Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

oalexanderdk.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 439 posts

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#361

Post by tptacek »

alienicecream wrote: post #351
pvg wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe but that's the essence of cherry-picking. It suggests that you aren't actually 'working from nothing towards plausible theories' as you think (and I'm not saying this is intentional or some sort of intellectual or moral failing, we all do this) but working backwards from a conclusion to select supporting points and counterpoints can be dismissed for not being sufficiently countery.

Is not cherry picking to apply relevant heuristics. I'm an average news consumer and I had never heard of your example. I doubt many people have, and probably even fewer care. It's just not as noteworthy as what happened here and that in itself is a factor in analyzing the response to it.

The fact that you hadn't heard of his example is a reason _not_ to trust your own first-principles logic, not a reason to rely on it.

I'm still stuck on the idea that we're having this discussion at all, though. It's really hard for people to get past the idea that Hersh can be an absolute kook and whatever their prior beliefs about the Nord Stream incidents can still be valid.

It goes in both directions. There's a comment elsewhere on this thread suggesting that, since Hersh's story is obviously fictitious (I tend to agree), it's probably the case that the US had nothing to do with the detonation. But that doesn't follow either!

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#362

Post by dang »

halothane wrote: post #276
mannerheim wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nice! Love how you threw in the age factor there Buster. Yep, Seymour sure got his basic facts wrong during the Vietnam War, Watergate scandal, Abu Ghraib and more. I'd rather have him report on our state of the world than Brown Moses's team of Tik Tok experts or for that matter Team Jorge, unless you are one of them?

Can you please not (a) post in the flamewar style to HN, or (b) use HN for political flamewar? You're breaking the site guidelines badly here.

We don't need you to change your views but we do need you to present them thoughtfully and respectfully, if you want to participate here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#363

Post by red-iron-pine »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #327
fwungy wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow both the NYT and Wapo, and The New Atlas, Douglas MacGregor, and Alexander Mercouris. The latter group has been far more accurate in their predictions and their analysis is far more logically composed.

Mice have a gestation period of about 8 weeks. (your response is an irrelevant non sequitur)

All politics threads on HN are full of shillbots, and very likely bots now that GPT-3 is big.

It's not as well moderated or as complex as reddit w/r/t brigading, fighting obvious shills, or obfuscating upvotes, etc. Not that reddit is particularly immune to this, either.

I wouldn't trust jack shit about politics on HN. Details about the latest implementation of systemd? Absolutely. Anything not STEM? Dubious at best.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#364

Post by jessaustin »

ceejayoz wrote: post #64
baybal2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abu Ghraib happened, and My Lai happened, and Hersh was first who brought these two stories to light. Neither were some giant secrets, and were previously dismissed as unsubstantiated rumour. Hersh collected enough factoids together to substantiate them enough to become a news story, rather than a military legend.

> Hersh was first who brought these two stories to light. Yes, but critically, also not the last . Other journalists corroborated, more sources came forward, evidence, hearings, photographs, convictions.

Similarly, we'll learn more about this operation over the next years, unless of course we get the species-ending nuclear holocaust that some appear to desire.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#365

Post by epistasis »

thephyber wrote: post #349
epistasis wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, the NATO stuff is nonsense from Westerners who are trying to backform a rationale to support Russia, that directly contradicts the motives of Russia. Those who now claim NATO as justification for Russia's aggression were also saying that Russia would not invade as the US predicted, right up until it happened. For true motivations, your video is spot on, and see for example Putin's 2021 essay which was basica…

I don’t buy the Mearsheimer narrative as the primary purpose for invasion, but I do think it contributed in a small way. I just happen to believe that Putin wanted the prize, had flawed intelligence, and had gotten away with progressively larger incursions (Georgia, Crimea, fomented rebellions in the Donbas, etc) and nobody was willing/able to stop him, so he had no reason to believe they would in Kyiv. I’m also not…

I read a lot about Ukraine, live with Ukrainians, consume lots of non-Ukrainian Eastern European history and commentary, but I don't know Mearshiemer's point of view. He looks to be a "realist" which I tend to think of as fabulists, so I will happily continue in my ignorance of his views.

What you say are all strong possibilities, in my view. But IMHO the strongest is that he's getting old, drunk on power, too steeped in the pre-WW2 imperial history mindset, and wants a legacy. And when combined with the limp response to his past misdeeds in Georgia, Syria, etc., and watching what happened to Gaddafi in Libya, he massively miscalculated.

But if Ukraine had folded quickly, he would not have miscalculated, IMHO. Western powers, with Ukraine overrun, would probably have just let him have it. If Ukrainians didn't stand up for themselves, put up a fight way above their weight class, and enable the West a trivially easy method of support with just ammo and small amounts of equipment, this would have ended the way of Georgia, with lots of hand wringing and weak sanctions. Maybe more hand wringing than Georgia, because Ukraine is clearly closer to Western Europe, and Ukraine had been the actual battleground in prior European wars, but still nothing more than hand wringing. It's possible that there would not even be NATO applications from Finland.

Nobody fights for somebody who won't fight for themselves, and Ukrainian identity has been growing exceptionally strong. Even amongst those in the East with parents from Russia, who only know a very little of the Ukrainian language, a strong civic Ukrainian identity is fomenting, in a country with many language and many ethnicities. My hope for the future of Ukraine is to band together with other post-colonial nations, especially those in Africa, to use their massive brain power to build new industries, rather than shipping all their best minds to other countries. Perhaps not likely, but there is a new consciousness rising which makes a huge amount of growth possible.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#366

Post by astrange »

einpoklum wrote: post #346
astrange wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaron Maté is a ridiculous tankie who's currently claiming the US is trying to coup Hungary. (Why as a leftist he's supporting the current Hungary government is unclear, but being a tankie requires you to start with the US being bad and work the rest out from there.)

"Ridiculous" and "Tankie" are non-specific characterizations which mostly indicate whether or not you like a person or their opinions. But in the same vein, let us recall Mate has been awarded the Ithaca College Journalism School's Izzy award (which is considered prestigious). Mate, specifically, has a record of reliable fact-based investigative and integrational reporting on subjects such as "Russia-gate" (i.e. the…

> But in the same vein, let us recall Mate has been awarded the Ithaca College Journalism School's Izzy award (which is considered prestigious).

Noam Chomsky is also quite decorated but that doesn't stop them both from denying war crimes like Cambodia and Syria.

If you're claiming Russia-Trump coordination and Skripal didn't happen, that's because you're a tankie who can never say Russia has done anything bad, because you think they're secretly the USSR and are going to bring back communism. Bit sad since they're a fascist state. ("Anti-imperialists" are also rather bad at opposing Chinese imperialism.)

> I don't know about the Hungary situation and have not read Mate's work on that; but links would be appreciated.

Doing it right now.

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1625634526947835907

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#367

Post by floxy »

simplicio wrote: post #141
floxy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't followed any of this really at all, but is there a compelling reason why Ukraine isn't at the top of everyone's list? Seems like they would have the motive to prevent Germany from giving-in to Russian demands to keep gas flowing and at the same time hurt Russia. It doesn't seem like it was a highly technical or expensive operation that would have prevented a smaller player from accomplishing it, and in fact…

I think the 2 reasons people don't suspect Ukraine is that: a) it seems kinda implausible they have ability to blow up the pipe-line, nevermind to do so without being detected in what has to be the most cloesly monitored body of water on the planet. b) Germany was already backing them. Blowing up the pipeline might make Germany marginally less likely to backslide, but if Ukraine were caught blowing up the pipeline, G…

>a) it seems kinda implausible they have ability to blow up the pipe-line, nevermind to do so without being detected in what has to be the most closely monitored body of water on the planet.

Is there a reason it couldn't have been a couple of zodiac boats? I can't imagine the entire Baltic sea is so well monitored that every craft of any size is tracked, even under the cover of darkness. Seems like a large moving van sized vehicle could hold a couple of deflated rafts, and a 10 man outfit in a trek across Poland.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#368

Post by einpoklum »

astrange wrote: post #366
einpoklum wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ridiculous" and "Tankie" are non-specific characterizations which mostly indicate whether or not you like a person or their opinions. But in the same vein, let us recall Mate has been awarded the Ithaca College Journalism School's Izzy award (which is considered prestigious). Mate, specifically, has a record of reliable fact-based investigative and integrational reporting on subjects such as "Russia-gate" (i.e. the…

> But in the same vein, let us recall Mate has been awarded the Ithaca College Journalism School's Izzy award (which is considered prestigious). Noam Chomsky is also quite decorated but that doesn't stop them both from denying war crimes like Cambodia and Syria. If you're claiming Russia-Trump coordination and Skripal didn't happen, that's because you're a tankie who can never say Russia has done anything bad, becaus…

> https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1625634526947835907

That is a tweet about a suspicion, not a news article with a concrete claim. Also, USAID is indeed widely perceived as an arm of the US government, or the CIA more specifically, for political intervention in foreign countries. And I would be pretty worried if Samantha Power were to land in my country and start driving some "locally-driven" initiatives.

> that's because you're a tankie

This "tankie" thinks the Russian regime has done and does many bad things, like killing civilians, suppressing speech and organization, forcing a military draft, maintaining a social order of massive exploitation of workers by private proprietors, etc. It's just that most of those bad things don't happen to be the bad things which the US is accusing Russia of - and the latter are often just fanciful tales or more elaborate fabrication.

Re: Blowing holes in Seymour Hersh’s pipe dream

#370

Post by kurthr »

halothane wrote: post #350
kurthr wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea, judge based only on the name of the source, completely captured by narrative and unable to make decisions based any measurable facts they present. Pick a football team and cheer them to victory for surely that's the right way to understand the world, the economy, and geopolitics! Don't read anything from the London Review of Books either since you might not agree with them. It's scary to hear new things. I…

>>>>Good idea, judge based only on the name of the source, completely captured by narrative and unable to make decisions based any measurable facts they present. Pick a football team and cheer them to victory for surely that's the right way to understand the world, the economy, and geopolitics! Lots of words, but nothing that adds to the discussion that the source of your "new things" is a bunch of Tik-Tokers doing a…

When you're JAQing off the use of chlorine gas in WWI and comparing LRoB to TikTok, ZyclonB and the holocaust are nearby. Since you use the internet I guess you can't know anything, LOL!
Post reply on HN