Screw Time Magazine: Iranian Protester Person of the Year

David Horowitz's NewsRealblog ^

[Michael van der Galien]

Two weeks ago, Time magazine once again proved to have little appreciation for the US Constitution when it announced that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was its “person of the year 2009.” He deserved this honor, the magazine’s editors said, because he “has dramatically expanded” the Fed “and reinvented it.” In other words, because he used the economic crisis as an excuse to radically increase the size of government.

Today, the British editors of the Times of London proved to have a much better understanding of what truly matters:

Neda Soltan was not political. She did not vote in the Iranian presidential election on June 12. The young student was appalled, however, by the way that the regime shamelessly rigged the result and reinstalled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Ignoring the pleas of her family, she went with her music teacher eight days later to join a huge opposition demonstration in Tehran.

This apolitical student ended up becoming the face of the Green Revolution and a martyr for democracy when she was shot and killed by the regime’s thugs. As The Times explains:

Her grave became something of a shrine, and the 40th day after her death — an important date in Shia mourning rituals — was marked by a big demonstration in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran that riot police broke up…

Six months on, it is obvious that Ms Soltan did not die in vain. The manner of her death, and the regime’s response, has shredded what little legitimacy it had left. She helped to inspire an opposition movement that is now led by her generation, which a systematic campaign of arrests, show trials, beatings, torture and security force violence has failed to crush, and whose courage and defiance has won the admiration of the world.

[Carley]

And the leadership of Honduras. They stood firm when our esteemed despot took the side of their democracy hating despot and cut off all aid to that country.

[sionnsar]

Neda Soltan was not political. She did not vote in the Iranian presidential election on June 12. The young student was appalled, however, by the way that the regime shamelessly rigged the result and reinstalled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Ignoring the pleas of her family, she went with her music teacher eight days later to join a huge opposition demonstration in Tehran.

This apolitical student ended up becoming the face of the Green Revolution and a martyr for democracy when she was shot and killed by the regime’s thugs.

At every Iranian Freedom rally here in Bellevue WA since she was killed there's been at least one sign about Neda. And not carried by "Green Revolution" (Moussavi) folks, either.