[Peace-discuss] RT: Nord Stream syndrome: One year on, EU states and the US collude to sweep the pipeline attacks under the rug

[J.B. Nicholson]

A good write-up of the issues involved in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.

https://www.rt.com/russia/584074-russia-nord-stream-pipeline-attacks/

> Nord Stream syndrome: One year on, EU states and the US collude to sweep the
> pipeline attacks under the rug
> 
> It seemed easy to blame Russia at first, but now that the evidence doesn’t add up,
> the West doesn’t want to talk about the truth
> 
> By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies, RT
> correspondent
> 
> Nord Stream syndrome: One year on, EU states and the US collude to sweep the
> pipeline attacks under the rug
> 
> It’s been more than a year since one of the biggest pieces of energy
> infrastructure in Europe was destroyed in what can only be described as a terror
> attack. One would imagine that no stone would be left unturned to investigate a
> crime of such magnitude and attribute responsibility.
> 
> You would also think that the countries that stood to lose most from Nord Stream’s
> destruction would be at the forefront of these investigations. Well, welcome to
> the Europe of 2023 where, in a weird case of Stockholm syndrome, it seems neither
> the alleged perpetrator nor indeed one of the main victims wants any more
> “trouble” when it comes to Nord Stream. The consensus is to let sleeping dogs lie,
> and considering the evidence of US involvement in the attack, that’s entirely
> unsurprising.
> 
> On September 26, 2022, the world’s news feeds erupted with reports of the powerful
> explosions which tore the landmark Russian-German gas pipelines apart, dealing a
> devastating blow to Berlin's, and by extension the entire EU's, energy security.
> Within a couple of days, Western media had seemingly solved the mystery.
> Publications such as Politico eagerly proclaimed that “Everything is pointing to
> Russia,”[1] embracing the utterly delusional anti-logic that would make it
> plausible that Russia would destroy a piece of its own energy infrastructure that
> had been bringing it steady income. This reality, widely accepted by objective,
> nonaligned observers[2], was however lost on a slew of NATO-, US-, and EU-aligned
> commentators and officials. A mere four days after the explosions, US Energy
> Secretary Jennifer Granholm told the BBC[3] that it “seems” Russia was behind the
> destruction of its own multibillion-dollar investment.
> 
> When we roll the clock forward to today, it is now patently clear that Western
> media have been tasked with memory-holing the entire Nord Stream affair, with
> Germany, Sweden, and Denmark quietly conducting separate “investigations” which
> conveniently exclude Russian officials while also remaining strangely low-key in
> Western newsfeeds. These obviously declawed investigations continue as it is
> increasingly accepted in the West[4] that Russia had nothing to do with the
> sabotage, it now being obvious that the US and/or a proxy partner[5] were actually
> behind this terror attack on European soil. More than a year after these attacks,
> it’s apparent that the manner in which this reality has been suppressed is
> possibly more sinister than the attack itself.
> 
> An often-overlooked element of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines is the
> devastating environmental impact that resulted from the explosions. Over 100,000
> tons of methane gas was released into the atmosphere as four huge blasts tore
> through the two pipelines. A far less well known, or publicized, fact is that
> these pipelines were laid near an area where tons of toxic chemical weapons
> waste[6] from the First World War had previously been dumped. The scale of the
> resulting short- and long-term impact on the seabed and atmosphere is difficult to
> establish, but both this and the single-biggest release of methane into the
> atmosphere in recent history seem to have gone generally unnoticed by the Green
> lobby in the EU and US. Anyone doubting the influence of this bunch should recall
> that on Joe Biden’s first day in office, he canceled a huge pipeline project,
> Keystone XL, jeopardizing thousands of construction jobs in what was seen as
> payback to environmentalists, whose cash and influence had been critical in his
> narrow electoral success.
> 
> The silence of the Green lobby on the catastrophic impact of the Nord Stream
> attack thus seems all the more unusual. Environmental activists across the US have
> rallied around calls to prevent the construction of pipelines in various regions,
> citing their negative environmental impact, but those same people seem remarkably
> quiet when it comes to the biggest pipeline-related environmental catastrophe in
