WHITE PRIVELEGE AND EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTISM IN ACTION

    I CALL THEM ARMAGEDDONISTS, THEY WANT THE END TIMES

Around 700 people gathered on Saturday in Kelowna to protest against the government’s COVID-19 restrictions and health orders. 

They were calling it a freedom rally.

PRO CHOICE ABOUT THEIR BODIES, BUT DENY WOMEN THE SAME RIGHT

STOP IT YOU ARE KILLING ME

Bitcoin mining can be a 'bridge' to a renewable energy future by supporting green projects, a leading North American miner says

NO FUCKING WAY IT'S A USELESS CHIP IN CASINO CAPITALI$M

© Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters Bitcoin mining is hugely energy intensive, requiring vast amounts of computing power Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

Bitcoin can be at the heart of the transition towards renewable energy, Foundry boss Mike Colyer said.

He said bitcoin mining can help renewable projects manage oversupply and support more investment.

Many remain unconvinced, with Bank of America attacking bitcoin's energy use this week.

Bitcoin mining can help the development of renewable energy technologies by allowing a quicker return on green investments, according to the head of one of North America's biggest crypto miners.

Mike Colyer, chief executive of Foundry, a sister company of major bitcoin player Grayscale, told Insider he thinks bitcoin can be "a bridge between our current energy production and this future world of renewable energy production."

His argument is the boom in green-energy creation has led to oversupply in many areas, which can be difficult to manage and costly for renewables firms.

Colyer said locating bitcoin mines near renewable energy projects can help deal with this oversupply, in turn helping the development of green technology.

"It allows for a faster payback on those solar projects or wind projects, which means more of them can be built faster in regions where before it was not attractive, because they would produce too much energy for the grid in that area," he said.

TRYING TO SAY THEY CAN EVER BE GREEN  WHILE BEING PROFIT DRIVEN IS A FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN PLATFORMS POTENTIAL FOR P2P AND FINTECH TO ACTUALLY CREATE A INFORMATION ENERGY CREDIT SYSTEM

 

Other miners have echoed this argument, although the secretive nature of the industry means it is difficult to gauge the rate of change.

And many remain unconvinced. As the bitcoin price has soared this year, arguments over its intense energy use have heated up, with climate concerns making some investors wary of the world's biggest cryptocurrency.

Bank of America analysts on Wednesday said in a note that bitcoin is "not good news for the environment," estimating that it uses almost the same amount of electricity as the Netherlands.

"Bitcoin's estimated energy consumption has grown over 200% in the past two years, creating large environmental risks," the analysts, including commodities strategist Francisco Blanch, wrote. They noted that most mining is done in China, where coal is dominant.

Bitcoin is "mined" when computers are hooked up to the cryptocurrency's network to verify transactions. As a reward for this work, which involves solving puzzles, miners can sometimes receive small amounts of bitcoin.

Huge amounts of computing power are now dedicated to mining bitcoin, with more drawn in as the price skyrockets.

Yet Colyer said bitcoin mining is increasingly using renewable energy as green power becomes cheaper. His mining company Foundry is owned by Grayscale-owner Digital Currency Group, and also provides equipment financing and advice.

"The bitcoin algorithm is relentless in its drive for efficiency and cost reduction," he said. "It's built in, there's no stopping it. Every miner in the world is constantly looking for ways to take cost out of the production of bitcoin. And the most cost-effective energy [in North America] is renewable energy."

A report from Cambridge University in September last year estimated 39% of proof-of-work mining is powered by renewable energy, primarily hydroelectric.

Michel Rauchs, an affiliate of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, told Insider it is difficult to come up with an accurate assessment of how "green" bitcoin is.

He said within China the renewable share of mining changes throughout the year due to "seasonal migration patterns" that see miners move towards hydroelectric plants during the wet season. "So it really depends at what point of time... you're looking at this," he said.

The Bank of America analysts argued bitcoin's energy consumption is only going to worsen due to the system's structure, which makes mining more difficult over time.

