Coverage of the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines helped Murray realize something important about how the Big Lie works.
LNG site in the Norwegian industrial island of Melkøya, end point of the undersea pipeline for natural gas from the Snøhvit fields in the Barents Sea. (Andreas Rümpel, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk
It is a clear indicator of the disappearance of freedom from our so-called Western democracies that Sy Hersh, arguably the greatest living journalist, cannot get this monumental revelation on the front of The Washington Post or The New York Times, but has to self-publish on the net.
Hersh tells the story of the U.S. destruction of the Nordstream pipelines in forensic detail, giving dates, times, method and military units involved. He also outlines the importance of the Norwegian armed forces working alongside the U.S. Navy in the operation.
One point Sy does not much stress, but it is worth saying more about, is that Norway and the U.S. are of course the two countries that have benefitted financially, to an enormous degree, from blowing up the pipeline.
Not only have both gained huge export surpluses from the jump in gas prices, Norway has directly replaced Russian gas to the tune of some $40 billion per year. From 2023 the United States will appear in that list in second place behind Norway, following the opening in the last two months of two new liquefied natural gas terminals in Germany, built to replace Russian gas with U.S. and Qatari supplies.
So Russia lost out massively financially from the destruction of Nordstream and who benefited? The U.S. and Norway, the two countries who blew up the pipeline.
But of course, this war is nothing to do with money or hydrocarbons and is all about freedom and democracy….
To return to Hersh’s account, particularly interesting are the series of decisions taken to avoid classification of the operation in various ways which would require it to be reported to Congress. In terms of United States history, this ought to be a big deal.
For the executive branch to commit what is an act of war without the approval of the legislature is fundamentally unconstitutional. But that is one of those quaint remnants of democracy that the neoliberal elite consensus can quietly sidestep nowadays.
Hersh sets out the well-known background in compelling detail, including that, from U.S. President Joe Biden down, the Americans effectively announced what they were going to do, openly.
At a Senate hearing, top US diplomat Victoria Nuland celebrated the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing:
"Senator Cruz, like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea." pic.twitter.com/KS5OM4N165
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 27, 2023
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
But what most worries me about the entire story is the unanimous complicity of the mainstream media in ignoring the completely obvious.
The media line, parroted here relentlessly by the BBC and corporate media, was that the Russians had probably themselves blown up the pipeline on which they had expended such great resources and three decades of intense diplomatic activity, and which was to be the key to Russia’s single most valuable source of income for the next 40 years.
This was always quite literally incredible. You would have to be deranged to believe it.
How the Big Lie Works
It actually taught me not just that we truly are in the realm of totalitarianism and the Big Lie, but I learnt something very important about how the Big Lie works.
The secret is not that people genuinely believe an outrageous claim. The secret is that people do genuinely believe that they are in a battle of good against evil, and it is necessary to accept the narrative being promoted, in the interests of fighting evil.
Don’t question, just follow. If you do question, you are promoting evil.
I am sure that is how it works.
State and corporate stenographer journalists are actually intelligent individuals. If they thought about it, they would realise that the narrative that Russia blew up its own pipeline is obvious nonsense.
But they are convinced it is morally wrong to think about it.
Seymour Hersh signing books at the London Review of Books bookshop, April 2016. (David Jones, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Which is why none of them challenged the equally mad claims that Russia was repeatedly shelling its own forces occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. It’s also why none of them challenged the utterly risible official version of the Skripal story.
I previously told the anecdote from when I worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and asked a good friend if he really believed the misinformation on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with which he was involved.
He replied by referring to the video game “Championship Manager” (now renamed “Football Manager”), which we used to play together. He said when he was in the game, it was immersive, he was manager of Liverpool and it fully absorbed him.
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Similarly, when he walked through the FCO gates, the world of the intelligence reports was immersive and Iraq did have these WMDs inside that world. He worked in the “reality” of the FCO. Once he left in the evening, he lived in a different reality, the world of us in the pub.
I know of journalists bright enough to detach their professional output from what they really think, in a similar way. (I once had a conversation along these lines with Jeremy Bowen in Tashkent.)
Most however don’t think like this. They simply think that all right-thinking people support the historic struggle against the evil Russians, so it must be right to read out the propaganda without thinking too much about it.
Those of us critical of the aggressive promotion of war in Europe, are not only barred from all mainstream media and confined to corners of the internet. Even there we are heavily suppressed on social media (which is why Sy Hersh’s article does not have the scores of millions of readers it merits).
We can’t even obtain freedom of assembly.
Two established left-wing venues have cancelled the “No-2-NATO” meeting I am addressing in London on Feb. 25. Conway Hall’s reasons for cancellation included threats to funding and fears for the safety of staff.
We are now reduced to a guerrilla meeting, the Central London venue for which will not be announced until the evening before.
An illustration of the Overton Window, along with political commentator Joshua Treviño’s degrees of acceptance. (Hydrargyrum, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Is this really a democracy, where it is not possible for dissidents to hold a public meeting without secrecy, subterfuge and hiding from supporters of the state?
I do urge you to come along on the day, whatever your views on the subject, to support the right to freedom of speech.
I have a different view from perhaps all of the other speakers, on the legitimacy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which I oppose.
But I also oppose NATO expansion which is an underlying cause of the war, and indeed oppose the existence of NATO itself.
NATO is a war machine that sucks resources from working people to benefit the military industrial complex, and unleashes devastating destruction on the developing states that do not make their natural resources available to Western billionaire elites.
It is also a fundamental node of the propaganda apparatus that manipulates and controls our society, particularly as counter narrative. Dissident thought is now rigorously and systematically excluded.
There is no longer an Overton window of permitted debate. It has narrowed and should be renamed the Overton letterbox.
One of those small difficult ones right down at the bottom of the door. With a very fierce spring, and snarling dogs guarding it.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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I remember the conversation between Harry Truman and his wife after FDR’s death. “The president is dead,” said Harry. “What are we going to do?” Bess said, “Harry, what are YOU going to do.” She nailed my feelings exactly. Much talk and comment while helpful and in the main supportive of the article is like chewing cuds of discontent. What has to be done? Clearly Congress should act. Will they? More importantly, what are WE in a democracy going to do?
I have a somewhat different theory about it. This, “just don’t think about it” may be how indoctrinated functionaries of the empire, like journalists, seal their brains against it. With the ordinary public, I think it is just plain fear. Fear of being attacked and ostracized.
Whatever, the solution for this situation is always the same. Forget about talking into the wind. Prepare to overthrow these people. Wait until they fail. Create something new. Know what you are trying to create.
