“It’s just shocking. I’ve never seen anything like it,” the president said Monday.
President Joe Biden called the behavior of House Republicans “shocking” on Monday for “walking away from the threat of Russia” for not passing aid for Ukraine.
“The way they’re walking away from the threat of Russia, the way they’re walking away from NATO, the way they’re walking away from meeting our obligations. It’s just shocking. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Biden said in remarks to reporters on the White House lawn.
Biden’s frustrations with House Republicans have increased after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died Friday in prison.
The president urged House Republicans to pass aid for Ukraine on Friday, saying, “It’s about time they step up, don’t you think,” instead of going on an extended recess, which he called a “two-week vacation.”
Here’s a good article about it
TLDR: Imran Khan wanted to stay neutral on Russia-Ukraine. America said you must pick Ukraine and help them in war. Then America overthrew the government using the IMF and they jailed Khan for some super BS like his marriage not being religiously valid.
The Pakistani people have recently voted against the American backed government even though the government tried to massively rig the elections.
Pakistan is known as a production hub for the types of basic munitions needed for grinding warfare. As Ukraine grappled with chronic shortages of munitions and hardware, the presence of Pakistani-produced shells and other ordinances by the Ukrainian military has surfaced in open-source news reports about the conflict, though neither the U.S. nor Pakistan has acknowledged the arrangement.
The economic capital and political goodwill from the arms sales played a key role in helping secure the bailout from the IMF, with the State Department agreeing to take the IMF into confidence regarding the undisclosed weapons deal, according to sources with knowledge of the arrangement, and confirmed by a related document.
To win the loan, Pakistan had been told by the IMF it had to meet certain financing and refinancing targets related to its debt and foreign investment — targets that the country was struggling to meet. The weapons sales came to the rescue, with the funds garnered from the sale of munitions for Ukraine going a long way to cover the gap.
Securing the loan eased economic pressure, enabling the military government to delay elections — a potential reckoning in the long aftermath of Khan’s removal — and deepen the crackdown against Khan’s supporters and other dissenters. The U.S. remained largely silent about the extraordinary scale of the human rights violations that pushed the future of Pakistan’s embattled democracy into doubt.
Thanks for the link, holy shit. The TMR interview actually did mention that article but didn’t really put it in context.
What is interesting though is that they provide a bit more background to Imran Kahn as a Trump-like populous that got co-opted by the Pakistan military and his own election in 2018 was also quite questionable (previous PM was jailed). Until they had a big falling out ending in riots and mass arrests.
Overall this story reminds me a bit of Patriot… so much shady dealings and then falling flat on their faces, including now failing to properly rig the election lol. I’m not even sure if I should root for Imran Khan here. Hasan Ali describes him as willing to do pretty much anything in the pursuit of power.
But it’s scary how precarious all this is and the role of the IMF and US. They get the bailout but have to cut energy subsidies which leads to protests and political instability… I feel like more and more the wheels are coming off in all these meddling affairs around the world.
Khan seems like the democratically elected leader. I’m not too informed and/or going to vouch for his policies, but we can’t say
“People should have a democracy and vo… No wait not voting like that! You have to 100% ally with America and can’t be neutral on a war!”
Yeah I agree with that. It just seems that either way Pakistan is a long way off a stable democracy.
