Showing posts with label legal. Show all posts

Racketeering and Certification #3: Targeted Collateral Damage!?

How does Basel Action Network define Africa's Tech Sector, who purchase affordable solid state electronics for import, as a "Problem"?

First, look at their words.

Primitive. Pawing. Ghoulish. Skeletal. Rice Paddy. Shantytown. Swamp. Third World. Orphan. Toxic Soup, Witches' Brew, Cadavres...

Next, look at their claims.

80% of all ewaste is exported... Stuff at dumps imported days before... Children and teenagers... Most die within 5 years... Illegal under Basel Ban Amendment...

Published in UNU Report 2015

And we can't look away from their photos.

At first glance, these are meant, like a tear-jerking Humane Society sad-dog-trick ad, to appeal to retiree church ladies or college PIRG fundraisers.

That is not who funds these ads. The poor kids herding goats at African landfills do not benefit.

Part II assessed BAN's service technique of selling a sabotaged (but nice looking) computer or TV with a GPS tracker inside to someone who does business with Africa or Asia's Tech Sector. Through a "Tracker" service they sell for money, you can investigate a competitor's sales. To legitimize the spy-ware (literally "ware") they try to make it about pollution and children. They send reporters, like BBC Raphael Rowe, to a dump in a city that has had TV stations and electricity for a half century, and tell the reporter it used to be a lush paradise until bad, bad African repairmen imported waste to burn on it. But usually, they just send the reporter pictures, fake stats, and halloweeny words.

Racketeering often involves a conspiracy, a complicated system of money laundering, even through charities (USAToday). If the IRS investigates this NGO, through a complaint form 13909, there might be a domino effect. If billionaire corporations are privately benefiting from false claims, they could wind up at the sharp end of the Lanham Act. And million dollar settlements may ensue.

Take a look at the photos (below) Jim is taking now....

Multiple pals on Facebook and Email sent me last weekend's article about Eric Lundgren, spectacled and lightly bearded electronics reuse guru. Friend of Kyle at IFIXIT and other TechSoup sorts, Lundgren has made a colorful career doing press-catchy projects, like building electric cars out of e-waste, and other tinkerer tricks.

I have nothing against Eric and think it sucks he has been sentenced to jail for importing Microsoft Operating System licenses from China. Whether he was going to give them away to poor people without computers, or sell them (as alleged by Microsoft and FBI informants), jail seems like overkill. Here was Microsoft's side of the story, which sounds truthy as well. And here is the view at IFIXIT.

Oh, and here is the petition circulated by PIRG... with a photo at the top looking very Agbogbloshie-like (reminding us that PIRG and Greenpeace still have not corrected their 80-90% primitive ewaste export hoax that put #FREEJOEBENSON in prison for much longer than Eric Lundgren is scheduled to serve).

Ok, I can fix this. Have been trying for 20 years. Had the solution in 1998. Tried to implement it in Massachusetts.

Spoiler in yellow. I solved this over a decade ago. Why can't I get traction?

THE SOLUTION IS FOR GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONAL VOLUME PURCHASERS TO PROCURE ONE "SPARE TIRE" LICENSE ON EVERY PC THEY ORDER.

THE "SPARE" LICENSE KEY WOULD BE GLUED ON THE BACK, AND USED FOR A CLEAN REINSTALL AFTER THE HARD DRIVE WAS WIPED.

THIS WOULD ELIMINATE E-WASTE AND MAKE THE PCS AFFORDABLE.

WHEN I PITCHED THE IDEA TO MICHAEL DELL IN AUSTIN TEXAS, HIS FOLKS ESTIMATED THEIR COST FOR SUCH A LICENSE WOULD BE ABOUT $1.

I made a short career of this when another Operating System company, NewDeal Inc., hired me as a consultant to promote THEIR Operating System as the backup. New Deal collapsed during the "dotcom" crash, and my Spare Tire licensing idea never got off the ground.

More about Lundgren's case and how OEM Operating licenses work below. Wouldn't surprise me if that's Lundgren using Accra's slum as a backdrop.

Europe (and INTERPOL) Focus Still Explained by "Strategic Metals"?

INTERPOL announced 30 days of "recycling crime" enforcement this week.

On this I will give them points - They are targeting automobile "recycling crime" and waste exports, and not as many of the photos seem to show reuse or Tech Sector imports. I believe Fair Trade Recycling (WR3A) has been effective in reducing the enforcement agency's obsession with "e-waste exports".

The photo of lead-zinc ore for sale from Africa's most toxic mine (Kabwe in Zambia) is apparently legal. There's no law targeting the most toxic activity on the planet, because it isn't "waste"... so there is no fetish attached to it.

I love INTERPOL's focus on tigers and elephants and shark fins and ocean dumping. I'm enthusiastic about illegal forestry and charcoal trade. But what explains INTERPOL's strange obsession with recycling, when MINING is so much worse for Africans and the planet?

Mining lead-zinc ore from Africa's forests, for sale to Asia and Europe, is legal.

But it is apparently not legal for Africans to buy back scrap metal?

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.

TRAGEDY 3: (Video) Puckett Defends "Guidelines" Developed Under Hoax

"When something is "claimed" to be exported for repair... but is actually exported for primitive dumping...." Africans are accused of relocating to Europe in order to do this to other Africans, and #GreatWhiteSavior is here to help.

