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 to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".
I did find it interesting in that Wikipedia article to read that The New Yorker's editor insists on knowing the identify of all of the anonymous sources that Hersh has used when his reporting is published in that magazine. That suggests to me that while Hersh can probably be generally trusted, his work is of a higher quality when it's published in an outlet like The New Yorker, as the editor-in-chief and other staff submit it to a more rigorous internal discussion. That's in comparison to probably no internal review or discussion by Substack.
Seymour Hersh has had a long and storied career, and he has made some very bold claims that later turned out to be correct.
He's also, especially recently, made some very bold claims that so far have not turned out to be correct, whether because the truth just hasn't been revealed yet, or because Hersh was wrong or misled by his sources.
It's also worth noting that Hersh - as with any journalist - is only as good as his sources. If people choose to leak juicy secrets to him (not implausible!) he may end up publishing accurate stories that reveal nefarious conspiracies (which has happened). If people choose to give him lies and misinformation, he may end up publishing conspiracy theories instead. And as he keeps publishing, the odds that this will happen (if it hasn't already) keep increasing.
So I absolutely wouldn't write off any claim Hersh makes, but I wouldn't blindly believe it either. And here he is relying, by his own admission, almost entirely on a single anonymous source, giving details that can't really be independently confirmed.
Was Hersh told by someone that the US took out the pipeline? Probably! Does that mean the US did so? I'm not sure I'd seriously update my priors based on this.
That even that inconsistent Bin Laden story purportedly relied on two distinct sources, and yet his Nord Stream story purportedly relies on only a single anonymous source, should be a significant red flag here. I have no reason to doubt that Hersh heard the quotes in his Nord Stream story from at least someone in government, but that source's motivations and truthfulness were not independently verified even, by his own admission, by Hersh. And that's just... not credible reporting.
Biden stated last year: "If Russia invades [Ukraine] there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." [1] This was a clear threat, clear as day, that the US could destroy Nordstream. It should surprise nobody that the US was involved.
Since Nordstream was destroyed amidst public pressure from US energy companies who wanted to takeover the European energy market, the US has become the world's leading exporter of liquid natural gas, Europeans are paying record natural gas prices, and US energy companies are reporting record profits. Again, the relationship between these things should surprise nobody.
I know nothing of him, but given that there's an entire paragraph about Jens Stoltenberg where almost every sentence is just completely factually wrong in a way that could be verified to be wrong with a look at the first paragraph on his Wikipedia page, I'm not inclined to take what he says seriously.
I mean, par for the course for modern journalism, I suppose.
I imagine there are very good reasons why he can’t trust the editors of certain publications for certain stories. Many of them are among the “power elite” who collaborate with the security state, whether directly or indirectly. There’s a long, storied history of that.
He has decades of renown from his My Lai reporting, and he renewed it with Abu Ghraib. However, substantially everything he's ever written uses anonymous sourcing to tell a story of intrigue and conspiracy... and only those two stores amounted to anything. There's a reason he's publishing this on Substack: nobody reputable will publish him anymore.
It's unfortunate, but Sy Hersh has kinda flown the coop in the last 10 years. He egged on the Seth Rich conspiracy and tried to deny the US killed bin Laden. The New Yorker has basically disowned him and he hasn't had a byline in many years.
> 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.
That's why there were several explosions: Everyone was blowing it up at the same time, unbeknownst of each other's plans.
> 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.
I'd bet my last dollar that at least four nations had "blow up Nord Stream to force continued conflict" contingency plans.
Who did it? Germany, Russia, USA, Ukraine, or a curve ball from the one of the Nordic or Baltic states? We'll probably never know, and none of those answers would surprise me.
Why just those countries? Surely some countries in the middle east would be interested in opening and supplying petro products to a new market. What about China? Maybe they're interested in division and weakening their nearest neighbor so they could buy up all the gas?
There are too many players with varying interests at different levels to just go off of someone's reputation and an unnamed source. Perhaps Biden or some other head of state needs to come along and blow up this thread so that moderators and commenters alike have to find other outlets for the water they're carrying.
Considering that a lot people came out after the pipeline was blown up, people with the necessary training and experience, saying that it was not a particularly difficult job, it might even have been some rogues having a fun fishing trip.
Besides motive, this article doesn't provide anything new. And that the US had at least motive is established fact since basically the day of the explosion.
No man. This was not in the Russians’ geopolitical interests. And even if Germany wanted to divest itself of Russian gas, they would not have done so, in this way.
This was leaked at the time that it is now to send a message to the Germans.
And one should be skeptical of a single source who somehow knows the entire story, from White House deliberations to technical details; all the more so when it's a supposed secret squirrel story that allegedly was hidden from Congressional oversight on a technicality.
The fact is, Hersh has gotten deeper and deeper into the conspiracy-theory weeds over the past few decades, with his most recent work tending towards outright disinformation -- from suggesting al-Qa'ida wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks, to whitewashing Syrian chemical attacks (and Ted Postol makes a cameo appearance in this piece as well), to denying Russian involvement in the Skripal poisoning, to being one of the motive forces behind the Seth Rich conspiracy theories. Increasingly it seems that he doesn't even care about the credibility of his "sources."
It's not unsourced, the source is being kept private. That may not seem like a meaningful difference but there is a difference. And that difference is the reason Seymour Hersh's reputation is relevant.
I read the first half of the article, and skimmed the second. It doesn't claim to be sourced from anywhere, and the only paragraph that discusses sources and fact checking is when they point out the White House says the entire article is a work of fiction. It doesn't present any evidence that it happened (other than that the US has a big swimming pool that the navy trains in), and summarizes itself by saying that it was a perfect plan (presumably meaning it left behind no evidence), except that they actually did it.
Most News outlets prefer to have more than one source of info. For the life of me I cannot see how this would be a net plus benefit to the US. The potential to destabilize our allies seems likely. If they find out it is true - some of them would be at minimum very pissed.
Well yeah, I think Seymour Hersh's reputation is relevant. He's pretty much a conspiracy theorist in this era.[1] Including his claim that the US never killed Osama bin Laden.
Initially I had the same reaction. After reading the piece slowly again my impression is:
This is not a conspiracy theory. It is very carefully and lucidly written, with so many details, each of which can be refuted. How does he know about all the meetings between the CIA, Sullivan, etc. Why does no one refute individual facts?
I think he did have a source who provided all this. If the source lied, tough.
Investigative journalism is always a gamble. If mainstream media worked, they'd try to press the government on the myriads of claims presented in Hersh's article. Perhaps this would lead somewhere. But the days when mainstream opposed the U.S. government like in the case of Abu Ghraib are over.
> If the source lied, tough. Investigative journalism is always a gamble.
That's not how it works. The onus is on the journalist and the editors to ensure that any source they're relying on is credible, in a position to know what they're claiming, and not playing you. That's why most will insist on dual-sourcing any particularly sensational claims unless they really trust the source.
In the past journalists have been fired for relying on non-credible sources, most recently James LaPorta, so this is no small thing.
If Sy Hersh is not verifying anything about the source he's relying on, he's just being a transcriber not a journalist.
> What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".
Why is that weird? Assuming this is true, there would be rather many people with such knowledge. One of them may feel the need to talk. Would you expect such a source to be named?
Also, I find it a lot easier to imagine why the US would want to do this, than why Russia or Germany would want to do this.
> Why is that weird? Assuming this is true, there would be rather many people with such knowledge. One of them may feel the need to talk.
The level of detail about the operation is basically, some divers from the US Navy attached bombs to the pipeline during a military drill that were detonated with magical sonobouy signals according to some professor who said that might work.
Another red flag: The vast majority of the article was about a political narrative, which really is focused around hurting Russia, and not who is benefited by the destruction of the pipeline. The US government does not own our energy industry and is often at odds with the gas and oil industry here, and this article assumes a level of integration that does not exist in the US political system.
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.
Because without a collaboration of some sort this reads like a planted story.
Source with this degree of knowledge would have no issue providing lots of things that could be confirmed through other means. Documents, names, precise dates and times. Who was in charge of this on Norwegian side? On CIA side.. when and where did they meat etc etc etc
"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 economically.
EU states are now buying US natural gas like we always wanted them to. How much pain and suffering were we willing to inflict to make that happen ?
As a German citizen let me tell you, hardly anyone here is angry that the pipelines are gone. No one is even talking about Nord Stream anymore. When Gazprom stopped the gas flows in July 2022, it was abundandly clear, that the deliveries would not resume in the foreseable future. In a way, blowing up the pipelines made things easier, because the government and the industry could fully focus on reorganizing energy procurement, without being needlessly entangled in hypothetical discussions about what could have been. Even if Russia wanted to resume selling gas to Western Europe sometime in the future, there is still plenty of capacity in the remaining pipelines through Belarus and Poland, as well as Ukraine. They are fully operational and currently either not used at all (Yamal pipeline), or operating at a very low capacity (Transgas).
