Urban warfare drills in Chicago, USA

This video from the USA is called Urban Warfare Drill Chicago 2012 Blackhawk helicopters NATO | G8.

The US Department of Defense conducted urban warfare training drills in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park this week, including the use of explosives to train soldiers in the raiding of homes and other structures: here.

Urban warfare exercise in Tinley Park frightens some residents: here.

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Chicago’s Field Museum science threatened

This video from the USA is called Chicago Field Museum of Natural History.

While more and more money is spent on war … oops-a-daisy … “defence” …

From Nature:

Chicago’s Field Museum cuts back on science

Previous expansion projects force the centre’s new president to address shortfalls.

Helen Shen

20 December 2012

After years of financial woes, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, is slashing US$3 million from its annual budget for science operations, which include a $10-million programme for research on the institution’s collection of some 25 million specimens of fossils, plants and animals. Museum president Richard Lariviere unveiled the cuts to museum staff on 18 December as part of a plan to reduce the museum’s total budget by $5 million next year.

For some in the scientific community, the changes signal the end of an era. “It’s one of the great research institutions in comparative zoology, biodiversity and natural history, and it has been one of the leading centres of research for more than 100 years,” says James Hanken, director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “There’s no way the Field Museum will be able to maintain its position of prominence under those circumstances.”

Endowments for museums and universities across the country have been hit hard by the economic recession, but the Field Museum has been pushed to its financial limits in part by recent expansion projects, including the $65-million Collections Resource Center, a storage and laboratory facility that opened in 2005.

More related stories

“We took on a lot of debt, more than we could sustain, to do some really exciting things, but now we’re paying for it,” says Mark Westneat, a Field Museum curator and chair of zoology.

Despite weathering hiring freezes and repeated budget cuts in the past few years, Field Museum scientists are reeling from the latest announcement, which they feel may cut into crucial scientific capabilities.

“We’ve already cut all the fat off the bone,” says Westneat.

The budget cuts will be accompanied by the dissolution, on 1 January, of the 120-year-old institution’s classical academic departments — zoology, botany, geology and anthropology — and by the shuffling of member scientists into a new, leaner organization, broadly titled Science and Education.

No plans have been released about how the cuts will be applied. “There will be staff input on all the recommendations,” says Debra Moskovits, who will head the new organization.

But most scientists believe layoffs and incentivized retirements are likely to have a big role. “Morale is extremely low,” says Peter Makovicky, curator and chair of geology at the Field Museum. “I would imagine that there will be a lot of résumé polishing in the near future.”

At present, the museum employs 168 science staff, 27 of whom are curators — scientists who collect specimens from around the world and maintain research labs to study the museum’s collection. Much like academic professors, some curators are tenured, but others are not.

At the president’s request, Makovicky and other members of a special museum committee have met to decide whether the institution needs to declare ‘financial exigency’ — an emergency status that would allow for layoffs of tenured scientists at the world-class institution.

“To have that put on the table is frightening,” says Corrie Moreau, assistant curator of zoology and one of four ‘pre-tenure’ curators at the museum.

Museum cutbacks are also likely to affect researchers at other universities. At any given time, around 50–60 graduate students from the University of Chicago and other area universities perform dissertation research in the labs of museum curators.

“The Field Museum has some of the world’s authorities on certain insects and certain kinds of fossils,” says Hanken. “If those people no longer have a job, we in the scientific community have lost their expertise.”

Nature, doi:10.1038/nature.2012.12105

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Haymarket, Chicago, USA, 1886

This video from Chicago, USA is called May Day 2011: Thousands Take Part In Haymarket 125th Anniversary Reenactment.

By Rhian E Jones in Britain:

The Haymarket Scrapbook

Edited by Franklin Rosemont and David Roediger (AK Press, £18.95)

Tuesday 13 November 2012

The euphemistically titled Haymarket Affair of 1886 began with a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in support of a strike for the eight-hour day.

