Volunteers Rally to Archive Ukrainian Web Sites

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Caralee Adams

https://archive.org/

As the war intensifies in Ukraine, volunteers from around the world are working to archive digital content at risk of destruction or manipulation. The Internet Archive is supporting several preservation efforts including the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) initiative launched in early March. 

“When we think about the internet, we think the data is always going to be there. But all this data exists on physical servers and they can get destroyed just like buildings and monuments,” said Quinn Dombrowski, academic technology specialist at Stanford University and co-founder of SUCHO. “A tremendous amount of effort and energy has gone into the development of these websites and digitized collections. The people of Ukraine put them together for a reason. They wanted to share their history, culture, language and literature with the world.”

Watch:

More than 1,200 volunteers with SUCHO have saved 10 terabytes of data including 14,000 uploaded items (images and PDFs) and captured parts of 2,300 websites so far. This includes material from Ukrainian museums, library websites, digital exhibits, open access publications and elsewhere. 

The initiative is using a combination of technologies to crawl and archive sites and content. Some of the information is stored at the Internet Archive, where it can be discovered and accessed using open-source software.

Staff at the Internet Archive are committed to assisting with the effort, which aligns with the organization’s mission of universal access to knowledge, and aim to make the web more useful and reliable, said Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine.

“This is a pivotal time in history,” he said. “We’re seeing major powers engaged in a war and it’s happening in the internet age where the platforms for information sharing and access we have built, and rely on, the Internet and the Web, are at risk.”

The Internet Archive is documenting and making information accessible that might not otherwise be available, Graham said. For years, the Wayback Machine has been archiving about 950 Russian news sites and 350 Ukrainian news sites. Stories that are deleted or altered are being archived for the historical record. 

“We’re seeing major powers engaged in a war and it’s happening in the internet age where the platforms for information sharing and access…are at risk.”

Mark Graham, director, Wayback Machine

Recognizing the urgency of this moment, Dombrowski has been stunned by the response to help from archivists, scholars, librarians involved in cultural heritage and the general public. Volunteers need not have technical expertise or special language skills to be of value in the project. 

“Many people were spending the days before they got involved with SUCHO scrolling the news and feeling helpless and wishing they could do something to contribute more directly towards helping out with the situation,” Dombrowski said. “It’s been really inspiring hearing the stories that people have told about what it’s meant to them to be able to be part of something like this.”

Gudrun Wirtz, head of the East European Department of the Bavarian State Library (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) in Munich, was archiving on a smaller scale when she and other colleagues began to collaborate with SUCHO.

“We are committed to Ukraine’s heritage and horrified by this war against the people and their rich culture and the distorting of history going on,” Wirtz said. “As Germans we are especially shocked and reminded of our historical responsibility, because last time Ukraine was invaded it was 1941 by Nazi-Germany. We try to do everything we can at the moment.”

Anna Kiljas, Tufts University

The invasion of Ukraine hits particularly close to home for Anna Kijas, a librarian at Tufts University and co-founder of SUCHO, who is a Polish immigrant with family members who lived through Soviet occupation following WWII.

“Contributing to the SUCHO effort is something tangible that I can do and bring my expertise as a librarian and digital humanist in order to help preserve as much of the cultural heritage of the Ukrainian people as is possible,” said Kijas. 

The third co-founder SUCHO, Sebastian Majstorovic, is with the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage. 

The Internet Archive is providing technical support, tools and training to assist volunteers, including those with SUCHO, who are giving of their time.

Through Archive-It, a customizable self-service web archiving platform that captures, stores, and provides access to web-based content, free online accounts have been offered to volunteer archivists. Mirage Berry, business development manager for Archive-It, has coordinated support with other preservation partners including the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, and East European & Central Asian Studies Collections librarian Liladhar Pendse at University of California, Berkeley.

“It’s so incredible how quickly all of these archivists have pulled together to do this,” Berry said. “Everyone wants to do something. You don’t need to have a ton of technical experience. For anyone who is willing to learn, it’s a great jumping off point for web archiving.”

SUCHO organizers anticipate after the immediate emergency of website archiving is over, there will be an ongoing need to stay vigilant with data curation of Ukrainian material. To learn more and get involved, visit http://www.sucho.org.

Posted in Wayback Machine - Web Archive | Tagged web archiving | 

How to hold back the growing deserts?

All over the world, land is being degraded at an alarming rate, with catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth. The good news is that there are ways to reverse the damage and restore soil fertility.

GOOD NEWS ANOTHER REPUBLIC

Jamaica to remove ties to monarchy as soon as William and Kate leave, sources say

By Michelle Butterfield

Global News
Posted March 22, 2022 


WATCH: Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrive in Jamaica for royal tour

A journalist is sounding the alarm that Queen Elizabeth could soon be removed as the head of state of Jamaica as local politicians plan to push ahead with turning the country into a republic by August.

Noel Phillips, Good Morning Britain‘s North American correspondent, says he’s heard rumblings that Jamaica will begin to remove their ties to the monarchy as soon as Prince William and Kate Middleton leave the island.

In a segment posted to Twitter, Phillips commented on the couple’s current Caribbean tour, saying, “the timing just doesn’t seem to be right. The people here in Jamaica, they don’t want William and Kate here.”

“They don’t have a problem with the Queen, they have a problem with the institution. They see the British monarchy as an institution that has long oppressed them and they want reparations, they also want an apology, and they feel they’ve been asking for these things for an awful long time and until now there’s been no acknowledgement of their suffering or pain.”

Phillips continued, adding that he expects to see a lot of people “taking to the streets” in protest of the visit before he drops a major bombshell: “A source within the Prime Minister’s government who has told me that as soon as they leave Jamaica will begin the process of removing the Queen as head of state.”

The Independent also reported it has talked to inside sources that confirm Phillips’ news.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge visit Caracol, an iconic ancient Mayan archaeological site deep in the jungle in the Chiquibul Forest during day 3 of their Caribbean tour on March 21, 2022 in Caracol, Belize.

