Global News Blog
This film image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Bryan Cranston (l.) as Jack O’Donnell and Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in 'Argo,' a rescue thriller about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. (Claire Folger/Warner Bros./AP)
Iran sees conspiracy in box office success of Ben Affleck's 'Argo' (+video)
American moviegoers flocked to theaters this weekend to see Ben Affleck's long-anticipated thriller Argo, which has been generating headlines since it was first screened at the Toronto Film Festival last month.
Based on a true story about how the CIA smuggled six American diplomats out of Iran after the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy, the film opened on Oct. 12 and came in at No. 2 in box office sales over the weekend, after "Taken 2" (an action film starring Liam Neeson). By Oct. 15, Argo held the top spot.
But inside Iran, where the decision by a group of Iranian students to storm the US Embassy and hold Americans hostage for 444 days is still controversial and vibrantly debated, the press has paid Argo scant attention. The few comments the film has received are generally negative – Iran's state-run IRNA news agency called Argo "Hollywood’s latest failed attempt to confront the Islamic Revolution" – and replete with complaints that the movie portrays all Iranians as stereotypically aggressive and unrefined and fails to give viewers enough historical context. (Pirated copies of American films typically become available in Iran a few months before the films open in the US, and are easily accessed by the public.)
“Argo makes the people of Iran look like they have no self-determination, and indisputably support violence,” writes Meysam Karimi in a lengthy review for the popular Iran-based film magazine website, Moviemag. “For me, as an Iranian … this makes [the storyline behind] Argo much less believable.”
Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency labels Argo “anti-Iranian" and painted the film as a flop. Citing unidentified "news agencies," it asserted that Argo only managed to reach second place in the US and Canada because the filmmakers artificially boosted sales by purchasing tickets “en masse” and giving them away for free to random people.
Argo “was unable to become a box office hit in spite of considerable advertisement," Fars wrote. “The filmmakers tried very hard and used a variety of methods to increase ticket sales, but they were unsuccessful. … Even though ‘Taken 2’ was in its second week, Argo still couldn’t beat it to first place in the box office … due to a lack of interest among its own [North American] audience.”
SEE ALSO: The Monitor's review of "Argo"
Moviemag, the privately owned online film magazine, is more sober in its assessment of the film, acknowledging Ben Affleck’s strong directorial skill and the film’s attention-grabbing story line and giving the film a four out of five star rating.
"If I were to set aside issues [with how Iran is portrayed], I must admit that Argo is one of this year’s best movies, and expect it to be awarded an Oscar for Best Director and Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin’s role," he writes.
“Without a doubt, a non-Iranian viewer will highly enjoy seeing Argo because the story is strong and keeps the viewer’s attention through to the end,” he adds. “But for an Iranian who counts this subject as part of our country’s history, the view may be a bit different.”
Almost all coverage of Argo also noted that the film’s Toronto Film Festival debut, Sept. 7, is the same day Canada closed its embassy this year in Tehran and announced the expulsion of Iran’s diplomats from Ottawa.
“Perhaps it was a coincidence,” writes Mr. Karimi for Moviemag. “But for [the embassy closure] to take place during the Toronto Film Festival, right when this film was being screened, somewhat undermines the theory that this happened by accident.”
Follow Roshanak Taghavi on Twitter at @RoshanakT.
(This article was updated after first posting to correct the spelling of the capital of Canada.)
Computer expert Gary McKinnon poses after arriving at the High Court in London in this January 2009 file photo. (Andrew Winning/Reuters/File)
Britain nixes extradition of NASA hacker Gary McKinnon to US
The British government today announced that Gary McKinnon, a British hacker with a condition that has been diagnosed as Asperger's syndrome, will not be extradited to the United States. But while the decision is nominally about his human rights, it may also be a byproduct of a longstanding debate over the US-Britain extradition treaty, which British critics say is weighted too much in favor of US interests.
British Home Secretary Theresa May today told the House of Commons that she had withdrawn the extradition order against Mr. McKinnon after determining that extraditing him would violate his human rights, BBC News reports.
Mr McKinnon is accused of serious crimes. But there is also no doubt that he is seriously ill. He has Asperger's syndrome, and suffers from depressive illness. The legal question before me is now whether the extent of that illness is sufficient to preclude extradition.
After careful consideration of all of the relevant material, I have concluded that Mr McKinnon's extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon's human rights.
Ms. May said that it would now be up to the director of public prosecutions to determine whether McKinnon would face charges in Britain.
