This is the dawning of
And then there are the paragraphs about Relman and his NAS report!
Good article!
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Good article!
Yeah, it's a great article, but unfortunately there is also still stuff like this from Salon:
Salon is referring to the time when they published an article about David Relman's so-called expert panel's report a few weeks after the ODNI report was released.
And the State Department will probably continue to make statements like this:
Not that it's wrong. Their symptoms, their pain, and their experiences are indeed real. It's just that their interpretations of those experiences as having been caused by DEW attacks are delusional, and it can no longer come as a surprise to the State Department, Blinken, Burns etc. how the general public and an awful lot of journalists also interpret statements talkning about real symptoms, pain and experiences.
Lawyer Mark Zaid and Salon are aware of this when they use weasel words like "It is believed":
No, it is not believed, at least not by anybody in the know, that the "Moscow Signal" was weponized. Nobody asks that question. They know that The thing" was indeed a listening device. And nobody but the uninformed or willingly ignorant asks if the "Moscow Signal" has been weaponized and is now a handheld device. It only is in the 'syndrome' narrative. Not in reality.
Another important part of Mark Zaid's agenda is to distance himself (and his clients!) from the targeted individuals (TIs) the same way he has distanced himself and his clients from the recordings of the cricket sounds:
The TIs ain't gonna like that. His message about them is repeated throughout the article and probably also in the podcast interview, which I haven't listened to yet. It's obviously very important to Zaid.
No, the wide range of symptoms couldn't be traced back to any kind of energy weapons. If they had been traced back, Zaid and Salon would have published the evidence of that tracing back a long time ago, but Relman's report traced nothing back to anything other than imagination.
Considering that the 'syndrome' symptoms have allegedly already been traced back to DEWs, it's really funny to see the next claim. Salon has interviewed an anonymous source who is very fond of the word if:
Now the imaginary weapon is no longer just untraced. It has become untraceable - just like Carl Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage (Rational Wiki).
However, Salon's source has more of the same. Every time accompanied by the if.
I hope this is a sign that Mark Zaid and Salon have noticed that their iceberg has been melting away for quite some time at this point.
Salon is referring to the time when they published an article about David Relman's so-called expert panel's report a few weeks after the ODNI report was released.
And the State Department will probably continue to make statements like this:
Not that it's wrong. Their symptoms, their pain, and their experiences are indeed real. It's just that their interpretations of those experiences as having been caused by DEW attacks are delusional, and it can no longer come as a surprise to the State Department, Blinken, Burns etc. how the general public and an awful lot of journalists also interpret statements talkning about real symptoms, pain and experiences.
Lawyer Mark Zaid and Salon are aware of this when they use weasel words like "It is believed":
No, it is not believed, at least not by anybody in the know, that the "Moscow Signal" was weponized. Nobody asks that question. They know that The thing" was indeed a listening device. And nobody but the uninformed or willingly ignorant asks if the "Moscow Signal" has been weaponized and is now a handheld device. It only is in the 'syndrome' narrative. Not in reality.
Another important part of Mark Zaid's agenda is to distance himself (and his clients!) from the targeted individuals (TIs) the same way he has distanced himself and his clients from the recordings of the cricket sounds:
The TIs ain't gonna like that. His message about them is repeated throughout the article and probably also in the podcast interview, which I haven't listened to yet. It's obviously very important to Zaid.
No, the wide range of symptoms couldn't be traced back to any kind of energy weapons. If they had been traced back, Zaid and Salon would have published the evidence of that tracing back a long time ago, but Relman's report traced nothing back to anything other than imagination.
Considering that the 'syndrome' symptoms have allegedly already been traced back to DEWs, it's really funny to see the next claim. Salon has interviewed an anonymous source who is very fond of the word if:
Now the imaginary weapon is no longer just untraced. It has become untraceable - just like Carl Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage (Rational Wiki).
However, Salon's source has more of the same. Every time accompanied by the if.
I hope this is a sign that Mark Zaid and Salon have noticed that their iceberg has been melting away for quite some time at this point.
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I have now listened to the podcast with Mark Zaid mentioned in the previous post:
At this point, he seems to have gone full conspiracy nut, while denying that he has.
