The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has virtually announced that the war in Ukraine can only intensify with no end in sight.
Crew from the LVNS Talivaldis performing mine countermeasures training in the Baltic Sea during during the annual BALTOPS maritime exercise in June 2020. (NATO)
By Diana Johnstone
in Paris
Special to Consortium News
Imperialist wars are waged to conquer lands, peoples, territories. Gangster wars are waged to remove competitors. In gangster wars you issue an obscure warning, then you smash the windows or burn the place down.
Gangster war is what you wage when you already are the boss and won’t let any outsider muscle in on your territory. For the dons in Washington, the territory can be just about everywhere, but its core is occupied Europe.
By an uncanny coincidence, Joe Biden just happens to look like a mafia boss, to talk like a mafia boss, to wear a little lopsided half smile like a mafia boss. Just watch the now famous video:
Pres. Biden: "If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
Reporter: "But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany's control?"
Biden: "I promise you, we will be able to do that." https://t.co/uruQ4F4zM9 pic.twitter.com/4ksDaaU0YC
— ABC News (@ABC) February 7, 2022
Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”
Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”
Able for sure.
It cost billions of dollars to lay the Nord Stream 2 pipeline across the Baltic Sea, from near Saint Petersburg to the port of Greifsfeld in Germany. The idea was to ensure safe natural gas supplies to Germany and other European partners by going around troublesome Ukraine, known for readiness to use its transit rights to siphon off gas for itself or blackmail clients.
Nord Stream 2 area map. (Berria Egunkaria, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Of course, Ukraine was always vehemently hostile to the project. So was the United States. And so were Poland, the three Baltic States, Finland and Sweden, all attentive to what went on in their sea.
The Baltic Sea is a nearly closed body of water, with narrow access to the Atlantic through Danish and Swedish straits. The waters near the Danish island of Bornholm where the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged by massive underwater explosions is under constant military surveillance by these neighbors.
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“It seems completely impossible that a state actor could carry out a major naval operation in the middle of this densely monitored area without being noticed by the countless active and passive sensors of the littoral states; certainly not directly off the island of Bornholm, where Danes, Swedes and Germans have a rendezvous in monitoring the surface and undersea activities,” writes Jens Berger in the excellent German website Nachdenkseiten.
Last June, Berger reports,
“the annual NATO maneuver Baltops took place in the Baltic Sea. Under the command of the U.S. 6th Fleet, 47 warships participated in the exercise this year, including the U.S. fleet force around the helicopter carrier USS Kearsarge. Of particular significance is one particular maneuver conducted by the 6th Fleet’s Task Force 68 — a special unit for explosive ordnance disposal and underwater operations of the U.S. Marines, the very unit that would be the first address for an act of sabotage on an undersea pipeline.”
In June this year this very unit was engaged in a maneuver off the island of Bornholm, operating with unmanned underwater vehicles.
Crew member from the LVNS Talivaldis in the operations room, controlling and tracking the movement of the underwater robot during the BALTOPS maritime exercise in June 2020. (NATO)
Berger considers that a major sabotage operation “could not have been carried out directly under the noses of several littoral states without anyone noticing.” But he adds this clever observation: “if you want to hide something, it is best to do so in public.”
In order to be able to attach explosive devices to a gas pipeline halfway unnoticed, one would need a plausible distraction — a reason for diving near Bornholm without immediately being suspected of committing an act of sabotage. It doesn’t even have to be directly related in time to the attacks. Modern explosive devices can, of course, be detonated remotely. So, who has been conducting such operations in the maritime area in recent weeks? As luck would have it, exactly the same task force around the USS Kearsarge was again in the sea area around Bornholm last week.
In short, during NATO maneuvers, some participant could have laid the explosives, to be blown up at a later chosen moment.
By an odd coincidence, only a few hours after the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2, ceremonies began opening the new Baltic Pipe carrying gas from Norway to Denmark and Poland.
The Political Significance of the Sabotage
A Royal Marine commando briefs Royal Marines, U.S. Marines, Royal Navy personnel and Singaporean observers in the vehicle deck of HMS Ocean (U.K.) during BALTOPS 2016. (NATO)
Due to Western sanctions against Russia, gas was not being delivered through the destroyed pipelines. However, gas inside the pipelines is leaking dangerously. The pipelines remained ready for use whenever an agreement could be reached. And the first, dramatic significance of the sabotage is that henceforth, no agreement can be reached. Nord Stream 2 would have been the key to some sort of settlement between Russia and the Europeans. The sabotage has virtually announced that the war can only intensify with no end in sight.
