Five days ago I first posted about watching a woman die on the streets of Tehran.  At that time, she was nameless, but the sight of her bleeding on the streets as the life drained out of her, had quite an impact on me.  I literally watched her die.  

 

        Here was the situation of a regime feeding its already bloated ego by mowing down a defenseless young woman, whose only weapon, was her vocal chords.  Her vocal chords were silenced, but she is "talking" louder than she did while alive.  This young woman is now known worldwide.  Her name is Neda.  This could become a name that the grand designers of repression in Iran will come to fear. 

        Thomas Jefferson said it best: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants.  It is its natural manure." 

        Neda's blood has refreshed the withering tree of liberty in Iran.  Those grand rulers may win this skirmish, in what could turn out to be a protracted and intractable struggle.  But they and their supporters are going to learn that once that freedom genie is let out of the bottle of tyranny, it will not be so easy to force it back in.

 

        The grand rulers do have plenty of force in the form of guards, militias, and other assorted "law" enforcement minions, and it is force sufficient to suppress any rebellion--especially when the opposing side is "armed" with stones.  As a refresher on how stones could mow down even a giant, they may want to check out the Bible, the little story about David versus Goliath.  David was the one with the stones.  Goliath is the one who did not live to tell about the fight. 

        Five days after the murder of Neda, the grand oppressors have clamped down even further on any freedom of expression.  Professors have been arrested.  Some foreign diplomats have been expelled.  All foreign correspondents have been banned from reporting any news of events unfolding in Iran, unless it is something as mundane as a grand oppressor getting a haircut?  I may have struck a nerve there.  They probably have locked up all of the barbers!  Are there any more killed, than the twenty or so Iranians already reported as killed?  We don't know.  We may never know.  Ever since that "free and democratic" election, "freedom" is becoming more and more elusive in Iran.

        Ironically, the grand ones in Iran, may have been granted a temporary reprieve from world scrutiny by the death of a celebrity.  This death has driven all other news, including the strangling of the protests (and protestors) in Iran, from the world news stage. Michael Jackson, pop star extraordinaire, died today.  Although the death of Farrah Fawcett of Charlie's Angels fame, preceded his, it was his death that pushed all other events, including the repression in Iran, from television screens.  May both of these two souls rest in peace.

        As famous as those two superstars were, it is the murder of a young woman in Iran, that remains uppermost in my mind.  We are a celebrity-driven society, and I can understand the need to pay homage to the king of pop, and an angel of Charlie.  However, please do not let the grand oppressors off the hook. Mourn the celebrity deaths, but return to the vigil and vigilance of events in Iran.  Let not this struggle for freedom, be transformed into a deathwatch for that tree of liberty in Iran, already nourished with the blood of Neda and her countrymen and women. 

        I really wonder if those of us in the rest of the world, will ever know how many gallons of Iranian blood watered the tree.  This time, it was the blood of patriots that provided the "natural manure" for the Iranian tree of liberty.  Next time?