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Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette is a CNN contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Follow him on Twitter: @rubennavarrette.

(CNN) -- All those who are hoping that comprehensive immigration reform is going to happen this year -- Latinos, businesses, churches, agriculture industry, law enforcement and others -- are in for a rude awakening.

The trick for politicians will be to look as if they're doing something, when really they're doing nothing. But, regardless of how it looks, it's a long shot that Congress will pass immigration reform this year.

That's bad news for those who want to give the undocumented a chance to get right with the law and develop a sensible, fair and efficient policy for future immigrants. But it's good news for those who resist legalizing the undocumented because they're afraid of foreigners -- either because of competition with their work ethic, or that they're changing the culture and complexion of the country.

Is enforcement key to fixing America's immigration system?

The problem isn't just Republicans, who can't get on the same page about whether they want to be reformers. It's also Democrats, who seem to be playing the immigration reform camp for chumps.

The signs are everywhere, if you know where to look. For instance, a few days ago, a draft of President Obama's immigration reform plan was leaked. It took four years to write, and yet its key points fit on a cocktail napkin with room to spare.

Here's what is in the plan: more border security, a requirement that employers use an electronic system to verify if prospective hires are eligible to work, and a long path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Obama's immigration plan leaked

Obama: Harvest immigrants' talents

How long? The undocumented could immediately apply for a special protective status to avoid deportation, but it would take them about eight years to get legal permanent residency (a green card) and another four or five years to become a U.S. citizen.

Here's what is not in the plan: a guest worker program. Republicans have repeatedly insisted that this needs to be in the mix for them to vote for any reform package. The fact that it was left out tells us that Obama isn't serious about reform and ensures that his plan would be, as Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said, "dead on arrival" in Congress.

Opinion: Economy and immigration linked to American dream

The idea would be to bring in a few hundred thousand temporary "guest workers" to do the hard and dirty jobs that Americans won't do at any wage. When the work is done, and the workers have been paid a fair salary, they go home. And another batch is brought in. It's not a perfect solution. But you won't find any of those in the immigration debate.

The first U.S. president to push for guest workers was Abraham Lincoln. Industries were facing labor shortages during the Civil War and, with Lincoln's support, Congress in 1864 passed The Act to Encourage Immigration. The bill allowed employers to recruit foreign workers and pay their way to America. There were more guest workers during World War I. But the concept really became popular during World War II and the Cold War. From 1942 to 1964, under the Bracero program (as in "brazo", which is Spanish for arm as in someone who works with his arms and hands), nearly 5 million guest workers came in and out of the United States.

In fact, arguably, the reason the Braceros stopped coming was because journalist Edward R. Murrow -- in the 1960 CBS documentary, "Harvest of Shame" -- exposed the horrible treatments the workers received at the hands of employers, including low wages, unsanitary conditions, dilapidated housing, etc. Congress pulled the plug soon thereafter.

But exploitation doesn't have to be part of the deal, and not every guest worker program is run as badly as that one. There are apple growers in Washington State who don't have to scramble for pickers at harvest time because the same crews return every year. The growers lure them back by paying decent wages and providing clean living quarters. Everyone is happy.

Well, maybe not everyone. Many in organized labor hate the concept of guest workers because their leaders are busy peddling the fantasy that the hard and dirty jobs in question are sought after by union members. Sure. Then why aren't they doing them now? Answer: Because they're hard and dirty.

It's time for Congress to create a new guest worker program for the agriculture industry where employees can have decent wages, access to health clinics, livable housing, workers comp in case of injury, and legal protection so that they aren't exploited. Of course, there's the catch. If growers have to pay for all that, labor economists say, it might well kill the incentive for them to participate.

Immigration debate: High-stakes political poker

But it's those same growers who are now complaining that they aren't able to find American workers who are willing to pick a variety of crops that can't be harvested by machine -- peaches, plums, apples, lettuce, tomatoes, avocadoes, nectarines, strawberries, blueberries, apricots, table grapes, etc. So those employers will have to make some tough choices. If they want a reliable labor supply, it'll cost them. That's the way it should be. There is no free lunch.

Either way, it's a guest workers program that will make or break the prospects for immigration reform. I'm betting it's the latter.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette.

Editor's note: Jesse Williams is an actor/producer who plays Dr. Jackson Avery on the TV series "Grey's Anatomy." He is a Temple University graduate and former public high school teacher. Williams founded the production company, farWord Inc. and is an executive producer of "Question Bridge: Black Males." Follow him on Twitter and Tumblr. Note: This article contains offensive language.

(CNN) -- Films such as "Django Unchained" carry with them an uncommonly high concentration of influence and opportunity. Due to the scarcity of diverse and inspiring representations on screen, Quentin Tarantino's latest movie casts a longer shadow than many are willing to acknowledge.

In a recent interview with UK Channel 4, Tarantino stated his goals and interpretation of the Oscar-nominated film's impact: "I've always wanted to explore slavery ... to give black American males a hero ... and revenge. ... I am responsible for people talking about slavery in America in a way they have not in 30 years."

He went on, "Violence on slaves hasn't been dealt with to the extent that I've dealt with it."

My personal biracial experience growing up on both sides of segregated hoods, suburbs and backcountry taught me a lot about the coded language and arithmetic of racism. I was often invisible when topics of race arose, the racial adoptee that you spoke honestly in front of.

I grew up hearing the candid dirt from both sides, and I studied it. The conversation was almost always influenced by something people read or saw on a screen. Media portrayals greatly affect, if not entirely construct, how we interpret "otherness." People see what they are shown, and little else.

It's why my dad forced me to study and value history from an absurdly young age -- to build a foundation solid enough to withstand cultural omissions from the curriculum and distortions from the media. It's what led me to become a teacher of American and African history out of college. There is a glaring difference in outlook between those who have mined the rich, empowering truth about how we've come to be, and those who just accept that there's only one or two people of African descent deemed worthy of entire history books.

If, like Tarantino, you show up with a megaphone and claim to be creating a real solution to a specific problem, I only ask that you not instead, construct something unnecessarily fake and then act like you've done us a favor.

Vote for your Oscar favorites

"Django Unchained" is being projected on screens around the world, out of context: A slim percentage of consumers have any real understanding of what took place during slavery, one of history's most prolonged, barbaric and celebrated human rights violations. Sadly, for many Americans, this film is the beginning and the end of that history lesson.

Waltz, left, helps free Foxx from slavery, and the two team up to save the latter's wife in the Quentin Tarantino film.

This film follows a brave, cunning and fearless lead character whose name starts with a "D." Viewers of the film's trailer would think that character is Django, played by Jamie Foxx. In fact, his name is Dr. King Schultz, a German portrayed by Christoph Waltz, (spoiler alert) who sacrifices his life in the pursuit of freedom and justice for the black man. It is the white Dr. King, who after sharing a motivational tale about a man reaching a mountaintop, nobly gives his life for "black justice."

Tarantino rightly claims that the abundant use of "nigger" in the film was authentic and of the time. Of course it was. So was chattel slavery and the back-breaking manual labor that kept these massive plantations thriving.

Tarantino's plantations are nearly empty farms with well-dressed Negresses in flowing gowns, frolicking on swings and enjoying leisurely strolls through the grounds, as if the setting is Versailles, mixed in with occasional acts of barbarism against slaves.

It's the opposite of the exploration of the real phenomenon of slavery about which he boasts.

Sometimes we sacrifice accuracy for story, but these inaccuracies are completely unnecessary. How does depicting slave plantations like circus campgrounds, fit with delirious, babbling overseers wielding bull whips and overdressed rabble wandering aimlessly, further Django's truth?

The film's antagonist, Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, supposedly runs one of the very worst plantations in all of Mississippi. Yet on the road he dines with his slaves, and at home, his fields are mostly empty and he only seems to have slaves in his house. Is this one of those rare slave plantations that primarily trades in polished silverware and gossip? That authenticity card that Tarantino uses to buy all those "niggers" has an awfully selective memory.

In the film's opening sequence, shackled blacks literally hold the key to their shackles and don't use them, choosing instead to trudge forward, hindered by biting chains, to kill a white man. In the third act, after seeing Django kill the Australians, the blacks sitting in an open cage neither communicate with each other or consider stepping outside of the cage.

Review: 'Django Unchained'

In fact, in this entire, nearly three-hour film, there are no scenes with black people interacting, or even looking at each other, in a respectful or productive way.

If only one black person (Django) displays the vaguest interest in gaining freedom, while the rest consistently demonstrate that they wouldn't do anything with that freedom, were they to obtain it, then we're not able to become invested in them or their pursuits: We can't relate to shiftless characters. Being illiterate, and/or brown, does not remove the ability to think, or observe or yearn or plan or develop meaningful relationships.

Foxx's Django is the film's only black character to show interest in gaining freedom, Jesse Williams argues.

Despite the repeated suggestions that they are similar narratives, "Django Unchained" has little in common with "Inglourious Basterds," Tarantino's 2009 fantasy involving a band of American soldiers taking revenge against the Nazis. The latter's title characters choose to form a band of men who risk their lives for a generous and creative endeavor to stop the Holocaust completely, saving all of their people, not just one.

"Django" is just a random guy, who, to no credit of his own, was plucked from slavery by an impressive white man and led on a journey to save his wife.

"Inglourious" did not walk us through provocative scenes of concentration camp torture, gas chambers and ethnically stereotyped victims. Nor were Jewish characters subjected to the indignities of being torn apart by dogs. And while we have our trusty authenticity card out, did the Jewish people not suffer the repeated verbal onslaught of "kike," "rats" and other grotesque terms?

Were such words used in "Inglourious Basterds" more than 100 times? How about 70? OK 30? 10? Thankfully, Tarantino knew that he was perfectly able to tell a story without such gimmicks. (He also knew the community he claimed to be avenging wouldn't stand for it.)

Hey, remember when Tarantino was selling those emaciated Jewish prisoner action figures with the concentration camp tattoos? So funny and ironic and harmless, right? No. That would have been cheap and disgusting.

