March 23, 2012

JWB's fab titles--in C'ville Saturday, and globally, forever!

For all JWN readers in the Greater Charlottesville area-- do come by the VaBook book fair that runs tomorrow, 9am-4pm, at the Omni Hotel. Tell your friends to come, as...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:53 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 16, 2012

Powerful, intimate memoir from Israeli peace activist Miko Peled

The countdown clock is now ticking fast, toward the publication of Miko Peled's amazing and powerful memoir, The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. The book traces Miko's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:13 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 02, 2012

What's new in the publishing biz!

... is Just World Books's new webstore, which gives us global reach for distributing books from, as of now, three different print/distribute hubs... I am really excited about this development....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:06 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

December 20, 2011

Mrs. Peled and the Palestinian homes of West Jerusalem

I am delighted that my company, Just World books, is publishing Miko Peled's intimate and thought-provoking memoir The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. (We're already taking advance...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:21 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 25, 2011

Getting back to the blogosphere

So much has been happening in the world... The horrible killing of Qadhafi; an earthquake in Turkey (preceded by an upsurge in PKK-Turkish violence); some great-looking elections in Tunisia; continued...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:08 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

October 04, 2011

In Algiers: Book Fair and Colloquium

I'm writing this on a plane, at the end of a four-day visit to Algiers... In Algiers I was participating in a big international Colloquium on the Arab Spring organized...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:35 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 26, 2011

Updates, Sept.26

I have found it really hard to find time and energy to blog recently. Lots has been going on with Just World Books. This very evening, we are launching Manan...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:16 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

July 30, 2011

Remembering Qana, five years on

On this day five years ago, at 1:30 am Lebanon time, Israel's U.S.-supplied warplanes attacked houses in the south Lebanese village of Qana, killing more than 60 civilians, 37 of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:02 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

July 28, 2011

Place your orders now for Zurayk's 'War Diary: Lebanon 2006'

You can now go to the 'Buy' button on the web-page for Rami Zurayk's 'War Diary: Lebanon 2006' and place your advance order for this unique, 60-page work. The ebook...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:50 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 24, 2011

Nurturing that better future

All my wonderful longtime readers here at JWN may wonder why I've been so silent recently. Two reasons, mainly. I've been deep immersed in the most wonderful forms of family...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:00 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

July 12, 2011

New e-book soon: 'War Diary: Lebanon 2006'

Today is the fifth anniversary of the beginning of that terrible march of folly, the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006. So I'm delighted to announce today that my publishing company, Just...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:23 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

July 01, 2011

My piece on Egypt and Gaza, at ME Channel

... is here. I rather like the title they put on it, "Tahrir's journey to Palestine". In fact, the journey that the "spirit of of the Tahrir uprising" has to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:10 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

June 09, 2011

Publishing: From 140 characters to 150,000 words

I haven't blogged much recently, I know. I've been incredibly busy. Primarily with the book-publishing but a bit with family things and also, increasingly, with planning for the trip I'm...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:26 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 15, 2011

Interview with R. Visser at 8th anniversary of invasion of Iraq

(I first became acquainted with (and came to admire) Reidar Visser's work when he started posting comments here on JWN during and after Iraq's December 2005 election... Last fall, he...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:23 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

March 14, 2011

Freeman, El-Haddad, Foust in Charlottesville, Saturday

My publishing company's three great authors Chas Freeman, Laila El-Haddad, and josh Foust will all be in Charlottesville this Saturday, taking part in a panel discussion on developments in the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:37 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 10, 2011

I've been tweeting

... more than blogging these past few days. You can follow me here....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:58 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 06, 2011

JWN's 8th blogiversary

... is today. Over the Christmas of 2002, my son Tarek said to me a number of times, "Mom, you really should start a blog." I said, "A what?" (not...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:31 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

February 05, 2011

Egypt, the world food-price crisis-- and JWB's next book!

I just want to pick up on the food-price dimension of what's happening in the Middle East (and other parts of the world) today. Since the beginning of the current...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:10 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

November 30, 2010

Visser's book on Iraq now available for sale!

Reidar Visser's magisterial 300-page book A Responsible End? The United States and Iraq, 2005-2010 is now available for sale from Amazon. Actually, it's already selling really well there! Long-time JWN...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:34 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 18, 2010

Celebrate Laila's book launch today!

Today's the day! Laila El-Haddad will be launching her first book, Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between at 6:30 pm EST in Washington DC's Palestine Center. The...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:14 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

November 13, 2010

Laila El-Haddad and Josh Foust books: on Amazon!

