Category Archives: Political

Irony by the Dawn’s Early Light

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Many decades ago, actually, in 1984, a film, Red Dawn[1] was released.  It was directed by John Milius from a screenplay he co-wrote with Kevin Reynolds and starred Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey with supporting roles played by Ben Johnson, Darren Dalton, Harry Dean Stanton, Ron O’Neal, William Smith and Powers Boothe.  The film impacted me a great deal in a number of different ways.  It instilled a great deal of empathy in me for people I’d been taught to view as uncivilized terrorists, for people I’d been taught I should despise and hate and who were subhumans not entitled to human rights (even though none were represented, even indirectly, in the film).  But it also made me wonder how the United States citizenry would actually react were the United States ever to be successfully invaded and conquered by a foreign government.  Little did I know at the time that such conquest had already taken place, albeit imperceptibly.

The film dealt with a takeover of the United States by foreign communist forces, Soviets and Cubans as I recall, acting under a United Nations mandate during a major internal crisis, and of the refusal of a small segment of United States civil society to accept foreign domination, even if it was purportedly well intentioned.  The film, as history has demonstrated, was inversely prescient as well as revealing.  The roles, in reality, are and have always been the obverse of reality where it is the United States and its allies that have been and are the invaders and occupiers and looters virtually everywhere.  Something the United States inherited from the British and the French.

The emotional irony involves the profoundly empathic justification generated by the film for the resistance, one with which United States’ citizens viewing the film emotionally bond not realizing that such resistance mirrors resistance against United States colonialism and imperialism all over the world.  Che Guevara, of course, comes to mind but so do the members of Al Qaeda and Isis who resisted the US conquests in the Middle East, and Hamas and Hezbollah in Palestine, and today’s Iranians, and the Cubans and Nicaraguans who have been resisting the US for more than half a century.  And Chileans in 1973, and Argentinians in the 1970’s and today, Panamanians, and Grenadians, and Haitians, and Yemenis, and Libyans, and Syrians, etc., etc., etc.

In today’s context, internally, given the current situation within the current United States, the film leads has led me to reflect on how far from reality John Milius and Kevin Reynolds strayed when they wrote the screenplay given that current history exposes a United States occupied and looted by Fifth Columnist[2] “Israel Firsters”, bought and paid for by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (“AIPAC”), a United States whose citizens, for the most part, be they politically Democrats or Republicans, accept domination by (rather than resist) a tiny foreign power that uses money to fuel its occupation instead of bombs and bullets (those are reserved for use elsewhere), a situation where many (and at the federal level, most) United States elected officials receive the bulk of their income “sort of” from abroad. Where elected officials in many instances receive many times their official salaries in the form of political contributions but also in the form of highly paid post-retirement consultancies and stipends, from AIPAC and its billionaire allies.  My use of the phrase “sort of” reflects the irony (and irony is an oft repeated term in this article) that the funds used to make such payments (some would refer to them as bribes) come indirectly through a devious route from the pockets of United States tax payers whose taxes then to Israel and the “defense” industry (against which Ike, in his wisdom, once warned us[3]) and through them to select investors who then contribute a portion of their “winnings” to AIPAC, which then recirculates a portion of them (everyone needs a bite of the proverbial apple) to the servile “civil servants” who authorized their misdirection in the first place.  Sounds a lot like a shell game doesn’t it?  But a shell game with consequences far worse than mere small time peculation. 

Even worse perhaps, at least in the context of the film’s premises, many active and retired United States military and police personnel wholeheartedly support the looting of the United States and the commission of genocide, ethnic cleansing and wars of conquest, at the expense of United States tax payers, violating every principle they purportedly hold dear, applauding the wholesale murder of journalists and medical personnel and educators as well as the wholesale slaughter of women and children.  It is even worse from my perspective because some of them have been my classmates and are people I have long loved and admired and believed to be profoundly honorable as well as patriotic.

It makes me wonder whether the film was an intentional satire ridiculing who the populace of the United States thought they were.  After all, the United States, building on the framework initiated by Woodrow Wilson in Hollywood during the purported war to end all wars (with George Creel as his handyman), has always appropriated the heroism of others as its own. Witness the perception in the United States that it was primarily responsible for victories in World Wars One and Two when the reality was far, far different[4].  Or the purported bravery of United States aviators murdering thousands of civilians from miles in the sky or safely ensconced in videogame style bunkers as they rain down death on civilians below.  Those are not mirrors into which we enjoy gazing.  We prefer the illusory Hollywood spectacles where United States’ Davids destroy foreign Goliaths against impossible odds.

Again, ironically (that word again), the United States utterly corrupt leaders and brave but naïve military men and women are standing by and indeed assisting in the looting of their three-hundred-and-fifty-million co-citizens by the most evil selfish and depraved ten million people the world has ever known.  So while those ten million enjoy free health care, free education, subsidized housing and alimentation and unbounded military weaponry, all paid for by overworked and underpaid United States taxpayers, none of those benefits exist at home.  Horrors!!!  That would be socialism.  But apparently, paying for socialist programs is fine as long as we are not tainted by benefitting from them.

Irony indeed reigns. 

All of the foregoing is massively supported in the United States by Christian Zionists cheering on the end of the world so that Jesus can return and consign those ten million who they currently hail and support as well as many innocent Jews to perdition, … after Jesus returns. 

How sick is that?

Israeli Zionists know that and scoff.  How can a Jesus consigned to boil in pools of feces in the Hell to which Zionists are sure he’s been consigned ever return at all?  He’s as securely disabled as are the tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of Muslims that Zionists have been able to “eliminate” since the blessed year of 1948.  1948; ironically (again), the year when Eric Arthur Blair, writing as George Orwell, first published his seminal dystopian novel, 1984.

So, “Red Dawn”. 

Enlightening in a sick way to the few who can see and who care about morals and justice and equity and peace but, fortunately for the powers that be, those few are an insignificant lot, more like gnats, troublesome but not all that dangerous thanks to the blinded mases who keep cheering for their captors and for the Fifth Columnists who lead and purportedly protect them.  “Rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air by the dawn’s early light” a nice turn of phrase by a vehement supporter of slavery, one that all citizens of the United States, even the descendants of former slaves, are expected to revere.  But nowadays we can safely note that they’re our bombs and our rockets raining down on others (through our “generosity”) as they once purportedly rained down on Fort McHenry in Baltimore’s harbor.

In the film, one aspect touched me was when Ron O’Neil, playing the role of Cuban Colonel Ernesto Bella, spared captured United States’ “freedom fighters”, having become disgusted by his senseless role in the subjugation of others.  A role not echoed by very many United States “patriots” today.  But one can hope.  One can hope that at some point our military, if not our political leaders, will come to their senses and awake from the somnambulant nightmare in which they’ve permitted not only our country but our world to be placed.

That Red Dawn was released in “1984”, the year when Eric Arthur Blair predicted that our world would have attained its current form may have been deliberate, but probably was not.

It should have been though.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

[1] See superficial description of the film on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn.

[2] See description of Fifth Columnists on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column

[3] “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  President Dwight David Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (January 17, 1961), at https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address.

[4] The casualties suffered by the major participants in World Wars One and Two were as follows:  The Soviet Union/Russia suffered the highest losses in World War Two (22–27 million) and 2 million deaths in World War One.  China experienced 20 million deaths in World War Two, mainly civilians due to Japanese occupation.  Germany suffered about 5.5 million military deaths in World War Two and roughly 2.7 million in World War One.  The United Kingdom lost only 383,600 deaths in World War Two but 886,000 in World War One.  On the other hand, the United States only lost 416,800 deaths in World War Two and 116,000 deaths in World War One.

