A Separate Peace: E-Waste Activism's Collateral Damage

"Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even death by violence"

For over 10 years, this blog has thoroughly documented the false narrative that "exports" are driven by "waste externalisation" and "avoided costs" rather than by "importers" in the "Tech Sector" of emerging markets.  The blog managed to land a few "swordfish", such as Adam Minter, Reed Miller, Josh Goldstein, Josh Lepawsky, NPR Marketplace, USA Today, and many more Ph.D's and press. 

The false statistic that 80% of used electronics was "sham" recycled has been exposed. - not least importantly by the main NGO itself. Despite trying to rig their last EU GPS tracking study by not affixing GPS to things Africa doesn't want, BAN.org found only 5% export. Despite embarrasing MIT and Oregon PBS with the rigged 2016 GPS tracking study, the NGO E-Stewards racket continues to bring millions of dollars into the lush Seattle offices. Despite questions on the bare faced exploitation of children's photographs in the "third world" dumps, who receive nary a penny from the millions raised, the NGO stands unapologetic. 

"Sodom and Gomorrah", "primitives", "ghoulish", and other halloweeny words remain slurs against the talented valedictorians of the Tech Sector in emerging markets. It was racial profiling by the left. That's what structural racism and implicit racism is all about.

The NGO has largely found they don't have to promote lies as fervently, that OEMs with anti-gray-market designs and "big shred" investors who don't like competing in the Good Enough Market will fund them anyway. Why issue lies today, if the money tree is shedding fruit from the lies you told (about Agbogbloshie, Guiyu, etc) a decade ago? 

These "parasites of the poor" have enough scalps on their wall.

INTERPOL quietly sunsetted "Project Eden". SERI (the organization that "houses" the R2 standard) is pivoting away from export-related "root problems" to "data security". Europe's most prestigious E-Waste conference - the IERC in Salzburg - invited Fair Trade Recycling representative Emmanuel Nyaletey to present an African perspective in 2018. A "Green Prize" was awarded in 2018 to the Spanish documentary "Blame Game", which actually took the UNPRECEDENTED step of interviewing Joseph "Hurricane" Benson, falsely imprisoned for "dumping e-waste" when he purchased hotel upgraded CRT televisions for reuse in Africa. 

But the journalists, like Solly Granatstein and Raphael Rowe, who provided gasoline during the cross-burning environmentalist boogaloo, have yet to make amends. Despite multiple peer-reviewed university studies, baseline data from World Bank and IMF, deep investigative dives by journalists like Adam Minter, and the 2013 admission from Jim Puckett himself that his 80% dumping claims were bullhockey (technically, he did not dismiss the statistic, he merely disclaimed ever having stated it... in and of itself calls 60 Minutes Wasteland's Pelley Award into question)... despite all this, there's no apology or follow up or headline. Ira Glass set the benchmark in his corrections to the Mikey Daisy Foxconn hallucinations. But Solly and @aReporter have yet to make peace with the defamed geeks of color.

A Separate Peace is a novel by John Knowles.  I don't know to what degree it's assigned reading in high school (I read it under Mr. Thomas at Fayetteville High School's American Literature class in 1977).  I don't want to give a spoiler, but it's a coming of age tale for both Gene Forrester and his paralyzed friend "Finny" Phineas. It's a psychological thriller, documenting the process of admitting you are to blame for something horrible. 

Post colonial guilt, and guilt over resource pollution and extraction by the free market, can create a bias that assumes Africans should be denied agency in the trade platforms which created a critical mass of users - without which investments in Africa's mobile phone, internet, and mass communications grid could not have occurred. I'm not saying at all that the journalists mentioned above intended anything but the best for Africans. But the structural racism behind PACE (the first "standard"). The "Partnership" - written solely by white Europeans and Americans -assumption that importers were "waste tourists", ie bad people. That smoke-filled room of liberal white saviors created standards to be later enforced by Interpol's "Project Eden", and set the stage for the friendly fire by reporters. It should be obvious now that Photojournalists owe their own debt of atonement to Africa's valedictorians.

Protesters across America are demanding that our Police come to terms with, and atone for, the collateral damage to the African American community and other minorities around the world intimidated by Majority Authority.  Every day, the press is reporting on this account taking, as protesters take to the street.