Open political debates are strictly constrained in China. The CCP maintains its dominance in several ways. First, there is a series of indirect elections in which one people’s congress appoints the members of the congress at the next level up and in which only the lowest people’s congresses are subject to direct popular vote. This means that although independent members occasionally get elected to the lowest level of congress, it is impossible for them to organize to the point where they can elect members to the next higher people’s congress without the approval of the CCP or to exercise oversight over executive positions at the lowest level in the hierarchy. This lack of effective power also discourages outsiders from contesting the people’s congress elections even at the lowest level.

Second, although Chinese law has no formal provision for banning non-religious organizations, it also has no provision which would give non-communist political parties any corporate status. This means that a hypothetical opposition party would have no legal means to collect funds or own property in the name of the party. More importantly, there is a wide range of offenses, including the crimes of subversion, sedition and releasing state secrets, which can and have been used against the leaders of efforts to form an opposition party such as the China Democracy Party.

Formed before the communists came into power in China in 1949, the non-communist parties include the China Democratic League (CDL), the largest of them all with more than 200,000 members; the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (RCCK), formed by leftist members of the Kuomintang (the current ruling party in Taiwan), who did not escape to Taiwan; the China Association for Promoting Democracy (CAPD), and the Chinese Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party (CPWDP). Most of them came into being and developed during the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937 to 1945) and the War of Liberation, also known as the Chinese Civil War (1927 to 1949). They supported the CCP during the long years when they fought side by side with the communists.

Non-communist parties play important political and functional roles in the current system. From a political perspective, their mere existence is used to show the Chinese people that the CCP does listen to those outside it. At present, all the standing committees of the people’s congresses or legislatures, the committees of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (a political advisory body to the CCP) and government agencies at all levels have members of the democratic parties as leaders. The current chairpersons of these eight parties’ central committees for instance, hold the posts of vice-chairpersons of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee and the CPPCC National Committee. All the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and large and medium cities now have local and basic organizations of non-communist parties. Their ranks have swelled.

From a practical point of view, these parties offer advice to the communists, even occasional criticism, which the government acts on at times. Party members of the CDL for instance, are mostly intellectuals, many of whom are involved in the education or health sectors. Where disagreement arises between the CCP and the CDL, it tends to be on matters such as the pace of change in the education sector.

China’s non-communist parties may disagree with the CCP, but it is clear that they cannot challenge its position as the ruling party. That is not their job. As of now, political debates, if any, still remain limited to the confines of Internet chat rooms or the privacy of people’s homes.

“I’ve always been like this, even when I was 15, 20, it was always important to me to be well-dressed. It’s important for me to hold onto my femininity because it’s authentic to me and, you know, I was asked not to. I was told by my predecessor [at the Ministry of Justice], Elisabeth Guigou, a very pretty woman, that it wouldn’t be long until I gave up my high heels. Well, I never wanted to do that.”

*With the Oscars coming up, I thought I slip in a plug for Moment Magazine’s July/August 2009 cover story “From Ghetto to Glamour: How American Jews Toppled Paris Couture and Redesigned the Fashion Industry.” One of the designers profiled is Diane von Furstenberg, the Belgian-American inventor of the fabulous wrap dress:

“Born two years after her mother’s liberation from a Nazi concentration camp, Diane Simone Michelle Halfin early on adopted her mother’s optimism. During the frigid winters, Lily Nahmias had been forced to march for days in the snow. So, in true survivor spirit, after the war Lily took her entire reparation check from the German government and blew it on a new sable coat. ‘She had been so cold in the camps and she never wanted to be cold again!’ says von Furstenberg.

In 1973, in an age of counter-culture experimentation when women tried on pants suits and men sported Nehru jackets, von Furstenberg introduced the wrap dress, an unapologetically feminine design. Her genius was to rebel against trend. ‘Women were ready for clothes that let them be both sexy and successful, powerful and practical and the wrap dress satisfied those needs,’ she says.”

*An Olympic plea to Russia’s Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin and all of the other ice dancing couples for Sochi: Please stay away from costumes depicting Australian Aborigines, Canadian cowboys and anything that you don’t have a very firm grasp on either through birthright or extensive experience.

*It’s Saturday night but what to wear, what to wear? University of Leeds sent female victims to nightclubs to investigate. The results, as summed up by the Daily Mail: “Women who showed off around 40 per cent of their skin were approached by twice as many men as those who were more covered up…For the purposes of the study, each arm accounts for 10 per cent, each leg for 15 per cent and the torso for 50 per cent.” Thank you, University of Leeds!

