Get Malik Out of Ad-Seg Keith "Malik" Washington is an incarcerated activist who has spoken out on conditions of confinement in Texas prison and beyond:  from issues of toxic water and extreme heat, to physical and sexual abuse of imprisoned people, to religious discrimination and more.  Malik has also been a tireless leader in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery which gained visibility during nationwide prison strikes in 2016 and 2018.  View his work at comrademalik.com or write him at: Keith H. Washington TDC# 1487958 McConnell Unit 3001 S. Emily Drive Beeville, TX 78102 Friends, it's time to get Malik out of solitary confinement. Malik has experienced intense, targeted harassment ever since he dared to start speaking against brutal conditions faced by incarcerated people in Texas and nationwide--but over the past few months, prison officials have stepped up their retaliation even more. In Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at McConnell Unit, Malik has experienced frequent humiliating strip searches, medical neglect, mail tampering and censorship, confinement 23 hours a day to a cell that often reached 100+ degrees in the summer, and other daily abuses too numerous to name.  It could not be more clear that they are trying to make an example of him because he is a committed freedom fighter.  So we have to step up. Who to contact: TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier Phone: (936)295-6371 Email:  exec.director@tdcj.texas.gov Senior Warden Philip Sinfuentes (McConnell Unit) Phone: (361) 362-2300

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Major George Tillery

MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION SEX FOR LIES AND MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony. These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors. Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters. In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years Major Tillery Needs Your Help: Major Tillery and family HOW YOU CAN HELP Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom. Go to JPay.com; code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false. Call: 215-686-8000 or Email: justice@phila.gov Write to: Security Processing Center Major Tillery AM 9786 268 Bricker Road Bellefonte, PA 16823 For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org Call/Write: Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* On Monday March 4th, 2019 Leonard Peltier was advised that his request for a transfer had been unceremoniously denied by the United States Bureau of Prisons. The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee appreciates and thanks the large number of his supporters who took the time to write, call, email, or fax the BOP in support of Leonard's request for a transfer. Those of us who have been supporting Leonard's freedom for a number of years are disappointed but resolute to continue pushing for his freedom and until that day, to continue to push for his transfer to be closer to his relatives and the Indigenous Nations who support him. 44 years is too damn long for an innocent man to be locked up. How can his co-defendants be innocent on the grounds of self-defense but Leonard remains in prison? The time is now for all of us to dig deep and do what we can and what we must to secure freedom for Leonard Peltier before it's too late. We need the support of all of you now, more than ever. The ILPDC plans to appeal this denial of his transfer to be closer to his family. We plan to demand he receive appropriate medical care, and to continue to uncover and utilize every legal mechanism to secure his release. To do these things we need money to support the legal work. Please call the ILPDC National office or email us for a copy of the postcard you can send to the White House. We need your help to ask President Trump for Leonard's freedom. DONATE  ©2019 ILPDC | 116 W Osborne Avenue Tampa, FL 33603  Web Version  Preferences  Forward  Unsubscribe   Powered by GoDaddy Email Marketing ® Free Leonard Peltier!

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* Articles: *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 1) G.M. Strike's Economic Toll: Idle Trucks, Packed Warehouses By Nelson D. Schwartz and David Yaffe-Bellany, October 8, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/business/economy/gm-strike-economy-impact.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Stacks of inventory at Pridgeon and Clay, an auto parts maker based in Grand Rapids, Mich. Parts destined for General Motors have been piling up at the company's distribution center.CreditCreditBrittany Greeson for The New York Times

The truck drivers at Phoenix Transit and Logistics in Dearborn, Mich., are long gone. Around three dozen of the trailers they once ferried between auto plants — packed with dashboards, engine components, lights and other parts for General Motors — are sitting in a lot with nowhere to go.

It's an increasingly familiar scene as the strike against G.M. by the United Auto Workers enters its fourth week. From suppliers to shippers to restaurants, the impact of the work stoppage is spreading through the web of businesses whose fates are tied to the biggest American automaker.

Wael Tlaib, the owner of Phoenix Transit & Logistics, said he had laid off nearly his entire staff, including 80 drivers, and had dipped into his personal savings to keep his company afloat. "I might lose the business next week," Mr. Tlaib said.

The most intense economic pain is being felt in the industrial Midwest, where G.M.'s network of plants and suppliers is thickest. It is a difficult time for the region's manufacturing industry, which even before the strike was contending with slowing auto sales, a weakening global economy and the trade war.

An economic blow to the Midwest would have broad consequences in part because the region is an important political battleground that will help determine who wins the 2020 presidential election. In 2016, President Trump's narrow victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin put him over the top in the Electoral College tally.

The state of the auto industry "usually has political ramifications that are beyond its direct economic influence," said Matt Grossmann, a political-science professor at Michigan State University. "A lot of Democrats here are running on the promise to help the factory workers and the working class, and saying Trump hasn't done it."

Nearly 50,000 U.A.W. members walked off the job on Sept. 16, the largest stoppage since G.M. workers went on strike in 2007. The union is pressing for more job security as well as the reopening of plants in the United States that the company has recently idled. For its part, G.M. wants workers to pick up more of their health care costs and agree to give managers greater flexibility in factory operations.

After signs of progress over the last week, the two sides hit a roadblock this weekend on how production might be moved to the United States from Mexico. Terry Dittes, the U.A.W.'s lead negotiator, said on Sunday that the talks had taken a "turn for the worse."

The impact of the strike stretches from Mexico to Canada, where G.M. plants that depend on American factories have been shuttered, putting thousands out of work. Analysts estimate that G.M. has lost $600 million as a result of the strike.

In the United States, 34 G.M. plants have gone dark. And striking workers are making do with a $250-a-week subsidy from the union.

In the first three weeks of the strike, $412 million in wages were lost, according to Patrick Anderson, chief executive of Anderson Economic Group. "Each week the damage grows geometrically," Mr. Anderson said. "First you lose your U.A.W. workers, then the immediate suppliers, then the next tiers."

Michigan has the most exposure to the auto sector, with roughly 8 percent of the state's economy linked to the industry. Even after factory closures decimated employment in the car industry in recent decades, the state remains dotted with auto plants and suppliers.

Gabriel Ehrlich, director of the University of Michigan's Research Seminar in Qualitative Economics, estimates that the Michigan economy is growing at an annual rate of 1.4 percent. Without the strike, he said, that number could be 0.1 to 0.2 points higher.

Even before the strike, manufacturing employment in Michigan fell by 1,300 jobs in the first eight months of the year. By comparison, manufacturers added 43,000 jobs nationally in the same period.

"There's been real damage to the economy," said Charles Ballard, an economics professor at Michigan State. "It hasn't been huge yet but the ripple effects will get bigger the longer this goes on."

In Flint, at least 1,200 truckers and production workers from suppliers have lost their jobs because of the strike. That includes hundreds from a supplier of seats to G.M., Lear Corporation, according to Duane Ballard, the financial secretary for U.A.W. Local 659, which represents employees at that factory.

A Lear spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Many of those workers are new hires who have not worked at the Lear plant long enough to qualify for state unemployment insurance, Mr. Ballard said.

On a rainy night last week, more than two dozen people affected by the strike showed up at the Martus Luna Food Pantry in Flint, said Art Luna, who runs the pantry.

They "are the ones that are really hurting," he said. "They're anxious to go back to work."

The fallout has extended beyond the auto industry, disrupting local businesses that serve autoworkers.

On a typical Saturday night, Luigi's Restaurant, an Italian eatery a short drive from the Lear factory, sees around 350 customers. But in recent weeks, that number has fallen by as many as 60 people, according to Tom Beaubien, who runs the restaurant.

"After one week without pay, everybody starts to suffer, from McDonald's all the way to Luigi's Restaurant," Mr. Beaubien said.

It's unclear just how many workers have been laid off by G.M.'s suppliers. Magna International, one of the world's largest auto suppliers, has idled "a few" plants, according to a spokeswoman, Tracy Fuerst. "We attempted to keep our employees at these impacted plants working as long as possible through training, maintenance and inventory," she said.

