Swedish prosecutor says Nordstream explosions were attacks, but nothing about who may have done it

The New Neo Posted on by

The latest news:

Almost two months after the Russian Nord Stream pipelines blew up in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish prosecutors have found traces of explosives at the underwater site and declared that the incident was an act of “gross sabotage.”

The explosions that ripped apart the pipelines at four places had a force of almost “500 kilograms of TNT” and measured 2.3 on the seismic Richter scale — comparable to “a powerful bomb from the second world war,” the German and British media outlets reported.

But is this really news? I suppose the traces of explosives and the official confirmation are news, but I don’t think there have been many people who didn’t conclude quite early on that this was most likely sabotage. Among other things, seismographic data indicated it almost from the start. The real question is whodunnit, and as in the best detective novels, there is no shortage of candidates.

I’d like to add a few things that people don’t usually emphasize. The first is that neither pipeline was active at the time. Number two wasn’t yet operating to begin with, and Russia had purposely stopped the flow of number one for “repairs” close to four weeks earlier (the article just linked was written weeks before the explosions):

Russia’s state-owned energy giant, Gazprom, halted all exports via Nord Stream 1 from Aug. 31, citing maintenance work on its only remaining compressor.

However, while flows were due to resume after three days, Gazprom on Friday cited an oil leak for the indefinite shutdown of the pipeline. The shock announcement came hot on the heels of a joint statement from the G-7 economic powers backing a proposal to put a price-capping mechanism on Russian oil.

In what energy analysts see as an escalation of Russia’s bid to inflict economic pain on the region, the Kremlin has since said that the resumption of gas supplies to Europe is completely dependent on Europe lifting its economic sanctions against Moscow.

The sanctions were not lifted. Also, Gazprom informed Germany’s Siemen’s Energy that until Siemen’s repaired some allegedly faulty equipment, the flow would not be resumed and the shutdown would continue. Siemen’s said this:

…[T]he company told Reuters that it’s not currently commissioned by Gazprom to do maintenance work on the turbine with the suspected oil leak, but said it remains on standby to do so.

Siemens Energy added that it “cannot comprehend this new representation based on the information provided to us over the weekend.”

Even more interestingly, months earlier Russia had already reduced the flow in the only-operating Nord Stream pipeline (number one) to 20% of the originally agreed-upon volume. Then came the report by Russia of a maintenance problem, and then a shutdown that was supposed to last three days, and then an indefinite shutdown supposedly due to a leak. The shutdown was about a month before the sabotage. Even the shutdown was causing great worry in Europe and particularly Germany about fuel shortages:

“Russia’s move to again cut gas supply to the EU just as the region scrambles to fill its inventories ahead of winter is a further escalation of its policy of the past months to inflict economic pain through repeated supply cuts to Germany, the EU’s biggest economy and gas consumer,” analysts at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group said in a research note.

“Sources in Berlin say they are now making all winter energy plans on the assumption of zero supply from Russia,” they added. “That means there will now also be a focus on central and southern Europe, which still receives Russian gas including through pipeline transit of Ukraine and Turkey.”

Again, please note that was written three weeks before the explosions.

It is my impression that many of those blaming the US for the sabotage – and there are plenty of them – seem to be ignoring this build-up. Let me say right here that I do not know who set the explosives. But to me, Russia is the most likely culprit for the simple reason that Russia had already been cutting off the flow through that pipeline for months, and then shutting it off for a month, in order to get the concessions it wanted from Europe. Russia was obviously more than willing to sacrifice whatever revenue it got from the Nord Stream, bargaining that hurting Europe was well worth it. And it had already become clear that Europe wouldn’t cooperate and give Russia what it wanted – with Germany also making it clear that it was trying to free itself from dependence on Russian fossil fuels entirely as soon as possible. So Russia may indeed have calculated that it would be losing nothing by making the already-shut-down Nord Stream pipelines inoperative, and that Europe would be losing much more.

To go back in time a bit further to demonstrate what I mean, in April of 2022 Germany made this announcement:

Germany could end Russian oil imports this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, signalling the urgency driving Europe’s biggest economy to wean itself off energy from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine…

“We are actively working to get independent from the import of (Russian) oil and we think that we will be able to make it during this year,” Scholz said during a news conference in London with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson…

The DIW economic institute said in a study published on Friday that Germany might be able to secure enough gas supplies for the coming winter without any imports from Russia through a combination of alternative suppliers and drastic energy-saving measures.

