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Fifth Cable Cut To Middle East
You may have noticed a number of stories recently about undersea cables getting cut around the world. Apparently the total is now up to 5, but the scariest part of this is that Iran is now offline. You can also read Schneier's comments on this coincidence. Update: 02/06 17:42 GMT by Z : As a commenter notes, though the country of Iran is obviously experiencing some networking difficulties, it is not offline.
"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
-Auric Goldfinger
But who is the enemy?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
One router in Iran -- the one that happens to be used by Internet Traffic Report -- is unreachable. As are dozens of single points on the internet in many states in the region.
A quick perusal of, e.g., newspaper web sites in Iran finds every one I have tried working fine, including all state-run media. As is the web site of the Government of Iran and numerous other government and press web sites physically located in Iran. See for yourself. (And yes, I am aware that simply ending in
I know all of you are just itching to believe it's a US information operation (I love some of the articles..."a secret Pentagon strategy called 'information warfare'" -- uh, guys, I hate to break this to you, but it's not a secret) to cut Iran off from the internet in advance of the secret Iran invasion that Bush -- er, Cheney -- is oh-so-obviously planning.
No one ever said that one ship damaged all the cables. What was said was that a single ship probably cut two cables in a particular area off Egypt. But that has been called into doubt in that location. Unfortunately, it isn't clear exactly where some of the cables have been damaged, so simply because one area didn't have a ship doesn't mean it wasn't possible for it to be damaged elsewhere.
Even if someone is cutting the cables, as telecom and undersea cable experts believe is unlikely, it would be better to actually consider the facts of the situation, instead of feeing the conspiracy mill with garbage like "Iran is offline" when it clearly isn't? How about waiting until the cables are raised to see what kind of damage has been caused?
But if you want to believe one guy's blog post that "Iran is offline", which ends with:
Or, we could perhaps consider that "[m]ost telecommunications experts and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely."
Or, we could perhaps believe the facts, which is that Iran is not "offline", as I have illustrated above.
It seems that the premise to this story -- namely, that Iran is "offline" -- is patently incorrect. So, since that is untrue, what are the motivations of people who want to believe this is a prelude to war?
That lying about it somehow serves a greater purpose?
Oh, and by the way, for all you pushers of the Information Warfare theory, keep in mind that it runs both ways. I wouldn't be surprised before Iran picks up on the conspiracy stories and starts promoting that itself. What a great way to detract attention from its continuing defiance of the world community -- no, not just the US -- on its nuclear processing.
The scary part is I think this may be right. It's just too damn "convenient" to be a "coincidence"
It's a leather thing
He says he knows it all he will just wait until his next post to tell you all, so this is where "journalism" is heading. It's all about the money of course, but it's actually the first time it's been so clear.
I don't think s/he has anything.
Oops.
So when the basic, sole premise and of the story is wrong, and by extension the clear implication, where do we go from there?
from TFA "However, this author actually dug a bit deeper and found a trail that leads from the owners of most of these internet cables all the way back to some very, very large companies in the U.S. and in the U.K. Which companies you ask? Who is behind this?"
what. the. fuck?
the author clearly has his tinfoil underpants and armadillo hat on. I mean come on, whilst I realize that almost everything can be turned into a conspiracy theory this is too much. Accidents happen all the time and I remember reading that some of this outage is due to routing maintenance. Occams Razor, to me the facts as reported seem simpler then some ulterior motive and cable cutting gear.
According to an acquaintance who works for an ISP, the weird thing isn't that these cables are broken, it's that all of a sudden it's news. There are always issues with submarine systems. That is why we have so many repair ships in the global fleet:
list of ships
The big problem with your debunking of tinfoil-hat theories is that it doesn't account for 5 cables (FIVE!!! --- let that incredible number soak into your skull for a bit) being cut within the space of a few days.
It is statistically unlikely for a single cable to go down. No surprise there, as these cables cost dozens of millions apiece so they're engineered for permanence. Two in the same week is unheard of, unless there's an underwater earthquake. It doesn't take a PhD in statistics to understand that 5 cables do not get cut by normal processes in the same week or two, EVER. Under any circumstance at all.
So, while you're being partly rational in your response, you're also not addressing the issue. It can't be dismissed.
Bullshit. My buddy from Iran is currently chatting with me in on AIM. The cable may be cut, but Iran is far from offline.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Because they could just add taxes for outsourcing work to bring the cost inline with US worker cost and let the market choose the best quality for their work instead of exploiting economic imbalances?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Iranian Oil Bourse "December 2007 Iran stops accepting U.S. dollars for oil.
January 2008 Iran's Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari told reporters the bourse will be inaugurated during the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (February 1-11) at the latest." Cutting cables sends a more specific message on this issue, than say, bombing. (i.e.: How would transactions in the Oil Bourse be communicated?)
