But while the Ukraine may have physically done it, I’m virtually certain the US approved it. In fact, that’s the most likely scenario. We held their hand, and they carried it out.

‘The argument that it would seem worth the risk to Ukraine, which is fighting for its national survival, seems pretty plausible.’

The difficulty there is that Ukraine was not fighting for its national survival. Certainly after Russia’s initial lunge collapsed in fiasco, Ukraine’s survival as an independent state was no longer in question.

But my point is that the scale of the operation has turned out to be similar to what I initially assumed.

Or their cover story is similar to your theory.

The single most likely perpetrator of a project of that scale would be the state that currently hates Russia most, Ukraine.

Now you are totally going to lose credibility with Ron Unz. 😉

Kudos. I remember your posts. Good call on the men involved and the scale of it. Who ordered it and/or gave the green light? That’s another question.

That’s what I’ve always been thinking & it turns out I was right.

As far as the JFK assassination goes, I’ve changed my mind – not completely, but significantly. Of course I didn’t buy Stone’s byzantine MIC-Cubans-gays-… plot, but I was inclined, perhaps 80%, to think that Kennedy was killed by some combination of right wingers, spooks & LBJ.

Now I tend to accept the official version 50%.

Just, as I said: it doesn’t matter anymore. Considering the demographic, cultural, behavioral …. changes, this iconic cinematic assassination belongs to a bygone era, similar to Prohibition or suffragette movement.

He’s “the fall guy.”

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fall-guy

fall guy
noun [ C usually singular ] informal
US /ˈfɑːl ˌɡaɪ/ UK /ˈfɔːl ˌɡaɪ/
a person who is falsely blamed for something that has gone wrong, or for a crime that they have not committed:
The governor was looking for a fall guy to take the blame for the corruption scandal.

I’d bet the CIA, MI6, and Mossad are responsible.

By the way, there was ballot measure on abortion, in Ohio.

Some standout data on abortion support from Ohio's exit polls.

1. Black voters were the strongest pro-abortion block, with Black men (88% support) and Black women (80% support) leading the pack, followed by 'all other races' (63% support).https://t.co/Gwz20S9Uo0 pic.twitter.com/RBa9xIxLXj

— ARC-Southeast (@ARC_Southeast) November 8, 2023

Ohio is a bit more conservative than the rest of the country.

Contrary to popular belief, there’s no significant gender divide on abortion. Men are only slightly less supportive of abortion than women.

Thank goodness we have the CIA’s newspaper to tell us what’s true.

Here’s the same narrative but it’s not behind a paywall:

Investigating the Nord Stream Attack
All the Evidence Points To Kyiv
https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/investigating-the-attack-on-nord-stream-all-the-clues-point-toward-kyiv-a-124838c7-992a-4d0e-9894-942d4a665778

It was pretty obvious at the time, but naturally the media lapdogs dutifully reported the absurd theory that Russia blew up its own source of foreign revenue in the midst of a war it considers existential. You have to a total rube at this point to trust official messaging on just about any major foreign or domestic cultural issue at this point, but this was such a pathetic lie that outlets like the NYT and WaPo unblinkingly relayed to the masses.

More plausibly, many argued that it had to be a giant operation involving the U.S. Navy and the entire United States military-industrial complex, rather like the vast project to assassinate the President described by Donald Sutherland’s character in Oliver Stone’s JFK.

There’s a strawman buried somewhere in that snark.

It could also be the case that it was a modestly scaled operation that was conducted by the US Government.

Or by Ukrainians with the aid of the US Government. Or by Ukrainians (and perhaps others) with the US Government looking the other way.

But the fact that US Government officials, right up to Joey Diapers himself, were predicting the “ending” of Nord Stream (he even said “WE will end it”) and that after the fact officials like Vicki “Cookies” Nuland were praising the sabotage of Nord Stream as a happy occurrence suggest that, at the very least, the US Government was on-board with the plan and approved.

The suddenly popular argument that Russia blowing up Russia’s own strategic pipeline would be in Russia’s interest seems strained to me. I haven’t heard any terribly skillful arguments for this, which suggests that this came as a big surprise to the anti-Russian coalition.

Insightful comment, but it’s worth remembering this wasn’t just an attack on Russian infrastructure but on German infrastructure too. So, if this is true, the Ukraine committed an act of war against NATO.

But we can trust them this time.

And maybe Colonel Chervinsky got himself a sweet deal with the CIA/NSA/Mi6/whatever to take the credit. After all, a spook colonel of a losing army will be needing a job. In any case, if it’s from the Washington Post it’s probably a lie.

-Discard

You read the MSM more than me, but I don’t recall any kind of MSM consensus Russia did it.

Personally I thought it was Poland or Ukraine. The “Russia might have done it” line struck me as mostly non-serious trolling by Ukrainian partisans, similar to the Ukrainian policy of never taking responsibility for drone attacks on targets in Russia proper, and the Russian policy of pretending its cruise missile strikes on Ukrainian targets were all Ukrainian misfires or frame jobs.

The reason why #gaza is now the worldwide focus of leftist scum is that it represents the only hot war between white civilization and turd-world anti-white barbarism. https://t.co/lnPD32IarD

— Oliver Cromwell (@Lorlordylor) November 11, 2023

Where’s Lt. Michael Byrd when we need him?

Roman Chervinsky, a colonel in Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces

Is Chervinsky Jewish?

Is it true that Slavic names that end in -ski are Christian and those ending in -sky are Jewish?

Only a submarine containing the specialized equipment needed for a team of saturation divers, and a team of the said saturation divers could possibly have pulled off that stunt.
Only the US Navy has that sort of capability.

Saturation diving is the technique used to enable divers to cope with the extreme pressures of the deep sea, in which the diver is forced to breath heliox at pressures many times atmospheric. Also, hot water, supplied by the means of an ‘umbilical’ which also delivers the heliox and Comms, is needed for survival in the icy waters of the Baltic. The hot water freely circulates within the dive suit.

I don’t support Hamas, but that guy’s username is ironically (or not) a good example of how dehumanizing weaker/less civilized peoples leads to great evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland

It couldn’t have been done without NATO (i.e. U.S.) complicity in the action and the coverup. The U.S. either did it or knew who did it. The interesting thing about the article is the U.S. is preparing to throw Ukraine under the bus. Kissinger-“To be an enemy of America is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

Last month in The Washington Post:

https://web.archive.org/web/20231024035333/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/23/ukraine-cia-shadow-war-russia/

Exclusive: Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia
https://t.co/uvFIISJEsF

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 23, 2023

“say people familiar with planning”

Ah, yes, people familiar with planning. “as well as other people”

And this means it wasn’t, ultimately, a U.S./U.S. intelligence operation, because people said something. And those Ukrainian assassination operations in Russia… weren’t they recently confirmed to be, ultimately, CIA ops? Nevermind.

It could very well have been carried out by Ukranians, but with the blessing and support of US/Nato. Germany was probably told, but their government being the most obedient trained poodles in Europe, just kept their mouths shut, even though they’re the ones who suffered the most from the outcome.

if the deed was carried out by Ukrainians, it would have only been possible with the hand of US-UK agencies aiding them every step of the way.

The Ukrainians are tough, scary guys fighting for national survival.

They wouldn’t be “fighting for survival if they weren’t stupid enough to believe the political filth in the West.

Personally I thought it was Poland or Ukraine.

There’s no way the attack happened without the approval of the US. It was just too big. You don’t just do that on your own. Some small act of sabotage, okay.

But this was HUGE.

It got greenlit by US.

This is pretty interesting.

Total 'paternity' rate for certain groups by father's birth region, Australia, 2022:

Indian: 1.38
Pakistani: 1.87
Bangladeshi: 1.66
Afghan: 2.10
Australian: 1.61
British: 1.77
Iranian: 1.26
Israeli: 2.22
Lebanese: 3.56
Turkish: 1.49
Chinese: 1.01
SS. African: 2.01

— Global Demographics (@nonebusinesshey) November 11, 2023

It was pretty obvious at the time, but naturally the media lapdogs dutifully reported the absurd theory that Russia blew up its own source of foreign revenue in the midst of a war it considers existential.

It makes you wonder what else can be blown up with all the legacy media reporting that someone else did it. I bring this up with the 2024 campaign season in mind.

Come on man, you can hardly rule out the corrupt and evil US government. Sure, some Ukes might have done the actual dirty work, but don’t tell me the dirtbag government here wasn’t involved.

Also in the WaPo, the CIA front clearly gets the knives out for Biden.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/09/fbi-biden-golf-club-membership-probe/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

Leading to this nice summary on Zerohedge.

The Biden-Du Pont Nexus: From A Prestigious Golf Club To A Controversial Child Rape Plea Deal

The word seems to be out : Pedo Joe has got to go.

Nah, the smoking gun points to Britain, in the form of the text message from Truss to Blinken: “it’s done.” Was she talking about her pot roast? And why was she booted out of office soon after this happened?

The single most likely perpetrator of a project of that scale would be the state that currently hates Russia most

That state would be the UK.

Lloyd Bridges? Flipper did it!

Are Ukrainians fighting for survival or their sovereignty? I guess after Stalin and Hitler, they assume there’s no difference.

Ctrl-F Gell-Mann

No hits.

Hm.

INDEPENDENT VIDEO EVIDENCE CONFIRMS KEY PART OF SY HERSH’S REPORT ON THE ATTACK ON NORD STREAM 2
8 February 2023 by Larry Johnson
https://sonar21.com/independent-evidence-confirms-key-part-of-sy-hershs-report-on-the-attack-on-nord-stream-2/

Nuts.
1. Sy Hersh says he knows it was US and no one but US or perhaps UK or Russia could have done this.
Sy is always accused of getting it wrong – he always has got it right though.
2. Ukraine has always been 3 wars:
a) civil war W on E Ukraine
b) Cold war reheated nato/US vs Russia
c) Economic war US vs China (aka US vs Germany)

The Economic war is the big part, it is making sure that When China Block splits with US Block, then Europe never trades with China or Russia again. As a bonus US gets to sell its expensive gas to Germany and Germany transfers its energy intensive industry to US where gas is going to be cheaper.

