'Russia Might Have Caused Havana Syndrome' (washingtonpost.com) 188
An anonymous reader quotes an opinion piece from the Washington Post, published by the Editorial Board: A just-published investigation by Russian, American and German journalists has unearthed startling new information about the so-called Havana syndrome, or "Anomalous Health Incidents," as the government calls the unexplained bouts of painful disorientation that U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers have suffered in recent years. The new information suggests but does not prove that Russia's military intelligence agency is responsible. Earlier, agencies in the U.S. intelligence community had concluded that "it is very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible." They need to look again. [...]
[T]he new investigation by the Insider, a Russian investigative news outlet, in collaboration with CBS's "60 Minutes" and Germany's Der Spiegel, paints a different picture. It identifies the possible culprit as Unit 29155, a "notorious assassination and sabotage squad" of the GRU, Moscow's military intelligence service. Senior members of the unit received "awards and political promotions for work related to the development of 'non-lethal acoustic weapons'" -- a term used in the Russian military-scientific literature to describe both sound- and radiofrequency-based directed energy devices. The investigation found documentary evidence that Unit 29155 "has been experimenting with exactly the kind of weaponized technology" experts suggest is a plausible cause. Moreover, the Insider reported, geolocation data shows that operators attached to Unit 29155, traveling undercover, were present in places where Havana syndrome struck, just before the incidents took place.
Even more concerning, the investigation found that a commonality among the Americans targeted was their work history on Russia issues. This included CIA officers who were helping Ukraine build up its intelligence capabilities in the years before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. One veteran of the CIA Kyiv station was named the new chief of station in Vietnam and was hit there. A second veteran of the CIA in Ukraine was hit in his apartment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Both these intelligence officers had to be medevaced and were treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The wife of a third CIA officer who had served in Kyiv was hit in London. "Of all the cases" examined by the news organizations, they said, "the most well-documented involve U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel with subject matter expertise in Russia or operational experience in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine," both of which were the scene of popular pro-Western uprisings in the past two decades. The news organizations point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin has often blamed these "color revolutions" on the CIA and the State Department. They conclude, "Putin would have every interest in neutralizing scores of U.S. intelligence officers he deemed responsible for his loss of the former satellites." The Editorial Board is advocating for a thorough and aggressive investigation by the U.S. intelligence community that "takes into account all aspects of the incidents."
"If the incidents are a deliberate attack, the perpetrator must be identified and held to account. Along with sending a message to those who might harm American personnel, the United States needs to show all those who might join the diplomatic and intelligence services that the government will protect them abroad and at home from foreign adversaries, no matter what."
[T]he new investigation by the Insider, a Russian investigative news outlet, in collaboration with CBS's "60 Minutes" and Germany's Der Spiegel, paints a different picture. It identifies the possible culprit as Unit 29155, a "notorious assassination and sabotage squad" of the GRU, Moscow's military intelligence service. Senior members of the unit received "awards and political promotions for work related to the development of 'non-lethal acoustic weapons'" -- a term used in the Russian military-scientific literature to describe both sound- and radiofrequency-based directed energy devices. The investigation found documentary evidence that Unit 29155 "has been experimenting with exactly the kind of weaponized technology" experts suggest is a plausible cause. Moreover, the Insider reported, geolocation data shows that operators attached to Unit 29155, traveling undercover, were present in places where Havana syndrome struck, just before the incidents took place.
Even more concerning, the investigation found that a commonality among the Americans targeted was their work history on Russia issues. This included CIA officers who were helping Ukraine build up its intelligence capabilities in the years before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. One veteran of the CIA Kyiv station was named the new chief of station in Vietnam and was hit there. A second veteran of the CIA in Ukraine was hit in his apartment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Both these intelligence officers had to be medevaced and were treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The wife of a third CIA officer who had served in Kyiv was hit in London. "Of all the cases" examined by the news organizations, they said, "the most well-documented involve U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel with subject matter expertise in Russia or operational experience in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine," both of which were the scene of popular pro-Western uprisings in the past two decades. The news organizations point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin has often blamed these "color revolutions" on the CIA and the State Department. They conclude, "Putin would have every interest in neutralizing scores of U.S. intelligence officers he deemed responsible for his loss of the former satellites." The Editorial Board is advocating for a thorough and aggressive investigation by the U.S. intelligence community that "takes into account all aspects of the incidents."
"If the incidents are a deliberate attack, the perpetrator must be identified and held to account. Along with sending a message to those who might harm American personnel, the United States needs to show all those who might join the diplomatic and intelligence services that the government will protect them abroad and at home from foreign adversaries, no matter what."
This is not news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Russia has lost the plot and can no longer be reasoned with.
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Make that several decades, or rather. 8+ decades. Only wishful thinking from 1990-2021 ever made anyone think otherwise.
Re:This is not news. (Score:5, Interesting)
Um...
what?
The US is to blame for Russia's backslide to authoritarianism? It was literally the US State Department being open about corruption in Russian elections that got Putin so pissed off at Clinton to begin with. Exactly what do YOU want the US to have done about it?
The west didn't "pivot back to Cold War territory", it was astoundingly, pigheadedly resistant to recognizing that Russia already had gone back to a Cold War mindset, and kept idiotically pursing Wandel Durch Handel as Putin bit by bit broke off chunks of his neighbors and assassinated critics even in western nations, ever-tying itself to energy dependence on Russia and other forms of Russian leverage, on the notion that if we just trade with Russia enough and integrate them into western systems enough, magically things will get better.
"We have an entirely different relationship with [China]" - wait, you think the west's relationship with China since the end of the cold war had been WARMER than with Russia? Exactly what planet have you been living on? China was been seen as the main geostrategic threat to the west, and was the primary focus of Red Team campaigns. Russia was basically ignored until they essentially made themselves un-ignorable in recent years. Much to the frustration of people like me, who were pointing out the danger that Russia posed and how horribly dangerous this "treat them just like any other democratic nation in hopes that they'll get better" strategy was.
*Left wing*? Ask any random person on social media that has a communist flag on their profile pic about Russia; they'll gush about how they're the glorious savior of the world against the US imperialist pigs.
(Very much the Horseshoe Theory in action... honestly, I don't think it's even a horseshoe, I think it's a circle, as I've seen plenty of people circle all the way around the back)
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Yes the US is to blame for Russia's backslide into authoritarianism.
Its mostly the same story as far as Iraq and Afghanistan go as well. We went in there and insisted on letting our oh-so-educated-diplomatic wonder boys; pick the winners and losers. They suffered from way to much hubris to think they had less understanding of the culture than did. Guess what the Taliban is back.
In Russia we wanted all those state-run enterprises privatized and we wanted it yesterday; all while continuing to treat Russia as
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You talk like Russians have no free will of their own.
Russians like authoritarianism. Despite all it's flaws, they are comfortable that way. It's what they know and more or less it works for them.
Re:This is not news. (Score:4, Interesting)
You talk as if Russians are some kind of monolithic block that and one that is somehow different than the rest of freedom loving humanity.
I don't think so Russians are like every other group of people they are favor what they know. The Russian public in 1990 was not ready to move immediately from Soviet Communism to a US style system over night. This why I question the ability/motives of our diplomatic folks - it does not take a genius to observe that change has to come slowly or be forced. While you can force change it has to be done in a way the breaks the will of the resistance; but that does not fit with trying to make people be democratic...
Russia is/was also a weird place because its always been rather isolated in terms of culture from the rest of Europe. Certainly in the 1990 it was public with a lot of internal conflict in terms of getting very different messages than what most had been raised with; they were looking outside for the first time in a long time and we really let them down in terms of showing them the way.
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At the same time, sometimes fast change is forced by circumstance. A failure of a dictatorship very often is followed by chaos: Libya, Uganda, Iraq, etc. Sometimes there are exceptions. Very often after the chaos there is not a new dictatorship, but often there is. In Russia the same pattern - dictatorship fell, there was chaos, then a dicatorship took over again.
With the USSR, all of it's individual Soviet states went their separate ways, leaving Russia alone. That was a massive shock to the system. Th
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Not all Russians. We're not even sure if most Russians want dictatorship. Intead it was thrust upon them with no choice. First Czars, then Soviet party leaders, then Putin, with just an incredibly brief respite with an incompetent Yeltsin. Even some moderate supporters of Putin like to say "at least he's not Yeltsin", as if it's all ok.
The problem with saying "Russians like dictatorships" (let's leave off the wimpy "authoritarian" label) is that they've not been given a chance to see something else. Tho
Re:This is not news. (Score:4, Insightful)
Russia has been at war with Western civilization for several years, and on every level, on our own soil.
Their biggest victory are the successful splitting and polarization of Western societies, by co-opting conservatives and the right-wing in several countries of the EU and in the United States.
Ask an average FN supporter in France, or an AfD supporter in Germany, or a MAGA republican in the US, what they think about Putin and Russia, and you will hear praises of how a great leader Putin is that really cares about his people, and that Russia is this honorable society of conservative values.
The truth is of course that Putin is a brutal dictator who murders political opponents, suppresses all dissidents and free media in the country, and starts wars and invades his neighbours as soon as they start leaning towards the West. The corrpution of the elites in Putin's inner circle has been bleeding the country dry for decades, while a majority of the population barely has access to sanitation facilities, with dilapitaded infrastructure as soon as you move out of the Disneyland cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The two major cities are the only part of Russia the leadership really cares about. The rest of the Russian Land Empire is subservient to that, and non-heartland Russian (non-white) minorities in the provinces suffer discrimination and arbitraryness, such as being sent to Ukraine as cannon-fodder. Putin's rule is enforced through violence and mafia tactics. Basically, shut up and play along or you will disappear or experience a tragic incident, such as 'suicide' by falling out of a window. People tend to forget that Putin was a KGB agent who hates the fact that the West "won" the cold war, and has declared the Anglo-Saxon culture to be his own personal, greatest enemy.
Putin and his secret services has managed to align himself with the values of conservatives in the West, like anti-wokeness, anti-GLBTQ, pro "tough guy image", and the conservative right-wing has become so enraptured by these charms through propaganda networks like RT and social media channels, and uses this as a weapon to sow ever larger division and polarization and thereby civil unrest in Western countries. We where very close to the types of outcomes the Russian leadership is looking for on January 6th.
I'm not being partisan, it's just a matter of fact that Russia helped propell Trump to victory because they knew he was the kind of character they had a hold on, and who could be influneced and uses as a tool to further divide US society, which is exactly what Trump has been doing for the last decade.
Remember how they reacted to Trump's victory
https://theworld.org/stories/2... [theworld.org]
Putin and Russia, they are not our friends. Not even of Trump, Republicans or MAGA. They pretend to be, but their goals are to polarize, disrupt, weaken, divide and conquer.
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Needs more mod points.
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Wooooow, the right wing is a Putin creation while the left wing is mom baseball and Apple pie.
You ultra lefties really do live Rules for Radicals. "Accuse them of doing what you're guilty of".
No, the evil just resides in different places depending on the each flank of politics and the level of authoritarianism. On the authoritarian right wing it's generally the 'strong leader', be it Putin, Trump, Orban, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam, ... With the liberal western left wing its here: "... the left wing is mom baseball and <EVIL>Apple</EVIL> pie ...". Did that clear things up for you?
Re:This is not news. (Score:5, Insightful)
which political group uses the most 'othering language' when it comes to fellow citizens and domestic population?
Are you fucking kidding me?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And that's not even touching on his racist birtherism stuff (ex. Mexico is "bringing drugs, crime and rapists" to US). Qualifying the racism by limiting the "othering" to fellow citizens and domestic population is a neat tactic.
You know what exactly NONE of them praise Putin.
Get out more. They frequently and openly do so. That's not to say that everyone in a MAGA hat does so, but many are so polarized that seeing the left support Ukraine leads them to defend putin - something trump also does. How do you call yourself MAGA and say none of them praise putin, while trump is praising putin?
Wow.... the stupid partisan political assumptions (Score:2)
As an Independent, I even see the obvious problem America has with the flood of illegal immigration across our Southern border. Mexico is a nation ruled by drug cartels. Their official President is nothing more than a figurehead, controlled by the cartels, and this has been the case since around 2007.
Allowing people to freely cross over to the U.S. means we have ZERO control over the type of people coming through. Are they all "bringing drugs, crime or rape" to America? Obviously not! But we sure can't tel
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1. Your premise if false ("Allowing people to freely cross over to the U.S. means we have ZERO control over the type of people coming through"). Though you didn't actually say that people could freely cross today, that's what you are implying and it's simply not true.
2. The "problem America has with the flood of illegal immigration across our Southern border" is nothing new nor specific to political party. The proposed solutions to that do vary, and I would argue that more wall isn't where the money should
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It might not be true people can simply cross our border with NO interference... I mean, obviously we DO still have border checkpoints and some barriers to entry put in place. We do hire border patrol people and we have an immigration enforcement group.
