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Threadkiller Dog posted:I dont know exactly how or even why but I would really like it to be true that PostNord did it. the bomb meant for the fourth pipeline was lost on the way
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Feb 9, 2023 00:58
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Can someone lay out the logic of blowing up one's own leverage?
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Feb 9, 2023 11:15
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SplitSoul posted:Can someone lay out the logic of blowing up one's own leverage? Russia couldn't just turn off the gas valve, or the EU could legally take it out on Russian corporate energy assets that exist within the EU. But if the pipeline is blown up, and it doesn't get repaired. Then that's an excuse to stop delivering.
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Feb 9, 2023 11:38
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Rust Martialis posted:Let's just say that Sy Hersh in 1970 isn't the same as Sy Hersh in 2023. Somewhere between My Lai and Syria, he basically lost his mind. mark ames has a handy rebuttal to this: https://www.therealnews.com/lapdogs-redux-how-the-press-tried-to-discredit-seymour-hershs-bombshell-reporting-on-cia-domestic-spying it's not necessarily God's word, but when hersh makes these kinds of allegations it's very stupid to simply dismiss them out of hand. at the very least we should be calling for investigations into this by our own press. combined with the germans saying that there's no evidence for it being the russians, this offers a reasonably compelling narrative which should be pursued. the willingness of people to believe the security state over a guy who has published real scoops in the not-that distant past in the face of severe attacks on his credibility to the point where one is willing to simply dismiss it outright is disquieting. V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 12:07
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You believe America blew it up because of an irrational hatred of Russia. I believe America blew it up because of a rational hatred of Germany. We are not the same.
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Feb 9, 2023 12:18
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A Buttery Pastry posted:You believe America blew it up because of an irrational hatred of Russia. Does the US Navy run SAP?
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Feb 9, 2023 12:30
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If the US did it, I would have expected Russia to be real angry and make huge demands, instead of the controlled rollout of prepared news pieces and official statements accusing the US that they produced just hours after it happened.
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Feb 9, 2023 12:33
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KozmoNaut posted:If the US did it, I would have expected Russia to be real angry and make huge demands, instead of the controlled rollout of prepared news pieces and official statements accusing the US that they produced just hours after it happened. russia's been accusing the brits of doing it, their messaging on the nord stream stuff has been confused and lovely (like a lot of the russian war-adjacent propaganda, to be fair) the point isn't that hersh's story is definitely correct and we should treat this as an act of war by norway and the US on germany right now, it's that our own press appears to have completely failed to be critical in the immediate aftermath of the incident and that we really should start demanding some answers. in this, hersh's piece seems like a good place to start. that means that our press should be trying to interrogate the substance of claims that have been made in the piece. if my country's military and/or intelligence services have been involved in an act of serious sabotage against two of our most powerful neighbours, one of whom has a bunch of nukes and the other of whom is a formal ally, it is a matter of serious public interest. dismissing it out of hand like some parties seem to want to is deeply anti-intellectual. being critical is fine - hersh may well have been led on by his source, and even if he hasn't been, that source will have some kind of agenda which also needs to be examined and interrogated. whichever claims can be examined, should be examined - but they do warrant examining given the apparent lack of evidence connecting russia to the bombing.
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Feb 9, 2023 12:41
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I don't believe either Russia, the United Kingdom, or Usania if they say they they didn't do it. Nor do I believe a journalist citing a single anonymous source, when that journalist has more than a quarter of a century of using anonymous sources. I want an actual investigation by someone to present actual evidence, before I come to any conclusions.
