Disabled employee sues Twitter over Musk's ban on remote work

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

A view of the Twitter logo at its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California, US on Oct 28, 2022.

Twitter Inc owner Elon Musk's mandate that employees stop working remotely and put in "long hours at high intensity" discriminates against workers with disabilities, a new lawsuit claims.

Dmitry Borodaenko, a California-based engineering manager who said Twitter fired him this week when he refused to report to the office, filed a proposed class action against the company in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday (Nov 16).

Borodaenko said Musk's recent call for Twitter employees to return to the office or quit violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires employers to offer reasonable accommodations to workers with disabilities.

Borodaenko has a disability that makes him vulnerable to Covid-19, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit said many Twitter employees with disabilities have been forced to resign because they could not meet Musk's demanding performance and productivity standards.

In a separate complaint filed in the same court on Wednesday, Twitter was accused of laying off thousands of contract workers without giving the 60 days' notice required by federal law.

Twitter is already facing a proposed class action, also in San Francisco federal court, claiming it violated that law by abruptly laying off about 3,700 employees, or half the company's workforce, after Musk took over.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Musk has said laid-off workers were offered three months of severance pay.

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Under federal law, employers can provide workers with 60 days of severance pay in lieu of giving notice.

Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in all three pending cases, said that since taking over Twitter, Musk "has put the company's workers through a great deal of pain and uncertainty in such a short amount of time."

There is little legal precedent on when remote work qualifies as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA, and the question ultimately turns on the facts of individual cases. Because of that, disability bias claims can be difficult to bring in a class action lawsuit.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces the ADA, said in guidance released in 2020 that remote work can be a reasonable accommodation when it would not create an undue burden on an employer.

ALSO READ: Musk tells Twitter staff: Opt in for 'intensity' or take severance

Source: Reuters

AOC pays tribute to Twitter staff amid

reports that Elon Musk locked offices after

‘hardcore’ deadline passed



Graeme Massie
Thu, November 17, 2022

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has paid tribute to Twitter’s employees amid reports that Elon Musk has locked down all the company’s offices after his “hardcore” deadline passed.

“Shout out to all the workers at Twitter. You all built a vital place for connection and deserved so much better. Millions of people appreciate the space you built and the hard work that went into it. Thank you,” tweeted the congresswoman from New York.

Following the 5pm ET deadline, hundreds of Twitter employees reportedly signalled on the company’s Slack system that they were leaving, and Mr Musk’s response was reportedly to close offices until 21 November.

“Twitter just alerted employees that effective immediately, all office buildings are temporarily closed and badge access is suspended. No details given as to why,” tweeted Zoe Schiffer of Platformer.


“We’re hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they’re still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for.”

Mr Musk took to Twitter and joked at the seemingly difficult position he now found himself in.

“How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one,” he tweeted on Thursday evening.

The lawmaker and the world’s richest person have had an ongoing feud on Twitter, with the high-profile New York Democrat mocking his attempt to charge users $8 per month for verification.

Earlier Mr Musk appeared to soften his stance on remote work for Twitter employees after a strong backlash to his ultimatum.

And with some staff opting to exit the San Francisco-based company rather than accept Mr musk’s new work environment, he appeared to soften his approach to remote working.

Following his $44bn takeover of the firm, Mr Musk told staff he was ending work from home and everyone needed to be in the office for 40 hours a week.

On Wednesday he told staff that they should be prepared to work “long hours at high intensity” to build “Twitter 2.0.”

But on Thursday afternoon, in an apparent attempt to actually retain staff, he sent another email clarifying his position on remote work.

“Regarding remote work, all that is required for approval is that your manager takes responsibility for ensuring that you are making an excellent contribution,” Mr Musk said in the email, seen by CNN.

Opinion
Biden rewards Saudi leader’s impunity with legal immunity



By David Ignatius

Columnist

WASHINGTON POST
November 17, 2022 

President Biden gives Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a fist bump as he arrives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 15. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace/AP)

The Biden administration has granted legal immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a protection that even President Donald Trump’s administration didn’t offer.

