Were the Cuban sonic attack victims actually poisoned? | Hacker News Reader

Were the Cuban sonic attack victims actually poisoned?

thedailybeast.com

121 pointsfern1276 comments

Literally from the first moment the story broke, I had completely discounted the magical sonic weapon theory and was wondering what was in their environment and whether they had instead been poisoned. It fits vastly better, and there are much better questions to be asked probing the nature of the poisoning. The entire "sonic weapon" angle seemed to be some kind of fabrication to immediately drum up Cold War feelings against Cuba and the ongoing efforts to end the embargo and return to normalcy.

In fact, it was this very story that makes me wonder to this day if Obama's move to normalize relations with Cuba in 2014-15 was the inciting incident behind Russia's decision to start the Digital Cold War in the first place.

> In fact, it was this very story that makes me wonder to this day if Obama's move to normalize relations with Cuba in 2014-15 was the inciting incident behind Russia's decision to start the Digital Cold War in the first place.

I think NATO's assassination of Gaddafi was a disaster re: relationship with Russia

2011: "Putin blamed himself for letting Gaddafi go, for not playing a strong role behind the scenes" [0]

2012: US threatens military action in Syria: "red line"

2013: Russia gives refuge to Edward Snowden

2013: John Kerry gives Syria a week to destroy their chemical weapons. "(Syria) isn't about to do it and it can't be done". Lavrov immediately negotiates a non-military solution. [1]

2014: Direct Russian intervention following the overthrow of the Ukrainian government (cf Yugoslavia)

2015: Full-scale Russian military props up the Syrian government side in the Syrian civil war (cf Libya)

2016: Russia is accused of manipulating the US election

[0] http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2017/04/obamas_red_li... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

It amazed me at the time of the 'red line' incident how little credence most people gave to the threat intimated by Russia should the US take action in Syria. Those on the right took it as a turn to jab at Obama over perceived weakness and the Left was in a frenzy to initiate some kind of 'humanitarian police action' with neither side seeming to give a damn that their leaders were standing toe to toe with their Russian counterparts in the first credible example of brinkmanship in the new millennia.

Not a perceived weakness, proof of just how terrible a negotiator he is. You should never declare a "red line" if you won't adhere to it.

Think of it through an example of a micro-negotiation. Look at parents who constantly tell their children "if you do x I'll do y" but never follow through on it. All their children do is push their boundaries to see just how much they can get away with. It totally destroys any ability to have a normal relationship built on mutual respect.

Perhaps more of a failure of intelligence than negotiation -- it seems the Americans at the time perceived the Russian support for Assad as lukewarm and gambled on a weaker Russian response. It seems that Obama may really have meant the red line, until it became clear too late what the cost would be.

I highly doubt that, since his administration was actively financing anti-Assad groups, including violent religious extremists. We've been fighting a proxy war with Russia in the Middle East for roughly seventy years and Syria has been Russia's #1 ally in the region for decades. He'd have to have his head in the sand to think that Russia would allow him to directly take out Assad's forces.

He made a horrible decision that reeks of hubris, thinking that nobody would call his bluff.

> Not a perceived weakness, proof of just how terrible a negotiator he is. You should never declare a "red line" if you won't adhere to it.

if seymour hersh is to be believed, the ghouta attack was carried out by islamists with turkish support[1]. if this is the case, obama's (lack of) reaction makes much more sense. turkey is a nato member but stands to gain much were assad pushed out, and clear incentive to trip something over the red line. however, the actions that may be forced by revealing turkish involvement would be a political and diplomatic atom bomb.

[1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-a...

yes, Cuba in 2014-15 wasn't that important/noticeable in Russia given the other things going, ie. Ukraine.

Just an addition to your timeline - the opening bell was as far as i see the Georgian war of 2008. That clearly put Russia on notice about NATO expansion not stopping with Poland/Bulgaria/Romania/etc. and that the warm&cozy period has ended - at least it was perceived that way from the Russia POV.

It was a probably a combo of things, but the images of Ukrainians tearing down statues of Lenin right after the winter Olympics (in Russia!) has to be near the top.

From my understanding, Lenin and the 1917 Bolsheviks are not sacrosanct or particularly welcome in Putin's nationalist, capitalist, Russia.

The 100th anniversary of the Russian October revolution just passed, with minimal and lukewarm remembrance from the official state. BBC ran a whole series of segments on this, interviewing school children and ordinary Russians and state officials -- knowledge of the 1917 Revolution was thin.

