Larisa Alexandrovna: Iran hostage crisis update...Incredibly "Just On Time"

Iran hostage crisis update...

We now know that Iran has confirmed holding 15 UK sailors. But there are now allegations from the Iranian side that sailors and marines were in Iranian waters, something I suspected earlier:



Why do I believe Iranian accounts over UK/US accounts of what transpired? I am not a fan of Iran or its hard-line government. But I am also not a fan of pre-emptive and continued war either.

Remember, it is a well known and publicized fact that Iran had been conducting drills in its waters this past week. Tensions are high even with Iran's own patron's in Russia and China over issues involving uranium enrichment. There is a critical US/UK vote at the UN over the weekend. Yet Tehran decides to take hostages now?

Also consider this: if the British sailors were in fact in Iraqi water, as the Brits state, then are they also willing to say that Iran had entered Iraqi waters illegally? That is a claim the British have not made but it would have to be the case if the kidnapping happened in Iraqi water.

The most interesting thing here, for me as always, is timing and what I have already mentioned is the strong arming of the United Nations into tightening sanctions again Iran. The timing of the kidnapping is incredibly "just on time" for this crucial vote:



We should all be very concerned that as s domestics scandals control the national conversation, no one appears to be noticing what is a very serious situation.

http://www.atlargely.com/2007/03/iran_hostage_cr.html

Let us hope for cool heads. Pray even to whoever.

Give us this day our daily foreign policy crisis,
and forgive us our trespasses into neighboring territory,
as we forgive those who trespass into us.
lead us not into Iran, but deliver us from the Evil of the Bush Regime,
for thine is the system of government,
and the power, pursuant to a weekly committee meeting,
and the glory, not watery tarts wielding English weapons,
Amen.

thanks for the post.

Curious, eh?

don't get sidetracked

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x150921

and maybe even that won't scare people stupid again.

The difference being the British gave a radio warning, rather than immediately trying to capture the Iranians.

Or do they have the same sort of modern GPS units that every other modern country on the planet have? I gotta assume the latter.

So, why no coordinates? Why are we still talking in vague generalities? What were the exact coordinates of where the sailors were picked up? Where is the video of the GPS unit and then the sailors? Why the fuck would anyone in the Gulf not document every aspect of any official engagement using at the least ordinary GPS and video crap available on Ebay or a a street bazaar?

If you don't pre-suppose the lies, get out of the game.

Isn't it all one grand GPS system? Kind of funny to think opposing armies would be using the same system. Who controls it?

From a cursory search (gps jamming hacking military) it looks like screwing with the signals would be a piece of cake for those sophisticated in electronic warfare.

http://gpsd.berlios.de/gps-hacking.html

How GPS Works

First, the basics of how GPS works. It depends on the fact that satellite orbits are very predictable. A GPS sensor is a specialized computer that knows about the orbits of GPS satellites, and in particular can predict exactly where each satellite will be at any given time with respect to the fixed Earth. (For those of you who enjoy such details, what they actually predict is each satellite's position with respect to an imaginary ellipsoid called the "WGS 84 geoid" which closely fits the mean sea level of Earth.)

There are presently 28 dedicated GPS satellites, 11,000 miles up in high-inclination orbits so that each one's trajectory wraps around the Earth like a ball of yarn as the planet spins beneath them. The inclinations are tuned to guarantee that about twelve will be visible at any given time from anywhere on Earth (coverage falls off a little at high latitudes). Additional GPS coverage is provided by a couple of maritime navigation satellites parked in geosynchronous orbits over the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

You can look at a very nifty simulation of GPS satellite orbits. (Also includes GLONASS, the Russian military equivalent of GPS.) You can also look at pictures of GPS satellites and the control system.

Each satellite broadcasts identification pulses, each one including the clock time it was sent. A GPS receiver, picking up one of these pulses, can compare it to an internal clock and know the time it took to arrive. Multiplying by lightspeed gives the distance to the satellite. This starts to be useful when the GPS can get accurate timings to three or more satellites; at that point, computing the GPS's exact position with respect to the satellites becomes a relatively simple if tedious exercise in spherical trigonometry (which, fortunately, the GPS's firmware does for you).

