Alternative Perspective
 Issue 12, December 11, 2002
 Compiled by Madhukar 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:
  • Is Money Laundering = Healthy Economy?
     According to Daniel Griswald of the Cato Institute, the large US trade deficit is a sign of a healthy economy[1], showing investor confidence in the economy. The flip side is that, as this article shows, that a large amounts of investments - running in trillions of dollars - in the US economy come from the "dirty money" which moves through respectable banks[2], gets invested and legitimised. Moreover, without these investments into economy through "laundered money" - including from "terrorists", dictators, and drug-dealers - which run into trillions, the economy will not remain solvent.
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/PET108A.html

  • Iraq and War Crimes
    As yet another Iraq War looms large in a month or so, it is worth revisiting what war crimes happened during the last one. As this article shows, the difference between a war crime (e.g., burying people alive) and an army manouver is just a "gap in the international law". Or for that matter, even targetting civilian facilities - or using uranium depleted bombs [3] - gets justified as a perfectly normal way of conducting a just war.
    http://jeff.paterson.net/aw/aw4_buried_alive.htm

  • Different Models for Globalisation
    In the past issues of this newletter, often we have looked at viable alternatives to the current form of globalisation. This chapter from Joseph Stiglitz's book - Globalisation and its Discontent - from the Insider who was the ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank[4] - shows that there are other models of globalisation which can also be exercised. Unfortunately, however, the ones which are currently exercised do not touch the core problems.
    http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/finance/stiglitz240602.htm

  • Manufacturing War
    There is a touch of deja vu in this report about how Vietnam War was manufactured. It seems that wars - or rather, the reasons for them - are carefully fabricated/created around a central theme (one might call them the USP for war:-0). If it was the "unprovoked attack" in case of Vietnam (or for that matter, even in the case of Pearl Harbour[5]), it was the "children being killed in incubators" in the last Gulf War[6]... so, perhaps there is a case for looking through the USP of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and "material breach" in the current situation.
    http://www.bsos.umd.edu/pgsd/people/staffpubs/Gar-Tonkin.htm

  • Iraq Issue according to Lewis Carroll
    Lewis Carroll must have written this poem in Alice in Wonderland with a remarkable foresight into the contemporary Iraq-US crisis. To appreciate this foresight you will have to read this poem in the context of George W Bush's statement: when asked to give evidence about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Distraction, Mr Bush said that it is not up to him to prove that Iraq has prohibited weapons, but it is for for Iraq to prove that it does not have them!!![7]...
    http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/txt/600.txt


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.cato.org/dailys/02-21-01.html
    [2]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/511951.stm
    [3]: http://www.heatherwokusch.com/columns/column38.html
    [4]: http://www.tnr.com/041700/stiglitz041700.html
    [4]: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/stinnett1.html
    [6]: http://www.aci.net/Kalliste/hkwar.htm
    [7]: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/09/1039379785088.html


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