Posted on 12/30/2004 11:16:38 PM PST by DoctorZIn
Top News Story
Iran, Russia to study UFOs
Scientific probe amid rash of sightings in Eastern Hemisphere
Posted: December 30, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Image taken from infrared video of UFOs in Mexico in May
With a rash of recent sightings of unidentified flying objects in the Eastern Hemisphere, Russia and Iran have agreed to jointly study the UFO phenomenon.
According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, the two nations are stressing "expansion of bilateral cooperation particularly in space research and construction of satellites."
In addition to the scientific look at UFOs, Russia and Iran are finalizing agreement for the construction of the Zohreh satellite for Iran, which has been on the drawing board for years but has been hampered by bureaucratic obstacles.
News of the UFO study comes as skywatching mania strikes Iran.
This week, the Associated Press reported Tehran's air force was ordered to shoot down any unknown or suspicious flying objects in its airspace amid state-media reports of sightings of flying objects near Iran's nuclear installations.
"Flights of unknown objects in the country's airspace have increased in recent weeks... [they] have been seen over Bushehr and Isfahan provinces," the Resalat daily reported. Nuclear facilities are located in both provinces.
"We have arranged plans to defend nuclear facilities from any threat," air force General Karim Ghavami told the paper. "Iran's air force is watchful and prepared to carry out its responsibilities."
Resalat also reported "shining objects" in the sky near Natanz, where Iran's uranium-enrichment plant is situated. One of those objects is said to have exploded, prompting "panic in the region."
As WorldNetDaily previously reported, Iran has been struck by UFO fever all year long, with dozens of sightings of strange objects.
In April, state-run television broadcast a sparkling white disc flying over Tehran.
People were reported rushing out into the streets in eight towns to watch a bright "extraterrestrial light dipping in and out of the clouds."
The IRNA also reported colorful objects seen beaming out green, red, blue and purple rays over the northern cities of Tabriz and Ardebil and in the Caspian Sea province of Golestan.
In addition to Iran, a number of UFOs – some possibly meteors – have been spotted by citizens of Indonesia, China and Australia.
In May, the Mexican air force released video footage of 11 unidentified flying objects that were only visible via an infrared camera.
The objects reportedly flew around a military surveillance plane.
Jamie Maussan, a journalists and UFO enthusiast, told reporters the objects seemed "intelligent" because at one point they changed direction and surrounded the plane that was chasing them.
"They were invisible to the eye but they were there, there is no doubt about it. They had mass, they had energy and they were moving about," Maussan said after showing a 15-minute video.
"We are not alone! This is so weird," one of the pilots can be heard yelling, Reuters reported. The plane's crew had just switched on the infrared camera after first picking up the objects by radar.
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UFO=UAV
EU to build nuclear reactor in Iran
04:50:30 È.Ù
Semnan, Dec 30 - The first team of European researchers will enter Iran in the next few days in order to build an atomic reactor, said the Secretary of the Supreme Council of National Security Dr. Hassan Rowhani, after an agreement reached between Iran and EU big states.
"Constructive engagement with the world is important for the growth and development of the country," said Rowhani and added: "We should contraction with the world while maintaining our culture, principles and virtues; with this engagement we managed to solve the country's most important problem which was nuclear energy."
Top Iran's nuclear official said that the Europeans announced they were ready to build nuclear plants in Iran.
The Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council warned the United States and Tel Aviv against any possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and said in case of any such move, Iran would confront with the issue seriousely.
h/h
The US has been there ...done that.
That or low-orbit satellites. Whats the top altitude of our UAVs?
Mideast Overtures
Iran's domestic crisis: Its youth
[Excerpt]Tuesday, December 28, 2004
An impending danger is haunting Iran. While an intense debate, both domestic and international, has been carried out in the past year over the Iranian nuclear program, another issue that merits even more attention is being ignored: the waste of a generation of Iranian youth. This tragedy merits our attention because of the human resource being squandered.
