From today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:
Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a blockbuster report on last year’s attack on the Nord Stream pipeline. Though at the time, US mainstream media and neocons blamed Russia for attacking its own pipeline, Hersh lays out in detail how the US government, in a covert operation, blew it up. What’s next? Also today, Ukraine war is McCain’s legacy.
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
While it is possible, I do believe Seymour has gone a bit nuts. Personally I bet the Poles did it. I would be really surprised if the Russians did it.
A retired Seal laid out much the same scenario back when it happened. He said only the US and UK have the technical ability to pull it off.
Hersh is quite often correct.
And every time he’s correct, there’s a few months of “I do believe Hersh has gone a bit nuts” before everyone finally admits he was correct. Until the next time.
That doesn’t mean the story is true — it may not be. But on a no-odds, no-spread bet on whether he’s right or wrong in any given case, right is the safest bet.
I do find the argument that only the US or UK had the technical ability to do it odd, though. It’s like some people don’t know that other countries have boats, divers, and explosives.
I’d take odds on Hersh being right but yeah, underwater demolition teams and C4 aren’t a new invention. Hopefully this new world order of blowing up whatever you don’t like doesn’t apply to our own pipelines.
“While it is possible, I do believe Seymour has gone a bit nuts.”
If it was possible why would Hersh have gone “a bit nuts”?
Possible doesn’t mean they did it.
Yes, but doesn’t that rule out Hersh going a bit nuts if it’s at least possible?
You can be nuts and correct. I don’t dismiss the possibility that the USA did it out of hand we may well have done it. I dispute the notion that this was some masterwork of underwater demolition that only a few elites could have pulled off.
It’s not “possible,” it’s totally obvious, and has been from Day 1. The U.S. is the only country that had both the means and the incentive to blow up the pipeline.
Underwater demolition at 150 ft in the North Sea region? Innumerable number of militaries and private contractors that could pull that off. This isn’t the surface of the moon. The North Sea oil industry creates lots of commercial divers.
What part of “and the incentive” don’t you get?
“In my imagination, the U.S. is the only country that had both the means and the incentive to blow up the pipeline.”
Fixed, no charge.
Of course mainstream/establishment/corporate media ignored Hersh’s story; it doesn’t fit their “Russia bad” narrative.
Just a good days work for theEmpire!
I have no doubt that Mr. Hersh is right. Also interesting is this YouTube post by John Mark Dougan, where he claims he received an email in October, 2022, from a NATO sailor who participated in Baltops22, and who was a coordinator for underwater operations. Dougan read this email in a livestream, and in it the sailor claimed to have seen divers “who looked like terrorists”, who were supposed to be looking for practice mines, but didn’t have their long, metal detection equipment. Further, they went to a location 2,000 yards away from the one they were supposed to dive at, and went under for over 6 hours. They were also said to be equipped with the latest, still classified, MK29 Helium rebreathers for deep-sea diving. I won’t summarize any further, but it’s interesting that if Dougan’s claim can be verified — he doesn’t post full livestreams on his channel, but replayed the relevant clip — he received corroboration of Hersh’s story 4 months before it appeared. It also reveals an obvious source of people to question for corroboration — the NATO sailors. Here’s the YouTube link. He begins discussing the issue at 5:30;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd908X8cuzg
I don’t know of any SCUBA technology that would allow anyone to stay underwater for anywhere near 8 hours. Their oxygen tanks would be empty well before then.
I edited my post to include more information after watching the Dougan video again. So note that the sailor claimed to be a coordinator for underwater operations. He said that the divers had classified MK29 rebreathers optimized for deep-sea diving, and that they were supposed to be hunting for the practice mines laid on the sea-floor, but that they didn’t carry their long, metal detection equipment.
This correlates very well with Hersh’s reporting, which confirms that the cover story was a search for the practice mines, and contains this, “The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.”
All emphasis mine.
Wiki states that the Alta-class is a minesweeper, aka mine-hunter, and no mention is made of such a ship in the NATO sailor’s report, who says the divers went out in a rubber boat. However, it is possible that the minesweeper came later, perhaps even at intervals. Nonetheless, I believe that this is well worth investigating. I’ve sent this video to several important anti-imperialist reporters and bloggers, with no indication of acknowledgement. Not surprising, since I used Twitter, and they probably don’t waste time reading the comments, which are mostly from trolls. I’ll keep trying, though, because this is potential corroboration of Hersh’s story and could lead to other people with knowledge of the affair.
