Iran Has Put a Satellite Into Orbit 923
Dekortage writes "'Dear Iranian nation, your children have placed the first indigenous satellite into orbit,' announced Iran's President Ahmadinejad yesterday. The satellite, named Omid ('hope'), was launched to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Video shown on Iranian television shows a Safir-2 rocket rising into the sky, as a follow-up to a test firing last August."
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:4, Informative)
Don't worry, they'll probably only go after people that supplied their enemies with weapons [wikipedia.org].
PS. D'oh! [wikipedia.org]
Re:Citation Needed? - Confirmed (Score:5, Informative)
from cnn:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/03/iran.satellite/index.html [cnn.com]
"The United States has confirmed that Iran launched a low-earth orbit satellite on Monday night, two U.S. officials told CNN's Barbara Starr. "
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:1, Informative)
FYI: Canada has nuclear power stations AND has launched satellites. Are you scared now? We have just demonstrated that we can drop nuclear beer and back-bacon on any city worldwide.
Actually, Canada has NOT launched satellites.
While there are many Canadian satellites in orbit, they have all been launched using the facilities of other nations, primarily the USA.
Troll (Score:5, Informative)
"Acting up"? *Sigh* Why do I respond to trolls?
Go read a bit of modern Iranian history [wikipedia.org], before you fall back on stereotypes of Islam-vs-the-rest-of-the-world. If it hadn't been for our meddling (oh, overthrowing governments, oil grabs etc--none of this is controversial), Iran would not be in confrontation with us today. Twenty years after the revolution, they tried peace overtures, but Bush decided instead to dub them an "Axis of Evil" (wow, thank god our era of world-as-cartoon presidents is over). I can't understand your claim of Iran expanding its values into Israel.
We have no right to overthrow other people's governments, and even less right to act surprised when they get pissed over it. And speaking of Israel: when they behave all might is right, others are going to try to acquire might to counter that.
Re:Take them at face value. (Score:5, Informative)
To that end, I suppose that those who would argue that strategic missile defense cannot be built, or that militarization of space should be avoided, or that Iran is not a threat, need to rethink that.
Strategic missile defense is a waste of money and effort, equivalent to airport metal detectors. They're security theater - if successful, they may prevent an attack from that vector, but their real value lies in making the citizens feel safer and deterring attempts along that one vector.
Problem is, there are so many other vectors that are easier - millions if not billions of shipping containers enter the US each year entirely uninspected. Why mess with a launch and guidance system able to withstand launch and reentry stresses when you could just build a Fat Man and put it in the back of a van?
Want a scarier idea? Say we do start inspecting all the shipping containers to enter the country... where would we do it? Probably dockside in major coastal cities, so even if we do happen to check the right container, a simple deadman switch would still make for a successful attack.
Defense is not the solution, and security theater is just a waste.
CNN citing U.S. officials good enough? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/03/iran.satellite/index.html [cnn.com] [cnn.com]
The United States has confirmed that Iran launched a low-earth orbit satellite on Monday night, two U.S. officials told CNN's Barbara Starr.
There were no indications of any weapons activity on the two-stage rocket, although the rocket is capable of launching long-range weapons, the officials said.
Re:Respect (Score:1, Informative)
But Iran isn't a country with nukes; Iran is a US-hostile country with orbital capability and a nuclear development program, but no functioning nukes. US strategic policy is pretty deterministic in this case: "let the Israelis bomb the bejesus of them."
Re:....With a Return Address (Score:4, Informative)
Which I'm sure will greatly comfort the few million who die when that missiles comes back down.
At least when we were facing down the Russians, we knew we had a rational enemy who wouldn't launch without a damn good reason. But when you've got religious fanatics in charge of nuclear arsenals ... well, the extremist Muslims have no qualms with dying for their religion, nor do they seem to have much of a problem with causing the deaths of other Muslims. Really, whether Iran ever launches or not isn't going to be decided by anything we can predict - more likely that decision will rest on whether the reining mullahs are totally insane, or just a little-bit insane.
