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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

#151
post #128
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a strategic goal to let Europeans suffer during winter in order to shatter our resolve to support Ukraine, while avoiding contractual penalties for unilateral cessation of gaz delivery, can explain the benefit of exploding the pipeline. This can explain also the fact that the fourth pipe was left intact - as a potential carrot to Europe... I do not pretend that the above is truth, but it seams to be a plausible…

I don't see why this is so downvoted. People are doing a lot of mental gymnastics to discount the possibility of Russian sabotage here and I really don't understand why that is. Nothing is certain, but I think it's silly to discount Russia being responsible it for the reasons people are giving.

I’m genuinely curious where the gymnastic is? I am asking in good faith. What is Russia’s interest in sabotaging it? They can’t sell gas to fund their war machine.

What’s the US interest? Now Europe must buy LNG from our fantastic gas companies. US exports of LNG are at an all time high price. Europe is pissed off at our rival. Not to mention our commander in chief threatened to blow it up, why?

Everything here says it’s in the interest of the USA, not Russia. I don’t feel like I’m bending any logic, in fact I feel like this is the only common sense way to think about it.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#152
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this is so downvoted. People are doing a lot of mental gymnastics to discount the possibility of Russian sabotage here and I really don't understand why that is. Nothing is certain, but I think it's silly to discount Russia being responsible it for the reasons people are giving.

I’m genuinely curious where the gymnastic is? I am asking in good faith. What is Russia’s interest in sabotaging it? They can’t sell gas to fund their war machine. What’s the US interest? Now Europe must buy LNG from our fantastic gas companies. US exports of LNG are at an all time high price. Europe is pissed off at our rival. Not to mention our commander in chief threatened to blow it up, why? Everything here says…

Russia is the only country who could do it without risking provoking a war.

Russia knew they weren’t going to make any money on it due to the strong reaction to the war on Ukraine.

Russia could have decided to do it to remind Western Europe that it could do the same to other pipelines they depend on.

None of that is determinative that Russia did do it, but it’s sufficient to me to indicate that they could have done it, and insisting that it’s absurd is, well, absurd.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#153

I don’t care either way who blew up the pipeline but to me the biggest glaring reason why I don’t think it’s the US is because Russia did not retaliate in any meaningful way. Us peons are clueless about what happened but Russia knows and they would know if it was them. If it wasn’t them then it’s obvious who did It and escalating the war would be justified. The fact this didn’t happen to me suggests it was Russia all…

This goes both way, however. If Russia used the incident as a justification for retaliation, they would make it easy for the US to play the innocent one and point the political finger to old enemy Russia - a believable story the rest of the west would have to support.

The Defense industry profits either way.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#154
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this is so downvoted. People are doing a lot of mental gymnastics to discount the possibility of Russian sabotage here and I really don't understand why that is. Nothing is certain, but I think it's silly to discount Russia being responsible it for the reasons people are giving.

I’m genuinely curious where the gymnastic is? I am asking in good faith. What is Russia’s interest in sabotaging it? They can’t sell gas to fund their war machine. What’s the US interest? Now Europe must buy LNG from our fantastic gas companies. US exports of LNG are at an all time high price. Europe is pissed off at our rival. Not to mention our commander in chief threatened to blow it up, why? Everything here says…

What people are saying is that he wouldn't be stupid enough to kill off something that is a vital source of foreign currency in wartime, and could be used as leverage in negotiating with the EU. Except it wasn't operational and was proving to be useless as a bargaining chip.

The gymnastics come in believing that the guy who was willing to throw caution to the wind in starting a war with Ukraine (causing his economy to take a hammering and killing trade with the EU, running the real risk of pushing NATO entirely into NATO's arms) is somehow going to be precious about a pipeline that had ceased to have any value. I don't see it.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#155
post #127
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany declared war on Russia which was allied with France. And Germany did not declare war on any of those countries out of will, but due to an alliance with the Austro-Hungarian empire. The situation is not even remotely comparable.

So ... Germany declared war on Russia knowing it would involve fighting France then. Not sure how this changes things unless the alliance was a secret

As parent said, Germany didn’t declare war willingly, they had no choice but supporting the alliance. You cannot just change sides in war as it suits you.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#156
It’s interesting to me that dang overrode community moderation of this story [1] yesterday. Without having first even read it. A story that was based on an unverified anonymous source, by a discredited journalist, and which as we see now contained provably made up parts.

Because dang overrode moderation, that literal fake news (fake as in actually made up) was allowed to hover on the front page for a long time and given a legitimacy it didn’t deserve. It was able to be seen by a very large audience over a very long time.

Sadly an article that counters to that fake news makes it to the front page for a brief moment and after 3 hours is no on the 5th page.

So many of those people that saw the first will never see the second and get the wrong idea. It’s the old story about a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes. Sadly to me that it was Hacker News that decided to actively help spread the lie.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#157
post #134
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…

> (one of those pipes was suspiciously left undamaged).

You do not offer any reason for Russia to blow up three of four pipelines just to leave around one.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#158

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 becau…

So should everyone shut up until they have hard evidence to present? That doesn't sound like a very interesting way to live. Even in court circumstantial evidence is a valid form of evidence and plausible scenarios can be presented to try and convince. What is wrong with that?

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#159

I actually was drawn into reading this much more than the original article. I found myself going into skim mode with the original Hersh article. So ironically, I actually learned more about Hersh's claims reading this article than the original. I've worked with a bunch of old people of late. And I'm saying that from the reference point of 52. It's hard. I don't want to be an ageist. But I regularly see how hard it is…

> I don't want to be an ageist

Yet you felt compelled to cast aspersions on Hersh solely based on age.

Re: Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

#160

I actually was drawn into reading this much more than the original article. I found myself going into skim mode with the original Hersh article. So ironically, I actually learned more about Hersh's claims reading this article than the original. I've worked with a bunch of old people of late. And I'm saying that from the reference point of 52. It's hard. I don't want to be an ageist. But I regularly see how hard it is…

> I don't want to be an ageist Yet you felt compelled to cast aspersions on Hersh solely based on age.

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