Pay
For Your Own Wars, Big Oil!
by C.A. Matthews
Did you get a chance to read Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh’s excellent
exposé on who and how
and when the Nord Stream
LNG pipelines were blown up? If you haven’t read his article yet, you really owe it to yourself to do so now. Go on, click on the blue link. We’ll wait.
Here’s a quick
excerpt from it for
those in a rush:
Last June, the Navy
divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer
NATO exercise known as BALTOPS22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months
later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according
to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
Two of the pipelines,
which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing
Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for
more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2,
had been built but were not yet operational. (…)
Biden’s decision to
sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly
secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security
community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time,
the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done
with no overt clue as to who was responsible. – Seymour Hersch,
How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline
And
for clarification, in case you've come across persons attempting to besmirch Mr. Hersh’s distinguished
career:
[Hersh] went to Vietnam and
covered the war as a freelance reporter. In 1969, he heard about an Army
lieutenant, William Calley, who had been secretly court martialed for
his role in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians, and, after investigating
it as a freelance reporter, he broke the news of what became widely
known as the My Lai massacre, in which he wrote, “The Army says
Lieutenant Calley deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese
civilians during a search and destroy mission in March 1968, in a Viet
Cong stronghold known as Painesville.” Hersh 's story was picked up by
33 newspapers through the wire service. He was working as a freelance
reporter when he revealed that.
That
incident took place in March 1968. It involved the deliberate killing
by company Sea First Battalion, 20th Infantry, of South Vietnamese
civilians. The U.S. Army originally denied all of his claims, insisting
that they were all made up and were all fiction but they ultimately
ended up admitting most of his revelations, including the fact that
Lieutenant Calley was convicted of murder of 22 civilians and was
sentenced to life in prison, though he was pardoned in 1974. For that
reporting, which prompted not mean tweets, but threats of all kinds of
violence from many serious sectors, Hersh won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize
for Investigative Reporting.—Glenn Greenwald, Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? System Update #39 (February 10, 2023)
Seymour
Hersh is one of the most highly respected journalists in the world.
He won the Pulitzer Prize, the top award in Western journalism, for
his reporting on US war crimes in Vietnam.
He has spent decades building up sources inside the US
government. Hersh has also earned accolades for exposing US
atrocities and cover-ups targeting Iraq, Iran, and Syria. —Ben
Norton, US blew up Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia to Germany, journalist Seymour Hersh reports
Things
are making a whole lot more
sense now—at least
they should
to those who have been watching and/or reading mainstream media
outlets and fell for the
“Russia blew up its own pipeline!” nonsense.
The rest of us who regularly follow independent journalists online and nurse a
healthy sense of skepticism
toward anything coming out of the mouths
of US
government spokespersons
weren’t surprised at all by
Hersh’s reporting.
But I realize that there is still a
lot of head scratching in the “Vote Blue No Matter Who” crowd. Some of these heavily propagandized folks are willing to admit that they couldn’t fathom why any country would destroy its own profitable pipeline,
even if they are ruled by “Bad Man (not Orange) Putin,” a man portrayed in the mainstream media as a combination of Trump and Stalin.
The most surprising thing
to me in Hersh's article was the
Norwegians’ uncontained enthusiasm for the sabotage plan. They were happy to go
along with planting the concrete-covered
C4 explosives on the
Nord Stream liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipelines.
No one had to twist the
Norwegians’ arms to
drop the sea
buoy that boosted the signal from
the US to detonate the
bombs three months after they were planted. The bombs then exploded and
destroyed
three out of four of
the pipelines. (Hey,
nobody’s perfect, and the surviving pipeline has since been turned off. Mission accomplished!)
I wonder if the Norwegians
realized that by helping the United States destroy
property belonging
to oil companies from the EU, Germany, France, and several others (49%),
and Russia (51%) that
they were, to all
intents and purposes,
participating in an act
of war. Think about it. Blowing up a liquefied natural gas pipeline
that doesn’t belong to you is a very aggressive act. It’s not
something one country should do to another without expecting to
experience some serious
consequences in return.
In the past, as soon as one
country discovered their property had been destroyed by another
country,
a call for war was issued and fighting ensued. Perhaps
we should count ourselves lucky that nowadays the Big Oil companies sit down at the boardroom table and discuss how they’ll
proceed from this point onward before they come to blows.
Big Oil companies? Did you
actually think I meant to type “the US, Germany, Russia, and Norway
need to sit down and talk things over” in regard to blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines? No, I meant to type Big
Oil, and you'll see why in a moment.
