The idea that Ukraine’s senior command had the ability or daring to execute the complex and risky venture of blowing up the pipelines without involving the U.S. beggars belief, writes Jonathan Cook.
Diver, bubbles, light. (Derek Keats, Flickr,CC BY 2.0)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
Want to understand why the media we consume is either owned by billionaires or under the thumb of governments? The latest developments in the reporting of who was behind the explosions that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that brought Russian gas to Europe provide the answer.
Although largely forgotten now, the blasts in the Baltic Sea in September 2022 had huge and lasting repercussions. The explosion was an act both of unprecedented industrial sabotage and of unparalleled environmental terrorism, releasing untold quantities of the most potent of the greenhouse gasses, methane, into the atmosphere.
The blowing up of the pipelines plunged Europe into a prolonged energy crisis, tipping its economies deeper into a recession from which they are yet to recover. Europe was forced to turn to the United States and buy much more expensive liquified gas. And one of the long-term effects will be to accelerate the de-industrialisation of Europe, especially Germany.
There can be almost no one in Europe who did not suffer personal financial harm, in most cases significant harm, from the explosions.
The question that needed urgently answering at the time of the blasts was one no media organisation was in a hurry to investigate: Who did it?
In unison, the media simply recited the White House’s extraordinary claim that Russia had sabotaged its own pipelines.
[Related: Western Media’s Peculiar Incuriosity About Nord Stream]
That required an unprecedented suspension of disbelief. It meant that Moscow had chosen to strip itself of both the lucrative income stream the gas pipelines generated and of the political and diplomatic leverage it enjoyed over European states from its control of their energy supplies. This was at a time, remember, when the Kremlin, embattled in its war in Ukraine, needed all the diplomatic influence it could muster.
The Main Culprit
The need to breathe credibility into the laughably improbable “Russia did it” story was so urgent at the time because there was only one other serious culprit in the frame. No media outlet, of course, mentioned it.
The United States had both the motive and the means.
[Related: SCOTT RITTER: Pipelines v. USA]
U.S. officials from President Joe Biden down had repeatedly threatened that Washington would intervene to make sure the Nord Stream pipelines could not operate.
The administration was expressly against European energy dependency on Russia. Another gain from the pipelines’ destruction was that a more economically vulnerable Europe would be forced to lean even more heavily on the U.S. as a guarantor of its security, a useful chokehold on Europe when Washington was preparing for prolonged confrontations with both Russia and China.
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
As for the means, only a handful of states had the divers and technical resources enabling them to pull off the extremely difficult feat of successfully planting and detonating explosives on the sea floor undetected.
Had we known then what is gradually becoming clear now, even from establishment media reporting — that the U.S. was, at the very least, intimately involved — there would have been uproar.
It would have been clear that the U.S. was a rogue, terrorist state, willing to burn its allies for geostrategic gain. It would have been clear that there was no limit to the crimes it was prepared to commit.
Every time Europeans had to pay substantially more for their heating bills, or filling up their car, or paying for the weekly shop, they would have known that the cause was gangster-like criminality by the Biden administration.
Evidence Ignored
The Washington Post Building in Washington, D.C. (Ron Cogswell, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Which is precisely why the establishment media were so very careful after the explosions not to implicate the Biden administration in any way, even if it meant ignoring the mass of evidence staring them in the face.
It is why they ignored the incendiary report by legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh — who has broken some of the most important stories of the last half century — detailing exactly how the U.S. carried out the operation. When his account was occasionally referenced by the media, it was solely to ridicule it.
[Related: Seymour Hersh Accuses US of Nord Stream ‘Cover Up’ and Craig Murray: Sy Hersh & The Way We Live Now]
It is why, when it became obvious that the “Russia did it” claim was unsupportable, the media literally jumped ship: credulously reporting that a small group of “maverick” Ukrainians — unknown to President Volodymyr Zelensky, of course — had rented a yacht and carried off one of the most daring and difficult deep-sea stunts ever recorded.
[Related: SCOTT RITTER: The Nord Stream-Andromeda Cover Up
It is why, later, the media treated it as entirely unremarkable — and certainly not worthy of comment — that new evidence suggested the Biden administration was warned of this maverick Ukrainian operation against Europe’s energy security. It apparently knew what was about to happen but did precisely nothing to stop it.
