ulvir posted:

this whole tiktok deal sure is blown way out of proportion, huh

yes, in part thanks to her own self for not just admitting it a week ago

Slowdive posted:

Hi guys, I'm writing an article for a leftie Croatian newspaper on the rise of right-wing populism in Scandinavia, any suggestions for articles or books I could look at? English preferred but not required

SplitSoul posted:

Rust Martialis posted:

SuperMarco in Sydhavnen is nice for niche stuff

Sure, if you're absolutely made of money.

SplitSoul posted:

That's because most of them are on kontanthjælp and don't want to be there.

anatomi posted:

It's ridiculous, but ICA doing their self-checkout differently from everyone else, i.e. swipe card before scanning instead of after, makes me so angry.

V. Illych L. posted:

it's insanely stupid and imo the result of an american campaign to whip up anxiery about china. we import american culture war poo poo uncritically - usually it's liberal stuff, but in this case we've caught a whiff of Republican frenzy. i'm sure that china has intelligence people harvesting stuff from tiktok, but intelligence people are deep in every popular social medium, and this perspective is simply absent in the discussion. any attempt at drawing consequences from assertions is immediately frowned upon.

Alhazred posted:

The issue is more that she has handled this insanely stupid.

Revelation 2-13 posted:

I worked there without being on kontanthjælp and definitely still did not want to be there. The detailhandel branche in general, especially the supermarket chains, has the most godawful shitbad management, both top and line, I’ve experienced in my life (that’s coming from someone who has experienced “university management”), Irma being the sole exception in Denmark by several of my friends account anyway.

Feliday Melody posted:

You know. My local Willy's has self-checkout where you scan your driving licence. But in 5 visits, staff has double-checked me 5 times. Everything was legitimate, but it was still a bigger bother than ICA. I guess I could see it as going ahead of the queue in a way.

evil_bunnY posted:

LOL I absolutely refuse to self-checkout. Our local ICA had a bunch of self-checkout lanes and that lasted all of 6 months before they reverted the changes.
The people there never have that "please let this end" stare and I can chat with them if they want, it's aces.

evil_bunnY posted:

LOL I absolutely refuse to self-checkout. Our local ICA had a bunch of self-checkout lanes and that lasted all of 6 months before they reverted the changes.
The people there never have that "please let this end" stare and I can chat with them if they want, it's aces.

KozmoNaut posted:

I hate having to call over a pimply-faced teen just to get some booze or painkillers, then again to be allowed to scan them and once more to be allowed to pay for them.

And then the scale decides that I didn't put down the correct weight of scanned items and refuses to do anything before – yet again – I have to call for "help".

Jack Trades posted:

Are you a pensioner?

Feliday Melody posted:

Sorry, I meant self scanning. Where you carry the little thing.

His Divine Shadow posted:

It's true here too. Lidl has some of the best bread and lowest price points. I think this is maybe a finnish lidl thing, but they got an extra large "rustic" croissant. Love it, regular croissants do nothing for me anymore.

Jack Trades posted:

Are you a pensioner?

thotsky posted:

I hate the self checkout poo poo. I am trying to buy something and they're making me work for the privilege.

His Divine Shadow posted:

My first experience with those was at the new Prisma they built near me. Took me 5 minutes to figure out how to get a scanner, then I didn't use it anyway when shopping, then I went for the regular checkout and asked the cashier lady what do I do with this?

I work with computers

KozmoNaut posted:

I hate having to call over a pimply-faced teen just to get some booze or painkillers, then again to be allowed to scan them and once more to be allowed to pay for them.
And then the scale decides that I didn't put down the correct weight of scanned items and refuses to do anything before – yet again – I have to call for "help".

KozmoNaut posted:

I hate having to call over a pimply-faced teen just to get some booze or painkillers, then again to be allowed to scan them and once more to be allowed to pay for them.

And then the scale decides that I didn't put down the correct weight of scanned items and refuses to do anything before – yet again – I have to call for "help".

F4rt5 posted:

The stores I use the most have fingerprint scanners. You show your ID to a clerk one time, who hits a couple buttons and you add your print. After that you don’t have to bother with waiting for staff for age-restricted stuff.

Unless the fingerprint scanners gently caress up. Which they often do. But I am a mellow guy who has time to wait for a couple of minutes until someone comes along.

Winklebottom posted:

https://twitter.com/SociologenHD/status/1622809240292278276

Jon Pod Van Damm posted:

From a long term perspective the Nord Stream pipelines are still vulnerable to more Scandinavian mischievousness.

In terms of passive brinkmanship NATO and its partner client states have been doing military training exercises in the Baltic Sea commanded by the United States of America on an annual basis for the last 60 years.

thotsky posted:

You believe the sabotage was a Scandinavian op?

Zudgemud posted:

Is this one of those rare medium effort trolls?.

Feliday Melody posted:

You can't front load the insanity or people catch on too quickly (Except thotsky I guess haha)

Dirk Pitt posted:

Sir, this is a sibylla

Fruits of the sea posted:

I'm really having trouble parsing that bit too.

Although this:

is an excellent combo of stating the obvious and whataboutism

Inferior Third Season posted:

And then Denmark yells "Wildcard, bitches!", and jumps out of the back of the van.

THE BAR posted:

It was Norway, in a mad gamble to make us all dependant on their oil reserves!!

thotsky posted:

I like the idea. Sounds like something the Norwegian film industry would mine for decades.

Rust Martialis posted:

quote:

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now

(...)

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.

(...)