For critics of MBS, as the Saudi leader is known, the immunity decision is a slap in the face. It will likely rouse new protests in Congress and among human rights activists that the Biden administration is accommodating Mohammed for reasons of realpolitik — and compromising its values in the process.

The decision was triggered by a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington against MBS and some 20 other defendants by the fiance of Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist who was murdered by Saudi operatives in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. The suit alleges that the crown prince and his co-defendants were responsible for the murder.

The action is the latest in a cascade of controversies that followed the murder, which the CIA concluded resulted from an operation authorized by MBS. The Trump administration shielded the Saudi leader, but President Biden initially claimed he would hold him accountable, describing him as a “pariah.” But over time, Biden has sadly capitulated to what he viewed as a need to mend relations with the man who might be Saudi Arabia’s king for decades.

A State Department official said the decision to grant immunity was a “purely legal decision,” triggered by MBS’s recent elevation to prime minister. But the State Department and the White House could have intervened on policy grounds to prevent granting the legal exemption, which MBS has sought for more than two years.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, who is hearing the Khashoggi case, asked the Justice Department in July for a ruling on whether MBS should be granted sovereign immunity, as his lawyers requested. On Sept. 27, three days before the deadline for the Justice Department’s response, Saudi King Salman declared his son prime minister. That triggered Thursday’s decision that MBS was entitled to sovereign immunity as a “head of government.” Bates could conceivably reject the State Department filing, but such a rejection of a government option he had requested would be unlikely.

The State Department’s decision was filed late Thursday. “The United States respectfully informs the Court that Defendant Mohammed bin Salman, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is the sitting head of government and accordingly, is immune from this suit,” the filing said.

“The Biden administration’s suggestion of immunity for MBS isn’t just a mistake as a matter of law, it’s a mistake as a matter of policy,” argued Sarah Leah Whitson, who heads a group called Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, which filed the suit with Khashoggi’s fiance, Hatice Cengiz. Whitson argued that the immunity grant was “an undeserved concession” to the Saudi leader that “will no doubt embolden him to continue his ruthless abuses.”

MBS began seeking immunity in U.S. courts after he was named in a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Washington in August 2020 by Saad Aljabri, a former top Saudi counterterrorism official. Mohammed’s lawyers asked that the suit be dismissed because of what they claimed was sovereign immunity and other issues. The Trump administration did not grant that request.

Aljabri, in his 2021 amended complaint, accused the Saudi leader of sending a hit team to kill him in 2018 in Canada, where he fled after MBS fired him in 2015 and after MBS in 2017 toppled Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, with whom Aljabri had worked closely at the Saudi interior ministry.

The Biden State Department deliberated whether the immunity issue was a policy question, involving significant human rights issues, rather than simply a legal matter, an administration official told me. But there was a strong legal argument that prime ministers routinely receive immunity. And in the end, as has so often been the case with MBS, the Biden administration acceded to the Saudi leader’s desires.

The immunity decision doesn’t simply derail the lawsuit by Khashoggi’s fiance. It will shield the crown prince from legal action on issues involving travel bans and other alleged human rights abuses. According to media reports, at least two U.S. citizens, Saad Almadi and Mohammed Salem, have been banned from leaving Saudi Arabia since Biden’s visit to the kingdom in July.

The president’s fist bump during that trip has become a symbol of political accommodation to the Saudi leader and his demands. The grant of immunity will give him not just a friendly welcome, but a legal shield that will hard to break.

Tesla Safety At Centre Of South Korean Trial Over Fiery, Fatal Crash

By Ju-min Park
11/20/22

The logo of Tesla is seen on a steering wheel of its Model S electric car at its dealership in Seoul, South Korea July 6, 2017.

In an upscale Seoul neighbourhood two years ago, a white Tesla Model X smashed into a parking lot wall. The fiery crash killed a prominent lawyer - a close friend of South Korea's president.

