Internet Fiberoptic Cable Cut In Arabian Sea (5 Times)

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2008-02-04 05:12pm

CaptainChewbacca wrote:
They started rioting about university policy, and then it turned into full-blown anti-government demonstrations. I'll see if I can find it when I get home.

I just tried searching for that article and I couldn't find anything less than a year old. You sure you're not mixing up stories? Recent riots shouldn't be too hard to find something about.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2008-02-04 05:15pm

General Zod wrote:
CaptainChewbacca wrote:
They started rioting about university policy, and then it turned into full-blown anti-government demonstrations. I'll see if I can find it when I get home.
I just tried searching for that article and I couldn't find anything less than a year old. You sure you're not mixing up stories? Recent riots shouldn't be too hard to find something about.

Nope, Got it

They're Rioting in Tehran Again
MIchael Ledeen
Not that it's made any headlines on this side of the world. Here's the report I received:

Sunday, Jan. 27, was marked by the third day of protest by Tehran University students at the Kouy-e Daneshgah - or the students dormitory. The protest began by 250 students with a basic demand for improvement of the food quality at the KOUY, but it rapidly turned into a full-fledged political protest against the government as the protest progressed. The protesting students broke the door between the KOUY and the main campus and entered the area inside the School of Technology. By this time the crowd had grown to 1,000. Clashes broke out and a number of students suffered broken arms and heads. The State Security Force and the Special Guard, in full armed gears, threw stones and the students answered.
By 9.30 p.m., the students lit a big fire in the area of the School of Technology (FANNI) and chanted, "Death to the Dictator" and "Death to Tyranny". They used molotov cocktails to defend themselves against guards' attack. Some 60 students were injured and 40 were arrested. The guards covered the arrested students with sacks so that they could not be identified. The protest lasted until midnight.
The state-run press were compelled to report the three-day unrest, of course to minimize its importance. For example, the official news agency, IRNA, reported that there were no clashes between the students and the security forces and the protest was simply over food quality. Some of the press said the President has advised university officials to attend to the needs of students regarding food and other accommodations of the dorms.

Participating students in Sunday's protest said the scene resembles the scene of protests by student in July 1999, when six days of student protests were joined by ordinary people and spread to the streets of central Tehran, seriously scaring the regime.

On Friday, 1,500 TU students marched out of the KOUY over low quality food and staged an angry demonstration on Amir Abad Ave. with anti-government slogans. They clashed with the special guards and were badly beaten up. A number of students were arrested.

The protest resumed in the cold afternoon of Saturday at 4.30 p.m. The crowd gradually swelled to 1,500 by 7.30 p.m. The students hurled stones at the State Security Force who had surrounded the university and blocked all streets leading to TU.

They chanted, "We want no rule of force, we want no mercenary police" - "People, why are you sitting down? Iran has become another Palestine" - "Students die but will not succumb" - "Children of Kaveh and Siavosh will not relent until the Islamic Republic regime is overthrown."

The SSF clubed the students, breaking the noses, arms and legs of some 20 students. The SSF also brought Fire Engines and flushed water on the students who staged their protest under heavy snow until 10 p.m.

On Saturday, Jan. 26, workers of Kiyan Tire staged a protest at 9 a.m. They started by a sit-in in the factory while all the factory departments were shut down. Kiyan Tire workers have not received their wages of seven months and have terrible living conditions. Finally, they blocked Saveh Road and set fire to tires. Smoke filled all the area of Char Dangeh where the factory is located. All 2500 workers of the factory are on strike. The protest on Saturday lasted until noon. Workers said they would continue their protests until their demands are met.

I also learned of another major protest by workers of Alborz Tire Factory on Saturday. 2000 workers work at Alborz Tire Factory. They have not received their salaries for three months and this protest has been going on at least for a week. Angry workers chanted: "So much injustice (under an Islamic regime claiming justice of Imam Ali)" - "Death to Tyranny" - "Jobs, Salaries, Justice are our inalienable right" (This contradicts the official motto of Nuclear Energy is our inalienable right) - "A decent living is our inalienable right" - etc.
So much for a busy weekend.

Remember that the people of Iran, the students and workers and women wish to be heard by the world and they need your kind and sympathetic attention to their cause and naturally a decent reporting of their anti-government protests.

Its really baffling that not even the BBC is mentioning it.

Sidewinder · Post by **Sidewinder** » 2008-02-04 05:27pm

I think the reason the protests in Iran is being ignored is because the Western media thinks no one gives a damn anymore. The crazy Holocast denier they call President was probably the last chance the Iranians had of attracting foreign attention-- and aid.

Overall, it sounds like that nation is descending into African-level obscurity in the minds of the average American/European/Asian.

[R_H] · Post by **[R_H]** » 2008-02-06 07:33am

Repairs begin

Work begins to repair severed net

Work has begun to repair two damaged internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea that were severed last week.

Flag Telecom, one of the firms responsible for the cables, says it will take about a week to be fixed.

The break in cables has caused disruption to net services in the Middle East and India. The cause is still not known.

Repairs will involve a team of about 50 people, including navigation experts and cable engineers, said Flag Telecom.

The ship that will repair the first severed cable is already in place, with repairs underway, while the second vessel is expected to begin work on Tuesday.

Bespoke ships

"It will be a highly technical job and should take a week to complete," a spokesperson for Flag Telecom told the BBC News website.

The cause of the damage has not been officially confirmed but there have been reports that the breaks were related to a tanker dragging its anchor along the sea bed. However, the Egyptian communications ministry has denied any ships were in the area at the time of the break.

The first job in such a situation was to find the exact location of the damaged cable, said Mark Harper, manager of cable system support at Cable and Wireless.

The firm is not involved in the repair operation, but has carried out similar work in the past.

Often the location of a break can be found by cable engineers back on shore. The areas affected by the outage will give key clues as to what part of the cable is broken.

To get a more precise location, cable engineers can send light pulses along the fibres in the cable using a device known as a Optical Time Domain Reflectometer.

When the pulses hit the broken part of the cable they will bounce back and by measuring the time it takes for them to return, engineers can ascertain the location of the damage to within tens of metres.

The next stage is to employ a specially fitted cable ship, which will have onboard remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).

Fishing

If the ROV is able to locate the cable it can cut out the non-working sections and pull the cable back onto the ship.

Alternatively a device onboard known as a grapnel can hook the cable from the sea floor and drag it on to the ship.

"The first option is preferable because it means you can recover the cable very close to the end whereas a grapnel is less precise," said Mr Harper.

Grapnels have been in use for hundreds of years, and so were part of the equipment employed when the first telegraph cables were laid.

The damaged cable can be repaired on the ship at which point a technician will splice new cable to the existing pieces.

Once repaired it can be lowered back to the seabed.

Two cable operators were involved in this most recent outage.

FLAG Telecoms, which has responsibility for the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG), a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable and SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 project - which links South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.

Disruption also occurred in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, reported the Associated Press.

In Dubai, at least two internet service providers (ISPs) were affected.

In December 2006, seven of the eight cables connected to Taiwan were damaged by an earthquake, disrupting communications in much of Asia.

These cables took several months to fully repair.

Natural disasters are one of several causes of cable outages.

In this case, an errant anchor has been blamed and Mr Harper believes there is "still a partial conflict between the needs of shipping and of telecoms".

But it is not the biggest problem facing cable operators.

"Fishing is still the biggest issue. Historically in Europe trawler fishing has been a problem although in the last 15 years most cables have been buried in the seabed to overcome this," said Mr Harper.

tim31 · Post by **tim31** » 2008-02-06 12:06pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:A communications disruption can mean only one thing: invasion.

Oh, suffering christ, I won't be able to sleep until you remind me what that's from.

CJvR · Post by **CJvR** » 2008-02-06 12:18pm

tim31 wrote:Oh, suffering christ, I won't be able to sleep until you remind me what that's from.

Phantom menace?

tim31 · Post by **tim31** » 2008-02-06 12:25pm

Goddamit, I can't believe I couldn't remember that.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2008-02-06 12:39pm

Fifth Cable Cut, Iran Loses Net Connectivity
Apparently another cable has been cut, and it's focused on Iran no less.

http:// +++www.ilovebonnie.net/cablecutssmall.jpg
That's...interesting. The cable cuts are at opposite ends of the ME.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-02-06 12:42pm

General Zod wrote:Don't be retarded. Monitoring some communication does not equal monitoring all the communications of an entire nation. The sheer amount of email traffic a small company generates alone would be a chore to sort through.

You are incorrect. Large scale internet monitoring systems are already in place and steadily expanding in scope. A significant amount of funding for academic research into data mining and automatic classification and filtering comes from governments interested in exactly this application. I recently worked on a contract to deliver a deployable version of an experimental filtering algorithm (successful BTW, our technology sped it up by a factor of ~100, conventional software engineering tweaks sped it up by another factor of ~10); one of the customer's major target markets was just this kind of monitoring. Yes, you need lots of hardware. No, this is not a problem if you a well-funded government agency. The workload parallelises nicely and the cost of datacentre computing cycles has continued to fal rapidly throughout this decade, more than keeping up with the expansion in textual content (and voice recognition tech has been in limited deployment in this area for some time now too).

Multiply that by a few hundred times, and you're looking at a significant expenditure of manpower and computing resources which makes it more trouble than it's worth, unless you know what you're looking for.

So you work with text mining and filtering systems on a regular basis, have experience of data intercept and analysis and can make an informed assessment of the utility of Internet monitoring to major intelligence organisations?

If yes, I'd be happy to hear why you disagree with basically everyone else in the industry. If no, STFU.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-02-06 12:44pm

DEATH wrote:Apparently another cable has been cut, and it's focused on Iran no less.

This number of cable breaks in geographically distinct locations is a statistical anomoly but let's not start spouting unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Iran is certainly not offline.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-02-06 01:06pm

Sidewinder wrote:I think the reason the protests in Iran is being ignored is because the Western media thinks no one gives a damn anymore. The crazy Holocast denier they call President was probably the last chance the Iranians had of attracting foreign attention-- and aid.

Overall, it sounds like that nation is descending into African-level obscurity in the minds of the average American/European/Asian.

In order to really grab peoples' attention, something must be unexpected. The problem with foreign news is that once something becomes stereotypical of a foreign country, then it is no longer news. That's why tribal violence and starvation in Africa is not news; we expect it. Similarly, Iran's moonbat president mouthing off is not news, because we've come to expect that too.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2008-02-06 04:40pm

It is now up to FIVE cables cut.

This is just weirding me out. Three is odd enough, but FIVE in less then ten days? What the hell? It seems rather sinister.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-02-06 04:59pm

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
-Auric Goldfinger

I'm not advocating the drivel that Rense.com and other moonbats promote, but the idea that this is coincidence or, LOL, sharks, is quite frankly no better.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2008-02-06 05:08pm

Starglider wrote: So you work with text mining and filtering systems on a regular basis, have experience of data intercept and analysis and can make an informed assessment of the utility of Internet monitoring to major intelligence organisations?

If yes, I'd be happy to hear why you disagree with basically everyone else in the industry. If no, STFU.

Disagreeing on what? That it requires a massive amount of resources to be able to accomplish? Oh wait, I already said it does. Or that it would require a significant amount of manpower and equipment? In either event significantly limiting any potential suspects for who might have done it? Nope, no disagreement there. . . .so, what the fuck exactly are you saying I'm wrong about?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-02-06 05:10pm

The ability of someone to monitor Internet traffic has what to do with Iranian hardlines getting cut?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2008-02-06 05:21pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:The ability of someone to monitor Internet traffic has what to do with Iranian hardlines getting cut?

It has to do with idiots bringing up conspiracy theories. Page 2.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-02-06 05:29pm

Then it ends here. Rense.com has plenty of pages devoted to that. I want to know why this is happening, not speculate about crazy US invasion plans or corporate control.

