Iran Opens Space Center

post from The Newshoggers on 04 February 2008 07:20:00 AM. © The Newshoggers

By Cernig

Iran has joined the space race.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran on Monday fired a rocket into space to mark the opening of its first space centre, triggering swift condemnation from the United States amid continued tensions over the Iranian nuclear drive.

The space centre, located in the remote desert of western Iran, will be used to launch Iran's first home-produced satellite "Omid" (Hope) in May or June this year, officials said.

...The rocket launch is believed to be the second time Iran has tried to put an object into space after it claimed to have successfully fired a missile outside the atmosphere in February 2007.

State television broadcast pictures of the launch of the rocket, which is dubbed Kavoshgar-1 but bore a close resemblance to Iran's longer-range missile Shahab-3.

The Shahab-3 has a range of 1,300 to 1,600 kilometres (800 to 1,000 miles), enough to put Tehran's arch regional foe Israel and US bases in the Gulf within reach.

The new space centre includes an underground control centre and launchpad which will be used to fire Omid into space, followed by other planned satellites in the future, state media said.

...Iran has been pursuing a space programme for several years, and in October 2005 a Russian-made Iranian satellite was put into orbit by a Russian rocket.

But Omid would be Iran's first domestically manufactured probe and the first to be launched from Iranian territory.

The rocket blasted off after a countdown to cries of "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest), from the space centre in a desert region in the northern Semnan province, state television showed.

The pictures showed the rocket heading towards space but no information was given on what height it reached. A small probe was seen falling back to earth under a parachute but it was not clear what this contained.

State media said the rocket was a sounding probe sent to conduct experiments to pave the way for the launch of the Omid satellite.

Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency that the satellite would be launched in the Iranian month of Khordad, which begins on May 21.

The Russian-launched satellite Sina-1 was Iran's first -- and so far only -- probe to be launched into space, and was described by the Iranian press at the time as being for research and telecommunications.

Iran has said it plans to construct and launch several more satellites over the next three years.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino put a decidedly negative cast on the launch: ""I saw this morning that Iran, again, tested a ballistic missile. It's unfortunate that they continue to do that because it further isolates the country from the rest of the world," she said.

Which really is the problem with such dual-use technology. Whether satellite launching systems and uranium enrichment facilities represent actual threats or not depends entirely on the intent of the users and Iran has been consistently demonised as not having the best of intent. Yet the IAEA has said that there is no way that the current Iranian enrichment plant or its product can be diverted to military use without their knowledge. The IAEA has said that Iran's answers to their questions bear out the recent American NIE that said Iran no longer has a nuclear weapons program.

And it seems as if this Space Center is another peaceful use for what was originally tagged as a military missile testing site. Jeffrey Lewis a few days ago posted a satellite picture of a facility near Tabriz, in NorthWestern Iran which may well be the Space Center.

This facility was originally tagged as a military site by the neoconservatives favorite terrorists, the MEK.

Can you imagine if every satellite launch by the US, Japan or Europe was similarly described as a ballistic missile launch? Technically, they are. But intent doesn't lie in the mind of the beholder.

Update Ok, here's interesting. Regular reader Amir who runs the Nuclear Iran blog says in comments that the missile was launched from "a point near Semnan, in central Iran" rather than Western Iran. Did the Western press get the location wrong? In which case the picturted facility above is definitely of another probable silo-launched missile facility. We're back to wondering about intent. Is the pictured facility military or part of Iran's space race?

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http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2008/02/iran-opens-space-center.html

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Hillary cried again

post from AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth on 04 February 2008 07:16:00 AM. © AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

If she's tearing up for real, then it's interesting and a window into her heart, shows she isn't just cold and calculating, shows that she's a real person with feelings, empathy, etc. And if she's faking it, it's also relevant as it shows that she really is just a calculating phony. Either way, as tedious as it may sound, the tears are relevant:

Sen. Hillary Clinton teared up this morning at an event at the Yale Child Study Center, where she worked while in law school in the early 1970s.

A doctor, who was introducing Clinton, began to choke up, leading Clinton's eyes to fill with tears, which she wiped out of her left eye. At the time, the doctor was saying how proud he was that sheepskin-coat, bell-bottom-wearing young woman he met in 1972 was now running for president.

"Well, I said I would not tear up; already we're not exactly on the path," Clinton said with emotion after the introduction.

