Alternative Perspective
 Issue 3, October 8, 2002
 Compiled byMadhukar Shukla

Introduction: Alternative Perspective is an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media.



In This Issue:
  • Mondragon Cooperatives: An Alternative to Shareholder Capitalism
     One implication of the recent corporate scandals is the need to revisit the assumptions of shareholder return as the basis of doing business, and the role of "professional manager". 60 years old Mondragon Cooperative based in Basque (Spain), consisting of 42,000 owner-workers, 120 companies and a turnover of $4.8bn, offers an alternative and viable paradigm of business. Mondragon is worth studying because it works, and offers new principles and lessons for doing business. You can also download the Mondragon Cooperative Experience's Book
    http://www.ping.be/jvwit/Mondragon.html

  • Life in Iraq
    Once again as the spotlight is on the inevitable war in Iraq (read why), the media focus revolves around Saddam Hussein/ GW Bush/ Tony Blair/ Weapon's Inspector, etc. Neglected behind these stories are those - the people - who are the recepients of war. Rarely, one comes across the facts, for instance:
  • that Iraq is among the most liberal countries in the middle-east,
  • that "UN sanctions" actually kill people,
  • that the US-UK enforced "No-Fly Zones" in Iraq are not sanctioned by UN
  • and are, in fact, a breach of International Law
    etc. etc.
    http://pilger.carlton.com/articles/19197

  • Environment and The Bottling Plant
    Environmental threat due to industrialisation conjours up the images of smoking chimneys, leaking oil tankers, CFC, pesticide contaminated water, etc. But even an innocuous bottling plant for the aerated coloured sugar water, can cause tremendous environmental damage, as this news report shows. More importantly, the issue is not unique just to India or to a particular company. These two news items on Perrier's Bottling Plant in Michigan and USA Spring's Bottling Plant in New Hampshire show that the concern is global.
    http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/special/2002/0528india.htm

  • Is Democracy the Cure-all?... or just an idea in Fashion?
    Democracy: is it an universally applicable political system? or, an organic system of governance which evolves culturally? or, as it appears, a ideological weapon, to justify toppling other governments?...Going beyond the hype, it is worth looking at the facts of democracy worldwide, that it was democracy which gave us Hitler and Mousolini (and our very own Laloo Yadav in India:-))... more importantly, the two element of democracy - political choice (right for self governance) and civil liberties (living the way I would like to) - do not necessarily go together. As one of the article in this issue highlights, after all, one still can have more civil liberties, even in a non-democratic country.
    http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97dec/democ.htm

  • Tokyo Firebombing in March 1945
    The firebombing of Tokyo remains an obscure footnote in the history of WW II, even though it killed more people than were killed in Nagasaki atom bomb (100,000 people in just six hours). This was the first display of Strategic Bombing Campaign, a military euphamism for the deliberate targetting of civilians and civilian facilities to break the will of a country to fight ("bombing them back to stone ages", as its architect, General Curtis LeMay, described it - though he was never indicted for war crimes). Strategic bombing was replicated later in other cities of Japan, and much later in Vietnam, Gulf War, Kosovo, and Afghanistan Wars. The fact that Japan had offered to surrender as early as May 1945, it does raise the question if dropping atom bomb on Hiroshima/Nagasaki was actually necessary?
    http://tvtokyo.com/Burning.html


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