Last July, the Research and Planning Institute for Higher Education, an Iranian government agency, conducted research on Iranian youth. The project focused on young Iranians with an average age of 21. The results are alarming: 53 percent of the participants see death as a way out of their lives and more than 77 percent believe there is no future for them. While one would expect further analysis and research in order to better understand the issues and to come up with solutions, few public debates have made it their central focus.
Where will this hopelessness of Iranian youth lead? How will this affect the hopes for a democratic future of the country? We all know that apathy precludes participation and empowerment, the two essential building blocks of democracy.
When you actually talk to Iranian youth as I have, you get a sense of their emotions, which are much like their western counterparts. You also see that their aspirations are depressingly absent. I've visited the neighborhoods and parks where I spent my teenage years, and I've spoken to many young people in order to compare how they feel in contrast to my own generation. While they have trouble identifying the future, they are not rejecting their past, nor are they denying the importance of Islamic values to their identity. But I've realized this is a generation that for the most part is being overlooked and, even worse, abandoned.
The Iranian government has not invested in the country's youth in terms of instilling leadership qualities or a sense of mission and aspirations by providing equal opportunities. In the 1970s, people in the United States talked about the "me" generation. In Tehran in the 1970s, people talked about the children of the shah's generation, in whom some of the oil money was invested. Many of us were sent to the best European and U.S. universities to receive higher education and return to take the country to the "gates of the great civilization." ...
Today's youth are different. They are without ideals or role models such as intellectuals, artists, poets, scientists or anyone who has excelled at something. They have no spokesperson.
The poems they recite and the literature they read are the ones my generation recited and read. Their sources of inspiration are a generation old! This is a generation that is apathetic about its leaders, and none of the many I interviewed aspires to lead the country one day. Most important, this is a generation that does not have a sense of national pride and identity. At a time when nationalism and a sense of national purpose are on the rise throughout the world -- from China and India to Brazil -- Iran stands out as one of the great civilizations whose destiny is ignored by its own people.
One university professor, who had studied in Germany and is now teaching in Tehran, compared Iran's young people to the German youth directly after World War II. He explained that the same hopelessness, sense of shame and lack of national pride had crippled that generation of Germans for years.
Iranian youth are an untapped resource who comprise more than 60 percent of the population -- perhaps a greater asset than the natural wealth of the nation.
If we care about the future of democracy in Iran, what should be done? The United States should encourage Iran's leaders to invest in that nation's youth in the following ways:
-- Acknowledge that the apathy crisis among Iranian youth exists. This may seem trivial to Americans, but it is really an important step, yet not taken. The conservative domestic media portray Iranian youth as happy, hopeful and committed to the Islamic ideals of the nation's leaders. But this oversimplification is far from the truth.
-- Shift the emphasis from religious values and traditional beliefs to individual freedom and to values that relate to their Persian identity. In other words, let the young be young and discover life for themselves.
-- Channel some of Iran's surging oil wealth into the basic needs of the younger generation. One simple issue stressed by the young people I talked to was the lack of youth centers and other places where they could socialize outside of family gatherings.
-- Finally, instill a sense of hopefulness by creating a level playing field in job opportunities and financial self-sufficiency.
Investing in the nation's youth would be a much more secure path to greatness than a nuclear program.
Elahe Enssani is chair of civil engineering at San Francisco State University. A documentary film of the interviews she conducted in Iran is in post production.
top altitude.... there is no top altitude... see: Global Hawk, then satellites.
Thanks
65,000 ft for Global Hawk!
The Tidal Wave!
By Ramin Parham
December 30, 2004
Photography showing an Islamist poster depicting a US hostage, Iran 1979. The subtitle reads: "Others talk, we get the job done!" Imam Khomeiny. Photo by Abbas/Magnum.“Seeing a tsunami in your dream, represents that you are being overwhelmed by some repressed feelings or unconscious material that is rising up to the surface. You are experiencing some unhappiness and emotional instability in some waking situation.” Definition of Tsunami in Dream Dictionary, Hyperdictionary.com
Liberty is not a natural state. It is a constructed human aspiration. In the jungle as in the savanna, rabbits, elephants, and crocodiles are anything but free. They are submitted, for life, to the ruthless rules of nature and their respective predators in a pyramid of fear. Human beings are free for it is in their destiny to use their cortical rationality to manufacture freedom as the most complex system of social interaction and stability. And, if recent history teaches us anything, that freedom, with responsibility as its corollary, remain to be constructed. For us, human beings, survival is intertwined with the ability to create more value with fewer resources so to satisfy increasing demand. Such inventiveness is not possible in the absence of free thought and exchange of ideas. In the game of probabilities and certainties, in the occurrence and collision of quasi infinite and unpredictable events, liberty and responsibility are the surest ingredients of higher survivability. Miscalculation in this game has a price.
Our century was heralded by a probability “inflated”, some would say, to indisputable certainty: Y2K. IT buggers would argue otherwise, “for it goes of their debugging business” says the naysayer! They would say that the preventive implementation of integrated software systems and Enterprise Resource Planning packages forestalled the anticipated collapse of electronics-driven systems. No one is in any measure to rewrite that what-if-history and the would-have-been consequence of date-impacted binary fields in trillions of lines of cross-functional code throughout the world. However, the aftermath of the bug-that-never-came was littered with outraged papers decrying the “puffed up” threat. Y2K was not the only “inflated IT fantasy”. The dot com crash that did come, this time for good, following a fanfare of juicy numbers, saxophone, sex and cigars, was the paroxysmal staging of human blindness and white collar arrogance.
Heralded by an “inflated” probability that didn’t materialize, our century was born in the rubbles of an underestimated certainty that did come into embodiment, with dust and flesh, bones and blood: 9/11. Yet, from the attacks on the barracks of US Marines in Lebanon, on October 23, 1983, to the car-bombing that shook, ten years later, on February 26, 1993, the Twin Towers, to the bombing of Khobar barracks on June 25, 1996, there should have been little statistical doubt that the chain reaction which had started on November 4, 1979, when Marxist-Islamist militants took over the US Embassy in Tehran, would, sooner or later, mushroom in a deadly climax. The certainty could and should have been perceived with more acuteness if one had considered that the chain folly’s heartland is quite fertile to the burgeoning and propelling of mystics and lunatics, the frontier being often blurred, to the apex of power. True, you can patch a date field on a computer mother board without crying havoc, but you can’t [app]-ease the ideological fever of a Hasan Sabbah, flooded with oil-dollars and armed with Boeing technology, with diplomatic bandage. You eliminate the tumor, eradicate the metastases and engage in preventive medicine or pay sky-rocketing curative diseasecare and count the dead. Healthcare is preventive care.
Heralded by Y2K, midwifed by 9/11, our new born just celebrated its 4th anniversary: Tsunami. Though, US and French advanced warning systems had detected the looming threat, with at least a 2-hour margin, no South-Asian socio-political system was able to alert local populations of the present danger. On this sad birthday, candles were blown off for good by the tens of thousands. Politically speaking, the affected countries were mostly democratic systems in various stages of maturity. Yet, all of them proved dysfunctional at a critical juncture, unable to fulfill their primary duty which consists of protecting their citizens. Democracy is not just about elections. It is a functional whole that integrates all economic, infra-structural, educational, and other social sub-systems into an ever evolving, responsive and adaptive system. Underestimating the necessity to implement this holistic approach to human organization will have devastating consequences.
As the century rolls out, from towering architectures that no longer scrape, but the bottom of city basements, to paradise beaches where cadavers rub shoulders in a ghastly dance of death, devising and implementing a global advanced warning system is the safest bet as we engage uncertainty. No such system could ever see the day without a global trust environment powered by the shared values of freedom and responsibility in a network of partners.