Yet the filmmakers agreed to the release of action-figure slave and slaver dolls to help promote "Django." It was an especially offensive decision because selling slave figurines falls directly in line with the centuries-old American tradition of desensitizing us to the horrors of slavery with cute, palatable commodities. Tarantino didn't invent this tacky strategy; he just dug it back up.

Opinion: Why 'Django' stirs race debate

Think for a moment of the lengths that Tarantino went, to create a heroic triumph for his "Inglourious Basterds." He created an imaginary scenario wherein his characters could outwit and ultimately incinerate Hitler and his top advisers in a movie theater. It was choose-your-own-adventure heroism to create figures that took complete agency in the acquisition of their freedom. A very cool idea.

Director Quentin Tarantino attends the Berlin premiere of "Django Unchained" in January.

A big reason slavery is avoided in American storytelling is guilt. Unlike the Holocaust, when it comes to slavery, our people were the bad guys. But we're not German, so we can rail on Hitler and the Nazis all day without thinking critically about our legacy.

For descendants of slaves, and all Americans, our ovens -- the slave plantations -- are tourist destinations and wedding venues, home to preservation societies and guided tours. The "good ole days," when faceless black folks with zero potential were merely quiet, collateral damage.

America's minimal comprehension of slavery combined with the kind of trivialization "Django" offers renders us ill-equipped to empathize with its victims. This is a chicken or the egg manipulation: "Do I know nothing about the complexity of slavery because it's not that big a deal, or must it not be that big a deal because I'm only vaguely informed?"

None of my criticisms would be different had the person in the director's chair been a different color (though all widely released American films heavily involving slavery in the United States have been directed by white men). My concerns are limited to the onscreen material, its advertised aims and the consequences.

We try so hard to distance ourselves from the generations that made a business out of systematically crippling a people and the public's vision of their abilities and intentions. We're so different now, aren't we? We are civilized.

By popular measure, so were they.

And we deserve better, than this lazy, oversimplified reduction of our history.

(Note: On my blog I offer a detailed breakdown of the specific scenes that I found problematic.)

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jesse Williams.

Editor's note: John C. Abell is the tech columnist and reviewer for Reuters, and a former Wired editor. Follow him on Twitter: @johncabell

(CNN) -- Apple is getting pushed around a lot these days. Digerati reaction to the iPhone 5 was "meh," response to the iPad Mini was akin to "it's about time" and we are all more excited about unicorn-like products such as an iWatch and iTV than the things you can buy right now.

Apple's strength is its Achilles' heel: We expect it to reinvent on schedule and when, in our infinite wisdom, we believe it is not, we treat it like the kid who no longer belongs in our clique.

Some of this is to be expected when a company with as incredible a recent track record as Apple's seems to be resting more on its laurels than finding new battles to win. Since the quixotic introduction of the iMac in 1998 -- reinvigorating the desktop computer well into the age of portables -- Apple has been on a tear:

• The iPod (2001)

• The iTunes Store, allowing the purchase of single music tracks (2003)

• The Apple retail store (2004)

• The iPhone (2007)

• The iPad (2010)

And you can add to list that Steve Jobs' revitalization of the animated feature film through his acquisition of Pixar.

Samsung takes a bite out of Apple

Locals dominate China smartphone market

Apple CEO remains confident with company

That's a lot of imagination in a very short time. Apple hasn't just dominated the story for a decade: It has written the story of the past decade. That is a lot to live up to. Most companies can't. It's particularly brutal for tech (as opposed to, say, shampoo) companies, which at best can usually hope to set the pace for only about generation until they settle into a comfortable middle class.

Call it the Microsoft Curve. Microsoft dominated through the red-hot '90s, the height of the PC era. It isn't going anywhere. It still prints money by selling MS-Office and Windows licenses. But look at a five-year stock price chart, and you'll see it has gone exactly nowhere. The only people dancing for joy about owning a Windows computer seem to be in those Surface Pro TV ads.

At the bottom of the pile there is the sad tale of Palm -- the hottest tech company on the planet for far too brief a time. Palm Pilots were once everywhere. But the company stumbled by failing to recognize quickly enough that, in the age of the Internet, no one wanted a portable device that couldn't get online.

How Samsung is out-innovating Apple

Another hard luck case is Research in Motion -- now BlackBerry. That company did get the portable device memo, but it spectacularly misjudged the smartphone revolution sparked by Apple.

Now Apple is this unfamiliar territory: Successful on paper, products seen everywhere, Macbooks and iPhone placed in seemingly every TV show and movie and yet ... the cool factor is cooling off.

There is a big difference between atmospherics and actuality, of course. But nobody wants to be thought of as a has-been in the making.

The lesson of tech history is that smart companies crash when they believe what they have already done is all they need to do: that doubling-down and trash-talking the competition is what it takes.

Exhibit A? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer himself, whose initial public reaction to the iPhone was that business customers wouldn't want it "because it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good e-mail machine."

This would be a good time to mention that increasingly large numbers of these "business customers" now want an iPhone at work, challenging Microsoft at what has been its enterprise stronghold.

Apple's search for its next billion-dollar product

Success is never assured, but it can only be extended only two ways: If you corner the market, impossible in the uberdisruptive tech space, or if you are unabashedly willing to question everything, all the time.

Facebook began life as the world's most exclusive private social network -- only Harvard students need apply. But it became a public company worth $68 billion because it decided instead to become the world's least exclusive private network.

Even Palm's trajectory might have been different if it had inverted its thinking in time: Imagine a Palm Pilot not as a personal information manager with connectivity, but a connected device with PIM applications, and you have described exactly what the smartphone is today.

There is no reason to think Apple won't thrive financially for years to come, just like Microsoft. But its continued reputation as the chief arbiter of cool is being challenged. Apple may still have the best-selling smartphone in the world, but the many others powered by rival Google's Android operating system -- and especially those made by Samsung -- far exceed the iPhone.

For years, tech writers reviewed each new smartphone on a simple grading scale: Is this the iPhone killer? None has been, but collectively the point has been made:

No phone has killed the iPhone, but plenty of them co-exist just fine, thank you very much.

We expect the unexpected from Apple, and the company does nothing to tamp down these expectations. So when it doesn't dazzle us, ennui begins to creep in. Apple is also burdened by what I called at the time the meaningless milestone of having become the biggest company ever. Where do you go from there? You are either still the biggest, or slipping. Consolidating your lead is fine and all, but it isn't sexy.

My own prediction of Apple's prospects is that needs to worry about becoming a mid-packer only after the CEO Tim Cook and designer Jony Ive -- the other tow members of the triumvirate headed by Steve Jobs -- are no longer with the company.

Until then, perhaps a decade from now, you bet against Apple at your own peril.

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The opinions in this commentary are solely those of John Abell.

(CNN) -- After the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, people everywhere are demanding common sense reforms to our gun laws. According to a January poll, for example, an overwhelming 92% of Americans back background checks for every gun sale. We all need to take action to see real change.

President Obama has unveiled a bold package of legislation, and our leaders in Washington are finally listening. We are encouraged by this, but concerned Americans must stand united against gun violence and put pressure on elected leaders to vote accordingly for real solutions.

Like the president said during the State of the Union, this issue deserves a vote -- our elected officials are accountable to the survivors of gun violence and the families of victims, and they deserve a vote.

Now more than ever, we need to provide support for the advocacy organizations that are working to establish a formidable counterweight to the gun lobby, which is well financed, well organized and will stop at nothing to protect the interests of the firearms industry and obstruct sensible legislation that will help save lives.

Groups like the Fund for a Safer Future and Mayors Against Illegal Guns -- spearheaded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- have been leading the charge in Washington for meaningful reform. It is incumbent upon all of us in the philanthropic community and the people served by these programs to stand firmly behind them during this critical time.

We have been proud to join other foundations and grant makers in backing these organizations. With the help of our resources, they have conducted essential policy research, raised public awareness and launched national campaigns that have brought us closer than ever to stopping the bloodshed.

But there's still so much more that philanthropists can do to further this cause.

Obama: Involved dads could curb violence

Advocates on Obama call for gun control

Obama: Laws alone won't stop gun deaths

Obama: Laws alone won't stop gun deaths

Philanthropy, after all, is activism. It is not merely writing checks and throwing money at problems; it is investing in solutions that can lead to momentous change. We have an obligation to help save lives. This isn't about politics. This is about reclaiming our fundamental right to safety. What better investment could there be? Over the years, we have each financed major public institutions in Los Angeles and across the United States -- from opera houses to charter schools, scientific research centers to art museums. They have all contributed to positive change in our community and our country. But what good are they if our children aren't safe in their classrooms?

What good are they if a 15-year-old girl can perform at the president's inaugural festivities one week and be gunned down in a Chicago park the next?

We need to take a comprehensive approach to reducing gun violence, and the time is now to do it. Supporting nonprofit advocacy groups will help maintain the energy behind reform and keep pressure on our elected officials. Political leaders can no longer duck this issue or the growing grass-roots movement that it has inspired.

The philanthropic community can help ensure our elected representatives make the right decisions. Private citizens can help make a difference in whatever way they are able -- writing a check, donating in-kind contributions, calling or writing their elected representatives, volunteering time to a nonprofit.

Most important, we have to hold our legislators accountable on Election Day. If your representatives don't support gun reform, then don't vote for them. A coalition of people working toward the greater good is the essence of our democracy. Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writers.

• Gloria Borger: Prospect of deep budget cuts was designed to compel compromise
• She says the "unthinkable" cuts now have many supporters
• The likelihood that cuts may happen shows new level of D.C. dysfunction, she says
• Borger: President may want a 2014 House victory, but action needed now

(CNN) -- So let's try to recount why we are where we are. In August 2011, Washington was trying to figure out how to raise the debt ceiling -- so the US might continue to pay its bills -- when a stunt was hatched: Kick the can down the road.

And not only kick it down the road, but do it in a way that would eventually force Washington to do its job: Invent a punishment.

If the politicians failed to come up with some kind of budget deal, the blunt instrument of across-the-board cuts in every area would await.

Unthinkable! Untenable!

Until now.

In fact, something designed to be worse than any conceivable agreement is now completely acceptable to many.