I think the notion that the “reality” of your place of work is one thing and the “reality” that is your honest evaluation of facts is another shows the deep, profound level of corruption that is deep within the professional classes in the West. I’ve seen it up close. Lying is to politics, the so-called “democracies” that dribbling is to basketball and journalists are (I’ve had social contact with them) politicians if they are successful. They lie because they have children to feed, clothe, house, educate and women to impress. They “believe” that up is down and the Moon is made of green cheese because to look in the mirror and call who they see a liar is too painful so they have to, psychologically, accept the lie as truth. But the reality is that money talks and bullshit walks and the mind is able to distort reality once lies become a habit–which for nearly every single mainstream journalist is a fact. This obsession with lying has spread throughout the professions at least in the USA. Generally speaking, lying is the result of living in a corrupt society and Americans do not like seeing themselves as corrupt so they lie and share the blame for the extreme violence the US has favored domestically and internationally.
The biggest lie: all wars are about power, but power is an illusion – it can never be held forever. And all empires eventually face the conflict they are fighting to avert, their own destruction.
About the only thing that the Biden administration has truly excelled at is corruption, which actually dates back to Joe-the-fixer’s “service” as the American Veep and the Ukrainian Viceroy in the Obomber administration. If I were still young and just starting a family, I would expect my kids to start learning about the worst examples of political corruption, far surpassing those nefarious acts of the Grant and Harding administrations by the time my hypothetical offspring started to study American history in high school circa 2040, give or take a decade. This assumes that our system still entertains periodic cycles of reform along with those of graft and corruption.
There are a couple of things about the sabatoge of the four Nord Stream pipelines that I don’t understand. It may be that I have just overlooked something in the many news reports about the sabatoge as well as Sy Hersh’s report.
First of all, from what I have read including Sy Hersh’s report, I believe it is generally accepted by all parties, including the US government, that it was an act of sabatoge caused by the preplacement and detanation of explosive charges on the two Nord Stream 1 pipelines. Explosive charges were also placed on the 2 Nord Stream 2 pipelines , but ony one of them exploded. The after the fact investigation that determined it was an act of sabotage, and that just 3 of the 4 pipelines were damaged was carried out by Sweden and Denmark. It is not clear to me what role the US played, if any, in the onsite investigation.
Initially there was a lot of spedulation that Russia was responsible for the sabatoge. As far as I know that theory has been generally debunked and not even the US government is endorsing that accuzation any longer. It seems to me that if the explosive charge and sophisticated triggering device that failed to detonate on one of the Nord Stream 2 pipelines was recoverd by the Swedes and Danes who conducted the on site, after the fact, investigation, it should have been relatively easy to trace its origin back to the country that made it. However, even if there are legitimate reasons for why that wasn’t done, has anyone taken the time to at least make a listing of the relatively few countries in the world with the technical knowhow and and spophisticated intelligence and special operations services to carry out such a complicated and difficult covert task without dtection. Russia, Israel and China might have the ability to do it. But none of them have anything like a logical motive for doing it. The US also has the resources necessary to do it and it also meets the “Cui bono?” insinuation. Can anyone think of any other country that has the necessary resources as well as a logical motive to do it? If you can I would like to know what country or countries that might be.
The voices of reason need to be heard… not sure how, but something surely needs to be done.. the governments in power as well as in opposition in the US & UK are at one, hand-in-glove with the industrial military complex and the MSM, and Social Media…
Frightening times… we live in a world somewhere between 1984 and The Matrix.
Mr. Murray,
I think the evidence is quite clear that the Russian invasion was not unjustified and there are moral and legal arguments that makes it justifiable and legal.
1. Ukraine was breaking the Minsk 2 accords (UNSC approved as international law) and engaged in a heavy shelling of the ethnic Russians in Donbas prior to September 22 / 24, as witnessed and recorded by OECD. Prior to that date, Ukraine Army has killed approximately 2500 civilians in Donbas, with no problem from the West – remember that Serbia was attacked and dismembered in 1999 by US/NATO led war for a mass grave of 30 male individuals of unknown provenance.
2. Ukraine has passed legislation in 2021 demanding that the government will retake control of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, by any means necessary, including military.
3. Russia has recognized the two Republics as independent in February 22, moment in which sanctions were implemented by the west and only in February 24 the invasion started.
Bellow are some summaries of the unfolding of the situation as well as some legal opinions.
hxxp://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/february/08/setting-the-record-straight-stuff-you-should-know-about-ukraine/
hxxp://www.fletcherforum.org/home/2023/1/12/invoking-the-kosovo-precedent-can-we-dismiss-the-russian-argument
And it was US’s plan all along. From the horse’s mouth:
“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I’m using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
hxxps://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/russia-s-ukraine-invasion-may-have-been-preventable-n1290831
I tried to find your statement that the OECD witnessed Ukrainian shelling of Donbas. I didn’t find it but possibly I didn’t search enough. I did find a more recent OECD document.
It’s the OSCE, not OECD. And you can find the evidence in this article:
hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/21/putin-recognizes-donbass-independence-as-violence-soars/
The U.S. Navy’s Diving & Salvage Center on the west side of Chicago, near a coin-operated laundromat & a dance school. How f/appropos, eh? Wash. Fold. 24/7, a 365 day Spin Cycle. Roll ‘em, The BIDEN-HARRIS War on Terra, “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”
“NS1 & NS2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring Congress be informed to a highly classified intelligence operation w/U.S. military $upport.” ‘The USG executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret —-until NOW!’
‘POTUS saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political & territorial ambitions.”
“This is false & complete fiction.” Adrienne Watson-WH. “This claim is completely & utterly false.” Tammy Thorp-C.I.A.
“And after all the violence and double talk,” Joey “The Political Corpse” Biden nearing his ninth decade of life, his mental acuity & physical abilities in extreme decline, poses as POTUS masquerades as human. “Never have so many been manipulated by so few.”
Neither of POTUS’ disabilities excuse or forgive POTUS’ mortal & venial sins aka war crimes & crimes against humanity. AND, IF, Congress gave a $H*T, they woulda, coulda, shoulda joined the International Criminal Court and served POTUS up for indictment, prosecution, incarceration for f/ever!!!
It’s the disappearance of the Nation’s moral compass, Code of Ethics; and, its heart & f/soul, “If, you dare to challenge us, we will come after you!!!” That’s f/dysfunctional!!! And, inphkninhumane!!!
BIDEN-HARRIS struggle to hold it together. Their Board of Executioners struggle to shuffle, hide, disguise, f/Hold ‘Em” together. Entre s’il vous plaît, Anita Dunn aka Nurse Ratchet to JOEY BIDEN, for decades. BIDEN’S-HARRIS’ moments of lucidity, GONE! They have Zero to NO moments of Brilliance; and, BIDEN’s “GOT” absolutely, terrifying brain freezes. Consequently, BIDENS-HARRIS’ random rambling, that lost, medicated, glossed-over glaze in their cold, black eyes searching for a connection and reaction. Everyone cringing; waiting for BIDEN-HARRIS & their rhetoric to C R A S H.
