INTERVIEW

Putin's massive mistake: Lawrence Freedman on Ukraine and the lessons of history

Putin made bad decisions based on "total misapprehension," says military expert. Now the whole world pays the price

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

Senior Writer
SALON
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 21, 2022 

Vladimir Putin | A destroyed tank lies in rubble, in central Mariupol

 (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

LONG READ

Since the Russian invasion last February, the Ukrainian military has spent months trading space for time. That has proven a successful strategy: U.S. and NATO military assistance, excellent civilian and military leadership, a determined and well-trained military and a population committed to total resistance has evidently turned the tide against the Russian forces.

The Ukrainian military first pushed the Russians back from the attempted siege of Kyiv. In late August and September, the Ukrainians launched a series of bold offenses in the northeast and southeast, liberating a considerable amount of Russian-occupied territory, including the strategically important city of Kherson. But these battles have been costly for both sides. The Ukrainians have lost many thousands of soldiers and expended a large amount of their artillery supplies, particularly the precision-guided, long-range U.S.-made munitions that have been integral to interdicting Russian supplies, targeting command and control, and generally creating chaos behind the front line areas.

The Russians have suffered far worse losses: Western intelligence agencies estimate that the Russian military may have suffered more than 100,000 casualties, and has seen its most modern and elite units decimated. Russia has also lost an unexpectedly high number of its best attack helicopters and fighter aircraft, making it even more difficult to turn back the Ukrainian offensive.

With winter arriving, it would be normal for the two armies to rest, consolidate their gains and prepare to fight again in the spring, especially in terrain where snow and mud will make maneuvering difficult for several months. So far, the Ukrainian military is defying those precedents, as it continues to attack Russian forces and reclaim lost territory. In response, the Russians are launching local counterattacks, digging in and bringing forward new conscripts to replenish their demoralized frontline forces. The Russians are also using drones and missiles to attack Ukraine's infrastructure and major cities in an attempt to break the Ukrainian people's will to resist by denying them heat, clean water and electricity.

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The war in Ukraine is far from over and it would be foolish to make firm predictions about its outcome. But one thing is assured: This war will be studied for a long time as a type of lethal classroom where decades-old or centuries-old principles of strategy and tactics are being tested by the realities of the 21st-century battlefield.
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Lawrence Freedman is one of the world's leading experts on foreign policy, war, strategy and international relations. He is emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London and the author of many books, including "Strategy: A History," "The Future of War" and "The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy." His new book is "Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine." Freedman's essays and other writing have been featured in such publications as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New Statesman and the Times (U.K.).

In this conversation, he explains how the Russian military disregarded the fundamental basics of military strategy in its war against Ukraine, which is why Russia faces defeat on the battlefield. Freedman also contends that, contrary to Vladimir Putin's assumptions, in attacking Ukraine he strengthened that nation's resolve, sense of national unity and will to resist. This is especially true of the terror bombing campaign against Ukraine, which Freedman argues will do little or nothing to advance Russia's strategic goals or win the war.

Freedman also ponders counterfactual scenarios about the Ukraine war. How would a general from another time period adapt to modern warfare as seen in Ukraine? What would they do differently, or do the same? Freedman also takes on a question that has been much discussed online and in other forums: What would happen if the Russian military directly engaged in battle against U.S. or NATO forces?

Toward the end of this conversation, Freedman explains that Vladimir Putin's failures in Ukraine are an example of a larger dynamic: Authoritarian and autocratic leaders consistently make poor decisions because they are insulated from reality and accurate information.

How are you making sense of the war in Ukraine? As a military historian, how do you process these events on a human level?

I have very mixed emotions about the war. First, I always feel a bit guilty because my life gets more interesting and enthralling, in a way, whenever something awful is going on. Wars make me busy. It would be nice if peace made me quite as busy. I have Ukrainian friends, and what they are going through is awful. But on the other hand, they've shown enormous resilience and have made remarkable progress in fighting the war. In the end, I hesitate to say that I am optimistic because it is dangerous to predict the future. Yes, the Ukrainians have the initiative in the war. But even then, more people are going to die, be made into refugees, and generally life is going to be hard for the Ukrainians for the foreseeable future.

What does it mean to be Ukrainian right now?

I have spoken to a number of Ukrainians about this question. My feeling is that they are experiencing a much stronger sense of national identity than before the war. The idea that the Ukrainians were distinct from Russia is not that new. But I think what's striking about their sentiments now, and we see it in all the polling, is that there is a much clearer sense of solidarity with each other and a belief in the state and in Ukraine's leaders.

How do you balance your intellectual interests and curiosity about war and armed conflict with seeing the human cost and reality of it?

I have followed a number of wars pretty closely throughout my long career. I try not to look at wars as some type of spectator sport: War is about violence. The war in Ukraine is different in several ways. First, the Russian tactics are clearly very brutal, as they were in Syria. The amount of information about what is happening day to day in Ukraine is much more, as compared to previous wars. What we can see about war is just much more immediate and intimate.

I started paying close attention to wars with the Falklands in 1982. The amount of information that was coming back at any time was very small. There was radio commentary and very little television coverage of the Falklands — and even that was out of date. With social media today and the internet I can see tanks being blown up and actually watch the soldiers scurrying away, trying not to die. This is unprecedented in many ways. It is all so much closer than before.

A person can literally watch the war in Ukraine in real time. It is dystopian, it feels like a science fiction movie. To me, it's very unsettling. Our culture is already violent enough without that level of desensitization.