The rally’s violent dispersal by police, during which a bomb was thrown and gunfire exchanged, resulted in the deaths of seven officers, at least four civilians and the subsequent arrest, on very scant evidence, of eight anarchists, seven of whom were sentenced to death.

This reissue of the commemorative anthology Haymarket Scrapbook marks 125 years since these events.

Following an updated preface by the radical historian Peter Linebaugh, the book’s first section contextualises what happened at Haymarket Square, recreating the volatile and heavily politicised atmosphere in which the events took place through reproducing hundreds of contemporary documents, speeches, posters and handbills.

Its second section deals with the local and international responses, debates and analysis surrounding the dubious arrests, prosecution and sentencing of the eight “Haymarket Martyrs” and a final section documents the abiding influence of the affair, from subsequent industrial struggles to the Surrealist movement and proto-Brechtian theatre.

The content chosen is diverse and eclectic. It attests to the febrile blend of anarcho-syndicalist, socialist and communist agitation which made up the background to the Haymarket events and emphasises its international and multiracial nature.

The significant part played by women during and after the events is outlined in retrospectives by Carolyn Ashbaugh and contributions from the period by Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons and Eleanor Marx.

On its first publication for the events’ centennial in 1986, the Haymarket Scrapbook provided a source of alternative inspiration for those opposing the dominant paradigms of the era of Thatcherism and Reaganomics.

A quarter of a century on, the neoliberal certainties of the 1980s seem so entrenched that the radical vitality, flamboyance and confidence which pervades these documents can sometimes look like a relic of an irrevocable age – not to mention the contrast between the historical spirit of revolutionary trade unionism and the present constitutional malaise evident in considerable swathes of western workers’ organisation.

The Haymarket Scrapbook nevertheless remains a valuable and engaging tribute and a major contribution to US and international labour history.

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Chicago coyotes faithful to their mates

This video from the USA is called Mama coyote catches large cutthroat trout in Yellowstone.

Courtesy of Ohio State University in the USA and World Science staff:

Street coyotes more faithful than people, study suggests

Sept. 25, 2012

Coy­otes liv­ing in ur­ban areas nev­er stray from their mates—they stay to­geth­er till death do them part, ac­cord­ing to a new stu­dy.

Sci­en­tists say the find­ing sheds light on why the North Amer­i­can cous­in of the dog and wolf, which is orig­i­nally na­tive to deserts and plains, is thriv­ing to­day in metro­pol­is­es.

Re­search­ers with Ohio State Uni­vers­ity who ge­net­ic­ally sam­pled 236 coy­otes in the Chi­ca­go ar­ea over a six-year pe­ri­od found no ev­i­dence of polygamy—of the an­i­mals hav­ing more than one mate—nor of one mate ev­er leav­ing an­oth­er while the oth­er was still alive.

That was true, the sci­ent­ists said, even though the coy­otes live in dense­ly packed pop­ula­t­ions with plen­t­iful of food, con­di­tions that of­ten lead some oth­er mem­bers of the dog family to stray from their nor­mal mo­nog­a­my.

“I was sur­prised we did­n’t find any cheat­ing,” said study co-au­thor Stan Gehrt, a wild­life ecol­o­gist at Ohio State. “Even with all the op­por­tun­i­ties for the coy­otes to phi­lan­der, they really don’t.

“In con­trast to stud­ies of oth­er pre­sumably mo­nog­a­mous spe­cies that were lat­er found to be cheat­ing, such as arc­tic fox­es and moun­tain blue­birds, we found in­cred­i­ble loy­al­ty to part­ners in the study popula­t­ion,” he added.

The re­search ap­pears in a re­cent is­sue of The Jour­nal of Mam­mal­o­gy.

