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Who cut Muslim World Internet Cables?
Feb, 2008: 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.
INFOWARS.net
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