Activation breathwork aims to unlock psychedelic state naturally

??? GUEST, LISA LING
November 17, 2023



Surrounded by Sedona, Arizona's scenic red rocks, which many believe have therapeutic powers, a group of people from across the United States recently gathered for a psychedelic experience.

Ocean Eagle, a facilitator with a distinctive cowboy hat and tattoos, led participants on a journey of the mind aimed at harnessing the transformative power of breathing.

"I am here to open up a container of love and safety for you guys," he told retreat participants, setting the stage for a deep dive into emotional healing.

The goal, according to Ocean Eagle, was for participants to connect with — and, if necessary, try to heal — their inner child.

His own journey stems from a childhood marked by alcoholic parents and a brother's early death. Back then, Ocean Eagle was Marty Daniel, and later coped with his trauma by also turning to alcohol.

"I drank a lot...ultimately alcohol was my master," he said.

Despite his addiction, he played college baseball on a scholarship and went on to have a family and a successful real estate business.

"But I was miserable on the inside," he said. "I've had the million-dollar homes....I've had all the cars I've ever wanted, had it all. And none of it filled that hole inside me."

He said his life changed when he went on a retreat and met a woman doing shamanic breathwork.

"I lay down and had a spiritual awakening of biblical proportions," he said. "I turned into an Eagle....and flew over all over Earth. And that moment of oneness, you hear about, I had it in an instant...I'm everything. Everything's me. I'm feminine, masculine, male, female. It just hit me like that."

After that, he trained in holotropic breathwork and developed a unique method: activation breathwork.

The technique, as Ocean Eagle says, aims to activate the body on a cellular level, balancing oxygen and carbon dioxide levels "properly." This releases DMT in the brain, he claims, allowing participants to enter a psychedelic state naturally. DMT is found in some plants and psychedelics, and can produce hallucinations.


Participants, like Nafsheen Luhar, testified to the power of the approach. Luhar, grappling with childhood trauma and uterine cancer, credited the breathwork with helping her release decades of pain.

"Breathwork helped me release 25 years of trauma that I was holding on to. I just didn't even know what hit me. And especially to that degree where everything I've always needed has actually been inside me. I am it, I am my own healer," Luhar said.

A recent session led by Ocean Eagle included affirmations and a carefully chosen playlist. After 90 minutes, the music slowed and people started coming back into a space that their minds had left.

Ocean Eagle gathered the group to talk about their journeys.

"I did a lot of connecting with my children in today's session," one person said. "It was a beautiful experience because I saw visions. I felt like I was in a different world."

"I felt like I got deeply connected with myself and I reached out to a lot of my family. I felt good. And I feel alive," said another participant.

On the retreat's second day, I decided to participate. I felt a little nervous, because I've always had difficulty relinquishing control. But I wanted to do my best to just surrender.

I started off feeling angry about things happening in the world and the wars men have plunged us into throughout history. I had a moment where I was severely grieving for mothers in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict — on both sides of the fight — that have lost their children.

My body started shaking profusely. Ocean Eagle laid his hands on me, but I told him I needed a woman. Jimene, another facilitator, came, and I felt her energy, as though her hands were burning my back.

I later felt like I was holding the Earth and almost wrapping my hands around it, to heal it.

Analisa Novak contributed to this article.

Activation breathwork retreat participants seek psychedelic experience without taking a drug

A Swedish hydrofoil ferry seeks to electrify the waterways

DAVID KEYTON
November 17, 2023 

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Many cities around the world see clean and efficient public transport as a crucial way to lower their carbon emissions. For cities with waterways, a high-tech ferry in Sweden could soon set a new standard.

Speeding through Stockholm’s archipelago, electric boat maker Candela’s new P-12 vessel barely makes a sound as it glides over a meter (3 feet) above the water. Its developers hope the ferry, which was unveiled this week, will yield a new era of waterborne public transport.

“This is a real leap forward,” said Erik Eklund, who is in charge of the commercial vessel division at Candela. “The energy savings we get by going airborne on the foils give us the speed and range we need to make this work on batteries.”

The vessel is designed to carry 30 passengers at a maximum speed of 30 knots (56 kph or 35 mph) — considerably faster than other electric passenger ferries. It achieves this with carbon fiber hydrofoil wings that lift the boat out of the water, reducing drag.

Candela says its technology reduces the energy per passenger-kilometer by 95% compared with the diesel ships that are currently transporting passengers across the picturesque Stockholm archipelago, which is made up of tens of thousands of islands and skerries stretching out into the Baltic Sea.

An added benefit is that the vessel is exempt from the 12-knot speed limit in Stockholm because it leaves no wake — waves made by a boat’s displacement through water that increase with speed and could swamp other vessels or erode the shoreline.

The P-12 is still in testing but is set to enter service in July between the Stockholm suburb of Ekero and the city center as part of a nine-month pilot project. The ferry will cut the travel time from Ekero by conventional public transport from 55 minutes to 25 minutes.

The company wants to build on lessons learned from the launch of their smaller electric hydrofoil leisure boat. Onboard, engineers are fine turning the hydrofoils, which are regulated by a computer 100 times per second to compensate for the sea state and negate the effects of any waves. The vessel can operate in waves of up two meters (6.5 feet).

Candela hopes that as well as Stockholm, cities like San Francisco, New York and Venice will lead the electrification of waterborne public transport.

Gustav Hemming, Vice President of the Regional Executive Board in Stockholm, said the Swedish capital is on board.

“The ambition is, for the Stockholm region, to expand public transport on water, because we think that is one of the keys to make public transport more attractive,” he said.

There were around 6.2 million public transport boat journeys in the Stockholm region in 2022, and while it remains a small part of the entire public transit system, it is the means of public transport that is increasing the most after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our roads are congested and building new ones is very expensive and not very environmentally friendly,” Hemming says. “But here we have our traditional infrastructure. There is no congestion on the water,” he said, looking out onto the open waters of Stockholm on a cold autumnal day.

