Simon Usborne

When a Taliban gunman boarded a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley last year, he shouted out one question. “Who is Malala?” Some of the girls turned to look at the only pupil among them whose face was not covered. The man had his answer, and shot her in the head. She was 15.
Malala Yousafzai, whose crime was to speak out for the rights of girls to receive education, has spent the past 12 months answering the Taliban in her own way. In a show of defiance that has inspired a movement, the teenager has emerged as a global figurehead perched on the slenderest of shoulders.

malalaThe artist Jonathan Yeo, who painted the portrait that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, admits he had concerns. “I guess I was worried that she was probably a pawn in a bigger game and was being unduly influenced by the people around her,” he says. Those people include Edelman, the global PR firm that manages Malala alongside its work for clients that include Microsoft and Starbucks. Jamie Lundie, an impeccably connected senior executive for the firm and former speechwriter for Paddy Ashdown when he was the Lib Dem leader, leads a team of five who work with Malala on a pro bono basis.
Fascinated by what he calls her “totemic” profile, Yeo says he was quickly reassured. “She’s so reliant on others and that could go very badly if politicians tried to launder their reputations by association with her. …”

5 thoughts on “Simon Usborne

  1. shinichi Post author

    The making of Malala Yousafzai: Shot by the Taliban for going to school and now in the frame for Nobel Peace Prize

    One girl’s journey from a rural classroom to the United Nations, and the family and PR advisers that have guided her

    by Simon Usborne

    The Independent

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-making-of-malala-yousafzai-shot-by-the-taliban-for-going-to-school-and-now-in-the-frame-for-nobel-peace-prize-8862588.html

    When a Taliban gunman boarded a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley last year, he shouted out one question. “Who is Malala?” Some of the girls turned to look at the only pupil among them whose face was not covered. The man had his answer, and shot her in the head. She was 15.

    Malala Yousafzai, whose crime was to speak out for the rights of girls to receive education, has spent the past 12 months answering the Taliban in her own way. In a show of defiance that has inspired a movement, the teenager has emerged as a global figurehead perched on the slenderest of shoulders. In the week of the first anniversary of her failed assassination attempt, Malala’s face will reach audiences large by even her own standards – a symbol of hope embraced by world leaders and celebrity campaigners, and managed by the biggest public relations firms.

    On Monday night, in an interview with the BBC’s Panorama, the 16-year-old talks with characteristic poise about her journey from a rural classroom to the United Nations, the walls of the National Portrait Gallery and the nominations list for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. On Tuesday, I Am Malala, the girl’s memoir written with the foreign correspondent Christina Lamb, will be published simultaneously in 21 countries, including Pakistan – an international release on a scale usually reserved for blockbuster novels.

    A second interview will air on Monday in the US as Diane Sawyer, the anchor for ABC’s World News, starts a week of Malala coverage. On Sunday, CNN will air its own special: The Bravest Girl in the World.

    By the end of this extraordinary week, Malala, who refuses to let her work get in the way of her own schooling near her new home in Birmingham, will find out if she has become the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in its 112-year history. Though this is the kind of exposure that can presage self-destructive behaviour in teenage idols with rather different routes to fame, those who meet Malala are struck by her composure and commitment.

    The artist Jonathan Yeo, who painted the portrait that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, admits he had concerns. “I guess I was worried that she was probably a pawn in a bigger game and was being unduly influenced by the people around her,” he says. Those people include Edelman, the global PR firm that manages Malala alongside its work for clients that include Microsoft and Starbucks. Jamie Lundie, an impeccably connected senior executive for the firm and former speechwriter for Paddy Ashdown when he was the Lib Dem leader, leads a team of five who work with Malala on a pro bono basis.

    Fascinated by what he calls her “totemic” profile, Yeo says he was quickly reassured. “She’s so reliant on others and that could go very badly if politicians tried to launder their reputations by association with her. But I think she’s getting good advice – not too intrusive, and there is no other agenda that I can see.”

    Yeo says Ziauddin, Malala’s father, is ambitious on her behalf but also protective. That ambition was evident in an interview filmed in 2009, when Malala was already facing threats from the Taliban. Then, Malala wanted to be a doctor, but her father, a teacher and activist, saw a different future.