Prosecutors have charged the driver with involuntary manslaughter. He blames Tesla.

Choi Woan-jong, who had eked out a living by driving drunk people home in their own cars, says the Model X sped out of control on its own and that the brakes failed in the December 2020 accident.

The criminal trial about to begin in South Korea hangs on questions about the safety of Tesla cars, at a time when the EV maker faces a range of lawsuits and increased scrutiny by regulators.

Choi, 61, is now unable to find work as an independent driver, or what is known in Korea as a "replacement driver".

He says he suffers flashbacks and depression ahead of a trial that pits his credibility against the world's most valuable automaker.

"When I wake up, I feel abandoned, floating alone in the middle of the ocean," said Choi, who underwent surgery after the crash for a ruptured intestine.

Tesla did not respond to written requests for comment about the crash and Choi's case. A lawyer for the family of Yoon Hong-geun, who owned the car and died in the crash, declined to comment.

Choi's case has drawn the attention of some safety advocates in South Korea who want to change a provision in the free trade agreement with the United States that exempts Tesla from local standards.

For instance, Tesla is not required to follow South Korean regulations that require at least one front-seat and back-seat door to have a mechanical failsafe because the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement exempts carmakers with sales under 50,000 vehicles from local safety rules.

Tesla sold 17,828 vehicles in South Korea in 2021, registration data shows.

Park Keun-oh, an official from the Korea-U.S. FTA division of South Korea's trade ministry, said the exemption clause requires Tesla to abide by American safety regulations, which do not require mechanical backup latch. Such latches allow doors to be opened even if the car does not have electrical power.

Park declined to comment further. The Office of the United States Trade Representative did not respond to requests for comment about the trade deal or the regulations.

Prosecutors say Choi floored the accelerator as he entered the garage of a Seoul apartment building, hitting 95 kph (60mph) before crashing. He denies that, saying the car's side mirrors began folding in and out uncommanded just before the car accelerated on its own.

"It felt like the car was swept away by a hurricane," said Choi, who said he had been driving for more than 20 years and had experience driving Teslas.

The automaker provided prosecutors with data from the Model X that the car transmitted in the moments before the crash, the judge said at a preliminary hearing. The defence team has asked to see the data and is waiting for the court to release it.

Choi and his lawyer are seeking to show that the car's electrical systems failed and that its design slowed firefighters' attempts to rescue Yoon.

The Tesla's battery caught fire after the crash. Smoke and flames filled the car, according to firefighters and a video of the scene, taken by firefighters and viewed by Reuters.

Choi escaped through a broken window on his side. Firefighters were delayed in pulling Yoon out of the back seat, because the Model X's electronic doors failed to open from outside, a Dec. 31, 2020, fire department report reviewed by Reuters shows. The report does not say how long the rescue was delayed.

Yoon, 60, was pronounced dead after firefighters extricated him from the car and performed CPR. The cause of death was not made public.

Judge Park Won-gyu said that he plans to call Tesla engineers to testify and that the safety of Tesla vehicles would be examined at trial. Involuntary manslaughter carries a potential prison sentence of up to five years.

A FIERY SCENE

The investigation by the fire station that responded found the battery failure slowed the emergency response by disabling seat controls, which prevented firefighters from repositioning the front seats so they could get to Yoon, according to the fire department report.

The electrical outage made it "impossible to secure space for the (rescue) operation", the report said.

A fire station representative declined to comment.

The report says exterior door handles on the Model X, which are electronic, did not open from the outside as the battery burned. It also says firefighters could not pull Yoon from the car because they couldn't move the front seats after the battery died.

A video of the rescue shows firefighters trying but failing to open the Model X's wing-style doors. They eventually broke through the front windshield and pulled Yoon from the car about 25 minutes after the emergency call came in, according to the footage and the firefighters' report.

