HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s military said early Wednesday that it had taken custody of President Robert Mugabe, the world’s oldest head of state and one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, in what increasingly appeared to be a military takeover in the southern African nation.
After apparently seizing the state broadcaster, ZBC, two uniformed officers said in a short predawn announcement that “the situation in our country has moved to another level.” While denying that the military had seized power, they said that Mr. Mugabe and his family “are safe and sound, and their security is guaranteed.”
“We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring them to justice,” said the main speaker, who was identified as Maj. Gen. S. B. Moyo, the army’s chief of staff.
The criminals around him!!! Mugabe is like a gas giant planet, a big, ugly, ancient, decrepit, smelly gas giant; he, being the main criminal, has scores of smaller hoods orbiting around like moons and rings. Happy hunting there, generals!
“Woof! Woof! Woof!” Mugabe and associate thugs celebrate 1,000,000% inflation at prior communist tent revival. EPA/NYT.
Interesting. Couldn’t happen to a finer country nor a thuggier thug.
HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s ruling party accused the head of the armed forces of treason on Tuesday as troops took up positions around the capital in an escalation of a dispute with 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe over political succession.
Just 24 hours after military chief General Constantino Chiwenga threatened to intervene to end a purge in the ruling party, a Reuters reporter saw six armored personnel carriers on major thoroughfares on the outskirts of the capital.
Aggressive soldiers directing traffic told passing cars to keep moving through the darkness.
“Don’t try anything funny. Just go,” one soldier said on Harare Drive.
The presence of troops, including the movement of at least six armored personnel carriers from a barracks northwest of Harare, sparked rumors of coup against Mugabe, although there was no evidence to suggest Zimbabwe’s leader of the last 37 years had been toppled.
The lead item on the ZBC state broadcaster’s evening news bulletin was an anti-military rally by the youth wing of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party.
The Southern African nation has been on edge since Monday when Chiwenga, Commander of Zimbabwe Defence Forces, said he was prepared to “step in” to end a purge of supporters of a sacked vice president.
The unprecedented statement represents an escalation of a rumbling political struggle over who will succeed Mugabe, who has been in power since the country gained independence from Britain in 1980.
Those things run on diesel. Who knew they had any left? REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo.
I know some (mostly idiot coastal academics) hold modern Rhodesia Zimbabwe and Mugabe in high esteem for Mugabe’s agricultural “reforms,” tolerant, open, and honest governance, and economic stabilization. I simply detest the senile bastard and weep for what the people lost (or gave away … took … whatever).
A week or so back I had drafted a comedy piece of sorts about Mugabe, based on his recent handling of a certain American college student (whose professors probably adore the warlord in chief). It needs a little tweaking but it’s pretty good. Coming soon! Yes, and if this rumor turns out true, I could perhaps append a very happy ending – maybe with a picture of Mugabe on a pike or the gallows or something.
Robots may enslave us all someday. In the meantime, if one of them goes berserk, here’s a useful tactic: Shut the door behind you.
One after another, robots in a government-sponsored contest were stumped by an unlocked door that blocked their path at an outdoor obstacle course. One bipedal machine managed to wrap a claw around the door handle and open it but was flummoxed by a breeze that kept blowing the door shut before it could pass through.
…
They have some very funny pictures of the proto-terminators falling over, a bumbling lot of pitiful machines. They include the droid that committed suicide after attacking a child. All good and well… But it doesn’t take much to find more pics, and videos, of much more nimble killer bots.
There are, now, plenty of machines that could simple roll or blast through the door. And the drawing board is filled with many that don’t walk, crawl, or roll anyway. The most terrifying of the lot may be a far cry from the hunter-killers of sci-fi infamy. Imagine a plague of robo insects or viruses.
The movie portrays a brutal future. A military firm unveils a tiny drone that hunts and kills with ruthless efficiency. But when the technology falls into the wrong hands, no one is safe. Politicians are cut down in broad daylight. The machines descend on a lecture hall and spot activists, who are swiftly dispatched with an explosive to the head.
The short, disturbing film is the latest attempt by campaigners and concerned scientists to highlight the dangers of developing autonomous weapons that can find, track and fire on targets without human supervision. They warn that a preemptive ban on the technology is urgently needed to prevent terrible new weapons of mass destruction.
Stuart Russell, a leading AI scientist at the University of California in Berkeley, and others will show the film on Monday during an event at the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. The manufacture and use of autonomous weapons, such as drones, tanks and automated machine guns, would be devastating for human security and freedom, and the window to halt their development is closing fast, Russell warned.
“The technology illustrated in the film is simply an integration of existing capabilities. It is not science fiction. In fact, it is easier to achieve than self-driving cars, which require far higher standards of performance,” Russell said.
It all started in 1979 when an Ohio vending machine “accidentally” fell over on a man, crushing him. Yesterday it was soda drinkers. Tomorrow it could be anyone, or everyone.
On May 22, 1949, former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal fell to his death from the sixteenth floor of the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. An investigation by a Navy review board found no definitive cause for his death, which was assumed by many to be suicide.