Vietnam was described as the first television war. I remember the Tet Offensive in 1968, for example. There was an immediacy in the coverage of the war as long as the TV crews were there to transmit images in near-real time, which meant, as in Tet, that fighting was taking place in cities. For a lot of the time this was about counterinsurgency, as also in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is unusual about the war in Ukraine is that this is a conventional war, and one fought at high intensity This isn't a walkover. This is a very serious fight for both sides. Yes, there was all the media coverage of the Gulf War in 1991, but no one really thought the United States was going to lose.

But we should still be careful in how we understand all this footage coming back from the war in Ukraine because we are not seeing everything, and the coverage is inevitably selective by nature.

When you look at the war in Ukraine, what is the simple story, and what is the more complicated one?

The initial assaults by Russia failed because of arrogance and an underestimation of the Ukrainians. The first moves by Russia failed, and they never really recovered from that.

The simple story is quite straightforward: Putin ordered his military to invade Ukraine on the basis of a total misapprehension of the country he was taking on. It was that error — presuming the country to be an ineffectual non-state ruled by an illegitimate government — which was used to justify the invasion in the first place. The reason the initial assaults by Russia failed was because of arrogance and an underestimation of the Ukrainians. The first moves by Russia failed, and they never really recovered from that. The Russians could not take Kyiv, and then we had the stage where they moved to the Donbas region. Western support started to come in and that moved us to the next stage of the war, from late July and August to the present, where the Ukrainians are taking the initiative because they have better equipment and supplies from America and NATO.

What is happening now in the war is very much the consequence of the Russians suffering shortages in manpower because they expended them — quite carelessly, in my opinion — early on. The Russians are pretty thinly defended now and are trying to bolster their ranks through mobilizing reserves and a de facto draft. The Russians have gradually become a 20th-century army, while the Ukrainians are gradually becoming a 21st-century one.

On another level, we are seeing a coercive Russian strategy against Ukrainian society. This involves a wide range of war crimes. Russia is also trying to turn off the power and electricity in Ukraine. The Ukrainians cannot do the same against the Russians in terms of targeting infrastructure. The Ukrainians are winning on the battlefield, but they cannot hit back against the Russians on that strategic level.

The Russian military has been exposed as a hollow force. Before the war in Ukraine, it had a fearsome reputation. Now the Russian military looks like it may collapse in Ukraine. Are there other historical examples of such a thing?

It does happen that armies, when they are properly tested, just collapse. It's not wholly unusual. That can happen because of a lack of supplies or from poor leadership. The Iraqi army in Desert Storm is an example of this. Before Desert Storm, the Iraqi army was talked about as the fourth-largest in the world, battle-hardened from their war against the Iranians. The Iraqis believed their own reputation. But in the end the Iraqi military could not oppose the combat power of the United States.

As for Russia, they did quite poorly in the first Chechen war. They went in arrogantly and got hammered by the Chechens. But that was explained as being caused by the end of the Cold War and a lack of funding for the Russian military, which was demoralized. Russia had time to rebuild its military afterwards, and it was assumed they had used the money from oil to modernize their forces.

Putin was misled by the fact that their recent military operations were successful, such as in Chechnya, Georgia and in particular in Crimea. That led him to believe the Russian military was competent and professional.

I believe that Putin was misled by the fact that their recent military operations were successful, such as the second Chechen war, their intervention in Georgia and, in particular, taking Crimea and bullying the Ukrainians in 2014, followed by their actions in Syria. This led Putin to believe that the Russian military was competent and professional. Of course, that turned out to be incorrect. Moreover, the war in Ukraine is on a different scale. The Ukrainians are professional, motivated, well-trained, determined and are fighting back in a sophisticated and effective way. The Russian military was not prepared for such opposition.

What is new about what we are seeing, in terms of the operational art of war in Ukraine? What is old?

Much of what is taking place in Ukraine would make perfect sense to a World War II commander. Drones, the communications technology, the intelligence-gathering technology and the satellites would be quite awesome to them. But the basics of attrition and maneuver and of where you hold the line and where you don't hold the line, especially the importance of logistics, are timeless. On that point, the Russians have really encountered problems with the basics of logistics. Keeping supply lines open is just fundamental to war.

The war in Ukraine is on a much smaller scale than what we saw in World War II. But the fundamentals are much the same. What is different from previous decades, and World War II in particular, is the precision of modern weapons. The Russians had a number of precision-guided weapons, but they did not use them effectively in the early stages of the war. Instead of hitting military targets, the Russians used them against civilian targets. That was painful for the Ukrainians, but it did not actually help Russia on the battlefield. By comparison, the Ukrainians have used the American HIMARS system and other long-range weapons to focus on specific targets of value, as opposed to the Russians. The Ukrainians have learned to use drones and other intelligence assets and specific targeting information very effectively. It really is quite impressive.

Many different narratives are being imposed on the war in Ukraine. Many of them are premature. One I have been following closely in the mainstream media is that Javelin and other ATGMs have somehow made the tank obsolete. That is an old and repeatedly disproved claim. What are your thoughts?

The tank has always been a subject of debate. For example, in the Arab-Israeli war in October 1973, many tanks were lost. How? From other tanks. The main anti-tank weapon is often another tank. The fact is, if you want to move a distance with firepower and have a degree of protection over difficult terrain, it is going to end up looking like a tank. Anything can be vulnerable on the modern battlefield, because if you can be seen you can be hit. That having been said, you still need to move people and firepower on the battlefield. Of course there are forms of deception and finding cover and using artillery and infantry to screen and protect your forces from short-range anti-tank systems.

