The world has changed, literally overnight.

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Vladimir Putin has ordered a massive invasion of Ukraine, the likes of which the world has not seen since World War II.

There are a number of possible reasons for the attack, and it is likely the way the United States exited Afghanistan emboldened our enemies, including, of course, Vladimir Putin.

Our departure from Afghanistan was an utter disaster that saw the U.S. military withdraw before billions of dollars in weapons could be removed. Large numbers of Americans and those who assisted U.S. forces in Afghanistan were left behind to fend for themselves and an estimated five thousand terrorists were simply permitted to go free while the Taliban was able to seize control of the entire country, turning Afghanistan into a base of operations for ISIS and other radical Islamic terrorist organizations.

The debacle in Afghanistan, coupled with Biden’s insane immigration policies, violate recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and have left America and Americans vulnerable to the threat of terrorism.

This threat to our nation was the predication for my articles, Biden’s Catastrophic Policies: Immigration and Afghanistan and Biden’s Afghanistan Catastrophe Increases Terror Threat in US.

However, since taking office, Biden’s immigration policies have created a human tsunami that has flooded the U.S. with illegal aliens from virtually every continent, except perhaps Antarctica.

On February 24 the Associated Press published an article that began with this paragraph:

Russian troops launched a wide-ranging attack on Ukraine on Thursday, as President Vladimir Putin cast aside international condemnation and sanctions and warned other countries that any attempt to interfere would lead to “consequences you have never seen.”

There are many potential ways Russia could inflict harm on America, including by sending saboteurs to the U.S. in much the same way that Nazi Germany did at the beginning of World War II.

The FBI’s official website posted a detailed accounting of that effort:

Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 13, 1942, four men landed on a beach near Amagansett, Long Island, New York from a German submarine, clad in German uniforms and bringing ashore enough explosives, primers, and incendiaries to support an expected two-year career in the sabotage of American defense-related production. On June 17, 1942, a similar group landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, near Jacksonville, Florida, equipped for a similar career in industrial disruption.

The purpose of the invasions was to strike a major blow for Germany by bringing the violence of war to our home ground through destruction of America’s ability to manufacture vital equipment and supplies and transport them to the battlegrounds of Europe; to strike fear into the American civilian population; and to diminish the resolve of the United States to overcome our enemies.

Concerns about the potential for enemy combatants to gain entry into the U.S. were behind the decision of the FDR administration to move the enforcement of our immigration laws from the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice, not unlike the way enforcement of immigration laws was moved to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the months following the terror attacks of 9/11.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has effectively ordered “shields down” in a particularly perilous era and has taken other actions that leave America vulnerable to international terrorists, members of transnational gangs, and now potential enemy combatants and spies.

Having mentioned spies, it is important to consider a Fox News report published on February 23:

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it is ending its “China Initiative” program that was aimed at preventing spying by the Chinese Communist Party, and launching a new, “broader approach.”

The China Initiative was started in 2018 under the Trump administration to protect U.S. national security against Chinese spying on U.S. intellectual property and in academia. The DOJ website said it was aimed at “identifying and prosecuting those engaged in trade secret theft, hacking, and economic espionage,” as well as “protecting our critical infrastructure against external threats through foreign direct investment and supply chain compromises.”

That program is coming to an end. In its place, the DOJ is instituting a new “Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats.”

Meanwhile, Iran, another ally of Russia, pushes on to complete nuclear weapons and has flooded thousands of members of Hezbollah into Latin America to work in close cooperation with human trafficking organizations that also smuggle vast quantities of deadly narcotics into the U.S., according to information provided at Congressional hearings.

It is entirely possible that Iran would be happy to carry out attacks in the U.S. at the behest of their Russian ally.

Consider a couple of my earlier articles published in 2018: Iran Threatens U.S. And Its Allies With “Drugs, Refugees, Bombs And Assassination” and Congressional Hearing: Iranian Sleeper Cells Threaten U.S.

