Iranian Elections

Now that I'm unemployed, I have all day to read every article in my Google reader. This means that I've been reading a lot about these elections. As soon as the results were published, most people assumed there was something wrong. Now there are articles describing rioting against Ahmadinejad's government and the election process as a whole. Young Iranians and especially women feel they were cheated. It is not my place to say the election process was flawed, or that the Iranian governmental system is unstable. However, it appears increasingly likely that a democratic process was attempted and the incumbent government intentionally interfered with its results. If this turns out to be true, it puts our government in an awkward position - not because we have to play nice with Ahmadinejad's government if/when it is officially accepted as the winner, but because we care greatly about free and fair elections, and that phrase pops up frequently in discussions about countries with "unstable" governments. As it becomes increasingly evident that the elections were neither fair nor free, the US sort of ends up eating its words...or at least ignoring its stated policy.

I don't know how much this will really interfere with our plans for the Middle East. I assume Ahmadinejad's election will make Israel more uneasy about giving up territory to a Palestinian state, but that could just as easily be attributed to Netanyahu's being the prime minister instead of Tzipi Livni. There are always so many different factors in play.

I've always felt that change in nations has to come from within the nation itself and from the nations' own people, rather than be foisted upon them by an outside force. Hopefully this will occur in Iran sooner rather than later. If Iranian citizens who oppose Ahmadinejad constitute a large enough proportion of Iranian society, they will destabilize the system (assuming that the Iranian government doesn't go the way of SLARK in Myanmar/Burma, and start imprisoning everyone who makes the slightest objection to government policy).

Introduction/Welcome

I've never had a blog before, and I don't expect this one to be particularly groundbreaking. However, a friend and I recently discussed being unemployed, and he told me that starting a blog while out of work helps keep up one's writing skills. Blogs get your name "out there" and force you to reflect in an eloquent and comprehensible manner.

Second, there is a great deal going on in the world right now. I am not especially qualified to comment on these events, but as a citizen of this country (and the world), it seems prudent to have a venue in which to discuss my thoughts and observances.