Consequently, “Q & A’s” are NOT in Biden’s-Harris’ wheelhouse. Q & A’s are handled by the most incompetent, checks all the other boxes, PRESS SECRETARY, Karine Jean Pierre. Best practice, fuhgeddabout KJP. There’s nothin’ PRESS friendly about HER. The WH Handlers oughta bring on board either “Siri” or “ALEXA” get real “A.I.,” & retire KJP who lacks intelligence, competence and courtesy. Imo, KJP ain’t human & on the verge of imploding. Like that independent, hot-air factory from Vermont, She “blows!!!
“GOT” Questions?” Query, directly, the WH Counsel or the Dept of Injustice. Be mindful, they’re working in a GRAVEYARD!!! They’ve failed. They “hope” your memory is worse than Joey Biden’s-Comma La Harris.’ Their Ace in the Hole, Joey Biden’s malfunctioning brain.
This IS what happens when Con$umers order a President (Biden-Harris) through the U.S. Mail.” And, that’s the State of “Democracy,” now.
There is EVERY reason to believe Seymour Hersch’s accounting is Spot F/On!!! And, FOX, the most watched cable network news is airing, Seymour Hersch’s Findings, “Guilty as charged!!!” I’ve only seen you-tube thumbnails; but, they reflect what’s being broadcast. Onward & Upwards. TY, Seymour Hersch. Now, we Know the What, When, Where, Why, and f/HOW!”
E N O U G H!” POTUS needs to END the WAR he ”Fired Up!!! “It’s OVER! The Hague, Delaware or Bust?!? Hold “em accountable for the MADness (Mutually Assured Destruction) Buh-bye, Biden-Harris.”
One of your most prescient and humourous comments LeoSun. Thankyou.
“Awh, Woo-Hoo-Hoo!” Thank You, Valerie!!! “A Woo-Hoo-Hoo!”
“Be-bop-a-lula, what’d I say?!? Here comes Sy Hersch telling us the Story. Hand me now my walkin’ shoes. Here comes Sy Hersch w/the power & the glory. Backbeat Sy’s talkn’ the blues. Sy’s got the action. He’s got the motion. Oh, yeah, Hersch f/rocks the truth!!! Dedication. Devotion. He’s lighting up our LIFE w/the wholly TRUTH! Awh, Woo-Hoo-Hoo! We do the walk. Yeah, we do the walk of of life.
AND, after all the violence and double talk, It’s a TRUE Story about the trouble & the strife.” Yeah, SEYMOUR HERSCH Rocks! And, “we do the walk of life. A woo-hoo-hoo.”
Inspiration: “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline,” SEYMOUR HERSCH!!! SOURCE: Dire Straits, “Walk of Life.” hxxps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sys9LCUo-AU
Keep It Lit!!!
To culture, good and bad are the cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, while in nature, it’s the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental, the 1/0 of sentience.
That’s because it is the function of culture to synchronize people into one larger social organism, using the same languages, rules, measures, etc.
This centripetal dynamic is balanced harmonization, as constituent energy radiates out. Like galaxies; Structure coalesces in, as energy radiates out. Nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields.
The problem is that Western culture has taken the premise of monotheism as its core principle. Though remember that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family as godhead. The Romans adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion, as the Empire coalesced out of the ashes of the Republic. Basically validating the tenet that The Big Guy Rules. Divine right of kings.
Logically though, a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through the film, than the narrative projected on it.
Ideals are not absolutes and a culture founded on this nonsensical premise is inherently conflicted, as the multitudes of ideals can only clash. Rather than recognizing they exist as nodes in that larger, effectively infinite physical and conceptual network.
Basically our tactile monkey brains are still obsessing over the shiny objects, that prove our social status.
“Shiny objects”. I always favour this quote from the book “the philosopher and the wolf” by Mark Rowlands: “we are so distracted by shiny and twinkling motives that we don’t notice the ugliness beneath them”.
“The secret is not that people genuinely believe an outrageous claim. The secret is that people do genuinely believe that they are in a battle of good against evil, and it is necessary to accept the narrative being promoted, in the interests of fighting evil.”
Indeed. I mean, here you have western democracies, men and women in nice, tailored suits who smile and are very tolerant of everything fashionable to be tolerant about currently on one side and cartoonish villains Igors and Vladimirs and Sergeys etc. that we have all seen over the course of the Cold War are genetically predisposed to evil on the other side. I mean, come on: our side has gay transportation secretaries and black lesbian press secretaries and sincerely, sincerely cares about climate change and everything else one should care about … so, come on, who are you going to trust?
So of course facts don’t matter … as we have heard from many people in the press now, truth is a fungible concept and “my truth” may be different than the facts as strictly stated. In this case, for example, it’s a good thing that Russia’s pipe was blown up … who did it should quietly get a medal and a promotion, just like the captain of the ship that shot down the Iranian passenger airliner in 1988 in the Gulf.
As Twain is supposed to have said: “Facts are the most valuable thing we have; let us economize them” …
Most german news outlets prefer not to believe the story. They question hersh´s integrity. If I had not read about it here, and looked for it specifically, I would not have found any article in german newspapers.
We all can help Sy by posting his article and re tweeting, sharing it….
I’ve done it several times.
When Russia started the operation Craig went full blown British Imperialist on it. He showed a side I didn’t believe he has. This is a nice article, but I don’t trust the guy anymore…
Even that “good vs. evil” narrative is so full of holes that it requires an act of self-denial to defend it. What we are witnessing is more like the “right or wrong, my country” narrative that always kicks in in times of war. One more proof that we are already at war.
Joseph Goebbles “When you tell lie, make it a big one, and tell it often.”
Hi Craig ,
In your story about Nord2 bombing and thus being a speaker at a certain forum you said you were different from the other speakers cozz you disagreed with Putin ‘invading’ Ukraine … What else could Putin do we humble readers ask given the threat of ‘The NATO’ expansion ??!! Note : Across the domain of all genuine investigative journalism it all agrees to the phenomenon that Putin really was continuing a war that had started even before the Maidan coup of 2014 .. ?! Thanks for your deep and honest insights in general btw ..
I think people are scarred to admit the truth. Scared of the consequences. So they hang on to half-truths. Anybody pointing to the roots of the war first needs to recite the mantra of “Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression” no matter how nonsensical that is. One may debate it, but I think there can be no doubt that, from the Russian point of view, this is a defensive war in two ways. In fact, the aggressive stance taken by Nato and the increasing suppression of all things Russian just go to confirm the Russian point of view.
Whether it’s an illegal war is actually debatable.
The entire western world now suffers from the extraordinary, cartoonish manichaesim of the American public. What Craig Murray describes is the mental machinery – good vs evil – that gave us the Salem witch trials, the extermination of the Indians and the Holocaust. But I remain bewildered as to just how a lively press, ferocious in its pursuit of truth during the 1970s has been muzzled and subjugated to a regime led by a senile, arrogant crook who believes that a lie, if told often enough (unprovoked, unprovoiked, unprovoked) becomes the truth. Now who said that?
The CIA-Pentagon coup that ousted President Nixon was covered up by the media in the 1970s.
