Friday, February 8, 2008

cable cuts. what the hell do we know?

I'd like to take a moment to go on record and say this about the underwater cables in the news recently:
I'm not totally convinced there is anything nefarious going on, but it's not for the same reasons that a lot of the commenters I've read think. I've seen a great number of people saying that the 'terrorists' wouldn't cut off there own communications, but only a few rebut that with such a statement as "the terrorists don't care about the internet; would rather not have it coming in anyway..." etc. Without a doubt the terrorists who would be behind this do not like the fact that the internet brings such a global presence to their countries. That is an influence that over the past few years has been growing at an alarming rate. For the terrorists this is a scary proposition. More knowledge means more power. Once people begin to look at, and talk about, the outside world, they'll be less likely to care about their parent's religion. All over the world secularism is on the rise. Greater numbers of young people (and old too,) are looking less to God to solve their problems an more to their friends, family, and professionals outside of the clergy. This is definitely a trend that the Islamofacists need to stop to succeed in their mission. Cutting those cables is just one way to buy some time, and do some research on the outcome.
Now, do I think that scenario is the one playing out? I'm not sure. That's a cop-out way of saying I don't have enough information. Cable breaks have happened before, they'll happen again. Murphy's Law dictates that. Are these cable breaks close enough together not to rule out natural phenomenon? It seems that there is enough distance between them that a natural occurrence would register on someone's seismic or volcanic equipment. Almost certainly there would be some facility with warning bells and whistles going off in the region. Hells, we were able to detect an earthquake thousands of miles out, and hundreds of meters below the nearest coast. twice that distance from and modern monitoring equipment. So, no, I'm not too sure that this is 100 per cent natural.
As for the theory of Isral or the U.S. attempting to tap the lines, or deliberately breaking them to disrupt communications? Who knows? Both sides of this conflict know that the first weakness to create against an enemy is to destroy his ability to communicate effectively. And if that option is as simple as cutting a few underwater cables... Then by all means, it sure is a hell of a cost effective way to get the job done.

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Faking Normality. Don't achieve normality, fake it.