你被禁止过什么?为什么被禁止(二)
2021-05-03 辽阔天空 6556
正文翻译

What are you banned from? Why?

你被禁止过什么?为什么被禁止?

评论翻译
Franklin Veaux, Small business owner, sexuality educator, writer

Franklin Veaux, 小企业主,性教育家,作家

So let me tell you the story of a secret government plot. It's an interesting story, I promise.
I sell a computer sex game called Onyx from one of my Web sites. Well, I say sell...it's a free game, 2-6 players, tons of fun. You can register the game to unlock higher levels. I've been selling it since 1996 or so.
A couple years ago, I was banned by my credit card merchant account underwriter, Best Payment Solutions. I'd been with them for more than ten years with only one complaint, a rather impressive record--but they told me they were canceling my account. Not to worry, though--they'd been bought by another merchant services provider, Vantiv, and they'd just reopen my account with their parent company if I filled out some forms.
I filled out the forms and waited. Then I got a call from my account manager. "We can't open a new account for you," they said.
"Why not?" I said.
"Risk reasons," they said.
"What risk reasons?" I said. "I'm in the lowest risk tier you guys have. I have a long history with you. What's going on?"
"We can't talk about it. We can't give you any more information," they said. "Goodbye."

让我来告诉你们一个故事,一个关于政府阴谋的秘密。我保证这是个有趣的故事。
我在我的一个网站上售卖一款叫Onyx的电脑性爱游戏。好吧,我是说推销…这其实是一个免费的游戏,一局2-6个玩家,非常有趣。你可以通过注册游戏来解锁更多的关卡。我从1996年左右就开始卖了。
几年前,我被我的信用卡商户账户保险商Best Payment Solutions禁用了。我和他们合作十多年了,只有过一次投诉,这是一个相当令人瞩目的记录——但现在他们告诉我他们要注销我的账户。不过,不用担心——它们已经被另一家商业服务提供商万提夫(Vantiv)收购了,如果我填写一些表格的话,它们就会重新开设我在它们母公司的账户。
我填好表格后一直在等待。然后我接到了客户经理的电话。他们说:“我们不能给你开新账户。”
我说:“为什么不能?”
他们说:“因为存在风险。”
我说:“存在什么风险?我的风险等级是最低的,我和你们合作很久了。现在发生什么事了?”
他们说:“我们不能谈论这件事,也不能提供更多的信息了,再见。”

I had to scramble to find a new merchant account underwriter, and my Web site was out of commission for a month. I finally found a new company. They asked me why I was changing account underwriters. I told them the story.
"Ah," they said. "Operation Choke Point. Don't sweat it. We'll give you an account."
"What the hell is Operation Choke Point?" I said. "That sounds like something from the scxt of a particularly badly written Hollywood B movie starring Wesley Snipes." (Okay, I didn't say the last part, I just thought it.)
So it turns out that the US Justice Department ran this thing called Operation Choke Point for a couple of years. The goal? Pressure banks and credit card companies into shutting off bank and payment services to businesses that were legal, but considered "undesirable."

我不得不赶紧找一个新的商业帐户承销商,我的网站已经一个月没有交佣金了。我终于找到了一家新公司,他们问我为什么要换账户承销商,于是我给他们讲了这个故事。
他们说:“啊,操作瓶颈期罢了。别担心。我们会给你新开一个账户的。”
我问:"操作瓶颈期到底是什么?"“这听起来像是韦斯利·斯奈普斯主演的一部写得特别糟糕的好莱坞B级电影的剧本。”(好吧,最后一部分我没说出来,只是想想。)
事实表明,美国司法部曾经进行过一项叫做“操作瓶颈期”的项目,开展了好几年。目标是什么?向银行和信用卡公司施压,禁止向合法但被认为“不受欢迎”的企业提供银行和支付服务。

