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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”

#391

Post by ROTMetro »

pillefitz wrote: post #345
twoquestions wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. If this is true and more evidence comes out, the usual suspects will be screaming it from the rooftops, if not this narrative will die in obscurity. There's been a lot of misinformation about this war, and a bunch of people who for a variety of reasons want to blame the US for it and are willing to believe some incredible things if they support that narrative.

It's really not far fetched to believe the US did it - or any Eastern European country, for that matter.

It's really not fat fetched to believe the US didn't do it. Check and mate to your powerful argument.

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

#392

Post by mrguyorama »

itsoktocry wrote: post #367
torstenvl wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dan, I respectfully ask you to reconsider. This is a poorly-sourced speculative piece of propaganda and clearly goes against site guidelines. You repeat, above, that HN is not for nationalist flamewar, and requires substance. But this post is nationalist flamewar and isn't substantive. Allowing it while shutting down similar content from the opposite perspective is... unsettling.

Honest question: what about this story seems so far-fetched to you that you can't give the author the benefit of the doubt? There are decades of such intelligence goings-on.

Benefit of the doubt about reporters with a good track record trusting anonymous sources is also kind of how we ended up looking for WMDs in the desert and murdering a bunch of people who did nothing wrong over the course of 20 years so maybe we should hold up a bit.

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

#393

Post by dang »

nindalf wrote: post #180
dang wrote: post #34

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…

Dan there’s no sugarcoating this - you’ve got it wrong on this one. I say this as a supporter of your moderation policies in general. The sooner you reverse this decision, the better for everyone.

That's certainly possible! But I would need to hear an argument about why, which actually addresses the reasons I've given in my responses in this thread. So far I haven't heard that. In fact, no one seems to have even tried (maybe I missed it amid the inundation - I've been trying and failing to keep up for a couple hours now).

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

#394

Post by oezi »

ttctciyf wrote: post #381
oezi wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the Europeans, Biden miscalculated that income via Nordstream would be crucial to Russia. Nobody would have predicted that the Russians are so crazy to cut off Europe on their own in an attempt to force them (Germany in particular) into submission. Alas that didn't work as European customers saved on Gas and shouldered the increase in cost.

Prima facie, in the context of Hersh's story, it sounds a lot like there's a plan to blow up the pipeline, doesn't it? I'm anticipating there are more plausible explanations of what his words "We will bring an end to it" might refer to, and was hoping replies might provide them.

Bringing an end to it can just imply calling chancellor Scholz and making it clear to close the pipelines. Germany could have stopped receiving Gas if they were pressured to.

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

#395

Post by lossolo »

History repeats itself.

> In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.

> At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/r...

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

#396

Post by outside1234 »

dang wrote: post #34

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…

It seems like your comment is actually an argument for why this should have been flagged?

This easily could be a Russian psyop -- and even if it isn't -- it is definitely political and a potential flamewar. Totally lost here

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

#397

Post by VincentEvans »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #364
VincentEvans wrote: post #176

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…

> Kremlin has miscalculated Europe has also had a very mild winter, so luck played a nontrivial role. > Now that the Western sanctions are strangling Russian economy I'm very curious about how Western sanctions are affecting the Russian economy (I understand that you're speaking narrowly to Gazprom, but I'm asking about the Russian economy more broadly). My understanding is that Putin has spent the better part of the…

Russian attempts to withstand the economic pressure of sanctions have been successful insofar as to prevent a collapse, but the pressure is crushing on all aspects of the economy, as well as any hopes for Russia for economic and industrial development. Brain drain, loss of foreign investment, technology imports, diminishing consumer activity, falling real estate markets - are just some of the headwinds that are in effect outside the energy sanctions.

The budget revenue deficit for just the January of this year exceeds the deficit for the entirety of 2022. Russia has reserves that it can employ for the time being to mitigate some of the damage, but they are not bottomless. If the pace of losses continues in a similar manner - most of the reserves will be exhausted by years end.

After that - one might expect the usual tools to be employed - cutting budgets to pay for civil workers (everyone other than security), pensions etc, attempts to raise money from already struggling businesses via wartime taxes, issuance of wartime bonds to population to borrow cash, and if all fails - start printing money to plug the budgetary shortfalls, and the resulting inflation.

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

#398

Post by dang »

threeseed wrote: post #317
dang wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: I took out the question mark in response to anigbrowl making the point that it's confusing things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34714493 . 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 otherw…

> are somehow endorsing the claim You are endorsing the claim when you override the ranking system and allow opposing views to be flagged and thus never appear for balance.

Not so—nor the claims that anthropology is in ruins, that this is the year of the RSS reader, or anything about covid and smoking. At this point I'm starting to wonder what's hard to understand about this.

Re flagging: that's supposed to be for comments that break the site guidelines. If you (or anyone) see a comment that breaks the site guidelines and isn't flagged, or a comment that is flagged and doesn't break the site guidelines, remember that we don't come close to seeing everything, and that you can always let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. It's best to only do that in egregious cases though. For non-egregious cases, it's best to remember that consistency in moderation is impossible and not sweat the small stuff.

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

#399

Post by MilaM »

rsync wrote: post #207
mmastrac wrote: post #97

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…

As a German citizen let me tell you, hardly anyone here is angry that the pipelines are gone. No one is even talking about Nord Stream anymore. When Gazprom stopped the gas flows in July 2022, it was abundandly clear, that the deliveries would not resume in the foreseable future. In a way, blowing up the pipelines made things easier, because the government and the industry could fully focus on reorganizing energy procurement, without being needlessly entangled in hypothetical discussions about what could have been. Even if Russia wanted to resume selling gas to Western Europe sometime in the future, there is still plenty of capacity in the remaining pipelines through Belarus and Poland, as well as Ukraine. They are fully operational and currently either not used at all (Yamal pipeline), or operating at a very low capacity (Transgas).

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

#400

Post by nkozyra »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #364
VincentEvans wrote: post #176

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…

> Kremlin has miscalculated Europe has also had a very mild winter, so luck played a nontrivial role. > Now that the Western sanctions are strangling Russian economy I'm very curious about how Western sanctions are affecting the Russian economy (I understand that you're speaking narrowly to Gazprom, but I'm asking about the Russian economy more broadly). My understanding is that Putin has spent the better part of the…

> Europe has also had a very mild winter, so luck played a nontrivial role.

Luck always plays a nontrivial role in risk.

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