Also covered up: Crucial aspects of the RFK assassination. Ted Charach’s documentary, The Second Gun, actually came out as long as 1973!
He gives these “journalists” far too much credit. They are either extremely unintelligent or extremely corrupt individuals, selling their souls for a paycheck.
There’s no other way to look at it. It’s one or the other.
I don’t believe freedom as it was originally constructed in the US Constitution and various notions of popular suffrage up to that age retains it’s meaning today as such. Today freedom is not for the rank and file populace, but is now constructed to be solely the freedom of wealthy business persons to act globally on their own behalf toward their own ends. Thus the first sentence of Mr. Murrays article mis-frames the issue here.
Thank you for this profoundly excellent analysis. I often wonder where this seemingly “democratic” West is leading us to!
It’s a race to the end and the worst people win. Fabulous article. Gonna have to give you another bottle of wine, CN, meaning it’s coming out of my wine budget. Next month, and please cash them ASAP as you just never know when they will freeze my bank account. Remember Canada.
Thanks to you the Big Lie and its totalitarianism a-la-1984,
was revealed when the UK courts disgraced themselves in
keeping Julian in jail. His crime was exposing the truth and
the war machine’s collateral murder.
But along with truth, “God is dead” (Nietzsche).
I’m real glad someone said it outloud, and someone with the stature of Seymour Hersh especially. It can be picked at but, as MoA said, it’s true. Let’s all try to get this straight: it’s true.
The murderous and cancerous corruption spreading out from the now comprehensively demonic USA and its two dearest partners in crime—Israel and Britain—appears to have metastasized across the entirety of the West. The Ukraine war really is stupidly perceived as a zero-sum game, either the US/NATO “wins”, or Russia “wins”. And neither side is prepared to digest losing. As Ukraine runs out of blood to spill on behalf of the American imperium, it has recently appeared Russia would likely triumph out of sheer numerical superiority in things like troops and artillery pieces. As that became evident, a wild frenzy seemed to grip NATO and they suddenly threw tanks, long-range missiles, jet fighters, everything and the kitchen sink into the fray, damn the growing likelihood of uncontrolled escalation. That is an ominous sign.
I don’t think this kind of desperation is a winning formula, but there is no evident point at which NATO backs off of this losing strategy. What is looming into view as a distinct possibility is some kind of real or manufactured casus belli that allows NATO to send in Western troops to man their own tanks and jets and long range missile batteries. At that point, you may as well dig a grave for yourself in your backyard to lie down in because the doomsday clock is striking midnight.
It’s the last moments of James Dean in his Porsche Spyder playing themselves out on a geopolitical scale. And like Dean, America’s last words are apparently gonna be, “don’t worry, he’ll swerve…” Russia here is driving the lumbering Edsel, with its hulking 500 pound bumper with which the West will be crushed like Dean’s little sports car. Ironically, the driver of the Edsel, though dazed, survived. The epitaph should read: America—douchebags without a cause.
It is very important to think critically about what we are told. This may be particularly the case when we talk about someone we like and respect, such as Seymour Hersh. It is good to see that some people have looked critically at his article and identified one or two problems.
Hersh could, perhaps, have become an assassination investigator.
I read his book, The Dark Side of Camelot, about 25 years ago.
On page 12, he writes about how a recent back injury had made President Kennedy particularly vulnerable to assassination:
“The braces also made it impossible for the president to bend in reflex when he was struck by the bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald’s first successful shot was not necessarily fatal, but the president remained erect–and an excellent target for the second, fatal blow to the head.”
I remember thinking at the time that Hersh was right about JFK’s vulnerability and that remains my view to this day.
But hang on a minute, looking back now, I find it strange that he should write, as late as 1997, of Oswald as if he was definitely the assassin. But the Zapruder footage, first broadcast in 1975, shows the fatal shot coming from a direction that means that Oswald could not have fired it.
Later in the book, Hersh writes something that is actually very significant but he does not realise it (and nor did I when I first read it):
“That Friday started as a great day for Bobby Kennedy and a potentially ruinous one for Vice President Lyndon Johnson.”
On the next page, 447, Hersh then quotes Burkett Van Kirk, minority counsel for the Senate Rules Committee back in 1963:
“There’s no doubt in my mind that (Donald) Reynolds’ testimony would have gotten Johnson out of the vice presidency” he told the author.
I would add that it might well have got him into prison too!
Hersh then informs us that the Senate investigation ‘petered out’ soon after Johnson became president.
Hersh had struck gold in finding the prime suspect in the JFK assassination but he just did not realise it.
I also read Camelot some 25 years ago (not all the way as I lost it at an airport in Asia) but I do remember that I didn’t get it at all as I had read Crossfire by Jim Marrs and Double Cross by the Giancana bro just a couple of years before. I didn’t understand why Sy would write that book in the first place when he wouldn’t touch the real issue. It made no sense.
My understanding was that Hersh agreed not to go into the assassination in return for full cooperation with his sources on other stories. He has quite a network and has always been fiercely protective of his sources.
Hersh was severely trashed for the Dark Side of Camelot (so unlike the Kennedy hagiographies, such as Brothers). Hersh was caught in revisionist history with the Kennedys. Probably that led to his banishment; you cannot critique icons.
He also said he wanted to write about Dick Cheney, but it was not possible. So he wrote an autobiography instead.
To the 2 previous commenters:
Thank you for your thoughts on this.
Many NATO members must be in on it, how else can they silence the international western press, including even Germany? Sweden, Denmark, the UK, and Poland, why else do they refuse to show the results of the investigation? Scholz said he knows but could not even tell the people in parliament who did it. Only now they said there is no evidence that Russia did it. What a surprise that is.
Joseph P Overton, damn it, here I go again, thinking on my own, using my own intelligence or the lack there of to sum up my observations. An exercise that seldom does not result in saying or presenting a personal opinion that causes the other immense heart burn. So be it.
The Overton Window is a large part of what I feel gives justification to or other wise legitimizes the quality of information delivered to John and Jamie Q Public, allowing an excuse to the money made gullible congress that desires to be paid but do so dogdamned little.
I swear I can hear stomachs curdle as what I’m writing here is consumed. Tough it out kiddies.
Not until today did my slow up-take mind led to my realization I needed to know much more about the deceased Mr. Overton. He died in 2003, crashed flying an ultra-light aircraft.
Quoting his wiki, Overton was an ardent libertarian, and while associated with the Mackinaw Center in Midland, he promoted and studied free-market principals for over ten years while traveling to more than a dozen countries, in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. Check out the founder of the Cooley law school
Involved in raising money to explain what think tanks do.
Time to raise the BS Flag! I smell the scent of Rat #*cking. Check this guy out!
The overton window is, I my humble opinion, the shell in the “shell game” being applied through propaganda feed to “we the people”.
See; How the Big Lie Works, here in Murray’s piece. Overton was the father of a tool used to promote the lies of the Deep State. Check out how the overton’ tunnel vision’ window has been used to guide the servile MSM!
