The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[Reformed Offlian]

The old Russian joke about resigning 'for health reasons' - the Yeltsin excuse, on a par with the British politicians' stock, 'wanting to spend more time with my family'.

There are usually two reasons a high-up minister resigns: the official reason and the real reason.

So no answer then, as to why the Estonians and Finns played along with a Swedish coverup, nor evidence that they steadfastly refused to do so, as you earlier insinuated.

 

[Vixen]

Except the passenger liners on your list are of a very different design than a RORO car ferry.

The common factor is 'speed of sinking' and 'cause' - all of them collisions, torpedoes or explosions...except for the Estonia.

 

[Vixen]

How did their terror manifest itself?

Ready story the next day by Carl Bildt that the bow visor had caused the accident and the car deck was flooded.

The JAIC giving a press conference statement 4 Oct 1994 it was the bow visor.

However, as of the time of Carl Bildt's shrewd guess, nobody had reported a bow visor missing nor the car deck flooded.

A diving team didn't even go down until 2 October so how could they know officially within a couple of days that was the cause?

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Finland had a lawyer called Kari Lehtola who was in charge. He was like Kekkonen, a master of diplomacy and cover up, careful never to upset the bear next door. He was an oleaginous character (d. 2019) fall of niceties dropping from his smiling mouth.

There were nine members on the committee that signed the report, three from each country. At the time the report was issued, the chair was Uno Laur, an Estonian.

Do you have any actual evidence for Lehtola's lack of integrity?

Also, I thought you said the Finns never played along?

 

[Vixen]

Except the passenger liners on your list are of a very different design than a RORO car ferry.

There would be next to nothing to compare it with in that case.

 

[Vixen]

Okay that seems like a reasonable conclusion then. What about the Swedes' motives? Where's that evidence?

See Appeal Court Judge Hirschfeldt's (_sp?) statement in the Swedish Rikstag 2005 confirming the Swedes receiving stolen ex-Soviet military stuff, in September, 1994 transported on the Estonia with its normal passenger schedules.

 

[lobosrul5]

Ready story the next day by Carl Bildt that the bow visor had caused the accident and the car deck was flooded.

The JAIC giving a press conference statement 4 Oct 1994 it was the bow visor.

However, as of the time of Carl Bildt's shrewd guess, nobody had reported a bow visor missing nor the car deck flooded.

A diving team didn't even go down until 2 October so how could they know officially within a couple of days that was the cause?

Passenger Rolf Sörman's account:

and Sörman saw a terrified crewman emerge, having climbed up an internal escape ladder from the engine room. The crewman started shouting in English, "Water is coming in on the car deck!"

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-story/302940/

I suppose Rolf Sörman is yet another member of this ever widening conspiracy theory?

 

[Belz...]

Do keep up.

How? You regularily skip posts asking you tough questions and keep changing from one argument or piece of logic to the next. There's nothing to follow.

 

[Vixen]

So no answer then, as to why the Estonians and Finns played along with a Swedish coverup, nor evidence that they steadfastly refused to do so, as you earlier insinuated.

There were very many disagreements, disputes and resignations.

Sometimes, doing something by committee will lead to chaos.

 

[Vixen]

There were nine members on the committee that signed the report, three from each country. At the time the report was issued, the chair was Uno Laur, an Estonian.

Do you have any actual evidence for Lehtola's lack of integrity?

Also, I thought you said the Finns never played along?

I did not say he had a lack of integrity. He likely had an arrogant belief that the public were not entitled to know everything.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Ready story the next day by Carl Bildt that the bow visor had caused the accident and the car deck was flooded.

The JAIC giving a press conference statement 4 Oct 1994 it was the bow visor.

However, as of the time of Carl Bildt's shrewd guess, nobody had reported a bow visor missing nor the car deck flooded.

The Commission had interviewed a crew member on 29 September who told them he had seen the bow visor missing (again, it's in Chapter 6 of the report). Maybe that's how they knew about it?

 

[JayUtah]

See Appeal Court Judge Hirschfeldt's (_sp?) statement in the Swedish Rikstag 2005 confirming the Swedes receiving stolen ex-Soviet military stuff, in September, 1994 transported on the Estonia with its normal passenger schedules.

But not on the day Estonia sank. It's all well and good to infer a motive based on some tenuous chain of reasoning. But I asked for evidence of their motives.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

I did not say he had a lack of integrity. He likely had an arrogant belief that the public were not entitled to know everything.

Okay, but why would he play along with Swedish government coverup? That is still your contention, right, that the JAIC report is part of a Carl Bildt-instigated coverup?

 

[lobosrul5]

There would be next to nothing to compare it with in that case.

Indeed. Except the other RORO ferry that partially capsized after losing its bow visor.

Estonia took longer to sink than passenger liners that were torpedoed or struck by another ship, but also in a shorter time than others. Which is somehow evidence that she didn't sink due to the bow visor being ripped off, but rather a collision?!? This is not logical.

 

[Vixen]

Passenger Rolf Sörman's account:

and Sörman saw a terrified crewman emerge, having climbed up an internal escape ladder from the engine room. The crewman started shouting in English, "Water is coming in on the car deck!"

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-story/302940/

I suppose Rolf Sörman is yet another member of this ever widening conspiracy theory?

That's a fictionalised account written ten years after the event. To know what really happens in history before it is revised and sanitised, you should read the newspaper reports and contemporaneous accounts as of the time. Of course, they may be wildly inaccurate and mere speculation (you should have seen and heard what people were saying about the 7/7 tube bombings; now you cannot find those early accounts). This is why when researching history, I found the British Newspaper Library and invaluable research tool. After time, things become revised into a bland narrative suitable for school textbooks and glib reporting for lazy journalists. If you read the Swedish newspapers for the date the accident happened 28 Sept/29 Sept and the few days after, you'll see what the Swedish Prime Minister actually said at the time. And the bow visor was blamed and a parallel drawn with The Herald of Free Enterprise. Now, when you consider that it was Carl Bildt himself who was PM when the transportation of ex-Soviet military equipment took place and he must have OK-ed his intelligence services to instruct the Swedish Customs at the border to pass them through uninspected, then one has a realisation that he must have known there might be a connection to that activity yet rushed to direct everybody's minds to the bow visor, before the wreck had even been examined.

 

[JayUtah]

Professor Amdahl was patiently giving examples of the type of object that could have collided with the Estonia to cause that type of damage.

But the a submarine hypothesis is not merely a classroom example. It's actually been seriously proposed, and you expended considerable energy defending its plausibility by claiming former prosecutor Kurm would not have endorsed it unless it could be defended with evidence. Prof. Amdahl is shown examining submarine types that could plausibly have been in the region.

If the goal is to test the plausibility of the submarine hypothesis for the starboard-side injury, rather than just to explain the notion of kinetic energy, then Amdahl's findings, plus the physical evidence, clearly rules out collision with a submarine. Can we finally agree at least on that?

 

[JayUtah]

To know what really happens in history before it is revised and sanitised, you should read the newspaper reports and contemporaneous accounts as of the time.

So on that basis, should we consider any eyewitness testimony or opinion subsequent to, say, October 1994 to be something we can safely ignore moving forward?

 

[Vixen]

The Commission had interviewed a crew member on 29 September who told them he had seen the bow visor missing (again, it's in Chapter 6 of the report). Maybe that's how they knew about it?

As of the time Carl Bildt gave his statement to the Aftondagbladet and Espressen no one had yet been formally interviewed.


Taking the pure opinion of one person does not a conclusion make.

 

[Vixen]

Okay, but why would he play along with Swedish government coverup? That is still your contention, right, that the JAIC report is part of a Carl Bildt-instigated coverup?

Who knows what goes on behind the doors of meetings described as 'National Security matters'.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

As of the time Carl Bildt gave his statement to the Aftondagbladet and Espressen no one had yet been formally interviewed.

Are you sure? Do you have an exact timeline of when the interview took place, and when Bildt made his statement?

Taking the pure opinion of one person does not a conclusion make.

A person reporting what they saw is not an "opinion"; it is testimony. But let's not change the topic just yet. You asked how Bildt could have known about the bow visor story. The answer is that he had heard reports from people that had been there. Can you prove otherwise?