Better, listen to Jim make BAN's case, on video, and on his own behalf. Below is the case for the "guidelines" which would rewrite Basel Convention's Annex IX, B1110 (the unamended Convention explicitly makes Hurricane Joe Benson's exports legal, See Part 1). In the video testimony below, Jim Puckett admits that they are legal under the Basel Convention. They'd be "illegal" under the "Guidelines" proposed under the Basel Ban Amendment, developed under the cloud of his hoax statistics. As he describes, those Guidelines are being implemented in Europe. Those were the Guidelines the UK Barrister used to convict Hurricane Benson. Below is Puckett's impassioned case not to "roll them back" (i.e. why we should still amend the Convention with the hoax-fed Guidelines).

VIDEO BELOW

4 Key E-Waste Tactics: Inference, Allegation, Indictment, Guilt?

Why should exports of used electronics be outlawed? Let's look at the case Basel Action Network makes in its campaign to stop the used electronics trade.

The "watchdog" campaign to end USA's used electronics exports relies on inferences, allegations, indictments, and even proven guilt. Which is which, and how concerned should environmentalists be?

1) Inference: Poor children are found amid piles of e-scrap, and pollution is found amid piles of e-scrap. The inference is that the e-scrap was imported, and that the pollution, the poverty, and associated risk to children will be reduced through prohibition.

- First, the water pollution in Guiyu comes largely from the textile mills in the area. But some of the burning of copper and boards is certainly going to add to the pollution in the short term. Did the material come directly off of a boat laden with imports?

Or was it material imported years ago? Or was it recently imported, but a percentage of residue (e.g. 15%) of otherwise clean scrap or reuse product? Or.. just perhaps.. does the fact China generates more "e-waste" than the USA have something to do with it?

And are the children helped more by prohibition or by investing in safer processes? Is the problem manual disassembly, or fire? I say fire is the problem and e-scrap can be recycled without fire, just as cotton can be picked without slaves.

BAN is good, really good, at inference.

"Terima kasih atas menggambarkan pekerjaan kami sebagai teknisi. Kami tidak pencemar kecuali seseorang mengirim kita polusi karena kita tidak memiliki pilihan lain pembeli kecuali e-limbah. Kami adalah pintar dan aku bisa memperbaiki hal-hal IT tidak ada masalah."

The quote above was posted from a commenter to the provocatively-titled blog post (one of the BEST series) "Are E-Waste Advocates Racist?"

My company has repeatedly been accused of being "an exporter" by companies which "don't export". If you don't marry, how could you possibly be guilty of spouse abuse? This is the logic established by companies like GARB, which posted to our Youtube video over the weekend

"GARB has the solution to the ewaste problem. The closed cycle principle. A must see."

As required, I came, I saw it. Hammermills grinding and chopping computers into little pieces that are then hand sorted by labor on an assembly line. It's "the solution" if you are looking for two things: elimination of screwdriver labor, and elimination of reuse. Yum yum. I feel so much better about mining lead, silver, and tin for my new Tablet or 80 inch video display. Having people pick up chopped pieces is SO much better than removing screws and sorting the same metals and parts, with some reuse.

The translation of the opening quote (auto-detected as Indonesian language)

Thank you for describing our work as a technician. We are not polluters pollution unlesssomeone sends us because we have no other choice except e-waste buyers. We are smartand I can fix things IT does not have a problem.

Mexico is Family Visa Policy

My Insights into USA's Immigration and Guest Worker Policy with Mexico

American Retroworks Inc. has a sister company in Mexico, retroworks de mexico, nicknamed "Las Chicas Bravas". It has been profiled on NPR Marketplace, Living On Earth, Associated Press, Sacramento Bee, and many other media. My wife and children come with me to visit the ladies at the TV maquila in northern Mexico. While our attorney was shot and killed, we never see any drugs or violence in the rural town of Fronteras, a few dozen kilometers from the mines and smelter of Nacozari.

We regularly cross-train workers from Mexico, like Mariano, Dolores, Vicki, Lydia, Panchito, Dominita, Don Chuco, etc. at our plant in Middlebury, and they cross-train our staff during regular visits to Arizona. We recently sent Nate Hutnak, our collection partner in Rhode Island, to Arizona to help establish collections. My business partner and his wife visit us, and host us, and my kids are close with their godson Oscar, who spent a year with us in Vermont and Arizona.

Mexico is our Family

Mariano from Mexico tests and inspects and sells fully functional TVs, and occasionally brokers them to buyers in Peru, Venezuela, or Guatemala. He cross trains Vermont staff, some of whom were born in El Salvador or Honduras or Guatemala. In short, our fair trade company has partners in many countries, from Burkina Faso to Indonesia to Egypt and Senegal - but Mexico is family.

Our key policy is that manual disassembly creates more value in parts, and more jobs, than automated recycling. We do manual disassembly in Vermont... but if you are going to create low wage demanufacturing jobs for Mexicans, it's wiser to make those jobs in Mexico. Our competitors try to chop TVs up with machines, but believe me, running electronics and e-waste through hammermills and shredders is literally not all it is cracked up to be.

Having established my personal bias and credentials, what can I say about national USA policy on border enforcement, illegals, green cards, work visas, and immigration? Here goes...