Category Archives: Requiem

Windfall Profits, the Defense Industry and the American Tax Payer:

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Reflections during another Memorial Day

The fulcrum on which political decisions are leveraged and the world’s future mortgaged is inherently tied to the welfare of investors in “defense” industries, of their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war, and if war and the threat of war are constants, then investments in “defense” industries are predictably secure.  Something the commander of allied forces in the Second World War and later, president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower begged us to avoid.  To the extent related government expenditures are not carefully monitored and waste prevails, so much the better.  That millions subsidize such profits with their lives in diverse parts of the world is merely “collateral damage”, at least to those not suffering such consequences, directly or indirectly.  And of course, on this Memorial Day, we recognize that such casualties are not only innocent foreigners, but also the bravest Americans, those who, believing that their service is essential, volunteer to put their lives and welfare on the line.

The Athenians attitude towards those who provided the armaments for their military and naval forces was wise.  They were required to serve on the front lines.  Not so our own war profiteers, neither they nor their families, except in extremely rare cases, serve at all, being too busy enjoying the fruits of others’ labors.  And most of those who do serve, Albert Gore and George W. Bush being prime examples, do so ensconced in protective cocoons, far from danger, surrounded by photographers so that their purported service can be documented for future use.  The Clintons and the Obamas and the Bidens (Joe and Hunter and Jimmy) and the Trumps were excused from service through the labyrinth of useful loopholes available to those wealthy or influential enough to avoid service, something which needs to be differentiated from the refusal to serve by those opposed to war, and who would never send the children, spouses, siblings or relatives of others to tread where they refused to serve.  Those who declined to serve but on attaining power of any sort, do not hesitate to send others to die or kill, and to suffer and cause mayhem, and to suffer and cause irreparable psychological trauma, are contemptuously referred to by those who served, as well as by conscientious objectors, as “chicken hawks”.  Our country is led by chicken hawks.  Chicken hawks in government, in the “defense” industries and in the corporate media as well.  And the results are predictable.  Profits for the few, massive profits.  But famine and chaos and mayhem and death and destruction for far too many on the other side of the ledger.  Some of them our own.  Some of them the best among us.

This Memorial Day takes place at an interesting time.  There has been hugely hyperbolic debate between the Republican led House of Representatives and the Biden administration concerning the need to raise the national debt limit, an increase once again required, for the 82nd time, because rather than pay for federal expenditures through taxes, to which voters would object and, as a result, might seriously consider what their taxes were being used to fund, it is more palatable, at least for now, to just, well, … borrow the money.  Federal debt financing is done through unsecured borrowing from third parties, largely banks and financial institutions but also investors, foreign and domestic.  Interestingly, the interest paid to holders of United States debt securities is higher than that paid by financial institutions to the Federal Reserve for the money borrowed to acquire such securities, among other things.  Many might wonder why the prohibitions against “ponzi” schemes which the Federal government prosecutes, are not applicable to the largest ponzi scheme of all.

The current direct national debt, that which is disclosed (it may well be substantially greater and does not include state, municipal or local debt), currently stands at almost thirty-two-trillion dollars[1], but the Biden administration insists that it must be increased immediately, if not sooner, and traditionalist members of the Republican Party are in agreement, although its populist branch is  not.  There is a current proposal on the table in Congress to acquiesce to the Biden administration’s demand to increase the national debt during the period preceding the next presidential election (so that it need not be revisited and become a political issue therein), by one-and-a-half-trillion dollars.

Sooo.  Why?

Because the United States government wants to spend the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China into oblivion by funding wars involving the Ukraine, already under way, and Taiwan, even at the risk of a nuclear holocaust, and anyway, that addition to the national debt, like the accumulated debt before it, ends up in the pockets of, well, you may have already guessed the answer from the introductory material above, “investors in “defense” industries, their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war”.

And who, you may ask, will pay that accumulated debt?

The answer is interesting and reminiscent of the attitude of French King Louis XV, you know, the one who preceded Luis XVI, who, along with his family and many others, lost his head in the French Revolution of 1789 (which, to an extent, may explain the drastic reaction by the powers that be to the political protests of January 6, 2020).  The answer is, … “who cares”!  At worse, the United States could print the money necessary to pay off the debt, although that would create never before imagined hyperinflation, inflation that would make that suffered in Germany following the War to End All Wars (well, we now call it the first of the world wars) at the dawn of the twentieth century a trifle.  One might recall that the inflation following the first of the world wars led to the rise of fascism in various countries, and threatened to do the same in most others.  Of course, some consider that fascism is currently in vogue among those who most criticized it way back then.

