On the Nature and Malfunctioning of Constitutions

Posted on March 26, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some Brief but Important Reflections on Pending Decisions Concerning Electoral Processes

Posted on March 24, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

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

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

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

So, About St. Patrick’s Day

Posted on March 17, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Today, much of the English speaking world celebrates the death of Maewyn Succat, the son of a wealthy Romanized Briton whether from England, Scotland or Wales is uncertain. From the age of 16 through 22 he was a purported slave in Ireland, having been shipwrecked there or perhaps kidnapped by Irish raiders and “forced” to act as a goat herder (horrors). At twenty-two he escaped or was expelled from Ireland and travelled to Gaul where he became a Catholic priest and adopted the Roman name Patricius (meaning “well-born” or “father of the citizens”).

He attained revenge for his “enslavement” by returning to Ireland sometime after the year 432 of the Common Era, commissioned by Pope Celestine I with following up on the conversion of the Irish, assuring that only the Catholic variant survived. Interestingly Pope Celestine I died that same year. The exact year of Maewyn Succat’s assignment and of his return to Ireland is seemingly unknowable, too confused by evolving myths although, if it was indeed Pope Celestine I who was involved, it would seemingly have been on or before July 27^th in the year 432, absent some sort of miracle. he passed away on the 26^th.

True to his assignment from whomever and whenever, Maewyn Succat brutally suppressed not only the ancient Irish culture and its tolerant indigenous religion but also the original variants of the Christian religion introduced into Ireland apparently by adherents of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt and by Pelagianists (Christians who did not believe in original sin). Catholicism may have already been introduced into Ireland via Great Britain by Germanus of Auxerre and then definitely by a certain Palladius, a Galatian monk and chronicler of monasticism (also known as Patricius). Nonetheless, the ruthless Maewyn Succat has received the credit for such role, one celebrated interestingly enough, not on the day of his birth but on that of his death, perhaps a celebration the specters of his numerous victims appreciate.

So, the truth about “St.” Patrick is that virtually everything associated with him is less than honest, making this a most relevant holiday in our post-truth era. For example: Ireland never had snakes thus he never cast them out; at best, the story being a metaphor for him driving out paganism and earlier forms of Christianity. There is no evidence from his own writings that he used the shamrock to teach the Holy Trinity, a subsequently crafted legend at best. He was never formally canonized because he lived before the formal papal canonization process began. The original color associated with him was blue, not green, perhaps explaining the University of Notre Dame’s shifting uniform colors. For more detailed information I recommend an informal article on the Medium entitled “The Disturbing Truth about St. Patrick’s Day and Its Brutal History” by an author writing under the pseudonym “three raccoons in a spacesuit”, apparently fearful of revealing his or her real name anticipating retribution. The article is available at https://threeraccoons.medium.com/the-disturbing-truth-about-st-patricks-day-and-its-brutal-history-aaf74f68604c although probably behind a paywall.

How Maewyn Succat would treat those who engage in merry celebrations in his memory today is predictable. He would probably have had them tortured and executed so it’s a good thing he is no longer around, although many fundamentalist Christians, especially of the Zionist variant, may well share his perspectives, especially concerning the religious validity of genocide.

Sooo, ….

Have a memorable St. Patrick’s Say.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

On the Origen of the “Hebrews”

Posted on March 12, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

In many senses, the “Hebrews” are an enigma. They’re the principal cultural component of the Abrahamic cultures which encompass Europe, the Middle East and the Americas but their origins although purportedly well documented in sacred scriptures are historically shrouded in mystery. Hebrew mythology, as improbable as any mythology, is frequently, perhaps too frequently, considered not only history but sacrosanct notwithstanding obvious historical evidence which discredits it. Today’s Jews claim descent from the ancient Hebrews but in many instances that is clearly inaccurate as the vast majority of modern Jews are converts from Turkey, Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, especially among the variant known as Ashkenazi who account for approximately 80% of modern Jewry. The closest genetic descendants of ancient Hebrews ironically exist, in all likelihood, among Palestinians, most of whom religiously profess Islam, albeit with significant Christian minorities.

