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: : d u r a : m a t e r : :
Odd bits from a distracted scientist's brain
Chilean Scree
In December of 1996 I travelled to Termas de Chillán, Chile for a meeting as part of the work I was doing at the time for the National Science Foundation. I flew to Santiago, and then took a flight on LanChile to Concepción, where I got a rental car for the drive to Chillán. The drive was quite long, several hours, but it was through country that was beautiful -- Chile always reminds me so much of Colombia that I never mind driving there. Chillán is a largish town in the peneplane of the Andes, laid out in a typical Spanish colonial plan - plaza mayor with a church, the alcaldía, etc. - colored half-walls wish whitewashed tops. I could have been anywhere in Boyacá. A small road lead out of Chillán towards the hot springs, or termas, which I took, and soon left the pavement for a fairly smooth gravel road, which would its way through the foothills towards the mountains. In the distance, as a surreal backdrop to the town, was the volcano of Chillán, a beautiful cone with a snow-capped peak. As is usual at high altitudes, it looked a lot closer than it actually was, because the air is so clear. Slowly, the farm clearings were less frequent, and I realized that the seemingly endless pine forests of Chile were all artificial - they have been replanted with European species to replace the abandoned farmlands of the first wave of settlers that have fled to the cities. The native forests of Chile are starkly different from the pine forests - the first thing that strikes you is the stunning number of different types of trees - and the 'roughness' of the leaf cover. A riot of cellulose, thrown carelessly over the steep hillsides, covered in lichen, moss, and creepers. Among these forests were all sorts of cabins for what I guess were winter (June-July) holiday-makers, who wanted to be near the ski slopes in Termas. As I sped along the road, I saw a dark shape on the road ahead, and quickly realized that it was someone lying in the road, next to a bicycle. I hate to say it, but my first thought was: "ambush," and I brought the car to a slow crawl next to the unfortunate soul - I rolled down the window, and carefully looked at him and at the surrounding trees as I crunched by on the dry gravel. There was no movement - none. He did not look injured, no blood, no scrapes, not even torn clothing, which made me suspicious. I stopped the car, locking my doors, and thought hard about what to do. In the US or Europe, there was no question about what to do. Get out and help. But here... I thought about blowing the horn, and I decided that might help, if not startle the victim, so I sat for several minutes blowing the horn. Nothing. Not from the limp rag on the ground, not from the cabins along the road, not from the dark trees. Finally, I had to leave. What else could I do? I was quite afraid of being attacked, or worse, kidnapped. Perhaps this was Colombian hysteria invading a safe part of Chile, or memories of my Moroccan roadblock experience, but I decided to head off to see if I could find other people to come back with. A few miles farther down the road, I found a police station, and I roused an officer there and told him of what I had found. The police officer headed off back down the road on a horse. I never did find out what happened, but I felt that I had done all I could for the man. I headed on to the Termas and to my meeting, climbing ever higher into the mountains.The Termas are really a cluster of Germanic chalets centered about a set of hot springs. There is a ski complex for which this all serves as a typical base lodge during the winter, with a set of chair lifts etc. The meeting was going well (it had already started by the time I arrived), and I was simply there to give a speech, and not really to take part in many of the discussions, so I had a great deal of spare time. During much of the spare time, people would wander off on some of the many forest trails for walks. Some of these walks were quite strenuous, as they climbed steep mountain trails that headed off to different hot springs, mud baths, and sulphur pits in the area. Again, looming over all this was the volcano, looking ever so much closer. I took several walks, each longer and longer, seeing how high I could climb in the surrounding mountains - several times I got above the clouds, and was able to see for hundreds of miles over the amazing ranges nearby.Each time, I could see that the volcano was actually on the next range over, and that a days' hike would easily bring one to the snow line on the side of the mountain itself. I decided to take the next day and climb at