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.
The amount of LNG gas remains insignificant so far. Germany also hasn't signed any significant contract with the US but rather with Qatar.
To give you one credible motive for Russian involvement: Russia cut off Europe of Gas supplies to get leverage on the Ukraine conflict, but this largely failed as European countries pooled their gas reserves and vowed to move away from Russian gas. As Russia could see that this market was lost the explosions were a last punch to send gas prices higher before the European winter and protect Gazprom from lawsuits. The mild weather killed that first motive, let's see about the other.
There is a lot of credible motive for the fascist russia. First, make allies distrust each other, sabotaging their unity. Second, create panic among the EU population, hoping for increased pressure to lift the sanctions and stop support of Ukraine defending their homeland. Third, force the issue with pending legal approvals for the remaining new pipeline.
Fortunately, EU managed to store up plenty of gas and the winter was mild, so russian blackmail has failed.
I remember reading at the time that the motive would have been to remove the oligarch's desire to end the war. If you can't sell the gas anyway, then you can't complain about it.
Seeing as Russia was already using gas supplies as a political tool, it doesn't seem too far fetched.
Notice how the Nord Stream explosions were timed with the opening of the Baltic Pipe connection, which makes it possible to send Norwegian (and Danish) gas from the North Sea to Poland (and possibly further to Lithuania).
Putin was still trying to energy blackmail Europe back then. It is hard to see the explosions as anything else but a threat that the Baltic Pipe could also be blown up -- and the Nord Stream pipes weren't very useful to Russia at that point so it wouldn't cost much to lose them.
There are plenty of credible motives for Russia to do this (some even listed in this thread), but they are all just as weakly supported as this theory.
> 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 made the EU weak. Breaking that relationship permanently will make the EU stronger.
I agree, very well written and full of detail, but with no shred of evidence, it’s just a theory.
The credibility of the author should never be taken for granted, especially with stories of this sensitive nature. The veracity also depends on an anonymous source, which will likely never be revealed nor verified or verifiable.
I think the danger here is that many people will take the author’s credibility for granted and will be influenced to take some action based on their belief.
I guess that’s okay, but it feels like people ought to come to the conclusion that this is nothing more than an interesting theory, then move on.
He’s protecting his source. You can think what you want, but the circumstantial evidence that supports the assertions is voluminous. And it certainly makes more sense than any of the other “theories”, especially the absurd idea that Russia blew up its own pipeline.
Top comment of course is reassuring nothing-to-see-here platitude, definitively framing this thoroughly-sourced investigation by a Pulitzer winner (whatever that means) as a harmless entertaining fabrication (mad props to the mmastrac, it's quite a skill to deftly dismiss and trivialize months of work with two sentences)...aahhhh, so reassured....because we want to be "soothed and comforted, not challenged and confronted" and anything against the mainstream narrative and Chinese-spy-balloon-distraction is clearly "not anchored in reality". SMH...expect more from you HN.
Pretty much any country bordering the baltic sea + US + China + Ukrain have groups which a) have interest in it being destroyed b) have the capabilities to do so.
I don’t reckon that the leaks are accidental either. The Biden Administration waited until the tide of public opinion turned further against Russia. They waited until the rest of the West had committed MBTs to Ukraine before allowing this to be leaked. There’s a message being sent here.
Perhaps some folks care very much that it was the US that executed the plan instead of Sweden or the UK or some other country, but for me you could swap out all the names of entities in the reporting and it would still be very interesting reading. For me, I take the story as, "this is a plausible explanation for how a modern nation state plans and executes targeted subterfuge as part of a web of global politics".
It's not entirely fiction such as, "And then Biden sacrificed a peahen, waved his magic wand, and spoke the incantation and the pipeline exploded!" The events, organizations, equipment, and strategy described in the document is all real-life stuff!
> 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.
we can also choose to ignore the american material movements in the area at more or less the exact time. Coincidence im sure, after all, the good old uncle sam is an ally to europe and would NEVER do anything against citizens of other countries
You’re free to not believe his anonymous source, but this vapid “Tom Clancy” nonsense is uncalled for given that you have no counter-arguments whatsoever.
Not a few hours later, 17 hours apart. No military is going to arrange for two pipes in the same general area to be destroyed 17 hours apart. 17 hours to find the second floating sonar device. 17 hours to get caught with your pants down.
I'm saying this as former US military here. the Idea that in the middle of a OPORD, of any kind, POTUS would come in last minute and change a detail, like an explosive on a timer (fairly simple,) to what is effectively some new technology no one has ever heard of, that allows for remote sonar detonations is Tom Clancy stuff.
In the United States Military, there's this thing called the Chain of Command.
This exercise was under the U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, which is under the United States European Command & United States Africa Command.
The "work" that being described here would have been under SOCOM (United States Special Operations Command), which is the only command that could do this kind of work, they are the only ones that even have the assets to do this kind of work and theres absolutely no mention of that in this piece.
It's complete conjecture and should absolutely be treated as such until theres hard evidence.
SOCOM does actually get a brief mention, but in a way that makes the whole story even less plausible. At the beginning, Hersh claims that the divers used were chosen because they were just "Navy only" and not part of SOCOM, which is allegedly a legal loophole to avoid having to report the activity to the Gang of Eight in Congress, apparently done because of concerns about leaks.
Setting aside how legally questionable that premise sounds, especially because the entire rest of the article is full of references to the involvement of clandestine organizations beyond "Navy only", Hersh then goes on to describe an operation apparently involving an absolute clown car full of a bunch of other people including 3 foreign countries, at least some people running a major NATO exercise, and what sounds like half the Norwegian Navy. Operations so secret you can't tell 8 Congressional leaders (as required by law) but you can tell Norway, Denmark, and Sweden about do not sound like a thing.
> Operations so secret you can't tell 8 Congressional leaders (as required by law) but you can tell Norway, Denmark, and Sweden about do not sound like a thing.
I think his argument is that the explanation offered by the author is implausible. When someone comes forward with such claims, the main means of determining it's veracity is to verify the details provided. Typically fabrications will contain small inconsistencies that don't match facts known only to investigators, verified witnesses, or experts in the subject matter.
I think their implication is that none of us really know what happened, much less the author of this article.
He is right that sonar buoy detonation thing sounds like absolute bullshit. Incredibly risky and 17 hours.. I mean you want to do this, send a submarine, it fires few torpedoes. No more pipeline. Fast, simple, reliable.
Let's say I am a Ukranian patriot, with few million in the bank. I bet given few month I could put together a team of divers to plant some C4 with a simple timer and blow this thing to hell. Or Polish patriot, or Polish government or any of the Baltic states. It is an existential struggle for all of them, and russkie understand one thing and one thing only, this was a very clear communication straight to Putin.
Pipelines of all types are fragile things and break all the time for numerous reasons.
Do not attribute to malice which can be explained by negligence/incompetence with out evidence.
The Nordstream pipelines were not in operation, which indicated the need for maintenance. The pipelines, which carry methane under saltwater, require frequent preventive maintenance checks and services, however, it is believed that these checks may have been neglected since the Russians took over. The pipelines were officially shut down for maintenance in July 2020 and July 2021, but were met with various issues and disruptions in gas flow.
Given the pressurized and highly flammable nature of the pipelines, it is imperative to determine the causes of these issues.
Sabotage cannot be ruled out, especially given the current geopolitical climate.
However, the most likely cause could be related to the formation of methane hydrates, which can cause blockages in the pipeline known as hydrate plugs. These plugs can be difficult to remove and require a slow and simultaneous depressurization from both ends of the pipeline.
Remember, both sides, this is important!
If the depressurization is not carried out correctly, it can result in the rapid launch of the hydrate plug towards the depressurized side, causing significant damage to the pipeline. The Diesel Effect, which occurs when the valves are closed ahead of the fast-moving plug, can also cause significant damage. It is crucial that the removal of hydrate plugs be carried out by experienced professionals, given the potential consequences of a failure to do so.
Was it ever established whether the fourth pipeline was even attacked? Did it have explosives attached that didn't go off? (And if so do they have a convenient "made in ..." sticker?)
Would have been interesting to hear the alleged source give a reason for only blowing up 3 of 4 pipes in a plan they call "perfect".
