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Transiting the Suez Canal in a Private Sailboat (2003)

264 points by dreamcompiler 6y ago

Waterluvian 6y ago
This might be the kind of life for some but not for me. I cannot handle the bribery and unspoken rules and such. It's a fascinating diary entry but it also makes me feel so anxious just reading it. I cherish being able to have my guard down at almost all times.
- anonu 6y ago
  If youre a (seemingly) rich foreigner in a poor country, what do you expect? Per capita GDP in Egypt is $250/month. For a guy on a yacht $5 or $10 dollars is no difference. For the other side, its a substantial percent of their earnings. They understand the differential, which is why they will press for more.
  - Waterluvian 6y ago
    I wonder if all poorer regions are apparently this pushy about getting their cigarettes.
    - xeromal 6y ago
      I got stopped in morocco and had to bribe my way out of it unless I wanted them to take my license.
    - toyg 6y ago
      Most of them are, but I reckon the number of tourists / foreigners is a factor.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    > for some but not for me [...] makes me feel so anxious > what do you expect I think it's less about expectations and more about preferences. Sure, this might be how it works in that part of the world, but if you're not from there, and you're not accustomed to constantly looking over your shoulder, an experience like this can be harrowing. Even if you know your counterpart is just doing what they always do and not giving it a second thought, some people would be drowning in anxiety. This seems like a completely reasonable personal limit to me.
  - amscanne 6y ago
    I think there's a lot of variation depending on the culture and context (i.e. this is a single impersonal transaction with an almost zero chance of repeat business, and probably attracts a lot of sketchy people to begin with). Many places in the world are poor but you don't feel live everyone is constantly trying to take advantage of you (but of course, the opposite is also true).
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    Then they should simply charge the higher amount. This “dance” where they pretend to be your friends when trying to extract that money and cigarettes from you when you are trying to get a service is extremely annoying. Want cigarettes? Put cigarettes on the requirements list. Not to mention that the informality creates special class of corrupt officials that easily leads to mafia politics. Criminals develop relationships with these people and easily do stuff that they are not supposed to do and the law abiding people stress over the bribes and mood of the staff. This even goes higher up, as paves the way for higher levels of corruption where things needs to be at scale and yet hush hush, exposing whole nations to political risks(from money laundering to terrorism).
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      You misunderstand the system. The charge goes to the organisation. Then the individual guards and officials then make their own fortune using the position they were given. Think of them more as entrepreneurs or self-employed. This system of handing out unpaid or poorly paid government positions has existed throughout the world, britain in 1800 worked like this - judges were not paid, they charged defendants whatever price they wanted. In Tsarist Russia the local officials working for the state" were charging the locals for their services whatever they felt like charging them. That way the state did not have to deal with paying them salaries, it was up to officials to 'make themselves usefull to thw community' What we call corruption today is just how the world used to work before - it was not structured and not everything had a fixed price.
      - mrtksn 6y ago
        I know that tax to the government and cigarettes to the officer are different but I think in 2021 no one should deal with that, we no longer do a lot of things that were normal in the olden days. And those who feel to operate like that should maybe should be more open about the payments so we can skip the negotiation part. A carton of cigarettes is not a big deal but trying deal with the official that tries to coerce you into that payment is. It makes things slow and unpredictable. Oh and I strongly disagree with the "entrepreneur" analogy, the people who get into these lucrative positions are people close to the politically dominant class. They often "donate" some of that money to their church/mosque/party and take it easy on the people of their clan when making life hard to the outsiders. A recent case is the case of Reza Zarrab, the guy who laundered Iranian money through Turkey and get caught. He has become a billionaire and was very well connected to the Turkish political class. Erdogan himself pulled a lot of strings with Trump. Very high profile case with a lot of US and Turkish public figures being involved, you should Google it.(Spoiler: Rudolph Giuliani was on his defence team) Apparently he had an issue with a customs officer called Teoman who refused bribes so he got Teoman fired. Those informal organisations are more like cabals than corporations. It's not about entrepreneurship but loyalty to the higher ups. It does create a business but that business is reserved to the people in power and the bribe takers are simply employees. Zarrab also gave a master class in bribery. His motto was "You pay prostitutes afterwards but public officials beforehand", apparently. Good to know.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    He didn't say what he expected, he said he didn't like it. They are welcome to charge whatever they want for services, it would be nice if that was just a normal up front conversation though.
  - santoshalper 6y ago
    I live in a wealthy western country and work for a living. I would rather not work so hard. Sometimes, in my line of work I encounter very wealthy people. Billionaires. People whose spare change could change my life. People who drive cars more expensive than my home, and have a fleet of them. You know what I don't do? Try to harass, intimidate or rob them. Do you know why? Because I am not an animal. The fact that this is expected in Egypt does not speak well of their culture. This person lives in a poor country, yes, but I don't think it is likely he is starving. Some countries and cultures are just more corrupt. Some rich, some poor.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      "You know what I don't do? Try to harass, intimidate or rob them. Do you know why? Because I am not an animal." I think you should gey off your high horse, comparing people to animals is not cool. For starters, you misunderstand the basics - are you actually sure you could harras a person with billions of dollars, connections and lawyers? Because, doing that in Russia is a good strategy to end in beried in the forest. In Brutain in 1800 judges were not paid by the state, the people being judged paid them. And the more they paid, the 'better' they were judged. That was official policy. Now obviously we call that corruption.
      - AlanYx 6y ago
        >In Brutain in 1800 judges were not paid by the state, the people being judged paid them. And the more they paid, the 'better' they were judged. That was official policy. Now obviously we call that corruption. Assuming you mean Britain, this is false. Judges in Britain have been paid by the state since the 13th century, and their oath to "in no way accept gift or reward from any party in litigation before them" dates to 1346.
        arethuza 6y ago
        Also judges in some parts swear: "I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this Realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will." Almost as if the UK had multiple legal systems!
  - Johnny555 6y ago
    If youre a (seemingly) rich foreigner in a poor country, what do you expect? Since you asked, I'd expect that professionals would do their job, not require me to bribe them to do their jobs. Which is why I wouldn't feel comfortable making this kind of trip.
    - gscott 6y ago
      The corruption goes up the ladder. These folks to keep there jobs likely have to pay in cash and cigarettes to whoever controls there ability to work the canal.
    - markdown 6y ago
      I feel this way about US tipping culture.
  - rrrazdan 6y ago
    Please don’t justify corruption in poor countries. It is not a way of life. And the adverse effects of this are very long term in nature.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Its been around for thousands of years, so its certainly a way of life. What we should not justify is corruptuon in rich countries, because folks there aren't doing it to survive, they do it to get ahead.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    That should not be justification for intimidation and flat out extortion. You're phrasing this as if it is OK and should be the expectation.
    - riversflow 6y ago
      Isn’t bribery the norm throughout time and place though? —and the kind of law and order we enjoy in the West, the exception? It’s understandable that this makes people who aren’t used to it uncomfortable, so does going barefoot, or not using a toilet. People are a product of their environment. My point is, it’s easy to proselytize when you are a comfortable wealthy person, adapted to and living in a state with a functional justice system.
      - fermienrico 6y ago
        Replace extortion with rape. You'll quickly realize how absurd this argument is. They're breaking their own laws decided by their own people.
        ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
        This is a ridiculous statement. I would venture to guess that you have smoked weed in a place where it was still illegal. But breaking that law is not equivalent to rape. That's a total false equivalence. Not all laws are equally just from each person's perspective. Minor corruption like this, while corrosive, is not viewed as negatively by the local population. I would argue that the US allowing infinite money on politics and our forms of lobbying, regulatory capture, and rent seeking are way worse than this minor corruption.
        Chris2048 6y ago
        Both rape and scamming have a perpetrator and a victim - who is the victim of smoking weed? This is less about the law, and more about the morality of victimising someone; legal harassment/threats would also fall into this category.
  - toomanybeersies 6y ago
    > For the other side, its a substantial percent of their earnings The article infers that the measurer "measures" around half a dozen yachts a day, so they'd be collecting somewhere around $1,200 a month in bribes (which coincidentally is the same amount as the US minimum wage). That's not a substantial percent of their earnings, it's their primary income. Their government salary is just lunch money.
- CalChris 6y ago
  After you exit the Suez into the Gulf of Aden, you get to sail past Somalia where the locals won't be asking so politely.
- el_dev_hell 6y ago
  Agreed. As someone that lived in Cambodia where "tea" money (a nice way to say bribe) is very common. It was unsettling every time.
- rahimiali 6y ago
  It’s stressful but it serves a purpose. In the west, we use “sliding scales”, or “surge pricing”, or “suggested donations” to charge people different prices according to their means. The rest of the world has very similar mechanisms. The main difference is the sliding scales aren’t published, even if they are well known.
  - anon_tor_12345 6y ago
    It's a hilarious (nefarious?) kind of xenophobia that's repulsed by this kind of stuff but is wilfully ignorant of exactly the same thing, by another name, in the developed world. And I'm not even talking about "sliding scales" but the well known grift and corruption. The truth is this kind of exploit exists everywhere institutions exist because individuals are not identical with institutions.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
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johnnyAghands 6y ago
Wow that was tough to read. The writer seems incredibly calm given the experience -- I'd never be able to cope with that crap without punching someone. Kudos
foobarbazetc 6y ago
There’s a time lapse video of a Suez Canal transit on a container ship here: https://youtu.be/L0J-VIvKLsc https://youtu.be/L0J-VIvKLsc
- fdrobotic 6y ago
  Here is one that shows just how bad the visibility can get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWF7A9Ujr3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWF7A9Ujr3w
  - Johnny555 6y ago
    All of the buoys are fitted with radar reflectors. Since all vessels transiting the canal have to have pilots, I wouldn't think visibility would be that big of a deal when they can see the buoys with radar.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      According to TFA the pilots managed to crash one boat into a harbor wall and ground another with perfect visibility. I don't think that would improve with worse visibility.
  - irrational 6y ago
    Wow. I thought driving a car in fog was terrible. This is absolutely terrifying.
    - roelschroeven 6y ago
      They do have radar, AIS, and an electronic chart on which their position and the position of the buoys is plotted, as well as the other ships (via AIS). And a pilot on board who is very familiar with the area. All of that helps a lot, and in some ways it's probably better than driving a car in that fog. But yes, it's still terrifying.
- capableweb 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing. Something strange I noticed, it seems they are not meeting any other ships going the other way? Is there separate locations where boats are waiting before they continue? Second note is that it's easy to notice how windy it is and how easy it would be to get stuck in the side if you're not paying 100% attention. At many points in the video you can see the ship it's filmed from pointing in one way, but actually travel a different way.
eddy_chan 6y ago
If I was a sailor I'd rather go around the Cape of Good Hope than deal with this.
- jalbertoni 6y ago
  See, the problem is it's cheaper to pay all the bribes. Morality is good and commendable but in the end money speaks, at least in the shipping industry. The trip around it is way, way more expensive, both in time and fuel.
- SergeAx 6y ago
  Going in a small sailboat through doldrums, then against south passats, all the way to Canaries will take about two or three months of non-stop sailing. You will still need to enter ports to get food and fuel, and deal with african border and port authorities. The whole feat would be an equivalent of 5-10 Suez Canal transitions in terms of haggling and bribery, 10-20 in money and 30-50 times longer.
Ozzie_osman 6y ago
My dad is from Ismailia, a town on the Suez Canal (right in the middle of it). Growing up, about 20 years ago, we could go on a fishing boat or speed boat into the canal, and sometimes even get somewhat close to the ships. It was awesome. These days, there's a lot more security.
ehnto 6y ago
The Wynns from Gone with the Wynns did a great series of YouTube videos about transiting the Panama Canal. It looks pretty nerve wracking.
- opwieurposiu 6y ago
  Do you still need to hire four line handlers and a pilot or can you pilot yourself?
  - ehnto 6y ago
    They did have to hire a pilot and there were some handlers at some point, I think the port offered the services though so you just paid the port services.
praveen9920 6y ago
