Bobi Wine says soldiers have stormed his home as Uganda counts vote

Opposition leader tweets ‘we are under siege’, while President Yoweri Museveni takes early lead in election

Emmanuel Akinwotu and Samuel Okiror in Kampala

Fri 15 Jan 2021 

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1:16 Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine says he and wife fear for lives – video

Soldiers have stormed the home of Bobi Wine, the Ugandan opposition leader has said, as votes continued to be counted in the country’s election.

“We are under siege,” the pop star turned politician tweeted. “The military has jumped over the fence and has now taken control of our home.”

President Yoweri Museveni has taken an early lead as votes are counted in Uganda’s most keenly watched election in years, while opposition figures said the vote had been marred by fraud and violence.

With a third of the votes counted, Museveni had more than 65% of the tallied ballots and was ahead of Wine in almost every region. Wine, one of 10 opposition challengers, had gained about a quarter of the vote, according to Uganda’s electoral body.

Lt Col Deo Akiiki, Uganda’s deputy military spokesperson, said the soldiers were at Wine’s house to protect him. “As presidential candidate, do you want his security to be compromised? It’s not a deployment to arrest him. Its a deployment to keep his security like any other presidential candidate has. It’s a simple as that.”

Wine, who has galvanised a mass movement of young people challenging the president’s 34-year rule, said at a press conference on Friday morning that Ugandans should reject the results.

“I am very confident that we defeated the dictator by far,” he said. “The people of Uganda voted massively for change of leadership from a dictatorship to a democratic government. But Mr Museveni is trying to paint a picture that he is in the lead.”

Results are expected to be announced by Saturday. A candidate must win more than 50% to avoid a runoff vote.

Helicopters and tanks were on patrol as millions went to the polls on Thursday following one of the most turbulent and violent election campaigns. Wine’s rejection of the results could prolong heightened tensions in the east African country.

Election officials count the ballots after polls closed in Kampala on Thursday. 

Photograph: Jérôme Delay/AP

Security forces loyal to Museveni violently suppressed opposition supporters during the campaign. Museveni’s bid for a sixth term in power was only made possible when MPs changed the constitution to remove age limits. He has repeatedly accused Wine of being a foreign-backed “traitor”, while Wine has branded him a “dictator”.


Many in Africa see the challenge to Museveni, who at 76 is twice as old as Wine, as emblematic of a continent-wide generational struggle between ageing leaders who refuse to relinquish power and younger voters mobilising against them.

Bobi Wine: the reggae singer vying to be Uganda’s next president


The charismatic Wine has the backing of many young people in Uganda – where the median age is 15.7 – who are drawn to his anti-establishment message.

Many observers have expressed fears of state-backed moves to prevent transparency during the polls. On Wednesday night internet access was cut off for most users in the east African country, though some have used VPNs to communicate online. Uganda’s electoral commission said the lack of internet access had not affected the tallying of the count from around the country.

After polls closed on Thursday, hundreds of Wine supporters in Kampala returned to their polling stations to heed his call to “protect the vote” by watching the count. At the station where Wine had voted, security forces chased his supporters away.

Isabella Akiteng, a civil society activist, said late on Thursday that she and 29 others who were observing the polls had been arrested at a hotel in Kampala and were being interrogated by police.

On Wednesday, the US and EU said they would not observe the elections, after several officials were denied accreditation.

Peter Mwesigye, director of the Africa Media Centre of Excellence, said it would take time to determine the extent of voter fraud and violence at the polls.

“We know definitely there have been credible reports of fraud, but it’s going to be much harder and it will take many more days for us to begin to get the sense and scope of it,” he said. “The shutdown of the internet robbed the process of transparency that is required of an election. It has basically been an environment that doesn’t qualify for one to call it a free and fair election.”

Lina Zedriga, deputy president of Wine’s National Unity Platform for northern Uganda, said it would use all non-violent means to challenge the result. “It’s a mess. We have witnessed yet another false and great sham election […] They are just alleging and creating their own results.

“We are calling upon our supporters to be calm. They want us to provoke and make us violent. We are non-violent people. We will definitely use all non-violent means possible that is going to be discussed by our legal teams.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M; GOOD OLD FASHIONED PRICE FIXING

Amazon.com and 'Big Five' publishers accused of ebook price-fixing

Class action lawsuit filed in US claims the houses ha
ve colluded with the online giant to keep prices artificially high

An Amazon Kindle e-reader on a bookshelf. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian


Sian Cain
@siancain
Fri 15 Jan 2021 THE GUARDIAN


Amazon.com and the “Big Five” publishers – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster – have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices, in a class action filed by the law firm that successfully sued Apple and the Big Five on the same charge 10 years ago.

The lawsuit, filed in district court in New York on Thursday by Seattle firm Hagens Berman, on behalf of consumers in several US states, names the retail giant as the sole defendant but labels the publishers “co-conspirators”. It alleges Amazon and the publishers use a clause known as “Most Favored Nations” (MFN) to keep ebook prices artificially high, by agreeing to price restraints that force consumers to pay more for ebooks purchased on retail platforms that are not Amazon.com.

The lawsuit claims that almost 90% of all ebooks sold in the US are sold on Amazon, in addition to over 50% of all print books. The suit alleges that ebook prices dropped in 2013 and 2014 after Apple and major publishers were successfully sued for conspiring to set ebook prices, but rose again after Amazon renegotiated their contracts in 2015.

“In violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Defendant and the Big Five Co-conspirators agreed to various anti-competitive MFNs and anti-competitive provisions that functioned the same as MFNs,” the complaint states. “Amazon’s agreement with its Co-conspirators is an unreasonable restraint of trade that prevents competitive pricing and causes Plaintiffs and other consumers to overpay when they purchase ebooks from the Big Five through an ebook retailer that competes with Amazon. That harm persists and will not abate unless Amazon and the Big Five are stopped.”

The suit seeks compensation for consumers who purchased ebooks through competitors, damages and injunctive relief that would require Amazon and the publishers to “stop enforcing anti-competitive price restraints”.

The lawsuit comes a day after the state of Connecticut announced it was investigating Amazon for potential anti-competitive behaviour in its sales of ebooks. A spokesperson for Connecticut Attorney General William Tong confirmed on Wednesday that Amazon had cooperated with a subpoena requesting documents relating to its dealings with the Big Five.

Amazon declined to comment on the New York lawsuit when approached by Reuters.

Hagens Berman sued Apple and the Big Five publishers for fixing ebook prices in 2011, in a case that would eventually lead to suits from several US states and the Department of Justice, which accused Apple of colluding in order to break up Amazon.com’s dominance in the ebook market.

In that case, the five publishers settled for $166m (£120m), while Apple lost at trial and was order to pay out $450m in 2016, after a lengthy legal process that ended when the US supreme court declined to hear the company’s challenge.

Far-right website 8kun again loses internet service protection following Capitol attack

Shell company owned by two Russians cut ties with internet host of 8kun, which has been linked to other acts of violence

Cognitive Cloud LP allegedly operates out of 18 Forth Street, Edinburgh. 

Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian


Kari Paul, Luke Harding and Severin Carrell
Fri 15 Jan 2021 THE GUARDIAN


A far-right website that was among the platforms used to organize the deadly violence at the US Capitol has again been forced to find new internet service protection after a shell company owned by two Russians and registered in Scotland cut ties with the platform’s internet host.

The website 8kun, previously known as 8chan, has long been one of the preferred platforms of the far right and followers of the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon. It was used by rioters ahead of the 6 January attack to mobilize other “patriots” to “help storm the Capitol”, with some on the message board debating which politicians to kill once they got inside.

In the aftermath of the riot, users continued to post content fomenting violence, including maps of government buildings to target and combat techniques for a proposed civil war.


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It wasn’t the first time the platform had been linked to acts of violence. Its predecessor site, 8chan, was linked to a series of white nationalist terrorist attacks, including the massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas.

8kun has faced significant hurdles to remain online since at least 2019, when the El Paso attack occurred. All websites are kept online by a network of services including web hosts and domain name registrars. 8kun has had a loyal internet provider in the Washington state-based VanwaTech, whose CEO has repeatedly defended its connections to the hate site in the name of freedom of speech.

8kun was used by rioters ahead of the 6 January attack to mobilize other ‘patriots’ to ‘help storm the Capitol’. Photograph: Ahmed Gaber/Reuters

LUCKY THE MAJORITY WERE ONLY ARMED WITH SMART PHONES FOR SELFIES

But the site cannot function without platform protection services that prevent DDoS attacks, or distributed denial of service attacks, and few providers have been willing to work with it.
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Following its removal from the infrastructure company Cloudflare, 8kun, throughVanwaTech, worked with the Oregon-based CNServers LLC for DDoS protection. That company, too, cut ties with 8kun when it was alerted to the site’s violent history.

Since October 2020, 8kun had received DDoS protection from DDoS-Guard, a company that provides protection to a number of controversial websites, including the neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer. 8kun’s ties to DDoS-Guard were first reported by the security researcher and journalist Brian Krebs.

This week, DDoS-Guard became the latest company to cut ties with 8kun’s hosting company, VanwaTech, following inquiries from the Guardian.

8kun is now being protected by the US-based firm FiberHub, which is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to analysis from the independent web researcher Ron Guilmette viewed by the Guardian.

FiberHub does not provide infrastructure directly to 8chan but does support VanwaTech as a client, FiberHub’s co-founder and chief technology officer Rob Tyree confirmed to the Guardian by email.

“We have received no reports that content hosted by VanwaTech supported by our infrastructure is in violation of our terms of service or acceptable use policy, which includes a requirement to abide by all US federal and state laws and regulations,” Tyree said. “Should we receive any such reports, we would follow our internal policies and observe any legal requirements to resolve those matters as swiftly as possible.”

DDoS-Guard, the company that provided services to VanwaTech until earlier this week, was registered under a limited partnership, a financial structure in Scotland that allows non-residents to create companies with little scrutiny, on 24 November 2017 by Aleksei Likhachev and Evgeniy Marchenko – two Russian businessmen who remain owners of the company. The partnership under which DDoS-Guard is registered is called Cognitive Cloud and is listed at an address in Edinburgh’s Forth Street.

Speaking from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don earlier this week, Marchenko told the Guardian that 8kun was not a direct client of DDoS-Guard, but that his company provided services to VanwaTech.

He described DDoS-Guard as a global information security service. It hosted “thousands of websites”, he said, adding that it merely provided VanwaTech with “transit protection services” to stop it from falling victim to DDoS or other “brute force” attacks.

“It looks like they host some dubious sites like Qanon/8chan/8kun. I still don’t understand what are they about and have no information about their content or activity,” he added.

The partnership under which DDoS-Guard is registered is called Cognitive Cloud and is listed at an address in Edinburgh’s Forth Street. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

“We are not related to any politic issues and don’t want to be associated in
any sense with customer hosting such toxic sites like QAnon/8chan,” Machenko said after the company severed ties with VanwaTech.

Asked why he used a company based in Scotland, Marchenko said: “Why not? The UK is very comfortable for business. I visited London one time, 14 years ago.” He said: “We don’t support any illegal activity. We know nothing about what happened in Washington or support one side or another. This company [VanwaTech] is just one of our many customers.”

DDoS-Guard’s other clients include the Russian ministry of defense, as well as media organizations in Moscow. The firm’s webpage links to an official ministry history, which sets out recent steps the Kremlin has taken to ban the use of smartphones by Russian soldiers, after a series of leaks.

“It’s OK to earn money from the Russian government or from any other government. It’s just business,” Marchenko said.

DDoS-Guard’s Edinburgh office is at 18 Forth Street, a terrace of small Georgian townhouses in the eastern part of Edinburgh’s New Town. There was no evidence of any office belonging to Cognitive Cloud at that address or any of the five other neighbouring townhouses. An employee at a neighbouring business said in his seven years working there, he had never met anyone from Cognitive Cloud but had frequently fielded requests to take mail and parcels for the firm. A manager at the Edinburgh site said Cognitive Cloud was not a tenant at the address but referred the Guardian to another company of a different name based in London, to which she said mail addressed to Cognitive Cloud was meant to be forwarded.

The Scottish number listed on the site for DDoS-Guard is disconnected. A tech support representative contacted through the Russian phone number on the site said the majority of its clients were based in Russia and declined to answer any other questions.

Marchenko said its Edinburgh office was an “EU subdivision” staffed by a “representative”.

VanwaTech did not respond to a request for comment.

This article was amended on 15 January 2020 in one paragraph to reflect that 8kun is being protected, not hosted, by FiberHub.

MOM'S AND TOTS HOMES

The true horror of Ireland's machine of misogyny must never be forgotten

Elaine Feeney

The landmark mother and baby home report underlines why we need to grapple with our country’s dark past

Children’s socks hang at a shrine in Tuam, County Galway, erected in memory of the 796 children who had been buried in a septic tank at the site of the Bon Secours mother and baby home. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images

Fri 15 Jan 2021 12.10 GMT

On a grey day in 2014, I met a friend at the gate of St Jarlath’s College, Tuam, where I was teaching boys of secondary-school age. We chatted under the shadow of Tuam’s cathedral, located beside a large Victorian villa known locally as the Palace, home of the archbishop. Tuam is a town in north Galway, birthplace of Tom Murphy, the Saw Doctors and the infamous Tuam mother and baby home.

A local historian called Catherine Corless had just turned an open secret into something quantifiable: that the remains of 796 children had been buried in a septic tank at the site of the Bon Secours home, active in the town between 1925 and 1961. Corless, at her own cost, obtained death certificates for each child. Her investigation led to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, which published its report on Wednesday.

My friend was born in the Tuam mother and baby home. “My mother’s crime was being a woman, and being poor. Poverty is a crime to that lot,” he said, waving at the cathedral. The rain was coming down heavy and I was whispering. At one point, I covered my mouth. Teaching in the school for years had made me careful about speaking out – which was perhaps paranoid, but I was definitely cautious about being overheard.

It is early in the dissection of the commission’s report (by necessity, as it is 3,000 pages), but initial reactions are sceptical at best. The executive summary states: “It must be acknowledged that the institutions under investigation provided a refuge – a harsh refuge in some cases – when families provided no refuge at all.” This defensiveness seems damning. The Galway politician Catherine Connolly spoke powerfully in the Dáil this week. “I find the narrative disturbing,” she said of the report, accusing the government of “placing abuse on abuse in the manner in which this subject has been dealt with”. She went on to say: “We either believe the women or we don’t.” This is the crux of it.

If we consider the broader societal context at the time, the country was in its infancy, poverty was common and opportunities scarce – Ireland was a society under the control of church and state, propped up by councils, county managers and the petty bourgeoisie. Ireland’s dark decades, as covered by the report, were an age of the institution, a time when church and state coerced and incarcerated more women per capita in institutions than anywhere in the world. Tens of thousands of them. Some were as young as 12.

Though strongly challenged through feminist activism, Ireland’s machine of misogyny continued. A contraception ban, an employment marriage bar, no property rights. A woman’s place was in the home. There was no access to abortion. There was no divorce. They could not sit on a jury. Women, pregnant outside of marriage, who ended up in these dire institutions, often did so due to incest and rape. It’s staggering. How they got pregnant in the first instance remains to be answered in many cases: where and who are the men?

When I grew up in the 1980s – in a Catholic house, attending a Catholic school – there was a sense that change had begun; and while legislative changes were welcome, cultural shifts were far slower. When I was in conversation with my grandmother, a small, anxious woman who grew up in Tuam and gave birth to 11 children, she became upset. I was asking questions about her life: why did she have faith? Did she have regrets? It wasn’t a fair question. To have regrets you must have freedom to make decisions about your life, economic and physical freedom – you need to know that in some part, you are your own authority.

Into the early millennium, Ireland remained patriarchal. We have men’s surnames – if not our father’s then our husband’s. We learned about men in school, we read men’s poems and studied men’s plays, while the priest listened to us confess sins from the age of six. Women’s full economic independence was rare, and terminology for women’s bodies was stilted. Sexual pleasure was not discussed, menstruation hushed up. Rape was rarely mentioned. Miscarriage carried a taboo. Euphemisms prevailed. “I’m in trouble.” “She lost it.” “Take the boat.” There were no conversations about consent.

The outpouring of women’s trauma prior to repealing the eighth amendment in 2018 was harrowing. Birth trauma, sexual violence, lack of autonomy, coercion: Ireland was finally talking about sex, but it was painful. During this time, I turned to writing fiction – it was proving a broader space than poetry for what I wanted to decant. To consider the stories and experiences I had absorbed, I wrote As You Were. The novel tells the story of three women over one week, on a hospital ward in Galway, a city close to Tuam. Octogenarian Jane speaks about her friend who gave birth in the Tuam home with dire consequences, Margaret Rose attempts to procure an abortion for her young daughter in England, and the protagonist, Sinéad, has trouble in articulating her pain at all. As You Were was written as a big, noisy intergenerational novel, a choir to the great covens of women I know and have known, to witness something of this shared, national somatic pain.

To bear witness to your story is paramount. The Tuam Oral History project at the National University of Ireland in Galway was founded in 2017 by a small group of creatives and academics, of whom I was one. Its principle is simple: it is a survivor-focused project to record first-person oral histories, including testimony from families and the broader community. Our project plans for creative engagement, restorative justice and educational projects for all second- and third-level institutions on this period of Ireland’s history.

The last mother and baby home finally closed in Ireland in 1997; recently enough, as the writer Sarah Maria Griffin observed, for it to have been the same year Angels, by Robbie Williams, came out.

Back on that rainy day in 2014, as we began to grapple with the horror and legacy that was unfolding, conscious of silence, conscious of speaking, I parted company with my friend. After lunch, in my classroom filled with young men in blazers, I resumed teaching a section from The Handmaid’s Tale.

• Elaine Feeney is a poet and novelist

Left stranded: US military sonar linked to whale beachings in Pacific, say scientists

Islands surrounded by US military study area, including Guam and Saipan, call for activity that harms the whales to stop

A Cuvier’s beaked whale breaching. The mammals may be acutely vulnerable to sonar and there have been 13 documented strandings since 2010, possibly linked to sonar use. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo

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Jon Letman
Fri 15 Jan 2021 THE GUARDIAN

In the midst of the western Pacific, flanked by the world’s deepest ocean trench, the waters off the Mariana Islands are home and habitat to whales, dolphins, and countless other marine mammals as they breed and feed.

It’s also where they encounter the might of the US military.

The US territory of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), which includes Saipan, Tinian, and 12 other islands, are surrounded by the US military’s Mariana Islands Training and Testing (MITT) study area.


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Almost the size of India, the MITT is strategically important to the Department of Defence as a proving ground for new weapons systems and for live-fire training.

But some on the neighbouring islands, including indigenous Chamoru people, hold grave concerns for the military’s impact on their environment, especially the use of sonar for anti-submarine warfare training, which may be causing whales to beach themselves and die.

Map of the Mariana Islands Training and Testing Study Area Photograph: Mariana Islands Training and Testing

In particular, Cuvier’s beaked whales, known for deep dives documented to last for hours, may be acutely vulnerable to sonar.

Able to dive to nearly 3,000 meters, Cuvier’s beaked whales can feed beyond the reach of competitors and predators, but not out of range of navy sonar.

Since 1998, fisheries biologist with Guam’s department of agriculture, Brent Tibbatts, has documented 30 marine mammal strandings – 13 of them since 2010. The timing of the strandings, and their proximity to sonar, have led him to believe they are related.

When strandings occur, Tibbatts is the first called. If the animal can be saved, it’s pushed back into the water. If it washes up dead – over 80% of the time, Tibbatts told the Guardian – or dies while stranded, Tibbatts performs a necropsy , taking tissue samples, measurements, and photos.

Tibbatts recalled a 2015 live stranding of a Cuvier’s beaked whale which later died. Initially, the military denied it was using sonar, only to later admit it had after divers presented video in which sonar could be heard.

Listening to the inaudible

In February, a team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography published a study examining how the navy’s use of mid-frequency active sonar may contribute to whale strandings in the Marianas.

The study reported eight stranding events between 2006-2019 involving at least 10 whales.

An adult males Cuvier’s beaked whale stranded. There are growing concerns US military activity – including sonar – off Guam and the Mariana Islands is contributing to whale strandings. Photograph: FLPA/Alamy Stock Photo

The lead author, acoustic ecologist Dr Anne Simonis, said the team recorded in waters between 600 and 1000 meters off Saipan and Tinian islands at timed intervals for up to 12 months, analysing recordings of the whales’ distinctive echolocation clicks, which fall beyond the range of human hearing but are easily identified using a spectrogram to visually represent sounds.

The team detected three beaked whale species and examined eight Cuvier’s beaked whale strandings, of which three were confirmed to have occurred within six days of sonar use in the area, similar to other beaked whale strandings in other parts the world after anti-submarine activity.

A leading hypothesis suggested sonar may cause the whales to surface too quickly, forming bubbles in their blood or vital organs similar to decompression sickness, known as the bends.

“The number of animals that actually show up dead on the beaches may only be a fraction of the animals that are dying at sea,” said Simonis, saying that far fewer animals in pelagic [open ocean] waters are recovered compared to coastal species, no matter the cause of death.

“It does seem to be clear that beaked whales are more sensitive to navy sonar than other species,” Simonis said.

“There’s still a need to answer some basic questions about beaked whale populations and behaviour before we can understand the impact of sonar-associated strandings.”
Level ‘B’ Harassment

The US Navy declined an interviewed but in an email, Pacific Fleet spokesperson Lieutenant James Adams said: “Whales strand for a wide variety of reasons, including due to natural causes”.

The Center for Naval Analysis analysed complete data, including classified information, Adams said, determining there was “insufficient evidence to claim a relationship between sonar use and beaked whale strandings in the Mariana Islands”.

None of this can be understood without understanding indigenous dispossession and US imperialismIsa Arriola

The navy would not release the number of anti-submarine warfare exercises it has conducted in the Marianas over the last 24 months, but Adams said, “the navy has not exceeded [authorised] sonar and explosive levels,” adding “the navy has trained with active sonar in the region for over 70 years with negligible effects to the marine environment”.

The navy follows strict guidelines, employing protective measures to avoid impacts from at-sea training and testing, Adams said.

Kate Goggin, NOAA fisheries spokeswoman, said the Marine Mammal Protection Act allowed the navy to use sonar and conduct in-water detonations inside the MITT, “which are likely to result in … behavioural disruption, temporary hearing impairment or, in limited cases, permanent hearing impairment [of marine mammals].”

NOAA Fisheries has authorised “Level B harassment” of beaked whales which includes “interruption of feeding behaviours or displacement from areas where and when navy activities are occurring”.

Goggin said low to moderate severity of effects was not expected to impact the survival of beaked whales.

In January 2019, the navy released a 1,400-page MITT draft supplemental overseas environmental impact statement followed by its record of decision, selecting the option that allows for the most activity in the MITT


The island of Guam seen from the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The relationship between the US navy and the islands of Guam and the Northern Marianas are generally strong, but have been strained over the issue of environmental damage. Photograph: Zachary Wheeler/US NAVY/AFP/Getty Images

In response, eight Guamanian senators – led by Senator Kelly Marsh-Taitano – introduced a resolution calling on the navy to “cease its use of active sonar that harms marine mammals; use passive sonar to detect the presence of marine mammals; and provide all information as declared necessary by the government of Guam in order to determine boundaries of habitat areas of beaked whales and other cetaceans”.

In a virtual public hearing in September, Senator Régine Bisco Lee noted protective agreements already exist for Hawaii and California: “We’re just asking that our land and our resources be protected in the same way”.

One ocean, two governments

While both US territories, Guam and CNMI’s distinct governance structures (larger Guam is an unincorporated territory, while CNMI is a commonwealth with is own governor and legislature) complicates protection of the beaked whale habitats.

Edwin Reyes, a government of Guam coastal management program administrator, says co-operation between Guam and CNMI is important in pursuing the common goal of ensuring the navy’s use of sonar is consistent with local policies.

Guam’s size, even small compared to Hawaii, Reyes said, means the impact of human activity is even greater and “puts a lot of strain on our resources”.

On neighbouring Saipan, part of the Marianas, Isa Arriola, chair of the group Our Common Wealth 670, said militarisation was about more than sonar and whales.

“None of this can be understood without understanding indigenous dispossession and US imperialism.”


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She argued current levels of military activity were “totally unsustainable” and said co-operation between Guam and the CNMI was imperative because “whales and dolphins aren’t restricted by red dotted lines on a map”.

Also on Saipan, CNMI representative Sheila J. Babauta said that while the military has generally been welcome in the commonwealth, the relationship is complex. She has introduced a house joint resolution calling for a halt to all destructive military training.

“If this is happening now and the training and testing is not in full force yet … imagine what’s going to happen in the future.”

And then there were two: can northern white rhinos be saved from extinction?

Fatu (left) and Najin (right) are the last two northern white rhinos left on the planet. They are both female and are a mother-daughter duo. The fate of the species now rest on assisted methods of reproduction. Photograph: Gurcharan Roopra


There are only two remaining rhinos of this species, a mother and daughter, but scientists see new hope in stem cell breakthroughs

Megan Mayhew Bergman
Thu 14 Jan 2021 THE GUARDIAN



“I watch these beautiful animals walk the path toward extinction every day,” keeper James Mwenda tells me. He’s out in the Kenyan bush, swatting flies. The anti-poaching K-9 dogs bark in the background. “I’ve watched their numbers fall from seven to two ... Working with them and watching what’s happening – it’s an emotional freefall.” He smiles, clearly resigned to the pain of bearing witness. “But I’ve dedicated my life to it.”

The window to keep the northern white rhino from going functionally extinct to fully extinct is closing fast. Were things left only to nature, the two remaining rhinos – elderly, calm Najin and her feisty 20-year-old daughter Fatu – would be the last of their kind to graze the African grasslands. After civil war, habitat loss, and aggressive poaching, scientists declared the species extinct in the wild in 2008.

Scientists now have a last-minute chance to bring the northern white rhinos back from the void, thanks to stem cell breakthroughs – but only if they can manage to work through the constraints of the pandemic.

“In 2012, there was no hope for the northern white rhino,” Dr Thomas Hildebrandt, a Berlin-based expert in wildlife reproduction, tells me. But, inspired by an interdisciplinary conference on interstellar life, Hildebrandt used grant money to forge an international consortium dedicated to saving the species. “We realized we were not yet at the end. There was, suddenly, a new horizon.”

He spearheaded “BioRescue” – a collaboration between the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, Italian laboratory Avantea, and Kenya’s Ol Pejeta and Kenya Wildlife Service. Hildebrandt believes increased international cooperation is the future of conservation, sharing resources without the expectation of payback. “It’s the moral thing to do,” he says.

Covid-19 thwarted BioRescue’s 2019 momentum, disrupting travel and diverting science funding. They wondered if they would be able to harvest more egg cells from Fatu and the aging Najin and get them to a laboratory in Italy during a global pandemic.

But given the cost and complexity – should they?

How we answer this question not only determines the rhinos’ future, but our ability to pioneer processes that will be called upon to preserve other species.

The stakes could not be higher. There are no longer any living northern white rhino males after the beloved Sudan was humanely euthanized at the advanced age of 45 in 2018. Ol Pejeta employs intense security measures against the constant threat of poaching: armed rangers, electric fences, the specialized K-9 unit, motion sensor cameras, and airplane surveillance.

In 2014, scientists discovered that 20-year-old Fatu cannot conceive naturally, and recently that her mother Najin has a large tumor in her abdomen next to her left ovary, potentially compromising the egg harvesting process. Najin’s hind legs are weak and veterinarians believe a pregnancy – 16 months of depleted resources for the mother and a 100kg baby – would cause debilitating stress.

Rhino caregiver James Mwenda spends his days taking care of the northern white rhinos along with 10 other dedicated rangers. Photograph: Gurcharan Roopra

In December, BioRescue harvested 14 egg cells from Fatu using an ultrasound-guided probe. Though sperm can be frozen, unfertilized eggs cannot. Thus, Fatu’s eggs are better traveled than any of us in 2021. They were overnighted via a charter flight from Nairobi to Frankfurt to Milan, then driven to the Avantea laboratory in Cremona, Italy.

Once in Italy, Fatu’s eggs were matured and combined with frozen sperm from Suni, a bull born in 1980. (Though he died of natural causes in 2014, Suni’s sperm was collected when he was still relatively young. His sperm is considered healthier than that collected from the aged Sudan.) After eight of Fatu’s eggs were fertilized, two were deemed viable, and were cryofrozen on Christmas Eve, bringing the total frozen embryo count to five.
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Though Suni is dead and Fatu cannot conceive, science has christened this couple the future of the northern white rhino.

