I’m nonplussed about something. I know what you’re thinking, “Garry what else is new?” Now wait a minute, I think you’ll be with me on this. I’m talking about the situation with that American WNBA player who is imprisoned in Russia on drug charges after officials found vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage. The player, Brittney Griner, has been sentenced to 9 years but there is chatter about a prisoner exchange. We get her back if we give up some Russian who’s labeled as one of the most notorious arms dealers in history. Great. In concert with this story we are now hearing from people who say they have a family member who has been wrongfully detained in Russia and their kin is not getting nearly the attention of this WNBA superstar. In fact they say their loved one is getting no attention. Here’s the dealio, no one forced these people to go to a country whose atmosphere and politics are much different than ours. On top of that there has been friction between these two countries for decades. Soooo if I’m thinking of places to travel to or work in I’m going to bake that into the equation. Plus I’m going to remember the movie Midnight Express which features an American attempting to smuggle hash out of Istanbul everytime I pack my luggage even if I’m just flying from say Chicago to Austin let alone a foreign country. If you’ve ever traveled outside the USA you realize very quickly that other places don’t exactly operate like we do here and therefore you have to not act like a stupido. I’ve been in a restaurant in Venezuela when the federales swept through during lunchtime brandishing machine guns, for what reason I didn’t ask. On that same trip while making my way back to the cruise ship I was on I was detained by two federales outside the ship because I was wearing a cast for a broken ankle and they hinted I might be smuggling drugs in the cast. Scared the sh.t out of me. It might sound naive but you are really taking a gamble by going to certain countries, getting into some trouble or maybe not but being accused of making trouble and ending up in jail and asking our government to bail you out. First of all why you think you can take any drugs through foreign airports is mind boggling and I’m sure certain countries are looking to grab a U S citizen as a bargaining chip to, say, get back some scumbag that we are holding.
This situation goes beyond the Russian story. We’re always hearing about people who go hiking in some remote area, get lost, and then the search party has to go out and save their ass. Life has risks, assess the risks accordingly and proceed but if you end up in a trick bag because you were a stunod I say you’re on your own. I don’t even like touching the remote control in a nice hotel. I’d last about 2 minutes in a Turkish prison. How often do you think they wash the sheets in a Turkish prison?

Gunga, galunga
Garry