Chess champ trounces Deep Fritz computer

Wednesday, October 9, 2002
Posted: 9:47 AM EDT (1347 GMT)

MANAMA, Bahrain (Reuters)
— World champion Vladimir Kramnik outwitted the world’s most powerful
chess computer Deep Fritz to win the third game in a match dubbed the “Brains
in Bahrain” contest. Fans of the human were rooting for him to pull off
another victory during game four on Thursday.

    The 27-year-old Russian, playing with black pieces, beat German-developed Fritz in 51 moves
to lead the eight-game series 2.5-05. The first game was drawn.

    Fritz
is capable of evaluating 3.5 million moves per second and the man-versus-machine
contest is a sequel to Gary Kasparov’s 1997 battle with super-computer
Deep Blue in New York. The computer won that contest.

    Kramnik,
who was crowned world champion in 2000 when he beat compatriot Kasparov
in London, will get $1 million if he wins, $800,000 if the match is drawn,
and $600,000 if he loses.

    Fritz
won the opening skirmish even though he began with the aggressive Scotch
Opening, precisely the kind of tactical maneuver experts say computers
do not understand well.

    As he
had done in the previous two games, Kramnik confused Fritz with an early
gambit of queens and then slowly outplayed the computer in a brilliant
display of chess.

    The queenless
middle game had a rigid pawn structure which Kramnik could pick apart at
leisure.

    Kramnik
said he knew he was winning as early as move 19.a3, when Fritz weakened
its pawns on the king’s side.

    Under
the new rules, Kramnik was given the computer two weeks before the contest
to practice against the new software and assess its style.

Copyright © 1995 by Terri Windling. This article was published in “Realms of Fantasy” magazine

“A Gothic footbridge made of stone spans the broad Vltava River, linking five ancient towns together
into Prague, the hauntingly beautiful capital city of the Czech Republic.
West of the bridge is the Old Town; to the east is Mala Strana (the Little
Quarter), a collection of crooked cobbled streets between the river and
the castle on the hill. Strolling across Charles Bridge at twilight, the
“City of One Hundred Spires” looks distinctly unreal, as dreamlike and
hallucinatory as any of the art it has inspired. This is Franz Kafka’s
city, after all. A town where nothing is quite as it appears. A town steeped
in legends and alchemy, with a long, bizarre, rather tragic history. Where
the past is tangible, crowding the present-day streets with ghosts and
stories.

    
The apartment where I am staying is in Mala Strana, tucked between crumbling
Baroque buildings, quiet parks and the bubbling Devil’s Stream — named,
I am told, for a demon in the water, or else for a washerwoman’s temper.
I have come because of the Art Nouveau movement which blossomed here one
hundred years before. With its roots deeply planted in Czech folklore,
Art Nouveau architecture and design has turned Prague into a fantasist’s
dream: extravagantly adorned with sprites, undines, and the pensive heroes
of myth and legend, standing draped over doorways, on turret towers, holding
up the red-tile roofs. Stories surround me everywhere I look. Music, too,
is a constant presence. The sound of Mozart on a solo violin follows me
down a dusky alleyway. I glimpse the form of the young musician in a lit
window on a floor above. The next block, I hear piano scales; and down
the street, the strains of a string quartet from a small palace concert
hall. The night air is crisp, cold, the last of autumn shading into winter.

    
The friends I am visiting here in Prague are involved in a world of magic
themselves. William Todd-Jones is a Welsh puppeteer at work on a film of
Pinocchio. The film crew, directed by Steve Barron, have made use of these
old, unspoiled streets to recreate the timeless landscape of a classic
children’s story. Although ostensibly set in Italy, Carlos Collodi’s tale
of a wooden puppet who longs to be a real boy is a fitting one to bring
to Prague — and not just because of the economic climate that lures so
many film productions here. This is a city filled with puppets: from the
simplest wooden marionettes hawked by street vendors on Charles Bridge
to the elaborate, fanciful figures found on display in posh art galleries.
This ancient folk art/folk theater tradition still flourishes here in Eastern
Europe in a way unimaginable in the West — where puppetry, like fantasy
itself, is deemed to be for children only.

    
Czech puppets often depict the figures from old Bohemian folktales, a rich
oral storytelling tradition that dates back to the founding of this land.
According to the history books the Czech tribe established itself in Bohemia
sometime between the 5th and 8th centuries, following a vanished Celtic
tribe, and one of Germanic peoples. The Premysls were the first ruling
dynasty, founded by the Queen Libuse — a romantic, half-legendary figure
described by Cosmas of Prague (c. 1045-1125) as “. . .a wonderful woman
among women, chaste in body, righteous in all her morals, second to none
as a judge over the people, affable to all and even amiable, the pride
and glory of the female sex, doing wise and manly deeds; but, as nobody
is perfect, this so praise-worthy woman was, alas, a soothsayer. . . .”

    
When the men of her tribe grew disgruntled about being ruled by a woman,
she fell into a trance, pointed toward the hills, and instructed them to
follow her horse; it would lead them to the simple ploughman who was destined
to be her husband. That ploughman was the first Premysls, a muscular and
handsome young man according to the legends — and to the many statues
of the pair one finds in Prague today. Another legend attributes the founding
of the city itself to Libuse’s visions. In a trance she saw two golden
olive trees and “a town, the glory of which will reach the stars.” The
spot described by the queen was found, and on it was a man building a doorsill
for his cottage. The Czech word for doorsill is prah, giving Libuse’s new
town it’s name: Praha (Prague). The town was then erected on the hill where
Prague Castle stands today.