Ooops, yes it would seem they made it (Score:5, Informative)
Was being lazy...after digging a little
"Two objects from the launch, likely the Omid satellite and part of its booster, are circling Earth in oval-shaped orbits.
The orbits range in altitude from low points of 153 miles to high points of 235 miles and 273 miles. The orbital inclination is 55.5 degrees, according to U.S. military tracking data."
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sfn-090203-iran-satellite-launch.html [space.com]
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:3, Informative)
Well, yes obviously. But being able to place something in orbit is probably the most significant milestone on the road to being able to place a warhead any place on the planet. Once you achieve that, then terrestrial distances are not a barrier.
In fact, the Sputnik rocket was simply one of several prototype variants of the R-7 rocket, the world's first ICBM. The Sputnik launches were in essence part of the testing program for that missile, which had its first successful flight a little more than a month before Sputnik 1. The Sputnik rocket was little more than a shortened version of that rocket.
For historical reference, the timeline looks like this:
May 15, 1957: First launch test of prototype R-7 fails, traveling only 400km.
August 21, 1957: on third attempt, R-7 prototype makes first successful flight of 6000km.
October 4, 1957: Sputnik launched on slightly shorter, lighter version of successful R-7 prototype.
December 15, 1959: An R-7 is deployed, becoming the world's first operational ICBM.
Total time from achieving Earth Orbit to Functional ICBM: 26 months.
yes, they are (Score:3, Informative)
hezboullah and hamas kill lebanese and palestinians regularly. after israel's last response in gazza, 150 palestinians who supported fatah were gathered and tortured. numerous were killed, or maimed by guns as an 'example'. it doesnt matter who are they fighting - a terrorist organization has a life of its own. its basically a fascist level rigid hierarchy ideological organization
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:3, Informative)
North Korea never invaded any nation, it was a civil war.
Do you like Ike? (Score:1, Informative)
You shouldn't have slept through history class. The incident [wikipedia.org] took place during Eisenhower's presidency.
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:3, Informative)
There is nothing about the term president that implies that you were elected, it just means leader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:5, Informative)
Apollo 11 ran on an insanely sucky chip
Apollo 11 (and all the others) actually ran on a shitload of NOR gates, the single chip CPU not having been invented yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer [wikipedia.org]
Re:Take them at face value. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:5, Informative)
Sputnik was launched with an ICBM -an R-7 [russianspaceweb.com] to be exact.
Re:Respect (Score:3, Informative)
How about bombed instead of annexed?
List of countries the USA has bombed since the end of World War II
List taken from http://www.btinternet.com/~davidbeaumont/msf/listbombed.html [btinternet.com]
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:5, Informative)
Apples and oranges. An accidental bombing under the fog of war hardly compares to overrunning a foreign embassy and holding the people therein hostage for over a year.
Re:Respect (Score:4, Informative)
Also, at the time our bases were put in Japan it was in order to keep China happy. At the time everyone in the region was terrified of a Japan with a large military. In order to have Japan not rebuild a significant military we had to promise to defend them. This in turn kept China mostly happy.
The other option was to make Japan a state. Something the US rarely has done after defeating someone in a war. In fact the US generally goes out of it's way to give the country back to the people.
Re:Respect (Score:3, Informative)
hmmm, did you miss your history classes?
Imperialism is not a system based on conquer and occupy foreign land, but actually a system that install local puppet governments (Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Georgia, just to name a few...) and control their economies so the Imperialist country can ship back home the local controlled countries' production at very cheap prices.
Basically what the US has been doing since forever...
The definition you using for Imperialism is the one from the Civi games, and if you are an American geek, being your country famous for your ignorance and pathetic cowboy mentality, that is probably all you got close to any world history...
Re:Citation Needed? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Respect (Score:3, Informative)
> Iraq (to UN): "We are evicting your WMD inspectors!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxdKlIZVDTQ [youtube.com]
6m16s.
Who was he telling to leave??