least to the snow line, and to the summit if the time went well. I got up very early, before sunrise, gathered some food, my camera, and put on several layers of clothes. Feeling satisfied that I was ready, I headed off, and drove to the bottom of the path that I had found up at the stem baths, headed past the sulphur vents, past the bubbling mud pits, and up far along the trail, until the car was a tiny green dot, and the base complex was a set of small buildings thousands of feet below. I reached the end of the trail within an hour or so after that, and continued up into the clouds, clambering over rocks that were literally shattered from the daily freezing and thawing they went through at his height. It was a beautifully sunny day, and I soon had to peel off my outer layer to cool down. I had brought along some water and some trail mix, which I carefully rationed out as the day wore on. Even though the marked trail had ended, it was obvious other people had come before me -- small cairns were erected along the faint footpath, and here and there there was the careless litter of other hikers. Soon there was snow covering the ground on the more sheltered parts of the path, and soon I had to pick my way across large sheets of it, punching my feet through the upper crust of ice to get a foothold. Above, always over the next ridge, was the volcano, drifting in and out of the clouds. I picked out my path as I came to higher vantage points, headed in the general direction of a saddle that I could see linking my ridge with the slopes of the volcano.By noon time, I could tell that I would certainly not make it to the summit -- the volcano was a lot larger, and a lot farther away than I had originally judged. What was obvious was that I would be able to make it to the permanent snow line, and cross over to the top of the ski lift, where the rest of the Conference was headed for an afternoon outing. Once they turned on the chair lift for the group. I could easily get home without the exhausting trek back downhill.As I came over one spectacular set of ridges, I could make out that the saddle was now quite close, but below me. The only way this could be so was if there were a set of steep cliffs between my position and the saddle. As I moved sideways several hundred yards to get a better view of the topography in front of me, I realized with dismay that there was indeed a set of steep cliffs on my previous path, and that there was no immediate way to get from the ridge I was on down to the saddle and across to the volcano without climbing down the cliff face, or traversing an enormous scree slope.A scree slope is an interesting feature - as the cliffs weather, pieces of rock splinter off and fall down to form piles of broken rock, ranging from pebbles to pieces just heavy enough not to be able to lift. All of this 'scree' formed a steep slope sitting at the angle of repose that started at the foot of the cliffs and dropped several thousand feet into the valley below. I knew crossing scree slopes was dangerous. I knew doing it alone was doubly dangerous. No one at the conference really knew where I was -- one person did know I was on the volcano, but as I was finding out, it was a very big place to look for a very small person. I could clearly see the chair lift, about a mile away (or so I judged, but I was now questioning all estimates of distance), and I knew that the walk back was difficult. The scree slope was about 800 yards across. To make it worse, the clouds had started to come in, and a stiff wind had started to blow. I pulled the hood of my anorak over my head, and tightened it around my face, sealing out the wind, and decided to cross the scree slope.I slowly started to crawl on all fours, distributing my weight evenly so that I could avoid shifting too many stones. Several times my shoes caught on the sharp edges of the shattered stones, and the disturbed rocks would start to roll, crashing down the slope until they were too far away to see. I made good progress, and was about five hundred yards out on the scree slope when I realized that my blood sugar was getting low, and that I was beginning to get more and more careless.Then I heard, or rather felt, a sound that made my blood freeze. A very low rumble shook the entire slope, and I felt the scree shift underneath me. I began to think about what the angle of repose meant - that the slope was unstable, and that anything - a careless hiker, for example - could set off a massive rock slide. If the scree face shifted, I stood a good chance of going down with it, and being buried and chewed up by the grinding rocks. I very carefully lowered myself onto the rock face and listened. Only the wind whistled by, carrying a few