But the point is, we're getting floods of people coming through who are NOT getting vetted, and many people who get caught trying to cross illegally are just sent back across to the other side so they can attempt it again another day.
The "MAGA agenda" of "bui
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You understand even a very very bad person can support a good policy or two or three. However when those 'deplorables' recognize anything good at all in Putin's Russia, its "look at the autocrat lovers"
OK, I'll bite. Name one good thing about Putin's Russia.
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Apparently you don't remember the '90s, but the Russian people do. They remember Clinton's BFF Yeltsin giving away the country to western bankers and his cronies while pensioners were being evicted into the snow and people were literally starving to death. Putin put an end to that, and his people won't forget it.
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It's not Russia that has lost the plot, it's the Western populace. And it's no wonder either. Ever since the orange guy got elected we have had non-stop Russia hate thrown at us from every angle, only paused to make room for the bi-weekly China hate. It was going to get to us sooner or later, you cannot live in this pressure forever without getting cooked, and it has done us in, and nobody can see anything but the red of their bloodshot eyes anymore. I might even say that it has reached brain damage levels
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Ukraine did nothing to Russia other than elect leaders who represent them rather than Moscow, as is the right of all human beings (including all Russians). No one on Earth is obligated to submit to the grotesque, orc-like tyrants of the Moscow cult. Russia is in violation of the entire system of international law by its actions in Ukraine, and for goddamn sure by its assaults on Americans both abroad and on our soil.
T
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First of all, there is no such actual thing as international law. The closest thing that we have to that is that the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must, which was already the observation 2400 years ago, and still stands. Whether it's the US doing the Middle East, Russia doing Ukraine, of now Israel doing Gaza, if there is no one to uphold the International Law, it is meaningless. When the International Court of Justice calls for the prevention of genocidal acts in Gaza, and the UN
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That claim worked so well for the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg. But who knows, maybe second time will be the charm. When Generalissimo Ratface is standing at the dock, I have no doubt he will say exactly that, along with the other usual refrains of tyrants faced with justice.
If your propaganda is so unhinged that it now devolves to "international law does not exist," I think we're done here. The fact that people like you can't tell th
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So try to follow me here. In WWII, what was the difference between the war crimes of the nazis, and the war crimes of the Soviet Union? The nazis bere beaten to submission physically, so it was possible to put them in court. There was no shortage of terrible things done by the soviets, but they were the winners, so they got to parade around as the good guys and circle jerk each other with the allies.
What is the difference of the war crimes of Milosevic in Kosovo, and of Bibi in Gaza? Milosevic was a commie
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Why not? Particularly now, what with Russia going off the rails w.r.t its international relationships..
They are obviously going off rails because they figure they can afford it IMHO. It makes me wonder just a tiny bit about our current leadership...
Re:This is not news. (Score:5, Informative)
Why not? Particularly now, what with Russia going off the rails w.r.t its international relationships..
They are obviously going off rails because they figure they can afford it IMHO. It makes me wonder just a tiny bit about our current leadership...
You mean the administration which has been sending billions of dollars of military equipment to Ukraine so it can keep killing tens of thousands of Russians each month? The administration which has pressed the Russian-bought Republicans in the House to get a new aid bill to his desk to sign since it's up to them to release the funding? The administration which keeps adding more and more sanctions to Russians and Russian businesses?
Unlike the previous regime who tried to blackmail the Ukrainian president into setting up a fake investigation. Who has openly stated he admires the dictator of Moscow. Who didn't want anyone to know what he and his Russian handler talked about during their meeting. Who revealed classified information to a Russian "dignitary". Who has openly stated he wants Russia to attack our NATO allies.* Who calls sanctions on Russia unfair.
It's understandable why you'd be confused. In the first case the administration is actively working to defeat Russia. In the second, they're actively working to curry favor for their own benefit.
* Considering the con artist is well known not to pay his bills, this statement is perfectly self-revealing.
Hans Kristian Graebener = StoneToss
Re:This is not news. (Score:5, Informative)
Which of course never happend [usatoday.com], but keep the lie alive.
Re:This is not news. (Score:5, Informative)
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By the way Biden should have been charged for doing what he did, he was not as a VP authorized to threaten funds in that manner.
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Much like the Steele dossier, and Russia Trump connection in 2016....
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No, you're listening to the Trump and Fox versions. Biden's son was just on the board, it wasn't his company. Joe Biden wanted an investigation and was complaining that Ukraine wasn't investigating corruption enough and wanted their corrupt prosecutor fired. This wasn't just Joe Biden wanting to get rid of the corrupt prosecutor, it was the opinion of the United States government, democrats and republicans.
It seems from reports that Hunter Biden and other directors in America had very little control, and
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Hunter was pulling down 80k a month to be on the board of a foreign company in a country he has no real connections to, didn't speak the language, didn't have any experience in what that company did. All thumbs up, pal!
When the Ukrainian investigator started looking into this corrupt bullshit and stirring shit up, his dad stepped in, and held up already approved money from Congress until that guy was fired and the investigation killed.
Then Joe did an interview where he bragged about it.
Anything different t
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Hunter was pulling down 80k a month to be on the board of a foreign company in a country he has no real connections to, didn't speak the language, didn't have any experience in what that company did. All thumbs up, pal!
True, but... Not illegal. And not that uncommon! Boards of directors really don't have connections other than owning stock, they aren't necessarily knowledgeable about the company. Look at the board of your own company and see who there qualified to be an employee that knows how to do a job there and understands what the company does. Boards of directors often just vote each year to keep the CEO and then sit back and wait for stock values to go up.
For a board in a foreign country, this is less common bu
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I believe my eyes. I've seen the video of Joe bragging about extorting the Ukrainians. Again, AC, I don't care if you haven't.
You're an AC and therefore not a real human being. You're a sub-human or an AI or some other form of trash unworthy of a real reply.
Re:This is not news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure he hoped to rush in (see what did there) and make it a fait accompli while everyone was still to busy bickering about the pandemic, but what is happening is the next best outcome in Putin's mind
If this is "next best", I'm curious what the worst outcomes look like to Putin. He's failed in every war aim: he's put Ukraine into the orbit of the EU for at least a few generations, he's strengthened NATO, and he's reminded everyone of the importance of America undersigning Western security. He even managed to inspire an armed column charging towards Moscow and killing a bunch of Russian soldiers.
The only silver lining I could see from Putin's perspective is that he's undermined faith in Western commitments by showing that a certain part of America's Congress will fail to support allies not because of principled disagreement, but because they can't be bothered to care enough to put it to a vote.
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He's gained about 20% of Ukrainian territory so far. Sure it's far from the 100% that he sought, but in his mind 20% is far more than 0%. And all he had to do was trade the lives of hundreds of thousands of people that aren't him or anyone he cares about. And he just "won" about 87% of the popular vote for re-election. We can't defeat our enemies if we do not understand how they think and I don't think many of my fellow westerners understand how Putin thinks. In order to do
Re:This is not news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please, you're making things up about Trump. Putin would have done what Putin would have done whether or not Trump was president. Besides, all signals Trump gave was that he wouldn't do something like lead with American air strikes if Russia invaded Ukraine. Let's be honest, Trump likes his ego being stroked, and the best you would have seen is him trying to get TV footage of him shaking Putin's hand as they made a "deal", with Trump coming home waving a piece of paper all Neville Chamberlain-esque.
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Putin was the one who invaded. You can't blame the west for this. The west were not the aggressors here. Trump almost certainly did not prevent Putin from invading. Putin had already invaded before Trump came to power, there was already an ongoing conflict. What Trump did was praise Putin.
The Trump administration did give arms to Ukraine. Trump threatened to withold these at one point, which came up in the impeachment. The Obama, Trump, and Biden adminstrations all did two things: they supplied weap
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They are obviously going off rails because they figure they can afford it IMHO. It makes me wonder just a tiny bit about our current leadership...
Wondering about current leadership makes sense for Russians... though it's more worrying than wondering.
Cause they're not thinking they can afford it - they think they're ENTITLED TO.
You know how in fiction an evangelical born again lunatic gets into the White House and, being on a mission from god, decides to "make America great again", only backed with nuclear weapons and by literally trying to conquer or subdue other countries?
Well... Funny thing is...
In Current Russia - fiction IS reality. [youtu.be]
Or like how Mo
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Putin, like Trump, is not at all religious. The opposite of religious. However Putin, like Trump, has a lot of religious followers who think the guy at the top is highly religious and God's personal choice for the leadership. Trump, like Reagan, saw a religious segment that would support him and courted it. It seems baffling, but the best chances at getting a theocracy seems to be coming from a couple of non-religious guys.
