Behind the Headlines/March 25

Jamshid Chalangi:

We continue tonight’s program with offering our deepest sympathy to all those Iranians who have lost their loved ones in the ongoing devastating floods across the country.

But it appears that the combination of nature’s wrath and the corruption and inefficiency among the regime’s officials have taken their toll on our already suffering nation in this Nowruz time.

And this disastrous situation could have been well predicted given the mismanagement of our country’s water and utility resources over the four decades that this regime has been in power.

Now we listen to our special guest the satirical poet Mr Haloo, for his views on the current plight of the Iranians in light of the ongoing economic and environmental woes.

Mr Haloo:

Naturally I can not congratulate our suffering people for the Nowruz occasion given what they are going through.

It is in our popular culture that when a regime that rules over us is repressive, even nature will join it to cause more miseries on us, as it is the case now.

All over the world governments put in place measures to face any natural disasters with efficiency and good management to save the lives of their people.

However, in our country it is the complete reverse as our officials destroy all understructure foundations that fight off natural disasters for commercial gains.

They look upon our nation’s natural and human resources as money making machines that must be plundered as they have no sense of responsibility towards the nation.

They have destroyed our forests to sell of the lugs and diverted rivers to their own farming lands and built shaky dams to irrigate their fruit orchards and what we see in the current devastating floods is the consequences of decades of their theft of our nation’s wealth.