Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[dann]

As could be expected, James Giordano is very offended by the ODNI report because it doesn't agree with his findings and those in the NAS report.
VIEWPOINT: Intel Community’s Havana Syndrome Report and its Flawed Assumptions (National Defense Magazine, Mar 10, 2023)
At this hour, it is too late for me to comment on the article. It will have to wait till tomorrow.

 

[dann]

All the news media is really quilty of is giving too much credence to expert opinion. In a time when so many flatly refuse to listen to experts on important matters such as vaccinations and global warming, why are we accusing the media of not being sufficiently skeptical when those same experts weigh in on other matters? I don't blame the news media for simply reporting the news as it appears to be. They are just the messengers.

The real problem is the experts themselves, whether they be CIA agents, doctors, scientists or electrical engineers. When this is finally resolved, some of them are going to look like idiots.

Before I get back to James Giordano, just this because I just stumbled on it:

Alex Wagner looks at the Daily Beast's reporting on the woman whose e-mail became the basis for stolen election claim entertained by Maria Bartiromo and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.
"Repeating unverified claims verbatim is not journalism, it's crazy. Crazy like a fox."
Closer look finds startlingly flimsy basis for Fox anti-Dominion Big Lie claim (MSNBC on YouTube, Mar 11, 2023)

'Crazy like a fox' is a reference to Sidney Powell, but the principle is right everywhere. Repeating unverified claims verbatim is not journalism. (And the mainstream news media didn't (and still doesn't) restrict itself to quoting: See post 1,779 for the latest example from MSNBC. Still doing it!)

Sidney Powell's stories about the Dominion voting machines weren't any crazier than the lies about raygun attacks on diplomats told by people from the intelligence community and politicians (from both sides of the aisle) to the news media.
At least, the Dominion voting machines do exist. They are real. They've been used at elections. We have seen them on TV. The Russian ray guns, on the other hand, are totally imaginary, they are all made up. We haven't seen a single photo of one. Unless you count something like this.

We have heard thousands of claims that they are real and that they do exist, and yet the DoD only recently started its experiments on ferrets to come up with something that at least makes it plausible that the alleged damages on the spooks' brains were caused by microwaves.
And we know how this new experiment will end: They will manage to boil the brain of a, until then, living caged ferret, which we all know is possible, and then claim that it validates the idea of a Russian raygun attack in Havana and elsewhere.

 

[dann]

PETA Vice President Shalin Gala criticised the Defense Department for its animal testing.
"We are disturbed by a reported military plan [exposing] monkeys to pulsed microwave radiation in a misguided attempt to determine human brain effects associated with Havana Syndrome," she said, according to Politico. This has been debunked as has the purported justification for the Army's current $750,000 taxpayer-funded brain injury experiment that bombards 48 ferrets with radio waves."

A former intelligence official told the outlet that this research being conducted means the Defense Department has "extremely solid science".
You don't get approval for animal testing unless the science is there. ... You've already proven out that the science is correct and exists, and now you are looking at the biological impacts that can't be modelled and you need a specimen to determine what it does biologically," the ex-official said, adding that the department is processing other contracts to do further animal experiments.
US government is trying to give ferrets Havana Syndrome to figure out what mystery illness is (Independent, Mar 10, 2023)

If I understand this correctly, it merely means that they have a hypothesis that can be tested on ferrets. If they had actual "extremely solid science", it obviously wouldn't be necessary to microwave "a specimen" to see if it works.

Other news sites have also discovered Politico's article about DoD's taxpayer-funded bombardment of animals with microwaves - unlike the consumer-funded bombardment of animal remains using household microwave ovens:
Defense Department funds 'Havana syndrome' research in animals (Becker's Hospital Review, March 10, 2023)
The US military has been testing pulsed energy on animals trying to recreate the mysterious 'Havana Syndrome' symptoms: report (BusinessInsider.mx, March 11, 2023)

 

[dann]

American intelligence agencies have concluded that Havana syndrome isn’t real. No surprise. But that determination comes long after mainstream media credulously and repeatedly reported on and repeated intelligence officers’ absurd claims.
(...)
While the agencies acknowledge “that US personnel sincerely and honestly reported their experiences, including those that were painful or traumatic,” they concluded that the microwave-weapon theory that prevailed in the Washington establishment was “not borne out by subsequent medical and technical analysis,” and that they “identified medical, environmental, and social factors that plausibly can explain” the symptoms.
In other words, what “Havana syndrome” sufferers experienced was very real, but only in the sense that a placebo is also real medicine. And there’s a good chance that the arcane energy weapon they imagined as the cause of their suffering really was just the literal sound of crickets.
Havana Syndrome Is Fake. But Mainstream Media Couldn’t Get Enough of It for Years. (Jacobin, Mar 4, 2023)

I like the Jacobin's way of putting it, and this is what needs to be said to the scientific community (Scientific American did it so well! See post 1,760), U.S. politicians, the syndrome sufferers themselves and the general public: The 'attacks' were as real as a sugar pill is real medicine. You know that you got and swallowed a pill, but that pill wasn't real medicine. It was just a way of making you think that you got real medicine, and that may have been enough to make you feel better. The sugar pill works much like the misdirection of a stage magician because people often aren't able to distinguish between what they actually see (experience) and what they think they see (perception).

