Last week, Iran was appointed to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Iran, making decisions and giving advice on the status of women. NEW YORK — Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Statu…

When Mr. Alipour didn’t return home that night, his parents began to worry. All day, they had heard gunshots ringing in the distance. His father, Yousef, first called his fiancée and friends. No one had heard from him.

At the crack of dawn, his father began searching at police stations, then hospitals and then the morgue.

Upon learning of his son’s death, the elder Mr. Alipour was told the family had to pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a “bullet fee”—a fee for the bullet used by security forces—before taking the body back, relatives said.

I suppose Neda’s family will have to pay for the bullet that killed her, too.

moonsbreath: Forgive me if I seemed like I was mocking you. I was trying to point out the fact that the coverage of Iranian protesters and the death of a girl have become internet fads and that it is highly inappropriate to both be overly concerned with the internal politics of Iran and to attempt to memorialize a girl in an internet combox.

Innocent Smith on June 23, 2009 at 9:40 AM

You’ve been mocking all of us since you joined this thread, and for some reason it rubbed most of us the wrong way.

Now, I remember hearing as a child the phrase, “what is popular isn’t always right, and what’s right isn’t always popular,” but you seem to be of the impression that “what is popular is never right,” which is really just as ridiculous as its opposite.

Just because this has the potential to become popular, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done or that getting the word out about these people is somehow wrong.

Mourning a stranger as if I can truly have empathy for her in any truly meaningful way is certainly trivializing. I think that makes perfect sense.

Innocent Smith on June 22, 2009 at 8:37 PM

No one is doing that. Quit putting up strawmen.

I think we should allow for the fact that people respond to situations emotionally at times even if those reactions seem crass.

csdeven on June 22, 2009 at 8:39 PM

So you forgive his crass response but find me worse for pointing it out what it was. Got it.

I did not love her, and an attempt to act as if her death means as much to me as it does her family and friends and people who actually knew her would be both immature and insincere.

Innocent Smith on June 22, 2009 at 8:50 PM

No one is doing that.

But remember, her death is now the viral video of the week, and people are being desensitized to the death and carnage that is the reality for so many people.

No, you can’t have it both ways. Which is it, Innocent? Are we caring too much about her death or are we desensitized to it?

I am saying that it is pathetic to become inappropriately sentimental over a stranger’s death because it is the popular thing to do right now.

Innocent Smith on June 22, 2009 at 9:38 PM

Actually, it’s not yet popular, but that it is what we’re working towards, getting the Iranian people as much publicity as possible so that their government will feel our eyes on them, knowing they won’t be able to get away with this.

And seriously, read that sentence. Because that is what people here are doing, you are calling them pathetic. To pretend otherwise is to further insult our intelligence.

http://k9-hunter.blogspot.com/

Moonsbreath, you are a perfect example of what I am saying. You are displaying the color green on an internet page. A girl was murdered. Murdered! How trivializing.
Innocent Smith on June 22, 2009 at 9:10 PM

I wasn’t going to reply again to you, but I changed my mind. FYI, since you seem to be so interested in what I do on the internet, I joined Twitter the other day to follow what was going on in Iran. I have a green overlay over my icon to support those brave people in Iran. Why you feel it’s important to mock me about this, I haven’t a clue, however, it is very telling about you.

In 1979, I was 21-years-old when that revolution took place in Iran. Up until that time, the Middle East seemed like it was a universe away. Through news coverage, it became a bit closer. I even wasted energy back then and worried about our hostages too. Through my sister, I knew one Iranian, who went back to fight against the revolution. Mo was never heard from again. Throughout these 30 years, the world has gotten a little bit smaller, and those places that I grew-up thinking were a universe away, are next door.

Now, I am witnessing a new revolution, started by the children of the people who participated in the last revolution. I believe, as our founding fathers believed, that freedom is precious. So, I support anyone, anywhere, who is willing to lay down their lives for freedom. I can only hope that if I were in their place, I would be as brave as they are.

Then there is the death of Neda. She has become the symbol of the youth of Iran, who are fighting for their freedom. Whether I or others here feel emotions and care, is really none of your business. However, you made it your business to post on here and (for lack of a better word) mock others, like myself.

You are the one trivializing the events in Iran and Neda’s death. I have the impression of you that if you had lived during WWII, you would have been trivializing the concentration camps in Germany. I suppose you’ve never seen those pictures either.

As far as watching Neda’s death, I did not take it lightly and I had to think hard about watching it and prepare myself. For me personally, I felt it was important to watch the video because if no one watches, then there are no witnesses to the atrocities.

Watching a real girl die on a computer screen is beyond dehumanizing and is sure to desensitize people to the reality of death

I strongly disagree with your hypothesis. And based on your statement:

However, my initial criticism was twofold: 1) We should not interfere with the internal politics of other countries as a matter of policy and 2) this girl’s death is being popularly memorialized by people who have never known her in order to interfere with the internal politics of another country

Evidently, neither do you. You fear not that the video of her death dehumanizes her death, you fear it will personalize her death. And your right, it will.

