September 10, 2011

For September 11, ten years on

... I want to link, first, to these reflections on 9/11, that I published in Friends Journal in 2007, and to this column, that I wrote for the Christian Science...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:15 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

August 04, 2011

Syria, authoritarianism, war, and peace

I regret that I haven't had much time in recent months to blog and write about the many developments in the still-unfolding 'Arab Spring.' However, I think that much of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:19 AM | Fulltext link (5 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 03, 2011

Afghanistan, logistics, geopolitics, war, peace

The WaPo's Craig Whitlock has an informative piece in today's paper about the many continuing challenges the U.S. military has faced as it attempted to provide logistic support to the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:32 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

May 02, 2011

On the killing of Osama Bin Laden

In the wee hours of this morning, Pakistan time, a U.S. Special Forces team entered Pakistan in helicopters and flew to a compound in Abbotabad where they found someone reported...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:00 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

April 22, 2011

My CSM oped on need for negotiated transition in Syria

People with an interest in escalating tensions and sowing conflict within Middle Eastern countries always say "There is no time!" for diplomacy or negotiation.... and that "If lives are to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:39 AM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

April 21, 2011

Cordesman on the slippery slope of warmaking

I generally have broad respect for the military assessments made by Anthony Cordesman, and his latest assessment of the situation in Samantha's War in Libya contains much excellent analysis. Including...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:09 PM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

April 08, 2011

Obama's (and Sarkozy's) nonexistent 'casus belli' in Libya

Hat-tip to Harvard's Steve Walt for this fine article, in which he identified and linked to two other fine articles that took apart the 'rationale' adduced by Presidents Sarkozy and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:06 PM | Fulltext link (36 comments)

March 23, 2011

This is what good statecraft looks like

Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store has a terrific piece titled "Why We Must Talk" in a recent issue of the NY Review of Books. In it, he makes a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:26 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

March 19, 2011

Arab tragedies and role of the "west"

Today is the eighth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, and today the US is preparing to once again join a military action against an Arab country, Libya. I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:41 AM | Fulltext link (23 comments)

January 08, 2011

H. Shue on advanced militaries targeting civilian infrastructure

The Oxford philosopher and ethicist Henry Shue has just published an extremely important piece of analysis (PDF here, pp. 2-7) that unpacks the timely issue of why it is that...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:02 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

December 29, 2010

David Swanson's 'War is a Lie'

My neighbor and friend, the antiwar activist David Swanson, recently published a terrific book that takes on, one by one, all the main myths/lies that warmongers use to try to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:04 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 31, 2010

D. Broder and the war fever in Washington

Just how serious the current, rising epidemic of war fever is in Washington DC is indicated by a column in today's WaPo in which veteran pundit David Broder argues quite...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:13 AM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

July 11, 2010

Military spending: The real crisis for Israel and the U.S.

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Didi Remez we learn that many of the 'scare stories' about Hizbullah, Lebanon etc, that have been coming out of Israel's defense ministry in recent days...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:42 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

February 14, 2010

My grandfather goes looking for his own grave (and other Maltese mysteries)

Ninety-five or so years ago a teenager in New Zealand, hearing news of the-- perhaps still "heroic"-- early phases of the British involvement in the Great War, was desperate to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:05 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

April 11, 2009

Why A Military?

Government programs normally have an objective, a goal. There are funded programs to educate children, help the elderly, provide housing for the poor, build bridges and highways, etc. These programs...
Posted by Don Bacon at 11:37 AM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

March 27, 2009

Problems of the west's extreme casualty aversion, Afghanistan and Gaza

The extreme aversion of the US and Israeli armies to own-soldier casualties has huge and often unintended consequences in the realms of both strategic effectiveness and ethics. This is now...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:15 PM | Fulltext link (37 comments)

March 02, 2009

Magnanimous in Defeat

It's a beautiful place to sit, on a bench overlooking Tarakena Bay on the southeast corner of New Zealand's North Island. One can watch the ferry boats traversing Cook Strait...
Posted by Don Bacon at 12:20 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

February 27, 2009

Climate of Change?

