'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Re-engage update

I put a couple more interesting posts onto the Re-engage book's blog this week. This one has a fascinating map showing how, in a time of high oil prices, life in the exurbs becomes much more expensive than life closer in. (Hat-tip Paul Krugman.) This one deals with weighty issues around whether and how to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Also, I see that Scott MacLeod, the Cairo bureau chief of Time magazine, has written some nice things about Re-engage! on Time's "Middle East" blog-- here.

He writes:

Journalist Helena Cobban's Re-engage! is a citizens' manual with a broader agenda. Cobban feels that Bush's invasion of Iraq has led to a strategic failure of a similar magnitude as the 1956 Suez crisis, which effectively diminished the global role played by once-great imperial powers Britain and France, and as the 1979 Afghanistan invasion, which helped lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Believing that the next American president has a new chance to put things right, Cobban calls for a revamped foreign policy of global inclusion to replace Bush's unilateralism...

Since 2003 she has operated Just World News, a lively, informative blog on world affairs that is popular with specialists and non-specialist citizens alike. Just World News, like Re-engage!, is a good example of the role citizens can play in helping shape a new, better narrative for the Middle East and the world.

Further details about Re-engage!, including ordering info and a list of the upcoming book events, can be accessed through the book's website.