💭 The Gallas had little to contribute to the Semitized civilization of Ethiopia; they possessed no significant material or intellectual culture, and their social organization differed considerably from that of the population among whom they settled. They were not only the cause of the depressed state into which the country now sank, but they helped to prolong a situation fromwhich even a physically and spiritually exhausted Ethiopia might otherwise have been able to recover far more quickly
➡ Edward Ullendorff – “The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People.” Oxford University Press, 1960
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 6, 2021
For years, Facebook has been serving as one of the main platforms the fascist Oromo regime in Ethiopia & its followers used it incite hate and demonize Tigrayans, resulting in the ongoing 11-month-old #TigrayGenocide.
💭 “What we saw in Myanmar and are now seeing in Ethiopia are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the end of it” Frances Haugen ends her remarks with a warning that without further action, Facebook will only become more dangerous to the world.
Facebook ‘operates in shadows’ – and Instagram is worse than other social sites, whistleblower tells Congress
“Mark holds a very unique role in the tech industry in that he holds over 55% of all the voting shares for Facebook. There are no similarly powerful companies that are as unilaterally controlled,” said Ms Haugen.
Facebook’s products “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy”, a whistleblower has claimed.
Frances Haugen – who used to work as a product manager at the tech giant – has given damning evidence to US politicians in the Senate, days after leaking internal documents to the Wall Street Journal.
Her testimony also came after Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp suffered an unprecedented outage for almost six hours on Monday – leaving its 3.5 billion users struggling to access services.
Ms Haugen warned: “Left alone, Facebook will continue to make choices that go against the common good. Our common good.
“When we realised Big Tobacco was hiding the harms, that caused the government to take action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action.
“And when our government learned that opioids were taking lives, the government took action.”
Following the hearing Facebook said that Ms Haugen had worked with the company for less than two years and it didn’t “agree with her characterisation of the many issues she testified about”.
The whistleblower implored politicians in the hearing to take similar action against Facebook – and alleged that the company’s leadership knows how to make its platforms safer but won’t make the necessary changes “because they have put their astronomical profits before people”.
She later warned that there was nobody at the company who could hold Mark Zuckerberg accountable other than himself.
“Mark holds a very unique role in the tech industry in that he holds over 55% of all the voting shares for Facebook. There are no similarly powerful companies that are as unilaterally controlled,” she said.
And she added: “As long as Facebook is operating in the shadows, hiding its research from public scrutiny, it is unaccountable.”
Addressing Monday’s outage, Ms Haugen said: “For more than five hours, Facebook wasn’t used to deepen divides, destabilise democracies and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies.”
Explaining why she drew parallels between Facebook, Instagram and Big Tobacco, she said such platforms give young people “little dopamine hits” every time they receive a like – and many children fear being “ostracised” and disconnected from their peers if they stop using it.
Ms Haugen also said she believes Instagram is “worse” than other apps such as TikTok, Reddit and Snapchat because of how it is “about bodies and comparing lifestyles”.
Facebook has said “a number of inaccurate claims” were made during her testimony.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said Facebook knew that its products were addictive like cigarettes – adding: “Tech now faces that Big Tobacco jaw-dropping moment of truth.”
Criticising Zuckerberg, he added: “Our children are the ones who are victims. Teens today looking in the mirror feel doubt and insecurity. Mark Zuckerberg ought to be looking at himself in the mirror.”
He also assured Ms Haugen that politicians will do “anything and everything to protect and stop any retaliation against you, and any legal action that the company may bring to bear”.
And in a direct message to Zuckerberg, Senator Ed Markey said: “Your time of invading privacy, promoting toxic content and preying on children and teens is over.”
Vowing that Congress will take action against the company, he added: “You can work with us or not work with us.”
Some senators personally extended an invitation for Zuckerberg to testify in front of the committee and put forward Facebook’s side of the story, while others accused him of going sailing instead of facing his responsibilities.
