The mastermind
Hot on the heels of last year's Spy Squirrel bust comes this victory for counter-espionage. "Iran arrests pigeons 'spying' on nuclear site," from the Telegraph, October 20:
One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan in Isfahan province, the Etemad Melli newspaper reported. It said that some metal rings and "invisible" strings were attached to the bird, suggesting that it might have been somehow communicating what it had seen with the equipment it was carrying.
"Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings," a source told the newspaper.
The source gave no further description of the pigeons, nor what their fate might be.
Natanz is home to Iran's heavily-bunkered underground uranium enrichment plant, which is also not far from Kashan.
The activity at Iran's controversial uranium enrichment facility is the focus of Iran's five-year standoff with the West, which fears it aims to develop nuclear weapons. The Tehran government insists its programme is intended to generate power for civilian use only.
Last year, Iran issued a formal protest over the use of espionage by the United States to produce a key intelligence report on the country's controversial nuclear programme.
It is also highly suspicious of Israel, whose extensive intelligence activities are not known to include the use of pigeons.
Put yur wings behind your head and
turn around S-L-O-W-L-Y No sudden moves BIRD!
You just can't make this stuff up!
And some folks think it's OK if these jokers obtain nuclear weapons?
Nomoors
I have never seen a black pigeon but who knows, maybe they have them in Iran. I'm sure the Jews dispatched them with itsy-bitsy cameras on the suspicious metal rings.
Maybe they were somebody's innocent homing pigeons who went astray, poor things. I'm sure they were summarily executed immediately after capture.
They must have been desperate for something to kill while they waited to butcher another little girl convicted of immodesty.
Pigeons! Hahahahahahaha!
"Invisible strings"? Good grief! Now we've heard it all!
These people are truly crazy -- Allah has driven them mad!
Holy supermarionation, Scott!
“The tree shall say, behold there is a Zionist pigeon upon ye branches, lay waste to my roost! As for those from whom ye fear secret messages of kafir rebellion, admonish them and banish them to under bridges, and scourge their feather from their wings and smite their bird brains. Then if they carry no invisible decree, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.”
Birdshaq : 285
Invisible strings?
How did they know?
I have been studying invisible strings for years.
I thought I was the only one that could see them.
It's not easy to see invisible strings.
You have to cross your eyes and hold your tongue just right.
People think I'm crazy when I point them out.
Look! There's an invisible string, don't you see it?
I hate to say it, but the Iranians have vindicated me. They see invisible strings too...
I wonder what form of execution they will use against the pigeons. Hanging? Firing squad? Poison Bird Seed?
This is what happens when the lunatics are allowed to run the aslymn.
no doubt they have been tortured and beheaded..
From what I have heard from my friends at Spy R Us it seems that the pigeons are just a distraction - the real threat to to the Iranians are their highly trained invisible worms.
No doubt the Iranian people actually believe that infidel pigeons are infiltrating their society - trying to spread Christianity.
You just couldn't make it up.
In recent times, when war and strife
The kafir invasion threaten'd life
An' all was armed to the knife
The Mohos hung the monkey O !
The Mohos with courage high,
Siezed on the monkey for a Kafir spy;
"Hang him !" says one; "he's to die"
They did and they hung the monkey Oh!
They tried every means to make him speak
And tortured the monkey till loud he did speak;
Says yen "thats french" says another "its Greek"
For the fishermen had got druncky oh!
Adapted from The Hartlepool Monkey
http://www.thisishartlepool.co.uk/history/thehartlepoolmonkey.asp
Birds of a feather...
The Iranians always Crow about something.
I'm surprised they didn't accuse the Pigeons of conducting bombing raids. Like "hay, what just landed on my head"?
Verily a sign from heaven.
Even a fool like monkey man knows what is coming.
The sage notes that even as a pigeon poops from above, so will the bombers dump their loads.
We can only hope that the pigeons were not virgins.
Ah the pigeons are also suffering from Islamophobia...
Will PETA & ALF protest and come to their rescue?
Some Pigeon facts:
Racing Homing Pigeons have been clocked flying 92.5 mph average speed on a 400 mile race.
Homing Pigeons have been known to fly 700 miles in a day.
Pigeons have flown in many wars, including both WWI & WWII. They have saved countless lives.
Pigeons achieved a 98% success rate in the missions flown in WW II, despite enemy fire, and often with mortal injuries to themselves.
In the World Wars, flying pilots carried pigeons in case they had to ditch their plane, they would release the bird for help. Many pilots owe their lives to a pigeon.
