[News] Havana Syndrome, the US’s Monumental Hoax

[Anti-Imperialist News]

resumen-english.org
<https://www.resumen-english.org/2022/01/havana-syndrome-the-uss-monumental-hoax/>
Havana
Syndrome, the US’s Monumental HoaxBy Alejandra Garcia on January 23, 2022
from Havana

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US Embassy in Havana, photo: Bill Hackwell

Last week, the United States decided to recognize for the first time in
five years that the phenomenon baptized as “Havana Syndrome” is nothing
more than a big farce. On Thursday, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) admitted that its allegations against Cuba for the so-called “health
incidents” against its diplomats in Havana back in 2016 were not caused by
“a deliberate attack.”

A report released by the CIA on the events confirms what the scientific
community in Cuba and the rest of the world has said to exhaustion, “There
is no evidence that an attack of such magnitude was planned by a
government.”

“The new study confirms Cuba’s position, strongly held since the first
alleged cases came to light,” Johana Tablada, deputy director-general for
the United States at the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry, told local
journalists.

According to the CIA security report, the symptoms – nausea, drowsiness,
fatigue, headaches, and hearing and vision problems – cannot be attributed
to a common cause and even less to such a far-fetched hypothesis as a
“sonic attack.”

That hypothesis has been advocated by the Donald Trump administration and
his successor, the current president, Joe Biden and has been used as the
primary justification for keeping Cuba on their list of countries
supporting terrorism, slapping on over 240 sanctions, cutting the staffs of
the embassies to skeleton crews while maintaining in full force the over 60
year blockade on the island nation.

Experts overwhelmingly agree that for an ultrasound to be capable of
destroying molecular tissue, it would need to involve huge weapons. They
explained that such devices would have to be placed close enough to the
target to avoid being blocked by walls but hidden as much as possible to
cause such damage invisibly.

In January 2019, biologists with expertise in tropical insects suggested
that the most plausible explanation would be that the noise perceived by
the diplomats was the mating song of one particularly noisy species, the
short-legged guinea fowl crickets.

Now, the U.S. intelligence agency acknowledged that most cases could be
categorized as “environmental causes, undiagnosed medical conditions, or
stress.” The information dismisses the “attacks” being perpetrated by
Russia or other enemy foreign powers, as U.S. politicians have tried to
make them seem during the last five years.

Consequences of such lies

Cuba denounced to exhaustion the political manipulation behind this scandal
due to the lack of scientific foundations and the proliferation of
increasingly less credible excuses, such as the use of microwaves and
supersonic weapons, as if we were dealing with a James Bond movie.

The United States relied on the disease to apply a battalion of sanctions
against Cuba that are still in force today. The “syndrome,” which seems
more a phenomenon of collective hysteria than a disease per se, complicated
the process of visa applications by Cubans wishing to travel to the country.

Washington decided to transfer those procedures to embassies in other
nations, a situation that is still maintained along with other measures
that were born to “weaken relations between the two countries,” Johana
Tablada explained.

“Although incidents have been reported in several countries, the United
States has only taken Draconian measures against Cuba, which has had a
negative impact on the Cuban family,” she complained.

Why is the U.S. discourse changing now?

There was never a scientific consensus on the issue. The United States was
never able to prove that this symptom exists but that didn’t stop them from
punishing Cuba on a failed assumption. Today, five years later, the great
farce has become untenable.

The new report does not mean that the neighboring country will cease its
hostilities against the island, nor that they will stop investigating the
alleged events recorded in their diplomatic community.

In fact, the CIA assured that, although it is not a “deliberate event,”
they will continue to analyze specific cases. They maintain the rhetorical
hook to continue encouraging the anti-Cuban far-right in Florida, key
voters for the new administration.

Just last week, US Foreign Affairs Minister Antony Blinken assured that the
US was continuing to “get to the bottom” of the issue to find out who was
behind the attacks. He said so after the country documented new cases in
Geneva Switzerland, and Paris France.

But this sudden decision to acknowledge that Cuba, Russia, and other
“enemies” are not behind the events is the first stone they lift in the
Hollywood movie story they no longer have a way to sustain.

The report is also an effort to contain the cascade of denunciations and
new cases that have proliferated in various parts of the world since the US
Congress approved in September 2021 a resolution to grant economic aid to
diplomatic officials afflicted by the alleged syndrome.

Why hasn’t the White House dismissed this fantasy altogether? Because they
do not want to admit that the “phenomenon” has become a boomerang for them,
bringing them more losses than gains. They want to make the whole story go
away in a fade, without recognizing the great ridicule.

They neither want to admit that it has been a farce, because they know
that, historically, whatever story they make up against Cuba, the world
will believe it without asking questions, even if it includes supersonic
weapons, murderous microwaves, deafening sounds in the middle of the night,
or malicious short-legged crickets.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English
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