Middle East Internet Blackouts Spur Geopolitical Suspicions

[Iceberg]

Paul Joseph Watson - Unprecedented mass Internet outages throughout the Middle East and Asia after no less than four undersea Internet cables were cut without explanation are spurring suspicions that a major event of geopolitical proportions may be just around the corner.

Internet blackouts are impacting large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa after four undersea cable connections were severed. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.

According to InternetTraffic.com, Iran has been completely cut off from the Internet, though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s blog can still be accessed.

Most notably, Israel and Iraq are unaffected by the outage.

"Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the damaged cables collectively account for the majority of international communications between Europe and the Middle East," reports CNN.

Officials say that the cause behind the severing of the cables remains unknown, but United Arab Emirates’ second largest telecom company said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.

Is this a pre-cursor to throw a veil over an imminent staged event in the Middle East?
"What are the odds? Who benefits? asks the Crimes and Corruptions blog. "Let’s see. Iranian rapprochement: "Recent months have brought signs of a growing rapprochement between Iran and Egypt."

"What nation would not like this and has subs which could cut the cables? Why do it? Payback as over the net business is badly damaged. Or is this a setup for more? Note the internet is working just fine in Israel."

Over at WhatReallyHappened.com, Mike Rivero points out that the mysterious cable sabotage could portend another imperial Neo-Con crusade in the works.

"The biggest problem the Bush administration faced during Iraq were images coming over the internet that showed the horrors being visited on the Iraqi people, and exposed the government’s lies about Saddam," he writes.

"I am greatly concerned that these undersea cable cuttings are intended to prevent the world from seeing something that is about to happen, other than through the government-controlled propaganda/media."

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We're discussing the purely technological aspect of this story here, what's your say guys?

[Sony]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

Internet blackouts are impacting large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa after four undersea cable connections were severed. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.
thx god not lebanon
According to InternetTraffic.com, Iran has been completely cut off from the Internet, though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s blog can still be accessed.
Ahmadinajad have a blog...lol !
Most notably, Israel and Iraq are unaffected by the outage.
we all knows why
"Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the damaged cables collectively account for the majority of international communications between Europe and the Middle East," reports CNN.
this is mainly against France
Officials say that the cause behind the severing of the cables remains unknown, but United Arab Emirates’ second largest telecom company said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.
ships never hit water undergrounds ! Duh !
Is this a pre-cursor to throw a veil over an imminent staged event in the Middle East?
"What are the odds? Who benefits? asks the Crimes and Corruptions blog. "Let’s see. Iranian rapprochement: "Recent months have brought signs of a growing rapprochement between Iran and Egypt."
USA,Israel benefits from this...Iran Egy reapproch cs of lebanon, and something for egypt and her role between USA,israel and palestine...
"What nation would not like this and has subs which could cut the cables? Why do it? Payback as over the net business is badly damaged. Or is this a setup for more? Note the internet is working just fine in Israel."
KSA,France,Germany nay not like this
Over at WhatReallyHappened.com, Mike Rivero points out that the mysterious cable sabotage could portend another imperial Neo-Con crusade in the works.

"The biggest problem the Bush administration faced during Iraq were images coming over the internet that showed the horrors being visited on the Iraqi people, and exposed the government’s lies about Saddam," he writes.
...nah is worst then this
"I am greatly concerned that these undersea cable cuttings are intended to prevent the world from seeing something that is about to happen, other than through the government-controlled propaganda/media."
exactly

all me comments r in positions... thank you.

[xcoder]

If what is mentioned is right, then it's weird how israel and iraq were intact!

[Kingroudy]

i heard about this before, and thought that only a cable from egypt to lebanon was cut. it seems that there are 4 cables!! for sure someone did it on purpose. we can't talk only technically here, though it seems that the expenses will be high to fix this issue, and i would like to know HOW can this be fixed..

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by Sony

all me comments r in positions... thank you.

Who told you that Lebanon wasn't affected? We have a backup line from Cyprus that totalizes 30MB of BW, thus all providers are "sharing" the connection until the problem is fixed.
Second, ships do hit cables under water when they move they anchors, ..but to completely "cut" 4 cables is pure lies. We aren't talking about a simple multipoint fiber optic cable here, the radius of each line is about 60cm!
What i'm sure of is that those lines aren't cut at all, they might just be put out of power. We'll be fixed in a couple of weeks, since that's the deadline for reparation, if they aren't repaired then we're in for a big hit I guess.

[Sony]

Originally Posted by Iceberg

Internet blackouts are impacting large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa after four undersea cable connections were severed. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.

what about egypt, can't take from Cyprus or African countries ???

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by Sony

what about egypt, can't take from Cyprus or African countries ???

Sure they can, but with the current setup this is how it goes. Cyprus has a backup link to the Middle East and a part of Asia..
For Egypt to take from Cyprus, it would require a month if not more to setup those huge underwater cables.

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by Kingroudy

i heard about this before, and thought that only a cable from egypt to lebanon was cut. it seems that there are 4 cables!! for sure someone did it on purpose. we can't talk only technically here, though it seems that the expenses will be high to fix this issue, and i would like to know HOW can this be fixed..

http://www.fiberoptix.com/services/repairs.html

This is for single-multi mode cables, the same applies to those above mentioned except it's on a huge scale and details of reparations

[Iceberg]

I have been heavily researching this issue, and came up with interesting findings so far.

First of all, please note that we're dealing with Submarine Cables here, this is the name of the fiber optic cables that are used under water. Here's a detailed picture of a Submarine Cable:



A quick report of the events will show the following:
- On January 30th 2008 at 8.00 two cables in the far east were severely damaged, those cables are not even close to each other.
- On February 1st 2008 at 5.59 a third cable was cut, this cable is the FLAG FALCON cable (Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FALCON_%28cable_system%29 ), this cable stretches between UAE and Oman.

Here's a complete map of the whole underworld cable subsystem so you understand more what we're talking about:



According to Blomberg, six ships were diverted from Alexandria's port because of bad weather, and one may have severed the cables with an anchor.
The FLAG cut is reported to have taken place 8.3 kilometers from Alexandria beach in northern Egypt. FLAG runs from Britain to Japan.
In Cairo, much of the city was without access to the Internet for the bulk of the day.
The South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable, has 17 landing points. The SEA-ME-WEA-4 cable was damaged in the waters off Marseille, France, as reported by C/Net shortly after the first cut on FLAG. The two cables, which are separately managed and operated, were damaged within hours of each other.
This is basically the summary of the events, and the real causes are up till today unknown. To know more about all the routes and terms, there's an interest link with an interactive map where you can rollover any point and see its naming or backbone type: http://www.vsnlinternational.com/map/
You can see several types of maps there, with different information and routes.
As a last link, I would like to show something I've come upon by pure luck.
The link is: http://www.internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm
Please go there and see which backbone router is completely offline (100% packet loss), you can go into details and see it has been a week the graphs show no signal for this router.
I won't comment on that event since I personally believe this is a purely political move by the United States in order to prepare for something big; and we're just discussing the techy details here.