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Feb 9, 2023 14:04
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That’s cool and all but I want to believe a Substack instead
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Feb 9, 2023 14:21
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teen witch posted:That’s cool and all but I want to believe a Substack instead 
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Feb 9, 2023 14:25
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:I don't believe either Russia, the United Kingdom, or Usania if they say they they didn't do it. sure, this is also my position - though i must note that i think that when that journalist has also produced some verifiably true bombshells using this method, the specific claims involved it merit serious investigation however, the reaction (including rust martialis itt, but also in certain corners of journalist-world, including our very own brown moses) has tended towards outright dismissal, in practice stating that these claims do not merit serious investigation because hersh is a crank or whatever. that is not imo a good attitude to take regarding this kind of story, because the implications if it is true are very grave, and the probability of it being true is not entirely negligible
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Feb 9, 2023 14:41
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Feliday Melody posted:Russia couldn't just turn off the gas valve, or the EU could legally take it out on Russian corporate energy assets that exist within the EU. But if the pipeline is blown up, and it doesn't get repaired. Then that's an excuse to stop delivering. And what did they have to gain from blowing up their own multiple-billion-dollar pipeline that they held over the heads of the Germans, right under the noses of a NATO naval exercise in what's likely the most heavily surveilled body of water on the planet? Who did gain from it?
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Feb 9, 2023 14:48
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 Man kan bara ana, vad som försiggick där nere i mörkret, dykare i... i tighta, åtsittande kläder, rör som pumpar och pumpar... och till sist, en sorts... en sorts utlösning, en explosion!
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Feb 9, 2023 14:53
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Konec Hry posted:
När På Spåret tonsatte klippbilder av Sigtunaskolan med Gravitation, då visste jag att det var jag som var gammal. Och så gjorde jag den här minen 
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Feb 9, 2023 15:19
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SplitSoul posted:And what did they have to gain from blowing up their own multiple-billion-dollar pipeline that they held over the heads of the Germans, right under the noses of a NATO naval exercise in what's likely the most heavily surveilled body of water on the planet? Who did gain from it? It wasn't "their own" It was co-financed with Europe, and it was blown up at a section that Europe is responsible for. Are you engaging me in bad faith here?
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Feb 9, 2023 15:34
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Feliday Melody posted:It wasn't "their own" It was co-financed with Europe, and it was blown up at a section that Europe is responsible for. nord stream 2 was basically a means by which russian gas exports could go to germany without passing through the land borders of third parties, making it more politically convenient and cheaper, and reducing the leverage of those third parties it was owned by a german subsidiary of gazprom. it's not crazy to call it russian, nor german, nor joint russo-german, depending on the point one wants to make. in this case, splitsoul seems to want to make the point that the resumption of gas transfers through NS1 or the commencement of gas transfers through NS2 represents russian leverage over germany, which is removed with the sabotage operation. in this context it's not unreasonable to call it a russian pipeline, since it in this narrative represents russian leverage over germany. it's also worth noting that NS1 was in operation until the turbine shenanigans, i.e. until the sanctions regime gave the russians a good excuse to wave their hands. they also took the opportunity to get very serious indeed about maintenance issues; it seems reasonable to assume that if the russians wanted to cut off the gas supplies in a reversible way, they could've done it, especially given that the germans have outright said that they have no evidence that the russians bombed the pipelines.
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Feb 9, 2023 15:42
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V. Illych L. posted:sure, this is also my position - though i must note that i think that when that journalist has also produced some verifiably true bombshells using this method, the specific claims involved it merit serious investigation The implications of the Norwegian government trying to kill people with the covid vaccine would also be very grave and we shouldn't dismiss that either despite it being obvious bullshit.
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Feb 9, 2023 17:31
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Russia literally did "just turn off the gas valve", they just came up with some other excuses for it (maintenance and technical issues). There was no need for them to blow up their own pipeline to keep it closed. Blowing it up also removed leverage Russia had over Germany, which is not at all in Russia's interest. Recall that when the pipeline blew, Europe was looking into a winter where we weren't certain if there would be gas shortages, and people were beginning to air the idea that the pipeline might need to be reopened. If the US did it, that's at least a coherent story in terms of motivation. The US had a clear motive and the means to do it, and Biden specifically threatened that he would shut off the pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine. I think the "Russia did it" story is very weakly supported given the limited information that's currently available. That seems to be why people are digging out great arguments like "Hersh is just washed up, so let's just ignore the story" and "How could Russia possibly blame the US so quickly if they didn't know in advance?". It's not like it took more than a few hours for our own press to report that Russia definitely did it to themselves.