On the Nature and Malfunctioning of Constitutions

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Constitutions are inherently conservative antidemocratic instruments, attempts by the polity of a given time to control the decisions and practices of their progeny.  At their best, they are conservative in the sense, not of the policies they promote but rather, in the sense that they reject the opinions of any given period as absolute, instead insisting that they reflect the past (i.e., tradition), the present (seeking resolution to current tensions) and the future, although with reference to the future they tend less to respect than to bind.  Those burdened with the task of constitutional control (i.e., interpretation, implementation and enforcement) are purportedly bound by the constitution’s dictates based on earlier experiences (experiences perhaps not only no longer relevant but conceivably now proven wrong) while trying to resolve current tensions.  Not an enviable task.

In constitutional terms, the English common law did not recognize the authority of the past over the present insisting that no parliament or institution could bind another but it concurrently had to deal with the inherited Roman concepts of stare decises and res judicata, both demanding adherence to prior decisions, albeit binding on the judiciary but not the legislature.  Napoleon Bonaparte, based on libertarian and egalitarian instincts, rejected both stare decises and res judicata, insisting that judges be bound by broad legislatively enacted legal concepts embodied and logically organized into codes[1] which they were required to apply to the facts, using their own judgment and logic, to arrive at conclusions tailor made for the specific issues involved without regard for either the past or the future.  On the other hand, he insisted that judicial decisions be brief, limited to one sentence if possible, a dictate made ludicrous through us of the word “whereas” (in French, considérant) to link innumerable pages-long clauses to contextualize and explain the nature of and reasoning for a decision.

The constitution of the Republic of Colombia (where I now live after a lifetime in the United States), like the constitution of the Republic of India (also known as Bharat), is an extremely long tapestry of contradictory and unattainable premises and promises, albeit beautifully phrased and full of idealistic platitudes, in the case of Colombia, with four different supreme judicial bodies, each of which seems to take turns contradicting the others, and as elsewhere, each dominated by political rather than legal priorities.  To me they are both most useful as harbingers of the uselessness of constitutions incomprehensible to the people they are meant to govern, interpretable, if at all, only by purported experts frequently incapable of agreeing with each other.  As several of my students in classes on constitutional theory and on comparative politics have noted, a constitution, to really serve its purpose, ought to at least be comprehensible to people of average intelligence and education, even if it is, in practice, rarely really followed (as is much too frequently the case)[2].

Today, many, perhaps most, maybe even all constitutions are more like revered religious relics treasured by atheists because of their historical, cultural and monetary value than because of their intrinsic meaning.  Hence, in the United States of America for example, the meaning of the Constitution’s premises and pronouncements not only vary over time as it purportedly somehow seeks to remain relevant for resolution of legal and political tensions reflecting changing societal contexts, but even more so with respect to the immediate goals and aspirations of the political party that most recently appointed the membership of the judiciary, the judiciary which, in the United States, through usurpation[3], acquired the power and responsibility for constitutional control.  Hence, members of the United States Supreme Court may well change their constitutional interpretations based on whether or not the party that appointed them controls one or the other, or both of the other purportedly coequal branches of government.  Consequently, existential issues like states’ rights versus federal supremacy alternate in focus and importance, as does strict construction versus organic interpretation.

In the United States, the study and practice of “constitutional law” does not involve development of a profound understanding of hypotheses and theories involving the nature and roles of constitutions, their elements and how they should function in order to approximate the common welfare but rather, a tortured study of the history of Supreme Court decisions and how to best misinterpret them to support desired quotidian results. That leads to ludicrous decisions (sometimes resulting in equitable results) such as that in the famous (and now infamous) case of Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), where the court at the time discovered a penumbra of privacy emanating from perceived implied constitutional rights that created a right to an abortion, something none of the creators of the Bill of Rights would have supported, although they probably would have agreed that such a right probably existed based on the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution (the forgotten amendments) which provide that the Bill of Rights is not an exhaustive list of all human rights and sought (unsuccessfully) to restrict federal power to only what is explicitly stated in the Constitution. Specifically, the 9th Amendment protects rights not specifically listed while the 10th reserves all other powers for the states “or the people”.  Roe v Wade is only one of the more egregious instances of poor constitutional scholarship by those charged with constitutional control.  Other examples are myriad, especially those that virtually destroyed the constitutional concept of federalism on which the United States was based, at least what was left of it after the Civil War and the Wilson era constitutional amendments (the 16th through 19th amendments), through expansion of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, which grants Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the several states, and with Indian tribes, coupled with the Supremacy Clause,  Article VI, Clause, which establishes that the Constitution, federal laws, and treaties constitute the “supreme law of the land”, albeit theoretically only in the areas covered by the twenty-seven specifically designated (“enumerated”) areas were power is withdrawn from the States and transferred by the Constitution to the federal government (Article I, Section 8).

Thus, while it is true that in theory constitutions are inherently conservative, antidemocratic instruments, in the case of the United States of America, the meaning of the constitution adopted in 1787 and implemented in 1788, at any given point in time, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder, except, perhaps, for its organic functions, i.e., those that specify the institutions created for federal governance.  But even there, such functions, organization and modes of operation have proven not that difficult to manipulate, e.g., voting rights, apportionment, electoral districts, gerrymandering, prohibitions against convergence of legislative, executive and judicial powers[4], etc.  The result is, as I once wrote[5], a motley constitution, one court jesters (actually, wielders of considerable power both as advisors and as spies) might well be proud to call their own.

And unfortunately, in that respect, the United States Constitution is not unique.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

[1] An ancient perspective reflected notably in the codes of Hammurabi and Justinian, millennia apart.

[2] Interestingly, there are those, frequently highly intelligent comedians of a libertarian bent, who find dysfunctionality the best form of governance given, as Will Rogers once stated quoting Judge Gideon John Tucker that “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session”, thus a functional constitution may be the most dangerous kind and the type most to be avoided.  It is sad to consider that the eminent Judge Tucker and Mr. Rogers may well have had a point.

[3] See, e.g., Calvo Mahé, Guillermo et. al. (Jiménez Ramírez, Milton Cesar, editor, 2020): “Capítulo I. Evolución del control de constitucionalidad en los estados unidos.”; El control de la constitucionalidad en episodios: acerca del control constitucional como límite al poder; Universidad de Caldas, Facultad de ciencias jurídicas y sociales; Bogotá.

[4] A prohibition made ludicrous in the case of administrative agencies which combine all three functions in a revolving door scheme where regulators and the regulated constantly trade places.

[5] Calvo Mahé, Guillermo (2023):  “Motley Constitutionalism: a labyrinthine aphorism”; Medium, July 30, 2023 available at https://guillermo-calvo-mahe.medium.com/motley-constitutionalism-a-labyrinthine-aphorism-9270c689f12d.

Some Brief but Important Reflections on Pending Decisions Concerning Electoral Processes

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Two issues seem very relevant to me as another hyperbolically intense and polarized electoral cycle approaches, both, to some extent, being currently considered by the United States’ utterly politicized Supreme Court (Michael Watson, Mississippi Secretary of State, Petitioner v. Republican National Committee, et al., Docket Number: No. 24-1260, U.S. Supreme Court), much more a politburo than an impartial arbiter of legal disputes.  They involve the electoral cycle and mail-in-ballots.