Some G.M. suppliers are finding creative ways to keep workers occupied, whether repairing machines or building an inventory of auto components to ship later.

"Your smarter suppliers are being very careful about how they lay people off," said Michael Robinet, an expert on the auto industry at IHS Markit. "They don't want to lose their better employees to a competitor or to another occupation."

Of course, Michigan's economy is not as dependent on the auto sector as it was even two decades ago. Lansing has two G.M. plants but their economic weight is counterbalanced by the state government and the city's hospital system, said Andy Schor, the city's mayor. Another large employer, Michigan State University, is nearby.

"The sooner they resolve this the better but I wouldn't say everything has shut down in Lansing," Mr. Schor said. Over all, G.M. and its suppliers account for 6,600 jobs with $250 million in annual wages in the city, which has roughly 118,000 residents.

Mr. Schor said autoworkers had been asking the city-owned utility for more time to pay their electric and water bills.

Yet even at companies that are not highly dependent on G.M., the effect of the strike was immediate. Pridgeon & Clay, a component maker that sells to G.M.'s suppliers, froze hiring right away.

"We heard from our customers within hours," said R. Kevin Clay, the company's president. Business had already been a little soft at Pridgeon and Clay, which is based in Grand Rapids, Mich., when the strike began.

G.M. suppliers account for about $13 million of the company's $300 million in annual revenue. Now parts destined for the automaker are piled up in corners of the company's distribution center.

Mr. Clay said he was determined to avoid layoffs. "It's certainly eating into profitability but rather than cut people, you pinch every penny," he said.

Other manufacturers, like Stripmatic in Cleveland, say manpower has been tight recently, and the strike has freed workers for other tasks.

But Bill Adler, the company's president, said business could suffer if G.M.'s plants don't resume production soon. "If the strike goes on much longer, what started out as a very good year could turn into a mediocre year," he said.

Around the country, G.M. dealers said inventories had grown somewhat tighter.

"We had a pretty deep shelf when the strike started and are at about average inventory right now," said Mark Scarpelli, president of Raymond Chevrolet in Antioch, Ill.

G.M. said last week that its American dealers had 760,000 vehicles at the end of September, down 5 percent from a year ago. That's enough to last several weeks, but dealers are nearing the time when they place orders for the brisk sales they usually see around the end of the year.

Back in Dearborn, Mr. Tlaib of Phoenix Transit & Logistics is doing what he can to get trucks back on the road. He emptied five of his trailers into a warehouse, freeing them to carry parts for other companies. But that has made barely a dent in the G.M. inventory in his yard.

"We don't know what's going to happen next," he said. "We just sit down and smoke and watch the news."

Neal E. Boudette contributed reporting.

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2) Slain Witness in Amber Guyger Trial Testified Reluctantly. He'd Already Been Shot Once.

Joshua Brown, who testified for prosecutors at Amber Guyger's murder trial in Dallas, was himself shot to death two days after the trial ended.

By Marina Trahan Martinez, Sarah Mervosh and Manny Fernandez, October 8, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/us/joshua-brown-amber-guyger-witness.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Joshua Brown, left, answering questions from LaQuita Long, an assistant district attorney, in the murder trial of the former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger.CreditCreditPool photo by Tom Fox

DALLAS — Joshua Brown and Botham Shem Jean knew each other not by sight, but by sound — as muffled voices through their apartment walls.

From the hallway outside his fourth-floor apartment, Mr. Brown could hear Mr. Jean, his neighbor across the way, sing gospel music and Drake lyrics. The two men, both in their mid-20s, had met but once. But just as their lives had fleetingly intertwined, so, too, have their sudden and violent deaths.

Mr. Jean, 26, was murdered in his apartment at the South Side Flats complex last year by an off-duty Dallas police officer who claimed she had mistakenly entered the wrong unit and believed he was an intruder. Mr. Brown, 28, was gunned down last week, 10 days after he testified against the former officer. And the city of Dallas, still reeling with racial tensions in a case that stoked longstanding mistrust of the police, is once again full of questions.

Mr. Brown was shot twice late Friday night outside a new apartment he had moved to in another part of the city. Witnesses saw a silver sedan speeding away from the scene, but the authorities have not identified a suspect or a motive, and they have declined to talk about whether Mr. Brown's death was in any way connected to the trial. Many African-American community members and activists are renewing their call for someone outside the Dallas Police Department to conduct an independent investigation.

The former officer, Amber R. Guyger, who is white, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing Mr. Jean, who was black and unarmed. Mr. Brown, who was also black, was killed two days after the jury trial came to a close.

The timing of Mr. Brown's death immediately led to public speculation about whether he was killed in retaliation for his testimony, or whether the trial, streamed live on the internet, had drawn potentially dangerous attention to him. 

"The testimony of Joshua Brown showed us a very good man — and one willing to testify in a controversial trial against the police," said John Fullinwider, a founder of the Dallas activist group Mothers Against Police Brutality. "So the timing of his death and the multiple shots shook the city." 

The latest shooting drew the attention of several Democratic presidential candidates, including Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, who called for transparency in the investigation. A Houston businessman and high-stakes poker player, Bill Perkins, is offering a $100,000 reward in the case. Mayor Eric Johnson of Dallas said he believed that the city's Police Department would conduct a thorough investigation and asked for people to "refrain from speculation."

The N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund called for an independent state or federal investigation into Mr. Brown's killing, calling it a "deeply alarming and highly suspicious murder."

"It is critical to public confidence in the administration of justice that witnesses who speak out against police violence are fully protected," Sherrilyn Ifill, the organization's president, said in a statement. "The suspicious circumstances of Mr. Brown's killing should cause great alarm and demand an immediate and piercing inquiry."

A witness to two murders

Mr. Brown was a witness in not one but two murders last year in Dallas. 

In November 2018, more than two months after the shooting of Mr. Jean, Mr. Brown was shot in the foot during a shooting outside a strip club that left another man dead. 

In that encounter, Mr. Brown and his friends were leaving the club when he ran into another man who had a "personal issue" with him and wanted to fight, according to court documents. Gunshots erupted, killing Nicholas Diggs. 

Mr. Brown viewed a police photo lineup and identified the gunman and an accomplice. A suspect, Kendall Morris, was charged with murder and aggravated assault; he posted bond and was released pending trial. 

Mr. Brown believed he had been the intended target in that shooting, so he kept a low profile in the months that followed. He only reluctantly agreed to testify for the prosecution at Ms. Guyger's trial, according to a civil rights lawyer who represented Mr. Jean's family and who is now working with Mr. Brown's relatives.

"He didn't want any part of this trial," said the lawyer, Lee Merritt. "He was intimidated by the idea of being out there in the public. And unfortunately, in the black community, cooperating with the state — even in the prosecution of a white police officer — is frowned upon."

When Mr. Brown took the witness stand on Sept. 24, the second day of the trial, he was worried about being in the public eye, Mr. Merritt said. Perhaps in a sign of his reluctance to testify, Mr. Brown was not exactly dressed for court: He wore blue athletic shorts and a mint-green graphic T-shirt, which he used to wipe his eyes occasionally as he spoke about his former neighbor.

'Two voices mixing together'

Mr. Brown and Mr. Jean were in some ways living parallel but separate lives across the hall from each other at the South Side Flats. 

Mr. Brown was from Florida and managed Airbnb locations; Mr. Jean was from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia and worked for a major accounting firm. The night Mr. Jean was killed, they had separately made plans to spend the evening the same way — watching the first N.F.L. game of the season, when the Philadelphia Eagles played the Atlanta Falcons. 

Mr. Brown told the jury he had met Mr. Jean for the first time earlier on the day of the shooting, when officials from the leasing office came by to knock on their doors about a noise complaint. 

Later that night, after going to a bar to watch the first half of the football game, Mr. Brown said, he came home to a commotion in the hallway. He heard something "like two voices mixing together at the same time," he told the jury during the trial, followed by gunshots.

Crucially, he said he did not hear loud verbal commands before the gunshots, which was contrary to Ms. Guyger's testimony that she had ordered Mr. Jean to show his hands before she pulled the trigger.

Later, from his balcony, Mr. Brown said, he could see Ms. Guyger pacing while crying on the phone. 

"She was crying, explaining what happened, what she thought happened, saying she went into the wrong apartment," he said.

Mr. Brown was raised in a military family who moved from city to city, including stints in Jacksonville, Fla., and Lancaster, Texas, outside of Dallas, according to Mr. Merritt. He played football at the University of South Florida, where former colleagues remembered him as a competitive and outspoken player with a love of video games, according to The Tampa Bay Times. 

After college, he worked as a roofing contractor for a few years before starting a business renting out residences for Airbnb. He acknowledged during his testimony that he had previously had run-ins with the police, including a 2011 misdemeanor theft conviction and a 2016 drug conviction.

Members of the public had already expressed concern about the Police Department's handling of the case after it was revealed that Ms. Guyger's police partner, Martin Rivera, with whom she was having a relationship, had deleted text messages following the shooting. It also emerged that Mike Mata, the president of the Dallas Police Association, instructed an officer to turn off a squad car camera on the night of Mr. Jean's death so he could talk to Ms. Guyger privately, which officers said was standard procedure in officer-involved shootings. 

After the trial, Chief U. Reneé Hall of the Dallas Police Department announced that she planned to open an internal affairs investigation.

Mr. Merritt said evidence revealed during the trial had "eroded the trust of the community." 

"This investigation into the murder of Joshua Brown is going to be a critical point," he said. "The city of Dallas can begin to either regain that trust, or create further division in the community."

Marina Trahan Martinez reported from Dallas, Sarah Mervosh from New York and Manny Fernandez from Houston.

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3) Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn't Report Past Food Industry Ties

The lead researcher, Bradley C. Johnston, said he was not required to report his past relationship with a powerful industry trade group.

By Tara Parker-Pope and Anahad O'Conno, October 4, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/well/eat/scientist-who-discredited-meat-guidelines-didnt-report-past-food-industry-ties.html?fallback=0&recId=1RvXIi4jlFAIh02cCnmtrDJrEpH&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=CA&recAlloc=control&geoCountry=US&blockId=home-discovery-vi-prg&imp_id=644484168&action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage

A surprising new study challenged decades of nutrition advice and gave consumers the green light to eat more red and processed meat. But what the study didn't say is that its lead author has past research ties to the meat and food industry.

The new report, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, stunned scientists and public health officials because it contradicted longstanding nutrition guidelines about limiting consumption of red and processed meats. The analysis, led by Bradley C. Johnston, an epidemiologist at Dalhousie University in Canada, and more than a dozen researchers concluded that warnings linking meat consumption to heart disease and cancer are not backed by strong scientific evidence.

Several prominent nutrition scientists and health organizations criticized the study's methods and findings. But Dr. Johnston and his colleagues defended the work, saying it relied on the highest standards of scientific evidence, and noted that the large team of investigators reported no conflicts of interest and conducted the review without outside funding.

Dr. Johnston also indicated on a disclosure form that he did not have any conflicts of interest to report during the past three years. But as recently as December 2016 he was the senior author on a similar study that tried to discredit international health guidelines advising people to eat less sugar. That study, which also appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was paid for by the International Life Sciences Institute, or ILSI, an industry trade group largely supported by agribusiness, food and pharmaceutical companies and whose members have included McDonald's, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cargill, one of the largest beef processors in North America. The industry group, founded by a top Coca-Cola executive four decades ago, has long been accused by the World Health Organization and others of trying to undermine public health recommendations to advance the interests of its corporate members.

In an interview, Dr. Johnston said his past relationship with ILSI had no influence on the current research on meat recommendations. He said he did not report his past relationship with ILSI because the disclosure form asked only about potential conflicts within the past three years. Although the ILSI-funded study publication falls within the three-year window, he said the money from ILSI arrived in 2015, and he was not required to report it for the meat study disclosure.

"That money was from 2015 so it was outside of the three year period for disclosing competing interests," said Dr. Johnston. "I have no relationship with them whatsoever."

Critics of the meat study say that while Dr. Johnston may have technically complied with the letter of the disclosure rules, he did not comply with the spirit of financial disclosure.

"Journals require disclosure, and it is always better to disclose fully, if for no other reason than to stay out of trouble when the undisclosed conflicts are exposed," said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University who studies conflicts of interest in nutrition research. "Behind the scenes, ILSI works diligently on behalf of the food industry; it is a classic front group. Even if ILSI had nothing to do with the meat papers — and there is no evidence of which I am aware that it did — the previous paper suggests that Johnston is making a career of tearing down conventional nutrition wisdom."

Notably, Dr. Johnston and colleagues thought it was important to fully disclose their personal eating habits. The meat paper includes an appendix titled "Summary of Panelists' Potential Conflicts of Interest," that discloses whether each author eats red or processed meat and how often. Johnston reported no financial conflicts of interest but disclosed that he eats one to two servings of red or processed meat per week.

"We think that's a potential bias that is worth disclosing," said Dr. Johnston about the researchers' personal eating habits.

Dr. Johnston's ties to the 2016 ILSI-funded sugar study show how ILSI has methodically cultivated allies in academia around the world, and how it recruits influential scientists to help shape global nutrition advice and counter what it perceives to be anti-food industry guidelines by health organizations.

When Dr. Johnston and his colleagues first published the sugar study, they said that ILSI had no direct role in conducting the research other than providing funding, but later amended their disclosure statement in the Annals after The Associated Press obtained emails showing that ILSI had "reviewed" and "approved" the study's protocol.

Dr. Johnston said that when he published the sugar study in 2016, he put his connection with the food industry group "front and center." He said in hindsight he was "naïve" when he agreed to work on the ILSI-funded study about sugar guidelines. It was during a conference call on the sugar study that he realized the extent that industry figures were involved with that organization. He declined to say who was on the conference call.

"It wasn't until I was on a conference call with them and people were introducing themselves where I realized this is not what I expected," he said. "Then I saw the reaction from the paper we did publish, which I think was a very good paper. People didn't get that message. They got stuck on the funding part. That was a big lesson to separate oneself. It's not worth working with industry at all."

Dr. Christine Laine, editor in chief of the Annals of Internal Medicine, said the medical journal asks people to disclose their financial interests but relies on the integrity of the researcher and does not attempt to verify the forms. "We are really leaving it to the authors to disclose," said Dr. Laine. "We advise authors if they wonder 'Should I disclose this or not,' they should err on the side of disclosure."

Dr. Laine noted that people on both sides of the meat issue have conflicts of interest. "Many of the people who are criticizing these articles have lots of conflicts of interest they aren't talking about," she said. "They do workshops on plant-based diets, do retreats on wellness and write books on plant-based diets. There are conflicts on both sides."

Dr. Laine said if Dr. Johnston had chosen to disclose a financial relationship with the food industry group, it would not have changed the journal's decision to publish the research. What matters to the journal editors and peer-review team, she said, is the fact that the group had clear protocols for examining the data and was transparent about its methods.

"I don't think we would have made a different decision about publishing the manuscript if he had that on his conflicts disclosure," said Dr. Laine. "We certainly know that in the past he did nutrition research that was funded by industry. It's a judgment call if that should be disclosed. I think at some level that's a little bit of noise around this. The methods of what these researchers did and their conclusions are out there, and people can disagree with that."

Dr. Gordon Guyatt, chair of the 14-member panel that reviewed the analysis, said he is confident that the work was not in any way influenced by industry.

"Perhaps Brad was a little naïve, and both I and perhaps Christine Laine were a little negligent in it not occurring to us that he should probably declare the previous money he got from the previous project," said Dr. Guyatt, an internal medicine physician and a distinguished professor at McMaster University. "All of that being said, I feel personally extremely comfortable that it had no effect on what we did."

Dr. Guyatt noted that for 20 years he has been a pescatarian who eats only fish and no other meat. "Before I was involved in these systematic reviews and looking carefully at evidence, I had three reasons for not eating meat — animal welfare, the environment and health. Now I only have two reasons for not eating meat."

Critics of the meat study say that it has similarities to the industry-funded sugar study and uses the same standard to evaluate evidence. Dr. Frank Hu, the chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said he was stunned when he realized that Dr. Johnston was both the leader of the meat study and the same researcher who led the industry-funded review that attacked guidelines advising people to eat less sugar. He said that in both cases Dr. Johnston undercut sugar and meat recommendations by using a tool called GRADE that was mainly designed to rate clinical drug trials, not dietary studies.

"You can't do a double-blinded placebo-controlled trial of red meat and other foods on heart attacks or cancer," Dr. Hu said. "For dietary and lifestyle factors, it's impossible to use the same standards for drug trials."

Drug trials are primarily designed to look at efficacy and safety, Dr. Hu said, while the main goal of diet studies is to identify risk factors that influence obesity and chronic diseases. That is why scientists use data from large observational studies and randomized trials to look at the health effects of different eating patterns and other behaviors that cannot be studied like pharmaceutical therapies.

Dr. Johnston said the real problem is that people don't want to accept findings that contradict long-held views. "People have very strong opinions," he said. "Scientists should have intellectual curiosity and be open to challenges to their data. Science is about debate, not about digging your heels in."

But Dr. Hu said Dr. Johnston's methods were not very objective or rigorous and the tool he employed in his meat and sugar studies could be misused to discredit all sorts of well-established public health warnings, like the link between secondhand smoke and heart disease, air pollution and health problems, physical inactivity and chronic disease, and trans fats and heart disease.

"Some people may be wondering what his next target will be," Dr. Hu said. "But I'm concerned about the damage that has already been done to public health recommendations."

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4) A Supreme Court Abortion Case That Tests the Court Itself
What will access to abortion look like under the new conservative majority?
By Linda Greenhouse, October 10, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/opinion/supreme-court-abortion.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

This year Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, left, and Brett Kavanaugh will hear their first major abortion rights case since joining the court.CreditCreditJabin Botsford/picture-alliance, via Associated Press

Under the rules that normally govern the American judicial system, the Louisiana abortion law at the center of a case the Supreme Court added to its docket last week is flagrantly unconstitutional. My goal in this column is to make visible not only the stakes in the case but also Louisiana's strategy for saving its law, the first of a wave of anti-abortion measures to reach a Supreme Court transformed by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy and the addition of two justices appointed by President Donald Trump.

The case, June Medical Services v. Gee, asks the court to decide whether states can prohibit doctors from performing abortions unless they have admitting privileges at local hospitals. It presents each side with an obvious challenge. The challenge for Louisiana is that the court answered precisely that question three years ago in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, declaring that an identical law in Texas imposed an unconstitutional burden on access to abortion. The court's holding was so definitive that the attorneys general of Alabama and Tennessee almost immediately stopped defending their states' admitting-privileges laws.

But Louisiana persisted, and the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit went rogue. It upheld the Louisiana law by disregarding the findings of the federal district judge who had struck it down after a six-day trial, by mischaracterizing what the justices did in Whole Woman's Health and by drawing phony distinctions between Texas, where the regulatory onslaught has left the state with 20 abortion clinics, and Louisiana, which now has three clinics and will be left with one if the law goes into effect.

So the state, and any justices inclined to take its side, faces a glaring rule-of-law problem, as a bipartisan group of former federal judges and senior Justice Department officials observed in a friend-of-the-court brief they filed in support of the clinic that is appealing the Fifth Circuit ruling. "Lower courts are bound by the decisions of this court," they told the justices, adding, "That fundamental principle is essential to establishing and maintaining the rule of law." The signers of this brief include Charles Fried, a former solicitor general of the United States, who in 1989 on behalf of the George H.W. Bush administration urged the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The clinic bringing the appeal, Hope Medical Group for Women, in Shreveport, also faces a major challenge: a remade Supreme Court. The vote in Whole Woman's Health, argued shortly after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and before his successor, Neil Gorsuch, joined the court, was 5 to 3. One of the five was Justice Kennedy, who retired last year and whose seat is now filled by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In February, with the Louisiana law about to take effect, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to grant a temporary stay of the Fifth Circuit's decision to permit the Hope clinic and its doctors to file an appeal. Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, along with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, voted to deny the stay. Justice Kavanaugh filed an opinionto explain his vote. The doctors should try harder to get admitting privileges, he said. 

Federal District Judge John deGravelles had pointed out in declaring the law known as Act 620 unconstitutional that some of the Louisiana doctors had been trying to get admitting privileges for as long as five years. I have to assume that Justice Kavanaugh read the District Court opinion and that he also refreshed his recollection of Whole Woman's Health, in which Justice Stephen Breyer marshaled abundant evidence to show that admitting privileges serve no medical purpose in the abortion context. To put it a bit more bluntly than the polite Justice Breyer, the requirement is nothing more than a ploy to enable a state to destroy the abortion infrastructure while pretending to be protecting the very women whose constitutional right the requirement is eviscerating. 

This is not just my opinion as an abortion-rights advocate; it's a fact available to all. The District Court opinion in this case includes among its evidentiary findings an email sent from an anti-abortion group to the Louisiana law's main sponsor when the bill was pending in 2014. The email asserted that the identical Texas law was having "tremendous success in closing abortion clinics and restricting abortion access in Texas."

In considering the clinic's appeal, the Supreme Court appeared to have three choices. One was to not accept the case, which would have put the law into effect immediately. Given the stay the court granted in February, that step was unlikely; the court's main criterion for granting a stay is the likelihood that the justices would ultimately decide to hear the appeal. Another possible course was to overturn the Fifth Circuit's decision summarily, without further briefing or oral argument. While the court takes that step with some regularity when a lower court's error is obvious, that seemed an unlikely outcome in an abortion case. So the choice the justices made to accept the case for full briefing and argument was unremarkable — predictable, in fact.

But the order granting the case included a curve ball. The justices also granted a "conditional cross-petition" filed over the summer, with little attention, by Louisiana. Such an appeal may, at the court's discretion, be granted as a companion to the original petition to address an additional issue. In this instance, Louisiana is arguing that the clinic and its doctors should never have been permitted to challenge the law in the first place.

While ordinarily, plaintiffs in court cases lack standing to argue for the rights of those who are not parties to the case, the Supreme Court has permitted doctors to argue on behalf of women's right to abortion ever since the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade. Doctors were involved in the early contraception and abortion cases as well, but back then they were in part arguing for their own freedom from prosecution. Once abortion became legal, the theory supporting what is known as third-party standing for doctors and clinics in post-Roe abortion cases is that there are too many obstacles of timing, resources and privacy for women to get to court to assert their own right to an abortion free of the regulatory obstacles that stand in their way. Take away doctors' right to advocate in court on their patients' behalf and most legal attacks on state-created obstacles to abortion conveniently disappear.

Doctors' standing is so much an accepted part of abortion litigation that Louisiana didn't even question it in defending its law in the lower courts, and the lower courts naturally didn't address it. Ordinarily, the Supreme Court refuses to address issues that were not raised at an earlier stage. On its face, then, the state's cross-petition is frivolous. I sensed potential trouble when I stumbled upon it by chance over the summer, but the idea that the justices would actually grant it seemed so far-fetched that I put it out of my mind.

It turns out that the idea of eliminating doctors' third-party standing has been in the anti-abortion movement's water supply ever since Justice Thomas raised it in his dissenting opinion in Whole Woman's Health three years ago. I suppose Louisiana's cross-petition is an example of "when all else fails, change the subject," but I have to give the state credit for coming up with a superficially clever argument. The state is arguing that the realities of clinic-based abortion practice belie the assumption behind the third-party standing doctrine, which is that the interests of both parties are aligned. Instead, the state notes that there was no evidence in this case "that any particular Louisiana woman who has obtained or is considering an abortion would personally (1) prefer to obtain an abortion from a doctor without admitting privileges, (2) prefer to forgo the protections Act 620 was intended to provide, or (3) consider her decision to obtain an abortion to be burdened by Act 620."