At that depth they’d also need pressurized suits. I never SCUBA dived, but even snorkeling the pressure would start to bother me at 10-20 feet below the surface.
To be clear, none of my comments here have anything to do with the veracity or credibility of Hersh’s article. It’s been obvious to me from Day 1 that the U.S. did this, and all Hersh’s article does is lend more evidence to that knowledge.
Jeff, I’m a certified diver, I’ve been to 160 feet and you just need to stop commenting and go read Wikipedia about this subject. And then maybe come back and read your comment about your snorkeling experience and try and appreciate how kind I’m being. Go flap your arms and talk about flying next.
What I said was that snorkeling at 10-20 feet below the surface bothered me, so I assume they’d need pressurized suits at 240 feet. Nor does your Wikipedia insult say that diving to that depth can be done without more equipment. And what about the water temperature at that depth? Even the surface water is cold at that latitude, and I wonder if even dry suits would be warm enough for that length of time.
Sorry you feel so insulted by someone asking questions about this. I don’t like the idea of SCUBA diving because it’s just more industrial crap destroying the planet, which is why I snorkeled instead. There’s no reason to be insulting to those of us who are more oriented toward natural living and don’t know much about this technological stuff when we ask questions.
Myeah, Jeff …. draw a line between what you personally think of SCUBA and what you know about it. Two different things. And seriously, go flap your arms and then try writing some aerodynamic equations. See how that goes. Honest to Dog, Jeffe, you’re giving your opinion of deep water heli-ox rebreathing based on your snorkeling background. This is the act of someone dumber. I think.
I never said anything about breathing except for questioning how long your oxygen would last (I didn’t know about the new technology until DoomGuy mentioned it). This shows that you have poor reading comprehension, and/or that you’re so blinded by your own ideologies and/or positions that you can’t see what others are saying. But notice how he responded compared to your insulting response.
Listen, snowflake, ignorance is humanity’s second biggest problem, but we can at least try to cure it, and the first step is realizing it exists. You can google the Buddha on this. If you think your experience snorkeling, which I taught myself to do as a small child BTW, but anyway if you think bobbing around on the surface breathing through a tube somehow qualifies you to share your opinion on deep water mixed gas rebreather diving (“pressurized suits”?) then your ego’s clearly writing checks your intellect can’t cash. And we are running out of time for it.
Just stay down, grasshopper.
Actually, it’s you who needs to check his ego. All of your posts on this thread have been arrogant and egotistic. To make matters worse, your posts have been rude and insulting. I will attempt to avoid interacting with you again.
And screw your evil science. Western science is not knowledge, it’s reductionist mechanistic foolishness. The whole world would be infinitely better off if humans had never discovered any science than it is with your evil crap.
No, Jeff, Western science is not reductionist and mechanistic. Think of quarks precipitating at big bang’s cooling skin. Here you have particles whose attractive power increases with distance separating from each other far faster than the speed of light (there was as yet no light).
Sex is the other only known force that increases with distance— it makes the heart grow fonder. Thus we see a line of western scientific reasoning that puts biology as emerging with mechanics at the same time. Sex drive very likely accounts for inflation of Cosmos expanding at an accelerating rate. Mechanistic? Reductionist? Pshaw.
There are some scientific disciplines that are not reductionist or mechanistic, such as theoretical physics, ecology, wildlife biology, etc. But the overwhelming attitude of western science is reductionist and mechanistic, and I totally reject that world view. Western medicine is a perfect example of this wrong-headed view.
We’re actually communicating … well, I’m communicating anyway, but we’re actually communicating right now by way of evil reductionist mechanistic foolish science, snowflake. Go forage for a few days and think about that. Railing against technology on the internet is the act of a fool. Arrogant and egotistic are in the eye of the beholder, but at least I know what I’m typing about, and it didn’t just happen.
Damn. If true, this fairly nails it to the wall. So the next thing that needs to happen is the congressional investigation to cover it up and then we vote them all out of office.
The 3-4 hr dive time limit for the MK29 is incorrect-
“The MK29 can be used to extend FMGS (an open loop system) diving operation durations by a factor of five”
I expect a 6hr dive time is well within limits for the MK29, in addition to which I would have designed it for in situ recharge.