It has been a crazy and wonderful week! We launched Josh Foust's book Afghanistan Journal on Tuesday. Just prior to that, both his book and Laila El-Haddad's Gaza Mom: Palestine,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:03 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

October 06, 2010

Chas Freeman book: Buy it on Amazon!

We've done it! The paperback version of Amb. Chas Freeman's book, America's Misadventures in the Middle East, is now available for purchase through Amazon. The paperback, hardcover, and e-book versions...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:06 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 09, 2010

Just World Books website is born!

Okay, I know I've been promising my readers here that the JWB website will be published "any day now"... And the day is here! So head on over and check...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:46 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

August 10, 2010

Building 'Just World Books'

This is kind of a "what I've been doing this summer". Yes, I have felt intermittently guilty that I haven't done more JWN blogging. One item in particular I wish...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:04 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

July 16, 2010

Just World Books update #4

We're still tweaking the website at Just World Books, so until it's ready to roll out, I'll be sending out my updates from here. I've signed three new contracts in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:04 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 10, 2010

Summer thoughts: On publishing

I've been amazingly (and wonderfully) busy, reading the first two book manuscripts for the new publishing house. Okay, let's be truthful. I've been reading one (Laila El-Haddad's), and Bill the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:47 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

June 29, 2010

Update from Just World Books

I realize I haven't posted anything here since mid-April about the progress of my new book-publishing company, Just World Books. But the authors and I-- along with a range of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:12 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

June 21, 2010

My piece on Syria at the M.E. Channel

... is here. It already says that 13 people like it. Well, that's nice. (And I didn't cast any of those votes myself.) Not many comments there, though....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:26 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 15, 2010

Announcing... Just World Books!

I am delighted to announce the establishment of a new book-publishing company, Just World Books, an imprint of the recently created limited-liability company, Just World Publishing, LLC. The first titles...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:48 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

March 13, 2010

'Journey to Jerusalem, 1995', Part 1

I'm happy to make available to JWN readers Part 1 of a seven-part series I wrote about Jerusalem for Al-Hayat, back in July 1995. It's here. Getting this series into...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:53 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 23, 2010

Essays by HC in 'Boston Review', since 2001

Nearly all these articles contain considerable amounts of material from interviews and other information gained during on-the-spot reporting trips, as well as analysis and reflections: Contribution to discussion on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:02 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 19, 2010

Blast from the CNI past

Well, what should drop into our mailbox yesterday but the latest direct-mail fundraising appeal from CNI... And goodness, what an embarrassment to me now, my name is even on the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:26 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 13, 2010

Malta: Some notes from the conference, tweeting, etc

I have wifi inside the conference hall here, which is nice. I did a bit of tweeting already-- here. The appearance of the US ambassador here just now was interesting....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:23 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

December 23, 2009

In Boston Review forum-- on Afghanistan

I have a contribution in this latest Boston Review forum on Afghanistan. The forum is built around a great piece of reporting by Nir Rosen. I wish I'd had more...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:46 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

October 25, 2009

New blog!

For the foreseeable future I'll be doing all or most of my Middle East-related blogging over at the new blog I've launched on behalf of the CNI Foundation. It's called...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:11 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

October 19, 2009

New horizons ahead!

Check out my big news here. It will be quite the lifestyle change for me, working with the excellent people at CNI/CNIF to put some real organizing oomph into the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:43 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

October 15, 2009

Good reporting from RFE/RL on Galbraith/DNO

Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty is a relic of the Cold War that in the mid-1990s got rebranded by Tom Dine (as you can read in my Nation piece) as...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:01 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

'The Nation' piece on AIPAC's Tom Dine

This piece is online now, here. It was really fascinating to work on-- just as it has been really interesting to work with Dine on the US-Syria Working Group, as...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:22 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

October 13, 2009

RIP Leila Abu-Saba

Leila Abu-Saba was one of the first great American bloggers for Palestinian rights and Arab-Israeli peace. Since early 2004, she used her blog Dove's Eye View to explore many dimensions...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:33 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 11, 2009

IPS piece on Abbas's waning popularity

Oops, I forgot to mention this when it came out, on Friday. But anyway, the piece is here, and also archived here. The conclusion there: there is increasing talk amongst...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:03 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

August 01, 2009

IPS piece on Obama, Jewish Israelis, and Jewish Americans

... here. Also archived here. Actually, right now the archived version is the definitive one, because I lost a few words from the version I'd sent to my excellent editor...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:47 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

