Documentary "Blame Game" Covers More Angles at Agbogbloshie

Directors Juan Solera and Albert Julia's English-language documentary, Blame Game, can now be viewed on Amazon Prime.  The documentary was aired at the 2019 E-Scrap Conference in Orlando, Florida, and Good Point Recycling of Vermont sponsored the travel costs for the directors (from Spain), on behalf of Fair Trade Recycling.

Short clip (Teaser) available on Vimeo.  

Link to full documentary on Amazon Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/Blame-Game-Juan-Solera/dp/B07NC532NF/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Blame+Game&qid=1571060738&s=instant-video&sr=1-1

The Event was well attended by E-Scrap standards.  Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network opened questions from the audience, stating it was the best film he'd seen on the subject.  He then went on --- very curiously -- to ask why the filmmakers had not given more air time to proponents of the Basel Convention?

The curious insinuation was that he had not been interviewed.  But he had been. The directors had honored his own demand not to include his interview, perhaps because he had made a false claim on camera.

Nuance Delivery 1: Awal is Sasha Rainbow's Tire Burning Boy

Another reminder from the Placebo "Life's What You Make It" controversy a year ago... Sasha Rainbow, who made the Placebo music video in Agbogbloshie, didn't ever - even once- respond to me or talk to me.  She said I was a liar.



Here (in Pidgin English) is an interview with Awal Muhammed of Savelugu (village north of Tamale).  Oh, he's also featured in BBC reporter Reggie Yates feature on Agbogbloshie.

Sasha's documentary is coming out soon, I've been told.  Good for her that she spent more time down there.  I've heard nice things about Sasha Rainbow from people I know in Accra. 

Euro Agbo Photo Journos Redux 1: The Butterfly and the Whale (enacted by 2 roosters)

With the help of Ghana Tech Wahab Odoi, and the miracles of the internet, I have managed to put together a lot of the pieces behind the strange alt-coinish entry by the  band Placebo.  Their MTV video's use of Agbogbloshie as a backdrop for "Life is What You Make It" debuted during the middle of this blog's series on Euro Agbo Porno Photo Journos.

As far as making friends with people you run into in strange places - well, chalk this chicken fight up to unfortunate timing.

I was in the middle of a "photo journo flog" series.  And Sasha Rainbow was thrilled with what seems her studio's most prestigious work to date. And the band and Placebo fans were unprepared to play a part in an environmental lesson plan.  What does work for photography often does not work as journalism?... um no it's about the music dude.

Artists look for simplicity - a simple, powerful photo can tell a thousand words. But those words may be false, and quite easily proffer mere racial profiling.  I brought their video into the "Free Joe Hurricane Benson" debate, and they seem angry and perturbed.  Easier to describe me as a trollish brute than to entertain the possibility that their depiction of poverty was bleeding with collateral damage, and wrapped in #ewaste activist folly.

How did we meet in this place?  All of us? How does Awal, Yahroo or Razak wind up with a Whatsapp treasuretrove of white contacts from UK, USA, Spain, etc?  Since just the last month, I've been sent photos and been handed by phone to speak directly to five "freelance documentary makers".  It's a land rush... but they don't know what kind.

Q and A: The Bitter End of UK's E-Waste Safari Exploitation

More information turned up on the Band Placebo and how the Agbogbloshie dump kids were chosen to launch the Band's Australia tour.  

The band's reps are researching us.  And we are researching the filmmaker and the band.  Feelings of saviorism and feelings of exploitation are both valid, and both come from good hearts.  We are all running uphill, fighting for higher moral ground.

Here is "Running Up That Hill", a song about trading places.  It is one of the band's hits from the past that got USA airplay, at least on college radio.  ... I remember this.




There's no direct communication between us (yet?), but a lot of evidence people are reading the blog and adjusting their message.  For example, the OfficialPlacebo Facebook page no longer ID's Abgo as "the largest e-waste dump in the world", and reciprocally, I can state this headline was also fake news ("Brian Molko highest paid singer on earth")

"The ‘People’ section is a humorous parody of Gossip magazines, all stories are obviously not true."