This is a common thing here in India, be it a traffic police man or govt employee in office . Not cigarettes but currency is valid, you are expected to pay based on benefit you get. You get ₹1000, you have to pay around 10%. While it is annoying to pay, even more annoying thing is the entitlement of authorities. People here are so used to the informal tax they wouldn’t bother resisting in anyway.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  These practices are called "Facilitating Payments" [0] (as opposed to bribery) and they're explicitly allowed by laws like the FCPA [1]. It seems strange for them to be legal, but the distinction is that you're merely expediting the work of a bureaucratic official that was going to do the work anyway, if perhaps more slowly. When you start paying decision-makers to make high-value decisions in your favor, that becomes bribery and it gets illegal very fast. (Although there can be a lot of gray area involved.) The fact that these practices are technically legal doesn't make them less odious, IMO. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitating_payment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitating_payment [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
  - jcims 6y ago
    I worked for a very large bank for a spell and distinctly remember this from their mandatory anti-bribery training. I thought it was hilarious that this was enshrined in the formal material, but was glad because i would stress putting it on my expense report.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    That has me thinking. A non-euphemistic facilitative payment would be like priority mail essentially of paying more to the root institute for a higher tier of service. Reminds me of the ironic case of university admission legality - bribing the institution itself with say donations large enough to get your name on a building wing gets your lazy idiot kid into a prestigious university but doing so directly is bribery. The funny thing is that it is so transparently selfish yet it actually makes sense from an incentives letter. If the dillution from lazy idiot rich kid's admission allows for funding to do more positive things to improve quality overall if spent wisely. Doing directly just lines their pocket. Now government vs private university is apples to oranges but it hints at a source of harm from corruption other than just unfairness is skewing decision making towards personal benefits instead of who they should be operating on behalf of.
geocrasher 6y ago
Paul Lutus (the guy who wrote AppleWriter) sailed around the world in the late 80's, solo. He wrote about it in "Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor", which is freely available online at his own personal website: https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html In chapter 7 he goes into his trip through the Suez Canal. Mind you, this was in the late 80's, and it didn't sound very pleasant.
- tibu 6y ago
  Thank you for this. I read now Chapter 7 and this seems to be a really good book.
  - geocrasher 6y ago
    It really is quite good- read the whole thing :)
- jcims 6y ago
  He also worked on the Space Shuttle. Paul is a fairly prolific commenter on Reddit. Over the years there have been a few hilarious exchanges between him and some unfortunate know-it-alls on the platform.
  - unwind 6y ago
    That sounds really interesting, do you have any links?
    - Spare_account 6y ago
      Here's a link to am AMA he hosted, you can explore his comment history from there I guess: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q9qzn/iama_former_nasa_space_shuttle_engineer_created/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q9qzn/iama_former_nas...
    - jcims 6y ago
      None beyond the ama/username link That spare_account provided. It’s been 4-5 years at least, most of the stuff i read was about his work on the shuttle, people arguing with him about various engineering topics.
bitpow 6y ago
Will this site be accessible after Chrome forces HTTPS everywhere?
- tempestn 6y ago
  My understanding is that Chrome is defaulting to https when a protocol is not specified, not forcing https everywhere.
- shric 6y ago
  Chrome will just attempt https first when you type something in your browser without an explicit http:// http:// prefix. If the https:// https:// connection fails, it will fall back to http.
jacquesm 6y ago
Driving through Poland or Romania used to be very much like this. Bullshit police stops and bribery were pretty much the norm.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  It's pretty impressive how quickly Poland turned into a mostly "high trust" society (I don't know about Romania). Like, a few decades? Sure there's still some corruption and nepotism but totally not like this, and it changed in a single generation.
  - snickerer 6y ago
    Georgia in the Caucasus is quite interesting. The police there were Soviet-style horribly corrupt. And, some years ago, this changed from one day to the next. They fired all the old officers and started with better training and better payment for the new ones. And with punishment for bribery and criminal behavior at duty. The society decided to do this and it worked very well. I personally experienced encounters with police in Georgia and they were nice and friendly. They helped me instead of robbing me. Very impressive.
  - yread 6y ago
    we did a road trip for a few days in Romania a few years ago and experienced no corruption. It was a rental though perhaps it would be different if we had foreign plates?
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Both are fine now, you still get stopped more often than in western countries but no more bribery and reasonably professional police officers. Romania took a lot longer to get to that state than Poland though. In general Poland's progress over the last 30 years has been extremely impressive.
whoisjuan 6y ago
What stood out the most in this story for me, it’s how pack of cigarettes seem to operate as some kind of currency. They are not particularly expensive (about 85 EGP or 6 USD a pack) so I wonder why they seem to prefer them over money. Are they just being hypocritical and thinking that just because they are asking for a pack of cigarettes (instead of money) they are not engaging in bribery?
- kqr 6y ago
  I would assume that they either have direct value (bank notes cannot be smoked), or they're a more reliable store of value than bank notes, or they're more liquid than bank notes in the types of business they would need money for later. In short, maybe cigarettes are a better money than whatever fiat bank notes could replace them. (Though the text does seem to indicate that payment was often made in a combination of fiat and cigarettes, so maybe they're about equal in value after all.)
- isolli 6y ago
  Tangentially related: cigarettes were a currency in Nazi concentration camps [0]. Obviously money was not an option there... [0] https://www.finance-watch.org/the-perfect-draw-when-cigarettes-became-a-war-camp-currency/ https://www.finance-watch.org/the-perfect-draw-when-cigarett...
  - Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
    They were also a currency in American federal prisons, until the prison system banned smoking. At that point, they were replaced with pouches of mackerel...
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> I knew I could be in for at least a day or two of delays, more Yacht Club Fees, etc. so I agreed to pay it. It was "only" $75 too much. Reminds me of a pretty sad episode I had in Mexico. After hearing about it from friends a few times, the time finally came for me (and my wife) to meet a corrupt police officer on our way to the airport. Long story short... I ended up paying $100 to have him let us go. I then regretted it, but... What could you do in these situations? Is it worth the trouble? Can a proper behavior (refusing to bribe) change things?
- leetcrew 6y ago
