IRAN AND EGYPT: NO, IT'S NOT QUITE LIKE THAT, RACHEL

From MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show:

Every year they commemorate this date in Tehran and at today's big march President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad praised the protesters in Egypt saying, quote, "it is your right to freely choose this path. The Iranian nation backs this right of yours." By "this right of yours" he means this right of Egypt's, not the Iranian people. The Iranian regime is making a big show of backing the Egyptian people's rights, but not extending the same courtesy to its own citizens. Eight Iranian activists including planners of Monday's protest inspired by Egypt are now under house arrest.

More here (click on the "transcript" button on the video panel, or just watch the video--what the hell, it's only two minutes).

Okay, point well taken, Rachel: Iran's rhetoric doesn't really match up with its actions. The Persian nation continues to be, after over three decades, a bit longer than Mubarek's reign in Egypt, a religiously oriented dictatorship, a theocracy that denies its people both civil and human rights. For President Ahmadinejad to throw in his support for Egypt's democratic revolution appears to be, at first glance to Western eyes, wildly hypocritical.

But let's take two seconds to delve only a bit more deeply. Egypt just toppled a US supported dictator who for decades tortured his own people and suppressed their rights, just as Iran did with the Shah some thirty two years ago. Both countries are in the Middle East. Both countries are Muslim, albeit Sunni in Egypt, and Shia in Iran. Both revolutions were relatively bloodless, featuring enormous concentrations of citizens in the streets, shouting slogans, denouncing their dictators--okay, there was a lot of anti-American rhetoric in the Iranian demonstrations back in the day, and hardly any in Egypt these past few weeks, but you get my drift. That is, despite the apparent contradiction, there are, indeed, some very big similarities between these revolutions, probably the biggest being a sense of overthrowing US imperialism.

So, from Ahmadinejad's point of view, there is no hypocrisy. He's talking about Muslim countries having the right to free themselves from American domination, not democracy as some worthy national goal--indeed, that makes these Iranian protesters recently arrested out to be counter-revolutionaries, bad guys, not good guys. I mean, I sure would like him to be praising democracy, and, you know, trying to get it going in Iran, but that's not really what I'm getting at here.

It is a bit disturbing that someone as smart and insightful as Maddow falls into the standard corporate media US establishment talking points on the Middle East, rightfully calling out Iran for its oppressive nature, but failing to paint a more subtle and nuanced picture that would help viewers understand the region better than as simply a land of "evil doers." I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised because this is the corporate news media we're talking about. But I've really gotten to dig Rachel Maddow these last couple of years.

I suppose I expect better from her.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$