Who bombed the Nordstream Pipeline?

[Octavious]

Thought I'd expand on the theme of Ukraine related mysteries with this recent development. Interestingly they've made a point of stating that no foul play is suspected prior to the investigation being carried out.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.jpost.co ... 730870/amp

[flash2015]

I suspect your hopes will be fulfilled.

But let's imagine that it is true... What would the fallout for Biden be? Would that be considered a resigning issue? And what would the impact be on NATO?

I was initially thinking that if this is true Biden is done. This is a massive scandal. Biden would be forced to resign and we would be starting the reign of President Harris (shudder). Potentially the coalition helping Ukraine collapses as they are shocked by the actions of the US.

But the reality appears to be turning out differently. The response has been incredibly muted. I was expecting this to be top story everywhere...but I am still having to look hard to find it. No outrage response from the Germans (yet). No response from any significant US politicians (yet).

The reality is that the US has hated Nordstream for years and it definitely was in US interests for this to happen. The US wants to break Russian influence in Europe. Trump put the sanctions on Nordstream 2 in Dec 2019 to try and stop it ...and there was some outrage when Biden dropped the sanctions in May 2021. While there is some small minority that are against the Ukraine war in the US both sides want the support of Ukraine to continue so don't expect congressional/senate inquiries any time soon. If the US did do it, the Germans likely already know this...but they have few options to change course now in the conflict. Even if they made peace with Russia right now, it may be years before the gas flows again.

[flash2015]

I do find it concerning that a friend I forwarded the story to wrote back to me today and asked "since the response was so muted was the original source a right wing publication?". It is crazy how people see the news through such a polarized filter.

[Randomizer]

What is significant is none of the countries investigating it have provided any evidence to support this story. Explosives are traceable to type used and manufacture.

[Fluminator]

America behind this is so shocking. Who would have guessed

[Octavious]

The journalist in question does seem to be the sort that you'd normally consider to be reliable. Certainly someone who is hard to dismiss out of hand. But it is also difficult to get too excited about an article backed up with not a huge amount of evidence.

It is quite a big story in Russia, as you'd imagine, but not a dominant story. I guess because someone else saying what they've been saying for months is less interesting than a shock revelation

[flash2015]

It is true that there isn't a large amount of evidence behind the article (it relies on the word of an anonymous source)...but it builds a timeline and a story that does sound somewhat plausible.

[orathaic]

Thought I'd expand on the theme of Ukraine related mysteries with this recent development. Interestingly they've made a point of stating that no foul play is suspected prior to the investigation being carried out.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.jpost.co ... 730870/amp

I saw a theory earlier that Russia is engaged in 'Hybrid warfare' and the Nato alliance are intentionally downplaying and ignoring it.

Because what other choice do they have? Make it public, blame Russia (who will deny it anyway) and spend more on national defence (because their public will demand it) while giving less aid to Ukraine? Or deny everything, coverup Russian attacks, let the conspiracy theories go wild, and double down on helping Ukraine beat Russia as the best responce they can achieve?

It is a tough choice i would say, but since NATO is a defensive Alliance, and Russia has plausible deniability, and nobody wants a direct confrontation. This seems to be the best option available.

[orathaic]

I do find it concerning that a friend I forwarded the story to wrote back to me today and asked "since the response was so muted was the original source a right wing publication?". It is crazy how people see the news through such a polarized filter.

What world are you living in that people don't immediately jump to calling plthe media biased?

The news has always been biased, they have to decide what kind of stories are newsworthy, and whether to spend time and money on investigative journalism (or rely on sources divulging info). But which sources they listen to and which stories they choose to investigate is a first layer of bias. Nevermind how the tell the story...

There are however some good websites which show how left/right leaning a media source is, and how each covered the story. You can't get a lot from looking at both sides.

[flash2015]

I do find it concerning that a friend I forwarded the story to wrote back to me today and asked "since the response was so muted was the original source a right wing publication?". It is crazy how people see the news through such a polarized filter.

What world are you living in that people don't immediately jump to calling plthe media biased?

The news has always been biased, they have to decide what kind of stories are newsworthy, and whether to spend time and money on investigative journalism (or rely on sources divulging info). But which sources they listen to and which stories they choose to investigate is a first layer of bias. Nevermind how the tell the story...

There are however some good websites which show how left/right leaning a media source is, and how each covered the story. You can't get a lot from looking at both sides.

I think you are misunderstanding me. I am well aware that people will call news sources biased and ignore them. I live in the US which is the worst for this. I run my own politics group where people will provide links to backup their point...and the response will be "oh that's <source x>, it is biased/fake news so I won't even look at it. I can dismiss whatever is written there out of hand".

This is a little bit different than that. The person that I was talking to had no knowledge of the reporter in question. This person said the story must have come from a right wing biased source just because it provided negative information about a politician this person supports. This I see as equivalent to some of the worst things about the Trump era - that if someone said something bad about Trump in any way, shape or form it must be that this person is biased or had TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). There could be no other explanation.

As long as you are cognizant of the biases of the sources you are reading, I think you can learn a lot by reading articles from "both sides". The most important thing is not the bias but the quality of the articles and whether the articles are written in good faith/bad faith. For example the Murdoch tabloids are usually terrible sources of information because not only are they heavily biased, generally contain little factual info and are generally bad faith too (they are deliberately lying out their asses, then have the hide to whine about alleged bias in other news sources). But there are lots of good conservative sources too which can give you lots of good information, like reason.com or the cato institute (cato though is more strictly libertarian than strictly conservative). Doing this has made me aware of how many distortions there are in other more culturally progressive media sources, from George Zimmerman to the "Don't Say Gay" bill.

It isn't good that many people are just dismissing news sources they don't like. If both sides do this it makes it almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion with someone with a different ideology on almost any contentious topic.

[brainbomb]

America did this.
And they are making a fortune off of selling frozen gas to the EU from this.

[flash2015]

Hmmm. Some inconsistencies in Seymour Hersh's story. Now I am less confident of the story:

https://youtu.be/YBArIp0Gy7g?t=370

[President Eden]

Obviously Russia blew up their own pipeline which was the source of their greatest economic leverage over their proxy enemies and which was making them tons of money

I don’t know how you look at the situation and conclude anything else!

[Octavious]

I reckon it was the Spanish Inquisition

[flash2015]

Didn't South Park tell us to blame Canada?

[Randomizer]

It's obviously OPEC to eliminate competition in supplying Europe, Or more likely Iran to prop up its economy and avoid a revolution.

[orathaic]

I doubt Iran has the capacity to project such a specialised force so far from their territory.

Russia planned to cut off supplies to starve Germany, but blowing it up does seem a bit extreme as that kills Russian leverage, maybe the US did it to help Germany break their addiction to Russian oil? Now they just need to break their own addiction (having no more need to import from the middle East, which is a good step...)