Stalin, different story, because he fits into the 'Great Russian' nationalist narrative -- and was the leader during the Great Patriotic War.

> Stalin, different story, because he fits into the 'Great Russian' nationalist narrative -- and was the leader during the Great Patriotic War.

Dead wrong.

Stalin is remembered first and foremost for the great purge of 1937, inducing famine in Ukraine and displacing people en masse. His most notable "contribution" to WW2 was his complete silence during the first few days that followed June 22nd. He abandoned his duties as the supreme commander at the moment when he was needed the most. In my age group it is generally accepted that WW2 was won by generals and marshals despite Stalin being at the helm rather than because of it. Stalin is remembered for his cruelty and cowardice, not his leadership.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

That may be how history in the west remembers him (and probably a large number of people in Russia as well), but that is not my impression of how he is framed by the Russian regime today or press today.

Take a look at https://www.rt.com/politics/394158-russians-name-stalin-most...

>Stalin is remembered first and foremost for the great purge of 1937, inducing famine in Ukraine and displacing people en masse.

That's in other countries. In Russia he is remembered for WW2. Official narrative is something like "yep, he killed some people and was wrong sometimes, but they were reabilitated some 30-50 years after, so what's up", BUT he won WW2.

No, what I said applies specifically to how he is viewed by Russians. Not the official media, but the actual people.

I'm not sure you can draw a line between Qaddafi and general Russian expansion because you're missing 2008: Direct Russian military intervention in Georgia

I'm no fan of Putin but you also have to go back to NATO going into Russia in 1999, violating agreements by expanding NATO right up to Russias border around the Baltics etc and pushing Ballistic Missile Defence in Europe.

I think killing Gaddafi was a disaster, period. In addition, it sent the message to other would-be cooperators in authoritarian regimes that we are a very fickle ally, and we'll do what we want when we want. Unless you have nukes, of course.

Any hope for the non-proliferation / disarmament movement died with him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_Libya

I don't know that there's enough info for an outsider to reliably guess what actually happened...poison, versus microwave attacks, versus sonic attacks, etc.

However, there seems to be enough smoke to assume "some kind of deliberate attack".

That, on it's own, seems enough to dictate the path forward. More onus and pressure on the Cubans to solve it. Certainly they could provide an environment immune from most vectors.

Even when the story broke, experts agreed that a sonic attack as described originally was pretty much impossible with known technology or even the known properties of sound waves. Microwaves don't penetrate walls like this. And poisoning isn't so well localized if they didn't deliberately poison some of the people.

Something strange is afoot.

Well, your Wi-Fi is in the microwave spectrum (300MHz - 300GHz), and it doesn't seem to have a problem penetrating walls with power amplifiers operating under statutory limits. What about a maser?

AFAIK, WiFi signal does not penetrate walls it reflects of them.

>> However, there seems to be enough smoke to assume "some kind of deliberate attack".

I strongly disagree. Its highly irresponsible to claim an illness of unknown source is an attack and turn ignorance into casus belli. The unquestioning certainty of an attack absent of evidence has fuelled my skepticism. I'd consider self-inflicted foolishness from US's own incompetent secret services more likely than an "attack".

There's a wide gulf in between "more pressure on the Cubans to provide a safe environment" and "casus belli".

I'm arguing there's enough evidence to ask for more action, not warmongering.

My "guess" has always been a bad taco truck (or the like). Something that maybe the locals are used to, but makes the Americans ill.

If it was poisoning, it'll be next to impossible finding out the source, even for the Cuban government. It could've easily been someone else (likely state actor) trying to worsen the relationship or to test how the US reacts in this case.

Or, you know, a run-of-the-mill op from the US itself, and a convenient cover with blaming the Cubans. It wouldn't be the first time of testing on own people unsuspectedly.

How could it be tinnitus if there is a recording of the sound?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwjNJ6EGyQ

What’s more damning is the sound only occurred in certain locations in a room.

The actual recorded sound could be a diversion I guess.

Attack people with stupid weapon then make spooky noises to confuse - I like the theory.

I wonder what the recording setup was; sensitivity, hardware, etc. I believe a sonic attack is possible, but I'd also like to see similar sonic-attack investigations of architecturally similar buildings in the US.