They want us to think only what they want us to think. The theory of the overton window is a lie designed to facilitate an end to a means and it’s all bullshit.
Now someone step and prove me wrong!
Thanks to Mr. Murray for rattling my grey matter and the CREW @ CN
Dare I point out that the vision of our world as a metaphysical battleground between good and evil is a construction of Christianity. There is a reason why churches are exempt from taxation: it is the service that organized religion performs as the compliance assurance arm of state power.
“Us and them” is older than good and evil and just as well designed to lead to conflict. In many cultures, the word for people is reserved for “us” while the other may as well be some other incomprehensible being.
It’s the need to “other” that matters not the excuse.
Great stuff here, rave on!
Well, this is probably good for the economy.
I am quite certain that people around the world are being paid today to go around the nets and post negative comments about the Pulitzer Prize winner’s reporting. At least we found one little way to force the oligarchs to give us even a small pittance for food and heat. Thanks Sy.
Please do not believe that there is anything like “journalism” or “reporting” going on in the MSM.
Thus, there was no reason to believe, at least from my point of view, that the “MSM would have to address it.” This is not the first important bit of news to be hidden from the American people and the people of ‘the west’.
The MSM is a propaganda system, and functions entirely along those lines. They tell you what they want to tell you, and they don’t tell you what they don’t want you to know. It is all about Mind Control, and they will only do what keeps your mind controlled. Reporting facts that they do not want you to know is not a part of their program.
The good news is that in these modern times, you can find translator plugins for your browser that let you read almost any news source in the world regardless of language. Oh, and you may need a VPN to shift your apparent country around and escape blocking. But in general, there is a big world out there beyond the MSM propaganda system.
Once upon a time, people in authoritarian regimes that controlled information needed to use shortwave radio to listen to news from the world. Today, all they need is a browser plugin and perhaps a VPN.
Schools have always been a prime recruiting ground for the C.I.A.
Especially the elite schools with the goal of recruiting the young elite to the unholy cause. This was especially true in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Would he be the first to be recruited as a teenager, then put on a course towards power?
Just saying.
Some time ago there was a film made in the UK which stood as a critique of the First World War 1914-18. It was called ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ and stood as the damning bloodletting which occurred during that conflict. The stupidity and blindness of the our ‘leaders’ – the leaders of the great powers – was plain to see as the great battles were fought amidst the mud, blood and stupidity. In ”Memoirs of an Infantry Officer” – Siegfried Sassoon – wrote that ”I had more or less made up my mind to die because in the circumstances there didn’t seem anything else to be done… In 1917 I was only beginning to learn that life, for the majority of the population, is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds, culminating in a cheap funeral. Anyhow the man with his head bashed in – The German Soldier – had achieved the theoretical glory for dying for his country in the battle of Arras and we who marched past him had an excellent chance of following his example.”
One would have thought that this was the end of such conflicts, but apparently this was not to be the case. The lessons only lasted until the next time around: 1939-45 – Repeat performance. Now we (or they) our ”betters”, appear to be gearing up for great the final showdown. I am inclined to think that this is the madness which will sweep all before it and will be the great finale. This time around: no hiding place I’m afraid, given the weaponry and human frailty on display. Give up all hope …you know the rest.
You can always think Outside The Box.
No matter how much they try to tell you that There is No Alternative.
Think Outside the Box. Especially the Boxes that they try to put you into, and insist that you must remain inside.
Be an Escape Artist.
Think Outside the Box.
Its easy, if you try.
Make Love! Not War!
Another comment spoke to the illogic of Craig Murray’s condemnation of the “Russian invasion.” Of course he hates war, but so does Putin and the majority of the Russian people. Sadly, the Washington neocons and their ultranationalist (read Nazi) vassals in Kyiv do not. These people pushed and threatened and made war a reality. I have never heard any account of an option available to Putin that would have avoided war. Washington and Kyiv gave Russia no choice.
Only a total imbecile would destroy its own financial source of income – and I would not count Russians among imbeciles.
Speaking of Evil – the USA is the epitome! MSM needs to wake up to that fact…
Sorry Susan but MSM is part of the same evil. They are wide awake and leading the cheer for our destruction.
True, MSM is now State Media and LEGALLY controls the Official Narratives since “modernization” of our anti-domestic propaganda law (Smith Mundt) putting the State Dept/ CIA in charge. They have had lots of practice globally since WWII, and were eager to apply their craft to domestic “truth telling”.
The news media is the often if not usually the willing propaganda arm of government, all governments no matter where they are located and their political flavor. It has always been so and will likely continue to be so. I know. I am a retired journalist.
The obvious reason why Ukraine is being destroyed and young Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are dying. Follow the cash. Of course, everyone in the world is paying higher prices for everything but – we all need to make sacrifices for the greater good of the privileged few.
Without much hyperbole or exaggeration, the New York Times & Washington Post have become America’s default “Co-Ministries of Truth.” Today, their pseudo journalism speaks almost exclusively for the interests of the US State Department, CIA, NSA, DOJ, FBI, and Pentagon. It follows that anyone seeking the formed truth as defined by our own Federal government should seek no further than the front pages of the two national papers of record.
The only surprise of Sy Hersh’s Nordstrom who dunnit revelation was that anyone in the entire world was actually surprised to learn that America’s finger prints were all over the sabotage. Who did most people think blew up the pipeline? Japan? Moreover, what fool would ever believe the State Department’s initial canard that it was really Russia that blew up its own pipeline? Yet, that is exactly what the NYTs & Washington Post both dutifully reported to the rest of us.
Caveat emptor...for all matters involving news emanating from the American MSM, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood, and Washington, DC.
I’m sorry but I’m not impressed by Hershs piece.
First of all, as Murray points out, most of it consists of known facts.
As for the new part, a source with insight into the working of utter most high level political figures in Washington talks to a reporter about top secret acts in a still ongoing war.
Since there would be very few people that have this information, and since the leak would render him or her life in prison if found out you would have to ask: why.
Then there is the planning in it self. It reads like a thriller. Which it probably is, it’s simply too smooth to be real.
And then there is the modus operandi:
“ The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. ”
First: the pipes don’t run ON the sea floor, they run below it to be protected from external forces.
Second: they are 4-5 centimetres of steel covered by about a decimetre of steel reinforced concrete.
The idea that diver alone first cleared the pipes, then placed the huge amount of c4 needed is imaginative, but a bit far fetched: most operators would have used machines for the job.
My take on this is that while Hersh is probably sincere, chances are high that he is being used as a pawn in a game of blame shifting.
In the last sentence, I meant to say “countries (and corporations)” not “companies (and corporations)”.
The Hersh article may not be one hundred percent factually correct but everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows the Americans did it. They had the means, the motive and a long history as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Yes, and that’s what I meant by it mostly consisting of known facts.
