Tuesday 26th of November 2024
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I just called on the speaker-phone to say I love you, dad....

The US State Department pressured Pakistan to remove its popular prime minister, Imran Khan, last year over the latter’s neutrality regarding the conflict in Ukraine, The Intercept reported on Wednesday, citing a secret diplomatic cable obtained from a Pakistani military source. The cable documents a meeting between US State Department officials and Pakistan’s ambassador to the US on March 7, 2022.

“People here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position” on Ukraine, US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu warns his Pakistani counterpart in the cable, blaming the PM alone for the offending policy.

While Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan attempts to correct the American, pointing out that Pakistan’s position on Ukraine is shared across the government, Lu counters that it is the PM’s behavior that is the problem, but that “if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington.”

“Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead,” he threatens, adding that Europe will follow the US’ lead in the “isolation of the prime minister.” Ambassador Khan reflects in his notes that the threat seems to be coming directly from the White House and suggests a strong diplomatic response.

Khan, who apparently obtained a copy of the cable in the weeks following the meeting, pointed at the US as the director of his ouster after he was removed following a no-confidence vote last April – just as Lu had suggested.

His successor, Shehbaz Sharif, admitted the cable existed and that some of its messaging was inappropriate, but stopped short of acknowledging its confirmation of Khan’s claims.

Washington has categorically denied pressuring Islamabad to remove Khan. While the document obtained by The Intercept does not technically constitute a direct order, it attaches strongly-worded threats to noncompliance, hints at rewards for obedience, and confirms both were viewed as coming directly from President Joe Biden.

Immediately following Khan’s ouster, Pakistan reversed its neutrality on Ukraine, demonstrating its fealty to Washington by supplying copious amounts of weapons to Kiev. Its military was reportedly rewarded with a defense pact covering “joint exercises, operations, training, basing and equipment.”

While polls have suggested Khan would easily win an election were he permitted to run again, he was sentenced to three years in prison last week on corruption charges, blocking him from contesting elections expected to take place this year. He has been charged with numerous crimes since his ouster, from insulting state officials to terrorism, and last month it was announced he would be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for revealing the contents of the cable documenting the conspiracy to oust him.

https://www.rt.com/news/581067-us-pressured-pakistan-khan-ouster/

 

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american deceit....

Pakistan has imposed a media blackout over the deposed prime minister and thousands of new political prisoners incarcerated in appalling conditions. Condemnation in the U.K. and U.S. has been non-existent.

 

Craig Murray: The Silence on Imran Khan

 

Given the large population in the U.K. of Pakistani origin, the lack of serious media coverage of the overthrow and incarceration of Imran Khan, and the mass imprisonment of his supporters, is truly extraordinary.

Imran Khan was last week sentenced to three years in prison — and a five-year ban from politics — for alleged embezzlement of official gifts. This follows his removal as prime minister in a C.I.A.-engineered coup, and a vicious campaign of violence and imprisonment against Khan and his supporters.

It is currently illegal in Pakistan to publish or broadcast about Khan or the thousands of new political prisoners incarcerated in appalling conditions. There have been no protests from the U.K. or U.S. governments.

Imran Khan is almost certainly the least corrupt senior politician in Pakistan’s history — I admit that is not a high bar. Pakistan’s politics are — to an extent not sufficiently understood in the West — literally feudal. Two dynasties, the Sharifs and the Bhuttos, have alternated in power, in a sometimes deadly rivalry, punctuated by periods of more open military rule.

There is no genuine ideological or policy gap between the Sharifs and Bhuttos, though the latter have more intellectual pretension. It is purely about control of state resources. The arbiter of power has in reality been the military, not the electorate. They have now put the Sharifs back in power.

Imran Khan’s incredible breakthrough in the 2018 National Assembly elections shattered normal political life in Pakistan. Winning a plurality of the popular vote and the most seats, Khan’s PTI party had risen from under 1 percent of the vote in 2002 to 32 percent in 2018. 

The dates are important. It was not Khan’s cricketing heroics which made him politically popular. In 2002, when his cricket genius was much fresher in the mind than it is now, he was viewed as a joke candidate. 

In fact, it was Khan’s outspoken opposition to the United States using Pakistan as a base, and particularly his demand to stop the hundreds of dreadful U.S. drone strikes within Pakistan, that caused the surge in his support.

The Pakistani military went along with him. The reason is not hard to find. Given the level of hatred the U.S.A. had engendered through its drone killings, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the hideous torture excesses of the “War on terror,” it was temporarily not in the interests of the Pakistan military to foreground their deep relationship with the C.I.A. and U.S. military.

 

READ MORE: https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/09/craig-murray-the-silence-on-imran-khan/

 

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bidens' moneys.....

Nobody in White House or media can explain this: Schweizer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_POhA8nUAQ

 

Author and president of the Government Accountability Institute Peter Schweizer discusses the congressional probe of Hunter Biden and the Biden family's business dealings on 'The Brian Kilmeade Show

 

 

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SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvX0-ebbchc

 

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