The attack by Russia on Ukraine is as real as the casualties it is inflicting. The threats to America are no less real. The first priority for our leaders must be the protection of America and Americans.

America’s borders and immigration laws are our first and last lines of defense.

These obvious facts were a major theme of the 9/11 Commission report and findings. To this point, one of the reports that the 9/11 Commission staff produced was, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.”

This report focused specifically on the ability of terrorists to travel around the world and ultimately embed themselves in the U.S. as they went about preparations to carry out deadly attacks.

The preface of this report begins with the following paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

Page 61 contained this passage:

Exploring the Link between Human Smugglers and Terrorists

In July 2001, the CIA warned of a possible link between human smugglers and terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.149 Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups.150 With their global reach and connections to fraudulent document vendors and corrupt government officials, human smugglers clearly have the “credentials” necessary to aid terrorist travel.

This paragraph is found on page 98 under the title “Immigration Benefits”:

Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.

The clock is ticking and time is not on our side. It is time for the Biden administration to act immediately and decisively to fulfill its primary responsibilities to protect America and Americans in an extremely dangerous and precarious era.

©Michael Cutler. All rights reserved.

On the cusp of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, there were disturbing revelations about this issue in the French Presidential election campaign in this our fifth monthly discussion with Nidra Poller, on February 18th There were statements by ultranationalist candidates on both the far left and far right dismissing the looming threat of Russian President to the Western alliance and world order.

President Macron shifted into high gear in diplomatic initiatives having an audience with Putin in Moscow and on the eve of Russia’s invasion Macron made a 105-minute phone call with Putin followed by one with Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelensky, who promptly announced that he would meet with Putin. Zelensky made a sudden trip to the Munich Security Conference the same day, chastising Western appeasement of Putin pressing for immediate imposition of sanctions. He remarked:

“Ukraine is longing for peace, Europe is longing for Peace, the world is saying it doesn’t want any war, while Russia claiming she doesn’t want to intervene – someone here is lying.”

Zelensky got his answer that evening. Backed by Russia’s Duma, Putin signed treaties with the unelected leaders of the two breakaway Ukrainian provinces recognizing their “independence.”  Brushing aside last-minute calls for diplomatic initiatives, Putin used the pretext of “false Flag” Ukrainian actions to send in so-called “peacekeepers” followed by tanks, vehicles and more. The reaction was a salvo of world critical of Putin’s demarche followed by a veritable fusillade of economic and financial sanctions directed at key Russian Banks and oligarchs close to Putin announced by US President Biden, the UK, EU, Japan, South Korea. Even China’s Xi-Jinping urged “caution” to his erstwhile geo-political partner. Ukrainian President Zelensky announced a State of Emergency mobilizing his 250,000 troops to oppose the 190,000 Russian forces surrounding his country on three sides. We knew what would come of this Russian action given Putin’s precedents in the 2008 War against The Republic of Georgia, which resulted his seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and in 2014 seizure of the Crimea and sending in troops to support the rebels in the breakaway eastern Donetsk and Luhansk region. French philosopher and activist Bernard-Henri Lévy penned a Tablet op ed, “The Rape of Ukraine.”  His dour forecast: “Taking Putin’s grievances seriously would be nothing more than a death wish for a return to the terrible 20^th Century.”

French President Macron’s other diplomatic effort – the decade long fight in Operation Barkhane against Jihad in former French colonies in Africa Sahel has faltered. The cause has been as previously discussed, the fall of Sahel governments to military coups in Chad, the Central African Republic, Mali. That has forced the cutback of French and Swedish-led EU special forces in the Takuba Task Force in Mali and their re-deployment to Burkina Faso and Niger. That vacuum has been filled by the mercenary force of Putin’s little green men of The Wagner Group to provide security of coup perpetrators tying payments to acquisition of important mineral rights in these countries. Meanwhile, the Islamist takeover of the Sahel continues unabated. Moreover, so does the continuing slave trade of Black Africans, estimated at over 800,000, in both North Africa and the Sahel.

