Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich arrested for trying to sell senate seat vacanted by now Mr. President Obama

CHICAGO - Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich embarked on a "corruption crime spree" and tried to benefit from his ability to appoint President-elect Barack Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate, federal officials said.

Rod Blagojevich

At a news conference in Chicago on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called it a sad day for the citizens of Illinois and alleged that the governor tried to "auction off" the Senate seat "to the highest bidder."

Blagojevich had been arrested hours earlier and was released later in the day after posting a $4,500 bond.

A 76-page FBI affidavit said the 51-year-old Democrat was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps over the last month conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife, Patti. Fitzgerald said federal investigators bugged Blagojevich's campaign offices and placed a tap on his home phone.

Obama

In Illinois, the governor selects a successor when there is a mid-term Senate vacancy. Obama resigned from the Senate soon after winning the Nov. 4 presidential election. With the governor's arrest, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, Jr., said he will call the Senate back in session in order to create a special election for the U.S. Senate seat.

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Must read following Ultra SHOCKING article
mindlessly copied from The Smoking Gun:

The criminal complaint filed today against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich contains a remarkable section detailing the Democratic politician's alleged attempt to cash in on his ability to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. Attached to the U.S. District Court complaint is an FBI affidavit, excerpted below, alleging that Blagojevich was caught on wiretaps noting that the Senate seat "is a fucking valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing." He was also recorded saying that unless "I get something real good," he would appoint himself to the vacancy. "I'm going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I'm saying. And if I don't get what I want and I'm not satisfied with it, then I'll just take the Senate seat myself." According to surreptitiously recorded conversations, Blagojevich spoke with associates about the possibility of trading the Senate post for either an ambassadorship or a Cabinet post. The politician, according to the affidavit sworn by FBI Agent Daniel Cain, "analogized his situation to that of a sports agent shopping a potential free agent to various teams." During a wiretapped November 10 call, a frustrated and financially strapped Blagojevich referred to Obama as a "motherfucker" and said that he would not appoint an ally of the President-elect to the Senate vacancy if "I don't get anything." Referring to Obama, Blagojevich exclaimed, "Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him." In a November 11 conversation, Blagojevich remarked that he knew Obama wanted Valerie Jarrett, a longtime confidante, to succeed him, "but they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them." Blagojevich, 51, and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested this morning on political corruption charges. While the affidavit does not specifically name the six prospective Senate candidates discussed by Blagojevic, Harris, and the governor's aides, it appears that several are easily identified. "Senate Candidate 1" is Jarrett. "Senate Candidate 2" is Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Emil Jones, an Illinois state legislator, is "Senate Candidate 5." [The Chicago Tribune and ABC News are reporting that "Senate Candidate 5" is Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.] And "Senate Candidate 6" appears to be J.P. Pritzker, a wealthy Chicago businessman. Additionally, Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, is referred to in the affidavit as "President-elect Advisor." (21 pages)

Click here to read the full detailed 21 paged article

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Click here to read the Blagojevich criminal complaint (PDF)

*************** Thanks for reading this article **********

meat eating increases GLOBAL WARMING - eat less meat, dairy products to save the earth's environment from buring out

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has estimated that meat production accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are generated during the production of animal feeds, for example, while ruminants, particularly cows, emit methane, which is 23 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide. The agency has also warned that meat consumption is set to double by the middle of the century.

Last year a major report into the environmental impact of meat eating by the Food Climate Research Network at Surrey University claimed livestock generated 8 per cent of UK emissions. It also said vegetarian diets that included lots of milk, butter and cheese would probably not noticeably reduce emissions because dairy cows are a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas released through flatulence.

Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases****, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation, and smarter production methods, including improved animal diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, are urgently needed, according to a new United Nations report released today.

