russia calls on the u.s. to disavow its allegations of election meddling in the wake of the report the embassy in washington releases a one hundred twenty one page document bunking claims of interference. in the cracks keep up the pressure on the president after more. years of media speculation . collusion. no collusion no obstruction of president. struction of justice certainly obstructing justice multiple attempts by the present to mislead the country. the un backed government in libya accuses france of supporting rebel forces in a conflict that has killed hundreds in the past few weeks. aside from

a nightmare or groundbreaking opportunity as plans are laid to turn the night sky into a huge billboard for advertisements projected from space. latest on these stories dog dot com stay with us for the big picture. on this week's show. in the war against the opioid academic and prosecutors are calling it the biggest pill bust in american history than sailors assigned to a submarine armed with tomahawk missiles test positive for drugs but first sure is have awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits but bayer is appealing they say that their roundup does not cause cancer we'll talk to the plaintiffs lead lawyer holland cook in washington and for the next thirty minutes muller free zone this is the big picture on our t.v. america.

could a product you might have right now in your garage or basement kill you round up is the best selling herbicide you see than hardware stores and big box home stores but you won't find it on the shelf that cost co any more although ads boast that round up kills weeds in your lawn without harming your lawn hundreds of lawsuits say key ingredient life oh say causes cancer juries have awarded plaintiffs hundreds of millions of dollars in cases that defendant bayer which acquired roundup manufacturer monsanto is appealing since the first verdict bayer shares have lost a third of their value this is a story we've been following all along what's the latest let's ask michael baume managing partner of baum hedlund era state and goldman law firm a member of the executive committee for the recently consolidated federal monsanto

roundup lawsuits he joins us from oakland last summer we interviewed robert f. kennedy jr with whom you are working on this as a jury ordered bear to pay two hundred eighty nine point two million dollars to former california groundskeeper with lymphoma a judge later reduced that award to seventy eight point five male which bayer is now appealing what was the basis for the reduction and what is the rationale for bear's appeal well the basis for the reduction was that the judge thought that the compensatory damages of thirty nine million dollars already reflected very high. compensation and include incorporated some punitive damages if it so she thought that a one to one ratio between the compensatory damages and the pain of damages. was justified. that's not ordinarily done with

a compensatory damages case and something like not hodgkins lymphoma or serious injury type case it's usually somewhere like nine to ten times the compensatory damages award so the award itself was actually in law and with historical precedents for damages well we will be hoping on appeal to that verdict returned to where it was to begin with to eighty nine and what is the basis for of a or appealing they want to say that the regulators around the world have said it's safe and therefore it must be safe our contention is that the regulators have missed. the actual risk that's there that i arc found international agency for research on cancer the problem for the most part is blitz into looking at studies that just evaluated wife state by itself without looking at the

formulation the formulation has a lot of chemicals in it that help it penetrates cells helps it penetrate the layers of your skin gets down inside the skin collects there and then interacts with the limb subsisted and that leads to. foam and. that process is not is evident with life state by itself of both sides it's there unsurprisingly both sides are accusing each other of junk science and a plaintiff's attorney i know a calls the experts who are well paid to contribute to research such as bayer offers in this case by asta toots doesn't appear carefully edited work just flunked a smell test monsanto experts flunked the smell smell test our experts are like you know leaders in the area of the of their expertise you know you've got christopher poor da who headed the national toxic collar. program he actually wrote the

guidelines that the e.p.a. is supposed to use for evaluating carcinogenicity in animal studies they just didn't do it and the scientific advisory board for the for the e.p.a. said so said hey you didn't follow your guidelines followed your guidelines you were to come up with a different result not looking at studies that showed a statistically significant doubling or more of the risk when a person uses roundup more than two days a year or more than ten days a year. ignoring that data in favor of ever never use which would mean you would use it used it once a year or once every couple years or very small relative use that's not going to overwhelm your immune system in a way that. can't handle the d.n.a. damage and it's the regular exposure that causes the

damage and so people who use it more are more likely to get not hodgkin's lymphoma and that's what the studies show and they show it and again a statistically significant adjusted for other pesticides when you look at those studies you get the these things the risk is evident and then it's supported by what's in the animal studies the toxicology studies out in my sim particular every single study showed malignant lymphomas wow and advice and that is the corollary to not hodgkin's lymphoma in humans and that's you know a very substantial strong finding that. the e.p.a. recognize fails to recognize that i.r. does recognize. and then there's the issue studies looking at cells. and