Election days are by necessity arbitrary.  Electoral periods, what we have today, involve a temporal range culminating in an end date and they are also arbitrary, but more complex.  To me, an “informed” electorate may be the most essential factor for a functional democracy, excluding aspects related to electoral corruption (which has always been present).  An informed electorate requires that the voters have access to all relevant information before making their decisions.  That argues against a temporal range with early voting, especially when the temporal range is broad because political parties and advocacy groups are desperate to have votes frozen in time at the earliest possible moment so that voters do not continue to receive information that might impact their vote in manners adverse to the interests of such groups although, of course, such impact would not always impact them negatively.  To me, therefore, early voting is more democratically counterproductive than is receipt of mail-in-ballots postmarked on the final “end date” but received a reasonably short period thereafter.

Mail-in-ballots involve a different, albeit related issue, and that is that they facilitate electoral corruption, and not limited to the casting of ballots by ineligible voters or the casting of ballots by a voter in multiple jurisdictions.  They facilitate the creation of a market for purchased votes, for example, by facilitating the purchase of a signed ballot, filled in or vacant, from a voter who either needs the cash or sees voting as a profit making opportunity, a world-wide phenomenon probably as old as the first election, and not limited to mail-in-ballots, but certainly facilitated by them.  On the other hand, there is certainly justification for use of mail-in-ballots where nearby polling stations are not available, for example, where voters reside abroad, or for use by voters whose mobility is restricted because they are incapacitated.

The foregoing issues merit serious reflection and better solutions than those available today (or as proposed in the hyperbolically denominated “Save Act”[1]), understanding that neither electoral ignorance nor electoral corruption are likely to ever be eliminated but that they can certainly be minimized.  Unfortunately, such solutions would require non-politicized arbiters without personal interests in the results and that mechanism is non-existent in the good old USA.  Or actually, anywhere else.  Less disinterested arbiters than the United States’ major political parties, the Democrats and the GOP, however, are difficult to imagine.  Consider for example their oscillating positions on the gerrymandering issue.  And they are the ones on whom, along with the nine political appointees to the Supreme Court, we are left to rely.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

[1] The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act (H.R. 8281/H.R. 22).

Reflections on Tyranny, Democracy, Rights and Sovereignty

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It’s interesting and indeed important in this age where verity is an anachronism to reflect on the intellectual pillars on which seventeenth and eighteenth century political philosophers ruminated as they wove the fundaments on which they hoped “western” society might to be based.  They were not concerned with democracy at all.  Indeed, most disdained it as mob rule, but they were very concerned with avoidance of tyranny.  Not “tyranny” in the classical Greek sense of attainment of power by nontraditional means, Greek tyrants were among the most effective and populist leaders, but in the sense of abuse of power by an oligarch.  They realized, I believe, that rule of one man (a subject) by another (a sovereign) inevitably involves the appropriation, for benign or malign purposes, of the subject’s sovereignty (i.e., his or her autonomy) and they were most concerned with at least limiting the extent to which such bequeathed, stolen or otherwise acquired individual sovereignty would be subjugated.  In this, Thomas Hobbes was more sanguine than was the kinder and more idealistic John Locke but as history has demonstrated, Hobbes was more perceptive.

In the opinion of John Locke and perhaps also Thomas Hobbes, in a primordial, perhaps metaphorical past, individuals, theretofore fully vested of their individual sovereignty, surrendered it in exchange for a social system that provided some semblance of security and predictability because in a world where everyone was sovereign, no one was secure, the concept of private property could not exist, and though the strongest might rule, the weak, collectively or while the strong slumbered, could dispose of them.  Hobbes believed that individuals surrendered the totality of their individual sovereignty to a single individual, an autocrat, or to a group of individuals, an oligarchy, in exchange for promised personal safety and for “boons” from the sovereign which resembled rights, but could be modified, suspended or eliminated at the sovereign’s whim, so long as the sovereign provided security.

John Locke’s perspective was very different in that not all aspects of individual sovereignty were surrendered and the aspects retained were inviolable “rights”.  Further, that the surrender of the portion of individual sovereignty not retained was based on a social contract and thus, the surrender was conditioned on the sovereign’s compliance with the terms pursuant to which it had attained its authority, which included guarantees of security, but much more, especially respect for the aspects of sovereignty not surrendered.

Because “rights” were the purported residue of individual sovereignty, not granted but retained, they could not be conditioned, even when the conditions were benign, made sense and were necessary.  Consequently, if what seems a right is subject to any condition, it is no longer a right but a boon granted by one who has attained sovereignty over another or others, and the best that might be hoped for is a quasicontractual arrangement where the sovereign agrees to be bound by rules giving the subject limited means to enforce the boon granted.  Limited means because, as we see today in the United States, sovereigns tend to avoid or ignore the promises made to their subjects whenever the whim strikes them.  Thomas Hobbes did not believe in the concept of rights (other than as a primordial myth).  Because he believed that the totality of individual sovereignty had been surrendered to a central authority in exchange for security and for the grant of boons that sort of smelled like rights, he believed that mankind’s hope lay in enlightened sovereigns.

Today, “rights” appear everywhere, enumerated in countless constitutions and referenced constantly in treaties, legislation and political debates, indeed, they have morphed into diverse purported generations each expanding their purported scope.  But no so-called-right is unconditional and despite constant references to guarantees, no such right is consistently enforced.  Given that rights are purportedly self-enforcing, not having been granted but retained, it seems clear, at least to the author, that in reality, no rights, as understood by John Locke exist.  Rather, there are aspirational concepts towards which decent governments should seek to evolve, and what exists currently is solely the conception described by David Hume in his criticism of Locke as conventional, utility-based, and established human conditional agreements meant to maintain social order and property, essential, artificial rules that allow people to coexist peacefully, which may or may not be honored..

John Locke naively believed in rights and argued articulately in their favor albeit, as David Hume eventually pointed out, his logic was premise free, i.e., rather than articulated, his premises were purportedly self-evident.  However, clever politicians including those who betrayed their oaths of loyalty to the British monarchy in the latter half of the eighteenth century in order to appropriate the British monarch’s sovereignty for themselves, found Locke’s arguments useful, if perhaps not quite credible.  They were, after all, pragmatically practical men interested in practical results rather than the idealists that history portrays.  Indeed, their actions (think of Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence and slavery) with respect to their purported reformulation of John Locke’s conclusions were laced with hypocrisy.  That always has been the case and not just among the so-called Founding Fathers nor limited to the republic they founded.

Still, the Founding Fathers, like the political philosophers who preceded and followed them, were concerned with the issue of tyranny, at least with tyranny that impacted them directly and, in order to minimize tyranny, the founders of the United Colonies’ eventual republic sought to constitutionally disperse sovereignty in two ways: first by placing temporal limits on the human beings who might be charged with its employment and second, by fragmenting sovereignty into separate groupings of political power, thus avoiding “dictatorship” [1].  In this regard it is worth noting that the concept of dictatorship ought not to be considered a pejorative but rather, merely the result of un-fragmented sovereignty, i.e., when all political power was concentrated in one person or institution (the traditional segmentation of political power being, legislative, executive and judicial, to which should have been added a fourth, supervision and control over the other three to avoid usurpation[2]).