In Germany, the Czech Republic and some other countries, movements were beginning to grow calling for an end to the sanctions, specifically to solve the energy crisis by putting Nord Stream 2 into operation for the first time. The sabotage has thus invalidated the leading demand of potential peace movements in Germany and Europe.
This act of sabotage is above all a deliberate sabotage of any prospect of a negotiated peace in Europe. The next move from the West has been for NATO governments to call on all their citizens to leave Russia immediately. In preparation of what?
The Russians Did It
In this catastrophic situation, Western mainstream media are all wondering who could be the guilty party, and suspicion automatically fixes on… Russia. Motive? “To raise the price of gas” or “to destabilize Europe” — things that were happening anyway. Any far-fetched notion will do.
European opinion-makers are showing the result of 70 years of Americanization. Especially in Germany, but also in France and elsewhere, for decades the United States has systematically spotted up-and-coming young people, invited them to become “young leaders,” invited them to the United States, indoctrinated them in “our values” and made them feel like members of the great trans-Atlantic family. They are networked into top positions in politics and media. In recent years, great alarm is raised about alleged Russian efforts to exert “influence” in European countries, while Europeans bathe in perpetual American influence: movies, Netflix, pop culture, influence in universities, media, everywhere.
When disaster strikes Europe, it can’t be blamed on America (except for former President Donald Trump, because the American establishment despised and rejected him, so Europeans must do the same). It has to be the bad guy in the movie, Putin.
The fanatically anti-Russian former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorsky couldn’t restrain himself and joyously greeted the massive natural-gas leaks from the destroyed pipeline with a cheerful tweet, “Thank you, USA.” But Poland was certainly also willing, and perhaps even able. So perhaps were some others in NATO-land. But they all prefer to publicly “suspect” Russia.
Officially, so far, no NATO government knows who dunnit. Or maybe they all know. Maybe this is like the famous Agatha Christie mystery on the Orient Express train, where suspicion falls on all the passengers, and are all guilty. And all united in Omerta.
Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her latest book is Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press). The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at [email protected] .
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Speaking of gangsters, one is reminded of former Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps Smedley Butler, who, reminiscing on his countless operations overseas to enforce American order for the benefit of U.S. corporations, wrote: “Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Joe Biden brings a new twist to the genre, as he impersonates a senile gangster don. He is painful to watch, every time.
BRUSSELS, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Gas leaks along Gazprom-led (GAZP.MM) Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines are very likely the result of state action, Swedish energy minister Khashayar Farmanbar said on Friday.
Reporting by Kate Abnett and Philip Blenkinsop
You have reached your article limit
I cannot tell for sure what I missed in the un-earned 50 seconds of reading. I guess nothing about the presence of US Navy in the area in the recent past etc.
I’d like to know what was the damage to living beings? How much of it was Russia able to stop? If Russia could turn off the pipeline with the turn of a valve, how many valves are there? In addition to the horror of living with overlords who resorted to this, what was the damage to the environment and how much was stopped?
Russia has announced that as the gas pressure falls in three of the four pipelines, the infusion of salt water will irreversibly corrode the pipes. (Tagesspiegel, September 28.)
Great article, I was surprised that Pepe Escobar omitted Noland’s and especially Biden’s statement that “We will do that” just like a Mafia don. The US in desperation is source of the pipeline blowup, I do not doubt. NATO, CIA, neocons, are all terrorists. I was surprised to learn that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) who adamantly opposed “vaccine” mandate, is ardently Russophobic and allied with Noland. The US government is broke and truly will stop at nothing to maintain power.
“In recent years, great alarm is raised about alleged Russian efforts to exert “influence” in European countries, while Europeans bathe in perpetual American influence: movies, Netflix, pop culture, influence in universities, media, everywhere.”
If Europeans really, really want to bathe in perpetual American influence they’ll see 45% of their populations living very near or below the poverty line, and witness tens of millions mired in a lifetime of debt bondage due to student loans and healthcare bills. They’ll squander the majority of their monthly incomes on exorbitant housing costs and see some of their brothers and sisters struggling with fentanyl and other drug addictions and dying deaths of despair. They’ll live alienated lives, garaging themselves in the house all day after working 60 hour workweeks, afraid and isolated from fellow citizens. This is what much of America has become.