So, about the different possible origins for the “original” ancient Hebrews who first came into historical contexts approximately three millennia ago? There are a number of hypotheses that we will briefly examine, hypotheses because there are not enough supporting facts to qualify any of them as theories, and for purposes of this article we will label them as follows: the Sumerian hypothesis; the Moses hypothesis; and, the Habiru hypothesis. Of course, there may well be many other hypotheses and one of them may someday even evolve into a theory. This is a very brief survey, admittedly inadequately documented, but which may hopefully serve as a catalyst for further objective research.

The Sumerian Hypothesis

The traditional religious view is that the ancient Hebrews are descendants of the Talmudic patriarch Noah through his purported descendant, the Sumerian Nahor, a resident of Sumerian Ur, through his son, Terach, a pagan priest of the Sumerian moon god Nanna, and an idol maker (Hebrew: תֶּרַח Teraḥ). Terach was purportedly the father of the rebellious Sumerian expatriate, Abram, from whom all three of the Abrahamic faiths in one sense or another, mainly another, are said to descend.

Rather than following what would normally have been, at least from a historian’s perspective, their Sumerian history or mythology, Terach and his descendants are described in the Hebrew Tanakh, in the Christian Old Testaments and in the Islamic Quran as having been descendants of Noah’s grandson Arpachshad, the son of Shem, and thus “Semites”. Noah, of course, was the purported survivor of a divinely orchestrated genocide. That is telling given that Sumer had its own great flood epic but, rather than Noah, its protagonist was Ziusudra (also referred to in related cultures as Utnapishtim or Atrahasis), the king of Shuruppak, a primordial Sumerian city located in what is now Tell Fara. Shuruppak was located approximately thirty-five miles south of Nippur and eighteen miles north of ancient Uruk on the banks of the Euphrates (today in Iraq’s Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate).

Following the Sumerian version of the great flood, one visited on humanity by a council of Sumerian divinities including Enlil and Inanna but excluding Enki, the genocidal flood meant to destroy all of humanity was launched purportedly because humanity was too noisy and disrupted the Sumerian divinities’ slumber. However, Ziusudra and his wife survived having been warned of the flood by the god Enki and were subsequently granted relief from death by a repentant Enlil who, in penance of sorts, permitted them to reside in Dilmun, the paradisiacal garden of diverse families of Sumerian divinities. Enki had created humanity from the blood of the demon (or divinity, there frequently being little difference) Qingu, a spawn and lover of the Creator divinity Tiamat, and was thus not anxious to see his creation destroyed. Violating his duty to his fellow divinities, Enki had warned Ziusudra in a prophetic dream of the plan to eliminate humanity, a dream with very specific instructions concerning an ark which was to be built in a manner virtually identical to the ark which Noah was charged with constructing, and for a similar purpose.

Following the instructions provided in the dream by Enki, Ziusudra invited his family and the laborers who had assisted in the ark’s construction, as well as diverse goods and many species of animals to join him on the ark which survived the great flood in a manner very similar to the ark on which Noah and his family and their goods and many species of animals also survived. Interestingly, those same gods, who are collectively referred to as the Anunnaki (descendants of the Sumerian divinity An or Anu), in their youth, had also been threatened with destruction for being unbearably noisy by their own progenitor, their great, great, grandfather, Abzu. One supposes that Nahor and his descendants, assuming they in fact existed, were all well familiar with the Sumerian flood epic and they and their descendants modified it to fit their specific cultural needs. The same is true with respect to the Biblical Garden of Eden and the two primordial sacred trees contained therein as well as the serpent who dwelt in one of them.

At the time during which Terach and his sons purported lived, the diverse city states that had once comprised the area we refer to as Sumer (the land of the black haired people) had greatly declined and its people were ruled over by Babylonia, although a segment of Babylonia may, at the time, have included the Kaśdim (כשדים; Chaldeans) whose reigning monarch, according to the Hebrews (but to no one else) appears to have been someone referred to as Nimrod. Nimrod might, perhaps, have been Naram-Sin of Akkad, grandson of Sargon, a ruler of the Akkadian Empire. Of course, the Hebrew Tanakh’s genealogical reference are tied to Noah and incoherently ignore the existence of Sumer or Akkad. Interestingly though, it was purportedly Nimrod who set out to build the infamous Tower of Babel so, if Nimrod ruled at the time, at least according to the Tanakh and to some sort of logic, all humans would, at the time, still have spoken the same language.

