UK
'It's A Simple Yes Or No': Naga Munchetty Skewers Tory Minister Over Crumbling Schools


Kevin Schofield
Fri, 1 September 2023 

Naga Munchetty grilled Nick Gibb on BBC Breakfast


A Tory minister was skewered by Naga Munchetty as he struggled to defend the government over the closure of unsafe schools just days before the end of the summer holidays.

More than 100 will have either partially or completely shut their doors to pupils because the concrete used to build them - known as RAAC - is at risk of collapse.

Schools minister Nick Gibb this morning admitted that some of the affected schools have yet to be contacted by the government, and that it is still not known how many will have to close completely.

Appearing on BBC Breakfast, Gibb was grilled on the government’s response to the crisis, which will see thousands of pupils forced to learn from home when the new term starts next week.

The minister insisted the government had been “very proactive in assessing the school estate” and had taken action as soon as the extent of the problem became apparent.

He said RACC was used between the 1950s and 1990s, and that surveys were sent to every school in England in 2022 asking whether it was present in their buildings.

But Munchetty told him: “I’m sorry, please let me interrupt. You’ve given me the history of RACC and the dangers known.

“In 2018 when there was a national audit report saying that it was in 572 schools, why did it take until 2022 until surveys were sent to schools?”

Gibb said “warning notices” had been sent to all schools after that report, but that further evidence had emerged since then about the dangers posed by the crumbling concrete.

He added: “You seem to be criticising us for being more proactive than other governments around the world.”



The minister said that prior to yesterday, the government had already taken action in 52 schools where RACC was identified.

Munchetty said: “Is it fair to say that they were unsafe up until that point - that children were attending schools with buildings unsafe?”

Gibb replied: “This evidence was emerging over time ...”

The presenter then interrupted to say: “It’s a simple yes or no, isn’t it? They were either safe or unsafe.”

The minister said: “Well we felt, having had that evidence, that parts of the school that had RACC that was in a criticial condition were not safe.”

“So they could have potentially collapsed?” Munchetty replied.

Gibb said: “Yes and that’s why we took action.”

Labour has accused the government of “staggering incompetence” in not taking action until just before schools return from the summer break.

Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Ministers have been content to let this chaos continue for far too long.”

Mike Short, head of education at the UNISON union, said the situation was “nothing short of a scandal”.

Teachers clear out classrooms after 104 schools in England told to shut

More than 100 schools, nurseries and colleges in England have been told by the government to close classrooms and other buildings that contain RAAC, which is prone to collapse. Thousands of pupils now risk having to start the year taking lessons online or in temporary accommodation as some schools will be forced to shut completely.

Parents told ‘don’t worry’ as school buildings with concrete prone to collapse ordered to shut immediately

Liam ColemanThursday 31 Aug 2023 

Hundreds of schools across the country could be impacted by the changes (Picture: Shutterstock / PeopleImages.com – Yuri A)

Schools in England must immediately shut buildings made with a type of concrete that is prone to collapse, the government has announced.

Extra measures are set to be put in place, with some schools having to relocate children to other teaching spaces.

However Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has told parents ‘don’t worry’ over the closures.

She saidmost parents need not be worried at all – there are more than 20,000 schools in England, and just over 150 have RAAC present.

She said: ‘We are working to minimise this a much as possible. The priority for me is your children’s safety and that’s why we are taking these precautionary measures.’

Keegan says engineers have been combing school sites looking for RAAC and over the summer, ‘a couple of cases have given us cause for concern’.

She added: ‘We need to take the cautious approach.’

A ‘minority’ of the state facilities will need to ‘either fully or partially relocate’ to alternative accommodation while safety measures are installed, the Department for Education (DfE) said.

The department has contacted 104 settings that do not currently have mitigations in place to vacate spaces containing reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).

Unions and opposition parties criticised the Government for failing to take action sooner, as schools were being shuttered ahead of the return from the summer break.

Some 52 of the 156 educational settings containing the concrete have taken protective steps already this year.

Two schools in Bradford have already been partially closed on the eve of the new term after surveys found weak concrete in the buildings.

Tables and chairs which fell through the collapsed ceiling at Rosemead Prep School (Picture: HSE)

Pupils at Crossflatts Primary School and Eldwick Primary School will be moved to ‘safe’ areas, after the problem came to light.

Bradford Council said temporary classrooms would be set up in the coming weeks and months.

The council has carried out detailed surveys at 45 schools to determine whether reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) was used in their construction.

The lightweight material was used to construct many civic buildings from the 1950s to the 1990s, before being found to deteriorate over time.

It has an estimated lifespan of around 30 years.

Sue Lowndes, Bradford Council’s assistant director schools and learning, said: ‘We are putting plans in place for those two schools to make sure no one is put at risk and also to minimise any disruption to children’s education.