McKinnon is accused of breaking into nearly 100 NASA and US military computers between 2001 and 2002, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, and is charged in Virginia and New Jersey on eight counts of computer fraud. Lawyers for McKinnon said that he was merely looking for evidence of UFOs and did not have any criminal intent. The Daily Telegraph reported in 2009 that McKinnon's supporters say he is being made a scapegoat for US failures to secure its computers, which McKinnon has called "ridiculously easy" to hack.
US lawyer David Rivkin, an adviser to the Reagan and Bush administrations, told the BBC that the decision to deny extradition for McKinnon on health grounds was "laughable" and that "under that logic, anybody who claims some kind of physical or mental problem can commit crimes with impunity and get away with it." British solicitor Edward Fitzgerald told The Guardian that he felt McKinnon's case turned on his alleged high suicide risk.
While May said in her statement that the "sole issue" before her was McKinnon's human rights, her decision not to extradite McKinnon comes amid public debate in Britain over the country's extradition responsibilities, particularly those in its treaty with the US.
Critics say that the US-Britain treaty, enacted in 2003, favors US interests over British ones. The Guardian's Owen Bowcott points out that between January 2004 and October 2012, 92 people have been extradited from Britain to the US, while only 43 have made the opposite trip. He also notes, however, that between January 2004 and December 2011, Britain made 57 requests for extradition and 40 extraditions took place, while the US made 134 requests during that same period, and only 75 extraditions occurred.
In announcing her decision on McKinnon, May called the US-Britain treaty "broadly sound," reports The Guardian. But May added that she would introduce a new "forum bar" to the extradition process, which would allow a court to deny extradition if it deemed a British trial more fair to the accused than a trial overseas, reports The Guardian. May also said that she planned to end the home secretary's ability to deny extradition on human rights grounds – the very grounds she used to bar McKinnon's extradition – arguing that such discretion would be better placed in the courts than in the government's hands.
May's proposed reforms to the US extradition process are just part of a broader overhaul by the British government to its approach to international justice. The Washington Post reports that May also announced that Britain would be opting out of more than 100 criminal justice measures with the European Union and reinstating selected measures. The Post writes that the move "appeared aimed at satisfying Conservative lawmakers who have grown increasingly skeptical of the E.U.’s reach in British affairs."
A statue of a globe painted with the EU flag and a peace dove stands in the garden of a church near the EU Council in Brussels, on Oct. 12. The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for its efforts to promote peace and democracy in Europe, despite being in the midst of its biggest crisis since the bloc was created in the 1950s. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP)
Amid ongoing economic crisis, EU celebrates 'Single Market Week'
News reports about the European Union nowadays do not give much reason for celebration. Greece is on the brink of economic collapse, other European countries are also in severe economic troubles, and shrinking solidarity is going hand-in-hand with reviving stereotypes. Yes, the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize last week, but this news was quickly met with cynical comments.
Nevertheless, the EU today kicked off a week of celebrations, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the single market, which allows Europeans and their goods to move around all 27 member states without borders or barriers. The Single Market Week encompasses events all around Europe, with various “opportunities to discuss the main achievements of the Single Market.” Some of these include “cheaper calls abroad,” “safer toys,” and “more rights for travelers,” according to documents handed out to attendees of the launch event of the Single Market Week at the European Parliament in Brussels.
The celebration comes at a time when citizens' trust in the European Union is at an all-time low, according to the most recent survey by Eurobarometer. Only 31 percent of EU citizens say they trust the European Union (mind you: they trust their national governments even less). Also, 28 percent have a flat-out negative view of the EU – almost double the figure of six years ago.
According to some of the speakers today, the European Union doesn't always receive the credit it deserves. “Citizens don't attribute their cheaper mobile phone bills to the single market,” said Malcolm Harbour, a member of the European Parliament for the British Conservative party, during a meeting with journalists. “Sometimes we forget how much has been achieved. The free movement of people, students studying abroad – citizens take that for granted.”
Mr. Harbour has a point. I arrived here in Brussels yesterday from the Netherlands, without realizing that my train didn't have to stop at the border. The only reason I brought my passport was to show it at the security check of the European Parliament. And it is not just free movement of journalists and other Europeans. If I want, I can buy as many Belgian waffles as I want without having to declare them at the border.
As European Commissioner Michel Barnier said: “Our lives have been made easier.” But as with most advancements, we quickly take them for granted. So how to make the people more aware of these things? Mr. Barnier's answer was simple: “We have to talk about it.” And that's what EU representatives will be doing this week.