Another excellent CN article on the conflict. It’s clear that America has always assumed itself as tbe colonisers of Europe after WWII. All the media spin doctors tried to make it look like a friendship but it was (is) the launching pad for “The Geopolitical Pivot of History” as described by UK politician Halford Mckinder in 1904. It was known then the Eurasian wealth was the ultimate prize and Europe is the staging ground for the imperialist venture. The players have changed a bit (US vs UK as leader) but the ambitions are still the same. Conquest, subjugation, steal the national wealth.
Very interesting points. Thanks Mr. Boyles.
Hard to argue with your list of life attributes of many Americans. Curious if you have ever lived in Europe. Europe has plenty of problems of their own. The old age of the buildings and cities is one thing that the U.S. cannot match. European history and cultures are varied, deep and interesting. The large number of languages spoken is a frequent reminder that other people around you, have and are entitled to, their own different opinions. Europe has much lower salaries than the US, albeit with longer vacation periods. Most people have very little money and do not invest cash but keep it in a bank out of fear of losing it. Banks in some cases pay negative rates of interest for the privilege of having a place to keep cash. Merkel’s immigration policy, like Biden’s has been a disaster. Biden has lately been tormenting voters with open borders. Merkel had been waving in all comers in for the past several years. Many cities with a long tradition of safety saw the environment change overnight. Where it was safe to be out all night long, there is suddenly a risk of being mugged or attacked on the street. It is a mix of immigrants as well as criminal gangs from other parts of Europe that have taken over the streets. Russian mafia presence in Berlin. On top of that, Europe is dealing with 10%+ inflation with a devalued Euro and Pound. Fuel shortages are coming in Winter and all of this sacrifice to persist in a Ukraine proxy war.
We’re now at an incredibly tense and dangerous moment in world history.
The Washington-militarist empire has just upped the stakes dramatically with a monstrous and wildly ill-conceived attack on one of Europe’s major energy supply channels. It’s basically a declaration of war for Germany.
One of the reasons (by no means the only) Washington began waging this deadly proxy war against sovereign Russia was to de-link Euro business relations from Russia, especially Germany. The last thing the Washington imperialists want to see is robust Eurasian economic integration that sees Wall St and U.S. based multinationals playing a smaller role.
Essentially no commercial infrastructure anywhere in the world is safe from sabotage after what the crazed, desperate and craven gangsters just did to the Nord Stream pipelines.
At some point people will begin to ask why this war is permitted to continue. A major problem with finding a settlement is the complete abdication of leadership by Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a guy who can always be counted on to make things worse. Everyone seems to know and accept that Biden brings nothing in the way of leadership. But what of Queen Von der Leyen and the leaders of France, Germany and the U.K? They have collectively done nothing but feed the beast. VDL telling all Europeans to suck it up for solidarity. In a proxy war. Only after Europe tires of the deaths and economic hardships will people ask themselves why a senseless and destructive war cannot be negotiated to an end. All wars end in negotiations. The sooner the better. Meanwhile Mr. Magoo has stumbled into a gloves-off bombing escalation. The gas wasn’t flowing anyway. A huge, reckless risk was taken while nothing of value was gained. It seems only a way of burning the bridges on the lone escape route. Even if he didn’t do it, he acted like he did. What a dunce. Why would anything be off limits now? Assassinations, abductions, hostages. What’s the end game in these provocations of war? All the world has to expect that the guy in the top job has no clue.
In 1931 officers of the Japanese imperial army blew up the railroad at Mukden, and used that as a pretext to take over Manchuria.
Everybody knew they did it, but they got away with it anyway. Imperialists get away with things like that.
Yes, of course, the idea is to get Europe to buy US-derived LNG since there’s supposedly a “surplus” here….I note the observation that the methane released by this insane act of blowing up the pipeline may have sealed our fate as a species. Capitalism is killing us, but people don’t seem ready for cooperation and honest trading.
People here, readers and fans of Diana Johnstone, would like to solve this “what can we do instead?” problem but too many people do not seem ready for cooperative, honest trading or much else other than their hand-held electronic devices and using the “right” pronoun for those who are about that. Sad, indeed.
