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Indian Express
a day ago
- Indian Express
A copy-paste apology signals unreliability
While aviation investigators are still trying to figure out what caused the tragic crash of Air India-171 in Ahmedabad, a litany of other embarrassing blunders have emerged, not least of which was the CEO's condolence message that was almost identical to an American Airlines statement made after a plane went down in Washington five months ago. In the June 12 video, the CEO of Air India appeared looking stiff, his bland platitudes of a 'difficult time' and 'doing everything we can' falling flat in the immediate aftermath of heartrending sorrow. Though Air India did not address the plagiarism claim, it acknowledged it had drawn examples from other crashes. To be sure, at the time, nothing anyone said could have provided solace. However, when netizens pointed out the striking similarities between the two notes and accusations of plagiarism began trending online, it struck at every cynical Indian's heart like a cruel joke. It's not merely the lack of originality that's offensive, rather, the bitter realisation that even at such a disastrous moment, leaders can't be relied on to speak the plain truth or display sincere empathy. It's a toss up on what's worse — speculation that ChatGPT wrote that message or somebody from the airline actually dug out the American Airlines statement and handed it to the CEO to read out. There's a thought floating around that in today's litigious, social media-driven world, an adherence to protocol even during a desperate crisis, comes first. Indeed, circumspection is required when dealing with a distressed public and facts remain unknown; in which case, borrowing heavily from other post-accident scenarios and then getting caught out makes no sense at all. The most underused sentences in the English language are 'I am sorry' and 'I don't know'. Our fears are rarely assuaged by phony assurances or hatchet jobs to contain a situation. During terrible events, people have a heightened instinct for sussing out inaccuracies — a policy of complete transparency is a step towards rebuilding trust in institutions. Hours after the twin towers fell in New York on September 11, 2001, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani had to answer the inevitable question: how many were lost? He appeared to brace himself before quietly replying that the number of casualties 'will be more than any of us can bear'. His spare words didn't gloss over peoples' sufferings. Yet, he conveyed his tireless support. Over the next few weeks, he attended five funerals a world also remembers Jacinda Ardern, then PM of New Zealand, for the exemplary compassion she showed after the horrific Christchurch mosque massacre. Leadership during tragedy is a mixture of relentlessly working a way back to stability, while participating in the rites we live by. It's impossible to look at the randomness of this airline crash and not realise how tenuous our foothold on earth really is. Intellectually, we may know loss is omnipresent. A twist in fate means some unlucky people are forced to confront this reality in discombobulating ways. What do we glean from the sidelines when lives are brutally cut short this way? That devastation always lurks frighteningly close; the dreams we have, the paths we take are all relatively transient. Quite innocently, we trust in the uncertain, it's the only choice to live with some measure of happiness. Whatever eventually emerges about the final minutes of the crash, the last fortnight has revealed those in charge don't have the luxury of reflecting on it in isolation. A tragedy of this scale involves us all. The writer is director, Hutkay Films
Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Governing New York is hard enough, but can anyone fix its problems?
Before Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York, as he tells it, the popular consensus was that the city was ungovernable. The impossibility of overseeing hundreds of thousands of employees and a budget of tens of billions of dollars while negotiating your every move past greedy unions, furious civil society groups and corrupt judges meant that Gotham City was doomed. Like every other mayor, Giuliani thought he was the one to prove that idea wrong. And like every other mayor, he says he did. 'There's nothing ungovernable about New York,' Giuliani, now 81 and beset with legal woes, told me last week. 'Cities are not places beyond human intervention. They're created by humans. And if humans create a problem, they can fix it.' Today New York is in the midst of a mayoral campaign dominated by a populist young left-winger who is the latest in a long line of politicians promising to fix the city. The question of whether the city is ungovernable, and the kind of experience needed to bring it to heel, is being debated from Long Island to the Bronx. Last week Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old 'democratic socialist' who has promised to freeze rents and make New York City more affordable, won the Democratic nomination over the former governor Andrew Cuomo (who is now, like the incumbent Eric Adams, running as an independent). Mamdani's campaign was dominated by snappy videos of him speaking Spanish and Urdu, and occasionally recreating iconic Bollywood moments as he walks around the city. Cuomo's critics say he ran a lacklustre campaign and has been tarred by the sexual harassment allegations that led to his resignation as governor in 2021 (and which he denies). Mamdani's critics say he is a radical without the political nous to enact his big promises and point out that as an assemblyman he has only been in charge of a staff of about five. • Meet Zohran Mamdani, the man who promises to make NYC affordable Whoever wins in November will take on a job that is as complicated as it is powerful. Being the mayor of New York involves managing a workforce of more than 330,000 people — from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to the housing authority and the fire department — and, crucially, the unions that govern how they work. More than 30,000 acres of parks. Almost 800 bridges and tunnels. A police force of 35,000. A subway system with 665 miles of track. Sanitation. Public schools. The pension board. Appointing judges who handle criminal cases. Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic political consultant, said: 'You have to battle with the state government all day long. You have to fight the feds. You have almost half the population on some form of public assistance that is managed by the NYC Human Resources Administration. It is a job unlike any other in the United States of America.' To do it well, said Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist and Baptist minister who ran for mayor in 1997, was extraordinarily difficult. 