This is why combined arms is critical on the modern battlefield; every system has a role to play. You can't isolate the tank and say that it's gone and everything else stays. There is always going to be a role for tanks. Will the balance of systems on the battlefield change in the future? Of course. UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] are now being used instead of manned aircraft for certain missions. But that doesn't mean you get rid of manned aircraft, because they can do things that a UAV can't. You use the best system for the mission.

Russia is waging a terror campaign using drones, missiles and artillery against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. What do we actually know about the effectiveness of targeting civilians as part of a larger strategy to win a war?

Unfortunately, we know a great deal about this. This is a political question about terrorizing populations and whether to do so or not. The question is: Does targeting civilians and population centers actually make the public turn on their own government?

The Allies during the Second World War did terrible things against German cities, especially toward the end. But there wasn't much that the German people could do about it. They lacked the means to change their government. In the case of Ukraine, there's absolutely no evidence that the attacks on civil society have made a difference to popular support, if anything, the Russian attacks have encouraged popular support for the war. Attacking civilian populations can backfire in that way. Terror bombing and attacking civil society does not necessarily gain the attacker a political victory.

What are some of the main things the Russian military has done incorrectly in the execution of their war in Ukraine? By comparison, what have the Ukrainians done right

The Russians' main error is that they strategically underestimated their opponent. That is always a basic mistake: Never underestimate your enemy. The Russians also did not have enough infantry and manpower, more generally. They do not give enough autonomy and flexibility to junior officers and others lower down the chain of command to make decisions, improvise and address problems.

The Ukrainians have not wasted weaponry. They have thought hard about the targets they need to hit. Their ability to maneuver and encircle the Russians has caused them to panic.

The Russians also failed to anticipate what the Ukrainians could do with accurate artillery. The Russians didn't disperse their ammunition enough. The Russian logistics system was too rigid, which makes it an easy target. What did the Ukrainians do right? They delegated initiative to quite small groups of forces and junior officers. The Ukrainians had to rely on taking the initiative against the Russians; that was central to their strategy and tactics.

The Ukrainians have not wasted their weaponry. They have thought hard about the targets that they most need to hit. When possible and where it made sense, the Ukrainians have used maneuver warfare to encircle the Russians rather than go directly at them in frontal assaults. The Ukrainians' ability to maneuver and encircle the Russians has caused them to panic — it'a demoralizing. In total, the Ukrainians have waged a very astute campaign against the Russians.

Armchair generals and other students of military history love counterfactuals and "what if" scenarios. One of those scenarios we see in response to the war in Ukraine is that the U.S. military and NATO would easily destroy the Russians in a conventional war. I am suspicious of such a conclusion, because in my opinion the Russian military and its leadership would approach such a scenario much differently than they did with Ukraine. How do you assess that counterfactual?

We just don't know. Counterfactuals are useful for testing theories of causation. What variable made the difference? If the Russians genuinely thought they were protecting their homeland, what we are seeing with Ukraine might have turned out differently. The Ukrainians are much more motivated in this fight than the Russians. Nuclear weapons are a variable here too. If the Russians really did think they were fighting for their own territory, they'd be much more likely to use nuclear weapons if they were losing. I am of the mind that the Russians still won't do such a thing in this conflict. Those types of questions can be explored using counterfactuals.

Autocrats tend to make bad decisions. They believe in the possibility of big, bold, decisive moves, and they don't have people who dare to warn them about all that can go wrong.

To answer your question, in a straight fight between the Americans and the Russians, the Americans would have won. American equipment, supplies and overall forces are just that much better. One of the surprising things about the war in Ukraine is the limited impact of Russian airpower. By comparison, the Americans would dominate the battlefield with their airpower — or at least would try to do so. We reasonably assumed that the Russians would do this in Ukraine. They weren't able to do it. If the Russians cannot dominate the Ukrainians with airpower, they would not be able to do it against the Americans.

The United States does not lose conventional battles very often. The United States does have difficulty with insurgencies, because in the end it is not worth the effort. Americans get impatient. In the end, the Americans would not have had much trouble with the Russian military that we are seeing in Ukraine.

What are some of the lessons from the war in Ukraine for NATO members and European militaries?

The Americans are going to fight in all domains. The British, the Germans and the French, for example, are not going to fight in all domains in the same way. They must think as an alliance: The European countries are not able to do everything on their own. A huge lesson from the war in Ukraine is that the intensity of modern warfare means you go through material and supplies very quickly. The stockpiles are never sufficient. The NATO countries have greatly depleted their supplies supporting Ukraine.

That means more resources are going to be put into building back up supplies. This means more ammunition, shells, rockets, missiles and the like for the future. This is not a new lesson, but it has to be relearned. Logistics are critical because even if you are making more ammunition and other supplies, you still have to get it all to the front.

Your new book focuses on command and leadership. What does the war in Ukraine tell us about Vladimir Putin?

Autocrats tend to make very bad decisions. Democracies make bad decisions too, but the difference is that autocracies believe in the possibility of big, bold, decisive moves, and they don't have people who dare to warn them about all that can go wrong. There are sycophantic advisers who don't dare to criticize the autocratic leader. This can cause horrible outcomes.

