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FARC is shifting tactics to terrorism and Information War, in response to its inability to deal with the army and police on the ground. Fueled by cocaine profits, FARC believes it can survive the military superiority of the government. Money can buy politicians and police, preventing the government from wiping out FARC completely. Since FARC has merged with the drug gangs it used to just protect, the leftist rebels believe they are invincible. Meanwhile, the battle on the ground is costing FARC thousands of members each year, and the territory they used to control, or at least terrorize.

The “Information War” strategy is cheaper, safer, and more likely to find allies in the media.

ROBERT NOVAK’S CIA LEAK: Now it can be told.

THE SEPTEMBER 11TH digital archive.

MUQTADA AL-SADR runs to Iran. “Sadr’s flight from Iraq and return to Iran comes as Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki issued an unusually strong statement calling for Sadr’s Mahdi Army to disarm, and Iraqi security forces continue to battle his Mahdi Army in southern Iraq.”

A BRITISH WARNING: Look out for people doing things!

REMEMBERING ROBERT HEINLEIN: A friend at NASA sent me a copy of the remarks by NASA’s head of legislative affairs, Bill Brunner. Excerpt:

This is a real pleasure – joining with all of you in saluting a great writer and visionary – a man whom we honor here this weekend for using the power of words to inspire, to shape values and attitudes – and yes, to make a buck or two (those us here who have ever tried to sell a manuscript honor him especially for that).

As a testimony to the power of his ideas, I’d like to share my personal story with you.

The first real novel I ever read was Rocketship Galileo. After that, I read as much Heinlein as I could find. I can honestly say that, as a young black male raised by a single mom, RAH shaped my views on many subjects from race – to politics – to the nobility of military service – to the equality of the sexes – to the future of humankind on the space frontier.

Many times, the reader would not know that a major character in a Heinlein narrative was black – and always, there was passionate advocacy for freedom over tyranny woven into every storyline.

Heinlein wrote a lot of memorable words. But there’s one line that I found especially striking in preparing for today’s talk. It was his declaration that, “[a] generation which ignores history has no past and no future.”

Full text below: Click “read more” to read it.

LGF goes Web 2.0.

PAY NO ATTENTION to those jet pilots behind the curtain.

A LOT OF PEOPLE WANT TO BRING BACK TROLLEY CARS — but they’re forgetting about the electric terror!

NIGERIA UPDATE:

The separatist movements in the Niger Delta are not making much progress, but the copycat gangs that have emerged to join in the growing banditry and mayhem, are. Gangs of robbers roam the main highways, some of them in police uniform (and some of those may actually be police). More gangsters are demanding protection money from businesses, and that leads to gangs fighting over control of territory to “protect.” The government is concerned because of the billions of dollars in lost oil revenue. About a quarter of Nigerias oil production is now shut down by the violence. The government cannot muster sufficient security forces to pacify the Delta, and has been unable to negotiate a deal to get the new players, the Delta gangs, to do it for them.

Obviously, we should pull our troops out. Oh, wait . . . .

KIKI MUNSHI, meet Michael Yon.

In a not-directly-related matter, Ed Driscoll asks: “And yet, both TV news ratings and newspaper sales have cratered. Why on earth could that be?!”

WHY BLOOMBERG CAN’T WIN. If he runs, though, it won’t be about winning. It’ll be about handing the election to someone else.

DON SURBER: “Africa burns while UN blue helmets look askance and indulge themselves in child porn and petty theft. That is the Times prescription for Iraq.”

UPDATE: More from Jules Crittenden. And more on the NYT here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

A LOOK AT EUROPE IN DENIAL: But a few cracks seem to be appearing.

BOYCOTTING the British academic boycott of Israel.

MICKEY KAUS: “Lone blogger Luke Ford, and not the L.A. Times, continues to be where you go go to find out what’s really happening in the Villasalinas sex scandal.”

Plus, how Liddy Dole has saved her career.

UPDATE: The Villaraigosa scandal is a Hollywood thriller dripping with sex! And most of the press coverage seems to be dripping with, er, something else.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Sex, sex, and more sex.”

MORE GREENHOUSE HYPOCRISY:

51 plane flights in six months for an environmental author and lecturer–embarrassing? Yeah, that’s one way of putting it. Another would be “I guess my entire career has really just been one long act of satire.” It is possible that none of these flights were even slightly superfluous?

I’ll start acting as if it’s a crisis when the people who are telling me it’s a crisis start acting as if it’s a crisis.

FROM THE LONDON TIMES, a Live Earth postmortem: “As a concert, Live Earth was not the repeat of Live Aid/Live 8 it clearly wanted to be. Unlike the events organised by the charismatic Sir Bob Geldof – upon which this one modelled itself closely, right down to its choice of name – the acts who answered the call from Al Gore’s people to play at Wembley Stadium were a bit short on superstar clout.”

UPDATE: Ouch:

But out back, where revellers go to buy their fluids and to get rid of them, and where big events often live or die, there was a different kind of drought. Faced with record beer queues, thirsty fans at Saturday’s Live Earth concert at Sydney’s Aussie Stadium were seen by the Herald offering others $50 for their beer rather than wait an hour to buy refreshments.

Thousands, deprived of the traditional rock ‘n’ roll accompaniment, went to a Coca-Cola stand, forgetting that its manufacturers had been under fire in India for allegedly creating water shortages and pollution around their bottling facilities.

Scores were seen leaving within the first two hours of the nine-hour festival, fed up with the lack of basic services, cutting their losses on a $99 ticket. Gate attendants were heard telling the human tide that they should complain to the promoter.

It was “unAustralian”, one spectator protested. “This is what happens when you let hippies organise a big event,” another said.

No beer? Now we’re talking crisis, mate.

JIHADISTS against climate change.

“WE MUST RIDE THE LIGHTNING:” Robert Heinlein on America and space. “Heinlein was certainly a prophet, but sometimes prophets are ignored and sometimes they are wrong.”

TIGERHAWK looks at the Pew Global Attitudes survey and the way it’s been spun.

SO WE’RE ON THE WAY HOME and we stopped for dinner at Truett’s Grill in McDonough, Georgia. The Truett in question is Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, and this is a diner-like Chik-fil-A incarnation that we had never encountered. There was table service, and enough retro atmosphere to make James Lileks swoon. We liked it.

But there’s a deep secret. Click “read more” to see it.

PHIL BOWERMASTER DISCOVERS THAT CLUELESSNESS ABOUT SCIENCE extends beyond America.

LIFESTYLES of the rich and environmentalist.

MORE ON THE DEBACLE IN U.S. / COLOMBIA RELATIONS.