Sand
Castle
Papa,
yankee,
lesser.
voter.
evil.
🎥 US immigration crackdown | ICE plans to buy electric shock gloves for agents in $20 million DHS plan
The Economic Times | Aug 12, 2026
ICE plans to spend up to $20m (£15m) to purchase thousands of gloves for officers and agents that can deliver painful electric shocks by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security. The devices, called Glove (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. According to the manufacturer, “the discomfort associated with the stimulation is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds and leaves no burns, marks or scars”. The company has advertised the device as a “humane, low-optics, de-escalation solution for many situations facing our men and women in uniform”.
Imaginary rules
Chad has joined a growing list of countries as it announced plans to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The military government declared on Monday that Chad had begun the process to leave the court, which prosecutes war crimes and other violations of humanitarian law and is based in The Hague in the Netherlands.
The northern African nation is the fifth state in recent months to quit the international tribunal, as the United States continues to increase pressure on the institution.
Chad’s government said that the court’s effectiveness was “limited” and uneven and condemned what it said was a concentration of its activities on African countries.
Of the 13 investigations opened by the court since it came into force, nine concern African states, as opposed to four opened in other regions of the world “but without any concrete progress,” the government statement said.
Chad’s decision follows neighbouring Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which also have military governments. The Sahel states jointly announced their withdrawal in September, accusing the court of selective justice.
As well as the claims of bias, the withdrawals come amid increasing US pressure on the international court.
Washington’s longstanding antipathy has only grown since the ICC issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in 2024.
The Trump administration now appears to have openly declared war on the institution. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the US would wage a campaign to “systematically disable” the ICC’s ability to function.
Fools n’ tools
As of February, more than 1,000 law enforcement and public safety agencies had received waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate autonomous surveillance drones as part of so-called “drone-as-first-responder” (DFR) programs, according to public records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and released in July. While the list of waiver recipients includes fire departments and other first responders, the vast majority are law enforcement agencies, including police in cities large and small.
The automated drone push comes as resistance to mass surveillance by license plate-reading cameras goes viral. Residents are packing city council meetings across the country to demand restrictions on the data gathered by high-tech drones and cameras — or an end to mass surveillance altogether.
Scandals over digital stalking by police and other abuses are erupting as new surveillance tech empowers the state to violate privacy in entirely fresh ways. In response, people are taking direct action, sabotaging automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that are capable of building complex profiles of individual vehicles.
Flock Safety, a top surveillance tech firm, is the company most associated with ALPRs and is itself often at the center of controversy. But Flock also has a number of competitors, including Axon and Motorola Solutions. And business across the surveillance tech economy is booming.
Unlike most consumer drones, which are controlled by an operator looking up from the ground, autonomous surveillance drones used for DFR programs are operated remotely, allowing police to send drones much longer distances and stream live video footage back to headquarters. Cops in many cities have launched camera-carrying drones for years, but autonomous drones guided by AI are capable of flying “beyond the visual line of sight” of the operator (also known as BVLOS drones) and can be managed from a central launch pad, freeing up police time and capacity.
“The human increasingly is not flying the drone; the drone is driven by artificial intelligence and just deployed from one spot to another spot,” said Beryl Lipton, the senior investigative researcher at EFF, in an interview. “They don’t have a pilot, but there is often a human person who is there to manage the feed.”
Flying a BVLOS drone requires an FAA waiver. The agency streamlined the waiver process in April 2025 and approved more waivers for BVLOS drones between then and February 2026 than it had in the previous seven years combined, EFF reports.
Lipton said most law enforcement applicants are already deploying automated drones or are strongly considering a “drone-as-first-responder” program. Once police begin a relationship with a company such as Flock Safety or Axon, Lipton said, taxpayers can expect a push for purchases of additional gadgets, upgrades, and storage for video.
Drone (war)fare
First.
they.
came.
🎥 Palestinian-American watches with dread as Israeli settlers besiege relatives’ homes in West Bank
Al Jazeera English | Aug 12, 2026
Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian families in their homes in the occupied West Bank amid an ongoing attempt to seize their land. Security camera footage from a village south of Nablus shows settlers and soldiers surrounding one of the homes.
Families have told Al Jazeera that the settlers have been blocking the entrances to at least three homes since Sunday using rocks and tents, while Israeli forces have failed to clear them.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, American-Palestinian Loai Ridi said his brother Qusay and 18-year-old nephew Ahmad have been under siege for four days in their home in the village of Qusra.
Ridi said: “They cut off the electricity, they cut off the water lines. He only has supplies for two, three days left.”
He said Israeli forces initially arrived but “they got down and they started praying behind the settlers in the same tent.”
Ridi said he has contacted the US Embassy and his congressional representative, but “we're not seeing anything on the ground has changed yet.”
For.
the.
Palestinians.
Birthplace earth
<insert great
question mark>
The police state has such horrible tools, all over the globe, paid for with our taxes.
And international law and its enforcers are being disabled.
Meanwhile the horrors continue in Palestine, and no one stops it.
And this is democracy? I don't hear anyone saying that anymore, and for good reason.
Be well, Najwan, and thanks as always for bringing awareness to all of this.
#PalestineWillBeFree
🇵🇸 🙏🏼 🇵🇸
Would follow that ICE and the police trained in the illegal occupation would blowback imperial cruelty atrocities and judicial defiance- Latuff’s Democratic and Republican vote alchemy of bombs for genocide.
“First.
they.
came.
For.
the.
Palestinians.”