If we can spend billions of dollars (estimated) invading Iraq, might we spend a few million dollars teaching useful foreign languages to our diplomats and students? The New York Times has a brilliant story about a shortage ...
Author: Peter Maass
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.
An Act of Genius from Ukraine
Their name is Gogol Bordello and they are a gypsy punk band/cabaret. Seeing is believing.
Has Al Qaeda Failed?
The ideas of Gilles Kepel, a French academic who has written a counter-intuitive book on Islamic extremism, deserve more attention than they are receiving. In a new ...
Bollywood Meets the Ghost of Osama
It sounds like a bad joke, but what happens when you put, on a flight into New York City, a famous Indian actress, singer and comedian–and an American who suspects they might be terrorists? The answer was provided yesterday, when the Indians were arrested upon their arrival at LaGuardia airport, ...
Talking to a Terrorist
The conviction of Ahmed Omar Sheikh for the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl reminds me of an interview I conducted in Karachi in May with the police investigator who led the manhunt for Sheikh. As the police closed ...
War? What war?
Michael Kinsley has a point: “It was amazing to read the Pentagon’s detailed plans for an invasion of Iraq in the New York Times last week. The general reaction of Americans to this news was even more amazing: Basically, there was no reaction. ...
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
That’s a quote from the legendary Robert Capa, and it appears at the beginning of “War Photographer,” which is a documentary about Jim Nachtwey, whose life and ideas are no less stunning than the beautifully grim pictures ...
Journalists And War Crimes
My newest story, an opinion piece in today’s New York Times, can be found here.
Journalists and Justice at The Hague
The New York Times
July 5, 2002
The war-crimes tribunal in The Hague is supposed to put the bad guys behind bars. I never thought it would go after an American journalist. But last month the tribunal upheld a subpoena against Jonathan Randal, requiring him to testify about events he covered ...
Shakespeare Vs. Cellphones
One of the pleasures of summer in New York is the Shakespeare festival at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, where the plays are performed outdoors, free of charge. A few nights ago I went with a friend to see “Twelfth ...