“Operation Choke Point”
There was a list of business categories that were targeted: escort services, payday loan places, porn sellers, porn performers, and so on. I guess the sex game qualified me as a "porn business" or something. (There's no porn in the game, but it is a sex game, so I reckon to a government bureaucrat that's close enough.)
Crucially, the folks responsible for Operation Choke Point miscalculated. They made a critical error: they included gun resellers on the list of "undesirable businesses." Gun merchants who suddenly found themselves without banking services complained to their representatives, who (this being the country it is) launched an investigation.
When it was discovered that yes, the Justice Department was indeed pressuring banks to stop providing banking services to gun dealers, there was a howl of fury from the Right that would have shaken Lucifer from the deepest, darkest pit. This was exactly the sort of malfeasance a certain breed of American citizen is always on hair-trigger alx for; oh my, we do love our guns here in ‘Murica.
The Justice Department quickly issued a "clarification" that the directive to choke off financial services to undesirable merchants wasn't reeeeeaaaallly a directive to, you know, choke off financial services to undesirable merchants, and the whole thing quietly disappeared, save for some furious op-eds in a handful of newspapers.
To this day, I firmly believe that the reason Republican Party didn't raise a much bigger stink over it (think Benghazi) is that they were pissed about the gun thing, sure, but they actually agreed with the rest of it--you know, going after the evil sellers of adult stuff that has to do with sex. I don't for a second think they would have had my back had Operation Choke Point been aimed only at adult businesses.
But, you know, whatever.

“瓶颈行动”
有一个针对性的商业类别列表:陪护服务、发薪日贷款场所、色情卖家、色情表演者等等。我猜推销性游戏让我被列入了“色情行业”一类。(尽管游戏中没有色情内容,但这是一款性游戏,所以我想政府官员会认为这已经足够接近色情行业了。)
很重要的是,负责“瓶颈”行动的人计算错误了。他们犯了一个严重的错误:他们把枪支转售商列入了“不受欢迎的企业”名单。突然发现自己被限制了银行服务的枪支商人向他们的代表抱怨,然后他们的代表(就是我们的国家)发起了一项调查。
当人们发现,司法部确实在向银行施压,要求它们停止向枪支经销商提供银行服务时,右翼们愤怒的嚎叫足以把路西法从最黑暗的深渊中召唤出来。而这正是某些美国公民时刻警惕着的渎职行为;天啊,在美国我们是真的很喜欢我们的枪。
司法部很快发表了一份“澄清”,指受令阻断金融服务的不良商人接收到的不是真的指令,然后你知道的,除了一些少数愤怒的报纸专栏还在报道他们之外,那些阻断金融服务不良商人和整个事情一起都悄然消失了。
时至今日,我坚信共和党之所以没有在这件事上引起更大的声讨(想想班加西),是因为他们对枪支的事很恼火,但他们其实默认了其余的事情——追杀那些与性有关的成人物品的邪恶卖家。如果"瓶颈行动"只针对成人企业,我也从没想过他们会支持我。
但是,你知道的,我无所谓了。

Jakub Handlíř, lives in Prague

Jakub Handlíř,住在布拉格

I got banned from the Britske listy (Czech newspaper) Facebook page.
As for an explanation.
Britské listy (Britské listy 16.5. 2016) is a Czech internet newspaper through it isn’t a newspaper per se since even though it bring some daily news most of the articles are essays about various topic. The newspaper was founded by its current editor in chief Jan Culik (a professor in Glasgow university) who is - just like the newspaper - a typical modern leftie who adores Sanders and hates everything right from him.
It’s not exactly my political opinion but I’ve read - and still reading - the newspaper because it bring an original view on things. And also the articles on it are really good and have mostly a high quality. So I also commented on the article on the newspaper’s Facebook page mostly arguing against the admins since I though they were narrow minded.
Also what you must know is that currently many newspapers and people in the Czech Republic are very much against the immigrants which is a stance that the Britske listy criticize as immoral, racist etc.

