Opinion: Nuclear energy is not sustainable

The EU wants to partially label nuclear power investments as climate-friendly. That could slow down the development of sustainables but not stop it. Nuclear energy is not making a comeback, says DW's Jens Thurau. 

For a Europe free of nuclear power, a light installation on Germany's Grohnde power plant reads

Two news reports at the beginning of this year concerning the future of nuclear energy seem to come from different worlds: While in Germany three of the last six remaining nuclear power plants have just been taken off the grid, the EU Commission has published a plan according to which investments in gas and nuclear power plants are to be considered climate-friendly under certain conditions.

In Germany, the country's decision in 2011 to phase out nuclear energy, is going ahead largely without a fuss. Unlike many decades earlier, it is no reason for heated debate, but rather a minor announcement.

The French push for nuclear

The EU, on the other hand, is feeling the pressure from France, which has 58 operational nuclear power plants. The country's national energy supply is based on nuclear power. President Emmanuel Macron has skillfully used the temporary power vacuum caused by the change of government in Germany to push through a revaluation of nuclear energy. It's unlikely Germany will be able to do anything about it. The issue is likely to land Germany's Green Party, a coalition partner in the new German government, in considerable trouble. That's because the new year kicking off with nuclear energy potentially being considered climate-friendly would amount to a political betrayal for the Greens and their voters.

DW's Jens Thurau

For years, advocates of nuclear power plants have been lobbying for the allegedly sustainable energy source since the reactors are free of greenhouse gas. The truth is that, unlike coal-fired power plants, nuclear power plants do not emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while in operation.

Nuclear contamination a real threat

However, it is also true that uranium mining produces greenhouse gases. And it is not sustainable at all when you consider that in the wake of accidents at nuclear power plants like in Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, entire regions become uninhabitable for long periods of time, with the general public rather than the nuclear industry shouldering the huge costs of dealing with the disasters.

What is also completely forgotten in the Brussels debate on nuclear energy is the mammoth task all countries that still operate or have operated nuclear power plants face — the disposal of radioactive waste. In Germany, too, the search for a final disposal site is an issue that will take generations to resolve, not to mention the actual process, which will cost billions.

Can nuclear power be a sustainable form of generating energy? Not really. Even building new plants is so expensive that it doesn't warrant the term "resource-efficient."

Defeat for the Greens

Things are different when it comes to gas. Germany has ambitious goals to phase out both nuclear energy and coal, which the new government wants to bring forward from 2038 to 2030. If that is to succeed, the country will have to rely on gas as a bridging technology for a long time to come if it doesn't want to import electricity and nuclear power from France at that.

But, on gas the Green party faces another defeat if German Chancellor Olaf Scholz gets his way with his endorsement of the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas export pipeline. That looks very likely.

So is nuclear power likely to make a comeback? Hardly. Basically, in countries that operate nuclear power plants, the lifespans of existing plants are being extended, while plans to build new plants are mostly failing because of the gigantic costs involved.

But there is an enormous demand globally for energy and it will certainly skyrocket  again  once the COVID-19 pandemic wanes. China, in particular, relies on all types of power generation, including not only renewable energies but also fossil fuels and nuclear power.

In the long run, however,countries will rely on renewable energy, even if there is a lot of lobbying for the old forms of energy generation. Even after the EU takes the decision to label nuclear energy investments as green, it is important to wait and see how many investors actually want to invest in outdated forms of energy generation. Most of the major investment funds have already withdrawn from climate-damaging coal. It's quite likely that they have little appetite to keep an outdated form of technology that comes with high risks alive for a few more years.

This opinion piece has been translated from German.

PARTHENOGENESIS

Northern white rhinos: The audacious plan that could save the species

Issued on: 04/01/2022 - 

Video by: Fraser JACKSON

There are only two Northern white rhinos left in the world, and they are both females. So the species is in danger of becoming extinct. But thanks to a complicated surrogacy process the hope for saving the species remains.

SCHADENFREUDE

Crypto meme brothers, who were reportedly not vaccinated, contract COVID-19 and die days apart


Crypto Meme Twin Brothers, 72, Die Days Apart From COVID-19
AJ McDougall
Mon, January 3, 2022

Fred Dufour/Getty

With cheekbones “so high and bulbous as to appear to threaten their owners’ vision,” as an Australian newspaper described them a decade ago, the Bogdanoff twins drew attention wherever they went.

The controversial celebrity scientists, who both obtained doctorates after penning a series of impenetrable and allegedly meaningless physics papers, were descendants of nobility and, later, a meme beloved on social media platforms like Reddit and 4chan.

But their voyage through the stars ended recently in a Parisian hospital, where both Grichka and Igor Bogdanoff had been admitted on the same day last month after contracting COVID-19. Grichka, the younger twin, died in the intensive care unit on Dec. 28. Igor followed him on Monday. Both were 72.

A source close to the brothers told French outlet Le Monde that neither had been vaccinated against the virus.

The socialite scientists made headlines almost exactly a year ago for allegedly “swindling” a millionaire, a 53-year-old man identified only as “Cyrille P.” in the subsequent lawsuit, convincing him to invest hundreds of thousands of euros in various projects, including an attempt to revive Temps X, the pop science show that first skyrocketed the brothers to fame in 1979.

Decades before they beamed themselves, decked out in futuristic spacesuits, into the homes of families all over France, the twins were born in a castle in Gascony in 1949. Descended from German and Austrian nobility, Igor and Grichka were raised by their grandmother, Countess Bertha Kolowrat-Krakowská, whose scandalous affair with Roland Hayes, the first Black American to attain international fame as a classical musician, produced the twins’ mother.

The brothers went on to study applied mathematics at the Institute of Political Science and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. They then found a niche for themselves as writers, producers, and presenters of Temps X, which ran from 1979 into the mid-’80s.

Igor and Grichka first invited controversy with the 1991 publication of a book, Dieu et la Science (God and Science), which went on to become a French bestseller. Its debut, however, roiled academics after a University of Virginia astronomy professor filed a plagiarism lawsuit over the manuscript.

Settling out of court, the Bogdanoffs began work towards their doctorates in 1993. After defending their theses and publishing five articles in several peer-reviewed physics journals, both brothers passed with the lowest possible grade.

Tracing their story in 2002, a New York Times reporter wrote that one of their advisers described the twins as “wunderkids” who had difficulty understanding they were not “the Einstein brothers.” The adviser, Dr. Daniel Sternheimer, told the Times that teaching the brother was like “teaching My Fair Lady to speak with an Oxford accent.”

Their papers, published in journals like Annals of Physics, claimed, among other concepts, to identify what happened both before and during the Big Bang. The Bogdanoffs’ work was first disputed in 2002, after a University of Tours physicist raised concerns in an email to another academic. The scientist, Max Niedermaier, called the twins’ writing “delightfully meaningless combinations of buzzwords,” fretting that their evidence had nonetheless “been taken seriously.”

Asked why the brothers had been conferred their degrees, Dr. Sternheimer said, “These guys worked for 10 years without pay. They have the right to have their work recognized with a diploma, which is nothing much these days.”

He called the subsequent scandal, nicknamed “the Bogdanoff affair,” a “storm in a teacup.” The dispute ended in a report that found the twins’ theses held no scientific value, but Classical and Quantum Gravity, another peer-reviewed journal that published a Bogdanoff paper, ultimately declined to print a retraction.

Social media users would eventually stumble upon the brothers, who by the turn of the century had apparently discovered plastic surgery. (Both would repeatedly deny that they had ever had extensive cosmetic surgical procedures performed.)

Beginning on Reddit in 2015, users ran wild with conspiracy theories about the brothers, claiming, among other things, that the Bogdanoffs had “psychic powers” and could control the cryptocurrency markets.

This last claim stemmed from a television appearance in June last year, when Grichka remarked on French show Non-Stop People that he and his brother helped develop the source code for Bitcoin. Both also claimed that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous name for the figure purported to have invented Bitcoin, had given them two “ancient” Bitcoin in “physical form.”

“In terms of credibility,” a French editor told news site Decrypt at the time, Igor and Grichka “are equivalent to a scientific version of the Kardashian family.”

Eccentric French twins die of Covid-19 after refusing vaccine

Tue, 4 January 2022


Two French twin brothers who became the faces of a famed 1980s science TV programme before winning notoriety for their cosmetic surgery have died within a week of each other from Covid-19 after refusing the vaccination, friends and family said.

The death of Igor Bogdanoff, 72, was confirmed on Monday evening by his lawyer Edouard de Lamaze, as well as his agent.

He died just six days after his brother Grichka Bogdanoff passed away in a Parisian hospital, also of Covid, the lawyer confirmed.

Instantly recognisable in France and a favourite in the country's glossy celebrity magazines, they also claimed to have taken part in the creation of Bitcoin.

"We were implicated, very early, in the birth of the cryptocurrency," Grichka told French TV show Non-Stop People in June, with their claim largely based on their friendship with Japanese mathematicians behind the currency.

The brothers became well-known in international cryptocurrency circles and a subject of mockery, largely thanks to an online meme and conspiracy theory that they controlled the markets.

Igor announced earlier this year that they planned to launch their own currency, "Exocoin".

Anti-Vax?

Neither of the brothers had been vaccinated against Covid-19, their friend Luc Ferry, a former education minister, said last week.

Ferry told Le Parisien newspaper that he had urged both of them to get vaccinated "countless times" but they refused on the basis that they were "very sporty, without a gram of fat".

"Grichka, like Igor, wasn't an anti-vaxxer. He was anti-vax for himself," Ferry said, confirming that both of them had contracted Covid. "I told them that it was grotesque, they were mad!"

In an interview at the beginning of December, they raised doubts about the new generation mRNA messenger vaccines developed by BioNtech/Pfizer among others, despite their approval by health authorities.

France is currently facing another major wave of Covid-19 infections caused by the highly infectious Omicron variant, with hospitals warning that intensive care units are overwhelmed with mostly unvaccinated patients.
Plastic surgery

The identical twins shot to fame as the heartthrob presenters of the hit 1980s science show "Temps X" on the country's TF1 channel and then carved out careers as amateur and often controversial science writers afterwards.

Born to a Russian-origin father, a painter, and an Austrian aristocratic mother, they grew up in a castle in southwest France.

"At the age of 11, we underwent tests which showed that we were part of 0.01 percent of the population with an IQ of more than 190," Grichka once claimed, feeding the mystique of the twins as freakishly intelligent.

Critics would accuse them of plagiarising the work of others, and of promoting pseudo-science in their subsequent publications and media interviews.

Igor married several times to aristocratic French women, fathering six children, while Gricha remained single, one of few differences between the two men who would often finish each other's sentences during interviews.

In their later years, their looks, socialite lifestyle and legal problems stemming from their attempt to relaunch "Temps X" kept them in the public eye.

They faced prosecution for allegedly cheating a millionaire with mental health problems out of several hundred thousand euros -- charges they denied.

They also denied having plastic surgery to explain their transformed looks, but admitted to having undergone "experimentations" which gave them their extreme high cheek bones, as well as large lips and pronounced chins.

"We are proud of having faces like extra-terrestrials," they said in 2010.

(AFP)

James Webb Space Telescope completes most complex step in deployment

An artist's illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope in space shows the large silver sunshield, which is now fully deployed. Image courtesy of NASA | License Photo

Jan. 4 (UPI) -- NASA and mission controllers for the James Webb Space Telescope completed the most complicated stage in deploying the $10 billion observatory Tuesday -- full extension of the large, five-layered sunshield.

The successful operation was "quite an achievement" that means the largest, most powerful space telescope in history is about two-thirds through its weeks-long deployment, Keith Parrish, Webb commissioning manager, said during a live broadcast.

"This is a significant milestone accomplished -- job well done sunshield team, job well done," Carl Starr, mission operations manager, said over a live feed from the mission control room.



Completion of the extension means NASA can move on to final steps, including the extension of radiators Tuesday evening and unfolding of the large, gold-coated main dish planned for Friday, Parrish said.


Ninety cables were wound up and 107 pins were removed robotically to extend the shield, which is necessary to keep the observatory's infrared instruments supercooled.

RELATEDJames Webb Space Telescope launches on million-mile journey

NASA has designed James Webb to surpass the Hubble Space Telescope with infrared vision that can peer 13.5 billion years into the universe's past -- seeing the light of the first stars and galaxies as they formed after the Big Bang.

The new observatory will also study other space objects such as nebulae, pulsars, supermassive black holes and the composition of atmospheres around exoplanets.

Webb telescope fully deploys sunshield in mission milestone


The tennis court size, kite-shaped apparatus acts like a parasol, ensuring the observatory is kept in the shade so that it is able to detect faint infrared signals from the far reaches of the Universe (AFP/Chris GUNN)

Issam AHMED
Tue, January 4, 2022, 

The James Webb Space Telescope fully deployed its tennis-court sized sunshield Tuesday, a critical milestone for the success of its mission to study every phase of cosmic history, NASA said.

"All five layers of the sunshield are fully tensioned," said an announcer at the observatory's control center in Baltimore, where team members cheered, a live feed showed.

The 70-foot (21 meter) long, kite-shaped apparatus acts like a parasol, ensuring Webb's instruments are kept in the shade so they can detect faint infrared signals from the far reaches of the Universe.


Each of the layers was unfolded one by one over two days. Working together they offer an SPF (sun protection factor) of about one million.

Because the telescope was too large to fit into a rocket's nose cone in its operational configuration, it had to be transported folded, origami style. Unfurling is a complex and challenging task, the most daunting such deployment NASA has ever attempted.

"This is the first time anyone has ever attempted to put a telescope this large into space," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, said in a statement.

"The success of its most challenging deployment –- the sunshield –- is an incredible testament to the human ingenuity and engineering skill that will enable Webb to accomplish its science goals."

Hillary Stock, a sunshield deployment specialist for Northrop Grumman, told reporters on a call: "It was a wonderful moment. There was a lot of joy, a lot of relief."

The most powerful space telescope ever built and the successor to Hubble, Webb blasted off in an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana on December 25, and is now more than halfway to its orbital point, a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

Its infrared technology allows it to see the first stars and galaxies that formed 13.5 billion years ago, giving astronomers new insight into the earliest epoch of the Universe.

Visible and ultraviolet light emitted by the very first luminous objects has been stretched by the Universe's expansion, and arrives today in the form of infrared, which Webb is equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity.

Its mission also includes the study of distant planets to determine their origin, evolution, and habitability.

- Built to withstand meteoroids -

The sunshield will be permanently positioned between the telescope and the Sun, Earth and Moon, with the Sun-facing side built to withstand 230 degrees Fahrenheit (110 degrees Celsius).

Each successive layer is cooler than the one above it, allowing the telescope's sensitive instruments to operate at -380F.

It is made of lightweight material called Kapton, coated with treated silicon. It also has special "ripstop" seaming to limit damage from meteoroids.

Though Webb will reach its space destination, known as the second Lagrange point, in a matter of weeks, it still has around another five and a half months of setup to go.

Next steps include deploying its secondary and primary mirror wings, aligning the telescope's optics, and calibrating its science instruments.

ia/dw

Hawaii’s water protectors lead a growing movement to close Navy fuel site after poisonous leak

In the wake of a major leak by the Navy that contaminated O’ahu’s water supply, water protectors found unlikely allies among outraged military families.

By

 Sam Carliner

 -

January 4, 2022

SOURCEWaging Nonviolence

Image credit: Twitter/Greg Noir

Upwards of 100 water protectors rallied outside the Hawaii State Capitol in Honolulu on Dec. 10. Their greatest fears had just come true. The U.S. Navy had kept decaying fuel storage tanks just 100 feet above a water aquifer that functioned as the main source of drinking water on the island of O’ahu. Those tanks recently leaked jet fuel into the aquifer, poisoning thousands of people and creating irreparable damage to O’ahu’s water supply.

Shelley Muneoka, a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) member of the O’ahu Water Protectors coalition of organizers and community members, has been warning of such a leak since 2014. She spoke about the surge in attention that water protectors have recently received from the larger O’ahu community.

“On the one hand, [we’re] really feeling devastated that it’s come to this and really scared for what this means for the future of life on O’ahu,” Muneoka said. “On the other hand, [we’re] really having to dig deep to activate and motivate. All of a sudden, every day, tons of things are happening.”

Public demonstrations and community outreach throughout Honolulu are being led by the O’ahu Water Protectors. The coalition has been growing support around a demand to “Shut Down Red Hill,” referring to the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, which is the official name of the complex of underground tanks. 

A die-in organized by O’ahu Water Protectors on Dec. 10. (Twitter/O’ahu Water Protectors)

So far they have held two high profile actions and are engaging with members of the local community through teach-ins and mutual aid in order to bolster local support for their demand. They have also been active on social media to draw public attention to the issue. Community support and attention from the public is especially necessary because the Navy has resisted demands and dodged accountability at every turn, even fighting a state order to defuel Red Hill issued on Dec. 6.

Concern first started growing over the tanks at Red Hill in 2014 because that is the first known case of a major leak. In January 2014, 27,000 gallons of fuel leaked from a single tank, prompting a 20-year agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency, the Navy, the Defense Logistics Agency, and the Hawaii Department of Health to study and consider improvements to the facility.

Despite this agreement between various governmental organizations, the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments responsible for holding the Navy accountable have not followed through, according to the Sierra Club. 

The lack of action from federal and state institutions prompted the Sierra Club to wage a legal campaign that won some major gains in accountability. In 2017 the environmental organization sued the Hawaii Department of Health over a policy that exempted Red Hill from usual underground tank storage regulations. Prior to opposition, the Navy’s permit to operate the tanks was automatically renewed anytime it expired. The Sierra Club’s work forced the state to drop the practice of automatic renewal. The organization has also been using its website to document and clearly convey all available data and studies into the environmental threat posed by Red Hill.

Although the precedent of a major leak was set more than half a decade ago, the demand to shut down Red Hill lacked public support. Much of that hesitancy to question the Navy comes from the military’s large role in the Hawaiian economy and the concentration of service members and veterans who live on the island. The military industry is the second largest economic driver in Hawaii, employing 101,500 people or 16.5 percent of state’s workforce.

In Honolulu Civil Beat, Eric Stinton writes about how the military has been able to avoid significant criticism by portraying any negativity toward it as an institution as condemnation of individual service members.

“Even mild critiques of the military are often met with patriotic outrage, as if a specific institutional criticism is no different than spitting in the face of your uncle who took a bullet for his country,” he explained. “Military culture is particularly effective at subsuming the identities of those who are in it, so it’s easy to understand why criticism of the military is often received as criticism of military members.”

Antiwar veteran and O’ahu resident Ann Wright, who has been active in the Shut Down Red Hill movement, says that the economic role of the military has kept the state government complacent with the Navy’s presence.

“Besides tourism, it’s Department of Defense money that runs the state, so all of our Congress people are the big pork barrel people getting military projects here,” Wright said. “So the state has gone along with it and has not really kept good investigations going and made sure permits are issued.”

While the Navy has long manipulated public sentiment and worked with state officials to skirt responsibility, it was not able to avoid backlash following another major leak from the Red Hill tanks in recent months. That is because this time around the Navy is facing a new type of opposition: its own service members and military families living on the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. After posing a threat to the average O’ahu resident, the tanks have now leaked so much that military families living in Hawaii have been poisoned and outrage is finally growing.

Towards the end of November military spouses living in housing communities around the military base began reporting that they could smell gasoline in their water. Families also reported symptoms including headaches, rashes and diarrhea. Initially Navy spokespeople ensured the families that the water was safe to drink. They were only able to maintain this line for so long.

“If it had been over at the part of town where I live, the Navy wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass about it,” Wright said. “But because it’s military families, and those military families have wives, there’s nothing worse than an angry military spouse. Having been in the military 29 years I know, when things go wrong on a military base and the wives get mad, all hell breaks loose.”

Water protectors rallied in front of the headquarters of the U.S. Navy Pacific Command on Dec. 17. (Twitter/Ka’ohewai)

Facing growing outrage from the military families, the Navy held a town hall on Dec. 6 where affected families voiced their sense of betrayal at the Navy’s negligence. “Why have you told us that the water was safe to drink, to bathe in while you waited for results that you already had?” one military spouse asked top local Navy officials. “I’m here to ask why you weren’t a wingman to protect my 13-month-old son … while I was giving him a sippy cup full of water from my faucet when he has been throwing up for days on end.”

Muneoka claimed that in the past, Native Hawaiian activists faced backlash whenever they criticized the military, but lately she has felt that the larger community’s feelings about the military are starting to change. Even elected officials who long failed to hold the Navy accountable are starting to more publicly condemn and question the Navy’s actions.

“I think there’s a reckoning happening,” Muneoka said. “For the military families, their whole lives are premised on the belief in this system. For them I think there’s a lot of feeling of shock and betrayal. For Hawaiians, we are not surprised, sadly.”

Adding to the momentum of the Shut Down Red Hill movement is the experience of Native Hawaiian leaders who spent the last several years leading a struggle in defense of the Mauna Kea mountain. The dormant volcano sacred to Native Hawaiians had been chosen as a construction site for a $1.4 billion observatory. Indigenous leaders launched a movement to resist construction, by blocking roads and occupying the land. At the height of the protests several thousand people were occupying the land to stop construction. These protests managed to halt construction in January 2020 and since then much of the opposition has moved to a legal arena.

Many of the Mauna Kea land defenders are now leading the public demonstrations around shutting down Red Hill. Along with the State Capitol, a coalition of Hawaiian organizations called Ka’ohewai has made the headquarters of the U.S. Navy Pacific Command a center of demonstration. In the early morning on Dec. 12, about 70 Native Hawaiians held a ceremony at the gate of the command and constructed a stone altar dedicated to the Hawaiian god of water. The purpose of the altar is to draw people, both literally and spiritually, to the issue of contamination.

Both Muneoka and Wright explained that, while much of the ongoing activism is challenging the Navy’s desire to leave the fuel tanks in place, the military will likely only shut down Red Hill if they are ordered to do so from President Biden.

“When the Secretary of the Navy says to the governor’s order that the tanks should be shut down and drained, ‘I consider it a request,’ that gives you the idea of what’s happening,” Wright said.

“So many people have been to Hawaii for their own recreation or vacation,” Muneoka said. “This is an opportunity for you to do something. We really need pressure on President Biden, which I feel sounds so lofty and far away. But in the U.S., Navy command is everything and people can easily hide behind following orders. We need this order from the top to shut down the Red Hill fuel tanks.”

On Dec. 27 Deputy Attorney General David Day of the Department of Health sided with the governor’s demand that the Navy defuel the tanks. The O’ahu Water Protectors wrote a statement in support of Day’s decision, but added that it is just a first step in what they intend to make a larger movement to demilitarize Hawaii.

Navy extends deadline to clean Pearl Harbor

drinking water it contaminated

Board of Water Supply members are seen in 2016 visiting an empty fuel tank at Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility near Pearl Harbor. 

File Photo courtesy of U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet/Wikimedia Commons

Jan. 3 (UPI) -- The Navy has extended its timeline to clean up the Pearl Harbor drinking water system it contaminated in a jet fuel spill in November.

The Navy previously determined that its water well around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam was contaminated from a jet fuel spill on Nov. 20 near the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

Navy officials told state legislators the project to restore safe drinking water to approximately 93,000 people impacted by the spill will not be complete until the end of the month during an informational briefing Wednesday.

The new deadline extends its assessment in early December that it would clean up the water system in a couple of weeks, Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.

Still, some military families displaced due to the water contamination could start moving home as soon as next week in a staggered process.

More than 4,000 military families have left their homes due to the contamination, including about 3,400 who have moved into hotel rooms, primarily in Waikiki.

The extension of the deadline follows problems with the Navy's initial clean-up efforts.

The Hawaii Department of Health issued the Navy a cease and desist order after it flushed out hydrants to clear its main distribution lines days after the contamination without a permit, and amid concerns the flushing was contaminating storm drains leading into the oceans and streams.

Also, when the Navy asked residents to run water and flush their toilets to get rid of contamination, it prompted reports of overwhelming fuel fumes.

Navy Real Adm. Blake Converse told lawmakers Wednesday during the informational briefing the Navy is now working closely with the Hawaii Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to restore safe drinking water.

"The plan includes complete flushing of the entire Navy system, from the source to the faucet, with a comprehensive series of water tests in every neighborhood to certify that drinking water meets safe drinking water standards," Converse said at the briefing.

The plan is to flush the main distribution lines carrying water to neighborhoods, then flush individual homes, schools and businesses, according to Converse.

About 10% of homes will be sampled to ensure compliance with safety standards along with all schools using the Navy's water system, Converse added.

The Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro apologized for the spill in a statement Saturday.

"We understand the hurt this has caused many of you, and we are committed to making it right," Del Toro said in the statement.

Converse reiterated during the briefing last week that the Navy takes responsibility.

"The Navy is responsible for the contamination of the drinking water in our Navy distribution system in the Red Hill well," Converse said at the briefing.

"We used every means available to investigate it thoroughly... and we will take aggressive actions to correct the failures and to hold those at fault appropriately accountable once we've completed those investigations," Converse said.

“A vaccine for the world”: U.S. scientists develop low-cost shot to inoculate global south

"We make vaccines for diseases that the pharma companies won’t make."

By Amy Goodman
-January 4, 2022
SOURCE Democracy Now!

As COVID cases skyrocket, we speak to Dr. Peter Hotez at Texas Children’s Hospital about the Omicron surge, as well as his groundbreaking work developing an affordable patent-free coronavirus vaccine. Last week the Indian government gave emergency approval to the new low-cost, patent-free vaccine called Corbevax, which Hotez co-created. He says it could reach billions of people across the globe who have lacked access to the more expensive mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna. “We can really make a vaccine for the world,” says Hotez. Hotez also addresses problems stemming from ongoing vaccine hesitancy.
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The United States is now averaging over 400,000 new COVID cases a day as the Omicron variant rapidly spreads across the country. The record-breaking surge is putting a new strain on hospitals, even though early studies suggest Omicron infections appear to be milder than previous variants. In Washington, D.C., cases are up by 500% over the past two weeks. In Puerto Rico, cases are up nearly 1,000%. COVID cases are also rapidly rising globally with daily new cases surpassing 1 million for the first time as the pandemic enters its third year. In Argentina, nearly 30% of all COVID tests are coming back positive. In China, the city of Xi’an has entered a second week of lockdown. Cases in Australia have reached a new high.