Chef Giulio Buonomo shows off a 'euro' pizza, prepared with tomatoes, cheese, basil, and a euro symbol in icing, at his restaurant in central Naples, in 2001. This week the city was outraged to find Verona had been named as having the best pizza in the country in a respected restaurant guide. (Mario Laporta/Reuters)
Food fight: Naples protests 'culinary racism' over pizza snub
It prides itself as the birthplace of the pizza and the global benchmark for Italy’s most famous culinary export.
So when Naples heard this week that the latest edition of Italy’s most respected restaurant guide had nominated a pizzeria in faraway, foggy Verona as the best in the country, there was spluttering outrage. Worse than that, not a single one of Naples’s estimated 2,000 pizzerias had made it into the 2013 edition of Gambero Rosso, Italy’s bible for foodies.
Indignant “pizzaioli,” as pizzamakers are known, staged noisy demonstrations in some of Naples’s most famous pizzerias to rail against what they saw as an injustice and a humiliation.
For the guide to judge the pizzeria near Verona, in the northeast of Italy, as the finest in the country was a snub not just to pizzamakers in Naples, but to the entire city, they said. Francesco Borrelli, a Neapolitan politician, went further – it was, he said, no less than an example of “culinary racism.”
"This is the umpteenth example of hostility towards our city and our traditions. The fact that Gambero Rosso did not find a single Neapolitan pizzeria to include is shameful,” he said.
Neapolitan newspapers tried to salvage some pride by poking fun at Verona for its culinary peculiarities – among them a horse meat stew known as “pastissada” and a bone marrow dish called “peara” – and said the city of Romeo and Juliet should stick to making polenta, not pizza.
The original pizza
Naples was the undisputed birthplace of the pizza, said Sergio Miccu, the president of the Neapolitan association of pizzamakers, even if it has now become a dish known around the world. “Its origins are in Naples – it was Neapolitans who taught the art of pizzamaking to other countries,” he said.
Once they’d stopped choking on their Quattro Stagioni, the pizzamakers in the Mediterranean port went on the offensive, inviting the food critics from Gambero Rosso to put their pizzas to the test so they could at least be included in the next guide.
“If they want to be our guests here in Campania, we will offer them an exquisite pizza in a different restaurant every day,” said Salvatore Trinchillo, the president of a Neapolitan commercial association.
Naples has campaigned for years to be recognized as the spiritual home of the pizza.
Legend has it that pizza was invented there at the beginning of the 18th century and the famous Margherita version was created in 1889 and named after Queen Margherita of Savoy.
Its ingredients reflected Italy’s national colors – red tomatoes, white mozzarella, and green basil leaves.
Naples lobbying the UN
Neapolitans have even lobbied UNESCO to include the dish on its “intangible cultural heritage” list of cultural and culinary traditions.
The list is run in parallel with UNESCO’s better-known register of World Heritage sites, such as castles, temples, and historical city centers.
The indignation of Neapolitans might seem a bit of an overreaction.
The row pitched southerners against northerners in a country that was only unified 151 years ago and where regional rivalries remain intense.
The city’s pizza aficionados muttered darkly about a northern “political plot” to besmirch the reputation of Naples.
But it was confirmation, if it was needed, that aside from football and family, few things arouse passions in Italy as much as food.
Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi (c.) leaves a branch office of her National League for Democracy party during her visit to Thone Gwa township in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday, Oct. 11. (Khin Maung Win/AP)
Good Reads: A lesson for democracy, lost and found on Google Earth, and the next Arab uprising
Larry Diamond writes in the Atlantic of the recent 17-day US tour by Myanmar (Burma) pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi – the first since her release from house arrest in November 2010.
Mr. Diamond writes that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s “moral authority has grown through personal suffering and sacrifice” after decades of house arrest and persecution under the military junta in Myanmar, where a fledging democracy is now beginning to take hold.
But it is Aung San Suu Kyi’s “spirit of pragmatism and dialogue” that holds a relevant lesson for American politics. As she told her fellow Burmese in the audience during her American tour, “We must learn to compromise without regarding it as humiliation.”
When Aung San Suu Kyi was asked if she aspires to rule her country, Diamond noted that “rather than shying away from politics, she embraced it. ‘You should think of me as a political party leader. I was a politician before I was a ‘democracy icon.’ ”
Diamond concludes, “At a time of rampant cynicism about parties and politicians in the United States, it is invigorating to have a ‘democracy icon’ remind us that politics can be a noble calling – and an indispensable means for advancing the public good.”
Google Earth and a long road home
Commentators have done plenty of hand-wringing over the Internet’s corrosive effects on civil society. But not to be neglected are the triumphs of the digital realm – and its sometimes life-changing human impacts.