There are approximately 16,000 unwed mothers raising children on their own in South Korea. Because of a strong social stigma, these women face tremendous economic and social hardships, and most are pressured to have abortions (abortion is an illegal but widely-available procedure in the country) or to give their children up for adoption. However, a burgeoning advocacy movement is making headway in changing public perceptions. According to surveys taken between 1984 and 2009, unwed mothers today feel less shame about having children outside of marriage and are more optimistic about their futures. Advocacy groups have agitated successfully for small policy changes, such as the recent increase in the government stipend available to single mothers. In this WAFP interview, Kwon Hee Jung, the Project Coordinator for Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network (KUMSN), talks about the evolving status of unwed mothers in South Korea.

Tell me about single motherhood in Korea…

In popular thought, an unwed woman can’t be a mother. Korea is a very family-oriented society. Status and public perception are very important. Unwed mothers are stigmatized most harshly. Society says they are so immoral, so they think they are.

During the late 1990s to the early 2000s, there was a period of high divorce rates in Korea. As a result, there were many newly-single moms. There were calls to form social advocacy groups for unwed mothers, but no one came forward to lead or join groups. The stigma of being an unwed mother was too great. There is still a strong social stigma, though the social climate has changed enough so that more women are coming forward to organize.

What are the main challenges facing single unwed mothers?

First, there’s disconnection. Often, when an unwed woman finds out that she is pregnant, she may find herself quickly disconnected from her networks. If she is a student, she often leaves school. If she has a job, she may quit. Frequently, if she lives with her parents, she is forced to move out when she tells them she is pregnant and intends to raise the child on her own.

Second, there is stigma. Last year, the Korean Women’s Development Institute, found that people associate unwed mothers with carelessness, irresponsibility and sexual cheapness.

Third is poverty. If you no longer have a job or a place to stay, there is a high risk of poverty. Some unwed mothers will sleep in jimjilbangs (public baths open 24 hours) because they can’t afford housing. There are maternity homes for unwed mothers, but they are limited.

Another risk comes from the fathers. Fathers can disconnect from the mother and child, but if they want to return, Korean law favors men and guardianship can very easily go to the father. Some mothers coach their children to say that their fathers are working abroad or dead.

Do many unwed single mothers give up their children to orphanages?

Instead of orphanage, “children’s group home” is the preferred terminology. Approximately 90 percent of adopted children, or “orphans,” are children of unwed mothers. Mothers may leave their children in a group home so as to be able to go to work. Many still hold the legal, or parental right. If the mother never relinquishes parental right, then the child cannot be adopted out. In a way, [some of] these children are stuck until they age out of the system.

Are there any child support laws in Korea?

I am sorry to say that Korean law is really difficult or complicated. There are legal requirements for fathers to pay child support but no requirements for unwed fathers. It has to be acknowledged by law that he is a father of a baby. Then the baby is registered under his/her father’s registry. Through this process, unwed mother can receive child support from unwed father, but the unwed father’s right to control over the child is increases as well. Sometimes, he wants to take baby away from the mother in worst cases. If the unwed mother has less ability in terms of finances than unwed father, she can’t defend herself to keep the child.

Now, the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Affairs is preparing to submit a revised law that unwed mother can be supported by unwed father without the process of “acknowledgment of father.” Then the baby would not need to be registered in his/her father’s registry. That way, the mother can have more independence in raising her baby.

Hopefully, there will be new laws next year. The government has not made child support an issue because, until recently, the policy has been to adopt children of unwed mothers out of the country.

What changed recently?

Around 2004, the Korean government received a lot of criticism for “exporting” children. The government responded by changing policies to encourage domestic adoption. In 2007, there were slightly more domestic adoptions of Korean children than international adoptions of Korean children. This trend is continuing.

What public assistance is available?

Unwed mothers can apply for government stipends if they find themselves without income or family support. The stipend increased since last year to 100,000 won per month because of advocacy work by unwed mothers. The budget was passed last year and will take effect in April this year. However, the government checks your parents’ income before assigning a stipend, even if you have no contact with your parents. Some women who don’t qualify for a stipend can, through persistent petitioning of the government, eventually get a stipend, but it is very difficult.

What is the biggest obstacle to organizing to advocate for unwed mothers in Korea?

