Irony by the Dawn’s Early Light

Posted on March 29, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Irony indeed reigns.

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

How sick is that?

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

So, “Red Dawn”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

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

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

So what now?

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

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

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

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

On Gratifying Self-Delusions

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

“Ignorance is bliss” is a saying truer than we care to admit. And orchestrated ignorance is perhaps the most reliable tool for controlling slaves, especially when they are unaware of their status and are treated just well enough to keep them from rebelling. Especially when they can be kept divided and polarized, fooled into thinking they have a meaningful voice in their own lives. Especially when they can be turned against those who seek to free them.

During the academic year that started in the fall of 1976 and ended as summer approached in 1977 I was a student at the graduate division of New York University’s school of law working on my LL.M in international legal studies. My classmates in that endeavor included students from all over the world. The best and the brightest. One was a member of an African country’s supreme court, two were Lebanese legal scholars and several were Iranian jurists. There were others but those were the ones I most remember; my apologies to the rest. The academic aspects of that experience were very important, especially those that dealt with comparative constitutional law, but much more important were the eye opening experiences shared with me by my classmates. Real people who introduced me to the real world rather than the one to which I’d been exposed as a student and then replicated as a lecturer in history. History as to which I had been abysmally misled, especially with reference to Iran and Islam, topics now all too relevant.

During my time at my alma mater, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, and for the bulk of the decade that followed my graduation in June of 1968 while I was an instructor at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York, I was a devout supporter of Israel. Israel, the purported David amidst a sea of Goliaths. And I was also an admirer of the Shah of Iran, Israel’s greatest and perhaps only ally in the Middle East. Islam, I had been taught, was the greatest threat to world peace and Zionism the savior not only of Judaism but of Christianity as well (I had never heard of the Toledot Yeshu or of the Zionist tradition of spitting on Christians). The world was purportedly evolving following the defeat of evil in World War II, the second war to end all wars, and international law was to be the norm that made Kant’s aspirations for perpetual peace possible. And that was what I was specializing in.

As reality demonstrates, I could not have been more wrong. False narratives impact us more than anything else, they always have, and false narratives were what I’d been fed. What we’d all been fed and what most of us continue to be fed. We were taught that we were a benign force seeking to share freedom and prosperity and democracy with our less enlightened neighbors, not that we were rapacious looters of their natural resources. Or at least that some among us were, most of us were merely useful tools.

In our high school and undergraduate studies as they touched on modern Persia, on Iran, we were not taught about the coup on the 19^th of August in 1953 when democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown because he’d dared to place the interests of his people over those of British and United States oil interests, an industry he’d nationalized after the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had refused to account for the income it had consistently looted. That coup against democracy, decency and the right to national self-determination was not unusual. It was what the United Kingdom and the United States had always done and still do when faced with the desire of any people to control their own destinies threatens to become a reality. In hindsight it’s become clear that World War II was not about preventing genocide or saving the world for democracy, the German genocide could not compare in breadth or scope to that engaged in for a century by the United Kingdom and the United States and Belgium and the Netherlands and France, etc. It was about preserving the right to loot and enslave of the billionaire class which ruled us all as though possessed of Tolkien’s One Ring. And International Law? A useful delusion for a while.

The CIA and MI6 and Mossad orchestrated Iranian coup of 1953 restored the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the monarch without a monarchical background who had ruled and would again rule Iran with an iron fist under the direction of the United States CIA, the British MI6 but, most of all, the Israeli Mossad. The Shah who, as the figurehead for United Kingdom, United States and Israeli interests, brutally ruled the Iranian people through the Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State (the Savak), an agency modelled on the German Gestapo and the Soviet KGB but under the ironic tutelage of the French intelligence service and, according to a declassified CIA memo, run by the CIA which provided the Savak with both funding and training, albeit on behalf of the Israeli Mossad.