‘We know how important it is to make sure children can continue at school. Headteachers at the affected schools are working with parents and staff so we can keep them informed of the changes that are being put in place.’

Earlier this week a private prep school was fined £80,000 after a classroom ceiling collapsed on top of a group of seven and eight-year-old children.

Year 3 pupils at Rosemead Preparatory School in Dulwich, south London, were in the middle of a handwriting lesson when the roof caved in above their heads on November 15, 2021.

Photo issued by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) of a ceiling that collapsed during a Year 3 class at Rosemead Preparatory School in south London (Picture: PA)

Several of the youngsters along with their teacher were taken to hospital with various injuries – including fractured limbs, cuts and concussion – when tables and chairs fell from the attic above.

Safety measures include propping up ceilings in buildings made with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).

The Department for Education (DfE) has not given a timeline for replacing the RAAC, but school leaders have called for an ‘urgent plan’ to fix buildings.

A report in June assessed the risk of injury or death from a school building collapse as ‘very likely and critical’.

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the NAHT, the union representing school leaders told the Guardian: ‘NAHT has repeatedly raised concerns about these buildings for a long time now, so while this news is shocking, sadly it is not hugely surprising.

‘What we are seeing here are the very real consequences of a decade of swingeing cuts to spending on school buildings.

‘The government is right to put the safety of pupils and staff first – if the safety of buildings cannot be guaranteed, there is no choice but to close them so urgent building work can take place.

‘But there is no escaping the fact that the timing of this couldn’t be worse, with children due to return from the summer holidays next week.

‘This will put school leaders under tremendous pressure as they have to scramble to organise alternative accommodation.’

The Unison public service union’s head of education Mike Short said: ‘This situation is nothing short of a scandal.

‘The DfE and government have squandered valuable months hiding this crisis when they should have been fixing dangerous school buildings.

‘The schools minister even broke his own promise to publish information about at-risk properties before parliament’s summer recess.

‘Parents, pupils and staff will be relieved the issue is finally being taken seriously.

‘But to wait until the eleventh hour as schools are preparing for a new academic year will create turmoil for thousands of families. And this could just be the tip of the iceberg.’

Association of School and College Leaders policy director Julie McCulloch said the Government had been too slow to respond.

She said: ‘The danger of structural failure in school buildings where this type of concrete was used in construction has been known since at least 2018.

‘The Department for Education’s own annual report last year identified the condition of school buildings as one of six ‘significant risks’ it was managing, describing this risk as ‘critical – very likely’ and ‘worsening’.

‘It has taken the Government far too long to act on a risk of this seriousness.

‘The scramble now taking place to contact affected schools ahead of the imminent start of the new school year is clearly vital, but the actions these schools will need to take will be hugely disruptive, and this will obviously be worrying for pupils, families and staff.

‘The Government should have put in place a programme to identify and remediate this risk at a much earlier stage.’

Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Munira Wilson said: ‘This shocking admission is a concrete result of years of Conservative neglect of our school buildings.

‘Parents, teachers and pupils will be horrified that children have been taught in unsafe buildings and cannot return to school next week.

‘Instead pupils face more misery learning in temporary classrooms or being bussed miles to local schools.

‘Pupil safety is paramount but for this to come out just days before term starts is totally unacceptable.

‘Liberal Democrats would invest in our schools urgently to remove RAAC where it is a risk to life and clear the backlog of school repairs.’

School trust chiefs warned the timing of the announcement ‘couldn’t be more disruptive’ and called on the Department for Education (DfE) to make sure its response was ‘as strong as possible’.

Confederation of School Trusts chief executive Leora Cruddas said: ‘This is a very serious situation and it couldn’t be more disruptive at the start of a new academic year.

‘However, children’s safety must come first so the government is right to proceed with caution.

‘It is absolutely imperative that the operational response from the DfE is as strong as possible and that this gets schools and trusts the help they need in this extremely challenging circumstances.’

How the Government Failed to Act on the Collapsing School Building Scandal

Ministers’ claims that the school building scandal only emerged ‘over the summer’ is contradicted by evidence of warnings going back years

David Hencke

  

1 September 2023

Gillian Keegan Secretary for State for Education arrives in Downing Street Photo: Martin Dalton /Alamy

Ministers claimed today that the collapsing school buildings issue only emerged as a serious problem in recent weeks. Education Minister Nick Gibbs told ITV this morning that “this is only an issue that emerged over the summer”.

However, this claim is refuted by a wealth of evidence, from local government to the National Audit Office, to one of the Government’s own agencies.

The problem actually first emerged five years ago when a school roof collapsed in Gravesend, Kent destroying the staff room and a computer room. No children were there when it happened.