Until Terach’s departure from Ur with sons Abram, Haran, and Nahor II, and one daughter, Sarai, the family had been longtime residents of Ur and, assuming they were real historical figures, Ur may well have been their ancestral home. Their sudden departure may have had something to do with opposition to Abram’s infatuation with his sister, who he took as his wife, rather than with Abram’s opposition to his father’s religion and profession, although in either case, it seems odd that Terach accompanied his sons, indeed led them in their exodus from Ur heading for the lands occupied by the Canaanites, lands which a divinity unnamed at the time had purportedly promised them in exchange for their worship. In any event, according to the Tanakh, Terach and his family initially settled in the City of Harran where Terach died, whereupon his family, then led by Abram, moved on. In some versions of the Abrahamic odyssey, prior to the family’s departure from Ur, Terach had sought to have Abram executed for destroying the religious items Terach fabricated only to have Abram rescued by the Canaanite divinity, one of the seventy sons of the Canaanite god El, whereupon there was a reconciliation of sorts with the patriarchal role eventually passing from Terach to Abram. In any event, Abram’s divine Canaanite rescuer promised Abram dominion over Canaan if he abandoned all the Sumerian divinities who his ancestors had worshipped (perhaps Enlil and Enki and Inanna and An, etc.), something to which Abram, apparently a somewhat disloyal and avaricious individual, readily agreed.

The Moses Hypothesis

A further historical incoherence is presented in the Tanakh concerning the origins of the Hebrew’s monotheistic religion. Based on the Abram-source-hypothesis, Abram was given the Hebrew’s religion directly from an egotistical unidentified Canaanite divinity but when, thereafter, Moishe (Moses) is introduced into the Tanakh, it appears that Moishe was the source of that religion, having ironically obtained it from descendants of the Biblical villain, Cain, descendants who had evolved into the Kenites (although sanitized narratives insist that the Kenites, also known as the Midianites, were really descendants of Abraham and his second wife Keturah). In this latter variant, it was Moishe who imposed the religion he had adopted while wandering in the dessert (having fled Egypt, where he was a sort of adopted prince, after murdering a slave overseer) on the Hebrew tribes he had purportedly liberated from slavery in Egypt.

Many, perhaps most historians have come to consider the “revelations” in the Tanakh, especially the “revelations” in the Torah which comprises a component of the Tanakh, as a mythology neither more nor less credible than Sumerian mythology, noting that, based on linguistic analysis, the Torah was in all likelihood composed, not during the middle of the second millennium prior to what has become known as the “common era” (the Common Era), but rather, after the sixth century preceding the Common Era, a period referred to as the Persian[1] period following the “Babylonian” captivity, a diaspora of sorts, and that the Tanakh was periodically “editorialized” in a manner seeking to impact the tension between Hebrews who had remained in what is today Palestine and who traced their claims to ownership of the land from their purported ancestor, Abram (his name having evolved into Abraham), and the more sophisticated returning “exiles” who countered such claims basing theirs on the purported Mosaic Exodus from Egypt, traditions of the people who had taken to calling themselves “Israelites (Ska, 2009). Ironically, that is a situation eerily similar to the current conflict between Palestinians, genetically linked to the Hebrews at the time of the Hellenic and Roman conquests, and the European and Turkish converts to Judaism since the eighth century of the Common Era who are known as the Ashkenazi and who invaded the Levant starting in the nineteenth century.

The Habiru Hypothesis

The Hebrew Tanakh is not the only source of information concerning the origin of the ancient Hebrews. Indeed, perhaps much more accurate historical information than the Abrahamic myths is available but, for predictable reasons, is not easily accessible. A number of historians assert that “Habiru” was the ancient term for the nomadic tribes that eventually came to be known as “Hebrews” and particularly, the term for the early Israelites of the period of the “judges” who “appropriated” the fertile region of Canaan for themselves. According to some historical traditions (e.g., the Amarna letters, a collection of diplomatic correspondence between Egyptian rulers and their vassals in Canaan), the Habiru or (in Egyptian, Apiru) became the people we know today as the ancient Hebrews, some of whom are the ancestors of today’s Palestinians and of the Sephardim among modern Jews.

