Avoiding official repercussions may have been a reason, too, Mr. Knutsen allowed.
In Africa, he says, "I travelled extensively, avoiding official routes, palaces, important personages, and high-level politics".
Robert Mugabe's regime is hostile to Western reporters, and most of the journalists who visited Zimbabwe this summer were disguised as tourists, avoiding official contacts and possible arrest.
(If, that is, the millionaires are even around; as my colleague Patrick Radden Keefe wrote yesterday, many of the wealthiest owners of Manhattan property use their apartments as investments while avoiding official residency, and the taxes that come with it).
In a last-minute decision, Mr. Huang dropped one of the two Chinese characters that form the word "against" as well as Mr. Wang's family name in hopes of avoiding official anger.
Greece appears, increasingly, to be caught between two evils: avoiding official acceptance of bankruptcy and enacting reforms that, having already killed the market, now stand to exacerbate the very thing that will hurtle the country into greater poverty: recession.
