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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

#311

Post by jesterson »

charintstr wrote: post #298

The amount of pro-Russia apologia on this thread is pretty incredible. There are a number of salient points raised in this article discussing how details of the original article are implausible. However instead of addressing any of these points or inconsistencies directly, people simply say this rebuttal is "non-credible." I had expected more from this readership.

What I like about audience here is - majority still express critical thinking while assessing events. If you are looking forward to primitive discussions "Russia bad US good" based on emotions, you may look to other communities, there are aplenty.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#312

Post by lispm »

lispm wrote: post #227
thoeiu4oi234 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you, but I find these "pro-West" side to be quite specious in their arguments. What idiot really believes that Russia of all people would want to kill their own golden goose ? The argument these geniuses are implicitly making is that either Russians (or more euphemistically "Putin") is a raging lunatic, or that their readers so utterly dim-witted that they'll believe any shit that they'll spin. OTO…

The pipeline is not completely destroyed. It could be repaired. Putin attacked the Ukraine and used Energy Dependence as a weapon against Europe. Russia bought energy companies. Russia influenced energy politics and politics in general in these countries. Russia reduced the storage and flow of natural gas before the invasion and prepared it to be used as a political instrument in this war, which is not just a war aga…

Let me add: the blown-up pipelines were three of four newly built. One of the four is not damaged. The damage to the other three pipelines was only in a small area. The pipelines are repairable. The pipeline was mainly a project of Russia and Germany, meant to supply natural gas to German markets (and beyond). The pipelines were not in use, yet. There was zero chance that the pipelines would go in use in the next decade, given the political situation.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#313

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #242
peteradio wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a "professional" agree to do this work without extensive obvious evidence that it was sanctioned on high? Wouldn't you risk becoming fall guys if you agree to do all this with a minimal crew on a wooden fishing boat? You'd risk being arrested by the local police. I think there is some holistic view on how to get the whole thing to work that might not lead to an obvious minimal solution. Various interests get in…

You don't need to go find the world's best miners like in the movie Armageddon; you can use military divers. You just don't use a carefully tracked warship, one of a single-digit number in its class, as a diving platform. You get the same weird thing with this "camouflage" thing with the C4. Camouflaging from what? They need to make the explosive charges undetectable... for what? Like, the US blows up the Nord Stream…

[deleted]

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#314

Post by KMag »

linkjuice4all wrote: post #294
EdwardDiego wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but again I'd posit that the world's most advanced military wouldn't mind slapping on a few more batteries, just to be sure.

Or a drone submarine or some crap like that. The problem with this story is that there are so many ways any capable not-even-super-power could do something like this. There’s also all the 4D chess about Putin keeping his oligarchs trapped since they can’t sell the nation’s largest commodity. Or that’s what insert country with special forces wants you to think. It’s possible Hersh is 100% correct but without anyone el…

Right. The most plausible explanation, given the number of Russian petrochemical executives critical of Putin who have died under suspicious circumstances, is that Putin wanted to greatly reduce the incentive of petrochemical oligarchs to stage a coup in order to re-open the pipeline.

Putin has shown he's very wary of the petrochemical oligarchs. If removing Putin from power doesn't open Nord Stream back up, then that's one less incentive for the petrochemical oligarchs to move on Putin, at least in the short term.

Presumably, Putin also wanted to make threats against the new Norway-Poland Baltic Pipe in a way that kept plausible deniability. He wanted to show he could destroy that pipeline, but without committing an act of war against a Nato member, so instead he blew up an unused pipeline owned by Russia.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#315

Post by moremetadata »

rjzzleep wrote: post #293
maybelsyrup wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> independently and axiomatically derived culpability > ever since 2006, been a nutbag

I really needed to know if tptacek was somehow mixing in some ad homimem attacks to discredit the author. Two things I found interesting that I didn't know and found fascinating is that western countries would give the US in modern age jurisdiction over their territory. I get how it happens in Japan or Germany that were occupied due to their role in WWII. It's also worth noting that part of the reason why Iran had a…

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1579608838118191105 Gazprom just released these photos of a NATO Seafox drone that was found right next to Nord Stream 1 in 2015.

Nato Seafox Drone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafox_drone#/media/File:Seafo...

Nordstream sections that were attacked were at a depth of 80-110metres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabo....

In May 2021 the worlds first wireless underwater drone was available for sale which operates at depths of upto 100mtres. https://www.hydromea.com/exray-wireless-underwater-drone

Maybe these could be used to monitor the pipeline in a semi autonomous fashion in future?

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#316

Post by Jerry2 »

rjzzleep wrote: post #301
tptacek wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "minutia". These are the details of the story Hersh chose to tell. It's not a minor question! Implicating the Norwegian Navy drastically increases the number of people that need to keep this secret. Using a warship drastically increases the scrutiny applied to the ship.

I'm a bit confused, do you have some personal relationship to the author? Or why do you get personally offended when people question (not attack) the author of this particular substack? NATO had plenty of big navy drills around the area last year. Who would complain about NATO ships in the area? Russia? Why do you even get hung up on that point? https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_196240.htm?selectedL...

tptacek, you still haven't explained how Biden, Nuland, Sullivan and Blinken are all on video saying that NS pipelines will be destroyed. Why are you so heavily invested in this and why are you defending this insane criminal cabal that is pushing us into WW3?

