Iran Sends Monkey to Space

[Ukomba]

That never happened.

Yes we know, now tell bush god doesn't exist

Haters gonna hate

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

They put it 70 miles up. It didn't even get into low Earth orbit. It's really not that big of a deal.

We already have private companies with better space programs than that.

Also the people being anti-Islam are fucking stupid.

Spoiler

There hundreds of millions of Muslims who are really good people and many more who are just people like any other. The Middle East is a hotbed of violence, but it's also not even where the bulk of the Muslim population is. It's a hellhole because the Ottoman Empire divided provinces on ethnic lines so that they could never rebel, then the UK/US divided them into countries based on those ethnic lines. So that rather than having a Kurdistan, we have an Iraq with multiple factions that want to kill each other to become independent and we have surrounding states like Turkey who don't want them to become independent because their Kurd population will want to rebel and they stand to lose territory. We have forced the Middle East into a shitty land that purposefully fosters dictatorial assholes as the only means of creating stability to hold the nations together. And when a nation can't stay together the dictators around will prop it up, because it's collapse means their collapse. And then we ran around pissing them off by overthrowing government and installing our own dictators to imprison and torture people(like the Iranians) for speaking out against the US controlled government there.

We created this mess and now we all act superior. We act like everything that happens over there is something they did, and not our progressive policy of continuously fucking them over and then acting all surprised when they get pissed at us.

 

[unstabLized]

I know that people have different viewpoints on things like this, and you have every right to have an opinion, but one thing I ask of you is that please, never assume that all of Iran is like what you see on the news. The people in that country are struggling very hard everyday to survive, to the point where they can barely even get food anymore. They can't have a voice because the government censors everything, and if someone does say something, they'll be either brutally punished or killed on the spot. Say what you want about the government, and I'll probably agree with almost everything you say, but don't mistake the people in the country. A lot of the people in Iran are completely against the government, but they can't say anything or get away.

It's pretty hard to seperate citizen and government in the mind, to be honest, because whenever news stations (or even the article we've just read from Greg) mention a nation doing something they always say 'Iran' or 'America' rather than 'the Iranian government' or 'the American government'. Likewise, whenever something horrible is done by the Israelis, we blame Israel as a whole (though recent polls suggest that many of them do support continued oppression) rather than pointing out that the government is being a dick.

Intellectually we all know that the Iranian people aren't raging lunatics who want to wipe us out, just like we know Americans aren't all fat inbred gun-nuts. It's just that the media tends to report on events in other countries as if that country was one united bloc of humanity who all share the same ideals, and that tends to leak through into the way ordinary people talk about them.

Yes, which is sad. The media would do anything to hype something up these days. That's why i made that post. Point is to try not to generalize and not be lead to illusions.

 

[Lucky Godzilla]

Uh, you do realize the specter of Soviet invasion kick started the single largest military spending spree in recorded history? I mean, have you studied anything about the Cold War? does the term containment policy ring a bell?

You do realise this only occurred after WW2 when military industrial complex had started being run as a privatised corporation (war profiteers anyone? hang the Germans ones, but US ones are good for the economy).

So lets think why would a privately run weapons manufacturer want an arms race? Whilst at the same time demonising a country that used a political ideology that could strip them of their wealth and power? I bet you think the Cuban missile crisis cam about because those dirty commie bastards felt like it. Whilst we're talking about Cuba why don't you look what the US did to the other smaller non threatening countries that were possibly leaning towards the left in their political ideology.

Now I'm not defending the soviet union, whilst it did seem to be a promising change to having a ruling elite at first, its failure to export the revolution in the early days (pre WW2) lead it government bogged down in bureaucracy and totalitarianism. But the cold war was more about America fighting an idea than it was anything else. Also the Iranian people have more than enough reason to hate the USA and their dislike for Israel stems from the treatment of Palestinians and the theft of their land, whilst appearing to be an extension of the USA in the region.

Whether Iran should have a nuclear program? I don't know. I have never experienced the country or culture first hand. Only what i have been spoon fed by the media, and since the war on terror does seem to be a war on Islam I'll reserve judgement.

Ho boy, this is going to turn into a full blown essay soon enough.

O.K, in order to fully understand the arms race, one must go back to the aftermath of WWII. So Nazi Germany had gone belly up, and subsequently the U.S.S.R had found itself deeper into Europe than ever before. Now, I'm going to assume you know what the Soviets stance on capitalism, and by extent democracy was. Understandably, Europe was a tad jittery at the prospect of Soviet invasion. Truman was also alarmed by the potential of communist aggression, but he was also confident in his ace in the hole. You see, at the end of WWII the U.S was basically demobilizing its forces while all of western Europe's forces were dead. On the other hand Russia had, despite sustaining unfathomable losses, still maintained the largest standing army.

By a magnitude.

