2009's most important person

Time magazine came up short when they chose Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as the Person of the Year, but The Times of London got it right: Neda Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman who was killed during anti-government protests in June.

The shocking and graphic video of Soltan being shot through the chest and dying in the street spread around the world and her death has become the iconic moment of the Iranian peoples' struggle. Neda is important because this uprising of the citizenry may well signal the end of the oppressive and internationally combative regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, further, her documented murder at the hands of a government militiaman may be the tipping point.

More broadly, the capturing of the horrible event by cell phone video and the spreading of it over YouTube, as well as the use of the Internet -- especially blogs and Twitter -- to organize and follow the protests, mark an important point in the realm of popular uprisings. The printing press, in essence, made democracy possible -- and hence, the United States came into being. The Internet is another key juncture on that road. The "information superhighway" has its positives and negatives, but it does seem to be a tool that is difficult (not impossible: see China) for tyrants to manage.

And so Neda Soltan's death is meaningful for a number of reasons, and she is, I think, the better choice. Bernanke did some good things and some not-so-good before and during the current economic crisis. However, even if the housing boom and financial meltdown are the only things that matter, former Fed chair Alan Greenspan's faith in the markets is more integral to causing the crisis -- and his statement before a Congressional committee that his worldview was "flawed" is an admission that laissez-faire capitalism does not work. That stands as a key moment as well.

Photo from The Times of London web site.

Protests in Iran reach new level

Street protests throughout Iran have seemingly reached a new level, but in general the American mainstream media seems not to have noticed. Today was the Day of Ashura, a holy day for Muslims and a holiday in Islamic countries. Iranians demonstrating against their government have flooded the streets in a number of cities, marching and in some cases attacking the street police and setting their motorbikes afire.

These protests are a continuation of those that unfolded after the national election results last summer, which appeared to many people to have been tampered with to protect the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei backed Ahmadinejad and the protests were met with violence, arrests and show trials.

The determination and spirit of the Iranian people, however, seems to have not been broken, and they are making their voices heard, despite reports that 10 or more of the protesters have been killed. Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan, who followed the summer protests closely and provided an outlet for reports and video from the scene, is on top of the story again. Be advised that some of the images are graphic.

Photo from Kosoof.com.

Takin' it to the streets

The developments this week in Tehran are, by turns, stirring and disturbing. The people of Iran are standing up against their theocratic dictatorship and wide fissures among the country's leadership have been exposed. Meanwhile, some police and militia in the streets have beaten many and killed some.

The role of modern technology in all of this is fascinating, and some of the best places to follow the story are Andrew Sullivan's blog on The Atlantic Monthly's web site, a site based in the US called Tehran Bureau, the BBC, The New Yorker magazine's News Desk blog, and The New York Times blog The Lede.

Though a few blowhards on the right are shouting that President Obama needs to offer more public support for the Iranian protesters, most observers -- including conservatives George F. Will, David Brooks and Pat Buchanan -- have said, correctly, that the US cannot allow Iran's government to tie the unrest in the streets of Tehran to foreign elements. Of course they will do that anyway, but this is a movement that began domestically, and everyone inside and outside Iran knows it. Obama's comments so far have been just right, and there is no doubt that his administration is monitoring the ordeal closely.

There's also no doubt that the US would like to see the reactionary duo of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei out of the picture, but if Obama were to stand up and shout that it would only negatively impact the outcome. We are not, after all, about to send in the American military to defend the protesters or to fight the Revolutionary Guard. Therefore, our maneuvers here require wisdom, tact and patience -- and thankfully we have the right guy in charge on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The revolution will be texted

While we in the US are debating the negative physical and emotional effects of text messaging and Internet-based social-networking sites, these modes of communication just may be the unstoppable weapons that help people break free of oppressive governments around the world.

I personally have Luddite tendencies (at least philosophically; practically speaking, my refusal to get an iPod is a rather weak line in the sand) and I join the chorus of those decrying the ubiquity of young people constantly texting (even while behind the wheel) or of the seeming foolishness of following anyone's every move on Twitter. However, this week's upheaval in Iran over the apparently stolen presidential election seems to be fueled by high-tech communication, despite the emabttled government's attempts to cut off those connections.

In China, where the totalitarian regime succeeded recently in keeping public demonstrations to a minimum during the days that marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre (to end mass public gatherings that happened without the help of texting or the Internet), modern communication resources are used to spread stories of the corruption of local government officials. The Communist Party's massive efforts at controlling information is less than perfect.

So it seems that our rapidly developing communication technologies have a big upside for those who have lived under the cloak of oppressive governments, and it appears to be just a matter of time before newer and less-controllable modes of information-spreading completely tip the balance. In this regard these devices are the printing presses of the 21st Century, and I'll try to remember that the next time someone talking on a cell phone almost runs me over.