我被Britske榜单(捷克报纸)脸书页面禁止访问了。
我解释一下。
Britské listy (Britské listy 16.5. 2016)是一份捷克互联网报纸,尽管它也会刊登一些日常新闻,但本身不是一份报纸,它的大多数文章都是有关于各种主题的。该报由现任主编简·库利克(格拉斯哥大学教授)创办,他和该报一样,是典型的现代左派,崇拜桑德斯,讨厌右派的一切。
这不完全是我的政治主张,但我读过并且现在仍在读这个报纸,因为它带来了对事物的独到见解。而且上面的文章真的很好,大多文章质量都很高。所以我也评论了该报纸脸书版上的文章,主要是反对管理员的,因为我认为他们心胸狭窄。
你还必须知道的是,目前捷克共和国的许多报纸和人民都非常反对移民,英国人批评这种立场是不道德的、是种族主义的等等。

Another thing is that there is another Czech internet newspapers called Parlamentni Listy which is very popular and also very anti-immigrant.
But to the point: one day an article appeared in Britske listy with a title which was something like “Unlike in the Czech Republic the Scottish employees investigate racist statements of their employees on the web.” The article was about a Czech doctor who works in a Glasgow hospital and who wrote an article to the Parlamentni listy describing how bad the immigrant patients are. As a result of this the Glasgow hospital was investigating him.
However when I checked the former Scottish article - published in some minor left-wing Scottish newspaper - it was written there that the person who pointed out the doctor’s article to the Scottish hospital was Jan Culik himself.
Basically this Jan Culik reported this to the Scottish hospital, the entire affair got into the Scottish press whose article Culik took and made an article into his own newspaper in order to promote his political view that anti-immigrant statements on web should be punished.
So I wrote on the Facebook page that I though that Culik created this affair so he could write an article in Britske listy which promoted his own political stance and that I find it absolutely immoral.
The next day I was banned from the Britske listy Facebook page.

另一件事是,还有另一家捷克互联网报纸叫做Parlamentni Listy,它很受欢迎,也很反对移民。
关键是:有一天,一篇文章出现在《英国周刊》上,标题是“与捷克共和国不同的是,苏格兰雇员调查他们在网络上的种族主义言论。”这篇文章是关于一个在格拉斯哥医院工作的捷克医生的,他给议会写了一篇文章,描述了移民病人有多糟糕。结果格拉斯哥医院对他进行了调查。
然而,当我查看发表在一些小型左翼苏格兰报纸上的以前苏格兰的文章时,上面写道,向苏格兰医院指出这位医生的文章的人是简·库利克本人。
简单地说,简·库利克向苏格兰医院报告了这件事,整个事件进入了苏格兰媒体的视野,库利克在自己的报纸上发表了一篇文章,以宣传他的政治观点,即网络上的反移民言论应该受到惩罚。
所以我在脸书的网页上写道,我认为库利克制造了这件事,这样他就可以在Britské listy上发表一篇文章,宣传他自己的政治立场,我认为这是很不道德的。
第二天,我被禁止访问Britske listy的脸书页面了。

Michael Dickens, former Driver at Uber

迈克尔·狄更斯(Michael Dickens),以前是优步的司机
原创翻译:龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


I was banned from a site much like this one, only much much worse…
I was banned from the abomination that is Yahoo! Answers
I was answering a question where the asker had an issue with their computer and needed to reinstall the OS (Windows XP Home IIRC), the problem was the asker didn’t have the original OEM restoration disc that came with the computer, neither did they have an OEM (or retail for that matter) OS install CD
Before I continue, I should mention that since XP, Microsoft implemented a License Activation/Registration System, in which the License key is married/matched with the hardware configuration and the motherboard’s chipset credentials (this is why if you replace hardware to many times, you have to reactivate to stay “Genuine”), this was done by sending the hardware details and the License key either online to Microsoft, or by transferring alphanumeric codes over the phone via a toll free number
What this means is, the CD and the data on it were technically free (legally), you just paid for the license to legally use it, it just seemed like you paid for the CD as it was bundled in the sleeve that contained the License key sticker (Okay, maybe some of that cost paid for the pennies worth of plastic the CD was made of and the cardboard used for the packaging), point is it’s not piracy unless you use a key crack (which did/does exist and is highly illegal)