"The rising complexity of the system creates ultimately a vicious environmental cycle of rising prices, rising hashpower, rising energy consumption and, ultimately, rising CO2 emissions," they wrote.

Colyer said Foundry is working on a number of ways to make mining greener. "We're focused on the newer technology, like immersion mining where the machines are actually put in a coolant and they don't use air cooling... We work with the flare gas guys that are chasing the flare gas emissions."

However, many investors are worried about how long it might take to make bitcoin green.

Bank of America said: "As renewable energy production increases over the next 20 years, quantum computers reduce energy usage, and new, more efficient crypto assets continue to emerge, the cryptocurrency space could eventually find ways to reduce its carbon footprint.

"But a rapid surge in adoption of bitcoin presents a major risk, and thus drives bitcoin's low environmental score."

Read the original article on Business Insider

The GameStop saga didn't revolutionize the stock market - it just proved how out of touch Wall Street has become for the average American

insider@insider.com (Paul Constant) 

3/20/2021

© Provided by Business Insider GameStop's stock prices have been

 erratic since the January squeeze. Spencer Platt/Getty

Paul Constant is a writer at Civic Ventures and a frequent cohost of the "Pitchfork Economics" podcast with Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein.

In the latest episode, they spoke with California congressman Ro Khanna about Robinhood and the GameStop squeeze.

Khanna says the stock-buying craze should serve as a stark reminder of "the over-financialization of our economy."

It feels like a fever dream now, but for one week in late January all anyone in the media could talk about was Gamestop's skyrocketing stock prices.

In case you've already driven the episode out of your memory, here's a brief recap: A Wall Street hedge fund had placed a big bet that America's biggest chain video game retailer was on the verge of failure, and users from a subreddit called WallStreetBets rushed in to buy stock and force the hedge fund to cover their positions, thereby costing the fund billions of dollars in the process and driving the stock price up in what's called a "squeeze."

After GameStop share prices started climbing, stock trading apps that many Redditors used to buy stocks, including Robinhood, suddenly disabled the capacity of users to buy additional shares of GameStop and other so-called "meme stocks" for on-the-skids companies like AMC and BlackBerry that had gained new prestige thanks to WallStreetBets.

Before Robinhood throttled the stock-buying craze, the internet was full of pundits claiming that the little guy was finally striking back against Wall Street, that the age of hedge funds had come to an end, and that a new economic order was dawning. But now that GameStop's share price has declined considerably (though it remains quite erratic,) those hot takes all seem like empty hyperbole. Hedge funds made fistfuls of money off the GameStop stock fad, and the stock-trading revolution didn't materialize. The rich got richer - and everyone else, by and large, either lost money or coasted along.

In this week's episode of "Pitchfork Economics," Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein talk with Representative Ro Khanna, who represents California's Silicon Valley, to discuss the true lessons of GameStop mania.

Robinhood's motives

Khanna has some harsh words for Robinhood's decision to disable its users capability to buy certain meme stocks without any explanation. "Even if you don't think there's any nefarious motive - my sense is it was a liquidity issue and they didn't have the money required to meet the clearinghouse collateral requirements - you wonder why they didn't have to have disclosure," Khanna said.

"They had no disclosure to their investors. They took no provisions to have loans or other capital available if they ever ran into that situation," Khanna continued, adding that Robinhood also was selling customer data to a market maker called Citadel Securities, which then likely profited from the use of that information.

"It does create questions about whether these conflicts of interest should really exist," Khanna said, "and whether people should be allowed to trade on your data when you have a relationship with someone who has a different financial interest than the investors trading on the site."

Robinhood, then, seems to be built on two separate models of exploitation. Not only does it serve as a low-friction entry point to the rigged casino of Wall Street, where the house always wins and the little day trader always loses, but it also apparently has the privacy issues of a Facebook or a Tiktok, in which users may not realize that their every move is being scrutinized, packaged, and sold to the highest bidder. Both types of exploitation have thrived under decades of deregulation, and they're likely to only get worse without some form of government intervention.