Coy­otes’ loy­al­ty may be a key to their suc­cess in ur­ban ar­eas, Gehrt said. Not only is a fe­male coy­ote nat­u­rally ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing large lit­ters of young dur­ing times of plen­ty, such as when liv­ing in food-rich ­ci­ties, she has a faith­ful part­ner to help raise them all. “If the fe­male were to try to raise those large lit­ters by her­self, she would­n’t be able to do it,” said Gehrt. “But the male spends just as much time help­ing to raise those pups as the fe­male does.”

Smaller treefrogs are more likely to “cheat” their way to a mate, French scientists have found. The team studied the response of differently sized European treefrogs to a chorus of mating calls: here.

Expo Chicago, money and art

This video from the USA is called EXPO Chicago Preview.

By Jeff Lusanne in the USA:

Expo Chicago: Money and art mingle, with little benefit to art

27 September 2012

After a six-year hiatus, Chicago was once again host in 2012 to an international art fair, Expo Chicago. The event was held September 20-23 in the massive Festival Hall at Navy Pier, a tourist destination near the city’s center. One hundred galleries exhibited work in the fair, presenting enough material to easily fill up a day of viewing. Such a presentation offered a unique opportunity to survey the world of contemporary art—and, specifically, its problems and possibilities.

Painting and photography were most widely represented at Expo Chicago, followed by sculpture, drawing and new media.

Two traits quickly made themselves felt. First of all, there is an exciting, seemingly boundless availability of media and formats for artists to work in, including relatively new technologies such as 3D printing (the making of solid objects by adding layers of material), projection and bold methods of material fabrication. In itself, however, this variety of media does not automatically lead to artistically significant or emotionally engaging content.

Secondly, the fair was awash in money, and the brazen commodification of art and the consequences of that process are readily apparent. A substantial amount of artwork is almost insignificant in either its mediocrity or inaccessibility, or both. Some works seem immediately destined for life as decoration in homes or offices, and only the dizzying price tags separate such efforts from the kitsch one finds in a shopping mall gallery.

Thankfully, amid the flurry of commerce and triviality, there is still thoughtful, compelling and fascinating work to be found—although relative to current social and political developments, it seems a pale reflection of life as it is for millions across the world. That said, these are some of the works and artists that stood out.

Works of note

Monumental Failures is a witty, attractive series of small sculptures by the prolific artist David Opdyke, presented by the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery. Each of the 24 pieces features a model-like, finely detailed, grey subject set on a textured tombstone. The Capitol dome, instruments of war old and new, a house, a pipeline, a parking lot and a symbolic eagle are shown to have met their deaths, suggesting each is a relic of history, even as it persists in the present day.

Also on display were a few of the fascinating photographs of industrial processes, nature and economic life by Edward Burtynsky. His decades-long body of work features photographs from around the world offering grand views of monumental subjects—from massive mines in North America to seemingly endless factory floors in China. Those are accompanied by portraits of harrowing working conditions (shipbreaking in Bangladesh) and disturbing environmental effects (mine tailings).

Chicago classical musicians on strike

This music video from the USA says about itself:

Elgar – Nimrod (from “Enigma Variations“)

Daniel Barenboim with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, opening the 1997 season at Carnegie Hall in this gorgeously performed dedication to the recently deceased Sir Georg Solti. Solti was the previous music director of the CSO for many years.

By Kristina Betinis in the USA:

Chicago Symphony musicians walk out

24 September 2012

On Saturday, over one hundred Chicago Symphony Orchestra players rejected the Orchestra Association’s final offer of a three-year concessions contract. The players formed picket lines outside of Orchestra Hall ahead of a scheduled evening performance.

This is the first strike at the CSO in more than twenty years. In 1991, Chicago Symphony musicians were on strike for three weeks.

The players’ contract expired September 16, and negotiations for a new contract took place throughout the summer months.

The issues in the strike center on musicians’ wages and health care costs. A seven percent increase in employee healthcare costs outstrips the proposed pay raises for the years spanned by the contract, in effect cutting the orchestra’s pay. The Chicago Federation of Musicians is asking for pay raises to cover the health cost increases.

