Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who promised last week to stop cursing after a personal chat with god, once again slammed the United States on Wednesday for halting the planned sale of 26,000 rifles to his country, calling those behind the decision “fools” and “monkeys” and indicating he might turn to Russia and China instead. Duterte’s tirades against the US have become a virtiually daily event, and on Wednesday he said that he once believed in Washington, but had since lost respect for what is the Philippines’ biggest ally, Reuters reported.
Which is why the US decision to halt an arms shipment to Duterte should probably not come as a major shock: the State Department halted the sale of the assault rifles to the Philippine police after U.S. Senator Ben Cardin said he would oppose it, Senate aides told Reuters on Monday. Aides said Cardin, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was reluctant for the United States to provide the weapons given concern about human rights violations in the Philippines during Duterte’s bloody, four-month-old war on drugs. – READ MORE
