JEFF CHILDERS
☕️ Coffee & Covid 2024

CNN ran a story yesterday headlined, “Cargo ship lost power before colliding with Baltimore bridge; 6 presumed dead.” By now, most of you have already heard about the dramatic collapse of Baltimore’s gigantic Francis Scott Key bridge, after a container ship knocked out one of two key pylons holding the whole thing up. And the media is already corporately lying, at least by omission.

The collision was recorded from a number of vantage points. The videos show a towering boat piled high with shipping containers heading directly toward one of the bridge’s key support columns (0:44), running with into it, and sending a massive stretch of the bridge rapidly crashing into the icy river water. The initial collision triggered a chain reaction as adjacent parts of the bridge quickly collapsed in sequence, running right down the line, dropping straight down like giant steel dominos.

As you know or could easily imagine, the hot takes are off the chain. And I’m talking about the official hot takes. Even before the crew was interviewed, the federal agencies and top federal officials like Biden and Buttigieg insisted the collision was one hundred percent accidental and it was not any kind of terrorist cyberattack, no way, no how, don’t even think that.

But the feds’ early, shrill, and repetitive denials of any outside agency just made doubters that much more suspicious.

The errant ship was the massive Dali, 984-feet long and 157-feet wide, weighing 100,000 tons, registered in Singapore, and owned by international shipping giant Maersk. So far what we know is that, as the Dali approached the bridge, its electrical system suddenly shut down. In other words, right at the worst possible time, it lost its engine power, electrical power, and steering and was adrift in a complete blackout.

Some videos seem to show the ship’s power going out twice, as though the crew tried to restart or reboot the power, but then it quickly shuts off again (0:56). It also looks like the ship cleared the bridge, but then the power went out (the second time) and it drifted back into the key pylon. These facts weren’t included in corporate media reports, so they may or may not be accurate. It’s just what it looks like from the video, from that particular vantage.

Why would anyone ever suspect a sudden, unexplained power outage at a critical moment could possibly be a cyberattack? I mean, come on people. Quit talking nonsense.

Miraculously, the crew sent out a “mayday” moments before the collision, and heroic Baltimore police frantically cleared the bridge, minimizing casualties. No recordings or transcripts of the mayday have been published that I could find. As of this morning, the only casualties were from a pothole repair crew that were plunged into the icy waters when the bridge collapsed.

It could have been much, much worse.

Believe it or not, the Francis Scott Key bridge is a critical part of the entire nation’s supply chain. Its catastrophic collapse cannot possibly be repaired for years. Officials are already talking about significant damage to our country’s supply chain, increased costs for consumer goods and energy, and so forth. It is not just an inconvenience. For a cascade of interrelated reasons, the destruction of this particular bridge was incalculably injurious to our economy.

One wild, random fact reported in CNN’s article was that thirteen vaguely-described shipping containers marked as unidentified CDC bio-hazmat were somehow damaged in the collision and are being “secured.” I’ll just leave that one right there.

USA Today reported, without explanation, that no Maersk personnel were on board at the time of the collision. Here’s where things really start to get weird. Something strange is going on with the reporting over the identity of the captain and crew: the media refuses to report their identity or even hint at it. The USA Today article even named a local, Andrew Middleton, who took the captain and crew shopping the day before. They named Andrew — the only guy who wasn’t on the boat — but none of the crew. Not one. Not even by first name.

CNN’s article referred multiple times to the “pilot of the ship” without naming him — including in a sentence that happily named a lawyer for a ship pilot’s association. A lawyer, Clay Diamond, who also wasn’t on the boat.

The Daily Mail UK claimed the Dali was being piloted by a local crew of specialists who know the channel, but that claim was not reported anywhere else. Misdirection? Accurate?

If I were a betting man, I’d bet the feds invoked some kind of emergency media authority and told reporters not to talk about the crew. Otherwise I can’t explain why all the stories won’t say one way or the other whether the crew’s names are known.

It doesn’t mean much, but when I asked Grok who was the Dali’s captain, it lied. It glowingly described a “Captain John Smith” with “20 years of seafaring experience.” I confronted it and it copped to spreading misinformation:

Uh huh.

CNN also reported that NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy gave a press conference during which she refused to identify “the nationality of the crew.”

That’s the extent of media and official weirdness I found so far this morning.

Online commenters were not amused, and the majority of speculation seems to be that the collision was intentional. Award-winning investigative journalist Lara Logan claims to have heard from anonymous intelligence-agency workers who are certain this was a cyberattack (13:23). It hasn’t even been a full day and for some reason Joe Biden is awake, medicated, and has already pledged to pay for the full cost of rebuilding the bridge. Why? Why did they wake up Joe? Why shouldn’t Maersk and the various insurers pay for the bridge that their boat crashed into?

Maybe the feds want to quiet the whole thing down, and the last thing they need is a bunch of lawsuits with cross-discovery and depositions and subpoenas and experts and inspections trying to figure out exactly what happened and who is to blame. I’m just saying.

One TikToker claiming to be a former Coast Guard engineer asked, where’s the pilot boat (0:57)? Where were the tugboats? Why didn’t the Dali sound its horn before the collision? Like, sound its horn a LOT? He noted without comment how closely the bridge strike followed the dreadful Moscow Crocus City Hall attack, implying (I think) possible Russian retribution against the US.

Online commenters continue to do the media’s job, since the media refuses to do its job anymore. Some video analysts show what appear to be a series of electrical explosions popping off right along the points where each successive bridge segment collapsed. Some commenters claim these look like explosive charges (0:34). Others say it’s just an electrical conduit that runs along that area, and the small explosions and smoke are due to breaking electric cables.

There were only two key pylons and the Dali hit one, just right

It is way too early to draw any conclusions. We haven’t even heard from the crew about what happened on board. It could be, as the feds insist, just a horrific accident. If so, it was a truly terrible accident bursting with bad luck; every single thing that could have gone wrong (except the mayday) went wrong. The Dali was in the perfect spot in the channel right when its power went off, so it could drift right into the most vulnerable part of Francis Scott Key bridge, and hit the bridge just right to create a complete catastrophic loss of a billion-dollar transportation conduit.

The current was just right. The tide was just right. The power outages were just right. The boat was in just the right spot when it happened. And anything that could have made the accident less damaging to our infrastructure did not happen.

Federal authorities were either crazy or lying when they ruled out a cyberattack. And corporate media is obviously collaborating to hide or obscure certain facts — like the crew’s identity — creating reason to be suspicious.

What else are they hiding?

Personally, these days I am automatically suspicious of any infrastructure disaster. We’ve seen the tit-for-tat strikes on our refineries and manufacturing plants. And just a few days ago, Moscow suffered a dreadful and tragic terrorist attack. Putin hinted that the US was involved. And then within a few days, a major bridge goes down. I also find it fascinating that the Russians are already mad at us for repeatedly trying to help Ukraine blow up the Russians’ key Kerch Bridge in Crimea.

Key bridge for key bridge? Or just an unhappy coincidence? What do youthink?

We’ll know a lot more soon. Stay tuned.

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https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/falling-down-wednesday-march-27-2024?utm