Did the US, with help from Norway, blow up the Nordstream pipeline? Seymour Hersh seems to think so, thanks to one anonymous source.
This has received a lot of coverage in Europe, but less so here in Canada or the USA.
From the article:
"If Russia invades – that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine – there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2," Biden said during joint a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "We will bring an end to it... I promise you, we'll be able to do it."
Hersh has vehemently defended his reporting:
"I've been doing stories for fifty years and I worked at The New York Times for seven or eight years. I won an awful lot of prizes there for a lot of stories. And I doubt if maybe 5% of my stories had a source named. Most of them were without sources because you can't do this kind of reporting without it."
It makes a certain kind of sense: it hits Russia in the pocket book and peels Germany away from its Russian fossil fuel addiction.
On the other hand, it economically damages Germany, a US ally, and I can't see the Germans being happy about that. It's uncharacteristically reckless for Biden to pull such a stunt; he's been consistently cautious about escalating tensions with Russia.
But who knows? Power politics is a damn dirty business.
Things like this make me side eye the media narrative, and consider Mearsheimer's assertion that the USA orchestrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014. I don't doubt the US helped give advice to dissidents, and even funds to liberal political movements, but a full fledged coup? It's a serious claim that requires serious evidence.
The CIA has pulled stuff like this before.
As with pursuing the Arc of the Covenant, poking the Russian Bear in its den is not something to be undertaken lightly...
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