Biden & Scholz huddle in White House, with no aides present, dwelt on the sabotage of Nord Stream, Washington, March 3, 2023
Next Monday, an uneasy anniversary arrives. It will be 20 years since the invasion of Iraq by the United States. Britain was a pillar of the US-led ‘coalition of the willing.’ The Guardian columnist John Harris wrote on Sunday that it was “the greatest political and humanitarian disaster the UK had been involved in since the second world war… when the supposed political centre ground suddenly lurched somewhere reckless and catastrophic.”
Scheduled for Mar 10, 2023 Live at 2pm EST
Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss the controlled leaks aiming to deflect blame for the Nordstream attacks onto “pro-Ukrainian” elements, the failed attempt by Republican populists and Democratic progressives to withdraw US troops from Syria, and the dramatic congressional Twitter files hearing.
Has hot air been adding fuel to the fire as rumors regarding the Ukraine are used to aid Washington as it changes tack in global affairs?
Preamble
Whilst the world was focused on happenings in the Ukraine last year, September saw both of the Nord Stream pipelines systems supplying liquified natural gas to Germany being destroyed. After the multitude of headlines and accusations, the last week has seen a barrage of allegations placing the blame at Kiev’s door. This article will look at the pipeline and its importance to Germany, the new accusations concerning the Ukraine and how this may all fit together. Continue reading →
The latest New York Times report on the Nord Stream pipeline bombing is something else. According to NYT’s anonymous US government sources, the pipelines were blown up by a “pro-Ukrainian group” who had no known connections to any military or intelligence agency, but somehow had all the information, skills, diving equipment and military explosives necessary to carry out such an attack.
Ray McGovern addresses the U.N. Security Council at 3 pm EST debate on the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines in light of Sy Hersh’s reporting.
The Security Council meeting called by Russia after Seymour Hersh’s report pointed to the U.S. and Norway as the culprits, can be seen live at 3 pm on the following link:
The U.N. livestream on YouTube can followed below. The schedule on the YouTube page does not include the 3 pm meeting on the Nord Stream sabotage. Check this stream at 3 pm to see if the U.N. is streaming it. Otherwise use the above link.
UPDATE: We have blurred some imagery about 30 seconds into the video in response to a content warning from YouTube that severely limited the reach of this interview. What you see now is an edited version. For the uncensored version of this interview that aired on our show, visit https://democracynow.org.
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When the Nord Stream pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany were damaged last September, U.S. officials were quick to suggest Russia had bombed its own pipelines. But according to a new report by the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, it was the U.S. Navy that carried out the sabotage, with help from Norway. Citing a source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning,” Hersh writes on his Substack blog that planning for the mission began in December of 2021. The White House and the Norwegian government have since denied the claims. Hersh joins us for an in-depth interview to discuss his report and says the U.S. decision to bomb the pipelines was meant to lock allies into support for Ukraine at a time when some were wavering. “The fear was Europe would walk away from the war,” he says. Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his reporting on the My Lai massacre. His reporting on CIA spying on antiwar activists during the Vietnam War era helped lead to the formation of the Church Committee, which led to major reforms of the intelligence community, and in 2004, he exposed the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.
Famous American journalist Seymour Hersh exposes the sabotage of Nord Stream gas pipelines by the US and Norway in Sept 2022
The meeting of the defence ministers of the Pentagon’s Ukraine Defence Contact Group in the “Ramstein” format in Brussels on January 14 failed to make any major announcement on the supply of offensive weapons to Kiev.
Seymour Hersh is a legendary investigative reported who has revealed dozens of crimes the U.S. government committed at home and abroad.
In his latest piece Hersh describes the destruction of the North Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea by U.S. government forces. The destruction released an enormous amount of methane, a global warming gas. It destroyed Germany’s gas lifeline with Russia and thereby heavily damaged Germany’s industry. It was ecological and economic terrorism by the U.S. government targeted at an ‘ally’.
Last week, Alex Nunns, author of ‘The Candidate – Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path To Power’ and former Corbyn speechwriter, described the current assault on democracy within the Labour Party:
‘What’s happening in the Labour Party is new. The Labour right, having had the shock of their lives in 2015, are now intent on eradicating the left entirely. This isn’t how their predecessors thought. It’s a new departure in Labour history that’ll have long term consequences.’
Despite the economically disastrous impact the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage will have on Europe, Western media still holds its tongue about it.
Ceremony of opening of gasoline Nord Stream. Among others Angela Merkel and Dmitry Medvedev, 2011. Kremlin.ru, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost
Absolutely remarkable, Western media’s determination to ignore the recent Baltic Sea detonations, which knocked out the Nord Stream I and II gas pipelines. A major piece of Europe’s energy infrastructure, the joint property of Germany and Russia, has been destroyed. Any chance that Russian gas transmissions westward will be resumed is off the table. The Continent is now sent on a desperate search for new sources of natural gas, inevitably at higher prices. I cannot think of many stories that are more significant.
The sitting US Secretary of State very recently declared in an official press conference that the NS1 and NS2 pipeline sabotage will have “no impact on European energy resilience”…
We should assume that Secretary Antony Blinken was referring to the timely supply of US LNG substitute equivalent to pipeline nat-gas now theoretically available (not) which would save the European day. With a clear smile, Blinken considered it to be a “tremendous opportunity” for the US to help Europe wean off of Russian energy… with the USA ready to be “the leading supplier (of dirty fracked seaborne LNG) to Europe”. And all of it despite the great ripoff “mondepreise” moon-high prices charged by US vendors according to the German Minister of Economics Robert Habeck who is now sorrowfully surprised by the very market dynamics that he actively contributed to establish. Continue reading →
While the international press treats the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines as a news item, we analyze it as an act of war against Germany and the European Union. Indeed, the three gas supply routes to Western Europe have been cut off simultaneously, while at the same time a new gas pipeline has been opened to Poland.
The three leaks that were discovered on Monday at the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines connecting Russia with Germany — one after another within hours of each other in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark — were caused by blasts. Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde tweeted that the blasts “are consequences of detonations, probably caused by sabotage. We continue to collect information and do not rule out any cause, actor or motive.”
US plan was always to stop EU buying Russia’s gas
2014
Rice:”You want to change the structure of energy dependence. You want to depend more on the North America energy platform … to have pipelines that don’t go through Ukraine & Russia” https://youtube.com/watch?v=aF0uYIjaTNE
That war, hidden behind the U.S. created Ukraine crisis, is designed to destroy Europe’s manufacturing advantage compared to the U.S. It is more likely though to strengthen the economic position of China and other Asian economies.
Next winter Germany, and other European countries, will have an energy crisis. This crisis, we are told, is caused by the proxy war between the U.S. and Russia in Europe. They say that Russia has cut us off from its natural gas deliveries.
Gazprom’s Nord Stream gas pipeline, Lubmin, Germany
The unthinkable is happening for the second time in five months: Russian gas giant Gazprom writes to German gas companies announcing force majeure effective from June 14, exonerating it from any compensation for shortfalls since then.
The formal US response to Russia’s demands for security guarantee was delivered to the foreign ministry in Moscow on Wednesday. Moscow’s worst fears came true: Washington simply ducked without addressing the main Russian concerns — NATO’s expansion, rollback of NATO deployments to pre-1997 level, etc. —and instead offered to discuss confidence-building measures.
“We need long-term legally binding guarantees even if we know they cannot be trusted, as the U.S. frequently withdraws from treaties that become uninteresting to them. But it’s something, not just verbal assurances.”
And that’s how Russia-U.S. relations come to the definitive crunch – after an interminable series of polite red alerts coming from Moscow.