Iran sends monkey into space - Westerners shit their pants

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

First Kim sends something into orbit, now this. I bet trigger fingers are twitching like crazy in the States.

Iran says it has successfully sent a monkey into space.
The primate travelled in a Pishgam rocket, which reached an altitude of some 120km (75 miles) for a sub-orbital flight before "returning its shipment intact", the defence ministry said.
Iranian state TV showed images of the monkey, which was strapped into a harness, being taken to the rocket.
Western nations have expressed concern that Iran's space programme is being used to develop long-range missiles.
Such missiles could potentially be used to carry nuclear warheads.
Iran denies it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and insists its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.
In 2010, Iran successfully sent a rat, turtle and worms into space. But an attempt to send a monkey up in a rocket failed in 2011.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in 2010 that the country planned to send a man into space by 2019.
A domestically-made satellite was sent into orbit for the first time in 2009.

(BBC News)

[LeonJWilliams]

Well it's not the first time so it's not really that significant.

Like the DPRK I can't see either using this against another nation, it would be too suicidal.

[human strike]

How long before Israel sends a monkey to the moon?

[LeonJWilliams]

How long before Israel sends a monkey to the moon?

In a "i've got a bigger dick than you" contest with Iran?

[Geiseric]

First Kim sends something into orbit, now this. I bet trigger fingers are twitching like crazy in the States.

Iran says it has successfully sent a monkey into space.
The primate travelled in a Pishgam rocket, which reached an altitude of some 120km (75 miles) for a sub-orbital flight before "returning its shipment intact", the defence ministry said.
Iranian state TV showed images of the monkey, which was strapped into a harness, being taken to the rocket.
Western nations have expressed concern that Iran's space programme is being used to develop long-range missiles.
Such missiles could potentially be used to carry nuclear warheads.
Iran denies it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and insists its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.
In 2010, Iran successfully sent a rat, turtle and worms into space. But an attempt to send a monkey up in a rocket failed in 2011.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in 2010 that the country planned to send a man into space by 2019.
A domestically-made satellite was sent into orbit for the first time in 2009.

(BBC News)


There honestly is no other practical purpose for space exploration other than the military. I mean the U.S. government is trying the same thing with Iraq. It doesn't matter IF they are even making nuclear weapons. I'd bet U.S. Chinese or Russian corporations would even help them make them for a price. That's just how the arms market works, but the U.S. is just going to have a 1984 esque propaganda war to get people supporting the invasion of Iran.

[o well this is ok I guess]

Hell man I'd watch an Iran-North Korea space race any day.

[LeonJWilliams]

There honestly is no other practical purpose for space exploration other than the military.

Rubbish. There are many reasons for space exploration.

[Brutus]

Obama went bananas

[Rusty Shackleford]

I feel a bit bad for the monkey but its is pretty awesome seeing as in Iran and the DPRK have somewhat independent space and rocket programs. Maybe a bit of help from Russia, China, and or Pakistan (or some central asian republics, namely Kazakhstan?). maaaaaaayyybe.

Reason i say Kazakhstan was because the soviet space program launched and landed there no? Sure, the space program was Soviet and not Kazakh, but they have some stuff left over yeah?

[hashem]

Irans government sends monkeys to space while many ordinary Iranian people cant send their children to school!

this is just waste of money from ordinary peoples point of view.

[Yuppie Grinder]

space exploration is mad decadent
worry about feeding everybody here before you go blowin yr money on rocket ships

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Next it'll be apostates.

[Geiseric]

Rubbish. There are many reasons for space exploration.

Really? At this point with the tech we have, and where the money is flowing, I.e. star wars space defense, the main goal of any state with a standing military, on the moon and in orbit of the earth, is to have the capibility to out manuever other countres and shoot missiles from space. The vast majorty of NASA's work is on weapon development.

[Q]

Has anyone seen independent sources on this? So far this news stays on the level of rumors: No one saw the launch, NORAD saw no blip on their screens, etc.

Simply propaganda?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Really? At this point with the tech we have, and where the money is flowing, I.e. star wars space defense, the main goal of any state with a standing military, on the moon and in orbit of the earth, is to have the capibility to out manuever other countres and shoot missiles from space.

Not so long as the Outer Space Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty) is in force.


The vast majorty of NASA's work is on weapon development.

I'm gonna have to ask you for evidence of this, as the Department of Defence have more than enough money and technical ability to fund their own space projects.

[Yazman]

There honestly is no other practical purpose for space exploration other than the military.

The funniest part about this post is that you're making it while using a computer. A computer that exists because of space exploration (microchips, development funded by Apollo program).

