Many Undersea Cables Cut
By Richard Sauder, PhD
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
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
