OF COURSE the U.S. blew up Nord Stream
OF COURSE the U.S. blew up Nord Stream
Seymour Hersh is 100% correct not just on the how, but also the why.
I debated for days whether to write about this. To me it seems perfectly obvious that the United States blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. And yet, comments I have received on my other articles lead me to believe there are still some benighted individuals out there who may not be ready for the truth.
So here it is.
First, as an American who still remembers the Vietnam War, I am convinced that the U.S. blew up the pipeline by the simple fact that my government is denying it.
As Sy Hersh writes in his article revealing the truth behind the sabotage:
Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”
For me, that is all I need to hear to know that OF COURSE the U.S. blew up Nord Stream. That’s because:
They told me that the North Vietnamese attacked us at The Gulf of Tonkin
They told me that we needed to fight dirty wars in Central America to prevent a Russian/Cuban invasion of Texas (a la “Red Dawn”).
They told me that Manuel Noriega posed a “clear and present danger” to America.
They told me that Iraqis were throwing babies out of incubators.
They told me that Saddam had WMD that could hit New York with 45 minutes notice.
They told me the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee.
They told me the Russians were promoting Bernie Sanders.
They told me that Russia had stolen the 2016 election.
They told me Donald Trump was under the control of his Russian handlers.
They told me the Hunter Biden laptop story was “Russian disinformation”.
As Professor Jeffrey Sachs has so eloquently said: “The greatest problem in Washington is not polarization but lying.” Indeed, when it comes to Ukraine, the good professor has remarked, with a tone of exasperation, that the U.S. is “constantly lying”.
Seymour Hersh keeps getting it right — much to the chagrin of DC
The attempts by the mainstream media to dismiss Sy hersh as some sort of random “blogger” or crazed conspiracy theorist would be funny of they were not so utterly pathetic.
In 1969 Sy Hersh exposed the massacre of South Vietnamese villagers by US troops in the hamlet of My Lai. His syndicated report was credited with helping end the Vietnam War, according to Reuters. His book “My Lai” won a 1970 Pulitzer Prize.
In addition to the lies I have listed above, my government also told me there was no CIA torture program. But Sy Hersh exposed the US government’s crimes at Abu Ghraib.
Hersh also uncovered the truth about the Osama Bin Laden killing, as well as the lies made by US authorities that Bashar Al-Assad had “gassed his own people”.
Hersh’s reporting for the New York Times on President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal led to an award-winning book on former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award.
But to me, his greatest accomplishment is his unassailable record of getting to the truth when the US government is determined to keep it hidden.
In the case of Nord Stream, Sy Hersh gets it right once more.
Who stands to benefit?
In law there is a concept called “cui bono” — a Latin phrase that means “who benefits”. It expresses the view that “crimes are often committed to benefit their perpetrators, especially financially”, according to Wikipedia.
In the case of the Nord Stream sabotage, the answer is clear: the United States, more than any other possible perpetrator, stands to benefit both directly and indirectly from the destruction of Nord Stream. In fact, the U.S. stands to “especially” benefit financially.
Caitlin Johnstone does a great job (as usual) of laying out all the ways in which U.S. officials have themselves virtually confirmed the U.S. responsibility for the incident. In her recent Medium article, she includes all the tweets, pronouncements and various and sundry admissions from people such as Anthony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and even Joe Biden himself.
In fact, a great many US officials, Senators and Congressmen, have all gone “on the record” saying that it was a US priority to “stop Nord Stream 2 by any means necessary”.
This mashup lists just some of the pronouncements that should remove all doubt as to who was behind the Nord Stream sabotage:
So please, let’s just all agree that the United States blew up Nord Stream, and that Sy Hersh’s sources are as impeccable and unassailable as ever.
So much for the “cui”. What about the “bono”? Why exactly did the U.S. risk global condemnation to sever the gas pipeline from Russia to Germany?
Sy Hersh also does a great job of covering this aspect of the incident. “From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance”, he writes. In fact, the U.S. was afraid that “Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia — while diminishing European reliance on America”.
As I write in my own Medium article, “How America is WINNING in Ukraine”, it is a well-known fact that America’s greatest fear is a German-Russian alliance. This was explained by Stratfor CEO George Friedman in a speech at the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs:
“The primordial interest of the United States, over which for centuries we have fought wars– the First, the Second and Cold Wars– has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united there, they’re the only force that could threaten us. And to make sure that that doesn’t happen.” [VIDEO]
When the top exec at “the world’s leading geopolitical intelligence platform” says something, we should listen.
With cheap Russian gas no longer available, Europe, and especially Germany, is facing an economic crisis of de-industrialisation, as companies such as Ford Motors shut down their EU operations and move to the United States, where energy costs are a mere fraction of what they are in Europe.
Indeed, the point of my article is that the U.S. is ‘winning” because the European Union is “losing”. I point out that, in reality, the U.S. perceives its “friends” in Europe as economic rivals. When Americans talk about “great power competition” they also include the EU, which has, in recent years, surpassed the USA in terms of GDP.
The Baltic “Sea of Cortez”?
There is a famous historical anecdote that may apply to the Nord Stream situation. According to legend, when the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519, he sank his own ships to ensure his crew would follow him inland.
In destroying any possibility of Russia’s delivery of cheap gas to Germany, Biden may have similarly been acting to ensure the “all in” commitment of the Europeans — especially the Germans.
Germany’s Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has always been seen as the “weak link” when it comes to Ukraine. Far from demonstrating a backbone of German steel, Scholz seems more to have a spine made of overcooked Spätzle. Prior to his recent dithering over Leopard 2 tanks, Scholz was best known for opposing a ban on Russian energy. He has been steadily pushing for a sanctions carve out on Russian energy supplies, and — until the pipeline disaster — was probably hoping to find a way around the U.S. imposed sanctions if possible.
Last fall, The New York Times wrote on 07 September 2022, shortly before the Nord Stream sabotage:
“I think that the coming winter will show how real their belief is in the possibility of refusing Russian gas,” the Russian energy minister, Nikolai Shulginov, said in an interview with the Russian state-run news agency Tass. “This will be a completely new life for the Europeans. I think that, most likely, they will not be able to refuse.”
Scholz’s ambivalence towards the sanctions was understandable, and I am sure that people in Washington were worried that Germany would “not be able to refuse” Russian gas as the war — and the sanctions — dragged on. With a cold winter approaching, and anecdotes appearing of Germans cutting down trees for fuel, the German Chancellor was no doubt worried about social unrest — not to mention getting thrown out of office. The “new life” that Shulginov mentioned probably seemed terrifying.
One can imagine, then, that Scholz had hoped to overcome the sanctions as quickly as possible so that Germany could literally get back to business, cooking with cheap, plentiful, clean Russian gas.
That possibility no longer existed after the undersea explosions of September 26.
#End
If you liked this post, please consider leaving me a tip! Donations support my independent, ad-free writing.
============================================================================
Something so obvious that it has to be repeated so the propagandists take the hint… Good piece.
When Biden stood next to Scholtz in a press conference & stated. That the Nord stream would be stopped & they have ways of doing this. Couldn't have been more obvious to anyone with half a brain. Who had the means, who had the ability & Extremist atitude to carry out this war crime against an Allie & believe they'd done the right thing. It was an American action.