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Current? What about Trump, the formerly-current leadership who wanted to be buddies with Putin (and Kim, and Duterte, and all the other "strong" leaders). There's a long line of "current" leaders who failed here, it is absolutely not a new failure.
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They're laughing because the US gov't has invented a whole conspiracy theory involving phantasmagorical "weapons" when the issue is their own poorly designed facilities. What did they think when they put half a dozen different ultrasonic devices all in the same concrete walled room, that there wouldn't be any sort of interaction between them? Electrical engineers told them EIGHT YEARS AGO what the problem was, and they're still fantasizing that Professor Moriartyski has created a new superweapon that can
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Actually they've known the cause of this since 2018, it's called Intermodulation distortion (IMD). It happens when multiple frequencies interact and generate harmonic vibrations, and in this case it would be from multiple pieces of building automation and anti-monitoring hardware. Of course spies being spies they'll always prefer to believe that they're under attack from some super-villain than their own poor engineering. I've experienced a similar thing in a security installation here in Seattle that se
No. (Score:5, Interesting)
For the past 20 years or so, Putin has been following the playbook of Nazi Germany leading up to WW2; that is, a combination of rapid, decisive deployments to eat up smaller neighbors and the weaponization of fear, uncertainty, and doubt to deter other nations from responding in any way more substantial than a stern "please don't do that." What was legitimately surprising to me was that the US actually didn't let them get away with this in 2020; crazy how actually learning from past mistakes can sometimes lead to more positive outcomes. Chalk one up for Uncle Sam, it's one of the few unquestionably good strategic decisions I'd attribute to my own government over my lifetime. I may not like Biden or his DNC puppetmasters all that much but they damn sure got this one right.
As a result, the past few years have started to demonstrate Russia's martial ineptitude and people have finally started to wise up to their act. It's unlikely that Russia will be able to get away with their previous strategy again any time soon now that Europe is starting to re-militarize and Russia's neighbors are jumping at the bit to enter NATO. It's only a shame that it took the loss of Crimea, substantial parts of Georgia, and many Ukrainian lives to get to this point.
Re:This is not news. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're accusing hundreds of the world's most capable, educated, and accomplished diplomats, intelligence agents, law enforcement investigators, and scientists of not knowing how to do their jobs, or how to examine information logically.
Right that is being far to kind them. The reality is the ones at the top are malicious liars and rank and file go a long to get a long
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You're accusing hundreds of the world's most capable, educated, and accomplished diplomats, intelligence agents, law enforcement investigators, and scientists of not knowing how to do their jobs, or how to examine information logically.
I have not read the rest of the conversation that goes with that snippet. I would like to point out that you are committing a logical fallacy. "Appeal to Authority" I think is the official name for it.
If I were a betting man, I would bet the way you are betting now; however, it would be a BET. There is no actual guarantee that all of those people are going to do their jobs or examine information logically. Money makes for some VERY powerful distortions in perception and action.
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No investigation has ever said it was a "hoax." That's a complete lie. All the brass who dictated those results ever said was it's unproven, and that conclusion was harsh
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And in other news... (Score:2)
Members of the journalism community were saddened by the obituaries of three reporters from Russia's "Insider" news organization, who accidentally fell to their death from windows in a high rise apartment block next week.
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Defenestration was not the cause of death however as the polonium killed them before they hit the ground.
or not.... (Score:2)
Let me know when they pick the narrative & mis (Score:5, Insightful)
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This demonstrates just how bad things have got. Even when you have journalists doing actual journalism, doing the investigations and hard work they should be putting in, it gets dismissed just the same as a Breitbart or Daily Mail article.
Re:Let me know when they pick the narrative & (Score:5, Interesting)
Anecdote from my college years: on my way home after class this girl walks up to me asking for help finding a building for her next class. She's a junior transfer journalism major. She's on the wrong side of campus, long walk.
Along the way she explains her reason to go into journalism is she "wants to change the world". Uhm, ok, odd, so I clarify and ask if she means by investigating and revealing something important like the pentagon papers. No. Not that. She wants to push a particular agenda and use journalism as her tool to achieve that end.
I suspect this is quite common given the horrific not-reporting we get and that the majority of people recognize it and don't trust news media the way they did in previous generations.
