Tag: cable

Fear of offending Muslims allowed extremists into Britain

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A fear of offending Muslims allowed extremists into Britain before the 2005 London Tube and bus bombings, a former Labour minister with close links to the intelligence services has admitted.

Kim Howells blamed “political correctness” for fostering a situation in which dozens of extremists being sent to fight the West after being indoctrinated in Britain.

The Daily Telegraph has disclosed this week how terrorist recruits from across Africa and the Middle East flocked to London to claim asylum.

According to leaked detainee files from the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph, at least 35 detainees were sent to fight against the West after being indoctrinated in Britain. Mr Howells, a former foreign office minister and chairman of the influential Commons intelligence and security committee, blamed “political correctness” which meant that the extremists and their views were not challenged…

Britain ignored repeated warnings to stop granting asylum to Islamic extremists wanted in other countries for terrorism offences before the 7/7 bombings.

According to the cable, also obtained by WikiLeaks, the politician asked: “Did the English consider the risks of allowing Londonistan to develop? The British thought that sheltering terrorists was a good solution, but they did not realise that one can never align oneself with the devil, and they did precisely that for years and years…”

Shake hands with the devil who wants to kill you.

Little old lady cuts off web access to whole country of Armenia

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An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighbouring Armenia…

The woman, 75, had been digging for the metal not far from the capital Tbilisi when her spade damaged the fibre-optic cable on 28 March.

As Georgia provides 90% of Armenia’s internet, the woman’s unwitting sabotage had catastrophic consequences. Web users in the nation of 3.2 million people were left twiddling their thumbs for up to five hours as the country’s main internet providers – ArmenTel, FiberNet Communication and GNC-Alfa – were prevented from supplying their normal service. Television pictures showed reporters at a news agency in the capital Yerevan staring glumly at blank screens.

Large parts of Georgia and some areas of Azerbaijan were also affected…

Dubbed “the spade-hacker” by local media, the woman – who has not been named – is being investigated on suspicion of damaging property. She faces up to three years in prison if charged and convicted.

A spokesman for Georgia’s interior ministry said the woman was temporarily released “on account of her old age” but could face more questioning…

Pulling up unused copper cables for scrap is a common means of making money in the former Soviet Union. Some entrepreneurs have even used tractors to wrench out hundreds of metres of cable from the former nuclear testing ground at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan.

Yup. Let’s wander around a nuclear-testing site trying to find something worth scrounging.

Then, complain to the government a week later about glowing in the dark.

Wonder what’s happening in Egypt? Do what the networks do! – UPDATED

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Go to AlJazeera to find out what’s really going on.

Click the link above if you’re at your desktop computer. There is an App for iPod, iPhone and iPad as well.

It’s a sad commentary on American news organizations they have so little direct coverage – especially outfits like CNN which used to field direct satellite communications back to North America from around the world. They were the inspiration for AlJazeera – which now surpasses the mediocrity that CNN has become.

If it weren’t for the Web, of course, we’d have little access to AlJazeera and their peers around the world. Broadcast television, cable and satellite broadcasters are too afraid of offending the ignorant to carry primary source media.

UPDATE: AlJazeera has been “officially” shut down; but, is continuing to broadcast live.

Guardian Unlimited is doing a superb job of live blogging everything associated with the uprising in Egypt – from around the world and on the ground in Egypt.

Stealing electricity with a meat hook and not too many brains

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This guy was not Benjamin Franklin

German police are investigating a man for theft after he siphoned electricity off a high-voltage overhead transmission line for one month with the help of an ordinary meat hook.

The 36-year old man from Sibbesse in Lower Saxony concocted the plan to steal electricity after the power company cut him off for failure to pay his bills, police said.

The man attached a cable to the meat hook and tossed it onto an overhead power line. He then drew power from the transmission line to his home, located about 150 meters away.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my 34-year-career,” said Friedrich-Wilhelm Lach, chief executive of regional utility Ueberlandwerke Leinetal GmbH, told Reuters. “It’s incredibly dangerous and utterly stupid.”

An employee of the utility noticed the meat hook during a routine check. Lach said the man was lucky he is still alive and warned copycats not to try it: “It will kill you,” he said.

