Just World Podcasts

On June 13, 2024, JWE President Helena Cobban gave a talk at the Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek, CA, hosted by Rossmoor Voices for Justice in Palestine. The talk was titled "Palestinian resistance from the PLO to Hamas." In it Helena drew on her 50 years of experience of studying, reporting on, interviewing the leaders of, and analyzing all the main Palestinian resistance movements of the modern era. Look on the JWE blog  for links to the video of this event, the transcript, and more information about JWE's "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters" project.Support the Show.

This was the fifth and final session in a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed presented in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series as a whole was presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest in this episode was Dr. Azzam Tamimi,  who's the editor-in-chief of the London-based Al Hiwar ("Dialogue") TV channel. He's a specialist on issues related to Islamic political thought, Islamic movements, and Middle Eastern (or West Asian) politics; and a distinguished author of several well-received books on these topics. The book on Hamas that Dr. Azzam published in 2007 came out in the USA with the intriguing title of Hamas: a History from Within.In this session in our series, Helena and Rami were joined on the "interviewing panel" by three other JWE board members: Zoharah Simmons, Nora Barrows-Friedman, and Zoharah Simmons.You can learn much more about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.Support the Show.

This was the fourth of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest in this episode was Mouin Rabbani, a super-smart Dutch-Palestinian researcher and analyst who specializes in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and contemporary West Asia, the region also known by its Eurocentric monicker, "the Middle East." Rabbani has previously served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria; as Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group: and a Researcher with Al-Haq, the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He is currently Co-Editor of Jadaliyya and has numerous other important affiliations. You can see much more information about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others as they occur, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.Support the Show.

This was the third of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest was Dr. Jeroen Gunning, a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and Conflict Studies at King's College, London. Dr. Gunning is also a Visiting Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, and at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.  He is one of the founders of the field of critical terrorism studies and has taught and advised both policy-makers and civil society organizations.In 2010, he published a book titled, Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence.  You can learn about the broad array of articles and books he has published on different aspects of the work of radical non-state actors in various parts of West Asia, at his page on the KCL website.You can see much more information about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others as they occur, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.Support the Show.

This was the second of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest was Dr. Khaled Hroub, a Professor in residence with the faculty of liberal arts at Northwestern University in Qatar, whose focus is Middle Eastern studies and politics with particular interest on Islam and politics, Arab-Israeli conflict and Arab media studies. Dr. Hroub's many works include Hamas, A Beginner's Guide, 2nd edn, 2010, and a chapter, “Nothing Fails Like Success: Hamas and the Gaza Explosion” in the recently published book Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm (OR Books, 2024.)You can see much more information about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others as they occur, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.Support the Show.

This was the first of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our first guest was journalist and author Dr. Paola Caridi.You can see much more information about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others as they occur, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.Dr. Caridi is a Lecturer at the University of Palermo, is a founding member of the News Agency “Lettera22”, and was their correspondent in Cairo, 2001-03, and in Jerusalem, 2003-12. While she was reporting from Jerusalem she conducted intensive coverage of the crucial series of events that ran from Israel's 2004 assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, through the movement's participation in Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 (and their victory therein)... and then to the series of fierce, always US-supported, attacks that Israel maintained against Hamas and the whole population of Gaza from 2007 on... The second of Dr. Caridi's three published books was Hamas: From Resistance to Government, which first appeared in Italian in 2009, and in English in 2012. (An updated version was released last October 10.)Support the Show.

In March 2024, the Middle East Committee of Westmoreland Church, which is a very active  "UCC" congregation located on the borderline between Maryland and Washington DC, invited Helena to go and speak to their members on the topic "Hamas: A Primer." The event took place on April 21, 2024, and took the form of a conversation conducted, for the first 35 minutes, by longtime Middle East Committee member Robert Mertz. In the second half of the program, several attendees at the gathering asked questions, both in-person from the church parlor, and online via the event's well-populated Zoom feed. This episode contains the recording of nearly the whole of the April 21 event. Here is the "resource list" referred to toward the end of the episode:•Online resource list: bit.ly/Keys-4-H•Sign up for Helena's (roughly weekly) newsletter at: eepurl.com/b-5d_9•Learn about her company's many books on Gaza, Palestine, etc, at: Justworldbooks.comSupport the show