This Memorial Day, as I mourn my many friends and my former classmates who’ve perished in combat during the past six decades (I’m a Citadel graduate), it occurred to me that the answer to our ludicrous national debt crisis is rather simple and does not require a reinvention of the wheel.  It’s called a “windfall profits tax”.  One that should be imposed on those who’ve so profited from the perpetual wars (what would Emanuel Kant think).  You may have guessed the answer again, it’s the same as the answer to the former query: “investors in “defense” industries, their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war”.  A tax of 90% on all profits derived from them, directly and indirectly, from whatever sources and wherever derived, until the national debt is paid off, with tax avoidance punishable by forfeiture of all assets and life imprisonment.

Simple, sort of.  At least in a democracy where voters have some awareness of how things work, and why.

A suggestion as we remember those of our fellow men and woman who’ve sacrificed so much, unfortunately, all too often uselessly, on this Memorial Day.

Something on which not only to reflect, but perhaps on which to act.
_______

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

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] Information based on the national debt clock as of this Memorial Day, available at https://www.usdebtclock.org/.

On the Possibility of Divine Contrition

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What if some of what objective alien academics might, on reflection, consider Terran religious myths, turned out to be true.  Consider the two most visible this week: the divine massacre of Egypt’s first born male children at the request of at least one Hebrew leader; and then, a bit over a millennia later, the execution of the purported son of the Hebrew god, again, at the demand of at least some Hebrew leaders.

What if the execution of the Nazarene, Yeshua ben Miriam, or ben Deux, or ben Yosef, depending on his paternity, involved an act of contrition by the Hebrew divinity for the execution, at his command, of so many innocents, and that does not relate solely to the Egyptian firstborn, but to almost all of the human race in the purported Great Flood, and to numerous Canaanites whose land, property and women were apparently gifts from the Hebrew God to the followers of a man from Ur Kaśdim who married his own sister and did not hesitate to generously share her with others (if it was to his benefit), and perhaps, even to the imposition of mortality not only on Eve, purportedly for her sins, and Adam, but on all humanity.

What if, having had over a millennia to reflect, the Hebrew divinity discovered a conscience and decided that his own sins (he was obviously male) required a supreme sacrifice, that of a version of himself? 

That certainly makes more ethical and moral sense than a sacrifice by mankind of a divinity’s son, to expunge the sin by one ancestress of having taken a bite from an apple (or a fruit of some kind, anyway).

Something to consider during the celebration of this week which so reeks of irony.

_______

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

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Now What?

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As I write this, I wonder if it will ever be permitted to see the light of day.  I’m certain that access to this article will be subjected to the de facto censorship limiting its spread and access through algorithms designed to limit postures frowned upon by our Internet censors.  But perhaps some brave souls will share it.  Every once in a while we somehow manage to get our messages heard, after which, of course, they’re distorted.

As usual when I write about abuse of the political, electoral and legal systems by the Deep State and its primary tools, the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and the corporate media to impact the electoral options of Donald John Trump, I precede by asserting that I do not care for him and do not intend to vote for him, even as a protest.  But Mr. Trump has been indicted through the machinations of a Deep State tool, one of several local attorneys general and federal prosecutors tasked with preventing him for again running for and again possibly winning the United States presidency. 

The action is unprecedented, not only because it involves a former United States president, but because the purported “crime” involves having been the victim of blackmail and extortion.  But the real reason seems obvious to me.  It seems obvious to many who love peace, to the many who really strive for equity and equality, and for a system of governance based on justice and legality.

Mr. Trump has many negative characteristics but also a few saving graces, and it is the latter which have led the Deep State to take this unprecedented action, an action so polarizing that it once again promotes the prospect that American citizens will feel it is their duty to act in an uncivil, possibly violent manner.  The saving graces all involve repudiation of neoconservative military activities abroad, for example, in the Ukraine and in Taiwan; they involve repudiation of the dangerously anachronistic North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the similar web of offensive military alliances and bases around the world designed to promote and preserve political, economic and military hegemony, even at the risk of nuclear war.  They involve a desire to redirect spending on defense towards improved infrastructure.