And not only are these forced budget cuts considered acceptable, they're even applauded. Some Republicans figure they'll never find a way to get 5% across-the-board domestic spending cuts like this again, so go for it. And some liberal Democrats likewise say 8% cuts in military spending are better than anything we might get on our own, so go for it.

The result: A draconian plan designed to force the two sides to get together has now turned out to be too weak to do that.

And what does that tell us? More about the collapse of the political process than it does about the merits of any budget cuts. Official Washington has completely abdicated responsibility, taking its dysfunction to a new level -- which is really saying something.

We've learned since the election that the second-term president is feeling chipper. With re-election came the power to force Republicans to raise taxes on the wealthy in the fiscal cliff negotiations, and good for him. Americans voted, and said that's what they wanted, and so it happened. Even the most sullen Republicans knew that tax fight had been lost.

Points on the board for the White House.

Obama: People will lose jobs over cuts

Now the evil "sequester" -- the forced budget cuts -- looms. And the president proposes what he calls a "balanced" approach: closing tax loopholes on the rich and budget cuts. It's something he knows Republicans will never go for. They raised taxes six weeks ago, and they're not going to do it again now. They already gave at the office. And Republicans also say, with some merit, that taxes were never meant to be a part of the discussion of across-the-board cuts. It's about spending.

Here's the problem: The election is over. Obama won, and he doesn't really have to keep telling us -- or showing us, via staged campaign-style events like the one Tuesday in which he used police officers as props while he opposed the forced spending cuts.

What we're waiting for is the plan to translate victory into effective governance.

Sure, there's no doubt the president has the upper hand. He's right to believe that GOP calls for austerity do not constitute a cohesive party platform. He knows that the GOP has no singular, effective leader, and that its message is unformed. And he's probably hoping that the next two years can be used effectively to further undermine the GOP and win back a Democratic majority in the House.

Slight problem: There's plenty of real work to be done, on the budget, on tax reform, on immigration, climate change and guns. A second-term president has a small window of opportunity. And a presidential legacy is not something that can be kicked down the road.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Borger.

Editor's note: Robert Jobson is an award-winning royal correspondent and best-selling royal author, whose books include William & Kate: The Love Story and Harry's War (biography of Prince Harry), both published by John Blake.

London (CNN) -- The venomous attack on the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge by author Hilary Mantel calling her bland and "machine made" is a cheap publicity stunt.

Her remarks saying her impression of our future queen is that of a and "only purpose being to give birth," is mean spirited in the extreme.

See the Duchess and her royal bump

The darling of the literary establishment I fear is playing publicity seeking games; raising her profile on the back of one of the most famous women on the planet right now.

I respect Hilary Mantel as a writer. I like her books too. But she clearly knows very little about modern princesses -- or duchesses even.

Perhaps all that time writing about Tudor princesses has led her to lose her head -- like so many Tudor heroines.

Mantel has never met the duchess. She has never seen her at work. I have, and I have been impressed by the speed and ease with which she has taken to the job of being a front line royal.

People who meet Kate warm to her. She has a winning smile and easy charm. Yes, she has a long way to go, and is not the new Princess Diana as many in the media are hoping for.

But I think she is slowly but surely carving out a role for herself.

Even Diana took years in the job before growing into the global icon who was so admired before she was taken from us so tragically.

For somebody who is relatively new to royal engagements, Kate has performed with aplomb.

On foreign assignments too, I have seen her at close quarters in Canada, America, Singapore and Borneo. She is professional and warm, complimenting her husband Prince William as they carry out their royal duties together.

Kate and William are a great double act. There is her wifely strength, like the Queen Mother, and as a Queen Consort she does not try to steal the limelight from her husband.

The Palace and Kate have kept a dignified silence over Mantel's rant. It's a wise stance.

I know the team around Kate and far from her being a "machine-made doll" or "designed by a committee" she has a hands-on role in everything she does. They follow her lead.

She has chosen to be patron of charities in which she has a deep personal interest.

Kate, in the coming months and years, will let her actions speak for her.

Today she was back doing royal duties for her charity Action on Addiction at Hope House in Clapham, South London.

She looked fabulous as she stepped out of the royal car, happy to show her baby bump to the media gathered outside. She was well briefed and knew her stuff.

She is a beautiful, educated and stylish young woman, who has embraced her role with ease and injected much-needed glamour to the British royal family.

The Palace will step up the number of patronages in the coming months and claims that Kate is a plastic princess will soon fade.

Kate has her detractors -- many Internet trolls label her work shy -- but I am surprised someone of Mantel's stature has joined in this pastime, attacking Kate for no apparent reason.

In my view she has abused her position among the novel-writing elite to launch this astonishing attack on a woman half way through her pregnancy.

Mantel, whose latest books are set in the Tudor court, is lucky she is not a character in one of her own books. If she had attacked the wife of a future king back then with such vitriol she may have soon lost her head in a more literal sense.

Editor's note: Sarah Chayes is an expert in kleptocracy and anti-corruption at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She was a special advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and has also visited Tunisia eight times since the 2011 revolution.

Washington (CNN) -- Avenue Bourgiba, the leafy, cafe-lined thoroughfare that abuts Tunis's ancient walled bazaar, was a solid mass of people. The ambulance carrying the body of political organizer Chokri Belaid, shot dead that morning, was scarcely able to pass.

Two days later, outside the cemetery where he was being laid to ground, stinging plumes of teargas lanced the air. Security forces clashed with mourners. Tunisia, and its revolution, are in crisis.

READ: Vocal critic of Islamist-led government gunned down in Tunisia

The scenes last week were like distorted reflections of the 2011 uprising that inspired revolts across the region. Where the mood then was one of euphoria and national unity, last week's demonstrations showcased the deepening rifts that divide Tunisians.

Crisis, however, always conceals opportunity. And this one offers the ruling Muslim Brotherhood-linked Ennahda party the chance to redirect Tunisia's transition in a way that could serve, again, as a blueprint for the region. The challenge is for ruling parties to disentangle their short-term partisan objectives from their obligations as arbiters -- on behalf of the whole country -- of once-in-a-lifetime political transformations.

Belaid's assassination shocked Tunisians. More placid than Egypt with its intense, teeming vitality, Tunisia has had a calmer transition, and has often been described as the success story of the Arab Awakenings. But for that very reason, the significance of violence like last week's assassination -- or the September 11 attack on the U.S. embassy in Tunis -- may be greater, because of its higher psychological impact on ordinary people.

READ: President's party to quit coalition government in Tunisia

In fact, the post-revolution trajectory in Egypt and Tunisia has been remarkably similar. In both cases, Islamist parties were able to convert name recognition and long-standing grass-roots organization into electoral victories. Now both Muslim Brotherhood-linked parties are taking steps to try to translate that electoral supremacy into a durable lock on power.

In Egypt, the struggle has largely centered on the content and approval of the country's new constitution. In Tunisia, many accuse the government of a deliberately lax attitude toward acts of organized political violence, including not arresting extremist assailants or vandals, or letting calls for political assassination from the pulpits of some mosques go unchallenged. The aim would be to cultivate deniable "proxies" with which to intimidate political opponents. Tunisian opposition leaders have also accused Ennahda of pushing to stack the professional civil service with party loyalists.

READ: Jebali vows to press on with plans for caretaker government in Tunisia

For their part, secular Tunisian political parties have struggled to organize and to connect meaningfully with large parts of the population. Some of the difficulties have been due to the sheer number of these new parties, which split the vote of their sympathizers. Their inexperience and lack of resources have also been obstacles. By contrast, Ennahda is able to finance thousands of neighborhood offices, where party workers run after-school activities for local children, donate items to needy families, or help neighbors sort out administrative headaches.

Most secular parties are led by a highly internationalized elite, however, who are often as comfortable speaking French as Arabic, and who are culturally disconnected from the vast majority of their compatriots, even uncomfortable in their company. "People shouldn't speak of Tunisia in the same breath as Egypt," said one activist last fall. "We're more like France, or any other European country."

It is in this context that the Islamist Ennahda party won a nearly 40% of the votes in parliamentary elections last fall. It would be hard to argue that all of those ballots represented detailed and active endorsements of Ennahda's political program. Rural and inland voters may have felt a sense of cultural and even economic affinity with the less wealthy and ostentatiously western-looking Ennahda candidates.

Most importantly, many voters said they were looking for "clean" candidates. What was seen as the acute, structured corruption of the regime of Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali -- and the social injustice that resulted from it -- was a key impetus driving Tunisians into the streets in 2011. In the subsequent vote, many voters explained that they trusted Ennahda's candidates because a number of them had served long prison terms and so could not be accused of collusion with the former dictator's regime.

But with Ennahda's rise to power, the debate over the political and public role of religion has overshadowed the economic issues that gave rise the revolution.

In two years the government has made negligible headway in devising a systematic transitional justice procedure, in assessing the level and nature of past economic crimes, and in obtaining restitution for the population. The government's failure to address these problems, and its apparent unwillingness to disturb longstanding practices, including public corruption, is fueling popular frustration. And if these issues of political economy are not addressed, it is likely that Tunisians will continue to radicalize.

Still, Tunisia's window of opportunity is not yet shut. Westerners should recall the extraordinary racial, cultural, economic, and intellectual homogeneity of our own revolutionary generations. And even so, it took decades for stable western democracies to emerge from our revolutions.

The task that the Arab Spring countries have set for themselves is monumental. And they are tackling it without the benefit of an intellectual elite that has spent years considering different models of political and economic organization, as had early American or French revolutionary activists, or many Eastern European dissidents in the 1970s and '80s. In that perspective, two years is nothing -- and every crisis is still an opportunity.

The current one offers Ennahda a second chance to rise above its partisan instinct to try to lock in its control over Tunisia, and to serve instead as an honest broker for all Tunisians.

To do so, it should accept Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali's proposal to appoint a non-partisan cabinet to enforce neutral rules of political discourse until the next parliamentary election. Such a reshuffle has been in the works for months, and the shock of last week's assassination provides the perfect opening to implement it.

The new cabinet must launch a serious and structured process of transitional justice, which would address issues of systematic economic crime as well as more traditional human rights violations. And, if Ben Ali-era functionaries are removed from their positions during this process, they should be replaced via merit-based recruitment to the civil service.