July 23, 2009

My Nation piece on Fateh/Hamas, fulltext on web

So here I've been, quietly waiting for The Nation to put the fulltext version of my May piece about internal Palestinian politics up onto their website... and I didn't realize...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:59 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

July 13, 2009

My piece on the decline of the Israeli peace movement

... is now up on the Boston Review website, here. I found it a really tragic article to work on. I have admired the Israeli peace movement since its inception....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:47 AM | Fulltext link (27 comments)

July 06, 2009

Molavi's question

In a July 4th Washington Post oped, the excellent Iranian-American journalist Afshin Molavi writes of how Iran's fitful struggle for freedom is well in-grained within Iran's history and political culture....
Posted by Scott Harrop at 09:48 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

June 24, 2009

Me in the CSM, on bringing in Hamas

The piece I wrote on this topic Monday is now on the CSM website. As JWN readers might guess, I had a lot more I wanted to say about this...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:10 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

June 19, 2009

Now at TPM Cafe!

Big thanks to Josh Marshall and his colleagues at Talking Points Memo, who recently invited me to join the roster of contributors to their excellent discussion forum, TPM Cafe. My...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:15 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

June 12, 2009

CSM piece on the AKP in Turkey

Sometimes I feel I exist in a time-warp! Today, the CSM published an opinion piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago, based on my time in Turkey. I still...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:02 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

June 10, 2009

My book on Syria-Israel talks, being reprinted

I just heard from the good folks at the US Institute of Peace Press that they will be reprinting my 2000 book The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-96 and Beyond. The...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:46 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

May 09, 2009

My piece in The Nation on Hamas

... is in the May 25 edition of the magazine. It's here-- but sadly most of it is behind a subscribers-only paywall. So I guess you'll need to go buy...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:02 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

April 11, 2009

IPS analysis on re-emergence of one-state idea

... It came out yesterday here. Also archived here. My own main position on one state vs. two states is one of agnosticism. Not least because I'm not a direct...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:07 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

April 03, 2009

My IPS analysis on the Lieberman bombshell

... is here. Also here. On a related note, we have this from the Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Information center: Dr. Salah Al-Bardaweel, the spokesman of Hamas's parliamentary bloc in the PLC,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:07 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

March 27, 2009

IPS piece on including Hamas in the diplomacy

My latest IPS piece on issues around including Hamas in the diplomacy was published today (and also archived here.)...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:27 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 25, 2009

Short piece on J'lem on 'The Nation' website; DC talks next week

I have a short piece on Jerusalem on The Nation's website today. I'll be working on one more short piece for the website and a couple of longer pieces for...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:11 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 21, 2009

IPS piece on Egypt's diplo challenges

I had a new piece up on IPS yesterday, titled " Pressure Mounts on Egypt to Deliver Results". You can find it on IPS here and on my analysis-archive here....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:10 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

March 09, 2009

From Have-not to Have (DSL)

JWN readers might recall my laments from years past about the great digital divide in America, between those who have DSL or some form of real broadband and those who...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 03:25 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 03, 2009

Note on my Inbar interview

I have just written up and posted onto this blog a lengthy account of the interview I conducted with Efraim Inbar here in Jerusalem, on Sunday. I did it in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:17 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 27, 2009

My IPS piece on Israel's lurch to the right, and peace prospects

... is here. Also here. It contains some key points from my recent interview with Ramallah PM Salam Fayad....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:56 AM | Fulltext link (25 comments)

February 23, 2009

CSM article about need for Hamas-Fateh reconciliation

... is here. (Also archived here.) As you can see, I wrote it in Amman, before I came here to Ramallah. Since I've been here I've done a lot of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:17 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

February 14, 2009

My IPS pieces on a new blog; JWN blogiversary

A big thanks to readers who offered to help me aggregate and archive my developing corpus of weekly IPS news analyses! However, once I sat down and thought about the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:48 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 07, 2009

At IPS: 'Mideast: A truce too big to fail?'