The breakthrough came in 2006 when the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published a study, Livestock's Long Shadow, showing that the livestock industry is responsible for a staggering 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

soy

This is only the beginning of the story. In 2008, Brazil announced that in the 12 months to July it had lost 12,000 sq km of the Amazon rainforest, mainly to cattle ranchers and soy producers supplying European markets with animal feed. There is water scarcity in large parts of the world, yet livestock-rearing can use up to 200 times more water a kilogram of meat produced than is used in growing wheat. Given the volatile global food prices, it seems foolhardy to divert 1.2bn tonnes of fodder - including cereals - to fuel global meat consumption, which has increased by more than two and half times since 1970.

cattle ranchers in a cattle livestock

Vegetarians have been around for a very long time - Pythagoreans forbade eating animals more than 2,500 years ago - but even as the environmental evidence mounted, they didn't appear to be winning the argument. Today in Britain just 2% of the population is vegetarian.

Thankfully, a more pragmatic alternative to total abstinence now seems to be emerging. Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a vegetarian himself, called on people to take personal responsibility for the impacts of their consumption. "Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there," he said. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity." Pachauri said diet change was important because of the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals. It was relatively easy to change eating habits compared to changing means of transport, he said. In an interview with Supreme Master Television , Dr. Pachauri shared that he wasn’t always a vegetarian until he realized the detrimental environmental impact of the raising of livestock for human consumption.

This week the Belgian city of Ghent met his demands by declaring Thursday a meat-free day. Restaurants, canteens and schools will now opt to make vegetarianism the default for one day a week,and promote meat-free meals on other days as well. This is not the first institutional backing for such a move. In Britain, the country's health service (NHS) now aims to reduce its impact on the environment partly by "increasing the use of sustainably sourced fish and reducing our reliance on eggs, meat and dairy." Last year, Camden council in London announced that it would be issuing a report calling for schools,care homes and canteens on council premises to cut meat from menus and encourage staff to become vegetarian. (In the end the initiative was shot down by Conservative councillors who insisted that people should not be deprived of choice.) While in Germany the federal environment agency in January called on Germans to follow a more Mediterranean diet by reserving meat only for special occasions. These initiatives may sound novel, but in fact they reinstate what was for centuries an obligatory practice across Europe. The fasting laws of the Catholic church stipulated that on Fridays, fast days, and Lent, no one could eat meat or wine; on some days, dairy products and fish were also banned. Even after the Reformation Elizabeth I upheld the Lenten fast, insisting that while there was no religious basis for fasting, there were sound utilitarian motives: to protect the country's livestock from over-exploitation and to promote the fishing industry (which had the ancillary benefit of increasing the number of ships available for the navy). Towards the end of the 18th century, two consecutive bad harvests in Europe created shortages. There was a huge public clamour for the wealthy to cut down on their meat consumption in order to leave more grain for the poor. The idea that meat was a cruel profligacy became current, and led Percy Bysshe Shelley to declare that the carnivorous rich literally monopolised land and food by taking more of it than they needed. "The use of animal flesh," he said, "directly militates with this equality of the rights of man."

In the wake of last year's food crisis and with mounting concern over global warming, we appear to have reached a similar crisis moment.

Rajendra Kumar Pachauri**

The vegetarian argument is complicated, however, by the fact that in terms of environmental impact, no two pieces of meat are the same. A hunk of beef raised on Scottish moorland has a very different ecological footprint from one created in an intensive feedlot using concentrated cereal feed, and a wild venison or rabbit casserole is arguably greener than a vegetable curry. Likewise, countries have very different animal husbandry methods. For example, in the US, for each calorie of meat ordairy food produced, farm animals consume on average more than 5 calories of feed. In India the rate is a less than 1.5 calories. In Kenya, where there isn't the luxury of feeding grains to animals, livestock yield more calories than they consume because they are fattened on grass and agricultural by-products inedible to humans. In a paper published in April in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, food ecologist Annika Carlsson-Kanyama showed that kilo for kilo, beef and pork could produce 30 times more CO² emissions than other protein rich foods such as beans. On the other hand, the paper also indicated that poultry and eggs had much lower emissions than cheese, which was among the highest polluters. So do meat-free days, and arguments for vegetarianism in general, take adequate consideration of these subtleties, or should we all be chucking out the cheese and going vegan?