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Feb 9, 2023 17:41
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There is still a Nordstream 2 pipeline that is (claimed to be) operational. So conveniently Russia retained some of that important leverage even after the attack.
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Feb 9, 2023 17:47
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Feliday Melody posted:It wasn't "their own" It was co-financed with Europe, and it was blown up at a section that Europe is responsible for. Which way did the gas flow again? Moreover, is anyone accusing the Germans? Are you engaging in semantics to avoid answering the question(s)? Esran posted:The US had a clear motive and the means to do it, and Biden specifically threatened that he would shut off the pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine. He threatened it even before the troop buildup, IIRC. SplitSoul fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 18:08
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Esran posted:
People are saying that Hersh can't even get basic facts right: https://twitter.com/joshua__frank/status/1623387523241345024
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Feb 9, 2023 18:19
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Alhazred posted:The implications of the Norwegian government trying to kill people with the covid vaccine would also be very grave and we shouldn't dismiss that either despite it being obvious bullshit. this is coming from the guy who has made his bones breaking these kinds of stories in the past. it may not be true, but then again my lai was true, abu ghraib was true, the MH-chaos revelations were true. they came from the same guy working in much the same way. his record warrant his allegations being taken seriously enough to be followed up upon, especially with the recent indications that there's no evidence connecting russia to the pipeline bombings.
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Feb 9, 2023 18:25
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the point being, dismissing his allegations out of hand as "obvious bullshit" is stupid. i will maintain this even if he's made some errors in the background stuff (i certainly don't agree with the characerisation of stoltenberg as a rabidly russophobic, for instance). if he's being led on by his source or is just making stuff up, that will become clear as the substantive claims made are investigated. my point is simply that his career and resume warrant such investigations.
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Feb 9, 2023 18:33
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V. Illych L. posted:this is coming from the guy who has made his bones breaking these kinds of stories in the past. it may not be true, but then again my lai was true, abu ghraib was true, the MH-chaos revelations were true. they came from the same guy working in much the same way. his record warrant his allegations being taken seriously enough to be followed up upon, especially with the recent indications that there's no evidence connecting russia to the pipeline bombings. It is also coming from the guy who claims that Assad did not use chemical weapons in Syria. If Hersh can come up with other evidence except one anonymous source that can't get basic poo poo right then his claims does not warrant to be follow up on.
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Feb 9, 2023 18:43
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Alhazred posted:It is also coming from the guy who claims that Assad did not use chemical weapons in Syria. If Hersh can come up with other evidence except one anonymous source that can't get basic poo poo right then his claims does not warrant to be follow up on. why not? it's not as though our security agencies are subjected to excessive public scrutiny anyway, what negative consequences are you worried about here?
