McCain's Support of Terrorism and Genocide in Africa

In 1987, John McCain cast several votes in an attempt to force the Reagan administration to meet with RENAMO (1), a guerrilla organization in Mozambique that State Department officials at the time described as a "terrorist group," (2) without requiring that the group meet any preconditions.
McCain's support for RENAMO directly contradicts his attacks on opponent Barack Obama for having "worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers" and having "pledged to meet, without preconditions, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea." Senator Obama has made it clear that this policy does not extend to non-governmental organizations. In response to questions about the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Obama specified that "we should not be dealing with them until they ... renounce terrorism."
According to a Congressional Research Service report in 1988, the initially doctrinaire Marxist FRELIMO government of Mozambique began moving towards privatization and progress on human rights in the early 1980s, signing a non-aggression treaty with neighboring South Africa in 1984. Due to this progress, the Reagan administration provided the FRELIMO government with non-lethal military aid in their fight against RENAMO -- until Reagan was stymied by a 1985 Congressional prohibition . Reagan himself hosted FRELIMO leader and Mozambican President Samora Machel at the White House in September of 1985.
The Reagan administration's embrace of the nominally Marxist Mozambican government, even as it funded anti-communist resistance in Angola(UNITA), Afghanistan(the mujahideen) and most famously Nicaragua (the Contras), had a lot to do with the nature of the anti-communist resistance forces in Mozambique. At a June 1987 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, testified that RENAMO was "created by the Rhodesian secret services in 1977" as a fake anti-communist black liberation movement, designed to "punish Mozambique for that country's assistance to the Zimbabwean liberation movements." After the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980, apartheid South Africa began sponsoring RENAMO, with their support becoming clandestine after the signing of the 1984 non-aggression treaty.
RENAMO's tactics combined those of the most brutal terrorist groups and regimes in recent history. While ostensibly opposing the FRELIMO government, their attacks focused mostly on civilians. During the 1980s, their actions ranged from attacks on buses (3), trains (4) and cars (5) to kidnapping American and other foreign missionaries (6). They "killed bedridden hospital patients and chanted political slogans while killing children" in July of 1987 in what was later found to be a typical attack on a village; an American aid worker witnessed these attacks and they were thus widely reported.7 RENAMO even accepted "compensations" from Moscow.(8)
However, since the group claimed to be "anti-communist," they had support from the far-right in the United States. The Heritage Foundation supplied office space to a RENAMO representative in Washington, and Grover Norquist of K Street Project fame lobbied for them and for the UNITA resistance group in Angola. The U.S. Council for World Freedom funded RENAMO (and other anti-communist organizations) directly between 1984 and 1986 while John McCain was on their advisory board. Though he claims to have left the organization in 1984, news articles from October of 1985 show that he attended a U.S. Council on World Freedom event honoring Wali Khan, an Islamic militant from Afghanistan, for his efforts in opposing the Soviet occupation.(9) Moreover, two former council members do not recall him having ever resigned from the group. It is unclear whether or not McCain ever donated money to RENAMO via the U.S. Council for World Freedom, though he is on record as having donated to the Contras. The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for a list of anti-communist organizations to which he has donated.
These RENAMO-backing organizations had friends in high places. Senator Jesse Helms and a faction of conservative Senators (a similar faction existed in the House, led by Representative Dan Burton) also wanted to shift U.S. policy from the Reagan administration's position to the support of RENAMO. Helms and the conservatives decided to make their stand on the nomination of Melissa Wells to be ambassador to Mozambique. Their only problem with Melissa Wells was that she supported the Reagan administration policy of supporting the FRELIMO government and not recognizing the RENAMO terrorists. From a July 20, 1986, United Press International article by Jim Anderson:

After eight months of silence, the State Department came to the public defense Wednesday of Melissa Wells, a career foreign service officer whose confirmation as ambassador to Mozambique has been held up by Senate conservatives.
The conservatives, led by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., made it clear in statements last week in the Senate that the nomination of Wells, who has been approved by the Foreign Relations Committee, is meant as an attack against the State Department and its policies in Africa.
[...]
Helms and the other conservatives attacked Wells because of her lack of support for Renamo, an insurgent group seeking to overthrow the central one-party government of Mozambique. Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.C., described Renamo as ''freedom fighters trying to topple a communist regime.''