The collapse alarmed Kent education authority who decided to alert all councils in England about the problem so everyone, including the Department for Education, were aware of the issue.

Then last September The Office for Government Property – which supports ​the government and the wider public sector to manage their estate more efficiently and effectively – issued a blunt warning  about the dangers of aerated concrete to Whitehall.

It said: “RAAC[aerated concrete] is now life-expired and liable to collapse – this has already happened in two schools with little or no notice.”

The National Audit Office, Parliament’s financial watchdog, decided to launch a thorough investigation into how many schools were affected and how much money schools needed to put it and other schools right. They came up with the figures of £7 billion but the Treasury was only prepared to spend £3.1 billion on the problem.

The NAO report, published at the end of June, revealed that there were 572 schools built using aerated concrete and provided a map broken into London boroughs and English education authorities, showing how much money was needed to be spent in each authority to bring all buildings, including those with aerated concrete, up to scratch. The government would have known  the NAO’s findings months before publication because it had to factually clear it with the Department for Education.

Only then did the Department start checking some of the schools to see if they were safe.

During the summer holidays two school buildings using aerated concrete collapsed, one bringing a beam down and it seems only then that ministers began to panic and take action to protect children.

Last night Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, suddenly announced that over 100 schools were going to be closed, or partially closed, and the pupils diverted to temporary accommodation or other schools just before term begins next week.

The issue is that the buildings were constructed with aerated concrete which is now life-expired and prone to collapse without any warning.

 The ministry is refusing to release details of the two schools where the collapses occurred (including one last week) or to name the 104 schools being closed or partly closed. The ministry claimed that it didn’t want the media to overwhelm the schools concerned “saying it was up to the schools or the parents to make the information public”.

Despite this, information is leaking out with schools in Bradford, Leicester, Sheffield, Basingstoke, Brixton in south London, County Durham and a special school in Southend all facing closure or partial closure.

It also emerged on Thursday that seven of the hospitals being rebuilt or replaced also have aerated concrete problems and Harrow Crown Court has been closed for nine months to replace its aerated concrete roof.

Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, said:  “Nothing is more important than making sure children and staff are safe in schools and colleges, which is why we are acting on new evidence about RAAC now, ahead of the start of term.  

“We must take a cautious approach because that is the right thing to do for both pupils and staff.  

“The plan we have set out will minimise the impact on pupil learning and provide schools with the right funding and support they need to put mitigations in place to deal with RAAC”.  

Labour plans to challenge the Government over the issue next week when parliament returns.

Fact Check: Iconic Pic Captures Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix Smoking a Bong in 1968?

Alex Kasprak
Thu, 31 August 2023

Betterman / Getty Images

Claim:

A photo authentically shows Joan Baez holding a bong and smoking marijuana with Jimi Hendrix.

Rating:

Rating: Fake


Since as early as 2013, a photo of Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix apparently smoking marijuana and sharing a bong repeatedly goes viral on various social media platforms:


This picture has been manipulated. The original photo, taken in August 1968, contains no bong:


The caption provided by Getty Images explains the context behind the photograph, which occurred during a relief concert for refugees of the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War:

Folk singer Joan Baez and rock singer Jimi Hendrix chat between acts at a Biafran Relief Benefit show at a place in Manhattan called Steve Paul's Scene. Both Miss Baez and Hendrix performed free of charge and Hendrix contributed $500 cash to the fund. The benefit was to raise food and money for refugees of the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War.

It is unlikely that Baez would be photographed smoking marijuana, as she has publicly stated her distaste for drugs. In discussing her short-lived relationship with Bob Dylan with Rolling Stone Magazine, for example, Baez referenced her lack of interest in drugs:

By 1965, though, Dylan's desire to move toward rock and his waning interest in protest songs helped drive them apart. Baez thinks her distaste for drugs distanced her from Dylan in the Sixties and later, during their reunion on the 1975–76 Rolling Thunder Revue. "I was the only one who didn't do drugs," she says of those shows. "It was the same as that trip to England," she adds, referring to the 1965 Dylan tour documented in Don't Look Back. "I couldn't connect with what their brains were doing."

In a 2021 interview with CBS, Baez said that she did "zero" drugs during her heyday as a musician in the 60s, though she has, periodically, tried marijuana more recently. "I try periodically because people say it's a great way to relax or whatever," she said. "It doesn't work for me."

Because the image is photoshopped to add a bong and marijuana smoke that were not there in the original photo, we rate it Fake.

Sources:

alihamzah23023. "Joan Baez & Jimi Hendrix Sharing a Bong before a Performance, Early 1970." R/OldSchoolCool, 7 Apr. 2016, www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/4dpoo4/joan_baez_jimi_hendrix_sharing_a_bong_before_a/.

