What The Hell is 'Havana Syndrome'? | Ash Sarkar Meets Nicky Woolf | Downstream
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- Опубликовано: 11 фев 2023
- From covering mass shootings as US Correspondent for The Guardian to investigating QAnon for a year for the podcast 'Finding Q' - Nicky Woolf has been plumbing the grimmer depths of the American psyche for a long time.
He joins Ash to discuss the mysterious ‘Havana Syndrome’, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Making Nazis Afraid Again.
You can listen to his new podcast 'The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome' everywhere you get podcasts.
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Ash is always a delight to listen to .Great interviewer , great commentator .
I prefer Aaron tbh, aah gets a bit screechy lol
@@harrylong2796 cheeky bit of sexism
@@thomasmarsh6834 nope, I know plenty of women who aren't screechy it is ash in particular
2008, "early days of internet"? I was using it in '93!
Absolutely. I think they meant "when it got mass" i.e., when all the normies showed up, but even then that was Eternal September in the late 1990s when AOL got real cheap.
I love Ash. I always enjoy her political and social observations/commentary on Novara Media and this interview is also excellent. More interviews from Ash please
A missed opportunity: you got a former Guardian (the house magazine for British Intelligence) journalist and you didn't ask him about that newspaper selling out Assange, you didn't ask why they voluntarily destroyed their hard drives for the security service, you just gave him a platform to push a strong Russia-phobic line, largely unchallenged.
How can this man say that the mid 2000s was the early days of the Internet? It was being widely used at least ten years earlier. The subjects he references: 4chan, gamergate, cat/bin lady, hardly date back to the early years of the Internet.
It's like talking about the origins of popular music and thinking it started with the Beatles.
Finding Q is the most gripping investigative journalism podcast since Serial Series 1. You gotta give it a listen!
I love how "degrees of ketamine intoxication" is a language that british millennials can communicate in
Love these long form interviews... Nice1
It's important to have an open mind about conspiracies but not such an open mind your brain falls out. Which seems to happen to many people.
Many conspiracy people do it like this: be critical of mainstream sources, be uncritical of whatever alternative sources you consume.
That's when it goes very wrong.
It's generally a good idea to know how to fact check.
@@bumblebeeatbreadloaf1286 And how do you define a 'conspiracy person'?
@@Fredmayve His definition comes straight after "Many conspiracy people do it like this:..."
There's no such thing as a conspiracy theory. Life is ordinary and dull. When a government wants to do something terrible quietly, they do it in the open using innocuous language! Not conspiracy, stripping your rights quietly in the open! The term conspiracy theory is simply a distraction from the actual truth! An example of this is America letting people believe alien aircraft is in the sky when in actuality it's testing of secret aircraft. Dull!
The addiction to social media is real easy to get over. 2 christmas' ago I looked and discovered I'd spent 5.5 hrs on Facebook ( probably another hour or two on Twitter ) and realised that beyond arguing with strangers I had no idea what I'd been looking at or reading. I deleted all social media within a month and haven't felt any loss and apart from the odd comment here I've no interest in social media at all. You miss nothing.
You still comment on RUclips! LOL LOL
@@bertnijhof5413 see above for response.
@@bertnijhof5413 “… apart from the odd comment here”. You need a break from social media.
@@yttommy76 Oh yes, apologies owed, completely misread the handle there, my bad.
Considering the state of the internet, i wonder how many theories spread cause people have difficulties identifying or expressing sarcasm in writing.
Yeah right, that’s a likely explanation
Bring back the rolley eye emoji
Y'know the question "who would you like at your dinner-party?" I've never thought of anyone really. Think I've found my first guest. I know the name but never really heard him speak to any great length. Very easy to listen to and I have a shit-ton more questions for him; discussion points to sound out. Podcasts here I come.
Went to the local library to get a book on conspiracies but they didn’t have one.
Coincidence 🤷🏻♂️
About ten to fifteen years ago many libraries and indeed bookstores began not to stock alternative or conspiracy literature.
I really enjoyed this apart from the bits I just didn't understand. You young people these days .... Thank you.
Really interesting, thanks!
As always great show Ash, you say it in a way that I understand 👍
"... cars, burgers, medical bills." - Chef's kiss! Ash flexing in her alternative career as a comedy writer on 'Would I Lie to You?'
It is those who believe nothing but benevolence emanates from the intersections of power, law and wealth, - you may call them coincidence theorists - who keep me awake at night.
Thanks
After I watched Tales of the American Empire, I realized many conspiracy theories are real.