As a religious movement, Ennahda (which seems currently like a slow-motion version of more radical Salafi movements) is missing an extraordinary opportunity. Given the country's symbolic role in sparking the Arab Awakenings, the party could turn Tunis into an influential magnet for innovative faith-based thinking about how Islam should best interface with the modern world. Such a project would secure its place in history.

READ: Tunisia's President: 'The extremists are a minority of a minority'

• Obama administration beefing up effort to counter cyberattacks
• Michael Hayden says emphasis is on striking first, as the U.S. does with drone attacks
• Ex-CIA director says drone policy reflects lack of consensus on handling prisoners
• Hayden: Is killing terrorists preferred because of division over how to try them?

Editor's note: Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was appointed by President George W. Bush as CIA director in 2006 and served until February 2009, is a principal with the Chertoff Group, a security consulting firm. He serves on the boards of several defense firms and is a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University.

(CNN) -- Human decisions have complex roots: history, circumstance, personality, even chance.

So it's a dangerous game to oversimplify reality, isolate causation and attribute any particular course of action to one or another singular motive.

But let me tempt fate, since some recent government decisions suggest important issues for public discussion.

Over the past several weeks, press accounts have outlined a series of Obama administration moves dealing with the cyberdefense of the United States.

According to one report, the Department of Defense will add some 4,000 personnel to U.S. Cyber Command, on top of a current base of fewer than a thousand. The command will also pick up a "national defense" mission to protect critical infrastructure by disabling would-be aggressors.

A second report reveals another administration decision, very reminiscent of the Bush Doctrine of preemption, to strike first when there is imminent danger of serious cyberattack against the United States.

Both of these represent dramatic and largely welcome moves.

But they also suggest the failure of a deeper national policy process and, more importantly, the failure to develop national consensus on some very difficult issues.

Chinese military leading cyber attacks

Let me reason by analogy, and in this case the analogy is the program of targeted killings supported and indeed expanded by the Obama administration. Again, I have no legal or moral objections to killing those who threaten us. We are, as the administration rightly holds, in a global state of war with al Qaeda and its affiliates.

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Safeguarding against cyber attacks

But at the level of policy, killing terrorists rather than capturing them seems to be the default option, and part of that dynamic is fairly attributable to our inability to decide where to put a detainee once we have decided to detain him.

Congress won't let him into the United States unless he is going before a criminal court, and the administration will not send him to Guantanamo despite the legitimate claim that a nation at war has the right to detain enemy combatants without trial.

Failing to come to agreement on the implications of the "we are at war" position, we have made it so legally difficult and so politically dangerous to detain anyone that we seem to default to killing those who would do us harm.

Clearly, it's an easier path: no debates over the location or conditions of confinement. Frequently such action can be kept covert. Decision-making is confined to one branch of government. Congress is "notified." Courts are not involved.

Besides, we are powerful. We have technology at our fingertips. We know that we can be precise, and the professionalism of our combatants allows them to easily meet the standards of proportionality and distinction (between combatants and noncombatants) in such strikes, despite claims to the contrary.

And we also believe that we can live with the second and third order effects of targeted killings. We believe that the care we show will set high standards for the use of such weapons by others who will inevitably follow us. We also believe that any long-term blowback (akin to what Gen. Stanley McChrystal calls the image of "arrogance" such strikes create) is more than offset by the immediate effects on America's safety.

I agree with much of the above. But I also fear that the lack of political consensus at home can drive us to routinely exercise an option whose long-term effects are hard to discern. Which brings us back to last week's stories on American cyberdefense.

In the last Congress, there were two prominent bills introduced to strengthen America's cyberdefenses. Neither came close to passing.

In the Senate, the Collins-Lieberman Bill created a near perfect storm with the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Chamber of Commerce weighing in strongly against the legislation. That two such disparate bodies had issues with the legislation should suggest how far we are from a national consensus.

In the House, a modest proposal from the Intelligence Committee to enhance cybersharing between the private sector and the National Security Agency was met with a presidential veto threat over alleged privacy concerns and was never even considered by the Senate.

Indeed, my preferred option -- a more active and well-regulated role for NSA and Cyber Command on and for American networks -- is almost a third rail in the debate over U.S. cybersecurity. The cybertalent and firepower at Fort Meade, where both are headquartered, are on a short leash because few dare to even address what we would ask them to do or what we would permit them to do on domestic networks.

And hence, last week's "decisions." Rather than settle the roles of these institutions by dealing with the tough issues of security and privacy domestically, we have opted for a policy not unlike targeted killing. Rather than opt for the painful process of building consensus at home, we are opting for "killing" threats abroad in their "safe haven."

We appear more willing to preempt perceived threats "over there" than spill the domestic political blood that would be needed to settle questions about standards for the defense of critical infrastructure, the role of government surveillance or even questions of information sharing. And we seem willing to live with the consequences, not unlike those of targeted killings, of the precedent we set with a policy to shoot on warning.

I understand the advantage that accrues to the offense in dealing with terrorists or cyberthreats. I also accept the underlying legality and morality of preemptive drone or cyberstrikes.

I just hope that we don't do either merely because we don't have the courage to face ourselves and make some hard decisions at home.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Michael Hayden.

Washington (CNN) -- Whether a political ploy or bona fide proposal, a leaked version of President Barack Obama's draft immigration plan raised Republican hackles while bringing some additional focus to the debate.

The draft plan reported over the weekend by USA Today and confirmed to CNN by an administration official included a possible path to coveted permanent residency in eight years for most of the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.

It also called for steps to strengthen border security and the E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers.

GOP critics pounced, with some objecting to any form of what they label "amnesty" for those in the country illegally. Others accused Obama and the White House of dirty tricks by going public with their draft as a bipartisan group of senators works on a possible agreement.

Conservative Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama complained on Monday that both the Obama draft and the talks involving the Senate's so-called Gang of Eight seek to "confer legal status and work authorization on Day One in exchange for promises of future enforcement on which this administration will never deliver."

"Perhaps this leak, and what it reveals, may mark the beginning of the collapse of this new scheme to force through a fatally flawed plan," Sessions said in a statement.

Others accused Obama of deliberately floating an unacceptable plan so that Republicans would reject it, bringing the party further disfavor from Hispanic Americans, the nation's fastest-growing demographic.

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"Does the president want a result, or does he want another cudgel to beat up Republicans so that he can get political advantage in the next election?" veteran GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

To former Rep. Connie Mack, a Florida Republican, "a little bit of this is show from everyone, including the president's side."

Regardless of how it happened, the leak of Obama's plan "plays into the fears" of Republicans that the president prefers keeping the issue alive for political advantage, Mack told CNN on Monday.

His wife -- former Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack of California -- agreed that the leak added to what she called an already deep trust deficit in Washington.

"The American people would be astonished if they knew how little trust existed between the two parties when we have to work together like this," Bono Mack said on CNN.

She acknowledged tossing the president's plan into the debate was "a good way to move a bill."

"You know, come out farther to the left, make the room on the right," Bono Mack said. "But in this case, start with that trust."

Administration officials insisted Obama wanted Congress to work out an agreement that can win support from both parties.

"We will be prepared with our own plans if these ongoing talks between Republicans and Democrats up on Capitol Hill break down," Obama's new chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation." "There's no evidence that they have broken down yet. We are continuing to support that."

He added that he hoped the two sides "don't get involved in some kind of typical Washington back-and-forth sideshow here and rather just ... roll up their sleeves and get to work" on writing a comprehensive immigration bill.

Along with the Senate talks on possible legislation, House members from both parties also are involved in their own discussions.

The draft plan reported by USA Today calls for an eight-year path to permanent residency for undocumented immigrants, who would face a criminal background check and have to pay back taxes, learn English and get a new "lawful prospective immigrant" visa.

On the day after last week's State of the Union address, in which Obama called for comprehensive immigration reform, he met with the four Democratic senators involved in the Gang of Eight talks to reiterate what he considers to be the main principles for a final agreement.

According to the White House, those principles include "continuing to strengthen border security, creating an earned path to citizenship, holding employers accountable and streamlining legal immigration."

Republicans stung by the overwhelming support for Obama from Latino voters that helped the president win re-election in November are divided over how to proceed on immigration.

Conservatives generally oppose any breaks for those who came to America illegally although some, like Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, contend the party must adopt a modern approach to an issue with such strong economic and social impacts.

Rubio, who gave the GOP response to Obama's State of the Union address, displayed the party's conflicted posture on the issue that night. He didn't mention his past support of a route to legal status for undocumented immigrants now in the United States, but advocated a non-specific "responsible, permanent solution to the problem."

First, he said, "we must follow through on the broken promises of the past to secure our borders and enforce our laws."

When news of the leaked Obama proposal emerged, Rubio immediately criticized it as "disappointing to those of us working on a serious solution."

On the Democratic side, some of the distrust noted by Bono Mack is evident. Remembering similar bipartisan talks on major issues, such as the Gang of Six that spent months working on a health care overhaul in 2009 without every reaching an agreement, they want to make sure Congress gets legislation to consider.

"I know that Senator Rubio was upset with this leak," Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York told CNN on Sunday. "I am not upset. We've talked to Senator Rubio and he is fully on board with our process. And I am very hopeful that in March we will have a bipartisan bill."

Schumer said the mechanics of politics was obvious: "If a Democrat, the president or anyone else puts out what they want on their own, it's going to be different than what you have (in) a bipartisan agreement, but the only way we're going to get something done is with a bipartisan agreement."

CNN's Jessica Yellin, Gregory Wallace, Kevin Bohn, Juan Carlos Lopez, Ashley Killough and Dana Bash contributed to this report.

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The reality is that ever since President Hugo Chavez was first elected, Venezuela has defied these negative predictions and brought unprecedented social progress to the country over the last 14 years. Since 2004 poverty has been reduced by half and extreme poverty has been cut by 70%. University enrolment has doubled, entitlement to public pensions has tripled, and access to health care and all levels of education have been dramatically expanded.

Venezuela now has the lowest levels of economic inequality of any Latin American country as measured by the Gini coefficient. Our country has already achieved many of the Millennium Development Goals, and is well on target to achieve all eight by the 2015 deadline.

