When tragedy or disease strikes someone wealthy – or one of their children – the family often uses their financial advantage to draw attention to the cause or to prevent similar tragedies.

After Christopher Reeve was paralyzed, he and his wife started a foundation to fund and research possible cures for spinal cord injuries. Michael J. Fox started his own group to fund research into Parkinson’s. Lance Armstrong has help fund cancer research. Former NFL star Boomer Esiason has a foundation trying to cure cystic fibrosis, an ailment that affects his son.

Going by FOX News and their cadre of extremist Judeo-Christian ideologues that pose as “journalists” (Bill Kristol, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, et. al.), one might believe certain myths are true:

• Islam is a violent religion.
• Muslims are terrorists (but not Joe Stack).

Isolated in the U.S., where contact with Muslims is rare (or non-existent), it’s difficult to find evidence of anything different. Americans rely on the media to provide information that will create an educated public. But our media (and FOX News is only a part) is too often concerned only with selling more of the same fear instead of actually digging for truth.

Only stories that fit the narrative of “the righteous ‘us’ against the evil ‘them’” – or that frame “them” as victims, in need of our divine munificence – are reported. The rest are ignored.

Last week, I was saddened to learn that Brother Tim passed away. His “Blog of Revelation” was a collection of religious and political writings that always looked to help our world progress and grow.

I never met Brother Tim – I only knew him through his writing and the occasional e-mail. But I know he was a compassionate human being – and a strong Christian. His writings reflected the tolerant, inclusive Christianity that was preached by Jesus – and Brother Tim was always keen to look at similarities between religions instead of differences. The world needs more people with the kind of religious wisdom of Brother Tim.

Tempering Turmoil

by Brother Tim – March 17, 2007

Turmoil lusts against peace; and peace, against turmoil. They are contrary, one to another. They cannot co-exist. It is like heat and cold, or light and darkness; one must overcome the other to have a viable existence.

Once again, Mumbai proved that letting a few voices in the media frame our values and fears is not the way to live peaceably with 20 million neighbors. It’s a lesson that, in a globalized world, the rest of us would do well to learn.

Shahrukh Khan, or SRK as he is often referred to for brevity’s sake, is a dancing, acting and commercialized celebrity in India on a level unparalleled in the West. He also is owner of the Kolkata Knights cricket team.

A couple of weeks ago, when the Indian cricket league drafted new players, teams purposefully passed on Pakistani nationals. SRK said what everyone was thinking – that it didn’t make sense to leave out good cricketers just because they were Pakistani.

Interesting piece in the New Internationalist magazine about Congo refugees earning a living in Rwandan camps written by a (likely good-looking) journalist also named Wil.

He was an 18-year-old orphan when he crossed the border into Rwanda as a refugee, fleeing the violence that had overtaken the Congo.

If you need a taxi to the Mumbai airport from the neighborhood of Vashi, Sonu is the driver you want.

A ride to the airport from my area can take hours (though it’s probably only about 20 miles) – there’s a toll bridge to cross, no highway (so single-lane city streets are the only route), and of course, there’s Mumbai’s infamous traffic.

In light of Senator Harry Reid’s racist remarks about Obama (get it – in “light” of!), and Rush Limbaugh’s overt racist comments about Haiti, I bring you: “Racism: Bollywood Edition.”

When President Obama was elected, it was hailed in India as a sign of racial equality – as if it were some kind of achievement on a global scale. Indian pundits and writers opined that America had finally crossed the racial barrier the rest of the non-white world already had – and most Indian media implied that this was a non-existent barrier in India (because they aren’t white).

When you hear “third world labor exploitation,” a few standard images come to mind: sweatshops full of hungry people making Nike tennis shoes 18 hours a day for pennies in Indonesia; young mothers sewing $25 T-shirts for The Gap in return for a few cents in Honduras; children chained to a loom making carpets in India or Pakistan.

But sometimes the exploitation is less multi-national, and more local. Sometimes it’s the developing country’s elite that are exploiting their own people, without the help of international corporations.

[...these bricks aren't being exported to developed countries...but used for local contractors...]

Mumbai is a city of poverty. More than half of the 19+ million inhabitants live in the slums. An equal number have no toilets. And while a good portion of the slum-dwellers likely live below the poverty line of less than $1.25, there are actually 1.2 million that lives on less than 50 cents a day.

When a country allows religious extremists to export their dangerous ideology of hate and intolerance – Nigerian airline bombers coming from Yemen, CIA-assassinating Jordanian double-agents in Afghanistan, or anti-American clerics in Pakistan – it’s a problem.

But the origin and strain of religion sometimes affects the response.

At a press conference last October in Kampala, President Museveni of Uganda said:

“If you rape a woman in Uganda, you will face the firing squad. Or if you rape a man, you will face the firing squad. Of course, [men getting raped] is mostly a problem in Europe – we don’t have this problem in Uganda.”

Hmm. I liked the whole “rape = firing squad” thing. But the rest smacks of the kind of denial that Ahmedinejad made famous during his speech at Columbia University when he said Iran “doesn’t have this [homosexual] phenomenon” like we do in America.

We had a noon meeting the next day in Kigali, but we were in Fort Portal, Uganda. The woman who sold us the 6:00 a.m. bus tickets said it was only a six-hour ride to the Uganda/Rwanda border. No problem.

Except we found out that a good portion of the trip was on a dirt road (complete with locals digging potholes so that when it rained, they could conveniently show up and help push people’s cars and buses out of the mud – for a small fee, of course).