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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Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz, funeral report

This video says about itself:

Jan 15, 2013

The funeral of freedom of information activist Aaron Swartz has been held in Chicago. The twenty-six year old took his own life last Friday after finding himself boxed in by federal prosecutors and facing decades in jail. All this for illegally downloading academic documents. RT talks more about this with Justin Morton, a software engineer who used to work with J-store – an academic database that was also hacked by Swartz.

From the World Socialist Web Site in the USA:

Father of Aaron Swartz indicts US government for son’s suicide

By our reporters

16 January 2013

A funeral for Aaron Swartz was held today at the Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois on Tuesday. The event overflowed with friends, family, collaborators and those who came to pay tribute to the 26-year-old open Internet activist who took his own life late last week.

In remarks delivered at the funeral, Robert Swartz, Aaron’s father, issued a stinging rebuke of the US government. “Aaron did not commit suicide,” he said. “The government killed him. Someone who made the world a better place was pushed to his death by the government.”

At the time of his death, Swartz faced federal felony charges for allegedly downloading millions of academic journal articles from subscription service JSTOR through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the aim of making these articles freely available. Federal prosecutors were demanding prison time, and Swartz faced the prospect of 35 years in prison if convicted in trial. (See, “Open access activist dead at 26”)

Robert Swartz spoke passionately of his son, who he said grew up as a “beacon of light in a world of darkness.” He contrasted Aaron’s principled actions in service of open information access with the criminality of the financial system that crashed the global economy.

Swartz noted that Aaron did nothing legally wrong and yet was persecuted and bullied by the US government. He contrasted the actions of his son with those who did “sketchy or illegal” things in order to make vast fortunes, mentioning Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates.

From a very early age, Swartz played a major role in developing important internet infrastructure, including RSS feeds. A company he founded, Infogami, merged with Reddit, which has since become one of the most popular link aggregating sites on the Internet. Swartz also founded Demand Progress, a group that promotes Internet freedom.

In a document describing his views, written in 2008, Swartz argued that “the world’s scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.” He added that large corporations are opposed to any attempt to make information broadly available, “and the politicians they have bought off back them.”

Friends and family at the funeral spoke of Aaron’s intellectual curiosity, selflessness, emotional sensitivity and deep concern for improving the world. Various speakers spoke of a “light” within Aaron that drew people to him as he sought to hold the world to a higher standard. They spoke of his ability to challenge others and inspire them to solve complex problems, whether technological or social.

Aaron’s partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, recalled a kind, sensitive and creative person. “Aaron wanted so badly to change the world. He wanted it more than money and more than fame,” she said. “Aaron wanted us to see the world as it is,” she said, “even if it was very painful to do so.”

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Stinebrickner-Kauffman said that she “was never as worried about [Swartz] as the last few days of his life, and there’s no doubt in my mind that this wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the overreaching prosecution.” She said that Swartz was particularly distraught by the need to make continual financial appeals from friends and supporters to fund his defense campaign. “He couldn’t face another day of, ‘Have you done this, have you asked people for money.’ I think he literally rather would have been dead.”

Other speakers and collaborators at the funeral spoke of the seriousness that Aaron gave to every subject he sought to understand. He was “wise beyond his years,” said his friend and collaborator Larry Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School.

Aaron’s defense lawyer, Elliot Peters, recollected a young man who looked vulnerable and needed protection, but always became animated and alive when conversations turned to complex subjects. He was pained that Aaron took his life, as he felt that his case could have been won. Peters spoke out against US Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s statement that “stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars.”

Ortiz, the US attorney for the district of Massachusetts and an Obama appointee, along with assistant attorney Stephen Heymann, pushed to get felony convictions against Swartz. In this they were operating at the behest of the Obama administration, which has aggressively pursued opponents of corporate and government control of the Internet.

Even after JSTOR indicated that it had no desire to pursue a case against Swartz, the federal government, with the support of MIT, brought the full weight of the law against him. The excessive charges were accompanied by a refusal to reach any settlement that did not include prison time and a guilty plea on 13 felony counts.

“I said, how about a misdemeanor and probation, and they said it will never happen,” Peters said on Monday. Swartz was adamant about not accepting a felony plea, Peters said, but this meant facing a trial that require enormous financial resources and could ruin his life.

Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to some of those in attendance at the funeral. Kathleen Geier, a writer for Washington Monthly, said, “Aaron was a representative of the best that is in America. He read more than anyone I knew and studied so many different subjects. He was a representative light to us all.”

Peter Eckersley, Technology Projects Director at Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a friend and collaborator of Swartz, said, “It was a terrible loss. We both worked together fighting SOPA and PIPA,” referring to proposed legislation to increase government control over the Internet.

With tears in his eyes, Eckersley said, “A big problem in the US is the out-of-control criminal justice system. I’m from Australia and I find it unbelievable here. You have a system that takes people that do not hurt anyone and puts them in prison.”

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the partner of deceased Internet activist Aaron Swartz, issued a statement on March 10 denouncing the Senate testimony of US Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the Justice Department’s prosecution of Swartz. She also accused the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts of multiple acts of prosecutorial misconduct in its handling of the case: here.

By Cavan Sieczkowski in the USA:

After the tragic suicide of Reddit co-founder and Internet activist Aaron Swartz, hacktivist group Anonymous vowed to derail picketing efforts by the hate-mongering members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who threatened to picket Swartz’s funeral on Tuesday. When members of Anonymous and supporters showed up to block the WBC’s picket line, the quasi-religious group was nowhere to be seen.

Westboro Baptist Church on Sunday announced plans to protest Swarz’s open funeral in a press release titled “GOD H8S Cyber Criminal THUGS.”

Related articles

• ‘Aaron was killed by the government’ – Robert Swartz on his son’s death (rt.com)
• Aaron Swartz’s Father: My Son Was ‘Killed By The Government’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Anonymous Hackers Leak 33GB of Files Allegedly Taken from JSTOR (news.softpedia.com)
• Dad: Aaron Swartz ‘Pushed to His Death by the Government’ (commondreams.org)
• Aaron Swartz, Internet Activist and Pioneer, Eulogized (theepochtimes.com)
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American ratsnakes and climate change

This video from the USA is called 6ft Black Rat Snake.

From ScienceDaily:

Global Warming Beneficial to Ratsnakes

Jan. 8, 2013 — Speculation about how animals will respond to climate change due to global warming led University of Illinois researcher Patrick Weatherhead and his students to conduct a study of ratsnakes at three different latitudes — Ontario, Illinois, and Texas. His findings suggest that ratsnakes will be able to adapt to the higher temperatures by becoming more active at night.

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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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