Was it established that it was caused by explosives? The last time the US did this, it was by adding malicious code into pipeline control software (before the USSR stole the software from a US company).
to counter, a lot of people in this thread are saying that the united states is the only country that benefits, (hind sight is 20/20), therefor they must have done it. And all of this is without a shred of evidence.
If you're going to comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidlelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." We don't want political or nationalistic flamewar here, and any substantive point can be made without it.
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 that it's interesting.
Btw, I haven't gone back and looked at the history but I'd be willing to bet that the same things were said about Hersh's reputation from the beginning. That's standard fare for counterargument.
p.s. It's astonishing how narrow the space is for someone to say they don't know the truth about X but it's interesting. If X has any charge at all, you get pounced on by people who feel sure that they do know what the truth is. But if you think about it, it's a precondition for curiosity not to already know (or feel one knows) the answer—and this is a site for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). So I don't feel that this is particularly a borderline call from a moderation point of view.
This gatekeeping is ridiculous. This is the same guy who unveiled the atrocities that occured during the My Lai massacre and at Abu Ghraib, both of which painted the US Gov/military in a terrible light.
This is an actual case of speaking truth to power. He clearly (and rightfully IMO) does not trust the US government and his "somewhat questionable" and recent work has continued that trend. Is it any surprise that the same institutions/people that continuously carry water for the government now rush to label him a conspiracy theorist?
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 that's the only thing people are focusing on because it makes the situation simple for them, and it's easiest to have a single villain and the rest are the good guys.
I assume most people offended by this submission here are American (or at least heavily support America) and want to think of their current government/country as the good guys.
I don't think there's any good guys in this situation.
I think it's worthwhile that a reputation is able to garner attention for someone, and it may be worth examining why his reputation is coming into question. If it has something to do with "he likes to tout conspiracy theories" I would start to wonder who would gain from this reporting being discredited in such a manner.
Just flagged this in the hopes that you'll reconsider.
It's no secret that Hersh's work has become increasingly suspect in recent years. Every time he writes, he cites a single anonymous source and yet manages to go into an implausible level of detail and completeness with neatly tied up loose ends you'd only expect to find in a Tom Clancy novel. The only reason this story has been rescued from the dustbin is due to Hersh's (old) reputation, which though well earned, shouldn't just give him a pass.
Yeah, instead of blog posts Hersh should write spy thrillers in tje tradition of the early Tom Clancy works. I would even pay for those, I like the setting and the narrative Hersh oresented in this blog, and the writing, are compelling and good. For a fictional book, not for journalism.
Dan, I respectfully ask you to reconsider. This is a poorly-sourced speculative piece of propaganda and clearly goes against site guidelines.
You repeat, above, that HN is not for nationalist flamewar, and requires substance. But this post is nationalist flamewar and isn't substantive. Allowing it while shutting down similar content from the opposite perspective is... unsettling.
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.
Man, the aithor (no idea who that is...) should write a spy novel around this. As a fictional setting it would be great! As anything else, not so much.
Heck, the Baltic states, along with Poland and the Scandinavian countries, have some of the best naval divers and EODs on the planet, virtue of having the priviledge of cleaning two world wars worth of mines, bombs and torpedoes from the Baltic sea...
This piece should be flagged to death, especially since it is, giving it the most (and IMHO undeserved) credit pure speculation.
Edit: Just looked Seymore Hersh up, now I know why the name rang a bell. Well, for My Lai he had proof and sources, didn't he?
It’s not propaganda. It’s certainly much less propagandistic than the average coverage of the Ukraine war.
The article has an anonymous source. Your comment complains about “propaganda” and “nationalist flamewar” (unfounded) and asks for moderation. The submission is more substantive than your comment.
Honest question: what about this story seems so far-fetched to you that you can't give the author the benefit of the doubt? There are decades of such intelligence goings-on.
> This is a poorly-sourced speculative piece of propaganda
You mean like most mainstream news that parrot state-sponsored talking points? It seems counterpropaganda propaganda pieces are the only way to balance out state propaganda these days.
Amazing the lengths people will go to censor anything that goes against the US proxy war narrative, even on HN. The mental gymnastics are truly breathtaking.
> Hersh reporting on this counts as significant new information
This is from 2015:
"The way to understand Hersh is to visualize most of his sources as Michael Scheuer-like individuals. It is not difficult to find such people in the intelligence world: obsessive, frustrated idiot savants who perceive themselves as stymied by the paper pushers, the bureaucrats"
"Hersh’s problem is that he evinces no skepticism whatsoever toward what his crank sources tell him, which is ironic considering how cynical he is regarding the pronouncements of the U.S. national security bureaucracy. Like diplomats who “go native,” gradually sympathizing with the government or some faction in the host nation while losing sight of their own country’s national interest, Hersh long ago adopted the views of America’s adversaries and harshest critics."
> Hersh’s problem is that he evinces no skepticism whatsoever toward what his crank sources tell him, which is ironic considering how cynical he is regarding the pronouncements of the U.S. national security bureaucracy.
i don't have opinions about journalists, because i'm a normal person, but that sounds like a needed antidote to, say, slate's complete lack of skepticism regarding the pronouncements of the U.S. national security bureaucracy.
I'm surprised at the reaction here. There's plenty of stuff posted on HN I don't agree with, but don't think I've ever felt so strongly about a submission that I'd want the rest of the HN community not to read it because of my personal reaction to it. If you don't like something you read on HN, why not let the rest of us read it and make up our own minds?
Thanks dang. I'm glad HN has moderators that make calls like.
If you’ve been on HN (or any link-sharing community) for a while, it’s easy to see that certain articles are posted and/or upvoted largely for the sake of zeitgeist-shaping, not out of a sense of intellectual curiosity. This feels like one of those articles.
I'm honestly really shocked by your stance on this. Regardless of whether or not this information is credible, this seems like text book flame war kindling. In the past, I've thought HN's policy of "you can discuss things like this in other forums" was wise and I've been corrected by it myself many times. Why wouldn't that apply in this case?
One thing that makes this distinct from much of said kindling is that it hasn't been reported on before. This isn't someone coming into an unrelated comment thread and commenting "9/11 was an inside job!"
I would encourage any who disagree to consider truly why this reporting upsets them.
Because it's interesting. Hersh reporting on it is an interesting story in its own right. Is what he says true? I have no idea. We don't have a truth meter here.
I want to defend this decision from the naysayers here. The geopolitical implications are fascinating, and the technical aspects of how the operation was (may have?) been carried out are an interesting topic of discussion. There are increasingly fewer alternative communities of intelligent people on the internet where these things can be discussed. Why take that away?
If the comments turn into a flame war, blame the commenters, not the article.
Typically three unnamed sources with domain knowledge are required. It's telling that no editor chose to run this and Hersh has to self-publish. I wish you would reconsider the folks flagging this.
We sometimes add a question mark when a title makes a dramatic and divisive claim, because otherwise readers who read the title might think that HN (or its admins) are somehow endorsing the claim. We don't know what the truth is and are neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the claim.
Edit: I dug up a few other examples where we've done this:
The basic idea is that adding a question is a flame retardant because it tends to dampen the meta-comments about the story, e.g. complaints that the admins are taking a side or whatnot.
In this case it's not really working, because the question mark is also generating lots of meta-comments. But maybe fewer than we'd get without it.
Meta comment of my own: it's not only impossible to please everyone with moderation calls like this—it's seemingly impossible to please anyone. That's why it's really helpful to have a first principle to rely on—i.e. to know what you're optimizing for. It occasionally makes it possible to answer an otherwise hard question rather easily.
I find it so bizarre that there’s bonafide HN users who so keenly want to protect a narrative that they demand an interesting article with detailed claims be removed, rather than just accepting that many people will want to read it make up their own mind. Who are these people? (rhetorical question)
This angle made me doubt the story Hersh is pushing.
When you're just speculating or building a conspiracy theory then those "ominous" comments are worth quoting.
If you are claiming to be in contact with someone with deep knowledge of the actual operation, why even mention those? Worse still, add some extra twist where the spies have a meta comment on their cover being blown by those comments.
I disagree that we shouldn't question such big claims.
It's safe to assume the reason his sources are unnamed is to protect their safety. Don't know how plausible this is, but I it's possible that the lack of presentable evidence is for the same reason. Maybe the relevant documents could've been somehow fingerprinted, which would identify the leaker/source; the film/tv industry has done this when distributing pilots for private viewings. Heck, even printers did it lol.
However, it's not secret American politicians vehemently disliked the existence of Nordstream, and this outcome is undeniably convenient for them. Maybe too convenient, so they wouldn't dare attempt it? Or maybe they just assumed they'd have a great scapegoat. Maybe it wasn't even them, and it's Russian government playing 5D chess by blowing up their own investment to frame Americans.