That democracy was not important at to the Founding Fathers seems obvious in the institutional structures they established through the Constitution promulgated in 1787 and set into full force in 1788:

  • The Senate was selected, not by the People but by the States. 
  • The membership of the House of Representatives was not based on population but on a complex system comprised in part of population, in another part based on equal numerical representation of the states, and in a third part by treating persons locked into involuntary servitude (slavery) as 3/5ths of a person, however, the right to vote was restricted in such manner as the states might determine so that, as in ancient Athens, less than ten percent of the population originally enjoyed the “franchise” (right to vote). 
  • The President was to be elected by designees of the states selected as they saw fit to serve in an organization that never actually met, the Electoral College.  And the federal Judiciary was to be selected for life by agreement between the president and the Senate. 

No trace of democracy anywhere. 

That system has somewhat morphed into a semblance of democracy by expansion of the right to vote, usurping functions originally assigned to the states, but not on a one person one vote basis as residents in smaller states exercise disproportional electoral power in the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. 

Democracy should however be a majoritarian concept and that requires popular participation.  Unfortunately, unlike the ancient Athenians and Romans where political participation (at least by those eligible to participate) was deemed a duty, in the United States participation in the political process is deemed a sort of right and, consequently, rarely if ever do enough eligible voters participate in the electoral process to make attainment of a real majority (more than 50% of the eligible electorate) possible.  Hence electoral decisions are made by relatively small pluralities, usually less than 30% of the eligible electorate and that 30% is comprised of or controlled by elites with little or no interest in the common welfare (as opposed to their own privileges).

Perhaps more relevant is the reality that while the illusion of democracy seems to have evolved over time, the reality has not.  Elected officials for the most part (with fairly are exceptions) answer not to their constituents but to those who fund their political campaigns.  Institutionally, political power is purportedly concentrated in two privileged political parties supposedly in a relationship of collaborative opposition but today and for the past half century at least, both of those groupings are economically dominated by a purportedly private organization dedicated to imposing the will of a foreign country on the citizenry[3].  As a result, the residents of that foreign country, well, at least the residents who are members of that country’s official religion, obtain, at the expense of United States tax payers, massive social programs  unavailable in the United States (e.g., subsidized housing, free healthcare and education, etc.), massive funding for its armed forces, the use of the armed forces of the United States for its own quest for lebensraum and, use of the veto power of the United States in the United Nations (as directed by that foreign government).  In addition to the foregoing, the purported rights constitutionally guaranteed to the citizens of the United States are quickly becoming inapplicable if they are detrimental to the goals, aspirations or interests of that foreign state. Consequently, a foreign state, without temporal limitations such as are involved in terms of political office or limitations based on fragmentation of sovereignty has imposed a de facto tyrannical dictatorship over the United States, which it uses to impose its will over the Middle East.  Its ambitions however may well spread to other regions in the not too distant future.

Ironic but perhaps, something that was predictable as far back as 1787.  Indeed, George Washington, the first president of the United States under the Constitution of 1787 seems to have foreseen the possibility now existent in his farewell address.  The address was in the form of a letter entitled “The Address of General Washington to the People of America on His Declining the Presidency of the United States” published in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796, about ten weeks before the newly appointed members of the Electoral College were to cast their votes in 1796.  In that address he sternly warned against the situation which the country finds itself in today, one that has been continually evolving since at least 1916.  Wikipedia, not the most reliable source but a useful one from time to time, describes the segment of George Washington’s Farewell Address dedicated to foreign sovereigns as follows (footnotes omitted)[4]:

Washington dedicates a large part of his farewell address to discussing foreign relations and the dangers of permanent alliances between the United States and foreign nations, which he views as foreign entanglements. He advocates a policy of good faith and justice towards all nations, again making reference to proper behavior based upon religious doctrine and morality. He urges the American people to avoid long-term friendly relations or rivalries with any nation, arguing that attachments with or animosity toward other nations will only cloud the government’s judgment in its foreign policy. He argues that longstanding poor relations will only lead to unnecessary wars due to a tendency to blow minor offenses out of proportion when committed by nations viewed as enemies of the United States. He continues this argument by claiming that alliances are likely to draw the United States into wars that have no justification and no benefit to the country beyond simply defending the favored nation. Alliances, he warns, often lead to poor relations with nations who feel that they are not being treated as well as America’s allies, and threaten to influence the American government into making decisions based upon the will of their allies instead of the will of the American people.

….

Washington makes an extended reference to the dangers of foreign nations who will seek to influence the American people and government; nations who may be considered friendly as well as nations considered enemies will equally try to influence the government to do their will. “Real patriots”, he warns, who “resist the intrigues” of foreign nations may find themselves “suspected and odious” in the eyes of others, yet he urges the people to stand firm against such influences all the same. He portrays those who attempt to further such foreign interests as becoming the “tools and dupes” of those nations, stealing the applause and praise of their country away from the “real patriots” while actually working to “surrender” American interests to foreign nations.

Washington goes on to urge the American people to take advantage of their isolated position in the world, and to avoid attachments and entanglements in foreign affairs, especially those of Europe, which he argues have little or nothing to do with the interests of America. He argues that it makes no sense for the American people to become embroiled in European affairs when their isolated position and unity allow them to remain neutral and focus on their own affairs. He argues that the country should avoid permanent alliances with all foreign nations, although temporary alliances during times of extreme danger may be necessary. He states that current treaties should be honored but not extended.

Washington wraps up his foreign policy stance by advocating free trade with all nations, arguing that trade links should be established naturally and the role of the government should be limited to ensuring stable trade, defending the rights of American merchants and any provisions necessary to ensure the conventional rules of trade.

Obviously, as in the case of President Dwight David Eisenhower’s farewell address, President Washington’s foresight has been utterly ignored.  Thus, while the postulations of the sixteenth and seventeenth century philosophers who sought to provide future generations with guidance with respect to the avoidance of tyranny to some extent impacted the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution of 1787, the results have proven singularly unsuccessful and have instead, resulted in the domination of three hundred and fifty million residents of the United States by ten million European Immigrants to the Middle East who have managed to leverage widespread control over economics, communication, entertainment and finance into total control over the … well, … seemingly everything.  Pretty much the definition of tyranny.

So, … In retrospect, reflecting on tyranny, democracy, rights and sovereignty, we have never had democracy or rights although for a while, to an extent, we managed to minimize tyranny, but whatever sovereignty we once had, or though we had, is now illusory as well.  Ironically, the efforts of the Founding Fathers to sunder Britain’s American colonies from British sovereignty in a manner minimizing the risks of tyranny have only resulted in subjugation to the tyranny of another foreign sovereign.

At least for now.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/

[1] A dictatorship is the most efficient form of government but more likely to lead to tyranny than fragmented sovereignty although, as can be seen today, the scheme of governance the Founding Fathers established on their second attempt, in 1787, can fairly easily be converted into a dictatorship when all elements of such fragmentation are reunited under one person, or one political group, as frequently occurs and as is the case in the United States today.