    
The Premysls rule over Bohemia lasted well into the Middle Ages. Prague
thrived, and by the 14th century, under the rule of Charles IV, the city
was larger than London or Paris and boasted western Europe’s first university.
But religious strife between various Christian faiths presented serious
on-going problems, resulting in many bloody massacres, assassinations and
executions. A series of weak absentee Kings further damaged the independent
kingdom until, in the 16th century, the Austrian Habsburgs claimed the
throne. German became the official court language as tiny Bohemia was swallowed
up by the Holy Roman Empire.

    
In 1583, the Emperor Rudolph II moved his capital from Vienna to Prague.
Rudolph was an unusual man: an intellectual and a mystic, reputed to be
mentally unhinged (he walked around with the fingers of a dead man stuffed
in his back pocket). Rudolfine Prague was glittering and surreal, a city
teeming with alchemists, astrologists, necromancers, soothsayers, artists,
musicians, brilliant mathematicians, and religious zealots of every stripe
and color. The search for the Philosopher’s Stone (“the stone which is
not a stone, a precious thing which has no value, a thing of many shapes,
this unknown which is most known of all,” according to the alchemist Hermes
Trismegistus) consumed Rudolph and his court, and indeed much of Prague
nobility. The famed English astrologer/wizard John Dee and his partner
Edward Kelly spent five years together in Prague (much of it on Rudolph’s
payroll), gazing into crystal balls and conducting conversations with angels.
Kelly stayed on when Dee returned to England, claiming to have discovered
the coveted secret of turning lead into gold. Kelly gained a knighthood,
but eventually landed in prison on sorcery and heresy charges. Legend has
it he died in Prague, but no one really knows for sure.

    
Despite continued religious strife, the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian rule
did not weaken until the 19th century. Then the Czech language, which had
all but died out, was revived by a handful of writers and language scholars.
A wave of nationalism swept the country, and a strong desire for Slav self-rule.
In the arts, this translated into a passion for the history, myths and
folklore of Bohemia. The national operas of Bedrich Smetana drew upon rustic
traditional stories, and the symphonies of Antonin Dvorak were influenced
by Slav folk music. Art Nouveau was a 19th century movement that came to
Prague via Paris and Vienna. In architecture, the style was distinguished
by the abundant use of decorative elements drawn from sensual, natural
forms: vines and lilies, sunflowers, poppies, and the shapes of the human
body. Czech artists used this fluid style to cover the faces of new buildings
with figures drawn from Slav folklore, creating some of the finest examples
of Art Nouveau to be found anywhere in Europe. A huge slum clearance in
the old Jewish Quarter led to many new buildings in the Art Nouveau style
— buildings miraculously preserved despite the ravages of two World Wars.

    
The most famous Czech Art Nouveau artist was not an architect but a graphic
designer: Alphonse Mucha, whose theater posters for the actress Sara Bernhardt
catapulted him into sudden fame. In Paris between 1890 and 1910, his posters,
prints, even jewelry designs, were ubiquitous in fashionable circles —
standing the test of time with their great popularity to this day. Although
Mucha’s distinctive work has come to exemplify the Art Nouveau style, he
himself hated the term, insisting that art could never be “new” because
it was eternal. A fiercely nationalistic man, literate, and prone to mystic
leanings, Mucha himself was most proud of the work completed upon his return
to Prague: the Slav Epic, comprised of twenty large panels in tempera and
oil paint. Commissioned for Prague’s Municipal Building, an Art Nouveau
masterpiece itself, these gorgeous paintings illustrate Slav history and
legend in rich detail. Mucha spent his later years in Prague, watching
his dream of national independence turn to reality in 1918, when the Czechs
paired with neighboring Slovakia to establish their own republic. Twenty
years later that dream crumbled as Hitler’s army rolled into the city.
Mucha was one of the first of the nationalist intellectuals to be grilled
by the Gestapo. Already in poor health, the artist died three months later,
a broken man.

    
A lesser known but equally interesting Czech artist is Frantisek Bilek,
who brought Art Nouveau ideas back to Prague after studying in Paris in
the 1890s. Bilek was an intelligent, iconoclastic and wildly inventive
man, a sculptor and designer who worked with an astonishing variety of
materials. Like Mucha, he had a strong mystical bent, and a passion for
Czech history and lore. His art combined ideas from music, literature and
philosophy to explore the mysticism, magic and spirituality inherent in
everyday life. The peculiar house Bilek built for himself (in a design
meant to represent a cornfield) is now a museum of the artist’s work and
philosophy.

    
The most famous of Prague’s creative figures, of course, was the German-speaking
Franz Kafka (1883-1924), whose brooding surrealistic vision captured the
darker flavor of the city where he lived for all but a few years of his
life. The tormented man-turned-cockroach in Kafka’s Metamorphosis and the
bleak labyrinthine despair of his novel The Castle are now well known to
generations of readers and philosophy students around the world. Kafka
never lived to see any of the fame that would one day emblazon his name
across his city’s tourist maps and postcards. He died, surrounded by unpublished
manuscripts, in a small flat over Old Town Square — a place of Gothic
towers and Baroque rooftops aptly described as the Brothers Grimm in stone,
which Kafka considered “the most beautiful setting that has ever been seen
on this earth.”

    
In Czechoslovakia, as elsewhere in Europe, artists moved on to Cubism and
Surrealism in the period between the two world wars. It is not surprising
that a city with a history of alchemy and mysticism would become the second
most active center of Surrealism after Paris. Karel Capek was a writer
whose engaging work shows the influence of both movements — combined with
a love of Czech folklore, and a distrust of industrialized life. Often
called “the Czech Kurt Vonnegut,” he is best known for his novel War of
the Newts, and for his science fiction play R.U.R., a Broadway hit which
gave the world the word robot (from the Czech robota, meaning: hard labor).
His brother Josef was a noted Cubist painter, but he also produced Thurber-esque
cartoons to illustrate some of Karel’s work. Together they published a
charming book called Nine Fairy Tales and One Thrown in for Good Measure.
Translated into English by Dagmar Herrmann, it was published in the US
in 1990 to mark the centenary of Karl Capek’s birth.

