Seymour Hersh may have the scoop with his anonymous source, but he may also not. He has had some impressive scoops but also some glaringly wrong ones as well. https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden He published and doubled down on a conspiracy theory about the Bin Laden raid.
perhaps you haven't read the whole thread, and the repeated derision towards those who suspected this and raised concerns about it. if true, and as noted by Biden officials in article, it's an act of war against Russia. surely that's worth discussing.
Here we go again. Russia prepares thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles and hundreds of fighter jets for offensive https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/9/7388556/ Since last year:
Yes I would agree that is a certainly interesting find. It certainly could be considered an act of war and an escalation. NOte, economic sanctions though already could already be considered an act of war so I'm not sure what the long term implications of this are to the overall conflict.
I guess it'd be the Berlin Blockade, 1948-49. Building the Berlin Wall in 1961 set a detente. But, they occupied half the country for 50 years. And they also held Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. That's a lot of buffer between Russia and NATO. If Ukraine joins NATO, we'll be able to see the Kremlin from Zelenskyy's house. Remember that time we put missile launchers in Turkey so the USSR countered by trying to put missiles in Cuba and we almost started WWIII? Ukraine is much closer to Moscow than Turkey is. I'm not sure why the article has this scandalous undertone for how it tells the story. Like I'd said when the news of the explosion first broke, it might have been the US that did it and if it was, kudos for us. I wouldn't be ashamed of it at all. If Biden did it, that means Putin knew it all along -- cuz he knows he didn't do it. But it didn't result in an escalation of the war. Sounds like a win.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/spacex-ukrainian-troops-satellite-technology/index.html The president of SpaceX revealed the company has taken active steps to prevent Ukrainian forces from using the critical Starlink satellite technology with Ukrainian drones that are a key component of their fight against Russia. “There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that,” Gwynne Shotwell told reporters on Wednesday, referencing reports on Starlink and drone use. “There are things that we can do, and have done.” …
The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin (yahoo.com) Mia Jankowicz Thu, February 9, 2023 at 8:57 AM CST Once-celebrated journalist Seymour Hersh made unproven claims the US blew up the Nord Stream pipelines. Hersh won a Pulitzer in 1970, but his more recent work has come under sharp criticism. But Russia pounced on his claim, swiftly endorsing it despite there being no current evidence of its truth. ... The central claims of the 5,200-word article appear to be based on a single source, who is described only as having "direct knowledge of the operational planning." Asked by TASS about his source, Hersch refused to reveal their name but said: "It's a person, who, it seems, knows a lot about what's going on." Hersh declined to comment when contacted by Insider.
^^^ why discredited? Maybe because of below. Have some cautions in believing who did what to the pipelines. Seymour Hersh - Wikipedia Seth Rich In a January 2017 recorded telephone conversation about the 2016 death of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, Hersh told former financial adviser Ed Butowsky that he had spoken to a Federal Bureau of Investigation source who confirmed the existence of information on Rich's laptop computer showing he had been in contact with WikiLeaks prior to his death. Although cautioned by Hersh that the information may not be true, Butowsky forwarded the secretly taped discussion to the Rich family setting off a flurry of activity in the media.[85] Hersh later said that he had heard "gossip"[86] and that he was fishing for information.[85]
Its my understanding the economic sanctions was mostly the US cutting Russia off from SWIFT. Putin knew he would be cut off and that is why Russia had been aggressively selling off UST and stacking gold over the last few years. Unless Russia and the United States had some type of treaty that dictated Russia was entitled to use SWIFT or other routing protocols, I wouldn't consider that an act of war. While I am not sure I would consider destroying another country's infrastructure an act of war, it absolutely justifies other countries attacking ours. Its not going to be good if Russia starts flying aircraft into Ukraine. We are a year into this war and its escalating.
You have a bad understanding. Uhh, they did this starting on day 1 of the war. Are you under the impression Russia is not using aircraft in Ukraine??
money quote "There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center's hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America's Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership--the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022."
I admit I don't know exactly the terms of SWIFT but from what it sounds like there is a treaty protocal to it such as with other multilateral institutions like the IMF or WTF. Abrogating a treaty has before been seen as an act of war. Besides that there are other sanctions that the US and other countries have placed on Russia. That would be an act of war then. But yes I can agree the destruction of the Nordstream could be an escalation. Also to note while it technically is infrastructure it's not in the Russia territory. They already have been flying aircraft into Ukraine.
Lol, you may not have noticed but Russia is our enemy with whom we are engaged in a cold war. They try to hurt us and we try to hurt them. The 'how would you like it if they did that to us' logic I used for my kids isn't really applicable here. The less they like it, the happier I am about it. Its a NATO country and also has an air base with a NATO battalion. Latvia is also afraid that Russia will invade them.