Vanity Fair’s David Kushner found one such story in the incredible saga of Saroo Brierley. As a 5-year-old in India, he was separated from his older brother at a train station, and through a series of dramatic turns, found himself lost among the poor and homeless on the streets of Calcutta. Taken in by an orphanage, he was eventually adopted by Australian parents.
Mr. Brierley adjusted well to his new life, but after graduating from college in 2009, he hit a rough patch: “After years of ignoring his past, it finally came crashing back – the desire to find his roots, and himself.”
Enter Google Earth. Brierley used the program’s satellite imagery to search for his home village in India – whose geographic location and name he did not know. “All he had was a laptop and some hazy memories, but Saroo was going to try.”
Brierley used strategies from an applied-mathematics course to narrow his search, and after months of scouring aerial photos, researching leads, and networking on Facebook, he pinpointed his hometown.
Armed with the encouragement of his adoptive parents, Brierley flew to India. “With every step, it felt like two films overlaying, his wispy memories from his childhood and the vital reality now.”
Spoiler alert: Brierley found his biological mother. A tearful reunion was followed by 11 days of family reintroductions.
A profile in Egyptian courage
Yasmine Fathi, writing for Al Ahram, the English-language Egyptian paper, pays tribute to Mina Danial, a revered 19-year-old Christian activist a year after his death. Mr. Danial was one of 27 Coptic protesters killed by Egyptian security forces in the Maspero massacre on Oct. 9, 2011. The piece captures not just the brave ethic of a young revolutionary but the struggles of post-Mubarak Egypt, strained by sectarian tensions.
The recollection is framed largely through the lens of Danial’s unlikely friendship with Salafist Tarek El-Tayeb, forged in “Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square” during the uprising. Though the two “became like brothers,” Mr. Tayeb “still struggled to overcome his discomfort at having a Christian friend.” Eventually he says the “emotions I felt towards him destroyed all of these shackles.”
“Despite being heartbroken over the deteriorating situation for Christians in Egypt, friends say, [Danial] did not have sectarian tendencies. He always believed that the Christian problem was part of the bigger Egyptian problem.”
Saudi Arabia, the next revolution?
Bruce Riedel, in a book review in Al-Monitor, a website of news and commentary from the Middle East, notes that the “greatest international challenge the next US president could face is a revolution in Saudi Arabia.”
In his review of “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines and Future,” by Karen Elliot House, he details a “country seething with internal tensions and anger” – a stratified society, with high poverty rates, a glut of foreign workers, “regional racism,” gender discrimination, a largely unemployed youth bulge, Al Qaeda undercurrents, and an aging royal family facing an “unprecedented succession challenge.”
The stark takeaway: “Revolution in Saudi Arabia is no longer unthinkable.”
Rekha Kalindi, a 12-year-old girl living in Bararola, India, refused to get married when her parents tried to arrange one and insisted on staying in school. (Ben Arnoldy)
A story to celebrate on the International Day of the Girl Child
The United Nations has declared today the first International Day of the Girl Child and is observing – rather than celebrating – the day by focusing on the problem of child marriage.
However, I have a story about child marriage from my years reporting in India, that one can truly celebrate.
But first, the startling statistics from the UN: Child marriage still happens to a third of young women globally. Pregnancy complications are the leading cause of death for girls 15 to 19 in the developing world. And child marriages cut short girls' education, while keeping girls in school longer has proven to be a key tactic to fight the problem.
Efforts by girls to stay in school meet resistance from parents in poverty, ingrained cultural traditions, and, as we were reminded in Pakistan this week, radical Islamists. A Pakistani Taliban gunman shot twice 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai after she spoke out against the group and its efforts to shut down girls' schooling in Swat. She is recovering in a military hospital.
In next-door India three years ago, I met Rekha Kalindi, a girl whose fight to stay in school met with less tragedy.
When Rekha Kalindi was nearing age 12, her parents told her they were planning to marry her off. Rekha's response would reverberate all the way up to the president of India: "No."
Nearly half of all Indian females get married before turning the legal minimum age of 18. The requirement has been in place for more than three decades, but centuries of custom don't change overnight – and that's especially true in Bararola, a land carved up into small farm plots and crisscrossed by dirt paths that takes at least a day's journey to reach from Calcutta. But even here, some people are taking a stand.
Many locals eke out a living making beedis, a leaf-wrapped Indian cigarette. Rekha was rolling beedis with her parents inside their mud-hut home when they broached her nuptials.
"I was very angry," says Rekha. "I told my father very clearly that this is my age of studying in school, and I didn't want to marry."
With the help of friends, teachers, and administrators, Rekha accomplished what the law alone has not. No child marriages have taken place in the surrounding villages where she and two other girls refused to marry last summer, and similar approaches are meeting some success in other regions.