Of course, there's so much wrong with that argument that the question is where to begin. It assumes the counterfactual: that the law was intended to protect women and that it actually protects them, or that women have any reason to prefer a doctor who has admitting privileges. The clinic points out in its own brief that only four out of thousands of abortion patients it has treated over the past 23 years required hospital treatment and that the District Court found that all had received appropriate hospital care "regardless," in the words of the district judge, "of whether the physician had admitting privileges."

In its initial response to the clinic's petition, the state argues that if Whole Woman's Health is so confusing as to have pointed a well-meaning appeals court in the wrong direction, then that shows the best course is for the Supreme Court to overturn it. I don't think the court is going to take that step. It would be too bold, too obvious, too soon, too close to the 2020 election. And, most significantly, the court doesn't have to expose itself in that way to achieve its anti-abortion aims. Rather, it's much more likely that the court will do what the Fifth Circuit did: reinterpret the precedent to its liking; credit the Fifth Circuit's charges that abortion practice in Louisiana was sloppy and dangerous rather than the District Court's precise findings that the safety record of abortion in the state was "excellent"; or pretend, as the appeals court did, that insignificant differences between Texas and Louisiana justify a completely different outcome when it comes to the constitutional rights of women.

Or perhaps the court will do all three. If it does even one — if the Louisiana law survives this test, which is really a test of the Supreme Court itself — then those of us who have set aside talk of impeachment and the day's multiple distractions long enough to understand the game that's afoot will have an obligation somehow to break through the din when the decision is announced in late spring or early summer and let the public in on the secret.

Linda Greenhouse, the winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, writes on alternate Thursdays about the Supreme Court and the law. She reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008, and is the author of several books.

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5) Why Amazon Fires Keep Raging 10 Years After a Deal to End Them
Many of the thousands of fires burning in Brazil's Amazon are set by ranchers. A deal inked 10 years ago was meant to stop the problem, but the ecological arson goes on as the Earth warms.
By Clifford Krauss, David Yaffe-Bellany and Mariana Simões, October 10, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/world/americas/amazon-fires-brazil-cattle.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

Smoke from fires drift over a cattle farm in the state of Mato Grosso.CreditVictor Moriyama for The New York Times

When things go wrong, those in power often promise to make it right. But do they? In this series, The Times investigates to see if those promises were kept.

SERRA DO CACHIMBO BIOLOGICAL RESERVE, Brazil — A smoky, choking haze drifted over a lush rainforest reserve in the Brazilian Amazon last month, as fires lit by cattlemen illegally ranching on protected land spread through the jungle.

From an elevated vantage point, a dozen blazes could be spotted across an 845,000-acre nature preserve.

As damaging as these fires would be to the Serra Do Cachimbo Biological Reserve, they represented just a tiny fraction of the total number burning vast swaths of the Amazon, with 26,000 recorded in August, the highest number in a decade.

The immense scale of the fires in Brazil this summer raised a global alarm about the risks they posed to the world's largest rainforest, which soaks up carbon dioxide and helps keep global temperatures from rising.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Ten years ago, an agreement was reached that was intended to help end these devastating acts of ecological arson.

In 2009, the three biggest Brazilian meatpacking companies signed an agreement with the environmental group Greenpeace not to buy cattle from ranchers who raised their beef in newly deforested areas.

The deal was meant to be a model for the world, a partnership between private industry and environmental activists that would benefit both.

For Greenpeace, the agreement offered a solution to one of the biggest causes of rainforest destruction: The cattle industry is responsible for up to 80 percent of the clearings in recent years, according to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

For the meatpackers, the agreement relieved pressure from a growing international environmental campaign against them and threats of boycotts against retailers selling their beef.

But the vows made by those three companies — JBS, Minerva and Marfrig, which handle about 50 percent of the beef raised in the Amazon — have been only partially kept, according to prosecutors, environmentalists and academics who study the cattle industry.

The failure to fulfill crucial elements of the ambitious promise — which were always going to be a challenge to achieve — is one of the main reasons the Amazon is on fire.

Cattle ranching has been responsible for 18,000 square miles of additional deforestation — equivalent to New Hampshire and Vermont combined — since the 2009 agreement between Greenpeace and the meatpackers, according to University of Wisconsin researchers.

Convinced that the meatpackers were not living up to their commitments, Greenpeace pulled out of the agreement in 2017. 

"We saw that they failed to comply with what they had promised," said Adriana Charoux, the lead Greenpeace Amazon activist. "They could have done much more. The slaughterhouses are making a minimal effort."

From Jaguars in Jungles to Cows in Pastures

During a September visit, the fires were abundant in the Serra Do Cachimbo Biological Reserve, set aside by the Brazilian government 15 years ago as a pristine wilderness area off-limits to all commercial activity.

But driving over the creaky river bridges built by the ranchers in this reserve, illegal cattle operations were easy to find, as they are throughout Brazil's Amazon. Where giant otters and jaguars once roamed, there were fields where cattle grazed.

Fazenda Canaã, a 2,700-acre farm carved out of the reserve's rainforest around 2013, made no effort to hide. The jungle that had stood on this land was replaced by open savanna — grazing land for its 400 cattle.

For a ranch hand working there, the exchange of rainforest for productive farmland seemed like a fair deal.

"The right thing to do is let people work," said Isaías Hermogem, as he watched over cattle grazing in a clearing edged with papaya and coconut trees. "Let's open up more space."

Many ranchers have taken that advice.

Fazenda Canaã is just one of at least 71 ranches in the Serra do Cachimbo, and both the number of ranches and the size of each appears to be growing. In August, just as the rampant fires in the Amazon gripped the attention of a warming world, Fazenda Canaã extended its turf with additional burning.

About 200 million heads of cattle are raised in the Brazilian Amazon region in total, with an estimated 173,746 square miles of forest — the size of California, plus Massachusetts and New Jersey — converted to cattle pasture over recent decades, according to the Yale School of Forestry.

Livestock farming generates more than $6 billion in annual export revenues and about 360,000 jobs. 

Despite the promise of the major meatpackers not to buy cattle from ranches like Fazenda Canaã, cattle that spent time on this farm were purchased by JBS over the last three years, according to government data.

In fact, JBS, the biggest meatpacker worldwide, bought cattle that passed through 11 ranches in the preserve over the last two years, according to the government data.

Marfrig and Minerva each made indirect purchases from one ranch here, according to government data that traces a complex supply chain.

An audit in 2016 by federal prosecutors in Pará State, where the Serra do Cachimbo reserve is and where about a third of the cattle slaughtered in the Amazon come from, showed that 6 percent of the cattle JBS had bought between October 2009 and 2016, totaling 36,739 heads of cattle, came from ranches that had been illegally cleared.

In 2016, 118,459 cattle, or 19 percent of the total bought by JBS in Pará, were acquired "with evidence of irregularities," according to the audit by the Brazilian Federal Prosecution Service using satellite information, on-the-ground inspections and traced purchasing data.

"There is no reason why after 10 years there could not be better results," said Nathalie Walker, a director at the National Wildlife Federation, who has studied the Brazilian cattle industry. "There were firm negotiated agreements."

WHAT WE FOUND

'Cattle Laundering' Subverts the Supply Chain

Brazil has many thousands of cattle farms in the Amazon, spread out across one of the world's most remote areas, which hinders efforts at law enforcement, inspections and, especially, tracking cattle over their life spans.

It's rare for a cow to spend its entire life on the farm where it was born; it may be bought and sold multiple times, until it reaches the ranch that sells it directly to a slaughterhouse.

This complex supply chain has made the phenomenon of "cattle laundering" common and is the crux of the problem in fulfilling the deal's promise.

A calf may be born on illegally deforested land and then ultimately sold to a fattening ranch whose land was cleared long ago and is within the terms of the accord.