[2] Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers did not provide for an arbiter between the three traditional powers, although the concept was considered at the Constitutional Convention, and several proposed solutions rejected.  Instead, they appeared to assume that such function could be attained through granting the executive a power to veto legislation, for whatever reason, subject to override, and also the power to pardon.  They were, unfortunately mistaken as that power was quickly usurped by the Judiciary in a decision worthy of Machiavelli, the case of Marbury v. Madison (1803) where John Marshall, the recently appointed n Chief Justice of the United States provided his detested cousin, President Thomas Jefferson with a pyrrhic victory by deciding in his favor, but based on the dubious theory that the Judiciary was the arbiter of constitutional authority.  Theretofore, that function had been assumed to lie in the legislative branch (as it did in the United Kingdom) or in the executive as implied at the Constitutional Convention, although a number of colonies in their own systems of governance had been drifting towards the concept of judicial review under their own constitutions.  See generally, Calvo Mahé, Guillermo et. al. (Jiménez Ramírez, Milton Cesar, editor, 2020): “Capítulo I. Evolución del control de constitucionalidad en los estados unidos.”; El control de la constitucionalidad en episodios: acerca del control constitucional como límite al poder; Universidad de Caldas, Facultad de ciencias jurídicas y sociales; Bogotá.

[3] The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

[4] George Washington’s Farewell Address; Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington’s_Farewell_Address.  Last edited on 23 February 2026, at 19:06 (UTC), accessed, March 10, 2026.

Pandora’s Box, Chemical Warfare, Thomas Hobbes and the Israeli-United States State of Nature

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‘Intentional Chemical Warfare’: Toxic Black Rain in Tehran after US-Israel Bomb Oil Facilities, article by Jon Queally published on March 8, 2026 in Common Dreams:  “These attacks on fuel storage facilities amount to nothing less than intentional chemical warfare against the Iranian citizens.”

Murphy’s Law and the purported Law of Unintended Consequences sometimes coincide and they may have done so when the United States and Israel bombed Iranian petroleum facilities creating a toxic chemical rain that seems to have violated the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction which purportedly entered into force on 29 April 1997.  Israel has signed the treaty but has not ratified it (although it has, as it does with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, accused others of its abuse and with the help of its proxy, the United States, has sought to have other countries punished for its purported violation). 

The foregoing is not surprising as both Israel and the United States now feel that they have the right to violate International Law at all levels with impunity.  But, in this instance, they may have bitten off more than they expected.  Chemical weapons (and biological weapons as well) are not difficult to manufacture or to put into play and having opened Pandora’s Box (figuratively, it was an amphora, not a box) it may be that other states or even non-state actors will also decide that International Law is not a norm binding on them, certainly not on them but not on their adversaries, and may decide that when treaties are not honored, they certainly do not apply with respect to protecting the violators.

Until now both Israel and the United States have enjoyed absolute impunity in their violations of international law assassinating and kidnapping foreign heads of state, blatantly stealing other countries national resources, imposing illegal blockades and embargoes, attacking, invading and destroying foreign cities and towns, even engaging in blatant genocide and ethnic cleansing but, until now, there seemed now viable means for the victims to strike back.  Strike back at the United States and Israeli homelands, not just defensively.  But when you place an adversary in a position where it has nothing to lose, the consequences can be terrible.  That has not been the case in modern history, until now.  There have always been the protections provided to the vanquished under International Humanitarian Law and International Law, but those concepts have proven to be delusory illusions.  Even the Nazis refused to violate very international norm.

So what now?

Chemical weapons, mass poisoning, etc., are seemingly on the table but the real horror, the one likely to wipe us out, is the one apparently recently experimented with under the guise of the Covid 19 pandemic, something many feel was a trial run by the United States, Israel and their allies.  And that is biological warfare.  And biological warfare can quickly spin out of human control.

The sixteenth century English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, used the concept of a primordial State of Nature as an illustration of a lawless society, one without any rules other than strength, the kind of society to which both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump allude from time to time and one which their ministers and followers seem to fully embrace.  The State of Nature was a metaphor for a time where only the strongest ruled and ruled with impunity, but Hobbes noted that even the strongest had vulnerabilities, they had to sleep, and thus a rules based society emerged.  That society has now, in large part, broken down. 

Both the United States and Israel act as though they can engage in any kind of conduct, regardless of how depraved.  And in that they, especially the Israelis, enjoy widespread domestic support.  But cheap and easily deployed biological and chemical weapons may change that equation leaving us to wonder what species will replace us after our extinction and whether, eventually, some successor species will evolve with the ethical and moral instincts necessary to assure their survival.  Something we, or at least enough of us, seemingly lack.

The Armageddon that Christian Zionist pray for may be on the brink of arrival, albeit not quite in the manner they expect.  If Jesus does return, he may well return to find nobody home.  
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Democracy and Comparative Electoral Systems

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Today, March 8, 2026 is an interesting day because of the confluence of diverse factors.  It is “Women’s Day” in many places, originally “Working Women’s Day” but the concept has been expanded internationally as it has become recognized that unpaid domestic labor is as worthy of recognition as any other kind of labor.  But today is also Daylight Savings Time Day, at least in the United States of America where millions of people woke to find that they’re bodies believe that it is an hour later than everything around them seems to be occurring.  Finally, it is the first in a series of election days in the Republic of Colombia this year.  Today the members of Congress are elected and primaries are held for contested presidential candidacies.  Which brings me, admittedly in a roundabout way, to the continuing debate in the United States concerning who should be permitted to vote and how.

In Colombia, voting requires photo identification via a national identity card updated constantly to electronically indicate not only citizenship, but voting residency.  At the designated polls (voting is in person), one is also fingerprinted and required to provide a signature.  The individual voting locations are maintained electronically in the National Registry and one can find one’s polling place and room through the Internet.  The identity cards, denominated “cedulas”, are easily available to everyone, in fact, they’re required and used for commercial transactions, transport, etc.  They are issued by the National Registry which verifies citizenship as well as basic personal data including height and blood type.  Elections are easy, quick, and with results posted the same day.  All of the foregoing is very different than the incoherently complex, inefficient and insecure system in the United States where the concept of a national identification card has been anathema to conservatives and libertarians in the past but, ironically, at present, it is liberals who seem to oppose required voting identification while conservatives insist on photo identification that includes proof of citizenship and support federal legislation denominated the “Save Act” to make such requirements applicable nationally. 

The Save Act sounds logical but has a major problem.  Because the United States is a federation, elections occur at the state, county and special district rather than national level, even in elections for Congress and the Presidential Electoral College (there are no real presidential elections) thus, appropriate identification would require supplemental systems that verify not only national citizenship, but state and local domicile.  No current form of identification meets those requirements which would require a constantly updated national citizen database similar to what exists in Colombia and most other countries, a database heretofore opposed by the conservatives who now insist on what, without it, would be a dysfunctional Save Act.  So, unlike most of the world, the United States is engaged in an easily resolvable but transcendentally important ludicrous political debate, politicized in order to polarize the electorate.  Perhaps instead of Make America Great Again, the United States electorate needs to concentrate on just Make America Functional.

While the electoral process in the Republic of Colombia is fair, efficient and relatively secure, there are significant issues that render it deficient in terms of democracy, a universal problem.  Most of all, the electoral system is geared to empower political parties instead of voters, hence, it is political parties rather than the citizenry that is the subject of political rights and related political power.  As in most of the non-English speaking world, Colombian legislative elections are proportional so that the legislature more or less represents most of the political forces in the country.  If, for example, a political party only receives ten percent of the vote, it still receives ten percent of the membership in the legislature, unlike the English speaking world (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) where it would be completely frozen out.  This is accomplished in Colombia and elsewhere because instead of using individual electoral districts where only one legislator is chosen, a system of multi-legislator districts is used.  The most efficient such system is the one used in the Republic of Ireland for elections to the lower house of Parliament where the voter places all of the candidates in the district in order of preference allocating to each a voting value.  Thus, the individual voter’s personal list can be comprised of candidates from diverse political parties.  For example, if the district were to have ten candidates, the one listed first would receive a voting value of ten and the one listed tenth would receive a voting value of one.  If a candidate is not listed, the voting value would be zero.  The candidates elected in that ten legislator district would be the ten who accumulated the most voting value points and might well include candidates who received no first or second place votes.

