Co-sign

If you need a chaser to Spencer Ackerman's Dick Cheney masterwork, here's my 2021 obituary of Colin Powell, who helped kill hundreds of thousands of people (millions if you count indirect deaths) in the so-called war on terror. theintercept.com/2021/10/18/c...

Other than a trial at the Hague, what Dick Cheney deserved most is an obituary by Spencer Ackerman.

@maassp.bsky.social unpacks the sensationalist journalism of Richard Harding Davis, America’s first star war reporter.

Take it from me, the guy who derided/dunked/nuked the Swedish Academy for awarding the 2019 Nobel Literature Prize to genocide denialist Peter Handke -- this hilarious takedown by @alexshephard.bsky.social and @markkrotov.bsky.social merits its own Nobel. newrepublic.com/article/2015...

Very proud that LitHub published my retrospective on the first great war reporter, Richard Harding Davis, whose coverage of the Spanish-American war set the flawed standard for conflict journalism. My piece introduces a new publication of Davis's "Cuba in War Time." lithub.com/how-americas...

Baghdad 1979 is calling, wants its Baath Party purge back.

With Lachlan Murdoch in the headlines, thanks to his buyout of his siblings for full control of Fox News, I'm re-upping my deep dive into his (revealing) years as a philosophy student at Princeton. theintercept.com/2019/03/30/l...

My latest story for @timemagazine.bsky.social on Labor Day, Labor Day Sales and the American Dream. A very personal essay time.com/7313480/labo... @eccobooks.bsky.social @economichardship.bsky.social @jillgrinberglit.bsky.social @maiasz.bsky.social @maassp.bsky.social @economichardship.bsky.social

What I'm doing in the coming year -- a fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography to work on my book about Jacob Schiff, Felix Warburg and their philanthropic support for Jewish emigration to British-controlled Palestine in the context of non-Zionism.

Friends, a funny but cautionary tale of how wrong GROK gets things. I am neither Jewish, nor "Whitewashing myself" nor Antisemitic. Follow this thread my pal @maassp.bsky.social posted..you may need to go back to Peter's account to follow the whole damn thread...which gets comically absurd

“[W]hen you disregard ‘crime in the strict legal sense’ as the criterion for enforcement, grand new vistas of violence against "disordered" social populations open,” writes @attackerman.bsky.social

Meanwhile, in upstate New York…

Here's a funny yet revealing tale about Grok (Elon Musk's AI) attributing a story I wrote to my friend @janinedigi.bsky.social, and as a result saying she's Jewish (which she's not, though I am). It starts with a query from an X account that didn't like a post from Janine and asked Grok about her.

Pulitzer Prize for Best Use of Habibi…

From 2024, @mollycrabapple.bsky.social:

Perfect 10 on the North Korea scale. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

A fascinating and meticulous article by Gary Knight about the likelihood that one of the most famous war photos of the 20th century was taken by one photographer but attributed to another. www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

“There is a campaign in the Israeli media about Israel starving Gazans. From the pictures I see I think they need to lose some weight.” Right-wing Israeli network Channel 14 hosts mock the mother of four-year-old Razan Abu Zaher, who died last week of starvation. Read: zeteo.com?utm_source=n...

Every word of this www.forever-wars.com/the-belated-...

One of the loveliest articles you can read today was written by my wife, Alissa Quart, about her mother’s paintings and what spreading them in our world means. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/o...

This morning on BBC World Service we took time to Remember Srebrenica. We recalled what happened&heard from survivors & relatives. David Rhode told us how he uncovered the first mass graves 30 years ago. With guests Arminka Helic and Steven Erlanger👇from min 26:30 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Will be tapping this sign for years.

Upcoming at the Tribeca film festival, the short documentary "Natasha," co-directed by my friend Andrew Meier, about the slain human rights investigator in Chechnya, Natasha Estemirova. www.natashadoc.com

Personal news: I will be a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at CUNY, working on my next book, "End of a Fortune: The Warburgs and Schiffs and the World They Tried to Make." To be published by Hachette's Grand Central imprint, it's about my family's complicated role in Israel's creation.

