Global v Local

I missed this Mark Steyn article from last week's Washington Times, but he hits the nail on the head with this observation.

Here are four news stories from the last week:

Baghdad: Abu Musab Zarqawi found himself on the receiving end of 500 pounds of U.S. ordnance. 

London: Scotland Yard arrested a cell of East End Muslims allegedly plotting a sarin attack in Britain.   

Toronto: The Mounties busted a cell of Ontario Muslims planning a bombing 3 times more powerful than Oklahoma City.  

Mogadishu: An al Qaeda affiliate, the "Joint Islamic Courts," took control of the Somali capital, displacing "U.S.-backed warlords." 

The world divides into those who think the above are all part of the same story and those who figure they're strictly local items of no wider significance deriving from various regional factors . . .

Harper, Bush, Howard and Blair are all members of the first group, thankfully.

Of no historical value

From the National Post:

An inscription at a medieval dungeon translated as "Where God does not exist" is causing a political furor in Turkey as the Islamist-influenced government faces accusations of having ordered the erasure of the sign.

The head of the Archeology Museum in Bodrum, an Aegean resort popular with foreign tourists, said the Culture Ministry ordered the 500-year-old inscription scraped away after government inspectors decided that it had "no historical and archeological value."

Just like these were of no significant value?