Among other topics we address are the trans-Atlantic trucker “freedom convoy protests,”, the issue of anti-Semitism in France and the US, the role of France and Israel contending with the looming Iran nuclear agreement, the critical reaction to Amnesty International ‘s report calling Israel an “apartheid state.”

What follows is our discussion with Nidra Poller.

Jerry Gordon: This is Jerry Gordon, a Senior Editor of The New English Review. I’m here with Nidra Poller. This is our fifth monthly discussion about developments, not only in France but, as it turns out, more dramatically in Eastern Europe. And let’s start with that. Nidra, French President Macron had a 105-minute conversation with Putin followed by an immediate conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky, during which the result was an appeal by Zelensky to Putin for an immediate ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine followed by the reconvening of the Trilateral Contact Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. What is going on now?

Nidra Poller: We seem to be on parallel tracks: If you look at the question from the American side–based on intelligence, not just speculation– Russia is ready to attack at any moment…  Putin has made the decision. From the European perspective, the Europeans, united, with Macron in the lead have managed to stave off the attack and get Russia’s approval to continue on an accelerated diplomatic path. We can only see what happens in the coming days. There’s no way I can judge, by myself, which view is right. It’s like a stage drama: the two possibilities for handling conflict are in front of you, and someone is going to choose. You know that Europeans hate to have war here. It’s not like the United States, where wars are always at a distance. Here, the war is next door, it’s hitting places and people that are in our reach. It’s too close for comfort for everyone in Europe. So, it’s normal, Europeans always favor the diplomatic approach. But war comes when diplomacy fails.

We’ll see in the coming days, what the Russians are asking for. There is going to be a meeting between Lavrov and Le Drian, the French Foreign Minister. And a meeting between Lavrov, Blinken, and Le Drian. We’ll see, in the coming days, if there is any progress on that side. At the same time, we know what’s happening in Donbass, where the Russians are evacuating civilians and there have been 115 attacks in the last few days, in violation of the Minsk Agreement.

Opinion is divided here in France. There’s a sort of national union in support of Macron’s efforts to negotiate and reach a diplomatic solution. Of course, the opposition parties are uncomfortable with the possibility that the president will take advantage of this to help in his re-election campaign. But it’s low-key because, obviously, you want the President to do what’s best for the country and for Europe. If he draws an advantage from it, that’s only fair.

There’s a difference of opinion on the causes of the conflict. And that casts light on our ongoing conversation, because three of the candidates commonly labeled as extreme–Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen on the right, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the left–are taking a pro-Russian position.

They want France to leave NATO’s joint command. They see NATO as aggressive, and they claim this crisis is caused by Ukraine’s intentions to join NATO. The three ultranationalists are hostile to the United States and favorable to Russia. Marine Le Pen said the European Union has been “brutal” to Russia. None of the three make a distinction between relations with a democratic country and with a tyranny. They think it’s to France’s advantage to be on equally good terms with both Russia and the U.S. It’s quite shocking, frankly. Marine Le Pen says we should pull out of NATO, Zemmour says we should pull out of the Joint Command, and all three ultranationalists say France is weakened by its membership in these collective organizations.

France should somehow be so sovereign and powerful in and of itself and, consequently, would be in a stronger position to negotiate. They consider NATO to be under the control of the United States. Zemmour, only a short while ago, said that NATO was obsolete because it was set up to counter an aggressive Soviet Union. That threat, he said, no longer exists. Now he’s dropped that detail but maintains his anti-NATO stance. Le Pen says that it’s aggressive to threaten Russia with NATO countries on its border. Zemmour compared the current situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis. In other words, NATO– which is a defense system set up to counter Russian aggression, which continues to this day–is equivalent to the Soviet Union in its conflict with the United States during the Cold War. Zemmour paints the United States and NATO aa the bad guys. By its membership in NATO, says Zemmour, France is a handmaiden of NATO and Washington.