    
The extraordinary Prague art scene that existed between the two World Wars
was all but stamped out when the new country fell to Hitler’s armies. Intellectuals,
many of them Jewish, fled or were exterminated. Out of ninety thousand
people in the Old Jewish Quarter of Prague, eighty thousand were killed.
The Old Jewish Quarter, an extravaganza of beautiful Art Nouveau architecture,
had originally been established many centuries before as a walled medieval
ghetto, often locked to segregate its inhabitants. The community had its
own folktales, particularly those of the Golem and Rabbi Loew. Loew was
a Talmudic scholar said to have lived in the 15th century — a hero in
various fairy tale exploits whose villain was usually Brother Thaddeus,
a wicked cleric prone to pogroms and accusing Jews of killing Christian
babies. The Golem comes from the mystical cabalist idea that each mortal
contains within him a spark of the divine. In prayer, Loew was instructed
to build a man out of mud, to walk around it several times, and then place
the unknown name of God (the shem) in its mouth. The Golem thus created
is a rather humorous, slapstick creature who nonetheless appears at times
of crisis to save the Jews from danger. He did not, alas, make an appearance
when Hitler’s Gestapo came to town.

    
After the war, Czech arts fared no better under the strict Social Realist
doctrine of Communism. In the Sixties, this seemed to loosen a bit; art
and optimism swept Prague, culminating in the student revolt of Prague
Spring in ’68. Then Soviet tanks rolled into the city, and all Prague watched
in horror as hundreds of unarmed people were shot, effectively crushing
the resistance and the spirits of a whole generation. Another two decades
of Communism passed before the Czech people revolted again. After the fall
of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Prague students confronted baton-wielding police
on the streets of New Town. The televised confrontation, showing the brutality
of the police against students armed only with candles and flowers, shook
the Czech population to the core, and a million people took to the streets
to demand the government’s resignation. This extraordinary peaceful uprising,
known as The Velvet Revolution, toppled the old Communist regime, and in
less than two months playwright Vaclav Havel was elected to the presidency.

    
Since then, Czech and Slovakia have formed two separate nations. Prague
has opened its doors to the West, and called home its many exiles. The
city’s beauty, mystique, and cheap rents have attracted a large English-speaking
community, many of them writers, artists and filmmakers hoping to find,
or recreate, the “cafe life” of Europe between the wars. At sidewalk cafes
and in coffee bars one sees many young faces these days and hears many
different languages spoken. Some Czechs are delighted with this new infusion
of young energy, others are dismayed by the tourist invasion. But despite
the crowds in Old Town Square and around the other tourist attractions,
the real life of Prague goes in the back streets of the city — in the
casual and unmarked beer halls which one discovers only with the aid of
Czech friends, in the art studios, theaters and jazz clubs tucked away
on unlikely streets, where the Czechs exercise their hard-won right to
gather, to argue, and to create.

    
In recent years, Hollywood in particular has discovered the charms of Eastern
Europe, with its economical labor pool and a wealth of exotic locations
from castles to cities to countryside. My friend’s film, Pinocchio, has
been shot in Prague’s back streets, on its rooftops, in a quarry, and in
a small Czech village. Now they are doing bluescreen shots in the large
film studio on the outskirts of town, the painstaking work that will make
the wooden puppet come to life on film. It is fascinating to watch Todd
and the others at work manipulating the puppet. It takes several puppeteers
working together to move, in co-ordination, the legs, the arms, the torso,
the head, and all the facial movements that give the puppet expression.
Todd wears what looks like a blue diving suit so that he can be eliminated
from the picture, leaving behind only the image of the wooden puppet in
motion. It is an unusual and highly skilled form of acting — physical,
even acrobatic. A good team seems to work together as if by magic or telepathy.

    
At a break in the filming, the director, Steve Barron, talks about Pinocchio
with me. It is, he says, a tale that he has long wanted to film. He has
an abiding love for fantasy stories, particularly ones grounded in the
world we know. Steve directed the “Storyteller” series (created with Jim
Henson, of Muppet fame), filming beautiful and intelligent retellings of
lesser known fairy tales, such as the quirky Hans My Hedgehog. What drew
him to Pinocchio was the human emotion lodged within Collodi’s magical
adventure tale: the wooden boy who longs to be like the other boys, to
be real, to fit in. That deep desire to belong, Steve says with a smile,
is a feeling he remembers well.

    
Carlos Collodi was an Italian journalist who became a popular writer of
children’s stories. He first published Pinocchio in an episodic, serial
form; it was then gathered together as a single book in 1883. Since then
the story has been filmed several times, but never (in America) quite successfully.
The Disney version in particular lacks the original story’s sinister edge
that makes the ultimate reunion between the puppet and his father so affecting.
Like Steve, Mac Wilson (the head puppeteer) says it is a story he has long
wanted to film, the ultimate story for a puppeteer. And a technically challenging
one, for the puppet is on-screen for a great deal of the movie. The task
of Mac’s team of puppeteers is to show how a bit of carved and painted
wood can be turned into a living, breathing character whom an audience
will come to love.

    
It seems fitting that they must accomplish this here, in the ancient land
of Bohemia, where puppet-makers have been bringing such creatures to life
for centuries. The folktales of Bohemia are full of creatures carved from
trees: male and female, painted, then dressed, then brought to life by
the power of speech. One becomes a ravenous child, eating everything in
sight, his parents, his village, the countryside, until he’s finally destroyed.
Another is a girl, ravishing but mute, who is wed to a prince and then
turns back into wood in his arms on their wedding night. Creation, destruction,
illusion. . .reminding us that all is not as it appears. . . .