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:1, Informative)
I'm not aware of Iran making threats to wipe neighbors off the map either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel
--
According to Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, Ahmadinejad's statement should be translated as:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[11]
According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian". Instead, "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."[12]
--
This is akin to saying we want Naziism wiped off the pages of time. Doesn't mean we want Germany wiped off the map.
You've been drinking too much Zionist koolaid. Turn off your TV and stop reading Zionist propaganda.
Re:Respect (Score:5, Informative)
Really? When exactly did this happen, in the lead up to the last invasion? UN inspectors were in Iraq only days before the US invaded and only left because the UN told them to get the hell out before the US started dropping high-explosives on their heads. Hans Blix was telling the UN Security Council flat out that Iraq was complying with the inspections and essentially pleaded for more time to complete the inspections before the US decided that Iraq had WMD. The US ignored all of that and invaded anyway.
Some people have fucking short memories.
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:2, Informative)
Texas (Score:3, Informative)
Ahmm - what about those 5 states you took from Mexico?
Bribed-Head-Of-States. (Score:3, Informative)
On dicovery channel I recently saw a report about one of our heads of state which had his election payed and fixed by the USA. No they did not fix the votes - the USA swamped us with advertising until we elected the Adenauer into office.
Pretty similar to what happened in Ukrania recently.
Re:Your take on the contras is hilarious (Score:3, Informative)
Hilariously disgusting. The Sandinistas were democratically elected.
Yes, they were elected. My Nicaraguan friend that lived there at the time remembers it well.
He told me how the Sandinista troops, dressed in the nice new uniforms and carrying the brand-new Soviet-made AK47's that were both fresh off the boat from Cuba came to his village and rounded everyone up and herded them to where they had the ballot boxes set up, and carefully watched as each person put their ballot in the "correct" box. The one they actually took with them instead of the other that they threw in the fire of his neighbors' house. His neighbor that put his ballot in the "not-correct" box. Too bad about the mans' family inside.
The contras are generally acknowledged as "death squads,"...
Well, history is (re)written by the victors, after all.
Furthermore the US has been sentenced to pay $1 billion by the International Court of Justice in restitution, which it refuses to pay.
The same "International Court of Justice" populated by those who view the US & its' allies as an impediment to their own very questionable agendas?
Stick that right wing murderous propaganda up yours
Oooh, I love it when you talk dirty! You sure got a purty mouth!
Strat
Re:Dear Iranian nation (Score:3, Informative)
You're right about him being second in command, and I agree that the President of Iran is not powerless, but the Iranian constitution limits the President's powers. The Iranian President is also not in charge of the military. Only the Supreme Leader can wage war.
The President of Iran is really only responsible for setting economic policies.
Here's an older PBS [pbs.org] page that outlines the power structure in Iran. While it is somewhat dated, the power structure in Iran hasn't changed since the 1990's.
Basically, Ahmadinejad can make as many threats as he wants, but he cannot carry them out without explicit blessings from the supreme leader, which is not likely to happen.
Re:Racist Piece Of Garbage (Score:3, Informative)
promising to wipe Iran off the map
Please don't spread myths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#.22Wiped_off_the_map.22_or_.22Vanish_from_the_pages_of_time.22_translation [wikipedia.org]
Re:Respect (Score:4, Informative)
Were you paying attention to the eventually "non-newbie" guy who held the office for eight years before Bush? He repeatedly said that Iraq's WMDs and missile programs were a grave threat. Not the possibility of them, not the if-we-find-them-they-might-be, but the existence of them - including their demostrated use against thousands of people in the north of the country, and the huge stockpiles of them seen and recorded by inspectors following the Kuwait invasion and spanking episode. Clinton even launched cruise missiles into Iraq with the intention of destroying a facility that he was convinced (by the same CIA upon which Bush was relying as he took office, run by people that Clinton put there) was making WMDs.
As for Bush "painting a picture" of Iran... are you not listening when the head of every government in Europe describes it the same way? When Obama - now in receipt of the same intelligence that Bush looked at every day for years - is now saying the same thing?
Iranian War Games (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=DAR20060821&articleId=3027 [globalresearch.ca]
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1018815.html [haaretz.com]