By: Miranda Dobson,
on 6/23/2015
Since the global financial crisis in 2008, the world has paid close attention to corporations and banks around the world that have faced financial trouble, especially if there is some aspect of scandal involved. The list below gives a brief overview of some of the most notorious company implosions from the last three decades.
The post Top 5 most infamous company implosions appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 5/8/2015
Hillary Clinton declared that she is running for the Democratic Party nomination in a Tweet that was sent out Sunday, April 12. This ended pundit conjecture that she might not run, either because of poor health, lack of energy at her age, or maybe she was too tarnished with scandal. Yet, such speculation was just idle chatter used to fill media space. Now that Clinton has declared her candidacy, the media and political pundits have something real to discuss.
The post Hillary Clinton and voter disgust appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Eleanor Jackson,
on 11/4/2014
In December 2013, Turkish authorities arrested the sons of several prominent cabinet ministers on bribery, embezzlement, and smuggling charges. Investigators claimed that the men were contributing members in a conspiracy to illicitly trade Turkish gold for Iranian oil gas (an act which, among other things, violates the spirit of United Nations’ sanctions targeting Tehran). The scheme purportedly netted a vast fortune in proceeds in the form of dividends and bribes. Among those suspected of benefiting from the trade was Prime Minister (now President) Tayyip Erdoğan and members of his family. The firestorm from this scandal was initially so furious many feared that Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party would not survive its implications. Yet as of this September, the investigation into this scandal has all but come to an end. The officials involved in propagating and executing the investigation have all been dismissed or transferred. Consequently, virtually all charges related to the case have been dropped.
Most of the analysis of this scandal has focused upon the political implications of the arrests and the subsequent purges of Turkey’s national police force. Events since December have indeed underscored the intense levels of strife within Turkey’s governing institutions as well as the growing authoritarian tendencies of the country’s ruling party. Yet Turkey’s “oil for gold” corruption scandal also illuminates fundamental, yet long-standing, aspects of the relationship between prominent illicit trades and the country’s politics.
Turkey’s black market, by all accounts, is exceeding large and highly lucrative. As a country sitting at a major intersection in global commerce, Turkey acts as a spring, valve and spigot for multiple illicit industries. Weapons, narcotics and undocumented migrants, as well as contraband carpets, petroleum, cigarettes, and precious metals all pass in and through the country’s borders on a regular basis. Official statistics on cigarette smuggling offer a few hints of the extent of smuggling in and out of Turkey. According to Interior Ministry sources, Turkish seizures of smuggled cigarettes grew fourteen fold between 2009 and 2012 (with ten million cigarettes seized in 2009 and over 145 million in 2012). In January of this year, Bulgarian customs officials purportedly confiscated fourteen million cigarettes illegally imported from Turkey in one seizure alone. The numbers of arrests for cigarette smuggling has also climbed precipitously, with over 4000 people arrested in 2009 and over 24000 arrests in 2012.
Organized crime takes other forms in Turkey. Criminal networks, builders, and lawmakers have been known to violate laws governing land sales, usage, building safety, and contracting. Bribes and kickbacks to government officials and regulators historically have been essential elements in the rapid building projects undertaken throughout the country for much of the last century. Charges levied against the managers of Istanbul’s Fenerbahce soccer club stand as an example of the match fixing and extortion scandals that have rocked professional sports in Turkey in recent years. Gangsters and extortionists, known as kabadayı, have been counted among Turkey’s most noted and notorious figures in the public spotlight. All in all, organized criminal trades have generated an untold number of fortunes for a select few and have provided a subsistence living for an even larger number of average citizens for a very long time in Turkey.
If Tayyip Erdoğan and his family did glean a great fortune as a result of illicit doings (which some reports claim to amount to total in the tens of millions of dollars), Turkey’s president joins a fairly sizable host of Turkish politicians who have benefited from organized criminal trades. American officials in the 1950s, for example, secretly suspected that noted members of Adnan Menderes’ Democratic Party had protected major Turkish heroin traffickers. During the 1970s, at least four members of the Turkish Grand National Assembly were official charged with attempting to transport heroin abroad. Other politicians from this era, including one-time Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, were unofficially suspected of engaging in the drug trade but never charged. Accusations of theft and corruption especially dogged the governments of the tumultuous 1990s. Tansu Ciller, the country’s first female prime minister, was implicated in organized criminal activity both before and after she was first elected to office. Tayyip Erdoğan’s JDP came to power in 2002 with the promise of bringing discipline and respectability to politics. Yet even as recent as last year, a regional JDP chairman was implicated in trading in heroin in the province of Van. The revelations of December 2013 now has many in Turkey convinced that the JDP is as dirty and corruptible as any of the parties that had preceded it.