studies of lymphocytes human lymphocytes showing d.n.a. damage caused in petri dish experiments all those things together show there's a strong correlation between exposure repeated exposure to round up and not hodgkin's lymphoma that gets missed by. has been missed by some other regulators and is what. monsanto has failed to acknowledge but in our internal documents that we've obtained from them in discovery they again they say you know what you know we can't really say that round up the formulation doesn't doesn't cause cancer or doesn't cause not hodgkin's lymphoma because we haven't done the tests they only do the tests on to say the loan or the formulation product the the surf act it's that help it penetrates. the surfaces of plants and

also skin when you get exposed to it so the synergistic effect of a life estate plus the surf act and is a formulation in that formulation is sixty times more toxic than glyphosate alone and if you don't test the formulation you miss the risk and that's actually one of the things that the s.a.p.o. recognized and what the e.p.a. recognised recently saying well there may be a problem with the formulation we need to look into that and study it more the consumer use you described a minute ago evokes the t.v. commercial with a guy spray in the weeds that are popping up through the driveway talk about the institutional use in agriculture now to the extent that the grain in our breakfast cereal in the strawberries we drop on top of the breakfast cereal are tainted are we exposed just living our lives as a result of the use of the life of life to say and round up or in almost every

single non-organic food or beverage that we normally consume now and the use of roundup for agricultural products is pretty pervasive and. what they do is round up kills weeds actually kills plants any plant but monsanto developed. roundup ready crops that are resistant to the effects of life to sate and round up so they can be sprayed with it and pretty much heavily and they kills all of the weeds and plants around it without killing the crops so corn and soybeans and crops like that that are staples in most of our diets. are being inundated with round up while the plants are growing and another more recent development is the use of ground

as a dryer or desiccate or that dries out the crops of wheat and oats and other type grains sugar cane for. harvesting it makes it easier to harvest. the wheat seeds and seeds and into. flour and products and they have a lot of roundup in him so there's been some recent testing of cheerios and we d.s. and quaker oats there if they're they're not using organic wheat or oats they're using desiccated dried. oats and wheat that have been dried out by being sprayed with roundup got about a minute left but i must ask the world health organization is classified life so say as a likely having the potential to cause cancer in humans but the most recent review

by the u.s. environmental protection agency circa twenty seven team classified life oh say that as unlikely to cause cancer in humans and my cynical to smell money politics they're not too cynical but if you should be cynical as our documents show that there was has been a relationship with the e.p.a. between monsanto and some. the individuals that were responsible for writing that report a guy named just rolland was an author of that and. we have e-mails showing that he coordinated with them and stopping some of the studies and coordinated with them on what what to count and what not to count in the mouse studies like that malignant lymphoma i was telling you about he consulted with monsanto scientists of what to count and what not to count and deviated from the guidelines to crisp already a doctor sporty actually wrote for. the regulators like the v.a.

for how to evaluate toxicological science which and. so they had say p. the science advisory panel noticed that and said hey you didn't count these right you didn't follow the guidelines and so what our documents show is that the guidelines that followed showed the risk and. they failed to do it and they look focused on studies that show were related to glide to say not round up right and there are even that study says or that report says they need to look at round up not just the state alone attorney michael baume from the executive committee for the recently consolidated federal monsanto round up lawsuits thank you for your time and for the work you're doing. coming up sailors busted just as they were to report for duty on a navy submarine after they tested positive for cocaine and opioids

busted this is the big picture on our t. america. when i say assets on their books terry they're referring to bonds that they priced at one hundred cents on the dollar but don't have a sale value in the market greater than maybe one penny on the dollar so again this departure dorian gray economy all these quote assets on the central bank balance sheets if you added the all up i think the central banks and i have something like fifty to fifty five trillion dollars of what they call assets that might be worth mcdonald's hamburger when they have no collateral value i thought they're worthless

that's a fact of life. what do you do before you came here where did you work before you came here when you live well death row in many us states capital punishment is still practiced convicted prisoners can spend years waiting for execution but most of the time the victims' families they are very much in favor of the death penalty there are some people because of what they did have given up the right to live among us some even proven innocent of two years on death row and how many more exonerations is it going to take before we as a society realize that this is not working and we actually do something about. the british royal navy busted seven sailors who were about to board

a nuclear submarine armed with tomahawk missiles after they tested positive for cocaine the h.m.s. talent was heading out to track russian submarine movements and the north sea in the arctic circle a mission that calls for calm heads and steady hands and this comes on the heels of another royal embarrassment soldiers including four from prince harry's old regiment also busted for coke what is going on there and here let's ask dr harlan ullman vietnam and persian gulf veteran now chairman of two private companies and u.p.i. is arnaud de boer scrub distinguished columnist welcome back. having served as a former pentagon adviser can you give us comfort that our troops aren't getting anywhere near that nuclear button while they're high i have also a sailor in the royal navy i spent two happy years in the royal navy i know it intimately well and quite frankly this is a non-story you're making too much about nothing what are the safeguards that are