The biggest obstacle for KUMSN is getting public interest. People will listen, feel sorry for unwed mothers and then do nothing. We have to involve other issues—birth rate, adoption, abortion—to get interest. This is a women’s issue, and related to sex, so it is marginalized and taboo.

Are there any other developments on this issue worth noting?

In 2009, a high school student became pregnant and went to her teacher for advice. Her teacher advised her to move or quit school. The student filed a case with the National Human Rights Commission of the Republic of Korea. The case was not brought to the court. The commission made a recommendation and submitted to the Ministry of Education. And the issue was discussed at the National Assembly level and broadcasted through media. Due to these social attentions, she could go back to school. Even though she could not go back the same school she used to attend, it became a precedent for those who want to keep studying at school regardless pregnancy. Now all students have a right to continue their studies, even if they are pregnant. Still, in practice, there is pressure on students to quit or move should they become pregnant.

What has been KUMSN’s greatest accomplishment?

Our greatest accomplishment has been to motivate unwed mothers to organize themselves and to be their own advocates. We are accomplishing things when unwed mothers are together, getting society to recognize them and not hiding who they are.

Jessica D’Itri is an editorial intern at Women and Foreign Policy. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia, where she studied international relations.

Attending the summit, Brown tells us, will be Queen Rania of Jordan, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Meryl Streep, Barbara Walters, Christiane Amanpour and Cherie Blair among other well-known opinion makers and NGO leaders.

Although few would dare to call Queen Rania a full-fledged member of the “liberal” set, Brown has been accused of bias by one of the article’s commenters for neglecting to invite former Republican VP candidate and now best-selling author of Going Rogue Sarah Palin.

As johnwr3 writes:

I notice that all the women featured in the cover photo are liberals. Tina, your private club is quickly becoming a small minority. Most women don’t support your agenda and the more you promote it by demeaning others the more it shrinks. Sarah Palin is the most powerful woman in the country yet she is frequently ridiculed by you and yours. Whether you agree with her or not she belongs on any list of important women.

Though the contentions made by johnwr3 are highly debatable, there is no question that Sarah Palin is a visible figure, whose activities and declarations are followed by the media on a daily basis.

Tina Brown is entitled to invite whomever she chooses to the “Women of the World” summit, and, in the end, she can always cheekily blame Palin’s plain lack of knowledge “of the world” for not asking her to participate.

Yet the slight does reveal that the larger issue of how feminists treat women who do not think “like us” remains unresolved. Has Palin’s polarizing persona led feminists to put a limit on their feminism? Tell us what you think.

Recently, one of my friends told me that the anglosphere is dead and the future lies in Asia. Beyond the condition of the world economy that this fashionable attitude reflects, the fashion is actually typical of the anglosphere itself. The term “anglosphere” became briefly popular in conservative circles around 2003-2004, reviving Churchillian values opposite a liberal vision of multicultural evolution, which was dismissed by conservative critics as self-hatred and self-immolation. With these debates at the back of my mind, I have been reading The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 2: My Country Right or Left.

Should such ideas, either the anglosphere or its inevitable downfall, be taken literally—or do they signify something else? Orwell wrote the 1941 essay “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius” contemplating British patriotism and the English class system in the face of war and invasion. His call for British socialism to defeat continental fascism additionally isolated an ethereal spirit in historically British societies that still persists today. In Orwell’s eyes, Britain’s ramshackle dedication to internal disagreement, lack of resolution and fractured progress were held together by an overriding commitment by all citizens to the rule of law and other unseen bonds.

He likened British society to a stuffy Victorian family, with all the wrong members in charge, “cupboards bursting with skeletons … and … a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income.” For Orwell, the evil of this family as it stretched across the world in the empire lay not in its power, violence or inequalities but in its insufferable banality: “Well-meaning, over-civilized men, in dark suits and black felt hats, with neatly rolled umbrellas crooked over the left forearm, were imposing their constipated view of life on Malaya and Nigeria, Mombasa and Mandalay.” The result was not some majestic and terrifying struggle between oppressors and oppressed but an acceptance of pervasive mediocrity: “Instead of going out to trade adventurously in the Indes one went to an office stool in Bombay or Singapore. And life in Bombay or Singapore was actually duller and safer than life in London.”