 Karwai Tang / WireImage via Getty Images

Although there has been no official confirmation, Phillips says the Queen’s removal as head of state could be a “swift process” and could happen as early as August, which marks Jamaica’s 60th independence anniversary month.

A group of 100 Jamaican business leaders, doctors, musicians and politicians penned an open letter calling for slavery reparation payments and an apology for colonialism from the monarchs.

“We note with great concern your visit to our country, Jamaica, during a period when we are still in the throes of a global pandemic and bracing for the full impact of another global crisis associated with the Russian/Ukraine war,” the letter, written by the Advocates Network, states.

And on Tuesday, local outlets shared photos and videos from the protest at the British High Commission in St. Andrew.

Jamaica lawmaker Mike Henry, who has long led an effort to obtain reparations that he estimates at more than seven billion pounds, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that an apology is only the first step for what he described as “abuse of human life and labour.”

“An apology really admits that there is some guilt,” he said.

During their two-day stay in Jamaica, Prince William and Kate are expected to celebrate Bob Marley’s legacy, a move that also has riled some Jamaicans.

“As a Rastafarian, Bob Marley embodied advocacy and is recognized globally for the principles of human rights, equality, reparations and repatriation,” stated the letter of those demanding an apology.



The group said that it would be celebrating 60 years of freedom from Britain, adding that it is saddened “that more progress has not been made given the burden of our colonial inheritance. We nonetheless celebrate the many achievements of great Jamaicans who rejected negative, colonial self-concepts and who self-confidently succeeded against tremendous odds. We will also remember and celebrate our freedom fighters.”

The Caribbean tour marks the first major overseas trip for William and Kate since before the pandemic began.

Local opposition forced the royal couple to cancel one of their first tour stops Saturday, after a protest was staged on Friday opposing the couple’s visit to Akte‘il Ha cacao farm in Indian Creek village in the foothills of the Maya Mountains.

Protesters were also upset that the couple planned to land their helicopter on a nearby soccer field without consultation.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge attend a special reception hosted by the Governor General of Belize in celebration of Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on March 21, 2022 in Cahal Pech, Belize. 

Samir Hussein / WireImage via Getty Images

“We don’t want them to land on our land, that’s the message that we want to send,” Indian Creek chairman Sebastian Shol told the Daily Mail on Friday. “They could land anywhere but not on our land.”

The trip takes place at a crucial time, as several nations within the Commonwealth have considered cutting ties with the British monarchy.

Although the Queen is highly regarded across the region, Britain is accused by many of — at best — a callous attitude towards its former colonies. That feeling has been heightened by the U.K.’s treatment of many Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain after the Second World War, helping to rebuild a war-shattered country.

READ MORE: Prince William, Kate face more protests, backlash as tour continues to Jamaica

In recent years, some people from the Caribbean who had lived legally in Britain for decades were denied housing, jobs or medical treatment, and in some cases deported, because they didn’t have paperwork to prove their status.

The British government has apologized and agreed to pay compensation, but the scandal has caused deep anger, both in the U.K. and in the Caribbean.

Her Majesty was formally removed as head of state in Barbados in November. Prince Charles was in attendance at the handover ceremony as guest of honour.

Kensington Palace has yet to publicly address the protesters’ concerns.

— With files from The Associated Press

5:46 Barbados becomes a republic and parts ways with the Queen – Nov 30, 2021

© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Authorities Pump Brakes On US Far-Right Former Legislator’s ‘Rescue’ Of Ukrainian Kids

Screenshot/On Fire Ministries

By Matt Shuham
TPM
March 23, 2022

Three weeks after the far-right former state legislator Matt Shea arrived in Poland with dozens of Ukrainian orphans, including several he is attempting to adopt, authorities in multiple countries are pumping the brakes, grinding Shea’s plans to a halt — at least for now.

“The children will not leave Poland, unless Ukrainian authorities decides to do so,” Artur Pomianowski, the mayor of the small Polish town where Shea and the children are now staying, told TPM.

Shea, who served in the Washington state legislature from 2009 to 2021, is best known for allegations that he’s been involved in domestic terrorism, his advocacy for the separatist 51st state “Liberty” movement, and a document he authored outlining steps for killing non-believers during a hypothetical religious war.

But he’s also a potential adoptive father: Shea’s wife is Ukrainian, and in recent weeks the far-right figure has acknowledged his family’s effort to adopt four children from Ukraine — an effort that was interrupted by Russia’s sudden invasion of the country.

So Shea and a team of Americans traveled to Poland, linked up with a local right-wing evangelical pastor, and launched a “rescue action” that resulted in buses full of Ukrainian children crossing the border and ending up at a Polish hotel — and plenty of concern from Polish locals worried about child trafficking.

To hear Shea describe it, the operation to aid the orphans of Mariupol, a city in Ukraine’s east that’s been subject to weeks of heavy Russian attack, was a religious quest of Biblical proportions.

“We flew and drove 72 hours, with about four hours of sleep, to bring those orphans home,” Shea said in a sermon in Poland shortly after the kids arrived. “And now the next step is to bring them home to the Father.”

The extent of Shea’s actual involvement is less clear: In a video posted online by the congregation he founded, On Fire Ministries, Shea said that he met up with the children after they had been evacuated to Lviv, a city in Western Ukraine just over an hour from the border with Poland. The Polish pastor Shea is working with, Paweł Chojecki, runs a right-wing media outlet that said the children “met their American rescuers after a 16-hour long train journey.”

Within days of Shea, his team and the kids arriving in Poland, locals had grown concerned about the children, leading local authorities to get involved.

Pomianowski, the mayor of the Polish town of Kazimierz Dolny, set off alarms stateside when he told The Seattle Times that Shea and his team “have given us some contradictory information and, for that reason, it is difficult for us to trust them.”

Shea, who has not returned TPM’s requests for comment, wrote on Facebook Saturday that “The State Department has indicated that those people in the final stages of adoption (defined here as approved by the US and Ukraine but not Ukrainian Court) should be finalized as soon as possible so those families can be reunited.”

But the group Shea is working with, Loving Families and Homes for Orphans, is not an official “adoption service provider,” as he’s acknowledged several times. Instead, it’s a hosting organization, which set up private trips for potential adoptees to meet their potential families in other countries.

