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Fourth Undersea Cable Taken Offline In Less Than a Week
An anonymous reader writes "Another undersea cable was taken offline on Friday, this one connecting Qatar and UAE. 'The [outage] caused major problems for internet users in Qatar over the weekend, but Qtel's loss of capacity has been kept below 40% thanks to what the telecom said was a large number of alternative routes for transmission. It is not yet clear how badly telecom and internet services have been affected in the UAE.' In related news it's been confirmed that the two cables near Egypt were not cut by ship anchors." Update: 02/04 07:13 GMT by Z : A commenter notes that despite the language in the article indicated a break or malfunction, the cable wasn't cut. It was taken offline due to power issues.
RTFA: The cable was not cut, it was taken offline due to power problems.
> the problem is related to the power system and not the result of a ship's anchor cutting the cable, as is thought to be the case in the other three incidents.
Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
From Sun Tzu (IIRC):
1. Attack the plan - Futility
2. Attack the alliances - Division
3. Attack the resources - Frustration
4. Attack the army in the field - Attrition
5. Attack the cities - Destruction
The costs increase with each step, which is why the cities are last. Good, proactive intellegence and operatives can prevent things from happening. If not, they can foul things up so they can't happen. Communications is a resource, so it looks like step 3 is on the table.
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
Here's the link that was on reddit.com on Friday regarding this info:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=JES20080202&articleId=7980
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
Singapore is not a Muslim nation, although it is surrounded by Muslim nations... hmm... sounds familiar.
"No, but the Republican party still wants a chance at this election. If another war was started, it would guarantee a Democrat victory."
.... but it worked. Anything is possible if you control an effective propaganda machine.
Not if you manage an effective propaganda campaign to con the American people in to thinking that they and their children are in imminent danger. It would be somewhat harder to do this time around because everyone is a little jaded from Iraq... It would still be quite possible to use an imagined threat from Iran to actually win an election as long as you are willing to kill a few Americans to get the fear rolling. The Republican's won the 2002 and 2004 elections at least partially based on fear mongering about 9/11 and Iraq, that and skillful use of wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion.
All you would need is another 9/11 scale attack, an attack where you could implicate Iran even if they had nothing to do with it, real or fabricated evidence of an Iranian built nuke, and a repeat of something like the Anthrax letters that followed 9/11.
The neocon cabal, The New American Century had pretty brazenly outlined the importance of modern Pearl Harbors to advance their agenda, and lucky them, they got one on 9/11, followed by a couple more in the London and Madrid bombings.
Those Anthrax letters are the most disturbing indicator of a government conspiracy, even if 9/11 wasn't, where someone killed a small number of Americans in order to create a panic about weapons of mass destruction so it could be used as the propaganda lever to get the American people to support invading Iraq. All indications are the Anthrax came out of American bioweapons labs, not from some Middle Eastern terrorist. You also note the American government made absolutely no progress in finding the responsible party even though they know where the Anthrax came from.
I still remember the run up to Iraq war where Fox News was running news stories suggesting Saddam was going to use drones to spray American cities with chemical and biological weapons. It was complete insanity and blatantly fabrication
I'm the first to admit its a little unlikely, but the Neocons are starting to regain some of their malevolent self confidence since things have calmed down some in Iraq. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they are considering ginning up a war with Iran in time to start a new and furious round of flag waving and lapel pins for the next election.
@de_machina
It could be a coincidence that four cables got cut. It could also be a coincidence that we see a clear increase in the propaganda from the "coalition" right now that the connectivity for the "enemy" is poor...
I can't tell if you're being facetious or not. The law you're talking about isn't in the Constitution (and is considered by many an abdication of Congress's Constitutionally-mandated duty); it's the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
However, the counter arguement here is that anything they can do to the LAN cables we could easily counter-act with wireless transmission as Satellites are more than capable of carrying the necessary data for communication.
Absolutely not. Satellites don't have anywhere close to the bandwidth that fiber cables do, and the latency sucks on satellite connections.
And in the grand scheme of things, how important would you think 750 million people with some of the highest standards of living in the world would be to US exports. (Yes, there are about 3 times as many people in Europe as in USA).
Please, if you know absolutely nothing about the world you live in, at least don't pretend you do. And for pete's sake don't get modded up!!!
Although the fiber itself is glass, the undersea cables are not simply bare fibers. The glass fibers (usually 2-12 fibers) are bundled with electrical cables used to power optical repeaters, steel cable for tensile strength, then wrapped in armor plating to protect against most of the common undersea hazards.
If you want to be taken seriously, please use correct grammar. The adjectival form of "Democrat" is "Democratic".
I am with you on the Iran oil market theory - in fact I would say that would be the primary reason for military action in any case.
Of course, there's increasing evidence that contradicts the "ship's anchor" theory as well.
However, the counter arguement here is that anything they can do to the LAN cables
What do you mean by LAN cables? Like CAT5 through the ocean? While the mediteranean sea isn't exactly huge, i wouldn't call it a "local area network".
This pretty much only isolates the European world from the internet,
Really? When did this happen? I didn't notice it happening to me....
Anyway, a big blackout would likely isolate the US from the rest of the world, given most network infrastructure goes through europe anyway and the network in europe is more interlinked than that in the US.
Also note: US citizens are still quite a minority seen globally: 300 million versus roughly 6 billion which is about 5 percent (calculating body weight will more likely end up to be 7-8%... SCNR).
Europe, with its roughly 710 mill. people is about 11.8 percent of world population, Asia is 4 billion/60 percent, africa 900 mill./14 percent, just to give you a perspective. Details can be found at wikipedia; just search for the continent of your choice or "world population".
Acts of war against other continents may lead to a major conflict where that end with the US completly devastated. The sheer numbers of available menpower virtually guarantees that: Just think of 4 billion asians waging war against the US. Even if the US military wipes out 80%, the asians are still ahead in numbers and can overcome US citizens by sheer force.
Note to self: Be more nice to my asian co-workers
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev