Person of the year: Neda Agha-Soltan

It is a hard sell to say a person who got shot can achieve "of the year" status. Sorry to sound callous, but the only thing she did was be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get shot. Other people got shot but it wasn't on camera, so does being shot on camera make some kind of special achievement? Furthermore, every year lots of people get shot by dictators, criminals, democracies, or loved ones. Rather, what made her famous was a broader sense of human tragedy for which the graphic simulacra of her death was available. There are a lot of powerful images of people being shot on film (Eddie Adam's famous Saigon execution photo for example) and they have power to affect the viewer into action, but it is the person who made the image and the the image itself which have created value. To mistake the individual suffering the injustice as having special value is to misplace the responsibility. If you are so effected by her death, try and get the video recording an award, but don't make every victim into a modern saint.

I agree with this from the mindset that the Iranian protests were the most important FP event this year, and NEDa represents that movement the best.

Revolutions are not made by victims any more than wars are won by evacuations.

I don't mean to sound cold, though it is true that my personal threshold for inspiration is pretty high. Becoming a victim through the actions of others and a symbol, also through the actions of others is what happened to this poor young woman. Anything further that happens in Iran, for good or ill, will happen because of the actions of other Iranians.

Also, and not for nothing, most of Iran's problems today are a legacy of its leaders' ambitions to make it a transcendental force in the Middle East. If there is a gap between those ambitions and those of the majority of Iran's people, it may lie in the desire of Iranians to live in a normal country.

the fate of Nade is tyranny's only response. But hope as St. Paul would say never disappoints - no matter how powerful a ruse the thugs may try.

The execution of Jose Rizal was the beginning of the Philippine War for Independence from Spain, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand began the First World War, and the murder of Julius Cesar sparked a civil war. True, those were prominent men; on the other hand, video images of their deaths were not flashed all over the world within a few hours. Neda's Soltan's murder is the most widely viewed in human history; more people have seen the video of her death than saw and have seen the death of John F. Kennedy. That vidclip galvanized the opposition in Iran and changed the movement from one of protest against a fraudulent election to one for a more widespread change.

she was a symbole of pure & innocent iranian people has killed for freedom so she is hero of the year

She was not just "in the wrong place at the wrong time>"

From the New York Times.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/piecing-together-neda-agha-soltans-death/

Ms. Agha-Soltan was in the streets to protest Iran’s presidential election, which she, like many Iranians, considered fraudulent. According to Mr. Macqueen, his sources told him, “Neda attended virtually every demonstration – some with her mother, some even with Caspian.”

Neda may be a good poster girl but in Asia it takes more than sacrifice to achieve freedom. Look at Aun Sang Suchi, Burmese leader fighting for ages against mad military junta, and what has she achieved? Tibetan leader Dalai Lama has been coaxing Chinese to have meaningful dialogue with him but of no avail. In Iran not only Mullahs wield power they have powerful allies in blood thirsty Revoultionary guards, who have huge stake in status quo. Still good wins rarely over evil in the world.

While I think the posters make valid points, the real power of Neda is not who she was or what she did; it's her symbolic import.

Sometimes these changes take time to work their way through, and in retrospect the importance of a relatively small event becomes magnified. The British firing on protesters on Boston Common in 1776 is incredibly minor, unless one considers how the event was used by Samuel Adams and others to gin up support for rebellion. Took a few years for that to come to full fruition, but there's no denying its importance symbolically.

It's hard to gauge the value of Neda's murder and her power as a symbol from a historical perspective, of course, but there's no question her death put a personal face on more than just the questionable election outcomes (which, after all, came down to the incumbent hardliner vs. his hardliner challenger). I think that's what Mr. R is driving at here.

Person of the year? Sorry, no.
While Neda's death was tragic, the only reason the public/media has not forgotten about it is because it was caught on film AND because it makes Iran look bad...which is the current goal of American/Israeli policy.

Had she been a protester in, say, Palestine, protesting the occupation or the raid on Gaza or illegal settlements, etc., no one would have even known her name.

People do get hurt and even killed in riots. A girl was shot in the face and killed right here in Boston a few years ago when the Red Sox made it to the World Series.

We don't know the exact details of who shot Neda and how it happened, but it's easy to use her death to condemn the Iranian govt., who may very well have legitimately won that election. I mean if Americans can elect Bush twice, Iranians who fear American or Israeli military action could easily choose Ahmedinejad over a bunch of unknowns. We simply don't have the facts.

While I am against any corrupt regimes, I am also opposed to propaganda which marches us towards unjust war.

Honestly, I wish every murder and act of injustice was caught on film and publicized. Otherwise, we have a tendency to turn human tragedy into mere statistics.

What about all the Neda's WE killed in Iraq? (Beautiful young women)

Because of our military censorship we never see them.

Because more news and photos get out from Tehran, than from Baghdad we know about the Nedas there.

There are about a hundred thousand Nedas in whorehouses all over the middle east because of our war of choice.

We have (indirectly) killed more than one million muslims -- probably about 50,000 Neda (beautiful young women.)

Please stop the war porn, you dirty old frustrated men.

Here is the link to the MIT study:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12150

Iraq's Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

by John Tirman

Global Research, February 3, 2009
The Nation

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush's war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards -- "stability" -- the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it's too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.

We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis -- more than half of them refugees -- or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.

The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 "excess deaths" (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths -- from health emergencies, for example -- or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million "excess deaths" as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.

This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead -- in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis.

By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

John Tirman is Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies.

Global Research Articles by John Tirman

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