We begin today’s show looking at vaccine inequity and efforts to vaccinate the world. Last week, the Indian government gave emergency approval to a new low-cost, patent-free vaccine called Corbevax. The vaccine was developed by two doctors at the Texas Children’s Hospital’s Center for Vaccine Development. An Indian company is now aiming to produce 1 billion doses of the vaccine this year to help address the massive shortage of COVID vaccines in the Global South.

We’re joined now by one of the vaccine’s creators, Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital. His most recent book, Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science.

Dr. Hotez, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you link the first part of our lede, what’s happening around the world with the speed of the Omicron variant, to what you have now just accomplished, making this patent-free vaccine available to the world? India has just given you emergency approval.

DR. PETER HOTEZ: [inaudible] the year of 2021 [inaudible] States from the Delta and Omicron variant. The reason they arose was because we allowed large unvaccinated populations to go unvaccinated in low- and middle-income countries.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you repeat what you said at the beginning, Dr. Hotez? We didn’t quite get it, and it’s absolutely critical.

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Well, thanks again for having me. Again, the reason why we have this situation now with Omicron, just like we have the situation with Delta, is we allowed large unvaccinated populations in low- and middle-income countries to remain unvaccinated. Delta arose out of an unvaccinated population in India in early 2021, and Omicron out of a large unvaccinated population on the African continent later in the same year. So, these two variants of concern represent failures, failures by global leaders to work with sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America to vaccinate the Southern Hemisphere, vaccinate the Global South.

And we got tired of it, so we’ve decided to do what we’ve always done for 20 years. And when I say “we,” myself and Dr. Bottazzi, as you point out, and our team of 20 scientists. We make vaccines for diseases that the pharma companies won’t make, for parasitic infections such as Chagas disease and schistosomiasis. And we adopted a coronavirus program about 10 years ago, and then we flipped that around to make the COVID vaccine.

And the only thing we know how to do is make low-cost, straightforward vaccines for use in resource-poor settings. And that was the failure of the global policy leaders. They never had any interest in that. It was always about speed and innovation and to make enough interesting vaccines for North America and Europe, without any attention to the rest of the world. So, we went the opposite direction. And we worked really hard, because, you know, it was very difficult to get funding. We got no support from Operation Warp Speed, no support really from the G7 countries. We were on our own.

And now we’ve licensed our prototype vaccine, and help in the co-development, to India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and now Botswana. And India is the furthest along, and we’ve worked with this extraordinary organization known as Biological E that has got a track record of making low-cost vaccines for the world. And we’ve partnered with them, working with them on a daily or weekly basis. And now that vaccine is being produced by Biological E, and they already have 150 million doses ready to go. And they’re now producing 100 million doses a month, and that will get us to 1.2 billion. We’re going to need several billion more, and hopefully our other partners in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Botswana will also have similar successes.

So, it’s really exciting to show that, you know, you don’t need to be a multinational pharmaceutical company and just make brand-new technologies that will only be suitable for the Northern Hemisphere. We can really make a vaccine for the world. And that’s what our goal has always been for the last 20 years. And we think we’ve made an important first step with COVID-19.

AMY GOODMAN: Public Citizen has said, quote, “Texas Children Hospital’s commitment to sharing technology is a challenge to the pharma giants and the false narrative that vaccine production and medical innovation thrive through secrecy and exclusivity. If Texas Children’s Hospital can do it, why can’t Pfizer and Moderna?” Can you talk about how you were able to do this with so little funding while they are making billions, not to mention billionaires of their founders and chairs and execs in the companies, while millions now — we are dealing with the largest surge in the history of this pandemic?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Well, you know, the way I look at it is, the multinational pharma companies are the multinational pharma companies. They’re going to do what they do. And they’ve made some good vaccines. And I, myself, was the beneficiary of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

I think the problem was not balancing that — not balancing the ecosystem, putting all of the eggs in the pharma basket and not recognizing that we have some outstanding vaccine producers in low- and middle-income countries that are bereft of resources and bereft of some of the technical help they need to get over that hump. And that’s what we’ve been doing now for the last 20 years. The other thing we do is we build capacity. We invite scientists from all over the world to come into our vaccine labs to learn how to make vaccines under a quality umbrella, whereas you cannot walk into Merck or GSK or Pfizer or Moderna and say, “Show me how to make a vaccine.” With our group, we can. And so, we think the problem is not balancing that model better. And that’s what we’re doing now.

And I think, for me, the biggest frustration was never really getting that support from the G7 countries. So, not only was I going on cable news networks and talking about the disinformation empire that was building out of the White House in 2020, but trying to raise meager funds just to get started. And fortunately, we were able to get some funding through Texas- and New York-based philanthropies, and that made — that, we raised about $6 [million], $7 million, I believe. And with that, we were able to pay our scientists to actually do this, transfer the technology, no patent, no strings attached, to India, now, as I said, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Botswana. And, you know, of course, we’ve been getting calls for help all over the world from ministries of science and ministries of health, and we do what we can. We could do a lot — I mean, if we had even a fraction of the support that, say, Moderna or the other pharma companies had gotten, who knows? We might have been able to have the whole world vaccinated by now.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this point you raise with Moderna, which got a fortune from U.S. taxpayers — I mean, we’re talking about millions, if not a billion, dollars — to do the research to develop this, and yet they are not willing to share the formula.

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Here was the problem. The problem was the policymakers, not only in the U.S. but globally, were so fixed on speed and innovation. You know, it was all about the brand-new technologies, rapidly immunizing populations, without that situational awareness to understand that when you only rely on a brand-new technology, there’s a learning curve. We need 9 billion doses of vaccines for sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Nobody was able to take a step back and — as any first-year engineering graduate student will tell you, well, you can’t go from zero to 9 billion with a new technology right away; you’d better balance it with some older traditional technologies. And that was the frustration that we had, that there wasn’t — we couldn’t persuade the big policymakers that that was the way to go, in addition to what they were doing.

Fortunately, we were able to do it. We could have done it a lot faster had we had more support. But now we’re moving forward. So, India, as I said, is now starting to vaccinate its population. They’re working to donate vaccines to the COVAX sharing facilities. We’ll do it with others. And eventually, we think we can vaccinate the Southern Hemisphere, the Global South, and prevent these future variants from emerging.

But, you know, we’re still not getting that kind of awareness. You know, for instance, President Biden — and I’m a big fan of the team that the Biden administration has brought on — boasted that, a couple of weeks ago, right before the new year, that he donated 275 million doses to 110 countries. Well, heck. I mean, we have already matched that with our research institute in Texas, and we’re about to exceed it.