    
Since the Revolution, fantasy, folklore and surrealism is catching up with
Social Realism as a vibrant presence in modern Czech arts. Adolf Born is
an artist whose phantasmagoric paintings could almost be children’s book
illustrations but for the macabre, perversely erotic elements of his imagery.
Jiri Anderle is a master of delicate, surreal pencil drawings. The collection
of his art with text by Vaclav Havel is particularly worth seeking out.
Peter Sis is a Czech painter, filmmaker and children’s book author now
living in New York. The Three Golden Keys is a gorgeous, dreamlike picture
book about his home city of Prague, created for his young daughter who
was born in America. The book captures the beauty and melancholy of the
old city streets; it is an intimate and haunting work which I strongly
recommend. For those interested in Czech folklore, K.J. Erben’s Tales from
Bohemia is a particularly nice collection, reprinted from the original
Prague edition with lovely illustrations by Artus Scheiner.

    
One Prague book critic has decried the surge in popularity of “works of
mere escapism” — such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (a best-seller
in the Czech Republic), as well as home-grown magical works by young Czech
fantasists. Yet it is not surprising to learn that after years of force-fed
Realism, readers have discovered the pleasures to be found in works of
modern fantasy, the best of which speaks on two levels at once: not only
as a magical “escape” from humdrum reality but also as a metaphorical exploration
of the basic truths underlying modern life: love and hate, loyalty and
betrayal, courage and despair, survival, transformation. Tolkien’s tale,
for instance, is a bittersweet story of war, heroism, and loss. Sauron’s
dark hold on Middle Earth, and the terror of his Dark Riders, must have
a particular resonance for those who saw the Prague Spring crushed, and
watched in horror as police attacked young people armed only with flowers.
. . .

    
Prague is a place where the old and the new, the realistic and surrealistic,
have come together in a singular manner — in its arts, its streets, its
politics, its way of life, and its stories. This capital city is contemporary,
vital and full of promise for the future; yet ancient blood still stains
the stones and ancient ghosts still haunt the roads: the innocent women
burned as witches, the religious martyrs thrown from the towers, the men
and women executed for the wrong faith, the wrong name, the wrong ideas.
I have never been in a place where so much history seems crowded together,
packed into the few square miles overlooked by old Prague Castle.

    
On my last night in Prague, I pass through the city riding on the back
of my friend’s motorcycle, the sleek machine passing over the old cobblestones,
slippery with rain. The old and the new flash past us as we speed across
the river and down the streets of Mala Strana. The ghosts of the past are
still whispering their tales: folk tales, fairy tale, history and legend.
But I’m back in the modern world now. I’m moving too fast to listen.

from the October 03, 2002 edition – http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1003/p01s01-ussc.html

Your ad here: Cop cars as the next billboards

By Daniel B. Wood | Staff
writer of The Christian Science Monitor

LOS ANGELES – The city of Springfield, Fla., will soon be getting 15 new squad cars equipped with
the latest in computer databases, satellite tracking, and back-seat jail
bars. The cost of each vehicle is only $1 … with a catch.

    These aren’t traditional “black and white” police cars. Instead, each cruiser
will be emblazoned with advertisements that could vary from local services
(“Minnie’s Beauty Salon” and “Bert’s Radiators”) to, say, national doughnut
or burger chains. Dozens of cash-strapped towns are also considering
the idea, an offer made by a marketing company.

    While
law-enforcement experts see a whole new source of revenue to replace aging,
outdated fleets, critics wonder whether this could mean we’ll be seeing
live TV broadcasts of car chases in which the pursuers sport ads for happy
meals next to each siren.

    In additions
to questions of conflict of interest, some wonder whether this is one step
too far in the commercialization of America.

    “American
society has really gone beyond the pale in turning every part of the environment
into ad space,” says Professor Michael Maynard, who teaches journalism,
advertising, and PR at Temple University. “There should be some things
that are off limits.”

    But proponents
counter that the ads will be tasteful (none for alcohol, tobacco, firearms,
or gambling). City buses and dog-catcher trucks already carry such advertisements,
and this is merely the next logical step, they say.

    Government
Acquisitions LLC, the firm in Charlotte, N.C., that is pushing the idea,
is already getting lots of takers.

    Since
May, 12 police departments ˆ in locations as diverse as Ozark, Ala., and
Caddo Valley, Ariz. ˆ have signed up for the offer. The company says it
has been inundated with enquiries from police. “Everybody wins. Cities
get the extra protection they need, and businesses get a way to contribute
to the local police,” says Ken Allison, managing partner of the company.

    But at
least one observer is worried about the possible implications of such a
deal. “I see a problem with conflict of interest right out of the gate,”
says Prof. Gary Kritz, who teaches advertising and marketing at Seton Hall
University in New Jersey. “If local police forces have advertisements for
local businesses, might the police be tempted to look the other way if
one of those businesses commit crimes against society? The ads could in
effect be viewed as bribing a public officer, which in itself is a crime.”

    One of
the first towns to actually approve the idea is Springfield, Fla., population
9,000. City commissioners recently glanced at their aging fleet of squad
cars, and their tax-income projections for the next few years, and decided
to look into the idea to help them police their streets. “We don’t have
property tax, we don’t have sales tax, and we are very limited on state
revenue sharing,” says police chief Sam Slay. “I’ll be honest and say I
didn’t like the idea at first, but from a practical standpoint this is
something we just cannot ignore.”

    Gary
Gernandt, a city councilman in Omaha, Neb., initially didn’t like the idea
either, but says the savings for the city could top $1 million. “We think
the idea is worth exploring. Our current graffiti van was purchased
by private money, and corporations have logos all over it. Our stadium
has ads on the fences and corridors ˆ as does our civic auditorium. As
long as it’s done tastefully, advertising on police cars is no different.”

    But police
cars are different, say some legal scholars. There is a danger of the appearance
of impropriety in the eyes of the public. And there are practical issues
of proper identification of the cars.

    “Ads
would distract from the civic symbols, emergency phone numbers, squad-car
numbers,” says Robert Pugsley, a law professor at Southwestern University
School of Law in Los Angeles. “A police car should not look like a NASCAR.
It could lead to legal difficulties.”

    Still
others wonder whether the ads will stop at police cars. They muse that
logos might end up on the lapels or trousers of cop uniforms ˆ in the same
way that a woman recently began selling ad space on her bowling skirt,
and a bald head offered his head to the highest advertising bidder on eBay.
And
they’re worried about other recent agreements between private businesses
and public entities. The San Diego City Council, for example, is currently
weighing a proposal for the city to partner with GM. In exchange for allowing
advertising on its beachfront lifeguard towers, the automobile company
is offering to give the city 35 vehicles. And the town of St. Peters, Mo.,
just announced that it is going to experiment with leasing ads on the sides
of its trash-collection trucks.

    “I really
feel we’ve finally gone completely over the edge of appropriateness and
better judgment into a fuzziness between commercial and public discourse
that is really dangerous,” says Kalle Lasn, author of several books on
the rise of advertising and publisher of Adbusters Magazine. “We’ve already
tracked the rise of ads into every area of life from urinals to golf holes.
I think this will diminish respect for the whole institution of police,”
Mr. Lasn says.

COURTESY: D. SILVER!

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/04/international/americas/04COLO.html

October 4, 2002

New Role for U.S. in Colombia: Protecting
a Vital Oil Pipeline

By JUAN FORERO

SARAVENA, Colombia, Sept.
27 ˜ Casting a wary eye for rebel snipers, Lt. Felipe Zúñiga
and his counterinsurgency troops slog through the wet fields and patches
of jungle here. Their mission has nothing to do with drugs ˜ until now,
the defining issue in Colombia for American policy makers ˜ but instead
with protecting a pipeline that carries crude to an oil-hungry America.

    The 500-mile
pipeline, which snakes through eastern Colombia, transporting 100,000 barrels
of oil a day for Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles, is emerging as a
new front in the terror war. One of Colombia’s most valuable assets, the
pipeline has long been vulnerable to bombings by Colombia’s guerrilla groups,
which along with the country’s paramilitary outfits are included on the
Bush administration’s list of terrorist organizations.

    Sometime
in the next month, in a significant shift in American policy, United States
Special Forces will arrive in Colombia to begin laying the groundwork for
the training of Lieutenant Zúñiga and his 35-man squad in
the finer arts of counterinsurgency. Over the next two years, 10 American
helicopters will bolster the Colombian counterinsurgency efforts, and some
4,000 more troops will receive American training, which will begin in earnest
in January, Bush administration and American military officials said in
interviews in recent days.

    The policy
shift dovetails with the Bush administration’s new, global emphasis on
expanding and diversifying the sources of America’s oil imports, with an
eye to reducing dependence on Middle Eastern oil. That new approach, outlined
in the administration’s energy report issued last year, is gaining ever
more importance with the threat to Persian Gulf oil supplies from the looming
war with Iraq.

    The $94
million counterinsurgency program is also an important element in the offensive
by Colombia’s new government against two rebel groups and a paramilitary
force that dominate much of the country.

    Pipeline
bombings by the guerrillas cost the government nearly $500 million last
year ˜ a blow in a country where oil accounts for 25 percent of revenues.
The two main rebel groups, which view Occidental as a symbol of American
imperialism, have bombed the pipeline 948 times since the 1980’s, while
extorting oil royalty payments from local government officials.

    The Colombian
military has increased security recently, deploying five of the six battalions
in the 6,000-man 18th Brigade to pipeline protection, up from just two
battalions last year. As a result, the number of bombings has fallen to
30 this year, from 170 the year before, Colombian military officials say.
But the goal is to eliminate the bombings altogether, they say, and to
accomplish that they need help.

    “We have
been fighting here, but there are still so many things the Americans can
teach us,” said Lieutenant Zúñiga as he led a reporter on
patrol along the pipeline. “I think it is going to make us much better.”

    The final
product, officials say, will be an offensive-minded unit of Colombian counterinsurgency
analysts who will interpret intelligence data gathered from high-tech equipment
and informers and then deploy rapid-response forces stationed at strategic
points along the pipeline to thwart rebel attacks.

    “The
idea is to prepare troops for the war we are living,” said Gen. Carlos
Lemus, commander of the 18th Brigade, which will receive much of the training
here in Arauca Province. “We will be able to do so much more, with better
intelligence and helicopters. The idea is to find out when something is
going to happen and react.”

    The training
could not take place in a more dangerous area. Though the army base here
˜ with its neatly pruned hedges, modern barracks and billboard featuring
the fighting words of Gen. George S. Patton ˜ gives an air of familiarity
American soldiers might find comforting, Saravena itself sits in a war
zone.

    “What
they can expect is lead,” boasted a local commander for the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, the country’s largest and most belligerent rebel
group. “What else? That and cadavers.”

    Indeed,
the rebels have flexed their muscles all year in Saravena, launching dozens
of homemade rockets that have destroyed the airport terminal, the city
hall, the town council chambers and the prosecutor’s office. Policemen
on patrol are frequently fired upon, and military officials say that despite
the new deployment of Colombian troops the pipeline is still exposed to
attack.

