Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[steenkh]

A little more about the Matanzas incident, this time from TV Yumurí (which I'd never heard about):

So no hysteria involved (this time)?

 

[dann]

So no hysteria involved (this time)?

Apparently not ... but on the other hand:
The pepper spray would account for the immediate physiological reaction like shortness of breath, throat discomfort, vomiting and redness (of the eyes? of the skin?). As for dizziness, headache and fainting, they are probably more likely to be due to anxiety because of the physiological symptoms - the symptoms that you yourself may have or those of other people you see come down with those symptoms.
So I guess it's possible that the symptoms of some of the 35 students may have been mass psychogenic rather than physiological in nature.

It is even possible that some students who never came into contact with the substance may have experienced (!) shortness of breath, throat discomfort, vomiting and red eyes. On the list of signs and symptoms of MPI (Wikipedia), we find: cough, nausea, sore or burning throat, hyperventilating or difficulty breathing, watery or irritated eyes, chest tightness or chest pain.
Headache and dizziness are the two most common MPI symptoms.

It would be interesting to see a detailed description of the symptoms at the Säpo incident in Sweden last year, which was entirely psychogenic (= no gas or substance) and compare it with the symptoms at the pepper-spray incident in Matanzas.

A comparison of the Säpo incident and the 'Havana syndrome' would also be interesting. The symptoms of MPI are bound to reflect the imaginary cause almost as directly as if it had been physiological, i.e. no or only minor vestibular symptoms in Sweden where the cause was believed to be gas, and no or only minor throat and respiratory symptoms in Havana where the cause was believed to be a sonic weapon.

 

[dann]

The show must go on!

Tulsi Gabbard hearing: What is the Havana Syndrome? (The Times of India, Jan 31, 2025)
Donald Trump's pick for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said she looks forward to addressing the reported Havana Syndrome case during her confirmation hearing.
Gabbard expressed serious concern about these incidents, stating that despite the ongoing impact on service personnel, the intelligence community had yet to determine the precise cause and origin of what is commonly referred to as Havana Syndrome."I look forward, if confirmed as director of national intelligence, to addressing this, of course, making sure that those who have been impacted are getting the care that they need and deserve, but getting to the truth behind how and why this has occurred," she answered when asked about her approach by Senator Roger Wicker.

 

[dann]

In a recent article on Substack,Takeaways from the X Space on Havana Syndrome (Feb 6, 2025), targeted individual Len Ber quotes from the 2022 Intelligence Community Expert Panel Report on Anomalous Health Incidents, the one headed by David Relman, about the Four Core Characteristics of AHI:

1. The acute onset of audio-sensory phenomena, including sound and/or vibrating pressure (buffeting)
2. Other nearly simultaneous signs and symptoms such as loss of balance, ear pain, and cognitive "meltdown"
3. A strong sense of locality or directionality.
4. The absence of known environmental or medical conditions that could have caused the reported signs and symptoms.

The amazing thing about these four characteristics is that they have all been explained and are not at all and never were mysterious.
1. In the cases that the hard-core proponents of the 'syndrome' always refer to as the legit cases, the ones in Havana 2016-17 - unlike the 1,500 cases that followed - there are several recordings of the "audio-sensory phenomena," and expert analyses of those recordings showed that the sound emanated from Indies short-tailed crickets.
2. Loss of balance, ear pain, and cognitive "meltdown" are very common reactions to stress and anxiety.
3. A strong sense of locality or directionality is what you would expect from sound: We usually know the direction it's coming from, and high-frequency sounds tend to be more directional. The sound of crickets adheres to that pattern.
4. There was no absence of environmental conditions to cause the 'syndrome' cases in Havana. The crickets were there, and they were recorded!

From post 1,590:
Dr. David Relman: This subset of cases had a very unusual, so-called acute sensory event, an experience that consisted of the abrupt onset of intense pressure or vibration in the face or head sometimes with the abrupt onset of sound.Sound, like that described by the officials who spoke to us.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And then this just loud sound just absolutely filled my room.This former official, who we agreed not to name, recorded the sound at his home in Havana. Understand that the sound does not cause the injury, it is a byproduct. Like the sound of a gun which is not what does the harm.
(...)
The injured officials we spoke with said the sound or a feeling of pressure came from one direction and focused in one location.Miles Taylor: It was a continuous sound and one that only changed based on my location.
Dr. David Relman: They left, it dissipated. They returned, it recurred. That to us was something that we had never heard of, we could not explain by known medical or environmental conditions, and to us deserved our special attention in an effort to understand what might be the plausible mechanism.
That mechanism, Dr. Relman's committees concluded, was most likely "pulsed electromagnetic energy." In other words, a focused beam of microwaves fired from a distance.

