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Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

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Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#131

Post by jboy55 »

DeLeeuw wrote: post #62
aredox wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the pipelines is still operational. Weird, eh?

Very weird. Would you volunteer a theory? (since that is probably all we can do for now).

I would say the operation went off as planned. The capacity to ship gas on Nord Stream 1 was cut, but luckily, the pipeline hadn't been in use for a month at the time. According to this site, https://berthub.eu/gazmon/ , In March 2020, 100-150 GW of Gas went from Russia to EU, right before the pipeline cut, that had gone down to 50GW, and after the cut it dropped to 30GW.

So the question is, what was the strategic effect for the US, Ukraine, and/or Russia to have done this?

My take, its almost as good for Russia to play victim than it is for the US to cut Russia's Gas. It would be interesting to see how dominant this story was in Russia, given the Ukrainian advances in late 2022.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#133

Post by smcl »

mikeyouse wrote: post #88
notinfuriated wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons. Building a pipeline is not cheap, not in money or time or bureaucratic effort. It's easier to just stop supplying the gas if you want to make an obvious threat.

> Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons. They launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine while denying they were doing so and failed at every one of their military objectives while causing their economy to collapse due to the massive worldwide sanctions. What other evidence could you require?

Exactly. Putin started an incredibly expensive war that could prove to be financially ruinous for Russia, I don't know why we're supposed to believe he wouldn't be so careless about a pipeline that wasn't even operational at the time. I'm not claiming to know who did this, but I don't think we can say it couldn't possibly be Russia

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#134

Post by erentz »

0xDEF wrote: post #81

The main problem with Hersh's claims is why the US/Norway would keep one of the two new NS2 lines intact? That line alone is big enough to meet Germany's domestic demands and according to Nord Stream AG one of the other lines received so little damage that they can fix it in a year or less.

Let me also add these point that everyone seems to want to ignore:

NordStream 2 was never put into service. Germany halted it due to the invasion. This was considered a very big deal.

At the time of the explosion on 26 Sep there had been no gas flowing on NordStream 1 at all. None! Flows on NS1 were shutdown by Russia on 31 Aug. This came after a series of declining flows from Russia accompanied by various efforts by Russia to get Germany to violate sanctions and persuade other countries to reduce sanctions. It culminated in complete shut off of NS1 and an offer to instead activate NS2 before the explosion (one of those pipes was suspiciously left undamaged).

Russia had been trying the blackmail that everyone feared, and Germany resisted it. I've bashed Germany a lot for it's response to the war but the fact is Germany got off Russian gas at huge costs and resisted the blackmail threat.

Folks who don't believe this can go view the data in graph form here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-phys...

Or Grab the raw data if you want: https://www.nord-stream.info/

Germany gas imports from Russia: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-impor...

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#135

Post by nkurz »

koheripbal wrote: post #91
createdapril24 wrote: post #7

I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends". I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however.…

> anonymous officials. ... this is the standard for journalism on these topics Unfortunately, it's also standard for planted false stories. It's notable that Hersh won the Nobel prize for producing photographic evidence of war crimes. None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true

> None of his anonymously sourced articles has ever been confirmed true

While not "confirmed true", I think this piece shows that later evidence strongly supported Hersh's anonymous claims in this case:

https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/Who-carried-out-the-chemi...

It's an interesting style of analysis. You'll need to click on "Show more" below each section to see their actual evidence and reasoning.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#136

Post by throwaway4good »

nkurz wrote: post #50

Good piece, and I think he points out some clear problems with the exact events that Hersh describes. I think the lack of a verifiable path for either the ship carrying divers or for the plane that supposedly dropped off the sonobuoy do make it less likely that Hersh's version actually happened. The author's conclusion is that this is because Hersh's source was making things up, but I think it's also compatible with…

Why does the bombs have to go off immediately when the plane drops the signalling device? If you got through setting all this up, I am sure you can also figure out how to delay the explosion so there would be no obvious connection to a plane flying over.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#137

Post by marcusverus »

ajross wrote: post #2

It does seem like what happened is that Hersh got a legitimate source (probably in the US or Norwegian intelligence community) who was willing to talk about an existing plan for this kind of operation, and then spun it into a story just declaring that it happened that way. In point of fact probably every major player in the region had a plan like this. Nord Stream 2 was a huge football for everyone with interest. We…

> The context was sanctions and international condemnation,

How odd that you would consider her second question--which wasn't directed at Biden--to be the relevant context for Biden's answer, and not the actual question that was posed to Biden! Watch the video.[1] The reporter asks Biden if he's received assurances that Germany will pull the plug on the project if Germany invades (then continues to pose a separate question to Sholz). Biden answered "If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will put an end to it."

Beyond that, his word choice only makes sense as a direct threat on the pipeline. It makes no sense as an oblique threat of sanctions or "international condemnation".

> literally no one at the time, even the most Russophilic pundits and anti-imperialist tankies, interpreted this as a military threat.

You don't remember headlines like "Biden warns "there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2" if Russia invades Urkaine"?[0] They were everywhere.

[0] https://theweek.com/joe-biden/1009898/biden-warns-there-will... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKoPA3M7x2o&t=610s

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#138

Post by reducesuffering »

manimino wrote: post #55

When the evidence is thin, it's best to avoid committing to a belief either way, despite the temptation. Related Paul Graham essay, "Keep your identity small": http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Exactly. The most common US-culprit "evidence" brought up is Biden saying "we're going to put an end to Nordstream 2" on the eve of the Russian invasion, which happened immediately; no gas through Nordstream 2. Then there's no evidence in Hersh's piece, based on one anonymous source and a litany of outright fabrications (Jens Stoltenberg being "supreme commander of NATO", Norwegians hating russians??, P-8 not in Norwegian Navy service). On the other hand, there's no direct evidence of Russian involvement, only a history of bold-faced lying to us and blowing up their own pipeline.

This realm is still in the land of almost zero evidence hearsay, and we just do not know yet.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#140

Post by labrador »

croes wrote: post #123
labrador wrote: post #24

Some of the most prolific bull-shitters on the planet are people who claim to have been part of some secret military operation and have inside knowledge in great detail, hinting that they played a major role in the planning and execution. Anyone who served in the military knows this because these elaborate confabulations are the jam of a certain kind of military person. Seymour Hersh is older than my father (85). My…

Some of the greatest bull-shitters work for intelligence. Remember Curveball?

Right, with every nation running psy ops and disinformation campaigns, we're supposed to believe this guy (or gal):

All the information in Hersh’s post reportedly comes from a single unnamed source, who appears to have had direct access to every step of the planning and execution of this highly secretive operation.

It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic how people rush to believe things that confirm their preconceptions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)

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