In Colombia and other places, the list system is perverted because the lists are predetermined by the political parties and in many instances, the order of candidates, which determines who will be elected, is frozen.  In other hybrid systems voters get to either vote for the whole list or to indicate a preference for a single candidate, with the order of candidates in the list reprioritized based on the number of votes received by individual candidates.  In the Republic of Colombia, the political parties determine whether the lists will be closed, the former option, or open, the latter.  Closed lists are sometimes justified as necessary in order to assure gender balance in the results with candidates listed in alternating gender.

The principal practical problem with the legislative electoral system in the Republic of Colombia in the open system is that the names of candidates do not appear on the ballot, rather, only the names of the political parties or movements sponsoring the list and a series of numbers representing the individual candidates, thus, voters have to arrive at the polls with the number of the candidate they favor memorized.  Because voters frequently forget the specific numbers, they instead opt to vote only for the party.  This issue is easily resolvable by either placing the names of candidates on the ballot or providing a guide at the polling station that voters can consult to find the number allocated to their preferred candidate but as usually occurs, solutions are plentiful but the will to implement them, for manipulative reasons, is absent.  The other major problem is that although the electoral districts are multi legislator districts, voters can only vote for one candidate thus, for example, the Department of Caldas is entitled to five members in the House of Representatives, voters can only vote for one and in doing so, automatically vote for that candidates sponsoring political party or political movement.

Another practical problem in Colombia is that the political party system is in great incoherent ideologically. With political parties forming local electoral alliances of convenience.  Thus, in one Department a list may be jointly sponsored by the Liberal Party, Conservative Party, the Party of National Unity and the Radical Change Party, in another Department the party configuration may be very different, excluding some of the members or replacing or supplementing them with others, or even, presenting a unique list without alliances with other parties.  The consequence is that the policies advocated by different parties can be inconsistent in different parts of the country but, since promised policies are, as in most parts of the world, rarely honored, the impact is more theoretical than practical.

Legislative electoral systems in the English speaking world, the first past the post systems as they are commonly known, are the least democratic, i.e., candidates receiving less than half of the vote are elected based on a plurality, and a plurality means that the candidate was opposed by most of the voters who fragmented their votes.  Such issue could be tempered, if not resolved, through required runoff systems, but that would still disenfranchise a majority of the electorate.  Smaller political parties have no legislative representation at all, and hence, are not likely to ever evolve into major parties, especially as voters are urged by the media not to waste their votes on smaller political parties.

The proportional list systems have their own problems except, perhaps, in systems such as exist in the Republic of Ireland, but given the political power provided to political parties by systemic deficiencies, the likelihood of change to improve the functionality of legislative democracy, other than through constitutional reform directly through the electorate, is unlikely.  Democracy is thus, unfortunately, more of a useful illusion than a realistic system of governance, almost everywhere.  Of course, that leaves open for future analysis the value of an effective democratic electoral system given the laziness, ignorance, emotionality, prejudices and naiveté of so many voters.

Further exponent sayeth naught other than: Happy Women’s Day and Happy Daylight Savings Day!

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Reflections on the Unprovoked but Predictable United States and Israeli Attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran on the 28th day of February, 2026

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Shades of December 7, 1941, but in reverse.  And again, of the Nazi Holocaust, but in reverse.  This time it’s the United States that is the villain, as are Zionists and as is Israel.  Indeed, a more objective historical analysis of the causes of the Second World War and of the history of its protagonists would call into question just who the historical purveyors of genocide were.  Think of the indigenous population of the United States, think of the genocide against Africans and East Indians perpetrated by the British and the French and the Belgians, or more historically, of the genocide perpetrated on the Canaanites, and on Jericho, and on so many other peoples as reflected in the Tanakh.  Perhaps reality has just become a bit more clear, a bit more focused.  And reality is not all that pretty.

It’s difficult to put into words the infamy involved in the latest United States’ collaboration with the pedophilic, genocidal regime which has obviously taken control over politics, governance and communications throughout the so called Western World.  The actions undertaken by the United States and Israel on that infamous day at the end of February in 2026.

On December 7, 1941, less perfidious actions by the Empire of Japan against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor were labelled “a day that would live in infamy” by then president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  But sneak attacks during negotiations have become the norm for the United States, in each instance, based on obvious lies, but not involving United States’ interests nor United States territorial expansion, just the sacrifice of the lives of United States citizens and of millions of innocent victims to further the ethnic cleansing, genocidal and expansionist goals of the worst people in modern history, worse even that the Nazis whom they emulate.

That all of the foregoing is applauded and facilitated by Christian fundamentalists mainly in the United States, Israeli firster despite Zionist disdain for Christians (who Zionists loathe and as to whom they claim a god given right to expectorate) is not just sickening but amazing.  However, Christianity, at least in its Pauline version, has always been hypocritical, but rarely has it been so self-delusional, subordinating its interests to those of the people who most despise them, those who claim that Yešu was the black magician bastard child of a prostitute (see, Toledot Yeshu).

It all once again proves the accuracy of the Orwellian premises published in 1948.  All of them.  Self-delusion is as prevalent as the delusion imposed by the Zionists who have attained control over virtually the entirety of United States and Western media, both official and social, just as they acquired, or at least rented, both major United States political parties in the United States through AIPAC and in the United Kingdom through the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland (ZF), and the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM).  That more and more United States citizens and citizens of countries in Western Europe are awakening to the foregoing, especially among the young (including young Jews who ought never to be confused with Zionists), may not be enough and certainly will not be timely.

A large segment of the population in the United States, including people I’ve loved and admired and with whom I was educated, people with whom I once felt I shared values of decency and morality and equity and justice, are delusionally applauding the actions of the United States and Israel, having somehow, despite all the evidence to the contrary, become convinced that Iran was the power mad international villain set on conquest.  It makes me understand, at long last, how the peaceful and socially aware German people became Nazi supporters, able to look in their mirrors and admire what they saw.  But that understanding brings no solace. 

The sins of the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden and Trump administrations against even the semblance of human decency and especially of the values the United States purports to represent, are eradicable and if history is a guide, may all too soon come home to roost.  Certainly the reputation, even if illusory, of which former president Ronald Reagan once spoke, the metaphorical “shining city on a hill”, has been utterly destroyed, at least among the people of the world, if not among their leaders. 

February 28, 2026, a day that will live in infamy indeed.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

Zionism, Antisemitism, Jeffrey Epstein and the Purported Protocols of the Elders of Zion

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No matter how frequently stakes are driven into the heart of the claim that all Jews are part of a sinister plot to enslave all non-Jews, a plot intricately woven into the fraudulent “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which seemingly refuse to die[1], related suspicions and rumors resurface.  It is worth analyzing why.  Most recently they are resurfacing on a worldwide basis as a result of the impunity with which Israel has conducted a campaign of land theft, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine as well as throughout the Middle East, a campaign that has lasted, not since October 7, 2023 but during the past three quarters of a century; but now, even more given the ghastly revelations concerning the depredations of Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplices, almost all of whom were devout Zionists.  Recent related events have exacerbated the problem due to the facility with which Israel has manipulated the United States, and indeed, most of Western Europe since the end of the Second World War to engage in a series of armed conflicts in the Middle East on Israel’s behalf[2].  Indeed, the roots of that issue precede the First World War, you know, the one that was originally referred to as the War to End All Wars, and the role in all of the foregoing of a small group of Jewish atheists (sort of an oxymoron) and Christian adventists (with a small “a” to distinguish them from the denomination of that name), both identifying as “Zionists”.

