“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”
seymourhersh.substack.com
seymourhersh.substack.com
The only anchor in reality appears to be Biden suggesting that they knew how to take it out which seems like a pretty weak place to build a large story.
What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".
Why is that weird? Assuming this is true, there would be rather many people with such knowledge. One of them may feel the need to talk. Would you expect such a source to be named?
Also, I find it a lot easier to imagine why the US would want to do this, than why Russia or Germany would want to do this.
Or, since the pipelines are well known and not difficult to reach, basically everyone with access to explosives, a boat a divers with explosives skills. None of which is particularly hard to come by.
Without sources, everything is specilation at best, consiracy theory BS or propaganda at worst. Personally, I don't even believe half of what is reported with connection to the war in Ukraine.
Thank you so much for this, makes me start the day in such a better mood!!!
Gazprom would have to abide by it once relations are normalised, or find other countries unwilling to trust it when signing future contracts.
I can see the US doing it as they've been vocal opponents to nordstream since its inception, I can see Ukraine wanting to do it although I doubt they'd have the resources, might also have been some other rogue European faction wanting out from under Putin's thumb.
Permanently shutting it down significantly constrains options for anyone who might seize power in Russia next.
Destroying the pipelines removed the potential reward for an internal rival to replace him.
Putin's rivals make Putin look soft. If they do take power, they will end the conflict quickly and definitively.
Heck leveling Kiev will do that too. Could be done in a day.
Meanwhile, all the rhetoric of Russia “saving” a brotherly nation goes flying out the window.
Of course it will.
>ground troops from neighbors, EU, and possibly NATO
They are not suicidal, I don't think.
>Russia “saving” a brotherly nation goes flying out the window
Yes. That is the reason war will continue the way it is now: very slowly, and stupid.
Edit: reddit spacing
I'm afraid something as drastic as the annihilation of Kiev will lead to actions that are beyond the usual risk assessment levels. Countries will be compelled to act, (repeated...) threats of nukes be damned. Europe will not tolerate another Nazi Germany on its borders, period.
Put another way, a massive, discontinuous step in escalation will inevitably lead to a similar step from the other side. There is no world in which Germany and Poland go "OK then" and withdraw all aid.
No, they just don't have the means to escalate this any further (without using nukes).
Ukraine's military barely held on against 90k professional soldiers and 140k mobilised. It would not stand a single chance against 3 million soldiers and a fully militarized Russian economy. Russia hasn't even called up a tenth of its trained reserves.
Then the explosions happened, which prevented gas from being transported through the pipelines - except for one Nordstream 2 pipeline, which actually would require Germany to budge for it to be operational. Russia even stated that they'd be happy to send gas through the remaining pipeline as soon as Germany backtracked.
Whether or not you think Russia did it, the explosion had the effect of turning something the Russians had been trying and failing to convince other countries of into a reality.
Indeed, Nordstream hadn't been running gas for about a month at the time of the explosions. (Indeed, Nordstream 2 also never ran gas). That is critically useful information for assessing who had motive to blow up the pipeline, yet everyone speculating on the matter seems to assume that it was being used at the time of explosion.
Putin's concern would be the home front.
No, one cannot easily imagine long-term neutral countries interfering in a foreign war like this.
Thus you cannot easily imagine any of the Baltic states, Finland or Sweden doing the deed.
Norway is conceivable-- but they're not really all that active in the Baltic sea, Ukraine is conceivable-- but it isn't actually super easy to do what was done. Blowing up the pipeline would have been easy, but there were several bombs, and they were, as I understand it, quite big, and this would be removal of resources from things closer to the fighting.
Norway is difficult for political reasons though-- would they really screw over their neighbouring countries in the EU?
Thus all these countries are all unlikely choices.
The level of detail about the operation is basically, some divers from the US Navy attached bombs to the pipeline during a military drill that were detonated with magical sonobouy signals according to some professor who said that might work.
Another red flag: The vast majority of the article was about a political narrative, which really is focused around hurting Russia, and not who is benefited by the destruction of the pipeline. The US government does not own our energy industry and is often at odds with the gas and oil industry here, and this article assumes a level of integration that does not exist in the US political system.
The article itself said that Norway would benefit from the destruction of the pipe line.
This does not make the article more credible, in fact, it detaches the beneficiary one more degree from the actor.
I am not really qualified to judge on the verity of the article, but the statement that's there is no strong "integration" between the US government and the gas and oil industry (and other ones for that matter) is absurd. The US fought wars over access to cheap oil (Gulf war 1) has put extremely lucrative deals for their own oil companies into place after forcing regime change (gulf war 2), has highest officials transition to highest jobs in industry (Cheney), has shown multiple times that it will use intelligence apperatus for industry advantages (the spying scandal in Germany, airbus vs boring contracts...). Many (most) US military operations over the last 30 years can be directly attributed to economic motivations.
Meanwhile, the US controversially transferred SEALS to Germany earlier in October 2022[1].
USNS William McLean left a German port 5 September 2022[3] (there are also port call records) and headed to meet the USS Arlington on 10 Sept 2022[2] to transfer cargo.
USS Arlington loitered around docking in Lithuania and only reaching the straight near Denmark on 22 Sept.[2]
USS Arlington then meets the exact same USNS William McLean for another cargo transfer 20 days later and just 6 days after leaving port.
Where USNS William McLean went after I don't know. I know it docked somewhere close as there's an entry for 26 Sept 2022, but I don't feel like paying to know the exact location.
If you were conducting a SEAL operation on the high seas, a San Antonio-class ship would be a perfect launch vessel. A cargo exchange would be the perfect cover to swap ships. Delayed bomb detonation isn't dangerous and could explain why only 3 of 4 pipelines were impacted (aka, something went wrong with one).
I'm not saying it 100% happened (and is somewhat at odds with the anonymous source in this story), but to me, it seems like the US had the motive, means, and opportunity.
[0] https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/31497...
[1] https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-10-20/seals-gre...
It has a range of roughly 20 miles necessitating carrying it near the location. That "giant assault ship" is exactly what you use to carry one of these. It also explains how you haul a few hundred pounds of explosives down a hundred meters for planting.
Something that wasn't made clear in the article is that US energy companies have been massive beneficiaries of the Nordstream destruction. The US is now the world's leading exporter of liquid natural gas. That wouldn't have happened if the pipeline(s) were still operational.
It's like no one had ever heard of encrypted digital signals.
This part made me question a lot more.
For someone who is not American, this statement is amusing. The US govt and US military are fully in bed with the US energy industry, when it comes to actions outside America.
US still occupies the Syrian oil fields btw. No one talks about US territory grabbing there - it never even makes the news.
Source with this degree of knowledge would have no issue providing lots of things that could be confirmed through other means. Documents, names, precise dates and times. Who was in charge of this on Norwegian side? On CIA side.. when and where did they meat etc etc etc
I read the first half of the article, and skimmed the second. It doesn't claim to be sourced from anywhere, and the only paragraph that discusses sources and fact checking is when they point out the White House says the entire article is a work of fiction. It doesn't present any evidence that it happened (other than that the US has a big swimming pool that the navy trains in), and summarizes itself by saying that it was a perfect plan (presumably meaning it left behind no evidence), except that they actually did it.
What am I missing?
While I am extraordinarily distrustful of news reports using anonymous sources you do have to consider the author here. Ultimately we are deciding if we trust him and, for me personally, he lends a lot of credibility.
The other side of this is, duh, of course America blew up the pipeline. I said at the time that we were the most likely culprit.
There's a very small subset of groups who have the capability to do this and even fewer who have the motivation. It forces Germany/EU to stop buying NG from Russia and start buying LNG from the US (among others) with exceptionally minimal political risk to the US.
The US will just continue to deny that we did it, this article will get no traction in mainstream media. If incontrovertible proof ever did surface the media will just bury the story and if anyone involved is forced to comment they will just spin it as a good and necessary and just thing that they did to help Ukraine with a dose of natural gas bad because of climate change and all will be forgiven.
My knowledge on this is very, very sketchy, but my understanding is the there is still a large amount of Russian gas transiting the Ukraine pipelines, Europe needs the gas so they buy it, Ukraine needs the transit money to defend against Russia so they keep the operation running. and Russia needs the gas money to attack Ukraine so they keep the operation running.
Honestly if true it is one of the weirdest situations I have ever heard about in the middle of a war.
I deliberately used an RT link because it is probably full of Russian propaganda and yet says basically the same thing as other articles. I originally learned about it via the Perun youtube channel(the best place to start if you want actual information not propaganda) but am unable to find the episode where it is mentioned.
https://www.rt.com/business/570805-russia-ukraine-eu-gas-tra...
Why do so many people act as if it's so unlikely that Russia did it? They had the least to lose, their relations with the west were already ruined at that point and such an incident couldn't make them any worse.
What would be their motive? Before the explosion, Russia had illegally shut down the pipeline. Now that the pipeline has exploded, they have plausible deniability and they can say it's not their fault the gas isn't flowing. Because of that, they won't have to pay additional fines when the economic relations with the west are restored.
And don't forget that one pipe of NS2 was left intact and, unlike NS1, there was no contractual obligation to pump gas through it.
>Now that the pipeline has exploded, they have plausible deniability and they can say it's not their fault the gas isn't flowing.
How the hell thinking they have nothing to lose and also worried about a contract at the same time sound or consistent?
Umm, the US has made a terrific return on investment. EU supplies have shifted dramatically away from Russia to Norway and the United States following the end of Nordstream.
The third paragraph in the article.
Again, there's a huge weasel word right there in the only sourcing for the whole article. That just... yikes. Maybe it's a typo. Maybe it's something an editor could have cleaned up. But maybe it's also the sort of thing Hersh's editors simply threw out as unpublishable, which is why it's an uneditted substack blog.
Makes a lot of sense to connect the dots given that it's a covert activity.
Often planning is done by senior members, who get out of the military more frequently (especially recently) and the younger people who are operational stay quiet.
The people who were on the operation, aren't going to talk right now, because they are still operating and aren't ready to spill the beans and write a book/movie script.
"Makes a lot of sense" is hardly the standard for legitimate journalism though. Did it happen or not? How do you know? Does your source know that it happened or just that it was planned? Do you make that clear? Hersh really does not.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Criticism_and_co...
You give a link but it is nowhere in that link. I watched an interview where Hersh talked about how the US killed bin Laden. Hersh has always said this.
Hersh did do reporting that countered parts of the US government story about bin Laden. Namely the idea no high Pakistani army/intelligence/government official knew where bin Laden was in Pakistan. As well as some other things.
The conspiracy theory is believing bin Laden sat in a big compound in Abbottabad with no one important in the Pakistani government knowing this. I guess the US government feels it needs to state this for some diplomatic reason, but it is ludicrous.
Later on in 2013, he changed his claim, such that he admitted some of the story is true, that is, that the terrorist leader was killed, after he encountered pushback.
Source: https://dailycaller.com/2013/09/27/hersh-slams-us-media-clai...
There's nothing simpler and better for your case than typing the quote where he said the thing you say he said. Otherwise, you're actively spreading misinformation on social media, and intentionally using rhetorical games to obscure the lack of evidence you're offering to support it. That's conscious spreading of misinformation.
Would you be willing to explain how a strictly historical truth, that is, a direct quote from the individual in question, is misinformation?
> This article was amended on 1 October 2013. The original text stated that Hersh sold a story about the My Lai massacre to the New York Times for $5,000 when in fact it was the Times of London. Hersh has pointed out that he was in no way suggesting that Osama bin Laden was not killed in Pakistan, as reported, upon the president's authority: he was saying that it was in the aftermath that the lying began. Finally, the interview took place in the month of July, 2013.
Note that from this footnote that Seymour Hersh does not admit that he misspoke. He claims that he never suggested that Osama bin Laden was not killed. This is plainly a straight lie, given his claim that the White House's statement did not contain one word that was true.
If he wants to state that he misspoke in this interview: fine, then he should do it. But to state that he didn't make this claim is itself misinformation.
Edit: You're accusing me of bad faith. Can you please explain how my argument is deceptive or a lie? If anything, Seymour Hersh has acted in bad faith in this ordeal, lying about his own statements. And people should be suspect of him for that.
When your entire argument is "this one sentence when taken literally with no context can be considered crazy," I don't think you're arguing in good faith.
You condensed an entire book/section of a book that Hersh wrote into one sentence and then attacked it as if it were the argument he presented. It's not. It's something he said offhand in an interview about the book, and which he immediately clarified was not meant in the way people were taking it.
You're taking the worst possible interpretation of what he said and arguing he clearly meant that. Hence, not arguing in good faith.
I have not engaged in deception in the statements I've made in this thread a single time. However, it is important to point out that Seymour Hersh has indeed engaged in bad faith in his statements about Osama bin Laden, by refusing to acknowledge that he either originally misspoke, or he changed his claim about the White House's statement. In either case, he is being deceptive in his statements as I've demonstrated above, exactly what it means to argue in bad faith.
You aren't arguing in good faith. You aren't trying to be fair, open, and honest. Like your repeated claim that Hersh saying he in no way was suggesting that bin Laden was not killed in Pakistan is him refusing to acknowledge he misspoke. Or your constant ignoring of anything Hersh has said on the matter besides the one sentence you object to. Neither of those things are fair, or honest about his argument.
Maybe you aren't being intentionally deceptive, I can't say. But as I pointed out you are not being fair and honest about Hersh's argument, which is more nuanced than the one sentence.
As for the reason why Hersh did this, I cannot say, a person's intention is a black box. But this kind of behavior amounts to some amount of dishonesty. It's not much more complicated than that.
Is saying he misspoke. His words were interpreted in a way he did not intend them to be.
Addressing only the quote itself is unfair, as again that does not represent his actual argument.
I'm done with this.
You take this statement he made and translate it to "his claim that the US never killed Osama bin Laden". The original quote you print is much clearer. I certainly don't translate his quote to what you translated it to.
Speaking of changed claims, both the White House and New York Times walked back claims they made in 2011 about bin Laden. So Hersh's claim of "a lie" and "not true", if you want to call it that, is true by their own admissions.
Incidentally the disputed issues are did anyone high up in the Pakistani government know bin Laden was there, how did the US learn he was there (connected to the first point), was the firefight killing bin Laden a kind of John Wayne/Audie Murphy production or was it more pedestrian etc.
If it's not pedantic that Hersh telling the interviewer "not one word of it is true" was hyperbole, when at least one word of the White House story was true, then you have a point on that statement. But it still does not automatically translate as you said. The original statement is more clearly what he said.
I do have a problem with people who change their claims and then deny that they changed their claims, like Seymour Hersh did, with respect to Osama bin Laden and stating that not a single word from the White House was true. That's disingenuous and it makes his credibility questionable, especially if he's going to rely on anonymous sources for his claims.
To address your claim that perhaps he was being hyperbolic in his statement: fine, but at least admit to that. He hasn't. He denied that he said it in the first place, which is a lie.
It's much easier to make a strong claim, and to repeat it, than it is to read through articles and debunk those claims. Frequently, as soon as you've done it, there are several more of these strong claims made, and the discussion becomes impossible.
I think it's rooted in the desire to "win".
I know I get a little excited when I see a comment I've made get upvoted.
I think about it when I'm writing and I've found it affects what I write and my phrasing.
I think this is an unintended consequence of self-moderated discussions - it seems to devolve into a zero-sum game.
Is this satire or what? His reputation is "as a nutcase" nowadays.
Most reputable editors, when given a secret-sources story, either reject it outright, or say "OK, tell me their names and let me talk to them."
If you're Hersh, maybe you get away with saying, "trust me."
But either he’s being fed this by someone with an agenda or he shares that agenda.
Conspiracy thinking ironically always includes blind credulity, just of other things.
I'd bet my last dollar that at least four nations had "blow up Nord Stream to force continued conflict" contingency plans.
Who did it? Germany, Russia, USA, Ukraine, or a curve ball from the one of the Nordic or Baltic states? We'll probably never know, and none of those answers would surprise me.
Besides motive, this article doesn't provide anything new. And that the US had at least motive is established fact since basically the day of the explosion.
There are too many players with varying interests at different levels to just go off of someone's reputation and an unnamed source. Perhaps Biden or some other head of state needs to come along and blow up this thread so that moderators and commenters alike have to find other outlets for the water they're carrying.
Although if Biden took part in such a conspiracy, someone in one of the American intelligence agencies would've probably leaked it out.
They have successfully annoyed just about ever regional player, as well as the US and every other major power at times, and yet mange to thread the needle of staying friendly with the US and Iran at the same time. The way they played out the Saudi sanctions on them was a masterpiece, and they are the biggest gas exporter in the world.
No evidence they are involved of course, but there are plenty of extremely competent militaries in the Middle East.
It's the perfect crime
Exactly!
How can you view the East River if you're facing West?
(Yes, that’s legally Manhattan still. And a reasonable walk from the UN.)
This was leaked at the time that it is now to send a message to the Germans.
[1]: Whereas analysis based on what Russia was actually doing was largely correct before the war. This is why there was such a large chasm between what the US was saying then- based on their ability to hack Kadryov's phones and hear what was being said at those levels, along with their satellites to observe what the actual Russian army was doing- and what the French and Germans were saying based largely on 'that would be a dumb thing for Putin to do'.
It is now known that Putin's decision to invade was due to bad intel from his intelligence services that reported that Ukraine would not be able to mount significant resistance. In that light it was reasonably self-interest-pursuant.
Acting on incorrect information is not the same as being irrational.
I disagree - there is no credible motive here for Russia and, in fact, the outcome was directly opposed to every outcome they are, or were trying, to achieve.
Not only do I, as a US citizen, believe that the US perpetrated this act but further: I believe it is an overtly hostile action against EU citizens and, particularly, Germans, who will suffer the most economically.
EU states are now buying US natural gas like we always wanted them to. How much pain and suffering were we willing to inflict to make that happen ?
Seeing as Russia was already using gas supplies as a political tool, it doesn't seem too far fetched.
In the scenario where America did it, I think there is a strong argument to be made that it was in the long-term interests of EU citizens, despite causing them some short-term discomfort. They never should have started this pipeline project in the first place, buying energy from Russia made the EU weak. Breaking that relationship permanently will make the EU stronger.
You have no idea what's going on.
Also, are you arguing that having less choice in market supply is good better for EU?
Coincidentally, the Russian sphere is one of the groups mad about the UN involvement in Bosnia and Serbia
Personally I’d call the groups committing literal genocide the butchers, not the groups taking action to stop it. To each their own opinion.
Also, petro states like Norway caused global warming and ultimately history will find them culpable for mass death.
It's about a documentary which made some waves, accusing the involved politicians of outright lies and exaggerations as justification for military action, which in turn then lead to the things they fabricated.
It was called 'Es begann mit einer Lüge/It started with a lie'
https://programm.ard.de/?sendung=281116097670119
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/umstrittene-ard-dokum...
They were like that because of cleaning up after some skirmish. To be identified, and buried.
These pictures were used to present it like that was common. Which wasn't the case.
The military intervention created the circumstances which made that common.
Until you can defend yourselves, you are.
