The Kleptocrats

By Paul Iddon

'The 1%' doesn't even begin to describe how small the minority that have stolen Persia's vast wealth for themselves are.

It's relatively rare that one encounters something so profoundly stupid that one actually has to stand in abject awe. However if one thing over the past year had me stand back in abject awe it would be those American academics who went on an official state visit to Tehran last year to hold lectures on the economic inequality the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement in the United States has held numerous rallies in protest against.

That incident was a fitting microcosm of the profound ignorance exhibited by not only large parts of American society when it comes to the repressive state of Iran today, but also by what we sometimes call American academia. The idea that the regime ruling Iran at present is somehow one that sympathizes with those opposing economic inequality is absurd. It's also a very sinister idea when it is propagated by such professors and people in academia who really do know better – unless of course they really are 'that' stupid.

Other attendants of the regimes arcane little conference included, among others, Abdul Alim Musa the fanatical imam of the Masjid Al-Islam mosque in Washington DC. A man whose outspoken pronouncements are notorious for there anti-Semitic and conspiratorial nature. He has asserted that 9/11 was a conspiracy orchestrated by the United States and that the Occupy Wall Street Movement was spearheading a fight against "global Zionism". He said, with a straight face, at that particular conference in the "Islamic Republic" of Iran that "there is no democracy and human equality in the [United States] country."

Didactic dolts with ceaseless casuistry doesn't even begin to describe these people. The blithesome disregard they have for the negation of the most basic rights of the Iranians who are repressed by a clerical cabal of elites who have plundered their country is very salient.

That conference was a wholly shameful affair, and one that still makes me feel sick when I think about it. Whilst ordinary Iranians are struggling to stay above water the country cannot, as it seems, import enough Porshes for the “pious”. This represents in its own right a creepy hark back to how nasty the situation was in Iraq in the 1990's when Saddam's son Uday couldn't get his grubby hands on enough shiny new sports cars to amuse himself whilst large swaths of the Iraqi population starved to death. 

Any business that brings in considerable capital is controlled or largely owned by members of the regimes Revolutionary Guard or Basiji paramilitary forces. Forces which seek out anyone voicing any form of dissent to the way their country is run and their destiny decided by those who proclaim that they hold ownership over them.

Nevertheless the attitudes of those at the 'inequality' conference reflect a general trend that is beginning in the west amongst academics and former politicians who package and sell their apologist arguments of totalitarianism and oppression as 'radical'. George Galloway for example has his own show on Press TV. Each episode of this call-in show consists of him shouting abuse and cheap slogans at callers, bellowing like an idiot and consistently exculpating the crimes of the Iranian regime whilst simultaneously claiming he cares about human rights. He has in the past fawned in person on both Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad, the latter of whom he is trying to distance himself from as of late. He described the Baathist Hussein family rule of Iraq as revolutionary in the same way Mao's 'Cultural Revolution' was for China. He also had a personal relationship with that heinous and criminal regime, particularly with its spokesperson Tariq Aziz.

Speaking of personal relationships and tyrannical regimes one is reminded of Flynt and Hilary Mann Leverett two analysts who have consecrated their efforts to exculpating the Iranian regime. They assert that the United States “come to terms” with the “Islamic Republic”. As was the case with Galloway they have a friend within the regime, in the form of Mohamed Marandi and we also have good reason to believe they have their own personal business interest in seeing to the United States “coming to terms” with the “Islamic Republic” given the fact that Mrs. Leverett is CEO of the energy and consulting firm called Stratega. It is therefore quite disturbing that all of their research consistently whitewashes the regime when it comes to its domestic repression and foreign support of terrorism.

Today Iranian journalists are once again being targeted and denied free speech in their own country. Many of whom will likely be tortured, humiliated degraded and completely deprived of their human rights as was the case with many before them as this brutal regime undergoes another charade of an election. Another insult to the trod upon and oppressed people of Persia.

'Westerners', particularly Americans, of a certain age who learn about history can prove to be quite naïve or unable to put themselves mentally into a time and place. They seem to have a mental predisposition that insists that, for example, were they Jews being lined up to be gassed they would not 'let themselves' be exterminated. History isn't properly understood in this writers view until the reader of it can fully comprehend that those who 'lost' also thought they were the right and righteous ones. Hence, they didn't go into battle thinking they were wrong and therefore going to lose. This is particularly true of slavery in the United States. One must comprehend the extent to which the advocates of slavery promulgated superficial arguments and logic which convinced many Americans that slavery was justifiable to truly understand the history of slavery in the United States. Of course the pro-slavery arguments look obscene and obscure with so much hindsight. But the challenge of history is to see ahistorical nonsense before it becomes just that in 'enlightened' hindsight.

History is yesterday, it cannot be changed. But tomorrow today will be history. Therefore as members of possibly the freest, most open societies of the world 'westerners' have a special obligation not to make superficial apologist arguments and excuses for the oppression of others. They have an obligation not to relativize the ownership and oppression of an entire nation by a small cabal of clerical criminals. If we forgo this elementary moral obligation future generations will look back at such attitudes and wonder what kind of utterly obscure thought process led us to conclude these criminal characters were the legitimate representatives of the learned and civilized people of Persia.