“When we have done something we have never done before that is suddenly suppressing one of these receptors that are highly responsible for keeping cancers in check …”
He is basically saying that the jabs are suppressing that part of our immunity that keeps cancer in check.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 27, 2021
After October 1st, all countries will stop compulsory vaccination and will open the use of ivermectin, artemisinin, dexamethasone, and hydroxychloroquine.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 20, 2021
Who has stood trial, or will stand trial, for the appalling abuses committed against the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Yazidi in Iraq, or the people of Tigray in Ethiopia? How many mass murderers are walking free in Rwanda, or Syria?
As the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials approaches, Ilse Cohn’s grandson calls for international law to ensure those committing atrocities today face retribution.
The man who ordered the murder of my grandmother never stood trial for the crime. Nor did he stand trial for any of the other 137,000 murders he ordered during five short months in 1941.
I know who he was. His name was Karl Jäger, and he was the commander of a Nazi execution squad in Lithuania, where my 44-year-old grandmother had been deported from her home town in Germany. He is just one of several hundred thousand men and women who were never brought to justice for the part they played in the Nazi holocaust. It’s estimated that up to a million people were directly or indirectly involved in holocaust atrocities, yet only a tiny fraction – perhaps no more than 1% – were ever prosecuted.
Next month marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal at which 24 of the most senior Nazi leaders stood trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was the first such trial in history, described at the time as “a shining light for justice”.
A dozen other trials followed – of bankers, lawyers, doctors and others – but according to Mary Fulbrook, professor of German history at University College London, once the Nuremberg process was over, the West Germans prosecuted only 6,000 people for their part in Nazi crimes, of whom some 4,000 were convicted.
Most holocaust perpetrators, such as Jäger, a music-loving SS colonel who ordered the murder of my grandmother and so many others, simply melted back into their community. Jäger, for example, led a quiet, inconspicuous life as a farmer in the German town of Waldkirch, not far from the borders with France and Switzerland, until he was finally arrested in 1959. He hanged himself in his prison cell with a length of electric cable before he could be brought to trial.
So why was Nuremberg, and the handful of other war crimes trials that followed, the exception rather than the rule?
First, because by 1945, large parts of Germany were a smouldering ruin. Millions of people were homeless, so the emphasis was primarily on reconstruction. And who was available to take charge in the “new Germany” if not the very same officials (supposedly de-Nazified) who had served under the Nazis?
Second, because with the start of the cold war and fears of Soviet domination in Europe, both the US and Britain believed that confronting the Soviet threat was more important than hunting down thousands of Nazis. Justice would have to take a back seat.
None of which excuses why, even today, so few perpetrators of the most egregious crimes against humanity are pursued and convicted. It’s true that Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić are both serving long prison sentences for their role in the atrocities of the war in Bosnia. The former Liberian president Charles Taylor is incarcerated after being convicted of what the judge at his trial in The Hague called ‘some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded human history’, and the former president of Chad, Hissène Habré, died of Covid-19 last month while serving a life sentence for human rights abuses.
But, like Nuremberg, they are the exceptions. Who has stood trial, or will stand trial, for the appalling abuses committed against the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Yazidi in Iraq, or the people of Tigray in Ethiopia? How many mass murderers are walking free in Rwanda, or Syria?
The anniversary of the Nuremberg verdicts offers an opportunity to revisit the debate over war crimes prosecutions, both past and future. It also marks the October release of a major new documentary film called Getting Away With Murder(s) which shines a spotlight on some of the thousands of unpunished Nazi war criminals who escaped after 1945 and lived the rest of their lives undisturbed, some of them in Britain.
Full disclosure: after the film’s director, David Wilkinson, read an article I wrote in the Observer three years ago, he invited me to appear in the film, visiting the site of my grandmother’s death.)
Seventy-five years after Nuremberg, at a time when war crimes are still being committed with shameful alacrity, it is more important than ever to re-emphasise the need to collect evidence when such crimes are committed, and to reaffirm the principle that they should never go unpunished.