An interesting Wired article [0] considered a hybrid cause:

> "Possibly [...] inaudible infra- and ultrasound could be synergistic with an ototoxin just as industrial factory noise can be."

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/us-diplomats-sonic-attack-ototox...

I just want to say as a person who has to live with tinnitus, (too much gunfire in my ear), I could swear sometimes I hear the same ringing but it's an outside source. I've always just rationalized it away, but I still notice it.

This is to the degree of wild conspiracy theories; however, this whole Cuba incident defies all explanation. Sonic sounds plausbile for other reasons, such as the locality of the phenomenon (the victims didn't experience the effects if they moved). However, let's face it: sonic attacks are. just. impossible. There's E.T. It's never E.T. Furthermore, why would E.T. attack political officials in Cuba for, so far, no fallout effect? Poisoning? That doesn't explain the locality of the effect. Microwaves? Some people were in rooms, we can assume that they were shielded by concrete and microwaves aren't known to have these effects without other effects presenting more severely first. Gamma rays, or some beyond-gamma emission? Particle accelerators aren't that portable.

When I first heard about this I basically gave up on all explanations after things started becoming too crazy. The simplest explanation I have right now is a combination attack - you poison officials with "something" and activate it with some combination of other triggers (including sonic, as we have the recordings you linked). This explanation is full-blown Fringe and I don't like it for that reason, but this is really starting to defy all simpler explanations.

I really don't know what to think at this point: it is becoming science fiction.

What about microwave beams? Wasn't one of the theories that these could have been used for surveillance and caused brain damage with similar symptoms?

Why is a sonic attack impossible? We have sonic weapons. We know long exposures to loud ultrasonic sounds can be damaging.

Is it possible they were poisoned, or otherwise exposed to something that made them hypersensitive to otherwise normal environmental radiation? I know when I'm sick with a sinus headache that certain frequencies of sound like fluorescent lights and CRT TVs put me on edge.

"Salvi said drugs prescribed to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy, like Cisplatin...." Correction: Cisplatin is the chemotherapy drug that causes those side effects. It is indeed ototoxic.

let me add that in the case of cisplatin, morphine to ease the pain is the vomit inducing compound (sadly)

If this story keeps showing up in the news, but without any real information, I’d suspect that this constant simmering vagueness belies undisclosed information locked behind operational secrecy that prevents the public from understanding the media pressure and the suspicion.

This is to say, fingers are being pointed, but we only receive incomplete information. It’s sort of like seeing two neighbors bicker about trash collection and garbage cans, but they leave out glaring details about known trash can abductions by space aliens, that they’ve been summoning with multi-colored LED flash lights.

What if it was an accidental poisoning? Maybe the embassy got a shipment of bad rum. Methanol poisoning would explain the white matter damage and disorientation.

It's borderline impossible to accidentally get methanol poisoning from distilled spirits.

The vast majority of cases you hear about on the news are due to spirits being cut with industrial methanol, or people accidentally drinking industrial methanol in the belief that it's ethanol.

Poorly distilled spirits are going to taste bad, but they aren't going to kill you (except for ethanol poisoning).

Also, if it was methanol poisoning (deliberate or not), they'd have severe vision impairment, which we haven't heard anything about.

>The vast majority of cases you hear about on the news are due to spirits being cut with industrial methanol

So methanol poisoning is more likely to be the result of fraudsters selling fake branded bottles of spirits, rather than moonshine?

That's usually the case, yes.

Not just more likely, it's a matter of certainty.

Ethanol is one of the possible treatments to methanol poisoning. Drinking badly made moonshine that has some methanol is like drinking both the poison and the cure (because ethanol will compete for treatment within the liver against methanol).

It's really impossible to get poisoned by methanol by accident. If you drink enough methanol to suffer from it it's because people added a large amount of it to your drink. Whatever methanol is found in badly made moonshine just isn't enough to show any effect, not when you consider the fact that the ethanol of the moonshine will pretty much stop your body from absorbing methanol.

I'm going to guess it's not a physics-breaking, direct and conspicuous attack on foreign diplomats for observable reason.

I'm not sure it wasn't a false flag if I'm honest, especially considering the amount of publicity & nature of reporting around the incidents.

As a Canadian, this has always seemed weird that they were Canadian victims too. Sure Canada is a US ally, but there's been a pretty big difference in policy toward Cuba between the two.