That's the theory. In practice, the system has important limits. Anything, natural or artificial, that messes with the signal timings will degrade the accuracy of your position fix. Until it was abolished by Presidential decree in 2000, the most important limit was artificial, the so-called 'Selective Availability' feature. The satellites were programmed to introduce patterned timing jitter into the signals. The U.S. military knew the pattern, but nobody else did (or, at least, nobody who was admitting it).


http://www.hacking-gps.com/gps-notes/archives/2005/04/lowcost_gps_jam.php

Technical article on building a portable GPS jammer that affects the L1 carrier signal. This means that it would have no effect on the military L2 carrier or the P-code that that carries. It does however cast a huge cloud of doubt over the use of GPS in tracking tagged criminals.

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,77702,00.html

January 17, 2003 (Computerworld) -- Government officials and communications experts are assessing the public safety and security implications of a newly posted online article that provides directions for making cheap devices that can jam Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.

Information in the article that appears in the current issue of the online hacker magazine Phrack potentially puts at risk GPS devices used for commercial navigation and military operations, authorities said.

The Phrack article provides a detailed guide to building a low-cost, portable GPS jammer out of components that can be easily obtained from electronics supply houses. According to the article, the "onslaught of cheap GPS-based navigation (or hidden tracking devices) has made it necessary for the average citizen to take up the fine art of electronic warfare." Electronics and GPS experts who read the article this week called it technically competent and said amateurs with a certain amount of technical skill could build a GPS jammer from the plans.

Although the article said the jammer is designed to work only against civil-use GPS signals broadcast on the frequency of 1575.42 MHz and not the military frequency of 1227.6 MHz, James Hasik, an Atlanta-based consultant and author of the book The Precision Revolution: GPS and the Future of Aerial Warfare, disagreed. (...)

http://www.fuhs.de/en/news/sathack.shtml

Press Release 03.04.2003
'Coalition Guidance Systems Compromised'

The explosion of an alleged allied forces so-called smart bomb on a market place in Baghdad where about 50 civilians were killed could have been caused by the deliberate jamming of the guidance system by a GPS jammer. This is the opinion of the internationally well-known security consultant Howard Fuhs. ‘This incident is similar to the bombing of the Chinese embassy during the Kosovo conflict’, Fuhs said. ‘It is a safe assumption that the error was caused by GPS jamming transmitters and not through navigational errors.’

Fuhs maintains that not only is the jamming of GPS signals a threat to allied forces and civilians in Iraq, but there is also the danger of the enemy, even terrorists, hacking into satellite communication channels. Such hacking and jamming may explain the level of civilian casualties and attack from 'friendly' fire.

'I have seen not only ex-Soviet hand-held GPS jamming devices for sale on the internet, but details of how to make jammers out of cheap components. The threat of jamming is widely known, but rarely publicised'. See:
www.computerworld.com
www.ac11.org
www.space.com

What is even more disturbing is the possibility of satellites actually being taken over and their communication channels used for ill. 'Satellite security is at the same stage as computer security was ten years ago, with the 'owners' in denial. Usually, encryption is either weak or non-existent, in the belief that little-known modulation types are sufficient security. This is palpably untrue. There is no modulation type that cannot be decoded with money to buy the equipment. In some cases, sufficient wattage is all that is needed to open up the controls. (...)

http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,65096,00.html

Pentagon is probably jamming GPS in Afghanistan, experts say
Bob Brewin

October 26, 2001 (Computerworld) -- The U.S. Defense Department has probably been selectively jamming signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) in Afghanistan since the start of the air campaign earlier this month, according to nonmilitary GPS experts.

The experts emphasized that the jamming in Afghanistan will have no effect on civilian users, including airlines, which increasingly rely on GPS for transoceanic navigation. Signals from the GPS satellite system available to civilian users provide an accuracy of 36 meters or better, while separate, encrypted military signals used to guide so-called smart bombs in Afghanistan provide accuracy within 6 meters, according to Richard Langley, a professor of geodesy and precision navigation at the University of New Brunswick. Langley's Web site plots the GPS military signal over Kabul as of Oct. 11.

Langley said the Pentagon has developed the capability to jam civilian GPS signals within a specific targeted area and could easily deny the 36-meter-accuracy civilian signal to the Taliban forces without interfering with users in other areas of the world. Depending on whether the Pentagon, which developed and operates the 28-satellite GPS constellation, uses airborne or ground jammers, this could deny the signal to the Taliban over a wide area, with some of the jamming potentially spilling over into Pakistan.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/04/universal_autom.html

GPS, my behind. Who needs to hack those tamperproof big brother GPS boxes when it's much easier to jam the weak satellite signals? Couple of hours of soldering and assembling, top, for an amateur.

