Alternative Perspective
 Issue 24, March 12, 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:
  • The Real Reasons for Hunger
     This is a rejoinder to Amartya Sen's article on global markets as a solution to poverty[1] - Amartya Sen had suggested that it is not the global market economy, but lack of democratic institutions in a country, which create poverty and hunger. The other side of the argument is, as this article by Vandana Shiva points out, that mechanisms of global market economy weaken the democracy by minimising the economic role in the government.
    http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4446511,00.html

  • Big Brother Google!
    One of the best - and fastest growing - search engine on the net. But in the true Yin-Yang mode, there is a dark side to it also. Some may find these facts perturbing (not me, though - or at least not yet!).
    http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

  • List of UN Security Council Resolutions Vetoed by US
    History has a fascinating way of raising disconcerting questions about the present. This list of 192 UN Security Council Resolutions which US vetoed since 1972 also includes the US veto (along with Israel) on a 1987 UN Resolution condemning "terrorism"[2]. In fact in March, 1986, the UN Security Council passed a non-binding Presidential statement, expressing that the members were "profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops...[and] the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons." US voted against the issuance of this statement[3 - see the last paragraph under 1988], and UK, Australia, France and Denmark abstained!!!
    http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html

  • Derivative Market: The Next Big Bubble to Burst?
    It is the hottest financial instrument around - showing a phenomenal market growth from $1 trillion (1990 ) to $120 trillion (2001). Originally meant to hedge risks, it also allows one to make quick bucks, trading in items, which one may not even be possessing. That's why, in 1999, when Alan Greenspan expressed his concern about the $80 trillion derivative market of US, he was also hinting at a potential disaster in offing. After all, there is a lot of similarity between derivative trading and other bubbles of the past, e.g., dotcom stocks, Enron, and Tulipmania... as Mark Twain observed long time back: "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
    http://www.nex.net.au/users/reidgck/COLLAP.HTM

  • "Dry Drunk" and George W Bush
    If one does not hastily judge this article as another example of Bush-bashing, then it is a classic piece of psychohistory. "Dry Drunk" is a term used for former alchoholics, who still show symptomatic alchoholic thinking patterns. Written by a Professor of Social Work, it elaborates the thoughts of an earlier American Politics Journal article, Dry Drunk: Is Bush Making a Cry for Help?[4]). It is a good reminder that leaders are after all humans, and history is written as much by the socio-political factors, as by the personal psychological traumas of the key players.
    http://www.counterpunch.org/wormer1011.html


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4033378,00.html
    [2]: http://www.math.uic.edu/~takata/WorldTradeCenter/WTC_Articles/US_unilateralism.html
    [3]: http://www.casi.org.uk/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html
    [4]: http://www.rense.com/general29/drydrunk.htm


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