Silver lining, I don't need to travel to a distant country to cover the Forever Wars anymore.

Hello, I've visited North Korea and watched its propaganda broadcasts -- this is the same stuff!

"Mainstream American Jewish leaders have ... effectively redefined what it means to be a Jew. To silence condemnation of Israel, they have equated support for the state with Jewishness itself." -- @peterbeinart.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...

Twenty-two years ago today I stood in Baghdad's Firdos Square and watched U.S. Marines tear down a statue of Saddam Hussein. The toppling was portrayed by the American media as a symbol of Iraq's joyous liberation but the reality of what happened was quite different. (Thread)

There's a lot going on, I know, but on this day in 2003, U.S. forces seized the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein. That scene, seemingly triumphant, was broadcast across the world. What follows is a long thread I wrote about it on (now-demented) Twitter in 2018.

“Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place…He was surprised that there had been no obvious beginning, no point beyond which their lives had moved into a clearly more sinister dimension.” —JG Ballard, “High-Rise”

"While we are still capable of looking, we have to say what we see: The United States has become a secret-police state. Trust me, I’ve seen it before." --M Gessen www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/o...

Thoughtful and provocative by @mazmhussain.bsky.social. mazmhussain.substack.com/p/what-is-to...

The "voluntary migration" apparatus in Bosnia was the Bureau for the Removal of Populations and Exchange of Material Goods. Genocide is not just bombs. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/poli...

Just deleted a post dt typo. Reposting now.

The last day of Slobodan Milošević's rule, Oct. 5, 2000.

The most powerful institutions surrendered, so now Trump will come even more ruthlessly after the less powerful ones.

Elites do not fight power. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/u...

Elites do not fight power. www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

A sad day for Columbia and for our democracy. "Additionally the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands" has got to be one of the most depressing sentences ever written. www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

American civil society is full of abject cowards, that is the issue. The government is a mafia state but it is winning because most American elite institutions are devoid of anything resembling integrity and are folding rather than stand on principles that were little more than marketing.

Wrote this 30 years ago in my book about Bosnia, lamentably true today: "The response of America's leadership (Republican and Democratic) to the ravaging of Bosnia has not been reassuring; politicians who accommodate evil abroad are not particularly well suited to defend us from it at home."

One of these days or one of these years I'll import that thread into BlueSky, but for now, it's posted only on the terrible place. More than 300 tweets in it, stretched out over the 20 days of the invasion.

Today is the anniversary of America's 2003 invasion of Iraq -- a colossal failure of our elites that killed hundreds of thousands and undermined our democracy (hello Trump). Seven years ago I wrote a long thread on Twitter about covering the invasion; let's learn, not forget. x.com/maassp/statu...

Thank you, President Obama, for being such a strong and unflinching voice at this moment of national peril.

Must-read column by @propublica.org editor-in-chief Steve Engelberg: The October Story That Outlined Exactly What the Trump Administration Would Do to the Federal Bureaucracy

This whole campaign is disgraceful. This administration which is riddled with actual antisemites is using antisemitism as a stalking horse for its campaign against all universities. A kind of elaborate and hideous gaslighting.

“I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Mahmoud Khalil Is One of the Most Upstanding People I Have Ever Met” Absolute #mustread for Zeteo from Jonathan Ben-Menachem, who also argues that “we cannot allow fascists to use the pretext of Jewish safety to attack our communities.” Read/share/subscribe:

Spent a few decades reporting on authoritarian regimes and resistance to them and yes, this seems right. It's going to take a while, too.

I’m convinced American exceptionalism is a big part of what made us vulnerable to Trump. We’re so used to thinking of ourselves as the Special Freedom Country that a lot of people find it inconceivable we could rapidly collapse into shabby despotism even as they watch it happen.