  same thing happened to my family many years ago. I don't think there's any way around it. there's a reason why they set up on the road to the airport. they know it's easily worth $100 to americans not to miss their flight.
tlb 6y ago
How do people in countries where bribes are pervasive think about Anglosphere countries where they aren't? Do they think we're oblivious to the potential? Not interested in money? So rich it doesn't matter? Or do they feel sorry for officials not getting the share they deserve?
- pixelpoet 6y ago
  I'd love to hear about this too.
- snickerer 6y ago
  I had conversations about this topic with people from Russia, Turkey, and Iran. They compared their country of origin with Switzerland and Germany. It was not only about bribery but also about informal vs. formal organization of society. They all told me that the clear organizational structures and reliability in the West are a big relief for them personally. They loved this aspect of the western country. And I remember the stressed faces of the local victims when they were stopped by the highwaymen (the traffic police) in Azerbaijan. So I believe everyone hates the corruption and would love to live in a place where you can rely on the official rules.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  I can put one datapoint: a person i know closely forgot a bag on a train in Switzerland, with significant valuables inside. This was in a rural area, with a tiny train station. He told the local staff, they told the train driver, and at his next stop he passed it to the driver of a train going the other way. The guy had his valuables back withing 40 minutes. He tried to offer some cash to the guy as a token of gratitude and he got offended. The dude was left feeling very uncomfortable and not sure what to do or how to soove over the situation. That guy is reasonably aware of how europe works, but old habbit die hard. Also switzerland is probably one of the most orderly places around
- M277 6y ago
  As an Egyptian, my thought is that it's a conscience issue, and also a law-trust issue. People in Anglosphere countries respect the law better than here (and the law is also actually applied and enforced), while here people just don't care (and the law isn't applied in many cases). Some people actually boast that they're breaking the law :)
js2 6y ago
Transiting the world (including the Suez Canal) in a private sailboat: https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/ https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/ The Suez Canal is featured in Chapter 7: https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/Chapter_7_--_Sri_Lanka_to_Tel_Aviv.html https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/Chapter_7_--_Sri_Lanka_to_Tel... (I read the whole book years ago and found it very vicariously entertaining.) The author is Paul Lutus: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lutusp https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lutusp
4gotunameagain 6y ago
This is one of the aspects of the Islamic world that I do not like. Bartering/bribing/coercing is super common, and I fail to see how it could have any positive benefit at all. My home country has huge Islamic influences, and it is prevalent there as well. All it does is destroy your sense of trust for any authority, and without even minimal trust no one ever tries to improve things, a vicious cycle.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  I have always been curious about this, because in my mind systems (however distasteful we may find them) do not arise for no reason. You imagine it reflects some underlying dynamics going on. I have heard that Arabic / Islamic society is much more family, neighbor, who-you-know oriented versus western society trusting more the rules of some authority, even if not personally known to you. Even for example, mundane things like if you need your plumbing fixed, you don't look up the yellow pages, you ask your friend to refer someone. Does this lead to "favors" being more acceptable, like as a gift to someone you know for having helped you? Interpreted in a more charitable way, bribes/baksheesh are an expression of gratitude (though now an obligation of doing business)? You start to think such factors must be ingrained in a people's mentality, because otherwise, why don't we just declare laws that make this sort of practice illegal and everyone is happier?
  - em500 6y ago
    Some economists / sociologists classify this as low-trust/high-trust societies. In low-trust societies, trust typically does not extend far beyond family and personal connections. There's nothing Islamic about it: low-trust is more or less synonymous with low- to middle income societies, with the majority non-Islamic (China, India, Latin America). High-trust is largly "Western" (North America, Western/Norhern Europe, Oceania), but also the rich Asian countries (Japan, South Korean, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore). The causal relationship between high-trust and high-income is difficult to disentangle, but there's plausibly some form of positive feedback loop at work. I'm not sure what you have in mind with "arise for no reason". Both historically and presently by population-majority, low-trust society seem the norm and high-trust the exeption. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_socie...
weinzierl 6y ago
USD 225 plus some small amount of bribes for a transit according to the article. Contrast that with the recent news reporting that called an amount of roughly 250000 EUR per ship on average. From another source 4.2 billion Euros income per year for 19000 ships per year which roughly matches the quarter million per ship number. Unfortunately the article isn't dated but from the navigation bar I assume the transit was before 2003. Does anyone know what a transit in a small yacht costs today, or know even the formula the article talks about?
- fastasucan 6y ago
  I may misunderstand you, but you cannot compare bribe money for a yacht with what enormous vessels pay for transit.
TheButlerian 6y ago
Were the western operators of the Canal corrupt?
gauchojs 6y ago
I find it very interesting. Most of us are more used to highways and airports. The problems one usually has are "if you don't have the documents with you, you go home/get on the next flight". But in "boat world", delaying a trip a few days is no big deal. So things move slowly, there's time for all this cigarette song and dance, etc. This story has some old world charm in some sense. Of course bribery is not cool, but in other ways I'm glad the whole world isn't (wasn't.. 2003) so homogeneous, and would prefer it to remain that way because its more interesting.
motohagiography 6y ago
The problem is that corruption is contagious. When you assent to it, you are compromised as well. It's a kind of collateral blackmail people use. You can see it in politics and even corporate management in the west, it's just a little more nuanced and refined. While I think bribe culture is disgusting, and it's infuriating in Canada to see how dirty money effects neighbourhoods and how every level of government is in on it, the way corruption works in companies is when your boss tells you, "I want to be honest about this statement," it can often mean he wants you to hold the risk even if it means lying. In tech, there is a certain kind of project manager who will try to extract date commitments from engineers by browbeating them like a prosecutor looking for leverage, and the reason is they want to get you submit and "lie," so they can make a fake commitment to their boss and blame you for it. It's the result of a similar kind of corruption in the organization. Corruption itself isn't cultural, and the WASP version of it is a weirdly oblique gaslighting, but it certainly infects cultures, and it's anathema to what any culture would consider its ideal.

