Jeffrey Sachs And The Nord Stream: A Counter-Narrative Case Study
I've long described my raison d'être in terms of the intersection between geopolitics and finance.
From the outset (so, from this platform's modest beginnings almost seven years ago), I've employed the same language to describe the site's purpose. That language reads as follows:
Perhaps more than any other time in the last six decades, the fate of markets is inextricably intertwined with the ebb and flow of geopolitics. Simply put, one can't fully comprehend financial markets without a thorou
I happened to have seen that interview. I thought Sach’s statement was bs and innuendo, and unlikely to be true, impossible no but highly unlikely. He was asked for evidence and had none. The thought that went through my mind was that he was an asset of a foreign intelligence service, or being used or very naive. Previous to that interview I had a reasonable amount of respect for his opinions. No longer. He is not likely to be in a position to make an informed judgment with a reasonable basis for this particular event. It was a rather stunning interview, and I am glad you reviewed it. Caveat emptor.
The most instructive bit here, I think, is how I stumbled on it after the fact. As noted in the article, I was looking for information on the detained Iranian national, and specifically the date of his release, so I naturally looked to Iranian media, and there’s a file photo of Sachs staring at me. Right next to an article about a detainee nabbed by the Saudis for promoting Qassem Soleimani while on the Hajj. And then, sure enough, one Google search turns up an NY Post article on Sachs and a Tucker Carlson article on the same interview. Around we go. If you follow that loop around and observe all the roadside attractions, you’ll get everything from Kremlin talking points to Assad propaganda to IRGC cheerleading to Soros conspiracies to MAGA hats. It’s a carnival of disinformation.
Ps Lisa Abromowitz was all over it and did an excellent job. She is a solid reporter.
As a subscriber for several years, I have increasingly turned to you for balanced, objective journalism, with well thought out opinions.
You’ve become my 21st century “Walter Cronkite”, for lack of better comparison.
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Geez man, his ego is big enough already, no need to feed it more!
And besides, H. L. Mencken would be a better comparison.
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But much funnier!
FWIW, I’ve spoken to a lot of reporters who think Tucker Carlson is a Russian asset.
I bet the Ruskies have waaay more than pee video on Tucker
Thank you Mr. H.
At the moment there is still no fact of who may have done it.
Some reasonable conjectures do not point at Ukrainian Allies.
Great piece.
I also detest the increasingly common third alternative to the more typical binary options of “we did it” or “they did it” — and that’s the false flag conspiracy take — in this case, that the US/Ukrainian allies did it not to hurt Russia per se, but to make Russia look bad by making it look like Russia did it. But the underlying cause of all of this confusion, IMO, is the media’s drive to report everything ASAP — which tends to mean a lot more rumors, hearsay, anonymous whisperings, etc. as opposed to actual facts and confirmed information. Less than a week ago, as you pointed out, there was an awful lot of heavy breathing concerning Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.
We’ve plainly seen some high profile examples of the Western narrative turning out to be specious recently. The Kabul drone strike was a particularly egregious example, and the Daria Dugina story looks like another one.
So, I wouldn’t want anyone to misconstrue the point of this article. It’s not so much about Sachs or the Nord Stream, as much as it is about the counter-narrative machine itself — the propaganda echo chamber.
Much as everyone remembers all the market crash calls that came true but forgets all the ones that didn’t, it’s easy to forget that the vast majority of counter-narrative is almost totally meritless. The counter-narrative business doesn’t sleep. It’s 24-7. It doesn’t care what the “hit ratio” is just like websites and newsletters peddling market crash calls don’t care how many are ultimately borne out. It’s all about perpetuating an agenda, making money, getting attention or all three.
The US screwed up a drone strike and it resulted in tragedy. It looks like Daria Dugina was in fact killed by Ukrainian operatives. And who knows, maybe the US had a role in destroying the Nord Stream.
That’s three counter-narrative “hits” (assuming the NYT’s Dugina story is true and assuming, to play devil’s advocate, that the Nord Stream story is true). How many misses have there been in that echo chamber over the past two years? So many that it’s literally impossible to count them, because it’s just an ongoing firehose of conspiratorial propagandizing.
If the end result was a better informed populace whose healthy skepticism is honed and analytical skills sharpened as a result of counter-narrative, that’d be great. But we have the opposite of that. Instead, counter-narrative as it’s currently force-fed to the public, has resulted in an infinitely less informed, infinitely more gullible and infinitely more divided body politic.
If it walks like a duck, it’s probably propaganda. The fact that one time out of 1,000 or one time out of 10,000 conspiracy theory turns out to be conspiracy fact, doesn’t absolve the echo chamber of responsibility for the chaos it’s sown across the world’s foremost democracies.
This is such an important thing to understand. We only have limited mental bandwidth and can’t possibly do our due diligence on everything. That requires us to take some shortcuts in how we evaluate information. As you say, I’d rather be wrong once or twice than give credence to stories that are false 99% of the time.
“firehose of conspiratorial propagandizing”
Good one!
Both binary (or tertiary, if you include false flag) assumptions may be wrong.
An experience oilman with extensive experience with methane gas pipelines pointed out (reminded me) that methane (natural gas) under a quite broad range of temperature, pressure and moisture content forms methane hydrate (methane ice). To remove it from a pipeline it has to be carefully de-pressured from both ends simultaneously. If it is only de-pressured from one end or one end becomes impatient and tries to hurry the process along, the methane hydrate ice plug will travel at high speed down the pipeline towards the lower pressure end until it hits an elbow and then with burst the pipe at the point of impact.
If Gazprom did that by mistake, it’s a better cover for the Russians to quickly parrot Western (unsubstantiated at the time) cries of ‘Sabotage!’ That’s a better cover than having to admit that Gazprom is an incompetent operator(like the Russian Army, so it seems).
p.s. Dugina’s father was supposed to be in his car she was driving. He changed cars at the last minute, before she left the event. Hmmm…
Gas pipeline leaks of this size are pretty uncommon and there were 4 of them at once. The security/military heard/felt detonations. It is highly likely this was an intentional sabotage. I believe there is too much downside for Ukraine or the US to destroy allies’ infrastructure- although I suppose you cannot rule anything out these days. Occam’s razor would suggest this was an entity connected to Russia.
I truly believe that most conspiracy theories are false. They have always been around but social media has only served to amplify them. My rule is that the greater the number of people that would need to be involved in the conspiracy the more likely it is to be false. People just aren’t good at keeping secrets. The greater the number of people that know something the more likely that it is it will become common knowledge, loose lips and all.
I don’t do Facebook, Tiktok, instagram, twitter, or any of the other social media. I’ll wait for mainstream reporting on the Swedish investigation of the incident. Everything else is just idle speculation repeated as fact.
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This is always my counterargument to conspiracy theories. As Benjamin Franklin observed, the only way three people can keep a secret is if two of them are dead.
My favorite is Chemtrails. Can you imagine how many people it would take to pull off something like that? From chemical manufacturing, to shipping, to storage, airport security, airplane mechanics installing things, pilots who know the layout of their planes perfectly, thousands of potential witnesses, across every major airport in the world? Millions of people would have to be in on such a conspiracy. You’re going to tell me there’s a multi-million person conspiracy and not a single one has ever leaked the truth? It’s beyond farcical.
The same goes for all the vaccine conspiracies. It’s just bizarre what people are capable of believing.
I, for one, fully believe that cognitive dissonance is one of the most powerful forces in the universe.
Trump on the Ukraine war…I’m sure there are very fine people on both sides….