Category Archives: Requiem

Reflections on the 126th Anniversary of my Grandmother’s Birth

Posted on by
Reply

Soooo, today, June 24, 2026, is the anniversary of the day one-hundred-and-twenty-six years ago when Juana Valbuena Rubiano, the future queen of Manizales, patroness of the arts and of civic causes, spiritual leader and entrepreneur was born.  She was my maternal grandmother and, of course, she still is, just not on our plane of existence anymore, or is it plain?  Or both?  Everyone seemed to refer to her as “Doña Juanita” but we called her “la Mamita”.  So did my own three sons.

She was an amazing woman and, as was the custom in the Republic of Colombia then (not anymore though), she tacked on the names of her spouses.  The first was my grandfather Jean Eugénio Mahé, a physician descended from a French noble family and clairvoyant as well.  A pretty good catch except that, like too many good things, he didn’t last.  He died young leaving his young wife, Juanita de Mahé then, with two young children: my mother, María de Rosario de Nuestra Señora de Chiquinquirá (a mouthful) Mahé Valbuena and her younger brother, Francisco Eugenio Mahé Valbuena.  Eugenio’s funeral was wonderful; everyone came, everyone to whom he’d extended credit especially.  He’d taken his role as a physician seriously and payment, as in communism, varied with the person’s ability to pay.  But after the funeral no one paid their debts and my grandmother Juanita was left with very little in the way of capital.  Fortunately, she was not only extremely beautiful but a survivor  and she invested the little capital she had in a small shoe business and then sold it when it became profitable and purchased a hotel in Manizales, the famous Hotel Roma on 22nd street between 23rd and 24th avenues, today the place where the Notary Number Two of Manizales, stands.

Being beautiful, suitors were plentiful and one won her heart, his name was Germán Restrepo and he too, like my grandfather Eugénio, was from a prominent family, this one Colombian, a family with politicians and presidents and entrepreneurs galore.  Unfortunately, he was its black sheep, and a very dark shade of black.  He was handsome and charismatic and especially charming, but work was not his thing, nor was fidelity.  And bigamy was not something he disdained.  He would leave and return, then leave again, always charming his way back into my grandmother’s heart.  He did do two good things though, in fact, great things.  He gave my grandmother two more children, daughters.  First Carola and then Livia.  Livia is still around although in California, everyone else in this reflection (other than grandchildren and great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren) now resides beyond the veil. 

My grandmother was not a “Women’s Liber” although she was the mold from which the very best of them were made.  She was a natural leader, generous and responsible and an example to follow when success seemed impossible but had to be attained.  I love and admire her very much.  So does Livia.  So do my three sons and the many children of my Uncle Francisco (we called him Pacho), all of whom, like me, are her grandchildren.  And many of the grandchildren now also have children and they have all heard about their Mamita. 

My grandmother left a legacy in Manizales, well, many in fact, but one in particular, her beautiful country home: a small pink castle speckled in gold set atop a large hill with an arroyo at its base and millions of flower’s she’d planted (or had planted) up and down the hill, mainly carnations but roses as well and fruit trees.  It had its own name, the Atardecer (Sunset), and it had a pool with an adjacent gazebo and, nearby, a large artificial lake with ducks and swans and a tiny lake house where equipment was stored.  She left it in trust for pregnant girls whose families had disowned them.  It was named after her:  the Hogar Juanita”.  Unfortunately, as too often happens in Colombia (and elsewhere), after her passing an unscrupulous politician appropriated it, sold most of the property to real estate developers, and the main building is now leased to a private School, “El Nuevo Gimnasio”. 

Sometimes people are terrible.  But then again, there are people like her.  I have never met anyone better or kinder or wiser or more loving.  And I’ve met a lot of awesome people.

She lived past one hundred but decided she did not need to attain the age of a hundred-and-one, so she left us.  Gone but certainly not forgotten.  Anyway, today is her birthday and, as always, my heart and soul are with her.

