The Economist has a short blurb on a crowd dispersal used against stone throwers in Israel.
It smells like raw sewage mixed with putrefying cow's carcass, and it might soon be Israel's latest high-tech export. Skunk, as it is appositely called, has been used by Israeli soldiers since 2008 to disperse Palestinian protesters. Now it has attracted the interest of law-enforcement agencies in America which, after riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, crave better ways to scatter rioters without killing or injuring them.
The good news is it is entirely non-toxic, and allegedly drinkable, and serves to clear the area with no injuries. There are reports of its use go back several years
Palestinians call it simply "shit."
"How can you describe this stuff?" said Muad Tamimi, whose gas station on the front line of Nabi Saleh's standoffs is often bathed in it. "It's beyond foul water, like a dead body and rotting food together, which no soap or perfume can take off - I'm hit with it and nobody goes near me for days."
The bad news, is there is some indication that US Police departments are starting to order the Feculent fragrance for their own crowd control situations.
A report this week that Skunk is now being sold to American local police departments was initially confirmed by a Maryland-based company claiming to be the vendor; but then swiftly retracted.
It remains to be seen how this "collective environmental punishment" will go over in the streets of the US where people call the police on dog walkers that fail to pick up after their pet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @01:17AM
You think you have rights? You don't have any rights. Your fellow Americans forfeited your rights when they elected Bush Jr. Try to keep up with the times please.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 06 2015, @01:25AM
Consider their recent decision that the police can't make you wait around for a drug sniffing dog to arrive.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @01:33AM
but everything else is the worst injustice in history!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday June 06 2015, @01:51AM
Bush? Really? The Constitution was pretty much null and void by the time President Wilson put it out its misery. Tis been dead long before anyone posting here was born, before most of our parents.
It is just since the 'return to normalcy' backlash after Wilson they all went to a lot of trouble to pretend we still followed it, lately the pretending got old and/or they figured everyone who got all riled up back then was now dead so they could drop the pretense again. Expect a rinse and repeat.... of the lying part.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @01:59AM
Wilson, really? Have you forgotten how Lincoln trampled states' rights, declared martial law, suspended habeas corpus, declared war on fellow citizens?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:16AM
No I didn't. Somebody has reading difficulties but it ain't me. Wilson 'put it out of its misery' kinda implies (remember, Reading Is Fundamental) that it was mostly dead already. It is just that bringing up the crimes of Lincoln almost always diverts the discussion into yells of RACIST and nothing useful comes of the rest of the thread. But if you want to remind everyone Lincoln pretty much did the whole Vader "I have changed the bargain, pray I do not change it further." bit then I certainly won't argue the point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:21AM
Lincoln was worse than Hitler.
(Score: 1) by _1156277 on Saturday June 06 2015, @04:42AM
What of Abradolf Linkler?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday June 08 2015, @10:32PM
the constitution allows it to be suspended during insurrections.
Smithsonian magazine made a good case of the civil war not being about states' rights as is commonly claimed these days, but about slavery.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @03:26AM
Yeah. Remember all those race riots while W was in office? Me neither.