Showing posts with label bullyboy. Show all posts

Apology From Craig Lorch and Jeff Zirkle - Entrapped By BAN

Last week, E-Scrap News and Recycling Today ran an Op-Ed Letter and story about the upcoming sentencing of two electronics recycling company owners from Seattle, Washington.

Craig Lorch and Jeff Zirkle's letter starts with their background as young freon recovery do-gooders, who got into fluorescent lamp recycling, and then into "E-Waste", becoming the largest TV, computer, and electronics scrap recycling company in the NW USA.

Open Letter: Learn from Total Reclaim’s mistakes

Got a call from Craig a few days before the letter, and we had a pretty long talk about the situation. Had a shorter exchange with Jeff just afterwards. Around New Years, I had talked to Charles Brennick, another Seattle area electronics guy spiked by the GPS tracking scandal in Washington. And I've been in regular contact with Bojan Paduh, founder of Canada's ERA, who is in a defamation lawsuit against Basel Action Network for their report describing GPS device trackers they put into electronics dropped off at his site in Canada. I was a paid expert witness for a fraud case on e-waste recycling in Chicago last summer. So I have a lot of perspective to share.

It is an ugly business to grandstand, or use a friend's painful prison sentence news story as a soapbox to pontificate on environmental policy. But in some of these cases, I've been given a green light.

Let's start by acknowledging that fraud is bad.

Let's finish by talking about Total Reclaim's biggest mistake.

Spiral Economy Trumps Circular Economy: Part 1 Protectionist Rules in Emerging Markets

The debate is over 5 Markets

1) Value Added New Industrial Goods
2) Value Added Second-hand Goods
3) Clean Graded Raw Materials
4) Raw Materials Requiring Disassembly Labor
5) Waste Dumping

Very large, emerging, but historically agrarian markets like China and India have somewhat ironically tended to be more Marxist in their economics. While Marx predicted that Communism would be the logical evolutionary outcome of very large industry, it was the relatively rural Russia (compared to Europe generally), and agrarian China, which implemented Communism.

When Formal Market is Criminal, is Informal more Moral?

Quick thanks for a tip from a pal via Tweet, here's a thought-provoking article on Informal Trade in East Africa. Kate Douglas writes in HowWeMadeItInAfrica.com

Wheelbarrows of dollars: Understanding informal trade in East Africa

"The Hand That Will Rule The World—One Big Union"

I'll leave you to read it, it's about the underestimation of the power and importance of "informal" markets in Africa, and how "off the books" trade makes African commerce look smaller than it really is. That's not a huge surprise - how much of the growth in China's economy came from record-keeping of trade previously off the record?

The thoughts provoked here are based on my sadness and disgust at the levels of corruption I witnessed while living in Africa in the mid-80s. I remember going through checkpoints in East Zaire (Dem Republic of Congo) which were set up by soldiers on dirt roads in the jungle. Using a fallen tree to block the road, the soldiers would stop taxivans and demand bribes, while waving machine guns.

When "formal" is run by criminals, the moral market may be the informal.

城管 [chéngguǎn / cheng2 guan3] noun.

City management or administrators tasked with enforcing municipal laws, regulations, codes, etc. They have a very poor reputation amongst Chinese people as being corrupt and violent brutes, best known for often physically bullying illegal street vendors, hawkers, and peddlers. See examples.

This post is from the ChinaSmack Glossary, which is a collection of current idioms and expressions, like "memes" in China. You've heard of the "green fence" and the crackdown on printer refurbishers in Foshan? This may be the Chinese word for the people Joseph Benson called "bullyboys".

Good news. The number of poor recyclers' defenders has just increased by One.

Pope Francis has made an amateur video praising the world's "cartoneros" — the poor people who pick through garbage to find recyclable and reusable goods. He says their work is dignified and good for the environment. [ABC News]

It is so bloody obvious that an activity, such as recycling, which is praised as good citizenship when performed by rich people, does not deserve less merit when performed by poor people. How often do MIT and the Pope and modern artists in NYC agree?

We now have author Adam Minter, NYC Artist/Oscar Winner Vik Muniz, former Basel Convention Secretary Katharina Kummer Peiry, researchers from Memorial University, USC, PUCP, MIT, Africans and Chinese, all signing the praise of recycling in a fair manner. Where with the backlash be felt?

By Authorities who hitched their wagons to Basel Action Network's campaign of poverty porn photos, false statistics, and halloween rhetoric.

Authority. Bullyboys. 城管

[Pope] Francis, known for his simple habits, has denounced today's "throw-away culture" and said in the video that food that is tossed aside each day could feed all the world's hungry.

Francis has a long relationship with Argentina's "cartoneros" — literally "cardboard people." He would celebrate Mass for them as archbishop and invited them on stage during World Youth Day in July.

Middle managers, the tide has turned. The Vermont E-Waste Massacree will be the Wounded Knee of the battle against good enough markets. When Chinese bloggers are complaining about the same thing as the Pope, African TV repairmen (Joe Benson), and New York professional artists, the Temp Light is on your motorcycle. Ignore it and ruin your vehicle. E-Stewards has to execute Plan B, throw Eric Cartman out of the Executive Director chair. Even Donald Summers, the former BAN.org consultant who (18 months ago) called my views on Fair Trade Recycling "a huge outlier", now works for ISRI.

"Recycling good." say Og, beating a reused mammoth bone against an elk antler.

So I used to sell to Egypt, now I don't.

I used to sell to Indonesia, but it's illegal now, so I stopped.

And for years I exported to Malaysia for refurbishing, and that factory - which recycled 100% of accidental breakage at the CRT glass furnace in KL - no longer speaks English. We gave them a price cut in return for their obtaining ISO14001 certification. They began a takeback program, creating a domestic Malaysia CRT recycling infrastructure...

It's all dead. Supply and demand.

The E-Waste Industry, at the EScrap Conference in Orlando, will be talking about there being no demand for CRT glass, cathode ray tube cullet. But that's not exactly what there's no demand for.

There's no demand for self-righteous bigotry and b******t.

Back to the drawing board. I can cross off lots of places that are expensive to visit, expensive to audit, and give R2 Auditors the heeby-jeebies. Turns out, the heeby-jeeby feeling is mutual. In Vermont, we have practically eliminated CRT export for reuse. I could become an E-Steward right now, if I was willing to pay the dues. I'm not doing anything they don't want me to do.

So gee... I should look back at the invitation to join E-Stewards, the gracious invitation extended to me last
winter. Sure, I'm qualified now to be a "steward". But, it's wasted on me. See, I'm really not into calling innocent people guilty, and the whole making myself look like a better recycler by making other people look worse. If an all white country club chased off my colored fiance, and said now I could be a member, I wouldn't be too keen with all that.

I'm E-Steward qualified, E-Steward eligible, E-Steward compliant. I'm a good ole e-waste steward boy. Just got to show them my downstreams and write them a check.

"Be Quiet! I order you to be quiet!"

- Arthur, King of the Britons, (Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

As I wrap up the "Bullyboys" case for exoneration of African traders, we are left with a simple question of authority. Jim Puckett told me directly, a few years ago, to "stop referring people to Annex IX of the Basel Convention." (the section that makes export for recycling, and repair, legal - so long as it isn't dumping). It was in the form of an order. Basel Convention was his "turf". He drew a line and told me not to cross.

"The Magna Carta Action Group."
"The Declaration of Independence Action Network."
"The Bill of Rights Action Center."

There are lots of authoritative names a small, underemployed environmentalist can bestow himself. Most Americans wouldn't fall for the "Associations" above. But if you select the name of a Swiss Treaty, and say "international law" enough times, you may even get an informed journalist to report your press release as something from an authority.

Ill defined legal systems produce bullyboys.

King Arthur: I am your king. Woman: Well I didn't vote for you. King Arthur: You don't vote for kings. Woman: Well how'd you become king then? [Angelic music plays... ] King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king. Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

The difference between an authority and a bullyboy? Law. Courts. Constitutions. Consensus. And the problem in this whole case is that there is little in the way of an international court system. Lacking international law, and fed fake numbers by BAN.org, Europeans have reverted into bully justice.

Granted, true international law is more orderly. I've been to the the Hague, I've been to Strasbourg. But these are very busy places to get into. If you are arrested in Britain for a crime you are not even accused of committing where it didn't occur in Nigeria, and think you can find a place on the International Court Docket, go buy a Megabucks lottery ticket, right now.

Laws only "happen" inside borders. The police or Stewards or regulators who enforce international "law" are enforcing something that is extra-juridicial. That's why treaties have to be "ratified", to give them status of law inside the borders of a nation with laws and courts and police. Inside a border, giving "international" law to a policeman, there is otherwise no constitutional basis for appeal.

Your sole appeal is to the bully-boy.

Bullyboy 6: Eden is Not On Our Map

Fair Trade Recycling. Our vision is not the same, perhaps, as Basel Action Network, or the "Back to Eden" program of Interpol. Arresting dozens of Africans and seizing thousands of "good enough" televisions and monitors, purchased for repair and resale, will not get us where we are going.

Where are we going? According to the Economist, to the end of poverty. The world population is making the same progress as the United States made, in standard of living, for the past 100 years.

Nearly 1 billion people have left poverty in 20 years.

In "Towards the End of Poverty", the Economist shows how at this rate, another billion will leave poverty in a decade.

This is our vision. Africans with television, barios with high speed internet, rice fields with smart phones. Yes, that means they will "generate e-waste", just as we did/do. But "Back to Eden" isn't on our Map.

Bullyboy 4: No Habeus E-Waste Corpus, And curious retraction

Too bad Interpol and the UK authorities didn't consider how easy TV repair was. Two years after Export-Hoax-gate (see BAN's Night of Breaking CRT glass, Environmental Malpractice, and Clubbed to Death Blogs), Intercon police are still seizing African's containers, presuming the electronics were waste. Like a parent taking toys out of a crib, the paternalism of the "Project Eden" (putting Africa back the way it was?) stands opposing the African Revolution, the Arab Spring, the democratization which flows directly through used display devices like twitter to teenagers.

The two "root causes"? BAN made up a fake number, and rich countries know so little about electronics repair that we make museums about it. "Once upon a time, we replaced capacitors too, honey". Fixing things is so "hunter gatherer", it seems to belong in a stoneage village.

Meet the other side of the table. If you live in a place, like Lagos, that still does a lot of electronics repair, you wonder why people don't ask you how to repair the TV they seized. That's what the UNEP study finally did - and discovered 91% repair and reuse in Lagos. But it was too late for Joe Benson.

Here is a minute of Joseph Benson, describing Bullyboys in his own words.

This is about power. It's about BAN and Greenpeace showing they are watchdogs. They follow Saul Insky's model, enforcing their vision of segregation of trade, in a weird money-making way. This is about paternalistic decisions about who Nigeria or Ghana, Africa is allowed to trade with. Is Africa to be denied the path of development followed by South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia? Or is Africa going to be relegated to mining raw materials for our new electronics, a resource-curse economy? After Indonesia, Africa is the next battleground for Good Enough Markets, Tinkerer Blessing, and Resource Curse.

Puckett told me that - even if his math was wrong (It's 91% reuse, NOT 80-90% dumping)- that the "law" was violated ("a technicality" he says justifies Benson's arrest). What, exactly, is the crime the Africans are accused of? Dumping? Or like the Michigan case, is there some other technicality? The facts of the case are like background music playing over a slide show of Pieter Hugo exotic photos. The audio doesn't fit the video.

More cross examination:

Now, had Sky News or BBC or PBS or CBS etc asked Joseph Benson some questions, would they have still had a story? Or would they have a lot more work? Would Green and Thompson E-Waste Export Bill have been drafted? It would have at least been Jim Puckett's word that the exports were 80% bad, vs. Joe Bensons. Now they have the UNEP studies... but don't seem to be revisiting the story.

And they don't seem to have noticed the stealthy retraction two months ago, BAN back-stepping away from the initial accusation.

"Despite your reading diligence however, it is unfortunate that you did not start by questioning the baseless assertions made by Adam Minter in his reckless article. Never has BAN ever stated that 80% of US e-waste is exported."

http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2013/05/basel-action-network-explains-80-or.html

Bullyboy II: Meet an Innocent Man HR2284

At the Las Vegas E-Waste Summit last November, Jim Puckett of BAN and I each gave presentations on the export of used electronics for reuse and repair. Jim's powerpoint had a slide showing this UK Independent journalist's (Cahal Milmo) 2009 article on the arrest of "Nigerian Exporters".

Milmo took a 2013 victory lap recently, alluding to his role in the 2009 seizures of Benson's electronics.

"Owners and employees of a string of waste disposal companies have been fined more than £200,000 following Britain's largest investigation into the illegal export of toxic dumped electronics to the developing world.

"The eight men, whose firm’s operated across the country, were found to have been at the heart of a lucrative trade which sends tonnes of waste computers and other consumer durables to west Africa and Asia every year to be stripped of valuable metals in grim conditions, often by children.

"One of the company owners, Joseph Benson, whose BJ Electronics toured civic waste sites picking up electronic goods to be sent illegally to Nigeria from east London, was convicted following an investigation by The Independent, Sky News and Greenpeace."

Puckett (a former employee of Greenpeace in Europe) showed the article in his slide show between photos of kids at dumps. I raised my hand and asked him why he was applauding the arrest of Joseph Benson, when the UNEP found Benson's containers to be 91% working? Puckett said "I don't know that name". I referred him to his own slide. And reminded him afterwards. People have names.

The Independent and Sky News coverage would have been ludicrous, except for the pictures of children burning scrap in horrid conditions. The NGOs said that "80%" of the imports of used electronics in Africa were dumped, burned by "scrap boy" children, in primitive circumstances. (Sky News is owned by Rupert Murdoch... they cut a copper wire in a TV, gave it to Benson, and tracked it to Lagos, then bought it for 70 British pounds, and showed the cut wire. My 11 year old could fix that TV. If they think there is $107 in copper in a junk TV, have I got a deal for them). (Correction: I confused the Sky News TV with the BBC Track My Trash TV. Sky News removed a part and bought the TV back for 40 British Pounds, about $62. BBC cut the wire and bought their TV back in Lagos for 70 Pounds or $107).

