“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline” • Hacker News Board

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

#731

Post by klrls » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 1:51 AM UTC

bandyaboot wrote: post #726

htrgh wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taibbi, who is active on Substack, confirms using his verified Twitter account: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1623352901111517185 Reuters reported on it, the White House bothered to refute the story. It is Hersh.

Have you seen the White House refutation somewhere other than in the piece which is the subject of the questioning you’re responding to? If not, that’s a null point.

Yes, and it is trivial to find:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-blog-post-...

Are people try to derail this story by flooding the submission with innocent questions?

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

#732

Post by mlindner » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

LarryMullins wrote: post #18

syzarian wrote: post #2

Seymour doesn’t provide any proof or any evidence. It’s argument by assertion. What he writes is plausible but without any sources or other corroborating evidence. I think it more believable that Seymour has been paid to write this by a Russian aligned entity. I don’t know the truth of the matter and Seymour could be right. We just can’t tell from the evidence provided.

Seymour Hersh has a very credible background and reputation. Assuming he is still lucid in his age, hasn't become a senile puppet of a ghost writer, then it would be foolish to write off his claims just because he isn't telling you who his source is.

Seymour Hersh is also 85 years old, long into his retirement with likely partially declining faculties. When you get older your "bullshit filter" starts to go away as well. Also he has a long career of attacking the US government so anything that "rhymes" with that is going to fit his own confirmation bias.

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

#733

Post by ravi-delia » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 1:54 AM UTC

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #527

ravi-delia wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It claims that the info came from someone "with direct knowledge of the operational planning"

And it includes direct quotes from that person in the last paragraphs. It was clearly someone Hersh spoke to directly. While I am extraordinarily distrustful of news reports using anonymous sources you do have to consider the author here. Ultimately we are deciding if we trust him and, for me personally, he lends a lot of credibility. The other side of this is, duh, of course America blew up the pipeline. I said at t…

When it happened it was clear that the US, Russia, and Poland were likely the only suspects, except they're all really weird! The US absolutely has not made return on investment, which was obviously going to happen because shipping it over is much more expensive than the pipeline, and in the meantime Biden has to deal with increased gas prices. His incentives go the other way on this. But why the fuck would Russia do it? Poland is like...there, which is why they're worth a mention, but they don't have the same operational capacity and also do not benefit from it at all. But I mean come on, we know it was sabotaged deliberately. Such a weird thing

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

#734

Post by lmm » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 1:54 AM UTC

k1m wrote: post #529

archagon wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the community decides. By flagging. Which was, in this case, ignored by fiat. Moreover, the article has little to do with tech and has obviously loaded statements such as this: > From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance. If we can’t filter out misinformation and propaganda, we are screwed as a community. ( Is this misinforma…

> Is this misinformation/propaganda? Maybe, maybe not, but false positives are better in cases like this than false negatives. You question people's motivation when it comes to submissions. Why not when it comes to flagging? Does it foster intellectual curiousity to flag a story by a renowned investigative journalist? In any case, what's surprising to me here is the reaction to dang's reasonable justification for dis…

> what's surprising to me here is the reaction to dang's reasonable justification for disabling the flags on this story

It doesn't seem so reasonable. It seems bizarre, frankly. It's utterly out of line with (what I percieve to be) the whole history of HN moderation on this kind of subject.

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

#735

Post by bandyaboot » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 1:58 AM UTC

klrls wrote: post #731

bandyaboot wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the White House refutation somewhere other than in the piece which is the subject of the questioning you’re responding to? If not, that’s a null point.

Yes, and it is trivial to find: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-blog-post-... Are people try to derail this story by flooding the submission with innocent questions?

No. Question asked and answered. Thanks.

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

#736

Post by newsclues » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 1:58 AM UTC

boplicity wrote: post #693

drewda wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seymour Hersh has decades of credibility from reporting the My Lai Massacre to the abuses at Abu Graib. But he does often rely on sources who remain anonymous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Use_of_anonymous... I did find it interesting in that Wikipedia article to read that The New Yorker's editor insists on knowing the identify of all of the anonymous sources that Hersh has used when his reporting is p…

What makes you think this was even written by Seymour Hersh?

matt taibbi confirmed it on twitter.

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

#737

Post by Teever » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #679

GAN_Game wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tried to deny the US killed bin Laden If he denied the US killed bin Laden he would be unreliable. He never denied the US killed bin Laden. You saying he said that is what is unreliable. He said that some of the White House and Pentagon assertions about bin Laden, which the New York Times did not question in the days after (but did question, to some extent, later on) were not accurate. Particularly that no one high…

The alleged "compound" of bin Laden was located less than a mile from PMA Kakul [0]. So there was at least one odd thing about this event: would we expect that the world's most wanted terrorist could live across the street from USMA West Point for five years, without the government knowing? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden%27s_compound_i...

Your question makes me wonder if they even bothered to check areas around US domestic military bases for OBL.

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

#738

Post by newsclues » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #599

apnew wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning. The third paragraph in the article.

FWIW, that doesn't really even make sense. If you had direct knowledge only of the planning , then what's the source for the execution? I don't think anyone would be surprised that there was a plan for doing this. The US plans lots of stuff. Why did "planning" even appear in that sentence? Why not "a source with direct knowledge of the operation"? Again, there's a huge weasel word right there in the only sourcing for…

Someone plans to blow something up. And then it blows up.

Makes a lot of sense to connect the dots given that it's a covert activity.

Often planning is done by senior members, who get out of the military more frequently (especially recently) and the younger people who are operational stay quiet.

The people who were on the operation, aren't going to talk right now, because they are still operating and aren't ready to spill the beans and write a book/movie script.

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

#739

Post by judahmeek » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 2:03 AM UTC

htrgh wrote: post #720

marianatom wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The substack was created today, then Russian outlet Sputnik ran the story hours later. Then a hacker news account with pro CCP content submitted this substack. Why is this rubbish on top of hacker news?

[flagged]

If there's a lot of facts that discredit a narrative, then people simply stating those facts are not a part of a "concentrated effort".

Your contrarian logic is going to take you down a very sorrowful & dimly lit path in life.

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

#740

Post by stephc_int13 » Thu, Feb 09, 2023, 2:05 AM UTC

readonthegoapp wrote: post #692

stephc_int13 wrote: post #515

The fact that this subject is able to trigger so much controversy on HN is fascinating. I could understand if diplomats and politicians were upset, but regular techies?

i think any article that is a bad look for country 'x' will have that country's nationalists up in arms. it's not just a natural reaction for nationalists, it's a strategy for people in power generally - nationalist or otherwise - it's just one way to try to make a story go away, and it's obviously had some success here on HN today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Flak

What I don't get is that from my perspective this is not really a bad look.

A lot of Putin strategy relied on the weakness of the leaders on the other side.

He very likely expected to see most government caving or at least stay away.

The narrative is that Biden is an old almost senile dude and Zelensky is a clown.

Well, we now know that this narrative turned out to not be entirely accurate, and IMHO Biden cutting the big pipe of Putin can be seen as a good thing if you expect your leader to be strong and decisive.