And it is why The Washington Post’s latest report changes the earlier, impossible-to-believe claim that “maverick” Ukrainians carried out the operation to destroy the pipelines into one that implicates the very top of the Ukrainian military. Yet, once again, the paper and the rest of the media steadfastly refuse to join the dots and follow the implications contained in their own reporting.
The central character in the new drama, Roman Chervinsky, belongs to Ukraine’s special operations forces. He supposedly oversaw the small, six-man team that rented a yacht and then carried out the James Bond-style attack.
The ingenuous Washington Post claims that his training and operational experience meant he was “well suited to help carry out a covert mission meant to obscure Ukraine’s responsibility.” It lists his resistance activities against Russia. None indicate that he had any experience masterminding a highly challenging, extremely dangerous, technically complex attack deep in the waters of the Baltic Sea.
Prior Knowledge
If the Ukrainian military really was behind the explosions — rather than the U.S. — all the indications are that the Biden administration and the Pentagon must have been intimately involved in the planning, execution and subsequent cover-up.
Not least, it is extremely unlikely that the Ukrainian military had the technical capability to carry out by itself such an operation successfully and covertly.
Map of the explosions caused at the Nord Stream pipelines on Sept. 26, 2022. (FactsWithoutBias1, CC-By-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
And given that, even before the war, the Ukrainian military had fallen almost completely under U.S. military operational control, the idea that Ukraine’s senior command would have been able to, or dared, execute this complex and risky venture without involving the U.S. beggars belief.
Politically, it would have been quite extraordinary for Ukrainian leaders to imagine they could unilaterally decide to shut down energy supplies to Europe without consulting with the U.S., especially when Ukraine’s entire war effort was being paid for and overseen by Washington and Europe.
And of course, Ukrainian leaders would have been only too aware that the U.S. was bound to quickly work out who was behind the attack.
In such circumstances, why would the Biden administration choose to reward Ukraine with more money and arms for its act of industrial sabotage against Europe rather than punish it in some way?
Equally, the three states supposedly investigating the attack — Germany, Sweden and Denmark — would also have soon figured out that Ukraine was culpable. Why would they decide to cover up Ukraine’s attack on Europe’s economy rather than expose it — unless they were worried about upsetting the U.S.?
And of course, there is the elephant in the room: The Washington Post’s earlier reporting indicated that the U.S. had prior knowledge Ukraine was planning the attack. That is even more likely if the pipeline blast was signed off by Ukrainian military commanders rather than a group of Ukrainian “mavericks.”
The Washington Post’s new story repeats the line that the Biden administration was forewarned of the attack. Now, however, the paper casually reports that, after expressing opposition, “U.S. officials believed the attack had been called off. But it turned out only to have been postponed to three months later, using a different point of departure than originally planned.”
The Washington Post simply accepts the word of U.S. officials that the most powerful country on the planet fell asleep at the wheel. The C.I.A. and the Biden administration apparently knew the Ukrainian military was keen to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines and plunge Europe into an energy crisis and economic recession. But U.S. officials were blindsided when the same small Ukrainian operational team changed locations and timings.
On this account, U.S. intelligence fell for the simplest of bait and switches when the stakes were about as high as could be imagined. And The Washington Post and other media outlets report all of this with a faux-seriousness.
Ukrainian Fall Guy
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Kiev on Nov. 20. The U.S. delegation also included Commander of the U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli. (President of Ukraine, Flickr, Public domain)
Either way, the U.S. is deeply implicated in the attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure and the undermining of its economy.
Even if the establishment media reporting is right and Ukraine blew up Nord Stream, the Biden administration must have given the green light, overseen the operational planning and assisted in the implementation and subsequent cover-up.
Then again, if as seems far more likely, Hersh is right, then there was no middle man — the U.S. carried out the attack on its own. It needed a fall guy. When Russia no longer fitted the bill, Ukraine became the sacrificial offering.
A year on, these muffled implications from the media’s own reporting barely raise an eyebrow.
