Small World?

My friend Vic Alhadeff has published an op-ed in his local paper, The Australian, about the hypocrisy of the UN. Sometime you've got to pinch yourself to realize how small the world has become: I can sit at my desk in Jerusalem and read the morning newspaper from Sydney, or Ann Arbor (that's Juan Cole), or anywhere else. It didn't use to be that way, long ago when I turning 40 in a previous eon.

It can be misleading, of course. The ability to follow local news doesn't mean more people can find the Congo on the map today than in the 19th centruy, when King Leopold's men were busy murdering unimaginable numbers of locals. No one was interested then, and no-one is effectively interested today. Or Jaffna, say, or Khwost. (No, there hasn't been a genocide in Khwost yet. Though it's definitely an important place for what is happening there, not that you'd know it from reading that new-fangled Internet thing you've got there. Even though it may yet impact on your life, wherever you are).