My latest news analysis for IPS, "Mideast, a truce too big to fail?", went up on their website yesterday. Doing these weekly pieces for them is an interesting experience so...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:59 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 30, 2009

My IPS analysis on Obama's Middle East policy so far

Read it here....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:50 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

January 23, 2009

IPS articles from Syria and Washington, DC

I've been really busy these past couple of weeks-- plus, figuring out too much new technology. So, to catch up a little, here are the last two pieces of News...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:36 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

September 01, 2008

Post on China in US occupied zones-- at Japan Focus

The folks at Japan Focus have republished my recent JWN post on some implications of China's investments in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's more, they did a light edit on it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:15 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

August 04, 2008

My piece in the CSM on ending the Iraqi & Afghan wars

Here it is in today's paper. (It's also archived here.) The headline is good (if not terribly snappy... but then, who needs snappy?): The U.N. can end these wars: It...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:28 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

June 01, 2008

HC writings on Hamas, 2006-2008

One strategy you can always pursue is to check out my writings on Hamas, both those published here on JWN and (links to) those published elsewhere, by going to the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:19 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

May 15, 2008

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...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:38 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

May 14, 2008

Re-engage book, launch news

My Re-engage! book has been getting a good soft roll-out already. But next week we have the first two significant launch events-- one in Charlottesville, VA and the other in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:56 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 25, 2008

CSM piece on America-World relations, today

I have a big piece in the CSM today that urges Americans to build a relationship with the rest of the world on the basis of strong commitment to the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:59 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

April 19, 2008

"Re-engage!"-- the book is here!

Yesterday I got my hands on the first copies of my upcoming book Re-engage! America and the World After Bush. It is so exciting! Paradigm Publishers have done a fabulous...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:02 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 20, 2008

New book, 'Re-engage' goes to press; website launched!

So here we are! The great folks at Paradigm Publishers told me my upcoming book Re-engage! America and the World After Bush went to press today-- and we are now...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:43 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

February 21, 2008

Article-- and audio-- on Lebanon in CSM

My piece on Why Lebanon hasn't slipped into civil war is in Friday's Christian Science Monitor. (Here, and archived here.) If you go to the first of those links, you...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:56 PM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

February 20, 2008

'Economist' rips me off

Interesting that the Economist recently used a quote from the portion of my January 16 interview with Khaled Meshaal that had been published on the Foreign Policy website, by agreement....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:57 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

February 07, 2008

Where did my 5th blogiversary go to, anyway?

I've been pretty busy this week-- including on a special project, see below. So though yesterday was my 5th blogiversary I completely forgot about marking that fact here. Darn! It's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:55 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

January 30, 2008

Meshaal interview at 'Foreign Policy' website

A condensed version of my Jan. 16th interview with Hamas head Khaled Meshaal is now published on the website of Foreign Policy magazine. Under my agreement with them, they have...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:21 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

January 01, 2008

My article on the post-9/11 world in 'Friends Journal'

Earlier this year I had a strong leading, as we Quakers say, to do more writing for a specifically Quaker audience. This is a part, really, of the personal/spiritual journey...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:54 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

Michael Massing, on Iraq

Michael Massing of Columbia Journalism Review has two excellent pieces in the current and upcoming issues of the New York Review of Books; and luckily for us they both available...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:30 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 13, 2007

New blogging gig on urban transportation systems

I have a new little blogging gig-- a periodic feature called "Eyes on the Street" over at The City Fix, which is a blog published by the Washington DC-based World...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:54 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

November 03, 2007

Article in The Nation on Hamas and Hizbullah

I see that The Nation has put up on its website a teaser for a piece I wrote for them about a month ago, which is on the need for...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:38 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

October 29, 2007

Book-writing progress report

In my experience, birthing a book is similar to publishing a family in the sense that, once you've done it, you look at the product-- beautifully produced books that can...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:57 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

October 03, 2007

Piece in CSM today on Bush and global warming

I have a non-column in the CSM today on climate-change. The title is "Bush's good idea on global warming." Don't let that put anyone off reading it! I start the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:44 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

September 25, 2007

Bookwriting "Mission Accomplished"

Well I haven't decided which aircraft carrier to make a showboat appearance on yet... Gotta try on my fighter-aircraft piloting duds and have the midshipmen paint the banner... Nah, that...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:03 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

August 29, 2007

Bush fiddles, world warms, China 'rises'

The work on my current book project has been going generally well. When I'm working on a big project like this, the writing I do when I'm writing sometimes feels...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:22 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

August 17, 2007

Fasting from blogging is good for productivity...

