Let's just consider this for a second from a political standpoint. What does Cuba have to gain from sabotaging the improving relations with the United States? The embargo is still a huge, huge burden for them, and they have no major allies (a la the USSR). Why would the Cuban government do this?
Cuban here (and actually living in Cuba, if that's even important or relevant.) This whole thing was puzzling for me from the get go, as I never thought our government could do something like this. If they wanted to freeze back relations, it would be simpler to just say "F* off!" (and believe me, they can dream up a thousand somewhat-plausible explanations for that decision.)
It doesn't make sense from an Intelligence o Intelligence Gathering point of view. They have cheaper and better ways (like... actual people?), so I don't think that this wasn't some kind of (Cuban) intelligence equipment malfunction. Plus, from the reports it seems that the presumed attacks were taking place on diplomatic personnel residences and hotel rooms. In that environment the attackers do not have much control: what if there's an asset there? what if there's a child?
But what really makes me to think that this was not a Cuban operation or attack, is that Canadian personnel were also reported to be affected. That's a big huge no-no.
Since this whole thing was interesting for me, I have asked several people on their opinions. People from all walks of life and political leanings. Most of them just told me that they did not think it was Cuban behind the attacks, if there were attacks at all. The more cautious just waved off with "We need more information." Not one person, no matter where they stand, thinks we actually did this.
I agree with your general sentiment, but as a devils advocate this doesn't have to come from Cuban government. Any number of parties either inside (political infighting) or outside Cuba could benefit from this. Low risk if action is found -- sound generator can look like standard acoustic equipment.
While the above is pretty far fetched, floor is open for conspiracy theories...
> If the tables were turned here and the Cubans or Russians were accusing us of a sonic attack we’d be screaming that it’s a disinformation campaign
I do not follow Cuban politics (and not much Russian), but Russia nowadays are always accusing USA of some evil -- watch the official 1st channel or read gov't radio transcript: planning an overthrow of their government (via supporting this or that NGO), destabilizing an economy, financing a war and killing Russian citizens (Ukraine, Syria), etc. etc.
Much of this is for internal consumption, and generally the reaction in the US from those who can read it and care to is "meh, business as usual". Trying to influence minds, for sure; but this is par for the course for politics.
The only difference seems to be that we don’t have state media - our outlets are just as happy to claim Chinese military exercises are “practice bombing operations” against the US, and that a Russian plot exists to destabilize our democracy and hack our voting machines.
Our official sources are happy to demur, as they have around claims of sonic attacks - we are still “investigating” and “analyzing data”. We officially keep the claims at arms length.
We’ve figured out that a public-private partnership makes better agitprop.
But is that really as hypocritical as you seem to suggest? After all we are, for lack of a better phrase, the good guys. It's not unprincipled to give the good guys more benefit of the doubt.
Based on the account's history I assume that you're trolling HN like you did before. That's not cool—especially on divisive topics, where it has a genuinely destructive effect. I've banned your account until we get an indication that you'll use the site as intended. You're welcome to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and email us at hn@ycombinator.com if that's what you'd like to do.
And yet, there are bad guys. Churchill was a bastard, and no kind of “good guy” yet Hitler and the Nazis were the bad guys. C‘est la vie. Stalin was one of the bad guys, and so was Slobodan Milosovic, and so is Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Pol Pot, etc. Good guy is a tough category to fill, but history is full of inexcusable monsters and we should be careful with our moral relativism.
Dick Cheney and Tony Blair don't seem to belong in that same list. Not saying they are good guys, but I don't see how they can be even close to on the same level as the others.
But I agree with your main point. There is real evil out there and we have a moral prerogative to stop/fight/kill those people.
The USA is hardly spotless, but they have a good reputation of standing up to real evil in the world.
From the beginning of this drama, few have been trying to place the blame on Cuba. Instead, it has been suggested that this could be the actions of a third country (like Russia or China) taken within Cuba.
In the US government, the Cuban regime has an excellent boogeyman for the squalor its people live in.
They have walked back liberalization before. After the collapse of the USSR, which had sent enormous amounts of money to support the Castro regime, Cuba entered a serious economic crisis. Castro instituted a period of market reforms, and there was widespread hope for political opening. But as soon as the economic situation improved sufficiently to keep buying off enough people to run the oppressive apparatus, it was all rolled back.
Please don’t confuse the interests of the Cuban people with the interests of the Cuban regime. The latter cares about one thing only: stay in power.
This is the first article in which I’ve heard the sonic attacks described as the buffering of an open car window.
In one car that I owned, if I opened one of the rear windows while driving on the freeway, the buffeting was so “loud” as to be almost painful to everyone in the car. It wasn’t exactly normal sound so much as some kind of oscillating pressure wave.
If diplomats are describing the sonic attack in terms of a buffeting car window then that raises the chance in my mind that these really were sonic or pressure attacks of some kind. I’ve never heard anything produce sound like that naturally.
Except that because humans are wired for intentionality and causality they naturally are going to try to use existing phenomenon to "explain" their unknown issue.
When Encounters of the 3rd Kind was released with aliens as little grey men with big heads suddenly most of the subsequent reports of alien abduction switched to grey aliens with big heads.
It's human nature. It's not evidence that the phenomenon is real just because people say it's like a phenomenon that exists.
I have suffered from tinnitus (which is thankfully clearing up as my ear heals) and I have experienced such sounds. Not the actual pressure waves, but noises in the ear which emulate such noises to a certain extent.
I've had severe tinnitus for over a decade, and know exactly what you're talking about. It's not just an audio tone, but I very much get these "pressure" feelings inside my skull that line up with the audio tone getting louder at times (the perceived volume of my tinnitus tone gets louder and softer depending on the day, tiredness, weather, etc).
I don't know how this could possible be related, as I've never heard of groups of people getting sudden tinnitus together, but I do agree with you that the explanation sounds similar to what I experience.
I wasn't suggesting that they all had tinnitus. The parent comment mentioned not hearing of anything natural that could cause such a buffering effect. I was pointing out there are natural phenomena that can cause such effects.
Or, there's something wrong with ventilation in the building. Owing to its nature as an embassy, perhaps people are willing to jump to more sinister conclusions as opposed to if this happened at ACME Headquarters in Omaha.
It’s always good to have more analysis and disagreement. But I’m not going to take the word of a few critics—who have never examined the victims—as disproving the thorough work of the excellent doctors at UPenn—who did. The next step would be to wait for those doctors to respond to the criticisms of their methodology and take it from there. It looks like they are in the process of doing that, so I’m looking forward to it.
I read a story, wish I could find the link but can't, that at the same time as these "attacks" were appearing there was an ongoing special program at the CIA involving agents taking some kind of experimental nootropic. I guess the idea was to create some kind of super agents. The story suggested a link to the reported attacks, that the symptoms were actually an unintended result of the nootropics. I see no mention of that theory in the comments here. Anyone else see that story?
Rheumatoid arthritis used to be a psychogenic illness. Parkinson’s. MS. Etc. It seems most psychogenic illnesses over time prove to be real. Doctors need to stop using this as a crutch when they can’t explain something, it’s harmful. Just say “we don’t know, this doesn’t make sense to us based on what we know at this time.”
There is a new series on Netflix called "Afflicted". Basically just exploring a few different people and their struggles with illnesses that are commonly thought to be all in their head. It's pretty interesting. I think the documentary tries not to draw a conclusion. Some of them definitely appear to be totally psychosymatic. The "electromagnetic sensitivity" (wifi allergy) people in particular.
Careful making any conclusions from that show. A number of the participants have said they were totally misrepresented.
You could tell they were going to slant things right from the start when they started first with introducing Bekah and her quirky “witch” and “psychic” beliefs, before even getting to the diagnostics or how they were diagnosed. The documentary makers definitely crossed some ethical lines by cutting in that doctor talking answering general prompts about psychological illness, and splicing that in with patients answering questions about their emotional state, etc.
One thing it was good for though was to see just how horribly taken advantage of desperate and sick people can be by quacks. The show featured a lot of quacks such as Suzanne Kim and the Sophia Institute and that lady on Marthas Vineyard. I really wish I had the hours of material they left out to produce a documentary on what these quacks prescribed and charged their clients.
Edit: I’ll say on the subject of Jamison for example, if you want a better documentary on ME/CFS take a look at Unrest, also on Netflix. (And Forgotten Plague I think on Prime.) But even that science has progressed a long way in the past couple of years since that came out.