The so-called “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” have been characterized as fraudulent for over a century.  They were likely initially written by Russian anti-Semites to slander Jews. Ironically however it seems that Zionists[3] may have used at least some of the suggestions contained therein as mechanisms to become the world’s most powerful group, one reveling in related impunity.  Disturbingly, Zionists actions now reflect some of the most horrific calumnies attributed to Jews during past millennia because Zionists in Israel engage, not only in genocide and ethnic cleansing, but apparently in the ghoulish harvesting of human organs from involuntary “donors”, in the wholesale murder of women and children and have praised rape as a legitimate instrument of social control.  An indicia that not all Jews are Zionists and indeed, that many strongly oppose Zionist atrocities was recently illustrated when the Israeli army’s chief legal officer, Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, resigned and was subsequently arrested (earlier this month for leaking a surveillance video that evinced the brutal rape of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military detention facility during 2024.

What an irony. 

Unfortunately for non-Zionist Jews who reflect real traditional Jewish values, while the Elders of Zion, at least as reflected in the purported Protocols, may well have been fictional, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) certainly is not nor are the numerous Zionist billionaires whose atrocities are reflected in the so called Epstein files.  Nor are AIPAC’s Zionist counterparts in the United Kingdom which destroyed the political career of statesman Jeremy Corbin, replacing him with Keith Stammer, and in France, gave us Rothschild protégé Emmanuel Macron and, in Germany, Joachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz as well as German Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen in the European Union.   

In the United States, AIPAC exercises de facto veto power over all the presidential and most of the Congressional candidates in both the Democratic and Republican parties, choices most voters would rather not support, but the AIPAC controlled portion of the national media constantly convinces us that there are no other choices and manages to keep us too divided and polarized to do anything but accept AIPAC’s dictates, no matter the cost to us in taxes diverted for Israel’s benefit, or the cost in human lives lost or destroyed, both here and abroad in senseless military adventures and interventions.  Zionist media control is growing as illustrated by the recent acquisitions by Larry Ellison and his son David, two of the world’s wealthiest billionaires[4] and passionate supporters of Zionism, of Israel and of AIPAC who have recently consolidated their media influence through a series of strategic moves, most notably through the Paramount-Skydance merger which provided them with control over the Warner Bros. Discovery and its CNN news network and a significant portion of TikTok’s U.S. operations, one of the few social media platforms that have previously permitted broad uncensored criticism of Israel.  Furthermore, the accelerating evolution of artificial intelligence, especially as used in Internet browsers and search engines now also “coincidentally” censors comments deemed “unfairly” critical of Israel, AIPAC or Zionism in general, an area in which the Ellisons have also recently invested heavily.

Given the Jeffrey Epstein related horrors being revealed daily which include not only pedophilia but unimaginable vampiric blood drinking rituals and cannibalism by world economic and political leaders, it seems to many people all over the world that we are in a hopeless downward ethical and moral spiral and that instead of the perpetual peace envisioned by German philosopher Immanuel Kant, we are trapped in perpetual war engaged in primarily to generate profits and that, to a great extent, that downward spiral is led by Zionists.  And that such downward spiral continues with circuses, if not bread, keeping us carefully anesthetized, circuses like sports and television programs and cinema and concerts, and fake news.  Arenas where we can futilely rail against each other, wasting our energy but somehow feeling as though we’ve won something, perhaps even as if someone had heard us and acted. 

And “someones” have seemingly heard us, and they have acted, just not who we think or in the manner we hoped, and certainly not in the manner we need.  But the foregoing does not mean that terrible the status quo will continue without meaningful opposition.  Increasingly, younger people all over the world, the United States and Western Europe, many of them Jewish, are protesting against the perpetual war we have been involved in seemingly forever, including against the genocide, ethnic cleansing and massive violations of human rights being orchestrated by the government of Israel, supported by the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany.  A number of countries have taken affirmative actions to minimize the new holocaust taking place by filing complaints with the International Criminal Court in Rome and with the International Court of Justice, as well as by formally recognizing the existence of a Palestinian State and by restricting or even breaking off relationships with Israel.  While such opposition, to date, has been no match for the political, financial and cultural power amassed by Zionists, both Jewish and Christian[5], and by the billionaire class in general, perhaps the all-pro consummate politician, Abraham Lincoln, had a point when he asserted that “you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”, and to an extent, that hypothesis may be proving at least partially accurate.  However, the growing reaction to Zionist atrocities and abuses is not without significant danger of its own.  It may well lead to abuses as malign as those it is initially seeking to eliminate.  Rather than a temporary moral and ethical awakening, it appears that a reactive increase in the age old immorality of antisemitism is also occurring.  And that solves nothing.  It never has.

It is essential therefore to forcefully acknowledge that neither AIPAC nor Zionism in general represent all Jews and indeed, to note that Zionism was founded by atheists rather than religious Jews, and that Zionists, rather than being descendants of the ancient Hebrews, or even of the Jews who inhabited Palestine at the dawn of the Common Era, are, for the most part, descendants of Turkish, Kazhar and Russian converts to Judaism who today primarily comprise only one segment of Judaism, the Ashkenazi.  And it is also essential, notwithstanding the insistence by Zionists that they represent all Jews and notwithstanding the reality that the creation of Israel in Palestine against the wishes of those who had inhabited those lands for millennia was a travesty, especially in light of the judgments of the Nuremburg Tribunals, it is critical to acknowledge that Jews and Judaism have been a force for decency and tolerance for millennia and have positively contributed a great deal towards Western civilizations. 

As an aside, it is incredibly frustrating and sad that the three branches of the Abrahamic faiths have proven so internecinely fratricidal and that, rather than sharing Abram of the Sumerians as their founder, they all seem to be offspring of the mythical Cain.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

[1] I most recently reencountered references to the purported protocols in an Instagram post I found at https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOko_JjjmpG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link (but which may have been removed).  That post led me to write and share these observations.

[2] Recent revelations, although circulation has been limited due to de facto media self-censorship, indicate that a great deal of Zionist power may be the result of blackmail and extortion activities targeting political, military and business leaders such as those which have been attributed to the abuse of underage girls and boys orchestrated by Jeffery Epstein, possibly acting on behalf of the Israeli Mossad and perhaps even United States, British and French intelligence agencies. 

[3] Note, it is essential to emphasize that not all Jews are Zionists nor, as described above, are all Zionists Jews.

[4] Studies indicate that while the Jewish population in the United States is approximately 3%, Zionists represent 40% of its billionaires.

[5] There may well be more Christian than Jewish Zionists, especially among “fundamentalist” Christians in the United States.

