111 Comments

"There was also the question of timing. Havana Syndrome arrived on the American scene at the end of a tumultuous presidential campaign that had left tens of millions of Americans feeling unsure of what came next: Was the country about to be taken over by fascists?"

Um, no. It *wasn't* the "tumultuous presidential campaign".

It was the pathological, deliberate, willful lies and dishonesty and malfeasance of the alphabet legacy media's REPORTING (sic) on the presidential campaign that was greatly responsible FOR the tumultuousness of the presidential campaign and that was greatly responsible FOR the uncertainty felt by many Americans.

Let's be sure we call a spade a spade, please.

The alphabet legacy media are the cancer among us. Trump WAS right. They are enemies of the American people, of both sides of the aisle, of all sides of the aisle.

Expand full comment

“Donald Trump, vying for the Cuban-American vote in Florida, had made clear on the campaign trail his opposition to the deal Barack Obama had cut with the Castros. Then, Trump won the election, and a few weeks later, Fidel Castro died.

State Department officials were determined not to let Havana Syndrome undermine the new détente. Nor did Pentagon higher-ups want problems. There was widespread agreement that the opening to Cuba was overdue and that politics had stopped it from happening sooner.“

And they whine about nothing being done under Trump? Well maybe if they had followed his instructions and rolled back the “detente” then they wouldn’t have been subjected to this. Christ, we are surrounded by elitist dunces of the worst kind. Let them eat cake.

Expand full comment

The word "fuckery", used by both the author and one of his sources, is gratuitously vulgar, even immature. If Savodnik can't find a way to write like an adult, he should find another line of work.

As to the Death Ray from Outer Space, it appears something must've gone wrong at the highest levels: some of the medical investigators actually did their jobs and correctly shot it down. I guess the Administration hasn't sufficiently leaned on their corps of "medical" toadies to produce the right propaganda, as they have with the current troubles...

Expand full comment
founding

“The Russians had also spent decades developing “directed-energy weapons” that could blast microwaves at unknowing targets”

———————————————-

Do they have one that can heat the center of the burrito at the same time as the ends of the burrito?

Expand full comment
founding

Everyone make sure to get your 5-year-old their Havana Syndrome vaccine. We’re all in this together.

And please wear your aluminum/lead Havana Syndrome helmet. I wear my helmet to protect you. We must focus on these proven mitigation strategies as we work to address the root causes of Havana Syndrome.

Expand full comment
founding

No MRI information? No reports of heat when this happened? Pretty hard to focus energy and not make heat. And if there’s physical damage to brain, it would likely be visible on MR imaging.

So, any actual data to report?

Expand full comment

The possibility of psychogenic origin is not mutually exclusive with the possibility of directed attack. The brain can be tricked into producing symptoms that are real and sometimes devastating. However, the thing that tricked the brain could still be intentional and directed.

An example is tinnitus and hyperacusis (sound pain). These are real and devastating symptoms produced psychogenically by the brains of sufferers. The tinnitus sound can only be detected by the sufferer, and the same is true of the hyperacusis. However, it is not uncommon for these conditions to be triggered by partial hearing loss. The brain will register the loss of a particular frequency range, for instance, and supply that same range in the form of tinnitus. I know this from personal debilitating experience.

I wonder if both studies are partially correct: the syndrome is psychogenic in origin, but the trigger that tricked the brains was directed and intentional. There may well be some who have been influenced by mass hysteria, but I am disinclined to accept that was the only trigger.

This is an excellent thought-provoking article!

Expand full comment

Common Sense is one of the best things going in journalism today, but what's with the gratuitous attack on Trump? Savodnik concludes his piece by editorializing "... five years after America veered off its prescribed historical-political course, we remain convinced ..." That's an opinion that has nothing to do with the subject of the piece.

It's obvious how Bari Weiss feels about Trump (she referred to him as "grotesque" in a Megyn Kelly podcast a few months back), but if she's pursuing journalism in the old school sense (i.e. objectively), then this kind of aside is unhelpful and might alienate an otherwise supportive segment of the readership.

Expand full comment

"they heard ... cricket-like sounds."

Yeh, I hear those all the time. Seems to happen whenever I hear Administration/government medical 'professions' (read: politicians) talk about COVID (masks, mandates, vaccines, shutdowns, variants, shots....), The cricket-like sounds are deafening! Maybe I should get that checked out!? /sarc

Expand full comment

Happy to have fuckery added to my vocabulary 😉

Expand full comment

Glenn Greenwald had an interesting take on this:

https://youtu.be/kSCrc0MmKHM

Expand full comment

This seems like a good application for Occam's Razor. A high tech undetectable directed energy weapon? I don't think so.

Expand full comment

On another note, Substack of all places put on Eric Tolpo - a known Big Pharma propagandist - as a “writer in residence.” I love that Substack is a platform for anyone, but having now been bought out by big pharma, it’s questionable if this platform is even real anymore. I can hardly watch TV anymore because it’s inundation with big pharma commercials - being funded by my tax dollars (and yours!!!). And now Substack is PAYING a big pharma propagandist to be on this platform. So disappointed. 😩. If they want to write on the platform like everyone else fine. Paying a propagandist to write on here makes me wonder if this whole thing isn’t just another manipulative mirage…..

Expand full comment

Bari gotta say I’m confused you would publish this weird article. In fact it’s giving me a headache.

Expand full comment

What a fun read to wake up to. This reads like a good mystery or conspiracy theory and I don’t know which.

Is there fire where there is smoke?

Expand full comment

I know something about hearing and something about radio, so I could spot this as a fake immediately. Tinnitus and headaches can be brought on by stress and amplified by suggestion. Or more likely all of the claims are simply lies, which wouldn't be a bit surprising.

Spies are liars BY FUCKING DEFINITION, so anything said by spies should be taken as strictly and purely false.

Expand full comment