我被一个与此类似的网站禁止了,还有更糟糕的……
我被禁止进入讨厌的雅虎问答网站了。
我所回答的问题的发问者说他们的电脑有问题,需要重新安装操作系统(如果我没记错的话,是Windows XP家庭版),问题在于发问者的电脑没有原来的OEM恢复光盘,也没有原始设备制造商(或者零售也一样)的操作系统安装光盘。
在我继续说之前,我需要提一下,自XP以来,微软实现了一个许可证激活/注册系统,许可证密钥与硬件配置和主板的芯片组凭证结合/匹配(这就是为什么如果你多次更换硬件,就必须重新激活保持“正版”),要做到这一点,只需将硬件细节和授权密钥在线发送给微软,或者拨打免费电话传递字母数字代码。
这意味着,光盘和光盘上的数据在技术上是免费的(合法的),你只是购买了合法使用它的许可证,就像你为捆绑在包含许可证密钥标签的套筒中的光盘付费一样(好吧,也许有些费用是为了制作光盘的价值几便士的塑料和用于包装的纸板而支付的),重点是除非你使用密钥破解(这种情况确实存在,并且是很不合法的),否则这不就是盗版。

Ok, so back to the story…
I answered saying that the asker could go to one of many torrenting websites out there and download the Windows XP Home OEM torrent magnet along with the BitTorrent client (or any other torrent client), and download the ISO from that, burn the ISO to CD and boot from it as usual, then when asked, type the License key from the sticker on their case (the one matched to the hardware inside the case the sticker is on) and Activate as usual
I even put a disclaimer in my answer saying that the torrent will include a Readme file containing a pirated License key, and explicitly not to use it, and instead to use the legal License key affixed to their case
I posted and proofread my answer and went about my way, looking up and answering more questions

好了,回到故事上来......
我回答说,提问者可以去一个种子网站,下载Windows XP家庭版原始设备制造商种子和BitTorrent客户端(或任何其他种子客户端),从那里下载ISO,将ISO刻录到光盘上,并像往常一样从那里启动,然后当被询问时,从他们的外壳上的标签(与外壳内的硬件匹配的标签)输入许可证密钥,并像往常一样激活。
我甚至在我的回答中放了一个免责声明,说明了种子包括一个包含盗版许可证密钥的自述文件,并明确表示不要使用它,而是使用附在他们案例上的合法的许可证密钥。
我校对并上传了我的答案,然后继续往下翻,抬头回答更多的问题。

原创翻译:龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


One day, I went to log into Yahoo! Answers to read and answer more questions, and found out I couldn’t log on
Did I type in the wrong account name/email?… Nope
Did I type in the wrong password?… Nope
Is there a connection issue, site down, something?… Nope
WHAT HAPPENED!!!
Well, I was banned of course, but why?
I check my email (my Yahoo! Mail of course, I have already transitioned to Gmail by this point, but still checked both) and sure enough I got an email saying I was banned because of that specific answer, because the content was reported for promoting piracy, and thus against their ToS
Even with my disclaimer, pointing out it was in fact not piracy, and why it wasn’t, some idiot still reported me because “Downloading in and of itself is piracy… Right?”
Now I would understand if I posted a lix to a particular torrent, or if I mentioned a particular torrent site, but I didn’t lix or post anything
What’s even worse is Yahoo! Answers’ reporting system is completely automated, there is no human (Yahoo! Employee) intervention, submit a report and Bam! Instalbanned

有一天,我登录了雅虎问答去浏览和回答更多的问题,却发现我登录不了了。
我是否输入了错误的账户名/电子邮件?……没有。
我输错密码了吗?……没有。
是有连接问题吗,网站宕机了吗?……不是。
发生了什么!
我显然是被封了,但为什么?
我查看了我的电子邮件(我的雅虎邮箱,当然,现在我已经转换到了谷歌邮箱,但还是两个邮箱都看了),我收到了一封电子邮件,说我被封是因为那个答案,内容被举报为促进盗版,违反了他们的服务条款。
即使我的免责声明说明了这不是盗版,以及为什么不是盗版,但一些白痴还是举报了我,因为“下载本身就是盗版……对吧?”
如果我发布了一个特定torrent的链接,或者我提到了一个特定的torrent站点,那我能够理解,但现在我并没有发布任何链接或站点。
更糟糕的是雅虎问答的举报系统是完全自动化的,没有人工干预,提交一份报告,砰!直接就被封了。

