Slashdot Mirror
Victims of Mystery Attacks In Cuba Left With Anomalies In Brain Tissue (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: American victims of mysterious attacks in Cuba have abnormalities in their brains' white matter, according to new medical testing reported by the Associated Press. But, so far, it's unclear how or if the white-matter anomalies seen in the victims relate to their symptoms. White matter is made up of dense nerve fibers that connect neurons in different areas of the brain, forming networks. It gets its name from the light-colored electrical insulation, myelin, that coats the fibers. Overall, the tissue is essential for rapidly transmitting brain signals critical for learning and cognitive function.
In August, U.S. authorities first acknowledged that American diplomats and their spouses stationed in Havana, Cuba, had been the targets of puzzling attacks for months. The attacks were carried out by unknown agents and for unknown reasons, using a completely baffling weaponry. The attacks were sometimes marked by bizarrely targeted and piercing noises or vibrations, but other times they were completely imperceptible. Victims complained of a range of symptoms, including dizziness, nausea, headaches, balance problems, ringing in the ears (tinnitus), nosebleeds, difficulty concentrating and recalling words, permanent hearing loss, and speech and vision problems. Doctors have also identified mild brain injuries, including swelling and concussion. U.S. officials now report that 24 Americans were injured in the attacks but wouldn't comment on how many showed abnormalities in their white matter.
In August, U.S. authorities first acknowledged that American diplomats and their spouses stationed in Havana, Cuba, had been the targets of puzzling attacks for months. The attacks were carried out by unknown agents and for unknown reasons, using a completely baffling weaponry. The attacks were sometimes marked by bizarrely targeted and piercing noises or vibrations, but other times they were completely imperceptible. Victims complained of a range of symptoms, including dizziness, nausea, headaches, balance problems, ringing in the ears (tinnitus), nosebleeds, difficulty concentrating and recalling words, permanent hearing loss, and speech and vision problems. Doctors have also identified mild brain injuries, including swelling and concussion. U.S. officials now report that 24 Americans were injured in the attacks but wouldn't comment on how many showed abnormalities in their white matter.
No matter how hostile and immoral in their spying the Cubans and Russians might be, there is so little factual basis to this story, and it's so absurd that no radiation is sensed, etc., and people have visible brain pathology.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There isn't any.
Bruce Perens.
Cuba was under the protection of the USSR for quite some time. I imagine they could have been testing and developing some kind of new technology and now the Cubans have it? A lot of experimental stuff was tried all throughout the Cold War by both sides.
Be interesting if we ever learn what caused this. Normally I'd discount such bizzare reports as silly, but a lot of people were affected by this. So I think something was definitely done to them.
Lets see you point to a single documented case of someone psychologically inducing actual damage to their own brain tissue. What a jerk. This is nothing like PTSD.
Such a puzzling variety of symptoms were seen with the first BSE Patients. Not the same ones, but similar in their oddity.
It may be best not to ascribe to nefarious motives, what can simply be explained away by bad hygiene.
Captcha: gerbil...
Gerbil?
I'm not going to propose that there is no mystery here, but when probing something this mysterious and examining people as intensely as they are likely examining these individuals, I'd want to go with a setup that tests both people who were there and people who weren't. I'd also want to hide the identities from those reading the scans.
No human would be without anomalies if tested intensively enough.
Hmm, sounds like self inflicted injuries. One thing happened, the professional paranoid got a hold of it, exaggerated the hell out of it and then all of them felt they were under attack. That constant psychological stress, affected their brains sufficiently to affect the senses they are attached to. Don't think of it as a one off but in affect a sustained psychological attack upon their own people, generating a continuous state of high stress, fear, paranoia, all feeding into delusions that created real physical harm.
Hmm, sounds like Aliens.
Think of it grinding on, hour after hour, day after day, for months, the threat of someone attacking you and destroying you mind, the message reinforced again and again and again, have you been attacked, have you heard anything, have you felt anything, every thing a possible threat, fully exposed to the enemy. They drove their own people crazy and generated real physical harm as a result.
Think of exposure to alien mind rays grinding on, hour after hour, day after day, for months attacking you and destroying your mind.
I read the list of major infectious diseases in Cuba and see several that attack brain/nervous system and some of which can even cause "brain alteration"
could this "attack" be a natural pathogen? It's the first thing that came to my mind reading the mass media hysteria over it, and after looking at all the interesting nasties that are in Cuba....
I have wondered from the first time I read about these embassy attacks if someone was playing with a device that utilizes the "microwave auditory effect" that this wired article was discussing in 2008.
Perhaps they were attempting to project voices into their heads and had some sort of tuning issue that caused it to have a range of other effects.
These symptoms are all explained by high-power microwave exposure. Someone simply used
surplus microwave or radar emitters at relatively short range to try and cause physical harm.
Although this may sound sophisticated, it's actually pretty low tech. Most likely North Korean
agents in Cuba, but acting without the knowledge or permission of the Cuban government.
Ok, I'll bite. Here's my theories. I'm in the "ultrasonic or electromagnetic attack" camp, but I suspect that a phased-array system is being used to try to focus the energy at the heads of the people while they sleep. Aiming phased arrays is somewhat non-trivial, so the spot of focus isn't perfect and has lots of local minima and maxima. Given the lack of knowledge about the exact insides of the room and what's in the walls, the instigator probably can't control the exact shape of the focused spot even if they completely understand the performance of their device. This explains the range of symptoms. Some consular personnel were hit with maxima in the ears, some on the eyes, some on the brain, etc. etc. Maybe there's a chemical explanation - something toxic to nerves. But some of the people had concussions. Can a person get a concussion from a chemical? Outside of my expertise.... It'll be interesting to eventually find out who is doing this. I would say that it requires doctorate-level skill in either physics, or mechanical or electrical engineering to do something like this, so we're talking about smart people. But there are a lot of those around nowadays, in lots of parts of the world. This isn't the work of a first-rate or even second-rate intelligence agency. As far as espionage/sabotage goes, this is super-sloppy work. Who would be so dumb as to try this on US people... and so many times...... one wrong move and the US will get a person in custody, or capture the tricked-out van that's doing this, or intercept a cell phone call, and figure out who's behind it. At that point, if it's sponsored by a country, there will probably be holy hell to pay. A small terrorist group? This seems a bit out of the ability of most terrorist types. Most of them can barely put a simple bomb together properly. I've got no good theory on who's doing it, but I'd bet a paycheck that the US intelligence agencies already know.
You seriously think that in less than a year Trump has utter control over an array of army doctors such that they would outright lie to this extent? Come on man. He doesn't even have full control of the state department or pretty much any other department for that matter.
Or what about the notion that Trump could coerce this many doctors to lie about this, and even if that WERE true why would the embassy staff all be sick? Do you claim that the entire staff of the Cuban embassy is making THAT up? I refer you again to my first point re: Trump and the state department - not to mention the actual timeframe in which they got sick was back in 2016 before the election. Was Trump masterfully convincing the entire Cuban embassy staff to claim they were sick at that point? To what end? I mean Scott Adams claims Trump is a master persuader but even so I'm not going to buy into Tump being that clever...
Now I'm not willing to agree it was may not even have been an attack, maybe just some natural cause of the building. But to claim there is nothing going on at all is seriously out of whack even for the paranoid among us (which I count myself in that group). There is obviously something more to the story that is not understood at this point.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is a plausible explanation for this mysterious attack. Currently, Microwave guns that are being used for riot-control have their frequencies tuned to be absorbed by the skin, but you can lower the frequency (longer wavelength) to make the microwave penetrate deeper, literally frying the victim's brain. When the microwave cooks the auditory region, the victim hears a phantom sound.
There is no actual recording of the sound. What the AP released is just a synthesized simulation of what it might sound like to a victim under attack.
I once had a signature.
AC Re: The motive is strange.
Human spies need out of Cuba and into US to spy on groups that are trying to bring freedom to Cuba.
Getting out of Cuba with that real US embassy paperwork is great for a later deep cover story.
The US embassy trusted that person enough to give the needed real paper work.
The spy agency printed paperwork spies tried to use gets detected.
The embassy is one way out. Walk in, tell a good story, get real trusted papers to escape out of Cuba with.
Once in the West find other people who want to bring freedom to Cuba.
Report all findings back to Cuba.
A more long term plan used by Communists is to escape to the West and get the second and third generations to enter the US mil, gov.
Grow up in the USA, pass the few background checks now, rise up the ranks of the US mil, gov reporting back to Cuba only when really needed.
The one part Cuba needs working for decades of spying is a US embassy thats relaxed and able to give a lot of papers out so as many spies can get into the USA.
The more spies Cuba graduates as ready for missions in the USA the longer lines outside the US embassy.
The more happy and productive the US embassy staff are the more Cuban spies might get a chance to enter the USA.
More paperwork for spies is cleared per hour to enter the USA with relaxed embassy staff.
Cuba would not risk the best, fastest and most legitimate way to get lots of its trusted spies out of Cuba.
Everyday embassy work slows is another days worth of spies not been allowed into the USA.
Having US investigations start also disrupts the work of Cuban spies working inside the US embassy.
Cuba would lose it legal path to the USA for many of its spies and risk its spies in the US embassy with a spy hunt.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"Thanks Obama"
Considering there is zero precedent for any kind acoustic phenomenon to cause symptoms like this
Considering they have brain abnormalities it seems like whatever happened may not have been acoustic. It could be what was "heard" was a side effect of trauma to the brain, which would also explain why some people heard nothing if the brain was affected in differing locations.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If Cuban communist agents really wanted to infiltrate America they could have just landed on US soil and claimed asylum which would have been granted, just as it had been for decades up until earlier this year when Obama ended that policy. If this were a real goal of Cuba, the U.S. would be rife with Cuban spies unless they only decided they should get in on this whole espionage thing within the last 10 months. There were so many Cubans actually trying to escape that even thousands of spies would have been able to blend in quite easily.
Also, I'm not sure if the tinfoil hat has ever been accurately prescribed as a remedy, but in this case the US could ask the embassy workers to wear it as a precaution. It would actually be effective against microwave guns if it were the true cause.
I once had a signature.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
Actual attacks happened back in 2016. You know, before the election? So TWO administrations (that absolutely despise each other) both claim something happened and you say no?
HMM.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Motivation: Who would be motivated to cause this? Does anyone benefit from it?
Dispersion: Have no Cubans suffered from similar symptoms? Has anyone bothered to check?
Location: Were all affected families living in the embassy? What other areas were 'attacked'?
The 'white matter' test evidence seems weak, just as the entire story is vague. Until our own government is honest about what they've found, it just seems like another conspiracy theory. The kind of vague rumor they create when they are contemplating an offensive action against a country.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Think of the stress of working in an embassy like that.
Think of the literally hundreds of jobs that are far more stressful than being stationed in an embassy, and yet which don't show the same symptoms.
Anyone banging their head in the wall has psychologically induced brain trauma.
No, that is physically induced brain trauma. Regardless of WHY your head hit the wall, it is the physical impact that did the damage.
Hello,
CBS News reports that the same type of attack may have occurred on USAID workers in Uzbekistan; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u...
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Well, reading some of his leaked emails on the dark web, SOMEONE is definitely paying him.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That would be a bizarre pathogen indeed that can make you hear a sound - which can be and has been recorded - in a specific part of the room, disappearing whenever you move just slightly but reappearing when you pass back through that spot. And which only affects workers of the US embassy in Cuba, having never been recorded to infect anyone else, anywhere else, ever.
There's no question that it's a baffling case, but pathogens don't pass muster. I waver between "another type of EM radiation, for which the sound is just an incidental side effect" and "a multispectral ultrasonic audio signal, for which what is heard (and what does the damage) is harmonics between the channels rather than the carriers". But at this point, who bloody knows.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
Some US athletes were claiming that they were robbed at gun point in Rio during the Olympic Games. It was a big story in the media.
Until it was proven irrevocably by the organizing side that they were just lying brazenly.
I guess that at least some part of the American people believe that they are kind of exclusive, much cleverer than others. And that they can get away with about any lie. My point is that one has to look for irrevocable evidences as soon as one hears such unusual claims.
No, they were taken out of a B-17. See, video proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
too much country music.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Four centuries of official denial have not satisfied independent investigators of the Bermuda Triangle. From the time of Shakespeare (The Tempest) to the space age, no official body will admit that the anomalies that occur in that area are of extraterrestrial origin. Even NASA will not acknowledge their measurements and probes showing the shifting and expanding of the Triangle with the ozone layer and global warming.
Is it any surprise that innocent, non-spying diplomats are suffering due to official refusal to admit the influence of alien powers over this area? Expect the zombification to continue.
Finally some common sense.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
... entirely. Mass hysteria has effects that can be bizarr and creepy to the utmost extent. And as far as we know, nobody is fully immune to it. For one, mass hysteria does spread similar to a disease. Because you need to meet people who have fallen prone to the hysteria for it to spread. Or you need to be primed by some detailed description of it in an environment that emphasises the fact that the effects have a "real" cause.
That scientist find "alterations in brain tissue" could be simply because they were looking for them.
Note: I'm not ruling out some sort of weapon, but right now mass hysteria seems more plausible to me. The story has all the ingredients.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Sick building syndrome. A 1950s brutalist bunker, probably filled with asbestos and other toxic building materials, that sat mostly unused and undermaintained for decades and was only fully reoccupied a few years ago. You don't need to resort to alien mind-control-rays or similar to come up with things that would affect people working in that environment.
I do not understand why almost everybody keeps referring to these phenomena as 'atacks'. An 'attack' implies a malevolent agent and purpose.
So if you don't know what happened, what exactly is the damage or even whether anything happened at all, why keep using the word 'attack', implying that the Cubans had anything to do with it and did it on purpose? Unless of course somebody wants a reason to put pressure on Cuba. But the american gouvernement would not do that,would they?
Paai
Ate there any correlation to the Otto Warmbier injuries?
The charge won't build up more than electrostatic does and tends to dissipate quickly in a humid climate like Havana, so sure it's uncomfortable but it sure gets your attention that you may be under attack.
I think the more scary thought is that the weapon is low-tech enough that any random hobo could make one by tearing apart an off-the-shelf microwave oven. It doesn't take state sponsorship to do that.
I once had a signature.
Hell, one time I spent a week in New Orleans in the 80s for Mardi Gras, and I ended up on intravenous antibiotics and bed rest for a month.
You shouldn't have barebacked that tranny.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Let's see...you're asking me if Hillary Clinton and Rex Tillerson are both capable of lying?
No, I'm asking if you believe they are capable of liking each other enough to coordinate the SAME EASILY DISPROVED LIE.
Also You brought up the entirely wrong person, Hillary was not president last year - Obama was. Same point though, are Rex Tillerson and Obama going to be willing to work together on the same lie about embassy workers in Cuba???? Really? Why.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now you tell me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why would Cuba want to irradiate the American diplomats? It wants the good trading relations with the US as far as I know.
It is rather seldom that a crime is being committed without a motive.
Do you think that, since they don't know what's causing these symptoms, perhaps they could lay off calling it an attack? You know, until they have some evidence. Or is it now US foreign policy to characterise everything that they don't understand that affects US personnel as an attack?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Nobody knows no nothing, just like through Kennedy's assassination. Truth is, I'd rather see less of NGO's trying to infiltrate Cuban way of life and more of diplomatic relations rendezvouses. But that wishful thinkking doesn't fall in line to pre-charted lines of certain powerful figures in espionage apparatus of the USA.
Again, that is the claim but no names about these "doctors" are being given. Also, I do work in neuroscience.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You are an idiot - http://healthland.time.com/201... and https://www.researchgate.net/p.... In fact simply do the search yourself https://duckduckgo.com/?q=stre.... Stupid is as stupid does and they have been quite stupid.
I would post studies showing Aliens causing the same damage but it's classified and they would find me.
What if they were exposed to a pathogen; and they (Russians?) also blasted their target with audio, in order to confuse them and dissuade investigators from taking blood samples, doing dna tests, and looking for some kind of weaponized bacteria or virus or something like that?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.