The second episode of Palcast discusses the shared struggle of the Palestinian and Irish peoples. From Captain Boycott, to Bloody Balfour, to hunger strikes, Dr Yousef Aljamal, Helena Cobban and Tony Groves delve into the shared struggle between the two nations, and indeed the anti-apartheid movements globally. We also look at the mistakes that Ireland has made and what the movement for Palestinian self-determination can learn from them. Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshackSupport the show

 As Israel's genocide in Gaza continues, PalCast's Dr Yousef Aljamal and his co-host Helena Cobban survey the situation on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank and the waves of pro-Palestinian sympathy that have swept around the whole world, including throughout the Global South and even at the grassroots level within most Western countries. They note the continued ability of Washington DC to block effective U.N. action for a ceasefire, the declining power of the United States in world affairs, and the need for a deep renewal of the Palestinian political leadership. Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshackSupport the show

This episode introduces the people behind a brand new series, PalCast, which will be hosted by Palestinian refugee (and friend of the shack) Dr Yousef Aljamal and his longtime collaborator and friend Helena Cobban, herself an activist and author of great renown. PalCast is a collaboration between Just World Educational and Tortoise Shack Media, which produces the series from its base in Dublin, Ireland. This twice weekly series will discuss the ongoing Gaza-Israel crisis, the geopolitics at play, the place of Palestine in the world, and the struggle for Palestinian liberation, as summed up in the mantra 'One World, One Struggle.' One World, One Struggle which is being used with the permission of the Blood Sunday Families. Music is Sabreen (West Bank 1987) Support the show

In this episode, Helena Cobban presents a voiced version of the essay she published today on the Globalities website, which is titled, "Untangling Syria's devastating civil war." In the essay, Ms. Cobban, a long-time analyst of Syria's affairs, expresses her cautiously optimistic assessment of the possibility that recent shifts in West Asian politics and diplomacy may now, finally, allow for a winding down of the conflict inside Syria.If you're interested in what you hear here, head to the essay in the text version, where you will also find all the hyperlinks Ms. Cobban put in there, as well as a map and some other informative graphics.Support the show

In this episode of her Global Shifts series, Just World ed President Helena Cobban looks at the events and developments of the past week that illustrate the big shifts now underway in the global balance. This week, she looks at the continuing fallout from the visit that French Pres. Emmanuel Macron paid recently to Beijing, and also at this week's visit there by Brazilian Pres. Lula Da Silva. Then, she looks at three big ongoing developments in West Asia, concerning Yemen, Syria-- and the current worrying increase in U.S. military deployments in the Persian Gulf region.Ms. Cobban rounds off the episode by taking a step back to survey the 500-year history of Western colonial involvement in the Asian and Indian Ocean regions and the current signs that that era is starting to come to an end.Support the show

 In today's episode Just World Ed's Helena Cobban presents her review of the key shifts in the global balance that we've seen over the past week. This episode covers:The ongoing contest between NATO and Russia over Ukraine  The two big diplomatic events in Beijing this weekImplications of Pres. Macron's visit to BeijingImplications of the new rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, andThe effects of this rapprochement on developments in the Mashreq area of West Asia. Support the show

In mid-January 2023, the veteran analyst of world affairs Helena Cobban published an essay at Globalities.org in which she explored the urgent need for a country-wide ceasefire or armistice for Ukraine, and explored the value of the precedent set by the Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953. She also looked at the issue of armistices more broadly and noted several features of the Korean armistice that are particularly relevant to the case of Ukraine today.In late March 2023 Ms. Cobban voiced this essay as the inaugural episode in this new podcast series from Just World Educational. Globalities is a project of Just World Educational.Support the show

This was the sixth conversation in Just World Educational's project to produce and share multimedia resources to inform, educate, and engage new generations of (especially) Americans on the need to Ban All Nuclear Weapons and dismantle all existing nuclear arsenals, including our own.In this convo, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Amelle Zeroug talked to William B. Quandt, an American scholar, author and professor emeritus in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia.  Dr Quandt previously served as senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and as a member on the National Security Council in the Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter administrations.Support the show