I think this might be surprising to some people who are following the French Presidential campaign from a distance and don’t realize this geopolitical aspect.

Jerry Gordon: Well, those are very interesting revelations. When you mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis, that is something that you and I both lived through. I certainly did, as a young US army intelligence officer on duty, who was going to be shipped out in the case of war over Russia’s missiles in Cuba. and dealing with Khrushchev, the foot banger at the United Nations. I can tell you that it was probably the scariest moment in my adult life at that juncture. So, to see that referred to is really telling misbehavior on the part of Zemmour. The other ironic echo this weekend with the Munich Security Conference, was Zelensky talking about the appeasement of the West. That is a direct send-up on what happened in Munich in 1938 with then French Premier Daladier and Mr. Chamberlain dealing with Herr Hitler.

Nidra Poller: We’re living in a time of off-the-wall comparisons, right? Anti-vaxxers are saying they’re being treated like the Jews in the ’30s and ’40s. And NATO is compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then saying it’s Munich again, because the Europeans have said they’re not going to send in the troops. That’s true. But European NATO forces are in neighboring Eastern European countries. They’re not taking the attitude that Russian ambitions io reconquer the former satellite countries is legitimate. That is not the attitude anywhere. Though it’s true that Zemmour and Marine Le Pen keep talking about Russia’s legitimate concerns. When in fact, to my mind, the legitimate concerns are in Eastern Europe, because it’s obvious there’s an attempt to recreate the Soviet Union.

Some observers have explained that what really concerns Russia is not Ukrainian NATO membership. It’s democracy. After all, democratic movements in Russia are fiercely oppressed. They’re concerned about the achievement of democracy right next door, in Ukraine. On the other hand, I’ve heard members of Zemmour’s party and, even more so, of Marine Le Pen’s party, saying Russia starts with Kyiv; Ukraine is a sort of fabricated state that has no legitimacy. They say that Western Ukraine is Galicia, it’s part of Europe. But the East has always been Russia, it was taken away from Russia. They adopt the Russian narrative. And blame Ukraine. But perhaps we should go on to the state of the French presidential campaign.

Jerry Gordon: That brings up an interesting situation. It appears that Zemmour is challenging his competitors, if you want to call them that, on the right, including the Gaulliste, Pécresse. Certainly, you see Marine Le Pen’s party almost crumbling, with renegades from her ranks joining with Zemmour.

Nidra Poller: It depends. If you zap from one station to the other, you’ll find Zemmour fourth in line, on one, and second on another. The polls are a very weak tool for evaluating candidates, but following the pools gets more and more obsessive. Sometimes you have to cover your eyes and try to think. Here’s what’s important: Zemmour has not had a single important member of the “parliamentary” conservative party– as distinguished from what I will call the “populist nationalist” right. There is a real barrier, but it doesn’t hold up too well today. Generally, the distinction is made between the parliamentary right and the extreme right. That distinction is no longer sharp and clear. But there is a difference, and we have to think about that. It has to do with democracy. Marine Le Pen’s party is not democratic, and Zemmour doesn’t have a party. Furthermore, his attitude is not democratic. Populism actually conflicts with democracy. They call it direct democracy. Between that and the mob … is there a distinction?

There is a dividing line, and it hasn’t been crossed by a single important member of Les Républicains. Zemmour has people from Marine Le Pen’s party, but the Rassemblement National is weakened anyway, because it has had only one possible presidential candidate in the last three elections. Who is it? Marine Le Pen. Why? Because it’s not a democratic party. There’s never been any question of whether another candidate might do better? It’s Marine’s third campaign. She already said it’s the last one and everyone knows she’ll loses, so her party is weakened. People that like her way of functioning and embrace the whole thought system of nationalist populism are going over to Zemmour. Voter intentions could come from anywhere, from Macron, from Les Républicains. But there are no crossovers from the party leadership of Les Républicains to Reconquête. One day the polls say Zemmour passed Pécresse, another day that she passed him; we’ll see now what happens when Macron becomes a candidate. How is Zemmour going to stand up in a debate with Macron? That’s quite different from holding rallies with fans.

