7, May 2018
US: McCain regrets choosing Sarah Palin as running mate 0
John McCain, the seasoned senator of Arizona, says he regrets choosing former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate during the country’s 2008 presidential race, and instead he should have chosen Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent politician.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that McCain, while still defending Palin’s performance, said in his upcoming book, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and other Appreciations,” that although his advisers had warned him that picking a vice-presidential candidate who caucused with Democrats and supported abortion rights would divide Republicans and doom his chances, he should still have proceeded and chosen Lieberman as is his vice-presidential nominee.
“It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” he writes. “But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had.”
Many in McCain’s own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party.
In addition to the book, the senator has also participated in a nearly two-hour HBO documentary, both of which are set to be released this month. In the HBO documentary McCain strikingly expresses sorrow for not choosing Lieberman calling it “another mistake that I made.”
Lieberman later said he did not know McCain felt that regret until he watched the film. “It touched me greatly,” he said.
The Times reported that Lieberman recently visited McCain, 81, at his ranch in Arizona where the senator is recovering from his brain cancer treatment and surgery for an infection.
New memoir
In excerpts of his book, The Restless Wave that will be published by Simon & Schuster on May 22, the senior senator from the state of Arizona says his battle with brain cancer has given him a sense of liberation to freely speak his mind.
“I’m freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry.”
“I don’t think I’m free to disregard my constituents’ wishes, far from it. I don’t feel excused from keeping pledges I made. Nor do I wish to harm my party’s prospects. But I do feel a pressing responsibility to give Americans my best judgment,” McCain says in the excerpts released Monday by Apple News.
McCain, a Vietnam War prisoner, says he is bothered by the “scarcity of humility” in the current political climate in America.
Criticism of Trump
McCain openly criticizes US President Donald Trump in the book saying he seems to care more about “the appearance of toughness” than so-called American values.
“The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values,” he says in the memoir referring to Trump.
“He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones,” McCain writes in the book of Trump.
Source: Presstv
7, May 2018
Southern Cameroons Crisis: CPDM baron says Biya era nearing its end 0
A senior Francophone political elite has hinted Cameroon Concord News that the Paul Biya era is nearly over as the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia intensifies support for armed groups engaged in the Southern Cameroons liberation struggle. The CPDM baron who is also a member of the Central Committee told our undercover reporter that some foreign states including France and Germany were cutting financial support for the Yaoundé regime.
The French Cameroun politician whose name we are withholding pointed out that Biya and his SDF acolytes were staging elections in some parts of the country to send a message to the international community that the Southern Cameroons uprising has ended … and that the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime is on the path towards dialogue.
Under the direct supervision of the Interim Government with financial help from the Southern Cameroons Diaspora, Ambazonian fighters have freed over much of Southern Cameroons’s populated counties in both the Northern and Southern Zones. Now, the Amba fighters are marching eastward towards Buea the Federal capital.
The Southern Cameroons war, which has killed hundreds of Ambazonian civilians, has reached its penultimate stage as foreign powers including the Federal Republic of Nigeria that backed the Biya regime are changing their policies.
Nigerian President Buhari is under pressure to step aside and has shifted his attention to the numerous Boko Haram attacks and incursions in Northern Nigeria. French President Macron has also shifted his priority away from guaranteeing Biya’s continued stay in power, seeking to mend ties with progressive Francophone and Anglophone forces.
The Francophone dominated military deployed to Southern Cameroons have been burning down villages and killing innocent Southern Cameroons civilians including women and children. Yaoundé also has a garrison in the French Cameroun locality of Mbouda in the Western region, near the strategic highway crossing to Bamenda, where young recruits are trained to battle the Ambazonian forces.
With no FIFA World Cup football to divert attention from the war, the Biya regime this week traded the so-called university games in Maroua and noted that participation from Anglophone universities proved a U-turn was achieved in the conflict in Southern Cameroons.
The conflict that became multi-sided following Nigeria and French government involvement has raged on along several fronts across Southern Cameroons, with Yaoundé losing ground to the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.
And while the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo government has forced several senior Anglophone political elites to surrender to its policy of one and indivisible Cameroon, Amba fighters loyal to the Interim Government are now holding key positions, including Akwaya, Lebialem, Kumba, Mbonge Kupe Muanenguba, Belo, Jakiri and a pocket of territory near Buea.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai