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

[Vixen]

Source? Citation? Evidence? Anything at all to back up this theory of a conspiracy?

The hole in the starboard was not investigated. The passenger survivor accounts not investigated. The claims of poor maintenance not investigated. The claim the vessel was seaworthy was not investigated.

The JAIC declared that there was no damage to the ship other than at the car ramp and bow visor.

Isn't that lying by omission?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Why would an accidental sinking of the Estonia by a leftover WWII unexploded mine be "hugely political and embarrassing" but an accidental sinking of the Estonia by a failing bow visor not be such that it's worth the Swedish government's while going to the byzantine lengths to cover up the former story and railroad an investigation into coming up with the latter cover story?

Remember that I asked you about "an unexploded leftover WWII mine", i.e. an accident. You're answering an entirely different scenario involving sabotage, which I didn't ask about.

A ship being sunk by a naval mine in a main shipping lane would be cause for great concern.
Sailings would be stopped, a 'notice to mariners' put out detailing the danger and the navy would be in there with mine countermeasures vessels.

Why would it be covered up? it would be perfect 'cover' for the real plot.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Are you suggesting that the crew, when abandoning a sinking ship, took the ship's communication equipment with them, all the way to shore and to hospital, and then used the ship's communication equipment to contact their employers? Seriously?

In the immediate aftermath of "facing death in the face" (your words), you're suggesting that the crew made the decision to phone their employers? People phone their loved ones and immediate family in those situations to let them know they're safe, then don't phone their employers to discuss the details of how the disaster happened.

And do you have any evidence that the crew actually did that? Where's your source, citation and proper reference for this idea that the crew called their employers after the rescue? Remember, your posts are sourced, cited and properly referenced.

What were the surviving crew supposed to have said to the company? Did they tell the boss it was a mine that sank the ship?
Why didn't they mention this to anyone else?

 

[Vixen]

That's not what I asked you.

You stated that it is obvious that the Estonia was sunk by an act of sabotage.

So I then asked you if that means you're going back on your claim that it was probably sank by an accidental collision with a friendly submarine.

You stated that you didn't know.

How can you think it's obvious that it was sank by an act of sabotage and simultaneously not be sure if it was probably sank by an accidental collision with a friendly submarine?

I said, it was obvious to me.

This is because:

• it sank super fast
• survivors independently of each other related bangs going off at Swedsih midnight - indicating a timed device
• passengers relate feelings of a collision - slammed into a wall/flungonto the floor with force
• some passengers recount a feeling of the vessel momnetarily stopping, consistent with a collision
• two passengers relates seeing something moving away in the water
• two passengers recount seeing military vehicles being loaded just before departure
• passengers complain that their eye witness accounts have either been disregarded or rewritten in the JAIC report
• the Swedish government immediately claimed it was 'just an accident' due to flooding o the car deck before it could possibly know
• the hole in the starboard has been known of and recorded in a published newspaper as early as 1997 (the Kaleva)
• the JAIC never investigated the hole in the starboad claim nor the reports of bangs and/or a collision
• the JAIC report says categorically the 'only damage was in the bow'.
• despite various film crews revealing the hole in the starboard, for example, in 2010, it still was not investigated
• when an English survivor requested a FOI document setting out why the UK were signatories to a Baltic area treaty he received no reply

 

[Vixen]

You weren't asked about witness statements.

You were asked about survivors being asked in the immediate aftermath of the disaster what happened to give some idea of what caused the disaster.

When someone is asked in the immediate wake of a disaster what happened to allow rescuers or investigators some idea of what happened, you don't have lawyers, cops, signed statements, witnesses, etc. Where do you get this nonsense from?

The point being made was that any information imparted to rescuers becomes hearsay. For example, if a survivor told a rescuer 'there was a fire', is that adequate reason for the Swedish government to announce that 'a fire caused the accident', or is it a ludicrous assertion (see Captain_Swoop's original post for the context of this conversation).


The JAIC relied solely on the survivor crew testimony. Survivor Third Engineer Sillaste, did not tell Bildt, Laar, Aho and the attending SuPo that the bow visor had fallen off when they interviewed him on the day of the accident 28 September 1994, so where did Carl Bildt get his claim from, to make a confident statement of fact at the press conference on the same day?

 

[JesseCuster]

What were the surviving crew supposed to have said to the company? Did they tell the boss it was a mine that sank the ship?
Why didn't they mention this to anyone else?

What's quite bizarre about this is, according to Vixen, the surviving crew and passengers would not have said anything useful to rescuers or first responders in the aftermath of the disaster because of the trauma, shock, insomnia, etc. they had just suffered that would allow the Swedish government to have any idea of what might have caused the disaster, but that the crew would have phoned their employers in the same situation using communications equipment they had taken from the ship, and given their employers enough information for the head of Estline to give a carefully weighed considered opinion as to what might have caused the disaster.

 

[Vixen]

Why would an accidental sinking of the Estonia by a leftover WWII unexploded mine be "hugely political and embarrassing" but an accidental sinking of the Estonia by a failing bow visor not be such that it's worth the Swedish government's while going to the byzantine lengths to cover up the former story and railroad an investigation into coming up with the latter cover story?

Remember that I asked you about "an unexploded leftover WWII mine", i.e. an accident. You're answering an entirely different scenario involving sabotage, which I didn't ask about.

Because whilst Johanson of Estline was giving a genuine statement of his opinion, Carl Bildt already knew what caused the disaster hence the immediate cover up from Time Zero.

He claims he forgets who told him of the accident or when.

 

[JesseCuster]

I said, it was obvious to me.

If it's obvious to you that the Estonia was sunk by an act of deliberate espionage, then you can't still hold the view that the Estonia was probably sunk by an accidental collision by a friendly submarine, which is something you said earlier in this thread.

I asked you if you no longer hold that view, and you said you didn't know.

So I'll ask you again, are you discarding your earlier opinion in this thread that the Estonia was probably sunk by an accidental collision by a friendly submarine for a new opinion that it was obviously sunk by a deliberate act of sabotage? You can't hold both views simultaneously, they're mutually exclusive.

 

[Vixen]

If it is secret how do you know about it?

What is your evidence for this secret Swedish navy investigation?.

Nothing secret about it. Swedish navy divers went down to the wreck as soon as it was located. They were quite separate from the outsourced Rockwater divers. What goes on in the military stays in the military. You should know that.

 

[Vixen]

Are you suggesting that the crew, when abandoning a sinking ship, took the ship's communication equipment with them, all the way to shore and to hospital, and then used the ship's communication equipment to contact their employers? Seriously?

In the immediate aftermath of "facing death in the face" (your words), you're suggesting that the crew made the decision to phone their employers? People phone their loved ones and immediate family in those situations to let them know they're safe, then don't phone their employers to discuss the details of how the disaster happened.

And do you have any evidence that the crew actually did that? Where's your source, citation and proper reference for this idea that the crew called their employers after the rescue? Remember, your posts are sourced, cited and properly referenced.

The context was, whether Johanson had had a chance to discuss the accident with the crew when he gave his interview to James Meek of the GUARDIAN. If Captain_Swoop thinks Bildt had a chance to chat to rescuers who had chatted to survivors then why not the employers, likewise. If your staff are involved in an accident of course you try to contact them ASAP. We are talking about likelihood, not whether there is any evidence either of these scenarios happened.

 

[Vixen]

I don't know what you're trying to prove.d

Immediately after an accident, when there is a paucity of evidence regarding the cause, a reporter is not there to judge the credibility of an authority giving his opinion. The opinion itself is newsworthy.

That the comments from an authority for the ferry company appeared in a newspaper is not evidence that what the authority said is credible. Duh.

Your refusal to accept this obvious fact is embarrassing.

If James Meek flew all the way to Tallinn, or his stringer on his behalf, there will also have been research assistants who automatically made their way to the British Library Newspaper Library which was then situated in Colindale and had a collection of original newspapers going back to year dot, and foreign newspapers mostly on microfiche. The place was daily jampacked with hacks doing research (often on the past foibles of celebrities in the news) or lawyers looking for trade (ambulance chasers or noting who inthe local papers was going to court, and thereby getting the office to send out fliers to the individuals named offering their services).

One can always spot the articles that are well researched.

I am betting that Meek's team will almost certainly have looked up the possibility of a mine being the culprit for the shocking disaster.

 

[Mojo]

To send a clear message.

What was the “clear message”, and who was it sent by and to?

And if it was done “to send a clear message”, why the cover-up?

 

[Andy_Ross]

The hole in the starboard was not investigated. The passenger survivor accounts not investigated. The claims of poor maintenance not investigated. The claim the vessel was seaworthy was not investigated.

The JAIC declared that there was no damage to the ship other than at the car ramp and bow visor.

Isn't that lying by omission?

We have no evidence for a hole in the hull at the time of the sinking. What can be seen now does not look like a hole caused by ramming or explosives, it looks like a fracture or tear along a weld seam line caused by the ship being subjected to stresses and forces it was not designed for.
Estonia has shifted position since the sinking and the hole aligns with known topological features of the seabed.
We went over this in great detail previously in the thread.

 

[Andy_Ross]

And so we have a complete reset of the entire thread.

 

[Vixen]

If it's obvious to you that the Estonia was sunk by an act of deliberate espionage, then you can't still hold the view that the Estonia was probably sunk by an accidental collision by a friendly submarine, which is something you said earlier in this thread.

I asked you if you no longer hold that view, and you said you didn't know.

So I'll ask you again, are you discarding your earlier opinion in this thread that the Estonia was probably sunk by an accidental collision by a friendly submarine for a new opinion that it was obviously sunk by a deliberate act of sabotage? You can't hold both views simultaneously, they're mutually exclusive.

I have always held that my default position is that things happen because of 'cock up' rather than evil intent. So, if the submarine - if it was a submarine - that collided with the vessel was Swedish/British then it could well have been accidental. If Russian, obviously hostile.


We don't know what nationality object caused the hole in the starboard.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The context was, whether Johanson had had a chance to discuss the accident with the crew when he gave his interview to James Meek of the GUARDIAN. If Captain_Swoop thinks Bildt had a chance to chat to rescuers who had chatted to survivors then why not the employers, likewise. If your staff are involved in an accident of course you try to contact them ASAP. We are talking about likelihood, not whether there is any evidence either of these scenarios happened.

Where did I say Bildt 'chatted' with the survivors?

 

[Andy_Ross]

One can always spot the articles that are well researched.

I am betting that Meek's team will almost certainly have looked up the possibility of a mine being the culprit for the shocking disaster.

I bet they didn't.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I have always held that my default position is that things happen because of 'cock up' rather than evil intent. So, if the submarine - if it was a submarine - that collided with the vessel was Swedish/British then it could well have been accidental. If Russian, obviously hostile.


We don't know what nationality object caused the hole in the starboard.

What submarine?

We already went through in detail why a submarine would not have made hole above the waterline or even one of the form seen on Estonia.

You seem to have forgotten it all. Don't you remember? it's the reason you switched to explosives and saboteurs aboard the ship doing it.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

No, I didn't say the divers faked any damage.

I'm not struggling back through the previous hundred page thread to fling your own words at you, especially as you just squirm and obfuscate when anyone does that, but when you started your Bildt couldn't have known schtick you definitely remarked on how convenient it was that the bow door was later found detached, clearly implying it could have been arranged that way by divers.

Bildt, when asked the same question at the time, replied 'I don't remember'.

Of course he remembers!

That's a weak-ass inference to hang a fantastical criminal conspiracy on.

Bildt did not interview any survivors until late afternoon 28 Sept 1994 the same day of the accident and that was Sillaste, together with Aho and Laar and the police. Laar confirmed Sillaste never mentioned the bow visor in that interview.

If you look at the JAIC report you'll see the other crew were not interviewed until 29 Sept 1994.

Bildt made the bow visor announcement as per press conference with the Swedish press at circa 4:00pm 28 Sept 1994 when nobody could possibly have known this for sure...unless they had military/intelligence personnel who were there at the time or ... actually carried it out.

Irrelevant. The timings of formal interviews do not tell us anything about what the survivors said in the hours after their rescue.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I'm not struggling back through the previous hundred page thread to fling your own words at you, especially as you just squirm and obfuscate when anyone does that, but when you started your Bildt couldn't have known schtick you definitely remarked on how convenient it was that the bow door was later found detached, clearly implying it could have been arranged that way by divers..

That's why we have had the secret Swedish navy divers introduced in to the narrative. Obviously they used explosive charges to detach the visor and move it away from the ship (fill in the details of how they managed this yourself)
Then when they had finished they forgot to clear up all the unexploded ordnance and just left it all behind.