"Neda". Watched it. Not cool.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Joe, when are you going to understand that, as of last Friday, this thing got much bigger than just Mousavi vs. Ahmadinejad? My Iranian friends seemed to grasp this almost immediately, but you just don't seem to get it.

Did you read the transcript of Mousavi's speech (given Saturday)?

 

[leftysergeant]

but it is more likely that she was unconscious or already dead during the whole sequence. No need to overthink the video.

It loks to me like she is moving her hands, clenching them, at least 12 seconds in. She did look directly at someone approaching her. I would say that she had blood pressure at least another five seconds.

And that makes it all the more horrifying.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

When she looked directly at the camera, it was because a friend was approaching, filming as he came.

No, I've seen many people die. She lost consciousness. It was an illusion she was looking at anything. Trust me. With that much blood pouring into your airway, nose, mouth, it is because you are bleeding profusely into your chest. No blood is going to your brain at that point.

It is an illusion that she is looking at the camera. She is unconscious. I know. I have seen it many times.

I saw a version with German subtitles. The people around her are saying"Don't be afraid. Stay with us."

What is haunting about that is that the look on her face seemed to indicate that she knew it was over for her, and that she was ready to die. Her last expression seemed more one of sadness than of hatred or anger.

In a way, that makes the video all the more effective for the purpose of rallying the people around her cause.

Haunting yes, a very haunting illusion. And no less horrifying.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It loks to me like she is moving her hands, clenching them, at least 12 seconds in. She did look directly at someone approaching her. I would say that she had blood pressure at least another five seconds.

And that makes it all the more horrifying.

Clenching is a brain injury reflex. Again, this is not a conscious muscle movement. It's called decorticate posturing.

Decorticate posture is an abnormal posturing that involves rigidity, flexion of the arms, clenched fists, and extended legs. The arms are bent inward toward the body with the wrists and fingers bent and held on the chest. This type of posturing implies severe damage to the brain with immediate need for medical attention.

Decerebrate posturing comes next.

 

[Alt+F4]

Oooh. I don't wanna think about it. I just hope they put down the rebellion quickly so we can get back to wondering what Meghan Fox and Audrina Partridge are up to.

Who are they? Are they Iranian supporters from other western countries (based on their names)?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

....
Oooh. I don't wanna think about it. I just hope they put down the rebellion quickly so we can get back to wondering what Meghan Fox and Audrina Partridge are up to.

Sheesus. You want the people to be suppressed quickly because you are disturbed watching them suffer in their struggle for freedom?

Any chance you might wish they'd hurry up and succeed instead?


BTW, an historical note: the struggle against the Shaw took a year and violent repression failed to stop it.

The first major demonstrations against the Shah began in January 1978.[8] Between August and December 1978 strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country. The shah left Iran for exile in mid-January 1979, and two weeks later Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran to a greeting by several million Iranians.[9] The royal regime collapsed shortly after on February 11 when guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah in armed street fighting. Iran voted by national referendum to become an Islamic Republic on April 1, 1979,[10] and to approve a new theocratic constitution whereby Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country, in December 1979.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I've watched it again and I don't think she's clenching her fists after all. Her hands are just in that position. As people push on her chest her hands move a bit then they just flop off to the side. I'm still certain she is unconscious by the time her eyes roll back and to the side.

If anyone is having trouble finding the video you can see it here along with the second one that captures her face more clearly: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/neda

Don't watch it if you don't want that haunting event bothering you for the next few days. It's too late for me. I remain very bothered by the image.

 

[FireGarden]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/24/neda-soltan-iran-family-forced-out

Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said.

"We just know that they [the family] were forced to leave their flat," a neighbour said. The Guardian was unable to contact the family directly to confirm if they had been forced to leave.

[...] The area in front of Soltan's house was empty today. There was no sign of black cloths, banners or mourning. Secret police patrolled the street.

"We are trembling," one neighbour said. "We are still afraid. We haven't had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can't imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn't let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda's family were not even given a quiet moment to grieve."

Another man said many would have turned up to show their sympathy had it not been for the police.

"In Iran, when someone dies, neighbours visit the family and will not let them stay alone for weeks but Neda's family was forced to be alone, otherwise the whole of Iran would gather here," he said. "The government is terrible, they are even accusing pro-Mousavi people of killing Neda and have just written in their websites that Neda is a Basiji (government militia) martyr. That's ridiculous – if that's true why don't they let her family hold any funeral or ceremonies? Since the election, you are not able to trust one word from the government."

There's also a claim about the BBC's Jon Leyne.

Shirin Ebadi has offered her services as a lawyer. She also calls for an election with international supervision, including from the UN:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/200962484755543950.html

Shirin Ebadi, a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel peace prize winner, has told Al Jazeera that she is prepared to represent the family of a young woman shot dead during a protest in Tehran.

The woman, named as Neda Agha Soltan on social-networking websites, has become a symbol for people protesting against the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

Ebadi told Al Jazeera on Wednesday: "I am personally prepared to legally represent her family against the people who ordered the shooting and those who fired at her.

"This act was against the law.

"Neda had not participated in the rally but, even if she had, they did not have the right to shoot her."

