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“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

seymourhersh.substack.com

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

#341

Post by strawpeople »

dang wrote: post #282
spoiler wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could you humor me: if he came out saying Russians blew up the pipeline, would you have the same stance? 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. I don't support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it seems like tha…

Nothing would be easier than to say "of course we would have the same stance" but I don't want to give you quite that lazy a reply. Your question has too many counterfactual layers to backpropagate an answer through. For example, I doubt that Hersh would publish it in that case. The Hershness of a story depends on it being a blockbuster counter-thing. Edit: oops, I missed that your question wasn't to me. Sorry!

Saying what amounts to ‘we’d never be in that position’ comes across as pretty evasive.

Also saying Hersh only writes this kind of thing supports the idea that Hersh is biased enough to be taken for a ride by a source with an agenda.

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

#342

Post by SergeAx »

This smells strange. A Pulitzer winner, 60+ years in journalism, starts Substack just to post this one investigation. He has about one million chances to have at least Twitter, not mentioning a website, but no.

BTW, I checked the text with GPT detector, it didn't sound alarm, so at least it is a human-written.

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

#343

Post by dang »

mzs wrote: post #313
dang wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll read the article and reconsider. I haven't had time to even look at it yet. The moderation call here isn't based on agreeing, disagreeing, liking, or disliking. It just seems like an obvious interesting event, that's all. Edit: Ok, I've read the first half and looked over the second half, and I think the moderation call was the correct one. Not saying this to pile on; I just wanted to report back.

In the future please at least look at an article before deciding to undo all the flags, many from actual readers.

Of course I nearly always do, but in this case the moderation call didn't depend on it, for reasons I've already explained in several other comments in this thread.

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

#344

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #196
twblalock wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else had written this, would it be significant? Wouldn't it just be written off as a conspiracy theory that provides little to no evidence for its claims? If the only thing that gets this on HN is Seymour Hersh's reputation (which has lately become somewhat questionable) then you might want to reconsider. Plus, the quality of the comments has not been very good so far.

No, I don't think it would be. Hersh is inevitably part of the story because of his historical significance and the network of government sources that he's cultivated for decades. It doesn't follow that his claims are true (even if he's accurately reporting, his sources must have their own agendas). That's why I added the question mark to the title above. The story being on HN doesn't imply anything about that—only t…

because of his historical significance and the network of government sources that he's cultivated for decades

This seems a little partial and hard to implement consistently. Can we assume the same metric will be applied to every Robert Woodward story, or any of many single-sector journalists with a lengthy track record, such as Radley Balko who has spent years writing about policing?

I also don't think adding a question mark to the headline clarifies; I can treat an assertion with skepticism, but 'How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline?' reads like a submission from a non-native English speaker, of the sort which often clutter up the New submissions page.

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

#345

Post by pillefitz »

twoquestions wrote: post #82
syzarian wrote: post #2

Seymour doesn’t provide any proof or any evidence. It’s argument by assertion. What he writes is plausible but without any sources or other corroborating evidence. I think it more believable that Seymour has been paid to write this by a Russian aligned entity. I don’t know the truth of the matter and Seymour could be right. We just can’t tell from the evidence provided.

My thoughts exactly. If this is true and more evidence comes out, the usual suspects will be screaming it from the rooftops, if not this narrative will die in obscurity. There's been a lot of misinformation about this war, and a bunch of people who for a variety of reasons want to blame the US for it and are willing to believe some incredible things if they support that narrative.

It's really not far fetched to believe the US did it - or any Eastern European country, for that matter.

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

#346

Post by dang »

threeseed wrote: post #325
dang wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've answered that question repeatedly in this thread already. If you read those comments and have a question I haven't addressed, I'd like to know what it is. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34712496

The HN guidelines are clear about political topics. Is there a change to the guidelines and should we expect you to not override the ranking system for opposing view points.

The HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) entirely support the moderation call I've made here. If you think otherwise, you might want to take a closer look.*

It is neither desirable nor possible to exclude political topics from HN completely. At the same time, it's important that the site be protected from being overrun and dominated by political topics. Lots of explanation of how we handle this can be found at these links, if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....

* here's pg making the same point 10 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426

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

#347

Post by letrowekwel »

rsync wrote: post #207
mmastrac wrote: post #97

It's a great story, but it's all unsourced and could be a decent Tom Clancy story at best. You could probably write a similar one with Russia or German agents as the key players and be just as convincing. The only anchor in reality appears to be Biden suggesting that they knew how to take it out which seems like a pretty weak place to build a large story. What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears…

"You could probably write a similar one with Russia ..." I disagree - there is no credible motive here for Russia and, in fact, the outcome was directly opposed to every outcome they are, or were trying, to achieve. Not only do I, as a US citizen, believe that the US perpetrated this act but further: I believe it is an overtly hostile action against EU citizens and, particularly, Germans, who will suffer the most eco…

As an EU citizen living next to Russia I can assure you, I'm DELIGHTED that people can no longer buy gas from a mass murderer like Putin. Anyone who buys gas from Russia is essentially supporting genocide of Ukrainian civilians, if suffering is what we're talking about.

Besides, things are going on pretty okay. Electricity prices are stabilizing and Europe will eventually become greener as well. No matter who did it, blowing up the pipeline was a good thing.

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

#348

Post by tanseydavid »

threeseed wrote: post #288
h2odragon wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interests me too. You're always free not to read this article or thread.

Dang is manually influencing the ranking system. So this is not necessarily what is interesting to everyone.

Dang is doing his job.

The number of attempts to either shame or coerce him into doing things the way you think should be done, versus what he thinks is appropriate -- seems childish to me.

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

#349

Post by Laaas »

thwayunion wrote: post #171
hef19898 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily imagine any of the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine (with some local help) or even Finland, Swede or Norway doing the deed. Or, since the pipelines are well known and not difficult to reach, basically everyone with access to explosives, a boat a divers with explosives skills. None of which is particularly hard to come by.

At that moment in the war, even Putin had a lot of strong motivations -- lock out the option of bringing Nord Stream back online and close to door on de-escalation. As a side-benefit, the possibility of driving a wedge into NATO. I also found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713402 interesting. Who knows.

Why do you think Putin is against de-escalation? The post you links to proposes a not very sensible argument: We are talking about _nation states_. The law isn't as black and white, Gazprom would not pay any fines put on it by a court of the enemy. Even if they were to pay fines put on them, why would this in any way reduce fines? Even if it were to reduce the fines, why would that be worth more than two pipelines there were full of methane? It sounds very implausible.

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

#350

Post by letrowekwel »

pillefitz wrote: post #336
LarryMullins wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe it is an overtly hostile action against EU citizens and, particularly, Germans, who will suffer the most economically. In the scenario where America did it, I think there is a strong argument to be made that it was in the long-term interests of EU citizens, despite causing them some short-term discomfort. They never should have started this pipeline project in the first place, buying energy from Russia ma…

We were quite happy with cheap energy and it was great to have a choice between Russian gas and American LNG, until that option disappeared.

That option disappeared when Russia invaded Ukraine, not when the pipeline was blown up (at least if you rate human life over economics). Nobody should buy anything from a regime like Putin's Russia.
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