The UNEP study showed that most of what the kids were burning was sourced from waste generated in Lagos. Nigeria had 6,900,000 households with tellies in 2007 (World Bank). The used electronics trade was already decades old, and was responsible for the development of communications infrastructure in Africa. 70% of all purchase of electronics in Nigeria, a nation of 170M, are used goods sold by people like Benson.

My first meeting with Joe Benson (Environmental Malpractice 6.1) in London was just a few days ago. Unlike other factories and traders I've written about, I had never met, never sold to, bought from, or spoken with Benson. This was a cold call.

Like the character Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, Benson was at first awkward and not very talkative. Like Robinson, Benson seemed overwhelmed by the system of accusations leading to seizures and fines, without assessment of the veracity of the allegation. Another recycler, clubbed to death in 2010.

My pidgin English is very very rusty, but I opened with a few words in pidgin just to hopefully make Benson and his three friends know I was a different kind of environmentalist. That got a chuckle, but fell a bit flat, and we resumed the conversation in Queens English.

Bullyboy 1: Toxics, Consumption, and Racism

There were 3 seminal works, all published in 1960, which have guided me.

Silent Spring, Rachael Carlson.
The Waste Makers, Vance Packard
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Toxics, Consumption, and Racism. The Story of Stuff, or E-Waste Exports, is “...tria juncta in uno...”

Used electronics recycling policy, as a lens, reveals how liberal occidental policy responds to risks. The risk of a "toxic", the risk of product obsolescence, and the risk racism. Particularly of black men taking white women. Oh, you didn't know white liberals had fears about the third? How subliminal of me.

These three seminal works have salted the discussion of used electronics regulation. Racially charged imagery, planned obsolescence money, cognitive risk of "toxics" without borders, are everywhere as we look at the arrests of men like Joe Benson, the seizures of goods purchased by Hamdy Moussa, and the closure of refurbishing factories like PT Imtech in Indonesia. American society, as much as it has progressed, still betrays a willingness to believe in crimes based on the brown-ness of the accused.

Lagos Nigeria has 6,900,000 households with television. But when someone photographs a solitary junk TV at a Nigerian dump, we assume it was dumped there from Europe. So sure, that even when it turns out the trade in used electronics is owned, operated, and successfully steered by African owners, the goods triaged by African technicians and repairmen, in a marketplace echoing the success of Singapore's R&O (repair and overhaul), Japan's Network of Tinkerers, Taiwan and Korean reverse-engineering and good enough markets, NGOs are satisfied to see African businesses enchained rather than question the Story of Stuff assumptions.

Answer: Not much, you?

The sparse number of scrapped goods in the photos at African dumps (see below fold, under the tire) were probably, statistically, generated in the streets of Lagos, one of the largest cities in the world. But the story, parrotted by all the western press, is that it came out of a sea container, diverted from a recycling program in the USA or Europe. We are so sure, in fact, that the US Congress now has a bill (H.R. 2791) introduced to make sale of repairable used electronics to Africans a crime. Why look at photographic evidence when Annie Leonard has drawn it so simply? African kids get junk because fat western businessmen don't want to pay to recycle it.

Washington, DC, Jul 24 - U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson (CA-05) and Gene Green (TX-29) today introduced H.R. 2791, the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (RERA) of 2013. The legislation promotes the U.S. recycling industry by prohibiting the exportation of some electronics whose improper disposal may create environmental, health, or national security risks.

"We'll start by burning the TVs from London hotel upgrades"

So, to truly connect the dots, Africans like Joe Benson and Hamdy Moussa are motivated not by consumer demand in cities like Cairo and Lagos and Accra, but by an altruistic need cut whitie's recycling bill. But they don't want to do him such a big favor that they'll take ALL the junk, or any of the most expensive. They cherry pick out the newest looking TVs and computers, to burn them, despite the fact the new ones have much less copper and gold than the old ones we never see in the African containers filmed by BAN and Greenpeace.

This was the circumstantial case presented in the arrests of Africans during the past year. A few days ago, I got a chance to do a one-on-one, exclusive interview, with Joseph Benson, the man profiled in Jim Puckett's powerpoint presentation, in London.

Leading up to the meeting with Benson, I did a whirlwind tour of Europe by car, meeting at Interpol offices in Lyon (FR), with Basel Convention staff in Geneva and Fribourg (CH), and flew out of Copenhagen. I met with four Africans accused publicly by Basel Action Network, Greenpeace, Rupert Murdoch's SkyNet News, and the UK Independent reporter Cahal Milmo, of buying used TVs, sold in Lagos for $100 apiece, to be burned by children for $2 in copper scrap.

Robert Ewell, call Sheriff Heck Tate. There's a Tom Robinson running loose.