Salon.com > David Teather

Not jumping to conclusions

Fri, 06 May 2005 14:27:00 +0000

The police and FBI were analyzing footage from 17 security cameras Thursday night after two homemade bombs exploded outside the British consulate in New York. The bombs, encased in toy grenades and apparently placed in the soil of a large cement flower tub outside the building, went off at 3:35 a.m. EDT.

The explosion hurled a footlong piece of concrete from the tub through the glass door of the building but injured no one. Firefighters and police from nearby stations rushed to the scene, but did not see anybody running away.

A Dutch U.N. employee arrested at the scene and later questioned by police was released without charge. A jogger, cyclist and taxi were also seen in the security footage. "This is New York," said the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly. "It's 3:30 in the morning, yet these people were out on the street."

One of the cameras appeared to show something being thrown from across the street. The timing of the blasts led to speculation that they were linked to the British election and perhaps the country's role in the Iraq war.

Stopping Hillary before she starts

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 14:58:00 +0000

She has yet to declare any intention of running for president, but the long shadow of Hillary Rodham Clinton over American politics has already prompted Republicans to train their sights on the former first lady. Republican strategist Arthur Finkelstein is reportedly raising $10 million for a political action committee called Stop Her Now. He aims to prevent Clinton's reelection to the Senate next year, and ultimately thwart any bid she makes for the White House.

Stop Her Now is a "527" advocacy group, similar to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group, which helped to undermine Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in last November's election. The groups began to emerge last year after campaign funding reform prevented donors from giving unlimited sums directly to political parties.

Finkelstein, an advisor to New York Gov. George Pataki and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is a controversial figure within his party. He raised eyebrows by warning against the influence of evangelical Christians. He is also openly gay, and startled some party supporters when headlines last weekend disclosed that he had recently married his long-term partner.

Old, ugly and fired

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 13:56:00 +0000

When Laura Zubulake's male colleagues on Wall Street wanted to strike deals with clients they headed to the golf course, the baseball stadium and, inevitably, the strip club. Amid the machismo, Zubulake, 44, never got a look in. Her lawyers claimed that a male executive at the bank told her she was old and ugly and could not do the job. After making a complaint, she was fired.

Now her former employer, UBS, Europe's largest bank, is being forced to pay out $29 million in damages -- the latest award in a growing number of sexual discrimination lawsuits challenging the way that the world's most powerful financial center does business. It is one of the largest discrimination awards to an individual on record.

Last July, another of the big Wall Street banks, Morgan Stanley, agreed to pay $54 million to settle a discrimination suit brought by the EEOC, the U.S. employment commission, on behalf of Allison Schieffelin, a former bond trader, and 340 other women. Also last year, Merrill Lynch paid out $2.2 million to a female former broker.

“Disruptive” detainees

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 15:49:00 +0000

Twenty-three detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military camp made an apparent mass suicide attempt in an orchestrated protest in 2003, the United States confirmed Monday night. The captives tried to either hang or strangle themselves in their cells over eight days in August of that year. Ten made an attempt on Aug. 22.

The military did not say why it had not previously reported the incident, described by officials as "self-injurious behavior" -- an attempt to get attention rather than genuine attempts at suicide. The plan had been engineered, they said, to disrupt operations and unnerve new guards. Sixteen of the 23 are among 553 prisoners still at the camp. Many of the detainees have been held for three years without being charged.

The “Salvador option”

Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:42:00 +0000

The United States is considering setting up an elite squad of assassins to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency, according to reports Sunday. Newsweek magazine said the Pentagon is drawing up possible proposals to send U.S. Special Forces teams to advise, support and train handpicked Iraqi squads to target Sunni rebels.

The ploy has apparently been called the "Salvador option" after the strategy that was secretly employed by Ronald Reagan's administration to combat the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. In that instance, the U.S. government backed "nationalist forces" that hunted down rebel leaders and their supporters.

The plans appear to be a sign of the increasing frustration at the continued level of violence in Iraq. Direct actions, such the attack on Fallujah in November, have had little more effect than spreading the rebels out. Newsweek cited an unidentified senior military officer. "What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are," he said. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing."