His only piece of hard 'evidence' appears to be this old document, which I already mentioned in post 2,007:
I am not an expert on NSA documents, but to me this reads like, 'Somebody reported having overheard somebody talking about a weapon that could do all sorts of awful things, but we never actually saw such a weapon, and nothing whatsoever indicates that Mr. Beck was exposed to such a weapon'.
Somehow, I can't imagine that Mark Zaid isn't aware of this, so let me use the if, which is so popular in claims about the imaginary 'syndrome':
If Mark Zaid is fully aware that he hasn't actually got the slightest piece of evidence that his clients have been the targets of DEW attacks, then he is leading them on and should be ashamed of himself.
"Without leaving evidence" is as ingenious as the "untraceable ability to harm, permanently disable or even kill" mentioned in my previous post! Isn't this proof positive that Russians are behind the 'Havana Syndrome?!
We're on to you, Vladimir!
At this point, he seems to have gone full conspiracy nut, while denying that he has.
His only piece of hard 'evidence' appears to be this old document, which I already mentioned in post 2,007:
I am not an expert on NSA documents, but to me this reads like, 'Somebody reported having overheard somebody talking about a weapon that could do all sorts of awful things, but we never actually saw such a weapon, and nothing whatsoever indicates that Mr. Beck was exposed to such a weapon'.
Somehow, I can't imagine that Mark Zaid isn't aware of this, so let me use the if, which is so popular in claims about the imaginary 'syndrome':
If Mark Zaid is fully aware that he hasn't actually got the slightest piece of evidence that his clients have been the targets of DEW attacks, then he is leading them on and should be ashamed of himself.
"Without leaving evidence" is as ingenious as the "untraceable ability to harm, permanently disable or even kill" mentioned in my previous post! Isn't this proof positive that Russians are behind the 'Havana Syndrome?!
We're on to you, Vladimir!
Questions and comments to the Salon article by Brian Karem (see post 2,245) that will probably go unanswered:
He supports the idea that attacks took place with mysterious untraceable weapons. He supports the idea that the wholegovernment apparatus is denying the truth. That they have joined forces with Putin to cover it up. Not one skeptic is mentioned in the article. 60 Minutes, too!
https://twitter.com/dannXsim/status/1783903970416538036
The 'syndrome' segment is from 1:23:20 to 1:31:50. There's a 'forward-30-seconds' feature:
My quotations (more or less (!)):
We can't have a knee-jerk reaction ... consider all the alternatives ... is it plausible that a weapon could have ... we know that these kinds of stressors can cause these ... is it plausible that a foreign power would test these weapons? Sure, why not? ... ODNI: no evidence that this is a foreign attack ... microwave weapons way more plausible ... absolutely plausible that they would have a portable device in a van ... I don't think we can call it science fiction ... Russian 29155 have been associated with these incidents ... I don't think this is a homerun ... we still don't know ... that workers in Havana didn't come down with this ... we don't know if that is true ...
At the end of the day, it's still an open question ...
I'm taking a physician's approach ... you have to be open to alternatives ... Because sometimes the 95% answer is wrong ...
So we're going to be following this one ...
Conclusion:
"I still think it's more likely than not - especially given the investigation by American intelligence agencies - that this probably isn't a real, you know, attack, but I would not be stunned if it turned out that that's the case, that some of these cases were in fact a directed microwave weapon that was being used or tested against American diplomats. I don't think we can remove that from the list of possibilities at this time."
My quotations (more or less (!)):
We can't have a knee-jerk reaction ... consider all the alternatives ... is it plausible that a weapon could have ... we know that these kinds of stressors can cause these ... is it plausible that a foreign power would test these weapons? Sure, why not? ... ODNI: no evidence that this is a foreign attack ... microwave weapons way more plausible ... absolutely plausible that they would have a portable device in a van ... I don't think we can call it science fiction ... Russian 29155 have been associated with these incidents ... I don't think this is a homerun ... we still don't know ... that workers in Havana didn't come down with this ... we don't know if that is true ...
At the end of the day, it's still an open question ...
I'm taking a physician's approach ... you have to be open to alternatives ... Because sometimes the 95% answer is wrong ...
So we're going to be following this one ...