264 points by dreamcompiler 6y ago

This might be the kind of life for some but not for me. I cannot handle the bribery and unspoken rules and such. It's a fascinating diary entry but it also makes me feel so anxious just reading it. I cherish being able to have my guard down at almost all times.

anonu 6y ago
If youre a (seemingly) rich foreigner in a poor country, what do you expect? Per capita GDP in Egypt is $250/month. For a guy on a yacht $5 or $10 dollars is no difference. For the other side, its a substantial percent of their earnings. They understand the differential, which is why they will press for more.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  I wonder if all poorer regions are apparently this pushy about getting their cigarettes.
  - xeromal 6y ago
    I got stopped in morocco and had to bribe my way out of it unless I wanted them to take my license.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Most of them are, but I reckon the number of tourists / foreigners is a factor.
- ohazi 6y ago
  > for some but not for me [...] makes me feel so anxious > what do you expect I think it's less about expectations and more about preferences. Sure, this might be how it works in that part of the world, but if you're not from there, and you're not accustomed to constantly looking over your shoulder, an experience like this can be harrowing. Even if you know your counterpart is just doing what they always do and not giving it a second thought, some people would be drowning in anxiety. This seems like a completely reasonable personal limit to me.
- amscanne 6y ago
  I think there's a lot of variation depending on the culture and context (i.e. this is a single impersonal transaction with an almost zero chance of repeat business, and probably attracts a lot of sketchy people to begin with). Many places in the world are poor but you don't feel live everyone is constantly trying to take advantage of you (but of course, the opposite is also true).
- mrtksn 6y ago
  Then they should simply charge the higher amount. This “dance” where they pretend to be your friends when trying to extract that money and cigarettes from you when you are trying to get a service is extremely annoying. Want cigarettes? Put cigarettes on the requirements list. Not to mention that the informality creates special class of corrupt officials that easily leads to mafia politics. Criminals develop relationships with these people and easily do stuff that they are not supposed to do and the law abiding people stress over the bribes and mood of the staff. This even goes higher up, as paves the way for higher levels of corruption where things needs to be at scale and yet hush hush, exposing whole nations to political risks(from money laundering to terrorism).
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    You misunderstand the system. The charge goes to the organisation. Then the individual guards and officials then make their own fortune using the position they were given. Think of them more as entrepreneurs or self-employed. This system of handing out unpaid or poorly paid government positions has existed throughout the world, britain in 1800 worked like this - judges were not paid, they charged defendants whatever price they wanted. In Tsarist Russia the local officials working for the state" were charging the locals for their services whatever they felt like charging them. That way the state did not have to deal with paying them salaries, it was up to officials to 'make themselves usefull to thw community' What we call corruption today is just how the world used to work before - it was not structured and not everything had a fixed price.
    - mrtksn 6y ago
      I know that tax to the government and cigarettes to the officer are different but I think in 2021 no one should deal with that, we no longer do a lot of things that were normal in the olden days. And those who feel to operate like that should maybe should be more open about the payments so we can skip the negotiation part. A carton of cigarettes is not a big deal but trying deal with the official that tries to coerce you into that payment is. It makes things slow and unpredictable. Oh and I strongly disagree with the "entrepreneur" analogy, the people who get into these lucrative positions are people close to the politically dominant class. They often "donate" some of that money to their church/mosque/party and take it easy on the people of their clan when making life hard to the outsiders. A recent case is the case of Reza Zarrab, the guy who laundered Iranian money through Turkey and get caught. He has become a billionaire and was very well connected to the Turkish political class. Erdogan himself pulled a lot of strings with Trump. Very high profile case with a lot of US and Turkish public figures being involved, you should Google it.(Spoiler: Rudolph Giuliani was on his defence team) Apparently he had an issue with a customs officer called Teoman who refused bribes so he got Teoman fired. Those informal organisations are more like cabals than corporations. It's not about entrepreneurship but loyalty to the higher ups. It does create a business but that business is reserved to the people in power and the bribe takers are simply employees. Zarrab also gave a master class in bribery. His motto was "You pay prostitutes afterwards but public officials beforehand", apparently. Good to know.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  He didn't say what he expected, he said he didn't like it. They are welcome to charge whatever they want for services, it would be nice if that was just a normal up front conversation though.
- santoshalper 6y ago
  I live in a wealthy western country and work for a living. I would rather not work so hard. Sometimes, in my line of work I encounter very wealthy people. Billionaires. People whose spare change could change my life. People who drive cars more expensive than my home, and have a fleet of them. You know what I don't do? Try to harass, intimidate or rob them. Do you know why? Because I am not an animal. The fact that this is expected in Egypt does not speak well of their culture. This person lives in a poor country, yes, but I don't think it is likely he is starving. Some countries and cultures are just more corrupt. Some rich, some poor.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    "You know what I don't do? Try to harass, intimidate or rob them. Do you know why? Because I am not an animal." I think you should gey off your high horse, comparing people to animals is not cool. For starters, you misunderstand the basics - are you actually sure you could harras a person with billions of dollars, connections and lawyers? Because, doing that in Russia is a good strategy to end in beried in the forest. In Brutain in 1800 judges were not paid by the state, the people being judged paid them. And the more they paid, the 'better' they were judged. That was official policy. Now obviously we call that corruption.
    - AlanYx 6y ago
      >In Brutain in 1800 judges were not paid by the state, the people being judged paid them. And the more they paid, the 'better' they were judged. That was official policy. Now obviously we call that corruption. Assuming you mean Britain, this is false. Judges in Britain have been paid by the state since the 13th century, and their oath to "in no way accept gift or reward from any party in litigation before them" dates to 1346.
      - arethuza 6y ago
        Also judges in some parts swear: "I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this Realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will." Almost as if the UK had multiple legal systems!
- Johnny555 6y ago
  If youre a (seemingly) rich foreigner in a poor country, what do you expect? Since you asked, I'd expect that professionals would do their job, not require me to bribe them to do their jobs. Which is why I wouldn't feel comfortable making this kind of trip.
  - gscott 6y ago
    The corruption goes up the ladder. These folks to keep there jobs likely have to pay in cash and cigarettes to whoever controls there ability to work the canal.
  - markdown 6y ago
    I feel this way about US tipping culture.
- rrrazdan 6y ago
  Please don’t justify corruption in poor countries. It is not a way of life. And the adverse effects of this are very long term in nature.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Its been around for thousands of years, so its certainly a way of life. What we should not justify is corruptuon in rich countries, because folks there aren't doing it to survive, they do it to get ahead.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  That should not be justification for intimidation and flat out extortion. You're phrasing this as if it is OK and should be the expectation.
  - riversflow 6y ago
    Isn’t bribery the norm throughout time and place though? —and the kind of law and order we enjoy in the West, the exception? It’s understandable that this makes people who aren’t used to it uncomfortable, so does going barefoot, or not using a toilet. People are a product of their environment. My point is, it’s easy to proselytize when you are a comfortable wealthy person, adapted to and living in a state with a functional justice system.
    - fermienrico 6y ago
      Replace extortion with rape. You'll quickly realize how absurd this argument is. They're breaking their own laws decided by their own people.
      - ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
        This is a ridiculous statement. I would venture to guess that you have smoked weed in a place where it was still illegal. But breaking that law is not equivalent to rape. That's a total false equivalence. Not all laws are equally just from each person's perspective. Minor corruption like this, while corrosive, is not viewed as negatively by the local population. I would argue that the US allowing infinite money on politics and our forms of lobbying, regulatory capture, and rent seeking are way worse than this minor corruption.
        Chris2048 6y ago
        Both rape and scamming have a perpetrator and a victim - who is the victim of smoking weed? This is less about the law, and more about the morality of victimising someone; legal harassment/threats would also fall into this category.
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  > For the other side, its a substantial percent of their earnings The article infers that the measurer "measures" around half a dozen yachts a day, so they'd be collecting somewhere around $1,200 a month in bribes (which coincidentally is the same amount as the US minimum wage). That's not a substantial percent of their earnings, it's their primary income. Their government salary is just lunch money.
CalChris 6y ago
After you exit the Suez into the Gulf of Aden, you get to sail past Somalia where the locals won't be asking so politely.
el_dev_hell 6y ago
Agreed. As someone that lived in Cambodia where "tea" money (a nice way to say bribe) is very common. It was unsettling every time.
rahimiali 6y ago
It’s stressful but it serves a purpose. In the west, we use “sliding scales”, or “surge pricing”, or “suggested donations” to charge people different prices according to their means. The rest of the world has very similar mechanisms. The main difference is the sliding scales aren’t published, even if they are well known.
- anon_tor_12345 6y ago
  It's a hilarious (nefarious?) kind of xenophobia that's repulsed by this kind of stuff but is wilfully ignorant of exactly the same thing, by another name, in the developed world. And I'm not even talking about "sliding scales" but the well known grift and corruption. The truth is this kind of exploit exists everywhere institutions exist because individuals are not identical with institutions.