Oh, and that will also screw up GPS navigation for everyone unlucky to be close by.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

Police comedy, the next round: the hunt for GPS jammers. "What's that in your pocket, boy?"

Where this silliness is going to end? EMP guns?

http://www.dailywireless.org/2006/10/08/satellite-jam/

Ground segments and communications links remain the most vulnerable components of space systems, susceptible to attack by conventional military means, computer hacking, and electronic jamming. A number of intentional jamming incidents targeting communications satellites have been reported in recent years and Iraq’s acquisition of GPS-jamming equipment for use against US GPS-guided munitions during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 suggests that jamming capabilities are proliferating.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2041685,00.html

My country has had disputes with Iran since the 1950's but it has never invaded or fought a war with them.
I am a little concerned about it becoming a problem, Iran taking hostages, maybe trying to provoke action, I hope it will speed up our withdrawal from Iraq.

but the British have not seriously, agressively responded and there has been serious hatred towards
the UK from Iran for decades. I can't see any reason for us to go to war with Iran, despite the nuclear ambitions, the public will never support further war and if those Naval Officers are killed, the support and trust in our government will get even lower.
To me it makes little sense, the Britain would want to provoke a war right now, when we are preparing to withdraw and Tony Blair has three months left in office. Most of his party want him gone sooner because they have local elections in May and he is damaging them badly.
They majority of the British public have been against this war from the start and the more that our troops die and the worse the anger gets. I have never meet another British person that supports this war, everyone from the ladies at the bus stops, to the railway maitainance workers, to parish priests, pastors, vicars and newsagents is against this and always was.

Then it has to do with the history of British imperialism: specifically, the 1953 coup d'etat against Mossadegh, backed by UK, US and Anglo-American Petroleum, and the support for the Shah until 1979.

there's that and, my first reaction was that maybe tony's poodlehood( or would that be poodleness?) was being questioned and he just felt a need to help the chimperor gin up a case for some sort of military action against the Iranians.Or I may just be being cynical,not that there's a justification for that or anything.

These photos arrays, which the CIA and/or NSA already has, would put the issue to rest immediately. Yet they aren't being released.

So why not? If they showed the Iranians in Iraqi territorial waters, the crisis would be over. Unless, of course, someone WANTS the crisis to continue.

Could it be that the Brits were in the wrong?

(Just asking is all).

if they want to use it to start the war they will try whatever the facts actually are.

At this point any claims including evidence presented by either side as to the location of the UK boat crew is going to be disputed.

Now if the Andromedans land and settle the question, that's a different matter.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_on_re_eu/british_seized_iran


Britain's Defense Ministry said the Royal Navy personnel were "engaged in routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters," and had completed a ship inspection when they were accosted by the Iranian vessels.




Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl of the Fifth Fleet said the British crew members were intercepted by several larger patrol boats operated by Iranian sailors belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, a radical force that operates separately from the country's regular navy.

In fact, monkey and poodle lied the USA and UK into an illegal and immoral war over phony WMD threat claims.

The result? Maybe 600,000 dead human beings.

For what? Halliburton. BP. Exxon...

But i'd have to take the side of the less harmful one, the one that has no nukes, the one that isn't invading the middle east. The one that isn't looking for a pretext to invade yet another ME country, the one that doesn't have a record of staging events that serve as a pretext to war.

He does not want 15 died Naval Officers.
You also have to bare in mind these men and women were in a dingy and not exactly threatening.

If they were in Iranian waters, they were violating international law.
That alone is a threat. This is provocation plain and simple.

Not if it was unintentional... I don't think that there is a rope line or clear marker to say where the exact line is, in must happen all the time on that stretch of water. They didn't fire at anyone or do anything that should have provoked an arrest, other then supposedly going over an invisible line. Have a look at the type of boats they are in, they are not very well protected for people committing a deliberate act of aggression. These 15 officers are pawns in someone else's political games. If they did not enter Iranian waters then the Iranian patrols invaded Iraqi waters, which is a more worrying. If the Iranian's keep these officers in custody,it will most likely delay our withdrawal from Iraq,with was about to begin and if this does get very nasty, it is our government that is likely to fall not Iran's.
This is very, very serious, that the press are being very low key and not giving much in the way of editorial comment.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6492489.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6492705.stm

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2042328,00.html#article_continue

The Brits have been lying for 500 years.

Brits have been creating havoc in smaller boats for centuries.

Here we go again.

for any other reason than it being Absolutely Necessary.

Arjemini-me may be nuts, but he ain't stupid.