Seymour Hersh Blows Up Joe Biden’s Nord Stream 2 Pipeline Story

Here's a short chronology, then my reaction:

Feb 7, 2022: Joe Biden promises that Russia invades Ukraine, the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline will not be operational: "We will bring an end to it."

Sept 26, 2022 - The Nordstream 2 pipeline is destroyed.

Sept 28, 2022 - The Washington Post scolds Tucker Carlson for reporting that the U.S. destroyed Russia's pipeline.

Sept 30, 2022 - The White house denies U.S. involvement in destroying the pipeline. Accuses the Russians of lying. Claims that Russia destroyed its own pipeline.

Feb 8, 2023 - Highly respected investigative reporter Seymore Hersh issues news article detailing how the U.S. blew up the Nordstream 2 Pipeline. Title: "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."

Feb 8, 2023 - The White House claims that the article by Hersch, a well-decorated reporter (see comments), is "utterly false and complete fiction."

In a surreal way, it has ceased to become "news" that our political leaders constantly lie to us, even on matters that could dramatically escalate (already high) tensions between the U.S. and Russia, two irresponsible trigger-happy countries, each of which is capable of ruining the entire planet with their over-abundance of nuclear weapons.

You and were not give an opportunity to vote on whether the U.S should engage in such reckless behavior. Congress did not deliberate on whether the U.S. should jump into a proxy war with Russia. You and I were not asked whether the U.S. should destroy a valuable asset of Russia, committing what Russia will undoubtedly consider an act of war.

Witness yet another short-term victory for the Military-Petroleum-Industrial-Complex. We are playing out yet another round of wars of discretion. This should be horrifying to all of us. Why? Here are the ending lines of Hersch's article:

The source had a much more streetwise view of Biden’s decision to sabotage more than 1500 miles of Gazprom pipeline as winter approached. “Well,” he said, speaking of the President, “I gotta admit the guy has a pair of balls. He said he was going to do it, and he did.”

Asked why he thought the Russians failed to respond, he said cynically, “Maybe they want the capability to do the same things the U.S. did.

“It was a beautiful cover story,” he went on. “Behind it was a covert operation that placed experts in the field and equipment that operated on a covert signal.

“The only flaw was the decision to do it.”

At this time, based on my own search of these five websites, not a single word about Hersh's Nordstream 2 reporting at NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC or NPR. The only recent thing I found on MSNBC was this glowing interview of Hersh by David Gura.

Nathan Robinson:

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United States Interference with foreign elections

There is so very much hypocrisy in the air and on the ground these days! One type that is prominent is the claim that Russia has interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If true, that is obviously a bad thing. But as this article from Mint News indicates, it is a rare news article that reminds its consumers that the United States has a long history of interfering with the elections in other countries:

Despite that the U.S. has hypocritically exerted influence over foreign elections in all corners of the globe — in fact, it has arrogantly done so a whopping 81 times between 1946 and 2000, alone — with just one-third of those operations undertaken overtly.
Check out the article for the details.

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South American leaders blast U.S. kidnapping

From Common Dreams: The South American government leaders blasted the 'kidnapping' of the Bolivian president as an act of brute power, revealing that the U.S. and European governments still view themselves as the colonial rulers of Latin America. Uruguay's president Jose Mujica declared: We are not colonies any more. We…

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Looking Forward?

As usual, Florida is still undecided, a mess. According to NPR, though, it is leaning heavily toward Obama, despite the shenanigans of the state GOP in suppressing the vote. I didn’t watch last night. Couldn’t. We went to bed early. But then Donna got up around midnight and woke me by a whoop of joy that I briefly mistook for anguish. To my small surprise and relief, Obama won. I will not miss the constant electioneering, the radio ads, the tv spots, the slick mailers. I will not miss keeping still in mixed groups about my politics (something I am not good at, but this election cycle it feels more like holy war than an election). I will not miss wincing every time some politician opens his or her mouth and nonsense spills out. (This is, of course, normal, but during presidential years it feels much, much worse.) I will not miss… Anyway, the election came out partially the way I expected, in those moments when I felt calm enough to think rationally. Rationality seemed in short supply this year and mine was sorely tasked. So now, I sit here sorting through my reactions, trying to come up with something cogent to say. I am disappointed the House is still Republican, but it seems a number of the Tea Party robots from 2010 lost their seats, so maybe the temperature in chambers will drop a degree or two and some business may get done. Gary Johnson, running as a Libertarian, pulled 350,000 votes as of nine last night. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, got around 100,000. (Randall Terry received 8700 votes, a fact that both reassures me and gives me shivers—there are people who will actually vote for him?) Combined, the independent candidates made virtually no difference nationally. Which is a shame, really. I’ve read both Stein’s and Johnson’s platforms and both of them are willing to address the problems in the system. Johnson is the least realistic of the two and I like a lot of the Green Party platform. More . . .

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