I got arrested in Kazakhstan and represented myself in court
medium.com
medium.com
Bribing and twisting rules is "a thing" in some places that is part of the normal functioning of society. Is anyone _REALLY_ going to be shocked in Khazakhstan?
The article is a nice contrast to his dehumanizing police experience in SF.
But I can't help but now wonder if his mere being just triggers vastly different things in people unfortunately (such as instant hatred of "tech elite" by SFPD cops in the San Francisco piece he wrote).
But after the rest of the story, those guys helping him, drinking with him, showing him a good time (probably because life can be boring there and hanging out with a foreigner was an enervating experience for them too?) and greasing a few wheels for him (the "lenient judge" and possibly some other things he doesn't know about), I felt a bit different.
He was carrying $160 all the time, while Irlan paid for everything (probably not very much in dollars, but still). Some guy needed a spot for $6.5 to carry him to the end of the month, that says something about how far $160 goes in that country. At the end when Irlan said "it's gonna be boring without you", he knew he was free and could have wired himself another $200 later with relative ease (or maybe not? I'm not sure). I think at the very least he could have given Irlan some money/tip for all the effort, lunch, coffee, drinks? I mean, now that you know you're no longer in a complex negotiation / bribing situation with this person (so the cards are more open), he did go the extra mile, spent his own money even (while in the end, the author spent .. $0 ??? or did I miss something, he did say he got the $100 back). Say $50, that he'd otherwise spend on a single night out in SF, would mean a LOT more to this guy, so why not just do it? He'd earned it yes?
Could be some kind of cultural differences though. The author seems to know the culture of the area really well, so maybe it's something obvious. Maybe Irlan would be insulted getting such a large sum for just being hospitable. OTOH maybe Irlan hoped all this extra effort would earn him the $100 deal he couldn't fulfil earlier. Or maybe during all the "bonding" the author had been hinting he was a stranded student with zero money left and therefore they felt pity on him, so he didn't dare to break that character and suddenly producing $50 cash to give away (but Irlan knew he still carried that $100 at least).
Or maybe, the author's bottom-line thinking about this was, I did my best to stick to the (admittedly, draconian) rules, bad shit (aka adventure) still happened, so I really oughtn't face any consequences at all (except the part where he got free lunch, drinks and a tour).
Here's hoping the pictures won't show up in archived versions of the article.
Whole country is really gung-ho about modernizing, and modern tech is a huge part of that.
This is every Eastern European country.
guy got busted by some people who turned around and helped him.
now he's returning the favor?
Bribe culture is bad, but it's not something to dismiss in such situations, eg, here, it would get him into way MORE trouble just to put up a firm NO about bribing and social skills.
Being out of your main cultural context is pretty much about "going with the flow" and social engineering rather than enforcing your own beliefs onto an already established and deeply rooted status quo.
Do you think that this post will make a dent in corruption issues in Kazakhstan? That it will fix anything? The only thing it may cause is repercussions for the good people in this story. Which will leave the system even worse.
There is this concept of responsibility when publishing the story. I have a feeling that it's often forgotten.
I can disagree with this, or think up improvement, fixes. But at the end, I'm still a tourist, a guest in this country. I'm there to experience the culture, not to tell them they're doin' it wrong. That would be activism, not tourism.
Addition: experiencing other cultures has taught me things as well. Having to barter in Turkey, I probably got screwed but did learn a few lessons that are applicable at home (particular from watching other tourists handle it) (though sometimes they were dicks). All that tipping in the US, coupled with the fact that listed prices are never what you pay (because they're pre-tax) (this is not the case in the EU, it feels very weird not being able to calculate the final sum before checkout--a little exercise I often do in NL to keep my mental math sharp) I took home a bit more fluid idea of prices, and this makes for a lower barrier to tip in NL as well (but I still feel 20% is just crazy :p).
One should try it in the US after having his visa expired there.
I have noticed that it seems valuable to project being "poorer" rather than "richer" when traveling. Naively it might seem like throwing money around would grease all sorts of wheels but the opposite has been my experience (although probably I just don't have enough money to throw around to really grease the wheels).
On a side note, when I was in telecom, My boss (who had been in the industry for 15 years) used to tell me about working for MCI and doing surveying and laying copper in several middle eastern countries. He told me some stories that would make the hair on your neck stand up.
