Not a candidate or super Tuesday diary.
News just came in that a fifth fiberoptic undersea cable has been severed in the Middle East.
The cable problems started on January 23, when the Flag Telecoms FALCON undersea fiber optic cable near the Egyptian port of Alexandria was severed. Three more cuts followed, with another cut of the FALCON cable reported just recently. This results in considerable Internet traffic losses for Asia, in particular, Egypt and Iran. This report from internettrafficreport.com shows Iran knocked offline completely, although it may be incorrect. Update: it is incorrect.
The official explanations of what is hapenning are... limp as official explanations.
Basically, five fiberoptic cable losses in less than two weeks are being explained as a string of unlucky coincidences. Now, how unlucky indeed is that (according to Brian Schneier's security technology blog)
The first two affected India, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The third one is between the UAE and Oman. The fourth one connected Qatar and the UAE. This one may not have been cut, but taken offline due to power issues.
The first three have been blamed on ships' anchors, but there is some dispute about that. And that's two in the Mediterranean and two in the Persian Gulf.
There have been no official reports of malice to me, but it's an awfully big coincidence. The fact that Iran has lost Internet connectivity only makes this weirder.
EDITED TO ADD (2/5): The International Herald Tribune has more. And a comment below questions whether Iran being offline has anything to do with this.
EDITED TO ADD (2/5): A fifth cut? What the hell is going on out there?
Here is the link to the IHT article quoted by Schneier...
Most telecommunications experts and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely, but no one knows what damaged the cables or whether the incidents were related.
One theory - that a wayward ship traveling off course because of bad weather was responsible for cutting the first two cables last week - was dismissed by the Egyptian government over the weekend.
No ships passed the area in the Mediterranean where the cables were located, the country's Ministry of Communications said Sunday.
Oh well...
Update.
At least as of now, Iran has connectivity. I was able to reach the University of Tehran page and a bunch of others. Connections are slow.