601–610 of 1001 posts
The fact that this story has been allowed to live on HN's front page for so long has really knocked my confidence in the forum and its moderators. I thought HN had taken an enlightened stance on avoiding juicy topics like this since they clearly lead to lots of useless speculation and uncritical thinking. They are a net drain on community health. This story does not belong on HN. I think I can say that even if it tur…
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https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi... goes over how his more recent work verges on conspiracy theory. That even that inconsistent Bin Laden story purportedly relied on two distinct sources, and yet his Nord Stream story purportedly relies on only a single anonymous source, should be a significant red flag here. I have no reason to doubt that Hersh heard the quotes in his Nord Stream story fr…
> were not independently verified even, by his own admission, by Hersh. And that's just... not credible reporting since by his own admission, [what you said], that is credible reporting. it might not be a credible source or story
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"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…
There are plenty of credible motives for Russia to do this (some even listed in this thread), but they are all just as weakly supported as this theory.
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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.
That being said, Woodward and Bernstein didn't publish verbatim what Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat) told them; they used his tips as starting points to look for corroborating evidence, which they published to great accolade.
The WaPo and other mainstream media were also institutions of far more integrity at that time: their mission was to publish truth regardless of the implications, and they weren't under the kind of pressure the press is under today. Also, society (and media outlet owners) trusted truth itself to result in societal good far more than they do today.
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Putin was already effectively doing that, by demanding payment in rubles and making weird terms. If Putin wanted to shut down Nordstream, he'd just stop sending gas. What was Europe going to do, sanction him more? I can see the US doing it as they've been vocal opponents to nordstream since its inception, I can see Ukraine wanting to do it although I doubt they'd have the resources, might also have been some other ro…
The "Putin did it" hypothesis was that he did it to prevent internal replacement. Suppose that some Russian rival wanted to replace him. They could kill or imprison Putin, end the war in Ukraine, restart the gas pipelines, and have a lot of gas money from Europe to distribute to supporters. Destroying the pipelines removed the potential reward for an internal rival to replace him.
Not a few hours later, 17 hours apart. No military is going to arrange for two pipes in the same general area to be destroyed 17 hours apart. 17 hours to find the second floating sonar device. 17 hours to get caught with your pants down. I'm saying this as former US military here. the Idea that in the middle of a OPORD, of any kind, POTUS would come in last minute and change a detail, like an explosive on a timer (fa…
Setting aside how legally questionable that premise sounds, especially because the entire rest of the article is full of references to the involvement of clandestine organizations beyond "Navy only", Hersh then goes on to describe an operation apparently involving an absolute clown car full of a bunch of other people including 3 foreign countries, at least some people running a major NATO exercise, and what sounds like half the Norwegian Navy. Operations so secret you can't tell 8 Congressional leaders (as required by law) but you can tell Norway, Denmark, and Sweden about do not sound like a thing.
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At that moment in the war, even Putin had a lot of strong motivations -- lock out the option of bringing Nord Stream back online and close to door on de-escalation. As a side-benefit, the possibility of driving a wedge into NATO. I also found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713402 interesting. Who knows.
Putin was already effectively doing that, by demanding payment in rubles and making weird terms. If Putin wanted to shut down Nordstream, he'd just stop sending gas. What was Europe going to do, sanction him more? I can see the US doing it as they've been vocal opponents to nordstream since its inception, I can see Ukraine wanting to do it although I doubt they'd have the resources, might also have been some other ro…
Indeed, Nordstream hadn't been running gas for about a month at the time of the explosions. (Indeed, Nordstream 2 also never ran gas). That is critically useful information for assessing who had motive to blow up the pipeline, yet everyone speculating on the matter seems to assume that it was being used at the time of explosion.
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> 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. That's why there were several explosions: Everyone was blowing it up at the same time, unbeknownst of each other's plans.
Semi related darkly humorous daydream: what are the odds of two unrelated school shooters at the same school on the same day?
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…
Just flagged this in the hopes that you'll reconsider. It's no secret that Hersh's work has become increasingly suspect in recent years. Every time he writes, he cites a single anonymous source and yet manages to go into an implausible level of detail and completeness with neatly tied up loose ends you'd only expect to find in a Tom Clancy novel. The only reason this story has been rescued from the dustbin is due to…
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That option disappeared when Russia invaded Ukraine, not when the pipeline was blown up (at least if you rate human life over economics). Nobody should buy anything from a regime like Putin's Russia.
It's fine to buy gas from the USA, the butchers of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yugoslavia though?