Diver Indicted in 2003 GBR mishap

[Dadvocate]

Bsee65

Your point is taken, and I think you are justified in saying that any given OP ought not have the right to limit participation in such a way that creates a misrepresentative ownership in a thread. I don’t see why you should be concerned about where your post went in this case. Your comments were on topic as I see them, and the truth is that any real lines of distinction separating the two threads eroded a long time ago.

Anyway, we shall now see what happens to our hapless defendant in a court of law. Whatever our differences in opinion on the whole, I think it safe to say that most if not all posters in this thread are happy to see that turn of events. Perhaps now Tina’s story will be told in its entire narrative. Whatever the final outcome, she deserves that much, as does her family.

If Gabe is guilty, may he get his just desserts in a clear and definitive manner, devoid of ambiguities. As Livinoz says earlier, achieving an impartial jury at this stage is going to be tough given the media coverage and the hype surrounding this drama. I just hope there is a smoking gun one way or the other that will limit the potential for a jury to base its verdict on emotional truck and not on the evidence on the whole.

Cheers!

 

[K_girl]

You truly don't get what many of us are saying do you? We are not concerned with a "potential" jury member reading this forum or that in itself harming Watson's rights to a "fair trial". What we are saying is that you are basing all your arguments and your assumption of guilt on media reports and incomplete articles in the public domain. That is fraught with problems. No-one is attacking you personally, but some of us do have a problem with the way you have reached your conclusions.

The problem arises when people in Queensland, and Townsville in particular, read and see the multitude of media reports about this case, which most could hardly have failed to do. It makes impartiality very difficult; in fact forming a jury could be quite an issue and no doubt something the defense will look at closely.

You're right - I don't get it. First you say you all are not concerned with what is being said here affecting the potential jury pool - then you say that it is a problem when people in Queensland and Townsville read media reports that neither myself nor anyone on this board has absolutely anything to do with. None of those newspapers have picked up on what we have been saying about this case for all these years since day one. Why would they? They have direct access to investigators and witnesses. I don't see how examining and discussing this case on this board is fraught with problems. What "problems?"

 

[livinoz]

You're right - I don't get it. First you say you all are not concerned with what is being said here affecting the potential jury pool - then you say that it is a problem when people in Queensland and Townsville read media reports that neither myself nor anyone on this board has absolutely anything to do with. None of those newspapers have picked up on what we have been saying about this case for all these years since day one. Why would they? They have direct access to investigators and witnesses. I don't see how examining and discussing this case on this board is fraught with problems. What "problems?"

Please, someone else explain about forming conclusions based on evidence garnered from the media.

As for the rest, I was basically saying I agree; this is a forum and a thread that very few, if any, people involved directly in the case would read. However, the same can't be said for people in Queensland where this case is in their face all the time. That's the problem with the media and court cases; people make up their minds based on speculation and hype, and therefore it may be hard to put an unbiased jury together. Personally, I want to see a trial, and it would be a pity if this all fell though on a technicality wouldn't it?

I truly have nothing left to say. I'll leave you all to it now.

 

[bsee65]

bsee675 - I think you missed something on the first page of the thread. The purpose was to catch people up on the basic issue without huge numbers of posts for a good clean read so that people could catch-up with the basic issues in the case. I was trying to avoid the thread from getting too long with too much back-and-forth discussion, where the clean read would be lost. I never tried to bar people from posting to the thread, only to keep to the spirit of keeping a clean read. The idea being that argument and discussion is on this huge, lengthy thread, while the basic issues are stated only once on the Issues thread. Here is from the first page of the thread:

"I am starting this thread and submitting a series of posts, each post will be the focus of a single issue. Please DO NOT POST COMMENTS OR DISCUSSION OF THESE ISSUES HERE, but continue to post your opinions to the original thread of this case at "Diver Indicted in 2003 GBR mishap"

If you wish to post to this thread, please keep to the spirit and format of this thread which is to state the issue succinctly, statements, information that has been reported with the source in order to KEEP A CLEAN AND FAST READ ON THIS CASE.

***********

Since you have re-stated your point in a much less "offensive" way, I think you might be right, that a forum is not the right place for the "clean read." A blog might be a better place because then you could have each issue as an individual entry, and people can make comments on each issue. Then you can take comments that present something new (whether I disagree with it or not - that really is not what matters to me) and re-state it in the main blog issue in a concise way, to try and keep the read clean and fast. That way, you keep the voluminous back-and-forth banter down that will inevitably happen, but all sides get presented in a concise way. I will have to look into it. However, I am leaving on a dive vacation soon.

