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

[Andy_Ross]

There is a big difference between eyewitnesses interviewed in the presence of the police, with a witness and the start time, date and place of the recording noted, either on tape or by hand, together with the names of all those present and concluding with the end time and date plus signature of the eyewitness.

Any exchange of words between a survivor and his or her rescuers would be hearsay on the part of the rescuer and of little legal value.

What is your point?

they would have told the rescuers what they saw and heard. Who is on about a court of law?

 

[Andy_Ross]

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.

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

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.

What was their "skill and know how" when it came to WW2 naval mines?

I thought it was a sub or spies that sank it?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The survivors had gone virtually 24 hours without sleep, for fear of dozing off forever, as hypothermia brings about extreme sleepiness and indeed, most people on the rafts had to watch their fellow passengers die. All of the rescued had dangerously low core body temperatures. Some were on the verge of death and hallucinating.



Jack the Hedge thinks they were in a fit position to discuss the pros and cons o the bow visor and the car ramp.



Fact is, Paul Barney reports he definitely saw the pointy bit against the moonlight as the vessel went down.



This was later; when he was rescued he was far too delirious with happiness to care a darn about the flipping car ramp.

Vixen's conspiracy theory about her distant cousin requires us to assume none of the rescued survivors said anything about what happened before Bildt's press conference. This is a less than compelling suggestion.

 

[Vixen]

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?

Are you able to contribute anything constructive that relates to the title of this thread? Like most people I find 'flame wars' extremely boring, so please try to focus on the thread topic.

 

[Andy_Ross]

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.

When will you notice the elephant in the room?

And once again, this has been gone over at considerable length.

If the hole was not there at the time of the sinking why would it be mentioned?
It is not a hole made by ramming or explosion, it doesn't look like either of them, it looks like a tear caused by stress on the hull after it sank.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The survivors were evacuated to three hospital locations: Mariehamn, which is the capital of the autonomous Åland Islands (it is geographically and politically Finnish because the open sea doesn't start until west this). Turku hospital which is nearby Parainen/Utö, the nearest land to the accident and Huddinge Hospital in Stockholm.


I assume the crew would have had NMT phones or hospital phones to ring their employers.

I thought they were too traumatised and exhausted to speak to their rescuers?

Why would they be phoning their employers?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

You are the one who keeps making distasteful accusations about your interlocutors and yet you're now claiming we are attempting to start a flame war?

You really are shameless aren't you. You're pathetic.

Care to answer my questions yet Vixen? Those are on topic.

 

[JayUtah]

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

Yes. But not everything that is alleged to have happened, happened. In particular, if what you allege to have happened cannot have happened because it's inherently a contradiction, then it remains a conspiracy theory no matter how fervently one denies having conspiracy-mongered it into existence.

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

There is always going to be an underlying truth that, for happenstance events, will elude even our most rigorous inspection. But in searching for what most likely happened, we still require a coherent story that covers as many facts as possible. Your stories (emphatically plural) have only in common that the JAIC covered up something. They can't all be true because they contradict one another, and you can't be bothered to choose which one you think better explains all the facts with the least amount of additional speculation.

Hammering on the notion that objective truth exists doesn't fix the problem that the totality of what you've claimed over the life of this thread cannot possibly be that truth because it cannot all have happened. You either need to choose which theory you're going to promote as being more explanatory than the JAIC, or else consign yourself to properly being called a conspiracy theorist. None of what you're doing has the slightest chance of providing a better explanation than what already exists.

 

[JayUtah]

Are you able to contribute anything constructive that relates to the title of this thread? Like most people I find 'flame wars' extremely boring, so please try to focus on the thread topic.

You bring this up every time you're caught spewing vitriol and can't be bothered to accept responsibility for it. When you brought up the accusation against your critics, you had no problem thinking then that it was on-topic. It therefore remains topical, and doesn't suddenly become res non grata because you don't feel like explaining yourself.

 

[Vixen]

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



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.

Get back in the knife drawer, Mr. Sharp!

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Don't talk wet; as if reputable journalists insert their own opinions in a news article...

Good grief. That is what YOU said and were pulled up on. This is increasingly like some Monty Python sketch where you respond to critics by accusing them of doing the thing they were criticising you for. It's insane.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

What are you on about?

 

[Andy_Ross]

There has not been an accident like it before or since, unless you count the ships sunk by torpedo during the wars.

It is nothing like the Herald of Free Enterprise, which did not have a bow visor and was simply due to the boatswain not putting up the car ramp.

It had bow doors that open clam shell style to port and starboard rather than vertical, they are functionally the same as the bow visor.

 

[Vixen]

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.



...during the war.

You do know that the Baltic sea bed near the Finnish Archipelago varies from as shallow as 30m to 300m in a distance as little as a shake of a cat's tail? Have you never noticed the sheer number of ships and submarines who find themselves grounded in shallow water?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If Meek didn't think his source was reliable he would not have bothered to quote it. <much pompous stuff about journalistic integrity snipped for irrelevance>

Reliability is not the issue at all. Meek did not need to think his source was plausibly correct to report what the source said. YOU said he agreed. That was nonsense. The end.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Carl Bildt was obviously briefed by his intelligence agents.

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.

What is your evidence for these claims?

 

[Andy_Ross]

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'.

Why?

Should the rescue coordinators not ask those they rescue what happened?

Don't you think they would want to know what they were dealing with?

 

[Vixen]

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



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.



"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.

One thing all CEO's of large companies do know and that is damage limitation to the company's reputation is priority at all costs, so yes, he will have thought carefully before giving out his opinion.

Likewise Carl Bildt reassuring the public it was 'just an accident' for which no-one was to blame, other than a faulty design of the bow visor.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Er, hello, the ship sank in thirty-five minutes. Isn't it rather obvious what happened?

Imagine someone being recued from a car crash and being grilled by the rescue services as their car is being cut open as to what caused the accident.

Doesn't work like that.

You want us to swallow the idea that since the rescued were not immediately interrogated then none of them could or would have said anything at all about what happened.

That is just incredibly stupid.

 

[JayUtah]

You do know that the Baltic sea bed near the Finnish Archipelago varies from as shallow as 30m to 300m in a distance as little as a shake of a cat's tail? Have you never noticed the sheer number of ships and submarines who find themselves grounded in shallow water?

Have you noticed the sheer number of ships that are not sunk by sea mines in that area?