Conclusion:
"I still think it's more likely than not - especially given the investigation by American intelligence agencies - that this probably isn't a real, you know, attack, but I would not be stunned if it turned out that that's the case, that some of these cases were in fact a directed microwave weapon that was being used or tested against American diplomats. I don't think we can remove that from the list of possibilities at this time."
60 Minutes Australia - now with BARTHOLOMEW!!!
With many of the usual suspects, Mark Zaid, 'Adam' (aka Patient Zero), 'Joy', 'Carrie', John Bolton, Mark Polymeropoulos, Christo Grozev (The Insder), Blinken.
But as mentioned above, it includes Robert Bartholomew + the crickets + the ODNI report, which makes a hell of a difference. It's only 5 minutes of the 29 (19:17 to 25:25), but the other participants are now actually confronted with the opposing view, i.e. the science of mass psychogenic illness. They don't like that!
John Bolton, who played his usual role as warmonger in the U.S. 60 Minutes episode from February 2022, is now much more cautious about what he is saying than I remember him being back then:
There's the story about the GRU unit 29155 as told by:
Let us forget that there was no real evidence of any 29155 members present at any of the mentioned "Havana incidents". Sometimes "places" means that they may have been present in countries "before or during" 'incidents'.
It ends with Patient Zero reading aloud from the citation he got from the CIA:
However, it is obvious to focused viewers that he received this before the ODNI report in March 2023 - and even before the CIA interim report in January 2022, since it was signed by Mike Pompeo, who was director of the CIA from 2017 to 2018.
And Mark Zaid now comes across as a conspiracy nut, complaining about the skepticism he is confronted with by the speaker:
Of course, he doesn't accept skepticism. His case rests on people's willing suspension of disbelief, on their willingness to accept that invisible weapons, invisible attacks, and invisible attackers are real.
Since he finds the term mass hysteria so insulting, he should start using the term mass psychogenic illness instead and get used to the fact that MPI is a real thing.
I wasn't sure that Mark Zaid would repost a link to 60 Minutes Australia, but he actually did!
With many of the usual suspects, Mark Zaid, 'Adam' (aka Patient Zero), 'Joy', 'Carrie', John Bolton, Mark Polymeropoulos, Christo Grozev (The Insder), Blinken.
But as mentioned above, it includes Robert Bartholomew + the crickets + the ODNI report, which makes a hell of a difference. It's only 5 minutes of the 29 (19:17 to 25:25), but the other participants are now actually confronted with the opposing view, i.e. the science of mass psychogenic illness. They don't like that!
John Bolton, who played his usual role as warmonger in the U.S. 60 Minutes episode from February 2022, is now much more cautious about what he is saying than I remember him being back then:
There's the story about the GRU unit 29155 as told by:
Let us forget that there was no real evidence of any 29155 members present at any of the mentioned "Havana incidents". Sometimes "places" means that they may have been present in countries "before or during" 'incidents'.
It ends with Patient Zero reading aloud from the citation he got from the CIA:
However, it is obvious to focused viewers that he received this before the ODNI report in March 2023 - and even before the CIA interim report in January 2022, since it was signed by Mike Pompeo, who was director of the CIA from 2017 to 2018.
And Mark Zaid now comes across as a conspiracy nut, complaining about the skepticism he is confronted with by the speaker:
Of course, he doesn't accept skepticism. His case rests on people's willing suspension of disbelief, on their willingness to accept that invisible weapons, invisible attacks, and invisible attackers are real.
Since he finds the term mass hysteria so insulting, he should start using the term mass psychogenic illness instead and get used to the fact that MPI is a real thing.
I wasn't sure that Mark Zaid would repost a link to 60 Minutes Australia, but he actually did!
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Good to hear the Australian version was a bit less, um, hysterical.
Well, I think Mark Zaid and 'Adam' are more shrill than chill.
Did you watch it? (Can you even watch it? I am not sure that it's available in all countries. In Denmark, we have access to both the U.S. and the Aussie versions of 60 Minutes, but I don't know about other countries.)
This article accompanied 60 Minutes - Australia: Havana syndrome: The mysterious illness striking down US officials (60 Minutes Australia, April 28, 2024).
