One year ago tomorrow a series of massive underwater explosions destroyed most of the $30 billion Russian-German Nord Stream Pipelines, probably Europe's most important civilian energy infrastructure. All observers soon agreed that the blasts had been deliberate, likely constituting the greatest case of industrial terrorism in world history and an obvious act of war against Germany, NATO's leading European member. And then in lock-step, nearly all Western media outlets declared that the Russians had destroyed their own pipelines, an action further demonstrating the dangerous insanity of President Vladimir Putin, our diabolical Moscow adversary. Only a handful of voices on the dissident fringe suggested otherwise.

American Pravda: Of Pipelines and Plagues
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • October 3, 2022 • 3,900 Words
But five months later the issue was suddenly resurrected. Across his half-century career, Seymour Hersh had established himself as America's most renowned investigative journalist, and he now published one of his greatest exposes, a meticulously detailed account of how a team of American military divers had destroyed the pipelines, acting under the orders of the Biden Administration.

Seymour Hersh: Standing Tall in a Sea of Lies
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 13, 2023 • 2,000 Words

Despite Hersh's towering reputation, virtually all our mainstream journalists scrupulously avoided mentioning those revelations. But many millions around the world read his article or watched his interviews, and the UN Security Council soon held hearings on the issue, with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs and former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern strongly endorsing Hersh's conclusions.

Given these developments, the previous claim that Putin had destroyed his own pipelines began looking a little threadbare, so Western intelligence services soon circulated a new cover story, claiming that the gigantic attacks had actually been mounted by a shadowy handful of pro-Ukrainian activists operating from a rented sailboat. Once again, nearly all our pundits eagerly nodded their heads.

We live in an age of grotesque falsehoods that might rival those portrayed in George Orwell's 1984, and I think Putin had a point when he condemned America as "an empire of lies."