The Economic war is going very wrong for US, pretty much all the Rest of the world except Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan hates it, and Israel is making this rapidly much worse.

Blowing up NS2 was entirely about the economic war. There is zero interest in it for Ukraine. 100% interest for USA.

Ukraine is done – they just ran out of men – about 450k dead, a bit more wounded. Not much more than 100k still in service. It is not that US tired of supplying Ukraine with weapons, it is just that US ran out of weapons about the same time that Ukraine ran out of men (sending women now, a pregnant woman in Uniform surrendered recently).

So now is clear up time. WaPo and Der Spiegel is perfect. Both work closely for CIA. Post Ukraine some German Business men are going to be pretty furious when they realise just how the war was used to steal industries from Germany by blocking the cheap gas. This cover up is high priority now.

I thought about this at the time. The problem that nagged at me is that of “keeping station” – that is, keeping the boat in the exact same spot while the divers are down. (That way, after the divers accomplish their mission, they come up to the surface, and there you are.) Unless there is absolutely no current and no wind, keeping station requires considerable skill, experience, and coordination amongst actual mariners on the boat. Think of it as balancing a pencil on its point – – well, at least on its eraser. (A “pencil” is…oh never mind..) I remember deciding it might be doable if there existed considerable skill in lowering and then retrieving an unusually deep anchor, or, using GPS. In any case it’s not something just any dude could have done, using tattoos as his credentials. I know a little about this, but not a lot, so perhaps somebody who knows a lot can correct me.

You read the MSM more than me, but I don’t recall any kind of MSM consensus Russia did it.

Like Steve said, the mainstream media outlets dutifully repeated administration talking points implying that Russia *might* have done it:

Those same outlets ignored Seymour Hersh’s report that the U.S. was the culprit.

The depth of the pipeline – around 300 ft of water – makes it a technically challenging target for surface divers. It’s far beyond the range of most normal scuba divers. Standard recreational scuba divers max out at 60 feet of depth, and even specialized civilian deep divers stop at 130 ft. It’s a very select group of military and oil-rig divers, usually operating at long-term saturation, who will go to 300 ft of depth. I think it’s a very open question whether Ukraine had the specialized skills to pull it off.

I agree with the overall point that you don’t need a cast of thousands to do this, but I lean towards the view that Ukraine “borrowed” a half-dozen high-end frogmen from the U.S. or UK or some other top-drawer organization to help with the deep diving here.

but with the blessing and support of US/Nato.

The creators, funders, trainers, and facilitators of the plan most likely gave their blessing and support, yeah.

And to be clear, this could have been a bell-bounce job, not a saturation dive, but it’s the same very small community of military and oilfield divers who use these ultra-deep techniques and possess the specialized equipment to pull off these depths. These guys are mainly American and NW Euro.

Interesting take, but, in the interests of balancing the scales and discerning if indeed Ukraine acted alone regarding nixing the pipelines.

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

Don’t know if the dude is a nutjob poster…perhaps Mr. Unz can enlighten us who exactly this Hersh dude is. From his Feb. 22, 2023 article ‘Seymour Hersh: Standing Tall in a Sea of Lies’

“With a Pulitzer Prize and five George Polk awards, Hersh certainly ranks as one of the most renowned reporters of the last half-century, known for breaking the stories of the My Lai Massacre, the Abu Ghraib prison, and other landmarks of investigative journalism.”

Oh, THAT Seymour Hersh. Then he actually has some journalistic credibilty, integrity, and has done indepth investigative journalism before? Never would’ve known from the way the MSM hasn’t given him any recent attention. Whadya know. So basically, interviewing CIA and other Deep State members with knowledge of the identity of who took out the pipelines and what conclusion did Hersh come to?

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

So one of the leading US journalists of the last half century reached his conclusion while investigating the matter, and his journalistic experience leads him to the conclusion that it was the US that’s behind it? OMG.

What’s Mr. Unz opinion?

“But while there had been a great deal of informed speculation, Hersh has now provided a detailed narrative of exactly what transpired, including the allegation that the Biden Administration had employed questionable legalisms to avoid informing our Congressional Intelligence committees of the operation as was required by law. If Hersh is correct, our top government leaders may be in serious legal jeopardy.” — https://www.unz.com/runz/standing-upright-amid-a-sea-of-lies/

Steve.

Occam’s Razor says “Generally, the simplest explanation is preferred.”

But how is it the simpler explanation for a Ukrainian colonel to independently create a plan that happens to fit U.S. long-term strategic objectives and Biden’s explicit threats, get time off work from the Ukraine Army, get explosives and deep diving gear, get the funding, recruit six friends, travel abroad, anchor on top of a sensitive piece of infra-structure, and then set the explosives hundreds of feet deep on the pipeline itself without getting observed by the U.S. Navy, or any of the other six naval forces in the area?

Wouldn’t it involve fewer contingent variables for Biden to simply tell the CIA to do it? And for the CIA and our Kiev puppets to then frame some poor Ukie schmuck after Seymore Hersh broke the actual story?

I think someone needs to take Occam’s Razor away from Steve, before he cuts himself.

I also recall the Sea Hunt TV show but they were warm water divers in the 50s.

While the Germans/Ukes/US may want to promote the Seaborne Band of Brothers theory, from what I have read about the Baltic and undersea pipeline conditions the Seymour Hersh version still seems most likely.

Also considering how quickly this illegal sabotage of a supposed NATO allied country’s infrastructure disappeared down the Narrative Media memory hole, the new theory seems pretty weak and convenient.

The Uke Sea Hunt theory isn’t impossible, just unlikely.

If we are alive in 20 years, maybe we’ll learn the truth.

I love how Steve has made a career out of showing how the MSM and, particularly, the WaPo and NY Times lie or deceive themselves into believing ridiculous lies about HBD and crime.

And then Steve turns around and believes everything that those same media people say about other topics.

My goodness.

The Washington Post’s credibility on any serious foreign policy matter is highly suspect: it’s a de facto agency of the U.S. Intelligence State, our unconstitutional fourth and most powerful branch of the federal government.

In 2011, it was estimated that about half of Ukrainians have relatives in Russia, and there are now 5 million Ukrainian refugees in Russia seeking shelter from the Kiev regime. What you describe as “the state that currently hates Russia most” is better described as an illegitimate regime that the U.S. UniParty installed in 2014 after the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of the Ukraine. In the 2014 coup, the illegitimate regime’s shock troops were neo-Nazi thugs funded by a handful of corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs. Since 2014 the Kiev regime has received hundreds of billions of dollars of funding and weaponry from the U.S. and the EU to brainwash Ukrainians to “hate Russia most”, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have needlessly died in the current conflict.

Long before February 2022 the U.S. UniParty has tried to prevent the EU from benefiting from affordable, relatively clean natural gas supplies from Russia delivered by increased capacity via the NordStream II pipeline. Everyone knows who funded last year’s pipeline attacks (the U.S.), who authorized it (the U.S.); who provided the ISR for it and planned it (the U.S., with plausible deniability), and who benefited from it: the U.S. (LNG supplier), Norway (increased EU gas market share), and Poland (newly built LNG infrastructure). There are several countries’ governments that also know the answers to other questions of lesser importance: who carried it out (U.S., U.K., Poles, Ukrainians, or all of the above?), how they did it, and the available evidence.

The most important question for people living in ostensibly democratic western nations is this: Why are western governments unwilling to tell the truth to their own citizens about the NordStream pipeline bombings–a flagrant act of war against Germany (and hence NATO!) as well as Russia? Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s silence on this matter is a betrayal of the German state and people.

The Ukraine is going to be a source of embittered dead-enders with a sense of betrayal and US taxpayer-funded weapons. Plus some of them have that weird ersatz viking pagan death cult hobby.

Well done, DC.

If the US did blow up Nord Stream we can expect at least a decade of denials and, ironically, gaslighting. Eventually people in Washington will happily admit it and act like it’s either the funniest or most righteous thing ever.

Here’s the same narrative but it’s not behind a paywall:

I think you mean this Der Spiegel article:

Ukrainian Special Forces Officer Allegedly Involved in Nord Stream Attack
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ukrainian-special-forces-officer-allegedly-involved-in-nord-stream-attack-a-52a23ebb-85a4-43c3-b46c-de6cdce68134
https://archive.ph/LJC87

Here’s an archived link to The Washington Post article:

Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack
https://archive.ph/LJC87

It was the USA and its NATO companions who did Nord Stream. If they’re blaming Ukraine now, it’s because they know Ukraine is losing the war badly and they are getting ready to throw Ukraine under the bus.

Correct link:

Here’s an archived link to The Washington Post article:

Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack
https://archive.ph/Ex3WE

Thank goodness we have the CIA’s newspaper to tell us what’s true.

Exactly right. For whatever reason, the US government really wanted to distance itself from this. And maybe the German government as well. Maybe they don’t want the German people to know just how rotten their leaders and our leaders really are.

Based on my practical technical experience, it’s my intuition that the US military was involved in the planning and material supply of this operation. Maybe they employed a member or two of the Ukrainian special forces to place the explosives, but I have no reason to doubt Seymour Hersh’s journalistic finding that this operation was cooked up in the Biden WH and directly approved by the president.

The Ukrainians would probably be quite happy to drag the United States into a major war with Russia. There is no reason for it, though. Russia is not a threat to this country and is only portrayed as such to help justify spending almost a trillion dollars a year on our bloated military.

We are now spending more on just interest on our national debt than on that military. Social Security and Medicare are headed for insolvency. We need to change the purpose of the military so that it is focused on defense of this country. That will enable us to reduce spending in that area. We really have no choice here. We need to acknowledge the reality of our fiscal situation.

Sir Michael, an Irish papist has infiltrated our chamber!

Have you been reading the latest reports on the war? Ukraine never stood a chance.

It could also be the case that it was a modestly scaled operation that was conducted by the US Government.

While this may not have been Steve’s all-time worst take (I guess that dubious honor goes to “2 weeks to flatten the curve, bro”/“2 weeks to crater housing affordability and therefore family formation for an entire generation of young Americans”) this is without doubt the most annoying in its sh!t-eating @ss-clownery .

