In Nord Stream attack, US officials use proxy media to blame proxy Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

In Nord Stream attack, US officials use proxy media to blame proxy Ukraine

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13 pointsmiguelazo24 comments

"Unique capability to plant multiple explosives", WTF. I don't have a lot of friends, but I know someone who dives and someone else who can blow things up. Bringing the two together doesn't sound unique to my ears.

And adding "heavily sealed" doesn't changed it, what does that even mean? That they used concrete and steel to build the pipeline? Neither material is rare.

LOL. Perhaps you don't understand this because you don't dive yourself, but there's a very big difference between your PADI Open Water diver buddy's dives and the 70-90 meter depth estimated for the blasts.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/30/nord-stream...

I'm Norwegian and my buddy works with robots. But let's disregard that; Norwegians are just 0.06% of the world and your point is probably about the typical case, not about rare exceptions.

I think your real point is that deep diving skills and robots are extremely rare, perhaps except some pockets such as Norway. You might be right... but my basic assumption would be that the same skills and equipment are easy to find in every port large enough to have a construction industry for undersea pipelines etc.

Om jeg forstår deg rett.. Du som er Nordmann kjenner vel kanskje til at vi måtte hente eksperthjelp fra noen karer nede i USA før vi kunne begynne å bore olje. Ingen Nordmann dykket den gangen, vi måtte ha hjelp. Ved å følge din logikk burde de jo vært Norske, siden slike folk visstnok er enkle å finne? Det samme dypdykket jeg refererer til her endte også i dødsfall av en eller flere av de Amerikanerne som turte det dykket her nede i Norsk sjø, på grunn av en ulykke.

Uansett, med tanke på Nord Stream, vi snakker om en sabotasje-operasjon med eksplosiver under vann. Slikt man ofte ser i klisjè action-filmer, men som (nesten) aldri skjer i virkeligheten. Mener ikke å si at noe av det du skriver er feil i teorien - tror bare muligens du undervurderer skalaen på en slik operasjon. Det er åpenbart en godt planlagt militær operasjon.

Thank you for that additional context. I didn’t realize that Norway had been wholly dependent on US deep sea diving expertise when the oil industry was founded, and that it was relatively recent.

It depends what you mean by recent. The divers who brought those skills to Norway in the eighties had developed the techniques in the Gulf of Mexico a few years earlier. The eighties may be seen as recent or not, depending on your timescale. It's long enough ago that the knowledge has spread widely and much new equipment has been developed, such as the robots.

Ultimately, the capability is beyond the reach of the workers you are talking about. The NYT article produced zero evidence, scant details (including laughable ones like a "Polish yacht".) It was truly a pathetic attempt at diversion-- I would have expected something better, like they did with Iraq, but the truth is they don't care enough to bother because liberals do their work for them. And as the critique published above points out, the authors have previously engaged in wholesale fraud for the security state, writing articles about the fake "Russian bounties" in Afghanistan, etc.

“It is obvious that [leftists] are not cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality.” ― Theodore Kaczynski

Why am I not surprised that the Unabomber would conflate liberals and leftists?

But the same thing can be said of reactionary conservatives. https://billmoyers.com/story/how-authoritarianism-short-circ...

I'm reading the book not his manifesto version. There are no mentions of bombs in his book so the fact that he's the unabomber is of no importance. He's facing the consequences of his actions (good!). Doesn't mean that the book isn't good.

> would conflate liberals and leftists?

The book is from the 90s. You have to factor that in to be sure that he's conflating anything really. Lets also remember that Kaczynski is a literal genius. Top 1% of intelligence. Based on this also I don't believe that he thinks it makes any difference OR it made perfect sense in the times when he wrote it.

It's irrelevant because in a two-party political system they both (leftists+liberals) side to the left. The psychology (traits) of leftism/liberals are similar. The psychology (traits) of conservatives are the same no matter what "sub-type" (in lack of a better word) of conservative they claim to be because they side to the right. Wouldn't you call a neo-conservatives a conservative?

