Middle East subsea cable cuts

I've seen some speculation (at sites of dubious credibility) that the recent subsea cable cuts, which have apparently reduced Internet connectivity to Iran (though the impact to India has been more prominent), are a prelude to a U.S. attack of Iran. I don't think so.

First of all, subsea cable cuts (and the word "cut" is unfortunately overused to mean a non-functional cable even when it's not actually severed) occur on a regular basis, and every company that owns subsea cables (such as employer, Global Crossing) contracts with a cable-laying company such as Global Marine (which Global Crossing used to own) to do repairs. Second, in December 2006, there were nine cable breaks in east Asia as a result of earthquakes. In this instance, we are up to only three cable breaks--the first two were FLAG Telecom's Europe-Asia link and SeaMeWe-4, which were broken by a tanker in the Mediterranean between Alexandria, Egypt and Palermo, Sicily, causing disruption to Internet access in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and India. Those cables follow pretty much the same path, from Mumbai, India, to Djibouti, and from there into the Red Sea, past Egypt, through the Suez Canal, and into the Mediterranean to Sicily. It's not surprising that both were cut simultaneously by the same tanker dragging its anchor, they are perhaps a quarter mile apart. An offshoot from those cables goes north from just off the coast of India into the Persian Gulf, past Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain, and lands in Kuwait. In the other direction, it goes to Sri Lanka. The third cable cut was on this offshoot, FLAG Telecom's FALCON cable, off the coast of Dubai, between Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Some have erroneously claimed that four cables were cut, on the basis of a report that a cable was cut between Sri Lanka and the Suez Canal--that's the FALCON cable off the coast of Dubai, not yet another cut.

None of these cables land in Iran or Iraq, at least on my cable map, though there is apparently a Kuwait-Iran subsea cable, so any impact from these cable breaks to Iran is incidental. I don't see any evidence that these are anything other than normal accidental subsea cable breaks. (Correction: FLAG FALCON has a segment from Kuwait to Bandar Abbas, Iran, that was built in 2005 and isn't on my map, which was printed in May 2004.)

You can see Telegeography's submarine cable map of the world for yourself here.

UPDATE (February 3, 2008): I didn't check earlier, but I note that at the moment I have no problem reaching hosts in Iran, such as Mahmoud Ahamdinejad's official blog, or pinging the primary mail server of the Datacommunications Company of Iran (mail.dci.co.ir). Others have previously noted the continuing availability of Ahamdinejad's blog, which is hosted by DCI (AS 12880) and gets upstream connectivity from Singapore Telecom and TTNet (a Turkish ISP). I would hazard a guess that Iran's TTNet connectivity is via terrestrial cable from Turkey.

UPDATE: Egypt claims no ships were in the vicinity in the Mediterranean when the cable cuts there occurred. There is now a report of a fourth cable cut, in the Persian Gulf between the Qatari island of Haloul and the United Arab Emirates island of Das. This outage is now being attributed to a power system problem.

UPDATE (February 4, 2008): The Renesys Blog has analyzed the breaks from a routing perspective, showing which countries have been affected, in a series of posts. In part one, they look at the first two breaks in the Mediterranean, and show that the most impacted countries were Pakistan and Egypt. In part two, they look at the impact by ISP. In part three, they look at how providers addressed their connectivity before and after the breaks. You'll notice one country conspicuously absent from the list of impacted countries--Iran. This is because while Iran has had some impact, it has not been significant. In a fourth post, The Renesys Blog discusses the Iran impact and the misinformation about it that has appeared in places like Slashdot and the blog of the first commenter on this post. In a fifth post, they look at how Indian providers weathered the problems. And in a sixth post, they sum up lessons learned.

UPDATE: These cuts are all associated with bad weather in the region, which is also delaying repairs. Here's a report from FLAG Telecom posted by a commenter at the Renesys Blog:

Update on Submarine Cable Cut - Daily Bulletin
@ 0900 GMT February 4 2008
Bulletin will be updated Daily with Progress.
Cut # 1:
− FLAG Europe-Asia cable was reported cut at 0800 hrs GMT on January 30 2008.
− Location of cut is at 8.3 kms from Alexandria, Egypt on segment between Egypt and Italy.
− The Repair ship loaded with spares is expected to reach the repair ground by February 5 2008.
− We have received the necessary permits to commence work from the Egyptian Authorities.
− FLAG has restored circuits of customers covered under Pre-planned Restoration service.
− FLAG has restoration on alternative routes for customers who have requested Ad hoc Restoration service.
Cut # 2:
− FALCON cable was reported cut at 0559 hrs GMT on February 1 2008.
− Location of cut is reported at 56 kms from Dubai, UAE on segment between UAE and Oman.
− The repair Ship is loaded with all spares and ready to sail. Awaiting clearance from Port Authorities due to 36 knots winds.
− FLAG is executing restoration on alternative routes for customers who have requested Ad hoc Restoration service.