Dan there’s no sugarcoating this - you’ve got it wrong on this one. I say this as a supporter of your moderation policies in general. The sooner you reverse this decision, the better for everyone.
That's certainly possible! But I would need to hear an argument about why, which actually addresses the reasons I've given in my responses in this thread. So far I haven't heard that. In fact, no one seems to have even tried (maybe I missed it amid the inundation - I've been trying and failing to keep up for a couple hours now).
If you're a supporter of someones work in general, it should be far easier to just ignore what you perceive to be a mistake or blemish, and just move on.
The soon the better you do X, is quite an authoritative stance to take.
Since when does HN allow not only unsourced claims, but unsourced claims about massive geopolitical sabotage operations?
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle
You're just baiting everyone in this comments section. How long have you been moderating this site? Have you ever seen a post like this cultivate a productive comments section?
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Evidence? I don't see much evidence of anything here
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like
This last one you are guilty of, maybe this post was being flag brigaded for a reason
I find it extremely jarring how many reputable western media outlets immediately jumped to the conclusion that Russia did it even though that made zero sense - but absolutely refused to even consider the possibility that the US or another western state could have done it.
But at this point, the article is basically "cool story, bro". The only independently verifyable bits are the public statements of Biden, Nuland, etc, which are already well-known. But those only show that the US really really really didn't like the pipelines - and that was never a secret. They do not give any evidence for a planned operation to destroy them.
The rest of the article is amazingly detailed but only based on an anonymous source. Even if we trust that the source existed, there is no way to know if that source itself is trustworthy.
So as of now, I don't the information in the article would convince anyone of the "US did it" hypothesis who wasn't already convinced.
I think the only thing that the article is useful for is as a future reference. It could be useful to remember the details and keep an eye if they match with any future developments.
> I find it extremely jarring how many reputable western media outlets immediately jumped to the conclusion that Russia did it even though that made zero sense - but absolutely refused to even consider the possibility that the US or another western state could have done it.
One simple hypothesis would be that it is only an illusion that western media outlets are independent from their governments.
It make sense. russia's agenda is to destabilize Europe. And they were the only ones who had anything directly to gain from it with certainty as they wanted to create an energy crisis in Europe. They knew that after the EU sanctions, Nord stream would be a dead project after their illegal invasion. By blowing up what now had no real long term economic value, they created uncertainty and it helped to get the energy prices to skyrocket in Europe and they succeeded in their goal of destabilizing Europe's energy market. All the Russians want is to create as much havoc for the West they can and create conflicts and make west weak, just of that reason it make totally sense to blow it up.
> jumped to the conclusion that Russia did it even though that made zero sense
It makes a lot of sense. The pipeline was rendered useless anyway, they get to blame the US and sowing division by planting stories such as these, and they also send a message that they can blow up stuff underwater anywhere; in particular, undersea cables, whose destruction would cause major economic problems.
>I find it extremely jarring how many reputable western media outlets immediately jumped to the conclusion that Russia did it
Do you have proof to back up this claim? A more correct observation is that Western media didn't blame any single entity but has the attention span of a goldfish and forgot about this incident after a week or two.
I live in Germany and my proof is that a few days after the explosions, I could read/watch Spiegel, Tagesschau and other outlets quoting speculations about Russia as "expert opinions", while discussing speculations about the US only in context of "russian accusations".
This is not a good faith question. If you wanted to know the arguments that Russia made regarding the invasion of Ukraine, you would have googled them sometime within the past year. What you want is for somebody to type those reasons here so you can respond to them with invective.
Putin thought he could roll into Kyiv like the USSR did in Hungary and Czech, and like he did in Crimea. Bloodless coup. Massive show of strength no rational person would try to fight.
The entire world thought Ukraine was going to collapse.
Diplomats from big countries were telling Zelensky to his face that he had '24 hours' before Russia took Kyiv.
This is detail pretty well in an article I think I found here first.
If Russia ever wanted to take Ukraine “back”, it had to do it now. It would only get harder and less likely as time goes on. Now, as to why of take Ukraine back at all, IDK, beautiful women, I assume.
I’m not sure anyone can answer the why, really, but the why now seems to have reason.
>I find it extremely jarring how many reputable western media outlets immediately jumped to the conclusion that Russia did it even though that made zero sense
> Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s prime minister for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since. “He is the glove that fits the American hand,” the source said.
A lot of what he is saying here is not strictly true. Jens Stoltenberg was the leader of the labour party and while he was not a communist, describing him as a committed anti-communist is just plainly wrong. It was not part of his platform at all and one the parties in his coalition was a socialist, Marxist party.
Also he was not a hardliner on Russia. In fact during his time as a prime minister Norway and Russia peacefully and diplomatically solved the territorial dispute they had in the Barents Sea.
Neither have the Americans always completely trusted him since the Vietnam war. He was vocally anti-NATO in his youth and the Bush administration gave him a cold shoulder for the rest of it's years after he was elected prime minister in 2005. He claimed that during the congratulation call from the American president he said that he wanted all Norwegian troops out of Iraq and the the mission. The Americans were adamant he did not.
I know it's just one paragraph, but when thing gets misconstructed by the source in such a way it kinda losses credibility with me. Also the quote about Norwegians "Hating Russians" while I've never felt anything like that in my dealing with the armed forces (Norway don't have any historical grievances with Russia), really makes me question it.
Also, Supreme Allied Commander Europe is General Cavoli. Stoltenberg is Secretary General of NATO. The former is what most people would call the "supreme commander" since has military operational command. He is American so immediately suspect. In between there is Chair of the NATO Military Committee, who is Dutch admiral.
Yep. Gell Mann Amnesia in full effect here. Everything you two have said are basic geopolitical knowledge blunders and it's clear Hersh has lost his intellectual bearing the last decade as he's now 85...
Hersh: "Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg"
Reality: Jens Stoltenberg is the secretary general of NATO.
Hersh possibly confused Jens with his father Thorvald Stoltenberg. Who travelled to North-Vietnam in 1970 to negotiate between them and USA, and who was commended for his negotiating skills by the am. intel community in a declassified rapport from 1980.
>Thanks, Vietnam was over in '75, Stoltenberg was 16 then. It's just all so absurd.
Not necessarily.
I had thought Hersh's "since the Vietnam War" line to be poorly phrased, or an editing mistake, but /u/michaelmacmanus makes an interesting point <https://np.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/10wx42b/seymour_h...>. Maybe we should take the line literally!
«lieutenant colonel Tormod Heier said: - In its first years, the Stoltenberg government had a bad reputation in the USA, partly because we did not contribute in southern Afghanistan. After SV was weakened in the 2009 election, Libya became an opportunity to repair relations with the United States. This has contributed to the fact that Norway has now moved up a division in NATO .
And as a thank you for his efforts, Jens Stoltenberg was appointed Secretary General of NATO.«
> "Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg ... He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War."
During the Vietnam War (1955-1975) Stoltenberg (born 1959) was -4 to 16 years old..
Hersh possibly confused Jens with his father Thorvald Stoltenberg. Who travelled to North-Vietnam in 1970 to negotiate between them and USA, and who was commended for his negotiating skills by the am. intel community in a declassified rapport from 1980.
Links/sources follow:
«Thorvald Stoltenberg and Reiulf Steen visited Hanoi in 1970.»
«In a new biography of Thorvald Stoltenberg, it is described how Norway brokered peace between the parties in the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s.»
> A lot of what he is saying here is not strictly true. Jens Stoltenberg was the leader of the labour party and while he was not a communist, describing him as a committed anti-communist is just plainly wrong.
Would “milquetoast moderate” be more fitting? That’s at least closer to how the Labour Party operates, even though their rhetoric is more left-leaning than the other major party (H).
> He claimed that during the congratulation call from the American president he said that he wanted all Norwegian troops out of Iraq and the the mission. The Americans were adamant he did not.
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.
Seymour Hersh has a very credible background and reputation. Assuming he is still lucid in his age, hasn't become a senile puppet of a ghost writer, then it would be foolish to write off his claims just because he isn't telling you who his source is.
He's lost his credibility over the years. Which is likely why this didn't get published by NY Times.
It's long but after reading this ask why you would believe this man who, in this new article, is making plenty of assertions all based on quotes from a single anonymous source.
His reporting on Syria lost him some credibility. It appears from my perspective that he has a bias toward always thinking the U.S. is the culprit. Given the power of the U.S. and it’s history of shenanigans he’ll often times be right.
Seymour Hersh is also 85 years old, long into his retirement with likely partially declining faculties. When you get older your "bullshit filter" starts to go away as well. Also he has a long career of attacking the US government so anything that "rhymes" with that is going to fit his own confirmation bias.
Hersh was once a reputable journalist. But now he is predominantly a cheerleader for authoritarian regimes that makes up "anonymous sources" to back up his claims.
As soon as he has made an assertion he cites a 'source' to back it. In every case this is either an un-named former official or an unidentified secret document passed to Hersh in unknown circumstances. […] By my count Hersh has anonymous 'sources' inside 30 foreign governments and virtually every department of the U.S. government.
If you look at all the players, their interests, and their capabilities, I think the most logical conclusion is that the US likely did it. Of course this is not evidence but this the sort of operation where success means no evidence (at least no evidence available to the public at large as it is possible and, one might hope, likely that neighbouring countries know).
> If you look at all the players, their interests, and their capabilities, I think the most logical conclusion is that the US likely did it.
How so? The pipeline(s) was/were already off, so the US and Norway already had a new customer because of this. If the US risked blowing up the pipeline(s) (which was already not delivering,) it would put NATO in jeopardy which is explicitly against US interests and WAY more valuable than natural gas. The entire theory doesn't even make sense from the standpoint of US needs/wants.
Why leave one of the brand new, larger pipelines undamaged, so that Russia could then offer after the event to work with Germany to activate it? Which naturally they did.
This pipeline had been completed but activation was stopped due to the start of the war. If Germany had capitulated and activated it with Russia that would be a major political win for Russia and blow for the suggested goals of the US and other allies. To me this seems to be the biggest hole in the theory that the US was responsible.
> If you look at all the players, their interests, and their capabilities, I think the most logical conclusion is that the US likely did it.
I disagree.
The most logical explanation is tha Russia did it as a capacity demonstration and threat against Baltic Pipe to pressure contries in the region regarding Ukraine, but that, like all their threats against the West over Ukraine policy so far, the threat was hollow.
I think it’s plausible that Putin wanted it done. It got Russia out of a contractual obligation and greater isolation of Russian companies makes the oligarchs’ position tied to Putin. The oligarchs can’t go to the West since they’ve been sanctioned and their companies are increasingly barred from doing business in the West. That isolation makes their fortunes tied to Putin’s survival. Think Cortex burning the ships.
In a personalist authoritarian regime the rationality of actions sometimes depends on wether or not the dictator is being rational on a given day.
The story is credible. Is it true? This is not enough information to decide that, because, as you say it, there are no sources or other corroborating evidence.
But it does host a starting point for future discussion due to the fact that it offers relatively detailed pieces of information.
Now it's up to others to come out and say "this is true, that is not", people who actually do have provable information. It offers them a story to share their information on. This story didn't exist previously in the public discourse.
The story doesn't even claim it is credible. It claims the White House says the rest of the article is fiction, and provides no counterargument or evidence that contradicts the White House's statement.
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.
If this turns out to be right --and we don't have conclusive evidence, but this would upset the current narrative. Why would Russia be an idiot to shoot itself in the foot (cui bono) and blow up their leverage; though in international affairs the unimaginable is possible, so yeah they may have done it to themselves -though to outsiders it would seem illogical
If true though, it would be as big as the Gulf of Tonkin incident [as in it was us in pursuit of our own interest]
The Gulf of Tonkin involved the US claiming that a US ship was fired upon as a pretense to declare war in retaliation. The idea here is that the US blew up a Russian pipeline in order to... what? Declare war on Russia in retaliation for Russia's own pipeline being destroyed? This makes no sense unless you're accusing Russia of blowing up the pipeline.
Funnily enough, the article could just as well be commissioned/suggested by an American organization or person. The USA could easily shoulder the responsibility even if they did not do it, and the goals would be:
- show how firm they have been "back then": an interesting narrative in light of recent events (the balloon)
- deflect fire from the allied or friendly country who actually did it: Sweden, Poland who boldly supported Ukraine right from the start of the war?
Seymour could also have been trapped by a source he previously knew at the CIA and who decided to play its own game. Anyway the article lacks credibility on several aspects raised by weatherlight and erentz. The existence of said source just a few monthes after the events is in itself suspicious.
He has a lot of very specific details and quotes, but he doesn't say where any of them are from. Which ones are actual quotes, and which ones are creative writing?
He has links in the article but those links don’t give any evidence of what he claims. For instance, he has a link to the Gang of Eight but this doesn’t provide any evidence to what he ways. He uses links in a clever way to make it seem like he’s acquired evidence. What the linked information shows is that his assertions are plausible.
It’s plausible that the U.S. used the military personnel he claims the U.S. used so that they could avoid Congressional oversight. But where is the evidence they actually used said personnel? He references a source but my source with direct knowledge of Seymour’s work says that Russia paid him to write this.
Given Seymour’s work on Russia’s involvement in Syria I’m skeptical of him having credibility on the topic of Nordstream.
Your evidence against Seymour: “I think it more believable.” (Based on what? Exactly nothing.)
Not to mention that “paid to write” is not even hearsay: you just made it up as a theory, without any hint towards anything happening in the real world.
There is one thing that is really bothering me in this story.
I don't really care who is behind the sabotage, they would certainly not admit it for obvious reasons, and it could be more complex than it seems.
But the press, here in the UK, in France and in the US, has been suspiciously "clueless", avoiding with great care to imply that anyone in the west could be behind it, even if it really seems obvious that it could very well be the case.
Why? Why are they so careful? They usually are not afraid to speculate, especially on such a scale.
I find it disturbing to think that they could either have received instructions from their respective governments or are simply afraid push any inquiries on this subject.
Any US journalistic outlet would KILL to be first to report on this.
The US loves its military, but American news sources have no want to keep a secret like this on behalf of the government. The US media loves to report on US war crimes, and other stupid government shit
It wouldn't surprise me to know that the US government had knowledge of this. It would surprise me if they were directly involved though.
1. Russia would get income from the pipeline, empowering their economy.
2. This sort of infrastructure would represent increased German dependence on Russia for their energy needs.
3. This would also tend to increase economic and diplomatic ties between Germany and Russia.
Destroying the pipeline (even if it's not being used) could theoretically send the message that these infrastructure projects are not safe and that relying on Russia for energy is strategically unwise.
The Western press seems to more or less parrot the government talking points or are even more hawkish themselves. Criticism is offered on minor topics or is feeble and drowned in a torrent of other articles.
One could recognize this also with the Coronavirus fiasco when for example the press was parroting the governments saying that the virus is not going to come to Europe and urging people not to be racist against the Chinese (extra funny given the current mainstream position against China). Then the press was parroting that masks don’t work. Then they were parroting that people should really wear masks. Not all the press, not all of the time, but the trend and direction were obvious.
And the tireless downplaying of AstraZeneca and mRNA side-effects, goodness.
All of these narratives were also mainstream on HN, just as most opinions on the war are unsophisticated and thoroughly mainstream.
It’s so bizarre, imagine having freedom of the press and then doing what’s expected of you anyway.
Or as an individual being able to think, gather facts and information and draw your own conclusions. And having the freedom to present those conclusions go to waste while just repeating some simplistic talking point.
HN is worse than usual at discussing the war. Many non-mainstream commenters have given up or were censored and it’s mostly pockets of conformity now.
I don't thinks this is a conspiracy of any kind (or at least I hope so) but I wonder if this apparent docile conformity of the press at large is a side effect of the changes that occurred in this field during the past 20 years.
Readit News
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 to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".
But he does often rely on sources who remain anonymous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Use_of_anonymous...
I did find it interesting in that Wikipedia article to read that The New Yorker's editor insists on knowing the identify of all of the anonymous sources that Hersh has used when his reporting is published in that magazine. That suggests to me that while Hersh can probably be generally trusted, his work is of a higher quality when it's published in an outlet like The New Yorker, as the editor-in-chief and other staff submit it to a more rigorous internal discussion. That's in comparison to probably no internal review or discussion by Substack.
He's also, especially recently, made some very bold claims that so far have not turned out to be correct, whether because the truth just hasn't been revealed yet, or because Hersh was wrong or misled by his sources.
It's also worth noting that Hersh - as with any journalist - is only as good as his sources. If people choose to leak juicy secrets to him (not implausible!) he may end up publishing accurate stories that reveal nefarious conspiracies (which has happened). If people choose to give him lies and misinformation, he may end up publishing conspiracy theories instead. And as he keeps publishing, the odds that this will happen (if it hasn't already) keep increasing.
So I absolutely wouldn't write off any claim Hersh makes, but I wouldn't blindly believe it either. And here he is relying, by his own admission, almost entirely on a single anonymous source, giving details that can't really be independently confirmed.