    “I see great potential in my daughter that she can do more than a doctor,” he said. “She can create a society where a medical student would be easily able to get her doctorate degree.” From the age of nine, Malala was amazing communities around her home for a public speaking style that belied her quiet demeanour. But it was her shooting and the subsequent outcry that lifted her on to a global stage.

    Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, was an early champion in his role as UN education envoy. Days after the attack, he launched a petition with the slogan “I am Malala”, demanding education for all children by 2015. Malala, meanwhile, was undergoing emergency surgery. She continued her recovery in Birmingham, where she now lives with her parents and two brothers. In July, on her 16th birthday, she made her first public speech – at the UN headquarters in New York.

    She listened as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described her as “our hero, our champion” before delivering a 20-minute address that held the chamber rapt. New York plaudits continued to flow last month when Malala was honoured by Hillary Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative awards.

    Despite her composure, some are still concerned at her growing profile. Tilman Brueck, head of the Stockholm peace research institute, Sipri, asked last week if it would be “suitable, from an ethical point of view, to give the Nobel Peace Prize to a child”.

    Mariane Pearl, managing editor of Chime for Change, a global movement for women’s rights and the widow of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist beheaded by al-Qa’ida in Pakistan in 2002, said in an interview in The Independent last May, that Malala doesn’t need the heroine status: “Even she has started saying, ‘OK, there’s a bunch of me out there. So are we going to manufacture a new Ghandi or Mandela, or do we need a number of great individuals with a strong sense of justice that, together, they are unstoppable?’”

    But Malala’s determination to empower those individuals appears to be unshakeable. Shiza Shahid, 24, grew up in Pakistan and as a teenager had heard about Malala. She now runs the Malala Fund after Gordon Brown asked her boss at McKinsey, the consultancy firm, to give her time off. The fund’s first donor was the actress Angelina Jolie, who gave $200,000 (£125,000).

    “We’re trying to balance giving her a normal, healthy life with allowing her to achieve her dreams and having an impact on the ground,” Ms Shahid says. “She realised at an early age her voice was a powerful weapon and despite the risks she became stronger and louder.”

    Ms Shahid says she expected Malala to be deeply shaken by the shooting, but “I felt her emotions and convictions had only strengthened. I told her how many people were celebrating her recovery, that she was being offered all these awards and celebrities were speaking out for her. She replied, ‘But there’s still so much I have to do’.”

    Peace lovers: Nobel nominations

    If Malala Yousafzai is to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this week, she will have triumphed over the largest field in the award’s history.

    This year there are 259 candidates before the Nobel committee, beating the previous record of 241 from 2011. The rules state that only a select group can propose nominees; members of national assemblies or state governments, members of international courts, certain academics and directors of peace research and foreign policy institutes, former winners, and active and former members of the committee itself.

    The front-runners are Malala, who many consider the favourite; Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynaecologist who has carried out world-renowned work with gang rape victims; and Chelsea Manning, the former soldier who was this year sentenced to 35 years in jail for leaking classified US files to WikiLeaks.

    Manning’s supporters claim her revelations were instrumental in starting the Arab Spring.

    One person unlikely to be awarded the prize is Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been nominated for his “efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis”, but is also one of President Assad’s main arms suppliers and recently introduced laws criminalising the dissemination of “homosexual propaganda”.

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  2. shinichi Post author

    Pro bono

    Wikipedia

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_bono

    Pro bono publico (English: for the public good; usually shortened to pro bono) is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in architecture, marketing, medicine, technology, and strategy consulting firms. Pro bono service, unlike traditional volunteerism, uses the specific skills of professionals to provide services to those who are unable to afford them.

    Pro Bono Publico is also used in the United Kingdom to describe the central motivation of large organizations such as the National Health Service, and various NGOs, which exist “for the public good”, rather than for shareholder profit.

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  3. shinichi Post author

    jamie-lundieJamie Lundie
    Group Managing Director
    Corporate & Financial

    http://www.edelman.co.uk/the-team/staff/?staff_name=jamielundie

    Jamie leads Edelman’s 60-strong Corporate & Financial practice focusing on strategic communications, issues management and corporate strategy. Jamie joined Edelman in 2003, after seven years as a senior political adviser to both Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy as Leaders of the Liberal Democrats. Jamie counsels clients on their strategic positioning and communications and is particularly experienced across FMCG, retail and investment sectors. He was previously the Joint Managing Director of Edelman’s award winning Public Affairs division and subsequently head of their Reputation & Risk practice in London.