Telling the audience of a magic show that what they "experienced was very real" will confuse them because to them it actually looked like the magician sawed a lady in half even though he didn't, actually.

The 'syndrome' sufferers experienced being attack with ultra-sonics, but they weren't actually attacked, so telling them that what they experienced was real seems like a confirmation of their delusion, which is why some commentators have compared the cricket sounds to a nocebo. The 'syndrome' sufferers had been prepared for this, much like the audience at a magic show, when Patient Zero played his cricket tape at the New Year's Eve party at the embassy in Havana (see post 1,741). One thing is that crickets may sound like electronics gone haywire, like an old modem 30 years ago. It doesn't usually take long for people to realize that the sound they hear is coming from an insect. But it is much less likely that they will discover how harmless (albeit annoying) the sound is if they have been told in advance that it is something very dangerous, an enemy with a raygun damaging their brains. In that case, the sound will be perceived and interpreted as something entirely different, and they may even have headaches, ear pain and feel nauseous and dizzy.

It's like sitting at a campfire and hearing the sound of a breaking twig in the woods behind you. If you have just been told that a cannibalistic killer is on the loose in those woods, the way you experience hearing the sound will be different from your experience if you have just been told that the in the forest are nocturnal.

Even the way you remember your experience will depend on the stories you are told later. If people tell you that the magician who appeared to be sawing a woman in half has just been accused of murdering and dismembering his wife, it will probably color your memories in a different way than if you hear that he as been awarded for his implementation of safety measures.

I wonder if, for instance, Mark Zaid's clients could sue him for confirming their delusions that they have been attacked even now when it has been declared unambiguously that there was no attack, there was no sign of an attack, and there is no reason to assume that what they experienced was an attack. Telling them that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", i.e. 'even though there is no sign of evildoers, is doesn't mean that you aren't the victims of evildoers', is a way of prolonging their suffering instead of helping them get over it.

 

[dann]

Even before the Moscow Signal became a cause for concern in Washington, the Soviets, as the National Security Archive recently discovered, “exposed then Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, to ionizing radiation during his famous visit to Moscow in July 1959,” with “significant levels of radiation in and around Nixon’s sleeping quarters at … the residence of the U.S. Ambassador.” As with the Moscow Signal — and the Havana Syndrome — the specific source of the radiation was unclear; one American official said it may have “emanated from an atomic battery,” used primarily to activate another listening bug. Whatever the reason, it’s yet another instance of Moscow authorities targeting American officials with undeclared radiation — the details of which still remain murky.
There’s no evidence the radiation had any ill effects on Nixon, or that he was even aware of the elevated levels. But the recent revelations are one more piece of evidence revealing Moscow’s abilities — and willingness to use — these kinds of directed radiation schemes to target American officials and American diplomats.
Nixon’s irradiation “fits because it shows that the Soviets back at that time, and probably the Russians now, are willing to do most anything,” Schumaker told me. And with all that we know about the Havana Syndrome, it all appears to be “Moscow Signal all over again.”The Time Russians Really Did Target Americans With Microwaves (Politico, March 10, 2023)

"There's no evidence the radiation had any ill effects on Nixon." Really? We do know that he "suffered a severe stroke on April 18, 1994". But how do we know that the stroke wasn't caused by the ionized radiation in 1959? And his wife died only ten months earlier! A coincidence? I don't think so!
And only thirteen years after having been exposed to that ionized radiation in Moscow, Nixon's 'plumbers' broke into the the Watergate building. Who's to say that it would have happened if Nixon hadn't been exposed to mind-altering radiation? It's a pity that both Pat and Richard Nixon lived to be 81. Otherwise, it would have been the smoking gun in this case: The Soviets killed him!

Much like in the Project Brazen podcast about the Moscow signal (see post 1,716, it doesn't make the author of the Politico article wonder how come U.S. security officials have managed to detect and apparently measure radiation at least since 1959. And yet, not one single suspicious ray has been detected in Cuba in the context of the 'Havana Syndrome'.

But I guess it just goes to show how devious these Russkies are, doesn't it?! They succeeded in targeting all those diplomats and microwaving their brains without slipping up! Not even once!

 

[dann]

Microwaves and Frey effect revisited

This short article didn't appear until I searched for "Havana Syndrome" + "Washington Post". And it hasn't been seen by a lot of people: only two comments. Other WP articles this month about the 'syndrome' have several thousand comments.

The microwaves emitted in ovens are absorbed by water, which is present in food, and turned into heat. That causes food to get hot, from the outside in, which Rofer points out should be obvious to anyone who has tried to defrost meat. Similarly, a microwave weapon would burn the outside of your head long before it would cook cells on the inside.

Another point against the microwave weapon theory is a large body of research conducted over decades on the safety of exposure to military radar equipment, power lines, mobile phones and WiFi. Bioengineering professor Ken Foster of the University of Pennsylvania started conducting such studies for the Navy in the 1970s. When I interviewed him for this 2018 column, he told me he found that microwaves can stimulate the cochlea and cause people to hear a clicking sound — something called the Frey effect. He tested this on himself.

The Frey effect was the prime suspect, according to a panel assembled by the National Academy of Sciences, but Foster says this panel was mostly medical doctors and didn’t include physicists with the right expertise. He says this effect would not be able to cause internal damage without also causing external damage.
Havana Syndrome Is a Mystery, But Not of Physics (WP, March 2, 2023)

This raises the question: What do they need those ferrets and primates for at the Wayne State University, which is doing the $750,000 study for the DoD? Doesn't the DoD have any brave volunteers? Kenneth Foster microwaved his brain in the 1970s, and it still seems to be doing fine!

 

[Roger Ramjets]

This raises the question: What do they need those ferrets and primates for at the Wayne State University, which is doing the $750,000 study for the DoD?

I guess they feel they have to torture animals to justify the cost. But whatever they find it won't change people's minds.

OTOH it could be a great help for developing their own weapon.

"Do you know of any country having a technology that can do this?"
"We didn't, until now!"

 

[dann]

No, it probably won't change people's minds, which in itself is bad enough because it will be seen as confirmation of the delusion in the meantime: 'We are right to believe that we are the victims of an attack that has damaged our brains', which is a minor catastrophe for those stuck in it. Remember what FND expert Jon Stone said in the Vox article Bob001 found:

So if I see a patient who’s got the type of symptoms described in Havana syndrome and they fulfill diagnostic criteria for a functional disorder, the treatment involves beginning with explanation. If you’re trying to sort out a problem where the patient’s own brain is going wrong, you have to help them understand what’s happening. To make sense of it as a starting point.

The starting point is what guys like James Giordano and David Relman won't grant the 'syndrome' patients because of their own vanity. When everybody realizes how utterly wrong they have been the whole time, they will look ridiculous in the science community - if the article in Scientific American hasn't already seen to that.

By the way, in the Vox article, Jon Stone also addressed the white matter changes that have been treated as proof positive that the diplomats and spooks in Havana had been exposed to a brain-damaging microwave attack:

Noam Hassenfeld
There was a team at the University of Pennsylvania who took MRIs of some these patients, and they say they found results that are consistent with a major brain injury. Would those results eliminate the possibility of an FND?

Jon Stone
Here we get into more of a pickle because it turns out that even disorders like FND, depression, anxiety, if you look very closely at large groups, you actually do start to see changes in structure as well, because the brain is in some ways a bit like a muscle and it will grow in some bits and shrink in others. People with post-traumatic stress disorder have shrinkage of certain parts of their brain. So brain imaging is really, I’m afraid, no way to make arguments that things are neurological or psychological. And that’s why we have to abandon those categories.

And it becomes very harmful to [patients] if they’re caught in a legal system or in the medical system that’s telling them this is all brain damage. Because essentially what that means is this is the way you’re going to be forever. There’s no possibility of improvement. Your brain is damaged. Now, it’s very validating for the patient. But if they do have a functional disorder, it’s potentially very harmful because you’re denying them the opportunity to consider treatment of their condition through other means.

I promised I would get back to James Giordano's recent article (and I will). He feigns an interest in the well-being of the 'Havana Syndrome' patients and criticizes the ODNI report for not giving them the 'validation' that they so desire, but the truth doesn't validate their delusion, and it isn't supposed to do so. It helps them move beyond it. James Giordano wants to protect them from the truth because the truth is that his insistence that they were attacked helps them remain stuck in their belief in his lie about a microwave attack - and thus also in their own FND condition. James Giordano's pretense of caring for the 'syndrome' victims is unadulterated hypocrisy.

I doubt that the new DoD ferret study is meant to help develop a microwave weapon. I think its main purpose is to keep the 'Havana Syndrome' delusion alive.

 

[dann]

The Death of Havana Syndrome?!

Robert Bartholomew in Skeptic:

This case is a classic example of what can happen when science is intertwined with politics. These complex entities can be separated, but it takes time. While the wheels of progress turn slowly, in this instance the delay in getting to the bottom of Havana Syndrome took far too long. The result was a waste of valuable time and resources, tens of millions of dollars, unnecessary anxiety, damage to the Cuban economy, damage to the credibility of the American intelligence community and the news media, and a stoking of international tensions.
The Death of Havana Syndrome (2016-2023): R.I.P. (Skeptic, March 13, 2023)

Warning! When you follow the link to the Skeptic site, don't scroll down too fast to enjoy the rotation of old newspaper headlines about the 'syndrome'!
See also the list of Skeptic articles in the Havana Syndrome Archives.

I am not as optimistic as Robert Bartholomew that it is more or less over now, but I do hope that it is.

 

[dann]

The public meeting at the Spy Museum in Washington (see post 1,687) took place on Feb 22, 2023, one week before the ONID report was released.

You can now watch it on YouTube:

In December 2016, a US official in Havana went to the embassy medical centre to report a debilitating and confounding illness. The symptoms included headaches; nausea; hearing loss; problems with memory and vision. And its onset was characterized by hearing… something. A buzzing, hissing, grinding…sound.

Soon, a second official came down with the same symptoms. Then a third. Then a fourth. By the time the story went public in summer 2017, dozens of US diplomats, as well as some Canadians, had come down with what was becoming known as “Havana Syndrome.” In recent years, The US agencies have failed to agree even on the basic premises. State department said it’s a “sonic device,” then rolled that back. The CIA have hinted microwave radiation might be involved. The FBI said there was no “there” there. Now they seem to be rolling that back as well.

A new investigative podcast series — THE SOUND: Mystery of Havana Syndrome—from Project Brazen and PRX, peels back the layers of one of the most bizarre mysteries of the modern age. In collaboration with Goat Rodeo, join us along with Spy Museum historian/curator Dr. Andrew Hammond for a live panel discussion with Nicky Woolf, investigative journalist and host of THE SOUND podcast; Marc Polymeropoulos, the CIA officer who suffered debilitating symptoms in Moscow; and Mark Zaid, the American attorney who says new victims are coming forward all the time. They’ll explore the wide variety of theories that have been put forward surrounding Havana Syndrome. Could it be caused by noisy crickets? Or mosquito spray? A mass delusion? Or a foreign attack?

After their conversation, guests ask Nicky, Marc and Mark for their insight into other aspects of the mystery they have come to know and understand so well.
THE SOUND: Mystery of Havana Syndrome (International Spy Museum on YouTube, Mar 9, 2023 - 1:18:02)

A couple of the 17 YouTube comments (so far) complain about the sound of the video. It is subtitled, but the subtitles appear to be AI-generated: International Spy Museum --> international spine museum; Project Brazen --> Project Grayson. I have only listened to the first couple of minutes.

 

[dann]

I almost forgot that the final episode of Nicky Woolf's podcast series would be released today!

This week's episode of Project Brazen's podcast series THE SOUND: Mystery of Havana Syndrome:

We answer our central question: What happened here? And we try to chart the path forward for “Havana Syndrome” victims.
Guests: Marc Polymeropolous, Ken Jones, Doug Ferguson, Kevin Coats
Chapter 8: Hammers and Nails (Mar 13, 2023)

Transcript

There has been some progress.
1) Nicky Woolf appears to have understood that the jerky eye movements and and a case of retinal bleeding aren't the argument against mass psychogenic illness that he thought they were. They aren't mentioned at all in this episode.
2) He also doesn't mention the two cases of electromagnetic hypersensibility that he also seemed to think was an argument for the idea that the 'syndrome' victims had been exposed to a microwave attack. I would have preferred if he had openly admitted that had been taken in by these things but had come to the realization that they didn't represent what he used to think. They were very important to him as arguments against mass psychogenic illness.
3) He is also no longer as convinced that a microwave attack took place as he was in the article in The Sunday Times on Jan 22, 2023 (see posts 1,660, 1,661 and 1,663)
4) And he may even have realized that Golomb is a fringe scientists. At least, she is no longer mentioned. But again, I would have preferred to hear him say why she isn't mentioned anymore.

And he sticks with what he has been told by David Relman and James Giordano about microwave weapons:

The general consensus is, if it was an attack, pulsed microwaves – radio frequency radiation – fits closest. It’s a hypothesis I personally find credible. Let’s run it down.
First, possibility. Do the physics work?
So, yes. We’ve seen that microwaves can be projected. We know it’s theoretically capable of causing this kind of brain injury. And we know that, via the Frey Effect, it can also cause the experience of a sound.
Cue, Relman: In the past, some of the clinical features had been elicited with pulsed radio frequency energy…
Next, plausibility. How likely is it?
Well, we know devices like these exist. We’ve seen the patents – and the training videos. We know the US has access to them. And we know other nations have been working on similar tech.
Cue, Nicky: Uh, just to get straight to the point of it I guess, does the US have devices that can do this?
Cue, Giordano: Yes.

It is really not a surprise that microwaves can be projected. They are rays! We also know about the Frey effect, but what makes the Frey effect relevant at this point? We know that the sounds heard and recorded by people who thought they were being attacked in Havana were crickets, not the Frey effect, which makes the Frey effect and thus Relman's statement irrelevant.
And as for the existing devices: What exactly can those devices do? Can they target several people in one hotel room separately? Through walls? Is James Giordano so reliable that a simple "Yes" from him is enough to remove all doubt that allegedly existing weapons can cause 'Havana Syndrome? If that's true, then why is the DoD spending $750,000 on a cricket experiment that intends to prove that?

Two claims made by Relman and Giordano appears to be all it takes to convince Nicky Woof!

I do think some kind of device was used in some cases. I think something happened in Havana.

There's no doubt that something happened in Havana, but there is no smoking gun, no perpetrator, and no bullet hole, and yet for Nicky Woolf it's enough to beiieve that it was Putin, with a directed pulsed energy weapon, in Havana!

But to get to that point, there's a surprise guest:

We’re going to hear from a surprise, last-minute witness. One with a very important story to tell.
His name is Ken Jones.

But the important story is a huge disappointment: In 2011 Ken Jones was an FBI agent in a former USSR country when he couldn't make his computer work. He was told that it was because somebody from a neighboring country was sabotaging the electronic devices using rays. Later he had migraines, was also "dizzy, fatigued and nauseous" and had "ringing in his ears," but "it’s only years later, when he hears about Havana Syndrome on the news, that he makes the connection."

In other words, a nothing burger dressed up to appear to be significant now that all the other alleged circumstantial evidence of a microwave attack has turned out to be utterly unreliable.


I don't know how the podcast industry works, but I hope that Nicky Woolf will be given a chance in a year or two to come back and correct the mistakes that were made in Project Brazen's podcast series. There's a lot to make up for.
In the meantime, Project Brazen should at least include some notes in the transcripts about jerky eye movements, retinal bleeding, electromagnetic hypersensibility, Beatrice Golomb, David Relman, James Giordano, ...

 

[dann]

Based on quotations from today's episode of Project Brazen's podcast series about the 'Havana Syndrome':

"Since our concern was that one of the perpetrators - maybe the perpeetrator - was Russia," Bolton said, "we didn't feel we would get support from President Trump if we said, 'We think the Russians are coming after American personnel.'"
John Bolton chose not to brief Trump on Russia Havana syndrome suspicion (The Guardian, Mar 13, 2023)

 

[dann]

EXCLUSIVE: Scientist who investigated Havana Syndrome slams government report denying US enemies are to blame for mystery condition

Scientist says Havana Syndrome is caused by guns firing radio waves

https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/1635372101728104454 (Daily Mail Onine on Twitter, Mar 13, 2023)

It looks more like Golomb than Relman or Giordano, except she seems to have got rid of the bangs. It is the Daily Mail, so I think I've read enough for today ...

 

[dann]

Two things I forgot to mention yesterday when I wrote about:

This week's episode of Project Brazen's podcast series THE SOUND: Mystery of Havana Syndrome:
Transcript

1. One thing is that Nicky Woolf simply accepts the answer from two ... at this point, I think it's safe to call the two of them + Beatrice Golomb fringe scientists:

And he sticks with what he has been told by David Relman and James Giordano about microwave weapons:

The general consensus is, if it was an attack, pulsed microwaves – radio frequency radiation – fits closest. It’s a hypothesis I personally find credible. Let’s run it down.
First, possibility. Do the physics work?
So, yes. We’ve seen that microwaves can be projected. We know it’s theoretically capable of causing this kind of brain injury. And we know that, via the Frey Effect, it can also cause the experience of a sound.
Cue, Relman: In the past, some of the clinical features had been elicited with pulsed radio frequency energy…Next, plausibility. How likely is it?
Well, we know devices like these exist. We’ve seen the patents – and the training videos. We know the US has access to them. And we know other nations have been working on similar tech.
Cue, Nicky: Uh, just to get straight to the point of it I guess, does the US have devices that can do this?Cue, Giordano: Yes.

If Giordano says that the US has "devices that can do this", i.e. that can do exactly what happened to the Havana cohort of alleged attack victims, then it must be true. (And again: For some reason, the DoD is right at this very moment trying to prove that such a device can actually do such a thing ... to ferrets! But if Giordano's "Yes" is good enough for Nicky Woolf ...)

Another thing is how neurologist Robert Baloh is dismissed. He figured prominently in episode 3, but in the final episode he is reduced to this:

Doug and the others were diagnosed with brain injury by multiple medical teams at multiple institutions. Sure, the first JAMA study finding “brain damage” was widely criticized.
Cue, Baloh: After reviewing and reading, uh, the paper I was disappointed because … they really didn’t provide any convincing data of brain injury or brain damage.
But there’s been more research since. A 2019 paper concluded “a wholly psychogenic cause is very unlikely.” Another study, this one looking at Canadian victims, was even firmer: “Our findings confirm brain injury.”
And even the loudest skeptics admit that psychogenic symptoms… usually fade over time with a reduction in stress. That’s just not what we’re seeing. With Kate – and Karen, and Doug, and Kevin – and pretty much everyone we’ve heard from… the people who got sick… are still sick.
Chapter 8: Hammers and Nails (The SOUND, Mar 13, 2023)

Yes, there has indeed been more 'research' since 2019, but it is also not as if Baloh hasn't argued against that research. If I remember correctly, he and Robert Bartholomew wrote a whole book about it: Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria. And they didn't stop there. They have since then written articles and given interviews. If Nicky Woolf didn't have time to read any of that, he should just have said so instead of pretending that the criticism of the attack delusion stopped in 2018!

It's true that Kate, Karen, Doug and Kevin are still sick, but they are so for a reason: They were told by attack conspiracy nuts like Giordano, Relman, Golomb - and now we can add Nicky Woolf to the list - that their innocuous symptoms were due to a microwave attack, which made them get even sicker to the extent where Karen and Kate now suffer from a bad case of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, which "has no scientific basis and is not a recognised medical diagnosis. Claims are characterized by a "variety of non-specific symptoms, which afflicted individuals attribute to exposure to electromagnetic fields"" (Wikipedia).

Karen, Kate, Doug, Kevin, Marc & Marc "are still sick" because what started as mass psychogenic illness and/or mass suggestion has now turned into severe cases of functional neurological disorder (FND)! As Dr. Jon Snow puts it:

it becomes very harmful to [patients] if they’re caught in a legal system or in the medical system that’s telling them this is all brain damage. Because essentially what that means is this is the way you’re going to be forever. There’s no possibility of improvement. Your brain is damaged.

See posts 1,773, 1,774 and 1,788.
They have gone from being cases of mass psychogenic illness to being cases of functional neurological disorder thanks to what Dr. Mitchell Valdes Sosa calls "iatrogenic damage. (See post 1,689)


2. And then there is Ken, the FBI agent overseas, who suddenly appears in the final episode to save the idea of an energy attack now that jerky eye movements, a case of retinal bleeding and two cases of EHS have lost all credibility as arguments against mass psychogenic illness:

I go to sign into my FBI computer. And there’s no connectivity. ... The secure network… is down. ... One of their [an intelligence agency's] representatives told me that, ‘oh, it’s a country that is intentionally attacking this communication link’. ... It was a radio wave attack… someone is blasting radiofrequency energy at the embassy. And it’s messing with the comms equipment. ... shortly after that, I started experiencing daily migraines… The symptoms worsen. He’s dizzy, fatigued and nauseous. ... He’d been briefed on security threats before the posting, but they never mentioned anything like this. ... It’s only years later, when he hears about Havana Syndrome on the news, that he makes the connection.

Consider what exactly 'Ken' is saying here: He can't access his secret FBI network because somebody is scrambling it with radio waves. We should all be afraid of this because 'someone (a lot of someones, actually) is blasting radio frequency energy' at our homes! Every day, every hour! If you don't believe me, turn on your radios or TV sets (unless you've got cable): Where do you think that sound and those pictures come from? They come from the radio waves that are all around and in us all the time. And prepared to be shocked now, because I'm going to tell you about interference!!!

Definitions from Oxford Languages:
(...)
PHYSICS
the combination of two or more electromagnetic waveforms to form a resultant wave in which the displacement is either reinforced or cancelled.
the fading or disturbance of received radio signals caused by unwanted signals from other sources, such as unshielded electrical equipment, or broadcasts from other stations or channels.

Scary stuff, innit?!

No, not really.

Notice the one about unshielded electrical equipment. Even our household appliances may blast us and our neighbors with radio frequency energy if they aren't properly shielded. It doesn't affect us at all, we won't even notice, unless we open our radios or TV sets and hear that something is disrupting the signal to the radio receiver we are listening to.

When Ken had "been briefed on security threats before the posting, but they never mentioned anything like this," the reason why they didn't mention it is that it's not dangerous! When they didn't mention "RF exposure or its potential effects," it's because they had no reason to. Like Karen and Kate, Ken suffers from a serious case of electromagnetic hypersensitivity now, and his story is supposed to be the argument that saves the day for the attack delusion, which is kind of appropriate, all things considered.

Nicky Woolf was obviously in over his head when he made this series. He knew nothing about mass psychogenic illness, functional neurological disorders, white matter tracts, radio frequency or sound and acoustics, which gave guys like Relman, Giordano and Golomb the opportunity to lead him astray. But I am surprised that the sound technicians at Project Brazen didn't explain sound, acoustics and interference to him. I can't imagine that they have been as ignorant of this stuff as he is.

 

[dann]

So let's take a closer look at James Giordano's complaint about the new report:

As could be expected, James Giordano is very offended by the ODNI report because it doesn't agree with his findings and those in the NAS report.
VIEWPOINT: Intel Community’s Havana Syndrome Report and its Flawed Assumptions (National Defense Magazine, Mar 10, 2023)
At this hour, it is too late for me to comment on the article. It will have to wait till tomorrow.

The very brief summary is that he insists on treating the two dozen Havana cases as something entirely different from the other 1,000-1,500 cases in the rest of the world. He doesn't really point out any "flawed assumptions". It's all about his claim to the exceptionalism of his and David Relman's unique and genuine and never-before-seen cases, the ones that are supposed be an entirely new syndrome. To some extent, I blame the interim report for this: It was the one that said, 'We have analyzed and found out that the vast majority of the 1,000 cases in the rest of the world don't constitute an attack, but we'll let Relman, Giordano et al hold on to the first two dozen cases for now. They are still being investigated'. And less than two weeks later, Relman's group said that those cases were most plausibly caused by microwaves:

In the end, the experts determined that “pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio-frequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics” of the health incidents. That finding was not definitive, and “information gaps exist,” the panel wrote in a summary of its findings. But “there are several plausible pathways involving various forms of pulsed electromagnetic energy, each with its own requirements, limitations, and unknowns” that could be making people sick.
External energy source may explain ‘Havana syndrome,’ panel finds, renewing questions about possible foreign attack (Washington Post, Feb 2, 2022)

That they talk about "various forms of pulsed electromagnetic energy" is probably because they realized that one kind of microwave weapon wouldn't be enough to cause the variety of symptoms in the 'syndrome' victims, so they had to imagine various forms of weapons to make up for it instead of seeing it as a sign that the 'syndrome' wasn't caused by any kind of weapon.

But back to James Giordano:

In the main, I believe that the conclusions offered by this report are inconsistent with over five years of evidence and analyses by numerous individual and institutional subject matter experts. In addition, the report also makes flawed assumptions as a result of its compiling disparate patient data that have been accumulated over this five-year period.

It doesn't bother him that his own conclusions are inconsistent with several reports, for instance the ones by FBI and the JASON-group, and with even more numerous experts all around the world. It is an old trick to claim that 'we are many, so you must be wrong!' As I mentioned above, James Giordano insists that the Havana cases are the only genuine 'syndrome' cases, so it doesn't really matter to him that 1,000 other cases turned out to have very down-to-earth causes. The other patient data must be disparate and in no way related to the 'syndrome' cases.

He says about the cases that he thinks of as his own that "scientific and forensic analyses ... explicitly ruled out a number of the possible causes mentioned in the current report." The reason that upsets him the most is, of course, mass (or any kind of) psychogenic illness, and since his report ruled them out, the ODNI report should not be allowed to rule them in again and come to a different result. How dare they!

Some of these were environmental variables, gross exposure to industrial or ecological chemicals and/or toxins, the presence of pre- and/or co-existing medical conditions; and psycho- and sociogenic effects.
To wit, the intelligence report fails to acknowledge these previously established observations, but rather attributes all of the incidents reported to date — inclusive of those occurring in the original cohort of patients from Havana — on the factors that had previously been negated.

Why does he think that the new report fails to acknowledge the previously established observations? It appears to have acknowledged but disagreed with the conclusions drawn by Giordano about those observations, and Giordano is upset because it doesn't acknowledge his imaginary entitlement to some kind of exceptionalism of the Havana cases:

In this regard, the report inaptly (!) aggregates all reported cases of such (!) incidents, and does not distinguish between the specific findings relevant to those individuals originally affected in Havana, those in a current evaluative/verification pipeline, and the overwhelming majority of subsequent cases.

Giordano's article is so very repetitive because all it does is make the same claim from beginning till end: My Havana cases are different, they have been analyzed by me, the analysis is finished, so how dare you cast doubt on those results, which is obviously what the ODNI report does - and shouldn't be allowed to do, in Giordano's opinion!
I have already mentioned that I think it was a mistake for the interim report last year to shy away from taking the necessary confrontation with Giordano and Relman. I suspect that the CIA hoped that they would come to their senses if they gave G&R time to digest the results.
But that clearly didn't happen!

Instead, Giordano proposes a solution of Biblical proportions: And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him.
Render to the ODNI report all those other 1,000-1,500 cases, but leave my two dozen 'syndrome' cases alone. They're mine, goddammit!

That's the general idea, but it sounds a bit more sciencey when Giordano lays claim to the Havana cases. Anything else would be inappropriate and unethical:

These latter broad public cases may indeed represent incidences of other probable cause, such as those described above, but these have been — and should not be — inappropriately conflated with established case reports. To categorically aggregate and conflate all reported cases is both technically erroneous and ethically problematic, as it is a misrepresentation of data and evidence-based knowledge, and in thus conveys non-veridical information, in violation of professional responsibility and public trust.

(Yes, I know! I had to look up non-veridical, too! Like I already said: It's all about the exceptionalism of what's Giordano's and nobody else's!)

The next argument, if it deserves that name, is basically: 'And David Relman thinks so, too!'

"this constellation of clinical features is unlike any disorder in the neurological or general medical literature."

And the constellation is not only unique and exceptional:

many of the symptoms and signs were, in fact, consistent with exposure to some form of radio-frequency and/or electromagnetic energy.

No need to ask how they can be unlike any other neurological disorder known to mankind and yet be consistent with a certain kind of (imaginary, but still) exposure to microwaves! We already know that the 'syndrome' works in mysterious ways!

Next, James Giordano claims that there are an awful lot of those microwave weapons out there of the kind that he and Relman like to imagine caused the 'syndrome', which would render DoD's ferret-brain-frying experiment superfluous.

But then there are also the victims! Won't somebody think of the victims! (None of whom can be Cuban, obviously!) It's disrespectful to try to talk the 'syndrome' sufferers out of their unfortunate functional neurological disorder that he and his colleagues have spent so much time and effort talking them into! (Remember Dr. Mitchell Valdes Sosa's word for it: iatrogenic?)

But please don't take my word for any of this! Read the whole thing. I can't imagine that James Giordano's appeal to exceptionalism will make the editors of Scientific American retract their recent article about James Giordano, David Relman and their colleagues: How 'Anomalous Health Incidents' in Cuba Sidelined Science.

 

[dann]

By the way, I wasn't aware of this till now, but David Relman also appears to be one of the main proponents of the lab leak theory, which I haven't really kept up with:

Scientists like David Relman, an expert on microbiology and biosecurity at Stanford University, are dismayed at the way the lab leak theory has been dismissed. He helped organize a group of 18 scientists to sign a letter published in Science last May calling for further investigation of a possible accident. (At least two of those involved later sought to distance themselves from the letter after seeing how it had been used to promote the lab leak theory.)
Meet the scientist at the center of the covid lab leak controversy (MIT Technology Review, Feb 9, 2022)

House Republicans kick off investigation into how the pandemic began, with witnesses who mostly favour a lab origin.
(...)
For David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University in California, these recent announcements by the intelligence community support the idea that both hypotheses for COVID-19’s origins should receive serious attention, and that there is no definitive evidence to support either at the moment. “In particular, the laboratory idea is a plausible idea that hasn’t been properly addressed,” he says.
US COVID-origins hearing renews debate over lab-leak hypothesis (March 9, 2023)

I suppose microbiologist Relman knows more about lab leaks than he does about microwaves and acoustics.

 

[dann]

The Bizarre Reason Pentagon Is Conducting Radiation Tests on Ferrets (Popular Mechanics, Mar 13, 2023)

“Available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of U.S. adversaries in causing the reported incidents,” the redacted report states. “There is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or device that is causing AHIs.”
PETA latched onto that report, saying the experiment funding at Wayne State University “is not only cruel and wasteful but also, frankly, futile.”
PETA calls on Pentagon to stop ‘Havana syndrome’ testing on animals (The Hill, Mar 13, 2023)

If it's futile would depend on the purpose of the testing being carried out, of course. I seriously doubt that the experiment will somehow help "alleviate the deficits associated with traumatic brain injury."

 

[dann]

Justamente sobre eso tiene mucha experiencia Cuba, a quien constantemente se asedia e intenta llenar de falsedades desde los medios reaccionarios.
En tal sentido, el Jefe de Estado compartió con los presentes varios ejemplos sobre incidentes que han sido manipulados y, como consecuencia de ello, han traído consigo graves problemas para nuestro país. Tal es el caso, comentó el Presidente Díaz-Canel, del «famoso pretexto de los supuestos incidentes sónicos en La Habana, por lo cual Trump aplicó 243 medidas para recrudecer el bloqueo a Cuba».
A pesar de que desmentimos esa falacia, comentó, la «historia se siguió moviendo como una bola de nieve que va cayendo por una montaña y se va haciendo más grande. Hoy la mentira está deshecha, pero las 243 medidas que recrudecen el bloqueo están en pie.
«Luchar contra la mentira tiene un precio, y todos nosotros estamos pagando ese precio defendiendo la verdad; pero es lo más digno que podemos hacer si queremos un mundo mejor; es lo más revolucionario que podemos hacer para romper el hegemonismo que nos pretenden imponer, y el colonialismo con que nos quieren conquistar en los medios actualmente», subrayó el Primer Secretario del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba.
Luchar contra la mentira tiene un precio, y todos pagamos ese precio defendiendo la verdad (Granma.cu, Mar 15, 2023)

Cuba has a lot of experience with this exact thing [i.e. fighting against "campaigns of hate, lies and slander"], because the the reactionary media is constantly trying to inundate the country with falsehoods.
In this sense, the Head of State shared with those present several examples of incidents that have been manipulated and, as a consequence, have caused serious problems for our country. One of those cases, President Díaz-Canel commented, is the "famous alleged sonic incidents in Havana, which were used by Trump as a pretext to introduce 243 measures to intensify the blockade against Cuba."
Despite the fact that we disproved that fallacy, he commented, the “story kept growing like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Today the lie has been debunked, but the 243 measures to intensify the blockade are still in place.
«Fighting the lie comes at a price, and we are all are paying that price defending the truth; but it is the most dignified thing we can do if we want a better world; it is the most revolutionary thing we can do to break the hegemonism that they intend to impose on us, and the colonialism with which they want to conquer us in the media today," stressed the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Fighting the lie comes at a price, and we all pay that price defending the truth

 

[dann]

Just a TI rumor + conspiracy theory, but it would be nice if the ODNI report has made Michael Hoffer stop creating more 'syndrome' victims by handing out 'HS' diagnoses to people who weren't even anywhere near Havana. I don't know if that is what he has been doing, but some things seem to indicate that it might be the case (see posts 1,709, 1,722 and 1,752):

It looks like Dr. Hoffer also threw the towel. People who visited him reported that he behaved strangely, failing to diagnose HS. It was reported that someone from outside the consultation was present, intrusive. People are being threatened...
sababaschweitz (on Twitter, Mar 12, 2023)

How can he 'fail to diagnose HS' when that is what people pay him to do, right?!

 

[dann]

It looks more like Golomb than Relman or Giordano, except she seems to have got rid of the bangs. It is the Daily Mail, so I think I've read enough for today ...

I was wrong. The photo I saw was of Avril Haines, who is not the scientist referred to in the Daily Mail article:

'There's no environmental cause that causes the body damage that I saw,' they said. 'We know that the Soviets had sonic weapons'
(...)
A top scientist who dealt directly with victims of Havana Syndrome has slammed the government finding that the condition was not caused by foreign adversities as 'bulls**t.
EXCLUSIVE: Scientist who investigated Havana Syndrome insists US enemies ARE to blame for mysterious condition afflicting 1,500 embassy staff worldwide - and slams government report for denying it (Daily Mail, March 13, 2023)

He or she is "speaking on condition of anonymity," so it could be anyone who still believes that sonic weapons are relevant even after almost everybody (including the 'HS' lawyer Mark Zaid) declared that the cricket tapes have absolutely nothing to do with the whole thing. I would have liked to hear more about the kind of "body damage" seen by this "PhD expert [who] worked with the US intelligence community, analyzing body scans of several Havana Syndrome patients and studied data on scores more."

But the expert who studied patients told DailyMail.com that the differences between cases was to be expected, and there was a core of patients within the larger group whose cases could be explained by nothing other than directed energy.
'It's just rubbish. It implies it's a single disease vector. It's not a single disease vector. It's probably multiple different players all using some kind of similar technology,' the top PhD said.
'There's a wide range of energy weapons. That's why it's called a syndrome. And in fact, they are quite consistent.
What do you say to the people who have huge blotches on their body scans? Did a mosquito cause it? No. It just flies in the face of everybody's personal testimonies.'

So on the one hand, differences between cases, not a single disease vector, multiple different players and a wide range of energy weapons, but on the other hand, quite consistent. To me, it sounds much like both David Relman and James Giordano.
And again: Why don't we hear more about those huge blotches?
And are the "body scans" something other than the brain scans we usually hear about? The article doesn't tell us.

I have googled blotch + Havana Syndrome, but I haven't found anything. Are the huge blotches just a new gimmick that "the top PhD" has come up with in an attempt to rescue the attack idea?