November 29, 2008

Violence in Mumbai, love at home

My condolences to all who have lost loved ones to the terrorist violence in Mumbai. Most of those killed and wounded have reportedly (and not surprisingly) been Indians. But tens...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:08 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

July 30, 2008

Defining 'winning'

I've been writing quite a bit recently about war and its unwinnability. I've been thinking a lot more about this, and I want to clarify that in those writings I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:42 PM | Fulltext link (29 comments)

January 31, 2008

Kenya: Life, death, and unknowing when things fall apart

If you want to know what actually happens in communities that get caught up in a paroxysm of inter-group violence, and what it feels like to live in such a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:26 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 16, 2007

On desertions and conscientious objection

The rate of desertions from the US army "skyrocketed" during the 12-month period ending September 30, according to this report in the semi-official Army Times. Reporter William McMichael noted that...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:43 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

August 30, 2007

Sri Lanka: Asia's Darfur?

The revived and very violent civil war in Sri Lanka is another world event that seems to have slipped off the scope of most of the US mainstream media. For...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:44 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

July 18, 2007

More violence-inciting doctors

Further to the rush of commentary last week on "how could" a medical doctor engage in violence, as a handful of Muslim-immigrant physicians in Britain recently have, I thought of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:29 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

May 22, 2007

Violence begetting violence in the Middle East

One of the truest teachings of the Dalai Lama and of other nonviolence activists throughout history is that the use of violence to attain one's goals will always cause more...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:16 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

January 03, 2007

Human Rights Watch and nonviolent mass action: a footnote

Readers will remember that back on November 22 I wrote a post here that strongly criticized the press release Human Rights Watch put out that day critizing the Gazans' use...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:42 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 13, 2006

"We Want Peace" on YouTube

Hagit Tarnari, one of the dedicated pro-peace Israeli participants in our recent U.N. University conference on nonviolence in Amman, Jordan, made a little video at the end of the conference...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:48 AM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

November 08, 2006

CSM column on our great gathering in Amman

My column in Thursday's CSM is about our incredible conference on nonviolence, last week in Amman. You can read it here or here. In the column, I just gave a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:32 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 03, 2006

Well-organized people power in northern Gaza

I have long argued-- including in this article on Hizbullah, or this article on the women's organizations of Hamas-- that the bedrock of the political strength of well-organized Islamist organizations...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:28 AM | Fulltext link (53 comments)

September 30, 2006

Thuggish Israeli minister calls for killing Nasrallah

It seems to me that assassinating one's opponents is-- like torture-- a slippery slope. Maybe the first few times you do it, you're still a bit hesitant. But do it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:50 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

September 13, 2006

U.N.U. workshop on non-violence, October

Here's an announcement for another project I'm contributing to. Again, please feel free to copy, distribute, and re-post this one. United Nations University International Leadership Institute A 4-day, workshop-style course...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:50 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 10, 2006

A "Global Hunger Strike?"

A “Global Hunger Strike”? Commonly understood, “hunger strikes” are intended as a form of non-violent action, a voluntary fast with an intended political or human rights aim. Yet I confess...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:42 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

May 17, 2006

Emma's second birthday

Here in the US of A, we've just had Mother's Day, and we're proceeding fast toward Father's Day (June 18). I'm thinking of all the mothers and fathers who are...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:51 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

April 28, 2006

Religions and genocide prevention: the discussion

Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:55 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

March 23, 2006

Al-hamdu lillah!

Thank G-d! ... That CPT-ers Norman, Harmeet, and James were all freed today... And freed, moreover, by troops who found them and released them without firing a shot. CPT had...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:03 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 10, 2006

Dainty western leaders and violence

People in the west who've gotten so riled up about the "violence" (of some-- actually, a very, very small proportion) of those Muslims who've been protesting against the Danish cartoons...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:22 PM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

December 06, 2005

CPT abductees: still praying

Lauri Perman, who's the presiding clerk of Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), of which my Quaker Meeting is a part, is asking people to hold...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:05 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

August 17, 2005

Soldier bringing the war home...

A short but very moving photo essay on the BBC website about a victim of post-war trauma and his family....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:46 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

May 08, 2005

French colonial violence remembered

Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:37 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

April 25, 2005

Gallipoli?