    Jamie’s role is as a corporate counselor and does not involve direct engagement with government.

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  4. shinichi Post author

    マララ氏ノーベル平和賞受賞の裏側【週刊金曜日】

    今年のノーベル平和賞を受賞したマララ・ユスフザイさん。その受賞の裏側を探る。

    by 成澤宗男

    週刊金曜日

    「女性の教育権を訴える勇気ある活動をした」として10月10日、パキスタンのマララ・ユスフザイ氏(17歳、英国在住)の今年のノーベル平和賞受賞が発表された。マララ氏は、2012年10月9日に反政府武装勢力タリバンによって狙撃された少女として一躍世界で有名になり、その後も女性の教育権を訴える活動などを行ってきた。ただ、パキスタンでは少なくともタリバンより米無人機攻撃によって死傷する子どもの数が多いが、「国際社会」の関心は17歳の少女の「勇気」にばかり集中している。

    09年1月23日、パキスタン北部の村で一家族10人が米CIAの無人機による攻撃を受け、9人が殺害されるという事件があった。唯一の生存者は14歳の少年ファヒム・クレシ氏。胃に爆弾の破片が突き刺さり、頭蓋骨の一部が損傷して両眼を失う瀕死の重傷を負わされた。

    これは、オバマ大統領が就任後に猛烈な勢いで強化した無人機攻撃の、第一撃目として記録される。英国のジャーナリスト集団で、無人機による民間人被害を追跡している「調査ジャーナリズム事務所」の発表では、ブッシュ政権時の04年以降、この10月までにCIAは約400回の無人機攻撃を実施。2379人の死者のうち、米国が主張している「アルカイダ」等の「テロリスト」は4%に過ぎず、子どもは168人に上る。重傷を負わされた子どもたちの数はさらに多数に上るのは確実だが、世界の誰もファヒム・クレシの名を知ることはない。

    インドのムスリムのジャーナリストで、世界のインターネットメディアで活躍するシャイク・ザキール・フセイン氏はマララ氏の狙撃事件後に、こうした現象を「欧米の偽善」と強く批判していた。

    マララ氏は昨年11月10日にオバマ大統領とホワイトハウスで会見した際、パキスタンでの無人機攻撃を中止するよう要請している。だがこの要請は、メディアに黙殺された。これは、マララ氏を国際舞台に華々しくプロモートした米英にとって、「対テロ戦争」と称しアフガニスタンやパキスタンで無差別攻撃の対象としているタリバンを悪者に仕立てるため、彼女が絶好の「材料」だからだろう。

    マララ氏の周辺には米国の巨大PR会社・エデルマンの社員5人が張り付き、演説の草稿準備や記者会見設定を手がけているが、資金の拠出者は明らかにされていない。彼女の意思とは別に、「イスラム勢力と闘う可憐な少女」という図式を演出することで何らかの利益を得る集団の存在が背後にうかがえる。

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  5. shinichi Post author

    (sk)

    Malala の「感動的な」スピーチも、国連総会への出席も、ノーベル平和賞の受賞も、Edelman が後ろにいたのだと思えば合点がいく。

    この little faggot がこれからどうなっていくのか、そしてその父親がこれからどれだけ稼いでいくのか、気になるところだけれど、「政治に利用される人生」がうまくいくわけはない。

    「Global PR firms が。。。」と言ってそれで済ませてしまいがちだけれど、「テロとの戦い」の後ろにも、「人道的な戦い」の後ろにも、そして「人権を守るための戦い」の後ろにも、global PR firms がいて、そしてその後ろには、依頼主であるアメリカやイギリスの政府がいる。

    Guantánamo Bay での拷問のことも、global PR firms によるプロパガンダのことも、みんなそれぞれの会社がやったことで、政府にはなんの責任もない。そんな言い逃れができるくらい、力のある側にとってはこの世の中はちょろいものなのだ。

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