Erdoğan’s ability to deflect last year’s corruption charges has not put the specter of smuggling and corruption to rest. Local media reports and other studies suggest that the Syrian civil war has stimulated a surge in smuggling along Turkey’s southern border. It is now estimated that fuel, cigarette, and cell phone smuggling has risen by 314%, 135%, and 563% respectively since the war began. The initial efforts to arm and maintain resistance groups in Syria were deeply indebted to Turkey’s smuggling trade. As smuggling continues, it is clear that some groups have attempted to tax trade into and out of Syria (al-Nusrah, for example, purportedly levies a fee of 500 Syrian lira for every barrel of fuel that crosses the border). What this means for the present and future of Turkey’s government is not entirely clear. Suggestions that Ankara has allowed for the passage of large numbers of foreign fighters into Syria has cast doubt over the country’s police and customs officials stationed on its borders (particularly after the official purges earlier this year). Trading schemes and corruption allegations like those revealed in December may yet again manifest themselves considering what international watchdogs call Turkey’s “grey” status as a state with loose embezzlement and money laundering controls. Whether these trends will dent the image of Tayyip Erdoğan or upend JDP control over Turkey remains to be seen.
Headline Image: Turkish flag photo by Abigail Powell. CC BY-NC 2.0 by Flickr
The post Corruption, crime, and scandal in Turkey appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Lauren,
on 5/17/2011
A report filed by the Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics accuses former Nevada Senator John Ensign of a number of violations related to the end of an affair he had with the wife of a top aide who was also a long-time friend of his family. The aide, Douglas Hampton, was indicted on charges of violating the federal conflict of interest rules this past March, and there is a good chance Mr. Ensign will also be targeted by federal prosecutors.
Much like his former Senate colleague John Edwards is a target of an investigation based on payments to a former mistress, as I discussed previously, Mr. Ensign’s problem was not so much the affair but how he tried to keep it quiet through a secret pay-off. After ending his intimate relationship with Cindy Hampton, who worked as treasurer of his campaign committee, Mr. Ensign terminated both Hamptons and arranged for them to receive $96,000 from a trust fund controlled by his parents. How that payment should be characterized will be crucial in determining whether the former senator will be indicted by prosecutors from the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice, who have been investigating him for over a year.
The Special Counsel’s report reads almost like a prosecution memorandum, setting out the facts of the relationship between Mr. Ensign and the Hamptons, and offering assessments of whether his conduct constituted a violation of federal criminal laws. The former senator does not appear to have set out to purposely violate federal law, but his efforts to keep the affair quiet by placating the Hamptons with money and work for Mr. Hampton may well have led to Mr. Ensign to commit criminal acts.
The charges against Mr. Hampton involve alleged violations of 18 U.S.C. § 207(e)(2), which makes it a crime when a highly-paid member of a senator’s staff within 1 year of leaving the position “knowingly makes, with the intent to influence, any communication to or appearance before any senator or any officer or employee of the Senate, on behalf of any other person” in which the former staffer seeks action by a senator or staff member. Mr. Hampton had numerous contacts with Mr. Ensign, who assisted him by contacting government officials on behalf of Mr. Hampton’s clients.
While Mr. Ensign might try to plead ignorance of what Mr. Hampton was doing, the Special Counsel’s Report goes into great detail about how the former senator pressured companies to hire his former aide, all part of an effort to keep Mr. Hampton from speaking out about the affair with his wife. There does not appear to be much “plausible deniability” here for Mr. Ensign, so proving his knowledge and intent to provide assistance to Mr. Hampton would not appear to be difficult. In addition, a charge of conspiracy is quite possible, based on the interactions of Mr. Ensign and Mr. Hampton.