This was the fifth conversation in Just World Educational's project to produce and share multimedia resources to inform, educate, and engage new generations of (especially) Americans on the need to Ban All Nuclear Weapons and dismantle all existing nuclear arsenals, including our own.     In this convo, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Amelle Zeroug talked to Joseph Gerson, Executive Director of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security and Vice-President of the International Peace Bureau. Gerson, a veteran anti-nuclear organizer has just been at a key meeting in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on the international coordination of Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones (NWFZs) and who was with us from Vienna where he's attending many ICAN/TPNW-related meetings.     Listen to additional episodes in this series which will be released twice-weekly through the end of June.Support the show

This was the fourth conversation in Just World Educational's project to produce and share multimedia resources to inform, educate, and engage new generations of (especially) Americans on the need to Ban All Nuclear Weapons and dismantle all existing nuclear arsenals, including our own.     In this convo, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Amelle Zeroug talked to Ivana Nikolic Highes, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.      Listen to additional episodes in this series which will be released twice-weekly through the end of June.Support the show

This was the third conversation in Just World Educational's project to produce and share multimedia resources to inform, educate, and engage new generations of (especially) Americans on the need to Ban All Nuclear Weapons and dismantle all existing nuclear arsenals, including our own.     In this convo, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Amelle Zeroug talked to Vicki Elson, co-founder and creative director of NuclearBan.US.      Listen to additional episodes in this series which will be released twice-weekly through the end of June.Support the show

This was the second conversation in Just World Educational's project to produce and share multimedia resources to inform, educate, and engage new generations of (especially) Americans on the need to Ban All Nuclear Weapons and dismantle all existing nuclear arsenals, including our own.     In this convo, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Amelle Zeroug talked to Ray McGovern, a veteran CIA officer turned political activist whose post-retirement work includes co-founding in 2003 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and work on the National Advisory Board for Veterans for Peace.     Listen to additional episodes in this series which will be released twice-weekly through the end of June.Support the show

This was the inaugural conversation in Just World Educational's project to produce and share multimedia resources to inform, educate, and engage new generations of (especially) Americans on the need to Ban All Nuclear Weapons and dismantle all existing nuclear arsenals, including our own.     In this convo, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Amelle Zeroug discussed the growth of two massive nuclear arsenals since WW2 (in the USA and Russia) with JWE board member Rick Sterling and Prof. Ted Postol, who's a professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. Postol's expertise is in nuclear weapon systems, including submarine warfare, applications of nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defense, and ballistic missiles more generally. Before his gigs of teaching at Stanford and then MIT Postol worked as an analyst at the U.S.  Office of Technology Assessment and as a science and policy adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations, in the Pentagon.     Listen to additional episodes in this series which will be released twice-weekly through the end of June.Support the show

On May 20, JWE President Helena Cobban spoke at an event on the Ukraine Crisis and the nuclear risks associated with it that was hosted by the Mount Diablo Center for Peace and Justice in Walnut Creek, California. JWE board member Richard Falk contributed a video message to this event, which took the form of a 20-minute dialogue that Ms. Cobban had conducted with him a couple of days before.This podcast episode takes the form of a slightly clunky mix of the live audio from the event, the audio from the Falk dialogue, and some words of introduction and framing. Support the show

This virtual conversation between Helena Cobban and Richard Falk was pre-recorded for the Friends of Mt Diablo Peace and Justice Center for screening on May 20th, 2022.For more information or to download Just World Educational's report “Ukraine: Stop the Carnage, Build the Peace!” please visit www.justworldeducational.org.Support the show

The launch of our report “Ukraine: Stop the Carnage, Build the Peace!” in which Helena Cobban and Richard Falk were joined by Katrina vanden Heuvel, Medea Benjamin, Gar Smith, Ray McGovern, David Swanson, Cynthia Lazaroff, Rick Sterling, and David Barash to discuss the crisis in Ukraine and the policy recommendations included in the report.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

