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Alternative Radio for June 16, 2008
1:02 PM - 2:00 PM
[Program Website]
Today's Highlight: "The Global Water Crisis," with Maude Barlow
Water, water, everywhere. It looks that way. More than 2/3s of the earth's surface is water but of that, only a tiny percentage is suitable for drinking. Underground water supplies, aquifers, the most abundant source of fresh water, are being depleted. It is predicted that two-thirds of the world's population will not have enough drinking water by 2025. Corporations with their allies in government and international financial institutions are taking advantage of this crisis by pushing through water privatization schemes. collectively they are manufacturing consent for corporate control of water. For businesses water is blue gold. Ka-ching. For humanity it is the very
basis of life. A global water justice movement is emerging to establish water as a right, which can't be bought or sold for profit.
Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy organization, and the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right to water. She is the recipient of the Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship Award, and the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize. Author of many books, her latest is Blue Covenant: The Global Water
Crisis.
Alternative Radio is a weekly one-hour public affairs program offered free to all public radio stations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and on short-wave on Radio for Peace International.
Established in 1986, AR is dedicated to the founding principles of public broadcasting, which urge that programming serve as "a forum for controversy and debate," be diverse and "provide a voice for groups that may otherwise be unheard." The project is entirely independent, sustained solely by individuals who buy transcripts and tapes of programs.
Its "headquarters" is situated to correspond with its position in the mainstream mass media: down an alley, behind a house, on top of a garage in Boulder, Colorado. From this rarefied location, AR's programs manage to reach over 125 radio stations and millions of listeners. AR is part of the non-profit Institute for Social and Cultural Change.
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