Posts

Canada Withdraws Half of Their Diplomats from Cuba Due to Mysterious Illness

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Canadian Government is withdrawing half of its diplomatic staff from Cuba’s capital after 14 cases of mysterious illnesses. . .

“The health, safety and security of our diplomatic staff and their families remain our priority,” the department wrote. “The Canadian government continues to investigate the potential causes of the unusual health symptoms experienced by some Canadian diplomatic staff and their family members posted in Havana, Cuba. To date, no cause has been identified.”

The series of illness cases started in early 2017, with the most recent case occurring in November 2018. 26 Americans were affected by the illness as well. Symptoms include “dizziness, insomnia, hearing loss and nausea when using a computer,” according to The New York Times. . .

The United States made a similar move back in October 2017. President Donald Trump expelled 15 of their own diplomats from Havana, leaving only a couple a dozen members. The U.S. also warned citizens not to travel to Cuba, but Canada’s global affairs department didn’t make such a warning. . .

The Cuban government denied any involvement with the health issue, and Canada said that they are working closely with the Cuban government to identify the cause of the problem. (Read more from “Canada Withdraws Half of Their Diplomats from Cuba Due to Mysterious Illness” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers

/0 Comments/in , /by

By The New York Times. . .More recently, the American military itself sought to develop microwave arms that could invisibly beam painfully loud booms and even spoken words into people’s heads. The aims were to disable attackers and wage psychological warfare.

Now, doctors and scientists say such unconventional weapons may have caused the baffling symptoms and ailments that, starting in late 2016, hit more than three dozen American diplomats and family members in Cuba and China. The Cuban incidents resulted in a diplomatic rupture between Havana and Washington.

The medical team that examined 21 affected diplomats from Cuba made no mention of microwaves in its detailed report published in JAMA in March. But Douglas H. Smith, the study’s lead author and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a recent interview that microwaves were now considered a main suspect and that the team was increasingly sure the diplomats had suffered brain injury. (Read more from “Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers” HERE)

________________________________________________

Embassy ‘Sonic Attacks’ May Have Been Microwave Blasts

By Engadget. When researchers postulated that the “sonic attacks” on embassies in Cuba (and more recently China) were the fault of malfunctioning surveillance gear, that wasn’t the end to concerns about the true cause… if anything, there’s more worry than ever. The University of Pennsylvania’s Douglas Smith (who led a paper discussing the trauma of embassy victims) said in an interview that microwave blasts are now considered primary candidates. The concussion-like symptoms more closely line up with microwaves and other radio frequency-related illnesses than previous explanations, including straightforward acoustic attack, anxiety or viruses.

Embassy staff may have been subjected to the Frey effect, where microwaves fool the brain into perceiving phantom noises when they hit the temporal lobes processing signals from your ears. Sufficiently powerful microwave blasts can cause pain, and might even deal lasting damage to the nervous system. (Read more from “Embassy ‘Sonic Attacks’ May Have Been Microwave Blasts” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

American Visitors to Cuba Now Reporting Mysterious Attacks

/0 Comments/in , /by

Nineteen American citizens have reported symptoms similar to those suffered by U.S. diplomats who had been identified as victims of alleged attacks in Cuba.

“Since September 29, the Department of State has been contacted by 19 U.S. citizens who reported experiencing symptoms similar to those listed in the Travel Warning after visiting Cuba,” a spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs told the Miami Herald in an email . . .

In late September, the State Department issued a travel warning advising Americans not to travel to Cuba because they could become victims of mysterious attacks such as those suffered by 24 diplomats and their families while they were stationed in Havana. The U.S. also removed most of the staff at its embassy in the Cuban capital.

Among the symptoms described in the travel warning are: “ear complaints and hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues, and difficulty sleeping.”

In January, the State Department changed the wording and currently recommends “reconsidering” traveling to Cuba. However, officials stressed that the situation on the island had not changed, nor their message to American travelers. The list of possible symptoms remained unchanged in the new travel advisory. (Read more from “American Visitors to Cuba Now Reporting Mysterious Attacks” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

What’s Going on in Cuba? US Embassy Workers Found to Have Brain Abnormalities

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

By Nicole Darrah. Brain abnormalities have been found in the U.S. diplomats who were victims of suspected attacks at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, according to a new report.

Doctors discovered that white matter in the brains of Embassy workers had “developed changes,” The Associated Press reported. White matter allows different areas of the brain to communicate.

At least 24 U.S. Embassy officials in Cuba had reported hearing loud, grating noises before experiencing ear issues, hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues and difficulty sleeping.