The Amarna letters are an archive written on clay tablets primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and the Amurru, or neighboring kingdom leaders during a period of no more than thirty years during the middle of the 14^th century preceding the Common Era (the New Kingdom era). Most experts who hypothesize concerning the “Habiru” believe that they were more a social class than an ethnic group, a group originally comprised of diverse ethnic groups of brigands who may have at one time led a settled life somewhere but who, due to the force of circumstances, became a rootless population of roving mercenaries who hired themselves out to whichever local mayor, king, or princeling would pay for their support. One analysis proposes that the majority were Hurrian although there were a number of Semites and even some Kassite and Luwian adventurers amongst their number. It was probably in that manner that they first came to Egypt, either as mercenaries or more probably raiders. If accurate, that would explain how, as described in Exodus when writing about YHWH’s demands for his arc and tabernacle, a group of purported slaves escaped from ancient Egypt laden with gold, silver, precious jewels and woods and cloth. Thus, rather than having been enslaved, they may well have been pursued after having engaged in a series of raids similar to those engaged in much later by Vikings in Nordic regions, Europe and the British Isles.

If the foregoing hypothesis is accurate, then Abdi-Ashirta and his son Aziru (rather than the Sumerian Abram or his purported descendant Moishe) would have been the catalytic leaders among the Habiru who they consolidated from diverse roots into the social unit that eventually made its way into our history as the Hebrews. Abdi-Ashirta was a contemporary and vassal of the monotheistic Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten which may explain religious innovations attributed to the Hebrews. Thus, it is very possible that, rather than descendants of the Sumerian exile Abram, the Hebrews of the Tanakh were a composite group of marauders.

Concluding Observations

During the last three quarters of a century the purported Holy Land, that land purportedly taken by the Hebrews from the Jebusites and the Canaanites, then conquered by Babylon and Persia, then by Alexander and then Rome, and which subsequently became a Christian and then a Muslim domain, has been a cauldron of inequity, something not historically unusual there, but in this instance, largely based on fallacious hysterical rather than historical arguments concerning ancient ownership rights. Turko-Europeans who converted to Judaism during the eighth century colonized Palestine during the past century insisting that the inhabitants of Palestine during the past two millennia, mainly the descendants of Hebrews most but not all of whom converted from Judaism, first to Christianity and eventually to Islam, must, at the least be ethnically cleansed but if necessary, exterminated. Exterminated as the Canaanites in Jericho and other parts of the Levant were exterminated, men, women, children and even livestock, by the Hebrew hordes purportedly led by Joshua. Thus the relevance of this article in raising the question as to just who the Hebrews were and who their descendants are?

That is not the case with Ashkenazi Jews, today grown from a tiny minority of Jews in the ninth century to the largest segment of modern Judaism, the segment that today controls the modern State of Israel. They may well have little to no relation to either the purported descendants of Abram or of the Habiru but rather, may well be the progeny of Turko-European converts to Judaism descended from the Khazars[2].

But that’s another story and just as controversial as this one.

Limited References[3]:

K. L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction, A&C Black, 2001 p. 164: “It would seem that, in the eyes of Merneptah’s artisans, Israel was a Canaanite group indistinguishable from all other Canaanite groups.” “It is likely that Merneptah’s Israel was a group of Canaanites located in the Jezreel Valley.”

McNutt, Paula (1999). Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-664-22265-9.

Ska, Jean Louis (2009): The Exegesis of the Pentateuch: Exegetical Studies and Basic Questions. Mohr Siebeck; Tübingen, Germany.

Tubb, Jonathan N. (1998). Canaanites. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 13–14. ISBN 0-8061-3108-X.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Paper originally published in Academia.edu.

[1] Ironically, given today’s Middle Eastern realities, it was the Persians, the descendants of today’s Iranians, who liberated the Hebrews from their Babylonian captivity. Something one would assume the descendants of the Persians might rue. Of course, the same is true of Muslims. What Americans may rue in the future is, of course, yet to be determined.

[2] Zionists detest references to the Khazars as the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews claiming that such references involve antisemitic plots to discredit the current State of Israel and, who knows, in today’s atmosphere were verity is an irrelevance, they may or may not have a point.

