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Today's Stories

March 25, 2004

Saul Landau
Is Venezuela Next?

March 24, 2004

Gary Leupp
General Musharraf's IOU

Richard Oxman
Shakespeare for Kerry

William Lind
The Beginning of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq

Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later

Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again

Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn

Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media in Cuba

John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke

Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"

Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela

Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?

Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only Fuel More Suicide Bombings

Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey

 

March 23, 2004

Phillip Cryan
The Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks

Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?

Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections

Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George

Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble

JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"

Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black CD

Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track

Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]

M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie

 

March 22, 2004

Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial Executions

Uri Avnery
The Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime

Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage

Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee

Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy Scam

Greg Moses
Stop Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March

Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation

Lenni Brenner
Report from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace

Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations

Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment

Website of the Day
Enviros Against War

 

March 20 / 21, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Gay Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path

Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne Do?

Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act

Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"

William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall

Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism

Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War

John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon

Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man

Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity

Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss

Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?

Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism

Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun

Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!

Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill

Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet

Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility

Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election

 

March 19, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home

Ann Harrison
So Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?

William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"

Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote

Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup, Mr. Bush

Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future

John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs

Vicente Navarro
The End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend

Website of the War
Naming the Dead


March 18, 2004

Gila Svirsky
Rachel Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency

Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million from Saddam

William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing

Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative

Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment

Josh Frank
The Nader Question

Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy

Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey

Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain

Gary Leupp
The Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost

Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key

 

March 17, 2004

Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on Terror or Civil Liberties?

David MacMichael
Untruth and Consequences

Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer

Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware

Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out

Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections

Peter Linebaugh
Bush: Blanc Blanc

 

March 16, 2004

Lenni Brenner
James Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights

Scott Boehm
Madrid Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days

Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History Behind the Spanish Elections

Sam Hamod and Alfredo Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way: Executing David Clayton Hill

Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran

Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War on Terror"

Bill Christison
The Aftershocks from Madrid

CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa

Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!

 

March 15, 2004

Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe

Mike Whitney
Justice Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism

Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation

Greg Moses
Lessons from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs

Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health

Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer

CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!

 

March 12 / 14, 2004

Gabriel Kolko
The Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power

Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!

William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)

William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks

Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us All Less Safe

Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars

Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists

Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor

Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge

Helen Scott and Ashley Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?

Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy of the American Prison

Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On

Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding

Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith

Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier

 

 

 

March 11, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Bedtime for Democracy

Bill Kauffman
Hey, Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?

James Hollander
Slaughter in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?

Norman Solomon
They Shoot Journalists, Don't They?

Patrick Gavin
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Becky Burgwin
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March 10, 2004

Hammond Guthrie
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Chris Floyd
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Elizabeth Corrie
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Mike Whitney
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M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?

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March 25, 2004

Misreporting Venezuela

Hugo Chavez as Processed by The Independent

By TONI SOLO

Many people read the London based Independent newspaper because among its reporters is the outstanding Robert Fisk. The anti-war stance of the newspaper on Iraq and its stance on genetically manipulated foods and other environmental issues may give the impression that the Independent is a responsible newspaper across the board. But a look at its coverage of Venezuela reveals the same old story of distortion, omission and deceit on US intervention in Latin America that one finds everywhere else in the corporate media.

It may be worth pointing out that the owner of the UK Independent is Tony O'Reilly, one of Ireland's most prominent businessmen, formerly head of H.J. Heinz. H.J. Heinz heiress Teresa Heinz is married to Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry. Also of note is that O'Reilly shares philanthropic concerns through the Ireland Fund with fellow fund member Peter Sutherland, former GATT and World Trade Organization chief, also chairman of oil giant BP-Amoco.1 It's unlikely their corporate philantropy extends to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.

Three important stories on Venezuela have appeared in the Independent during March.2 One by Phil Gunson on March 2nd, one by Andrew Buncombe on March 13th and one by Rupert Cornwell on March 20th. Phil Gunson's article is crude anti-Chavez propaganda. Buncombe's is a straightforward account of US funding for the Venezuelan opposition. Cornwell's is a more insidious anti-Chavez piece employing classic BBC-style bonhomie and "balance". Both pieces depend on ignoring crucial facts.

