Putin Agrees to Be Protégé’s Prime Minister

newyork times
Published: December 18, 2007

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin said Monday that he intended to become prime minister next year, ensuring his dominance of the Russian government even after his term ends.

Mr. Putin told a meeting of his party, United Russia, that he had accepted an offer from his close aide, Dmitri A. Medvedev to move to the prime minister’s office if Mr. Medvedev wins the presidency in March, which is highly likely.

“If our people will trust Mr. Medvedev and elect him the new president of the Russian federation, I will be prepared to continue our joint work — in this case, in the position of premier of the government,” Mr. Putin said.

The announcement ends a carefully choreographed power transition that began in October, when Mr. Putin first suggested that he would find a way to retain influence after his term ended, and culminated last week when he endorsed Mr. Medvedev for the presidency, and Mr. Medvedev in turn said he wanted Mr. Putin to be prime minister.

Mr. Putin in his speech called Mr. Medvedev — who is a first deputy prime minister and chairman of Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly — “an exceptionally honest, decent man.”

“We should not be ashamed or frightened to deliver the main levers of control over the country, the fate of Russia, into the hands of a man like him,” Mr. Putin said.

Mr. Putin cannot run for a third consecutive presidential term because of constitutional term limits, which he has vowed not to change.

But the move on Monday raised the prospect that at some point in Mr. Medvedev’s term, Mr. Medvedev could step down, which would propel Mr. Putin, as prime minister, back to the presidency. A special presidential election would then be held, in which Mr. Putin could run.

The president is far more powerful in Russia than the prime minister, but Mr. Putin said Monday that he would not seek to change the formal authority of either office.

Still, given that Mr. Medvedev has never held an elected office and has spent almost his entire career as Mr. Putin’s deputy, it seems highly likely that after the election, Mr. Putin will continue to be the de facto, if not the formal, head of Russia.

Such arrangement, though, is unprecedented in Russian history, and some experts warned that power in Russia has traditionally flowed from the office, not the personality. While Mr. Putin may be the more influential figure, Mr. Medvedev will control the armed forces, the security services and other critical parts of the government.

Jesuits settle suit over Los Gatos priest who killed himself

BROTHER HAD CLAIMED ABUSE BY COLLEAGUE AT FACILITY

By Kim Vo
Mercury News

Article Launched: 12/13/2007 01:31:26 AM PST

Father Jim Chevedden was already mentally fragile when another Jesuit allegedly molested him. But it was his superiors forcing Chevedden to live in the same building as his accused abuser that led him to leap off a sixth-story San Jose garage, his family said, committing suicide on his 56th birthday.

"That's the last place you want someone with psychological problems," his brother John Chevedden said, "living with the person he said sexually assaulted him."

Last week, the Jesuits settled a wrongful-death suit with the Chevedden family for $1.6 million. However, Jesuit officials said the settlement was an offer of "closure," not an admission of culpability.

"Father Chevedden had a diagnosed severe mental illness that was at the core of the health struggles in his life," said Father John McGarry, head of the Jesuits' California province. "We did our best to take care of him."

Chevedden's accused abuser already had a troubled past. Charles Connor was one of two Jesuits convicted of molesting mentally retarded dishwashers at the center. In 2002, the religious order paid a $7.5 million settlement on that case.

Chevedden's accusations were never substantiated, said McGarry, who declined to let the Mercury News interview Connor. The octogenarian Connor, like several accused local Jesuits, lives at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos.

"Brother Connor is very elderly and unable to talk," McGarry said. "This settlement is not about sexual abuse. It's about the tragic loss of Father Jim Chevedden."

To the Chevedden family, the two are related.

Jim Chevedden knew early on he wanted to be a priest, reading missionary magazines while other boys thumbed through National Geographic. He entered the priesthood after graduating from a Jesuit high school in Los Angeles.

He suffered a mental breakdown after living alone for years in a rural section of Taiwan, said his twin brother, Paul Chevedden. He went back to the United States, and eventually to the Sacred Heart center.

The center, perched on a ridge overlooking Los Gatos, is where elderly Jesuits retire - and broken ones go for help. It's also where those accused of sexual misconduct are sent.

McGarry would not say how many of the center's current 65 residents have allegations against them or how much the province has paid in settlements since 2002, when the church sex scandal exploded nationwide.

Paul Chevedden says the facility never properly helped his brother and in 1998 he jumped off a scaffolding, fracturing both feet during an attempted suicide. While recovering in the infirmary, the family alleged, Connor pushed Chevedden's wheelchair and one day groped his genitals.

Chevedden didn't immediately tell his superiors, said his older brother, John Chevedden. But in 2002, when he heard Connor was moving back to the center, he told his superiors what happened and asked to be transferred. Leaders said they found no evidence of abuse.

The Cheveddens said their brother kept them apprised but Paul Chevedden suspects "the tragic thing was he always attempted to conceal the intensity of the difficulties he was going through, to protect the order, unfortunately."

The brothers said if Chevedden had known about Connor's history, he could have avoided him from the start - complaints against Connor stretch back to 1995, according to the lawsuit.