Perhaps the two nations shared a common space or Corridor

The US Embassy in Habana and the Canadian embassy are around 5 km apart from each other, so it does seem unlikely.

It could be deflection. Target apparently random people, so that it's difficult to tell who the real target was.

But then why Canada? Why not Switzerland as a much more independent country?

Where those affected known to have visited the US embassy?

I wonder if the Canadians and the Americans frequented the same places in their off hours.

Possibly it was something in a restaurant's food or bar.

How’s the Canadian relationship with Russia going?

I agree, having been to Cuba many times and seen the atmosphere there towards Canadians, and knowing Canadians who have done business there and been courted to do business by the Cuban gov't, etc. I can't see this being something the Castro regime would initiate or even tolerate. It works against their own interests big time.

So I don't even see any motivation for the Cubans to have instigated an attack at all and myy best guess would be something done by North Korea or Russia or some other actor that has been a soft ally of Cuba, but also benefits from ongoing conflict between the US and Cuba, and would also benefit from worsening relations between Canada and Cuba.

That the US hasn't initiated stronger retaliation makes me think they know this to.

...poison? Aren't there actual recording(s) of the sounds? [1]

I guess this doesn't rule out them having bee poisoned on top of it, but it sure does raise eyebrows. Are they hypothesizing sounds were used to cover up the poison or something?

And given that even the article acknowledges some had concussions (here's another source I saw it in [2]) I'm not sure why the poison hypothesis is being entertained?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdLfQsztBo

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-son...

Sound could be a red herring

FBI and other sweeps have repeatedly turned up nothing localized, so whatever is transmitting is likely not in the building(s) unless they are passive-reflectors. The general public probably have no idea just how advanced directed energy weapons are these days, which is what I am guessing this is, but I think they might be much longer range than people thing. Of course it's all speculation.

Because of the embargo, Cubans are using a lot of stuff that the rest of us got rid of a long time ago.

I would guess that the cause is something in the environment to which native Cubans have developed a tolerance or else an avoidance habit.

Embassy personnel go there and live in the community without these habits or tolerance, and some of them get sick.

I've been to Cuba for three months, and a friend spend a year there. It's really not uncommon for foreigners to do so. This isn't North Korea.

We didn't develop any symptoms that cannot be explained by either "ethanol poisoning" or "sunburn".

Something like this may explain the localized noise: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431264-600-ultrason...

Could be a stolen US/China weapon or at least a stolen smaller component of a larger US weapon. Or stolen IP of some new weapon which was then built by the thieves.

Maybe this was originally supposed to be use as a component of missile defense and now it’s been repurposed as a brain melter.

I only say this because I don’t know if many countries have the budget to develop advanced, new weaponry.

This may be a leak of epic proportions as some group is running around with some deadly advanced new weapon.

The existence of these weapons might reveal which weapons our government is focused on.

Intense stress can also cause these symptoms.

Skeptoid had a very interesting episode [0] on this subject recently. The analysis points to a mass psychogenic event; makes sense.

References and further reading located at end of article.

[0] https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4603

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera

Duh.

Do you really think a battery of tests weren’t run for any toxin with an acceptable symptom profile? Ciguatoxin is hardly undetectable, along with virtually all of the pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and toxins listed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579736/

"In the absence of a human biomarker to confirm CFP, the diagnosis of CFP is based on the clinical scenario and the patient’s recent fish-eating history. CFP is associated with gastrointestinal (GI), cardiovascular, neurological and neuropsychiatric symptoms and signs."

Doesn’t really explain the tinnitus, the recorded sound, and while you’re right that no human bio markers exist there are characteristic forms of demyelinating injuries. There’s really never a reason to be that focused on a differential diagnosis, especially when there is no treatment.

...Unless you’re a nation state that really wants to figure it out. If you’re willing to put people through hell just to diagnose them, it’s probably doable.

I have no real data to back this up, but when these news reports came out I looked up the symptoms and lead poisioning also seemed very plausible.

Quote:

> The symptoms can last from weeks to years, and in extreme cases as long as 20 years, often leading to long-term disability. Most people do recover slowly over time.

Doesn't look like the same thing.

It's also roughly the same symptoms that are caused by the mycotoxins from black mold.

They all had sex with the same prostitutes exclusive to US diplomats and contracted a form of syphilis that causes brain damage.

Fact or opinion? Legitimately curious.

That there is an 'opinion'.

Microwave attack/accident

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