Nord Stream 1 was dangerous enough, in the view of NATO and Washington, but Nord Stream 2, whose construction was completed in September of 2021, would, if approved by German regulators, double the amount of cheap gas that would be available to Germany and Western Europe. The second pipeline also would provide enough gas for more than 50 percent of Germany’s annual consumption. Tensions were constantly escalating between Russia and NATO, backed by the aggressive foreign policy of the Biden Administration.

Opposition to Nord Stream 2 flared on the eve of the Biden inauguration in January 2021, when Senate Republicans, led by Ted Cruz of Texas, repeatedly raised the political threat of cheap Russian natural gas during the confirmation hearing of Blinken as Secretary of State. By then a unified Senate had successfully passed a law that, as Cruz told Blinken, “halted [the pipeline] in its tracks.” There would be enormous political and economic pressure from the German government, then headed by Angela Merkel, to get the second pipeline online.

(...)

THE OPERATION

Norway was the perfect place to base the mission.

In the past few years of East-West crisis, the U.S. military has vastly expanded its presence inside Norway, whose western border runs 1,400 miles along the north Atlantic Ocean and merges above the Arctic Circle with Russia. The Pentagon has created high paying jobs and contracts, amid some local controversy, by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand American Navy and Air Force facilities in Norway. The new works included, most importantly, an advanced synthetic aperture radar far up north that was capable of penetrating deep into Russia and came online just as the American intelligence community lost access to a series of long-range listening sites inside China.

A newly refurbished American submarine base, which had been under construction for years, had become operational and more American submarines were now able to work closely with their Norwegian colleagues to monitor and spy on a major Russian nuclear redoubt 250 miles to the east, on the Kola Peninsula. America also has vastly expanded a Norwegian air base in the north and delivered to the Norwegian air force a fleet of Boeing-built P8 Poseidon patrol planes to bolster its long-range spying on all things Russia.

In return, the Norwegian government angered liberals and some moderates in its parliament last November by passing the Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA). Under the new deal, the U.S. legal system would have jurisdiction in certain “agreed areas” in the North over American soldiers accused of crimes off base, as well as over those Norwegian citizens accused or suspected of interfering with the work at the base.

Norway was one of the original signatories of the NATO Treaty in 1949, in the early days of the Cold War. Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s prime minister for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since. “He is the glove that fits the American hand,” the source said.

Back in Washington, planners knew they had to go to Norway. “They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said. They also could be trusted to keep the mission secret. (The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe.)

Sometime in March, a few members of the team flew to Norway to meet with the Norwegian Secret Service and Navy. One of the key questions was where exactly in the Baltic Sea was the best place to plant the explosives. Nord Stream 1 and 2, each with two sets of pipelines, were separated much of the way by little more than a mile as they made their run to the port of Greifswald in the far northeast of Germany.

The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.

(...)

The Norwegians and Americans had a location and the operatives, but there was another concern: any unusual underwater activity in the waters off Bornholm might draw the attention of the Swedish or Danish navies, which could report it.

Denmark had also been one of the original NATO signatories and was known in the intelligence community for its special ties to the United Kingdom. Sweden had applied for membership into NATO, and had demonstrated its great skill in managing its underwater sound and magnetic sensor systems that successfully tracked Russian submarines that would occasionally show up in remote waters of the Swedish archipelago and be forced to the surface.

The Norwegians joined the Americans in insisting that some senior officials in Denmark and Sweden had to be briefed in general terms about possible diving activity in the area. In that way, someone higher up could intervene and keep a report out of the chain of command, thus insulating the pipeline operation. “What they were told and what they knew were purposely different,” the source told me. (The Norwegian embassy, asked to comment on this story, did not respond.)

The Norwegians were key to solving other hurdles. The Russian navy was known to possess surveillance technology capable of spotting, and triggering, underwater mines. The American explosive devices needed to be camouflaged in a way that would make them appear to the Russian system as part of the natural background—something that required adapting to the specific salinity of the water. The Norwegians had a fix.

The Norwegians also had a solution to the crucial question of when the operation should take place. Every June, for the past 21 years, the American Sixth Fleet, whose flagship is based in Gaeta, Italy, south of Rome, has sponsored a major NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea involving scores of allied ships throughout the region. The current exercise, held in June, would be known as Baltic Operations 22, or BALTOPS 22. The Norwegians proposed this would be the ideal cover to plant the mines.

The Americans provided one vital element: they convinced the Sixth Fleet planners to add a research and development exercise to the program. The exercise, as made public by the Navy, involved the Sixth Fleet in collaboration with the Navy’s “research and warfare centers.” The at-sea event would be held off the coast of Bornholm Island and involve NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them.

It was both a useful exercise and ingenious cover. The Panama City boys would do their thing and the C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22, with a 48-hour timer attached. All of the Americans and Norwegians would be long gone by the first explosion.

(...)

On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.

quote:

Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. During the 1970s, Hersh covered the Watergate scandal for The New York Times and revealed the clandestine bombing of Cambodia. In 2004, he reported on the U.S. military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and five George Polk Awards. In 2004, he received the George Orwell Award.

Jon Pod Van Damm posted:

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1623313555901800448

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh

You should read the entire article.

Potrzebie posted:

A boomer has brainworms, news at eleven.

Jon Pod Van Damm posted:

You should read the entire article.

Rust Martialis posted:

Two boomers, it mentions Postol.

Jon Pod Van Damm posted:

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1623313555901800448

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh

You should read the entire article.

His Divine Shadow posted:

https://twitter.com/LarsKoch/status/1622991739010031616

Ska ja va ärligt förstår jag inte vad ligheten (likgiltighet?) är men jag antar det är nåt dåligt han säger.