Unlike all too many of my contemporaries, my blissful ignorance was not destined to last forever. My new acquaintances at the International Legal Studies program at NYU (doctoral students or post-doctoral students all), especially the Iranian jurists (who were actually part of the Shah’s regime), provided me with a narrative completely at odds with everything I’d been taught and which I’d been parroting to my own students for almost a decade. I listened to them during our conversations, listened uncomfortably but politely, but refused to believe what they were telling me (the way my contemporaries refuse to believe the truths I seek to share with them now). I refused to believe them at least until the fall of 1979, two years after I’d earned my LL.M and was no longer in contact with any of those who’d sought to open my eyes to uncomfortable realities. Until the Iran I thought I knew, a Muslim anomaly purportedly peopled by a happy and grateful populace, exploded and seemingly from one day to the next turned into a mass of seemingly ungrateful monsters who hated the hand that had “fed them” for so long. Until the Shah I’d been taught to admire was cast out without a shot being fired and a religious theocracy was established under a long exiled religious cleric, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, something seemingly out of Frank Herbert’s imagination on the Planet Dune

It was only at that point that I decided that perhaps I should do my own research given that the Iran in which I’d believed seemed to have been replaced by the Iran about which I’d been warned, and my own research confirmed the worst that I’d been told about the Iran I thought I knew, the Iran that sent its purported best and brightest to study in the United States, including at the Citadel. Research was more onerous back in the late 1970s and early 1980s than it is today but it was possible. Today, despite increasing censorship of information by Zionist ownership over most means of communication, it is still possible for those who care about truth to engage in adequate personal research, even if only on Wikipedia which is not the most reliable of sources but is frequently adequately accurate. I found several relevant articles there just now and it took less than ten minutes. As of today they can be found at the following links: the 1953 coup d’état: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#:~:text=On%2019%20August%201953%2C%20Prime,AJAX%20Project%20or%20Operation%20Ajax.;

the Savak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK; the Iranian Revolution of 1979: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution. But I recommend that you conduct your own research.

As in the case of the myriad Middle East monarchical dictatorships that exist today as vassals of Israel and the United States, or the myriad dictatorships imposed by the United States in Latin America during the past century, the common people in Iran during the fall of 1979 had no reason to love the United States and certainly not Israel, something that became evident when, in an orgy of rage, Iranian students seized control of the United States embassy in Tehran and held United States personnel there hostage until after the United States presidential election of 1980. Ironic given current United States and Israeli organized student demonstrations against the government their parents and grandparents founded. But as to Iran, history for most of the current generation in the United States only started when that embassy takeover occurred, just as the history of the Palestinian conflict only purportedly started on October 7, 2023 (rather than in 1948 when Israel initiated its campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing).

It comforts the current successors of the United States’ mid-nineteenth century American Party (self-described for non-pejorative reasons as the “Know Nothings”) to study history in that manner, or rather, to be taught history in that manner. The exclusion of inconvenient truths, like the genocide of indigenous Americans, or slavery, or child labor, or orchestrated mass pedophilia makes looking in the mirror much easier and facilitates cheering for the Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America at ball games followed by the honoring of heroes who kept and keep us free and safe. And it certainly makes it much easier for us to sanctimoniously attend Sunday religious services where we can repeat memorized prayers and hymns while ignoring the real messages that underlie them. We are taught to fear Iran because it purportedly seeks to join the nuclear armed club of which the United States and Israel are members and would then be in a position to not only defend itself, but also to defend all the Muslim countries in the Middle East whose lands Israel covets and intends to incorporate into a Greater Israel. The fact that Iran, unlike Israel, has under both international and Islamic law renounced such ambitions is ignored. As is the fact that the prophecy that Iran is within several weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons and must thus be destroyed now before it destroys us, destroys us because it hates our freedom not because of anything we’ve done, is an utter fallacy, one personally spread by Israel’s genocidal prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during over two decades (making obvious its deceptive nature). But perhaps now that the author of that prohibition, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been assassinated by the United States and Israel that false prophecy may become a self-fulfilling reality. His Fatwa, an edict prohibiting the development of nuclear weapons, may have died with him as more realistic Iranian leaders may decide that in a world bereft of law, nuclear weapons may provide the only source of national security, something North Korea has apparently demonstrated. And if it does, nuclear proliferation is likely to spread, and if it does, a nuclear holocaust may well become a reality.

My ignorance certainly comforted me during most of the first half of my life. It comforted me as I self-righteously engaged in all of the fascist nationalist tapestry so comforting for my contemporaries, hymns and parades and demonization and dehumanization of opponents all in the name of liberty and democracy, and especially of war in the name of peace. As I engaged in activities the way most of those with whom I attended school still do. Unfortunately, my eyes were forced open and I chose to keep them that way. I was educated under an honor code that I took seriously but that perhaps should have included another vow, one not to engage in gratifying self-delusion.

