Certification and Racketeering: Part 1 Ahmed Hussein Suale RIP

International Crime does take place.

"Racketeers offer a deceitful service to fix a problem that otherwise wouldn't exist."

Let that definition sink in.

"On 16 January, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, a Ghanaian investigative journalist who had collaborated with the BBC, was shot dead near his family home in Accra. Ghanaian police believe he was assassinated because of his work." - BBC

His work exposed bad calls from African referees, paid bribes to control the outcome of soccer matches. It's a textbook racketeering case, with a deceitful service (bad calls) sold to change the play that had occured on the field. People were convicted, resigned, or fired as the truth spread. And Africans who had watched the matches on TV and seen the bad calls with their own eyes, grew to esteem the Tiger Eye Team of Hussein-Suale and Anas Aremeya Anas.

Cultural Gulfs in Developing Markets #3: Congress Fiddling Around with First Use Doctrine

This week, Bloomberg's Adam Minter covers an important new front in the battle to repair your stuff.   Seems the CTIA (a cell phone group, similar to the Anti-Gray-Market-Alliance) is seeking sponsors for a bill to keep a geek from unlocking a chip so you can use your cell phone with a different carrier.

The cell phone unlocking is an important story. IFIXIT.org has previously sounded the alarm about your right to fiddle around with your used gadgets.  And everyone should get to know the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).   Very smart, following the core (first use doctrine) for longer than anyone.

Most Poor People are not a threat to most Rich People.  The two percent get along great with 90% of the 98%. It is the rapidly rising poor, the ones who have figured something out, and are on a trajectory to compete with the rich, that get smacked.  And there's no bigger threat than dirt poor geeks reverse-engineering, copying, innovating, and remarketing materials in competition with Big Electronics.  This is where Sony meets its Terry Gou, where HP meets its Simon Lin, where IBM meets its Steve Wozniak.  The first born of the emerging markets have a pesky way of becoming rivals to capitalist monarchies.

A Modest Proposal Made Every Day for "Export Bans"

WR3A Adapts New Moniker

    WR3A is announcing a formal tradename adaptation and copyright of the trade name "Fair Trade Recycling".   WR3A has suspended its own certification and cooperative marketing strategy, and will instead offer its legal support and funding of R2 certification for overseas companies.  

    The cooperative marketing was a huge success from 2006 to 2010, but created conflicts of interest for members when purchase orders shrank.  For example, east coast members who were shipping to SKD factories which were offered California supply in the "California Compromise" discussion would have been negatively impacted.  


    The WR3A Board has decided that while experience and data collected from cooperative sales were outstanding, the future of the organization should follow the recommendations by University of Amsterdam researcher Brenda Wijnen, and establish independent rules and principles rather than acting as "shipper of record".   Individual WR3A members may choose to broker loads, but not under the WR3A name or umbrella.

Challenge: IFIXIT Recycles 2009 GreenPeace Vid

I like IFIXIT.  With that said... Their weekend's "ewaste" blog titled

MORE PROOF YOU SHOULDN’T BLINDLY TRUST YOUR E-WASTE RECYCLER

is correct in its emphasis on the word "blindly"... don't blindly do anything.  But Elizabeth Chamberlin also provides evidence that you shouldn't blindly trust EU Law, or Greenpeace and E-Stewards, either.

If you watch the Greenpeace slide show, you might think I'm saying you shouldn't trust your own eyes...   ( I covered this 2009 Greenpeace "science with photos" with the post "WRONG, WRONG, WRONG..." )

Chamberlin trusts her eyes and is doing what she should be doing - looking at all sides of the ewaste-to-Africa debate.   Now I'm gonna go Ozark Atticus Finch on her.  Where is Greenpeace's interview of the accused?  They have the African Tech there on camera, and say he told them it was not a working TV but they bought it anyway.  What exactly does their methodology prove, and why didn't they ask the African they spoke to what the percentage of reuse was, and what his losses were on the bad units?