EU sees sabotage of Nord Stream

[Mountain Man]

I'm sure they already suspected, but I doubt they knew for sure. And we can't even know for sure, based solely on Hersh's claims (i.e. "according to unnamed sources" stuff).

All Russia could have known for sure is that they didn't do it. Ukraine could have hired someone, anyone, to perform it for them.

I hardly think Russia's intelligence agencies needed any help from a journalist to figure out what really happened.

[seanD]

I hardly think Russia's intelligence agencies needed any help from a journalist to figure out what really happened.

Especially when you have two high ranking US officials, including the president himself, admitting in public beforehand they would "bring an end to it."

[seanD]

In fact, I expect a brutal smear campaign against Hersh to be unleashed at any moment.

And here we go..

The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin

Hersh was once widely celebrated for his journalism, which uncovered the 1969 My Lai massacre in Vietnam and also helped expose the US abuses at Abu Ghraib in 2004.

In recent decades, he has come under criticism by those who call it poorly-sourced, conspiratorial, and over-reliant on anonymous sources. The open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat was deeply critical of his reporting on chemical attacks in Syria, and Vox raised doubts about his infamous 2015 claim that President Barack Obama did not, in fact, mastermind the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Though, to the article's credit, which seems a strange oxymoron to the harsh sentiments towards Seymour and the indictment of the title, they point out that the investigations remain inconclusive and that there's no strong evidence proving it was Russia.

[Ronson]

And here we go..

The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin

Hersh was once widely celebrated for his journalism, which uncovered the 1969 My Lai massacre in Vietnam and also helped expose the US abuses at Abu Ghraib in 2004.

In recent decades, he has come under criticism by those who call it poorly-sourced, conspiratorial, and over-reliant on anonymous sources. The open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat was deeply critical of his reporting on chemical attacks in Syria, and Vox raised doubts about his infamous 2015 claim that President Barack Obama did not, in fact, mastermind the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Though, to the article's credit, which seems a strange oxymoron to the harsh sentiments towards Seymour and the indictment of the title, they point out that the investigations remain inconclusive and that there's no strong evidence proving it was Russia.

Definitely a hit-piece on his credibility. What is ironic is that an article titled "The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin" is obviously more opinion than journalism, it's right there in the title(!), and in it the author actually attacks someone else as lacking credibility. Amazing, if done with a straight face.

But getting back to objectivity, there still is no reason to believe Hersh simply because Hersh says so, and because it is something we suspect or believe anyway. Do we believe New York Times articles that source "unnamed sources close to the issue who are not authorized to speak publicly on the record"? No.

[seanD]

Definitely a hit-piece on his credibility. What is ironic is that an article titled "The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin" is obviously more opinion than journalism, it's right there in the title(!), and in it the author actually attacks someone else as lacking credibility. Amazing, if done with a straight face.

But getting back to objectivity, there still is no reason to believe Hersh simply because Hersh says so, and because it is something we suspect or believe anyway. Do we believe New York Times articles that source "unnamed sources close to the issue who are not authorized to speak publicly on the record"? No.

Personally, I believe him because he's a credible journalist and I don't see how making this up would benefit him in the long term. It would be extraordinary for me to believe someone of his clout would just make all this up, which is not only suicide to his career and rep, but outright dangerous. I suppose someone could argue some Russian oligarch paid him a billionzillion dollars to do it, and then he could retire happily and live in hiding, but I find that more of a stretch. Why would anyone even pay him to do it when it doesn't really benefit Russia?

As far as the smear, it seems like your typical partisan hack rag network (all the networks the article named) that loved him when he was exposing things about the Bush admin, but then quickly felt slighted when he began exposing things under Obama and started attacking him. That's what it looks like to me anyway. The establishment and security state will then capitalize on the partisan hatred of him and use that as part of their smear campaign to discredit all this. So we'll see how far this smear actually goes.

[seanD]

In light of G7 members, like Macron, crying about being fleeced by US energy exports and forced into a situation of paying high costs, this is why US will likely resort to anything to make sure Hersh's story isn't verified with other sources and that it stays with one man they can smear as not credible...

The AfD and the Left Party have long been suspicious about the potential role of the U.S. in blowing up the pipelines.

German MP Sevim Dagdelen, of the Left Party, said there is ample reason to believe the U.S. was involved, highlighting how President Joe Biden said he would “end” the Nord Stream 2 if Russia invaded Ukraine. Dagdelen suggested that blowing up the pipelines was Washington’s attempt to prevent rapprochement between Berlin and Moscow, as well as ensure Europe was buying U.S. shale gas and not cheap Russian energy, which has long served as the bedrock of Germany’s economy.

Perhaps most importantly, Sahra Wagenknecht, a leading Left Party politician and one of the most popular politicians in Germany, linked to Hersh’s article in a Twitter post that was seen nearly a million times. She wrote that “while the German federal government invokes transatlantic friendship and follows the USA uncritically, the U.S. government ensure that the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, as Pulitzer Prize winner (Seymour) Hersh has meticulously researched. Whose interest does the federal government represent?”

Germany’s ruling parties have mostly ignored the story or downplayed it, and much of the German media is attempting to discredit Hersh’s report by merely pointing out that the Kremlin is using it as evidence it had nothing to do with the pipeline explosions. However, the German media has done little so far to dispel the central details of Hersh’s report, and even before the report, top media outlets were attempting to discredit any claim that the U.S. was behind the attack as “absurd” and a “conspiracy theory.”

The German government and media class may also have a substantial motive to ignore or downplay the report, especially if the core facts turn out to be true. It would be a political disaster for a government that has aligned behind the U.S. government against Russia while at the same time abandoning cheap Russian energy for expensive liquified gas from the U.S.

Furthermore, the environmental toll of the attack cannot be downplayed due to the massive volumes of gas that were leaked into the ocean. The Green party, which has made fighting pollution a central tenet of its platform, would be seen as aligning itself with a country that produced one of the biggest environmental disasters in the Baltic Sea in recent history.

Typically, destroying critical infrastructure of another country is seen as an act of war, and if Germans start believing the U.S. was behind the attack, it may lead to a sharp shift in German public sentiment in favor of parties such as AfD and the Left party, a political outcome the government would likely desperately try to avoid. At the same time, deep skepticism about the entire NATO security alliance, and questions about how the U.S. could commit an act of war against its own ally would also raise extremely vexing issues for the entire Western liberal establishment.

The question now is whether further leaks about potential U.S. involvement in the sabotage attack will come to light in the coming months. If further corroborating information comes out of Norway or other unexpected sources, the U.S., NATO, and Germany may have an unprecedented crisis on their hands.

There is also the question of whether any German officials knew about the attack beforehand and how much Germany has already learned over the course of its own investigation. The AfD wants to explore all these points via a parliamentary investigative committee.

“All the open questions must now be answered by investigative committees,” wrote the AfD co-leader.

“The Bundestag has a right to know what knowledge the federal government has. Could government officials have been privy to the planning of the attack? All the findings of national authorities must flow together in the European Parliament. The European states must not put up with such violent interference. They are even less allowed to participate in it.”

source

In short, I don't know if it would lead to actual war, but it certainly would be an international nightmare between allies.

[Teallaura]

Sigh, yeah, no. There are holes in Mr. I Like Anonymous Sources story.

Russia probably doesn't want to have to pay out a boatload of penalties from failing to meet their contractual obligations. Hence the silliness about the Nord Stream One slowdown being Canada's fault.

This is the crappiest 'evidence' - you'd never accept it from the left. Come on, guys, you know better than just accepts whatever agrees with your own suspicions.