To learn more about the sort of help that encouraged Rekha and could hold clues for combating child marriage, read the full story.
An activist from non-governmental organisation Insani Haqooq Ittihad hold a picture of Malala Yousufzai during a demonstration in Islamabad, Pakistan, October 10, 2012. (Faisal Mahmood/REUTERS)
My conversations with Malala Yousafzai, the girl who stood up to the Taliban (+video)
"Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all," a hooded, bearded Taliban militant asked a bus full of schoolgirls on their way home earlier this week. "She is propagating against the soldiers of Allah, the Taliban. She must be punished," the Taliban militant shouted louder. Then, recognizing her, he shot her at a point blank range.
Malala Yousafzai gained fame when it came out that she was the girl who was highly critical of the Taliban's ban on girls' education in the Swat valley, and blogging about her views and about the atrocities of Islamic militias controlling the valley from 2007-2009. The BBC blog, which was written in Urdu under a pen name, was nominated for several awards.
"I wanted to scream, shout and tell the whole world what we were going through. But it was not possible. The Taliban would have killed me, my father, my whole family. I would have died without leaving any mark. So I chose to write with a different name. And it worked, as my valley has been freed," she told me when I invited her for an interview for the TV station I am heading now, ARY News.
Doctors treating Malala now say bullets have been removed from her head and neck, but her condition is still critical. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have claimed responsibility for the attack and have a $100,000 government bounty against them.
Malala's friend, Shazia, who was also injured that day, recounted the event to me as her eyes filled with tears.
"They stopped our school van. They were riding on a bike. The masked man kept pointing guns at us and the other was shouting ‘where is Malala?!’ I froze with a flashback to the old dark days: I remembered the headless bodies, slaughtering of rivals – merely on dissent or slightest doubt of spying –the grotesque violence."
Just a few moments before, she said, the girls had been singing a traditional Pashtun folk song on their way back from school, its lyrics professing to sacrifice life for motherland, the beautiful valley of Swat.
"With a drop of my sweetheart's blood, Shed to defend the motherland, I will put a beauty spot on my forehead, Such would put to shame the rose in the garden," they sang. The song was made famous by Malala’s namesake, Malalai of Maiwand. The 19th century national folk hero fought against the British troops in the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
What's in a name?
The first time I met Malala, a couple of years ago, I asked her what her name signified. She answered: "Probably, a hero like the Afghan heroine Malalai [of Maiwand] or Malalai Joya. I want to be a social activist and an honest politician like her," she said, smiling. Ms. Joya, a 30-something activist, politician, and writer who was bitterly critical of both the Taliban and the Karzai regime, was at one point dubbed the bravest woman of Afghanistan.
Malala Yousafzai certainly was well on her way for a 14-year-old. She was awarded the National Peace Award in Pakistan last year. At the time, she said: "My life is like a movie, full of dreams. I used to dream of becoming famous, to see my valley freed from the clutches of Taliban, to see girls flying like butterflies, free from any restrictions. It is becoming as a reality so I am happy, happy, and very happy," she said. "I want to change the political system so there is social justice and equality and change in the status of girls and women. I plan to set up my own academy for girls," she said, ever with confidence and a maturity beyond her years.
I remember thinking it was her love for life that made countering the Taliban possible.
Engraved in memory
Under their control of the Swat valley, the turbaned militants burned schools and banned girls’ education, and forced women to wear burqas or stay inside their homes, turning Malala's colorful valley of Swat colorless. That period is engraved in people's memories through her diary.
"Saturday January 3, 2009: Today our headmistress announced that girls should stop wearing uniform because of Taliban. Come to schools in casual wear. In our class only three out of 27 attended the school. My three friends have quit school because of Taliban threats."
"January 5, 2009: Today our teacher told us not to wear colorful dress that might make Taliban angry."
"Tuesday March 2009: On our way to school, my friend asked me to cover my head properly, otherwise Taliban will punish us."
"Thursday, March 12, 2009: I had a sore throat. My father took me to the doctor. There a woman told us about a boy named Anis, 'Anis was with Taliban.’ His Taliban friend told him that he had a dream that he is surrounded by heavenly virgins in Paradise. The boy then asked his parents if he could become a suicide bomber to go to the Paradise. The parents refused. But Anis exploded himself at a check post of security forces, anyway.”
When the security forces carried out the operation to oust the Taliban in the Swat valley, Malala had to leave her valley, as did almost a million other displaced people. I met her while she was teaching children under a tent, as most of the schools were destroyed by Taliban in Swat. "I want to see every child getting education and our whole country freed from Taliban," she told me, gesturing to the surrounding mountains.