He said it was an open secret that MCI was giving his team suitcases of cash to bribe officials and the military just to allow them to do their job. Stories of being pulled over at gunpoint, negotiating with military people and being able to talk through the process of a bribe was something he always maintained was part of the day-to-day survival game they played.
...as a tangent, I'm impressed and slightly weirded out by the fact that I googled for "etymology demented" and it answered directly with an etymological tree for the word. Google's getting smarter.
Was this confirmed somewhere? I can't find any evidence with a quick search and I saw some of his interviews during the presidential campaign (he was running from the libertarian nomination I think) and he seemed ok.
Anyway, not to distract this discussion into a further tangent, I think the best way is to charitably read it as "paranoid schizophrenic episode" (which is kind of fair, yes?) and the "mind AWOL" remark as hyperbole, without reading too much behind it. It was a setup to the post's main point anyway, the anecdotal part.
Like I understand that he has done a lot of crazy drug addled things but I don't think that necessarily means that he is stupid or insane.
McAfee is someone who kept a minor girlfriend, fled Belize after being implicated in the murder of his neighbor and spent most of his time down there booty bumping bath salts.
For some perspective.
source?
Having lived in Cambodia (nowhere near as dangerous as Belize, but probably just as corrupt), being implicated with a crime you didn't commit isn't the most far fetched thing.
It is the same in USA. Every "decent" divorce lawyer's first step is for the wife to whack herself on the face, call the police, and get the husband kicked out of the house. The cops don't like it, but they have to take the report. Sometimes they have enough spine to not arrest the dude.
All interested parties including lawyers, judges, police get involved for financial gain.
Yeah this too. Family court is the biggest racket going now.
Like every single other human being on this planet. It's a feature of our brains.
I still don't understand what's the reason to treat McAfee as extremely unreliable. Could someone state the reasons explicitly?
In my experience, most of us don't move down to Belize to manufacture research chemicals and fuck underage women then get implicated in a murder all while being investigated for tax evasion.
There's a phrase I'm never going to google. I'm happily ignorant.
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/541627-Hello-and-an-MDPV...
I once took the train from Urumqi to Almaty. After touring around Kazakhstan for a week or so I went to the airport to fly to Baku. When I walked into the airport two police officers told me to follow them. They took me to a small room. They kept asking me “would you like any tea?” And I kept responding “no thanks, I really need to catch my flight.” They asked at least five times and then started using variants like “would you like coffee?” I ignorantly kept replying, “I’m really sorry. I appreciate the offer but I need to catch my flight.” After ten minutes or so they got frustrated and told me that I’m a stupid American and to leave and catch my flight. It clicked after sharing the story w/ some Kazakh folks that they were asking for a bribe. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Oops.
When I was younger and traveling in China alone, I fell for one of the "tea house" scams common in the bigger cities. The leader of the heavies sent to intimidate me was somewhat nicer when he figured out that I didn't have much money or a credit card and wasn't lying about it.
He gave me some life advice: "don't go anywhere with a stranger" then took ¥10,000 (about 300 in Chinese money) and sent me on my way. It was pretty surreal.
It would have been so much easier and involve less questionable ethics to just leave more than 24 hours in advance.
It's the ability to take the law and regulations lightly, when they're not that serious, and be humane about it.
I mean writing: "YOU CHOSE to violate it", with added emphasis, as if having a visa expiring on the same day you leave a place (and literally while you're on a vehicle leaving it) is some kind of huge crime...
What about the visum expiring the day before you leave? Two days? The law has to draw a line somewhere. It is the obligation of the person to stay clear of that line. If the visum duration is too short, just make all visa valid for 16 days rather than 15 days, and then enforce that line equally for everybody. Once corruption has taken a hold it tends to encroach on everything.
That was actually the most heart-warming part of the tale. The guy initially tried to bribe the police and get out of trouble, but the new computer systems prevented him from doing so. The cop who initially tried to collect a bribe from him, then returned the money, befriended him, and went to bat for him, with no financial incentives whatsoever.
The ability to pay your way out of it, usually comes together with the ability to talk your way out of it, and with the ability of police and such to bend some things on their discretion if they seem BS.
[addition] To quote John McAffee's guide on the matter:
"In order to make the most of your travels, you need to first understand that, throughout much of the Third World, there is a smoothly functioning “system” in place that has evolved over centuries. From the First World perspective it is a “corrupt” system, and indeed, at the higher levels there is no other word for it (...) at the lower levels, however, the system contains an element of grace and humanity, and this lower lever is all that most people will ever encounter. You might still call this lower level “corruption”, but that’s not a helpful word if you want to acquire the most effective attitude for dancing with it. I prefer “negotiable”."
>What about the visa expiring the day before you leave? Two days? The law has to put a line somewhere. It is the obligation of the person to stay clear of that line.
And it's an attribute of a good attitude towards the legal system to not be jerks about it, since "expired last day and I'm on a train leaving the country" is just as good as "it will expire after I leave".
Even if the "law must put a line somewhere", people should be served by the law, not be slaves to it, and enforce it according to its spirit, not merely its letter.
Of course with this mindset you don't get to be 4% of the world's population but have 25% of it's prison population.
There's a name used in some parts of Europe for the kind of legal anal retentive mindset that everything must be 100% according to the letter (and not the spirit) of the law, that someone is like "Javert" (from Les Miserables).
He ends like that in the book, btw (spoiler alert):
For the first time in his life, Javert is faced with the situation where he cannot act lawfully without acting immorally, and vice versa. Javert is unable to find a solution to this dilemma, and horrified at the sudden realization that Valjean was simultaneously a criminal and a good person—a conundrum which reveals deep flaws in his ethical system, and suggests to him the existence of a superior moral system. He feels that the only possible resolution for himself is in death, and— after leaving for the prefect of police a brief letter addressing lapses in the Conciergerie— he drowns himself in the river Seine.
No it doesn't. Hardly anybody would pay a large bribe if they could simply talk themselves out of it instead.
> Of course with this mindset you don't get to be 4% of the world's population but have 25% of it's prison population.
No, that is the result of crazy harsh sentences. That is a problem, but applying justice selectively to rich people is not the solution to that problem. The solution is to decrease the punishment for crimes that aren't serious, and then apply it equally. A prison sentence for a 1 day visum overstay is ridiculous, of course.
That's the case in game theory terms.
Fortunately real people don't act like that.
"Corrupted" third world officials and such are not profit-maximizing automata (well, a few are. Most are regular people trying to make a buck for the family on top of meagre salaries).
Even if you can afford a bribe and they know it (e.g. you look rich westerner etc), there's often tons of room for negotiation on the price. Including talking your way out of it, them getting a liking for you and just letting you go etc.
But I primarily talked about people who can't afford to pay and it shows. Sometimes what started as a probe as to whether you can pay them a bride even ends up as them getting out of their way to help you for free, if they see you cannot pay and they take sympathy on you.
Aside from "corruption" which might be all some westerner can see, those places also have ages old codes of hospitality and such.
>A prison sentence for a 1 day visum overstay is ridiculous, of course.
Well, if you can't change the law, another way is to selectively enforce it on someone's discretion (bribe or not). It might not benefit 100% of the people but it benefits massively more people than strictly following the ridiculous harsh law.
The people I know who have lived significant periods of their life in these systems would describe them as "corrupt", not "negotiable".
Though "negotiable" does correspond to the way I've usually heard wealthy Americans who've encountered these systems describe them.
Is this supposed to be some kind of faux-Latin plural? I defy you to find an English dictionary that contains this word.
"Arguably" because the word comes to English from French not straight from the Latin.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142643
"I didn't know it was different in english"
And for what it worth, he was "detained" (in a way) and had to pay a steep fine of $500, and had to face some significant stressful (and interesting) uncertainty. It was perhaps not as punitive as rules-oriented folks might like, but I think its safe to say that this guy is now careful to have his paperwork in order on foreign trips. What more can one expect?
Recently, I read an anecdote about someone in the US arrested for drug possession. The family was well-known in the community. Charges were dropped due to minor procedural errors. Other cases with potential procedural errors are pursued and the accused are often recommended to take plea deals.
> What more can one expect?
Someone may find it great that the rules were bent for a not-so-bad infraction. Someone else may want a system that is evenly applied and by-the-book in all situations.
It is utterly unreasonable to expect or desire everything to be "by the book" all the time. If you do, you'll be sorely disappointed with the real world.