Oh, but there’s a glimmer of hope… I can Appeal
So I do just that, I write an Appeal stating my side and the fact, and that what I posted did not violate their ToS whatsoever
So Yahoo! unbanned my Answers account, right?… Nope!
Instead they sent an “apologetic” reply saying that my appeal didn’t go through as my answer still violated their ToS, at least they said why, right?… Again, nope!
Then I later found out I was actually lucky
Yeah, I lucked out, only my Answers account was banned, some other members who were wrongfully banned from Answers got their entire Yahoo! account banned
No access to Flickr, no access to Geocities (I think it still existed then), and imagine this, AT&T subscribers even lost access to their service features (like U-verse Web Remote), and the worst of it all…. No access to Yahoo! Mail
Joke’s on them though, now Yahoo! Answers is nothing more than a meme (or a source to many memes that is), it’s a joke, it’s less credible than Wikipedia (at least Wikipedia is somewhat credible), the likeliness you can get a trustworthy and reliable answer is pretty nill
And when I say Yahoo! Answers is nothing more than a meme, I’m not kidding
How Is Babby Formed?
The one Yahoo meme that perfectly represents the faltering company

哦,但是还有一线希望……我可以上诉。
我的确这样做了,我写了一份上诉声明,陈述了我的立场和事实,并且我发布的内容均未违反其服务条款。
所以雅虎解封了我的账号吗?…没有!
相反,他们给了我一个“道歉”的答复,说我的上诉没有通过,因为我的回答仍然违反了他们的服务条款,至少他们说了为什么,对吗?……还是没有!
后来我发现我其实很幸运了。
是的,我很幸运,我的只是雅虎问答帐户被封了,其他一些被禁止使用雅虎问答的人,整个雅虎的账号都被封了。
无法访问相册,无法访问雅虎地球村(当时我认为它仍然存在),想象一下,美国电信的用户甚至失去了对其服务功能(如U-verse Web Remote)的访问权限,而最糟糕的是无法访问雅虎邮箱。
不过,他们开玩笑说,现在的雅虎问答只不过是一个迷因(或许多迷因的来源),它就是一个笑话,还不如维基百科可信(至少维基百科还有点可信度),在雅虎问答你能得到一个可靠答案的可能性很小。
而我说雅虎问答不过是一个迷因时,我不是在开玩笑。
婴儿是如何形成的?
这就是一个完美的代表了这家步履蹒跚的公司的雅虎迷因。

Sawan Tank, Civil Engineer | Student of Life | Tech-savvy

Sawan Tank,土木工程师,学生,精通技术

Cyber Cafe
Yes, I have been banned from visiting a particular cyber cafe in my Hometown.
This phenomenon occurred 7 years ago when speedy internet was rarely available and I used to visit cyber cafe for downloading movies, softwares, songs and videos.
The Cyber Cafe owner had a side business of selling his downloaded movies, songs, videos from ADMIN PC. He was charging ₹15 for copying two movies into customer’s pendrive/memory card. While internet surfing charge was ₹20/hr.
I used to make a list of urls of download lixs in notepad in advance from home.
When my time starts in Cafe, I used to paste the lixs directly from notepad to chrome to start files downloading instantly. This reduce wastage of precious time. I even used Internet Download Manager to maximize my downloading speed, which in result decreased other user's speed.
Note: I had to install IDM everytime as the PC had protection software which dexe new files/softwares at each restart. Hard work :)
All these things were fine till now.
I found downloading movies was so time consuming and I was totally free while these things download. So, I wanted to have other way around.
As the PC's in Cafe were connected by LAN including ADMIN PC, I have shared that folder in which owner used to keep those movies when he was not in Cafe.
Job done.
My one hour was now completely satisfying. I got plenty of entertainment resource. I just copy movies and video songs to my Pendrive for free while others were paying for it outside.
Within one hour, I used to download new things and additionally copy movies from ADMIN PC .
All these things were going fine till few months, but one day owner saw me copying movies from that shared folder.
I was calmly asked not to visit his Cyber Cafe again.

