- The last week has seen a spate of unexplained, cut,
undersea communications cables that has severely disrupted communications
in many countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. As I
shall show, the total numbers of cut cables remain in question, but likely
number as many as eight, and maybe nine or more.
-
- The trouble began on 30 January 2008 with CNN reports
that two cables were cut off the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, initially
severely disrupting Internet and telephone traffic from Egypt to India
and many points in between. According to CNN the two cut cables "account
for as much as three-quarters of the international communications between
Europe and the Middle East." CNN reported that the two cut cables
off the Egyptian coast were "FLAG Telecom's FLAG Europe-Asia cable
and SeaMeWe-4, a cable owned by a consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications
companies".(10) Other reports placed one of the cut cables, SeaMeWe-4,
off the coast of France, near Marseille.(9)(12) However, many news organizations
reported two cables cut off the Egyptian coast, including the SeaMeWe-4
cable connecting Europe with the Middle East. The possibilities are thus
three, based on the reporting in the news media: 1) the SeaMeWe-4 cable
was cut off the coast of France, and mistakenly reported as being cut off
the coast of Egypt, because it runs from France to Egypt; 2) the SeaMeWe-4
cable was cut off the Egyptian coast and mistakenly reported as being cut
off the coast of France, because it runs from France to Egypt; or 3) the
SeaMeWe-4 cable was cut both off the Egyptian and the French coasts, nearly
simultaneously, leading to confusion in the reporting. I am not sure what
to think, because most reports, such as this one from the International
Herald Tribune, refer to two cut cables off the Egyptian coast, one of
the two being the SeaMeWe4 cable,(11) while other reports also refer to
a cut cable off the coast of France.(9)(12) It thus appears that the same
cable may have suffered two cuts, both off the French and the Egyptian
coasts. So there were likely actually three undersea cables cut in the
Mediterranean on 30 January 2008.
-
- In the case of the cables cut off the Egyptian coast,
the news media initially advanced the explanation that the cables had been
cut by ships' anchors.(10)(13) But on 3 February the Egyptian Ministry
of Communications and Information Technology said that a review of video
footage of the coastal waters where the two cables passed revealed that
the area had been devoid of ship traffic for the 12 hours preceding and
the 12 hours following the time of the cable cuts.(5)(11) So the cable
cuts cannot have been caused by ship anchors, in view of the fact that
there were no ships there.
-
- The cable cutting was just getting started. Two days
later an undersea cable was reported cut in the Persian Gulf, 55 kilometers
off of Dubai.(11) The cable off of Dubai was reported by CNN to be a FLAG
Falcon cable.(10) And then on 3 February came reports of yet another damaged
undersea cable, this time between Qatar and the UAE (United Arab Emirates).(6)(7)(11)
-
- The confusion was compounded by another report on 1 February
2008 of a cut undersea cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka.(19)
If the report is accurate this would represent a sixth cut cable. The same
article mentions the cut cable off of Dubai in the Persian Gulf, but seeing
as the Suez is on the other side of the Arabian peninsula from the Persian
Gulf, the article logically appears to be describing two separate cable
cutting incidents.
-
- These reports were followed on 4 February 2008 with a
report of even more cut undersea cables. The Khaleej Times reported a total
of five damaged undersea cables: two off of Egypt and the cable near Dubai,
all of which have already been mentioned in this report. But then the Khaleej
Times mentions two that have not been mentioned elsewhere, to my knowledge:
1) a cable in the Persian Gulf near Bandar Abbas, Iran, and 2) the SeaMeWe4
undersea cable near Penang, Malaysia.(3) The one near Penang, Malaysia
appears to represent a new incident. The one near Bandar Abbas is reported
separately from the one off Dubai and is evidently not the same incident,
since the report says , "FLAG near the Dubai coast" and "FALCON
near Bandar Abbas in Iran" were both cut. Bandar Abbas is on the other
side of the Persian Gulf from Qatar and the UAE, and so presumably the
cut cable near Bandar Abbas is not the one in that incident either. Interestingly,
the report also states that, "The first cut in the undersea Internet
cable occurred on January 23, in the Flag Telcoms FALCON submarine cable
which was not reported.(3) This news article deals primarily with the outage
in the UAE, so it raises the question as to whether this is a reference
to yet a ninth cut cable that has not hit the mainstream news cycle in
the United States.
-
- By my count, we are probably dealing with as many as
eight, maybe even nine, unexplained cut or damaged undersea cables within
the last week, and not the mere three or four that most mainstream news
media outlets in the United States are presently reporting. Given all this
cable-cutting mayhem in the last several days, who knows but what there
may possibly be other cut and/or damaged cables that have not made it into
the news cycle, because they are lost in the general cable-cutting noise
by this point. Nevertheless, let me enumerate what I can, and keep in mind,
I am not pulling these out of a hat; all of the sources are referenced
at the conclusion of the article; you can click through and look at all
the evidence that I have. It's there if you care to read through it all.