Your particular example actually works against your argument. The "minor procedural errors" were likely discovered and exploited by highly compensated lawyers who make a living negotiating with the "fair" rules. The real problem for both cases is getting arrested in the first place. Both actors likely spent a miserable night in jail. Could a little discretion from the police involved have averted the misery, expense, and absurd waste of resources grinding the gears of the criminal justice system over nothing much at all? I think so.
If going by-the-book is overly harsh, then the book needs to be amended. Bending the rules is not really praiseworthy, though it may end up with an good result in a particular case. It's not what I prefer in a justice system.
But in the author's case the rules were bent for him (officers rewriting his confession, having 'the' lenient judge; "It seems like she might actually let him off," said the prosecutor) and seems that he was either a) given special treatment, possibly influenced by US citizenship or education; or b) that the prosecution being baffled by the results is common. The author suggests that because of the officer camaraderie and that he received what he believes a reasonable punishment, it's an example of a better (more humane) system.
Cultures with different values will have differing punishments for transgressions, but an ideal justice system should aim to reduce bias and codify procedure, so that no one is left scratching their head at the end of the day.
This isn't theoretical: it describes plenty of corrupt governments that nobody would hold up against any western country.
How's that latter part any different from any western country? There too, it's mostly the undesirables and those low down that get the full force of the enforcement. Those advanced countries just remove the part where less rich people can have a go at bending the rules, even if a little.
As for the equality of basic enforcement, that's illusory under the inequality of means and motivations. To quote Anatole France, "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread".
Accepting a certain level of risk that something bad might happen is absolutely equivalent (in terms of personal responsibility) to choosing to make that thing happen.
Example: drunk driving is dangerous. If you've had a lot to drink, and you get in a car to drive someplace, and you get in an accident, you take additional responsibility for that accident because you chose to increase risk above a certain common-sense level that everyone is aware of. Regardless of whether or not the accident would have happened without drunk driving, the drunk driver will be held accountable in a way that they would not have otherwise.
Waiting until you've got 24 hours left on your visa to leave Kazakhstan is so far beyond any common-sense threshold of acceptable risk (that pretty much any rational adult would be cognizant of) that it is equivalent to choosing this fate.
As far as risks people take go, this one is pretty inconsequential -- even in the worst case scenario, which would be a couple months in some jail.
That's a millennia old distinction people have made. It's difficult for the puritan mindset to parse, of course.
Sodomy (and being gay) was not that far ago persecuted (still is in the books in some states). Blacks where not allowed in the same establishment as whites.
Slavery was the law once. I wouldn't blame Southern border guards looking the other way when blacks crossed to the North. Even if they took a bride.
And let's not forget the "I was just following orders"/"the law at the time" excuse that tons of military trials clarified that it is not a valid excuse.
Compared to it being totally illegal for everybody and 100% enforced, yes, it would be better.
Compared to fully killing anti-sodomy laws and slavery, of course, not.
But in the real world, totally changing a law takes far more time (and influence) that merely being able to leverage some wiggle room/bribe/whatever.
>It's a legitimate point of view to be an advocate for kleptocracy, but it's honestly rare to see one in the wild.
The actual and powerful kleptocracy are people who have influence on government and on MAKING laws -- not those at the bottom taking some bribe or looking the other way for a friend etc.
I agree that laws should be tempered by common sense, and each case judged taking into account context, but in a country with a serious state of law, those that are not serious or unfair should be changed, not "taken lightly".
The moment you assume laws are not rules but "suggestions", and open to subjective interpretation, it's very easy for some people to find justifications for everything (classic example: taxes are not fair, so I'll just evade them).
Alternatively, one could argue that he took one for the team - he did something risky and stupid so he could find out what would happen, see if he could get out of it, and share the experience with those of us too responsible and sane to try it ourselves.
Either way though your point stands. He clearly chose to put himself in the situation he was in.
The thing that always bothers me about that attitude is that it removes any and all responsibility from the people who make the situation within which the choice is made.
It actually reminds me of basic Bayesian considerations: just as you can't know what a test means without knowing the false positive rate (and false negative, and true positive and negative...), you can't pass any kind of reasonable judgement on a choice unless you know what the alternatives were (and the situation in which the choice was made, and whether the alternatives were known or unknown, or...)
So no. He did NOT clearly choose to put himself in that situation.
He had the most control. He could have left earlier.