A State Department spokesperson, asked to comment on Shea’s Facebook post, told TPM, “The Department doesn’t have a role in hosting programs, which are coordinated by private organizations with the permission of the Ukrainian authorities.”

“The Ukrainian government has confirmed that it is not approving children to participate in host programs at this time,” the spokesperson said. “Instead, the Ukrainian government is taking measures to ensure the safety of children in neighboring countries. The Ukrainian government has informed us that it has moved many of the children in its care to Poland for safety and, where necessary, medical treatment.”

The spokesperson also referred to a statement from the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy (translated here) that said as much — in much more forceful language.

“Recently the mass media and social networks have been filled with notices about the willingness of foreigners to adopt a child from Ukraine and with appeals that Ukrainian children need to be adopted abroad,” the statement read. “The Ministry of Social Policy emphasizes that under current conditions intercountry adoption is impossible and that disseminating such inaccurate information contains signs of fraud and violations of the rights of the child.”

“The National Social Service is not currently considering cases and is not providing consent and/or permits for the adoption of children by foreigners or by citizens of Ukraine who reside beyond its borders,” the statement read, adding that without proper verification, “there is a great risk that the child could fall into the hands of fraudsters, persons who would not ensure the child’s rights and best interests, or human traffickers.”

The situation recalls that of Laura Silsby, an Idaho woman who was arrested in 2010 while attempting to take 33 children from earthquake-struck Haiti into the Dominican Republic without proper permission, said Kathryn Joyce, an investigative reporter at Salon and the author of a book on the modern evangelical adoption movement, The Child Catchers.

“These aren’t people who should be engaging in these vigilante rescue missions,” Joyce said.

Even if Shea, his team and the prospective adoptive families they say they represent have the best intentions, Joyce said, there’s an inherent risk involved in moving kids across borders in the middle of a crisis.

“What often ends up happening later on is the decision ends up having sort of been made in the moment,” she said.

Pomianowski, the mayor of the Polish town, told TPM of the Ukrainian children: “We do not know how long are they going to stay in Kazimierz Dolny.”

What The Heck Is U.S. Extremist Matt Shea Doing In Poland With 60 Ukrainian Kids?

Screenshot/idź Pod Prąd
By Matt Shuham
TPM
March 17, 2022 

The far-right former Washington state legislator Matt Shea is in a small town in Poland with a bunch of children that he says are orphan refugees from Ukraine. The local Poles are wary, and some basic questions have gone unanswered.

Wait… what? Well, exactly. Here’s what we’re wondering about this strange situation, and the best answers we have so far.

1 You’re talking about that Matt Shea?

Yes, you may be familiar with him through our reporting here at TPM: Shea was a longtime far-right legislator in the Washington House of Representatives until 2020, when he opted not to run for reelection after a report concluded that he’d engaged in domestic terrorism — the result of his involvement in the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife refuge.

Shea, who the report found had been involved in several armed stand-offs, is also known for his support of a separatist 51st state movement, and for authoring a document, “Biblical Basis for War,” that included steps for killing non-believers (Shea is Christian).

So in short: Sounds like the kind of guy we’d want shuttling purported orphans across international boundaries in the middle of a war.

2 Who are these kids?

This isn’t clear. We do have some information, based on claims from Shea and those on his team, the accounts of locals who’ve rung alarm bells, and several reports from American outlets. But the picture is still hazy.

Shea wrote last week that he’d taken a team to rescue 62 children from an orphanage in Mariupol, which has been under heavy Russian attack for several days, and transported them to Poland.

In an interview on a Polish television show last week flagged by the Seattle Times, which reported on the situation Wednesday, Shea described three categories of kids in the group: Those whose adoption by American families was interrupted by the war, those who had been hosted in America but were at an earlier stage in the adoption process, and those who had not begun the adoption process.

But the former legislator’s assurances haven’t satisfied locals, who apparently have been demanding answers about the American and his gaggle of purported refugee orphans.

So, amid the scrutiny, the group Shea is working with, Loving Home and Families for Orphans (LFHO), published a statement that was posted online by the guest house where Shea and the kids are staying.

The statement — which counts 63 kids in the group, not 62 — says the childrens’ orphanage was destroyed by Russian bombing.

3 Is Shea working with a reputable organization?

That’s also not totally clear right now. The Seattle Times reported that a non-profit with the name Loving Families and Homes for Orphans had been registered in Florida just last month. It was registered in Texas in 2018, according to the report, but not as an adoption agency, nor is it registered with the organization overseeing American agencies involved with international adoption.

On the Polish television show, Shea described LFHO as a hosting organization with the intent of facilitating the adoption of Ukrainian orphans in America. He attacked “elements here in Poland” who were spreading “lies and rumors” about the group.

One Chicago pediatrician who’d seen the children in recent days told the Spokane Spokesman-Review, “The kids are all well taken care of.”

4 How did this story come to light?

According to Range, an Inland Northwest news outlet, Shea’s arrival with dozens of children in the small Polish town of Kazimeirz Dolny raised questions — and then concerns — with locals, who appealed to local authorities and then national authorities in both Poland and the United States.

Polish Americans like the lawyer Marta Milan, quoted in the Range piece, starting flagging the story to news outlets. The Seattle Times and Spokesman-Review reported on the situation followed by several others.

Authorities in Kazimierz Dolny reacted with some alarm to the news, and to their discussions with Shea. Weronika Ziarnicka, an aide to the town’s mayor, told the Times that she went to check on the kids after hearing from a group of local volunteers. She said Shea “got really angry,” refused to tell her his last name, and said he’d spoken with the mayor and that everything was okay.

“And I know it’s not true because the mayor is the one that asked me to go,” she told the Times.

A Polish reporter, Katarzyna Lazzeri, told Range that “one of the American volunteers informed local authorities that they wanted to take children soon to the United States of America,” but Shea separately denied this, saying, “Neither we nor our partners have any intention of taking the children to the US.” One Polish report flagged by Range said the matter had been referred to a family court.