Who can invade EU, Russia after their showing in Ukraine? China from half the world away?
EU militaries have multiple times the budget of the RU army.
We don't need 11 carriers to defend ourselves.
They had more air defense than Germany, France, and the UK combined, though the systems were not quite as capable individually.
They had nearly as many active duty military as Germany, France, and the UK combined, and a huge number of reservists with experience fighting in the War in Donbass against Russian military and paramilitary forces with tanks and artillery, as opposed to jihadists with no real heavy weapons of any kind.
Their airforce was mostly comparable in size to any one of the above, though again not as capable qualitatively.
And they had a hell of a lot more artillery and artillery shells than Germany, France, and the UK combined. By a massive margin, although again not quite as capable individually. Nearly all of the NATO-standard artillery ammunition that has been provided to Ukraine has come from US stockpiles, because at the rate Ukraine consumes artillery ammo Germany, France, and the UK would be collectively tapped out in about 10 days. Not to mention HIMARS ammunition.
The Russians were also rather handicapped by the reckless, arrogant stupidity of their plan and extreme secrecy resulting in soldiers selling their fuel rations for alcohol, because until a day or two beforehand they thought was all a bunch of western lies because that's what the government was saying publicly. With the result that a bunch of vehicles ran out of fuel halfway to Kyiv. Had the invasion been done according to doctrine rather than as what they expected to be an immediate victory as the Ukrainians laid down their arms, awed by their superior military power, the story may still have turned out very different.
Anyway, Ukraine had, by a very significant margin, the largest military in Europe excluding Russia, and certainly the most experienced in fighting "real" wars. Take this into consideration when boasting about how easily the rest of Europe would be able to handle a Russian invasion.
Italy has a much more capable armoured force than Ukraine did at the time.
You are comparing T64s, vehicles designed in 1951 to modern vehicles? How do you think they are performing when it comes to firing on the move, engaging at night, accuracy, survivability?
Tanks newer than T64 have been long retired to reserve in Europe. There are many IFVs today capable of putting holes in T64s' in service today.
> The Russians were also rather handicapped by the reckless, arrogant stupidity of their plan
Such disrespect! Russia is an exemplary conservative society with traditional values!
Europe is 27 countries, not 3. Its's half a billion people. Europe combined has more operational vehicles than Russia does. Has a larger standing army than Russia does. A much better air force, and relies on it for air defence, not on ground-based missiles.
I never said 'easilly' but imagining that Russia can occupy half a billion people is downright crazy
I'm sure the Italians are very capable but they've never demonstrated holding off a tank force 8x their size.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/03/31/ukraines-be...
Whether the Russians can occupy successfully isn't the point, they can do a ton of damage in a short amount of time, not to mention the torture and rape.
There is no scenario in which Russia could successfully invade an appreciable part of the EU, even without taking into account European nukes.
Honestly Europe would be far more peaceful now without NATO. The US has mostly been a destabilising force for the past three decades.
The only nukes Germany has are those that America charitably allows Germany to borrow. If Germany grew up like UK and France and bought/made their own toys, then maybe Germany would find itself to have more autonomy.
Besides, things are going on pretty okay. Electricity prices are stabilizing and Europe will eventually become greener as well. No matter who did it, blowing up the pipeline was a good thing.
Weekly snapshot: Russian fossil fuel exports 16 to 22 January 2023:
* The week of 16 to 22 January 2023, the EU was the largest importer of Russian fossil fuels.
* The EU imported pipeline gas, oil products and LNG, as well as crude oil via pipeline or rail.
* The top five EU importer countries last week were the Netherlands, Slovakia, Germany, Belgium and Italy. [1]
[1] https://energyandcleanair.org/weekly-snapshot-russian-fossil...
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-gas-suppl...
That's expected as there's no longer the pipelines everyone is discussing in this comment section.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-gas-europe-v...
So Ukraine is "essentially supporting genocide of Ukrainian civilians"?
Recent reports suggest the US and certain European nations sabotaged peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. Are those nations supporting the genocide of Ukrainian civilians?
To give you one credible motive for Russian involvement: Russia cut off Europe of Gas supplies to get leverage on the Ukraine conflict, but this largely failed as European countries pooled their gas reserves and vowed to move away from Russian gas. As Russia could see that this market was lost the explosions were a last punch to send gas prices higher before the European winter and protect Gazprom from lawsuits. The mild weather killed that first motive, let's see about the other.
In September it was already clear that a weak polar vortex would make for a frosty winter in the northern hemisphere. It was just luck (for Europe) that it hit North America and not Europe. During summer in Germany every week more people were drumming up (literally) demands to open Nord Stream 2.
There was no way of being sure a German government wouldn't flip under pressure once people were freezing and showing up with torches at the Reichstag.
But one September night someone went in and shot the hostages...
Now we have to rely on the US and there is nothing worse than relying on the US. Europe just showed once again it failed to learn anything from the Suez crisis. The US should never be trusted. They are not a reliable and only care about themselves.
Europe has been mismanaging its relationship with the BRIC since the end of the Cold War. We are too dependent on NATO. Not that there is much to expect from the EU. Every addition since 1995 has only weakened it.
Also Norway can replace a lot of the Russian gas supplies.
(just kidding :p)
Fortunately, EU managed to store up plenty of gas and the winter was mild, so russian blackmail has failed.
Hooray for global warming?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Pipe
Putin was still trying to energy blackmail Europe back then. It is hard to see the explosions as anything else but a threat that the Baltic Pipe could also be blown up -- and the Nord Stream pipes weren't very useful to Russia at that point so it wouldn't cost much to lose them.
Also, given the climate now, if there was even a shred of evidence or any hint that Putin did this, US media and intelligence officials would be blaring that from every rooftop and every talking head would be "Russia this", and "Russia that". I think the relative silence speaks very clearly.
That's why there were several explosions: Everyone was blowing it up at the same time, unbeknownst of each other's plans.
But he does often rely on sources who remain anonymous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Use_of_anonymous...
I did find it interesting in that Wikipedia article to read that The New Yorker's editor insists on knowing the identify of all of the anonymous sources that Hersh has used when his reporting is published in that magazine. That suggests to me that while Hersh can probably be generally trusted, his work is of a higher quality when it's published in an outlet like The New Yorker, as the editor-in-chief and other staff submit it to a more rigorous internal discussion. That's in comparison to probably no internal review or discussion by Substack.
That even that inconsistent Bin Laden story purportedly relied on two distinct sources, and yet his Nord Stream story purportedly relies on only a single anonymous source, should be a significant red flag here. I have no reason to doubt that Hersh heard the quotes in his Nord Stream story from at least someone in government, but that source's motivations and truthfulness were not independently verified even, by his own admission, by Hersh. And that's just... not credible reporting.
since by his own admission, [what you said], that is credible reporting.
it might not be a credible source or story
I suggest that the ethics code says don't report facts as facts that you haven't verified as facts, but if you say "I could not verified this and I heard it from one source" you are within the code. "Sources in the Administration" often report things to reporters, and most of what they say can't be verified, it can only be echoed by more than one person. And if a reporter has a relationship with one leaker who has been reliable, you're claiming they can't use that, and I'm claiming they can and do. Sure, verify what you can, but being an honest reporter is what is required, not certain fact patterns.
Yes, in a deep dive publication like the New Yorker, they will often kill certain facts or an entire story if it cannot be corroborated, but that doesn't define journalism.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
Worth noting that both the White House and the New York Times walked back inconsistent claims they made in the days after bin Laden's death. So the White House and Times were self-admittedly inconsistent about it. If Hersh is inconsistent it is in that light.
Hersh pokes holes in different points of the official narrative. Particularly the idea no one high up in the Pakistani government knew bin Laden was in the compound. Contradicting the White House, but very convincing to me and others.
However, to be fair to you, Hersh goes into a great deal of detail about the initial intelligence, the raid etc. Was any part of that wrong or inconsistent? It's hard to know. He didn't just make a few statements but went into a lot of detail. So there could theoretically be inconsistencies in Hersh's reporting about it too, since he covered so much ground. It is hard to know though. You just take what the White House said, what Hersh says, what the Pakistani press says and try to figure out what actually happened.
But I'm biased as well, my desire to believe is strong, only that I'm in team "'t was an inside job" so my bias is in clear opposition of these claims (but in limited to speculation, I find "Russia jumped from excuse to excuse to keep the pipelines closed anyways, so the only immediate winners of the explosions were people in Moscow who felt threatened by some real or imagined "make money not war" faction" logically compelling, but that's all there is, I guess, strongly, but can't claim to know)
Come on now. I get the desire for people to believe their own government could just never possibly engage in this kind of skullduggery (at least, not until they're comfortably removed from the incident in question by many decades and can safely file it under "well we don't do that kind of thing anymore"), but the idea that the Russians were the only ones with motive?!
If so, do you trust it to be accurate?
I'm sure if they did, that was with the sole purpose of ensuring maximum factual accuracy, and no other purpose whatsoever.
https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/the-new-yorker-...
If he denied the US killed bin Laden he would be unreliable. He never denied the US killed bin Laden. You saying he said that is what is unreliable.
He said that some of the White House and Pentagon assertions about bin Laden, which the New York Times did not question in the days after (but did question, to some extent, later on) were not accurate. Particularly that no one high up in the Pakistani Army, government or intelligence knew Bin Laden was in Abbottabad. Hersh asserted that was incorrect, as were some other things.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden%27s_compound_i...
It was funny how suddenly all the journalists started to report from Kentucky or Alabama instead of Fifth avenue. As the media it is your job to explain how the world works.
He's also, especially recently, made some very bold claims that so far have not turned out to be correct, whether because the truth just hasn't been revealed yet, or because Hersh was wrong or misled by his sources.
It's also worth noting that Hersh - as with any journalist - is only as good as his sources. If people choose to leak juicy secrets to him (not implausible!) he may end up publishing accurate stories that reveal nefarious conspiracies (which has happened). If people choose to give him lies and misinformation, he may end up publishing conspiracy theories instead. And as he keeps publishing, the odds that this will happen (if it hasn't already) keep increasing.
So I absolutely wouldn't write off any claim Hersh makes, but I wouldn't blindly believe it either. And here he is relying, by his own admission, almost entirely on a single anonymous source, giving details that can't really be independently confirmed.
Was Hersh told by someone that the US took out the pipeline? Probably! Does that mean the US did so? I'm not sure I'd seriously update my priors based on this.
But a broken clock is right twice a day and a bad journalist can break two big stories in a career of publishing lies.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/05/seymour-hershs-u...
There are plenty of powerful people trying to discredit reporters who tell who tell the truth, so we should also be skeptical of attacks on Hersh.
If you publish all at once, others can go and verify the details. The source is protected.
If you verify pre-publication, e.g., go to the diving school in Florida and ask too many questions, you (and the source) will be under surveillance in no time.
I am an investigative reporter who covers crime, and my sources often insist on anonymity. There are ways to mitigate the possibility of being lied to.
All of my sources know that we have a deal: I promise to do everything that I reasonably can to keep their identity secret, and they promise me the truth. If a source lies to me or intentionally misleads me, my agreement to keep their identity secret no longer stands.
There’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist, and it has worked well for years. I have never burned a source, and as far as I know, I have never published an investigative story that is wrong about anything material.
No, but corroboration doesn't require multiple sources.
For example, sources often provide copies of official records that corroborate their story. That can be enough, particularly when the authenticity of the records can be independently verified.
Since Nordstream was destroyed amidst public pressure from US energy companies who wanted to takeover the European energy market, the US has become the world's leading exporter of liquid natural gas, Europeans are paying record natural gas prices, and US energy companies are reporting record profits. Again, the relationship between these things should surprise nobody.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/08/bidens-bi...
This is not an indictment of the US, it's just an assessment based on my own and other's extensive experiences with large, hierarchical organizations.
I'm not sure what would make it so high risk. The truth could easily be castigated and maligned as "conspiracy theory," a dismissal that most people in the Western countries will readily accept. The only people with the resources to investigate and find hard evidence would either be in on it (Western/NATO allies) or easily written off as pushing lies and propaganda (the Russians).
It doesn't say it outright, but if the hastily re-programmed explosives were triggered by a sonar buoy after three months in sea water as the article says, then it would not be surprising at all if some of them failed to go off.
Precisely that the article implicitly gives very plausible answers to good questions like yours, is why I think it's credible.
In addition the bad-trigger scenario would imply that the explosives and triggering mechanism remained in place on the remaining pipe, which would require the US to rush there to remove them or trigger the missing one to avoid terrible diplomatic consequences if the unexploded device were to be discovered.
Second, those terrible diplomatic consequences probably happened, behind the scenes (and weren't that terrible, because no one really wants to denounce the US in the middle of the Ukraine war). I'll remind you that both Sweden and Denmark claimed nothing other than sabotage could be concluded, and closed down their investigations and classified the heck out of the details. Feel free to make freedom of information requests to them, so that you can get those "national security interest" refusals.
Odds are that the US didn't directly admit anything to them, but strongly suggested they shouldn't look too closely or be too specific in their statements, and that those states were quick to comply. And probably cleaned up well enough that there was nothing left for the Russians to find, in the case that they should run their own investigation (although, Russia can't run a real investigation to save their ass, they're too used to have their conclusions dictated to them, so I wouldn't worry if I was the USG).
And the rest is all putting the cart in front of the horse. Would it look any different if Russia (or anyone else) were the culprit? No, it wouldn't (since otherwise the fact it's classified itself leaks information). Maybe the investigation just yielded nothing conclusive? Which given the location and event (big explosion and lots of gas output making sure everything gets nicely distributed elsewhere) wouldn't be that surprising?
You're suggesting that when Russia cut off the gas, and Germany didn't immediately capitulate, that's evidence the leverage was worthless? It wasn't even winter yet.
Also, blowing up your pipeline just as a competitor comes on line? Whatever you think of Hersh's article, it's undeniable that Norway made a lot of money on the sabotage. Even if Russia had stayed firm and sent no gas through the pipeline, the fact that they could have alone would have kept prices lower.
Third, you're suggesting that Sweden/Denmark would have kept it secret if they found evidence of Russian meddling? They absolutely would not. In fact, if there was even evidence exculpating the US, without implicating anyone else, they would have blasted it to the heavens.
NATO-aligned think tanks have gotten better at this - something I view as a good thing, despite that I am not a fan of them, and I don't think they did it willingly. But with the rise of Bellingcat, they're now routinely publishing embarrassing material on Russia that they would have LOVED to keep secret as a bargaining chip, in earlier decades.
In fact, if there was a Russian team that blew up the pipeline, they would have left a trail a mile wide in public data and the countless leaked databases (another huge one just a few days ago, from Roskomnadzor). Bellingcat, or anyone interested, could have given you their damn cell phone numbers, if it was a Russian op. Yet they have instead remained utterly uninterested in the question of how the pipelines were sabotaged.
Did they though? Looking at the gas futures chart it's not obvious to me at all. The prices suddenly spiked much higher when NS1 was suddenly shutdown. After the explosion they actually went down slightly. They did profit, but just from the actions from the Russian side (which were earlier in time).
As for whatever you mean with competitor coming online. Towards Germany the flows from Norway didn't change that much after the invasion, Europipe II from Norway to Germany was already maxed out since January 2021 pretty much.
Russia doesn’t lose all leverage the moment they shut off the pipeline. They still have the leverage from being able to turn the pipeline back on, which impacts competitors and customers by giving the option.
Blowing up the pipeline takes that option off the table for the foreseeable future, and with the advantage that it doesn’t cause immediate dangerous supply shocks to Allies since it was already off.
Win/win for the Allies (though if public, Western Europe gov’ts would have no choice but to be pissed in public), not great for Russia who has their last leverage knocked off the table.
I personally don’t have an opinion on if the US did or did not do it, and I doubt we’d know for at least several decades.
But the US has done lots weirder stuff with far less concrete potential benefits before. hell, nearly anything the CIA had been caught doing in the 60’s or 70’s has far less plausible justification!
My personal belief is that we will never know who actually performed the acts of sabotage. But taking some Biden soundbites, mixing it with some public information and some hand-waving doesn't produce any actual evidence about who actually did it.
Second point - agreed. If for no other reason than there is little to no incentive for any of the players to share any evidence or info they may have found that would support or disprove any of the scenarios.
For Russia, if they could prove the US did it, it would strengthens the image of the US as a powerful world player with their foot on Russia's neck. If someone else did it, it would make them look even weaker.
For Western European allies, it would make it really obvious how much influence the US has on them, especially since their own fate continues to depend on the US - and it's large natural gas supplies. Even if they wanted to cut off the US, Russia is even worse for them, and they can't stand on their own two feet against either Russia or the US right now (militarily or economically). If someone other than the US did it, it would make their key infrastructure look even more fragile and vulnerable.
For the US, if they did it, it would expose the extent they are playing dirty (hurting the 'clean hands' narrative) and lose them good will with most of the public. If they found someone else doing it, it would reduce their apparent 'dirty tricks' power folks need to worry about, which is a major deterrent to enemies and allies doing dirty tricks.
Or you could take a breath and realize that Nordstream 2 was not yet complete. It was an ongoing, non-operational project. In that context, “bringing it to an end” could easily mean not completing it. In fact, that’s the far more reasonable interpretation—-the literal physical destruction interpretation is only made by someone who wants to believe that.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-ru...
I had been assuming that the working theory amongst the “America definitely blowed up the pipeline” crowd was that this would have been a scheme cooked up amongst the NATO allies. Because, the alternative, that America did that against the will of Germany is just utter insanity. The idea that they would risk turning the entirety of Europe against them with such an act of brazen hostility is just…I can’t even.
It would certainly be an extreme, and strange escalation of their previous attempts to use gas supplies as a retaliatory device. But, IMO, it’s less far-fetched than what you’re suggesting.
And yeah, that is true. But when the wife was in fact murdered, then the odds that the known abusive husband did it are very high.
Maybe it was a reasonable interpretation that he didn't mean blowing up the pipeline, before the pipeline was blown up.
> known abusive husband
Not sure what you’re referring to here. If you’re analogizing what Biden said with domestic abuse, that’s just ridiculous. It’s more akin to telling the wife they’re going to need to divorce if she doesn’t stop threatening the children. If you’re saying the US in general has a history of doing things that could be compared to domestic abuse, sure, but so could all parties involved, particularly Russia. So we’re back at square one.
But it's not a comparison, it's just an example of the same statistical dishonesty.
When the pipeline was in fact blown up, of course we're going to look at vaguely worded threats in another light.
I was stating my opinion that the comparison was of low intellectual quality, not taking offense.
> When the pipeline was in fact blown up, of course we're going to look at vaguely worded threats in another light.
Except it’s only vaguely worded if you’re approaching it from the bias of wanting to think it was a threat of blowing it up. Approaching it a different way, they’re just the words a person would use if they were talking about ending the project, not literally blowing it up.
If Biden were going to be so aggressive as to threaten to blow up an infrastructure project of a close ally, why specifically limit it to Nordstream 2? “We’re going to lose our ever-loving minds here, but only for phase 2 of the project”.