Today, as yesterday, liberty remains a utopia. Yet, today, unlike yesterday, the realization of that utopia has become a possibility. It is no longer a matter of technical feasibility to manufacture a world of free individual enterprise and group responsibility. It is a matter of political will.
"Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear." Happy New Year!
Muslim Convert Preaches Politics, Predicts Democracy in Iran
Former Iranian Shiite Muslim Donald Fareed, now an evangelical Christian pastor and head of Persian Ministries International, has preached a radical religious and political message to millions of Muslims over satellite television in the face of religious persecution. He predicts that Iran, not Iraq, will undergo regime change and become the first democracy in the Middle East, and urges America to support the Iranian pro-democracy movement.
San Jose, CA (PRWEB) December 30, 2004 -- Donald Fareed, a former Iranian Shiite Muslim and founder of the San Jose-based Persian Ministries International (PMI) (www.Persian Ministries.org), today announced his prediction that Iran, not Iraq, will undergo regime change to become the first democracy in the Middle East within just a few years.
In the face of political and religious persecution that includes the torture and martyrdom of associates, and being blacklisted by the Iranian government, Fareed, now a U.S. citizen and evangelical Christian pastor, has preached a radical, combined message of religion and politics. For years, his non-profit organization Persian Ministries International (PMI) has had a weekly series of television programs through which he reaches up to 30 million Farsi-speaking Muslim viewers not only with the message of the Christian gospel, but also with the message of democracy, encouraging them to press the fundamentalist Iranian regime for religious freedom and referendum using Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s principles of civil disobedience and non-violent, passive resistance.
Fareed’s programs broadcast into the heart of the "10-40 window" around the Persian Gulf in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the Southern part of Iraq where nearly 90 million Farsi-speaking Muslims live. His unique, combined spiritual and political message has attracted many to hear the Christian gospel in the context of what is relevant to their struggles with Islam, particularly the fundamentalist version.
"The situation in Iraq has led many Americans to believe that having democracy in the Middle East is impossible," says Fareed. "But Iran is ready for democracy, and America needs to know that." In claiming Iran is ripe for regime change, Fareed points to its predominantly pro-West, secular population, which is fed up with Islamic fundamentalism. He also points to 70 percent of Iran's population, which consists of young intellectuals under age 30 and women who have suffered under fundamentalist Islamic law, with whom his message is especially resonating.
Recently, Iran has undergone many internal changes. The constitution is being re-written by pro- democracy groups, people are protesting for regime change through civil disobedience, and there is a huge movement for referendum. PMI is also planting home churches inside Iran, where one of the largest house church movements in the Islamic world is growing among students, according to a December 4 issue of Voice of the Martyrs.
"With the positive response we are getting, and growth of home churches in Iran, we are making significant strides in the Muslim world. I believe we will have one million Muslim converts in Iran by the end of 2007, and that Iran will be a model of democracy in the Middle East in just a few years," Fareed says confidently.
Fareed is also convinced that the defeat of Islamic fundamentalism as a premise for government in Iran will greatly contribute to the defeat of Islamic fundamentalism everywhere, but insists that time is of the essence. "The majority of Iranians are pro-democracy, and claim their only hope is President Bush. As Americans, we need to encourage our government to actively support the Iranians," urges Fareed. "If America supports the pro-democracy movement in Iran, it will lead to the downfall of the current Iranian regime, and that will send shockwaves throughout the entire Muslim world. It will be a huge wakeup call that Islam, particularly the fundamentalist version, isn't working," he says enthusiastically.
Although Fareed has been involved in the evangelism of Muslims since he converted to Christianity 14 years ago, he only felt compelled to add a political agenda to his message after the martyrdom by the Iranian government of a close associate, the Bishop of the Assemblies of God Church in Iran. Fear of meeting the same fate as a Muslim apostate kept him from preaching politics actively for years, but a later diagnosis with an incurable muscular disease made him realize he had nothing to lose.