The Spokesman-Review quoted an email from a State Department official confirming that she’d flagged the situation to the U.S. embassy in Warsaw.

5 Is Shea leveraging his far-right contacts?

That’s another significant, unanswered question. Both the Times and Range noted Shea’s recent interview appearance with Paweł Chojecki, a right-wing Polish pastor who’s disparaged Catholics in the past.

Range reported that he leads a small far-right political party in Poland, and that he’d pushed conspiracy theories about COVID-19 for months. Shea has done interviews with Chojecki at least as far back as 2018, Range noted, and the far-right Pole appears to be an important contact for Shea in the area.

Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) is a reporter in TPM’s New York office. Prior to joining TPM, he was associate editor of The National Memo and an editorial intern at Rolling Stone.

Emmanuel Macron promises welfare shake-up if re-elected French president

French president Emmanuel Macron. Photo: Reuters/Pascal Rossignol

Michel Rose

French president Emmanuel Macron said  he would increase the retirement age, cut taxes and further loosen labour market rules if he wins a second term in next month’s election, seeking a mandate to press on with pro-business reforms.

Opinion polls show Mr Macron is likely to win the first round of the election on April 10 and beat any opponent in a run-off on April 24.

His long-standing lead has grown in recent weeks, with voters approving of his diplomatic efforts over the Ukraine war.

“We are at a tipping point where we can make a real difference,” Mr Macron told a news conference, highlighting the war on the EU’s doorstep and the global challenge of climate change.

Stressing his pro-business credentials is not without risk as households feel the squeeze from rising prices, but Mr Macron said he wanted to see through a reshaping of the economy.

Laying out his campaign platform for the first time, he said he would increase the retirement age in France to 65 from 62, slash taxes by €15m per year, make some benefits conditional on community work and reform unemployment insurance to push people to get back to work.

“It’s quite normal, especially when you consider the state of public coffers, that we work more,” Mr Macron said.

Mr Macron is a former investment banker who was elected in 2017 on a centrist platform and his policies have veered to the right during his mandate. However, he had put some of his planned changes, including the raised pension age, on hold amid a series of crises, including the yellow vest protests and the Covid-19 pandemic.

With economic growth surging and unemployment falling to its current 7.4pc, 

Mr. Macron can point to data to show he has rebooted the eurozone’s second biggest economy since he took office, but he said he wanted to go further.

“The rate of unemployment is at its lowest level for 15 years, the youth unemployment rate is at its lowest level for 40 years... none of these results can be considered enough,” the president said.

Mr Macron added that another key aim if he is re-elected will be to make France more self-sufficient, with proposals ranging from investing “massively” in agricultural and industrial independence to building more nuclear reactors and strengthening the army.

France could be one of the first countries to wean itself off fossil fuels, he said, while adding that he wanted to build a “European metaverse” to compete with US tech giants and make Europe more independent on that front too.

The 44-year-old, who is likely to face a far-right or conservative opponent in the run-off round, also said he would get tougher on law and order, including putting more police on the streets, tightening conditions required for long-term residency permits and making it easier to expel people whose asylum request has been rejected. Mr Macron also said he planned more subsidies for single mothers and inheritance tax breaks.

Opinion polls in recent weeks show Mr Macron winning up to 31pc of the vote in the first round, up from around 25pc last month.

But even if he goes on to win re-election, he will need his centrist La Republique en Marche (LaRem) party – which has failed in all recent local elections – and its allies to win a parliamentary election in June if he is to have a strong base to implement his policies.

Russian court rejects appeal by historian Yuri Dmitriev, upholds 15-year prison sentence

Clara Weiss@claraweiss_wsws

WSWS.ORG

Amidst the war in Ukraine, the Putin regime is continuing its crackdown on all efforts to research the history of the crimes of Stalinism.

On March 15, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia in Russia rejected an appeal by Yuri Dmitriev, a historian of the Stalinist Great Terror, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a massive state frame-up. The Russian Supreme Court has also excluded all attempts to overturn the sentence. Having exhausted all legal paths in Russia, Dmitriev’s lawyer will now bring the case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Yuri Dmitriev

Yuri Dmitriev was centrally involved in the excavations of mass graves in the Sandarmokh forest in Karelia, a region bordering Finland, and the establishment of the names of those who were murdered there by the Stalinist secret police, the NKVD, during the Great Terror in 1937-38. Over a million people were killed during the Great Terror, among them tens of thousands of revolutionaries from Russia, Germany, Poland and many other countries. It was a political genocide, targeting above all the supporters of Leon Trotsky, who opposed the Stalinist, nationalist reaction against the October revolution of 1917. It also targeted all those who remembered and played an active part in the revolution.

As of this writing, the whereabouts of Yuri Dmitriev in Russia’s prison system are unclear, but it appears that he has now been sent to a penal colony. Dmitriev is 66 years old, and the rejection of his appeal is tantamount to a death sentence.

The case against Dmitriev, which is based on allegations of sexual assault of a minor, was a politically motivated state frame-up from its start in 2016. The charges have never been substantiated. The trial proceeded behind closed doors for years until he was sentenced to 13 years in prison in September 2020; the sentence was extended to 15 years last December.

The character of the charges not only served to create a basis for his persecution but also to discredit and defame him personally and, by extension, his work.

Thanks in no small part to Dmitriev’s efforts, the Sandarmokh shooting site, along with the Kommunarka and Butovo shooting sites in Moscow, is today one of only a few mass burial locations from the Great Terror that have been uncovered and whose victims are known by name; many more such shooting sites remain undiscovered to this day.

For decades, the Soviet bureaucracy kept the location of mass graves at Sandarmokh and elsewhere a “state secret.” The site was not uncovered until the crisis of Stalinism in the late 1980s created conditions for the partial revelations of the historical truth about the scale of the Great Purges. Expeditions headed by Dmitriev discovered 236 burial pits in the 1990s; he helped compile the list of names of those who were shot in the forest, as well as the names of their executioners; authored several works on the Great Terror in Karelia and became the head of the regional branch of Memorial.