Today, security officials say her attackers might have come down from those same mountains, either across the border where Mullah Fazlullah who had occupied Swat valley and now believed to have been in hiding in Nooristan and Kunnar provinces in Afghanistan, or from North Waziristan, which is considered to be a haven for Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.
Three years ago, a military operation followed the flogging of a girl from Swat, Chand Bibi, at the hands of Taliban, which triggered anger across the country. Now the attack on Malala has triggered nationwide anger and international condemnation, and there is some hope that it will effect a change again.
Pakistan's military chief visited the military hospital Wednesday to see Malala. "Such inhuman attacks clearly expose the extremist mindset the nation is facing," Gen. Parvez Ashfaq Kayani said in a statement. "We refuse to bow before terror, we will fight. Regardless of the cost, we will prevail, inshallah," the military chief said, triggering speculation that this attack might spur Pakistan's military to go into North Waziristan.
Unflagging determination
Malala, with her rosy complexion, twinkling eyes, and unflagging determination, charmed everybody with her courage and confidence in her public appearances. Fluent in Urdu, English, and Pashto, she had a flair for communication.
Her father, Zia Yousafzai, a Pashtun left-wing educator, almost always accompanied her on outings and interviews. He runs a chain of schools in Swat valley, the Khushal Public School, named after a famous Pashtun poet. I met father and daughter many times, and discussed with Malala the possibility of her hosting a show to interview leading politicians and dignitaries for the TV channel where I work.
"That will be fun, countering mullahs," she replied, but said she wanted to focus on her studies. Her father, bursting with pride, was cautious. "It's not the right time. She has already been in limelight in the national and international media. Her life can be under threat and she has to go a long way," her father told me.
The last time that I was with Malala, my 9-year-old daughter, Risa, called me to ask when I was coming home.
"I am with a hero, a very courageous girl. She has defeated the Taliban," I told her.
"The horrible Taliban? She must be so brave. Can I talk to her?" my daughter asked, and the girls chatted on the telephone for a few minutes.
On Tuesday, when my daughter called me, Malala was being rushed to the hospital. When I spoke to Malala's father, he said he was standing next to her, holding her hand. "Don't worry, Baba. I am going to be fine and victory will be ours," he said Malala told him in broken words before falling unconscious.
I came home that day heartsick and angry. My daughter had fallen asleep on top of her book titled “Mulan,” a folk tale we have read together about a heroic Chinese girl who fought against Mongols and saved her village. I held her tight, trying not to wake her because she had school the next day - which was Malala's dream.
IN PICTURES: Talking to the Taliban
Erel Margalit, leading Israeli venture capitalist. (Erel Margalit/PRNewsFoto)
Middle East peace: What would an Israeli entrepreneur do?
With yesterday’s announcement of early elections in Israel, many are saying that no one but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a real vision for the country.
Those who know Erel Margalit may beg to differ.
Mr. Margalit is not in politics – yet. But as one of Israel’s most successful venture capitalists with a bent toward social entrepreneurship, he has not been shy about admitting his desire to effect broader change by jumping into the political fray.
“Politics in Israel today is a stagnant business,” he says, contrasting it with the kind of innovation that has made Israel’s high-tech industry second only to Silicon Valley. “We need to take that level of innovation, daring, initiative, and working as a group into the political realm.”
Renovating the region
When visitors enter the headquarters of Margalit’s Jerusalem Venture Partners, they do not see Picassos or ancient Middle Eastern art.
Rather, there is a large picture of a derelict building that seems like it would be appealing only to stray cats. It bears no resemblance to the sleek, modern center it has become.
But Margalit had a vision for the derelict compound, which overlooks Jerusalem’s Old City walls. Today, it is home not only to his venture capital group but also to many of Israel’s most promising start-up companies, which each spend 18 months under the careful eye of Margalit and his team.
No one took him seriously when he proposed transforming the abandoned money-printing plant into a high-tech incubator, he says; he had to hire people to draw pictures of his proposed overhaul, which today boasts winding brick paths lined with vibrant flower beds.
“Right now, the Middle East looks like this [run-down building],” he says. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t have some renovation.”
Harnessing Jerusalem's energy
While many people see Jerusalem as one of the most intractable issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with two peoples competing for a foothold in a city they both consider holy, Margalit sees that as an incredible asset.
That’s just one of the ways that he redefines the problem that needs to be solved, which opens the way for different solutions.