•••

In November 2015, I joined an NGO focused on ending extreme poverty for women in Nanyuki, Kenya. Before heading to our field work further north, we drove into the Ol Pejeta Conservancy after a brief but violent rainstorm. There, I witnessed the last remnants of several species: a handful of Grevy’s zebra, a reticulated giraffe, a cheetah, and – just beyond an electric fence and armed guards - the last three northern white rhinos. Sudan was still alive.

I walked through Ol Pejeta’s rhinoceros cemetery, where a sign reads: “A Memorial to Rhinos Poached on the Conservancy Since 2004.” I stood next to a gravestone for Shemsha, a female black rhino who was “shot dead with both horns removed”. Rhino poachings are gruesome, calculated and a daily danger for both the rhinos and the rangers.
There are no longer any living northern white rhino males after the beloved Sudan was humanely euthanized in 2018

That November, I photographed Sudan and Najin in their 700 acre enclosure. Now the photos remind me of those of the last passenger pigeon named Martha, or the last Carolina Parakeets named Incas and Lady Jane. When populations dwindle, a specificity occurs. A personal connection blooms, making investment more urgent, and the loss harder to bear.

Mwenda thought he would leave his job as a keeper at Ol Pejeta after Sudan died. “No one wants to be associated with failure,” he says. “No one wants to watch a species die.”

Mwenda recalls a day three years before Sudan was euthanized. “I was standing with him out in the field, feeding him bananas. I enjoyed looking at his lovely face. I think he was feeling good. But then I looked at him and saw he was dropping tears. I know scientists will say that rhinos do not cry. But I think maybe he was feeling empty. I laid my hands on him. After that day, I decided it was not about taking selfies with rhinos and making a photo about the last of a species. It’s about making meaning. I told Sudan I would become his voice when he was gone.”

Mwenda thinks a lot about the youngest rhino, Fatu. Soon, her mother Najin’s age and tumor will lead to a decline. “Fatu is an ending,” Mwenda says. “This is her reality. She will have to bear the responsibility of being the last of her kind. She will be a symbol of political and human greed. That’s what her loneliness stands for. That is her work.”

•••

BioRescue must balance short term objectives – like extracting eggs and freezing embryos – with ambitious long-term plans.

“We plan to have a calf on the ground in two to three years,” Hildebrandt tells me.

First, scientists will plant Suni and Fatu’s embryos into a southern white rhino female, a similar rhino which diverged from the northern white rhino around a million years ago. Owuan, a sterilized southern white bull, arrived at the conservancy in early December to help indicate when the female is in heat, maximizing chances that the embryo will take.

Luckily, frozen embryos are not the only path forward. Nobel Prize-winning scientist Shinya Yamanka’s work with mice shows that skin cells can be transfigured with stem cells to create gametes – or, as the everyday reader might think of it: test tube rhinos. According to Hildebrandt, enough skin cell samples exist to create the necessary genetic diversity for a healthy future population. Over 20 to 30 years, the population would grow in surrogates and sanctuaries. One day – perhaps when Fatu and the original scientists are gone – northern white rhinos will return to Uganda, the most feasible country in the rhino’s original range.
How do we determine which species are worth saving, and how far to go?

The embryos are currently stored in a tank of liquid nitrogen kept at -196C, with a backup generator for additional security. Theoretically, the embryos will continue to be viable for thousands of years, waiting for science to catch up.

“Liquid nitrogen buys us time,” Hildebrandt says.

I think of Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, or as some call it – the Doomsday Vault. I imagine the analogous sperm and oocyte bank of endangered species, a frozen Noah’s Ark, where embryos from Fatu and Suni join embryos from vaquitas, cheetahs and Right Whales. A so-called Bio Bank.

But liquid nitrogen cannot replace what Hildebrandt calls “social knowledge”. It’s critical that a baby northern white rhino spend time with Fatu and Najin to learn the proper head position for grazing. “A southern white rhino can provide a northern white rhino milk,” Hildebrandt says. “But not species-specific knowledge.”

•••

How do we determine which species are worth saving, and how far to go? How do we realize when we’re pushing western conservation standards and consequences on other nations – like punishing hungry locals hunting animals for bush meat, or asking them to change longstanding cultural beliefs and medicinal practices? Is conservation a global concern? These are questions that will be asked increasingly as the planet hurtles through its sixth mass extinction.

I ask BioRescue if, ethically speaking, there’s a way the conservation community thinks about prioritizing spending to prevent extinction. For example, do we prioritize animals who have an important function in their ecological niche?

Hildebrandt points out that preserving the integrity of keystone species and ecosystems is a public health issue. “We may get more pandemics as systems break down,” he notes, thinking about HIV, Ebola, Covid, and ones we can’t yet imagine. Unhealthy and unnatural ecosystems release pathogens and promote the spread of disease.