I can’t wait for this stunt to be tried by some of the knuckle-dragging gangbangers in my neck of the prairie.

Google leads consortium for world’s fastest internet cable

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The Unity cable is part of another Google underseas consortium

In little more than a decade, Google has conquered the technology industry and become one of the world’s most powerful companies. Its latest undertaking, however, may be one of its most ambitious: a giant undersea cable that will significantly speed up internet access around the globe.

The Californian search engine is part of a consortium that confirmed its plans to install the new Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC), the centrepiece of a $400 million project that will create the highest capacity system ever built.

Google is undertaking the scheme with a number of Asian telecommunications companies, including Japan’s KDDI and India’s Reliance Globalcom. The agreement to build the submarine cable was first proposed three years ago, but negotiations finally came to a close on Wednesday as officials signed what they promised was a groundbreaking deal…

When it opens for business in 2012, the SJC will run 3,000 miles from Singapore to Japan – with branches reaching out to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Guam. In total, it will consist of more than 5,000 miles of cable, sunk deep under the seabed…

The SJC is set to break records by allowing up to 17 terabits of data to be sent every second – the equivalent of around 250m telephone lines, and large enough to allow the contents of every single book in the British Library to be transferred 20 times per second.

And as if that was not enough, the line is also upgradeable and could eventually run as fast as 23Tbps – space for another 88m phone lines.

It’s no surprise to me to see Google ready and willing to invest in a communications project like this. It’s what corporations should be prepared to invest in – to offer leadership in technology.

Now, uh, how many of your local newspapers covered this story, eh.

Sussex Gang rips out a kilometer of buried phone cable

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Hundreds of people were left without their landline phone service for nearly 48 hours after thieves stole 1km of copper cabling.

BT said telephone services to up 800 homes and businesses in Berwick were restored on Thursday evening.

The estimated cost of repairing and replacing the cable was £45,000.

Officers believe thieves posing as workers wearing uniforms or high-visibility jackets used a vehicle to pull the cable out of the ground and take it away.

Pc Thomas Stallard said: “Manholes running along the side of the road were used to access the cables and it appears the grass over some of the manholes was dug up to reach the sealed covers.

Dedicated thievery. Who says people aren’t willing to work hard, anymore, eh?

BTW – Since the lubricant utilized to pull the cable into place – remains after installation – it helps folks remove the cable, as well.

Time Warner Cable to test TV on this new thing called Internet

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TWCiptv

Time Warner Cable has signed up at least seven large media companies for a test that will offer television programs on the Internet to paying subscribers…says the Wall Street Journal.

Networks participating in the trial are expected to include General Electric Co’s Syfy, Time Warner Inc’s TNT, Cablevision Systems Corp’s AMC and the British Broadcasting Corp’s BBC America, people told the paper.

Other companies that could be involved in the trial are CBS Corp, Discovery Communications Inc and Viacom Inc, the paper cited some of the people as saying.

The te$t involve$ TV show$ being made available on the Web to a limited number of home$, the paper said.

All right. Who went and told them about The Internet?

Creeps cut cables in California – phone, internet outage

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Crew splicing fibre-optic cables

Vandals intentionally cut fiber optic cables early Thursday in San Jose, California, knocking out phones and access to 911 emergency services to thousands of residents in the region, local media reported.

The sabotage has caused a widespread phone service outage in southern Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, the San Jose Mercury News said in a report posted on its website.

It appears somebody opened a manhole in south San Jose, climbed down and cut four or five fiber optic cables, John Britton, a spokesman for AT&T which owns the cables, was quoted as saying. There were also reports of underground cables being cut in San Carlos, although no phone disruptions seemed to be connected with that incident.

AT&T is offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible for the sabotage.

The problem was first reported around 2 a.m. local time Thursday, the newspaper said. As of 2 p.m., one of the cables had been repaired and some service had been restored with full service expected to be restored in the evening.

Anarchist thugs drive me up a wall. At best, that’s who did this. Otherwise, it’s about the same mentality as graffiti vandalism. Spoiled, self-centered, egregious middle-class twerps incapable of public, collective struggle for whatever they believe in – this week.

Can you tell that 50 years of social activism never turned me into a pacifist?