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

[JesseCuster]

The international treaty spells out a determination that nations should follow a humanitarian protocol in the treatment of suspected persons.

And how is that evidence that Sweden was disappearing at the behest of the CIA?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Modesty.

In what sense was your deletion of that post, or indeed any of your previous posts you've deleted, anything to do with modesty? Please explain how deleting a post indicates modesty unless said post was filled with say, bragging about one's own abilities or importance.

That is to say, if the post was you talking about how you had gone to a party filled with celebs, but then later decided that you didn't want to brag and deleted it, that would be modesty. How is deleting a picture of a page of your year 11 physics workbook modest?

 

[GlennB]

We used to spell it anaeroid.

That, assuming your 'anearoid' to be a simple typo, would still be wrong. The word is aneroid, which is derived from the Greek a (without, lacking) and neros (water). An aneroid barometer uses no liquid.

 

[JesseCuster]

I see, so people who belong to a police union cannot possibly be police themselves.

Got it.

There you go again. I said nothing of the sort. This is getting tedious.

The Stockholm police employees on board the Estonia were members of ST, a civil service union, that also represents civil servants from other departments of the Swedish government, it wasn't a police union.

You've been given ample evidence that the people in question were civilians working for Stockholm police in administrative jobs. You've provided no evidence that they were actual police officers, nevermind elite police from some internal security branch.

You're just arguing for the sake of arguing now. Just admit you were wrong and move on.

 

[Vixen]

Exactly. As I described in this post:



Here is the english description of the ST Union:

I knew someone who worked for the Home Office (government department) and their building and even canteen, was exactly the same one as the police training college in Hendon. Same access to computerised criminal records. They were a Civil Servant and even did stuff for GCHQ.

Someone being in the executive arm doesn't mean there is no connection.

If these guys were just working for a trade union, I am not sure why they'd need to meet 'foreign affairs' people in another country of a different nationality and taking three working days out.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

So where did Lehtola get his stuff from, as reported in the Helsingin Sanomat.
...

... Kari Lehtola, chairman of the Major Accident Investigation Planning Board, who is leading the investigation with interim powers, did not want to comment on Sillaste's report...

What "stuff"? This is confusing. You present a news quote as if it was going to be a smoking gun showing Letolah saying the stuff you found suspicious all those dozens of times you told us it was Bildt who said it instead. But the stuff you actually quoted doesn't deliver. Did you read it before you quoted it? What did you imagine it said?

 

[JayUtah]

I knew someone who worked for the Home Office...

Good for you. That doesn't mean you can assume someone is a police officer when he is merely a member of the non-sworn civil servants' union. Maybe you should stop trying to write a bad spy novel in this thread and stick to the documented facts.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Here's a picture of those two car deck doors, which the JAIC believe would likely have been smashed to smithereens ...

This is just a complete fabrication by you. How can you hope to be taken seriously when you just make stuff up?

 

[Vixen]

Exactly. As I described in this post:



Here is the english description of the ST Union:

So were these people all working for the police administrative offices in Stockholm or were they just trade unionists? In the UK there'd be one general union - perhaps two - that civil servants can join but it wouldn't be limited to any one particular department, just as long as you are in the civil service, or with teacher's unions, it doesn't matter where you teach, if you worked for a teacher's union, that union would deal with teachers only, but nationwide.

 

[JayUtah]

How is deleting a picture of a page of your year 11 physics workbook modest?

Maybe she didn't want us correcting her exercises.

 

[zooterkin]

I do find it odd that nine crew members could vanish shortly after being rescued. The Treaty of Rome 1988 and as signed by Sweden itself prohibits the 'disappearance' of people. Yet disappear they did. Or seem to have done.

First of all, that writer gets the date of the Rome Treaty (Criminal Law) wrong. It should read 1988 not 1998.

Passing a Treaty is a legal process. It becomes enshrined in law. So yes, it is comparable to Criminal Law. Laws and treaties rarely get amended, and they require an Act of Parliament to do so.

If there were any Estonian crew made to 'disappear', then that breaches the Rome Treaty of 1988, which prohibits states from doing so. If this was done for 'classified' reasons then I am not sure that would be a get out clause.

ETA: See here: the enforced disappearance of people. (Pdf).

My claim was that enforced disappearance of people is contrary to the Rome Treaty 1988 and Untied Nations Charter of Human Rights 1992.

Stop pretending you do not know what a treaty is.

If you do not understand the concept of 'disappearing' people was dealt with in the Rome Treaty 1988 (Criminal Law as opposed to other types of Treaty) then I cannot help you. Sorry.