UPDATE (February 7, 2008): There have been some additional cable faults on FLAG's cable systems, to a total of four or five. In addition to the two listed above (FLAG Europe-Asia, 8.3 km from Alexandria and FLAG FALCON 56 km from Dubai), there has been another on FLAG Europe-Asia 28 km from Penang, Malaysia scheduled for repair on February 11, and possibly two faults on FLAG FALCON near Bandar Abbas, Iran, on a segment that runs from Iran to Kuwait, which will be visited by a repair ship around February 19.

The current list is this:

1. Consortium cable SeaMeWe-4, 12.334 km from Alexandria, in the Mediterranean. Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend.

2. Qtel's cable from Haloul (Qatar) to Das (UAE), in the Persian Gulf. Probably not a cut, but damaged power system due to weather.

3. FLAG's Europe-Asia (FEA Segment D), 8.3 km from Alexandria, in the Mediterranean. Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend by cable ship CS Certamen.

4. FLAG's FALCON (FALCON Segment 2), 56 km from Dubai, UAE in the Persian Gulf, on the route to Al Seeb, Oman. Currently under repair, should be fixed by this weekend. This cut was due to a ship's anchor--an abandoned 5-6 ton anchor was recovered by FLAG at the site (see photo in FLAG's update, PDF)

5. FLAG's Europe-Asia (FEA Segment M), 28 km from Penang, Malaysia. Scheduled for repair on February 11 by cable ship CS Asean Restorer.

6. FLAG's FALCON (FALCON Segments 7a and 7b), two faults on the cable between Kuwait and Bandar Abbas, Iran, scheduled for repair on February 19.

There's an article in Technology Review about the cable breaks.

Alex at the Yorkshire Ranter is a breath of fresh air on this subject, his commentary presents some common sense opinions with a factual basis and accompanied by lots of good links.

UPDATE (February 11, 2008): The Economist also has an excellent summary.

UPDATE (April 16, 2008): Two ships have been identified as the cause of damage to undersea cables in the Persian Gulf. An Indian officer a Syrian chief engineer of an impounded Iraqi ship are being held for trial in Dubai, and the ship owner will have to pay $350,000 in compensation. Another Korean ship was impounded and then released after its owners paid $60,000 in compensation to Flag Telecom. The two ships, the MV Hounslow and the MV Ann, were identified by satellite photos.

Two early reviews of Expelled

And they both appear to be pretty accurate, informed about the dishonesty of the movie's producers.

One is by Dan Whipple in Colorado Confidential, the other by Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel.

Hoax white powder sent to Scientology

Police are investigating mailings of suspicious white powder, which proved to be a hoax (apparently cornstarch and wheat germ), to nineteen Church of Scientology addresses today, which led to evacuations and closures. The LAPD and FBI are both investigating.

The LA Times says that "there was no evidence that Wednesday's mailings were connected to the hacking" ("a cyber attack last week"), though I suspect the mailings were from somebody participating in the "Anonymous" "war" on Scientology.

If they happen to catch the people behind the hoax, I won't have sympathy for them.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a married couple in Stockton were incorrectly targeted for harrassment on the belief they were pro-Scientology hackers.

The Scientology main website has been moved to Prolexic Technologies, a company that sells a service to filter denial of service traffic.

"Google bombing" has been used to make the Church of Scientology's website the top Google search result for "dangerous cult" and Xenu.net the third result for "Scientology."

The Economist has now reported on the battle, under the title "Fair game."

The Wikipedia page on "Project Chanology" is a good place to keep up-to-date on the events of the latest Internet battles involving Scientology.

George W. Bush's favorite painting

From Scott Horton, "The Illustrated President," Harper's, January 24, 2008:

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it:

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

...

Bush’s description of “A Charge to Keep” struck me as very strange. In fact, I’d say highly improbable. Now, however, Jacob Weisberg has solved the mystery. He invested the time to track down the commission behind the art work and he gives us the full story in his forthcoming book on Bush, The Bush Tragedy:

[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. But in fact he’s a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man. . . and Bush the president.

In an update, Horton points out that Sidney Blumenthal traced the story of this painting in an April 2007 column at Salon.com.

(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)

UPDATE (January 27, 2008): Commenter Bruce points out below that this painting misidentification was discovered even earlier by Jonathan Hutson in a blog post titled "Horseshit! Bush and the Christian Cowboy" at Talk to Action in May of 2006. Hutson uncovers the correct name of the painting and the story it was intended to illustrate, but doesn't point out that the character in the story who Bush identifies with in the painting is a thief fleeing from justice.

Election fraud

After massive election fraud in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia, and other countries, it's nice to see that we know how to follow standard procedures and use mechanisms to ensure that our voting is fair and properly secured...

Or perhaps not. The video and the lengthier description at the link are from Beverly Davis' Black Box Voting project's coverage of the New Hampshire recount process.

False statements from the Bush administration before the war in Iraq

This should be considered old news, but the Center for Public Integrity has done an extensive analysis of statements made by the president, the vice president, and five other senior members of the Bush Administration between September 11, 2001 and September 2003 and identified 935 specific false statements made. These statements are now part of a searchable database, and they've put together a graph that shows how the frequency and number of false statements dramatically increased during the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and then declined as the truth became known in the course of the war:

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

The CPI report is titled "The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War."