    “With
these bandits,” said Lt. Col. Emilio Torres, a local army commander, “if
you leave the pipeline alone even 24 hours, they can blow the tube.”

    Alert
to the dangers, American military officials said the trainers, Special
Forces soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., will be limited to 20 to 60 and
will be housed in specially fortified barracks.

   
Colombia’s new president, Álvaro Uribe, also declared Arauca one
of two security zones where military commanders can conduct searches without
warrants, impose curfews and usurp some powers from local government ˜
measures the United Nations says will erode civil rights.

    Bush
administration officials have said the reliable production of oil is imperative
if Colombia is to have the resources to combat the guerrillas and paramilitaries.
But oil is also critical to the national security planning of the United
States, which by 2020 will count on imported oil for 62 percent of its
oil needs, up from half today.

    Much
of that new oil will come from the Americas, which already supply the United
States with nearly 50 percent of its imported oil. Along with Venezuela
and Ecuador, the Andes now provides the United States with more than two
million barrels a day, about 20 percent of its imports.

    Colombia
will never be the sole solution to America’s voracious appetite for oil.
But the country is known for high-quality oil that is cheap to produce
and easy to refine, and is thought to have significant potential reserves
that could be rapidly exploited if the guerrillas and paramilitaries could
be brought under control.

    “We’re
becoming increasingly dependent on imported oil, therefore the strategic
goal of diversification has become more and more important,” said Michael
Klare, author of “Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict.”
“The Clinton administration and now the Bush administration have explicitly
stated that that one of the regions they have wanted to rely on in the
future is the Western Hemisphere.”

    Many
oil analysts say reliance on this region could greatly increase if the
major producer, Venezuela, increased its production capacity and if Colombia
˜ which shares many of the same geological features as Venezuela ˜ achieved
enough stability to allow widespread exploration.

    “We
don’t really know what’s there,” said Ed Corr, a former American diplomat
in Latin America and an expert on the strategic aspects of petroleum. “But
we certainly would be wise in getting the country in such a situation where
we can find out.”

    Washington’s
shift to counterinsurgency was made possible in July, when Congress rolled
back restrictions that had limited American aid to antidrug programs. The
drug war continues unabated, but the phasing out of those prohibition has
been warmly welcomed by energy companies, which have been pressing for
a wider role for the United States to improve the business climate.

    “You’ll
see more interest on the part of more companies,” Larry Meriage, spokesman
for Occidental, said in an interview. “Given the fact that there is a significant
amount of oil there, and the sheer mass of oil that remains under-explored,
there is considerable optimism.”

    Occidental,
well-versed in Colombia’s troubles by virtue of its two decades here, is
close to the Bush administration and has long lobbied for the United States
to be more involved in the conflict.

    According
to the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, the company contributed
$1.5 million to presidential and Congressional campaigns between 1995 and
2000. Occidental also spent nearly $8.7 million lobbying American officials
on Latin America policy, largely regarding Colombia, from 1996 to 2000,
according to disclosure forms filed with Congress.

    Other
oil and energy companies also spent handsomely to influence Colombia policy,
with Exxon Mobil Corporation, BP Amoco, the Unocal Corporation, Texaco
and Phillips Petroleum spending about $13 million among them on Colombia
in the same period.

    “We see
the oil companies leveraging their influence in Washington to move the
United States toward a counterinsurgency policy,” said Ted Lewis of Global
Exchange, a San Francisco human rights group that closely follows business
issues here.

    Mr. Meriage
counters that not taking strong action here could further weaken Colombia
and its neighbors, which are economically dependent on oil. “We have long
highlighted these problems,” he said. “You see the potential danger of
an entire Andean region being destabilized by the problems in Colombia.
That’s why this is important.”

    A tour
of the Occidental facilities here in Caño Limón oil fields
underscores the links between the company and Colombia’s military. The
300 or so troops stationed here wear patches featuring an oil drilling
rig. New motorcycle patrols zip down a network of roads, while antiguerrilla
patrols work their way through the jungle. Light tanks and heavily fortified
bunkers are strategically positioned along the pipeline to deter attacks.

    Two military
aircraft ˜ a helicopter and a Cessna ˜ patrol the pipeline with gasoline
paid for by Occidental, and military helicopters carrying troops on operations
often swing by here to fill their fuel tanks. Even the brigade commander,
General Lemus, drinks coffee from a mug bearing the Oxy logo.

    “This
is an island of security that we have here, thanks to the army,” said one
Occidental official.

    The company
is now producing nearly twice as much oil as last year at its 212 wells.
It has also signed contracts recently with the state oil company to explore
three additional blocs covering 9,325 square miles.

    “This
is the Colombians’ war to win, and they have to step up to the fight,”
said Brig. Gen. Galen Jackman, director of operations for American forces
in Latin America. “And they have to put their country on a footing to be
able to do that.”

From the New York Times:

October 1, 2002

A New Intrusion Threatens a Tribe in Amazon: Soldiers

By LARRY ROHTER

SURUCUCU, Brazil ˜ The Yanomami
Indians have lived precariously in the most remote reaches of the jungle
here for thousands of years, hunting with bows and arrows, and warring
among themselves and with the few white intruders who have appeared in
recent years.

    But now
they are facing a threat to their very existence as a people: the Brazilian
Army.

    As part
of a program to strengthen the military’s presence along Brazil’s vast
and largely undefended northern Amazon border, the Brazilian Armed Forces
are building new bases and expanding old ones in territories set aside
for the Yanomami and other tribes. As their numbers expand, soldiers are
increasingly getting Yanomami women pregnant, spreading venereal disease
and disrupting patterns of village life that have endured largely unchanged
since the Stone Age.

