Unveiled A: first Turkish woman poses for German "Playboy" (Time.com)

This position is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global news site translated stories of note in foreign languages in English. The following article was published in the leading German daily Die Welt.

Struggle with integration, usually performed with zeal grim and intellectual debates, the Germany has a sensual turn last week.

The appearance of the Turkish-German naked body of the actress Sila Sahin attractive in the issue of Playboy magazine shows how young women with a history of immigrants may can get rid of the religious and cultural constraints without the need to quote statistics or elaborate arguments provided by the experts of the integration. (See a brief history of the Playboy Club).

It is usually no longer a major problem when a celebrity or starlet removed her clothes for men magazine. Relentless overexposure to sexually explicit images in the media, advertisements and the Internet made nudity public therefore socially acceptable that we barely take notice.

But the 25-year old Sahin, who plays "ayala" in the German soap opera RTL "Good times, bad times" (Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten / GZSZ) managed to bind his public exposure to the debate on a socio-political issue central: this young Muslim - in this casTurc - women are not allowed to do the same kind of decisions on their own lives and the body revealing sexual majority girls were able to do for some time.

"For me, these images are an act of liberation from the cultural constraints of my childhood, says Sahin." I tried to please everyone for too long. With these images I want to show the young Turkish woman it is OK to live the way they are; It is not cheap to show skin. as you pursue your goals rather than bowing down to others. ?

Playboy could use the PR

It may very well be that the first appearance of a Turkish woman on the cover of the German Playboy is more than an excellent opportunity for the magazine on glossy paper, which could use the debate on immigration to enhance his image a bit obsolete.

And the still relatively unknown Sahin was certainly presented with a possibility of PR to stick host daily nudes fashioning itself as a pioneer brave for emancipation.

Still, his interview in the magazine opens a window on patronizing situations young Muslim girls and women have to deal with on a daily basis.

Growing up "with a father who is an actor and a mother very conservative, I am not for everyone, but in my case, things were black or white." Sexual relations before marriage was wrong, he should pray every Friday and so forth. "Long she thought"that I have to do what the man said." "(See the storied life of Hugh Hefner).

The emancipation of women and the cultural critic purists can sniff out the fact that Sila Sahin sees an act of liberation by posing nude for men who are not primarily interested in the intellectual discourse. But tastefully nude photos shot of young Turkish women remind us that marketing reviled female body that now seems as an element essential to daily life, played an important role in the history of the emancipation of women in the Western world.

With nude photos of the Sahin made as a contribution to the debate on the emancipation of Muslim women, the German Playboy draws on the historical tradition of the American original.

Its first edition, published in 1953 with a centerfold of Marilyn Monroe, was undeniably journalistic spearhead of opening sexual then still dormant in a strictly Puritan America.

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Like no other magazine Playboy amounted to a liberal sociopolitical spirit, whose breakthrough in America of the 1960s has contributed widely to facilitate. The subsequent increase in feminist criticism of structures patriarchic society discredited largely permanent policy of the magazine and its founder, Hugh Heffner, who just celebrated her 85th birthday.

Point of symbolic counter to "the girl with the scarf. (See review of the time of the documentary Hugh Hefner).

If nothing else, campaign of Sila Sahin use nudity as a means of self-determination tells us that this criticism may be short-sighted.

Because legitimate debate on if or when the body of naked women displaying begins to interfere with the women's dignity or, on the contrary, it, promoting presumes the capacity of women to decide for itself what it wants to know if her body naked to be represented or not.

This is how the right to pose naked gains an undeniable importance and explosivity - also for the control of the Muslim community in its relationship with the profane, an open society.

That Sila Sahin faces threats in her own family for its explicit photos, but radical Turkish nationalist groups also, illustrates this.

We have to realize and recognize that the pop culture and trivial lifestyle is a powerful force in the debates on emancipation because they produced iconic images that can make a company in one direction or the other.

By creating an interesting example of the autodéterminées, young Turkish woman who wants to live just as freely and without that its German peers without immigrant roots, Sahin photos have the potential to set a symbolic counter to the recent trend of the "girl with the scarf.

Beautiful photos breathe a new life in the values of the constitution and our liberal legal system which are too often just hailed in the abstract.

Now, we certainly would like to know what German feminists have to say. In the past, they had conducted campaigns against the bare covers on magazines. Today, they are fighting against the mandate for women to cover in the Muslim community.

The fact that Muslim women are using nudity as a lighthouse against their entrapment in their traditional culture could affect some ideas in the feminist community.