They initially failed to block Majority Leader Byrd's motion in May to proceed to the consideration of her nomination (10) (McCain was absent for this vote). However, the threats of a filibuster allowed them to hold up further consideration of the nomination until September. During this time, the Reagan administration did not budge on its support for FRELIMO and opposition to recognizing and meeting with RENAMO. In fact, the administration's position was strengthened after the revelation of a RENAMO massacre of 408 people in the village of Homoine in July of 1987, witnessed by American citizen Mark van Koevering.
Despite this revelation, RENAMO retained support in the Senate when that body began consideration of the Wells nomination in September. In what Senator Alan Cranston referred to during debate on the nomination as "truly Orwellian fashion," conservative Senators claimed that the massacre was a set-up by the governing FRELIMO. Most Senators voted to confirm her, but John McCain was one of the 24 Senators who voted against cloture on her nomination and against confirming her as ambassador to Mozambique (11). Of the Republicans still in the Senate today, Richard Lugar, Pete Domenici and Arlen Specter voted for her nomination; Grassley, Bond, McCain, Hatch and McConnell voted against it; and Ted Stevens and John Warner missed the vote. A month after Wells was confirmed, Jesse Helms introduced an amendment to the State Department authorization bill that would have forced the Secretary of State to meet with RENAMO without requiring any pre-conditions (12). Senator McCain opposed the motion by fellow Republican Senator John Danforth to kill the Helms amendment.
In April of 1988, the State Department released a report which "conservatively estimated that 100,000 civilians may have been murdered by RENAMO." At a United Nations event later that month, Roy A. Stacy, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, described RENAMO as guilty of "one of the most brutal holocausts against ordinary human beings since World War II." The report's release silenced Congressional RENAMO supporters(13).
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Notes and Sources:
1 RENAMO is the acronym in Portugese for the group's full name, the Mozambican National Resistance.
2 Friedland, Jonathan. "MOZAMBIQUE: THE MNR CONFUSES WASHINGTON." IPS-Inter Press Service. 30 October, 1986.
3 "Report: Rebels Kill 60 Bus Passengers." The Associated Press, 3 January, 1984 (the attack itself was on Christmas Day)
4 "Anti-Marxist Rebels Blow Up Passenger Train." The Associated Press. 9 February, 1984
5 "Rebels Claim Maputo Car Bomb, Battlefield Success." The Associated Press 22 April, 1986.
6 "Rebels kidnap seven whites from farm mission" United Press International 15 May, 1987.
7 Keys, Laurinda. "Survivors Say Attackers Killed Bedridden Hospital Patients, Children." The Associated Press 24 July, 1987.
8 "Rebels in Mozambique Free 12 Soviet Captives." The New York Times. 26 January, 1984: A10.
9 "Congressmen and Doctor Call for Increased Aid to Afghan Resistance" States News Service. October 15, 1985. Wali Khan was later killed by the pro-Soviet forces. He has no relation to the similarly-named Wali Khan Amin Shah, another Afghan guerrilla who later worked with WTC I mastermind Ramzi Yousef in a plot to bomb airplanes.
10 Byrd, D-W. Va., motion to proceed to the consideration of President Reagan's nomination of Melissa Wells of New York to be ambassador to the People's Republic of Mozambique. Motion agreed to 56-28: R 13-25; D43-3 (ND 31-0, SD 12-3), May 1, 1987
11Senate Roll Call votes 234 and 237, September 9, 1987.
12 S 1934. State Department Authorization, Fiscal 1988/Official Residence; Mozambique Policy. Danforth, R-Mo., motion to table (kill) the Helms, R-N.C., amendment to prohibit any expenditures related to the acquisition of a permanent residence for the secretary of state or any other Cabinet member. The tabling vote also had the effect of killing a Helms second-degree amendment aimed at forcing the secretary of state to consult with both sides in the civil war in Mozambique. Motion agreed to 61-34: R 21-24; D 40-10 (ND 27-5, SD 13-5), Oct. 6, 1987
13 Wayne, E.A. "Washington woos Marxist government of Mozambique." Christian Science Monitor. 16 August, 1988.