A more difficult issue, and one with much greater potential ramifications, is characterizing the $96,000 payment to the Hamptons after being terminated from their jobs with the Senate office and campaign. The money came from an Ensign family trust controlled by t
By: Maryann Yin,
on 5/12/2011
BookTour.com co-founder Kevin Smokler has been named vice president of marketing at Byliner.
Smokler will be responsible for overseeing marketing initiatives, social media projects, and community management at the new nonfiction site. Smokler previously served as CEO of BookTour.com. That site offers tools and services for authors to promote their books and for readers to have access to the authors.
Smokler had this statement in the press release: “Four of my great loves–reading, journalism, publishing and technology–all showed up in one job. How often does that happen?”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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By: Maryann Yin,
on 5/4/2011
Do you keep track of errors in your manuscript? In light of recent allegations that Greg Mortenson fabricated parts of his memoir, it might be helpful to keep track of your own mistakes.
Author Roger C. Parker (pictured, via) encourages writers to use of error logs during the writing and editing process.
Here’s more from the blog post: “A well-designed error log contains space to enter: The page the error appears on. The type of error, spelling, factual, grammatical, etc. Discovery date, i.e. the date you learned about the error. Resolution date, i.e., the date you corrected the error. Your error log should be immediately updated when you discover an error or when you verify an error pointed out by someone else.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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Posted on 12/16/2009
By: Megan,
on 2/26/2009
In a time where newspapers are folding and cutting delivery days left and right, it’s easy to forget that the newspaper was once the favorite, and maybe only, way for
people to get information. During the American Revolution, journalists were similar to modern-day bloggers. Everyone, it seemed, was starting a newspaper to bring his opinions to the public, including some people who might surprise you. In Scandal & Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy, Marcus Daniel, associate professor of American History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, offers a new perspective on the most influential, partisan journalists of the 1790s. Daniel reminds us that journalists’ rejection of civility and their criticism of the early American government were essential to the creation of modern-day politics. Check back tomorrow for the answers.
1. What early American journalist studied epidemics while taking a break from politics and his newspaper?
2. What grandson of a certain Founding Father used his inheritance to start a newspaper?
3. Which former public-school student, after failing to successfully run a dry-goods shop, decided to “try his luck” at journalism?
4. What Princeton alumnus and early journalist wore homemade clothes to his commencement ceremony?
5. What journalist scandalized Philadelphia with the window dressing in his printing shop and bookstore?
By: Rebecca,
on 1/8/2008
Every once in a while I get a blog piece from an author that I am so excited about I am compelled to post it immediately, today’s piece fits that bill. Philip Pullman, best known as the author of The Golden Compass, which is in theaters now, also wrote the introduction to the Oxford edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Today, it is my great honor to post Pullman’s thoughts on Milton in 2008. Enjoy!
Four hundred years after the birth of John Milton, he still lives, his example still inspires, his words still echo. Paradise Lost is played on the stage, is sung to music, is choreographed for a ballet; it is an audiobook, it is the subject of countless theses and dissertations, and on the very morning that I’m writing this, an invitation arrives to the private view of an exhibition of paintings and prints called The Fall of the Rebel Angels, whose iconography is unmistakable. (more…)
By: Kelly Fineman,
on 7/28/2007
Well. Crap. I tried to set this up to post yesterday, and it so didn't. I can't find it on anyone's friends lists, etc. Grr. So here's a replay, if you've seen it, or a little something new if you haven't.
For this week's post, a sonnet by Wordsworth. In the past, I've posted part of his Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood and It is a Beauteous Evening.
Scorn Not the Sonnet
by William Wordsworth
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakspeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faeryland
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains--alas, too few!
In these 14 lines, which he claimed were "composed, almost extempore, in a short walk on the western side of Rydal Lake," Wordsworth has provided a brief bibliography of the masters of the sonnet, beginning with Shakesepare, moving throughout Europe, and ending with John Milton.
Francesco Petrarch was a Renaissance man -- literally. He's known as the father of humanism, in addition to being a scholar and poet. He fell in love with a woman named Laura from afar (while in church, no less), and wrote 366 poems about her, eventually collected by others and called Il Canzoniere. He used a form of the sonnet inherited from Giacamo da Lentini, which became known as the Petrarchan or Italianate sonnet. (Poor Lentini.) I covered the different types of sonnets in an earlier post.