This is such an important topic to be covering right now; shame to see this video isn't performing as well in the algorithm as Downstream usually does
The rib rumour was about Prince in the mid 90s. Hadn't realised it had been passed onto Marilyn Manson.
Marjorie Taylor Greene? Umm ... "makes Nadine Dorries look competent and sensible", will that do?
Only a minute in & I'm dying (in KY/USA) 😂
*Help? lol This is my official SOS*
For me, the Havana Syndrome narrative espoused by the guest doesn't really add up. Seems to me the US would have known what was going on pretty much straight away if it was being caused by a technology they possessed themselves.
Paranoia is having the perfect sense of perception.
LMAO he just doubles down on "Russia ate my hamster".
Well done Ash. You're now my favourite political commentator
Prior to the late 90s access to conspiratorial literature, alternative history etc was quite limited, there were a number of periodicals and monthly subscriptions, you had to physically order books etc or go to the library, you may have also been able to buy VHS and dvd presentations etc. By the mid 2000s the internet was awash with alternative history/conspiracy sites, by the 2010s " patriot" and " freedom " radio had established itself - many alternative thinkers and researchers found themselves invited onto these stations and having had then a huge interest in these topics I'd tune in, I'd be listening to something about some conspiracy like the "face on mars" and then it would cut to an ad break, these stations were all right wing so the ads were all right wing, some aggressively so.
Rather quickly I began to notice that a lot of the researcher's then began to discuss politics which they had never done before. They were of course getting paid and also attracting an increased audience to the stations, a new and already paranoid audience, it was a you scratch my back I'll scratch yours kinda deal with only one side ( in most cases ) actually knowing what was really happening.
The extreme right wing appropriated language used by the alternative research community and particularly in America began to set " the leftists " against whatever conspiracy was useful to them in attracting numbers to their stations.
Lots of these patriot and freedom radio stations today are full blown trumpists and all pushed Qanon to crazy levels.
Qanon didn't come out of anything like larping, the foundations for Qanon were laid 20 years ago when nobody was paying attention.
I realise that last line is pure " rabbit hole " but I'm a recovering conspiracy theorist and this shit gets in deep.......just like the deep state ......help 😂
Great post! ❤
I used to buy some of those monthly magazines in the late 80s through to the late 90s, less because I believed the obvious conspiracy concepts, but because I would use it to counter the misinformation in social falsehood, but now Ash has broken my heart, not because she refuses to save me from myself but because she told me Avril Lavigneis a body double 😭 and there I was hoping that to get beyond my disability and become her Skater Boi 🥰
Also how come that nobody is mentioning anything about Mandleson being a regular visitor to Epstein's private Island for Epstein's birthday party and whoever knows what?
@@dambrooks7578 No no no, I'm not getting dragged in again, fuck all that what about the Annunaki ?They are still here sure 😂
You lost me when you blamed Russia for microwave attacks.
what are the devices called the causes havana sundrome? Is it called radionics, psychotronic generator or weather radar system?
He gives himself away at 1:00:39-1:00:48
Larping, you mean like the current government larping as effective cabinet administrators.
That being said, Larp is the best sport for nerds.
i had that book given by an aunty for xmas very good though i got one on serial killers also not so good
Really like Ash’s insight on Novara but this interview was like listening to a foreign language as there were so many references that I knew nothing about.
There are real conspiracies but pseudo-conspiracies are more popular. There are reasons for this.
Many references to what sounds like “Fortran”, which I suspect is not the programming language, so what is it?
4chan
Seriously, can not these microwaves be detected, an alarm set off, direction and range logged, cctv cameras activated, culprits caught, etc. Or is it just a load of prop for news stories, or even weapons tests on friendlies?
Or is the USA actually a (very expensive) tin pot state?
Wonder what the guest makes of today's headline in the Washington Post: 'Havana syndrome' not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds
Did they add a cricket noise?
Who? The microwave deathray bods? It would make for good camouflage if they did wouldn't it?
That what it was but the spooks won't admit it.
What’s the difference between a theory and a fact ,? 6 months!
This guy has a serious hangover
I only found out a few years ago that the fat girl from the Mammas and the Pappas didn't die choking on a sandwich. Just an urban myth.
Talking of how Urban Legends spread before the internet reminded me of being at school in the late 80's of the legend of a certain pop star who supposedly had to have 2 pints of semen pumped from his stomach, in later life I've met countless people from around the country who remember hearing it!
Don't what you mean. That Tainted Love stomach pump rumour never happened 😜
Just a slight correction to verify I remember that one too...the rumour had reached playgrounds around the country by the end of '81. The same year as their first hit single.