"Anonymous" launches "war" against Scientology

In a press release yesterday that cites an article I co-authored in Skeptic magazine, a group referring to itself as "Anonymous" has announced that it has declared war against Scientology. The stated justification for the "war" is the Church of Scientology's attempts to keep a video of Tom Cruise off the net. That video, which is still viewable at Gawker.com, was made for a Scientology awards ceremony. The longer video from which it was taken is also now viewable there. Gawker.com responded to a cease and desist letter with a refusal to remove the video, which it considers to be fair use for news and comment, but I'm not so sure that it has a good legal case for putting up more than short excerpts. (In case you're wondering about all the Scientology jargon in the Tom Cruise video, MTV has done a good job of explaining it. Actor Jerry O'Connell has also put out a good parody.)

The "war," which is described at another site under the name "Project Chanology" (a reference to 4chan, a popular message board, where most posts are made by people who don't login and are thus attributed to "Anonymous"), calls for denial of service attacks over the Internet, prank phone calls, spam emails, and personal visits involving vandalism and harassment. Apparently Scientology's main website was down due to denial of service for at least part of the day yesterday.

The press release cites a number of web pages for further information about Scientology, the second of which is the article "Scientology v. the Internet: Free Speech & Copyright Infringement on the Information Super-Highway" which Jeff Jacobsen and I wrote for Skeptic magazine in 1995 after Scientology effectively declared war on the Internet. (A much lesser-known sequel to that article, published only on the web, is "Scientology v. the Internet: An Update and Response to Leisa Goodman.")

I completely disagree with the tactics being used here--Scientology has as much right to free speech and protection of their copyrights as anyone else, though I also condemn Scientology's habitual misuse of copyright to try to suppress fair use of information. To the extent this is a prank designed to get media attention, well done. To the extent it gets taken seriously, though, it's something that may not end well. Read the material, watch the videos, have a laugh, and tell others about the absurdity and abuses of Scientology. But please, don't launch attacks on their websites, harass individuals, or engage in vandalism.

"Anonymous" previously received coverage for attacks on MySpace accounts on Fox 11 in Los Angeles on July 26, 2007.

BTW, the press release gets its facts wrong when it claims that the alt.religion.scientology Usenet newsgroup was "shut down." Scientology attorney Helena Kobrin issued an rmgroup message, but almost all news servers ignored it. The accurate facts may be found in Jeff's and my Skeptic article.

UPDATE: Wikinews and Xenu.net have more.

Message from God billboards

Back in 1999, a bunch of billboards popped up around Phoenix that had white letters on a black background and were signed by God. One I took a bad photo of said "You think it's hot here? --God." They're back. There's now one near Kat's workplace that says "Life is short. Eternity isn't. --God." These come from a group that calls itself GodSpeaks, which doesn't actually pay for or put up the billboards, they just help interested groups in doing it locally.

I'd like to see someone make one of those sign generators for these billboards, so I can make some parodies, which these are just asking for. These billboards aren't as lighthearted as some of the church marquee signs (like this one, for example, which suggests a God who has mellowed considerably from the one who sent the plagues of the Exodus).

Here are some ideas for better content:

Stop putting words in my mouth. --God

If I existed, I'd communicate directly to all people in their own languages in a miraculous manner rather than through billboards put up by people pretending to be me, just as parents pretend to be Santa Claus. -- God

Please post further suggestions in the comments. (And if somebody writes or finds a billboard photo generator, please let me know.)

William Lane Craig weighs in on Antony Flew book

William Lane Craig has given his account of the Roy Varghese book written for Antony Flew in an audio blog, which Richard Carrier ably dissects. Craig seems not to be interested in actually examining any of the evidence in any depth.

(Carrier's blog also had a more detailed post in response to Mark Oppenheimer's article in the New York Times Magazine last November, which agreed with Oppenheimer's analysis but provided further background detail, and he has added a 27 December 2007 update to his article on the Secular Web, "Antony Flew Considers God... Sort Of.")

FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills

Today's Washington Post reports:

The FBI, which has had trouble keeping track of its guns and laptops, also has a chronic problem paying its phone bills on time, according to audit results released today.

Telephone companies have repeatedly cut off FBI access to wiretaps of alleged terrorists and criminal suspects because of the bureau's failure to pay its bills, the audit found.

The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that more than half of the nearly 1,000 telecommunications bills reviewed by investigators were not paid on time, including one invoice for $66,000 at one unidentified field office.

...

The report identified one case in which an order obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- which covers clandestine wiretaps of terrorism and espionage suspects -- was halted because of "untimely payment."

The FBI says the problem is caused by an outdated financial management system and is working to fix it. The same Post article also points out that an examination of the backgrounds of the 35 employees with access to FBI funds used to pay for expenses for undercover investigations "found that half had personal bankruptcies or other financial problems" and one FBI telecommunications specialist pleaded guilty to "stealing more than $25,000 intended for telephone services."

The article concludes by observing that Congress is still divided over the issue of granting retroactive immunity to telecoms that have engaged in illegal wiretapping for government surveillance programs and that the most recent extensions of the foreign wiretap law from last summer expire at the beginning of February.