On the other hand, the knocked-out cables also affected Egypt, UAE, India and a bunch of other countries. This may not be accidental. In the event of a military strike on Iran, a whole bunch of people might want to simultaneously get rid of their dollars. Q: Where would the dollars go? A: Gold, Euros, and non-American, foreign securities. (after the dollar depreciates and stabilizes at a new low, the American stocks and bonds can be bought for a premium.)
So, who has these assets that can be exchanged for dollars? How would these transactions occur? (I guess satellite/land communication are possible, but they will be jammed up for days because of re-routed traffic.) How are these exchanges technically implemented? several ways, eg:
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
Does this mean a military attack against Iran is imminent? Perhaps not -- It could be a threat. But, this could be bad, not just for Iran. Curiously: it seems that threat extends to a lot of brown-type-looking people in or near the Middle East.
Cutting the cables doesn't serve any purpose... but perhaps repairing them does. It would be a good time to insert monitoring equipment, no?
Not that I think that's what's happening... far too obvious, in a supermarket-checkout-line-pulp-techno-thriller kind of way. I'm sure they can (and have) tapped such lines in a less clumsy way.
But how many companies are equipped for these kinds of repairs? It would be fairly easy to predict which one(s) would be used and stock them with agents. Dunno.
Does anyone know how often undersea cables normally have issues? Sure, 5 cuts in an area *seems* high to me, but then again, I don't have any frame of reference.
So, what is the statistical probability of an undersea cable having a minor, major, or catastrophic issue? If it's once a week, then perhaps we have an anomoly of location, not an anomoly of frequency.
I remember seeing some Discovery Channel show on how they end up fixing those cables, and it was rather interesting. I also have some fuzzy memory of how there are multiple boats designed to do this kind of repair work, and they are usually busy out at sea fixing *something*. I get the feeling (this is where my plea for verification comes in), that 5 cuts may not actually be TOO unusual.
If the news is wrong, Slashdot, remove it or amend it quickly. This is not serious at all and destroys a lot of support in this site. We're not talking puppies here, so be serious.
I don't think that the poster you replied to was really suggesting that having an Internet connection in Iran meant an idyllic unfettered freedom of information for its populace; instead, not having any glimpse into the outside world makes the citizens more susceptible to hatemongering propaganda, stilted views, and the like. To think that cutting off an Internet connection to Iran would actually improve political tensions would be naive.
I was also a bit disturbed that war seems to be the only alternative to sanctions. If the U.S. didn't routinely traipse into the Middle East and assert itself violently, would we have fomented as much hate as we receive now? Israel, Desert Storm, the Iraq conflict... it's enough to make Arab states feel pretty threatened. They can't compete with the scale of the United States military, but a nuclear device sure gets our attention and would make us think twice. I'm not necessarily debating the utility of our past military offensives, but to say that outright war is the only alternative to sanctions strikes me as pretty simplistic!
Perhaps we're arguing the same point, however: we've stirred up such a hornet's nest in the Middle East now that perhaps it really has come to suppression via sanctions or via war. I just wonder what that area of the world would look like if we had been less meddlesome and more supportive in the first place.
The moon may be smaller than the earth, but it's much farther away!
The measure of a theory of behavior is not "Does this action/occurrence further the given goal?", but "Given a hypothesis that group X is pursuing goal Y, is the action Z the best action X can take?"
Let's take the goal of "cutting off Iran's information before an attack by the US". Does cutting the cables in this manner "further that goal"? Yes, it does. However, given that goal, would the US military consider this its best action? Hell no! If the US Military wants to cut off your internet, they're not going to give you a lead time of several days; they're going to cut off all your links within minutes, possibly seconds of each other.
Are extremist Middle Eastern groups cutting off the cables to cut off Western influences? They would lack the capabilities to cut all cables at once, but I also suspect they'd know this was a brutally short-term situation. Most such people seem to believe that standard authoritarian government techniques are a better choice. I can't quite rule this one out as thoroughly, but it would have to be an awfully small, insular group to think this is the best choice.
The problem with the standard metric of "does it further this goal" is that it leaves you with an excessive abundance of theories, which can't all be true, but can't be ruled out by that metric. Every event further numerous goals and sets back numerous other ones. You really need to be looking at what people consider their best actions; that tends to be much more constrained and much more accurate. Less fun if you need to see conspiracies everywhere though, but that's the price you pay for caring about truth.
And so on. So far, I haven't really heard a good conspiracy theory yet, so I'm still judging natural event as the most likely, pending more information.
Hypothesis 1: the same number of cables get cut in the past two weeks as in the entire 50 years previous to that.