The eighth and final session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Dr. David Barash and Cynthia Lazaroff. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

The seventh session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Phyllis Bennis and Indi Samarajiva. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

The sixth session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Anatol Lieven and Ray McGovern. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

The fifth session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Dr. Radha Kumar and Dr. Mary Kaldor. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

The fourth session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Bill Fletcher, Jr., Erik Sperling and Marcus Stanley. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

The third session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Medea Benjamin and Marjorie Cohn. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

The first session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Amb. Chas Freeman, Jr. and Katrina vanden Heuvel. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

The first session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Vijay Prashad and Lyle Goldstein. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This week on The World From Palestine, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Yousef Aljamal untangle the ways in which empires erase and appropriate the cultures of indigenous peoples, whose lands they settle and steal. Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

In this week's episode, Helena and Yousef take us on a journey from Rwanda to India to understand the classic “divide and rule” tactic that belays many imperial projects and the various strategies indigenous people have used to push back.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

In this episode, Helena and Yousef examine  how colonial powers throughout history, including Israel, have used various forms of mass incarceration as a central tool in their project to control the indigenous populations of the areas they are colonizing.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This episode delves into the the dire environmental impact that West-European settler-colonial projects have always had on the lands and peoples that have been their target. From Israeli afforestation to the near-extinction of buffalo in the Great Plains of North America, Helena and Yousef break down settler attempts to appropriate resources and destroy indigenous self-sufficiency.  Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This week, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Yousef Aljamal break down the myths settler states have used throughout the past six centuries to erase indigenous populations and justify their occupation. Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This is the first episode in our new podcast series “The World From Palestine.” In this series, JWE President Helena Cobban and Palestinian scholar Yousef AlJamal will be jointly exploring the intersections between Palestine's liberation struggle and other anti-imperialist struggles throughout history, and until today. Today, Helena and Yousef discuss hunger striking and other forms of resistance to imperial efforts to isolate and punish intellectuals and freedom fighters.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This is the first one-third of a very rich conversation on food sovereignty topics that Just World Educational presented on November 28, as part of our latest webinar series “Beyond Survival: Food Sovereignty Challenges in Palestine and Worldwide.” This session of the series explores commonalities between the food-sovereignty struggles of Palestinians and of Native American and Black communities here in the United States.We'll be releasing the next two portions of this conversation in upcoming podcast episodes. You can learn more about this whole project here.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

 Just World Educational's President, Helena Cobban, hosts the second session of the groundbreaking “US-China public dialogue” that JWE is holding in collaboration with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. This dialogue session features two great specialists who discuss some of the currently contested issues in the trade, investment, technology, and other aspects of the two countries' relations.The featured experts are:Dr. Yukon Huang, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. Huang was formerly the World Bank's country director for China and, before that, director for Russia. Dr. Huang is an adviser to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and various governments and corporations. His latest book was Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong (Oxford U.P., 2017).Mr. He Weiwen, a Senior Fellow with the Chongyang Institute and Vice Chairman of the Global Alliance of SMEs. Mr. He worked as Economic and Commercial Counselor in the Chinese Consulates General in San Francisco and New York, 1997-2003. He is the author of three books and 200 articles on economic and trade affairs.The full video of this conversation and the full video, audio, and transcript of the earlier dialogue session on security affairs are posted along with many related materials at this page on the Just World Ed website.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

 Just World Ed President Helena Cobban hosts the first session of the groundbreaking “US-China public dialogue” that JWE is holding in collaboration with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. This dialogue session features two wonderful specialists who discuss some of the big-picture topics of contention in the relationship and dive in some detail into the thorny issue of the South China Sea.From Beijing (actually, Guangzhou, in southern China) we had Ambassador He Yafei, a Senior Fellow with the Chongyang Institute who has held many high-ranking diplomatic posts including as Counsellor of the Chinese Permanent Mission to the United Nations, and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.And from Washington DC we had Dr. Michael Swaine, who recently became the first Director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Dr. Swaine is the author of numerous books and articles on strategic issues relating to China and other parts of East Asia. He is co-director of a multi-year crisis prevention project with Chinese partners… And he also advises the U.S. government on Asian security issues. Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

