blog entry

Seoul Airport -

Uneventful thus far - already 18 hours traveling. I got into a nice,
long conversation with a United Airlines steward about the tsunami.
Luckily for me, Aliyah was along for quasi-scientific questions. Through
pure serendipity, she had taken a class at Smith in the geology
department on "Natural Disasters" last term, which put her about 98%
ahead of us mere mortals. We discussed how for the last hour in the
airport, I watched CNN News as they played and replayed the destruction
of the tourist resorts in Phuket, Thailand, the "amazing story" of the
reunification of a little one-year old BLONDE boy (Swedish!) with his
BLONDE grandparent. It makes for good press. The wave against the marble
swimming pool made for good visuals.

But I explained how the press hasn't even touched my mother's area of
India, which is not in the least bit remote, and has millions of people,
but no BLONDE people (and definitely no Swedes, and no tourist resorts.
Apologies to all blonde people reading this - it has nothing to do with
you, and everything to do with the way the media has decided to portray
the rest of the world.

Actually, there has been even less coverage of Bangladesh. As I wrote in
a series of articles almost 20 years ago, deforestation in the Himalayas
resulted in tens of thousands of tons of soil being washed down to the
mouth of the Ganges River 3,000 miles away, where it empties into the
Bay of Bengal. I even have pictures of the rivers in the mountainous
regions being choked with debris from mudslides and landslides (which
was also the beginning of the basis for my children's story "Gaura Devi
Saves the Trees" - which is in "The Healing Heart~Communities"
storytelling book. But meanwhile, huge new islands formed in Bangladesh
at the mouth of the river, underwater four months a year, and tens of
thousands of people have built houses on stilts - there is just no other
place to go. I imagine many of them have been washed away, but I have
yet to hear a single news report from Bangladesh, and it makes me -
sorry - angry!

I got to thinking - sometime last summer, out of the blue, and I really
don't know why, which I've learned probably means it is really important
- I started exploring some old Talmudic lore about a man called Og. Og
doesn't actually appear in Genesis (or at least in the Noah story), but
in Talmudic lore, Noah took only his family aboard the ark, but at the
last moment, with the waters rising, a man named Og found a ledge -
really just a chink of wood - on which he sat and hung and refused to
leave, despite Noah's insistance. For an entire year, with the waters
swirling, he hung on, and he was fed (what, I don't know) through a
little opening in the ark's side. In some versions, he is an evil ogre,
who is supposed to serve Noah when they leave the ark, or he will turn
wild ("feral"?) again.

What if the story were different, though? In Jewish tradition, there is
"midrash", where you can take a tale and turn it upside down and inside
out and empty out its pockets, and see what comes out. What if Og was a
warning to Noah that one should not, one CANNOT abandon one's neighbors,
whatever the situation? Maybe Noah didn't hear God entirely clearly
(after all, remember, even in the traditional version, he is a
drunkard.) What if Og sits on the ledge the entire year, banging on the
outside to be let in, and he was the point of the whole story - God put
Og up to it, and Noah is just the agent that allows God, through Og, to
make a point! What if Noah, having deforested the area for the past 100
years, was just willing to pick up his family (and his favorite furry
and feathered friends) and sail away to mess up the next earthly
installment, but Og is a reminder that you just can't do it?

Appa - my father....is Og. He is 91 and frail now, though apparently
they've nursed him back to reasonable health (though he can't hear much,
and can't see.) He has been arrested so many time for protesting against
the predations of the illegal prawn farms, salinating the soil, ruining
the watertable, cutting down the mangrove forests, etc. - all for profit
and prawns on our salad bars - that the government is now afraid to
arrest him, for fear that he'll die in jail. (The first time Aliyah met
him was in the Madras City Jail when she was 3.) He is Og, and he won't
let the corporations come in and make a quick killing (figuratively and
literally) with "hanging on" to them.

So now he's a prophet. Too many dead to rejoice in prophecy, but of
course that is the way prophecy usually works, isn't it? The irony is
that he vowed not to die until all the multinational shrimping companies
were out of India, and we all assumed it would take 40 years. I wouldn't
be surprised to arrive in two days to discover that they are all gone,
carried off on the big wave. It is unlikely they could rebuild - the
soil will now be so saline, that the shrimp won't survive. The death of
"slash and flood" aquaculture. But so many dead with it.

I have no idea what we'll be doing when we get there. It's not a bad
space to be - we'll just do what we are called upon to do, and,
hopefully, get to write about it. I'm not much at digging wells, I can't
give a vaccination, and I can haul some bags of rice, but I'm not all
that strong either. But I can play with kids at the orphanage (kids seem
to like me for some strange reason), console those I can, and write! It
will be enough.

Both Aliyah feel incredibly blessed by all the people who saw us off
with heartfelt messages and prayers. And contributions! We are going to
need them - once the media circus wears off, the reality wil set it, and
then is when folks are going to need all the help they can get.

Thanks all for your continuing generosity.

david

Press release

Editor of New Book Says, "Tsunami Was Natural Disaster, But Much
Suffering Man-Made"

Before departing for tsunami-hit areas of South India on Tuesday
December 28th, David Albert, editor of the new book The Color of
Freedom (Common Courage Press, 2005), noted that while the tsunami that
hit the Bay of Bengal was caused by a 9.0 underwater earthquake, much
of the suffering was actually caused by industrial shrimping interests
that stripped the coasts of protective mangrove forests. "Come with me
to Nagai District on the east coast of South India, and you will see
the actual cost in human lives skyrocketed well beyond that of
neighboring areas. These are the places that World Bank-financed
multinational projects in aquaculture have stripped the area of all
natural protection. The wall of water went further, and as it receded,
there was no break on what it carried with it. Homes, children, and
livelihoods were all carried out to see because of the lack of
attention to mangrove conservation by companies out to make a quick
buck."

