Alternative Perspective
 Issue 32, May 16, 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:
  • Shopping Malls: The New Cathedrals of Consumption
    In the earlier days, work and production was often seen as a means of salvation. The worker/producer was valued for his conribution, and the places of production - the factories and the farms - had a sacred aura (Nehru described the large factories as "the Temples of Modern India"). In the recent years, this status of the sacred has shifted to the consumer and the means of consumption. The traditional dialectics of personal identity - between "doing" and "being" - has been usurped by "having"... and correspondingly, shopping and shopping malls have become part of the new "invisible religion."... an extremely insightful article to help understand one of the most intriguing development in human history - the rise of the creed of consumer.
    http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/temples.html

  • Photo Feature:This is War!!!
    During last couple of months, most of us were treated with a "fair and balanced" coverage of war, edited so as not to violate the sensibilities of TV viewers (who would watch the TV ads, if they switch off the news?!!!). The pictures we saw were the clean ones, showing a clean war... and so, the statement: "well, let's accept it! civilian casualities do happen in war" has no experiential meaning for most of us, because there are no realistic images to support it. These pictures of war are to bring us in touch with this neglected reality of war - euphemistically called the "collateral damage"... after all, A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...
    http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/civilians.htm

  • Calculating Global Poverty: Rich in Imagination
    According to World Bank's oft-quoted figures, during the 1990's, the global poverty levels decreased from 29% to 23%. This is cited as the trimph of the contemporay economic model. Unfortunately, as this paper, based on a study done at Columbia University, shows, there are serious flaws in the WB's research methodology (including generalising on the basis of two studies which covered only 63 countries - and did not even include data from China and India!!!). If one goes by WB's calculations, the purchasing power of the poor is supposed to increase, because the price of air-travel or credit-card interest rates have gone down...
    http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=575

  • The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble
    In the town of Hargeisa, Somalia, a new industry took birth when a goat got crushed by a UN plane and the owner received compensation for the animal... Here is a delightful and extremely funny parable by Julian Gough, about how bubble economies grow and prosper, get supported by investors, derivative analysts, and international financial institutions, and then burst. A must read, even if you are not interested economics, trade, etc.
    http://www.somalilandnet.com/somaliland_voice/articles/11592.shtml

  • In Defense of Cheating
    It is an irony that all those activities clubbed as "cheating" - e.g., getting information from others, finding and quoting from sources, asking for and giving help, et. - are quite valued as capabilities in day-to-day life. An interesting look at how certain behaviours, reinforced in schools, are so contradictory to rules govering the real life.
    http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/InDefenseOfCheating.html



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