Was Hersh told by someone that the US took out the pipeline? Probably! Does that mean the US did so? I'm not sure I'd seriously update my priors based on this.
That even that inconsistent Bin Laden story purportedly relied on two distinct sources, and yet his Nord Stream story purportedly relies on only a single anonymous source, should be a significant red flag here. I have no reason to doubt that Hersh heard the quotes in his Nord Stream story from at least someone in government, but that source's motivations and truthfulness were not independently verified even, by his own admission, by Hersh. And that's just... not credible reporting.
Since Nordstream was destroyed amidst public pressure from US energy companies who wanted to takeover the European energy market, the US has become the world's leading exporter of liquid natural gas, Europeans are paying record natural gas prices, and US energy companies are reporting record profits. Again, the relationship between these things should surprise nobody.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/08/bidens-bi...
I mean, par for the course for modern journalism, I suppose.
The guy is obviously picks up lobby chatter, and lets his imagination to run.
My Lai was never a giant secret, he was just the first to bring it to the wider audience.
That's why there were several explosions: Everyone was blowing it up at the same time, unbeknownst of each other's plans.
I'd bet my last dollar that at least four nations had "blow up Nord Stream to force continued conflict" contingency plans.
Who did it? Germany, Russia, USA, Ukraine, or a curve ball from the one of the Nordic or Baltic states? We'll probably never know, and none of those answers would surprise me.
There are too many players with varying interests at different levels to just go off of someone's reputation and an unnamed source. Perhaps Biden or some other head of state needs to come along and blow up this thread so that moderators and commenters alike have to find other outlets for the water they're carrying.
Besides motive, this article doesn't provide anything new. And that the US had at least motive is established fact since basically the day of the explosion.
It's the perfect crime
This was leaked at the time that it is now to send a message to the Germans.
The fact is, Hersh has gotten deeper and deeper into the conspiracy-theory weeds over the past few decades, with his most recent work tending towards outright disinformation -- from suggesting al-Qa'ida wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks, to whitewashing Syrian chemical attacks (and Ted Postol makes a cameo appearance in this piece as well), to denying Russian involvement in the Skripal poisoning, to being one of the motive forces behind the Seth Rich conspiracy theories. Increasingly it seems that he doesn't even care about the credibility of his "sources."
Is this satire or what? His reputation is "as a nutcase" nowadays.
Most reputable editors, when given a secret-sources story, either reject it outright, or say "OK, tell me their names and let me talk to them."
If you're Hersh, maybe you get away with saying, "trust me."
I read the first half of the article, and skimmed the second. It doesn't claim to be sourced from anywhere, and the only paragraph that discusses sources and fact checking is when they point out the White House says the entire article is a work of fiction. It doesn't present any evidence that it happened (other than that the US has a big swimming pool that the navy trains in), and summarizes itself by saying that it was a perfect plan (presumably meaning it left behind no evidence), except that they actually did it.
What am I missing?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Criticism_and_co...
This is not a conspiracy theory. It is very carefully and lucidly written, with so many details, each of which can be refuted. How does he know about all the meetings between the CIA, Sullivan, etc. Why does no one refute individual facts?
I think he did have a source who provided all this. If the source lied, tough. Investigative journalism is always a gamble. If mainstream media worked, they'd try to press the government on the myriads of claims presented in Hersh's article. Perhaps this would lead somewhere. But the days when mainstream opposed the U.S. government like in the case of Abu Ghraib are over.
That's not how it works. The onus is on the journalist and the editors to ensure that any source they're relying on is credible, in a position to know what they're claiming, and not playing you. That's why most will insist on dual-sourcing any particularly sensational claims unless they really trust the source.
In the past journalists have been fired for relying on non-credible sources, most recently James LaPorta, so this is no small thing.
If Sy Hersh is not verifying anything about the source he's relying on, he's just being a transcriber not a journalist.
Why is that weird? Assuming this is true, there would be rather many people with such knowledge. One of them may feel the need to talk. Would you expect such a source to be named?
Also, I find it a lot easier to imagine why the US would want to do this, than why Russia or Germany would want to do this.
The level of detail about the operation is basically, some divers from the US Navy attached bombs to the pipeline during a military drill that were detonated with magical sonobouy signals according to some professor who said that might work.
Another red flag: The vast majority of the article was about a political narrative, which really is focused around hurting Russia, and not who is benefited by the destruction of the pipeline. The US government does not own our energy industry and is often at odds with the gas and oil industry here, and this article assumes a level of integration that does not exist in the US political system.
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.
Source with this degree of knowledge would have no issue providing lots of things that could be confirmed through other means. Documents, names, precise dates and times. Who was in charge of this on Norwegian side? On CIA side.. when and where did they meat etc etc etc
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 economically.
EU states are now buying US natural gas like we always wanted them to. How much pain and suffering were we willing to inflict to make that happen ?
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.
To give you one credible motive for Russian involvement: Russia cut off Europe of Gas supplies to get leverage on the Ukraine conflict, but this largely failed as European countries pooled their gas reserves and vowed to move away from Russian gas. As Russia could see that this market was lost the explosions were a last punch to send gas prices higher before the European winter and protect Gazprom from lawsuits. The mild weather killed that first motive, let's see about the other.
Fortunately, EU managed to store up plenty of gas and the winter was mild, so russian blackmail has failed.
Seeing as Russia was already using gas supplies as a political tool, it doesn't seem too far fetched.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Pipe
Putin was still trying to energy blackmail Europe back then. It is hard to see the explosions as anything else but a threat that the Baltic Pipe could also be blown up -- and the Nord Stream pipes weren't very useful to Russia at that point so it wouldn't cost much to lose them.
Dead Comment
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 made the EU weak. Breaking that relationship permanently will make the EU stronger.
The credibility of the author should never be taken for granted, especially with stories of this sensitive nature. The veracity also depends on an anonymous source, which will likely never be revealed nor verified or verifiable.
I think the danger here is that many people will take the author’s credibility for granted and will be influenced to take some action based on their belief.
I guess that’s okay, but it feels like people ought to come to the conclusion that this is nothing more than an interesting theory, then move on.
It's not entirely fiction such as, "And then Biden sacrificed a peahen, waved his magic wand, and spoke the incantation and the pipeline exploded!" The events, organizations, equipment, and strategy described in the document is all real-life stuff!
I would be surprised if anyone outside the US media sphere even gives that implausible happenstance a serious consideration.
we can also choose to ignore the american material movements in the area at more or less the exact time. Coincidence im sure, after all, the good old uncle sam is an ally to europe and would NEVER do anything against citizens of other countries
Its amazing fanfic.
I'm saying this as former US military here. the Idea that in the middle of a OPORD, of any kind, POTUS would come in last minute and change a detail, like an explosive on a timer (fairly simple,) to what is effectively some new technology no one has ever heard of, that allows for remote sonar detonations is Tom Clancy stuff.
In the United States Military, there's this thing called the Chain of Command.
This exercise was under the U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, which is under the United States European Command & United States Africa Command.
The "work" that being described here would have been under SOCOM (United States Special Operations Command), which is the only command that could do this kind of work, they are the only ones that even have the assets to do this kind of work and theres absolutely no mention of that in this piece.
It's complete conjecture and should absolutely be treated as such until theres hard evidence.
Setting aside how legally questionable that premise sounds, especially because the entire rest of the article is full of references to the involvement of clandestine organizations beyond "Navy only", Hersh then goes on to describe an operation apparently involving an absolute clown car full of a bunch of other people including 3 foreign countries, at least some people running a major NATO exercise, and what sounds like half the Norwegian Navy. Operations so secret you can't tell 8 Congressional leaders (as required by law) but you can tell Norway, Denmark, and Sweden about do not sound like a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joint_Special_Ope....
> Operations so secret you can't tell 8 Congressional leaders (as required by law) but you can tell Norway, Denmark, and Sweden about do not sound like a thing.
Exactly!
Deleted Comment
The US is too competent to do such a bad job (17 hours apart and only 3 of 4 pipes destroyed)?
Does this imply we have a rogue actor or insufficiently equipped one to blame? Who?
I think their implication is that none of us really know what happened, much less the author of this article.
Let's say I am a Ukranian patriot, with few million in the bank. I bet given few month I could put together a team of divers to plant some C4 with a simple timer and blow this thing to hell. Or Polish patriot, or Polish government or any of the Baltic states. It is an existential struggle for all of them, and russkie understand one thing and one thing only, this was a very clear communication straight to Putin.
https://www.stssensors.com/blog/2020/07/01/the-diesel-effect...