The establishment media has played precisely the role expected of it: neutering public outrage. Its regimented acceptance of the initial, preposterous claim of Russian responsibility. Its drip-feed, uncritical reporting of other, equally improbable possibilities. Its studious refusal to join the all-too-visible dots. Its continuing incuriousness about its own story and what Ukraine’s involvement would entail.
The media has failed by every yardstick of what journalism is supposed to be there for, what it is supposed to do. And that is because the establishment media is not there to dig out the truth, it is not there to hold power to account. Ultimately, when the stakes are high — and they get no higher than the Nord Stream attack — it is there to spin narratives convenient to those in power, because the media itself is embedded in those networks of power.
Why do billionaires rush to own media corporations, even when the outlets are loss-making? Why are governments so keen to let billionaires take charge of the chief means by which we gain information and communicate with each other. Because the power to tell stories, the power over our minds, is the greatest power there is.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider subscribing to his Substack page or offering your financial support.
This article is from the author’s blog Jonathan Cook.net
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Generations of human beings yet unborn have suffered from the gangster tactics played by the United States in this folly. A precious energy source ends up being depleted sooner than necessary and national economies that might have thrived are strangled further and sooner by the lying American hegemon. Consequent to this same heinous act of ecoterrorism, 8 billion inhabitants of the Earth now find themselves substantially closer to the much decried “climate change,” loss of arable land, potable water, clean air and the promised population crash soon to come after these essentials to life are irrevocably lost. Unity and friendships among nations that may have helped this planet survive the now looming existential crisis may well have evaporated. The US gangsters and their chief extortionist Joe Biden have committed far reaching crimes against all of humanity and they MUST be punished… by a collective action of all humanity. Joe, you damned idiot, you have no idea of the magnitude of your sins. Your hubristic self and your arrogant minions need to be prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to life-long punishments by the United Nations through whatever judicial authority made possible the Nuremberg trials after WWII. Really, Joe, your depravities and those of your Neo-con Praetorian Guard do quite clearly match the offenses by the long gone fanatical Third Reich. You have released a vampire and set him loose upon the world.
One needs to be able to think for one’s self. American TV has been awash with police procedurals for decades. As Perry Mason used to say… means, motive, and opportunity. Surely, I’m not the only person to have noticed the increase in state sponsored (or induced) censorship and the rise in government chicanery in The West.
Re “Cui bono?”
Also Israel.
This may be part of the explanation for Germany’s meek acceptance of economic punishment.
They dare not rebel against Israeli interests.
“Either way, the U.S. is deeply implicated in the attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure and the undermining of its economy.”
Now it is time to start connecting the dots between the Nord Stream sabotage and the existence of huge natural gas deposits under the offshore territory of the Gaza Strip. I understand the concern with “undermining” Europe’s economy. But we need to view the Gaza sitsautoin also in terms of “undermining” and actually “preventing and preempting” an independent Palestinian economy and economic development.
Is it possible that the USA and Zionistan “let” the Hamas attack happen, or even encouraged it as a hybrid false flag, to create a pretext to empty the Strip and proceed with the exploitation of its fossil fuel assets? These assets have been a gleam in the West’s eye ever since they were discovered.
See hxxps://unctad.org/news/unrealized-potential-palestinian-oil-and-gas-reserves
It is odd that commentators on the Middle East/SW Asia generally fail to note that Palestine is in the same oil-rich area as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc. Why should the minerals under the sands and sea stop at the (undeclared) Zionist “border”?
Why should the Pals be viewed any differently than Native Americans whose lands were found to be over valuable mineral deposits? Or, for that matter, the Congolese whose territory contains(ed) vast mineral deposits (just reading a New Yorker piece on the fate of Patrice Lumumba, at the hands of greedy imperialists who would only “grant” independence if they could control the mineral wealth of Katanga province and literally beat Lumumba to death).
Preventing this newest mineral grab requires calling it out loud and clear.
These gas deposits would certainly be of great interest to Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, with their tiny populations, but are they anywhere near large enough to be “a gleam in the West’s eye “?
If one wants to convince a family member who doubts the complicity of the US national news media with our Federal government Deep State and CIA, the cover up of the Biden Administration involvement in the Nord Stream catastrophe is the perfect example. EVERYTHING points directly to the Biden Administration. And yet over one year has passed and no official blame placed upon the Administration by a single national media organization.