droplets of rain and sleet. I started to shake with fear, and fought rising panic that was tightening around my throat.I knew I had to sit tight, calm myself, and either continue or turn back immediately. A, I thought about you and your mother, and how much I loved you both. I moaned and started to cry as I thought about you growing up without me, never knowing how I had died in the Andes, I thought about my mother, who was so sick and how this would affect her. I desperately wanted some miracle to occur, and to be magically transported away from the scree and back to Virginia.By this time, of course, things were compounding. The clouds had closed in, and the drops had turned into snowflakes - it was now snowing, and I realized that I could no longer see the chair lift, or much of the slope of the volcano. I also knew that the snow was slowly covering up my tracks, and that if it started to snow hard, I stood a good chance of getting lost. I had to make an immediate decision. Trembling, I turned back the way I came, and inched back across what seemed an endless skirt of scree.I don't know how long it took me to get off the slope, and I have since regretted not taking photos of that last part (I think the film had run out), even if it was to leave some scrap of evidence for people to look at if the camera was found. Needless to say, I did make it back down the mountain to the car, and back to the hotel room and my Conference. I haven't gone climbing alone since, and haven't gone near a scree slope, even when with someone else.Labels: Chile, psychology, stories
posted by Paul @ 11:38 PM
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All I want is my two front teeth:
From CBC Radio's "Quirks and Quarks" podcast:Dr. Joy Richmond, Professor of Pediatric Dentistry at UBC, just mentioned that many of the present dental problems are actually caused by our highly processed food.In the past (and as recently as the Dark Ages), our food was quite coarse, containing a lot of grit and abrasive material that ground our teeth down. This wear allowed our teeth to fit better in our jaws. That wear is no longer a factor, and our teeth retain their points much longer than is natural, which causes much more force to torque the teeth each time we chew (or grind our teeth), and it is this that causes much of the crookedness and crowding in modern teeth.This is visible when we look at the statistics of dental problems in ancient skulls - in general, older skulls have fewer dental problems than modern ones (although of course, if you did have problems, they were probably pretty agonizing, since there was little that could be done about it).Labels: biology, evolution
posted by Paul @ 1:05 PM
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Yoda loves it
 I spotted this chocolate bar brand on the shelves yesterday. What an odd name. And before you Star Wars freaks flame me, yes, I know Yoda's hideout was spelled 'Dagobah.' Apparently it is a Sinhalese word for stupa.Labels: advertising, curmudgeon
posted by Paul @ 2:54 PM
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A Theory and a Request
A THEORY OF THE PLANETARY EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH WITH AN EMPHASIS ON ANTARCTICA FOR A GRANTTo whom it may concern, August 29th, 2008 When we get to the National Science Foundation’s website after we utilize this mobile internet we just got today, as we have heard about the foundation on National Public Radio. We are [names removed] and are students at Indiana/Purdue University’s IPFW campus in Fort Wayne Indiana. We approach you however, independent of the Universities’ credentials, because we would like to conduct this idea under our own studies, having access to the professors, staff, information, and equipment that all students who attend do. We have been in attendance in []’s instance since January of 2005, where she is on the brink of more than one minor degree, and a chemistry course away from General Education. Amongst other profound endeavors that is, including these proposals, theoretical hypothesizes, and parenting. We have many calculations and information assembled in this cause, and have written NOAA about the following ideas and have received correspondence from them on this to follow, with links to exceptional maps and data; everything involved of the world. We understand the theories and mechanics needing to be changed, challenged, properly how, citations included, and perhaps how to make lots of noise.Just look at the continents, it is taught in the science courses of elementary school and therefore known that the largest fit back together on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; Greenland, North America, South America, Africa, Europe… There