Can someone tell me why 20,000 whitefolks-- most of them reportedly Ozzies or New Zealanders, and many of them young-- would flock to a chilly shore in Turkey early today...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:55 PM | Fulltext link (38 comments)

March 18, 2005

Paper on "Religion and violence"

You can now download and read a paper on "Religion and violence" that I first presented at a special colloquium on world religions that the American Academy of Religion held...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:59 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

February 06, 2005

Remembering the "devouring"

With all the news coverage recently of the 60th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz there was, as predictable, pitifully little mention of the 500,000 Roma people (Gypsies) who...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:09 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

February 04, 2005

Nuclear disarmament: a reminder

President Bush and Condi Rice have been stepping up their rhetoric against Iran, accusing the regime there of being undemocratic (true) and of harboring ambitions to acquire a nuclear arsenal...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:26 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

January 14, 2005

Friendships ripped by ethnic war

I wrote here, on Wednesday, about my disappointment in one chapter of My Neighbor, My enemy, the book I've been reading about "justice and community" in the aftermath of atrocious...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:21 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 10, 2005

On the bookshelf

These past few days I've been transitioning back into working on my "Violence and its Legacies" project, a.k.a. my book about Africa, and my reading's been starting to reflect that....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:12 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 17, 2004

For Margaret, and all her compatriots

Margaret, I never met you. I wish we'd had the chance to meet... This, from today's Guardian, about Margaret Hassan: Hassan was born Margaret Fitzsimmons in Ireland, where her early...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:35 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

September 13, 2004

What me? Pollyanna?

Several people have accused me of being unrealistically Pollyanna-ish in even suggesting--as I did when I wrote my column in last Thursday's CSM-- that this US administration might be interested...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:40 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

September 11, 2004

Post-9/11 wisdom and Danny Pipes' Dad

Bullying, ideological neo-con Daniel Pipes has a father at whose ultra- (but more traditionally) conservative knee he grew up. Richard Pipes was an ultra-conservative historian of Russian history at Harvard...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:41 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

August 06, 2004

Hiroshima then and now

59 years ago today an American warplane dropped the world's first "operational" atomic weapon. It was designed to detonate some 200 meters above the ground, to maximize fallout on the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:32 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

June 19, 2004

Paul Johnson, R.I.P.

I've been thinking a bit about the life, the terror-stricken captivity, and outrageous death of Paul Johnson, and certainly thinking about the grief of the loving family members he left...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:40 AM | Fulltext link (25 comments)

March 01, 2004

Talking with an Islamist

Here's a little fragment from my recent trip to Israel/Palestine that I wanted to share. I was sitting with a colleague at Bir Zeit University who'd been telling me about...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:05 AM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

February 27, 2004

Memories of the truce that failed

I've just about finished (let's hope!) reviewing the final edit of the long piece I've written for Boston Review since I got back from Israel/Palestine. It should be in the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:44 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 01, 2004

Violence and escalation in Palestine/Israel

I had so many things I wanted to blog about today. Mainly, a big piece I've been kinda planning for a few days now, connecting some dots on matters Israeli-Palestinian....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:52 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

November 13, 2003

Turkey abolishes death penalty

Hallelujah! The New York Times reports today that Turkey has finally, formally abolished the death penalty!!! And so, humankind slowly continues its march toward greater humanity. I wonder when my...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:27 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

November 03, 2003

On punishment (contd.)

My big research project these days looks at how societies deal with the multiple legacies they're left with in the aftermath of atrocious violence. In the interests of synergy, the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:32 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 28, 2003

Thinking about atrocity

This week I've gotten seriously into writing up, in as definitive a way as possible, the findings of the research project I've been working on, off and on, for the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:20 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

August 20, 2003

Tragedies, tragedies

I was stunned by yesterday's bombing of the UN HQ in Baghdad. Why the UN? Why Sergio Vieira de Mello, and so many other members of his team? I was...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:31 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

June 17, 2003

Ending cycles of violence

I just got done writing my mid-June column for Al-Hayat... It's one I've been thinking about for many days. Maybe as a sort of slightly philosophical commentary on the resurgence...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:29 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

May 17, 2003

INTO THE VIOLENCE CYCLE:

INTO THE VIOLENCE CYCLE: So here's how it goes. Leader X (call him George Bush, call him Ariel Sharon, call him whatever you want) perceives that his nation/group/whatever is experiencing...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:53 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 17, 2003

Iraq Democrats Disappointed

Back last summer, I got into a heartfelt exchange with a friend of mine who's an Iraqi democrat. His name is Siyamend Othman. He's a wise and good person, an...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:48 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 16, 2003

New York Demonstration

I was one of the lucky ones yesterday, at the anti-war demonstration in NYC. That is, New York's finest (the cops) actually graciously allowed my daughter, her fiance, and me...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:10 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 14, 2003

FROM NEW YORK, Valentine's Day

I've had a busy couple of days of work here, talking to some really interesting folks about my 'Violence and its Legacies' project, and starting to make plans for the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:16 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)