On the GOP’s Save Act and Critical Related Issues

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Opposition to the so called Save Act (H.R.22 – 119th Congress, 2025-2026) by Democrats based on their current arguments concerning threats to democracy seems stupid, nonsensical and counterproductive (to the glee of the GOP).  The requirement for photo identification verifying citizenship and right to vote as a prerequisite to voting is something common all over the world, something usually accompanied by required signature and fingerprint verification.  In the United States the issue is a bit more complicated because of states’ rights under our federal system and the historical aversion to a national identification card and because of the transient nature of United States society with voting at federal, state and local levels predicated not only on citizenship but on residency.  Thus it would seem that appropriately reliable verification documentation would be required at each such level depending on the election involved.  A problem, true, but not an irresolvable problem given available technology.  However, it could well require implementation of a national identification smart card, centrally updated; not an insurmountable obstacle as credit card companies make clear on a quotidian basis.  Mail in voting, the other serious wedge issue, clearly facilitates electoral fraud and just as clearly, makes voting easier.  But safeguards can be added to minimize its deficiencies.  In addition to the danger of facilitating electoral fraud, mail in voting has been abused in order to “lock in” votes before relevant issues come to light by providing for early voting, but that too can be regulated in order to minimize its abuse, rather than eliminated.  Wise Democrats would be much better off electorally by resolving the deficiencies noted rather than by focusing on hyperbolic platitudes.

Still, constitutional arguments based on federalism and states’ rights do have merit.  The Constitution vests decisions concerning electoral qualifications and related issues in the states but provides Congress a role should it elect to exercise it, something which Congress has done from time to time albeit not coherently, that is because Congress has limited its role to issues involving “federal elections” and the only real federal election is that “virtual” election taken when state departments of state submit the results of state level elections for electors to the Electoral College (which never, in fact, meets) to the United States Congress for tabulation and consideration.  All other elections involving the national government are taken at the state level.  The House of Representatives is elected through state district elections in districts established and supervised by the states, the same being true with respect to the Electoral College and, of course, despite the ill-considered and antidemocratic 17th Amendment to the Constitution, election of Senators is also done on a state basis.  The members of the Supreme Court are not elected at all but rather appointed through agreement between the Senate and the president.  The issue however is, or ought to be, more complex.  The truth is that a constitutional amendment related to a number of electoral issues is desperately required. 

Issues that need to be dealt with constitutionally include:

  • Financing of electoral campaigns which should, in all probability, be limited to eligible voters in the electoral districts involved, excluding thereby corporate and related entities (e.g., unions, political action committees, etc.).  The Supreme Court’s abhorrent Citizens United decision also needs to be obliterated.
  • The use of the national census for purposes of determining state representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College needs to be clarified so that for those purposes, only citizens are counted.  Not even permanent residents should be counted although for other purposes the census should include everyone resident in a state, regardless of their nationality or electoral status.
  • The issue of birthright citizenship, poorly dealt with in the 14th amendment, should be clarified.  As interpreted by the Supreme Court, it has been seriously abused and is a goad to illegal immigration.  Mr. Trump is not always wrong.
  • The status of undocumented immigrants for diverse purposes should also be dealt with, perhaps creating national standards in order to avoid forum shopping.

Those issues each require serious consideration involving a much more fundamental issue as well.  The United States Constitution adopted in 1789 and implemented in 1791 envisioned a federal state comprised of purportedly sovereign states.  Really, a fragmentation of sovereignty predicated on the concept of enumerated powers dealt with both in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and in its 9th and 10th amendments.  However, as I noted quite a while ago in an article entitled Motley Constitutionalism: a Labyrinthine Aphorism, the concept of federalism has been drastically and negatively impacted since shortly after adoption of the Constitution; first, by John Marshall’s usurpation of constitutional control in the case of Marbury v. Madison, then by the usurpation of issues involving secession, supremacy of legislation and related factors by the federal government as a result of the Civil War of 1861-65 and through the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments imposed following the Civil War (justifiable though they were), then, in the series of Wilson administration constitutional amendments that shattered state power, especially the 16th (taxation), 17th (representation through the Senate), 18th (state police power) and 19th (state control of the right to vote) and finally, by Supreme Court decisions ostensibly based on the Commerce Clause of the Constitution during the middle of the 20th century.  The foregoing constitutional proposals would further the trend away from federalism and towards a unitary state, as would consistent proposals to do away with the Electoral College in favor of direct, popular election of the president.

Those damned two sides to every issue can be utterly frustrating.  However, there is also a third side.  The truth is that a broad and serious discussion concerning the federal nature of the Republic is very much past due, a nature that has become largely illusory as chip by chip its federal foundation has become eroded.  The reality is that the original concept, first of a confederation of independent states, sort of like the United Nations, and then of a hybrid between a confederation and a unitary state (a federation) has in practice perhaps become obsolete as the United States has “sort of” become one nation rather than a conglomeration of regions, although, politically, it has become divided between urban and rural areas with totally different voting perspectives and an utterly polarized citizenry.  That discussion should have been undertaken before each and every decision impacting federalism but apparently the topic and its strategic aspects were ignored in favor of the interests of the moment, pretty much in the same manner as the Save Act is being currently considered: ironically, a legislative act proposed by traditional proponents of states’ rights and opposed by traditional proponents of a powerful central government.

Perhaps it’s way past time for a profound discussion concerning the nature and deficiencies of the Constitution adopted in 1789, two-hundred-and-thirty-seven years ago, and so patched up that it resembles the “motley of ill-matched patches” worn by ancient court jesters.  Like the Bible and other sacred treatises, the current Constitution is honored and revered, oaths taken to preserve and defend it, but not really followed.

Perhaps it’s time for a new constitutional convention, one led by serious technocrats and academics rather than politicians, a constitution to then be presented directly for approval or rejection, in whole or in part, by the citizenry it will be meant to govern.  A constitution to effectively, efficiently and equitable harmonize our society in order to really attain the common welfare.  But the sad truth is that neither major political party is interested in the foregoing as it would eliminate too many of the useful wedge issues through which we are each manipulated, divided and controlled.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.

On the Reality of Donald Trump’s Recent Animal-Human Hybrid Video

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There has been a great outcry recently by those who despise Mr. Trump, no matter what, but also by some among those who admire him without reserve, over the post that involved the Obamas with their faces superimposed on the bodies of chimpanzees.  The criticism had been hyperbolically focused on perceived racism.  I do not support Mr. Trump and have admittedly grown to despise him but I try to maintain a sense of objectivity without which discernment of truth is impossible (absent fortuitous coincidence).  So, while I was initially dumfounded and outraged; I watched the video to see for myself what I would be criticizing.  I doubt many others have done the same.  And I was surprised.  Rather than racist, I found the video idiotically juvenile.  It was by no means limited to the Obamas, although that has been the focus of the criticism, but involved numerous political figures both opposed to and supportive of Mr. Trump, all represented with animal bodies, and that included Mr. Trump himself. 

It was obvious to me that in the associational choice of animals Mr. Trump sought to insult his opponents and glamorize himself.  His was the body of a lion.  But my conclusion was that the video demonstrated not Mr. Trump’s racism but his ignorance concerning biology and evolution.  For example, chimpanzees are extremely intelligent and in their bonobo variant, the biological species closest to humans while male lions, such as the one selected by Mr. Trump to represent himself, are lazy and indolent, albeit strong and fierce, but dominated by the females of the species who do most of the work.

Thus, the video was childish and idiotic but instructive as well, and perhaps unintentionally, the portrayal may have been all too accurate. 

Perhaps someone pointed that out to Mr. Trump who has removed the video from his social platforms.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

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/.