That said, he doesn't explain any extenuating circumstances. He came across more like, 'And then my visa was about to expire that night. Crazy how visas expire all of a sudden, am I right?' If he didn't have much agency in the situation it doesn't seem to have bothered him enough to make a big deal about it.
Of course, he might have just felt rationalizing the situation wouldn't have added a whole lot to the essay, which it probably wouldn't have. Then again, who knows how much of the story is true and how much is entirely made up?
He didn't intend to do anything malicious. He wasn't on drugs. Wasn't going to kill or rob anyone. He was maybe simply playing a mischievous kid, not a "bloody criminal". Are laws really meant to be taken so rigidly? Has he actually done anything immoral (except for the bribe part, which I also confidently despise of)? Laws are meant to help people live comfortably and save the innocents from criminal. Yes he could have left 24 hours earlier, but maybe he felt it was more comfortable to leave later. He chose his comfort for the cost of absolutely nothing except not following a law, hopefully made to ultimately give comfort to people. He didn't harm anyone.
The fact that such a non-malicious "crime" (read: mischief) did not have to face the brutality given to actual criminals is enough evidence for me to believe that Kazakhstan's law is indeed superior to American law - because boy do I hear so much ill of the American law punishing innocents every other day on the internet.
They have clear instructions so they must follow them. If they don't follow the instructions, they might get in trouble, because there are other people who control them. So they did what they have to do.
On the other side, court made a right decision and let him go without any penalties, because court have the authority to make those decisions.
So overall I'm proud of Kazakhstan officials and I think that they did their jobs properly (except for a bribe episode, it's a real shame).
Oh wait, no, then he wouldn't have had an adventure and a interesting story to tell, so interesting other people actually enjoy hearing it.
I don't really get this comment at all, he never claimed to be hard done by.
He just told the story as it happened while giving us an insight into other cultures.
Visas are bullshit anyway, people should have the RIGHT to free travel wherever they wish, so BS on the ethics bit.
The only ethical issue is around using names (assuming they are real) and photos of people who helped him.
Other than that I suggest you get out and travel. You obviously don't, else you would know what it's like to get into situations that later seem so obviously could have been avoided. But to travel the world and have fun it's part and parcel of the experience.
dude relax and try to travel more. You sound like you could use some vacations.
I was living in Kazakhstan for a while and had to take the overnight train to Kyrgyzstan for a visa run. They're very old trains. I woke up around 3am and had to use the restroom. The train had just stopped at a station in the middle of nowhere, and it was the middle of winter. I went to the restroom. I flushed. But when I looked down through the toilet, I saw snow and train tracks. These trains didn't have anything to collect waste, they just flushed straight onto the ground. I immediately heard some loud whistles and shouting, and footsteps.
I rushed back to the bed and hoped that no-one saw me, but it was too late, and then we spent the next 30 minutes talking to soldiers. I wasn't sure if they were asking for extra money, or if it was something we needed to pay anyway because we were crossing the border.
It was a tiny train station in the middle of nowhere, and we had no SIM cards, so I started thinking about what we would do if they kicked us off the train. I was actually kind of excited about the idea of building an igloo and sleeping there overnight, and then going to get some help in the morning. That would have been a better story, but in the end they just let us go.
So don't flush any ex-soviet train toilets when you're stopped at a station in Central Asia.
Not just ex-Soviet trains, British ones too. Newer and renovated trains have sewage tanks, but older trains flush directly onto the tracks (and often therefore have a sign in the toilet asking you not to flush when stopped at a station). According to the BBC, as of 2015 this applied to about 10% of the trains in service: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30541015
The tabloids periodically have a field day with it when people notice again that these trains are still not quite phased out. E.g. in 2014, there was a minor sensation about the quantity of "fertiliser" on the tracks producing tomato growth: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/trains-dump-much-human-...
In village however the problem is purely cultural. I worked with some NGO which build proper flush toilets but people would prefer to use them as goat shelters. Their priorities are different.
by association, how even the ones with Masters in Bribery can make a rookie mistake - right these days the top staff of the Moscow DA office (the first deputy) and Russia AG office (the head of the Internal Affairs and his first deputy) have just been arrested by FSB on charges of taking bribes (on the scale of 1M euro) for helping the recently arrested "thief in law" (a king in organized crime hierarchy) and his "colleagues". The issue of course not the bribes itself :) The "king"'s group tried to extort from a restaurant which was under "protection" of ("roofed by") a group of former KGB officers (thus FSB involvement). One would think that challenging KGB/FSB wouldn't be a smart move, and it probably can be explained by the fact that the "king" - Shakro "Young" - was crowned only recently after the previous "king" had been killed (that guy was "Grandpa Hasan", i kid you not, it is Moscow, 21st century :). By taking the bribes the DA guys made the same rookie mistake of going against FSB.
