Just World Podcasts

In this episode of our "Gaza & the World" series, Helena Cobban talked with Dr. Ghada Karmi about the intersection of the genocide in Gaza and the shifting global balance of power. Dr. Karmi is a British-Palestinian who had a strong career in London as a physician and a medical historian; then between 2002 and 2023 she published four  thoughtful books that explored not only her own personal experiences as a member of ...

In this episode of our "Gaza & the World" series, Helena Cobban talked with Vijay Prashad about the intersection of the genocide in Gaza and the shifting global balance of power. 

Vijay Prashad is a visionary global justice activist, the executive director of the Tri Continental Institute for Social Research, the editor of Left Word Books, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at th...

This is the second episode of "Gaza & the World," a weekly podcast from Just World Educational, hosted by our president, Helena Cobban. This project explores the many interactions between the ongoing, genocidal crisis in Gaza and the world-changing shifts that the global balance of power is currently undergoing.

In this episode, Helena's guest is JWE's valued board member Prof. Richard Falk, a veteran scholar...

This is the first episode of "Gaza & the World," a new weekly podcast from Just World Educational, hosted by our president, Helena Cobban. This series explores the crucial role that the two-year genocide & the horrendous ongoing crisis in Gaza-- and also the resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people of Gaza-- are playing in the deep, world-changing shifts that the global balance of power is seeing in our...

On June 13, 2024, JWE President Helena Cobban gave a talk at the Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek, CA, hosted by Rossmoor Voices for Justice in Palestine. The talk was titled "Palestinian resistance from the PLO to Hamas." In it Helena drew on her 50 years of experience of studying, reporting on, interviewing the leaders of, and analyzing all the main Palestinian resistance movements of the modern era. Look on the JWE b...

This was the fifth and final session in a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed presented in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series as a whole was presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest in this episode was Dr. Azzam Tamimi,  who's the editor-in-chief of the London-based Al Hiwar ("Dialogue") TV channel. He&ap...

This was the fourth of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest in this episode was Mouin Rabbani, a super-smart Dutch-Palestinian researcher and analyst who specializes in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and con...

This was the third of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest was Dr. Jeroen Gunning, a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and Conflict Studies at King’s College, London. Dr. Gunning is also a Visiting Professor at the Depart...

This was the second of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest was Dr. Khaled Hroub, a Professor in residence with the faculty of liberal arts at Northwestern University in Qatar, whose focus is Middle Eastern studies and polit...

This was the first of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our first guest was journalist and author Dr. Paola Caridi.

You can see much more information about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and ...

In March 2024, the Middle East Committee of Westmoreland Church, which is a very active  "UCC" congregation located on the borderline between Maryland and Washington DC, invited Helena to go and speak to their members on the topic "Hamas: A Primer."

The event took place on April 21, 2024, and took the form of a conversation conducted, for the first 35 minutes, by longtime Middle East Committee member R...

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 wil...

 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 f...

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...

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 th...

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 ongoi...

 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 thi...

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 ...

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...