-
- one off of Marseille, France
- two off of Alexandria, Egypt
- one off of Dubai, in the Persian Gulf
- one off of Bandar Abbas, Iran in the Persian Gulf
- one between Qatar and the UAE, in the Persian Gulf
- one in the Suez, Egypt
- one near Penang, Malaysia
- initially unreported cable cut on 23 January 2008 (Persian
Gulf?)
-
- Three things stand out about these incidents:
-
- all of them, save one, have occurred in waters near predominantly
Muslim nations, causing disruption in those countries;
- all but two of the cut/damaged cables are in Middle Eastern
waters;
- so many like incidents in such a short period of time
suggests that they are not accidents, but are in fact deliberate acts,
i.e., sabotage.
-
- The evidence therefore suggests that we are looking at
a coordinated program of undersea cable sabotage by an actor, or actors,
on the international stage with an anti-Muslim bias, as well as a proclivity
for destructive violence in the Middle Eastern region.
-
- The question then becomes: are there any actors on the
international stage who exhibit a strong, anti-Muslim bias in their foreign
relations, who have the technical capability to carry out clandestine sabotage
operations on the sea floor, and who have exhibited a pattern of violently
destructive policies towards Muslim peoples and nations, especially in
the Middle East region?
-
- The answer is yes, there are two: Israel and the United
States of America.
-
- In recent years, Israel has bombed and invaded Lebanon,
bombed Syria, and placed the Palestinian Territories under a pitiless and
ruthless blockade/occupation/quarantine/assault. During the same time frame
the United States of America has militarily invaded and occupied Iraq and
Afghanistan, and American forces remain in both countries at present, continuing
to carry out aggressive military operations. Simultaneous with these Israeli
and American war crimes against countries in the region, both Israel and
the United States have made many thinly veiled threats of war against Iran,
and the United States openly seeks to increase its military presence in
Pakistan's so-called "tribal areas".(15) Israel and the United
States both have a technically sophisticated military operations capability.
Moreover, the United States Navy has a documented history of carrying out
espionage activities on the sea floor. The U.S. Navy has long had special
operations teams that can go out on submarines and deploy undersea, on
the seabed itself, specifically for this sort of operation. This has all
been thoroughly documented in the excellent book, Blind Man's Bluff: The
Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher
Drew (New York: Public Affairs, 1998). The classic example is Operation
Ivy Bells, which took place during the Cold War, in the waters off the
Soviet Union. In a joint, U.S. Navy-NSA operation, U.S. Navy divers repeatedly
tapped an underwater cable in the Kuril Islands, by swimming out undersea,
to and from U.S. Navy submarines.(14)
-
- This sort of activity is like something straight out
of a spy novel thriller, but the U.S. Navy really does have special submarines
and deep diving, special operations personnel who specialize in precisely
this sort of operation. So cutting undersea cables is well within the operational
capabilities of the United States Navy.
-
- Couple this little known, but very important fact, with
the reality that for years now we have seen more and more ham-handed interference
with the global communications grid by the American alphabet soup agencies
(NSA, CIA, FBI, HoSec) and major telecommunication companies. Would the
telecommunication companies and the American military and alphabet soup
agencies collude on an operation that had as its aim to sabotage the communications
network across a wide region of the planet? Would they perhaps collude
with Israeli military and intelligence agencies to do this? The honest
answer has to be: sure, maybe so. The hard reality is that we are now living
in a world of irrational and violent policies enacted against the civilian
population by multinational corporations, and military and espionage agencies
the world over. We see the evidence for this on every hand. Only the most
myopic among us remain oblivious to that reality.
-
- In light of the American Navy's demonstrated sea-floor
capabilities and espionage activities, the heavy American Navy presence
in the region, the many, thinly veiled threats against Iran by both the
Americans and the Israelis, and their repeated, illegal, military aggression
against other nations in the region, suspicion quite naturally falls on
both Israel and the United States of America. It may be that this is what
the beginning of a war against Iran looks like, or perhaps it is part of
a more general, larger assault against Muslim and/or Arab interests across
a very wide region. Whatever the case, this is no small operation, seeing
as the cables that have been cut are among the largest communication pipes
in the region, and clearly represent major strategic targets.
-
- Very clearly, we are not looking at business as usual.
On the contrary, it is obvious that we are looking at distinctly unusual
business.
-
- The explanations being put forth in the mainstream news
media for these many cut, undersea communications cables absolutely do
not pass the smell test. And by the way, the same operators who cut undersea
cables in the Persian Gulf, Mediterranean Sea, Malaysia and possibly the
Suez as well, presumably can also cut underwater cables in the Gulf of
Mexico, the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound. This could
be a multipurpose operation, in part a test run for isolating a country
or region from the international communications grid. The Middle East today,
the USA tomorrow?