Why McCain Has Lost Our Vote

By C.C.Goldwater
Being Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics. I learned a lot about my grandfather while producing the documentary, Mr. Conservative Goldwater on Goldwater. Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin ticket.
My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman's right to choose. My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930's, a cause my grandfather supported. I'm not sure about how he would feel about marriage rights based on same-sex orientation. I think he would feel that love and respect for ones privacy is what matters most and not the intolerance and poor judgment displayed by McCain over the years. Paka respected our civil liberties and passed on the message that that we should conduct our lives standing up for the basic freedoms we hold so dear.
For a while, there were several candidates who aligned themselves with the Goldwater version of Conservative thought. My grandfather had undying respect for the U.S. Constitution, and an understanding of its true meanings.
There always have been a glimmer of hope that someday, someone would "race through the gate" full steam in Goldwater style. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened, and the Republican brand has been tarnished in a shameless effort to gain votes and appeal to the lowest emotion, fear. Nothing about McCain, except for maybe a uniform, compares to the same ideology of what Goldwater stood for as a politician. The McCain/Palin plan is to appear diverse and inclusive, using women and minorities to push an agenda that makes us all financially vulnerable, fearful, and less safe.
When you see the candidate's in political ads, you can't help but be reminded of the 1964 presidential campaign of Johnson/Goldwater, the 'origin of spin', that twists the truth and obscures what really matters. Nothing about the Republican ticket offers the hope America needs to regain it's standing in the world, that's why we're going to support Barack Obama. I think that Obama has shown his ability and integrity.

After the last eight years, there's a lot of clean up do. Roll up your sleeves, Senators Obama and Biden, and we Goldwaters will roll ours up with you.

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Ron Howard's Call For Obama With Andy Griffith And Henry Winkler

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

This is the time to silently start preparing your victory party!

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America remains a center-right nation?