On a broader scale, Khanna calls the GameStop craze a potent reminder "of the over-financialization of our economy."

Some 55% of Americans aren't invested in the stock market at all, "The fact that so much attention is being paid to this gambling as opposed to investing in building things - battery storage plants or electric vehicle plants - should make us pause about what's going on in our economic system and why," Khanna said.

Wall Street's disconnect

The past year, in which the stock market climbed ever higher throughout the pandemic, even while more and more Americans lost their jobs and financial stability, offers even more proof that Wall Street has become unmoored from the average American's experience.

Financial success has less and less to do with the creation of solutions to everyday problems and more and more to do with stripping value and leveraging profits away from existing assets. To flip Mitt Romney's 2012 leaked fundraiser speech on its head, rather than making products and services with real-world value, finance has become about taking assets away from the average American.

Or, as Hanauer asked late in the episode, "Why in the world would you want to make it more lucrative for a highly talented person to rub money together to make more money, rather than go crack some medical problem, or invent some gizmo that could actually increase human welfare?"

It's a fundamental economic question, and one that will only become more pressing as hedge funds and tech startups continue to run amok. Is the point of capitalism for a select few to make as much money as possible, no matter who gets hurt in the process?

 

Or should the forces of capitalism be directed through regulation toward building concrete benefits for all society?  THAT WOULD BE SOCIALISM 

The next time these two dueling economic philosophies come into conflict, much more than a chain retailer's flagging stock price might be at stake.

     AND THEY WILL DO THIS RATHER RAPIDLY DO SO BECAUSE           OF CAPITALIST ACCELERATIONISM 

SAID EVERY SOCIAL DEMOCRAT EVER 

 

U.S. Weighs Global Climate Impact Benchmark for Wall Street
Jessica Shankleman, Saleha Mohsin and Jennifer A. Dlouhy 

3/20/2021

(Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration is considering ways to push the global finance industry to consistently account for carbon dioxide emissions and green investments, according to people familiar with the matter.

© Bloomberg Photovoltaic panels at the Calexico Solar Farm II in this aerial photograph taken over Calexico, California, U.S. on Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. As the threat of blackouts continues to plague California, officials are pointing to battery storage as a key to preventing future power shortfalls. But the Golden State is going to need a lot more batteries to weather the next climate-driven crisis—let alone to achieve its goal of a carbon-free grid.

The Treasury Department and U.S. regulators are in the early stages of working on measures to improve companies’ environmental impact disclosure, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. The moves seek to address carbon leakage -- where producers move to regions with less restrictive pollution rules -- and climate-related metrics for Environmental, Social and Governance-based investing, the people said.


Part of the effort would include recommendations being crafted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for companies to report their environmental impact, according to one person.

The intent is to boost demand for assets that tackle climate change, while preventing companies from making claims that could be considered “greenwashing,” or overstating the significance of emissions reductions and sustainability efforts, the people said. They asked not to be identified because Treasury’s discussions are not public.

There are already several industry-driven initiatives to establish a set of rules for green finance. But experts warn that without strong oversight the industry could settle on looser standards that allow firms to continue supporting carbon-intensive activities while using cheap offsets to claim they’re doing what’s needed to slow global warming.

The U.S. government looks forward to exchanging views with the European Union on a coming carbon border adjustment plan, set to be made public in June, according to an emailed statement from the State Department.

The Biden administration’s work with global partners on climate change “will include exploring and developing market and regulatory approaches to address greenhouse gas emissions in the global trading system,” the State Department said. “As appropriate, and consistent with domestic approaches to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, this includes consideration of carbon border adjustments.”

A Treasury spokesperson declined to comment. An SEC spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The SEC announced Monday that it would solicit public comment on potential changes to policies governing climate disclosure, including whether it should set different standards for various industries and whether investors should have a say in what specific corporations have to reveal.

