Earning The Best (Meta) Reputation Isn't Obvious: Canary Islands 43 Update

Earning The Best (Meta) Reputation Isn't Obvious: Canary Islands 43 Update

Back in Europe, trying to find a Spanish citizen to file the official Requests For Correspondence with the Spanish Civil National Guard, who arrested the Canary Islands 43 last winter .  Europe has a bureaucracy.  But after translating all of the Spanish news stories about the arrest of "E-waste Exporters", including a more factual one in particular from Europol (which corrected a number of sensationalist claims in the original story), a few facts are taking shape.

Fun Facts about the Canary Islands E-Waste Export "Crime"

1. It was mostly cars and car parts, like the chapter of Minter's Secondhand in the Bronx. Not electronics.
2. There is no Totall Reclaim, no Closed Loop, no Intercon, no western recycler mentioned at all.  That's usually the first question press ask for. So it's like the Joe "Hurricane" Benson story, where the Diaspora is in complete control of both the supply lines and the demand purchase order.
3. The Spanish Canarias (Islands) Civil Guard carried out the arrests.  That's not the same as high profile UK Environmental Agency, whose chief (Lord Chris Smith, who first introduced Mike "fishing as a boy" Anane to INTEROL) was stirring enforcement 13 years ago. But like the barrister in the Hurricane Benson case, we expect that some poor local prosecutor has been handed allegations which he'll have trouble making sense of. (Juan Solera said the UK Banniser he interviewed seemed unsure).
4. Canary Islands has the most hotels per Spanish population - a common attraction to Africa's diaspora, whose used electronics networks have snapped up hotel upgrades for decades.

So on Friday I boarded a flight to Spain and sent out an email to 25 people... I'm jumping in the pool, with my Duolingo (396 straight days of Spanish) and Whatsapp Translate.  But how do I complete these forms as an American - and one with a "reputation"?

This is quickly about hoped next steps... But also about your Meta Reputation, and how to steer it.  Show of hands, who remembers St. Louis Cardinals manager Branch Rickey? Other than the fact I grew up watching Cardinal's baseball on a black and white analogue TV at my grandparent's guest bedroom, why do I think Branch Rickey is the ultimate Meta Reputation? How is this obscure American 1940's baseball manager vital to understanding European E-Waste Policy?

Part 1: Why You Can Be For African Development, Or Against Secondhand Imports, But NOT BOTH

Almost anything mined can and should be reused before that material is mined again. Almost anything mined can and should be reused before that material is mined again. Almost anything mined can and should be reused before that material is mined again.

Ask them.

The photo above was taken this week in a city in Spain.  It shows three carters.  Carter is a legal term (see New York City statute) for the job of pushing a cart through the street to look for items discarded by businesses and residents that can be economically salvaged and should be reused, repaired, or recycled.

This photo is interesting because it humanizes the carters.  I tweeted a photo last week of a carter showing up to scavenge a waste container ten minutes after a previous carter had already sorted through it. In the photo above, two carters have idled their own carts to help a third repair the broken wheel on his own cart - which contained a computer and microwave ("e-waste").

It's also interesting because it's an opportunity to follow the cart, and see that 80% of it is sold locally to European formal sector scrap yards, by the African immigrants. The only things they keep to ship home are working and repairable devices... to countrymen who develop Africa, not dump on it.

2023 To Kill A Reuse Mockingbird: The Canary Islands E-Waste Black Man's Burden - of Proof

The "Hurricane" Joe Benson Saga continues in Sequel.The press announcements this week were short, but provided a few details... UPDATE: EUROPOL press release with actual photos discloses 750,000 kg - not 3M - were used electronics.

Here's a link to one of the articles on LinkedIn, which I posted.  It has an argument ongoing in the comment and replies section which includes SWEEEP Kuusakoski referencing the BBC Reggie Yates documentary about Agbogbloshie... Kuusakowski's representative ends his scolding reply with the words "I have been to Ghana."

Sir?  Hold. My. Coffee.

It was a sin to kill a mockingbird - in Harper Lee's 1960 novel, or in a 2011 blog about Indonesia... and it's a sin to kill a Canary in 2023.  In case after case, it has been about the burden of proof imposed upon an African tech sector and their family diaspora networks. 

Their burden (like the accused Tom Robinson) is the white man's presumption of guilt.  Ironically, this is not the usual meaning of "White Man's Burden", but the imposition of INTERPOL and Spanish Police to "save Africans from waste" is mind bending. What "proof of reuse" (the defense Canary Island diaspora must present against "presumed waste" communicates about the scales of justice is communicated in the headline - that the Spanish arrested "criminals" rather than "accused" them.