[3] It is unfortunate that a great many references originally available on the Internet seem to have been removed or drastically modified, especially with reference to the Khazars, since politicized sources attained growing control over most media and Internet platforms during the past several years.

Brief Reflections on Extraordinary Men Rising from Very Humble Beginnings: The Case of Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Posted on March 12, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

Ever since I can remember I’ve been an admirer of Leonardo da Vinci, the bastard son of Ser Piero da Vinci d’Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido, a successful Florentine legal notary, and Caterina di Meo Lippi. Leonardo was apparently born in either Anchiano, a country hamlet near the Florentine commune of Vinci, or in a house in Florence, part of the ancient Italian region of Tuscany, owned by his father, in either case, seeking privacy to hide the illegitimate birth. His mother may have been an Arab or Chinese slave although a book published by Martin Kemp and the archival researcher Giuseppe Pallanti claims that she was born in 1436 to a poor farmer, was orphaned at the age of fourteen and gave birth to Leonardo da Vinci at the age of sixteen, after which she purportedly had five other children with a different man, also a poor farmer. Leonardo was initially raised in relative poverty by his mother and her husband but eventually Leonardo came to enjoy a positive relationship with his father’s family, especially with his uncle and grandfather, although perhaps not with his father who was too busy with business matters. Consequently, he only received a very basic and informal education in writing, reading, and mathematics, although his artistic talents were recognized at an early age and emphasis was quickly placed on their development.

It is telling and very worth considering that from such inauspicious beginnings perhaps the world’s most universally talented man arose and to ask ourselves how many other multifaceted geniuses born under comparable circumstances never had the opportunity to attain their potential. In my own life I’ve known a number of men and women who fit that characterization. In this regard, the world owes a great debt to Andrea del Verrocchio, an Italian sculptor, painter and goldsmith who was a master of a workshop in Florence and who apparently accepted Leonardo, first as a studio boy but when he turned 17, as an apprentice, setting him on his path to greatness, first as an artist and then, … well, as a universal genius.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci is one of my greatest heroes, but I admire him less for his myriad successes than because he attained them despite the humility of his origins. One thing I have always found incomprehensible however is the fame of his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, and the worshipful claims concerning the subject’s beauty, and especially her smile. To my perhaps jaded and certainly inexpert tastes, she is not even particularly attractive and as for the “enigmatic” nature of her smile, I find nothing at all special about it, especially when compared to my wife’s. I assume many other husbands, boyfriends and fathers share my perspective and that some may also share my curiosity. What most troubles me however concerning the Mona Lisa hysteria is that it obscures Leonardo’s truly great achievement, having risen from such humble beginnings to such stunning heights without the intervention of martial opportunities and successes, the more usual route to success for those born of humble origins. One wonders how many people who might eventually have proven to be a new Leonardo we trash as we expel those desperate to become part of our society and who ask only to be permitted to work and grow among us? “… [g]ive me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore …” indeed.

The foregoing frequently leads me to reflect on the reality that when people are not assisted in attaining their potential, it is not only they who suffer, but the whole world, and on the stupidity and cupidity of those who oppose state assistance to the most humble among us. We certainly desperately need a world were the most humble can attain their full potential, a concept which the Athenian philosopher Plato referred to as an essential component of “justice” and understood as essential for optimal societal development, the common welfare and attainment of the best possible world. Something which, despite the millennia since Plato, his mentor Socrates and his student Aristotle contemplated how to attain justice, we are very, very far from attaining.
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Reflections on Tyranny, Democracy, Rights and Sovereignty

Posted on March 12, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Senate was selected, not by the People but by the States.

The membership of the House of Representatives was not based on population but on a complex system comprised in part of population, in another part based on equal numerical representation of the states, and in a third part by treating persons locked into involuntary servitude (slavery) as 3/5ths of a person, however, the right to vote was restricted in such manner as the states might determine so that, as in ancient Athens, less than ten percent of the population originally enjoyed the “franchise” (right to vote).

The President was to be elected by designees of the states selected as they saw fit to serve in an organization that never actually met, the Electoral College. And the federal Judiciary was to be selected for life by agreement between the president and the Senate.

No trace of democracy anywhere.

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

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

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

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

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

….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Democracy and Comparative Electoral Systems

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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