Unlike many Israeli entrepreneurs and businessmen, he eschewed Tel Aviv, with its trendy cafes and hub of high-tech firms, for the location of his company. Jerusalem, with its rich history and special place in the heart of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, holds far more creative potential – and thus could become the most dynamic city in the Middle East, he says.
“This is the place where three civilizations meet. That cultural bond could be the fertile land for innovation, creativity…. It’s something that you couldn’t even invent,” he says. “The storms of change occur where there are differences ... you need to tap into this – there is a lot of energy there.”
Palestinian role
He sees Israel’s 20-percent Arab population and Palestinians next door as playing a key role in helping Israel to do that.
What politics and diplomacy have failed to do for improving Israel’s relations with its neighbors, entrepreneurial economics could help to accomplish.
While Israeli companies have long targeted international markets, they have hardly tapped into Middle Eastern markets. Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, with their language skills and cultural background, are the key to helping Israel do this, says Margalit.
“Israelis don’t have direct access to the markets without Palestinians,” he says.
It goes without saying that such a partnership would also benefit the Palestinian economy, which is heavily dependent on foreign aid and needs a better model if it’s going to become a sustainable state.
“Palestinians need their Marshall Plan,” says Margalit. “And Israel needs a Marshall Plan by way of free-trade zones in the Middle East.”
The 2002 Saudi peace initiative, for example – which proposed a Palestinian state along 1967 borders and got the backing of the Arab League – could have an economic component that makes peace more about future prosperity than historical concessions.
“Most people, when they think of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they think of lose-lose, not win-win,” says Margalit, who in the next few weeks is hosting two separate entrepreneurial weekends for Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. “There’s no vision of what we can gain as an economic region.”
He acknowledges that such a transformation can’t come overnight, pointing out dryly that “we don’t have Canada as a neighbor.” But an entrepreneurial attitude could do much to help break the mental stalemate that has too often characterized efforts to address the Arab-Israeli conflict, he says.
“Israel should approach every problem [in the region] as a strong, proactive country, not as a victim,” says Margalit. “When you victimize your position, coming with constructive solutions becomes impossible. This should be said to Palestinians, too.”
A file photo shows car traffic speeding past Rome's world famous Colosseum. (Max Rossi/REUTERS/File)
No more paninis on the piazza? Rome bars tourists from eating at historical sites
It is one of the simplest, most affordable pleasures of any visit to Rome: tucking into a piece of pizza, or a panino stuffed with prosciutto and mozzarella, while marveling at the city’s ancient monuments. But not anymore.
As of this week, anyone caught snacking around the Eternal City’s centuries-old monuments and archeological sites could find themselves landed with a fine of up to 500 euros ($650).
In an attempt to bring a greater level of decorum to a city not known for order, Rome city council has passed a decree banning tourists from snacking in the historic center, which recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.
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That includes Piazza Navona, with its exquisite marble fountains, and the Pantheon, a vast Roman temple converted into a church. Other areas subject to the crackdown include Via dei Fori Imperiali, the broad avenue which links Piazza Venezia, Rome’s main square, with the Colosseum, the ancient arena where gladiators and slaves once fought.
Thinking of emulating Audrey Hepburn in the 1953 romantic comedy Roman Holiday by eating a gelato on the Spanish Steps? Think again. It could prove to be a very expensive ice cream.
"It is forbidden to encamp or erect makeshift shelters and stop to eat or drink in zones which have a particular historic or architectural value," reads the ordinance adopted by Rome city council this week.
The law is intended to “guarantee the protection of areas of merit in the historic center,” it added.
In what one Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, called the start of a “war on the panino," fines will range from 25 euros ($32) up to 500 euros ($650).
In many ways the new clamp-down reflects a schism in attitudes towards public eating between Italians and tourists.
Visitors may be happy to chow down on a slice of pizza or sandwich on the steps of a Renaissance church or ancient Roman monument, taking a rest from the exhausting challenge of touring the city on foot. But that leaves most Romans aghast – they rarely eat or drink on the street.
You don't see people guzzling enormous take-out coffees from paper cups; Italians go to a cafe for a cappuccino or a cafe macchiato, and drink it there, often standing up at the bar.
Eating in public is not done. I have even been told off for eating in a restaurant while reading a newspaper – on the grounds that it will ruin my digestion, and that I should forget about work at least for an hour.
Rome is just the latest Italian city to try to curb indecorous behavior by tourists.
Similar bans have been adopted in Venice, where snacking is prohibited in St. Mark's Square and around famous landmarks, as well as Florence and Bologna.
But critics said the draconian new law could drive away tourists just as Italy needs them more than ever – locals are spending less in restaurants, bars, and cafes as a result of a grinding recession and the imposition of austerity measures intended to tame the country’s 1.9 trillion euro national debt.