Facing certain death, Fareed did not hesitate to confront the Islamic government of Iran with their atrocities, encourage Iranians to push for religious freedom and referendum, and talk about his religious conversion from Islam to Christianity. As a result of his courageous broadcasts, millions of Muslims around the world have heard the Christian gospel, and thousands have converted to Christianity, and the pro-democracy movement in Iran has been encouraged.
Preaching against the Islamic-controlled Iranian government put Fareed in a precarious position, however. His first convert in Iran was caught by the Iranian secret service and tortured. Once released, there were two attempts on his life, forcing him to flee the country. Soon the Iranian government blacklisted Fareed, and Iran National TV aired his photograph, accusing him of "anti-Islamic activities with the intent to topple the government of Iran." "Due to several incidents at one point, I told my board of directors, 'I think my time is up,'" recalls Fareed.
Iran has made tremendous political strides within a short time, and Fareed’s health has improved as well, yet he continues to deal with the inherent risk of his activities as well as chronic pain.
Each day brings new battles. Fareed found himself in the middle of a media controversy a few weeks ago after being invited to preach a message entitled, "Why I Am Not a Muslim" at the Sunnyvale Nazarene Church in Sunnyvale, CA. Some community members considered the message "offensive," and AP News picked up the story, as did the network affiliates in the San Francisco Bay area.
About Persian Ministries International (PMI)
Persian Ministries International (PMI) is an evangelistic non-profit Christian organization with a vision of reaching over 100 million Persian-speaking Muslims for Christ worldwide, and encouraging Muslims around the world to press their governments for religious freedom and democracy. PMI is also encouraging Muslim-Christian dialog, working to bring the Church to an awareness of the needs and opportunities for ministering to Muslim people in the U.S. and around the world, and challenging and equipping the Church to love Muslims and reach them for Jesus Christ. For more information, please visit www.Persian Ministries.org.
# # #Other Releases by this Member
Iran launches Hebrew radio station
By ORLY HALPERNPersian-accented Hebrew has been flowing across the airwaves as the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcast Corporation recently began broadcasting a Hebrew radio station which can be accessed through the internet.
"Kol David" broadcasts its main news show every evening from 7-7:30 Greenwich time and has two other half hour broadcasts.
In a two-minute recorded introduction accessible from the webpage, an up-beat Iranian radio host tells Hebrew-speaking listeners that the broadcasts are directed to "Falestina and America."
Yet, in a blatant break with state rhetoric, the "Kol David" radio website refers to Israel by name. Its news articles, which appear to be copied in some instances from the Israeli Hebrew press, never use the more common Iranian phrase "Zionist entity." The only obvious difference in language is the use of 'immigrant' instead of "olim" and that the Israeli Defense Ministry is called the "Ministry of War."
At the top of the webpage, which can be accessed at http://www.irib.ir/worldservice/hebrewradio/default.htm, the Hebrew date slides across the screen. The site provides limited news, with most of it about Israel. The articles describe controversial events on the conflict. Dilemmas such as the psychological effects of the intifada on Israeli children are also posted.
The site does provide some daily world news, such as the tsunami disaster and events in Iraq. There is no news about Iran on the site, but links on the side of the webpage connect readers to Iranian news stations and to Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei's official website.
Hebrew-speaking Arab radio stations are meant as propaganda efforts to influence Israelis' view of their own society, but there can be other side effects, says Gerald Steinberg, the director of the Conflict Management and Negotiation program at Bar-Ilan University.
"I have discovered that [Egyptian and Jordanian Hebrew-language broadcasters] have gained a reasonable understanding of Israeli society through their language training," said Steinberg. "Perhaps these [Iranian] Hebrew speakers will help to provide some understanding about Israeli perceptions, and create some lines of communication with the centers of power in Teheran."
