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

[Andy_Ross]

For someone who claims to have actually made a special study of a region that is actually outside of his own shores - unlike most Brits or Americans who are only interested in 'Home News - I am shocked that:

• you have never heard of the Rome Treaty 1998 in Criminal Law
• you have no idea as to the difference between deportation and disappearance
• you make the assumption that the USA is a natural sovereign state of Sweden and thus can order them about
• If someone is 'disappeared' it must mean their application as an asylum seeker was denied.
• you angrily accuse anyone trying to correct you as to the true facts of calling you a racist

Shame on you, 'Mark Corrigan', shame on you. Are you SURE you studied Eastern Europe and the KGB...? Then you would be more familiar with the various political alliances and current issues of the day surrounding the Estonia 'accident'.

They weren't 'disappeared' they were sent back to Egypt.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The point is, people are trying to downplay the 68 police bods on board as 'just being back office workers, not proper professionals, like what I am by the way'.

Where has anyone done this?

Why do you invent things like this?

You have been shown exactly who they were.

 

[Vixen]

You have a report in the Irish Times of a report in a Turkish paper(?) of a captured PKK commander who allegedly told his Turkish interrogators the PKK killed Palme. Did he also admit they killed JFK and burned the Reichstag?

What motive could Kurdish separatists have for singling out the Swedish PM for murder?

How insular! These bloody foreigners just cannot tell the truth. Not like the SUN or the EXPRESS.

A Kurdish rebel commander says his guerrillas assassinated Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 in retaliation for Sweden's extradition of Kurdish rebels, a Turkish newspaper reported Tuesday.

CBS News

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The point is, people are trying to downplay the 68 police bods on board as 'just being back office workers, not proper professionals, like what I am by the way'.

No. We are just puncturing the bubble of your fantasy version where the elite of the Swedish police were on a secret mission with the CIA, M16 (sic) and others to teach the Estonians how to set up their own post-Soviet security.

That spy movie in your head is not what happened.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Look how long it took Oceanos to sink. 18 hours. It was heavily on its starboard side for 18 hours, albeit not capsized until the final nine minutes.

It took a long time to sink because for most of that time the water was coming in through a broken sea pipe. Once it rolled far enough to put other openings under water the flood rate increased and it sank.
On the Estonia the water came in through the missing bow at a faster rate and it rolled fairly quickly putting openings under water and increasing the flood rake more quickly.

They are not comparable.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Er, that was a story made up by Carl Bildt and his Defence Chief Emil Svensson on Day One, remember...?

No, I don't remember that. I remember your repeating it time after time, but I don't recall its actually happening.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Er, that was a story made up by Carl Bildt and his Defence Chief Emil Svensson on Day One, remember...?

What is your evidence for this claim?

Are we starting at the beginning again?


How far back do you want us to go in pointing out the evidence for the sinking again?

 

[Vixen]

Again relying on newspapers.

If you have ever researched history you will have discovered they are an excellent source. When researching WWII, I found no shortage of books on the topic. Unfortunately, despite having attractive covers and five-star write ups, I found it impossible to get beyond page 18 of most of them as they all had the same turgid style of listing events like a school textbook. So I visited the British Newspaper library. The daily on-the-spot TIMES newspaper report on the Battle of Stalingrad, together with maps and charts brought it to life for me. They even had reporters on the German front line, who must have been British secret agents to have infiltrated it in the first place.

So, yes, early news reports although prone to inaccuracies - of course they would be - are nonetheless often an excellent relay of events as they happen before the spin doctors move in to reinvent their own interpretations, as with the Estonia.

Carl Bildt having told the world it was 'the bow visor what done it', led to a whole plethora of news items (cf Panorama re 'Swedish/Finnish floating coffins') all linking the catastrophe to The Herald of Free Enterprise just as he was hoping with his 'management of expectations'.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

How insular! These bloody foreigners just cannot tell the truth. Not like the SUN or the EXPRESS.



CBS News

Missing the point by a country mile. You could show us all the world's press repeating the same story but that still goes back to the same origin: a claim in the Turkish press about a vague confession got from a PKK commander under Turkish interrogation.

I'll ask again: do you have any more convincing motive for the PKK to target Palme than a vague handwave about troubled times?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Of course I haven't got a citation. The ramp was not available for comment.

I presented a rather obvious possibility; that the ramp which fell open when its fixings were broken would just as easily have swung shut when the ship was no longer upright. I asked if you had any reason to believe it couldn't do so and I infer that you do not.

It is more than a possibility.
Video and pictures of the ramp show that it is swinging free and the locks that hold it closed are all broken.
All the damage has been listed in detail in the report.

The two port side hinges at the bottom of the ramp were torn apart. Both hydraulic actuators for the ramp had failed in their piston rod end eyes, i.e. at the ramp attachment points

position as when the ramp is partly open. The wires preventing the ramp from falling down to the forepeak deck had detached from the lugs on both sides of the ramp.

The ramp port side beam was damaged in several places, mostly towards the top end.
The lugs for the pull-in locking hooks were twisted

The boxes on the ramp side bars, mating the bolts of the ramp side cleats, were twisted to open position

The two port side hinges at the bottom of the ramp had failed because of tension fracture of the ramp-mounted lugs.
The mounting of the pins for the upper locking hooks was heavily twisted.

Three of the four side locking bolts were in their extended position and the mating boxes on the ramp side beams had been ripped open.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

<padding snipped for brevity>
Carl Bildt having told the world it was 'the bow visor what done it', led to ...

This appears to be untrue. Repeating it does not appear to be making it true. Doubtless you will keep trying.

 

[Vixen]

That was what you still failed to provide support for, remember?

You know - the press release that you claim Bildt put out that we are still waiting for you to show us.

