Seymour Hersh, Nord Stream and the silence of Europe

6 min read MIGUEL MOLLEDA

MIGUEL MOLLEDA

On September 29, 2022, the Swedish coast guard released disturbing images of bubbling, frothy waters gushing over the surface of the Baltic Sea. They were effervescences from a huge gas leak under the cold northern currents, emerging to the sea surface. The Russian Nord Stream pipelines supplying cheap gas to Europe had just been dynamited and disabled. From that moment on, the major American media began a tiresome exercise in journalistic tightrope walking with one main mantra: “it is a mystery”.

Washington's information stuntmen, who had profusely concealed and misrepresented the causes of Russia's military intervention in Ukraine in February 2022, launched into the most difficult yet risky pseudo-journalistic exercise. They unabashedly suggested that the destruction of Russia's oil pipelines, which flowed precious gas to the mighty industry and homes of Europe's leading economic powerhouse at a very attractive price, and which Berlin in turn resold to the rest of the continent, had been Moscow work. That is, double somersault with corkscrew; Russia, embarked on a destructive and dangerous war in the Ukraine and fighting, not only against Kiev, but against the 30 NATO countries that had solicitously come to the aid of the anti-Russian Ukrainians, after the Atlantic Alliance itself had been the main provocateur of the conflict , had bombed itself and in a gesture of Slavic madness had destroyed the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines that had long been the envy of the United States.

The American power could not bear that the main economic engine of Old Europe depended on Russian gas and that this dependency was also very beneficial for German economic interests and the rest of the countries of the European Union, lacking the necessary energy resources that Russia did. has. The fact that Russia had attacked its own energy and economic interests and destroyed Nord Stream was as implausible as the United States would have dared to attack them (or perhaps not as much), had the war not broken out in Ukraine.

Therefore, the darts of the Washington media, pointing the accusing finger at the Russians, were illogical and far-fetched. They would have done better to investigate what could be behind the statements, both by US President Joe Biden and by the Undersecretary of the State Department, architect of the coup in Kiev in 2014 (pompously and cunningly named "Euromaidan"), as turn "Miss Fucking Europe", Victoria Nuland. Both had threatened that the Russian Nord Stream pipelines would cease to exist.

As for the major European media, they continued to be immersed in the same somnambulism that has characterized the leaders in Brussels since the outbreak of the war: a total absence of the slightest critical spirit regarding the causes and consequences of the Ukrainian conflict, and blind monitoring of the strategic and economic interests of the United States and NATO, even at the expense of the population of the European Union, which suffers and will suffer even more from the excrescences of the war in Ukraine. Some media that did not even find sufficient reasons to investigate what happened under the waters of the Baltic when leaders of the neighboring republics and Poland, whose elites are insanely anti-Russian, proclaimed their striking thanks of "thank you, USA" when the surprising news arrived that Military high explosives, detonated underwater, had destroyed the Russian Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.

Since these sabotages and attacks against the oil pipelines, everything between the European media and political leaders has had this same pattern of silence, indoctrination, and submissive follow-up. Hardly a timid reaction when veteran and renowned Chicago investigative journalist Seymour Hersh announced in full detail on his own “Substack” blog in early February of this year (the big US corporate media did not want to publish their information to him) , that the United States, with the help of Norway (also a beneficiary of the possible sale, more and better, of its own gas and oil if the rest of Europe could no longer acquire Russian gas) had destroyed Nord Stream in September 2022. According to Hersh, used C4 military plastic explosive, placed in June by specialized American divers, taking advantage of NATO maneuvers in the Baltic.

Hersh's investigation, Pulitzer Prize winner for his coverage of the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War, who for years has based his sources of information on US intelligence agencies, has been scorned and rejected by the mainstream media. The New York Times and other North American and European media, instead of making an examination of conscience about his own limitations, have tried to discredit Hersh by accusing him of using a single anonymous information source on the American authorship of the attack. Hypocrisy of the same media that for months shamelessly used hundreds of anonymous information sources to justify the false information with which the administration of Bush Jr. prepared the 2003 military invasion of Iraq.

In an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan González of Democracy Now, published by Globalter, Seymour Hersh asserts that the US decided to bomb Russian gas pipelines to ensure the support of the allies in the war in Ukraine when some of them had begun to falter. And with that, Biden told Europe, "you are secondary." For Hersh, "the notion that Europe can totally trust the US has evaporated." The political consequences of the attacks will be enormous for the United States and will undermine NATO, the journalist assures.

At the moment, the “non-Russian” gas that the Europeans have begun to buy is much more expensive, and Germany's economy has begun its decline. It remains to be seen if Russia considers the attack on Nord Stream a "casus belli" with very serious and unpredictable consequences for Europe.

To the big corporate media, the aggressive Americans, and the kneeling Europe, Seymour Hersh is guilty for going out of his way to do his job as a journalist and tell us the truth, even drinking from a fountain they didn't want to taste a drop of. . Perhaps because journalism for these media is already another assumed victim of the war.