We’re intelligent adults here, so I feel
I can speak frankly with
you about this matter. We both know that the US government wasn't ultimately in charge of this pipeline sabotage operation. Oh no. Whenever human beings are discussing anything to do with the largest multinational corporations on the planet like Big Oil, we have to admit that they, the corporations, are the ones exercising all the power. Simply put, it is the corporations who are calling all the shots. Big Oil is our ultimate ruler.
In short, Joe Biden
wasn’t the first to express
a
long-held desire to blow up Russia's profitable LNG pipeline. It was the Western Big
Oil companies that have
wanted the Nord Stream
put out of commission for
some time now. Chevron signed a deal and made some comments about cornering the
market in Ukraine’s
fossil fuel industry back in 2013, right before the US overthrew Ukraine's popularly elected president, Viktor Vanukovych, in the Maidan Coup of 2014. Unfortunately for Mr. Vanukovych, he expressed an interest in doing business with a Russian oil company over Chevron, a US oil company. (Interesting
coincidence, the timing of the Maidan Coup, don’t you think? Well, it did get then Vice President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, a cushy job at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Nothing to see here, move along, please.)
Investigative journalist Ben Norton points out:
Just hours after Nord
Stream was sabotaged, NATO members Norway, Denmark, and Poland
announced the official opening of a new natural gas pipeline, the Baltic Pipe. (...)
Since the Nord Stream
pipelines were blown up, Norway has replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of pipeline gas.
Norwegian gas shipments to Germany in particular have reached record highs.
In 2021, Norway had provided Germany with less then 20% of its gas
supply. By 2022, that figure had shot up to 33%.
Meanwhile, the United States has also become the world’s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) exporter (tied with Qatar).
European imports made up the “lion’s share” of US LNG exports in
2022, quickly replacing Asia as the new top market. —US blew up Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia to Germany, journalist Seymour Hersh reports
Putting competitor oil
corporations and pipelines out of business is how capitalism works.
You didn’t think it was all about “sharing
the market” and
“friendly competition” among these mega-billion dollar corporations, did you? Competition is for suckers!
Building a monopoly in a commodity market is where it’s at in
the sick and twisted socioeconomic system of capitalism.
Getting rid of your
competitors forever is a good enough reason to have your favorite puppet government sabotage and blow up an LNG pipeline and risk a nuclear war by doing so. These psychopathic/sociopathic Big Oil CEOs don't seem to worry very much about the fate of humanity. If they ever did, would they have covered up fossil fuel's part in causing greenhouse gases and exacerbating the climate catastrophe for the past half century?
Helping out your fellow CEOs at Raytheon,
General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and the rest of the military-industrial complex to make mega-profits is a good idea, too. Military equipment uses a lot of fossil fuels to run and be maintained. So helping them sell more and more armaments will help Big Oil's bottom line. And it's always a great idea to cooperate with the War Machine, that
is, if we haven’t nuked the entire planet into a cinder before then.
Trillions
of dollars in profit for Big Oil CEOs and their shareholders is
worth the political fall out from
causing what could be the largest methane leak in human history. (You didn't think blowing up the Nord Stream wouldn't have
a massive environmental impact, did you?)
Really, it was worth it. It’s not like the oil companies themselves deal much with the press, the irate public, the environment, and the maligned pipeline
owners. That’s what their bought-off politician-puppets are for.
That’s
right. That’s why Big
Oil lobbyists give so
much money to politicians worldwide. Politicians are tasked with creating
the circumstances where
capitalists can do what capitalists do best: Create monopolies and make
themselves evermore increasing profits. And if
it takes a war and causing an environmental disaster... then so be it.
As the great Ralph Nader
says:
No other institutions
consistently Rule over as Much in the World as the Giant Global
Corporations – not governments, not armies, not religions and
certainly not trade unions. These fictional corporate entities have
largely achieved transcendent imperial status, as they amass
coordinated control over capital, labor, technology and governments
because they have secured the rights bestowed upon human beings. In a
confrontation or a conflict or even a contract, it is no contest:
mere people don’t have a chance.
As Supreme Court Justice
Louis D. Brandeis warned in 1933, we have created a “Frankenstein
monster” in our midst, whose unifying lust for power and control on
behalf of their profits know few limits. From How to Rescue Our Democratic Society: Constitutionally Render Corporations Unequal to Humans
I’ll
venture to say
that Big Oil
knows
zero limits on their power. These
avaricious corporations dictate
both domestic and foreign policy for the US government. And our paid-for politician-puppets obediently do as they're told.