built into the system so if the rules are a liability program and the fact that these people were screened immediately tells you that there's a safe in every navy the russian navy the american navy and it when you're dealing with militaries it got very advanced weapons with nuclear weapons you've got to be very very careful and every military service has got people who are going to do stupid things and what you have is a couple of kids in that submarine and prince harry's regiment who did stupid things this is a non-story we should be talking about the reports but far more important i promised i wouldn't for a whole half hour. this is people should not worry about this it happens in every military service and it's just the cost of doing this well they are not here is and what you're saying is the system worked they got it of course it got caught. next stop for you next week is moscow and. it's the eighth annual conference on international security sounds very post cold war to me what's the agenda and what do you figure gets accomplished there well the russians do very very well in fact

they attract probably representatives from about eighty or ninety countries sadly they will be too many americans their congress has made it against the law for our military to talk to the russian military except in the narrow confines of syria and it's a good opportunity to exchange views because obviously our views are far different so one of the reasons i'm quite happy to be invited and i'm going to be giving a paper is that i want to taunt the russians and see what we can do to see if we can improve relations my argument is going to be that i'm actually a man from mars i've just landed on a soyuz spacecraft i've been told by my superiors see what's going on in washington and in moscow and my reaction is you guys are crazy in washington you're crazy in moscow why are you being so belligerent towards each other there's no ideological differences you've got more things in common dealing with terrorism with energy with climate change arms control so why don't we grow up and see what relations can be improved and where and i know i'm not going to get

a very good response it's going to be very chilly in moscow well i hope there's going to be video of this on why i hope so or at least your paper published yeah hey i got a little over a minute tough question but we're told that some twenty two veterans come at suicide every day how do we fix this you don't it is a really serious issue you've got post-traumatic stress you've got traumatic brain injury i was at a dinner last night a couple days ago with some people who were really into this and it's true in the military it's true in the british military. it's a real problem we don't understand the cause as we understand the symptoms and it's going to require a great deal of research but you're absolutely right the suicide rates and not just in the american military it's happening in the british military and i'm sure in the russian military as well this is an issue of service extended time in combat and. it's a real problem to which we do not have an immediate fix and that's a tragedy you were served twice. of front there how long did it take you to feel

good when you got back about two seconds. it was great to get back to america after almost twenty months in vietnam i had absolutely no issues from combat and i saw a quite a bit but it depends upon the individual and it's impossible to say some people who bear the burden of the horrors of war can respond accordingly some cat and it's very very traumatic and it's impossible to predict who's going to be brave but who's going to come back and be intact and it's something that we need to study far more but the brain is a complicated organs were and it's impossible to predict but post-traumatic stress is a hugely serious problem which we're putting a lot of time and money into trying to resolve but at this stage it's a tough uphill fight thank you dr harlan ullman and safe travels next week. sixty doctors and other medical professionals in seven states are facing federal charges for illegal opioid sales accused of writing more than three hundred fifty thousand

prescriptions for thirty two million pills what's wrong with this picture let's ask attorney and self described giant slayer and legal crusader robert barnes who practices civil criminal and constitutional law and joins us from las vegas councilor welcome. glad to be here and this week's bust one doctor is accused of giving out fifteen hundred fentanyl patches three hundred thousand oxy code on pills after a million hydrocodone pills all opioids and more than six hundred thousand brando die as a peon pills used to treat anxiety all this over the course of just three years and other physicians thirty year old patients suffered a fatal overdose after being given an eight hundred oxy code on pills and two months after which the doctor told her husband to. spose of all pill bottles before the police arrived robert as the justice department task force was arresting doctors and others this week you tweeted big pharma remains the biggest drug dealer

of them all are we fishing for mental illness when instead we should be fishing for whales. precisely i mean the if they were serious about going after this and demick and it's an endemic borne of the fact that the united states economic elites have stripped appalachian where this is disproportionately happening of its manufacturing in mining jobs and the effect is what they've been left with is opiates instead of the american dream but the people promoting those opiates instead of the american dream is big pharma this is like going after arresting a bunch of street level drug dealers rather than the actual drug lords and drug cartel heads themselves because the drug dealers in this case big pharma knows exactly who selling their drug they know how much drug it selling they better than anybody would know when there's an anomaly taking place when somebody selling more than makes sense when it's selling something that's disproportionate or disparate they have no economic interest in actually flagging that because they make more