Pigeons are still used today by the French, Swiss, Israeli, Iraqi and Chinese Armies.
Pigeons proved valuable in the Gulf War, as their messaging was not affected by the electronic jamming.
They were used by the Greeks more than 5,000 years ago.
They have been known to see very well over a 26 mile distance.
Scientist believe they may hear wind blowing over mountains from hundreds of miles away.
In the late 1800 the most heroic recorded flight was from a pigeon that was released in Africa and took 55 days to get home in England. Traveling over 7,000 miles.
The pigeon beats its wings up to ten times per second, while maintaining a heart rate of 600 beats per minute up to 16 hours without rest.
The pigeon has the rare ability for a large bird to be able to fly nearly straight up.
Advanced studies at the University of Montana conclude: “Pound for pound,the pigeon is one of the smartest, most physically adept creatures in the animal kingdom.”
'Advanced studies at the University of Montana conclude: “Pound for pound,the pigeon is one of the smartest, most physically adept creatures in the animal kingdom.” '
...and they taste like chicken!
Q: What's worse than an Iranian with a nuke?
A: A paranoid Iranian with a nuke!
If you read the Telegraph, it has the Iran obilgatory Zionistic blame game. You can't make this stuff up!
Make sure the Iranians don't get any more DVDs of the PBS program "Nature".
They've had shows where biologists put cameras on birds and fish and then turn them loose in order to learn more about the animal's life.
Those evil scientists! Someone from Nature must be filming Iranian pigeons.
"Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings," a source told the newspaper.
Obviously of Zionist origin. After all, orthodox Jews wear black, and the Israeli flag is blue and white. Case closed.
F*** Allah. F*** Muhammad
:(-{--
'Pigeons are still used today by the French, Swiss, Israeli, Iraqi and Chinese Armies.'
Israeli Army? See! It's the Joooos, once again.
Little problem there, though. Does one really think that any pigeon created by the Israelis would have anything "obvious" about it?
Note to Ahmedinejad: it's the pigeons that look completely normal that should worry you. Be afraid; be very afraid.
How amusing-pigeons frightening a bunch of bird brains. Only in Cesspoolia can one find such ironic insanity.
Stop being so dense people, just beacause you read about something that sounds crazy doesnt mean that it is. We 100% have remote controled animals the CIA has admited to it many many times. Go to the link i posted it shows info about a few of our crazier wepons that i bet most of you ignorent idiots would mock if they were mentioned in any other artical.
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/gallery/2008-05/worlds-spookiest-weapons
zaarrae;
Most of them are just cancelled projects, and none of them control animals, the only one that might have a slight control is the dolphin.
the rest is just random paranoia.
Some even complete bullsh*t, it makes you laugh that the government actually invested in some of them.
So, relax, the iranians are just catching marked birds for migration control... are you one of them?
Mackie;
The raven or more commonly known as Crows are the smartest birds on the planet.
The pigeons fly to their nest, that is how they used it.
Just as long as they don't recognize the bugged roaches scurrying around. And did the eyes in that picture just move? It writes itself.lol
I hope they read the birds their Miranda Rights before taking them into custody.
"Iran arrests pigeons 'spying' on nuclear site"
From the article.
All the above scoffing aside, using pigeons to carry remote sensing cameras is actually not a bad idea at all. Zaarrae has a good point. Current video technology that can put spy cameras in a tie tack would certainly allow placing a camera on a pigeon, and the "invisible strings" could have been meant to indicate "barely visible" antennas used to transmit the video signal. It would be a sort of poor man's spy satellite, but would probably require someone transporting the wired pigeon to a location in the vicinity of the target and then releasing it, thus exposing said person to being caught. I wouldn't discount this as been as idiotic as it might appear, although I think a high resolution image from any of the spy satellites sporting an 8-meter mirror would do a better job and be more reliable.
Zaarrae, no one discounts that "creatures" can (and probably are) used by spy agencies of many countries. But the level of sophistication is most likely far greater in those made by their enemies than that described by the Iranians.
It would be very funny if DrCancerMan is correct, and they're pigeons marked for tracking migration and/or flight times.
I hope that the CIA is following this. I suggests an psy-ops program. Band millions of pigeons and release them near the Iranian border. Drive the revolutionary guards nuts.
Bert should conduct a Save-the-Pigeons telethon with his Sesame Street friends.
I know of an ornery cockatiel who wouldn't mind joining the war effort. From a pure intelligence standpoint he would probably exceed the Mullahs and cannot stomach the thought of halal birdseed.