is exceptional movement in the Indian Ocean of Australia and the islands of the pacific. There is the location in the northeastern Euro-Asian continent where a great depression underlain of that was deepest; and then thereby filled by the eastern Euro-Asia landmass, evident by the mountain bunching phenomena that is exclusive to the Northern and Southern Asian complexes. All, over billions of years in those matters indeed. But none have moved as far as Antarctica, having traveled down the pacific basin before the supercontinent separated much, part of that grand cataclysm and wrought out of the Arctic Ocean in the north. This is why the Pacific Floor is so smooth on the ocean floor off the West coast of America; one can view the equilaterally vertical trenches that gape across the horizontal decline from the Arctic Ocean basin to Antarctica multiply in succession and disappear under the Western North and South American continents; among other places crashed open by the cataclysm that laid open the worlds entire surface in and at the many huge cracks over the globe. These are in addition to the oppositional characteristics, as the Atlantic Trench and with the many other fractures certainly provide the evidence of their own existence. It is almost as if the original supercontinent was stamped out of the entire pacific basin originally, then oriented however to then be divided by another cataclysm whereby knocking Antarctica from the Arctic Basin to the South Pole and possibly breaking the supercontinent in two at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Antarctica is broken into three segments of land, the main body, and then conjunctively to the great ice shelves, to a contacting medium land mass, that is also oppositely connected to a third land mass which is small and tail like. The middle mass bares a unique and nearly 180 degree rotation from the affixing coastal point upon the main land mass, and the small tail mass affixes directly towards the main mass, non-rotated. We believe that the opposite side of Antarctica hit hard and fast at the bottom of the Earth, and is rumpled. We feel as though we can discount any contrary geological or geographical evidence that is against this rough theory and since it is stated by us that we are seeking a grant of money to take the time and effort to research and propose a tectonic explanation and descriptive evolution of the general processes that caused this geography to come into is present being as the known surface of the earth. If you would play heavy to us, we will devise the mechanics of the unified fields of the universe, explain gravity, and produce a superior algorithm to define the process of quantitative analysis and resolution that will define the physical structure of numbers as the most efficient process therefore, and show the world the shape of a finite core’s connection that progresses uniformly into higher quantitative fields that will define the universal mechanic in work over the entire universe. This by the definition of the field as was the old definition and applied to thus; while being uniform to many of the rules and laws of Physics. But for now, won’t you supply us a grant for the sake of the planet in the name of Antarctica from the Arctic Ocean? You know, there is a great oval ring of mountains as a crater near 15percent of our planet large, when you generate that which has moved and that which has not moved much at the top of the planet? It is evident by the Aleutians and the northern mountain ranges. What a puzzle indeed. What we desire for the formulation and establishment of the mechanics are around 72,000 dollars for the year in which we would like to conduct our research analysis, and challenges to existing theories. That is 36,000 for each of us for this very year. If there are formalities or greater extrapolations necessary to attain such grants from you, then please forward the appropriate forms and requirements for us to complete. Thank you for you time, and considerations. Sincerely Yours Truly,[names removed...]====I was suitably impressed, but not convinced that this merited an award.Labels: curmudgeon
posted by Paul @ 4:14 PM
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Screen Sharing gone mad:
This is what happens when you screen share from one machine, and then screen share back to the original: The interesting part is that the farther back you go, the farther back in time you are, so it is much like the display of Time Machine itself, with the past receding into the background. As each screen refreshes, it carries its events backwards by one step.This is the first time I have been able to get "Back to My Mac" working through all the various firewalls.
