Why does the Crown Court threaten 60 months in prison to an illiterate African born TV Repairman? Because it cannot prove its case and needs to "plea it out". Here is the fourth blog in the E-Waste Witch Hunt Series, featuring men old enough to remember Ghana as a British Colony, getting their "facts" from Michael Anane, Jim Puckett, and TinTin Comics. Posting publicly the prosecution's case and sentencing remarks against #FREEHURRICANEBENSON...
"Basically, the situation seems to be, if I can put it into, again, rather layman's language, that waste electrical goods can be exported to other countries quite sensibly and be used by other countries who perhaps cannot afford such things themselves, poorer countries in the main I imagine, but the rules and regulations to protect the environment say that that waste material must be converted back into items which have been properly tested and which therefore can be safely exported as properly tested secondhand items.
"In essence, what happened here is that when the environment agency intercepted these containers they looked inside them and they found that a large proportion of the items were hazardous waste, were not tested or suitable for use abroad, and in reality what would have happened -- the percentage is about 50 per cent -- in reality what would have happened is that large containers would have arrived in these African countries and 50 per cent of the items inside would have been hazardous waste. What happens, I am told, is that although there are rules and regulations all over the world for the treatment of hazardous waste, the reality is that in countries such as these the hazardous waste is not properly policed and therefore creates a danger, an environmental danger, not only to the residents and citizens of that country but I suppose to the world because these hazardous materials can create a problem of pollution worldwide."
The bold italics I added to link to NGOs Basel Action Network, who made this claim in "A Place Called Away"... after describing the Metal Scrappers in Agbogbloshie as "children" and depicting them with ghoulish, halloween language, Puckett gives the story about Benson's containers.
"This material [at the Agbogbloshie scrapyard] made its arrival on African shores just some days earlier as cargo inside 40-foot
intermodal corrugated containers — the shifting bricks of globalized trade turned techno-trash
haulers. Around 400 of these, each containing about 600 computers or monitors arrive each month
at the Port of Tema, Ghana, from the UK, USA, Canada and countless other rich and developed
countries. They may find a quick stay on the floors and shelves of hundreds of second-hand
markets throughout Accra. But those that do not sell — about half, even if they work perfectly —
are then picked up by small boys pushing heavy carts and hauled several miles to the outskirts of
town, to be thrown away — to Agbogbloshie’s scavengers."
"small boys" according to Jim Puckett
For film of the "Small Boys", see the Alex Wondergem / Adu Lalouschek documentary titled "Scrap Metal Men". These are not small boys, Abogbloshie is definitely not on the "outskirts of town", and the display devices "working or not" are not thrown away. But despite 3 preposterous, self evidently false claims in the paragraph, Judge Dawson appears to give the claim more weight than Benson's.
How We Rationalize False Arrests and Misused Authority
You might feel better that some of the men hanging from the trees were no angels. You might take consolation in the bribes and forged dates and mislabeled bill of ladings on some of the 91% reused and repaired equipment. But there's not much "pollution crime" to see here. I have hundreds and hundreds of photos of men and women who were accused, some of whom lost their businesses.
They were arrested thanks to one gnome-like dude in Seattle, who enlisted an exotic photographer, and made up a strange, bizarre, unsupported statistic, framed with words like "ghoulish" and "macabre", "skeletons" and "witches brew". E-Stewards ran and got the rope, tied affordable internet to a wooden stake, and applauded while dictators lit the match. It was a witch hunt, charged with racial exoticism, misleading photography, water samples from downstreams of textile mills, rumors and hyperbole.
It's all recorded on my hard drive. I have a suspicion, they will get me next, somehow. Three years ago an E-Steward company came and offered virtually every one of my Vermont clients to collect their junk TVs for a penny a pound. It was predatory pricing, and the sole purpose was to put me out of business. And they probably justified it to themselves by calling me an "exporter-lover". I see them circling around a CRT glass recycler who refused to join E-Stewards, refused to pay for "certification". With the foreign market now better researched, they will turn on the domestic recyclers, and manufacturers.
To Kill a Mockingbird. That accuser made the story up. There were no facts to support the accusations against Tom Robinson. And there are no facts about Benson, or Semarang, or Penang factories.
The 80% "statistic" is a lie, it's a fabrication. It comes from a single source, a man so certain of his mission that he calls the very people targeted "collateral damage". Personally, I don't think that definition works when you declare someone guilty, aim your gun, and shoot them.
"They shouldn't have to make that choice." This was the NGO leader's answer to CBS Reporter (now anchor) Scott Pelley in 2008, when Pelley asked whether the scrap pickers in Guiyu had another job to go to.
Johnny Be Goode Enough.
