brianv wrote:Nice one guys! Great to see some real photos on the site for a change!
Did you speak to anyone about the "passengers" aspect of it Simon? How they managed to get them all away so promptly!
HEIWA'S & SIMON'S CONCORDIA SIGHTSEEING DAY (part2)
As Heiwa and I walked around the Giglio port, I pretended to be Heiwa's Swedish/Italian translator - and casually 'interviewed' a bunch of individuals there: a few friendly locals, a military-clad scubadiver, a team of three medics (sitting in the one-and-only ambulance stationed in the port) and the receptionist of the Bahamas Hotel - where apparently the Concordia captain had taken refuge after the disaster.
My prime interest - as you may imagine - was to get some notion about the whole
"passengers" aspect - and to see if the feedback I gathered would help dispel my 'working suspicion' that the event was wholly phony (apart from the fact of the ship lying in front of the Giglio port which was, of course, beyond question), that the ship was deliberately sunk there, and that - possibly - NO real passengers were on that ship. In other words, if this was yet another media-backed psyop of sorts - featuring fake victims in a high-profile mega-disaster, just HOW - I wondered - might this have played out in reality?
(photo by Simon Shack)
Well, please know that the little port of Giglio seems almost tailor-made for such an operation: Yes, it does provide an 'alibi' for the official story
("the Giglio residents must have witnessed it all") but, at a closer look, this 'alibi' is very thin indeed: most of the 1400 Giglio residents live 6km away in the "Castello" - or in houses/villas spread around the island - far from the tiny Giglio harbour. Only a handful of people (mostly oldtimers) lives by the little port - and in January, tourism is pretty close to zero. Add this to the fact that the Concordia event happened at nighttime - when most of the few port residents would have been fast asleep.
As I chatted with one of these residents, however, he told me he had been awake and had witnessed the event. As I asked him about the 4200 people salvaged from the ship (and how they had been handled/tended to) he told me they had been quickly been embarked on buses and brought up to the Castello. "Had he witnessed any triage, medical activity, stretchers with wounded/drowned people?" - I asked him; "No", he said, "the dead and wounded were probably shipped straight back to the mainland".The 4200 people were then,
within the day, brought down again to the port, shipped to the mainland in (small) ferryboats - put into many buses, and driven down to Rome! Wow - that's ...uh...Italian efficiency at its very best, folks! Pretty surreal, if you ask me.
I then talked to a military-clad man leaning on a van which said "squadra sommozzatori" (Scuba Divers team). I asked him if the searches for the 22 missing people were still ongoing. He basically said
"No, because it is now feared that the ship might slip down into deeper waters, so we've had to suspend our searches - as we might contribute to destabilize the ship." Mumble...mumble... Makes sense, huh?
Next, I decided to chat up the three medics sitting in the sole ambulance (with wide-open doors) stationed in the port. So I just leaned into the ambulance and asked: "Hello, can I ask you guys a question or two?" Almost simultaneously (in chorus!), the 3 medics responded - shaking their heads in unison: "No, you can't!" I was a bit taken aback, as their reaction seemed unduly aggressive, but I nonetheless managed to add "Well, uh, I only wondered if you guys - or any of your colleagues - were present on the night of the event!" Again, the curt and off-putting reply was: "No!" Shaking my head in mild disbelief, I just turned back to Heiwa and instinctively muttered: "Holy Moly! These medics must be under some kind of gag order..." I still believe that this is the case.
Heiwa was eager to go visit the Bahamas Hotel where (he had read in the French FIGARO newspaper) the Concordia captain Francesco Schettino had reportedly been staying after the disaster. (In fact, the FIGARO had reported the Bahamas being located 6km away from the port, and that Mr. Schettino had arrived there by Taxi). Instead, we soon found the small Hotel was only about 80m away from the harbour. Anyhow, we walked into the small reception and had a chat with the receptionist. The guy seemed quite elated to talk to us! He went on and on in consummate detail - almost in a wild frenzy - about how he had seen the whole nighttime incident, with the Concordia turning up very close to the shore (not visible from his reception), its lights going out and then back on again (although only emergency lights), etc. He confirmed the Captain had turned up in a taxi (I still wonder who the heck hitches a taxi for an 80m ride!), but only to change his wet clothes. Then, as the Captain dried, an Italian TV news team (TG COM) interviewed him in the Hotel lobby (those news people are DAMN FAST ON THE FOOT!).
"But he was soon interrupted by a lady who rushed in, telling Schettino not to talk with the press. It seemed to me as if she was Schettino's lawyer", said the receptionist. I then asked the talkative receptionist, basically, if his Hotel had been crowded with Concordia survivors. He then got really excited, gesticulating in descriptive manner:
"Of course!!! We were all stacked up like sardines here, and I had 3/or 4 people sleeping behind my reception desk RIGHT HERE!" (Now folks, we're talking about a 3mX50cm space !).That's when the guy's credibility suddenly vaporized - and Heiwa and I walked out after politely thanking him for his kind 'witness account'...
So let's GET REAL now: Let's forget for a minute about the alleged victims (apparently now "13", as of today). According to the official Concordia story, the 4200 passengers were safely evacuated from this ship, at night, most of them supposedly climbing down the 2 "escape-ladders" we can see here:
(photo by Simon Shack)
(It's up to you to believe that most people were rescued on the other side of the ship - before it capsized...)
Now, according to this "infrared helicopter video" allegedly filmed by the Italian Coast Guard, there were still a whole lot of people on board as the Concordia toppled over on its side - at a 90° angle...
"Infrared COAST GUARD VIDEO": http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/nauf ... 5900?video
Are we to believe almost ALL of these passengers and crew (mostly older people, we are told, and many kids and toddlers), managed to climb up onto the side of the ship as it capsized at 90° - in the nick of time?
It is quite MIRACULOUS that only 13 people - or so - were lost !!!!!!!!
(To make myself clear: I believe the "Infrared COAST GUARD VIDEO" is a total fabrication - produced in order to convey to the public at least SOME visual "evidence" of there being passengers on board of the CONCORDIA vessel. I personally don't buy it. Watch it yourself in its entirety and decide.)