If internal strife between Orwell’s “Bloomsbury highbrow, with his mechanical snigger,” and middle class “Colonel Blimp” patriots, such as the “half-pay colonel with his bull neck and diminutive brain,” equally mirrored self-deception about defeat or glory, Orwell decided that the mediocre compromise between the two, where things actually got done, was equally misleading. Half-baked complacency enabled and concealed a hidden reserve of spirit that was awakened only at the last possible moment in times of crisis, healing divisions and propelling the population into unexpectedly efficient displays of decisive action and medieval aggression: “There can be moments when the whole nation suddenly swings together and does the same thing, like a herd of cattle facing a wolf.” How ever this sleeping cultural sensibility might reappear, it is safe to say that it will be in a form cast between right- and left-wing politics that no one can expect or predict. It is one of the “wild cards” that will be played in the future of international affairs.

Nonna Gorilovskaya

My nonfiction pick is The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan. The book is a very fluent and engaging historical account of the Partition and its terrible violence. Khan’s central point is that although we take the creation of India and Pakistan as givens, at the time, most people had only a vague idea of what was going to happen when the British left. One of the parts that I found most interesting was Khan’s discussion of the role of Congress and the Muslim League in the bloodshed:

“…Elite leaders, often the product of imperial schools and colleges, were as likely as the British that they had replaced to cite the madness of the masses, and apply the vocabulary of craziness, insanity and of a fever gripping the people, blaming ‘crooks, cranks and…mad people’ to try to explain the inexplicable devastation that had taken place. The language of class could be a convenient way for the leadership to wash their hands of their own explicit or inadvertent culpability. The poor and the uneducated must, of course, it was naturally assumed, have been mostly culpable. The information that militant, and often middle-class, organized cadres, sometimes fully answerable to Congress and League politicians, were at the forefront of events was known but glanced over.”

For my book club, I started but dropped My Life in France by Julia Child. Perhaps I am just too sarcastic, but I was generally annoyed by her constant, exuberant jolliness and frustrated by the fact that I have no time to try out her very delicious (check out my friend’s replica of Child’s pear tart) but extremely labor-intensive creations.

Now come the guilty pleasure reads! It is usually my rule—one that I break often—to read the book before I see the movie. I’ve faithfully seen all of the Harry Potter movies so far but my reading has progressed slowly. As I was reading the first two, I just felt that the movies stuck very faithfully to the text and that I was not learning any new information. But I really got into Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and I am curious to see what I think of the later books. I was told that the editors lost more and more power as J.K. Rowling grew more and more popular.

My other guilty pleasure was Julia Gregson’s East of the Sun, a story of three Englishwomen who travel to India in 1928 in search of adventure, love and work. The characters were intriguing—the central one was a writer, so bonus points—and this was squarely good historical chick lit. A fascinating factoid from the book: Englishwomen who sailed to India annually in search of dashing (or not so dashing) bureaucrats and officers overseeing the Empire were called the “Fishing Fleet.” The women who did not land husbands were dubbed “returned empties.” Ouch!

Jessica Hun

As my research interest continues to be central-local relations in China, I have been updating my bookshelf with current scholarly works on this topic. De Facto Federalism in China: Reforms and Dynamics of Central-Local Relations by Zheng Yongnian is part of a series on Contemporary China which suggests that with deepening reform and openness, China’s central-local relations is increasingly functioning on federalist principles. Despite the author’s attempts at explaining why this may the case, I have reservations because of the simple fact that federalism is based on constitutionally guaranteed rights and powers for various levels of government, clear division of power between the central government and other state organs and, most importantly, a genuine relinquishing of central government powers. These fundamental conditions are still not present in China, nor is there a genuine intention to guarantee any local powers. Another issue is that the implementation of constitutional provisions are dependent on the further enactment of implementing legislation such that for any constitutional provisions to come into effect, more steps need to be taken to guarantee implementation.

The notion of the supremacy of the central government is further reinforced by the book Hong Kong’s New Constitutional Order: The Resumption of Chinese Sovereignty and the Basic Law by Yash Ghai. This is a comprehensive analysis of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region focusing on the limitations of its constitutional and legal systems which aim to preserve capitalism under communist leadership. The book addresses fundamental constraints of governance implied in Hong Kong’s own constitution, better known as the Basic Law. Reading these two books back to back suggests that an important basis for communist rule is that local powers are at most selectively delegated with no specific guarantees.

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by Tara McKelvey

The IGA supermarket in Lynndie England’s hometown of Fort Ashby, WV (population 1,354), was boarded up on an August afternoon. Kansas’s “Dust in the Wind” blared from the radio of a rental car: “All we are is dust in the wind. Nothing more than dust in the wind.”