I mean, par for the course for modern journalism, I suppose.
See my other comment for quotes and sources.
https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/162420098079862374...
See my other comment for quotes and sources.
During the Vietnam War (1955-1975) Stoltenberg (born 1959) was -4 to 16 years old..
Hersh possibly confused Jens with his father Thorvald Stoltenberg. Who travelled to North-Vietnam in 1970 to negotiate between them and USA, and who was commended for his negotiating skills by the am. intel community in a declassified rapport from 1980.
Links/sources follow:
«Thorvald Stoltenberg and Reiulf Steen visited Hanoi in 1970.»
https://vietnamkrigen-wordpress-com.translate.goog/2010/02/2...
«In a new biography of Thorvald Stoltenberg, it is described how Norway brokered peace between the parties in the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s.»
https://www-vg-no.translate.goog/nyheter/innenriks/i/Pk947/n...
«Defense Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg was praised for his negotiating skills in a so far classified CIA report from 1980.«
https://www-nettavisen-no.translate.goog/nyheter/cia-vurdert...
The guy is obviously picks up lobby chatter, and lets his imagination to run.
My Lai was never a giant secret, he was just the first to bring it to the wider audience.
Its amazing fanfic.
we can also choose to ignore the american material movements in the area at more or less the exact time. Coincidence im sure, after all, the good old uncle sam is an ally to europe and would NEVER do anything against citizens of other countries
This is not a conspiracy theory. It is very carefully and lucidly written, with so many details, each of which can be refuted. How does he know about all the meetings between the CIA, Sullivan, etc. Why does no one refute individual facts?
I think he did have a source who provided all this. If the source lied, tough. Investigative journalism is always a gamble. If mainstream media worked, they'd try to press the government on the myriads of claims presented in Hersh's article. Perhaps this would lead somewhere. But the days when mainstream opposed the U.S. government like in the case of Abu Ghraib are over.
That's not how it works. The onus is on the journalist and the editors to ensure that any source they're relying on is credible, in a position to know what they're claiming, and not playing you. That's why most will insist on dual-sourcing any particularly sensational claims unless they really trust the source.
In the past journalists have been fired for relying on non-credible sources, most recently James LaPorta, so this is no small thing.
If Sy Hersh is not verifying anything about the source he's relying on, he's just being a transcriber not a journalist.
That strains credibility quite extraordinarily.
Assuming this is an blog from Sy Hersh and it's not made up by Sy Hersh and it's not made up by the person Sy Hersh interviewed (all of which might be possible and can't be easily claimed to be unlikely (or likely)):
The US still doesn't need to send a message now and it's still not profitable for them for the article to go public now.
More likely is that both Sy Hersh and the informant didn't want to risk it before. E.g. due to fear of personal consequences or due to fear of causing political consequences in ways they don't want to cause.
Wrt. the the normal citizens in the EU the US doesn't need to send a message, nor would it be received. Wrt. politicians messages already have been send clear enough.
I would be surprised if anyone outside the US media sphere even gives that implausible happenstance a serious consideration.
The fact is, Hersh has gotten deeper and deeper into the conspiracy-theory weeds over the past few decades, with his most recent work tending towards outright disinformation -- from suggesting al-Qa'ida wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks, to whitewashing Syrian chemical attacks (and Ted Postol makes a cameo appearance in this piece as well), to denying Russian involvement in the Skripal poisoning, to being one of the motive forces behind the Seth Rich conspiracy theories. Increasingly it seems that he doesn't even care about the credibility of his "sources."
It's not entirely fiction such as, "And then Biden sacrificed a peahen, waved his magic wand, and spoke the incantation and the pipeline exploded!" The events, organizations, equipment, and strategy described in the document is all real-life stuff!
The credibility of the author should never be taken for granted, especially with stories of this sensitive nature. The veracity also depends on an anonymous source, which will likely never be revealed nor verified or verifiable.
I think the danger here is that many people will take the author’s credibility for granted and will be influenced to take some action based on their belief.
I guess that’s okay, but it feels like people ought to come to the conclusion that this is nothing more than an interesting theory, then move on.
The most likely theory is still just that, a theory.
With great credibility comes great responsibility. Many people will read this and other stories as fact. It’s been an issue since the dawn of man, but with the reach a single voice has today, it has far more impact.
I had read a comment on HN once that said a course on critical thinking ought to be mandatory in school. I agree with that more and more.
I also think an author with this degree of influence ought to include a disclaimer reminding people to think critically about what is the truth and what could be the truth. A warning before using these words in anger would be the right thing to do.
The importance of this story is at Bay of Tonkin or WMD levels. At that level, credibility is not sufficient without sufficient evidence.
He could also have a source who fabricated the entire story.
Even if he did have a source or sources, the level of detail is astonishing. The source or sources would have needed to be omnipresent across multiple agencies and government offices. That alone seems improbable.
I'm saying this as former US military here. the Idea that in the middle of a OPORD, of any kind, POTUS would come in last minute and change a detail, like an explosive on a timer (fairly simple,) to what is effectively some new technology no one has ever heard of, that allows for remote sonar detonations is Tom Clancy stuff.
In the United States Military, there's this thing called the Chain of Command.
This exercise was under the U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, which is under the United States European Command & United States Africa Command.
The "work" that being described here would have been under SOCOM (United States Special Operations Command), which is the only command that could do this kind of work, they are the only ones that even have the assets to do this kind of work and theres absolutely no mention of that in this piece.
It's complete conjecture and should absolutely be treated as such until theres hard evidence.
The US is too competent to do such a bad job (17 hours apart and only 3 of 4 pipes destroyed)?
Does this imply we have a rogue actor or insufficiently equipped one to blame? Who?
Yes.
Let's say I am a Ukranian patriot, with few million in the bank. I bet given few month I could put together a team of divers to plant some C4 with a simple timer and blow this thing to hell. Or Polish patriot, or Polish government or any of the Baltic states. It is an existential struggle for all of them, and russkie understand one thing and one thing only, this was a very clear communication straight to Putin.
Polish friends say there’s no shortage of young men who want the glory of blowing up something owned by the people who gang raped Grandma.
and also the pipelines area already denied being approved by germany at the time.
The risk of blowing it up to make it irreversible seems to lack any real gains vs the risk it entails.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/22/spotlight-on-p...
I think it's moderately unlikely. This is obviously something that many Polish people would cheer for, but would their actual government really be that stupid?
I find it hard to imagine.
I think their implication is that none of us really know what happened, much less the author of this article.
Pipelines of all types are fragile things and break all the time for numerous reasons.
Do not attribute to malice which can be explained by negligence/incompetence with out evidence.
The Nordstream pipelines were not in operation, which indicated the need for maintenance. The pipelines, which carry methane under saltwater, require frequent preventive maintenance checks and services, however, it is believed that these checks may have been neglected since the Russians took over. The pipelines were officially shut down for maintenance in July 2020 and July 2021, but were met with various issues and disruptions in gas flow.
Given the pressurized and highly flammable nature of the pipelines, it is imperative to determine the causes of these issues.
Sabotage cannot be ruled out, especially given the current geopolitical climate.
However, the most likely cause could be related to the formation of methane hydrates, which can cause blockages in the pipeline known as hydrate plugs. These plugs can be difficult to remove and require a slow and simultaneous depressurization from both ends of the pipeline.
Remember, both sides, this is important!
If the depressurization is not carried out correctly, it can result in the rapid launch of the hydrate plug towards the depressurized side, causing significant damage to the pipeline. The Diesel Effect, which occurs when the valves are closed ahead of the fast-moving plug, can also cause significant damage. It is crucial that the removal of hydrate plugs be carried out by experienced professionals, given the potential consequences of a failure to do so.
https://www.stssensors.com/blog/2020/07/01/the-diesel-effect...
EDIT: Formatting
Would have been interesting to hear the alleged source give a reason for only blowing up 3 of 4 pipes in a plan they call "perfect".
The rest of us in the world live in reality and just assume the US did this.
Biden threatened it and then it happened. Shocked Pikachu face.
Sure, it could have been someone else, but does it even matter at this point?
PS some of us still remember the rainbow warrior, this move, like that move, has your yank cia stench all over it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_2 ^ a lot of different parties, including the US didn't want this to happen.
How many times has Russias the past 30 years weaponized its gas pipelines? Speak to Moldova, or Estonia, or Ukraine. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/russia-using-energy-weapon-agai...
I'm not saying the Russians did it, I personally think it was a maintenance accident.
Setting aside how legally questionable that premise sounds, especially because the entire rest of the article is full of references to the involvement of clandestine organizations beyond "Navy only", Hersh then goes on to describe an operation apparently involving an absolute clown car full of a bunch of other people including 3 foreign countries, at least some people running a major NATO exercise, and what sounds like half the Norwegian Navy. Operations so secret you can't tell 8 Congressional leaders (as required by law) but you can tell Norway, Denmark, and Sweden about do not sound like a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joint_Special_Ope....
> Operations so secret you can't tell 8 Congressional leaders (as required by law) but you can tell Norway, Denmark, and Sweden about do not sound like a thing.
Exactly!
Yes, I'm former military.
The United States does shady things and has a long history of doing so. The United States is a capitalist imperialist hell-scape for a lot of people. Counties/states do not have friends, they have interests.
That being said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
What was written in that piece does not mesh at all with what my mental model of how the US military work, How pipelines work, etc.
My main objection is, who would be the source? It sounds like there are maybe 20 people in the world who would have this level of information. Each of those individuals would presumably have been selected largely on the basis of commitment to national security. That's why people sign up for these roles in the first place. None of these individuals have anything in particular to gain by leaking this information. All of them have _a lot_ to lose by the same.
I can't imagine any of these individuals as the source, which throws the rest of the story out the window. Even if it ends up being true in the end.
If you're going to comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidlelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." We don't want political or nationalistic flamewar here, and any substantive point can be made without it.
You repeat, above, that HN is not for nationalist flamewar, and requires substance. But this post is nationalist flamewar and isn't substantive. Allowing it while shutting down similar content from the opposite perspective is... unsettling.
I'm not going to ban you because you might not have seen that other comment, but please look at it now and please stop posting like this. Regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are, you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
Heck, the Baltic states, along with Poland and the Scandinavian countries, have some of the best naval divers and EODs on the planet, virtue of having the priviledge of cleaning two world wars worth of mines, bombs and torpedoes from the Baltic sea...
This piece should be flagged to death, especially since it is, giving it the most (and IMHO undeserved) credit pure speculation.
Edit: Just looked Seymore Hersh up, now I know why the name rang a bell. Well, for My Lai he had proof and sources, didn't he?
Seymour Hersh, famous for his coverage of the My Lai massacre, Project Azorian, and more. You probably should know him.
Either way, you should at least know who the man is if you want to maintain any pretext of knowing modern American history.
I'm not even going to continue down this "argument from authority" path. Completely baffling conspiracy drivel
The "mainstream" "establishment" position on the death of Osama Bin Laden is that Bin Laden was living in the middle of Abbottabad, which is the Pakistani equivalent of the town of West Point, and no high level Pakistani Army official knew he was there, and no high level Pakistani government official knew he was there.
It is a completely absurd story. The "truthers" are the people who believe that story. The White House gave a lot of information about bin Laden's death, as well as the Pentagon, and the government had to walk back some of their story shortly after. The New York Times reported the government statements as fact, although later another section of the paper printed some of the questions about the mainstream narrative. This caused an internal Times squabble, some of the "memoes" of which were subsequently leaked.
If you want a better account of what happened, read the Pakistani press.
The ISI worked with the US and bin Laden hand in glove in the 1980s. The idea no one high up on Pakistani intelligence, government or military knew he was there is absurd. Yet you call this "truther".
> a advocate of the Syrian rebel chemical weapon conspiracy
Chemical weapons were released in Douma. The rebels and government blamed each other. If the "conspiracy" as you call it that the rebels released it were true, it would tend to have been a mishandling of them - a mistake. Hersh reported on the attack, including information pointing to the rebels controlling it. I have no idea who had control of the weapons - it could have been the government as you imply. I don't have a problem with Hersh reporting on the information he had on that.
Edit: Ok, I've read the first half and looked over the second half, and I think the moderation call was the correct one. Not saying this to pile on; I just wanted to report back.
The explosion had very real ramifications for the European continent outside the Western political context of the war.
Why ?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713787
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713529
Is there a change to the guidelines and should we expect you to not override the ranking system for opposing view points.
I agree with that guideline. I don't want HN in general to devolve into standard tribal mudslinging.
But I don't believe this is the standard 'breaking news' chum of the day, mostly because of the reputation of the author, though I readily admit the sensationalist title is click-baity.
So far (7 hours after this was first posted) most comments seem to be complaining that the HN users can't flag this away. I found the story interesting, it makes you think about just what the USGov is doing, if it's true or not is somewhat immaterial...the story was an interesting read, whether it was a non-fiction story or not.
It is neither desirable nor possible to exclude political topics from HN completely. At the same time, it's important that the site be protected from being overrun and dominated by political topics. Lots of explanation of how we handle this can be found at these links, if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
* here's pg making the same point 10 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426
I don't actually doubt the veracity of this information. But it's grossly irresponsible to publish "some guy's" claims as facts!!
But also just look at what happened here in the comments. It's totally predictable. Those of us that read the article and flagged the post had prevented this. In this case flagging had worked and was not abused.
I don't think the comments were as disastrous as you suggest. It's true that the majority were negative, but not all—and in any case, it's important that HN's front page not just be a product of majoritarian sentiment. If it were, then we would clearly be failing the core principle of HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Did I pick the right hill to die on at the hands of the majority? Maybe not, but (a) the sentiments would be the same if I had; and (b) we have to take some chances; if we don't, we fail for sure.
b) You chose to override the will of this community who largely did read the article.
You guys seem to be seizing on my saying I didn't read the whole article as if it were a horrifying gotcha. Let me try to disabuse you of that: it isn't necessary to read all of every article to make reasonable moderation calls, and that's lucky, because it would be physically impossible to do so. I can barely keep up with the titles.
I haven't overridden the will of the community because the community has no single will on this. It's divided along obvious political/tribal lines. It's not my job to align with any political or tribal view, including my own. The moderation principle on HN is simple and clear: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... Literally anyone with strong political views can expect to occasionally encounter something on HN that outrages them; if not, then we're doing a lousy job, because one thing's clear: intellectual curiosity ranges across political and tribal fences.
Yikes.
That being said, Woodward and Bernstein didn't publish verbatim what Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat) told them; they used his tips as starting points to look for corroborating evidence, which they published to great accolade.
The WaPo and other mainstream media were also institutions of far more integrity at that time: their mission was to publish truth regardless of the implications, and they weren't under the kind of pressure the press is under today. Also, society (and media outlet owners) trusted truth itself to result in societal good far more than they do today.
But beyond the article itself, it's worth explaining my priors. The first is that the shifting finger-pointing is a classic Russian disinformation campaign. The second is that America would incur enormous risk by doing this and gain nothing; while Russia would risk nothing and had everything to gain. Both of these deserve further explanation.
Disinformation campaigns, especially false flag operations, are a hallmark of KGB operations. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you read The Sword and the Shield, by Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Mitrokhin archive is probably the best primary source the West has about KGB active measures and internal politics. The Mitrokhin archive confirms that disinformation false flags are a common theme of KGB destablization operations, such as fomenting the degradation of race relations in the U.S. by forging hatemail. Most experts agree it's highly likely Putin himself used this domestically, by staging the 1999 apartment bombings that killed hundreds and injured a thousand people, and blaming it on Chechens; the resulting fear and hatred rocketed him to popularity when he then mercilessly persecuted Chechens, gaining him the Presidency for the first time. To this day, the real facts are unknown, but what is known is this: Achemez Gochiyaev rented basement facilities to an FSB officer for storage; those basements had bombs; after the first two explosions, Gochiyaev called police, who found and disabled the remaining bombs; after Putin's ascendency, the official narrative became that Gochiyaev didn't call, but that an unnamed real estate agent turned him in; that Gochiyaev later disappeared without a trace; and that the Russian government refuses any independent investigation. Other examples of Russia flooding the information space with competing false narratives include the conduct of the 2014 Ukraine invasian (little green men); the build-up before the 2022 Ukraine invasian; and the 2016 Presidential election. Their goal in these cases, according to Mitrokhin, is to overwhelm the populace's ability to critically examine every narrative and "give up," distrusting everything instead. Russia officially blaming the U.K., while getting a senile but formerly respected journalist to claim it was the U.S., perfectly fits their SOP.
In addition, there would be no reason whatsoever for the U.S. to do something like this. The cost is enormous: already concerned about disunity in NATO, the risk of doing something like this and it being discovered would be enormous within NATO, not to mention the risk of Russia viewing it as an act of war. The benefit is nil: Germany had already halted Nord Stream 2 on 22 Feb 22, well before the September 2022 explosion, and their gas reserves were over 90% at the time, minimizing Russia's ability to weaponize NS as an incentive for Germany to oppose Ukraine aid. By contrast, there are multiple reasons Russia would do this. It's essentially zero-cost: destroying their own pipeline is unlikely to bring any retribution from any other country, and certainly wouldn't warrant direct NATO involvement. And the benefits are immense: (1) claim the West did it and galvanize the Russian population, just as Putin did in the lead-up to the bombing of Grozny; (2) make it socially unacceptable to continue the then-current protests against mobilization of reserve units; (3) undercut any later claims against Russia for cutting off fuel supplies, as now it would be impossible for Gazprom to perform on its contracts; (4) now that it appeared the war in Ukraine might drag on longer than Putin expected, make it impossible for any successor to back out from Putin's chosen course of action and resume business as usual.
Bottom line is this: Russian disinformation is the KGB/FSB's modus operandi. We saw this all the time in Iraq: a news outlet would make a claim that the U.S. had caused civilian casualities. We investigated every allegation of CIVCAS. But most of the time, when RT would make a claim of CIVCAS, it wasn't even in a location we had performed a strike. All they were doing was flooding the information environment with the narrative that the U.S. was killing civilians.
This post by Hersh is deeply disappointing. It would hardly be a clearer case of Russian propaganda if it had a giant Z plastered above the fold. It doesn't deserve any credit, and—with respect to dang and the decision he has made—it doesn't deserve to be on HN.
Further reading:
https://www.amazon.com/The-Sword-and-Shield-audiobook/dp/B00...
https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Is-Coming-Garry-Kasparov-audio...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/08/07/u...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
The article has an anonymous source. Your comment complains about “propaganda” and “nationalist flamewar” (unfounded) and asks for moderation. The submission is more substantive than your comment.
You mean like most mainstream news that parrot state-sponsored talking points? It seems counterpropaganda propaganda pieces are the only way to balance out state propaganda these days.
Wouldn't it just be written off as a conspiracy theory that provides little to no evidence for its claims?
If the only thing that gets this on HN is Seymour Hersh's reputation (which has lately become somewhat questionable) then you might want to reconsider. Plus, the quality of the comments has not been very good so far.