There's a difference between saying a theory is wrong vs. what it tries to explain does not exist. Obviously you can prove that wifi sensitivity is an incorrect theory by experimenting. For the sake of argument, let's say someone's symptoms are precisely hypochondria. There must be some physical reason for that, that involves their brain but cannot be assumed limited to it, that can be investigated through science. There are people who do not suffer from hypochondria, so they can be compared. Nothing can be "all in your head" because the brain is physical and part of the body. Referring to something as psychosomatic serves the social function of ritually disclaiming responsibility for figuring it out. The harmful aspect of it is the assignation of blame to the victim, as though their will controls their illness.
This is related to the same epistemological territory people go over and over when debating dark matter, or evolution, or AGW. Observations don't go away just because you question a theory.
And there will be a lot more science to throw at such issues decades from now than is available today. We're not even close to having full understanding of the human body, and the brain is particularly troublesome to understand.
In any case psychology is physical, connections between neutrons, hormone levels, etc. Psychogenic illnesses are necessarily biological unless you accept an immaterial soul.
That's not really how the brain works. Yes, it's a computer, but more like those really old computers where you did your "programming" by way of wires plugged into a breadboard.
"It is argued that (a) AIDS is a typical example of epidemic hysteria, (b) the epidemic has at its core an unconscious group delusion that can be called the group fantasy of scapegoating" [2]
Turns out when people say they’re sick and something is wrong, there is almost always a cause even if we don’t know what. The body is complex. We still have a hell of a lot to learn. And doctors are being really lazy and damaging to patients when to dismiss a difficult to explain illness as psycho-genic/social/logical.
Your example of fan death is a superstition, which is not the same thing as an illness diagnosed as “psychogenic” by a doctor.
The AIDS example here is using a known AIDS/HIV denialist (who is also not a medical doctor, but a psychoanalyst), and does not represent the consensus view at the time. That same year, the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services had announced that there was a probable link between a virus (HTLV, later HIV) and AIDS [1].
There are always some denialists or crackpots out there, but I don't think your examples necessarily show that doctors are lazy and default to psychogenic means.
That's backwards. Psychogenic illness is when one reports an ailment, but doctors can find no physical cause and/or don't even believe the patient's report. Korean fan death is a belief that something will make you ill when it won't. (I can say this because my family and I would be dead many times over. I've run the experiment, so to speak.) Not the same thing, not even the same sort of thing.
You can be dismissive of fan-death, but please know that the people who believe in it do so more out of national identity than reason. I have met many very smart lovely people who believed in it. Think of it more as regional pride in local barbecue than an actual belief. That said South Korea is far too hot in the summer to have a fan shut off automatically.
Koreans don't put fan death on some kind of nationalistic pedestal of overdramatic belief systems that make you Korean. If we wanted nationalistic symbols, we already have plenty---starting with Dokdo (a.k.a. Takeshima, but don't utter that word in front of a Korean), the "East Sea" (more commonly known as "Sea of Japan"), and... but I digress.
Koreans believed fan death because their mothers did, and then their mothers did, and also the 9 pm news used to say "Yet another person found dead next to a fan" every summer, because in a hot, humid country of 50 million people someone is going to be found dead in a hot day next to a running fan.
How could it be a "national identity", when the very concept that some people might not consider sleeping-next-to-a-fan as deadly was beyond people's imagination. (Remember, it was time before the internet.) Now, thanks to the internet and everything, (I hope) most Koreans know that "Fan Death" is a silly urban folklore. We even scored our own Wikipedia entry. Nice.
>some kind of nationalistic pedestal of overdramatic belief systems that make you Korean
As I said think of it more like regional pride in barbecue. People from memphis don't think their barbecue is their identity, but if you insult it or say that Memphis barbecue sucks they defend it about as much as I have seen people in Korea defend fan death when my friend questioned it.
Imperial units are used because they're generally easier to relate to and use than the metric counterparts- simpler divisors, that sort of thing. It's the same reason we have 24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds.
Even if you don't agree with that statement, it's what people who prefer imperial units will say, not that there's some mass delusion / patriotic identity.
Canada and USA both in five eyes. If Australia New Zealand and UK Diplo say they have the same symptoms I'm going to go with malfunction in five eyes equipment.