The so called “Solovki” operation, in which 1,111 political prisoners were murdered, gives a sense of the political scale of the crimes committed by Stalinism in Sandarmokh alone.

In a sinister mockery of the ideals and leaders of the October Revolution, the bureaucracy organized its single biggest mass shooting here for the week of the 20th anniversary of the October 1917 seizure of power by the working class. As one historian of the Sandarmokh shootings noted, about “half of those who were shot were simple workers from Petersburg [Leningrad],” the city of the 1917 revolution.

Among those shot on October 27 and November 1-4, 1937 were also several Old Bolsheviks and members of the Left Opposition, including Nadezhda Smilga-Poluyan, an Old Bolshevik and the wife of Ivar Smilga, who had been a close collaborator of Lenin in 1917 and leader of the Left Opposition in the 1920s; the Old Bolsheviks Grigory Shklovsky and Georgy Yakovenko, who had signed declarations of the Left Opposition in the 1920s; Revekka Shumskaya and Noi Vol’fson, party members since the first years of the Soviet Union who had been arrested for support of the Opposition; and Martin Yakobson and Aleksandr Blaufel’d, two Old Bolsheviks who had fought for socialism in Estonia since the revolution of 1905.

In total, over 9,500 people from 60 different nationalities are believed to have been killed at Sandarmokh. A large number of them fell victim to the “national operations” by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, which targeted national minorities such as the Ukrainians, the Finns and the Poles.

Although Dmitriev, a deeply religious man, has always approached the crimes of Stalinism from the standpoint of anti-Communism, his work constituted an important contribution to reestablishing the historical truth about the Great Terror. As such, he was an intolerable thorn in the eye of the Russian state. The merciless crackdown on him is aimed at intimidating all those who are seeking to learn the truth about the crimes of Stalinism—be it professional historians or ordinary people.

The persecution of Dmitriev was also accompanied by a campaign, spearheaded by Russia’s Ministry of Culture and backed by neo-Stalinist forces in Russia’s pseudo-left, to propagandize the lie that the mass graves in Sandarmokh were the result not of the Great Terror, but rather of Finnish executions of Soviet soldiers during World War II.

The state vendetta against Dmitriev has been a central component of the years-long, systematic efforts of the Putin regime to rehabilitate Joseph Stalin, the “gravedigger” of the October revolution, and justify his crimes. This campaign has involved the production of a viciously anti-Semitic series smearing Leon Trotsky in 2017 (the series was then distributed by Netflix); the systematic destruction of archival material about the Great Terror; and, mostly recently, the liquidation of the Memorial research center, the single most important research institution on the history of the Great Terror.

Motivating this extraordinary campaign of state repression and historical falsification is a profound fear by the Russian oligarchy of the political consequences of the establishment of the historical truth about the October revolution, and the internationalist-socialist opposition to Stalinism, which was led by Leon Trotsky and his Left Opposition.

The Putin regime is the direct heir of the Stalinist reaction against the socialist October revolution of 1917, which culminated in the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union by the bureaucracy. Thirty years later, the Putin regime and the oligarchy as a whole are in a profound crisis. While its reactionary invasion in Ukraine is above all a bankrupt and criminal response to the systematic encirclement of Russia by imperialism since 1991, the Putin regime also seeks thereby to divert from immense class tensions and escalate the promotion of Great Russian nationalism. Tellingly, Putin began his speech justifying the war by attacking the October revolution and Vladimir Lenin in particular.

As the war drags on, developing ever more directly into an open confrontation with NATO, the economic sanctions are creating conditions for a socioeconomic disaster unseen in the country since the Second World War. After over a million people died because of the oligarchy’s criminal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, now, entire branches of industry are being devastated and millions of workers face the prospect of losing their employment.

The attacks of the Putin regime on historical truth and its rehabilitation of Stalinism are aimed, above all, at suppressing the historical truth about the October revolution and the socialist opposition to Stalinism in anticipation of major social and political unrest in the working class. Workers must oppose this campaign as part of their struggle to build a socialist anti-war movement whose revolutionary program is based on the entire historical legacy of the struggle of Trotskyism against Stalinism.

A new Solferino moment for humanitarians

Hugo Slim

Senior Research Fellow,

 University of Oxford

This year marks the 160th anniversary of the publication of Henri Dunant’s classic text, ‘A Memory of Solferino’, in 1862. Dunant’s powerful book inspired the founding of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the First Geneva Convention of 1864.

In this post, Hugo Slim, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, reflects on changes in warfare and humanitarian aid since Dunant’s legacy and makes three calls to action of his own.

ICRC Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog ·

Henri Dunant only worked with the wounded for a few days after the Battle of Solferino in 1859, helping organize food and water for injured soldiers, dressing their wounds, writing letters to their families and comforting men as they died. But the experience changed his life, and with it the course of humanitarian history.

Solferino was an enormous battle during the Second Italian War of Independence, the last in world history where all the armies involved were under the personal command of their monarchs. Some 300,000 men from Austrian, French, and Italian forces clashed for 14 hours, during which time over 30,000 soldiers were killed and tens of thousands wounded. These casualty figures are much higher than any battle in the early 21st century – only the Battle of Mosul in 2016 comes anywhere close.

For days after the battle, every church and public building in every village along the battle’s 40-kilometre front was crammed with wounded and sick soldiers. Hundreds of local Italians were caring for them. Dunant worked mostly in the church of Castiglione delle Stiviere, a delightful little town that looks down over the great plains of Lombardy.

Dunant spent much of the next two years penning his manifesto for change. His striking text is part memoire and part political advocacy that makes three urgent calls: official recognition of the wounded in war; the launch of a new voluntary movement of national relief societies with international support; and an international convention to protect the wounded and respect humanitarian aid.

Within two years of its publication, all three of Dunant’s proposals were agreed upon and underway, establishing A Memory of Solferino as one of the most successful international policy proposals in modern history.

One hundred sixty years later

When I re-read Dunant before writing my own book on the state of war and humanitarian aid today, three huge changes since Dunant’s day jumped out at me: the dramatic and devastating developments in military technology; the change in humanitarian focus from wounded soldiers to civilians, and the dominance of international humanitarian superagencies over national organizations in wartime aid today.