Great leap forward

Thu, 09 Dec 2004 15:23:00 +0000

IBM Wednesday sold its personal computer business to China's leading manufacturer, Lenovo, in a deal that reflects the profound changes taking place in the economic world order and marks the end of an era for one of America's most iconic companies.

The sale is a great leap forward for China, still nominally a Communist country, onto the global business stage. The deal is the largest overseas acquisition by a Chinese company, and Lenovo will become the third largest maker of personal computers in the world.

As a part of the $1.75 billion deal Lenovo will have use of the IBM name on personal computers and laptops for at least five years. IBM, founded in 1911, has been one of the most enduring symbols of corporate America and played a crucial role in shaping the modern era. The company, known as the Big Blue, ushered computers into homes and offices when it launched its first desktop in 1981. In the early years IBM became the standard in PC manufacturing, at one stage selling 70 percent of all computers made. Information technology departments fell back on the adage that nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM. The company's technology bled into everyday life, providing software for the first cashier machines and supermarket scanners in the 1970s.

Ohio’s referendum on welfare

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 14:14:00 +0000

Theressia Gresham's unemployment checks stopped arriving two months ago. Gresham, who lives in Cleveland, lost her job as a forklift driver at the beginning of the year and has been unable to find work since. The U.S. government pays just 26 weeks of benefits before cutting workers loose to fend for themselves. The Bush administration, convinced that the economy is on the rebound, recently ended a program extending the payments a further 13 weeks. She can't afford to be ill because she has no healthcare insurance, although she has developed high blood pressure and diabetes since being unemployed.

Gresham, 42, who has worked all her life, now spends her days at the United Labor Agency, a federally funded organization that helps people get back to work, sending out job applications, researching on the Internet and hoping. America's flexible labor market is much admired by the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but the downside to the dynamism is that for those who fall on hard times life is cruel. There are 93,000 people in Ohio who are now living without unemployment benefits, and Gresham is one of them.

Halliburton’s problematic Cheney connection

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 13:47:00 +0000

It must have seemed like a terrific stroke of luck: Dick Cheney, the man who for the past five years had been the chief executive of Halliburton, became the vice president in 2000. The oil services and engineering company was given a direct line to the White House. But Halliburton's relationship with the Bush administration is beginning to prove more problematic than it is worth.

The company admitted 12 days ago that it was considering selling Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), the division carrying out billions of dollars' worth of work for the U.S. government in Iraq, in a desperate attempt to get out of the spotlight. It is considering a sale, a spinoff or a separate listing for the business on the stock exchange. The company's shares have fallen from $50 when Cheney first took office in the White House to the low $30s.

Halliburton's business with the federal government has grown considerably since the current administration took office. According to the New York Times, the business went from being the 22nd biggest military contractor in 2000 to the seventh largest in 2003. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, without being asked to tender, Halliburton was handed a contract worth up to $7 billion to repair the nation's oil fields. It was also given a contract to provide logistical support to U.S. troops, handling everything from food to transport and laundry services. That deal, awarded under an existing long-term contract to provide emergency services, was worth a potential $13 billion.

Days of plunder

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 13:54:00 +0000

Conrad Black plundered his former company, Hollinger International, the then owner of the Daily Telegraph, on a vast scale, according to a 500-page report published Tuesday. The document, the result of a yearlong internal investigation, embellishes an earlier $1.25 billion lawsuit against Lord Black and other former executives of the company, accusing them of extraordinary greed.

According to the latest report, Lord Black charged the company almost $43,000 for a birthday party he threw for his wife, Barbara Amiel, at New York's La Grenouille restaurant. Celebrity guests, including Oscar de la Renta, Barbara Walters and Ron Perelman, enjoyed beluga caviar and lobster. The couple also claimed as expenses $2,463 for Lady Black's handbags, $3,530 for silverware for the Blacks' corporate jet and $24,950 for "summer drinks."

Publication of the long-awaited report could accelerate parallel investigations by U.S. criminal and financial authorities.

Lord Black and a small coterie, including the former deputy chairman of the company, David Radler, have been accused of skimming more than $400 million from the business in the past seven years. The lawsuit, including damages, is for three times that amount. They have been accused of taking excessive compensation and unapproved bonuses, fees and loans, and selling themselves assets from the company at bargain prices, as well as the headline-grabbing personal expenses.