Mr. Trump’s posture with respect to the foregoing is neither consistent nor coherent given his dedication to Israeli objectives and his intent to do to the Islamic Republic of Iran what his predecessors did to Iraq, nor given his methodology of governance through arrogance and aggressive posturing on economic issues, but it is deeply threatening to those who rule us through proxies, those who rule us through moles scattered throughout the bureaucracy and the judiciary, throughout what used to be a purportedly free press, throughout international institutions.  That is why a minor league functionary has taken the unprecedented, illegal action that confronts the United States today.  The action which will exacerbate the polarization which led to the events of January 6, 2020, and which, step by step, is bringing Americans closer and closer to another disastrous civil conflict.

Some among the American people seem to be waking up to the reality that democracy in the United States is an illusion, too many perhaps.  And the Deep State will not tolerate such independence, not again.  It is hell bent on preventing the miscalculations that led to the disastrous 2016 presidential and Congressional elections, disastrous at least from their perspective.  And no price is too high to pay to avoid them, especially when it is We the People who pay the price, not those who rule us.  Who rule us as though they were the proud owners of Tolkien’s one ring.

Julian Assange sits rotting in a British prison, thanks to the Deep State, in that case including Mr. Trump.  The real criminals, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bush’s and the Bidens (and I don’t mean just Hunter and Jimmy), are free to loot, plunder and cast the world into chaos; a world suffering from the blights of inflation and recession everywhere, and from the violence of the antithesis of Kant’s perpetual peace.  And I’m not at all certain that We the People can do anything about it.  It may already be too late. 

It is certainly way too late to stop the madness through the prophylactic means the Constitution was adopted to provide, means such as limiting the war powers to Congress, an institution which, for more than a century, has abdicated its most important responsibilities, both with respect to peace, and to foreign affairs, and to the wise use of our tax dollars.  And I’m not certain that there are any other constitutional options still open. 

Many of us seriously question the legitimacy of the electoral process, some, because of recent events, but others because the United States has always been a duopoly, a faux democracy with the electoral system rigged in favor of two principal players, both ultimately controlled by the same people.  That leaves us no options that most of us find acceptable, certainly not those options brewing under the surface among left and right wing armed thugs who consider themselves patriots.

So, … “now what”, as Troy’s Cassandra might ask, after having warned us of what was happening for so long?  As Julian Assange might ask, or Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning, or as the small group of independent journalists exiled from the major media constantly remind us.  Or as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley and myriad other authors of dystopian novels illustrated for us.

Now what?
_______

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

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

On the Day Designated Internationally to Honor Men

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It’s March 19, 2023, a Sunday and a day purportedly designated internationally to honor men, but as a holiday, it’s sort of a flop.  It’s not a great day for florists or restauranteurs, or for retail sales or for holiday bookings.  But perhaps it’s meaningful if we take a moment to recognize our less fortunate male brethren.  And there are so many.  And holiday’s all too often, rather than being happy days, are those most filled with regrets, and nostalgia, and melancholy.

So, … today, I’m thinking of all of the men who work diligently to support and protect their families, but who are deprecated for not spending enough quality time at home, and of those men who, through no fault of their own, have been sundered from their families and have lost everything they ever accumulated, who are left to live out what remains of their lives alone, and to those fathers who, after an unsuccessful relationship with their wives, find themselves estranged from their children. 

Of course, there’s another side to that dismal coin, men who are appreciated and beloved by their families, loved by their wives and admired by their children, but sadly, in today’s dysfunctional world, they’re the exception rather than the norm.  And of course, there are plenty of men who, because of their conduct, deserve their fate; but also, too many who don’t.

It’s an issue that’s not impacted by race, religion, national origin or political tendencies, … it just is, and there are few support groups to help these victims cope, nor any entertainment series to highlight the issue, nor any visible champions to highlight and ameliorate their plight, or legislators looking for legal and judicial reforms to resolve the social tragedy they represent. 

Just a few of us who, from time to time, remember and reflect.

Something to think about as this purported holiday fades to grey.

_______

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

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at https://guillermocalvomah.substack.com/.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Once Again, the Ides of March

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It’s March 15, 2023.  Once again the Ides of March. 

