Comments Elsewhere

Full issue page-scans of Volume V of THE LIBERATOR now online at Fair Use Repository. http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/ Official announcement coming soonish. If you want to support this project donations to a fund earmarked for fair-use.org projects can be made through the Molinari Institute; details here: http://fair-use.org/donate/

Scans of Volume V of the Liberator (1835) completed. Uploading now; should be available from Fair Use Repository in a bit.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/sequestration-cuts-navy-cocaine-united-states Via Mother Jones: “More Cocaine Could Soon Be on Our Streets [sic], Thanks to the Sequester.” Well, good. This is the second best thing I’ve heard so far about the sequester (after the announcement that it would force the government to release several hundred innocent immigrants from ICE detention and to furlough 60,000 “border security” [sic] workers starting in April). Everything about the government’s insanely costly, structurally racist and utterly irredeemable War on Drugs is destructive and wrong and everything that the United States Navy does to fight it should be shut down immediately by any means available. (Bizarrely, Mother Jones, which has in the past repeatedly run exposes of the Drug War’s bankruptcy, destructiveness, racism, and assault on civil liberties, posted this story in a bizarre attempt to pass this unusual break of good news off as if it were somehow supposed to be a *bad* thing about the sequester.)

is scanning Volume V (1835) of Garrison’s THE LIBERATOR

To-day @ Fair Use Repository : “Ross Winn’s ‘Radical Reflections’ column from FREE SOCIETY, Vol. IX No. 11 (March 16, 1902), on a different kind of ‘propaganda by deed.'” http://fair-use.org/free-society/1902/03/16/radical-reflections “Page scans now up for the entire issue of FREE SOCIETY are also now up:” http://fair-use.org/free-society/issue/353

You know what the worst part about John Brennan becoming Director of the CIA would be? The part about having a CIA, for anyone to direct. Seriously, that needs to be abolished, and anyone who’s ever nominated for running it ought to be blocked.

Las Vegas cab drivers on strike against Yellow Checker Star

To-day at the Fair Use Repository: Volumes III (1833) and IV (1834) of William Lloyd Garrison’s THE LIBERATOR are now available in facsimile PDFs. http://blog.fair-use.org/2013/03/04/liberator-vols-3-4-now-available/

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.