This progress has been achieved by using Venezuela's vast oil revenues to transform the lives of ordinary people. The sheer scale of our oil reserves -- the world's largest -- guarantees the complete sustainability of the model in which the country's resources are used to stimulate growth in the economy and aid development.

But Chavez's most significant achievement has been to trigger the awakening and empowerment of the majority. A majority of Venezuelans have seen vast improvements in their living standards and, as a consequence, they have continued to defend their interests at the ballot box.

The Venezuelan people are very clear about what they want. President Chavez was re-elected in October 2012 with 54% of the vote in an election that boasted an 81% turnout. The Venezuelan people showed their support for the government again in December 2012 in the gubernatorial elections, which saw Chavez's political party win 20 out of 23 states.

Governments in Europe and other parts of the world could only dream of these levels of support after 14 years in power. This shows that social progress in Venezuela has been consolidated and that there is a desire to further expand this progress.

In the coming years, the Venezuelan government will continue to respond to the needs of the Venezuelan people. Hundreds of thousands of new homes have been built over the last two years which have not only greatly improved living standards but also provided jobs and contributed to a boom in the construction industry. The government is well on its way to meeting its target of building three million new homes by 2019.

While many economies around the world are shrinking, the Venezuelan economy grew by 5.5% in 2012. Against the backdrop of a continuing international financial crisis, commerce in Venezuela grew by 9.2% and communications by 7.2%, manufacturing grew by 2.1% and the oil sector grew by 1.4% -- making Venezuela one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America.

At a time when many countries are attacking the rights of the most vulnerable sectors of society, Venezuela is providing ever greater protection for low-income senior citizens and single-parent families with younger children or disabled dependents.

The failed development models of previous governments condemned millions of Venezuelans to poverty. Before the election of Chavez in 1998, Venezuela suffered years of falling GDP. The country had one of the worst economic records in the world -- a record that led to mass social unrest and violent military crackdowns.

Venezuela will continue on its path of social progress and empowering ordinary citizens. The greatest hope for the future is the people know that they alone hold the power to determine the direction the country will take.

After so many failed predictions, isn't it time to respect Venezuela's democracy and the will of the people?

Editor's note: Roly Owers is chief executive of World Horse Welfare and a qualified veterinarian with a lifetime of involvement with horses. He is active in working with governments, sport regulators, veterinary bodies and non-profit organizations to improve horse welfare worldwide.

(CNN) -- A welcome spotlight is now being shone on the murky trade in European horsemeat, but the public are still being left in the dark about the brutal treatment and needless suffering of the horses destined for their plates.

Every year around 65,000 horses are crammed into trucks and transported across Europe to the slaughterhouse for what can be days on end in hellish conditions.

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Stressed, injured, exhausted, dehydrated and suffering from disease, these horses are desperate for food, water and rest.

No type of horse is spared: including infirm working horses, foals (foal steak commands a premium among those who eat horse meat) and those bred and fattened to obesity to command the highest prices at slaughter.

Few, if any of them, are fit enough to travel on such long journeys -- a feat which would challenge even the most athletic sport horses. Many thousands of America's horses are also transported vast distances on journeys to slaughter in Mexico and Canada, so this is not simply a European problem.

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World Horse Welfare undertakes regular field investigations as part of its campaign to stop these long-distance journeys, and for years we have documented the appalling suffering of these horses. In recent shipments we inspected, 89% of the horses had an injury and 93% showed clinical signs of disease.

Their misery was clear - all were showing signs of exhaustion and depression and many had suffered painful wounds from poorly designed compartments and terrible friction injuries due to inadequate space on the vehicle. No animal should have to suffer this.

The European Commission's own advisors, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have clearly stated that "journey duration should not exceed 12 hours for horses."

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Yet still the European Commission refuses to change the legislation that allows horses to be transported indefinitely, so long as they are given rest every 24 hours (a rule often broken, in part because it is unenforceable in practice).

Horses' immune systems decline after 10 hours of transportation making them more susceptible to disease. This is extremely unpleasant for the horses and it also poses a real risk to the equine industry of Europe, as horses intended for slaughter, often mix with other horses along the major routes.

We regularly present the findings from our investigations to the European Commission, and share information on breaches of transport law with the authorities. We have also presented a number of recommendations in our 'Dossier of Evidence' of welfare problems caused by the trade and our proposed solutions.

At the center of these recommendations is a 9-12 hour journey limit for horses (in keeping with the view of the European Commission's own scientific advisors), which is perfectly feasible given the abundance of slaughterhouses licenced to take horses, and would actually save money and red tape by harmonising with other laws. Yet the European Commission still refuses to act.

So what we can do to help these horses? First, we can make people aware of this appalling trade and encourage more Europeans to speak out against it. We can also write to our own governments in Europe to call for change.

And we can continue to press the European Commission for the short, maximum journey limit that is recommended by the Commission's own scientific experts. This is not about stopping people eating horsemeat -- that is a personal choice -- it is about fulfilling our basic responsibility to care for horses during their lifetime.

Together the louder we can shout to be the horses' voice, the more chance we'll have to put an end to this needless suffering. And that's exactly what it is -- utterly needless, reckless and brutal.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Roly Owers.

Editor's note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is a political comedian and frequent commentator on various TV networks including CNN. He is the editor of the politics blog "The Dean's Report" and co-director of the upcoming documentary, "The Muslims Are Coming!" Follow him on Twitter: @deanofcomedy.

(CNN) -- While America slept -- or at least while the left ate their organic ostrich burgers, drank their jackfruit-guava-flavored vitamin water and tweeted "cleverly" about Marco Rubio's "Watergate" -- Canada was preparing to counter a growing threat to the nation.

Patriotic members of the Canadian Parliament stood up to political correctness last week by declaring that Canada will not tolerate an influx of zombies. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird even went as far as to boldly state that "Canada will never become a safe haven for zombies, ever."

Of course, the lamestream media didn't cover this story. They prefer you worry about things like meteors and cruise ships instead of a growing zombie threat.

But it's time for Americans to wake up! Canada's zombie preparedness means one thing for us: Zombies will be driven out of Canada and into the United States. And once they are here, good luck getting them out of the country.

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Sure, some will argue that we can make conditions so tough for zombies that they will self-deport. But I'm not buying it. Why? A few reasons. One, zombies have no sense of direction. Sure, you can point zombies in the direction of Canada and hope they keep walking as a pack over the border, but they're easily distracted.

Second, Americans are fatter than Canadians, which means we are more appealing for zombies to eat than our slimmer northern neighbors.

Third, and most important, America is the greatest country in the world, so why would a zombie want to live anywhere else?!

I know some will dismiss me as an alarmist, but I wonder how you will feel when one these zombies steals your job.

Sure, zombie expert Max Brooks, author of the books "The Zombie Survival Guide" and "World War Z," informed me that zombies can't be trained to take our jobs. But I have two things to say about Brooks.

One, he's part of the liberal Hollywood elite who tries to sell us on the notion that zombies aren't a threat to our nation's exceptionalism. Check out the recent Hollywood film "Warm Bodies," which is a romantic comedy about a girl falling in love with a zombie. Sorry, Max and Hollywood: Zombies don't need a hug; they need a swift kick out of our country.

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Second, just because zombies aren't skilled enough to take our jobs today, what about in the future? The zombie virus could mutate, and before you know it, some undead person is doing your job for half the pay. I, for one, don't want to tell a red-blooded American human kid that his dream of being of a dog-walker is over because some zombie learned how to hold a leash.

Plus, keep in mind that if even only a few zombies make it over the border, these "anchor zombies" will create more and more zombies. This is a threat to our very existence. I'm not just talking the danger of them eating our brains, which could happen. I'm talking about the greater risk they pose to our federal deficit because they will want handouts from our government.

It's just a matter of time until Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says zombies should receive government benefits. How long after that do you think it will be until these people argue that zombies should be covered under Obamacare?! Keep in mind that zombies far outlive humans, so they will be a great drain on Medicare.

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And we all know where this is all ultimately leading. Two words: zombie amnesty. The living dead will then have an easier path to citizenship than the living.

Brooks and I did agree that we need the federal government to respond to the dangers posed by an influx of zombies. (While I'm usually against new government programs, I do support any that will benefit me directly.)

But Brooks, in typical liberal fashion, advocates a coordinated global response to the zombie threat. Nice try, Max, but that's just another ploy by you and your elitist friends to get us to give up control of our nation to the United Nations. Not on my watch, buddy.

I see these zombies for what they truly are: un-American. They don't speak English, they don't share our values, and they eat human beings. Plus, they're probably all liberals. After all, you can't be pro-life if you eat people.

I hope my fellow Americans wake up before it's too late. We need to secure our borders now before we talk about allowing any zombie reform legislation allowing them to enter or remain in our country. If not, then I hope the Rosetta Stone starts teaching us how to speak zombie, because we are all going to need it.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dean Obeidallah.

(CNN) -- The peculiar standoff on Borneo between Malaysian security forces and a group of men from the southern Philippines has its roots in a recent landmark peace deal between Manila and Muslim rebels, according to an expert on the region.

More than 100 men from the mainly Muslim southern Philippines came ashore in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo early last week demanding to be recognized as representatives of a sultanate that has historical claims on the area.

Their claims touch on an unresolved territorial question between the Philippines and Malaysia, as well as Manila's efforts to improve relations with Islamic insurgents in the country's south after decades of violence.

Malaysian police and armed forces soon surrounded the village in the eastern Sabah district of Lahad Datu where the men had gathered. Police officials said they were negotiating with the group in an effort to persuade its members to return to their homes in the Philippines peacefully.

The Philippine government also urged them to come back to the country, saying it hadn't authorized their voyage. There was no indication of a resolution to the standoff on Monday.

The men claim to be the Royal Army of the Sultanate of Sulu, which once encompassed Sabah, and say they don't want their people to be sent away from the area, Malaysian authorities said. There are conflicting claims about to what extent the men are armed.

Eroded power

Over the weekend, comments appeared in the news media from representatives of the sultanate, whose power is now largely symbolic, saying that their followers who had gone to Sabah planned to stay where they were.

