Regarding Neda

[Duer 157099]

I want to address the skeptics in the crowd. In looking around the web, it seems there are quite a few, and it's understandable. There is also conflicting info about her identity.

As for those who think the video was a stunt (and yes, there are some who think that) I can say to you that this was exactly my first impression upon watching the video. I first saw it early yesterday, before there was any info about it, so I formed all of my opinions based on what I was seeing with my own eyes, not what someone else was saying. I was horrified at the moment that I realized that it was not, could not be, a stunt of any kind. I personally feel as though I owe this young woman something, solely because of that fleeting moment where I doubted what I was seeing.

I'll describe my thought process as I watched the scene.

First, I watched it not realizing what was coming. When I saw the blood pouring from her nose and mouth, my first reaction was that it was fake because of how sudden it happened, as though one had bitten down on a capsule of red liquid, as in a movie. The way she was staring directly at the camera accentuated that impression for me.

Then I watched it again, carefully, and started trembling when I realized what I was seeing. I'm still trembling.

There is no doubt that it is real, but I'm writing this just to say that I understand how some could have that thought, because I did.

I realized it was real when her gaze locked. The blood flowed over her open eye. Imagine trying to keep your eyes open under those circumstances. Only death could achieve that.

Secondly, I didn't understand why at first there was no blood and then a few seconds later, it gushed out. It appears that someone did some chest compression and that's what caused the flow of blood.

As for her identity, there are two different names and photos circulating:

1) Neda Salehi



http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/06/21/the-image-of-neda/

and

2) Neda Agha-Soltan

The HuffPo entry seems to suggest that she was with a professor, not her father, or at least that was how I read it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html

Here's a wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neda_(Iranian_protester)

I do not know the origin of this photo:

[Joe the Revelator]

1. Neda is not the cause of the protest, nor was she the only person killed in the last week

Big picture, when you start to focus on personalities instead of issues, the movement begins to die.

[Duer 157099]

2. Of course I realize that

But the student standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen, or the monk setting himself on fire, or the Vietnamese man being executed in the street, or the naked Vietnamese girl running--none were any of those things you describe either. And yet you know who I'm talking about.

[Joe the Revelator]

4. But you're ( i mean look at your avatar) are wrapping yourself in a cult of (dead) personality.

That's weird.

[Duer 157099]

5. I can understand how and why you feel that way

And it's not like I did it suddenly without thinking. I'm ambivalent but for completely different reasons than you raise.

[Joe the Revelator]

6. Enlighten me.

[Duer 157099]

23. Because it often takes me hours to think of a proper response

Would you say that all those people who wear crosses around their necks are warped and subscribe to a cult of death?

(I would, but that's besides the point)

[uppityperson]

3. However, putting a face to it can personalize it for outsiders

[Duer 157099]

7. Let me try to explain as simply as I can

Why I'm using her photo (and I hope to god it's the right one, which I'm still a little uncomfortable about)

I am giving a GREAT BIG FUCK YOU to the man who shot her dead. PERIOD. I want him to see her everywhere he looks. I want the whole Iranian regime to see her face, dead and alive, everywhere they look on the net.

That's as simple as I can make it.

[Joe the Revelator]

9. I doubt the Basiji read DU

[Duer 157099]

10. do you? n/t

[Joe the Revelator]

11. You don't?

[Duer 157099]

12. I don't have enough info to doubt it. Do you?

There are other factors that come into play that I'm just not interested in discussing here. I have no need for your approval, and you are welcome to post whatever opinions you have.

:hi:

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

16. I'm sure he doesn't care

Really, I bet he doesn't.

[Duer 157099]

18. Yeah, but I do

and for me, that's enough reason.

Besides, who knows, whoever did it must have family, and somewhere a conscience of some sort. You just never know, and the more opportunities he has to face his victim, the better.

I'm going to err on the side of .... well, I don't know what to call it, but I'm there.

[arcadian]

8. Two words

Nurse Nayirah

[ColbertWatcher]

13. Who is "Nurse Nayirah" ? n/t

[PassingFair]

17. It DOES smell a bit. I believe that a woman was killed. I also think it's being spun....

"15-year old Nayirah, who gave testimony anonymously, testified before the Human Rights Caucus of the United States Congress in October 1990 that she was a refugee volunteering in the maternity ward of Al Adan hospital in Kuwait City, and that during the Iraqi occupation she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti infants in an incubator room: “They took the babies out of the incubator, took the incubators, and left the babies to die on the cold floor,” she testified.<2> The testimony came at a crucial time for the Bush administration, which was pressing for military action to eject Iraq from Kuwait. Nayirah's story was widely publicized, and Amnesty International at first seemed to corroborate the report. The story helped build domestic support for the Persian Gulf War.<1>

Nayirah was later disclosed to be Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA. She was demonstrated to have connections to the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which was at that time working for Citizens for a Free Kuwait.<1> The latter activist group was organized by the exiled Kuwaiti government, to gain support for the Kuwaiti cause.<1>"

[lunatica]

19. 5-year old Nayirah?

Is that a typo? She was much older than 5 years old. And in her case we saw no photos. We believed what appeared to be a young sincere girl and then found out she was lying because she was told to lie.

But we saw a young girl or woman killed. We didn't hear someone else tell us about it. There's a difference. It could be someone else, but the death was real so the name doesn't really matter, just like it we didn't need to know the name of the girl in Vietnam who was running severely burned by napalm, or the student at Kent State who lay dead or the young man who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square.

[PassingFair]

20. Sorry..."15" ...I cut the "1" off when I copied it from the Wiki article.

And we did see footage of her...but that's not the point.

The point is that we are getting multiple photos
of "her" and conflicting background info.

This is being spun. To what end, who knows?

[lunatica]

22. I think it's the equivalent of the saying 'the fog of war'

Getting information as quickly as we do now creates a lot of confusion when the information is coming fast and furious. At least that's what I usually think when there's rapidly developing breaking news. I remember we had some conflicting news when JFK was shot. When word came in that he had died there were anchors who claimed it wasn't true, then it was. These conflicting developments happen, so it's possible that's what's happening. Remember she was a stranger to the people who helped her and the person who took the cell phone video and there was all kinds of violence going on. It's not unusual so there may be no spin, but just different information coming in, some of it not accurate. It's chaotic in Iran at best right now.

[lunatica]

14. It's about wrapping our minds around facts that are so absolutely final

Death is something we Americans are very protected from. Great effort is made to make the dead look clean and pretty and to seem to be only sleeping, or even out of sight. So when a tragedy happens, whether it's man made like the deliberate killing of people or whether it's nature as in Katrina or the Loma Prieta earthquake in the SF Bay Area we are shocked by the realness and the finality of it. But we have been so protected from it that it's easy to put it out of our minds. We go into denial.

When someone loses a person who's very close the first reaction is disbelief and denial. It actually takes time and effort to finally admit on a mental level that death, with all its implications has occurred.

Your initial reaction was normal, and so is the one of realizing you witnessed a real death. And so is the one of wanting to find a photograph of her as she was when she was alive, because that defines a person much more than the moment of their death.

You'll find what you are experiencing is going on for a lot of people. Including forcing ourselves to watch it even as we really didn't want to. In the end what made me watch it was that it was a way of validating her life. To feel the sorrow of her passing, of her father's screams, and the feeling that so many have expressed about feeling utterly helpless yet wanting to help her makes her real to us.

I too wish everyone to see her photograph, the one of her as a living and healthy person everywhere so her killers can't escape her and her admirers can feel the loss of her. She's become a symbol just like all the other photographs we all remember from other violent times where they stood as reminders of a movement or a war or a defeat.

[Duer 157099]

15. Thank you. I'm glad to hear others who understand

Lately, especially, I've been grappling with the issue of why we react as we do about death. I've had my fair share (and then some) so I've had my own experiences to draw from. Perhaps that is why I reacted as I have to Neda's death and the video. I don't know, but I'm not turning my head from it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. You saw somebody die on that tape

what you described I have seen in patients who died VERY FAST... no matter if we did CPR or not They were dead, and dead is dead.

Usually a bullet can cause that, as well as a knife, or an ice pick.

An artery burst, and she bled to death

Part of the reason why Americans cannot believe it is because death has become so sterile and alien for most that we even resist it.

Me, as a former medic, seen that many times. Not surprising... I saw the photos and the vids and I knew what I was looking at. At least she didn't suffer much.

All I can say for her is rest in peace, and for the doubters, I understand your cynicism, but this was not staged.

If it was... why would the power structure do this? When you answer that, you might realize why the position itself is absurd.

As to propaganda, yes we have it, in spades, on all sides... but the demonstrations are real, and the dead are real.

So get your head around this thought... perhaps some people are willing to die... even if you are not. (Not directed at the OP but the folks who are professional cynics. I am one. But monitoring all that is available, and not the media, this has that air of this shit is for real that I cannot shake)

[tracker1312]

25. I saw the video...

...and the first thing I thought was that the bullet had hit her in the aorta, judging from where they were applying pressure. I'm an artist, so I know anatomy, and I'm working on a medical training simulation to boot so I know good and well how fast one can bleed out. It didn't surprise me at all. And I thought the same thing you thought, at least it was quick and she didn't suffer. She was dead before she knew what was happening.

Americans in general are sheltered. Most of the people here are spoiled bastards who don't have any idea what it's like to be poor, and even those of us who have been poor here in the States have no idea what it's like to be third world poor. Everything we see is filtered by a flat screen in front of us. It's not real to anyone because it's on a screen. That's why so many doubt it. They think it's a movie or something, because that's all they can identify with.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Well said and welcome to DU

[conscious evolution]

24. I wonder what Jessica Lynch

thinks about her story.
After all,the war machine would never twist a story to to suit their purposes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Apples and oranges

[Duer 157099]

28. Link to site dedicated to Neda

http://weareallneda.com/

[Duer 157099]

29. LA Times story about her

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-neda23-2009jun23,0,6240992.story

Reporting from Tehran -- The first word came from abroad. An aunt in the United States called her Saturday in a panic. "Don't go out into the streets, Golshad," she told her. "They're killing people." The relative proceeded to describe a video, airing on exile television channels that are jammed in Iran, in which a young woman is shown bleeding to death as her companion calls out, "Neda! Neda!"

A dark premonition swept over Golshad, who asked that her real name not be published. She began calling the cellphone and home number of her friend Neda Agha-Soltan who had gone to the chaotic demonstration with a group of friends, but Neda didn't answer. At midnight, as the city continued to smolder, Golshad drove to the Agha-Soltan residence in the eastern Tehran Pars section of the capital.

As she heard the cries and wails and praising of God reverberating from the house, she crumpled, knowing that her worst fears were true.