At a time when US-China tensions seem to be increasing, Just World Educational is launching a new project on the shifting balance between the two countries, as Phase 2 of its continuing "World After Covid" project. In this phase of the project, JWE will be releasing the materials from each of the sessions held in podcast format as well as video and text. To see all the materials produced during this phase and the previous phase of the project, visit the "Resources" section of our website, www.justworldeducational.org.In today's episode, Ms. Cobban discusses key aspects of the strategic balance between the United States and China with Dr. Lyle Goldstein, who was the founding diorector of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College in Newport, RI and author of a seminal 2015 book, Meeting China Halfway. Upcoming episodes of the podcast will present the audio from a groundbreaking public dialogue on US-China relations that Just World Edis organizing in collaboration with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Beijing's Renmin University. More details of this dialogue can be found here.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This episode is an inter-season special: an interview Just World Educational President Helena Cobban conducted with Frank Joyce, a veteran antiwar and workers-rights organizer who was the co-editor, along with Dr. Karin Aguilar-San Juan, of the 2015 anthology The People Make the Peace: Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar Movement.In July this year, Frank Joyce and four other American antiwar activists went back to Ha Noi again: this time, to celebrate the launching of the Vietnamese edition of The People Make the Peace. You can read more about their latest visit to Vietnam in this blog post on Just World Ed's website. In reflecting on this latest visit to Vietnam, Joyce argued that in the years after the antiwar activists of the 1960s and 1970s had succeeded in persuading the U.S. government to end the war, many of them started to experience an inferiority complex that led them to radically under-estimate the value of what they had achieved. In this this interview with Joyce, Ms. Cobban explored that proposition with him… and also, got his insights on some of the challenging issues that have faced the US antiwar movement in recent years.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

On this week's podcast, Just World Educational's president, Helena Cobban, discusses the currently high tensions between the United States and Iran with Amb. Chas W Freeman, Jr., a very distinguished former American diplomatist and the author of a number of very informative books. The most recent of these are collections of his essays on, respectively, US-Chinese relations and US policies in the Middle East.This week's podcast is linked to a column Ms. Cobban wrote that ran May 15 on the Mondoweiss website, under the title “Bolton pushing United States to over-reach in Iran”.In Ms. Cobban's interview with Amb. Freeman, he warns of some of the very dire effects that Pres. Trump's withdrawal from the six-party, 2015 Iran deal has already had on the rule of law internationally and on the continuing erosion of the safeguards the U.S. Constitution always placed on the executive branch's ability to enter willy-nilly into wars of choice. He warns of the dire consequences to be expected if Washington should get into a shooting war with Iran, and he assesses the roles that China, Russia, and the European countries that were also parties to the Iran deal might be able to play in defusing the tentions and de-escalating the conflict.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This week's podcast is Number Twelve in our multi-week “Story/Backstory” project, which explores Washington's current policies in the Middle East, and the Middle East itself, in a broader historical perspective. It is a complement to a column by Just World Ed President Helena Cobbanthat ran May 8th on the Mondoweiss website, “Thinking fast and slow in reporting Israeli-Gaza fighting”, in which she drew on her own long background as a reporter in war and conflict situations. There's a handy "Checklist for anti-Palestinian reporting bias" that's posted on our blog, that goes along with this package, as well.In this episode, Cobban delves even deeper into the matter of anti-Palestinian reporting bias in the U.S. corporate media, and starts to explore steps that can be taken to reduce or even (we hope!) eliminate it.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This timely episode focuses on Saudi Arabia's very destructive and now four-year-long war on Yemen, and the direct participation in it of some units of the U.S. military. In early April, the two houses of Congress enacted legislation to end this participation. Pres. Trump vetoed that legislation. Then yesterday, May 2, the Senate held a vote to try to over-ride the veto, and they failed.  The weekly podcasts in this "Story-Backstory" project are all linked to written opinion columns that get published a couple of days earlier… This week's column ran May 1 on the Mondoweiss website, under the title “A crucial vote on Yemen, aka ‘Saudi Arabia's Gaza'”. In this episode, host Helena Cobban discussed Yemen and the Saudi and US roles in the war there with Dr. Sheila Carapico, a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Richmond who is one of the United States' foremost experts on Yemen and its relationships with its neighbors. She is also the editor of a 2016 anthology of writings about Yemen and its Arabia-peninsula neighbors titled Arabia Incognita: Dispatches from Yemen and the Gulf, which is available wherever fine books are sold.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This episode in the "Story-Backstory" series is a complement to the article that Helena Cobban published on Mondoweiss on April 25, exploring a small window that the Mueller Report provided into the world of the influence-buying operations undertaken by the UAE and other rich Arab Gulf states in Washington DC. In this episode, Ms. Cobban interviews Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy, to discuss the extensive influence operations undertaken in Washington by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel. At one key point, Freeman notes that the same lobbying and p.r. firms that work for many of those actors also work for major US arms manufacturers!(Please note that there was no Episode 9 in this series, as we concentrated on producing online materials for last week's topic, instead.)Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

