dumb, dumb, dumb and dumber......

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has slammed Washington's alleged involvement in bombing the Nord Stream gas lines as one of the “dumbest” decisions taken in years, warning that the move will have “horrific”consequences for Europeans and further undercut the already “supremely useless” NATO alliance.

Speaking to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman for an interview on Wednesday, Hersh outlined his recent report on the destruction of the pipelines last year, which found that the US played a key role in planting and detonating explosives on sections of the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea.

“I think the consequences politically for us are enormous,” he said, adding that the long-term effects for Europe would be “horrific” and “cut into the notion that they can depend totally on America, even in a crisis.”

I think that this has probably been, in the view of some of the people who did it, one of the dumbest things the American government has done in years – and we’ve had four years of Trump.

Hersh argued that US officials have long seen cheap energy alternatives for Europe as a “threat,”noting that Washington has “always wanted to isolate Russia” to prevent oil and gas sales to the EU. He said the Joe Biden administration feared Europe would “walk away” from the conflict in Ukraine and felt the need to pressure allies to stay the course.

“What [Biden] did is he said, ‘I’m in a big war with Ukraine. It’s not looking good. I want to be sure I get German and West European support,’” Hersh continued. He added that the president did not want Berlin to reverse course and reopen the Nord Stream lines, which had been under sanctions, “so he took away that option,” effectively telling his European partners “You’re second rate.”

“I know people that are paying five times as much now for electricity. People are paying three or four times more for gas. There’s not enough of it. It’s very expensive,” he said, arguing that Europe is now forced to obtain energy from other sources than Russia, including the United States itself.

“And I think it’s going to undercut NATO, which I always found to be supremely useless,” he added.

While the Biden administration has vocally denied Hersh’s report, with State Department spokesperson Ned Price calling it “utter and complete nonsense,” the journalist has stuck by his unnamed source, insisting the information relayed to him was accurate. He told Democracy Now! that he would continue to report on the issue in the future, saying there are “still things I need to write about.”

https://www.rt.com/news/571617-nord-stream-seymour-hersh/

exclusive......

US investigative journalist Sy Hersh opened a Pandora’s Box of incriminating evidence that purportedly directly links the Biden administration to September’s sabotage attacks against the Nord Stream gas pipeline network. On Wednesday, Russia called a special Security Council meeting to discuss the new information.

An email forwarded to Sputnik by a US journalist from an individual identifying themselves as a servicemember that took part in last summer’s NATO BALTOPS 22 exercises in waters near the site of the Nord Stream pipeline explosions provides new information corroborating last week's bombshell Substack report on the incident by Seymour Hersh.

According to the email, on June 15, a helicopter delivered a group of conspicuous-looking American divers in civilian clothes to the exercise area. “My first thought was that they looked like a group of terrorists,” the source wrote, pointing to the individuals’ odd haircuts, mustaches and beards, and the absence of any military ID markers.

The divers were said to have been greeted by a vice admiral of the US Sixth Fleet and a group of individuals in plain clothes. The source couldn’t hear the details of their conversation due to the noise generated by the helicopter’s propeller blades. The commander of the Sixth Fleet during the BALTOPS 22 drills was Vice Admiral Eugene Black. Black was succeeded by Vice Admiral Thomas Ishee in September. The source did not clarify whether Black was the vice admiral the men spoke to.

The source in the email took note of the men’s MK29 military-issue rebreather systems, which use an oxygen-helium mixture for deep-sea diving. He also noticed that the men had other high-grade, expensive equipment not in use by ordinary Navy units, and that they brought small boxes with them, contents unknown.

The men identified themselves as participants in "de-mining exercises," which were to involve the sailing of a small rubber dinghy to a specified destination, find, and defuse anti-ship mines. However, the divers didn’t seem equipped for this, the source indicated.

After their conversation with the US commander, the men did not go to the exercise area, but instead “left their dinghy in their rebreathers and disappeared under the water for over six hours. There is no equipment that allows divers to stay underwater for six hours. The latest military equipment [allows] three or four hours maximum,” the source noted in the email.

Upon their return, the divers were no longer carrying their mystery boxes. They were picked up by a helicopter and flown out of the area, according to the source.

The email was received and verified by John Dougan, a US citizen journalist in Russia. Dougan told Sputnik that the author of the email had sent him details verifying he was who he said he was, including a photo of himself from the BALTOPS 22 drill, a military ID, and passport photo. Dougan couldn’t share this information in the interest of protecting the source's identity. The email was sent from an apparent burner account, Dougan said.

Speaking to Russian media on Thursday, Dougan said he believed many people in the US were beginning to “wake up” and understand what is happening in Ukraine, and the US’ role in “essentially starting World War III.” He noted that the legacy media in the West has done its best to block the dissemination of truthful information about the Ukraine crisis, but added that people have been able to find alternative, independent sources of information to figure out what’s really going on.

Dougan said that the only ones benefiting from the Ukraine conflict are US defense and energy companies, who are making billions of dollars on weapons contracts and the sale of US gas to Europe.

New Info Corroborates Hersh Reporting

The information shared with Sputnik verifies last week’s Substack story by veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, which detailed how US Navy divers operating under the cover of the BALTOPS 22 drills managed to plant remotely triggered C4 explosives in waters off the Danish island of Bornholm that detonated and destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines in September.

According to Hersh’s information, the divers operated from aboard a Norwegian Alta-class minesweeper, with C4 later triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane. The explosives-to-buoy communications system was said to have used highly advanced signal processing technology.

US media met Hersh’s reporting with a mix of feigned obliviousness and attempts to smear him as a “discredited journalist.” US officials categorically denied the information in his report, and any US involvement in the Nord Stream terror attack.

