More mysterious brain injuries in Cuba; Canada halves staff after new case

[C C]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/...in-injury/

INTRO: The Canadian government announced Wednesday that it will halve the number of diplomats at its embassy in Cuba after a 14th Canadian has mysteriously fallen ill with brain injuries there. The latest case from December suggests that the enigmatic incidents—which began in late 2016 and have been considered by the US government to be attacks—are still ongoing, straining relations between Cuba and the US, and now Cuba and Canada.

Josefina Vidal, Cuba's ambassador to Canada, called the decision Wednesday “incomprehensible.” “This behavior favors those who in the United States use this issue to attack and denigrate Cuba,” she wrote in a statement. “It is well known that some individuals with high-level positions within US foreign policy are trying very hard to create a climate of bilateral tension seeking to portray our country as a threat.”

The latest confirmed Canadian case concerns a senior government official who arrived in Cuba over the summer and reported symptoms on December 29, officials said. Symptoms generally include nausea, dizziness, trouble concentrating, and headaches. Medical experts in the US with access to affected US cases confirmed the presences of mild traumatic brain injuries and described “injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma.”

US officials have confirmed 26 American cases, many of which were associated with episodes involving unexplained, irritating sounds, pressure, and vibrations....

MORE: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/...in-injury/

[Magical Realist]

That is still just the weirdest thing ever. I would suspect paranormal if it weren't happening with just diplomats from other countries. Some kind of secret weapon or something. But why victimize diplomats?

[Yazata]

One speculative explanation that I've heard for the "sonic attacks" on the US embassy was that two or more ultrasonic motion detectors were positioned too close to one another so that they interfered and created beats. If so, it might be our own doing. I'm not sure how plausible that idea is.

Does the Canadian embassy use similar ultrasonic motion detectors? (Probably, they are kind of ubiquitous.)

[RainbowUnicorn]

That is still just the weirdest thing ever. I would suspect paranormal if it weren't happening with just diplomats from other countries. Some kind of secret weapon or something. But why victimize diplomats?

victimize diplomats

oxymoron to most cultures.
diplomats are seen as agents of propaganda and thus legitimate targets.

it is only in fairly recent western times that diplomats were labelled as non-combatant civilians while being given the ability to be above the law.
"diplomatic immunity"

it is the aristocratic elitists who share the view that diplomats should not be targeted, much the same as the leaders sending millions to their deaths.
draft dodgers ? can elitist industrialists be defined as conscientious objectors if they are profiting financially from the war ?

embassy's are sovereign land and thus acts against them can be viewed as acts against a sovereign state.


as extremism takes hold ideas around impartiality and neutrality fade into the distance along with concepts around noncombatants.

looking from a different angle.
all the potential cold war stuff that went on
redundant & half broken radio equipment...
drilling & tunneling
aggregate harmonic interaction between variant fill-top-soil.hard and soft rock structures etc...
the fact cuba has a massive number of earth quakes
how much lead paint is on the buildings in cuba ?
what types of chemicals may be coming out of the roads & footpaths ?


what about a broken scanner they may be walking through at the airports ?
a combined broken scanner which may also be harmonically resonating between an electromagnetic field & a quartz like stone maybe marble wall or floor....


induction field being created accidentally around a scanner that they walk through every day

colour and sound ...

concussion
brain injury

[Secular Sanity]

Did they rule out all toxins?

Toxic brain injury seems to be the most likely explanation.

[C C]

One speculative explanation that I've heard for the "sonic attacks" on the US embassy was that two or more ultrasonic motion detectors were positioned too close to one another so that they interfered and created beats. If so, it might be our own doing. I'm not sure how plausible that idea is.

Does the Canadian embassy use similar ultrasonic motion detectors? (Probably, they are kind of ubiquitous.)

Perhaps upper North American governments are the only ones who use them in association with embassies, or alone have technicians which suffer from "Contingent Sudden Incompetency Disorder" when setting up shop in the Cuban environment.

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Did they rule out all toxins?

Toxic brain injury seems to be the most likely explanation.

The 2000 agents, scientists, and medical experts supposedly carrying out the Cuban investigation, including "to see if others outside the diplomatic cadre were affected", found no indication of toxic substances as a cause. But the US would not allow them into the homes of diplomats. Some of the latter themselves surely had their own doctors examine them thoroughly for noxious traces in blood and tissue, granting that envoys are not penalized with restrictive health care. (Cubans Forcefully Reject Blame for U.S. Diplomats' Mystery Ailments)

Neurologists proposed that it is all mass psychogenic illness. That's likely the best explanation, given that the whole population of humans suffer from a kind of broadly coordinated or inter-subjectively coherent language-mediated illusion, whereby we falsely believe we have introspective/extrospective experiences of own own thoughts and the external world. If systematic hysteria on that staggering scale is possible, then the Havana Syndrome would be a walk in the park in terms of unplanned achievement.

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[Syne]

That's likely the best explanation, given that the whole population of humans suffer from a kind of broadly coordinated or inter-subjectively coherent language-mediated illusion, whereby we falsely believe we have introspective/extrospective experiences of own own thoughts and the external world.

Or you've just convinced yourself of the false belief that qualia is illusory, where the ability to hold a false belief is evidence of the mental state you seek to deny.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Which Specifically "a judgment or belief".

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[stryder]

Interestingly the most recent MacGyver [S03 ep15] has likely touched upon what is actually going on (and it generates some interesting concerns about security in general)

The episode itself has MacGyver tracking a run away sniffer dog using its RFID chipset. RFID's for the most part need to be close to the equipment for them to be scanned (since they are passive as opposed to being active under power), and obviously with the wonders of television (and MacGyver being the character that improvises) he sets about building a contraption to scan for the signal, while asking an AM radio station to broadcast on a frequency to cause all RFID's in the area to respond "actively".

What does this mean in regards to the current "attacks". Well I know from my experiences, if the intention was to interact or mess with a persons head it wouldn't be done so primitively. So it suggests it's more of a wide burst for another reason altogether. So I'd pose that the Embassies were bombarded to identify any RFID chipsets, that means security clearance cards, door card, car fobs and even passports. Hypothetically if used over time it would allow an observer to identify any weakness in any RNG used for cryptology in security hashes that change per session, or look for specific differences in range to identify clearance level or if someone is classed as a VIP.

It further generates concerns about the usage of RFID in regards to passports, it's not just the concern about identity theft through this manner but more the concern that a particular target could be sought through such a system and kidnapped from when they disembark at an airport/station/port etc.

It proves the country responsible for using such equipment obviously has an appalling human right track record, since they obviously don't care that their "wideband" method of broadcast effected peoples health negatively.

[C C]

Interestingly the most recent MacGyver [S03 ep15] has likely touched upon what is actually going on (and it generates some interesting concerns about security in general)

The episode itself has MacGyver tracking a run away sniffer dog using its RFID chipset.  RFID's for the most part need to be close to the equipment for them to be scanned (since they are passive as opposed to being active under power), and obviously with the wonders of television (and MacGyver being the character that improvises) he sets about building a contraption to scan for the signal, while asking an AM radio station to broadcast on a frequency to cause all RFID's in the area to respond "actively".

What does this mean in regards to the current "attacks".  Well I know from my experiences, if the intention was to interact or mess with a persons head it wouldn't be done so primitively.  So it suggests it's more of a wide burst for another reason altogether.  So I'd pose that the Embassies were bombarded to identify any RFID chipsets, that means security clearance cards, door card, car fobs and even passports.  Hypothetically if used over time it would allow an observer to identify any weakness in any RNG used for cryptology in security hashes that change per session, or look for specific differences in range to identify clearance level or if someone is classed as a VIP.

It further generates concerns about the usage of RFID in regards to passports, it's not just the concern about identity theft through this manner but more the concern that a particular target could be sought through such a system and kidnapped from when they disembark at an airport/station/port etc.

It proves the country responsible for using such equipment obviously has an appalling human right track record, since they obviously don't care that their "wideband" method of broadcast effected peoples health negatively.

Interesting possibility, Stryder.

I'd completely forgotten about the reboot of MacGyver (already in its 3rd season, no less?!), and was anachronistically disoriented at first because I was thinking of the original 1980s series.

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