Examining these trends, I also came up with three main policy calls. Less punchy and specific than Dunant’s, they are more general calls to action.

First, we need to get ready for ‘big wars’ across land, sea, air and three new domains – outer space, cyber space and personal information space – and prioritize the ethics and law to govern artificial intelligence (AI)-based weapons.

Second, we must support civilian survival better by investing in people’s own agency and actively include men and boys as well as women and girls.

And third, we need to invest much more in national humanitarian networks and in simpler aid that will be easier and cheaper to deliver in big wars and global climate emergencies.

Prepare for AI-based big war

Dunant wrote at the outset of a major new arms race. After Solferino, warfare changed from a form of warfare based on blade, gunshot and canon into a new era of industrial warfare with automatic weapons, massive artillery, poisoned gas, barbed wire, aerial bombardment and nuclear weapons.

From the 1860s onwards, the Gatling and Maxim guns, and their successors, began to fire hundreds of rounds a minute, initially devastating armies of African, Asian and Native American troops as European, American, Russian, Chinese and Japanese imperialism expanded around the world. In a single morning at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, British forces killed 12,000 Sudanese troops for the loss of 47 of their own. Such industrial scale killing increased exponentially throughout the twentieth century’s many terrible wars, killing tens of millions of combatants and civilians.

Warfare is at a tipping point now, just as it was in 1862. Today, in 2022, we face a new ‘Solferino moment’ as warfare moves to AI-based and potentially huge peer-to-peer conflicts between Great Powers once again.

Twenty-first century wars so far have been militarily small. They have been mostly asymmetric conflicts with no great armies fighting across whole continents or clashing repeatedly at sea and in the air. These militarily small wars will continue in various parts of the world, but the world’s Great Powers are leaving them behind and preparing for big war once again – massive, large-scale conflicts.

The core fabric of big war will be highly computerized weapons and military systems operating across war’s traditional domains of land, sea and air, as well as three new domains – outer space, cyber space and personal information space.

Outer space is increasingly militarized and a likely site of conflict in the next ten years. Space is already the ‘back office’ for terrestrial warfare and the centre of a new strategic contest for ‘planetary advantage’.[1] Cyberwarfare is similarly expanding to dominate 21st century warfare. So too will attacks on people’s personal information space as our mobile phones and the ‘internet of things’ dramatically increases the operational surface of war. Each one of us who is online could be targeted for misinformation, disinformation and hate speech, or violently hacked and individually picked off.

A major challenge, in which Dunant’s ICRC is already engaged, is the ethics and legality of AI-based warfare. This is a major priority as AI develops increasing levels of autonomy and non-human intelligence, and weapons change from being human tools to machine agents, or non-human combatants.[2] The extraordinary speed of AI-based weapons systems in action, and the secrecy of their development, means ethics and international law will be playing catch-up as new weapons are designed, produced and used before ethical codes and appropriate new laws of war are agreed by States and society.
Keep supporting civilians with aid and laws

In 2022, the main humanitarian focus is on civilians rather than the wounded soldiers Dunant worked so hard to assist. Indeed, among civilians, it is women and girls who dominate humanitarian concerns, as female bodies have become as targeted as male bodies in contemporary war. This is a complete gender reversal from Dunant’s nineteenth century focus on men as the iconic victims of war.

The good news today is that civilian deaths have been much lower in the first twenty years of this century compared to the massive numbers of civilians killed violently, or by famine and disease, in the wars of the twentieth century. Humanitarian rhetoric often claims that civilians are suffering ‘more than ever’. This is not true.

For example, one estimated total for all civilian casualties around the world from explosive weapons in urban areas in 2020 was 18,747 people.[3] This contrasts sharply with the 45,000 people killed in a single night of bombing over Hamburg in 1943. Thankfully, there has only been one wartime famine so far this century – Somalia’s terrible famine in 2011, which killed around 244,000 people. In the 1970s and 1980s alone, there were several large wartime famines.

This too is good news. It means early 21st century wars have not been as terrible, humanitarian norms are more widely respected so far, and humanitarian aid is so much better.

However, aid to civilians needs nuancing. The priority given to women and girls is sometimes more ideological than impartial, and today it is often men who are the forgotten civilians. Similarly, in big war, humanitarians should be ready once again to care not only for civilians but also for massive numbers of wounded combatants.
Invest in national humanitarian networks and simple aid

Aid is too international today and dominated by a premier league of superagencies who effectively have regulatory and financial capture over Western-funded humanitarian aid.

This needs to change if humanitarian aid is to stand any chance of coping with the much bigger demands of the climate crisis and big war. Bigger and bigger international agencies will be bad value for money as they become operationally rigid, overstretched and intensely bureaucratic.

Instead, international humanitarians need to lean in much more to Dunant’s original vision of a network of national humanitarian organizations, created by committed citizens, that are supported by governments and complemented by international agencies.

This means international organizations stepping back in large part from their current operational model of humanitarian action, which sees them serving large caseloads of individuals. Instead, they should adopt a model of humanitarian cooperation, which sees them actively investing in the locally-led humanitarian action of national and community partners. In business terms, this is a switch from a business-to-customer model (B2C) to a business-to-business model (B2B) – as internationals become creative investors in a portfolio of organizations rather than direct providers to long lists of individual recipients.

At a global level, today’s new multipolar world requires humanitarian cooperation too. Geopolitics dictate that the Western-funded humanitarian system will never be the single global system. Its sphere of influence and access will always be profoundly limited in large parts of the world where people experience war and climate disasters in spheres of influence controlled by China, Russia, India and anti-Western Islamism.

Realistically, international humanitarian agencies should accept that the global humanitarian system must be a ‘system of systems’ and not the globalization of the Western system. Humanitarian multilateralism in the 21st century will be about achieving cooperation and coordination between African, Chinese, Indian, Russian and Western humanitarian systems in a process more like the COP of climate multilateralism than the IASC of today’s parochial Western system.