绿色网吧
是的,我被禁止进入我家乡的一个网吧了。
这件事发生在7年前,当时网速还很慢,我经常去网吧下载电影、软件、歌曲和视频。
网吧老板有一个副业,就是出售他从管理电脑上下载的电影,歌曲,视频。他收取15英镑的费用,将两部电影复制到客户的存储卡中。而上网费用则是每小时20英镑。
我曾经在家里用笔记本提前列出了下载链接列表。
当网吧开始计算上机使用时间,我直接从笔记本复制链接粘贴到谷歌浏览器,立即开始下载文件。这样可以节省宝贵的时间,减少浪费。我甚至使用了互联网下载管理器以最大限度地提高我的下载速度,这就降低了其他用户的速度。
注意:我必须安装网络下载管理器,因为电脑有保护软件,每次重启都会删除新的文件或软件。努力工作吧。
到现在为止,一切都很好。
我发现下载电影很耗时间,而且我下载这些东西时完全是免费的,所以我想换一种方式。
由于在网吧的电脑是通过局域网连接的,包括管理电脑,所以我已经共享了网吧老板不在网吧时用来保存那些电影的文件夹。
工作完成。
我这一个小时目前让我非常满意。我有很多娱乐资源,我只需要把电影和视频及歌曲免费复制到我的闪存盘里,而其他人在外面却要付费才能够看这些东西。
在一个小时内,我下载了新的东西,另外还从管理电脑中复制了电影。
直到几个月前,一切都很顺利,但是有一天老板看到了我从那个共享文件夹里拷贝电影。
于是他告知我,不准再去他的网吧。

Nick Todorovski, lives in Australia

Nick Todorovski,住在澳大利亚

I am banned from a Facebook Group called Foxbook
This group is about foxes which I love which is why I joined it.
I love foxes and I hate the hunting of native species, invasive is another matter.
Anyway a member posted a article about how the state of Victoria and how they were offering money to hunters to killed foxes.
Since pretty much most of the members of this group were from the UK and me being from Australia I filled them in on why they were doing this.
I mentioned how foxes are a threat to our native wildlife and a threat to farmers which is why the state government of Victoria did this.
Few Hours later I cant gain access.
But I do wonder if they would’ve done this if say they had an invasive species that a apex predator like the gray wolf.
The gray wolf would cause havoc on the native fox population as well as badgers, hedgehogs, and other wildlife.

我被一个叫Foxbook的脸书群禁了。
这个群是关于狐狸的,我很喜欢狐狸,这也是我加入这个群的原因。
我喜欢狐狸,我讨厌捕猎本地物种,入侵物种就是另一回事了。
不管怎么说,一名群成员发表了一篇文章,关于维多利亚州如何向猎人提供资金来杀死狐狸的。
因为这个小组的大部分成员都来自英国,而我来自澳大利亚,所以我向他们解释了为什么维多利亚州要这样做。
我提到了狐狸是如何威胁我们当地的野生动物和农民的,这也是维多利亚州政府这样做的原因。
几个小时后,我进不去群了。
但我想知道,如果他们有一种入侵物种,还是像灰狼这样的顶级捕食者,他们是否会这么做。
灰狼会对当地的狐狸以及獾、刺猬和其他野生动物造成严重破坏。

Fun Fact: many who are against hunting of foxes in australia will just go if the farmer wants to protect live stock they should install fences.
While this is true, it will cost millions for a farmer to do this and it would need to be done each year as well in some places as the annual bushfires go through a lot of farmland and those bushfires will just destroy those fences and not many UK people realize how big australia is.
The Area of the entire UK is 242,495 km² or (93,628 mi²)
The Area of the state of Victoria is 237,629 km² or 91,749 mi²
So what 2,000mi² smaller than an entire country.
About 53% of victoria is farmland which is still a huge amount when you think about it.
And this is in one state alone
So no, our farmers cant even afford fencing to prevent their livestock from crossing on to the road where they can be killed by a roadtrain, let alone keep out foxes