In a recent NYTimes article entitled "Climate of Change" Paul Krugman wrote: Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the...
Posted by Don Bacon at 12:32 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

January 25, 2009

Discipline -- What Good Is It?

Pat Lang has pointed out that "the IDF/IOF does not routinely have any professional cadre of well-trained sergeants capable of enforcing discipline." This factor has allegedly contributed to Israeli soldiers...
Posted by Don Bacon at 01:34 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

January 18, 2009

One Virtuous Man

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In the late 1960's a fellow officer of mine, an African-American, call him Captain Em, was quite upset that Dr. King had come...
Posted by Don Bacon at 12:17 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 16, 2009

Tewks: "Let the Children Dance"

I recently highlighted Gina Bennett's National Security Mom, with it's marvelous drawing from the "lessons we teach our children" to understand national security. I've been wondering then what lessons Israel...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:08 AM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

December 18, 2008

Somalia and an international community in disarray (again)

So here we are, sixteen years on, and we once again have a major crisis of governance, civil chaos, and human suffering in Somalia; an international "community" that's completely incapable...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:43 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

December 15, 2008

Bush's militarism gets the shoe

Pres. Bush's present tour to Iraq and Afghanistan was probably designed to be a "legacy-establishing" trip, or perhaps even-- in the imagination of some of his advisers?-- a victory lap....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:33 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

November 20, 2008

L. Rozen on Israelis in Kurdistan

Laura Rozen has a great new investigative piece at Mother Jones about the very lucrative business and security activities undertaken in post-2003 Kurdistan by former Israeli Mossad head "Danny" Yatom...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:05 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

August 15, 2008

Russian military assessment: New arms race?

Moscow Times today gives us a fascinating article by Simon Saradzhyan analyzing the Russian military's performance in Georgia in some detail. Of note there, that among the 171 Russian troops...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:01 PM | Fulltext link (26 comments)

June 06, 2008

Trying to convert military aggressions into longterm political control: Iraq, Lebanon (x2)

Today is the 26th anniversary of Israeli PM Menachem Begin's launching of a large-scale invasion of Lebanon. So, given the notably unsuccessful, or even counter-productive (from Israel's point of view)...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:48 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

May 25, 2008

Names

On Friday, I was back in Charlottesville and in the late afternoon I biked to downtown to do a couple of errands. There, right next to the magnificent "Free Speech...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:59 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

December 29, 2007

"Winnability" in Iraq and Afghanistan: what does it mean?

For some time now (and certainly, long before last Thursday's killing of Benazir Bhutto), I've been intending to write a post here about the concept of "winnability", as it applies...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:28 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

December 17, 2007

Ever On, Dan Fogelberg (1951-2007)

(Note - this is Scott writing.) Independent thinkers, activists, and peacemakers have lost a friend in the passing yesterday of Dan Fogelberg. Just 56, Dan "the artist" Fogelberg succumbed to...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 11:40 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

December 05, 2007

'Meeting Resistance': The movie

Yesterday I was finally able to get to see the movie 'Meeting Resistance', which was showing at George Washington University's student center. It's a gutsy, very well-executed look at the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:46 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

June 28, 2007

Republicans mutinying over Iraq

I have always argued that-- regardless of one's own party-political proclivities-- the movement to end the United States' disastrous occupation of Iraq and restore reason and sustainability to a national...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:51 PM | Fulltext link (32 comments)

May 29, 2007

Cindy Sheehan's farewell

The inspiring, committed, and very effective peace activist Cindy Sheehan posted an agonizingly pained 'farewell' to public life on her Daily Kos website yesterday. It is worded as a sharp...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:07 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

May 12, 2007

The 'liberal hawks' question, contd.

In this recent JWN post I argued that the "soggy universalism" that pervaded much of the discussion among liberal or left-leaning westerners in the 1990s had allowed the emergence...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:18 PM | Fulltext link (34 comments)

May 01, 2007

Boys with (very lethal) toys: What are these 'toys' good for?

(Being, a critique of Ron Tira's The Limitations of Standoff Firepower-Based Operations:On Standoff Warfare, Maneuver, and Decision) Ron Tira is an Israeli Air Force reservist with considerable experience in the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:31 PM | Fulltext link (51 comments)

April 04, 2007

US citizens: where do our tax dollars go?

