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

[Jack by the hedge]

I don't want to go off topic, but I certainly do have one piece where the TIMES reporter reports back on what the ordinary German soldiers are saying about the British, as per eavesdropping.

Have you considered the possibility that a newspaper's bit of colour about what enemy soldiers gossip about might be entirely fabricated? Do you consider that possibility less likely than that the British managed to place spies among general Paulus' besieged front line troops, and devise a secret means for them to send messages back to London, and yet they usied this remarkable resource merely to feed tittle tattle to The Times?

Looking up the Estonia tragedy, it becomes readily apparent that the 'bow visor fell off and it was a design fault' is something that was promulgated virtually on the same day as the accident by Bildt or his officially sanctioned officials. Stenmark who mentioned Piht being interviewed and challenged the bow visor claim was summarily sacked pronto.

"By Bildt or his officially sanctioned officials" appears to mean "not by Bildt".

Do you have a non-cranks source for Stenmark's dismissal and the reason for it? Bearing in mind that Bildt himself was about to leave office anyway, I await a reliable source. The quote I saw about Stenmark indicated he suggested the bow visor theory, rather than challenged it.

Whilst it is unclear all nine survivors did actually survive, there seems to be a huge amount of evidence Piht certainly did.

If any of it is better than third hand rumour by all means present it.

The government, the newspapers and the JAIC never explained how these nine 'survivors' supposedly all in the same life boat (and being in the luxury cabins on the upper decks, near the life saving equipment, it does seem reasonably likely) were listed as survivors and then mysteriously not. Those in a life boat had a much greater chance of survival.

Show us the list.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

PS

The government, the newspapers and the JAIC never explained how these nine 'survivors' supposedly all in the same life boat (and being in the luxury cabins on the upper decks, near the life saving equipment, it does seem reasonably likely) were listed as survivors and then mysteriously not.

"Supposed" by whom?

 

[Mojo]

I don't want to go off topic, but I certainly do have one piece where the TIMES reporter reports back on what the ordinary German soldiers are saying about the British, as per eavesdropping.

Do you have the date for that, or can you remember what the headline said? Or perhaps the name of the reporter?

Actually, Don’t worry about the reporter, the contemporary Times stories about the battle are either “from our own/special/military/diplomatic correspondent”, or have no byline.

A date and/or headline would be handy though.

 

[abaddon]

I thought a British escort submarine crashed into the Estonia and sank it

Nope, it was the Spetsnaz suicide squad.

Or the mini sub with the limpet mines.

Or torpedoes.

Whoever it was, no less than 5 governments colluded to cover it up.

Oh and those 70 police officers were intentionally killed to conceal the nuclear waste used to disolve the bow while the crew were hurling the trucks containing the super massive secrets overboard.

Meanwhile, Swedish special forces, awaiting their chance, spirited away the ship's captain and a bunch of crew at the point the ship sank. Just because they could and it was a larf.

Afterward, rescue ships were asked to clear their fo'csl for helicopters. Even though that is impossible and the all had helipads anyway. They all sailed at best speed to the location of the sinking which they obtained over the radio channel that was totally being blocked by the russians.





But no way is it a conspiracy theory, not at all

 

[Andy_Ross]

And there's a further point to mention here:

Media war reporters are usually embedded with the combat troops. They're actually seeing and hearing things as they unfold on the battlefield. And notwithstanding the obvious limitations on their reporting of war (not least that they're only getting one heavily-filtered point of view), the very fact that they're there as "****'s going down" at least lends a degree of reliability and credibility to their reportage.

On the other hand, no journalist (so far as I'm aware) was present on the Estonia when it sank. Let alone being on the bridge as the ship foundered and sank, with senior crew explaining what was happening and why the ship was sinking. No: in fact, every Nordic journalist working on this story - a story which demanded huge amounts of copy, and in which speculation and sensationalism would be deemed positive facets of reporting - was receiving nothing but a confused, and often contradictory, jumble of information snippets. Even with the best will in the world, there truly was no way that any media outlet, in those days and weeks following the disaster, was basing its copy on anything other than unreliable sources - from which it was drawing necessarily-speculative opinions and conclusions.

Vixen's attempted comparison with war reporting is yet another epic fail.

Not many reporters embedded with Paulus and the 6th Army though.

As an aside, for the best account of the battle the 'Battlestorm Stalingrad' video seris by 'TIK' on Youtube is good. It starts with the build up and fighting from mid July 42 through to February 43. It has more detail than any other series I have seen on any battle. It has 30 parts so far and is just got to October. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNSNgGzaledi9jQeOzCUtBP2pxYdCYiXX
Stalingrad has produced more mythology than any other battle, re-enforced recently by 'Enemy At The Gates' this debunks a lot of them.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Oh yes, concerning these reporters. Totally true.
What you have to remember is that they can only report what they see, when they see.

In the case of a battle like Stalingrad, the how the who and the why, the amount of information is so much and concerns so many square miles (from the break out at Kharkov, all the way to the mountains of the Caucasus) and so many people, that no single reporter can see and report it all. And it is all important for the why's and hows of the actual battle of Stalingrad.

But then, a true scientist like Vixen would know this.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNSNgGzaledi9jQeOzCUtBP2pxYdCYiXX

 

[Andy_Ross]

Oh God, I missed this as well! Like you, I just skimmed over the (excruciating - but, as it turned out here, astonishing) details of Vixen's latest farrago, and thought she was just talking about war reportage in general.

I wonder if all these "British secret agents" shared the fate of their erstwhile German "colleagues" - ie they either froze to death, or they got carted off for a more protracted death in a Russian gulag...?

Besides, any fule kno that if you want to learn about this particular battle, all you need to do is read Antony Beevor's book on the subject*.


* I'm only semi-serious about that: many contemporary historians view Beevor's approach with a degree of mild disdain - viewing it as somewhat over-dramatised and editorialised (he makes his living predominantly from selling his books into the mass market, after all - and I thought his book was an excellent read). An acquaintance of mine is actually currently working with a Russian academic on assessing all the Russian material available on Stalingrad (plus the St Petersburg and Moscow campaigns, and the drive towards the Baku oilfields), after which she plans to write a history of the Russian Campaign alongside an eminent German historian, to try to view things appropriately from both sides of the line.

No, do not read Beevor, read Glantz's 'Stalingrad Trilogy' and 'When Titan's Clashed

If you see a copy of Rühle “With Paulus at Stalingrad.” just burn it.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The Estonian government officially believes that those nine Estonians listed as survivors have been disappeared by Sweden.

Do you have a reference for this?

 

[Steve]

PS



"Supposed" by whom?

Vixen, of course.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Yes, absolutely. Stalingrad was different (though far from unique) in that it evolved into an entirely chaotic situation, where there was no such thing as a battle line per se, where command & communication lines were stretched and broken all over the place, and where not even the senior military hierarchy on either side (especially the German side, of course) had a true picture of what was going on, where and when.
.

True of the streets of the city itself but not for the Front as a whole.

 

[Andy_Ross]

No, they advise him. The POTUS generally does what he is 'advised' by his generals. Fact is, Clinton was building up his image as Middle East Peacemaker.

No way would he have wanted to spoilt his image of chumminess with Yasser Arafat (See Camp David) 2000) by being revealed as helping Israel through the back door.

So 'classify' anything that might tarnish that image.

USA helps Israel openly through he 'front door'

What are you on about?

 

[zooterkin]

Excellent point.

Maybe so, but it doesn't help your argument one jot.

The people on the Estonia were apparently working for the police, but were not serving police officers, rather they were admin staff. It was therefore not 'grounds for suspicion of sabotage' as you seem to believe.

In Sweden and Finland the intelligence services come under the police. I should have said, Scotland Yard as a better analogy.

It is a fact there were 70 Stockholm Police on board, only about four of five survived.

If that is not grounds for suspicion of sabotage, I don't know what is.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Do you have the date for that, or can you remember what the headline said? Or perhaps the name of the reporter?

Or that the reporter was on the Don with Paulus.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Have you considered the possibility that a newspaper's bit of colour about what enemy soldiers gossip about might be entirely fabricated? Do you consider that possibility less likely than that the British managed to place spies among general Paulus' besieged front line troops, and devise a secret means for them to send messages back to London, and yet they usied this remarkable resource merely to feed tittle tattle to The Times?

To be fair the 6th Army was only surrounded towards the end. Plenty of opportunity for a Times reporter to ask the German troops, busy fighting the Russians in the sweatbox of the summer Steppe or the numbing cold of winter what they thought of the British.

 

[LondonJohn]

Have you considered the possibility that a newspaper's bit of colour about what enemy soldiers gossip about might be entirely fabricated? Do you consider that possibility less likely than that the British managed to place spies among general Paulus' besieged front line troops, and devise a secret means for them to send messages back to London, and yet they usied this remarkable resource merely to feed tittle tattle to The Times?