Cellist David Sanders, a member of the CSO musicians’ negotiating committee, told the Chicago Classical Review that the players had made concessions in past and current contracts, but that management kept coming back for more. “They’re asking for major concessions,” said Sanders on the picket line Saturday. “It’s thousands of dollars in givebacks. We spent weeks [negotiating and] giving them everything they asked for, and they continue to take away and take away and take away.”

Deborah Rutter, president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, referred to the austerity policies being implemented all over the country, commenting, “They’re doing very well by what the national standard is.”

Earlier this year, Rutter announced a record-breaking year of fundraising for the CSO, whose contributions increased 15 percent to $24 million.

According to a national study of 2008-09 orchestra budgets, 42 percent of total compensation went to executives, while just 17 percent went to players. Orchestra executives generally make annual salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, although Rutter’s current pay isn’t public.

As Sanders suggests, Chicago Symphony Orchestra members have given back thousands of dollars in pay and benefits in recent years. For the last contract in 2009, CSO players accepted a 2.5 percent pay cut and agreed to perform at certain events without pay.

No further contract talks are scheduled. Several upcoming performances may be canceled if the strike continues, including a season opener at Carnegie Hall in New York City, after which Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel was to preside as honorary chairman at a $1,500-per-plate gala dinner to raise funds for Carnegie programs.

The Chicago Symphony, one of the oldest in the US, was founded in 1891 and has a distinguished history. It is generally ranked among the finest such orchestras in the country. In the postwar years, its music directors included Rafael Kubelik, Fritz Reiner and, most famously, Georg Solti, who served in that position for 22 years, from 1969 to 1991. Daniel Barenboim held the post from 1991 to 2006, and Riccardo Muti is the current music director. Significant principal guest conductors have included Carlo Maria Giulini, Claudio Abbado and Pierre Boulez.

The cultural role of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in its home city and nationally, is undeniable. Only a handful of orchestras in the country have the endowment to support a large number of players, composers-in-residence, live performances of new music, a pre-professional civic orchestra and a large library of original recordings. The attack on the Chicago Symphony musicians, following the assault on their counterparts at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2010-11, is an escalation of the war against cultural institutions in the US.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) members voted Tuesday morning to approve a contract settlement reached the previous evening. Orchestra players had been on strike since Saturday over wages and increased health care contributions: here.

The opening of the 2012-2013 concert season has seen a series of lockouts and concession contracts at major symphony orchestras across the US. Musicians in Chicago, Atlanta and Indianapolis have had givebacks imposed on wages or benefits. In Minneapolis, St. Paul, Seattle and Jacksonville, Florida major concessions have also been demanded: here.

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Protest against Boeing war profiteers

This video from the USA is called NATO Chicago Boeing Rally.

Boeing HQ Shut Down by Anti-NATO Summit Protesters to Cap Week of Action. Yana Kunichoff, Truthout in the USA: “On Monday, May 21, the streets in front of Boeing‘s corporate headquarters were eerily similar to those in other countries where Boeing operates its defense business: bodies lying immobile on the ground, armed law enforcement ready to bring out reinforcements and the constant shuttering of media paraphernalia. But the scene wasn’t taking place in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. The bodies on the ground were in downtown Chicago, part of a ‘die-in’ and protest outside of the defense contractor‘s office as part of the week of action against the NATO summit coming to Chicago, and joined by several hundred police officers that were part of the beefed-up enforcement around protests during the summit”: here.

Drone Attacks Can’t Save the G8′s Bacon. Nick Mottern, Truthout: “Many of the G8 countries – comprised of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and Russia – are former colonial powers that have thrived by capturing at gunpoint basic mineral, petroleum and agriculture resources around the world, paying relatively little and thus subsidizing their corporations and their national economies. Right now, the G8 interest in Afghanistan is undoubtedly related to investment potential in minerals, as well as overland routes for oil, gas and electric lines”: here.

