Thread: How Russia exploits American racism and xenophobia for its own gain

Story, re the GMOs, fake news all the time from industry profiteers - 30some states have approved the roundup with agent orange formulas to be sprayed everywhere too. I know so many people that have died early, have COPD, have pace makers, bladder cancer, lung cancer from smoking cigarettes - a simple out of your system in 3days detox, a little longer for your brains' receptors to die off with triggers but the addiction to nicotine gone in 3days. How many decades did the industry hide the facts, tobacco is a carcinogen?

Should we say coal and tobacco farming industries should be expanded or deadly pesticides should be sprayed everywhere even though harmful? The coal particulates cause heart attacks and strokes. The pesticides are very harmful especially to children. If it will kill a weed, what part of you will it kill? The closer you are to it or eat sprayed food in abundance, the more problems you can expect to have healthwise. These chemicals mimic estrogens, called xenoestrogens and are deadly to the body by exploding cancer growth and shutting down your cells like they do to a plant.

The pesticides do not work after while, it creates superweeds, then you have to buy more to spray more and stronger solutions. =$$$$. Trump should not have considered appointing anyone that exclaimed pesticides are not harmful - they do not want a big powerful industry to make less money, they all own stock; they bought hillary too, she endorsed monsanto.

As long as you give the green light to continue, nothing new, unharmful will be marketed. There are robots to eliminate weeds being tested and doing a great job - no harmful endocrine disrupting junk anywhere if they switch to the weed stamping robots. How many years do you think monsanto, bayer will forbid that to come to market - as long as they can. $$$$$$$

Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

By DANNY HAKIMMARCH 14, 2017


The reputation of Roundup, whose active ingredient is the world’s most widely used weed killer, took a hit on Tuesday when a federal court unsealed documents raising questions about its safety and the research practices of its manufacturer, the chemical giant Monsanto.

Roundup and similar products are used around the world on everything from row crops to home gardens. It is Monsanto’s flagship product, and industry-funded research has long found it to be relatively safe. A case in federal court in San Francisco has challenged that conclusion, building on the findings of an international panel that claimed Roundup’s main ingredient might cause cancer.

The court documents included Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators. The records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

The documents also revealed that there was some disagreement within the E.P.A. over its own safety assessment.

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• The files were unsealed by Judge Vince Chhabria, who is presiding over litigation brought by people who claim to have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a result of exposure to glyphosate. The litigation was touched off by a determination made nearly two years ago by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen, citing research linking it to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
  

Court records show that Monsanto was tipped off to the determination by a deputy division director at the E.P.A., Jess Rowland, months beforehand. That led the company to prepare a public relations assault on the finding well in advance of its publication. Monsanto executives, in their internal email traffic, also said Mr. Rowland had promised to beat back an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct its own review.

Dan Jenkins, a Monsanto executive, said in an email in 2015 that Mr. Rowland, referring to the other agency’s potential review, had told him, “If I can kill this, I should get a medal.” The review never took place. In another email, Mr. Jenkins noted to a colleague that Mr. Rowland was planning to retire and said he “could be useful as we move forward with ongoing glyphosate defense.”

The safety of glyphosate is not settled science. A number of agencies, including the European Food Safety Agency and the E.P.A., have disagreed with the international cancer agency, playing down concerns of a cancer risk, and Monsanto has vigorously defended glyphosate.

But the court records also reveal a level of debate within the E.P.A. The agency’s Office of Research and Development raised some concern about the robustness of an assessment carried out by the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs, where Mr. Rowland was a senior official at the time, and recommended in December 2015 that it take steps to “strengthen” its “human health assessment.”

In a statement, Monsanto said, “Glyphosate is not a carcinogen.

It added: “The allegation that glyphosate can cause cancer in humans is inconsistent with decades of comprehensive safety reviews by the leading regulatory authorities around the world. The plaintiffs have submitted isolated documents that are taken out of context.”

The E.P.A. had no immediate comment, and Mr. Rowland could not be reached immediately.

Monsanto also rebutted suggestions that the disclosures highlighted concerns that the academic research it underwrites is compromised. Monsanto frequently cites such research to back up its safety claims on Roundup and pesticides.

In one email unsealed Tuesday, William F. Heydens, a Monsanto executive, told other company officials that they could ghostwrite research on glyphosate by hiring academics to put their names on papers that were actually written by Monsanto. “We would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak,” Mr. Heydens wrote, citing a previous instance in which he said the company had done this.

Asked about the exchange, Monsanto said in a second statement that its “scientists did not ghostwrite the paper” that was referred to or previous work, adding that a paper that eventually appeared “underwent the journal’s rigorous peer review process before it was published.”

David Kirkland, one of the scientists mentioned in the email, said in an interview, “I would not publish a document that had been written by someone else.” He added, “We had no interaction with Monsanto at all during the process of reviewing the data and writing the papers.”

The disclosures are the latest to raise concerns about the integrity of academic research financed by agrochemical companies. Last year, a review by The New York Times showed how the industry can manipulate academic research or misstate findings. Declarations of interest included in a Monsanto-financed paper on glyphosate that appeared in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology said panel members were recruited by a consulting firm. Email traffic made public shows that Monsanto officials discussed and debated scientists who should be considered, and shaped the project.