Okay, my current blog-fast has lasted nearly five whole days. In that period I've wrestled with some big issues in Chapter 4 of my new book and.... just about nailed...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:09 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

July 23, 2007

My new book: Help with mapping and other graphics

I wrote here about the new book project I'm currently working on. I'd really like any help any of you can give (or link to) regarding production of good graphics...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:32 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

July 21, 2007

My new book project, & a request

I know that my posting here at JWN has been a little episodic in recent weeks. One big reason is that I've been working on conceptualizing and pulling together the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:10 PM | Fulltext link (29 comments)

July 09, 2007

Three on Africa

In a fit of hyper-productivity I just put three posts on Transitional Justice issues in sub-Saharan Africa up onto the Transitional Justice Forum blog. They are on Uganda, Sudan (including...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:39 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

June 24, 2007

Reconciliation, from Africa to the Middle East

Actually, the reason that I received a paper copy of the latest issue of the Palestine-Israel Journal, which I have just written about on JWN here, is that it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:20 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

June 05, 2007

Changes ahead at the CSM

This note in today's Christian Science Monitor informs the world of something that I learned of only on Sunday, namely that at the end of June all five other regular...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:01 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

March 19, 2007

HC column on big trends in Arab world

... Just out in Tuesday's CSM. Read it....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:34 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

March 08, 2007

CSM column on Syria

Here is the column I had in the CSM today. (It is also here.) The editors put this title on it: The time is ripe for the US to engage...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:18 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 06, 2007

JWN celebrates 4th blogiversary

Gosh, has it been four years already? And who knows, one day I might even figure out what I want to do with this blog... I sometimes look up from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:59 AM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

January 13, 2007

33-day war article, footnoted version

I have just uploaded to my home website a late-draft and footnoted version of the text of my recent Boston Review article on the 33- Day war between Israel and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:43 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

January 10, 2007

Day of Shame: Five years of Guantanamo

Jan. 11 is the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first group of prisoners at Guantanamo. Some of those original 20 men are still there today, having been through...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:32 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

January 01, 2007

How to withdraw from Iraq

• My "3-step withdrawal program" of Jan., 2007, and my "Namibia plan for Iraq" of Nov., 2006. • My Christian Science Monitor columns from Oct. 2006 and June 2006 on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:44 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

December 22, 2006

New site to read and discuss the ISG report

The Institute for the Future of the Book and Lapham's Quarterly, which is edited by former Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham, have established a new website that will enable a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:24 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

November 28, 2006

Saudi 'Mystique' alive and still writing

The Saudi woman blogger 'Mystique' left a comment on JWN yesterday pointing out that the reason her earlier blog was down for a while was because I sort of lost...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:13 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

November 18, 2006

My BR article on the 33-day war

It's finally here: The 33-Day War: Hizbullah’s victory, Israel’s choice, the piece I wrote back in late August/early September about the Israel-Hizbullah war. Yesterday I went over to BR's new...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:59 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

October 11, 2006

CSM column calls for US pullout from Iraq, accountability

Here's my column in the CSM of Thursday, October 12. The title is Bush created a mess in Iraq. Here's how to clean it up. The subtitle is: It's time...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:27 PM | Fulltext link (36 comments)

September 29, 2006

Back to JWN

Phew! My horrible time/work crunch is now over. I had a really busy schedule planned for this week, and then on Mon. afternoon Deb Chasman at Boston Review sent me...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:07 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

September 13, 2006

My 'Atrocities' book-- about to ship!

I can't figure out why I'm so excited about my new book, Amnesty After Atrocity?: Healing Nations After Genocide and War Crimes... Maybe because it was a new, intellectually challenging,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:45 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 11, 2006

9/11 article in Tom Paine

TomPaine.com today carries a piece I wrote for them to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:25 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

September 03, 2006

Article-writing lockdown here

I just have to intensify the article-writing lockdown I've been trying to impose on myself for the past week. For some reason this Boston Review piece is proving hard to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:36 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

August 22, 2006

'Peace after Lebanon' at TomPaine.com

I did another piece for TomPaine.com at the end of last week, and I see it's up on their site today. Astute JWN readers will see it's an updated combination...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:38 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

August 09, 2006

My CSM column on the need for speedy, comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace

The Christian Science Monitor of Thursday carries my column on what to do about Lebanon (also here.) The editors there titled it For a lasting Middle East peace, look back...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:23 PM | Fulltext link (66 comments)

My upcoming book: paperback and hardcover

I've been working with the good folks at Paradigm Publishers who will be releasing the hardcover edition of my book Amnesty after Atrocity?: Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:20 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

July 09, 2006

The new haves vs. the have-nots: Broadband

With all the horrendous conflicts escalating in the Middle East, it may seem a tad trite to observe the obvious – that monitoring the world via the internet without broadband...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:00 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

July 01, 2006

Got broadband, succumbed briefly to blog-addiction

Spouse made slight error in planning last night and we ended up in a place with in-room broadband. It has proved a little distracting, as you can see. Now I'm...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:31 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

June 16, 2006

Every heart a peace factory!

