Bulletins and News Discussion from March 4th to March 10th, 2024 - The Coalition of Losers - COTW: Pakistan

Image is of a protest in Pakistan after the attempted assassination of Imran Khan in November 2022.

What a clusterfuck of an election.

Imran Khan, the previous official Prime Minister of Pakistan, was removed by the command of the United States in April 2022 in a no confidence motion. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Imran Khan and his supporters have protested since then against the Pakistani state, which is more-or-less governed by the military despite the furnishings of civilian rule. This has ranged from largely peaceful protests to trying to burn down and occupy houses and headquarters.

It was assumed by the Pakistani elite that they could make the problem go away by arresting Imran Khan and effectively forcing many PTI candidates to run as independents while hounding them with police raids and stopping them from campaigning - and adding salt on the wound by disabling social media access and mobile services on the day of the election to make it more difficult to co-ordinate. Fortunately, these people don't seem to quite understand how the internet works in the current day, and so Khan's supporters started up WhatsApp groups and improvised websites and apps to spread the word about which candidates to vote for, leading to Khan's party getting the plurality, though not the majority, of votes in the election.

This has created a rather depressed mood in the Pakistani elite. A coalition of eight parties joined together, obviously excluding the PTI, but this coalition is shaky and lacks much legitimacy, with two major parties inside it, the PML-N and PPP, being ideologically opposed on several issues. It has been regarded as "the coalition of losers" by Khan's supporters. The new Prime Minister is Shehbaz Sharif, who also ruled from April 2022 until August 2023 and is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who served as Prime Minister three times before in the last few decades. With inflation at 30% and the economy greatly struggling, there are fears that things may only stay together for months, not years, before the coalition fragments and something else has to be done.

Your Monday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Thursday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Sundary briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.

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New NYMag long form profile of Biden has some banger quotes from Biden's melted brain
I asked Biden if he intended to apply more pressure on Israel’s leaders, and, for the first time that day, he did not jab back at the question. “I understand the anger and the rage” sparked by October 7th, he said. “But you can’t let the rage consume you to the point where you lose the moral high ground.”
I asked Biden what he would do in a second term to protect abortion access at the federal level. “Pass Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said. Democrats would need to win control of the House of Representatives and gain seats in the Senate, but Biden expressed confidence. “A few more elections like we’ve seen taking place in the states” would suffice, he said. “You’re seeing the country changing.” Then, reiterating his position on Roe, he said, “I’ve never been supportive of, you know, ‘It’s my body, I can do what I want with it.’ But I have been supportive of the notion that this is probably the most rational allocation of responsibility that all the major religions have signed on and debated over the last thousand years.”
- I asked Biden what he would do in a second term to protect abortion access at the federal level. “Pass Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said.
  Biden after he wins a second term:
  President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he favored abortion rights for women but that passing a law guaranteeing those rights was not his top priority, trying to avoid inflaming divisions over the issue. "I believe that women should have the right to choose," Obama told a news conference marking his first 100 days in office. "But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on."
  
  "But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on."
  libs are such pieces of shit
  
  What are these areas that we agree on?
  
  I am untethered and my rage knows no bounds

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