EDIT: Formatting
Would have been interesting to hear the alleged source give a reason for only blowing up 3 of 4 pipes in a plan they call "perfect".
The rest of us in the world live in reality and just assume the US did this.
Biden threatened it and then it happened. Shocked Pikachu face.
Sure, it could have been someone else, but does it even matter at this point?
PS some of us still remember the rainbow warrior, this move, like that move, has your yank cia stench all over it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_2 ^ a lot of different parties, including the US didn't want this to happen.
How many times has Russias the past 30 years weaponized its gas pipelines? Speak to Moldova, or Estonia, or Ukraine. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/russia-using-energy-weapon-agai...
I'm not saying the Russians did it, I personally think it was a maintenance accident.
Dead Comment
If you're going to comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidlelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." We don't want political or nationalistic flamewar here, and any substantive point can be made without it.
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.
Btw, I haven't gone back and looked at the history but I'd be willing to bet that the same things were said about Hersh's reputation from the beginning. That's standard fare for counterargument.
p.s. It's astonishing how narrow the space is for someone to say they don't know the truth about X but it's interesting. If X has any charge at all, you get pounced on by people who feel sure that they do know what the truth is. But if you think about it, it's a precondition for curiosity not to already know (or feel one knows) the answer—and this is a site for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). So I don't feel that this is particularly a borderline call from a moderation point of view.
This is an actual case of speaking truth to power. He clearly (and rightfully IMO) does not trust the US government and his "somewhat questionable" and recent work has continued that trend. Is it any surprise that the same institutions/people that continuously carry water for the government now rush to label him a conspiracy theorist?
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 that's the only thing people are focusing on because it makes the situation simple for them, and it's easiest to have a single villain and the rest are the good guys.
I assume most people offended by this submission here are American (or at least heavily support America) and want to think of their current government/country as the good guys.
I don't think there's any good guys in this situation.
Wasn't Watergate also reported relying on a single source (deep throat)?
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It's no secret that Hersh's work has become increasingly suspect in recent years. Every time he writes, he cites a single anonymous source and yet manages to go into an implausible level of detail and completeness with neatly tied up loose ends you'd only expect to find in a Tom Clancy novel. The only reason this story has been rescued from the dustbin is due to Hersh's (old) reputation, which though well earned, shouldn't just give him a pass.
https://www.businessinsider.com/robert-grenier-reflects-on-s...
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/21/10634002/seymour-hersh-syria-...
You repeat, above, that HN is not for nationalist flamewar, and requires substance. But this post is nationalist flamewar and isn't substantive. Allowing it while shutting down similar content from the opposite perspective is... unsettling.
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.
Heck, the Baltic states, along with Poland and the Scandinavian countries, have some of the best naval divers and EODs on the planet, virtue of having the priviledge of cleaning two world wars worth of mines, bombs and torpedoes from the Baltic sea...
This piece should be flagged to death, especially since it is, giving it the most (and IMHO undeserved) credit pure speculation.
Edit: Just looked Seymore Hersh up, now I know why the name rang a bell. Well, for My Lai he had proof and sources, didn't he?
The article has an anonymous source. Your comment complains about “propaganda” and “nationalist flamewar” (unfounded) and asks for moderation. The submission is more substantive than your comment.
You mean like most mainstream news that parrot state-sponsored talking points? It seems counterpropaganda propaganda pieces are the only way to balance out state propaganda these days.
Dead Comment
This is from 2015:
"The way to understand Hersh is to visualize most of his sources as Michael Scheuer-like individuals. It is not difficult to find such people in the intelligence world: obsessive, frustrated idiot savants who perceive themselves as stymied by the paper pushers, the bureaucrats"
"Hersh’s problem is that he evinces no skepticism whatsoever toward what his crank sources tell him, which is ironic considering how cynical he is regarding the pronouncements of the U.S. national security bureaucracy. Like diplomats who “go native,” gradually sympathizing with the government or some faction in the host nation while losing sight of their own country’s national interest, Hersh long ago adopted the views of America’s adversaries and harshest critics."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/05/seymour-hershs-u...
i don't have opinions about journalists, because i'm a normal person, but that sounds like a needed antidote to, say, slate's complete lack of skepticism regarding the pronouncements of the U.S. national security bureaucracy.
Thanks dang. I'm glad HN has moderators that make calls like.
I would encourage any who disagree to consider truly why this reporting upsets them.
If the comments turn into a flame war, blame the commenters, not the article.
And there is an absence of it here.
Unless it's a miskey of some kind which sounds like the most plausible explanation.
Edit 2: I've replaced the question mark with quotation marks following a suggestion by bee_rider: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713987.
-- original comment: --
We sometimes add a question mark when a title makes a dramatic and divisive claim, because otherwise readers who read the title might think that HN (or its admins) are somehow endorsing the claim. We don't know what the truth is and are neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the claim.
Edit: I dug up a few other examples where we've done this:
This is the year of the RSS reader? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34105572
Anthropology in Ruins? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34049130
The great Covid and smoking cover-up? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33869176
The basic idea is that adding a question is a flame retardant because it tends to dampen the meta-comments about the story, e.g. complaints that the admins are taking a side or whatnot.
In this case it's not really working, because the question mark is also generating lots of meta-comments. But maybe fewer than we'd get without it.
Meta comment of my own: it's not only impossible to please everyone with moderation calls like this—it's seemingly impossible to please anyone. That's why it's really helpful to have a first principle to rely on—i.e. to know what you're optimizing for. It occasionally makes it possible to answer an otherwise hard question rather easily.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
When you're just speculating or building a conspiracy theory then those "ominous" comments are worth quoting.
If you are claiming to be in contact with someone with deep knowledge of the actual operation, why even mention those? Worse still, add some extra twist where the spies have a meta comment on their cover being blown by those comments.
It's safe to assume the reason his sources are unnamed is to protect their safety. Don't know how plausible this is, but I it's possible that the lack of presentable evidence is for the same reason. Maybe the relevant documents could've been somehow fingerprinted, which would identify the leaker/source; the film/tv industry has done this when distributing pilots for private viewings. Heck, even printers did it lol.
However, it's not secret American politicians vehemently disliked the existence of Nordstream, and this outcome is undeniably convenient for them. Maybe too convenient, so they wouldn't dare attempt it? Or maybe they just assumed they'd have a great scapegoat. Maybe it wasn't even them, and it's Russian government playing 5D chess by blowing up their own investment to frame Americans.
Who knows? Maybe time will tell; it usually does.
This topic in not "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
Opinion -- cloaked in shame and coercion.
The soon the better you do X, is quite an authoritative stance to take.
Deleted Comment
This easily could be a Russian psyop -- and even if it isn't -- it is definitely political and a potential flamewar. Totally lost here
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle
You're just baiting everyone in this comments section. How long have you been moderating this site? Have you ever seen a post like this cultivate a productive comments section?
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Evidence? I don't see much evidence of anything here
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like
This last one you are guilty of, maybe this post was being flag brigaded for a reason
But at this point, the article is basically "cool story, bro". The only independently verifyable bits are the public statements of Biden, Nuland, etc, which are already well-known. But those only show that the US really really really didn't like the pipelines - and that was never a secret. They do not give any evidence for a planned operation to destroy them.
The rest of the article is amazingly detailed but only based on an anonymous source. Even if we trust that the source existed, there is no way to know if that source itself is trustworthy.
So as of now, I don't the information in the article would convince anyone of the "US did it" hypothesis who wasn't already convinced.
I think the only thing that the article is useful for is as a future reference. It could be useful to remember the details and keep an eye if they match with any future developments.
One simple hypothesis would be that it is only an illusion that western media outlets are independent from their governments.
The media became a power by itsself and it's the media which influences the government.
And they analyze how the media synchronized itself on certain topics (especially Ukraine war).
https://www.fischerverlage.de/buch/richard-david-precht-hara...
It makes a lot of sense. The pipeline was rendered useless anyway, they get to blame the US and sowing division by planting stories such as these, and they also send a message that they can blow up stuff underwater anywhere; in particular, undersea cables, whose destruction would cause major economic problems.
Do you have proof to back up this claim? A more correct observation is that Western media didn't blame any single entity but has the attention span of a goldfish and forgot about this incident after a week or two.
A Spiegel article from september 28, two days after the incident: https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/nord-stream-spekulationen-ueb...
It links to a Times article allegedly saying the same (but behind a paywall unfortunately, so I can't check): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-probably-bombed-no...
Can you explain then please how much sense did Russia had to start a war in Ukraine?
The entire world thought Ukraine was going to collapse.
Diplomats from big countries were telling Zelensky to his face that he had '24 hours' before Russia took Kyiv.