History matters. We can learn from past mistakes, which is why in Germany, under the doctrine of “universal jurisdiction”, a Syrian doctor is now on trial charged with crimes against humanity for torturing people in military hospitals. In the Netherlands, another Syrian was sentenced last July to 20 years in prison, accused of being a member of the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate. In Sweden, a former Iranian deputy public prosecutor is currently on trial over the mass execution and torture of prisoners in the 1980s.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 18, 2021
💭 The World Watches as Abiy Loses it — And Risks Losing Ethiopia, Too.
Today, President Biden announced an Executive Order that declared the war, humanitarian crisis and human rights crisis in Ethiopia “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and put in place mechanisms to impose sanctions on individuals and entities engaged in the war and abuses.
This comes not a moment too soon: out of the headlines, the civil war has been raging on. Thousands are dying in bloody battles between Tigrayan resistance fighters and the ill-trained recruits that the Ethiopian government is deploying to shore up its shattered army. More than 200 massacre sites have been documented in Tigray, and thousands of women were cruelly raped. There’s a man-made famine. Ethnic hatred whipped up by government propaganda threatens to dismember the country.
These brute facts are obscured by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s bizarre confidence that he is destined to re-create the mythic glory days of the Ethiopian empire and by his loyalists’ aggressive media campaigns. The United Nations and African Union have taken the path of least resistance, taking Ethiopia’s diplomatic blandishments at face value. The United States has called out Abiy on his deceptions and self-destruction. That’s the correct position, but no outside power can save a country whose leader is blithely leading it into disaster.
The war began on the night of November 3-4, 2020, when a political dispute between the Federal Government in Ethiopia, headed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the Regional National Government in Tigray, headed by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, turned violent.
The causes of the war are complex and controversial. The two sides quarreled over the rights of states within the federation: the Tigrayans had held an election against the federal government’s decision to postpone elections due to COVID, and each side denounced the other as illegitimate. The first shots were fired by the Tigrayans and within days, a well-prepared ground and air attack was launched by a combination of Ethiopian federal troops, militia from the next-door Amhara region, and Eritrean troops to the north. Before the month was out, this coalition captured the Tigrayan capital Mekelle, forcing the Tigrayan leadership to flee to mountain redoubts.
For the next seven months, the Ethiopian government repeatedly assured the world that it was on the verge of wiping out the remnants of the TPLF. Despite a tight information blackout, disturbing information leaked out about egregious violations of human rights, certainly crimes against humanity. Ethiopian and Eritrean troops were branded as war criminals. The atrocities also drove Tigrayans — TPLF and non-TPLF — to unite in armed resistance. The war — with its mounting battlefield casualties — stayed below the media’s radar.
In June, Tigrayan guerrillas turned the military tables on the Ethiopian army, scoring decisive victories and forcing the federal army to abandon most of Tigray, including Mekelle, in disarray. The government, however, retained control of Western Tigray, an area bordering Sudan, where ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans continues. The Eritreans withdrew to defensive lines along the international border.
After this rout, Abiy announced a ceasefire but made it clear that he intended to regroup and return by force as soon as possible. With good reason, the TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda, who enjoys a reputation for provocative tweets, dismissed the ceasefire announcement as a “sick joke.”
Most importantly, Abiy continued to use his most potent weapon — starvation. Ethiopia and Eritrea encircle Tigray and enforce a blockade. Banks are closed, commercial traffic is stopped, and humanitarian aid is confined to a trickle. Over five million people in Tigray need emergency aid — an estimated 4,000 tons per day that would take 100 trucks to transport. Since the Tigrayans took back control, a total of just 435 trucks have been allowed in. That’s an average daily ration of about 40 grams, little more than a third of a cup of flour, per person. The obstacle isn’t generalized insecurity but a government policy of using starvation against a civilian population — a war crime.
The Regional National Government of Tigray says it is defending Ethiopia’s federal constitution. Adopted in 1995 when the TPLF was in government, that constitution controversially provides for each Ethiopian region to have the right of self-determination up to and including independence. This is exactly what Abiy’s vision of a unified Ethiopia seeks to deny. He has become an ultra-nationalist, seeking to resurrect the glory days of the Abyssinian empire.
