A year of lying about Nord Stream

LEFT: Polish journalist and MEP Radek Sikorski – hubbie to the Russophobe American writer, Anne Applebaum – tweets his gratitude to Uncle Sam.

ABOVE: why Europeans shiver, and German businesses go under or relocate to the USA, as energy costs soar.

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You could be forgiven for overlooking the significance of yesterday, September 26. I too would have overlooked it but for a feed from Seymour Hersh dropping into my mailbox. Remember him? More than half a century ago he broke the story of the slaughter of every man, woman and child in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.

While my own views of the Ukraine war differ from his, I have great respect for the investigative skills and tenacity of Mr Hersh. Both have been applied to that event, one year and a day ago, when the USA on Joe Biden’s watch committed an act of enormous environmental vandalism, and the single biggest act of economic warfare since WW2, near the south west elbow of the Baltic, close to the Danish island of Bornholm.

Corporate media were muted in their coverage yesterday, though the Guardian did dust off and recycle this absurd canard:

Investigations are continuing, but officials quoted in the US and German press have said the evidence points towards a Ukrainian-backed group, or a pro-Ukrainian group operating without the knowledge of the leadership in Kyiv.

Absurd because:

1. No such group had the capability to pull off this crime. Politicians and media had initially fingered Russia, which did have the capability but not – to anyone with a mental age of ten or over – the motive. Are we to suppose a Kremlin too full of dimwits to turn off the taps? The dropping of such drivel goes to show, I guess, that even for media as debased as ours on matters vital to power, some fit-ups are too preposterous to stick. Give them their dues, though – they tried!
2. The Biden Administration had a double motive: to inflict an economic blow on Russia while weakening America’s biggest trade competitor, Europe.
3. Both the US President and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria – “fuck the EU” – Nuland had told the world that ‘we will stop Nord Stream’.
4. On matters so important, neither “officials quoted” nor a “US and German press” doing the quoting can be trusted. Those officials would be military intelligence mouthpieces or shills for ‘think tanks‘ with the same agendas. Not since Vietnam have corporate media shown the slightest capacity for challenging such ‘official’ war pronouncements.
5. There is little evidence to back the Guardian claim that “investigations are continuing”. Unless, of course, its Oslo based reporter has in mind Seymour Hersh and likeminded sceptics. But somehow I doubt that she does …

Meanwhile Jan Oberg – also writing yesterday, at The Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research – had this to say:

… this unique destruction disappeared quickly from the media and has not been mentioned in, say, statements from NATO, G7, G20 or EU. The world has also not heard from any formal investigation, and an investigation could hardly take more than a year given that it would, in principle, be fast, hardworking and well-financed and given the urgency of the matter …

“Exactly, my dear Watson” … the reason behind all this, of course, is that Nord Stream was blown up by the US – and not by, say, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or al-Quaeda.”

That both Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland announced that the US would blow it up, that very few countries would be technically able to do it, and that the most solid analyses unanimously point in that direction makes this an overwhelmingly solid interpretation. At least until some official investigation puts another name on the perpetrator by empirically solid evidence.

Fortunately for those interested in the truth, Jan Oberg has collated a selection of pieces – two of them by Seymour Hersh – on this landmark event in a US-led war on Russia which may yet go nuclear.

UK’s The Telegraph yesterday, September 26 2023

Introducing those pieces, Jan begins:

The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines had neither a photogenic character nor a death toll comparable with 9/11, 2001. It also did not provoke a German or Russian response in the vicinity of the totally out-of-proportion US Global War on Terror that has cost millions of innocent lives. That said, one could hypothesise that, as a destructive event and over time, this gigantic infrastructure destruction will have consequences for the international order as comprehensive as 9/11.

Be this as it may, we’ve all noticed how this unique destruction disappeared very quickly from the media and has also not been mentioned in, say, statements from NATO, G7, G 20 or the EU. The world has also not heard anything from any formal investigation, and an investigation could hardly take more than a year given that it would, in principle at least, be fast, hardworking and well-financed and given the urgency of the matter.

Close-by countries like Sweden and Denmark have strong reasons to remain silent about US policies and activities.

Neither has the constructed, bizarre US “intelligence” hypothesis about a handful of pro-Ukrainian/Russian individuals in a small boat being the perpetrators been promoted for long. It was spread by a couple of US and German newspapers in the week right after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ media black-outed weekend trip to visit, for a few hours, President Biden in The White House.

Read on …