On 26 September 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines bringing Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea were attacked in a series of clandestine bombings. According to Seymour Hersh, the sabotage was planned by the Biden administration in late 2021, and carried out by U.S. Navy divers in collaboration with Norway
so it's true. the world really is being run by 12-yr.-old boys.
to be sure, i think 12-yr.old boys are great, generally. but i wouldn't put them in charge of anything more complicated than cleaning up their rooms, and i wouldn't have much hope for the success of that mission.
It really is, the Left (and much of the Right) of all current American generations stopped mentally maturing between ages 12-15.
We have sclerotic Boomer Vampires, whose rotting brains can't move past 1991, in almost all leadership positions. They'll continue to do what they've done since that year, strip mine the country so they can finance their gated communities, cruises, third-world "charitAY", plastic surgery, BMWs, nursing homes and other forms of socio-economic Witchcraft to preserve their husk-like existence at the expense of the young.
Gen-X backbenchers whose entire political philosophy comes from beating themselves off to the West-Wing and treat War like reality TV or an NFL season. They came of age during peak American triumphalism at the end of the Cold War and are the TurboAmerica true-believers. Inflation, crime, poverty, mass-childlessness be damned, America's going to beat the entire world at once because... liberalism and Russians are big meannies. Seriously, I'll try to explain to some of my relatives things like Teutoburg Forest, the Battle of Adrianople, or Manzikert eroding the previously "invincible" Roman Empires but they will literally get a blank-eyed look and cannot register information that is not given in the form of a news broadcast, TV-show reference, or a football score.
Millennial middle-managers whose formative years were spent LARPing at model UN conferences where the GAE-est team always received first place. In addition to beating themselves off to their own genius at Model UN conferences, run by wine-aunts and pillsburry doughboys, they were also enthusiastic band-wagonners of Kony 2012 and think the peak of human storytelling is "13 Reasons Why." This is where creatures like AOC come from and I know many other local mini-AOC's.
And finally we have the deracinated, dead-eyed, Zoomer TikToker who is a mere conduit for silicon-valley algorithm programming. I honestly don't think the Zoomer lefty has rationalization capacity, their brains are so fried by cradle-to-grave smartphone addiction that they'll jump on any popular trend to get the sweet dopamine rush of likes in their notification inbox. Most of the young white female Palestinian "supporters" see this whole situation as no different then a viral dance trend on TikTok, and will change their views with the algorithm.
Perhaps chattel slavery wasn't the tremendous evil everyone thinks it was. At least when a chunk of your population is in chains, you can control how many people have excessive leisure time. Idle hands are the devil's playthings, and all that.
Given that the purpose of the news media is to disseminate official propaganda, we must conclude that the western governments don't see any value in reporting this, at least for the moment. We are still supposed to be thinking the diaper-filler in chief in the White House didn't have anything to do with the initial sabotage. How I miss that one President we had who was not a warmonger... what was his name again? The one who didn't start any wars, and on whose watch Russia didn't invade any other country.
if it is a reprisal, I guess that drawing too much attention to it is the last thing Western media would want to do. raises too many awkward questions, and Russia/China did them the favour of striking back in a mostly harmless and very bizarre way, with sufficient plausible deniability to allow them not to make an issue out of it.
Which is precisely why the Russians did it in a less than clandestine manner. If NATO makes a big deal of it, it simply invites a lot more questions which the Russians would be happy to discuss in public.
> Analysts also have a hard time understanding how a container ship could have unknowingly dropped a 6-tonne anchor[.]
So, I'm not a boat guy, but having been a tractor trailer driver, and having seen some other drivers continue blithely onwards with some truly astounding stuff attached to or dangling off or missing altogether from their rigs (dual wheel assembly from a trailer axle, anyone?) I do wonder if it's not impossible.
And then the putting in somewhere, and then ignoring communications while running to a port they can get home from without traversing the scene of the crime again before anyone can grab them... does kinda sound like it might be "oh, we done fucked up, let's get out of here before we get arrested!"
