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“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

seymourhersh.substack.com

821–830 of 1001 posts

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

#821
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's hairsplitting. If you report something that some anonymous guy said as fact, without being able to verify anything, it's not credible. To be credible, one needs to provide some, you know, credits. Some evidence of why it's true. With all love of everybody around to say "without evidence" on anything they disagree with, somehow when there's a case when somebody literally says something without any evidence, we're supposed to just take it as fact? No way.

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

#822
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you see Zero Dark Thirty? If so, do you trust it to be accurate?

Does Zero Dark Thirty claims to be a factual description of the events, or a work of fiction?

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

#823
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…

I know nothing of him, but given that there's an entire paragraph about Jens Stoltenberg where almost every sentence is just completely factually wrong in a way that could be verified to be wrong with a look at the first paragraph on his Wikipedia page, I'm not inclined to take what he says seriously. I mean, par for the course for modern journalism, I suppose.

WTF, he's born in 1959. That makes him 16 by the time the war ended? How can a professional journalist make a claim like that?

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

#824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

While that Quora article has some important references to see the whole picture better it's still very biased and the conclusion that Russia invaded Ukraine to defend itself from WW3 is pretty wild. Because otherwise NATO would've attacked Russia (a country with nuclear weapons) or what?

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

#825
post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian propaganda machine keeps spouting lies about everything without much regard to credibility (firehose of lies), it's actually difficult to orient yourself in all the contradictory propaganda narratives. It's just strange they keep largely silent on this, even though it seems like a golden opportunity. Why are they not attacking German society with "Americans are trying to freeze you, they blew up the pipes"?

Russian propaganda is mostly directed at internal consumption. Pointing fingers at the americans to germany is not going to work inside germany.

Russia has an extensive network of influence campaigns within "unfriendly" countries, sponsoring parties like AfD, operating foreign language troll farms on Facebook and other networks, websites like Sputnik and "alternative media" etc. The list goes on. They absolutely do operate in Germany and try to split the society.

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

#826
post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden had outstanding naval capabilities during the cold war. The Swedish navy frequently chased away foreign submarines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_submarine_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk%C3%B6_naval_base

In most cases it’s debatable if there were any submarines. E.g. professor Anna Christensen who was on the 2001 government commission with access to all information has said that she does not think there is solid proof of a single foreign submarine in Swedish waters between 1981 and 1992 (other than U 137 of course).

In 2001 the anti-militarism in Sweden was peaking so that a government appointed commissioner came to the conclusion that there were no subs(except for the sub that were) is hardly surprising.

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

#827
The fact that Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, the countries investigating the explosions, are refusing to point any fingers at Russia suggests to me that they have serious reasons to believe that it may have been an ally nation that destroyed the pipeline. Pointing the finger at the USA, even if they had very concrete evidence, would be a massive diplomatic problem - so it stands to reason that we would not hear about it. By contrast, especially in the context of the war, pointing the finger at Russia would not particularly affect diplomatic ties - especially given how Russia has already been pointing the finger at everyone else.

So, even though this report itself is rather thin on evidence, it is presenting a version of what seems to be the most plausible hypothesis.

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

#828
post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see Zero Dark Thirty? If so, do you trust it to be accurate?

Does Zero Dark Thirty claims to be a factual description of the events, or a work of fiction?

It is a dramatization of the hunt for OBL. It elides names, sources and methods for obvious reasons. The larger shape of the story aligns without how the administration and CIA claim the search and assassination of OBL played out. It is alleged that the CIA cooperated heavily with the filmmakers. This would make sense given the amount of torture apologia that is in the movie.

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

#829
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU politicians may have expected to declare an unprecedented economic war on Russia while the latter dutifully continued to fulfill its gas contracts to the EU. Seems plausible given the geopolitical mastery the EU posesses. But does anyone else actually believe that? The other contract party trying to destroy your economy is a pretty good reason to terminate a contract. Failing that Russia could keep inventing p…

“Unprecedented economic war” that was only preceded by an “unprecedented actual war” war. And stoking and supplying separatists, along with mercenaries in Ukrainian territories before that. And downing a passenger jet before that. And annexing Crimea before that. And invading and occupying a quarter of Georgia before that. And doing the same in Moldova before that.

Given that we were discussing reasons for:

* Russia breaking gas delivery contracts with several EU countries

and you’ve replied with:

* a non sequitur enumerating a series of bellicose actions Russia took in relation to non-EU countries spanning years in the past

We can consider your contract argument refuted.

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

#830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a mistaken title attribution, but even with a correction do you think it changes much? Stoltenberg is the civilian leader of NATO and having his support is crucial. Hersh may have been mistaken in the title, but not the person nor their importance.

It actually means a lot. Hersh is basing the entire story off one anonymous source. For such a serious implication, he’s unable to even do due diligence on basic verifiable facts. That buries the lede on how much verification he competently did for his source.

It doesn't really. It's the kind of thing that could slip by fact checkers at plenty of publications and result in a fairly innocuous correction.
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