-
- What's that you say? I don't understand how the world
works? That kind of thing can't happen here?
-
- In any event, if the cables have been intentionally cut,
then that is an aggressive act of war. I'm sure everyone in the region
has gotten that message. I'm looking at the same telegram as they are,
and I know that it's clear as a "bell" to me.(14)
-
- It is little known by the American people, but nevertheless
true, that Iran intends to open its own Oil Bourse this month (February
2008) that will trade in "non-dollar currencies".(16) This has
massive geo-political-economic implications for the United States and the
American economy, since the American dollar is at present still (if not
for much longer) the dominant reserve currency internationally, particularly
for petroleum transactions. However, due to the mind-boggling scale of
the structural weaknesses in the American economy, which have been well
discussed in the financial press in recent weeks and months, the American
dollar is increasingly shunned by corporate, banking and governmental actors
the world over. No one wants to be stuck with vaults full of rapidly depreciating
dollars as the American economy hurtles towards the basement. And so an
operational Iranian Oil Bourse, actively trading supertankers full of petroleum
in non-dollar currencies, poses a great threat to the American dollar's
continued dominance as the international reserve currency.
-
- The American fear and unease of this development can
only be increased by the knowledge that, "Oil-rich Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) member states Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the
UAE have set 2010 as the target date for adopting a monetary union and
single currency."(2) The American government's fear must have ratcheted
up another notch when Kuwait "dropped its dollar peg" in May
"and adopted a basket of currencies", arousing "speculation
that the UAE and Qatar would follow suit or revalue their currencies."(2)
Although all the GCC members, with the exception of Kuwait, agreed at
their annual meeting in December 2007 to continue to peg their currencies
to the American dollar,(2) the hand writing is surely on the wall. As the
dollar plummets, their American currency holdings will be worth less and
less. At some point, they will likely decide to cut their losses and decouple
the value of their currencies from that of the dollar. That point may be
in 2010, when they establish the new GCC currency, maybe even sooner than
that. If Iran succeeds in opening its own Oil Bourse it is hard to imagine
that the GCC would not trade on the Iranian Oil Bourse, given the extremely
close geographic proximity. And it is hard to believe that they would not
trade their own oil in their own currency. Otherwise, why have a currency
of their own? Clearly they intend to use it. And just as clearly, the three
cut or damaged undersea communications cables in the Persian Gulf over
the last week deliver a clear message. The United States may be a senescent
dinosaur, and it is, but it is also a violent, heavily armed, very angry
senescent dinosaur. In the end, it will do what all aged dinosaurs do:
perish. But not before it first does a great deal of wild roaring and violent
lashing and thrashing about.
-
- There can be no doubt that Iran, and the other Gulf States,
were intended recipients of this rather pointed cable cutting telegram,
for all of the reasons mentioned here; and additionally, in the case of
Iran, probably also as a waning for its perceived insults of Israel and
dogged pursuit of its nuclear program in contravention of NeoCon-Zionist
dogma that Iran may not have a nuclear program, though other nations in
the region, Pakistan and Israel, do.
-
- I must mention that one of my e-mail correspondents has
pointed out that another possibility is that once the cables are cut, special
operations divers could hypothetically come in and attach surveillance
devices to the cables without being detected, because the cables are inoperable
until they are repaired and start functioning again. In this way, other
interests who wanted to spy on Middle Eastern communications, let's say
on banking and trading data going to and from the Iranian Oil Bourse, or
other nations in the Middle East, could tap into the communications network
under cover of an unexplained cable "break". Who knows? -- this
idea may have merit.
-
- It is noteworthy that two of the cables that were cut
lie off the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, and another passes through the
Suez. During the height of the disruption, some 70 percent of the Egyptian
Internet was down. (13) This is a heavy blow in a day when everything from
airlines, to banks, to universities, to newspapers, to hospitals, to telephone
and shipping companies, and much more, uses the Internet. So Egypt was
hit very hard. An astute observer who carefully reads the international
press could not fail to notice that in recent days there has been a report
in the Egyptian press that "Egypt rejected an Israeli-American proposal
to resettle 800,000 Palestinians in Sinai." This has evidently greatly
upset the Zionist-NeoCon power block holding sway in Tel Aviv and Washington,
DC with the result that Israel has reportedly threatened to have American
aid to Egypt reduced if Egypt does not consent to the resettlement of the
Palestinians in Egyptian territory.(17) This NeoCon-Zionist tantrum comes
hard on the heels of the Israeli desire to cut ties with Gaza, as a consequence
of the massive breach of the Gaza-Egypt border by hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians in January 2008. (18)
-
- What are NeoCon-Zionist tyrants to do when their diplomatic
hissy fits and anti-Arab tirades no longer carry the day in Cairo? Or in
Qatar and the UAE? Maybe they get out the underwater cable cutters and
deploy some special operations submarines and divers in the waters off
of Alexandria and in the Suez and in the Persian Gulf.