Just as the media pushed for the ban to be lifted on the pictures of the coffins of our military dead returning at Dover AFB because they know those pictures will personalize the sacrifice, just like the pictures of our dead military in body bag returning home from Vietnam contributed to Americans turning against the war.

the wilderness of Iran

how will you answer

– Haiku in memoriam to Neda

As of this posting, this makes 33 out 248 posts, for 13% of the “A proper obituary: Neda” thread, using 3,200 words, but never the word “Neda.”

theCork, you are a being shallow and vacuous. I am not an apologist for tyranny so quit the inquisitorial nonsense. I say what I say, nothing more or less. You can’t divine some sinister purpose behind my words, and your less than charitable interpretation of what I said shows a lack of understanding on your part. Why are people saying such nasty things to me when I just do not agree with them? Maybe I am at the DailyKos.

Innocent Smith on June 22, 2009 at 9:23 PM

Ascribing every political movement in the world to a Marxist conspiracy. Negative reaction to the word “democracy”. Regarding everyone else as either a Marxist enemy or an unwitting tool of their conspiracy… you wouldn’t be a Bircher, would you?

I used the word “apologist” because that’s what you’re doing. You’re doing everything in your power to minimize criticism of an evil, oppressive, corrupt, theocratic, tyrannical regime. You *are* acting as their apologist. You have uttered not one word of criticism of the regime in Iran. Not. A. Word. You’re the greatest defender I’ve met of the mullahs so far. The issue is not foreign intervention on this thread, it’s mere criticism of a totalitarian state.

Innocent, was Eisenhower a communist stooge? That will answer the JBS question.

Btw, you may want to look up the definition of “twat,” lol.

jjraines on June 22, 2009 at 10:15 PM

I looked it up in the Urban Dictionary:

twat – An inept person.

And it has your picture.

Which is hardly anything. But remember, her death is now the viral video of the week, and people are being desensitized to the death and carnage that is the reality for so many people.

WTF? You’re projecting.

She is also going to be used, already, in fact, for political purposes.

This is neither inherently good or inherently bad. Or inherently in good or bad taste. Whether it is or not depends on the situation and/or the one doing the ‘using’, don’t you agree?

Memorializing her on the internet is an insult to her life and death and people are already making tributes to her as if she is merely a symbol and not a flesh and blood human being.

You’re projecting again. Those whose reactions I’ve seen are affected on a personal level, not on some symbolic plane. Don’t project this nonsense onto me or mine, please.

I did not say that you were pathetic. I am saying that it is pathetic to become inappropriately sentimental over a stranger’s death because it is the popular thing to do right now.

For some of us she’s a little closer than a stranger, she’s practically family. I’d watch it with the ‘stranger’ epithet. Virtually guaranteed she’s the cousin of someone well-known within the community here in the States.

The next thing we’ll see is people with her face on t-shirts. It is inhuman in the literal sense.

Innocent Smith on June 22, 2009 at 9:38 PM

Martyrdom’s a tricky thing. I’m not going to concede to the false premise that the prospect of a T-shirt is prima facie evidence of something bad, nor that wearing T-shirts takes someone’s humanity away, nor that those wearing the T-shirts have the power to take someone’s humanity away.

IMHO it’s not the same thing at all as with the Che T-shirt epidemic. He was a monster with no human soul, no humanity to steal. In light of the shoddy comparison and false equivalence this sets up, I’m willing to take the situation with Neda one step at a time. Is that all right with you?

Evidently that’s all it takes to be labeled a troll and personally attacked, for daring not to toe the party line.

jjraines on June 22, 2009 at 8:32 PM

?? Let’s have some proof I called anyone a troll. I do get a bit tired of having threads hijacked, so I usually just leave.

dpierson on June 22, 2009 at 9:31 PM

Well said dpierson.

There’s also the simple fact that for some of us on this board, Neda reminds us well enough of school & family friends who’ve faced the same risks from these goons for decades now, when traveling to/from Iran. We’ve had to deal with the thought of what would happen if they went over one day and never came back, or were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got their heads blown off by ‘accident’.

Given this crap has gone on for 3 decades now it’s not exactly the first time this has come up. Neda’s death at the hands of these regime lap-dog kosk-shes just brings it that much closer.

Texas Gal on June 22, 2009 at 9:37 PM

Just citing an example of the simplistic and hostile mentality I was mildly criticizing, as requested. Btw, you may want to look up the definition of “twat,” lol.

Innocent Smith on June 22, 2009 at 9:38 PM

At first I was put off by what you wrote earlier on in the thread (the comparison to Marxists), but I think I have a better understanding of where you’re coming from. I gather from your handle that you’re a Chestertonian, and perhaps a paleoconservative Catholic.

If that is truly the case, your take on the video of the young woman’s death makes more sense: I do not wish to see the video, and yet, as commenters have pointed it, she has become iconic of the protest movement. I would not go so far as to say that memorializing her on the internet is ‘pathetic’, but certainly that we must be cautious against becoming swept up in sentiment; expressions of sorrow at her death and the deaths and persecutions of her countrymen, prayers for the repose of her soul and for the comfort of her family and friends, as well as prayers for peace and freedom for the Iranian people, those are goods for which we pray with urgent sincerity.

That said, the reticence on the part of the Administration, the refusal to stand up and use the word ‘freedom’, the continued willingness of that same Administration to invite representatives of this repressive regime to our embassies on July 4, our Independence Day, is insulting and outrageous. That our President would, with full knowledge of the brutalities committed by the regime in Iran, still try to cozy up to them, is a profound and glaring betrayal of our values as freedom-loving people.