When the slaughterhouses buy from these ranches, they can say they have acquired a cow from a compliant source.

JBS asserts that 100 percent of its cattle purchases from its direct suppliers "were in compliance with our responsible sourcing policies," according to a statement from Marcus Pilão, a company spokesman.

The company said it uses satellite technology, geo-referenced farm data and official government records to monitor more than 280,000 square miles, an area larger than Texas, and that it assesses more than 50,000 potential cattle suppliers every day.

"JBS has an unwavering commitment to combat, discourage and eliminate deforestation in the Amazon region," said the company statement.

Despite those efforts, an audit commissioned by JBS acknowledged that the company does not fully monitor indirect suppliers because of a lack of accessible public data tracking the transport of animals.

"JBS can track 100 percent of its direct suppliers," according to its third-party auditor, DNV GL, a Norwegian quality-assurance and certification company. But JBS "has not yet been successful in implementing traceability processes" for indirect suppliers.

And this gap, critics say, has rendered the agreement largely ineffectual.

Most of the Amazon ranches that sell cattle directly to JBS, Marfrig and Minerva are essentially middlemen, aggregators of cattle from multiple, inadequately monitored farms, according to data provided by University of Wisconsin researchers.

Based on an analysis of publicly available property records as well as on-the-ground interviews with hundreds of farmers in the Amazon, the University of Wisconsin researchers found that at least 15 percent of the indirect suppliers to the three major meatpackers have continued to deforest land since the 2009 agreement was signed.

"The agreement has so many holes, the deforestation is still just going on," said Holly Gibbs, a University of Wisconsin geographer who has studied the agreement.

In a separate study of the cattle export market in the Amazon and the nearby Cerrado, a region which is not covered by the agreement, Trase, a research group that studies commodity supply chains, said that beef exports by JBS contributed to an estimated 100 square miles of deforestation a year from 2015 to 2017.

And the deforestation totals in the report reflect only a small part of the problem, because 80 percent of the meat produced in the region goes into the domestic market, whose effect on deforestation Trase did not measure.

"The lack of monitoring of indirect suppliers is a big blind spot," said Erasmus zu Ermgassen, a Trase researcher. "Slaughterhouses, like JBS, have no way of guaranteeing that cattle from deforesting properties don't ultimately end up in their supply chain."

WHAT WE FOUND

Great Promise and Initial Progress Come Undone

The landmark agreement signed by JBS, Minerva and Marfrig was considered very promising.

The deal obligated the three companies to ensure that farmers who sold them cattle were not actively engaged in deforestation.

Soon after the Greenpeace deal, federal prosecutors reached an accord with 13 additional national meatpackers allowing federal law enforcement officers to monitor the source of their cattle so slaughterhouses would cut ties with cattlemen who cleared a significant amount of forest. Eventually, about 100 signed on, including the Big 3.

At first, the agreements did lead to improvements, as the meatpacking companies established the necessary protocols to monitor their direct suppliers.

In Pará State, for example, the University of Wisconsin research team found that while 36 percent of supplying ranches had recent deforestation in 2009, only 4 percent did in 2013.

But at the same time that the agreements limited the amount of new land for grazing, demand for beef was growing both domestically and internationally.

The incentive to clear more rainforest for pasture became hard to resist, and the result was a surge in the cattle laundering practice that has undermined the deals and ravaged Brazil's rain forests.

Compounding the problem, farmers and ranchers have treated the inauguration of the right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro as president in January as a green light to burn deeper into the rainforest.

"If there was one thing Bolsonaro was crystal clear about," said Jeremy M. Martin, vice president for energy and sustainability at the Institute of the Americas, a California-based research organization, "it was that he was 100 percent willing to compromise the Amazon for economic upside."

WHAT WE FOUND

A Large Loophole, With Lots of Blame to Go Around

The agreement with Greenpeace recognized that animals that end up in slaughterhouses are not always raised by the direct suppliers, and the three companies agreed they would monitor the complex path taken by cattle as they moved through the Amazon.

The tracking system was supposed to be in operation by 2011.

But on the 10th anniversary of the agreement, the companies still have not found a way to fully monitor the indirect suppliers.

While critical of the performance of JBS and other meatpackers, government prosecutors and academics say the three companies are only part of the problem, and so can only be part of the solution.

The companies have been handicapped by the inconsistent quality of government inspections that monitor cattle traffic from farm to farm. And cattle data is scattered and incomplete, government officials say.

Daniel Azeredo, a senior federal environmental prosecutor who has investigated the cattle industry, said that JBS and the other meatpackers have acknowledged the problem. "In meetings they say, 'We are victims of fraud,'" he said. "But I think they could do more."

The independent auditor used by JBS said that tracing the full supply chain would only be possible if JBS had complete access to animal transportation documents that are closely guarded by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Another of the signatories to the deal, Minerva, also pointed to the intractable problems in the supply chain. "Today there are no reliable and accessible statistics on the cattle traceability chain," Minerva said in a statement. "Any indirect supplier control initiative at this time is not monitorable, reportable and attestable."

Marfrig said it was in full compliance with the agreement, and is working to develop "new solutions to foment a deforestation-free supply chain."

Brazil's agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina da Costa Dias, agreed in an interview that the government's animal transport information was disorganized, dispersed and difficult to access.

Asked if the cattle industry was doing enough to protect the Amazon, she said, "That's a very difficult question."

WHAT WE FOUND

A Solution Stymied

No one disagrees with the minister about the difficulty of the task.

Following the life cycle of a cow takes sophisticated surveillance, regulatory supervision, standardized records and systematic auditing — a complex process that, critics acknowledge, is especially hard in the Amazon.

But thousands of miles from the Brazilian rain forests, in Madison, Wis., a team of University of Wisconsin researchers has spent nearly a decade attempting to show it can be done.

Working with the National Wildlife Federation, the team has developed a computerized tracking tool, called Visipec, that documents the movement of cattle from the calving farms to the slaughterhouses by linking the data sets on government websites.

Using that data, the researchers say, the tool can help slaughterhouses track almost all their direct and indirect suppliers.

It's unclear, however, how much private support or political will there is for such a solution, since it would close what some experts suggest has been a convenient loophole for all parties in the Brazilian cattle industry.

The National Wildlife Federation has offered Visipec for free to the major meatpackers, including JBS. So far, none of them are using it.

And just as the tool is ready to be fully deployed, much of the data underpinning it may soon become more difficult to access.

One of the key data sets had come from the website of the Brazilian agriculture ministry, which had posted online records of cattle transactions in the Amazon.

In April, the agriculture ministry released a memo saying that parts of the database would not be made publicly available because they contain "personal information" that "does not interest the general public." Already, some of the data has become harder to download, said Ms. Gibbs, the lead university researcher.

While tracking the supply chain had always been difficult, she said, now "it is essentially impossible."

Clifford Krauss and Mariana Simðes reported from the states of Mato Grosso and Pará in Brazil. David Yaffe-Bellany reported from New York.

Clifford Krauss is a national energy business correspondent based in Houston. He joined The Times in 1990 and has been the bureau chief in Buenos Aires and Toronto. He is the author of "Inside Central America: Its People, Politics, and History." @ckrausss

David Yaffe-Bellany reports on the food industry and general business news for The New York Times. He graduated from Yale University and previously reported in Texas, Ohio and Connecticut. @yaffebellany

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6) How to Tax Our Way Back to Justice
It is absurd that the working class is now paying higher tax rates than the richest people in America.
By Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, October 11, 2019

CreditCreditIllustration by Alex Merto; Photographs from Getty Images

America’s soaring inequality has a new engine: its regressive tax system. Over the past half century, even as their wealth rose to previously unseen heights, the richest Americans watched their tax rates collapse. Over the same period, as wages stagnated for the working classes, work conditions deteriorated and debts ballooned, their tax rates increased.

Stop to think this over for a minute: For the first time in the past hundred years, the working class — the 50 percent of Americans with the lowest incomes — today pays higher tax rates than billionaires.