Albert cited the work of Jeff McNeely, chief scientist of the
Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN), who noted that the
mangroves "were cleared by people who didn't have the long-term
knowledge of why these mangroves should have been saved, by outsiders
who get concessions from the governments and set up shrimp or prawn
farms."

The Color of Freedom details the work of Gandhian land-reform crusaders
S. Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan, who never set out to be
anti-globalization activists. But when they arrived on the east coast
of Tamil Nadu in southern India among communities within which they had
managed to wrest land for 11,000 families who had been landless for 700
years, they found they had no choice. The once-fertile land was being
salinated and turned into desert-like wastes, water polluted and water
table destroyed, mangroves cut down, fisheries decimated, and thousands
of people thrown out of work. All of this prior to the tsunami. All to
support multinational aquaculture interests, financed by the World
Bank, to bring shrimp to salad bars and buffet tables in Europe, Japan,
and the United States. And, they were soon to learn, it is the same
tale everywhere -- from Ecuador to Bangladesh, Thailand to Peru.

And they are fighting back. The Color of Freedom, a new book by Laura
Coppo from Common Courage Press, is the stirring oral biography of
these two internationally acclaimed activists and visionaries. Starting
with the struggle for Indian Independence, The Color of Freedom
passionately captures the sweep of almost a century of Indian history,
and the role of two extraordinary people (India's "Joan of Arc",
declares the Women's World Summit Foundation about Krishnammal
Jagannathan) as they personally engage a world hurtling from the feudal
past into an uncompromising modernity.

"They are fighting an imperialism of the soul and of the belly, a
frightening monster of greed and abuse that they know can and will be
stopped with the gentle teachings of the Mahatma," writes Dr. David
Willis, Chair of Cultural Studies at Soai University. "Their lives
embody the marriage of personal and social transformation," proclaims
Satish Kumar, Founder and Editor of Resurgence Magazine. "This stirring
book is a call to action, to transform ourselves and our institutions
to a 21st Century way of being that is just, equitable, and
sustainable," says editor David H. Albert.

---

Review copies of The Color of Freedom are now available from Common
Courage Press. Follow David Albert's trip at shantinik.blogspot.com

Author Bio
Laura Coppo (author) currently works at a World Wildlife Fund
environmental education center in the Piedmont region of Italy. She is
a former researcher at a peace center associated with the University of
Turin.

David H. Albert (editor) has been associated with the work of S.
Jagannathan and Krrishnammal Jagannathan for almost 30 years. He is a
magazine columnist and author, and was a founder of New Society
Publishers. He lives in Olympia, Washington. Interviews with Mr. Albert
can be arranged: phone 360 352-0506 or e-mail: shantinik@earthlink.net

The Color of Freedom:
Author: Laura Coppo, Editor: David H. Albert
ISBN: 1-56751-276-3 paper $17.95 ISBN 1-56751-277-1, hardcover, $39.95
Contact: Greg Bates
121 Red Barn Road, Monroe, ME 04951
phone 207-525-0900
fax 207-525-3068

First post!

Dear Friends,



My father, David Albert, and I have started this blog as a way of 

reporting back from South India, where we are going later today. 

Sunday morning, I woke up to the news that a giant earthquake and 

tsunami had hit the area where my adopted grandparents and other 

friends and relatives live and work. Since then, we have decided 

that we will still go, and help in any way possible. Our greatest 

strength is perhaps our ability to get the word out about what is 

going on there.



A bit of background is probably needed regarding my connections to 

this area of Tamil Nadu. My grandparents, S. and Krishnammal 

Jagannathan, are Gandhian land reform organizers who have worked 

for more than 50 years on getting land for the impoverished people 

of South India. Lately, they have had to contend with multinational 

corporations who have moved in and built shrimp farms along the 

coast, salinating the soil, polluting the water, and wiping out 

fish populations, in this district that depends entirely upon 

agriculture and fishing. They corporations also have cut down most 

of the mangrove forests, the only protection against cyclones and 

tsunamis. Krishnammal and Jagannathan's son, Bhoomikumar, works in 

Cambodia as a child psychiatrist working with war victims, and 

their daughter, Sathya, runs the pediatric section of a hospital 

in the town of Chengalpattu. The extraordinary lives of Krishnammal 

and Jagannathan have been recorded in my Dad's book, The Color of 

Freedom.



My Dad met Krishnammal and Jagannathan (or, as they are commonly 

known, Amma and Appa, which mean "mother" and "father" in Tamil) 

in the 70s, at a United Nations training seminar, and they mutually 

adopted each other. I first met them when I visited India at the 

age of three, and I still have a vague memory of meeting 

Jagannathan in jail. I visited again in 1998, when I was 11.



I know that all of the people I know personally in India are fine, 

but the devastation there must be immense. Thank you all for your 

thoughts and prayers.



In the Light,



Aliyah Shanti



If you want to contact us, our email is shantinik@earthlink.net. 

My Dad's website is http://www.skylarksings.com/. 

Copies of The Color of Freedom and more information on Amma and 

Appa can be found there.