England grew up in mobile home down the road from the IGA in a dirt-and-gravel patch of land situated off Route 46, behind a sheep farm, next to the windowless Roadside Pub. Her parents, Terrie and Kenneth, and her two-year-old son, Carter Allen, live here in a $200-a-month rented trailer. Her sister, Jessie Klinestiver, her brother-in-law James and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Allee, live in a mobile home yards away. Terrie, 46, a former housekeeper with Dawn View Center, a retirement home down the road from the trailer park, has pale eyes, deep etches in her face and three gold rings on her left hand.

The one-stoplight town of Fort Ashby has a frozen-in-amber quality that makes it seem like a small town in the 1970s. The main hangouts are 7-Eleven and Evan’s Dairy Dip. The Fort Ashby Public Library is located near the IGA parking lot. It is the site of a Brown Bag Program for low-income families. More than 20 men, women and children stopped by the library that day and carried away cardboard boxes full of applesauce, soup, cooking oil, KitKat bars, Pace salsa and other items. The median family income in Fort Ashby is $32,375, according to data provided by librarian Cindy Shanholtz, who helps coordinate the Brown Bag Program. But many survive on less. Kenneth makes $1,500 a month as a railroad utility worker when he doesn’t put in overtime, says Klinestiver, 27.

Nobody in the England family has a bachelor’s degree. The men work the night shift—Kenneth at CSX, a railroad company; their younger brother, Josh, 21, at Wal-Mart; and Jamie at Pilgrim’s Pride, a chicken-processing plant in Moorefield, WV.

Kleinstiver says they played cops and robbers, carrying pop guns and shooting them off as they ran through the tall grass, as children. “Lynndie was always the cop. That was her big thing,” says Kleinstiver. “That didn’t work out too good.”

England’s ticket out of the trailer park was the U.S. Army. She signed up at age 17 in a Pittsburgh recruiter’s office in December 1999. She did it over the protests of Terrie. “I joined because I wanted to. And I wanted to pay for college,” England says. “I didn’t think there would be a war. But I was ready to go if there was one.”

Long before England was deployed to Iraq, Terrie tells me, she and her sister worked the same shift as cashiers at the IGA. England met a stock boy, James Fike, and fell in love. They got married in March 2002. Like many people in eastern West Virginia, England and Fike applied for jobs at Pilgrim’s Pride. At the factory, England made $10.50 an hour, more than twice a cashier’s wages.

Fike worked in Breast/Debone, and England worked in Marination. England noticed that unhealthy-looking chicken parts were being sent down the line. She told her supervisors, but they ignored her. Her sister recalls her walking over to her station and taking off her smock “I said, ‘What are you doing?’” Klinestiver says. “She said, ‘I quit,’ and walked out the door.” “I didn’t like the way management was doing things,” England explains. “People would take the good chicken off and put the bad chicken on. Management didn’t care.”

It was worse in Live Hang—located in Pilgrim’s Pride Moorefield Fresh Plant next door. During her shift as a cashier at the nearby Dollar General Store, Barr describes the plant’s slaughterhouse. Workers grab the chickens, fasten hooks on their claws and hang them upside down from a conveyer belt, she explains. Then chickens are transported to the “kill room,” where, Barr says, “They go through an electrical shock. There’s a big saw where their necks go across.”

A People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) activist was hired as a plant worker and conducted a secret, eight-month investigation of the plant from late 2003 to early 2004. He described how workers would stomp on chickens, soaking the room in blood. On November 13, 2003, according to the investigator, 200 chickens “were slammed against the wall” by employees. “Several hours later, many of the birds were still alive.” Three days later, a worker “twisted the neck of a live chicken until the head popped off; he then used what remained of the bloodied body of the chicken to write graffiti on the wall.” Klinestiver says the employees did more than beat the animals. “They told me that people there actually fucked chickens,” she says. “They’d grab the beaks and rip them apart and make them bigger. Then they shoved their sexual parts into their beaks. Besides being overly gross and sexual, it was like morally wrong.”

On July 25, 2004, a Los Angeles Times op-ed appeared under the headline: “Echoes of Abu Ghraib in Chicken Slaughterhouse.” Several employees were fired. But no one was prosecuted.

