The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

[JesseCuster]

Nuclear bombs never exploded 1945! They were just Fake News och propaganda to end World War 2! The bluff worked fine then and today! But according to US President Truman 1945 it was legal to kill civilians that happened to be in the way, etc.

The so called, secret Manhattan Project 1942/5 by Oppenheimer & Co. simply failed and it was decided to fake it, i.e. a hoax! Stalin later copied the concept 1945+, which was finished by VV Putin at Dresden , East Germany, 1990.

Russian president VV Putin uses the hoax/bluff 2025 to protect Russia against foreign invasions by the US and its allies and to peacefully make Russia the richest country in the world again.

Vladimir Putin is the greatest peace maker the world has seen lying/killing about his nukes. He learnt his trade at Dresden, Germany 1985/90, where he built fake Sovjet nukes using fake uranium from Erzgebirge. All Saxons loved Putin then. He liberated them from communism!

Just a sample of the pontifications of Mr. Bjorkman, seriously questioning the logistics of dropping atomic bombs and their aftermath...

 

[JesseCuster]

Has it crossed your mind he might have been seriously interested in the logistics of dropping atomic bombs and its aftermath.

That two atomic bombs exploded in big, nano-seconds (speed of light) FLASHes that fried and radiated people to death while destroying two towns was just propaganda!

It never happened!

Fission chain reaction doesn't work like that then 1945 and today.

It was a ... fake Fantasy Fear show! And the American fools loved it! USA was the best and strongest. Even if it wasn't. The Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply destroyed by conventional carpet, napalm, fire bombings.

Vixen, do you think these are the words of someone "seriously interested in the logistics of dropping atomic bombs and their aftermath"? There's several pages of this kind of unhinged ranting on Bjorkman's website about nuclear weapons being a hoax and being impossible.

 

[JayUtah]

Just a sample of the pontifications of Mr. Bjorkman, seriously questioning the logistics of dropping atomic bombs and their aftermath...

As stated there, those are primarily historical claims. What I find more interesting and pertinent are the arguments he made here and at other forums trying to lay a scientific case for his interpretation of history. It's one thing to say nuclear weapons were never used, contrary to the conventional view of history. It's another thing to say they were not used because they cannot have been used because they cannot work as claimed. And then he went on to present a pseudoscientific explanation. That's different because there are objectively right and wrong answers to the claims he presented.

Ditto the Moon landings. When one's specific claim is that it didn't happen because it was impossible to do, this is not just a matter of historical perspective or political posture. And when that claim is followed with another stream of pseudoscience, that's another thing. Those are testable claims that have right and wrong answers, and experts can easily debunk it. He even offered a million euros to anyone who could refute him—with him being the sole judge of whether he was refuted or not.

And ditto MS Estonia. People can be surprised and dismayed at the notion of a ship taking only half an hour to sink. But Björkman here too offers a pseudoscience explanation for it. That makes it testable. It presents questions for which there are right and wrong answers, not just a difference in feelings or judgment. Most people don't know how atomic bombs work, how spaceships work, or the details of how ships sink. Therefore a lot of people will be fooled by something that uses a lot of sciency-sounding words and has lots of diagrams and equations and consequently looks very impressive. And pseudoscience is very effective at fooling people when it simply leaves out the pesky parts—the parts that a lay audience doesn't know about and therefore doesn't know to apply, and which produce a significantly different outcome when applied properly. This is even more effective when the claimant has a legitimate credential in the field, even if he is misrepresenting the field.

Just because someone has an academic qualification or experience in a field doesn't mean they can't be nutter butters.

Indeed, and when the conflict between nuttery and academics comes to a critical head—which it thankfully rarely does—the consequence is usually a revocation of the credential. The whole point of a credential is to convey authority to the person who exercises it. But that exercise must ultimately be accountable to fact and truth.

As I mentioned, I've even posted links to his website where he says these things for Vixen, but she said she doesn't want to read them, because she's "not interested." "You can lead a horse to water . . ."

She's obviously interested—just not in facts. It would be one thing to ignore Björkman's other claims entirely. But it's another thing to try to sane-wash them and pretend that this constitutes leaving them alone.

It's so very stupid. @Vixen had an easy out. When she first invoked Anders Björkman, she had no idea who he was. Understandably, he appeared to discuss the buoyancy of the ship from the perspective of a legitimate technical inquiry. People like Vixen were his intended audience: lay folk predisposed to believe an alternate theory and desirous of some putatively scientific reason to hold to it. Björkman was discredited early enough in our discussion that she could have said, "Oops, I guess he's not a very good authority on such matters." But now years later she is still committed to trying to rehabilitate him. She's sane-washing his absolutely ludicrous physics claims. She's doggedly gaslighting the proposition that objection to Björkman as a physics authority is a "personality" thing. All while claiming not to care.