deleted 6y ago

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johnnyAghands 6y ago

Wow that was tough to read. The writer seems incredibly calm given the experience -- I'd never be able to cope with that crap without punching someone. Kudos

foobarbazetc 6y ago

There’s a time lapse video of a Suez Canal transit on a container ship here: https://youtu.be/L0J-VIvKLsc https://youtu.be/L0J-VIvKLsc

fdrobotic 6y ago
Here is one that shows just how bad the visibility can get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWF7A9Ujr3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWF7A9Ujr3w
- Johnny555 6y ago
  All of the buoys are fitted with radar reflectors. Since all vessels transiting the canal have to have pilots, I wouldn't think visibility would be that big of a deal when they can see the buoys with radar.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    According to TFA the pilots managed to crash one boat into a harbor wall and ground another with perfect visibility. I don't think that would improve with worse visibility.
- irrational 6y ago
  Wow. I thought driving a car in fog was terrible. This is absolutely terrifying.
  - roelschroeven 6y ago
    They do have radar, AIS, and an electronic chart on which their position and the position of the buoys is plotted, as well as the other ships (via AIS). And a pilot on board who is very familiar with the area. All of that helps a lot, and in some ways it's probably better than driving a car in that fog. But yes, it's still terrifying.
capableweb 6y ago
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Something strange I noticed, it seems they are not meeting any other ships going the other way? Is there separate locations where boats are waiting before they continue? Second note is that it's easy to notice how windy it is and how easy it would be to get stuck in the side if you're not paying 100% attention. At many points in the video you can see the ship it's filmed from pointing in one way, but actually travel a different way.

eddy_chan 6y ago

If I was a sailor I'd rather go around the Cape of Good Hope than deal with this.

jalbertoni 6y ago
See, the problem is it's cheaper to pay all the bribes. Morality is good and commendable but in the end money speaks, at least in the shipping industry. The trip around it is way, way more expensive, both in time and fuel.
SergeAx 6y ago
Going in a small sailboat through doldrums, then against south passats, all the way to Canaries will take about two or three months of non-stop sailing. You will still need to enter ports to get food and fuel, and deal with african border and port authorities. The whole feat would be an equivalent of 5-10 Suez Canal transitions in terms of haggling and bribery, 10-20 in money and 30-50 times longer.