🤣
Yes, I remember that one. It gave a whole other meaning to "almond milk".
@@ftumschk 🤣🤣🤣 Didn't want to name name the star.......but, yep!😂
Interesting discussion and I agree about Sandy Hook. That was beyond the pale in every respect.
Did Novara cut out what Nicky Woolf said about Elon Musk?
In the nineties i fead that women at greenham common were attacked by a similar mysterious weapon and t had caused miscarriage.?
17:20 ‘it’s too good to check’. Good point. But what makes it worse is that even if it’s checked and found to be false, people can still fold it into the narrative. If a tweet like the aretha Franklin ‘natural woman’ thing is found to be a parody, people can just say ‘well that’s the kind of thing these people WOULD say‘, ignoring the fact that it’s very likely all the other CRAZY tweets they’ve seen in the past have been parodies/fake account too.
Interestingly enough...1983/84..."Woodpecker Syndrome" was beginning to be noticed, and it was discussed (later) as being used as a Soviet weapon via PSYCHOR (Department of Psycho-Corrections), including in Cuba thanks to the numerous radio arrays, culminating in the 1990's.
As far as could be figured out, the Soviets were using (Cuba, etc.) ELF in a dual mode from their arrays for submarine over-the-horizon transmissions, and it was found to correlate to human psychological & physiological long-term damage depending on frequency used. Secondarily, it was found that thanks to somewhat focused high power ELF transmissions, some electric grid substations would pick up the signals and re-propagate them 10 fold in the surrounding area of the sub-stations. Thirdly...directed microwaves can propagate in a field to overload already strained transformers exhibiting physical acoustic degradation (propagate harmonic resonance failure).
Theoretically...that is what the HAARP installation in Alaska was designed to stop in 1992/93 as cancelling radio emitters and submarine transmission/capture.
“As far as it has become possible to probe and correct psychic contents of human beings despite their will and consciousness by instrumental means…
results having been achieved can get out of [our] control and be used with inhumane purposes of manipulating psyche...”
KGB-General George Kotov,
PSYCHOR Center,
Department of Psycho-Correction,
Moscow, Russia, January 1993.
50:42 LMAO, of course he blames russia. Even though the US is literally right there and he had just stated that the US had been developing sonic weapons.
Jericho
British should understand that a majority of Americans are not rabidly pro-gun. This mania stems from a minority with outsized power.
You shouldn't regress to "romance" when it comes to the American gun problem. What it boils down to is resistance to the monopoly on violence (see Max Weber's sociology) as cornerstone of a modern state. There's nothing cute about it.
Ray gams ray gams
14:08
🤔
pretty sure i first came across that marilyn manson rumour in the late 90s, from friends who read it online.
i did hear the same thing about prince several years earlier though...very odd.
The "Havana Syndrome" thing sounds well Lovcraftian. The Mi-Go or The Colour Out Of Space is starting their assault...Ok, maybe it's the Russians or CIA are messing about with some sort of weapons. Freaky, though! Cool interview. I'm weirdly obsessed with debunking/deconstructing conspiracy theories, so this was grist to the mill for me. Good stuff.
There is a god.
"Russia Ate My Hamster"
Anon where not the first Hacktivist group. Cult of the Dead Cow / Hacktivismo was the first to create a recognizable movement. Ironic he then talks about poorly fact-checked journalism when he does not and has not researched the history of activist hackers.😂
Being anti- abortion is far right?
😁🤔💀☠🤡🤡 The uk England now has become almost like has become almost like the major film The Hunger Games We're the rich and a powerful dominated what you could eat when I did what you could use what you could drink And every so often a sacrifice was made for Justice in life where someone would fight for their lives in a game For entertainments of the rich and the famous Also other films have been made like the running man where when you get to 30 you are expected to be put down In a science fiction game as you have outlived your point There are lots of great films out there but now it's becoming realistic I am not a number I am a person and I am a human being
The printing press didn't have the same effect, it was expensive and few people could read, it was for the elite. It rook about 170 years for cheap printing to emerge and, more importantly, cheap (but very rough) paper. By that time male literacy was up around 65% (historians dispute the female level, which was lower, though higher than it had ever been before).
