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Third undersea cable cut Friday, Egypt says cuts not caused by ships

Last week DailyTech reported that a pair of undersea cables was cut leading to a loss of 50% to 60% of the bandwidth typically available in the Middle East.

Egyptian authorities originally reported two cables were cut by fishing boat anchors.  CNN now reports that three cables serving the Middle East have been cut. The two cables last week include the FLAG Telecom FLAG Europe–Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4 on Wednesday January 30. On Friday February 1 it was announced that a third cable was severed leaving Dubai with no Internet connection.

As of Friday FLAG Telecom states it is unclear what caused the breakage of the undersea cables according to CNN. Egypt's Ministry of Communications reversed its statement since Friday, claiming now that no ships were present when the first two undersea cables were cut.

The ministry released a statement saying, “A marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time.”

The Egyptian ministry also added that the area where the cables are located, which is about five miles from the port of Alexandria, is a restricted area and ships are not allowed in the area. No further speculation on what could have caused the three cables to be severed is available at this time. Officials estimate that full service in Egypt won’t be available for another ten days.

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Oil Bourse
By NeoConned08 on 2/4/2008 9:52:39 PM , Rating: 4
http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html

Well, I'm not really big into conspiracy theories but it does seem a bit coincidental that the week the Iranian Oil Bourse was to go live 4 (i've read of one more cable being cut as well) fiber optic lines get mysteriously cut. I could see one or two. But then a 3rd a little later, then a 4th the next day. All in restricted water ways? ummmmmmm ya. Perhaps nobody DID tell the guy trolling about with his anchor down that he was in restricted water ways and that he was busy cutting the internet off to almost all of the middle east.

The only thing keeping America afloat is that we signed a deal with the Saudi's back in 72 to peg dollars to petroleum sales. Since Saudi Arabia is numero uno, the rest of OPEC had to follow. We did this because the government borrowed so much money from the Federal Reserve, which was created out of thin air, to pay for the Korean/Vietnam debacles and the Nanny state benefits. The rest of the world wanted to ditch our dollars because they knew we didn't have enough gold to back up all the money we'd created.

Nixon took us off the gold standard in 71, thus declaring bankruptcy basically, and to keep the rest of the world from dumping all their dollar reserves back into our economy thus hyperinflating the dollar into oblivion ala Weimar, Germany post WWI, we had to do something to keep them from doing so. Well, if you peg the currency to a commodity that all nations have to have........there ya go. They are forced to keep your currency and it gives you the ability to continue to devaluate the currency by printing it out of thin air.

Hell, you can then even have a humongoloid military in 700 military bases in 130+ countries around the globe. You can have generations of people on welfare. The US is an empire that used an indirect method of taxing it's subjugate nations through inflation, rather than a direct tax as all previous empires had done.

Well, the Iranian Oil Bourse is going to change all that. Hence all the saber rattling against Iran. Luckily for them, Russia stepped up to bat and said 2 weeks ago that if anyone attacks Iran they will be immediately nuked. China also gets more than 1/3 of its oil from Iran and the EU would looooove for the Euro to become the new world reserve currency, or at least share that status with the dollar as our economy implodes on itself.

Warfare + Welfare State = Isolationism & Bankruptcy

I find it amusing that many think this system is going to keep going. We are 9 trillion dollars in the hole not including Social Security and Medicare benefits due over the next 20 years. Count those in and we are 55+ TRILLION dollars in the hole because of the huge glut of baby boomers retiring. This is what the head accountant of the US Government, David Walker, has been saying for quite some time now. We continue to give millions and millions of illegal aliens access to all the nanny state benefits. We borrow approximately 3 billion dollars a day from China to fund the Iraq War. All the while the Fed is busy lowering interest rates.........which means......creating more money out of thin air to try and inflate the deflating bubble.....thus devaluating the currency, driving prices up, and causing everyone to not want to go out and spend. It also pushes the other world economies to want to ditch our money even moreso.

The Fed is between a rock and a hard place now. They can't print much more money without all the OPEC nations unpegging from the dollar and they can't raise interest rates to appease the world economies because it will freeze consumption in our already locked up economy.

I think Gerald Celente was right, as usual, with his predictions for the US in 08.

http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/2236/81/

I also think Chalmers Johnson was correct in his NIE on the US.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/01/0081346

I have to admit I agree with Pat Buchanan when I read his article here:

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59693

And I must also agree with what I read here:

http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI...