So, I think we really need the G7 countries to step up in a bigger way, and we think we could help them quite a bit with our technology. It looks really robust, same technology used to make the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine that’s been around for 40 years, great levels of virus-neutralizing antibody, durable, simple refrigeration, actually has one of the best safety — maybe the best safety profile of any of the COVID vaccines.

And now we’re are doing clinical trials in kids. So, the emergency use is for adults, but hepatitis B vaccine has been given to infants for decades. Ours is the same technology. We’re doing now step-down studies in kids. So we’re hoping that could be the vaccine to immunize kids all over the world, as well. The one thing we don’t have is a path for the U.S., because we don’t have a U.S. partner.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what exactly does that mean? I mean, you’re the Baylor Texas Children’s Hospital. The vaccine is called Corbevax. Can you explain the older technology? I mean, Johnson & Johnson also used an older technology, and now it is not as effective as the Moderna and Pfizer. Can you talk about that and how your vaccine exactly works?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Well, again, the Johnson & Johnson is an adenovirus vector technology. That’s never been used before to make a vaccine in anything near this scale. So, in that sense, the adenovirus technology is a new technology. Ours is truly an old-school technology that’s been used to make recombinant hepatitis B vaccine. It’s microbial fermentation in yeast. It’s even a vegan vaccine, which is kind of interesting. So, now our partners in Indonesia who are scaling it up are trying to do this as a halal vaccine for Muslim-majority countries, which is pretty exciting, as well.

And as I said, you know, what we do is we license the technology, and we provide the prototype, production cell bank, no strings attached, no patent. We help in the co-development. And then the countries themselves and those companies own it. So Corbevax is the one for India, owned by Biological E. They work out the clinical development plan with the Indian regulators and the World Health Organization. We’re hands-off. We don’t try to meddle into their business. You know, very much we are a believer in this concept of decolonization. There’s too many colonial trappings around trying to own technology and dictate to the Global South what to do. And for us, that’s quite abhorrent. So we do this without strings attached. Once we do our due diligence that we know it’s a vaccine producer that has a track record of producing vaccines for the world, then we hand it off to them and help them in any way we can, again, at our own expense. We help them with the assays. So it’s no cost to the developing country vaccine manufacturers, who actually call themselves that, the developing vaccine — Developing Country Vaccine Manufacturers’ Network.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to ask what you mean when you say a vegan vaccine or a halal vaccine. How are the others not?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Well, the others use either — often use mammalian cells in some aspects of the process. It’s not that it’s better or worse. It’s just that ours has no animal products in our vaccines. And that makes it a little more straightforward for a country, especially for some of the Muslim-majority countries that worry about whether a vaccine is halal or not.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to Dr. Fauci. This goes to the whole issue of last week the Centers for Disease Control reducing the recommended isolation time for people with asymptomatic infections to five days down from 10. On Sunday, Dr. Fauci appeared on ABC’s This Week and said the CDC is considering updating the isolation guidance after facing widespread criticism.


DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: You’re right there has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration. The CDC is very well aware that there has been some pushback about that. Looking at it again, there may be an option in that that testing could be a part of that. And I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.

AMY GOODMAN: In our next segment, we’re going to be talking more about testing. But this atrocious lack of testing in the United States makes it impossible for there to be a kind of sane approach to all of this. But the fact that the CDC said people could come back to work, which in some cases workers — the employers then require workers to come back to work after five days, without a test, your response to this?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Yeah, as Tony points out, as Dr. Fauci points out, that they’ll probably have to walk that back partly and do an antigen-based test. Look, this was a tough call for the CDC, as well. I think the Omicron variant, which is just so overwhelming and so disruptive because of its high transmissibility, almost as high as measles — were trying to balance what they know about the science with the fact that right now we have to keep our society functioning at some level.

The biggest concern, of course, is all the healthcare providers getting knocked out of the workforce because they’re at home with COVID, and that creates a dangerous situation. And we heard all weekend about the problems with the airlines and the fact that ground crews are absent, air traffic controllers are absent.

So, one of the — you know, each variant has its own unique attributes or its own what I call little shop of horrors. In the case of Omicron, it’s this credibly high transmissibility, that could be so disruptive socially in maintaining a society as we know it. So I think the CDC was trying to balance what makes sense scientifically with the reality of trying to keep the country functioning. I actually don’t fault them as much as others do. Yes, I think they probably should have had the antigen test added on afterwards, but, you know, it’s tough when you’re in the middle of a firestorm to always get it perfect the first time around.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about children — I mean, after all, you are at Texas Children’s Hospital — the enormous number of children who are now coming down with COVID, but how seriously are they being affected?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Well, I think there’s two aspects to this. First of all, we saw this a little bit with the Delta variant here in the South, in Texas, over the summer, that it was much more transmissible than previous lineages, and kids were getting swept up in it. It wasn’t because Delta was selectively targeting kids. And I think that’s probably true of Omicron, as well. When you have something this transmissible, a lot of kids are getting infected.

And what you’re seeing are two types of hospital admissions. So, first of all, I think there are some kids who are getting admitted for various conditions, and upon testing, routine testing for hospitalization, they’re found to be positive. So they may be actually asymptomatic for their COVID but found to be positive. And I think that’s part of the hospitalizations. The other are, there are kids who are genuinely sick from COVID-19, and a lot of younger kids, as well. And now that schools are opening, especially in the North, where transmission is so high, we should expect that trend to continue.

And again, it’s going to be that one-two punch of having kids hospitalized and healthcare workers in pediatric hospitals at home because they’re ill from COVID or found to be positive. And I think that’s the — for me, that’s the dangerous situation with COVID-19. Yes, it looks like, overall, the virus may produce less severe disease, but still enough to cause a pretty steep rise in hospitalizations. We’re seeing a 50 to 60% rise in hospitalizations in New York and Washington, D.C., and having that healthcare workforce unable to adequately take care of those hospitalized individuals. One thing that we’ve learned during the last two years of this pandemic is when ERs, emergency rooms, in pediatric ICUs or ICUs get overwhelmed, that’s when mortality really skyrockets. And that’s the danger point that we are with COVID-19, on top of the fact that two of our three monoclonal antibodies do not work for the Omicron variant, and we don’t have enough of that third one. Paxlovid is still not here in abundance, so we have to rely on remdesivir, that has to be given parenterally. It doesn’t work quite as well as Paxlovid. And as we started at the beginning, the diagnostic testing is still a debacle.