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Feb 9, 2023 18:45
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V. Illych L. posted:if he's being led on by his source or is just making stuff up, that will become clear as the substantive claims made are investigated. my point is simply that his career and resume warrant such investigations.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:00
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V. Illych L. posted:the point being, dismissing his allegations out of hand as "obvious bullshit" is stupid. i will maintain this even if he's made some errors in the background stuff (i certainly don't agree with the characerisation of stoltenberg as a rabidly russophobic, for instance). If the story was published by some rando on their blog, it would be a complete nothing burger. Hersh's legacy fame is the only thing it has going for it. It's supposed to be a super-secret conspiracy, but it also goes out of its way to include all the people who's soundbites have gained traction on social media in it. I'm halfway surprised it doesn't mention Sikorski being in on it too. Norway had to be included because their oil & gas industry is making bank too, a clear motive. If you think for a second why Hersh published it on substack, you'll come up with one of two possible answers: Either the MSM's censorship is so pervasive that no one would dare touch the biggest scoop since the existence of NATO, not even media outside of the US, or it simply didn't meet anyone's editorial standards. There are a bunch of people who are making a good faith effort at fact-checking or debunking it, but good luck finding them in all the social media noise. https://twitter.com/Joey_Galvin/status/1623459664334659585?s=20&t=21Hbw7s8io10oS3PtybGag https://twitter.com/whoisernie/status/1623384604726988800?s=20&t=21Hbw7s8io10oS3PtybGag https://twitter.com/BadBalticTakes/status/1623606049746944002?s=20&t=21Hbw7s8io10oS3PtybGag
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Feb 9, 2023 19:02
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true.spoon posted:Let's say exactly this happens. And then it happens again. And again. How many times in a row does it need to happen before it becomes reasonable to dismiss him outright? until he dies, pretty much. that won't be too long. Hannibal Rex posted:If the story was published by some rando on their blog, it would be a complete nothing burger. Hersh's legacy fame is the only thing it has going for it. It's supposed to be a super-secret conspiracy, but it also goes out of its way to include all the people who's soundbites have gained traction on social media in it. I'm halfway surprised it doesn't mention Sikorski being in on it too. Norway had to be included because their oil & gas industry is making bank too, a clear motive. i mean, some of this stuff is not reasonable at all. the badbaltictakes thing ascribes a position to stoltenberg personally which was basically forced on him as leader of the Labour Youth group - if one assumes that he was amoral enough to be informing on the anti-war movement in his teens (when he was, in fact, involved with with the anti-vietnam war movement via his sister), there's no need for him to be personally anti-NATO to lead an organisation which was formally opposed to NATO at the time. Labour Youth leader is *still* a prime position for launching a political career, at the time when stoltenberg was leader it was basically a guarantor of at least a parliament seat for as long as you wanted it. for someone as ambitious as stoltenberg it's an obvious choice to go with the majority opinion for career advancement, that kind of thing happens *all the time* i don't buy that stoltenberg was informing for foreign intelligence as a kid, but it is not factually impossible on its face. it's certainly entirely believable that he was on some US intelligence lists, being a politically active child of an extremely prominent politician. again, though, the basic point here isn't that hersh is necessarily right, it's that the allegations should not be simply dismissed out of hand, because the balance of utility is so clearly in favour of not dismissing them. if you like, you can choose to see this as heading conspiracy theories off at the pass. the way i see it, there are three options here: 1) hersh's story is broadly correct. in this case, following up on it is of vital public interest 2) hersh's story has elements of truth in it, but has been passed through some garbled intelligence informant with their own agenda. in this case, following up on it is of vital public interest 3) hersh's story is just made up, either by him or his source. in this case, following up on it is just a waste of resources the probability of it being not being 3 doesn't need to be huge for following up on it to be a worthwhile expenditure of journalistic resources. the only thing lost is some time from one or more newspapers, and even then they can publish a piece debunking hersh and get some brownie points for having fact-checked and reaffirmed that he's full of poo poo. that would be fine by me!
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Feb 9, 2023 19:17
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if you've unearthed genuine bombshell stories in the face of public scorn and attempts at character assassination several times, you have imo earned the right to be taken seriously enough to check what you're saying for a long while after you've gone completely mad. this is because it is not always easy to distinguish between someone having gone completely mad and attempts at character assassination. again, i'm literally not advocating for anything more than follow-up journalistic inquiries into this allegation of overreach by the secret services. i think that the bar for justifying such inquiries should be pretty low, and i think that hersh simply by virtue of his legacy and career passes that bar in making the allegation. it's not clear to me why this is so controversial.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:27
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V. Illych L. posted:until he dies, pretty much. that won't be too long.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:28
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It's also entirely possible that one boomers conspiracy nuttery is gonna spread to more boomers, and we'll have more and more of these anonymously sourced claims.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:30
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V. Illych L. posted:until he dies, pretty much. that won't be too long.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:36
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V. Illych L. posted:
Okay, here you go: https://www.nettavisen.no/nyheter/hevder-norge-og-usa-sto-bak-nord-stream-eksplosjonene-fullstendig-usant/s/5-95-906574
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Feb 9, 2023 19:52
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:It's also entirely possible that one boomers conspiracy nuttery is gonna spread to more boomers, and we'll have more and more of these anonymously sourced claims. Speaking of "boomer conspiracy nuttery", has anyone heard anything from Snowden on the war? 
