The Woman in the Picture

What the protests are about is simple, FREEDOM. The people have bee repressed for the last 20 years, the youth did not ask for Khameni, they do not want him, they want freedom, they are and intelligenet people with the bravery many of us our lacking. I wish I had the courage to protest when George Bush was elected more than once.

This is a disgrace and a travesty of justice. We treat our animals better than this.

Following is a tribute to Neda by A world renowned Iranian American singer known as Siavash, Moving song with touching and rare photos and images of Neda Agha Soltan, telling the story of her life and brutal death by a basij militia sniper with a shot through the heart, in Iran, Tehran, an innocent bystander in peaceful protests. This includes a Picture of Neda's suspected killer. And in the end, a call for hope in the face of tragedy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpf6Mua0wiI

Jennie - I recommend that you watch the video. Its power lies in her expression, not in the gore. As she lies there with blood pooling under her, she turns a penetrating gaze directly at the camera. We see a beautiful young woman, in the prime of life, her arms raised in a position of surrender. Her expression is guileless which makes it all the more powerful, and her intelligent, piercing eyes challenge the viewer with an air of philosophical questioning. One feels compelled to answer her, but a second later blood begins to pour from her nose and mouth and the people swarm around her to help her. She leaves her viewers hanging in the midst of an eternally unanswered question. That's where the power lies.

I imagine there will always be a few creepy people reading pornographic content into images like this, but I don't think that should be a reason to censor such images. The Neda video has a particular quality of calling the viewer to task with the poignancy or her gaze. It made me curious about the context of her death and caused me to do further research to try to understand the situation in Iran. And I believe that it has affected other people that way, and even more profoundly. She wasn't a revolutionary - she was a philosophy student hoping to work as a tour guide - the type of young woman who's family would be proud of her. She was a regular person with good prospects, simply trying to attend a demonstration upholding people's fundamental rights. Her last gaze will forever associate her smart yet innocent young face with questions like "Shouldn't people have a right to express themselves?" It highlights the issue in Iran, but it goes way beyond it to the broader global context of fundamental individual rights.

Watching is not passive, NOT watching is passive. Moreover, someone risking death so you someone can see the results of tyranny is not a passive act. And as such viewing this video is indeed a political act because it validates the efforts of those who enabled others to see it. The author should have a stiff drink, gather her courage, and watch the video. Truly, some things must be experienced to be understood in all their profundity.

I think it IS important that we see. We are sheltered here, Americans. We are comfortable and complacent. What did WE do when an election was stolen? Nothing. What would have happened if WE had protested? In truth, we don't know. We think the U.S.A above this sort of barbarism, but our govt. lies and manipulates us all the time. How far would they go if some prime agenda was threatened by the people? I hesitate to believe it would come to violence, but we see police brutatlity occur more and more often. When a people ignore their govt., ignore mandates to return to their homes, to quit protesting in the streets, have they not broken the rules? Are they not "wrong?"Those empowered with a weapon believe themselves empowered with the right to supress what they deem "wrong." And then where are we? Witnessing Neda's death was horrific, gruesome, graphic, but she deserves our witness, and we need the jolt. Remember the govt. decision to ban images of soldiers returning home in caskets? It's time Americans face the reality of what happens outside our borders. There may come a day when it's happening INside our borders.

The author is wrong in my opinion. I have seen the video, and it is tragic. The argument that watching horrific scenes in horrific circumstances does not affect cognitive understanding of the core issues leading up to those events is preposterous. Is it required? No, but to say that it does not contribute to the general awareness is naive.

The people at the heart of the struggle are galvanized by the raw emotional and intellectual symbolism that these events represent. They codify what people are feeling and help further the common idea of the atrocities happening.

The further away from the events you are, the stronger the representation has to be to elicit any type of understanding. People on the ground in Iran are seeing things like this on a regular basis. I seriously doubt any of them are having a problem ???understanding the issues??? because of it.

"If we want to make sense of our past, and understand our present, we have to do more than just watch." I would argue it is helpful to *at least* watch, as you interestingly concede you had not as you wrote this. If there exists a perverse public fascination with the macabre for its own sake, the media have long been culpable in propagating it. Remember Don Henley's song "Dirty Laundry?"

"We got the bubble-headed bleach-blonde who comes on at five
She can tell you ???bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye
Its interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry"

The 24/7 news cycle on multiple outlets has long been dominated by human barbarity and tragedy as if that were all that is newsworthy. The video depicts reality -- it is not a snuff film. It enhances context. It is unsettling and absolutely ought to be, and everyone should watch and be unsettled, lest Neda Agha Soltan be a transient abstraction lost in our short-term memory to the next lurid story. Consider the journalist classifieds in Rainbow Lollipop Land, or next time watch a video before musing about its significance. It will make you are informed, not a highway crash gawker.

I understand it enough to know that Neda is yet another victim of the meat-grinder atrocities now taking place in Iran.

CNN has just reported that a ''massacre'' has taken place in front of Irans Parliament. By the cell-phone pictures and amateur films coming out ,this sounds about right [YOUTUBE for more on this].
Obama is caught in a vice. His overtures to the Mullahs back in May are now viewed as truckling to tyrants. On the other hand, he must heighten the rhetoric in order to isolate the GOP, which is four-square on the side of the protesters. Further, his prearranged questions with lefty WH press corps reporters regarding this crisis were stupid and unneccesary,only creating suspicion among the MSMs critics including MSNBCs Todd and ABCs Tapper who will be spending much more time holding Obamas feet to the fire as the chaos continues to get out of hand. ''What to do about it''?

Try this.

WTF is an American company, General Electric, doing conducting business with the Mullahs, and why hasen't Congress done more to conduct hearings on the actions of this and other American corporations who are driving through loopholes in the 1997 trade embargo with Iran in order to make more money. Perhaps we cannot do ''much'' on a Tehran street, but we can damned sure stop this crap in its tracks by demanding full and complete investigations into how Iranian money is laundered in the US. Where it goes, and to what Euro fronts. What American companies are doing business, and for what purpose and gain.

Pols getting their hands too greased by their lobbyists? Expose them for the rats that they are and throw them out in the next election. [start with Boxer of California, a dyed -in-wool bitch who has the temerity to openly insult our serving soldiers in the field], and go from there. Ask Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Brian Williams, or Andrea Mitchell, why their GE bosses are handing them paychecks with the blood of innocent Iranians dripping from these.[and ask why NEWSWEAK chair-warmers on all of their shows are not asking such questions themselves]. CONOCO-PHILLIPS,HALLIBURTON, and 14 other FORTUNE 500 companies that include investments by state pension funds are also wrapped up in this garbage.

Oh yes. We can do much more than simply ''pray''.

You should be ashamed of yourself. All the words you write are an excuse for not facing up to what is really going on in Iran.
The young woman in the video along with thousands of other women in Iran are willing to risk death for the right to be free to express themselves. Take a good look at the video it will help you understand the conflict more than all your words.