Browne, David. "Joan Baez's Fighting Side: The Life and Times of a Secret Badass." Rolling Stone, 5 Apr. 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/joan-baezs-fighting-side-the-life-and-times-of-a-secret-badass-129051/.

"CBS Mornings on TikTok." TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/@cbsmornings/video/6969232037899275526?lang=en. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023.

"Folk Singer Joan Baez and Rock Singer Jimi Hendrix Chat between Acts..." Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/folk-singer-joan-baez-and-rock-singer-jimi-hendrix-chat-news-photo/515448732. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023.

insanepuma. "Hits from the Bong with Jimi Hendrix and Joan Baez." R/OldCoolSchool, 24 Feb. 2017, www.reddit.com/r/OldCoolSchool/comments/5vxope/hits_from_the_bong_with_jimi_hendrix_and_joan_baez/.

https://www.instagram.com/p/iMxB20P_RD/?hl=af. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023.

Conscription is resurging across Europe. Is that a good thing?

Joshua Askew
Thu, 31 August 2023 


Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked Europe into taking a long hard look at its defences.

With peace in the region no longer a given, many Western capitals began asking if conscription was a solution to their security fears, at times igniting firey debate.

Lithuania in August announced plans to extend its draft, joining Denmark, while German and British politicians have suggested reviving compulsory military service.


But is conscription the right approach to Russian aggression? What impacts could its revival have on Europe? Will it prove counterproductive or help defend the region?

“Europe’s armed forces, particularly those on the border with Russia, now realise they don't have enough manpower,” said Vincenzo Bove, professor of political science at Warwick University, who specialises in conscription. "They clearly see conscription as a solution to that."

“Whether this is a good idea in terms of deterring a potential Russian invasion, we’re not really sure,” he continued, suggesting there was a lack of evidence about the effectiveness of conscript armies compared to regular forces.

Owing to the complexity of modern warfare, Bove questioned if conscripts could be properly trained to use the advanced equipment or tactics employed today in the short time available.

FILE - Oleg flies a drone while testing it on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 8, 2022. - Natacha Pisarenko/Copyright 2022 The AP. All rights reserved

"Just look at what is happening now in Russia with conscripts… They're not highly motivated. Young men are being forced to work. The majority of them would rather be doing something else."

A former Wagner mercenary in July told Euronews that while he served in Ukraine one of his main duties was to ensure Russian conscripts - “barely 21-years-old” - would not run away, as they were so reluctant to fight.
Canon fodder?

Besides economic concerns about the inefficiency of compulsory military service – with massive numbers of people prevented from doing something where they could be more productive – Bove raised ethical concerns about sending civilians into battle with little experience.

Having served in the Italian Navy for 15 years, he said: “Three years isn't enough to teach the basics of warfare… even using basic weapons requires a lot of training.”

“Some countries are talking about three-month programmes… that’s nothing. They won't even learn how to salute,” Bove added in jest.

Tucked on Russia’s border via the small enclave of Kaliningrad, Lithuania recently began drafting reforms to its conscription system, which could see people living and studying abroad called up.

One option in the proposals is to enlist recruits voluntarily for one-month training sessions every summer for three years. They would in theory then be ready for battle.

Along with Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Latvia, Austria, Greece and Estonia currently have some form of compulsory military service, alongside warring parties Ukraine and Russia.

FILE - A Leopard 2 tank is seen in action at the Bundeswehr tank battalion 203 at the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks in Augustdorf, Germany, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. - Martin Meissner/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved.

Still, others were supportive of conscription - with caveats.

Critical of “performative acts" where “every man and woman is herded into military service", Elisabeth Braw at the American Enterprise Institute told Euronews selective systems can “work really well".

The defence analyst pointed to the “incredibly successful” example of Norway, where citizens are called up en masse, but only a certain percentage are chosen for training.

“The army gets the best and the brightest, and on top of that service is an asset on a conscript's CV," she explained, with passing selection a mark of prestige.

In 2015, Norway became the first European country to introduce compulsory military service for both men and women. It still retains a professional military, providing the bedrock of its defence.

Braw offered a note of caution about conscription, however.

“Troops must be equipped with meaningful skills. It has to be time well spent," she said. "The Kremlin isn't going to be frightened by a conscript model that's not thought through, with young men and women sitting idle in barracks."

Some skills often cited by advocates are social and survival skills, functioning under pressure, stress tolerance, functioning in crisis situations and general resilience.

Enlisted civilians could be put to use beyond defence, Braw continued.

“Keeping a country safe is about more than the armed forces. It's about public health, infrastructure protection, and healthcare. Young people can be called up when they are needed to help protect the country from crises or disasters."

“There are so many societal problems the government alone cannot solve.”

France in 2019 launched a form of soft conscription, with young people offered voluntary civic service. Macron billed his pet project as a way of developing patriotism and social cohesion, though opponents say it diverted money for the wider education system.

Some Studies show conscripts are more likely to face unemployment when their service finishes, while others doubt if acquired skills are transferable to other sectors or learned at all.
Does military service breed patriotism?

One reason Europe is resorting to conscription - where men and women are typically legally obliged to fight - is that conventional recruitment drives aren't working.

The German army, for example, is failing to attract new soldiers, despite a vast initiative to strengthen itself amid the Ukraine war, the country's Ministry of Defence announced in August.

Why exactly people don't want to serve is unclear.

An argument by experts is militaries cannot compete with private sector wages and conditions, with army jobs often difficult and dangerous.

Yet, Bove said this claim cannot explain what is happening in areas of Europe with high unemployment, such as southern Italy or Spain. Here civilians still don't want to join up.

Another explanation is cultural, with civilians spurning the army because they don't share its “overarching goals and purposes,” he told Euronews.

Devastating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have left “long-lasting” negative attitudes towards the military, with Bove doubting that throwing cash at the problem could improve recruitment.

Millions killed in aftermath of post 9/11 wars, finds new report

Arguments exist that conscription can boost patriotism and a population's willingness to defend itself against an aggressor.

“Conscript service has a long history in Finland and has broad support in society,” said Elina Riutta, President of the Finnish Conscripts Union, in a statement sent to Euronews.

As Ukraine shows, "war affects the whole society. The more people are trained in case of a crisis, the better resilience society has," she added.

Finnish soldiers attends a field training exercise Sapeli 23, led by the Guard Jaeger Regiment, in Porvoo, Finland, Wednesday, May 31, 2023. - Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva

“The Russian threat has always been known in Finland, so the war in Ukraine does not in itself change things regarding conscript service, but rather emphasises its purposefulness.”

“The will to defend the country among conscripts and the entire nation is currently at a record high.”

Finland is in a unique position geographically, sharing a long border with Russia that it has fought in the past. Its example is not necessarily applicable to other countries.

Research by Bove and his colleagues Riccardo Di Leo and Marco Giani found conscription actually can create a gap between people and their government.

“Conscription makes people identify with the armed forces, but his loyalty clashes with that towards other democratic institutions, causing people to trust the authorities less.”

“If you're worried about the increasing distance between younger generations and the state, then conscription is not the answer. It's actually counterproductive,” he added.

US Unemployment reaches 18-month high for 'good reasons' as Americans come back to work


August jobs report: U.S. added 187,000 jobs, unemployment rate rises



Josh Schafer
·Reporter
Fri, September 1, 2023

The unemployment rate in August hit its highest level since February 2022, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Friday.

But a jump in the unemployment rate to 3.8% from 3.5% might not be a bad sign for the overall health of the US labor market.

"This was one of those 'good reasons' increases," Jefferies US economist Thomas Simons wrote in a note on Friday. "Given the tightness in the labor market, more supply is welcome, and sometimes it takes a little while for new entrants to find a fit."

In August, the civilian labor force added 736,000 participants from the month prior. As a result, the labor force participation rate rose to 62.8% in August, its highest level since reaching 63.3% in February 2020.

The US economy has added 3.1 million civilians back into the workforce over the last year.

And economists see the August jobs report as another sign supply and demand for workers is coming into a "better balance" as the post-pandemic labor market defined by the 'Great Resignation' recedes. This, economists note, would likely be a welcome development for the Federal Reserve as Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly stated the labor market needs better balance between supply and demand.

"Labor supply continues to surprise to the upside and is helping rebalance the labor market," Bank of America US economist Stephen Juneau wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

In August, the NFIB's small business jobs report showed 40% percent of the 611 small business owners surveyed reported job openings they couldn't fill, the lowest level since February 2021.

The Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, out earlier this week also revealed workers are quitting their jobs at the lowest rate since January 2021, indicating workers are valuing the certainty of employment over the possibility of a new role. Over the last year, the number of open jobs in the US has dropped by 2.5 million.

A hiring sign is displayed at a restaurant in Prospect Heights, Ill., on April 4, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

'No one left to hire'

The jump in unemployment in August was driven by younger and older workers — those between 16-24 and those 55 and older — a sign to some economists that so-called "prime age" workers, or those between 25-54, are fully engaged with the workforce.

Participation from prime age workers increased to 83.5%, matching a 21-year high previously seen in June. Economists at Wells Fargo noted that participation from older workers and teenaged workers also picked up in August, rising 0.2% and 0.8% percentage points, respectively.