Jerry Gordon: Zemmour reached out to none other than former US President Trump this past week, and he sort of got a pat on the back, but he did not get a commitment of any nature…

Nidra Poller: Yes.

Jerry Gordon: From Mr. Trump.

Nidra Poller: That was enough for him. Oh, he was very happy about that. As you know, Marine Le Pen went to Trump Tower the last election.

Jerry Gordon Yes, I remember that.

Nidra Poller: And she was sitting in the cafeteria, and nobody came to talk to her. That was a complete failure. And the person that was supposedly organizing the encounter is a person, I met at the time when, I was on speaking tours in the United States with Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician. I gave talks and sometimes I introduced Wilders. That’s when we met this man who supposedly arranged the encounter between Marine Le Pen and Trump. It didn’t work. Zemmour was very happy with the phone call and didn’t ask for anything or need anything more. If he thinks Trump’s a good example…well… help yourself. In the beginning, I couldn’t believe the “Zemmour is the French Trump” comparison, ” Apparently, he does think he’s the French Trump.

Jerry Gordon: We’ve had a transatlantic jump of protests this past couple of weeks, as it turns out, from Canada to France and Israel. You have truckers in Canada, the United States, France, and Israel, roaring around with their rigs and protesting against vax and mask mandates. That is curious to me, because in the case of France, if anybody has gotten applause for his anti-pandemic COVID campaign, it is Macron. I think there’s a great word in French that I’ve heard recently, “The complainers are always with you in the context of any action on the part of any president in France.” But it is interesting to me that it took less than a nanosecond for this jump to occur transatlantic.

Nidra Poller Yes. But it didn’t go very far.

Jerry Gordon: Not far at all.

Nidra Poller No, it won’t go very far. It’s not a French way. Americans get in their cars to go everywhere, and the French like to walk. So, car protests don’t work here. And the government was extremely severe. If they had allowed these people to block the city and tear up the Champs-Élysées, they would’ve been criticized for that. They came out with tanks and everything possible to stop it, and it worked. They didn’t let them block the city. They were criticized for that, but someone observed that tens of millions of French people are in favor of the measures that were taken to protect us. These tens of thousands of protesters can make a lot of noise, but they count for nothing. People are interested more in the campaign. I’ve been concerned about this populism because I think it’s a great danger to democracy. You hear these people say, “Well, nobody listens to me.” And during the gilets jaunes [yellow vests] demonstrations, they would hold out microphones to these people and ask, “Well, okay, here we are. What do you want to say?” “Macron démission.” The president should resign.

Now, we’re in the presidential campaign. We have so many candidates, it’s overkill. I was thinking about it…how many possible political programs and positions can there be in any country? So, if they can’t find a single candidate that corresponds to what they want, it’s because they don’t have a single collective demand that could possibly be accepted by the rest of the voters. So, when they say, “Nobody listens to me,” or “I don’t find any candidate that suits me,” they’re really saying, “Well, nobody will do exactly what I want, and too bad for everyone else.” That’s one of the problems with populism.

Jerry Gordon: I’d like to turn to a topic that we’ve covered during previous discussions, which is still problematic in France, Europe, and even here in the United States. That’s the rise of anti-Semitism. We’ve talked about the problems with the cases involved with the police in France, with the Halimi murder and others. More importantly, there is an opportunity for Macron who takes over as head of the European Council, to perfect some changes regarding anti-Semitism across the EU. But first, he has to deal with the questions of what to do about anti-Semitism in France, and its sources, including coming from the very significant Muslim minority. What is your view?

