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“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

seymourhersh.substack.com

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Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no longer an Enron, either. No one blew up their headquarters to do it.

Enron's accounting department kind of did, not physically but still.

> not physically but still

That's precisely the point, isn't it?

"We will put an end to X" does not mean "we will physically blow up X". Pretending Biden had an "oops, we're gonna do a terrorist attack against Russian and German infrastructure and I said it out loud at a press conference!" moment and that there's no other legitimate explanation for the statement is just goofy.

Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#322
post #290

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…

> Now that the Western sanctions are strangling Russian economy - if Gazprom wanted to come back to European market - they would be first greeted by billions of dollars of contract charges in arbitration courts. This is not merely hypothetical. Uniper, one of Gazproms biggest customers in Europe, is already suing for $12 billion in damages. And that is only one of many former customers. https://www.reuters.com/busine…

It’s probably worth adding here that according to a quick google search - the cost of Nordstream2 project is $11B. So one might imagine that the costs of potential repairs are negligible in comparison.

Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#323
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's interesting. Hersh reporting on it is an interesting story in its own right. Is what he says true? I have no idea. We don't have a truth meter here.

> Because it's interesting No. It's interesting to you .

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that you can't take the human being out of the moderator, nor would it be good to try. No in the sense that I'm not moderating HN just according to my personal interests—it would be very different if I did. As a matter of fact, I spend every day denying my own preferences about HN. That doesn't make me objective (far from it), but I do at least have a lot of practice.

It's a matter of striking a balance: holding space for what the community finds interesting* while allowing for a certain amount of idiosyncracy and unpredictability, but not too much. Without that, things would be more humdrum and therefore less interesting. There are tradeoffs along every conceivable axis with this thing.

* (note: community is not the same as commenters because most readers don't comment)

Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#324
Looks like the only 100% benefactor of this is Ukraine. Russia now must pump all its gas to Europe through Ukraine. And they are already at war with Russia, so there is no risk of escalation. And they have pulled other impressive stunts no one believed were possible, like Moscow cruiser, Kerch bridge, Engels airport. They kept it secret because didn't want to alienate Germany.

Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#325
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you haven’t read the article but are choosing to interfere with the ranking. Why ?

I've answered that question repeatedly in this thread already. If you read those comments and have a question I haven't addressed, I'd like to know what it is. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34712496

The HN guidelines are clear about political topics.

Is there a change to the guidelines and should we expect you to not override the ranking system for opposing view points.

Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could you humor me: if he came out saying Russians blew up the pipeline, would you have the same stance? These tensions have been brewing between NATO (mostly America) and Russia for at least a decade. It's unfortunate that the situation escalated in Ukraine though, which AFAIK is the victim in the scheming and plotting of those two powers. I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it seems like tha…

> These tensions have been brewing between NATO (mostly America) and Russia for at least a decade. It's unfortunate that the situation escalated in Ukraine though, which AFAIK is the victim in the scheming and plotting of those two powers. As a person from Eastern Europe this is literal Russian propaganda or in simple words - dogshit. You know why somebody like Baltic countries wanted to get in NATO? Because Russia w…

why is this downvoted/flagged?

Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#328
It is bewildering how many here are against this post staying up; no matter whether it's true or not, it's an interesting article! If you feel it is not true, why take it down rather than simply state your opinion in the comments? Do we not have the freedom to discuss and form our own opinions about it?

Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This gatekeeping is ridiculous It is not gatekeeping to demand that extraordinary claims are backed up by evidence. And there is an absence of evidence here.

It is nothing but gatekeeping if you are requesting the removal of a post that many consider interesting (the only threshhold it needs to cross).

Re: “How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

#330
It might be true. But the story rests on the following premise:

*Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”

The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. [...]'

This glosses over the legal fact that the President can't just carry out military operations and then never mention them again, not least on the grounds that someone needs to be in the loop in case the executive branch suffers some catastrophic attack. As far as I am aware, 10 USC 130f still requires that Congress be notified of sensitive military operations within 48 hours: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/130f

I don't see where Hersh addresses this aspect of the legal environment, he just waves it away. Of course, it could be that Congress notified but only a small number of sufficiently serious members with the capacity to keep their mouths firmly shut, but the article doesn't seem to contemplate that possibility.

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