"Nobody will be sent to the Philippines. Sabah is our home," Jamalul Kiram, a member of the sultanate's ruling family, told reporters in Manila on Sunday, according to Agence France-Presse.

The sultanate's claim to Sabah plays a long-standing and important role in the Philippine government's relationship with the country's Muslim minority and with neighboring Malaysia, said Julkipli Wadi, the dean of the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of the Philippines.

Established in the 15th century, the Sultanate of Sulu became an Islamic power center in Southeast Asia that at one point ruled Sabah.

But the encroachment of Western colonial powers, followed by the emergence of the Philippines and Malaysia as independent nation states, steadily eroded the sultanate's power, according to Wadi.

It became "a sultanate without a kingdom" to rule over, he said. Sulu is now a province within the Republic of the Philippines.

But the sultanate has nonetheless retained influence over some people in the southern Philippines and Sabah who still identify themselves with it, according to Wadi.

Excluded from a peace deal

The members of the sultanate's royal family, although riven by internal disputes over who the rightful sultan is today, appear to have felt isolated by the provisional accord signed in October by the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has fought for decades to establish an independent Islamic state in southern Philippines.

Malaysia, a mainly Muslim country, helped facilitate the agreement.

Kiram was cited by AFP as saying that the sultanate's exclusion from the deal, which aims to set up a new autonomous region to be administered by Muslims, prompted the decision to send the men to Sabah this month.

Dispatching the boat loads of followers to Lahad Datu served to make the sultanate's presence felt, according to Wadi.

"The whole aim is not to create conflict or initiate war, it is just to position themselves and make governments like Malaysia and the Philippines recognize them," he said.

Historical ties

The economic, cultural and historical links between Sabah and the nearby Philippines islands, as well as the porous nature of the border between the two, means that many of the Filipino men have friends and relatives in Lahad Datu.

But the historical connection still fuels tensions between Malaysia and the Philippines, with Manila retaining a "dormant claim" to Sabah through the Sultanate of Sulu, according to the CIA World Factbook.

According to the official Philippine News Agency, Manila still claims much of the eastern part of Sabah, which was leased to the British North Borneo Company in 1878 by the Sultanate of Sulu. In 1963, Britain transferred Sabah to Malaysia, a move that the sultanate claimed was a breach of the 1878 deal.

Malaysia still pays a token rent to the sultanate for the lease of Sabah, according to Wadi.

• During Great Depression, writers project interviewed former slaves
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• They tell of families torn apart, of people deprived of their basic freedoms

Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose 25 books include "Late Edition: A Love Story"; "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War"; and "Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen."

(CNN) -- "I was owned by Johnson Bell and born in New Orleans, in Louisiana."

Those words were spoken by a man named Frank Bell.

He said that according "to the bill of sale, I'm 86 years old."

His words, and those of thousands of other American citizens, were transcribed in the 1930s, at the depth of the Great Depression. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to restart the economy, the Works Progress Administration was founded, and one arm of the WPA was something called the Federal Writers' Project.

Men and women were hired by the government to work on various assignments documenting American history and American life.

One of those assignments, vast in scope, came to be known as the Slave Narratives.

"If a woman was a good breeder she brought a good price on the auction block," said Hattie Rogers, a North Carolina resident, when she was interviewed in 1937. "The slave buyers would come around and jab them in the stomach and look them over and if they thought they would have children fast they brought a good price."

We are in the midst of Black History Month. The slave years in the United States were not only black history, they were American history -- the ugliest and most indefensible chapter.

I had long heard of the Slave Narratives, but had never read them. The original interviews comprised 17 bound volumes in the Library of Congress, filled with the firsthand accounts of more than 2,000 former slaves, and hundreds of photographs.

The interviewers were sent to 17 states, and that is how the printed conversations are bound and arranged. I have been reading two volumes -- covering interviews done in North Carolina and in Texas.

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What is so shattering is the matter-of-fact tone of what the former slaves said. The United States was well into the 20th century by the time the interviews were conducted; automobiles had come to the nation, as had radio and motion pictures and air travel. The country, in many ways, was beginning to resemble the nation we live in now.

Yet residing in America's cities and towns were men and women who recalled being sold at auction, of seeing brothers and sisters led away in chains, of having -- in their words -- "good owners" or "cruel masters." Survivors of a time when, in many states, it was perfectly lawful for human beings to own other human beings, and to buy and sell them.

Mary Armstrong, 91 and living in Houston when she was interviewed, said the person who owned her family was "so mean he never would sell the man and woman and (children) to the same one. He'd sell the man here and the woman there and if (there were children) he'd sell them someplace else."

Charity Riddick, 80, interviewed in North Carolina, had a similar memory. "I belonged to Madison Pace in slavery time," she said. She had a brother whose first name was Washington, she said, but he was "sold away." Their mother "cried a lot about it."

The former slaves who were still alive in the 1930s were, of course, the youngest of those who were enslaved before emancipation. Many of them were relating childhood or adolescent memories, while others were passing on what their parents related to them.

There were many, however, who were old enough to have vivid firsthand recollections of specific instances. Stearlin Arnwine, who was 94 and living near Jacksonville, Texas, when he was interviewed, said he would see slaves on the auction block, stripped to the waist for inspection by potential buyers. Women and their children, he said, would be crying and begging "not to be separated," but it did no good: "They had to go."

As anguishing as are the stories recounted by the former slaves, troubling in a different way was the methodology many of the interviewers chose in committing the stories to written form. Most of the writers were white; in the 1930s, apparently it was still considered acceptable to use crudely rendered dialect in recreating on paper the speech patterns of African-Americans. That is how some of the writers transcribed the interviews, and in many cases it comes off as something close to mockery, whether or not it was intended that way.

The power of the stories overrides everything else. The quiet starkness of the telling:

"My father was a slave, A.H. Stewart, belonging to James Arch Stewart, a slave owner, whose plantation was in Wake County," said Sam T. Stewart, 84, interviewed in North Carolina in June 1937. "When I was two years old James Arch Stewart sold my father to speculators, and he was shipped to Mississippi. I was too young to know my father."

You can read from the volumes for hours at a time, and when you are finished for the evening you can look around you and try to comprehend that all of this was taking place in the same nation where we live today.

Alex Woods, of Raleigh, North Carolina, born on May 15, 1858, said that as a boy he saw slaves being marched on their way to the auction block, each person chained to the one next to him, and, as he witnessed this, being "afraid my mother and father would be sold away from me."

Story after story after story. Henry H. Buttler, 87, living in Fort Worth in the 1930s but born a slave in Virginia:

"The plantation consisted of about 30 acres, with about 30 slaves, though this number varied and sometimes reached 50. Mr. Sullivan owned my mother and her children, but my father was owned by Mr. John Rector, whose place was adjacent to ours."

And, when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that this must no longer be permitted to go on, millions of Americans said that he was dead wrong.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene.

Editor's note: Cameron Russell has been a model for brands such as Victoria's Secret, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Benetton and has appeared in the pages of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and W. She spoke at TEDx MidAtlantic in October. TED is a nonprofit dedicated to "ideas worth spreading" which it makes available through talks posted on its website.

(CNN) -- Last month the TEDx talk I gave was posted online. Now it has been viewed over a million times. The talk itself is nothing groundbreaking. It's a couple of stories and observations about working as a model for the last decade.

I gave the talk because I wanted to tell an honest personal narrative of what privilege means.

I wanted to answer questions like how did I become a model. I always just say, " I was scouted," but that means nothing.

The real way that I became a model is that I won a genetic lottery, and I am the recipient of a legacy. What do I mean by legacy? Well, for the past few centuries we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we're biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures, and femininity and white skin. And this is a legacy that was built for me, and it's a legacy that I've been cashing in on.

Some fashionistas may think, "Wait. Naomi. Tyra. Joan Smalls. Liu Wen." But the truth is that in 2007 when an inspired NYU Ph.D. student counted all the models on the runway, of the 677 models hired, only 27, or less than four percent, were non-white.

Usually TED only invites the most accomplished and famous people in the world to give talks. I hoped telling a simple story -- where my only qualification was life experience (not a degree, award, successful business or book) -- could encourage those of us who make media to elevate other personal narratives: the stories of someone like Trayvon Martin, the undocumented worker, the candidate without money for press.

Instead my talk reinforced the observations I highlighted in it: that beauty and femininity and race have made me the candy of mass media, the "once you pop you just can't stop" of news.

In particular it is the barrage of media requests I've had that confirm that how I look and what I do for a living attracts enormous undeserved attention.

Do I want a TV show? Do I want to write a book? Do I want to appear in a movie? Do I want to speak to CNN, NBC, NPR, the Times of India, Cosmo, this blogger and that journal? Do I want to speak at this high school, at that college, at Harvard Law School or at other conferences?

TED.com: A teen just trying to figure it out

I am not a uniquely accomplished 25-year-old. I've modeled for 10 years and I took six years to finish my undergraduate degree part-time, graduating this past June with honors from Columbia University. If I ever had needed to put together a CV it would be quite short. Like many young people I'd highlight my desire to work hard.

But hard work is not why I have been successful as a model. I'm not saying I'm lazy. But the most important part of my job is to show up with a 23-inch waist, looking young, feminine and white. This shouldn't really shock anyone. Models are chosen solely based on looks. But what was shocking to me is that when I spoke, the way I look catapulted what I had to say on to the front page.

Even if I did give a good talk, is what I have to say more important and interesting than what Colin Powell said? (He spoke at the same event and his talk has about a quarter of the view count.)

Model's frank talk: How I REALLY look

TED.com: Isaac Mizrahi on fashion and creativity

Like many young people I believe I have potential to make a positive impact in the world. But if I speak from a platform that relies on how I look, I worry that I will not have made room for anyone else to come after me. I will have reinforced that beauty and race and privilege get you a news story. The schoolteacher without adequate support, the domestic worker without rights, they won't be up there with me.

So what do I do? I am being handed press when good press for important issues is hard to come by. These outlets are the same outlets that spent two years not reporting a new drone base in Saudi Arabia while press in the UK covered it.