I'm not really a crier. Though I'll admit that post-Sept. 11 I'm certainly more prone to get misty-eyed, something that never happened to me before. But I can point to September 11 as the moment that changed something in me. Now, as Hillary readily admits, and admitted again this past weekend, she is one of the most scrutinized women in America, and has been so for going on 18 years. I don't recall, ever, Hillary being "one of those people who get all misty-eyed" at any time prior to these two really important primaries. It certainly isn't the first time Hillary has been faced with emotional scenes. But I just don't ever recall her being someone who teared up once a month. Which leads me to ask, what happened to change all of that? What changed in her at such a profound level, and why, as to make her one of those people who tears up? Or, is it all just a show? Either way, the question is actually relevant in determining just who Hillary Clinton is.

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Super Tuesday Snapshot: Obama Continues to Gain

post from Open Left - Front Page on 04 February 2008 07:11:05 AM. © Open Left - Front Page

Polls from Pollster.com. Super Delegates totals from Democratic Convention Watch:Super Tuesday[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/229049246/showDiary.do

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Zombie lies

post from Eschaton on 04 February 2008 06:53:00 AM. © Eschaton

Life is strange. Jake Tapper's stupid misrepresentation of What Bill Said has made it to ABC - and even right-wing blogs are criticizing them for it.

Which doesn't mean, of course, that it's stopped making the rounds....

Signed,
Not Atrios

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/bRuz/~3/228861375/2008_02_03_archive.html

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Eating Liberally's Recipe For Super Fat Tuesday:
Kingmaker Cupcakes

post from Open Left - Front Page on 04 February 2008 06:46:31 AM. © Open Left - Front Page

Eating Liberally Food For Thoughtby Kerry TruemanWho died and made corn King? Democracy, that's[...]

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John McCain, Traitor

post from Connecting.the.Dots on 04 February 2008 06:30:00 AM. © Connecting.the.Dots

In the eyes of its diehards, the Republican Party will go a long way tomorrow toward nominating a candidate who has betrayed its principles.

On the far right's list of infamy, McCain is reviled for damaging free speech and the First Amendment for trying to curb the power of money in elections, harming free enterprise by advocating a patient's bill of rights and the importation of lower-priced socialized medications from Canada and, worst of all, refusing to crack down on illegal immigrants who might sneak across our unfenced borders for another 9/11 attack.

The tide of bile against John McCain is so high that right-wing realists are piling last-minute sandbags on the ideological dikes to avert a GOP Katrina.

In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby argues that "the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real--as opposed to the mythic--Ronald Reagan.

"The conservative case against McCain is clear enough...But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling."

The New York Times' new sage William Kristol urges far-right colleagues to overcome their "disgruntlement and dyspepsia" and not to "treat 2008 as a throwaway election."

Fellow senators, too, are having a hard time swallowing the idea of McCain as their standard bearer, the Washington Post reports, warning that "his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office."

McCain's offenses against collegiality, to an outside observer, seem motivated by outrage at blatant corruption, but we may not be attuned to the nuances of legislative free enterprise.

Tomorrow will be a test for all his detractors. Will they choose a chance to win in November with the treacherous McCain or go down in honor with malleable Mitt Romney?

Read The Full Article:
http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2008/02/john-mccain-traitor.html

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Mythical Winnie

post from The Newshoggers on 04 February 2008 06:27:00 AM. © The Newshoggers

By Cernig

There's some excitement over on the rightwing of Blogtopia (s!) today about a survey that says almost a quarter of Brit's think Winston Churchill didn't exist.

(Agence France Presse) Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.
The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

But then you get to the source of this data. "UKTV Gold surveyed 3,000 people." Aha. Funny, but no-one mentions this bit.

A B-list channel for old reruns of sitcoms and soaps runs a survey, no methodology described (was it a phone-in poll?), then it gets reported as serious news by a French news service and Americans jump all over it.

Is it just me, or have y'all been waiting for an opportunity to get some pay-back on us Brits for our arrogant notion that we know more history and political geography than anyone else simply because the old British Empire was responsible for so much of both? Fair enough, we probably deserve some jumping-on. But this is thin justification.

I'd add that I don't know a single Brit this dumb. But then again, I don't know anyone who watches UKGold either.

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http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2008/02/mythical-winnie.html

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Heads Up On The FISA Bill

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker notified everyone that several amendments to the telecom “get out of jail free card” [AKA Protect America Act extension] are up for votes today. The important amendments need 51 votes, so Senator Reid scheduled the vote one day before the Super Tuesday primaries. This, of course, is extremely [...]

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http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2008/02/04/heads-up-on-the-fisa-bill/

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Ralph Nader, we are anonymous...

post from AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth on 04 February 2008 06:18:00 AM. © AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

First, a popular new YouTube video about Scientology:

video details and more

Next, a response about Ralph Nader. It's funny, and from our usual cohort of LA comedians.

video details and more

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/228979836/ralph-nader-we-are-anonym
ous.html

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Muse in the Morning

Muse in the MorningThe muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are[...]

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http://www.docudharma.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4248

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