I am out.

You can have the last word.

Oh, right. Why not just say so?

We did.

So, when you said, many times, "Rome Treaty 1988", what did you actually mean?

 

[LondonJohn]

So where did Lehtola get his stuff from, as reported in the Helsingin Sanomat. Press conference/release 30.9.1994 (Friday) referring to Thursday, when he had been appointed and flashback to Wednesday - the day of the accident - when Bildt, Aho and Laar had only as of that time interviewed one member of crew in the morning, Henrik Sillaste, in Turku, before flying onto Helsinki to appoint Lehtola et al in the afternoon. JAIC in place by Thursday 29. Press conference Fri 29.9 1994. Helsinging Sanomat re Bow Visor What Dunnit 1.10.1994.

Already on Thursday 29.9.1994, this was being said:

HS 29.9.1994

HS

So you see, initially - see first newsclip - there were several possible cause for the accident so why firmly state it was the bow visor on Day One?

And we know it was Carl Bildt who insisted because Estonian PM Laar said so in an interview. He was quite surprised as he said he suspected sabotage, and you can see the scepticism of the Swedish marine engineers, above, and I would imagine they know far more about naval architecture than a politician and a lawyer who sit behind desks and never get oil on their hands or need to wear a hard hat.

For the twelvetieth time.....................

Stop using newspaper reports from those very early days as some sort of source of authoritative record.

The media at that time were engaging in all sorts of speculation, and there was all manner of anecdotal chatter going around (much of it tenuous or simply incorrect). You seem astonishingly unable to grasp that newspaper speculation in this sort of scenario - which is primarily designed to sell newspapers and advertising, while avoiding legal manholes, and in which media outlets are competing for the gaze of the hungry general public - is inherently unreliable in the cold light of day. And in the cold light of a proper investigation.

You're quite an avid consumer of the Daily Mail, so you surely must be aware of the sensationalist claptrap they put out under the guise of "speculation" when it comes to attention-grabbing stories. For example, something like "Was Diana's death secretly planned by MI6?". And lest you think I'm cherry-picking one (particularly egregious) rag, pretty much all the printed media in the UK engage in this sort of behaviour to one extent or another. When there's a short-term vacuum of explanation/information, especially in the immediate aftermath of a momentous event, the print media will happily fill that vacuum with lurid tales which have very shaky foundations. And that's very clearly exactly what happened in the Nordic print media immediately after the Estonia disaster.

You also seem unable to grasp that whatever the newspapers were claiming/speculating in those early days (and whichever sources they may have been using) was almost certainly very different from the information that the official channels were learning. It's the job of governments (and their agencies and investigative bodies) to try to get to the truth as quickly and as reliably as possible. Which is pretty much in direct contrast to the aim of the printed media in the same timeframe.


So, I'll repeat once more for clarity, Vixen:

Stop using newspaper reports from those very early days as some sort of source of authoritative record.

 

[LondonJohn]

I see, so people who belong to a police union cannot possibly be police themselves.

Got it.

*Buries head in hands and sighs wearily*

You have no idea what you're talking about. These people were not "not police officers" on account of them being representatives of one of the police unions. These people were "not police officers" because..... they were specifically referred to as administrators.

It's long gone time for you to drop your ridiculous nonsense about (at least some of) these people somehow being shadowy senior police or intelligence operatives, Vixen. Not only is there no evidence whatsoever to support your claim - there's plenty of reliable evidence to disprove your claim. Please cease and desist.

 

[Here_to_learn]

I knew someone who worked for the Home Office (government department) and their building and even canteen, was exactly the same one as the police training college in Hendon. Same access to computerised criminal records. They were a Civil Servant and even did stuff for GCHQ.

Someone being in the executive arm doesn't mean there is no connection.

If these guys were just working for a trade union, I am not sure why they'd need to meet 'foreign affairs' people in another country of a different nationality and taking three working days out.

We know exactly what they were doing - having a conference to discuss the upcoming reorganisation of the Swedish police force, specifically the organisation in the Stockholm area.

Of course unions meet across the border. Why wouldn't they?

 

[Here_to_learn]

So were these people all working for the police administrative offices in Stockholm or were they just trade unionists? In the UK there'd be one general union - perhaps two - that civil servants can join but it wouldn't be limited to any one particular department, just as long as you are in the civil service, or with teacher's unions, it doesn't matter where you teach, if you worked for a teacher's union, that union would deal with teachers only, but nationwide.

