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Peter Maass Profile picture
Peter Maass
@maassp
Editor & writer. Author of “Love Thy Neighbor” & “Crude World.” Done time at the NYT, WP, Intercept. Posting & scrolling mostly at the blue place.
4 subscribers
May 20 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
“Gradually, then suddenly.”

A few thoughts on whether Benjamin Netanyahu might actually end up in the Hague for a war crimes trial, using the precedent of Slobodan Milošević's extradition there in 2001. I covered the former Yugoslavia back then and wrote a book about it. Two key factors in Milošević's extradition. First, he had been ousted from power nine months before his extradition. Second, the White House pressured the new government in Belgrade to send him to the Hague -- economic aid was conditioned on it.
Apr 7, 2023 • 47 tweets • 12 min read
The Iraq war is passing from America's memory but not mine. I don't know whether we'll ever accept moral & legal responsibility but until a reckoning comes, the truth must be kept alive.

Here's what I witnessed 20 years ago today at the Diyala Canal outside Baghdad. (Thread) Photo by Kuni Takahashi On April 7, 2003, I was with Marines who stormed across a bridge on the Diyala, 9 miles from central Baghdad; it was their gateway to capturing Iraq's capital. But on this day, they killed at least a half dozen civilians, probably more.

Here's the first one I saw, on the bridge: Photo by Peter Maass
Oct 19, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
For months, a consortium of news outlets has combed through a trove of data hacked from >50 Russian companies and agencies since the Ukraine invasion. It's the largest hack of a nation-state we've ever seen. Today, @theintercept published its first story from this data. 🧵 Meet Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia's Wagner Group, whose mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine and other countries where they're accused of war crimes. This story by @alicesperi reveals how Prigozhin used U.S. & UK lawyers to conceal his Wagner ties. theintercept.com/2022/10/19/rus…
Mar 19, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
On the 19th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I'm re-upping this thread about the intellectual authors of that catastrophe -- they are still telling us what to do, including on Ukraine. Max Boot, now telling us what to do on Russia and Ukraine, was one of the loudest and most erroneous voices on the Iraq invasion.
Sep 13, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Snapshots from the lethal vaudeville revealed in "The Afghanistan Papers" by @CraigMWhitlock.

The U.S. paid an Afghan businessman to rebuild bridges blown up by the Taliban. His brother was in the Taliban blowing up the bridges.

"They had built a thriving business." A State Department official was sharply criticized by the U.S. military for doubting the wisdom of building a highway in a hostile district in Kandahar.