After recapturing Mekelle, the Tigrayans did not wait for a counterattack. Armed with captured tanks and artillery, they took the offensive while their adversary was in disarray. They swept out of Tigray into Afar and Amhara regions, but TPLF leaders haven’t explained their war aims. Did they seek to break the blockade and secure roads for aid? Did they want to overthrow the government in Addis Ababa? And if so, did they want to return the TPLF to power or to form a coalition with insurgents in the south of Ethiopia?
With half his army destroyed and his triumphalist claims punctured, a leader might be expected to panic or flee. Not so Abiy Ahmed. With serene confidence, he proclaimed that he was destined to prevail. He showed visiting diplomats his gleaming refurbished palaces and parks and waved away the Tigrayans as a minority that had blighted the country, insisting that no tears should be shed over their destruction. Abiy assures African leaders that he has a plan to win the war and, they add, he truly believes it.
And Abiy has turned up the volume of nationalist-populist rhetoric to maximum. Ethnically charged, often frankly hateful messages that had previously been confined to fringe diaspora groups are now mainstream. Abiy describes the TPLF, and Tigrayans in general, as hyenas, cancers, and weeds to be uprooted. Many Ethiopians, especially from the historically dominant Amhara group, are heeding his call for every able-bodied Ethiopian to take up arms to fight for their land against the Tigrayan “traitors” and “terrorists.” They fight with zeal. Peasants, students, and urban youth, with just a few weeks’ basic training, charge TDF positions in human wave attacks. Sometimes the second wave doesn’t even have guns and have been told to take weapons from the enemy. Among them are priests and nuns with crosses and tabots (replicas of the Arc of the Covenant).
This kind of war blurs the line between combatant and civilian and between combat and massacre. There are half a dozen reports of TDF killings of villagers, each case trumpeted by Ethiopian media.
The mass attacks are a hemorrhage of young lives and a stark warning of future grievance. But they stalled the TDF advance and bought time for Abiy. The Eritrean army has sent armored divisions back into Ethiopia, and the government has been shopping for new equipment including drones (reportedly from Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkey).
With every setback, Abiy digs in deeper. When his ambassadors failed to convince foreign governments, he eviscerated the diplomatic corps, reducing embassies such as the one in Washington to just the ambassador and a skeleton support staff. Abiy reportedly said that diaspora volunteers do a better job of presenting his case than professional diplomats, though he has also hired commercial lobbyists too. Ethiopian “twitter lions” engage in social media combat with venom and determination. Every independent journalist or human rights advocate faces the online version of a human wave attack — relentless twitter trolling and hate mail.
Intimidation works in tandem with standard diplomatic blandishments. In a world beset by crises, Ethiopia is no one’s priority disaster, and so it’s convenient to dilute the frightening realities. The default storyline of foreign affairs officials is that the conflict is complicated, the facts aren’t clear, there are no good guys — and the government has given solemn assurances to make things better. Such thinking is lazy and demonstrably false — but pervasive.
Foreign leaders who have discussed the war in detail with Abiy and who have examined the grim evidence on the ground don’t buy his story; they think he is delusional and is leading Ethiopia into self-destruction. To its credit, the Biden administration is in this camp. Among its few public allies are Ireland, Norway, and the European Union Commission.
Privately, African leaders are terrified that Abiy will drive Ethiopia into state failure, which would in turn deepen instability throughout the Horn of Africa, but they can’t bear to admit that there’s no African solution for this African problem. In reaction to Washington’s tough measures announced today, Africans may publicly complain about American bullying but they will be privately thankful. Such arm-twisting cannot come quickly enough. Ethiopia’s tragedy may be that the country unravels before its leader’s reputation does.
To most Americans the collapse of Afghanistan called into question Washington’s ability to manage the world. After devoting 20 years, thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars to creating a stable, democratic, and liberal Afghanistan, the entire Potemkin structure collapsed in 11 days.
