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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Did the US blow up the Nord Stream Pipeline?

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

That was linked to me and it appeals to my sense of - conspiracy? warmongering? ... But I also don't really understand if it could be true.

What's the consensus here about the pipeline?

(I don't really even care if we discuss the article, it's long and I don't know who the person is - just interested in all kinds of thoughts)

While the pipeline was (is?) reachable by divers, I still favor a blockage/poor maintenance as the most likely theory, followed by sabotage from within NordStream's operation.

Thing is that the two pipelines blew something like 18 hours apart that strikes me as a long time for a group of divers and their support vessel to sit around waiting to be caught. If one were planning to destroy the pipes by planting bombs on the exterior, I would expect those bombs to be on a timer to allow the divers to already be long gone when shit goes down, and I would expect timers would be set to detonate simultaneously so as to minimize the risk of a bomb being discovered before it had gone off.

You should read it -- it's detailed and seems plausible. (IANANS)

The source claims that a timed explosion was the original plan, but concerns were raised that having stuff blowing up 2 days after a mine-sweeping exercise would ruin plausible deniablity -- so a remote trigger set off by a specific signature generated by a sono-buoy that the Norwegians could drop whenever they wanted during the course of normal operations was deployed.

I don't think the blockage theory can explain N.S. II blowing up -- wasn't it non-operational at the time? (not to mention that simultaneous events in two pipelines which have not exploded in the past seems a bit unlikely)

Off topic, but can you expand IANANS? Google says "I Am Not A Native Speaker", but that doesn't make sense in context I don't think (though if that is what you mean, congratulations on your impeccable English). Maybe "I Am Not A National Securitist"? Or "I Am Not A Nord Stream"?

I have not been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, do not have over 300 confirmed kills, am not trained in gorilla warfare and I'm definitely not the top sniper in the entire US armed forces.

Ah. That'd do it. Thanks.