The use of hydrofoils to raise a vessel out of the water to reduce drag is not new. Ship designers have experimented with the technology for more than a century, but costs and maintenance issues had prevented its widespread adoption. However, new lightweight carbon fiber material saw the technology make a comeback in elite sailing, and with efficient electric motors and high costs for traditional fuels it’s getting a second birth in the public transport sector, too.

“We know that marine vessels are often energy hungry, and the limited energy density of today’s batteries will be a barrier for electrification of a marine fleet,” said Arash Eslamdoost, associate professor of applied hydrodynamics at Chalmer's University of Technology in Gothenburg. “Here is where foiling steps in as a radical solution for taking the most out of the limited onboard electric power.”

Globally, several hydrofoil electric passenger ferries are under design or actively being developed. In the U.K., Artemis Technologies has announced plans for a fully electric hydrofoil ferry to operate in Northern Ireland between Belfast and nearby Bangor possibly as early as next year.

Robin Cook from the Swedish Transport Agency says the maritime industry is ripe for change, especially for short distance connections. But he stressed that public infrastructure must keep up with the latest developments and even encourage this through incentives.

“One important part of the electrification is when the ships connect to the ports through the onshore power supply," he said. "And here the harbors play a very important role to make sure that the infrastructure is in place for these connections.”

THE WAR ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Russian authorities ask the Supreme Court to declare the LGBTQ 'movement' extremist

DASHA LITVINOVA
November 17, 2023 


TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The Russian Justice Ministry on Friday said it has filed a lawsuit with the nation's Supreme Court to outlaw the LGBTQ+ “international public movement” as extremist, the latest crippling blow against the already beleaguered LGBTQ+ community in the increasingly conservative country.

The ministry said in an online statement announcing the lawsuit that authorities have identified “signs and manifestations of extremist nature” in “the activities of the LGBT movement active" in Russia, including “incitement of social and religious discord.” Russia's Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing to consider the lawsuit for Nov. 30, the ministry said.

It is not yet clear what exactly the label would entail for LGBTQ+ people in Russia if the Supreme Court sides with the Justice Ministry, and the ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the move in itself represents the latest, and possibly by far the most drastic, step in the decade-long crackdown on gay rights in Russia unleashed under President Vladimir Putin, who has put “traditional family values” at the cornerstone of his rule.

The crackdown, which began a decade ago, slowly but surely chipped away at LGBTQ+ rights. In 2013, the Kremlin adopted the first legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights, known as the “gay propaganda” law, banning any non-critical public depiction of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2020, Putin pushed through a constitutional reform to extend his rule by two more terms that also outlawed same-sex marriage.

In 2022, after sending troops into Ukraine, the Kremlin ramped up its rhetoric about protecting “traditional values” from what it called the West’s “degrading” influence, in what rights advocates saw as an attempt to legitimize the war in Ukraine. That same year, the authorities adopted a law banning propaganda of “nontraditional sexual relations” among adults, too, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ people.

Another law passed this year prohibited gender transitioning procedures and gender-affirming care for trans people. The legislation prohibited any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records. It also amended Russia’s Family Code by listing gender change as a reason to annul a marriage and adding those “who had changed gender” to a list of people who can’t become foster or adoptive parents.

“Do we really want to have here, in our country, in Russia, ‘Parent No. 1, No. 2, No. 3’ instead of ‘mom’ and ‘dad?’” Putin said in September 2022 at a ceremony to formalize Moscow's annexation of four Ukrainian regions. “Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed in our schools from the primary grades?”

Authorities have rejected accusations of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. Earlier this week, Russian media quoted Andrei Loginov, a deputy justice minister, as saying that “the rights of LGBT people in Russia are protected" legally. Loginov spoke in Geneva, while presenting a report on human rights in Russia to the U.N. Human Rights Council, and argued that “restraining public demonstration of non-traditional sexual relationships or preferences is not a form of censure for them.”

Putin, speaking at a culture-related event in St. Petersburg on Friday, called LGBTQ+ people “part of the society, too" and said they are entitled to winning various arts and culture awards. He did not comment on the Justice Ministry's lawsuit.

Hungary issues an anti-EU survey to citizens on migration, support for Ukraine and LGBTQ+ rights

JUSTIN SPIKE
November 17, 2023 



BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's government on Friday released a set of questions for an informal survey it will send to voters on a number of divisive issues including migration, LGBTQ+ rights and support for Ukraine, including a proposal to block further European Union assistance to Kyiv unless the bloc releases frozen funds to Hungary.

The survey, which the government calls a “national consultation,” contains 11 questions and strikes a combative tone toward the EU, which it accuses of trying to force policies on Hungary.

One question asks whether Hungary should block an EU plan to provide a four-year, 50 billion euro (nearly $53 billion) aid package for Ukraine unless the bloc unfreezes billions in assistance to Hungary that it has held up over concerns that the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has failed to uphold rule-of-law and human rights standards.

“They are asking Hungary for additional support (for Ukraine) even as our country has not received the EU funds due to it,” says one segment of the survey.

“We should not pay more to support Ukraine until we have received the money we are owed,” one possible answer says.

Hungary's national consultation surveys, conducted numerous times by Orbán's right-wing populist government since it took power in 2010, have been widely criticized by pollsters and opposition parties as propaganda tools that are manipulative in their phrasing and highly suggestive of desired answers.

Orbán's government says the surveys strengthen its bargaining position on the European level by demonstrating a national consensus on political issues.

The surveys are sent by mail to every Hungarian of voting age, but bear no legally binding relevance. They generally receive responses from fewer than 20% of Hungarian adults, yet the responses reflect up to 99% agreement with the government's position.

One question released Friday says the EU “wants to create migrant ghettos in Hungary” and asks whether respondents think Hungary should "accept Brussels' migration plans,” or prevent the creation of migrant ghettos.

Another says the EU wants Hungary to repeal a contentious law that bans the availability of LGBTQ+ content to minors and warns of “aggressive LGBTQ propaganda” targeting children.

The survey includes other questions about Ukraine, including a proposal that the EU cease military aid to Kyiv and opposition to talks over Ukraine eventually becoming an EU member.