Why the Syria sees a threat coming from small Lebanon? (Time.com)

Syria long has been accused of stirring trouble in the territories of its neighbors by exporting unwanted people across porous borders - Kurdish separatists into Turkey, Sunni insurgents into Iraq and Palestinian militants and Al-Qaeda sympathizers into Lebanon. But with Syria reeling from the worst internal unrest since the ruling Baath Party took power nearly 50 years ago, it is Damascus' turn to complain about the alleged infiltration of foreign militants seeking to stir anti-regime violence. Amid President Bashar al-Assad's hard-soft campaign against the unrest (crushing violence against protesters on one hand; lifting the nearly half-century "emergency law" and promising reforms, on the other), the official media in Damascus is focusing on the threat from across its borders.

On Sunday, for example, a refrigerator truck filled with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, night-vision goggles and ammunition was seized by Syrian customs were crossing into Syria from Iraq, according to Syria's SANA news agency. The driver, the report said, claimed to have been paid $20,000 by an Iraqi to deliver the weapons into Syria. (See Protests in Syria)

But the brunt of Syrian paranoia seems to be focused on Lebanon. Last week, Syrian state television area the alleged confessions of three members of the Muslim Brotherhood who claimed to have been planning to encourage protests and form armed groups on the instructions of Jamal Jarrah, a Lebanese parliamentarian belonging to the Future Movementa Sunni political block headed by Saad Hariri, the caretaker prime minister and the stupid black of Damascus. Jarrah has denied the charge, but the claim has ignited fresh tensions between the Syrian authorities and Lebanese opponents of the Syrian regime. "If any harm comes to syria, then Lebanon will be harmed," said Ali Abdel Karim Ali, the Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, in what many Lebanese interpreted as a threat.

Hizballah and other Lebanese allies of Syria have seized upon the charges to launch verbal attacks against their domestic political foes in the March 14 parliamentary coalition, which includes the Future Movement. March 14 retorted that the charges suggested was "dangerous conspiracy against Lebanon" and warned the Lebanese "against getting involved in a new plan aimed at creating strife among them."

A look at Lebanon's northern border with Syria, from the standpoint of Wadi Khaled, a remote impoverished village of black basalt homes scattered over a hillside, makes it immediately clear just how easy it would be to slip from one side to the other. The border here follows the Kabir river. Kabir may mean "great" in Arabic but this watercourse is barely larger than a small creek, flanked by dense Western of trees and lush verdant pastures.

"Yes, it is very easy to cross, especially in summer when the river is low," says Mohammed, owner of an electrical goods store a stone's throw from the river. He says smugglers charge $1,000 per head to cross one way or the other. Most people crossing the border are either economic migrant (Africans, for example) who hope to find jobs in Lebanon or Lebanese criminals on the lam who sneak into Syria until the heat has died down back home.

Purpose are the Lebanese sending co-operatives in subvert to Damascus? The political traffic seems to be the other way around. Rami Nakhle, a Syrian opposition activist, slipped across the border in Wadi Khaled in January to avoid being arrested by the Syrian authorities for his anti-regime activities. A Syrian smuggler in Homs charged him $1,500 for the trip. Rami agreed, but said he would only pay once in Lebanon. The two men rode motorcycles from Homs until they reached the border, then continued on foot. Purpose as they reached the river, they were ambushed by Syrian border guards. "They were firing in the air and we split up." "they chased but me I kept running into Lebanon," Rami says. (See pictures of Protests in Lebanon)

Although he lost his guide, Rami bumped into another Syrian smuggler on the Lebanese side of the border who offered to take him to Beirut for only $500. Rami presently is in hiding in Beirut and, operates under the nickname Malath Aumran, using the internet to help organize protests.

Smuggling activities have slowed since the uprising in Syria began five weeks ago. Syrian troops have reinforced their border positions and increased the number of foot patrols along this stretch of the frontier. Wadi Khaled and most of the neighboring villages are populated by Sunni and are fans of the Future Movement which, as far as the Syrians are concerned, is good reason to keep a wary eye open for possible infiltrators. "our blood belongs to saad hariri and we are with the Syrian uprising one hundred percent," says Ali, a young man sitting astride the ubiquitous Syrian-made motorcycles used for transport in the Wadi Khaled area.

Local residents say they are monitoring the border for possible Syrian infiltrators who they believe may attempt to create strife in Lebanon. Some members of Fatah al-Islam, an Al-Qaeda-inspired faction that fought a bloody three-month battle against Lebanese troops in a north Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp in 2007, Lebanon entered via the Wadi Khaled district. "we will let sunni refugees come here, but we will not allow any Alawites to enter," says Ali, referring to the minority Alawite sect, an off-shoot of Shi'ite Islam whose adherent form the backbone of the Syrian regime.

Although the Kabir river provides a clear geographical marker for the path of the border, the Lebanese-Syrian frontier is less well defined elsewhere. Much of the border is in dispute, with claims and counter-claims that both countries are encroaching on each other's territory. The fault for the ill-defined nature of the border rests with the French mandatory authorities who never properly delineated and demarcated the frontier when the modern state of Lebanon was established in the 1920s.