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Nice anecdote.
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Although I was turned off by her world view she was super hot and I was too stupid to get her number. Never saw her again. The end. :-)
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She wants to push a particular agenda and use journalism as her tool to achieve that end.
My Intro to Journalism class in high school was like this. Everything we wrote was scrutinized to ensure it was focused through the proper, correct lens. Our teacher was a raging Feminazi, of the ERA and NOW type. Stickers everywhere on her car. Loved wearing Che Guevara shirts. Basically a Commie bluehair before technicholor hair was permissible in society.
One semester and I walked. And along the way lost whatever respect I had for journalists / newspapers. That was 1987. Every year since then has
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Even when you have journalists doing actual journalism, doing the investigations and hard work they should be putting in, it gets dismissed just the same as a Breitbart or Daily Mail article.
That pretty much started the day CNN came into being in 1980. 24 hours to fill.. with what? There's not enough news in the world... then or now.. to fill 24 hours of news channel. So, they did what journos do best -- spout opinion in the hopes The Plebes will consider it fact. Judging by the state of the world, they were successful.
Shall we talk about the BBC? I peruse their site every now and then, as a counter-balance to American news outlets. Why is the BBC so preoccupied with Africa? I'd say 70% of
Re:Let me know when they pick the narrative & (Score:4, Informative)
If you said this a year ago, the same "journalists" would have called you a conspiracy theorist.
Rightly so, if you made such bold allegations without the evidence and investigation to back it up.
The difference between "investigative journalism" and "conspiracy theory" isn't necessarily the rightness or wrongness of the allegation. I'm sure many conspiracy theorists will happily point to "conspiracy theories" which turned out to be true. It turns into "investigative journalism" when you back up your allegation with an intellectually honest analysis of evidence that can be vetted.
Re: (Score:2)
If you said this a year ago, the same "journalists" would have called you a conspiracy theorist. Lately the "news" is just last year's mis/dis/mal-information pushed through a woke filter.
Nah, they would have said "it's possible, but there's not enough evidence", similar to now except there's a bit more evidence.
The difference between this and classic conspiracy theories is there's actually a bit of evidence, not enough to be conclusive, but enough to be suspicious.
The proponents of normal conspiracy theories act like they're all but certain when there's very little evidence for and some very strong evidence against, and so they just ignore the evidence against.
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Probably not. Why would journalists investigate it if they didn't think it was possible? Also real news is generally not on 24/7 cable networks. At best, they have filler, speculation and fluff. This might include your woke filter, but again it's not really news...
Always the allegations & 'suggestions' (Score:2)
that's yet more propaganda (Score:2)
the simple fact they're using "MIGHT" shows that they're just lying.
So did US intelligence agencies miss it? (Score:2)
These investigative journalists have turned up a lot of pretty compelling evidence. It's not a smoking gun, but it is very persuasive circumstantial evidence. The interesting thing to me is that if they could find it, surely US intelligence agencies could find it... and probably more. But intelligence agencies who looked at it concluded that there was nothing to see here.
Or that's what they told us, anyway. So I wonder, did they actually miss this, or did they find it and decide that it was better not to
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Mars needs women! Prove the Martians wrong...
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60 minutes (Score:3)
Watched the 60 minutes interview. My personal guess/theory these incidents could be side effects of spy gear akin to "the thing" from the 40s perhaps incompetently implemented/used.
The reports didn't seem credible to me. I kept waiting for them to tie the cook to something but in the end all we have was a lady talking about how she feels when she sees a picture. I didn't understand how she had video surveillance, said she saw the cook outside yet there is no video record of anyone getting out of the car.
" I went downstairs. I first looked on our security camera, which is right beside our front door, to see if anyone was outside. There was a vehicle right outside of our gate. I took a photo of that vehicle and noticed that it was not a vehicle that I recognized. And I went outside. "
"Did you see anyone around the vehicle?
I did
We sent you a photograph of Albert Averyanov. And this is the picture that we sent you.
And I wonder if that looks anything like the man you saw outside your home.
It absolutely does. And when I received this photo, I had a visceral reaction. It made me feel sick.
"
My understanding is most security cameras at the very least record frames with motion for some period of time. If the guy parked and got out of his car she has nothing? This makes no sense to me.