Gary Gensler, Biden’s nominee to lead the SEC, who’s currently awaiting Senate confirmation, would be responsible for implementing any changes to companies’ disclosure requirements.

Read more: SEC Signals Tougher Rules for Corporate Climate Disclosures

Wall Street banks such as Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions. That requires a focus on cutting emissions first, before using offsets to neutralize any pollution that still remains. Doing so usually requires costly structural changes.

President Joe Biden is pushing for the U.S. to take more aggressive climate action. He’s expected to announce a 2030 pollution reduction goal next month that will align with efforts to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels, according to two people familiar with the matter.

That’s the most-ambitious target under the Paris Agreement. The U.S. government is convening a summit with the world’s top carbon emitters on April 22, with hopes of driving more ambitious emissions-reductions and climate-finance commitments.

Related: Yellen Gets a Shot to Put Treasury Clout Into Climate Fight

Since taking office, Biden has sought to convince other world leaders that the U.S. is firmly back in the global fight against climate change, after it pulled back under President Donald Trump. Hashing out definitions of green financing will be a key part of discussions at international climate talks scheduled for November in Glasgow, Scotland.

The Biden administration’s green finance framework should start to take shape by June, when leaders of the Group of Seven countries are due to meet in southwest England, the people said. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government also wants carbon leakage to be on the agenda.

“Raising ambition as we go to Glasgow is so critical,” U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said earlier this month at CERAWeek by IHS Markit.

In Glasgow, “we will meet with the nations that met in Paris to hold the earth’s temperature hopefully to no larger than a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase,” Kerry said. “Our hope is that by keeping 1.5 degrees alive in the next 10 years, we lay the groundwork for the exciting venture of transitioning to clean energy.”

The U.S. and Europe could have an identical set of rules that determine what counts as green investment, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Kerry in Paris this month. The EU is due to propose a regulation on the so-called taxonomy in April.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said she will create a “climate hub” within Treasury to address Biden’s “whole-of-government” approach toward climate change. The hub will be overseen by a senior adviser who is expected to report directly to Yellen, one of the people said.

A Treasury climate “czar” hasn’t been announced. Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Federal Reserve official who served in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration, was under consideration for the post, Bloomberg News reported last month.

(Updates with State Department comment in 6th paragraph.)

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

KARMA IS A BITCH

Trump's Mar-a-Lago partially closed due to COVID outbreak
3/20/2021

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, has been partially closed after staff members tested positive for the coronavirus.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

That's according to several people, including one familiar with club operations, who said Mar-a-Lago had “partially closed” a section of the club and quarantined some of its workers “out of an abundance of caution.” The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation by name.

An email sent to members said that service had been temporarily suspended in the club’s dining room and at its beach club because some staff members had recently tested positive. It said the club had undertaken “all appropriate response measures,” including sanitizing affected areas," and that banquet and event services remain open.

“The health and safety of our members and staff is our highest priority,” it read.

The Florida Department of Health did not immediately respond to a phone call and email.

Trump moved to Mar-a-Lago after leaving Washington in January, and has spent the weeks since then laying low, golfing, dining with friends, meeting with Republican party leaders and plotting his political future as he considers running again in 2024.

Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 last fall and has since been vaccinated against the virus.

Mar-a-Lago was the site of his first known exposure more than a year ago. A senior Brazilian official tested positive last year after spending time at Mar-a-Lago, where he posed for a photo next to Trump and attended a family birthday party.

The Trump White House was hit with several subsequent outbreaks after it flouted virus precautions by resisting mask-wearing and continuing to hold large events.

The club in Palm Beach has been a flurry of activity in recent weeks, hosting events and fundraisers, including one to benefit rescue dogs. Trump unexpectedly dropped by the event last week.

In January, Palm Beach County issued a warning to Mar-a-Lago’s management after a New Year’s Eve party that violated an ordinance requiring employees and guests to wear masks. Video of the party posted online by Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., showed that few of the 500 guests wore masks as they crowded the dance floor while rapper Vanilla Ice, Beach Boys co-founder Mike Love and singer Taylor Dayne performed. The club was told future violations would result in fines of $15,000.

