The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[LondonJohn]

It is pretty much a certainty there were explosives applied to the bow bulkhead and side locks. However, that might well have been done post-accident by the various divers who went down on official government business with their various cutting tools and what have you to access the ship. What is strange is that they should have left the so-called incriminatory 'poorly designed bolts' on the sea bed with the claim they were 'too big for the helicopter'.

It could be that the bits of metal Royal Naval expert Brian Braidwood was looking at were the ones manipulated by the Rockwater divers. It needs to be determined when the deformation suggesting high intensity detonation happened.

It is?

 

[Vixen]

That's not evidence that arms bound for Israel were on the Estonia.

I didn't ask you for evidence that the Estonia had been used for smuggling Soviet military equipment. I asked for evidence that it was used to smuggle arms that were bound for Israel and that Bill Clinton was involved in the Israeli arms smuggling. None of the above is evidence of what I actually asked for.

Someone claims to have seen something that the cargo was intended for Israel is the only evidence you have posted that anything on the Estonia was being smuggled to Israel.

I asked you for evidence that arms were being smuggled on the Estonia, which were bound for Israel, and that Bill Clinton was involved. You've provided exactly no evidence that arms bound for Israel were onboard the Estonia and that Bill Clinton had any involvement.

I'm looking for your evidence that this happened, not unhinged "connecting the dots" type fantasies.

Get a grip, Jesse Custer. If the information is classified of course it isn't ratified in the public domain. Or are you waiting on FOX News to tell you what you can and cannot think?

 

[Vixen]

You want us to believe there are only two possibilities regarding damage to the ramp; either it was so lightly damaged at the top that water could merely "seep in" or it was torn right off the ship. Nothing else is possible, in your opinion. You wish to suggest there is zero chance that it could have been wrenched substantially or entirely open while remaining attached to the ship. And handily of course neither scenario fits with the report.

So you base this opinion on what, please?

The official JAIC report.

 

[LondonJohn]

Explain: 'it has been established that
the Department for Transport (DfT) does not hold any information regarding the UK’s signing
of the Estonia Agreement.'

Why the Department of Transport when the accident did not happen in UK territory?

You've answered your own question. Obviously the person who made the request wasn't sufficiently intelligent to realise that this had/has nothing to do with the DfT - it should have been directed to FCDO. It might have something to do with conspiracy theorists not usually being half as bright as they think they are....

 

[LondonJohn]

Because any treaty signed off by the UK has to to be laid before parliament.

Again, you're entirely misunderstanding the situation.

 

[Vixen]

Earlier in this thread you claim that the water came rushing in through the bow ramp at 2,000 tonnes per second which caused a deafening roar.

Are you going back on that claim and now think it merely seeped in?

Please read carefully. I pointed out that IF water - to a maximum 2,000 tonnes - flooded the free surface car deck, it would have rushed in with a tremendous roar as water is not only heavy but sea waves crashing is incredibly loud. For example, passengers who made it to the deck were unable to hear what other people were shouting. Yet not one single survivor relates hearing the deafening sound of water ingressing the car deck and slamming the vehicles against the sides.

 

[LondonJohn]

This is what is known as post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, i.e., water must have flooded the car deck as in the Herald of Free Enterprise. However, to do this, the bow visor must first have been compromised. Therefore it must have fallen off and taken the car ramp with it but as two people claim to have climbed down the car ramp, then the bow visor must have left a gap at the top of the car ramp for the seawater to seep in. That should keep the plebs happy whilst we slap a 'classified' label on what really happened.

It wouldn't do for POTUS Bill Clinton peace-maker extraordinaire between Israel and Palestine to be exposed as the person prepared to use a thousand civilians as collateral damage whilst smuggling out weapons for Israel on the Estonia public passenger ferry.

No, it's what's known as deductive reasoning.

There was a competent investigation, which found reliable evidence of a bow visor bolt failing, causing the visor to break away at that point and "flap" around (banging multiple times against the hull as it did so). The remaining bolt eventually broke as well, and the visor broke clear from the ship, dislodging the (connected) bow ramp in the process.

All of the above can be proven from visual and metallurgical examination of the components concerned. And when it's amalgamated with all the other reliable evidence, it's perfectly clear that this was indeed the proximate cause of the sinking.

I mean, all of this has been pointed out to you many times already. Just as the true cause has repeatedly been pointed out - with ample supporting evidence - to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Plus ca change.....

 

[Vixen]

The existence of the right of cross-examination is predicated on the premise that what a witness might say in a declaratory deposition might not be accurate. So the admissibility of a witness is quite separate from both the value of the witness' testimony in determining fact and the degree to which the trier of fact believes the witness.

Your second statement is pure nonsense as far as American courts go. A witness is subject to voir dire to determine whether he is qualified for the role he plays in the court. The role of a fact witness is to bear witness to events he actually experienced. Voir dire determines whether those circumstances hold, otherwise his testimony is inadmissible. After that, the degree to which a witness is credible is entirely up to the trier of fact. There is no incontestable declaration by the court that a witness is "credible."

Yes, I have court experience. I've been a plaintiff. I've been a defendant. I've been a fact witness. I've been an expert witness. My spouse is a court litigator, so our dinner conversation revolves around how courts treat evidence. As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.

By declaring that the "eyewitness" testimony of the survivors (none actually was eyewitness to a collision) would be acceptable in court, you seem to be trying to argue that it should be taken as read. But in fact, admission into a court merely starts the process of examining that evidence to see how credible it is. Admissibility and credibility are not at all the same thing.

Please read carefully. I stated that an eyewitness if deemed credible by a court of law, is an example of direct evidence. If a court holds that an eyewitness is a credible witness (and it doesn't have to: I have seen a wintess actually kicked out of the court room when it became apparent he was a liar) then that is evidence and it cannot be appealed against except on a point of law such as 'new evidence' which contradicts the eyewitness and that is incredibly rare as the 'new evidence' has to be evidence that was not known about or reasonably should have been known about as of the time of the trial.

 

[Vixen]

So what? Here in America we have celebrities pontificating all the time on things they know nothing about, influencing possibly millions of people. That doesn't mean they are factually correct.

You say you're disinclined to believe him compared to other witnesses because he may have political bias. We've shown that no Swedish submarines existed that could have inflicted the damage observed on the starboard side of the ship. Yet for some reason you seem to think his claims still merit attention. Why are you reporting things you don't believe, and which can't be true? Why are you compelled to defend him when his testimony is challenged?



I know the difference, but it's not clear that you do. You constantly vacillate between the motte argument that we have to pay attention to him because he allegedly has insider knowledge or that he's a well-known figure, and the bailey argument that he's just a political hack and you're reporting what he says out of general interest, and you shouldn't be held accountable for what he says, or to reconcile it with your other reporting.

The problem with most conspiracy arguments -- yours in particular -- is that while real investigation and real journalism are trying to go toward any of several possible conclusions, conspiracism is all about running away from one conventional narrative. If you declare the conventional narrative the thing that you must abandon as a premise to your own study, then there are infinite directions in which to run away from it. And many conspiracy theories -- yours especially -- try to go in all those directions at once. As such they fail to provide a compelling alternative narrative. Just because you conclude that the conventional narrative is flawed doesn't mean you can't also conclude that some of the alternative narratives are also flawed and should be abandoned for the same reasons you abandoned the conventional one. Because in the end you have to provide a single coherent narrative that stands against the conventional one, and is sensibly more supported by evidence. Clinging to any and all stories that dispute the conventional narrative accomplishes nothing.

In a real investigation Kurm's statements would have been rejected long ago and never thought of again. In a conspiracy theory, they keep popping up only because they dispute the conventional narrative (i.e., they support the running-away mode), not because they contribute to any better understanding of what might actually have happened.

Jay Utah please try to stay focussed. Kurm was Estonia's Chief Prosecutor as of the time of the incident. Has it never occurred to you that Kurm in his unique position, actually has insider information that makes him cocksure confident that a collision with a submarine was the cause of sinking. He says Swedish and perhaps he is aware of facts that we are not. In the meantime, I tend to err on the side of caution and say, well all right, it might well have been a submarine, however, since I am not privy to insider or classified information I have no idea what nationality the submarine might have been.

 

[Axxman300]

There is one such image here:

http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb576311/factgroup/est/riddle.html

That's not an image, that's bathymetric interpretation of a sonar image. Read what they said:

The Independent Fact Group visited SNMA to see the original seabed charts with the mysterious picture of the wreck and the presumed visor. The material from the contractor was extensive covering thousands of documents, and among those there were about 50 charts similar to the one used by AgnEf for the folder. Out of those 50 charts 4 showed the visor on the side of the ship, but none of them was identical. The seabed deep curves matching the visor was however almost identical on those 4 charts. On the other charts out of those 50 there were no deep curves other than showing a "normal" flat seabed in the area.

When questioning the officials at SNMA we got the answer that the contractor had used a sonar picture of the wreck and transposed the lines of the wreck to the bottom survey charts produced by the contractor. The original sonar picture was to be found either at the contractor or at the Finnish part of JAIC, from where it was believed the sonar picture originated.

The Independent Fact Group has tried to find the original sonar picture without success.

4 out of 50? Are these guys serious?

They're matrixing sonar clutter as the hood. That is just sad.

 

[Vixen]

Yes, it's obvious to the rest of us, but it hasn't seemed obvious to you. Whenever you're confronted with the problems of witness testimony, you make one of your superstitious/magical declarations, namely that eyewitness testimony is _______ in court, where the blank gets filled with a scattergun of words like "valuable" or "accepted" or "credible." You seem to forget that the court exists upon the premise that proffered evidence is of unknown reliability and veracity. You seem to intend your statement to mean that witness evidence should be taken as-is, and can never be questioned or made to reconcile with other testimony or other kinds of evidence, or that it should be held pre-eminent above all else. But that's precisely what a court does with that evidence. So if we perform the same role here as a court would, we should be able to do so without constant verbal molestation from you because of it.

Oh please. Captian_Swoop seemed to have the idea that eyewitness testimony was 'not evidence' so I was simply making a factual correction. An eye witness can be accepted as hard an evidence as a DNA sample.

 

[JayUtah]

Oh please. Captian_Swoop seemed to have the idea that eyewitness testimony was 'not evidence' so I was simply making a factual correction. An eye witness can be accepted as hard an evidence as a DNA sample.

He is right and you are wrong. Not everything that a witness says in his statement is evidence. We've been over this many times. You're trying to interpolate legal notions of appealability and terminology to get around it.

 

[Vixen]

Straw man. No one is claiming the witness testimony is "invalid." The claim is that it's not evidence of the thing you're asserting, and further that it should be examined critically.



And plenty of people have been properly acquitted when witness testimony was shown to be inconsistent with facts ascertained by other means. You're obfuscating the treatment of witnesses by vague words such as "valid." Testimony can be perfectly admissible, yet still be wrong. As usual, you're ignoring the reasons why your critics are treating witness testimony critically and imagining that we must instead be trying to show that it's categorically "invalid" in some way. The straw men in your arguments in this thread are innumerable.

You might avail yourself of the cases taken on by the Innocence Project in the United States. They have won several post-conviction exonerations in cases where the witness evidence against the accused was, by all measurements at the time, properly obtained and presented. Our late and mourned Loss Leader recommended a book on the subject. You might not want to make a case for the reliability of witness testimony on the premise of the results it seems to obtain.



Yes, and you've shown in spades that you have no skill at extracting evidence from witness testimony, or at developing evidence from the natural world. What is evidence is what witnesses actually perceived with senses. What isn't evidence is what they conjectured might have caused those perceptions. That's the case whether the trier of fact is a jury or whether it's a forensic investigator piecing together a narrative.

Let's face it, the Innocence Project largely attracts attorneys who want to fulfill the American Bar Association's criteria of doing X amount of 'pro bono' work as part of their CPD. So, who do they turn to for this pro bono accreditation? Yes, the poor and the dispossessed. The convicts who insist they are innocent. The whole system of unfair imprisonment in the USA is a direct result of the wholly unjust system of punishment in the USA, hence the need for 'Innocence Project' pro bono lawyers using their skiils to try to correct the inequalities that is inherent in the US system. We are not talking about social injustice here. I was merely correcting Captain_Swoop's incorrect assumption that eyewitness accounts do not count as 'evidence' when they most certainly can and do. The fact that injustices occur is neither here nor there. It is up to the court to decide if an eyewitness is credible and that will depend on their character, trustworthiness and credibility. That is a simple matter of fact. To claim the survivor's accounts are 'not evidence' shows a deplorable lack of understanding of how evidence works.

 

[JayUtah]

Jay Utah please try to stay focussed.

Don't get snippy.

Kurm was Estonia's Chief Prosecutor as of the time of the incident. Has it never occurred to you that Kurm in his unique position, actually has insider information that makes him cocksure confident that a collision with a submarine was the cause of sinking.

Of course it occurred to me. It also occurred to me that he might not know what he's talking about when it comes to maritime collisions. Show me the evidence that his claim is based on insider knowledge.

Oh, right, you can't because you're not privy to that information. So all that is your conjecture, not evidence.

He says Swedish and perhaps he is aware of facts that we are not.

But the facts that we are aware of preclude his claim. And all you can do in return is speculate that other facts might exist, and that other people might know them. So yes, you're back out on the motte trying to rehabilitate this witness on extremely shaky, speculative grounds. Your inability to let go of anything that challenges the conventional narrative is why this thread is almost a hundred pages long and why you will never accomplish anything toward finding out what really happened.

 

[Vixen]

I know it's obvious. Which is why you should have known it instead of heavily implying (nay, claiming) that witness testimony should be accepted at face value.

Nowhere have I said witness statements should be accepted at face value. Please read carefully. I said if accepted by the court. This means turning up at the hearing and subjecting oneself to cross-examination.

 

[Vixen]

It is?

Er, did you not know about the petal-shaped hole directly opposite one of the side bolts?

Or the video taken by Rockwater divers which appears to show an unexploded 'device' on the bow bulkhead?

 

[JayUtah]

Let's face it, the Innocence Project largely attracts attorneys who want to fulfill the American Bar Association's criteria of doing X amount of 'pro bono' work...

How many American attorneys do you actually know? How many members of the Innocence Project do you actually know?

We are not talking about social injustice here.

Agreed. We're talking about how once rock-solid witness testimony has been overturned by physical evidence. Hence your claims of the reliability of that testimony based on its use in court are suspect.

I was merely correcting Captain_Swoop's incorrect assumption that eyewitness accounts do not count as 'evidence' when they most certainly can and do.

Asked and answered. You keep eviscerating the same straw man with utter disregard for what your critics actually say. Not everything that a witness says in his or her statement is evidence. It may be mixed with conclusory or interpretive statements that are evidentiary. The critical exercise of separating what parts of a witness' statement are evidence and what are not is what a court does. So when we play the role of a court in doing so, we're not declaring the witness testimony "invalid."

To claim the survivor's accounts are 'not evidence' shows a deplorable lack of understanding of how evidence works.

You are not an expert in witness testimony.

 

[Vixen]

You've answered your own question. Obviously the person who made the request wasn't sufficiently intelligent to realise that this had/has nothing to do with the DfT - it should have been directed to FCDO. It might have something to do with conspiracy theorists not usually being half as bright as they think they are....

So Paul Barney PhD and a Churchill prize winner that enabled him to travel around internationally as a student for his research into biome systems 'was not sufficiently intelligent' to know how to put in an FOI request, nor Graham Philips journalist?


So he is a conspiracy theorist even though his report to the police immediately after the accident from his hospital bed suffering from one of the lowest body temperatures they had ever seen but lived to tell the tale, clearly states the following:

Paul Barney - in the Café Neptunus

woke up from a bang/shock and thought there had been a collision;
then he heard cracking and scraping noises and something was gliding along the vessel's hull side;
he got up to look what was going on when the vessel suddenly heeled very widely to starboard and the furniture moved to the deep side.

Yes, Paul Barney is obviously very very stupid whilst London John on his keyboard knows better.

 

[Vixen]

No, it's what's known as deductive reasoning.

There was a competent investigation, which found reliable evidence of a bow visor bolt failing, causing the visor to break away at that point and "flap" around (banging multiple times against the hull as it did so). The remaining bolt eventually broke as well, and the visor broke clear from the ship, dislodging the (connected) bow ramp in the process.

All of the above can be proven from visual and metallurgical examination of the components concerned. And when it's amalgamated with all the other reliable evidence, it's perfectly clear that this was indeed the proximate cause of the sinking.

I mean, all of this has been pointed out to you many times already. Just as the true cause has repeatedly been pointed out - with ample supporting evidence - to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Plus ca change.....

Stop talking nonsense. The bow visor, according tho the JAIC had its bolts at the side snapped off 'by a few strong waves' therefor it was hanging off the atlantic lock which is the lock at the bottom meaning that if it really was banging against the ship it would have had to have done so upwards and aft and would have had virtually nothing to actually 'bang' on. There would then need to be a counter-wave moving of its own accord - which is of course laughable - to then render it forward and down, which simply did not happen as the sea cannot choose which direction it moves.

 

[Vixen]

He is right and you are wrong. Not everything that a witness says in his statement is evidence. We've been over this many times. You're trying to interpolate legal notions of appealability and terminology to get around it.

Stop trying to twist what I said. You know perfectly well I never said 'everything an eyewitness says must be treated as gospel truth'. As I keep saying the matter of whether to accept an eye witness' account as evidence is for the court to decide. Shee-eesh!