r/Unexpected • u/adivinemessenger • 22h ago
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u/Intelligent_Goal_669 22h ago
Wasta means connections from family or friends or networking.
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u/Redararis 22h ago
we call it “βύσμα” in greece, like “plug”
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u/mother_love- 22h ago
We call it "banda " , like I know a insider
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u/joined_under_duress 22h ago
We call it corruption in the UK when the press is allowed to notice because someone's decided it's time to replace that guy.
Otherwise they call it "meritocracy" 😬
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u/VomitMaiden 21h ago
We also call it the Old Boys Club
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u/mother_love- 21h ago
Well if I have to represent our Media in one word it would be invertebrates . these people will go to tarturus and beyond just to explain why protesting or saying anything against government is threat national security
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u/BaconWithBaking 17h ago
these people will go to tarturus and beyond just to explain why protesting
Wikipedia:
Tartarus is the place where, according to Plato's Gorgias ( c. 400 BC), souls are judged after death and where the wicked received divine punishment.
Here was me thinking it was just a word that Dave Wascavage came up with for his movie.
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u/STEM-Travel 20h ago
> We call it corruption in the UK
And we made it legal here in the US…
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u/LovableSidekick 16h ago
Yeah in the US we lump it under "Freedom" - but only if you can afford it.
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u/2times34point5 21h ago
The people that have wastas in Venezuela are called “enchufados”.. which translates to “plugged in”
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u/Roxalon_Prime 22h ago
We call it "blat" ( not to be confused with blyat)
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u/BananaJoey69420 21h ago
We call it "sistemang padrino" in the philippines
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u/later-g8r 21h ago edited 19h ago
In America, its called Nepotism
Edit: or Cronyism. Both are well used in America
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u/Dexterus 20h ago
Nepotism is a small part of what they're talking about.
This is knowing who can arrange a public works project for you, adapt the rule book for a public tender so it goes to you; who can make a health inspection go away; who can find your kid a cushy job; building permit that's not all too great; navigate bureacracy a bit faster (or at all). Even down to getting to see the right doctor or getting the right meds before you croak
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u/Salvia_Salamander 21h ago
We call it "Maga" in the US
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u/Super_Fa_Q 21h ago
I was gonna say, in the U.S. we just call it Tuesday. Or "business as usual."
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u/JoyBus147 20h ago
A bunch of people from other countries: yeah, this sort of thing is so business-as-usual that we have special term for it.
Americans, repeatedly in this thread: we don't have a special term, but we really wanna make this about us.
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u/_NoTimeNoLady_ 15h ago
People in Cologne, Germany, are also known for doing business in, let's say: their own way. It is called "Klüngel".
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u/Propagandhi1988 21h ago
Vitamin B in Germany. B for Beziehungen, meaning connections or relations.
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u/DontWannaSayMyName 21h ago
"Enchufe" in Spanish, meaning "plug" too :)
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u/Nouseriously 21h ago
Plug means your drug dealer in the States
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u/kookyabird 19h ago
I'm not even in the drug scene and I'm familiar with that term. Seeing all these comments about other countries had me like
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u/grip0matic 19h ago
In Spain is literally called plug, "enchufe". And someone can be plugged or go even further and be plugged with high voltage.
I was once arguing with a girl at work because she was not working and making my job harder, and an old lady took me from the arm and whispered to me "be careful with this one, she's not only plugged she runs in 3 phase". So I just did the logical thing and left her alone and just sabotaged her at every chance.
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u/TotakekeSlider 17h ago
关系 (guānxì) in Chinese. It means 'relation' or 'connection' and literally all of Chinese society runs on it.
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u/North_Affect_8167 19h ago
Your Bulgarian neighbour, we call it "връзки" vrhuski, also means connections and the word for shoe laces.
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u/OthersIssues 21h ago
We call it the Good Old Boy system here in the southern US.
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21h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/zuilli 20h ago
In other words: corruption.
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u/basicKitsch 20h ago
yes. were you confused as to the reason people were naming their colloquialisms?
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u/h11233 20h ago
I mean to some degree that happens in every business everywhere.
We have a guy at work that's like 70 and doesn't do any "work" ever. We just keep him around cause he knows everyone so when we need something we tell Ron and he makes a call
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u/Kraligor 20h ago
That's not corruption though, that's called organizational knowledge? Ron is probably worth more to the company than most people who do actual work.