The pipeline thing is a bit of a mystery.
Deleted Comment
If Russia ever wanted to take Ukraine “back”, it had to do it now. It would only get harder and less likely as time goes on. Now, as to why of take Ukraine back at all, IDK, beautiful women, I assume.
I’m not sure anyone can answer the why, really, but the why now seems to have reason.
Dead Comment
Your ignorance is astounding
A lot of what he is saying here is not strictly true. Jens Stoltenberg was the leader of the labour party and while he was not a communist, describing him as a committed anti-communist is just plainly wrong. It was not part of his platform at all and one the parties in his coalition was a socialist, Marxist party.
Also he was not a hardliner on Russia. In fact during his time as a prime minister Norway and Russia peacefully and diplomatically solved the territorial dispute they had in the Barents Sea.
Neither have the Americans always completely trusted him since the Vietnam war. He was vocally anti-NATO in his youth and the Bush administration gave him a cold shoulder for the rest of it's years after he was elected prime minister in 2005. He claimed that during the congratulation call from the American president he said that he wanted all Norwegian troops out of Iraq and the the mission. The Americans were adamant he did not.
I know it's just one paragraph, but when thing gets misconstructed by the source in such a way it kinda losses credibility with me. Also the quote about Norwegians "Hating Russians" while I've never felt anything like that in my dealing with the armed forces (Norway don't have any historical grievances with Russia), really makes me question it.
It’s a bit strange to report on something so controversial and not make sure all verifiable claims are true…
Hersh: "Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg"
Reality: Jens Stoltenberg is the secretary general of NATO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Allied_Commander_Europ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Stoltenberg
See my other comment for sources.
Not necessarily.
I had thought Hersh's "since the Vietnam War" line to be poorly phrased, or an editing mistake, but /u/michaelmacmanus makes an interesting point <https://np.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/10wx42b/seymour_h...>. Maybe we should take the line literally!
It was the year before Norway took part in extensive bombing of Libya«
https://e24-no.translate.goog/karriere-og-ledelse/i/xPlw8V/h...
«lieutenant colonel Tormod Heier said: - In its first years, the Stoltenberg government had a bad reputation in the USA, partly because we did not contribute in southern Afghanistan. After SV was weakened in the 2009 election, Libya became an opportunity to repair relations with the United States. This has contributed to the fact that Norway has now moved up a division in NATO .
And as a thank you for his efforts, Jens Stoltenberg was appointed Secretary General of NATO.«
https://www-dagsavisen-no.translate.goog/kultur/2014/10/15/s...
During the Vietnam War (1955-1975) Stoltenberg (born 1959) was -4 to 16 years old..
Hersh possibly confused Jens with his father Thorvald Stoltenberg. Who travelled to North-Vietnam in 1970 to negotiate between them and USA, and who was commended for his negotiating skills by the am. intel community in a declassified rapport from 1980.
Links/sources follow:
«Thorvald Stoltenberg and Reiulf Steen visited Hanoi in 1970.»
https://vietnamkrigen-wordpress-com.translate.goog/2010/02/2...
«In a new biography of Thorvald Stoltenberg, it is described how Norway brokered peace between the parties in the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s.»
https://www-vg-no.translate.goog/nyheter/innenriks/i/Pk947/n...
«Defense Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg was praised for his negotiating skills in a so far classified CIA report from 1980.«
https://www-nettavisen-no.translate.goog/nyheter/cia-vurdert...
Well, that's certainly a kinder description than I would give. 'Blatant fucking bullshit' seems closer to the mark.
Would “milquetoast moderate” be more fitting? That’s at least closer to how the Labour Party operates, even though their rhetoric is more left-leaning than the other major party (H).
> He claimed that during the congratulation call from the American president he said that he wanted all Norwegian troops out of Iraq and the the mission. The Americans were adamant he did not.
He said that he said that? How brave of him.
I don’t know the truth of the matter and Seymour could be right. We just can’t tell from the evidence provided.
It's long but after reading this ask why you would believe this man who, in this new article, is making plenty of assertions all based on quotes from a single anonymous source.
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi...
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2018-07-22/ty-article-opinio...
or would it be prudent to wait for evidence, to err on the side of caution ?
How so? The pipeline(s) was/were already off, so the US and Norway already had a new customer because of this. If the US risked blowing up the pipeline(s) (which was already not delivering,) it would put NATO in jeopardy which is explicitly against US interests and WAY more valuable than natural gas. The entire theory doesn't even make sense from the standpoint of US needs/wants.
This pipeline had been completed but activation was stopped due to the start of the war. If Germany had capitulated and activated it with Russia that would be a major political win for Russia and blow for the suggested goals of the US and other allies. To me this seems to be the biggest hole in the theory that the US was responsible.
I disagree.
The most logical explanation is tha Russia did it as a capacity demonstration and threat against Baltic Pipe to pressure contries in the region regarding Ukraine, but that, like all their threats against the West over Ukraine policy so far, the threat was hollow.
In a personalist authoritarian regime the rationality of actions sometimes depends on wether or not the dictator is being rational on a given day.
But it does host a starting point for future discussion due to the fact that it offers relatively detailed pieces of information.
Now it's up to others to come out and say "this is true, that is not", people who actually do have provable information. It offers them a story to share their information on. This story didn't exist previously in the public discourse.
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.
If true though, it would be as big as the Gulf of Tonkin incident [as in it was us in pursuit of our own interest]
- show how firm they have been "back then": an interesting narrative in light of recent events (the balloon)
- deflect fire from the allied or friendly country who actually did it: Sweden, Poland who boldly supported Ukraine right from the start of the war?
Seymour could also have been trapped by a source he previously knew at the CIA and who decided to play its own game. Anyway the article lacks credibility on several aspects raised by weatherlight and erentz. The existence of said source just a few monthes after the events is in itself suspicious.
It’s plausible that the U.S. used the military personnel he claims the U.S. used so that they could avoid Congressional oversight. But where is the evidence they actually used said personnel? He references a source but my source with direct knowledge of Seymour’s work says that Russia paid him to write this.
Given Seymour’s work on Russia’s involvement in Syria I’m skeptical of him having credibility on the topic of Nordstream.
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2018-07-22/ty-article-opinio...
Your evidence against Seymour: “I think it more believable.” (Based on what? Exactly nothing.)
Not to mention that “paid to write” is not even hearsay: you just made it up as a theory, without any hint towards anything happening in the real world.
Dead Comment
I don't really care who is behind the sabotage, they would certainly not admit it for obvious reasons, and it could be more complex than it seems.
But the press, here in the UK, in France and in the US, has been suspiciously "clueless", avoiding with great care to imply that anyone in the west could be behind it, even if it really seems obvious that it could very well be the case.
Why? Why are they so careful? They usually are not afraid to speculate, especially on such a scale.
I find it disturbing to think that they could either have received instructions from their respective governments or are simply afraid push any inquiries on this subject.
The US loves its military, but American news sources have no want to keep a secret like this on behalf of the government. The US media loves to report on US war crimes, and other stupid government shit
It wouldn't surprise me to know that the US government had knowledge of this. It would surprise me if they were directly involved though.
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1. Russia would get income from the pipeline, empowering their economy. 2. This sort of infrastructure would represent increased German dependence on Russia for their energy needs. 3. This would also tend to increase economic and diplomatic ties between Germany and Russia.
Destroying the pipeline (even if it's not being used) could theoretically send the message that these infrastructure projects are not safe and that relying on Russia for energy is strategically unwise.
USA has been pissed off by this project from the start.
This is also a way to send a strong message to Putin.
One could recognize this also with the Coronavirus fiasco when for example the press was parroting the governments saying that the virus is not going to come to Europe and urging people not to be racist against the Chinese (extra funny given the current mainstream position against China). Then the press was parroting that masks don’t work. Then they were parroting that people should really wear masks. Not all the press, not all of the time, but the trend and direction were obvious. And the tireless downplaying of AstraZeneca and mRNA side-effects, goodness.
All of these narratives were also mainstream on HN, just as most opinions on the war are unsophisticated and thoroughly mainstream.
It’s so bizarre, imagine having freedom of the press and then doing what’s expected of you anyway.
Or as an individual being able to think, gather facts and information and draw your own conclusions. And having the freedom to present those conclusions go to waste while just repeating some simplistic talking point.
HN is worse than usual at discussing the war. Many non-mainstream commenters have given up or were censored and it’s mostly pockets of conformity now.
I don't thinks this is a conspiracy of any kind (or at least I hope so) but I wonder if this apparent docile conformity of the press at large is a side effect of the changes that occurred in this field during the past 20 years.
Have they lost that much power?
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