That deadline might have been somewhat premature, but at any rate the intent of Germany was clear way back in April and Nord Stream was due to become obsolete in fairly short order. Then Russia shut it down, and then it was purposely damaged.

I am virtually certain that many people here will disagree with me about the likelihood that Russia was the culprit and not the US. I have no illusions about those running Biden’s administration; I believe they are capable of deeply nefarious activities. But I don’t see strong signs that point to them being the perpetrators in this particular case and I see much stronger signs that point to Russia. That said, nothing would surprise me.

NOTE: This article on the history of Germany’s dependence on Russia is of interest (yes, I know, the Guardian is leftist, but it still seems pretty comprehensive to me). Many ironies abound, including the surprising (to me, at least) fact that the whole thing began in 1970, when Russia was still the USSR. Some details:

On Sunday 1 February 1970, senior politicians and gas executives from Germany and the Soviet Union gathered at the upmarket Hotel Kaiserhof in Essen…to celebrate the signing of a contract for the first major Russia-Germany gas pipeline, which was to run from Siberia to the West German border at Marktredwitz in Bavaria…

Germany would supply the machines and high-quality industrial goods; Russia would provide the raw material to fuel German industry…[This was part of the] new “eastern policy” of rapprochement towards the Soviet Union and its allies including East Germany, launched the previous year under chancellor Willy Brandt…

Before the signing, Nato had discreetly written to the German economics ministry to inquire about the security implications. Norbert Plesser, head of the gas department at the ministry, had assured Nato that there was no cause for alarm: Germany would never rely on Russia for even 10% of its gas supplies.

Half a century later, in 2020, Russia would supply more than half of Germany’s natural gas and about a third of all the oil that Germans burned to heat homes, power factories and fuel vehicles. Roughly half of Germany’s coal imports, which are essential to its steel manufacturing, came from Russia.

The article goes on to list many many people over the years who warned Germany, including a lot about Reagan:

Over 50 years, Germany fought numerous battles with a series of US presidents over its growing dependence on Russian energy. In the process, Germany’s foreign office developed a view of American anti-communism as naive, and a belief that only Germany truly understood the Soviet Union.

“I was wrong,” the former German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says, simply. “We were all wrong.”

What name is prominently missing from the entire 4,200+ word article? You can probably guess: Donald Trump. A reminder from 2018; Nord Stream 2 was planned but not yet built at the time:

I haven’t read any apologies to Trump coming from Germany or Western Europe. Perhaps I missed them, but a search didn’t locate them. If you find some, let me know.]

CBS engages in some Now It Can Be Told about Hunter Biden’s laptop

The New Neo Posted on by

You can’t exactly call it a scoop, but CBS News seems to be admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is authentic.

Two years late and two elections short, they grudgingly admit something that was obvious from the start, and discredited and suppressed by the MSM and the Democrats despite that because the truth was so potentially dangerous to their plans.

So, why now? I’ve noticed quite a few people saying it’s because they’re getting ready to jettison Biden, at least for 2024 if not sooner. But they could have dropped him anyway without this particular admission. What is my theory? I think they might just be trying to get slightly ahead of some parts of the planned House GOP investigation of the laptop evidence. They will be reporting that investigation as negatively as possible to the GOP and as positively as possible to the Democrats and especially to Biden himself. But in the meantime they’re admitting what will come out anyway, which is that the laptop is authentic.

King Joe and the dueling investigations

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”.]

From Andrea Widburg:

Today’s we-now-live-in-a-3rd-world-dictatorship news from the Biden administration is Merrick Garland’s breathtaking announcement that he has named a special counsel to conduct a criminal investigation into Donald Trump. Given the complete absence of evidence of any wrongdoing, it’s very clear that the Democrats are terrified of Trump and that they will do anything they can to destroy his candidacy. My suspicion is that this will backfire and, instead, solidify Trump’s support.

Then again, perhaps they would actually prefer Trump as a candidate because they think he’s tainted goods already and they can defeat him fairly easily, with or without fraud. So maybe they want that backlash and solidification of his support on the right, in order to encourage his nomination. Either way, though, they probably figure the appointment of a special counsel is a win/win, because they either imprison Trump as so many have been salivating to do for so long – placating their base – or they nudge the GOP voters into nominating Trump and they think he’s now a loser.