"There is virtually no one left to hire in the prime age cohorts, except for roughly 50k/month new entrants into the labor force (i.e. college and HS grads)," Simons wrote. "The age cohorts with remaining slack likely won't be able to meet the skills requirements for many current job openings."

In Simons' view, this means a lack of supply will see employment gains "slow significantly."

Other factors, including the end of the student loan moratorium and dwindling pandemic era savings, could also be at play in driving folks back to seeking work as the consumer is expected to come under pressure over the back half of the year and into 2024.

But one month's data has some economists wary of calling this the start of something bigger happening in the US labor market.

"The participation rates for younger and older workers have been more volatile than for prime-age workers, so it's not clear whether the August increases mark the beginning of a sustained rise," Oxford Economics lead US economist Nancy Vanden Houten wrote on Friday.

Josh Schafer is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.

L.A. hotel strike: Soccer star Lionel Messi cancels stay at Santa Monica hotel in support of strikers


Suhauna Hussain
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Inter Miami forward Lionel Messi celebrates after making penalty kick during Leagues Cup soccer match in Dallas. Messi and the rest of the soccer team were scheduled to stay at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica, where workers are striking, but the team has moved to a different hotel. (Logan Riely / Getty Images)

Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi and other players of the Inter Miami team were slated to stay at a Santa Monica hotel where workers are striking this weekend. But Unite Here Local 11 on Friday said the team is canceling its reservation at the union's urging that Messi respect a boycott of some 60 Southern California hotels that haven't signed labor contracts.

Messi is headed to BMO Stadium this Sunday for a game against LAFC. Tickets for the Sunday game skyrocketed when news broke this summer that Messi was joining Inter Miami.

Messi was originally scheduled to check into the Fairmont Miramar on Friday afternoon, said Unite Here Local 11 spokesperson Maria Hernandez.

The hotel is among 13 properties where union members walked off the job Wednesday. That means the soccer players, all members of the MLS Players Assn. union, would have had to cross another union's picket line to stay at the Fairmont.

The soccer players' union released a statement Friday afternoon applauding the decision by Inter Miami to change hotels.

"The MLSPA is proud to stand with the striking workers at the Fairmont Miramar and other LA area hotels," the association said in a social media post. "We urge all of the hotels to reach fair contracts with their workers ASAP."

Inter Miami representatives Molly Dreska and Rafael Cabrera and Fairmont Miramar Director of Human Resources Ashley Eberhard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"The housekeepers, cooks, bellmen and servers of the Fairmont Miramar say thank you to the great Lionel Messi and his teammates for agreeing to move from the hotel and stand with the striking workers," the union said in a statement Friday afternoon.

The previous day, Unite Here Local 11 had publicly called for Messi and his teammates "to stand in solidarity with us and stay out of the Fairmont Miramar."

"Just two weeks ago, workers at the Fairmont Miramar called for a boycott of their hotel after hotel security officers were videoed violently attacking their own employees while they attempted to establish a picket line," the union had said.

Picket lines at the Santa Monica hotel have been the site of violent altercations in which workers were injured. Security personnel pushed and tackled picketing hotel workers who appeared to be trying to cross a temporary barricade after a rally by striking workers in early August, according to video footage of the incident.

The union and local elected officials in recent weeks have sharply criticized the Fairmont and several other properties in Los Angeles and Orange counties where violence had flared against strikers.

The union filed a complaint Aug. 7 with the National Labor Relations Board highlighting what it called a pattern of violent incidents and property destruction. The complaint named three hotels — among them the Fairmont Miramar — alleging hotel management had condoned or turned a blind eye to attacks on workers.

Soon after, the union called for a boycott of the Fairmont Miramar as well as Hotel Maya in Long Beach and Laguna Cliffs Marriott in Dana Point, the other two hotels named in the complaint. The boycott has since been expanded to include scores of other hotels in talks with the union that have not reached a contract.

Keith Grossman, an attorney with Hirschfeld Kraemer who represents a coalition of 44 hotels involved in talks with Unite Here Local 11, said Monday that the union’s call for a boycott by visitors and conventions will hurt the city and small businesses that depend on conventions.

Asked for comment about Inter Miami's decision, Grossman reiterated concern that a boycott could damage the city's reputation for the long term.

“This Union effort regarding Messi and his Team is just one more nonsensical Union effort to drive business away from LA hotels," Grossman said in an email. "It’s unfortunate for our employees and for the City that Local 11 is focused more on its political agenda than on bargaining. We offered the Union dates to bargain and they have simply ignored us. They are more interested in strikes and boycotts, which is not going to help get us to a settlement.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Opinion: Biden heads to Southeast Asia next week, but his itinerary is 'exactly backward'

Kelly A. Grieco and Jennifer Kavanagh
Fri, September 1, 2023 

President Biden will go to the Group of 20 meeting in India on Sept. 7, then to Vietnam, but he's skipping the U.S.-ASEAN summit in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

(Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

When President Biden visits Vietnam after his stop at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi this month, he is expected to upgrade our two nations’ bilateral relationship to a "strategic partnership." The shift will mark a significant turning for both countries. But it should not come at the cost of skipping the summit of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations around the same time in Indonesia. Biden's choice to go to Hanoi — and send Vice President Kamala Harris in his place to Jakarta — is exactly backward.