Hungary's government has refused to supply Ukraine with weapons since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022 and has opposed EU sanctions on Moscow for its aggression.

In the last national consultation, which concluded in January, the government said 97% of Hungarians opposed sanctions against Russia though fewer than 1.4 million people returned the survey in a country of 9.7 million.

The surveys can be returned until Jan. 10, 2024, but the government in the past has extended such deadlines to increase participation.

UPDATED

Union workers at Stellantis and Ford close to ratifying deals that would end lengthy labor disputes

TOM KRISHER
November 17, 2023 at 10:51 AM



DETROIT (AP) — Members of the United Auto Workers union were close to approving contract agreements with Stellantis and Ford on Friday with voting at both companies overwhelmingly in favor and only a few factories yet to cast ballots.

On Friday, workers at Ford had voted 68.2% in favor of the deal with only seven smaller facilities yet to be counted by early Saturday. At the company's huge pickup truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, the vote was 78.7% in favor of the pact, giving it an insurmountable lead of more than 12,600 votes.

At Stellantis, the deal was approved Friday by large margins at two big Detroit plants. Overall, 68.4% of Stellantis workers who cast ballots were in favor of ratification, and the contract was leading by more than 9,600 votes.

Voting at Jeep and Ram vehicle maker Stellantis is scheduled to officially end on Saturday night.

With the deals likely to be approved, workers at Ford and Stellatis would join counterparts at General Motors in ratifying the record contracts, ending a contentious labor dispute that brought a punishing series of strikes over six weeks. GM workers narrowly approved their four year and eight month contract on Thursday.

At Stellantis, workers at the large Jefferson North factory that makes Jeep Grand Cherokees voted 70.7% in favor of the agreement. Nearby, workers at the Detroit Mack Assembly Complex who make the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer SUVs voted 78.3% in favor.

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said he expects the contracts to be ratified at Ford and Stellantis. “It certainly seems that they’re on track to pass,” he said.

The three contracts, if approved by 146,000 union members, would dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant autoworkers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into a 33% wage gain. Top assembly plant workers would get immediate 11% raises and earn roughly $42 per hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

The contract at GM was approved by a much narrower margin than voting at Ford and Stellantis. The deal passed by only 3,400 votes, or 54.7% in favor.

Many GM workers said they voted against the pact because they didn't think pay raises were large enough for longtime workers to make up for concessions made to help the company out of dire financial straits in 2008. Temporary workers and those moving to the top assembly plant wage got much larger increases. More than half of GM's 46,000 union workers get the top assembly plant wage.

Citing the automakers’ strong profits, UAW President Shawn Fain has insisted it was well past time to make up for the 2008 concessions.

Longtime assembly plant workers also wanted to see larger pension increases as well as defined benefit pensions and health care in retirement for workers hired after 2007. With GM making healthy profits, many said the union may have missed the chance to get more because the company may not be doing as well in the next round of talks in 2028.

Many newer hires wanted defined benefit pension plans instead of defined contribution plans. But the companies agreed to contribute 10% per year into 401(k) plans instead.

President Joe Biden has hailed the resolution of the strikes as an early victory for what he calls a worker-centered economy. But the success of the contracts will ultimately hinge on the ability of automakers to keep generating profits as they shift toward electric vehicles.

Thousands of UAW members joined picket lines in targeted strikes starting Sept. 15 before the tentative deals were reached late last month. Rather than striking at one company, the union targeted individual plants at all three automakers. At the peak of the strikes, about 46,000 workers were walking picket lines.

UAW members approve 4½-year contract with Detroit's Big Three

MARLEY JAY
November 16, 2023 

Matthew Hatcher


Union members at Ford, Stellantis and General Motors have ratified a new 4½-year contract, locking in at 11% pay increases secured after a six-week strike in September and October.

The United Auto Workers said that roughly 67% of Ford employees represented by the UAW voted in favor of the contract, which will last through April 30, 2028.

Voting officially ends Friday, but with around 57,000 union employees at Ford, the contract appeared headed toward easy ratification.

The contracts were negotiated after members of the UAW went on strike from Sept. 15 until late October.

Union members will get a total pay increase of 25% over the course of the deal. The new contracts also reinstate cost-of-living adjustments, let workers reach top wages in three years instead of eight and protect their right to strike over plant closures.

Both the UAW and the carmakers described the deals as “record” contracts based on those pay increases. The union also said members were regaining some of the benefits they agreed to give up after the Great Recession to help keep the automakers alive.

Workers at GM approved the contract, but they did so by a much narrower margin than Ford's employees did, with about 55% of workers voting yes.

While UAW President Shawn Fain has called the contacts a victory for workers, he has also said they are part of a larger plan to win back more benefits over the long haul.

According to the UAW's ratification vote tracker, Stellantis employees were on pace to approve the deal at margins similar to Ford workers. With 17,391 votes tallied as of Thursday evening ET, about 66% of ballots had been cast in favor of accepting the contract.

While the general terms of the contracts are similar, workers at Detroit's Big Three automakers are voting to accept or reject them independently.

General Motors becomes 1st of Detroit automakers to seal deal with unionized workers

Thu, November 16, 2023


DETROIT (AP) — United Auto Workers union members have voted to approve a new contract with General Motors, making the company the first Detroit automaker to get a ratified deal that could end a contentious labor dispute and a series of punishing strikes.

A vote-tracking spreadsheet on the union’s website shows that with all local union offices reporting, the contract passed by just over 3,400 votes, with 54.7% in favor. A union spokesman on Thursday confirmed that the spreadsheet had the official GM totals.

The outcome was closer than expected after the UAW’s celebrations of victories last month on many key demands that led to six weeks of targeted walkouts against GM, Ford and Stellantis, the maker of Jeep and Ram vehicles.

On Thursday the contract had a big lead in voting at Ford and Stellantis. Ratification was leading at Ford by more than 10,000 votes, with 66.7% of ballots in favor. At Stellantis, the lead was over 5,700, with 66.5% voting for the deal, according to the UAW website.