Some victims knew immediately that the attack was affecting their bodies, while some developed physical symptoms within 24 hours.

Other Americans who were not working but were traveling in Cuba had also reported experiencing weird symptoms similar to those that the U.S. officials reported, the State Department said. (Read more from “What’s Going on in Cuba? US Embassy Workers Found to Have Brain Abnormalities” HERE)

_______________________________________

Mysterious Cuba Embassy Attacks Left Victims With Brain Anomalies

By Avery Thompson. Back in September, a strange mystery was unfolding in Cuba. American officials and their spouses were experiencing some kind of attack, but nobody was really sure what was going on. People experienced a wide range of symptoms, from headaches and difficulty concentrating to hearing loss and brain damage. Many reported hearing high-pitched, painful noises prior to experiencing the symptoms.

Medical experts have been unable to explain what kind of weapon is affecting these officials, or even what’s wrong with them. But new results from doctors at the University of Miami and the University of Pennsylvania have provided a valuable clue: The victims appear to have abnormalities in their brains’ white matter.

White matter refers to the sections of the brain filled with dense nerve connections, which are primarily responsible for learning and higher brain functions. Doctors often see white matter damage when people suffer concussions or other brain damage, which likely means the victims are suffering something similar. (Read more from “Mysterious Cuba Embassy Attacks Left Victims With Brain Anomalies” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Top Neurologists Blame Mass Hysteria for Debilitating ‘Sonic Attacks’ in Cuba, But Now Navy is Evaluating Mysterious Sounds

/0 Comments/in , , /by

By Julian Borger and Philip Jaekl. Senior neurologists have suggested that a spate of mysterious ailments among US diplomats in Cuba – which has caused a diplomat rift between the two countries – could have been caused by a form of “mass hysteria” rather than sonic attacks.

The unexplained incidents have prompted the US to withdraw most of its embassy staff from Havana and expel the majority of Cuban diplomats from Washington . . .

“From an objective point of view it’s more like mass hysteria than anything else,” said Mark Hallett, the head of the human motor control section of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

“Mass hysteria” is the popular term for outbreaks among groups of people which are partly or wholly psychosomatic, but Hallett stressed there should be no blame attached to them.

“Psychosomatic disease is a disease like anything else. It shouldn’t be stigmatised,” said Hallett, who is also president of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. “It’s important to point out that symptoms like this are not voluntary. They are not a sign of weakness in an individual’s personality.” (Read more from “Mass Hysteria May Explain ‘Sonic Attacks’ in Cuba, Say Top Neurologists” HERE)

_________________________

Mass Hysteria? Not So Fast, Says Navy as it Analyzes Actual Sounds Captured by Injured Embassy Officials

By Josh Lederman and Michael Weissenstein. It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets. A high-pitched whine, but from what? It seems to undulate, even writhe. Listen closely: There are multiple, distinct tones that sound to some like they’re colliding in a nails-on-the-chalkboard effect.

The Associated Press has obtained a recording of what some U.S. Embassy workers heard in Havana in a series of unnerving incidents later deemed to be deliberate attacks. The recording, released Thursday by the AP, is the first disseminated publicly of the many taken in Cuba of mysterious sounds that led investigators initially to suspect a sonic weapon. . .

The recordings from Havana have been sent for analysis to the U.S. Navy, which has advanced capabilities for analyzing acoustic signals, and to the intelligence services, the AP has learned. But the recordings have not significantly advanced U.S. knowledge about what is harming diplomats. (Read more about whether the injuries suffered in Cuba are a result of mass hysteria or deliberate attacks HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Cuba Mystery Deepens

/0 Comments/in , /by

The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.

Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 U.S. victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top U.S. diplomat has called them “health attacks.” New details learned by The Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling U.S. officials who say the facts and the physics don’t add up.

“None of this has a reasonable explanation,” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA official who served in Havana long before America re-opened an embassy there. “It’s just mystery after mystery after mystery.” (Read more from “Cuba Mystery Deepens” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Sonic Assault: More American Diplomats in Cuba Have Health Issues

/0 Comments/in , /by

Unusual health attacks on U.S. diplomats in Cuba continued as recently as August despite previous assessments that the activities had stopped in the spring, the U.S. said on Friday.

“We can confirm another incident which occurred last month and is now part of the investigation,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

The U.S. is continually revising its assessments of the extent of the attacks as new information is obtained, Nauert said. An investigation has not been completed.