Ozzie_osman 6y ago

My dad is from Ismailia, a town on the Suez Canal (right in the middle of it). Growing up, about 20 years ago, we could go on a fishing boat or speed boat into the canal, and sometimes even get somewhat close to the ships. It was awesome. These days, there's a lot more security.

ehnto 6y ago

The Wynns from Gone with the Wynns did a great series of YouTube videos about transiting the Panama Canal. It looks pretty nerve wracking.

opwieurposiu 6y ago
Do you still need to hire four line handlers and a pilot or can you pilot yourself?
- ehnto 6y ago
  They did have to hire a pilot and there were some handlers at some point, I think the port offered the services though so you just paid the port services.

praveen9920 6y ago

This is a common thing here in India, be it a traffic police man or govt employee in office . Not cigarettes but currency is valid, you are expected to pay based on benefit you get. You get ₹1000, you have to pay around 10%. While it is annoying to pay, even more annoying thing is the entitlement of authorities. People here are so used to the informal tax they wouldn’t bother resisting in anyway.

dreamcompiler 6y ago
These practices are called "Facilitating Payments" [0] (as opposed to bribery) and they're explicitly allowed by laws like the FCPA [1]. It seems strange for them to be legal, but the distinction is that you're merely expediting the work of a bureaucratic official that was going to do the work anyway, if perhaps more slowly. When you start paying decision-makers to make high-value decisions in your favor, that becomes bribery and it gets illegal very fast. (Although there can be a lot of gray area involved.) The fact that these practices are technically legal doesn't make them less odious, IMO. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitating_payment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitating_payment [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
- jcims 6y ago
  I worked for a very large bank for a spell and distinctly remember this from their mandatory anti-bribery training. I thought it was hilarious that this was enshrined in the formal material, but was glad because i would stress putting it on my expense report.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  That has me thinking. A non-euphemistic facilitative payment would be like priority mail essentially of paying more to the root institute for a higher tier of service. Reminds me of the ironic case of university admission legality - bribing the institution itself with say donations large enough to get your name on a building wing gets your lazy idiot kid into a prestigious university but doing so directly is bribery. The funny thing is that it is so transparently selfish yet it actually makes sense from an incentives letter. If the dillution from lazy idiot rich kid's admission allows for funding to do more positive things to improve quality overall if spent wisely. Doing directly just lines their pocket. Now government vs private university is apples to oranges but it hints at a source of harm from corruption other than just unfairness is skewing decision making towards personal benefits instead of who they should be operating on behalf of.

geocrasher 6y ago

Paul Lutus (the guy who wrote AppleWriter) sailed around the world in the late 80's, solo. He wrote about it in "Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor", which is freely available online at his own personal website: https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html In chapter 7 he goes into his trip through the Suez Canal. Mind you, this was in the late 80's, and it didn't sound very pleasant.

tibu 6y ago
Thank you for this. I read now Chapter 7 and this seems to be a really good book.
- geocrasher 6y ago
  It really is quite good- read the whole thing :)
jcims 6y ago
He also worked on the Space Shuttle. Paul is a fairly prolific commenter on Reddit. Over the years there have been a few hilarious exchanges between him and some unfortunate know-it-alls on the platform.
- unwind 6y ago
  That sounds really interesting, do you have any links?
  - Spare_account 6y ago
    Here's a link to am AMA he hosted, you can explore his comment history from there I guess: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q9qzn/iama_former_nasa_space_shuttle_engineer_created/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q9qzn/iama_former_nas...
  - jcims 6y ago
    None beyond the ama/username link That spare_account provided. It’s been 4-5 years at least, most of the stuff i read was about his work on the shuttle, people arguing with him about various engineering topics.

bitpow 6y ago

Will this site be accessible after Chrome forces HTTPS everywhere?

tempestn 6y ago
My understanding is that Chrome is defaulting to https when a protocol is not specified, not forcing https everywhere.
shric 6y ago
Chrome will just attempt https first when you type something in your browser without an explicit http:// http:// prefix. If the https:// https:// connection fails, it will fall back to http.

jacquesm 6y ago

Driving through Poland or Romania used to be very much like this. Bullshit police stops and bribery were pretty much the norm.

skrebbel 6y ago
It's pretty impressive how quickly Poland turned into a mostly "high trust" society (I don't know about Romania). Like, a few decades? Sure there's still some corruption and nepotism but totally not like this, and it changed in a single generation.
- snickerer 6y ago
  Georgia in the Caucasus is quite interesting. The police there were Soviet-style horribly corrupt. And, some years ago, this changed from one day to the next. They fired all the old officers and started with better training and better payment for the new ones. And with punishment for bribery and criminal behavior at duty. The society decided to do this and it worked very well. I personally experienced encounters with police in Georgia and they were nice and friendly. They helped me instead of robbing me. Very impressive.
- yread 6y ago
  we did a road trip for a few days in Romania a few years ago and experienced no corruption. It was a rental though perhaps it would be different if we had foreign plates?
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Both are fine now, you still get stopped more often than in western countries but no more bribery and reasonably professional police officers. Romania took a lot longer to get to that state than Poland though. In general Poland's progress over the last 30 years has been extremely impressive.

whoisjuan 6y ago

What stood out the most in this story for me, it’s how pack of cigarettes seem to operate as some kind of currency. They are not particularly expensive (about 85 EGP or 6 USD a pack) so I wonder why they seem to prefer them over money. Are they just being hypocritical and thinking that just because they are asking for a pack of cigarettes (instead of money) they are not engaging in bribery?

kqr 6y ago
I would assume that they either have direct value (bank notes cannot be smoked), or they're a more reliable store of value than bank notes, or they're more liquid than bank notes in the types of business they would need money for later. In short, maybe cigarettes are a better money than whatever fiat bank notes could replace them. (Though the text does seem to indicate that payment was often made in a combination of fiat and cigarettes, so maybe they're about equal in value after all.)
isolli 6y ago
Tangentially related: cigarettes were a currency in Nazi concentration camps [0]. Obviously money was not an option there... [0] https://www.finance-watch.org/the-perfect-draw-when-cigarettes-became-a-war-camp-currency/ https://www.finance-watch.org/the-perfect-draw-when-cigarett...
- Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
  They were also a currency in American federal prisons, until the prison system banned smoking. At that point, they were replaced with pouches of mackerel...