[o well this is ok I guess]

The funniest part about this post is that you're making it while using a computer. A computer that exists because of space exploration (microchips, development funded by Apollo program). There's no reason to suppose this technology not could have existed otherwise.
I mean, it really ought to be no source of pride that much of our modern technology came out of military programs, rather than being developed for public good.

[Yazman]

There's no reason to suppose this technology not could have existed otherwise.

This isn't a discussion of "what if?" though. We can hypothesise until the cows come home - but that isn't really important. What's important is that it does exist because of space exploration.


I mean, it really ought to be no source of pride that much of our modern technology came out of military programs, rather than being developed for public good.The Apollo program wasn't a military program. the US Department of Defense has its own space programs, independent of NASA.

[China studen]

Congratulations to Iran!

The Iranian people are not intimidated by imperialist sanctions. Sanctions against Iran, the Iranian people to be more united. Development national faster.

History, Lenin, Stalin-era Soviet Union so. Mao era China so. Korea so.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Congratulations to Iran!

The Iranian people are not intimidated by imperialist sanctions. Sanctions against Iran, the Iranian people to be more united. Development national faster.

History, Lenin, Stalin-era Soviet Union so. Mao era China so. Korea so.

Yeah, fuck you. Even from the eyes of someone who's never lived there, it should be quite clear that the 'Iranian people' you Stalinist twats rant on about don't want any of this bullshit.

Try pulling the North Korean slave labour rhetoric of the 'Iranian people' on a coalworker there who's just had shit slashed by the minions of glorious leader and backstabber Khomeini and see how long it takes for them to implant a hammer in your face.

[Devrim]

Not only are they making fantastic development in space technology, but also in other fields too:
http://i.radikal.com.tr/GaleriHaber/2013/01/28/fft22_mf1308051.Jpeg

In case anybody is wondering this is a special machine for cutting off fingers.

Devrim

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

"Special machine"? Looks like something one would find in any well-equipped workshop, actually.

But is it really any more fiendish than the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injection in the US, which if I recall reports correctly, paralyses the injectee in horrible pain while slowly killing them?

Bourgeois states are no strangers to barbaric punishments, despite their rhetoric.

[Devrim]

But is it really any more fiendish than the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injection in the US, which if I recall reports correctly, paralyses the injectee in horrible pain while slowly killing them.

No, not at all. There was just a series of pictures (http://www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalGaleriHaber&ArticleID=1118854&CategoryID=81&HaberPage=1) of this on a newspaper website this morning, and I thought I would put one of them up.

Devrim

[Yazman]

MODERATOR ACTION:


Yeah, fuck you. Even from the eyes of someone who's never lived there, it should be quite clear that the 'Iranian people' you Stalinist twats rant on about don't want any of this bullshit.

Try pulling the North Korean slave labour rhetoric of the 'Iranian people' on a coalworker there who's just had shit slashed by the minions of glorious leader and backstabber Khomeini and see how long it takes for them to implant a hammer in your face.

The only person here who's going to get fucked, is you, if you keep making posts like this with flames. Do it again and you'll be infracted.

This constitutes a warning to Choler for flames.

[sixdollarchampagne]

Next it'll be apostates.

I'm really appalled at the finger-cutting machine, but I guess nothing quite tops making executions by hanging a spectator sport. If ever any country needed a workers' revolution against obscurantism, surely it is that one.

[B5C]

space exploration is mad decadent
worry about feeding everybody here before you go blowin yr money on rocket ships


It is about priorities. Look NASA budget is only .5% of US GDP. Some other nations space budgets are smaller than that. More nations spend more on subsidizing business than science.


The vast majorty of NASA's work is on weapon development.

ROFL:

Here is the budget:
http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html

When Bush was in power this was NASA budget.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/NASA_budgetFY05.jpg

That image is out of date now since Obama killed the Constellation program which would send men and women back the moon.

Penny4NASA has this image of NASA budget for 2013:
http://www.space.com/images/i/15238/original/nasa-budget-cuts-120213j-02.jpg

While Obama killing space exploration. Obama did gave the Airforce more technology for missile development.

BTW: Here is the budget for Missile development. No money from NASA.

http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-110211-035.pdf

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Fuck, if only the budget figures for NASA and Defence were reversed.

That's why I actually get fucking angry whenever some moron starts blathering about spending NASA's budget money on feeding people or whatever.

There is more than enough to do both!

[B5C]

I also like to add that some Sci-Fi movie budgets cost more than space programs.

http://ut-images.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/exploring-space-720.jpg

[I <3 short shorts]

Some vegan said this was horrific on facebook. I asked would she rather a human being die in space or Monkey.

