Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[dann]

"A blow to the 'directed-energy' Havana Syndrome case"

Maybe Politico should consider this to be a blow to the kind of journalism that does nothing but quote sources in the CIA and their political allies. It may come as a surprise to Poltico, but many of us aren't surprised at all.
Maybe Politico should consider 'doing its own research'. Actual research!

Writing about the CIA and broader administration’s effort to uncover who and/or what is behind so-called Havana Syndrome attacks, they report “ntelligence officials have not found any hard evidence that points to a cause. There are no intelligence intercepts implicating an adversarial spy service. No one has detected microwaves, other readings of energy pulses or any other weapons that could be to blame.”
That’s surprising, not only because U.S. officials have told POLITICO and others that directed-energy attacks are surely the culprit — with some claiming Russia is behind them — but also because lawmakers openly state that that’s the answer.
But it’s hard to reconcile the NYT’s reporting and remarks by members of Congress that directed energy explains why hundreds of diplomats have suffered headaches, nausea, brain damage and other illnesses.
A blow to the 'directed-energy' Havana Syndrome case (Politico, Dec 3, 2021)

 

[dann]

Columnist at New Republic, Natalie Shure, gives her take on 'Havana Syndrome.'
Behind The Havana Syndrome: Not As Mysterious As Everyone Thinks, Research REVEALS False Narrative (The Hill, Dec 1, 2021)

Many of the comments are from people who are very offended because she doesn't stick to repeating the claims made by 'syndrome' sufferers and U.S. politicians.

In post 1048, I applauded Natalie Shure's most recent article in New Republic about the 'Havana Syndrome'.

 

[dann]

It think that this is simply a copy of the recent NYT article:
Review finds no answer to Havana syndrome mystery (Switzerland Times, Dec 2, 2021)

But it reminds me that the NYT article mentions that Mark Renzi, a 'Havana Syndrome' sufferer, claims that microwaves, directed energy (whatever) actually has been detected:

The government, Mr. Lenzi also said, has readings that show the presence of dangerous levels of microwave energy in China. In an unclassified workers’ compensation report he filed with the Labor Department, Mr. Lenzi recounted how his neighbor in China used a commercial detector to record high levels of microwave energy in the apartment next to his.
(...)
When the government says directed energy is a theory but there is no evidence, “That is simply not true,” Mr. Lenzi said
“They have readings, especially in Guangzhou,” he said.

I wonder why he (or the NYT) doesn't go into the details about what exactly those readings are. What kind of microwave energy at what levels?

 

[Planigale]

It think that this is simply a copy of the recent NYT article:
Review finds no answer to Havana syndrome mystery (Switzerland Times, Dec 2, 2021)

But it reminds me that the NYT article mentions that Mark Renzi, a 'Havana Syndrome' sufferer, claims that microwaves, directed energy (whatever) actually has been detected:



I wonder why he (or the NYT) doesn't go into the details about what exactly those readings are. What kind of microwave energy at what levels?

Also why if it was directed, it was directed at his neighbour?

 

[dann]

I am not sure, but when it says that "his neighbor in China used a commercial detector to record high levels of microwave energy in the apartment next to his," I assume that it is supposed to mean that the microwave energy was coming from that apartment. The neighbor he refers to may be the other Guangzhou 'syndrome' sufferer who lived in the apartment above Mark Lenzi and his family. See the CBS News article below.

Anyway, I wonder why a "security engineering officer" had to rely on a neighbor's use of "a commercial detector" to come up with the "reading" that he mentions.

