Alternative Perspective
 Issue 30, April 30, 2003
Compiled by Madhukar Shukla

 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:
  • When Religious Faith meets Capitalist Economics
    Are certain religious beliefs at divergence with the capitalist economy - the current paradigm for commerce and business? This article by Joel Kotkin, the author of Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy and The New Geography provides an interesting insight on the value foundations of the capitalist economy, and how it reinforces - and supports - only certain kind of religious/cultural beliefs. While many would have intuitively sensed this, but this piece is also "missing link" which ties the clash of culture hypothesis with the anti-neoliberal economy voices... to be specific, for people of some cultures/religions, the only way to be economically successful in the current business paradigm is to foresake their cultural identity.
    http://www.worldpaper.com/Archivewp/1998/aug98/kotkin.html

  • How Global Networking Leads to Fragmented Tribalism
    The ultimate "global paradox" (to borrow the term coined by John Naisbitt): the more we come together, the more we grow apart. This is the new dialectic of our time, where a uniform globalised "cosmopolitan" agenda comes face-to-face with/gives rise to the emergence of localised "tribal" sentiments. The more we live in a digitally networked global village, the wider become the cultural and economic differences... a viewpoint, which perhaps explains our place in the history.
    http://www.telegeography.com/resources/essay_archive/telephony/tg1993_explosion_of_place.html

  • The Lessons from Lebenon
    Though much is being made about how US reconstructed Japan after WWII (and can, therefore, repeat the act in Iraq), but the fact is that Iraq is not Japan[1]. The nearest to the plan of Iraq's post-war reconstruction is the 1982-85 history of Lebenon, which was the last time US or any other Western nation tried to reconstruct an occupied/liberated nation in the middle-east... the results were disasterous!!
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,942406,00.html

  • "Juvenile Terrorists" in Guantanamo Bay (Camp XRay), Cuba??
    Well, US never ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child[2] (just another in the long list of multi-lateral agreements, which US refused to sign/ratify), so in terms of its "international obligations", holding teenagers as "enemy combatants" - is well within legal limits, isn't it?...
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s836988.htm

  • US Federal Reserve is a Private Bank!!!
    Contrary to the popular assumption, the US Federal Reserve Bank is actually a private corporation, registered in Delaware, in which the US Govt has no ownership. Nevertheless, it controls the monetary policies of US, and - in an increasingly US$ dependent world - by default, even the monetary policies of other countries. Its shareholders include (among others) Rothchild, Lehman Brothers, Warburg, Lazard Brothers, Chase Manhattan, Goldman Sachs, etc., who own the majority equity of the bank... Here is the transcript of a conversation with the Public Information executive of the Federal Reserve Bank[3], which is pretty revealing.
    http://www.sonic.net/sentinel/naij2.html


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/editorial/5728557.htm
    [2]: http://www.unicef.org/crc/crc.htm
    [3]: http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/FederalReserve.html


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