It's a Wonderful X

This was originally just a reaction to a Facebook Meme about something something being bad.

The number of things people lift their little petty pricky fingers to protest (troll) online is pitiful.  It's so negative out there, that you'd think anything "free market" or "free trade" is presumptively evil.

Robin Ingenthron

Idea: It's a Wonderful X. Make the movie (or short slide show) about things we hate (e.g. Wal-Mart) and how life would be if they never existed. I don't "LOVE" WalMart, but I do realize it's the same as a massive Co-op for poor people, bringing prices down by bringing needed jobs to other poorer people. It probably gives more to the poor (through lower pricing and net jobs) than tax-rebates or Salvation Army. Anyway, the concept is that when we oppose or hate something the free market created, we should make a little It's A Wonderful Life movie to make sure that (e.g., never invading Iraq) the world would be better today, or not. I think there are real legitimate things to protest (loss of endangered species, loss of rain forests, etc.) which will NEVER survive the "Wonderful Life" Test. I'm not pure free market, but people who postulate that free-market=evil are alchemists.

This is actually a good enough "tweet" for a blog post.

My grandfather's name was Clarence, and my son's middle name is for the Grandfather, not for the Wonderful Life Angel.

Recycling Human Beings After Ramadan

I'm in Montreal for the weekend, with my wife and our 12 year old son, speaking Franglais and restaurant hopping and seeing bugs at the Insectarium.

But the highlight of my trip was last evening, when we hosted a modest dinner reunion for friends at the original Basha's Restaurant (the first Lebanese Cuisine restaurant in North America, according to the website).  It was the "End of Ramadam" meal, and a busy long line of eaters at 8:30PM set the restaurant into a mass-feeding, no special orders mode.   We met with 9 friends, all with connections to WR3A and Fair Trade Recycling.



Jean Frederic Somda ("Mr. Fred" at our plant) and Hamdy of Egypt met, with friends Pascal et Isabelle, and  six children jabbering together in 3-4 languages (typical Montreal).

Learned English in Quebec

Mr. Fred is by all accounts the most prestigious WR3A Intern.  He was at his peak somewhere in the crooked line of ascension in the politics of Burkina Faso.   He was popular with the USA State Department, as a former seminary student with impeccable morals.  He was Attorney General or Prosecutor General, refused to prosecute "political enemies" and fell so far "out of favor" that he had to leave in the dead of night. He gained political refugee status after his 6 months stint at our E-waste company.  He will be passing the bar exam in Canada in December, and has made a focus of international law and the Basel Convention.  He was always a classy, upscale, impeccable dresser and it was a thrill to me when he came to meet us in his "Good Point Recycling" T-Shirt.

He met with Hamdy and Hamdy's wife and child.  Hamdy was one of my oldest trading parterns, one who I sold an interesting chunk of the 300,000 used computers I'd exported as of 2011, when he left Egypt with his wife and family.  He had the economic resources, unlike Fred, to get permanent resident status in Montreal based on economic grounds.   He described Egypt as a place of hope and change, but shared worries.  It was no longer safe to walk the streets at 2 in the morning, he said, describing the balance between Egyptians fear and dependence on the law and order of the military.