This is an actual case of speaking truth to power. He clearly (and rightfully IMO) does not trust the US government and his "somewhat questionable" and recent work has continued that trend. Is it any surprise that the same institutions/people that continuously carry water for the government now rush to label him a conspiracy theorist?
No level of reputation or historical track record should exempt anyone from the basic responsibility of providing evidence for claims they make.
I'm not sure. Bloomberg and Reuters are two media outlets who regularly release information while only citing anonymous sources and not releasing any evidence.
Just posting proofster.png [1] doesn't undo America's long history of doing weird stuff to achieve its goals. Thinking about funding terrorism in Cuba, backdooring all electronic communication ever or saying that your President did not have a stroke.
Also, someone posted further down in the comments that the White House has a history of discrediting witnesses and questioning motives. [2] Interestingly enough, it appears to me that this tactic engages citizens to follow the ad hominem attacks of their policymakers, although they don't gain anything from doing so. Maybe this dynamic is even more interesting than the article itself because the causes of this crime are only for history books. America got what it wanted anyway, and nothing will change that.
It's bad when they do it too. That's what Bloomberg did with their Supermicro Chinese chip story and it was a disaster (and one for which they still haven't apologized or really even acknowledged).
Huge allegations require evidence. Your name is not good enough, no matter what you've exposed in that past.
And that worked great on that "all server motherboards are compromised" article right?
p. 112; The Bloomberg Way: A Guide for Journalists; John Micklethwait, Paul Addison, Jennifer Sondag, Bill Grueskin; John Wiley & Sons; 2017 ed.
For you.
But maybe, just maybe, other people are willing to to accept claims backed by reputation.
I mean, do you have any idea how difficult some of these stories, throughout history, would be to bring to light with "hard evidence"? What would "hard evidence" even entail? A whistleblower?
However, evidence is not the only valid form of claim-making. Predictive power also has value: if someone can assert something unlikely without evidence, but with sufficient specificity that it describes a subsequent development very accurately, then it's fair to presume that person probably has insight into the issue.
So while I am somewhat skeptical of Hersh's claims, they're also detailed enough that corroboration could be sought for.
Both were corroborated with evidence. I'm scanning this post for new evidence and coming up empty. The fact that American action was technically plausible has always been known.
One might twist Hersh claiming he has an anonymous source as new information. But that's the closest we get. On its own, that's not sufficient to advance the discussion in a meaningful way because it presents no new facts.
I can't find any proof whatsoever as to who actually did it from the western authorities claiming to investigate it either though. In fact, there's been little to no news or updates at all since the incident.
Not an evidence.
> the source
Remains anonymous. Also, not an evidence.
It’s a signal to pay attention to the issue. To keep an eye out for evidence. It’s not evidence per se.
It is not gatekeeping to demand that extraordinary claims are backed up by evidence.
And there is an absence of evidence here.
Nope. The normal flagging rules are a sperate threshold.
Btw, I haven't gone back and looked at the history but I'd be willing to bet that the same things were said about Hersh's reputation from the beginning. That's standard fare for counterargument.
p.s. It's astonishing how narrow the space is for someone to say they don't know the truth about X but it's interesting. If X has any charge at all, you get pounced on by people who feel sure that they do know what the truth is. But if you think about it, it's a precondition for curiosity not to already know (or feel one knows) the answer—and this is a site for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). So I don't feel that this is particularly a borderline call from a moderation point of view.
b) There is a lack of evidence in the article. I can claim that you destroyed the pipeline and it would be equally as valid at this point.
c) His previous reputation is important but history is littered with examples of people making mistakes and relying on their own hubris. That is why we demand evidence.
An established reputation is the difference between those claims. You making a claim without evidence is just that.
Hersh making a claim without sharing his evidence is something different. That isn’t to say we don’t need evidence, but there’s a better reason to believe him than you, given the context of the situation.
> His previous reputation is important but history is littered with examples of people making mistakes and relying on their own hubris.
And it’s also full of the opposite. The existence of hubris is not evidence of it.
But even then, that claim doesn’t fit, unless you are implying that he made the whole thing up and concluded that it must be what happened.
Another conclusion is that he has a source, and simply has not shared it yet.
Maybe time will tell.
This article shouldn't be allowed here until that time.
Reputation is not evidence.
If John Carmack says there is an exciting breakthrough in 3D rendering that will give 8k 120fps ray tracing on commodity hardware, that’s noteworthy, and his reputation is evidence that there is substance to the claim.
HN would be super boring if only topics that had been conclusively proven could be discussed.
No it isn't. The guy's reputation is reason to give the benefit of the doubt, but either his claims are proven sound or else they are just as bullshit if Joe blow himself made them.
The concept of the benefit of the doubt still relies on this form of evidence. That doesn’t imply that this is sufficient.
Regarding Hersh vs. Joe Blow, there is still a meaningful difference in them getting things wrong.
When it’s Joe, you don’t care to begin with, and the revelation of wrongness doesn’t change your opinion of Joe.
When it’s someone like Hersh, such a revelation brings reputational harm, and raises more questions about how he became so convinced of this information to begin with.
Judging how incredulous one should be of an author’s writing based on their reputation is something else.
No.
Especially in stories involving classified information it's very rare to get unequivocal proof at first. For better or worse leaks are how stories break, and the leakers are careful about how they do it so to avoid criminal charges.
Given this, all you have is the reputation of the person doing the reporting. Historically have they shown good judgement in discarding the crackpots and do many of their breaking stories from unnamed stories subsequently turn out to be true?
In this case I think Hersh's reputation isn't what it used to be. This century only one of his major claimed stories (the Abu Ghraib prison story - which I don't think he broke anyway?) has turned out to be true, while most (all?) of his other major claims have turned out to be either false or completely unverified after many years.
>Especially in stories involving classified information it's very rare to get unequivocal proof at first. For better or worse leaks are how stories break, and the leakers are careful about how they do it so to avoid criminal charges.
>Given this, all you have is the reputation of the person doing the reporting. Historically have they shown good judgement in discarding the crackpots and do many of their breaking stories from unnamed stories subsequently turn out to be true?
I think we're back to an Appeal to Authority.
No one is claiming that a journalist’s reputation removes the burden of proof.
If you read what I said, it's the opposite ("In this case I think Hersh's reputation isn't what it used to be") but the point is that reputation is a signal that something is worth paying attention to in the absence of any other useful information.
I often think "false appeals to a logical fallacy without understanding nuanced argument" should be a fallacy itself. Nothing wrong with understanding logical fallacies of course - but often people just mindlessly use them without understanding what the fallacy says.
Expert witness in legal trials is a good counter-example to this fallacy for example. Expert witness testimony is given extra weight because of their reputation in the field. Sometimes this is wrong, but often it is not.
Which seems little different to an appeal to authority. Maybe you better understand the nuance between an appeal to authority and an appeal to someone's reputation as an authority.
Hersh is 85 and in the past decade he has already done quite a bit of damage to his prior reputation
Whether it turns out to be true or false, this article is interesting right now.
If it’s true, for obvious reasons.
If it’s false, for what it says about Hersh, and a myriad of followup questions that arise.
a) I don't understand the relevance at all to Hacker News. There are plenty of interesting things going on in the tech world that aren't making the front page.
the war/defense industry is the foundation of all US technology:
https://thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/PentagonSystem_Chom.h...
ukraine is a massive test ground for us weapons/tech -- including operations which don't occur strictly in Ukrainian territory.
and, the world might be over any day now because of the war, so there's always that.
is there a HN in heaven/hell?
1) The US would wait 7 months after Russia invaded Ukraine
2) The US would risk Navy divers for such a petty operation achievable without risking valuable personal
3) The US would not simultaneously detonate (17 hour delay between? wtf)
4) President Biden would not have immediately after taken the opportunity to interrupt broadcast and cable programming to remind us how tough he is.
Likely pieces of the torpedo could be found and traced back to American manufacture.
No, it wouldn't. The narrative provided by Hersh's source, whether it's true or not, explains many of the facts that demand an explanation. It provides plausible answers to the questions "How were the explosives placed", "How were the explosives triggered" and "how weren't they detected". Not necessarily true ones! But plausible ones that are internally consistent, and don't in themselves raise huge new questions.
If you want to be in the running, that's what you need to supply too.
This is not a defense of Hersh, it's a defense of his article. You should consider the claims in an article for their internal consistency, and consistency with public evidence, even if you don't trust the source.
This article is remarkable for how different it is from Hersh's Syrian gas claims. There, to the degree Hersh has answers at all to the similar questions how were the chemical weapons acquired, how were they placed and how were they triggered, they just raise impossibly hard questions (like "how was this coordinated", "how did all the participants go along with it" and "how did Russia and the Syrian government utterly fail to expose and document any of it convincingly")
It really isn't:
>What became clear to participants, according to the source with direct knowledge of the process, is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines …
>… Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”
>… Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group whose ad hoc members included—by chance—someone who was familiar with the capabilities of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Panama City."
That's exactly the sorts of things from his other recent articles that people who know how things actually work would immediately know is BS.
But to the parts that aren't, I'm open to be convinced. Tell me what you think is unrealistic in the substance of the narrative, and tell me how you came to know how these things work better than the rest of us.
I know from many jobs that the image we would like to preserve for outsiders about how you work, especially in leadership and decision making, is a lot prettier and competent than how it actually works. Hearsh's source tells a story about a messy process, which he sounds, despite it all, kind of proud that still worked. Only he thinks the whole thing should never have happened. I can totally relate to that. It's completely different from typical conspiratorial stories (including some of Hearsh's).
And you sound, unfortunately, like one trying to defend the reputation and preserve the prestige and mystique of planners and decision makers in hierarchical institutions. All that's missing now is that you reply with some variant of a huffy "think what you will" to this.
But you can try to prove me wrong, by spelling out in detail what's so implausible about the sources story.
It's possible the tech stack for the detonator was written in Rust.
It makes it less surprising to me. Back in 2006 I believed Hersh when he reported that the U.S. had troops inside Iran laying the groundwork for an imminent American attack. This was also based on anonymous sources. After the attack failed to materialize, I learned to take such reporting with a large grain of salt.
He used to be credible. Then unfortunately a lot of shady people learned they could manipulate him and get away with it, and so they've done. He can publish something like this and when anyone says, "prove it" he can't. Because Top Secret.
This is something that will always be problematic when reporting on something that hasn't happened yet. As the future hasn't been written, there's always room for all actors to adapt and change their plans.
Sadly I don’t think your request is the morally good action you presume it to be.
When Modi-critical submissions get flagged to death, just to pick another flame war guarantee as an example, there is no such intervention. So it is odd it happened in this case.
Why do you believe that it's desirable to push at best unfounded assumptions and at worse questionable propaganda?
I honestly panicked reading this! At first I was under the impression that this was breaking news. And if true it has major implications. But that’s a really big if. It wasn’t until I read the article that it became obvious I was being manipulated to believe a narrative without evidence. The most disingenuous part of the article is that it starts with a bold claim presented as truth, and then immediately includes two sentences about the White House denying the claim before jumping into thousands of words of hearsay and a story presented as fact. As if to say, “what you’re about to read is a story, and you should know that, but you have to be smart enough to parse between the lines to see that — and I’m avoiding stating it directly so that I can get away with writing the story the way I want to write it on the chance it’s true.”
Substantiate the claims and I’ll rescind criticism. I like to believe I’m a thoughtful and relatively apolitical person, I just have a visceral reaction to being manipulated in this way (bold claim, no evidence) and I’d hope other people share the same standards.
Given who authored this, and who is referencing it, this is now a “thing.”
This being published is for sure going to have an impact on diplomatic relations. Removing it from HN doesn’t stop anyone of relevance in this from seeing it. Presidents, ministers, ambassadors, senators, etc. are probably being briefed on this. The White House is going to have to deal with this regardless of its truthiness.
I suspect countries are going to want answers. The U.S. saying “this is not true” probably isn’t going to cut it for the countries involved.
This story has relevance regardless of its truthiness.
After seeing how Germany handled the USA spying on Merkel (phone saga), I do not expect them countries involved asking further questions or taking appropriate actions.
Welp, maybe taking no action IS the appropriate action. The west must stay united and trade must flow.
But such submissions also suck up a lot of oxygen and it's understandable that they are often flagged or discouraged when they get too flamey. It might be worthwhile to have a designation like 'Chat HN:' which is understood to be non-technical, and which users can filter in or out of their feed.
This seems a little partial and hard to implement consistently. Can we assume the same metric will be applied to every Robert Woodward story, or any of many single-sector journalists with a lengthy track record, such as Radley Balko who has spent years writing about policing?
I also don't think adding a question mark to the headline clarifies; I can treat an assertion with skepticism, but 'How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline?' reads like a submission from a non-native English speaker, of the sort which often clutter up the New submissions page.
Re your other question, the answer is somewhere in the space demarcated by (1) yes, (2) we'll try, (3) moderation consistency is impossible, (4) we're always open to reader input. (I'm sorry that I'm responding in shorthand but I'm being inundated atm)
Seymour Hersh's unnamed source on how America took out the Nord Stream pipeline
If you wanted to hear it, you could just read it as it's been stated repeatedly ITT and it's in the HN Guidelines #1:
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
One of the unironically hardest things about maintaining a community is Saying No. And I'm not just speaking abstractly here, I'm talking personally. When you have a community of interesting and intelligent people who you've enjoyed discussing things with, it's completely natural to start to want to bring everything there for discussion. But some topics inspire far more substantial discussion than others. Some topics are inherently meaty, in particular when they are about things that we, individually or in our direct organizations, can directly take action on, extent further, or otherwise make use of in our lives/work. That helps ground discussion in reality vs emotion and subjective infinities. Other topics risk being more and more intellectual empty calories, where many words can be written that have no actual use of any kind, pure jawboning and ever more self-referential spirals. This is particularly risky for something like this, which is a level removed from hard reports due to lack of hard proof which in turn naturally results in much of the discussion going one or more levels more meta: rather than even discussing the impacts, however useless it might be, it's discussing the report, the author of the report, their credibility etc.
It's not that it's inherently wrong to have those discussions, but does it need to be here? The answer to a lot of us is no. Even if we want to discuss it very much. Self-discipline (and community enforced discipline, and moderator enforced ultimately) is key to maintaining a place like this, and that includes erring towards not having low quality, highly meta and vacuous discussions with no ability for anyone in the community to do any grounding or contribute anything you couldn't read in a newspaper.
I can take issue with some of the other stuff you wrote, but ultimately it comes down to that. Maintaining good communities often involves picking areas and sticking to them, generalization being death. If this was a forum devoted exclusively to space habitats and cats, someone taking out pipelines would still be very important, but it would be neither space habitats, nor cats. It would be completely reasonable for the community to flag it dead. That's not a judgement on the topic nor discussion of it in general. It's just not space habitats or cats.
No, it's not harmless to repeatedly claim things without evidence. No, people do not make their own judgments.
When reality and your expectations are out of sync, it's probably best not to call it arrogance.
What is your judgement based on, intricate knowledge of explosives, experience of deepwater diving or training in black ops?
Because if you have none of those things, then no, you cannot form informed judgement. There hardly any difference between asking me, you, or a random child.
These tensions have been brewing between NATO (mostly America) and Russia for at least a decade. It's unfortunate that the situation escalated in Ukraine though, which AFAIK is the victim in the scheming and plotting of those two powers.
I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it seems like that's the only thing people are focusing on because it makes the situation simple for them, and it's easiest to have a single villain and the rest are the good guys.
I assume most people offended by this submission here are American (or at least heavily support America) and want to think of their current government/country as the good guys.
I don't think there's any good guys in this situation.
Of course. You don't think there are people claiming to have anonymous sources about Putin doing all manner of things?
As a person from Eastern Europe this is literal Russian propaganda or in simple words - dogshit. You know why somebody like Baltic countries wanted to get in NATO? Because Russia was/is a genuine threat after these countries were deoccupied from the Soviet Union. Russia thinks that these former Soviet Union countries are still their own property, they can't imagine that these countries don't want to live "the Russian way".
They even have a term for it - "Cordon sanitaire": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire_(internationa...
Here's a collection of sources compiled by someone on Quora. I dont know how biased or accurate this person is. However, there were other instances that made me think this isn't so black-and-white or "clean" as I'd like it to be.
https://www.quora.com/If-Putin-is-indeed-the-real-aggressor-...
A lot of the sources he used are from Ukranian websites so you might need to run them through Google Translate. Some are from reputable (for at least some definition of reputable) western media outlets like CNN, BBC, NYT, etc.
The embedded vidoes don't seem to work in Chrome (they just disappear when I click them) so I've extracted the link for one of them here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 - Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer, uploaded by The University of Chicago
Other videos are shorter clips to prove a point, but if anyone's interested they can see the video ID in the embedded image URL when inspecting the element.
Again, maybe this is all dogshit like you say, but I find that too dismissive of the facts presented.
There is definitely propganda on both sides (and how much of it is true is hard to tell). Russia isn't the only one with a propaganda machine, if anything the US is much more successful at it than Russia could ever hope to be.
I encourage you to read more of the Quora article, even if I appreciate that some of the stuff in the article might be hard to stomach, since you seem emotionally closer to the issue than I do. I believe a lot of it is very unlikely to stem from Russian propaganda.
Some of the stuff you attributed (eg you mentioned tribalism and spite) to Russia isn't unique to them or their politics; it's just a very primitive part of human nature that we still struggle with.
And to close with a tangent: it's always good to keep in mind that nobody (neither you or I) is immune to propagand; especially when it's pushed by state actors with a larger agenda. This is why I often indulge in reading stuff I don't agree with (within reason). Does give me a bit of cognitive dissonance occasionally, but alas.
There's zero excuse for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I don't even see how this is semi-debatable.
Edit: oops, I missed that your question wasn't to me. Sorry!
Also saying Hersh only writes this kind of thing supports the idea that Hersh is biased enough to be taken for a ride by a source with an agenda.
I do appreciate you replying! Thanks!
I realise it's an incredibly difficult question to answer because of the what-ifs, though.
I would also like to think you'd have the same stance... And for what it's worth I do believe you would.
I'd argue that your stance is currently harder to uphold since it makes the whole situation a lot morally murkier, and also because it goes against popular opinion (one can only be immune to it so much).
As far as I can see your position evaluates to ‘dang trusts Hersh‘.
Since it’s 2023 and we use machines to do our thinking now, I consulted ChatGPT about this. I draw your attention to the last paragraph.
—————
strawpeople: Can Seymour Hersh’s reporting always be trusted?
chatgpt:
Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has had a long and storied career. While he has been praised for his investigative reporting and his ability to uncover important stories, it is important to note that not all of his reporting can always be trusted. Like any journalist, Hersh is human and may make mistakes or have biases that affect the accuracy of his reporting.
Additionally, some of Hersh's reporting has been called into question, and he has faced criticism for making claims that are not supported by evidence or for relying on sources that are not credible. For example, in 2017, Hersh faced criticism for his reporting on the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria, which some experts said was based on unreliable sources and was contradicted by a large body of evidence.
