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Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

oalexanderdk.substack.com

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Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#141

Post by erentz »

jboy55 wrote: post #131
DeLeeuw wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ef…

Russia had stopped gas flows on NordStream 1 26 days prior to the explosion [1].

This was after a series of reductions, stops, and restarts where they reduced flows and tried to get Germany to break sanctions to send parts. That they then ultimately rejected and wouldn't receive. E.g. [2].

When Germany offered the parts. They refused them, stopped NS1 entirely and offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [3] Germany refused and resisted the blackmail attempt.

Then the explosion happened a couple of weeks later. After that Russia again offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [4]

In this context, the US going ahead with the plan to demolish NS1, and leave NS2 50% operation makes zero sense.

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-phys... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kremlin-says-gazprom... [3]: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-nord-stream-closed-energy-cris... [4]: https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-s...

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#142

Post by nkurz »

paganel wrote: post #79

Of course that it's from Oliver Alexander. Apart from the NAFO minions and from that Paul Massaro lunatic one couldn't have found a less impartial source. Give me Jihadi Julian (who's also pro-Ukraine) one thousand times over this guy.

Can you say more about Alexander's direction of bias? I'm not familiar with him.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#143

Post by macintux »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #19
macintux wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Russia would use it as a reminder that they could sabotage other pipelines doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

Can you name a single other instance in history where a country at war significantly damaged its ability to raise money for the war to “send a message”? What exactly is the message? The US didn’t think Russia had a submersible and some C4 and now they do?

That scale of sabotage wasn’t a casual act. Russia knew Europe was going to shut down its imports anyway, so perhaps it was a threat, but one that didn’t involve casus belli.

Russia was the only country that could do that without risk of widening the war.

I’m not saying they did do it, but I see no reason for everyone to insist it’s obviously false.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#145

Post by billjings »

Tycho wrote: post #126
billjings wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The criticism is bad, therefore the claim must be true" certainly sounds like a rhetorical fallacy to me. Does it have a name?

It’s a good heuristic.

It's dangerous to apply heuristics in political discourse without the inclusion of the element of reputation. Otherwise, you're vulnerable to adversarial techniques that flood the zone with garbage information.

This kind of thing was everywhere in the Trump era: whether you were on the right or the left, you could easily navigate yourself into a space where all of your critics were random people who were obviously completely unhinged. They don't actually tell you that your position is all that great in any strict logical sense, but they certainly are emotionally affirming!

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#146

Post by ShivShankaran »

debacle wrote: post #60

The reality is that we truly live in a post-truth world. Maybe we always have. When it comes to Ukraine, that means you can't trust anything. Any piece you read will have the taint of Ukrainian, American, or Russian propaganda. I gave up on trying to figure out what is really going on in this scenario a while back. Something is going on. There's definitely some deeper exchange happening. But I'll probably never know…

And most prime ministers and defence ministers of "allies" are resigning left and right. Something deeper is most likely that they don't want to be involved in this region conflict and be on leash of US.

EU made the mistake of following US into middle east and syria which blew up in their face with millions of refugees pouring in.

Getting involved in this RU-UKR war is the mistake to end all mistakes. There is no coming back from this. The world is polarized and EUR/USD is going to take a lot of pain.

EUR was created to offset some of the leash that US had on Europe and that's also tightening now.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#148

Post by BWStearns »

alienicecream wrote: post #144

Can someone explain why some people here are so agitated over a claim that the US did it? Is it hard to believe that US intelligence would do something like this? Besides, if you hate Russia then it's a good thing right?

I'll speak not for, but as one of, the agitated.

People are not agitated at the suggestion that the US did it. People are agitated because the claims are coming from Cy Hersh without remotely compelling evidence, who in the past decade or so has turned to spouting off unsubstantiated claims to carry water for Assad and Putin and shilling ridiculous Bin Laden theories and 9/11 trutherism.

I'm personally agitated because a community that is generally pretty grounded in fact and falsifiability somehow turns into a bunch of edge lord schoolboys around certain foreign affairs subjects. And it comes from the "adults" in our industry (Elon and Sacks) modeling the behavior and a lot of people in our industry mirroring it back. I'm sick of innuendo being passed off as critical thinking. Innuendo is cheap evasive sleight of hand that pollutes the information space and encourages bad faith bullshit. /rant

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#149

Post by aredox »

manimino wrote: post #87
aredox wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the pipelines is still undamaged. Why would the US be this sloppy?

No opinion on whether the US did it. But Hersh's essay indicates there were last-minute changes to the detonation method. That adds risk, which could have manifested as failure of some detonations.

Then the explosive charges are still there, and Danemark and Germany can recover them.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#150

Post by aredox »

ClarityJones wrote: post #120
aredox wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source is wrong on very basic details. And the big picture of the story is nonsensical: 1) this is a very very very secret operation that Congress shouldn't be informed about, but a shitton of services - including foreign countries - were involved 2) they laid the mines during... A very public and documented military exercise. They certainly couldn't do it from a nondescript modified fishing vessel, no, they had…

These errors largely sound like obfuscation... like a potentially true narrative with the names and places changed: - Instead of revealing the fishing vessel, he describes a vessel that it couldn't have been. - Giving the real timing would expose the vessel, so he gives timing that wouldn't have worked as a placeholder. - Too many people were involved, because only a subset were actually involved - or maybe even just…

Oh yeah, it's so important to not expose the vessel!

Grasping for straws, uh?

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