Equally stunning, and disconcerting, is the silence of our European “allies”. They suffered the consequences but remain almost completely silent. I’m at a loss as to how meekly the German public sit silently by as the effects of the sabotage works its way through the German economy. Empires in decline are more dangerous than empires ascending. The Nord Stream sabotage is the absolute perfect example. This incident goes way beyond the actions of the Biden Administration and US news media. It’s a reflection on the whole of Washington DC, and the unipolar world DC rules. As the old saying goes: If something has to end, it will.
If conclusive proof were provided it would still not make a difference to my family who will never abandon the democrat party no matter what. They would not even have the attention span to hear the evidence, even if you could give it in one minute. Instead they will completely ignore it, or find whatever corporate media are providing a moral back door – surely the Washington Post can figure out how to explain to them that Biden did the right thing. They wouldn’t even need an argument, they just need to see the words “Biden did the right thing” in their hallowed newspapers and that’d be good enough for them, they wouldn’t even read past the headline. Nowadays it has to be a negative article about Trump to get them past the headline.
My family are lifelong democrats who believe they are morally superior in all ways. I became enlightened in 1993 when I read my first Chomsky book. I’ve since outgrown Chomsky, I just can’t get on board with his pimping for the democrat party every four years, but I’ll always have a soft spot for him. I spent a good 5 years starting in 1993 trying to enlighten others. I convinced nobody, even though some pretended to listen and agree, it translated into nothing long term. I came to the sad conclusion that it’s not a lack of information that keeps people in line with evil, it’s literally that they do not want to know the truth, no matter what the evidence.
They simply cannot deal with a world which is not black and white and where there’s not a party of good to balance a party of evil. And the “powers that be” could not get away with it without the apathy of the people, so that makes them willing participants in evil. It’s hard to come to terms with your family constituting the true evil of our times. No better than the population of Nazi Germany they so love to criticize. In fact worse, because they won’t be killed for taking a stand. What’s a person with a conscience to do? I still associate with my family, because they’re my family, but I have to patronize them and bite my tongue every day. I have to break bread with people who burn women and children alive for profit and could care less, meanwhile patting themselves on the backs for being morally superior in all ways. That’s basically reduced my relationships with my family to a shell of what it once was. Not to mention my friends and colleagues at work, but that’s another story.
All I achieved in those five years was to completely ostracize and alienate myself from polite society. Something I continue to deal with to this day. Enlightenment in the political sphere is a lonely row to hoe. Thank god for Consortium news and these comment sections, it helps to keep me sane.
Wow ! your situtation is identical to mine. I really started to wake up to media manipulation of the public mind when the covid crisis hit. Once you become aware of how our minds are manipulated by the media and power interests you pass through a portal that you can never go back through. I don’t even try to convince people anymore. As you stated: people don’t want to know the truth. You can present them with evidence and they just won’t look at it no matter how smart you or they think they are. I also have to bite my lip and keep my comments to myself around most people in my life and it has definitely made me feel a lot less connected with my peers and family. My wife will listen to me and does believe what I present to her but she has absolutely no desire or curiosity to dig deeper so I really don’t discuss much with her either because she just does not want to spend the mental energy to wrap her head around events. What really astonishes me about most people is the complete lack of curiosity when presented with information that challenges their beliefs. Personally, I love it when I learn something that causes me to see something different that my previous understandings and beliefs. I live for epiphanies.
Well written, well said. I understand how you are feeling. I’m lucky, my close family get the picture and I share CN articles with them, and we have fruitful, enlightened discussions.
So happy to read the sane and critical journalism presented here, and the commentariat enriches the experience, provides a sense of a community, we are few but we are not alone.
Aksel, from Norway
Finland is ruining its economy by cutting all ties to its neighbour Russia. We have over 1000 km border with Russia. Finlands economy would boom if we begun trading with them and letting turism flourish but instead we commit suicide and everybody here is silent…
Apropos of the German occupation – see above – Europe is under American occupation, save one or two states – Hungary, Serbia for example. The latest addition to the European ‘Garden’. have been Finland and Sweden. Dumbshit morons who jump when the US snaps it fingers. I forgot to mention Ireland, but always tune into the Irish firebrand – Clare Daly. This lady has got what it takes
Thank you for this, I LOVE Clare Daly!