Hundreds of thousands fled as the Taliban successively captured provincial capitals. Tens of thousands thronged the Kabul airport in a desperate effort to escape the newly proclaimed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. If only a few of them had joined the security forces that were supposed to sustain their country, instead of leaving the fight to those who decided the regime was not worth defending, perhaps the outcome would have been different.
Many liberal Afghans likely will be trapped in a future that looks more like the past. Perhaps stable though intolerant Islamist rule. Perhaps regime breakdown and renewed civil war. Perhaps domestic conflict spurred by foreign intervention. Whatever the outcome, Washington dramatically demonstrated yet again that militarized social engineering is an art Americans have yet to learn.
However, other crises loom around the globe and, of course, those who demanded that America stay in Afghanistan now insist that Washington take on these new responsibilities, presumably to demonstrate improved levels of competence. Consider the extraordinarily brutal tricorner battle ongoing among Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Tigray.
The complex confrontation returns a peaceful region to its terrible past of war and oppression. Eritrea spent three decades fighting for independence from Ethiopia as the latter moved from monarchy to communist dictatorship to generic authoritarian rule. Eritrea gained its independence in 1993 and created a regime so infamously cruel and repressive that it was known as the North Korea of Africa (according to Freedom House, Eritrea actually is less free than the North, rating just 2 out of 100). Five years later Ethiopia and Eritrea staged a short-lived border war, finally forging a peace treaty in 2018. Last year fighting erupted between the Ethiopian government and local security forces in the Tigray region, which long had dominated the country’s politics. Eritrea joined Ethiopia and the fighting continues. (The relationship between Addis Ababa and Asmara is complicated, but Ethiopia has enabled Eritrea’s atrocious Afwerki regime to escape what had been well-deserved diplomatic isolation.)
The conflict is largely unknown to the American republic. However, it is a true humanitarian horror. Alas, US efforts to halt hostilities have proved unavailing.
The Washington Post recently detailed the many offenses committed by the parties. For instance, Eritrean forces “have committed among the war’s worst atrocities, including civilian massacres and rapes meant to be so violent they render victims infertile. In its sanctions announcement, the Treasury Department said that Eritrean defense forces have gone house-to-house in search of Tigrayan families to evict and men and boys to execute. Those who survive must leave behind dead loved ones or face execution.”
Although Addis Ababa is slightly less repressive – only South Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan reach Eritrea’s depths, according to Freedom House – Ethiopia’s “troops have committed many of the crimes for which the United States is sanctioning Eritrea. Amnesty International reports that Ethiopian government forces and allied militias have also weaponized rape. Ethiopian soldiers have forced Tigrayan women into sexual slavery, engaged in gang rapes and targeted Tigrayan women fleeing to neighboring Sudan.”
Lest you decide to toss in your lot with Tigray, however, its forces seem no less cruel. Explained the Post: “civilians fleeing the conflict are accusing Tigrayan forces of committing a range of atrocities, including door-to-door executions, as they have widened the conflict beyond the borders of their own region. Displaced people blame Tigrayan troops for ‘killings, widespread looting and the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas,’ Agence France-Presse reported.”
This is a terrible conflict and utterly wrong for all concerned. Of course, the combat should end. But what can the US do?
The Biden administration has not been silent. The Atlantic Council’s Cameron Hudson allowed: “In fairness to President Joe Biden’s administration, its efforts have not been half-hearted. The White House has doubled down on diplomatic engagement by appointing veteran diplomat Jeffrey Feltman as the first-ever special envoy to the region, while also dispatching Cabinet secretaries, cajoling a reluctant U.N. Security Council to speak up, and corralling like-minded allies to keep the up the diplomatic pressure.”
However, the result, which should surprise no one, was zilch. If countries and regions are willing to accept the high cost of going to war, why should we expect “diplomatic pressure” to halt the fighting? It’s worth making the effort, but that is likely to have an impact only if all parties are reluctant combatants or fear losing. Neither apparently is the case here. Unsurprisingly, then, Hudson worried that the administration relied too long on diplomacy: “Now, as the death toll continues to mount and more recruits join the fray, its delay in utilizing those measures is beginning to undermine its credibility.”
