just completed scanning Vol. IV of William Lloyd Garrison’s THE LIBERATOR (Jan-Dec 1834). Soon to be available through Fair Use Repository Previous volumes available here: http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/

Immigration Profiling Destroying lives and separating families for the sake of the numbers. Juicing the numbers by means of police-state dragnets. From USA Today: – – – quote – – – “WASHINGTON – U.S. immigration officials laid out plans last year that would ratchet up expulsions of immigrants convicted of minor crimes as part of an urgent push to make sure the government would not fall short of its criminal deportation targets, new records obtained by USA TODAY show. “Among those new tactics – detailed in interviews and internal e-mails – were TROLLING STATE DRIVER’S LICENSE RECORDS for information about foreign-born applicants, DISPATCHING U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE) AGENTS TO TRAFFIC SAFETY CHECKPOINTS CONDUCTED BY POLICE DEPARTMENTS, and PROCESSING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS [sic] WHO HAD BEEN BOOKED INTO JAILS FOR LOW-LEVEL OFFENSES. Records show ICE officials in Washington approved some of those steps. “President Obama’s administration has made deporting convicted criminals a central feature of its immigration policy, while also saying it would halt some efforts to remove low-priority immigrants who pose little risk to public safety. [sic — see above; see below] . . . By the time the government’s fiscal year ended in September, ICE had deported 225,390 criminal immigrants [sic] – a record, and well above the agency’s target of 210,000. ICE has not specified how many of those deportations were based on minor offenses; the year before, it reported that MORE THAN A QUARTER OF THE PEOPLE IT CLASSIFIED AS CRIMINALS HAD BEEN CONVICTED ONLY OF TRAFFIC OFFENSES. . . .” – – – quote – – – http://www.fdlreporter.com/usatoday/article/1919737 I should say that even if these police-state dragnets only netted people guilty of “major” criminal offenses this would still be absolutely appalling, because the *means* are appalling whatever results you might get from them, and because there’s no reason other than pure discrimination why immigrants convicted of crimes ought to be punished by being banished from the country when non-immigrants convicted of crimes are not. However, as it stands, the claim that the administration’s tactics are targeting those who “pose a risk to public safety” are purely propagandistic lies. In either case, adopting these tactics in order to destroy people’s lives and livelihoods, for the sake of meeting bureaucratic statistical targets is despicable.

Available now from the ALL Distro: “To Grow a Free Society,” five essays on Anarchism & Socialism, centered on “How Will a Free Society Come, and How Will It Operate?” http://distro.libertarianleft.org/for/anarchist-classics-series/winn-loubal-whitehead-washburn-to-grow-a-free-society/

Now available from ALL Distro: http://distro.libertarianleft.org/for/anarchist-classics-series/liberty-the-question-of-copyright/

FREE SOCIETY IX.27 (July 6, 1902) and IX.32 (August 10, 1902) now available for your perusal at the Fair Use Repository (fair-use.org) http://fair-use.org/free-society/issue/369 http://fair-use.org/free-society/issue/374

From The Stranger: “. . . Or they will be at 4 pm tomorrow afternoon. Judge Jones has granted Duran and Olejnik’s attorneys’ request to release their clients, who have been in prison—without convictions or charges—for five months and in solitary confinement for two months. “I wrote about visiting them in prison, and how they got there, in this story. “. . . this is happy, happy news. And it’s a correction of a situation in the justice system that has seemed very, very far from just. “The third grand jury refuser, Maddie Pfeiffer, is still in prison, but his attorney did not join the motion to file for his release. That motion, I’m guessing, isn’t far away. . . .”

Completed to-day, and going out to subscribers: the new (February 2013) issues of the Market Anarchy Zine Series and the Anarchist Classics Series. ACS #25 is a collection of articles on anarchism, socialism, and liberated economic life, by Ross Winn, A. LeRoy Loubal, Celia B. Whitehead and Albina L. Washburn, entitled “To Grow a FREE SOCIETY.” MA #38, “Repudiation Now,” is a pamphlet with articles by Kevin Carson and myself on neoliberalism, inter-national financial institutions and the repudiation of government debts.

Via Scott Crow: “One of my all time favorite Austin projects, Inside Books, which provides free books and radical literature to Texas prisoners could use some extra hands for their March work party. #anarchy #horizontal” For anyone in or around Austin, Tex. on March 1.

This is good news, as far as it goes. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/26/illegal-immigrants-released-detention-centers-sequ/ “The sequester is officially still three days away, but the Obama administration already is making the first cuts, officials confirming that the Homeland Security Department already has released several hundred illegal immigrants [sic] from detention in order to save money. The move is proving controversial. Immigrant-rights groups say it shows the administration was detaining folks it never should have gone after in the first place, . . . ‘Over the last week, ICE has reviewed several hundred cases and placed these individuals on methods of supervision less costly than detention,’ ICE said in a statement. ‘All of these individuals remain in removal proceedings. …'” ICE openly admits that it was imprisoning at least several hundreds of people in hellhole “detention centers” even though they admittedly posed no significant threat at all to public safety. The good news is that some of these 700 have been released. The bad news is that they are still subject to deportation, and there tens of thousands more still in detention who have not been released. Immigration should not be a crime at all, and I can only dream that they shut the whole thing down and that every immigrant in detention is immediately and unconditionally released. Free the ICE 34,000 and all political prisoners.

To-day Rad Geek People’s Daily [radgeek.com]: Bureaucratic Rationality #7, the Louisiana State Health Department vs. Health and Adequate Nutrition in Louisiana