Which isn't to say that it definitely wasn't intentional, but I can see a case for incompetence rather than malice.
Well I am a boat guy. At least, I spent 7 months of my Navy enlistment in Deck Department aboard an aircraft carrier. I was involved in anchoring twice, and I can assure you, it's quite the procedure. And as you can imagine, there are multiple operational safeguards for working with a 6-ton piece of metal.
Fair enough. I'll grant that trucks, even the big ones, are relatively massless compared to a really big ship. Still, I did wonder at times how folks could be so unaware of what was happening with their rig.
"Driver, are you aware that your truck is *on fire?*"
Interesting. To be fair, aircraft carriers and cargo ships are not perfectly analogous. In one important regard, the former are much more heavily manned, redundantly so---meaning more lookouts, more mechanics, more hull technicians, etc. Whereas cargo ships, by comparison, operate with a skeleton crew. I was struck by this line in that piece:
"Two days later, as the tug and barge neared [the cargo ship] Indiana Harbor near Chicago, a crew member noticed the anchor chain was rubbing against the barge’s hull and realized the anchor had been inadvertently released. When the anchor was pulled back on board, it was missing two flukes and the anchor crown, which have yet to be located."
In other words, this ship was dragging its anchor around for two days and a guy in a tugboat noticed it before the crew did.
So it's not impossible the recent incident in the Baltic was accidental. But given, based on that Norwegian study, that this was a less than 1% chance, and given where it happened, and given that Finland recently joined NATO, I can only quote Joe Biden at his most skeptical: "Come on, man!"
P.S. "Anchor Strike" would be a great name for a band.
While the Navy may have those safeguards, I wonder if a poorly paid Chinese crew on their way to an icy Russian port would follow the safeguards very closely.
I have no problem believing they accidentally did this out of stupidity and/or irresponsibility. There is such a glaring lack of self-responsibility and competence these days, which always results in things like this happening. Note also the evidence of self-responsibility as demonstrated by their refusal to communicate and their running away up north.
Which to my way of thinking, seems like an unlikely tactic for Russia to use since Russia would like nothing better than to have it's name cleared from the Nordstream attack and taking responsibility for this might lead to the truth of the Nordstream destruction coming to light? Maybe they aren't worried about getting caught if it was an act of revenge... but the west just doesn't want to deal with that?
Russia is only implicated by the US and its puppies in the west. Everyone else knows whodunnit, including those in the west. Russia’s name needs no clearing.
Trump did an incredible job keeping the US out of major new wars, but he also bombed Syria after a chemical weapons hoax and assassinated an Iranian general.
He probably would have had American jets bombing Gaza civilians after the 40 decapitated babies hoax.
Trump was far from perfect, but not as far as all the others we've had recently. I liked Reagan a lot too, but he had his blunders too. Iran-Contra, Grenada, amnesty for illegals (that was based on a promise from the Dems in Congress to close the border after the existing illegals were given amnesty, and they never did). That was predictable, and as he himself said, trust, but verify.
the iranians play a long game and they were gonna avenge that. that should have been anticipated and planned for. dick waving only accomplishes so much and usually just short-term satisfaction.
the iranian regime is always trying to kill people they've designated as enemies. so do we, of course. it is important to keep one's whiskrs calibrated to catch all sorts of vibrations and plan ahead accordingly..
Trump also sent lethal weapons to Ukraine and ignored Ukraine Nazis bombing the Donbas. He might not have started any new wars, but he let the military relax rules of engagement and more civilians died. Plus he sent troops into Syria to steal their oil. Trump isn’t the angel people think he is. Not to mention his role in operation warp speed and closing down the country. How do people give him a pass for that?
Lol.. I agree with you on his bombing Gaza cuz of the babies. Remember Ivana getting him involved after seeing dead ducks.
