Alternative Perspective
 Issue 6, October 30, 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:
  • Making a Killing
     Arms production and military spending is perhaps one of the largest (and fastest growing) industry in the world, accounting for business worth over $800bn (approx $135/person per annum - compared to total annual UN budget of $10bn, i.e., $1.7/person per annum). With USA dominating the world arms market, this is another example of "waging war to make peace" logic.
    http://www.newint.org/issue294/killing.html

  • Small Farms are More Productive than Corporate Farms
    Contradicting the fashionable wisdom of the age, facts highlight that small,organic farms are more productive and environmentally sustainbale (and therefore, perhaps key to solving problem of world hunger). In fact, as this article shows, redistibution of land to small farmers can boost output and be more socially and environmentally viable...
    ...which gives a very different perspective, as this article by George Monbiot shows, to the land reforms in Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe - the man who ticked off Tony Blair to mind his own business.
    http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1999/w99v6n4.html

  • Oil is Not Forever
    This pretty reveling study, published in Scientific American in 1998, raises questions about the assumption of sustainability of unending consumption-based growth. It also underscores the assertion which a Club of Rome Report had made some 30 years back - that there are real limits to growth. You can also read a long pdf document Revisiting the Limits to Growth.
    http://www.dieoff.org/page140.htm

  • The Betrayal of Adam Smith
    Contrary to much-hyped attribution of Free Trade to Adam Smith, the neo-liberal economics (or the doctrine that free persuit of self-interest results in the larger common good), contradicts everything which Adam Smith stood for. It may be worth looking at the very character of the modern corporations, and whether at all they play a benign social function.
    http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/corprule/betrayal.htm

  • Two Acts of Terrorism
    Here is a remarkable example of how media - and how it publicises one set of images over another - helps molding the global opinion and understanding about terrorism.
    http://www.emperors-clothes.com/1/rem.htm


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