Indeed. Not to mention sending less-than-breezy messages along the lines of "Send food and warm clothing!" or "Help, I'm being taken to Siberia!"

"By Bildt or his officially sanctioned officials" appears to mean "not by Bildt".

Haha I noticed that "...or..." sleight-of-hand too!

Do you have a non-cranks source for Stenmark's dismissal and the reason for it? Bearing in mind that Bildt himself was about to leave office anyway, I await a reliable source. The quote I saw about Stenmark indicated he suggested the bow visor theory, rather than challenged it.

I fear I already know the answer to this.

If any of it is better than third hand rumour by all means present it.

Ditto

Show us the list.

 

[LondonJohn]

To be fair the 6th Army was only surrounded towards the end. Plenty of opportunity for a Times reporter to ask the German troops, busy fighting the Russians in the sweatbox of the summer Steppe or the numbing cold of winter what they thought of the British.

Perhaps round the campfire at the end of the day, as they laughed and joked while bullets from the Russian snipers in the Elevator whistled around then, all the while making light of the fact that they were running out of food and other supplies.....


ETA: And of course all this is not to even mention that virtually no German army soldiers in the Russian campaign would, in 1942/43, have had any experience of fighting British troops (other than during the short race to Dunkirk in 1940, which doesn't even really count). Sure, they might share stories about their experiences with Polish adversaries, or French ones, or Dutch ones...... but British???)

 

[Steve]

USA helps Israel openly through he 'front door'

What are you on about?

Our fearless correspondent sees conspiracies everywhere, so there has to be a conspiracy there somewhere.

 

[whoanellie]

OFFS

Technically, at least in the UK, and workplace jargon notwithstanding, the police are civilians too.

Excellent point.

Let's look at the definition of civilian and try to put it in the proper context, shall we?

civilian noun
/səˈvɪlyən/

a person who is not a member of the armed forces or the police

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionar...ivilian#:~:text=noun-,noun,Topic Collocations

ci·​vil·​ian | \ sə-ˈvil-yən also -ˈvi-yən \
Definition of civilian (Entry 1 of 2)
1: a specialist in Roman or modern civil law
2a: one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian

A civilian is someone who is not something. In the context of the source that VIXEN HAS PROVIDED, the meaning of the phrase 'There were 63 civilian employees on board within the Police' is clear. They were employees of the police department but not actually police officers. It doesn't mean that they were police who happened to not be in the military.

This is not that hard.

 

[Stamuel]

No, they advise him. The POTUS generally does what he is 'advised' by his generals. Fact is, Clinton was building up his image as Middle East Peacemaker.

No way would he have wanted to spoilt his image of chumminess with Yasser Arafat (See Camp David) 2000) by being revealed as helping Israel through the back door.

So 'classify' anything that might tarnish that image.

It is now over 27 years since the Estonia sank, and the only part of this story for which there is relatively direct evidence is smuggling from Estonia to Sweden. To support your broader claims, here is what you still need to prove:

1. The smuggled goods were valuable equipment that would have been useful to Israel.
2. After getting to Sweden, the smuggled goods eventually were sent or were intended to be sent to Israel.
3. Bill Clinton was involved.

There has been no evidence presented that any of these are true. None at all. The whole broader context of the smuggling with Clinton and Israel is entirely made up.

And even proving the above three claims would not be enough to support the coverup theory, because Clinton smuggling stolen goods to Israel is not a motive for Clinton to coverup mass murder without also proving:

• The revelation that the Estonia was attacked/sabotaged would also reveal the smuggling.
• The revelation of the smuggling on the Estonia would also reveal that the final destination was Israel.
• The revelation of the rest would reveal that Bill Clinton was involved and was therefore secretly helping Israel.

Without all of these, allowing the public to learn that the Estonia was attacked or sabotaged wouldn't be a problem for Clinton at all. In my personal estimation of the items in this second list, each item individually and all items collectively are so stupid as not to deserve consideration.

And even all of this requires the smuggling to have been so intolerable to Russia that Russia committed mass murder of hundreds of civilians to stop it, which is insane beyond parody.

 

[LondonJohn]

OFFS





Let's look at the definition of civilian and try to put it in the proper context, shall we?


https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionar...ivilian#:~:text=noun-,noun,Topic Collocations


https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian

A civilian is someone who is not something. In the context of the source that VIXEN HAS PROVIDED, the meaning of the phrase 'There were 63 civilian employees on board within the Police' is clear. They were employees of the police department but not actually police officers. It doesn't mean that they were police who happened to not be in the military.

This is not that hard.

Bah.... civilian, schmivilian