    “The
destruction has already begun,” Roberto Angametery, the village chief here,
lamented in an interview in the lodge where members of his community live
together. “The soldiers say they are here to protect us, but they have
brought diseases and taken our land without asking us. Soon there will
be more, and then what will we do? Where will we go?”

    Initiated
in the mid-1980’s, the military’s Northern Channel program was shelved
during a budget crisis more than a decade ago. But with the United States’
decision two years ago to provide more than $1.5 billion in military and
other assistance to neighboring Colombia, Brazilians fear that the conflict
there will spill over into their territory.

    Indian
advocates, however, argue that the logic of the military expansion is dubious
here in Roraima State, which borders instead on Venezuela and Guyana.

    “The
armed forces are just seizing an opportunity to revive a program that has
long been desired but long lain dormant,” Egon Heck, executive secretary
of the Indigenous Missionary Council, a Roman Catholic church group, said
in an interview in Brasília, the capital. “There is nothing to justify
the construction of military bases in Roraima, because no concrete guerrilla
threat exists there.”

    Military
officials in the border region, at the headquarters of the Amazon Military
Command in Manaus and at the Army Chief of Staff office in Brasília
declined to discuss the issues that Yanomami leaders have raised, failing
to respond to two weeks of telephone calls, faxes and e-mail messages seeking
comment.

    In a
letter, however, the minister of defense, Geraldo Quintão, blamed
the tense situation here on what he called “a systematic and reiterated
campaign” on the part of Indians and advocacy groups “against the army,
which historically has always conferred a cordial treatment on the Indians.”

    He acknowledged
the existence of sexual relationships between soldiers and Indian women
but said he saw no need to intervene because they were “consenting relations”
between adults.

    “A relationship
that lasts two or three years is not sexual abuse,” Mr. Quintão
maintained. “It is natural that these relationships occur,” and “to block
them is to impede the fruit of human nature.”

    As perhaps
the most primitive of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, the Yanomami,
who number about 15,000 in Brazil and another 12,000 just across the border
in Venezuela, are especially vulnerable to the military effort. In his
recent book, “Darkness in El Dorado,” Patrick Tierney describes the Yanomami
as having been victimized repeatedly by miners, missionaries and anthropologists
since sustained contact with the outside world began in the 1960’s.

    The impact
of the increased military presence in Yanomami territory appears to have
been similar. According to Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami shaman who serves
as a tribal spokesman, at least 18 children have already been born of sexual
liaisons between soldiers and Yanomami women: 5 here and 13 in Maturacá,
a Yanomami village about 250 miles southwest of here.

    “The
soldiers have women of their own, so why don’t they bring them along?”
he asked. “They should stop messing with our wives and daughters, and respect
our rights instead of abusing us.”

    Tribal
leaders here refused to allow interviews with the women involved, to avoid
further humiliation, they said. But in a videotaped deposition to the Human
Rights Commission of the Brazilian Congress last year, one woman about
18 years old said she had agreed to have sexual relations with a soldier
after he gave her thread and food as gifts.

    The couple
had sex in the barracks at the base here, the woman testified. “The sergeant
knew what was going on, but he did nothing,” she said through an interpreter.

    “It is
illegal under federal law for government employees to have sex at their
workplace, but that is what these soldiers are doing,” said Martinho Alves
da Silva, regional delegate for the National Indian Foundation, the government
agency in charge of indigenous affairs. “They are having sex with Yanomami
girls in the barracks, on top of cars, in the jungle, at waterfalls.”

    Mr. Alves
da Silva said he had complained to the army about such incidents, with
few results. “They tell us they have taken measures to stop that behavior
and opened an internal investigation,” he said. “We would like for federal
prosecutors to supervise that process, but they have been unable to do
so.”

    A four-day
visit here revealed few if any restrictions on fraternization between troops
and Indians. Yanomamis were observed playing soccer on the army base, and
soldiers would occasionally swim at a nearby waterfall that is also frequented
by the Yanomamis, including young women wearing only loincloths.

    For the
Yanomami, the sudden appearance of mixed-race children in their midst has
created a cultural quandary. The village here consists of only 143 people,
and has until now been racially homogenous, which is one of the requirements
for an Indian tribe to maintain its status under Brazilian law.

    If tribe
members intermarry with whites and the group becomes excessively acculturated,
its members run the risk of being reclassified as caboclos, as persons
of mixed white and Indian blood are called in Portuguese, and losing the
benefits and protections provided to indigenous peoples. For that reason,
the mixed-race children here are regarded not just as a source of shame
but also as a threat.

    “When
these children grow up, no one knows where their loyalties will lie,” explained
Ivanildo Wawanawetery, a Yanomami who works for the National Indian Foundation
as an interpreter. “They may want to follow the path of their fathers and
live with the whites, and then they will no longer be Indians.”

    In at
least one other case, near Maturacá, a soldier has announced his
intention to settle down with the mother of his child and move into the
village and live as a Yanomami. This, too, has caused consternation among
the Yanomami who, while not hostile to occasional visits from strangers,
clearly delineate between themselves and outsiders.

    Mr. Kopenawa
said that one particularly alarming result of sexual contact between soldiers
and Yanomami women was the introduction of venereal diseases, which had
not previously been reported in the tribe. “The soldiers have already brought
gonorrhea and syphilis with them, and we fear that if they continue to
have sex with Yanomami women, they will transmit AIDS,” he said.

    Claudio
Esteves de Oliveira, director of Urihi, a nonprofit group that provides
health care to the Yanomami under a government contract, acknowledged that
doctors have recently treated cases of gonorrhea in Yanomami villages here
and elsewhere.

    But he
said he lacked proof that the disease originated with soldiers, because
the Yanomami may have also had sexual contact with miners and employees
of the government’s Indian affairs agency.

