Doc von Peters sent me this, which I believe ought
to be taken seriously, since Richard Sauder
compiled it:
Connecting The Many Undersea Cut Cable Dots by
Richard Sauder
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
4 February 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.
1) one off of Marseille, France
2) two off of Alexandria, Egypt
3) one off of Dubai, in the Persian Gulf
4) one off of Bandar Abbas, Iran in the Persian Gulf
5) one between Qatar and the UAE, in the Persian
Gulf
6) one in the Suez, Egypt
7) one near Penang, Malaysia
initially unreported cable cut on 23 January 2008
(Persian Gulf?)
Three things stand out about these incidents:
1) all of them, save one, have occurred in waters
near predominantly Muslim nations, causing
disruption in those countries;
2) all but two of the cut/damaged cables are in
Middle Eastern waters;
3) 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. [some informed people
assume that the Mossadomites and the US Navy are
simply creatures of B%$#F*&^ingham Palace, of
course. ~D]
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/Satell...icle%2FShowFull
2)
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/business/?id=24186
3)
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Display...§ion=theuae
4)
http://www.breitbart.com/article.ph...&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/5101...ble-break?ln=en
http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=7980
9)
https://confluence.slac.stanford.ed...h+Mediterranean
10)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast...?iref=hpmostpop
11)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/04/technology/cables.php
12)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/b...gin&oref=slogin
13)
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08...dle-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/...nians-in-sinai/
18)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...24/wgaza124.xml
19)
http://www.smartmoney.com/news/on/i...201-000320-0524
20) ~http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/info_ops_roadmap.pdf