There is a joke popular in the areas surrounding retirement communities in South Florida about the “driving dead”. Old people who continue driving, albeit at a snail’s pace, unaware that they’ve passed away. A similar joke may, in a sense, apply to neoliberal citizens in the United States, the United Kingdom and Western Europe who are blissfully unaware that they’ve already been conquered, politically, economically and intellectually, not by the hordes of Muslim immigrants fleeing the countries they, at the behest of Israel, have gleefully bombed into oblivion, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, the Sudan and now Iran, but by the Zionist billionaire class who have seemingly acquired the One Ring of which Tolkien once wrote.

Unfortunately, the reign of Sauron, or perhaps of the anti-Christ, is upon us and we have no Bilbo Baggins or Samwise to bail us out as we pontificate with our eyes wide shut.

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

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

Posted on February 28, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on February 21, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

What an irony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflections on an Unremittingly Ludicrous Situation

Posted on September 30, 2025 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Republicans are absolutely correct, the Democratic Party is horrible but, then again, so are Democrats, the Republican Party is awful. Interestingly, both are subservient to the same master and it is not the United States’ citizenry.

The second Trump administration is a disaster, domestically and internationally, but, in all honesty it’s not a worse disaster than the Biden administration, and, internationally, while terrible, it is no worse than the prior Obama and Clinton administrations which planted the seeds for so many of today’s problems (think of the Ukraine, and Libya and Syria and Yemen, etc.). And of course, the administration of George W. Bush was as terrible and inept as any of them, although, in each case, “inept” is measured only with respect to how such administrations benefit United States citizens. Each was highly apt as far as the billionaire class was concerned and with respect to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The sad part is that Mr. Trump’s inane behavior, rather than usher in a real independent and pro-United States administration comprised of people like former Congressman Dennis Kucinich or former Senator Jim Webb, real statesmen, it is very likely to usher in a new Democratic Party administration led by the Clintons and the Obamas and Pelosi, etc., also foreign owned, rather than one dedicated to world peace, domestic tranquility, prosperity and freedom from AIPAC domination. Thus, the more things purportedly change, the more they stay the same and it is our fault, yours and mine, both individually and collectively, for being so consistently gullible. Of course, things don’t quite stay the same as each subsequent administration becomes more vitriolic and more seriously abuses our civil liberties and constitutional rights, more thoroughly perverting and subverting the institutions and customs meant to preserve and protect us while the previous administration hypocritically laments the sad state of affairs.

For decades public opinion polls have shown that the United States electorate would prefer a political administration other than one controlled by either the Republican or Democratic parties but every election, thanks in large part to the AIPAC controlled corporate media, we are convinced that those are our only two choices and that voting for third parties or independents is merely wasting our votes, and that we thus have to vote for one of the two AIPAC owned political parties so that the other does not attain power. Thus, rather than voting our conscience and with our intellect, we tend to vote from artificially induced fear.

The stupidity involved is incredible! Albert Einstein would have described it as insane. But it is constant and consistent and anyway, it’s probably already too late to change things since, as may well have occurred in the United States already and as is occurring in Europe west of the Caucuses, electoral manipulation through distortive news reporting and, when that is not enough, electoral manipulation through abuse of the judicial system (as recently occurred in Romania) or, as a last resort, through electoral fraud involving destruction of inconvenient ballots (as was apparently again the case today in Moldavia) and through manufacture of necessary ballots, or else, through the hacking of electronic voting equipment will prevent changes opposed by the alliance of Deep States that makes a mockery of even the illusion of democracy.

For decades, especially since Eric Arthur Blair (writing under the pen name George Orwell) in his dystopian epic 1984 (published in 1948) warned us, we have been completely manipulated, duped, and our intellect and ethics have been insulted. We not only “should” know better, we in fact “do” know better, but somehow, that makes no difference. The genocide against which we purportedly fought a world war has now become acceptable, although, the reality, when one examines history, is that genocide has always been acceptable, one need only note the celebrated instances of genocide in the Tanakh (Old Testament), e.g., Jericho, or much more recently, the genocide perpetrated against indigenous Americans by European colonists, the genocide in the Congo perpetrated by the Belgians, the genocide in India and Africa perpetrated by the British, the genocide in Armenia perpetrated by the Turks and the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second war to end all wars, thus, the genocide engaged in by the Nazis was apparently only horrendous because the Nazis lacked sophisticated public relations such as those employed by Zionists and, of course, the Nazis lost a major war.