That’s one counter-theory, anyway. Or maybe the Democrats are indeed terrified of Trump. Personally, though, I don’t think so.

More:

When Biden was asked about Trump’s plan to run again for president, there were lots of standard things he could have said, such as saying that he looks forward to a hard-fought campaign or that he doesn’t think Trump can win or that the American people won’t stand for yet another Trump term in office. Biden, however, said none of those things. Instead, Biden said something bizarre and fundamentally un-American: “Well, we just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by—if we—if he does run. I’m making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next President again.”

Ignore the obligatory cover language about “our Constitution.” The key words are “I’m making sure he…does not become the next President again.”

It truly is an extraordinary statement by Biden or any president – or it would have been just a few short years ago. Things have moved along towards tyranny so rapidly, though, that it is no longer surprising.

As for my own opinion, I’m with John Hinderaker on this: it’s dueling investigations, and with the help of their MSM buddies the left believes it can overshadow the GOP’s hearings on Biden:

The Democrats have been planning on indicting Trump for a long time, and appointing a special counsel is part of their plan. It allows them to wash their hands of the investigation, pretending that impartial justice is simply taking its course…

I assume that Smith will be able to bring criminal charges against Trump in Washington, D.C., and it is almost a foregone conclusion that Trump will be convicted (of whatever the charges may be) by a hyperpartisan D.C. jury…

While the ability of a special counsel to wreak havoc is well established, Congressional investigations tend to fizzle out…

So I expect the dueling investigations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden to be a mismatch. The Trump investigation will likely result in an indictment and criminal conviction. The Biden investigation will tell us what we already know, and its findings will be a deep secret unless you read Power Line, InstaPundit, Breitbart, and other conservative news sources. Most news outlets will parrot the Democrat line that Biden’s corruption is a “long-debunked conspiracy theory.”

I hope I’m wrong. But that’s the way I imagine it will go. However, one other possibility is the Netanyahu route. Netanyahu was indicted on trumped-up (pun intended) charges, the trial is still ongoing but the prosecution hasn’t been doing well, and Netanyahu was re-elected after some time in the political wilderness.

[NOTE: See also this at Ace’s.]

Here’s a good FTX summary

The New Neo Posted on by

For anyone still scratching his or her head about what on earth FTX was supposed to do and what it actually did, here’s a good summary entitled “What You Need to Know about the Colossal Mess of FTX”.

Some excerpts follow. First, the promise and the supposed structure:

Back in 2017, Sam Bankman-Fried noticed that Bitcoin was bought and sold at significantly different prices in different countries’ markets — sometimes 60 percent more than the lowest priced markets. He bought Bitcoin in the markets where it was the cheapest, and then resold it in South Korean markets at a much higher price, what he nicknamed “the Kimchi Premium.” After a month, he launched his own trading house, Alameda Research.

Bankman-Fried founded FTX, which is short for “Futures Exchange,” in 2019. “In creating FTX, I wanted to build a platform for professional traders like me, while also bringing crypto trading to the mass market and first-time users,” he later said…

As a cryptocurrency exchange, FTX allowed customers to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, such as conventional — some would say, “real”– money or other cryptocurrencies.

The article goes into the manner in which Bankman-Fried was lauded as a veritable financial genius, and lots of other things with which you may be familiar. But it’s well worth reading even if you know; as I said, I think it’s a good overview that’s not too long. It also has details on how the unraveling occurred.

There’s also this news, which you may have missed (it includes a link to another article):

Apparently, there’s no proof to the rumor that the Ukrainian government invested heavily in FTX, with some folks on social media spinning a conspiracy theory that the Ukrainians gave to FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried gave money to Democrats, and Democrats and the Biden administration sent U.S. aid to Ukraine. FTX was a partner in helping the Ukrainian government convert donated cryptocurrencies to fiat money.

But the story is bad enough as is…It is believed that more than a million people have lost the money they invested in FTX, an estimated $8 billion or so.

I haven’t read articles about FTX in the regular MSM, but I hear it alleged that Bankman-Fried’s enormous donations to the Democrats are mostly not mentioned – or, if mentioned, it’s in the context of a misleading statement that he “donated to both parties.” His donations to Republicans were actually to a few RINOs like Romney, and they were extremely paltry compared to what he gave to Democrats.