Chavez rubbished among Gunson's garbage

The keynote in Gunson's piece comes in the second paragraph: "Three months after the opposition umbrella group, the Democratic Co-ordinator (CD), gathered more than three million signatures for a referendum against the leftist President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's electoral authority was poised to reject the petition.

The only way to revive the referendum, guaranteed under Mr Chavez's 1999 constitution, would be for hundreds of thousands of signatories to reaffirm their intentions - an option that seemed certain to be rejected by the CD as impractical."

Phil Gunson whimsically attributes to himself the authority to judge the number of signatures collected. He says nothing about the circumstances of the recall vote – which no European country would have regarded as acceptable. For example, voting lists were taken from the voting stations by opposition party representatives so as to register votes by going from house to house. The Chavez government accepted that and other abnormal voting procedures, presumably so as to quit the opposition of any excuse were they to lose the vote.

In the event the opposition failed to collect the necessary 2.4 million clearly valid votes they needed. They only got 1.8 million votes ratified by the national electoral council. 600.000 votes were disqualified outright by the electoral council as being obviously invalid. A further 800,000 thousand votes are in question, mainly because many of the signature forms presented as valid share identical handwriting. These questionable votes are now to be made available in voting stations to allow the people to whom the signatures were attributed a second chance to confirm their vote. Contrary to Gunson's comment, the constitutional procedure for the confirmation process is no more impractical than the original recall vote itself.

Gunson's article then notes the widespread violent protests by the US-funded Venezuelan opposition. The impression he gives is of broad based popular opposition to an oppressive unpopular regime. But he offers no support for any of his assertions. This example of weasel-like sourcing; gives the flavour: "Election observers from the Atlanta-based Carter Centre and the Organisation of American States (OAS) were preparing to leave, convinced - say diplomatic sources - that the process has been manipulated by the electoral authority, on whose board the government has a majority of three to two."

Gunson failed to get the answers he wanted from the Carter Centre or from the OAS, so he resorted to unattributed "diplomatic sources". What might count as "diplomatic sources" for Phil Gunson is unclear - two US embassy staff? Or one US embassy Information Service hack and a Colombian embassy representative of death squad-friendly President Alvaro Uribe? An impartial reader cannot tell.

Similarly, in the penultimate paragraph Gunson refers to Chavez's "increasing authoritarianism" with nothing to support this description of the Venezuelan President. One just has to recall the savage repression of peaceful protest in Miami around the FTAA meeting there last year to imagine what measures might be taken against demonstrators throwing petrol bombs and shooting civilians in the US. But in the alchemist's transformation of dross into sensationalism worked by Phil Gunson, security measures applied with minimum force in Venezuela against murderous assaults by the anti-democratic opposition become "increasing authoritarianism".

Gunson's report could be dismissed for the pap that it is and forgotten were it not part of an international media campaign to disparage and demonize Hugo Chavez and to intervene in Venezuela's internal affairs. The campaign gives aid and comfort to the anti-democratic US-funded opposition. The crisis in Venezuela stems from the opposition's lack of electoral support. They tried to rig the recall vote and became bogged down in constitutional process. Then they instigated violent insurrection to try and force the issue, so far without success. These basic facts are entirely absent from Gunson's report.

Chavez re-historied – the Buncombe version

Andrew Buncombe's article may well have been an attempt by the Independent to make good Gunson's crude bodge. Ostensibly, Buncombe highlights US funding for the Venezuelan opposition through the CIA's ugly sister, the National Endowment for Democracy. But his piece plays its part in the editorial management of perceptions about Venezuela against President Chavez. The final paragraph reads: "In recent days, Caracas and other cities have been rocked by demonstrations in support of the recall vote. Those intensified after the supposedly independent elections council ruled that government opponents lacked enough total signatures to force the vote. There have also been large and vociferous marches by thousands of supporters of the president who oppose the vote."

Note here the "supposedly independent elections council". In fact, the electoral council was chosen by the Venezuelan Supreme Court, not by the government nor by the government controlled legislature. Would Buncombe dare to describe the US Republican-packed Supremes as the "supposedly independent Supreme Court"? Hardly. But it's good enough when you're writing about Venezuela. And then the chimera "balance" rears one of its many heads. Buncombe reports the anti-Chavez demonstrations and the pro-government march as if they were somehow equal manifestations of political opinion in the country.