Finally, simpler aid must be a priority in all humanitarian systems. The last 160 years have produced enormous progress in humanitarian aid, which has saved hundreds of millions of lives. But the last twenty years in particular have seen an extraordinary elaboration of humanitarian aid. This has been driven by an over-ambition in Western liberal humanitarians to right every wrong and meet every conceivable human need.

Humanitarian aid is now too complicated – a luxury perhaps of an excess of staff in expanding bureaucracies. Before big war breaks out and the climate emergency becomes extreme everywhere, humanitarians need to limit their ambition. They then need to work closely with people in crisis to discover simpler forms of aid. Simple aid – that puts aid more directly into the hands of affected people and which builds the national institutions they rely on for healthcare, schooling, energy and cash – is what people need as they use their own initiative to adapt to the crisis around them. Simpler aid is still quality aid but is easier to deliver to larger populations at a cheaper price.

Editor’s note: Hugo Slim’s new book is Solferino 21: Warfare, Civilians and Humanitarians in the Twenty First Century, published by Hurst and Co. 

[1] Daniel Deudney, Dark Skies : Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics and the Ends of Humanity, Oxford University Press, New York, 2020, chapter 5.

[2] Kenneth Payne, I, Warbot : The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict, Hurst, London, 2021.

[3] Action on Armed Violence, Explosive Violence Monitor 2020 at https://aoav.org.uk/2021/explosive-violence-in-2020/

See other posts by the author:
People power in humanitarian action, February 20, 2020
Reflections of a humanitarian bureaucrat, January 9, 2020
Trust me – I’m a Humanitarian, October 24, 2019
The Power of Humanity: On being human now and in the future, July 30, 2019
Masculinity and War–let’s talk about it, March 15, 2018
Impartiality and Intersectionality, January 16, 2018

Shifting the narrative: not weapons, but technologies of warfare

Klaudia KlonowskaResearch, Asser Institute


Debates concerning the regulation of choices made by States in conducting hostilities are often limited to the use of weapons . . . but our understanding of weapons is outdated. New technologies – especially those with embedded artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, even if non-weaponized – are significantly transforming contemporary warfare. The indirect influence of these technologies on warfare decisions is consistently underestimated.

In this post, Klaudia Klonowska, a researcher with the Asser Institute’s DILEMA project, calls for a dramatic shift in what we consider to be an important tool of warfare. Not weapons, but all technologies of warfare. She argues that we need to acknowledge that the choice of technologies may influence offensive capabilities just as much as the choice of weapons.

ICRC Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and their use in conflicts is a topic of rising importance in international debates. However, despite the multitude of different AI applications, international fora – for example, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) – focus exclusively on AI applications to weaponized systems. Despite the lack of a shared definition, LAWS are most commonly referred to as weapon systems that can select and attack targets without human intervention, a focus on weaponization that is even tautologically emphasized by the inclusion of ‘lethal’ in the name of the technology in question. Non-weaponized AI technologies, such as decision aids[1] or military human enhancement technologies[2], are frequently overlooked and lack a suitable forum.

But is this weapons-focused approach justified from a legal perspective?

To answer this question, I point to and examine a key provision in international humanitarian law that reflects the limited freedom of States to select means or methods of warfare: Additional Protocol I (API) Article 36, which obliges State Parties to ensure that the question of the legality of ‘a new weapon, means or methods of warfare’ is reviewed with care during development or acquisition and before use and deployment. There is a prevailing tendency among States and scholars to call it the ‘weapons review’, as if non-weaponized items were excluded. This narrative, however, is overly simplistic.

So let’s take a step back and unpack a question that is often glossed over and assumed by international legal scholars and State experts: what specifically are the ‘weapons, means or methods of warfare’ about which these regular debates are held?

In the words of Mary Ellen O’Connell: ‘we need a radical shift about how we think of weapons!’ We need a shift to consider technologies that may be far removed from the battlefield, are not weaponized in the traditional sense, and nevertheless, significantly contribute to the conduct of hostilities. We need to move on from describing Article 36 as strictly requiring a weapons review and acknowledge that the choice of non-weaponized technologies may influence militaries’ offensive and defensive capabilities just as much as the choice of weapons. We need not a review of weapons, but a review of ‘technologies of warfare’, as the ICRC also calls them, a term that is adaptive to the modern battlefield, inclusive of both current and future military developments, and highlights a broad scope of review in the spirit of Article 36’s rationale.

Terminology of weapons under pressure: fleshing out the scope of Article 36 review

The AP1 itself does not define the key terms: ‘a new weapon, means or method of warfare’. There is no common definition of these terms nor does another provision or the preamble of the Protocol provide context to clarify their meaning. Drafters of the Protocol intentionally left the scope open to be sufficiently inclusive of a wide variety of military items, and to prevent States from evading or circumventing this prohibition by developing or defining new war-waging tools with distinct capabilities.

At the same time, this choice may have created some inconsistency in the Protocol’s application and lack of clarity in regards to which items shall be reviewed. For example, in 2017, the Netherlands and Switzerland stated that ‘what else should fall under the category of means apart from, of course, weapons (…), that is what needs to be reviewed, is up for debate’.

Arguably, the term ‘weapons’ has been the easiest of the three terms to define. States’ national definitions include a broad range of weapons—from traditional weapons, such as firearms, to munitions, missiles, non- or less-lethal weapons, and delivery systems. These definitions most commonly encompass all those objects that are intended to directly cause harm to persons or damage to objects.

Greater ambiguity lies with the understanding of the terms ‘means or methods of warfare’. Historically, one of the more common approaches has been to read ‘means and methods’ together as directly referring to weapons: on the one hand, capturing the design of a weapon (means) and, on the other hand, how the weapon is expected to be used (methods). In the past two decades, however, we can observe the development of a second approach which reads the terms separately, influenced by a significant contribution by Justin McClelland, an officer performing the legal review for the British Armed Forces. In his article from 2003, McClelland defined means of warfare as ‘items of equipment which, whilst they do not constitute a weapon as such, nonetheless have a direct impact on the offensive capability of the force to which they belong’. This approach further clarified the inclusion of non-weaponized items of equipment such as mine clearance vehicles, and ‘methods of warfare’ such as perfidy or starvation techniques prohibited by international law.