Two millennia, six decades and seven years ago, more or less (given Pope Gregory’s machinations with the calendar), Gaius Iulius Caesar was assassinated by a number of the colleagues he’d pardoned multiple times, including his reputed illegitimate son, Marcus Junius Brutus, as he entered the purportedly sacrosanct Roman Senate.  His crime, protecting the Roman lower classes against those who perceived themselves their betters, and denominated themselves the “boni” (the good).

He was a populist and populists are not well regarded by those who seek permanent power by hiding in the shadows and working through moles in the bureaucracy, the military and in the institutions that operate the economy.

Not that he was a paragon of virtue in all respects, especially shameful was his conduct of the so called Gallic Wars, but he was a fascinatingly complex human being, whose heart, at least with respect to the Roman people, seemed to be in the right place.

Except for the absence of a charismatic and effective populist leader protecting the interests of the most vulnerable among us, little if anything has changed today from the world that Gaius Iulius Caesar left us so long ago.
_______

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

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Reflections on Alexander

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On June 11 of this year, 2023, it will be two millennia, three centuries, four decades and six years since the death of Alexander III of Macedon, really of Macedon, Greece, Persia, Asia, and the world.  And not just the “world” he ruled but from many perspectives, our own world as well.

His dynastic family[1] was the Argeadai (Ἀργεάδαι) which colonized Macedonia from Argos (famous for the Golden Fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts) around 750 b.c.e., 400 years before Alexander’s birth. “Argeadai” was the family name his ancestor, Alexander I, used to prove to the hellanodikai (the judges who decided if you were Greek), that he was Dorian, and as a Dorian, Alexander was thus also part of the Heracleidae (Ἡρακλεῖδαι, the purported sons of Heracles).  More proximately, he was known to his contemporaries as Filipidis (Φιλιππίδης), son of Philip, which was his father’s name.  Almost everyone, everywhere today however just refers to him, in whatever their native languages are, as “Alexander the Great”.  That’s been true for more than 2,346 years now.

Alexander has always fascinated me.  I named my second son after him.  My first’s son’s Greek name, “Basileus” (“great king”, the title by which Alexander was addressed) was also, from my perspective, a link to the Alexander that I so admired.  My fascination was not premised on his renowned military prowess or on his charisma, but rather, on the fact that he considered all men brothers, regardless of their nationality, their race, their religion or their sexual orientation, and that he treated those his armies conquered as one people, much to the distaste and despair of his Macedonian brethren.  An attitude which, after more than 2,346 years, we have yet to fully accept although hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people have claimed to do so, unfortunately, usually, in an extremely hypocritical manner.

His tomb, eventually located in Egypt’s Alexandria, a city Alexander founded, was revered for hundreds of years.  Both Iulius Caesar and his grandnephew, Octavian, visited it almost three centuries after Alexander’s death.  Unfortunately, as so often happened in antiquity, the tomb was looted and his amazingly preserved body, it apparently refused to decay, has vanished.  The Roman emperor Gaius (Caligula), may have been to blame; he wanted Alexander’s armor, but other Roman emperors or popes evidently eventually needed the gold of his sarcophagus, and ultimately, apparently looters just wanted whatever they could get to sell, although there are legends that it was Christians from Venice who stole the body, believing it to be that of Mark the Evangelist, or perhaps Matthew, or maybe Luke.  Christians and looters are synonymous to people all over the world, especially in the Americas.

His vision of the brotherhood of man was adopted by the stoic philosophers, and eventually, by the early Christian churches, adopted but pretty much ignored.  An attitude all too similar to ours today.

What might he have accomplished had he lived beyond his span of a bit less than thirty-three years?

We could sure use an Alexander, in the latter sense, today.
_______

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

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] Information obtained from a post by Achilles Monomaxos.

The Former Right to Protest, now a Restricted Privilege

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Protests in the United States, once a sacrosanct right, have become tolerable only when deemed politically correct by politicized leaders of the criminal justice system (an oxymoron) and their rubber stamp echoes in the lazy, politicized judicial system.  The purported guardians of the truth and defenders of the citizenry from governmental abuse, the “fourth estate” (i.e., the “press”) have, for the most part, switched sides.  Just consider what happens now to real journalists like Julian Assange and Seymour Hersh.

