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Cont: The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VI

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Vixen said:
What a lot of nonsense. Sweden and Finland have always been an inextricable part of each other. There is banter but it is all tongue-in-cheek.

The enemy has always been to the east, not the west.
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But your "enemy" is not Russia. It's not Russia you're blaming for the sinking of the Estonia, is it? It's not Russia you're claiming "disappeared" the Estonia crew, is it?
 
Vixen said:
You are talking down to a psychology postgraduate here.
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Nonsense. You haven't provided any evidence that your claims to expertise in psychology are any more credible than your insinuations to expertise in any of the other fields upon which you've pontificated. If anything, you've provided copious evidence on this forum that you will claim competence in whatever field is at hand if it means you get to suggest that we should accept your ignorant say-so as fact.

When I presented the testimony of highly-respected, fully-credentialled pyschologists on the subject of the reliability of eyewitness testimony, you knee-jerkedly dismissed them as frauds. You weren't even able to muster the criticisms that other academics and practitioners have presented against them in the literature. You don't know the field, so don't pretend that you do.

Imagine here is a crime scene...
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No, Vixen, you have no expertise in crime-scene investigations or analytics that anyone on this forum is bound to respect.

No, it doesn't work like that. In a criminal court of law, eye-witness testimony is regarded as direct evidence. As hard evidence as Exhibit A and B.
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You don't know what "direct evidence" and "hard evidence" mean, and you have no relevant courtroom experience. I have, and I have routinely seen eyewitness testimony impeached on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Yes, eyewitness testimony is evidence. It's simply not the superlative evidence—in any context—that you demand it be taken as.

Further, a forensic engineering investigation is not a court of law. You have absolutely no relevant expertise, training, or experience in how eyewitness testimony is collected, evaluated, and used in such an endeavor. Your opinion on whether it was treated properly in this investigation is nonprobative.

Stay in your lane.
 
Vixen said:
Please stop with the rationalizing and the pop-psychology. You are talking down to a psychology postgraduate here. This is the problem with debating along the lines of rationalisation and 'what-iffing'. Fine for the academics and the philosophers. Imagine here is a crime scene with eye witnesses and all PC Plod can do is say, 'Hmm, what if this eye witness didn't really see what happened? We can't really summons any eye witness, so we had better let the suspect go.'
No, it doesn't work like that. In a criminal court of law, eye-witness testimony is regarded as direct evidence. As hard evidence as Exhibit A and B. (Of course, it is up to the jury as to whether they accept it.) Stop time wasting with alternative theories of what the eye-witnesses saw and heard.
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If the forensic examiner says, actually no it wasn't murder the victim died of a massive stroke brought on by his decades of smoking... yet PC Plod produces someone nearby that says they heard a gunshot... I'd rather hope the inquest rules the death as natural causes.
 
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MarkCorrigan said:
This is what I mean when I say Vixens musings are like badly written pulp spy novels.

They aren't grounded in reality at all, just an ignorant layman's idea of how intelligence is performed fed by a diet of preposterous movies, tv shows and books written by people whose objective wasn't to illustrate the real workings of an intelligence agency but to be entertaining.

James Bond movies would be dull as anything if they were accurate to the actual workings of human based intelligence, even during the cold war. Sure, there is a limited amount of spy gadgets and sneaking around, but for the most part it's just embedding someone into a group or agency and taking notes of literally everything they do so it can be filtered and analysed by other people who might not even use it.

I read a story once of someone whose uncle was an MI5 operative. They were embedded into the Liverpool docks during the height of the Cold War in order to monitor the dock workers for Communist activity and any anti-British government sentiment. They weren't able to see or visit any of their family for over a decade, had to live on a dock worker's salary, not socialise with anyone outside of those they could reasonably be expected to meet as a docker, feeding constant reports to their handler detailing everything said during meetings with their targets and the union members. Eventually the Government withdrew the program and "pulled him out" only they didn't really, they just told him one day "don't need you anymore" and left him. Apparently the guy went nuts, started collecting newspaper clippings to do with the dockyards and doing the "connect disconnected events with red string" thing that conspiracists are wont to do because he couldn't or wouldn't believe he had wasted so much of his time.

Every classified document I've ever seen was not magicked away like it was never there. Usually the bare bones of the report are available and they just crudely edit out the "classified" portions of it. Or they have a second report with the bare bones written and just publish that.

Sure, the MI5 archives are full of documents that haven't seen the light of day outside MI5 but they will have at least some kind of link to something available outside, even if it's just people commenting that they can't talk about this thing that's happening or a cover story. Intelligence agencies aren't magic. They aren't able to whisk people away with invisible helicopters in the middle of the night. They still have to operate within the bounds of the law and oversight.
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Actually I am pretty neutral about James Bond, Kingsman and spy thrillers in general. Not really my film of choice.
 
Vixen said:
Absolute nonsense in respect of a winchman working in a four-man iirc team of many and arriving some three hours late (according to the JAIC) to a standard civilian rescue effort, of which dozens of rescuers were already there, is NOT equivalent to the Gold Medal with Sword in combat or war-like situations. It was Sweden's highest military honour, equivalent to the Victoria Cross. My close relatives received Liberty Crosses with Swords AND Oak Leaves and they actually were on the front line face-to-face with the enemy over a period of time.

It is quite clear the the Estonia incident was not perceived as a civilian accident by the Swedish Military. What Ensign Ken Svensson really did heroically is classified information, as one would expect in conditions deemed a war. In this case the dying embers of the USSR. It is in plain sight. Whilst the early newspaper reports are censored and the JAIC do not mention it, make no mistake that medal was awarded for a genuine military reason.

In addition, whilst the Swedish rescuers were delayed arriving due to poor communications, their pilots also were unable to land their helicopters in the ships' decks because they didn't have the skills that Finns had, who were able to land. This will be due to the type of training beforehand and not a reflection on their abilities or heroism.
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Again we went through it in depth.
He was stranded in the water and himself rescued by another helicopter where he took over winchman duties when that helicopter winchman was injured.
He was then injured himself and continued to work as a winchman despite his injury.

You are typing complete **** again
 
Vixen said:
But we have a clue in that CIA could demand Sweden hand over suspected terrorists. or activists.
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The CIA is not in a position to demand anything from Sweden, or any other country for that matter. They can make a request through diplomatic and backdoor channels, but they can't make Sweden do something Sweden does not want to do.

That's just a fact.

And the whole point of the CIA having a direct action/SOG is to do sneaky stuff in foreign countries to they don't always have to ask.

So if Sweden did something at the request of the US Government it was in their mutual best interest. Thank you for attending my Foreign Policy 101 discussion.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
IIRC someone, probably you, linked to the manufacturer's specifications & it was shown that the regulations were changed as a direct result of this accident so that ships of these type would have to carry beacons that didn't need to be manually activated. Am I remembering correctly? I certainly remember this was comprehensively put to bed a very long time ago.
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Exactly this

The Estonia sinking resulted in all kinds of regulation changes to do with construction and use and safety.
 
Vixen said:
Actually I am pretty neutral about James Bond, Kingsman and spy thrillers in general. Not really my film of choice.
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I don't understand how you, or indeed anyone, could possibly think this in any way addresses the post you quoted.
 
Vixen said:
Nobody said it proved anything but it should have been part of the investigation. Especially with only 136 survivors.
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No no no, you don't get to do that.

Answer the question asked of you. If someone says they heard an explosion, does that prove there was an explosion, yes or no?
 
Vixen said:
In addition, whilst the Swedish rescuers were delayed arriving due to poor communications, their pilots also were unable to land their helicopters in the ships' decks because they didn't have the skills that Finns had, who were able to land. This will be due to the type of training beforehand and not a reflection on their abilities or heroism.
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You made that up.

Direct landing was abandoned because it was too dangerous.

Again we went through all this. Every helicopter was listed along with it's flight times and number of return trips to the ship. Only a couple of landings on to the ship were attempted.
It was quite right not to keep trying.

RN and RAF practice is not to land when a rescue is being performed due to the risk to the helicopter. This even applies to over land.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
But your "enemy" is not Russia. It's not Russia you're blaming for the sinking of the Estonia, is it? It's not Russia you're claiming "disappeared" the Estonia crew, is it?
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If Sweden took the Estonians into custody because of suspected sabotage, espionage or treason then that would be quite reasonable, ne c'est pas?

Problem is, justice should be seen to be done in an open court.
 
Vixen said:
That is pretty dishonest of you, isn't it? All those guys from 2009 who received the Gold Medal of Merit with Sword, were guys in action in Afghanistan.

No mention of rescuing people from a civilian ship, no matter how commendable.

As I said, and please take note - nota bene - it is a Military Medal for Military bravery.
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Which applies to a military crew performing rescues in dangerous conditions and putting their lives at risk to perform tasks above and beyond the call of duty
 
Vixen said:
I am right.

Your own link states:



There you have it: Estonia was a de facto military ship as of the time of the accident, under military command carrying out a military operation.
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****
 
JayUtah said:
Great, looks like we really are in for another hundred pages wherein you rehash all of your ignorant twaddle that's been debunked a dozen times over.
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Standard Conspiracy Theory lunacy:

Estonia sinks in violent storm. Investigation reveals bow visor was knocked off, ripping open the front ramp, allowing the car deck to flood. Investigation also learns the Estonia was never rated for open-ocean sailing, certainly not built to withstand North Sea storms.

Conspiracy Theorists: "We demand a new investigation!"

New Investigation supports original investigation, but with cool new high-resolution photography and 3D-Sonar imaging.

Conspiracy Theorists: "But this doesn't answer any of my nutjob claims, couched as questions!"

Rinse and Repeat...
 
Vixen said:
I am right.

Your own link states:



There you have it: Estonia was a de facto military ship as of the time of the accident, under military command carrying out a military operation.
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The medal awarded had different criteria at the time.
We went through this already at great length
 
Vixen said:
If Sweden took the Estonians into custody because of suspected sabotage, espionage or treason then that would be quite reasonable, ne c'est pas?

Problem is, justice should be seen to be done in an open court.
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No.

No that's not reasonable. It might be reasonable if the Estonia crew were performing espionage on Sweden. Do you have any evidence they were, or are we back to your poorly written pulp novel again?
 
Vixen said:
Nobody said it proved anything but it should have been part of the investigation.
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It was. But since the investigation didn't reach the conclusion that you think it should have, you've appointed yourself to sit in judgment upon your betters and suggest that they did it wrong.

Especially with only 136 survivors.
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That's not relevant to whether eyewitness testimony should have the role in a forensic investigation that you claim it should.
 
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