The former president was not present at the party. ___

Spencer reported from Fort Lauderdale. Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

Jill Colvin And Terry Spencer, The Associated Press

Finnish astrophotographer spends 1,000 hours over 12 years creating mosaic of the Milky Waymosaic of the Milky Way

By Eoin McSweeney, CNN 

3/21/2021

Capturing panoramas of the Milky Way, the galaxy in which we reside, might seem like a daunting task considering it is, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, about 100,000 light-years across.

© Courtesy JP Metsavainio An photo of the Sharpless 132 nebula which makes up a small part of JP Metsavainio's Milky Way mosaic completed on March 16 after 12 years of work.

But Finnish astrophotographer JP Metsavainio has spent almost 12 years stitching together 234 frames to create a mosaic of 125 degrees of sky. The panorama, which shows 20 million stars, captures the space between the Taurus and Cygnus constellations and was completed on March 16.

"Astronomical photography is one of the most difficult forms of nature photography," Metsavainio, a professional artist, told CNN Friday. "My mosaic image is generally very deep, meaning that it shows extremely dim targets and formations in gas clouds of our home galaxy, the Milky Way."

Each image in the mosaic is an independent artwork and available to see on Metsavainio's blog. He claims an image like this has never existed before, which is one of the reasons he decided to dedicate thousands of hours to the project.

Clear, dark skies away from the light pollution of cities are vital to astrophotography, the photography of astronomical objects, an activity that happens worldwide. Patience is also key, as it can take hours or even days to capture just one photo over a long exposure.

Metsavainio used a range of modified camera lenses and telescopes at his observatory in northern Finland, near the Arctic Circle. He first uses image processing software to adjust levels and color before stitching the separate panels together on Adobe PhotoShop, using stars as indicators to match the correct frames.

The astrophotographer said his favorite images are of supernova remnants, a phenomenon that forms after a star explodes. Several of them are visible in his panorama and the Cygnus Shell, a particularly dim supernova remnant which can be seen as a pale blue ring near the North America nebula, took the astrophotographer 100 hours alone to create.

His blog has had 750,000 visitors since the photo was published, up from an average of about 1,000 a day.

"The reason I keep doing my slow work is basically an endless curiosity, I love to see and show how wonderful our world really is," he told CNN. "This is lonely and slow work but every time I see the results, I'm as thrilled as the first time."

Alongside Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, Metsavainio participated in a live virtual broadcast in September hosted by the Science Museum of London. At the time he was publishing a 3-D book about cosmic clouds with the musician and Astronomy Magazine editor David J Eicher.

A devoted lover of the night sky, Metsavainio plans to continue his work but with a different lens.

"I have shot the night sky with relatively short focal length optics for the last few years," said Metsavainio. "In the future, I'll go back to a longer focal length instrument."

© Courtesy JP Metsavainio Another photo of the Sharpless 132 

nebula which makes up a small part of JP Metsavainio's Milky Way mosaic

© Studio Timo Heikkala Oy JP Metsavainio, the Finnish 

astrophotographer who created the stunning mosaic of the Milky Way.

Europe presses Turkey to rethink ditching violence-on-women pact

By Jonathan Spicer 

3/21/2021

© Reuters/UMIT BEKTAS Protest against Turkey's withdrawal from Istanbul Convention

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - European leaders criticised what they called Turkey's baffling and concerning decision to pull out of an international accord designed to protect women from violence, and urged President Tayyip Erdogan to reconsider.

Erdogan's government on Saturday withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, which it signed onto in 2011 after it was forged in Turkey's biggest city. Turkey said domestic laws, not outside fixes, would protect women's rights.

The Council of Europe accord pledged to prevent, prosecute and eliminate domestic violence and promote equality. Killings of women have surged in Turkey in recent years and thousands of women protested on Saturday against the government's move in Istanbul and other cities.