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)-- which is the excellent American Quaker lobbying organization with which I have a loose affiliation-- has a great downloadable flier titled Where Do...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:56 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 16, 2007

'Justice' and war: A conundrum

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself this: How come, in all the long history of warfare, very, very few leaders engaging in a war have ever done so on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:35 AM | Fulltext link (37 comments)

Four years on

It has been almost four years. Back in January 2003, I voiced this warning in my column in the Christian Science Monitor. Any use of massive violence such as that...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:08 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

January 27, 2007

Peace March January 2007

Today I was back on the streets, as part of United for Peace & Justice's big anti-war march in Washington DC. It was exhilarating and wonderful to be there-- though...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:45 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

January 16, 2007

'Delicious' feed acting up; Great Chazelle essay

The 'Delicious' feed to the blog sidebar is acting up and presenting some very old tags instead of the fresh ones with which I keep feeding it... I can't figure...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:43 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 15, 2007

Dr. King's program for Vietnam, updated for today

Today would have been the 87th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is a date that, since 1986, has been celebrated as a holiday in his memory here...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:41 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

December 18, 2006

Responding to the "strains" on the US military

I have a lot of respect for the realism and professionalism of most officers in the U.S.military. Unlike the scores of "chickenhawks" in the Bush administration-- that is, people who've...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:53 PM | Fulltext link (30 comments)

November 24, 2006

Women, war, and the need for home

Yesterday was 'Thanksgiving Day' here in the US. Our home was a heady mix of great cooking smells and multiple conversations as we reveled in the fellowship of guests from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:20 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

November 01, 2006

Travel, conference, disutility of war

The conference in Amman on nonviolent leadership was incredibly moving and absorbing. So much so that I didn't get a moment to blog for most of that time. I'm on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:50 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 25, 2006

US service members call for end to Iraqi occupation

This is important. It's a report on Raw Story that tells us that 346 service members, 125 of whom are on active duty, have now joined a call to end...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:29 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 21, 2006

Shana Tova to all Jewish readers

... and a special salute to these brave and life-affirming young Jews holding their important message up outside the Combined Jewish Philanthropies Board in Boston....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:47 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

June 07, 2006

Arms exports mania

My copy of the 2006 edition of the annual Military Balance assessment produced by the International Institute for Strategic Studies dropped heavily into my mailbox today. I enjoy looking through...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:49 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

May 18, 2006

Cindy Sheehan and Ann Wright-- in Charlottesville!

I finally got to meet Cindy Sheehan yesterday. She and Ann Wright both came to Charlottesville to speak at a public forum organized by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:36 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

May 17, 2006

Boots

Last Wednesday, I spent the afternoon on the National Mall in Washington DC, helping to set out the (then) 2,428 pairs of combat boots that are at the center of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:26 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

ER documentary tells some truths about war

David Steinbruner, the author of the piece I just posted here, is one of the emergency physicians featured in the new documentary 'Baghdad ER' that HBO will be screening this...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:38 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

May 04, 2006

A victory in the US Congress!

Hurrah! The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a small but very effective organization that lobbies the US Congress on issues of concern to Friends (Quakers), tells us that on Tuesday,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:33 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

April 25, 2006

The International Prayer for Peace, 2006

Wednesday and Thursday this week, the Community of Sant' Egidio, an international Catholic lay organization, will be bringing a wonderful pro-peace event to Washington DC: the International Prayer for Peace:...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:32 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 19, 2006

UNU symposium, war, peace, etc.

(Apologies to readers that the first version of this post was badly edited... It's hard to do all this on my modestly-sized laptop.... Now, it should be better. ~HC) So...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:08 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

April 07, 2006

Bush's project in Iraq: Is the end nigh?

Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:20 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

April 03, 2006

Saving lives with antiwar 'speedbumps'

The WaPo had an interesting article today. Written by David Brown, it described the publication of the 2nd edition of a book called Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries (DCP),...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:31 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

March 26, 2006

Peace train, part 2

Thursday, I wrote here about the guy who came and asked if I could tell him where to get a pro-peace yard sign like the one we have, and how...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:12 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

December 14, 2005

For an effective US antiwar movement

I have the following proposal, to help us create a much more effective national antiwar movement here in the US. This proposal grew out of the analysis I made...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:34 PM | Fulltext link (45 comments)

Chaos in the US antiwar "movement"

I just posted about the organizational effectiveness and leadership being shown by the British Stop the War Coalition. So how about the situation here in the US? First off, we...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:28 AM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

Global organizing against the war

On Saturday, December 10, the British Stop the War Coalition hosted a very significant gathering of some 1,400 anti-war organizers from around the world, including from Iraq, the US, and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:44 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

October 25, 2005

At 2,000 U.S. dead

Today, the MSM reported the death of the 2,000th US soldier in Iraq. Given that the 1,000th such death occurred on September 7, 2004, nearly 18 months into war,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:49 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 06, 2005

Gen. Odom battles the war, the Dems, the MSM

This, from Gen. William Odom, who capped a distinguished career in the US Army by serving as Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 through 1988. Just the title...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:44 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

August 25, 2005

Body part porn and war, part 2

This is a continued reflection on the latter portion of what I posted here yesterday. First, I'll just paste in here a lightly edited version of the bit that was...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:46 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

August 23, 2005

Achcar and Bacevich on exiting Iraq

Gilbert Achcar's excellent answer to Juan Cole's "not-an-exit" plan is here. Kudos to Juan for posting the whole of Gilbert's critique on his own site. Gilbert makes many of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:23 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

July 08, 2005

Peace demo # 82 or so

It was good to be back home this week and go to our regular Thursday afternoon peace demonstration in the center of town. (The Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:21 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

July 07, 2005

Exit-from-Iraq movement gathering steam

Catching up with my reading after the NZ trip I see from the website of the Friends Committee on National Legislation that The first bipartisan resolution calling on the president...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:25 AM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

June 23, 2005

Seattle's finest...

Good editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today. The title is: Iraq Occupation: This war can't be won. Go down to the bottom of the editorial and check out the little...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:02 PM | Fulltext link (27 comments)

May 27, 2005

The withdraw-from-Iraq movement in Congress

The withdraw-from-Iraq movement is slowly gathering strength in the US Congress. I've been away from most news sources for most of the past week, so I don't know how much...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:39 PM | Fulltext link (23 comments)

March 10, 2005

First shoot, then lie

The rules of engagement at US checkpoints in Iraq are an outrage to humanity. We all need to demand to know, first and foremost, what they are. This is essential...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:53 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

January 28, 2005

Kennedy gives withdrawal movement new traction

I only just got the chance to read the excellent speech that Senator Kennedy gave last night, on Iraq. It was well argued and well framed. Much of the press...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:37 PM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

January 23, 2005

Juan Cole's defense

So this morning, Juan Cole replied to my post of Thursday, in which I challenged the grounds he'd adduced for arguing against the announcement of a deadline for the withdrawal...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:06 PM | Fulltext link (58 comments)

Riverbend on water and civil/social collapse

Go read Riverbend's latest post to understand what war and civic instability end up meaning for real people and families. Her reflections on how ghastly it is for people in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:10 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 21, 2005

Willing no more!

One essential tenet of "news management", US government-style, is that the administration tries to release news that makes it look bad fairly late on a Friday evening... So tonight, this,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:29 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

January 17, 2005

War's effects on communities (contd.)

Last Friday I wrote a post here about the remarkable study that two Croatian psychology professors conducted into what happened to cross-ethnic personal friendships in Vukovar under the pressure of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:09 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

Martin Luther King, Jr., on war

It's a public holiday here today in the United States: the official "birthday" of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the great civil rights leader who won the Nobel Peace...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:33 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

January 12, 2005

How Casey's mom feels about the WMDs news

Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in the war and who left a comment on the Comments board here recently, just sent me the following letter: Dear Friends, Everyday...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:43 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

January 10, 2005

Please support this conscientious objector

I got yet another email today from my friend Chuck Fager, who runs Quaker House in that hotbed of the US military culture, Fayetteville, NC. He's asking for our help....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:23 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

January 04, 2005

"The supreme international crime"

Excerpt from the Judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal relating to "Count Two", the Crime of Aggression, as brought against Goering, Ribbentrop, and 14 other defendants: The charges in the Indictment...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:43 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 03, 2005

1998 "Letter to an Israeli mother"

I just found the text of the "Letter to an Israeli Mother" that I originally published in the Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat at the end of July 1998. I referred to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:58 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 02, 2005

The power of mothers!!!!