Has the FBI Launched a War of Entrapment Against the Occupy Movement?
Arun Gupta, AlterNet: “With the high-profile arrest of activists on terrorism charges in Cleveland on May Day and in Chicago during the NATO summit there, evidence is mounting that the FBI is unleashing the same methods of entrapment against the Occupy Wall Street movement that it has used against left movements and Muslim-Americans for the last decade. Will Potter, who analyzes FBI entrapment plots in his book Green is the New Red, says … ‘There have been many other cases like these in which the FBI had a role in manufacturing the plot itself’”: here.

US veteran: Why I Threw Back My “Global War on Terror” Medal: here.

Is This What Democracy Looks Like? Reflections on Chicago. Molly Knefel, Truthout: “But while we may not be a totalitarian regime, the numerous incidents of police repression surrounding the NATO protests highlighted specific, tangible and important ways in which we do not resemble a truly free country…. It is the nonviolent protest that is condemned as violent; people leave the crowd covered in blood as the ones holding the batons are credited with keeping things peaceful. The question is not necessarily, ‘Is this what a police state looks like?’ but rather, ‘Is this what a democracy looks like?’” Here.

Laura Flanders, The Nation: “Don’t take your eyes off Chicago yet. The NATO protests may be over, but city politics are heating up. Chicago’s Public School teachers are negotiating a new contract, and an impasse could lead to the first teachers strike in the city since 1987. The target of the teachers’ ire is Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a regimen of change that dates back to the days of now Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. A strike before November? Teachers say they are ready for it”: here.

Chicago police attacks peace demonstrators

This video from the USA is called U.S. Army Vets Join With Afghans For Peace to Lead Anti-War March at Chicago NATO Summit.

Thousands March With Veterans for Peace in Chicago; Police Respond With Brute Force. Allison Kilkenny, Truthout in the USA: “Thousands of protesters marched beside Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans Sunday to accompany the vets as they marched, hoping to return their service medals to NATO’s generals…. ‘These medals once made me feel good,’ said [veteran Scott] Olsen, adding, ‘I came back to reality. I don’t like these anymore’”: here.

In Chicago, Afghanistan and Iraq Veterans Put NATO’s Endless War on Trial. Robert Naiman, Truthout: “More than two million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. CNN and Fox can focus on what they want, but you can’t hide the life experiences of two million people indefinitely. Just like there’s nothing that can turn you against gay bashing like being friends with a gay person, there’s nothing that can turn you against wars of choice like being friends with an anti-war veteran who served in combat”: here.

Criminalizing Dissent Is a Travesty to Democracy: Chicago is Only the Latest Example: here.

More NATO Summit Activists Charged; Five Linked by Two Informants. Steve Horn, Truthout: “When push comes to shove, [National Lawyers Guild legal worker Kris] Hermes and the NLG believe ‘Mo’ and ‘Gloves’ are the ‘thread’ among all five activists charged with plotting acts of domestic ‘terrorism.’ ‘The thread between all five was the informants that we believe were provoking criminal activity,’ said Hermes to Truthout. ‘We believe it was the same two informants, which has been ascertained from the arrestees‘”: here.

US Rep. Dennis Kucinich: NATO Talks a Sham: War in Afghanistan Is Not Ending: here.

The US Government Is Running a Massive Spy Campaign on Occupy Wall Street: here.

Melissa Gira Grant, Truthout: “Thursday, members of Occupy Wall Street … filed a federal lawsuit against the city, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty, seeking to hold them accountable for violations of their constitutional rights, as well as subsequent smaller raids that targeted the People’s Library. In the course of the suit, the city may have to admit who called the shots during the eviction on November 15, 2011″: here.

Three of the five men arrested on frame-up “terrorism” charges during protests at the NATO summit in Chicago last month appeared in court Monday: here.