Unfortunately, it is not a transcription. It's a shortened version with some but not all quotations. For instance, the part about Mike Pompeo being the guy who gave Patient Zero the medal and citation is missing:
It's an important detail to leave out since it gives you the context that enables you to "make sense of" the apparently weird contradiction. It is not at all difficult to make sense of it when you know that Patient Zero/'Adam' got his medal and citation when the CIA still thought that people suffering from the 'syndrome' had been "targeted by unknown forces and subject to unprecedented damaging attacks."
By the way, the NIH reports (see post 2,143) are now under investigation after complaints from the participants in the study:
After complaints, National Institutes of Health launches review of Havana Syndrome study (Miami Herald, April 24, 2024)
After complaints, National Institutes of Health launches review of Havana Syndrome study (yahoo!news, April 24, 2024)
Did you watch it? (Can you even watch it? I am not sure that it's available in all countries. In Denmark, we have access to both the U.S. and the Aussie versions of 60 Minutes, but I don't know about other countries.)
This article accompanied 60 Minutes - Australia: Havana syndrome: The mysterious illness striking down US officials (60 Minutes Australia, April 28, 2024).
Unfortunately, it is not a transcription. It's a shortened version with some but not all quotations. For instance, the part about Mike Pompeo being the guy who gave Patient Zero the medal and citation is missing:
It's an important detail to leave out since it gives you the context that enables you to "make sense of" the apparently weird contradiction. It is not at all difficult to make sense of it when you know that Patient Zero/'Adam' got his medal and citation when the CIA still thought that people suffering from the 'syndrome' had been "targeted by unknown forces and subject to unprecedented damaging attacks."
By the way, the NIH reports (see post 2,143) are now under investigation after complaints from the participants in the study:
After complaints, National Institutes of Health launches review of Havana Syndrome study (Miami Herald, April 24, 2024)
After complaints, National Institutes of Health launches review of Havana Syndrome study (yahoo!news, April 24, 2024)
Another piece of very flawed reasoning. It shows how little some people writing about the 'syndrome' know about the full story:
1. This makes it clear how well the proponents of the attack narrative have managed to suppress the story of the targeted individuals. It is really not as if TIs "do not know to report it as Havana syndrome." It's a full-time occupation for some of them, but they are hardly ever mentioned by people claiming that U.S. officials, diplomats and spies were attacked by DEWs.
2. It is not true that "every U.S. official with Havana syndrome is also tied to Russia." It was claimed by some of the people interviewed by Scott Pelley, but it isn't true. However, "in some way" is a way of weasel-wording your way out of having to prove anything. CIA agents spy on Cubans, Cuba is a kind of ally of Russia in some ways, so ...
3. It may be "something worth investigating," but it's not as if it hasn't been investigated or as if those investigations didn't come up with anything. Pretending that they didn't is a way to prevent the 'syndrome' narrative from coming to an end.
4. As for the question, "What evidence is needed to prove that Havana syndrome is not a natural illness?" it is just a variation of the complaint that the "bar for proof was set impossibly high" (see post 2,217). There hasn't been one single piece of actual evidence of 'Havana Syndrome' being an attack. Considering that there have been 1,500+ cases, asking you to find just one case of a confirmed DEW attack isn't 'setting the bar too high'.
1. This makes it clear how well the proponents of the attack narrative have managed to suppress the story of the targeted individuals. It is really not as if TIs "do not know to report it as Havana syndrome." It's a full-time occupation for some of them, but they are hardly ever mentioned by people claiming that U.S. officials, diplomats and spies were attacked by DEWs.
2. It is not true that "every U.S. official with Havana syndrome is also tied to Russia." It was claimed by some of the people interviewed by Scott Pelley, but it isn't true. However, "in some way" is a way of weasel-wording your way out of having to prove anything. CIA agents spy on Cubans, Cuba is a kind of ally of Russia in some ways, so ...
3. It may be "something worth investigating," but it's not as if it hasn't been investigated or as if those investigations didn't come up with anything. Pretending that they didn't is a way to prevent the 'syndrome' narrative from coming to an end.
4. As for the question, "What evidence is needed to prove that Havana syndrome is not a natural illness?" it is just a variation of the complaint that the "bar for proof was set impossibly high" (see post 2,217). There hasn't been one single piece of actual evidence of 'Havana Syndrome' being an attack. Considering that there have been 1,500+ cases, asking you to find just one case of a confirmed DEW attack isn't 'setting the bar too high'.
