Shaba Kahamba, the Artist formerly known as Prince, and the E-Waste Hoax are dead.*
The second of the list, Prince, the incredibly famous purple dancer, was found passed out in an elevator, and declared dead at age 57. Shaba Kahamba, the Congolese Soukous bassist legend, died peacefully in retirement in the Netherlands on Tuesday... in somewhat undeserved obscurity. And the E-Waste Hoax will be remembered only by its silence. There is no "correction" forthcoming from BBC, Economist, NYT, NPR, etc. But I predict no further national or international coverage of any "e-Waste" emergency this Earth Day, one year after the news "jumped the shark" in declaring a small scrap metal pile in Western Africa to be the largest E-Waste Dump on Earth.
After a decade of NGO hype, what makes me think that "ewastegate" is over? And not with a clang, but a whimper?
There may be some residual stories about "e-waste exports" cropping about here and there, but mostly they are coming from rank amateurs like Kevin McElvaney, people in their 20s with a camera. But the source of the hoax statistics is running out of funding, and not a decade too soon.
*homage to "the Oxford Comma"... Shaba K and TAFKAP are two different people.
The second of the list, Prince, the incredibly famous purple dancer, was found passed out in an elevator, and declared dead at age 57. Shaba Kahamba, the Congolese Soukous bassist legend, died peacefully in retirement in the Netherlands on Tuesday... in somewhat undeserved obscurity. And the E-Waste Hoax will be remembered only by its silence. There is no "correction" forthcoming from BBC, Economist, NYT, NPR, etc. But I predict no further national or international coverage of any "e-Waste" emergency this Earth Day, one year after the news "jumped the shark" in declaring a small scrap metal pile in Western Africa to be the largest E-Waste Dump on Earth.After a decade of NGO hype, what makes me think that "ewastegate" is over? And not with a clang, but a whimper?
There may be some residual stories about "e-waste exports" cropping about here and there, but mostly they are coming from rank amateurs like Kevin McElvaney, people in their 20s with a camera. But the source of the hoax statistics is running out of funding, and not a decade too soon.
*homage to "the Oxford Comma"... Shaba K and TAFKAP are two different people.