Voting continues at Ford through early Saturday with only two large factories in the Detroit area and some smaller facilities left to be counted. At Stellantis, three Detroit-area factories were the only large plants yet to vote, with tallies expected to be complete by Tuesday.

The three contracts, if approved by 146,000 union members, would dramatically raise pay for autoworkers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into a 33% wage gain. Top assembly plant workers would get immediate 11% raises and earn roughly $42 per hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

At GM, about 46,000 workers were eligible to vote on the deal, and about 36,000 cast ballots.

Of the four GM plants that went on strike, workers at only a large SUV factory in Arlington, Texas, approved the contract. Workers in Wentzville, Missouri; Lansing Delta Township, Michigan; and Spring Hill, Tennessee, voted it down. Workers said that longtime employees at GM were unhappy they didn’t get larger pay raises like newer workers, and they wanted a bigger pension increase.

“I'm not ungrateful, but I feel like it could have been better,” said Andrea Repasky, a body shop worker at GM's pickup truck factory in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who voted against the deal.

Repasky said she's happy that temporary workers will be hired faster and won't have to wait multiple years to reach the full assembly worker pay rate, now about $32 per hour. She's also glad that workers at parts warehouses and component factories will get the top wage.

But she says she'll get only $4 per hour more at ratification, and her pay will have gone up only $7 per hour since 2006 due to concessions made to help the company out of dire financial straits during the Great Recession. “I would have been happy if we would have gotten a bigger jump up front,” she said. “I just think in 17 years, $7 more is not too good of a deal.”

She also wanted to see larger pension increases as well as defined benefit pensions and health care in retirement for workers hired after 2007. With GM making healthy profits, she's worried that the union may have missed the chance to get more because the company may not be doing as well in 2028.

Many newer hires wanted defined benefit pension plans instead of defined contribution plans. But the companies agreed to contribute 10% per year into 401(k) plans instead.

Keith Crowell, the local union president at GM's Arlington plant, said the factory has a diverse group of workers from full- and part-time temporary hires to longtime assembly line employees. Full-time temporary workers liked the large raises they received and the chance to get top union pay, he said. But many longtime workers didn’t think immediate pay raises were enough to make up for concessions granted to GM in 2008, he said.

“There was something in there for everybody, but everybody couldn’t get everything they wanted,” Crowell said. “At least we’re making a step in the right direction to recover from 2008.”

Citing the automakers' strong profits, UAW President Shawn Fain has insisted it was well past time to make up for the 2008 concessions.

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said GM has more older workers than the other two companies, so he expected the vote to be closer there. About half of GM's factory workers were hired before 2007. “They may have felt they were not listened to enough,” Masters said of the workers.

He expects the contracts to be ratified at Ford and Stellantis and said only lopsided votes against the deals that run counter to the current trends could sink the agreements. “It certainly seems that they're on track to pass,” he said.

President Joe Biden has hailed the resolution of the strikes as an early victory for what he calls a worker-centered economy. But the success of the contracts will ultimately hinge on the ability of automakers to keep generating profits as they shift toward electric vehicles.

Thousands of UAW members joined picket lines in targeted strikes starting Sept. 15 before the tentative deals were reached late last month. Rather than striking at one company, the union targeted individual plants at all three automakers. At the peak of the strikes, about 46,000 workers a were walking picket lines.

Tom Krisher, The Associated Press

Spain's Socialist Pedro Sánchez beat the odds to stay prime minister. Now he must keep his government in power

JOSEPH WILSON AND CIARÁN GILES
November 17, 2023 at 10:11 AM




BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez pulled off his latest feat of political survival to get reelected as prime minister with an absolute majority in a highly fragmented parliament. Now, he will have to use all his dexterity to keep a mixed bag of supporters happy and his government in power for the next four years.

Sánchez, who has led Spain since 2018, has defied the odds before, but the ones he faces this time look especially daunting. To win the endorsement of a majority of lawmakers Thursday, he clinched deals with six small parties, including two Catalan separatist groups that demanded he take an unpopular action in return.

He agreed to push through a controversial amnesty for hundreds of people in legal trouble over the Catalonia region’s failed secession attempt in 2017. Among them is the region’s fugitive former president, Carles Puigdemont, who for many in Spain is public enemy No. 1 since he led the independence bid before fleeing to Belgium.

While political observers agree Sánchez has a hard road ahead, they are unwilling to start writing his political obituary just yet, especially given the record of endurance he chronicled in a 2019 memoir “A Manual of Resistance.” For one thing, analysts say it is very difficult to topple a Spanish government though a parliamentary maneuver.

“This government has the possibility of lasting because it is very difficult, almost impossible, for a no-confidence motion against it to succeed,” said Oriol Bartomeus, professor of political science of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. “That said, this is a government with serious stability problems.”

In Sánchez’s new government, his Socialists will lead a new minority leftist coalition with the anti-austerity Sumar, or Joining Forces, party. Together, they have 152 lawmakers, short of the majority 176 votes needed to pass bills. So the constant support of Puigdemont’s Junts (Together) party, its rival Catalan separatist party Republic Left of Catalonia, and two Basque parties are key.

Sánchez has said that by agreeing to the amnesty he is “making necessity a virtue,” a way of acknowledging he didn’t want it while arguing it will benefit Catalonia and the rest of Spain in the end.

Lluís Orriols, a political science professor at Madrid's Carlos III University, said that completing a four-year term may be difficult for Sánchez but that does not mean he is completely at the mercy of the separatists.

“In Spain a government can even lose a vote to pass a new budget and still keep going because it can maintain the budget from the previous year, so it is very difficult to quickly topple a government,” Orriols said. “It is not as easy as just saying that the moment that Junts or the Republican Left of Catalonia withdraw their support that we will have new elections."

Sánchez also has the advantage of being able to call a snap election if he sees a moment when he thinks the Socialists could win more seats and free themselves of having to rely on such a motley crew of backers.