He suggested applying Magnitsky Act sanctions against human rights abusers. He also urged Washington to “sanction a wider range of individuals and entities. Potential targets could include individuals who are intentionally blocking humanitarian aid shipments; those using social media and other information platforms to incite violence and foment hate; and anyone seeking to undermine diplomatic efforts to achieve a cease-fire and long-term political settlement.”
No doubt, such penalties would inconvenience the guilty. However, they would do little to change government policy. Local elites typically are more committed to the regime than to foreign visas and bank accounts.
Moreover, Hudson advocated a formal ban on arms sales, a sensible step, though sometimes doing so has disproportionate and perverse impacts on combatants. With Ethiopia continuing to purchase weapons from such countries as Iran and Turkey, a unilateral prohibition would have only limited impact, causing him to call for a UN embargo, which would require Chinese and Russian acquiescence, no sure bet.
Avoiding the quagmire of secondary and financial sanctions, by which the US penalizes other nations’ individuals and companies, Hudson advocated targeting local firms involved in the war effort, such as Ethiopian Airlines and the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia. Hudson argued that “stiff sanctions against them could curtail the government’s ability to make war and push the companies’ executives to use their own influence over [Prime Minister] Abiy to pursue peace.” These steps would damage national prestige and marginally weaken Ethiopia’s war-making ability, but businessmen would remain unlikely to challenge their authoritarian political leaders. The war almost certainly would continue.
Indeed, when have economic penalties caused governments to yield what they consider to be vital security or political interests? The Trump administration increased sanctions on a gaggle of states, some serious enough to be termed “maximum pressure.” However, the result was a complete bust. Although China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela all felt varying degrees of pain, none changed their policies as a result.
Even the Washington Post, which ran an editorial urging the Biden administration to Do Something!, acknowledged a sense of futility: “US sanctions against Eritrea probably will not force Eritrean troops out of the conflict. The United Nations sanctioned Eritrea for nine years, in part for refusing to withdraw troops from neighboring Djibouti, and the country did not relent. But they should be a warning shot, signaling to Ethiopia’s government and to Tigrayan forces that the world is watching this horrific war – and that the United States will act. The United States should use whatever leverage it has not only to end human rights abuses but also to force both sides to the bargaining table.”
This is a terribly unserious argument from a supposedly serious publication. Today the world is not watching and certainly is not acting, at least in ways that do much more than irritate Ethiopia and Eritrea. To grandly intone that “the United States will act” commits it to do so. But how? Surely not military action. Financial sanctions, to isolate the two governments from the world economy, would raise hackles across Europe, China, and Russia which have tired of American overreach wherever Washington sought to conscript the world for its political priorities. Anyway, near total sanctions were imposed on Sudan, but did not halt the fighting in Darfur and elsewhere.
Moreover, there is a downside to such measures. Admitted Hudson: “Critics may argue that the punitive measures outlined here would disproportionally harm the Ethiopian government, further imperil bilateral relations, diminish American influence and drive Addis Ababa deeper into the clutches of Tehran, Moscow and Beijing.” Such has been the case in the past; for example, Beijing gained economic influence in Burma and Sudan when both were under sanctions by the West.
Hudson expressed hope to counter the appeal of China and other states: “this is precisely why the use of tough sanctions must be accompanied by a continued commitment to diplomacy and dialogue, as well as an articulation of the conditions necessary for these sanctions to be removed.” However, if Addis Ababa and Asmara are determined to prosecute the war and can receive many of the same economic benefits from other countries, they are unlikely to go with US commitments and articulations.
The ongoing conflict in the Horn of Africa is horrendous. However, the US has little leverage over the contending parties. Long ago President George H.W. Bush proclaimed “that what we say goes,” delusional hubris that wasn’t even true then. It certainly isn’t true today. American policymakers must come to terms with the fact that the US is a hyperpower no longer.