She then explained to me how killing was wrong. I found this ironic as she eats quinoa which due to western vegan demand is resulting in the Bolivian peasentry starving to death. She then sent me a link on factory farming which compared killing chickens to the holocaust.

I stopped debating with her soon after.

[I <3 short shorts]

space exploration is mad decadent
worry about feeding everybody here before you go blowin yr money on rocket ships

Not true, the discoveries of science during space exploration have the potential to be game changing for humanity.

The same as the collider and other projects that cost a lot in a monetary economy. Science and things like space exploration are far more likely to end the terrible archaic and chaotic unproductive system we have now than any social movement does.

I remember a certain black revolutionary said in the sixties that science holds the key to man mastering his own destiny and achieving god state. When I read that it inspired me and i still have that inspiration and optimism today.

[ckaihatsu]

Science and things like space exploration are far more likely to end the terrible archaic and chaotic unproductive system we have now than any social movement does.


This is highly debatable and, as a whole, is no good for humanity's self-image.

Sure, if some "magic bullet" happens to be developed and does for social relations what the Internet has done for information, I'd be all for it. But I'd far rather see people organize in collectively self-empowering ways to *consciously* usurp the world's capitalist relations of power and *consciously* usher in a self-determining world.

A purely technological solution to the question of humane-ness might be uplifting, like a shortcut to something, but could also leave the overall *social* issue unanswered and unresolved if not addressed in a pro-active way by everyone on the face of the earth.

[I <3 short shorts]

This is highly debatable and, as a whole, is no good for humanity's self-image.

Sure, if some "magic bullet" happens to be developed and does for social relations what the Internet has done for information, I'd be all for it. But I'd far rather see people organize in collectively self-empowering ways to *consciously* usurp the world's capitalist relations of power and *consciously* usher in a self-determining world.

A purely technological solution to the question of humane-ness might be uplifting, like a shortcut to something, but could also leave the overall *social* issue unanswered and unresolved if not addressed in a pro-active way by everyone on the face of the earth.

This is rose tinted your view of thins though. Just because we would want change to be powered by social upheaval via working class organising does not mean it is going to happen or is more likely to happen than a scientific revolution.

However surely they are not mutually exclusive.

[ckaihatsu]

This is rose tinted your view of thins though. Just because we would want change to be powered by social upheaval via working class organising does not mean it is going to happen or is more likely to happen than a scientific revolution.

However surely they are not mutually exclusive.


Let me put it *this* way: Let's say that technological advances developed to the point of superseding all need for all industrial processes -- perhaps 3-D printing and other technologies enabled everyone to be sheer d.i.y.-ers and consumers, with no need anymore for a working class anywhere.

So while the technology in this scenario would surpass the *material* need for workers, it would not automatically bury all pre-existing industrial implements and wipe everyone's minds clean as to their existence. If some more-power-minded types happened to continue to control such implements they would have a competitive material advantage over the rest of humanity who would be mostly content in more-or-less self-contained lives.

What social force would then be required to end exploitation, even of a kind that festered on while having been materially supplanted by sheer technological solutions -- ?

[I <3 short shorts]

Let me put it *this* way: Let's say that technological advances developed to the point of superseding all need for all industrial processes -- perhaps 3-D printing and other technologies enabled everyone to be sheer d.i.y.-ers and consumers, with no need anymore for a working class anywhere.

So while the technology in this scenario would surpass the *material* need for workers, it would not automatically bury all pre-existing industrial implements and wipe everyone's minds clean as to their existence. If some more-power-minded types happened to continue to control such implements they would have a competitive material advantage over the rest of humanity who would be mostly content in more-or-less self-contained lives.

What social force would then be required to end exploitation, even of a kind that festered on while having been materially supplanted by sheer technological solutions -- ?

I never said iot would end capitalism, I said it would bring about the conditions where the state and capitalism become totally untennable.

Again I am not speaking in absolutes, how can any of us really know.

[ckaihatsu]

I never said iot would end capitalism, I said it would bring about the conditions where the state and capitalism become totally untennable.

Again I am not speaking in absolutes, how can any of us really know.


I base my reasoning on Trotsky's 'mixed and uneven development', which would most likely continue to be the reality in a scenario of a technological uptick, however significant.

Social relations themselves could transform into something more-*backward*, like a global caste system, though at a more-advanced and relatively *individually*-empowering state of tool-usage. The social question, then, would remain unresolved.