I don't know how people overlook that. Also in all of his recent interviews he is dead silent about it. But the the worst is that he attacks desantis relentlessly who is a big critic of the scamdemic screw up... That just shows his real position about it.
Turning Soleimani into pico de gallo was Trump’s piece de resistance. With a precision cutting drone that only killed him and his bodyguard on international territory at Baghdad Airport. The number of US troop deaths he was responsible was incredibly high and many disfigurements with the countless IED’s they planted everywhere the Americans were. Done so well, even the Iranians didn’t know how to respond.
Newnew Shipping was set up to operate Newnew Polar Bear (IMO 9313204). The ship was built in 2005, operated under UK and Cypriot flags before the current Hong Kong company took control (and re-named it yet again) some time after 2019.
The broader point: EU27 and surrounding states have modest LNG storage and built the entire gas strategy on mainly being supplied by Russia. Every time this gets disrupted immense profits surge across the region due to opportunists hiking LNG prices, since the gas has to be shipped. Globally LNG has fallen in price - only in the EU27 and surrounding states has it increased.
I suspect not a country but specific companies / traders. After all, once the gas is disrupted, what then? Well, new supply systems, much higher prices for gas due to the 'emergency' and more. As they say in London, 'a nice little earner'.
This is the Russia that whacks people in Europe with slow acting nerve poisons and polonium. The Russia that calmly shoots down passenger jets over both Russia and Ukraine, and assassinates major opposition politicians in the middle of Moscow.
I think more likely than not. Belief is perhaps a bit strong a word given that nothing in the world of international spookery is what it seems.
Nice to make your online acquaintance, I was a big fan of your early commentary during the idiotic lockdown era. I have yet to escape from clinical research...
I have no idea what to make of this. It feels like the writers from Bojack Horseman got a hold of current events and decided to script a reprisal to the Nordstream attacks.
yes this true, although at that point the story was just that the pipe had been ruptured. comprehensive details took days to emerge and the basic outline was only confirmed this tuesday by finnish investigators.
The Finnish authorities tracked two vessels - Newnew Polar Bear was one, and the other was a nuclear powered Russia vessel (the only one of 4 left in service). I suspect the delay was due to verification of the damage site and the ship tracking data.
Finland were requested to pay for gas supplied by Russia in Rubles, so when they refused, the gas supply from Russia was cut in mid-May 2023. Finland had already organised a gassification ship (smaller than the two units working for Germany) and so were in a position to quickly move to LNG supplied by ships. This sealed the Finland / Russia situation in the summer.
The connector supplied Estonia from Finland. Although the gas volume is much smaller than Nordstream 1 or 2, this serves to pressure the ship based supply system which does not have a huge amount of spare capacity. The culprits remain in the shadows.
I am American, and one could say, "far right" politically. Frankly, I'm more and more embarrassed by the imbeciles who run this country. Our blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline -- I'm sure we were the leader of the NATO pack -- was an act of war against Russia, and a destructive act against Germany. Why weren't the Germans sizzling mad? I'm amazed we got away with it.
So this seems like a minor retaliatory act to me. And how stupid can the Finns be, joining NATO? Has the West gone collectively mad?
Saw this online: "This entire "presidency" is like being tied to a chair and watching a toddler play with a pistol." I think that pistol is about to go off.
I’m a recovering lefty, and we might well agree the bombing of the Nordstream pipelines was the most reckless act committed by any American president in history.
China and Russia saying: "Yeah we might have wrecked that cable of yours. So? Watcha gonna do, huh? Gonna try it on, huh? Do it, and see what happens to all that nice production you moved to Asia since the 1990s."
They know full well that not a single EU nation excepting Poland and Romania and Hungary can even handle their imported millions and millions of moslems of various origins, should they decide to act in concert.
They got the West by the ballsack and the throat; this is just a reminder who's the bitch and who's the butch.
lots of baffling things happening lately. what strikes me most, is how little attention was paid to this incident. It could very well be a pay back action. Who knows anymore what is going on in this world gone mad.
