Just World Books Podcasts

The first session of "#UkraineCrisis: Building a Just and Peaceful World," a biweekly series of online convos hosted by JWE Pres. Helena Cobban and Board Member Richard Falk, joined this week by guests Vijay Prashad and Lyle Goldstein. For full bios and more info, please visit bit.ly/Ukr-UpdatesSupport the show

This week on The World From Palestine, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Yousef Aljamal untangle the ways in which empires erase and appropriate the cultures of indigenous peoples, whose lands they settle and steal. Support the show

In this week's episode, Helena and Yousef take us on a journey from Rwanda to India to understand the classic “divide and rule” tactic that belays many imperial projects and the various strategies indigenous people have used to push back.Support the show

In this episode, Helena and Yousef examine  how colonial powers throughout history, including Israel, have used various forms of mass incarceration as a central tool in their project to control the indigenous populations of the areas they are colonizing.Support the show

This episode delves into the the dire environmental impact that West-European settler-colonial projects have always had on the lands and peoples that have been their target. From Israeli afforestation to the near-extinction of buffalo in the Great Plains of North America, Helena and Yousef break down settler attempts to appropriate resources and destroy indigenous self-sufficiency.  Support the show

This week, co-hosts Helena Cobban and Yousef Aljamal break down the myths settler states have used throughout the past six centuries to erase indigenous populations and justify their occupation. Support the show

This is the first episode in our new podcast series “The World From Palestine.” In this series, JWE President Helena Cobban and Palestinian scholar Yousef AlJamal will be jointly exploring the intersections between Palestine’s liberation struggle and other anti-imperialist struggles throughout history, and until today. Today, Helena and Yousef discuss hunger striking and other forms of resistance to imperial efforts to isolate and punish intellectuals and freedom fighters.Support the show

This is the first one-third of a very rich conversation on food sovereignty topics that Just World Educational presented on November 28, as part of our latest webinar series “Beyond Survival: Food Sovereignty Challenges in Palestine and Worldwide.” This session of the series explores commonalities between the food-sovereignty struggles of Palestinians and of Native American and Black communities here in the United States.We’ll be releasing the next two portions of this conversation in upcoming podcast episodes. You can learn more about this whole project here.Support the show

 Just World Educational's President, Helena Cobban, hosts the second session of the groundbreaking “US-China public dialogue” that JWE is holding in collaboration with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. This dialogue session features two great specialists who discuss some of the currently contested issues in the trade, investment, technology, and other aspects of the two countries' relations.The featured experts are:Dr. Yukon Huang, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. Huang was formerly the World Bank’s country director for China and, before that, director for Russia. Dr. Huang is an adviser to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and various governments and corporations. His latest book was Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong (Oxford U.P., 2017).Mr. He Weiwen, a Senior Fellow with the Chongyang Institute and Vice Chairman of the Global

 Just World Ed President Helena Cobban hosts the first session of the groundbreaking “US-China public dialogue” that JWE is holding in collaboration with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. This dialogue session features two wonderful specialists who discuss some of the big-picture topics of contention in the relationship and dive in some detail into the thorny issue of the South China Sea.From Beijing (actually, Guangzhou, in southern China) we had Ambassador He Yafei, a Senior Fellow with the Chongyang Institute who has held many high-ranking diplomatic posts including as Counsellor of the Chinese Permanent Mission to the United Nations, and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.And from Washington DC we had Dr. Michael Swaine, who recently became the first Director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Dr. Swaine is the author of numerous books and articles on strategic issues relating to China and other parts of E

At a time when US-China tensions seem to be increasing, Just World Educational is launching a new project on the shifting balance between the two countries, as Phase 2 of its continuing "World After Covid" project. In this phase of the project, JWE will be releasing the materials from each of the sessions held in podcast format as well as video and text. To see all the materials produced during this phase and the previous phase of the project, visit the "Resources" section of our website, www.justworldeducational.org.In today's episode, Ms. Cobban discusses key aspects of the strategic balance between the United States and China with Dr. Lyle Goldstein, who was the founding diorector of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College in Newport, RI and author of a seminal 2015 book, Meeting China Halfway. Upcoming episodes of the podcast will present the audio from a groundbreaking public dialogue on US-China relations that Just World Edis organizing in collaboration wit

This episode is an inter-season special: an interview Just World Educational President Helena Cobban conducted with Frank Joyce, a veteran antiwar and workers-rights organizer who was the co-editor, along with Dr. Karin Aguilar-San Juan, of the 2015 anthology The People Make the Peace: Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar Movement.In July this year, Frank Joyce and four other American antiwar activists went back to Ha Noi again: this time, to celebrate the launching of the Vietnamese edition of The People Make the Peace. You can read more about their latest visit to Vietnam in this blog post on Just World Ed’s website. In reflecting on this latest visit to Vietnam, Joyce argued that in the years after the antiwar activists of the 1960s and 1970s had succeeded in persuading the U.S. government to end the war, many of them started to experience an inferiority complex that led them to radically under-estimate the value of what they had achieved. In this this interview with Joyce, Ms. Cobban explored that proposition

