I believe it was Julius Caesar’s wife, who first made quite a thing about the 15th of March, known in those times as the Ides of March, warning her husband not to go to the forum on that day, because bad things happen on the Ides of March. Well, we all know how that turned out, but subsequently, Friday the 13th seems to have been labelled as more treacherous, and we’ve just had two of those in consecutive months. I sincerely hope none of you were struck by the dreaded Friday the 13th, and that today the Ides of March will not be worse!
Not doing too well weather-wise at the moment, around the world, are Gabon, the USA, Columbia, Ecuador, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ethiopia and Australia, where severe weather and flooding are causing power and communications cuts, and removals to evacuation centres, with the attendant and associated anxieties.
nbcnews.com notes that Japan marked the 15th anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster on its northeastern coast this week. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, ravaged parts of the region, directly caused more than 22,000 deaths, and forced nearly half a million people to flee their homes, most of them due to tsunami damage.
Some 160,000 people fled their homes in Fukushima because of the radiation spewed from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. About 26,000 of them haven’t returned because they resettled elsewhere, their home towns remain off-limits or they have lingering concerns about radiation.
Japan observed a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m. local time on Wednesday, the moment the quake occurred 15 years earlier. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, at a ceremony in Fukushima, pledged to do the utmost to accelerate the region’s recovery within the next five years and to reinforce “the valuable lessons we learned from the huge sacrifice of the disaster.”
Takaichi has pushed to accelerate reactor restarts and sought to bolster nuclear power as a stable energy source, in line with the major reversal of policy in 2022 that ended a decade-long nuclear phase-out plan.
Some residents in the tsunami-ravaged areas walked down to the coast early in the morning to pray for their loved ones and others whose remains are still missing.
More than 1 million homes, offices and schools were damaged or destroyed in the quake and tsunami in Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima and other coastal areas. Key infrastructure has been rebuilt, but communities and local economies have been slow to recover.
Gazetaexpress.com is reporting on the new (random) numbers station which is audible on shortwave (or HF) frequencies. They say that the radio signal first began broadcasting on February 28. On a noisy shortwave frequency, almost twice a day — early morning and evening according to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) — a man’s voice speaking Farsi, the language of Persia, is heard, counting out a series of seemingly random numbers.
The numbers are read at different time periods, followed by a pause during which the word “tavajjoh,” which translates as “attention,” is said three times.
The mystery of this transmission has puzzled many in the global community of amateur radio operators who analyze suspicious signals. They have exchanged notes and tips on the signal, who could be behind them, and what there purpose might be.
Starting on 4th March, the signal began to be jammed, with a deafening electronic noise making it almost impossible to hear the numbers. The original transmission stopped for a period of time and then moved to another shortwave frequency.
“It’s interesting because it started to be jammed on the initial frequency,” said Akin Fernandez, who is widely considered an authority on the old coded radio technology known as “numbered channels.”
Regardless of who is broadcasting and who is blocking it, this mysterious broadcast is a throwback to another era, before the digital encryption widely used in apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and others.
The transmission is called a “numbers station” — a Cold War-era tool that uses radio transmissions and traditional cryptology to send secret messages — usually to spies around the world.
The concept is this: using a random series of numbers, generated by some mechanical or electronic device or something more sophisticated, one person can send an encrypted message to another person who possesses a decoder, often called a “one-time pad.”
The code of the numbers stations is “completely unbreakable,” said Fernandez, who more than two decades ago released a four-CD audio compilation containing hundreds of recordings from around the world, called “The Conet Project.” It is considered the “Bible” for numbers station enthusiasts.
“The numeric keys used are completely random. There are no mathematical operations that can be used to brute force them,” he said. “And even if the answer is found, for example in correct English, it is not necessarily understandable.”
“You can’t understand anything from a random set of letters or numbers except their length. However the length of the message is not the content of the information being transmitted,” he said.
“But it is possible to get an idea of the stations’ purpose from the length of time they are active and the noise they transmit if there is no text message.”
According to Priyom, a blog run by radio enthusiasts, the Persian-language broadcast is the first new numbers station in years. Priyom was the first to identify, catalogue, and analyze the signal, which they have dubbed “V32.” American journalist Seth Hettena also mentioned the signal in a blog post on March 4.
The group says its members scattered around the world have managed to triangulate the origin of the signal transmitter: “Somewhere in an area that includes northern Italy, Switzerland, Western Germany, Eastern France, Belgium and the Netherlands”, they say.
Thanks to gazetaexpress.com for these excerpts from their report.
Well, having survived two Friday the 13th’s and the Ides of March, I’m sure it will be an easy matter for all of you to find something green to wear on Tuesday the 17th, to practice your best “Oirish Accent”, to be sure, and to go looking for the best source of good Irish Guinness to celebrate your narrow escape.
This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, hastily cultivating a shamrock in my garden, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.