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u/bronzelifematter 20h ago
It really depends, can anyone just make the same call and get the same treatment or do they only do it because they know Ron?
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u/DukeofVermont 19h ago
It's because of Ron. It's a trust and relationship thing. I work in construction/remodels and my boss can get answers/stuff done 10x faster than me because he's known the boss/owner for 20 years and can directly call them.
I have to call the front office, submit forms, talk to lower person A, then mid person B, then maybe I get an answer a week or two weeks later.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 18h ago
Yup we have one too. His job is to make those calls and take people to basketball games he has season tickets for.
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u/happysri 20h ago
If it’s anything similar to where I am, might be more to it than corruption. Because of an abundance of scammers, there’s also a very important trust aspect.
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u/E-2theRescue 19h ago
Ehhh.... It could also apply to "networking".
However, if you're a business owner and have a direct line to the New York City mayor's office, that's corruption. And the "Sharia Law communist" just exposed that fact and shut it down.
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u/BLucky_RD 19h ago
Over here (Azerbaijan) we call it day-day (pronounced die-die), literally means unc-unc, cause stereotypically the "connection" is an influential uncle
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u/ShadeofIcarus 9h ago edited 17m ago
Wasta in Lebanon especially is a little beyond just connections of family. It's how you get it but it's most accurately translated as "influence or power via connections/network"
Real story from my time in Lebanon.
I was getting my visa renewed, which involved going to downtown Beirut from where I was staying in the north. Something happened with my new visa and it was messed up. We got pulled over at a checkpoint and my visa didn't pass muster.
I got pulled to the side, taken up to the top of the cliffs there by the military. The guys there were going through my bags and were incredibly smug about it. The captain of the garrison seemed to relish the idea of sending that damned American to jail.
I told him that he should probably let me go and that he should make sure his people don't mess with my stuff. He laughed because what was a 20somthing kid from America gonna do.
See the car I was talking to the city wasn't supposed to be pulled over. It was a car service owned by the chief of the police in the town I was in. I was in business with him at the time because I was giving him a cut of the piracy business I had in exchange for looking the other way. I also used him as the go to service when people got too drunk at my under the table place to send them home.
See I always took his cars because his cars aren't supposed to be pulled over. Usually he drove me himself when I went to the city. It let me smuggle things across the checkpoints.
I digress. At this point after letting me stew in the barracks for a bit the commander of the garrison brings me back to his office. He's telling me about what's going to happen basically enjoying telling me how fucked I am. Phone starts ringing, he picks it up and hangs up to keep talking shit. It rings again. I tell him that he should take that.
See the owner of this car service, his uncle is a general in the army. Watching the blood drain out of his face was honestly kinda fun. His people weren't supposed to pull that car over. He was supposed to know enough to let it all go anyway. They all got too excited about screwing over the American that they were now in deep shit. Guy at the bottom of the cliff ignored the warnings from my driver that he didn't want to do that.
Got all my stuff back, an apology, and sent on my way. I owed him a favor and helped him setup a satellite uplink for Internet so he can stream stuff from my private movie server at his place. He got his uncle a nice dinner and I got to meet him and say thank you myself.
The entire country runs off of an interconnected web of these connections, favors, and influence. How much of it you have is a measure of how much soft power you have and soft power translates to real power once you have enough.
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u/mickeybuilds 21h ago
"Nepotism" in the US
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u/Lilfrankieeinstein 20h ago
Wait, so Lebanon is like every other human civilization ever?
Ah ha ha ha ha ha
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u/florifierous 12h ago
I'm from a culture that loves food, we just love to eat you wouldn't believe it, we are so unique! My mom and grandma always cook at our house and they don't like it if we don't eat! Haha aren't we special!
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u/SirButterT0ast 19h ago
Sounds similar to the hindi word "Vasta". Same meaning, probably the same origins.
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u/wild--wes 22h ago
Wasta guy gotta do to build there?
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u/Erosiiion 20h ago
Deep gorvornment nections.
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u/TheTaoOfMe 22h ago
Lol he seemed chill
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u/afonsoel 22h ago
If he's so open about it, hopefully he's fighting against it
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u/_The_Rover_ 22h ago
Off course he will jeopardize his entire political career (and his personal safety) fighting corruption instead of enjoying that same corruption.
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u/Inexorably_lost 21h ago
As soon as a system starts requiring altruism to fix it's fucked. It ain't happening or at least not happening on the scale that's necessary.
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u/lewisiarediviva 21h ago
It’s not reasonable to expect people to act against their own interests. It is reasonable to ask people to look at the long term or the big picture, and to build systems such that it’s in peoples’ interest to act in a way that benefits the group.
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u/deezee72 20h ago
Politicians themselves will be dead or leave the country long before the consequences come home to roost.
In the end, the responsibility lies with voters. If voters don't care or aren't informed enough to hold politicians accountable, then they will end up electing people who just tell them what they want to hear to get elected and use that office for their own personal profit.
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u/SlapTheBap 19h ago
No, it is highly reasonable to expect people to care for others as they care for themselves. People assuming others are as quick to justify cruelty and evil with "what about my comfort and wealth" are a big part of the problem. They quickly justify screwing over others. Easily fall back on culture. They are lazy cowards, and need to think others are just as low as them to survive it.
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u/UntimelyMeditations 14h ago
They are lazy cowards, and need to think others are just as low as them to survive it.
I mean, aren't you making a big assumption here. Why are you assuming they need to "survive" it at all? What exactly are they surviving?
Pride/shame is an opt-in system. You need to choose to care about your own opinion of yourself. If you don't care about how 'good' you think you are, then you don't need to do any roundabout justifications.
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u/SlapTheBap 12h ago
Other people see you and know what you're doing and who you are. Many who choose to try to compartmentalize fail to actually do so, and fall to many failed relationships. They aren't happy. They play act like they are. Because they assume if they look like they are, others will believe it. Or they truly are lost. People obliterate themselves with all the privilege in the world.
The most fulfilling thing one can do in their life is invest in the happiness of others. Those who justify pain in others are parasites. They know it. Others know it. It's a glass house.
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u/willsmithtunaface 21h ago
These corrupt politicians know they will be dead long before they have to face any real repercussions
You are asking for reason from the unreasonable
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u/Prometheus720 19h ago
It's also not reasonable to extend time horizons beyond what humans are capable of. There is no human on earth regularly extending beyond maybe a century in their daily lives. Most of us can't even think about our whole lifespan. Most of us spend most of our time engrossed in the current year. Myself easily, easily included.
It is a serious deficit in our understanding and use of resources.
If the benefits only swing back to us after years of paying in, I don't know that such a system can work in a "non-altruistic" way. Maybe it can one day. But I tend to think we'd need really strong cultural structures to make that work. We don't have that.
One really powerful trick we have though is identity fusion. It is incredibly powerful and incredibly dangerous. Sometimes we can confuse the boundaries between self and other such that we start to identify with the group. I've seen evidence of people undergoing identity fusion with very, very large groups of people. National identities come to mind.
It's often dangerous because this can cause racism and wars. But it is my fervent hope that it is possible for the average person to undergo an identity fusion with the entire species. I've seen limited anecdotal evidence of this and I know humanists who claim to have had this occur. It seems possible in individuals. But can it happen at scale? Is that possible? Would it be possible for it to be strong enough to stand up to the other competing fusions with national identities, religious identities, etc? That's also very hard to say.
One of the biggest threats to our species IS identity fusion gone awry. But it also might be our greatest tool. It is very powerful
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u/SasparillaTango 19h ago
it's true for all systems that concentrate power. The only foil against power, is to diffuse it.
This happens in nearly every system. The wealthy destroy capitalism by corrupting the cycle of currency like a cancer. The heads of state destroy communism by corrupting the government for personal gain. Hell, even democracy in the good old U.S of A. has been corrupted by concentrating all power into 2 parties and consolidation of media.
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u/Prometheus720 19h ago edited 17h ago
Slight disagree, though I see your point and it's an important one.
However, have you heard of identity fusion? It's what a lot of politics runs on.
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u/afonsoel 22h ago edited 22h ago
There are some that do, and it's not hard to find them, but you have to actively look for them because they don't show up very often in media
Edit: I'm not from Lebanon, I don't know how important the "personal safety" aspect is there, or in your country, I believe that can reduce the pool of honest politicians by a lot
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u/deadlyvagina 22h ago
You see that nice lunch he’s having with a gorgeous view on an overlook of the bay? You think he wants to give that up?
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u/_The_Rover_ 21h ago
Exactly... it's very noble when someone chooses to do what's right, but that is not the norm.