The literacy explosion was mostly down to Puritanism and the Bible, of course, but when that met cheap printing, so that almost anyone could put out a pamphlet, that was the internet of the 17th century with knobs on! It could be said that "Charles, the man of bloud" got his head chopped off as much by cheap printing as the executioner's axe. It led to us being able to still read Winstanley for insight into our struggles now and direct action, to Lilburne who did good stuff but was a lousy writer, to the polished prose but political compromise of Walwyn. But ... but ... there were also the nutters and conspiracy theorists. Some of them, like Abiezer Coppe were coming from the right place, but a bit mad in their "visions", while others, like Tany, were completely CLANG! HONK! TWEET! round the bend.
Will Alex Jones be as much fun - but completely irrelevant to anything - in 370 years as Tany is now? I doubt it.
It'd didn't work exactly like that. There were professional readers operating every Sunday. Also much more actual community & communication. People might not have read, but they'd still want the same consumption of information. Just as radio & TV replaced an amount of the reading done.
@@ethelmini The "professional readers" you refer to existed from only around a century before the period I referred to. Before that, the only "professional readers" were the clergy and not even all of them could read.
The people I think you're referring to were those who read the so-called "newsbooks" aloud in ale houses etc. But the "news" contained within their wooden board covers made such contemporary publications as the 'Daily Star' look like responsible journalism and QAnon a reliable source of information. "A woman in X" (adjust place according to local prejudice) "gave birth to a cow" -that sort of thing..
Actual news was, as you say, passed from person to person orally, of course. Much the same evaluation was applied by people informally as Islam formalised in the isnads - the chains of narration - to the hadiths. If a sensible and reliable person told you something they would likely also mention their source. Either you knew that source to be equally reliable or you trusted your informant that they would not be relaying the information unless they were confident in their source. Tales relayed by known gossips and scandal-mongers would be believed only by other such people, though they are always numerous.
If you're doing a prog about conspiracy theories, why not start your own ...
The Russians would lose strategic influence if US-Cuba relations improved. Donald Trump could lose revenue from his Florida leisure business interests too. Just sayin' 😉
All went well until....he goes in for blaming Russia. That's where he becomes his subject.
Well, he is from the guardian, probably thinks Mr. Assange did it. After all, us. foreign policy good, russian foreign policy bad.
Trouble is, some of them are undoubtedly true, or are you claiming that the 9/11 official story is true? (to give the most glaring example.)
There’s elements of truth that then have nonsense wrapped around it. These days, usually for political purposes.
maube, but some things, (like 9/11 and the moon landings) are just great big lies.
In what world was the bombing of Dresden too far?
E. Belfort Bax 'Pagan Socialist' 4 May 1912CE/11912HE
It is not an uncommon thing to hear on the part of persons who consider themselves Socialists, and hence ought to know better, deprecatory references to something or other as “pagan.” Not merely with those who call themselves Christian Socialists, but with many who repudiate this designation, there often seems to linger a feeling as though Socialist and even general humanitarian sentiment were something specially alien to Paganism. Why this is so it would be difficult to say. In a sense, of course, the modern spirit of which Socialism is the logical outcome stands apart from the world-outlook of older creeds outworn, as it does from the world-outlook of the traditional Christian theology. But there is, I contend, no reason to regard it as in any special manner opposed to the outlook of Paganism more than to that of Christianism. On the contrary, there is a sense, I maintain, in which the spirit animating modern Socialism represents a return, with a difference of course, but still a return, to the pagan view of the world and of life.
Let us analyse for a moment what the mental attitude of Paganism - of the ancient heathen world - connoted. Before everything else it supposed a corporate life, In Paganism the end of the individual life was always the family, the clan, the tribe, or the city. The sentiment and rites constituting the Pagan’s religion, which did not involve, be it remembered, any system of dogma, or theological tenets, maybe summed up in one word - absorption in, and devotion to, the life of the community in one or other of its forms. This, in contradistinction to the Christian idea, according to which the corporate life of man here below is a matter of small concern compared with the future life of the individual soul up above. What the Pagan, as such, cared for, was not so much the fate of the individual soul after death as the continuity and prosperity of the society to which he belonged on this earth. Of course, in the later ages of Paganism its whole vision became dimmed, and the potter with which for ages it had moulded the minds of men weakened. The new spirit, on the soil of which Christianity took root and grew up, asserted itself at the expense of the Pagan spirit. But the Pagan spirit finally disappeared only with the extinction of the life of the ancient world itself. Indeed, in the true sense of the word, it did not even then finally disappear, continuing as one of the deeper under-currents of life throughout the Middle Ages. Now, surely this Pagan outlook upon life is more akin to that of modern Social-Democracy than is Christianity with its spiritual-individualistic point of view.