Washington should work with European and African states to press for an end to the battle over Tigray, as well as greater freedom in Ethiopia and especially Eritrea. The US also should look for support in unusual places. Moscow and Beijing might be willing to cooperate to promote stability in the Horn of Africa for economic reasons even if they are less concerned about the ongoing human carnage.
However, Washington is likely to be most effective if it moderates its ambitions. US hubris doesn’t have a good track record of late, even when deployed with the best humanitarian intentions. These days what we say increasingly goes nowhere.
💭 Microwave Weapons That Could Cause Havana Syndrome Exist, Experts Say
Russia and possibly China have developed technology capable of injuring brain and a US company made a prototype in 2004
Portable microwave weapons capable of causing the mysterious spate of “Havana Syndrome” brain injuries in US diplomats and spies have been developed by several countries in recent years, according to leading American experts in the field.
A US company also made the prototype of such a weapon for the marine corps in 2004. The weapon, codenamed Medusa, was intended to be small enough to fit in a car, and cause a “temporarily incapacitating effect” but “with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury”.
There is no evidence that the research was taken beyond the prototype phase, and a report on that stage has been removed from a US navy website. Scientists with knowledge of the project said that ethical considerations preventing human experimentation contributed to the project being shelved – but they said such consideration had not hindered US adversaries, including Russia, and possibly China.
“The state of that science has for the most part been, if not abandoned, pretty much left fallow in the United States – but it has not been fallow elsewhere,” said James Giordano, professor of neurology and ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center.
Giordano, who is also senior fellow in biotechnology, biosecurity and ethics at the US Naval War College, was brought in as adviser by the government in late 2016 after about two dozen US diplomats began falling sick in Havana. He later took part in an assessment for US Special Forces Command on which countries were developing the technology and what they had achieved.
“It became clear that some of the work that was conducted in the former Soviet Union was taken up again by Russia and its satellite proxies,” Giordano said, adding that China had also developed directed energy devices to test the structure of various materials, with technology which could be adapted to weapons. A second major wave of brain injuries among US diplomats and intelligence officers took place in China in 2018.
Giordano is restricted from giving details on which country had developed what kind of device but he said the new weapons used microwave frequencies, able to disrupt brain function without any burning sensation.
“This was important – and rather frightening – to us, because it represented a state of advancement and sophistication of these types of instruments that heretofore had not been thought to be accomplished,” he said.
If a US adversary has succeeded in miniaturising the directed energy technology needed to inflict tissue damage from a distance, it makes such weapons a more plausible explanation for Havana Syndrome.
More than 130 US officials, from the state department, CIA and national security council (NSC), have suffered from symptoms, including dizziness, loss of balance, nausea and headaches, first identified in Cuba. The impact on some of the victims has been debilitating and long-lasting.
Some of the most recent incidents have involved NSC officials experiencing crippling symptoms in broad daylight in Washington. The state department, CIA and Pentagon have all launched investigations, but have yet to come to conclusions. A National Academy of Sciences report in December, found that the Havana Syndrome injuries were most likely caused by “directed pulsed radio frequency energy”.
Sceptics of the microwave weapon theory have pointed to decades of US efforts to build such a device during the cold war and since, without any confirmed success. They have also argued that a weapon capable of inflicting brain injury from a distance would be too unwieldy to use in urban areas.
However, James Lin, the leading US authority on the biological impact of microwave energy, said a large apparatus would not be needed to focus energy on a small area, heating it a minute amount and causing “a thermoelastic pressure wave” that travels through the brain, causing damage to soft tissue.
The pressure wave would initially be experienced by the target as sound. Many of the US diplomats, spies, soldiers and officials whose symptoms are being studied as part of the Havana Syndrome investigation reported hearing strange sounds at the onset of the attacks.
“You can certainly put together a system in a couple of big suitcases that will allow you to put it in a van or an SUV,” Lin, professor emeritus in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Illinois, said. “It’s not something that you need to have enormous amounts of space or equipment to do it.”
___________
