Chevron Honoring the World's "Global Thinkers"

Thanks in large part to global green giant Chevron, Foreign Policy has hit the interwebs with its special “Global Thinkers” edition. [...] One of their “leading global thinkers” is Kabul graffiti artist, Shamsia Hassani.

Supply Shamsia Hassani with spray paint, and the lasting effects of Afghanistan’s war will be covered with street art. Her dramatic murals enliven wreckage and abandoned buildings in Kabul. In Afghanistan, where women have historically been oppressed, those murals run counter to stereotypes about the culture. </>

And, because this is pretty and we want to keep people reading, there’s a picture……of someone who’s not Shamsia Hassani.

Afghan women all look alike, thanks to years spent under the burqua. So it can be tough to tell one from the other. It’s actually a picture of Lima Ahmad.

  Sunny in Kabul

Ooops. Well, sometimes doing your internet research on the fly and on a deadline, you make a booboo. Although, the Guardian did do a spread on Shamsia in September.

It’s not FP’s fault, not really. There’s no reason they should have spent more time making sure they’d labeled the picture of the one Afghan woman in their collection correctly.

[...]

After all, they could have just gone with random-woman-in-a-burqua-shot-from-the-window-of-an-armored-car.

[...]

Afghan women should be happy they made an appearance at all in something as lofty as a collection of people put together using the editorial equivalent of a dartboard.

[...]

So keep your expectations in check, Afghans. You got a mention. Not an accurate one, but…a mention.

Chevron, doing great things for the earth and humanity.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.