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posted by Fnord666 on Friday July 10 2020, @11:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the overworked-and-underpaid dept.

Authors of the new Springer book identify mass psychogenic illness as the likely cause of Havana Syndrome, a mysterious condition affecting American and Canadian diplomats stationed in Cuba between 2016 and 2019.

Dozens of embassy staff reported an array of complaints that have baffled the medical community, the most prominent being concussion-like symptoms without head trauma. U.S. Government physicians have promoted the theory that the diplomats and their families were the victims of a sonic attack. Studies of the embassy patients have been inconclusive. In their book Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria, the authors Robert W. Baloh and Robert E. Bartholomew observe that the outbreak is notably similar to the appearance of 'shell shock' and other combat syndromes. The two medical experts conclude that neurological complaints from an overstimulated nervous system have been misdiagnosed as concussions and brain damage when the real cause is stress.

Havana Syndrome

[Source]: Springer Book

However, I think this mystery is far from solved. For example: Why were diplomats & embassy staff, predominantly from the US and Canada, affected?, Why not other American citizens? Why only between the years 2016 and 2019? Why not before or after? What do you guys think about this?

[Ed Note: Fixed date in last paragraph. Thanks c0lo!]


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 10 2020, @05:16PM (6 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday July 10 2020, @05:16PM (#1019158) Journal

    > why a new boss every couple weeks?

    That is, of course, a huge sign that the office was extremely dysfunctional. Under the current administration, dysfunction is the norm.

    I've been in an extremely stressful office environment. I know what it's like: Horrible. I lost a lot of weight from all the stress-- and I wasn't overweight to start with. In hindsight, I should have broken the door down running away from those toxic managers who spent all their time feeding everyone around them loads of BS. They make up impossible schedules born of not knowing fundamental things about the business, demand unpaid overtime, lots and lots of overtime, and push employees to make themselves unable to quit the job for fear of not being able to make their car and house payments. On that last, all the better if you've done that to yourself. Student loans are especially useful on that front. They are all too apt to say all your work is a bunch of worthless garbage, you didn't do x right, didn't even do y, whatever, then throw your work in the trash without even looking at it, and accuse you of being a poor employee for not accomplishing anything worthwhile. Yeah, I've had one manager who deliberately erased my hard drive. Gave me bull that my computer was needed for something else. Kinda tough to protect yourself from data loss when even your own manager is against you. Oh, and of course the workplace has rules against bringing in flash drives and copying valuable company secrets to them and all that. Yeah, they got your Internet covered too. No massive uploads shall be coming out of the facility, nope!

    You can't please or satisfy such bosses. Nothing is good enough. Even if you did somehow manage the impossible, they wouldn't get it, wouldn't appreciate in the least what you did, and still think you're a lazy idiot, and gaslight you some more about your supposed poor performance.

    When you have not experienced such an environment, haven't felt trapped by the need for that paycheck or a good reference for the next job, haven't learned that there really are unbelievably destructive trolls who will cut their own throats to take someone (you) down with them, it's easy to believe you can handle it, you can cut through the crap. You might be wondering how the trolls could possibly be willing to cut their own throats? It's because they've deluded themselves that they aren't actually doing that. That's where they really get you. They're experts at exploiting your fears. Afraid that your career will be ruined? You'll never have another job doing the work you love? Then they've got you.

    You got in a car with a strange person, who turned out to be a madman who wants to drive 200 mph, weaving through traffic and leaving paint and dents on other cars, skid marks all over the pavement, and at every corner popping up on two wheels, enjoying seeing your terrified face crushed up against the window just inches above the concrete, telling you that's how you too should drive, because there's no time to waste. Then, in some isolated place several hours hike from the nearest village, they change seats with you, put you behind the wheel, but you're not in control, no. You're taking the route they tell you to take, while they verbally abuse you for being a chicken and not driving fast and furious enough. And what they haven't told you is that the reckless driving has been noticed, and the police are even now on the way to stop that car, and who will they find behind the wheel when they pull the car over? Why, you, of course! Then, if you show proper cowardly, whipped dog behavior, they may "save" you from being hauled off to jail. That's the opening they create and exploit to the max, to fill you with doubts and destroy your confidence, so that you no longer feel confident you can tell up from down, black from white.

    One of the hooks they had on me was the moving expenses. They paid my moving expenses. But, there was a little proviso in there that said if I left the job before I'd been there a year, I would have to pay back some or all of the moving expenses. Another hook was the employee ownership program. You would get nothing of that if you didn't last for at least a year, and very little unless you made it to at least 2 years. It was much the same with the retirement funding. There's a lot of stuff of that sort that make the young and poor, with massive student loan debt, very vulnerable to workplace abuse.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Friday July 10 2020, @06:15PM (2 children)

    by captain normal (2205) on Friday July 10 2020, @06:15PM (#1019174)

    You took a job in the The Trump Organization? Or where you actually working in the Trump White House? No wonder you were nervous and lost weight.

