What is the probability for Russia and what is it for US?
Putin can spare a few but the oligarch bodies are really piling up.
I hate trying to assign probability to something like this because it’s not a random event. We’re not talking about randomness here, we’re talking about incomplete information. I think the Russians didn’t do it, and I’d be shocked if it turns out they did. Hersh’s article didn’t move the needle for me at all on the question of did Russia do it, by the way, because I was already sure they didn’t. Not because of any evidence, but because they didn’t benefit in any way from the bombing. They were harmed. It removed leverage they had over Germany.
But then the need to obfuscate the location of this class of vessel(s) presupposes the existence of the Hersh story accusing them of being the bomb-placers. I wouldn’t have even considered Norwegian involvement without the Hersh story. If it had not been written, or even if it had not mentioned what class of ship allegedly placed the explosives, transponder spoofing would serve no purpose. There were a whole stack of NATO ships in the vicinity, the only reason this one is relevant is that Hersh mentioned it.
But then maybe US intelligence fed him incorrect information in a “limited hangout” so that he would accuse that ship of placing the bomb so that their agents in the OSINT community could debunk it with blurry satellite images! HOW DEEP DOES THE RABBIT HOLE GO?
Edit: Like you’re assuming that the mission planning included the conversation “what if a journalist gets so much information about this operation that they know exactly which Norwegian warship planted the explosives, yet so little evidence that their expose will be foiled if we spoof the transponder”.
The US could have done it AND Hersh could be 100 percent full of shit
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Yeah so a wide range seems appropriate. And you should not be shocked if it was the Russians. You don’t know they or some faction didn’t benefit.
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The only reason to spoof the transponder is if the ship would have had to hang out above the explosion site for a long time. Hersh doesn’t allege the ship did this, Alexander assumes it would have had to. But if they did have to then they’d want to spoof the transponder, because the exercise would have been an obvious cover for doing the sabotage and hanging out above the sabotage would be suspicious.
Like how is this even remotely complicated? If the warship doing the sabotage had a transponder, they wouldn’t want the public transponder data to show it hanging out above the sabotage site. So if the operation required that to have happened, they would have planned to spoof the transponder.
Could have been one of those spontaneous combustion things like on x files or whatever.
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omgheadmitit.gif
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Huh, really? As sure as you were that Russia wasn’t going to invade Ukraine? Something else you were sure they weren’t going to benefit from?
Did he ever drum for Spinal Tap?
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Someday I might have to sit down and actually watch that movie. Not today though.
It’s in my personal top 5, a must watch.
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Of course I could be wrong but I don’t see how they benefited in any way. For the Russians to have done this it’d have to be Putin deciding this, right? Jake Sullivan, Vicky Nuland, Joe Biden, Ted Cruz, and every other neocon on the planet were vocally ecstatic about the pipeline sabotage. Their interests are directly opposed to Putin’s interests, right?
One interesting thing that I think Sy brought up in one of his interviews is that none of these guys, the deciders and doers, have been asked about Sy’s story or directly denied involvement. Is that true? I’m not sure. Pretty wild if true, crack White House press corps we’ve got here. I could be mixing up what Sy said with one of his interviewers though. The only people I’ve seen deny it are spokesmen like John Kirby and Ned Price, aka paid liars/propagandists.
Check out all the dead Russian oil and gas oligarchs. Maybe they weren’t team players. Read the Nord Stream wiki:
Gazprom’s decisions make perfect sense if the company is assumed to be run for the benefit of its contractors, not for commercial profit. The Power of Siberia, Nord Stream 2 and Turkish Stream are all deeply value-destructive projects that will eat up almost half of Gazprom’s investments over the next five years. They are commonly perceived as being foisted on the company by the government pursuing a geopolitical agenda. A more important characteristic that they share, however, is the ability to employ a closely knit group of suppliers in Russia, with little outside supervision.
— Sberbank CIB, Russian Oil and Gas - Tickling Giants, 2018
The pipelines aren’t necessarily in every Russian oligarch’s interest. I don’t have Hersh’s imagination but even I could come up with a conspiracy theory out of that. I mean surely the guys that laid the pipe would have the capacity to destroy it. And also plant a news story. The US wasn’t even their first choice for scapegoat. In September it was the UK.
I don’t know who did it but my money, if I had any, would still be on Russians.
So a rogue oligarch faction? I don’t know, maybe. Seems like fancy play syndrome. We just throwing cui bono out the window? The US neocon foreign policy elite says they wanted nordstream out of commission, that it was going to happen one way or another, then it happened, and those same neocons celebrated it. They had the means, motive and opportunity.
Saw the original release at a drive in. Also have a dvd that has a bonus track of the movie with Guest, McKean, and Shearer doing commentary in character. Definitely top 5.