No one seems to have done due diligence concerning FTX and Bankman-Fried. It is shocking to learn that a company can be such an empty house of cards, and yet no one seemed to catch on for such a long time. Among others, the MSM itself was responsible for lauding Bankman-Fried and the company to the skies, helping to give him and FTX the patina of reliability.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) It seems that despite a scheduled mandatory recount, Boebert has been re-elected to the House.

(2) I’m getting that old deja vu feeling: Garland announces there will be a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump. For what? For possibly “unlawfully interferring with the transfer of presidential power following the 2020 election or the certification of the Electoral College vote,” and/or “whether Trump broke the law and obstructed justice in connection with his removal of hundreds of documents from the White House, which were shipped to his residence at Mar-a-Lago.” I think they would have done this whether Trump had announced a 2024 run or not.

(3) And of course the Democrats want Elon Musk investigated as well.
I will add that Democrats will characterize the investigations of Biden that the GOP House is planning as solely politically motivated and bogus.

(4) Arizona tabulates the 2022 vote.

(5) The new Democrat House leader is an election denier. Shhh, don’t tell!

What’s going on with the alleged perp in the LA car incident that injured the police recruits?

The New Neo Posted on by

First we were told it was probably a bona fide accident. Then we were told it was likely to have been a purposeful crime. Now we hear this:

Twenty-five recruits for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department got mowed down by a driver on Wednesday. Police arrested Nicholas Gutierrez for attempted murder almost immediately. Police investigators insist that they have probable cause and evidence to support those charges.

Late last night, however, Gutierrez walked out of jail…

What happened?

The explanation is that they want to build a more solid case. I supposed it could merely be that, but author Morrisey adds:

If the evidence is there, and the LASO has probable cause to charge him, why is Gutierrez walking free? None of the media outlets covering this mention Gascón by name, but this leaves the impression that the LASO — and likely other LA-area law enforcement agencies — have little trust in Gascón and the DA’s office these days. They seem to want a case so solid that Gascón cannot possibly deal it down without taking enormous political risks.

If they have decent evidence that this was a crime, it seems dangerous to release this guy. If not, he should be released. Which is it? It certainly shouldn’t also be necessary to worry about an adversarial DA, but there’s little question that they do have to worry about it.

A walk through presidential first-term midterms election history of the last 100 years

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Whenever I have a math-heavy post like this, I always get nervous that I’ve made an arithmetical error.]

I see it again and again: the assertion that the 2022 midterm results were almost unheard-of, because a president’s first midterm always involves the opposite party gaining a large number of seats in the House and a significant number in the Senate. Just to take one example, we have this:

Historically, every president in history facing his first midterm experiences a tough day with automatically 20 to 30 House seats lost…and 4 or more Senate seats lost…but this terribly unpopular President Biden is brain dead with severe dementia, and can’t put 3 coherent sentences together…Yet Biden defied history?

When I read something like that, I think: is it true? Did every president in history facing his first midterm experience results like that, or pretty much like that? Or nearly every president?

So I decided to actually take a look – not at every single president in history, but at least at presidents for the last 100 years, the group one would imagine would be most relevant to today. Then maybe, if it appeared true for all of them, I’d go back further in time and see what I found.

Let’s just say I didn’t have to go back further in time, because it wasn’t true during the last 100 years.

We’re not talking about midterms in a president’s second term; just the first. Here’s the record for the Senate midterms in presidents’ first terms:

(1) Calvin Coolidge (R) – first half of first term 1923-1925, Senate was R53 D43 and midterm results were R54 D42. Doesn’t follow the rule.

(2) Herbet Hoover (R) – first half of first term 1929-1931, Senate was R56 D39 and midterm results were R48 D47. This follows the rule.

(3) Franklin Roosevelt (D) – first half of first term 1933-1935, Senate was R36 D59 and midterms were R25 D69. This goes dramatically against the rule.

(4) Harry Truman (D) – first half of first term can be calculated either from the time FDR died (which was quite early in the term) or the time of Truman’s first election on his own, when he had already been president for many years. I’ll do both. First half of first non-elected term 1945-1947, Senate was R38 D57 and midterm results were R51 D45. This follows the rule.
First half of first elected term 1949-1951, Senate was R42 D54, and midterm results were R47 D49. This also follows the rule.