Germany, France and the European Union responded with dismay - marking the second time in four days Europe's leaders have criticised Ankara over rights issues, after a Turkish prosecutor moved to close down a pro-Kurdish political party.

"We cannot but regret deeply and express incomprehension towards the decision of the Turkish government," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said late on Saturday.

It "risks compromising the protection and fundamental rights of women and girls in Turkey (and) sends a dangerous message across the world," he said. "We therefore cannot but urge Turkey to reverse its decision."

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen - who spoke with Erdogan a day before Turkey ditched the pact - tweeted on Sunday: "Women deserve a strong legal framework to protect them," and she called on all signatories to ratify it.

The convention had split Erdogan's ruling AK Party (AKP) and even his family. Officials floated pulling out last year amid a dispute over how to curb domestic violence in Turkey, where femicide has tripled in 10 years according to one monitoring group.

But many conservatives in Turkey and in Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AKP say the pact undermines family structures, encouraging violence. Some are also hostile to its stance against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

Paris said Turkey's withdrawal marked a new regression in respect for human rights, while Berlin said neither culture, religion nor tradition could "serve as an excuse for ignoring violence against women".

The diplomatic strain comes after Europe and the United States this past week said the move to close down parliament's third-largest party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), undermined democracy in Turkey.

In their video call on Friday, Erdogan, Von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel discussed a dispute, which has cooled, over offshore resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

An EU summit this week will address relations with Ankara.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Brazil coronavirus: No vaccines, 

no leadership, no end in sight. 

How nation has become a global threat

by Matt Rivers, CNN

3/21/2021

LONG READ 

The temperature read 95 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, but the humidity made it feel worse. Amid the stifling late summer Rio de Janeiro heat, Silvia Silva Santos steadied her 77-year-old mother as they walked toward the clinic gate.

© Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images Medical staff transport 

a patient on a stretcher at a field hospital as coronavirus cases

 soar on March 11, 2021 in Santo Andre, Brazil.

© Provided by CNN Brazil Covid-19 crisis overwhelmed ICU 

vaccine shortage Rivers 

"We've already come here twice but she hasn't managed to get a vaccine," said Silva Santos. "She just stands in line and then there's no more vaccines and we have to leave."

At the gate, Silva Santos asked the guard if she could get her mother a vaccine. Keenly aware of CNN cameras watching, he quickly ushered her in.

About five minutes later, the pair came back out, bad news written on their faces.

"I think this is very wrong," said Silva Santos, clearly angry and frustrated. "Now we'll have to find out again when they'll have vaccines and you never know when."

That frustration rippled through the elderly crowd as person after person was denied a first dose of a vaccine, after the state of Rio de Janeiro suspended its vaccination campaign because it had run out of vaccine supplies.

"This is a disaster, a total disaster," a woman told CNN after being denied her vaccine. "Who is to blame for all this? I think our leaders, our politicians suck."


The growing perfect storm

The Covid-19 crisis in Brazil has never been worse. Nearly every Brazilian state has an ICU occupancy of 80% or higher, according to a CNN analysis of state data. As of Friday, 16 of 26 states were at or above 90%, meaning those health systems have collapsed or are at imminent risk of doing so.

The seven-day averages of both new cases and new deaths are higher than they have ever been.

In the last 10 days, about a quarter of all coronavirus deaths worldwide have been recorded in Brazil, according to CNN analysis.

"They are clear signs that we are in a phase of very critical acceleration of the epidemic and it is unprecedented," said Jesem Orellana, a Brazilian epidemiologist.

If vaccines are the ultimate way out from this global pandemic, Brazil has a long way to go to seeing this through.

As of Friday, less than 10 million people in the country of about 220 million had received at least one dose, according to federal health data. Only 1.57% of the population had been fully vaccinated.

That is the result of a slow rollout program that has been plagued by delays. During the announcement of its distribution plan in early February, the government promised some 46 million vaccine doses to be available in March. It's been repeatedly forced to lower that number, now estimating only 26 million by month's end.

