Sunday, January 28, 2007

Paintings Biennial


While looking for a photo of yalda celebrations this year, I ran into this interesting photo from the scene of The Fourth
International Painting Biennial of The Islamic World
in Tehran, Iran.

Click on it and you'll see a larger image at Flickr.

I believe the biennial started in the last week of November, and it looks like it ended on
December, 21, 2006.

Here are some other pictures I found.

It would be good to see more photographs of this
exhibition. (As another example, check out this work.) There does not seem to be a website for the biennial or one that actually displays all the paintings.

I believe my friend, and ex-Berkeley-ite, Bobak Etminani,
also has several paintings on display in the biennial.

Myths, Politics and Skiing


Payvand, a Silicon Valley Persian community web site, has published a summary of "Answering the Charges Against Iran: Dispelling the Demonising Myths" report by U.K.'s Campaign Iran. You will need to scroll down through Payvand's introduction to see the list of charges and the summary debunks.

Another article on a roughly similar topic has been written by Edward Herman and David Peterson for Z Magazine. The latter article contains some misunderstandings regarding the social make-up of Iran although it does expose some of the other demonizing myths propagated by the mainstream media here. In their article, Herman and Peterson have included a scholarly exposé, complete with references, of the realities hiding behind the rhetoric against Iran including those of the Democratic party leaders.


Less tersely, you can partake of a youthful skier's visit to Iran on YouTube. (It was the first video listed under Iran on YouTube.) You need to be patient through the introduction but I think recreational skier Jasin Nazim has done a much better job of reporting than many other professional journalists who have visited the country. I certainly learned quite a lot from the video and it motivates me to ski the same mountains!