Chicago demonstrates against NATO’s wars

This video from the USA is called Journalists’ Car Raided by Police at NATO Summit Chicago.

Hundreds of Protesters Head to Chicago Mayor’s House to Oppose Health Clinic Closures. Allison Kilkenny, Truthout in the USA: “As hundreds of protesters slowly marched to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s neighborhood in Chicago … the marching protesters were angry and disappointed. Some feared the media’s attention would focus solely on the act of three young men [the NATO 3] instead of the acts of hundreds who were marching to oppose the closings of six mental health facilities all across the city. Hosting NATO will likely cost the city $55 million, and health advocates claim only $2-3 million is needed to keep these facilities open”: here.

“Terrorism Plot” or Entrapment? The Case of the NATO 3. Yana Kunichoff and Steve Horn, Truthout: “NATO 3 has become the moniker for three activists who arrived in Chicago to protest the NATO Summit. They now face charges of ‘conspiring to commit domestic terrorism during the NATO summit.’ Michael Deutsch of the National Lawyers Guild has alleged entrapment and possibly more as the activists charged with terrorism see their first day in court on May 22″: here.

Occupying Different Worlds: NATO and Its Citizens. J.A. Myerson, Truthout: “[Author] Michael Hastings [said]: ‘We’re spending $700 billion a year on defense … We spent $120 billion in 2011 in Afghanistan. The takeaway I got from the protesters was that this money could be better spent at home than on these different foreign policy adventures. The adventures have turned out not to be very beneficial for most Americans or most Afghans either’”: here.

US Veterans to Return Medals as NATO Protesters March: here.

US war veterans tossing medals back at Nato was a heroic act. Nato summit leaders should have been forced to watch the moving protest of the former troops chucking their medals away: here.

Chicago anti-NATO demonstrations

This video from the USA is called Police prepares in Chicago as thousands join anti-NATO demonstration.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

US protesters join forces to say No to Nato

Sunday 20 May 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Thousands of protesters gathered in Chicago on Sunday for a march to the lakeside convention centre where Nato leaders are meeting.

Several hundred demonstrators wound through the US city’s streets for hours on Saturday, testing police who barricaded streets and used horseback officers.

Tense clashes between protesters and police resulted in 18 arrests.

A later march stretched for hours as protesters zigzagged through the city centre, decrying terrorism-related charges levelled against three men earlier in the day.

Organisers pledged a larger crowd as protesters from the Occupy movement joined forces with an anti-war coalition.

“We want the world to focus on Nato – it’s not important and has no mandate any more,” said Occupy Chicago spokesman Micah Philbrook.

Three activists who traveled to Chicago for the summit were accused on Saturday of manufacturing Molotov cocktails in a plot to attack Obama’s campaign headquarters and other targets.

But defence lawyers argued that the police had trumped up the charges to frighten peaceful protesters away.

They told a judge it was undercover officers who brought the firebombs to an apartment in Chicago’s South Side where the men were arrested.

As the Nato mission in Afghanistan winds down after nearly 11 years, the so-called insurgents remain undefeated, corruption runs rife and the peace process is stuck in the mire.

Such is the bleak reality of Afghanistan as Nato leaders met to map their way out of a futile, failing and ultimately unpopular war.

None of the Nato countries have the stomach to pursue the futile war much longer and the only viable option they can conceive of is to leave behind an Afghan army and police force capable of defending its puppet regime against the Taliban and its allies after the Nato combat mission ends in 2014.

That would require no less than $4.1 billion (£2.6bn) a year.

The war has already claimed the lives of at least 3,000 Nato service members and thousands of Afghans.

Support for the war has eroded in Europe and hit a new low in the US, where only 27 per cent say they back the war.

Nato is training a 352,000-member force, but the size is to shrink to about 230,000 sometime after 2015.

England: Anti-war protesters are planning more demonstrations after a hugely successful gathering in London at the weekend in solidarity with mass action in the US against Nato: here.