Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[Checkmite]

Now, what I would really like to know is: What would it look like if you “de-noised and filtered” (Checkmite) a recording of crickets?!

Being in the same pitch frequency as the sound crickets make doesn't mean the sound was made by crickets. Leonard Cohen's singing voice is in the same band as common human belching; it doesn't mean he's belching rather than singing.

Comparing the noise to "crickets" was an attempt to describe it by analogy. When someone tells you their car engine is making a "ting ting ting ting ting" sound, you're not intended to interpret that as "the car literally sounds like a falsetto human voice saying 'ting ting ting ting ting', so that's probably exactly what it is". A single listen to the video clip is all it takes to verify the sound was definitely not made by "crickets".

 

[dann]

¿WHAT KIND OF CRICKET? ¿A PARANORMAL CRICKET?

Your imaginary scenarios are brilliant, Checkmite, but you forget a couple of things.

First of all, good old Occam's razor, of course, which in this case would be: If it sounds like crickets, it probably is because it is crickets. On the other hand, I have actually confused a cricket (just the one) with electronic sounds, indoors, in the basement of my place of work, and mainly because when you’re dealing with just the one of them, it tends to come at very regular intervals the way you would expect from a piece of electronic equipment, in particular in a basement in a big building where there’s lots of other stuff making (to me) inexplicable noises. I probably would have stuck to my idea of it being caused by electronics if I hadn’t asked one of the janitors what it was. (The building is close to a couple of parks with many crickets, so it’s not strange that one of them occasionally strays and ends up there.)

However, as I've already mentioned, when I'm in Cuba and I hear the sound of crickets, I tend to assume that the sound comes from crickets, and even though my hearing is becoming increasingly impaired, that doesn’t seem to be a bad assumption. And so far, the correlation between hearing loss and Cuban crickets hasn’t made me suspect that my impaired hearing is caused by the crickets. But then again, I also never had reason to suspect that Cubans might be out to get me for spying on them or trying to destabilize their society – mainly because I wasn’t.
(But if any Cuban high-tech contra-espionage operatives are reading this: I sure could do with a bit of Cuban ingenuity to help me with the problem of not-quite-properly-functioning hearing aids: With your superior talents in the field of acoustics, it shouldn’t pose any big problem! Please?!!)

I only ever ride motorcycles - never had as much as a driver's license for a car - but if I ever came across a sound emanating from any of those, literally sounding "like a falsetto human voice", I would probably have my hearing aid checked before I put myself in the embarrassing situation of having to give your description to a mechanic. (As it is, I've already had to give plenty of embarrassing descriptions of engine malfunctions to mechanics since my skill set tends to be rather … academic.)
A lot of singing does sound like burping to me nowadays, but as long as I’m able to understand the words of Leonard Cohen, I don’t confuse the two.
But I would find it interesting to have both burping and Leonard Cohen exposed to the kind of manipulation that was done to the recordings of the US ‘diplomats’, i.e. to have them “de-noised and filtered” by the CIA experts.

Because this is what you seem to forget: There’s a reason why the crickets in your video clip no longer sound like crickets!

My guess is that right now there’s a lot of damage control going on in Langley, Virginia. They already had to come up with a credible and not too embarrassing explanation for why their field agents in Havana are behaving like a bunch of highly strung teenage schoolgirls, and now they also have to deal with the recordings of crickets and try to make them sound like something else … like, for instance, how you would imagine that a supersonic commie device would sound in a paranoid sci-fi movie from the 1950s.
And let me assure you, Checkmite and theprestige, that this comparison isn’t meant to be condescending: I think that I already mentioned that as a high-school teacher, I actually tend to hold teenage schoolgirls, even when highly strung, in much higher regard than I do American spies!

But still, I am able to empathize with these guys, I mean, with the old JFK documents about to be released, having to work for the Trump Administration and everything. So a piece of advice: There’s already a bunch of guys who are experts in the field of taking recordings, both visual and audio, of everyday phenomena and turning them into suspicious, sinister stuff.
Let them handle the Havana tapes from now on. You should not leave that job to a bunch of, let's face it, amateurs! And if they would want to discuss any of this, i.e. high-tech super-sonic commie sneak attacks, we have a whole section of the forum dedicated to just that!