From what I can understand it was a mixture. Some may have been employed by the union, while many were elected union representatives, from the police civilian employees.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

... there were several possible cause for the accident so why firmly state it was the bow visor on Day One?

And we know it was Carl Bildt who insisted because Estonian PM Laar said so in an interview...

You're going to have to provide a very solid reference for this.

I have long regarded you as an unreliable reporter of facts, but your claim, that Bildt told the press 16 hours after the disaster that the bow visor was the cause, and which you have repeated and referred back to literally dozens of times, now seems quite possibly a complete fabulation.

 

[LondonJohn]

There are plenty of people who think there is a connection, as the RITS (police air and sea search departments) had practised a mock bomb threat on the Estonia in Feb 1994, which happened half way through its journey.

What in holy heck's name has that got to do with anything??!

Law enforcement agencies practise these sorts of things very regularly. It's the only way they can get anything approaching real-world training into how best to deal with those sorts of incidents. But there would have been absolutely nothing clandestine about that sort of training exercise. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the matter at hand. Nothing whatsoever.


(As a related aside: I seem to remember that one of the notable recent US commercial aircraft disasters - I think it may have been TWA800 - featured short-term speculation that the aircraft might have been brought down by a bomb or missile, when explosives residue was discovered on some of the parts brought up from the sea bed. But it turned out that the residue was almost certainly from a sniffer-dog training exercise that had taken place aboard the aircraft a few months prior to the accident. The crash was actually caused by an electric-mechanical-fuel fault and had nothing at all to do with bombs or missiles.)

 

[Jack by the hedge]

It shows they were meeting with 'colleagues' in Tallinn, which was their destination.

So what? Is there something so sinister about 'colleagues' that it needs scare quotes?

Plus of course their destination was Stockholm.

 

[Axxman300]

To Update:

After a cataclysmic demonstration of physics and spatial geometry, the conversation was detoured to pointless observations about the crew being "disappeared" with zero support evidence. Instead we are regaled with incorrect accounts of two Egyptian men who were forcibly deported back to Cairo after 9-11-2001, six years after the MS Estonia sank in high seas. From there we are being begged to believe that the presence of seventy Swedish police and government union members onboard the ship somehow proves sabotage, and as of this post we're all waiting to hear why.

 

[Stamuel]

So where did Lehtola get his stuff from, as reported in the Helsingin Sanomat. Press conference/release 30.9.1994 (Friday) referring to Thursday, when he had been appointed and flashback to Wednesday - the day of the accident - when Bildt, Aho and Laar had only as of that time interviewed one member of crew in the morning, Henrik Sillaste, in Turku, before flying onto Helsinki to appoint Lehtola et al in the afternoon. JAIC in place by Thursday 29. Press conference Fri 29.9 1994. Helsinging Sanomat re Bow Visor What Dunnit 1.10.1994.

Already on Thursday 29.9.1994, this was being said:

HS 29.9.1994

HS

So you see, initially - see first newsclip - there were several possible cause for the accident so why firmly state it was the bow visor on Day One?

And we know it was Carl Bildt who insisted because Estonian PM Laar said so in an interview. He was quite surprised as he said he suspected sabotage, and you can see the scepticism of the Swedish marine engineers, above, and I would imagine they know far more about naval architecture than a politician and a lawyer who sit behind desks and never get oil on their hands or need to wear a hard hat.

Hold on a second, are you really citing those engineers as authorities? Look at this quote from the article you cited: "Superintendent Åke Sjöblom and marine engineer Gunnar Zahlée saw the deficiency as just a small detail - it could not have affected the result of the accident."

This was an article that came out 29 September 1994, THE DAY AFTER THE ESTONIA SANK! The wreck wasn't even found until 30 September 1994! Yet somehow, after just one day and with no observation of the ship, these guys confidently declared that the problem with the bow visor couldn't have been involved. They were claiming it wasn't even a possibility and were trying to shut down any attempt to look at it.

Not to mention, Sillaste was the only witness who had been officially interviewed by that time, and he said water was coming in at the bow. So why are these guys pushing this story so hard on day one, saying, "Oh, the witness is wrong, we know better than the people who were there and saw things with their own eyes. There is no possible way it could have been the bow visor, no way, no how!"

We know, as you yourself taught us, that anyone making an early confident statement about the cause of the sinking is part of a conspiracy, that they must have been informed by people who knew exactly what happened from the start. We need to know what they were trying to cover up about the bow visor and why they were trying to prevent justice for the families of the almost 1,000 people who died on the Estonia.

Those engineers are not sources, they are criminals. Unless there is something wrong with your method of interpreting evidence.