On May 2, 1957, Senator Joseph McCarthy died from acute hepatitis at the Bethesda hospital. Just a few days earlier, he’d been admitted to the hospital with a knee injury. No cause for the hepatitis was ever given. No autopsy was conducted.
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while visiting Dallas, Texas. An autopsy conducted at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center late that evening resulted in controversy over the extent of the president’s wounds and how they ultimately were caused. The wounds viewed by many eyewitnesses in Dallas and Bethesda weren’t reflected in the final Warren Commission report.
Inflation is not caused by the butcher, the baker, or the auto maker, although they usually get blamed. On the contrary, by producing real wealth, they fight the effects of inflation. Inflation is the work of government alone, since government alone controls the creation of currency.
In a true free-market society, the only way a person or organization can legitimately obtain wealth is through production. “Making money” is no different from “creating wealth,” and money is nothing but a certificate of production. In our world, however, the government can create currency at trivial cost, and spend it at full value in the marketplace. If taxation is the expropriation of wealth by force, then inflation is its expropriation by fraud.
To inflate, a government needs complete control of a country’s legal money. This has the widest possible implications, since money is much more than just a medium of exchange. Money is the means by which all other material goods are valued. It represents, in an objective way, the hours of one’s life spent in acquiring it. And if enough money allows one to live life as one wishes, it represents freedom as well. It represents all the good things one hopes to have, do, and provide for others. Money is life concentrated.
We need car control and truck control – common sense vehicular controls.
Whether it’s the confused elderly, pizza-slicing soccer moms, “refugees,” terrorists, or the ordinary everyday insane, this motoring madness has gone far enough.
A driver ‘suffering from acute schizophrenia’ ploughed into a group of Chinese students leaving a college in the suburb of Blagnac, near Toulouse, on Friday.
Three people were injured, two gravely, in the smash at the exit of Saint-Exupéry high school, in south-west France, before being taken to the nearby Purpan Hospital.
The driver, 28, who deliberately committed the attack, is known to police but was not on a security watch list. While being arrested he admitted to hearing voices telling him to hurt someone.
A driver ‘suffering from acute schizophrenia’ ploughed into a group of Chinese students leaving a college in the suburb of Blagnac, near Toulouse, on Friday
The three victims are Chinese students – a 22-year-old man and two 23-year-old women.
This college campus comprises of several postgraduate courses including journalism, computer science, real estate and business.
The unnamed driver has been arrested following the incident.
Local media report the man is known to suffer from a psychiatric disorder.
Times have changed. The ultra-powerful, modern, assault-style cars and trucks of today barely resemble the simple, single-shot, muzzle-loading cars of yesteryear (yet all are really but another evil invention of white male privilege). If that parenthetical thought isn’t enough to warrant a full ban, I don’t know what is.
Assault-style Truck with Chainsaw Bayonet Hood Ornament. End the madness!
One cannot use a car to hunt. Sportsmen (and Sportswomen, Sportspersons, and Sportszirs) do not need cars. You are far more likely to run over yourself with your own car than to be run over by someone else’s. Criminals frequently use “innocent” people’s cars against them. Car show loopholes allow anyone, even terrorists, cripples, and the schizophrenic, to drive our streets with little more than a small operators “license.”
Face the truth: only the police, the military, other government agents, and the ultra-connected, wealthy, right-thinking, and jet set elite need automobiles. You? You’re just not good enough.
This school attack in France, and the 40 gazillion like it, each year, in America, Europe, and elsewhere, proves we need sensible car control to save our children, ourselves, our planet, maybe even our whales.
The blood is on the cash-soaked hands of the AAA, literally bribing Congress this very minute for more lethal death machines on our highways – all for their own selfish profits…
Write, email, or call your local political critters and fish wrapper opinion editors. Tell them enough is enough. The reign of automotive terror must end. Our children deserve better. No child should have to walk to school under a hail of hub caps or spark plugs.
Scream helplessly at the sky!
*This message brought to you by Citizens Against Car Violence, a division of Gun Control, Inc., in conjunction with the Southern Communism Bullshit Center.
Big Brother? Or Big Smother? Just a day in the life in Airstrip One Wichita.
If you are caught making a violation on camera by a staffer who is monitoring Old Town from an office in City Hall, that staffer will call and alert a nearby officer of your violation.
The staffer will provide the officer with your location, a description of your vehicle and what violation you made.
That officer can then pull you over.
“I hope people don’t perceive this as ‘Big Brother,’ ” Wichita police Sgt. Kelly O’Brien said. “Officers are monitoring public places where you see it from public viewing. It’s just a way for officers to enhance their abilities to protect the community and improve traffic safety and also improve officer safety.”
Still, O’Brien knows not everyone will think this is OK.
“I did an informal survey before we ever did this to every friend and person I came across, and it’s a 50/50 split,” he said, mentioning that even his wife and daughter were not necessarily on board with camera-based traffic enforcement.
There are 97 cameras monitoring the core of Old Town, with particular attention at First and Washington, Second and Washington and Third and Mead.