They said the center openly admits who is recovering from alcoholism so others could keep an eye on them; they wonder why the same wasn't done for the priests with sexual misconduct allegations.

McGarry said the center is monitored. "The leadership at this place was very aware of Brother Connor's situation. I think it's important to respect his privacy."

The center is the province's only health care facility, he said, so it had to accommodate both Connor and Chevedden. The two lived in the same building, but he was unsure if they were housed in same wing.

As Chevedden appealed for transfers, his siblings fretted over his limited options. He faithfully lived his sacred vows - poverty, chastity and obedience - and couldn't easily rebel against his superiors' orders to stay in Los Gatos.

"I don't know of any way he could have left and still been a priest," John Chevedden said.

"It was the obedience that was foremost on his mind. They forced him to live with his attacker," Paul Chevedden said. "He was a committed priest."

Paul Chevedden believed the Jesuits would eventually do right by his brother. He said he stopped believing on May 19, 2004 - their shared birthday and the day his brother jumped. In a bizarre coincidence, Jim Chevedden had jury duty that day. The priest that drove him to downtown San Jose was another accused child molester.

Ron Paul Smashes Record With $6 Million Plus Haul

Expect hit pieces to go into overdrive as media tries to spin momentous day

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, December 17, 2007

Ron Paul has smashed the all-time record for political donations on one day, beating John Kerry's previous effort as he hauled in over $6 million dollars during a 24-hour period that coincided with the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. The true figure could even tally up to near $7 million once all donations have been fully processed.

As of 12 Midnight EST, Paul campaign headquarters confirmed the total to be over $6 million while others had the figure at around $6.4 million. That total just represents processed credit card donations. The final total is likely to be closer to $7 million once checks, Paypal e-checks, and money orders are fully processed.

At 6am CST, several news agencies such as Reuters were still reporting that Paul had raised just $4.5 million, which is a little odd considering the fact that writers are employed around the clock.

Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton confirmed that the average donation was around $50 dollars. Over 107,000 individual donors contributed to the sum of almost $18 million for the quarter and counting.

The Congressman is on course to quadruple his fundraising in comparison to the $5.1 million raised during the third quarter which itself was a doubling of the second quarter total.

We now expect the media spin machine to go into overdrive and hit pieces to swarm in the final week before Christmas.

An early CNN report on the record breaking fundraiser still sardonically refers to Paul as a "long shot" and fails to underline the true significance of yesterday's watershed and history making events.

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AT&T engineer says Bush Administration sought to implement domestic spying within two weeks of taking office

John Byrne
Raw Story
Monday December 17, 2007

Nearly 1,300 words into Sunday's New York Times article revealing new details of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, the lawyer for an AT&T engineer alleges that "within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”

In a New Jersey federal court case, the engineer claims that AT&T sought to create a phone center that would give the NSA access to "all the global phone and e-mail traffic that ran through" a New Jersey network hub.

The former AT&T employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Times said he took part in several discussions with agency officials about the plan.

"The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency “could listen in” with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review," Times reporters Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Scott Shane wrote. "There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said."

“At some point,” he told the paper, “I started feeling something isn’t right.”

"Two other AT&T employees who worked on the proposal discounted his claims, saying in interviews that the project had simply sought to improve the N.S.A.’s internal communications systems and was never designed to allow the agency access to outside communications."

AT&T's spokesman said they didn't comment on national security matters, as did a spokesman for Qwest, which was also approached but apparently rebuffed the plan. The lawyer for the engineer and others in the New Jersey case says AT&T's internal documents would vindicate his clients.

“What he saw,” Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told the Times, “was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”

The full Times article is here.

Small group of US experts insist global warming not man-made

Jean-Louis Santini
AFP
Monday December 17, 2007

Related: Skeptical Climate Scientists Shunned At UN Bali Meeting

A small group of US experts stubbornly insist that, contrary to what the vast majority of their colleagues believe, humans may not be responsible for the warming of the planet Earth.

These experts believe that global warming is a natural phenomenon, and they point to reams of data they say supports their assertions.

These conclusions are in sharp contradiction to those of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reached its conclusions using largely similar data.

The UN body of about 3,000 experts, including several renown US scientists, jointly won the award with former US vice president Al Gore for their work to raise awareness about the disastrous consequences of global warming.

In mid-November the IPCC adopted a landmark report stating that the evidence of a human role in the warming of the planet was now "unequivocal."

Retreating glaciers and loss of snow in Alpine regions, thinning Arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost shows that climate change is already on the march, the report said.

Carbon pollution, emitted especially by the burning of oil, gas and coal, traps heat from the Sun, thus warming the Earth's surface and inflicting changes to weather systems.

Full article here.

United Nations Model for the New World Order is China

You Tube
Monday December 17, 2007

Excerpt taken from Alex Jones new film Endgame : Bluebprint for Global Enslavement. Take some of this info on board, learn the truth and educate your neighbours.

Dec 16th Ron Paul donation day coverage on CNN

You Tube
Monday December 17, 2007