The station encourages feedback from Israelis.
After every internet article the word "response" is written in red and pressing on it leads to an e-mail address of the radio station. The word "E-Mail" dances on the side of the webpage, calling readers to press on it and write.
Dec. 30, 2004 23:45
Venezuela, Iran to sign cooperative agreements
By ASSOCIATED PRESSIran will provide equipment and technology to Venezuela for use in agriculture, petrochemicals, construction and health care, an Iranian official said Thursday.
A series of cooperative agreements will provide Venezuela with "plants, machinery and technology," Iranian Vice Minister of Industry Valiallah Afkhami told reporters after a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Afkhami said the agreements would be signed Friday. He also said Iranians would help set up farms with special irrigation systems and plants for making bricks.
He said next month a delegation will come to Caracas to discuss cooperative projects in petrochemicals.
The Iranian official began his one-week visit to the South American oil producer on Monday.
Chavez also visited Iran in November as part of an international tour.
Last Update: 31/12/2004 04:29
PM holds meeting on Iran's nuclear program
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held a meeting last night to discuss Israel's response to the Iranian nuclear program. A senior Israeli source said this week that Israel is leaning toward a diplomatic option. The same source said that the military option has a very low priority and that diplomacy is believed to be the best way of delaying Iranian movement toward nuclear arms. Sharon has said in recent weeks that the question of the Iranian nuclear program should be brought before the UN Security Council and should not be handled solely by the European Union.
Thursday, December 30, 2004 Iran conducts battlefield test of Shihab-3 missile, spends $1.5 billion on WMD warhead
Iran conducts battlefield test of Shihab-3 missile, spends $1.5 billion on
WMD warhead
Geostrategy-Direct, www.geostrategy-direct.com, December 28, 2004Iran has successfully tested its enhanced intermediate-range missile under
battlefield conditions.U.S. officials said Iran demonstrated its ability to fire a Shihab-3 missile
within hours of an order. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps tested the
Shihab-3 on Oct. 20 under the most realistic battle conditions yet,
officials said.Iranian Defense Ministry sources also provided details of Teheran's efforts
to develop a weapons of mass destruction warhead for the enhanced Shihab-3
missile. The sources told the London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat on Nov. 26 that
the Zelzal comprised a five-stage program to develop a biological, chemical
and nuclear warhead.The sources were quoted as saying that the warhead was developed for the
Shihab-3, which traveled 1,990 kilometers during the October launch. The
project cost $1.5 billion, derived from oil revenues, they said.A WMD warhead has also been developed for the new Makar rocket. The sources
told A-Sharq Al Awsat that the 355-mm rocket could carry a biological or
chemical warhead."The test was meant to show everybody of Iran's capability to fire the
missile at a moment's notice," an official said.Officials said the October Shihab-3 launch was not meant to achieve the
maximum range of the missile, which flew about 1,300 kilometers, but is
capable of continuing for an additional several hundred kilometers."They didn't seek to obtain the maximum range," the official said. "When you
try to get to the maximum range, you have a certain telemetry that we didn't
detect."The Oct. 20 launch was the first actual test firing of the enhanced Shihab-3
missile under battlefield conditions. Officials said the modified Shihab
contained a range of Iranian-developed subsystems, including a liquid-fuel
engine.In August, the enhanced Shihab-3 was used in a command and control
demonstration that did not seek to fly the missile to any significant range.Officials said the missile was aborted within seconds of launch.
U.S. officials confirmed the Iranian claim that Teheran could begin serial
production of the Shihab-3. But they said they doubted this would take place
over the next few months as development of the intermediate-range was
continuing.A-Sharq Al Awsat quoted the Defense Ministry sources as saying that in late
2003 Iran achieved the capability to produce what they termed small atomic
weapons.The sources said Iran's aim was to produce a nuclear warhead, a process that
they estimated would take no more than 18 months.
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