Nidra Poller: It’s not a front-and-center issue today. It comes up, because of the fact that Zemmour is Jewish. For Jewish voters in France, it’s not an easy choice. If you line up what matters to you as a Jew, nothing fits with Zemmour, except the one question, which every candidate on the right, including Macron, is dealing with. Each candidate has a different way of defining it, a different way of proposing to deal with it, but they can’t ignore it. The problem of political Islam or what I would call them Jihadists, the problem of violence, criminal and political violence coming not just from Muslim immigrants, because we’re talking about fourth generation French Muslims. All of these problems are being discussed, but not so much in terms of antisemitism.

The Middle East is not an issue in the campaign. And in a way I would say it’s all for the better. Because it used to be an obsession with the “two-state solution.” That’s not an issue in the current campaign. The question of antisemitism comes up, because some accuse Zemmour of being antisemitic, for reasons that I think we have already discussed. His positions on Pétain, Dreyfus, the victims of French Muslim Islamic murder buried in Israel… Even the question of names… you know…he says parents shouldn’t give foreign names to their children…the whole question of assimilation. For us, as Jews, assimilation is not necessarily a good word, right? We’re always held to be good citizens wherever we live. This is one of the basic tenets of Judaism, to be a good citizen wherever you live. But not by assimilating. By remaining Jewish.

When the Jews were pushed to assimilation… you have situations like Germany before the Second World War. It hasn’t gone well, and it isn’t good today. I think Jews that don’t feel a strong Jewish identity don’t think of themselves as assimilated. They think of themselves as secular. Jews that have a Jewish identity do not appreciate being told to assimilate. So, if they’re blinded by Zemmour’s extravagant promises to end the problem of Islamic violence against Jews and against the general population, they might not realize what he means by assimilation. Do you know Zemmour’s position that hijab and the kippah should be banned in public. He says people shouldn’t display their religion, it’s disrespectful. It’s almost like not displaying your nudity. For Jews that are very much attuned to these things, all of this is highly questionable. Other Jews will go along with Zemmour because they’re convinced that, by some magic, he will bring an end in record time to all the problems associated with uncontrolled immigration and Islam in its current jihad mode: crime, drug dealing, antisocial behavior, and virulent violent antisemitism. These problems may not be as visible in the United States I don’t say that Macron is indifferent to antisemitism or that he’ll do nothing to combat it during his presidency of the EU Council, but it’s not a front and center issue today.

Jerry Gordon: What is Macron’s position on this emerging nuclear agreement between the EU three with the US on the sidelines, but present in these negotiations? There have been leaks of the contents of this proposed agreement. We understand that Mr. Macron would like the Iranians to sign on if they can to this proposed agreement, but the agreement itself is coming up against some very strong opposition here in the United States, particularly in the Congress.

Nidra Poller: Thankfully.

Jerry Gordon: Yes.

Nidra Poller:  I can hardly bear to see the terms. I’ll have to deal with it. Le Drian, the Foreign Affairs Minister, said just the other day to Iran that they have to decide now, quickly or if not, there will be severe consequences. The position of France, in my opinion, is no less demanding than the United States, perhaps more demanding. I hate to think what’s going to happen. I try not to believe that they’re going to sign the bad agreement. But I don’t sense any pressure here in France for a bad agreement. Public opinion is more focused on the elections, and now in Ukraine, and less in Iran. The French position is not weak. I think that they’re not far away from what Israel believes about Iran, and what Iran can do. They’re not apologetic about Iran.

Jerry Gordon: Having said that, would France support a so-called plan B on the part of Israel to unilaterally attack Iran’s nuclear facilities?

Nidra Poller: I don’t feel qualified to answer that. I don’t think that they’re giving any indication that would help us to know what they think behind the scenes, but they do not minimize the threat of Iran. It’s not like the old days, with focus on the Israel-Palestine impasse, where everything was Israel’s fault. They’re clear about that. And there’s no way I could tell you how they would react.