From your own link:

The following was noted on Carl Bildt’s report concerning the Turku meeting:

»In Turku the atmosphere was strange. In the hospital Carl Bildt and the other prime ministers spoke to the survivors, among others to an Estonian sailor* who had been on the car deck. Carl Bildt did not speak his language but the other prime ministers could talk to him. It was obvious that the bow visor had gone up. Already at the airport in Turku Carl Bildt discussed the problem with Esko Aho** because the whole Finland traffic operates with bow visors. This was both a moral and economical question (the extensive transport of goods).

There was not the slightest doubt for Carl Bildt that the bow visor had been torn open.*** Sjöfartsverket, however, stated that this was not possible.** **Carl Bildt became furious about Sjöfartsverket’s paper in this question. This paper should be found somewhere. He seems to remember that he kept it. The Communications Ministry** ** *was the contact level for the Prime Minister’s office to Sjöfartsverket. Carl Bildt passed on his irritation through this Ministry. It is possible that the Government provoked Sjöfartsverket (SFV) to take up the question concerning bow visors.«

EFD

Bloody cheek! Blaming the Finns for inventing the bow visor.

**Aho is the Finnish PM of the time. Bildt was in Turku the same day as the 'accident' on 28 September 1994.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Oh my giddy aunt.

Shall I fetch the smelling salts?

Were the men expelled from Sweden and returned to Egypt?

Yes.

Were they given asylum in Sweden?

No.

So you're just quibbling over whether "deported" or "disappeared" is the more appropriate term. You could well argue that an unlawful deportation is not truly a deportation so another term might be appropriate, but a key element of disappeared is that they actually disappear, which they didn't.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

From your own link:



EFD



Bloody cheek! Blaming the Finns for inventing the bow visor.



**Aho is the Finnish PM of the time. Bildt was in Turku the same day as the 'accident' on 28 September 1994.

EFD is very much *your* link Vixen, and seems to have been feeding you counterfactual fantasy.

 

[Vixen]

It took a long time to sink because for most of that time the water was coming in through a broken sea pipe. Once it rolled far enough to put other openings under water the flood rate increased and it sank.
On the Estonia the water came in through the missing bow at a faster rate and it rolled fairly quickly putting openings under water and increasing the flood rake more quickly.

They are not comparable.

But how did the bow visor come to be missing in the first place?


Over to On Scene Commander Captain Esa Mäkelä of the Silja Europa on the night, whose deck was used as a helipad on the rescue night.

Silja Europa arrived at the scene of the accident fairly quickly, but Mäkelä slowed down the speed of her ship as she approached the scene of the accident, as she thought Estonia was hanging up on the surface.

- By all accounts, that should have been the case. It should have remained floating upside down, which would have been dangerous for us. I had over 2,000 passengers on board myself.

"The cause of the accident is not just the bow visor"

According to Esa Mäkelä, the exact cause of the accident has not been determined, because the Swedish government has not lifted the wreck despite its promises.

There are similar storms in the Baltic Sea every year, so that alone cannot be the explanation for the sinking. Even the detachment of the bow visor would not have been enough to sink Estonia so quickly.

- Apparently all the waterproof doors were open. When the bow gate was detached, water entered the ship, but it should still not have entered the entire ship.

The wind at sea kept getting up all night, and Silja Europa had dropped to 10-11 knots long before the Estonian emergency call. However, Estonia continued at normal speeds despite the storm.

- It left Tallinn an hour and a half after us and it had almost caught us, so it came pretty hard.

MTV Uutiset

 

[Vixen]

Missing the point by a country mile. You could show us all the world's press repeating the same story but that still goes back to the same origin: a claim in the Turkish press about a vague confession got from a PKK commander under Turkish interrogation.

I'll ask again: do you have any more convincing motive for the PKK to target Palme than a vague handwave about troubled times?

Palme was heavily involved with the Kurdish issue. Look it up on wikipedia or google. It is not such a 'vague confession' as you might think.

 

[Here_to_learn]

From your own link:

EFD

Describing that as my own link without providing the context is deeply inhonest.

Let's see what I wrote about that link:

Now, those that are prone to self-hurt may want to see how the "German group of experts" spin this. Then go to: https://www.estoniaferrydisaster.net/chapter21/21-0.html

They claim to base their description on the Öhrn report, but what they describe cannot be found in that report.

And of course, it does not support your statement about a press release.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

But how did the bow visor come to be missing in the first place?


Over to On Scene Commander Captain Esa Mäkelä of the Silja Europa on the night, whose deck was used as a helipad on the rescue night.

MTV Uutiset

Why are you presenting this as if it was a mystery? We all knew hundreds of pages ago that the Estonia's bow was built with the top of the ramp tucked up into a compartment in the visor, so when the visor broke free its weight would be dragging on the ramp. The failure of one led to the failure of both.

What is the use of your going back to tales of people being surprised because they didn't yet appreciate what had occurred and why?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Palme was heavily involved with the Kurdish issue. Look it up on wikipedia or google. It is not such a 'vague confession' as you might think.

Are you claiming he was acting *against* the Kurds?

 

[Andy_Ross]

From your own link:

EFD

Bloody cheek! Blaming the Finns for inventing the bow visor.

**Aho is the Finnish PM of the time. Bildt was in Turku the same day as the 'accident' on 28 September 1994.

Where does he blame the Finns?
It was a Finnish ship but I see no 'blaming' of Finland.

Chapter 10 of the report details the history of ferry operations between Sweden and Finland.
https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt10.html

Chapter 18 details how both Sweden and Finland gave themselves exemption in domestic law from compliance with SOLAS regulations regarding bow visors, ramps and collision bulkheads.
https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt18.html

Also your own quote shows that he spoke to the survivors and they told him about the visor.