Whew!! I just finished the painstaking process of going over the page proofs for my upcoming book Amnesty After Atrocity? Healing Nations After Genocide and War Crimes. The page layout...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:58 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

June 02, 2006

Article on East Timor in TomPaine.com

I have a piece on TomPaine.com today, about East Timor. It was a good experience working with them. Their turnround time on the piece was about one hour. So it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:05 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

May 09, 2006

Too much work on dead-tree publications!

My schedule has been crazy. Last week I got back the copyedited and laid-out versions of two significant longer articles that I needed to review very carefully. One was my...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:36 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

March 21, 2006

The international courts discussion grows

Well, my article in Foreign Policy on international war-crimes courts has been getting a gratifying amount of attention. My intention in publishing it was, after all, to open up the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:27 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 16, 2006

CSM column on the Israeli election

The CSM today published my column on the Israeli election (here and here). It underlines the fact that in this election, the main platform plank of the front-running party is...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:26 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 02, 2006

Articles in Salon.com, Foreign Policy

So the piece I wrote for Salon on Hamas went up onto their site last night. It's here. If you don't have a subscription you just have to sit through...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:47 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

February 25, 2006

Still in receive mode here

I hope that y'all are sitting on the edge of your chairs to see what I'll be reporting during my time here in Israel/Palestine. It will come. But I'm still...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:35 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 13, 2006

Africa book re-edit finished

So I finished it today, coming in with a whole text that I feel fairly good about and that is under 94,000 words... Plus, two days before deadline. At times...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:36 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

February 06, 2006

JWN's third blogiversary

Has it been three years already since JWN's inaugural post? It has indeed.. And what a three years it has been... Most of it, alas, dominated by the US invasion...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:19 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

January 22, 2006

Writing and life

Yesterday, I completed the revision of the Rwanda section of my upcoming book. I had to cut it from three chapters to one (!) ... I was also trying to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:15 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 12, 2006

CSM column on Israel and Palestine

Here is the column I have in the CSM today, on the implications of the leadership crises in Israel and Palestine....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:16 AM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

January 05, 2006

Some recent Hayat pieces

Y'all know I write periodic columns for al-Hayat. I frequently don't see them when they come out in Arabic, because I make a bee-line for the news pages and find...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:53 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

January 02, 2006

New URL for my homepage

I've had my home web-page hosted by the University of Virginia for four or five years now. But over the holiday I got kicked off their server. Grrr. Tech advisor...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:00 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

November 10, 2005

CSM column on France (and Europe)

It's been a really busy week. Monday, I had a deadline for my CSM column for this week. I started out writing something about the Middle East, and at around...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:42 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

September 20, 2005

Calling US radio listeners

National Public Radio, Wednesday, 2:15 through 2:35 p.m. or so, on "Talk of the Nation"... I'll be talking (from London) about the need to withdraw US forces from Iraq. [That...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:51 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

September 08, 2005

CSM column on the US and the UN

I have a column in the CSM today about the importance of the UN to the US. It decries the bullying tactics that John Bolton has used since his arrival...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:13 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

July 21, 2005

The woman behind the byline

... Hannah Allam, that is, the talented and incredibly courageous 27-year-old journo who's been running Knight Ridder's Baghdad bureau since late 2003. That nice profile of her there, from Editor...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:00 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

July 17, 2005

Notes from a busy Sunday

This morning our Quaker Meeting held its regular (generally monthly) "Meeting for Worship with a concern for Business". Since we don't have a paid minister, it's the responsibility of all...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:19 PM | Fulltext link (58 comments)

July 14, 2005

CSM column on NZ

The column I wrote earlier this week on New Zealand is in today's Christian Science Monitor. They cut it pretty drastically and I see now there's a little bit of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:29 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

May 16, 2005

Passages

Saturday was a big day. At 6 a.m., in northern California, my beloved mother-in-law DQ passed away, just one day short of her 98th birthday. She was an amazing woman...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:51 AM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

May 10, 2005

Africa book, chapter 11 (again)

So just in case any of you is sitting there thinking, "I wonder how Helena's getting on with finishing her long-awaited (!) book on violence and conflict termination in Africa?".......
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:17 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

April 11, 2005

Hizbullah article appears

The article on Hizbullah that I worked on over the Christmas holiday weeks has finally come out. It's in the April-May issue of Boston Review. Knowing that the text would...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:51 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

March 23, 2005

Wanted: some respect!

