Reading the Telegraph’s story, Slumdog Millionaire: Mumbai’s real slumdogs, I’m thinking no, there can’t really be tours of the slums of Mumbai. Why?

Reality Tours believes, “that Dharavi, the biggest slum in Asia, is one of the most interesting places to see in Mumbai.” The tour offers to, “break down the negative image of Dharavi (and India’s slums) and its residents,” and to “bring people of different countries, races, religions and social classes together to increase understanding and empathy.” Hmm. The tour is ten bucks per person for the “short tour” or twenty for the “long tour” or you can opt for the “private long tour” for $80 bucks if you’d rather not have the company.

So there’s two sides to this (at least). Certainly the issues we never see never get addressed, so perhaps some good could come of it. And then, the fact that we’re so disconnected from one another that we need to take a tour to shock us into action is probably just the state of the state currently. Perhaps the US election will bear out that we hit compassion’s low point with the Bush Administration and my HOPE is that a new cloud-clearing era has arrived. Hope.

I don’t think the tour should be on the itinerary though. Volunteering seems a step in the right direction. I know there are a host of issues surrounding even that: “Gap-year ‘voluntourists’ told not to bother” outlines many of the hurdles there. But still, helping has to be better than watching.

I support Kiva where I can help people to help themselves with loans (micro) that have an amazing track record for repayment, and I choose the person with whom I want to ‘invest”. For the cost of a slum tour I have the chance instead to help someone start a sustainable business.

Have seen some high energy comments about the new “Black” browser, Blackbird. With a Black president it might seem that the ultimate in assimilation has been accomplished, so why now?

I haven’t used the browser, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea. On-line users are grouped by likes, age, and all sorts of demo’s, so if some users feel like they get the best out the Net using a Black browser, fine. Some of the most outspoken people have been Black and see it as some sort of throw-back, or even an insult.

But Black people are not monolithic. Black people are as diverse as any ethnic group, and as mixed racially, and are literally all over the map. If some portion of the folks want to use a Black browser because it speaks to them, and delivers more relevant search returns then it’s a win for Ed Young. But read the comments at TechCrunch and you can see that some have taken the browser as a symbol for something bigger.

Admittedly, I am late to this party. Life & Debt came out a while ago, but I just Netflixed it, so I got to see the Stephanie Black directed feature late. Better than never.

The film tells the story of the island nation of Jamaica’s interaction with the International Monetary Fund. And the effects. I polled a friend and Jamaican native in an informal fact-check and more-or-less got the idea she didn’t agree with the film or the presentation. But Jamaica is a pretty partisan place, and the facts as laid out in the film are sad and the presentation pretty compelling. Belinda Becker, who I know as a New York trend-maker, narrates part of the film. Overall the film is riveting because some of the story-lines, the effects of the IMF relationship are so monumentally disastrous and often inhumane, that you’d think it would sit somewhere on the front page of the New York Times. Here is what the New York Times had to say recently about the film:

“The term ”globalization” is so tinged with rosy one-world optimism that it’s easy to assume the essential benignity of an economic philosophy whose name vaguely connotes unity, equality and freedom. But as Stephanie Black’s powerful documentary ”Life and Debt” illustrates with an impressive (and depressing) acuity, globalization can have a devastating impact on third world countries. The movie offers the clearest analysis of globalization and its negative effects that I’ve ever seen on a movie or television screen.”

Whoa. Watch it.

For several reasons, mostly the armchair adventure aspect, my current favorite magazine is Geographical published by the Royal Geographical Society in the UK. It’s what Outside magazine would be if it didnt have to pander to advertisers.

I was reading my favorite magazine and out dropped a piece of direct marketing, but not for sunglasses or a new Toyota Landcruiser, armchair favorites, but for Bhopal. I don’t know. I thought the whole thing had been solved, but really it was simply off my radar.

It’s not. The stories are heartbreaking. And though Union Carbide was responsible for the clean-up and somehow transfered that responsibility, the end result is that the abandoned plant is sitting there like Chernobyl. Reeking and killing. In any event the magazine Georgraphical is well worth reading, the link to Bhopal.org takes you to an organization that is helping, and I think help, from Americans, makes sense. We need to check our capitalist ambassadors from time to time as earnings aren’t all that matter.

