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Alternative Radio for September 03, 2012
1:00 PM - 1:58 PM
[Program Website]
Today's Highlight: "Not a Drop to Drink," with Maude Barlow
Many know Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and its famous "Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink." Perhaps less known is Mark Twain's, "Whiskey's for drinking, water's for fighting." Today, the UN warns, "Too often, where we need water, we find guns. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie over the horizon." Once empires were fueled by spices, the fur trade, silver, gold, and ivory, and in recent decades it's been all about oil. Now, water is seen by corporations as the next big thing. This precious resource is being rapidly commodified. Instead of being humankind's common heritage and right it's becoming the private property of giant multinational conglomerates. There are no two ways about it. As Auden wrote, "Thousands have lived without love-not one without water."
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 Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize and the Citation for Lifetime Achievement, Canada's highest environmental award. She served as the first Senior Advisor on water issues for the United Nations. She’s the author of “Blue Gold” and "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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