'You have to have someone that can work with each of the departments that they run, that can stay on top of it, that knows how to administer. And it has to work with members of the city council that passes the laws and regulations that govern all of those bodies.' On top of that, he said, to get anything significant passed, 'you need to get labour, you need to get civil groups that have influence, you need to get clergymen, you need to get activist groups that have a constituency like women's groups, LGBTQ groups, black organisations. All of them are influential because all of them support some of the city council people that are going to vote.' • What Zohran Mamdani's win means for the Democratic Party It is, as political strategists are fond of saying, the second hardest job in American politics. Stu Loeser, a longtime press secretary to the former mayor Michael Bloomberg who now runs a corporate intelligence firm, said that every decision made in office needed to be wrangled past endless barriers. While he was working for Bloomberg in the early 2000s, and trying to pass a law to ban smoking indoors, he said, they had no sooner convinced bar owners that they wouldn't lose money from the measure (by arguing that people were coming to them to buy beer, not cigarettes) than they were besieged by angry dry cleaners who said they'd lose money because people's clothes would no longer smell of cigarettes after a night out. 'It is in many ways … a thankless job, and most mayors really have trouble with that,' Loeser said. It was also, he said, a powerful one. Bloomberg, Loeser said, used to say that if he woke up one morning and decided to change the direction of traffic on Fifth Avenue, he could text the police commissioner and get it done. Mitchell Moss, professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, said that the mayor had vast powers, including appointing the top deputy mayors and as many as 65 commissioners, who he could then sack at will, as well as deciding what the city spends its annual budget of more than $100 billion on. He told me: 'We have a structure of government where the city charter gives the mayor enormous executive power. The city council has very specific powers to approve the budget and approve land use changes. But other than that, it doesn't have much.' In the past few years New York, under Adams, has been beset with headlines that the city is unravelling under the pressures of migrants coming in and locals moving out, unable to afford to live in a city where a studio flat on the Lower East Side can cost $5,000 a month, and a latte is $7. High-profile, though rare, attacks on the subway and a highly visible population of homeless and mentally ill people roaming the streets stoked fears last year that New York was returning to the bad old days of the 1980s and early 1990s, when the crack cocaine and heroin epidemic combined with economic decline to make parts of the city deeply unsafe. When Giuliani came to power in 1994, he became a household name on both sides of the Atlantic because of his efforts to clean up the streets of New York by arresting people for minor infractions, a policy now much-criticised for disproportionately arresting black men. Giuliani, who was disbarred from legal practice last year for allegedly making false statements while representing President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, conceded in a phone interview that Mamdani, who he called 'dangerous' and 'evil', had a certain charm and for now looked likely to win in November. When I asked what he thought of Mamdani's promises to bring reform to New York, he snapped: 'Stalin had a will to reform too.' Mamdani has denied accusations of radicalism. Yet despite the enormous powers given to the mayor, Giuliani said, anyone in the office would always have a check on their plans: New Yorkers, who could turn against them in a moment. 'You're not Julius Caesar. You don't have power to do anything you want, because you won't be there very long if you do,' he told me. 'You have to learn that the politics of the city is a tremendous interaction with the people of the city.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Giuliani, Lewandowski among new members of Homeland Security advisory council
President Donald Trump announced his appointments to an advisory council inside the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, with a list that includes a right-wing news commentator, former lawmakers, Trump's former attorney Rudy Giuliani and a top former campaign adviser. The announcement by Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the council, established first in 2002, will provide 'real-time, real-world and independent advice on homeland security operations.' The list includes right-wing political commentator Mark Levin, as well as Giuliani, who helped lead efforts to try and overturn the 2020 election results and was later sued for defamation by two Georgia election workers; a lawsuit he lost before a jury in Washington, DC. 'Mayor Rudy Giuliani is honored to serve the president and the secretary,' Ted Goodman, Giuliani's spokesman, told CNN. 'No one is as prepared to advise and assist this administration on issues pertaining to Homeland security and protecting the American people.' The announcement on the new council states: 'This new-look, America First HSAC will draw upon a deep well of public and private sector experience from homeland security experts committed to fulfilling President Trump's agenda.' The appointments also include Corey Lewandowski, a Trump campaign leader in 2016 who is currently a chief adviser to Noem. Other members of the council include South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who will chair the council, as well as other government officials, attorneys, security experts, as well as the founder of 'Bikers for Trump,' according to DHS. The council will hold its first meeting early next month. This story has been updated with additional information.
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
What the Democratic establishment should learn from Mamdani's win
New York City is a political ecosystem all its own, one that doesn't translate — or set the direction — for the rest of the country. Consider how many of its modern mayors have been misled by the prominence — and the hype — that comes with their posts atop the nation's most self-important city. John Lindsay, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio ranged across the political spectrum but had one thing in common: Once they got west of the Hudson River, their presidential aspirations turned to dust.
CNN
5 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Giuliani, Lewandowski among new members of Homeland Security advisory council
President Donald Trump announced his appointments to an advisory council inside the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, with a list that includes a right-wing news commentator, former lawmakers, Trump's former attorney Rudy Giuliani and a top former campaign adviser. The announcement by Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the council, established first in 2002, will provide 'real-time, real-world and independent advice on homeland security operations.' The list includes right-wing political commentator Mark Levin, as well as Giuliani, who helped lead efforts to try and overturn the 2020 election results and was later sued for defamation by two Georgia election workers; a lawsuit he lost before a jury in Washington, DC. 'This new-look, America First HSAC will draw upon a deep well of public and private sector experience from homeland security experts committed to fulfilling President Trump's agenda,' the press release on the new council states. The appointments also include Corey Lewandowski, a Trump campaign leader in 2016 who is currently a chief adviser to Noem. Other members of the council include South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who will chair the council, as well as other government officials, attorneys, security experts, as well as the founder of 'Bikers for Trump,' according to DHS. The council will hold its first meeting early next month.