Klinestiver and England were both shocked by the behavior of coworkers at the plant. And England had even protested shoddy plant standards. She was a whistle-blower. “A lot of people complained about it,” England says defensively. “It wasn’t just me.” When I ask her why she didn’t stand up to the abusive practices at Abu Ghraib, she falls silent and looks at her hands.

After leaving her job at Pilgrim’s Pride, England, then 20, got a job as an army administrative clerk in Cresaptown, MD. She processed the paperwork of Graner, 35, for the 372nd Military Police Company when he arrived in November 2002. “He was funny, the jokester,” she recalls. Other times, he was raunchy. “An outlaw,” she calls him. Their affair started in March 2003 while they were stationed in Fort Lee. “After Lynndie joined the army and was working as an orderly in the U.S., she didn’t know anybody. She was a really quiet girl,” Janis Karpinski, a former commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, tells me. “Enter Charles Graner. He’s much older, and he’s full of himself. He’s just got that kind of personality.” “She was blown away,” Karpinski says. “She felt like someone was finally talking to her. Paying attention. He seemed far more experienced and worldly than anyone she knew. It only took a few, short conversations. She was enamored with him.” “Graner was the total opposite of Jamie [Fike],” says Kleinstiver. “Lynndie told me, ‘He’s real open. He likes to do stuff. Wild stuff.’”

Graner has admitted to beating his former wife, Staci Morris, and dragging her by her hair across a room. He was accused in a federal suit, Horatio Nimley v. Charles A. Graner, filed on May 25, 1999, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, of injuring an inmate, Horatio Nimley, while Graner was working as a prison guard at Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution-Greene. On June 29, 1998, according to the suit, Graner and another guard hid a razor blade in a side dish of mashed potatoes that was served to Nimley. He bit down on the razor, slicing the inside of his mouth, and bled profusely.

In March 2003, England went with Graner and another soldier to Virginia Beach. Their friend took a picture of England performing oral sex on Graner. In addition, Graner took a series of pictures as they engaged in anal sex, showing the progression of the sex act, “minute by minute,” says Hardy.

“Everything they did, he took a picture of it,” says Hardy. “She was asked why she let him. She said, ‘You know, guys like that. I just wanted to make him happy.’ She was like a little plaything for him. I think the sexual stuff—and the way he put her in those positions—was his way of saying, ‘Let me see what I can make you do.’”

Graner flaunted his affair with England, and the photos were passed around among the soldiers in their unit. Military rules forbid soldiers from taking lewd photographs. Also, England was married to Fike. Her affair with Graner violated army rules. Neither England nor Graner got in serious trouble, though. Several weeks later, they got ready for their deployment to Iraq and were eventually stationed at Abu Ghraib.

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Tara McKelvey is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Her work has also appeared in Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, Boston Review and other publications. She is currently a fellow with the Alicia Patterson Foundation.

“Just like they do for White House coverage, the major (and some not so major) news organizations could draw up an agreement to send a contingent of print, radio, and television reporters to wherever the next global disaster strikes. The participating news organizations could then use the raw material transmitted back to them to fashion their own reports.”

*Kevin Smith, president of the Society for Professional Journalists wants journalists to know their place: “I think it’s important for journalists to be cognizant of their roles in disaster coverage. Advocacy, self promotion, offering favors for news and interviews, injecting oneself into the story or creating news events for coverage is not objective reporting, and it ultimately calls into question the ability of a journalist to be independent, which can damage credibility.”

*Historian Joseph A. Palermo is glad Haiti is finally getting some media attention but wants reporters to delve into some uncomfortable questions about the United States’ long and unsavory history in the country. As Palermo writes in Huffington Post:

“Publicizing the catastrophe has generated tens of millions of dollars in relief donations. That’s a good thing. But why were Haiti’s long-suffering people deemed so un-newsworthy before the quake? Passed over in the process have been some uncomfortable truths behind the outpouring of compassion toward the plight of the Haitian people.

For over two centuries the U.S. has been on the wrong side of history in Haiti. It has propped up military dictatorships that enriched a tiny oligarchy at the expense of Haiti’s population. Decades of abuse have created a country with a level of food insecurity on par with Sub-Saharan Africa, a per capita income of about $390 a year, and a sizable underclass forced literally to eat mud to sustain itself.”

*The funny people at The Onion remind us that “4.2 billion people—a full 70 percent of the planet’s inhabitants—could use an all-star benefit concert.” A simple but important message for the stars and the rest of us ordinary beings to keep in mind, especially after all of those camera crews inevitably leave Haiti.