Progressive Politics

Sadiq Khan has blocked a £50m Metropolitan police deal with the controversial US tech company Palantir, sparking a bitter row between the London mayor and Scotland Yard.

After the UK’s largest police force had agreed to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations, Khan intervened, citing “serious concerns” about how the deal had been struck.

The mayor’s office said there had been a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules and said police had only seriously considered one supplier (Palantir).

But after the Guardian reported the decision, Scotland Yard criticised the block as “disappointing”, saying that without new technology it would have to cut officer numbers, which would in turn affect the force’s ability to keep London safe.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/46795143

Videos from a 30 October 2025 operation were disclosed in court as part of an ongoing class-action lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrest tactics and racial profiling by agents. Lawyers for one of the detained farm workers shared the footage with the Guardian.

The officers did not have warrants to detain the workers, and a federal judge later said the arrests appeared to be unlawful and unjustified.

The footage shows an agent using his phone to capture the face of one of the detained workers, and agents later admitted in court that they used a facial recognition app during the operation. The case provides a window into ICE’s expanding use of this surveillance technology across the US, which has raised significant privacy and civil liberties concerns, particularly since the app can yield inaccurate results.

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US judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled against ICE in February in the class-action suit led by MJMA. He said officers had engaged in “misconduct” in Oregon and issued a preliminary decision broadly restricting agents in the state from arresting people without warrants.

Kasubhai noted that officers had made inaccurate statements in their reports about the Woodburn encounter, including falsely saying MJMA had entered the US unlawfully when she had arrived with a valid temporary visa. He said the claims of possible “smuggling” were “unfounded”, and noted that ICE’s reports inaccurately called the stop “consensual”.

The judge was also critical of the officers’ use of the facial recognition technology, saying it relied on data that “can be inaccurate and produce individuals who are here in accordance with immigration laws”.

The judge further said that in the Woodburn stop, officers “did not provide any meaningfully reasonable time for the driver to comply with his commands before shattering the driver side window”.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/46795076

Reem Yassin, the watch group’s attorney, described the raids as “fishing expeditions” that used “baseless” search warrants. "These raids are nothing more than an intimidation tactic to suppress free speech,” he said at a Thursday press conference.

Yassin added that the incidents were part of a year-long pattern in which federal agents have targeted more than 50 people associated with the group with arrests, raids, car ramming, pepper-spraying, and following them home. VC Defensa, based in Ventura County, is one of many neighborhood groups across the U.S. known to record and monitor Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Immigration agents have been documented targeting observers with violence while they film immigration activities, most notably killing legal observers Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota this winter.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/46795749

“There are many people suffering here. This is the only way we have to raise our voice, this is a call to stop the suffering and respect our dignity as human beings,” read a statement written by the strikers that was read during an press conference held online Wednesday morning. It was put on by a coalition of advocacy groups.

The immigrants at the Adelanto ICE detention complex have not eaten since Tuesday, organizers said. They are demanding “due process, bond reform, improved conditions, adequate medical and mental health care, nutritious food, accountability for deaths, and the right to organize and communicate” according to their statement.

The 20 men on strike are all being held in the facility’s Desert View Annex processing center, which is one of the three facilities in the Adelanto detention complex, where immigrants who are detained await deportation or release. There are also reports of a hunger strike at the Adelanto Processing Facility West that began last Friday, according to the Community Defense Coalition, a grassroots immigration advocacy group who is in touch with people being held there through their families.

The Adelanto ICE facility is California’s largest immigration detention facility and currently holds over 2,000 people, according to the California Department of Justice. It is owned by GEO Group, a private corporation contracted to operate immigration detention facilities, prisons and mental health facilities around the country.

Earlier this month, a former GEO Group executive was named the acting director of ICE, replacing Todd Lyons who will soon retire.

Four people have died in the Adelanto facility between September 2025 and March 2026, according to a report from the California Department of Justice.

a government minister filmed himself gloating over bound humanitarian workers in international waters. Suddenly, after two years of genocide, Western leaders have discovered their voices.

Crosspost from Crosspost from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11679700

https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/May-20-2026.pdf

A Tennessee man who was jailed for 37 days over a Facebook post he shared after the killing of Charlie Kirk has agreed to a $835,000 settlement with the sheriff who detained him, his lawyers said on Wednesday.

The fatal shooting of Mr. Kirk, the conservative activist, last September set off an avalanche of social media commentary across the country. With it came firings, resignations and a debate about the boundaries of free speech. But Larry Bushart, the man arrested in Tennessee, was perhaps the only person charged with a felony after his posts about Mr. Kirk’s death.

In the posts, he shared memes that accused Mr. Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, of perpetrating hate and another that included past comments from President Trump about moving past a school shooting. The sheriff’s office in Perry County, Tenn., claimed that with those posts, he had threatened violence.

WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — More than 40 aircraft, including unmanned drones, have been either lost or damaged in Iran, according to a congressional report.

The report, which cites news reports and statements by the Defense Department and U.S. Central Command, says 42 “fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft, including uncrewed aircraft (i.e., drones)” have been lost or damaged during Operation Epic Fury.

“The conflict has involved air, maritime, and missile combat engagements across the Middle East. The pace of combat activity declined amid a ceasefire in April. Within weeks, some strikes resumed, and conditions remain fluid,” the report reads.

A few days ago, a document surfaced online. It was a leaked police memo outlining a joint operation between the Bolivian police and the United States military to capture former president Evo Morales and, according to multiple reports, massacre the villagers who stood in their way. The response from the Bolivian people was immediate and defiant. Indigenous rural communities surrounded Morales’ residence to protect him. Workers seized Chimoré airport near his home, blocking the runway to prevent American planes or helicopters from landing. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a people fighting for their lives and the Western media is barely whispering about it.

