June 29, 2011

Reactions to Gaza Flotilla 2

Nine boats of siege-busting 'Freedom Rider' activists are now gathering in the Mediterranean, preparing to challenge the longrunning siege that is one of the main tools through which Israel continues...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:47 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

December 28, 2010

JWN revived; Israel's wars described

My apologies to loyal JWN readers that I haven't posted much recently... Indeed, for most of the past three or four months I have been seriously AWOL as a blogger....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:06 PM | Fulltext link (18 comments)

August 15, 2009

West Bank Palestinians and Golan Syrians at joint camp

I was intrigued to see the news from Maan that a summer camp has brought some 350 Palestinians from the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and from inside Israel, along...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:50 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

July 22, 2009

How occupations end

We here in Washington DC currently have a front-seat view of how a country undertakes the ending of the military occupation by its ground forces of another country's territory. Today,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:15 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

July 18, 2009

US military chafes under Iraq Withdrawal Agreement

Oh, pity the retreating hegemon-- just for a fleeting second-- as it starts to realize the implications of the drawdown of ts forces from Iraq, in compliance with the Withdrawal...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:39 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

June 30, 2009

Iraq: An occupation recedes

Congratulations to my Iraqi friends on the occasion of the significant (if not quite total) withdrawal of US military occupation rule from your cities and towns that has been taking...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:54 AM | Fulltext link (72 comments)

March 28, 2009

Play It Again, Barry

I thought it might be interesting to look at two speeches, comparing President Obama's speech on Afghanistan Friday to President Nixon's Vietnamization speech on November 3, 1969. Comparative excerpts follow....
Posted by Don Bacon at 11:55 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

March 08, 2009

An officer home from Iraq: his thoughts

I enjoyed an extended chat with a jr. US Army officer, on furlough from Iraq, about the time that Phyllis Bennis here gave a stimulating guest comment that questioned the...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 02:35 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

March 04, 2009

Divide and Conquer

Success in foreign affairs, where domination is the goal, is often accomplished withn a divide-and-conquer strategy. Conn Hallinan, 2004: It was "divide and conquer" that made it possible for an...
Posted by Don Bacon at 03:35 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

December 26, 2008

More Warriors Needed

The US Army is currently on track to increase 65,000 people to a total of 547,000 active-duty soldiers next year, up from 482,000 before the current conflicts. There is a...
Posted by Don Bacon at 05:34 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

December 20, 2008

Is there an Islamic Charlie Wilson?

As the US and NATO lose control of surface roads in Afghanistan they are more and more dependent upon air transport and air cargo delivery. According to USA Today: Afghanistan's...
Posted by Don Bacon at 04:16 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

December 07, 2008

Recruiting for the Enemy

The US occupation forces in Iraq have, from the beginning of the occupation more than five years ago, engaged in the arbitrary imprisonment ("detaining") of Iraqi citizens. As one former...
Posted by Don Bacon at 02:19 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

December 05, 2008

Counterinsurgency 101

WARNING: There will be a test. The US Department of Defense and its representatives continually use the word Counterinsurgency, or its acronym COIN, to describe the US efforts to secure,...
Posted by Don Bacon at 05:12 PM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

November 19, 2008

Israel attacks Gaza, demonstrates it is still the 'occupying power'

The Israeli military has sent ground forces deep into Gaza over the past two weeks, and has killed 17 Palestinians, and wounded uncounted others. In what even longtime Israeli flack...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:10 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

June 14, 2008

Baghdad: Ways of seeing

Saad Khalaf of the LA Times's Baghdad bureau has a very interesting post over at the LAT's Mideast staff blog, Baghdad & Beyond. It recounts a helicopter visit he recently...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:07 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

May 04, 2008

War and 'anthropology'

I have been concerned about the Pentagon's program to enlist anthropologists into its "Human Terrain System" (HTS) program ever since I first heard about it. The relationship between western "anthropology"...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:19 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

February 16, 2008

Military occupations, sewage, and governance

So now, after just under five years of rule by US military occupation, the historic city of Baghdad is drowning in lakes of human excreta. (Hat-tip Juan.) That item from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:27 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

July 13, 2007

"Whistling in the Dark" (Iran-media spat)

For all of the ongoing press woes in the Islamic Republic of Iran, commentaries in Iranian papers can still be extraordinarily boisterous -- too lively at times for Iran's neighbors....
Posted by Scott Harrop at 12:34 PM | Fulltext link (18 comments)

June 05, 2007

40 years of occupation (contd.)

Well, today is the 40th anniversary of the day the 1967 war started-- the war that brought under sraeli military occupation vast swathes of Arab land. Some of that land,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:56 PM | Fulltext link (30 comments)

January 10, 2007

Bush's new generals in Iraq

Note to readers: This week I started a new arrangement whereby I shall be cross-posting some JWN posts to "The Notion", a group blog hosted by the venerable New-York-based mag,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:52 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

November 25, 2006

Occupations in Palestine and Iraq

Well, tonight's the night that the Israeli occupation of Palestine (and Golan) will finally have lasted exactly for ten times as long as the US/UK occupation of Iraq. If both...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:17 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

October 01, 2006

Ending the occupation rule of Palestine and Golan

After 42 months of US occupation rule in Iraq, have we in the US finally learned a few truth about the true nature of rule by military occupation? First and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:16 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

July 07, 2006

Memories of the French Resistance

Our trip in Europe continues. We're in southern France now, heading north in three or four days. Earlier this week we had breakfast in Gordes, a spectacularly beautiful hill town...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:12 AM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

March 08, 2006

Chaos, closure, and the Gaza greenhouses

One commenter wrote that when I wrote here recently about the greenhouses in Gaza that an American Jewish group helped hand over to the Palestinians last year, the source I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:57 AM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

December 15, 2004

Living under foreign military occupation

Ever since I came to live in the US in 1982, I've done a fair amount of public speaking around the country, especially on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Over the years,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:36 AM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

January 01, 2004

Golan-- the human dimension

The Sharon government has been hinting that, in the absence of any credible peace diplomacy toward the Palestinians, it might be prepared to resume the long-stalled talks with Syria. What...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:35 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 22, 2003

MILITARY OCCUPATIONS, PART 3

MILITARY OCCUPATIONS, PART 3: I first met Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli peace activist, in a PLO office in Tunis in the mid-1980s. Uri has sure hung in there over...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:17 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 21, 2003

MORE ON OCCUPATIONS-- JAPAN AND

MORE ON OCCUPATIONS-- JAPAN AND IRAQ: What I forgot to mention in my earlier long screed on comparative occupation-ology was that there's a great article by the historian of modern...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:01 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

MILITARY OCCUPATIONS: THE GOOD, THE

MILITARY OCCUPATIONS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE POSSIBLY UGLY: Okay, George Bush has set us on the path of war, and in the days ahead Iraqi people, Iraqi conscripts,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:04 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 10, 2003

Dangers of Occupation: Taking a lesson from post-war Japan

BOSTON REVIEW: The paper copy of the latest (Feb/March) issue of BR dropped into my mailbox today. Hey, there's still something special about hard copy-- like the way you can...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:30 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)