■"Mexican Rebel on Reality Tour: Few Outside His Entourage Cheer Famed Chiapas Champion of Poor," by Jose de Cordoba and John Lyons, Wall Street Journal, 5 January 2006, p. A12.

Fascinating article on the pathetic "farewell tour" of the Chiapas rebel leader, Subcomandante Marcos (who now calls himself "Delegate Zero"), as he tries to sort of run in/influence the upcoming July national elections.

Focusing on poverty is good, but Marcos' answers never were. Clearly, though, his rebel force were masters of the sort of netwar so promoted by Fourth Generation Warfare types as being the new top dog in international conflict: they worked the web and the media like few had before them.

So what killed this rebellion and turned this guy into a pathetic joke? Was it some amazing "info war" campaign by Mexico's government. Did the public diplomacy and strategic communications rule the day?

The sight of the aging revolutionary on an undersized bike prompted Mexico's leading newspaper, Reforma, to compare Marcos to a pizza deliveryman.

"If he keeps this [motorcyle tour] up," quipped one radio commentator, "he should be called Sub-comedian Marcos."

More stinging than the mockery is the growing realization, even by many of his once-devoted supporters, that Marcos has become increasingly irrelevant as Mexico has embraced democracy and free markets. While his legacy is evident--leftists and indigenous movements have become a political force here and elsewhere in the region since he burst onto the scene, and President Vincente Fox felt compelled to launch a competing tour of indigenous communities--few Mexicans these days buy Marcos' revolutionary rhetoric, and townspeople here offered studied indifference and wariness when he arrived amid an army of masked followers.

My, what an inconceivable outcome, so clearly driven by the dynamics of 4GW. How the incompetent Mexican government and private sector pulled this off, I'll never know.

And clearly, any movement by Iraq's fledgling government and economy down similar pathways will yield nothing of value there.

No, no, only the masters of 4GW disaster take the long view. The naïve idealists of economic connectivity are no match for this brilliant realism.