5 years ago we went on a Mongol Rally. Driving European vehicle through the Stans makes you easy prey for local policeman. My co-driver had a strategy of befriending them and sharing small gifts (pens, lighters etc.). Most expensive were Tajik GBAO guards, they got headlamps. During my shifts I had 2 encounters but played dumb, even though I'm native in similar language and could communicate. No bribes given. :)
Had a great time in Semey, KZ and later across the border in Barnaul. Must go back some day, driving, of course:). If you love big skies of US west, you'll be in heaven in Kazakhstan.
The only bribe we had to pay in the end was $5 on the Ukraine/Russia border.
Side note, Google translate's OCR feature saved me from eating testicles so many times.
Your loss. Testicles, e.g. lamb testicles, are just as delicious as any other part -- plus, if you think about it, there's nothing that strange or dirty about them (compared to liver or whatever), it's just some prudish mental connection people make.
We were with convoying Mongolia with bunch of cool guys from AUS, NZ and UK. One team went through northern Iraq (it was relatively safe back in 2011) and later had to double as Kyrgyz emergency as they were driving an ambulance. Links are mostly broken, but you can read some of it here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111122143223/http://www.travel...
We had another trouble in Novokuznetsk, as we were filming clip on factory there, for a project on environment and pollution. Part of the sponsorship deal, so we took Wikipedia and found bad spots along the route. Of course, few minutes after setting up the camera we were busted. Screeching tyres of UAZs as they were coming out, like in the movie. It was tense, but we played Slavic card there and so they just deleted memory cards. At that point after 30 days or so in a van, I guess we were not much of your typical spy. :). We were told it's good it was private security company, because they could just kick us out from the scene without all the paperwork required by regular police.
Good times :)
http://settledforthis.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/mongol-rally-1-...
In fact, if you need to spend a month in a car, it might be better with a person you don't know (friend, relative...). There will be too much information you don't need to know. :)
Another #protip: the ultimate "get out of jail" card is the red MAN UTD t-shirt.
It's the better universal value than cigarettes, pens or crisp $20 notes. If we had few of those (fakes, obviously) we would've seriously cut our mechanic bills and few other expenses along the way.
* A cop takes a bribe, is surprised the tourist is in some computer and then returns the bribe? I've never ever encountered a cop who takes bribes but does not know how the system works. They are not this stupid. This, by the way, is the best way to avoid bribing: Point out you accept punishment and let them work out the consequences for them - paperwork, getting you to jail etc. All this for a visa that expired a few hours ago? I'm sure they'll find a less work-intensive way to let you go.
* Cops being happy to have some "criminal" around for getting drunk and they even pay? No, they rather take your money and get drunk with their friends.
* The girl's story did not make much sense (abortion, breaking up, being raped, leaving school, being arrested, being dug on by a male guard while making out with a female guard and all of this within 24h? wait, what, I am missing some connections here).
I'm not saying that the base of the story ain't true, but there is, IMHO, a lot of storytelling in there, too.
And somehow he turns that into a story of injustice. So yes, he likes storytelling.
He was arrested because the police resented that he did not immediately 'respect my authoritah'. He was not interfering with paramedics. He was a safe distance away.
He got put on psychiatric hold by the police as retribution for insisting it is reasonable for him to have the right to see a doctor for medical treatment.
Medical treatment which was only required because the police physically assaulted him.
It's very hard to imagine a retelling of his story which doesn't involve substantial police misconduct.
http://sfist.com/2014/02/18/young_tech_worker_who_called_911...
or this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/779439/police_report_ann...
LOL, he stated he was a medic and tried to push his way past the police.
The idea that it is right for police to violently enforce their every whim if one does not immediately obey all commands is a serious problem.
For one, only a small subset of all possible commands a police officer could make are commands which one is legally obligated to follow.
Secondly, I think we want a society where police choose constructive dialog over violence.
Nothing about this incident was necessary or proportionate.