> decades. The lack of any significant challenge regarding this act of eco-terrorism
> speaks volumes about the West’s selective approach to the Ukraine conflict. Green
> moral outrage is instantly shelved once Russia or China is the target and not the
> perpetrator.
> 
> The other elephant in the room is of course the fact that the US military
> represents the single-biggest source of carbon pollution on planet Earth[7]. It's
> the largest consumer of energy in America itself and the world’s single-largest
> institutional consumer of petroleum. In this context it’s worth noting the endless
> stream of “celebrity” visitors to the court of Ukrainian President Vladimir
> Zelensky in Kiev, amongst them the 'Queen of Green' Greta Thunberg, who decried
> the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam and the environmental impacts of
> war, all the while posing for grinning pictures with Zelensky and his entourage.
> Strangely, and maybe conveniently, the Nord Stream attack was absent from the
> agenda which widely condemned Russia as the architect of all of Ukraine’s past,
> current, and future environmental woes. Innumerable other Western “stars” have
> landed in Kiev to wring as much PR out of the conflict as possible, but not on one
> single occasion has any of these “eco warriors” dared to raise the impact of the
> Nord Stream attack and its aftermath. It seems that the destruction of the dam,
> which had no strategic benefit for the Russian military, much like the destruction
> of the Nord Stream pipeline, is yet another convenient way to demonize Moscow, a
> practice now routinely engaged in without any requirement to provide any objective
> or independent evidence.
> 
> Remarkably, when evidence[8] emerged that Ukrainian forces had previously targeted
> the Kakhovka dam to “test” whether they could indeed strike it, this was widely
> ignored by Western media, and yet again, the immediate rush to blame Russia, as
> happened with Nord Stream, began with only a few outlets publishing slightly
> dissenting views[9].
> 
> So as the line of Hollywood stars and politicians making the pilgrimage to Kiev
> diminishes, along with Kiev’s chances of victory, some of the realities of the
> selective blindness regarding Nord Stream become all the more apparent. Zelensky’s
> regime in Kiev is obviously finding it more and more difficult to carry the
> narrative plausibly to tiring Western audiences, with manic allegations of Russian
> missile attacks in Poland[10] and Konstantinovka[11] all being embarrassingly
> shown to be false. Compounding the downward spiral of Ukrainian credibility is
> Polish Prime Minister Andrzej Duda’s recent pushback against Kiev’s demands. Add
> to this the recent debacle with the Ukrainian Nazi lauded in the Canadian
> parliament, which turned Ottawa’s show of support for Kiev into a PR disaster, and
> you get a distinct sense that the wheels are coming off for Zelensky and his
> regime. One thing is absolutely undeniable, that when this is all over, and the
> truth about Nord Stream and the suppressive media coverage surrounding it comes to
> the surface, we will probably need a dam to hold back the flood of reality that
> hits a Western population that gleefully consumed a grossly implausible narrative
> around this whole affair. Given the fact that the truth has an inconvenient
> tendency to emerge, it’s quite possible that one of the EU’s most energetic
> Russophobes, Josep Borrell, may end up regretting saying the words he never
> intended to turn into action at the time:
> 
> “Any deliberate disruption of European energy infrastructure is utterly
> unacceptable and will be met with a robust and united response.”

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/28/nord-stream-pipeline-explosions-eu-00059262
[2] https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63084613
[4] 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/russia-nord-stream-explosions/
[5] https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
[6] 
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nord-stream-pipeline-blasts-stirred-up-toxic-sediment/#:~:text=The%20explosions%20that%20blasted%20holes,analysis%20of%20the%20site%20suggests.
[7] 
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/10/pentagon-climate-change-neta-crawford-book/#:~:text=Although%20the%20Pentagon%20has%20been,percent%20of%20federal%20energy%20consumption.
[8] 
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/ukraine-considered-destroying-nova-kakhovka-dam-:wapo
[9] 
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-07/ukraine-and-russia-blame-each-other-for-dam-burst-at-un/102448442
[10] https://www.rt.com/news/583571-polish-deaths-ukrainian-missile/
[11] https://www.rt.com/russia/583187-konstantinovka-missile-nyt-investigation/