The idea that this must constitute an enemy attack (with Putin as the perpetrator) is so incredibly dumb that it's hard to believe that anybody can still defend it to this day, least of all a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine like Relman, but that's nevertheless the case.
David Relman is one of the few people on earth who think that it is a very unusual and thus mysterious phenomenon that sound comes from a particular direction and dissipates when you move away from it.

At this point, most 'targeted individuals' appear to have lost interest in Len Ber's ideas.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Here's a recent prosaic explanation for some military AHIs (Anomalous Health Incidents):

Snipers suffer irreversible brain damage from 'invisible shock waves'

Aussie veterans who helped train Iraqi snipers say they were exposed to hundreds of blasts a day, leaving them with long-term brain injuries.

www.abc.net.au

 

[dann]

Interesting! And not just snipers, apparently:

Both Dan and Max have been diagnosed with brain injuries.
The only apparent cause: their exposure to shock waves caused by the high-powered rifles they fired during their years of sniper training.
(...)
Those within the ADF who train others are most at risk of brain injury due to their repeated exposure, including Special Forces method-of-entry experts, navy clearance divers and others who work with explosives or heavy weapons.
"There's probably more than a dozen different specialties within the military which render them vulnerable in training to chronic brain injury," says Dr David Rosen, a neurologist who specialises in veterans with blast-related traumatic brain injury.

And Pentagon's intelligence agency appears to be the only one of seven ICs that thinks that it is not unlikely that the 'Havana syndrome' was caused by directed energy weapons: "there is a "roughly even chance" a foreign actor has used a novel weapon or prototype device to harm a small, undetermined subset of the USG personnel or dependents who reported medical symptoms or sensory phenomena as AHIs" (see post 2,351).
Maybe Pentagon should resume its ferret- study and expose the control group to the shock-wave recoil from sniper rifles.
U.S Troops Still Train on Weapons with Known Risk of Brain Injury (NYT, Nov 28, 2023)

 

[dann]

Notice what's absent from the list:

GOP Makes MAJOR MISTAKE with Trump’s DARK PAST (MeidasTouch on YouTube, Feb 12, 2025 - 13:48 min.)
3:25--> Anna Paulina Luna: "It is with profound honor that I have been entrusted by Speaker Mike Johnson and chairman James Comer to lead the House Force or the House Oversight Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets. Together with the help of the White House, our intelligence allies, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, we'll be conducting investigations into the following:
the assassinations of JFK RFK and Dr Martin Luther King unidentified aerial phenomena, also known as UAPs, and unidentified submerged objects, also known as USOs, The Epstein client list, the origins of COVID-19, and the 9/11 files."

In spite of Trump's reluctance to declassify the Epstein files, the Epstein client list is one of the federal secrets to be investigated, but the 'syndrome' files aren't.

 

[dann]

From a new book by Ullekh N.P.: Mad about Cuba: A Malayali Revisits the Revolution (GoodReads)

You can find the quotation here:

Che Guevara’s Undying Spell & Other Tales of Cuba (Consortium News, Jan 8, 2025)
There was, of course, another trigger for the U.S.–Cuba detente to unravel as early as October 2017: a phenomenon that came to be called the Havana syndrome. The symptoms of this ailment, which seemed to have affected several people at the American embassy in Havana, included ‘a constellation of physical symptoms including ringing in the ears followed by pressure in the head and nausea, headaches, and acute discomfort’.
A year later on Oct. 3, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the country was pulling back many members of its heavily fortified embassy — sort of an impenetrable fortress along the Malecon — and also expelling 15 Cuban diplomats from the U.S. over Cuba’s ‘failure to take appropriate steps’ to protect American personnel in Cuba who had been targeted in mysterious ‘attacks’ that had damaged their health.
The knee-jerk American argument from the beginning was that the physical discomforts were caused by a sonic attack by enemies. Although Cuba protested that Washington was discounting science in this accusation, the Trump administration went ahead with its plan to snap ties with the Caribbean country.
Seven U.S. intelligence agencies did a years-long investigation in more than ninety countries, including the United States, and finally concluded that it is ‘very unlikely’ that a foreign adversary was responsible for the ‘Havana syndrome’, which had affected American diplomats and other officials in many parts of the world.
But by then, all the damage was done and Cuba had to face multiple jeopardies that pushed its economy to the brink.

