A threat to our public sphere? Sabotage in Middle East? Government refuses comment.

Cut Gulf Internet cable

By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 8, 2:24 PM ET

CAIRO, Egypt – An abandoned anchor was responsible for cutting one of the undersea Internet cables severed last week, causing disruptions across the Middle East and parts of Asia, the cable’s owner said Friday. A FLAG Telecom repair crew discovered the anchor near where the fiber-optic cable was severed Feb. 1 in the Persian Gulf, 35 miles north of Dubai, between the Emirates and Oman.

Weighing more than 5.5 tons, the anchor has been pulled to the surface. The company did not immediately explain whether the anchor moved and snapped the cable or whether the cable itself was drifting when it was sliced.

 

It remains unclear exactly how any of the cuts occurred.

… A second FLAG repair ship continued work on two undersea cables that were cut Jan. 30. They are about 5 miles off the north coast of Egypt, near the port city of Alexandria, and run between Egypt and Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily. One of the two Mediterranean cables was owned by FLAG. The other, identified as SEA-ME-WE 4, or South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable, was owned by a consortium of 16 international telecommunication companies.

 

Egypt’s telecommunication ministry said no ships were registered near the location at the time. The cuts slowed businesses, hampered personal Internet usage and caused a flurry of Internet blogger speculation, including mentions of sabotage. Government authorities and FLAG, which stands for Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe, have refused to comment on the speculation.

 

Reports of additional cuts in Middle East Internet cables could not be confirmed. FLAG, in a statement posted on the company Web site, said it has surveyed the cable cut off Egypt with remotely operated robots.

 

The FLAG spokesman said this week that it was laying a new cable underwater between Egypt and France that would be “fully resilient” against cuts such as last week’s and “provide a diversity in routes.” He did not say what that resilience entailed, but said it would take months to set up the new cable.

 

“It is difficult to comment right now on this,” said a FLAG spokesman, reached over the telephone. “We are doing our own investigation.” He spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with company policy. Ovum analyst Matt Walker said undersea cable networks are highly vulnerable to deliberate attack and need enhanced security.

 

… “The economic cost of losing, or even just slowing down, international communications is extremely high,” said Walker. “This risk has to be factored into the calculations behind the investment level and design of undersea optical networks.” …

 

AP Business Writer Matt Moore contributed to this report from Frankfurt, Germany.

 

U.S. heading to war in Iran, says former inspector

BY: MARILYN H. KARFELD Senior Staff Reporter

08/02/08 “Cleveland Jewish News“ — – The former chief United Nations weapons inspector and a retired Middle East diplomat recently warned that America was heading straight toward imminent war with Iran.

John McCain April 20, 2007: Bomb, Bomb Iran

 

Politics of the Internet

Will American society continue to exclude ordinary citizens from important choices about the design and development of new technologies and information systems? Most likely there will continue to be unequal power over decisions about what is built and why, intensive efforts to hem in and control people’s lives in both work and consumerism, and present our future as something nonnegotiable.

Businesses will demonstrate accomplishment in what could and should be choices only to be decided by public investigation and debate – a disguised form of economic plunder. They conceal their strategy by designs that appeal to individual gratification which complicate social issues. Those with the understanding of what is happening must choose to protest or at least inform groups willing to take action on behalf of the community.

The technological vulnerability of the Internet offers the opportunity for expression of protest against agencies or corporations targeted as oppressive or exploitive. “Hacker-Activists” have previously broken into restricted websites of military agencies and financial companies in order to call attention to their insecurity and to protest against their goals.

We don’t want social outcomes “determined by market forces.” Every day, someone makes deliberate choices about the relationship between people and new technology. Should it be someone with commercial intent, concealed or otherwise? Have we traded away much of our humanity and gracious way of living for a lifestyle which leaves others hungry, plundered or dead?

Computer professionals with insight into important matters with social outcomes must express their knowledge and judgments to a broad public or be complicit in the capitalist conspiracy. Information technology and social justice are now interconnected. We need social policies that defend democratic social choice against corporate manipulation and the false labeling of dynamic changes in social or living conditions as “progress” or as “unstoppable.” Where there are obvious and increasing signs of social disorder, look for propaganda and hidden agendas. Computer professionals are not “value-neutral” any longer. They are the best positioned to help democracy and society on a global level or assist in creating victims.

Before access to information technology, our existing information systems attempted to control the flow of information through taboos, costs, and restrictions. Governments do not believe that information should be free. Corporations feel they should not only control it, but charge for it as well.

But the digital world celebrates the right of the individual to speak and be heard, the foundation of American media and democracy. The world’s information is being liberated, and so are we. The hackers and geeks who founded and shaped it believed that there should be no obstacles between people and information. They are the ones that can thwart the obstructions to freedom and democracy that are constantly being devised by government and business. The dominant ethic of this community is that information wants to be free. That idea is antithetical to the history and nature of politics and capitalism. Instead of the government watching people, people should watch their government. Power increasingly functions in global networks, bypassing the institutions of the nation-state. Social movements must be able to compete with corporations and governments in their global impact on the media. The Internet is an ideal facilitator of social movements because it cannot be disorganized or captured.

Can the Digital Revolution will show us solutions for eradicating poverty, ignorance, and war in radical and hopeful ways? Technology is power. Education is power. Communication is power. The citizens of the Digital Nation could form a political movement based on common global values, a moral ideology, and a humane agenda which could construct a more civil society, new politics based on rationalism, shared information, the pursuit of truth, and new kinds of community.