What's happened in Ukraine is a good example of how autocrats make mistakes. This war was Putin's decision. Putin had a theory about Ukraine, and did not confirm that theory with real experts who would tell him that he was wrong. Putin believed that Ukraine would crumble if pushed hard enough, and that turned out to be very wrong.

Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

Brexit has opened a Pandora’s Box of rabid right-wing xenophobic bile

21st November, 2022

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Readers of The National

SCOTLAND

ALEX Orr’s excellent letter (Brexit chickens come home to roost as new era of austerity begins, Nov 16) gets straight to the heart of the major cause of the crippling economic and social predicament that now faces the UK.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement is mightily depressing reading, particularly considering that expert opinion considers he has delayed spending cuts until 2025 in a blatantly political decision that tries to mask the economic basket case that the UK has become until after the next General Election.

Unsurprisingly, whilst he warns ordinary people of the financial pain ahead, he continued to allow the Truss mini-Budget decision to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses, a decision made possible by abandoning EU legislation. As Tory apologists claim that our woes are directly due to international instability and the results of Covid, many economic experts claim that Brexit places the UK in a unique economic position that has witnessed a drop in Gross Domestic Product of more than 4%. Factor in the incalculable loss of staff from areas like the NHS and it is clear that Brexit is a cancer riddling the UK economy.

Yet it is not simply a case of the self-inflicted economic harm of Brexit. Brexit has polarised the UK politically more than any time in the last 100 years and released a Pandora’s Box of rabid right-wing xenophobic political bile into the mainstream of the Tory party and UK political life. The Conservative MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, is the living embodiment of these rancorous and callous views. The man who claimed an exorbitant sum for his most recent expenses as an MP, and who claimed in true Gradgrindian style that people could live off £3 a day, regularly cites Brexit as a reason why asylum seekers ought to be thrown back into boats and returned to France tout de suite. This inhumane and chauvinistic rhetoric may charm the Daily Mail, Express, Sun and Telegraph’s readers but it highlights the stark difference between the little Englander and the majority of the rest of the UK

Brexit has created the Gordian Knot that is the Northern Ireland protocol, an issue exacerbated by the refusal of the antediluvian DUP representatives to form a Stormont Assembly and which continues to jeopardise the hard-won peace in the province, as evidence by the bombing of a police patrol vehicle in Strabane.

The Labour Party, even in the face of recent polls that show a clear majority for a Brexit reversal, still peddle the line that they can make Brexit work, though present little or no evidence to demonstrate how they would achieve this inconceivable feat. Lest we forget, the people of Scotland voted by 62% to remain in the EU but will be among the worst affected economically by the recession. As indy supporters on Twitter are fond of saying – you Yes yet?

Owen Kelly
Stirling

https://www.thenational.sco

UK

Older workers forced to 'unretire' amid cost-of-living crisis

 

By Sophie Smith

 21/11/22

Almost one third (30 per cent) of workers over the age of 45 no longer have enough income to cover basic living costs, with 1 in 10 older workers having no choice but to unretire and return to work to make ends meet as a result, according to research from Working Wise.

The report, sponsored by Santander Consumer Finance, revealed the impact of the "ever-growing" cost-of-living crisis on older workers, with a "huge" 46 per cent of older workers having to change their retirement plans to fund growing bills.

In addition to the 10 per cent of workers who have come out of retirement, the survey found that 26 per cent of those who have retired said they may need to return or could be tempted back.

Indeed, while two thirds (66 per cent) of older workers would, in fact, like to slow down and reduce their hours, nearly half (41 per cent) said they can’t afford to.

If it were a viable option, almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of older workers admitted that they would like to take early retirement, with the majority (48 per cent) citing job dissatisfaction issues, while 34 per cent would like to retire early for health reasons.

Commenting on the findings, Workingwise spokesperson, Mandy Garner, said: “For many older workers, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, unable to retire but unable to pay the bills in their current roles.

"If we want to engage older workers and encourage them to stay in or return to the workplace, we need to understand their needs; flexible working is crucial, largely owing to health issues and caring responsibilities.

"We need to appreciate older workers, show them we value them and create a working environment that enables them to thrive and keep growing. Otherwise they will jump ship.”

What are climate summits actually for, and how can we make them work?

The lack of progress on cutting carbon emissions at COP27 has drawn criticism, but climate summits must provide deals that encourage nations to go green while still supporting economic growth

ENVIRONMENT | ANALYSIS 22 November 2022

By Madeleine Cuff

Protesters demanding a “loss and damage” deal at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt

Another year, another COP, another failure to cut carbon emissions. As the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, drew to a close, delegates from countries most vulnerable to the effects of global warming were celebrating the agreement of a “loss and damage” fund to compensate for the results of escalating climate change. But as the dust has settled, many see this victory as coming at the cost of securing further progress on driving down emissions.

Some activists critcised the deal as a “cut and paste” replica of agreements secured at last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, UK, while technical discussions on cutting emissions this decade resulted in a weak agreement that will do little to push countries into setting more ambitious targets in an effort to stay below 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels.

“We are another year into this critical decade, and not backsliding is not enough. We’re basically one step further towards exceeding 1.5°C,” says Kaveh Guilanpour, a former climate negotiator now at the US-based Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

With that in mind, is it time to rethink what the world should be aiming to achieve at the annual COP meetings?

The European Union, the UK and others that pushed for more ambitious emissions cuts in Egypt will be hoping that next year’s COP28 summit, due to be held in the United Arab Emirates, will focus more heavily on the causes of climate change, rather than its impacts. They argue – rightly – that without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the bill for loss and damage will just keep growing.