Torquato Tasso was a 16th-century Italian poet most famous for his epic work, Gerusalemme Liberata, an epic poem about the battle between Christians and Muslims for Jerusalem in the First Crusades. He was welcomed by many royal patrons, but suffered from mental illness that prevented his enjoying it. Based on modern psychology, it would seem he was schizophrenic.
Luís de Camões, usually rendered in English as Camöens, was Portugal's greatest poet. Born in the 16th century, he wrote an epic poem called Os Lusídas about the glory of Portugal, along with a significant amount of lyrical poetry, including a great number of sonnets, ranging from a paraphrased version of the book of Job to poems about ideas (akin to what Wordsworth excelled at).
Dante Alighieri's life spanned the transition between the 13th and 14th centuries. His masterwork, La Commedia ("The Divine Comedy"), continues to be a source of inspiration for artists, authors and poets, even seven centuries later. The Commedia was broken into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and features in part his beloved Beatrice, who was immortalised in another work, La Vita Nuova, from which I quoted in a post after my grandmother's death. (My guess is that the name Beatrice was chosen by Daniel Handler to be Lemony Snicket's unrequited love based on Dante's writings.)
Edmund Spenser was Poet Laureate of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. His most famous work is The Faerie Queene, which was essentially a huge sycophantic poem for the Queen and her Tudor ancestry. He was venerated by Wordsworth, Byron and others alive at the turn of the 19th century. For those fans of the 1995 movie version of Sense & Sensibility, the lines which Colonel Brandon reads to Marianne near the end are from The Faerie Queen.
John Milton was a 17th-century poet known for his epic poems written in blank verse*, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Milton was opposed to the monarchy, and supported the republican ideas of Thomas Cromwell, which went swimmingly for him until the Restoration, when he was forced to go into hiding. He emerged after a general pardon was issued, only to be arrested. He was eventually released, and died a free man. During the course of his life, Milton went blind, probaby from glaucoma; as a result, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were all dictated to others. Although they are frequently construed as religious works, Milton was writing about the revolution and restoration; his religious beliefs were outside the bounds of Christianity. In addition to his work in blank verse, Milton wrote a number of excellent sonnets, which were revered by Wordsworth and others.
*blank verse is the term for unrhymed iambic pentameter, used by Milton in his masterworks, by Shakespeare in his plays, and by many others as well. It remained quite popular as a means of composing verse until at least the late 19th century.
No. I would instead be on the lookout for brilliant new fiction by unknown authors like me.
And I would use the time I might otherwise spend selling a trashy Tiger Woods book requesting and reading fulls from just such people, and then offering them representation and helping launch their careers.
And I'm being tongue-in-cheek, because I know you guys have to make money, but with an undertone of sadness, because there is no "serious analysis of the situation and its more universal implications" from any of these celebrity stories...at least none that can't be done as well if not better through fiction.
If I were an agent I sure as hell try and sell a photo heavy point, touch and giggle pamphlet of Tiger and the Tiger-ettes!
I mean, this is only gonna last so long.
Wait 'till the dust settles and in a few years mosey alongside Elin and have her spill the beans. Now there's a book!
Haste yee back ;-)
I wouldn't, mostly because I'm not interested in the story. Like you agents say, writing is subjective, and if I've I'm not interested in your story, no matter how famous you are, I'm not going to rep it.
No, but I wouldn't have repped O.J. either.
I couldn't do it. Maybe if times were hard enough I'd rep one book like that to put food on the table. But I just know that afterwards I'd be taking showers every few minutes for the rest of my life, trying to wash off the stench that comes from profiting off one of the ugliest facets of the race.
I'm critical of the many women coming forward to get their media-whoring on while they can. It'd be far worse to be the sad lump lapping up the scraps from their table.
-Colin Hill
No.
I've been so busy (and so out of it), that I only heard about Tiger Woods today, from a colleague. I understand why people are curious about things like this and I'll bet a good book would sell like mad if the writer started cracking away on it immediately -- and put in lots of photos. I wouldn't go out and buy the book. But I'd probably read it.