I made a quick reference in a recent post here to the Israeli "Four Mothers" peace movement. This movement, founded by four mothers of Israeli soldiers serving in the IDF's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:24 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

December 22, 2004

Kosovo & the 'humanitarian' pretext for war

In this recent post I wrote about the subversion of allegedly "humanitarian" arguments that are used as pretexts for war. Today I found this recent piece by John Pilger, on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:21 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

November 27, 2004

Families in pain

Be sure you're sitting down before you click on this link, which shows scenes from funerals of some of the US military personnel killed in Iraq during October and November....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:55 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

July 17, 2004

Language and 'humanitarian interventions'

One more thing I'd meant to mention in the piece I posted Thursday about humanitarianism and war. This is an observation about the way that language has--certainly in the US--become...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:33 PM | Fulltext link (34 comments)

July 15, 2004

The myth of 'humanitarian' war

The attempt by the authors of last year's US/UK aggression against Iraq to retroactively repackage their venture as a "humanitarian" war seems almost complete. Both Bush and Blair now say...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:43 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

July 06, 2004

US Army & Marines: mental health alert

Well, we knew it would happen, and it has. Now, a study supported by the Military Operational Medicine Research Program, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command of Ft. Detrick,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:50 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

June 25, 2004

What war does to womens' and girls' lives

Yesterday, a truly amazing piece of reporting by the WaPo's Ariana Eunjung Cha told the story of a 23-year-old mother of two in Baghdad, widowed by last year's war, who...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:39 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

June 23, 2004

Virginia native killed in Iraq

This report from Abingdon, Virginia, a great little town in the Appalachian southwest of the state. Staff Sgt. Greg Pennington, 37, had been living with his Army unit in one...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:52 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

June 19, 2004

The youngest of the 2,081

If you go to this site, you will find the results of the survey that Raed Jarrar and his team from CIVIC have done, that identified and listed 2,081 Iraqi...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:14 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

June 01, 2004

What to do with $119.4 billion

The AP wire has a great little story that just came across my transom. It starts by reminding us that, "Congress and President Bush have so far provided $119.4 billion...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:57 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

May 09, 2004

Passing on the gift

I'll pass on the Mother's Day gift that my firstborn, Tarek, gave me today, as he had found it on Alternet... Here is the original, pre-Hallmark, Mother's Day Proclamation, penned...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:19 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

April 08, 2004

Peace, war, and John Kerry

Whenever I'm in my hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia, on a Thursday I try to take part in the pro-peace "presence" that the C'ville Center for Peace and Justice maintains on a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:30 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

March 21, 2004

A very sad anniversary

Sorry I haven't been posting much recently... I was really busy last week, and then today got hit by exhaustion. Yesterday, I took part in our hometown commemoration of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:58 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

March 12, 2004

North Carolina peace activists threatened

A letter from Chuck Fager at Quaker House, Fayetteville NC Dear Friend, I'm writing you today to express my deep concern about the campaign being mounted on "FreeRepublic.com", a militantly...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:30 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

January 05, 2004

U.S. Army to expand involuntary service orders

Donna Miles of the Armed Forces Press Service, reported Jan. 2 that the Army would be announcing a further expansion of its existing "stop-loss" program within the next week or...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:34 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

December 13, 2003

Peace activities, C'ville: the photos

Thanks to C'ville "Editor Ludorum" George Loper, here are two photos from early on in our pro-peace demonstration, Thursday: George actually had to leave soon after we got started setting...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:25 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

November 24, 2003

John Kerry in 'Atlantic Monthly'

After the end of the conference in Atlanta last week we went to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center there. Interesting, inspiring, but also a bit disappointing (for me, anyway)....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:37 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 16, 2003

Marine's Girl being silenced-- or not?