Eye in the sky watching you 24/7. How could anyone possibly associate that with “big brother”?
There are ways to beat camera-based offenses, pretty easy ones. However, most will simply opt to pay the taxes fines. That’s what Big Brother O’Brien counts on. And the courts have already rubber-stamped the telescreens. Probably not 50/50 either – the peeps gotta love this “security”.
Definitely NOT Big Brother. You have the right to confront the teevee accuser. Or maybe the keyboard. Nah. Kansas.com.
The three richest people in the US – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, or 160 million people.
Analysis of the wealth of America’s richest people found that Gates, Bezos and Buffett were sitting on a combined $248.5bn (£190bn) fortune. The Institute for Policy Studies said the growing gap between rich and poor had created a “moral crisis”.
In a report, the Billionaire Bonanza, the thinktank said Donald Trump’s tax change proposals would “exacerbate existing wealth disparities” as 80% of tax benefits would end up going to the wealthiest 1% of households.
“Wealth inequality is on the rise,” said Chuck Collins, an economist and co-author of the report. “Now is the time for actions that reduce inequality, not tax cuts for the very wealthy.”
The study found that the billionaires included in Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest people in the US were worth a combined $2.68tn – more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of the UK.
“Our wealthiest 400 now have more wealth combined than the bottom 64% of the US population, an estimated 80m households or 204 million people,” the report says. “That’s more people than the population of Canada and Mexico combined.”
The report says the “billionaire class” continues to “pull apart from the rest of us” at the fastest rate ever recorded. “We have not witnessed such extreme levels of concentrated wealth and power since the first gilded age a century ago.”
David McNew/Getty/The Guardian.
This isn’t a piece on class envy – at least not mine is not. Who knows what the trained squirrels at the Guardian were up to. If this money were earned honestly, then there would be no problem, regardless of any “inequality”, real or fancied.
Some, many of whom are hoarse from howling at the moon last night, might propose to seize all of this wealth and redistribute it. Unlike Scrooge McDuck, these three real characters do not have $250 Billion in gold coins and cash in the basement of some mega mansion. It’s (almost all of it) invested in their companies and earning more money while created goods, jobs, and services. It’s not liquid. Taking it would collapse a sizable portion of the economy. Killing the goose … all for $1,500 per poorer half class member. Once…
Stick to the helpless screaming, SJWs.
The rest of you know I am (mostly) concerned with the truth. So, what is the truth behind Gates, Bezos, and Buffett?
Bill Gates became filthy rich by selling software. My perspective dictates the products are second-rate at best, a bill of goods bought from a high-class carny. Yet they remain extremely popular. The people get what they think they want. Gates gets richer. Okay.
Bezos runs Amazon. Some say this business is a modern monopoly, responsible for killing all the bookstores of the world. I have a vested interest here. Periodically Amazon sends me money for book sales. The checks are small but they do come. Thus, in my view, Saint Bezos and his beautiful creation can do no wrong. I wish them success as this directly benefits me. If you don’t like that, then you probably don’t read and, therefore, don’t really have a dog in the fight. Bugger off.
Buffett is held forth as the ultimate investor. Making and creating Billion$ while humbly living in the same small house for 50 years, the paragon of Wall Street virtue. That’s part of the truth.
The other part involves his direct manipulation of the economy. Watch the following video for a funny analysis of how this works (a cartoon, no less – for the people!):
Malekanoms/YouTube.
First, for the ardent pendatrists, consider the cloud cover in the cartoon. How is that consistent with the digital trees??? What say your television shows?
Now. If you happen to consider the substance, then know this: what Buffet and a few others do is not technically illegal. It should be as should be the whole central banking scheme. However, since we’re past the days of the law, why not make money (take money) from the existing corrupt system?
That’s where the problem lies. And howling at the moon, beating the bongos, and voting will not fix it.
Are you one of those people that can’t stand hearing Christmas songs months before the holiday actually arrives? Does hearing festive carols weeks before Thanksgiving only make you upset that you haven’t eaten your turkey yet? A psychologist in Great Britain says your reactions don’t make you a Grinch because too much Christmas music is actually bad for your mental health.
Clinical psychologist Linda Blair claims the constant barrage of Christmas tunes too early in the season forces people to remember all the things they have to do before the holiday. Blair says the songs are a reminder to buy presents, cater parties, organize travel, and all the more stressful chores during Christmas.
“You’re simply spending all of your energy trying not to hear what you’re hearing,” Blair tells Sky News.
I’ll hold off on my annual tunes release a week or two…
The Pentagon separately disclosed that it had failed to furnish information about the gunman’s criminal record from his U.S. Air Force service to a national database that should have prevented him from legally purchasing the firearms he bought.
Failed. Should have. Legally. Tell me more about your government.
Stephen Willeford is the man who shot and chased the Texas gunman who killed 26 people in a Texas Baptist church on Sunday. Mr. Willeford shares the story of what took place during an interview with 40/29 News in Texas. Mr. Willeford tells what happened in one of the most riveting accounts ever. I have […]
PERRIN LOVETT 
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