Unnecessary violence has made policing dangerous lately. A few years ago it was more dangerous to supervise lawncare, be a taxi driver, collect garbage, or be a handyman than it was to be a police officer.
I wonder if this year's escalations will lead to policing actually becoming a dangerous profession. :(
seeing how deep the police got addicted to violence one can only wonder whether it is possible for them to get sober at all.
I mean you can't make that up - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/2... . Just make sure to watch the video. The police tried to shoot the autistic patient even after the therapist clearly explained to them everything, and there were absolutely no danger to anybody. The police screwed the shot [fortunately] and instead of killing the autistic patient they hit the therapist in the leg.
I get that everyone's on edge, but please, "PUT AWAY THE GUNS".
America has many consensual crimes (drugs, prostitution, etc.), and that makes a very large percentage of the population criminals who must live outside the law.
I'm not sure this can be fixed until it is unusual for a police interaction with a citizen to be a police-criminal interaction. If most of the people you meet as a law enforcement officer are criminals who interact with the world of drugs (a world which currently features privatized violence-based contract enforcement), then I guess a person's prior probability matrix gets fucked up.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/22/487027848/...
Love the casual insinuations that he and his friend were just leaving a gay bar and are part of a sort of commune.
Like they carry any sort of weight or relevance.
Yellow journalism at its best.
I don't follow why the steppes of Central Asia should be culturally similar to Africa and South America (each massively diverse in their own right).
The kid could easily be overlooked by the border guards since he had his passport, and it might have took extreme due diligence on their part to bother to look it up on the computer.
>Cops being happy to have some "criminal" around for getting drunk and they even pay? No, they rather take your money and get drunk with their friends.
If you travel in the right places and chance on the right people, the first can happen just as well.
Especially if you have to be in their company (custody etc) in the first place for a few days, it's some small place and you're seen as interesting talking material, and lots of other situations. Even bribe-taking officials are not one-sided hardened corrupted caricatures.
The most repulsive thing is author doesn't do that because of malevolence. He just honestly doesn't care.
It's funny that probably being a type of person that I dislike so much, may be actually helping him to write a story I like so much.
It would be extortion if Irlan had (say) planted a kilo of heroin in his bags and then demanded money.
The author may have just not cared, but this kind of behaviour makes good people less helpful just out of a need for self-preservation - you never know if that random person you've just bent the rules for won't do something that'll cost you your job, or your freedom.
You give bribe, I buy you bear. You give no bribe, I buy you two bears.
(Or insert any other joke here, they write themselves.)
I very sincerely, on behalf of my country and Obama, my state and Arnold Schwarzenegger, myself and my family beseeched her to be lenient in her judgment.
Schwarzenegger was governor until 2011, which would presumably date his escapades to sometime between 2009 and 2011. Hopefully it's long enough ago to clear Irlan or anyone else mentioned or photographed in the post of any problems should it get traced back to them.
Great story, by the way. Well told.
@pavel_lishin: The exit visa costs about $50 -- you pay a fee to the government and possibly a fee to fill out the application. These days it takes anywhere between 2 weeks to 2 months to get it. Depending on the country you want to visit or where you have been previously (based on your application), you might also have to go through a security interview with intelligence officers.
In my opinion, this is a great, well written traveling story, where no objective, willful harm was caused by the author. What I got from it was that a book should not be judged by its cover, it's important to try and relate to people when traveling, and violence against women is a horrible problem.
If the names weren't changed, you could say he was a bit naive (although the odds of this ever reaching Irlan seem somewhat small to me), but ultimately, he portrayed all of the people he met in a positive light that makes me want to visit Kazakhstan.
I think being in such a situation, out of one's comfort zone, gives great perspective on what really matters (although it's not for everyone).
What I've experienced is, all over the world, people will try to help: if you seem like you need help and don't have all the answers/money.
For travelers -- if you know the local language, speak it. I had a scary experience in the same part of the word and managed to "ingenious" my way out of it. Speakign the local language just helps people identify with you more.
treat them like a person and they'll treat you like you are a person.
Yet another reason to have body cameras -- no he said, they said.
If Irlan didn't wanted to be bribed there would no discussion. All the chit-chat was in order to induce the victim to bribe him.
