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Impressions from the Monsanto People’s Assembly

I attended one day of the Seed Freedom Monsanto Tribunal People’s Assembly in The Hague on 15 October 2016, and I thought I would share some of my observations and experiences.

Very Poor Organization

The event was over 3 days.   The first day was short and mostly a press conference, and the last 2 days were workshops and some presentations.  Literally, 3 days to talk about and listen to others tell about how much they hate Monsanto!  There were 3 workshop rounds, with hours between them of largely unscheduled time, and very little else planned.

Not enough good discussion leaders were provided, and there was no transparent or obvious way to influence the direction of the event.  For example, I sent an email offering to speak, and this wasn’t even answered.

Racist Hosts and Speakers

The local hosts and speakers were all ethnic Dutch, in a city where half the population comes from somewhere else.  There were lots of guests from other places, but the event itself completely ignored local initiatives and personalities of non-Dutch backgrounds.

After I brought this to the attention of the organizers, videos promoting this racism and these people were tentatively not placed on the event website, but instead appeared on the Seed Freedom website and even mailed to participants.  I guess there was sort of a concession there, but not much of one.

Non-ethnic Dutch were also all but excluded from attending by the price.  For the one day I attended, I paid €70, a small fortune by local standards.  I think when the Rolling Stones played in Amsterdam they weren’t even that expensive.  Mostly those people who were there were from ethnic Dutch NGOs who could afford to pay their entrance fee.

This was a major insult for those of us who care and try to confront racism.

Completely Infiltrated and Lacking Networks of Trust

A number of the participants were directly and indirectly employed by the seed industry here in The Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe.  They were allowed to freely spread their ‘propaganda’.  It wasn’t possible to know who you were talking to, and if you could offer any degree of trust.  There also wasn’t any good ways of building or working from within your own networks of trust.

It was almost impossible to have a conversation with anyone.

Conclusions

We have enough problems with racism here in the Netherlands.  I hope the Seed Freedom People’s Assembly doesn’t return.  It’s also time to stop releasing racist videos.

I don’t know very many people who don’t want companies like Monsanto to go on trial for their crimes, but I think People’s Assemblies should be bottom up and grassroots in origin, rather than top down and rife with commercial interests.

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No Patents on Seeds

To be clear, I’m against patents on seeds and all other forms of life.  At the same time, I’m against the goals of the campaign called No Patents on Seeds.

All Seeds

The website of this campaign makes it appear as though they are against all forms of patents.  The petition they are asking people to sign, also appears to oppose all patents on life.  Privately however, they are lobbying for an end to patents only on conventionally bred seeds, arguing this is a necessary starting point.

Note that nothing on the website, not the petition or their statements, exclude the possibility of them lobbying solely for the removal of patents on conventionally bred plants.  It all comes down to trusting or not trusting the people behind the campaign.

If GMOs are excluded from this campaign, as it appears now, this will mean GMOs have an enormous marketing advantage over traditionally bred plants.  This will be a much worse situation than what we have now.

An Error in Implementation

Patents on seeds were more or less forced on the seed industry from the pharmaceutical industry, who wanted to ensure their inventions were fully patentable.  This came about by way of more or less secret negotiations between the EU and US, in a similar way TTIP and other trade agreements have been arranged.

In a similar way, the EU patent office was created.  The EU patent office has more or less diplomatic status.  Technically speaking, even police are not allowed to enter the building uninvited, and it exists outside of EU law, almost like a foreign embassy.  The reason for this was to insure there could be no ‘political interference’ in the issuing of patents.

As it turns out, there was a mistake in the implementation of seed patents, and conventionally bred plants were accidentally included.  What happened was they did exclude seeds resulting from conventional breeding, but forgot to exclude the resulting products grown from the seeds.  Now the seed industry itself is caught in the middle of this legal construction that was intended to prevent any changes to the operation of the EU patent office.

Plant Breeding

Plant breeders everywhere depend on the free exchange of genetic materials.  Here in the Netherlands are a number of companies involved in industrial plant breeding, and they all more or less freely exchange genetic resources with one another.  Independent plant breeders also usually exchange material.

As soon as patents are allowed on conventional breeding, determining exactly what’s patented, and who owns the patents, becomes almost impossible.  This is an enormous problem for the seed industry.  It’s also an enormous problem for independent plant breeders, but given the problems for the seed industry are more serious, I think we should accept this for the time being.

Industry Lobby Efforts

The campaign No Patents on Seeds was started in the Netherlands by Bionext, the lobby organ for industrial organic food, and is supported by the non-organic industrial food sector as well.  There are intense lobby efforts by these groups in Brussels now, but only concerning conventionally bred seeds.

If you support this campaign, you are supporting the lobby efforts of the food industry.

Webs of Trust

One of the issues here is who do you trust.  Since by reading this, you know this campaign is flawed, it’s really a good idea to familiarize yourself with the organizations behind it.  The people and organizations who signed the petition are not necessarily bad, as the petition itself is not all that bad.  The organizations that are putting themselves forward for the purpose of misrepresenting the intentions of the petition are the ones to be concerned with.

The food movement in general does not need these blurring of lines between the food industry and activist movements.

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Problems With Aliexpress

1442027000-mo-hop-dien-thoai-moi-2Kingzone N5 mobile phone

If you don’t already know what Aliexpress is, it’s sort of the Ebay of china.  It’s parent company Alibaba is a business to business wholesaler, and Aliexpress is the branch of the company that handles business to customer transactions.

Aliexpress has a large number of individual companies that offer products to consumers.  For common items, usually several companies will offer competing prices, and customer reviews are supposed to keep the individual sellers honest.  Aliexpress themselves have an escrow service, and if your item doesn’t arrive, in theory you can make a claim and get your money back.

In theory it’s all a good idea, and in fact I’ve bought some 50+ items over the last 2 years or so, ranging in price from a few cents to a few hundred euros, and not had any serious problems until now.  Until now, I haven’t had any problems with individual sellers, and have only just uncovered how bad the escalation process is for complaints.

Basically, I bought this phone for 2 reasons.  It supports 4G mobile frequencies used in my area, and necessary for reception in my house.  It also has 5Ghz (802.11ac) WiFi, which is what I use at home.  Otherwise I was looking for the cheapest phone.  It was also a small bonus that this phone had the latest Android 5.1 and a dual sim  I bought it from this seller at Aliexpress: D&S Electronic Mall.  This seller has a very bad attitude, and does not stand behind what they sell.

It turns out the 5Ghz WiFi, 802.11ac, does not work on this phone.  The description of the phone was just wrong.  On the manufacturers website, it does not mention this as a feature.  According to the seller mentioned above, they were told by the manufacturer it does support 5Ghz WiFi, so it must.  Perhaps it’s necessary to fix it with a future software upgrade…!  Therefore there’s nothing more for the seller to do, and it’s my problem.  The seller pointed out all the other sellers selling the same phone say the same thing, so how could everyone be wrong?

Just for the record, I noticed dx.com was selling the same phone with the same mistake in their description.  I notified them of the mistake and they updated their website.

Final Settlement (not yet appealed)

After a very long dispute process, including making a video ‘proving’ the fault with the phone, they finally offered me a refund of about $20.  They also offered that I could return the phone at my own cost for a full refund, but the shipping costs are too expensive for this.  I’ve appealed this, so it might change, but the whole process has completely warn me out and turned me off of Aliexpress.

Words cannot describe how dissatisfied I am.  This was their mistake.  They advertised the wrong features of this phone.  If they got the wrong information from the manufacturer, that’s up to them to sort out.  In a case like this, when it’s the sellers fault, there are generally three things to do:

  • Fix the phone
  • Pay the costs of returning the phone and give a full refund
  • Send a new phone that works according to the description

A small refund like $20 is an insult.

The entire reason for dealing with the business to costumer branch of Alibaba is so they will fix problems like this when they occur.

Other Stories

In the Netherlands there are quite a few unhappy people with Aliexpress.  I was reading for example about one woman who ordered a pair of shoes.  When the package arrived it contained two left shoes.  She agreed with the seller she would send it back at her own expense for a refund, which cost her about €25.  After several months went by without anything happening, she started to enquire about her refund.  Then she got a notice from the post office a package was waiting for her, and it turned out the seller in China refused to accept the package so it was returned to her.

This is another reason for not trying to return something at your own expense.

Other Complaints About Aliexpress

They are in the process of completely eliminating the possibility to directly contact a customer support representative.  Instead you have to go via a robot, that tries to answer your questions, and in the end if it decides to connect you to a real person it only does this during working hours in China and only with a web chat session.

I personally won’t do business with a company where direct contact with a customer support representative is not possible, offline, 24 hours per day via eamil or a web form.

Their website is very buggy.  Uploading videos doesn’t always work.  Some things, like their entire dispute process, are very confusing and it’s very easy to mistakenly press a fatal button, from which there is no recovery.  For example, with every dispute, there are two options: ‘agree with seller’ or ‘cancel dispute’.  These have very different consequences, depending on which one you press.

The review of the sellers are not well presented, and tend to make all sellers look honest.  They also expire the information after about 6 months, and after a month you can’t change your review anymore in case you discover more about the product you bought.  After a time they also only have the star rating, and the text of the reviews is removed.  Aliexpress should make the review information open source, and let interested parties do their own analysis and presentation of the information.

Conclusions

It doesn’t seem to me there is any real consumer protection at Aliexpress, except perhaps if you never receive the item and can prove that.

I contacted my credit card company, and asked if they would reverse the payment for this.  They said no.  I plan to use another credit card from now on, because most offer this protection.

If you buy anything from Aliexpress, I suggest you make sure you can ask your credit card company to reverse the transaction in case something goes wrong.  Otherwise, you’ll really have no recourse.

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Site Encryption

I’m experimenting with site encryption.  Your browser will now probably show a padlock next to the address, together with an ‘https://’, and if you click on this you’ll probably get some information about the certificate I use and so on.

The first problem I’ve encountered is more an issue with my browser, in that it now blocks any unencrypted content.  That means if I embed any images from other websites these might not be shown, unless you enable it in your browser.  You might also get a warning message about this.

Encryption has the advantage of giving us all a little more privacy, something that’s very important to some people.

Please bear with me as I try to sort out these problems, and if you run into anything funny, please let me know.

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Solstice Seeds

Sylvia Davatz, who runs Solstice Seeds in Hartland Vermont, recently sent me a copy of her seed catalog for distribution.  I think she has quite a few interesting and hard to find seeds.

She is aware this is an international blog, and her email address is on the order form on the last page of the catalog.  I think if you live outside of the US and are interested in her seeds, you can send her an email and discuss the terms and conditions of an order.