Glad I was born when I was; lived through the Golden Years, 60’s activist plus all the decades until now, and it’s all coming undone.
Thanks, Diana, brilliant, as usual..
Sadly Nancy, what is coming “undone” was never actually done. We had our dreams, our dream-time. We slowed them down for a while, we gave them pause after great effort that finally saw the actual “Great Silent Majority” come to terms with what America (USA) was all about in practice.
But much more poisonous and deeper seeds had been sown not only at home, but especially Europe in the aftermath of WW II. The powers that be were and are propelled by a vision made manifest via their sources of infinite capital and principles of morality much, much different than those we common folk share. Post-1960s they were all over it, the Powell Memorandum a striking example of the resilience of the hydra/octopus Board of Directors of this civilizational enterprise. You know, the Owners.
Jimmy Carter was an illusion, it did not take long at all to get back on track with Reagan, Bush, and then the ultimate in perfidious treachery, the Clintons. Presented to the remains of the 1960s as vindication for our idealism if not self-forgiveness for allowing Reagan-Bush to reclaim the throne.
But we were deluded all along, the Owners do not miss a trick. They plan and they possess—literally—cause and effect. Bush 2, Obama, the brief blip of aberration in Trump (whatever he was and is,) now we’re back on track, a centuries-old world made by man. Or perhaps Satan is more appropriate in the larger scheme of things. It is the Order. Of kings, and of the vanquished. Of cause and effect.
Give up? Nein! Nay! No!
An old mountain climbing adage when impossibility is contemplated is my own internal clarion call: “Up. Up. Always Up!”
I cannot give enough thanks to Diana Johnstone for her ministrations of truth to and for us all. She is a balm for the soul. And a healer nonpareil. The truth hurts and there must be more of it if the patient is to survive.
Nancy Oden,
perhaps if i were an eleventy-dimensional chess fan, i would say this driving down of the living standards of Europe and the UK/US “five Eyes” empire is part of the plan to force the world to live within its ecological limits.
guess who benefits from all of these downstream effects? China. and our masters here in US/UK empire are quickly being trained to live in the pods, eat the bugs and obey the social media reports about us. the pronoun nonsense is just a training exercise in shunning and shaming those who refuse to cooperate, until their jobs are cancelled out from under them. which the Empire doesn’t really need for the products of their employ, as they get everything they need sold to them from China made with the metals and energy which Russia will sell to China. China’s superior classes have said openly among themselves “bring it on! we can always make a deal with Wall Street because they still want to get rich.”
oh what a convoluted web we weave, when first we practice rentier capitalism to deceive.
Thank you once again, Ms. Johnstone. You wisely lay the most salient facts here and those facts speak for themselves.
Only the hopelessly brainwashed will ignore them to preserve their belief in the neocon-to-neoliberal narrative that the war and all other evils are the result of a ‘Russian madman’.
There is madness, to be sure; but it is centered in Washington and has spread throughout Washington’s vassal states.
Even self-proclaimed progressive New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern is in line with this. She wants to censor any speech pointing out any of such unacceptable facts that might ‘legitimize’ Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
These are scary times, in which perhaps, even if humanity somehow survives, humane and democratic principles such as freedom of information and speech may be eradicated. That is all the more reason why you and other honest journalists are needed.
¿From where do all of the military pictures emanate?
Diana Johnstone is, simply, reliably brilliant.
She brings in all the relevant background elegantly.
For instance, this: “It cost billions of dollars to lay the Nord Stream 2 pipeline across the Baltic Sea, from near Saint Petersburg to the port of Greifsfeld in Germany. The idea was to ensure safe natural gas supplies to Germany and other European partners by going around troublesome Ukraine, known for readiness to use its transit rights to siphon off gas for itself or blackmail clients. ”
Thank heaven someone besides me (quasi-expert on Gazprom and EU gas politics) is clarifying this oh-so-relevant little fact.
“Poor Ukraine!” No, not “poor Ukraine.” Urkaine was a pack of hyenas fighting among themselves, playing gas games with Russia, cluelessly letting themselves be used by the EU like a cheap whore while thinking they were the EU’s fiancee, and all the time stealing gas from Russia.
Ukraine’s endless internicine BS and corruption that also unavoidably entangled Russia because of THE GAS is THE REASON Nord Stream 2 was conceived by Schroeder and Russia, and was given life as a result of ca. 50-50 investment by Gazprom and a consortium of European players. Whether the latter will now be indemnified by the US, the obvious perpetrator of the pipeline terrorism, is another question.
The US is a terrorist state. Like Israel.
Also, Johnstone’s opening extended “gang” metaphor—well, it is not a metaphor.
It is a searing indictment of the US and of the gangster Biden and his administration.
The gangster’s MO that she describes is, in fact, exactly how gangsters practice terrorism on their competitors and also the hapless victims in communities held captive by any gang or Mob.
As a companion piece to an inside look at how the US-qua-Mob and its secretive British masters operate in Latin America read the excellent piece by Rafael Correa on Julian Assange, also at Consortium News.
It almost seems like Britain is the USA’s “Sicily.”
Being an American citizen has become a source of shame and actual horror at what this country has visibly become now that the Nord Stream endgame is causing a lot of masks to fall.
The best description I’ve read of the American enterprise, thank you! –
“Imperialist wars are waged to conquer lands, peoples, territories. Gangster wars are waged to remove competitors. In gangster wars you issue an obscure warning, then you smash the windows or burn the place down.
Gangster war is what you wage when you already are the boss and won’t let any outsider muscle in on your territory. For the dons in Washington, the territory can be just about everywhere, but its core is occupied Europe.”
After the pipeline explosions, it seems almost certain that there will now be a NATO false flag perhaps using a small tactical nuclear weapon and perhaps taking out the Ukrainian leadership. What then?
I don’t believe it was America responsible for the pipelines but another NATO country heavily involved in the Ukrainian war.
No matter who did it, the US is responsible.
I agree with you about the possibility of a NATO false flag attack using nuclear weapons. The US has recently been banging on about Russia using them in Ukraine, which to my mind means that they (as in NATO) are thinking of using them. Since the US always accuses others of what it is doing or about to do – it’s a fairly reliable way of determining their next actions.
Russia, no doubt, is aware of this possibility, and will be preparing for it. But I don’t see how it can prevent it. The warning to NATO citizens to leave Russia is very ominous – it suggests an attack against Russia directly!
Perhaps that is the US intention, to escalate to such a point that Russia will suddenly back down. It certainly didn’t understand Putin’s recent statement, and warning that he wasn’t bluffing.
But since the collective west has consistently failed to understand Russia’s motives and strategy, it is quite possible that they will pursue a false flag operation and start WWIII.
I just hope that the cooler heads in the Pentagon are able to foil any such attempts to strike.
I have long had a perfect method for predicting US foreign policy. One it would appear that Ms. Johnstone would agree with.
The method is this. Sit down and binge watch your favorite gangster movies. My go-tos are usually stuff like Goodfellas or Casino, or the Godfather trilogy.
Then, when you’ve gotten yourself into a gangster frame of mind. When you are thinking like a gangster. When what the gangsters are doing in these movies seems perfectly reasonable …. at that time, in that state of mind, you will be completely able to predict US foreign policy actions with uncanny accuracy. After all, you can answer the question What Would a Gangster Do?, and that always predicts Uncle Sam perfectly.
Excellent, as always …
The betrayal of the EU citizens by their corrupted ruling class is astonishing to behold. Perhaps a dose of true north cold may be a wake up call …
The key is Germany. Chancellor Scholz and Foreign Minister Baerbock are the latest incarnation of what Raimond Pretzel (pseudonym Sebastian Haffner) observed in 1933 as a young German lawyer in training to become a judge in Berlin. Is there, among German politicians, a lingering lack of what Pretzel called breeding”?
Pretzel wrote:
“The sequence of events is wholly within the natural range of psychology, and it helps to explain the inexplicable. The only thing that is missing is what in animals is called ‘breeding’. This is a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle, and dignity to be drawn on in the hour of trial. It is missing in the Germans.
“As a nation they are soft, unreliable, and without backbone.
“That was shown in March 1933. At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown.
“The result of this millionfold nervous breakdown is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world.”
When Oliver Pretzel’s found his father’s record of events in Berlin, he published it (giving the English translation the title “Defying Hitler). Oliver added at the beginning a short poem that Peter Gan wrote in 1935; following is an English translation:
“But first the most important thing:
What are you doing in these great times?
Great I say; for times see great
to me, when each man, driven
half to death by the era’s hate,
and standing in the place he’s given,
Must willy-nilly contemplate
no less a thing than his own BEING!
