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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35341 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?

Two bits of contextual info that makes me believe it is America/NATO: (1) George Friedman of Stratfor fame has often said that America’s primary geopolitical interest in the whole of Western Europe is to prevent the cozying up of Germany and Russia; with cuddling season approaching, making it impossible for Germany to utilize Russian gas could be a way to prevent the idea of reducing pressure against Russia re: Ukraine. (2) Neocons at National Review are subtly admitting to the likelihood of American involvement.

Neocons at National Review are subtly admitting

So subtle you do not need it to be in the article to say it exists.

These are both true:

  • Jim Geraghty is clearly happy that this happened.

  • Jim Geraghty is American.

But that is different from him admitting (even "subtly") that the Americans did it.

Let’s say my neighbor Devonshire, who I do not like, buys a car. I say, “Nice New Car You’ve Got There. Shame If Something Happened to It,” with a smug look on my face. This will be construed as a threat given the strength of the connotation behind the expression “shame if something happened to it”.

If I go on to say, “looks like it drives well. Of course, if something happened to make it unusable, that’s a different story. Hey, what is felon friend doing these days? Where are those gangsters when we really need them?” Really any person with a working grasp of English would now construe this as a threat.

Now let’s say your car actually wound up being destroyed. And I “Just about anyone could have destroyed your car, but whoever it was, they wanted to make sure your car would not work for a long time”.

This reads like an admission to me, given the previous threat as well as the author reiterating the previous threat in the article.

The only way this analogy makes sense is if you think Jim Geraghty blew up the pipeline, or arranged for it to happen.

I already said that

  • Jim Geraghty is clearly happy that this happened.

  • Jim Geraghty is American.

but without some as-yet-unrevealed capacity for Jim Geraghty to execute pipeline sabotage, any reading of it as "an admission" reveals something about your paranoia about your outgroup, and nothing about reality.

Jim Geraghty is not causally involved, obviously. His role here is as an analyst and commentator at best. Still, his analysis makes sense to me.

Right, Jim is saying that someone blew it up, that there was lots of incentive for people to blow it up, and is pleased as punch about it blowing up.

But the other poster seemed convinced that this was an "admission" of USG involvement.

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