The full extent of this situation is not visible in official statistics, which is perhaps why it has not received more attention so far. Government agencies like the Congressional Budget Office publish information about the distribution of federal taxes, but they disregard state and local taxes, which account for a third of all taxes paid by Americans and are in general highly regressive. The official statistics keepers do not provide specific information on the ultra-wealthy, who although few in number earn a large fraction of national income and therefore account for a large share of potential tax revenue. And until now there were no estimates of the total tax burden that factored in the effect of President Trump’s tax reform enacted at the end of 2017, which was particularly generous for the ultra-wealthy.

To fill this gap, we have estimated how much each social group, from the poorest to billionaires, paid in taxes for the year 2018. Our starting point is the total amount of tax revenue collected in the United States, 28 percent of national income. We allocate this total across the population, divided into 15 income groups: the bottom 10 percent (the 24 million adults with the lowest pretax income), the next 10 percent and so on, with finer-grained groups within the top 10 percent, up to the 400 wealthiest Americans.

The Regressive American Tax System

How combined federal, state and local taxes fall on American adults, by income percentile.

Three regressive taxes account for 

most of the burden on the working class:

Consumption 

taxes

Payroll

tax

Residential

property taxes

INCOME

PERCENTILE

TOTAL 

TAX RATE:

Bottom

50%

12.3%

11.2%

25.6%

10

Working

class;

average

annual

pre-tax 

income:

$18,500

10.3

11.3

24.2

20

9.1

11.7

24.5

30

7.7

10.6

23.5

40

6.7

10.6

24.2

50

Next

40%

6.4

10.5

25.4

60

Middle

class;

average

income:

$75,000

5.4

10.6

26.3

70

5.1

10.3

27.8

80

4.8

9.8

29.4

90

Top 9%

3.8

8.0

28.6

Avg.

$220,000

95

3.2

5.2

27.7

99

Top 1%

2.3

2.4

28.9

Avg.

$1.5

million

99.9

2.2

33.2

99.99

2.2

30.4

99.99+

The top 400

2.3

23.0

The richest 400 adults

pay a lower rate than 

all other groups.

Estate

tax

Income

tax

Corporate and business

property taxes

Our data series include all taxes paid to the federal, state and local governments: the federal income tax, of course, but also state income taxes, myriad sales and excise taxes, the corporate income tax, business and residential property taxes and payroll taxes. In the end, all taxes are paid by people. The corporate tax, for example, is paid by shareholders, because it reduces the amount of profit they can receive in dividends or reinvest in their companies.

You will often hear that we have a progressive tax system in the United States — you owe more, as a fraction of your income, as you earn more. When he was a presidential candidate in 2012, Senator Mitt Romney famously lambasted the 47 percent of “takers” who, according to him, do not contribute to the public coffers. In reality, the bottom half of the income distribution may not pay much in income taxes, but it pays a lot in sales and payroll taxes. Taking into account all taxes paid, each group contributes between 25 percent and 30 percent of its income to the community’s needs. The only exception is the billionaires, who pay a tax rate of 23 percent, less than every other group.

The tax system in the United States has become a giant flat tax — except at the top, where it’s regressive. The notion that America, even if it may not collect as much in taxes as European countries, at least does so in a progressive way, is a myth. As a group, and although their individual situations are not all the same, the Trumps, the Bezoses and the Buffetts of this world pay lower tax rates than teachers and secretaries do.

This is the tax system of a plutocracy. With tax rates of barely 23 percent at the top of the pyramid, wealth will keep accumulating with hardly any barrier. So too will the power of the wealthy, including their ability to shape policymaking and government for their own benefit.

From Kennedy Through Trump, the Rich Have Done Very, Very Well

Here’s the change in total wealth per adult since 1962, on average, from the poorest to the richest slices of America. Circles representing wealth are proportionate, which is why they’re almost too small to see for the bottom 50 percent of Americans. All wealth figures are in 2018 dollars.

CHANGE IN TAX RATE,

1962-2018

1962

2018

TOTAL

WEALTH:

TOTAL

WEALTH:

Bottom 50%

of Americans

Bottom 50%

of Americans

1.5 x

increase

UP

24.2%

$3,528

$5,156

22.5%

27.6

3.5

$73,703

$259,200

Next 40%

25.1

DOWN

3.5

$738,841

$2.6 million

Top 10%

33.2

29.0

4.7

Top 1%

$2.9 M

$13.5 M

43.1

30.1

Top 0.1%

$9.6 M

$70.2 M

7.3

51.1

31.4

Top 0.01%

$30.9 M

$349.9 M

11.3

53.6

29.4

Top 400

adults

24.4 x

increase

$276.2 M

$6.7 billion

54.4

23.0

Each of these richest 400 adults

has, on average, the same wealth as

1,308,440

average adults in the working class

(the bottom 50%)

What Taxes Should Look Like

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7) Norwegian Cruise Ship Passengers Live-Tweet a Mutiny
Faced with broken toilets, canceled shore visits and a lack of information, travelers on the Norwegian Spirit staged — and chronicled — a rebellion on the high seas.
By Liam Stack, October 11, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/world/europe/norwegian-cruise-revolt.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Passengers on the Norwegian Spirit have staged protests after inclement weather forced repeated changes to their itinerary.CreditCreditDevon Stephens/Alamy

It is not clear if the rebellion was sparked by the clogged toilets or the canceled visit to Scotland, but passengers on the Norwegian Cruise Line ship had had enough. In recent days, travelers on the “mystical fjords” voyage in Europe staged (and live tweeted) a veritable mutiny after inclement weather forced repeated changes to their itinerary and trapped them at sea. 

The ship, called Norwegian Spirit, departed from Southampton, England, recently for a 14-day voyage with planned stops in the Netherlands, Norway and Iceland. But those plans were scuttled by bad weather, forcing the ship to plan new stops — some of which were then also canceled because of the weather. Passengers said they were stuck at sea for three days.

By Monday, a fed-up — and social media-savvy — group of passengers rallied in the ship’s atrium to vent their outrage at the crew, demand a refund from the company and post images and video of their revolt on newly created Twitter and YouTube accounts. They described the scene as a “riot” and “open rebellion.”

“Buddy, you’re not a manager, we want the head — who is driving the boat?” a passenger in one video asked a uniformed crew member, who stood flanked by security personnel in a crowd of angry vacationers. Nearby, a woman screamed.

“What you’re doing right now is you’re not helping the situation, you’re getting people amped up,” the passenger said to the crew member. Later, looking into the camera, the passenger said: “Nothing on this itinerary is the same. Nothing is the same. Not one thing.”

Passengers shared grim images of their trip on Twitter, including video and pictures of toilets that did not flush, a picture of a uniformed crew member in a scrum of angry passengers grabbing one of them by the wrist, and a receipt for a $79 tour of the ship that included a visit to the laundry room.

“After three days floating around the Atlantic the bathrooms are backing up, not flushing, and out of order today on Norwegian Spirit,” one protester, Cody McNutt, wrote on a Twitter account he started to share updates from the protests. He said it “smelled like sewage in public areas on the ship.”

“Many passengers got off the ship when it stopped after 3 days stuck floating the ocean, fearing for their safety and health,” he wrote.

Another video showed crew members retreating up a staircase to escape dozens of angry passengers in the ship’s atrium, many of whom could be seen holding their phones over their heads to record the mayhem. The man being booed was the captain, the passengers said.

“We don’t want to be on this ship!” one man yelled, as the crew members clambered up the stairs. Another man agreed, yelling, “We want off the ship!”

In another video, passengers at a reception desk can be seen angrily reacting to staff members who advised them to call the cruise line’s Miami headquarters for information. 

Again, many of the passengers can be seen recording the scene with their phones. “It’s a good thing we got this fancy new phone here for our trip,” a woman quipped.

A representative for Norwegian Cruise Line declined on Thursday to provide a day-by-day breakdown of events on the ship or to provide its original and modified itineraries. In a statement, the company pleaded for calm.