The group has called for governments to lead campaigns to reduce meat consumption by 60 per cent by 2020. Campaigners have also pointed out the health benefits of eating less meat. The average person in the UK eats 50g of protein from meat a day, equivalent to a chicken breast and a lamb chop - a relatively low level for rich nations but 25-50 per cent more than World Heath Organisation guidelines. The IPCC among other bodies, has called for an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Since high levels of meat and dairy consumption are luxuries, it seems reasonable to expect livestock production to take its share of the hit. For rich western countries this would mean decreasing meat and dairy consumption to significantly less than one tenth of current levels, the sooner the better.

Aside from the dangerously high levels of greenhouse gases released in the atmosphere due to factory farms, there’s also the destruction of habitats and the clearing of forests for grazing. Thousands of acres in the Amazon had been destroyed for this reason.

Click here to view the facts on destruction of rainforests

The clearing of forests also have other ramifications. According to Jocelyn Stock Andy Rochen:
“To understand why deforestation is such a pressing and urgent issue, forests must first be given credit for what they bring to global ecosystems and the quality of life that all species maintain. Tropical Rainforests presently give a place to call home for 50% - 90% of all organisms, 90% of our relatives, the primates, and 50 million creatures that can live no place but the rich rainforests (World Rainforest Movement 16). Not only are other species at risk, but the human race also benefits from what the trees give. From something as minor as the spices that indulge food to life giving medicines, the rainforests amplify and save lives.” In short, we’re pretty much shooting ourselves in the foot by the way we disregard nature and the environment. 500,000 hectares vanished in a single week. At the rate we’re going, there may not be too many forests left.

**Rajendra Kumar Pachauri (born August 20, 1940, Nainital, India) is an economist who has served as the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002. Pachauri is the director general of the The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, an institution devoted to researching and promoting sustainable development and the chancellor of TERI University. He is also the chairman, governing council of the National Agro Foundation (NAF), as well as the chairman of the board of Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society. He was recently awarded the second-highest civilian award in India, the Padma Vibhushan in January 2008 as well as the Padma Bhushan in January 2001. On December 10, 2007, Dr. Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, along with co-recipient Al Gore.

***The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The panel was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.

****Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. The greenhouse effect is the heating of the surface of earth due to the presence of an atmosphere containing gases that absorb and emit infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases, which include water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane, are almost transparent to solar radiation but strongly absorb and emit infrared radiation. Thus, greenhouse gases trap heat within the surface-troposphere system.

interview of Osama bin Laden's wife by british magazine Al-Majallah

The world's media have struggled to find out about Osama bin Laden's personal life. Now a London magazine, Al-Majallah, has scooped them all by tracking and interviewing one of his wife identified only as AS.

She agreed to talk but laid down several conditions. For security reasons, she did not want to be photographed or have her location revealed.

AS spoke calmly and confidently. She lives in a modest house and acts unpretentiously. Following is the text of the interview:

Nasr: First of all, how was your life with Osama?
AS: During my life with him, he used sometimes to come home late at night and lie down alone on his bed for long hours. He did not like anybody to talk to him.
He became angry if I tried to talk to him and I would therefore leave him alone. He used to sit and think for a long time and sleep very late. He did not sleep for more than two or three hours. Though he was beside me, I sometimes felt lonely. During the last period, he was constantly worried and looked tired and exhausted due to lack of sleep, to the extent that most days he was taking medicine and sleeping pills to help him go to sleep.
Nasr: Did you live with his other wives in one house? How did he treat you and them?
AS: No, we did not live in one house. Each wife lived in her own house. There were two wives in Kandahar, each with her own house. The third wife had a house in Kabul, and the fourth in the Tora Bora mountains.
He used to come to me once a week. His wives met only once every month or two when he came to us or sent one of his sons to take us to the house of one of us. We met most often in the house of Umm-Awad. He always warned me against going into town alone and used to say that if I needed anything I could send one of the children to buy what I wanted.
During the last period, he used to speak less to me and I used to spend my time at home, because he prevented me from going outside and used to say that if I went out, harm might come to me. At a later stage, he used to come to me only once every two or three weeks and say he was busy, had some problems, and was in constant meetings with Mullah Omar and the Taliban leaders. Even when he wanted to travel to another area, he did not tell anybody, contrary to the past, when he used to take one of us with him when he travelled.
Nasr: How was the house that you lived in and what kind of food did Osama like?
AS: My house was a very modest one that looked like a simple village house. As for food, Osama liked bread, yoghurt, honey and dates. He rarely eats meat.
Nasr: When he prevented you from going out, was he concerned about you from, for example, the Taliban men?
AS: He told me one time that he was very worried and feared that the Taliban men might turn against him and seek to get rid of him and that the United States might pay one of them money to get rid of him. He also told me he had some differences with Mullah Omar and the Taliban leaders and that they were trying to harass him because they probably did not want him to continue to live with them any more.
Nasr: Who were the closest people to him?
AS: He always used to talk about Mullah Omar, Sulayman Abu-Ghayth [al-Qaida's official spokesman] and Abu-Hafs [an alias for Mohamed Atef, Bin Laden's friend and military planner, killed by US bombing in Afghanistan], and say they have determination and patience. He used to take one of them with him most of the time whenever he wanted to travel.
Nasr: Did he have heavy protection?
AS: He had a large group of soldiers, tribesmen and young Arab mojahedin, and a number of vehicles that he travelled in with them.
Nasr: Did Osama speak to you about his intention to attack the United States?
AS: He did not talk about this at all. He used to talk about America's hegemony and its cooperation with Israel. He always told me that he had a big plan and that he had dedicated himself to confronting them. He used to tell me that the United States was humiliating the Arabs and that he had a large group of young mojahedin who hated the United States and were willing to fight jihad against it.
Nasr: How did Osama reply to the US accusations that he was behind the bombing of its embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam?
AS: I heard him say more than once that the United States is his first enemy, that it is trying to throw its problems and what is happening to it on to our region, that it is pursuing him, trying to kill him and to get rid of him. He said the United States deserves this and even more and that some youths have been guided by God to teach America a lesson.
Nasr: Did you ever ask him whether he was behind these attacks?
AS: No.
Nasr: Why?
AS: He did not like to talk to me about these issues. He was angry with me when I tried to ask him, and told me not to discuss these matters with him ever again.
Nasr: How did he divide his time between his houses, his businesses and the al- Qaida organisation?
AS: He used to come home once a week. He managed his commercial businesses most of the time with a group of employees.
Nasr: In what business fields was he involved?
AS: Trade and construction. He always spoke about his companies that were doing building and roadworks with a large group of charities that were helping the poor and needy among the Afghan people.
Nasr: When was the last time you saw Osama and how was the meeting?
AS: The last time I saw him was before the September events. He came to the house, gave me a telephone and told me to call my family and tell them we were going somewhere else and that there would be no news of me for a long time.
Nasr: Did he tell you about the place you were going to? Did you actually call your family?
AS: Yes, I called my mother and told her that. But he did not tell me where we were going. He prepared a vehicle and ordered me to go with one of his sons and some escorts to an area in the south near the border with Pakistan, which I did not know before. We arrived in the house of a tribesman.
Several days later, we heard about the explosions in the United States and that the latter had declared war on Osama and the Taliban. When the US bombing of Afghanistan started, we moved to a mountainous area with some children and lived in one of the caves for two months until one of his sons came with a group of tribesmen and took us with them. I did not know that we were going to Pakistan until they handed us over to the Pakistani government.
Nasr: Is it true that Osama had kidney pains and suffered from kidney failure?
AS: He always suffered from kidney and stomach pains. He told me once that he was going to Pakistan for treatment.
Nasr: When did he tell you this?
AS: Nearly two months before the September events.
Nasr: Has Osama contacted you from your departure from Afghanistan to this day?
AS: He has not contacted me at all.
Nasr: Do you believe he was killed?
AS: I feel deep inside me that he is still alive. If he had been killed then the entire world would have known about it because Osama's death is not something that can be concealed.
Nasr: If Osama were still alive, where would he be now? Did he possibly leave Afghanistan?
AS: He never spoke to me about his intention to leave Afghanistan and always wished to die there. He told me once that if he ever left Afghanistan it would be to meet his Creator.
Nasr: Did he have any particular hobbies?
AS: Hunting. He used to hunt with a group of friends on Fridays.
Nasr: Do you regret marrying Osama because, in the world's view, he has become a terrorist?
AS: I do not feel regret because everything is willed by fate and divine decree. I do not think he is a terrorist as the west is depicting him.
Nasr: You have sons from Osama bin Laden. How do you view their future?
AS: I will teach them righteousness and the divine path. I am not worried about them because we accept what is written and fated by God Almighty. We cannot repel what is willed by fate and divine decree.
Nasr: If Osama bin Laden does appear again and asks you to return to Afghanistan, or wherever he is, will you agree?
AS: Let us wait and see what happens.
Nasr: When the Taliban banned schools and kept the religious ones only, did Osama's children study? What did they study?
AS: They had private tutors who taught them the English and Arabic languages, mathematics and sciences. They also trained them to use the computer.