This is NOT TRUE, the lead singer of Placebo does not out-rank Mick Jagger, Beyonce, Eminem, etc.  But the fact that it shows up as the top Google listing for "net worth Brian Molko" shows that Brian has something in common with Wahab, Chendiba, Joe Benson, and other Tech Sector entrepreneurs in Ghana - who do NOT import 80% waste to what is NOT the "biggest e-waste dump on earth".  More in common than he ever knew.

Since my earlier blog and tweets, Placebo has taken down this claim on Facebook - that Agbo is the "world's largest e-waste dump".

Now watch out for someone simply swapping the words "in Africa" for "on Earth".  Some people imply that sounds like a small mistake.  But is is quite a correction. "The Tallest Man in the NBA" and "The Tallest Man on North Korea's High School Basketball Team" are two very different "Tallest Men". Because fewer Africans owned TVs and computers decades ago, their junkyards have fewer of them than ours do. Here's a photo of a pile in Addison County Vermont...

Seriously - we got WAAAAAAY more e-waste in Middlebury Vermont (pop 10k) than Accra has in Agbogbloshie.  Maybe I can pay Michael Anane to tell people he played mini-golf here as a boy, and we'll get some MTV screen time.

The photo of Agbogbloshie is, to us, even funnier and more obviously a joke than the MediaMass (Onionish) fake news.  The kid is standing on a single TV, on a barren landscape, carring a bag (no doubt on his way on some errand) and a Alsdair Mitchell pulled a McElvaney and said "kid, jump up on here a second".  Using it under the headline "the world's largest e-waste dump" a single kid standing on a single TV in a city of 3M is rather hilarious (and I'm not the one that choose that screenshot for that headline - Placebo's Facebook manager did).

Look, Brian Molko is closer to being the richest rock star than Agbogbloshie is to being the largest e-waste dump, but that's irrelevant.  My point is that good people - Ghana's Tech Sector and Brian Molko - can get thrust into conflict through misinformation and misunderstanding, and no one has to get bent out of shape.   It's dialectic. I know more about the band, and at the end they'll know more about Ghana, and the UK Press portrayal of its slums (no chaps, t'isn't about you).

So for the benefit of Placebo fans, it's ok to enjoy the video.  The camerawork is some of the best I've seen there (a little cheating with extra gasoline of the fires).  But below is a quick Q and A about Agbogbloshie, the myths and the facts.  Everything stated below has been the subject of many blogs.

PLACEBO Twitter Spat: UK Band Fans White Privilege in Agbogbloshie

"The Band is absolutely dedicated to its workers.  Our policy is to give a living wage to any employee, crew person, or extra, irregardless of their race or nationality.  We'll investigate Awal Basit's concerns, and if there's any validity to his claim, we'll make this right."

 - Nobody so far.  Robin Ingenthron made this quote up to be helpful.

That's is how Robin Ingenthron would have answered the question.  So far, no one from RiseRecords or PlaceboWorld, or any band mate, has summoned the courage to address Agbogbloshie scrap worker Awal Muhammed Basit's concerns. Awal says neither he nor the two other Scrap Workers the video is "dedicated to" were paid, or signed waivers.

It would have deftly anticipated the questions over white PRIVILEGE which infuse discussions over filming slums, teledensity, liability laws, and the prison sentence for African TV repairman Joseph Benson.

Like a lot of slum dwellers, Awal is nearly illiterate and struggles with English. Fortunately, I had Wahab, our Ghana Tech Sector partner here in Vermont to translate, and felt like we could get to the bottom of this quickly.  Maybe Sasha Rainbow, the video director, mistook Awal's enthusiasm for giddiness over being featured in a PLACEBO video.  Maybe he signed a waiver he hadn't understood.

Going directly to the band, via twitter, was I know a little likely to ruffle feathers.  But we were polite in the beginning, and my concern about the days of silence have to do with the narrowing opportunity to translate directly - while Wahab is here - for the band.