Since Ted is from the US he lives in the forementioned two-party political system. Making the distinction between leftist and liberals makes more sense imo in the European political system (not two-party) and perhaps others.

Left/Right, the political leaning can be observed because of various clues and traits. It's well understood. In academia and elsewhere.

> reactionary conservatives

Absolutely! Kaczynski also goes hard into conservatives. You should read the book, he is also criticising his own political leaning. He isn't so political-focused in his book. It's more on the sociology/psychology side.

What? You're thinking of some other dive. I'm talking about the dive that was done in '78 to demonstrate that we had the ability to fix the underwater pipes at that depth. It's THE dive that made us literally filthy rich as a nation, in the years after. Everything depended on the outcome of this dive. No one had attempted anything like this before, that's why we brought in experts from the US.

Do not underestimate the importance of this event. Surprised you didn't know this.

It happened on February 7th 1978. Skånevikfjorden, Norway. On the West Coast. Taylor Diving Company brought in 3 divers + crew.

David Hoover, one of the three American divers, died in the accident that day. RIP

> It's long enough ago that the knowledge has spread widely and much new equipment has been developed, such as the robots.

No one would disagree. If you're saying that it's possible for these robots to plant explosives - I wouldn't know but I can believe that. In this case it's irrelevant.

So a team of divers who work construction was recruited and provided with a large amount of explosives to carry this out. And then they all managed to keep quiet. Yes, that sounds way more plausible than Seymour Hersh’s explanation.

> With the story that Russia blew up its own pipelines no longer tenable, the Times’ new narrative asks us to believe that some unnamed “pro-Ukraine group”, which “did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services” somehow managed to obtain the unique capability to plant multiple explosives on a heavily sealed pipeline at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Apparently planting explosives on an underwater pipeline requires Manhattan project levels of resources.

My opinion: People don't seem to understand how war works.

Depends on the depth of the pipeline. Your average scuba enthusiast is certainly not going to pull it off. And acquiring/transporting that quantity of explosives to the sites is also well beyond the means of the amateurs currently being offered up as a distraction.

How much quantity did they use?

>Reports from seismologists based in Denmark and Sweden suggest that sizeable explosions on the order of 100 kilograms of TNT occurred in both incidents.

https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88062

100kg isn't that much to transport on a boat.

Getting it down to that depth and actually locating the pipeline is the part that seems more difficult to me.

As I said, you don't understand what war is. This is what countries do when there is a war. There is utterly nothing illegal or immoral about blowing those pipelines up.

Well, perhaps I am not as expert as yourself in the conduct of war, but last time I checked deliberately blowing up an ally's energy infrastructure wasn't a best practice.

51% of the pipelines are owned by Russia which is waging war against Ukraine. Which makes them a completely fair target.

That they were successfully destroyed may make you unhappy because you favor Russia. But such as it is.

The pipeline, despite being valuable for its purpose, was a hostage for Russia, and there can't be any reasonable doubt who destroyed it and why.

"Harry Temple: All right, pop quiz. Airport, gunman with one hostage. He's using her for cover; he's almost to a plane. You're a hundred feet away. Jack?"

Please explain how a pipeline owned by a consortium of European partners and Gazprom, that was (very) mutually beneficial to Europe and Russia, was a "hostage for Russia"? Maybe it had something to do with the US, which has been trying to sell more LNG to Europe?

https://peoplesworld.org/article/pipeline-ploy-how-u-s-natur...

It was a conflict of interest for some in Europe between helping Ukraine and securing their energy supply. The pipeline provided an incentive to hold back regarding Russia.

Someone made the judgement that it was better to take the risk of doing without the pipeline than let it affect policy. And do it covertly so as not to have a public controversy.

I can't guess exactly who was involved, but likely some combination of NATO members at some level, probably including the US.

US LNG seems like an important factor in judging the risk - you would want to be confident in the possibility of replacing the gas supply.

It seems like with hindsight, the calculations that people wouldn't freeze to death en masse were correct, doesn't it?

What is unclear?

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