I was, I think, one of the first, back in February, to point out that the complicated system put in place in Iraq by Paul Bremer's bizarre and almost...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:07 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

March 09, 2005

CSM column Thursday

I have a column in Thursday's CSM. It's titled Time to end US cotton subsidies, and it celebrates the recent WTO ruling in favor of Brazil and against the US...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:47 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 01, 2005

Hard at work here

I've been working hard at making myself get my Africa book finished. Since I also have a life (okay, this may come as a surprise to some blog-readers), this means...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:59 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

February 24, 2005

CSM column on post-Hariri Lebanon

Today's CSM has my column on post-Hariri Lebanon. It's titled: Can real peace take root in Lebanon? Let's hope so! There have been some encouraging signs, as noted in the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:20 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

February 14, 2005

A Valentine from the WaPo

Well, you know that in some places around the world, women's rights, interests, and voice have been getting progressively devalued over recent years (while in others they've been becoming progressively...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:59 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 10, 2005

A little writing crisis here

Really interesting things are happening all over the world. The North Koreans have announced they have nuclear weapons... The Iraqi election commission has announced yet more problems in ballot-counting, necessitating...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:04 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

January 24, 2005

Women getting WaPo-ed, update

Week 5 of the WGW watch has just finished. It was a "banner" week. 5.5 of the 34 op-ed articles published in the WaPo since last Tuesday were by women,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:04 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 06, 2005

A new day

I've been struggling with the Comments boards here on JWN for some time now. Yesterday, I felt I learned something new about what's been going on. As someone who works...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:33 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

January 03, 2005

Women getting WaPo-ed

Okay, readers, so what proportion of the wisdom of the human race do you think resides in the minds of the world's women? Fifty percent, perhaps? That might be a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:38 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

January 02, 2005

Hizbullah: the discussion resumes

Okay. Commenter Dominic, who appealed my decision to close the Comments board on the recent Lebanon's Hizbullah post, wins. (At least, I think "appealing" was what you were doing, Dominic?)...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:08 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

December 21, 2004

Women and the WaPo

Item 1: The lede paragraph of a review in last Friday's WaPo of a new Chinese-made movie: The experience of "House of Flying Daggers" isn't like going to a movie...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:48 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

December 16, 2004

CSM column on Iran (and CAMERA letter)

The CSM ran my column on Iran in today's edition. I think it came out pretty well despite some hasty last-minute edits. In addition, today was the day they finally...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:33 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

December 09, 2004

CSM column on Syria

Today's CSM has the column I wrote for them about (and from) Syria. Again, I'm not really happy with the title they chose. Plus, in the CSM's own version of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:12 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

December 06, 2004

Inconveniences of travel

It's Monday morning in Philadelphia. We flew (back) here yesterday from Beirut, transiting through Paris-Charles de Gaulle. None of the four bags we checked made the connection. Grrr. We met...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:05 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

December 03, 2004

"Islamo-fascist slut" fights back (peacefully)

The Comments boards here on JWN have hosted some really great discussions. They also, sadly, host some really nasty, commercially generated spam, much of it pornographic, that I'm constantly trying...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:58 PM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

November 20, 2004

On the road to Damascus

In about an hour I'll be leaving Beirut to go to Damascus for a few days. Returning here Wednesday. Then next weekend (God, or mainly the Iranian visa authorities, willing)...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:53 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

September 06, 2004

How's your Arabic?

You could test it out by reading this column of mine, that appeared in al-Hayat today....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:48 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

August 21, 2004

Pray for peace in Najaf (& new Golden Oldies here)

I just put up two more months' worth of Golden Oldies onto the sidebar here. Last November was quite a momentous month for Iraq! October was a momentous month for...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:41 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

July 13, 2004

Wiped

I'm wiped. I finished writing the section of my book on Rwanda today. And I don't even have energy for blogging. What's happening here?? Don't worry. I'll be back tomorrow...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:00 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

July 08, 2004

Our Quaker book on Israel/Palestine--finally!

Finally! After long labors, the book-length report that 14 of us--nearly all Quakers--have written on the Israel/Palestine situation is out. (Quaker process takes a famously long time, but we did...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:30 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

June 15, 2004

Guess who?