Jerry Gordon: Macron’s diplomacy has been pretty active this week, not only with the Ukraine-Russian situation, but something that from our mutual backgrounds is disturbing – that is the “Retreat from the Sahel,” the former French Equatorial Africa colonies – in terms of dealing with the Jihadist growth there. In particular, the leave-taking from Mali is a signature indication that France’s nearly decade-long Operation Barkhane, Macron has not succeeded in pushing back against the Islamist threat in Africa. What is happening there?

Nidra Poller: The French are trying to put the best face possible on that. They say they’re not retreating from the Sahel, they’re leaving Mali “in an orderly fashion,” and the government, the Junta is sort of saying, “Get the hell out of here tomorrow.” We’ll see how that works out. The French are repositioning their troops in other African countries in the Sahel. They’re developing their good relations with Niger, and I think with all the West African countries. They’re not happy to see the Jihad taking over in Mali. So, if the French are trying not look too weak, it’s not just for political advantage here:  it’s because this is a very dangerous situation, and it’s very close to home. The fact is they have not defeated the Jihad in Mali. It’s fair enough to say that nobody has managed to defeat it anywhere. They just tamped it down a bit. And then it pops up somewhere else.

Jerry Gordon: But who should be filling the vacuum but none other than those “little green men” of Putin’s Wagner paramilitary group. In the case of Mali, the Wagner group is receiving $10 million a month to provide “security”, meaning a Praetorian guard for the current usurpers. Very interestingly, because the default condition in those security contracts is Wagner, meaning Russia obtaining mining rights all across the Sahel for gold and uranium, as it turns out.

Nidra Poller: Yes.

Jerry Gordon: We have examples of that in the Central African Republic and elsewhere. In addition, the commodity that has become increasingly important to the West because of their desire to become climate clean, lithium, mining rare earth minerals, in those areas. Then you have the Chinese on both ends of the Sahel with a military base in Djibouti and trying to perfect one in Guinea on the Atlantic coast. That has really begun to upset the West, the US in particular, because it now means the Chinese would have a military presence, so to speak, on the Atlantic. There are other disturbing elements that are going on at the present time, as an interesting aside, particularly in light of all the problems here in the US about critical race theory. There is the question of continuing evidence of Muslim slavery that our friend Charles Jacobs in Boston with his American Anti-Slavery Group has put his finger on this past week, which is stunning. He has estimates of in excess of 800,000 Black slaves in countries like Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger, and Sudan. As I recall, a decade ago the issue of Arab Muslim slavery of indigenous Black Africans was a predicate for the creation of South Sudan, which has become a failed state. So, the Jacobs revelations is an indication that slavery as an institution in Muslim African world is unfortunately alive and well.

Nidra Poller: Yes, Over the years I’ve been following the wonderful work Jacobs has done. I once interviewed a militant leader, from Darfur, who had taken refuge in the United States. Charles has shown videos of former slaves. It shows us that the unfair obsession with certain injustices, for twisted reasons, has abandoned the people that are most in need of help. For example, this obsession with criticizing Israel obscures the injustices endured by Palestinians in Gaza and in Ramallah, and by Palestinian in exile in other Arab countries. Then Amnesty International comes out with a report about “apartheid” in Israel. Sometimes you ask yourself how they can still be around, how they can still work themselves up over these lies. But they can. We’ve often observed that Black Lives Matter hasn’t been concerned with slavery in African and Arab Muslim countries. And that’s just one of the terrible inhumanities to man. We can’t right the wrongs, because it requires some kind of international value system that doesn’t exist. You have the UN condemning Israel. And not doing anything about those evils. Bravo to Charles Jacobs for what he does.

