, concurrently, I also reflect on the context in which that album was developed and recorded.  And that invariably leads me to consider much more serious issues, and it gives me hope, even in today’s world where things seem so dark, and where evil and injustice and hypocrisy rule.

The album was contextually set in the Republic of South Africa just before it transitioned from a racist, nuclear powered apartheid state into one slowly evolving towards some sort of equity and harmony and justice, still only goals with ups and downs as though a roller coaster was involved, but for one amazing instant in time, an instant impacted in part by that album, South Africa became the shining beacon on a Hill that Ronald Reagan mistook for the country he led.  And that light, that spark, had a name and a history and a profundity hard to match, although other contemporaries who, to some extent shared the trials and tribulations involved, among them, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Muhamad Ali, came close. 

That catalytic shining light involved was the late Nelson Mandela who, after having suffered decades long attempts to humiliate and destroy him by the white South African oligarchs became not only a leader but a unifying symbol in his heterogeneous, multiracial society, the only society to give up both its racist traditions and nuclear armaments voluntarily, and it was white leaders among the white oppressors who, somehow or other, finding a moral compass or perhaps, just coming to their senses, voluntarily albeit grudgingly surrendered their hold on power.  A white society to an extent redeemed, more so certainly than the United States after its Civil War, an event historically distorted and manipulated for political ends having nothing to do with liberation of the Africans and African descendants so long held in bondage, slaves and their descendants who have, unfortunately, whether or not they realize it, merely exchanged one form of involuntary servitude for another.

Today, of course, an evil much worse than that of South Africa’s former masters dominates the Middle East with an even worse form of apartheid, one implemented through genocide and theft and rape and plunder, through calumny and deceit, one arguably even worse than that of the Nazis during the end of the Second World War, and that evil is made possible by hypocrites who claim to be defenders of liberty, justice and human rights from their safe bases in Europe and North America, the places where goods and services looted for centuries from the Global South are hoarded; the world against which Eric Arthur Blair warned us in 1948, a terrible year for justice and truth and equity, the year in which Zionism began its imitation of the Huns and the Visigoths and the hordes of Genghis the Khan.  “Graceland”, an album aptly named but perhaps not after Elvis Presley’s mansion but rather, aspirationally, perhaps reflecting on how a traumatized land and its traumatized indigenous population might one day attain a semblance of grace, of freedom, perhaps even a semblance of justice even if such aspirations are not yet realities.  Unfortunately, Israel’s Zionists do not seem likely to imitate South Africa’s white leaders and revert to the Jewish values, ethics and morals they purport to represent.  Rather, they seek to emulate European colonists in North America and Africa and Latin America and Southeast Asia who, in the name of a confused deity (at best), subjugated and virtually eliminated the indigenous populations who for millennia had peacefully occupied the territory European “settlers” coveted and to which they felt divinely entitled, notwithstanding the Decalogue’s (which they claim to hold sacred) Tenth Commandment.

My bed is now made, my bedroom is now attractively ordered, my exuberant dance is now done.  At least until the morrow.  I have now also read the daily news and reflect as I read about devastated Palestinians returning to their destroyed homes and homeland mourning their dead and attempting to care for their maimed and injured, at least for a few days, maybe even a few weeks.  And from afar, I wonder about what the future will bring now that the genocidal Biden administration is hopefully just a terrible part of recent history and a new era is promised.  Most probably a strange and incoherent era full of inequity and injustice, albeit perhaps not as evil as the dark days that purportedly ended on January 20, 2025.  Who can tell?  After all, even in our world miracles sometimes take place.  Miracles such as the one that took place when Nelson Mandela crossed that bridge after his liberation from decades of imprisonment to assume a path towards a future like the one we are all so consistently promised.  Like the future that Martin Luther King, Jr. perceived just before he was assassinated.  Like the one Mohandas Gandhi also saw for his people, Hindu and Muslim alike, before an assassin’s bullet ended his life.  Like the future of which so many Palestinian leaders murdered by Israel’s purported defense forces during the years since 1948 also dreamed.  Like the one in which murdered Palestinian children perhaps still believed as their limbs were sundered and their skulls were shattered by Israelis using armaments gifted to them by United States, British and German taxpayers, we among them.

Times like ours have long led me, at best an agnostic, to hope that whether or not a Heaven exists, there’s a Hell, one even more horrible than the one imagined by Dante Alighieri, even as I recognize that such an aspiration betrays my belief in the importance of empathy and understanding and forgiveness, one to which I aspire in emulation of someone in whom I don’t quite believe but who fascinates me and who I love and respect, fictional though he may be, at least in the guise presented to us: that gentle Palestinian from Bethlehem or Nazareth who purportedly lived two millennia ago and whose name, Yešu, is universally mispronounced and coupled with a sort of grammatical verbal, an adjective converted into a noun, a Greek term he never considered his own.

2025, like so many others, I wonder what it will bring, some of us hoping for the best, albeit with serious doubts, while others, not only hope for the worst but feel duty bound to do all they can to assure that the next four years will be terrible so that those they follow and support can regain power, the price being no object.  Lemmings come to mind and I wonder what it feels like to float in the air for a few instances before one crashes into the hard surface of a cold sea.  It must at least be interesting given how many of us continuously follow such course.

So, about Paul Simon, I wonder what he thinks about Zionism and Palestine and Palestinians.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. 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/.

Dreams of Freedom on an Early Winter’s Day

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I’ve been listening to the beautiful Scottish Anthem, Highland Cathedral lately.  Almost compulsively so.  I’m very supportive of the rights of subjugated peoples, rights to the independence purportedly guaranteed as a result of the first war to end all wars, the one we now know, after its abject failure as World War I and, to me, the Scotts are an enigma.  Brutally subjugated by the English, they morphed into English tools for the subjugation of others including the attempted subjugations of residents of thirteen of England’s North American colonists, whole peoples throughout the world including the Indian subcontinent, Asia and Africa.  As an aside, I wonder why India is a subcontinent while Europe is a continent when, in reality, both are parts of Asia. 

Still, many Scotts are awakening and discarding the hypocrisy inherent in their subjugation.  Bagpipe hymns like Highland Cathedral and Scotland the Brave bring to mind the aspiration for freedom, independence and self-expression of legendary Scottish folk heroes like Robert the Bruce, John Balliol, David II and even he who was referred to as Bonny Prince Charley, the original Charles III.  Today, of course, they would be joined by numerous Palestinian martyrs.

Perhaps many of today’s Scotts are being shamed by the courage of the Palestinian people in the face of genocide, ethnic cleansing and the theft of their country by European invaders.  Scottish independence.  Now wouldn’t that be something.  And perhaps a United Ireland.  And, maybe even a free Wales.  And, of course, a Free Palestine. 

Highland Cathedral, perhaps an anthem for the subjugated everywhere. 

No wonder it resonates so in my soul.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; 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. 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/.