Seriously, for every one division the U.S and its European allies had deployed the U.S.S.R had ten. But the U.S had something no one else had, the atomic bomb. Congress, and to some extent Truman were convinced that the bomb would pick up the slack in matching Russia's military might. And it did, for all of four years. The Ruskies eventually got around to detonating their own nuke in 1949, meaning the U.S and by extent Europe had now lost their trump card. See the Russians could now match the nuclear might of the West, and still had more divisions by a factor of ten.

As one can easily imagine bricks were shat, and the resulting refuse would become known as N.A.T.O. Between 1950 and 1960 the Russians overly exaggerated the extent of first their bomber, and than their missile arsenal. This lead to paranoia within the states the the Russians currently maintained a significant lead, both in nuclear and conventional capabilities. BAM arms race. Hardly manufactured by the defense contractors, but they sure as hell didn't argue with it.

Well if by some freak of nature you have read up to this point, I applaud you. For now I will begin to provide counter arguments to your comment.

You see, like it or not there exists a relatively stable balance of power within the world. We have managed to avoid another World War through deterrence, and that has worked out great for everybody. Sure what we did (particularly in South America) during the Cold War was detestable. But I think we can all agree that that was preferable to a full scale nuclear exchange between the two super powers. The only current loose end in this system is North Korea, but the Beijing keeps them on a tight enough leash so to prevent a nuclear holocaust.

What is truly frightening about Iran is they are not exactly friends with anyone. After Russia refused to follow through with their S-300 deal with Iran, while also voicing their support of international sanctions, Iran lost its last major ally. Simply put, there is nothing any nation can currently do to keep the Iranians in check without resorting to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Simply put they are an unknown factor, and when talking about nuclear armament, that is unacceptable.

 

[flarty]

Ho boy, this is going to turn into a full blown essay soon enough.

O.K, in order to fully understand the arms race, one must go back to the aftermath of WWII. So Nazi Germany had gone belly up, and subsequently the U.S.S.R had found itself deeper into Europe than ever before. Now, I'm going to assume you know what the Soviets stance on capitalism, and by extent democracy was. Understandably, Europe was a tad jittery at the prospect of Soviet invasion. Truman was also alarmed by the potential of communist aggression, but he was also confident in his ace in the hole. You see, at the end of WWII the U.S was basically demobilizing its forces while all of western Europe's forces were dead. On the other hand Russia had, despite sustaining unfathomable losses, still maintained the largest standing army.

By a magnitude.

Seriously, for every one division the U.S and its European allies had deployed the U.S.S.R had ten. But the U.S had something no one else had, the atomic bomb. Congress, and to some extent Truman were convinced that the bomb would pick up the slack in matching Russia's military might. And it did, for all of four years. The Ruskies eventually got around to detonating their own nuke in 1949, meaning the U.S and by extent Europe had now lost their trump card. See the Russians could now match the nuclear might of the West, and still had more divisions by a factor of ten.

As one can easily imagine bricks were shat, and the resulting refuse would become known as N.A.T.O. Between 1950 and 1960 the Russians overly exaggerated the extent of first their bomber, and than their missile arsenal. This lead to paranoia within the states the the Russians currently maintained a significant lead, both in nuclear and conventional capabilities. BAM arms race. Hardly manufactured by the defense contractors, but they sure as hell didn't argue with it.

Whilst alot of that might be true. You seem to of forgotten about the Korean War. Which as said by Eisenhower the MIC was already beginning to try and shape foreign policy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnaM8TqAzzo

i did have more but internets broke on me when i clicked post

You see, like it or not there exists a relatively stable balance of power within the world. We have managed to avoid another World War through deterrence, and that has worked out great for everybody. Sure what we did (particularly in South America) during the Cold War was detestable. But I think we can all agree that that was preferable to a full scale nuclear exchange between the two super powers. The only current loose end in this system is North Korea, but the Beijing keeps them on a tight enough leash so to prevent a nuclear holocaust.

Wait you lost me. What you did in south America during the cold war was preferable to a nuclear war between super powers. Enlighten me to which super power in south America had nuclear weapons?

What is truly frightening about Iran is they are not exactly friends with anyone. After Russia refused to follow through with their S-300 deal with Iran, while also voicing their support of international sanctions, Iran lost its last major ally. Simply put, there is nothing any nation can currently do to keep the Iranians in check without resorting to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Simply put they are an unknown factor, and when talking about nuclear armament, that is unacceptable.

Yes but instead of taking hostile actions would it not of been better to pursue a agenda of collaboration? The west could of kept close observations on their nuclear program. But no we imposed sanctions on an already distressed country at the drop of a hat.

 

[Dogstile]

Iran launches monkey into space and this turns into a thread about bashing religion? Why? Even if we didn't have religion, people would still find excuses to kill each other.

Because religion was the reason people decided it would be a good idea to pilot planes into two massive towers all those years ago and people are worried that they'll try it again, but use a nuke?

Its a valid fear, especially with how warlike the middle east is.

 

[Sneezeguard]

Well it's offical that monkey has achieved more in life than me, I'm gonna go drink.