In fact, the limited insurrectionist outbreaks, directly encouraged and heavily hyped by the uncensored Venezuelan media under Gunson's "increasingly authoritarian" Chavez, were rejected even by the opposition's own middle class supporters. (No one likes paid riff-raff burning tyres and shooting people at the bottom of their smart driveways.) Whereas the pro-government demonstration brought out half a million Chavez supporters – a degree of magnitude far greater than the "thousands" reported by Buncombe. So even in pieces that seem to offer a respite from the unremitting demonization of Hugo Chavez, history is retouched to serve mainstream media inventions about events in Venezuela.

Chavez weighed in the Cornwell Balance

Balance plays an enticingly plausible role for the unwary in Rupert Cornwell's piece, which presents information about current events in Venezuela through a profile of President Chavez. The article is cleverly done, several degrees more sophisticated than Phil Gunson's mediocre hatchet job. Anyone unfamiliar with Venezuelan affairs would leave it thinking what an agreeable fellow Cornwell must be and what an unstable jerk those bewildering Venezuelans elected to be their President.

But the giveaway comes in the first paragraph. Noting Washington's hemispheric concerns, Cornwell writes of Fidel Castro "as far as can be judged, that particular tormentor of the US is as firmly in the saddle as ever." So, even taking into account the flippancy, which serves it's purpose here by distracting the reader from the sense of what is being said, the perspective is clear. It is Cuba's Castro who is the aggressive tormentor. Never mind 40 years of US funded and organized sabotage, economic blockade and terrorist attacks that have claimed thousands of Cubans as well as foreign tourists among their victims. It is poor old Washington and the United States that deserve our sympathy.

The rest of the article flows naturally and fluently from that perspective. Cornwell presents Venezuela as a country in social crisis and "on the brink of civil war". A coherent broadly based force capable of mounting effective organized military action against the Venezuelan government for now exists only in Cornwell's own prose although it almost certainly figures in the planning of the State Department and the CIA. Never mind, Cornwell goes on. Chavez "has divided his country by class and race" - as if Venezuela's has not been precisely the history of a country ruthlessly dominated by a wealthy white elite who kept the poor non-white majority in miserable poverty with corrupt, undemocratic politics and brutal repression. In Cornwell's version it is wanton Chavez who has divided the country.

Cornwell relates, "In 1992, as economic crisis and social unrest gripped the country, he made his first attempt to seize power..." This account leaves out the context in which the Andres Perez government of the time, following riots against disastrous IMF imposed reforms, oversaw the massacre and disappearance of around 3000 people. Cornwell's "economic crisis and social unrest" reinforces the racist stereotype of unstable Latins who can't run their own countries. In fact the 1992 uprising was a response to the endless interference in Venezuela's internal affairs by the United States and its dogsbodies, the IMF and the World Bank.

Another suave way Cornwell uses to undermine Chavez is to make invidious comparisons with Salvador Allende and Juan Peron, as if Chavez is already doomed to meet one or other of their fates. Cornwell tends to sneer at Chavez's "narcissistic" use of TV to reach his political consituency. But in fact Chavez uses TV for his political purposes in a very similar way to the Venezuelan opposition – both talk dramatically and intimately to camera as if speaking directly to an audience at a political meeting. Anyone who has not watched Venezuelan TV would not know that. Meretriciously, Cornwell makes Chavez seem a poseur.

Cornwell quotes Larry Binns of the Council for Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. Binns complains that Chavez is "far too dependent on the military." Ah, so we are to conclude that Chavez must surely be a militarist despot.... or then again, maybe he just doesn't want to end up like Salvador Allende. Allende died because he trusted the army. The army murdered him. Chavez isn't making the same mistake. So, in Cornwell-speak he must be described (this time by an attributed source because Cornwell is a better journalist than Phil Gunson) as "far too dependent on the military" at the same time as Chavez's extrovert character is unfavourably contrasted against the more sober demeanour of Allende.