It is also highly unlikely that Sánchez’s supporters would switch to backing the Popular Party due to its alliances with the far-right Vox party, which wants to reduce the powers of regional governments and rails against Catalan and Basque nationalism.


As Aitor Esteban of the Basque regionalist PNV party put it, the Popular Party's “tractor has an engine that is all clogged up because you have used Vox motor oil.”

Both of the Catalan parties have warned that they want much more than an amnesty. Their ultimate goal is for Madrid to authorize a binding referendum on independence for Catalonia, an idea that is an anathema for most Spaniards and even for many Catalonia residents.

“You have time to back out now,” Junts spokesperson Míriam Nogueras told Sánchez on Wednesday but added, “If you do not keep your end of our deal, we will not support any of your policies.”

A factor that could help Sánchez is the fierce competition between the two Catalan parties, which are set to compete in regional elections that must be held by 2025.

Depending on the results, the separatists could end up needing Sánchez as well —- or his Socialists could even retake power in Barcelona. Separatist parties fared poorly in Spain's July elections while the Socialists surged in Catalonia, and public support for the independence movement has waned amid in-fighting between Junts and the Republican Left for Catalonia.

“Everything will hinge on the strategy that Sánchez feels necessary to adopt for the regional elections, where they all have bargaining chips on the table,” Montserrat Nebrera, professor of constitutional law at the International University of Catalonia, said.

Bartomeus, the Autonomous University of Barcelona professor, thinks Sánchez stands to benefit from the separatists’ weaknesses.

“Despite appearances, the separatist push is dead,” he said. “All the tension generated by the separatist movement has moved to Madrid,” where there have been violent street protests against the amnesty, he added.

“The only way that the separatist movement could regain strength is if the Popular Party and Vox were to come into power," Bartomeus said. "That is the irony of Puigdemont’s situation: A Socialist government is not good for his party, but it is the only way that he can get the amnesty.”

___

Giles reported from Madrid.

ANTI-IMPERIALIST STATE
Maldives will have no foreign military presence - new president

MOHAMED JUNAYD
November 17, 2023 


MALE (Reuters) - Maldives will use diplomacy to ensure there is no foreign military presence on its soil, its new president said on Friday, reaffirming his support for the departure of a small Indian force from the islands where India and China vie for influence.

Mohamed Muizzu was speaking at his inauguration after winning a presidential election in September, beating incumbent Ibrahim Solih in a second-round runoff.

Solih had followed an "India first" policy, but Muizzu in his election campaign promised to remove a small Indian military presence of about 75 personnel from the Maldives.

The Indian Ocean island chain will have a "thick red line" when it comes to security related issues, Muizzu said in his inauguration speech. He also pledged to respect the "security red line of any other country".

"Using the instrument of diplomacy, I will ensure that this country has no foreign military presence on its soil. I assure you there is no greater honour for me than being loyal to my beloved Maldives," he added.



Muizzu had said last month he would work to return Indian military personnel "as soon as possible", but he has also emphasised his commitment to stronger investment ties with both India and China to foster growth.

Home to about 521,000 people, Maldives is famous for its sun-kissed atolls and luxury tourist resorts.

Rival Asian giants India and China have both invested millions of dollars in the islands as they seek to build influence.

Public debt remains high, due to sustained borrowing to finance the budget deficit and infrastructure projects. Total public and publicly guaranteed debt rose to $7 billion, or 113.5% of GDP, at the end of 2022, from $5.9 billion, or 112.1% of GDP, the year before, according to World Bank figures.

Muizzu described growing debt as a "danger," and pledged to take "swift and bold" measures to tackle the problem.

State officials from key countries were present at Muizzu's inauguration, including U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power and Chinese State Councillor Shen Yiqin, who will fly to Sri Lanka on Saturday after wrapping up his visit to the Maldives.

(Writing by Uditha Jayasinghe; Editing by Mark Potter)

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/10/mohamed-muizzu-wins-maldives-election.html

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MALDIVES 

Doctor says Israeli forces 'found nothing', supplies low at Gaza's Al Shifa hospital

ABIR AHMAR
November 17, 2023 

DUBAI (Reuters) - A doctor at the Gaza Strip's Al Shifa hospital said on Friday Israeli forces had "found nothing" during searches of the hospital complex, and that food and water were running out.

Doctor Ahmed El Mokhallalati told Reuters by telephone that despite the "difficult" conditions at the hospital, no babies had died there since Israeli troops entered it on Wednesday.

Israel says Hamas has a command centre underneath the hospital, an assertion the Palestinian militant group denies. Reuters has been unable to verify the situation at the hospital independently.

"It’s a totally terrifying situation, here the Israeli tanks and the Israeli troops have been moving within the hospital area, all over the hospital," said Mokhallalati, a surgeon born in Ireland who trained in Cairo and practiced in London.

"The situation is totally difficult. They are shooting all the time, all the areas."

The Israeli military said on Thursday it had uncovered a Hamas tunnel shaft and a vehicle with weapons at the Al Shifa hospital complex. It also made public videos and photographs to support its statement.

Speaking in English, Mokhallalati said: "They have found nothing. They have found no single resistance. No single gunshot, against them within the hospital area."

The hospital, packed with patients and displaced people and struggling to keep operating, has become a focus of global concern.

Mokhallalati said the Israeli military had provided some supplies since entering the hospital but that it was insufficient.

"What happened is that the people, we run out of food, we ran out of drinking water," Mokhallalati said. "And then, yesterday, they arranged some, just some food and water, which is very, very minimal, which doesn't cover, maybe 40% of the number of people around here."

Dr Mohamed Tabasha, head of the paediatric department at Al Shifa, said on Monday three newborn babies had died as problems mounted at the hospital, and that the 36 remaining newborns were at risk.

"As of yesterday they were 36, luckily no one has lost their lives," he said on Friday.

(Reporting by Abir Al Ahmar, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by Hugh Lawson and Andrew Heavens)

Surgeon flees Gaza City's last functioning hospital after anaesthetics run out

NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI AND ABIR AHMAR
November 17, 2023 


GAZA (Reuters) -Hundreds of patients desperately needed his help, but now there was nothing he could do.

