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| Imprisoned based on fake statistic |
Thanks to all for the polite applause and pats on the back as I profile the arrest and imprisonment of an African used goods trader from the safety of my Vermont office.
Many people have told me how "brave" I am to risk offending the Senator Joe McCarthy of E-Waste.
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| " Never has BAN ever stated that 80% of US e-waste is exported." From NPR.org / fair use. |
One year ago, "Hurricane" Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics was involved in our efforts to get Puckett to actively withdraw his accusations against African techs. I travelled to Interpol, met Benson in London, and engaged with Puckett (via BloombergView) over Basel Action Network's silence about it's "80%" statistic being discredited in major
UN funded studies in Nigeria. Jim Puckett tried to spin the story, claiming credit for what he called the vast improvement in standards of imports to Nigeria.
Outrageous. The study was the same containers seized from Benson's arrest! Puckett was acknowledging the quality of the studies funded by Basel Convention Secretariat, but implying the quality of the loads was a result of the goods seizure. Rarely does an expert get caught so bloody red handed.
Unfortunately for Joe Benson, trade of used goods in Africa has already been tried and convicted in the press, based on BAN and Greenpeace's accidental racial profiling of allegedly "primitive" electronics repairers.
Portions of the Hurricane Joe Benson blog, with quotes from Puckett and from the 2011 report on the findings of Benson and others sea containers are reposted below the lyrics of Bob Dylan's song Hurricane. It includes a link to an academic article reportedly submitted in Benson's trial, from University of Northampton UK, which quotes Puckett estimating only 25% of exports to Nigeria are actually reused...
Recall also, a year ago,
that Puckett and BAN refused to come clean about their "statistics" on e-waste. "Never has BAN ever said..." etc. Recall as well that Puckett used articles mentioning Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics by name in his powerpoint presentations, taking credit for the crackdown.
Bottom line: Africa has enough REAL problems, needing real solutions. They don't need us to manufacture scandals for them. (See another old blog chestnut,
"The finite world", riffing on Economist Paul Krugman).
"Hurricane" Rubin Carter, memorialized in Bob Dylan's song, passed away two months ago, April 20, by the way.
My point is that I told Jim Puckett, to his face at E-Scrap in the fall, that his stats about Africa were resulting in an Innocent Man's arrest and imprisonment. Jim Puckett said to me that Joe Benson was
"collateral damage". That's the best he could do. And now Benson is in prison.
Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder 'one' guess who testified
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers they all went along for the ride
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand ?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.