Moscow has vowed not to let the bombshell revelations be swept under the rug, while China has called for an impartial investigation into the incident. Russia has scheduled a United Nations Security Council meeting on the issue for February 22.

On Thursday, US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith reiterated that the US rejects all allegations of involvement in the Nord Stream attack, said she does not know who was behind the blasts, and that Washington would like to see the investigations continue.

https://sputniknews.com/20230216/new-corroborating-evidence-emerges-showing-us-trace-behind-nord-stream-blasts-1107514989.html

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By Gus Leonisky at 17 Feb 2023 - 6:18pm
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accomplice?.....

Martin Jay February 15

If the German leader knew all along about Biden’s bombing plot, then he is complicit in treachery to the German people, Martin Jay writes.

If the German leader knew all along about Biden’s bombing plot, then he is complicit in not only an act of international terrorism, but also treachery on a grand scale to the German people who have been led to war in Ukraine under entirely false pretenses.

The entire Seymour Hersh scandal produces more questions than answers as this legend in the newsroom who has been upsetting the western elites since the mid-sixties has really rocked the boat this time with this latest exposes of how the US destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines.

But one question raises its ugly head and refuses to go away.

If we are to assume that Germany’s cavernous chancellor was aware of Biden’s intentions as early as January 2022, when Scholz was in the White House, what does that say about Germany’s role or indeed that of the entire EU? Are these two power houses now both slaves to a new world order which expects Europe to acquiesce to its demands, no matter how extreme they may be in the name of serving Uncle Sam?

Biden was planning all along for his navy to plant bombs on the pipelines which would immediately destroy Germany’s economy which was having a boom on cheap gas; he also knew that it would be much easier to draw Germany into a war with Ukraine once the country no longer had a dependency on Russian gas; and he also believed, wrongly, that the operation would shake the Russian economy to its core.

Two out of three guess right, isn’t bad for a half-wit like Biden who remarkably isn’t, it would seem, as dumb as he looks. But if we are to assume that this international act of terrorism wasn’t part of a plan which Scholz was informed about beforehand, then what should the EU and Berlin now do to respond to it?

The answer perhaps is already there in the German press which has decided to place Hersh’s article buried in the high brow foreign pages attributing it to “Russian allegations”. It’s a similar story with the Norwegian press (as Norway played a considerable role in the operation and is exploiting the situation to its own gains with gas sales) which dismisses it as “nonsense”, following the pattern set out by western media who have invested too much now in the hilarious fake news ruse that Russia was behind it all along. Even Reuters cannot resist to put the boot into Hersh, referring to his epic work of investigative journalism as a “blog”.

Scholz might have been told in the White House about the scheme. He may well have not liked what he heard, but what was he going to do? Three weeks later the war started and Germany was very quick to respond with its neutral position and the news that it only intended to send military helmets to the Ukrainian army as support, which erupted with a baptism of mockery around Europe as Germany’s new leader hesitated, spluttered and gasped on the world stage. What a sorry excuse for a leader. A sort of male German version of Theresa May with the competence and agility of Liz Truss.

If Scholz did know what was coming in the summer, in June when NATO carried out its military manoeuvres, then this might explain why he opted to go in the opposite direction from his initial position and throw the switch completely on Germany’s rearmament. But if he did know that Biden was planning the pipeline attack, then he must have also realised that the US president was luring Putin into a trap in letting the war take place in the first place, when there was a very simple option to stop it simply by agreeing to “look at” the notion of Ukraine not becoming a NATO member. That’s all it would have taken.

But Biden was determined to let the war start and then chose the right moment to blow up the pipelines and cash in a massive pay day – a triple whammie which is really the heart of what the war is really about: making Germany and the EU more servile to Washington’s geopolitical objectives, cashing in on US gas deals (sold at four times the Russian rate) and giving a huge boost to the US military industrial complex all in one shot.

Germany’s role is unprecedented in all this. If Scholz knew the bigger picture, then he has acted as a traitor to his own countrymen who are now paying a huge price in how subservient Germany has become to the US, even down to many companies relocating to America simply to survive.

This single act of Biden’s though, which can be believed by many humble Americans as being patriotic as it created jobs and helped US businesses – is even more worrying on an EU level. Yes, the EU project is young and inexperienced, but if the truth behind the cardboard facades in the institutions in Brussels is that “America calls the shots, EU follows” then the EU project is doomed even before Josep Borrell’s garden has had a chance to blossom. The Americans have got the garden they want in Europe, the gardener to perform his tasks to their orders and now the ultimate confirmation that there is no limit to what the strongest EU country will do for them to cling on to the dying tentacles of a dream where Washington was the sole super power in the unipolar world.

Nostalgia plays a huge role in this relationship which cannot be described as master and concubine, but more like King Kong and pathetic blond shrieking doll. No wonder Scholz and von der Leyen are looking more and more dazed and confused these days. They are wondering how long this secret can remain intact. Is that why the EU just announced even more sanctions against Russia Today, or rather its employees? An act so extraordinarily desperate that it leaves you wondering if these EU apparatchiks have any sense of how the public sees them, as the latest fad feels like armed robbers getting away with a hundred million dollar bank heist only to return to the bank the next day to picks up a handful of five dollar bills which got left on the car park floor in the commotion. Desperation. Scholz particularly looks distressed like a man tortured. What will he tell his grand children when the truth comes out Germany is a sex slave to Washington’s gimp in chief and it will be generations of Germans who will have to pay for that repugnant relationship?

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/02/15/did-scholz-know-all-along-about-the-biden-plan-to-bomb-nord-stream/

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