The "Independent" 's incredible shrinking masses

Recounting the April 2002 coup, Cornwell has the hundreds of thousands of Chavez supporters that defeated the US managed putsch shrink– just as in Buncombe's report - to mere "thousands". The effort in all these pieces is to minimize the massive popular support enjoyed by Chavez and to magnify the militant opposition – which is in many ways a virtual creation of the corporate owned Venezuelan media. US involvement in the 2002 coup becomes just some funding and some verbal encouragement from White House officials Roger Noriega and Otto Reich. In fact, US war ships entered Venezuelan territorial waters. US military helicopters landed in at least one Venezuelan airport. Venezuelan terrorists have been and probably continue to be trained at camps in Florida to carry out terror attacks against targets in their country 3All this information is available and has been for some time. But it does not inform the reports that appear in the Independent.

Also in Cornwell's account, Chavez "has failed his country with his erratic and sometimes blundering style, and his inability to deliver on promises." As if the US inspired April 2002 coup never happened. As if the crippling economic sabotage inflicted by the business classes and their media allies never happened. As if the opposition controlled Central Bank's mis-management of inflationary measures were benign. As if the management strike in the country's nationalised petrol company had no effect. But, of course, it is Chavez who has failed his country, Chavez who has failed to deliver on his promises. For Cornwell's narrative, it seems, the murderous and destructive Venezuelan opposition are innocent children who fail to figure as significant actors.

Non-existent bitter battles

And now, Cornwell writes, "crisis looms, as the president wages a bitter battle with the Venezuelan Supreme Court to prevent a recall vote that could legally drive him from office. If a vote were held today, almost certainly that would happen." In fact, the Chavez administration has repeatedly publicly declared that it will accept whatever verdict the Supreme Court hands down. So where is this "bitter battle"?

If Cornwell is so sure that Chavez would lose a new election why is it that the opposition had to resort to systematic fraud in order to try and win the recall vote? Why is it that only 1.8 million votes were ratified by the electoral authority while a further 800,000 have had to be submitted for confirmation because most of them appear in identical handwriting? Oh, but of course, we are now back to Andrew Buncombe and the "supposedly independent elections council"- a body appointed by the Venezuelan Supreme Court with whom Cornwell alleges President Chavez is engaged in a "bitter battle". The editorial manipulation over the three articles is clear.

Gunson, Buncombe and Cornwell and their editors operate from assumptions that implicitly support the aggressive imperialist policies of the US while apparently maintaining a certain distance or even, occasionally, expressing apparent disapproval. But through consistent innuendo, distortion and omission they misrepresent the Venezuelan government's efforts to resist US intervention in the country's internal affairs. Whatever may be the truth about Hugo Chavez the man is indeed a matter of interpretation. On the other hand, no one seeking factual coverage of events in Venezuela will find it in the Independent.

There is no need to resort to deep Chomskyian analysis of what's going on in the media on Venezuela. Gunson, Buncombe and Cornwell and every other journalist at work in the international corporate media have the same access to the Internet as anyone else. The fact that their reporting on Venezuela is so abysmally prejudiced may well simply be because they are biased and lazy. If Robert Fisk can deliver factual coverage on Iraq, his Independent colleagues can well do it on Venezuela. They don't.

Toni Solo is an activist based in Central America. Contact: tonisolo01@yahoo.com.

NOTES

1. US oil giant Occidental Petroleum has a deal with BP-Amoco on exploitation rights in land of the U'wa people, and Catatumbo on the Venezuelan-Colombian border. The area has been militarised and serves as a platform for Colombian army and paramilitary provocations against Venezuela. "Plan Colombia: Throwing Gasoline on a Fire", Hector Mondragon, 2000 Translated by Jens Nielson and Justin Podur, August 2001

2. "Venezuelans use people power to attack Chavez", Phil Gunson, Independent, 2nd March 2004 "US revealed to be secretly funding opponents of Chavez", Andrew Buncombe, 13th March 2004 "Hugo Chavez: Champion of the poor, or just another despot?", Rupert Cornwell, Independent, 20th March 2004

3. "Waiting for a response to U.S.-based terrorists'' Dozthor Zurlent, Yellow Times, October 13, 2003 " Chavez Accuses CIA as Bombings Rock Venezuela", Agence France-Presse, 11 October 2003. Both Otto Reich and the US ambassador to Venezuela Charles Shapiro are vetera


Weekend Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Gay Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path

Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne Do?

Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act

Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"

William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall

Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism

Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War

John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon

Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man

Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity

Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss

Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?

Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism

Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun

Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!

Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill

Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet

Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility

Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election


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