@7

https://tomluongo.me/2022/09/29/the-curious-whodunit-of-nordstreams-1-and-2/

interested in your thoughts/criticism

@skells Oof, I was loving this until the conclusion in the 13th tweet quoted -- and my complaint is really small. He seems to dance around the subject of what bodies and agencies actually perform the actions which is just soft at this point in the argument, but actually answering the question brings up questions I don't know can be answered:

* If the CIA saw the need, saw the weakness, and the director at the Russia Desk approved a black-op, then technically no one authorized such an attack.
* If Davos has sympathetic operatives in any part of the US Intelligence Community then there are far bigger problems than a pipeline to be concerned about, because Davos' plan isn't to hang the US out to dry -- it's to take the US down with them at the slightest hint of anything less than totalitarian success.

But past that point we come to agreement again. Past that point, it's an act of war; not necessarily by the US but a cheque which can only be signed by the US as it were. "The mouth writing cheques that the ass can't cash."

There's a lot in here worth reading though for everyone; it ties a lot of the geopol together quite nicely for those seeing it as a two-player game. Even I've made that mistake at times.

@skells The one thing he doesn't address, the one thing that is so hard to draw a line down without bringing up fraternities, is how you connect the Straussians with the CIA itself.

@skells Oh, one last point; I think he fails to understand how entrenched of a bureaucracy DC is when he assumes Biden's threat isn't connected to the Rand report and the event itself. Yes, it could take 7 months for such an operation to finally take place, and yes it could keep taking place even if it suddenly becomes a bad idea because Russia has taken back their bargaining chip

@7

> If the CIA saw the need, saw the weakness, and the director at the Russia Desk approved a black-op, then technically no one authorized such an attack.

Perhaps, I suspect those sorts of bureaucratic boundaries are far more permeable than that.

I still struggle with the overarching Davos narrative tbh, even though I agree with the broad strokes. Don't buy they're that competent/united.

Not that the decision makers aren't competent generally, just that I don't see the genius level competency required to navigate something as complex as this.

I like Luongo generally though, he has an eye for details.

@skells "Davos" is probably diminutive to what would really constitute it, but it does give us a quick shorthand to use in place of, "The Leaders and Top Contributors to Davos, which take their political education from its greatest proponents and carry it back to their nations, implementing something we can't even surely define until it calcifies around this perceived US/NATO declaration of war."

@7 geeze, ok galaxy brain

@skells You're the one who asked me to turn the fucker on.

@7 appreciate the effort

yeah I'm more inclined to believe there's a running together of various forms of conspiracy and an emergent behaviour of actors protecting their vested interests.

the other side of the arguement is that there is historical precedent for serious conspiracy, the first and second triumverates come to mind, but they were about domination of a centralised ruling City, not the level of decentralisation and conflicting/coupled interests we see today.

Bismark/Metternich come close but both were characterised not only by diplomatic/politcal genius but also being at the mercy of political circumstance, even as they rode that wave

@skells I've had a working theory for like ten years, that the speed of communication directly impacts the scale of both state and corporate power. Probably sounds obvious now but at the time it was a helluva research project, digging through history and learning about how different countries implemented telegraph lines and when, radio towers, telephone trunks, and tried to find correlation within the market to clearly describe how a reduction in latency (or an increase in bandwidth past a negligible latency) influences market boom cycles.

I bring it up because I wonder about what you're saying regarding the level of decentralization. A European superstate would be completely capable of tracking 80% of its citizens via phone, and keep them engaged and "correctly-informed" through that little bit of cyberpop; with the right language they could move to a more Chinese system with European Characteristics very easily. I don't know that they need a great European philosopher if they can buy one from the Chinese -- they don't seem to play by the same rules as previous inheritors of Rome.