 

[FarmallMTA]

I am feeling a sense of foreboding right now, and hearing right-wingers grumbling that we should do something. Bad idea.

Leave it alone and let them sort it out unless it spills outside their borders.Rarely does intervention overthrow a dictator and bring about the liberation of a people. The last time it happened was a year before I was born.

Look how well just sitting back and watching worked for us in Eastern Europe.

Stay the hell out of it, Senator McCain.

Wow. Now there's a real Neville Chamberlain for our times. "Leave it alone and let them sort it out." News flash for you, sport: that rarely works for dictators: Kaiser Bill, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kim-queers... all of them got left alone and their people failed miserably in sorting it out for themselves. Because there's one small problem with dictators: they dictate because they love the power. The ones who are really good at the game are best at accumulating enough power to also terrorize their own people. Like Iran's Armorpajamajihad and his clique.


The second part of the sentence is even more questionable: "unless it spills over the border." Hezbollah, anybody? Hamas? Islamic Jihad? Atomic weapons and missiles from North Korea? IED's in Iraq made from Iranian artillery shells? Wake up and smell the coffee already, Leftysarge: it only spilled over the border 30 freekin' years ago.

At the very least, you could surely summon up the cajones to request-- not insist, mind you, just request-- that the United Nations Security Council pass yet another highly effective resolution, one condemning the use of tear gas which may contribute to Global Warming? Surely such a milquetoast statement from such a milquetoast do-nothing jaw-flapping boondoggle of a worthless organization wouldn't be too aggressively anti-Iranian dictator for you?

I can think of at least one recent dictator for whom your hands-off policy also worked until outside intervention deposed him and his gang: Saddam Hussein. He's gone. Out of there. History. Archives. Toast. Thanks to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the American/British/New European militaries.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Wow. Now there's a real Neville Chamberlain for our times. "Leave it alone and let them sort it out." News flash for you, sport: that rarely works for dictators: Kaiser Bill, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kim-queers... all of them got left alone and their people failed miserably in sorting it out for themselves. Because there's one small problem with dictators: they dictate because they love the power. The ones who are really good at the game are best at accumulating enough power to also terrorize their own people. Like Iran's Armorpajamajihad and his clique.


The second part of the sentence is even more questionable: "unless it spills over the border." Hezbollah, anybody? Hamas? Islamic Jihad? Atomic weapons and missiles from North Korea? IED's in Iraq made from Iranian artillery shells? Wake up and smell the coffee already, Leftysarge: it only spilled over the border 30 freekin' years ago.

At the very least, you could surely summon up the cajones to request-- not insist, mind you, just request-- that the United Nations Security Council pass yet another highly effective resolution, one condemning the use of tear gas which may contribute to Global Warming? Surely such a milquetoast statement from such a milquetoast do-nothing jaw-flapping boondoggle of a worthless organization wouldn't be too aggressively anti-Iranian dictator for you?

I can think of at least one recent dictator for whom your hands-off policy also worked until outside intervention deposed him and his gang: Saddam Hussein. He's gone. Out of there. History. Archives. Toast. Thanks to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the American/British/New European militaries.

If you feel you are so correct in your opinion, why do you feel the need to misrepresent both leftysergeant and Obama's positions in doing so?

What are you suggesting be done to help the people of Iran? Think we should invade and overthrow the current regime?

Ramp up the rhetoric?

Add more sanctions?

Let's hear the specific interventions you claim would help rather than the lie that not ranting and raving is akin to supporting Iran's current dictators.


And if it wasn't a thread hijack, I'd post a long list of horrendous dictators the US supported over the years when it was economically beneficial to a few national and international corporations.

 

[leftysergeant]

Wow. Now there's a real Neville Chamberlain for our times. "Leave it alone and let them sort it out." News flash for you, sport: that rarely works for dictators: Kaiser Bill, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kim-queers... all of them got left alone and their people failed miserably in sorting it out for themselves.

Stop it right there. I didn't buy that crap before the invasion of Iraq, and I will not contenance it now. Your grasp of history is, to say the least, inadequate. There is no parallel between Chamberlain's betrayal of Czechoslovakia and what I am suggesting here. Iran is acting entirely within its own borders, and it is largely the fauklt of our 43rd president's stupidity that Ahmedinaejad was elected in the first place. Iran was moving toward becoming our ally in the fight against al Qaeda before the Shrub started checking his package and talking smack about them. That frightened them, and rightly so. In case you missed it, he had a tendancy to do ghastly things to other countries that did not want to dance to his tune.

IED's in Iraq made from Iranian artillery shells? Wake up and smell the coffee already, Leftysarge: it only spilled over the border 30 freekin' years ago.

And we were backing their enemy at that time. Get a clue. We are not the victrim here. We have been messing with them for 57 years, and they have a right not to respect our wishes as to how they govern themselves. If we do anything other than offer moral support to the demonstrations, we are giving the mullahs evidence that we have not changed our ways and that they know better than we what is good for Iran.

As for the IEDs, there is no proof that the government of Iran is providing them. TRhere is a huge black market in weapons all over the middle east. Our attitude toward the governments there is not helpiong to control that.

At the very least, you could surely summon up the cajones to request-- not insist, mind you, just request-- that the United Nations Security Council pass yet another highly effective resolution, one condemning the use of tear gas which may contribute to Global Warming? Surely such a milquetoast statement from such a milquetoast do-nothing jaw-flapping boondoggle of a worthless organization wouldn't be too aggressively anti-Iranian dictator for you?

Are you through with the Rushblob-inspired ad homs now? Try listening to someone other than the blithering idiots on right-wing hate radio for a change. None of them are worth yesterday's refried beans in matters of military power or diplomacy. The only sign that the right-wing radio freaks have a pair between them is that they obviously think with them. (Which still leaves them retarded, lacking as they are in that area.)

I can think of at least one recent dictator for whom your hands-off policy also worked until outside intervention deposed him and his gang: Saddam Hussein. He's gone. Out of there. History. Archives. Toast. Thanks to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the American/British/New European militaries.

And we went broke for nothing over-throwing him and are not the least bit safer because of it. Time will tell whether the gang that we installed wil really be that much better at protecting human rights, but it is doubtful that they will because the change was imposed against their will.

Do you think that using force will actually work?

Never has, never will. And don't give me any crap about Germany and Japan. They went outside their borders and they knew when they fell that they were the authors of their own misfortune.

What we did to Mossadeg and Allende should serve as examples of what a nasty can of worms we open when we stick our noses into this sort of thing.

If there is not the popular will in Iran to overturn the existing order, we cannot instill it by making life more miserable there. Another round of Bushcheneyrummy-style Schlock and Awww! is not much of a way to express our sadness and pain over events like the death of Neda Soltani.

They are not messing with us, and you can make no case from this for us to mess with them.

 

[EGarrett]

I am feeling a sense of foreboding right now, and hearing right-wingers grumbling that we should do something. Bad idea.

I still remember how the mullahs came to power. It looked an awful lot like this. People just finally got pissed off, soldiers started defecting, sick of shooting their neighbors, some of them started shooting their officers in the back.

Leave it alone and let them sort it out unless it spills outside their borders.Rarely does intervention overthrow a dictator and bring about the liberation of a people. The last time it happened was a year before I was born.

Look how well just sitting back and watching worked for us in Eastern Europe.

I was with you up until the last line, when you apparently completely torpedoed your own argument by reminding me of all the things that happened in Nazi Germany before the rest of the world found out.

 

[leftysergeant]

I was with you up until the last line, when you apparently completely torpedoed your own argument by reminding me of all the things that happened in Nazi Germany before the rest of the world found out.

If you are saying that we should make it our business, you are showing a dreadful inability to comprehend the concept of "unintended consequences."

We created the mess in Iran over fifty years ago, and sticking our noses in there right now will not make it right.

Unless the people of Iran have the will to overthrow the mullahs, it aint gonna happen. Why is this so hard to comprehend? Have you forgotten how and why they came to power in the first place?

 

[fuelair]

I've long been amused that the neocons today seem to be the starry-eyed idealists and the liberals are the realpolitique proponents. I guess the difference is that back then the overthrow of a dictatorship resulted in a new communist utopia; now that they are more likely to produce yet another messy capitalist democracy. It doesn't seem quite as interesting for the Left as it was when Pete Seeger penned his revision of How Can I Keep from Singing?

I'm a liberal, voted for Obama and understand why he is going the way he is.
Note slightly below my preference. And I guarantee waterboarding isn't even where I would begin.

 

[fuelair]

Watched the Neda video on Live Leak. Don't know why. I hate watching death videos. US TV is scrubbed clean of them, but it wouldn't surprise me if European channels broadcast it.

Hopefully things will change over there. It appears to be a massive rallying cry.

It's described as she's shot in the head, but she's shot in the chest.



I stumbled onto it before I saw how the **** hit the fan because of it. I'm glad it did. The **** running that country needs to die painfully. Now.

On that we agreee completely.

 

[JihadJane]

Who shot her?

 

[fuelair]

Depends on the witness, two primary stories. A) feces on a motorbike who was chased down and killed by part of crowd (less likely), B)feces on a building who aimed rifle and shot (most likely). Specific person not known

 

[dudalb]

Who shot her?

Conspiracy theory starting in 3....2....1......

 

[Pardalis]

Who shot her?

Who let them shoot her?

Hey, this conspiracy thinking is really fun!

 

[EGarrett]

If you are saying that we should make it our business, you are showing a dreadful inability to comprehend the concept of "unintended consequences."

We created the mess in Iran over fifty years ago, and sticking our noses in there right now will not make it right.

Unless the people of Iran have the will to overthrow the mullahs, it aint gonna happen. Why is this so hard to comprehend? Have you forgotten how and why they came to power in the first place?

My interpretation of your post was that we should wait until the Iranian people rise up themselves and want to reform their government, which made sense. Then you said to look how well that worked out for us in Eastern Europe, and while I don't think you were referencing Nazi Germany, it certainly brought that to mind, and reminded me that horrific things can spiral out of control in a country while we sit and wait. Given this Neda video, we can see the beginnings of that already.