The announcement that the attacks – in which a potential covert sonic device caused a series of issues, including permanent hearing loss – comes after the union representing American diplomats said that mild traumatic brain injury was among the diagnoses given to diplomats victimized in the attack.

The American Foreign Service Association said additional symptoms had included brain swelling, severe headaches, loss of balance and “cognitive disruption.” (Read more from “Sonic Assault: More American Diplomats in Cuba Have Health Issues” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Who Is the Cop-Killer Trump Said He Wants Extradited From Cuba?

/0 Comments/in , /by

During his speech in Miami on Friday, President Trump called on the regime in Cuba to extradite wanted terrorist Joanne Chesimard (who goes by the name Assata Shakur) to the United States.

“Return the fugitives from American justice. Including the return of the cop-killer, Joanne Chesimard,” Trump demanded of the regime in Cuba.

Chesimard is a well-known, infamous figure in the law enforcement community. But many outside of that community, especially millennials, may not be so familiar with her case.

A convicted murderer, Chesimard was a prominent member of the ruthless Black Liberation Army (BLA), a splinter group comprised of the most radical members of the Black Panthers. Shakur was the leader of a notorious New York City BLA cell that hunted down police officers for brutal assassinations.

Chesimard has become a folk hero among the fringe Left. Because of her background in far-left activism, some in movements like Black Lives Matter see her as a hero, and not the terrorist cop-killer that she really is.

The Black Liberation Army, which rose to prominence in the 1970s, was known for its ruthless methods. In one incident showcasing their carnage, three BLA militants killed two NYPD officers in the East Village. But that wasn’t the worst part. The assailants stood over the officers and continued to shoot into their bodies repeatedly.

By 1973, Shakur was the subject of a multi-state manhunt. The FBI labeled her the “revolutionary mother hen” of the cell that had carried out the murders of NYPD officers. Later that year, Shakur bolted New York City with fellow BLA members.

On her escape down the New Jersey turnpike, she was pulled over by state troopers. At that time, her accomplice, Zayd Shakur, was killed in a gunfire battle. A police officer was also killed in the incident, with help from Chesimard, who again sped away in her vehicle

But ultimately, she was captured sitting on the side of the highway after being wounded in the gun battle.

In 1977, Chesimard was charged with murder and convicted of firing the shots that killed New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster. She was also convicted of seven other felonies. She was sentenced to life in prison plus thirty years for her crimes.

She was later transferred to a lax security prison facility. The facility did not screen guests, so anyone was able to visit her. This allowed Chesimard to plot with members of the BLA to break her out. And on Nov. 2, 1979, three militants held a correctional officer hostage and proceeded to break Chesimard out of prison, with getaway cars waiting outside.

Two years later, she surfaced in Cuba. A wanted fugitive, Fidel Castro’s dictatorial regime provided Chesimard with asylum. Her path from prison to Cuba is largely unknown, and has baffled even the experts who traced every step of her case. Some speculate that she made her way to the Bahamas and was later picked up by a Cuban patrol boat. There are as many as 70 American fugitives living in Cuba under protection of the tyrannical Castro regime.

In 2013, the FBI placed Chesimard on its most wanted terrorists list, giving her the distinct honor of becoming the first woman to ever be placed on the FBI fugitive roster.

As former President Obama opened up diplomatic relations with Cuba, many had hoped that Chesimard would be on his list of priorities for extradition. This turned out not to be the case. Obama ignored the pleas of the law enforcement community and her victims families’ who sought to bring Chesimard to justice.

Many in the law enforcement community hoped that President Trump would act on behalf of their slain colleagues, and get to the bottom of Chesimard’s case. Today, they are surely thankful that the president demanded the Cuban regime extradite her back to America to face justice. (For more from the author of “Who Is the Cop-Killer Trump Said He Wants Extradited From Cuba?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

How Dissidents Are Responding to Trump’s Change in Cuba Policy

/0 Comments/in , /by

The letter sent by Cuba’s main dissident group to President Donald Trump thanking him for his decision to prohibit U.S. trade with the military, security and intelligence services on the island—their tormentors—serves as a timely rebuke of President Barack Obama’s warm embrace of the Castro regime and those still defending it.

The letter was sent by Berta Soler on behalf of the group she leads, The Ladies in White. These brave, mostly Afro-Cuban women suffer constant harassment, beatings, and incarcerations at the hand of the Castro regime when they attempt to march on the streets of Havana on Sundays.