A little breath, a second’s wait
May well suffice — you catch my meaning?
The “who done it ” is now officially underway.
Losers: Russia, Holland and Germany. They funded the pipeline and are now out billions of dollars. Plus Germany will now have to purchase American LNG at twice the price of Russian gas. Russia now has no card to play for the EU to remove their sanctions. Winner: the US. Now it has cut the Russian pipelines out of the picture and it will rake in the profits of their supply of LNG to Europe. America has no friends. It sees all countries as potential vassals. When will the European countries recognize this? America is rubbing it in their face.
Many people commenting here, fail to understand there’s no way the US can fill the void of this energy shortage in Europe. What it can do, is make it profitable for E U Industrialists to TRANSFER their manufacturing to the U S. Energy there is Cheaper than in the E U and there’s a readily supply of homeless people willing to work for peanuts. There goes the great E U industrialisation. L.O..L
Eh, mon ami! ’Ow are we Frenchmen to move all of our unique vineyards with their unique soils to the USA in order to make our fine wines? The world cannot do wizout Aloxe-Corton and Mouton-Duvernet! Where are we supposed to make zem? Alabama?
The enormous amount of methane escaping from the sabotaged Nordstream pipelines could very well sink any hope of even marginally mitigating climate disaster. The gangster Uncle Sam could care less. So long as there is potential profit for the ruling class, who cares?
The US screwing over humanity since it’s inception.
MOSCOU, 29 septembre. /TASS/. Les pays membres de l’OTAN ont mené des exercices en juillet à l’aide d’équipements en haute mer près du site de fuites de Nord Streams, a déclaré jeudi la porte-parole du ministère russe des Affaires étrangères, Maria Zakharova, lors d’un point de presse.
“En juillet, il y a eu des exercices de l’OTAN avec l’utilisation d’équipements en haute mer dans la région de l’île de Bornholm”, a-t-elle déclaré.
Zakharova a également souligné que la région regorgeait d’infrastructures de l’OTAN.
Mardi, la société Nord Stream AG a signalé que trois fils des gazoducs offshore Nord Stream 1 et 2 avaient subi lundi des dommages sans précédent. Le porte-parole du Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, a déclaré que Moscou était “profondément préoccupé par la nouvelle” et n’a pas exclu que l’exploitation des pipelines ait pu être perturbée par un acte de sabotage. Des sismologues suédois ont rapporté plus tard que deux explosions avaient été enregistrées lundi le long des pipelines Nord Stream.
La présidente de la Commission européenne, Ursula von der Leyen, a qualifié les incidents de sabotage, soulignant que toute “perturbation délibérée de l’infrastructure énergétique européenne est inacceptable et conduira à la réponse la plus forte possible”. Jeudi, les garde-côtes suédois ont découvert une autre fuite de gaz des pipelines Nord Stream et Nord Stream 2.
I’m so glad to see Diana Johnstone still going strong, she has been one of my favorite writers ever since I read her article “Seeing Yugoslavia Through a Dark Glass” geeze almost 25 years ago now. Thank you Diana for a lifetime of service, standing up to Western power for a lifetime is no small feat.
Copy that!
Have been another of her many fans since reading “Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions” in 2002 (having retired 7 yrs previous from the Cdn military). That started me on my never-ending endeavor to unlearn/ deindoctrinate/ detox and relearn everything I’d been taught from birth.
Thanks ever so much, Diana.
Another timely and astute observation on the questionable “who done it!” pipeline explosion by the sagacious Diana Johnstone.
Unfortunately, Europeans are becoming as willfully ignorant of history and current events as my fellow Americans, and seem to be contented with their subservience to Big Brother, aka “Uncle Sam.”
Whether real or not, this is as good an explanation as any I’ve so far heard and read.
It’s an act of desperation. Good luck! Or maybe so sad.
“In this catastrophic situation, Western mainstream media are all wondering who could be the guilty party, and suspicion automatically fixes on… Russia.”
But there is simply no motive, and it urgently needs to be invented. It is not for nothing that for so many years the image of a bad, cruel Russian devouring Ukrainian babies has been formed. The gas pipeline explosion brought Germany to its knees before America and even before the fascist remnants of the former Ukraine. The accusation of Russia in the explosions is a very big slander, but, unfortunately, similar to the truth, only the TRUTH is not like the truth. The customer is known, but the old schizophrenic, who has appointed himself the “owner” of the planet, will continue to blame everything on Russia. But the main thing in the course of any investigation is not to find yourself.