** Reprinted by kind permission of Al-Majallah magazine. ** Translation by BBC Monitoring. BBC Monitoring selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.

** Interviewer : Khalid Nasr

** About this article : Interview with one of Osama bin Laden's wives. This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 01.39 GMT on Friday 15 March 2002. It appeared in the Guardian on Friday 15 March 2002 on p4 of the Comment & features section. It was last updated at 01.39 GMT on Friday 15 March 2002.

"Iraq War Ends" - says "New York Times" ??

New York: The U.S. Defence Department on Wednesday declared the end of the Iraq war and the immediate withdrawal of all troops, prompting an admission from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the Bush administration had known all along that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, according to the “New York Times.”

Sorry, folks, the Iraq war isn’t over (sob sob !!), at least not yet. In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed thousands of free copies of a spoof edition of The New York Times on Wednesday morning at busy subway stations around the city, including Grand Central Terminal, Washington and Union Squares, the 14th and 23rd Street stations along Eighth Avenue, and Pacific Street in Brooklyn, among others. The spurious 14-page papers — with a headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS” — surprised commuters, many of whom took the free copies thinking they were legitimate. The paper imagines a liberal utopia of national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, a national oil fund to study climate change, and other goals of progressive politics. Dated July 4, 2009, and boasting the motto “All the news we hope to print” in a twist on the daily’s motto “All the news that’s fit to print,” the fake paper looks forward to the day the war ends, and envisages a chain of events that would be manna from heaven for American liberals. In one story ExxonMobil is taken into public ownership, while in another evangelicals open the doors of their mega-churches to Iraqi refugees.

The hoax was accompanied by a Web site (click here to visit the spoof site) that mimics the look of The Times’s real Web site (click here to visit the original site) . A page of the spoof site contained links to dozens of progressive organizations, which were also listed in the print edition. (A headline in the fake business section declares: “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.” Uh, sure.)

The Associated Press reported that copies of the spoof paper were also handed out in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, and that the pranksters — who included a film promoter, three unnamed Times employees and Steven Lambert, an art professor — financed the paper with small online contributions and created the paper to urge President-elect Barack Obama to keep his campaign promises. Software and Internet support were provided by the Yes Men, who were the subject of a 2004 documentary film. `Yes Men` issued a statement about the prank, stating, in part: "In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street."

Original NYTimes Website

There is a history of spoofs and parodies of The Times -> Probably the best-known is one unveiled two months into the 1978 newspaper strike. A whole cast of characters took part in that parody, including the journalist Carl Bernstein, the author Christopher Cerf, the humorist Tony Hendra and the Paris Review editor George Plimpton. And for April Fool’s Day in 1999, the British business executive Richard Branson printed 100,000 copies of a parody titled “I Can’t Believe It’s Not The New York Times.” A 27-year-old Princeton alumnus named Matthew Polly, operating a “guerrilla press” known as Hard Eight Publishing, edited that 32-page spoof of the newspaper.

Spoof of NYTimes Website