Rice is not a water plant - part 2

Bayer aren't alone in foisting sterile hybrid rice seeds on Indonesian farmers; however it is worth noting that they also supply Burma's vilified military regime.

Monstrous Monsanto

Among the sources of these seeds in Indonesia is the American company Monsanto. This company has long been vilified as one of the producers of agent orange, the defoliant sprayed over the forests of Vietnam which have been proven to cause genetic defects. There are calls to boycott the company because its current herbicide, generally known as Roundup, and its cousins marketed under about 90 different names, appear to be appear to be direct descendants of agent orange.

Monsanto is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as Roundup. This is sold to small farmers as a pesticide, yet harms crops in the long run as the toxins accumulate in the soil. Plants eventually become infertile, forcing farmers to purchase genetically modified Roundup Ready Seed, a seed that resists the herbicide. This creates a cycle of dependency on Monsanto for both the weed killer and the only seed that can resist it. Both products are patented, and sold at inflated prices. Exposure to the pesticide is documented to cause cancers, skin disorders, spontaneous abortions, premature births, and damage to the gastrointestinal and nervous systems.

Of course, Monsanto has the backing of governments. In America they had the following:
1. Prior to being the Supreme Court Judge who put GW Bush in office, Clarence Thomas was Monsanto's lawyer.
2. Former US Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Calgene Corporation.
3. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Searle pharmaceuticals.
4. Former US Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson, received $50,000 in donations from Monsanto during his winning campaign for Wisconsin's governor.
5. The two congressmen receiving the most donations from Monsanto during the 2000 election were Larry Combest (Former Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee) and Missouri Senate candidate John Ashcroft (later to be named Attorney General).

So how does (did?) Monsanto go about its business with the Indonesian government and the military?

Need I state the obvious?

According to the US authorities, Monsanto made some $700,000 in illicit payments to at least 140 current and former Indonesian government officials and their family members, from 1997 to 2002.

The biggest outlay, $373,990, was to buy land and build a house in the name of a wife of a senior Ministry of Agriculture official. Soleh Solahudin, who was agriculture minister from 1998 to 1999 and visited the company's US headquarters at its invitation, confirmed after a meeting with the KPK (Indonesia's Anti Corruption Commission) that both Monsanto and its local subsidiary, PT Monagro Kimia, had lobbied him to allow the cultivation of GM crops in Indonesia.

And is this business model restricted to Monsanto? Of course not. The bio-technologists in agri-business, which perhaps would be better termed as the aggro-business, have very close ties with Indonesia's so-called élite.