So, … we rush towards Armageddon, many Christion Zionists with open arms in the hope that Yešu the Nazarene will deem it prudent to return and reward slaughter and mayhem with his holy presence. We rush towards Armageddon oblivious, polarized and incoherent but, apparently, blissfully so. Or, perhaps, we’ll just blissfully remain enslaved to our betters who apparently deserve to use us as they will.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Reflections on Canaanite Salem

Posted on August 5, 2025 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

*Photo copyright: Michael Ventura / Alamy Stock Photo*

Salem: the Jebusite city whose name was debauched and became Jeru-Salem and then, the focus for genocide, animal sacrifice and the mother of blood libels (sacred to the fratricidal sons of Avram). Divine El, the principal deity of the Canaanites, must surely have cursed them all. Or, at least, he should have.

I wonder what Canaanite Salem was like before all the hatred and all the blood was shed. Before patricidal David came. The Canaanites were apparently a pleasant and generous people but then, Joshua (political heir to Moishe) came to slaughter all their men and women and children and flocks and pets, all in the name of Avram’s unholy god, YHWH, the younger, black sheep son of El.

Then, the Canaanites were just … no more.

Sort of how Zionists aspire that the Palestinians will “just be no more” and that everyone will forget what happened.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025 (photo excluded); 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/.

Alleged Genocide in Palestine, Jeffrey Epstein, Zionism, AIPAC, the Mossad and the Law of Unintended Consequences: A Plea Not to Conflate Judaism with Zionism

Posted on August 2, 2025 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

August 2, 2025

“According to the current Trump administration, it seems that Jeffrey Epstein was apparently an optical illusion, especially with reference to any suspicion that Mr. Epstein was a close personal friend of any among the world’s most powerful people or that he was a critical asset of Israel’s Mossad. ‘No honey pots here, move on. The collective memory of the American people, indeed of people all over the world is mistaken. It must be an Iranian mass hypnosis plot aided by Palestinian baby-eating, mass-raping terrorists.’ That too many people refuse to acknowledge the foregoing, including many deluded MAGA Trump supporters, is unfortunate and obviously involves blatant antisemitism.”

Okay, no citations, the quote is a fabrication, but it’s a fabrication worthy of an answer to a ChatGPT open AI query. And, there may be more than just a kernel of truth in the foregoing. As a caveat, I am not a MAGA or Trump supporter but nor am I a supporter of Trump detractors aligned with the Democratic Party or the legacy media. Nor am I blind, deaf and dumb. A further acknowledgement: I consider myself a leftwing democratic socialist along the lines of Noam Chomsky, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, etc., and I acknowledge that the length of an article usually negatively impacts its readability and thus apologize ahead of time for the length of this one, but the subject matter seemed too important to condense further than it has been. Because of this article’s length, I’m taking the strange step of quoting its concluding paragraph here. Make of that what you will: “While it is fair to insist that Zionist Israel should follow Nazi Germany into the dust bins of history, that the United States must rid itself of AIPAC controlled political parties and politicians and that the Mossad should go the way of the Gestapo, a repeat of the massive historical violations of human rights incident to antisemitism must never again be repeated or justified.”

There is an unfortunate and potentially dangerous resurgence in antisemitism as a result of non-traditional factors, one being the campaign by Zionists in Israel engaged in genocide and other crimes against humanity and violations of international law to conflate their political program with the far broader aspects of Judaism claiming that opposition to Zionism is anti-Semitic, per se. Anti-Semitic under any circumstances, notwithstanding any objective verities. Another is the enshrinement of such conflation in penal legislation which, in essence, makes criticism of Zionism or Israel, regardless of how justified, illegal.

The mass murder, rape and starvation of the Palestinian people by Israel has led to a broad reaction by people from every corner of the world against Israeli Zionism (including large numbers of traditional Jews, especially Orthodox Jews). People all over the world (although less so in the United States) are revolted by the indiscriminate murder of women and children, the wholesale destruction of Palestinian hospitals, mosques, schools and homes, but also the justification of rape as a legitimate means of control and the murder of infants and children based on the fear of eventual retaliation. That Israeli settlers are now also attacking Christian communities, burning Christian churches and seeking the expulsion of Christians as well as Muslims from the Levant will only make things worse as some within the somnambulant Christian community in the United States may suddenly wake up. Unfortunately, that justifiable reaction may all too easily be used by racist anti-Semites to justify their long held hatred and fear of Jews in general. Jews, who they claim, are bent on worldwide hegemony as evinced by the disproportionate power wielded by them in politics, the economy, the news media, the entertainment industry and in many other major industries claiming that, as evinced by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it is all based on a long term plot rather than on the natural consequences of meritocracy.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a document circulated during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century detailing a purported Zionist plot to attain world dominance but debunked as a forgery during the 1920s, although it has never stopped circulating in various variants and has been a cornerstone of twentieth century antisemitism. Reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as forgeries rather than fabrications has resulted in confusion to some as, generally speaking, a forgery is understood to involve the existence of some predicate instrument that has been distorted with an inaccurate variant being passed off as genuine but, in either case, there is no doubt that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were used and continue to be used to justify anti-Semitic narratives.