In conclusion, it is important to approach Hersh's reporting with a critical eye and to carefully evaluate the evidence and sources he relies on. While some of his reporting has been praised for its accuracy and impact, it is not always reliable and should be independently verified.
It should still be approached critically, though.
People here seem largely seem dismissive of this story because they don't like it (or the author).
I've addressed in another thread why the sources are unnamed, but it's plausible it's to protect their safety, and lack of presentable evidence could also be the same reason. Information could be somehow fingerprintes to identify leaks. Hollywood did/does it; printers do it too.
---
> Since it’s 2023 and we use robots now, I consulted ChatGPT about this
On a lighter note, this made me laugh. Somehow makes it seem like we're in 3023, not 2023... but also like it's 2023. What a time to be alive.
I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth.
Given that it’s clear he wouldn’t give this post special treatment if it wasn’t from Hersh, we can reasonably infer that dang trusts Hersh more than a random poster as you suggest he should.
I don’t think you represent dang, and at question here is dang’s reasons for giving the story special treatment, which unless you are a dang sock puppet you don’t have special insight into.
... And since we're indulging in unnecessary snide comments: They've outlined their reasoning already in a few places. Maybe if you read this thread instead of conversed with ChatGPT, we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.
If that is what you are up to, let’s end at this point.
Wasn't Watergate also reported relying on a single source (deep throat)?
I would encourage any who disagree to consider truly why this reporting upsets them.
> Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”
"This is ... complete fiction." is a claim that the story was fabricated. I think it's worth examining who would be doing that fabrication and what they would have to gain, especially considering who is making the counter-claim and what they would have to gain from that.
Are you familiar with Christopher Hitchens? That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. Until the author provides evidence of their claims, there's nothing required to dismiss them.
> The assertion that someone made up a story is the logical conclusion to the assertion that there is no evidence to back up their claims.
It is a logical conclusion. One might still arrive at a different logical conclusion.
However, given all of the information known at the time, there's little evidence to suggest that anyone aside from them was responsible for the assertions without evidence, which again leads to the same logical conclusion.
Maybe you're not familiar with the practice of journalism where anonymous sources are routine, and have successfully uncovered a great deal of misconduct by governments. Reserve skepticism of course, but dismissal of a routine practice with a proven track record is not justified.
Right, and these claims are being made by an award winning journalist with a proven track record who has a source. That deserves more credence than just "anyone" making any claim. Not enough to accept it as truth, but far more than claims that can be outright dismissed as you initially claimed.
Sure. Russia and geopolitical destabilization
> who is making the counter-claim and what they would have to gain from that
This part doesn't make sense to me - the accused party naturally is the one making the "counter-claim", and naturally they will make "counter assertions" without evidence - how do you disprove an unfalsifiable claim?
I overall don't think your comments really align. "The US has done bad things in the past" doesn't mean "all accusations of bad things pointed at the US should be treated with credibility and have to be disproved with an ironclad case by the US to not garner further suspicion"
Care to comment?
HN is not in a position to determine the success of breaking news and this story fits the mold of things that are usually flagged. Let other credible media sources start picking up on the story if it turns out to amount to anything. Before then, let this one die just as the others like it do on HN.
Wasn't the U.S. being behind the bombing a leading alternative hypothesis when the news broke?
Even extending to the international community (which is generally a reflection of American politics, much to the chagrin of Europeans who are unwilling to admit it), there is mixed levels of enthusiasm for getting to the truth. The countries are all anti-Russia, and so the pipeline sabotage is generally seen as a "good thing" except by the countries with direct profit motive for it. However, those countries aren't about to publicly accuse US intelligence of carrying out the operation, because their relationship with US intelligence is too important to lose, especially given all the weapons and intelligence they provide.
It just seemed inexplicable to me at the time because of Biden's prior remarks. In that light I can't see how anyone wouldn't immediately assume the US didn't do it-- the US hadn't even denied it at the time!
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/seymour-hersh-...
You can of course argue that I've made a wrong call in this case, but the point I'm making here is different: you need moderators who make judgment calls, including to override flags sometimes. And of course no one is ever going to get the calls 100% right; we have failure modes too.
No. It's interesting to you.
So this is not necessarily what is interesting to everyone.
Your comment suggests an assumption that without moderation, the ranking system would indicate "what is interesting to everyone". That assumption isn't just wrong, it's super wrong. Here are some past comments about that, if anyone cares: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The short version is that without moderation, the site would be dominated by the same few hot stories repeated ad nauseum, plus an endless supply of riler-uppers. This is no way to optimize for what is interesting to everyone. As I said elsewhere in a reply to you, there are tradeoffs along every axis of this thing.
The number of attempts to either shame or coerce him into doing things the way you think should be done, versus what he thinks is appropriate -- seems childish to me.
Some of that interest, rather predictably, is negative.
Far more heat than light being generated though, though. Which is predictable with this kind of story, raising emotion is part of the desired outcome of posting it (1). "interest" in baseless speculation and conspiratorial thinking is not a good thing.
Standards are slipping, that this story is protected.
1) https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/more+heat+than...
It's a matter of striking a balance: holding space for what the community finds interesting* while allowing for a certain amount of idiosyncracy and unpredictability, but not too much. Without that, things would be more humdrum and therefore less interesting. There are tradeoffs along every conceivable axis with this thing.
* (note: community is not the same as commenters because most readers don't comment)
Do you have stats on what percent of regular HN readers have ever commented on any story? Or are stats more like, for every 100 readers of a story, 1 will comment on that story? To put another way: if I read 100 stories and comment on 1, would I be counted as lurking 99 times and posting 1?
Basically, I'm curious if engagement is lopsided toward lurking because some users never comment, or because most users never comment on every story they read.
I think it was something like 1% of total readers and 5% of logged-in readers but I'd have to check again to be sure.
Unless it's a miskey of some kind which sounds like the most plausible explanation.
Edit 2: I've replaced the question mark with quotation marks following a suggestion by bee_rider: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713987.
-- original comment: --
We sometimes add a question mark when a title makes a dramatic and divisive claim, because otherwise readers who read the title might think that HN (or its admins) are somehow endorsing the claim. We don't know what the truth is and are neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the claim.
Edit: I dug up a few other examples where we've done this:
This is the year of the RSS reader? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34105572
Anthropology in Ruins? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34049130
The great Covid and smoking cover-up? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33869176
The basic idea is that adding a question is a flame retardant because it tends to dampen the meta-comments about the story, e.g. complaints that the admins are taking a side or whatnot.
In this case it's not really working, because the question mark is also generating lots of meta-comments. But maybe fewer than we'd get without it.
Meta comment of my own: it's not only impossible to please everyone with moderation calls like this—it's seemingly impossible to please anyone. That's why it's really helpful to have a first principle to rely on—i.e. to know what you're optimizing for. It occasionally makes it possible to answer an otherwise hard question rather easily.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
You are endorsing the claim when you override the ranking system and allow opposing views to be flagged and thus never appear for balance.
Re flagging: that's supposed to be for comments that break the site guidelines. If you (or anyone) see a comment that breaks the site guidelines and isn't flagged, or a comment that is flagged and doesn't break the site guidelines, remember that we don't come close to seeing everything, and that you can always let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. It's best to only do that in egregious cases though. For non-egregious cases, it's best to remember that consistency in moderation is impossible and not sweat the small stuff.
Your stance seems to be that this unsourced conspiracy theory is a story worth discussing because, and only because, it is Seymor Hersh making the claim. Then make that clear in the title: "Seymor Hersh claims America took down Nord Stream", or something. It goes against the standard HN practice of stripping out any such attribution from the title, but it's also not standard practice for an article to only be worthy because of who wrote it.
Edit: I've put quotation marks up there now, as explained in the GP.
- only use unnamed sources if no other sources will come forward
- highest levels of editorial and legal need to approve
- fact checkers vet the info
A gracious interpretation is that not being a paper of note in news LRB were unaware and published what did not pass rudimentary scrutiny possibly because editors were star struck. A cynical interpretation is that they had motivation to look the other way.
In any case, journalistic outlets had largely long stopped running Hersh because he was penning unsubstantiated and illogical conspiracy theories.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle
You're just baiting everyone in this comments section. How long have you been moderating this site? Have you ever seen a post like this cultivate a productive comments section?
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Evidence? I don't see much evidence of anything here
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like
This last one you are guilty of, maybe this post was being flag brigaded for a reason
And there is an absence of it here.
This topic in not "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
Opinion -- cloaked in shame and coercion.
That judgment normally should not weigh as much as the combined judgment of the community members with flag powers. At that point you may as well disable the flags because your trust in the judgment of the community has eroded to the point of non-existence.
I think at best this should be presented with a title of 'How America could have taken out the Nord Stream pipeline' because as it is the facts are not supported by any evidence and there are some clear flaws in the article (for instance, see the comments by user 'weatherlight'). The reputation of this particular reporter was at one point in time absolutely stellar but has gone steadily downhill and I think you should update your priors as to whether you still want to stand by him when making unverifiable claims. Note that no reputable paper would put this in print, which is why you find it on substack, the place where conspiracy and controversy finds its audience.
Note also that this article essentially claims privileged knowledge about an act of war, gets a whole pile of details factually wrong and yet the main claim apparently should stand and get the benefit of the doubt, including a title that states this all as fact (those quotes and question marks are just confusing). Something that grave should not be amplified until it is presented with more foundation.
> I know nothing of him, but given that there's an entire paragraph about Jens Stoltenberg where almost every sentence is just completely factually wrong in a way that could be verified to be wrong with a look at the first paragraph on his Wikipedia page, I'm not inclined to take what he says seriously.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34717803
This is something that could be verified quickly by you and others.
Flagging exists for a reason, doesn't it?
Yes, but in my mind that reason is to call the moderator's attention to an article and force a conscious decision. It's not to automatically allow some tiny percentage of participants to decide what the majority are allowed to read. Probably most of the time, the flaggers are right, discussion would be unproductive, and the article should be removed.
But some of the time, some of the flaggers are ideologically driven to prevent discussion that will damage their ideology. The moderator's goal should be to distinguish these cases. Making it tricky, it's not always a binary whether an article is worthy of discussion or not. Sometimes a good discussion can be created if and only if the moderator has time to spare on guiding the discussion, and sometimes the same article is flagged for different reasons.
A good discussion on a bad article is a great outcome, and bad discussion on a good article is a poor outcome. The "illusory truth effect" is a danger, but failing to properly challenge a false narrative is a danger too. I feel like Dan usually does a good job of trying to weigh these factors, based on the amount of time he is willing to spend babysitting the thread to avoid the worst outcomes, and based on his intuition on what sort of discussion will result.
During the Vietnam War (1955-1975) Stoltenberg (born 1959) was -4 to 16 years old..
Hersh possibly confused Jens with his father Thorvald Stoltenberg. Who travelled to North-Vietnam in 1970 to negotiate between them and USA, and who was commended for his negotiating skills by the am. intel community in a declassified rapport from 1980.
Links/sources follow:
«Thorvald Stoltenberg and Reiulf Steen visited Hanoi in 1970.»
https://vietnamkrigen-wordpress-com.translate.goog/2010/02/2...
«In a new biography of Thorvald Stoltenberg, it is described how Norway brokered peace between the parties in the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s.»
https://www-vg-no.translate.goog/nyheter/innenriks/i/Pk947/n...
«Defense Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg was praised for his negotiating skills in a so far classified CIA report from 1980.«
https://www-nettavisen-no.translate.goog/nyheter/cia-vurdert...
The soon the better you do X, is quite an authoritative stance to take.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=5567609899962902 "We will put an end to Abbott's attacks on educators, raise teacher pay, improve their retirement benefits, and fully fund our classrooms."
https://larson.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/larson-... "we will put an end to the decades of price gouging"
Again, "we'll bankrupt them with sanctions" easily falls under "we will put an end to them".
That's precisely the point, isn't it?
"We will put an end to X" does not mean "we will physically blow up X". Pretending Biden had an "oops, we're gonna do a terrorist attack against Russian and German infrastructure and I said it out loud at a press conference!" moment and that there's no other legitimate explanation for the statement is just goofy.
The other tell is that in the follow-up, Biden was pressured to explain what he meant but he refused to comment. Sanctions could have been mentioned here without repercussions but they weren't.
Conveniently for Russia, Nord Stream 2 still exists. Only one of its two pipes had exploded. Everyone forgets about it.
It's safe to assume the reason his sources are unnamed is to protect their safety. Don't know how plausible this is, but I it's possible that the lack of presentable evidence is for the same reason. Maybe the relevant documents could've been somehow fingerprinted, which would identify the leaker/source; the film/tv industry has done this when distributing pilots for private viewings. Heck, even printers did it lol.
However, it's not secret American politicians vehemently disliked the existence of Nordstream, and this outcome is undeniably convenient for them. Maybe too convenient, so they wouldn't dare attempt it? Or maybe they just assumed they'd have a great scapegoat. Maybe it wasn't even them, and it's Russian government playing 5D chess by blowing up their own investment to frame Americans.
Who knows? Maybe time will tell; it usually does.
When you're just speculating or building a conspiracy theory then those "ominous" comments are worth quoting.
If you are claiming to be in contact with someone with deep knowledge of the actual operation, why even mention those? Worse still, add some extra twist where the spies have a meta comment on their cover being blown by those comments.
It's no secret that Hersh's work has become increasingly suspect in recent years. Every time he writes, he cites a single anonymous source and yet manages to go into an implausible level of detail and completeness with neatly tied up loose ends you'd only expect to find in a Tom Clancy novel. The only reason this story has been rescued from the dustbin is due to Hersh's (old) reputation, which though well earned, shouldn't just give him a pass.
https://www.businessinsider.com/robert-grenier-reflects-on-s...
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/21/10634002/seymour-hersh-syria-...
He had a lock on the genre like nobody else before or since.
This easily could be a Russian psyop -- and even if it isn't -- it is definitely political and a potential flamewar. Totally lost here
If the comments turn into a flame war, blame the commenters, not the article.
Thanks dang. I'm glad HN has moderators that make calls like.
Moreover, the article has little to do with tech and has obviously loaded statements such as this:
> From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance.
If we can’t filter out misinformation and propaganda, we are screwed as a community. (Is this misinformation/propaganda? Maybe, maybe not, but better to have false positives in cases like this.)
You question people's motivation when it comes to submissions. Why not when it comes to flagging? Does it foster intellectual curiousity to flag a story by a renowned investigative journalist?
In any case, what's surprising to me here is the reaction to dang's reasonable justification for disabling the flags on this story. I think those who continue to push for its removal after flagging have moved beyond "I personally don't think it's a suitable topic" to "I don't want anyone else to read it". I find the latter attitude very worrying.
I am also worried that HN's moderation has a bus factor of one, and has effectively no recourse. That's a lot of community-shaping power in one person's hands, regardless of how good of a job dang normally does.
> You question people's motivation when it comes to submissions. Why not when it comes to flagging?
To me either negation is about the same but not a deal breaker because I can exercise reasonable judgement.
Well that explains why you're so against this type of article. You should reconsider whether the rot you're perceiving isn't in the West, rather than in Greenwald's brain.
It doesn't seem so reasonable. It seems bizarre, frankly. It's utterly out of line with (what I percieve to be) the whole history of HN moderation on this kind of subject.
Anything discussing controversial social topics is nuked. Which would explain the sheer panic and replies to dang: it must be truly terrible to not be able to make undesirable stories disappear instead of having to refute them. :-/
In the end this story doesn’t really present any ironclad proof and should be easy to point that out. Except that would open a discussion which could make the EU and US look quite poorly…
This is from 2015:
"The way to understand Hersh is to visualize most of his sources as Michael Scheuer-like individuals. It is not difficult to find such people in the intelligence world: obsessive, frustrated idiot savants who perceive themselves as stymied by the paper pushers, the bureaucrats"
"Hersh’s problem is that he evinces no skepticism whatsoever toward what his crank sources tell him, which is ironic considering how cynical he is regarding the pronouncements of the U.S. national security bureaucracy. Like diplomats who “go native,” gradually sympathizing with the government or some faction in the host nation while losing sight of their own country’s national interest, Hersh long ago adopted the views of America’s adversaries and harshest critics."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/05/seymour-hershs-u...
i don't have opinions about journalists, because i'm a normal person, but that sounds like a needed antidote to, say, slate's complete lack of skepticism regarding the pronouncements of the U.S. national security bureaucracy.
But at this point, the article is basically "cool story, bro". The only independently verifyable bits are the public statements of Biden, Nuland, etc, which are already well-known. But those only show that the US really really really didn't like the pipelines - and that was never a secret. They do not give any evidence for a planned operation to destroy them.
The rest of the article is amazingly detailed but only based on an anonymous source. Even if we trust that the source existed, there is no way to know if that source itself is trustworthy.
So as of now, I don't the information in the article would convince anyone of the "US did it" hypothesis who wasn't already convinced.
I think the only thing that the article is useful for is as a future reference. It could be useful to remember the details and keep an eye if they match with any future developments.
One simple hypothesis would be that it is only an illusion that western media outlets are independent from their governments.
The media became a power by itsself and it's the media which influences the government.
And they analyze how the media synchronized itself on certain topics (especially Ukraine war).
https://www.fischerverlage.de/buch/richard-david-precht-hara...
Meanwhile the press is not similarly divided but usually follows the hawkish position. So whatever opinion they are promoting, it's evidently not the government's.
Do you have proof to back up this claim? A more correct observation is that Western media didn't blame any single entity but has the attention span of a goldfish and forgot about this incident after a week or two.
A Spiegel article from september 28, two days after the incident: https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/nord-stream-spekulationen-ueb...
It links to a Times article allegedly saying the same (but behind a paywall unfortunately, so I can't check): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-probably-bombed-no...
They're simply going for views and readers. The exciting story back in September was that Russia had sabotaged the pipeline. It was then more or less established that they probably did, so now the exciting story is that they might not have!
Other outlets seem to be commenting a bit more neutral: https://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/nord-stream-2--usa-soll...
Can you explain then please how much sense did Russia had to start a war in Ukraine?
If Russia ever wanted to take Ukraine “back”, it had to do it now. It would only get harder and less likely as time goes on. Now, as to why of take Ukraine back at all, IDK, beautiful women, I assume.
I’m not sure anyone can answer the why, really, but the why now seems to have reason.
The entire world thought Ukraine was going to collapse.
Diplomats from big countries were telling Zelensky to his face that he had '24 hours' before Russia took Kyiv.
The pipeline thing is a bit of a mystery.
Your ignorance is astounding
It makes a lot of sense. The pipeline was rendered useless anyway, they get to blame the US and sowing division by planting stories such as these, and they also send a message that they can blow up stuff underwater anywhere; in particular, undersea cables, whose destruction would cause major economic problems.
A lot of what he is saying here is not strictly true. Jens Stoltenberg was the leader of the labour party and while he was not a communist, describing him as a committed anti-communist is just plainly wrong. It was not part of his platform at all and one the parties in his coalition was a socialist, Marxist party.
Also he was not a hardliner on Russia. In fact during his time as a prime minister Norway and Russia peacefully and diplomatically solved the territorial dispute they had in the Barents Sea.
