Alternative Perspective
 Issue 10, November 26, 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. Please feel free to share/ forward/ distribute this newsletter to others who may be interested.



Note: The URLs of sources used in the text are numbered and given at the end of the Newsletter.

In This Issue:
  • War over Water
     According to World Bank, "The wars of 21st century will be about water." The facts (e.g., the global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, only 2.5% of all available water on the planet is freshwater, 12% of world's population uses 85% of its water, etc.) also give credence to this claim. In fact, as this case study of the privatisation of water in Bolivia shows, the war for water is already on. In this new form of coloniolism, the invaders are the large corporations, supported by IMF and the privatisation agenda[1], and the targets to capture are the public utilities. It seems that the Blue Gold - as Maude Barlow's report on Commodification of Water[2] descibes it - is going to be what oil was to 20th Century.
    http://democracyctr.org/waterwar/index.htm

  • Profitting from NATO Expansion
    This week NATO invited seven Baltic nations to join the Alliance, in a bid to take care of larger security concerns of Europe. Whatever the validity of this aim, it certainly is a bonanza for the US and British arms manufacturer. In the past, The cost of NATO expansion[3] ranged anywhere between $14bn to $125bn - required to upgrade the weapons, communication equipments, military infrastructure, etc., and to make them compatible with those of other NATO nations. Since the new invitees are not so rich nations, the way it normally works is that US provides them with soft loans (paid, naturally, by the American tax-payer). This money is then used by the new NATO members - as happened when Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined NATO[4] - to buy new weapons and equipments from the US Arms manufacturers.
    http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/tech/042098te.htm

  • The Value of an MBA Degree?
    This Standford study by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina Fong, based on 40 years of data, questions whether having an MBA really makes one a better executive - or even helps earning more money. Though done in US, it has implications for other places as well, where the lucrative MBA-education business is booming.
    http://www.matr.net/print-4332.html

  • StreetCar Conspiracy: A Case of Business Strategy
    Winning competition is all about how to demolish a rival company or industry, and establish yourself as the choice for the customer. As this case shows, this is what General Motors (along with Firestone Tires and Standard Oil Company) systematically did to the public transport system in US during 1930s-50s. When the GM President Charles Wilson became the US Secretary of Defense in 1953, it became sort of official truth that "What is good for General Motors is good for America"[5]... Much later a federal anti-trust investigation found these companies guilty, and indicted them for conspiracy... They were fined $5,000 - yes, just five thousand - each!!!.
    http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm

  • Globalisation vs. Global Literacy
    The world, as we all know, is becoming increasingly globalised. The critical issue, however, is whether the minds are also becoming more global - more specifically, do the neighbours in this shrinking global village know about each other (or even about themselves). The disconcerting findings of the National Geographics Roper Survey (2003) - e.g., less than 25% young people could locate Israel, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. on the map - conducted across 11 developed nations seems to prove otherwise.
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.afrol.com/News2001/afr003_water_private.htm
    [2]: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Water/Blue_Gold.html
    [3]: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol2/v2n35nat_body.html
    [4]: http://www.motherjones.com/arms/czech.html
    [5]: http://www.bilderberg.org/socal.htm


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