There was never
any question about who
blew up the Nord Stream pipelines.
The half-owners, Gazprom of Russia,
could have just turned off a valve on the pipeline and shut it down. There was
no need for them to
waste expensive and dangerous explosives to stop the flow of liquefied natural gas. Any
rational adult could reason that the Russians
had no motive to blow
up the
Nord Stream. It was highly profitable. Only
the
owners of the
new Baltic Pipe (built
by Poland, Denmark, and Norway)
and the US-aligned oil companies had the motive.
And they're
all making money hand
over fist, charging four times last year's cost for LNG to heat homes in Europe.
Their motive here is greed,
pure and simple—the greed of the US and EU oil companies who didn't
like cheap Russian natural gas flooding the market. And who suffers? Just the
people in both the Europe and the US this winter who can't afford to heat their homes.
Just the people of Ukraine caught in the middle of a shooting match. Nobody really in the eyes of the multinational corporations.
It's the greedy oil corporations who are the "bad guys” in this story. They ordered their puppet, the US government, to destroy a pipeline belonging to Russia, a fellow nuclear power. The saddest thing is that sabotaging another country's pipeline (or even shooting down another country's weather balloons) could lead to a grave misunderstanding, spark World War III, and get us all killed.
You know what? Big Oil can
pay for its own wars from now on. They can afford it—they make
trillions of dollars in profits, and it doesn’t look like they’ll
be without money anytime soon. Since
they are so good at buying politicians, they can go
ahead and buy mercenaries (which make up a good percentage of those fighting for
Ukraine currently) to do
the warring for them.
Better yet, let’s
tell Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to use their private spaceships to transport all the CEOS
and their mercenaries to the moon or Mars where they can fight over who gets to rule the LNG market without interruptions. We’ll all be much safer and happier here on Earth
if none of them ever come back.
Related Links:
How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
US blew up Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia to Germany, journalist Seymour Hersh reports
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/02/08/us-nord-stream-pipelines-seymour-hersh/
My Sources Corroborate Sy Hersh's Nord Stream Report
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/my-sources-corroborate-sy-hershs
Seymour Hersh’s exposure of the Nord Stream bombing: A lesson and a warning https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/10/pers-f10.html
Sen. Mike Lee ‘Can’t Rule Out’ That the US Blew Up Nord Stream
https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/10/sen-mike-lee-cant-rule-out-that-the-us-blew-up-nord-stream/
Glenn Greenwald: Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? System Update, Episode #39 https://rumble.com/v291nvo-system-update-show-39.html
INSANE: US Confirmed to Be Behind Nordstream Pipeline Attacks: Seymour Hersh https://www.youtube.com/live/DUwfPWJQ7Pc
Nord Stream pipeline & sabotaging peace w/Jeffrey Sachs
https://www.youtube.com/live/ySNyAaw4VEI
Here's How US Blew Up Nordstream Pipeline (NEW PROOF)
https://rumble.com/v28vpee-heres-how-us-blew-up-nordstream-pipeline-new-proof.html
How The United States Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline https://youtu.be/A68z2iQHUhE
Sy Hersh and the Way We Live Now https://popularresistance.org/sy-hersh-the-way-we-live-now/
Ukraine Signs $10 Billion Shale Gas Deal with Chevron https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-chevron/ukraine-signs-10-billion-shale-gas-deal-with-chevron-idUSBRE9A40ML20131105
Sitting in the Dock at the Hague (Ukraine War Series) https://bernie2016.blogspot.com/2022/03/sitting-in-dock-at-hague.html
Biden covers up plans for US shooting war against Russia in State of the Union address https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/09/pers-f09.html
How to Rescue Our Democratic Society: Constitutionally Render Corporations Unequal to Humans https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/11/how-to-rescue-our-democratic-society-constitutionally-render-corporations-unequal-to-humans/
How A Pipeline Company Paid Minnesota Millions To Police Protests https://popularresistance.org/how-a-pipeline-company-paid-minnesota-millions-to-police-protests/
Zelensky Admits He Refused to Implement Minsk Peace Deal https://popularresistance.org/zelensky-admits-he-refused-to-implement-minsk
Former Israeli PM Bennett Says US ‘Blocked’ His Attempts at a Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/08/former-israeli-pm-bennett-says-us-blocked-his-attempts-at-a-russia-ukraine-peace-deal/
Why Are We Repeating History? https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2023/02/why-are-we-repeating-history.html
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