One of those victims, current State Department official Mark Lenzi, sustained traumatic brain injuries while on assignment in Guangzhou, China, in late 2017, when he was working as a security engineering officer in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. It wasn’t until June 2018 that Lenzi was evaluated for directed-energy exposure, more than six months after first informing his superiors about his symptoms.
State Department tested diplomats for 'directed energy exposure' years before telling Congress - A whistleblower victim provided new documents to POLITICO and is alleging retaliation for speaking out. (Politico, Oct 25, 2021)

When he mentioned it on 60 Minutes in 2019, he didn't talk about any microwaves being actually measured, detected or recorded:

Scott Pelley: What sort of energy is this that we're talking about?
Mark Lenzi: I believe it's RF, radio frequency energy, in the microwave range.
Brain trauma suffered by U.S. diplomats abroad could be work of hostile foreign government (CBS News, March 17, 2019)

And the documents that Politico was so proud of having obtained don't mention any microwave measurements, recordings or detection:
Doc 1
Doc 2
Doc 3

Babalú Blog, a right-wing anti-Castro site, quotes Politico but has this title:
U.S. State Department hid the truth about Cuban sonic attacks from Congress, retaliated against whistleblower (Babalú Blog, Oct 26, 2021)

 

[dann]

Leading Theory

From the Fair Observer, Aug 20, 2021:

Leading theory
For government-led investigations, any theory, however improbable or utterly unlikely that points toward a hypothesis consistent with the requirements of the perpetrator’s agenda of political marketing.
Questions on Which No One Agrees: Infrastructure, Cuba and Jobs

 

[dann]

It has been five days since the NYT article Review Finds No Answers to Mystery of Havana Syndrome, and it seems like the mainstream media will continue to ignore it, probably waiting for new, unsubstantiated reports in line with the leading theory that the 'syndrome' is caused by attacks perpetrated by a menacing, undetectably and invisible enemy:

THERE WILL BE NO WAR, AND UKRAINE WILL NOT JOIN NATO: An uneasy stalemate is likely for months to come, with Moscow stirring the pot in the Mideast while supporting cyberwarfare against the U.S. The "Havana Syndrome" will persist, an increasingly menacing attempt to affect the health of U.S. embassy personnel.
AGF Management : High Stakes as Biden and Putin Talk; Threat of War is Greatly Exaggerated (MarketScreener, Dec 7, 2021)

There is no reason to assume that Mr. Burns will give up his favourite fantasy, and his people love him for it:

In another move seen as defending his workforce, he prioritised an investigation into the mysterious health effects that CIA officers first reported in 2016 as part of so-called Havana syndrome, meeting victims from day one and appointing a senior officer who helped find Osama bin Laden to head a team investigating its cause:

“There was an absolute sea change when Bill Burns took over,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a veteran former CIA field officer who ran clandestine operations and has suffered health problems. “This is the validation that we needed . . . I think he understands leadership.”
Joe Biden turns to spy chief for tricky diplomatic missions (Financial Times, Dec 6, 2021)

Too bad he doesn't understand mass psychogenic illness ...

 

[dann]

Was George W. Bush a 2007 victim of Russia-induced 'Havana Syndrome'? (Washington Examiner, Dec 8, 2021)

No!
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-examiner/

 

[dann]

The story about George W. Bush is so far out that not even the White House takes it seriously:

Q Karine, has the White House got a response to this story that came out saying that President — former President George W. Bush — this is speculating — might have been a target of a Havana Syndrome-type attack, based on the symptoms that he and the former First Lady experienced.
MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I mean, I can’t speak to anything that’s speculated. I — this is the first time I’m hearing about this report, and so I would have to go back and check with our team.
Press Gaggle by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre En Route Kansas City, MO (The White House, Dec 8, 2021)

This is the bill mentioned before that includes not only "anomalous health incidents, but also "unidentified aerial phenomena.

Havana syndrome, China and Afghanistan
On "anomalous health incidents," more colloquially known as Havana Syndrome, the bill authorizes the President to appoint a "senior official" to lead a "whole-of-government" effort to address the incidents, the summary states. The bill also creates a "Department of Defense cross functional team" to coordinate the Pentagon's response to the health incidents. The team will address "national security challenges," posed by the health incidents and ensure that those who have suffered from the incidents receive timely medical care, the bill states.
House passes bill authorizing $770 billion in Pentagon funding and setting Defense policy (CNN, Dec 8, 2021)

 

[dann]

I wonder why he (or the NYT) doesn't go into the details about what exactly those readings are. What kind of microwave energy at what levels?