As an indicia of the foregoing, Nicholas Joseph Fuentes (a right wing political pundit, activist and live streamer accused of promoting white supremacist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic views) recently released the following purported statistics concerning Zionist dominance in diverse fields of United States’ politics, education and commerce. According to him and others who share his prejudices, purportedly ninety percent of donors to the Democratic Party are Jewish, over eighty-seven percent of the presidents of Ivy League universities are Jewish, all major talent agencies in the United States are “Jewish” run, half of the owners of NBA teams are Jewish (as is the NBA Commissioner) and, during the past four decades, all chairpersons of the Federal Reserve with the exception of Jerome Powell have been Jewish. Finally, Mr. Fuentes claims that the majority of the members of the cabinets in the most recent United States presidential administrations have either been Jewish or had Jewish spouses. Similar claims are made concerning the United Kingdom and diverse European countries. In short, according to anti-Semites, Jews control most of the world’s financial institutions, most of the world’s news media, most of the world’s entertainment industry, most of the world’s major educational institutions, they control everything worth controlling, either directly or indirectly. Of course, that ignores the existence of the Global South, of India and China and Russia and Iran and North Korea and Yemen, etc. However, even respected political commentators like former Judge Andrew Napolitano have recently interacted with former government officials who claim that despite their miniscule percentage of the population in the United States, Zionists are an overwhelming majority of the government officials in charge of foreign affairs in both Republican and Democratic Party administrations and that both major United States political parties are wholly subservient to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which can make or break any member of the United States Congress through its access to massive donor wealth. Respected political commentators like former Judge Napolitano, Tucker Carlson, Jeffrey Sacks and Noam Chomsky, as contrasted with Mr. Fuentes, are providing such information not in the context of traditional generalized antisemitism (indeed, Doctors Sacks and Chomsky are among the world’s most prominent and respected Jews) but rather, in response to the United States’ wholehearted support of Israel, no matter what, as illustrated by the financing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israel’s overthrow of the government of Syria and Syria’s ongoing dismemberment and the ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon as well as the recent Israeli-American attacks on Iran, none of which positively impact United States’ interests.

Admittedly, today, much of the world (outside of the United States) is justifiably outraged by the United States-supported Israeli conduct criticized by Messrs. Sacks, Chomsky, Carlson, Napolitano and dozens of others. But things are getting worse, not better. According to available polling data Israelis in general have been utterly corrupted by the policies of their government and now wholeheartedly and bloodthirstily approve of their government actions which most credible specialists in international law characterize as crimes of lèse humanité comparable to the worst instances of violations of human rights in modern history. Indeed, Zionist settlers are now doing their best to eliminate Christians from Israel as well as Muslims prompting a rebuke from Catholic Pope Leo XIV.

Apologists for Israel’s consistent violations of international law and basic human rights during more than three quarters of a century argue that Israel’s actions are existentially necessary for the survival of the Jewish race even though Judaism is neither a race nor a nationality and Zionism is not even a religion. To a growing extent, such actions are resulting in the malediction common to self-fulfilling prophecies and such actions have had the opposite effect; in many instances, very unfairly so. Zionist lies (as blatantly false as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) to the effect that Israel and Zionism act in the name of and for the benefit of all Jews are indeed resulting in increased antisemitism, especially as antisemitism is being legally defined, especially as it is being legally defined in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia. Defined, not as generalized hatred of Jews but as opposition, not to Judaism, but to Zionism. It’s as though the infamous Murphy (of Murphy’s Law fame) was an anti-Semite as well.

Judaism is not synonymous with Zionism and many of the most vociferous critics of Zionist crimes of lèse-humanité are, as indicated above, in fact Jews, especially orthodox Jews. And even if Mr. Fuentes’ statistics or the more credible information presented in interviews conducted by Messrs. Napolitano and Tucker, especially those observations that have involved renowned political economist Jeffrey Sacks, bear any resemblance to reality, that does not mean that meritocracy rather than a grand conspiracy is not the reason for that statistical anomaly. But wouldn’t it be a strange and ironic twist of fate, even an indicia of divine justice in the face of millennia of antisemitism, if whoever was responsible for concocting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in fact provided a blueprint for the evolution of meaningful Jewish and Zionist power far in excess of that which the miniscule number of Jews, compared to Christians, Muslims, etc., would appear to represent if statistics rather than merit were the measuring stick?

