Big Sur 11.2.3 Desktop console ls operation not permitted?

This is MAC kicking in (see On File System Permissions for the background to this). In you’re running ls directly from Terminal you should be able to fix this by granting Terminal access in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Files and Folders > Terminal > Desktop.

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—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Thanks for the reply. Being somewhat familiar with FreeBSD and Linux system Unix's, but not iMac's, some of the differences can be frustrating. Especially when it's the extended permissions. The way I fixed it was to use "finder" on iCloud Drive, select the Desktop folder, look at options... One was "open a new terminal"... When I did this the ls -al@ I had originally done to see what was going on with "ls" from my terminal went
from.....
drwx------@ 13 jrh  staff   416 May  4 21:20 Desktop/
com.apple.icloud.desktop   10 
com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags   -1 
to....
drwx------@ 13 jrh   staff    416 May  4 21:20 Desktop/
com.apple.icloud.desktop   10 
com.apple.macl   72 
com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags   42 

And now I can see the 'Desktop' folder from all of my Terminal's.... So I had finally gotten it fixed before seeing your reply... However, I would like to thank you because it's responses like these that are so helpful for learning the MacOS. Thank you so much to the mighty Quinn "The Eskimo", your help is truly appreciated... By the way, loved that song. Think it was Manfred Mann who had done that one.