 

[dann]

PS Since I started this thread, I've been reading up on mass hysteria and mass psychogenic illness. I can recommend the book A Colorful History of Popular Delusions by Robert E. Bartholomew and Peter Hassall, in particular chapter 7, "Anxiety Hysteria: The Power of Sudden Fear", and chapter 12, "Small Group Panics: People Who Scared Themselves."
The latter mentions that

A person's education level or training offers little protection from making such mistakes (misidentifying a variety of phenomena). For instance, it is often said that the police are "trained observers" (and, I assume, spies probably are too!), yet this does not render them immune from identifying the wrong suspect or mistaking a light in the sky for an extraterrestrial spaceship.

or, I guess, mistaking crickets for …

I can also recommend that anybody affected by supersonic attacks in the future go see a proper medical doctor, preferably a Cuban one! I am pretty sure that the Cuban medical staff would not be as prejudiced as American doctors who've been handling the cases so far. What these patients seem to need more than anything else is a doctor who is open to the diagnosis that it's all in the head!

 

[dann]

It's been reported that many of the complainers reported different symptoms, but you don't have enough information to justify reframing that as if there are absolutely no similar symptoms between any two alleged victims.

(My emphasizing, of course, dann)

Are you aware of the way that psychogenic 'diseases' spread? People talk, they communicate. Sometimes they emulate the symptoms that they've heard about. Sometimes they simply interpret other actual symptoms that aren't even indicative of anything malignant as if they were a part of the same thing (which, of course, they then also are!) - as in the case of the tourist at Hotel Capri … and, of course, the sound of Jiminy and his friends …

But let me start somewhere else since you seem to think that the symptoms in this case might also be caused by something other than sounds:

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK has a very recent (Oct. 28, 2007) article about The Sound of a Ghost. In one of the paragraphs, we hear about a woman who had delusions and weird symptoms. She was fortunate enough to contact a group of rational ’ghost busters’. They suspected carbon monoxide poisoning:

- I did some research, and auditive hallucinations, chest tightness and a permanent feeling of fear all turned out to be symptoms of this, Poppy tells us at the American conference ”TED”.
And the very same night, she finds a gas leak in the house, and the symptoms disappeared as soon as it had been repaired.

The article also mentions vibrations and infrasound and the symptoms they may cause, but when I tend to find all of this completely irrelevant in the context of the 'diplomatic incident' in Havana, it’s because I think that you are doing approximately the same things as a lot of the woos in this forum:

Face it, we’re dealing with a conspiracy theory - like some of us suspected from the beginning. The symptoms mentioned in all the news stories don’t add up to anything real, they don’t point in the direction of an actual disease, and the only reason why the search for outlandish explanations (e.g. science-fiction weapons) started in the first place is that this is what the patients not only want, but apparently also need to believe. Very often the authorities will do their utmost to fight this kind of superstition: They did so in the case of the MMR scare, they are doing it in Denmark in the case of the HPV-vaccine scare, but in the case of the suspected Cuban-sonic-attack scare (now on a Wikipedia near you!), the authorities seem to be encouraging the delusion instead of handling it the way it should be handled if they actually wanted it to go away, which, of course, they don’t. So no wonder that it has now not only spread to other countries (i.e. Canada), but has become truly science-fictional by transgressing the usually accepted limits of the spacetime continuum and affecting a guy who stayed at the Hotel Capri a couple of years ago!!!

We already have the explanation: We are dealing with WMHs (Weapons of Mass Hallucination) not WMDs! And just like we shouldn’t start looking for what might cause the dowsing rod to move when we already know about the ideomotor effect, we shouldn’t accept ’water memory’ as the explanation for the healing powers of homeopathy when we already know that it has none of those, and we also shouldn’t be looking for ghosts when the symptoms point us in the direction of carbon monoxide poisoning:
In the case of the US spies in Havana, we shouldn’t be looking for imaginary high-tech contraptions that just might cause symptoms similar to the ones exhibited by the people working at the US Embassy in Cuba because there is no such thing!

 

[Butter!]

Wow, I think that Wiki has an edit war going on. It currently has "[citation needed]" after nearly every sentence in the section describing the effects, and someone slipped in a declarative sentence about wind farms having similar effects on people.

Yikes.

 

[dann]

It doesn't surprise me at all!
Over the years since I started to take an interest in this theme, I've seen an awful number of lies about Cuba. Unfortunately, when they become blatantly obvious, the evidence tends to disappear as in this case of alleged police brutality.
However, the science-fiction story about the US diplomats is so big and has been spread worldwide, so they'll never be able to remove it.

 

[Checkmite]

Your imaginary scenarios are brilliant, Checkmite, but you forget a couple of things.

First of all, good old Occam's razor, of course, which in this case would be: If it sounds like crickets, it probably is because it is crickets. On the other hand, I have actually confused a cricket (just the one) with electronic sounds, indoors, in the basement of my place of work, and mainly because when you’re dealing with just the one of them, it tends to come at very regular intervals the way you would expect from a piece of electronic equipment, in particular in a basement in a big building where there’s lots of other stuff making (to me) inexplicable noises. I probably would have stuck to my idea of it being caused by electronics if I hadn’t asked one of the janitors what it was. (The building is close to a couple of parks with many crickets, so it’s not strange that one of them occasionally strays and ends up there.)

I think this is obtuse; I can't believe anybody can honestly watch that video clip and say with a straight face "yes this sounds like crickets to me".

Here is the sound of an actual cricket, for reference. There is one strikingly apparent characteristic of the sound that someone cannot help but notice, which is wholly absent in the Cuba recording.

 

[Checkmite]

(My emphasizing, of course, dann)

Are you aware of the way that psychogenic 'diseases' spread? People talk, they communicate. Sometimes they emulate the symptoms that they've heard about. Sometimes they simply interpret other actual symptoms that aren't even indicative of anything malignant as if they were a part of the same thing (which, of course, they then also are!) - as in the case of the tourist at Hotel Capri … and, of course, the sound of Jiminy and his friends …

And this special situation - is this something you are aware of, that medical doctors are not?

 

[dann]

I don't know. You would have to ask an MD. Why would that be important?!

 

[dann]

Here is the sound of an actual cricket, for reference. There is one strikingly apparent characteristic of the sound that someone cannot help but notice, which is wholly absent in the Cuba recording.

That is because it hasn't been properly

de-noised and filtered

yet!

 

[dann]

An audio tape was released recently which allegedly sounds to some victims exactly like what they heard in the U.S. Embassy and in some of their homes. What it really sounds exactly like is a group of giant love-struck crickets on steroids.
(…)
One huge question remains for this observer: Why have no Cubans been victims of the attacks?
I have an answer.
Cubans are not stupid. In fact, they’re quite clever. They’re taught, even as young pioneers, to avoid large gatherings of love-struck crickets on steroids— if they want to grow up to be like Che.
Michael Ritchie: Sonic Attacks: Cubans Don’t Take Them Sitting Down (Havana Times, Oct. 19, 2017)

 

[Sherkeu]

I think this is obtuse; I can't believe anybody can honestly watch that video clip and say with a straight face "yes this sounds like crickets to me".

Here is the sound of an actual cricket, for reference. There is one strikingly apparent characteristic of the sound that someone cannot help but notice, which is wholly absent in the Cuba recording.

That's just one cricket. If you have a zillion of them, it sounds very different. And loud!
See this video (made in 2012). There are many many more like it.



Another one (with cicadas too!):


The released recording sounds similar. Just has a higher pitch as if its been sped up.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Wow, I think that Wiki has an edit war going on. It currently has "[citation needed]" after nearly every sentence in the section describing the effects, and someone slipped in a declarative sentence about wind farms having similar effects on people.

Yikes.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

And this special situation - is this something you are aware of, that medical doctors are not?

I'm pretty sure the docs seeing these folks are for the most part aware of the hysteria diagnosis.

Another bit of medical practice you have been ignoring is how one approaches a patient with hysteria or psychogenic illness. You don't slap them like in the movies and tell them to snap out of it.

Telling the patient they aren't experiencing what they are telling you they are experiencing will not help anyone, especially the patient.

You always look for everything possible on the differential and carefully word your diagnosis, both because getting paid often relies on coding the diagnosis properly even if you have to conflate the presenting diagnosis with the final diagnosis (dare I say lie?), and because you almost never approach a patient telling them it's all in their head or they are lying.

 

[Checkmite]

I'm pretty sure the docs seeing these folks are for the most part aware of the hysteria diagnosis.

Another bit of medical practice you have been ignoring is how one approaches a patient with hysteria or psychogenic illness. You don't slap them like in the movies and tell them to snap out of it.

Telling the patient they aren't experiencing what they are telling you they are experiencing will not help anyone, especially the patient.

You always look for everything possible on the differential and carefully word your diagnosis, both because getting paid often relies on coding the diagnosis properly even if you have to conflate the presenting diagnosis with the final diagnosis (dare I say lie?), and because you almost never approach a patient telling them it's all in their head or they are lying.

Interesting. A doctor can diagnose a patient with hysteria without telling them or anyone else so, such circumstance thus recognizable by lay individuals as a hysteria diagnosis.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Interesting. A doctor can diagnose a patient with hysteria without telling them or anyone else so, such circumstance thus recognizable by lay individuals as a hysteria diagnosis.

Yes, in the same way I wouldn't tell an antivaxxer patient outright they believe in nonsense, there are ways one approaches a patient under some circumstances. You balance effectiveness with facts in approaching some subjects with patients.

But in these cases, for example, a provider might say a patient has hearing loss and not say definitively what the cause is. The patient then reports to the news media, the doctor confirmed I have hearing loss. That doctor did not diagnose damage due to a sonic weapon.

You got any doctor's statement confirming a secret weapon caused X?


Are you interested in anything that doesn't support your preconceived conclusion there really is a sooper secret evil weapon that defies physics? Just curious.

 

[dann]

Interesting. A doctor can diagnose a patient with hysteria without telling them or anyone else so, such circumstance thus recognizable by lay individuals as a hysteria diagnosis.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the way that outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness should be handled:

Response to outbreaks
Timothy F. Jones, of the Tennessee Department of Health recommends the following action be taken in the case of an outbreak:
• Attempt to separate persons with illness associated with the outbreak.
• Promptly perform physical examination and basic laboratory testing sufficient to exclude serious acute illness.
• Monitor and provide oxygen as necessary for hyperventilation.
• Minimize unnecessary exposure to medical procedures, emergency personnel, media or other potential anxiety-stimulating situations.
• Notify public health authorities of apparent outbreak.
• Openly communicate with physicians caring for other patients.
• Promptly communicate results of laboratory and environmental testing to patients.
• While maintaining confidentiality, explain that other people are experiencing similar symptoms and improving without complications.
• Remind patients that rumors and reports of "suspected causes" are not equivalent to confirmed results.
• Acknowledge that symptoms experienced by the patient are real.
• Explain potential contribution of anxiety to the patient's symptoms.
• Reassure patient that long-term sequelae from current illness are not expected.
• As appropriate, reassure patient that thorough clinical, epidemiologic and environmental investigations have identified no toxic cause for the outbreak or reason for further concern.
Some responses by authorities to MPI are not appropriate. Intense media coverage seems to exacerbate outbreaks. Once it is determined that the illness is psychogenic, it should not be given credence by authorities. For example, in the Singapore factory case study, calling in a medicine man to perform an exorcism seemed to perpetuate the outbreak.

Mass Psychogenic Illness: Response to outbreaks (Wikipedia)

So far I've seen no reports about medicine men being asked to treat the US 'diplomats', but you never know …

 

[Checkmite]

That's just one cricket. If you have a zillion of them, it sounds very different. And loud!
See this video (made in 2012). There are many many more like it.

For the first time, I've heard the audio analog of a "potato quality" cell phone video.

The thing about a mass of crickets though is that it sounds like a mass of crickets; that is, the sound is omnidirectional and there is a certain quality of vastness, almost like an echo, that lends the impression of a multitude of sources. You cannot stand outside your door and listen to a chorus of crickets and ever get the idea all that sound came from a single object. I can personally attest to this because I actually live in a rural area where I have listened to masses of crickets literally every night until just this past week when the weather finally turned enough to quiet them down. The alleged Cuban recording does not have that quality.

One could say "well the recording device initially used must have flattened out the sound", I suppose in the way that digital cameras tend to flatten images by washing out contrast. Maybe that's true, but that's the beginning of a layer cake of supposition that will eventually be required just to maintain the idea's viability as an alternative. And even ignoring that, we still can't get past the fact that it only remains an alternative explanation, one that there's no particular reason to favor over the idea that the sound is electronic in origin.

 

[dann]

That's just one cricket. If you have a zillion of them, it sounds very different. And loud!
See this video (made in 2012). There are many many more like it.

Another one (with cicadas too!):

The released recording sounds similar. Just has a higher pitch as if its been sped up.

Are you absolutely certain that they've not been manipulated? Do they come from a reliable source? They sure sound like super-sonic space blaster guns to me!

 

[dann]

For the first time, I've heard the audio analog of a "potato quality" cell phone video.

The thing about a mass of crickets though is that it sounds like a mass of crickets; that is, the sound is omnidirectional and there is a certain quality of vastness, almost like an echo, that lends the impression of a multitude of sources. You cannot stand outside your door and listen to a chorus of crickets and ever get the idea all that sound came from a single object. I can personally attest to this because I actually live in a rural area where I have listened to masses of crickets literally every night until just this past week when the weather finally turned enough to quiet them down. The alleged Cuban recording does not have that quality.

So now you're blaming the Youtube videos for not being surround sound?!

One could say "well the recording device initially used must have flattened out the sound", I suppose in the way that digital cameras tend to flatten images by washing out contrast. Maybe that's true, but that's the beginning of a layer cake of supposition that will eventually be required just to maintain the idea's viability as an alternative. And even ignoring that, we still can't get past the fact that it only remains an alternative explanation, one that there's no particular reason to favor over the idea that the sound is electronic in origin.

No, the only problem is that the Youtube crickets haven't been flattened enough. I already told you: They haven't yet been properly

de-noised and filtered

Alphaba may be able to help you with that.

That the US diplomat crisis in Havana is psychogenic in nature only remains an alternative expiation that there's no particular reason to favor over the idea that it is caused by super-sonic weapons, in approximately the same way that evolution remains an alternative explanation that there's no particular reason to favor over the idea of creationism.