NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai / Japan Broadcasting Corporation) carried a documentary named "the Water Crisis: the water, for whose?".
In this programs, some important issues like below are discussed.
1. In many part of the earth such as Philippine and Bolivia, the privatization of water by MNCs are threatening poor people's life and health.
2. Also in developed countries like California, people is now claiming the performance of water companies privatized by MNCs.
3. In some part of the world like Wales, there are alternative models of water supply using non-profit agency.
Unlike BBC, NHK have not been positive to address this kind of "Globalization" issues.
Sometime, only on the satellite broadcasting programs, critical viewpoints against globalization by someone such as Vandana Shiva or Noam Chomsky ware on the air.
I don't know the reason, but I guess that this kind of issues will not be welcomed because of complicacy and hopelessness (and I also guess that the audience of satellite broadcasting programs are assumed as relatively high literate people).
But today "the water crisis" was a ground wave casting program.
It means that almost all people living in Japan can watch this program if they want to watch.
We have one experience that a documentary addressing globalization issues was on the air by NHK soon after first World Social Forum (Jun. 2001).
And many of Japanese NGOs got many new members, and we wondered how influential broadcasting programs are!!
In addition to it, the program today was very timely!!
Japan will have a general election at 11th Sep. (I have no idea why our government chose "the day")
And Prime minister Koizumi is defining this as a referendum to judge his plan to privatize the postal service.
The Privatization of the postal service is very complicated issues especially in Japan.
Japanese postal service agency is also providing banking and assurance service, so then the agency is simultaneously secret but the world biggest bank.
Some critique call it "the second national treasury" and Japanese disarranged expenditure for public works like building environmentally destructive dam or very local high-way (a politician say those high-way are used by less cars than bears).
Apparently the postal system is one of the most important source of pork barrels
In the other hand, opposition parties accuse that Koizumi can NOT show how to stop the corruption.
I also agree that The Privatization will not be necessary nor sufficient condition.
And large part of Japanese including me think that this Privatization is just one of consequences of American political pressure to open Japanese market to Global hyena companies.
A secret paper made by Koizumi's advertising agency was leaked out (And a representative of oppositon party release the file on his website as a PDF file).
http://www.tetsu-chan.com/05-0622yuusei_rijikai2.pdf (*this is a PDF file in Japanese)
This chart on the paper was very interesting because they discussed that...
1. High literate conservatives are (of course) negative to their structural reformation
2. A part of Japanese are already suffering bad consequences of Koizumi's reformation. So then they are also negative.
3. High literate liberal like executives, University Professors, media and urban white colors are basically possitive to reform, HOWEVER, now they are very skeptical because of many fails Koizumi took on his programs like reformation of Public Roads Corporation and so on.
So they proposed that Koizumi must focus his campaign on Housewives, children and old.
Why?
It is incredible but this paper say that "Their IQ and EQ (Economic Quotient) are low, and they are not understanding what real problems are. So they support Koizumi because of his friendly character".
W can't esteem whether Koizumi and his retainers are discriminating housewife women, but I think, we can say they have no self-confidence for their program to reform the Postal Agency.
(If they have a kind of pride for their program, they will try to persuade third category people; I mean, High literate liberal)
So I want to claim that Koizumi Government want to make up "the Privatization" as the almighty St. Nicholas or something.
And we need to eliminate this phantasm -- the phantasm of the globalization--.
Maybe this is accident because NHK have no way to expect the date of election, however, I'm delighted this documentary must be a great weapon to eliminate the phantasm.
