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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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/r/stupidpol is abuzz with news of both NordStream pipelines being damaged, in what mainstream sources openly speculate to be an attack:

Massive drop in pressure – Nord Stream 2 pipeline apparently partially destroyed

There was an incident on the Russian Baltic Sea pipeline, as confirmed by the Danish shipping authority. The operator Gascade speaks of a sharp drop in pressure in the tube. An accident is considered unlikely. The timing of the accident suggests sabotage.

Stupidpol being stupidpol, blames it all on the west (either the US or UK)... but it feels like the kind of have a point? Russian performance in the war doesn't exactly scream competence, so it would be surprising, if they pulled something like this off, so deep in NATOs turf.

When we were discussing the coming winter, some people were saying "the European gas storage is filled up, it'll be fine", but isn't the gas storage more like a buffer, designed to take advantage of the decreased demand over the summer, to even out the increased demand in winter, working on the assumption that there will still be a constant supply of gas coming in? Does this change the calculus at all?

Is nobody considering that a third party could have sabotaged it?

This is a major escalation in a war which which likely benefit China and India.

This is the most likely explanation.

Both sides of a pipeline want it operating, by definition, or else it would not be operating.

More complex "teaching the other side a lesson about the pipeline possibly closing off" explanations require big assumptions on who exactly is supposed to be learning what, since again both sides want it operating.

My gut instinct is a non-state-actor LARPING or thinking "I AM HELPING."

Is it really larping when you've reached the point of blowing up major international infrastructure? I'd think the difference between larping a war-brazened saboteur and actually being one probably includes actual acts of destruction that require at least some skill and planning.

I think LARPing jumped the shark as a term that means anything when I've heard it applied to both armies actively in the field, and to people on Reddit. Both kind of fail the definition.

People have been sharing around instructions to sabotage pipelines and there's quite a few would be ecoterrorists sharpening their knives these days, so some random group of people is worth considering as an option, but usually you'd get some claim of responsibility in that case.

I think it's worth considering that if this were a Russian operation (likeliness unknown), it could look something like an intentional Crossing the Rubicon moment. It would serve as both an outward proclamation that Putin wishes to punish Germany and other parts of the EU for opposing him, but also burns easy pathways for anyone toppling the regime to return to the previous status quo. I'm reminded of how Cortés burned his ships on reaching Mexico to prevent mutiny.

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