“I think it’s important that people hold Monsanto accountable when they say one thing and it’s completely contradicted by very frank internal documents,” said Timothy Litzenburg of the Miller Firm, one of the law firms handling the litigation.

The issue of glyphosate’s safety is not a trivial one for Americans. Over the last two decades, Monsanto has genetically re-engineered corn, soybeans and cotton so it is much easier to spray them with the weed killer, and some 220 million pounds of glyphosate were used in 2015 in the United States.

“People should know that there are superb scientists in the world who would disagree with Monsanto and some of the regulatory agencies’ evaluations, and even E.P.A. has disagreement within the agency,” said Robin Greenwald, a lawyer at Weitz & Luxenberg, which is also involved in the litigation. “Even in the E.U., there’s been a lot of disagreement among the countries. It’s not so simple as Monsanto makes it out to be.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/b...suit.html?_r=0

Originally Posted by Judy

Statute please. Thanks.

International law is clear on the subject of foreign intervention into the domestic affairs of another state.

Chapter I, Article 2, paragraph 7 of the United Nations Charter states that nothing in the Charter authorizes the signatories “to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”[4]

The only exception to this non-intervention principle is found in Chapter VII, which authorizes the United Nations to intervene against “the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”[5]

In 1965 the United Nations General Assembly reaffirmed, and seemingly expanded, the principle of non-intervention in a resolution.

The resolution states: “No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal […] affairs of any other State.”[6]

It goes on to state that every “State has an inalienable right to choose its political, economic, social and cultural systems without interference in any form by another State.”[7]

The United Nations resolution makes it clear that non-physical intervention into a state’s domestic election is also considered to be a violation, not just the use physical force to sabotage an election within another state.

Accordingly, it is reasonable to conclude that a Russian cyber-attack conducted to sabotage the democratic election within the United States would, likewise, violate international law and international norms as established by the United Nations.

However, laws and norms against foreign intervention into other states’ domestic affairs, including elections, were severely undermined during the Cold War by the Soviet Union and, ironically, the United States. The Soviet Union used its power to enforce a political system within its satellite states, and the United States used covert tactics to influence or undermine elections in several countries, such as Italy, Iran, and Chile. International law was impotent, and the superpowers regularly interfered with domestic politics within weaker countries.[8] Unfortunately, long before cyber technology existed, the wanton sabotaging of elections during the second half of the twentieth century eroded any teeth that international law and norms may have had in preventing, current, foreign cyber-intrusions.

Now countries can possibly disrupt the outcome of other countries’ elections without the need for physical coercion. This reality is most dangerous for democracies because elections are the means by which their governments or representatives are chosen. Barring advancements in cybersecurity that would render the issue moot, democracies must establish robust international laws and norms against using cyber-attacks to influence elections. If a cybersecurity global treaty becomes a reality, democracies, such as the United States, must refrain from undermining the principles of non-intervention, lest such undermining facilitates the future unraveling of their democratic systems.

The hacking of the DNC highlights how important it is for all countries to adhere stringently to international laws and norms, whether convenient or not. All countries, rich or poor, large or small, powerful or weak, are vulnerable to cyber-intrusion. An enduring international norm against interference into a country’s domestic affairs could have helped to protect all countries against cyber-intrusion, making a violator an international pariah. By continuously violating international norms against interference into the domestic affairs of other countries the United States played a role in eroding such norms. In the past the United States intruded into the domestic affairs of weaker countries with impunity. Now the very foundation of the American democratic process, free and fair elections, are potentially vulnerable to foreign interference. Likewise, Russia could, in the future, become the victim of cyber-attacks in vulnerable areas within its own political or economic system. To help protect against cyber intrusion countries should establish international law on the matter and work assiduously to maintain the law’s integrity.

http://www.mjilonline.org/russian-ha...rnational-law/

I didn't think we had a US statute against that because no country on the planet interferes in more domestic affairs of other nations than the United States, you know trying to spread our "democracy" far and wide (and make a lot of crooked politicians and their pay-pals a lot of money in the process).

But along those lines, Trump is the man, he is the non-interventionist candidate and will be a non-interventionist President right up to the point where national interests of the United States are at risk or under threat. So the Democrats who like that aspect of the UN Charter need to hop aboard the Trump Train and help US fix our country.

Absolutely, we interfere in other countries' elections - so what is this all about? Maybe Pres. Trump should insist that OUR past interference be part of the investigation.

Yes, we and other countries, try to influence the elections, operations, etc., in other sovereign countries.

What in the world do you think 'foreign aid' is, but influence peddling, palm greasing.

How many Americans - of the many Americans are pretending to be people of another country in order to gain confidence, and foment wars and revolutions - right at this moment? All around the world.

Why is SA in such a turmoil - maybe we could start with the CIA and it's involvement? Maybe we could ask the DEA about their 'war on drugs' down there?

And has been said - what about Mexico's involvement in our election? We absolutely know what Mexico's aim is and we know they were involved.

Again, what about Israel and their powerful lobby?

When you really think about it, what about all these multi-national NGO"s and churches that get involved in our elections?

Maybe someone should start an investigation into that.

https://www.alipac.us/f9/russia-metr...st-act-345675/