On paper, COP28 could be a crucial moment for advancing emissions cuts. The summit will mark the release of the first “Global Stocktake”, an assessment of countries’ progress on their emissions goals, which it is hoped will propel nations to make bolder plans to cut emissions in 2025.

But lower-income countries are becoming exasperated by the constant pressure from richer nations to improve their climate targets, particularly when the financial help that has been promised in return has proven elusive. At one of the final plenaries of COP26, India’s environment minister, Bhupender Yadav, told delegates that too much focus was being placed on pushing countries to increase their ambitions, while “none of the same urgency” was being shown in the drive to increase climate finance.

During COP27, those tensions resurfaced during technical discussions on the “mitigation work programme”, talks charged with scaling up climate ambition this decade. High-income countries such as Switzerland wanted major emitters, regardless of their economic status, to be called on to cut emissions further this decade. But lower-income nations, including India and Bolivia, argued richer countries with the highest historical emissions must take the lead in delivering further emissions cuts before expecting less well-off nations to do more. Bolivia’s chief negotiator, Diego Pacheco, warned the talks were “pressuring developing countries to enhance mitigation action”.

Read more: What is 'loss and damage' and how is it informed by climate science?

So what is the way forward? Guilanpour says the COP summits need to stop focusing so much on extracting ever more ambitious climate pledges from reluctant governments and concentrate instead on how to make nations actually want to decarbonise faster. “Having pressure only on target setting, while it’s important, increasingly it’s not sufficient,” he says.

That means using the annual climate gatherings to focus more on providing real-world support to nations rolling out electric cars or renewable power, for example. Agreements like the Just Energy Transition Partnership are a glimmer of what this could look like. The JET-Ps, as they are known, see richer nations band together to arrange billions of dollars of financing for lower-income countries to shut down polluting power stations and pivot to green energy. So far two deals have been announced, benefiting South Africa at COP26 and Indonesia this year at COP27.

But schemes like the JET-Ps are time-consuming and resource-intensive, and they are only part of the answer. If high-income nations want faster progress on cutting emissions, they need to show other nations that “green growth”’ isn’t just a slogan. Despite grand promises of a net zero global economy, the only nation in the world delivering climate action in line with a 1.5°C trajectory is Gambia.

Until high-income nations can demonstrate that going green pays off, pushing for faster emissions cuts will be an uphill struggle at COP summits. “It’s not the negotiations that are at fault,” says Guilanpour. “It’s the lack of political leadership.”

Sign up to our free Fix the Planet newsletter to get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox, every Thursday                                                                           

'Elgin Marbles' solution? How American billionaire Leonard Stern may have created a model for reunification of Parthenon sculptures in Athens – Matthew Taylor

The frameworks of many good stories start by setting out the characters.

By Matthew Taylor

About half of the sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon in Athens are in London's British Museum

 (Picture: Matthew Fearn/PA)


Leonard Norman Stern is a New York real estate mogul worth nearly £5 billion. New York’s Metropolitan Museum, aka the Met, is the largest museum in the Americas, with a collection of over two million objects.

The Museum of Cycladic Art is an institution created by Greek shipping magnate Nicholas P Goulandris. The Greek Government hopefully requires no further explanation.

So, on to the story. Leonard Stern amassed an impressive collection of ancient Cycladic art. For those that haven’t seen it, these works are generally small stone sculptures dating from 3,300 to 1,100BCE.

This is way older than the Ancient Greece of the Parthenon, the Olympic Games and Alexander the Great that we tend to think of – but at the same time these figurines are oddly ageless and could be contemporary pieces. They are works that make you realise that maybe the minimal aesthetic of modern art isn’t always so modern.

However, Stern recently entered an agreement with a new entity, the Hellenic Ancient Culture Institute (an organisation whose directors represent Stern and the Goulandris Museum) – essentially a special-purpose vehicle created for this deal. That deal is, broadly speaking, for ownership of Stern’s collection to be transferred to the Greek state, but that, for the next 25 years, the works will be exhibited in the Met. After ten years, other artefacts covered by the agreement will periodically travel to Greece for temporary exhibition.

This whole arrangement is not without controversy (that though is a story for another day). What is interesting however is that a deal was reached and agreements were made and signed off by the Greek parliament.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has described the agreement as "a blueprint for other solutions to come", hinting that this was in reference to the Parthenon Sculptures, aka the Elgin Marbles, in the British Museum.

Recently, George Osborne, the chair of the British Museum’s trustees, stated that he is “confident that there are long-term partnerships to be struck” in relation to the return of disputed artefacts. Both sides, it appears, are in the mood for making a deal – and a possible template for one is now out there.

Previous negotiations have stalled over the matter of ownership – but what if the British Museum were to acknowledge Greece’s ownership of the works, while retaining the rights to exhibit them – for now. Surely this could be a big step forward?

In the past, Greek governments have shied away from serious negotiations for fear of how a compromise settlement would play out in the media. Any steps forward are better than no steps at all though.

The issue can be broken down into chunks and each of these can then be a small move towards the ultimate goal. There are many ways this might be a win-win scenario for both of the key parties here, with neither losing face, whilst jolting the debate on from the current stalemate that has existed for many decades.

To move forward will almost certainly require compromises – the question though is what compromises either side will accept. Maybe, we’ve begun to glimpse the terms for a new playing field for the debate?