As pointed out many, many times, Biden said he was going to blow up NORDSTREAM well before it even happened! Yet somehow we’re to believe “Ukranians” were able to smuggle explosives, deep diving equipment, etc. across multiple international borders unbeknownst to US intelligence which has been so far up Kiev’s @sss the last several years it is effectively the acting government, carry out the operation in heavily-surveilled NATO waters which, oh, just happened to host NATO naval exercises that very summer, and then keep it all a secret until the very moment when Washington is about to wash its hands of the Ukraine fiasco and needs a scapegoat. And, yeah, all of this hot off the presses of the CIA TIMES.

Well, this is certainly depressing that anyone would entertain this story for more than a split second.

The Ukrainians are tough, scary guys fighting for national survival.

Give it a rest, Scumbag Steve.

Ukraine was not fighting for their “national survival” even at the beginning because that would have required a force strength far greater than what the Russians used. John Mearsheimer has explained this. Germany used something like 2 million troops during their invasion of Poland. The Russians would have needed troop levels like that. Russia had no intention to occupy or destroy all of Ukraine.

Now, as a result of the Kagan Cult and the rest of the Usual Suspects, Ukraine may actually be destroyed. They have lost up to 500,000 men and millions have fled and may never return.

Ukraine’s interests aren’t our interests.

And there is final line from Sleazy Steve … hey fellas, we were just leading you down the primrose path, just thought you guys would make nice cannon fodder so we could hurt Russia (a White Christian country with nukes that won’t get with our program). But now, you know, go bury your dead, whore out your daughters to get food, and get ready for mass 3rd world immigration to “rebuild” your country.

You scum promoted a situation that got a lot of White Gentiles killed for no good reason. You had to know what you were doing.

SEE: “Limited Hangout”

… having watched a lot of episodes of Lloyd Bridges in Sea Hunt after school in the 1960s…

I watched Flipper, so I thought it was dolphins.

On the surface Seymour Hersh's story looks passable, but as you dig deeper it has more holes than the Nord Stream pipeline.

An in-depth look at the inconsistencies in Seymour Hersh's recent story.
https://t.co/Yf5oqZYiHx

— Oliver Alexander (@OAlexanderDK) February 10, 2023

Oh look, the CIA launders more fake news via its assets in the MSM, all attributed to vague unnamed and unknowable “sources,” and all the commentariat clap like seals.

Meanwhile the actual investigative journalists, like Seymour Hersh, with decades long reliable track record, are studiously ignored.

The purpose of most government propaganda isn’t just to create a false narrative, it is to mislead and misdirect the public from the truth.

Seymour Hersh was not wrong. It was the United States. This lie that it was a Ukranian is a big “I’m sorry, please don’t go” to the Germans and the rest of the EU colony.

This story they’ve concocted is bogus. We have lost for now in the Ukraine but will be looking to find another front to attack Russia on or we will move on straight to Taiwan and conceded Russia for now. The Empire has not changed its long-term objectives of global domination.

You know and I know and you know that I know that I know that you know that I know that it was

Sailer and Charles Murray who did it. They blew it up.

Why else would Sailer try to cover it up by blaming some other actor?

We need to change the purpose of the military so that it is focused on defense of this country. That will enable us to reduce spending in that area.

Won’t that send unemployment through the roof? How many Americans does the military employ directly and indirectly?

GPS and a reasonably competent helmsman or autopilot would suffice in most conditions.

Have you been reading the latest reports on the war? Ukraine never stood a chance.

Reference please? Hasn’t Ukraine fought Russia to a stalemate?

The Russians would have needed troop levels like that. Russia had no intention to occupy or destroy all of Ukraine.

What was their goal then?

Triton subs advertise small submersibles rated to 200 meters.

The Empire has not changed its long-term objectives of global domination.

It’s been sickening to watch the change since the end of the Cold War, Mr. Robinson. However, as per Mark G.’s quick synopsis (his 2nd paragraph), global domination may be the objective, but it’s not agonna happen.

It’s not that the Feral Gov’t will see the light and cut offense , errr, Defense spending in half (even that would not get us out of the hole – even ALL of it wouldn’t). There just won’t be enough funding to keep the MIC going for much longer. You want a war with China? Sure, but don’t forget to arrange for a cease fire every couple of weeks – gotta wait for weapons parts that are still inbound in COSCO shipping containers and then we need to open the markets for a few days to sell the Chinese investors more T-bonds.

Hell of a war, eh?

Everyone is assuming this involved divers. Is there any reason the explosives couldn’t have been delivered and detonated by a a remote control submersible?

Which should be a lesson to their allies like the US to keep an eye on them ultra-carefully to keep them from turning their war into a NATO-vs.-Russia shooting war.

Which should be a lesson for Joe Biden to keep an eye ultra-carefully on Joe Biden

I couldn’t read the WaPo article, so thanks for that link. According to this Der Spiegel article, Hersh’s story has been proven false. I haven’t followed that, so don’t know, but I will say that while I initially assumed it was the USA, I was suspicious of Hersh’s story because it was entirely based on an anonymous source. If I were the CIA and wanting to cover up Ukraine’s involvement in the Nord Stream attack in order to protect support for the war among Europeans, leaking a false story to a respected journalist would be a good way to do it.

But I remain agnostic.

The Der Spiegel investigators are relying on lots of what is essentially gossip among European bureaucrats. They have confabulated a story here that doesn’t address many of the technical problems such as those brought up by commenters here. When they track down one member of the commando team, they suggest he pulled off this technical dive with diving skills he learned in a youth orgsnization, which is preposterous.

I think it’s interesting that the Der Spiegel article concludes with a review of the theory that the Russians did it and cites Europeans officials who say Russia could have planted all this evidence to frame Ukraine. They give serious ear to this conspiracy theory while never considering that if all the “evidence” pointing to Ukraine cpuld have been planted by Russia, it could have been planted by the USA as well or the Europeans.

Overall, I just don’t see anything convincing pointing one way or another.

The single most likely perpetrator of a project of that scale would be the state that currently hates Russia most, Ukraine.

Not to mention who benefits most. Gas flowing to Europe which is not going through Nord Stream has to go through Ukraine. With transit fees. I had not realized Russian gas was still flowing through the Ukraine even with the war–though much reduced since 2019.
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/qa-russian-gas-transit-through-ukraine/

That said, I would be shocked if the US had not given approval at some level. If not outright assistance. Others have covered that in this thread.

Yes. If this really were the Womens Rights issue of advertising legend, men could shut down legal abortion without the other sex’s help; female corollary to this is banning pornography.

You can go to the Kremlin website, the Russian Foreign Ministry website or RT to find the answer yourself. It’s funny how people happily make up their own preferred Russian motives without even bothering to see what the Russians themselves say.

Ukraine’s interests aren’t our interests.

I wouldn’t maybe call Steve sleazy, but my recollection is that Steve’s support of not trying to make a peace deal as soon as possible was that changing borders via military intervention is Bad For Everybody, which was basically another way of saying that Ukraine’s interests were our interests. I don’t know what’s changed now.

Of all the problems in the West, the inherent dishonesty and gaslighting by the so-called mainstream media is THE biggest problem. Bringing them to task should be Trump’s number one job, should he miraculously win the next election.

I’m still going with Mexican cartels.

https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/articles/2023/06/fuel-theft-and-cartels/seeking-revenue-cartel-fuel-thefts/

In the last 15 years, this kind of theft became much more organized and sophisticated as organized criminal networks have increasingly initiated fuel thefts, according to McCormick, who is also a senior associate for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). With the ability to leverage massive funds and paramilitaries, criminal cartels can acquire information about pipeline paths, valves, and other infrastructure.
…
“The number of illegal taps in Mexico increased from around 200 per year before 2007 to 3,000 in 2013, peaking at 15,000 in 2018. Illicit pipeline tapping accounts for most of Mexico’s oil theft,” wrote Vlado Vivoda, Ghaelb Krame, and Martin Spraggon—authors of the Resources article.

I actually work for the military. I am not an anarchist and think you need a military but it needs to have the purpose of defending this country and not just providing a lot of make work government jobs paid for by the hard working taxpayers. If you let those taxpayers keep more of their hard earned dollars, they will spend them and create other jobs elsewhere. Government does not create jobs. It just shifts spending from one sector of the economy to another.

How convenient. Now that Ukraine is acknowledged to have ZERO chance of winning, and after a year ZERO investigation, blame can be pinned on them. Honestly, wake up.

Kudos. I remember your posts. Good call on the men involved and the scale of it. Who ordered it and/or gave the green light?

Biden (okay, the retards that are running the Oval Office).

was Trump a Russian agent? the leftist media spent years on that one. they said it over and over so it MUST be the case, right? Steve should just admit he doesn’t know anything about underwater demolitions. it’s simple. it’s easy. he does it all the time on other subjects. Steve is an expert on black women’s hair. not explosives, and certainly not the underwater kind.

it’s mind blowing to me that Steve has spent 40 years studying how the US leftists lie in the media, then gets taken by a whopper of a made up story. here’s how the parable goes – you read a news article in the media that YOU PERSONALLY are an expert on the subject matter, chuckle to yourself at how bad and nonsensical the reporting is, then turn the page, read the next couple articles on which you are NOT a subject matter expert, and take the reporter’s story at face value.

that’s what just happened to Steve here. he’s like a boxer who entered UFC after 25 years of training for that exact specific scenario, hand to hand against 1 other person, then got taken out in 1 minute by a guy who’s been training for 2 years.

Ukrainians didn’t do it. they don’t have the capabilities. because if they did, that’s the first thing they would have done when the war started. they tried to sabotage everything, to various fumbling degrees. they blew up their own dams haphazardly, to slow the Russian advance. Ukraine has been trying to blow up a bridge for over a year and can’t do it. they literally tried to blow up a huge nuclear reactor AND FAILED. the US organized this pipeline demolition. they may have used other NATO guys to accomplish the mission, but that’s what happened.

also, Ukraine LOVES to run their mouth – they literally attempt to record videos of everything backhanded thing they’re doing, then post them on the internet. you seriously think they pulled this off and then DID NOT post videos of it? of course they would have. if they did it. which they didn’t. there’s no video, no nothing, because professional western military guys did this and kept the operation a secret.