With the subprime mortgage fraud bundled up and all over the globe, the Fed and central banks suppressing the price of gold to help keep confidence in the dollar, the Iranian oil bourse going live irregardless of *accidental* damage to multiple fiber optic lines that would facilitate trade on the bourse, the South Americans pulling billions and billions of investments out of the US because they see what's coming, and then last but not least, the 450+ Trillion dollars worth of bad derivatives.......I can't help but laugh at the neo-cons and the dems and all the sheeple that follow them.

Hold on to your hat fellas because we are in for the ride of our lives.




RE: Oil Bourse
By MrTeal on 2/4/2008 10:15:40 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
Well, the Iranian Oil Bourse is going to change all that. Hence all the saber rattling against Iran. Luckily for them, Russia stepped up to bat and said 2 weeks ago that if anyone attacks Iran they will be immediately nuked.


I'd love to see a reputable source on that.


RE: Oil Bourse
By masher2 (blog) on 2/4/2008 10:57:03 PM , Rating: 5
Of course Russia said no such thing. What they did say was that they would feel justified in a preemptive nuclear strike if they "felt threatened" sufficiently.

No mention was made of Iran specifically, and the thought of Russia starting a nuclear war to protect a lukewarm ally like Iran is rather ludicrous.


RE: Oil Bourse
RE: Oil Bourse
By NeoConned08 on 2/4/08, Rating: -1
RE: Oil Bourse
By JustTom on 2/5/2008 1:14:03 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
Russia gets more than 1/3 of its petroleum from Iran


Of course that is wrong, Russia is a net oil exporter.From the Energy Infromation Agency

quote:
During 2006, Russia produced roughly 9.8 million bbl/d of liquids (not including oil products), consumed roughly 2.8 million bbl/d in liquids, and exported (in net) around 7 million bbl/d. According to official Russian statistics, roughly 4 million of this total is crude oil. Over 70 percent of Russian crude oil production is exported, while the remaining 30 percent is refined locally.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Russia/Oil_exports.htm...

Iran exports @ 400,000 bbl/d to China, not even in the same ballpark as 1/3. It is not even the biggest exporter to China, both Angola and Saudi Arabia export more oil placing Iran third amongst oil exporters to China.

quote:
Angola surpassed Saudi Arabia as China’s largest source of crude oil imports in February 2006. According to one industry report, in May 2006 China imported 750,000 bbl/d of crude oil from Angola, a 70 percent increase from the same month in 2005. According to the same report, between January and May 2006 China received 46 percent of its crude oil imports from the Middle East and 32 percent from Africa, while its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region only supplied 5 percent of China’s imports.


http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/China/Oil.html


RE: Oil Bourse
By Lord 666 on 2/4/2008 10:36:57 PM , Rating: 1
And for your reasons above is why we are being brain washed about the need to go "green."


RE: Oil Bourse
By Ringold on 2/4/2008 10:56:48 PM , Rating: 5
People realize gold has no intrinsic value beyond a limited market for jewlery, and thus its surge higher finally slows, and suddenly its a conspiracy between world banks? In case you're not too privy on how trading can work, but when everyone says "Buy gold!" and almost no one urges caution.. time to sell. That time was or still is now. Take profits, run away.

Second, the fed doesnt "print money"; they set the fed funds rate, which is very limited in scope. Frankly, we're lucky that markets follow the Fed's lead; smaller countries central banks set interest rates and might as well be whizzing in the wind for all the good it does them. If you knew what you were talking about, you'd know the Treasury is responsible for the dollar. The Fed's only concern with the dollar is how it interest rates feed back in to inflation and employment. Thus far, the weak dollar has boosted employment and still allowed WalMart to slash prices. The Treasury prints money. That's the Secretary of Treasury's signature on the dollar, not Fed Reserve Chairman's.

As for the petro-dollar, it made sense at the time. As for now, the dollar can absorb a slow diversification of oil, but when the value of the dollar can be baked in to the price traders are willing to pay and supplies are willing to accept for oil I don't see the huge advantage in doing so. OPEC, being the bastards they are, probably don't see the huge advantage either. They would be wise, however, to stop pegging their domestic currencies to the dollar. That could cause them some serious problems.

Enough fighting paranoia with logic for one night.


RE: Oil Bourse
By masher2 (blog) on 2/4/2008 11:01:23 PM , Rating: 5
While I agree with your other points, I have to point out that gold is, industrially, one of the most useful metals. In fact, if people would stop driving the price up by using it in jewelry, we could still easily consume the entire world production level.