Not all wars are shooting wars. Warfare without guns is still warfare. Any country that joins NATO during the Russia/Ukraine war can expect retaliation. It is the nature of the war beast.
I realized as I finished reading the article, that the original nordstream pipeline situation could truly be a case of "everyone in the know, knows what happened, but nobody is willing to say it - there will just be backroom deals and acts of sabotage/revenge."
Looks deliberate, and it looks like Ru wanted to be caught, with the message being "look at all this nice critical infrastructure you have here, would be a shame if something happened to it"
I'm amazed they haven't retaliated over nordstream, and that the Drozhba and soyuz pipelines still operate I.e the ones that pass through Ukraine, AND THE RUSSIANS STILL PAY THEM TRANSIT FEES
Oligarchs don't want to lose money. That's why some call it Not-War. Private interests overweighing national interests. So much for Putin's dictatorial iron rule over Russia.
I find it baffling that on 7-8.10 there was a heavy storm and high winds, which nobody bothers to mention. My first guess was that one of the ferries constantly sailing between Helsinki and Tallinn did it. One of those ferries had to turn back because of heavy weather, unable to dock in Tallinn. To me the obvious explanation is that the chinese ship was dragging anchor to steady itself in the storm. And if I were the captain and realized the damage, I'd forget all foreign languages and claim I did not notice anything, it must have been the faeries. I mean the damages are expensive, what can you do? Turn yourself in to authorities and get jailed? Maybe I am naive, but in sailing, weather does make a difference, the sea is not a motorway.
apparently container ships don’t drag anchors to steady themselves in storms. at first there was speculation that a ship might have dropped anchor near the balticconnector and been pushed by the heavy storm winds across it, but that wouldn’t explain the very long trench (made under power) and it also wouldn’t explain the damage to the telecommunications cables many kilometres away.
It's an odd story on every level. I've never heard of a surface ship dragging anchor on purpose, especially for several kilometers. Or of continuing under power after knowing you've dropped the hook, even by accident. Strange.
The scary thing - there are very important data transmission cables across the sea bed as well as other services right around the world. The USA and UK (probably more) have just finished re-fitting off shore rig support ships to assist in detection of sub-sea cable and pipeline 'security'.
It's a whole new world.
Will anyone ever formally admit to causing Nordstream's damage?
"What is happening to European Baltic gas pipelines?"
------------
FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY
well. nothing is perfect.
so it's true. the world really is being run by 12-yr.-old boys.
to be sure, i think 12-yr.old boys are great, generally. but i wouldn't put them in charge of anything more complicated than cleaning up their rooms, and i wouldn't have much hope for the success of that mission.
It really is, the Left (and much of the Right) of all current American generations stopped mentally maturing between ages 12-15.
We have sclerotic Boomer Vampires, whose rotting brains can't move past 1991, in almost all leadership positions. They'll continue to do what they've done since that year, strip mine the country so they can finance their gated communities, cruises, third-world "charitAY", plastic surgery, BMWs, nursing homes and other forms of socio-economic Witchcraft to preserve their husk-like existence at the expense of the young.
Gen-X backbenchers whose entire political philosophy comes from beating themselves off to the West-Wing and treat War like reality TV or an NFL season. They came of age during peak American triumphalism at the end of the Cold War and are the TurboAmerica true-believers. Inflation, crime, poverty, mass-childlessness be damned, America's going to beat the entire world at once because... liberalism and Russians are big meannies. Seriously, I'll try to explain to some of my relatives things like Teutoburg Forest, the Battle of Adrianople, or Manzikert eroding the previously "invincible" Roman Empires but they will literally get a blank-eyed look and cannot register information that is not given in the form of a news broadcast, TV-show reference, or a football score.
Millennial middle-managers whose formative years were spent LARPing at model UN conferences where the GAE-est team always received first place. In addition to beating themselves off to their own genius at Model UN conferences, run by wine-aunts and pillsburry doughboys, they were also enthusiastic band-wagonners of Kony 2012 and think the peak of human storytelling is "13 Reasons Why." This is where creatures like AOC come from and I know many other local mini-AOC's.
And finally we have the deracinated, dead-eyed, Zoomer TikToker who is a mere conduit for silicon-valley algorithm programming. I honestly don't think the Zoomer lefty has rationalization capacity, their brains are so fried by cradle-to-grave smartphone addiction that they'll jump on any popular trend to get the sweet dopamine rush of likes in their notification inbox. Most of the young white female Palestinian "supporters" see this whole situation as no different then a viral dance trend on TikTok, and will change their views with the algorithm.
this is the cycle of every civilization. the minute we get a bit of leisure time the idiocies begin.
Hottest of hot takes incoming:
Perhaps chattel slavery wasn't the tremendous evil everyone thinks it was. At least when a chunk of your population is in chains, you can control how many people have excessive leisure time. Idle hands are the devil's playthings, and all that.
Given that the purpose of the news media is to disseminate official propaganda, we must conclude that the western governments don't see any value in reporting this, at least for the moment. We are still supposed to be thinking the diaper-filler in chief in the White House didn't have anything to do with the initial sabotage. How I miss that one President we had who was not a warmonger... what was his name again? The one who didn't start any wars, and on whose watch Russia didn't invade any other country.
if it is a reprisal, I guess that drawing too much attention to it is the last thing Western media would want to do. raises too many awkward questions, and Russia/China did them the favour of striking back in a mostly harmless and very bizarre way, with sufficient plausible deniability to allow them not to make an issue out of it.
Which is precisely why the Russians did it in a less than clandestine manner. If NATO makes a big deal of it, it simply invites a lot more questions which the Russians would be happy to discuss in public.
> Analysts also have a hard time understanding how a container ship could have unknowingly dropped a 6-tonne anchor[.]
So, I'm not a boat guy, but having been a tractor trailer driver, and having seen some other drivers continue blithely onwards with some truly astounding stuff attached to or dangling off or missing altogether from their rigs (dual wheel assembly from a trailer axle, anyone?) I do wonder if it's not impossible.
And then the putting in somewhere, and then ignoring communications while running to a port they can get home from without traversing the scene of the crime again before anyone can grab them... does kinda sound like it might be "oh, we done fucked up, let's get out of here before we get arrested!"
Which isn't to say that it definitely wasn't intentional, but I can see a case for incompetence rather than malice.
Well I am a boat guy. At least, I spent 7 months of my Navy enlistment in Deck Department aboard an aircraft carrier. I was involved in anchoring twice, and I can assure you, it's quite the procedure. And as you can imagine, there are multiple operational safeguards for working with a 6-ton piece of metal.
This was intentional.
Fair enough. I'll grant that trucks, even the big ones, are relatively massless compared to a really big ship. Still, I did wonder at times how folks could be so unaware of what was happening with their rig.
"Driver, are you aware that your truck is *on fire?*"
@Luke, I'm replying to you since you seem to know what you're talking about and I (certainly) don't. This 2019 article suggests that accidental anchor drops are rare but that they DO happen. The article references "A 2017 study by a Norwegian maritime and oil and gas risk analysis group estimated that globally there were seven to 10 anchor losses per 1,000 ships between 2007 and 2015." https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/07/08/anchor-strike-biggest-risk-line-5-few-incidents-great-lakes/1616215001/
Interesting. To be fair, aircraft carriers and cargo ships are not perfectly analogous. In one important regard, the former are much more heavily manned, redundantly so---meaning more lookouts, more mechanics, more hull technicians, etc. Whereas cargo ships, by comparison, operate with a skeleton crew. I was struck by this line in that piece:
"Two days later, as the tug and barge neared [the cargo ship] Indiana Harbor near Chicago, a crew member noticed the anchor chain was rubbing against the barge’s hull and realized the anchor had been inadvertently released. When the anchor was pulled back on board, it was missing two flukes and the anchor crown, which have yet to be located."
