Thursday, February 28, 2008

Boycott Danish, eat bagels.

I'm sick and my tummy hurts coz I havn't had breakfast yet and it's 1pm, but I digress...

Growing up among two distincly different cultures gives a person the most amazing insight into both cultures, IF that person knows where to look.

Ofcoures you get some disadvantages, hardships, it may even make it worthless having this experience and insight.

One recurring experience many people of my breed always cite is not quite feeling "at home" anywhere. In my case it's Australia and everywhere else. I love Melbourne and I've very happy and comfortable living in it, but it doesn't feel like home, where ever I go I'm always asked where I'm "originally" from. Well I was born in Iraq but I havn't been there since 94. and if I GO to iraq, I would be asked wher I came from, and that's another cup of crap because alot of arabs and iraqis who haven't been able to travel or live overseas hate your guts, and they mostly convey that distaste for your kind by putting you down all the time, you could be a frickin arabic scholar but they'll still make fun of your bad arabic, you would be wearing normal jeans and a polo shirt and they'd be like, ooh look at what the austorali is wearing. this hasn't happened to me but you knwo what I mean.

I must also note that not all people are like that, there are very nice people who respect and honour you genuniely, but usually the bad experiences trump the good ones.

But I digress...


NOTE I wrote this a while ago and left it, now I want to publish it but I've lost my train of thought, so I'll just leave it unfinished

In the case of the danish newspaper cartoon offenseive Mohammad (pbuh) etc... issue. I sometimes get the feeling of having one eye on the arab or muslim camp, and another eye on the western camp. and since I'm one person, all I can do is look, and blog.

The arabs on one side have mixed feelinsg about the west, they look up to and imitate the west in music and cars and expressions and if you go the gulf countries and some middle east countries as well you would find all sorts of Western university campuses. A lady I know graduated from a "perston university" where she had her degree signed by Condeleeza Rice ! ! ! (That lady is not a spy btw).
However, arabs have a deep distrust of the west as crusaders, mainly because of the iraq war and probably alot of it has to do with left over feelings from the colonisations years. Coupled with a mob mentality and complete lack of real understanding of how people in the west think, any little action is seen as a predetermined insult on islam.

Most of these people are not very relegious at all, which makes it even worse because theír reactions to "protect the honour of islam" is usually very islamic, like burning shit and killing nuns etc... thier idea of dealing with the problem seems to be maximum violence to scare the west into submission.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

The undersea-cable-gate

THREE days ago I was updating my computer after having formatted it and done all the updates, all of a sudden ! (Wednesday 30th January around midday) my 1 Mbps superfast internet connection suddenly slows down to dialup rate ! I tried calling the help and support numbers listed for my ISP (I won't mention who it is, but it rhymes with entisalat), and the number wasn't even on ! it was wierd.

Later on news surfaces about a ship's anchor appearantly left dragging on the sea floor in the red or medditeranian sea, which caused damage to the undersea internet cable that connects the world regions of USA-Europ to the Middle East/Asia, or something like that.

My wife wondered aloud at how strange it is that an anchor would damage an obviously well protected cable (since it connects the world and it already has to be tough enough to withstand natural disasters etc...), I, being so romantically trustful of the media, said "no no, it was in the news, it MUST have happened".

Today the news man on the radio told me it wasn't one cable but THREE ! and the ship despatched by an indian company to fix the cables is stuck in Abu Dhabi because of weather concerns. So from now it would take ten days to fix the lines.

Then I heard that Israel and Iraq weren't affected, and that Iran was FULLY affected, that is, no internet at all !

Interesting...

After putting my ears to the ground, I starting listening and thinking about the holes in this story. Most of which the ground gave me (the ground here is anti establishment websites and blogs peppering the internet).

1- The Cables: These are HUGE cables, they connect world regions ! they're not supposed to break so easily, one cable breaking is fair enough, shit happens right ? but four cables breaking ?



LAYERS:

1--Polyethylene
2--"Mylar" tape
3--Stranded metal (steel) wires
4--Aluminum water barrier
5--Polycarbonate
6--Copper or aluminum tube
7--Petroleum jelly
8--Optical fibers




2- For something this important and vital to world communication, commerce, politics etc... the only company that can fix it is an indian company ? Really ?

No disrespect to indians, but really man, something this big should be planned for, like having a plan for when it goes down. It happening in the red sea, shoudln't there be a trusted company worth its salt and having some sort of HQ in the middle east to fix this ? Allahu a3lam.

3- AFP reporst that the Egyptian communications ministry denied the posibility of ships breaking the cable in the red sea because there were no ships seen over that patch of water where the cables were damaged (according to footage kept by cameras kept by the ministry), so if it wasn't ships, what was it ? and why would ships be blamed ?

4- (Here is the real whoppper) AND I quote "(I-Newswire) - Multiple reports that internet cables connecting Iran to the rest of the world have been “cut” are raising suspicions in the minds of experts on 9/11 that something serious may be in the works. According to James H. Fetzer, founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, “Prior to 9/11, the FBI—our own FBI—shut down Arab Muslim web sites ( whatreallyhappened.com/fbishsut ). Some of us fear that internet access may have been deliberately severed to isolate Iran and make it difficult to communicate in response to a ‘false flag’ attack in the United States, possibly during the Super Bowl, an attack upon Iran, or both.”

This may sound crazy or far fetched, but why would we doubt the US in some crasy plot to invade a country ? unless our memory span is less than 7 years old, we should see this coming.

Also, it makes perfect strategic sense to cut off your enemy's communication before you make your move. it's like SWAT teams cutting off phone and electricity lines before going in to free the hostage.


You descide, is there something fishy going on under the sea (PUN !), is this really a prelude to war ? are indians really the best people to fix this problem ?




PS, thanks to
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=118041
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2008/February/theworld_February77.xml§ion=theworld&col
http://www.i-newswire.com/pr148510.html