Iran has received plenty of help from North Korea, and appears again to be borrowing the concept of "space program" projects to cover a test of long-range missile technology. This time, for good measure, they're throwing in some monkeys.
In the mindset of the Islamic Republic of Iran, they're probably used to seeing "apes and pigs" (see also Qur'an 2:62-65; 5:59-60; and 7:166) beating them into outer space.
"Iran space monkey likely to spark nuclear fears from the West," by Eman El-Shenawi for Al-Arabiya, June 29:
Iran says it plans to send a monkey into space next month as part of its space program, potentially sparking fears from Western countries about the progress of Iran’s missile arsenal.
Five monkeys are undergoing tests, and one will be selected for the flight on board a Kavoshgar-5 rocket, state-run news agency IRNA reported on Monday, quoting the head of Iran's Space Agency.
But the experiment is likely to alarm Israel and its Western allies, who are concerned that Iran is pressing on with its plans for nuclear arms.
The fear is that Iran’s long-range ballistic technology used in Iran’s space program to propel satellites into orbit could also be used to launch atomic warheads.
Tehran has denied such suggestions, saying its nuclear work is purely peaceful and adding that it seeks only energy-producing reactors, IRNA reported.
Last year, Iran announced it had launched a rocket carrying a mouse, turtle and worms into space.
In August 2010 the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said that Iran planned to send a man into space by 2017.
Commence Operation Weather Balloons And A Lawn Chair.
Last week, Iran launched its second domestically built satellite into orbit, the Rasad 1, which it said was designed for transmitting images and for weather forecasting, according to Reuters reports.
Iran says it plans to send a monkey into space next month as part of its space program...
Wow! Such an original, novel idea! Let's test space travel with an ape!
F*cking morons.
Five monkeys are undergoing tests, ......
Hilarious! Maybe they're trying to find out which one is the adulterous one - and then stone her!
You don't believe me? Check out this hadith story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjdYaYh7fXU
! Feces flinging rhesus in space !
How apropos for Iran , planet of the Apes.
But that contradicts the koran, and is therefore blasphemous! According to the book of the all-knowing mediaeval barbarian bandit-leader, the Earth is flat!
This is a logical test in any program to eventually put a man into space. The trick will be to carry it out successfully. I give them a 50/50 chance, but with persistence they'll eventually get it right.
"[I]ran announced it had launched a rocket carrying a mouse, turtle and worms into space."
Gives a whole new meaning to [Iranian] philosophers with their heads in the clouds.
Oh! One out of five. I am sure top monkey Dinnerjacket will make it.
Dang. .you beat me to the button. Drat and double drat.
Today's concerns about Iranian IRBMs that can strike Israel and our bases in the Middle East will pale next to tomorrow's prospects of Iranian ICBMs reaching the American homeland. Anticipate a future when Iran is fielding literally hundreds of nuclear-tipped ICBMs aimed at America. The Cold War will then seem like child's play.
They won't need ICBMs if they are planning to try an EMP strike. The link below is probably an older video, but there is increased concern about this now due to Iran's new test.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qIvs860q6Q
Monkeys? So they're sending the supreme leader and his wives?
Good point. And one can be sure that the Iranians, like everyone else in the nuclear weapons business, are well aware of the possible usage of a nuclear warhead as an EMP weapon.
Why waste monkeys when you have moslems?
....and one day we wake up to see our cities burning.
And the lefties will wonder "wtf happened there? we did EVERYTHING the Muslim world wanted, and then they did this? I just don't gettit......"
2012 is getting closer and closer. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Mayans had it right all along....
Sod it, I'm just gonna get myself some whiskey and amphetamine and have a good time while I still can! :)
Gonna go out and try and get laid too methinks.
Seriously though - isn't it about time the Mighty Satan did us all a favour and obliterated Mecca? Just get it over and done with - better them than us.
This seems to me to be a legitimate space program.
I think they are just trying to find their missing Moon god Allah, space be upon him. After all he has been missing for almost 1400 years.
I think it is ill-advised to send monkeys to the Moon. I don't think Allah is supposed to like them.
A better plan might be to send Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, space be upon them too, to the moon. Having listened to them speak I know they are both already part way there right now.
Certainly putting these two clowns on the Moon would be 'one giant leap forward for mankind.'
I have to say, I am very disappointed in the US Government and its military. When Iraq was invaded after 9/11 most people said it was over oil but I thought I knew better.
I was convinced at the time that in once sense the invasion of Iraq was a diversion. At that time, Iraq was too weak to present a real threat and it wasn't rattling sabres in any case. US oil reserves were not in any danger and even if oil was taken from Iraq it would be at world prices so nothing was going to be gained.
What seemed likely was the US government recognized that Iran was the real threat. It was known at the time to be working on a nuclear bomb but it wasn't known how far they had advanced in that type of technology.
So, the real threat was always Iran; but, how could the US put a stop to that project? Declaring War on Iran wouldn't make sense because there would be no easy access for land troops into that country. They might have been able to land troops in Iran but those troops would have had their backs to the sea.
Taking on Iraq would have made access to Iran not only possible but easy. Getting the UN to back up an invasion of Iraq would be easy because everybody hated Saddam Hussein.
Once Iraq was taken, the US 6th fleet would have an easy gas up station. Once Iraq, once pacified, it would provide a place from which a large US land army could attack the nuclear facilities when the time was right. Actually, a large threatening army on Iran's borders might have given the Iranian Government pause for sober reflection about continuing its bomb project. If things played out well, a war with Iran might not have been required.