Tesla is the only automaker that does not provide data to the Korea Transportation Safety Authority (TS) from onboard diagnostic systems for safety checks in South Korea, according to the agency and Park Sang-hyuk, a lawmaker with the opposition Democratic Party of Korea who, spurred by Choi's crash, has campaigned for regulators to pressure Tesla to change its door handles and work with regulators.

TS noted that Tesla is not legally required to provide such data, but that all other foreign and domestic carmakers are doing so.

Park and TS said Tesla is working with the agency to allow Korean owners to access their car's diagnostic data starting in October 2023.

"Tesla has become something of an icon for great innovation, but I think (the company's issues in Korea) also raise a serious concern for customers here," Park said, referring to cases in which Tesla's doors will not open after a collision, and the free trade agreement provisions.

A South Korean consumer group, Citizens United for Consumer Sovereignty, said in September that Tesla had not fixed what the group calls "door defects". The group says it has collected information on about 1,870 complaints involving Tesla doors over the past four years. Data provided to Reuters by another South Korean lawmaker, and TS, confirmed that number.

The consumer group said that it asked police to investigate Tesla over not improving driver and passenger safety after the fatal crash in Seoul, but that police told them in May there was not enough evidence to proceed, according to their report, seen by Reuters.

In a June 29 letter to the consumer group, seen by Reuters, police say that although Tesla's door latches might violate local safety standards, that consideration was trumped by the terms of the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement.

Tesla doors "could be in violation of the (local) regulations, but it (Tesla) has no obligations to comply with local motor vehicle safety standards in accordance with the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement," the police letter said.

In South Korean courts, drivers in cases where a crash's cause is disputed face the burden of proving the car had a defect, three legal and auto safety experts say, and vehicle manufacturers are almost never prosecuted over safety issues.

"Unless you have gone through this, you will never know how it feels," said Ahn Ho-joon, another "replacement driver" in South Korea, who had a Tesla accident in May nearly identical to Choi's, police records show.

Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

Ahn, one of the few to attend all of Choi's pre-trial hearings, says the Tesla he drove also accelerated on its own and crashed into two vehicles in an underground garage, but there were no serious injuries. Police say the accident was his fault because there were no issues with the vehicle, but did not charge him because the wreck was minor.

Ahn said he has kept his job as an independent replacement driver, but declines to drive Teslas.

Choi, unable to work and nearly out of money, has moved into a 6.6-square-metre (71-square-foot) cubicle he rents for 350,000 won ($243) a month. Financed by state housing subsidies, it includes a shared bathroom and kitchen, and all the rice he can eat. Despite these hardships, Choi takes the long view on Tesla.

"Obviously there's a process to make products perfect through trial and error. And I am just destined to be part of that process," he said.


© Copyright Thomson Reuters 2022. All rights reserved.

Thousands of Tasmanian devils are dying from cancer – but a new vaccine approach could help us save them

The Conversation
November 17, 2022

Tasmanian devil (Shutterstock)

Tasmanian devils are tough little creatures with a ferocious reputation. Tragically, each year thousands of Tasmanian devils suffer and die from contagious cancers – devil facial tumors.

We have discovered that a modified virus, like the attenuated adenovirus used in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, can make devil facial tumor cells more visible to the devil immune system.

We have also found key immune targets on devil facial tumor cells. These combined advances allow us to move forward with a vaccine that helps the devil immune system find and fight the cancer.

And we have a clever way to deliver this vaccine, too – with edible baits.

A puzzling cancer

Tasmanian devils mainly suffer from the original devil facial tumor, or DFT1. A second type of devil facial tumor (DFT2) has begun emerging in southern Tasmania that further threatens the already endangered devil population.

DFT1 and DFT2 are transmissible cancers – they spread living cancer cells when the devils bite each other.
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This has presented a puzzle: a cancer cell that comes from another animal should be detected by the immune system as an invader, because it is “genetically mismatched”. For example, in human medicine, tissue transplants need to be genetically matched between the donor and recipient to avoid the immune system rejecting the transplant.