Now the Trump administration’s Jeffrey Epstein fiasco is adding to the problem.

It has been credibly alleged by former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe and other credible witnesses that Mr. Epstein was an agent of Israel’s infamous Mossad and that his sexual predation was a tool designed specifically by the Mossad to compromise important political, economic and social leaders, especially the most wealthy and powerful among them, in order to provide Israel with leverage against them. Prior to his latest election, Mr. Trump had promised to make public all available information concerning Mr. Epstein’s activities, especially including a purported list of his “clients” but he has totally backtracked on that promise and while the corporate media and Mr. Trump’s political opponents insist that Mr. Trump’s change in attitude is based on compromising information specifically concerning him that would come to light in the event that the Epstein files were made public, there are a plethora of unconfirmable rumors to the effect that instead of the foregoing, Israel has somehow or other convinced the Trump Administration that the promised public release of information would not only tarnish numerous elites in politics, finance, entertainment, the news media, etc., but that such disclosure would also implicate numerous United States intelligence agencies and leaders and thus, would have a negative impact on United States intelligence sources and methods, impacting “national security”. Unfortunately (unfortunately for the Trump administration as well as Israel), it seems way too many cats are out of the bag including unverifiable claims that it was the Israeli Mossad that was responsible for the assassination of President Trump’s predecessor, John F. Kennedy and perhaps even for the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

President Trump’s defense of Israeli interests in the Epstein affair, if accurate, is proving personally catastrophic to him. As indicated above, his numerous opponents, especially in the corporate media and, of course, the Democratic Party, are using Mr. Trump’s refusal to release materials in the possession of the United States Department of Justice and intelligence agencies as proof that he, like Mr. Jeffries, is a pedophile and seemingly was the only person of public interest with whom Mr. Epstein “partied”. That distraction is being massively played up, according to some, to keep attention off of Mr. Epstein’s Israeli intelligence connection and his decades’ long successful generation of salacious materials useful to the Zionist cause. Still, related information keeps leaking out and as often as not, the sources are non-Zionist Jews. Unfortunately for Jews in general, Israel’s impunity with respect to the ongoing genocide in Palestine is making such otherwise unverifiable claims concerning Mossad activities all too credible, especially to people all too prepared to think the worst of Jews but, more troublingly, to a large number of people who are not congenital anti-Semites.

Just when things were going Israel’s way in Syria and Lebanon and Palestine and Iran and in all the Middle Eastern dictatorships and in all the NATO countries, this had to happen! Apparently justice is just too difficult to keep bought and traces of truth, albeit mixed with wild conspiracy theories, continue to leak out no matter how much censorship is imposed. As an unfortunate consequence, the Law of Unintended Consequences, a close relative to Murphy’s Law, may well be seeding the ground for a very unfortunate revival of real antisemitism. Something against which honorable critics of Zionist atrocities and of manipulation of the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Middle East dictatorships must guard, especially by repeatedly pointing out that non-Zionist Jews are leading the criticism of the massive Israeli abuses involved.

While it is fair to insist that Zionist Israel should follow Nazi Germany into the dust bins of history, that the United States must rid itself of AIPAC controlled political parties and politicians and that the Mossad should go the way of the Gestapo, a repeat of the massive historical violations of human rights incident to antisemitism must never again be repeated or justified.

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

Posted on July 22, 2025 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

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

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

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

Caveat:

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

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

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

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

Fortunately for the kleptocracy, because he is a naturalized rather than native born United States citizen, Mr. Mamdani can never become president. But, then again, perhaps sometime soon, someone who shares his values will appear on the national stage and, unlike Mr. Trump, will not so quickly betray the principles he promised to sustain.
_____

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

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

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 January 21, 2025 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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.

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Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Author, Academic, Political Analyst, Political Commentator, Poet, Linguist

Tag Archives: israel

Irony by the Dawn’s Early Light

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

On Gratifying Self-Delusions

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

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

Reflections on an Unremittingly Ludicrous Situation

Reflections on Canaanite Salem

Alleged Genocide in Palestine, Jeffrey Epstein, Zionism, AIPAC, the Mossad and the Law of Unintended Consequences: A Plea Not to Conflate Judaism with Zionism

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

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

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