Neither have the Americans always completely trusted him since the Vietnam war. He was vocally anti-NATO in his youth and the Bush administration gave him a cold shoulder for the rest of it's years after he was elected prime minister in 2005. He claimed that during the congratulation call from the American president he said that he wanted all Norwegian troops out of Iraq and the the mission. The Americans were adamant he did not.
I know it's just one paragraph, but when thing gets misconstructed by the source in such a way it kinda losses credibility with me. Also the quote about Norwegians "Hating Russians" while I've never felt anything like that in my dealing with the armed forces (Norway don't have any historical grievances with Russia), really makes me question it.
Hersh: "Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg"
Reality: Jens Stoltenberg is the secretary general of NATO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Allied_Commander_Europ...
I don't believe it because I don't know, but I don't think it's insane to consider or that the existence of a relationship is impossible on face value because he was merely a young activist in the 70s.
1. Stoltenberg didn't get arrested because he was the son of a high-ranking government official.
2. He had a secret history of collaboration with American intelligence going back to his teenage days that is only being mentioned now in a single line in a paragraph with several other factual inaccuracies.
And now nearly every dumbass Western "progressive" thinks NATO is some holy defensive force and imperialism is somehow only something far lesser powers do.
Moreover, Stoltenberg´s DAD was a pro-NATO Defence and Foreign Minister.
It’s a bit strange to report on something so controversial and not make sure all verifiable claims are true…
Would “milquetoast moderate” be more fitting? That’s at least closer to how the Labour Party operates, even though their rhetoric is more left-leaning than the other major party (H).
> He claimed that during the congratulation call from the American president he said that he wanted all Norwegian troops out of Iraq and the the mission. The Americans were adamant he did not.
He said that he said that? How brave of him.
Well, that's certainly a kinder description than I would give. 'Blatant fucking bullshit' seems closer to the mark.
Not necessarily.
I had thought Hersh's "since the Vietnam War" line to be poorly phrased, or an editing mistake, but /u/michaelmacmanus makes an interesting point <https://np.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/10wx42b/seymour_h...>. Maybe we should take the line literally!
See my other comment for sources.
During the Vietnam War (1955-1975) Stoltenberg (born 1959) was -4 to 16 years old..
Hersh possibly confused Jens with his father Thorvald Stoltenberg. Who travelled to North-Vietnam in 1970 to negotiate between them and USA, and who was commended for his negotiating skills by the am. intel community in a declassified rapport from 1980.
Links/sources follow:
«Thorvald Stoltenberg and Reiulf Steen visited Hanoi in 1970.»
https://vietnamkrigen-wordpress-com.translate.goog/2010/02/2...
«In a new biography of Thorvald Stoltenberg, it is described how Norway brokered peace between the parties in the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s.»
https://www-vg-no.translate.goog/nyheter/innenriks/i/Pk947/n...
«Defense Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg was praised for his negotiating skills in a so far classified CIA report from 1980.«
https://www-nettavisen-no.translate.goog/nyheter/cia-vurdert...
It was the year before Norway took part in extensive bombing of Libya«
https://e24-no.translate.goog/karriere-og-ledelse/i/xPlw8V/h...
«lieutenant colonel Tormod Heier said: - In its first years, the Stoltenberg government had a bad reputation in the USA, partly because we did not contribute in southern Afghanistan. After SV was weakened in the 2009 election, Libya became an opportunity to repair relations with the United States. This has contributed to the fact that Norway has now moved up a division in NATO .
And as a thank you for his efforts, Jens Stoltenberg was appointed Secretary General of NATO.«
https://www-dagsavisen-no.translate.goog/kultur/2014/10/15/s...
I don’t know the truth of the matter and Seymour could be right. We just can’t tell from the evidence provided.
It’s plausible that the U.S. used the military personnel he claims the U.S. used so that they could avoid Congressional oversight. But where is the evidence they actually used said personnel? He references a source but my source with direct knowledge of Seymour’s work says that Russia paid him to write this.
Given Seymour’s work on Russia’s involvement in Syria I’m skeptical of him having credibility on the topic of Nordstream.
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2018-07-22/ty-article-opinio...
In a personalist authoritarian regime the rationality of actions sometimes depends on wether or not the dictator is being rational on a given day.
I disagree.
The most logical explanation is tha Russia did it as a capacity demonstration and threat against Baltic Pipe to pressure contries in the region regarding Ukraine, but that, like all their threats against the West over Ukraine policy so far, the threat was hollow.
Russia destroying their own pipelines (both NS 1 and the new NS 2 were sabotaged) looks like them shooting themselves in both feet at once. Like doing 'capacity demonstration' by nuking the Kremlin... They could, but would that be a likely scenario?
Many, if not most, expert observers strongly suspect the US for a reason.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/where-does-germany-s...
Joe talks a lot:
"If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it." -- Joe Biden, Feb 2022, with the German's Chancellor standing next to him! [1]
So at the very least the US thought that they indeed had control over that "major NATO ally" and could make thinly veiled threats to their face. Why you think that the US would be above sabotage on a matter of strategic national interests is unclear.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-joe-biden-vladimir...
It is inconceivable that Biden made that comment without consulting Germany. Also it was primarily Nordstream1 that was attacked.
Gas prices spiked and it seems likelier that Russia was behind it. At least to me. I don’t know the truth of the matter.
Washington defeated Germany and Japan in the 1940s and proceeded to demilitarize them and occupy them with its own forces. This is historically standard military practice. It is not a "nice gesture" from Washington. It was all part of a coherent strategy to contain and confront the rival USSR, around which Germany and Japan represent critical nodes.
You remind me of the leftists I met when I lived in Kreuzburg in Berlin.
Yes, part of Germany was occuppied by the Western Allies until 1955. And there were sone technical restrictions on the sovereignty of Germany-as-a-whole until the 2+4 Treaty went into full effect in 1991.
But even the later of those dates was almost 17 years before Obama became President.
> It was all part of a coherent strategy to contain and confront the rival USSR
The occupation of the Axis Powers by the Allies, including the USSR, was not part of a strategy to contain the USSR. It may have formed part of the context of such a strategy, but that’s a different thing.
Note that success of spies is not guaranteed. It is possible Germany doesn't have spies in the US because despite trying they haven't found any.
As a German, not just me, when Trump threatened - yes threatened! - to withdraw lots of troops from Germany there was lots of Angst about the economic fallout. US troops are in areas that have benefited, and still benefit, very heavily from their presence.
The opinion that US troops are "occupiers" can only be found in some tiny minority fringe groups, left and right, if even that.
I'm East German even, who even maintained interest in the ex USSR territories, visiting a few times (Ukraine and Russia, both, even taking a two month long Russian language course to refresh my knowledge, so I should be biased towards the Russian PoV, but there is no way I would find your assertion anything but nonsense. Having US troops in Germany is mostly looked upon favorably, even when Germans have not agreed with some of the wars the US fought using them.
There also is a significant difference in public opinion before the Russian invasion and after. Also, opinions and the relationship were worst, by far, during the Trump years. So, during that time, and before the invasion, and definitely after Trump, the opinion was indeed more in favor of the US leaving. For some strange reason Russia decided to help out European-US alliance and to give it a huge boost...
Just as an example, it's not like that hasn't been reported many times since last February:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/22/international-...
They include their methodology at the top, including the questions asked.
> Data collection began a week prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and Japan.
.
Oh and I'm of the - weakly held - opinion that it was the Russians who blew up the pipeline. I don't understand the questions here about benefits and motives - this has all been discussed to death elsewhere, anyone seriously interested in the topic, and not just wanting to annoy somebody here, would/could just have gone there and read it all. I'd suspect Poland more than the US, they've been visibly mad and very outspoken about Germany's Russia reliance and close ties for a long time, they've felt threatened by the Russians and are right next to them.
https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/68455... -- "Nord Stream 2 as a Threat to National Interests of Poland and Ukraine"
There is no shortage of candidates, and if the governments don't want to talk, not even the Russians making much noise, I see no good purpose behind all this speculation. Especially when people start making strong assertions left and right, based on carefully selected pieces of facts. What a waste of time, but I didn't want to let the "US troops occupy Germany" stand, it's just too silly. Oh, and one pipe of NS2 remaining does seem kind of significant to me. Hardly an accident.
For the most part, I agree that the US occupation has been benign. Really, they are not protecting Germany from anything, but also not causing many problems. They are perhaps creating some jobs even.
However, when Washington starts blowing up critical national infrastructure to advance its narrow geopolitical interests, that changes.
To be clear, the economic fallout of Germany having to export LNG across the Atlantic instead of through already-existing pipelines is vastly more severe than US closing its military bases (which could be partially reappropriated by a growing Bundeswehr).
Well, that is an unsubstantiated opinion not held by the majority. I did not claim nobody with such opinions exist, one just has to look at the AfD.
Oh and it was Russia that stopped sending gas, long before the pipelines were blown up. You also conveniently don't address my last point, which does not fit the "the US was it" so that's understandable on some level.
> they are not protecting Germany from anything
And the reason for that is that we can hide behind Poland, which is protected by NATO.
Also see here https://www.reddit.com/r/jimmydore/comments/10x3yfq/jimmy_do...
It was their biggest leverage over the EU. Now it’s gone and there’s no possibility of restoring Russian gas flows to the EU.
If they were gonna destroy critical international infrastructure wouldn’t it make more sense to blow up something else?
Play out the game theory here. Russia has nothing to gain and lots of leverage to lose by destroying the pipelines. They can just keep the gas flows off FFS!
That doesn’t mean the US was involved but it makes zero sense for the Russians to do it to themselves.
Russia weaponizes energy. Many people assume Russia is rational but it’s just not true. Like John McCain said, it’s a gas station run by gangsters.
> They can just keep the gas flows off FFS!
Russia would have to pay penalties in the contract. They don’t want to do that.
> That doesn’t mean the US was involved but it makes zero sense for the Russians to do it to themselves.
See above points. It is clearly not “zero.”
The sources themselves do not make the assertion that Russia destroyed the pipelines. I’m not looking for an admission from Russia!
> Russia weaponizes energy.
100% agree. Destroying the pipelines eliminates Russia’s ability to continue weaponizing gas flows. The German economy now has nothing to gain by easing sanctions or military aid to Ukraine.
> Russia would have to pay penalties in the contract. They don’t want to do that.
Destroying a pipeline in foreign economic zones does not absolve you of your contractual obligations. That would be a massive escalation and an overt act of war. It’d be much easier and less risky to manufacture justifications for reduced gas flows.
I don’t know who destroyed the pipelines but Russia seems to be the least likely perpetrator of all the players.
There are no other suspects and Russia does benefit.
> 100% agree. Destroying the pipelines eliminates Russia’s ability to continue weaponizing gas flows. The German economy now has nothing to gain by easing sanctions or military aid to Ukraine.
What makes you think Germany doesn't want gas from Russia? That's the whole reason they sent a few thousand helmets to Ukraine at the beginning of the war. I think the German dream is that the war ends and they get their cheap gas again from Russia.
> Destroying a pipeline in foreign economic zones does not absolve you of your contractual obligations. That would be a massive escalation and an overt act of war. It’d be much easier and less risky to manufacture justifications for reduced gas flows.
No one can prove that you did it. That's the whole point. I really don't understand your comment here.
Keeping the gas flows off has manifestly not given the leverage they are seeking over Ukraine policy, Considering that there is every reason to believe (whether or not this was initially the case, but note that is one of the explicit Russian justificafions foe the war) that Putin sees Western assistance to Ukraine as both an imminenr ans existential threat to Russia, or at least the present regime, scarificing leverage that had already been exhausted without effect on that issue foe something that has a chance, even remote, Of budging that can be worthwhile.
This was why Germany was hesitant to impose full sanctions requested by the US and other NATO countries. They were hesitant to supply tanks and other military equipment.
Since the destruction of the pipelines Germany has capitulated on the tanks issue. Now there’s nothing to gain by working with the Russians because their industrial gas-dependent economy cannot benefit from renewed gas flows.
Or Russia did it for the internal audience: "Look at what they did the big evil US just wants europe to suffer we are the best"
I'm not sure it makes sense for either the US or Russia to have done it. I bet it was some smaller NATO country or ukraine just whistling in the corner and giggling a little as everyone points fingers.
No, if they were going to make a threat and capacity demonstration against other, active natural gas pipelines in the region, destroying an idle natural gas pipeline makes a lot more sense than “something else”.
(There’s a certain extent to which it doesn’t make sense to make idle threats without the will to carry them out, but that clearly hasn’t factored into Russian action related to pressuring European countries over Ukraine policy.)
Uh, yeah, Russia already describes the current war in Ukraine as against “the collective West”.
> they don't need to threaten that at all,
Whether or not you think Russia needs to issue war threats to Western states, rhey’ve been doing it a lot inn last year.
> if it got to that point they might as well just nuke Berli
The point of a threat is to dissaude an opponent before it becomes necessary to execute on. Yhe threat. So other attacks that they might do if the threat fails don’t really effect whether the threT might be seen as useful. Also, Russia has made implicit nuclear thrrats to Germany, most, recently over the decisions to send MBTs to Ukraine.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nord-stream-turbine-...
How so? The pipeline(s) was/were already off, so the US and Norway already had a new customer because of this. If the US risked blowing up the pipeline(s) (which was already not delivering,) it would put NATO in jeopardy which is explicitly against US interests and WAY more valuable than natural gas. The entire theory doesn't even make sense from the standpoint of US needs/wants.
And EU industry very much depends on low cost gas (chemical manufacturing, vehicle and other industrial manufacturing, greenhouse heating, etc). There’s report after report of vital industrial facilities shuttering due to high gas prices.
Because the pipeline was already off. The second pipeline was not operational. They already had no leverage.
> And EU industry very much depends on low cost gas (chemical manufacturing, vehicle and other industrial manufacturing, greenhouse heating, etc). There’s report after report of vital industrial facilities shuttering due to high gas.
So, your theory is that the US not only endangered the entire NATO alliance, but also sought to weaken NATO members? Again, how does that make any sense? You also fail to mention that gas prices currently are actually pretty low relative to before this event occurred and Europe never ran out of gas.
There is a substantial difference between the pipeline being off and the pipeline being off the table.
what's the benefit to russia if russia did it?
This pipeline had been completed but activation was stopped due to the start of the war. If Germany had capitulated and activated it with Russia that would be a major political win for Russia and blow for the suggested goals of the US and other allies. To me this seems to be the biggest hole in the theory that the US was responsible.
The US have been hostile for a long time to Germany getting closer to Russia. The war in Ukraine has just been a convenient event to push their strategic agenda forward and so far, irrespective of those pipelines, it has been very good for the US.
https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-s...
The pipe that survived? It would need Germany to backtrack on sanctions to open it. Russia said the gas was ready to flow as soon as they did so.
Two possibilities:
(1) explosive charge malfunctioned
(2) make plausible arguments that it was Russia who did it
(2): Then why blow the other three?
So for the US angle to work here what is the motivation?
At the outset of the war Germany stopped NS2 activation plans and started diversifying its energy away from Russia.
Leading up to the explosion Russia had been trying to blackmail Germany by reducing the supplies of gas. And gas was fully turned off at the time of the explosion. Russia was also playing games with Germany to try to get propaganda wins over the subject of gas by cutting gas supplies on NS1 and saying it was because Germany needed to ship it a turbine. Then Russia was claiming it couldn't receive the turbine from Germany because of the sanctions imposed by other countries. Russia was also saying, well pity that we can't supply enough gas because we don't have the turbine, but we could activate NS2 with you instead. [1]
So the clear motivation for the US could be that they did not want Germany to capitulate to Russian blackmail and give Russia some kind of political or sanction relief. That's actually somewhat reasonable as a theory if you believe Germany was susceptible to it (was it?), and assume all the other levers that the US and other EU allies had wouldn't be enough to keep Germany on the team.
The risk is that doing this and being caught would be a huge breach of trust. The claim of Hersh is that these explosives sat on the pipeline for three months.
The US even warned Germany about potential attacks on the pipeline. [2]
So now if that is the motivation, in this context leaving one of the newer, larger NordStream 2 pipelines untouched would make absolutely no sense. As you leave open the possibility for Germany to still capitulate and worse give Russia a massive propaganda win by forcing Germany to reverse its position and activate NS2.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/business/germany-russia-g... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/cia-warned-berlin-about-possib...
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2018-07-22/ty-article-opinio...
https://mronline.org/2021/10/11/bellingcat-funded-by-u-s-and...
US state media literally aired a puff piece for Jolani, including interviews from top DoD officials. It is staggering [1].
These are all undisputed facts which I can supply primary evidence to support. Russia is doing nothing of the sort. Some civilians possibly died as collateral as Russia targeted extremist strongholds in extremist-controlled Idlib. In fact, outside the West, Russia is credited with preventing Syria from turning into an Iraq/Libya-style disaster.
[1] - https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-jihadist/...?
Northern Iraq, like Eastern Syria is currently occupied by US military forces. The Iraqi government has asked them to end the illegal occupation.
And your conclusion is that... this indicates extreme bias?
Have you even watched the program?
As soon as he has made an assertion he cites a 'source' to back it. In every case this is either an un-named former official or an unidentified secret document passed to Hersh in unknown circumstances. […] By my count Hersh has anonymous 'sources' inside 30 foreign governments and virtually every department of the U.S. government.It's long but after reading this ask why you would believe this man who, in this new article, is making plenty of assertions all based on quotes from a single anonymous source.
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi...
If someone had an inside source on deep background with evidence of an American cover-up? Hell yes they would. And if they wouldn't, the Journal would pay a premium.
or would it be prudent to wait for evidence, to err on the side of caution ?
(sorry for being so long winded - it comes with the age)
If true though, it would be as big as the Gulf of Tonkin incident [as in it was us in pursuit of our own interest]
McNamara's tacit admission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HODxnUrFX6k
The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”
If this is true and more evidence comes out, the usual suspects will be screaming it from the rooftops, if not this narrative will die in obscurity. There's been a lot of misinformation about this war, and a bunch of people who for a variety of reasons want to blame the US for it and are willing to believe some incredible things if they support that narrative.
But it does host a starting point for future discussion due to the fact that it offers relatively detailed pieces of information.
Now it's up to others to come out and say "this is true, that is not", people who actually do have provable information. It offers them a story to share their information on. This story didn't exist previously in the public discourse.
- show how firm they have been "back then": an interesting narrative in light of recent events (the balloon)
- deflect fire from the allied or friendly country who actually did it: Sweden, Poland who boldly supported Ukraine right from the start of the war?
Seymour could also have been trapped by a source he previously knew at the CIA and who decided to play its own game. Anyway the article lacks credibility on several aspects raised by weatherlight and erentz. The existence of said source just a few monthes after the events is in itself suspicious.
Your evidence against Seymour: “I think it more believable.” (Based on what? Exactly nothing.)
Not to mention that “paid to write” is not even hearsay: you just made it up as a theory, without any hint towards anything happening in the real world.
I don't really care who is behind the sabotage, they would certainly not admit it for obvious reasons, and it could be more complex than it seems.