I heard much more salty stories from my father who was a Businessmen in the Balkan area in the 90s and 00s. After 2002 the situation in the Balkan area improved a lot, but it's not uncommon for police officers to get bribed, it's their way to make ends meet and the easier way for a foreigner to get things done.
Police in the United States are used to generally treating everyone (including foreigners) with impunity, while cops in other countries dealing with US citizens are more wary of causing a diplomatic incident. There's also the novelty factor: people from high status countries are seen as interesting, and the more uncommon your presence is there, the more friendly interest officials take.
He's making a mistaken inference by assuming that how the police treat US citizens also reflects how they treat locals.
My in-laws were in Iran during the revolution. He's American and she's Thai. They have a long story whose climactic confrontation with guards is suddenly resolved when they decide that the Thai lady with the fuzzy hooded coat must obviously be an American Eskimo and that this is the most amazing thing he's ever seen.
So the two of them have a story about the time they got out of a terrifying situation, and there's an Iranian somewhere who has a story about that one time, for reasons he will never understand, an American Eskimo wandered through his guard post.
Being able to speak the local language and to be able to portray yourself as "local boy made good" seems to bring out something in people where they want to root for you.
Both your responses have the person taking on the role of a --short term-- mentee: they show some sort of of connection + naïveté that prompts the authority figure into rooting for them ie caring enough to indicate next steps. '
Update: To be fair, I'll add that some cops in Kyrgyzstan like that kind of easy money -- they could harass you until you give them some money. But don't bribe them. It is best to play a total idiot like "you me, me you, me friend to you, you friend to me, yes, I like your country, nature mountains ... " etc. Don't forget to smile :)
> ...in another ten years, you will see, we’ll be living like Arabs.
Do you mean he is stupid or that Kakakistan doesn't have an oil refinery or that he doesn't have a successor?
This was an interesting throw away. I wonder what his experience was.
Good reading material, but I'm probably going to call the embassy (and 911).
At the very least its very impolite to hang around and gaggle at a police investigation or someone getting aid from the EMS. At that point you are only getting in the way.
I've never personally gotten assistance from a US Embassy but I know people who have and they were genuinely helpful.
A+++ would read again.
Trains shall run on tracks. Spontanious agents are a loss of controll. The horror.
b) Outing the photo of a cute 18 yo girl "who just got raped"
Yes - an interesting story - but this is extreme clickbait likely for profit. And problematic in other dimensions. This guy is an opportunist who does not seem to care about other people.
B) I can see your point. She did ask me to take photos and to tell her story. I have not been in touch with her in a while. I will deliberate for a bit and consider taking down her photos.
There is no profit motive. I am not paid for this story.
I'm not sure what to think about this. Corruption is bad. But this particular official's heart seemed to be in the right place, and he treated you with respect, honesty, and generosity, even when he didn't have to. He doesn't seem to have been repaid in kind.
I want to say something like, "Hopefully Irlan isn't on the wrong side of the courtroom as a result of your story," but on the other hand... corruption is bad, and I don't want the legal system in my own country to work this way.
So, did you do a good thing by exposing Irlan and his colleagues, or a bad thing by betraying them? I honestly don't know. You made me empathize with someone I wouldn't ordinarily empathize with, and then you stuck a knife in his back. Which is interesting.
Parenthetically, if you're a US citizen, you're subject to the FCPA, which can potentially be a pretty big deal. Google it if you're not familiar with the acronym. I don't know if the FCPA's reach extends to bribing low-level immigration officials, but it's worth looking into if you plan to leave the article up.
Is the FCPA applicable outside the context of business transactions?
There's building your personal brand and/or company. You know, that startup you're the CEO of.
It's clear that he was saying that no one's paying him to write this political reasons.
also I'd be so grateful for the boys, I'd least make some effort to repay all the beers :)
about a) i liked it. It builds a expectation that is completely shattered by the "but i got treated so well". He lures you in to thinking a little racist and than disproves it :)
For his memory. Clearly it wasn't a "tell my story!" Kind of moment. Even if it was, she'd been raped the day before then tried to flee the country with no money, got arrested and thrown in prison. She was clearly in a very vulnerable state and the writer was the first friendly face she'd seen. He admits he didn't contact her before posting her face all over the internet. The pictures have been taken down now btw.
Edit: OP says she asked him to tell her story. I still think he should have asked her at a time when, you know, she wasn't at the lowest point in her life.
can you like take this down?