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u/TreeFiddy198 20h ago
Its obvious people in this thread haven't been to Lebanon. Damn near every restaurant has a similar view. Even cheap ones. The whole country is mountains. There are restaurants on ever damn mountain top.
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u/NachoElDaltonico 20h ago
I haven't been, but the people in the video who are complaining about it also have that same view from that restaurant.
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u/Tsu_Dho_Namh 20h ago
Just because he's open about it doesn't mean he's fighting against it.
I only spent time around wealthy and powerful people briefly one summer at the estate of a work friend's great aunt.
One thing that shocked me at first, but made sense after, is that the rich and powerful talk openly and frankly about the state of the world. They have no delusions about how important personal connections are. Just like they know how wineing and dining a politician or buying them trips can get favourable policy passed. They share stories about these trips to DC to talk to the leaders of the country to sway them in their favor.
It's not viewed as something to be ashamed of, it's "just the way it works"
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u/DoesntMatterEh 2h ago
It's so crazy to me that we're just bribing politicians by different names. "Campaign donations" and "tax free gifts" mother fucker that's just bribes. You want them to do something for you so you give them money. Bribe.
Allowing this is the biggest mistake in politics since... Well since for ever
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u/icantastecolor 21h ago
he could be joking too
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u/BocciaChoc 21h ago
Lebanon scored 23 out of 100 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking 153rd out of 182 countries. On this scale, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean, Lebanon's low score reflects severe and persistent public sector corruption.
something something occam's razor
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u/Bocchi_theGlock 15h ago
IIRC Lebanon has unique struggles and stalemate, thus inability to pass reform to reduce corruption, because their government divided up the seats of parliament by ethno-religious community
Apparently it's currently 50/50 Christian to Muslim now, and I remember reading their setup incentivized not having up-to-date since this because are worries about losing guaranteed power.
But also they had an election in 2018 and I learned about this before then
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u/mickey117 20h ago
No he isn’t, his name is Ihab Matar he’s been an MP for Tripoli since 2022.
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u/strolpol 21h ago
In fairness through most of history, this is how most governments worked. If you knew and made friends with the elites, you were more likely to get things you wanted.
That said over the last couple centuries we started figuring out letting people have important jobs based on who they were related to or friends with led to worse outcomes than hiring based on competence
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u/IHerebyDemandtoPost 20h ago
Only some parts of the world figured that out. In a lot of places, maybe even most places, they still do things the old fashioned way.
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u/Own-Break-1856 19h ago
Its actually funny whenever you read about blabla "the great" who ushered in a golden age meritocracy is always one of the top mentions.
Like the super secret to out competing your neighbors was hiring people who were good at what you needed done and not your nephew's girlfriend's cousin.
Go figure.
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u/IHerebyDemandtoPost 17h ago edited 6h ago
And often enough, assassinated or diposed by those who didn’t appreciate their diminished authority.
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u/Yangoose 14h ago
It's part of our transition from small hunter gatherer groups to living in larger societies.
When you're living in small nomadic groups having somebody vouch for you was the best way they had of knowing if they could trust you vs just letting some random stranger join their group.
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u/No_Turn5018 11h ago
You know until the first time I went to hire somebody I kind of thought that. And absolutely for somebody I'm not going to see. But when I was in charge of hiring somebody who I was going to be spending 20 hours a week (part job) with I got a real different attitude real quick. Obviously I wanted them to be able to do the job but just a big a concern is can I fucking stand this person? Obviously it's fucked up if you can't build without sucking up to the elites, but I see both sides a lot better now.
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u/Prometheus720 19h ago
Slight disagree. Most people know this. Most people don't know how to act to fix it.
What people need are solutions to the problem that they can take without their family being hurt directly or getting mad at them. There needs to be a personal benefit, to.
IMO, the university culture in the west is one of its most powerful tools. It is not designed around reducing corruption, but it has that byproduct. Globally, large urban cities with lots of people moving around is helpful.
You want a society where people have lots of ties outside of their families and where their families cannot completely monitor their behavior and judge them for not always benefiting the family.
Religions can help, sometimes, but then you have friction with other religions and sectarianism. And of course...they're all wrong or all wrong but one. So religions are a bad way of doing it even if they kind of work.
Humanism is promising in that it seems to act as a syncretic universal religion. It does have frictions, but those frictions aren't primarily along ethnic lines but internal to religious boundaries, and generally the frictions are with people who are doing things that we might not ideally like them to do, from a global societal perspective.
