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Results: The clinical presentation, cognitive impairment in the spatial memory domain, positive auditory-vestibular results, degradation of fiber tracts in the fornix on DTI, leaky brain vesselson DCE-MRI and abnormal brain slowing on MEG all support the diagnosis of acquired brain injury in the Canadian diplomats and their families posted in Cuba.

The clinical course, pattern of injury, brain regions involved, cortical and sub-cortical dysfunction, together with a history of common exposure, all raise the hypothesis of recurrent, low-dose exposure to neurotoxins. Notably, lesions evident in networks involving the brain stem, basal forebrain and fornix were highly suggestive of cholinesterase inhibitor intoxication, as the cause of brain injury in our cohort of Canadian diplomats and families. Biochemical analysis of plasma acetyl- and butyryl-cholinesterase activity confirmed lower activity in recently-exposed individuals, further supporting this hypothesis. Toxicological analysis of serum samples using the high-resolution accurate Orbitrap mass spectrometry confirmed the presence of pyrethroid and organophosphate, and their metabolites in exposed individuals.

While proving the source of exposure and cause of injury is difficult, if not impossible at this time point, embassy records show a significant increase in fumigation in recent years with weekly exposure to high dose pesticides in and around many diplomats’ residences. Our results provide a plausible explanation for acquired brain injury secondary to neurotoxin exposure. A multidisciplinary approach may offer new mitigation strategies for rapid diagnosis, reduction of exposure, and potential prevention of future injury.

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The Ecstatic said:
It doesn’t literally have to be a CIA plot, could just be hungover state dept folks with excuses that snowballed into a tool for the war machine

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The Ecstatic said:
A pesticide that’s affected only a few hundred western diplomats across 4 continents? Ehhhh

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Are you upset that state dept employees might be getting away with hangovers, or are you upset that the US government is using claims of an experimental sonic weapon to keep the war machine greased?

If it's the latter, then attacking the claim by calling the injuries made-up is throwing people that may have legitimately suffered illness or injury under the bus. It's really easy to say 'the sonic weapon story is made up' rather than 'the injuries are made up'.

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shivas.wisdom said:
I've seen nothing to support the idea of a secret energy weapon [...] Hammer home the point that nothing concrete exists in support of the energy weapon claim, instead of trying to argue that the reports of injury are made-up or exaggerated.

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The Ecstatic said:
The thing that the CIA made up.

[...]

It doesn’t literally have to be a CIA plot, could just be hungover state dept folks with excuses that snowballed.

[...]

I obviously don’t think it literally boils down to some exaggerated hangovers.

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christopera said:
As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We've not seen the proof yet.

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"This does not undermine the fact that several people felt unwell," Della Sala explained. "However, before postulating questionable new syndromes, it may prove fruitful to analyze the data for what they tell us, exempt from political prejudices and pressure."

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The Ecstatic said:
We don’t know whether these “attacks” are actually happening. That’s step one.

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The Ecstatic said:
Treat this story as you would any other report of some person or persons getting head injuries. “Oh I feel bad for them, hope they recover.” But you can’t just discard the ton of baggage that’s become inseparable from this story. That’s my point.

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The Ecstatic said:
To the extent that injuries are happening, those people are receiving medical care. Yet there’s clearly a sinister effort to push this story into the public consciousness, so yeah if it walks like a duck..

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Cuba: The end of the social enchantment of the “Revolution”

The repressive social enchantment that kept a great part of the international left pacified has melted away. Under the “Cuban Revolution,” and contrary to its benign image, it has publicly exposed, in all its crudeness and repressive grandeur, the nature of the “Cuban State.” The same Cuban State that created—to face Yankee imperialism—an omnipresent political police that fights the same society it controls. The same Cuban State that destroyed—in the name of socialism—all the peoples’ and workers’ organizations that, with their history of struggle, made a daily reality the socialist triumphs the State claims as its own. That same Cuban State that has made “solidarity” into a brand of international identity, all the while it keeps us drowning in the distrust and fear among neighbors. The same Cuban State that—under the worsening Yankee blockade—builds more hotels for foreign tourists than the infrastructure needed to produce food, fruit, and milk. The same Cuban State that has produced the only vaccines in Latin America against COVID-19 yet keeps its healthcare personnel in a condition of employees of the political police.

This Cuban State in these days of July 2021 has shown us what it is: a typical oligarchy, interested only in maintaining its absolute power at all costs; a vulgar kleptocracy with humanist and enlightened pretentions; a pyramid of power as solid and unequal as the pyramids of the Egyptian theocracies, but surrounded by the sands of paradisical beaches.

Right now, to have geopolitical arguments about the place of Cuba in the global imperialist plan, to argue that the antigovernment protests in Cuba are inevitably paid by the Cuban right in Miami, to yell that the protesters are just delinquents looking to loot, that the real popular revolutionaries are with their government—all of these are arguments that describe a great deal of the reality, but they don’t express everything with just one angle. The Cuban people has as much right and as much need to protest as those of Colombia and Chile. What’s the difference: that they’re oligarchies with different origins? With practices that are more or less brutal? With ideological shades more or less distinguishable? With postures that are more or less servile to the United States? With ideals more or less sublime to justify their privileges? All these huge differences between the Colombian, Chilean, and Cuban oligarchies are reduced to zero when, on a beautiful Sunday morning, you discover that, besides the gangster oligarchies in Colombia and Chile, the Cuban oligarchy—faced with an unarmed populace—is armed to the teeth, a little more or a little less, to crush you and your siblings, your body and your mind, if it even crosses your mind to question a word of the normalcy they’ve built.

