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Gulf News from Dubai, UAE. They have been reporting on all kinds of nasty weather in the Gulf/Central Asia region for several weeks. Wind, Rain with flooding, Snow and now an earthquake or two in Africa.
There is so much 'news' that goes unreported in our MSM. Everything including Bird Flu and crop failures and Tamil Tiger's pirating and Doctors without Borders pulling their folks out of Somalia, the Chad story, Kenya, the Gaza-Israel-Lebanon-Eygpt mess and whatever.
India lost internet too.
http://www.gulfnews.com/ http://www.worldnews.com/
Last report that I read had the 'repair ships' in safe harbor in Dubai because of the weather.
"...fighting the wildfires of my life with squirt guns."
by deMemedeMedia on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 02:32:18 PM PDT
could certainly be to blame. I was reading one article that discussed some undersea landslides both in the beginning of laying underwater cables as well as articles indicating outages due to underwater occurences as recently as 2006 I think.
It's definitely not out of the question.
My signature beat up your signature.
by Stand Strong on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 02:38:30 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
and undersea maps would clear this up.
But something tells me that is sensitive or higher data :p Not sure there is much we can do besides... Google research to support a hypothesis without leaving my seat!
My first thought, besides conspiracy theories, is undersea seismic activity... I'm basing this on what I remember from 8th grade Earth Science, but I think this map indicates there is a fault that converges under the Persian Gulf.
Kind of hard to imagine a cable snapping by being pressed together, but I wonder if that's a possibility. Also, the existence of a fault here could mean that minor quakes have contributed to the damage to these cables.
Interestingly,the IRIS supports this hypothesis with a 4.8 magnitude located in the Persian gulf yesterday. It registers no other quakes for the past two weeks in that area, however.
Of course, none of this can be confirmed without surveys. I'm pretty confident this will be adequately studied, because it's a bit of an anomaly and those cables are fuxing *expensive.* It's enough confirmation, to me, that there are more possible natural explanations than devious ones. I'm going to ignore this until we get wind of something else to be concerned about. Doesn't mean everybody should; to each their own issues.
Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?
by Mardish on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 02:59:53 PM PDT
And certainly not dismissed in any way. It's been noted that there is bad weather in the area and underwater occurrences have been known to cause interruptions and damage underground infrastructure as well.
It's probably all coincidence and I lean heavily towards that as well.
But there will alway be questions until ultimate causes are known and for that, we will have to wait a little longer.
by Stand Strong on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 03:09:13 PM PDT
Those cables are designed to withstand all of those forces.
This is a US/UK signals intelligence collection operation, either gone bad or right on target depending on how one interprets some of the details. I'm 100% certain of that.
@ 25 years' experience in telecommunications speaking here.
by G2geek on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 06:29:17 PM PDT
due to weather was the early explanation, and it may well be true. Does anyone know how deep in the water these cables are?
"This chamber reeks of blood." -- Sen George McGovern, 1970
by cotterperson on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 02:40:08 PM PDT
Three of the cables are in shallow parts of the Gulf and the fourth off Alexandria is probably in an area that was on land until fairly recently. Plus:
The ministry added that the location, 5 miles from the port of Alexandria, was in a restricted area so ships would not have been allowed there to begin with.
A resticted area could be restricted for any number of reasons. It could be a dumping area, it could be hazardous to navigation because it is shallow, has uncharted wrecks, etc. It could be a military training area or explosives dumping area. It could be, given the location, an archeologically sensitive area. It could be a restricted area because undersea cables run there.
Lots of reasons to restrict waterspace. Lots of reasons for a cable to break, too.
See you at the debate, bitches!
by calipygian on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 03:00:59 PM PDT
is also a problem. You can google. I am too much of a 'pedestrian' in this discipline to know what might be a direct factor, but am aware of the discussions.
by deMemedeMedia on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 03:22:17 PM PDT
but after reading an article, I found a picture of undersea cables as they exited the water and went into a beachside concrete housing.
It looked like iron clad lane separators, separators being the things in a pool that divides the pool into lanes. It was kind of neat looking but I imagine cables come in a variety of compositions and construction.
by Stand Strong on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 03:33:57 PM PDT
Natural causes, eh? I know you know better than that:-)
Just say "collection."
I wonder where USS Jimmy Carter has been recently...?
The only question is, did the project go bad ("oops, lost one end of the splice, dammit!"), or is it right on target (e.g. a bit of traffic forcing to tease out high-priority backup routes before the "repair ships" splice it all back together with a signal splitter in the middle)? If the latter, those guys must be having a good ol' time, plus or minus the sleep deprivation.
by G2geek on Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 06:35:47 PM PDT
wide narrow
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