The center-right mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, is acting like a “sheriff” and “transforming Rome into a city of rules and regulations,” said Angelo Bonelli, an opposition councilor in the city administration.
Others said Rome had more serious problems to contend with – streets are often strewn with rubbish, illegal hawkers and touts harass tourists outside St. Peter’s Basilica and the Colosseum, and cars are allowed to double- or even triple-park.
“To start pestering tourists while they are eating lunch out of a bag really seems the last of our problems,” says Dario Nanni, a member of the left-leaning Democratic Party.
Italy has a somewhat checkered history when it comes to law enforcement, so whether tourists munching on sandwiches and slices of pizza really will be slapped with heavy fines remains to be seen.
Egyptian women shout slogans and beat drums during a protest against the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties in front of the presidential palace in Cairo on October 4. The women were also demonstrating in support of women's rights in the constitution and protesting against issues such as harassment against women and child marriage. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)
Egypt's leading female voice for change warns that revolution is backsliding
Years from now, when scholars and historians debate the beginnings of the uprisings that rocked Egypt and the entire Middle East in 2011, one woman will likely figure prominently: Dalia Ziada, an ebullient Egyptian woman, civil society activist, and prolific blogger.
The pro-democracy figure warns that the heady optimism that infused Cairo’s Tahrir Square last year is being slowly replaced by fear that the very political forces that helped sweep long-serving Hosni Mubarak from power are remaking Egyptian society into a rigid, religiously intolerant, patriarchal system.
“What’s happening now is the Muslim Brotherhood is coercing everything,” she said, referring to the once-banned conservative Islamic political group that now dominates Egypt’s parliament and the presidency. “What I fear is that we will be facing the Muslim Brotherhood’s theocracy with Mubarak’s autocracy.”
Ms. Ziada is one of a growing number of women activists in a movement that some have called “The Pink Hijab.” The wave of uprisings that roiled politics and upended dictatorships from Tunisia, to Egypt, to Yemen has featured female activists at its forefront in a way that was previously unthinkable in male-dominated Muslim societies. Her work in particular has garnered accolades: Newsweek magazine called her one of the world’s most influential women, while CNN dubbed her one of the Arab world's eight “Agents of Change."
“I don’t believe our revolution will succeed until one day we will have a woman president. I don’t believe there can be a democracy unless women are properly in power,” she said in a speech at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass., yesterday.
Ziada’s work predates the Tahrir Square events by several years. She helped translate a comic book about Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous 1955 bus boycott in Alabama into Arabic. She helped organize human rights film festivals in Egypt, smuggling in films about the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine and about female genital circumcision. And through her Cairo-based organization, the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, she helped train activists and bloggers from across the region.
Since last year’s revolution, a grim reality has replaced heady optimism in many of the countries that were also convulsed by protests. Syria is mired in a brutal civil war. Yemen is still volatile, despite the ouster of its president. Tunisia is still tense, as society grapples with the question of how prominent a role Islam should play in civic life.
This is mirrored in Egypt’s own struggles, as the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party agitate for policies and legislation – such as child marriage and female genital circumcision – that, Ms. Ziada argues, are contrary to the ideals of last year’s protesters. Law enforcement and police agencies, who she said felt humiliated by the protests last year, have pushed for legislation that would make it easier for police to use deadly force against protesters. Among the myriad political parties that vied for parliament seats in last year’s election, many chafed at the idea that a woman should be listed at the top of the ticket on the ballots. The political party she helped found was no exception.
But Egypt’s political life also mirrors traditional social norms, she acknowledged, particularly when it comes to attitudes toward women in public life. She said her organization helped run a public opinion survey not long ago in Cairo, and of the roughly 1,000 people surveyed, every one of them said they did not want a woman to be president.
“Men are telling women, ‘Go back home, it’s not your time now, we want to build democracy, you should be home,'” she said, wearing one of her distinctive brightly-colored head scarfs. “It’s not proper that the people who led the revolution are now completely out of the scene now,” she said.
The other factor that played an unquestionably pivotal role in the uprisings was social media, she said. The ability of people to post photos and videos and discuss events and organize rallies using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube has changed the Arab World, particularly for women, she said, who have been able to find communities and solidarity in ways they couldn’t previously.
What led to the uprisings, first and foremost, was the “the strength of human links” – the traditional ties of family and neighbors and clans. “But these communications were speeded by Facebook…. It was the glue, it helped stick everything together,” she said.
“The human connection is essential, civil society is very important, but social media was the tool, the messenger, when people finally found one another,” she said.
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