Lines On Maps: Where the OECD was Hatched

Simple, Jim P. of BAN told me.   Follow international law.   He said he agreed with 95% of what Oscar A. Orta's presentation on "Fair Trade Recycling" said.  He applauds the Chicas Bravas.   But he said the Basel Convention Ban Amendment is simple.

That's a mouthful.   The Declaration of Independence Declaration of Independence Amendment (proposed, not passed) is what to follow.   Not the actual Basel Convention, Annex IX, B1110, which allows export for metal recycling and export for repair and reuse, which says nothing about "functional".

Definition of 'Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - OECD'

A group of 30 member countries that discuss and develop economic and social policy. OECD countries are democratic countries that support free market economies. [Investopedia.com]

See the video at the bottom for the 1000 years history in Europe that culminated in the OECD.





The NGO has purposefully and willfully confused hundreds of journalists, regulators, customs enforcement agents, procurement officials, and local regulators about the international law, and then says their objection to "Fair Trade Recycling" is simple.  He now says it's good but unfortunately illegal.  That's a step up, I guess, from Jim's 2010 Op Ed in E-Scrap news, where he literally accused us of "poisoning people".

Last week, it was back to technicalities, to law over trans-boundary movements of various states of metallurgy.  Raw ore, or blister copper, including lead ore itself, or mercury ore, is legal to ship anywhere as it has not  been defined as waste.  Prior ownership in real estate trumps toxicity in the Basel Action Alchemy, and geographic political coordinates determined that Joe Benson and other African techs should be arrested and fined large sums of money.

Simply follow Jim Puckett's version of what International Law should have said, his Amendment, and you're a good person.  That doesn't mean whether it pollutes or not, or whether it creates sustainable jobs or internet access.  The world will be better if we mine leaded ore and export it everywhere, but keep leaded solder defined by a 1960s membership organization.   Singapore, as Oscar's presentation noted, is wealthier and more regulated today than ANY 1960 OECD nation, and if you want to return a hard drive to "manufacturer takeback", it's the nation where many hard drives are made.  It's one of the biggest seaports in the world.

Shipping raw filthy leaded ore from a mine in the USA to India is legal, according to BAN.  Shipping a hard drive with recycled content leaded solder to Singapore is a crime.   That's the 5% difference between what Basel Action Network's director says is 95%  good.

They are trying to achieve, through E-Stewards certification, what in the 1990s Jim Puckett protested their failure to achieve, a 1990s loophole he imagined. Jim's submitted language to amend the Basel Convention.   If it's not amended, but he can convince people it has been amended, he has won his "crusade" against... against what?  Against transboundary movement of clean recyclables over lines on maps.


The Basel Convention used this 1960 construct - the "Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development".  Often called the "rich country club", it was hatched in Europe, and noted for not even including Japan on its original charter.  Europe is the hatchery for all kinds of 'lines on maps'.   The Europeans fight wars, and outlaw spoken languages like Basque and Catalan in schools.   Europe contributed the contagion of lines on maps to Africa, Asia, and Latin America.   The lines don't get drawn by wealth, they get drawn by geographical coordinates, and then we must form armies and kill one another to move the lines about.   See the video below for a fast forward on how Europes geographical puzzle has ebbed and flown through decades, a model which gave us north and south Korea, north and south Viet Nam, and Singapore and Malaysia and Indonesia... And Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

I posted a blog while in Europe last summer about Lines on Maps.  I'm considered insane for learning two languages, by teaching school in Africa, for marrying a foreigner and raising kids with two passports by certain churchgoing folk in booger county Arkansas.  But most of the people in NW Arkansas are not trolls.  Most of them think that what this local boy grew up and made a business out of is pretty cool.   It's unpopular with King E-Steward in Seattle, and unpopular with certain fundamentalist English-speakins in the Ozarks.   They got a lot in common in my book.   And this blog is written by a guy from the Ozarks, from 6-7 generations of hillbilly European Youngbloods and Cherokee, who's being regulated by Vermont readers of Puckett's white whale obsession with metals crossing lines on maps.

So much simpler to divide us all into First World, Second World, and Third World, and to define the third group as wire burning monkey people who will aspire one day, with whitie's help, to get internet.  Rather than see that the majority of the internet users are long-already in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where they happen to do recycling really really well if you give them a chance.   Just make everybody OECD, hand ever person in the world an OECD passport, and let's trade together fairly, so they aren't forced to trade with the people in back alleys who make their advantage with toxics along for the ride, using the vacuum of supply and demand created by Big Shred to get sweeter deals off of the black faced internet geeks, who are more likely by far to be running a Minecraft server in Lagos as to be burning one in Agbogbloshie.

Here's another map.   American Ethnicity.  Where Americans came from, the origins of populations in the USA.

I got both the video at top, and the Mail article map, from friends from Fayetteville High School, via facebook, this morning.