So, when you put all of that stuff in the mix, you’ve got a very dangerous epidemic here in the United States in the month of January. And, of course, this brings us back to how we started our whole conversation, which is, all of this was predicted and predictable and preventable had we showed greater resolve to vaccinate the world, especially the world’s low- and middle-income countries.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you tweeted, “Since June … 2021, … 200,000 unvaccinated Americans lost their lives [due] to Covid … despite … widespread availability” of vaccines. Two hundred thousand Americans needlessly died because they believed disinformation from the far right, you tweeted. However, vaccine hesitancy seems to span the political divide, with left-leaning parents, some refusing to vaccinate themselves or their kids. Your message to those who think vaccines are a profit-making mechanism for Big Pharma that will pollute their bodies and irreversibly alter their immune system’s natural responses?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Well, the first part may be true. Vaccines clearly have been profitable for Pfizer and Moderna, but it doesn’t mean that — but they can still save your life. So I think that that’s the message. And we’ve seen that of those 200,000 Americans who’ve died since June 1, we now know that 85% were unvaccinated, the other 15% split between partially vaccinated and a few full vaccinated, especially if they were immunocompromised or of extremely high age. But, overwhelmingly, it’s the unvaccinated who are losing their lives.

And, overwhelmingly, that is coming from an aggressive campaign of disinformation, what I call anti-science aggression, coming from the conservative news outlets, coming from the members of Congress. You talked about Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene just being taken off Twitter. That’s in part because she’s been out there at the CPAC conference and elsewhere discrediting vaccines, she and her colleagues. So we have about a half a dozen members of the U.S. Congress going out of their way to discredit the safety of vaccines, even saying they’re political instruments of control, or ridiculous things like, “First they’re going to vaccinate you, and then they’re going to take away your guns and your Bibles.” And as absurd as that sounds to us, there’s a fourth of the country that actually believes it, and those are the ones who are not getting vaccinated. And we even have far-right think tanks to give these far-right groups intellectual cover, academic cover. So, this is a whole ecosystem coming from political extremism on the far right, and it’s a killer. I’ve written an article called “Anti-science kills,” because now it’s killed 200,000 Americans since last June.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Dr. Peter Hotez, I want to thank you for being with us, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, just came up with a vaccine that is being made available patent-free to the world. Dr. Hotez’s latest book, Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science.


Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

CRONY CAPITALI$M

'Defining moment': S.Africa report on Zuma-era graft handed over



'Defining moment': S.Africa report on Zuma-era graft handed overZuma's jailing sparked violent protests that devolved into rioting and looting in his home region, KwaZulu-Natal 

(AFP/GUILLEM SARTORIO)

Tue, January 4, 2022

South African investigators on Tuesday handed over the first instalment of a long-awaited report into corruption at the heart of the state under former president Jacob Zuma.

The fruit of four years' work, the report was handed to Zuma's successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has vowed to root out graft and financial sleaze.

"This is what I would call a defining moment in our country's effort to definitively end the era of state capture and to restore the integrity... of our institutions and more importantly our government," Ramaphosa said.

The findings, he hoped, would "mark a decisive break with the corrupt practices that our country has experienced in the past."

Ramaphosa said he would brief parliament by the end of June on his response to the report, drawn up by a top-level commission which does not itself have powers of prosecution.

Zuma, 79, became post-apartheid South Africa's fourth president in May 2009, succeeding Thabo Mbeki.

But his presidency became stained by a reputation for corruption, with cronies influencing government appointments, contracts and state businesses.

- Billions looted -

The web-like process, known in South Africa as "state capture," led to losses that at the time were equivalent to nearly seven billion dollars, according to a past estimate by Pravin Gordhan, a former finance minister given responsibility for state companies.

As the outcry mounted, Zuma was pressed into establishing an investigative commission under Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, before he was forced out of office in February 2018 by the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

"It's been a gruelling four years," Zondo said on Tuesday as he physically handed the weighty volume to Ramaphosa at a ceremony in Pretoria.

The second volume will be handed to Ramaphosa at the end of January, and the third and final tome at the end of February, according to the presidency.

The first instalment deals with corruption at South African Airways, the New Age newspaper, the country's tax collector and the issue of public procurement, Zondo said.

Over 34 months, his commission heard accounts of rampant misappropriation of funds from some of the 270 witnesses, who included business people, civil servants and intelligence officers.

Much of the evidence to the commission related to a wealthy Indian immigrant family headed by three brothers -- Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta -- who are accused of having wielded undue influence over Zuma.

- Bags of cash claim -

The brothers are at the centre of claims they paid bribes to influence ministerial appointments and plunder state bodies.

They fled South Africa shortly after the commission started its work, and their whereabouts are unknown.

Paul Holden, an investigator who runs an NGO alongside a former ANC MP, told Zondo the estimated cost of the Guptas' illicit activities could have been as much as 50 billion rand ($3.12 billion, 2.76 billion euros).

One witness described bags bulging with cash being delivered to ANC grandees during secret meetings in upmarket hotels in exchange for lucrative contracts for one private company.

Several witnesses detailed an audit for a major asbestos roof removal project in central Free State province. The project was never completed, yet $10 million went missing.

This led to the indictment and suspension of ANC secretary general Ace Magashule, the provincial premier at the time.

- Zuma snub -

Zuma repeatedly refused to testify to the commission and in July was jailed for contempt of court.

Despite the corrupt reputation of his presidency, Zuma remains popular among many grassroots ANC members.

His imprisonment sparked violent protests that devolved into rioting and looting in his home region, KwaZulu-Natal, and spread to the financial hub Johannesburg.

In a separate case, Zuma is facing 16 charges of fraud, graft and racketeering relating to a 1999 purchase of military equipment from five European arms companies when he was deputy president.

The report's handover comes as the political system reels from the fire which destroyed swathes of the parliament in Cape Town after it caught ablaze on Sunday, the day that Archbishop Desmond Tutu's funeral was held in the city.

The fire has been contained and a man was due in court on Tuesday charged with arson.

bur-ad-gw/ri

Detained Ugandan satirical novelist displays signs of torture on brief home visit

Nearly a week after his arrest, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, a prominent Ugandan satirical novelist and critic of President Yoweri Museveni made a surprise visit home under guard. Security forces wanted to search the dissident writer’s house, but his wife didn’t have to search for visible signs of torture as her husband turned victim, once again, of Uganda’s brutal crackdown on dissent.

The New Year was off to a harrowing start for Eva Basiima, wife of award-winning Ugandan author Kakwenza Rukirabashaija. She had not heard from her husband since his arrest last week after the satirical novelist disparaged Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his powerful son in social media posts.

When she saw her husband again on Monday, Basiima was left traumatised.

Nearly a week after his December 28 arrest, security forces brought Rukirabashaija home while they conducted a search of his home. The 33-year-old novelist and winner of the prestigious 2021 PEN Pinter Prize displayed visible signs of torture, according to his wife.