In other words, this ship was dragging its anchor around for two days and a guy in a tugboat noticed it before the crew did.
So it's not impossible the recent incident in the Baltic was accidental. But given, based on that Norwegian study, that this was a less than 1% chance, and given where it happened, and given that Finland recently joined NATO, I can only quote Joe Biden at his most skeptical: "Come on, man!"
P.S. "Anchor Strike" would be a great name for a band.
While the Navy may have those safeguards, I wonder if a poorly paid Chinese crew on their way to an icy Russian port would follow the safeguards very closely.
I have no problem believing they accidentally did this out of stupidity and/or irresponsibility. There is such a glaring lack of self-responsibility and competence these days, which always results in things like this happening. Note also the evidence of self-responsibility as demonstrated by their refusal to communicate and their running away up north.
perhaps they hoped to do more damage, but container ships are not really the best machine for that.
Which to my way of thinking, seems like an unlikely tactic for Russia to use since Russia would like nothing better than to have it's name cleared from the Nordstream attack and taking responsibility for this might lead to the truth of the Nordstream destruction coming to light? Maybe they aren't worried about getting caught if it was an act of revenge... but the west just doesn't want to deal with that?
Russia is only implicated by the US and its puppies in the west. Everyone else knows whodunnit, including those in the west. Russia’s name needs no clearing.
Trump did an incredible job keeping the US out of major new wars, but he also bombed Syria after a chemical weapons hoax and assassinated an Iranian general.
He probably would have had American jets bombing Gaza civilians after the 40 decapitated babies hoax.
Trump was far from perfect, but not as far as all the others we've had recently. I liked Reagan a lot too, but he had his blunders too. Iran-Contra, Grenada, amnesty for illegals (that was based on a promise from the Dems in Congress to close the border after the existing illegals were given amnesty, and they never did). That was predictable, and as he himself said, trust, but verify.
Reagan also gave big pharma immunity from lawsuits because their vaccines were harming so many kids.
He killed an Iranian general who was killing American troops. Fair game.
the iranians play a long game and they were gonna avenge that. that should have been anticipated and planned for. dick waving only accomplishes so much and usually just short-term satisfaction.
They don’t need to play a long game- Obama and Biden are on their side! That’s why they both gave billions each time.
And indeed they may, I'm just saying that "Trump assassinated an Iranian General" leaves out rather a bit of context.
the iranian regime is always trying to kill people they've designated as enemies. so do we, of course. it is important to keep one's whiskrs calibrated to catch all sorts of vibrations and plan ahead accordingly..
Where were these supposedly killed troops? On US territory? Or, oh, in a country they invaded?
Murder is evil and all involved will face judgment for it.
The fucker that got gapped wasn't in his home territory either, so...
Trump also sent lethal weapons to Ukraine and ignored Ukraine Nazis bombing the Donbas. He might not have started any new wars, but he let the military relax rules of engagement and more civilians died. Plus he sent troops into Syria to steal their oil. Trump isn’t the angel people think he is. Not to mention his role in operation warp speed and closing down the country. How do people give him a pass for that?
Lol.. I agree with you on his bombing Gaza cuz of the babies. Remember Ivana getting him involved after seeing dead ducks.
I don't know how people overlook that. Also in all of his recent interviews he is dead silent about it. But the the worst is that he attacks desantis relentlessly who is a big critic of the scamdemic screw up... That just shows his real position about it.
Turning Soleimani into pico de gallo was Trump’s piece de resistance. With a precision cutting drone that only killed him and his bodyguard on international territory at Baghdad Airport. The number of US troop deaths he was responsible was incredibly high and many disfigurements with the countless IED’s they planted everywhere the Americans were. Done so well, even the Iranians didn’t know how to respond.