There are more details in a CNN article today: State Department officer struck by Havana syndrome sues Blinken and agency for alleged disability discrimination (CNN, Dec 10, 2021)

The State Department officer in question is Mark Lenzi, the "he" mentioned in post 1143, who began to suffer from the 'syndrome' in Guangzhou. In many ways, he sounds more like a disgruntled employee than anything else:

Lenzi also claims that although he has received some disability accommodations, he has been placed in roles that are associated with salary tiers below his expertise level -- even though, he claims, those accommodations would not have precluded him from taking an overseas posting more commensurate with his experience.
The suit also alleges that "Mr. Lenzi would most likely have been promoted already if not for the Agency's discrimination and retaliation against him."

It wasn't clear in the NYT article who exactly had measured what. The CNN article says:

In the suit, Lenzi claims that a security engineering officer (SEO) conducted a technical inspection of the apartment of another State Department official who was medically evacuated from the country for symptoms similar to Lenzi's. But the engineering officer used microwave detection equipment that was "antiquated and out of date, was not working properly and was disfavored by SEOs who use this type of equipment frequently," the lawsuit says.
The engineering officer "told Mr. Lenzi that this technical inspection of the medevac'd officer's apartment was a 'check-the-box' exercise, and stated that (the Diplomatic Security Deputy Assistant Secretary of State) had expressly requested that this inferior device be used for the search," the suit claims.

Much like Patient Zero in Havana, he also 'spread the word' (and thus the condition):

Lenzi eventually moved his family out of their Guangzhou apartment of his own accord and sent an unclassified email to colleagues "warning them about the potential danger to their health and safety," according to the suit. That email prompted the State Department to order him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, Lenzi claims.

 

[dann]

Unlike the NYT article, Review Finds No Answers to Mystery of Havana Syndrome, mentioned in post 1141, the CNN story today about Mark Lenzi suing his employers is already all over the internet.

Washington Post wrote about it:

He said an agency-affiliated doctor refused to diagnose him with the condition, meaning he received less support than other colleagues.
(...)
He also alleges that after he sent a mass email to his colleagues warning of the potential harm, the State Department engaged in “crude and cruel” retaliation by ordering him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
U.S. diplomat said to have ‘Havana Syndrome’ sues State Dept. and Blinken, alleging discrimination (WP, Dec 10, 2021)

I am pretty sure that my doctor would also refuse to diagnose me with having come down with a bad case of being attacked by a directed microwave energy weapon and would then recommend some kind of psychiatric evaluation.
I seriously doubt that his current behavior will help him get the promotion that he's been hoping for ...

 

[dann]

Alien Attack? Mass Hysteria? Conspiracy?

More UFOs (or UAPs):

An interview with Garry Nolan, a Professor of Pathology at Stanford University, who became famous for doing gene-sequencing analysis of a skeleton that some people believed to be an alien, thus proving that it wasn't.

That ended up bringing me to the attention of some people associated with the CIA and some aeronautics corporations.
(...)
Then these guys showed up and said, ‘We need you to help us with this because we want to do blood analysis and everybody says that you've got the best blood analysis instrumentation on the planet.’ Then they started showing the MRIs of some of these pilots and ground personnel and intelligence agents who had been damaged.
(...)
How many patients did you take a look at in that first phase?
It was around 100 patients. They were almost all defense or governmental personnel or people working in the aerospace industry; people doing government-level work. Here's how it works: Let's say that a Department of Defense personnel gets damaged or hurt. Odd cases go up the chain of command, at least within the medical branch. If nobody knows what to do with it, it goes over to what's called the weird desk, where things get thrown in a bucket.
Stanford Professor Garry Nolan Is Analyzing Anomalous Materials From UFO Crashes (Vice, Dec 10, 2021)

"Odd cases go up the chain of command." That sounds even more like the Vatican Miracle Commission (post 1,140) than I thought!