    --
    When life isn't going right, go left.
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 10 2020, @07:24PM (1 child)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday July 10 2020, @07:24PM (#1019196) Journal

      No, this was working for the government during the George W. Bush administration, which was nearly as bad. I was a defense contractor. The military boys put on a real gung-ho, tough guy act. Pushed us hard to do the impossible. They wanted unbreakable computer security, for themselves only. They wanted everyone else's security to be breakable, preferably only by them, but breakable by a few others might be okay.

      Simply could not get through to them that security doesn't play favorites like that. Either everyone can have unbreakable security, or no one can. But they kept weaving and hammering and pushing, bullying everyone to come up with some way somehow, that it could be done. And it was that way, during WWII, but only because the Axis was too arrogant in believing in the supposed unbreakability of their Enigma system.

      Tell them it's impossible, and their reply was 1) you're a super genius, you could do it if you really wanted to, doc. Why don't you want to, huh, doc? Do you hate America? Are you a liberal? You voted Democrat, didn't you? Are you, maybe, even a traitor? Thinking of selling out to the Chinese? And 2) if you won't do it, we'll fire you and hire someone who will.

      So there you go, an additional hook to keep you from leaving the job from Hell. Leave, and you might even be suspected of treason. That possibility was never mentioned. It didn't have to be.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:38AM

        by anubi (2828) on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:38AM (#1019288) Journal

        I feel for you. I get a strong idea what happened.

        Engineers deal in controlling THINGS and maximizing bang for the buck.

        MBA deal in controlling PEOPLE.

        Some treat US just like we treat things. So what if I monkeyed up a screw? I simply replace it.

        MBA are paid enough they don't have to rely on kindness and compassion to get things done for them, they control money flow to compel what they want. Not much different than my controlling forces of nature to achieve my goals.

        Except the stuff I work with has no feelings, emotion, and can be created or destructed at will. That's the thing I liked so much about engineering... I could bend things as I wanted, and not be an ass for compelling others against their will. It's a "God thing" with me... To me it's flat wrong to impose myself on others. You know, that do unto others as you would have others do unto you. And that includes the ignominy of being compelled to make shoddy product.

        I was for a while in the MIC industry, where we had an overabundance of MBA, and a dearth of seasoned engineers. We had lots of newbies that did not yet have enough experience and too much debt to stand up to a MBA.

        Not all MBA are so destructive, but their privilege of rank puts them in position to destroy any innovation and creativity any subordinate may offer.

        I am out of the game now, so I can tell it as I saw it without fear of being blacklisted by the men who are empowered to accept anything I may have to offer.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by TheReaperD on Friday July 10 2020, @11:36PM (2 children)

    by TheReaperD (5556) on Friday July 10 2020, @11:36PM (#1019268)

    Yea, I worked at a job that had over a 300% average annual employee turnover rate. CEO was a crook and because he was a crook, he assumed all of his employees were crooks out to get him. I was young and stupid and wasn't aware they were running a racket at first. When the FTC showed up, I had all the documentation ready to have them hauled off for racketeering and extortion. Of course, the investigators went strait to the CEO's office (how they knew how to get there without asking anybody was rather suspicious) and right back out again without speaking to anybody else and that was the extant of their investigation. They never asked for a single piece of paper (I know because I was the head file clerk). The investigation was dropped due to lack of evidence. Obviously, it's easy to have 'a lack of evidence' when you don't look for any evidence in the first place! Still annoyed by this 20+ years later. The sheer feeling of euphoria I felt when I told my boss "no, I quit" is hard to describe. That job was nothing but 2 1/2 years of pure stress and my most recent boss was the epitome of bitchy emotionally unstable redhead that gives redheads a bad stereotype. The only reason she wasn't fired 6 months earlier, with my help, was because the CEO expected criminal behavior from his employees. So, when I turned her in for criminal behavior (she was the accountant), it was like water off a duck's back to him. The look of pure impotent rage she had on her face when I both told her "no" and "I quit" still gives me joy. Would have felt even better to have her fired, but that wasn't going to happen in that environment. The CEO was more comfortable with the other crooks because he knew their 'angle.' He didn't trust the honest people because he couldn't understand that the average person doesn't seek to stab you in the back. The concept of honesty was so foreign to him, he just couldn't comprehend it.

    --
    Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:46AM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:46AM (#1019338) Journal

      Woof, sounds like a worse nest of vipers than I was in. The managers I had to deal with were shameless liars and gross incompetents who couldn't tell gold from mud and didn't really care as long as whatever they had could be sold, but they didn't step over the line into outright criminal behavior, nor push subordinates to break the law.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:52AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:52AM (#1019408)

      Dishonest people hate honest people because honest people not only keep the documents that would hang them out to dry but will cheerfully turn those documents over to law enforcement to ensure that hanging happens.