Another aspect of Paganism in which it should have an affinity with the healthy spirit of modern Socialism is that of the “joie de vivre.” The increasing tendency of the modern man, atendency in which the great bulk of Socialists share, is towards what is sometimes called “the rehabilitation of the flesh” - that is, towards an antagonism to the sordidly ascetic outlook of the industrial and middle classes, especially the small middle class, to which the name of Puritanism is commonly given. The attitude of mind embodying the latter tendency has always been conspicuously that of the classes named. But the working classes, in their earlier stage of development, as an off-shoot it the small middle class, naturally shared its intellectual and moral outlook to a great extent. With the workmen of the modern great industry, from whom the main body of the modern Socialist Party is drawn, the hold upon them of middle-class ideals of life has progressively weakened, as a separate class-consciousness has sprung into life. It is the task of the Socialist thinker to press home the truth not only that Socialism has no part or lot with Puritanism, but that the latter is the enemy of rational living and personal liberty. One of the tasks of that spirit which finals its ultimate expression in the Socialistic view of life in the rehabilitation to a modern form of the joyous, nay, if you will, sensuous, ideal of the ancient world, which was but the reflection of its corporate life, before the individualistic spirit of self-introspection, of self-brooding, cast its baneful and morbid shadow over human society.
An economically free community cannot fail to be the foundation of a free social life, a life free from the shackles which Christian theology, in conjunction with the sordid struggle for gain; or for the bare means of subsistence, have between them contrived to impose on mankind. The Socialist who looks beyond the immediate present should lose no opportunity of combatting an ideal of life proper to a section of the exploiters of the modern proletariat and expressed in the word Puritanism. The Puritan, with his arrogant self-assertion, his tyrannical attempt to impose his theory of conduct upon the world at large. His sordid hypocrisy, must be hit as soon he appears upon the scene, He can never be sufficiently exposed. Where he is possessed of no strong influence, he may be safely left to be suppressed by the weapon of ridicule. If he becomes dangerous, where he imposes, as he sometimes does, on the very elect, he must be encountered with sterner argument if need be. Every new movement aiming at serious new changes in social life has to run the gauntlet of the Puritanical pest. The old Adam of asceticism in man is always there latent if not active. It is altogether a mistake to suppose that the tendency of human nature is exclusively towards self-indulgence, as is often assumed. The strain of asceticism, of useless self-mortification, which feeds on human vanity, love of domination, any stray particles of cruelty present in character, is also as constant, if somewhat less frequent, an ethical phenomenon than the self-indulgence we hear so much about
This strain of asceticism, this old Adam of Puritanism, is one of the enemies we have to combat. In the past men have spent quite enough of their best energies in attempts at repressing their nature, in striving to attain the false ideal of self-mortification. Upon this false ideal the man of the future will have to turn his back definitively if humanity is to be saved from being swamped once again in the back-wash of reaction - the more treacherous, since it occupies the ground of conscience, duty and noble endeavour. Puritanism is the cuckoo of ethics. It seeks to lay its eggs in every new movement. Let us, before all things, keep our ideal of social service based on economic reconstruction free from any admixture with the old individualist ideal of mere personal self-immolation. The man who is best fitted for social service will be assuredly he who has not wasted his energies on useless repression, but who fully recognises the reasonable right of the “appetites,” even the purely animal appetites. An open and frank recognition of this truth which, as above said, has sometimes been termed the “rehabilitation of the flesh.” is the central point in the new Paganism. The ancient world, before its decadence, recognised openly and without reserve the rights of man’s animal nature.
This healthy Pagan view of life became gradually superseded by the ascetic ideal of the early centuries of the Christian era. The new morality, if it is to correspond to the needs of modern man, must be, before all things, sympathetic, sympathetic towards all sides of human nature, certainly not excepting those sides whose claims have been unduly repressed, and which have hence had to seek their own satisfaction furtively as a thing forbidden. The new order, we would fain hope, will recognise in theory, no less than in practice, the full claims of human nature once for all, branding with its disapproval all attempts to crush man into Spanish boots. Socialism means the proclamation of the “joy of life” as the right of all. The sourness, the crabbedness, the hardness of the Puritanic spirit is the enemy for the annihilation of which the Pagan should hold all means justifiable.
--- Just þought alot of ðis was applicable, even now in 2023/12023
--- For ðose who are more familiar wið Bax; NO, I do NOT agree wið his antifeminist pieces, so don´t even start.
Musk has done more to tackle divisions and extremism than this nobody ever has. Calling Musk a c*** shows this guy’s character.
The thing about GamerGate is that isn’t wasn’t just young dudes, it was fully grown weirdos like Sagan of Akkad