    At the
same time, tribal leaders complain, the army is stepping up efforts to
recruit young Yanomami men as soldiers. Because the Brazilian military
has intensified its presence along the border, guides and scouts who know
the their way through the dense, trackless jungle are in greater demand,
and the Yanomami are clearly the best qualified to fill that crucial role.

    Tribal
elders worry, though, that the young men will return from their one-year
enlistments with the white man’s materialistic values and a sense of cultural
inferiority that will make it difficult for them to fit back into village
life. The few Yanomami who have come back from military service have already
become disruptive forces in their communities, leaders say.

    Alarmed
by what they see as the threat the military poses to their identity and
culture, the Yanomami and other Indian groups are now seeking to block
the construction of new bases along the border. The focus of that effort
is Ericó, a Yanomami village north of here where virtually none
of the residents speak Portuguese or have had extended contact with whites.

    The Indians
have also filed a suit seeking the dismantling of a new base at Uiramutã
on the border with Guyana and another older base at Pacaraíma, on
the Venezuelan border. They argue that the military bases are unconstitutional
because they violate provisions granting Indians “exclusive use” of lands
designated for them.

    “The
military argues that national security is above Indian rights, but we don’t
think the Supreme Court will agree,” said Joenia Batista de Carvalho, a
Wapixana Indian who is a lawyer for the Roraima Indigenous Council. “But
we are prepared to go all the way to international courts if Brazil does
not respect rights of indigenous peoples that it has already recognized.”

    In the
meantime, the situation here is growing increasingly complicated. Fleeing
a conflict with a group of villages further north that has denied them
access to their traditional hunting grounds, one Yanomami community recently
moved to a site that is about 200 yards from the military base here.

    “Now
the Yanomami look forward to the whites’ giving them food instead of going
hunting and tilling their fields,” Mr. Kopenawa said. “This is bad, like
a dog you feed every day. Everything is being ruined.”

“Chartreuse

 Monk Liqueur

“Chartreuse is made according to extremely complex secret formulae and contains about 130 different herbs. The monks control distillation, while bottling and sales are conducted
by a secular company. The considerable royalties accruing to the order finance much charitable work. It is the green Chartreuse that is the strong one; the yellow is slightly weaker and marginally sweeter. There is also the rare élixir végétal, nearly eighty per cent alcohol, which is probably very close to the original medicinal compound. The GREEN CHARTREUSE is the only green liqueur in the world with a completely natural color. It is powerful and different.

“Only three brothers know the names of the 130 plants and how to blend and to distill them. They
are also the only ones who know which plants they have to macerate to produce the green and yellow colors. And they alone supervise the low ageing in oak casks.

Price:  $45.83. To
order…”

From http://www.nycgoth.com/more/chartreuse/

“Chartreuse is an herbal
liqueur made by the Carthusian Monks near Grenoble, France. According to
the tale, the formula for chartruese was invented by a 16th century alchemist
as an attempt to create aqua vitae (the waters of life.) Aqua vitae was
believed to restore youth to the aged, endow animation to the dead, and
be a key ingredient in the creation of the philosophers stone. Though this
attempt at its creation seems to fall somewhat short of the legendary effects,
it was promoted as a heal-all tonic by the descendant of the alchemist,
and was bequeathed to the Carthusian Order upon his death. This formula
of 130 herbs has been secret for nearly 400 years. Today, only three brothers
of that monestary know how to make chartreuse.

    Charteuse
is made in three varieties; yellow chartreuse, green chartreuse, and VEP
elixir chartreuse. Yellow chartreuse is a pale golden color, extremely
sweet, and tastes roughly like plum wine with a touch of honey, or perhaps
a delicate version of Benedictine (which is probably related.) Green chartreuse
is fiery; the shade of green actually named for this liquor denotes an
intense herbal taste vaguely reminiscent of absinthe. Also like absinthe,
it has an extremely high alcohol content. VEP elixir chartreuse, the rarest
and most expensive kind, sacrifices a small amount of green’s intensity
for all of the sweetness of the yellow. Only 100 bottles of VEP elixir
are produced each year, and it is the variant closest to the original alchemical
formula. It is also, supposedly, the most difficult to create.

    Though
the precise herbs in chartreuse are not publically known, there is a
small quantity of thujone, the active chemical in wormwood (and consequently,
absinthe.) This considered, it is no surprise that the intoxication caused
by chartruese is both stronger than it’s alcohol content (110 proof) would
otherwise indicate, and slightly different because of thujone’s psychoactive
qualities.

    Green
chartreuse is particularly loved in the goth scene because of it’s efficiency;
a very small quantity can maintain a buzz for most of an evening, and a
larger quantity can take the sharp edges off of everything. For many, it
is the poor man’s absinthe; it has a smidgen of its psychotropic effects
because of the thujone, and it has an herbal taste and a sharp kick reminiscent
of absinthe experience. A few shots of green chartreuse, and you’re completely
wasted.

    VEP chartreuse
is loved for these reasons and more; its rarity, its remarkable taste,
and its fascinating and mysterious lineage.

    Yellow
chartreuse is not as popular in the goth scene as its sister liquors; there
is nothing particularly wrong with it, but the others outshine it in every
way.

    Nevertheless,
the popularization of Chartreuse within the goth scene can be attributed
to an additional source; Poppy Z. Brite. In her debut novel, Lost Souls,
she mentions (Green) Chartreuse eight times within the prologue alone,
and is the alcoholic drink of choice among the undead throughout the novel.
Bela Lugosi’s “I never drink… wine” be damned; the zing of Chartreuse
seems potent enough to get a rise out of the dead and the living. Well,
at least Poppy thinks so.

Commentary by Clifford Hartleigh
Low, Thursday, April 30, 1998.