In the February Z Magazine:

A report from the ACLU on the illegality of National Security Agency spying on United States citizens. The Bush Jr. Administration just gets more and more lawless and corrupt, in a three decades later replay of the Richard Nixon years. Why impeachment proceedings have not begun yet amazes me.

A related article by Olga Bonfiglio (of Kalamazoo College, here in Michigan) details the erosion of freedom in the United States due to the USA PATRIOT act. She gives some historical background to remind us that this is not necessarily a new thing, as evidenced by the COINTELPRO program of FBI spying and intimidation of progressive political organizations in the 1960s and 1970s.

Nicolas Davies writes about a report published in the medical journal Lancet that found that the vast majority of deaths in the Iraq war have been caused by the "coalition" forces led by the United States. This, of course, does not reflect well on the warmongers in the U.S. government and their allies, and so must be sent down the "Orwellian memory hole" as Noam Chomsky likes to refer to the place where unpleasant facts get banished.

Carolina Cositore reports on a promising development in Latin America and the Caribbean known as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or Alternativa Bolivarana por las Americas in Espanol (ALBA). This is an alternative to corporate and United States dominated "free trade" policies such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas), which are not free or fair to anyone but the very rich. By contrast, ALBA is oriented towards the needs of all people and focuses on such things as eliminating poverty and protecting the environment.

This is followed by an article by Melissa Hornaday that details the negative effects of CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) on the women of the Central America region. Many women farmers in the region have lost their land and been forced into labor in "maquiladora" factories due to CAFTA, which has had much of the same bad impact on the poor that NAFTA has had on the poor of North America.

Edward Herman on "retail" and "state" terrorism, a subject that he and Noam Chomsky have often discussed. Retail terrorism is what most of us think of when we hear the word "terrorism." and 9/11 was perhaps the most extreme example of this.

State terrorism, on the other hand, ends up killing and injuring many more people but is typically not referred to (at least in the mainstream) as "terrorism." Examples of this are many, including the U.S. war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia in general in the 1960s and 1970s, the military coup in Chile in 1973 that was supported by the United States (which, ironically, took place on September 11 of that year...why do we never hear about that "9/11???," and the current U.S. and allies war in Iraq. Then there was the U.S. supported 1954 coup in Guatemala, the U.S. support of the "contra" terrorists in Nicaragua, ongoing U.S. backed terror against Cuba, ongoing U.S. support of Israeli terror, etc., etc. Of course, other countries including the former Soviet Union engaged in state terror as well, but that is no excuse for the United States which likes so much to portray itself as the champion of human rights, peace, and democracy.

Herman also discusses the role of the corporate media in twisting the truth and turning state terror into noble crusades for freedom, or whatever other comforting notion is put forth.

Finally, Sofia Jarrin-Thomas on the U.S. military's efforts to recruit in high schools, particularly in the Latino/Latina community. This also happens in the African-American community as Michael Moore showed in one of his films, with footage of military recruiters approaching young African-Americans in Flint, Michigan. Poor people of all races are increasingly under pressure to join the military as other options to make a living become harder to find. And so the poor suffer for the benefit of people like George Bush, his Republican and Democratic Party buddies, and the Corporations For Which They Stand.