Happy birthday Mamita!
_____

© 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/.

Diplomacy, History and Eric Arthur Blair

Posted on by
Reply

The triumphalism on all sides with regard to the two week suspension on the Israeli orchestrated United States attacks on Iran seems counterproductive.  No one has won and everyone has lost, especially the sense of decency in international affairs, the concept of “law” (not just internationally but constitutionally) and, of course, the families of all the victims who have been murdered.  Murdered just as surely as victims continue to be murdered in armed conflicts where the only victors are the military industrial complex against which Ike warned us well over half a century ago.  We humans are easily manipulated and induced to engage in inhuman conduct and inherent hypocrisy, assisted by our ability to profoundly express moral and religious beliefs which we cavalierly ignore, usually in the name of false patriotism and purportedly in an incoherently misdirected quest for security, all desensitized by “bread and circuses” (but without the bread).

Diplomacy has become nonexistent, especially among the states that comprise the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  But it’s also become non-existent among the victims of that (purportedly) defensive alliance; victims who seem more interested in antagonizing mad bulls than in manipulating them (as the wise-weak once did in artful forms of agonizing savage bulls). But then again, those bulls had been tamed and drugged after having been captured and imprisoned and thus, the metaphor does not quite fit, except perhaps as a visual aid.  Name calling, insulting and cursing; threats; imposition of economic sanctions designed to cause starvation; kidnapping and murdering of opposition leaders, those are the new norms and norms tend to be copied.  Just noting.  While the foregoing deterioration of the polite and subtle discourse that once characterized foreign services is accelerating, accelerating in alarming fashion, it is not all that new.  It’s been a growing trend for at least half a century.  Or perhaps for a millennium or two.  And while diplomacy tends to involve inter-state affairs, the trend has leaked into the domestic sphere, now characterizing domestic politics as well.  But it hasn’t stopped there.  Check your social media; Yankees’ fans have really caught on.  And the exchange of information at all levels has become the art of disinformation, artful disinformation so-to-speak.  B.F. Skinner’s legacy, the gift that keeps on giving is now freed from Madison Avenue and Hollywood.  It’s become ubiquitously omnipresent, now enhanced by artificial intelligence.  Empathy???  Hmmm, what’s that?

As a historian, political analyst and commentator I look at what is reported as news today and which will soon calcify into purported history and ask myself how much of what we’ve been taught, how much of what I’ve taught, about the unending armed conflicts we humans engage and have engaged in since we evolved into our most primitive forms as members of the homo genus series of species; forms that purportedly separated us from the ancestors of our simian cousins, or perhaps from the first spark of life, is even partially accurate.  Certainly some of it has to be even if only by pure coincidence or perhaps, carelessness.  But most of it is not.  Is it any wonder then that we seemingly learn absolutely nothing from our devastating mistakes, mistakes we refuse to admit and which we paper over with noble sounding platitudes? 

Today, because of the resemblance to the attitudes preceding the first and second wars to end all wars, World War comes to mind.  At its conclusion purportedly back and white distinctions between the combatants were drawn, albeit only after research into critical interpretative factors was made illegal.  Made criminal, formally and culturally, with those who questioned official narratives labeled immoral deviants.  World War II, like World War I, turned out to be a war in which the victors who wrote the history were at least as evil as the vanquished, although following World War II the leaders of the vanquished were executed in what now seem to have been show trials held in the vanquished city of Nuremburg.  In hindsight, the victors, the ones who first engaged in nuclear warfare after having engaged in their own forms of genocide for millennia seem more evil than those who they conquered, … well, conquered again.  And again and again and again.  Now, I ask myself, and I ask those who chance to read this article, has anything we’ve been taught about that horrible conflict actually proven to have been accurate?  Consider this: the purported victims of the Nazis whose protection was a purportedly existential obligation have, during more than three quarters of a century, acted no differently with respect to Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, etc., than did their purported victimizers acted with respect to them.  Genocide then was evil, today it’s necessary to combat terrorism (which is what the Nazis and Japanese and Italians claimed they were doing way back when).  And unprovoked sneak attacks?  Well they apparently no longer involve “days that will live in infamy” but rather, days of national pride.  And nuclear weapons?  Well, they were briefly anathema but now they’re to be hoarded for possible use, when and if convenient.  The names and faces have been changed as detective sergeant Joe Friday might have said on the old television series Dragnet (back in simpler times) but, in this case, they’ve been changed to protect the guilty rather than the innocent.