The administration may claim otherwise, but in prioritizing the Vietnam visit, it is doubling down on its efforts to build a nation-by-nation Cold War-style security bloc to counter China and avoiding working with regional groups — such as ASEAN — likely to decide the Indo-Pacific region's future. In an increasingly multipolar world, Washington needs to become more effective at navigating fluid and flexible coalitions, not rerun an old playbook.

Read more: Goldberg: China's faltering economy is a result of state-directed planning. Now comes the global fallout

The Biden administration insists its approach “is not about forcing countries to choose” between Washington and Beijing, but as we learned through interviews with former senior government officials and security experts in Southeast Asia, its actions often do not match its rhetoric. And the ASEAN countries — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — are noticing.

According to our interviews, Washington has publicly and privately pressured ASEAN members to turn down China’s global infrastructure projects, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, reduce their economic and technological dependence on Beijing and cancel their military partnerships with the People’s Liberation Army. What the administration heralds as “putting really big, important strategic points on the board” — for example, gaining additional access to the Philippines’ military bases and holding the largest-ever military exercise with Indonesia — many in the region view as thinly disguised attempts to form a new U.S. security bloc. Upgrading the relationship with Vietnam is just the latest example.

Worse, U.S. efforts to build its network of security partnerships are harming, not improving, ASEAN security concerns. For example, a trilateral initiative (known as AUKUS), in which the U.S. and the United Kingdom plan to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, alarms some ASEAN states because it puts them geographically in the center of a dangerous U.S.-China tug of war.

Read more: After bitter warnings, the U.S. and China are trying to ease hostilities

Washington's limited approach to ASEAN as a collective has done little to allay those fears. Biden’s hesitance is partly understandable. ASEAN can be vexingly slow and bureaucratic, but that does not make it any less central to the region. And unlike Beijing, Washington is on the outside of many of the organization’s economic and political collaborations — for example, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that unites ASEAN, China, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. Whatever points Washington is putting on the board in the region, they are not the ones that count most among nations focused on consensus-based multilateralism.

In the end, Washington’s drive for exclusive partnerships could leave it isolated. No amount of U.S. effort will consolidate ASEAN members as an anti-China bloc because these countries depend on China economically and politically. That long-standing position is unlikely to change, a former Singaporean defense official told us. And were these countries to turn away from China, they would be more likely to lean into the overlapping partnerships they are building with their other neighbors, such as India, Australia and Japan — investments made to give themselves strategic options — than to decisively take the U.S. side.

Take Vietnam: Even as relations with the United States have advanced, Vietnam has pursued deeper defense ties with India, formalizing cooperation on military logistics and weapons development and moving toward arms purchases from New Delhi. Vietnam also continues to preserve high-level defense and government ties with China — a necessity given their shared border and contentious history. When Biden upgrades relations with Vietnam, it will not represent Hanoi's picking Washington over Beijing, although many will frame the move this way.

Read more: Regional threats push Japan, South Korea to Camp David trilateral summit with Biden

The region has moved beyond security blocs and binary choices. The United States needs to do the same. The best way to do this would be through robust economic engagement, for example by joining — rejoining really — the now-rebranded Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal President Obama negotiated and President Trump scuttled. Unfortunately, U.S. economic nationalism probably precludes this option.

Alternatively, the United States could formalize its participation in ASEAN’s subregional political and economic groups with investments of capital, materiel and technical expertise. Washington could also leverage its comparative advantages in green technology, industrial know-how or education to create new ASEAN subgroups, as it did with the five-nation U.S.-Mekong Partnership established in 2020 to promote stability and sustainable development with initiatives focused on energy, water and health security.

Above all, Washington needs to stop expecting countries to choose sides in its balancing act with China, or risk being shut out of Southeast Asia.

Kelly A. Grieco is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, an adjunct associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a nonresident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center of Marine Corps University. Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow with the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Silicon Valley’s elites can’t be trusted with the future of AI. We must break their dominance–and dangerous god complex

Vivek Wadhwa, Vinita Gupta
Fri, September 1, 2023

Chris J. Ratcliffe - Bloomberg - Getty Images

In January 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a large audience in India that the country was not capable of building a ChatGPT. Eight months later, India’s Chandrayaan 3 made a perfect landing on the largely unexplored dark side of the Moon, putting India alongside the United States and China in the exclusive club of nations with working lunar rovers.

