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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35347 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?

Finally, a real conspiracy! Clearly, someone is doing policy with other means here, will we ever know who?

This is an act of war, right? Against whom?

These things usually happen in the shadows and you don't know if something did happen or not or if it was all just an accident, so refreshing to have something where it's totally obvious that that black ops are involved but still unclear who did it. I can't remember the last time something like this even happened. Has it ever happened?

If Russians blew up their own pipeline for whatever reasons (and it would be possible that the explosives have been rigged to the pipeline right at the construction stage for this purpose), I don't think it would qualify as an act of war by itself, considering the explosions happened (just barely) in the international waters. A huge destabilizing factor, certainly.

It probably wasn't Russians.

Looks like Americans, given that their naval assault ship was right on the spot this week.

However, just now Poland and supposedly also Bulgaria have asked all their citizens to leave Russia, so quite possibly it was done by Poles, who have capability. All you need is an unimpressive ROV and some explosives and timers.

As someone not enthusiastic by AI panopticon nonsense or humanity going extinct, I'm liking this new development as it makes it look like the great atomic cleansing is getting more likely. Given a good nuclear war, mankind may even survive the 21st century. Can't get replaced by AI and bots if your tech base is early 20th century.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises against all travel to the Russian Federation due to the war in Ukraine and the recognition of Poland by the Russian Federation authorities as an unfriendly state.

Attention is drawn to the suspension of direct flights between Poland and Russia and the very limited opportunities to travel to/from Poland, the lack of or extremely limited access to funds located in Poland (e.g., the inability to use Polish payment cards), as well as the actions of local services, such as arbitrary detentions, cell phone searches, and the potential impossibility of leaving Russia if one holds dual citizenship.

Due to the significantly reduced size of the Polish diplomatic and consular staff in Russia, the possibility of providing direct consular assistance to Polish citizens is very limited.

In the event of a drastic deterioration of the security situation, border closures or other unforeseen situations, evacuation may be significantly hampered or even impossible.

We recommend following the announcements on the Ministry's website and on the websites of Polish missions in Russia and reporting your stay in the "Odysseus" system.

We recommend Polish citizens remaining on the territory of the Russian Federation to leave its territory by available commercial and private means.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Baltic Pipe is also scheduled to start operating at the start of October, delivering gas from Norway to Poland (via Denmark). So the destruction of Nord Stream doesn't hurt Poland much and puts them into a good position to sell gas to other countries.

However, just now Poland and supposedly also Bulgaria have asked all their citizens to leave Russia, so quite possibly it was done by Poles

I'm not sure I follow the (possible) innuendo here. Are you implying that asking their citizens to leave Russia is not a direct follow-on to Russia's doubling down on their war efforts with more conscription and staging a referendum in the occupied Ukraine?

Why should Russian mobilisation be concerning ? Nothing but the number of military formations in UA is going to change.

Seems more like a reaction to Russians getting pissed. They, like many other countries have a bad habit in crisis situations of grabbing suspicious enemy citizens to use as bargaining chips.

The water at the site is allegedly less than 350 feet deep which would put the pipeline within reach of conventional civilian diving equipment. Now I'm imagining a conversation in a pub frequented by fishermen and oil rig workers somewhere on the Polish coast...

Jan: Hey Wojak, wanna fuck the Germans and Russians over for a change instead of them fucking us?

Wojak: You son of a bitch I'm in!

The water at the site is allegedly less than 350 feet deep which would put the pipeline within reach of conventional civilian diving equipment.

What civilian diving equipment gets you to 350 feet? Do you mean non-military industrial/mining equipment?

What civilian diving equipment gets you to 350 feet?

Most of it in fact. While recreational diving is generally restricted to depths less than 100 feet so as to avoid having to worry about decompression sickness. The maximum practical depth for conventional compressed air diving gear is actually closer to 100 m or 350 feet as that is where nitrogen narcosis tends to set in. That the water in that region appears to be shallower than this threshold suggests that a diver could reach it without the need for specialized equipment / breathing gasses.

350 feet as that is where nitrogen narcosis tends to set in

Alright here's where I'm going with this. I'm a lapsed divemaster so my expertise may be rusty, but IMO a dive to 350 feet is considered specialized technical diving even if normies manage to do it with recreational dive gear and not kill themselves. Lots of recreational divers are simply not cut out for that kind of dive with a task.

Adding a bomb payload to the task and bringing it to that depth and securing it stretches credibility for me a bit. Actually, they did this twice, to NS1 and NS2, yes? Yeah. Hard to fathom.

Not saying it's not possible, but the list of suspects would not be very long.

I would love to read their biography.

(If commercial divers that are used to surveying/mining the area did it, that's believable. In that case I was genuinely curious what that equipment is. I have no experience in that stuff.)

Ukraine had oil rigs and thus also commercial divers. Poland has a navy of sorts, so probably professional divers.

The whole are was being patrolled by NATO helicopters in the days ahead, and extensively surveyed during a recent exercise that also involved 'demining' in the depths.

All these unlikely coincidences.

Though I'm working off the dive medicine classes I took while still in the Navy which were a good 15 - 20 years ago now so I might have it all wrong, but my recollection is that any depth from which you'd have to do a staged ascent to avoid the bends is classified as "technical". I remember 350 feet being considered the maximum "safe" depth for conventional scuba gear due to high concentrations of inert gasses in the blood (relative to oxygen) producing a similar effect to intoxication and in more serious cases hypoxia. I don't think that some random normies pulling this off with recreational gear is all that plausible, but I did find it interesting that it was at least hypothetically possible.

In terms of diving deeper, the sort of specialized equipment we're talking about is at a minimum, a pressurized diving helmet (vs conventional mask and regulator) and breathing gear that'll give you a higher concentration of oxygen than the 20% oxygen 78% nitrogen mix you'd get from regular air.

Poles have no oil rigs and associated industry and probably no divers that skilled outside of military.

Of course, they might have done it. Just yesterday told all their citizens to leave Russia, so who knows.

Yeah, that 350 feet deep point raised an eyebrow to me too. That's not exactly a restricted naval zone either.

Remember the Maine.

The what?

USS Maine sunk in Havana kicking off the Spanish-American War.

The Maine, a US Warship Allegedly sunk by a Spanish mine or torpedo in the lead up to the Spanish American War, but in post war analysis may have been destroyed by accidental detonation of coal dust in the fuel bunker.

The USS Maine.

Remember the Maine.

It's plausible that the Maine sunk by accident. No-one is claiming that this is an accident: it's very clearly black ops.

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