Mecca Blog – The Heart of the Matter

One month and one week. Two major news events. One major technological failure. Russia invades Crimea and seems poised to take over the Ukraine Malaysia Flight 370 disappears from the face of the earth. We save our documents on our computers. The NSA can monitor our phones, e-mails, and every other electronic device we own.…

Tom Friedman’s editorial in today’s New York Times has abundant errors. It seems to be a piece more about Secretary of State John Kerry’s so-called original last-ditch effort to cement an Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement. Kerry’s effort is far from original. There hasn’t been an American government official—be it an ambassador, president, vice-president, secretary of state…

On 2 August 1990, Iraqi troops crossed the border into Kuwait. The Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, claimed that his military presence in Kuwait was not an offensive nor was it an invasion. According to Saddam, history made the incursion justified since back in the days when Iraq was part of the Babylonian Empire, Kuwait or…

When I decided to redesign my website, the images and thoughts I had of the beauty of our world back when evoked nostalgia though mingled with a bit of sadness. Back then, politically, socially, and culturally, strides were made that gave us hope that those issues we treasured and fought for would continue to improve.…

To begin with, why did President Obama accept the resignation of General David Petraeus? Pressure? Morality? Fear of political reprisal? Or, does the President really believe what President Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and President Lyndon Johnson feared back in the 1950s and 1960s before Executive Order 10450 was revoked — precisely on June 4, 1974?…

“THERES A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE” P.T. Barnum Several years ago when I was in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza researching my book on women suicide bombers, ARMY OF ROSES, as well as filming a documentary on the same subject, the following question kept coming up. “Are you for or against suicide bombings?” On…

On 23 February 2012 in Montreux Switzerland, Dmitri Nabokov, son of the author, Vladimir Nabokov, died. Dmitri’s death touched many throughout the world for a variety of different reasons. For some, he was the last link to his father as he was the guardian of Vladimir Nabokov’s literary works and memory. For others, he was…

Without getting into a polemic about who owns what and who was there first, the latest news flash out of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem that made it to the front page of the New York Times is simply shocking. Netanyahu and his cabinet decided to withhold $100 million from the Palestinian Authority as…

While I am writing this, in the background is President Obama addressing the United Nations. For some, this is an historic day—21 September 2011. For others, it is more of the same, a different form of warfare that will lead to yet another kind of warfare and on and on… The history of conflict in…

As a former working journalist and now a writer of fiction and non-fiction, I felt the time was right to give all of you listeners out there the lowdown on how the media functions. Courses in journalism obviously focus on the facts, teach how to construct the opening paragraph which is to list the object…

Sometimes when there is so much to say or to write, when the person armed with the knowledge knows the subjects too well, is aware of the inside story, and consequently the truth, it is difficult to begin. For me, having spent twenty-two years as a journalist in Paris, and ten of those years in…