profit the more drugs they get distributed so if the department of justice was serious about doing something about the death overdose epidemic that's occurring throughout appalachian from tennessee up throughout southern ohio then they would be targeting the big drug companies not focusing on a few minor doctors and pharmacists in small towns you know i'm glad you brought up the geography on that because we covered a big story on this in west virginia a while back and if you look at the map the seven states involved here as you say appalachian do you think big pharma is profiling accordingly. i think that's exactly what's happening i mean years ago john le carre wrote a great book called the constant gardener about how drug companies were targeting poor yuri's in africa for drug experimentation purposes and it was a thinly disguised documentary disguised as a film in a book and the same thing is happen the united states they've targeted the poorest most as. we're parts of the economy parts of the country that have been abandoned by the economic elites that have been decimated in the way that when they used to come into a coal mine they would often decimate large parts of the land to build

a coal mine well now economic elites have decimated all of appalachians cultural social and economic infrastructure and left them desperate and instead decided to come in and capitalize off of it and profit from it by selling them opiates instead of the american dream and instead of blaming them they're blaming some low level doctors who are still practicing in poor parts of the country for their own derelict behavior rather than targeting the true criminals the true culprits the truly culpable parties which is big pharma assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the united states department of justice brian byrnes a koski says you can rest assured when medical professionals behave like drug dealers the department of justice is going to treat them like drug dealers tough talk from uncle sam is all well and good but why i count on the government to fix this we just talked to the lead lawyer in that monsanto round up lawsuit consolidation is it feasible for plaintiffs to go after big pharma instead

of hoping uncle sam well. precisely what needs to happen is a big class action against big drug companies that have deliberately targeted underprivileged populations in parts of the country particularly the appalachian part of the country and i'm from the southern part of that back home in chattanooga tennessee is the southern tip of appalachian to go after them systematically and systemic lee because the only way you're going to stop this abuse from taking place is to target big drug companies i mean you have lawyers who are suing gun companies on marginal claims of holding them responsible for what somebody does with their gun well drug companies are truly responsible for what happens with the drug that they profit from that they promote that they propagate that they line the pockets of these medical professionals to sell and oversell and they're the ones who should be the target of major civil action and allow the civil jury system to bring real justice to appalachian while you're very well versed. on this so i guess i'm asking for an opinion why is the opioid epidemic a bigger problem in the usa than it seems to be elsewhere. i think as

a whole it's because it's under covered the people that are you know years ago there was when they originally when crack cocaine and heroin was distributed in certain parts of the country it was often distributed in poor african-american areas here you have opiates disproportionately targeting the big drug companies targeting poor white populations in parts of abandoned parts of america and consequently this is the place where the media lives this isn't the place where the media has friends or family or grew up and so consequently they don't cover the degree to which you know you have at least over one hundred people die a day from opiate overdose from prescribed opiate overdose that should never happen one is too many and so the fact that it's happening in occurring is mostly under covered in the american media because the american media doesn't live there doesn't work there and many of them probably are investors or stockholders and some of these drug companies that are profiting from it and they sure are appreciate your time and your perspective on this thank you attorney robert barnes from the barnes law firm who joined us from las vegas and thank you for watching the big picture if

you see us somewhere else you can also find our team america live on you tube at youtube dot com slash r t america we are on the dish network at channel two a zero we are on direct t.v. channel three two one and on these super cool pluto t.v.'s up at one three two and all of our shows are available on demand any time any place on any device at youtube dot com slash the big picture r t m holland cook in washington i'll be back here same time next week and in the meantime i am at holland cook on twitter where if you follow me i'll follow you happy easter happening passover happy earth day. and read the report question more.

well. known for. what is bitcoin. magic the new type of digital currency decentralized digital scarcity chancellor i'm bringing a second bailout for a bank that's called the genesis blog for reason they're calling it civil disobedience

a source of optimism because i can control my own financial destiny it's just a new way of coming to consensus it's a game changer in the human history of this columbus discovering a new world this paradigm shifting knowledge that transforms economics and finance good heart to apollo eleven landing on the to the left stacy. we could only be done for the rule book. for the fall to the. i'll sell something if you go back to cuba. and let's have plenty of. you among the group was. the movie did well yeah except you're then he says the pulls with folks like me the focus of the security just hold it where you will pick up.

a. little psycho. wall enclosure we're going to produce a. month . to the pacific as this was the last stop at the push and i was as. i am x. kaiser this is the kaiser report this.