The BBC has an interesting/funny/not-so-funny story on Canada’s African lumberjacks. Seems African’s will go a long way for a job.

An employer’s compliment on the ability of his workers can be taken a couple of ways, “Mr Richard believes that his African employees have more stamina, noting that the overwhelming majority tough it out until the end of the season.”

Given the global economy and domestic meltdown a good job is as good as gold. I’m not sure how Canadian’s feel about competing with African’s, but between exporting jobs and importing labor the working folks are getting squeezed vice-like.

I love Pacific Magazine. The publication brings the indigenous culture of the region front and center without the subtle condescending tone I see in too much media.

Western culture has become so dominant that it could easily erase any other unless there is a strong effort at preservation. And while the medicine, learning, government, and scientific advances that go hand-in-hand with the Western world are many, the lack of connection to the planet is, for me, a very fundamental flaw. I’ve ranted about Captain Cook in previous posts and won’t do so here. Check out the article in Pacific Magazine and the images as they celebrate their culture in “American” Samoa.

I’m sure there were a couple of brown faces besides Jay Z at Glastonbury, but even he was not unanimously welcome. Oasis lead Noel Gallagher moaned that Hip Hop had no place at the Festival (deleting Oasis from iTunes). Somewhat in the same vein Amy Winehouse apparently called Kanye a c**t in one of her songs. So maybe music is not the touchstone of common youth culture that it seems? (yep, I see a little diversity in the image, but c’mon)…

I don’t know why Fiji Times and Pacific Magazine sit in my “weekly” favorites, but they do. Fiji found its way to my favorites mostly from an environmental standpoint but once there the on-going story of the indigenous people and the cultural impact of colonialism became just as compelling. Those beautiful islands we see in Pacific postcards are largely stuck in a post-colonial netherworld.

And as I write this post, “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1935) rolls by on my TV, in black and white with the sound turned down. The “natives” don’t look very native. And the movie doesn’t delve into the fact that “First Contact” was a disaster for indigenous peoples.

But, that said, the “Mutiny” really did put Captain Bligh in a 23 foot boat that he would sail, with 18 aboard, over 3,000 miles. Armed with a sextant and aboard an open boat there are probably just a few sailors who could do what he did even today. C’mon no chart, no compass (no GPS). Very few.

A further aside is the story of many of the mutineers (from the year 1789 we’re talking) who made their way to Pitcairn Island where their descendants still live — some 47 or so. In 2004 there was trial of many of these wayward souls for sexually abusing their own inbred young people – read the Wiki. So the long arm of British justice still reached these remote castaways and stirred the very old pot. It’s a very strange story, one that Vanity Fair featured as well. Strange that the ghosts of that day and those people are very real and are still living off-balance lives in that faraway place so long after the original crime.

Can’t mention the Pacific without Captain Cook’s voyage and that is well documented — read Blue Latitudes.

But more so read Fiji Times. It’s curious to see such an ongoing upheaval politically, socially and now environmentally in a place we normally think of as Paradise. Maybe Paradise really is just a state of being, temporary and not any one place after all.

Got my first issue of Greenland Today magazine. As a former publisher I still really love print. And the plight of indigenous people around the globe is a magnet for my attention.

Greenland according to Wikipedia is “self-governing Danish province” which essentially means Colony. Interestingly, Greenland is taking steps towards independence with a Referendum later this year. In any event, it was one trip I had on the books that I never completed. I had planned to go kayaking with Ultima Thule of Iceland, but work intervened. Something to look forward to.

Pictured, Miniconjou chief Bigfoot lies dead in the snow after massacre at Wounded Knee. So we’re giving some land back to the Sioux. I’m certain the NY Times will get around to the story, but meanwhile check Britain’s Independent, “Nearly 120 years after the last massacre of Native Americans by the United States cavalry at Wounded Knee, some of the lands confiscated from their descendants are to be returned to the Oglala Sioux.”

And a Wiki-history lesson: “The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as The Battle at Wounded Knee Creek, was the last major armed conflict between the Lakota Sioux and the United States, subsequently described as a “massacre” by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs…” By the time it was over, more than 300 men, women and children of the Lakota Sioux lay dead. Twenty-five troopers also died during the massacre, some believed to have been the victims of “friendly fire” as the shooting took place at point blank range in chaotic conditions.

If you’re up for it read the book, there are no celebrities and it will make you cry: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.