Nelson Mandela Funeral Sign Language Interpretor Fakes It, Too

When we talk about Real vs. Perceived Risks, "fool me once, shame on you" is the takeaway.

The "assistance" to the deaf viewers of Nelson Mandela's funeral service is in the news today.  The guy translating for several world leaders did not know what he was "talking" about, made it up as he went along.  Where have we seen that before?  (short video clips below)

Well, there was this funeral maintenance announcement by Saturday Night Live in the 1970s for Spain's General Franco.  Some blog readers are "video bandwidth impaired", and so I usually put clips below the fold (click "more")

What other "end of life" news turns out to be gibberish?

Eighty percent of all used electronics purchased by Africans are burned by children in primitive dumps, perhaps?    That Basel Action Network scandal is far more insidious, as it leads to actual seizures of goods and actual arrests of Africans, based on how loudly BAN.org claims it.

The Africans were accused of exporting junk in London in 2009 (following the late 2008 CBS 60 Minutes credibility scandal covering Guiyu, the "following the e-waste trail" scandal).  Greenpeace shot film of nice black TVs from a hotel takeout (working units replaced by LCDs and plasmas) being unloaded in Lagos.  It took months for Interpol and UK Wastecrime to organize seizures, but 279 sea containers were held in 2010.   In 2011 the UNEP released studies of the containers, siting 91% reuse.

Fair Trade Recycling Summit in Vermont Earth Week 2013

Middlebury College Environmental Studies is hosting a Summit of researchers of "e-waste" or WEEE exports on April 16.  The Summit will be streamed online at www.fairtraderecycling.org.   It is funded in part by a Canadian grant of $479,000 to Memorial University, University CP de Peru, and University of Southern California (LA).

Researchers organized the Summit in order to interview actual importers of used electronics in five countries.  They will be joined by experts from MIT, Monterrey Tech Guadelajara, University of Amsterdam, and Universite Paul Cezanne of France.  A representative of the Swiss Basel Convention will speak about 2-year studies in Nigeria and Ghana, and the US International Trade Commission will update attendees on its new 2013 calculation, that 88% of used electronics exports are reused.

In fact, Researchers from Peru, Basel Convention, US ITC, and elsewhere have consistently found 85%-90% of the used electronics purchased by Africans, Asians, and South Americans are reused, and that the 10-15% fallout is comparable to new goods.   Most experts say that material filmed at dumps is collected from cities in emerging markets which have used up the equipment imported decades earlier. IT importers from Egypt, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Peru, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Angola, and Colombia are attending the Summit, to meet students, and explain that they cannot afford to pay $21 per unit, plus thousands in shipping, to burn material on the ground.

Fair Trade Recycling, an international NGO based in Vermont, organized the Summit.  EPA, Interpol, and other enforcement agencies have committed to participate online.  The enforcement agencies will be asked who originated the statistic that 75% of the imports are dumped and burned (creating a presumption of guilt among used IT importers).  FTR representatives hope to shift the burden of proof, so that exports of used IT are not presented as de facto "e-waste", and to address the need for appropriate recycling techniques and hand disassembly systems.  The association of exports with "primitive" or "informal" recycling and dumping (via widespread coverage by CBS 60 Minutes, Frontline, USA Today, Oprah, NPR Fresh Air, etc.) doesn't address the problem if those wastes were not recently imported.  (a Seattle NGO has emerged as the probably source of the claim that 75%-90% of used IT imported by Africans are immediately sent to be burned in dumps).

List of Speakers and Biographies, 2013 Vermont Fair Trade Recycling Summit