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Feb 9, 2023 20:37
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SplitSoul posted:Speaking of "boomer conspiracy nuttery", has anyone heard anything from Snowden on the war?
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Feb 9, 2023 20:58
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Alhazred posted:Okay, here you go: This article isn't anything. The journalist asked the White House, Norwegian PM's office and Forsvaret for comment, and they said they didn't do it. I guess that's all the investigation we need to do, let's move on to how Bellingcat feels about Hersh (dislike, it turns out). The only part of that article that says anything at all about whether Hersh's story is believable is the note that the P8 plane isn't in service yet. I'm not saying Hersh's story is believable, but this kind of article is just white noise.
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Feb 9, 2023 21:33
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Esran posted:This article isn't anything. I don't know what's worse, Hersh supposedly losing his touch or the Wikipedia Journalists getting enough airtime to poo poo on him. Everything is so stupid now.
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Feb 9, 2023 22:17
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SplitSoul posted:Everything is so stupid now.
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Feb 9, 2023 22:51
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Alhazred posted:Okay, here you go: this is not an investigation, this is a guy calling people and asking them whether they or the people paying them did serious crimes. this looks more like a stitch-up than it does a follow-up, from the headline to the conclusion, which mentions germany's investigation but fails to mention that germany's pretty much ruled out russia as a suspect. true.spoon posted:That is a much more stupid position to take than dismissing him outright now in my opinion. why? there really are not that many people with hersh's career merits, and i've addressed the substance of this (the difficulty of discerning genuine madness from character assassination seems most pertinent) in other posts. there's no great systemic inefficiency to giving people this kind of credibility as a career achievement award if you place the bar anywhere near hersh's level. BlankSystemDaemon posted:Isn't it fair to say that the observations made by the first two people in the tweets linked, which seems to be that Sy failed at even the most basic of fact checking and seeking comments from any involved agencies and persons that any editor would've absolutely climbed down his throat over, go a long way towards discrediting someone who's acknowledged as having had plenty of journalistic training and experience and has published enough articles that it shouldn't be in question that he knew he'd need to do a much better job than he apparently did? in the current media environment and over an issue this sensitive about the secret services? no, i don't think that is fair. deep throat was one anonymous source, and hersh has a history of working in this basic way and producing genuine scoops about this specific kind of story. as far as substack journalism about this war goes, do you also think e.g. https://jackmurphywrites.com/169/the-cias-sabotage-campaign-inside-russia/ is nonsense because it's on a personal blog? keep in mind that the standard here is that any serious follow-up would have been a waste of time, i.e. that the guy is so obviously out to lunch that there's no point in even reading the story during working hours if you're an honest journalist. i do not think that this is a reasonable inference in this case. that well has in my view been poisoned by previous attempts to discredit hersh for genuine scoops. the secret services have a history of under-scrutiny for their excesses. in general, i think we should encourage the press to look more closely at them. if people end up like gary webb, that has the opposite effect. these are powerful institutions with a strong interest in keeping secrets, especially when they break rules - that means that allegations against them should be treated more generously than most other allegations, at least as a jumping-off point for serious investigative work. the attitude expressed in this discussion is, paradoxically, precisely why this leniency is necessary; since the matter is so serious and the blue wall is so strong, you may not get more than a glimpse through a small crack to begin with. sometimes, that wasn't a real crack at all, but isn't it worthwhile to at least check thoroughly when someone with a history of real crack identification says that there is one?
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Feb 10, 2023 01:13
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