Ron Paul is one of those rare politicians who make sense more often than not but find it hard to make a big enough impact to actually change the status-quo. Why? I don’t know, maybe this whole democracy thing is a delusion, maybe you always need some special interest group behind you to win an election.
I found this speech by Ron Paul, a very thoughtful speech indeed.
These are the most interesting points I found in the speech.
What if we wake up one day and realize that terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others.
What if conservatives who preach smaller government wake up and realize that our interventionist foreign policy provides the greatest incentive to expand the government.
What if we as a nation came to realize that the quest for empires eventually destroys all great nations.
What if Christianity actually preaches peace and not preventive wars of aggression.
What if diplomacy is found to be superior to bombs and bribes.
Contrary to the hopes of West and anyone like me who would not mind a saner regime anywhere in the world that maybe, Ahmadinejad have won the Iranian presidential election and in a landslide too. There are stories of vote rigging and many malpractices but you should always think twice when Western media report on Iran. Whatever the malpractices that were supposedly took place, the win is convincing enough for me.
What I was thinking was actually who would welcome Ahmadinejads win?Of course other than the public of Iran. Ultra nationalist Zionists of Israel could keep using Iran’s nuclear threat to come to power and keep refusing any reasonable middle ground regarding the problems of Palestinians. Neocons in USA who don’t want to see any dialog between USA and Iran would find a very good excuse. Then of course is the religious conservative, terror loving, ruling elite of Tehran, who could keep ignoring reforms and modernity for Iranians and continue on their imaginary revolutions and destabilization of their neighbors. It is very interesting how hardliners in opposite sides of the line could rely on each other for their survival.
The bright side of story? Looks like the majority behind the reformist opposition had been youth and students. Would the next generation be able to take Iran, a country with a wonderful History that had done so much for the human civilazation on a more secular, modern path? Time will tell.
Github is a web based project hosting service based on git that has social networking concepts embedded into it. They call it Social Coding. Apart from standard version control facilities github includes social networking features like RSS feeds and followers. Currently I have the GSOC 2009 project hosted in github and hopefully many more in the future.