Altman later recanted his comments and said they were taken out of context–but his Freudian slip did illustrate the ignorance of Silicon Valley. Altman and his Silicon Valley peers are the wrong ones to lead us into the AI future because they are largely driven by profit, disconnected from the world’s realities, and often suffer from a serious god complex.

And it’s not only space technology. India has also already built the world’s most advanced cancer care infrastructure and is rolling it out on an unprecedented scale, leading the White House to announce a partnership with India to combine efforts on curing cancer.

India is also the only major country that has designed and fostered an intelligent regulation strategy to maintain open and free markets in key aspects of technology such as e-commerce and finance. Its Unified Payments Interface system is leveling the playing field and preventing market abuse by large technology giants.

We can do the same with AI. We can take Silicon Valley’s open-source technology and build something that benefits the masses. Altman surely believes that his company is doing good for the world and is uniquely positioned to deliver advanced AI, but even one of OpenAI’s top funders, Elon Musk, has distanced himself from this project due to concerns over its profit-seeking motives.

Research shows the market dysfunction created by Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other large players that dominate e-commerce, advertising, and online information-sharing. Big Tech monopolists are already positioning themselves to dominate AI. The shortage of GPUs and massive lobbying dollars spent requesting expensive regulation that would lock out startups are just two examples of this troubling trend.

Altman’s comments in India made him sound like he is unaware that Indian scientists have played a massive role in AI’s recent progress. They have published important research papers and have been key players inside large technology giants that have driven the development of foundational Large Language Models like GPT-4 (which powers ChatGPT) and Google’s Bard. Needless to say, the CEOs of U.S. technology companies building AI technologies, including Google, Microsoft, and IBM, are Indian.

To start, India can build, train, and finetune a massive foundational LLM that uses data already in the public domain or that is legally aggregated with full permission from its creators or owners. Notably, social media data should be underweighted as large chunks are toxic and unhelpful. This will also make a homegrown LLM safer than current models. As data scientists always say: Garbage in, garbage out.

India’s LLM would be trained on data representing diverse world views and situations, something OpenAI and StableDiffusion neglected. The cardinal sin of much AI and algorithms today is discrimination baked into their fabric through poor data design. This leads to the next key component of India’s LLM gift to the world: complete transparency and traceability. Unlike a few years ago, it is now largely possible to shine a light on the inner workings of deep neural networks used to train and create LLMs. This requires innovation and advances, but India is up to the task. Transparent AI would radically change the game.

Sharing such a system with the world will give us greater safety by allowing the brightest minds to work on the best technology and counter-balance dominant technology companies and evil-doers as rogue states and criminal groups seek to leverage AI. The AI cat is already out of the bag. LLM code and weights for large models like Meta’s Lllama are in the wild. Restrictions on transmission are no longer useful and would only cripple innovation.

Building, sharing, and maintaining a truly open AI LLM is not sufficient. Half of the challenge with LLMs is training, which is extraordinarily expensive and compute-intensive, costing tens of millions of dollars for each model version. Costs will fall, and researchers and AI companies are already figuring out how to train effectively with less data, less computing, and more specificity, often yielding superior results.

AI is a public good, and the best way to support its creation is to ensure all resources required are publicly accessible. Part of why Google and Meta have leaped to the forefront of AI is their brute access to massive technology infrastructure, something few university researchers could dream of.

To cement AI’s future development as an open resource, India should build a massive training cloud for AI and offer it up at cost to Indian startups and researchers–and to the entire world. A good model for this is massive telescopes that scan the skies and offer usage time to astronomers everywhere, with a small slice dedicated to the operating institution.

India can reap enormous benefits by fostering AI innovation in its own economy and helping its own AI community leap forward with the resources required to do the work. Even better, India and Silicon Valley can join forces in this quest to foster truly open and publicly available AI. LLMs are foundational technology components that can benefit all and develop faster with a motivated community. The Linux operating system, which now dominates global enterprise computing, is a great example of this dynamic. A public, community-driven vision for AI will accelerate innovation, reduce bias, ensure greater transparency, and provide a better outcome for all.

AI will fundamentally change society and billions of lives. Its development is too important to be left to the hubris of Silicon Valley’s elites. India is well positioned to break their dominance and level the AI playing field, accelerating innovation and benefiting all of humankind.

Vivek Wadhwa is an academic, entrepreneur, and author. His book, From Incremental to Exponential, explains how large companies can see the future and rethink innovation.

Vinita Gupta was the first woman of Indian origin to take her company public in the United States. She is an accomplished entrepreneur, author, and bridge champion.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com