In-country production of what the governments says will eventually be hundreds of millions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine only just got off the ground. The first 500,000 doses were delivered and celebrated by top Ministry of Health officials in Rio de Janeiro this week, despite being months behind schedule.

"[There are] no vaccines in an amount that would really make an impact right now," said Natalia Pasternak, a Brazilian microbiologist, who said it won't be until well into the second half of the year before enough vaccines are available to make a substantive impact on the epidemic.

If vaccines are to remain in short supply for the foreseeable future, the only remaining ways to control the epidemic's exponential growth in Brazil are the methods the world has heard ad nauseam -- social distancing, no large crowds, restricted movements and good hygiene.

But in many places throughout Brazil, that is just not happening. In bustling Rio de Janeiro, it is easy to find maskless crowds walking the streets, conversing in close quarters.

Though the city's famed beaches are closed this weekend, restaurants and bars can still be open until 9 p.m., many likely to be filled to capacity.

Many states have imposed much harsher restrictions including nighttime curfews, but local leaders are fighting against federal leadership, or a lack thereof, determined to keep things open.

President Jair Bolsonaro, a Covid-19 skeptic who has mocked the efficacy of vaccines and hasn't publicly taken one himself, announced Thursday that he would be taking legal action against certain states in the country's Supreme Court, claiming the only person who can decree curfews is him -- something he has promised never to do.

Despite thousands of people dying from the virus each day, he claims the real threat is from the economic harm virus-prompted restrictions can impose.

Millions of his supporters are following his lead, openly flaunting local regulations of social distancing and mask wearing.

All of this would be concerning enough on its own, but it is exacerbated by a deeply concerning reality -- the spread of Covid-19 variants.

'People don't realize how much worse P.1 is'

The P.1 variant was first discovered in Japan. Health authorities detected the viral mutation in multiple travelers that were returning from Amazonas state, an isolated region in Brazil's north replete with rainforest.

CNN reported from the region in late January, where a brutal second wave of Covid-19 was decimating the city of Manaus.

Nearly two months later, more and more research points to the P.1 variant as a crucial factor not only in the Manaus outbreak but in the nationwide crisis Brazil faces today.

A study from Brazil's top medical research foundation, Fiocruz, from early March found that of eight Brazilian states studied, Covid-19 variants including P.1 were prevalent in at least 50% of new cases.

The variant is widely agreed to be more easily transmissible, up to 2.2 times so according to a recent study. That is more transmissible than the widely discussed B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the United Kingdom, which is up to 1.7 times more transmissible, according to a December study.

That same study also found that people are 25% to 65% more likely to evade existing protective immunity from previous non-P.1 infections.

Finally, there remain concerns the different vaccines might not be as effective against the P.1 variant.

Though a recent study from the UK did find that the "existing vaccines may protect against the Brazilian coronavirus variant," CNN spoke to several epidemiologists who remain concerned.

"The world has not awoken the dire potential reality that P1 variant could represent," said Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist. "People don't realize how much worse P1 is."


Brazil is becoming a global hazard

Amidst Brazil's unmitigated viral spread lies two additional, distinct threats.

One, the easier export of the existing P.1 variant abroad. It's already in at least two dozen countries and counting and international travel to and from Brazil is still open to for most countries.

Two, if the P.1 variant was created here, so can others.

"The pandemic being out of control in Brazil caused the variant," said Pasternak, the Brazilian microbiologist. "And it's going to cause more variants. It's going to cause more mutations because this is what happens when you let the virus replicate freely."

Under the laws of viral evolution, new variants are created to try and allow the virus to spread more easily. Along the way, more dangerous iterations can be created.

"More variants mean that there is a greater probability that one of these variants can really escape all vaccines, for instance," said Pasternak. "It's rare, but it could happen."

That, she says, makes Brazil a global hazard, not just to its neighboring countries but to others around the world.