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

> I knew I could be in for at least a day or two of delays, more Yacht Club Fees, etc. so I agreed to pay it. It was "only" $75 too much. Reminds me of a pretty sad episode I had in Mexico. After hearing about it from friends a few times, the time finally came for me (and my wife) to meet a corrupt police officer on our way to the airport. Long story short... I ended up paying $100 to have him let us go. I then regretted it, but... What could you do in these situations? Is it worth the trouble? Can a proper behavior (refusing to bribe) change things?

leetcrew 6y ago
same thing happened to my family many years ago. I don't think there's any way around it. there's a reason why they set up on the road to the airport. they know it's easily worth $100 to americans not to miss their flight.

tlb 6y ago

How do people in countries where bribes are pervasive think about Anglosphere countries where they aren't? Do they think we're oblivious to the potential? Not interested in money? So rich it doesn't matter? Or do they feel sorry for officials not getting the share they deserve?

pixelpoet 6y ago
I'd love to hear about this too.
snickerer 6y ago
I had conversations about this topic with people from Russia, Turkey, and Iran. They compared their country of origin with Switzerland and Germany. It was not only about bribery but also about informal vs. formal organization of society. They all told me that the clear organizational structures and reliability in the West are a big relief for them personally. They loved this aspect of the western country. And I remember the stressed faces of the local victims when they were stopped by the highwaymen (the traffic police) in Azerbaijan. So I believe everyone hates the corruption and would love to live in a place where you can rely on the official rules.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
I can put one datapoint: a person i know closely forgot a bag on a train in Switzerland, with significant valuables inside. This was in a rural area, with a tiny train station. He told the local staff, they told the train driver, and at his next stop he passed it to the driver of a train going the other way. The guy had his valuables back withing 40 minutes. He tried to offer some cash to the guy as a token of gratitude and he got offended. The dude was left feeling very uncomfortable and not sure what to do or how to soove over the situation. That guy is reasonably aware of how europe works, but old habbit die hard. Also switzerland is probably one of the most orderly places around
M277 6y ago
As an Egyptian, my thought is that it's a conscience issue, and also a law-trust issue. People in Anglosphere countries respect the law better than here (and the law is also actually applied and enforced), while here people just don't care (and the law isn't applied in many cases). Some people actually boast that they're breaking the law :)

js2 6y ago

Transiting the world (including the Suez Canal) in a private sailboat: https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/ https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/ The Suez Canal is featured in Chapter 7: https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/Chapter_7_--_Sri_Lanka_to_Tel_Aviv.html https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/Chapter_7_--_Sri_Lanka_to_Tel... (I read the whole book years ago and found it very vicariously entertaining.) The author is Paul Lutus: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lutusp https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lutusp

4gotunameagain 6y ago

This is one of the aspects of the Islamic world that I do not like. Bartering/bribing/coercing is super common, and I fail to see how it could have any positive benefit at all. My home country has huge Islamic influences, and it is prevalent there as well. All it does is destroy your sense of trust for any authority, and without even minimal trust no one ever tries to improve things, a vicious cycle.

supernova87a 6y ago
I have always been curious about this, because in my mind systems (however distasteful we may find them) do not arise for no reason. You imagine it reflects some underlying dynamics going on. I have heard that Arabic / Islamic society is much more family, neighbor, who-you-know oriented versus western society trusting more the rules of some authority, even if not personally known to you. Even for example, mundane things like if you need your plumbing fixed, you don't look up the yellow pages, you ask your friend to refer someone. Does this lead to "favors" being more acceptable, like as a gift to someone you know for having helped you? Interpreted in a more charitable way, bribes/baksheesh are an expression of gratitude (though now an obligation of doing business)? You start to think such factors must be ingrained in a people's mentality, because otherwise, why don't we just declare laws that make this sort of practice illegal and everyone is happier?
- em500 6y ago
  Some economists / sociologists classify this as low-trust/high-trust societies. In low-trust societies, trust typically does not extend far beyond family and personal connections. There's nothing Islamic about it: low-trust is more or less synonymous with low- to middle income societies, with the majority non-Islamic (China, India, Latin America). High-trust is largly "Western" (North America, Western/Norhern Europe, Oceania), but also the rich Asian countries (Japan, South Korean, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore). The causal relationship between high-trust and high-income is difficult to disentangle, but there's plausibly some form of positive feedback loop at work. I'm not sure what you have in mind with "arise for no reason". Both historically and presently by population-majority, low-trust society seem the norm and high-trust the exeption. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_socie...

weinzierl 6y ago

USD 225 plus some small amount of bribes for a transit according to the article. Contrast that with the recent news reporting that called an amount of roughly 250000 EUR per ship on average. From another source 4.2 billion Euros income per year for 19000 ships per year which roughly matches the quarter million per ship number. Unfortunately the article isn't dated but from the navigation bar I assume the transit was before 2003. Does anyone know what a transit in a small yacht costs today, or know even the formula the article talks about?

fastasucan 6y ago
I may misunderstand you, but you cannot compare bribe money for a yacht with what enormous vessels pay for transit.

TheButlerian 6y ago

Were the western operators of the Canal corrupt?

gauchojs 6y ago

I find it very interesting. Most of us are more used to highways and airports. The problems one usually has are "if you don't have the documents with you, you go home/get on the next flight". But in "boat world", delaying a trip a few days is no big deal. So things move slowly, there's time for all this cigarette song and dance, etc. This story has some old world charm in some sense. Of course bribery is not cool, but in other ways I'm glad the whole world isn't (wasn't.. 2003) so homogeneous, and would prefer it to remain that way because its more interesting.

motohagiography 6y ago

The problem is that corruption is contagious. When you assent to it, you are compromised as well. It's a kind of collateral blackmail people use. You can see it in politics and even corporate management in the west, it's just a little more nuanced and refined. While I think bribe culture is disgusting, and it's infuriating in Canada to see how dirty money effects neighbourhoods and how every level of government is in on it, the way corruption works in companies is when your boss tells you, "I want to be honest about this statement," it can often mean he wants you to hold the risk even if it means lying. In tech, there is a certain kind of project manager who will try to extract date commitments from engineers by browbeating them like a prosecutor looking for leverage, and the reason is they want to get you submit and "lie," so they can make a fake commitment to their boss and blame you for it. It's the result of a similar kind of corruption in the organization. Corruption itself isn't cultural, and the WASP version of it is a weirdly oblique gaslighting, but it certainly infects cultures, and it's anathema to what any culture would consider its ideal.