Good piece, and I think he points out some clear problems with the exact events that Hersh describes. I think the lack of a verifiable path for either the ship carrying divers or for the plane that supposedly dropped off the sonobuoy do make it less likely that Hersh's version actually happened. The author's conclusion is that this is because Hersh's source was making things up, but I think it's also compatible with someone who heard about the plan but didn't fully understand it. Or possibly, heard about it before it was finalized. Hopefully more details will come out.
His closing question is "Why leave one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipelines intact"? I haven't seen it discussed much, but apparently there actually were 4 leaks, with one pipeline being damaged twice. One possible explanation would be that this was a mistake in the execution by whoever did this, with one pipeline somehow getting two explosives planted. Here's a Sept 22 article about the discover of the 4th leak: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fourth-leak-found-no...
Why does the bombs have to go off immediately when the plane drops the signalling device? If you got through setting all this up, I am sure you can also figure out how to delay the explosion so there would be no obvious connection to a plane flying over.
Sure: when a large amount of gas is released to bubble up, the average density of the gas/water mix can be too low for the maximum displacement of a ship passing above to carry it's weight. Ship drops beneath the surface until it hits pure water or a mix close enough, and most ships aren't built to recover from that.
For anyone interested, there's more to the accusation of Stoltenberg's involvement with intelligence from a young age than the author of this article implies by dismissing it as ridiculous on its face.[1] Whether or not you find the linked narrative convincing is up to you, however.
His family origins? You mean being the son of a politician who was staunchly against the vietnam war? To the point that he was honoured by the Vietnamese post war?
The same Jens Stoltenberg who was against and protested the american war against Iraq from the beginning?
As a Norwegian I have never voted for Jens Stoltenberg or his party, I am slightly more to the center in our politics. However I find the patreon article dishonest and completely speculative. It has no evidence whatsoever just tries to paint normal things in a conspiratorial light.
I'll agree that it does lack hard evidence, but it presents very important and relevant context about the groups that Jens was associated with at the time, and what became of those groups and him. What are the chances that some young person would change teams so suddenly and extremely? It's common for teenagers to pass through a rebellious phase, but the timing (of the reversion to daddy's team) here seems too abrupt, and the quick passage to the exact opposite position seems suspicious. The Patreon post also discusses how many other figures in that circle became double agents, which is highly relevant.
I actually was drawn into reading this much more than the original article. I found myself going into skim mode with the original Hersh article. So ironically, I actually learned more about Hersh's claims reading this article than the original.
I've worked with a bunch of old people of late. And I'm saying that from the reference point of 52. It's hard. I don't want to be an ageist. But I regularly see how hard it is to grow older. To do so gracefully scares the heck out of me. Some things are in your control, but it's increasingly a journey where the constitution of yourself slips out of your control. Some 85 year olds (Hersh's current age) are still sharp as a tack, but even then, the fight to still feel relevant is an uphill battle. It is hard for me to not be suspicious much of Hersh's vector here isn't hugely influenced by advancing years.
Can someone explain why some people here are so agitated over a claim that the US did it? Is it hard to believe that US intelligence would do something like this? Besides, if you hate Russia then it's a good thing right?
Not agitated, but I believe it would be incredibly unwise for the US to have done this, in particular regarding the trust relationship with Germany. It’s also naive to think that who did it wouldn’t come out sooner or later. Those things have a way to not stay secret.
Poor trust in Germany of American intent has been ongoing for some time. The US has done much to repair it, although the quiet diplomacy has been more effective than the public diplomacy. The preservation of this trust, despite what conspiracy seekers believe, would strongly militate against this event - its benefit would in no way be perceived in USG circles as greater than the cost.
The US was tapping Angela Merkel's phone. IMO that is as bad for the relationship as blowing up the pipeline. I don't think there is much trust there, just a we have to work together because of NATO and the 50k US troops on Germany's soil.
er...no, tapping every phone of value in the world is not as bad as secretly bombing something.
you can trivially know this by comparing the US's response to e.g. every hack china and russia have ever done leading to mean words and maybe economic sanctions, vs the US literally invading two countries - which had nothing to do with the person who did the bombings - after 11/9.
People are not agitated at the suggestion that the US did it. People are agitated because the claims are coming from Cy Hersh without remotely compelling evidence, who in the past decade or so has turned to spouting off unsubstantiated claims to carry water for Assad and Putin and shilling ridiculous Bin Laden theories and 9/11 trutherism.
I'm personally agitated because a community that is generally pretty grounded in fact and falsifiability somehow turns into a bunch of edge lord schoolboys around certain foreign affairs subjects. And it comes from the "adults" in our industry (Elon and Sacks) modeling the behavior and a lot of people in our industry mirroring it back. I'm sick of innuendo being passed off as critical thinking. Innuendo is cheap evasive sleight of hand that pollutes the information space and encourages bad faith bullshit. /rant
So should everyone shut up until they have hard evidence to present? That doesn't sound like a very interesting way to live. Even in court circumstantial evidence is a valid form of evidence and plausible scenarios can be presented to try and convince. What is wrong with that?
If you don’t bother to fact check your evidence before making serious accusations then yes, one should shut up.
Circumstantial evidence is still evidence yes, but this is just a bunch of shit that is observably false followed by salacious assertions.
Presenting claims that are trivially falsifiable as true without bothering to apply skepticism because it plays into your favored narrative is not journalism. It’s whatever the hell Hersh is doing now.
I don't understand how it is "observably false". It seems at least like a plausible story, although without hard evidence no one can say for sure. Calling the whole story "observably false" and "trivially falsifiable" seems to way overstate the case, and I wonder what the motivation and emotion behind that is.
The overarching accusation is plausible but many of the claims to support the story are observably false, as outlined in the linked article. And yes, as per your innuendo I’m clearly an agent of the state here to shut down your free thinking.
I think you might be misreading alienicecream's tone. Maybe I'm naive, but I'd like to think that he wasn't accusing you of being a shill. I think he was genuinely wondering about your reasoning. At the least, I am. I appreciated (and upvoted) your answer higher in the thread.
I find it interesting that different people have very different reactions to this. I don't think it's just national politics, although that often plays a role. For me, I was bothered by the way the news coverage immediately after the event converged to "Russia did it". It wasn't that I was in any way sure that they were wrong, but I was sure that they were absurdly overconfident.
I'd like to know what caused them to take this stance so universally and so strongly. My would guess would be tribalism and fear of offending the US government. Since then, I've been pleased to see that some recent articles that are moving more to the "we don't really know yet" stance. The New York Times had such an article in late December (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/world/europe/nordstream-p...), and the London Times had a similar one about a week ago (https://archive.is/A35Ce).
Hersh's article doesn't bother me in the way that it seems to bother you. It's not at all that I'm sure it's right. It seems possible, maybe even likely, that Hersh is being fooled by a bullshitter or even a foreign agent. He presumably published it on a brand new Substack because every more reputable outlet refused. But despite this, I think it's good to discuss its strengths and weaknesses. Many people (possibly including you) think it's better that we ignore it, but I think this is more likely to cause problems in the long term. I think it's interesting and useful to look at why our reactions are so different.
I would also add. If you claim to be respectable journalist or an objective observer, I, as a reader would expect you to have done your research and have a higher standard of your publications. Given your past accolades, presenting anything less without substantial support just tells me you are just trying to make yourself relevant with contrarian views
This is one of the most infuriatingly disingenuous argument devices: "People keep doing this irresponsible thing and get traction!" "Oh, so you mean everyone should not do a thing???"
Yeah, buddy. The most absurd interpretation of the opposite is what we mean...
Because it makes no sense, blowing up NS would achieve nothing the EU was already cutting itself off Russian gas and oil.
This operation has no upsides and the downsides are so big that this is probably the only time where the meme of the guy being thrown out of the window for suggesting something in a meeting is actually appropriate…
If there was even a whiff of credible evidence that the US was behind it it would’ve set back US-EU relations by decades if not more and if there was actual undeniable proof it could’ve been the end of NATO.