Everything that the Cuban State has done to produce the national vaccines against COVID-19, all the labor funding, all the salary increases that it offered to many sectors in the middle of the pandemic, it all has at once evaporated. This is not only because of the death spiral of inflation and the endemic food scarcity in Cuba, but also because it has made visible that all of it was part of the grisly structure of “repressive tolerance,” something that any decent person in Cuba could describe, without having to read any brilliant book on counterculture. To those who come to sugarcoat that repressive tolerance in this country and hold up the illusion of militarized harmony, we can calmly define them as the new face of what shouldn’t have a place in our future. Those who, in the name of a future democracy or the well-functioning of the economy, come to discredit the affinities and fellowship and energies that have emerged in the protests, or would belittle what happened these last days as “simple vandalism by the dregs of society,” speak in the name and with the language of the decrepit oligarchies that once again shamelessly dare to speak in our country.

The “masses” have again become the “People,” with all their light and shadow, to stop obeying the heavy chains of authority, and have again begun to trust their emotions, affinities, and the basic ability to think together, who have made a comeback in disobedience and solidarity among equals, in the middle of the spiral of violence, the pandemic, and scarcity. This is the new reality that has been born in Cuba these days of July 2021, and in that new reality, as anarchists in Cuba, we'd like to consider ourselves part of it.

—Taller Libertario Alfredo López

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10. Neuropathological findings in an exposed dog:

An exposed dog belonging to one of the diplomatic families developed changes in behavior during their time in Havana, specifically aggression and epileptic seizures. Consequently, he was euthanized in Ottawa on September 2018. Sections from his brain were processed and analyzed by independent experts in the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine and Weitzman Institute for Science (Rehovot, Israel).

[Medical mumbo jumbo follows...]

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shivas.wisdom said:
Do you think only one Canadian reported injury? The study I referenced examined 11 “recently exposed” - tested within one month of returning from Havana - and 14 “remotely exposed” - tested 1-19 months after returning from Havana. So what's the sweet spot between 25 and 48 where it suddenly becomes real for you?

Also, no comment on being wrong about non-political Canadian brain injuries being global headlines? Just going to keep throwing shit at the wall by being wrong about 48>1 too?

I'll ask again: what would you consider evidence that embassy workers in Havana were injured, without an immediately apparent cause?

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I’d never seen any news programs discussing those Canadian brain injuries, nor seen US Congress pass unanimous bills appropriating funds for victims, nor had military spokespeople condemning these injuries with thinly veiled accusations of state sponsored terrorism.

It doesn’t matter what id consider evidence, I’m not deciding which medical stories merit airtime, or the legislative authority of US Congress, and the latter is not deciding legislation based on medical necessity, clearly.

It boils down to this: the evidence is scant, and I have no reason to take the US government or their media lackeys word on it when it’s clear they’d present incriminating evidence on those parties if they had any, which prompted the Senator’s frustration that I linked pages ago. You wanna be mad because I’m not paying enough respect to the 1%ers who may or may not have gotten brain damage before, during, or after visiting Cuba, okay. Has anyone even died lol? There is zero proportionality to this story and that alone should be raising alarms. If it’ll make you feel better, just know that my heart goes out to all people everywhere who are injured unjustly, either physically or mentally. There, now we can stop pretending I’m some cold hearted sociopath who wants Cuba to torture people without recourse because it allows me to take a rhetorical position opposed to the United States’.  I feel like this is the argument racists make when I tell them to stfu about FBI crime statistics. “Oh you don’t care about the black people being shot, how terrible!” No I’m just aware of how certain stories are elevated to pursue certain agendas, like the local news ignoring widespread death at the hands of corporations to instead spotlight black on black violence to subconsciously convince the general public that their main concern should be black people. I simply don’t see the point in entertaining this story at all because one, all the supposed victims come from a place of privilege, my dismissal isn’t harming them at all, and two, there’s a clear pattern of lies and bad science at play throughout the timeline of this story. I’ll do the same thing when I see that a politician’s house was vandalized by anarchists or a cop claims some black teenager was charging at him or the OAS declares election fraud when a leftist party wins an election. I’ll continue to make these assumptions because they’re safe assumptions, and because it serves no purpose to take these peoples’ word on it. There are exceptions, there are times where I’ll make these assumptions and they’ll be wrong, but this is the risk you take in a world where most of the media you consume is designed to bend your will towards a goal you’d not otherwise seek.  These parties don’t need my help manufacturing consent for their agenda and no matter how many different ways you try to frame it, your trying to find the needle of truth in this haystack only serves to validate that agenda. there is no point to me weeping for these injury victims, they’re gonna get all the help that is available on this planet to recover, they don’t need apostles for sympathy crusading through the Internet. They’ll be fine.