Perhaps they did have another choice. Picking cabbage. Agriculture is an honorable job. A dangerous job, a job with insecticides, moving blades, and risk of death. But many of the Africans in TV repair could, if they wanted, have stayed in the rural sahel, Savannah or forests.
Just don't kid yourself, it's not "back to Eden."
MRO - Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul - if taken off the table - leaves worse choices.
This is the eighth blog about the decision to scrimmage environmental enforcement agents to arrest "e-waste #wastecrime criminals". I've focused on Joe Benson, because his was the case Jim Puckett put on display at a conference last November, showing off news coverage by UK Independent reporter Cahil Milmo.
Maybellene, why can't you be true?
Last November, at that "E-waste Summit" in Las Vegas, I had a face to face with Jim Puckett and Mike Enberg of BAN and E-Stewards, which I wrote about in the "Environmental Malpractice" series. That series of blogs centered around the Interpol crackdown (which we were documenting before Interpol's press release). Jim and Mike are really nice people with good hearts, and I wanted to try to just ask them why they wouldn't be concerned about a man like Joe Benson, who Jim had just run down in his Powerpoint (without recognize the man's name... You've been reporting his arrest for years, trumpeting it in your 2009 Annual Report, pairing the news with Pieter Hugo photos... and don't know his name...)
He never ever learned to read and write so well, but he could [fix a TV] just like ringing a bell.
"Collateral Damage?" Did Jim actually say those words? I swear he did. He said he felt bad for any individual caught violating international law, as a person. But the law must be enforced. If we can arrest a TV repairman, who can't we arrest for #wastecrime? Metal sorters? Cabbage fertilizers? Fair Trade Cotton farmers? Cabbage dealers? For most of the people in the developing and emerging markets, the bottom line is that Europe is a lot like Africa. Badges and handcuffs and financial fines are the tools of bullyboys. No habeus corpus, no Basel law broken, just a presumption of "primitive", based on what?
Ask Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird while Chuck Berry was in prison, convicted under the Mann Act, a border-crossing crime, like Joe Jackson (the boxer). It has been a few years, Benson seems ripe for a cross-border crime.
Too bad Interpol and the UK authorities didn't consider how easy TV repair was. Two years after Export-Hoax-gate (see BAN's Night of Breaking CRT glass, Environmental Malpractice, and Clubbed to Death Blogs), Intercon police are still seizing African's containers, presuming the electronics were waste. Like a parent taking toys out of a crib, the paternalism of the "Project Eden" (putting Africa back the way it was?) stands opposing the African Revolution, the Arab Spring, the democratization which flows directly through used display devices like twitter to teenagers.
The two "root causes"? BAN made up a fake number, and rich countries know so little about electronics repair that we make museums about it. "Once upon a time, we replaced capacitors too, honey". Fixing things is so "hunter gatherer", it seems to belong in a stoneage village.
Meet the other side of the table. If you live in a place, like Lagos, that still does a lot of electronics repair, you wonder why people don't ask you how to repair the TV they seized. That's what the UNEP study finally did - and discovered 91% repair and reuse in Lagos. But it was too late for Joe Benson.
Here is a minute of Joseph Benson, describing Bullyboys in his own words.
This is about power. It's about BAN and Greenpeace showing they are watchdogs. They follow Saul Insky's model, enforcing their vision of segregation of trade, in a weird money-making way. This is about paternalistic decisions about who Nigeria or Ghana, Africa is allowed to trade with. Is Africa to be denied the path of development followed by South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia? Or is Africa going to be relegated to mining raw materials for our new electronics, a resource-curse economy? After Indonesia, Africa is the next battleground for Good Enough Markets, Tinkerer Blessing, and Resource Curse.
Puckett told me that - even if his math was wrong (It's 91% reuse, NOT 80-90% dumping)- that the "law" was violated ("a technicality" he says justifies Benson's arrest). What, exactly, is the crime the Africans are accused of? Dumping? Or like the Michigan case, is there some other technicality? The facts of the case are like background music playing over a slide show of Pieter Hugo exotic photos. The audio doesn't fit the video.
More cross examination:
Now, had Sky News or BBC or PBS or CBS etc asked Joseph Benson some questions, would they have still had a story? Or would they have a lot more work? Would Green and Thompson E-Waste Export Bill have been drafted? It would have at least been Jim Puckett's word that the exports were 80% bad, vs. Joe Bensons. Now they have the UNEP studies... but don't seem to be revisiting the story.
And they don't seem to have noticed the stealthy retraction two months ago, BAN back-stepping away from the initial accusation.
"Despite your reading diligence however, it is unfortunate that you did not start by questioning the baseless assertions made by Adam Minter in his reckless article. Never has BAN ever stated that 80% of US e-waste is exported."
