19 ms·

Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

152 points by erentz 4y ago

ajross 4y ago
It does seem like what happened is that Hersh got a legitimate source (probably in the US or Norwegian intelligence community) who was willing to talk about an existing plan for this kind of operation, and then spun it into a story just declaring that it happened that way. In point of fact probably every major player in the region had a plan like this. Nord Stream 2 was a huge football for everyone with interest. We just don't know who did it. Maybe we never will. But reporting on a plan doesn't tell us much of anything. My own opinion: I think it probably wasn't the US, simply because the Biden folks are being so cautious in so many other ways. I mean, you know this kind of thing will eventually get out. Why blow up a gas line but not sent ATACMS? Just doesn't make strategic sense. If we wanted to roll the dice and push harder there are so many more effective ways to do it. I still think the "Putin did it to silence internal dissent" theory sounds best. Could also be more hawkish European governments trying to keep the Germans from waffling. Edit to note: the fact that the two replies are immediately jumping back into the essentially false[1] "Biden said he would blow up Nord Stream 2" canard in response tells us how uninformative Hersh's story turns out to be. It's not proof of anything. [1] It was a statement in the press conference before the war started about possible consequences and responses. The context was sanctions and international condemnation, literally no one at the time, even the most Russophilic pundits and anti-imperialist tankies, interpreted this as a military threat.
- akira2501 4y ago
  > simply because the Biden folks are being so cautious in so many other ways. Biden said publicly they were going to "end it." The reporter who asked the question was even baffled and asked how they could make that claim when the pipeline was in foreign territory. Biden further confirmed that we would have a way to do it if needed. If they didn't do it, then that press conference and that answer was exceptionally incautious.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  I think it's overwhelmingly obvious that the US, or US-aligned forces, were responsible. It's not clear to me who else even has a motive to do this. US has capable forces in the region at the time, a clear motive (remove the temptation for Germany to use the pipeline). The other possibilities are Russia, they could just turn off the pipeline rather than blow it up, Germany, they could just turn off their end of the pipeline without blowing it up, or... Ukraine, Poland, etc I count as "US-aligned" forces. Then, when you add in that Biden explicitly threatened unilaterally stopping the pipeline, and that threat was subsequently reiterated by the head of the State Department... I have to wonder what evidence would convince people that the US was probably behind the action.
  - mopsi 4y ago
    > It's not clear to me who else even has a motive to do this. Putin. Blow up the pipeline so no-one can offer cheap gas in exchange for being recognized as the next legitimate leader of Russia behind his back. It's one of the simplest explanations and falls into the overall pattern. False-flag terrorism[1] is how Putin got into power in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      What? You could repair the damage to the pipeline. If someone could replace Putin by promising to sell gas to the Germans, the fact that the pipeline is currently damaged would not be an obstacle. It's also not the case that Putin needs false flag terrorism. For one, he is already in power and has already started the war. Two, if he needed an example of US or Ukrainian forces blowing something up to galvanize his position - he has plenty of real world examples of Russian things getting destroyed - he doesn't need to manufacture a new one.
      - mopsi 4y ago
        It was damaged beyond repair, certainly beyond a quick repair. If the plan with gas extortion was to break the will of Europe over this winter, then no alternative to Putin could offer any relief after it was blown up, decreasing the value of backchannel negotiations.
- aredox 4y ago
  Do you think any US or Norwegian would say that Soltenberg is "the glove that fits America's hand"? (Hat tip to the Grugq for pointing out this weirdness)
- pphysch 4y ago
  > Why blow up a gas line but not sent ATACMS? Because the strategic goal is is not to militarily defeat Russia, which would probably be impossible, but to drive a hard geopolitical wedge between the EU and the rising Russia-Iran-India-China Eurasian multipolar order, and thereby secure EU dependence on Washington (rather than losing it to the gravitational pull of Eurasia). A limited proxy war, and blowing up economic links between the two, are two ways of achieving that.
  - notafraudster 4y ago
    It's not clear to me why Iran is a part of this multipolar order. It's true that the U.S. has backed Saudi Arabia/GCC and more or less taken the Sunni side in the Sunni-Shi'a split, but why is Iran considered an independent world power in the multipolar world but Saudi is not? In the same way, Cuba and Yugoslavia were not powers in a multipolar world in the 1960s just because they stood against a U.S. The hegemony but were nevertheless not explicitly owned by the Soviet Union. The U.S. definitely has an interest in an isolated and weak Russia, but the polarity of this situation is totally unclear. Isolating Russia has already empowered China. It may strengthen the EU and EU-central/eastern European ties, but it may also cause a further loss of influence in Africa and SE Asia for the west. It's definitely possible to make the math shake out for this to be strategically useful for the U.S., but I don't think it's as foregone a conclusion as you expect it is, and for that reason I don't see how this is any more likely an explanation than any contradicting explanation.
    - pphysch 4y ago
      Washington was on track to lose ALL of Eurasia to the inevitable force of China-Russia-led integration. So they opted to carve out the EU.
- marcusverus 4y ago
  > The context was sanctions and international condemnation, How odd that you would consider her second question--which wasn't directed at Biden--to be the relevant context for Biden's answer, and not the actual question that was posed to Biden! Watch the video.[1] The reporter asks Biden if he's received assurances that Germany will pull the plug on the project if Germany invades (then continues to pose a separate question to Sholz). Biden answered "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 put an end to it." Beyond that, his word choice only makes sense as a direct threat on the pipeline. It makes no sense as an oblique threat of sanctions or "international condemnation". > literally no one at the time, even the most Russophilic pundits and anti-imperialist tankies, interpreted this as a military threat. You don't remember headlines like "Biden warns "there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2" if Russia invades Urkaine"?[0] They were everywhere. [0] https://theweek.com/joe-biden/1009898/biden-warns-there-will-be-no-longer-a-nord-stream-2-if-russia-invades-ukraine https://theweek.com/joe-biden/1009898/biden-warns-there-will... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKoPA3M7x2o&t=610s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKoPA3M7x2o&t=610s
freitzkriesler2 4y ago
After years and years of dubious, "anonymous sources" literally making up claims, I have come to doubt the truthfulness of nearly anyone who claims something from an anonymous sources. Even if it is from a well regarded journalist. This is a consequence of how far the profession has fallen.
- pydry 4y ago
  Have you heard of Abu Ghraib? Most of his award winning journalism has relied upon anonymous sources. This is how it has always worked.
  - freitzkriesler2 4y ago
    Abu Ghraib was over 20 years ago mate. Journalists during Bush Jr's era were solid. Post Obama, the entire profession couldn't handle not being the under dog. And now we're paying the price with untrustworthy or outright made up "anonymous sources".
    - DeLeeuw 4y ago
      For what it's worth, the Washington Post at least doubts it was Russia (december 2022): https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/russia-nord-stream-explosions/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - pydry 4y ago
      And he got exactly the same reaction when he published the Abu Ghraib story. The Pentagon called it nonsense.
      - BryantD 4y ago
        That seems like a risky rubric. Are we to conclude that anything the Pentagon denies is true?
notinfuriated 4y ago
While the Seymour Hersh story seems unbelievable to me, so does the initial explanation that was being thrown around, that Russia did this as sabotage, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/nord-stream-russia-methane-leak-baltic-sea/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/nord-stream-.... The utter stupidity of that idea is along the sames lines as rhetoric, also present in OP, that Russia "weaponized" its gas pipelines. (To use that language, nearly anything can be a "weapon.") I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say that I won't take seriously anything that doesn't immediately address how insane those initial accusations, of Russian sabotage of its own pipelines, were.
- macintux 4y ago
  The idea that Russia would use it as a reminder that they could sabotage other pipelines doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
  - pydry 4y ago
    It is ridiculously far fetched. It was extremely expensive asset and provided a source of leverage. This is why the US publicly hated on the pipeline.
  - notinfuriated 4y ago
    Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons. Building a pipeline is not cheap, not in money or time or bureaucratic effort. It's easier to just stop supplying the gas if you want to make an obvious threat.
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      > Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons. They launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine while denying they were doing so and failed at every one of their military objectives while causing their economy to collapse due to the massive worldwide sanctions. What other evidence could you require?
throwaway4good 4y ago
This text doesn’t really disproof the Hersh story beyond nitpicking some details and incorrect use of technical languages. (Admittedly it would be hard to disprove; and it is the accuser that has the burden of proof.) However the big issue is the complete shutdown of media coverage and that the governments of Denmark, Sweden, and Germany all keep their investigations secret.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > Admittedly it would be hard to disprove; and it is the accuser that has the burden of proof. Not quite. Any person who makes an assertion either positive or negative has a burden of proof. This simple misunderstanding is one of the most dangerous beliefs out there if you ask me, and it is a broadly distributed belief.
- burkaman 4y ago
  "complete shutdown of media coverage" is completely false, there were many stories in major US outlets that explicitly called out the possibility that the US did it.
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    I meant now; there was obviously media coverage when it happened.
    - burkaman 4y ago
      I see. News organizations have a duty to corroborate claims like this before they publish them, so I would interpret the lack of coverage as other reporters being unable to verify anything he said. There is of course still some coverage though: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/prize-winning-reporter-seymour-hersh-no-stranger-controversy-2023-02-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/prize-winning-reporter-seym..., https://www.newsweek.com/did-joe-biden-attack-russias-nord-stream-pipelines-1779948 https://www.newsweek.com/did-joe-biden-attack-russias-nord-s..., https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-bombed-nord-stream-gas-pipelines-claims-investigative-journalist-seymour-hersh-s730dnnfz https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-bombed-nord-stream-gas...
createdapril24 4y ago
I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends". I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however. There are specific details that journalists can dig into in the future to find validating hard facts. This may ultimately press a government to cop up to involvement over time, once enough evidence has mounted. That's not to say there aren't possible false leads and inaccuracies in his report. For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen the author makes the strongest possible case that there's not merit to Hersh's argument - but for me it comes across as Sophomoric. In terms of who destroyed the pipeline it is clear that the United States, United Kingdom and Ukraine had strong motives - and the US and UK capability. It's difficult to read commentary that dismisses these motivations out of hand as outrageous. Or at least, I'm coming in with priors that significantly diverge from these commentators.
- pydry 4y ago
  >I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. Nobody much wanted to talk on the record about My Lai or Abu Ghraib when it happened either.
  - not2b 4y ago
    Seymour Hersh's sources for My Lai gave their names and went on the record. The soldiers who revealed it went on TV and testified before Congress. I'm pretty sure that he had additional anonymous sources, but to get it published he had to be able to back it up. Abu Ghraib was uncovered by Amnesty International and the international Red Cross and they had tons of photos.
  - JackFr 4y ago
    Really? People absolutely went on the record about My Lai.
censorship1111 4y ago
[flagged]
rexxxmi 4y ago
As long as this story remains uncofirmed by another party I'll continue to hold reservations. Still inconvlusive.
htwaterx 4y ago
While interesting, the author appears to be nitpicking. It does not really refute Hersh's story, because these minor inconsistencies appear in any news article, including the NYT. It is irrelevant whether Hersh gets all details right, the important thing is whether his source is correct on the big picture or not. It seems to me that the veracity of Hersh's claims cannot be decided by textual analysis, but rather by another investigative reporter who would travel for months to Florida, Norway, etc. and try to dig into the story. But who will finance that? Who would dare that?
- aredox 4y ago
  The source is wrong on very basic details. And the big picture of the story is nonsensical: 1) this is a very very very secret operation that Congress shouldn't be informed about, but a shitton of services - including foreign countries - were involved 2) they laid the mines during... A very public and documented military exercise. They certainly couldn't do it from a nondescript modified fishing vessel, no, they had to make it obvious it was them. But very very very secret operation indeed. This is just an idiot's idea of a secret military operation.
  - ClarityJones 4y ago
    These errors largely sound like obfuscation... like a potentially true narrative with the names and places changed: - Instead of revealing the fishing vessel, he describes a vessel that it couldn't have been. - Giving the real timing would expose the vessel, so he gives timing that wouldn't have worked as a placeholder. - Too many people were involved, because only a subset were actually involved - or maybe even just an analogous group. Hersh eliminates the intelligence value by obfuscating exactly who did what and how, but provides lay readers (to whom the specific details don't matter) a story that conveys a general sense of how the mission was achieved.
    - aredox 4y ago
      Oh yeah, it's so important to not expose the vessel! Grasping for straws, uh?
DeLeeuw 4y ago
Well, somebody blew up that pipeline. And the list of possible suspects is very short. Germany, Denmark and Sweden have not yet blamed Russia.
- aredox 4y ago
  One of the pipelines is still operational. Weird, eh?
  - DeLeeuw 4y ago
    Very weird. Would you volunteer a theory? (since that is probably all we can do for now).
    - aredox 4y ago
      I think you are smart enough to guess why, and infer who did it.
    - jboy55 4y ago
      I would say the operation went off as planned. The capacity to ship gas on Nord Stream 1 was cut, but luckily, the pipeline hadn't been in use for a month at the time. According to this site, https://berthub.eu/gazmon/ https://berthub.eu/gazmon/ , In March 2020, 100-150 GW of Gas went from Russia to EU, right before the pipeline cut, that had gone down to 50GW, and after the cut it dropped to 30GW. So the question is, what was the strategic effect for the US, Ukraine, and/or Russia to have done this? My take, its almost as good for Russia to play victim than it is for the US to cut Russia's Gas. It would be interesting to see how dominant this story was in Russia, given the Ukrainian advances in late 2022.
      - erentz 4y ago
        Russia had stopped gas flows on NordStream 1 26 days prior to the explosion [1]. This was after a series of reductions, stops, and restarts where they reduced flows and tried to get Germany to break sanctions to send parts. That they then ultimately rejected and wouldn't receive. E.g. [2]. When Germany offered the parts. They refused them, stopped NS1 entirely and offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [3] Germany refused and resisted the blackmail attempt. Then the explosion happened a couple of weeks later. After that Russia again offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [4] In this context, the US going ahead with the plan to demolish NS1, and leave NS2 50% operation makes zero sense. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-physical-flows/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-phys... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kremlin-says-gazprom-would-like-nord-stream-turbine-back-needs-documents-2022-08-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kremlin-says-gazprom... [3]: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-nord-stream-closed-energy-crisis/32022453.html https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-nord-stream-closed-energy-cris... [4]: https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-stream-2-germany-declines/a-63416138 https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-s...
labrador 4y ago
Some of the most prolific bull-shitters on the planet are people who claim to have been part of some secret military operation and have inside knowledge in great detail, hinting that they played a major role in the planning and execution. Anyone who served in the military knows this because these elaborate confabulations are the jam of a certain kind of military person. Seymour Hersh is older than my father (85). My father doesn't suffer from any brain diseases but he has definitely declined in mental acuity. Has Mr. Hersh considered retiring? Or can he back up his claims? I say this as someone who wouldn't be surprised if America was involved
- croes 4y ago
  Some of the greatest bull-shitters work for intelligence. Remember Curveball?
  - labrador 4y ago
    Right, with every nation running psy ops and disinformation campaigns, we're supposed to believe this guy (or gal): All the information in Hersh’s post reportedly comes from a single unnamed source, who appears to have had direct access to every step of the planning and execution of this highly secretive operation. It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic how people rush to believe things that confirm their preconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
pastacacioepepe 4y ago
Cui prodest? That's the only question that matters, the one people writing articles like this want you to ignore.
BWStearns 4y ago
To the people are saying "oh this is just nitpicking", it's not. Hersh's claims are extraordinary[0], and require if not extraordinary evidence, at least evidence that's not sloppy as hell. Given the subject matter it's completely reasonable that he could only have anonymous sources. But when you have anonymous sources then their information has to line up with reality. If it doesn't then you're either getting played or dealing with someone who has kind of lost it and maybe is exaggerating/misinterpreting information that they _do_ have access to. Getting basic claims wrong like the kind of boats involved, or the location of the attack, or the equipment required is disqualifying enough to disregard other more salacious claims. That all said: the US may very well have been behind it, but Hersh does nothing to prove that in his original article in light of the inconsistencies. [0] Not so extraordinary that we would blow up a pipeline, but that Biden would pull the silly "I'm-not-covert-actioning" word game. It's stupid and wouldn't shield him from accountability any more than just telling DevGru/DO(or whatever the abbreviation is now) not to tell gang of 8.
- DeLeeuw 4y ago
  Hersh' claims are not extraordinary. Someone blew up that pipeline. And the list of possible suspects is very, very short.
  - BWStearns 4y ago
    .... I devoted a footnote to clarifying this
swader999 4y ago
There was a P8 dropping a sonar bouy a few hours before the blast. Monkeywerx on YouTube has a few videos on that. Then there's Biden explicitly stating it would be no more and they would end it, also on YouTube.
- aredox 4y ago
  Wrong, it made a pass after the explosion. For a good reason. But here you are proclaiming that they used a plane, with its transponder on, to activate the bomb. A very very very secret operation indeed. Cloak and daggers! So much covert.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    If you can't trust monkeywerx on youtube to ferret out the secret plans, who can you trust? Importantly, Hersh claims there was a Norwegian Navy P8 that dropped the Sonobouy -- but the Norwegian Navy doesnt operate P8s, the Air Force does, and they don't have any actually flying yet - they won't be in service until 2023. The plane tracked by monkeywerx is a US Navy P8. That's a pretty important difference!
pdog 4y ago
The sheer number of rhetorical fallacies employed in the opening of this "takedown" inclines me to believe that Hersh's reporting is a largely accurate and truthful account. For example, stating that you could write "an entire post on the reasons why sounds entirely made up by someone with no real grasp of what that suggestion would actually technically entail" is a clear-cut appeal to ridicule[1] fallacy with no further elaboration. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule
- billjings 4y ago
  "The criticism is bad, therefore the claim must be true" certainly sounds like a rhetorical fallacy to me. Does it have a name?
  - Tycho 4y ago
    It’s a good heuristic.
    - billjings 4y ago
      It's dangerous to apply heuristics in political discourse without the inclusion of the element of reputation. Otherwise, you're vulnerable to adversarial techniques that flood the zone with garbage information. This kind of thing was everywhere in the Trump era: whether you were on the right or the left, you could easily navigate yourself into a space where all of your critics were random people who were obviously completely unhinged. They don't actually tell you that your position is all that great in any strict logical sense, but they certainly are emotionally affirming!
  - raphlinus 4y ago
    It's an instance of "argument from fallacy." This whole comment section is like a zoo of logical fallacies, with golden oldies such as ad hominem (both sides), false equivalence, and of course both-siderism well represented.
  - waffleiron 4y ago
AndyMcConachie 4y ago
If this guy wants me to believe him he needs to stop insulting Hersh. I appreciate the deep dive (get it) of this piece, and I appreciate his calling out what he believes to be bullshit. But I DO NOT appreciate the ad hominem attacks on Hersh.
- 0xDEF 4y ago
  He is Scandinavian so he might be offended by Hersh pushing unsourced lies accusing Norway of being state terrorists.
nkurz 4y ago
Good piece, and I think he points out some clear problems with the exact events that Hersh describes. I think the lack of a verifiable path for either the ship carrying divers or for the plane that supposedly dropped off the sonobuoy do make it less likely that Hersh's version actually happened. The author's conclusion is that this is because Hersh's source was making things up, but I think it's also compatible with someone who heard about the plan but didn't fully understand it. Or possibly, heard about it before it was finalized. Hopefully more details will come out. His closing question is "Why leave one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipelines intact"? I haven't seen it discussed much, but apparently there actually were 4 leaks, with one pipeline being damaged twice. One possible explanation would be that this was a mistake in the execution by whoever did this, with one pipeline somehow getting two explosives planted. Here's a Sept 22 article about the discover of the 4th leak: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fourth-leak-found-nord-stream-pipelines-swedish-coast-guard-says-2022-09-29/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fourth-leak-found-no...
- koheripbal 4y ago
  > a mistake in the execution by whoever did this, with one pipeline somehow getting two explosives planted This was my thought exactly. It's dark underwater, and it's often not clear which pipe is which
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  Why does the bombs have to go off immediately when the plane drops the signalling device? If you got through setting all this up, I am sure you can also figure out how to delay the explosion so there would be no obvious connection to a plane flying over.
  - mc32 4y ago
    Maybe to ensure a "bysailing" ship isn't accidentally damaged? Presumably a plan could detect a ship if it was near target and do a go around?
    - oh_sigh 4y ago
manimino 4y ago
When the evidence is thin, it's best to avoid committing to a belief either way, despite the temptation. Related Paul Graham essay, "Keep your identity small": http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- mistermann 4y ago
  I think Paul's advice in that post is best accompanied by reading Thinking Fast and Slow. There is a big difference between knowing something in theory and being able to actually practice it skilfully, and self-assessment in such things is always questionable.
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  Exactly. The most common US-culprit "evidence" brought up is Biden saying "we're going to put an end to Nordstream 2" on the eve of the Russian invasion, which happened immediately; no gas through Nordstream 2. Then there's no evidence in Hersh's piece, based on one anonymous source and a litany of outright fabrications (Jens Stoltenberg being "supreme commander of NATO", Norwegians hating russians??, P-8 not in Norwegian Navy service). On the other hand, there's no direct evidence of Russian involvement, only a history of bold-faced lying to us and blowing up their own pipeline. This realm is still in the land of almost zero evidence hearsay, and we just do not know yet.
api 4y ago
If the US did blow it up, then good work. It reduces Putin’s energy blackmail ability by just taking some of it off the table. It was kind of like shooting the hostage. I would not even consider it a scandal. It’s all Europe’s fault for making themselves energy dependents on a dictator.
- chii 4y ago
  > It was kind of like shooting the hostage. ... It’s all Europe’s fault for making themselves energy dependents on a dictator. You should not be chopping off the hands of an addict to prevent him from injecting himself with drugs.
debacle 4y ago
The reality is that we truly live in a post-truth world. Maybe we always have. When it comes to Ukraine, that means you can't trust anything. Any piece you read will have the taint of Ukrainian, American, or Russian propaganda. I gave up on trying to figure out what is really going on in this scenario a while back. Something is going on. There's definitely some deeper exchange happening. But I'll probably never know what.
- ShivShankaran 4y ago
  And most prime ministers and defence ministers of "allies" are resigning left and right. Something deeper is most likely that they don't want to be involved in this region conflict and be on leash of US. EU made the mistake of following US into middle east and syria which blew up in their face with millions of refugees pouring in. Getting involved in this RU-UKR war is the mistake to end all mistakes. There is no coming back from this. The world is polarized and EUR/USD is going to take a lot of pain. EUR was created to offset some of the leash that US had on Europe and that's also tightening now.
slt2021 4y ago
[flagged]
pphysch 4y ago
Sure, there are probably some holes/slight inaccuracies in Hersh's story. This particular "debunking" is mostly nitpicking. The tweet about the minesweeper path is a head-scratcher, because it sure looks like the boat slowed down/loitered near both blast sites. It is interesting that the White House, CIA, State Department, and establishment media class all found the need to promptly respond to what they characterized as a "blog post" and "conspiracy theory" from a "discredited former journalist". Thousands of such speculations are published every day on the internet, and the government does not find the need to respond. It is also interesting that none of the above government organizations volunteered an alternative explanation for who bombed their ally's critical infrastructure. You would think that the #1 intelligence service in the world would be able to offer some explanation on the matter, almost half a year later, to quell the speculation.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- InTheArena 4y ago
  Hersh is well connected to the Russian intelligence agencies and has been for his entire career, including before the recently very viable "Debunking" of his Syria story-line (another story that benefited Russia). He's publicly stated he is close friends with Scott Ritter, who recently called for Ukraine's "annihilation", and both are regular guests on propaganda organ RT. Hersh's previous activity played a key role in eliminating support for anti-Russian forces in Syria. Hundreds of thousands are dying in Ukraine right now. I think it's pretty obvious exactly why Russia would want want to pin these explosions on the USA, and why the USA would take steps to ensure the truth came out,
  - pphysch 4y ago
    What steps has the USA taken to ensure the truth came out? Please be specific. It's been months. > anti-Russian forces in Syria All-time euphemism for AQ/ISIS affiliates like HTS.
    - InTheArena 4y ago
paganel 4y ago
Of course that it's from Oliver Alexander. Apart from the NAFO minions and from that Paul Massaro lunatic one couldn't have found a less impartial source. Give me Jihadi Julian (who's also pro-Ukraine) one thousand times over this guy.
- nkurz 4y ago
  Can you say more about Alexander's direction of bias? I'm not familiar with him.
AlanYx 4y ago
There may be an incorrect statement regarding the Norwegian P-8 in the linked article. The author states that that "they won’t enter into active service until later this year", but the source the author links to doesn't actually make that claim. All it says is that the P-3s will keep flying until sometime in 2023, when the "P-8 is ready to take over". I don't think that implies that Norway doesn't already have some P-8s in active operation.
- edenceover 4y ago
  > I would like to believe that this is possible within a few months. Setting a specific date is difficult. But we are now trying to qualify the P-8 aircraft and crews for operational service from the end of the first quarter of 2023, confirms Rolf Folland, head of the Air Force to TV 2. Translated from this piece published in November 2022: https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/innenriks/settes-i-beredskap-raskere-enn-planlagt/15278906/ https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/innenriks/settes-i-beredskap-rask... So the planes were not in operational service at that time of the explosion.
  - AlanYx 4y ago
    Thanks. That sounds like it rules out the Norwegian P-8 claim.
    - heyda 4y ago
      Doesn't really rule out the P-8, apparently Norway has had P-8's since 2021, in order for an aircraft to be 'fully operational' you have to do training/exercises, fly the aircraft. If the Norwegian Air Force wanted to have the P-8 fully operational by Jan 30 2023, they had to have been flying sorties before then. https://www.arctictoday.com/norway-takes-delivery-of-boeing-p-8-submarine-hunter-aircraft/ https://www.arctictoday.com/norway-takes-delivery-of-boeing-...
      - nkurz 4y ago
        In confirmation, here's a press release saying that they have been making training flights with their P8's since June 22, with plans to make 2 flights a week: https://www-forsvaret-no.translate.goog/aktuelt-og-presse/aktuelt/det-er-spennende-tider-i-vente?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-forsvaret-no.translate.goog/aktuelt-og-presse/ak...
0xDEF 4y ago
The main problem with Hersh's claims is why the US/Norway would keep one of the two new NS2 lines intact? That line alone is big enough to meet Germany's domestic demands and according to Nord Stream AG one of the other lines received so little damage that they can fix it in a year or less.
- erentz 4y ago
  Let me also add these point that everyone seems to want to ignore: NordStream 2 was never put into service. Germany halted it due to the invasion. This was considered a very big deal. At the time of the explosion on 26 Sep there had been no gas flowing on NordStream 1 at all. None! Flows on NS1 were shutdown by Russia on 31 Aug. This came after a series of declining flows from Russia accompanied by various efforts by Russia to get Germany to violate sanctions and persuade other countries to reduce sanctions. It culminated in complete shut off of NS1 and an offer to instead activate NS2 before the explosion (one of those pipes was suspiciously left undamaged). Russia had been trying the blackmail that everyone feared, and Germany resisted it. I've bashed Germany a lot for it's response to the war but the fact is Germany got off Russian gas at huge costs and resisted the blackmail threat. Folks who don't believe this can go view the data in graph form here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-physical-flows/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-phys... Or Grab the raw data if you want: https://www.nord-stream.info/ https://www.nord-stream.info/ Germany gas imports from Russia: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-imports-from-russia/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-impor...
  - kubectl_h 4y ago
    > (one of those pipes was suspiciously left undamaged). You do not offer any reason for Russia to blow up three of four pipelines just to leave around one.
    - sschueller 4y ago
      Most likely because blowing up stuff under water requires a lot of skill and things can go wrong when you have fish and other wildlife around. I am sure they wanted all 4 destroyed.
travisgriggs 4y ago
I actually was drawn into reading this much more than the original article. I found myself going into skim mode with the original Hersh article. So ironically, I actually learned more about Hersh's claims reading this article than the original. I've worked with a bunch of old people of late. And I'm saying that from the reference point of 52. It's hard. I don't want to be an ageist. But I regularly see how hard it is to grow older. To do so gracefully scares the heck out of me. Some things are in your control, but it's increasingly a journey where the constitution of yourself slips out of your control. Some 85 year olds (Hersh's current age) are still sharp as a tack, but even then, the fight to still feel relevant is an uphill battle. It is hard for me to not be suspicious much of Hersh's vector here isn't hugely influenced by advancing years.
- 0xDEF 4y ago
  It's also a possibility that Hersh has been a victim of a bullshitter.
  - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    Or that Oliver Alexander is not a reporter, but a stenographer.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > I don't want to be an ageist Yet you felt compelled to cast aspersions on Hersh solely based on age.
  - travisgriggs 4y ago
    More like concerns
- aaron695 4y ago
  [dead]
- klrpa 4y ago
  [flagged]
trefoiled 4y ago
For anyone interested, there's more to the accusation of Stoltenberg's involvement with intelligence from a young age than the author of this article implies by dismissing it as ridiculous on its face.[1] Whether or not you find the linked narrative convincing is up to you, however. [1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/unlocked-young-78471711 https://www.patreon.com/posts/unlocked-young-78471711
- miguelazo 4y ago
  Given what camp Stoltenberg ended up in, and his family origins, this is highly plausible.
  - Phaedor 4y ago
    His family origins? You mean being the son of a politician who was staunchly against the vietnam war? To the point that he was honoured by the Vietnamese post war? https://vietnamnet.vn/en/ex-foreign-minister-of-norway-honoured-with-friendship-order-E166094.html https://vietnamnet.vn/en/ex-foreign-minister-of-norway-honou... The same Jens Stoltenberg who was against and protested the american war against Iraq from the beginning? As a Norwegian I have never voted for Jens Stoltenberg or his party, I am slightly more to the center in our politics. However I find the patreon article dishonest and completely speculative. It has no evidence whatsoever just tries to paint normal things in a conspiratorial light.
    - miguelazo 4y ago
      I'll agree that it does lack hard evidence, but it presents very important and relevant context about the groups that Jens was associated with at the time, and what became of those groups and him. What are the chances that some young person would change teams so suddenly and extremely? It's common for teenagers to pass through a rebellious phase, but the timing (of the reversion to daddy's team) here seems too abrupt, and the quick passage to the exact opposite position seems suspicious. The Patreon post also discusses how many other figures in that circle became double agents, which is highly relevant.
remote_phone 4y ago
I don’t care either way who blew up the pipeline but to me the biggest glaring reason why I don’t think it’s the US is because Russia did not retaliate in any meaningful way. Us peons are clueless about what happened but Russia knows and they would know if it was them. If it wasn’t them then it’s obvious who did It and escalating the war would be justified. The fact this didn’t happen to me suggests it was Russia all along.
- 9dev 4y ago
  This goes both way, however. If Russia used the incident as a justification for retaliation, they would make it easy for the US to play the innocent one and point the political finger to old enemy Russia - a believable story the rest of the west would have to support. The Defense industry profits either way.
- askheqybewq 4y ago
  Russia would only retaliate in a visible way if they played a tit-for-tat strategy. But that's not the only option. That's only how Americans think ("something HAS to be done right now, it doesn't matter if we end up punishing the wrong guy or the wrong country"). From the point of view of Russia, this is just yet another move in the much larger scale game of energy geopolitics. Russia's answer might not be to blow up some random pipeline in Alaska but to do many other things that will secure their energy contracts elsewhere, while harming its adversaries in the process.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
Wow...what a brilliant piece of propaganda. "I am unsure as to why all the intelligence officials in the initial planning meetings for the mission felt that the only possible way to sabotage the pipeline would be at the short section directly bordering Russia, instead of the large section in more favorable waters." I can think of one reason; to make it look more likely that Russia did it. And why oh why would Norway help??? I'll give you 263 billion reasons... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-16/norway-s-gas-bonanza-set-to-boost-already-gigantic-oil-fund https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-16/norway-s-... But no where doe the writer mention why Russia would do this to themselves.
ibobev 4y ago
It is interesting why this article is not banned from HN after Seymour Hersh's article was banned. :)
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  Consistency? Last one stayed up and so does this one. Looks right to me.
- ShivShankaran 4y ago
  [dead]
alienicecream 4y ago
Can someone explain why some people here are so agitated over a claim that the US did it? Is it hard to believe that US intelligence would do something like this? Besides, if you hate Russia then it's a good thing right?
- BWStearns 4y ago
  I'll speak not for, but as one of, the agitated. People are not agitated at the suggestion that the US did it. People are agitated because the claims are coming from Cy Hersh without remotely compelling evidence, who in the past decade or so has turned to spouting off unsubstantiated claims to carry water for Assad and Putin and shilling ridiculous Bin Laden theories and 9/11 trutherism. I'm personally agitated because a community that is generally pretty grounded in fact and falsifiability somehow turns into a bunch of edge lord schoolboys around certain foreign affairs subjects. And it comes from the "adults" in our industry (Elon and Sacks) modeling the behavior and a lot of people in our industry mirroring it back. I'm sick of innuendo being passed off as critical thinking. Innuendo is cheap evasive sleight of hand that pollutes the information space and encourages bad faith bullshit. /rant
  - alienicecream 4y ago
    So should everyone shut up until they have hard evidence to present? That doesn't sound like a very interesting way to live. Even in court circumstantial evidence is a valid form of evidence and plausible scenarios can be presented to try and convince. What is wrong with that?
    - BWStearns 4y ago
      If you don’t bother to fact check your evidence before making serious accusations then yes, one should shut up. Circumstantial evidence is still evidence yes, but this is just a bunch of shit that is observably false followed by salacious assertions. Presenting claims that are trivially falsifiable as true without bothering to apply skepticism because it plays into your favored narrative is not journalism. It’s whatever the hell Hersh is doing now.
erentz 4y ago
It’s interesting to me that dang overrode community moderation of this story [1] yesterday. Without having first even read it. A story that was based on an unverified anonymous source, by a discredited journalist, and which as we see now contained provably made up parts. Because dang overrode moderation, that literal fake news (fake as in actually made up) was allowed to hover on the front page for a long time and given a legitimacy it didn’t deserve. It was able to be seen by a very large audience over a very long time. Sadly an article that counters to that fake news makes it to the front page for a brief moment and after 3 hours is no on the 5th page. So many of those people that saw the first will never see the second and get the wrong idea. It’s the old story about a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes. Sadly to me that it was Hacker News that decided to actively help spread the lie. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305
- exolymph 4y ago
  Dang also constantly gets criticized for not overriding flags on stories. He has to make judgment calls and ultimately that's a flawed human process. He won't always get it right, and furthermore people will often disagree on which instances he messed up (or didn't).
- askheqybewq 4y ago
  >by a discredited journalist I'm French and I had never heard of that journalist. Can you share the link to the official list of discredited journalists so I know who not to trust going forward?
  - etc-hosts 4y ago
    I think the commenter is labelling Hersh a "discredited journalist". The discrediting part would be his recent articles on Syrian government complicity in chemical warfare attacks, his narrative of how the Bin Laden killing actually happened, and if the Russians actually poisoned the Skripals. But you probably knew all that and I have been concern trolled. Oh well, I try.
nortonham 4y ago
people always doubt Hersh but he's rarely wrong, and he has incredible sources. Btw, the US/NATO sabotaging that pipeline isn't exactly a crazy idea.
nostromo123 4y ago
Here in Central Europe there is a general tacit understanding that "of course it was the Americans". It just doesn't make sense to the people that Russia did it... what would it gain from this?
- usrusr 4y ago
  Crippling any "make money not war" faction that might build in Moscow. No path to money, no threat. An all-in commitment forced on the unwilling, and on the perhaps unwilling who might change their minds. And with a generous side of doubt and distrust in the West, particularly after that Biden remark. The list of possible universes we live in even includes one where Russia did it, but would not have done without that invitation.
Laaas 4y ago
Wrt. the claim about BALTOPS, https://sfn.nato.int/newsroom/news-archive/2022/lasting-mine-countermeasures-partnerships-built-during-baltops-22 https://sfn.nato.int/newsroom/news-archive/2022/lasting-mine... seems relevant: > Lasting Mine Countermeasures partnerships built during BALTOPS 22 > Experimentation on new types of unmanned underwater vehicles were also tested off the coast of Bornholm Island, Denmark during the exercise. Them having used mines in prior BALTOPS exercises doesn't necessarily preclude what Seymour noted. BALTOPS 22 _does_ seem to have been more mine-focused than usual, according to the article.
- klrpa 4y ago
  [flagged]
daxfohl 4y ago
Hersh's story sounds reasonable, but my question is who in this situation would leak it? Vietnam had thousands of kids drafted straight out of high school witnessing a massacre that might want to get something off their chest. Here you've got an elite strike team of military specialists hand picked for the mission to serve God and Country. What on earth would anybody involved here have to gain by leaking any of this, beyond a court martial and a bunch of strife for those you supposedly serve?
locallost 4y ago
I agree with his assessment that Hersh's story is so detailed and that it's a red flag. It was what I felt when reading it. Feeling something doesn't make it true of course. But ironically, I think there's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to make at least the jist of Hersh's story correct. The big thing for me is the near complete media silence. You'd think blowing up a huge piece of civilian infrastructure would stir up a bigger frenzy, but no. If we really did not know and it was plausibly Russia, it would get talked about a lot more.
kornhole 4y ago
Other discussion on this is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34821872#34825139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34821872#34825139

152 points by erentz 4y ago

It does seem like what happened is that Hersh got a legitimate source (probably in the US or Norwegian intelligence community) who was willing to talk about an existing plan for this kind of operation, and then spun it into a story just declaring that it happened that way. In point of fact probably every major player in the region had a plan like this. Nord Stream 2 was a huge football for everyone with interest. We just don't know who did it. Maybe we never will. But reporting on a plan doesn't tell us much of anything. My own opinion: I think it probably wasn't the US, simply because the Biden folks are being so cautious in so many other ways. I mean, you know this kind of thing will eventually get out. Why blow up a gas line but not sent ATACMS? Just doesn't make strategic sense. If we wanted to roll the dice and push harder there are so many more effective ways to do it. I still think the "Putin did it to silence internal dissent" theory sounds best. Could also be more hawkish European governments trying to keep the Germans from waffling. Edit to note: the fact that the two replies are immediately jumping back into the essentially false[1] "Biden said he would blow up Nord Stream 2" canard in response tells us how uninformative Hersh's story turns out to be. It's not proof of anything. [1] It was a statement in the press conference before the war started about possible consequences and responses. The context was sanctions and international condemnation, literally no one at the time, even the most Russophilic pundits and anti-imperialist tankies, interpreted this as a military threat.

akira2501 4y ago
> simply because the Biden folks are being so cautious in so many other ways. Biden said publicly they were going to "end it." The reporter who asked the question was even baffled and asked how they could make that claim when the pipeline was in foreign territory. Biden further confirmed that we would have a way to do it if needed. If they didn't do it, then that press conference and that answer was exceptionally incautious.
ALittleLight 4y ago
I think it's overwhelmingly obvious that the US, or US-aligned forces, were responsible. It's not clear to me who else even has a motive to do this. US has capable forces in the region at the time, a clear motive (remove the temptation for Germany to use the pipeline). The other possibilities are Russia, they could just turn off the pipeline rather than blow it up, Germany, they could just turn off their end of the pipeline without blowing it up, or... Ukraine, Poland, etc I count as "US-aligned" forces. Then, when you add in that Biden explicitly threatened unilaterally stopping the pipeline, and that threat was subsequently reiterated by the head of the State Department... I have to wonder what evidence would convince people that the US was probably behind the action.
- mopsi 4y ago
  > It's not clear to me who else even has a motive to do this. Putin. Blow up the pipeline so no-one can offer cheap gas in exchange for being recognized as the next legitimate leader of Russia behind his back. It's one of the simplest explanations and falls into the overall pattern. False-flag terrorism[1] is how Putin got into power in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    What? You could repair the damage to the pipeline. If someone could replace Putin by promising to sell gas to the Germans, the fact that the pipeline is currently damaged would not be an obstacle. It's also not the case that Putin needs false flag terrorism. For one, he is already in power and has already started the war. Two, if he needed an example of US or Ukrainian forces blowing something up to galvanize his position - he has plenty of real world examples of Russian things getting destroyed - he doesn't need to manufacture a new one.
    - mopsi 4y ago
      It was damaged beyond repair, certainly beyond a quick repair. If the plan with gas extortion was to break the will of Europe over this winter, then no alternative to Putin could offer any relief after it was blown up, decreasing the value of backchannel negotiations.
aredox 4y ago
Do you think any US or Norwegian would say that Soltenberg is "the glove that fits America's hand"? (Hat tip to the Grugq for pointing out this weirdness)
pphysch 4y ago
> Why blow up a gas line but not sent ATACMS? Because the strategic goal is is not to militarily defeat Russia, which would probably be impossible, but to drive a hard geopolitical wedge between the EU and the rising Russia-Iran-India-China Eurasian multipolar order, and thereby secure EU dependence on Washington (rather than losing it to the gravitational pull of Eurasia). A limited proxy war, and blowing up economic links between the two, are two ways of achieving that.
- notafraudster 4y ago
  It's not clear to me why Iran is a part of this multipolar order. It's true that the U.S. has backed Saudi Arabia/GCC and more or less taken the Sunni side in the Sunni-Shi'a split, but why is Iran considered an independent world power in the multipolar world but Saudi is not? In the same way, Cuba and Yugoslavia were not powers in a multipolar world in the 1960s just because they stood against a U.S. The hegemony but were nevertheless not explicitly owned by the Soviet Union. The U.S. definitely has an interest in an isolated and weak Russia, but the polarity of this situation is totally unclear. Isolating Russia has already empowered China. It may strengthen the EU and EU-central/eastern European ties, but it may also cause a further loss of influence in Africa and SE Asia for the west. It's definitely possible to make the math shake out for this to be strategically useful for the U.S., but I don't think it's as foregone a conclusion as you expect it is, and for that reason I don't see how this is any more likely an explanation than any contradicting explanation.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    Washington was on track to lose ALL of Eurasia to the inevitable force of China-Russia-led integration. So they opted to carve out the EU.
marcusverus 4y ago
> The context was sanctions and international condemnation, How odd that you would consider her second question--which wasn't directed at Biden--to be the relevant context for Biden's answer, and not the actual question that was posed to Biden! Watch the video.[1] The reporter asks Biden if he's received assurances that Germany will pull the plug on the project if Germany invades (then continues to pose a separate question to Sholz). Biden answered "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 put an end to it." Beyond that, his word choice only makes sense as a direct threat on the pipeline. It makes no sense as an oblique threat of sanctions or "international condemnation". > literally no one at the time, even the most Russophilic pundits and anti-imperialist tankies, interpreted this as a military threat. You don't remember headlines like "Biden warns "there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2" if Russia invades Urkaine"?[0] They were everywhere. [0] https://theweek.com/joe-biden/1009898/biden-warns-there-will-be-no-longer-a-nord-stream-2-if-russia-invades-ukraine https://theweek.com/joe-biden/1009898/biden-warns-there-will... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKoPA3M7x2o&t=610s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKoPA3M7x2o&t=610s

freitzkriesler2 4y ago

After years and years of dubious, "anonymous sources" literally making up claims, I have come to doubt the truthfulness of nearly anyone who claims something from an anonymous sources. Even if it is from a well regarded journalist. This is a consequence of how far the profession has fallen.

pydry 4y ago
Have you heard of Abu Ghraib? Most of his award winning journalism has relied upon anonymous sources. This is how it has always worked.
- freitzkriesler2 4y ago
  Abu Ghraib was over 20 years ago mate. Journalists during Bush Jr's era were solid. Post Obama, the entire profession couldn't handle not being the under dog. And now we're paying the price with untrustworthy or outright made up "anonymous sources".
  - DeLeeuw 4y ago
    For what it's worth, the Washington Post at least doubts it was Russia (december 2022): https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/russia-nord-stream-explosions/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pydry 4y ago
    And he got exactly the same reaction when he published the Abu Ghraib story. The Pentagon called it nonsense.
    - BryantD 4y ago
      That seems like a risky rubric. Are we to conclude that anything the Pentagon denies is true?

notinfuriated 4y ago

While the Seymour Hersh story seems unbelievable to me, so does the initial explanation that was being thrown around, that Russia did this as sabotage, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/nord-stream-russia-methane-leak-baltic-sea/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/nord-stream-.... The utter stupidity of that idea is along the sames lines as rhetoric, also present in OP, that Russia "weaponized" its gas pipelines. (To use that language, nearly anything can be a "weapon.") I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say that I won't take seriously anything that doesn't immediately address how insane those initial accusations, of Russian sabotage of its own pipelines, were.

macintux 4y ago
The idea that Russia would use it as a reminder that they could sabotage other pipelines doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
- pydry 4y ago
  It is ridiculously far fetched. It was extremely expensive asset and provided a source of leverage. This is why the US publicly hated on the pipeline.
- notinfuriated 4y ago
  Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons. Building a pipeline is not cheap, not in money or time or bureaucratic effort. It's easier to just stop supplying the gas if you want to make an obvious threat.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    > Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons. They launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine while denying they were doing so and failed at every one of their military objectives while causing their economy to collapse due to the massive worldwide sanctions. What other evidence could you require?

throwaway4good 4y ago

This text doesn’t really disproof the Hersh story beyond nitpicking some details and incorrect use of technical languages. (Admittedly it would be hard to disprove; and it is the accuser that has the burden of proof.) However the big issue is the complete shutdown of media coverage and that the governments of Denmark, Sweden, and Germany all keep their investigations secret.

mistermann 4y ago
> Admittedly it would be hard to disprove; and it is the accuser that has the burden of proof. Not quite. Any person who makes an assertion either positive or negative has a burden of proof. This simple misunderstanding is one of the most dangerous beliefs out there if you ask me, and it is a broadly distributed belief.
burkaman 4y ago
"complete shutdown of media coverage" is completely false, there were many stories in major US outlets that explicitly called out the possibility that the US did it.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  I meant now; there was obviously media coverage when it happened.
  - burkaman 4y ago
    I see. News organizations have a duty to corroborate claims like this before they publish them, so I would interpret the lack of coverage as other reporters being unable to verify anything he said. There is of course still some coverage though: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/prize-winning-reporter-seymour-hersh-no-stranger-controversy-2023-02-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/prize-winning-reporter-seym..., https://www.newsweek.com/did-joe-biden-attack-russias-nord-stream-pipelines-1779948 https://www.newsweek.com/did-joe-biden-attack-russias-nord-s..., https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-bombed-nord-stream-gas-pipelines-claims-investigative-journalist-seymour-hersh-s730dnnfz https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-bombed-nord-stream-gas...

createdapril24 4y ago

I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends". I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however. There are specific details that journalists can dig into in the future to find validating hard facts. This may ultimately press a government to cop up to involvement over time, once enough evidence has mounted. That's not to say there aren't possible false leads and inaccuracies in his report. For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen the author makes the strongest possible case that there's not merit to Hersh's argument - but for me it comes across as Sophomoric. In terms of who destroyed the pipeline it is clear that the United States, United Kingdom and Ukraine had strong motives - and the US and UK capability. It's difficult to read commentary that dismisses these motivations out of hand as outrageous. Or at least, I'm coming in with priors that significantly diverge from these commentators.

pydry 4y ago
>I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. Nobody much wanted to talk on the record about My Lai or Abu Ghraib when it happened either.
- not2b 4y ago
  Seymour Hersh's sources for My Lai gave their names and went on the record. The soldiers who revealed it went on TV and testified before Congress. I'm pretty sure that he had additional anonymous sources, but to get it published he had to be able to back it up. Abu Ghraib was uncovered by Amnesty International and the international Red Cross and they had tons of photos.
- JackFr 4y ago
  Really? People absolutely went on the record about My Lai.

censorship1111 4y ago

[flagged]

rexxxmi 4y ago

As long as this story remains uncofirmed by another party I'll continue to hold reservations. Still inconvlusive.

htwaterx 4y ago

While interesting, the author appears to be nitpicking. It does not really refute Hersh's story, because these minor inconsistencies appear in any news article, including the NYT. It is irrelevant whether Hersh gets all details right, the important thing is whether his source is correct on the big picture or not. It seems to me that the veracity of Hersh's claims cannot be decided by textual analysis, but rather by another investigative reporter who would travel for months to Florida, Norway, etc. and try to dig into the story. But who will finance that? Who would dare that?

aredox 4y ago
The source is wrong on very basic details. And the big picture of the story is nonsensical: 1) this is a very very very secret operation that Congress shouldn't be informed about, but a shitton of services - including foreign countries - were involved 2) they laid the mines during... A very public and documented military exercise. They certainly couldn't do it from a nondescript modified fishing vessel, no, they had to make it obvious it was them. But very very very secret operation indeed. This is just an idiot's idea of a secret military operation.
- ClarityJones 4y ago
  These errors largely sound like obfuscation... like a potentially true narrative with the names and places changed: - Instead of revealing the fishing vessel, he describes a vessel that it couldn't have been. - Giving the real timing would expose the vessel, so he gives timing that wouldn't have worked as a placeholder. - Too many people were involved, because only a subset were actually involved - or maybe even just an analogous group. Hersh eliminates the intelligence value by obfuscating exactly who did what and how, but provides lay readers (to whom the specific details don't matter) a story that conveys a general sense of how the mission was achieved.
  - aredox 4y ago
    Oh yeah, it's so important to not expose the vessel! Grasping for straws, uh?

DeLeeuw 4y ago

Well, somebody blew up that pipeline. And the list of possible suspects is very short. Germany, Denmark and Sweden have not yet blamed Russia.

aredox 4y ago
One of the pipelines is still operational. Weird, eh?
- DeLeeuw 4y ago
  Very weird. Would you volunteer a theory? (since that is probably all we can do for now).
  - aredox 4y ago
    I think you are smart enough to guess why, and infer who did it.
  - jboy55 4y ago
    I would say the operation went off as planned. The capacity to ship gas on Nord Stream 1 was cut, but luckily, the pipeline hadn't been in use for a month at the time. According to this site, https://berthub.eu/gazmon/ https://berthub.eu/gazmon/ , In March 2020, 100-150 GW of Gas went from Russia to EU, right before the pipeline cut, that had gone down to 50GW, and after the cut it dropped to 30GW. So the question is, what was the strategic effect for the US, Ukraine, and/or Russia to have done this? My take, its almost as good for Russia to play victim than it is for the US to cut Russia's Gas. It would be interesting to see how dominant this story was in Russia, given the Ukrainian advances in late 2022.
    - erentz 4y ago
      Russia had stopped gas flows on NordStream 1 26 days prior to the explosion [1]. This was after a series of reductions, stops, and restarts where they reduced flows and tried to get Germany to break sanctions to send parts. That they then ultimately rejected and wouldn't receive. E.g. [2]. When Germany offered the parts. They refused them, stopped NS1 entirely and offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [3] Germany refused and resisted the blackmail attempt. Then the explosion happened a couple of weeks later. After that Russia again offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [4] In this context, the US going ahead with the plan to demolish NS1, and leave NS2 50% operation makes zero sense. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-physical-flows/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-phys... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kremlin-says-gazprom-would-like-nord-stream-turbine-back-needs-documents-2022-08-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kremlin-says-gazprom... [3]: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-nord-stream-closed-energy-crisis/32022453.html https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-nord-stream-closed-energy-cris... [4]: https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-stream-2-germany-declines/a-63416138 https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-s...

labrador 4y ago

Some of the most prolific bull-shitters on the planet are people who claim to have been part of some secret military operation and have inside knowledge in great detail, hinting that they played a major role in the planning and execution. Anyone who served in the military knows this because these elaborate confabulations are the jam of a certain kind of military person. Seymour Hersh is older than my father (85). My father doesn't suffer from any brain diseases but he has definitely declined in mental acuity. Has Mr. Hersh considered retiring? Or can he back up his claims? I say this as someone who wouldn't be surprised if America was involved

croes 4y ago
Some of the greatest bull-shitters work for intelligence. Remember Curveball?
- labrador 4y ago
  Right, with every nation running psy ops and disinformation campaigns, we're supposed to believe this guy (or gal): All the information in Hersh’s post reportedly comes from a single unnamed source, who appears to have had direct access to every step of the planning and execution of this highly secretive operation. It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic how people rush to believe things that confirm their preconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)

pastacacioepepe 4y ago

Cui prodest? That's the only question that matters, the one people writing articles like this want you to ignore.

BWStearns 4y ago

To the people are saying "oh this is just nitpicking", it's not. Hersh's claims are extraordinary[0], and require if not extraordinary evidence, at least evidence that's not sloppy as hell. Given the subject matter it's completely reasonable that he could only have anonymous sources. But when you have anonymous sources then their information has to line up with reality. If it doesn't then you're either getting played or dealing with someone who has kind of lost it and maybe is exaggerating/misinterpreting information that they _do_ have access to. Getting basic claims wrong like the kind of boats involved, or the location of the attack, or the equipment required is disqualifying enough to disregard other more salacious claims. That all said: the US may very well have been behind it, but Hersh does nothing to prove that in his original article in light of the inconsistencies. [0] Not so extraordinary that we would blow up a pipeline, but that Biden would pull the silly "I'm-not-covert-actioning" word game. It's stupid and wouldn't shield him from accountability any more than just telling DevGru/DO(or whatever the abbreviation is now) not to tell gang of 8.

DeLeeuw 4y ago
Hersh' claims are not extraordinary. Someone blew up that pipeline. And the list of possible suspects is very, very short.
- BWStearns 4y ago
  .... I devoted a footnote to clarifying this

swader999 4y ago

There was a P8 dropping a sonar bouy a few hours before the blast. Monkeywerx on YouTube has a few videos on that. Then there's Biden explicitly stating it would be no more and they would end it, also on YouTube.

aredox 4y ago
Wrong, it made a pass after the explosion. For a good reason. But here you are proclaiming that they used a plane, with its transponder on, to activate the bomb. A very very very secret operation indeed. Cloak and daggers! So much covert.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  If you can't trust monkeywerx on youtube to ferret out the secret plans, who can you trust? Importantly, Hersh claims there was a Norwegian Navy P8 that dropped the Sonobouy -- but the Norwegian Navy doesnt operate P8s, the Air Force does, and they don't have any actually flying yet - they won't be in service until 2023. The plane tracked by monkeywerx is a US Navy P8. That's a pretty important difference!

pdog 4y ago

The sheer number of rhetorical fallacies employed in the opening of this "takedown" inclines me to believe that Hersh's reporting is a largely accurate and truthful account. For example, stating that you could write "an entire post on the reasons why sounds entirely made up by someone with no real grasp of what that suggestion would actually technically entail" is a clear-cut appeal to ridicule[1] fallacy with no further elaboration. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule

billjings 4y ago
"The criticism is bad, therefore the claim must be true" certainly sounds like a rhetorical fallacy to me. Does it have a name?
- Tycho 4y ago
  It’s a good heuristic.
  - billjings 4y ago
    It's dangerous to apply heuristics in political discourse without the inclusion of the element of reputation. Otherwise, you're vulnerable to adversarial techniques that flood the zone with garbage information. This kind of thing was everywhere in the Trump era: whether you were on the right or the left, you could easily navigate yourself into a space where all of your critics were random people who were obviously completely unhinged. They don't actually tell you that your position is all that great in any strict logical sense, but they certainly are emotionally affirming!
- raphlinus 4y ago
  It's an instance of "argument from fallacy." This whole comment section is like a zoo of logical fallacies, with golden oldies such as ad hominem (both sides), false equivalence, and of course both-siderism well represented.
- waffleiron 4y ago

AndyMcConachie 4y ago

If this guy wants me to believe him he needs to stop insulting Hersh. I appreciate the deep dive (get it) of this piece, and I appreciate his calling out what he believes to be bullshit. But I DO NOT appreciate the ad hominem attacks on Hersh.

0xDEF 4y ago
He is Scandinavian so he might be offended by Hersh pushing unsourced lies accusing Norway of being state terrorists.

nkurz 4y ago

Good piece, and I think he points out some clear problems with the exact events that Hersh describes. I think the lack of a verifiable path for either the ship carrying divers or for the plane that supposedly dropped off the sonobuoy do make it less likely that Hersh's version actually happened. The author's conclusion is that this is because Hersh's source was making things up, but I think it's also compatible with someone who heard about the plan but didn't fully understand it. Or possibly, heard about it before it was finalized. Hopefully more details will come out. His closing question is "Why leave one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipelines intact"? I haven't seen it discussed much, but apparently there actually were 4 leaks, with one pipeline being damaged twice. One possible explanation would be that this was a mistake in the execution by whoever did this, with one pipeline somehow getting two explosives planted. Here's a Sept 22 article about the discover of the 4th leak: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fourth-leak-found-nord-stream-pipelines-swedish-coast-guard-says-2022-09-29/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fourth-leak-found-no...

koheripbal 4y ago
> a mistake in the execution by whoever did this, with one pipeline somehow getting two explosives planted This was my thought exactly. It's dark underwater, and it's often not clear which pipe is which
throwaway4good 4y ago
Why does the bombs have to go off immediately when the plane drops the signalling device? If you got through setting all this up, I am sure you can also figure out how to delay the explosion so there would be no obvious connection to a plane flying over.
- mc32 4y ago
  Maybe to ensure a "bysailing" ship isn't accidentally damaged? Presumably a plan could detect a ship if it was near target and do a go around?
  - oh_sigh 4y ago

manimino 4y ago

When the evidence is thin, it's best to avoid committing to a belief either way, despite the temptation. Related Paul Graham essay, "Keep your identity small": http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

mistermann 4y ago
I think Paul's advice in that post is best accompanied by reading Thinking Fast and Slow. There is a big difference between knowing something in theory and being able to actually practice it skilfully, and self-assessment in such things is always questionable.
reducesuffering 4y ago
Exactly. The most common US-culprit "evidence" brought up is Biden saying "we're going to put an end to Nordstream 2" on the eve of the Russian invasion, which happened immediately; no gas through Nordstream 2. Then there's no evidence in Hersh's piece, based on one anonymous source and a litany of outright fabrications (Jens Stoltenberg being "supreme commander of NATO", Norwegians hating russians??, P-8 not in Norwegian Navy service). On the other hand, there's no direct evidence of Russian involvement, only a history of bold-faced lying to us and blowing up their own pipeline. This realm is still in the land of almost zero evidence hearsay, and we just do not know yet.

api 4y ago

If the US did blow it up, then good work. It reduces Putin’s energy blackmail ability by just taking some of it off the table. It was kind of like shooting the hostage. I would not even consider it a scandal. It’s all Europe’s fault for making themselves energy dependents on a dictator.

chii 4y ago
> It was kind of like shooting the hostage. ... It’s all Europe’s fault for making themselves energy dependents on a dictator. You should not be chopping off the hands of an addict to prevent him from injecting himself with drugs.

debacle 4y ago

The reality is that we truly live in a post-truth world. Maybe we always have. When it comes to Ukraine, that means you can't trust anything. Any piece you read will have the taint of Ukrainian, American, or Russian propaganda. I gave up on trying to figure out what is really going on in this scenario a while back. Something is going on. There's definitely some deeper exchange happening. But I'll probably never know what.

ShivShankaran 4y ago
And most prime ministers and defence ministers of "allies" are resigning left and right. Something deeper is most likely that they don't want to be involved in this region conflict and be on leash of US. EU made the mistake of following US into middle east and syria which blew up in their face with millions of refugees pouring in. Getting involved in this RU-UKR war is the mistake to end all mistakes. There is no coming back from this. The world is polarized and EUR/USD is going to take a lot of pain. EUR was created to offset some of the leash that US had on Europe and that's also tightening now.

slt2021 4y ago

[flagged]

pphysch 4y ago

Sure, there are probably some holes/slight inaccuracies in Hersh's story. This particular "debunking" is mostly nitpicking. The tweet about the minesweeper path is a head-scratcher, because it sure looks like the boat slowed down/loitered near both blast sites. It is interesting that the White House, CIA, State Department, and establishment media class all found the need to promptly respond to what they characterized as a "blog post" and "conspiracy theory" from a "discredited former journalist". Thousands of such speculations are published every day on the internet, and the government does not find the need to respond. It is also interesting that none of the above government organizations volunteered an alternative explanation for who bombed their ally's critical infrastructure. You would think that the #1 intelligence service in the world would be able to offer some explanation on the matter, almost half a year later, to quell the speculation.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
InTheArena 4y ago
Hersh is well connected to the Russian intelligence agencies and has been for his entire career, including before the recently very viable "Debunking" of his Syria story-line (another story that benefited Russia). He's publicly stated he is close friends with Scott Ritter, who recently called for Ukraine's "annihilation", and both are regular guests on propaganda organ RT. Hersh's previous activity played a key role in eliminating support for anti-Russian forces in Syria. Hundreds of thousands are dying in Ukraine right now. I think it's pretty obvious exactly why Russia would want want to pin these explosions on the USA, and why the USA would take steps to ensure the truth came out,
- pphysch 4y ago
  What steps has the USA taken to ensure the truth came out? Please be specific. It's been months. > anti-Russian forces in Syria All-time euphemism for AQ/ISIS affiliates like HTS.
  - InTheArena 4y ago

paganel 4y ago

Of course that it's from Oliver Alexander. Apart from the NAFO minions and from that Paul Massaro lunatic one couldn't have found a less impartial source. Give me Jihadi Julian (who's also pro-Ukraine) one thousand times over this guy.

nkurz 4y ago
Can you say more about Alexander's direction of bias? I'm not familiar with him.

AlanYx 4y ago

There may be an incorrect statement regarding the Norwegian P-8 in the linked article. The author states that that "they won’t enter into active service until later this year", but the source the author links to doesn't actually make that claim. All it says is that the P-3s will keep flying until sometime in 2023, when the "P-8 is ready to take over". I don't think that implies that Norway doesn't already have some P-8s in active operation.

edenceover 4y ago
> I would like to believe that this is possible within a few months. Setting a specific date is difficult. But we are now trying to qualify the P-8 aircraft and crews for operational service from the end of the first quarter of 2023, confirms Rolf Folland, head of the Air Force to TV 2. Translated from this piece published in November 2022: https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/innenriks/settes-i-beredskap-raskere-enn-planlagt/15278906/ https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/innenriks/settes-i-beredskap-rask... So the planes were not in operational service at that time of the explosion.
- AlanYx 4y ago
  Thanks. That sounds like it rules out the Norwegian P-8 claim.
  - heyda 4y ago
    Doesn't really rule out the P-8, apparently Norway has had P-8's since 2021, in order for an aircraft to be 'fully operational' you have to do training/exercises, fly the aircraft. If the Norwegian Air Force wanted to have the P-8 fully operational by Jan 30 2023, they had to have been flying sorties before then. https://www.arctictoday.com/norway-takes-delivery-of-boeing-p-8-submarine-hunter-aircraft/ https://www.arctictoday.com/norway-takes-delivery-of-boeing-...
    - nkurz 4y ago
      In confirmation, here's a press release saying that they have been making training flights with their P8's since June 22, with plans to make 2 flights a week: https://www-forsvaret-no.translate.goog/aktuelt-og-presse/aktuelt/det-er-spennende-tider-i-vente?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-forsvaret-no.translate.goog/aktuelt-og-presse/ak...

0xDEF 4y ago

The main problem with Hersh's claims is why the US/Norway would keep one of the two new NS2 lines intact? That line alone is big enough to meet Germany's domestic demands and according to Nord Stream AG one of the other lines received so little damage that they can fix it in a year or less.

erentz 4y ago
Let me also add these point that everyone seems to want to ignore: NordStream 2 was never put into service. Germany halted it due to the invasion. This was considered a very big deal. At the time of the explosion on 26 Sep there had been no gas flowing on NordStream 1 at all. None! Flows on NS1 were shutdown by Russia on 31 Aug. This came after a series of declining flows from Russia accompanied by various efforts by Russia to get Germany to violate sanctions and persuade other countries to reduce sanctions. It culminated in complete shut off of NS1 and an offer to instead activate NS2 before the explosion (one of those pipes was suspiciously left undamaged). Russia had been trying the blackmail that everyone feared, and Germany resisted it. I've bashed Germany a lot for it's response to the war but the fact is Germany got off Russian gas at huge costs and resisted the blackmail threat. Folks who don't believe this can go view the data in graph form here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-physical-flows/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-phys... Or Grab the raw data if you want: https://www.nord-stream.info/ https://www.nord-stream.info/ Germany gas imports from Russia: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-imports-from-russia/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-impor...
- kubectl_h 4y ago
  > (one of those pipes was suspiciously left undamaged). You do not offer any reason for Russia to blow up three of four pipelines just to leave around one.
  - sschueller 4y ago
    Most likely because blowing up stuff under water requires a lot of skill and things can go wrong when you have fish and other wildlife around. I am sure they wanted all 4 destroyed.

travisgriggs 4y ago

I actually was drawn into reading this much more than the original article. I found myself going into skim mode with the original Hersh article. So ironically, I actually learned more about Hersh's claims reading this article than the original. I've worked with a bunch of old people of late. And I'm saying that from the reference point of 52. It's hard. I don't want to be an ageist. But I regularly see how hard it is to grow older. To do so gracefully scares the heck out of me. Some things are in your control, but it's increasingly a journey where the constitution of yourself slips out of your control. Some 85 year olds (Hersh's current age) are still sharp as a tack, but even then, the fight to still feel relevant is an uphill battle. It is hard for me to not be suspicious much of Hersh's vector here isn't hugely influenced by advancing years.