posted by Paul @ 5:15 PM
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Jaque: El bien germina ya
 I am always proud to be Colombian on the 20th of July, but this year it was the 2nd of July that I was most proud of.Well done!Libérenlos ya!Labels: Colombia
posted by Paul @ 10:24 PM
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iPhone 3G
July 11 is the word Hmm. I've held off until now - my current non-iPhone contract is up soon. ...temptation strikes, especially with the push-synchronization features with my Outlook setup at work...USD$199 for an 8 gig model, USD$299 for the 16 gig.More here, at Apple.Labels: Apple
posted by Paul @ 4:08 PM
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Oh crap
Not an e-mail you want to receive:Dear Mr. Fulano,As you may have seen in the Director General’s May 27, 2008 ALDAC “Announcing the 2009 Iraq/Afghanistan Cycle (State 056058)” and in the Secretary’s personal message to the field (link below), the Department has begun recruiting for summer 2009 openings in Iraq. I am writing to inform you that the Department considers you among those particularly well qualified for the key positions listed below and is asking you to seriously consider volunteering for an opportunity to tackle our nation’s top foreign policy priority.20700000 ECON Officer (ESTH) FS-03You are considered well qualified because your record of achievement indicates that you have the skills and experience, as defined by Embassy Baghdad, to be successful in these positions. Information about the Embassy’s criteria as well as the position descriptions for these and other jobs in Iraq can be found on the following website: http://hrweb.hr.state.gov/prd/hrweb/dg/assignment_iraq/.HR/CDA and others will soon be contacting you to discuss further your interest in these positions.The Director General is confident that with your help, and that of others who step forward, we will staff Iraq with volunteers as we have in the past. As noted in the cable, however, the Director General will assess at an appropriate time how best to complete the cycle. If positions remain unfilled, you would be among the pool of qualified individuals potentially subject to identification for one of these positions.[Italics added] In the interest of fairness and transparency, this is something we wanted to communicate to you at the earliest possible point in the assignments process. Again, our goal is 100% volunteers.I will give you a call next week (June 2-6) to discuss more in depth what this might mean for you, but please feel free to contact me sooner if you wish. In the meantime, I urge you to take another look at the ALDAC referenced in paragraph one for details on the Iraq-Afghanistan cycle and the overall timeline for 2009 assignments. If you will be in Washington, I also urge you to attend the upcoming Iraq brown bag event on June 3 and to watch for the upcoming Iraq/Afghanistan Open House as well as other events, including DVCs with selected posts. We will be announcing details about these events soon. I look forward to working with you as you consider stepping forward for one of these critical assignments.Regards, Your Career Development Officer Link to the Secretary’s message:(http://bnet.state.gov/viewClip.asp?clip_id=1148),In accordance with the policies and procedures outlined in Executive Order 12958, this e-mail is UNCLASSIFIED. The passage in italics is the code for "volunteer or else." The only hope for escape from this is to a) quit, b) get pregnant, or c) hope they reach 100% capacity before reaching your name in the list.Labels: Washington DC
posted by Paul @ 3:02 PM
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Colibri:
We saw our first hummingbird of the year today.The male scouts are here, looking for likely sites to nest and for feeding spots. Our feeders have been out for several weeks now, but the hummers are pretty consistently here around the date of last frost, April 15.It will be interesting to watch this date change as the climate shifts:2003: April 212004: April 192005: April 192006: no record2007: no record2008: April 17Not a statistically significant trend, but it bears watching.The harder part is tracking the last bird to leave, in autumn. You have to track every day you do see one, and then as it gets more and more sparse, you eventually give up hope and look up the last day you had a check mark on the calendar. Kind of depressing, compared to the excitement of the first visitor.Labels: biology, climate
posted by Paul @ 11:56 PM
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Who's on first?