This comment is rather silly, another exercise in quibbling (probably self-directed) to discredit the fundamental message of US duplicity and aggression against Russia. Sy Hersch’s report definitely indicates that the pipelines are set under or into the sea floor; the divers did use machines according to Hersch. They used compressed water to remove sediment around the pipes in order to gird them with exploves, and that is a machine, a very effective technique as anyone with a garden hose can find out, or as petty gold miners do in the Amazon today.
That Hersch is a good writer, not a polemicist, but a messenger, does not detract from veracity. That there is a covert source in Washington is fortunate, yet believable.
As to the last comment, to whom is blame being shifted? Everyone knows the US was behind the pipeline attack. Details simply corroborate (sadly uncommon) knowledge.
And they brought the the compressor there swimming? And as we are talking about some depth: how did they power it? Extension cord from oslo?
Nobody outside the anglosaxon colonial empire questions that the US did it. And there are good assessments of how it was it was done, check out Scott Ritter for one.
The more the factual flaws of the piece are uncovered, the clearer the pattern becomes:
This is an attempt of distancing the CIA and MI6 from an operation they most certainly ran.
(Terrorism isn’t a task of the navy, it handled by the CIA.)
Jorgen: “I’m sorry, but I am not impressed by” your response.
“First of all, as Murray points out, most of it consists of known facts.”
If those revelations are “known facts”, by whom are they known? By the perpetrators, but not by the general public. The actual facts are suppressed by the mainstream media in service to US empire. Otherwise, why would Hersh’s article not receive coverage on the mainstream media? Answer: to make sure the docile, subservient US consumer of mainstream media consumes only the US government BS about about Russian sabotage of its own pipeline which is the standard Kool-Aid proffered for your delectation.
Ceterum autem censeo Civitates Foederatas Americae esse delendam.
The simple logic of answering the question, if you dare to ask it, “why would Russia blow up it’s own pipeline?” legitimizes the premise of this article. But the corporate mainstream media count on us to not think and ask the obvious questions. I’ve been a keen observer and critic of US hegemony for 45 years (the most militarized and warring nation on the planet) and if it sounds like a conspiracy theory, it almost always turns out to be reality. No, it doesn’t just happen in the movies . . . .
Perhaps you ought to google Seymour Hersh. This is not Sy Hersh’s first rodeo. Hersh has been reporting on US government, military, CIA for years. He began his reporting career starting in Chicago, then on to an Associated Press reporter for the Pentagon, onward again to The NY Times. He has won many Pulitzers. His talent for investigative reporting was made famous from the shocking story which happened in Vietnam, the My Lai Massacre in 1967. Several newspapers sought to hire Hersh. (Back in those days newspapers were privately owned and the truth was allowed to be printed) He has authored many best selling books. At roughly 85 years old Hersh has made plenty of friends within the higher ranks of government. He is more known, far more respected than any of those “utter most high political figures in Washington.” He has a far greater sense between good and evil than most of the elites in D.C. Most of our great journalists, known for their integrity, made sure to print accurate facts with with two or more sources, have had to print their reports on the internet. Once the government controlled the news outlets the truth has been ignored, not with the Sy Hersh, or Robert Parry or Chris Hedges, Patrick Lawrence as examples. This is how Washington gets away with all their corruption, replace the truth-tellers with unethical reporters writing exactly what they are told to write, it must be government/corporation approved. Please re-read how the divers placed the explosives around the pipelines. The explosives had to remain intact for months until the go ahead was given to those in charge of ignition via a devise. Sy Hersh is one of the greatest investigative reporters of all time.
Maybe you should google me and learn Swedish. I was an investigating report for about ten years in alternative media. I know who Hersh is, that’s why I’m surprised and disappointed.
But I know the trade, my professional rules where:
1 get the facts damn it!
2 tell the damned story!
3 publish and be damned!
Hersh failed the first rule of reporting, and I recognise bad craftsmanship when I see it.
The key fact exposed by Seymour Hersh is that the planning for this operation goes back to 2021. This fact undercuts the “unprovoked,” “illegal,” or “criminal” invasion memes. These terms are functionally interchangeable synonyms, serving the same purpose, to delay, impede and undercut the development of anti-Ukraine War peace movement in the U.S. I’m so happy Caitlyn Johnstone and Aaron Mate stopped using these terms which they both flirted with for a short time a few weeks past.
USnato had been arming and training the Ukraine to fight a war with Russia for 8 years.
That’s a well known fact that better debunk the unprovoked narrative.
And the complicated procedure the kremlin went trough during the days leading up to the war made it technically legal under international law (as being collective self defence).
You don’t have to like the war or support Russia, but I agree: it was provoked and it was legal.
“My take on this is that while Hersh is probably sincere, chances are high that he is being used as a pawn in a game of blame shifting….”
Perhaps but the rest of us can only hope that Mr. Hersh has been in the game long enough to know if at least suspect when he is being played.
chances are high that he is being used as a pawn in a game of blame shifting.
OK Who? Because to me the idea the Russians did it still remains risible. Is it the case you are trying to find reasons why Hershs staory is wrong …principally because you dont like the implications, you dont WANT for it to be true. If you think about it, your last sentence is revealing in this regard.
Revealing in what regard? Hersh is likely being used to whitewash CIA and MI6 (remember “it’s done”?). If that’s revealed by my last sentence I’m a bit confused but generally happy.
Hersh’s piece on the Nordstream bombing is interesting but not the best piece of journalism I’ve read. As Jeffrey St Clair responded on CounterPunch:
“…the piece…rests entirely on the word of one unidentified source (referred to somewhat coyly throughout as “the Source”), who seems to command an almost omniscient knowledge of an operation involving many parts and players, including another country: Norway.”
Hersh also alleges that NATO’s Supreme Commander, Jens Stoltenberg, has been a CIA asset since the Vietnam war. Stoltenberg was born in 1959, meaning he was still at school when the American helicopters lifted off the embassy roof in Saigon in 1975.
There’s every reason to believe the USA did commit this act of terrorism, but Hersh’s article is not decisive evidence.
The man’s track record speaks for itself. He is effectively using his track record and credibility as a journalist to try to connect the dots on something mere months after it happened. History will prove him, and Russia right. Just as history has proven the Soviets right for backing every anti-colonial liberation movement while the USA was using Nazis and Jihadis and extremists in the developing world and Europe (which it is still doing) to further its hegemonic aims.
Again, like others, you quibble over details that are irrelevant, such as Jens Stoltenberg connection to the CIA. Hersch’s piece is not a legal indictment, it is not a presentation of evidence. It is a report of accounts given by a covert source in Washington, and it is completely believable. As such, it could be the basis of an international investigation, but we know that will never happen.
Seymour Hersh confirmed the evidence we already had, he also added some. I trust Seymour Hersh, he is the most reputable investigative journalist. He has nothing to prove.
I do suspect the Germans knew by their silence. They showed no surprise, no outrage, and said nothing. In the MSM no real outrage from the Germans. I do recall Chancellor Scholz’s unresponsiveness at the press conference when President Biden said they know how to prevent the opening of the pipeline.