Crosspost from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11672063

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said on Wednesday that they would seek to expel Maureen Galindo, a Democrat running for Congress in Texas who has expressed extreme antisemitic views, if she is elected.

He made a similar comment, and expounded on the situation, during a House hearing earlier in the day, describing Galindo’s comments as a logical escalation of attacks on Jewish and pro-Israel Americans and U.S. support for Israel, which have become increasingly common in Democratic politics.

MAGA Influencers are all in a chat and they all receive talking points and are paid to say things in a coordinated campaign.

They say Tucker isn't in on this ... how many of you wanna bet Rogan is though ...

In 1994, Shaw became a witness in a grisly triple homicide. A local drug dealer, along with his mother and a teenage friend, had been abducted, murdered, and buried in a freshly dug grave at a cemetery in South Memphis. Prosecutors arrested 25-year-old Tony Carruthers, who had recently gotten out of prison. There was nothing directly tying him to the crime — and he swore that he had nothing to do with it. But Shaw claimed that Carruthers confessed to him. In 1996, a jury sentenced Carruthers to die.

Like most people, Story assumed Carruthers was guilty. But in January 1997, Story himself was accused of a crime he swore he did not commit. He was arrested and charged with selling drugs to an undercover officer. There was no evidence against Story — in fact, the presiding judge initially threw out his case for lack of probable cause. But in 1999, he was tried, convicted, and given probation. The main witness against him was Shaw.

Story was convinced he’d been framed. Over the previous decade he’d become known as a whistleblower, documenting violence and abuse at the jail. This made him a target for retaliation. “I had some enemies within the sheriff’s department,” he said.

Story lost his job and his pension as a result of his conviction. He had been fighting to clear his name for 20 years when, one week before Christmas 2017, he got an envelope in the mail from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. That return address was written in elaborate script below the name “Tony Von Carruthers.”

The envelope contained records confirming what Story had long known to be true: Shaw had been a paid confidential informant. Although this had been an open secret in Memphis for decades, the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office repeatedly denied it. “I have talked to the prosecutors who tried your client and neither is aware of any situation where Alfredo Shaw acted as a paid informant for anybody,” the office had written to Carruthers’s post-conviction attorneys.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/46736896

There’s a massive immigration operation in Memphis right now, but you may not have heard about it. It certainly hasn’t gotten as much attention as past surges in Chicago or Minneapolis—even though it’s been going on since September.

Hunter Demster, who runs a soup kitchen in the city, has been trying to get the word out. He often drives around with his phone, looking for officers to film as they arrest immigrants. There are more than 2,700 officers stationed in the city as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force; some are from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); others are from other law enforcement agencies and the National Guard. None particularly want to be photographed.

Which means that Demster is facing blowback for trying to document them. So are other community members doing the same thing. Officers have taunted them, shined bright lights at them, and followed them in their cars. One community member was assaulted and jailed for trying to film. Now, they’re suing, with help from the ACLU, which argues that agents are engaged in a pattern of intimidation and retaliation that hampers their First Amendment rights to record the police.

The lawsuit was filed last week against leaders of the task force, and it’s a harrowing read—dozens of pages of examples. Demster, for one, recalls an officer driving quickly as he stood in a parking lot and then swerving toward him, missing him by inches. Another plaintiff was “bumper-rushed” by police while driving—they came up behind him so quickly that it appeared a collision was imminent, before hitting the brakes at the last second.

“It’s retaliation,” Demster told me of the various incidents. “And for what? Holding a phone.”

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The surge has not gotten much national attention in part because Tennessee’s Republican governor supports it—he has said it will continue indefinitely. And the Trump administration has framed it not as an immigration crackdown, which would get a lot of press coverage, but as a crime crackdown. (Task force officers from other agencies are arresting people primarily for traffic violations and crimes, but they call DHS officers when they encounter immigrants.)

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Demster continues to press record whenever he gets a chance. “We are under full-blown occupation and immigrants are going missing,” he says. “No one should fear their government for holding a phone.”

Thomas Massie has lost his congressional seat against a primary opponent whose Israel lobby funding made the race the most expensive House of Representatives primary in history. Massie has been a rare Republican opponent of Israeli abuses on Capitol Hill.

The spending on Massie’s ouster topped out at a staggering $32 million when all was said and done. The second- and third-most expensive House primary races were also heavily slanted by Israel lobby funding, with AIPAC pouring millions into toppling progressive Democrats Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.

Americans just watched the Israel lobby openly manipulate yet another election, and then in like two weeks they’re going to hear their government tell them they need to regime change another foreign country to bring “democracy” to its people. Americans themselves do not have democracy.

For a rough estimate of how dominant Zionism is among Jewish organizations, I carried out an analysis of the Wikipedia category page for ‘Jewish organizations based in the United States.’ As of April 2026, the page lists approximately 487 organizations in this category and its sub-categories. It should be noted that not every organization is explicitly marked as pro-Israel on Wikipedia, so a deeper analysis required reviewing each one individually.

Out of the 487 organizations investigated, 458 had sufficient publicly available information to determine their stance on Zionism/Israel. Of those 458, 454 organizations (99%) can be classified as Zionist. This includes Liberal Zionist organizations that may make token references to Palestinians or two-state solutions; even excluding those, the proportion remains at approximately 90% of all organizations with clear stances.

To put it another way: only 4 organizations out of 458 with sufficient information could be classified as non-Zionist or critical of Israel. The remaining 29 organizations had no stated stance, insufficient information available, or no discernible relationship to pro-Israel groups. Including organizations with unknown stances, the minimum proportion of Zionist organizations among all 487 is 93% (454/487).