I just got back from a rather depressing car ride. Yup, another cop bribery story. I hate writing about this stuff, but seriously, something HAS to be done. Something effective and immediate. This time I was with a very well respected and entrepenurial local businessman, who got pulled over for doing nothing wrong. He tried talking his way out of it, but eventually, for to make his life easier, just paid off the cop. I could see him go into his wallet to get the money... the cop tried to hide the whole transaction with his back and all, but it was visible anyways. I stayed out of the whole thing to see how it would go, and when he came back after giving the bribe, he was very distraught. He explained that these little things become such a burden on life, that people are leaving, they can't get work done, they can't move around freely. He said that as he spoke, the tax authorities continued going through the books at his office, which he keeps perfectly. They are trying to tax him on investments he has recieved for his business, for the expense of exporting his product abroad, they are trying to tax him according to the price his product get sold for RETAIL abroad... He just says that trying to work by the book is torture, and that quite frankly, the Turks would do a better job running the country (*businesswise*). I could not disagree. The spiurk conference is over. We just finished complaining about the corruption, and Kocharian just finished begging us for more investment. Why? We have to have absolute guarantees. Big businessmen must come in and only do business after the president himself signs a document stating that anyone trying to exact bribes, or accepting them will be thrown into jail for hard labor. That is it.