“We understand that it is disheartening when we are unable to call on ports that our guests have been looking forward to visiting,” the company said. “However, we do ask for our guests’ patience, cooperation and understanding that severe weather conditions are an act of God and cannot be controlled, influenced or remediated by the cruise line.”

A spokesman said that the itinerary was changed because of “severe weather conditions” and that the company had offered its passengers 25 percent off the cost of a future cruise. 

But on social media, the protesters said that offer was not enough. 

They held up signs in the ship’s atrium and chanted: “Refund! Refund! Refund!”

The ship finally docked in Southampton early Friday, according to VesselFinder.com. 

Passengers disembarking the ship on Friday voiced their dismay, according to CBS News. “There’s a lot of people that are saying never again,” one passenger was quoted as saying. 

The ship was scheduled to travel the seas again and arrive on Saturday in Le Havre, France, more than 100 miles northwest of Paris, the site said, but whether that would happen was unclear. The cruise line did not immediately respond to questions about whether the ship’s plumbing and other problems would be addressed before it departs.

Derrick Bryson Taylor contributed reporting. 

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8) Apple Removes App That Helps Hong Kong Protesters Track the Police

By Jack Nicas, October 9, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/technology/apple-hong-kong-app.html

An Apple store in a shopping mall in Hong Kong.CreditCreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple removed an app late Wednesday that enabled protesters in Hong Kong to track the police, a day after facing intense criticism from Chinese state media for it, plunging the technology giant deeper into the complicated politics of a country that is fundamental to its business.

Apple said it was withdrawing the app, HKmap.live, from its App Store just days after approving it because the authorities in Hong Kong said protesters were using it to attack the police in the semiautonomous city.

A day earlier, People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial accusing Apple of aiding “rioters” in Hong Kong. “Letting poisonous software have its way is a betrayal of the Chinese people’s feelings,” said the article, which was written under a pseudonym that translates into “Calming the Waves.”

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in an email to employees on Thursday that the company had removed the app after receiving “credible information” from the authorities and people in Hong Kong “that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present.” As a result, he said, the app violated Apple rules and local laws.

“National and international debates will outlive us all, and, while important, they do not govern the facts,” he said in the letter, which was viewed by The New York Times. “In this case, we thoroughly reviewed them, and we believe this decision best protects our users.”

With its reversal, Apple joined a growing list of corporations that are trying to navigate the fraught political situation between China and Hong Kong, where antigovernment protests have unfolded for months.

That minefield was evident this week when an executive of the N.B.A.’s Houston Rockets tweeted his support of the Hong Kong protests. The tweet prompted a backlash from the Chinese authorities, leading to apologies by the Rockets and ultimately the cancellation of broadcasts of N.B.A. exhibition games in China, one of the N.B.A.’s largest markets.

Companies ranging from Marriott to United Airlines to Versacehave also backtracked on perceived slights to the Chinese government in the past, such as customer surveys that suggested Taiwan was an independent nation. All the firms are balancing the enormous economic opportunity in China, with its 1.4 billion consumers, with the negative public image of capitulating to an authoritarian government.

No multinational company arguably has as much at stake in China as Apple, which assembles nearly all its products there and counts the country as its No. 3 market after the United States and Europe. It tallied nearly $44 billion in sales in the greater China region, which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, in the year that ended June 30. Apple’s stock price often rises or falls depending on how it is performing in China.

Mr. Cook has become a deft diplomat in China. He has traveled there frequently and attended numerous Chinese government events. In recent months, he has argued for moderation in the trade war between the United States and China. While Mr. Cook regularly speaks out on political issues in the United States like gun control and immigration, he has largely remained silent on Chinese politics, including the clashes in Hong Kong.

In late 2017, Mr. Cook said at a conference that while he disagreed with some Chinese policies, Apple must comply with local laws.

“Each country in the world decides their laws and their regulations, and so your choice is: Do you participate? Or do you stand on the sideline and yell at how things should be?” he said. “You get in the arena, because nothing ever changes from the sideline.”

Maya Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, said Apple’s decision to remove the Hong Kong app would embolden the Chinese Communist Party.

“I think the party concludes from this that intimidation, harassment and pressure work for most people, in most places,” she said.

A Twitter account that claimed to be run by the developer of HKmap.live said in a message on Wednesday that Apple’s reasoning for the app’s removal — that protesters were using it to attack the police — was false.

A display of the app "HKmap.live" designed by an outside supplier and available on Apple Inc.'s  App Store. CreditVincent Yu/Associated Press

“That is ridiculous,” said the person running the account, who declined to provide a name. The person shared a message that Apple sent explaining the removal. In the notice, the company cited App Store policies that apps must comply with local laws and must not “solicit, promote or encourage criminal activity or clearly reckless behavior.” The note was signed: “App Store Review.”

Supporters of the app have argued that it helps Hong Kong residents avoid clashes between the police and protesters. The app “is used by passer-by, protesters, journalist, tourist and even pro-government supporters,” the HKmap.live Twitter account later tweeted, calling the removal “clearly a political decision to suppress freedom and human right.”

The Twitter account said Google had not removed the app from the marketplace for Android devices. The account said the iPhone app had been downloaded more than 100,000 times and the Android app more than 50,000 times.

The app shows a map of Hong Kong with updates from users on the location of the police, their water cannons and safe zones, among other things. Apple initially rejected the app for enabling people to evade the police, the app’s Twitter account said last week. Several days later, the account tweeted that Apple had reversed course. It soon became the top free app in Hong Kong, according to the app-data firm Sensor Tower, and criticism from mainland China began.

After the People’s Daily editorial, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “anyone with a conscience and a sense of justice” should boycott the app.

Charles Mok, a pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong, said on Thursday that he had sent a letter to Mr. Cook saying HKmap.live helped people avoid the protests.

“We Hong Kongers will definitely look closely at whether Apple chooses to uphold its commitment to free expression and other basic human rights, or become an accomplice for Chinese censorship and oppression,” he wrote.

In the United States, Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, tweeted that Apple had told him that its initial rejection of the app was a mistake. “Looks like the Chinese censors have had a word with them since,” he said. “Who is really running Apple? Tim Cook or Beijing?”

Apple has made other moves that appeared to appease the Chinese government. It recently removed the Taiwanese flag emoji from iPhone keyboards in certain areas, including Hong Kong.

On Sept. 30, Apple pulled the app of the news organization Quartz from the App Store in China, Quartz said. The news organization, which has covered the Hong Kong protests, said Apple had sent it a vague notice about removing its app “because it includes content that is illegal in China.”

Zach Seward, Quartz’s chief executive, said in a statement, “We abhor this kind of government censorship of the internet, and have great coverage of how to get around such bans around the world,” and included a link to its articles about software designed to dodge censorship.

Apple declined to comment on the Quartz app on Wednesday and did not respond to a request regarding the Taiwanese flag emoji.

Apple has removed other apps in China that it allows elsewhere, including The New York Times app and some services that enabled Chinese users to circumvent the government’s internet restrictions.

Apple has long prided itself on how every app in its App Store is approved by one of its employees, unlike Google’s largely automated approach for Android apps. Apps that pose tricky policy questions are deliberated during weekly meetings of senior executives, led by Phil Schiller, an executive who heads the App Store. That group decided to remove the HKmap.live app, said a person familiar with the decision who declined to be named because the process was confidential.

Separately, Google this week removed a mobile game, The Revolution of Our Times I, which allowed users to play as Hong Kong protesters. Google said it had pulled the app from the Android app store worldwide because it violated its policy that bars “developers from capitalizing on sensitive events.”

The developer, who declined to be named, said in an email that he or she donated 80 percent of the app’s revenues to a group supporting the Hong Kong protests.

A Google spokesman said the company had decided to remove it during regular reviews of Android apps. He said Google hadn’t heard from the Chinese government or the Hong Kong police about it.

Javier Hernandez contributed reporting from Beijing and Brian X. Chen contributed reporting from San Francisco.

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