On this week’s podcast, Just World Educational's president, Helena Cobban, discusses the currently high tensions between the United States and Iran with Amb. Chas W Freeman, Jr., a very distinguished former American diplomatist and the author of a number of very informative books. The most recent of these are collections of his essays on, respectively, US-Chinese relations and US policies in the Middle East.This week’s podcast is linked to a column Ms. Cobban wrote that ran May 15 on the Mondoweiss website, under the title “Bolton pushing United States to over-reach in Iran”.In Ms. Cobban's interview with Amb. Freeman, he warns of some of the very dire effects that Pres. Trump's withdrawal from the six-party, 2015 Iran deal has already had on the rule of law internationally and on the continuing erosion of the safeguards the U.S. Constitution always placed on the executive branch's ability to enter willy-nilly into wars of choice. He warns of the dire consequences to be expected if Washing

This week’s podcast is Number Twelve in our multi-week “Story/Backstory” project, which explores Washington’s current policies in the Middle East, and the Middle East itself, in a broader historical perspective. It is a complement to a column by Just World Ed President Helena Cobbanthat ran May 8th on the Mondoweiss website, “Thinking fast and slow in reporting Israeli-Gaza fighting”, in which she drew on her own long background as a reporter in war and conflict situations. There's a handy "Checklist for anti-Palestinian reporting bias" that's posted on our blog, that goes along with this package, as well.In this episode, Cobban delves even deeper into the matter of anti-Palestinian reporting bias in the U.S. corporate media, and starts to explore steps that can be taken to reduce or even (we hope!) eliminate it.Support the show

This timely episode focuses on Saudi Arabia's very destructive and now four-year-long war on Yemen, and the direct participation in it of some units of the U.S. military. In early April, the two houses of Congress enacted legislation to end this participation. Pres. Trump vetoed that legislation. Then yesterday, May 2, the Senate held a vote to try to over-ride the veto, and they failed.  The weekly podcasts in this "Story-Backstory" project are all linked to written opinion columns that get published a couple of days earlier… This week’s column ran May 1 on the Mondoweiss website, under the title “A crucial vote on Yemen, aka ‘Saudi Arabia’s Gaza’”. In this episode, host Helena Cobban discussed Yemen and the Saudi and US roles in the war there with Dr. Sheila Carapico, a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Richmond who is one of the United States’ foremost experts on Yemen and its relationships with its neighbors. She is also the editor of a 2016 ant

This episode in the "Story-Backstory" series is a complement to the article that Helena Cobban published on Mondoweiss on April 25, exploring a small window that the Mueller Report provided into the world of the influence-buying operations undertaken by the UAE and other rich Arab Gulf states in Washington DC. In this episode, Ms. Cobban interviews Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy, to discuss the extensive influence operations undertaken in Washington by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel. At one key point, Freeman notes that the same lobbying and p.r. firms that work for many of those actors also work for major US arms manufacturers!(Please note that there was no Episode 9 in this series, as we concentrated on producing online materials for last week's topic, instead.)Support the show

Since late February, the large North African country of Algeria has been the site of a massive popular movement that every Friday brings millions of people into the streets demanding deepseated reform. The protests were sparked when the country’s ageing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced that he would be seeking a fifth term in office. Last week, Bouteflika announced that he would not run again, and also that he would immediately resign. The country’s very powerful army chief Gaid Salah also announced the postponement of the planned presidential elections until July. These steps did not satisfy the demonstrators, who turned out in very large numbers again last Friday—and early reports from today (April 12) say that the demonstrations are once again nationwide and large. Amin Khan, the guest on today’s episode, is an Algerian poet and thinker who was the author of a key article published April 5 in French that laid out a program for how Algeria might transition successfully from its current situation as

Just World Educational President Helena Cobban and guest Nora Lester Murad discuss Israel's continuing waves of attack against Palestinian life in Jerusalem, which Ms. Murad describes here as "The front-line of the Palestinians' ongoing Nakba." Ms. Murad is the co-author of the recently published book Rest In My Shade.This episode is a complement to the column Ms. Cobban published on this topic in Mondoweiss on April 3, 2019.Support the show

Just World Educational president Helena Cobban and guest Amb. Peter Ford look at the implications of Pres. Trump's March 25 decision to break with decades of US policy and provide official US support for Israel's annexation of Syria's Golan. This episode is a complement to the column Ms. Cobban published on this topic in Mondoweiss, March 26.Support the show

This episode of the "Story/Backstory" series is related to the column "Beating Israel's 'But Khamas!' ploy" that was released on the Mondoweiss website on March 20. In this episode, JWE president Helena Cobban tries something a little new. Instead of starting off by reading the text of the column, she briefly summarizes it, and then dives right into the deeper backstory, providing her take on what's needed to prevent this commonly used Israeli ploy from succeeding.    In the second half of this episode, she introduces some excerpts from the audio of a fascinating presentation that Ahmed Abu Artema, the Gaza-Palestinian poet who was the originator of the whole idea of the Great March of Return, gave on March 18 at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington DC.Support the show