> the EU was already cutting itself off Russian gas and oil
Which in practice only meant gorging on it and storing like crazy, while initiating years-long process of establishing alternative routes (x10 priced LNG obviously doesn't count)
> If there was even a whiff of credible evidence that the US was behind it it would’ve set back US-EU relations by decades if not more and if there was actual undeniable proof it could’ve been the end of NATO
"Could"/"would", yeah, but this is hardly the first time US doing stuff that SHOULD have ended with totally ruined relations, but in fact would be swept under the rug even if credible evidence had resurfaced publicly. They'll just say that it was a private initiative of a few rouge CIA officers, acting independently of the higher command, as it was with operation Gladio.
EU is simply too dependent on US: economically (through trade), in military (EU has no serious military of its own, and almost no military industrial complex of its own - NATO standard is American standard), and in politics (through "international" political organizations).
It's just realpolitik. Burning down a pipeline is bad, but making a fuss about it would be worse.
Regarding what could be achieved, irregardless of who is the culprit:
- There is now no incentive to turn the tap directly to Russia back on
- There is now a ton of incentive to keep Ukrainian gas transportation pipeline safe (which also transports Russian gas to Europe, while Russia is still paying Ukraine for it) - both to Russia and EU.
> Which in practice only meant gorging on it and storing like crazy, while initiating years-long process of establishing alternative routes (x10 priced LNG obviously doesn't count)
Some Americans are proud of their country and believe it is always in the right. When given stories to the contrary, they will fight hard against what they do not want to see or believe. It is more than just uncomfortable to accept. It shatters their foundational beliefs.
Hersh didn't just question some narrative. He presented a fanciful story as fact that is full of holes and does not stand up to scrutiny. Those who are motivated to see the US blamed for it seem to be uninterested in whether his story actually is true or not. The truth of what happened and how it happened doesn't seem to matter. They believe the US did it, so they believe Hersh's story.
It's frustrating because having a theory that the US did it isn't unreasonable, and could be discussed. My initial reaction was that the US probably did it, it was only later after more details came out and really thinking it through I came to realize it wouldn't make sense. Though if they did it certainly would not have occurred in the fanciful way Hersh presented. I do not know who did it, while I could put a good theory together why Russia did it and can see they had some motivation, I could also make a good Hershesque story about how some criminal environmentalist group from Germany did it. Or why Poland did it. Or Sweden.
EDIT: Actually when you think about it, with the alternative Yamal pipeline through Poland, and Poland's distrust of Germany. Poland had plenty of motivation! Much more than the US. They have the explosives, they can whip together a few tech divers for an easy 80-100m dive, and they have easy access to the Baltic. But motivation and opportunity is not enough.
I agree with his assessment that Hersh's story is so detailed and that it's a red flag. It was what I felt when reading it. Feeling something doesn't make it true of course.
But ironically, I think there's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to make at least the jist of Hersh's story correct. The big thing for me is the near complete media silence. You'd think blowing up a huge piece of civilian infrastructure would stir up a bigger frenzy, but no. If we really did not know and it was plausibly Russia, it would get talked about a lot more.
The utter stupidity of that idea is along the sames lines as rhetoric, also present in OP, that Russia "weaponized" its gas pipelines. (To use that language, nearly anything can be a "weapon.") I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say that I won't take seriously anything that doesn't immediately address how insane those initial accusations, of Russian sabotage of its own pipelines, were.
But Hersh's essay indicates there were last-minute changes to the detonation method. That adds risk, which could have manifested as failure of some detonations.
Why wouldn't be sloppy? Remember the Afghanistan pull out? The US is capable of screw ups. Unless of course people were falling down from planes and busses with kids and women were droned tactically?
>The utter stupidity of that idea is along the sames lines as rhetoric, also present in OP, that Russia "weaponized" its gas pipelines
Cutting off energy a nation's energy supply in violation of an established trade agreement, as a response to an escalating conflict between nations, is economic warfare. The term "weaponized" is used correctly in this sense and the author was not engaging in hyperbole.
Modern hybridized warfare is fought across a number of spaces: legal, political, economic, ecological, informational, 'cyber', etc, etc.
We no longer have the luxury of believing the warfare only involves weapons with purely kinetic effects. This is not the way Russia conducts war anymore nor has it been for the last few decades if not more. Conventional military action is always the last resort or the culminating event in modern campaigns.
>I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say that I won't take seriously anything that doesn't immediately address how insane those initial accusations, of Russian sabotage of its own pipelines, were.
Can you honestly justify any actions that Russia has taken openly over the last few years as sane? Countries run by viscous autocrats who have consolidated power often make decisions which suit their personal interests more than the those of the nation. Many in Europe and the US have made the mistake of assessing Putin's strategies as being 'Russia's strategy' and therefore unlikely because it would be bad for Russia. When in fact Putin's strategies serve him just fine because he doesn't give a shit about Russians.
“We have repeatedly said that the movement of our armed forces on our own territory should be of no concern to anyone. Russia poses no threat to anyone.”
> Russia dismisses the accusations, claiming they are not going to invade Ukraine.
What's your point? That the Russian gov't is capable of lying, therefore they blew up the pipelines? What if I said that the US lied about weapons of mass destruction, therefore the US must have blown up the pipelines? It seems like a non-sequitur. State governments can deceive, especially about their plans for war.
That said, I'm not supporting Russia in this war, nor Ukraine. So I'm not going to participate any further in this other debate about the war that you appear to want to have.
Can you name a single other instance in history where a country at war significantly damaged its ability to raise money for the war to “send a message”? What exactly is the message? The US didn’t think Russia had a submersible and some C4 and now they do?
Well, a strategic goal to let Europeans suffer during winter in order to shatter our resolve to support Ukraine, while avoiding contractual penalties for unilateral cessation of gaz delivery, can explain the benefit of exploding the pipeline. This can explain also the fact that the fourth pipe was left intact - as a potential carrot to Europe...
I do not pretend that the above is truth, but it seams to be a plausible explanation.
I don't see why this is so downvoted. People are doing a lot of mental gymnastics to discount the possibility of Russian sabotage here and I really don't understand why that is. Nothing is certain, but I think it's silly to discount Russia being responsible it for the reasons people are giving.
I’m genuinely curious where the gymnastic is? I am asking in good faith. What is Russia’s interest in sabotaging it? They can’t sell gas to fund their war machine.
What’s the US interest? Now Europe must buy LNG from our fantastic gas companies. US exports of LNG are at an all time high price. Europe is pissed off at our rival. Not to mention our commander in chief threatened to blow it up, why?
Everything here says it’s in the interest of the USA, not Russia. I don’t feel like I’m bending any logic, in fact I feel like this is the only common sense way to think about it.
What people are saying is that he wouldn't be stupid enough to kill off something that is a vital source of foreign currency in wartime, and could be used as leverage in negotiating with the EU. Except it wasn't operational and was proving to be useless as a bargaining chip.
The gymnastics come in believing that the guy who was willing to throw caution to the wind in starting a war with Ukraine (causing his economy to take a hammering and killing trade with the EU, running the real risk of pushing NATO entirely into NATO's arms) is somehow going to be precious about a pipeline that had ceased to have any value. I don't see it.
Russia is the only country who could do it without risking provoking a war.
Russia knew they weren’t going to make any money on it due to the strong reaction to the war on Ukraine.
Russia could have decided to do it to remind Western Europe that it could do the same to other pipelines they depend on.
None of that is determinative that Russia did do it, but it’s sufficient to me to indicate that they could have done it, and insisting that it’s absurd is, well, absurd.
Russia is also not a single actor. There are factions, and they have different interests. The "liberals" aka the economic bloc in the administration - who know full well what kind of shitshow is ahead in the long term - would prefer the war to die down, and for gas to start flowing again, preferably in exchange for dropping sanctions. Because of that, they're a potential threat to the war faction; think of how some parts of the German military repeatedly tried to arrange for secret negotiations with the Allies for an example of how it could materialize. But if there are no pipelines, the "liberals" have no gas to offer in exchange for concessions even if they somehow manage to stop the war and remove the war party from power. This makes their platform less attractive.
(To be clear, this is all just conjecture. The factions are real enough, and have motives that could make players in this game, but it's obviously not the only viable explanation.)
I find this the most likely scenario too. Blowing up the pipeline cemented that Europe wasn't going to get Russian gas for the winter. It left less maneuvering room to any interest groups that could've used it as a bargaining chip as Europe was heading into winter and many expected widespread heating and power issues, some local authorities in Europe even planned for possible mass evacuations of vulnerable population. Gas was the most valuable concession that anyone in Russia could've made. Pipeline blew up and that was off the table. Nobody knew at the time that winter 2022/2023 was going to be exceptionally warm and in hindsight it's easy to downplay those fears and percieved value of the pipeline.
You know the USA sends sophisticated military weapons and training to Ukraine including actual HIMARS used to blow up a Russian barrack and kill 400 Russians?
But you think the USA blowing up an inactive pipeline might be the thing that provokes a war and therefore the USA would never do it?
My best guess as to Russian interest is that by performing the sabotage in a difficult-to-attribute manner it plants the seeds for anti-US (and by extent, anti-Ukraine) sentiment in the public perception in the EU. More or less the governments of EU countries need the will of the people to back military aid to Ukraine, so giving the public something to latch on to from an anti-US perspective is valuable in that it could lower or prevent aid.
The Russians can also probably be secure in knowing that NATO won't publicly identify Russia as responsible as that would probably mean war and it has been very clear that NATO's top priority is avoiding the spread of the war in Ukraine.
There are some other possible Russian motivations I've seen, but put less stock in like capability demonstration and limiting incentives for a coup.
You need to stop thinking like a rational capitalist. It's a common problem for westerners to try to look at Russia from this angle.
It makes the cost of energy go up in Europe and the US, which exacerbates the existing problem of monetary inflation caused by the recent pandemic. It was meant as punishment for the West's support of Ukraine to increase civil discontent with the existing pro-Ukraine western governments. This allows the electorate to be more receptive to populist candidates funded by Russia with anti-Ukraine positions which will give Russia what they want.
Then, Ukraine goes to Russia, gas goes back to Europe via the still intact pipeline, European money goes back to Russia, and Russia wins.
That scale of sabotage wasn’t a casual act. Russia knew Europe was going to shut down its imports anyway, so perhaps it was a threat, but one that didn’t involve casus belli.
Russia was the only country that could do that without risk of widening the war.
I’m not saying they did do it, but I see no reason for everyone to insist it’s obviously false.
> The US didn’t think Russia had a submersible and some C4 and now they do?
The US wasn’t the target, European powers were, and the message was about will (though like other Russian threats over the same policy issue, it was a false message, despite the dramatic form), more than material capacity.
Russia comes to mind, in the weeks before the explosions when they launched a ridiculous cascade of excuses about why they can't fulfill contracts on the existing, undamaged pipe. They quite literally left huge amounts of money on the table only to send a message. Must have been difficult, internally, to keep up.
Germany declared war on Russia which was allied with France. And Germany did not declare war on any of those countries out of will, but due to an alliance with the Austro-Hungarian empire.
As parent said, Germany didn’t declare war willingly, they had no choice but supporting the alliance. You cannot just change sides in war as it suits you.
For starters, Germany declared war on Russia five days before Austria-Hungary did. But even if it were otherwise, they still had a choice whether to honor their obligations or not.
Furthermore, there's substantial evidence that Germany - or rather, some German factions - was very specifically pressuring Austria into a war, precisely so that it could then be "joined":
Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons.
Building a pipeline is not cheap, not in money or time or bureaucratic effort. It's easier to just stop supplying the gas if you want to make an obvious threat.
> Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons.
They launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine while denying they were doing so and failed at every one of their military objectives while causing their economy to collapse due to the massive worldwide sanctions. What other evidence could you require?
Exactly. Putin started an incredibly expensive war that could prove to be financially ruinous for Russia, I don't know why we're supposed to believe he wouldn't be so careless about a pipeline that wasn't even operational at the time. I'm not claiming to know who did this, but I don't think we can say it couldn't possibly be Russia
Part of the credibility of either account lies in the source. The source of one is a highly awarded investigative journalist legend with a history of verifying his anonymous sources in government and never published anything false TMK. The other account comes from a publication owned by a billionaire contractor to the department of defense.
There may be an incorrect statement regarding the Norwegian P-8 in the linked article.
The author states that that "they won’t enter into active service until later this year", but the source the author links to doesn't actually make that claim. All it says is that the P-3s will keep flying until sometime in 2023, when the "P-8 is ready to take over". I don't think that implies that Norway doesn't already have some P-8s in active operation.
> I would like to believe that this is possible within a few months. Setting a specific date is difficult. But we are now trying to qualify the P-8 aircraft and crews for operational service from the end of the first quarter of 2023, confirms Rolf Folland, head of the Air Force to TV 2.
Doesn't really rule out the P-8, apparently Norway has had P-8's since 2021, in order for an aircraft to be 'fully operational' you have to do training/exercises, fly the aircraft. If the Norwegian Air Force wanted to have the P-8 fully operational by Jan 30 2023, they had to have been flying sorties before then.
Tom Clancy would disavow having served as inspiration if the story did not feature secret prototypes! (I know nothing about Tom Clancy and his works, that's just how I imagine them to be like: not full-out "future gear porn" but a well-balanced moderate dose of it?)
I think Paul's advice in that post is best accompanied by reading Thinking Fast and Slow. There is a big difference between knowing something in theory and being able to actually practice it skilfully, and self-assessment in such things is always questionable.
Exactly. The most common US-culprit "evidence" brought up is Biden saying "we're going to put an end to Nordstream 2" on the eve of the Russian invasion, which happened immediately; no gas through Nordstream 2. Then there's no evidence in Hersh's piece, based on one anonymous source and a litany of outright fabrications (Jens Stoltenberg being "supreme commander of NATO", Norwegians hating russians??, P-8 not in Norwegian Navy service). On the other hand, there's no direct evidence of Russian involvement, only a history of bold-faced lying to us and blowing up their own pipeline.
This realm is still in the land of almost zero evidence hearsay, and we just do not know yet.
I regret that Hersh's reporting relied on anonymous officials. That's not a dig on Hersh - this is the standard for journalism on these topics. As a standard it creates a deniability to any story that comes out e.g. "they probably made it up", "the source doesn't know what they are talking about", "the source is influencing the journalist for their own ends".
I think Hersh's article is interesting and useful however. There are specific details that journalists can dig into in the future to find validating hard facts. This may ultimately press a government to cop up to involvement over time, once enough evidence has mounted. That's not to say there aren't possible false leads and inaccuracies in his report.
For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen the author makes the strongest possible case that there's not merit to Hersh's argument - but for me it comes across as Sophomoric.
In terms of who destroyed the pipeline it is clear that the United States, United Kingdom and Ukraine had strong motives - and the US and UK capability. It's difficult to read commentary that dismisses these motivations out of hand as outrageous. Or at least, I'm coming in with priors that significantly diverge from these commentators.
There's nothing wrong with anonymous sourcing, but if your thing is based on a _single_ anonymous source, AND you've cultivated a reputation for being a credulous crank (see also the sourcing on the alternate universe Bin Laden writing Hersh did), AND you don't have any kind of editorial machine to back up your sourcing, AND the claim is incredibly inflammatory, then probably that's going to present a problem.
>For the linked article - it commits far more journalistic sins than Hersh's article - in an attempt to take it down. Through continued use of insinuation, analogies, and strawmen
Like what? Give some examples.
Hersh's article is just made up fiction. Hersh has a habit of making up "anonymous sources":
>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.
Doesn't have to mean that he makes them up though: when a group of professional "truth fabricators" (or rather "doubt fabricators", they don't really need their stories to be water-proof) has learned that he makes for an effective mouthpiece eager to believe he'll be swarmed with "sources".
it's a useful heuristic of mine to massively distrust anyone who makes silly claims like assigning probabilities at 1 decimal point to things like this:
> 1 Opposition: Opposition forces in Syria (Liwa al-Islam) carried out the chemical attack. 96.4%
> 2 Syrian army: The Syrian army carried out the chemical attack. 3.6%
though it helps when they also explain the process with nonsense like:
> The few prior instances of chemical attacks against civilian targets contain factors that make them poor comparisons to the attack in Syria, leaving motivation as the primary factor. An analysis of the motivating factors behind such an attack results in the Syrian army being twice as likely to launch such an attack compared to an Opposition group, i.e. 67%-33%.
I really hate this style of analysis. It's transparent, yes: it's a prior being updated by evidence to produce a posterior, and you see where the rabbit goes in the hat. But this just puts a sciencism gloss on what are basically qualitative arguments.
A short version of their argument is "You might think for any number of reasons that the Syrian government launched the missile, but other peoples calculations of the launch location were wrong and ours were right so it couldn't be the government." Their prior begins at 95-5 for the government doing it, then it becomes 69-31 for the government doing it when they show a video of an anti-government guerrilla wearing a chemical hazard suit, then it becomes 7-93 in favour of the opposition once they decide they know the launch site. The launch site evidence is supposed to mean the Syrian government's probability is divided by 3 and the opposition's probability is multiplied by 15. That's the whole argument, that's where the rabbit is in the hat. After that point, no other evidence can adjust anything.
Most of the other evidence is just conjecture: they assign a 90% confidence to the evidence point "No western countries shared their evidence that the Syrian government did it" and they feel this fact is enough evidence to half their confidence in the Syrian government doing it. As proof for this, they literally say "The US says they have signals intercepts saying the Syrian government did it, but what if they actually have signals intercepts from the Syrian government asking if they did it or maybe they did admit to doing it but they were lying" This is not evidence.
This really seems like crank people trying to apply a rational choice / scientific skeptic veneer to a process of qualitative reasoning. And frankly I flicked through another ten or fifteen pages on the blog and almost everything discussed was discussed in the exact manner LessWrong/Slate Star Codex commenters would, and many of the issues being discussed were the exact issues discussed on those sites.
(I have no prior at all on the Syrian gas attacks, as I don't pretend to know anything about Syria or chemical weapons)
None of what you said mentions of any specific details of either article, whatsoever. What specifically is an example of an insinuation you object to? Maybe pick one straw man and point it out? Otherwise, what's the informational content behind all this verbiage?
Seems to me equally likely he's saying they'd pressure Germany to not use it or introduce sanctions (to bring an end to Nordstream 2, as a source of foreign currency for Russia and as leverage over the EU). Additionally wasn't Nordstream 2 not yet operational, and mostly Nordstream 1 that was sabotaged?
Nord Stream 2 was operational. It was also targeted but one of the pipes was hit twice, leaving the other intact.
Up to that point, the Russians clearly communicated to Germany that the flow of gas could be resumed either by dropping the sanctions to "repair" Nord Stream 1 or by opening Nord Stream 2.
The reason given by the Russians as to why Nord Stream 1 wasn't running at capacity was technical problems. First it was a turbine which eventually was replaced by Germany. Next it was allegedly damage to a control unit. The Russians claimed the repairs were impossible because of the sanctions.
So up until the bombing, Nord Stream 2 was always there as a possible fallback. Had Germany run into difficulties procuring gas from other sources up until winter, there was this dangling bait in reach of the German government. A freezing population would have been very unkind to a government that refused to open the second pipeline just for political stance.
Since the bombing it has become clear that operating any pipeline through the Baltic might only last for a short time.
Nordstream 2 was not delivering any gas at that point, Germany had refused the offer to open NS2 (after a series of comically timed "repairs" that just happened to require the new sanctions to be broken) and showed no signs of relenting. I think it is an enormous leap to assume that Germany would in this alternate reality inevitably relent and do what amounts to a pro-Russia stance in backpedalling and using NS2, that would not only fracture the country internally but would cause a foreign policy nightmare at the heart of the EU and NATO. As we have seen it was well within the world of possibilities to stand up LNG terminals for delivery by tanker, this would've been known to both Germany and the USA who would have been in discussion about this the entire time Nordstream was being discussed.
My position is: we just don't know yet, nothing is completely certain. I am surprised that people seem 100% convinced because they read an article by Hersh that paints a nice story and uses an as-yet unnamed source as proof and are prepared to take it all at face value. It may well turn out that the USA was responsible after all. But this recent article is, as it stands, no more than a story. It's still completely possible Nordstream 1/2 was blown by the Russians or the Ukrainians or the Brits or the Poles...
> Nordstream 2 was not delivering any gas at that point
I agree. I meant "operational" as in "ready to operate". Sorry for causing confusion here.
> I think it is an enormous leap to assume that Germany would in this alternate reality inevitably relent and do what amounts to a pro-Russia stance in backpedalling and using NS2, that would not only fracture the country internally but would cause a foreign policy nightmare at the heart of the EU and NATO.
I live in Germany. Through the entire summer I heard more and more people (and from surpising directions) voice their frustration that Nord Stream 2 wasn't opened in the face of gas shortages. Where I live, every week protests gathered that demanded NS2 to be opened and sanctions to be lifted.
The signs of a weak polar vortex came in around that time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32985927. Had Europe seen the kind of winter that eventually befell North America, matters would have shifted dramatically. From the outside there was no way of knowing whether an already weak looking German government would not flip whith riots at the door.
For what it's worth I think your use of "operational" was in this context more correct than mine :)
You've probably got a better feel for public opinion in Germany than I do - I'm over the border in Czech Republic so while we'd have also suffered with a gas shortage, the idea of any concessions to Putin here is nearly unthinkable (people crowdsourced a fucking tank they called "Tomáš" for god's sake :D). I figured Germany might be more forgiving, but would still be very resistant and would be supported in doing so by its NATO allies in any way possible.
The majority in Germany, as far as I can tell, is in favour of sanctions. Not so much because of NATO, but because of all the wrongs that are carried out by Russia and a feeling of helplessness.
However, there's also another thing going on. As I said, there are people protesting. They hold banners calling for peace. But they walk behind a row of martial sounding drums. And if you ask them how peace would be achieved they tell you that military support for Ukraine must be stopped. And if you look at them, you realise you've seen them before. Also the drummers. It's the same people who did pretty much the same walking and drumming against masks and vaccines. That movement was known to be heavily influenced by Russian propaganda and RT in general. The biggest support for this "movement" is seen in the former socialist east, by the way. Which is suprising if you look at the rest of the non-Russian former eastern block and how Russian geopolitics are viewed there. It is not suprising if you know that there is still a lot of distrust towards anything western or American there.
I'm sure that, in between all of that, a winter with failing heating and a crashing industry would have tipped something over.
“Put an end to it” seems to carry a bit more finality then “we are going to encourage to not use it, or introduce sanctions to not use it”. Especially in light of the damn thing actually being destroyed…and an end being put to it.
The action that was taken, even though it’s not acknowledged, has brought weight to the statement.
I think if they were planning to do this they wouldn't have sent Joe Biden out and said "alright, drop a little hint that you're going to bomb Nordstream in the event of a Ukraine invasion". And if they were planning to do so and Biden blurted it out (because ... he's Joe Biden) I imagine any plans to bomb the pipeline would surely have been scrapped as he'd have just given the game away.
More realistic is the old man who has famously delivered gaffe after gaffe, who has repeatedly stumbled on his speeches and said dumb shit, said something a bit inelegant that everyone's now seizing on like a bunch of qanoners baking the latest q-drop on 8chan
Even a gaffe doesn’t change the core strategic value, it only adds another variable to consider as part of the possible blowback of the operation.
Regardless, it’s apparent that even with a Biden gaffe in the mix, if the US was responsible it was done in a way that preserved enough mystery to minimize the blowback.
Right, this is what I'm saying. The situation is anything but clear and I don't think Biden's comments that day tell us anything concrete about this one way or another, and I think it's a mistake that some people think it does.
If the USA didn't commit this, then through their various covert actions over the last half-century they only have themselves to blame for the suspicion that it was down to them.
I don’t think the gaffe proves it on its own, it’s the gaffe comment, the fact that the US policy towards Russia/Ukraine directly benefited from it’s destruction, there was bi-partisan opposition to the pipeline, and our history in such things that make me believe the US probably did it.
As President Obama famously supposedly said: “Never estimate Joe’s ability to fuck something up”
A general criminal law principle known as the corpus delicti rule provides that a confession, standing alone, isn't enough for a conviction.
I am not taking a position. I'm saying no one has presented hard evidence. And until they do, if ever, both sides will play hot potato and nothing will happen.
When someone presents hard evidence for either position I'll listen to them happily.
He said that in the context of sanctions, and which did end up shutting it down long before it was blown up. It only appears to be a threat of destruction retroactively because it was later blown up. There were no articles claiming he was threatening to blow it up at the time. Everyone knew the context was with regards to sanctions at the time.
You're looking at a youtube short that explicitly cuts out any semblance of context. The entire world had been discussing nothing but Russian sanctions for weeks at that point. And no, it wasn't a weird way to threaten sanctions, and no one at the time thought any differently, otherwise there would've been a flurry of articles saying Biden threatened to blow it up. But that never happened.
You're looking at a youtube short that explicitly cuts out any semblance of context.
> Lol. Here's the video.[0] The 'context' you're arguing for was a question posed to someone else. The question she asked to Biden--the immediate context for his comment--clearly strengthens the argument that this was a threat against the pipeline.
> The entire world had been discussing nothing but Russian sanctions for weeks at that point.
I don't even know where to start with this one.
> And no, it wasn't a weird way to threaten sanctions, and no one at the time thought any differently,
Listen to the lady in the video above. Why's she so flabbergasted after Biden's answer? How does her follow-up question make sense if she thought he was talking about sanctions?
> otherwise there would've been a flurry of articles saying Biden threatened to blow it up.
> Why's she so flabbergasted after Biden's answer? How does her follow-up question make sense if she thought he was talking about sanctions?
She just asked how Biden would do it, since the pipeline was within Germany‘s control. And he answered: „We will be able to do it.“
He did not identify who „we“ is and how it‘s done. „We“ could be the US and Germany together, it could be the western World or it could be the US alone. If it were the US alone it could be done by imposing sanctions on that particular pipeline and it could be done by putting diplomatic or economic pressure on Germany (many ways to do that) and it could be done by putting sanctions on companies that interact with the pipeline and so on. It could also be done by using force, but that is merely one of many options and I believe that Biden at that time didn‘t even know how himself. He made a strong assertion in order to take control of the situation and he did.
Yes. We can continue to hold reservations but that can be considered evidence. It is akin to someone getting killed and someone else prior saying they would kill that person. It doesn't mean they actually did it, but it is suspicion and motive that should lead to further investigations. That Germany and other countries aren't looking into it can also be considered circumstantial evidence.
It‘s not evidence because the pipeline wasn‘t that important anymore. They also looked into it. And finally any of them could have done it themselves as well. Nothing points to the US specifically.
For the US such an operation would have a huge amount of risk and they have to gain nothing until the war is over and even after that very little or nothing. (Potentially they can sell their gas - but others as well.) So why do it?
On the other hand, Germany had to gain a bit (shutting down the voices calling for it being opened) and Russia had to gain a lot (sowing distrust within NATO; forcing a change from NS1 to the remaining NS2; as a show of power and a threat; making a strategic change impossible to shut down future opposition within the power structure of Russia) or just to complete their shift to trade with China now instead. The NS2 project was already dead.)
The US runs no risk at all in doing something like this.
They've been doing war and killing innocents ("collateral damage", sorry...) for decades, all in the name of some doubtful "freedom and democracy", and what has happened to them? Nothing whatsoever.
Your original claim, which was an opinion stated in the form of a fact, was that it is a Nothing Burger.
Stating one's opinions on social media is generally fine, but stating them in the form of facts is dangerous in that it can cause other agents in the system to have incorrect state, which can have very serious causal consequences, up to and including death, which most people claim to be "a big deal".
It is counterintuitive to think in this way, but many useful things are counterintuitive.
Seymour Hersh's sources for My Lai gave their names and went on the record. The soldiers who revealed it went on TV and testified before Congress. I'm pretty sure that he had additional anonymous sources, but to get it published he had to be able to back it up.
Abu Ghraib was uncovered by Amnesty International and the international Red Cross and they had tons of photos.
By the time Hersh first wrote about Abu Ghraib there had already been reporting on abuses by Amnesty International, and several days earlier some of the photos had been shown on 60 Minutes (as he mentions in the piece). The piece cites an Army report, credited to two named generals, and names seven suspects, six of whom were under active criminal prosecution. His report was published (and vetted!) by The New Yorker. The difference between that piece and this one in terms of sourcing and credibility is like night and day.
I would say the operation went off as planned. The capacity to ship gas on Nord Stream 1 was cut, but luckily, the pipeline hadn't been in use for a month at the time. According to this site, https://berthub.eu/gazmon/ , In March 2020, 100-150 GW of Gas went from Russia to EU, right before the pipeline cut, that had gone down to 50GW, and after the cut it dropped to 30GW.
So the question is, what was the strategic effect for the US, Ukraine, and/or Russia to have done this?
My take, its almost as good for Russia to play victim than it is for the US to cut Russia's Gas. It would be interesting to see how dominant this story was in Russia, given the Ukrainian advances in late 2022.
Russia had stopped gas flows on NordStream 1 26 days prior to the explosion [1].
This was after a series of reductions, stops, and restarts where they reduced flows and tried to get Germany to break sanctions to send parts. That they then ultimately rejected and wouldn't receive. E.g. [2].
When Germany offered the parts. They refused them, stopped NS1 entirely and offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [3] Germany refused and resisted the blackmail attempt.
Then the explosion happened a couple of weeks later. After that Russia again offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [4]
In this context, the US going ahead with the plan to demolish NS1, and leave NS2 50% operation makes zero sense.
Biden pretty much gave it away. In a press conference before the invasion he assured the German media that nordstream 2 will never happen and when asked how the US has any say in a German / Russia venture he said he it will never happen, trust me.
Blowing up the pipeline is the only way to make sure. The only other option would have been to somehow sanction Germany if they turned on Nordstream 2 but that would also be bad for the US that needs to be able to operate their missions from Ramstein.
I thought there was subsequent reporting that Biden got a commitment from the chancellor (embarrassingly, I can’t remember if it was before or after Merkel left) that if Russia did invade, Germany would pull the plus on NS2. That could just as easily explain the comment, no?
The main problem with Hersh's claims is why the US/Norway would keep one of the two new NS2 lines intact? That line alone is big enough to meet Germany's domestic demands and according to Nord Stream AG one of the other lines received so little damage that they can fix it in a year or less.
Let me also add these point that everyone seems to want to ignore:
NordStream 2 was never put into service. Germany halted it due to the invasion. This was considered a very big deal.
At the time of the explosion on 26 Sep there had been no gas flowing on NordStream 1 at all. None! Flows on NS1 were shutdown by Russia on 31 Aug. This came after a series of declining flows from Russia accompanied by various efforts by Russia to get Germany to violate sanctions and persuade other countries to reduce sanctions. It culminated in complete shut off of NS1 and an offer to instead activate NS2 before the explosion (one of those pipes was suspiciously left undamaged).
Russia had been trying the blackmail that everyone feared, and Germany resisted it. I've bashed Germany a lot for it's response to the war but the fact is Germany got off Russian gas at huge costs and resisted the blackmail threat.
Well if you want to consider motives, what I said makes a clear motive IF Russia did it, for them to leave one of the NS2 pipes untouched doesn't it. Because the history was of Russia trying to blackmail Germany and get Germany to turn on NS2.
But I didn't claim Russia did it. You know you can suspect the US did it but that doesn't mean you need to promote fake made up stories that defy scrutiny to believe it. You can still search for the actual truth and want to see actual facts presented rather than fiction.
> one of those pipes was suspiciously left undamaged
...
> But I didn't claim Russia did it.
Give me a break.
Anyway, it still doesn't make sense why Russia would blow up 3/4th its capacity to bluff the Germans into using 1/4th the capacity. This a mind boggling silly path in the "search for the actual truth".
Most likely because blowing up stuff under water requires a lot of skill and things can go wrong when you have fish and other wildlife around. I am sure they wanted all 4 destroyed.
"I am unsure as to why all the intelligence officials in the initial planning meetings for the mission felt that the only possible way to sabotage the pipeline would be at the short section directly bordering Russia, instead of the large section in more favorable waters."
I can think of one reason; to make it look more likely that Russia did it.
And why oh why would Norway help??? I'll give you 263 billion reasons...
It does seem like what happened is that Hersh got a legitimate source (probably in the US or Norwegian intelligence community) who was willing to talk about an existing plan for this kind of operation, and then spun it into a story just declaring that it happened that way.
In point of fact probably every major player in the region had a plan like this. Nord Stream 2 was a huge football for everyone with interest. We just don't know who did it. Maybe we never will. But reporting on a plan doesn't tell us much of anything.
My own opinion: I think it probably wasn't the US, simply because the Biden folks are being so cautious in so many other ways. I mean, you know this kind of thing will eventually get out. Why blow up a gas line but not sent ATACMS? Just doesn't make strategic sense. If we wanted to roll the dice and push harder there are so many more effective ways to do it. I still think the "Putin did it to silence internal dissent" theory sounds best. Could also be more hawkish European governments trying to keep the Germans from waffling.
Edit to note: the fact that the two replies are immediately jumping back into the essentially false[1] "Biden said he would blow up Nord Stream 2" canard in response tells us how uninformative Hersh's story turns out to be. It's not proof of anything.
[1] It was a statement in the press conference before the war started about possible consequences and responses. The context was sanctions and international condemnation, literally no one at the time, even the most Russophilic pundits and anti-imperialist tankies, interpreted this as a military threat.
Because the strategic goal is is not to militarily defeat Russia, which would probably be impossible, but to drive a hard geopolitical wedge between the EU and the rising Russia-Iran-India-China Eurasian multipolar order, and thereby secure EU dependence on Washington (rather than losing it to the gravitational pull of Eurasia). A limited proxy war, and blowing up economic links between the two, are two ways of achieving that.
It's not clear to me why Iran is a part of this multipolar order. It's true that the U.S. has backed Saudi Arabia/GCC and more or less taken the Sunni side in the Sunni-Shi'a split, but why is Iran considered an independent world power in the multipolar world but Saudi is not? In the same way, Cuba and Yugoslavia were not powers in a multipolar world in the 1960s just because they stood against a U.S. The hegemony but were nevertheless not explicitly owned by the Soviet Union.
The U.S. definitely has an interest in an isolated and weak Russia, but the polarity of this situation is totally unclear. Isolating Russia has already empowered China. It may strengthen the EU and EU-central/eastern European ties, but it may also cause a further loss of influence in Africa and SE Asia for the west. It's definitely possible to make the math shake out for this to be strategically useful for the U.S., but I don't think it's as foregone a conclusion as you expect it is, and for that reason I don't see how this is any more likely an explanation than any contradicting explanation.
> The context was sanctions and international condemnation,
How odd that you would consider her second question--which wasn't directed at Biden--to be the relevant context for Biden's answer, and not the actual question that was posed to Biden!
Watch the video.[1] The reporter asks Biden if he's received assurances that Germany will pull the plug on the project if Germany invades (then continues to pose a separate question to Sholz). Biden answered "If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will put an end to it."
Beyond that, his word choice only makes sense as a direct threat on the pipeline. It makes no sense as an oblique threat of sanctions or "international condemnation".
> literally no one at the time, even the most Russophilic pundits and anti-imperialist tankies, interpreted this as a military threat.
You don't remember headlines like "Biden warns "there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2" if Russia invades Urkaine"?[0] They were everywhere.
I think it's overwhelmingly obvious that the US, or US-aligned forces, were responsible. It's not clear to me who else even has a motive to do this. US has capable forces in the region at the time, a clear motive (remove the temptation for Germany to use the pipeline). The other possibilities are Russia, they could just turn off the pipeline rather than blow it up, Germany, they could just turn off their end of the pipeline without blowing it up, or... Ukraine, Poland, etc I count as "US-aligned" forces.
Then, when you add in that Biden explicitly threatened unilaterally stopping the pipeline, and that threat was subsequently reiterated by the head of the State Department... I have to wonder what evidence would convince people that the US was probably behind the action.
> It's not clear to me who else even has a motive to do this.
Putin. Blow up the pipeline so no-one can offer cheap gas in exchange for being recognized as the next legitimate leader of Russia behind his back. It's one of the simplest explanations and falls into the overall pattern. False-flag terrorism[1] is how Putin got into power in the first place.
Cheap gas or not, the west would welcome any new Russian leader with open arms if they withdrew from Ukraine. That explanation does not seem very compelling at all.
The west is not the only party that would have to welcome a new russian leader - the russian oligarchs, as well as people interested in making money selling to the west, needs to be on board.
Putin can remove the temptation to overthrow him, and restoring normal relations with the EU (gas pipes included), by blowing it up - something that is currently not being used and serves to short to medium term value for putin. However, blowing it up, but hiding who did it, can sow mistrust in the NATO alliance. He might be betting that the germans would think the americans did it (or at least be suspicious). And if he was found out, russia can claim that they're within their rights to blow up a pipeline that belongs to them (aka, no real bad consequences).
What? You could repair the damage to the pipeline. If someone could replace Putin by promising to sell gas to the Germans, the fact that the pipeline is currently damaged would not be an obstacle.
It's also not the case that Putin needs false flag terrorism. For one, he is already in power and has already started the war. Two, if he needed an example of US or Ukrainian forces blowing something up to galvanize his position - he has plenty of real world examples of Russian things getting destroyed - he doesn't need to manufacture a new one.
It was damaged beyond repair, certainly beyond a quick repair. If the plan with gas extortion was to break the will of Europe over this winter, then no alternative to Putin could offer any relief after it was blown up, decreasing the value of backchannel negotiations.
> simply because the Biden folks are being so cautious in so many other ways.
Biden said publicly they were going to "end it." The reporter who asked the question was even baffled and asked how they could make that claim when the pipeline was in foreign territory. Biden further confirmed that we would have a way to do it if needed.
If they didn't do it, then that press conference and that answer was exceptionally incautious.
To the people are saying "oh this is just nitpicking", it's not. Hersh's claims are extraordinary[0], and require if not extraordinary evidence, at least evidence that's not sloppy as hell.
Given the subject matter it's completely reasonable that he could only have anonymous sources. But when you have anonymous sources then their information has to line up with reality. If it doesn't then you're either getting played or dealing with someone who has kind of lost it and maybe is exaggerating/misinterpreting information that they _do_ have access to. Getting basic claims wrong like the kind of boats involved, or the location of the attack, or the equipment required is disqualifying enough to disregard other more salacious claims.
That all said: the US may very well have been behind it, but Hersh does nothing to prove that in his original article in light of the inconsistencies.
[0] Not so extraordinary that we would blow up a pipeline, but that Biden would pull the silly "I'm-not-covert-actioning" word game. It's stupid and wouldn't shield him from accountability any more than just telling DevGru/DO(or whatever the abbreviation is now) not to tell gang of 8.
I don’t care either way who blew up the pipeline but to me the biggest glaring reason why I don’t think it’s the US is because Russia did not retaliate in any meaningful way.
Us peons are clueless about what happened but Russia knows and they would know if it was them. If it wasn’t them then it’s obvious who did It and escalating the war would be justified. The fact this didn’t happen to me suggests it was Russia all along.
Russia would only retaliate in a visible way if they played a tit-for-tat strategy. But that's not the only option. That's only how Americans think ("something HAS to be done right now, it doesn't matter if we end up punishing the wrong guy or the wrong country").
From the point of view of Russia, this is just yet another move in the much larger scale game of energy geopolitics. Russia's answer might not be to blow up some random pipeline in Alaska but to do many other things that will secure their energy contracts elsewhere, while harming its adversaries in the process.
This goes both way, however. If Russia used the incident as a justification for retaliation, they would make it easy for the US to play the innocent one and point the political finger to old enemy Russia - a believable story the rest of the west would have to support.
> Lasting Mine Countermeasures partnerships built during BALTOPS 22
> Experimentation on new types of unmanned underwater vehicles were also tested off the coast of Bornholm Island, Denmark during the exercise.
Them having used mines in prior BALTOPS exercises doesn't necessarily preclude what Seymour noted. BALTOPS 22 _does_ seem to have been more mine-focused than usual, according to the article.
If this guy wants me to believe him he needs to stop insulting Hersh. I appreciate the deep dive (get it) of this piece, and I appreciate his calling out what he believes to be bullshit. But I DO NOT appreciate the ad hominem attacks on Hersh.
Hersh's story sounds reasonable, but my question is who in this situation would leak it?
Vietnam had thousands of kids drafted straight out of high school witnessing a massacre that might want to get something off their chest. Here you've got an elite strike team of military specialists hand picked for the mission to serve God and Country. What on earth would anybody involved here have to gain by leaking any of this, beyond a court martial and a bunch of strife for those you supposedly serve?
And most prime ministers and defence ministers of "allies" are resigning left and right. Something deeper is most likely that they don't want to be involved in this region conflict and be on leash of US.
EU made the mistake of following US into middle east and syria which blew up in their face with millions of refugees pouring in.
Getting involved in this RU-UKR war is the mistake to end all mistakes. There is no coming back from this. The world is polarized and EUR/USD is going to take a lot of pain.
EUR was created to offset some of the leash that US had on Europe and that's also tightening now.
Here in Central Europe there is a general tacit understanding that "of course it was the Americans". It just doesn't make sense to the people that Russia did it... what would it gain from this?
Crippling any "make money not war" faction that might build in Moscow. No path to money, no threat. An all-in commitment forced on the unwilling, and on the perhaps unwilling who might change their minds. And with a generous side of doubt and distrust in the West, particularly after that Biden remark. The list of possible universes we live in even includes one where Russia did it, but would not have done without that invitation.
Some of the most prolific bull-shitters on the planet are people who claim to have been part of some secret military operation and have inside knowledge in great detail, hinting that they played a major role in the planning and execution. Anyone who served in the military knows this because these elaborate confabulations are the jam of a certain kind of military person. Seymour Hersh is older than my father (85). My father doesn't suffer from any brain diseases but he has definitely declined in mental acuity. Has Mr. Hersh considered retiring? Or can he back up his claims?
I say this as someone who wouldn't be surprised if America was involved
Right, with every nation running psy ops and disinformation campaigns, we're supposed to believe this guy (or gal):
All the information in Hersh’s post reportedly comes from a single unnamed source, who appears to have had direct access to every step of the planning and execution of this highly secretive operation.
It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic how people rush to believe things that confirm their preconceptions
After years and years of dubious, "anonymous sources" literally making up claims, I have come to doubt the truthfulness of nearly anyone who claims something from an anonymous sources.
Even if it is from a well regarded journalist. This is a consequence of how far the profession has fallen.
This isn't how it's always worked for Hersh, though.
The Abu Ghraib report was published by the New Yorker, which has fact checkers on staff. You cannot tell their stuff "my source is anonymous" and not have them confirm that source: the public may not know Hersh's sources for that work, but the New Yorker does.
Hersh's recent work is self published and not fact checked. Moreover, it is wild, and often logically at odds with itself (This operation was extremely secret, and yet the Treasury department was involved?). So: times have changed.
I love Substack, but Substack doesn't solve your reputation problem for you: if you were reliant on your editor to check your work (as Hersh clearly was), Substack gives you nothing to help out with that. It's a different world now, unfortunately, and it's made a crank out of Hersh.
His ad hoc speeches during the Abu Ghraib reporting were also not fact checked, and he said some things which he later admitted were exaggerations. Some reporters need the discipline of fact checking; Hersh has always been very good when he had that, and very bad when he does not.
Hersh's New Yorker article was published April 30. His reporting was based on the Army's Taguba report, which leaked broadly in the first week of May. Other reporters had access to and reported on the leaked report. There's absolutely grounds to criticize the Pentagon in terms of its lack of transparency with regards to the report, but once the story was broken it was way too well-substantiated to outright deny.
That would actually be really interesting if someone tried to comprehensively go through past Pentagon denials and see how truthful they've been for the cases we're able to actually adjudicate one way or another these days.
Of course that it's from Oliver Alexander. Apart from the NAFO minions and from that Paul Massaro lunatic one couldn't have found a less impartial source. Give me Jihadi Julian (who's also pro-Ukraine) one thousand times over this guy.
While interesting, the author appears to be nitpicking. It does not really refute Hersh's story, because these minor inconsistencies appear in any news article, including the NYT.
It is irrelevant whether Hersh gets all details right, the important thing is whether his source is correct on the big picture or not.
It seems to me that the veracity of Hersh's claims cannot be decided by textual analysis, but rather by another investigative reporter who would travel for months to Florida, Norway, etc. and try to dig into the story. But who will finance that? Who would dare that?
The source is wrong on very basic details. And the big picture of the story is nonsensical:
1) this is a very very very secret operation that Congress shouldn't be informed about, but a shitton of services - including foreign countries - were involved
2) they laid the mines during... A very public and documented military exercise. They certainly couldn't do it from a nondescript modified fishing vessel, no, they had to make it obvious it was them. But very very very secret operation indeed.
This is just an idiot's idea of a secret military operation.
These errors largely sound like obfuscation... like a potentially true narrative with the names and places changed:
- Instead of revealing the fishing vessel, he describes a vessel that it couldn't have been.
- Giving the real timing would expose the vessel, so he gives timing that wouldn't have worked as a placeholder.
- Too many people were involved, because only a subset were actually involved - or maybe even just an analogous group.
Hersh eliminates the intelligence value by obfuscating exactly who did what and how, but provides lay readers (to whom the specific details don't matter) a story that conveys a general sense of how the mission was achieved.
At the end of the day it is much more important what people believe than what is true, and people's reactions to specific instances of "nitpicking" varies according to their pre-existing beliefs.
For example "nitpicking" is enthusiastically praised during the investigation of physical matters (ie: science), but it is commonly denigrated (if not outright condemned, even by genuinely smart people) when used during the investigation of metaphysical matters, and this mystery is a combination of both (but is mostly metaphysical to my way of thinking).
>whether his source is correct on the big picture or not
(which cannot be verified), based on the details that can be verified.
>another investigative reporter who would travel for months to Florida, Norway, etc. and try to dig into the story.
What would be one concrete specific claim that you'd try to dig into?
>Who would dare that?
The question of "why would someone want to bother" is still open for debate, and until that's settled, there's little use bringing in conspiratorial woo questions.
“[Jens Steltonberg] 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.”
when he was actually born in 1959 is not a small thing. It’s simply making things up.
I would call it completely unrealistic (asuming we have entered John le Carre territory); Stoltenberg is of a political family in Norway; and I am sure it he was politically active from an early age. While Saigon fell in 1975, the various Vietnam movements countinue as organisations providing support for and cultural exchange with the newly unified (and heavily sanctioned) Vietnam.
It's almost definitely an error, but I don't think it significantly reduces the chances that Hersh's source is telling the truth. This feels like a detail that Hersh (incorrectly) added to the story, rather than something the source claimed. The charitable interpretation is that the aging Hersh confused Stoltenberg with his father, a Norwegian politician who was indeed involved with Vietnam. It's not a good look if Hersh is conflating different people from different generations, but it doesn't really reflect on the accuracy of his source one way or the other.
So what else in his age makes it not a small thing? That he cooperated with the American intelligence community back then? If he was some random teenager I guess it would be no random thing. However, his father was defense minister of this NATO country. Him spying on the student peace movement and relating details to his father and whoever his father had dealings with is the accusation. He certainly did a complete about face on the US military - or did he? Maybe this was his inclination from the beginning.
Incidentally NATO had a massive intelligence operation against the Norwegian student anti-NATO movement which was in the papers a few years ago.
I'm sure you had no clue the papers talked about his importance as a supposed anti-Vietnam activist years ago. I'm sure you had no idea his father was defense Minister of a NATO country. You're attempting to "discredit" the article by seeing a date, knowing none of these details, and deciding it discredits the article.
This text doesn’t really disproof the Hersh story beyond nitpicking some details and incorrect use of technical languages. (Admittedly it would be hard to disprove; and it is the accuser that has the burden of proof.)
However the big issue is the complete shutdown of media coverage and that the governments of Denmark, Sweden, and Germany all keep their investigations secret.
"complete shutdown of media coverage" is completely false, there were many stories in major US outlets that explicitly called out the possibility that the US did it.
Sure, there are probably some holes/slight inaccuracies in Hersh's story. This particular "debunking" is mostly nitpicking. The tweet about the minesweeper path is a head-scratcher, because it sure looks like the boat slowed down/loitered near both blast sites.
It is interesting that the White House, CIA, State Department, and establishment media class all found the need to promptly respond to what they characterized as a "blog post" and "conspiracy theory" from a "discredited former journalist". Thousands of such speculations are published every day on the internet, and the government does not find the need to respond.
It is also interesting that none of the above government organizations volunteered an alternative explanation for who bombed their ally's critical infrastructure. You would think that the #1 intelligence service in the world would be able to offer some explanation on the matter, almost half a year later, to quell the speculation.
Hersh is well connected to the Russian intelligence agencies and has been for his entire career, including before the recently very viable "Debunking" of his Syria story-line (another story that benefited Russia). He's publicly stated he is close friends with Scott Ritter, who recently called for Ukraine's "annihilation", and both are regular guests on propaganda organ RT.
Hersh's previous activity played a key role in eliminating support for anti-Russian forces in Syria. Hundreds of thousands are dying in Ukraine right now. I think it's pretty obvious exactly why Russia would want want to pin these explosions on the USA, and why the USA would take steps to ensure the truth came out,
No. There were pro-democratic forces.. forces that were basically abandoned by the USA and other, and quickly exterminated following Obama’s capitulation to Putin in 2013.
The sheer number of rhetorical fallacies employed in the opening of this "takedown" inclines me to believe that Hersh's reporting is a largely accurate and truthful account.
For example, stating that you could write "an entire post on the reasons why sounds entirely made up by someone with no real grasp of what that suggestion would actually technically entail" is a clear-cut appeal to ridicule[1] fallacy with no further elaboration.
It's an instance of "argument from fallacy." This whole comment section is like a zoo of logical fallacies, with golden oldies such as ad hominem (both sides), false equivalence, and of course both-siderism well represented.
It's dangerous to apply heuristics in political discourse without the inclusion of the element of reputation. Otherwise, you're vulnerable to adversarial techniques that flood the zone with garbage information.
This kind of thing was everywhere in the Trump era: whether you were on the right or the left, you could easily navigate yourself into a space where all of your critics were random people who were obviously completely unhinged. They don't actually tell you that your position is all that great in any strict logical sense, but they certainly are emotionally affirming!
There was a P8 dropping a sonar bouy a few hours before the blast. Monkeywerx on YouTube has a few videos on that. Then there's Biden explicitly stating it would be no more and they would end it, also on YouTube.
Wrong, it made a pass after the explosion. For a good reason.
But here you are proclaiming that they used a plane, with its transponder on, to activate the bomb. A very very very secret operation indeed. Cloak and daggers! So much covert.
If you can't trust monkeywerx on youtube to ferret out the secret plans, who can you trust? Importantly, Hersh claims there was a Norwegian Navy P8 that dropped the Sonobouy -- but the Norwegian Navy doesnt operate P8s, the Air Force does, and they don't have any actually flying yet - they won't be in service until 2023. The plane tracked by monkeywerx is a US Navy P8. That's a pretty important difference!
It’s interesting to me that dang overrode community moderation of this story [1] yesterday. Without having first even read it. A story that was based on an unverified anonymous source, by a discredited journalist, and which as we see now contained provably made up parts.
Because dang overrode moderation, that literal fake news (fake as in actually made up) was allowed to hover on the front page for a long time and given a legitimacy it didn’t deserve. It was able to be seen by a very large audience over a very long time.
Sadly an article that counters to that fake news makes it to the front page for a brief moment and after 3 hours is no on the 5th page.
So many of those people that saw the first will never see the second and get the wrong idea. It’s the old story about a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes. Sadly to me that it was Hacker News that decided to actively help spread the lie.
If community moderation worked perfectly, there would be no reason to moderate. dang was clear and consistent in his moderation, even though he received the most backlash I've seen him face in the thread [1].
Seymour Hersh's stories have faced similar backlash every time they're released, including counter-statements by the US government. He has put out more dubious pieces as of late – he could be right or wrong about this – but I'd rather be exposed to his ideas than have them censored.
Anecdotally, I found the Seymour Hersh story intellectually gratifying, and was forewarned of the murkiness of its contents by the HN comments. I think all functioned pretty well on the HN side.
I'm French and I had never heard of that journalist.
Can you share the link to the official list of discredited journalists so I know who not to trust going forward?
I think the commenter is labelling Hersh a "discredited journalist".
The discrediting part would be his recent articles on Syrian government complicity in chemical warfare attacks, his narrative of how the Bin Laden killing actually happened, and if the Russians actually poisoned the Skripals.
But you probably knew all that and I have been concern trolled. Oh well, I try.
> But you probably knew all that and I have been concern trolled. Oh well, I try.
I think the less than hour old account with random username might've given it away. :-) Unfortunately a seemingly unusual amount of that on this story.
How do you know it's made up? None of the involved countries have blamed Russia. Reuters and the washington post have also reported on this. It is not exactly wild speculation.
Dang also constantly gets criticized for not overriding flags on stories. He has to make judgment calls and ultimately that's a flawed human process. He won't always get it right, and furthermore people will often disagree on which instances he messed up (or didn't).
His closing question is "Why leave one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipelines intact"? I haven't seen it discussed much, but apparently there actually were 4 leaks, with one pipeline being damaged twice. One possible explanation would be that this was a mistake in the execution by whoever did this, with one pipeline somehow getting two explosives planted. Here's a Sept 22 article about the discover of the 4th leak: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fourth-leak-found-no...