Matthew Taylor is a member of the British Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures

NASA 'giddy' over amazing moon views from Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft

By Brett Tingley 

"The results were eye-watering."

A portion of the far side of the Moon looms large just beyond the Orion spacecraft in this image taken on the sixth day of the Artemis I mission by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays.

 (Image credit: NASA)

NASA officials say Artemis 1 mission teams are "giddy" after witnessing how well their Orion spacecraft has been performing so far on its way towards lunar orbit.

Artemis 1 launched at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT) on Nov. 16, blasting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a spectacular display of the sheer power of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The Orion spacecraft reached Earth orbit shortly after, and then at 87 minutes after launch performed a so-called Trans Lunar Injection burn to send it hurtling towards the moon. On Monday (Nov. 21), Orion performed another burn to send the spacecraft close enough to the lunar surface to leverage the moon's gravity to pull the spacecraft around the moon into a distant retrograde lunar orbit.

After collecting data from that propulsive maneuver, NASA officials held a briefing Monday evening (Nov. 21) to discuss Orion's powered flyby of the moon. Judd Frieling, flight director at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said Orion mission team members are "giddy" with the current performance they are seeing from the spacecraft after the flyby, which saw the spacecraft come within 80 miles of the lunar surface.

Frieling added that flight controllers are so far amazed by the stellar performance they've seen from Orion. "As far as the flight controllers themselves, they're absolutely astounded as well, you know, at these great videos that they're able to get from the Orion spacecraft," Frieling said. "As well as that, you know, they're just happy that all of the hard work and dedication that they've spent for many, many, many years is really paying dividends."

Howard Hu, Orion program manager, said the team has seen "really good performance across the board on all our subsystems and systems and we're certainly really happy with the performance" of the spacecraft so far.

"Today was a terrific day," Hu added. "We're coming in every day and it doesn't seem like work. I mean, it is just fabulous. I want to hear the information that's coming from the spacecraft, learning about the spacecraft and being excited about what we're doing. And it's just, it's just been phenomenal. I've got a big smile every day."

The briefing also discussed the launch of the Artemis 1 mission's Space Launch System rocket on Nov. 16. Mike Sarafin, Artemis 1 mission manager at NASA headquarters, said the SLS rocket performed flawlessly during launch. "The results were eye-watering," Sarafin said. "The rocket performed and/or exceeded expectations." Sarafin added that the "kindler, gentler" fueling procedure that was performed for the successful third launch attempt also produced the results mission managers expected, circumventing some of the issues that plagued previous attempts.

Sarafin also discussed the damage that Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center suffered during the launch. While much of the damage was expected and similar to other launches, the 8.8 million pounds of thrust produced by the SLS vehicle's core stage and two solid rocket boosters literally blew doors in. "The elevator system is not functioning right now," Sarafin said. "We had the world's most powerful rocket and the pressure basically blew the doors off of our elevators."

Sarafin said that a segment of RTV, the insulating caulking around the base of Orion that was damaged by Tropical Storm Nicole, was found in the infield surrounding the rocket. It's unclear whether it was stripped off during launch or was previously ripped away by Nicole. A strip of that caulking damaged by the storm was a source of worry prior to launch, but mission managers determined it would not be a risk.

The Artemis 1 mission sent Orion towards the moon on a 26-day journey that will see the spacecraft come within 80 miles of the lunar surface at its closest pass, and some 40,000 miles away at its farthest. The mission is designed as a flight test of the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and associated ground control systems ahead of the Artemis 2 and 3 missions currently planned for 2024 and 2025, respectively.

After swinging far away from the moon, Orion will make its way back to Earth where it will splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11.

"I will rest well on Dec. 11 after splashdown and recovery is complete, as well as these gentlemen and their teams," Sarafin said.

Elon Musk tells remaining Twitter employees no more layoffs 'planned' and HQ will not move to Texas

Kali Hays

Elon Musk has axed thousands of jobs at Twitter. Susan Walsh/AP

Elon Musk held another meeting with Twitter employees.

He told them that layoffs are done, at least for the time being.

Also, Musk gave some details on plans for headquarters and future compensation plans.

Elon Musk is done with layoffs at Twitter, at least for now, and has no intention of moving the company's headquarters from San Francisco.

Musk gave remaining Twitter employees tidbits of good news during an all-hands meeting on Monday at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters, according to two people present. It's Musk's second such meeting since last week when he told workers that bankruptcy was not out of the question for Twitter and first floated his "extremely hardcore" work expectations.

Musk said during the meeting no more layoffs are "planned" to happen. It's the first time Musk has said waves of cuts to the company's headcount are over since he took control at the end of October. Twitter's headcount of full-time employees prior to Musk's ownership was about 7,500 people. That number is now down to 2,300 people, according to a person familiar with the company's operations, after a mass layoff and a mass resignation. The official headcount number could continue to change, however, as resignations continue to be accounted for internally, another person familiar with the company said.

One employee who made it through Musk's layoffs and a spate of firings of perceived critics said Musk's comments were met with "some relief." The meeting came after most employees worked through the weekend for Musk, who posted to Twitter pictures of an early Saturday morning "code review."

Now, Twitter may even start hiring again. Musk said during the meeting he is looking to bring in more engineers, according to one of the people present. Layoffs and resignations have deeply impacted Twitter's engineering ranks, another person at the company said, estimating that as much as 50% of engineering is now gone. Musk on Friday made an urgent call for "anyone" left at Twitter who could write software to meet with him. Engineers who remain with the company are continuing to reach out to coworkers who were laid off or resigned asking them if they're interested in returning to the company because some teams do not have enough people, a current employee said.