With Al Ahli hospital shaking from Israeli tank fire and no more anaesthetics left to operate, British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta told his team it was time to leave the last fully functioning hospital in Gaza City.

"It has been a living nightmare - leaving 500 wounded knowing that there's nothing left for you to be able to do for them, it's just the most heartbreaking thing I ever had to do," Abu Sitta told Reuters on Friday, a day after leaving the hospital and walking to Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

In a post on X, he wrote: "No longer able to provide surgeries at Ahli Hosp. The hospital is now effectively a first aid station. Hundreds of wounded now at hospital with no access to surgery. They will die from their wounds."

Israel has ordered the entire northern half of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, to be evacuated as it presses its campaign to wipe out the Hamas group that governs the territory. All northern hospitals have effectively ceased functioning.

Gaza's health ministry said that as of Nov. 16 only nine of the enclave's 35 hospitals were functioning even partially.

Earlier this week, it put the confirmed Palestinian death toll at over 11,500, including at least 4,700 children, but has said communications blackouts throughout the territory have made it impossible to provide regular updates.

Gaza hospitals have been overwhelmed and short of supplies since Israeli forces began their campaign to wipe out Hamas following the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which Israel said killed about 1,200 people.

"Al Ahli was completely inundated with wounded. And we were operating all through the night (on Wednesday)," Abu Sitta said in an internet call. "And by the early hours (of Thursday)... we realised that we have basically run out of medication for the anaesthetic machines and we had to stop the operating room."


"INUNDATED WITH WOUNDED"

Abu Sitta said he and his team had been particularly busy in the past weeks week treating patients after an Israeli air strike on a nearby mosque, and after Israeli forces surrounded and then entered Gaza's biggest hospital, Al Shifa.

Abu Sitta said a message had been received at Al Ahli hospital saying it had been surrounded by Israeli tanks.

Reuters could not immediately verify the situation at and around Al Ahli. Israel's military says Hamas has tunnels and command centres beneath and adjacent to some hospitals, a charge Hamas denies.

Hamas' armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said on Friday that no hostages taken during the Oct. 7 attack were being held at hospitals but were taken to care centres for treatment due to the seriousness of their condition and to save their lives.

On the five-hour walk from Al Ahli to the refugee camp, Abu Sitta said he saw "scenes of destruction" and bodies lying on the street.

He said patients needing treatment remained at Al Ahli, and that another hospital in northern Gaza had been unable to take them.

"Basically, the whole of northern Gaza now has no functioning hospital," he said.

His immediate plan is to rest.

"We've been operating non-stop for the last week since Al Shifa (was surrounded). I just made the decision that I needed to sleep, until I figure out what I wanted to do next," he said.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and by Abir Al Ahmar in Dubai, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by Peter Graff)

UN Human Rights chief calls for independent investigation into Al-Shifa hospital claims

ANDREW CAREY AND DAVID SHORTELL, CNN
November 17, 2023 

The United Nations’ human rights chief has called on Israel to give his team access to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after Israel’s military released video of what it called a Hamas “operational tunnel shaft” in the complex’s grounds, a claim immediately rejected by the militant group and medical administrators as “ridiculous.”

The video, released on Thursday, shows a hole in the ground and what appears to be a shaft reinforced with concrete with exposed pipes and cabling.

At one point, the video, which has been geolocated by CNN, tilts up to reveal one of the hospital’s main buildings about 30 meters away from the hole.

The video does not show the inside of the shaft.

Israel has been under significant international pressure to prove its claims about Hamas’s supposed infiltration of the hospital. CNN cannot independently verify the claim by Israel that the image is of a Hamas tunnel.

In a televised briefing later Thursday, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said army engineers were still working to expose the tunnel infrastructure.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called on Israel to grant independent investigators access to Gaza to probe the competing claims.

“This is precisely where you need an independent international investigation, because we have different narratives,” said Türk on Thursday. “You cannot use … hospitals, for any military purposes. But you also cannot attack a hospital in the absence of clear evidence.”

The video released by the IDF shows what Israel claims is an 'operational tunnel shaft' in the grounds of the Al-Shifa hospital complex. - IDF

The release of the video came as Israeli troops continued to conduct what an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman called “very specific, contained operations” both “inside and in the vicinity of the hospital complex.”

Israel has been bombarding Gaza, an impoverished and densely packed territory, since the deadly October 7 attack on its territory by Hamas militants.

Israeli airstrikes have killed 11,470 people in Gaza, 4,707 of them children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said Thursday, citing medical sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave.

The actions of both Israel and Hamas since the militant group’s massacre of an estimated 1,200 people on October 7 must be investigated, Türk said.

“What Hamas did – the horrific killing of civilians, the fact that they took hostages – are clear violations of the law. The fact that we have seen a collective punishment by Israel of Gaza, by cutting off supplies, of medical necessities, of food, of electricity, of water, is also [a] very serious matter under international humanitarian law,” said Türk.

“So, indeed, there are issues that we all have to look into because they are very serious. And they require answers. And they require accountability,” he added.

Türk said hospitals had special protection at all time under humanitarian law.

“When it comes to hospitals to medical facilities, to medical personnel, there needs to be special protection for them because, of course, hospitals provide life-saving services. There needs to be effective communication when it comes to evacuations, for example, and there needs to be special provision made for the wounded and the injured to be cared for,” said Türk.

Israel and the United States have accused Hamas of operating what they claim is a command center under the hospital in Gaza and Israeli is under pressure to uncover evidence of the sort of multi-layered network of tunnels and chambers that officials have said lies beneath the hospital.

The Hamas-run government media office released a statement calling Israel’s claim about the tunnel shaft a “ridiculous scenario.” It accused Israel of pushing “false scenarios, fabricated narratives, and distorted information” about the hospital.


“It is a failed attempt to escape future accountability and legal pursuit,” the Hamas statement said.

“The Palestinian Ministry of Health has repeatedly requested dozens of times (for) all institutions, organizations, international bodies, and relevant parties to form technical teams to visit and inspect all hospitals, in order to refute the false incitement narrative,” it added.