I also didn't understand the conflicting assertions. There is no physical evidence... yet:
". And now doctors say she has holes in her inner ear canalsâ"the vestibular system that creates the sense of balance. Two surgeries put metal plates in her skull. Another surgery is likely. "
"This month, the National Institutes of Health reported results of brain scans. NIH said there's no evidence of physical damage. "
I just don't know how to square these things.
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non-lethal acoustic weapons (Score:2)
"The Insider said senior members of the unit received awards and political promotions for work related to the development of “non-lethal acoustic weapons” that include both sound and radio frequency-based directed energy devices."
This is the thing that makes me think there might be something to all this.
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It's not like we don't have these [wikipedia.org] as well.
rolled on a thigh (Score:2)
Let me count the ways. (Score:2)
This looks like a good time to roll out the new sig.
Twelve songs and counting that are about the current war and the overall state of affairs in and around Russia.
Russia did it? (Score:2)
That's unpossible!
Nicebo (Score:2)
There have been two extensive medical studies that found no reports of incidents were the same and there was no evidence of any medical illnesses. They both concluded there were no attacks and it was the nocebo effect caused stories making people think that they were unwell and were attacked. People who didn't believe in the attacks report no symptoms and were fine.
This article presents not a single piece of medical evdience, not any evidence for a sonic weapon.
Every country has reasearched sonic weapons. O
Re: No, it was the Goa'uld from planet P3X-888 /s (Score:2)
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It was Colonel Mustard with the knife in the kitchen.
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Slashdot had a submission not long ago indicating that outdated microwave-based signals intelligence gear commonly used by the Soviets might have caused the reported ringing in people's ears (and possibly other symptoms).
Re: Treat with extreme skepticism (Score:2)
outdated microwave-based signals intelligence gear commonly used by the Soviets
Nonsense. The Russians use the same state of the art gear that we do. Sourced from the same manufacturers. The Chinese.
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It wasn't my analysis. You can backtrack and read the submission for yourself.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The most recent story on the Havana Syndrome before this was that there was no evidence it was caused by any physical damage. The conclusion was that its not actually a "syndrome" but random symptoms with no common cause.
Whereas the correct conclusion would have been that it is not caused by anything that causes physical damage that we can detect.
Studies (Score:2)
The studies I've seen show that whatever Havana Syndrome is, it doesn't cause physical damage. They've done MRIs of affected individuals can can find nothing.
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Leave me out of this, I have never been to Russia (in its borders at the time) or Cuba in my life.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
> State facts or be gone
If you're waiting for fully verifiable facts to be published by some "trustworthy" agency, you'll be waiting right up until you're carted off to the gulag.
Russia has been doing "off books" offensive ops around the world for decades - all of it just about deniable enough that it doesn't start an all out war. Thus far, they've mostly kept it to assassinating Russians (ie. born that way, may or may not have taken up citizenship elsewhere). IMHO, it's only a matter of time before they
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No, he meant the 7 world central kitchen aid workers, in a clearly marked convoy, arranged with Israel that was hit by 3 successive missiles.
Calling out Israels actions is not jew hatred, or anti-semitism. Repeating IDF lies is disgusting.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/w... [cbsnews.com]
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Lmao, DN and RS?
Omg, this is the same RS that has been busted publishing complete crap?
And DN? Seriously? Why not just use Vox or MSNBC or ask Hillary directly?
Jfc.... smh
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I doubt faked up crap from known biased sources that have previously been caught making shit up from whole cloth like Rolling Stone or places that are blatant propaganda not news sources.
Given the thousands of potential sources it makes laugh hard that these are the complete shit fake sources he came up with.
If I used Breitbart as a source you'd be justified dismissing it outright without even clicking the link yet I'm supposed to accept equally or worse shit links.
GTFO of here with garbage links and expect
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I don't watch or read Fox. You're not talking to who you think you're talking to.
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Nope. I've seen 2minutes of Oann when it was new. Never newsmax. Only open Breitbart to find articles to troll a friend with based on headlines.
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I wouldn't claim anything as I don't know what's on Fox. You seem to watch it more than me. Why are you watching so much Fox?
That you think I -watch- anything says more about you than me. I don't -watch- ANY news. I read my news from all over the world and across the entire political spectrum and then make up my mind after taking it all in. Watching is a passive act for mindless people who are empty headed shells that want someone to tell them what to think. Do -you- WATCH news?
I'll ask you the same t