Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part V

[MarkCorrigan]

Oh are we back to disavowing Bjorkman now?

 

[SpitfireIX]

Wait! Are you saying that Bjorkman is also a neo-nazi?

There is no reasonable reading of my post that suggests that interpretation. You either have extremely poor reading comprehension, or you are being deliberately obtuse in an attempt to create a smokescreen.

That said, I stand by my assertion that Björkman's denial that 300,000 Japanese died from the atomic bombings is no less vile than Bollyn's Holocaust denial and rabid antisemitism.

Unfortunately, there are people with a political agenda who will latch onto social issues or disasters and try to hijack them. It doesn't mean they own that disaster or social issue.

Then you shouldn't have any trouble finding other readily available sources that support Björkman's and Bollyn's claims about the Estonia. So where are they?

 

[Vixen]

No, indeed.
What you said concerning Heiwa was


So. How do you know this?

Because I have critical faculties by which I assess information.

 

[Vixen]

Repeating this stuff-of-legend doesn't make it more factual. You have a claim that several people thought they saw Piht on German TV news. I wonder if that is actually true. Maybe. You have a story of the alleged footage being reviewed and not showing him. You have a claim that the clip ends just before a 4th person comes into view and a claim that this was the guy they remember was Piht. That smells fishily like a back-constructed conspiracist claim to me. You have a claim that some or other German authorities seized the original footage which doesn't stack up when you posted more of whatever source you were quoting because they only say that the archivist said the police had also come looking for the material, not that they had taken all copies of it away. If they had, how come there's a copy which apparently fails to show Piht? Smells like BS. What level of conspiracy are we at now where someone finds and edits a German TV news report and then archives the faked one which then someone, somewhere views and discovers it doesn't show Piht?

So now the German embassy (in Finland or Sweden, it's not clear) the German police and a German TV news channel are all in on it.

Then you have an alleged interview on a Finnish radio station which can't be found. So which sinister agency are we to imagine dealt with that? And how come only one radio station got the scoop that this Swedish rescue man (whom you insist blabbed to the world's press before having medals stuffed into his mouth to shut him up) claimed he had rescued Piht?

You do recognise that a superinjunction which prevents any further report of a story being published is not a device which operates worldwide, and does not unpublish all previous reports.

This all sounds very, very much like completely made-up BS created by a paranoiac with a joining-the-dots-to-make-a-monster fixation and which would barely make a weaker episode of the X-Files.

The guy who recognised him on TV in Rostock was Captain Moik. He was sacked for saying so in an interview.

I've instantly recognised people on TV and people have recognised me from a two or three second clip of an audience or sports event crowd.

 

[Vixen]

If we could trust that you were accurately quoting newspapers every time you claim to be quoting newspapers, this would be a shorter thread.

I provided the link. All you had to do was click on it. If you need help in translation you can add to your google chrome settings completely free of charge, their google translate application, and microsoft word will do it for you, too.

 

[Vixen]

You have exactly the same newspaper libraries on your fingertips as I have. If you had bothered to open the links to digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi, you would have noticed that it is completely free access. You have also posted snippets from the Helsingin Sanomat archives, so I assume that you have a subscription. Both libraries have search functions, though the one at kansalliskirjasto is quite bad because it relies on OCR and OCR is not that reliable with Fraktur fonts.

And, you are again remembering things incorrectly. I have several times stated that it is plausible that there might be an article about 1918 murder that uses the name "Härkätie". I don't say that the article definitely doesn't exist. However, I still think that it is more likely that you are remembering things wrong. You can easily prove me wrong by going to digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi and finding the article there. Every single 1918 issue of Turun Sanomat is there.

And for a reminder, the reason why I find it unlikely is that the road has not been called "Härkätie" in contemporary contexts during the recorded history. All references to the name that I have managed to find is in the context that says that the road was called that earlier. It is like someone today wrote a news item stating that "A body was found in Viapori" when the name of the place has been Suomenlinna for over a century.

The contemporary name of the road was "Hämeentie", "Suuri Hämeentie", or "Iso Hämeentie" when looked from Turku and "Turuntie" or "Suuri Turuntie" when looked from the Häme end.

(I also posted a link to a news item that called the road from Huilu to Tiensuu "Hämeentie" after you claimed that the road passing Huilu has always been called "Härkätie". You didn't comment on that, but just in case you want to claim that it was some other road, I dug up an old map showing that there is only one road that goes past both places: https://vanhatkartat.fi/#12.62/60.54756/22.62843)

Even if the proper name is Hämeen Härkätie, it should still have shown as a separate word in its own right. A cousin once removed who was a history professor at Helsinki Uni has published an entire book on local history, which can be found or ordered at Finnish public libraries. Drop me a PM if you want the title. So now it is called kymppitie (= 'Road 10'), but that is only since the fifties, when it became a motorway. Digital newspaper libraries are quite limited. I'll see if I can find the article I took a photocopy of from the hard original copy at British Newspaper Library, when I have time.

Either way, your trying to claim it is impossible is simply either misguided or you are not being straight.

 

[Vixen]

They were doing their jobs, when the power failed their job was over, what else could they do?
You are the one introducing the 'battling' All they could do was monitor the engines and generators and make sure any
Every watertight compartment in a vessel needs a bilge pump or a pipe connected to a bilge pump.
In large vessels like the Estonia, pipes from every compartment connect to three or four bilge pumps in the main engineering space. Sometimes there are auxiliary pumps in compartments where direct piping isn't practical.

Bilge pumps operate automatically when water rises above a certain level and will keep pumping until water is either removed, power is cut or they become overwhelmed.

Engines and generators on a ship will cut off to protect themselves if the ship lists too far as the oil in their sumps will move to one side.
Once power is lost the pumps stop.

In 2019 Viking Sky lost power in a storm with 15-meter high waves. According to pilots on board, the weather was well within the operational capability of the ship.

Around 13:50 the ship suffered a loss of oil pressure, resulting in an automatic shutdown of all engines and she started drifting towards land. The alarms for low lubricant level did not trigger.
Anchors were dropped, and tugboats tried unsuccessfully to attach towlines to the ship.
Six of Norwegian SAR helicopters were sent to the scene and started to evacuate passengers
The crew of Viking Sky managed to restart one engine
Three of the four engines had been restarted during the night, evacuation was stopped and Viking Sky got under way.

It was determined that the oil levels in the engines while within specified levels were towards the lower limit.
When the ship started to roll the oil uncovered the sensors that stopped the engines. Warning lights never came on because the level never actually fell low enough to trigger them.

When a ship rolls and stays rolled the power will shut down and there is no way to get it back.

The power did not cut off until it was listed at a certain angle. Wouldn't you say that if these three guys in the engine room were 'up to their knees in water', there was something badly wrong?

Yet they do not mention this at all in the JAIC Report. I would have thought it was an important observation to note.

 

[Vixen]

Because you posted it without checking to see if it was true. IF it hadn't been called out you would have let it stand.
It is an example of your sloppy fact checking and research.

No, I deleted it straight away, yet you saw fit to retrieve it and quote it. Why did you do that?

So you did so because you wanted to retrieve an error in order to call me out and shout to everybody - Look she made an error and tried to edit it, but I've captured it!

 

[Vixen]

Exactly, the command team was woeful, It's the Chief Engineers job to keep the bridge informed of what is happening.
It is the Chief Engineers job to investigate strange sounds and bangs and water ingress.

Look at the example of HMS Nottingham, the Chief had a situation report on the bridge just 5 minutes after the grounding and a full damage report with flooding forecasts etc within 30. None involved crew were mustering on the deck in suits and life jackets just five minutes after the grounding ready to abandon ship if necessary and control teams were already starting to shore bulkheads and work on reducing flooding.

I don't expect any merchant crew to be trained to the level of a Royal Navy Destroyer crew, they are expecting to get damaged, it's what the ship is designed for. However, the response of everyone involved on the Estonia was bordering on criminal.
Sadly I suspect that they were no worse than a lot of ferries and small cargo ships working coastal trades.

The Chief Engineer and the Navigation Officer were both initially listed as survivors. Such a shame they were taken off the list, so now we'll never know their version of the story.

 

[Vixen]

There is no reasonable reading of my post that suggests that interpretation. You either have extremely poor reading comprehension, or you are being deliberately obtuse in an attempt to create a smokescreen.

That said, I stand by my assertion that Björkman's denial that 300,000 Japanese died from the atomic bombings is no less vile than Bollyn's Holocaust denial and rabid antisemitism.




Then you shouldn't have any trouble finding other readily available sources that support Björkman's and Bollyn's claims about the Estonia. So where are they?

There is Sven Aner and about 27% of the entire Swedish population, according to a poll.

 

[Here_to_learn]

There is Sven Aner and about 27% of the entire Swedish population, according to a poll.

Sven Anér has of course been dead for over three years.

And I'd like to see the poll that say that 27% of the Swedish (living?) population agree with Bollyn on Estonia.

Note that the poll I posted say that 27% of the respondents more or less agree with the statement "Den verkliga orsaken till Estoniakatastrofen har mörklagts av myndigheterna"

My translation:
The real cause of the Estonian disaster has been hidden by the authorities.

That certainly does not mean that all those 27% agree with one specific conspiracy theory!

 

[whoanellie]

I don't have that copy of Nucleonics Week. Got a link?

Here is the Nucleonics Week article. Be sure to read the correction published 1 week later. Make of it what you will.

Body
Attempting to cash in on a lucrative market for rare radioisotopes, seven suspects trying to sell smuggled Soviet-origin californium-252 were arrested by cooperating law enforcement agencies in Finland and Germany last month.

On August 13, Finland's Central Criminal Police bureau arrested two Finns and two Russians in Espoo, west of Helsinki.

In their car, police found slightly less than one gram of Cf-252. Later a fifth suspect, an Estonian, was arrested in Helsinki.
Sources said Finnish authorities were alerted by the Bundeskriminalamt, Germany's domestic criminal investigation unit.

Four days later, in Bavaria, police arrested two Germans and confiscated 6.5 milligrams of Cf-252. According to one of the German suspects in the case, the Cf-252 was obtained from the Tomsk-7 nuclear complex in Siberia. Finnish police reported that, from Russia, the isotope was smuggled to Tallinn, Estonia, and then to Finland. The ultimate destination of the material confiscated in Finland was Germany.

U.S. officials said that Cf-252 is produced in dedicated facilities equipped with accelerators and is used for activity analysis of laboratory samples. The commercial value of a milligram-quantity of Cf-252, large enough to be used for such purposes, is an estimated $ 2- to 3-million, according to an official at one U.S. national laboratory. This would indicate that the amount carried by the Finnish smugglers could have been worth $ 200-million.

Statements made to the police in Finland and Germany indicate that the suspects were aware of the true value of the material found in their possession.



URL: http://www.platts.com

Correction

Trace amount of Cf-252 seized. A preliminary report cited by Nucleonics Week stated that just under one gram of californium-252, allegedly stolen from Soviet inventories, had been recovered by Finnish police on August 13 (NW, 2 Sept., 7).
On September 2, criminal authorities corrected for the record the amount involved. They said experts from Finland's Center for Radiation & Nuclear Safety have concluded since that only a trace amount -- between 0.05 and 0.1 nanogram Cf-252 -- was seized. Suspects said they had access to a total of 6.5 milligrams of Cf-252 from Tomsk-7, said to be worth about $ 900,000.
Correction-Date: September 9, 1993

 

[Andy_Ross]

Of course that would be the reason.

The official reason as you state, and then there is the real reason.

A 'real reason' for which you have no evidence.

You didn't even have his job title or department right

 

[Andy_Ross]

Quite a few people who knew him reported recognising him, or hearing the interview on an Estonian radio station in which Svensson claimed he had Piht and the information that Piht hailed from Hiumaa, and island which few will have heard of to have made it up. On retrieving the news reel, the fourth guy getting out of the ambulance, which people had recognised as Piht, it now cut off just at that point and Rabe was unable to get the radio recording of the Svensson interview, with the radio station telling her the tape had already been seized by Estonian intelligence agencies, like wise a news clip in Germany by the German ones.

Think about it. Your friend who is in the public eye has an embarrassing alleged indiscretion publisised in the mass media. He takes out a superinjunction. Suddenly, all the old mentions on Google of the topless pictures taken by a French papparazzi are now no longer available and all previous mentions of this regrettable allegation are completely removed from the newspapers which had previously reported on it.

So you see, it does happen. Many things related to Prince Philip, such as his will, is not available for the public to see for 70 years, so you see, suppression of facts does happen.

Now think about what might happen should a state decide something should remain 'classified'.

Why would German 'intelligence agencies' seize a tape from a German news agency?
Where is there any evidence for this?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The guy who recognised him on TV in Rostock was Captain Moik. He was sacked for saying so in an interview.

Now you have heaped on a new claim - that this Moik person was sacked for saying he saw Piht on a German TV news report.

Can you provide evidence for that one? What job was he dismissed from, what grounds were given by his employer and may we add that employer to the increasingly long list of those who are "in on it"?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Because I have critical faculties by which I assess information.

But not the relevant knowledge that allows you to assess this information. You've admitted yourself you're not an expert, so you do not have the ability to fully understand if what he is claiming is correct.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

No, I deleted it straight away, yet you saw fit to retrieve it and quote it. Why did you do that?

So you did so because you wanted to retrieve an error in order to call me out and shout to everybody - Look she made an error and tried to edit it, but I've captured it!

Then stop deleting inconvenient posts and just admit "Oops, sorry guess this was wrong".

 

[JayUtah]

That is nonsense. In a disaster with just a handful of survivors, and as logged by the helicopter pilots, hospitals and other officials, what is the problem in getting the correct number of survivors, or explaining how come survivors originally listed were now removed?

How many search-and-rescue operations have you participated in?

 

[zooterkin]

No, I deleted it straight away, yet you saw fit to retrieve it and quote it. Why did you do that?

So you did so because you wanted to retrieve an error in order to call me out and shout to everybody - Look she made an error and tried to edit it, but I've captured it!

You are wrong. He must have quoted your post before you deleted it. Only you and the mod team can see what is in previous versions of your posts.

 

[Marras]

Quite a few people who knew him reported recognising him, or hearing the interview on an Estonian radio station in which Svensson claimed he had Piht and the information that Piht hailed from Hiumaa, and island which few will have heard of to have made it up.

Did you know that one specific person heard the news of Piht's survival from Estonian radio but, as far as I know, never spoke about any Svensson interviews?

The person that I'm speaking of is Sirje Piht, Avo Piht's wife.

According to an article on Estonia conspiracy theories written by YLE, Sirje Piht heard from radio that morning that his husband had survived and that later that day Erich Moik phoned her and told that he had seen Avo Piht on a German TV news report.

If there really was a radio interview of Svensson mentioning Piht, I would expect Sirje Piht to remember that. At least the YLE story doesn't mention that.

The YLE article is at https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11808310

The relevant parts of the text are:

Kapteeni Avo Pihtin vaimo Sirje Piht kuulee radion aamu-uutisista, että hänen miehensä on mahdollisesti pelastunut. Iltapäivällä Saksasta, Rostockin satamakaupungista tulee puhelu, joka muuttaa lopullisesti Sirjen elämän.

Pihtien perhetuttu, kapteeni Erich Moik soittaa Sirjelle ilouutisen: “Onneksi olkoon, miehesi on elossa! Olemme täällä ottamassa miehistön kanssa vastaan uutta laivaa. Katsoimme Saksan uutislähetystä ja näimme, kun miehesi käveli ambulanssista sairaalaan viltti olalla.”

"Captain Avo Piht's wife Sirje Piht hears from radio morning news that his husband has possibly survived. During afternoon she gets a call from harbour town Rostock in Germany that changes Sirje's life.

A family friend of Pihts, captain Erich Moik calls to Sirje happy news: 'Congratulations, your husband is alive! We are here here receiving a new ship with the crew. We were looking at German news broadcast and saw how your husband walked from an ambulance to a hospital with a blanket on his shoulders.' "

Later in the YLE article Jüri Lember confirms that the phone call happened and said that three men recognized Piht from the newsreel.

The simplest explanation is that the three men who thought they recognized Piht were wrong. They saw someone else who looked like Piht. That's also the reason why no one has been able to find the footage again.

One thing that is certain is that no German news station had time to send their own camera crew to Finland in time to get a news report out the afternoon same day. The German news station has shown footage captured by someone else and presumably other news stations over the world showed the same film.

I went to youtube to see if there's something there. There was the 20:30 main news report by YLE. It's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Y6MvW9nnU .

Starting at about 1:15 on that video there's a scene where two men who have blankets over their shoulders walk from ambulance to a hospital. I believe this is the footage that the Estonian sailors saw in Rostock and they mistook the first man as Avo Piht.