We talk to legendary Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh about his latest bombshell scoop: the United States, on President Biden’s orders, blew up the Nord Stream pipelines that were foundational to Germany’s export economy until last year.
Seymour Hersh on US Bombing Nord Stream Pipelines — Radio War Nerd EP #366 via Radio War Nerd
Previously:
US bombed Nord Stream gas pipelines, claims investigative journalist Seymour Hersh
For several decades the American public has been instilled with an intrinsic fear of and hatred for China.
No singular event in this seemingly inevitable march to war is more emblematic of the American public’s warped psyche than the “Chinese Spy Balloon” narrative—perhaps due, in part, to its facial absurdity. The happening eclipses even similarly nonsensical yarns such as widespread TikTok paranoia (see the NSA’s PRISM program), China’s American farmland purchases (Chinese firms account for <.5% of all foreign-owned land in the U.S.), and the “invasion” of Chinese fentanyl through the Southern border (fentanyl trafficking is illegal in China).
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While some populist Republicans have bravely departed from the establishment’s support for Ukraine, many led the chorus of voices urging escalation—and not diplomacy.
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The banner narrative favored by mainline Republicans and the populist Right alike—that Joe Biden is weak—is insidious, because it implies that Biden should be more aggressive. Furthermore, it excuses Biden’s objectively ultra-hawkish policy against China.
Just in the last few weeks, the Biden administration continued its redoubling of the Asia Pivot launched by Barack Obama and furthered by Donald Trump: the U.S. Marine Corps opened a new base in Guam as the U.S. opened an embassy in the Solomon Islands, furthered diplomatic measures meant to militarize Japan, announced the opening of new military installations in the Philippines and Palau, and furthered a deal that would secure it exclusive military access to Micronesia, an area of the Pacific Ocean as large as the continental U.S.—all with the express and stated aim of confronting China.
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Unfortunately, the prevailing narrative won the day—while Americans’ heads were in the clouds, imagining a biowarfare attack, or falsely reporting the balloon carried explosives, Sino-American relations deteriorated even further. Distressingly, the American public exhibited its eagerness to rush to just about any conclusion concerning China.
An Overblown Balloon Headline Inflates False Narrative on China
The bombing of the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea was a covert operation ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA, a report by a veteran investigative journalist claims.
US bombed Nord Stream gas pipelines, claims investigative journalist Seymour Hersh
Full Story:
If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.
More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions
The CIA has been using a European NATO country’s intelligence services to conduct sabotage attacks inside Russia since the February invasion of Ukraine, investigative journalist Jack Murphy reported on Saturday, citing unnamed former US intelligence and military officials.
Report: The CIA Is Directing Sabotage Attacks Inside Russia
Related:
The CIA is using a European NATO ally’s spy service to conduct a covert sabotage campaign inside Russia under the agency’s direction, according to former U.S. intelligence and military officials.
‘CIA behind spate of explosions in Russia’: US veteran claims CIA and NATO ally behind sabotage
The FBI Paid Twitter $3.4 Million for Processing Requests
There’s been ample insinuation that these agencies were politically motivated. But all of this was happening at a time when President Donald Trump was in power and his people were running DHS and the FBI. Rather than agencies intent on swaying the 2020 election for Biden, their actions seem like run-of-the-mill paranoia and attempts at control.
This brings us back to the money the FBI gave Twitter for “time spent processing requests.” In the last installment of the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi reported on some of those requests, many of which were related to potential election misinformation. Twitter looked into the flagged tweets and accounts, sometimes complying with the FBI and sometimes not.
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Twitter’s “Guidelines for law enforcement” does state under a section titled “Cost reimbursement” that “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).” But the fact that this garnered millions from the FBI was not, as far as I can tell, known until now.
Related:
No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’
But this is a misreading/misunderstanding of how things work. This had nothing to do with any “influence campaign.” The law already says that if the FBI is legally requesting information for an investigation under a number of different legal authorities, the companies receiving those requests can be reimbursed for fulfilling them.
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I do think it remains a scandal the way that 2703(d) orders work, and the inability of users to push back on them. But that is the law. And it has literally nothing whatsoever to do with “censorship” requests. It is entirely about investigations by the FBI into Twitter users based on evidence of a crime. If you want, you can read the DOJ’s own guidelines regarding what they can request under 2703(d).
Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, law enforcement must obtain a court order under 18 U.S.C. §2703(d) (2703(d) order) to compel a provider to disclose more detailed records about a customer’s or subscriber’s use of services, such as the following
The market for commercial spyware — which allows governments to invade mobile phones and vacuum up data — is booming. Even the U.S. government is using it.
How the Global Spyware Industry Spiraled Out of Control
A Washington DC-area Anomaly 6 firm is marketing illegal spy tech that can scrape an individual’s most sensitive personal data by tracking their smartphone. The British Ministry of Defence and GCHQ are potential buyers.
Leaked files: private spying firm targets global population with illegal spyware
During the Trump administration, the FBI paid $5 million to an Israeli software company for a license to use its “zero-click” surveillance software called Pegasus. Zero-click refers to software that can download the contents of a target’s computer or mobile device without the need for tricking the target into clicking on it. The FBI operated the software from a warehouse in New Jersey.
The FBI and Zero-Click
Related:
NSO Group Pitched Phone Hacking Tech to American Police
A former NSO employee told Motherboard that Phantom was “a brand name for U.S. territory,” but the “same Pegasus,” referring to NSO’s phone hacking tool that the company has sold to multiple countries including the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia for millions of dollars. Infamously, Saudi Arabia used the software to surveil associates of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Motherboard granted the source anonymity to protect them from retaliation from NSO
The former prime minister’s leaked iPhone messages convince Russia that British forces blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Liz Truss’s message to the USA seconds after the Nord Stream attack: ‘It’s done’.
Video via Proletarian TV
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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