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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”

#411

Post by abracadaniel »

ttctciyf wrote: post #354
anigbrowl wrote: post #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.”…

I wonder what Biden was referring to when he stated > "If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." > When asked how, the president says, "I promise you, we will be able do that." (C-SPAN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8 )

Considering the context was about sanctions, and no one at the time thought he was suggesting he would blow it up, then it’s not reasonable to try to retroactively change the context.

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

#412

Post by dang »

jsnell wrote: post #405
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…

Huh, I would have said that a question mark is nowhere near enough. Your stance seems to be that this unsourced conspiracy theory is a story worth discussing because, and only because, it is Seymor Hersh making the claim. Then make that clear in the title: "Seymor Hersh claims America took down Nord Stream", or something. It goes against the standard HN practice of stripping out any such attribution from the title, b…

Hersh's name is in the domain next to the title, and we've always treated that as an implicit part of titles.

Edit: I've put quotation marks up there now, as explained in the GP.

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

#413

Post by spoiler »

ohmaigad wrote: post #274
spoiler wrote: post #209

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…

Maybe you're right. I honestly don't know. But I only have so much time in a day to veryfy everything. I'm talking from memory of course, but this Ukraine invasion didn't "come out of the blue" AFAIK.

Here's a collection of sources compiled by someone on Quora. I dont know how biased or accurate this person is. However, there were other instances that made me think this isn't so black-and-white or "clean" as I'd like it to be.

https://www.quora.com/If-Putin-is-indeed-the-real-aggressor-...

A lot of the sources he used are from Ukranian websites so you might need to run them through Google Translate. Some are from reputable (for at least some definition of reputable) western media outlets like CNN, BBC, NYT, etc.

The embedded vidoes don't seem to work in Chrome (they just disappear when I click them) so I've extracted the link for one of them here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 - Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer, uploaded by The University of Chicago

Other videos are shorter clips to prove a point, but if anyone's interested they can see the video ID in the embedded image URL when inspecting the element.

Again, maybe this is all dogshit like you say, but I find that too dismissive of the facts presented.

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

#414

Post by dang »

bee_rider wrote: post #275
dang wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713747

Odd, haven’t seen titles like this before. It seems like a weird policy, to change headlines in a manner that is misleading if parsed following normal English grammar rules. And especially to only apply that rule in controversial cases. If the goal is to make it clear that the claim is not endorsed by HN, why not something like AuthorName: “This is clearly a quote because it is in quotation marks”

We do quotation marks sometimes too, and that's actually maybe a good idea here, so I'll add them. Thanks!

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

#415

Post by josephb »

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.

If you're a supporter of someones work in general, it should be far easier to just ignore what you perceive to be a mistake or blemish, and just move on.

The soon the better you do X, is quite an authoritative stance to take.

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

#416

Post by mzs »

dang wrote: post #366
anigbrowl wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because of his historical significance and the network of government sources that he's cultivated for decades This seems a little partial and hard to implement consistently. Can we assume the same metric will be applied to every Robert Woodward story, or any of many single-sector journalists with a lengthy track record, such as Radley Balko who has spent years writing about policing? I also don't think adding a quest…

Ok, that last bit is a good point - I'll take out the question mark. Thanks! Re your other question, the answer is somewhere in the space demarcated by (1) yes, (2) we'll try, (3) moderation consistency is impossible, (4) we're always open to reader input. (I'm sorry that I'm responding in shorthand but I'm being inundated atm)

if you insist:

Seymour Hersh's unnamed source on how America took out the Nord Stream pipeline

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

#417

Post by VincentEvans »

joe_the_user wrote: post #401
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…

Russia is a brutal dictatorship engaging in a war of aggression against the Ukraine and using natural gas as weapon in it's war. But is that a reason to not to address or even mention the topic of the post, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline? I mean, are implicitly saying that covert act was justified? If people believe that, they should say it. One of the worst effects of war is an attitude of "not only is…

You seem to be pretty convinced that US is behind it, where I am not so much.

I wouldn’t presume to know if destruction of the pipeline is justified if you look at it from Russian perspective, if they are responsible, but I can volunteer a few motives why they might be:

- an attempt to introduce a force majeure factor into any future contract disagreements

- an attempt at escalating the seriousness of threats, signalling “we aren’t backing down”

- an attempt to drive a wedge between allies by implicating a sabotage behind ones backs. US vs Germany etc.

… or a little of all of the above.

One of the key strategies employed by Russia in the conflict - is a periodic display of belligerence bordering on unhingement. I think Russia being behind it fits the MO.

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

#418

Post by IshKebab »

partiallypro wrote: post #56
cpursley wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely does. Blowing up the pipeline took away Russias ability to hold the EU hostage with the energy card.

The pipeline was already not operational. What are you missing? If you think the US had a profit motive (which it seems you are saying this), NATO is much much more profitable than gas which will be diversified over time. So why would they risk the entire NATO alliance for this? Again, the theory makes no sense.

There's a huge difference between "off" and "destroyed".

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

#419

Post by dang »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #410
dang wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Maybe just rename to "Seymour Hersh: How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline". The unique new info is that Seymour Hersh has reported such-and-such.

That information is in the domain name next to the title, which we treat as part of the title.

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

#420

Post by trwhanh »

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…

I question this theory. Russia had already throttled NS 1 and was playing games with the turbine certification.

I'm not so sure that they would have had to pay damages. It is true that they were pressuring Germany to certify NS 2 (one explanation is that NS 1 had long term contracts whereas NS 2 would have been higher spot prices).

But the danger of NS 2 certification would also support the U.S. involvement theory.

To all others who focus on NS and Germany: There are a multitude of Russian pipelines through Poland and Ukraine that are still operating. Ukraine collects transit fees for Russian gas as we speak.

So the theory that the attempt was to destroy specifically German/Russian relations, which had been a stated goal of U.S. foreign policy for decades, is pretty solid.

I don't expect much from the Swedish investigation. Another such investigation was the sinking of the MS Estonia. Figures like Carl Bildt (who is now a war hawk) went on to the RAND corporation. Sweden will do what the U.S. prescribes.

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