You have a smorgasbord of patients, some of whom had heard weird noises buzzing in their head, got sick, etc. A reasonable subset of them had claimed to have seen UAPs and some claimed to be close to things that got them sick.
(...)
That was when we realized that these people were not damaged, but had an over-connection of neurons between the head of the caudate and the putamen.
(...)
If you looked at 100 average people, you wouldn’t see this kind of density. But these individuals had it. An open question is: did coming in contact with whatever it was cause it or not?
For a couple of these individuals we had MRIs from prior years. They had it before they had these incidents. It was pretty obvious, then, that this was something that people were born with.

Unfortunately, he is not at liberty to say how many of the brains he studied belonged to 'Havana Syndrome' sufferers and how many had had UFO encounters, and he probably wasn't even told, but ...

Did the people who claimed that they'd had an encounter, especially the pilots, describe any perceivable decrease in neurological capacity?
Of the 100 or so patients that we looked at, about a quarter of them died from their injuries. The majority of these patients had symptomology that's basically identical to what's now called Havana syndrome. We think amongst this bucket list of cases, we had the first Havana syndrome patients. Once this turned into a national security problem with the Havana syndrome I was locked out of all of the access to the files because it's now a serious potential international incident if they ever figured out who's been doing it.
That still left individuals who had seen UAPs. They didn't have Havana syndrome. They had a smorgasbord of other symptoms.

 

[dann]

Another Danish skeptic told me about this one:

Here’s what you’ll find in Skeptic Magazine 26.4 (2021): Havana Syndrome Hysteria and the Great Wild Goose Chase • Stupid Videos and Marketing Ploys • Environmental Conspiracies: Why do conspiracy theorists believe natural events are intentionally manipulated? • “You Can’t Say That!” Corporate Policing of Language • Excerpt from The Conjurer’s Conundrum: My Life in Magic & Skepticism • Vexed by the Un-Vaxxed • Misunderstanding Vaccines • Why Would God Create the Universe? • Distorting Darwinism • Electrohypersensitivity as a New Psychological Disorder • Reviews of Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity; Mysteries and Secrets Revealed; The Conjurer’s Conundrum; The Century of Deception • Special Investigation: Penguin Paradox — Serious Skeptical Lessons from an Apparently Silly Story
VOL. 26 NO. 4 HAVANA SYNDROME HYSTERIA (Skeptic, 2021)

 

[dann]

Alien Attack? Mass Hysteria? Conspiracy?

The Sun got hold of the interview with Garry Nolan in Vice and based an article almost entirely on that interview, and now the New York Post has reprinted the Sun article:
A look inside people’s brains who say they’ve had a UFO encounter (NYP, Dec 12, 2021).

The Sun and NYP are much more interested in UFOs (or UAPs) than in the 'syndrome', so they manage connect it with a recent NASA report that doesn't exclude the "possibility of extraterrestrial life existing" and with a story about a boulder photographed on the Moon, but in this version it's an actual hut:

The new X-Files-style unit will run on-the-ground investigations into UFOs, probe any “threat” posed by the craft, and oversee any efforts to “capture” them.
And China’s space agency has found a tiny hut on the Moon and dubbed it a “mysterious house” after spotting the cube on the far side of the lunar surface.

Let me propose a nuclear attack on that hut to make sure that all the directed microwave energy weapons that it contains will be gone forever. It will show the world as well as the galaxy that Biden means business, and it will give give some peace to the agents and diplomats who imagine that they have been harmed by those weapons.

 

[dann]

In post 1,140, I linked to the article Review Finds No Answers to Mystery of Havana Syndrome (NYT, Dec 2, 2021).

Peter Isackson criticizes the NYT article, The New York Times Manages the Unknown - The Times’ coverage of the Havana syndrome has become a running joke (Fair Observer, Dec 6, 2021), and points out that there is probably no reason to assume that it constitutes the end of almost five years of unsubstantiated speculations about attacks:

The authors expect readers to feel morally offended that the obdurate Russians “consistently” deny something that may not even exist. This is the ongoing mind-game that The Times has been playing regularly in its reporting on the Havana syndrome.
Historical Note
When the authors write, “so far, the C.I.A. has been unable to collect hard evidence to show…some sort of energy pulse,” they fail to mention that the agency has been at it for five years, with the usual unlimited budget to achieve its goal. “So far” indicates that there will be more budget and more time to keep alive the version The Times’ preferred version of the story.
(...)
“So far” reasoning can be a powerful tool of propaganda to plant an unverified story and make it survive for months, years or decades on end. All this is maintained while preventing serious investigators and historians from accessing the evidence that risks contradicting the preferred narrative.

 

[Puppycow]

Sabine Hossenfelder has a video on the subject.

 

[Orphia Nay]

The Sun got hold of the interview with Garry Nolan in Vice and based an article almost entirely on that interview, and now the New York Post has reprinted the Sun article:
A look inside people’s brains who say they’ve had a UFO encounter (NYP, Dec 12, 2021).

The Sun and NYP are much more interested in UFOs (or UAPs) than in the 'syndrome', so they manage connect it with a recent NASA report that doesn't exclude the "possibility of extraterrestrial life existing" and with a story about a boulder photographed on the Moon, but in this version it's an actual hut:



Let me propose a nuclear attack on that hut to make sure that all the directed microwave energy weapons that it contains will be gone forever. It will show the world as well as the galaxy that Biden means business, and it will give give some peace to the agents and diplomats who imagine that they have been harmed by those weapons.

Hahaha, "it's easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled".

 

[dann]

Sabine Hossenfelder has a video on the subject.

Been there.

 

[dann]

Hahaha, "it's easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled".

I could not find an English translation of these paragraphs, so this is my translation from Danish:

In Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse §408, Hegel writes that when you are dealing with people who are insane, you should grasp onto the rest of reason that they still have left by using the specific delusion, the fixed idea, as your starting point:

"Thus, you can often cure them by giving them the impression that you accept their distorted point of view and then suddenly do something that makes the insane person see a liberation from his imaginary malady. A well-known example is an Englishman who thought that he had a cartload of hay, as well as the cart and four horses, in his stomach. He was liberated from this delusion by a doctor who won his trust by assuring him that he could actually feel the cart and the four horses and then convincing him that he had a way to shrink this thing in his stomach. Then he gave the insane person an emetic and had him throw up out of the window when the doctor had ordered a hay cart to go by outside, a hay cart, which the insane person imagined that he had thrown up."

In this way the insane person can "see" that he has got rid of the malady. When he has thus been freed from his delusion, you can talk to him about the actual problem. Similarly in another one of Hegel's examples from the same place:

"Another one thought that he was dead, he didn't move and would not eat anything. He came to his senses when they - apparently accepting his insanity - put him in a coffin in a crypt next to another person who, at first, pretended that he was dead, but soon after he had been left alone with the insane person, he sat up and told him that he was pleased that he now had company in death, and in the end he got up and ate some of the food that had been placed in the crypt and told the insane person that he had been dead for a long time already and thus knew the ways of the dead. The insane person was assuaged by this assurance, ate and drank too, and was cured."
https://www.skeptica.dk/?p=1171

So nuking the 'Chinese hut' on the dark side of the Moon is the most rational solution I can come up with in the current situation.


ETA: But they should get the Chinese camera bot out the way before the nuking begins. Otherwise, there may be an international incident. A real one, not an anomalous health one!

 

[dann]

Peter Savodnik's analysis of the 'syndrome':

“Look, there are fair instances of *******,” a former State Department official now working in another government agency said. American military and intelligence personnel generally expect more aggressive harassment while on duty overseas. “But the targeting of diplomats is very different. Diplomats are, by definition, not supposed to be ****** with in that regard.”
(...)
The real *******, as it were, is not Russian agents causing American spies and diplomats a great deal of suffering. That’s awful, if it’s true. It’s awful no matter the cause. The real ******* is that, five years after Havana Syndrome came to America, five years after America veered off its prescribed historical-political course, we remain convinced that the very bad thing that is happening to us is being imposed from the outside—a mysterious force infiltrating our homes and warping our brains. That whatever this is must be someone else’s fault. That it can’t be us.
The Attacks - Is Havana Syndrome a secret super weapon? Or a social contagion? (Common Sense, Dec 8, 2021)

The article uses actual words, not reproducible here at the ISF, for ******* and ******.