It’s no longer the nature of the protests that matter (whether peaceful or violent), but the subject matter.  While perhaps, to an extent that has always been the case in the United States, it has now become the rule.  Contrast reactions to protests during the four years immediately following the 2016 presidential election, when apparently anything was fair game including looting, arson, mayhem and murder, with the protests following the presidential election in 2020, when less severe political protests became anathema.  But the bastardization of the right to protest and of the related right to freedom of expression, has now taken a massive leap backward, a backflip, if you will.

On March 9, 2023, Peoples Dispatch, formerly The Dawn News (an international media project which seeks to assure that the coverage of news is not restricted to the rhetoric of politicians and the fortunes of big companies but encompasses the richness and diversity of mobilizations from around the world), published an article, without identifying the writer, perhaps for obvious reasons, entitled “Protesters Charged with Terrorism in Atlanta”.  The article, as is so often the case, was published in Consortium News, one of the very few reliable sources of information still available, and dealt with the spreading tendency to treat political protest in the United States as “terrorism”.  Atlanta is once again a focal point.

This time, protests involved the perversion of the government’s eminent domain powers to create what residents called a “cop city”, a proposed $90 million police training complex in the City of Atlanta, Georgia.  The government’s reaction seems not only perverse, but, with the cooperation of the media, was orchestrated to create the false impression that the protestors were not local residents but rather out of state provocateurs.  In recent years, when convenient for electoral purposes, Georgia has become a magnet for out of state activists who have been urged to participate in second round elections, even if they voted elsewhere in the initial rounds, but evidently, they are only welcome when convenient for Deep State purposes.

The United States Declaration of Independence and its Constitution of 1787-89 (which replaced the first constitution of the United States, the Articles of Confederation), both unequivocally enshrine the right to protest government actions, and not always peacefully.  The Revolutionary War was hardly peaceful.  But the Deep State is, with the collaboration of the corporate media, the Department of Justice, the intelligence agencies, the Democratic Party and traditionalist (non-Tea Party) Republicans, as well as a lazy and politicized judiciary, doing away with such right.  It is now merely a privilege afforded to the politically useful, e.g., supporters of black lives matter groups, pro-abortion groups and anti-Trump groups of all kind (e.g., the vagina hatted, the “resistance”, the Russiagated crowd, etc.). 

An example of where we find ourselves is reflected in the information being made available to the public, despite large scale obstruction by the Democratic Party, the Capitol Police, the Justice Department and the corporate media concerning the events that really took place on January 6, 2020, events which were the subject of orchestrated, televised hearings by a special committee of the House of Representatives and of thousands of prosecutions by the Biden “Justice” Department.  Police videos, frequently withheld from defendants, show how completely false and out of control the Deep State has become in seeking to impose and maintain control over an uncooperative electorate.  Trumped up charges of terrorism and espionage, perverting completely the original intent of legislation that authorized drastic curtailment of civil rights under extraordinary circumstances, have now become common, and the cooperative judiciary acts, not as a neutral arbiter, but as a collaborative prosecutor, impeding rights to present relevant evidence in kangaroo court proceedings.  The events in Atlanta were a logical extension of the prosecutorial improprieties in the trials of defendants charged with criminal violations for their participation in events at the Capitol on January 6, 2020.  And it is unlikely that the tendency will end in Atlanta.  We have gone from a libertarian state, to an authoritarian system tending towards totalitarianism, the things of which our Deep State has so often accused other states.

The image of Julian Assange, incarcerated and tortured in a maximum security British prison at the request of the Biden administration which seeks to extradite and try him for telling the truth tells it all.  Magna Carta, like our Bill of Rights, seems now useful primarily for purposes of post fecal hygiene.

We were warned this would happen.  We were warned in 1948 by George Orwell, we were warned by Aldous Huxley, we were warned by Kurt Vonnegut, and we were warned by many others, and despite a blackout on real news by the corporate media, we are constantly being warned by courageous independent journalists like Julian Assange (and you know where he is), Seymour Hersh and the varied writers who publish in Consortium News (a donation supported news source) and other alternative news sources like Truthdig, and Common Dreams and now Substack.  We were warned by brave whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, among many others (most either jailed, formerly jailed or in exile).  All of the foregoing have done their best to keep any who care informed.  Unfortunately, as this article illustrates, the tide is in favor of the corrupt, the power mad, the warmongers and of their insipidly silly supporters who ironically identify as the “woke”.