RE: Oil Bourse
By NeoConned08 on 2/5/2008 12:03:13 AM , Rating: 3
The money doesn't actually get printed at all. It's done via computer :) There is money that gets printed but the vast majority of the supply isn't in physical dollars. I figured you would point that out. *printing money out of thin air* is laymens terms for increasing liquidity/money supply. Figured you'd have known what I was talking about. Yes, enough fighting delusion with logic for me as well. Hopefully you Helicopter Ben can fly us out of here when then fecal matter hits the fan in bucket loads.


RE: Oil Bourse
By Ringold on 2/5/2008 1:28:43 AM , Rating: 2
Thank god your group finally grew up past the printing press theory and modernized the propaganda. I'll point out that there's a reason why economists don't maintain the M3 data; nobody cares . What matters to society is growth. The velocity of money, core CPI and other measures serving as inflation gauges allow effective maintenance of price stability. Balancing the two, we've experienced the most fantastic growth in the history of man with our fiat currencies.

If you think a gold-standard currency would remove inflation and deflation, a growing economy would be require deflation. If new gold is mined, that's insta-inflation. If gold is consumed via use in industrial processes, more deflation.

The anti-Fed Reserve movement goes back to the founding of the nation, I understand that, but you guys have always screamed the sky is falling and yet we're still going along. Feel free to move to ECB-land, though; price's must be stable, employment be damned! :P


RE: Oil Bourse
By masher2 (blog) on 2/5/2008 9:57:48 AM , Rating: 3
Interestingly enough, Alan Greenspan himself was at one time a member of the "anti-Fed movement". I have some of his treatises from the 1960s, in which he is highly critical of the institution, and advocates its abolishment.

Paper economies *have* been the doom of many nations. I'm sure you're familiar with cases of hyperinflation in places like Germany in the 1920s or Brazil less than 20 years ago, with people carting around wheelbarrows of money, and prices rising so fast that a single day's time could depreciate a paycheck to worthlessness. Postwar Hungary, for instance, saw in a single year's time, prices increase by 5,000,000,000,000%. That means a dozen eggs that cost a dollar in the morning would cost $15 billion dollars by evening.

An economy on a fixed standard -- be it gold, bimetallism, or a commodities basket -- cannot experience hyperinflation. It also is much more resistant to many types of government meddling in the economy.

Does that mean the lack of a gold standard will "destroy the country"? No, but it certainly requires a certain faith in both the ability and goodwill of politicians, a faith some people would rather we not depend upon.


RE: Oil Bourse
By BansheeX on 2/5/08, Rating: 0
RE: Oil Bourse
By masher2 (blog) on 2/5/2008 10:26:40 AM , Rating: 2
> "In case anyone forgot, Ringold is the biggest trotskyist liberal on these boards"

If you're going to make personal attacks, at least make accurate ones. Ringold is about as far from Marxism as one can get, as countless posts of his has demonestrated.


RE: Oil Bourse
By BansheeX on 2/5/2008 1:16:53 PM , Rating: 1
Is that why he supports a central bank, one of the major communist planks? Is that why he supports redistribution of wealth via the inflation tax created by the federal reserve system? How about his vehement defense of interventionism and big government regulation of the free market? He's the biggest neo-con traditional conservative wannabe on these forums.


RE: Oil Bourse
By masher2 (blog) on 2/5/2008 1:34:08 PM , Rating: 2
Wow, all the way from Trotskyite to Neo-con in two posts! That's enough to make one's head spin.

Ringold's an economist, and they like central banks for the same reason that body shops like car accidents...business would be rather boring without them.

Take away state control of monetary policy, and you've single-handedly removed most of the "knobs and levers" that economists can potentially use to exert influence.


RE: Oil Bourse
By BansheeX on 2/6/2008 5:07:52 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
People realize gold has no intrinsic value beyond a limited market for jewlery


Gold is scarce and has very desirable attributes in a metal for both industry and jewelry. As such it is also desired for its convenience as a store of wealth and as a trading mechanism. That's why it's been used as a currency throughout history. People like you are the dorks going around saying that no wants gold in a depression and that you should buy chickens instead. That's stupid and totally impractical. When your savings and currency is destroyed, OF COURSE people are going to want a better asset than paper to store their wealth. And what better thing than gold: it's easy to buy, requires no upkeep, and a great deal of wealth can be secured and stored in a relatively trivial volume. Unlike many other major commodities, physical gold is not perishable and can be stored indefinitely. And I needn't remind you that a depression here would not drastically reduce its demand on a worldwide basis.


RE: Oil Bourse
By somaswordsaint on 2/4/2008 10:59:41 PM , Rating: 2
"...irregardless of *accidental* damage....."

fond of double negatives.. ?

irrespective or regardless.. [not both, seemingly]