Environmental Malpractice Part 4: Poverty Porn

Born in:   Mexico, Mexico, USA, Palestine, USA, Taiwan, USA, Malaysia

So at our meeting in Vegas, Jim Puckett made the case that the world will be better if we all obey "international law", and that defamation of technicians, and closure of sustainable repair and reuse factories, is acceptable "collateral damage".  Jim presents himself, again and again, as an authority on Basel Convention.

The use of international treaties to simultaneously protect the 6 billion people in "non-OECD" nations from ... bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...  and the same time generate millions of well-intentioned dollars for a Seattle non-profit... This is not BAN.org's invention.  Poverty Porn has been around for decades.

Since my days studying international development at Carleton College, and as both a volunteer and employee (cross-culture trainer) for Peace Corps Africa, we've been aware of the "poster child" syndrome.  Here's a recent editorial on "Poverty Porn" by Nathaniel Whittemore at Co.Exist  (and here's a film from an admittedly donation-based organization in Africa, MamaHope.org, which does at least give hope for a different message).

The Hollywood and not-for-profit-Guilt-Industrial-Complex are really nice people to hang around with, as Jim and Mike both were in Vegas.  They are nicer people than I am.   Calling them accidental racists or ayatollahs of #ewaste was a decent into frustration.    If we are to turn them around, we need to first get their attention (which I've done) but then to find an alternative to the touchy word "racism".



Environmental Malpractice:

Jim Puckett skirted away from competing with me in a contest of who was doing more to help the poor.  He said (privately to me) that he trusts me and doesn't want to hurt recyclers or importers, but refers to this dispute as a matter of legality.

He says that exports of equipment for repair and elective upgrade (the SKD factories which buy tested working but upgrade them to work better by replacing key parts) should not have been considered legal in Annex IX, B1110 of the Basel Convention, and imminently will be made illegal by the Basel Ban Amendment.   Or perhaps it has been "determined" to be illegal, Jim says, by a group such as MPPI or PACE, cloister of "experts" (who don't even know what elective upgrade is and don't recall reading my 10 page submission about it) who make recommendations to the Basel Convention.


Fight fire with fire, ISRI says.  ISRI has the best lawyers in the scrap recycling business.  And so I'm inspired to take Jim up on his offer, and make this a legal issue.  Who should have custody of the e-waste poster children?
 
We must hold fast to the defense of the technicians, fixers and geeks who have been profiled as "primitives" in their import businesses... by making the "collateral damage" not into "poster children, but into witnesses for the legal defense of trade with Africa.  Boycotts are dumb.  Boycotting Africans, Asians, and Latinos is not some kind of exception.


BAN has presented themselves in a legal context, as protectors of the poor and impoverished nations.  In Part V, I will start my own legal case - not via a defamation lawsuit, as tempting as that is after the Chicago Patch diatribe by BAN's paid consultant.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I will present in the next few pages a legal case against BAN's guardianship of the "e-waste trade" and the poor children whose photos they have associated with recycling practices in the west.

Court is now in session.

The Basel Convention doesn't say what he says, and doesn't give him and a group at PACE authority over USA or international law.  And there is no better case against Jim's defense of his interpretation of "international law" than the falsely accused and falsely arrested.

If they are not victims of "accidental racism", can we compromise on legal malpractice?

From wikipedia:

Legal malpractice is the term for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, or breach of contract by an attorney that causes harm to his or her client. In order to rise to an actionable level of negligence, the injured party must show that the attorney's acts were not merely the result of poor strategy, but that they were the result of errors that no reasonable attorney would make.

Furthermore, legal malpractice requires proof of what would have happened had the attorney not been negligent; that is, "but for" the attorney's negligence ("but for" causation).^[1] If the same result would have occurred despite different (non-negligent) actions by the attorney, no cause of action will be permitted. "But for" or actual causation can be difficult to prove and usually results in a "trial-within-a-trial" which delves into the facts of the case for which the client originally retained the attorney.

We will present you evidence that the non-profit has profited from the following, that these were intentional, and that BAN's director Jim Puckett knew full well that the case made by his organization was deceiving.

1.  False data.  

2.  False description of Basel Convention

3.  False description of importers

But first, I will call three witnesses in Absentia:

Hamdy, CEO of Medicom, an importer to Egypt and Libya, from 2001-2008.
Joseph, Manager of Walthamstow-UK's BJ Electronics, importer to Nigeria in 2009.
Gordon, importer of record to PT Imtech of Indonesia.  The Indonesian mockingbird... 2010.

Unlike Brian B of Intercon Solutions, these three Geeks of Color are not likely to hire an American legal team to defend themselves.

But unlike Brian, they are actually in the best position to fight this bizarre custody battle over the "victims", Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans employed in sustainable recycling, repair, reuse, and digital divide rights.

Over the next month, I will present a case in the custody battle against the Poverty Porn Purveyors in Seattle, on behalf of the Geeks of Color.   I hope that students from the University of Washington, and sustainability professionals at CURC and universities in California, etc., will be the jury.   Is E-Stewardship the best bet for custody of the old computers?  Or does the native trade, and fair trade recycling, offer a more humane alternative to against a let-them-surf-the-web-with-cake solution by Big Shred, Planned Obsolescence, and Poverty Porn?

Defamation Case #1:  MediCom of Egypt