The release of the latest video came as Israel also said that it had found the body of Yehudit Weiss, a 65-year-old grandmother who was kidnapped from a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip during the attack by Hamas militants on October 7.

Friday morning the IDF announced it had recovered the body of a second Israeli hostage, 19-year old Noa Marciano, a corporal in the Israel Defense Forces.

IDF statements said both bodies were found in what were described as “structures” near the Shifa hospital, though it is not known if the bodies were found together, and the precise circumstances surrounding the deaths of both women has not been made clear.

Israeli forces launched a raid on Al-Shifa early Wednesday and soon after released images showing firearms, body armor, and a laptop that it said contained incriminating material recovered from the hospital.

On Thursday, the IDF also claimed to have found a booby-trapped car in the hospital complex containing a large amount of weapons and ammunition.

The IDF on Thursday released an image of what it said were weapons recovered from inside Al-Shifa hospital. - IDF

Thousands of medical personnel, patients, and displaced people remained inside Al-Shifa Thursday amid conditions that doctors have called “catastrophic,” with food, water, and medical supplies exhausted.

The hospital, the largest in Gaza, has run out of fuel and is no longer considered operational. Earlier this week, doctors and journalists described desperate efforts to keep premature babies alive and limited procedures taking place by candlelight.

Hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera Thursday that children were starving, and his medical staff had been forced to make “harrowing” decisions such as amputating patients’ limbs to prevent the spread of infection from untreated wounds.

Abu Salmiya reported the death of a kidney patient, with four others on the brink of death due to critical conditions and the absence of dialysis for days. He accused Israel of besieging the hospital, sabotaging sections, and spending the last 48 hours freely roaming within its premises.
Al-Rantisi Hospital claims

In another announcement, the IDF’s Hagari said Thursday that soldiers had also unearthed a tunnel at the Al-Rantisi children’s hospital in northern Gaza.

A CNN team embedded with the IDF on Monday inside that hospital was shown guns and explosives in a basement that Hagari termed an “armory.”

CNN was also shown a shaft, about 200 meters away from Al-Rantisi, which Hagari claimed was located next to a Hamas commander’s house and a school. The IDF said it was working to determine if there was a connection between that tunnel entrance and the hospital.

But Mohammed Zarqout, a senior health official in the Hamas-run enclave, told CNN that the basement at Al-Rantisi had been used as a shelter for women and children – not to store Hamas weaponry and hold hostages. He also claimed the tunnel was “an electrical wire assembly point.”

CNN is unable to verify the claims by the IDF and Zarqout about Al-Rantisi hospital.

On Wednesday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby reiterated previous statements from the White House saying the US had intelligence that Hamas was operating in Al-Shifa Hospital.

“I would say we are comfortable with our own intelligence assessment about the degree to which Hamas was and is using al-Shifa hospital as a command and control node and as a storage facility underneath. We’re very comfortable with our own intelligence assessment for that,” Kirby said.

CNN.com

South Lebanon shepherds face risk and ruin from cross-border hostilities

ABDELAZIZ BOUMZAR
November 17, 2023 


MAJDAL SELM, Lebanon (Reuters) - The rolling pastures of southern Lebanon have provided perfect grazing grounds for local shepherds' flocks for centuries. But they are now off-limits, rendered too dangerous for sheep, cows and their herders by Israeli air raids and artillery fire.

"All of us shepherds take our herds to (the border areas of) Mays al-Jabal, Houla... but with the shelling, you can't get anywhere near there," said Ali Beber, with a flock of 350 sheep.

They are now squeezed into a corrugated metal pen in the town of Majdal Selm, about seven kilometres (four miles) west of their usual grazing spot.

Beber, 57, walks them briefly every day but has had to buy haystacks to feed them at a cost of around $2,000.

"This isn't cheap. I had prepared hay for them so they could eat during winter, but that was meant for rainy days," he said.

"The hay I have left can feed them for another two or three days, then I'm going to have to go into debt to get them food."

Fighting broke out in Lebanon after Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas went to war in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. Lebanese Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has fired rockets at Israel, which has retaliated with air strikes and artillery shells.


The resulting fires have burned olive trees and torched agricultural land across southern Lebanon, devastating herders and farmers already hit hard by a four-year economic meltdown.

Jihad Said, 45, told Reuters he had moved his herd to the town of Rmeich after losing three cows to Israeli shelling earlier this month on a farm on the outskirts of the town.

Two Lebanese shepherds were also found dead after being shot at by Israeli troops earlier this month.

Lebanese herders have long learned to live with the cross-border tensions between Lebanon and Israel. Those who venture too close to the border are often questioned for hours by the Israeli military. Beber said he had been detained by Israel twice.

A month-long war between Israeli forces and Hezbollah in 2006 also hit farmers hard. It prevented Tony al-Amil from harvesting five hectares of wheat and barley, he told Reuters.

This time around, he stayed in the south for the first two weeks of shelling - but then took his 100 sheep to the edges of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

"If it (the war) ends tomorrow, I'll go back tomorrow. Otherwise I’m going to stay here, I have nowhere else to go."

(Reporting by AbdelAziz Boumzar; Additional reporting by Abdelhadi Ramahi and Ahmad Kerdi; Writing by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Amazon.com to cut 'several hundred' Alexa jobs

ALEXA SAYS YOU'RE FIRED

GREG BENSINGER
November 17, 2023 at 8:49 AM



(Reuters) -Amazon.com on Friday announced it is trimming jobs at its Alexa voice assistant unit, citing shifting business priorities and a greater focus on generative artificial intelligence.

The cuts affect several hundred employees working on Alexa, according to the email. A spokeswoman declined to elaborate on exactly how many were affected.

"We’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers - which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI," Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, said in the email. "These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives."

Amazon has been pulling back in a variety of divisions this month, including in its music and gaming divisions and some human resources roles.

While most of the jobs affected were in the devices division, a few were working on Alexa-related products in a different unit, a spokeswoman said. Many companies are shifting resources to generative AI, which can create software code and lengthy text responses from short prompts.