Musk also said during the meeting he "does not intend" to move Twitter's headquarters to Texas from San Francisco. Such a move has been speculated on since Musk's other companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, have moved operations there. Musk and some of his younger children and their mothers also live in the state.

Twitter employees were also told that part of their future compensation plans under Musk will include stock grants and be offered and paid out as they are with employees at SpaceX. Although private, that company allows employees to sell grants of stock through private tender offers.

Meta is finally trying to protect teens from 'suspicious adults' on Instagram and Facebook

By Cesar Cadenas

 published about 8 hours ago

Meta changes privacy settings and adds new message notifications

(Image credit: Meta)

In an effort to better protect underaged users, Meta is adjusting the default privacy settings on Facebook and Instagram to limit contact by “suspicious adults.”

Now, whenever a teenager joins Facebook, their account will automatically have more stringent privacy protections. This includes, but is not limited to, deciding who can see their friends list, what pages they follow, and who is allowed to comment on their posts. For accounts created before this update, Meta states(opens in new tab) it will begin pushing those users to adopt those same settings, but won’t force it. If all this sounds familiar, that’s because Instagram implemented very similar changes back in 2021 to protect young people there.

Power to the user

Meta goes on to say it’s working on new ways to stop blocked and reported accounts from contacting underaged 

One way it'll do this on Instagram is by, as part of a test, removing the message button, making it impossible for predatory adults to use Instagram messaging to contact teen users directly.

Plus, the People You May Know recommendations feed on Facebook will also no longer display these flagged accounts.

Coming to both Messenger and Instagram is a new notification encouraging teenagers to use safety tools anytime they feel “uncomfortable” during a conversation. One notification will ask users if they know the person who just messaged them. If ‘No’ is chosen, both apps will bring up a series of actions(opens in new tab) they can take, like blocking the account or reporting them.

According to the announcement, the new Facebook default privacy settings are rolling out today (Nov. 21); presumably, so are the other changes. We reached out to Meta for clarification. This story will be updated if we hear back.

In addition to the update, Meta announced it’s partnering up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to create a new platform to “prevent [teenagers’] intimate images from being posted online” and spreading across the internet. It aims to help underaged users “regain control” of these leaked images while also discouraging those acts in the first place.

Mixed messaging

While it’s great to see more security features being added, Meta’s recent track record on privacy has been confusing. On one hand, the company improved Instagram’s blocking system to stop trolls from harassing you further back in October. But at the same time, the platform implemented a new precise location feature that can make users vulnerable to stalkers or theft.

It’s a rather mixed message that could lead to privacy problems for all users; especially teenagers. Because of that, be sure to check out TechRadar’s best parental control app for 2022.

Facebook Will No Longer Ask For Your Political And Religious Views

BYKISHALAYA KUNDU

PUBLISHED 3 DAYS AGO

Facebook will soon remove four information fields from user profiles, including Religious Views, Political Views, Address, and Interested In.


Facebook will soon remove four information fields from user profiles, ostensibly as part of its plans to streamline the platform. Facebook is the world's largest social media network, with 2.96 million users worldwide as of Q3 2022. However, over the past few years, the company has been losing its young userbase, with many of them migrating to newer platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. Under increasing pressure from competitors, Facebook has been implementing several changes, including a heightened focus on short-form videos following a historic plunge in its stock price earlier this year.

While Facebook remains the biggest cash cow for its parent company Meta, it is no longer a priority area for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, Zuckerberg has been focused on the metaverse over the past few years, investing billions of dollars in the technology despite a lukewarm response from mainstream consumers. The company is believed to have already invested a whopping $36 billion on the project, with billions more expected to be poured into it in the coming years. As part of its persistent bullishness on virtual and augmented reality, Meta has also been launching many VR headsets, including the $1,499 Meta Quest Pro last month.

RELATED: How To Hide Your Facebook Profile From Strangers

A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed to TechCrunch that from Dec. 1, the company will remove four fields from user profiles to make the platform "easier to navigate and use." The four fields are 'Religious Views, Political Views, Address, and Interested In.' The company says it is sending notifications to users, letting them know of the impending change. The messages, however, are only going out to people who have these fields filled out. "This change doesn’t affect anyone’s ability to share this information about themselves elsewhere on Facebook," the spokesperson said.

Facebook's Upcoming Change


The news was first reported earlier this week by social media consultant Matt Navarra, who tweeted a screenshot of Facebook's message about the impending change. The notice also says that the rest of the profile information on the user's bio will remain untouched. As can be seen from the message, Facebook is also giving users the chance to download a copy of their Facebook data in its current state, before the four fields are removed from their profile.

The change will bring Facebook in line with other major social media platforms like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat that have a more streamlined profile page and do not ask users for their religious and political views. Since none of these are dating apps, they also don't need users to specify what genders they're interested in for potential partners. As for the address, it is a privacy risk for Facebook users, especially with the various scandals and data leaks that the company has been involved in over the years.

NEXT:How To Delete A Photo Or Video From Your Facebook Story

Source: TechCrunch, Matt Navarra/Twitter

Why Facebook Won't Be Fact-Checking Trump Now That He's Announced Candidacy

Former U.S President Donald Trump announced his 2024 reelection bid on Nov. 15, 2022.