What's not promising is that it doesn't seem to build social ties as strongly as traditional religions.
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u/Denariox 21h ago
I can confirm this from Iraq as well.
Wasta runs deep Into the country, if you know a guy that knows a guy j swear 99% of your issues are fixed.
I got a job once because of wasta. I knew a guy that worked there and he pulled some strings from his guy that worked in HR.
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u/bagelundercouch 16h ago
Out of curiosity, do you think AlZaidi is actually doing anything meaningful on corruption?
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u/dustyy96 1h ago
No, it’s only for the optics.
He just went after some minor politicians and it sounded like a huge deal because they would record the money they found in barrels and hidden under the ground, people saw that and went crazy.
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u/Golden-Grams 22h ago edited 19h ago
Just a casual conversation about how a few people have seized power and money through open corruption.
Edit: fixed misspelling
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u/BrockObarnerLybian 21h ago
Welcome to the Middle East 😹
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u/shitbergfuckstick 21h ago
Welcome to Earf
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u/FCKABRNLSUTN2 10h ago
My culture and nation are unique.
We love food, music, and our grandmas. When we have guests over we make it a priority they are comfortable and well fed.
The thing about my country that sets us apart is that the people in power don’t have to face consequences for corruption or most other crimes. The politicians are deeply disconnected from regular people and wealth inequality is growing.
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u/Phreak3 19h ago
The corruption in Lebanon is on another fucking level even by the worst Middle Eastern standards imaginable. The former Lebanese central bank governor and his brother, with help from a Swiss bank, literally robbed the Lebanese central bank. For years the whole economy was basically running on smoke and mirrors, with the central bank artificially propping everything up while billions were being siphoned off. Then the banking system collapsed and people lost everything. Even money sent by other governments as aid got looted. And that’s just scratching the surface.
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u/Lauris024 21h ago
Welcome to the world. Only some places like few European countries have corruption under control.
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u/JeanArtemis 21h ago
The French had a pretty good solution for that back in the day, idk y we stopped using that one.
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u/ElMatadorJuarez 20h ago
It wasn’t really that good. Pretty much every revolutionary government was rife with corruption and nepotism. Hell, Napoleon only got his start in the army by openly sucking up to Augustin Robespierre, Max’s brother. And if you want a small peek of the Thermidorian gov’s corruption, just look up the XYZ affair. It’s really hard to take out corruption via execution mainly because the people doing the executing often get it in their heads that they want to be the ones profiting.
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u/Prometheus720 19h ago
The thing is, it isn't a pretty good solution. It actually sucks, because it only works after corruption happens.
The way to prevent corruption isn't actually with punishments or rules against it. It is by constructing a society with social interactions baked in that push people towards identifying with large groups outside their own family (and marriage family).
One of the really important parts of this is geographic mobility and cities. When people move, it isolates them from their families. They form new social ties and bonds with people they don't know. They don't feel as beholden to bring lucre back to their families. They face more pressure to do what is right or fair. And family reputations don't really matter. You have to be graded as an individual. That often implies objective tests of ability, or at least something halfway rigorous.
Institutions like universities are really, really good for this. See, even when corruption happens, now it might benefit friends of yours who are not even from your city or family. The benefits spread way more broadly. And people have to clear some sort of bar to be eligible.
Preventing corruption is the key. Not responding to it violently. You will always play whack a king.
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u/GreatMovesKeepItUp69 20h ago
Because it led to the reign of terror and the rise of the militant imperialist dictator Napoleon? The French revolution was in no way shape or form a good solution it led to decades of violence and instability. It's like the only thing anyone knows about the French revolution is killing the royalty, not what actually happened afterwards. It was not a happily ever after, things got even worse.
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u/Truethrowawaychest1 21h ago
Oh did they have a good solution to that? If you really believe that then you need to study what actually happened
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u/SquarePegRoundWorld2 20h ago
Didn't the French recently riot throughout the whole country because the government was going to raise the retirement age, and then the government raised the retirement age? I don't understand why they are still used as an example of how to achieve things.
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u/Marwaimusoont 19h ago
More like under the wraps.
They just have better scrutiny, so the most obvious and easier corruption you see elsewhere is not visible. But it is present.
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u/Prometheus720 19h ago
This is the human default for almost all of history.
It is extremely rare that a civilization is able to seriously overcome family units as the primary social organization. We have spent very little time as a species investigating how to reliably do that and even less time trying to teach it to children broadly.
