London's Daily Telegraph reports on an inspiring story that should have been more so:
From WSJ Jim Taranto's Best of the Web:
An American who fled Iran's Islamic revolution two decades ago has fulfilled a childhood dream when she became the first woman to pay for her own journey into space.
Anousheh Ansari, a 40-year-old Iranian American telecommunications entrepreneur, was bound for the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian rocket that blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. . . .
She fled Iran in 1984, aged 16, after the country's radical Islamic regime closed down the wine company where her father was a senior executive.
Although she spoke no English when she arrived in the United States, she secured two degrees within five years, took out a loan to start a software firm with her husband in her 20s and then sold it for $500 million. . . .
Ms Ansari provoked a brief row when she announced she wanted to wear the Stars and Stripes on one sleeve of her space suit and, to inspire women in the country of her birth, the Iranian flag on the other.
She backed down under pressure from the US and Russian governments and promised to refrain from making political statements while in orbit.
Why in the world would the American government pressure an American "to refrain from making political statements while in orbit"? It's just inexplicable.
Maybe Harvard should invite her to speak, both to stand up against governmental chilling of expression and to atone for Mohammad Khatami's recent appearance.
Complete Bio follows
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