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A HIGH-SPEED Porsche crash has become a symbol of growing inequality in Iran, with even the country’s top religious leader speaking out against corruption that has spawned extreme wealth for the 1%.
The New York Times reports that in Iran, “a new class of untouchable 1 percenters hoards money, profiting from sanctions and influential relations, leaving Iran’s middle classes to face the full force of the country’s deepening economic woes”.
The crash
Last month, a 20-year-old woman from a poor part of Tehran crashed a yellow Porsche carrying the 21-year-old grandson of a high-ranking religious cleric in Iran. They both died instantly.
When photos of the wreckage appeared on social media, Iranians started criticising Parivash Akbarzadeh and the grandson, Mohammad Hossein Rabbani-Shirazi.
One commenter wrote on Instagram, according to The Times:
Thank God that even when there is no justice in this world in distributing money and wealth, there is justice in death. I love God’s justice that rich and young people also die along with the desperate poor people who have no hope in life.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, even commented on the controversy, saying that young rich people showing off their wealth “creates psychological insecurity in the society.”
The gap between rich and poor
Outrage over the widening gap between rich and poor has been building in Iran for years.
Another sign of the exorbitant wealth among Iran’s elite made the news in 2011.
The Washington Post reported that Iran’s wealthy had taken to eating ice cream covered in edible gold. Despite the country’s promise to distribute its oil wealth evenly, only a small group of well-connected Iranians have benefitted.
The Financial Times wrote in 2013 that Iran’s economy had been hurt by US and European Union sanctions, noting that as much as 40% of Iranians lived below the poverty line, a dramatic increase since 2005, when that figure was about 22%.
Luxury cars have become a particularly powerful symbol of the economic inequality in the country. AFP reported in 2012 that Iran was seeing a “luxury car boom,” with people paying as much as $360,000 for the high-end vehicles because of a high import tax.
AFP noted that working-class Iranians were then having to survive on an average monthly salary of $700.
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Can a body be mummified in a week, considering the humidity in that part of the world?
I saw the guy Dave.
The body was well preserved considering the length of time that he had been dead.
At first it was thought that it was murder when a local fisherman brought him ashore.
Poor guy.
Apparently he was a very experienced sailor.
Interesting article here (graphic warning):
His last comunication was a year ago and the condition of the interior of the yacht would seem to indicate a much longer timeframe than one week. I’m no expert but I wouldn’t have thought one week would be enough to mumify a body like this.
He was mummified by the ocean winds, warm temperatures and salt air according to the Examiner.
I saw the pictures aswell. Noway all that mildew grew in 7 days. Saw a reprt the boat was seen adrift in early Jan
According to the Independent article linked above..
“has been discovered on his yacht drifting off the coast of the Phillipines seven years after the last reported sighting and a year after the last message received from him”
Don’t know where the 7 days idea came from…He’s been dead a while!
Great way to go.
So a body can be mummified by sea air in the space of a week? I belive this to be a shoddy article.
Can’t really call it a shoddy article if they’re reporting what the coroner has said.
@craig
pretty sure the coroner just said he died of a heart attack, not how long ago it happened.
“The German national is estimated to have been dead for more or less seven days,” he added, citing a police statement by police in the southern Philippines.”
No it literally says it there in your quote. The “dead more or less seven days, citing a police statement” part.
“acute myocardial infarction” – a heart attack if you’re a working class schmuck!
Oh no, that feels like a heart attack, I’d better strip naked. You can always trust the Filipino police when it comes to foreigners.
I dunno, if you’re isolated on a boat in the Pacific ocean there’s probably not much point in being dressed all the time.
If I was on my own yacht cruising around the Philippines you can be damn sure I’d be naked too.
he was German , Germans on yachts are usually Naked , and it doesnt matter that he was German, most single handed sailors sail naked when the weather is good …
He is covered with salt from sea spray from waves washing over the boat.
That can happen in days in the blistering tropical heat.
Salt water evaporates in minutes in the tropics, leaving a salt crust on everything.
He is encrusted in salt.
Mind you.
We humans preserve fish by salting them.
The sea strikes back at humans.
P.S.
The fact that seabirds had not already picked him clean into a skeleton means that he was dead for only a week or two at most.
I wonder how much cash he had on board. None? What a surprise
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