“This is not just exotic conservation or a scientific exercise, like the mammoth project,” Hildebrandt explains, “but an attempt to repair a complex ecosystem. We are providing solutions for irresponsible behavior. It is much wiser to save species through responsible behavior, while we still can.”

“Think of all the other ridiculous things humans spend money on. This may be cheap in comparison,” Jan Stejskal, director of international projects for the Dvůr Králové Zoo, tells me.

“I believe in the value of the rhino himself,” Stejskal adds. “Who can ascribe value to an animal? It’s about more than subsistence. It’s deeper than that.”

“It’s existential, a new philosophy,” Hildebrandt says. “Sudan is not dead for me. What is death? He is saving his species. This is life. It’s a complex process, but it’s possible to preserve life, and give opportunities to future generations.”

Mwenda hopes that the upside of Covid’s impact on tourism is that Kenyans have been able to connect with wildlife through opportunities usually reserved for tourists. He wants Kenyans to see the northern white rhinos as not just good for tourists, but good for Africa.

“These rhinos are my family,” Mwenda says. “I spend more time with them than my own family. I truly love them.” His shift is winding down as we finish our talk. Soon, he will escort Najin and Fatu to their evening enclosure, his favorite time of day.

“Right now it sounds helpless,” Hildebrandt says. “But we have a fair chance. We just need support. The fragility of our planet is dramatic. We must act now.”

 In 2020, a small but timely library of Sikh history

Distinctive in style and scope, these three Sikh histories will fascinate any religion or history nerd.

Courtesy images

December 29, 2020

By 

Simran Jeet Singh

(RNS) — I know I speak for people everywhere when I say that 2020 has been the longest year in history. The pandemic. The U.S. presidential election. The recounts.

And yet, there are many comforts to consider. Health, for those of us who have survived or avoided the virus. Loved ones. Hope for the future.

One of the real pleasures of this year for me was enjoying three ground-breaking books of Sikh history written by Sikh women. The subject itself is consistently underrepresented and traditionally dominated by the voices of men. Each of the books published this year is distinctive in style and scope, and yet any religion or history nerd can enjoy all three.

The Wheat Fields Still Whisper: Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict
By Mallika Kaur

As I write, Indian farmers are leading a historic protest on the streets of New Delhi, opposing new agricultural laws that benefit large corporations and harm small farmers. Most analyses of the situation remain limited to the immediate issues, but, as with most uprisings, there is far more to it than meets the eye.

Kaur’s “The Wheat Fields Still Whisper” unlocks the complexities behind the current crisis. She explains why much of the movement is being led and driven by Punjabi Sikhs, guiding us through the neglect, abuses, resistance and resilience that the Punjab’s Sikh population has withstood in the immediate past decades to deliver an understanding of what’s going on in India right now.

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RELATED: Farmers’ protests against India’s new agriculture laws follow long Sikh tradition

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Kaur’s vehicles are three of Punjab’s inspirational human rights defenders: Baljit Kaur, Justice Ajit Singh Bains, and Inderjit Singh Jaijee. Their relative privilege has allowed them to support their community in violent conflict, and their life stories pull in dozens of other everyday heroes who haven’t been written about thus far, or in this detail.

She tells the story beautifully as well, mixing incisive analysis with prose that makes it easy for the reader to not only understand what is happening, but to empathize with those who are going through it. It’s a masterful work of contemporary history and a joy for anyone interested in discovering the Punjabi Sikh community and their psyche.

Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire
By Priya Atwal

Perhaps my favorite period in Sikh history is the time from the late 1400s to the early 1700s, when the 10 Gurus lived. But a close second is the period of autonomous rule known as the time of the Sikh Empire. The glorious reign began when Maharaja Ranjit Singh wrested control of Punjab from the Mughal overlords in the late 18th century. Sikh rule expanded rapidly, stretching from Tibet to Afghanistan before eventually being felled by the British just before the 20th century dawned.

Despite its storied past, the Sikh Empire is little mentioned today. Priya Atwal’s Royals and Rebels not only restores this period to historical memory but also gives it dignity.

Atwal’s splendid historical scholarship brings forward voices and stories that have been marginalized in previous tellings, delivering a fascinating story full of women and even children whose contributions are as essential as any male ruler. But it’s no slow crawl through sociological data: Atwal’s is a chronicle of politics, royalty, family and intrigue with all the makings of a series for Masterpiece Theater.

The First Sikh: The Life and Legacy of Guru Nanak
Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh

For decades, Kaur Singh has been the preeminent feminist writer in Sikh studies — stress on writer: Though an academic historian, she leans into her poetic sense, an ability that makes her latest book, “The First Sikh,” an enchanting account of the life and legacy of Guru Nanak, the founder and first guru of the Sikh tradition and songster-poet himself.

Instead of the typically dry prose of academic historical writing, Singh fuses translations of first-hand testimony, oral histories and Guru Nanak’s own writings to produce the best and most accessible modern account of Guru Nanak’s worldview and teachings.