They are the same organizations that have forgotten New Orleans and forgotten to follow up on contractors who aren't fulfilling their responsibilities there -- important not only for the people of NOLA, but also for setting a precedent for the victims of Sandy, and of the many storms to come whose frequency and severity will rise as our climate changes.

TED. com: Amy Tan on where creativity hides

Should I tell stories like these instead of my own? I don't feel like I have the authority or experience to do so.

How can we change this cycle? The rise of the Internet and the camera phone have started to change what stories are accessible. And we now have the ability to build more participatory media structures. The Internet often comes up with good answers to difficult questions. So I ask: How can we build media platforms accessible to a diversity of content creators?

On a personal note, what should I talk about? Do I refuse these offers outright because of my lack of experience, because I'm not the right person to tell the stories that are missing from the media? Can I figure out a way to leverage my access to bring new voices into the conversation? Right now I'm cautiously accepting a few requests and figuring out what it all means.

I'm listening, tweet me @cameroncrussell

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Cameron Russell.

Pope Benedict XVI waves in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican in December 2012. Benedict, 85, announced on Monday, February 11, that he will resign at the end of February "because of advanced age." The last pope to resign was Gregory XII in 1415.

Joseph Ratzinger, who became the 265th pope in 2005, poses for a photo while a German air force assistant in 1943.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, right, poses for a picture in Vatican City in June 1977 with fellow cardinals, from left, Cardinal Gappi, Cardinal Tomazek, Cardinal Gantin and Cardinal Benelli. Ratzinger was named cardinal-priest of Santa Maria Consolatrice al Tiburtino by Pope Paul VI in June 1977.

Ratzinger, who was serving as cardinal-priest of Santa Maria Consolatrice al Tiburtino, visits Madrid in 1989.

Ratzinger fills in for Pope John Paul II during the Easter Vigil service in Saint Peter's Basilica in March 2005.

Newly elected as pope, Benedict XVI gestures to the crowd in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City on April 19, 2005.

Benedict meets Prince Albert II of Monaco at the pope's private library in Vatican City in December 2005.

Benedict kisses the altar before addressing the crowds at Jasna Gora Monastery in Czestochowa, Poland, in May 2006.

Benedict waves from under an umbrella as he arrives to lead his weekly general audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican in October 2007.

Benedict speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in April 2008.

Benedict celebrates a Mass at the end of a synod of Catholic bishops in October 2008 at St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.

Benedict attends a screening of a movie about his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, on October 16, 2008, in Vatican City during celebrations of the 30th anniversary of John Paul's election as pontiff.

Benedict kneels as he prays in front of Pope John XXIII's tomb in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on October 28, 2008, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of John's election to the papacy.

Benedict talks with bishops in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican after his weekly general address in November 2009.

Benedict blesses pilgrims as he arrives in St. Peter's Square in his popemobile in March 2010 to meet with young people from Rome and the Lazio region in preparation for World Youth Day.

The pope salutes from his popemobile in St. Peter's Square in March 2010.

Benedict prepares to celebrate Mass at San Giovanni della Croce parish in Rome in March 2010.

Benedict prays on Good Friday in April 2010 at the Roman Colosseum.

Benedict celebrates an open-air Mass in the Terreiro do Paco in Lisbon, Portugal, in May 2010.

Benedict prepares to celebrate a Mass for 70,000 people in September 2011 in Berlin.

Benedict waves to the crowd gathered at the Colosseum in Rome during the Way of the Cross procession on Good Friday in April 2012.

A gust of wind blows Benedict's collar into his face in September 2012 during his weekly address in Saint Peter's Square.

Benedict speaks with Nikolaus Schneider, praeses of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, before a Mass at the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, Germany, in September 2011.

Benedict waves to pilgrims as he arrives at St. Peter's Square for his weekly address in October 2012.

Benedict looks at a chess game with Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara during a private audience in November 2012 at the Vatican.

Benedict arrives to lead the Vesper prayer with members of Rome's universities in December 2012 at St. Peter's Basilica.

Benedict clicks on a tablet to send his first tweet from his account @pontifex at the Vatican in December 2012.

Benedict celebrates Mass during a visit to San Patrizio al Colle Prenestino parish on the outskirts of Rome in December 2012.

Benedict blesses members of the ecumenical Christian community of Taize, a group based in Taize, France, in St. Peter's Square in December 2012.

Benedict, accompanied by Grand Master Matthew Festing of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, right, shakes hands with a woman after the Mass in St. Peter's Basilica to mark the 900th anniversary of the Order of the Knights of Malta on February 9, 2013, at the Vatican.

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(CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI's resignation captured the world's attention, and rightly.

It is the first papal resignation in nearly six centuries. The pope leads a church that includes a sixth of the world's population. His gravitas reverberates outside Roman Catholicism: The pope talks and people listen.

Others are fascinated by Vatican spectacle. Benedict speaks Latin and wears gold vestments. His successor's election by conclave, with sequestering and smoke, is high drama.

But for all the excitement and ceremony, the pope is not the most important thing about Catholicism.

For all his influence, the pope makes up an infinitesimal fraction of the opinions and activities of Catholics.

The most important thing about Catholicism is the 1 billion who claim it as their faith.

In the wake of updating by the Second Vatican Council, Roman bishops emphasized the role of the laity. Lay activism exploded. Many Catholic theologians stressed the whole community of Catholics working together.

Opinion: Why pope will be remembered for generations

The issue is not only what the Church should look like. We should be concerned about media and popular takes on what Catholicism does look like. News coverage of the Church is usually about the hierarchy. Ask average Americans about Catholicism and they likely will mention the pope.

This happened for several reasons.

No other big religious institution is so centralized. The media covers the pope as Catholicism because it is easy to cover the pope as Catholicism. Place a correspondent in Rome or even just use Vatican press releases. There is no highest authority of Hinduism. There is no international imam of Islam.

What some Catholics want in next pope

Also, despite the Vatican II council of the 1960s, popes kept expanding their authority. Benedict XVI endorsed that council but read tradition to support papal sovereignty. If popular opinion overwhelmingly associates Catholicism with the papacy, that's partly because effective Vatican theologizing made it so.

Roland Martin: Pope shows true leadership by resigning

Finally, the U.S. has always had an obsession with the pope.

Ironically, this obsession had roots in anti-Catholicism. Americans "used" the pope as a way to sharpen national identity. American democracy was contrasted with papal demagoguery, American piety with papal superstition, American modernity with papal obsolescence.

U.S. Roman Catholics felt pulled between nation and church. Scholars have noted that American faithful were more pope-identified than coreligionists around the world, as if overcompensating to hold the two sides together.

But obsession involves both attraction and loathing. Even ardent anti-Catholics seemed consumed with fascination for the pontiff. The infamous publisher of anti-Catholic comics, Jack Chick depicts decadent popes lofting ominous speech bubbles, precisely capitalizing on the fact that such scenes make gripping graphic art. It's as if the pope — with absolute rule, a throne, pomp and circumstance — taps into a repressed fantasy of crowns and ermine.

Perhaps pop god Prince put it best:

So U can be the President

I'd rather be the Pope

Yeah, U can be the side effect

I'd rather be the dope

Arguably Prince is right; the pope is bigger than the president.

But the pope is not the dope. At least not for purposes of best analyzing Catholicism. While the popes have attempted to maintain the status quo from the top down, three major phenomena are happening in the Church from the ground up -- and the media would be well advised to pay attention.

First, vernacular religion. This refers to religion as it is actually lived, rather than how leaders say it should be lived. A term coined by Leonard Primiano of Cabrini College, vernacular religion highlights that while clerics write creeds and command pulpits, official religion is the tip of the iceberg of religious culture.

Opinion: Why next pope must open up church and usher in Vatican III

This became visible in coverage of bishops' activism against President Obama's health care law provisions for artificial birth control. The bishops held the official position that artificial birth control was morally wrong. Most news accounts added that a majority of U.S. Catholic women used it anyway. This addition was a start, but it needs to go further. According to doctrine, women were "going against" their Church. But in terms of vernacular religion, their everyday Catholicism was simply different from the approved version.

Second, other Catholics. Last year a Religion Dispatches blog headline read, "Will the Catholic Church Split?"

As several noted in the comments, Catholicism has already split. Catholicism is actually not one structurally unified body — and hasn't been since 1054. The Orthodox churches are Catholic, the biggest headed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Anglican Communion (including the U.S. Episcopal Church) identifies as both Catholic and Protestant, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Old Catholic churches of Europe formed in the late 19th century as harbor for Catholics who rejected papal infallibility; they are in communion with Anglicanism.

In the United States at least 200 separate small Catholic churches and clergy associations exist, often with their own bishops. Some are CORPUS, a corps of married priests who celebrate the sacraments; Roman Catholic Womenpriests, who like many others are ordaining women; and the Ecumenical Catholic Communion, which has partnered with the other two groups.

Third, flows. Some people live in several Catholic worlds. In the United States, a Catholic woman might attend a Roman parish, work for Catholic Charities, serve as an independent Catholic priest, officiate weddings for divorced Romans on weekends and do Buddhist meditation every morning, too.

What would it mean to account for vernacular Catholicism? Non-Roman Catholics? Flows between Rome and other institutions?

Understanding one of the world's most populous faiths needs to encompass all of Catholicism -- not just the Roman version.

And certainly not just the pope.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julie Byrne.

Asteroid 2012 DA14 made a record-close pass -- 17,100 miles -- by Earth on February 15. Most asteroids are made of rocks, but some are metal. They orbit mostly between Jupiter and Mars in the main asteroid belt. Scientists estimate there are tens of thousands of asteroids and when they get close to our planet, they are called near-Earth objects.

This graphic shows Asteroid 2012 DA14's predicted path as it passes closest to Earth on February 15 at 2:24 p.m. ET. It will fly 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers) above Earth's surface and inside the ring of weather and communications satellites. The asteroid is about 150 feet (45 meters) in diameter. It is heading toward Earth at 17,450 mph.

Another asteroid, Apophis, got a lot of attention from space scientists and the media when initial calculations indicated a small chance it could hit Earth in 2029 or 2036. NASA scientists have since ruled out an impact, but on April 13, 2029, Apophis, which is about the size of 3½ football fields, will make a close visit -- flying about 19,400 miles (31,300 kilometers) above Earth's surface. The images above were taken by the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory in January 2013.