Only politician I ever put on a t-shirt.
Most of Russia’s population live in Europe. Moscow is the largest entirely European city.
Yet another excellently reflective piece by Cook. While it did not cook up anything additional the narrative dish clearly missed the key ingrediant : energy profits for all the benefiting parties at the unsuspecting EXPENSES OF THE EU PUBLICS ! Clearly it is an act of collaborative if not also cooperative industrial sabotage with highly irresponsible additional environmental costs. This explains the muted response of EU leaders and even Russia not to mention lucre greedy Ukraine !
The western MSM is the ultimate “embed” – now fully embedded in those networks of power. I can’t see a way for it to extricate itself. It has to go extinct and be replaced. Free Julian Assange.
The US media run interference for the big corporations and their lackeys in the government. Their job is to manufacture doubt and to misdirect. They know they are lying, but they think they are noble lies in the furtherance of empire. They are information warriors.
What would happen if America’s 9/11 and Israel’s Oct. 7th were
subjected to truthful journalism? The yacht story might sink
along with the Titanic.
Sy Hersh had it exactly, but like Israel’s military blaming Hamas
for bombing Palestinian hospitals, while US/Israel commits genocide
on Gaza; the West’s mass media’s purpose is to keep the lie alive.
Our fault is believing them.
Anyone who knows anything about deep sea operations knows it was not done by divers, but by unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs; look that up!). But if course, even if some Ukrainians pulled the trigger, they didn’t build their own UUVs … and of course Biden knows who they are and where they got them. The stories about divers are red herrings, and Hersh was conned.
Hard to believe the Ukraine war can become even more of a disaster. Thanks for your staying on this, and giving Hersch the props he deserves.
Multiple and even mutually contradictory lies have become central to a new mode of propaganda over the last couple decades. The 5 Eyes have since returned heavily to repression and censorship, but this business of dribbling out wrong-planet stories designed to appeal to one or another assembly of fantasies does not seem likely to subside.
The likelihood that Ukraine’s military was able to carry out such a difficult act of sabotage on the ocean floor with 6 men and a rented yacht is vanishingly small. Of course the U.S. did it. In this case, it’s a matter of guilty until proven innocent.
This is an article based on hypothesis and not real reporting.
If Ukraine had anything to do with the sabotage, then the Hersh article is complete garbage and needs to be completely ignored. Hersh was very detailed on which US agencies carried out the sabotage. If his story is wrong in these critical details, it is not credible.
The Intercept came out with a story purporting to show that the pipeline operation was not all that difficult for experienced divers. If that is true, then there is no compelling evidence, except conjecture, that the top Ukrainian, or US, agencies were involved or forewarned. Even the Gilligan’s Island explanation of six men and a yacht is not entirely fanciful.
The most important fact was that the country supposedly investigating the sabotage, Sweden, refuses to give Russia access to the investigation or its detailed evidence. So, the evidence for any conclusion is very weak.
“Because the power to tell stories, the power over our minds, is the greatest power there is.”
Yup, so why haven’t we the people figured out how to tell better stories – ones more akin to the truth …
“There are no alternative facts,” only alternative narratives.”
If you inhabit a parallel universe, like many an oligarch, there are alternative facts, eg. you’ve never had it so good; things are only getting better; your wealth is increasing day by day; even the sky isn’t a limit; war, famine, and climate disasters only hurt other people; …
The Biden regime almost certainly blew up the pipeline, there are videos still on YT where he boasts that the US “will end Nordstream”.
Cui Bono?
Prof. Michael Hudson was one of the early predictors of this, the US would force EU countries (Germany especially) to buy very expensive LNG shipped from the US and other places, cut off Russia, make Germany pay for new LNG terminals and eat the costs of the destroyed pipelines. The EU is a militarily occupied vassal of the US Empire. Hudson predicted the financial collapse of 08, and he predicted this.
Contrast this excellent piece from Jonathan Cook with a piece that appears in Counter Punch today “And, Still Ukraine” by L. Michael Hager. The CP article is full of one-sided accounts and outright falsehoods. The author makes no attempt to offer any evidence that Russia was unprovoked, Russia is running out of weapons, Ukraine is a democracy etc. I am quite disappointed that CP would continue to post such low-quality garbage – it should be insulting to the informed readers.