Since late February, the large North African country of Algeria has been the site of a massive popular movement that every Friday brings millions of people into the streets demanding deepseated reform. The protests were sparked when the country's ageing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced that he would be seeking a fifth term in office. Last week, Bouteflika announced that he would not run again, and also that he would immediately resign. The country's very powerful army chief Gaid Salah also announced the postponement of the planned presidential elections until July. These steps did not satisfy the demonstrators, who turned out in very large numbers again last Friday—and early reports from today (April 12) say that the demonstrations are once again nationwide and large. Amin Khan, the guest on today's episode, is an Algerian poet and thinker who was the author of a key article published April 5 in French that laid out a program for how Algeria might transition successfully from its current situation as a sclerotic quasi-dictatorship into a fully functioning democracy. You can read our English-language translation of Amin Khan's article-- and of another key document relating to the protests-- on the Just World Educational website, here.Most of the weekly podcasts in this series are linked to written opinion columns that get published a couple of days earlier… This week, because of the groundbreaking nature of Algeria's popular uprising-- which has been sadly under-reported in the English-language media-- we're doing things a little differently. For the text portion of this week's project, there's an interview that I conducted earlier this week with veteran Algeria specialist William B. Quandt. And for the podcast portion, we have this interview that I conducted in English, on Wednesday April 10, with Amin Khan.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

Just World Educational President Helena Cobban and guest Nora Lester Murad discuss Israel's continuing waves of attack against Palestinian life in Jerusalem, which Ms. Murad describes here as "The front-line of the Palestinians' ongoing Nakba." Ms. Murad is the co-author of the recently published book Rest In My Shade.This episode is a complement to the column Ms. Cobban published on this topic in Mondoweiss on April 3, 2019.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

Just World Educational president Helena Cobban and guest Amb. Peter Ford look at the implications of Pres. Trump's March 25 decision to break with decades of US policy and provide official US support for Israel's annexation of Syria's Golan. This episode is a complement to the column Ms. Cobban published on this topic in Mondoweiss, March 26.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

This episode of the "Story/Backstory" series is related to the column "Beating Israel's 'But Khamas!' ploy" that was released on the Mondoweiss website on March 20. In this episode, JWE president Helena Cobban tries something a little new. Instead of starting off by reading the text of the column, she briefly summarizes it, and then dives right into the deeper backstory, providing her take on what's needed to prevent this commonly used Israeli ploy from succeeding.    In the second half of this episode, she introduces some excerpts from the audio of a fascinating presentation that Ahmed Abu Artema, the Gaza-Palestinian poet who was the originator of the whole idea of the Great March of Return, gave on March 18 at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington DC.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)

Just World Ed president Helena Cobban reads the column she had on this topic on Mondoweiss on March 13, which asked whether the Great March of Return movement that has swept the Gaza Strip for the past 50 weeks, may be the third great political movement to be born in Gaza. In the second half of this episode she discusses the Great March of Return with British-Palestinian author and activist Dr. Azzam Tamimi.Support the show (http://justworldeducational.org/donate/)