Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part III

[Vixen]

Carl Bildt is not on trial. That he doesn't meet your standard of being candid is not relevant. Nothing in his LONG history of public service suggests anything indicating he would be comfortable with and or cover up mass murder.

This is a classic strawman argument.

Bildt is on Twitter, and anyone can follow him.



Weird, almost as if Swedish intelligence does its job by monitoring radio traffic since anyone with a radio in that area would have heard THE MAYDAY call.




Considering how much Sweden pays its police officers I think the ferry would be cheaper than an airplane.

And the CIA is oddly prompt about adding stars to its wall of fallen agents, but none were added in this time frame, certainly nothing to suggest a "contingent".



This is nothing more than anti-EU propaganda. In most of the CT links you post you will find many of those promoting conspiracy are Green Party members. Bildt's main achievement was getting Sweden into the EU, and this made enemies. Hence this claptrap of lies.

The Estonia sank after her bow visor was knocked off by heavy seas and her crew doing nothing until it was too late. That's what happened, it's ugly, but the truth often is ugly.

"Many of those promoting conspiracy are Green Party members"...what?

Clinton had a PR image of being 'Peace Maker Extraordinaire' for the Middle East. He was far too vain to let the Palestinians know he was firmly in bed with Yitzhak Rabin thus we had a cover up, using his well-tried formula of making any such accident involving civilian collateral 'classified'.

According to Wikileaks, Bildt was a CIA agent.

Good for Bildt supporting the western democratisation of the former Soviet Baltic States and getting them into the EU out of Russian hands. It should not mean not being accountable for the terrible mistake of using a public passenger ferry to transport smuggled defense and space secrets. Time for Sweden to put up its hand, as it were.

 

[Vixen]

Are you sure about that? Or are you, just perhaps, regurgitating something that another conspiracy theorist has said?

Could it be, for example, that he might once have stated that he couldn't remember when he was told what about the disaster (eg he might have been told firstly that the Estonia was in trouble and that a rescue operation was underway, but only at a slightly later point in time was he told the full details of the disaster as they were known at that time)?

And as others have already said: how would/could Bildt possibly benefit from "pretending" not to remember something like this? Even if he was privy to some sort of grand conspiracy (he wasn't, but just supposing...), why on Earth would he have needed to lie about when he first heard the Estonia was in trouble? The Swedish Navy/Coastguard and/or listening stations would without doubt have learned about the unfolding disaster as soon as the Estonia put out its Mayday call (ie some time before it sank), so even a CT-involved Bildt would have had a plausible reason to have learned about things even before the ship went down.






No. It's just as likely - probably more likely, in fact - that if the Swedish intelligence services knew about the disaster immediately, it was because it had heard the Estonia's mayday calls, and subsequent related radio traffic.






Where to start on this stuff? Well firstly, the very moment you wrote "Truth is..." you invalidated everything following that opener. Because there's no way whatsoever that you can categorise what you've written as "truth". The best you can claim about it is that it's your opinion. Your wholly-unsubstantiated opinion.

As for your opinion itself, it resists any form of rebuttal, on account of its core stupidity and entire lack of substantiation.

No, Sweden did not get the May Day call. To refresh your memory, Channel 16 was down and the guys on the Estonia bridge had to use a hand held device to make a local 2182 call instead to nearby vessels (including Silja Europa*, who coincidentally, is currently in Glasgow hosting the COP26 summit). The captains of these nearby vessels had to ring the Finnish Coastguard landline using their NMT devices as the radio signals were down.

Do get your facts right before spouting off.

*Now with Tallink, not Silja.

 

[Mojo]

Do get your facts right before spouting off.

 

[Vixen]

I don't gather that this is what she's trying to do. The context of the remark was a tangent about the reliability of Wikipedia, and I doubt her comment with respect to an unrelated murder was intended to go beyond that. If she considers Wikipedia unreliable because it states something about that murder that she finds objectionable, then that doesn't have to relate in any way to the Estonia tragedy. The point is that Wikipedia is often unreliable, and I doubt that's a point that either I or she has to belabor among this audience.

Where it becomes relevant is that she cited Wikipedia as authority that Herald of Free Enterprise did not have a compartmentalized hull, which is at best misinterpreted and at worst flagrantly wrong. When she doubled down on it, as she frequently does in such cases, and has to retract, it often takes the forum of a distractionary pivot to some unrelated topic without actually issuing the retraction.

I didn't double down on it, I referred to my source, which showed I didn't just make it up. So the source happened to be incorrect which actually didn't change anything as Captian_Swoop didn't explain in which way The Herald of Free Enterprise watertight bulkheads compared to the Estonia's.

Edited by Agatha: 

Edited to remove rule 11 breach

 

[Here_to_learn]

No, Sweden did not get the May Day call. To refresh your memory, Channel 16 was down and the guys on the Estonia bridge had to use a hand held device to make a local 2182 call instead to nearby vessels (including Silja Europa, who coincidentally, is currently in Glasgow hosting the COP26 summit). The captains of these nearby vessels had to ring the Finnish Coastguard landline using their NMT devices as the radio signals were down.

Do get your facts right before spouting off.

You really have no idea on what you are talking about.

Channel 16 was not down - you can listen to the recorded VHF traffic between Estonia and the other ferries on several youtube videos.

MF 2182kHZ is specifically used since it has a longer range than VHF - it's not "a local call".

Any disturbances from a Russian radio on CH16 would not disturb VHF traffic towards Sweden, since VHF is a line-of-sight transmission.

 

[Vixen]

You really have no idea on what you are talking about.

Channel 16 was not down - you can listen to the recorded VHF traffic between Estonia and the other ferries on several youtube videos.

MF 2182kHZ is specifically used since it has a longer range than VHF - it's not "a local call".

Any disturbances from a Russian radio on CH16 would not disturb VHF traffic towards Sweden, since VHF is a line-of-sight transmission.

The Finnish Rear Admiral and Head of Finnish Coast Guard, Heimo Iivonen testified to the JAIC that he believed there was a continuous signal blocking by a transmitter coming off the Russian military island, Hoagland.

Russian soldiers silence

"Ešt0fl! 3" call for help "Estonia"

The call for help on the 16th international radio channel was silenced by a Russian military transmitter on the island of Hogland, the Swedish newspaper "Aftonbiadet" reported. The newspaper refers to Heimo Iivonen, a member of the International Commission of Inquiry, who said that a Russian military envoy based in Hoglandll had prevented him from attending the emergency call. Since September, a Russian radio transmitter has disrupted radio communications on the southern coast of Finland. Even on the night when "Estonia" sank, the transmitter was working and blocking the emergency call frequency. Therefore, it was difficult to understand the "Estonia" call for help.

"The first call for help heard on" Silja Symphony "was partly buried in the Russian carrier frequency coming from Hogland. Later," Estonia "was connected to ..Silja Europa". It is unlikely that "Estonia" tried to sound the alarm in the past. The island of Hogland is a closed Russian military area. Therefore, the Finnish authorities cannot do anything directly to stop the jammer. and also in the Gulf of Finland.Radio stations on ships sailing in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia are constantly tuned to VHF 16. To ensure that calls for help are received. "Iivonen has temporarily failed to intervene in order to take action on this issue." (BNS-,, Aftonbladet 1 ’)

There was a lot of time wasted as Third Officer Ainsalu was unable to tell Europa its location and had to call back, this time Fourth Officer Tammes [where was the Captain?] some minutes later, with Kaunasaar (?_) shouting the coordinates in the background.

None of the EPIR Buoys were switched on (which they ought to have been as they had only just been checked by the regulators who almost certainly would not have returned them in the 'off switch' position, or at least the maintenance guys would have made sure they were on, as a matter of routine) and were found washed up by some Norwegian fishermen many miles away switched off.


Whoever was responsible for the accident, made sure there was minimum chance of rescue and that the ship would stop there.

What you hear on youtube is not Channel 16 - the international distress call channel. There were 97 vessels in the vicinity at the time (or at least, this was the number of vessels who came to help in the ensuing hours) yet once Ainsalu got through to Europa on his hand held device only a couple of vessels picked it up. After the Captain of the Europa says, 'Estonia, can you reply...?' nothing more is tragically heard.

Helsinki Radio got the call and mistakenly sent it out as a pan-pan instead of mayday (pan-pan normally used for things such as 'man overboard').

 

[Jack by the hedge]

... It should not mean not being accountable for the terrible mistake of using a public passenger ferry to transport smuggled defense and space secrets. Time for Sweden to put up its hand, as it were.

You want Sweden to admit they foresaw the risk, or at least later realised the fact, that the deliberate sinking of the Estonia was a Russian retaliation for theft of ex-Soviet military equipment.

Well, it's a fine plot for a thriller, but you're quite a long way short of any worthwhile evidence that the sinking was not an accident.

 

[Andy_Ross]

No, Sweden did not get the May Day call. To refresh your memory, Channel 16 was down and the guys on the Estonia bridge had to use a hand held device to make a local 2182 call instead to nearby vessels (including Silja Europa*, who coincidentally, is currently in Glasgow hosting the COP26 summit). The captains of these nearby vessels had to ring the Finnish Coastguard landline using their NMT devices as the radio signals were down.

Do get your facts right before spouting off.

*Now with Tallink, not Silja.

Several ships responded to the mayday and relayed it
If the channel was 'down' how did that happen?
Maybe you need to learn about radio.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

There was a lot of time wasted as Third Officer Ainsalu was unable to tell Europa its location and had to call back, this time Fourth Officer Tammes [where was the Captain?] some minutes later, with Kaunasaar (?_) shouting the coordinates in the background.

Confusion on the bridge caused by some super secret Russian bewilderment ray, no doubt.

None of the EPIR Buoys were switched on (which they ought to have been as they had only just been checked by the regulators who almost certainly would not have returned them in the 'off switch' position, or at least the maintenance guys would have made sure they were on, as a matter of routine) and were found washed up by some Norwegian fishermen many miles away switched off.

That'll be the secret Russian switching-off ray.

Whoever was responsible for the accident, made sure there was minimum chance of rescue and that the ship would stop there.

I assume that has the Russian's fingerprints all over it, right?

What you hear on youtube is not Channel 16 - the international distress call channel. There were 97 vessels in the vicinity at the time (or at least, this was the number of vessels who came to help in the ensuing hours) yet once Ainsalu got through to Europa on his hand held device only a couple of vessels picked it up. After the Captain of the Europa says, 'Estonia, can you reply...?' nothing more is tragically heard.

Helsinki Radio got the call and mistakenly sent it out as a pan-pan instead of mayday (pan-pan normally used for things such as 'man overboard').

So the Russians infiltrated Helsinki Radio too. They think of everything.

Everything except using half a dozen guys to intercept the truck and destroy it before it got on the ferry. Not elaborate enough, I guess. Secret plots need to be amazingly complicated and elaborate. And probably suicidal for the saboteurs too, obviously.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The Finnish Rear Admiral and Head of Finnish Coast Guard, Heimo Iivonen testified to the JAIC that he believed there was a continuous signal blocking by a transmitter coming off the Russian military island, Hoagland.

There was a lot of time wasted as Third Officer Ainsalu was unable to tell Europa its location and had to call back, this time Fourth Officer Tammes [where was the Captain?] some minutes later, with Kaunasaar (?_) shouting the coordinates in the background.

None of the EPIR Buoys were switched on (which they ought to have been as they had only just been checked by the regulators who almost certainly would not have returned them in the 'off switch' position, or at least the maintenance guys would have made sure they were on, as a matter of routine) and were found washed up by some Norwegian fishermen many miles away switched off.


Whoever was responsible for the accident, made sure there was minimum chance of rescue and that the ship would stop there.

What you hear on youtube is not Channel 16 - the international distress call channel. There were 97 vessels in the vicinity at the time (or at least, this was the number of vessels who came to help in the ensuing hours) yet once Ainsalu got through to Europa on his hand held device only a couple of vessels picked it up. After the Captain of the Europa says, 'Estonia, can you reply...?' nothing more is tragically heard.

Helsinki Radio got the call and mistakenly sent it out as a pan-pan instead of mayday (pan-pan normally used for things such as 'man overboard').

Once again, the buoys are always off until activated. If they were always on the batteries would go flat and they would be continually transmitting.

Mayday messages were picked up. What channel do you think they would be transmitted on?

You don't know what a Pan message is.

 

[LondonJohn]

Not at all. I am referring to your own post in which you were bragging about how an entry was deliberately falsified and you seemed to believe this turned it into the truth, 'as it [the falsification] is on Wikipedia'.


The hypocrisy is astonishing. Wikipedia is wrong when it suits you.

Ermmm I suggest that you re-read my post in situ, with specific reference to the post of yours to which I was responding. Because what you've written above has nothing whatsoever to do with what I was actually talking about in my post.

So, go back and check that, then (if you like) have a proper go at responding.



ETA: To make things easier for you, my post was, specifically and solely, in direct response to your claim that:

Only the dimwitted would think falsifying a Wikipedia entry makes something 'true', .....that the JAIC report stands up to scrutiny.

ETA2: Re your words above though....

1) I don't know how you arrived at your (pejorative) claim that I was "bragging" about anything (because I wasn't);

2) I don't know how you arrived at your (pejorative) claim that I "seemed to believe" that if an entry on Wikipedia was falsified, this somehow "turned it into the truth" (because I was saying the exact opposite of this, so I'd be interested to learn quite how you reached your conclusion here....); and

3) don't use quotation marks (the final five words of your post above, excluding the two words in parentheses) unless you're actually quoting something - in this instance, you were not quoting any words that I'd written. I'd have thought this was an obvious rule (not to mention an intellectually-honest one).

 

[Here_to_learn]

The Finnish Rear Admiral and Head of Finnish Coast Guard, Heimo Iivonen testified to the JAIC that he believed there was a continuous signal blocking by a transmitter coming off the Russian military island, Hoagland.

You are parroting this without any understanding. Yes, the signal blocking may affect Coastguard operations in Helsinki, but not traffic from Estonia towards Sweden, or towards the other ships that were nearby. Unless you subscribe to some kind of Flat Earth Theory, line of sight is the limiting factor.

There was a lot of time wasted as Third Officer Ainsalu was unable to tell Europa its location and had to call back, this time Fourth Officer Tammes [where was the Captain?] some minutes later, with Kaunasaar (?_) shouting the coordinates in the background.

They state that they have a blackout on the bridge, you can here that as part of the recorded transmissions. That means that the instrument that would have shown the position doesn't. Hence he is unable to say the Lat/Long.

What you hear on youtube is not Channel 16 - the international distress call channel.

That is exactly what CH16 is used for. And you can hear in Silja Europas response that they specifically point out that they are responding on CH16.

During an emergency (a Mayday situation), CH16 is dedicated to distress traffic.

 

[LondonJohn]

No, Sweden did not get the May Day call. To refresh your memory, Channel 16 was down and the guys on the Estonia bridge had to use a hand held device to make a local 2182 call instead to nearby vessels (including Silja Europa*, who coincidentally, is currently in Glasgow hosting the COP26 summit). The captains of these nearby vessels had to ring the Finnish Coastguard landline using their NMT devices as the radio signals were down.

Do get your facts right before spouting off.

*Now with Tallink, not Silja.

Yes. I know all that (though you're fundamentally wrong in your understanding of what was communicated over what network on that night, in any case). You seem to have little or no idea about the eavesdropping capabilities of intelligence service listening stations. They're very powerful capabilities, for your information. The Swedes would have had little trouble eavesdropping on the relevant communications that night.

Oh and FYI:

1) "Their NMT devices" should simply read "their mobile phones/cellphones". NMT is nothing more or less than the prevailing analogue mobile phone standard of the time.

2) It's "Mayday", not "May Day". The former is a distress call codeword. The latter is a festival typically celebrated on May 1st.


(And in passing... it's very impressive that the ship Silja Europa (or whatever it's named now) is "hosting the COP26 Summit". I'm sure the organisers of the summit would be somewhat surprised to learn that, though.)

 

[Andy_Ross]

After power was lost only battery powered devices would have been available aboard the Estonia. That means hand held devices.

 

[LondonJohn]

The Finnish Rear Admiral and Head of Finnish Coast Guard, Heimo Iivonen testified to the JAIC that he believed there was a continuous signal blocking by a transmitter coming off the Russian military island, Hoagland.


There was a lot of time wasted as Third Officer Ainsalu was unable to tell Europa its location and had to call back, this time Fourth Officer Tammes [where was the Captain?] some minutes later, with Kaunasaar (?_) shouting the coordinates in the background.

You really have to stop using two-steps-removed "sources". What you're doing is quoting a website's interpretation of a newspaper report, and that newspaper report would (presumably) have used one or more primary sources. So you're way too far away from any ability to check on the veracity of the primary source(s) itself/themselves.

(On top of that, we all know which website you're using as your go-to tertiary source. And it's not acceptable from an NPOV perspective.)

None of the EPIR Buoys were switched on (which they ought to have been as they had only just been checked by the regulators who almost certainly would not have returned them in the 'off switch' position, or at least the maintenance guys would have made sure they were on, as a matter of routine) and were found washed up by some Norwegian fishermen many miles away switched off.

*sigh* This has now been explained to you several times in these threads. Stop relying on incorrect and biassed websites for your "facts". The older-style EPIRBs on the Estonia did not have an automatic immersion-triggered switch-on capability. Rather, they had a manual switch-on facility.

No EPIRBs - regardless of whether they're old-style or new-style - remain switched on and transmitting constantly 24/7/365. If they did, their internal batteries would go flat within a matter of days. Instead, they must only start transmitting when they're needed - ie when the ship sinks.

The new-style ones do this automatically (by way of their immersion sensors). The old-style ones - as fitted to the Estonia - have to be switched on manually by a crew member once they know the ship is going to sink.

And if/when the EPIRBs were checked, the check would have constituted three parts: 1) that the bouy itself was in good repair; 2) that the battery was in good order and sufficiently charged; 3) that, once the transmitter was tested by manually turning it on, it did indeed transmit at the required strength and frequency. There is, in fact, no chance that anyone testing the EPIRBs would have left them switched on. In fact, it would have been a gross mistake to have left them switched on.

At the risk of repeating myself: you don't know what you're talking about.

Whoever was responsible for the accident, made sure there was minimum chance of rescue and that the ship would stop there.

My word. You need to have a very careful think about your sources and your analytical abilities. Because this is atrocious - and possibly venal - nonsense.

 

[Vixen]

Several ships responded to the mayday and relayed it
If the channel was 'down' how did that happen?
Maybe you need to learn about radio.

The point is, it was unnecessarily delayed. A weak signal was picked up half an hour beforehand. As Channel 16 is the international distress channel, having to send a Mayday by Channel 2182 instead is hardly satisfactory. The nearby ships themselves had to use hand held devices to ring up the Coast Guard's landline.

Maybe you need to learn more about this case.

 

[Vixen]

Once again, the buoys are always off until activated. If they were always on the batteries would go flat and they would be continually transmitting.

Mayday messages were picked up. What channel do you think they would be transmitted on?

You don't know what a Pan message is.

Can you confirm you are stating that ships sail without activating their APIRB's?

 

[Vixen]

You really have to stop using two-steps-removed "sources". What you're doing is quoting a website's interpretation of a newspaper report, and that newspaper report would (presumably) have used one or more primary sources. So you're way too far away from any ability to check on the veracity of the primary source(s) itself/themselves.

(On top of that, we all know which website you're using as your go-to tertiary source. And it's not acceptable from an NPOV perspective.)






*sigh* This has now been explained to you several times in these threads. Stop relying on incorrect and biassed websites for your "facts". The older-style EPIRBs on the Estonia did not have an automatic immersion-triggered switch-on capability. Rather, they had a manual switch-on facility.

No EPIRBs - regardless of whether they're old-style or new-style - remain switched on and transmitting constantly 24/7/365. If they did, their internal batteries would go flat within a matter of days. Instead, they must only start transmitting when they're needed - ie when the ship sinks.

The new-style ones do this automatically (by way of their immersion sensors). The old-style ones - as fitted to the Estonia - have to be switched on manually by a crew member once they know the ship is going to sink.

And if/when the EPIRBs were checked, the check would have constituted three parts: 1) that the bouy itself was in good repair; 2) that the battery was in good order and sufficiently charged; 3) that, once the transmitter was tested by manually turning it on, it did indeed transmit at the required strength and frequency. There is, in fact, no chance that anyone testing the EPIRBs would have left them switched on. In fact, it would have been a gross mistake to have left them switched on.

At the risk of repeating myself: you don't know what you're talking about.






My word. You need to have a very careful think about your sources and your analytical abilities. Because this is atrocious - and possibly venal - nonsense.

Since your entire response is predicated on a false premise, that my information comes from some crackpot called Bjorkman, or even from an internet site - wrong, again! - your entire reasoning fails. Stop pretending to 'know' that Estonia's APIRB's were all in good working order and correct usage. That is a massive whopper of a lie.

 

[LondonJohn]

Can you confirm you are stating that ships sail without activating their APIRB's?

Yes. That is absolutely the case (assuming you mean EPIRBs, not APIRB's)

Once again: the Estonia's EPIRBs did not automatically switch on by way of an immersion sensor. They needed to be manually switched on by a crew member, once they knew the ship was going down. They are not switched on as a matter of course: if they were, their batteries would go flat very quickly, rendering them useless.

Seriously - please try to do some research and learning about these sorts of things. It's tiresome having to correct you so frequently.

 

[Vixen]

No it isn't any kind of fallacy and anyway that was mockery. Deserved mockery. It made the valid point, which you ignore, that your imagined plot is ridiculous. Nobody would plan such a crazy scheme.

Seriously, if you were the Russians, what would you have done?

No, the Russian intelligence agencies would never think of anything as crazy as putting enough Novichok nerve agent to kill 5,000 people in a perfume spray bottle or

The European Court of Human Rights has found the Kremlin responsible for the 2006 assassination by radiation poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence official who defected to the West.

Meanwhile, British police said Tuesday that they have identified a third suspect in a Russian-linked nerve agent attack on a former Russian double agent in southern England.

Litvinenko died in London weeks after drinking tea that was later found to have been laced with the deadly radioactive compound polonium-210.

or

A statement from Berlin's Charite Hospital, which is treating Alexei Navalny, said he remains in a serious condition in intensive care and his breathing is being supported.

It added that while symptoms are receding, he is expected to suffer a long period of illness.

Mr Navalny appears to have been exposed to the same chemicals as the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in 2018.

No, you'd have to be crazy to write a script like that.