Thanks! I was going to click on that CP article, and now I know better. CP has been going steadily downhill since the Age Of Trump. Incredibly, Paul Street, a guy whose work I would always read first at CP, has let Trump get the better of him and now admonishes readers to stay away from Consortium News and The Grayzone. Why? I forget the exact reason, but maybe it’s because they don’t criticize Trump enough,or fail to call Trump a fascist.
What hasn’t been mentioned in the Nordstream bombing stories is how it bailed out the deeply speculative US gas industry. Gas prices in the USA have been low for years. The new LNG market as a result of the bombing is extremly lucrative. Worse, rising gas prices in USA hve contributed to inflation here.
Unfortunately what people tend to miss here is that blowing up the pipeline released massive amounts of Methane into the atmosphere!
This from the Clean Air Taskforce: Initial estimates vary widely, but the Nord Stream leaks may represent the largest single methane emitting event ever recorded. Based on information provided by Nord Stream AG, the primary operator of the pipelines, the total gas lost from each pipeline could be as high as 170-190 kilotonnes of methane, meaning that if all three pipelines lost all their gas, more than 500 kilotonnes of methane were leaked within a week. If all this gas made it into the atmosphere, this would have the same climate impact over the next two decades as a year’s emissions from almost 9 million passenger cars.
But, then, humans are predisposed to blowing things up, including ourselves, so I’m not surprised…
Nordstream may have been the largest single methane leak yet, but it pales into insignificance beside the fossil fuel industry’s regular emissions. 500 kilotonnes of methane is what the oil and gas industries emit in just a day or two.
Daily use of fossil fuels is at least productive. Transportation, heating and cooling of homes and businesses, industrial production all depend on fuels. The bombing of the Nordstream pipelines was a state sponsored act of environmental terrorism. If the International Criminal Court was anything but a fraudulent, political entity, Joe Biden would have a warrant out for his arrest. The record is that every European head of state, except for Viktor Orban is complicit in this massive criminal act and cover-up of the facts. How many ordinary Germans even realize that they are stuck with paying the cost of this act of war that was taken against them by their supposed friend and ally in Washington D.C? The German state sponsored and censored press will never reveal the truth to them. Nor will Chancellor Scholz nor the Greens darling Baerbock.
I doubt if Aleksandr Lukashenko is any more complicit than Viktor Orban.
Thank you, Mr. Cook for keeping us properly and truly informed on this incident. I’ve been following the articles on this subject on Consortium News and it’s important and critical to keep on top of this! Thank you and all those true journalists out there for keeping on top of this important news!
Why UK and the EU keeps supporting the USA after the damage that Biden with his long standing dislike of Russia has imposed on it bears much greater scrutiny. BORIS Johnson ex PM was American born and is probably as corrupt as he is a born liar. Sunak worked in the financial sector in the States and is still being handsomely rewarded from there. As to the EU,the politicians should be investigated for financial incentives recieved from the USA .
Cui bono? The U.S. not only had the means and motive, but the Biden Regime had the most to gain of any nation, by destroying the Nordstream pipeline.
Sweden and Denmark conducted investigations and the only report issued was that the bombings were carried out only by an unnamed nation-state that had the capability. ‘Sweden and Denmark, in whose exclusive economic zones the explosions occurred, have concluded that the pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany were blown up deliberately.’ Puts Frederiksen, during a press conference in Copenhagen. “According to the clear assessment of the authorities, these are deliberate actions, not accidents. Several explosions were observed, ”said Frederiksen. Climate Minister Dan Jorgensen stressed that there were explosions and no accidents. “The nature of the leaks indicates that there are holes that are so big it can’t have happened by accident,” Both Sweden and Denmark have stopped short of naming which nations have the capability to have carried out the ‘deliberate’ demolition operation. Why? If they had evidence that Russia had bombed the pipelines, they would not hesitate to say as much. They would have little reason to protect Ukraine, if they had evidence. That leaves the U.S. and U.K. as the prime suspects. There is no way that any NATO country would have attacked a fellow NATO nation without the approval of the U.S.
