When I say "You destroyed peoples lives"...

... what I meant was, "You are destroying peoples lives."

From Nairobi, I got a message from BAN.   Here's my answer.

You think I'm talking about YOU?

You describe it as a personal attack against YOU?

You are 1 percent of the equation when you destroy 99 lives.

I was talking about them.  The factory closed down because you told the government they were polluters and illegal and primitive.  They have families.  They made display devices out of working CRTs and sold them to other islamic countries which set up internet cafes and had revolutions.


Ad hominem attack?  Is "dip@*&" an ad hominem attack?  I guess so.  But you tell everyone you are a good non-profit crusader, but all you are doing is wrecking the only sustainable jobs these people had, in nations where sex trade, drugs, mining, and warfare make up far too much of the employment already.

We wasted years explaining this to you nicely.  You want a better relationship?  Stop shooting kids in the face (with your camera) and get real about how internet is growing at ten times the rate in nations earning a tenth of our take home income.  A lot of people should be very ashamed of using your marketing campaign. If my state passes a law obligating me to pay a percentage of my gross income for you to spend attacking geeks of color, I'll set myself on bloody fire.  This isn't about international law, or pollution, this is about taking jobs and internet away from geeks and giving the money to YOU.

 Do you know the names of any geeks in Ethiopia?  You pose there and say they are happy because they aren't importing, that they get only tested working older PCs, not newer ones they can fix.  Take your success story and shove it, we talk to hundreds of geeks and give them more choices, and the more choices they have, the better off they are as PC refurbishers.

You should thank me for telling it to you straight.   Taking money from people who "see the light" and abandon their geek friends to rot is not my idea of "stewardship".

What hurts the most from Kenya is the word of the official who said "we wouldn't be here talking about this if it wasn't for Jim".  You know that you wouldn't be in Africa if it wasn't for ME.   I brought you there, like a kind of smallpox, and I feel personally responsible and ashamed.  They wouldn't be there in Africa discussing the BANs if it wasn't for you, and you wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for me.

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