If you really want to know about asteroids, you need to see one up close. NASA did just that. A spacecraft called NEAR-Shoemaker, named in honor of planetary scientist Gene Shoemaker, was the first probe to touch down on an asteroid, landing on the asteroid Eros on February 12, 2001. This image was taken on February 14, 2000, just after the probe began orbiting Eros.

The first asteroid to be identified, 1 Ceres, was discovered January 1, 1801, by Giuseppe Piazzi in Palermo, Sicily. But is Ceres just another asteroid? Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show that Ceres has a lot in common with planets like Earth. It's almost round and it may have a lot of pure water ice beneath its surface. Ceres is about 606 by 565 miles (975 by 909 kilometers) in size and scientists say it may be more accurate to call it a mini-planet. NASA's Dawn spacecraft is on its way to Ceres to investigate. The spacecraft is 35 million miles (57 million kilometers) from Ceres and 179 million miles (288 million kilometers) from Earth. The photo on the left was taken by Keck Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The image on the right was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

One big space rock got upgraded recently. This image of Vesta was taken by the Dawn spacecraft, which is on its way to Ceres. In 2012, scientists said data from the spacecraft show Vesta is more like a planet than an asteroid and so Vesta is now considered a protoplanet.

The three-mile long (4.8-kilometer) asteroid Toutatis flew about 4.3 million miles (6.9 million kilometers) from Earth on December 12, 2012. NASA scientists used radar images to make a short movie.

Asteroids have hit Earth many times. It's hard to get an exact count because erosion has wiped away much of the evidence. The mile-wide Meteor Crater in Arizona, seen above, was created by a small asteroid that hit about 50,000 years ago, NASA says. Other famous impact craters on Earth include Manicouagan in Quebec, Canada; Sudbury in Ontario, Canada; Ries Crater in Germany, and Chicxulub on the Yucatan coast in Mexico.

NASA scientists say the impact of an asteroid or comet several hundred million years ago created the Aorounga crater in the Sahara Desert of northern Chad. The crater has a diameter of about 10.5 miles (17 kilometers). This image was taken by the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994.

In 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia, scientists theorize an asteroid flattened about 750 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of forest in and around the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia.

What else is up there? Is anyone watching? NASA's Near-Earth Object Program is trying to track down all asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth. NASA says 9,672 near-Earth objects have been discovered as of February 5, 2013. Of these, 1,374 have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, or objects that could one day threaten Earth.

One of the top asteroid-tracking scientists is Don Yeomans at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by the California Institute of Technology. Yeomans says every day, "Earth is pummeled by more than 100 tons of material that spewed off asteroids and comets." Fortunately, most of the asteroid trash is tiny and it burns up when it hits the atmosphere, creating meteors, or shooting stars. Yeomans says it's very rare for big chunks of space litter to hit Earth's surface. Those chunks are called meteorites.

Asteroids and comets are popular fodder for Earth-ending science fiction movies. Two of the biggest blockbusters came out in 1998: "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon." (Walt Disney Studios) Others include "Meteorites!" (1998), "Doomsday Rock" (1997), "Asteroid" (1997), "Meteor" (1979), and "A Fire in the Sky" (1978). Can you name others?

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The asteroid, named DA14, came within 17,000 miles or so, as close as a telecommunication satellite in geosynchronous orbit. DA14 is quite a bit smaller than YU55, the asteroid that passed Earth in November 2011, but DA14 came more than 10 times closer.

These two rare events occurred the same day. Your inner mathematician and your inner prophet of the end times think they should be connected. But scientists say they are not. What gives?

First, some facts. Meteors are rocky bodies that enter the Earth's atmosphere. Some are leftover debris out of which planets like Earth are formed, while others are the remnants of shattered comets and asteroids. As long as their orbit intersects the Earth's orbit, these rocks can in principle impact the Earth.

Actually, this happens all the time, although usually the impacts occur in unpopulated regions since most of Earth is uninhabited. In fact, most meteors fall into the ocean simply because water covers two-thirds of the planet.

So we don't witness most meteor impacts. If one landed in New York City or Moscow, people would definitely notice. Fortunately, the odds are very much against hitting a densely populated region.

The meteor that fell Friday near Chelyabinsk, Russia, was pretty big, maybe 50 feet across. In 1908, a slightly larger meteor -- perhaps three times larger in diameter, or 27 times larger in mass -- flattened a thousand square miles of forest near Tunguska, Russia, downing some 80 million trees.

A large chunk of a meteor that exploded over Russia is found in a late on Friday, February 15.

A meteor streaks through the sky before exploding with a flash and boom that shattered glass in buildings and left hundreds of people hurt.

Workers repair a damaged power line near the wall of a local zinc plant. About 270 buildings were damaged -- mostly broken glass -- by shock waves caused by the blast, said Vladimir Stepanov of the National Center for Emergency Situations at the Russian Interior Ministry.

The meteor leaves a white streak through the sky. The national space agency, Roscosmos, said scientists believed one meteoroid had entered the atmosphere, where it burned and disintegrated into fragments, according to RIA Novosti.

The meteor's vapor trail passes over the city.

A man removes shards of glass from the frame of a broken window.

The meteor damaged windows at a sports hall.

By noon Russia time more than 725 people had sought medical help.

Meteor explodes over Russia

Meteor explodes over Russia

Meteor explodes over Russia

Meteor explodes over Russia

Meteor explodes over Russia

Meteor explodes over Russia

Meteor explodes over Russia

Meteor explodes over Russia

Photos: Meteor explodes over Russia

NASA scientists estimate that meteors as large as Friday's might hit the Earth every decade or two, while Tunguska-like events are estimated to occur once every 1,000 years.

Opinion: Meteor shows why it is crucial to keep an eye on the sky

The close fly-by of an asteroid like DA14, like the Tunguska meteor, is a once-in-1,000-years event. Asteroids are large, irregular, rocky bodies orbiting the Sun roughly between Mars and Jupiter. Many have impacted the Earth over its 4.5 billion-year history --as they have hit the moon, Mars and other planets -- leaving craters behind.

A particularly large asteroid -- roughly 300 times larger across than DA14 (and 30 million times its volume, and far more rare) -- created a planetary extinction event that did in dinosaurs 65 million years ago, allowing mammals to rise to their present-day prominence.

Using NASA's WISE infrared satellite, astronomers estimate there are about 5,000 known meteors that can impact the Earth with sizes of about 100 feet or larger -- that is, larger than the Chelyabinsk meteor. Smaller ones are fainter and thus harder to find.

It makes sense that smaller asteroids pass Earth more frequently and, on average, closer. That's because in nature, small things are more common than big things. So asteroids like YU55 are more rare than DA14, which in turn is more rare than the Chelyabinsk meteor. Because there are more DA14s filling interplanetary space than YU55s, a 50-foot asteroid can be found in a smaller volume of space, on average, and thus closer to Earth, than a 150-foot one. Now let's talk about coincidence. Mathematicians frame this issue in terms of probability -- that is, the likelihood that something will happen. A rare thing is unlikely, so we say it has a low probability of occurring.

Two rare events happening at approximately the same time is much more unlikely. Here is how to think of it mathematically: If the events are not associated, the probability of this coincidence comes from multiplying the individual probabilities.

For example, the probability that your birthday is on a given date -- say, January 1 -- is 1/365. That is, of every 365 readers of this article, roughly one will have a birthday on January 1.

Five things to know about asteroids and meteors

Now, the probability that the next reader's birthday is also on January 1 is 1/365 times 1/365, or about 1 in 130,000. If that many people read the article, such a coincidence could happen. Of course, it's much more likely that two non-consecutive readers will have a birthday on January 1. And it's very likely that lots of readers have the same birthday as other readers. (In fact, in any group of 23 or more people, it is more than 50% likely that two will share a birthday, but calculating that probability is a bit more complicated.)

Back to the meteor and the asteroid. Both events happening within one day makes us think they could be connected. That instinct comes from doing the math -- if it is improbable, then we think it cannot be a coincidence.

But the facts don't support this conclusion. First of all, in the time between the two events, the Earth moved roughly 300,000 miles, meaning the asteroid and the meteor were in completely different places. Moreover, they traveled in completely different directions, so they couldn't have been associated.

So there is no way the meteor and the asteroid are connected. It has to be a coincidence that the two events happened on the same day. Yet this would seem to be at odds with our instinct that two very rare things would not happen at the same time.

How can we reconcile these two opposite thoughts: the impossibility of an association based on the physics of trajectories, and the improbability of coincidence (lack of association) that the math suggests?

The answer is that we need to rethink the probability calculation. If asteroids as big as DA14 pass close to Earth once every decade or two, and meteors as large as the Chelyabinsk one impact once every 100 years (a similar meteor having caused the Tunguska event in 1908), the chance of both events happening on any one day are indeed very small: 1 in 3,650 days times 1 in 36,500 days, or about 1 in 100 million -- not odds you would bet against.

But think again: The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years -- which is 1.6 trillion days. So the chance that these two events would happen on a day sometime in the earth's history is actually larger than we first thought -- it ought to have happened about 12,000 times already.

Of course, during most of that 4.5 billion year history, the earth was not populated by intelligent life -- human beings who might have noticed the two events happening on the same day.

So what is the probability that the meteor hits and the asteroid passes Earth on the same day when someone could record it on video? That's probably been possible for about 50 years, or only about five years if we have to do it on a smartphone or dashboard camera. That's 1,825 days, which means the chance of someone filming the event is only about one in 70,000 -- and that's if people blanketed the Earth. Given how sparsely the Earth is populated, we should correct this number downward by a (large!) geographical factor. It's also unlikely that this event would happen within 3,000 miles of the Tunguska impact.

What to think? Our rough calculation says a large meteor impact on the same day as closest passage of the DA14 asteroid is really improbable. But it did happen. Something in our assumptions could be wrong. For example, the frequency of meteor impacts could be much larger and our estimates too low because we don't notice most of them.

Then again, maybe sometimes, long odds just pay off.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Meg Urry.