Alexa is a voice assistant that can be used to set timers, ask search queries, play music, or as a home automation hub.

Reuters reported in September that morale in the devices division had suffered over concerns about what some viewed as a weak product pipeline. In particular, people familiar with the matter pointed to the Alexa voice assistant, now nearly a decade old, as having failed to keep pace in the age of generative artificial intelligence.

Amazon said at the time that "to suggest that a few anecdotes paint a picture of reality for an organization as large and diverse as Devices and Services is inaccurate," and that it stood by its products.


Amazon has said its devices and services business is not profitable, without providing figures.

Only last month the device unit got a new chief, Panos Panay, who joined the company from Microsoft, replacing David Limp, a 13-year veteran who is leaving later this year to head Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company. Panay had overseen development of the Surface tablet.

Amazon has struggled to generate any profits from Alexa, which many people use through Echo speakers or video screens. Most efforts to make money from it have centered on easing purchasing from Amazon.com.

The Seattle-based online retailer's voice assistant products compete with offerings from Alphabet and Apple.

Amazon has cut more than 27,000 jobs across the company over the past year, part of a wave of U.S. tech layoffs after the industry hired heavily people during the pandemic.

The latest cuts come even as Amazon reported third-quarter net income that far exceeded analyst estimates and forecast revenue in the year’s final quarter roughly in line with expectations. The fourth quarter is Amazon’s most crucial, as it includes holiday shopping.

In the email, Rausch said he remained optimistic about Alexa.

"Incorporating a new large language model into a voice-forward, personal AI, has been and continues to be an enormous scientific and engineering challenge," he wrote, using another term for generative AI.

(Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; editing by Kenneth Li, Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

WHITE COLLAR BLUES

Amazon says employees who don't comply with the return to office mandate may not get promoted

ANNIE PALMER, CNBC
November 17, 2023 at

Amazon is dialing up the pressure on corporate employees who haven’t complied with the company’s return-to-office mandate.

Staffers who don’t adhere to the policy, which requires employees to be in the office at least three days a week, may not get promoted, according to posts on Amazon’s internal website that were viewed by CNBC.

“Managers own the promotion process, which means it is their responsibility to support your growth through regular conversations and stretch assignments, and to complete all the required inputs for a promotion,” one post says. “If your role is expected to work from the office 3+ days a week and you are not in compliance, your manager will be made aware and VP approval will be required.”

A separate post on Amazon’s internal career platform for employees says, “In accordance with Amazon’s overall approach to promotions, employees are expected to work from their office 3+ days/week if that is the requirement of their role.”

The post goes on to say that managers are working with Amazon’s human resources group to “monitor adherence” to the in-person work requirement, and “this will continue as we evaluate promotion readiness.”

Some details of the new guidance were previously reported by Business Insider.

Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed the announcement in an email.

“Promotions are one of the many ways we support employees’ growth and development, and there are a variety of factors we consider when determining an employee’s readiness for the next level,” Glasser told CNBC. “Like any company, we expect employees who are being considered for promotion to be in compliance with company guidelines and policies.”

Tensions have flared between Amazon and some of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees since the company began its return-to-office push. In May, the company began requiring that staffers work out of physical offices at least three days a week, shifting from a Covid-era policy that left it up to individual managers to decide how often team members should be present.

Following the mandate, a group of employees walked out in protest at the company’s Seattle headquarters. Staffers also criticized how Amazon handled the decision to lay off 27,000 people as part of job cuts that began last year.

Employees circulated an internal petition urging CEO Andy Jassy to drop the return-to-office requirement, but the company hasn’t budged. In recent months, Amazon informed some staffers they must relocate to central office hubs in different states if they want to keep their jobs, prompting some to quit, CNBC previously reported.

Amazon’s stance has changed multiple times since the start of the pandemic in 2020. At first, the company said it would return to an “office-centric culture as our baseline.” But as other tech companies leaned toward more flexible work arrangements, Amazon relaxed its position.

The company later announced the RTO mandate, which CEO Andy Jassy said would lead to a stronger company culture and collaboration between employees. Amazon has a remote work exception in place and considers requests on a case-by-case basis.

“Teams tend to be better connected to one another when they see each other in person more frequently,” Jassy said at the time. “There is something about being face-to-face with somebody, looking them in the eye, and seeing they’re fully immersed in whatever you’re discussing that bonds people together.”

EU nations reach major breakthrough to stop shipping plastic waste to poor countries

SAMUEL PETREQUIN
November 17, 2023 


BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union made a major breakthrough Friday in efforts to stop sending its plastic trash to poor countries.

Under a tentative agreement, the 27 EU countries will no longer be able to export their plastic waste outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development club of wealthy countries.

The text now needs to be formally approved by both the council representing the EU member states and the EU Parliament to enter into force.

Only a third of plastic waste in Europe is recycled, and half of the plastic collected for recycling is exported to be treated in countries outside the EU.

“The EU will finally assume responsibility for its plastic waste by banning its export to non-OECD countries,” said Pernille Weiss, the EU Parliament rapporteur. "Once again, we follow our vision that waste is a resource when it is properly managed, but should not in any case be causing harm to the environment or human health.”

In addition, plastic waste exports to the 38 OECD countries “will be subject to stricter conditions, including an obligation to apply the prior written notification and consent procedure, and closer compliance monitoring,” the Parliament said.

The deal was announced as United Nations-led negotiations for a treat y aimed at cutting plastics pollution take place in Kenya.

After a period of five years following the introduction of the regulation, non-OECD countries will have the option to ask the EU Commission — the bloc's executive arm — for the right to import plastic waste and the ban will be lifted if they prove they can treat it properly.

The EU Commission said negotiators agreed to set up a group to coordinate the action of member countries to make sure illegal shipments are detected and prevented.

According to EU data, the global production of plastic has grown from 1.5 million tonnes in 1950 to 359 million tonnes in 2018. As part of the Green Deal, 55% of plastic packaging waste should be recycled by 2030.