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Double Lives, Social Security, Grassroots Media in New Orleans, Ibrahim Rugova

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Articles for this week from Toward Freedom, offering a progressive perspective on world events:

Double Lives: The Dilemma of Education and Work under Capitalism: by Matt Dineen:

“Whatever you do, just don’t get stuck in a dead-end job.” These words had a powerful effect on me and have occupied my consciousness over the past seven years. It was the summer after my high school graduation and this advice was given to me while I was working in the mechanized bakery of a large grocery store chain. My coworker had been there for over 20 years and now, in the midst of back problems and middle-age, she was unhappy with her life and urged me not to make the same mistake.
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Social Security in Danger: by Nancy J. Altman:

Breaking ranks with every former president, Republican and Democratic alike, President George W. Bush is engaged in a high-profile campaign to undo Social Security. He hopes to accomplish what has eluded his ideological brethren who fought
for similar ends over the last 70 years. Like Representative Carl Curtis in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bush seeks to curtail the benefits of all but the lowest-paid workers, so that all beneficiaries would receive meager, basically flat benefits, largely unrelated to earnings.
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Grassroots Media Looks to Cover the Future of New Orleans: by Brian Conley:

Four and a half months since Katrina struck land, the situation in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast still leaves a lot of troubles and a lot of questions. Many of these questions are being asked by grassroots media activists. In the immediate aftermath New Orleans’ coverage was grossly lacking. While CNN and local affiliates set up shop dozens of miles away in Baton Rouge, grassroots media activists both in New Orleans and elsewhere prepared to fill the gap left by the mainstream media’s coverage.
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Ibrahim Rugova: Non-violent Actions in Violent Kosovo, by Rene Wadlow:

Just as negotiations on the "final status" of Kosovo were to start on January 25 under the chairmanship of Martii Ahtisaari, former President of Finland
and a seasoned negotiator, Ibrahim Rugova, President of Kosovo, died of lung cancer in the Kosovo capital Pristina. The start of the final status talks have been postponed but should start relatively soon as the negotiating team that Rugova had put together should be able to continue, but without the long-range vision and spirit of reconciliation that Rugova represented.
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Between the Lines Radio:

Haiti's Poor Erupt in Protest After Charges that Presidential Vote Count was Manipulated; Protection of Canada's Great Bear Rain Forest Can Be a Model for Future Conservation Efforts; Bush Budget's Permanent Tax Cuts and Slashed Social Programs Reward the Rich, Punish the Poor and Underreported News Summary from Around the World.
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posted by Annamarie at 3:42 PM