His behavior before and after makes me believe that Mr. Scholz might have been informed, he may have known. This was an act of war against Germany by an ALLY and the Germans were silent, protecting the perpetrator, never demanding to see the results of the investigations. Norway pumps gas to Poland in a new pipeline starting the next day after the sabotage. There are many unanswered questions.
One big question I have is, what did the German government know, starting with Scholz? It looks like treachery.
Ah, but I really love the way it begs many questions which is what this article is trying to answer and so obvious is who the perps are, who benefitted the most. That’s not something you can hide like a computer chip. Of course there is a great deal of money laundering by the CIA, FBI, other law makers and their corporate friends, like its a practice everyone takes for granted. As for decisive evidence. I don’t think we need more than that.
Thank you, Craig, for the truly excellent article. It is amazing, how people can compartmentalize and lie to themselves about pretty much anything, to the point where–to quote Caitlin Johnstone–it’s totally ok to “blow up the world over who gets to govern Crimea.”
People are so impervious to reason, it’s almost like a bizarre mass contagion that you’d see in a zombie movie at the theatre.
This is slightly off topic, but the madness is most pronounced in the elite class. But if we have a wide scale nuclear war, we’re going back to the stone ages and that so obviously includes them. We “little people” do everything for them. We build and maintain the infrastructure that allows them to be King Parasite(s). If society and the biosphere are basically annihilated, so will their position up on top of the pyramid. Do they not understand this? It’s the equivalent of thumbing your nose at gravity! They won’t be able to survive in their luxury bunkers for more than one or maybe two years, tops. What if somebody needs some heart surgery, or even something like an appendectomy? Sorry, medical technology was sucked up into the mushroom clouds, along with everything else!
Just breathtaking ignorance and stupidity all around.
At any rate, thank you for doing your part in telling the truth and for standing up to the Big Lie.
Sincerely, Jon M.
Already the first two comments here are denying what Hersh revealed. The brainwashing is deep and sudsy.
Mattias Desmet makes an interesting case for Mass Formation syndrome in his Psychology of Totalitarianism. Eric Clapman said he started seeing it everywhere after he read Desmet’s book.
The University of Ghent where he was Professor recently took away much of Mattias Desmet’s authority claiming he was pushing “pseudoscience”.
Similar to California’s medical authorities silencing physicians trying repurposed drugs like glucocorticoids, vitamin D3 and ivermectin. The authorities always know best, as they themselves say.
Expect retaliation.
As Craig Murray accurately notes, it is extremely alarming, as well as depressing, when the mainstream media refuses to run a story which challenges the official narrative which is seen and heard in so many official venues and that includes the allegedly liberal MSNBC. If it were not for the Internet and for web sites like CN and the wsws, ordinary Americans would be at a loss to discover information which runs counter to the propaganda which is served up daily by the corporate media. And when this happens, one has to realize how hollow and ineffectual the First Amendment is, when very few viewpoints can be found which challenge the claims given by both major war parties. If major news outlets think that Hersh’s claims are false, then they should allow their readers and viewers to make up their own minds about Sy Hersh’s allegations. But that apparently is a bridge too far for a paper like the New York Times, which claims that it publishes “all the news that is fit to print.” The corporate media would do well to recognize the validity of the words from the individual below, who observed many years ago that:
“A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.”-Joseph Addison, English essayist and poet [1672-1719]
When Mr. Hersch’s article first hit a few days ago on very credible sites like MOA and Sonar21, I naively thought that MSM would have to address it. After all, Mr. Hersch, as the article points out is “arguably the greatest living journalist” and besides…..any rational person who was paying attention could have figured out who committed, as Adam West’s Batman would have said, “This dastardly deed!”. How wrong I was. Crickets! Not a peep from anybody. Now….Hersch includes Norway in the dastardly deed column. This can not end well. For the first time in this whole fiasco, I am starting to get nervous.
My longer comment below was also a reply to you. ………. Anyway, has anything Hersh ever published turn out to be not true? I think not. Sure, there is the possibility he’s been duped here and been told a ‘false flag’ story so as to destroy his credibility, and by extension any/all independent journalists. But, Hersh is a seasoned pro – I think he’d suss all that out. The reporting has a ring of truth to it.
He has already been marginalized by the establishment, banished from The New Yorker and it seems also from The London Review of Books and Die Welt. No need for a false flag.
Fair point. However, despite corporate marginalization, Seymour Hersh still has a certain cache and reputation, especially among older folks. A psy-op gambit to thoroughly discredit him (and independent journos in general) is not beyond the perfidy of US information warriors. Though probably not the case here, it is nonetheless not beyond realm of possibility.
Why would the US want to even put such a suspicion out there by feeding this to Hersh so that many people might believe it? It is absolutely beyond the realm of possibility.
NORWAY AND THE US put a physical hurt on the EU for financial gain. Those are not manners or behaviors that will save some modicum of life on this planet into a future, if there’s to be one. Not to mention the uncalulatable harm to our biosphere with the most massive release of methane all at once. I suppose the melting of the arctic will compare of worst. We are such short sighted creatures, or at least it is quite clear those who behave like Norway and the US have no sight nor care, for that matter. We can’t continue to allow these people to continue to governs us. They are killing us. Capitalism in the Anthropocene should be a high school textbook.
I wish he offered other options for Russia, since he opposes its “invasion.” There is never another scenario suggested when Russia’s choice is condemned. The UN was obviously no help. What else could Russia do when the people of the Donbass begged for help? Dan Kovalik says that if people in the Donbass are critical of Putin, it’s that he took so long.
Well Riva they could have asked nicely if the United-States can pretty please not place nuclear missiles with first strike capability on Moscow in Ukraine when Trump unilaterally left the INF treaty and Zelensky asked for nuclear weapons in Munich. Putin had not exhausted his options. He could have gone cherry on top, but he didn’t.
I agree with your assessment. I believe those who decry “Russia’s invasion” demonstrate how deeply liberal values overshadow reality-based observations. There is little doubt that Putin tried very hard to avoid war, and little doubt that the Americans/West marched in unison with the Ukrainian ultranationalists (Bandera-loving Nazis) to make war with Russia.
i hear ya’. The day after Hersh’s piece was published and NO media outlet commented on it, I wrote on another site about how that aspect was the most alarming of this episode. (Murray concurs). ………. After all, reports of the uS being behind this act of war/sabotage, is not so shocking, given the extent of mayhem the US has inflicted on every corner of the globe. But, having the story so quickly ‘disappeared’ by corporate news outlets is more than just troubling. …………………….. It is a clear example of how truth absolutely does not matter. A rubicon has been crossed. ……….,.. No ‘reporter’ has or will ask Biden for a comment on it. Nor the Pentagon.
The self-censorship in US corporate media rivals that of any state sanctioned censorship by an authoritarian gov’t anywhere.
“We’ll know our propaganda is successful when everything the American people believe is a lie”. William Casey, former CIA Director.
