Looks who’s worried about climate change now:

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

‘Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,’ concludes the Pentagon analysis. ‘Once again, warfare would define human life.’

The Center for American Progress offers a useful overview of just how bad Bush’s latest fly-by-night judicial appointee is.

GET-UP votes tonight:

Deirdre Martinez, a GET-UP member who is studying for her Ph.D. in Education, said that she was approached by organizers a couple of weeks ago about the prospect of striking. Martinez, a research assistant and mother of two, said that she plans to vote in favor of a strike tonight and would plan to take part in the walk-out events on Thursday and Friday.

Martinez hopes the action will sway the University’s current stance. “Obviously, when people go on strike they hope to see something changed,” Martinez said. “And in our case, we would like to see the University decide to let the votes be counted and to move forward in a democratic fashion.”

In today’s Daily Pennsylvanian, a member of U Penn’s Undergraduate Support Committee for GET-UP calls on classmates to support the TAs who make their university function. Meanwhile, the paper’s Editorial Board tells graduate students that it feels their pain but admonishes them not to be so “juvenile” and “disruptively zealous.”

Sound familiar?

Good call:

Several Democrats said that what polls have found to be an overwhelming sentiment among Democrats – that the nominee have the ability to unseat Mr. Bush – would prove to be a big obstacle to Mr. Nader.

Bad call:

It also means, Democrats said, that they could bring lawsuits to knock Mr. Nader off state ballots without risking the kind of backlash that typically greets such litigation, often in the form of newspaper editorials and criticism from voters.

I think the Democrats in question would find that many more folks believe in urging candidates whose candidacies they believe will be detrimental not to run than in exploiting institutional power and regressive policy to create legal barriers to others voting for them.

SEIU President Andy Stern:

I also agree that the labor movement has been too much of an appendage of the Democratic Party, and we have not learned to hold politicians accountable — Democratic and Republican alike?

My question: So, how do we hold politicians accountable?

Capital-D, not lower-case d, Democrats:

Protesters at this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Boston may be confined to a cozy triangle of land off Haymarket Square, blocked off from the FleetCenter and convention delegates by a maze of Central Artery service roads, MBTA train tracks, and a temporary parking lot holding scores of buses and media trucks. Under a preliminary plan floated by convention organizers, the ‘free-speech zone’ would be a small plot bounded by Green Line tracks and North Washington Street, in an area that until recently was given over to the elevated artery. The zone would hold as few as 400 of the several thousand protesters who are expected in Boston in late July.

‘The area looks a little silly, to be honest with you,’ said Urszula Masny-Latos, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild’s Massachusetts chapter. ‘People will not be able to express their concerns with whatever will be happening, because no one will have access to delegates. No one will be heard, and the area is just too small.’

Best sign I’ve ever seen held in a “free speech zone”: “If I’m in the free speech zone, where are you?”

From the Times:

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti, Feb. 22: Anti-government rebels today attacked this city, the government’s last major stronghold in the north, and commandeered the police station inside the city, witnesses said. The rebels said they would be in the capital of Port-au-Prince on Monday. In a convoy of 11 jeeps, about 200 soldiers armed with machine guns arrived in Cap-Haitien about 10 a.m., after leaving Gonaives about 3 a.m.

As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, yesterday at Penn’s Trustees’ meeting to approve Amy Guttman as President, “a jolt of student moxie arched trustee spines”:

About 75 graduate students abruptly stood up during the meeting. Over the objections of trustee chair James Riepe, one belted out a harangue that dressed down the trustees for blocking the students’ attempts to unionize…

“You can end this today. Drop your appeal,” Faris said. “If not, we’ll do what we have to do, and we will see you in the streets.”

Not an open forum indeed…

As Zach observes:

Provost Robert Barchi claims that students are being “manipulated and coopted” by unions. Guess it says a lot about his faith in the people who he admits to his grad school and who teach his undergraduates that he doesn’t think they know when they’re being screwed over and when they’re fighting for justice…

Meanwhile, looks like one uber-capitalist (after whom the major library of Penn’s uber-capitalist business school is named) believes that strong unions lead to strong work:

Before the trustee meeting, Jon Huntsman, a philanthropist, chemical company magnate and Penn trustee, approached the row of seated graduate students, shaking every hand, smiling broadly, welcoming them. Later, student organizer Tina Collins said Huntsman told her that his company has thousands of union employees who helped make his company successful.

Funny – Henry Ford said the same thing. How twentieth-century of him…

Just watched Ralph Nader announce his candidacy for President. It was a frustrating, uninspiring interview, sprinkled with ironic moments like Nader describing those concerned that he would throw the election to Bush as the “liberal intelligensia,” his refusal to release his income tax returns, and a near dodge on gay marriage. And his claim that nothing would be any different under Al Gore anyway. This much, of course, is true:

Money is flowing in like never before that sells our elections. What does that mean to the American people? It means that corporations are saying no to the necessities of the American people. They’re saying no to health insurance for everyone, no to tax reform, no to health and safety standards, no to stopping corporate welfare into hundreds of billions, no to straightening out the defense budget, which is bloated and redundant, as many retired generals and admirals said, no to access to our courts. It’s time for people to say yes and we need more civic and political energies inside the campaign to challenge this two-party duopoly that’s trending toward one-party districts all over the country.

But it’s difficult to see a Nader candidacy as anything but a setback for those goals.

A national movement:

This week, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) said he would have ‘no problem’ if Cook County allowed gay marriages. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak (D) has issued a proclamation in favor of treating gay couples the same as heterosexuals. Mayors in Salt Lake City and Plattsburgh, N.Y., also have expressed support for same-sex marriage.

Phoebe reads between the lines of the Herald‘s celebration of departing Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead.