  The Contractor Renormalization group formalism (CORE) is a real-space
renormalization group method which is the Hamiltonian analogue of the Wilson
exact renormalization group equations. In an earlier paper\cite{QGAF} I showed
that the Contractor Renormalization group (CORE) method could be used to map a
theory of free quarks, and quarks interacting with gluons, into a generalized
frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet (HAF) and proposed using CORE methods to
study these theories. Since generalizations of HAF's exhibit all sorts of
subtle behavior which, from a continuum point of view, are related to
topological properties of the theory, it is important to know that CORE can be
used to extract this physics. In this paper I show that despite the folklore
which asserts that all real-space renormalization group schemes are necessarily
inaccurate, simple Contractor Renormalization group (CORE) computations can
give highly accurate results even if one only keeps a small number of states
per block and a few terms in the cluster expansion. In addition I argue that
even very simple CORE computations give a much better qualitative understanding
of the physics than naive renormalization group methods. In particular I show
that the simplest CORE computation yields a first principles understanding of
how the famous Haldane conjecture works for the case of the spin-1/2 and spin-1
HAF.