Syrian border security concerns run highest in areas adjacent to Lebanese Sunni populations, but a few miles to the east, in the remote Shi 'ite populated Hermel district of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, a center of support for the Syria - allied Hizballah, the border restrictions are much more lax. It is through the rugged mountains of the eastern Bekaa that Hizballah is believed to bring much of its substantial arsenal of weapons from Syria. Locals allege that when the electricity supply is suddenly cut at night and cellphones lose reception, it means Hizballah's cross - border arms convoys are on the move.

At the tiny farming hamlet of Haush Sayyed Ali near Hermel, the border is marked by a concrete culvert and a narrow stream along which gushes icy snow melt from the mountains to the west. A Syrian border guard sitting in the entrance of a small concrete hut with the national flag painted on one wall stares curiously as a small group of people pass by a few yards away. A tractor carrying a trailer piled high with sacks of cement chugs down a steep ramp into the stream opposite the Syrian border post. The Syrian guard does not even glance up as the tractor driver follows the water course for about 50 yards before heading up another earth ramp onto the Syrian side.

"You have just watched someone smuggling cement into Syria," chuckles Hussein, a self-confessed smuggler and farmer.

On the other hand, the tractor's short trip may not have constituted an act of smuggling after all, because, according to standard maps of Lebanon, Sayyed Ali Haush lies almost one mile inside Syria. Just another weird anomaly along the porous and ambiguous Lebanon-Syria border.

Is Lebanon Being Sucked Into Regional Unrest?

See TIME's Special Report: The Middle East in Revolt

View this article on Time.com

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You want to Blockbuster FX? Head of New Zealand (Time.com)

When Warner Bros. proposed relocation of production of the Lord of the prequel film of two rings the Hobbit of New Zealand, due to a prolonged dispute with the actors Equity, Prime Minister John Key Union intervened personally. Connection long of the country with the franchise of the rings - an association which has been a great boon to linked to tourism - and the jobs of 2500 would create production of Bilbo the Hobbit $ 490 million was at stake. Therefore, there was relief in Wellington when filming began finally last month, with the actors and Warner Bros Thieu of the labour law reform and tax breaks respectively. Hamstrung by the cost of two large earthquakes (estimated at $ 11 billion), New Zealand needs all investments that its film industry can bring.

Locations famous scenic in the country are a great draw of Hollywood filmmakers - but they are not the only one. Large Budget screen Production Grant the New Zealand offers a 15% discount on production expenses. The producers of the Avatar, large parts which were filmed in the Studios of street stone of Wellington, has received 32 million of the grant (in return, the country received $ 307 million). Since the scheme started in 2003, overseas productions have reportedly passed 1.42 billion in New Zealand and received 189.4 million in grants. The absence of taxes of the fringe that would be incurred to the United States - such as taxes on benefits employees, compensation, and other levies - also helps reduce the overall cost of post-production. (See than the alternative of the top 10 places to film the Hobbit).

Then, there are industry of innovative visual effects (VFX) of New Zealand, which, although less than ten years now becomes a major player, contributes approximately $ 180 million in revenues for 2006-2007 film only, a survey of statistics. Companies like Weta Digital in Wellington, which won three Oscars for his work on the Avatar, and who will work on both Hobbit films, winning international praise for their work in special effects, art direction and film. "It seems to be a unique creation, New Zealand sensitivity, both artistic and technical sense here and Weta Digital certainly defines that standard,", said Gisella Carr, CEO of the new Film of the New Zealand.

The rings franchise has been a huge boost for the development of local industry of VFX, according to Mike Horgan, Director General of Digipost, digital post production company in New Zealand when it was established in 1990. "The world has always had an eye on the New Zealand film industry, through projects such as Xena, Hercules and, more recently, Spartacus, but [Director rings] certainly, Sir Peter Jackson played a huge part in putting the industry on the map"he says. ". (See why South Africa is becoming a hot film location).

And Weta, companies such as Park Road Post Production will benefit business of Jackson. Costume based in Wellington is a one-stop shop, offering audio service, the digital conversion facilities and film processing laboratories. "The Hobbit has begun production in the studios of here," says Vicki Jackways, head of marketing of Park Road.

Although there is some international hiring, this technology intensive industry depends primarily of local talent. "The majority of our artists is New Zealand and is very experienced and highly qualified to offer to high international standards," said Cree Casares, a VFX producer for house production of Images and sound. Horgan agrees: "there are a number of training institutions very functioning here which help to support and develop young creative minds", he said. I hope that the agreement recently struck between Warner Bros., actors equity and the Government will form a framework to help to maintain this nascent industry on track.