The problem is that cable "cuts" (actual term = "disruptions of service") happen ALL THE TIME. There's nearly always a half-dozen or more ongoing major incidents. There's enough spare capacity on parallel and diverse cables so that most folks don't notice a change in service. It's when there are simultaneous cuts on several parallel cables that people really notice. As an example, the cable breaks after the tsunami in Asia.
So, let me restate your hypothesis #1:
Hypothesis 1: The same number of cables get disrupted in the past two weeks as in the prior month. This time, they're all in the same vicinity.
That does actually make a bit more sense, eh?
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And who's to blame for the current Iranian government? The USA! We're the ones who installed the Shah there, and the people hated him so much they overthrew him.
Maybe we should have left them alone to begin with. If we go to war again there, it'll be another mess, since we'll just install another bloodthirsty dictator like we always do, and thousands upon thousands will die, at our hands.
If we want to avoid war, we just need to mind our own fucking business. How hard is that?
The US has been doing much worse and for far longer. You haven't included thebest parts of the US in thee Middle East.
Iran used to be a DEMOCRATIC nation, one of the first to do so. But they didn't want to bend over for the US. So the US supported the overthrow of that government to put the Shah into power. The Shah was a ruthless dictator who was sort of like Saddam, only less cuddly.
When the people finally rose up against the Shah and took back their country, they made it very clear that the US was not welcome. Well, we can't have that now can we? So we helped put yet another ruthless dictator into power, Saddam Hussein. We gave Saddam military support and weapons to help fight a proxy war for us with Iran. That was quite a bloody mess. And that eventually lead Kuwait and the Iraq wars. More death and destruction.
Don't worry, the US still has Iran beat in regards to the killing people. They're amateurs compared to the US.
If you think the Iranians dislike their government, they dislike the US a whole lot more. If one thing can be said for the Middle East, its that they have long memories. We've been screwing over that area of the world for the better part of a century now, and I think it is easy to see that the remember all to well the actions of our past.
~X~
~X~
Dismissing every "conspiracy" as automatically false is an act of profound stupidity.
You can't take the sky from me...
> Yep, you get to go around shouting to everyone about how you're "censored".
Since a censored post is, by definition, something you are not going to see, proving that there is no censorship by example is... is... Well, you said it best:
> You are an idiot.
You're missing the point, which is that Padilla was illegally jailed for over two years and his rightful request for habeas corpus was denied. SCOTUS refused to clarify whether holding Padilla was legal, thus making his case a clear cut example of the illegal detainment and torture of an American citizen. Furthermore, what you're saying is that because Padilla was suspected of terrorism, jailing him illegally was OK.
My point is not that Padilla was innocent. My point is that terrorism is carte blanche for the executive to illegally detain Americans, to fabricate charges against them, and to increase penalties upon conviction. In the meantime, people like you will look at Padilla and see someone they don't quite like and decide that it's all OK.
In my opinion, it will only be a matter of time before someone finds themselves on the wrong end of what you call "normal, peaceful political channels," as did many in their peaceful protest of the 2004 Republican National Convention. Your thinking implies that rule of law is a privilege to be extended only to American citizens who behave in the proper manner, people who look a particular way and who have a particular kind of past.
I believe that rule of law should apply not only to all American citizens, but that it should also be extended to all people detained by the United States.
blog
While I agree that one can find moderators pursuing an agenda here, I don't think it is organized, quite the opposite. Also, never attribute to malice what you can rationally interpret as incompetence. Slashdot's moderation system is badly broken, to the point where reading slashdot at anything but -1 results in disjointed conversations, nonsensical, context-free posts, and dependence upon some very poor judgment (for whatever reason.) The smiley was honest; I only read at -1, so moderation doesn't affect my experience at all. If it affects others with regard to my posts, they are either reading slashdot in an extremely naive manner (depending upon the moderation to guide them) or they aren't smart enough to follow what I'm trying to tell them anyway, so nothing much lost there. In the latter case, meh, in the former, they'll figure it out soon enough when they get mod-bombed, or some thread they are trying to follow develops unexpected voids.
The most severe problems occur when an editor, not a user, goes on a moderation jag; you can spot this by seeing a series of posts (many of which may be several days old) from one poster that is larger than five posts (the max number of mod points given to a "regular" user) get hammered within just a few minutes. Easiest to spot on your own account, of course, but if you're following someone else closely, you can see it there, too. Slashdot insists they don't need to change the moderation system or poke (or replace) editors; I've had a little correspondence with Rob Malda about this and the laissez faire approach is quite up front.
The reason I don't post as AC is because by posting under my UID, my comments are collected for others to peruse if they find that useful. For that matter, *I* find it useful.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Padilla a POLITICAL opponent?!?! LOL.