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New did america blow the russion pipelines? maybe
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
New Maybe not.
Supposedly his source is one anonymous guy.

It doesn't pass the smell test.

Hersh is way, way past his prime, and is probably being used.

Cheers,
Scott.
New his track record isnt good but that is one way to blow it
by either the russians or someone else
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
New For those of you who speak German...
...and have 22 + 34 = 56 minutes to spare, here are a couple of videos dealing with this story:

Seymour Hersh: Der BEWEIS, North Stream waren die AMIS! Oder doch nicht? Aufarbeitung des Artikels. (22:04)

and

Seymour Hershs Geschichte ist eine klassische Verschwörungstheorie. Aktueller Stand & Quellenkritik (33:43)

Militär & Geschichte mit Torsten Heinrich is a rather popular (66.9K subscribers) German vlog that deals with the Ukraine war. Torsten lives in Central America; AIUI in, of all places, Panama. (Maybe he came across this story because it's part of his regular internet search routine?) He is, as you can see from the video lengths above, rather prone to going on (and on and on...), and as you also can see quite sensationalist in his headline setting. But the actual content, beneath the waffling, is more sensible and balanced, so much of what he says seems quite reasonable. (In large part, of course, because it's so obvious as to be self-evident.)

On the whole, I agree with his take here, which IIRC was:

TL;DW -- German vlogger thinks, first video:

1) Is that even Hersh? If it's him, why is this (his only!) article on Substack, and not on the NYT / WaPo / The Atlantic, etc?

2) If it's him, has he gone troll / Putler agent?

3) Or has he been duped by his single source, who might be
.. a) a troll
.. b) a Putler agent
.. c) someone else who has been duped by a troll / Putler agent?

Second video:

1) Summary of first video

2) Means and deception
.. a) Why would one put up a NATO exercise as camouflage, and then use a Norwegian ship to do it, when the Norwegians aren't participating in the exercise?
.. b) Stuff about which ships and planes were going where and when.

3) Classic hallmarks of conspirace theory:
.. a) Single source, weird publication site (as per first video).
.. b) No ships / planes near enough where it happened, 2b above -- Tinfoil hatters go "They had their transponders off!" In the middle of an exercise with a lot of other warships with theirs on, and none of those wondered about this?
.. c) Nobody else has got a whiff of this, the mysterious single source hasn't talked to anyone else?

4) Qui bono? In stead of asking, "Who had an interest in blowing up the pipeline", should one ask who had an interest in not blowing up all the pipelines? Remember, Nord Stream 1 and 2 each consisted of two pipes each. Only three of the four were blown. And Heinrich notes that the one that wasn't was one half of NS2, for which no usage contract is in place.

Food for thought, somewhat convincing IMO.
--

   Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything


Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
New if I understand point 4 correctly
Only three of the four were blown. And Heinrich notes that the one that wasn't was one half of NS2, for which no usage contract is in place.

so no constrained pricing model?
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
New Yes, AIUI.
And NS1 is under a contract that for all I know reads something like "Germany has an exclusive right to get as much gas as it wants through this pipe". So if Germany says "the amount we want is zero", Putler isn't going to sell any gas through NS1 for however long that contract is. But since Germany doesn't have any such deal on NS2, he could well write a contract to pump gas through NS2 to, say, Serbia or Hungary.
--

   Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything


Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
New I won't be alive when the docs are released
I seem to recall about 50 years before the archivists can start digging and of course s*** will be hidden. And I don't speak German.

But what do you think? Do you think the US did it?
New Nope. Seems too much risk for too little gain (or none). Why would they?
New To be very sure that they are never turned on again
Whether or not it's worth the risk of the blowback is a calculation that I can't make.

But European and very specifically German dependence on those pipes tilted the world in the last 5 years. One of the few things I ever agreed with Trump on.

So while they were being wound down in theory, the reality is someone could make a decision and flip a switch and all the sudden all the influence is back. I could very easily see someone making a decision to make sure that did not happen again.
New It was probably the Norwegians . . .
. . to make sure they could continue to get a good price for their gas.
New You guys are supposed to be good at blowing shit up. You'd have got all four.
New "Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say"
NY Times article.
New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.

U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.

The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which link Russia to Western Europe, fueled public speculation about who was to blame, from Moscow to Kyiv and London to Washington, and it has remained one of the most consequential unsolved mysteries of Russia’s year-old war in Ukraine.
Without identifying the executors of the attacks, they say a Ukraine favoring group did the work. I can't say it's irrational.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New need sat diving capabilty and ship/boat support in a heavily patrolled area
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
New "Suggests"
There's a whole lot of weasel words in that piece.

Here's a Substack article on what seems to be a reasonable story of what happened and why:

[...]

I theorize that the initial Nord Stream 2 rupture was an accident, potentially the result poor workmanship by the Akademik Cherskiy due to an inadequate vessel and inexperienced crew.

Once this pipe had ruptured, the remaining pipes would probably be inspected to ensure that there was no risk of further leaks. This process would have revealed the explosives planted on the Nord Stream 1 pipes. Due to this the plan to potentially destroy Nord Stream 1 in the future was accelerated and the explosives were detonated 17 hours after the initial rupture at 19:03 local time.

Destroying Nord Stream 1 would allow Russia to increase pressure on Germany, while at the same time not being a massive loss, as they stated that it was “out of commission”. Russia had stated that the decreased flow and eventual shutdown of Nord Stream 1 was caused by European Union sanctions against Russia, which had resulted in technical problems they could not remedy.

This would leave the operational, but never opened Nord Stream 2 available to supply Germany with natural gas immediately after the shock of the destruction of Nord Stream 1. This is something Putin still offered Germany through the one remaining Nord Stream 2 line. Germany turned down the offer.

I believe that the charges were in place on Nord Stream 1, hoping for Germany and Europe to be in a more dire situation during the winter. They would then be blown in an attempt to pressure Europe to give up on Ukraine.

[...]


Worth a click.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New AIUI (from other src, not read these yet), it all boils down to "Could have been a tiny 'private'...
...operation, so lots of lovely deniability and opportunity for false-flagging for whichever larger (state-level) interests -- if any -- lay behind it".

Oh sure, they "looked and sounded Ukrainian"? How hard is it for Russia to fake that? Or vice versa? (And did they even; that's only hearsay. Could have been Nigerians, Maori, or Japanese for all I know.) It's not as if you can't find people who look and sound Ukrainian -- mainly because they are Ukrainian -- pretty much anywhere: The second-largest city in the world, by number of Ukrainians living in it, right after Kyiv, is AFAIK: Toronto, Canada. And there's been an exodus of refugees from the war Ukraine for a year now; lots of time for intelligence services (or private actors) all over the world -- certainly all over Europe -- to recruit and train agents for all kinds of ops, including this.

Could still have been absolutely anyone. Sure, a bunch of private Ukrainians -- scuba diving hobbyists from the Black Sea coastal regions, financed by some Odessa oligarch pal of theirs? -- feels like quite a plausible option. Almost as likely, though, that they raced off to somewhere in Europe back in March-April '22 and got recruited by private Western rich folks with interesting political views... Or the domestic intelligence services of weherever they ended up, or of the country two over to the left. Quite possible one posing as the other, to them, so they didn't even know who they were working for.

Sure, that all sounds like tinfoil-hattery... That's because it is. I'm not saying that's what happened. Only that at this stage, it's not much more unlikely than anything else -- and fun to speculate about. As for who this possible actor hiring this gang (be they Ukrainians or not) could be... Anything from Statoil (Hi, Gryge!) to Mossad, via Japan's security services and a cartel of Argentinian and Brazilian cattle ranchers. The least unlikely perhaps some British M-whatever agency; motive: The Germans need stiffening their backbone. The most funny(-Macchiavellian): The Germans themselves. Either private(-slash-political) actors, presumably on the right; motive: Scholz and the SPD need stiffening their backbone. Or, perhaps most fun of all: Private(-slash-political) actors on the left, or even the BND / GSG9(*) / Kampftaucher unit of the Bundeswehr Marine; motive: Scholz himself felt "the Germans need stiffening their public backbone", in the sense that he felt politically trapped into maintaining his foot-dragging and pandering to the "pacifist" Putin-Versteher and the large proportion of the populace they've turned into cowardly useful idiots, but didn't actually want to run too far in that direction, and therefore wanted to make sure he physically couldn't (and therefore couldn't be made to) re-open it. Yeah, that last one is really twisted... Must be why I like it the most. :-)


___

(*): Successor unit called something else nowadays, can't recall what.
--

   Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything


Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
     did america blow the russion pipelines? maybe - (boxley) - (14)
         Maybe not. - (Another Scott) - (1)
             his track record isnt good but that is one way to blow it - (boxley)
         For those of you who speak German... - (CRConrad) - (7)
             if I understand point 4 correctly - (boxley) - (6)
                 Yes, AIUI. - (CRConrad) - (5)
                     I won't be alive when the docs are released - (crazy) - (4)
                         Nope. Seems too much risk for too little gain (or none). Why would they? -NT - (CRConrad) - (3)
                             To be very sure that they are never turned on again - (crazy) - (2)
                                 It was probably the Norwegians . . . - (Andrew Grygus)
                                 You guys are supposed to be good at blowing shit up. You'd have got all four. -NT - (CRConrad)
         "Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say" - (a6l6e6x) - (3)
             need sat diving capabilty and ship/boat support in a heavily patrolled area -NT - (boxley)
             "Suggests" - (Another Scott)
             AIUI (from other src, not read these yet), it all boils down to "Could have been a tiny 'private'... - (CRConrad)

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!
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