“He was in a bad state … I broke down. I’ve never been so broken like yesterday,” Basiima said in a phone interview with FRANCE 24 from her home in the Ugandan town of Iganga on Tuesday. “His legs were swollen, he looked starved. He was trying to show me under his feet, his soles, they were very badly bruised. He was in handcuffs and wearing the same clothes he was wearing on December 28, when he left us.”

While security officials searched the house for nearly three hours, overturning everything and terrifying the couple’s three young children, Rukirabashaija was allowed to use the toilet. He was then granted permission to take a shower – with an officer in the bathroom – since he hadn’t been able to wash himself or even brush his teeth for nearly a week.

“He refreshed [himself] and left his clothes in the bathroom. I looked at them, they were filled with blood, there were dried blood stains on his clothes. I took them and I kept them as evidence,” explained Basiima.

It was a resourceful move from a woman who is no stranger to Uganda’s systemic use of torture and intimidation tactics against critics of Museveni and his inner circle. Within hours, images of her husband’s blood-stained shirt and underpants circulated on Twitter. In a message alerting the international community, Rukirabashaija’s lawyer Eron Kiiza on Monday posted photographs of the clothes and condemned “the heinous torture” of his client.

During the house search, Basiima was not able to speak to her husband privately or at length. But she saw sharp piercings on the soles of his feet, leading her to suspect her husband was made to walk on nails. His stained underpants have sparked fears that he is urinating blood due internal injuries.

Experiencing and writing about torture

The signs of torture, including bruises and a damaged kidney, were unfortunately familiar to Basiima. This is the third time the Ugandan author has been arrested over the past two years. He has claimed that he was tortured during all of his arrests.

In April 2020, Rukirabashaija was detained and questioned about his novel, “The Greedy Barbarian”, which takes on themes of high-level corruption in a fictional country.

Following his release, the author wrote about his experience with torture in another book, “Banana Republic: Where Writing Is Treasonous”. In September 2020 he was arrested again, interrogated about his second novel, and released under a bond requiring him to report to the police on a weekly basis for an indefinite period.

Rukirabashaija’s fearless drive to speak truth to power was internationally recognised last year, when he was awarded the PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage prize in October 2021.

Two months later he was detained again while driving from his home in Iganga, where he had celebrated Christmas, to the capital Kampala.

‘Unconditional’ release order, but no freedom

Under Ugandan law detainees can be held for 48 hours without charges. But Basiima had heard nothing about the case, nor had she seen or heard from her husband until his shocking appearance on Monday morning, nearly a week after his arrest.

During the house search, the 33-year-old kept badgering security officers for details of the charges against her husband. They declined to answer and told her instead that the charges would be filed in a Kampala court later Monday. When they left, Basiima made the 120 kilometre journey from Iganga to Kampala, but there was no court hearing. She returned home shortly after midnight.

On Tuesday, a Kampala court ruled in Rukirabashaija’s favour in a civil complaint against his illegal detention without charges. Magistrate Irene Nambatya ruled that the Ugandan writer should be “unconditionally” released, adding: “Every police officer should comply with the above order.”

But in a phone interview with FRANCE 24 just hours after the ruling, Kiiza said his client had not been released. Rukirabashaija was due to appear in a separate criminal court on Tuesday but he did not show up, the human rights lawyer noted.

“No formal charges have been filed – that can only be done when he is brought to court. They can still go ahead and charge him. The highest likelihood is they will charge him. Police fear producing him in court with torture marks, that’s why they are delaying bringing him to court,” explained Kiiza.

Since Rukirabashaija’s arrest, Kiiza said he has been denied access to his client.

Meanwhile, Charles Twiine, spokesman for the Police Criminal Investigations Department (CID), told reporters in Kampala that Rukirabashaija was to be charged under the Computer Misuse Act with an offence that can carry up to a year in jail.

Despite the civil ruling for his immediate release, the authorities are likely to continue intimidating Rukirabashaija. “It fits in with what’s already happened to Kakwenza: when he was arrested for a second time and released, he was required to report to police pending investigation. It’s within the continuum of ongoing harassment for his open criticism of public officials,” explained Nduko o’Matigere, Africa regional coordinator at PEN International, in a phone interview with FRANCE 24 from Nairobi.

A ‘quasi-monarchy’ with ‘military aristocracy’ underpinnings

Uganda’s crackdown on freedom of expression increased in the lead-up to last year’s elections, when Museveni – Africa’s longest-serving leader – won a sixth term in office. His main rival – a former rap star known by his stage name, Bobby Wine – challenged the results but later withdrew the case, citing a lack of confidence in the judicial system.

Rukirabashaija had recently stepped up criticism of Museveni’s son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, an army general who many Ugandans believe is positioning himself to take over from his 77-year-old father.

The 47-year-old Kainerugaba’s rise up the military ranks is being carefully monitored by experts who note that the country’s security forces are key to his father’s grip on power.

In the course of his 35 years in power, Museveni, a former senior military officer, has frequently shuffled officers to remove rivals and promote loyalists. His inner circle today includes his son; his wife, Education Minister Janet Museveni; and his younger brother, former military officer Salim Saleh. It’s a power nexus that the British magazine Africa Confidential acerbically described as “a quasi-monarchy” with “a kind of military aristocracy underpinning it”.

On social media sites, Museveni’s son is a larger-than-life figure; a subject of much lampooning by government critics and expats. But the 47-year-old first son, who leads the military’s land forces and has commanded special forces accused of violations, also has vocal supporters on Twitter who proclaim Kainerugaba is the man who will “carry forward the mission to transform Uganda”.

‘Justice must prevail’

When he seized power in 1986, ending years of tyranny under Idi Amin and Milton Obote, Museveni was hailed as a reformist. But the former rebel has since stifled dissent and changed the constitution to allow himself to stand in elections again and again.

“The international community needs to put a focus on Uganda and condemn the wanton disrespect for human rights until Uganda takes seriously its constitutional promises and international rights obligations that it signs,” said o’Matigere.

The East African country has long been a major recipient of US foreign aid and security assistance, particularly for counterterrorism operations in the region, notably in Somalia.

But in recent times, there are signs that Washington’s patience with the Museveni administration’s violations is wearing thin. Following the latest pre-election crackdown on opposition supporters, which killed more than 50 people, Museveni failed to make it on US President Joe Biden’s list of invitees to the December 2021 Summit for Democracy.

Last month the US announced sanctions against Uganda’s military intelligence chief, Major General Abel Kandiho, citing his involvement in serious human rights abuses including beatings, sexual assault and torture.

But from her home in Iganga – where she is struggling to reassure her three young children, traumatised by the sight of their badly beaten father brought home by security officers – Basiima said she would like the international community to do more. “In my humble opinion, justice must prevail,” she said slowly between sobs. “I’m requesting the international community to fight for justice and for any help that can be rendered to us.”