So -- you looking to learn how to dive? Lots of good people here to dive with.

The problem, though, K_girl is that you did not do what you asked everyone else to do. Your basic issue descriptions reeked of your opinions and biases. For example, you wrote:

ISSUE 9: Watson stated that the current was very strong and that is what he felt started TinaÃÔ panic. The following scenario gives Watson the most favorable numbers for the fastest current possible. WatsonÃÔ statement about low visibility being only 30 feet, but being able to see the anchor line they descended down, puts them within 30 feet of the anchor line. He later changes the visibility to 20 feet. The lowest figure Watson gave for the time before TinaÃÔ problems began was 5 minutes, if you give two minutes for the descent before they let go of the line, that leaves 3 minutes that they were in the current. He says it only took him five to ten seconds for him to get back to the anchor rope. So Watson made the visibility and distance to the rope match in his statements, but it cannot match a description of a strong current. To travel 30 feet from the anchor line in 3 minutes, the rate of speed would have been only 10 feet per minute. This translates to 1/10th of a knot per hour rate. The reason Watson needs to lower the visibility is because he chose to swim against the current rather than with the current to the other line, was he could not see the other line. He is either lying about his location or lying about the current.

Both bolded passages are clearly your interpretation of his statements, your judgement that he was lying, and your determination of the reasons for his "lies". That doesn't fit in with:

The focus of this thread will NOT: 1) interject personal experience in order to bring a belief that Watson or others should have acted in a certain way;

This is the behavior that I originally described as "borderline offensive". I would hazard to say that the comments started relatively neutral, but became more biased as you went along. Possibly, the more time you spent working on this, the more the story impacted you and affected your writing?

Again, I have no problem with you expressing your view of the facts. I don't think I missed anything in your first post, and it would be too easy and trite to accuse you of missing something. Rather, I think you just lost objectivity as your feelings strengthened on the matter.

-bob

 

[Dadvocate]

You're right - I don't get it. First you say you all are not concerned with what is being said here affecting the potential jury pool - then you say that it is a problem when people in Queensland and Townsville read media reports that neither myself nor anyone on this board has absolutely anything to do with. None of those newspapers have picked up on what we have been saying about this case for all these years since day one. Why would they? They have direct access to investigators and witnesses. I don't see how examining and discussing this case on this board is fraught with problems. What "problems?"

This is becoming an exercise in futility. All of us say we should stop this endeavor; yet continue to keep it going. Are we secretly hoping for 200 pages in this thread and therefore must, a propos Manifest Destiny, push it ever onward? I guess I am no different in the end as this post illustrates.

Remember when you said that you were interested in facts, K-Girl? Let us set aside for the moment what constitutes actual facts at this juncture because several of us see facts needing to be presented outside of the media, whereas you don’t. That is fine. To each her own. Tangential to this, we now have this notion out of the blue that we are also critiquing you for hindering the potential jury pool because of your posts here. This is an amazing claim since I can’t for the life of me find this anywhere in the recent discussion. Perhaps I’ve missed something.

Since it is facts you claim are relevant with Gabe and his behavior, and given that you have shown province in tabulating his various statements filtered through the media to come to your conclusion, may I ask that you turn your astute efforts more inward, i.e. inward toward this monster thread of 114 pages? I ask this knowing that there is a great potential that you will ignore this request for explication just as you have my others, but I guess I am a glutton for punishment.

Here is your claim again:

First you say you all are not concerned with what is being said here affecting the potential jury pool - then you say that it is a problem when people in Queensland and Townsville read media reports that neither myself nor anyone on this board has absolutely anything to do with.

Could you back that up with a citation from any of us, please? I’ll go on record right now saying you will not find that citation from me. I admit that I have not read all of the pages in this thread. It is possible that I have missed this accusation from someone else. I vaguely remember someone saying as much many, many pages ago, but in recent pages this has not come up. So please do the honorable thing and back up this charge with a quote showing how even one of us who is engaged in this conversation at present has said what you are saying, that we “all” think you are negatively impacting the defense team’s ability to get a fair and impartial jury in Australia. Frankly, this is so far out of left field, I don’t really know how you gleaned this message from what has been said.

If you cannot come up with any of us stating this, then the burning question has to be why you are saying this is our issue with your posts and not what we are actually saying it is, namely that you refuse to accept that your opinion has been arrived at with an incomplete picture of the evidence. You’ve already said you accept this at least to some degree, so why is it that you keep morphing our objections into straw men and claiming things that simply are not true?

When I called you out for skewing our intent earlier and then for personally attacking Bsee, you ignored this, I am sorry to say. You should at least acknowledge the mistakes. Is that what will happen here as well?

I can speak for myself in saying categorically that I have never claimed this thread or participation in it would somehow impact the jury or this case in any way. I’ve said the “media” has done so, and I know Livinoz and In The Drink have said as much as well. But I’ve not asked for your journalistic credentials (nor have they), and I am a far cry away from using proper APA citation standards to quote what you have stated in this thread or the other. So, with no one currently taking issue with your posts based on them tampering with the jury pool, where does this charge come from other then from your own imagination, much akin to the personal slights you’ve said you have endured?

At least have the decency to disagree with what we are saying. That is a fair request, isn’t it?

Cheers!

 

[alohagal]

Oh Come on...I have been reading this thread. Liveinoz comes across like she is darn well concerned about a fair trial, tainted jurors, lynch mob mentality all thanks to media chicanery. I was perplexed as to her point. Did she want to shut down this thread so we can be just, fair, impartial and accountable (to whom)? We all know what rabble rousing lust and venom seekers the media are. I think most humans who are not in that business have disdain for them one way or the other. K-girl obviously is intrigued by this subject. She admits over and over again that all the evidence is not in. Okay...she is guilty of proferring her own opinion on the issues she put forth and might be verbose at doing so, while interjecting speculation that she forbode others to do on the so called "clean" thread. Big deal. Now you want to attack her every word, every nuance, every phrase just because you can...and there are no more "facts" at this point to muddle over until the trial starts.

I still want to know what is Liveinoz's point? What is it? She lives in Australia she is obviously getting the hell beat out of this story. I think we can all agree that everyone deserves a fair trial. Okay, the media are mainly blood sucking dogs. We can't trust them. That was taught to us in elementary school. So should we end this thread? Not discuss this subject until trial over?
Or do you just want to verbally flog K-girl ad-nauseum because she violated her own rules and you want her to cry uncle now? Hmmmmm? Okay K-girl cry uncle and stop analyzing your dead horse with such tainted bias.
How dare you! So there (tongue sticking out)

 

[K_girl]

bsee65 - This is what I said on the Issues thread:

"The focus of this thread will NOT: 1) interject personal experience in order to bring a belief that Watson or others should have acted in a certain way;"

The meaning here was I wanted to avoid any statements like - if she were my wife - I sure would have rescued no matter what. I keep re-reading what I originally wrote, and it seems clear to me and does not really apply where you applied it. I used an outside source for the analysis of currents such as how far a certain current speed will carry a diver in a certain period of time and how well a diver can swim against varying speeds of current. I did not use my own experience.

That aside, in the example you showed, I did say that he was lying when I should have said that if these statements are proven to be what he said, it is physically impossible to make it work, therefore the jury may conclude he is lying. Much of the thread does have the extra verbage, but there are examples where I just cut-to-the-chase as it were. Yes, I think as much time I took looking at the case, my bias leaned to guilty and it started showing. I originally intended to talk about issues as a "potential" to show guilt or innocence. I found it less and less feasible to argue to innocent side, other than to say, what sounds like a lie was really a mistake due to nerves. And those examples just keep piling up. So yes, I would say it has become increasingly difficult maintain objectivity after such a long period of looking at this stuff.

Therefore, I have requested that the Watson Issues thread be removed, along with all of my other posts.

 

[livinoz]

Oh Come on...I have been reading this thread. Liveinoz comes across like she is darn well concerned about a fair trial, tainted jurors, lynch mob mentality all thanks to media chicanery. I was perplexed as to her point. Did she want to shut down this thread so we can be just, fair, impartial and accountable (to whom)? We all know what rabble rousing lust and venom seekers the media are. I think most humans who are not in that business have disdain for them one way or the other. K-girl obviously is intrigued by this subject. She admits over and over again that all the evidence is not in. Okay...she is guilty of proferring her own opinion on the issues she put forth and might be verbose at doing so, while interjecting speculation that she forbode others to do on the so called "clean" thread. Big deal. Now you want to attack her every word, every nuance, every phrase just because you can...and there are no more "facts" at this point to muddle over until the trial starts.

I still want to know what is Liveinoz's point? What is it? She lives in Australia she is obviously getting the hell beat out of this story. I think we can all agree that everyone deserves a fair trial. Okay, the media are mainly blood sucking dogs. We can't trust them. That was taught to us in elementary school. So should we end this thread? Not discuss this subject until trial over?
Or do you just want to verbally flog K-girl ad-nauseum because she violated her own rules and you want her to cry uncle now? Hmmmmm? Okay K-girl cry uncle and stop analyzing your dead horse with such tainted bias.
How dare you! So there (tongue sticking out)

Oohh, I love a good verbal flogging!

Thanks for the best laugh I've had in ages alohagal!

Bye!

 

[bsee65]

bsee65 - This is what I said on the Issues thread:

"The focus of this thread will NOT: 1) interject personal experience in order to bring a belief that Watson or others should have acted in a certain way;"

The meaning here was I wanted to avoid any statements like - if she were my wife - I sure would have rescued no matter what. The meaning does not really apply where you applied it.

That's certainly not the way that passage comes across. My interpretation was that you intended to cleanly represent the evidence of the case in a relatively objective fashion and wanted to protect it from the back-and-forth speculation that occurs when people start trying to interpret an incomplete set of facts to extrapolate the rest of the story. We know from experience that such interpretation of the facts, if left unchecked, could result in a thread that spans 1000 posts, QED.

Your point seemed to be that all the back-and-forth can bury the facts in a massive pile of drivel, precluding a clean read. Of course, telling people how to interpret each piece of evidence or testimony before they can think about it for themselves also hinders the concept of a clean read, but apparently that wasn't your concern.

I attributed your other thread to the noble purpose of presenting an accurate picture of the knowledge base for this overall case. It seems you are saying that wasn't your intent. What do you suppose would happen to your "clean read" if the quizzical and fair-minded among us started questioning your interpretations on that thread? Personally, I suspect it would rapidly begin to look like this one, and that wouldn't benefit anyone. The fair thing, for someone who has that level of interest in the case, would be to glean any other plausible explanations for the respective issues that crop up in this thread and transcribe them to the other. That would still provide a more succinct summary, but it would be a lot closer to objective than it is now.

-bob

 

[alohagal]

That's certainly not the way that passage comes across. My interpretation was that you intended to cleanly represent the evidence of the case in a relatively objective fashion and wanted to protect it from the back-and-forth speculation that occurs when people start trying to interpret an incomplete set of facts to extrapolate the rest of the story. We know from experience that such interpretation of the facts, if left unchecked, could result in a thread that spans 1000 posts, QED.

Your point seemed to be that all the back-and-forth can bury the facts in a massive pile of drivel, precluding a clean read. Of course, telling people how to interpret each piece of evidence or testimony before they can think about it for themselves also hinders the concept of a clean read, but apparently that wasn't your concern.

I attributed your other thread to the noble purpose of presenting an accurate picture of the knowledge base for this overall case. It seems you are saying that wasn't your intent. What do you suppose would happen to your "clean read" if the quizzical and fair-minded among us started questioning your interpretations on that thread? Personally, I suspect it would rapidly begin to look like this one, and that wouldn't benefit anyone. The fair thing, for someone who has that level of interest in the case, would be to glean any other plausible explanations for the respective issues that crop up in this thread and transcribe them to the other. That would still provide a more succinct summary, but it would be a lot closer to objective than it is now.

-bob

Well Sherlock,

And there's the rub. There have been no plausible (counter) explanations for the respective issues cropping up in this thread to be transcribed to the other.

Wouldn't that be dandy if there were!! You know, like point-counterpoint. So get on with it. I have it from good authority that K-girl would welcome such on the "clean" thread. (even though it could be interpreted that you intended in telling people that the other thread is neither noble or fair set of facts nor evidence, that we know from experience is drivel and glean it an in-accurate knowledge base)

BTW: I think we found her guilty. We know her intent. And there are no pictures!!

Anyway...I am eagerly awaiting your plausible explanations. I will even volunteer to transcribe them for you. (foot tapping now)