Entries by Nidra Poller

The Longest War? Afghanistan?

It’s not a coincidence that the full force of cruel Sharia law bears down on the people of Afghanistan, while the democratic trial of the 13 November 2015 massacre unfolds in a French courtroom.  But this concordance is drowned out by the discourse that envelops the Afghanistan withdrawal –the joyful condemnation of Joe Biden and the deafening […]

What Has Happened To These Bright Minds?

What has happened to these bright minds? As the world faces a pandemic of historic proportions, the novel coronavirus, these American thinkers have retreated to a provincial village where they ply a cottage industry of neo-relativism, backbiting, and conspiracy theories. Their worldview has shrunk to the narrow confines of a petty America locked in tribal feuds. […]

A.R.T. for All & Sundry: Sterile Social Progress and Sexless Equality

This article is translated from the original French by the author. The article is a response to the debate in France on legislation that will extend access to PMA, Procréation Médicalement Assistée (or ART, Assisted Reproduction Technology) to lesbian couples and single women in France. Isn’t it heartless to block the flow of such tender desires? Where is the […]

Why Have So Many American Conservatives Embraced COVID-19 Pseudoscience?

With almost 150,000 COVID-19 deaths, the United States, putative leader of the free world, now is competing with Brazil and Russia for global supremacy in pandemic mismanagement. Not only does the United States lack any kind of coherent federal leadership on this issue, but even state and city leaders have fallen into bickering—and even lawsuits—over the […]

Paris and Washington Struck in the Heart

Update The successful elimination of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi intervened just as this text was about to go to press. Highly skilled American commandoes, with international cooperation, under the civilian leadership of President Donald Trump, cornered the caliph of the defeated Islamic State [Daesh], who fled into a dead-ended tunnel and blew himself up with an […]

Paris Weeps as Notre Dame Burns

April 15th, President Macron was scheduled to address the nation at 8 PM, to present a sort of executive summary of government policy, revised but not diverted by five months of weekly Gilet Jaune actions. I switched on the television 10 minutes before the hour, expecting to hear the usual quibbling: The Gilets Jaunes expect […]

Karaoke State of Palestine

Palestine The very word is so tasty. Just saying it-the State of Palestine-is enough to bring into being this imaginary state with neat little houses on tree-lined streets, municipal buildings, bus stations, a brand new airport, and the capital in “East” Jerusalem, the imaginary holy land, the Jerusalem of Palestine, a cut-and-paste of Their Jerusalem. […]

The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology

Ibn Warraq, The Islam in Islamic Terrorism; the Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology, New English Review Press, Nashville, TN, 2017 Book review It has nothing to do with Islam… Mentally deranged, fragile personalities are hijacking a sublime religion… More people die in highway accidents… All religions preach violence and spawn fundamentalists… Seventeen years since the […]

Sarah Halimi’s killer suffered a bouffée délirante

The long-awaited psychiatric evaluation of Sarah Halimi’s killer, Kobili Traoré, was revealed in the media on September 13th. Forensic psychiatrist Daniel Zagury concludes that Traoré committed the crime under the influence of an “acute bouffée délirante” that altered but did not abolish his discernment. This psychopathological state was aggravated, according to doctor Zagury, by the […]

Tribal Warfare in Charlottesville Virginia

Politics in the United States has sunk to the lower depths. It’s tribal warfare. You can’t talk politics: everyone’s angry and full of hate. It’s impossible to debate the issues with flaming partisans. In Charlottesville VA on August 12th, warring clans marched into battle. And the TV screen trembled with indignation! A woman was killed by […]

Wailing Wall of the West

Temple Mount psychodrama Act 1 July 14th: three Arab Israelis pick up weapons previously stored by an accomplice in the al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount and gun down two Israeli Druze policemen. Being courageous jihadis, they shoot the policemen in the back. Israeli authorities step in where the Waqf, guardians of the mosques, […]

Sarah Halimi case: Will truth lead to justice?

Commemoration of the Rafle du vel d’hiv There was every reason to expect the July 16th commemoration of the Rafle du vel d’hiv to be limited to the usual concern for the dead. It does not take a gigantic soul to condemn retrospectively the arrest, deportation and extermination of more than 13,000 Parisian Jews, including […]

A murder that France dares not name

Dismay, frustration, exasperation. Three months after Sarah Halimi was savagely murdered by Kobili Traoré, the suspect is still out of reach in a psychiatric hospital, leaving the criminal investigation at a standstill. An update and action plan were presented at a July 4th press conference organized by the Comité de soutien / Vérité et Justice […]