By Paul Waklman
We usually have to wait until after the Democrats emerge victorious at the polls for the Beltway finger-waggers to begin warning them not to be too ambitious, not to do too much, not to actually follow through on the proposals they presented to the voters. But this year, it's starting early: Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, penned a 3,300-word cover story warning that, as the subtitle says, "America remains a center-right nation -- a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril." Because, God forbid, a progressive candidate who wins an election should actually keep the promises he made to the American people.
It's an interesting contrast to what happens when Republicans win. While Democratic victories are seen as signifying nothing about the electorate's fundamental beliefs, Republican victories are inevitably described as revealing profound sea changes in American ideology. When the GOP took over both houses of Congress in 1994, The New York Times wrote the next day, "[T]he country has unmistakably moved to the right." The Washington Post agreed, saying, "The huge Republican gains also marked a clear shift to the right in the country."
And after Election Day 2004, the Times intoned, "[I]t is impossible to read President Bush's re-election with larger Republican majorities in both houses of Congress as anything other than the clearest confirmation yet that this is a center-right country -- divided yes, but with an undisputed majority united behind his leadership." The article was headlined, "An Electoral Affirmation of Shared Values." The Los Angeles Times agreed that the election proved voters "don't believe that the Democrats share their values." Chris Matthews wondered, "Can the Democrats ever connect with the country's cultural majority?"
Yet we heard nothing of the sort from elite media outlets in 2006, when Democrats retook both houses of Congress -- no grand proclamations that the country had moved left, no ruminations on whether conservatism was an electorally bankrupt ideology. Instead, the news media focused on a few conservative Democratic candidates who won seats in Republican areas, despite the fact that they were far outnumbered by the new Democratic members who held traditionally progressive positions.
In other words, when Republicans win, we're told that Democrats need to move to the center, because the country is too conservative for them. When Democrats win, on the other hand, we're told that... Democrats need to move to the center. Their victory must have been some kind of accident -- it couldn't have been because the public actually agreed with what they want to do.
So what kind of evidence does Meacham offer for his oh-so-familiar thesis? First off, he says, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton didn't accomplish everything they wanted to. Interesting -- but last time I checked, liberal programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Clinton's expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit remain pretty popular. And remind me how George Bush's 2005 attempt to privatize Social Security -- a longstanding conservative goal -- went.
Then Meacham gives us the oft-noted fact that when asked by pollsters, more people will call themselves "conservative" than "liberal." The problem with this is that people who know a lot about politics -- like journalists -- assume that ordinary people have the same interpretation of those terms as political junkies have. But the truth, as nearly a half-century of political science research has made clear, is that a significant portion of the public has little or no idea of what these terms mean in the political world. A third of the public can't even tell you which of the two major parties is the "conservative" one.
Meacham also argues that America is "center-right" because we're more conservative than most Western European countries, which is kind of like arguing that Kevin Garnett is a mediocre basketball player, because Kobe Bryant scores more points than he does. The American public is much more liberal than publics in almost every region of the world other than Western Europe. Does that tell us that we're fundamentally liberal, or does it tell us not much of anything?
Comparisons to our friends in Sweden aside, a look at the issue terrain at the moment shows a public firmly in the progressive camp. On foreign policy, on economic policy, on social policy, on just about everything, it's the progressive position that is more popular. The median voter in 2008 is pro-choice, supports civil unions for gay Americans (a position that seemed insanely radical only a decade ago), rejects the Bush foreign policy, supported the recent increase in the minimum wage, wants strong environmental protections, favors reasonable restrictions on gun sales, thinks the wealthy and corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes, and wants the government to guarantee universal health coverage. Does that sound conservative to you? And younger generations are more progressive than their elders -- in fact, it is the pre-baby-boom generation that is the most conservative on most issues. And they will only be around for so long.
There is another reason the country is likely to become more progressive over time: The presidency of George W. Bush has discredited conservatism for years to come.
With the exception of a reduction in the size of government -- something Republicans always promise but never deliver (consider that no one since Roosevelt spent more as a percentage of GDP than Ronald Reagan) -- conservatives got pretty much everything they wanted from George W. Bush. They got tax breaks for the wealthy, huge increases in defense spending, a bellicose foreign policy, two Supreme Court justices ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, a mania for deregulation of business, a Justice Department devoted to advancing the electoral interests of the Republican Party, a consolidation of power in the executive branch, lackadaisical enforcement of environmental regulations, constant efforts to undermine labor unions, and the list goes on and on. This administration has been conservatism in action, and the country couldn't be more disgusted with the results.
Conservatives are increasingly sounding like they're stuck in the 1980s, as they warn against the creeping tide of socialism and denounce Obama's tax plan as "welfare." You almost expect to hear John McCain take the stage to a pulsing Richard Marx tune, then start reciting lines from "Red Dawn." It may have reached its apogee when, in her debate with Joe Biden, Sarah Palin quoted Reagan on the danger that if we're not careful, one day we'll be telling our children and grandchildren about a time when America was free. What was Reagan warning against in that quote? The passage of Medicare, one of the most successful and popular programs in U.S. history, brought to you courtesy of big-government liberals.
When conservatives take stands like these, so far from the American mainstream, the Beltway acolytes of the Church of Centrism never seem to mind. Will a GOP defeat be greeted with columns by Jon Meacham and his ilk instructing Republicans sternly that they need to abandon their ideology and move to the center, lest they permanently alienate themselves from the public?
Don't hold your breath.