Our situation today parallels that which was the subject of a poem following World War II by Martin Niemöller, a German Lutheran pastor and theologian born in Lippstadt, Germany, in 1892.  A version of his poem is enshrined in the United States Holocaust Museum, as follows:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.  Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”

It may already be too late to turn things around, but, like Troy’s Cassandra, some of us will keep trying, and if it’s too late for the United States, that may not be the case with the global south. 

From the Republic of Colombia, … here’s hoping.
_______

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

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Vague Memories

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The space on the page is still warm, although perhaps now only tepid.

It had, once upon a winter’s day, been occupied.  Occupied by a very special calid phrase, one subsequently erased, but the message’s essence remained, remained aware, somewhere in time, if no longer in space.  Indelible, ineradicable, ineffaceable. 

Destiny is not, by its nature, kind.  But perhaps it knows best.

Still, echoes of misplaced emotions resonate and ephemeral rainbows endure, albeit hidden amidst profoundly deep, dark shadows.  And anyway, notwithstanding the past or the present or the future, somewhere, some-when, hummingbirds play with dragonflies while flowers and willow o’ the wisps in season sing of might have beens.

Vague memories strayed far from home.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Sane

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A call on Americans and sane people everywhere of all political persuasions, political parties and civic movements to move away from war, from armed confrontations, from massive military spending, from stationing armed forces abroad and from violating the sovereignty of foreign states and to instead, concentrate on resolving transcendental domestic problems such as infrastructure, healthcare, education, social security and the common welfare, all of which can be accomplished with the savings from a sane military budget, one no greater than double that of any foreign country.

A call to end politization of the judiciary, the bureaucracy, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

A call on all of us to minimize discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender and national origins.

A call for empathy and respect instead of intolerance and polarization. 

A call to return to sanity and regain control of our destinies.

We urge that this be accomplished on a non-partisan basis under the leadership of people like Democrat Dennis Kucinich, independent Tulsi Gabbard and Republican Rand Paul, as well as former Senator Jim Webb and others dedicated to peace and survival, answering Bobby Darin’s call more than half a century ago to end war in his antiwar anthem, a Simple Song of Freedom.

The time is now, while we’re still around.

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

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Perhaps Thinking of Picking up the Pieces is the Only Option Left

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On February 10, 2023, Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research published an article in one of the few reliable English language sources of information, Consortium News, entitled “Making Taiwan the Ukraine of the East”.[1]

To those of us infected with Cassandra’s curse (disregarded precognition), it is clear that the United States Deep State, through the Democratic Party, it’s political puppet, and the corporate media, it’s propaganda arm, is determined to provoke a nuclear holocaust, which for some reason, it believes that it can win at a cost it deems reasonable, regardless of the price we as individuals will have to pay or its long term impact on our planet.  It does so through constant provocations we would never accept, including clear acts of war against both the Russian Federation and the Peoples’ Republic of China.  Witness, for example, the recently disclosed United States-Norwegian military attack on the Nord Stream pipelines and the United States targeting of missiles it supplies to the Ukraine against Russian positions. 

As this article makes clear, a similar campaign of intolerable provocation is being directed at the Peoples’ Republic of China in order to provoke it to assert its sovereignty over the province of Taiwan through the use of force, against which, the United States and its allies could then respond as they have in the Ukraine.  Or perhaps more blatantly and more directly in the hopes of ending the economic threats to a neoliberal world order premised on the fiat dollar’s supremacy.

That the positions under international law (an illusion at best most respected in its breach) are reversed in the two cases (the Ukraine and Taiwan) is irrelevant, as is logic and morals, and perhaps, most importantly, common sense.  The golden rule has no place in Deep State calculations and actions. 

The Deep State’s tools involved and their NATO counterparts are all too quickly leading us into disaster, and most American voters, with their eyes tightly shut, their ears safely plugged and their heads in the sand (if not in a darker and more olfactorily unpleasant orifice), appear unwilling, or perhaps, now that democracy is clearly just an illusion, unable to reverse the lemming-like trend towards planetary destruction.  Perhaps though, if the non-Anglo-nations of the Southern hemisphere can maintain our independence and exercise decent, independent judgment, we may survive to pick up the pieces, and learning from the Northern Hemisphere’s incredibly idiotic mistakes, perhaps avoid them in the future.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] See link to the article at https://consortiumnews.com/2023/02/09/making-taiwan-the-ukraine-of-the-east/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=32b91ed8-54a5-4708-809c-f23fb608c353.