[I <3 short shorts]

I base my reasoning on Trotsky's 'mixed and uneven development', which would most likely continue to be the reality in a scenario of a technological uptick, however significant.

Social relations themselves could transform into something more-*backward*, like a global caste system, though at a more-advanced and relatively *individually*-empowering state of tool-usage. The social question, then, would remain unresolved.

Maybe you are right. Do you have any of your own opinions or just that dead dudes?

[ckaihatsu]

Maybe you are right. Do you have any of your own opinions or just that dead dudes?


Yeah -- which ones do you want to hear?

[I <3 short shorts]

Yeah -- which ones do you want to hear?

Illmatic v me against the world?

[ckaihatsu]

Illmatic v me against the world?


Whatever. Thanks for participating.

[Yazman]

Let me put it *this* way: Let's say that technological advances developed to the point of superseding all need for all industrial processes -- perhaps 3-D printing and other technologies enabled everyone to be sheer d.i.y.-ers and consumers, with no need anymore for a working class anywhere.

So while the technology in this scenario would surpass the *material* need for workers, it would not automatically bury all pre-existing industrial implements and wipe everyone's minds clean as to their existence. If some more-power-minded types happened to continue to control such implements they would have a competitive material advantage over the rest of humanity who would be mostly content in more-or-less self-contained lives.

What social force would then be required to end exploitation, even of a kind that festered on while having been materially supplanted by sheer technological solutions -- ?

If, in your scenario, these technologies eliminated the existence of a working class, then who are the exploited people? Surely such a new technological order that has such widespread social ramifications would require a new class analysis, as society itself would not have the same class structure as before.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't think that systems of power would be able to be maintained in a world of super-abundance, or if they did they'd only be marginally effective at accomplishing anything.

A good example of this that's happening right now is the situation regarding electronic data and intellectual property, etc.

[Yazman]

Indeed Os, and I think that's a key thing here. Systems of power as we know them would not necessarily exist, or be able to be continued in their current form without drastic changes being made. Of course, they wouldn't simply disappear - new structures and systems would arise, some of them perhaps not being altogether different from old ones.

But I do think that one cannot simply say "well, the workers may still be oppressed" while in the same breath noting that there may not be a working class in such a society, just as many modern societies do not have a peasant class.

[ckaihatsu]

If, in your scenario, these technologies eliminated the existence of a working class, then who are the exploited people? Surely such a new technological order that has such widespread social ramifications would require a new class analysis, as society itself would not have the same class structure as before.





I don't think that systems of power would be able to be maintained in a world of super-abundance, or if they did they'd only be marginally effective at accomplishing anything.

A good example of this that's happening right now is the situation regarding electronic data and intellectual property, etc.


Yeah, I appreciate these points -- the disclaimer is that our reasoning is dependent on the scenario, of course, but, that said, I have to maintain that without a new collective *political* order being created, what would most likely emerge would be the same patchwork that exists today, though with a *degree* of increased empowerment and lessened exploitation, relatively.

I'll note that plenty of 'opportunities' currently exist for people to 'escape exploitation' *today*, as through the accumulation of some wealth, but even though that's done by some and is a real possibility for others, it doesn't address the *overall* system of capitalist anarchy in any kind of humankind-stewardship way, as a revolution would.

The social order of a society is / would be reflected by its prevailing domain of information, and the one we have today may be *semantically* orderly but is *authoritatively* less-than-definitively-organized. (Consider how it currently reflects and communicates information about humane options and public participation in societal matters.)

So I'll summarize by saying that, absent a revolution, society would continue to be *economically* diverse, with all of the ups and downs that implies. I could entertain a state-less, anarchic kind of social order, due to general technological prowess, but it would not exactly be *liberating* for humanity as a whole.

[o well this is ok I guess]

This isn't a discussion of "what if?" though. We can hypothesise until the cows come home - but that isn't really important. What's important is that it does exist because of space exploration.

The Apollo program wasn't a military program. the US Department of Defense has its own space programs, independent of NASA. Yes, what's important is the present, and presently the apollo program doesn't mean shit. I can't affect the historical event by which the computer was invented. That does not, however, mean we ought to throw some money at whatever space program in hopes of it yielding some useful tech.

You're correct on it not touching military money, though. I'll rephrase: It's no point of pride that we got technological advances via massive international dickwaving competitions.

[Skyhilist]

Coming from an animal rights point of view, this is pretty disgusting.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Coming from an animal rights point of view, this is pretty disgusting.

The animal rights point of view is incoherent. Everyone violates animal "rights" simply by existing, because by existing they are taking up living space and resources that would have otherwise been made use of by other animals.