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Democrats’ gloom deepens

The Democrats are poised on the brink of victory. And they cannot stand it. The news is too good. Something has to go wrong.
On Saturday, Charlie Cook, an independent analyst and author of the Cook Report, wrote: “This election isn’t over, but it is looking very bad for Republicans — and seems to be getting worse.”
This plunged the Democrats into a deep gloom. Good news is always bad news for them.
On Monday, CNN’s John King announced: “Most top [people] in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.”
Democratic pessimism deepened when, that same day, Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray wrote in The Washington Post: “In the 13 battleground states that require voters to register by party, there are nearly 1.5 million more Democrats than at this time in 2004. The comparable Republican numbers, by contrast, have fallen by 61,000 during that time. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by more than 3.3 million in these same 13 battleground states, roughly double the edge — 1.8 million — they enjoyed over the GOP four years ago.”
Can it get worse for the Democrats? Yes! On Tuesday, The Associated Press wrote: “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent $87.5 million last month and began October with nearly $134 million in the bank. The numbers illustrate his vast financial advantage over John McCain, his Republican rival, in the final stretch of the contest. McCain ended September with $47 million in the bank.”
The story went on to note that Obama “spent $65 million in advertising in September to McCain’s $22 million. In October, he has outspent McCain 4-to-1 in advertising.”
Awful news. Obama has a money problem. And you know what it is? He might run out of time to spend all the money he has! Election Day might come and go before Obama can spend the $5 million a day he is now raising. (If this does happen, I suggest he borrow a page from Oprah and buy everyone in America a Pontiac. Just as a gesture.)
Obama himself has reacted to the dismal drumbeat of good news. At a fundraising concert in Manhattan last Thursday featuring Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, Obama got up and said: “Don’t underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Don’t underestimate our ability to screw it up.”
Which is the prevailing mood in the top echelons of the Democratic Party right now. The McCain campaign cannot possibly be as hapless as it looks, party leaders feel. It is lulling the Democrats into complacency. The Republicans have to have an October surprise, because the Republicans always have an October surprise.
Besides, the robocalls could work. Never underestimate the power of the robocalls. Because people really like getting robocalls, right?
You are at home, it is dinnertime (which is when they call you because they figure you are at home then), and you are either trying to relax or get the kids fed, and the phone rings and it is this recorded voice saying: “I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.”
And does that make you feel more or less positive about John McCain? Does it persuade you that McCain has a plan to save the economy? Or to help you pay your mortgage? Or that he has a steady hand on the tiller?
For the robocalls to be effective, the Republicans would need Bill Ayers to plant bombs today and not when Barack Obama was 8 years old. They need Ayers to plant bombs in key states right now with stickers on them that say: “I am Barack Obama, and I endorse this bomb.”
But McCain may have found his October surprise after all. In Bensalem, Pa., on Tuesday, McCain said: “Now, I’m not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states. But I think I may have detected a little pattern with Sen. Obama. It’s pretty simple, really. When he’s campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he’s campaigning in Tampa Bay, he ‘shows love’ to the Rays.”
And rumors are now flying that McCain has proof that when Obama was in the second grade he once ate paste.
The Democrats are fearful of all this. The Democrats are always fearful.
“We have been on the precipice of victory before,” Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama spokesman, told me. “You have never seen a more superstitious campaign than ours. We do not talk about victory.”
Talk about it, no. Plan for it, yes.

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Republicans claim: All critics of Obama will be killed, when Obama is in office.

You will never believe it, but a vast majority of Obama-enemies does not know how restricted the power of a President is and how protecting the Constitutional freedom of speech in America is by law, court and law-enforcement. There is no knowledge about how the American democracy works and the right-wing media use that ignorance shamelessly to monger fear against Barack Obama, an unknown Al-Caeda-member, who tries to become president of the United States of America.
This soundtrack is an example.

Conspiritists were not always that concerned. Saying of Obama:

"He is a ringer, folks. He's meant to take a dive for John McCain. So this is nonpartisan. The facts are in. He will be destroyed in this election."

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