One smart post I've come across elsewhere:

The telecom infrastructure mailing list, I'm sure they know their failure rates, their protocols, their industry.

And, yes, failures do tend to happen in clusters sometimes, not just in telecom. It's a side-effect of interconnectedness and complexity. "Chaos" by James Gleick, "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell are decent references on this. I've also started reading "Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos" by Steven Strogatz, full of equations and graphs, should be right up an engineer's alley.

The problem is the event horizon of the system being investigated. That four cables lost connectivity in a short timeframe, that is to be expected occasionally. There is nothing inherently suspicious about that. And if that's all the information that can be considered, there's no issue.

Within a larger perspective, the severing of these four cables have virtually isolated a country about which the war drums are frequently beaten.

If The Netherlands, or Spain, or Chile had been cut off from the Internet, there would be much less tinfoiling.

I do understand that there's not anything necessarily going on there, as humans continually pattern-seek, even when there's no relevant pattern. On the other hand, it takes more information than we have to say that there isn't a suspicious pattern there, so further investigation is necessary, for those inclined.

So I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-02-06 07:02pm

General Zod wrote:Disagreeing on what? That it requires a massive amount of resources to be able to accomplish? Oh wait, I already said it does. Or that it would require a significant amount of manpower and equipment? In either event significantly limiting any potential suspects for who might have done it? Nope, no disagreement there. . . .so, what the fuck exactly are you saying I'm wrong about?

The comment you replied to was clearly talking about governments;

First, governments monitor all sorts of communications all the time. Either you are wrong, or they've been wasting their time for decades.

And second, even if you are right, doesn't mean they wouldn't do it anyway. It wouldn't be the first time that a government gathered more surveillance than it could get useful information from.

Don't try and pretend you were talking about the implausibility of some kind of smaller organisation monitoring large-scale communications. The conspiracy theories are all about government intelligent agencies (when they're not about aliens) because it's patently obvious only they have the resources. You were trying to claim that the task was outright impossible.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2008-02-06 08:08pm

Starglider wrote: Don't try and pretend you were talking about the implausibility of some kind of smaller organisation monitoring large-scale communications. The conspiracy theories are all about government intelligent agencies (when they're not about aliens) because it's patently obvious only they have the resources. You were trying to claim that the task was outright impossible.

Not all governments are created equally, unless you're attempting to suggest that every government in the world is going to have enough spare money floating around to launch this sort of thing. And again, I was not attempting to deny that it was possible with a sufficient amount of resources, so take your strawman elsewhere please.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2008-02-06 09:31pm

Ships did not cut internet cables: Egypt.

Ships are not responsible for damaging undersea internet cables in the Mediterranean, Egypt's Government says.

Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia.

A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said.

Egypt's transport ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

"The ministry's maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area," a statement said.

"The area is also marked on maps as a no-go zone and it is therefore ruled out that the damage to the cables was caused by ships."

Earlier reports said that the damage had been caused by ships that had been diverted off their usual route because of bad weather.

A repair ship is expected to begin work to fix the two Mediterranean cables on Tuesday.

- AFP

Notable comment beneath article:

It could be whale revenge?

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2008-02-07 12:40am

Winston Blake wrote:
Notable comment beneath article:

It could be whale revenge?

"Cloverfield 2: Tehran"?

wjs7744 · Post by **wjs7744** » 2008-02-07 12:48am

Darth Wong wrote:In order to really grab peoples' attention, something must be unexpected. The problem with foreign news is that once something becomes stereotypical of a foreign country, then it is no longer news. That's why tribal violence and starvation in Africa is not news; we expect it. Similarly, Iran's moonbat president mouthing off is not news, because we've come to expect that too.

It's pretty sad that people need telling that things have to be new to be news.

As far as the conspiracy theory goes, I'm not buying any of it unless anyone gives me a reason why anyone would target the cables rather than the onshore connection hubs, the way governments really do.