‘I think someone needs to take Occam’s Razor away from Steve, before he cuts himself.’

I think Steve shies away from the obvious conclusion: that we were implicated.

Even if the Ukrainians somehow did it independently, they almost certainly checked with us first. For them to do this off their own bat would have been close to suicidal. What if we (or the EU) had decided we weren’t happy about it?

I hasten to add that I mean the bad guys would do the blowing up, not the good guys.

"Because a felon has no opportunity to regain the right to keep and bear arms, this court questions the extent to which rehabilitation motivates criminal lawmaking…" https://t.co/B4Yr3Kkqhu

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) November 11, 2023

You should probably inform the person your org is named after https://t.co/0zP0nE4QBi pic.twitter.com/WIAd8tdSMg

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) November 10, 2023

I haven’t studied it in detail and never operated near there, but I’m VERY skeptical of a US submarine having done this mission. The Danish Straits are too shallow to drive through submerged, even at PD .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimax

And there’s too much shipping and too narrow a channel to safely transit at PD without having a collision even if you had the draft, which you don’t. And if you collide at PD…it’s automatically the sub’s fault…and you’re going slow, so it’s hard to avoid people…it’s just a total mess).

And there’s too much detection risk if you do the transit surfaced. It’s a very busy area and you need to stay in the channel even surfaced…so driving through with the lights out would be insane and you’d get detected by a gazillion other ships radars, who would then ask you on the bridge to bridge what the heck you were doing.

I haven’t operated there or studied it in depth but neither have you. Everyone I see pushing this on the Internet is a hoi polloi commenter. Get the detailed bathy charts at least (you’ll have to buy them). And it’s the Straits that are the concern, not the dive area.

I’m also pretty skeptical of a dive from a sailing yacht also. Too much roll, no crane, not enough space, etc. etc. A fishing vessel or merchantman or even surface combatant would be way easier.

But Occam’s Razor says the Ukrainians did it all by their lonesome because Lloyd Bridges neutralized a German mine floating around Catalina with his scuba knife. Yes, the U.S. greenlighted the destruction of an important European energy source. The Ukrainians, if it was them, were trained and assisted by Naval SF — American, British, Norwegian.

“The Ukrainians are tough, scary guys fighting for national survival.”

This is true. But at this point the mostly destroyed Ukrainian Army should make a separate peace with the Russians and go after the Zelenskyy government.

‘Won’t that send unemployment through the roof? How many Americans does the military employ directly and indirectly?’

We probably do need to wind it down gradually. Ironically, all the PC crap has probably helped that along; a whole lot of groups that traditionally used to enlist have presumably turned away over the last few years.

Steve and Occam have booked the Castle for their June wedding.

It’s like 9/11. Just as Israel most assuredly knew that was going to happen, however more deeply they were involved, so we most assuredly knew who actually blew up that pipeline, whatever the degree of our physical involvement.

To dive that deep, divers needed a decompression chamber. Would this fit on that small boat?

It’s not hard. You just drop a weight to the bottom, attached to a rope, with a buoy on the top. This is standard diving practice.

The main issue is actually the divers wandering around and getting lost, not the boat. But they go up and down the rope, including decompression rest stops. They just stay next to the rope.

The surface craft just stays in visual range of the buoy, small offset so you don’t drive on top of people. Very easy. Especially for ships with thrusters like amphibs (USS Kearsage) or even tugboats! But even a frigate or the like could manage it, just a bit more shiphandling.

I wouldn’t maybe call Steve sleazy, but my recollection is that Steve’s support of not trying to make a peace deal as soon as possible was that changing borders via military intervention is Bad For Everybody

It is difficult to maintain that position without condemning Zionism.

So the Qataris are off the hook now?

I was “following the money”. Is war more important to some people?

The part that you are missing, Mr. Sailer, is that this all had the approval, if not the guidance, of the American military and intelligence services. Zelensky is an American puppet who takes his orders from Washington. Like you said, who physically did it matters very little from a logistic point of view, but a lot from a rest of eternity international relations and liability point of view. From the American perspective, it’s more convenient if the Ukrainians took care of it rather than the American military (which America’s leaders have threatened publicly over and over again).

In the past, the standard view was that pregnant women wanted to have the baby, but their “callous” boyfriends didn’t want to get married and support a child. So these “abusive” men forced their girlfriends to have abortions.

Nowadays, the standard view is that women want to be “career” women, so they view a baby as a “burden.” They have abortions because they value careerism more than family life.

I wonder which view is more accurate.

How convenient for Zelensky — and his neocon/Zionist backers within the US hegemon — that the latest in a long series of false narratives about the Nordstream bombings now places the blame squarely on Zelensky’s most powerful political rival. Now Zelensky may not have to officially cancel the Ukraine’s upcoming elections. This latest lie may effectively do that.

1/ QUICK THREAD on the Russian perceptions and analysis of weapons and systems that most influenced the course of war in Ukraine, and for other global conflicts going forward. The points are from a Russian Telegram channel, so usual caveats apply. https://t.co/rDrO4COGDr pic.twitter.com/vULsRgfdxv

— Samuel Bendett (@sambendett) November 11, 2023

I want to believe that Ukraine did it, and that these guys pulled it off.

It was risky, brave, courageous and patriotic. Their country is getting invaded, in place to be dismembered, and they’re teaching the country that invaded them an extraordinarily expensive lesson.

Good for them.

If you don’t want your shit blown up and your people killed, don’t invade another country and kill their people.

I think the Palestinians in Gaza need to learn that lesson too.

It’s not that difficult a concept to grasp.

We have to teach the Japs the same lesson in World War II.

And maybe Colonel Chervinsky got himself a sweet deal with the CIA/NSA/Mi6/whatever to take the credit. After all, a spook colonel of a losing army will be needing a job.

Indeed, and after a few years of living well he can acquire a paunch, change his name to Vindman and he too can presume to dictate foreign policy to the President of the USA

Not necessarily. -ski is Polish and -sky is Russian, transliterated from the Cyrillic alphabet.

Incidentally, the feminine versions are -ska and -skaya, respectively.

Considering that both Lenin and Stalin were ultimately responsible for carving out Ukraine in its present form out of traditionally Russian territories, I find your statement to be quite ignorant.

If Hersh is correct, our top government leaders may be in serious legal jeopardy.

Oh, come on–they’re Democrats. Serious legal jeopardy is not something that worries top-level Democrats.

I don’t know anyone who argued it had to be a “giant” operation. It could have easily been a US SEAL team. After all, underwater demolitions are what SEAL teams do.

300′ is a very deep dive; SCUBA won’t make it even halfway. It’s not like you just hop out of an outboard with SCUBA. So it was either a robotic sub or deep divers who’d need decompression. Does the Ukraine Navy have that independent capability? I tend to doubt it but maybe they do.

Any halfway competent skiff pilot could maintain position to within less than 50 meters with a gps+compass.

Used to have a friend who was an diver for the U.S. Navy around the end of the Cold War. Graduated from EOD dive school, knew underwater demolitions well, etc. At one point he told me that during happier US/Russia times (remember, this was right after the Cold War ended) his unit had a joint meetup/training with an equivalent Spetznaz unit (hard to imagine something like that happening now, eh?).

Talking to him I got the impression he was highly impressed with the Russians’ knowledge, skills and toughness. I figure that it’s not inconceivable that before the Cold War ended, that unit also had some Ukrainians in the ranks, who afterward made their way back to their newly independent homeland and joined it’s armed forces, bringing their institutional knowledge and skills with them; knowledge and skills that have been passed down to the present day in the Ukrainian military.

So I think it’s possible the personnel are there in Ukraine who could carry out such a mission-but I think the logistics and access to specialized equipment (and geographical access) would have been impossible without the explicit help of NATO.

I still think it’s very unlikely the Ukrainians carried out this sabotage, though. I think Hersh’s scenario is much more likely. That’s the real Occam’s Razor, not a “Ukrainians did it” scenario, which is the long way around the block, IMHO.

You know, Ukrainians aren’t retards. The sabotage–not actually requiring any super-secret knowhow as many are implying–wouldn’t be any more difficult for them than for the US. Nor has the CIA actually tended to be a smoothly functioning decisive organization regarding these things. So Steve is right: Occum’s Razor points to Ukraine which doesn’t include your additional “framing” step (a harder step than the actual sabotage.) I think you guys are confused by a different heuristic, the “blame the US/Jews” heuristic.

Agree, but gosh there sure are a lot of “total rubes” out there. Makes me almost want to get into some kind of bridge-selling business.

Chesterton wrote something about people who don’t believe in God becoming capable of believing in anything, right? I guess as a corollary, in the present day, you could add that people who believe in trannys become capable of believing in anything.

I remember watching 9/11 on TV, so now I’m thinking maybe Nord Stream was sabotaged by guys with box cutters.

That gives me an idea:

Let’s just apply Occam’s box cutter to everything that happens. Cut our questions into crude, simple pieces. Cardboard reality. It makes thinking easier, like watching sportsball where there are two sides.

A bit of advice: Grownups know it doesn’t matter who does the bad guys’ dirty work or how they do it.

To clarify: no, you do not need saturation diving. No, you do not need a diving bell. Though it is too deep to breathe compressed air safely, no, it is not too deep for SCUBA: trimix/heliox exist and aren’t at all arcane. No, it is not hard to avoid being discovered. No, it is not hard to source the explosives, boat, etc. No, it is not hard to keep the boat in one place while divers are down! It’s pretty comical how you guys act like it’s mind-boggling that Ukrainians could do this.

☮

Only the US Navy has that sort of capability.

Negatory good buddy, the Royal Navy can’t stop ‘migrants’ crossing the English Channel but they certainly also have that sort of capacity.

I’ll say again what I said before: you can’t take a piss in the Baltic without NATO knowing the colour of your urine stream.

You know, Ukrainians aren’t retards. The sabotage–not actually requiring any super-secret knowhow as many are implying–wouldn’t be any more difficult for them than for the US.

So according to the Washington Post, the non-retard Ukrainians pulled off the Nord Stream job all by themselves.

But, also according to the Washington Post, they had CIA help in attacking the Kerch Straight Bridge.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cia-involved-in-developing-drones-used-in-crimea-bridge-attack-report

The Ukrainians had American help attacking a bridge in what they claim to be their own territory, but they go rogue, with no American involvement, when attacking a pipeline in the Baltic that is half owned by a NATO member (Germany).

And you buy that?

they’re teaching the country that invaded them an extraordinarily expensive lesson.

The Germans invaded them? Because that’s who is paying the price along with the rest of Europe.

FYI, our people aren’t cannon fodder for your various wars anymore. So you can drop the gungo WWII crap that works with the nursing home crowd. Try using the Chinese.

from the Washington Post, in a joint investigation with Der Spiegel of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage of 2022.

according to officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe,

Gee, no reason not to believe Der Spiegel, The Washington Post and “officials in the Ukraine”. They would never lie to us, would they? After all, they never did before…

Aside from a handful of taboo topics that are his bread and butter, Steve prides himself on being a mainstream, middle-of-the-road Boobus Americanus. That’s why he casually dismisses JFK and RFK conspiracy theories, plunged headlong into Covid hysteria, took “national pride” in Bob Dylan’s joke Nobel, found nice things to say about Hamilton the musical, and applauds Margo Robbie’s choice as Barbie. I’m not saying he’s wrong on all of these things (except the last one, which is a travesty), but there’s a pattern here, and it does make him less interesting to read on those occasions. (Which is okay. To be interesting all the time is actually quite boring, too. See some other columnists here on TUR.)

If you don’t want your shit blown up and your people killed, don’t invade another country and kill their people.

I think the Palestinians in Gaza need to learn that lesson too.

You have it backwards. It is the zionist jews that need to learn that lesson. They are the invaders and the killers. The international community, but especially the United States, needs to stop enabling the zionists so that they are forced to learn that lesson.

Now you’re delving into motive, an essential element of any crime.

I think the Chinese had a lot to gain from blowing the NordStream.

This pushed the Germans into economic retreat as they have to switch from cheap Russian gas to something else for their manufacturing. Which are two of the largest manufacturing economies? Their Energiewende was shown to be self-delusion and they had to start sucking up to the LNG exporters like Qatar, Australia, and the US. That costs more. Cheap energy drives competitive economies.

The Chinese also win by creating monosopolistic conditions for Russian energy exports. Of course new pipelines will have to be built to connect gas fields to Chinese markets but those have been in planning for a long time. Russia becomes a Chinese vassal state over time.

Evidence? I got none but we can say the Chinese have two of the elements – motive and, I assume, means.

Tonight at UFC fights at Madison Square Garden pic.twitter.com/Jj3Ga5oSgo

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 12, 2023

At last, the truth!

pic.twitter.com/76D4uG6ccK

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) November 11, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html

“They want us to believe Arabs can fly jets!”

“Hasn’t Ukraine fought Russia to a stalemate?”

Only on CNN.

Everybody agrees that the Kerch Bridge explosion was a Ukrainian operation……………….

The WaPo article stated that it was done with CIA assistance. And, moreover, that the CIA has been working closely with the current NATO-aligned regime that has governed Ukraine since 2014 (what was that called, by the way, the “Burlap Revolution”? – I don’t know.)

As long as we’re citing WaPo as authoritative, the above mentioned assertion seems relevant to the Nord Stream caper as well.

What was their goal then?

to de-nazi-fy Ukraine, i.e. kill the nazis ..the average age of the Ukrainian soldier is 42 ,I would say they are well on their way to achieving their war aims ,hence the meat-grinder strategy……..A secondary effect has been to drain western arsenals ……funny how another war has popped up.

I still think it’s very unlikely the Ukrainians carried out this sabotage, though. I think Hersh’s scenario is much more likely. That’s the real Occam’s Razor, not a “Ukrainians did it” scenario, which is the long way around the block, IMHO.

Concur. Adding Ukraine to the mix adds all sorts of complexity:
1. Where did they get the skilled divers?
2. How did they pull this off in the middle of one of the most patrolled and surveilled regions of the ocean?

Conceivably some Ukrainians rented a boat for plausible deniability, but #1 and #2 point to strong NATO involvement.

Yeah, it’s not impossible that some Ukrainians got deep dive experience during the Soviet period.

But that was well over 30 years ago.

Like with flying a plane or performing eye surgery, you need to keep current with these skills. If you haven’t practiced in decades, you can’t just jump into the water and dive to 300 ft, or even 130 ft. Plus you’re like 60 years old now.

Chesterton wrote something about people who don’t believe in God becoming capable of believing in anything, right?

http://web.archive.org/web/20000901224238/https://www.chesterton.org/qmeister2/any-everything.htm

H/T: John Derbyshire

Olaf Scholz about the rasons he can’t say more about the Nort Stream explosions: Because we don’t know.

The Norwegians who had done an official investigation about their reasons, why they could not go public with their findings: This would touch security interests.

Jeff Sachs about the reasosn he thinks the blow-up was a US backed covert operation: Because the evidence we have is strongly going in this direction.

No manned sub or hi-tech divers necessary. The charges were placed by a robotic submersible and detonated after it had skedaddled.

I’ve met plenty of divers in my day, and the only ones who had any meaningful bottom time at 300 ft+ were a handful of commercial / oilfield divers I met in England.

Yes, recreational tec diving exists, and yes, 300 ft is a realistic tec depth, but the number of dives and the amount of work to be done to disable Nord Stream points to very specialized experience.

The other thing that bothers is that the actual pipeline is one of the world’s wonders. This documentary shows just how technically sophisticated it is.

Why would Putin blow up something that was so difficult, time consuming and expensive to make? Wouldn’t it make more sense to blow up some dummy piece of crap?

While there’s no doubt that Cromwell’s religious beliefs were instrumental in some major atrocities, I would not rely on Wikipedia for anything politically contentious, a subject that very much includes English/Irish relations.

A better judge might be Churchill, himself no stranger to the killing of innocents. His words are pretty apposite today, as the destroyers of Iraq and Libya place their wreaths at the Cenotaph in London, alongside the “no Gaza ceasefire” figures of our Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.

In another letter to Speaker Lenthall he (Cromwell) gave further details. “Divers of the Enemy retreated into the Mill-Mount: a place very strong and of difficult access. . . . The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable Officers being there, our men getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the Town: and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2000 men; —divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the Bridge into the other part of the Town, where about 100 of them possessed St Peter’s Church-steeple… These being summoned to yield to mercy, refused. Whereupon I ordered the steeple of St Peter’s Church to be fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames, ‘God damn me, God confound me; I burn, I burn.’ ”

“I am persuaded,” Cromwell added, ‘‘that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood.” A similar atrocity was perpetrated a few weeks later at the storm of Wexford.

In the safe and comfortable days of Queen Victoria…men thought such scenes were gone for ever…

The twentieth century has sharply recalled its intellectuals from such vain indulgences. We have seen the technique of ‘‘frightfulness” applied in our own time with Cromwellian brutality and upon a far larger scale… It is necessary to recur to the simpler principle that the wholesale slaughter of unarmed or disarmed men marks with a mordant and eternal brand the memory of conquerors, however they may have prospered.

This smacks of CIA don’t blame us, look! A man behind a curtain! bullshit
Their best case against it being a US operation was that it was largely successful.

… and applauds Margo Robbie’s choice as Barbie. I’m not saying he’s wrong on all of these things (except the last one, which is a travesty) …

Well played.

You read the MSM more than me, but I don’t recall any kind of MSM consensus Russia did it.

September 2022:
http://web.archive.org/web/20231112115215/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/nord-stream-gas-pipelines-damage-russia/

European leaders blame Russian ‘sabotage’ after Nord Stream explosions

December 2022:
http://web.archive.org/web/20231112114914/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/russia-nord-stream-explosions/

No conclusive evidence Russia is behind Nord Stream attack
World leaders were quick to blame Moscow for explosions along the undersea natural gas pipelines. But some Western officials now doubt the Kremlin was responsible.

Steve, there have been more quite a few attacks on the Kerch bridge, but the two damaging ones were by truck and months later by boat.

The truck had a patsy driver who died, I forget the start country but it may have been Armenia or Bulgaria. It also killed a family who happened to be driving on the bridge and either by chance or design, damaged an oil train on the bridge above.

The boats were remotely piloted drones, perhaps a UK development – in fact Russia had attacked a bridge south of Odessa with a similar drone months before. My understanding is that since the attack, the bridge is protected by floating barriers, though you obviously can’t use those where marine traffic goes under the bridge.

Could I just raise my eyebrows slightly at your readiness to believe WaPo on this one? I think Biden’s recorded statements, and those of that foreign affairs harpy, are more believable.

January 2022:

.@UnderSecStateP Victoria Nuland: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” pic.twitter.com/hEGBrx6HJj

— Department of State (@StateDept) January 27, 2022

January 2023:
Nuland is “gratified” that Nord Stream 2 is “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea”

Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, testifies at the hearing “Countering Russian Aggression: Ukraine and Beyond” held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 26, 2023.

LOL, but Tyrd, I mean Byrd doesn’t have the stones to confront anyone but harmless girls. Not that he even confronted Ashli. What a P.O.S.

“If you don’t want your shit blown up and your people killed, don’t invade another country and kill their people. I think the Palestinians in Gaza need to learn that lesson too.”

But it’s the Palestinians who were invaded and had their people killed!

https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/

I must say it shows a certain brass neck to steal the name of a remarkable European for your propaganda work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel

iSteve: the big media is always lying and is blocking all my “noticing”
Also iSteve: the big media is saying the same things I say and proving I am right.

I guess there are limits for using the WaPo/NYT as your basic source material.

I think the primary purpose of the attack might have been against Germany and surrounding countries, and only secondarily against Russian finances. If the pipeline had been intact, and last winter had been harsh, Germany and Europe might have softened their anti-russian stance in return for Russian gas. Even without the harsh winter, German industry seems to have suffered.

Agree, and it’s not just Steve. It’s a characteristic of GOP supporters generally. They are firmly convinced that the media lie pretty much continuously about Republicans and their characteristic domestic issues. On the other hand, they are also firmly convinced that the lying stops at the water’s edge.

It’s not that mysterious why they think this, though. Politics is all about tribal affiliation for virtually everyone. Republican and Democrat elites more or less agree on foreign policy, so there’s no tribal reason to dissent from the media line here.

You have to get way out on the right or left to get significant foreign policy dissent.

OT – Donald Trump attended UFC 295 and was accompanied by Jr., Dana White, Kid Rock, and Tucker Carlson.

Indeed. Chesterton said something very like that pseudo-quote scores of times, but somehow never quite came out with the pithy version he is commonly credited with. Still, it’s kind of silly to claim that he didn’t say it (not saying you are claiming this). He said it in other words many, many times.

But Kerch Bridge is either Russian or Ukrainian depending on hiw you look at the situation.

But Nord Stream was German; therefore, any attack on it is an attack on Germany and thus NATO. So, in your view, Ukraine attacked NATO.

What say you, Steve?

> the CIA front clearly gets the knives out for Biden.

In The Tide Is Turning (good news for Gavin) Department, below the fold is yesterday’s tweet from liberal Wall St. billionaire, Anti-semitism foe, and heavyweight political contributor Bill Ackman.

I didn’t read the whole thing; the tl;dr is

Senile Joe has to go.

Is this one of the catalysts for the NYT, Lester Holt, Ivy League sachems, the WaPo, et al. to suddenly be shocked, shocked! to discover gambling is going on at Rick’s?

Being a boomer means never having to say you’re sorry.

“Ukraine’s interests aren’t our interests.”

Remove “Ukraine” and insert “Israel”. I think that’s what Steve was trying to say but can’t.

Who are “our people”? Which foreign country is sending troops to assist the Ukrainians?

Given the WP’s track record on pretty much everything, why would you believe it in this case? Hersh’s argument, which he stands by, is that the pipeline was so deep that you needed very experienced divers that only come from this one Navy School in Pensacola and you needed a ship that had one of those chambers that treats people for the Benz. In other words you needed a much bigger ship than a sailboat or sailing yacht.

So the Washington Post reports that anonymous U.S. officials now call the Nordstream sabotage “a dangerous attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure.”

Given the reporters’ outstanding connections to the Adminstration as well as to the Deep State, would it be too much for them to solicit on-the-record quotes from the senior U.S. officials most involved in the matter? If neocon supremos Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken have suddenly reversed themselves, isn’t that sort of newsworthy?

Added context in this tweet by Aaron Mate.

Given the WP’s track record on pretty much everything, why would you believe it in this case? Hersh’s argument, which he stands by, is that the pipeline was so deep that you needed very experienced divers that only come from this one Navy School in Pensacola and you needed a ship that had one of those chambers that treats people for the Benz. In other words you needed a much bigger ship than a sailboat or sailing yacht.

Btw this has nothing to do with the competence of the Ukraine military. I’ve been telling anyone that would listen that prewar, Ukraine had, contrary to popular belief, among the most robust militaries in Europe. This is what scares me about the Russians prevailing in less than 2 years. I do think that Poland better get its act together because obviously Western militaries need to consider producing more artillery and sheer volume of armaments. Eastern Europe is also going to be forced to reinstitute a draft. Theyre lucky that Poland remains so conservative and traditional.

Absolutely – the number of conventionally intelligent people I have met that buy every major leftist/media (but I repeat myself) narrative hook, line and sinker is astonishing.

Just underscores that a lot of people’s political beliefs are a product of who they want to signal to, rather than reasoned consideration.

These things I believe because I am not a Putin fanboy:

– Julian Assange spread Russian disinformation
– Hunter Biden’s laptop was disinformation too
– Jeffery Epstein killed himself
– The Russians helped make Brexit happen
– Same thing with the truckers’ protests in Canada
– Putin had compromat on Trump
– The Great Reset is a conspiracy theory promoted by Putin
– So is the Great Replacement
– “Cultural Marxism” is an anti-Semitic dog whistle
– A rogue Ukrainian intel agent blew up Nord Stream

If the WaPo says next week that Nord Stream was blown up by the New Zealand rugby team I will believe that too.

Even more absurd was all the hand-wringing over the possibility of Russia ‘using energy as a weapon’ by the EU and US as if ‘standing with Ukraine’ wasn’t a thing.

Too many people think there are no consequences to their actions.

Chesterton wrote something about people who don’t believe in God becoming capable of believing in anything, right? I guess as a corollary, in the present day, you could add that people who believe in trannys become capable of believing in anything.

I’ve related this exact observation, including the Chesterton quote, to other people out in the wild.

This is hilarious. Either we shouldn’t support Ukraine because they have already won or we shouldn’t support Ukraine because they have already lost. Unzites can’t agree on much about reality but they can agree on the “shouldn’t support Ukraine” part.

Don’t be silly. Any Unzite will tell you that the operation was planned and carried out by the CIA with the assistance of Mossad and those Ukrainian guys that Steve mention with the multisyllabic -sky names are just the fall guys.

You figured 0ut the secret. You must have an IQ of 2000 to make this brilliant discovery.

Roman Polanski – not Jewish

Igor Sikorsky – Jewish

Now that you know the secret Mossad will have to kill you.

This is embarrassing. Shocking that anyone with even a cursory knowledge of engineering and marine architecture wouldn’t simply laugh his ass off at this ludicrous story.

I guess we can now be fairly certain that this blog/blogger gets a lot of support from Jewish interest groups.

Ukrainians are hardly able to pave their streets or build tanks on the templates created on the sixties, that were long in use in factories on their territory. The Ukrainian fleet consisted of 4 gun-armed ship after 2014, and was still at 4 in 2021. Why did they need 15 thousand employees in the Navy is anyone guess, but I don’t expect any of them to have any navy skills.

Michael Tracey notes that the WaPo investigation that “shows” Ukrainians was published next to the obvious lie that “Blinken deplored the attack”. If they lied about something so easily falsifiable, why would anyone trust WaPo on the unverifiable part?

Has anone seen the most recent Trudeau vaccination video? Sleeve up on the left side, cut, sleeve up on the right side, end. No needle, no syringe, no vials, to bee seen. Enlighten us, Mr Sailer, how many doses does WaPo recommend, and in which arm?

Motive, means and opportunity.

Since the outbreak of war, Ukraine always had a cogent motive to blow up Nordstream.

But I doubt they had the means and opportunity to do this 100% solo and undetected.

Anyone proposing this scenario has the burden of bringing forward some evidence that Ukraine had established indigenous deep dive demolition capacity, and some plausible way to account for how they evaded NATO and Russian detection during the several days worth of diving needed to mount this operation.

Because on background public info, the U.S. and its NW Euro NATO allies are known to have had motive, means and opportunity in spades to do this; they are naturally stronger suspects than Ukraine acting on its own. The say-so of some anonymous spook does not tilt the balance.

Steve I have enjoyed your writings at Unz and here on twitter. I found you to be an independent thinker, looking for and finding solutions to interesting problems. However, you have exposed yourself with Nord Stream – I am almost certain you work for the CIA…

Well, I doubt they just walked into a dive shop and grabbed the first few dudes they saw. (Not to say that they couldn’t have trained people: tec diving isn’t rocket science.) Ukraine has >40 million people and significant offshore industry: they have people with comparable experience.

they go rogue, with no American involvement, when attacking a pipeline in the Baltic that is half owned by a NATO member (Germany).

The second half of this statement makes the first half more likely, not less.

Yes, I’m well aware it was over 30 years ago. But as I said I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those guys didn’t land in the nascent Ukrainian military after the Cold War end/Ukrainian independence, bringing their institutional knowledge and skills with them; knowledge and skills that have been passed down to the present day in the Ukrainian military.

There is such a thing as training new people over the years, after all. It’s one of the ways organizations survive.

Once the NATO divers finally go down for a look there’s a fair chance they’ll find a dropped Ukrainian passport LOL

Steve, I agree with all you have said – except that Ukraine fights for its “national survival”. The Ukrainians fight for the Donbass (whose Russian population they have treated badly) and for to get Crimea back.
Putin has never declared that he wants to possess the Ukraine. In such a war there are always people who dream about massive territorial gains – like, in WW2 some Germans dreamt about getting the Netherlands and, later on, some Dutch dreamt about getting North Western Germany. Neither the one nor the other dream was ever governmental policy.
My personal impression is that Putin as a secret service professional would never say more than he must, also he may avoid definitive war goals in order to take what he can get in the end and call that a success.

Ukrainians could not have boasted about such deeds, because it would have brought them shame!

https://www.unz.com/isteve/gregory-cochrans-theory-of-who-blew-up-the-nord-stream-pipelines/#comment-5571410

Jack D says:
September 28, 2022 at 2:17 pm GMT
[…]
I can’t say that it makes a tremendous amount of sense that Putin blew up his own pipeline, but all indicators (the usual unz.com conspiracy theories aside) point to Russia having done it – they had the means and opportunity. So he must have had his reasons.

Don’t worry, it will be revealed that the Uke wot dun it dropped his waterproof passport on the seabed.

“I think the Chinese had a lot to gain from blowing the NordStream….this pushed the Germans into economic retreat …cheap energy drives competitive economies.”

It’s certainly true that China will get cheap Russian energy, but they were going to get plenty anyway, Power Of Siberia 1 is operational and 2 hasn’t started the build yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_gas_pipeline

But China wants Russia to prosper, especially militarily, as they know they are next on the list (indeed, we see a possibility that the US may want to fight Russia, Iran and China simultaneously – in either scenario a strong Russia is vital to them).

The German economy, basically the only truly productive economy in the west, has been hit very hard. The business papers are blaming everything bar the loss of Nordstream 2.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/10/why-germanys-once-miracle-economy-is-turning-into-a-mirage

Industrial production has fallen for five straight months and is more than 7% below its pre-pandemic levels. The International Monetary Fund expects Germany to be the weakest economy in the G7 group of leading rich nations this year, and the only one to see output fall.

Carsten Brzeski, the global head of macro at ING bank, says Germany’s problems were a mixture of the cyclical and the structural. “How much is down to each? It is impossible to disentangle but it’s both.”

After shrinking this year between July and September there was a good chance, according to Brzeski, of a similarly weak performance in the final three months of 2023. Those two consecutive quarters of contraction would leave the economy in a technical recession.

“Ukrainians aren’t retards.” Wrong. Those who were adults, yet chose to stay in Ukraine in 2020 were definitely retards.

Ukraine’s northern border is about 750 km from the Baltic Sea coast. But some crackerjack Ukrainian naval commando unit was behind it. Lol, ok, whatever.

The US Navy and its SEAL teams were responsible.

Interesting. So if I read that correctly, the exact “quote” actually came from the pen of someone (Accardo) who wrote a literary criticism study of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, interpreting a couple of lines in two separate stories and then paraphrasing, rather than from Chesterton himself.

Accardo’s interpretation of Chesterton’s intent in the quotes he cites seems to be broadly correct, but there’s no actual exact or very close quote in Chesterton’s writings. But over the years the exact quote from the author of the study has mistakenly been attributed to Chesterton himself.

The good news about Gavin is that once he’s in, all of Steve’s uncertainties about the shadowy cabal controlling the president will vanish.

https://thespectator.com/topic/california-new-china-gavin-newsom-social-credit/

The fifty-six-year-old [Gavin Newsom] recently announced the creation of California’s new “Cradle-to-Career” (C2C) system. According to this official statement, the system will integrate “over 1 billion data points — providing unprecedented insight and transparency,” ostensibly “to improve career outcomes for millions of Californians.” C2C’s integration of data, notes the statement, “will provide the public, researchers and lawmakers unprecedented insight that could improve education and quality of life for millions of Californians.”According to the aforementioned C2C statement, by “leveraging billions of data points, California’s Cradle-to-Career data system will be a game-changer for improving the quality of life for millions of Californians and highlighting ways to improve opportunity in the classroom and access to the workforce.”

The Golden State, we’re assured, “is leading the nation in equitably connecting our education system to the workforce to ensure every Californian has the freedom to succeed.”

On closer inspection, however, the system will give lawmakers access to intimate information broken down by race, geography and, of course, gender, to, as the statement suggests (or warns) “illuminate and address areas of strength and needed growth and any inequities.” C2C’s partners include the California Department of Education, the Department of Health Care Services, the Department of Social Services and University of California’s Office of the President.

So in your view, having to pay more for heating gas is the same as having your cities bombed and people killed?

Gee, based on your illogical equivalence, the only thing that matters is the cost of an item?

I think that’s the thinking that caused our immigration crisis- immigrants do it cheaper, so it must be better for the country. Never mind the off-balance sheet costs.

Why is it gung-ho to admire a people fighting to push an invader out? Especially if it’s the same country that starved millions of your countrymen to death within living memory?

Paging Walter Durranty- you have a fan!

Those articles support what I said. Random officials vaguely and anonymously suggested it might have been Russia. The only direct on the record blame of Russia was trolling by a Uke partisan, the Polish PM.

“All the Evidence Points To Kyiv …” — ACCORDING TO RUSSIAN SOURCES

You forgot that last part but there, I fixed it for you. For example, let’s consider one of the so-called “Ukrainian” agents behind this according to the Spiegel article this WP journalist piggy-backed on:

German investigators in January searched a sailing yacht that may have been used to transport the explosives used in the sabotage. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office declined to comment on media reports that a team of five men and one woman were said to have chartered the yacht “Andromeda” in the port of Rostock…The “Spiegel” and the ZDF for their part followed the trail of the “Andromeda”. According to their research, a fake passport used to rent the sailboat leads to a Ukrainian soldier. The charter fee was also paid by a company registered in Poland that had connections to a woman in Kiev.

However, research by RTL and ntv shows that one of the women named in the company’s documents is Russian. After the annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia in 2014, she helped to hold elections for the occupiers. According to the Polish commercial register, the woman owns the company that, according to German investigators, is said to have rented the “Andromeda”. (Google-translation of the German original)

So much for all the evidence pointing to Kiev. I.e. this is basic Russian skullduggery, at least as far as the articles go. I’m not saying that Ukrainians were not behind this, or even that they didn’t have either explicit or wink-wink approval from the US, but the WP/Spiegel investigation, as it stands, well,… it just doesn’t stand up, and the named sources are heavy with TASS/Russian officials, while the unnamed so-called Ukrainian sources who, according to the article are “familiar with how the operation was carried out”, do not, as judged from the above quote, hold up to closer inspection either.

BREAKING… We Can’t Be 100% Sure That Russia Blew Up Their Own Pipeline But, You Know, It’s Pretty Much Certain That Russia Blew Up Their Own Pipeline, I Mean, Like, Would You Put ANYthing Past Putin?

You forgot that last part but there, I fixed it for you.

I copy and pasted the original headline; that’s why it’s in italics.

So much for all the evidence pointing to Kiev. I.e. this is basic Russian skullduggery, at least as far as the articles go.

I’m afraid it looks like Ukraine is getting framed for Nord Stream. It’s not being done by Russia but by Washington.

Some Ukies just treating this as standard Russkie tactics.

perfectly played by russian disinfo playbook by @washingtonpost and their moscow-affiliated @ikhurshudyan

They poured so much secondary loosely related info into it to mask the fact that this is their only semblance of sources on the topic: https://t.co/OP4VLynMTE pic.twitter.com/sVb8bUSdw4

— Oleksandr (@_glnc) November 11, 2023

Another russian asset in disguise working for a reputable media. And there are many like her.

They all act in a similar way – initially they say (mostly) all the right things, essentially establishing their reputation and building an image of “objectivity”.

Then they switch… https://t.co/0GWfLOk4Wj

— Walter Report 🇺🇦 (@walter_report) November 11, 2023

Nah. They’re too busy getting just the right corridinates to bomb hospitals so they can intentionally murder women and children.

Btw, the Israelis are smart to want to push the Palestinians out of Gaza once and for all, but they’re stupid to do it in such a public way. Unfortunately, you guys don’t control all the world’s media, so it’s not looking so great.

Then again, people have short attention spans so who knows.

The State that currently hates Russia the most is Israel. That is why they, with the help of a phalanx of Sayanim in the US DOS, seized control of the Ukrainian government in 2014. They could then send white Ukrainians to die in a war with white Russian soldiers, further reducing the populations of both sides and establishing the permanent foothold of Israel-in-Europe, as Zelensky himself has envisioned in public interviews.

Simplest explanation. The West decided to sanction Russia for defending Russian speaking people in Ukraine from attacks by the Banderites.

Russia decided “No gas for you”, shut the pipeline down, and opened a pressure relief valve. Leaving Germany facing a cold winter and slowing industrial output. Sanctions come at a price and often a wound in a foot.

Sidenote: NATO military units are kicking out service members who have WW2 NAZI crud in their private quarters, meanwhile, NATO members are supporting a nation that proudly displays WW2 NAZI banners on national holidays.

Parallels between Nazi Germany and Ukraine, both were led by short Jewish guys who like to wear military uniforms. Oh yeah, and both had beards (women).

That was the best information available at the time. Unlike some people here, I don’t make my conclusions first and then invent an imaginary reality to support it (“Russia is winning!”).

As I said at the time, it didn’t make a lot of sense for the Russians to have done it to themselves (but it wouldn’t be the 1st time that Putin did something self defeating). In light of current information, it appears to have been a Ukrainian operation, which makes more sense. But the Unz consensus then (even now) is that it was a CIA operation not a Ukrainian one so it is no less wrong than I was. I am willing to change my conclusion but the Men of Unz conclusion is ironclad and will never be moved by reality.

We shouldn’t intervene anywhere.

Dear Steve:
I have followed you for many years because you a) conduct sound research, b) uncover solid stories, c) write with skill and aptitude, and importantly – d) you tend to see through the bullshit generated by governments – home and abroad. The Agency employed several small groups of select individuals who are recruited for their various talents of insight, academic/scholastic skills, investigative nature, or because they could think events through to the end in greater detail than say….the average government moron. I know this, because I was part of one of them and we were together at least three times per week – commonly in law offices owned by the K Street operative firms – driven there by the Church Committee hearings. Sometimes these groups were placed in competition with one another, but the tasks were alway to penetrate disinformation, or create the same to cover our own operations, preparing CYA modules of thought prior to any operation so that a fully formed explanation could be advance at the right moment. Since the end of the Cold war many of these units were disbanded as the demands of that focal point disappeared. But clearly, some were brought back in-house in the mid-90s since there was a constant need for informational preparation related to the drug running operations, and not everything happening at the start of the new century could be left solely in the hands of Israel.
The location of Navy vessels and air traffic at the time of NordStream tells me that the Hersh story was on the mark and additionally, the current generation of “assets” tend to feed their egos by sharing and taking credit. The fact that this story has now gone form 1) Russia did it, to 2) some guys in a sailboat did it, and finally – to 3) an elite Ukrainian special-ops officer and his team of skilled operatives did it. What this tells me was that there was no informational advanced planning and they have been grasping at straws ever since. It also tells me that the Millennials have now reached the level of middle management in the I/C and likely, a few of the “brighter lights” have been moved into policy-making groups. I beg of you Steve…..do not start buying into the work of these teams, because they are not very good at their assignments and they are currently playing catch-up. In another 100 days or so, when this current fantasey fails to grab anyone’s imagination (outside of the “journalism” grads at NYT and WAPO, expect a new revelation that the elite Ukrainian special ops commander had access to extra-terrestrial technologies.

There isn’t one chance in a billion that six Ukrainian commandos on a sailboat or whatever cockamamie story the CIA propaganda department schemed up did this.

Also: where is A123 and his hydrate slugs? That is crazy but better than this baloney.

If it turns out US Navy divers blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, what will your position be?

“It’s funny how people happily make up their own preferred Russian motives without even bothering to see what the Russians themselves say.”

I didn’t read the RT site to find out what the old roulette Wheel-o’-Excuses is pointing to this week, but from what I’ve been able to gather, it hasn’t stopped spinning yet. For example, Here’s the “I do it because I’m Peter the Great” line that Lil’ BB invoked at one point:

“Peter the Great waged the great northern war for 21 years…. He did not take anything… he returned [what was Russia’s]…Apparently, it is also our lot to return [what is Russia’s] and strengthen [the country].”

Did that make it onto the wheel-o’-excuses? Or else, here’s the one about how according to him, Ukraine doesn’t even exist.

Then there’s the one where Ukraine is just a “stepping stone” to taking back what the Russians formerly held in Eastern Europe.

And of course, the one where putting all those states back into one Russian orbit somehow serves to make the world more multipolar. I don’t get that either. The math seems off.

Is the old “narco-maniacs have taken over Kyiv, won’t someone think of the children?” giveance still active? I guess we gotta check if and when that wheel ever stops.

“I’m afraid it looks like Ukraine is getting framed for Nord Stream.”

Yeah, I’m sure you’re really afraid about that — that’s about as sincere as the rest of your take on this. Any time you want to address the fact that the “Ukrainian” who actually owns the yacht being framed for this is actually a Crimean separatist, feel free to work that into your narrative. Or don’t, and continue to handwave or ignore it away. But don’t think I won’t notice, or that you’re fooling me.

“It’s not being done by Russia…”

So, you’re saying the Russian officials quoted in the story who blame the Ukrainians are all lying? If you believe that it’s kinda weird you continue to rely on their websites so devotedly. Unless…

Steve also shot RFK and has a bid in for the contract to shoot RFK Jr. His real name is Sailer Sailer, which is why Sirhan Sirhan is often mistaken for him.

Come on Steve. Can you say “Thrown under the bus?” This is the story that allows the US to back away from the whole mess they have been sucked into in 404.

“The State that currently hates Russia the most is Israel.”

Kinda surprised that we had to wait by almost 200 comments to get to this. I mean, if the basic response is “come on, we all know who REALLY did this”, then it’s a corollary of Godwin’s law — at least as far as the consensus on Unz-dot-com goes — that the ultimate bogeyman won’t be sitting in DC, no way, no how.

Now, how much longer am I going to have to wait before I hear about a gaggle of dancing Israelis, popping champagne on some passing Swedish cruise ship, as they gleefully gaze at the expanding pressure-wave from the explosion?

“Furthermore, all our MSM outlets are saying that’s what happened, and they would never, ever be dishonest about anything important or controversial.”

You need direct evidence rather than the standard rope. It’s possible, but you’re assuming it’s probable.

“He notes that America has a vast intelligence apparatus, including 17 separate organizations, and after the pipelines were destroyed, one would think that Biden and his national security staff might have become a little curious”

They most likely were kept in the loop.

A remarkable European who knew how to deal with Muslims

“Unlike some people here, I don’t make my conclusions first and then invent an imaginary reality to support it (“Russia is winning!”).”

Spoken like a lawyer who projects. Although, we have major doubts that is your actual profession.

Knowing your contempt for the Ukrainian people, I thought you would have declared the Ukrainians too cerebrally challenged to commit such an act.

Russia has neither the desire nor the ability to be a threat to Europe. Putin has never even vaguely implied a desire for such a thing.

Before the war, Russia clearly said that it wanted Ukraine to stop the attacks on the Donbas and to pledge neutrality.

Now, Russia will want more, but one thing they don’t want is western Ukraine. They know they couldn’t hold it. They learned their lesson in the Cold War.

I repeat, Russia has neither the desire nor ability to be a threat to Poland or beyond.

First off all, there’s the actual problem of *locating* the damn pipeline above the ocean’s bland watery vastness.
Then, there’s the problem of actually devising underwater explosives, packaging them, and having a suitable time delay mechanism. And, apparently, the pipeline was encased in concrete.
We are led to believe that no saturation diving was used off that yacht. Thus, you have the decompression problem, coupled with heliox mixture in a cold sea – rapid body heat loss resulting in hypothermia – and the long decompression stops a tank diver must take in those conditions. And you need several tank changes on the way. At most, you’ll have half an hour of ‘bottom time’ – alas not with lovely Ms. Lopez, as good James Bond deserves – . If the pipeline was encased in concrete, then that concrete would needed to have been chipped away with tools prior to explosive charge placement, a lot of time needed.
All sorts of difficulties involving poor light, boat positioning, planning and practice etc.
Stretches the limits of plausibility.

But on the other hand – the US Navy has exactly the right men and right equipment, who practice these drills day in day out, to accomplish the job.

On balance, who do you (so to speak) plump for?

Sounds good to me. I don’t remember voting for my country to be a global garbage dump.

I’ve related this exact observation, including the Chesterton quote, to other people out in the wild.

When asked about “rum, sodomy, and the lash”, Churchill said it wasn’t his, but he wished it was. This sounds like Chesterton’s potential response to this quote. I don’t think it’s ever been found in GKC’s œuvre, though the one to ask is his through Norwegian bibliographer, Geir Hasnes. There are parallel statements of GKC’s, so it’s likely he’d endorse this one.

So many great “quotes” of the past two centuries turn out to be anonymous on investigation, and stuck like “flypaper” (Ralph Keyes’s term) to whichever contemporary wit they most fit, Twain, Wilde, Churchill, Rogers, Mencken, whomever.

“If you are not a communist at twenty…”
“When fascism comes to America…”
“No dumb bastard ever won a war…”

Marx did maintain that history repeated itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Several times, in fact. But never so pithily; you’re getting the Reader’s Digest version. A very literate woman– she homeschooled her children in the classics– once “quoted” Mencken to me, about America being tilted to the southwest so everything loose winds up in California. I gently informed her that Frank Lloyd Wright had come up with that one. I heard it from Carol Wayne on the Tonight Show.

(Evidently Carol’s literacy was up there with Wally Cox’s bodybuilding as among the best-kept secrets in Hollywood.)

The Ukies trained on video games and old episodes of Sea Hunt.

“Unfortunately, you guys don’t control all the world’s media, so it’s not looking so great.”

In the UK, just as every story about Ukraine has to mention “Russia’s full-scale invasion”, so does every protest about the bombing of hospitals and residential buildings have to be described as “pro-Palestinian”, and most of the graphic stuff featuring bloodied or dead children and weeping parents stays well off the TV screens.

This is in YUGE contrast to the news coverage exactly eight years ago, in late 2015, when every bulletin was headlined with big-eyed Syrian tots covered in plaster from fallen ceilings, or being pulled from under rubble by MI6’s brave White Helmets, as Aleppo (held by our “moderate Islamists”) was attacked and TPTB were straining every sinew to get the UK involved in yet another war for freedom like Iraq and Libya.

Fortunately for Syria there were too many memories of the last two conflicts, and the RAF/USAF were never ordered to enforce a “no-fly zone”.

many argued that it had to be a giant operation involving the U.S. Navy and the entire United States military-industrial complex

Has one person claimed this? You met a guy who’s sure the Space Force was involved with an undersea diving or naval drone operation?

Ukraine has >40 million people…

Had.

That US Navy divers blew up the Nord Stream pipelines. But this would have to be based on actual evidence and not handwaving. So far I have seen zero evidence this is true.

That’s a recipe for being overrun. If Russia and China and Iran, etc. had a non-intervention policy then we could have one too but to have a unilateral one is suicidal.

Thank you for splashing cold water on the Occamite cosplayers.

I guess Biden was just too busy with other things.

Darn right. Sniffing kids’ hair consumes three to four hours a day. Three times a week, he has to meet with Kamala for Laugh Hour. I understand that he and Doctor Jill are very fond of Parcheesi. Then …

That US Navy divers blew up the Nord Stream pipelines.

Would you think it was a good idea?

So far I have seen zero evidence this is true.

How hard have you been looking?

The “Palestinians”, who never existed as a separate people from genetically indistinguishable Arabs, took over the land by force after the Romans primarily took it from the Jews, who were there for millennia before Mohammad raped his first nine year old or molested his first goat.

If you want to go back to original indigenous people, it never ends.

The Palestinians have 57 Arab countries they can go to and act like animals. Until their “Brother Arabs” kill them, that is.

That’s a recipe for being overrun. If Russia and China and Iran, etc. had a non-intervention policy then we could have one too but to have a unilateral one is suicidal.

This pontificating propagandist—closing in to 29,000 comments—evidently hasn’t noticed the two obstacles to the United States’ being suicidally overrun: one is called the Atlantic; the other, the Pacific.

Nah, the smoking gun points to Britain

None of the options are mutually exclusive, it could easily have been a joint CIA/MI6/Uke operation.

Norway may have helped too. I believe Seymour Hersh includes them in his version of events.

‘Aside from a handful of taboo topics that are his bread and butter, Steve prides himself on being a mainstream, middle-of-the-road Boobus Americanus…’

Yeah, but that gives Steve street cred — in a very boring sense.

If Andrew Anglin says ‘_______,’ you go, ‘uhuh. Anything to this?’ If Steve Sailer says it, you go ‘Jeepers. Must be so.’

Assuming Steve has a limited range of targets but wants to have maximum impact, it’s pretty smart, rhetorically.

I think you are both right. The Israelis and Palestinians are both justified in killing the other group.

‘I’m afraid it looks like Ukraine is getting framed for Nord Stream. It’s not being done by Russia but by Washington.’

Quite likely the Ukraine did do it — we prefer to have others do the dirty work. But she likely did so at our behest.

Even if not, we probably at least knew about it before hand, and almost certainly figured it out immediately afterwards. It’s absurd to imagine the pipeline got blown and we went ‘huh, wonder who did that? Well, shit happens…’

No…we were implicated. At some stage.

> On closer inspection, however, the system will give lawmakers access to intimate information broken down by…

However?

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.

“Reporter Seymour Hersh on “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline”: Exclusive TV Interview”