Related to the upcoming World Cup in the U.S., what should the world do when the host nation of a major sports event illegally attacks another? In 1980, the U.S. led a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow over the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Su...

As always, @attackerman.bsky.social is a must read: "This mass murder will not be [Trump's] alone. There is an entire political, security and media apparatus that brought us to this point." www.forever-wars.com/the-many-fat...

April 7, 2003, I ran across this bridge over the Diyala River in Iraq, past the body of this civilian. Bodies of a lot more civilians were on the other side of the bridge, killed by American fire. It was 23 years ago to the day, will never forget it. Iraq then, Iran now. (Photo by Kuni Takahashi)

To the Hague, those who give and follow illegal orders. Can't happen soon enough.

Americans need to read every word written by Spencer Ackerman in this column, and act accordingly.

Got my start as an overseas freelancer for CBS Radio (now gone, thanks Bari Weiss), Washington Post (diminished, due to Jeff Bezos), Baltimore Sun and Boston Globe (no longer have foreign reporters), and International Herald Tribune (poof). There are new digital outlets but it's tough out there.

Hard to believe that 23 years ago - March 19, 2003 - Bush announced the invasion of Iraq. I heard attack helicopters overhead and drove toward the war in darkness. The U.S. has learned nothing, still bombing and killing, hooked on violence. Photos: my SUV on the first and last days of the invasion.

Might be a good time to read a book titled, "Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil," which I've heard a lot about. www.amazon.com/Crude-World-...

What a flaccid Oscars that was. glad for the winners, but it shouldn’t be foreign and/or documentary filmmakers who speak to this moment. PTA a particular failure. Why make movies that confront what is happening if you can’t speak to it.

When Israel says their violence is done to protect all Jews and make the world safer for us, we can only look at incidents like this and see that is obviously not true. They’re making it more dangerous for us EVERYWHERE.

A legend of my generation of foreign reporters. I knew John and tangled with him at times, as did most everyone of that era. But as the obit notes, few of his kind have gone before, much of his work was superlative, and his raconteuring was spellbinding. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/w...

Latest from @alissaquart.bsky.social ...https://www.motherjones.com/media/2026/03/academy-awards-oscars-inequality-class-marty-supreme-sinners-battle/

We are the shithole nation. We are the citizens of a rouge, murderous empire. Our leaders are butchers.

Class struggle, but weird: The surreal politics of this year’s Oscar nominees

"absolutely fucking hallucinatorily batshit"

I saw the same when I visited Pyongyang. Not kidding.

One of the lessons of the Iran war is that it was a huge mistake not to even try to put any of the Iraq war architects in prison. We shouldn’t make it again.

Seen this before -- Serb leaders in Bosnia also blamed their atrocities on the victims. Main difference now is that Trump & Hegseth are unlikely to face the justice that finally got Karadzic and Mladic, now in prison for war crimes.

Just listening to a Pete Hegseth presser and rereading the Wikipedia page for Ratko Mladic

U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 went on for 78 days before Milosevic buckled, but not for regime change (for control of Kosovo). Imagine the bombing of Iran, illegal from day one, going that long or longer. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...

The Ahmed Chalabi of Iran, totally great call to platform him.

Our children and probably their children will pay a price for the evil and idiocy of Donald Trump and the GOP.

I've gotten these scam emails too, lol. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/b...

A poem that stops you in your tracks, from @joriegraham.bsky.social.

That was me in Sarajevo ~35 years ago except the Post didn't have a cretin billionaire owner who laid me off, so I went on to write a book about Bosnia and cover Iraq, Afghanistan etc on the dime of news outlets that now do much less of this work. It's a rug pull of journalists present *and future.*

I encountered paramilitary goons who looked and acted just like this in Bosnia, Iraq, and other conflict zones. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Cannot repeat the Obama-era dodge of saying "we tortured some folks" and not holding accountable the torturers and especially the chain of command. You want to stop state-sanctioned crimes? Trials not words are the only way.

Bovino’s retirement needs to be a cage. His command environment yielded Renee Good’s death, Alex Pretti’s death & Julio Sosa-Celis’ shooting. Failure to prosecute Bovino & everyone else materially responsible for these atrocities will be understood by ICE, CBP, etc as a green light for the next ones

"Government agents who wear plate carriers to kidnap day laborers and Uber drivers are not the ones in danger. They are the danger...ICE must be abolished." -- @attackerman.bsky.social www.forever-wars.com/either-ice-i...

We are far past the stage of permissiveness with white-supremacist violence inside DHS. We are witnessing ICE transition into a death squad. This cannot be reformed. The only question is who will fight to abolish it, and who will accommodate it instead.

The kidnapping of Maduro inaugurates a highly dangerous era of U.S. empire that for perhaps the first time in an era of mass media is not pretending to be anything other than a violent, extractive enterprise of domination.

Chef's kiss moment in this story about Larry Summers being forced to withdraw from teaching at Harvard is that Tony Blair was the guest lecturer for the next session of his class. Blair is regarded by many as complicit in war crimes wrt the Iraq invasion. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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...