Just World Podcasts

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/tortoiseshack

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) 

 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/tortoiseshack

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.

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.

 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 week
• Implications of Pres. Macron's visit to Beijing
• Implications of the new rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and
• The effects of this rapprochement on developments in the Mashreq area of West Asia. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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-Updates

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-Updates

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-Updates

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-Updates