As for the story now about the US shooting down an “unidentified object” over Alaska/No. Canada, who the hell knows if it’s even true, or not. Maybe it did. ……. Maybe it’s all just a made up story to foment more fear/anger in the continued ramp up of China-bashing. Anyone who takes at face value ANYTHING we are told by MSM is foolish.
I predict there’ll be the MOTHER OF ALL FALSE FLAG EVENTS sooner than later in Ukraine that’ll
compel US/NATO to send troops there. Perhaps something like blowing up a supply ship bringing tanks/weapons to Ukraine. Why not? (with the supply ship carrying nothing!) The media will go along with it and that’ll be THAT. Hell, the entire corporate media class went along with the phony WMD story used to start an illegal war on Iraq. You think this’d be any different? Ha.
in this phase of fascism creep, alternative media is marginalized. In the next phase, dissident voices/alternative media will be shut down for being ‘anti-American’ and dispensing ‘fake news’.
I also know people who almost seem fearful of the counter-narrative to the mainstream one. And these are people who used to reject official lies earlier in their lifetimes (Vietnam, Iraq WMD). It seems that many people have become addicted to the official story lines of good vs. evil, freedom and democracy over totalitarianism. It shows the power that propaganda can have, even on people who used to see past it.
Spot on comment John. I am totally astonished by how many people have no interest in hearing news not furnished by the MSM. We are rather fucked Mr. Moffett.
“Democracy”…the will of the people. Long time usurped by ‘the will of Wall Street and large corporations’. A word that, in my view, has become totally redundant.
Exactly. I have felt this way since the beginning of the whole Ukraine saga. People I have known for years, people who marched against war with me in the 1960s and 1980s and 2003 are now like sheep, waving their little Ukraine flags and sinking into the morass of deep propaganda. I imagine that the citizens of Germany in the 1930s reacted much the same way when Hitler was appointed Chancellor. They saw the brownshirts marching all over Berlin and convinced themselves that this was not a scary thing becauses to accept the plans of the Nazis was too frightening to think of. That didn’t turn out very well, did it? If any government is going to stop the U.S. world domination plot it will be Russia and also China. BRICS is growing.
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
Very asute observation. Thanks for your insight.
I am a 73 year old Vietnam Veteran who served with the Australian Army in America ‘s choice of terrorism in Vietnam. At the time, I was 17 years old, and my older brother had been caught in the Conscription Scheme the Australian Govt introduced to provide the “meat” on behalf of their good mates in Washington. The Australian Media, was back then, the same as it is today, totally 100 percent on the U.S.’s side. Smaller publications often published contrary articles, so the public were left in a quandry, what was real, and what was propaganda. I wrote to my older brother asking him what the truth was. He refused to answer any of my questions. To this day, still don’t know why he refused them. So I VOLUNTEERED my services to the Australian Military, who snapped me up in an instance, despite the FACT I was only 17 at the time. The first 12 months were taken up with introduction to the military, rookie training, Corps training, (Infantry) and then sent to my permanent posting 6 R.A.R. (Royal Australian Regiment) in Townsville, QLD where we were allocated to Companies in the Battalion, which had just returned from it’s First Tour in Vietnam and had many vacant spaces to be filled. This is the same 6 R.A.R. Battalion that was involved in the Long Tan Battle during it’s first tour. By the time all my training was completed, I had turned the legal age for going to war off shore at 18. On arrival in Vietnam, and within 6 weeks, I realised, everything we had ever been told by our Government, the MSM, and International MSM sources, were all LIES ! I had plenty of time to think about this, as I sat in my shell scraping hole awaiting the”enemy” in an ambush location, day after day, night after night, then burying the results of our action. From that experience, I learned a very important lesson, that lesson was to NEVER, EVER TRUST ANYTHING PUBLISHED BUY THE GOVERNMENT, OR THE SYCOPHANT MEDIA that is the mouth piece for the M.I.C. and the Government. I have witnessed the destruction of IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, LIBYA, YUGOSLAVIA, ALL based on LIES, and now it appears, the lead up to WW 111, again, ALL BASED ON LIES. Yet the public seem impervious to the truth, despite the painfull lessons of the past.
The ‘story’ of Ukraine/US/NATO/Russia has been crafted by the propagandists posing as news journalists, and that’s THAT. Anything that happened prior to Feb. 24, 2022 has been consigned to the memory black hole. The orthodoxy imposed on us about the ‘story’ – Russia’s unprovoked attack, Putin is Hitler, no neo-Nazis in Ukraine, US had nothing to do with the coup in 2014 – is so strong that any journo knows it’d be professional suicide to veer from the official narrative.
——- The same kind of implicit ‘official narrative ‘journalism’ also goes for any reporting about 9/11.
…..That Sy Hersh’s reporting on the pipeline sabotage has been summarily ‘disappeared’ by MSM so thoroughly and quickly is a terrible harbinger for where we’re headed.
Or where we already are.
Thanks Craig. The willing enslavement of the Nordic countries interests me. Two centuries of independent development have ended. Three countries have opted for the Anglo-Saxon system of state / regime domination of citizens, fake democracy and big-lie-manufactured consent. I’ve settled on Socrates’ statement that All Wars Are About Money. What financial coercion has brought about these coordinated Nordic decisions? Why have countries I loved for their vital independence bent to the US whip? Sweden may be the more perverse of the three, with its 10 year assault on Julian Assange in service of the USA. Norway profits from sabotage of Russian infrastructure. Finland deploys US arms at the Russian border. All three commit economic self-harm. The reasons elude me for the moment, but I am aware that I am watching momentous changes. The lights are going out in Scandinavia.
We cannot discount the power of neoliberal finance capitalism, favored and promoted by the Anglosphere, to corrupt social systems. The Nordic countries are famous for their mix of socialism and capitalism, but all that is contraindicated by the American Way, and slowly, steadily social programs in these countries have eroded in favor of finance and austerity. The war on Russia has just accelerated this tendency.
Yes, Julian Assange. Whatever happened to Julian Assange?! As the world turns have we moved on and away from this man and an injustice we can solve to one that is bigger than all of us?
Socrates said that, huh? Smart dude – and he paid for it … But, from Socrates’ lips to the ears of our “fearless leader”, “nothing will fundamentally change” – and it hasn’t – too bad that’s all Biden got from Socrates …
Another S, Smedley, admitted he was a “gangster for capitalism” – but it seems to me that considering Socrates predated capitalism by a few years – maybe we should replace the term, fraught with so much baggage, with the simple term “Greed” I think that about covers it all, here, there, and everywhere …
Even the MSM admits it – here’s its barometer of WS, updated daily …
hxxps://www.cnn.com/markets/fear-and-greed
The Swedish Right have always been prone to Empire subservience. Had to eliminate Olof Palme.
Watch for Nokia, Ericson, Saab, etc. to get large contracts from the Complex … as for the public, Goebbels explained how it’s done. It hasn’t changed except getting more professional.