Somehow, DFT1 and DFT2 seem to evade the immune system, and devils die from tumors spreading throughout their body or from malnutrition due to the facial tumors disrupting their ability to eat.


A Tasmanian devil with DFT1.
Andrew S. Flies @WildImmunity

On the bright side, the immune systems of a few wild devils have been able to overcome DFT1. Furthermore, previous vaccine and immunotherapy trials showed the devil immune system can be activated to kill DFT1 cells and clear away sizable tumors.

This good news from both the field and the laboratory has allowed our team to zoom in on key DFT protein targets that the devil immune system can attack. This helps us in our quest to develop a more effective and scalable vaccine.
How can we vaccinate wild animals?

Even if we succeed in producing a protective DFT vaccine, we can’t trap and inject every devil.

Luckily, clever researchers in Europe in the 1970s figured out that vaccines can be incorporated into edible food baits to vaccinate wildlife across diverse landscapes and ecosystems.

In 2019, we hypothesized an oral bait vaccine could be made to protect devils from DFT1 and DFT2. Fast forward to November 2022 and the pieces of this ambitious project are falling into place.

First, using samples from devils with strong anti-tumor responses, we have found that the main immune targets are major histocompatibility proteins. These are usually the main targets in transplant rejection. This tells us what to put into the vaccine.

Second, we tested a virus-based delivery system for the vaccine. We used a weakened adenovirus most of the human population has already been exposed to, and found that in the lab this virus can enter devil facial tumor cells.

Importantly, the weakened adenovirus can be modified to produce proteins that can stimulate the devil immune system. This means it forces the devil facial tumor cells to show the major histocompatibility proteins they normally hide, making the cells “visible” to cancer-killing immune cells.

This vaccine approach is much like the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine that uses a weakened chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver cargo to our immune system, getting it to recognize SARS-CoV-2. Adenoviral vaccines have also been widely used in oral bait vaccines to protect raccoons from the rabies virus.

Edible protection

But there were additional challenges to overcome. Our collaborators in the USA who research and develop other wildlife vaccines suggested that developing an effective bait for devils might be as challenging as making the vaccine itself.

Our first studies of placebo baits in the wild confirmed this. Contrary to previous studies which showed devils eating most of the baits, we found the baits were also readily consumed by other species, including eastern quolls, brushtail possums, and Tasmanian pademelons.

This led us to test an automatic bait dispenser supplied by our collaborators at the US Department of Agriculture National Wildlife Research Center. The dispensers proved quite effective at reducing the amount of “off target” bait consumption and showed devils could successfully retrieve the baits with their dexterous paws.


Tasmanian devil retrieving a placebo bait from an automatic bait dispenser.

Encouragingly, a recent mathematical modeling study suggests an oral bait vaccine could eliminate DFT1 from Tasmania.

Successful delivery of the vaccine would be a demanding and long-term commitment. But with it, we could prevent the suffering and deaths of thousands of individual devils, along with helping to reestablish a healthy wild devil population.
Can’t stop now

A bit of additional good news fell into place in late 2022 with the announcement that our international team was awarded an Australian Research Council Linkage Project grant to develop better baits and ways to monitor wildlife health in the field.

These oral bait vaccine techniques that eliminate the need to catch and jab animals could be applied to future wildlife and livestock diseases, not just Tassie devils.

Building on this momentum, we are planning to start new vaccine trials in 2023. We don’t know yet if this new experimental vaccine can prevent devils from getting devil facial tumors.

However, the leap we have made in the past three years and new technology gives us momentum and hope that we might be able to stop DFT2 before it spreads across the state. Perhaps, we can even eliminate DFT1.

Andrew S. Flies, Senior Research Fellow in Immunology, University of Tasmania; Chrissie Ong, Research officer, The University of Queensland, and Ruth Pye, veterinarian, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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.

Related
Ukraine's victory "almost a done deal": Military expert on how Russia's invasion imploded

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.”

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'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