Alternative Perspective
 Issue 22, February 27, 2003
 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:
  • Americanization is Not Globalization
     This five-part series throws up a new way of looking at Globalization. Contrary to what is generally accepted - both by proponents and opponents of Globalization - Tom Nairn suggests that, in fact, over period of time, Globalization has become independent of US global policy, and entered the domain of human experience - a domain in which globalization leads to greater cultural diversity instead of unified world, Americanization becomes enemy of Globalization, and new expressions of strife and conflicts, replace the hope of a unified world living in universal peace.
    http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=3&debateId=77&articleId=879

  • Beginning of an Open-Source, Network-Based Global Democracy!!!?
    How did the Anti-War Protests of Feb 15th, across the globe[1], in which (depending on the source) 11mn to 20mn people participated, get organised? Interestingly, this "largest co-ordinated protest" in the whole of human history, had no "organiser" in the sense we use the term. A fact, which not only makes it unique and awsome, but also representative of many other similar democratic movements - ranging from Open-Source Linux community to World Social Forum[2] (formed in response to World Economic Forum - last WSF meet in 2002 in Brazil saw some 70,000 participating from 130 countries). Given the fact, that the representative democracy, as they exist (a person/party getting 11-20% votes gets the right to decide on behalf of 100% populace for next 4 to 5 years!!), perhaps these networks offer an alternative for a more participative democracy.
    http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=29627

  • Facts about Rebellion
    What did India do, when Sikhs wanted their own nation? or Britain did with Ireland? or for that matter, Abraham Lincoln did to deal with local armed rebellion against the Union of States?... They all used brutal force against their "own people"!!! - all governments - democratically elected or otherwise - have done it... but such is the power of media and propaganda, that this fact is so easily forgotten!!!
    http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20030226/index.php

  • Turbo-Capitalism: The Rush to Nowhere
    We unquestioningly accept that time is money, that pace is the aim to achieve - that doing more in less time (from personal efficiency to growth rates of economies) is the natural thing to do. And yet, it is also worthwhile to recognise, as James Gleick in his book Faster: The Acceleration of Almost Everything highlights - {read its Part 1[3] and Part 2[4]} - the commodification of Time - which is an outcome of capitalism - is a pretty recent development in the history, and that ultimately, Time is not some "thing" that we have, but is a flow in which we are. It is an important point to think, since it has implications, not only for personal life and happiness, but also for ecology.
    http://www.newint.org/issue343/keynote.htm

  • British Teens to take "Oral" Education
    Part of the same pattern/logic of contemporary "solutions", in which de-forestation is suggested as a way of reducing forest fire; increasing medical costs to decrease the number of patients in the hospitals; waging war to win peace... so when teen-pregnancies become a point of concern in Britain, the government solution is to educate teenagers to go for oral sex!!! - another case of treating one symptom by substituting it with another...
    http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030221.0221oral/BNStory/International


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.hyperreal.org/~dana/
    [2]: http://www.wsfindia.org/whoarewe.htm
    [3]: http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,366046,00.html
    [4]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,366043,00.html


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