I always look forward to your articles and would be very interested in where you think this is all heading. I just don’t understand why the entire collective of non Western countries doesn’t just stand up and say No to the US/NATO once and for all.
Because, as Diana Johnstone explained, the US has co-opted European elites, so that their loyalty is to their international peers and not to their country or compatriots. It’s long-term work that requires patience and a long-term vision but nothing sorcerous: just basic human psychology.
I would add that it’s a classic colonial stratety: the grooming of a deracinated, alienated local elite whose loyalties lie with the colonial master instead of their local compatriots. That is how the French and the English ruled their vast empires — indeed they could not have done it otherwise — and now the US is doing it to Europe: the colonizers have been colonized.
Excellent observation. Simple, but, hey, I hadn’t really thought of it like that.
But it makes perfect sense.
One question, though: It sure seems like Britain actually is the godfather to the US mob.
In fact, since Britain was the colonial power par excellence, surely the Brits are instructing disgusting would-be godfathers such as Biden as to how it is done. Of course the Israelis are also master arm twisters, blackmailers, and terrorists.
our two countries have been fused at the hips (literally) since the age of the Robber Barons.
many sent their daughter across to GB to marry and shore up the finances of the bankrupting aristocracy. Many unwillingly and to lifelong unhappiness.
why did the richest and most powerful men in the world of their time need to do that? their daughters could have married anyone or no one.
ever since, our two countries have been in lockstep. even down to the co-presidents of the empire over these last few neoliberal decades–Thatcher/Reagan, Bush/Blair. even their “opposition” party leaders matched (Corbyn/Sanders).
yes, it’s a theory i’ve long held and i have yet to see anything to disprove it. remember that Pet Shop Boys song, “Money”?
they are the brains and we are the brawn. hence also why so much of their culture is imported here. there simply aren’t enough anglo-ancestored white people here to have a such deep instinctual love for james bond or their weird humorists, or fascination with the parasitic “royal” family naturally. that has to be propaganda inculcated. and not without purpose.
thank you for that observation. It sums up exactly what’s happened/is happening in my own country (Scotland).
Excellent analysis, and I am very glad you call them out as gangsters. The US government has operated like an organized crime family for decades. The Corporate Owned News (CON) is a big player in this criminal gang. What everyone should be thinking about is not how to counter the CONs messaging, it is how to get people to distrust and turn away from the CON. They are not a news source, they are mis-infotainment. They mix chatty entertainment with propaganda to keep everyone distracted from what the US Empire is up to. We need to figure out how to get people to stop watching and reading the CON.
You’re correct and I agree.
Superb analysis and commentary.
The US and it’s Baltic allies did it.
My thoughts as well. A joint US/Poland operation.
Question is: Turn about is fair play … will Putin answer at the Baltic Pipeline?
An excellent article Ms. Johnstone. Victoria “The Vile” Nuland also made threats against NS2. How much longer is Russia going to restrain itself in the face of these provocations? When are the Germans going to wake up and realize that the US rulers and the German puppet government are their enemies?
Hope no one blows up the ammonia pipeline from deep within Russia to the Black Sea.
If you believe Russia blew up Nord Stream 1 and 2, I do not know what I can sell you. Simply because, you do not have two nickels to rub together, more-or-less (dare say it here) brain cells. Just look at Germany now, as a perfect example.
I hope the bombing of Nordstream is the end of NATO. At least Germany sees how USA is willing to sacrifice even their NATO allies? since what USA did was cut off German and others from needed energy for winter heating. Although I do not agree with unipolar control of our world not, a convinced of multilateral control or world. Should not each nation, culturally identifying nation in our world have a right to be so? We are back to another King who asked why we could not all get along. The answer is because our country has no “incentive, translate profits should we go in a direction of peace and understanding and what most pelicans no longer practice called diplomacy.
Wise words.
Right. But the sabotage also cuts German industry off from the cheap energy it needed to be competitive on the international market – German quality not being sufficient for that. And in the long run that will leave a lot more people shivering in the dark. Could it be that the German leaders were coming to their senses and listening to the shouts in the street (kept silent by the media) demanding that NS2 be opened?