The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part II

[JesseCuster]

I see you are one those people who cannot debate without getting downright insulting and spiteful.

You have claimed that people in this thread have made callous jokes at the expense of the victims of the Estonia disaster, when no such thing happened in this thread. You have claimed that people in this thread want the testimony of survivors of the Estonia disaster to be censored. You have claimed that people in this thread don't know what to believe unless the likes of Fox News or the Daily Mail tell them what to think. None of those are true, you made those up just to insult and attempt to shame your critics.

And you're calling others spiteful and insulting?

 

[JayUtah]

I see you are one those people who cannot debate without getting downright insulting and spiteful. You are telling lies when you claim I 'pretended' to read the original source, when I very clearly said I would need to get the original from a newspaper library, and that the source was Drew Wilson.



I had read of Johanson's claim before but Wilson's was the source that was at hand.

You had no idea who Meek was quoting until someone else told you. I specifically asked you who Meek's source was and you didn't know. The problem is that you made claims of reliability for that source that are in order only if you had read it. You admitted you didn't have the text only after it became untenable for you to continue bluffing. You can claim all you want that I'm being unfair, but you also keep providing all the evidence we need that I'm right.

 

[Vixen]

Hack is slang for a poor journalist. No one here has claimed Meek is a poor journalist. The only claim made with respect to him states that he is probably not an expert on sea mines, so trusting his authority on the subject may not be the best information.



I've never seen it used that way, and I know several reporters for the Pulitzer-Prize-winning newspaper in my town.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_writer



No one here has claimed that. Literally you are the only person in this thread to attach such nasty words to Meek, even if it's to try to pretend your critics have done it.

Reading your exchange with Mojo over this point has led me to believe you are irredeemably dishonest. Yes, you must be bothered to correct errors you make if you want to be taken seriously. Conveniently forgetting what you previously argued, completely fabricating arguments to shove into your critics mouths, and out of the blue accusing them of racism are not just minor semantic quibbles. You are fundamentally failing at carrying on an adult conversation.

Look I know or have known quite a few respected journalists, one who writes for the Independent these days, another writes articles, another two are famed cartoonists. Sometimes it is just easier to write 'hack' than journalist. Whether it is derogatory or not depends on context. If I were to say 'some old hack at the SUN' that is very different in tone than, 'he works as a GUARDIAN hack'.

I note you are again judging others by your own standards. You think nothing of besmirching and hurling abuse, and when challenged about your scurrilous and disgraceful insults, your Modus Operandi is to deny you ever aimed any low blow.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Please link to any of Jay's insults. Any one.

Meanwhile your transparent attempt to wriggle away from your reality denying continues.

Answer my questions please.

 

[Vixen]

Source(s)? Or just rabid speculation?

You spew out this sort of bilge, yet in almost the same breath you mockingly reject (eminently feasible) suggestions that the shore-based management at the ship's owners Estline might rather desperately want to try to learn why their ship had sunk. And that an extremely obvious place to start would be to talk - in person or on the phone - with at least some of those crew members who had survived? And that senior politicians in Sweden and elsewhere in the region might, in turn, urgently want to try to find out why the ship had sunk - if for no other reason but to rule out military subterfuge by a foreign power. And that the obvious first place for the politicians to start would be to contact the ship's owners?


There's no need for mystery here. There's no need for Bildt to have learned about the bow visor via "briefings from his intelligence officers". There's no need whatsoever for any cloak-and-dagger bollocks. The ship sank because it was poorly designed and even more poorly maintained, to the point where a single mechanical stress failure (with a total lack of redundancy) set of an inevitable chain of events that culminated in the total loss of the ship. That's what happened here.

Carl Bildt was obviously briefed by his intelligence agents. On the noght in question, he was at a farewell party having lost the election when he was called away not long after one in the morning, as witnessed by the guests in the hotel/restaurant and briefed in his shell-like. The Finnish PM, Aho and the Estonian PM Laar didn't find out until a phone call in the middle of the night, which they were both able to remember clearly and from whom. When Bildt was asked the same question, he claimed he couldn't remember.

It is so obvious the Swedish - or affiliated intelligence agencies - knew about the accident as soon as it happen because...hello? they were tracking the vessel, whether by submarine or by SOSUS.

 

[Vixen]

So now it was a mine. Not submarine, mini-submarine, KGB/Spetsnaz commandos, and or terrorists.

Here's the thing, a mine detonating IS LOUD. We had one wash up here about 25 years ago and they blew it up on the beach. You could hear that thing from 12 miles away.

I'm certain of two things: Had it been a mine everyone on the bridge would have known it was a mine meaning the captain wouldn't have left at the end of his shift. And they would have said something during their MAYDAY calls.

All that was communicated was that Estonia was taking on water and listing badly. That meant the bridge crew had no idea what was happening.

Should be pointed out that a mine would detonate under the ship unless it was just floating around, and the crack/hole in the side of Estonia IS TOO SMALL to be caused by a mine of any kind.

I can't wait until we get to the "Aliens did it" part of this.

We know now it was not a mine but at the time of the accident it was a realistic possibility, given the disaster occurred in the military region of Utö and its history of mines. Johanson was actually being very logical.

 

[JayUtah]

I note you are again judging others by your own standards.

No, I posted a link to show the standard by which I had judged. It's not my personal standard.

You think nothing of besmirching and hurling abuse, and when challenged about your scurrilous and disgraceful insults, your Modus Operandi is to deny you ever aimed any low blow.

Because I didn't. Here's a hint: When the majority of responses to your posts start out with, "I made no such claim," that should be telling you something. Even more so recently, your posts have simply fabricated highly distasteful arguments and attributed them to your critics. You are simply not in touch with reality.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

If it was "logical" why were no other ships ever hit a mine in the area despite it being one of the busiest shipping lines in the world?

 

[Vixen]

This a prime example of you wanting it both ways. You've spent half the thread arguing that the survivor testimony must be treated as gospel, but here you are claiming it would have been worthless in the hours immediately after being pulled from the sea. What makes you think their memories improved over time? Why would a statement made a few hours after rescue be any less reliable than one made weeks or months later?

Again, they've now surveyed the Estonia twice. The visor got knocked off in rough seas. There is a crack along the seems of the hull plating. There is no evidence of an explosion. They will actively dive on Estonia next summer. These are the facts.

I did not say survivor testimony was worthless. However, it wouldn't have much worth as secondhand hearsay casual conversation, as I have stated earlier. First hand eye witness accounts ASAP after an accident is extremely invaluable but it has to be in the words of the eyewitness and witnessed by a third party, dated, timed and signed as being 'a fair and true account to the best of my knowledge'.

 

[JayUtah]

We know now it was not a mine but at the time of the accident it was a realistic possibility...

In whose estimation?

...given the disaster occurred in the military region of Utö and its history of mines.

...which had existed for decades without sinking any of the thousands of ships that routinely pass that way.

 

[JayUtah]

If the massive hole in the starboard was carefully omitted from mention by the JAIC - as it was - then there is obviously a cover up.

This is a problem only if the hole existed at the time and was in a place where it could have been observed. You've given us no evidence that this was the case.

When will you notice the elephant in the room?

When there is evidence of an elephant.

 

[Vixen]

You really don't know what you're talking about.

Look: suppose that Emmanuel Macron (just for example) said, in an interview with journalist X, that he suspected aliens might have been responsible for originating the current covid pandemic? For X, the veracity, falsifiability, reliability or credibility of Macron's claim would be of zero relevance or importance in the first instance. All that would be important at that point was that a person of Macron's position and status had made that claim. X would have filed his "French President Macron claims aliens may have planted covid onto Earth" story as rapidly as he possibly could.

And precisely the same logic applies to the "ship might have hit a mine" claim in our matter.

Again, this is political news which is often little more than spin. Macron saying something silly would be newsworthy in its own right by media hostile to his politics. For example, the DAILY EXPRESS. Hardly the same as reporting a developing situation.

 

[Vixen]

Didn't Vixen claim earlier in the thread that witness testimony taken very soon after a traumatic event was particularly valuable because the memory was vivid and fresh in their minds?

I did and I stand by it.

 

[Vixen]

No. LondonJohn (no space between "London" and "John") made no such claim. LondonJohn said that it was a nigh-on impossibility that the ship had - in reality - been sunk by a mine (of WWII era or any other).

That the head of the company which owned and operated the ship made some baseless speculation about a mine - when he himself must obviously have known how vanishingly improbable a scenario that would have been - is neither here nor there. Especially when those two dirty words "ulterior motives" come into play - as they most definitely did there.

See, it's also not impossible, for example, that the ship was struck by a meteorite that just happened to fall through the Earth's atmosphere at exactly the right time, in the right place, to collide with the ship's hull and cause it to sink. But in relative probability terms, it's even less probable (but not perhaps by as much as you might think) than the "hit a leftover mine" theory.


Oh and lastly, you seem repeatedly to overlook the fact that whatever might have been claimed (and for whatever reason) in the immediate aftermath of the sinking, it wasn't long at all before investigators were able to recover and analyse evidence. And had the ship hit a mine (it didn't), there would have been tell-tale signs of pitting and stretching of the hull at a visual and microscopic level, and there would have been easily-identifiable residues of explosives and explosives by-products. None of those were present. This ship did not hit a mine. End of story.

Oh dear. Now it's the logical fallacy of disproportionality as though being hit by a meteorite is as probable as a ship chancing upon a mine at Utö, as though sinking by bow visor is 'high probability'.

 

[JayUtah]

So Johanson is entirely correct.

No, Johanson is partially correct. He is correct that there are many unexploded sea mines in the area. However, the fact remains that they are on the seabed and do not pose any hazard to navigation. The other part of his claim -- that Estonia could have been sunk by one of these mines -- is not credible.

In fact, a Finnish warship the Ilmarinen was blown up by a mine...

...during the war.

 

[Vixen]

If the Estonia was sunk by an unexploded leftover WWII mine, then why would Carl Bildt make up a story about it being sunk by the bow visor coming off in a storm and letting water in that caused the ship to sink and why would the JAIC then go to the trouble of concocting a fraudulent investigation and report that affirmed that false story?

Because he was advised very early on that the whole thing was a botch up. The Russians warned the UK and Sweden to stop smuggling former Soviet military/space program secrets on the passenger ferry Estonia at least twice. Bildt would have known immediately this was hugely politcal and embarrassing so he did what Clinton and the US government has always done in these situations and that is to label the whole thing 'classified' meaning that anyone asking for information can be refused acknowledgement that there is any information to be had on the grounds of 'national security'. This is disgustingly unfair to the families of the deceased and to the survivors.

 

[JayUtah]

Political news is very different from developing news of a disaster. People know that politicians are skilled spin doctors and thus what they have to say is often carefully scripted to achieve a certain political effect.

And of course there is never any spin-doctoring or finger-pointing among potentially responsible parties in the wake of a major disaster.

Trump was damned by his own words. No comment needed to be added.

Ditto Johanson. Meek dutifully and accurately reported what Johanson said, which was of general interest because he represented the company that was party to the disaster. That Johanson's claim is objectively farfetched and improbable, and likely to be an attempt to deflect blame, doesn't require elaboration by anyone quoting him. However, it is a point that's important to raise when we evaluate the truthfulness of the claim.

Estline's opinion, being the vessel operators, as to the possible cause of the accident is bound to be a carefully weighed consideration of probabilities based on skill and know how.

"Bound to." Again you're inferring rather than reading. Johanson said it was his "personal opinion" and that it was simply because he could think of no other reason why his ship should have foundered so quickly. You keep insisting that Johanson has offered a "considered" opinion here, but all you bring to the table is your say-so.

 

[Vixen]

As I've said before: Conspiracy theorists generally have no idea what they are talking about. Literally no *idea*. No coherent image/model/hypothesis of what went down, who did it, nor why. Just a vague insinuation of "somehow, somewhere, somebody I don't like did something bad and fooled everybody except me."

So, Vixen. What do you think actually happened?

If something actually happened, it is not a conspiracy theory it is the truth.

The truth cannot be changed, spun, rewritten, revised, reconstructed or renamed. It has the ability to remain the truth.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Well he obviously was because unlike the posters here, he was aware of the historical mines at Utö.

James Meek, GUARDIAN 3.10.1994

And he is absolutely right. I assume 'Yuto' is a phonetical spelling of Utö, which is about 28 miles from Pargas/Parainen on the Finnish mainland.

A survey of mines done in 1940 showed an estimated over 920 between Vyberg and Utö. See map showing area of territorial water minefields

(Credit: Merimiinoitteet Suomen vesillä talvisodassa
ja Suomenlahdella vuonna 1941. pdf)

So Johanson is entirely correct. In fact, a Finnish warship the Ilmarinen was blown up by a mine and its wreck lies within 15 km of the Estonia.




As a matter of maritime interest. there also lies the wreck of the US Cargo Ship SS Park Victory nearby.

In addition, there are literally thousands of unexploded mines littering the region:



Thus, the idea that 'a bow visor causing a ship to sink' is by no means 'more probable' than hitting a mine.

We are aware of the WW2 mines in the Baltic.

1941 was how long ago?

It was not a mine, if it had been a mine it would have been obvious to the crew of the ship when there was a huge explosion that would have burst ear drums, shattered the windows, broke ankles and more than just made some banging sounds and a bit of a lurch.

Forget the ******* mines.

 

[Vixen]

Where's the cite, source and proper reference for this assumption?

Common sense common knowledge. Were I to say the sky was blue no reference or citation needed. You are just being silly for the sake of it. Please stop it.