There has been so much speculation for the past two weeks about the many fiber optic telecommunications cables being cut in the middle east, including here, that someone wrote a Wikipedia Article about the disruptions and the theories surrounding those breaks.
My own speculation led me to consider the soon to open Iranian Oil Bourse as a motive for these disruptions. In fairness though, I did also mention James Bond like spies, and The Incredible Mr. Limpet as possible suspects in the outage too. But if you must, go ahead and color me a tin foil hat weirdo. I am guilty, I guess.
As a techie, I still find it odd that so many cables in the area went down concurrently. Original reports had Iran 100% down, and that was incorrect. It certainly made me reconsider sources for future links.
I think that this has been an interesting experiment in media studies for me – seeing how much speculation and chaos could come from a bunch of nerds wondering why something broke. The bigger issue is that the speculation itself became a bigger story than the original outages. I am still getting several hundred hits a day on the postings from this story.
Because of all this, I learned a lot about the Iranian Oil Bourse, or commodities market. This is a very big story on it’s own, and is definitely worth learning something about. It of course has had very little mention in the U.S. media, despite how much it may change (or not) our economy, and the oil market globally.
Yours in the brotherhood of weirdness,
the (still) inquisitive techie
This is the kind of coincidence that turns tinfoil into hats.
read more | digg story
Only a bunch of techies could get whipped into a frenzy by the Internet going down – in Iran. As I have mentioned, and many others have mentioned, several undersea cables in the middle east have been cut. While many think this odd, and worthy of interest, and perhaps suspicious, others have gone a bit farther. This person seems to have been researching this since the first cable cut over a week ago, and these guys have lots of charts!
While I for one am skeptical about the likelihood of this many cables going down concurrently, I am however, awaiting judgment on it’s role in any number of nefarious world domination schemes. Here’s a cool chart of the Internet’s Undersea World,, and an old soviet era underground sub base you could use in case you wanted to build your own undersea lair.
Some folks are less than thrilled with the The Internet Traffic Report site that many (including) myself have used to determine Iran’s Internet availability. There are many .ir sites that are still functional.
The one scheme I am holding out for is the disruption of the opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse. Read this bold proclamation by the Iranian Finance Minister about the opening of the long delayed Bourse, complete with predictions of doom for the United States Economy, on a .ir site that is up.
The new oil market will be the first outside of the US or London, and will not trade in dollars, but will base its trades on the Euro, dealing a blow to the dollar. The opening of the Bourse has reportedly been delayed again by the recent outages, one of many in a long series of delays for the Bourse.
One could see many interests in the U.S. not wanting the Bourse to open. couldn’t they? Anyone who has read anything about Peak Oil would be a little suspicious.
… or maybe it was this guy:
