231–240 of 1001 posts
Can someone explain why would they blow up inoperational pipeline that Germany even said is not planning to operate in near future? And if they would have remote explosive wouldn't it make more sense to explode it in the moment of starting the pipeline to make it look more like an accident?
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This gatekeeping is ridiculous. This is the same guy who unveiled the atrocities that occured during the My Lai massacre and at Abu Ghraib, both of which painted the US Gov/military in a terrible light. This is an actual case of speaking truth to power. He clearly (and rightfully IMO) does not trust the US government and his "somewhat questionable" and recent work has continued that trend. Is it any surprise that the…
That’s not good enough. No level of reputation or historical track record should exempt anyone from the basic responsibility of providing evidence for claims they make.
I'm not sure. Bloomberg and Reuters are two media outlets who regularly release information while only citing anonymous sources and not releasing any evidence.
Just posting proofster.png [1] doesn't undo America's long history of doing weird stuff to achieve its goals. Thinking about funding terrorism in Cuba, backdooring all electronic communication ever or saying that your President did not have a stroke.
Also, someone posted further down in the comments that the White House has a history of discrediting witnesses and questioning motives. [2] Interestingly enough, it appears to me that this tactic engages citizens to follow the ad hominem attacks of their policymakers, although they don't gain anything from doing so. Maybe this dynamic is even more interesting than the article itself because the causes of this crime are only for history books. America got what it wanted anyway, and nothing will change that.
All: Whether he is right or not or one likes him or not, Hersh reporting on this counts as significant new information ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... ), so I've turned off the flags on this submission. If you're going to comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidlelines ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) and note this one: " Comments should…
What's with the question mark in the title? Hersh certainly doesn't frame this as a question. Unless it's a miskey of some kind which sounds like the most plausible explanation.
Edit 2: I've replaced the question mark with quotation marks following a suggestion by bee_rider: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713987.
-- original comment: --
We sometimes add a question mark when a title makes a dramatic and divisive claim, because otherwise readers who read the title might think that HN (or its admins) are somehow endorsing the claim. We don't know what the truth is and are neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the claim.
Edit: I dug up a few other examples where we've done this:
This is the year of the RSS reader? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34105572
Anthropology in Ruins? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34049130
The great Covid and smoking cover-up? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33869176
The basic idea is that adding a question is a flame retardant because it tends to dampen the meta-comments about the story, e.g. complaints that the admins are taking a side or whatnot.
In this case it's not really working, because the question mark is also generating lots of meta-comments. But maybe fewer than we'd get without it.
Meta comment of my own: it's not only impossible to please everyone with moderation calls like this—it's seemingly impossible to please anyone. That's why it's really helpful to have a first principle to rely on—i.e. to know what you're optimizing for. It occasionally makes it possible to answer an otherwise hard question rather easily.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
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He's lost his credibility over the years. Which is likely why this didn't get published by NY Times. It's long but after reading this ask why you would believe this man who, in this new article, is making plenty of assertions all based on quotes from a single anonymous source. https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi...
Suppose this story was written by a "credible" reporter. Do you think NYT's Foreign Editors would allow it to be published? Would it pass the national security screening?
If someone had an inside source on deep background with evidence of an American cover-up? Hell yes they would. And if they wouldn't, the Journal would pay a premium.
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Why don't we just properly view the gas reductions for what they are - a form of sanctioning?
Kremlin sanctioned themselves? Or are you presenting the suspension of gas supplies to Europe by Russia as a sort of “retaliatory sanctions”? That’s fine of course, it’s like North Korea cutting off themselves from the world and starving as a way to punish the world for interfering in its internal matters as they relate to nuclear weapons.
It's a great story, but it's all unsourced and could be a decent Tom Clancy story at best. You could probably write a similar one with Russia or German agents as the key players and be just as convincing. The only anchor in reality appears to be Biden suggesting that they knew how to take it out which seems like a pretty weak place to build a large story. What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears…
"You could probably write a similar one with Russia ..." I disagree - there is no credible motive here for Russia and, in fact, the outcome was directly opposed to every outcome they are, or were trying, to achieve. Not only do I, as a US citizen, believe that the US perpetrated this act but further: I believe it is an overtly hostile action against EU citizens and, particularly, Germans, who will suffer the most eco…
In the scenario where America did it, I think there is a strong argument to be made that it was in the long-term interests of EU citizens, despite causing them some short-term discomfort. They never should have started this pipeline project in the first place, buying energy from Russia made the EU weak. Breaking that relationship permanently will make the EU stronger.
Why was there a questionmark added to the title? It's against the site rules
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If anyone else had written this, would it be significant? Wouldn't it just be written off as a conspiracy theory that provides little to no evidence for its claims? If the only thing that gets this on HN is Seymour Hersh's reputation (which has lately become somewhat questionable) then you might want to reconsider. Plus, the quality of the comments has not been very good so far.
No, I don't think it would be. Hersh is inevitably part of the story because of his historical significance and the network of government sources that he's cultivated for decades. It doesn't follow that his claims are true (even if he's accurately reporting, his sources must have their own agendas). That's why I added the question mark to the title above. The story being on HN doesn't imply anything about that—only t…
Gazprom, Russian gas monopoly, has on Kremlin’s orders first threatened to, and then suspended gas supplies to Europe in an attempt to blackmail it to stop supporting Ukraine under a threat of, as they put it, “freezing Europe”. In the process unilaterally breaking existing delivery contracts. There were no Western sanctions targeting Russian gas - it was entirely a political operation initiated by Russian government…
Why don't we just properly view the gas reductions for what they are - a form of sanctioning?
An unsubstantiated story that’s presented as if it’s fact doesn’t really belong on Hacker News. The fact the submission has to be edited to include a question mark when the source material does not is an implicit admission of such by the moderation team. Why it hasn’t been removed I have no idea.
I think the story belongs on HN because I know a little bit about the historical significance of Seymour Hersh and I think the appearance of this story is intellectually interesting. Maybe I'm the only commenter who feels that way, since most appear only to want to score points for their pre-existing political side, but it's our job to serve the intellectual interest of the larger audience, most of whom don't comment.
Re the question mark in titles, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713747. This is a longstanding practice and has nothing to do with the topic.