Notably, certain cyber capabilities are now subject to Article 36 review. Rule 110 of the Tallinn Manual 2.0 notes that States should conduct a legal review of the ‘cyber means of warfare’, and many States have already followed suit. This development is significant, as cyber capabilities no longer resemble the typical iron-and-steel appearance of weapons. Where previously only those objects with a direct influence on the battlefield were reviewed, this addition opens up a range of possibilities to review systems that indirectly, through a chain of effects, achieve an intended purpose of inflicting harm or damage. This excludes cyber espionage, which is merely a passive collection of information. Instead, it highlights technologies that are capable of ‘transforming the passive collection of information into active disruption’ and thus are considered to fall within the meaning of ‘means of warfare’.

These developments show that under the pressure of technological developments, the meaning of Article 36 within international law has evolved to include a broader array of items other than weapons, such as items that are intended to indirectly cause harm or damage. This evolution must continue to account for new technologies that are significantly changing the way hostilities are conducted.

Reviewing technologies of warfare: four general criteria

In contemporary armed conflict, new means of warfare are not easily identifiable. They come in different shapes and forms, such as algorithmic codes or nano-bio-info-cognitive technologies that enhance human capacities. Furthermore, these emerging technologies are often of dual use – both civilian and military – which makes it even more difficult to define them or find viable pathways for regulating their use in the military context.

Think of facial recognition software, developed first as an algorithm, and then ‘militarized’ by its inclusion in software that matches the faces captured on a drone camera with military databases of headshots of known or suspected terrorists. Even if this dual use technology is never automated, it can be used to provide recommendations to the battlefield soldiers or drone operators in targeting decisions. Such technologies, although they differ from conventional weapons, are expected to considerably influence human agency, human judgement, and human intention in warfare decision-making.

To consider whether an item shall fall within the scope of Article 36 and be subjected to a legal review, I propose to consider the following four general criteria, taking into account the above-mentioned characteristics of ‘weapons, means or methods of warfare’ and the evolving interpretation of Article 36.

1. Compliance with international law

The first criterion considers whether the item risks States’ lack of compliance with international law. This criterion triggers the following questions, among others: first, is the item or its expected use expressly prohibited by existing legal obligations; and second, (if not prohibited per se) could its intended use in an operational environment violate rules or principles of applicable international law? If a system or its use in warfare may lead to violation of legal rules and principles, then it should be in the best interest of State Parties to ensure that such items are reviewed before deployment or use.

2. Integral to military decision-making and operations

For non-weaponized items (including those capable of fully complying with the applicable rules and principles) that are not prohibited by law nor do they explicitly violate any rules or principles of applicable law, further evaluation is required of their intended use within the critical military infrastructure. This includes consideration of whether the item will form an integral part of critical decision-making (i.e. targeting decisions) and be used in a chain of effects to inflict harm, injury, or damage. This is the case for certain cyber capabilities and may further include decision aids or human enhancement technologies.

Think of targeting decision aids (e.g. facial recognition software) with the tendency to misidentify certain female individuals resulting in a gender bias and a small percentage of misidentified targets. Such an algorithm, if using machine learning techniques, may be used alongside military operations to improve its accuracy with time. Nonetheless, it would be highly problematic if it were used as an integral element of the military decision-making infrastructure, in which case the recommendations of this software may lead to unlawful final targeting decisions. The phenomena of de-skilling and automation bias highlight that even where a system is not acting fully autonomously, it may become an integral element of military decision-making, and thus should be reviewed before deployment or use.

3. Actionable information to military decision-making and operations

If an item forms an integral element of military decision-making and operations, it is necessary to perform another evaluation of whether its contribution to the chain of effects is significant. Principally, as with cyber capabilities, it is necessary to consider if the item interprets, translates, or filters information before it is then provided to human decision-makers. Instead of simply displaying information (e.g. video feed camera), does it process and provide actionable intelligence (e.g. target recognition software) that may significantly affect military decisions? As the SIPRI report notes, even a surveillance system can become a subject of review ‘if it can be established that it collects and processes information used in the targeting process’.

4. Intended use in the conduct of hostilities

The last criterion of evaluation relates to the specific intended use of the item under review. Not all technologies integral to military decisions, with the capability to provide actionable intelligence, should fall within the meaning of Article 36. Only items that are intended for use in the conduct of hostilities, that is, in support of critical military decisions, should be reviewed to prevent avoidable (and/or unlawful) harm, injury, or damage.

* * * * *

In short, a weapons-focused approach to the regulation of new technologies of warfare cannot be justified. Where an item risks noncompliance with international law, is intended for use in critical military decision-making, and can significantly alter the nature of processed information, it should be subjected to a review before deployment or use. It should be said that such an item, together with human operators, soldiers, and commanders, participates in the co-production of hostilities, meaning that the same outcome cannot be achieved without their use.

The criteria above seek to include both items which can directly or indirectly – through a chain of effects – influence the conduct of hostilities. According to their obligation under AP1, State Parties should therefore ensure that all such items are reviewed with care before deployment.

The intention of the AP1 drafters to provide a sufficiently broad scope of Article 36 can be realized if we adequately capture emerging technological solutions that pose new challenges and threats to compliance with the legal rules and principles – not only new weapons, but also of new technologies of warfare that indirectly but increasingly affect our decisions and conduct in war.

[1] Decision aids or decision-support systems refer to technologies that use algorithms to process and filter information with the objective to provide recommendations and assist decision-makers.

[2] Human enhancement technology refers to a broad range of biomedical technologies with the aim of improving the human physical or mental capabilities. In the military context, human enhancement technologies are being developed to enhance the capabilities of soldiers.

See also
Christopher Chen, The future is now: artificial intelligence and anticipatory humanitarian action, August 19, 2021

Dustin A. Lewis, Legal reviews of weapons, means and methods of warfare involving artificial intelligence: 16 elements to consider, March 21, 2019

Netta Goussac, Safety net or tangled web: Legal reviews of AI in weapons and war-fighting, April 18, 2019