It is strange that the data used to go after Iraq and its supposed nuclear program was far far far less than we have now for Iran's nuclear program. Also, we have an Iranian leadership frothing at the mouth proclaiming what they are going to do to 'Big Satan' and 'Little Satan' as soon as they get the power. As far as I can recall, Saddam never made such overt threats about nuclear holocaust.
So this is the time when the US Government and military have to think this out carefully. This is probably their last moment to deal with Iran's nuclear bomb and delivery system project and do so without resorting to nuclear holocaust themselves. They are tactically and strategically placed to stop Armageddon. I hope they don't blink.
Of course, they have to convince Putin that an invasion of Iran is not a prelude to an invasion of Russia by Nato and that may be difficult but I think Putin knows that his country is in as much danger from a nuclear Iran as the US is. If he does, the solution my be an invasion of Iran by the US and Russia.
You wrote:" Of course, they have to convince Putin that an invasion of Iran is not a prelude to an invasion of Russia by Nato and that may be difficult but I think Putin knows that his country is in as much danger from a nuclear Iran as the US is. If he does, the solution my be an invasion of Iran by the US and Russia."
Yes.
But not an invasion. Simply a carpet-bombing campaign, using the truly enormous non-nuke bunker-busters that both Uncle Sam and Mother Russia possess, aimed at taking out every last nuke installation (the Russkies know where they all are, they've been selling the nuke tech to the Persian Muslims...). Then everybody in both Moscow and New York could sleep a lot more peacefully o'nights.
There is a dreadful irony to this, if one is aware of history.
Way back when, it was the West - including Britain - that *prevented* Tsarist Russia from destroying the Ottoman Turks and retaking Constantinople for Eastern Christendom. A great, tragic, disastrous failure: the heirs of western Christendom refused to recognise that the Ummah was a far more dangerous and permanent enemy than Eastern Christendom, and sided with that Enemy, the Ummah, against Christian Russia.
Curiously enough, John Quincy Adams, one of America's greatest sons, despised the western Europeans' (and Britain's) siding with and support of the Turkish Muslim entity, and empathised strongly both with the Greeks and Bulgarians in their struggle to free themselves of the Muslim yoke, and with Tsarist Russia in its struggle of self-defence against Jihad.
Had Adams' insights shaped the policies of western leaders, and had Western Christendom been wiling to *help* their Eastern brethren rather than hindering them, Anatolia would be no worse off than Central Europe today, Constantinople would be a Christian city, the Muslim genocide of the Armenians would never have happened, the Hagia Sophia - the most beautiful church in Christendom - would have been a Greek Orthodox church again for some 200 years, and it is quite possible that the psychological boost of being the daughter (Russia) who rescued the Mother (Constantinople) may have had healing effects upon the Russian psyche, such that the Communist revolution might have been averted. Might have beens, might have beens.
And now we have the reverse situation. This time it is 'the West' that needs to be encouraged to destroy the warmaking capacity of a major Muslim entity (in this case, the Persian Muslims) and this time it is **Russia** who, instead of assisting her non-Muslim neighbours to destroy a Muslim bully's capacity to do harm, *protects* and arms that bully against the West...just as the West, 200 odd years ago, foolishly protected and armed the Turkish Muslim bully, preventing Russia from giving him the solid thrashing and annihilating defeat that he richly deserved.
We infidels - western or eastern - have to stop this awful habit of being suckered into siding with Muslims against our fellow-Infidels.
Post scriptum: I don't know how diligently you read these threads, and whether you may not have come across it already, for I have mentioned it on various occasions - especially when we have had Russian guests at this forum.
But here is an article that discusses - and gives extensive samples from - John Quincy Adams' remarkable series of essays on Islam, jihad, the Greek war of independence and the Russo-Turkish war.
I firmly believe that the best thing anyone could do right now is dig out those essays from where they are buried in the depths of a library, and re-issue them in pamphlet form: not only in the English they were written in, but also, and this is most important, **in modern Russian**, with suitable scholarly annotations. With a dedication - this is most important - to the following departed souls: the non-Muslim dead of September 11 2001; the children of Beslan; and to all Russian and US servicemen killed by jihadists in Afghanistan, 1980s-2011. The book to be launched simultaneously in Moscow and in New York City.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F3F5C99B-338A-4BC1-A4B2-585EFE643619
John Quincy Adams Knew Jihad
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, September 29, 2004
The essays comprise:
“Unsigned essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece, written while JQA was in retirement, before his election to Congress in 1830”
[Chapters X-XIV (pp. 267-402) in The American Annual Register for 1827-28-29. New York, 1830.]
I have already also mentioned another fervent abolitionist, the Unitarian clergyman James Freeman Clarke, a contemporary of JQA.
Clarke wrote about Islam in chapter 11 of his book 'Ten Great Religions'.
And here is what we find in section 5 'religious doctrines and practices among the Mohammedans'.
'Two recent travellers, Mr. Palgrave and Mr. Vambéry, have described the present state of Mohammedanism in Central Arabia and Turkistan, or Central Asia.
"Barth has described it as existing among the negroes in North Africa.
"Count Gobineau has told us of Islam as it is in Persia at the present day.
"Mr. MacFarlane, in his book "Kismet, or the Doom of Turkey," has pointed out the gradual decay of that power, and the utter corruption of its administration.
"After reading such works as these,—and among them let us not forget Mr. Lane's "Modern Egyptians,"—the conclusion we must inevitably come to is, that the worst Christian government, be it that of the Pope **or the Czar,** [ my emphasis - dda] is very much better than the best Mohammedan government...
'According to Mr. MacFarlane, it would be a blessing to mankind to have the [Muslim - dda] Turks driven out of Europe and Asia Minor, and to have Constantinople become the capital of Russia."