Jerry Gordon: It’s interesting to me… You just brought it up… This whole obsession with Israel being an apartheid state, which has become a war cry on the part of the progressive Left here in the United States. And, frankly, the most disturbing aspect of it has been the, how should I say it, the adoption of this mantra by the leftist Jewish population in America. To me, that means the failure of a combination of American Jewish leadership and Israeli hasbara, of basically proving that this is a complete fraud. And yet it has become a common ideology now amongst American youth, that Israel, as a powerful state, is a perpetrator, because of that power, of an apartheid society. It is nowhere near, not even close, to what has occurred elsewhere, whether it’s Africa, as we’ve discussed or nowhere close to what it was historically in South Africa itself and yet it has become…

Nidra Poller: The obsession with Israel, in terms of noble values, is a complete reversal of reality. I can’t go into it here, because it’s a deep philosophical question and there are many very good thinkers here in France who address the question. I think that the Israelis have done very well of answering back, in this case, to Amnesty. This kind of anti-Zionism of the youth in America…

Jerry Gordon: Right.

Nidra Poller: It’s an American problem, a very serious American problem. And look at the rise of antisemitism in the United States. It’s a big question that I can’t deal with just in a few words, Americans didn’t understand the nature of the rise of antisemitism in Europe 20 years ago. They allowed it to develop in the States. Those who did have answers didn’t speak out or didn’t have enough speaking power to reverse the movement. And now you have antisemitic incidents, day in and day out. The thinking that‘s needed to deal with this … it’s not there. There’s a terrible absence of thought about something that’s so important. When the young people come out with total misunderstanding of the situation, there are not enough voices coming to them with intelligent arguments. Everything is just tribal. The Right in the United States did not deal with this in an intelligent way. And now they’re stuck in the corner with Trumpism. So, they can’t deal with it. They lost interest in it.

Jerry Gordon: Some people here in the United States would accuse, frankly, one of the divisions of American Judaism, the Reform Movement, of essentially abiding by that change, and I think a lot of that occurred since 2006 when the last leader of the United Reform Judaism Movement, Jaffe, stood up and defended Israel constructing the security wall to reduce the magnitude of the daily attacks. Since then, the leadership has really lost its moorings in the context of perpetuating tikkun olam or repairing the world, dealing with other people’s problems rather than the community itself. And to a degree it’s problematic…

Nidra Poller: These are deep-seated currents, and there’s a lot of interaction. In other words, the Reform Movement leads the Jewish community into certain directions, and the community gives power to the Reform Movement to continue in that direction. We hardly have reform movement in France. Judaism here is almost entirely Orthodox. That creates other problems, different ones. But when I propose to American media…I’m talking about specialized outlets…When I propose something that requires deep thinking and being aware of what’s happening somewhere outside the United States, they don’t want to get involved. They say it’s too complicated.

This isn’t a personal issue. It doesn’t matter if they’re not interested in what I want to write. It’s that deep-thinking on these questions in the outside world doesn’t get through the barrier of the United States. The alternative media that we knew are no longer interested in those questions. They can go on day and night, week in week out about masks and vaccination, claiming freedom means liberty for the unvaccinated, and questioning all scientific information on COVID-19. That’s their obsession now. There’s a real absence of dynamics to counter this antisemitism. It’s important, because there’s a very large Jewish community in the United States, and the United States has military and economic power, and not enough intellectual power.

Jerry Gordon: On that note, I want to thank you for a thoroughgoing conversation today on a wide range of compelling issues, and thoughtful ones that are not reported normally in what we consider either the mainstream press or its echo on social media. And to that I commend you for being an astute observer, cross Atlantic. Thank you very much, Nidra.

Nidra Poller: It’s always a pleasure, Jerry, and I look forward to our next conversation.

Jerry Gordon: Getting close, aren’t we? All the best.

Nidra Poller: Cette fois-ci, c’est moi qui te dis : « au revoir ».

Jerry Gordon: Au revoir.

©Jerry Gordon and Nidra Poller. All rights reserved.