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Frontline: Showdown With Iran

“In this report, that focuses on the tumultuous U.S.-Iran relations since 9/11, FRONTLINE examines how U.S. efforts to install democracy in Iraq have served to strengthen Iran’s position as an emerging power in the Middle East.”

Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker: Shifting Targets

“The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.”

For a 2005 exhibition, authorities issued an order to remove the central panel of Francis Bacon’s triptych “Two Figures Lying on a Bed With Attendant” because of its purported homosexual overtones.

“Ruled by one of the most vehemently anti-Western governments in the world, Iran is, by many assessments, home to the most extensive collection of late 19th and 20th century Western art outside the West. It is a treasure trove of masters that is all but forgotten outside knowledgeable art circles because, for all but a few of the last 30 years, it has been virtually unseen.”

La Times: Iran keeps Picassos in basement

Terry Jones: “No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch.”

&tSeymour Hersh;/a>: “In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.”

• Telegraph | News | Government in secret talks about strike against Iran
  “It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is “inevitable” if Teheran’s leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme.”
  (tags: uk us iran war un)

• Women Police in Iran - Google Video
  “… how islamic countries train their women police” In burka.
  (tags: video iran women)
• hinke | suds and soda | notes on art: Charlotte Schleiffert in Akinci
  “Intussen vond ik juist die meer-dan-menshoge tekeningen krachtig en prachtig als altijd - waar de doeken aan de oppervlakte blijven hebben zij de combinatie van het poëtische met het directe die het werk van Schleiffert zo sterk maakt.”
  (tags: art trendbeheer CharlotteSchleiffert)
• Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Invisible city
  “Chongqing is the fastest-growing urban centre on the planet. Its population is already bigger than that of Peru or Iraq, with half a million more arriving every year in search of a better life.”
  (tags: china urban)