The rest of the article (consisting of excerpts from the book) is not about the 'syndrome':

From the Amazon.com description: “Mad About Cuba documents his visit and observations. Through conversations with senior bureaucrats, scientists at Cuba’s fabled pharma research institutes, youth beginning their careers, students and many others, he paints an intimate and objective picture of the nation that has managed to withstand American sanctions for over six decades.”

 

[dann]

With Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, it was inevitable that Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI) would turn into 'Havana syndrome' again.
I assume they have listened to James Giordano, which is why they are now operating with both the 'syndrome' and AHIs:

Comer Investigates Biden Administration’s Inadequate Measures to Provide Care for Federal Employees Affected by Havana Syndrome (Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Feb 20, 2025)
“The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the Department of Defense’s inadequate measures under the Biden Administration to provide legally required care for federal civilian employees suffering from Havana Syndrome and other anomalous health incidents (AHIs),” wrote Chairman Comer. “The Committee seeks information about the Biden Administration’s shortcomings in complying with the law and the current Administration’s plan to implement GAO’s recommendations moving forward.”
(...)
Read the letter to Secretary of Defense Hegseth here.

 

[dann]

The 'syndrome' in fiction - New series: "a paranoid conspiracy thriller."

Netflix’s ‘Zero Day’ Details The Future Of War And It’s Terrifying (Forbes, Feb 20, 2025)
The new political thriller Zero Day follows the fallout of a catastrophic one-minute cyber attack with the threat of another. More than three thousand Americans die, and countless lives are forever altered.
(...)
There is also a storyline around another real-life form of attack: brain hacking. There have been several news stories about what has been named Havana Syndrome.
There have been many articles written on the subject dating back to 2016, and CBS’ 60 Minutes had a fascinating episode on this phenomenon wherein high-level American national security officials claimed they were stricken with unexplained brain injuries while on White House grounds and in Washington, as well as overseas in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Several U.S. government officials and their families have reported experiencing sudden symptoms, including vertigo, confusion, and memory loss, and their claims have been taken seriously, with the CIA, FBI, and the State Department investigating the theory that these people may have been injured by an unseen weapon.

'The next thing we knew, we were talking to Robert De Niro': How new TV show 'Zero Day' happened (MSNBC on YouTube, Feb 21, 2025 - 12 min.)
Co-creators and executive producers of the new series 'Zero Day,' Mike Schmidt, Noah Oppenheim and Eric Newman join Nicolle Wallace to discuss their Netflix series.

Robert De Niro talks first lead TV role in ‘Zero Day’: It's more work (Todayon YouTube, Feb 20, 2025 - 5:06 min.)
Legendary actor Robert De Niro sits down with TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie to talk about his decision to act in his first lead role in a series with “Zero Day” on Netflix. "It's more work. This was like doing three features back to back." He also talks about his encounter with Debbie Downer on “SNL50.” "I was really happy to be a part of it," he says about his sketch with Rachel Dratch.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Oh, great.

 

[dann]

Diagnosing American Decline: The Geopolitics of Havana Syndrome (Taylor & Francis online, Feb 21, 2025)
Abstract
Beginning in 2016, American diplomats and family members posted to Havana, Cuba reported debilitating medical symptoms with no known physical cause. Many US officials labelled these as evidence of a new malady called ‘Havana syndrome’, caused by experimental weaponry deployed by hostile rival states. Since then, American personnel in numerous other countries have self-reported hundreds more cases. Despite no medical consensus on the cause or coherence of symptoms and no proof that such weaponry exists, US officials have consistently claimed that Havana syndrome is the result of directed attacks by hostile powers. I examine how, amid questions of US vulnerability and potential shifts in the global balance of power, Havana syndrome presents both a medical and a geopolitical diagnosis. The contested diagnosis and scripting of Havana syndrome reflects and propagates anxieties about American power, rewriting and enacting US geopolitical codes through sites and scales from the body to the globe.

Paywalled: PDF download + Online access €48.00

It sounds interesting, but I don't intend to pay €48 to see it.

 

[dann]

(The Washington Examiner on YouTube, Jan 17, 2025 - 1:48 min.)

House Speaker Mike Johnson has removed representative Mike Turner as chairman of the house select committee on intelligence partly due to concerns over Havana syndrome ... Sources indicate Johnson was frustrated with Turner's lack of support for a more robust investigation into AHI. Turner's replacement representative Rick Crawford is expected to push for greater oversight of this critical issue Crawford's interim report suggests a foreign adversary may be responsible for some Ahi incidents contradicting the intelligence community's long-standing position.
Victims of AhI welcome Crawford's appointment hoping for a truthful accounting of their experience.
Mark Zaid: "These have not been really publicized in any way. In fact, the reality is that domestic incidents are being downplayed if not outright ignored by the US government."

When Mark Zaid refers to "domestic incidents," he isn't talking about the community of so-called Targeted Individuals. He is thinking of government officials that are his clients, like Olivia Troye, who was allegedly the victim of an AHI attack on the White House grounds when she was working as the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor for Mike Pence.
Mark Zaid recently lost his security clearance, probably because he has dared to criticize Donald Trump.

 

[dann]

Wow! This is a surprise!!!
I have a hard time believing that somebody hasn't hacked CyberCuba.
Can he actually have said this???

Marco Rubio on Havana Syndrome: "There is still much work underway" (CiberCuba, Feb 22, 2025)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismisses directed attacks as the cause of Havana Syndrome, attributing it to accidents and psychological phenomena.
(...)
Recent statements from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio have made it clear that, after evaluating the evidence gathered, they have ruled out the hypothesis of deliberate attacks using directed energy weapons as the cause of these injuries, attributing them instead to accidents, phenomena of mass hysteria, or pre-existing conditions.
“… I believe that the evidence and time will prove me right – that these things happened by accident, as a result of collective hysteria or some preexisting conditions. Now, in some cases, perhaps, but I have no doubt that something caused people to suffer these things – in different places around the world, not just in Havana,” Rubio said to reporter Catherine Herridge.

Alas, no! Unfortunately, it's not what he actually said. But it's also not due to hacking.
I have now listened to the actual interview:

Catherine Herridge on X, Feb 21, 2025:
I do not believe in the conclusions that we've seen in the past - and I think that evidence, in time, will prove me correct - that these things happened by accident, that these things were a result of mass hysteria or some pre-existing conditions. Now, in some cases, maybe, but I have no doubt in my mind that something caused people to be suffering from these things and in different posts around the world, not just limited to Havana.
There's a lot of work still going on. I think we're going to learn a lot more about it in the next few years as more work goes into it. But I've met some of these people, I've interacted with them for years, and I can't explain every case, but I think there are most definitely cases where there is no logical explanation other than the fact that some external mechanism caused them to suffer brain injuries that in many cases look like they were hit over the head with a baseball bat.

I think that what went wrong may have been due to the real meaning being lost in translation from English into Spanish and then back into English again. Unfortunate editing may also have something to do with it: It appears as if Rubio is talking about his own views and not about the analysis of the Intelligence Community.

 

[dann]

More 'syndrome' in fiction (see post 2,370)
The president doesn't have senile dementia

'Zero Day' Episode 4 Recap: Brainwaves (Decider, Feb 21, 2025)
The president doesn't have senile dementia - he has Advanced Havana Syndrome. We should all be so lucky, huh? Ah! Well. Nevertheless, that's the solution Zero Day appears to have devised for its central moral conundrum: the fact that the show's hero, George Mullen, is covering up his own diminished mental capacity despite the danger it poses to the nation. Now it turns out that this danger was deliberately inflicted on him by enemy agents utilizing Proteus, a long-abandoned, long-distance neurological weapon that seems to have been revived.

Am I the only one who thinks that this is a copyright infringement on the syndrome fiction invented by the collective of stressed-out CIA agents, their lawyers, quacks and bipartisan politicians as early as 2016-17?
I don't know if Mark Zaid handles cases of -infringement, but if he does, I think he might have a case.

ETA:
‘Zero Day’ Ending Explained: Who Is Responsible for the Massive Cyberattack? (Yahoo Entertainment News, Feb 22, 2025)
I wonder what the community of Targeted Individuals will think of this ending - and in particular of the perpetrator of the attack. Some of them must have watched it already, so I'll take a look.

 

[angrysoba]

The Studies Show has released a podcast episode on Havana Syndrome and Mass Hysteria.

I haven't listened yet, so who knows if they will affirm or deny or simply shrug their shoulders and say they don't know what to believe.

 

[dann]

Unlike the sensationalist 'investigation' from 60 Minutes and The Insider last year, the Studies Show episode isn't almost entirely based on interviews with people who believe they have been attacked. Unlike those and similar media reports, their source material isn't one sided, as you can see if you take a look at their Show notes. They even mention the analyses of the studies, which is always a good sign.
And they do get it right. They come down pretty hard on the attack idea.

 

[angrysoba]

Unlike the sensationalist 'investigation' from 60 Minutes and The Insider last year, the Studies Show episode isn't almost entirely based on interviews with people who believe they have been attacked. Unlike those and similar media reports, their source material isn't one sided, as you can see if you take a look at their Show notes. They even mention the analyses of the studies, which is always a good sign.
And they do get it right. They come down pretty hard on the attack idea.

Thanks. I listened not long after posting and thought it was pretty good. They made the joke I thought they would while listening.

I'm looking forward to listening to the claims of the energy weapon but all we hear is *crickets*

But they didn't do the Don't stop me now, cos I'm Havana Syndrome... gonna shoot a supersonic ray gun at you!

 

[dann]

The Daily Wire's article today is based on Catherine Herridge's recent interview with Marco Rubio (see post 2,374):

‘It’s Outrageous’: Rubio Weighs In On Biden Admin Dismissing Havana Syndrome Victims (Daily Wire, Feb 25, 2025)
He said that those who were “harmed in the service of our country … deserve our ongoing support, not to be – not being accused of things like mass hysteria.”
He said that the Biden administration’s insinuation that they were faking their symptoms was “outrageous.”

The Biden administration never insinuated that the 'syndrome' sufferers were "faking their symptoms." Neither did the ODNI report. Each and every time they were mentioned, it was emphasized that their symptoms were real. In fact, it has been emphasized so much and so often that a lot of people think that it implies that the alleged attacks were real, too. It's what Rubio would like people to think.

I guess Rubio is in a pickle at this point: He would like to blame Cuba for the alleged attacks, but he is serving a president who won't be happy with him if he tries to ruin his friendship with Putin by claiming that the U.S. spies and diplomats in Cuba were the victims of Russian attacks, with Cuba being an accomplice by letting the alleged attacks with directed energy weapons take place in the country.

The right-wing rag seems to have learned the lesson, too: Neither Putin nor Russia is mentioned in the article. Even the (incredibly dumb, with one exception) comments seem to have already grasped that Russia isn't the enemy anymore.
I'm surprised that nobody claims that Macron is the perpetrator.

 

[dann]

More about the 'syndrome' as it appears in the Netflix series Zero Day (see post 2,375)

What Is Proteus in 'Zero Day'? How the NSA weapon changes everything (MSN.com, Feb , 2025)
The psychological symptoms that Mullen experiences, including memory loss, disorientation, and auditory hallucinations, draw strong parallels to the real-world cases of Havana Syndrome, where U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers reportedly experienced, to this day, unexplained neurological issues believed to be caused by targeted attacks. Like Havana Syndrome, the fictional NSA weapon in Zero Day operates covertly, leaving no physical trace, which amplifies the paranoia and uncertainty surrounding Mullen's condition. This resemblance adds a layer of realism to the show's central mystery, blurring the lines between conspiracy and plausible threat.

It is worth noticing that the auditory part of the 'syndrome' was not a hallucination. The sound of crickets was real, and we have the recordings to prove it.

The closest that Zero Day comes to providing an answer to whether Mullen was attacked by Proteus is when he finds a broken device in the birdfeeder of his house. However, when having the broken electronic device tested, it is not conclusively established that it was indeed a transmitter for the Proteus.

In the case of the 'Havana syndrome', no relevant electronic device was ever found. However, 60 Minutes saw all its worst suspicions confirmed when the police stopped a speeding Russian and found a police-radar detector.

Despite the vagueness surrounding the role of Proteus in the overall scheme of events in Zero Day, the entire story line around Proteus runs parallel to the show's theme of exploring truth in a post-truth world. While Mullen does not find any solid evidence to link his psychological issues with the supposed neurological weapon, the inclusion of Proteus creates a good opportunity to explore the duality of Mullen's actions. It cannot be concluded whether Mullen's actions, fueled by unparalleled power, were a result of his dwindling mental health or the consequence of a targeted attack. The idea of Proteus presents Zero Day with a strong tool to make its point, regarding the reality of the socio-political climate existing today.

Video: 'Zero Day' follows the aftermath of a deadly cyberattack (MSNBC, Feb 25, 2025 - 10:24 min.)