有趣的事实是:如果农民想要保护牲畜,他们应该去安装围栏,这样许多反对在澳大利亚捕猎狐狸的人就会离开了。
如果真的这样做,农民将要为此花费数百万美元,而且在一些地方,每年都会要重新修一次围栏,就像每年发生的森林火灾一样。这些森林大火会连带许多农田,摧毁那些围栏。而英国大部分人没有意识到澳大利亚有多大。
整个英国的面积是242,495平方公里或(93,628平方英里)
维多利亚州的面积为237,629平方公里或(91,749平方英里)
仅仅比一个完整的国家小了2000平方英里。
想想看,维多利亚州有53%的土地是农田,这仍是一个很大的数字。
这还只是一种情况。
还不止是这样,我们的农民甚至负担不起公路边的栅栏,用来防止他们的牲畜穿越到公路上,因为他们可能会被路上的车流杀死。更不用说防止狐狸进入的围栏了。

Henry Rausch, former Commander at United States Navy (1983-2005)

亨利·劳施,美国海军前指挥官(1983-2005)

Mongolia. At least, the US ambassador kicked me out of it, never tried to get back so am not sure if the ban still holds.
I was installing satellite terminals there for an entity of the US government. The embassy assigned me a “minder”, a young woman, Mongolian national, very well connected politically. She was always on my case but I managed well enough with my crew, first in the capital Ulanbataar, then in a remote site in the Gobi Altai. It was there, at the end of the second installation, that I finally lost it and dressed her down verbally. Big mistake. We had flown in on a decrepit Russian aircraft and my Mongolian work crew was terrified of flying so we drove an old Russian jeep, 3 days, in the dead of winter, back to Ulanbataar. My minder had flown back and had had 3 days to make quite a case against me. As it happened, she was the daughter of the Mongolian ambassador to a very rich country. When I get back I was hit with these allegations, talk of charges, etc. It looked pretty bad for me. The only card I has to play was that the US government was up to some pretty illicit activity and I bet they didn't want it to be made public. So I wrote an apology to the ambassador, honestly apologizing for my actions, but explaining my side of it, and how the minder had jeopardized my crew's safety. I ended it with a kicker: I was happy to leave the country but if the embassy wanted to pursue anything further, I would welcome an open enquiry addressing all facets of the program, in a publuc forum. My bet paid off. I didn't know half of what they were up to but I was sure they did not want it made public. After I submitted the letter I had a meeting with the deputy ambassador that went like this:
“Finished?”
“Yes”
“Then get the hell of of my country.”

在蒙古我被美国大使把我赶了出来,因为从未试图回去过,所以我不确定这个禁令是否仍然有效。
我在那里为美国政府的一个机构安装卫星终端。使馆给我分配了一个“助手”,一个年轻的蒙古族女人,有很好的政治关系。她总是在找我的麻烦,但我和我的团队成员都相处得很好,先是在首都乌兰巴塔尔,然后去了戈壁阿尔泰一个偏远的地方。在第二次安装完成后,我终于控制不住了,狠狠地训斥了她一顿。这是很严重的错误。我们乘坐的是一架破旧的俄罗斯飞机,但因为团队中蒙古的工作人员害怕坐飞机,所以我们开着一辆旧的俄罗斯吉普车,在凛冽的严冬里行驶了三天,回到了乌兰巴托。我的助手已经飞回去了,并花了3天的时间对我提起诉讼。碰巧的是,她是一个富有的国家的驻蒙古大使的女儿。回来后,我受到了这些指控以及关于指控的讨论等等,对我来说情况很糟糕。我唯一能打的牌就是美国政府正在进行一些非法的活动,我打赌他们不希望此事被公开。所以我给大使写了一封道歉信,坦诚地为我的行为道歉,解释了一下我的观点,以及助手如何危及到了我的船员的安全。最后,我给出了一个提示:,我很高兴离开这个国家,但如果大使馆想做进一步的调查,欢迎去一个公共论坛上公开询问关于这个项目各方面的情况。我赌赢了。虽然我对他们的计划一无所知,但我敢肯定他们不想公开。在我提交这封信后,我与副大使进行了一次会议,会议内容如下:
“完了?”
“是的”
“那就滚出我的国家。”

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