Joe Biden bragged in public about being able to ‘stop’ Nordstream, but would not say how.
“If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the … border of Ukraine again, then there will be … no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it,” Biden said. Asked how, given the project is in German control, Biden said: “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”
After Nordstream was sabotaged, Victoria Nuland gloated about it while Anthony Blinken extolled the virtue of this ‘opportunity.’
Blame the press for conspiring with the Psy-Ops of the Biden Regime. This has become the new normal. When the Washington Post quotes a U.S. government ‘source,’ the only rational conclusion is that it is just the latest Psy-Op direct from the CIA.
But what of the ‘Greens’ of Europe? They are completely silent on this massive environmental disaster. Not a peep from Saint Greta or the climate anarchists on this crime against the planet. This proves that they are complete frauds. They want only to win at all costs. To destroy the economy of Europe and the world in order to exercise power over us all. The ‘Greens’ will never oppose Biden or Scholz because both of them do their bidding. Both Biden and Scholz and all of NATO are complicit in their charade.
Thank you, Jonathan Cook for proving that actual reporting still actually exists. And it doesn’t require an edifice of sterility and greed like the picture of the Washington Post building above to supply actual journalism at all. What buildings like that tell you is that we won’t be given any choices anymore. Representative democracy was just the object in a dark corner, obliquely seen, yet glowing in our minds like a beacon of hoped-for riches. And as soon as we assume its continued existence (even if only in our own minds), the prison-doors slam shut and the fight for survival in that same dark corner (which turned out to be empty, of course) begins. The truth is essential to that survival, and is much more important than the industrialized food offered in this wasteland of mendacity called the U.S.. What did Ben Franklin say at the end of the Constitutional Convention when asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy? “A republic, if you can keep it.” Well, it’s now a military-industrial oligarchy, and like the city-state of Athens or the Empire of Rome, it is falling into disarray before our very eyes. And what is even more pathetic is that, even after more than 2000 years to bake it into our own minds that this is what always happens, we let it happen all over again. America was always a bit of a con game, at best a long con against the very forces it was supposed to have held in check from the very beginning. Well, the con game is up, and the pieces of it that remain will be sold for the cheap rhetoric it always was.
Anyone with a brain knew the US destroyed the pipelines, the day after it happened. So, the rest was not interesting, with the possible exception of Hersh’s report. Even there, the details were faded quickly. What was astounding, to this day, was the response of Germany.
Ah, Germany and sausage Chancellor Scholtz, the very weakest and most despicable “leader” who just accepted the Biden insult and the destruction of Germany’s famed industrialisation and has gone on to ruin what is left of his country’s economy and “defense”.
Nobody could have believed the original Russia- blaming. If Russia, after all the work done to help provide the gas Europe had asked for , suddenly wanted to cut it off, it had only to turn off the tap, not destroy the whole scheme.
Absolutely as in any crime who benefits certainly in this case the US.
Cui bono?
Also Israel.
Also energy companies who have leases from Israel for the illegal exploitation of Gaza’s natural gas assets.
Germany is occupied. That occupation has proceeded all my life. When I was a child it wasn’t clear to me why the US military was still in Germany, many years after the end of WWII. The reasons became clear. Occupation, domination, submission, obedience, complicity.
The voluntary servitude of the highly educated and intelligent German populace to a corrupt, decadent, ignorant hegemonic U.S. overlord is astounding. Like Ukraine, Germans have been led down the primrose path to their doom. As Benjamin Franklin observed: ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’ The world should heed the examples of Ukraine and Germany. The U.S. is ultimately a friend to no nation and no one. We are a band of financial pirates, drunk on power and spiraling toward our own demise. War mongering, chicken hawk Lindsey Graham and feeble Joe Biden are prime examples of what passes for ‘leadership’ today in what was once the great hope of all humanity.
Had the German government openly accused the US, many other recent narratives would have come under increased scrutiny, eg. the poisonings of Navalny and the Skripals, the chemical attacks in Syria, and a whole lot more.
Jonathan Cook echoing Caitlin Johnstone here. The rulers could not carry out their criminal activities without a complacent media to enforce the official narrative. Take the narrative managers away and the whole edifice collapses.