“These days, Mr. President, when most of the world responds with a deafening silence to the harassment, arbitrary detentions, beatings, house searches, and robberies against peaceful opponents, human rights activists and defenseless women, your words of encouragement are most welcomed,” Soler wrote.

“We will continue to fight for our rights because we recognize it is our duty to free ourselves, but we can’t do it alone. It is also the duty of the freedom loving peoples of the world. The United States must continue to be the first defender of those who lack rights and freedoms in the world,” she added.

Sent Saturday, one day after Trump unveiled in Miami his new restrictions, the letter crystalizes what is at stake. One can believe these women’s intimate understanding of the vicious nature of the Cuban regime, or those who have come out in support of Obama’s policy, who minimize the brutality and economic devastation unleashed upon Cuba by the communist regime.

Perhaps the most acidic critic of the Trump doctrine has been the architect of Obama’s policy, his former deputy Ben Rhodes. In op-eds and tweets since last week, Rhodes has zigzagged between insisting that Trump’s changes won’t matter and warning that they will have a chilling effect on trade.

He has been joined by a cadre of progressive journalists, especially at NPR and MSNBC, whose leading defender of relations with Raul Castro’s Cuba, Andrea Mitchell, reported her show from Havana last week.

Trump was unstinting in his attacks on the Castros’s nearly six decade uninterrupted military dictatorship of Cuba.

“For nearly six decades, the Cuban people have suffered under communist domination. To this day, Cuba is ruled by the same people who killed tens of thousands of their own citizens, who sought to spread their repressive and failed ideology throughout our hemisphere, and who once tried to host enemy nuclear weapons 90 miles from our shores,” said Trump in Miami.

“The Castro regime has shipped arms to North Korea and fueled chaos in Venezuela. While imprisoning innocents, it has harbored cop-killers, hijackers, and terrorists. It has supported human trafficking, forced labor, and exploitation all around the globe. This is the simple truth of the Castro regime,” he added.

“My administration will not hide from it, excuse it, or glamorize it. And we will never, ever be blind to it. We know what’s going on and we remember what happened,” said the president, in a clear reference to his predecessor.

Obama not only unilaterally ended many restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba after he announced on Dec. 17, 2014 that he would undo the adversarial approach toward Castro of his 10 predecessors, Obama went out of his way to extend his hand to those who pummel people like Soler.

He traveled to Havana last May with his entire family, went to a baseball game with the dictator Raul Castro, and even did the wave with him while in the stands. At no time did he make his warmth contingent on Castro promising to ease up on dissidents.

And indeed, human rights groups report that political beatings and arrests (nearly 10,000 in 2016 alone) have increased.

The arguments made by Rhodes, Mitchell et al basically boil down to “sure, Mr. Castro ain’t no Thomas Jefferson, but there are worse people.”

In an op-ed in The Atlantic on Friday, Rhodes laid much of the blame for Cuba’s ruined economy on the U.S. embargo of the past six decades, rather than on the fact that communism has been a failed system everywhere it has been tried.

“Yes, the Cuban government shoulders its share of the blame,” Rhodes allows in passing. “But there are dozens of authoritarian governments; we do not impose embargoes on China or Vietnam, Kazakhstan or Egypt.” He refers to the dissidents once in his piece, damning them by calling them “the dissidents that the United States supports.”

Mitchell made similar comments last week, suggesting at one point that though Castro may not hold elections, world leaders like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte are worse.

These comments and others make clear why Castro gets a pass. Erdogan and Duterte represent threats to democracy in their countries, but both were democratically elected, whether we like it or not, and lead nations that are treaty allies, which makes things tricky.

The Castro brothers have not had elections since they took over in 1959 and lead a virulently anti-American regime, which as Trump said, continue to destabilize our region.

One can only decry that the Obama opening to the Castros has been reversed if one is blind to the brutality of the Castro government and the threat it represents to American interests and Cuban lives. (For more from the author of “How Dissidents Are Responding to Trump’s Change in Cuba Policy” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Will Reverse the Damage Done by Obama’s Cuba Policy

/0 Comments/in , /by

If “America First” means anything, it must mean preventing a virulently anti-American criminal enterprise from perpetuating its existence next door and reproducing itself throughout the hemisphere.

And since this is precisely what President Barack Obama’s opening to the Castros accomplished, President Donald Trump is duty-bound to reverse this mistake.

In fact, if The New York Times is to be believed—and on this we should, as coddling the Castros is one thing the Gray Lady has been consistent on for 60 years—the administration is about to announce it is reinstating the limits on travel and trade that Obama lifted.

