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

[Vixen]

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.

I know that. What is this gadget, then?

 

[Vixen]

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.

So are you saying that these people WERE employed by the police but as civilian staff? Or were they working for a trade union?

 

[Vixen]

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.

I honestly want to clarify whether these men and women were employed by the police (whether as civilian tea boy or CEO) or by an independent trade union which caters for people in police officer jobs.

 

[zooterkin]

I honestly want to clarify whether these men and women were employed by the police (whether as civilian tea boy or CEO) or by an independent trade union which caters for people in police officer jobs.

Why? Either way, they are not serving police officers.

 

[LondonJohn]

Here's the problem. The JAIC doesn't say the doors were open.

It says:



Which is accurate. Once the water had access to the interior it was over.

Why have you ignored the fact the MS Estonia was never designed for open-ocean sailing, only coastal sailing.

Why have you ignored this from the report?



And then there is this key fact from the JAIC:



From the first page, your entire premise is based on assumptions, not facts. You implied that the Estonia regularly sailed in rough seas equal to the night of the sinking, when the truth is the ship had only sailed in similar conditions only twice.

The water didn't flood the decks through open doors, it came in through ventilation ducts as the upper decks flooded.

You are metaphorically in over your head on this one.

The process of considering/addressing Vixen's many & various arguments on this incident is a heady mixture of astonishing, entertaining, frustrating and futile.

As you - and the JAIC - correctly say: this disaster had but one proximate cause. And that cause was the failure of the improperly-designed, improperly-constructed and improperly-maintained/operated bow visor locks.

(Coupled with the fact that if the bow visor failed and detached, the linkage with the bow ramp meant that the bow ramp would be wrenched out of position as well - which it of course actually was; and the attendant fact that there was zero redundancy designed into the bow opening system.)

Everything else is just white noise. Most of that white noise has been generated by or on behalf of entities with skin in the game (notably, of course, the shipyard which designed and built the Estonia) or by crackpot conspiracy theorists. All of it can safely be assessed and then dismissed on its face.

 

[Vixen]

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.

You are quite wrong. Quality newspapers like Helsingin Sanomat have intelligence as their sources. They are not governed by Rupert Murdoch-type ideals to put weight behind a particular political view.

I am not an avid reader of DM at all. I have delivered a quality broadsheet daily.

 

[JayUtah]

NOTA BENE: A treaty does not deal with individual cases.

But you knew that.

Of course I knew that. Which is why it's astounding that you cited a treaty in apparent substantiation of a claim made about a specific case. Now that we've spent pages discussing an irrelevant, mislabeled treaty, is it your claim that Sweden "disappeared" anyone in connection with MS Estonia, and if so do you have any evidence for that claim that hasn't been previously discussed?

 

[Vixen]

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?

From your own referenced article:

- Many of the employees were married or cohabiting with police. And very many in the authority lost colleagues or know families who lost a relative, says Mikael Sjöstedt.

Today he is a member of the Police Association's board and chairman of the members of the Security Police. He was then 26 years old, a new police officer and preparing for the morning trip in a radio car. The media reported on the disaster and his workplace - Östermalm Police - was in focus.

Question: so why do they keep being referred to as police if they are not police?

 

[Vixen]

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.

Sorry, are you claiming they went to Tallinn to have a shop floor union meeting?

 

[Reformed Offlian]

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.

1) Assumes facts not in evidence. You haven't established that there was any bomb. Without that, there is no relevant similarity between the two situations.

2) "Plenty of people" didn't bring it up in this thread. You did. And you didn't attribute the idea that it was "grounds for suspicion" to anybody else, so it's yours. Stop trying to duck responsibility for your own claims.

3) What exactly is suspicious about a police force doing bomb threat drills? It's the sort of contingency they might be called upon to deal with. If a workplace has fire drills, and there is subsequently a fire, does that suggest they were rehearsing an arson all along? And what does it have to do with the people who were actually on board that night?

 

[Vixen]

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.

analysgruppen, SOU 1998:132 Örn commission report p 28 -30

https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokumen...ga-utredningar/sou-1998-132-d1_GMB3132d1/html

Bildt based his theory on the testimony of those two Estonian athletes who said they climbed down the car ramp.

 

[Vixen]

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

Plus of course their destination was Stockholm.

Nobody said it was sinister. However, to a serious criminal gang or a terrorist-type, 70 police together - whether admin or on the beat - as a group they could be seen to be an easy target. Hatred of the police can be extremely strong.

Not saying that is the case.

 

[GlennB]

I know that. What is this gadget, then?

It's an aneroid barometer with extra parts.

But if you now know what aneroid means, and how to spell it, then your physics teacher clearly didn't way back then. Anaeroid would mean lacking air (as in anaerobic respiration) the precise opposite of the case with an aneroid barometer.

However, your textbooks would have put you straight on this

Did you really study physics for 5 years? None of us has seen a scrap of evidence to support your claim, the exact opposite in fact.

 

[Steve]

Please do not put words in my mouth, or twist what I said.

Something that you show no hesitation to doing with the words of others!? If you are going to dish it out you damn well better be able to take it.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

From your own referenced article:




Question: so why do they keep being referred to as police if they are not police?

It doesn't.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I know that. What is this gadget, then?

It seems to be a patent with a spelling mistake in the title. They manage to spell it correctly plenty of times in the body of the text though.

 

[carlitos]

Misspelled patent - that’s just perfect “evidence” for something.

Were the Amanda Knox threads this level of epic fail? It’s just pathetic.

 

[Vixen]

Here's the problem. The JAIC doesn't say the doors were open.

It says:



Which is accurate. Once the water had access to the interior it was over.

Why have you ignored the fact the MS Estonia was never designed for open-ocean sailing, only coastal sailing.

Why have you ignored this from the report?



And then there is this key fact from the JAIC:



From the first page, your entire premise is based on assumptions, not facts. You implied that the Estonia regularly sailed in rough seas equal to the night of the sinking, when the truth is the ship had only sailed in similar conditions only twice.

The water didn't flood the decks through open doors, it came in through ventilation ducts as the upper decks flooded.

You are metaphorically in over your head on this one.

Where did you get nonsense from? The ventilation ducts ran along the middle of the vessel from forward to aft. See here Car Decks 3 and 4, and you will see that for the ventilation ducts to get flooded, the car deck doors need first to be breached.

Ventilation ducts in orange. Source: Kehren dissertation

 

[Vixen]

You cited to the Rome Statue, claiming that the fact they were criminalizing enforced disappearances as evidence that someone, namely Sweden, had been doing that in the past. That was your claim, despite it making no logical sense.

You wrote

​

in the context of a hypothesis that "missing" officers from the MS Estonia had been spirited away.

If you've now come to your senses and agree that the Rome Statute provides no evidence that any particular party had engaged in enforced disappearances, why did you cite it? It seems you were scrambling for evidence that Sweden had "disappeared" passengers from MS Estonia. Does your citation of the Rome Statue have anything to do with that claim?

What? I simply said that disappearing suspects was a recognised happening, hence the Rome Treaty.

"The fact there is a Treaty 1988 (Criminal Law) that forbids the disappearance of suspects, must mean that it had been happening."

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Nobody said it was sinister. <pointless tangent snipped>

Yet you put 'colleagues' in scare quotes, like you don't really think colleagues was an appropriate term. Why?