Thus we find ourselves where we are.

Devastatingly polarized and confused by the ever changing variants of “official” verities just as B.F. Skinner’s nemesis (well, other than Noam Chomsky), Eric Arthur Blair writing as George Orwell presciently predicted three quarters of a century ago (just before he prudently died, leaving us to fend for ourselves).
_____

© 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/.

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

Posted on by
Reply

‘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.  
_____

© 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/.

Initial Reflections on Pope Leo XIV

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

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

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

Only time will tell. 

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

I certainly hope so.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

The Sad Saga of Adam Everyman: a confession of sorts

Posted on by
Reply

As he aged he increasingly came to acknowledge the harm he had caused others, either intentionally or carelessly or unavoidably, and he came to profoundly regret it.  He had too often been callous, albeit with a warm and sort of sincere smile, believing that he really sought to govern his life with good intentions, but his failures to do so were legion. 

He hated hypocrisy but that was mainly in others, his own example in that regard having been poor, although he tended to gloss over it in his introspections. 

He was a social and civic critic, and his related observations and speculations and analyses tended to be highly idealistic, and he was well thought of, except, perhaps, by those towards whom he had behaved inappropriately but, instead of seeking their forgiveness after admitting his faults, he sought forgiveness through penance of sorts, directed towards a divinity in which he did not really believe but which he constantly sought to find and understand. 

Faults in others were easy to identify and to criticize but in himself, they had for too long been artfully hidden, especially from himself. 

He had once reflected that if good and evil were objective rather than subjective, and that if an afterlife existed where punishments and rewards were bestowed based on merit, the only sure way to attain an adequate state of grace was to both forgive all the wrongs he had suffered and to attain forgiveness for the wrongs he had committed from those he had harmed.  Given his inability to do either, his only real hope rested in the unlikely possibility of immortality.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Reflections on an Easter Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Thoughts on an Equinox in the Year 2025

Posted on by
Reply

At 5:01 a.m., EST, today, the 20th of March in the year 2025, all hemispheres on our planet experienced one of the two annual equinoxes.  One would hope today’s would involve an instant of harmony and balance but, … not so. 

Genocide, murder, ethnic cleansing and hypocrisy reign thanks to the monsters who inhabit Israel and to their enablers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France as well as among the diverse Middle Eastern dictatorships: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, etc. 

It is instead an instant during a multiyear period when evil reigns and when, as Leo Durocher once noted, nice guys finish last, although, among world leaders, nice guys are a rare breed, as rare as are decent men and women.

As was the case when the Nazis ruled in Germany, most decent people, at least in North America and Europe, are deluded.  They’re like ostriches with their heads in the sand or like the three simians who believe that as long as they can avoid hearing, seeing, or talking about the evil in which they’re immersed, they’re safe. 

Those in the Global South, more sensitized by their experience with the colonialist North, look on enraged and ashamed but impotent as the phrase “never again” morphs into “as usual”. 

Sad thoughts on a lonely planet spinning along in a multiverse where justice and equity are irrelevant.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

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

Posted on by
1

The Ides of March, again, sort of.  

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

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

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

Interesting also given how many among our polarized citizenry are reflecting favorably on the events of that day, without considering its consequences.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, about Paul Simon, I wonder what he thinks about Zionism and Palestine and Palestinians.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Dreams of Freedom on an Early Winter’s Day

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

Highland Cathedral, perhaps an anthem for the subjugated everywhere. 

No wonder it resonates so in my soul.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.