Nur Ibrahim
SNOPES
Published Nov 17, 2022


Ahead of former U.S. President Donald Trump's Nov. 15, 2022, announcement that he would run for reelection in 2024, a Meta memo reiterated that his speeches would be exempt from third-party fact-checking efforts on Facebook.

The memo, which was obtained and reported on by CNN, stated that if Trump were to announce a reelection bid, he would no longer be fact-checked on Facebook's platform by its third-party fact-checkers (Meta is Facebook's parent company). The memo stated that "political speech is ineligible for fact-checking. This includes the words a politician says as well as photo, video, or other content that is clearly labeled as created by the politician or their campaign."

The memo explained: "If former president Trump makes a clear, public announcement that he is running for office, he would be considered a politician under our program policies." This rule applies to all politicians. According to Facebook's official policy, partners in the company's fact-checker program should not rate the following types of content:

Posts and ads from politicians: This includes the words a politician says as well as photo, video, or other content that is clearly labeled as created by the politician or their campaign. In evaluating when this applies, we ask our fact-checking partners to look at politicians at every level. We define a "politician" as candidates running for office, current office holders — and, by extension, many of their cabinet appointees — along with political parties and their leaders. In some cases, we ask fact-checkers to use their expertise and judgment to determine whether an individual is a politician, like in the case of a part-time elected official.

Elaborating on the company's policy, Meta stated:

Our approach is grounded in Facebook's fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and the belief that, especially in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is the most scrutinized speech there is. Just as critically, by limiting political speech we would leave people less informed about what their elected officials are saying and leave politicians less accountable for their words.

[...]

Opinion content is generally not eligible for rating because the fact-checking program is not meant to interfere with individual expression or debate. However, the definition of "opinion" is not meant to give a free pass to content that spreads false information, solely on the basis of how it is presented. Therefore, we ask fact-checkers to use their judgment to determine whether content is actually opinion or rather masking false information in the guise of opinion, and to rate it as appropriate in these circumstances.

This policy is not new. It was on Facebook's website before Trump's announcement. Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, said to CNN, "a reiteration of our long-standing policy should not be news to anyone." In 2019, Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, confirmed that the policy had been in place since 2018. Addressing the platform's rules for fact-checking political speech, he said:

We don't believe, however, that it's an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny. That's why Facebook exempts politicians from our third-party fact-checking program. We have had this policy on the books for over a year now, posted publicly on our site under our eligibility guidelines. This means that we will not send organic content or ads from politicians to our third-party fact-checking partners for review. However, when a politician shares previously debunked content including links, videos and photos, we plan to demote that content, display related information from fact-checkers, and reject its inclusion in advertisements.

Trump is currently banned on the platform, though "Team Trump," a page run by his team, is still up. Meta says it will assess the circumstances and possibly consider allowing him back on the platform in January 2023.

Meta pays independent third-party fact-checkers to apply fact-check labels on Facebook and Instagram. These fact-checkers are certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). (We should note that Snopes is a member of the IFCN but is not a part of the Facebook partnership.) We have reached out to IFCN for more information and will update this post if we hear back.

We also spoke to Jevin West, an associate professor at the University of Washington and a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, about this policy.

"The policy is problematic and inconsistent," West said. "You are fact-checking all these other [claims], but you are not fact-checking the things said by people with humongous microphones. You are tying the hands of your fact checkers. [...] Some of the most egregious statements come from our politicians."

This policy is probably in place so that Meta does not "alienate users coming from different sides of the political spectrum," West theorized. He also argued that Meta makes a lot of money on political advertising: "It is hard not to think that this could be part of the reason for this policy as well."

But for West, another Facebook policy was potentially more problematic: the one pertaining to content demotion. As per Meta: "When a politician shares a specific piece of content — e.g. a link to an article, video or photo created by someone else that has been previously debunked on Facebook — we will demote that content, display a warning and reject its inclusion in ads."

West argued that this particular element of the policy could possibly make users more distrustful of information posted on Facebook, as it does not appear to have any transparency behind it. "It is a black box," he said. "There is this idea that they don't want to 'referee political debates,' but but they are already doing that, so why exclude some of the biggest voices?"

Sources:

Duffy, Kate. "Facebook Won't Be Fact-Checking Donald Trump Now He's Announced He's Running for President in 2024." Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-trump-fact-checking-halted-presidential-run-2024-announced-meta-2022-11

 Accessed 16 Nov. 2022.

"How Meta's Third-Party Fact-Checking Program Works." How Meta's Third-Party Fact-Checking Program Works, https://www.facebook.com/facebookmedia

Accessed 16 Nov. 2022.

"Fact-Checking Policies on Facebook." Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/business/help/315131736305613?id=673052479947730 Accessed 16 Nov. 2022.

O'Sullivan, Donie. "Facebook Fact-Checkers Will Stop Checking Trump after Presidential Bid Announcement | CNN Politics." CNN, 15 Nov. 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/politics/facebook-fact-check-donald-trump/index.html

Accessed 16 Nov. 2022.

O'Sullivan, Donie. "Facebook Says Trump Now Suspended until at Least January 2023 | CNN Business." CNN, 4 June 2021,

 https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/04/tech/facebook-politicians/index.html

 Accessed 16 Nov. 2022.

By Nur Ibrahim
Nur Nasreen Ibrahim is a reporter with experience working in television, international news coverage, fact checking, and creative writing.