Lisa's latest blog on the situation in Guatemala concerning the kids snatched from Casa Quivira started me thinking this morning about political maneuvering, posturing, media spin, and all that rotten business that so often passes as steps in a direction that many are massaged into assuming is a right one.

On the Casa Quivira case, we know that the grab happened just before elections, and that alone should be enough to put questions of timing in everyones' mind, but with a combination of coordinated spin, some anti-adoption sucker punching, and no shortage of those overjoyed to jump on a bandwagon they don't bother to consider carefully, the story has somehow become palatable to the giant global tongue that tends to lap up anything spilled before it.

The fact that so much of the story that has been taken up by the world media and passed around like a platter of canapes at a cocktail party regurgitates the exact same dull points over and over again ... unsubstantiated allegations, rumor, guesses ... proves the power of the PR machine behind the UN and Co., and the undeniable truth that sliding into tut-tut mode is so very easy and comfortable for reporters, as well as consumers of media product.

Addressing for a moment here how dangerous this is, one word: Cambodia.

No one has any idea how many Cambodia children would now be in families if the US suspension on Cambodian adoptions either not happened, or happened but was dealt with. I will not get into a big hoo-haa here over the alleged reasons for the suspension, but I'll nutshell the outcome -- hundreds, if not thousands of Cambodian children continue to pay the price and will live out their lives without any hope of ever having a family.

To some, this seems a fair trade for assurance that no parents are being misled, coerced, or worse into surrendering their children. Those who might find it practical to sell one or two to enable them to feed the rest of the family no longer have the option of adding sleaze bags buying adoptable babies to their potential customer list, and now have to settle for those filling brothels. Of course, the price has dropped considerably for them, so more kids might have to go to make up the difference.

But back to that bandwagon-jumping thing ...

Continued in the next post.