But the press, here in the UK, in France and in the US, has been suspiciously "clueless", avoiding with great care to imply that anyone in the west could be behind it, even if it really seems obvious that it could very well be the case.
Why? Why are they so careful? They usually are not afraid to speculate, especially on such a scale.
I find it disturbing to think that they could either have received instructions from their respective governments or are simply afraid push any inquiries on this subject.
The US loves its military, but American news sources have no want to keep a secret like this on behalf of the government. The US media loves to report on US war crimes, and other stupid government shit
It wouldn't surprise me to know that the US government had knowledge of this. It would surprise me if they were directly involved though.
In other words, The US very much likes that the pipeline is gone, but it would been politically insane to be involved.
One could recognize this also with the Coronavirus fiasco when for example the press was parroting the governments saying that the virus is not going to come to Europe and urging people not to be racist against the Chinese (extra funny given the current mainstream position against China). Then the press was parroting that masks don’t work. Then they were parroting that people should really wear masks. Not all the press, not all of the time, but the trend and direction were obvious. And the tireless downplaying of AstraZeneca and mRNA side-effects, goodness.
All of these narratives were also mainstream on HN, just as most opinions on the war are unsophisticated and thoroughly mainstream.
It’s so bizarre, imagine having freedom of the press and then doing what’s expected of you anyway.
Or as an individual being able to think, gather facts and information and draw your own conclusions. And having the freedom to present those conclusions go to waste while just repeating some simplistic talking point.
HN is worse than usual at discussing the war. Many non-mainstream commenters have given up or were censored and it’s mostly pockets of conformity now.
I don't thinks this is a conspiracy of any kind (or at least I hope so) but I wonder if this apparent docile conformity of the press at large is a side effect of the changes that occurred in this field during the past 20 years.
Have they lost that much power?
1. Russia would get income from the pipeline, empowering their economy. 2. This sort of infrastructure would represent increased German dependence on Russia for their energy needs. 3. This would also tend to increase economic and diplomatic ties between Germany and Russia.
Destroying the pipeline (even if it's not being used) could theoretically send the message that these infrastructure projects are not safe and that relying on Russia for energy is strategically unwise.
No country in the EU thinks it's a good idea to buy gas from Russia and it's going to end broken pipes or not.
There's really nothing to gain for the US from blowing up the pipe that couldn't easily be accomplished via conversations.
North Stream 1 was a blackmail tool since June 2022, Russia manipulated EU gas prices by changing the volume, using supposed turbine failure as an excuse. Blowing up the pipe could be just a next move.
At the moment nobody has no illusion of economical feasibility of Russia already.
USA has been pissed off by this project from the start.
This is also a way to send a strong message to Putin.
I am pretty sure that all secret services and governments around the world are perfectly aware of the situation.
Only the press is playing the hypocrisy game, for some reason.
Alright, the internet is full of it, and many newspaper are not afraid of publishing clickbait bullshit, as long as it sells.
What's the risk? Since when is fake news illegal?
This is why I am surprised, why is it such a big deal?
For every one of these posts that are manually forced to stay on the front page we lose an actual relevant, technical post that we never see and get a chance to comment on.
What ridiculous hyperbole. My RT.com is working just fine. Medvedev and Russian Government account is still on Twitter shouting garbage...
Let's break this down...
> all state controlled media from Russia has been completely censored in the west.
> all
No.
> completely censored
No.
> in the west
No.
The US has no such censorship against Russian media.
All you're really arguing for here is that the west should openly allow Russian propaganda to infiltrate minds of the general public.
Kremlin has miscalculated - Europe was able to largely avoid the intended crisis, while simultaneously Gazprom lost its largest market. The pivot from Russian supplies did come at a significant cost though.
Now that the Western sanctions are strangling Russian economy - if Gazprom wanted to come back to European market - they would be first greeted by billions of dollars of contract charges in arbitration courts.
It has long became obvious that Gazprom will likely attempt to use claims of force majeure to try to avoid financial penalties. And as it became customary for Russia - start preparing fertile ground in the courts of public opinion by planting various stories misdirecting the blame and muddying the waters.
Gazprom unilaterally cut off gas supplies at the direction of the Kremlin, "weaponizing energy supplies" to Europe.
At some point, if Gazprom wanted to come back to European market - they would be first greeted by billions of dollars of contract charges in arbitration courts.
(and I guess the number of billions is probably in the 10's or more)
Therefore, to avoid that fate, Gazprom or the Kremlin surreptitiously blew up Nordstream2 themselves, in order to be able, later, to claim in court that the could not have resumed gas deliveries if they wanted to. This would be an argument against the billions in contract charges. Basically, they incur the cost of blowing up (and later repairing, one presumes) their own pipeline in order to avoid the cost of the fines and legal sanctions for suspending gas delivery unilaterally.
Summarized as: the Kremlin miscalculated in suspending gas delivery, and by blowing up the pipeline is trying to preserve some future access to the European market, after current hostilities cease.
This is not merely hypothetical. Uniper, one of Gazproms biggest customers in Europe, is already suing for $12 billion in damages. And that is only one of many former customers.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/uniper-seeking-billi...
But does anyone else actually believe that? The other contract party trying to destroy your economy is a pretty good reason to terminate a contract. Failing that Russia could keep inventing problems with turbines. Or sabotage the pipelines somewhere one can more easily repair them.
I do remember how several media organizations and politicians from the EU jumped at accusing Russia with zero proof. Once the media mania subsided several US newspaper reported that indeed there was no proof whatsoever and they had jumped to conclusions.
The later conspicuous silence from EU governments on a potential culprit, lack of evidence pointing at Russia and several statements from acting US politicians threatening NS and gloating over its demise plus a former Polish politician thanking the US certainly don’t do anything to clear the US from suspicion. Still, this remains all circumstantial evidence.
But not even this kind of circumstantial evidence exists pointing to Russia as culprit. Just far-fetched theories about them wanting to dodge contract penalties or doing it to show that they can. This is as credible as them doing it as an experiment to see what happens when you blow up a pipeline, really.
And stoking and supplying separatists, along with mercenaries in Ukrainian territories before that. And downing a passenger jet before that. And annexing Crimea before that. And invading and occupying a quarter of Georgia before that. And doing the same in Moldova before that.
* Russia breaking gas delivery contracts with several EU countries
and you’ve replied with:
* a non sequitur enumerating a series of bellicose actions Russia took in relation to non-EU countries spanning years in the past
We can consider your contract argument refuted.
Europe has also had a very mild winter, so luck played a nontrivial role.
> Now that the Western sanctions are strangling Russian economy
I'm very curious about how Western sanctions are affecting the Russian economy (I understand that you're speaking narrowly to Gazprom, but I'm asking about the Russian economy more broadly). My understanding is that Putin has spent the better part of the last decade immunizing the Russian economy from Western sanctions, and that this project has largely succeeded--that Russian oil sales are still making plenty of money to finance his invasion, etc. Can anyone elucidate?
The budget revenue deficit for just the January of this year exceeds the deficit for the entirety of 2022. Russia has reserves that it can employ for the time being to mitigate some of the damage, but they are not bottomless. If the pace of losses continues in a similar manner - most of the reserves will be exhausted by years end.
After that - one might expect the usual tools to be employed - cutting budgets to pay for civil workers (everyone other than security), pensions etc, attempts to raise money from already struggling businesses via wartime taxes, issuance of wartime bonds to population to borrow cash, and if all fails - start printing money to plug the budgetary shortfalls, and the resulting inflation.
I dont think the kremlin cares for any of these, except may be with brain drain (which they can easily fix by preventing movement of people).
As long as russia produces enough food for the population, a subsistence living is "good enough" in the eyes of the kremlin, and thus these sanctions doesn't hurt as much as the west had hoped.
Luck always plays a nontrivial role in risk.
But is that a reason to not to address or even mention the topic of the post, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline? I mean, are implicitly saying that covert act was justified? If people believe that, they should say it.
One of the worst effects of war is an attitude of "not only is everything our side does automatically justified, we're going to stomp on any investigation of what our side does".
I wouldn’t presume to know if destruction of the pipeline is justified if you look at it from Russian perspective, if they are responsible, but I can volunteer a few motives why they might be:
- an attempt to introduce a force majeure factor into any future contract disagreements
- an attempt at escalating the seriousness of threats, signalling “we aren’t backing down”
- an attempt to drive a wedge between allies by implicating a sabotage behind ones backs. US vs Germany etc.
… or a little of all of the above.
One of the key strategies employed by Russia in the conflict - is a periodic display of belligerence bordering on unhingement. I think Russia being behind it fits the MO.
Now, that I read your post in more detail, it's an argument for why Russia might have done it. OK. You could have made that a lot more clear.
People say “but the gas companies” but that’s just an immature conspiracy fairy tale that projects far, far too much power into the hands of but one corporate constituency among many.
The simple answer is that Russia did it. And since gas was never coming back online anyway might as well blow it up and cause chaos. It also helped further made sure that Russian energy companies wouldn’t go behind Putin’s back thinking if they depose him they can sell oil again.
This is still taking the OP at face value. If we're being honest, the destruction of the pipeline doesn't really make geopolitical sense for either the US or Russia, given the information we have. If we must assume that one of them did it, then in the absence of evidence we should prefer to assume that it was the action of an irrational actor, and Putin is clearly the more irrational of the two here (as evidence, allow me to gesture towards the war in Ukraine).
But no that can't be it, that would be complete insanity.
I'm not so sure that they would have had to pay damages. It is true that they were pressuring Germany to certify NS 2 (one explanation is that NS 1 had long term contracts whereas NS 2 would have been higher spot prices).
But the danger of NS 2 certification would also support the U.S. involvement theory.
To all others who focus on NS and Germany: There are a multitude of Russian pipelines through Poland and Ukraine that are still operating. Ukraine collects transit fees for Russian gas as we speak.
So the theory that the attempt was to destroy specifically German/Russian relations, which had been a stated goal of U.S. foreign policy for decades, is pretty solid.
I don't expect much from the Swedish investigation. Another such investigation was the sinking of the MS Estonia. Figures like Carl Bildt (who is now a war hawk) went on to the RAND corporation. Sweden will do what the U.S. prescribes.
Stop believing conspiracy theories. The investigation into the sinking was well executed and most likely correct. Estonia was also never covered, they started the work and then aborted it.
And force majeure? That's pretty far-fetched. Why would Russia care about financial penalties? This is the country that effectively stole over 400 airliners by refusing to return them when the leases were terminated.
I disagree, but assuming this were true, that'd mean doing so would offer an opportunity to sow discord amongst the allied nations. Like cops telling a suspect "your buddy confessed already".
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/single-line-nord-str...
There doesn’t even need to be a physical person that exists right now in Russia to oppose Putin. Just the possibility of it might have been enough for Putin to blow his own goddamn jewel in the Baltic.
*Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”
The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. [...]'
This glosses over the legal fact that the President can't just carry out military operations and then never mention them again, not least on the grounds that someone needs to be in the loop in case the executive branch suffers some catastrophic attack. As far as I am aware, 10 USC 130f still requires that Congress be notified of sensitive military operations within 48 hours: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/130f
I don't see where Hersh addresses this aspect of the legal environment, he just waves it away. Of course, it could be that Congress notified but only a small number of sufficiently serious members with the capacity to keep their mouths firmly shut, but the article doesn't seem to contemplate that possibility.
> "If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
> When asked how, the president says, "I promise you, we will be able do that."
(C-SPAN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8 )
I'm anticipating there are more plausible explanations of what his words "We will bring an end to it" might refer to, and was hoping replies might provide them.
I don't have a firm opinion on who destroyed the pipeline; there are valid strategic arguments for doing so on both sides, and the ambiguity over who did it is the geopolitical equivalent of a smoke bomb.
> There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.
The use of non-SEAL divers from Panama was also given as a reason for that.
1) a lethal operation or capture operation...
2) an operation conducted by the armed forces in self-defense or in defense of foreign partners, including during a cooperative operation; or
3) an operation conducted by the armed forces to free an individual from the control of hostile foreign forces.
0. The Nord Stream pipeline incident was not an accident.
1. The pipeline was sabotaged by a state actor.
a. Only a state had the capability to carry it out undetected.
b. The sabotage was in violation of international law.
c. Evidence of the sabotage would cause a diplomatic scandal.
d? Either Russia or the United States sabotaged the pipeline.
e? The sabotage was authorised at the highest levels.
a? Russia had no motivation to destroy it.
b. Russia controls the pipeline, and could choose to turn it off.
c. No state has presented evidence that Russia was involved in the sabotage.
d. The area is highly monitored by US and US-aligned countries.
a. The US had strategic and economic motivations to prevent the pipeline from operating.
b. The US govt made public statements prior to the sabotage that, had they been made by the Kremlin, would have uncontroversially implicated Russia in the eyes of the American public.
c. The US has the means to destroy it.
d? The US has the means to hide their involvement in the sabotage from European allies and the US public.
e. The Western public have no appetite for stories which portray Russia as a victim, or US/EU as villains. Hiding their involvement is therefore trivial, since media outlets have no motivation to investigate the truth.
f. Conversely, Russian state and media have no incentive to investigate, since the Russian audience takes it for granted that NATO was responsible.Russia wanted to cause panic and meltdown on EUs energy markets, but to no avail. Russia tried to sabotage gas supply by fiddling with turbines for months, but was in the end out of options, and EU gas prices were still too far from panic and collapse. Blowing up underwater gas pipes the same day that a gas pipe from Norway started to work - too good to be coincidence.
> Russia controls the pipeline, and could choose to turn it off
No, Russia cannot just turn off the gas without a force majeure cause (and even declaring the war to Ukraine, which will never be an option, is not a force majeure enough). Otherwise there are contractual obligations to fulfill, and enormous penalties in case of breaching contract.
penalties they could simply just ignore if they choose to. After all, they forced the sale in rubles, despite this not being part of the initial agreement of gas sales.
blowing it up seems just too much of shooting-self-in-the-foot for russia, unless russia can confidently lay the blame onto the west (particularly, the US) as the culprit.
And Russia immediately laid the blame onto the West, and never stopped. Maybe we are now looking at the part of that continuous effort.
> According to Hersh's story, Navy SEALs met no resistance at Abbottabad and were escorted by a Pakistani intelligence officer to bin Laden's bedroom, where they killed him. Bin Laden's body was "torn apart with rifle fire" and pieces of the corpse "tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains" by Navy SEALs during the flight home (no reason is given for this action). There was no burial at sea because "there wouldn’t have been much left of bin Laden to put into the sea in any case."
> The first hints came in the latter years of the Bush administration, when Hersh reported repeatedly that the US was on the verging of striking Iran. These included reports stating that the US might even bomb Iran with a nuclear warhead, and later that the administration had considered using US special forces disguised as Iranians to launch a "false flag" attack as a premise for war.
> The moment when a lot of journalists started to question whether Hersh had veered from investigative reporting into something else came in January 2011. That month, he spoke at Georgetown University's branch campus in Qatar, where he gave a bizarre and rambling address alleging that top military and special forces leaders "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta ... many of them are members of Opus Dei." He suggested that they belong to a network first formed by former Vice President Dick Cheney that is steering US foreign policy toward an agenda of bringing Christianity to the Middle East.
> The next year, in 2012, Hersh reported in the New Yorker that the Bush administration had secretly armed and funded an Iranian terrorist group known as the MEK in 2005. Two sources, neither with direct knowledge, told Hersh that American special forces had flown the Iranians all the way to Nevada to train at a base there. This detail was both spectacular and puzzling: the US has bases throughout the world, including several in the Middle East; why bring terrorists to Nevada?
2. Not at all implausible. Remember Stuxnet? Washington was evidently going to extreme lengths.
3. This one seems speculative but not implausible. Neoconservatism is closely linked with crazy religious beliefs.
4. It is established fact that the CIA flew Tibetan extremists to Colorado to train them in the 1950s. Nothing puzzling about this.
Hersh's big scoops were all corroborated by other news organizations. None of these four have been.
The last one in particular is deeply embarassing and shows the Vox blogger has little grasp of history.
The burden of proof is on HIM. It isn't up for us to debunk what he's saying (though I'm sure many can), he has to prove it, and he hasn't. No single corroboration from other big sources? Seems odd.
Here's a fawning local Nevada news segment about a former Green Beret training the mujihadeen, aired two months after 9/11:
b) recovering a submarine is not the same as saying, actually Assad is an innocent bystander and the rebels gassed themselves, The CIA worked with Putin and Assad to undermine Obama...also US soldiers raped children and video recorded it, oh and let's not forget that the US planned to fake how OBL was killed in coordinate with Pakistan because stealth helicopters aren't possible (so how could the US fly below deck and get into Pakistan undetected!).
All claims by him, none with a lick of evidence.
The very premise of stealing a Soviet submarine wreck off the ocean floor with nobody noticing is pants-on-head insane. The USN thought the CIA was being moronic to even consider this plan. The USN's idea was a lot saner; to simply use submersibles to extract intelligence-relevant materials from the wreck underwater, not lift and take the entire wreck. No surface ships needed, much less an expensive purpose-built attention-drawing surface ship.
I do believe one thing: with US AWACS and other assets, and in that part of the world, I believe that the US government (and perhaps other governments, like Germany) know who did it. There a many reasons why they would not share information, such as an ally could have done it. Or, of course, Russia may have done it.
I am glad this story is posted on HN because I like getting many different opinions in one place.
In either the case of America attacking a pipeline jointly owned by the Russians or the Russians attacking a pipeline jointly owned by a NATO country, you could call this an act of war. But in neither case will either side use it as their casus belli to start WW3, because nobody wants that. Nobody is waiting for a 'legitimate' excuse to start such a war. It is much safer for everybody to pretend they haven't noticed such attacks, or to pretend that the culprit is uncertain or maybe that it was done by accident. Pretending to be ignorant of the provocation is preferable to WW3, for both sides of the conflict.
>...
>"This is utterly false and complete fiction," said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council. Spokespeople for the CIA and State Department said the same.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-blog-post-...
And of course, proving innocence is effectively impossible without proving someone else did it.
Given that Nord Stream AG is (majority owned) by Russia, this would point at Russia since it's remarkably silent. But to me this doesn't make sense since I still don't understand how it benefits Russia. But perhaps it's another FSB plan which went wrong, as many others did in 2022.
It's a lot more convenient to explain that you totally would retaliate if only you knew who did it, rather than claiming you knew who did it but you're not going to retaliate anyway because you fear escalation. So everybody plays dumb.
That doesn't make sense. Russia can use this as a propaganda tool without having to act on it. And it's not like that Russia didn't accuse USA from blowing it up - they did, just not very forcefully. It's strange, because they could have used it in e.g. Germany to split the society: "bad Americans want you to freeze, they blew up your gas pipelines".
To acknowledge such an attack and not respond in kind would cause them to lose face, but responding in kind risks escalation. Ignoring the attack is their safest option.
Most of them also put out relatively balanced reasons why the US would not do it as well.
Lots of logical reasons have been laid out why the Russians are suspects too.
If Germany has no Russian gas (it's not possible) they won't spend any time even broaching that possibility - the only way forward is to look for other sources (which happened concurrently with the opening of the Baltic pipeline - convenient).
[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BurningTheShips
This is not exactly the view of the Swedish navy here in Sweden. No Russian submarine has ever been “forced to the surface” in Swedish waters to the best of my knowledge [1]. The only case where the Swedish navy claimed they had proof of a foreign submarine it turned out to probably be minks and herrings.
1. Closest case I’m aware of is Soviet submarine U137 that ran aground on the Swedish east coast due to navigation error.
- Biden saying that NS2 will not go forward
- the pipeline is blown up
Did I miss anything? Because the rest is conjectures, one anonymous source, and references to historical events. I don't understand what does this add to the discourse.
Adding Hersh's name to the conspiracy theory (in a very literal sense) does not add any factual weight to it, it's still an unfounded conspiracy theory. It's (again, literally) an "ad hominem" argument, which is widely understood to be a fallacy.
Which also makes people linking stuff like https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi... wrong, because it's not about Hersh's integrity or lack thereof, the whole premise is wrong.
The author, Seymour Hersh, has accused the Obama administration of lying about the events surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden, and disputed the claim that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on civilians in the Syrian Civil War.
This all sounds very plausible. It may even be true, but I do not trust the messenger that much.
I think the story belongs on HN because I know a little bit about the historical significance of Seymour Hersh and I think the appearance of this story is intellectually interesting. Maybe I'm the only commenter who feels that way, since most appear only to want to score points for their pre-existing political side, but it's our job to serve the intellectual interest of the larger audience, most of whom don't comment.
Re the question mark in titles, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713747. This is a longstanding practice and has nothing to do with the topic.
It could be true! I’ve read lots of compelling narratives over the years. Many of them are wholly true, some have elements of the truth, some are fiction. But there’s no verifiably new information presented here; only a compelling narrative.
I really urge you to reconsider your stance but this is the last comment I’ll make on the topic.
>… But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous. The story is riven with internal contradictions and inconsistencies.
>The story simply does not hold up to scrutiny — and, sadly, is in line with Hersh's recent turn away from the investigative reporting that made him famous into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi...
I respect and appreciate your opinions on all things HN related, but in this instance I think we need to make readers more urgently aware.
I was hoping there would be some discussion of the SONAR buoy remote detonation story - is it plausible (from a technical perspective)? Has it been done before?
In terms of how we handle the issue of political/divisive topics on HN, there are some pretty complete explanations here, if you (or anyone) are interested: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... If you read those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd like to know what it is and would be happy to take a crack at it. Here are a couple of good places to start:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 (April 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 (Nov 2019)
People have a love/hate relationship with their favorite internet forums. If you (again, I don't mean you personally, I mean anyone here) aren't occasionally running into something you hate, then we're probably doing a bad job—we're either too predictable, or too narrow, or both. I think that follows from the core idea of this place, which is intellectual curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... It's quite amazing how many unexpected and interesting things follow from that principle, but maybe this isn't the moment to make that case.
Where is the evidence?
People need to come to grips that people can slowly become kooks over time (or maybe they were always crazy, but did one good thing and now have clout.) Snowden, Greenwald have made similar kooky remarks of late defending bad actors all over. It's bizarre, but not unusual.
https://www.dw.com/en/problem-is-not-interrogation-its-war-i...
> US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh disclosed the torture scandal of Abu Ghraib 10 years ago.
> He was the first to describe in detail what was happening in Abu Ghraib, quoting from the Taguba Report, a secret, internal investigation by the US army about atrocities committed against the prisoners.
The article goes on to discuss how even though second hand accounts of abuses already existed, he was the first to get access to and disclose the report, giving a detailed first party account and giving proof of chain of command involvement for the first time.
Highly recommend the entire LRB series. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n01/seymour-m.-hersh/mil...
So, even though this report itself is rather thin on evidence, it is presenting a version of what seems to be the most plausible hypothesis.
But on the other hand, Norway and other countries were invited to be intimately involved in the planning and execution.
This strikes me as rather unlikely.
I think it's great the topic has been brought up again. This was a major event that somehow got swept away like nothing happened. The propaganda machine even tried to sell it as Russians blowing up their own pipe. Cause you know, at this point they could be blamed for the most ridiculous thing and it would still "track" because crazy.
What really matters is who else here in Europe helped them. And why. Norway stands to gain but did they help with the sabotage? Things don't look good at all. I am scared. Russia is just across the black sea. I don't want war
Russia has absolutely blown up their own gas pipe before...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Russia%E2%80%93Georgia_...
russia is the one perpetrating war. And yet, it is somehow the US that is questionable?
It isn't really logical for the US to do it - risk vs reward wise. And i doubt any european country would want to help the US do this either - they stand to gain very little. Even if Norway stands to gain more gas sales - those aren't guaranteed, and the reputational damage is not worth the financial reward imho.
All the commentary I read from reputable media seem to boil down to "Putin did it because that is the sort of thing that Putin does", without providing any further analysis on why it would make strategic or tactical sense for Putin to do so.
The more serious journals such as Foreign Policy seem to have ignored the issue entirely as far as I can see.
I think this video is articulate and sensible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk-0qJXyido
But the theory presented in the video hinges on the idea that if the americans were to have done it, they would've chosen a more covert means to do it - aka, undetectable (such as cyber warfare).
For example, they would've done something similar to Stuxnet to sabotage the iranian nuclear material processing.
However, i cannot imagine what method of covert sabotage is possible for a pipeline. If everyone believed the pipeline is working, even if it was sabotaged, then they will behave as though it wasn't sabotaged (until they realize it actually is broken). So the effect of the sabotage won't be felt until they turn back on the pipeline, by which, it is too late to for the sabotage's effect to change policy!
So i don't completely buy that the americans aren't a culprit, based purely on the operational design of the attack.
However, i do buy that the risk taking vs risk adverse behaviour does fit. America would not want to risk fracturing NATO from such covert activities. They gain very little - as the pipeline is already closed, and financial and diplomatic pressure on germany is enough to keep it closed. If russia wants to use the pipeline and prospect of cheap gas to lure germany out of the alliance, they've already showed to have failed at it. May be it will change in the future (like 5 yrs down the line), but that seems to be very far to predict, given the current risks of being discovered in between that time.
Lastly, the idea that Putin would covertly destroy the pipelines because they are at a state of war does seem a bit plausible - he's trying to remove the pipeline from being used as a negotiation leverage by any potential successor in ousting him! If germany could sponsor a political opponent in russia with which the gas and economy of russia could be rescued, they might get popular support. This removes the possibility, despite hurting russia in the short term (they're already lost the ability to sell gas from the pipeline, so blowing it up doesn't hurt as much). Coupled with the deniability, the kremlin could blame the act on the US, and hope to cause fracture within NATO for some added effect.
This is the hardest part to believe in the piece. Making this kind of very technical change (timer to remote detonation) at essentially the last minute seems very hard to pull off. I think the piece could have benefitted from more than one view (besides Postal) on how difficult such a change would be.
That said, that last quote by Postal offers an alternative explanation. Namely, that the explosives were rigged for remote detonation but exploded accidentally.
A more likely rationale for a fixed time line would simply be a concern on the life of the battery in the receiver, and the diplomatic fallout that would happen if the battery died, and an intact detonator was recovered on a later routine inspection that could be traced back to the USA.
Of course, the optimal solution for Europe would have been to start massive renewable infrastructure development over a decade ago, then they'd be on their way to not needing any gas imports, instead of having their domestic economy held hostage like this. The rest of the world would be wise to think in these terms - fundamental necessities like energy should not be subject to the random fluctuations of global supply chains due to wars, pandemics, etc.
It's very reckless behavior if true, essentially an act of war. I can't imagine Washington politicians responding with calm deliberation if someone was blowing up US LNG tankers, for comparison.
The story does sound a little strange, but who knows? I'd have suspected the explosives were planted by underwater rover / submarine but maybe human divers are less detectable.
Why would people living in what is an actual paradise on Earth risk all that by blindly following Joe Biden's orders to shoot at Russia?
Sorry but the Norwegian involvement claim doesn't pass the smell test.
I could understand if diplomats and politicians were upset, but regular techies?
it's not just a natural reaction for nationalists, it's a strategy for people in power generally - nationalist or otherwise - it's just one way to try to make a story go away, and it's obviously had some success here on HN today:
A lot of Putin strategy relied on the weakness of the leaders on the other side.
He very likely expected to see most government caving or at least stay away.
The narrative is that Biden is an old almost senile dude and Zelensky is a clown.
Well, we now know that this narrative turned out to not be entirely accurate, and IMHO Biden cutting the big pipe of Putin can be seen as a good thing if you expect your leader to be strong and decisive.
Not saying they can't have done it, but it would have required more resources than ukraine would spare imho. And if they have such resources, would they not use it instead to sabotage something else of more importance to russia? Such as their oil or gas fields that are still operational?
Now this doesn't mean Putin actually ordered it. But it's not true to say that there was no plausible reason w he would.
Considering the much rumored campaign announcement, I can absolutely see a large portion of "centrist America" respecting Biden for this move, and rewarding him for it. I think this quote from TFA encapsulates the sentiment:
> The source had a much more streetwise view of Biden’s decision to sabotage more than 1500 miles of Gazprom pipeline as winter approached. “Well,” he said, speaking of the President, “I gotta admit the guy has a pair of balls. He said he was going to do it, and he did.”
But... this is just really, really thin. Hersh had no editor on this, it's literally a self-published blog with one entry[1], created for just this article. No one else wanted to run it, one has to assume. There's one source, with only the thinnest of descriptions[2] and no independent verification described.
Everyone wants to lean hard on Hersh's reputation from My Lai and Abu Ghraib. But those stories had evidence! The vietnam story was about a covered-up-but-very-real prosecution of an actual person for actual crimes. Abu Ghraib had the famous photographs and people willing to go on record with their own names. This isn't the same at all.
I mean, maybe it's true. Again, the Freudian Neocon would like that. But realistically this could also be someone feeding Hersh a fake story sourced from anywhere. I don't think this really tells us much of anything.
[1] When I saw this the first time, I immediately thought it must be a fake!
[2] Just "someone familiar with the planning", I mean, were they even looped in on the execution? How does that description square with all the Tom Clancy prose about operation processes?
If they don't demand them (SSCI is still rather bipartisan) within 24-48 hours, you know it's complete BS.
BTW, I checked the text with GPT detector, it didn't sound alarm, so at least it is a human-written.
Russia Georgia Energy Crisis (2006)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Russia%E2%80%93Georgia_...
Turkmenistan (2009)
https://www.rferl.org/a/Pipeline_Explosion_Stokes_Tensions_B...
But they were stupid enough to invade Ukraine and think they were going to take it over in 2 weeks?
But the US itself is just so stupid that it would jeopardize the entire NATO alliance which is critical to US global power? Ok.
If the goal is to make it clear that the claim is not endorsed by HN, why not something like
AuthorName: “This is clearly a quote because it is in quotation marks”
If it's not Seymour, it sure is very effective propoganda.
Does anyone see any proof that this is indeed written by the claimed author?
We had the motive. We had the means. oh yea, and our president said we would do it in advance of it happening:
"If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." (reporter: "How will you do that, exactly, since the project is within germany's control?") "I promise you we'll be able to do it. (smirks, silence)"
https://youtu.be/OS4O8rGRLf8?t=81
With that context why wouldn't the default be to assume it was destroyed by the US unless there was compelling evidence otherwise?
As CIA guy I would not trust Biden to keep the mouth shut.
> In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.
> At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/r...
I think the Swedish investigation, with no public announcement, might be the only source of primary information. Add to this the sabotage against German trains etc, and the overall lack of ability of the Russian government to negotiate for its interests but instead choose subterfuge (they denied the invasion, and claim themselves the victim), it is more likely such a secret operation is in the interests of the aggressor.
When someone like Hersh is behind it, I expect _WAY_ more. His single source could be President Biden on the record and I'd still take issue with this.
All of this could turn out to be nearly 100% correct and it would still be irresponsible. The implications of getting this even slightly wrong are potentially catastrophic, in so many unpredictable ways.
Perhaps I'm showing my age, but I grew up learning not to F around with the implications of a land war in Europe.
how likely can a hypothetical operation as sketched by Mr Hersh, involving so many people in so many governments, remain without hard evidence leaking out for years?
Personally, I wonder what would have happened to the sonar buoy that was alledged to have triggered the explosives. Wouldn't they have to come back and pick it up to avoid leaving evidence of the triggering mechanism? And if they have to come pick it up anyway, why drop a buoy at all? Why not use that presence to send a time delayed trigger?
(I'll admit I don't follow politics and had not even heard of this event before today).
The John F. Kennedy assassination could not have been a conspiracy, some conspirator would have spoken sooner or later (maybe on his/her death bed).
This is obviously not a lone perpetrator, so the truth will come out.
But it may take decades, e.g.:
And everything is recorded nowadays. (people like Biden are great security risks)
JFK, RFK, Dag Hammarskjöld, MLK, Malcom X, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara, et al. to just name a few.
When you put it all together in historical context, it seems improbable that these were random unrelated events that just happen to advance the interests of a very powerful class that felt victimized by the end of European imperialism/American slavery and the rise of Communism and the Global South.
Otto Skorzeny is emblematic of the character that was central to this history.
Well, in hindsight, Russia does not seem to gain from it, in the EU we were lucky that the winter was not very bad, but the US somehow conveniently gets to sell us overpriced gas...
If it's not Seymour, it sure is very effective propoganda.
Does anyone see any proof that this is indeed written by the claimed author?
Why is this rubbish on top of hacker news?
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1623352901111517185
Reuters reported on it, the White House bothered to refute the story. It is Hersh.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-blog-post-...
Are people try to derail this story by flooding the submission with innocent questions?
eg they could very well be propaganda themselves
Hersh is an online individual like the rest of us, I’m quite sure he’d be aware of papers all over the world reporting on something he hadn’t written.
It’s alarming how many comments here are attempting to gaslight the public and shift the narrative.
We know it wasn’t an accident. We don’t know who did it exactly.
But we certainly know who benefited from it.
Definitely not Russia which was using it as significant leverage over the Europeans.
Definitely not the Europeans who were relying on it for energy.
That leaves the US, with willing help from accomplices of course.
We can squabble about Hersh's credentials - no doubt to be dragged through the mud in the coming days as establishment types attempt to discredit him - but the base case for this is that the US is responsible.
There's still one pipe of NS2 left unscathed; Russia had offered to start delivering gas over this pipe, prior to the winter turning out to be incredibly mild.
So the potential leverage is still there, and would perhaps have been useful had the climate cooperated. Maybe Russia took out three of four pipes just to ratchet up the sense of risk to Europe.
It just didn’t work.
The dude could have been a Cold War asset from day one!
Do people realise that once the article is on the internet, removing it from HN is self censorship, the equivalent of pretending something doesn’t exist?
I'm not always full of shit
a) Is this the real Seymour Hersh?
b) If so, perhaps people should ask him for sources.
https://www.rferl.org/a/nord-stream-sabotage-investigation-r...
Please note that Radio Free Europe is run by CIA.
That’s a bizarre interpretation, since what the Swedish government says in that article, which is no different than non-US-government news source reporting on the same Swedish statement, is additional evidence of sabotage but no evidence of by whom.
> Please note that Radio Free Europe is run by CIA.
No, its run by a private 501(c)3 that used to be (more thab 59 years ago) covertly funded by the CIA, but is now overtly funded by the federal government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
Just do a ctrl-f on “the source” on the OP. And read those lines. That’s the message.
It is widely understood to be a propaganda arm of the US, developing media presences in countries where the US wishes to increase its power by manipulating narratives around contentious political topics. "Radio Free Europe/Asia/etc." is a common offering of theirs, typically skeptical or outright critical of regimes the US wishes to weaken in those regions through civil unrest.
No, NED is a completely unrelated organization. The 501c3 that runs Radio Free Europe is RFE/RL, Inc. (the name conbining the abbreviations for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.)
> Radio Free Europe/Asia/etc." is a common offering of theirs
No, Radio Free Asia is a separate 501c3, which is, like RFE/RL, funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors through the U.S. Agency for Global Media; NED isn’t connected to it.
> NED is a completely unrelated organization
Interesting, then what are they involved in, and why the common refrain that they control Radio Free X?
You're right that I misattributed, but it is still fact that both organizations (NED and USAGM) fund propaganda-style campaigns in foreign nations with the goal of changing public opinion toward pro-Western viewpoints.
I feel like too many outlets are glossing over this question and are reporting it as fact that he wrote it. I haven't found a single confirmation that he actually did so if anyone has one I'd love to see it.
In this essay, I will use the same number and quality of sources as Hersh did in his article to support my claims. Hersh had an incentive to take out the Nord Stream pipeline so he could write the aforementioned article and become slightly relevant again, therefore he did. In conclusion, Seymour Hersh took out the Nord Stream pipeline.
Let's see some proof
"Are we the bad guys? I think we're the bad guys?"
Even this unsourced story makes more sense that Russians did that themself.
Im asserting as much evidence as Hersh. https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/09/nordstream.html
U.S. is worried Russia will use the pipeline that's supplying Europe with gas as a bargaining chip, and blackmail them. Threatening with higher prices, or switching it off.
Which makes zero sense, why blow up your own cash cow?
So the U.S. come in and blow it up. Causing sky high prices across Europe, poor families and elderly to choose to either freeze to death, or starve. Causing chaos for potentially years. Possibly more damage than Russia could ever have done.
Makes sense, well done. Fuk yeaaah, America!!!
People who did good work and have fame are getting old. Instead of retiring they just start to do sloppy work, or fall prey to people who exploit their reduced cognitive capacity. They get publicity because internet has no editors.
Hersh is 85. He has been on decline for some time.
Remember Michael Atiyah few years back. One of the greatest mathematicians in the last century. He claimed he solved the Riemann hypothesis little before he died. It was clear that he was in cognitive decline, but media and social media had their day.
Pun intended or not, it's got me laughing
I always thought it's more likely that somebody from the West did it, since from my perspective it helped West and not Russia. But what's confusing me is the rather muted reaction from Russia. If it wasn't them and if they believed it's the West, why are they so silent about it?
Gas pipes blowing up, massive disinformation campaigns, the utter hellhole that Ukraine is turning into... it's a scary, depressing time.
On the whole I hope this helps us transition into renewables quicker, so that at least there will be a silver lining.
(Conversely you might say this pushes us into burning more coal but I'd rather be an optimist)
If US is truly behind it, the Swiss company can sue US (and perhaps Germany) and I believe they would have a chance. Certainly better chance than Ukrainians have with reparations from Russia.
if they didn't have their nukes, then guess whether they'd "get away with it" or not.
It's just strange they keep largely silent on this, even though it seems like a golden opportunity. Why are they not attacking German society with "Americans are trying to freeze you, they blew up the pipes"?
Pointing fingers at the americans to germany is not going to work inside germany.