0xDEF 4y ago
It's also a possibility that Hersh has been a victim of a bullshitter.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  Or that Oliver Alexander is not a reporter, but a stenographer.
drewcoo 4y ago
> I don't want to be an ageist Yet you felt compelled to cast aspersions on Hersh solely based on age.
- travisgriggs 4y ago
  More like concerns
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
klrpa 4y ago
[flagged]

trefoiled 4y ago

For anyone interested, there's more to the accusation of Stoltenberg's involvement with intelligence from a young age than the author of this article implies by dismissing it as ridiculous on its face.[1] Whether or not you find the linked narrative convincing is up to you, however. [1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/unlocked-young-78471711 https://www.patreon.com/posts/unlocked-young-78471711

miguelazo 4y ago
Given what camp Stoltenberg ended up in, and his family origins, this is highly plausible.
- Phaedor 4y ago
  His family origins? You mean being the son of a politician who was staunchly against the vietnam war? To the point that he was honoured by the Vietnamese post war? https://vietnamnet.vn/en/ex-foreign-minister-of-norway-honoured-with-friendship-order-E166094.html https://vietnamnet.vn/en/ex-foreign-minister-of-norway-honou... The same Jens Stoltenberg who was against and protested the american war against Iraq from the beginning? As a Norwegian I have never voted for Jens Stoltenberg or his party, I am slightly more to the center in our politics. However I find the patreon article dishonest and completely speculative. It has no evidence whatsoever just tries to paint normal things in a conspiratorial light.
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    I'll agree that it does lack hard evidence, but it presents very important and relevant context about the groups that Jens was associated with at the time, and what became of those groups and him. What are the chances that some young person would change teams so suddenly and extremely? It's common for teenagers to pass through a rebellious phase, but the timing (of the reversion to daddy's team) here seems too abrupt, and the quick passage to the exact opposite position seems suspicious. The Patreon post also discusses how many other figures in that circle became double agents, which is highly relevant.

remote_phone 4y ago

I don’t care either way who blew up the pipeline but to me the biggest glaring reason why I don’t think it’s the US is because Russia did not retaliate in any meaningful way. Us peons are clueless about what happened but Russia knows and they would know if it was them. If it wasn’t them then it’s obvious who did It and escalating the war would be justified. The fact this didn’t happen to me suggests it was Russia all along.

9dev 4y ago
This goes both way, however. If Russia used the incident as a justification for retaliation, they would make it easy for the US to play the innocent one and point the political finger to old enemy Russia - a believable story the rest of the west would have to support. The Defense industry profits either way.
askheqybewq 4y ago
Russia would only retaliate in a visible way if they played a tit-for-tat strategy. But that's not the only option. That's only how Americans think ("something HAS to be done right now, it doesn't matter if we end up punishing the wrong guy or the wrong country"). From the point of view of Russia, this is just yet another move in the much larger scale game of energy geopolitics. Russia's answer might not be to blow up some random pipeline in Alaska but to do many other things that will secure their energy contracts elsewhere, while harming its adversaries in the process.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

Wow...what a brilliant piece of propaganda. "I am unsure as to why all the intelligence officials in the initial planning meetings for the mission felt that the only possible way to sabotage the pipeline would be at the short section directly bordering Russia, instead of the large section in more favorable waters." I can think of one reason; to make it look more likely that Russia did it. And why oh why would Norway help??? I'll give you 263 billion reasons... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-16/norway-s-gas-bonanza-set-to-boost-already-gigantic-oil-fund https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-16/norway-s-... But no where doe the writer mention why Russia would do this to themselves.

ibobev 4y ago

It is interesting why this article is not banned from HN after Seymour Hersh's article was banned. :)

reducesuffering 4y ago
Consistency? Last one stayed up and so does this one. Looks right to me.
ShivShankaran 4y ago
[dead]

alienicecream 4y ago

Can someone explain why some people here are so agitated over a claim that the US did it? Is it hard to believe that US intelligence would do something like this? Besides, if you hate Russia then it's a good thing right?

BWStearns 4y ago
I'll speak not for, but as one of, the agitated. People are not agitated at the suggestion that the US did it. People are agitated because the claims are coming from Cy Hersh without remotely compelling evidence, who in the past decade or so has turned to spouting off unsubstantiated claims to carry water for Assad and Putin and shilling ridiculous Bin Laden theories and 9/11 trutherism. I'm personally agitated because a community that is generally pretty grounded in fact and falsifiability somehow turns into a bunch of edge lord schoolboys around certain foreign affairs subjects. And it comes from the "adults" in our industry (Elon and Sacks) modeling the behavior and a lot of people in our industry mirroring it back. I'm sick of innuendo being passed off as critical thinking. Innuendo is cheap evasive sleight of hand that pollutes the information space and encourages bad faith bullshit. /rant
- alienicecream 4y ago
  So should everyone shut up until they have hard evidence to present? That doesn't sound like a very interesting way to live. Even in court circumstantial evidence is a valid form of evidence and plausible scenarios can be presented to try and convince. What is wrong with that?
  - BWStearns 4y ago
    If you don’t bother to fact check your evidence before making serious accusations then yes, one should shut up. Circumstantial evidence is still evidence yes, but this is just a bunch of shit that is observably false followed by salacious assertions. Presenting claims that are trivially falsifiable as true without bothering to apply skepticism because it plays into your favored narrative is not journalism. It’s whatever the hell Hersh is doing now.

erentz 4y ago

It’s interesting to me that dang overrode community moderation of this story [1] yesterday. Without having first even read it. A story that was based on an unverified anonymous source, by a discredited journalist, and which as we see now contained provably made up parts. Because dang overrode moderation, that literal fake news (fake as in actually made up) was allowed to hover on the front page for a long time and given a legitimacy it didn’t deserve. It was able to be seen by a very large audience over a very long time. Sadly an article that counters to that fake news makes it to the front page for a brief moment and after 3 hours is no on the 5th page. So many of those people that saw the first will never see the second and get the wrong idea. It’s the old story about a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes. Sadly to me that it was Hacker News that decided to actively help spread the lie. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305

exolymph 4y ago
Dang also constantly gets criticized for not overriding flags on stories. He has to make judgment calls and ultimately that's a flawed human process. He won't always get it right, and furthermore people will often disagree on which instances he messed up (or didn't).
askheqybewq 4y ago
>by a discredited journalist I'm French and I had never heard of that journalist. Can you share the link to the official list of discredited journalists so I know who not to trust going forward?
- etc-hosts 4y ago
  I think the commenter is labelling Hersh a "discredited journalist". The discrediting part would be his recent articles on Syrian government complicity in chemical warfare attacks, his narrative of how the Bin Laden killing actually happened, and if the Russians actually poisoned the Skripals. But you probably knew all that and I have been concern trolled. Oh well, I try.

nortonham 4y ago

people always doubt Hersh but he's rarely wrong, and he has incredible sources. Btw, the US/NATO sabotaging that pipeline isn't exactly a crazy idea.

nostromo123 4y ago

Here in Central Europe there is a general tacit understanding that "of course it was the Americans". It just doesn't make sense to the people that Russia did it... what would it gain from this?

usrusr 4y ago
Crippling any "make money not war" faction that might build in Moscow. No path to money, no threat. An all-in commitment forced on the unwilling, and on the perhaps unwilling who might change their minds. And with a generous side of doubt and distrust in the West, particularly after that Biden remark. The list of possible universes we live in even includes one where Russia did it, but would not have done without that invitation.

Laaas 4y ago

Wrt. the claim about BALTOPS, https://sfn.nato.int/newsroom/news-archive/2022/lasting-mine-countermeasures-partnerships-built-during-baltops-22 https://sfn.nato.int/newsroom/news-archive/2022/lasting-mine... seems relevant: > Lasting Mine Countermeasures partnerships built during BALTOPS 22 > Experimentation on new types of unmanned underwater vehicles were also tested off the coast of Bornholm Island, Denmark during the exercise. Them having used mines in prior BALTOPS exercises doesn't necessarily preclude what Seymour noted. BALTOPS 22 _does_ seem to have been more mine-focused than usual, according to the article.

klrpa 4y ago
[flagged]

daxfohl 4y ago

Hersh's story sounds reasonable, but my question is who in this situation would leak it? Vietnam had thousands of kids drafted straight out of high school witnessing a massacre that might want to get something off their chest. Here you've got an elite strike team of military specialists hand picked for the mission to serve God and Country. What on earth would anybody involved here have to gain by leaking any of this, beyond a court martial and a bunch of strife for those you supposedly serve?

locallost 4y ago

I agree with his assessment that Hersh's story is so detailed and that it's a red flag. It was what I felt when reading it. Feeling something doesn't make it true of course. But ironically, I think there's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to make at least the jist of Hersh's story correct. The big thing for me is the near complete media silence. You'd think blowing up a huge piece of civilian infrastructure would stir up a bigger frenzy, but no. If we really did not know and it was plausibly Russia, it would get talked about a lot more.

kornhole 4y ago

Other discussion on this is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34821872#34825139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34821872#34825139