I see a Disney Movie in the making. "The Spy who Flew the Coop"
Pigeon....Jame Pigeon..
ohh, too much coffee. s/b
Pigeon....James Pigeon
To think these Mullahs think they should be ruling a world wide Ummah.
Every time I read about the Iranians, I'm reminded of a Star Trek episode called "The Samaritan Snare".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakled
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean no one is out to get you.
The Iranian government may be idiotic, but that doesn't mean they are wrong to be worried about American intelligence operations utilizing animals as well as machines.
I go with the folks here who see nothing whatever ridiculous or implausible about training pigeons for intelligence and military missions of various kinds. In fact to ridicule it makes us look silly here, because advanced militaries have experimented and continue to experiment with the use of animals for intelligence and military missions. It is knowledge of the most common sort that animals can be trained to do amazing things, large numbers of amazing things, and the complexity of the tasks they can be trained for can only be matched by a machine if that machine is under the remote control of a human being. By themselves, machines are still not as flexibly "intelligent" as many kinds of animals. Animals do not have a thinking process that gathers itself together into self-consciousness or consciousness, but they do have a bodily intelligence that in some ways is infinitely greater than the puny conscious thoughts of human beings. That bodily intelligence, derived from the tremendous living intelligence in nature and the cosmos, can be exploited and harnessed by professional trainers to do remarkable things, for good or ill.
Pigeons have many advantages over the current generation of drones, though pigeons can't deliver a large explosion, at least not yet. But remote controlled drones will soon be miniaturized effectively and cheaply enough to make most functions of military pigeons obsolete. Still, animals have some abilities that machines may never have, unless scientists find ways of harnessing living tissue into computers -- something that, so I've been told, is being experimented with.
What can a camera on a pigeon see that Google Earth can't? Seriously.
"What can a camera on a pigeon see that Google Earth can't? Seriously."
Posted by: jdamn
Google Earth has limited resolution, which depends on location. Some areas are photographed at higher resolution than others, but none of them are at better resolution than maybe a few decimeters (say, a foot or so) per pixel. Many places are at lower resolution than this. But the biggest limitation is that the images aren't current. If you're trying to follow rapid developments you need images at more frequent updates than every few months or so that Google Earth provides.
A map of the locations of the Iranian nuclear sites is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4617398.stm, where there are images of the sites that appear to be snagged from Google Earth. They're not too bad, actually, and the coordinates given by Google Earth would certainly be sufficient for targeting purposes, even down to individual buildings if you knew which ones you wanted to hit.
Although using pigeons would appear to be technically feasible, I would think that often updated satellite observations would be a better and less hassle-filled way to get the images - if you have access to them. Not nearly as much fun, though, if you were a geeky kind of guy who digs doing stuff like this just to see if it works. This could be kind of fun to check out, actually. The necessary parts should be easily obtainable and would probably cost less than a few hundred dollars.
Eastview;
Today satellites do most of the dirty work in espionage, which U2 and SR-71 used to do it. Satellites can achieve incredible resolutions today, if you want a taste of what it can achieve, check the google headquarters in google earth.
Yes, very impressive indeed. Looks like the resolution here is on the order of a few inches per pixel. I wonder how many other places are imaged at this resolution?
"Pigeons have many advantages over the current generation of drones, though pigeons can't deliver a large explosion, at least not yet."
Posted by: traeh at October 21, 2008 11:08 PM
Exactly. Among other things, they can fly silently and very slowly, have zero radar signature, and can maneuver flawlessly through complex mazes such as between buildings, which drones or miniature RPVs (remotely piloted vehicle - drone) cannot do or have great difficulty doing. There are other uses besides delivering large explosives that could be conceived of. Even small amounts of explosives of a few ounces carried by a pigeon could be an effective way to knock out some types of high tech equipment, say by delivering it into a nook or cranny of a defense radar system as a prelude to a full scale attack.
A possible Israeli connection was noted above. This is entirely plausible. These guys are geniuses at concocting some very creative and novel solutions to technical problems, including especially in the field of miniature camera systems. In fact, it's an Israeli company that makes the camera systems for some of the American RPVs. Wouldn't be surprised at all if the company has a branch whose job it is to investigate stuff like this.
Ray Cline of the old CIA used to say the Soviet did "revolution on the cheap".
The Iranians evidently caugtht on and are picking up suspects who work for peanuts.
WHat a great story! There's more about it on the Sky News website too:
http://blogs.news.sky.com/foreignmatters/Post:8c2a2858-01ab-4ab8-9291-42bd4afa79b6