461–470 of 1001 posts
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…
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…
It doesn't make sense that Russia would blow up their own pipeline. They can't blackmail Europe with gas if there's no pipeline to supply the gas. And force majeure? That's pretty far-fetched. Why would Russia care about financial penalties? This is the country that effectively stole over 400 airliners by refusing to return them when the leases were terminated.
I disagree, but assuming this were true, that'd mean doing so would offer an opportunity to sow discord amongst the allied nations. Like cops telling a suspect "your buddy confessed already".
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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 str…
> community is not the same as commenters because most readers don't comment Do you have stats on what percent of regular HN readers have ever commented on any story? Or are stats more like, for every 100 readers of a story, 1 will comment on that story ? To put another way: if I read 100 stories and comment on 1, would I be counted as lurking 99 times and posting 1? Basically, I'm curious if engagement is lopsided t…
I think it was something like 1% of total readers and 5% of logged-in readers but I'd have to check again to be sure.
> The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology. Once in place, the delayed timing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be accidentally triggered by the complex mix of ocean background noises throughout the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea—from near and distant ships, underwa…
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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.
Salt water entering the pipeline can damage more than just the single length of pipe that has the hole in it, so fixing it is can be uneconomical.
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…
Thanks dang. I'm glad HN has moderators that make calls like.
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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, signal…
People say “but the gas companies” but that’s just an immature conspiracy fairy tale that projects far, far too much power into the hands of but one corporate constituency among many.
The simple answer is that Russia did it. And since gas was never coming back online anyway might as well blow it up and cause chaos. It also helped further made sure that Russian energy companies wouldn’t go behind Putin’s back thinking if they depose him they can sell oil again.
This is not exactly the view of the Swedish navy here in Sweden. No Russian submarine has ever been “forced to the surface” in Swedish waters to the best of my knowledge [1]. The only case where the Swedish navy claimed they had proof of a foreign submarine it turned out to probably be minks and herrings.
1. Closest case I’m aware of is Soviet submarine U137 that ran aground on the Swedish east coast due to navigation error.