"We were supposed to build roads in an area so dangerous that armed U.S. military helicopters could not even land near it."
Sep 8, 2021 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
The U.S. military has disciplined more than 1.3 million soldiers since 9/11 -- but none of the generals who lied about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here's my story about their abuse of power (and a short thread on it). theintercept.com/2021/09/08/afg… When we think of generals like David Petraeus and Lloyd Austin, we need to remember this line from Paul Yingling, who served in Iraq: "As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war." armedforcesjournal.com/a-failure-in-g…
Aug 19, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
"Americans like to imagine war stories featuring their heroic soldiers, sailors and pilots. The reality is that refugee stories are also war stories." -- @viet_t_nguyen nytimes.com/2021/08/19/opi… @viet_t_nguyen "The US has found it hard to give up its habits of war partly because we are a military-industrial complex built for war & partly because even antiwar stories [on] the military still center on the seductive glamour of firepower, hardware, heroism & masculinity." -@viet_t_nguyen
May 17, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1) I was Glenn Greenwald’s colleague at The Intercept until he resigned last year and accused me and other editors of censoring him. That was ridiculous, so I let it pass. But Glenn is now attacking and imperiling my workmates. It’s time to say a few words. 2) Glenn is trying to defame the Intercept’s solid reporting on the far right in America — and his campaign, mostly on Twitter and Fox News, has jeopardized the security of our staff and their families. I stand with my colleagues at The Intercept.
Nov 4, 2020 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
All eyes on Fox News and especially the Murdochs who own the network. Will Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and other primetime hosts encourage Trump's stolen-election/stop-counting crusade, or will the Murdochs make them stand down? theintercept.com/2020/10/24/fox… One of the grotesqueries of the U.S. political system is that the billionaire owners (Murdochs) of a rightwing cable network (Fox) can determine whether the president will be able to stir up enough chaos to hold onto power. Trump needs Fox but does Fox need Trump any longer?
Sep 11, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This country has gone mad. Its future is not good. Armed checkpoints where the men with arms are not law enforcement -- not a good omen. Especially when the men have taken up arms in response to a concocted threat (i.e. Antifa setting fires).
Feb 15, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
When the book you wrote isn't made into a film, the next best thing is for it to be used as a prop in one. h/t @Briancbs4 reddit.com/r/MovieDetails… @Briancbs4 Way back in 2002, I learned the backstory of how my Bosnia book got a cameo role in "High Fidelity," and I wrote a blog post about it (this was so long ago that blogs were still a thing). petermaass.com/blog/high_fide…
Feb 11, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The last wave of government resignations before the Trump era was in the early 1990s, when four officials quit to protest Clinton's Bosnia policy. I wrote about their decisions, and the consequences, in 2017. theintercept.com/2017/01/29/sho… They didn't just quit -- they spoke out. "I can no longer serve in a Department of State that accepts the forceful dismemberment of a European state and that will not act against genocide and the Serbian officials who perpetrate it," Marshall Harris wrote in his resignation.
Jan 29, 2020 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Behind this tweet there's a consoling message for those who protested the @NobelPrize organization's decision to give its 2019 literature award to Peter Handke. The tweet celebrates, justly, the winner of the 2018 prize, Olga Tokarczuk. She received her Nobel more than a month ago, at the same time as Handke. @nobelprize has frequently tweeted about Tokarczuk since then -- but has been silent about Handke.
Dec 24, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Now translated into Bosnian by Mediacentar Sarajevo, here's my story on the Nobel Prize for Literature and conspiracy theories about the Bosnia war. media.ba/bs/magazin-nov… Here's the story in its original English version, published by @theintercept in November. theintercept.com/2019/11/14/pet…
Dec 10, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Peter Handke, who is widely regarded as a denier of the genocide in Bosnia, has taken his seat in the Stockholm Concert House. The king of Sweden will shortly present him with the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature. Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, in the Stockholm Concert House, has expressed no reservations about the Nobel Prize for Literature going to Peter Handke. He will shortly present the Nobel medal to Handke.
Dec 9, 2019 • 43 tweets • 26 min read
Journalists who covered the war in Bosnia are taking a stand against the Nobel Prize going to Peter Handke. Using the hashtag #BosniaWarJournalists, they're describing what they witnessed in the 1990s. Tomorrow, Sweden's king is scheduled to give the Nobel to Handke. So far, there's Christiane Amanpour, Samantha Power, Roger Cohen, Sheri Fink, Jeremy Bowen, Gilles Peress, Janine di Giovanni, among others. Reporters who chronicled the Serb genocide of Muslims are saying the literature Nobel is going to a writer who denies what happened.
Dec 8, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
On the day the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Peter Handke, I wrote a story that included an idea I haven't come back to, until now. It's the connection between the 1990s Serb nationalists who are defended by Handke and the white nationalist violence in today's world: Handke tries to reposition the actions of Radovan Karadzic and other war criminals. They were not monsters, he says in his books & interviews. That's false. And scarily, these war criminals have become inspirations for contemporary killers like those in Utoja and Christchurch.
Dec 7, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Outside the Swedish Academy before the lectures by 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Peter Handke and 2018 winner Olga Tokarczuk. The Swedish Academy have said no media are allowed — I was politely turned away tonight. But media who have (coveted) invitations from Handke or Tokarczuk are allowed, the Academy told me.
Dec 5, 2019 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
There are many forms of genocide denial. Today, the Nobel Foundation and the Swedish Academy resorted to farce. Back in October, Peter Handke was named the winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature. It's controversial because his books are seen as denying the Serb genocide of Muslims in Bosnia. Today, the Nobel Foundation held a press conference in Stockholm.
Dec 3, 2019 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
How can you tell if a writer is a genocide denier? When other genocide deniers line up to support them. Today, a group of prominent Serbs who deny that a genocide occurred in Bosnia issued a petition in support of the Nobel Prize going to Peter Handke. politika.rs/sr/clanak/4432… The petition says Handke is "being crucified" for expressing the truth. "There were no genocidal acts in the territory of the former Yugoslavia during the 1991-1995 war," it says. (Note: I'm using Google translate, which tends to be reliable for simple lines/phrases).
Dec 2, 2019 • 20 tweets • 37 min read
If you're just tuning into the scandal over the Swedish Academy selecting Peter Handke for the Nobel Prize in Literature, here's a thread of my stories and tweets on the controversy (which still shocks me). I found out last month that two Nobel Prize jurors, in their deliberations, fell for a debunked conspiracy theory that falsely backs up Handke's discredited views on the Serb genocide of Bosnia's Muslims. theintercept.com/2019/11/14/pet…