-
- This would be completely in line with articulated American
military doctrine, which frankly views the Internet as something to be
fought. American Freedom Of Information researchers at George Washington
University obtained a Department of Defense (Pentagon) document in 2006,
entitled "Information Operation Roadmap", which says forthrightly
and explicitly that "the Department must be prepared to 'fight the
net'".(20) This is a direct quote. It goes on to say that, "We
Must Improve Network and Electro-Magnetic Attack Capability. To prevail
in an information-centric fight, it is increasingly important that our
forces dominate the electromagnetic spectrum with attack capabilities."
(20) It also makes reference to the importance of employing a "robust
offensive suite of capabilities to include full-range electronic and computer
network attack."(8)(20)
-
- So now we can add to our list of data points the professed
intent of the American military to "fight the net", using a "robust
offensive suite of capabilities" in a " full-range electronic
and computer network attack."
-
- Maybe this sudden spate of cut communications cables
is what it looks like when the American military uses a "robust offensive
suite of capabilities" and mounts an "electronic and computer
network attack" in order to "fight the net" in one region
of the world. They have the means, and the opportunity, I've amply demonstrated
that in this article. And now we also have the motive, in their own words,
from their own policy statement. The plain translation is that the American
military now regards the Internet, that means the hardware such as computers,
cables, modems, servers and routers, and presumably also the content it
contains, and the people who communicate that content, as an adversary,
as something to be fought.
-
- Oh yes, just a couple of more dots to connect before
you fall asleep tonight:
-
- 1) The USS San Jacinto, an anti-missile AEGIS cruiser,
was scheduled to dock in Haifa, Israel on 1 February 2008. The Jerusalem
Post reported that this ship's anti-missile system "could be deployed
in the region in the event of an Iranian missile attack against Israel."(1)
Are we to expect another "false flag" attack, like the inside
job on 9-11 perhaps? -- an attack that will be made to appear that it comes
from Iran, and that is then used as a pretext to strike Iran, maybe with
nuclear weapons? And when Iran retaliates with its own missiles, then the
Americans and Israelis will unleash further hell on Iran? Is that the Zionist-NeoCon
plan, or something generally along those lines?
-
- 2) I have to wonder because just this past Saturday,
there was a report in the news that, "Retired senior officers told
Israelis ... to prepare 'rocket rooms' as protection against a rain of
missiles expected to be fired at the Jewish State in any future conflict."
Retired General Udi Shani reportedly said, "The next war will see
a massive use of ballistic weapons against the whole of Israeli territory."(4)
-
- Now that we know the Israeli military establishment's
thinking, and now that we have a view into the American military mindset,
we ought to be looking at international events across the board with a
very critical, analytical eye, especially as they relate to possible events
that either are playing out right now, or may potentially play out in the
relatively near future, say in the time frame of the next one month to
five years. These people are violent and devious; they have forewarned
us, and we should take them at their word, given their murderous record
on the international stage.
-
- Contact the author at:
- dr_samizdat@yahoo.com
-
-
- References
-
- 1) http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=12020645732
- 79&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
-
- 2) http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/business/?id=24186
-
- 3) http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/the
- uae/2008/February/theuae_February121.xml§ion=theuae
-
- 4) http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080202132053.iohfg5ob&show_article=1
-
- 5) http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/04/2153455.htm
-
- 6) http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i03tUdyj8wf2Xa9P4trWEjqAJdyQ
-
- 7) http://www.arabianbusiness.com/510132-internet-probl
- ems-continue-with-fourth-cable-break?ln=en
-
- 8) http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=7980
-
- 9) https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effect
- s+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean
-
- 10) http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/?iref=hpmostpop
-
- 11) http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/04/technology/cables.php
-
- 12) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbu
- siness/31cable.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
-
- 13) http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/31/Cut-cabl
- e-disrupts-Internet-in-Middle-East_1.html
-
- 14) http://www.specialoperations.com/Operations/ivybells.html
-
- 15) http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2213925,00.html
-
- 16) http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=37468§ionid=351020103
-
- 17) http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2008/02/02/egypt-rejected-an-american-israeli-
- proposal-to-re-settle-800000-palestinians-in-sinai/
-
- 18) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=
- /news/2008/01/24/wgaza124.xml
-
- 19) http://www.smartmoney.com/news/on/inde
- x.cfm?story=ON-20080201-000320-0524
-
- 20) http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/info_ops_roadmap.pdf
|