"All of this together should raise the alarms in every country around the world that we must help Brazil contain P1, lest we all suffer the same fate of the collapsing Brazilian hospital system," said Dr. Feigl-Ding.

With a lack of a vaccines and a government unwilling to take the steps necessary to prevent that from happening, it is unclear how things get better in Brazil anytime soon.

Peru government, transport unions make deal to end strike

The Peruvian government and transport unions, striking since Monday over fuel price increases, have reached an agreement to end the protests, authorities announced Saturday

© Diego Ramos A blockade on the road linking the Peruvian

 cities of Puno and Arequipa on March 17, 2021

"After a long day of dialogue, leaders of the transport unions reached an agreement with the government and signed an act benefitting the sector and are committed to lifting their strike," the Ministry of Transport said on Twitter.

As part of the agreement, state-owned Petroperu will reduce the price of diesel and fuel will be subsidized by a special fund protecting against price volatility.

The unions agreed to clear roadblocks, including barricades made of rocks, burning tires and tree trunks, which had snarled traffic on main roads in several regions.

Police on Friday broke up several protests and roadblocks, resulting in 71 arrests.

The strike had forced police to deliver medical oxygen tanks meant for coronavirus patients by helicopter. Local media also said the roadblocks caused delays for some people going to vaccination appointments at hospitals.

According to the unions, a gallon (3.8 liters) of diesel had jumped in price to $4.00 in December from $2.90.

The protests came just weeks before April 11 presidential and parliamentary elections.

In neighboring Ecuador, an end to fuel subsidies in 2019 triggered the country's worst unrest in decades, with 10 dead and more than 1,300 injured in anti-government protests led by poor and indigenous communities.

AFP 

3/20/2021

ljc/mls/acb/mdl

Protesters march in Spain demanding rapper's release

lèse-majesté & lèse-poli

cia 

Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday rallied in cities across Spain, including Madrid and Barcelona, calling for the release of a controversial rapper, jailed in mid-February for tweets criticising the royal family and the security forces.

© OSCAR DEL POZO The march in Madrid on Saturday passed off peacefully before the crowds dispersed at the request of the police

© J. Martin Known for his hard-left views, rapper Pablo Hasel was handed a nine-month sentence over tweets glorifying terrorism and videos inciting violence

Shouting slogans such as "Freedom for Pablo Hasel" and "We are the anti-fascists", several hundreds of people took to the streets in the Spanish capital in an unregistered demonstration, according to an AFP reporter.

© OSCAR DEL POZO Rallies were also planned in other Spanish cities such as Barcelona and Palma de Majorca

AFP

3/20/2021 

The march passed off peacefully before the crowds dispersed at the request of the police.

In Barcelona, the main focal point of protests last month, around 100 people marched, waving banners demanding "complete amnesty for Pablo Hasel".

Here, too, the march remained peaceful, in contrast to the demonstrations last month when protesters and police clashed violently.

Rallies were also planned in other Spanish cities such as Palma de Majorca on Saturday.

Known for his hard-left views, Hasel was handed a nine-month sentence over tweets glorifying terrorism and videos inciting violence.

The court ruling said freedom of expression could not be used "as a 'blank cheque' to praise the perpetrators of terrorism".

The rapper was also fined about 30,000 euros ($36,000) for insults, libel and slander for tweets likening former king Juan Carlos I to a mafia boss and accusing police of torturing and killing demonstrators and migrants.

So far, more than 100 people were arrested in the protests, and scores more injured in the clashes, among them many police officers and a young woman who lost an eye after being hit by a foam round fired by police.

The clashes have also sparked a political row that has exacerbated a divide within Spain's leftwing coalition, which groups the Socialists of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the hard-left Podemos.

While the Socialists have firmly opposed the violence, Podemos' leadership has backed the protesters.

The party emerged from the anti-austerity "Indignados" protest movement that occupied squares across Spain in 2011. Their position is that the Hasel case exposes Spain's "democratic shortcoming