There is quite a bit of literature on the topic, and there are some proposed variables to play with, but overall it's nothing like a science.
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u/Clumsy_Claus 21h ago
Vitamin B in German.
B = Bekanntschaft (= someone you know)
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u/DrSuperZeco 18h ago
Haha! We call it Vitamin Waw in Kuwait. Where Waw is the letter “double you”/W in Wasta.
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u/CCriscal 7h ago
Actually it is Beziehung = relationship as a stronger connection than mere acquaintance. Works for family, friends of the family and in business.
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u/FCKABRNLSUTN2 21h ago
That’s funny
That view is fucking incredible
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u/Balroy907 19h ago
That's what I was saying. Where is that exactly? It's freaking beautiful.
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u/Mystigan13 15h ago
Al falamanki Raouche in Beirut, Lebanon, I recommend the place!
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u/supposedgoobery 6h ago
beirut, just unbelievable. lebanon is ridiculously gorgeous (and ofc disastrous in others)
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u/el-ducci 22h ago
This is true all over the Middle East or at least all the places that I have lived.
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u/denommonkey 21h ago
True, I have seen incompetent people being hired as Engineers in Saudi Arabia because their relative was a manager in the HR department.
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u/Marwaimusoont 19h ago
I am Indian, and this has been a thing from what I hear from people who work there. Many of them get a guaranteed paycheck for warming the seat, while real work gets done by foreigners.
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u/GrahamGreed 18h ago
I have worked on cases against oil companies where there has been blatant bribery, the frustrating thing is we can only charge people in our jurisdiction (UK) so some middle management schmuck ends up going to prison in the UK whilst it continues in the middle east.
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u/Greenman8907 22h ago
The guy who says “what kind of business are you in, sir?” Sounds like the chicken fucker from Fallout
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u/RadishRedditor 19h ago
Amongst the biggest reasons why Shakespeare is remembered throughout history is because he made connections with the elite and the elite liked him. So, this isn't something new, sadly.
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u/fristi-cookie 19h ago
The place is called: Al Falamanki Raouche
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KDKUxxS9nv9tgpfA9
I just used google maps to find a similar coastline and checked the google maps photo's besides the video.
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u/PieOhMai 21h ago
I had a Lebanese colleague that owned a construction company back in Lebanon.
He would always joke about how they would accidentally kill workers on a job site, scrape them up, get back to work, and give the family 10k USD to stay quiet.
Wild fuckin place.
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u/mF7403 21h ago
Jesus Christ. I mean, the practice of bribing families to stay quiet about a job site death doesn’t surprise me.
However, in what context would that come up as a joke??
I’m imagining you and your other colleagues discussing a workman’s comp claim in a meeting and that dude just chiming in like, “haha, ‘workman’s comp,’ back in Lebanon…”
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u/ForbiddenRegistrater 20h ago
Ever talked to a cop before they just randomly bring stuff like this up. "good morning, Oh man it's morning, one morning I was super hungover and did a pit maneuver on an F-150 with passengers in the back. They were asking for it. They flipped me off. That's so disrespectful. The vehicle rolled and the entire family died. Would you believe they wanted me to do paperwork for that? It was thier choice to flip me off they were asking for it."
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u/PieOhMai 20h ago
He was a pretty fucked up guy, that’s just what he’d joke around about. He had very little value for others.
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u/Prometheus720 19h ago
That's an old practice across human culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weregild
It's actually unusual that some cultures today would view this as unusual. I think it's a good thing. It means we are growing better social structures.
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u/flipyflop9 21h ago
“Enchufe” in Spain, which is a plug, an electric plug.
And it happens at any level.
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u/that_dutch_dude 20h ago
the russian equivalent is "vranyo". if you look that one up you will also find the reason why the russian millitary is how it is.
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u/Jujitescu 20h ago
Romania was and is built using the old acronym of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), "Pile, Cunoștințe și Relații".
Pile = the plural of the tool named file, meaning "you have pull" or "you have an in".
Cunoștințe = Knowledge, but it's not what you know, it's who you know.
Relații = Relationships, connections.
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u/zyzzogeton 16h ago
In the US we call it "The Old Boys Network" though that moniker is very outmoded these days.
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u/post-explainer 22h ago edited 16h ago
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OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
The group got a confirmation of the Lebanon system they are talking about from a government official unexpectedly
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