Didn't invasion of Russian embassies in the US happen on his watch, too (which is an equivalent to a foreign invasion in diplomatic terms)?
But he sent all those horribly mean tweets, and at least we aren't suffering that oppression any longer...
LOL the unsettling anxious times of mean tweets!
Newnew Shipping was set up to operate Newnew Polar Bear (IMO 9313204). The ship was built in 2005, operated under UK and Cypriot flags before the current Hong Kong company took control (and re-named it yet again) some time after 2019.
The broader point: EU27 and surrounding states have modest LNG storage and built the entire gas strategy on mainly being supplied by Russia. Every time this gets disrupted immense profits surge across the region due to opportunists hiking LNG prices, since the gas has to be shipped. Globally LNG has fallen in price - only in the EU27 and surrounding states has it increased.
Follow the money.
America.
America is happening to European Baltic gas pipelines?
SADS.
Sneaky American Destruction Syndrome.
You think it was an American false flag?
If the reports are accurate, then the anchor damage is obviously the most likely culprit.
I can't see the Chinese having a particular interest in that pipeline, but who knows.
It also seems a bit clumsy and obvious for it to have been Russia.
My snarky comment is due to the current state of the world and what has been happening for the last few decades.
I consider that nearly anyything is possible regarding Americas approach to other countries.
Especially when it comes to exerting control over everyone elses fuel and finances.
I suspect not a country but specific companies / traders. After all, once the gas is disrupted, what then? Well, new supply systems, much higher prices for gas due to the 'emergency' and more. As they say in London, 'a nice little earner'.
This is the Russia that whacks people in Europe with slow acting nerve poisons and polonium. The Russia that calmly shoots down passenger jets over both Russia and Ukraine, and assassinates major opposition politicians in the middle of Moscow.
Clumsy and obvious is absolutely Russian style.
And yet bizzarely, Russia is currently the sensible grown up, compared to the suicidally incompetent leaders in the West.
A bigot gets some agit-prop in for shits and giggles.
C'mon, Viv! You can't be that simple.
I’m pretty sure the polonium was the Russians!
You don’t really believe that the nerve poisons in Salisbury was the Russians, surely?
Porton Down (Chemical Defence establishment) is just up the road on Salisbury Plain.
All U.K. nerve agent research is done there.
I once worked there.
I think more likely than not. Belief is perhaps a bit strong a word given that nothing in the world of international spookery is what it seems.
Nice to make your online acquaintance, I was a big fan of your early commentary during the idiotic lockdown era. I have yet to escape from clinical research...
I have no idea what to make of this. It feels like the writers from Bojack Horseman got a hold of current events and decided to script a reprisal to the Nordstream attacks.
This is one of the most bizarre stories, honestly baffling it's getting so little coverage.
It happened on Oct. 8. That's why. The world was focused on marauding barbarians' massacre in Israel.
yes this true, although at that point the story was just that the pipe had been ruptured. comprehensive details took days to emerge and the basic outline was only confirmed this tuesday by finnish investigators.
The Finnish authorities tracked two vessels - Newnew Polar Bear was one, and the other was a nuclear powered Russia vessel (the only one of 4 left in service). I suspect the delay was due to verification of the damage site and the ship tracking data.
yes, the Sevmorput, which joined NewNew Polar Bear on its return journey back through the Baltic northwards.
The media is also ignoring the cat 5 hurricane in Acapulco which blew up in hours. You’d think with the climate change scam they would be all over it.
Finland were requested to pay for gas supplied by Russia in Rubles, so when they refused, the gas supply from Russia was cut in mid-May 2023. Finland had already organised a gassification ship (smaller than the two units working for Germany) and so were in a position to quickly move to LNG supplied by ships. This sealed the Finland / Russia situation in the summer.