Really interesting CNN article
Apparently, the AHIs mentioned by 60 Minutes and The Insider, Carrie in Florida, Joy in Tblisi and Taylor in Frankfurt, were not only known by the CIA but had also already been investigated. Why didn't Scott Pelley mention this? Why pretend that this is something brand-new, never heard of before, that will upend the ODNI investigation?
Is Scott Pelley as big a drama queen as David Relman?
I hate to say this, but Mr. Burns actually sounds like a real skeptic!
I really don't see much of a problem here. Aren't people usually examined properly before any kind of treatment starts, in this case occupational therapy at Walter Reed? Maybe it is not ethically correct. It is not clear if Polymeropoulos' description of this is correct. There is more about it towards the end of the article.
But why didn't the participants in the NIH studies complain until now (see post 2,252), after the studies reported that the 'syndrome' victims have "severe symptoms of “Havana Syndrome,”" but "no evidence of MRI-detectable brain injury or biological abnormalities"? Why didn't they complain at the time if what they had to go through was unethical and immoral? Or did it only become unethical and immoral when the investigation didn't confirm what they believed believed?
We also hear about Greg Edgreen's business model:
The whole business model seems to hinge on the idea that Putin has actually attacked the brains of U.S. officials around the world with directed-energy weapons. It doesn't really work if the idea is entirely imaginary. Besides, aren't those people, i.e. the recognized 'syndrome' victims, already being taken care of by the government agencies, free of charge?
Apparently, the AHIs mentioned by 60 Minutes and The Insider, Carrie in Florida, Joy in Tblisi and Taylor in Frankfurt, were not only known by the CIA but had also already been investigated. Why didn't Scott Pelley mention this? Why pretend that this is something brand-new, never heard of before, that will upend the ODNI investigation?
Is Scott Pelley as big a drama queen as David Relman?
I hate to say this, but Mr. Burns actually sounds like a real skeptic!
I really don't see much of a problem here. Aren't people usually examined properly before any kind of treatment starts, in this case occupational therapy at Walter Reed? Maybe it is not ethically correct. It is not clear if Polymeropoulos' description of this is correct. There is more about it towards the end of the article.
But why didn't the participants in the NIH studies complain until now (see post 2,252), after the studies reported that the 'syndrome' victims have "severe symptoms of “Havana Syndrome,”" but "no evidence of MRI-detectable brain injury or biological abnormalities"? Why didn't they complain at the time if what they had to go through was unethical and immoral? Or did it only become unethical and immoral when the investigation didn't confirm what they believed believed?
We also hear about Greg Edgreen's business model:
The whole business model seems to hinge on the idea that Putin has actually attacked the brains of U.S. officials around the world with directed-energy weapons. It doesn't really work if the idea is entirely imaginary. Besides, aren't those people, i.e. the recognized 'syndrome' victims, already being taken care of by the government agencies, free of charge?
60 Minutes Australia - the very short version
For those of you who can't access 60 Minutes Australia (see post 2,250), here is the very short (3:33 min.) clip on X with Robert Bartholomew:
Unfortunately, the clip ends with a question from Marc Polymeropoulos:
It is not unfortunate that Polymeropoulos asks the question, but it is very unfortunate that the question remains unanswered in the clip. A six-month-old baby doesn't suffer from mass psychogenic illness (MPI). (It's funny how these people always seem to prefer the term mass hysteria, isn't it?!) However, nobody ever claimed that the six-month-old baby suffered from MPI. And if the baby actually suffered from traumatic brain injury (whether 'immaculate' or not), why assume that a Russian with a raygun caused it? There are much more likely explanations that Polymeropoulos doesn't seem to want to consider.
For those of you who can't access 60 Minutes Australia (see post 2,250), here is the very short (3:33 min.) clip on X with Robert Bartholomew:
Unfortunately, the clip ends with a question from Marc Polymeropoulos:
It is not unfortunate that Polymeropoulos asks the question, but it is very unfortunate that the question remains unanswered in the clip. A six-month-old baby doesn't suffer from mass psychogenic illness (MPI). (It's funny how these people always seem to prefer the term mass hysteria, isn't it?!) However, nobody ever claimed that the six-month-old baby suffered from MPI. And if the baby actually suffered from traumatic brain injury (whether 'immaculate' or not), why assume that a Russian with a raygun caused it? There are much more likely explanations that Polymeropoulos doesn't seem to want to consider.
This podcast interview with Robert Bartholomew didn't appear when I google 'Havana syndrome' until today. Google works in mysterious ways.
March 25 was one week after the NIH studies (see posts 2,143 and 2,252) were released and a few days before Scott Pelley resurrected the 'syndrome' on U.S. 60 Minutes:
The interviewer has problems with the pronunciation of the word sociologist.
March 25 was one week after the NIH studies (see posts 2,143 and 2,252) were released and a few days before Scott Pelley resurrected the 'syndrome' on U.S. 60 Minutes:
The interviewer has problems with the pronunciation of the word sociologist.
Mark Zaid calls MPI "idiocy" and challenges Robert Bartholomew to sue him
Lawyer Mark Zaid has challenged Robert Bartholomew in a weird rambling conversation with Matt Ford on YouTube:
Why doesn't Mark Zaid challenge Robert Bartholomew to debate him instead? So far, Zaid has only 'debated' people who agree with him, like Nicky Woolf and Marc Polymeropoulos. I wonder what he is afraid of. But being a lawyer, Zaid probably imagines that this is the way to settle scientific disagreements: in court!
I have only watched from 52:25 to 1:03:45. At that point, they have begun to talk about UFOs, aliens and Contact instead of the 'syndrome'. I guess I'll have to watch the whole thing to make sure that I don't miss an actual argument against the syndrome being MPI - other than the moronic one that "so many people independently experienced the same thing." Apropos of UFOs!
Matt Ford isn't happy with the good work being done by Susan Gerbic and the Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. (See posts 2,208, 2,227, 2,228 and 2,239.) I don't know much about him, but I think he may not like the influence that skeptics have on the UFO/UAP narrative!
Lawyer Mark Zaid has challenged Robert Bartholomew in a weird rambling conversation with Matt Ford on YouTube:
Why doesn't Mark Zaid challenge Robert Bartholomew to debate him instead? So far, Zaid has only 'debated' people who agree with him, like Nicky Woolf and Marc Polymeropoulos. I wonder what he is afraid of. But being a lawyer, Zaid probably imagines that this is the way to settle scientific disagreements: in court!
I have only watched from 52:25 to 1:03:45. At that point, they have begun to talk about UFOs, aliens and Contact instead of the 'syndrome'. I guess I'll have to watch the whole thing to make sure that I don't miss an actual argument against the syndrome being MPI - other than the moronic one that "so many people independently experienced the same thing." Apropos of UFOs!
Matt Ford isn't happy with the good work being done by Susan Gerbic and the Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. (See posts 2,208, 2,227, 2,228 and 2,239.) I don't know much about him, but I think he may not like the influence that skeptics have on the UFO/UAP narrative!
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I think there's every reason to doubt that Mark Zaid will go any further than his childish insult. Or maybe he actually thinks that he'll get away with the argument that the 'syndrome' must have been caused by real attacks when his clients think so.
Is it possible that he actually believes his own argument?
Lawyer Mark Zaid about the 'Havana syndrome'
There is much more in the conversation between Matt Ford and 'Havana syndrome' lawyer Mark Zaid (see post 2,259) than I thought, so I'll take it piece by piece:
Mark Zaid lies from the very beginning when he describes what 'Havana syndrome' is supposed to be:
On the one hand, Mark Zaid is very much aware that people not only heard but actually recorded cricket sounds and played them on TV. But on the other hand, he is hell-bent on getting the cricket sounds out of the way to make room for his microwave-and/or-ultrasound-attack idea, so he lies about the recordings that so far are the only piece of hard evidence, but they document something that disproves his thesis:
Nice try, Zaid, but no, it wasn't "just a descriptive sense." There are a couple of things you leave out:
1) There was more than just that one recording you refer to. There appears to have been at least eight!
2) When recordings were played to other 'syndrome' victims, they confirmed that the (cricket) sound was also what they had heard.
3) Some of them went on TV and played their recordings as proof that they hade been attacked. They didn't say, 'Well, what I heard wasn't this. It just sounded somewhat like this'.
This is what Kate Husband and Doug Ferguson actually said on TV when they played their recording of the crickets:
So let us look at Mark Zaid's claim again: "so it was just a descriptive sense."
No, it wasn't! The Husband-Ferguson couple played the actual recording of the actual sound they heard.
And it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that all four household probably heard the same " piercing noise coming from their backyard." If it was as loud and piercing as claimed, then they all would have heard it, wouldn't they? And they would probably all have recorded it as well.
Are we supposed to assume that they all heard the same sound coming from the same crickets and never talked with their English-speaking neighbors about it?
Come on, Mark Zaid. You owe it to your clients to admit to the truth. What they heard wasn't tinnitus, obviously, and you are aware of that. And their recordings weren't recordings of something similar to the sound they heard. It was the actual sound they heard. If it had been tinnitus or the Frey effect, they wouldn't have been able to record it. You know that!
There is no need for the contrived explanation that what they heard was the Frey effect, because, much like tinnitus but not in the exact same way, the Frey effect is not an actual sound, and like tinnitus, you can't record it on your cell phone.
You know all this, and yet you continue to claim that what actually happened isn't what happened.
Your clients heard and recorded and were disturbed by crickets. Their brains weren't microwaved. By keeping up the pretense that they were, you make them continue to live in the bad NFD loop of fear that the microwave-attack narrative put them in, resulting in at least two of them, Kate Husband and Karen Coats, now suffering from EHS.
Do you want them to continue to believe in this and live like this?
To be continued. I'm only at 5:30 of 1:16:46.
There is much more in the conversation between Matt Ford and 'Havana syndrome' lawyer Mark Zaid (see post 2,259) than I thought, so I'll take it piece by piece:
Mark Zaid lies from the very beginning when he describes what 'Havana syndrome' is supposed to be:
On the one hand, Mark Zaid is very much aware that people not only heard but actually recorded cricket sounds and played them on TV. But on the other hand, he is hell-bent on getting the cricket sounds out of the way to make room for his microwave-and/or-ultrasound-attack idea, so he lies about the recordings that so far are the only piece of hard evidence, but they document something that disproves his thesis:
Nice try, Zaid, but no, it wasn't "just a descriptive sense." There are a couple of things you leave out:
1) There was more than just that one recording you refer to. There appears to have been at least eight!
2) When recordings were played to other 'syndrome' victims, they confirmed that the (cricket) sound was also what they had heard.
3) Some of them went on TV and played their recordings as proof that they hade been attacked. They didn't say, 'Well, what I heard wasn't this. It just sounded somewhat like this'.
This is what Kate Husband and Doug Ferguson actually said on TV when they played their recording of the crickets:
So let us look at Mark Zaid's claim again: "so it was just a descriptive sense."
No, it wasn't! The Husband-Ferguson couple played the actual recording of the actual sound they heard.
And it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that all four household probably heard the same " piercing noise coming from their backyard." If it was as loud and piercing as claimed, then they all would have heard it, wouldn't they? And they would probably all have recorded it as well.
Are we supposed to assume that they all heard the same sound coming from the same crickets and never talked with their English-speaking neighbors about it?
Come on, Mark Zaid. You owe it to your clients to admit to the truth. What they heard wasn't tinnitus, obviously, and you are aware of that. And their recordings weren't recordings of something similar to the sound they heard. It was the actual sound they heard. If it had been tinnitus or the Frey effect, they wouldn't have been able to record it. You know that!
There is no need for the contrived explanation that what they heard was the Frey effect, because, much like tinnitus but not in the exact same way, the Frey effect is not an actual sound, and like tinnitus, you can't record it on your cell phone.
You know all this, and yet you continue to claim that what actually happened isn't what happened.
Your clients heard and recorded and were disturbed by crickets. Their brains weren't microwaved. By keeping up the pretense that they were, you make them continue to live in the bad NFD loop of fear that the microwave-attack narrative put them in, resulting in at least two of them, Kate Husband and Karen Coats, now suffering from EHS.
Do you want them to continue to believe in this and live like this?
To be continued. I'm only at 5:30 of 1:16:46.
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Kristi Noem could have taken care of the whole 'syndrome' problem on day one if only Trump and Pompeo had thought of sending her to Havana!
I guess it's probably too late for that now.
'Where's Cricket?' Don't ask. (NYT, April 26, 2024)
I guess it's probably too late for that now.
'Where's Cricket?' Don't ask. (NYT, April 26, 2024)
Excellent (short!) article in The Spectator. Not by a journalist!
It's by a guy in the know: "John Foreman was formerly Britain’s defence attaché in Moscow. Before that, he was Britain’s defence attaché in Kyiv."
'Syndrome' lawyer Mark Zaid really won't like this one: "Ambulance-chasing lawyers are circling the victims."
It has upset TI Len Ber: "one of the most confusing articles on #HavanaSyndrome just published in @spectator."
It is not at all confusing!
It's by a guy in the know: "John Foreman was formerly Britain’s defence attaché in Moscow. Before that, he was Britain’s defence attaché in Kyiv."
'Syndrome' lawyer Mark Zaid really won't like this one: "Ambulance-chasing lawyers are circling the victims."
It has upset TI Len Ber: "one of the most confusing articles on #HavanaSyndrome just published in @spectator."
It is not at all confusing!
Lawyer Mark Zaid about the 'Havana syndrome', continued: Of Dogs and Men
Continued from post 2,257:
Notice the strawman: That the debunkers or naysayers say that each and every ailment is MPI, when it's actually Mark Zaid and Matt Ford who claim that each and every ailment, be it in grownups, kids or pets, is 'Havana syndrome', i.e. caused by DEW attacks:
Mark Zaid and Matt Ford absolutely don't understand the strawman that they themselves just made up!
Nobody has said that the children's ailments, be it falling over or having nosebleeds, are MPI. Nobody has claimed that children meet at the watercoooler in the office and swap stories about their suffering, and nobody claims that dogs getting tumors or hiding in the closet are victims of mass psychogenic illness. Mark Zaid and Matt Ford are the ones who claim that they are all victims of microwave and/or ultrasound attacks, and that a young dog getting tumors is unnatural and means that it must have been attacked by mean Russians guilty of cruelty to animals.
Cancer is a reality for humans and pets alike (BetterPet).
They want to persuade us to think that it is unnatural when a dog gets a perfectly natural disease while young unlike getting it at an old age, which may be much more common in both dogs and humans but isn't exactly unheard of. That a dog might hide in the closet, be it because of the owner's strange behavior during a panic attack or because it's scared by the same noise that scared the owner, is also not proof positive of a microwave or sonic attack even though the owner and his/her lawyer think so.
Another possibility might also be worth considering:
The most consistent finding is that neurotic owners tend to have neurotic dogs. (Psychology Today, Sep 21, 2021)
To be continued ...
Continued from post 2,257:
Notice the strawman: That the debunkers or naysayers say that each and every ailment is MPI, when it's actually Mark Zaid and Matt Ford who claim that each and every ailment, be it in grownups, kids or pets, is 'Havana syndrome', i.e. caused by DEW attacks:
Mark Zaid and Matt Ford absolutely don't understand the strawman that they themselves just made up!
Nobody has said that the children's ailments, be it falling over or having nosebleeds, are MPI. Nobody has claimed that children meet at the watercoooler in the office and swap stories about their suffering, and nobody claims that dogs getting tumors or hiding in the closet are victims of mass psychogenic illness. Mark Zaid and Matt Ford are the ones who claim that they are all victims of microwave and/or ultrasound attacks, and that a young dog getting tumors is unnatural and means that it must have been attacked by mean Russians guilty of cruelty to animals.
Cancer is a reality for humans and pets alike (BetterPet).
They want to persuade us to think that it is unnatural when a dog gets a perfectly natural disease while young unlike getting it at an old age, which may be much more common in both dogs and humans but isn't exactly unheard of. That a dog might hide in the closet, be it because of the owner's strange behavior during a panic attack or because it's scared by the same noise that scared the owner, is also not proof positive of a microwave or sonic attack even though the owner and his/her lawyer think so.
Another possibility might also be worth considering:
The most consistent finding is that neurotic owners tend to have neurotic dogs. (Psychology Today, Sep 21, 2021)
To be continued ...
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