Folks-- Marine's Girl, who has been writing a great blog for the past 5-plus weeks that provides "Insight on being the girl friend of a Marine in Iraq. Opinions of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:11 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 12, 2003

Brass versus suits, contd...

When I say "Thank God for the US military", don't get me wrong. My conviction that violence of all kinds is wrong and counter-productive remains firm. Violence begets violence, it's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:04 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

November 05, 2003

More Marine's girl

Go straight to this post on A Marine's Girl. Don't pass Go. Don't even think of collecting $200. It's the transcript of an "Instant message" session. Read down the whole...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:56 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 04, 2003

Appreciation for "Marine's girl"

A fabulous, heart-rending, honest, funny new voice in the blogosphere comes from the new blog by "Marine's girl". She's writing out of someplace in Michigan, I think, and supports her...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:06 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 04, 2003

Jailed CO Stephen Funk: update

Thanks to all JWN readers who responded to the earlier appeal from Chuck Fager, director of Quaker House in fayetteville, North Carolina, for folks to write to jailed conscientious objector...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:30 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 29, 2003

Some truth-finding efforts in DC

At last! News that the US intelligence community is going back to re-evaluate the "information" it bought from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congres in the months and years leading up...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:32 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

September 24, 2003

Colonialism 101

I think the true epiphany came to me a couple years ago when I first visited the Disney-ized (but also "real") gold mine that is a big attraction in the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:56 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

September 22, 2003

Max Cleland on Iraq

This, from former Senator Max Cleland, thanks to Juan Cole: Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when you had the chance. Read Cleland's whole, excellent op-ed in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:17 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 11, 2003

Appeal for a conscientious objector

Chuck Fager, the head of Quaker House in Fayetteville NC, has sent a message saying that Marine Corps Conscientious Objector (CO) Stephen Funk needs some cards and letters of support....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:43 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

September 10, 2003

Thoughts from/on Richmond, Virginia

Monday night, I was speaking to a fairly large audience at the University of Richmond. About the war. I focused quite a lot on 'How did the country get into...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:07 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

September 05, 2003

Not irritating, not provincial

So I guess the word got out to Imshin of Not a Fish! that I had been describing her on the Main Page of JWN as a "sassy (if sometimes...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:31 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

September 04, 2003

Setbacks for the monarchs of spin

Lots happening that I've been wanting to blog about. First, a good discussion about the utility of war developing on the Comments board under the next post down: check it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:16 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 02, 2003

Not exactly "umbrage"

After yesterday's quick post here on a topic Juan Cole had raised that seemed to me to equate participating in antiwar marches was the equivalent of "marching for Saddam", Juan...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:27 PM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

September 01, 2003

Marching for Saddam?

In his "Informed Comment" blog, Juan Cole recently wrote: I wasn't exactly for the war, I was just unable to bring myself to march to keep Saddam in power. I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:53 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

August 02, 2003

Quaker gathering

I am still here at the annual session of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). I have been a fan of Quaker process for a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:40 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

May 22, 2003

RE-CONNECTING, RECHARGING:

RE-CONNECTING, RECHARGING: Okay, we U.S. citizens all know that our government is doing many things around the world that are highly damaging (as well as a much smaller proportion, I'd...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:00 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

April 04, 2003

YARD-SIGN UPDATE: At the end

YARD-SIGN UPDATE: At the end of a post last Sunday, I wrote that I was going to put yellow-ribbon bows onto the two peace signs we have in our front...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:40 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 31, 2003

YELLOW RIBBON SHORTAGE:

YELLOW RIBBON SHORTAGE: Yesterday, I wrote that I was going to buy some yellow ribbon and make bows to put on the peace signs in our front yard. So I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:55 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 22, 2003

MORE ON MICHELE AND GLADYS:

MORE ON MICHELE AND GLADYS: So I wrote here Thursday night about the civil disobedience action that some Quakers and others here in Charlottesville undertook that afternoon. What I failed...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:00 PM | Fulltext link (1 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 08, 2003

Burden of Proof

I guess it's Sunday in Japan already... Sun quite high in the sky already over that magnificent semicircle of hills that surrounds Hiroshima... So Ramesh Thakur, a wise Indian scholar...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:55 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)