ot: this is an import I dont want

 not motorcycle related, not even close. this happened less than 10
miles of me; FBI is involved.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid443443

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/dailylife/993047-governor-of-pernambuco-blames-the-us-for-sending-hospital-waste.shtml


-- Tiago

 
It warms my heart when I see a non-US company doing something
horrific- spreads the blame a bit.

Dave

 
U.S. Consul in Brazil just said on TV that it is perfectly legal to
U.S. companies to export any kind of junk/waste/used stuff they want,
it's up to the country which is importing it to control what can or
can't be imported. Our law enforcement agencies never saw that coming
and now, hundreds if not thousands of jobs are on jeopardy, they
wrecked the economy of two medium sized tows... :(

And they only found the problem because the value of one of the
imports was way too low for the product and the brazilian IRS
suspected it was some scam to avoid paying taxes. Government here only
do anything if will hurt they tax collecting schemes.

-- Tiago

 On 10/21/2011 8:45 AM, Tiago wrote:

How did "they" ruin the towns. Don't you think it's the companies buying
the junk and selling it (knowing exactly what they were buying) that
ruined the towns? Didn't the workers and management know what they were
doing?

 

It's hard to explain if you don't understand the culture, the people
and how things are done here, but I will try my best.

A local company buys blood stained hospital bed sheets. They all have
the American city name and the institution name, not all of them have
the word "hospital", some had "institution" or other words. Of course,
it is written in english, as is America and it would never could be
written in Portuguese. People who work in this kind of stuff barely
can read portuguese, let alone english. The customers are also being
fooled, because most of their buyers are low income folks, who, again,
can't understand english... Let's just say that lots of t-shirts I can
buy here at low price street stores have things written in english,
I'm tired of seeing things like "University of California" in shirts
people use thinking they are fashion items. Language barriers and all
that... Hell, one guy I once hired to build a concrete paving had "for
women" in his trousers, he believed that "women" mean "the man" ("o
homem", it sounds similar enough when spoken). This would rule out
even some management, educated people. My wife has a MBA title and
lots of specialization courses after she graduated, she has published
articles and participation as talk person in symposiums and stuff and
she can't go to a mcdonalds and order a big mac with coke and fries if
she had to do that in english (*). The owner of the place that bought
the fabric alleged he didn't knew it was hospital waste he said he
believed was used fabric from textile industry. And our brilliant
government people missed a import scheme (believed to be run for
*years* now) of blood stained fabric. I wonder if I shipped a sheet
stained of blood to any decent country what could happen, you think
your government agencies would allow this? You think your customs
inspectors would never notice it? Ours never noticed until it start to
hurt their tax collection. It wasn't inspections, it was money they
would lose that triggered the discovery. The scary part, imo, is that
if you import hospital waste (have you wondered how many ugly diseases
could be transmitted by that?), you can import bombs, nuclear stuff,
drugs...

Now the part of ruining the economy. These two towns I mention (Santa
Cruz do Capibaribe and Toritama) live off the textile industry. They
are big on that, they make clothing, bed sheets, towels, you name it.
And now, it's on press, everywhere, countrywide, that they used to buy
medical waste and recycle into bed sheets and pocket liners. Would
*you* buy *anything* made by those companies again? I sure won't.
Worker's Unions reported 50% loss on sales, just from the last 15
days. :( I blame government because it was their incompetence that
allowed this to happen, a simple inspection would have solved it. If
the price of the imports was just a bit higher (more taxes!), the
scheme would go unnoticed for much longer. They found bed sheets with
American hospital names printed on an Hotel and the hotel owner said
he only noticed it after the case was on TV, he didn't knew what was
written, but sure he bought it on a store, that bought from the
company on that affected town I mention, that bought from the
importer... Passed through lots of hands, went through state borders,
hotel customers slept over it, was exposed on the streets and stores
and never a government agency noticed.... until it hurt their
pockets... You really believe if someone knew he was sleeping over
blood stained hospital bed sheets he would stay quiet and not complain
and not call, say, police? You think the hotel owner would risk that
by consciously buying hospital waste? People might not know foreign
languages, but they sure aren't that stupid, ain't the role of
government to prevent stuff like that? Let me put this way: If you
were in the market for bed sheets and find a really really good deal,
only it had stuff written in tagalog (Philippines language, they use
"normal" letters), you'd know what was written? If you were on a very
tight budget, like most of people down here are, and the salesman said
it was good bed sheets, would you pass? (Mind, we are flooded by stuff
printed in english, like I explained above, so it isn't something
really out of the ordinary buying stuff with foreign writing) Maybe
you would, as an enlightened person, but people with less "school"
perhaps wouldn't, and money counts, oh yeah, dreaded money... and
taxes... or the lack of enough of it... I'm every day more disgusted
with how this country is run. The only way out of this mess is indeed
the airport. Sorry for being so long-winded, but I felt that, since I
started the thread, I just justify it.

-- Tiago
(*) when I was in China, I tried to order just that to a Chinese
worker that didn't speak anything but mandarin and I only know "thank
you", "you are welcome" and "hi!" in this language :) In the end, I
got what I wanted, but it was after lots of finger pointing, gestures
and head nods. At least I could thank him on his language ;)