(5) Dwight Eisenhower (R) – first half of first term 1955-1957, Senate was R47 D48 (plus one other who caucused with the Democrats, making it 47/49), and midterm results were R47 D49. No change. Doesn’t follow the rule.

(6) John Kennedy (D) – first half of first term 1961-1963, Senate was R36 D64, and midterm results were R34 D66. This does not follow the rule.

(7) Lyndon Johnson (D) – I’ll skip his first term, because it wasn’t long enough for a midterm election. His second term and first elected term was 1965-1967, Senate was R32 D68, and midterm results were R43 D57. This follows the rule; however, it has an asterisk because of the special circumstances that involved LBJ having actually been president for 3 years at the time of those midterms rather than two.

(8) Richard Nixon (R) – first half of first term 1969-1971, Senate was R43 D57, and midterm results were R44 D54 but actually 45/55 because of members of other parties and where they caucused. This election did not follow the rule.

(9) I’m going to skip Gerald Ford because his term was too short, and he was unelected as well.

(10) Jimmy Carter (D) – first half of first term 1977-1979, Senate was R38 D61 (but really 38/62 because of caucusing), and midterm results were R41 D58 (but really 41/59 because of caucusing). This follows the rule.

(11) Ronald Reagan (R) – first half of first term 1981-1983, Senate was R53 D46 (but really 53/47 because of caucusing), and midterm results were R55 D45. This did not follow the rule.

(12) George H. W. Bush (R) – first half of first term 1989-1991, Senate was R45 D55, and midterm results were R44 D56. This follows the general rule, but in a very small way with the loss of only one seat.

(13) Bill Clinton (D) – first half of first term 1993-1995, Senate was R43 D57 (changing later to R44 D56 prior to the midterms), midterms were R52 D48. This follows the rule.

(14) George W. Bush (R) – first half of first term 2001-2003, Senate was R50 D50 (there was some small shifting back and forth afterward, but that was the original election result), midterm results were R51 D48 (but really 51/49 because of caucusing). This did not follow the rule, and in fact is similar to what happened in 2022 – a gain of one seat for the party with the presidency.

(15) Barack Obama (D) – first half of first term 2009-2011, Senate was R41 D57 (but really 41/59 because of caucusing), and midterm results were R47 D51 (but really 47/53 because of caucusing). This followed the rule.

(16) Donald Trump (R) – first half of first term 2017-2019, Senate was R51 D47 (but really 51/49 because of caucusing), and midterm results were R53 D45 (but really 53/47 because of caucusing). This did not follow the rule.

I was going to do the same thing with the House, but doing it for the Senate was already tiring and nitpicky and I think it made my point sufficiently anyway.

Here’s the tally: in the last 100 years, it’s exactly even for the Senate. Half of the first-term midterm results followed the supposed rule and half did not. So it’s not even close to “always.”

Just taking a really quick look at the House – the legislative branch that is more sensitive to political winds that blow because every member is up for re-election every two years, rather than a third every two years as in the Senate – reveals that the following presidencies did not follow the rule in their first term midterms (that is, the president’s party did not lose House seats in the first midterms): Coolidge, FDR, Eisenhower, and George W. Bush. What’s more, two other presidents only lost a small number of House seats in the first midterms, much like what happened to Biden and the Democrats this year: JFK only lost 6 seats, and George H.W Bush only lost 8 seats. So even in the House, results like those in 2022 have not been especially unusual.

What’s more, this year’s Senate breakdown was a difficult one for the Republicans, and yet they only lost one seat (perhaps two in the end, but we don’t yet know). By “difficult” I mean that fourteen seats held by Democrats and 20 held by Republicans were up for grabs this time. Not only that, but more of the seats held by Republicans were considered to be in battleground states (see the map here).

What does it all mean? Obviously, the common assertion that the 2022 midterm results were highly unusual is incorrect. However, I think we see the result this year as highly unusual and counter-intuitive for two reasons. The first is the predicted “red tsunami” set the right up for a huge win, and it wasn’t forthcoming. The second is that the awfulness of the present Congress and president, as well as some of the Democrat candidates, predisposed us to think that of course there would be a huge Republican victory. There had to be.

But there wasn’t. And whether you think the results were fraudulent, or the result of a legal exploitation of the relaxed voting rules, or an actual fair and square election, the results were nowhere near as unusual as so many people have been saying.

Make of it what you will.