These are the types of thoughts that strike a scientist as he showers in the morning: "Hmm. I wonder which properties of numbers are base-independent?" It actually made me drop my soap.Some things, like whether a number is prime, irrational, or whether it is Pi or e or some other property or constant are most likely independent of the base one is working in. We are familiar with, and tend to work mostly in base 10, but perhaps some of these numbers would look different in other bases? Is there a base in which numbers have different properties? What about irrational bases? Can you have imaginary number bases?I pondered these questions as I lathered up what is left of my hair, and it occurred to me that certain properties of numbers are actually only psychological, and not rooted in number theory at all.Here's an example from the news: the famous 'milestone' reached recently of 4,000 U.S. military casualties in Iraq. Four thousand is significant to us because it represents a round thousands number, like 1,000 2,000 3,000 et cetera. In this particular case, the 4,000 was being portrayed as a psychological breaking point for the will of the American public to keep fighting (more on death tolls from different events in a future post).However, it turns out that 4,000 has only a psychological significance, rather than a truly numerical one, because just what is it about 4,000 that intrinsically makes it different from 3,999 or 4,001? After all, it's only when it is written in base 10 that it looks this way. In hexadecimal, or base 16, a system just as valid as base 10, that number looks like FA0, which is not particularly significant next to 3,999 and 4,001, which look like F9F and FA1 in hexadecimal. In fact, in hexadecimal, the psychologically significant numbers 1000, 2000, 3000 turn out to be (in base 10): 4,096, 8,192 and 12,288, which don't look very interesting at all to us base-10 biased folk.So it turns out that certain things about numbers depend on which base you are using. Those things which are fundamental (like being prime), are independent of the base being used to represent the number itself. If the property depends on the base being used, that's probably a good sign that the property is not intrinsically part of formal number theory (but I'd love to be proved wrong).So we could fully expect, on that auspicious day where we met an alien species with a different number of digits (fingers), that they would have a completely different set of psychologically significant numbers, because it is likely that they would count in a different base. It occurred to me that the more fingers they had, the more difficult they would be to defeat in battle, because it would take more 'kills' to reach their psychological breaking points!Anyway, that was enough science fiction, and by this point I was towelling off anyway.We have lots of these psychologically significant number categories floating around: centuries, decades, dozens (an example of working in a non-base 10 system), and the famous pricing strategy of leaving something at one cent below (e.g. "ON SALE FOR ONLY $2.99!!!" etc. etc.).It was now time to adjust my bowtie, and go off and count my eggs before they hatched, and decide whether the count was significant or not.Labels: mathematics, psychology
posted by Paul @ 10:46 PM
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SC or CA, SC or CA? Hmm...
A friend of mine from Charleston South Carolina asked me recently whether she should buy some farm property in California. She was worried about living in an earthquake zone.I spoke to her for a bit about simply being prepared for hazards, etc. but what I should have recalled is that Charleston itself is an earthquake zone. In fact, the August 31, 1886 Charleston earthquake is the largest historical earthquakes on the East coast, and was felt as far away as Toronto and Cuba. It's estimated that it was somewhere between 7.3 and 7.6 in magnitude. Here's a historic photo of some of the damage on Tradd Street in Charleston: What I should have done was guided her to some of the Geological Survey resources:Earthquake Hazards 101Earthquake Probability Map ToolLabels: earthquakes
posted by Paul @ 2:11 PM
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Zip... ...zoom!
A clever fellow in Germany, Till Kredner, who co-authors the great website All the Sky, has a a great clip of the Jules Verne transport vehicle and the space station passing over Hohenzollern Castle.It's greatly sped up, and the smaller, dimmer Jules Verne ATV is in front of the International Space Station (ISS). You can just catch an airplane as it passes 'near' the departing and much brighter ISS.The ATV is now docked to the ISS, and will remain there for many weeks. It's used to take supplies up, boost the orbit of the ISS, and take garbage away.Labels: astronomy, NASA, rockets, Russia, satellites
posted by Paul @ 4:01 PM
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MS Word Misery:
Here's the latest puzzling message from the engineers in Redmond: My question is simple: "Isn't that what templates are for?"Sheesh. Yet another mis-categorized document in my files. Thanks guys, it's not as if I need any help in making messy filing systems.Labels: software
posted by Paul @ 1:09 PM
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Legitimacy in Exchange for Mistreated Hostages:
My translation of an article from Madrid's El País newspaper. The Author is Joaquín Villalobos, who was a leader of El Salvadorean guerillas during the 1980's and 90's.January 16, 2008When I began to learn about the Colombian conflict, I found it hard to believe that the FARC commanders travelled around in air-conditioned cars, and that their camps had many comforts. I was also surprised that some of their commanders were so evidently overweight. Whereas the Salvadorean civil war could be explained by an excess of power of the State, the Colombian conflict is essentially explained by the weakness of the State in controlling its own territory. Colombia has places where there has been no government for over forty years. This vacuum has been filled by paramilitaries, guerillas, drug traffickers, and bandits who have become the default authorities before the indifference or under the consent of the government.As Salvadorean guerillas, we fought for each square metre of our small country against authoritarian governments who were militarily supported by the United States. In Colombia, the FARC have been a sedentary guerilla force, who without much fighting were able to control extensive territory in which there was no government. They have spent forty-three years in the mountains, and some of their leaders have died of old age. Even so, in Colombia the April 19th Movement (M-19) was the first Latin American guerilla group that, at a price of many dead, negotiated democratic political reforms. Now, the M-19, as part of the Alternative Democratic Pole [a legitimate political alliance], is the second largest political force in the country. That is to say, that in Colombia the left could win the next elections, as has already occurred in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.There are those who continue to see Latin America as a set of banana republics in which political violence is legitimate. The map, the times, and money from cocaine coincided with the increase in violence of the FARC during the 1990's. Prior to this, they were a lazy insurgency, and as such, had little relevance. In 1990, after the death of their political leader Jacobo Arenas, the FARC was left without ideological guidance against the proliferation of coca plantations in their territory. They began by practicing extortion on the drug traffickers and ended up the owners of the largest cocaine production facilities in the world. Their journey took them from being the newest Latin American political guerilla force to being the first irregular drug trafficking army, and becoming a real threat to the Colombian State.The governments of the last twenty years had to reverse the weakness of the State and to correct past abuses. First, they agreed to peace with the political insurgencies, then they broke up the large drug cartels that Pablo Escobar had led, followed by successful efforts to combat the culture of violence, and finally they began to recuperate control of terrain. The government proposed negotiations with the FARC which failed, due to the kidnapping of twelve Congress members who were executed in June of 2007. The strength of the Army and Police were increased and these forces were permanently mobilized into the 1,120 municipalities of Colombia. They began to fight and demobilize the paramilitary forces. The guerilla leaders lost their air-conditioned cars and their camps with refrigerators. Cornered, the FARC turned to terrorism. One hundred and seventeen citizens died taking refuge in Bellavista church when it was destroyed by the FARC; a car-bomb with 200 kg of explosives demolished a club in Bogotá full of families -- this type of thing became routine, and the numbers of civilian dead and wounded mounted into the thousands. Despite this, the violence of the FARC is currently decreasing, and during 2007 they were unable to seize any towns now controlled by the State. Their fighters are demobilizing in large numbers (2,400 in the last year alone), and there is public evidence that some guerilla leaders are enjoying their lost comforts in Venezuelan territory.The FARC have no future as guerillas, although they do have one as drug traffickers. The immense Colombian jungle allows them to keep the hostages they kidnapped in the past, and to use them as their last pieces of political ammo. The harsh conditions in which they keep them are evidence of their own demoralization and loss of control; they didn't even know where they were holding baby Emmanuel. The FARC has made kidnapping, extortion and drug trafficking its principal activities. It is now the largest hostage-taking operation on the planet.An insurgency negotiates from a position of legitimate political demands or from the military strength it projects, but to demand legitimacy in exchange for mistreated hostages threatened with death is the moral equivalent of asking for respect because you are an evildoer. Anti-neoliberalism cannot justify exploiting the pain of the hostages' families. If Chávez were only helping to save hostages it would be positive, but his political recognition of the FARC has revived Colombian violence, opens the doors of his own country to cocaine, and makes him into the protector of cruel drug traffickers.An interesting taunt from Villalobos, a "comrade in arms" to the original FARC movement. I have written about the rise of the cartels and the corrupting influence of the drug trade on all aspects of Colombian society before.What you should realize, as you sit in your safe countries abroad, are two things: I have endangered myself and my family by posting these things, and second, that these thugs are also settling quite nicely into properties they buy in Europe and the United States, and working their way into the established "mara" system. Good luck getting rid of them.Labels: Colombia, governance
posted by Paul @ 9:50 AM
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