The connector supplied Estonia from Finland. Although the gas volume is much smaller than Nordstream 1 or 2, this serves to pressure the ship based supply system which does not have a huge amount of spare capacity. The culprits remain in the shadows.
I am American, and one could say, "far right" politically. Frankly, I'm more and more embarrassed by the imbeciles who run this country. Our blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline -- I'm sure we were the leader of the NATO pack -- was an act of war against Russia, and a destructive act against Germany. Why weren't the Germans sizzling mad? I'm amazed we got away with it.
So this seems like a minor retaliatory act to me. And how stupid can the Finns be, joining NATO? Has the West gone collectively mad?
Saw this online: "This entire "presidency" is like being tied to a chair and watching a toddler play with a pistol." I think that pistol is about to go off.
I’m a recovering lefty, and we might well agree the bombing of the Nordstream pipelines was the most reckless act committed by any American president in history.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
NS2 may make top twenty.
T-shirt material.
China and Russia saying: "Yeah we might have wrecked that cable of yours. So? Watcha gonna do, huh? Gonna try it on, huh? Do it, and see what happens to all that nice production you moved to Asia since the 1990s."
They know full well that not a single EU nation excepting Poland and Romania and Hungary can even handle their imported millions and millions of moslems of various origins, should they decide to act in concert.
They got the West by the ballsack and the throat; this is just a reminder who's the bitch and who's the butch.
They haven’t really started doing what they could do. I think it is going to get very ugly indeed before it’s over
An interesting story. Thanks for putting it out.
lots of baffling things happening lately. what strikes me most, is how little attention was paid to this incident. It could very well be a pay back action. Who knows anymore what is going on in this world gone mad.
Not all wars are shooting wars. Warfare without guns is still warfare. Any country that joins NATO during the Russia/Ukraine war can expect retaliation. It is the nature of the war beast.
I realized as I finished reading the article, that the original nordstream pipeline situation could truly be a case of "everyone in the know, knows what happened, but nobody is willing to say it - there will just be backroom deals and acts of sabotage/revenge."
Looks deliberate, and it looks like Ru wanted to be caught, with the message being "look at all this nice critical infrastructure you have here, would be a shame if something happened to it"
I'm amazed they haven't retaliated over nordstream, and that the Drozhba and soyuz pipelines still operate I.e the ones that pass through Ukraine, AND THE RUSSIANS STILL PAY THEM TRANSIT FEES
Oligarchs don't want to lose money. That's why some call it Not-War. Private interests overweighing national interests. So much for Putin's dictatorial iron rule over Russia.
I find it baffling that on 7-8.10 there was a heavy storm and high winds, which nobody bothers to mention. My first guess was that one of the ferries constantly sailing between Helsinki and Tallinn did it. One of those ferries had to turn back because of heavy weather, unable to dock in Tallinn. To me the obvious explanation is that the chinese ship was dragging anchor to steady itself in the storm. And if I were the captain and realized the damage, I'd forget all foreign languages and claim I did not notice anything, it must have been the faeries. I mean the damages are expensive, what can you do? Turn yourself in to authorities and get jailed? Maybe I am naive, but in sailing, weather does make a difference, the sea is not a motorway.
apparently container ships don’t drag anchors to steady themselves in storms. at first there was speculation that a ship might have dropped anchor near the balticconnector and been pushed by the heavy storm winds across it, but that wouldn’t explain the very long trench (made under power) and it also wouldn’t explain the damage to the telecommunications cables many kilometres away.
It's an odd story on every level. I've never heard of a surface ship dragging anchor on purpose, especially for several kilometers. Or of continuing under power after knowing you've dropped the hook, even by accident. Strange.
The scary thing - there are very important data transmission cables across the sea bed as well as other services right around the world. The USA and UK (probably more) have just finished re-fitting off shore rig support ships to assist in detection of sub-sea cable and pipeline 'security'.
It's a whole new world.
Will anyone ever formally admit to causing Nordstream's damage?
No