■"Paying For Terror," by David E. Kaplan, U.S. News & World Report, 5 December 2005, p. 40.

Never fails. Every time the press writes a story about terrorists, we are treated to some "unprecedented" new nasty development that signals (duh-duh-duh-duuuuuuuuuuh!) the end of the world as we know it.

Now, we are told (for maybe the 1 millionth time) that terror nets nowadays seem to be self-financing through criminal activities, thus revealing the "dark underbelly" (okay, my term there) of globalization.

As if globalization would somehow eliminate crime transnationally when no state has eliminated it nationally?

There is nothing new or particularly frightening in this "mix." Way back in the Cold War the Sovs were the main sponsor of terror nets around the planet. Huge, systematic sponsors.

Then the Sovs went away and wannabe terror groups and rebels had no one left to turn to, so they were all forced to either adapt to criminality and self-financing or die.

This development does not make them nastier, or more powerful, just more desperate and self-reliant by necessity.

The fear mongers (typically, experts on terrorism whose stock rises with each elevated pulse they trigger with their warnings) will ALWAYS tell you how these transnationals are redefining everything and making the state superfluous, and they'll be no more correct than when the globalization utopians like Thomas Friedman made it sound like connectivity would trump all (remembering he also gave name to such Super-Empowered Individuals).

It's not a binary outcome, this globalization. It is a yin-yang like interplay of connectivity and conflict, with the former winning out over time. How do I know? Is the global economy getting bigger and more pervasive or smaller and more restricted?

So please ignore the "birthing" claims regarding scary new monsters. It's the same old, same old. Our side grows, and theirs gets smaller.