She writes civilized yet passionate journal entries, focused on international affairs. The look of the page is cool--as are the colors. Her background and experience make her deeply credible... This,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:27 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

June 09, 2004

New York, CSM column on China, etc

I've been in New York since I flew in here from Toronto on Sunday evening. Monday, I suddenly remembered I needed to write not one but two columns for The...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:24 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

May 17, 2004

From Dar al-Hayat's English-language website

I've been trying to discuss reproduction rights issues with my editors at Al-Hayat for some time now. (No, that does not mean abortion issues. It means reproduction of the columns...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:57 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

May 14, 2004

CSM column on Iraq

The column I had in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor was on Iraq. It's titled "A pattern of culpability in Iraq". Regular readers of JWN may find quite a few familiar...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:13 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

April 17, 2004

Gaza article, etc.

Finally! The Boston Review article I wrote about Gaza has been put up on their website. You can read it here. I wrote it in late February and revised it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:35 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 31, 2004

Voices from Mozambique

I've been struggling quite a bit with (re-)shaping and (re-)writing the section on Mozambique for my current book-writing project, "Violence and its legacies". Actually, the conference I went to on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:50 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 18, 2004

New CSM column out today

Here is my latest CSM column, out today. The editors there put a good headline on it: Movement controls stunt Palestinian lives - and democracy. I mentioned in there that...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:01 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

March 10, 2004

CSM column on Gaza, Arafat

Here's a link to my column in Thursday's Christian Science Monitor. I had to do huge rewrite right up against deadline, for reasons I shan't go into here. So it's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:39 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 07, 2004

New CSM column: the U.S. and the rest

My latest column is in Thursday's Christian Science Monitor. It's a call for US citizens to start reflecting seriously on our rightful place in the world. I ask, "How, during...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:19 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

December 10, 2003

Dec 11 CSM column now on web

My latest Christian Science Monitor column is now up on the CSM website. You can read it here. It's titled 'Made in Israel' crackdowns in Iraq won't work, and it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:48 PM | Fulltext link (18 comments)

November 09, 2003

Nose to authorial grindstone here

I've had the nose to the grindstone here since Friday a.m. First, I finished final edit on a long piece about the Int'l Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda that the Boston...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:45 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 09, 2003

A columnist's job is never done

I just finished writing my CSM column for this Thursday's paper (9/11). As soon as I get to the published version, as usual I'll put up a link to it....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:10 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

August 18, 2003

Heathrow

Finally, I'm able to get a link to the CSM column of mine that ran last Thursday, that provoked so many expressions of anger and hostility in the Comments sections...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:28 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

August 16, 2003

Short update from the UK

I'm writing this from my sister's computer in England. Interested to see the numbers of ardently pro-Israel people posting comments on my last post, on the CSM column of mine...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:20 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

July 27, 2003

NYC/Star Island reflections

Sunday morning in New York City's East Village. I'm writing this in Alt.coffee, an internet cafe facing Tompkins Square Park. Sunshine outside. Inside, heavy-metal music and air-conditioning. Intermittent short rushes...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:44 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

July 17, 2003

No time to write!

I've been crazy busy for the past two weeks. Haven't had a moment to write. And now I'm going off to a place where I'll have no net access for...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:19 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 08, 2003

Work, and a long weekend

I'm sorry I haven't posted much here recently, but I've been writing up two or three storms. "Real" writing, that is... working on this humungous great redrafting project I'm working...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:27 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

June 07, 2003

Heavy work zone ahead

I spent much of Thursday and Friday doing family stuff, what with Lorna's graduation, etc. Today after seeing Joe and Tarek off, I pulled out an essay I needed to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:14 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 29, 2003

HAYAT COLUMN DEADLINE COMING UP:

HAYAT COLUMN DEADLINE COMING UP: Oh my goodness, it's nearly the end of the month. Which means I need to get my head around doing my next column for Al-Hayat....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:29 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 10, 2003

CSM COLUMN OUT TODAY

CSM COLUMN OUT TODAY: I have a column in the Christian Science Monitor today. I wrote it last weekend. It's titled, "Postwar shock and awe in the global economy". I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:06 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 27, 2003

CSM COLUMN OUT TODAY; AL-HAYAT COLUMN YESTERDAY:

Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:57 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 24, 2003

BLOGGING AS FIVE-FINGER EXERCISES: For

BLOGGING AS FIVE-FINGER EXERCISES: For some reason, two of my sisters have both expressed a concern that my blogging "might be taking too much of my time". (All three of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:09 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)