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#317

Post by gerikson »

KMag wrote: post #314
linkjuice4all wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a drone submarine or some crap like that. The problem with this story is that there are so many ways any capable not-even-super-power could do something like this. There’s also all the 4D chess about Putin keeping his oligarchs trapped since they can’t sell the nation’s largest commodity. Or that’s what insert country with special forces wants you to think. It’s possible Hersh is 100% correct but without anyone el…

Right. The most plausible explanation, given the number of Russian petrochemical executives critical of Putin who have died under suspicious circumstances, is that Putin wanted to greatly reduce the incentive of petrochemical oligarchs to stage a coup in order to re-open the pipeline. Putin has shown he's very wary of the petrochemical oligarchs. If removing Putin from power doesn't open Nord Stream back up, then tha…

This is my theory too. Putin blowing up the pipeline serves a number of purposes:

- removes options from a potential opposition within Russia

- reminds nations around the Baltic that Russia has undetectable underwater assets

- serves to potentially split NATO members (Hersh's story is obviously part of that)

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#318

Post by ggm »

astrange wrote: post #296
MarkMarine wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hersh also has a history of breaking stories that are true, like the My Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, and other things. This counterpoint writer has none of the yank that Hersh has. Has Hersh slipped in his age? I don’t know. But this nameless IC cutout who wrote this story has basically no credibility. Why should anyone listen to him?

Credit for Abu Ghraib should go to the person who told him about it, not to him. Did he do anything special there?

Recursively applied, almost all journalism based on Whistle-blower or off the record falls to this complaint.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#319

Post by XorNot »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #290
XorNot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seymour Hersh has also gone off the deep end lately. Some current examples[1]: * the Osama bin Laden raid was faked in a conspiracy with Pakistan and he was actually captured in 2006 * much of the US special forces is controlled by secret members of Opus Dei * that the US military flew Iranian terrorists to Nevada for training * the 2013 chemical weapons attack in Syria was a "false flag" staged by the government of…

We live in a world where the CIA has a heart attack gun [1], a presidential administration faked evidence of WMD to go to war in Iraq, the CDC conducted secret medical torture on black men with syphilis, and the Pentagon sent JFK proposals to justify a war on Cuba by conducting false flag terrorist attacks against American civilians [2]. (JFK rejected them, apparently.) So I read a list like yours, and read you scoff…

Yes and you know what all those things have in common? Actual evidence which corresponds to real events, and multiple sources confirming that they happened.

What Hersh's suppositions have is a stunning lack of verifiable evidence and observably factually incorrect assertions (as in the case of his articles on Nordstream).

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#320

Post by spurgu »

ROTMetro wrote: post #306
spurgu wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine had signed the Minsk agreements only to buy time to build their military to NATO standards. Petro Poroshenko and Angela Merkel have admitted as much. With the US promised them backing they believed that they could be victorious even if Russia intervened. Armed with this information they were planning and preparing to take back Donbass by force. OSCE data shows increased activity and casualties on the Donbass…

You make assertions to statements made by Merkel but give no links to back that up. OSCE data shows that 21 people were killed the year before invasion, mostly from mines. My friend that died fighting for Ukraine in this war called himself 'Russian from Ukraine' before the war, went to university in Moscow, spoke Russian, and loved Russia prior to the war and was helping this malinki chuvak learn Russian. He was sadl…

First of all I'm sorry about your friend. This whole thing really sucks and the only winner seems to be the US military-industrial complex (and other US investors buying up Ukraine at a discount). There was no reason why it had to happen and could have been avoided. That was what the Minsk agreements were attempting. At least on paper and by some parties.

I just assumed it was common knowledge about the Minsk ruse. Quick search for "Merkel admits Minsk agreements buying time" returns a large amount of sources for me (using kagi.com), first one: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/22/ffci-d22.html

Poroshenko's admission was earlier last year.

There are also many Russians who have now, after seeing Ukrainians as their brethren pre-war, grown to despise Ukraine and the west overall.

Losing jobs due to foreign companies leaving is a temporary blip, they will be replaced by local ones. That's actually what the US is trying to do now, to decrease reliance on foreign production. Any people avoiding the draft by legal means are likely to return (this is something I actually don't know much about, will most be able to return without being persecuted?).

And regards to Europe I don't think the worst is over, it's not like things are going back to normal in terms of energy prices any time soon. US LNG for example is a lot more expensive than pipeline gas and Europe might've managed this winter but the increased energy costs will have snowballing effects. Do you think industries won't be massively affected?

As for the OSCE events there were double-digit events most days but they increased to triple and some quadruple digits (from my memory, I can find links when on desktop, have the filtered results from that period bookmarked somewhere) in the days before the invasion. And the vast majority of those events were on the Donbass side, indicating an offensive by Kiev (which they had been planning literally for years). US "intelligence" is of course not very honest with pretty much any of this and neither is the western media.

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