■"Toll In Undersea Earthquake Passes 25,000; A Third Of The Dead Are Said To Be Children: Fear of Disease; Thousands Are Missing—Many Tourists Are Killed," by Seth Mydans, New York Times, 28 December 2004, p. A1.
■"Aid Agencies Go to Work as Tasks Continue to Mount," by Eric Lipton, New York Times, 28 December 2004, p. A10.
Question of whether this will be System Perturbation has little to do with trigger, since that one is impossible to be traced back to any human causality, like global warming or something. Also unlikely to change living near shore in those areas, cause this is a one-in-gajillions shot.
Where it can trigger massive new rule set flow would be in public's sense of bad recovery, meaning either too long/inefficient or too imbalanced (either inside states or when various states are compared). It's those differentials that anger people the most, act of God or no.
Quiet story to all this, buried in second story, are the US Air Force C-130s, Navy P-3s and Pacific Command's consideration of sending "several thousand American troops to the effort." Nothing unusual about that. It happens all the time. And it usually gets even less notice in the press.
■"Venezuela Agrees to Export Oil and Gas to China," by Chris Buckley, New York Times, December 2004, p. A1.
Analysts in DC and especially the Pentagon will squirm and vent mightily on this one, but it's no more surprising than Iran or Sudan or anybody else. This is simply "get it where they (the West) ain't" for China, meaning those oil sources we may shun or underplay are natural targets for a very needy China.
■"Supermarket Giants Crush Central American Farmers: The Food Chain (Survival of the Biggest)," by Celia W. Dugger, New York Times, 28 December 2004, p. A1.
Watching this is like watching small farmers where I grew up in Wisconsin in the 1970s, except there it was the mega-farmers who crowded in far earlier than the Cub Foods grocery behemoths. By the time Windward Farms was done, almost half the farms kids I knew from 1st grade were living in town by 6th grade. It was stunning, but unstoppable.
The alternative was a local economy based on low levels of ag production, and that just wasn't going to last. Sad for small farmers, yes. But frankly, there's nothing sacred about them, any more than coal miners or any other hard-scrabble lifestyle. They last until they can't last, and then they're gone almost overnight. People get nostalgic, and wax poetic about the life lost, but time moves on.
Real tragedy for Central America is lack of alternative employment, I would imagine (and confirmed, I see, about 20 paras into the text). What saved area where I lived was rise of Land's End and other manufacturers. But you can't fight consumers wanting cheaper food. That doesn't work. Rather than fighting this as rear-guard action, governments there need to attract foreign direct investment that triggers alternative jobs. Job loss is a tragedy. Job transition is a fact of life in globalization.
■"Al Qaeda Shifts Its Strategy in Saudi Arabia: Focus Placed on U.S. and Other Western Target in Bid to Bolster Network, Officials Say," by Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, 19 December 2004, p. A28.
This is Osama backtracking at his real Ground Zero. Going after the House of Saud and other symbols of authority is creating a backlash, as in uncool. So recruiting is down and the network is weakening.
So the backtrack is to resume targeting the evil West. Gets Osama close to nowhere, but it keeps the faith alive.
Good sign for the Global War on Terror, but bad sign in terms of reform in the kingdom. As always, the House of Saud temporizes with great mastery.
They are survivors, that lot. Crappy rulers in so many ways, but survivors.
■"Yushchenko Wins 52% of Vote; Rival Vows a Challenge: A clear victory in Ukraine, but a daunting task ahead for the victor," by C.J. Chivers, New York Times, 28 December 2004, p. A3.
You have to like that outcome, and the Kremlin is swallowing hard, but swallowing. It's like the head ref just pulled his head out of the instant replay tent and reversed the call!
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