Seymour Hersh on Nordstream
Legendary investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, tells us all about the story he broke that describes in great detail how the U.S. blew up the Nordstream pipelines in a covert “act of war” against Russia. Plus, Mickey Huff, of Project Censored joins us to speak to Ralph about the state of the so-called “free press.”
Seymour Hersh is the pre-eminent investigative journalist of our time. He has won five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. In 1970, Mr. Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War. In 2004, Mr. Hersh exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces in The New Yorker. Among his many books are The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, The Dark Side of Camelot, The Samson Option, The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, and his latest, a memoir of his storied, decades-long career, entitled simply Reporter.
The pipeline industry all know that Russia didn’t [sabotage the Nord Stream pipeline]. Everybody knows they did not do it. There might have been some vagueness about who. But they were pretty sure all along who. Because who else threatened to do it, but the President and his Under Secretary Victoria Nuland? They’re the two that went public with it— much to the dismay of the people actually doing the covert operation.
Seymour Hersh
We always saw the Russians’ great abundance of gas and the Russian delivery of gas to Europe—from Jack Kennedy in 1962— we saw it as weaponizing gas.
Seymour Hersh
It’s a famous notion that the CIA and all those secret groups, they don’t work for the Constitution. They work for the Crown. They work for the President.
Seymour Hersh
Mickey Huff is the director of Project Censored and the founder and host of The Project Censored Show, a weekly syndicated public affairs program. He is professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College. He has authored and edited several books including United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and what we can do about it), Let’s Agree to Disagree, The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People, and Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2023: The News That Didn’t Make the News—And Why.
[The Norfolk Southern crash] is a bipartisan disaster. It’s a direct example of what happens with regulatory capture. And it shows, once again, the gross failure of the corporate media— they’ll cover balloons, and the Super Bowl, and a bunch of other distractions, instead of things that really matter to working class Americans.
Mickey Huff, co-editor of State of the Free Press 2023: The News That Didn’t Make the News—And Why
You’re not allowed to ask the tough questions, Ralph. And anybody who’s been in the press pool long enough knows that. They don’t have to be told that. The censorship doesn’t have to be directly from the government, or even from the corporate owners. Reporters know that if they ask questions that don’t get answered too often, and get overlooked, they’re going to get yanked. They’re going to get called back to the office. They might end up losing their jobs because they don’t have copy and they don’t have stories.
Mickey Huff, co-editor of State of the Free Press 2023: The News That Didn’t Make the News—And Why
Encourage members of the press not to forget [the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq on March 19th]. That was a massive war crime— over a million innocent Iraqis died, the country destroyed, falling apart to this day— and Bush and Cheney are luxuriating in the US without any accountability whatsoever. There’s a lot of talk now on the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But very little talk about the US and its sociocide destruction of the Iraqi people. And I think that illustrates how important it is to ask questions on subjects that have been taboo or censored.
Ralph Nader
Seymour Hersh on Nordstream
I've added Ralph's latest to my blog post on this crime.
https://kevinhester.live/2023/02/23/world-war-three-chronicles-part1/
Glass houses, Ralph.
What about the censorship right here on the Radio Hour?
Five years worth of comments disappeared with the switch to Substack.
Over seven years of Ralph ignoring One Demand. A brief mention as a listener question does not qualify as having the discussion of One Demand that Ralph said on Washington Journal (10-24-2018) he would have me on the Radio Hour to discuss.
Steve using the strategy Mickey Huff mentioned of making it about the person instead of the idea to avoid addressing a difficult question as Steve did in the comments on the Populism-the Good Kind episode.
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The idea that we should use legislation to reclaim some of the air time that the media get for free is not going to get any farther along in the next 25 years than it did in the last 25 years.
What we need to do is take advantage of the free air time by forming our own media conglomerate of television, radio, newspapers and internet to buy up/start up this media by selling shares to a non-profit corporation for one hundred dollars a share. These shares could only be sold for one hundred dollars as the purpose of owning the shares is to own the media. The shares could only be owned by American citizens and no one person could own more than ten shares.
Just 6-7% of the 150 million 2020 voters investing in one share would total 1 billion dollars to fund this conglomerate that would provide 24 hours a day of of this air time that ordinary citizens would control.
If started now it could be operating by this time next year. Much faster than another 25 years of getting nowhere as the best case scenario.
Legislation to reclaim a few hours of air time will not be passed for the same reason legislation to get the big money out of politics will not be passed- the big money legislators will only pass legislation that primarily benefits the big money interests and the big money interests have no interest in having such legislation passed.
The only way to pass such legislation is to first replace the big money legislators with small donor legislators. The problem has to be solved before legislation to solve the problem can passed.
Letter writing and demonstrations have been adapted to by the big money interests and will not work as they did 50 years ago as long as citizens keep voting for the big money candidates.
Citizens need to use One Demand to demand small donor candidates and enforce that demand with our votes.
If we start now it can begin to be effective in 2024 and have a greater effect with each subsequent election cycle.
And if we also start the media conglomerate now there will be at least one news source providing information on One Demand to citizens that the current media (including the RNRH) do not and will not provide.
You are better than this, Ralph.