 

[Andy_Ross]

No, it's an observation supported by experience. In his case, he has been on ships' crews and can therefore assess whether the description of how a ship's crew responds to an emergency evinces effective or ineffective training. In contrast, you often offer propositions that would seem or want to be from experience, but without the experience.

Not just crews but highly trained crews lead by good officers on property maintained ships

 

[catsmate]

Here we see a demonstration of the logical fallacy of the ad hominem attack. Then we have another one that brings in the faux concept of 'everybody': the logical fallacy of appealing to the crowd.

Rubbish. Pointing out your basic errors of fact and other nonsensical gibberings is not an ad hominem attack. You simply don't understand what the term means.

 

[catsmate]

Well, for a start the people claiming you have to be a licensed engineer to comment on the accident. But AFIAC it is a news item and one doesn't have to have special knowledge to follow it.

Who did this? Where?

 

[Axxman300]

I don't believe they are conspiracy theorists. They are experts or investigators with primary access to sources. Rabe, Bemis, Bradiwood, Evertsson and Kurm actually visited the wreck. Hence the reinvestigation. A simple news story. Like the aforesaid, I am not looking for reassuring platitudes, it is a simple case of wanting to find out what happened.

But you're not interested in what happened to the MS Estonia because we already know what happened. This is all about your world view, and inability to accept you've been wrong.

 

[phiwum]

I am not a contrarian.

I think we all expected that response.

 

[JayUtah]

But you're not interested in what happened to the MS Estonia because we already know what happened.

Root cause notwithstanding, it's still necessary to acknowledge that there was enough interest in the hole in the side to conduct additional investigation to determine what may have caused it. Since the JAIC had no way of knowing it was there, they simply don't talk about it. As I said years ago, I'm rarely opposed to collecting more information about an accident, whether it changes the findings or not. In this case, for the reasons we've belabored over hundreds of pages, there's no need to change the accident sequence. The newly revealed damage to the ship's hull is still best explained by impact with the seabed. Now we can know that with greater assurance, which is generally a good thing.

But because people are the way they are, you can't be legitimately curious about new information on a controversial subject without enduring a flurry of I-told-you-sos from people who were always way off the mark and don't get any closer to it no matter how generously you interpret the new information. No amount of conspiratorial handwaving puts the hole below the waterline or gives it outward-blooming petals à la Braidwood's fanciful explosions or makes smuggled cesium any more credible or relevant.

Conspiracy theorists aren't interested in resolving questions. They're interested in perpetuating them and thereby maintaining their own relevance and sense of moral and intellectual superiority. Anything that looks like a mainstream revisit of any relevant point looks to them like, "Aha! The mainstream admits it was wrong! That means I might have been right!" It doesn't matter how much of a non sequitur that is from an objective point of view.

This is all about your world view, and inability to accept you've been wrong.

That, plus a desire to be seen as smart—smarter than the professionals who (in the estimation of the conspiracy theorist) got it nefariously wrong. Armchair detectives are worse than useless. They bring no expertise to the table. They do little more than strain at gnats and stir controversy. They provide no comfort to victims; on the contrary, they prolong the grief and agony in order to remain in the limelight.

 

[Axxman300]

Root cause notwithstanding, it's still necessary to acknowledge that there was enough interest in the hole in the side to conduct additional investigation to determine what may have caused it. Since the JAIC had no way of knowing it was there, they simply don't talk about it. As I said years ago, I'm rarely opposed to collecting more information about an accident, whether it changes the findings or not. In this case, for the reasons we've belabored over hundreds of pages, there's no need to change the accident sequence. The newly revealed damage to the ship's hull is still best explained by impact with the seabed. Now we can know that with greater assurance, which is generally a good thing.

I agree, and the new project really went to town. They set up sensors on the bottom to measure and gauge currents. They photographed the entire wreck to be stitched together in a searchable 3D rendering, Went to town with the latest side-scan sonar. Surveyed the entire car deck. Recovered the car ramp. And so much more because of the technology available today compared to back then. I'm always happy to see a wreck reinspected because we learn so much about structural decay under (sea) water, and the effects on sea life, etc. I look forward to the new report.

 

[Vixen]

Has it crossed your mind to read what Bjorkman has to say about nuclear bombs? No it hasn't, because you're too intellectually dishonest and lazy to actually check yourself. Bjorkman thinks that nuclear weapons are a hoax. He thinks the the moon landings were a hoax. He thinks that COVID is a hoax. He explicitly says this on his website.

You'd know this if you bothered to actually check, but you know he's a crackpot, so it suits you to pretend that he's simply questioning logistics, or engaging in pontificating about abstract matters, etc. instead of acknowledging that he's a crackpot who says things like "a nuclear explosion is a deception or a joke! It has never happened!"

And don't lie and say that it's about his personality or eccentricites or another dumb excuse you're going to invent. He's a crackpot who explicitly promotes numerous very silly conspiracy theories.

i am not the slightest bit interested in this guy. I couldn't give a toss what he thinks about 9/11 or Apollo or whatever.

 

[Vixen]

That won't generally stop someone from being a conspiracy theorist if they really want to be.


Which only seems to interest you as far as you can use it to spout conspiracy theories that were flying around long before the second investigation.


Which part of that is served by, for example, Evertsson lying about the damage he saw on the wreck? We're not interested in your platitudes about how these authors are very fine people who can't possibly be suspected of anything because they pretend to be so conscientious and diligent. If Evertsson tells me he lied abut the damage because the real damage didn't fit the story he wanted to tell, that's super strong evidence that he's a conspiracy theorist.

Conversely, Kurm and Rabe each stood on the deck of a boat above the wreck. To suggest they "visited" the wreck by doing that and thereby got some sort of additional insight that their critics don't have is exactly the sort of publicity-seeking nonsense that raises red flags among actual investigators.

The goal isn't to find an excuse to label people something and then dismiss them by the label. The goal is to vet purported scholarship. The fact that "conspiracy theorist" happens to be an apt label for people like Evertsson who lie to get gullible people like you to pay attention to them is just a convenience. The shoe just fits.

They have ROV cameras and communications. Whether they are worthy or unworthy, they do have information to contribute. Sure, you can simply disregard it but you cannot dictate that others do the same just because you do,

 

[Mojo]

i am not the slightest bit interested in this guy.

A search for posts by Vixen that include the name "Bjorkman" finds in excess of 200 hits.

 

[Vixen]

Exactly.

Just because someone has an academic qualification or experience in a field doesn't mean they can't be nutter butters. While someone with said qualification or experience would be expected to know more than a lay person and therefore their words can be seen to have a head start on those of some rando, that doesn't mean that if their claims are false we have to ignore that.

If Gukesh Dommaraju claimed that in chess a knight can move diagonally any number of spaces, just because he's currently world number one doesn't mean that he is right about how a knight moves.

This is where objectivity comes in. Try this exercise:​

• Can you provide three (or even one or two ) reasons* I have provided for being interested in this topic? What were they?
• Are you able to provide counterarguments that (a) are objective, (b) based on reason and giving your reasons and (c) without emotion, prejudice or claims of perceived personal shortcomings in your interlocutor?

When you can do this, you will be a skilled debater.

*Being a good LISTENER is the start of this journey.

 

[JayUtah]

i am not the slightest bit interested in this guy.

He is your source for your claim that MS Estonia exhibited buoyancy characteristics inconsistent with JAIC's findings of cause.

I couldn't give a toss what he thinks about 9/11 or Apollo or whatever.

Those provide evidence that (a) he doesn't understand engineering or physics, and (b) that he's willing to comment loudly and ignorantly on subjects he doesn't understand. This makes him a poor source for what you proposed to use him for.

They have ROV cameras and communications. Whether they are worthy or unworthy, they do have information to contribute. Sure, you can simply disregard it but you cannot dictate that others do the same just because you do,

I choose not to disregard it. Nor do I attempt to dictate that everyone must behave as me. But I will hold you accountable for your behavior insofar as you invite such an accounting by posting your feeble attempts at armchair investigation in a forum you know will specifically challenge you.

 

[Vixen]

Having performed such a search, I remain unsatisfied. The claim that these two captains expressed "grave doubts" seems to be a new one for which you need to provide evidence.

Your previous mentions of Capt. Thörnroos say merely that he was surprised upon arrival to discover that MS Estonia had already sunk. You have never before claimed that he expressed any kind of doubt over the narrative later developed to explain the sinking. And therefore this new attribution of an opinion to him requires a citation in order to have evidentiary value.

In your previous discussions of Capt. Mäkelä, you allude to an article in popular media where he says he is skeptical that there was just one factor in the sinking. From that, you seem to have concluded that he rejected the JAIC findings.

Since you inevitably bring up Captains Thörnroos and Mäkelä in order to distract from your imprudent choice of Anders Björkman as an expert source, let's avoid repetition and short-circuit around your typical tap-dance. Yes, they were there and I was not. However, I am not questioning their observations. I am questioning their expectations—and even that not very vigorously. That each of these captains had an informal expectation that was contradicted by fact does not put them in the same category as Björkman. Neither of these captains presented any sort of reasoned or factual finding to support their expectations. Nor are they necessarily expected to in order to informally hold the beliefs they do. The captains did not attempt to supply rigor, and we weigh their opinions accordingly as "soft" expertise.

Björkman attempts rigor, but fails. In contrast to the captains, he says that the ship foundered suspiciously as a matter of testable assertions of fact. Then he tries to present and frame facts to say so. But his framing is inexpert and incorrect, and this is more likely why he concludes differently than the rest of the field who more effectively invoke rational methods to establish and justify their expectations. And it was to Björkman—not to the captains—that you first reached in order to question the buoyancy of the ship.

The consensus of the experts in why ships sink remains suitably aligned with the JAIC.

You have missed the point. The point being made was that these two captains were not shy of expressing initial scepticism. This scepticism extends to various experts and pundits. This has led to a reinvestigation. This was pointed out to you to illustrate that there is no veto or debarment in people wanting an explanation, in answer to your vehement insistence that one must not ask questions.

 

[Vixen]

That says exactly what I said it does, and not what you seem to think it says. Here are their rankings of the top European universities for 2025.

13. Lund University, Lund

25. Uppsala University, Uppsala

27 (tied). KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

44 (tied). Stockholm University, Stockholm

71. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg

78. Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg

107. Linköping University, Linköping

185. Umea University, Umeå

448. University College of Boras, Borås

489 (tied). Karlstad University, Karlstad

551-600. Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall

This is consistent with, as I said, and you ignored as usual, USN&WR's having ranked Chalmers 8th among Swedish colleges and universities. So, no, it's not a "prestigious naval academy" as you like to pretend, in order to inflate Björkman's credentials. It's at best a second-tier university, even if it does enjoy an excellent (and possibly undeserved) reputation among the Swedish public.

Chalmers is ranked as #165 in world leading research universities.

 

[Vixen]

But you're not interested in what happened to the MS Estonia because we already know what happened. This is all about your world view, and inability to accept you've been wrong.

I will wait to see what the pundits involved in this issue have to say about the final report when it is released. Because as I said, if you were listening, is that this is a news item I am following.

 

[JayUtah]

You have missed the point.

No, you have missed the point. Several of them.

First, you keep misrepresenting what these captains actually said. You were invited to document your representation, but you declined and reversed the burden of proof. And now that others have done your homework for you, you are still trying to evade.

Second, the opinions expressed by the two captains are categorically different from Björkman's for the reasons I specified. In your haste to pretend you're not relying on crackpots for your science, you have tried to claim the testimony of the captains is essentially equivalent to Björkman's attempt to provide a scientific rationale. The two captains are not your source for the technical arguments regarding buoyancy of the ship. Björkman is, and has always been.

The point being made was that these two captains were not shy of expressing initial scepticism.

Asked and answered.

This scepticism extends to various experts and pundits.

No.

You posture the captains as having special credibility because they were present at the accident and they were experienced serving sea captains. That is not the same for all "pundits." You cannot presume the same background, interest, and expertise for everyone who comments on the accident.

This has led to a reinvestigation.

No.

The purpose of the investigation was to determine what caused the hole in the side. This is not equivalent to giving credence to all the various crackpot theories that have been proposed to explain it.

This was pointed out to you to illustrate that there is no veto or debarment in people wanting an explanation,

And it was pointed out to you that not everyone who pretends to be some sort of "investigator" is justified by renewed interested in new information. This means you.

...in answer to your vehement insistence that one must not ask questions.

I made no such claim.

 

[Vixen]

I think we all expected that response.

A contratrian is someone who argues for the sake of it. I followed the cases of Jeremy Bamber, Lucy Letby and Amanda Knox et al closely and I came to my opinion - which of course might be wrong - by a process of weighing up the evidence presented in court together with the arguments of the counsel and by doing my own delving. That people abnegate their critical faculties to others in deciding on issues based on low-level and low quality information (popularity) I find utterly bizarre. Why hand over your decision-making in interesting issues to others, who might be motivated by emotion, prejudice, incomplete knowledge (i.e., reciting the SUN or the guy down the pub) or persons signed up to a PR agency to flood the forums and Tik Tok with their 'influencer' opinions. To me that is a totally bonkers way to form your opinion but sadly it is how many people here seem to behave.