This isn’t full reversion, but I’ll take it. I don’t say this very often, but let’s hope The New York Times is right.

Obama always said he was helping Cubans with his opening, and in a technical way that is true.

Alejandro Castro Espin, the ideologically unbending Leninist son of military ruler Raul Castro, is a Cuban. So is Gen. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez Calleja, the economic czar in charge of the lucrative tourist trade.

Oh, Lopez Calleja is also Castro’s son-in-law and Alejandro’s brother-in-law.

U.S. recognition and sanction of the Castros helped these two Cubans enormously in their endeavor to inherit political and economic control when Castro, a spry 85-year-old man, effected a transition from one communist Castro to another in a short nine months.

Cuba’s 11 million other citizens were not helped so much.

They would have had a much better hope of a real transition to a post-communist, post-Castro, free Cuba had Obama not promised that, in exchange for nothing, the Castro dictatorship would benefit from selling their products in the United States and receiving credits to boot.

With Cuba’s international benefactor, Venezuela’s own despotic government, teetering on the brink of collapse, the Obama lifeline to the Castro family looms even larger.

People with zero understanding of Cuba have always parroted the Godfather stereotypes, so let’s put things in a language they’ll understand.

Raul is Don Corleone in this version, while Alejandro is Michael Corleone, and Lopez Calleja is Tom Hagen.

Sonny and Fredo are played by any number of Miami Cuban-Americans with business interests tied to this division of the spoils, the freedom of their former compatriots be damned.

Alejandro is widely expected to pull the strings of power when and if the nominal heir apparent, Miguel Diaz-Canel, first vice president since 2013, takes the title of president from Raul in February 2018.

There are precedents for this in the revolution and earlier Cuban history.

Cuba’s president from 1959 to 1976 wasn’t Fidel Castro, but a wealthy lawyer by the name of Osvaldo Dorticos Torrado, a nonentity who committed suicide in 1983.

From 1936 to 1940, the republic’s official head of state was Federico Laredo Bru, another wealthy lawyer whose strings were pulled by Fulgencio Batista.

Both Dorticos and Laredo Bru associated with communists and let them take part in government (yes, little-known fact: Batista was such a communist sympathizer that even Stalin’s Chilean hagiographer, Pablo Neruda, once wrote a poem to him).

But before reading these lines, had you ever heard of either of Dorticos or Laredo Bru?

This window-dressing fate awaits Diaz-Canel. Journalists are now besoiling themselves by claiming all sorts of things about him.

Six months ago, Reuters said he “has already established press and internet freedom as signature concerns.” It is often written that he’s a Beatles fan (the way Andropov liked jazz).

Probably better to listen to what Alejandro Castro says and watch what he does. This is admittedly onerous, as he’s a humorless Marxist ideologue who would apply a dialectical analysis to a doughnut.

But if you’re interested in what’s ahead for Cuba, there is, alas, no alternative.

“Cuba will never return to capitalism,” the reclusive Alejandro, officially an army colonel and the head of military intelligence, told Peruvian-Greek journalist Lasonas Pipinis Velasco in a sweeping 2015 interview.

In it, he applied “the logic of history” to everything from the serfs of the Middle Ages to John Locke, Bretton Woods and the distinction between “participative democracy” and “bourgeois representative democracy.”

(He says Cuba practices the former because it constantly holds “popular consultations.”)

A bit earlier, it was Alejandro, not Diaz-Canal, who conducted the secret negotiations on the opening with Obama’s outmatched deputy Ben Rhodes in 2014. It was also Alejandro who received the Cuban spies charged with the murder of Americans whom Obama obligingly sent to Havana in 2015.

More recently, it was Alejandro who sat next to Obama at the table when the 44th president visited Havana. And it was also him who accompanied Raul for the 2015 meeting with Pope Francis.

And again just recently, it was Alejandro again who popped up in Moscow negotiating, of all things, an agreement on cybersecurity cooperation with the head of the Russian Security Council, Nicolai Patrushev.

Known in hushed tones in Havana as “One Eye” (El Tuerto) after losing most of his sight in one eye in Angola, Alejandro has also left his feelings for the United States known in the book he wrote about America’s rise, “The Empire of Terror.”

According to The New York Times, the Trump administration is reportedly considering measures proposed by Florida Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart that would block deals between American companies and the Cuban military—measures that would hit the Castro family where it hurts.

Let’s hope it’s true. (For more from the author of “Trump Will Reverse the Damage Done by Obama’s Cuba Policy” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.