Rich Thieving Scum Whine

London is losing its status as the world’s leading financial centre and being overtaken by New York, according to a global survey of finance professionals.The collapse of Northern Rock and the proposed tax crackdown on non-domiciled residents are making the UK less attractive to overseas businesses, according to the City of London Corporation, which commissioned the survey.

A separate survey, also commissioned by the City, said the UK tax system had lost its competitive edge over other financial centres. The UK had become increasingly unpredictable and uncertain, complex and unnecessarily aggressive in its approach to taxpayers, it found.

So basically a shot across the bows by kleptocrats unlimited. Also via Mask of Anarchy (and see Exxon using UK courts to attack Venezuela) we see Tesco is weighing up suing the Guardian over blowing its Enron scams-

“Tesco is, apparently, considering suing The Guardian newspaper over a story alleging widespread offshore tax avoidance by the Grocer That Ate Middle England. This could give rise to a little friction between the rest of the Tesco board and one of its non-executives. In her day job, Carolyn McCall is chief executive of Guardian Media Group.”

Gunboat Diplomacy

Signaling impatience with Syria, the United States has sent its USS Cole warship off the coast of Lebanon in a show of support amid Beirut’s political crisis, U.S. officials said on Thursday.Lebanon’s Western-backed governing coalition and its Syrian and Iranian backed opposition have failed to reach a deal to end the country’s political conflict. A U.S. defense official said the Cole left Malta on Tuesday and was headed toward Lebanon, adding it would not be within visible range of Lebanon but “well over the horizon.”

The USS Cole was attacked off the coast of Yemen in October 2000 by al Qaeda militants. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed.

Update:

Another military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because full details about the ship movements are not yet public, said a Navy guided missile destroyer, the USS Cole, was headed for patrol in the eastern Mediterranean and that the USS Nassau, an amphibious warship, would be joining it shortly. The officer said a third ship would go later, but he did not identify it by type or name. 

Royal Tradition Of Killing Poor Foreigners Continues

I know it will be used in the US as a stick to beat the feckless Bush regime and the lack of any of them or their family serving, but it’s colonialism not heroism and anyway a Royal family? Are we living in a Shrek movie? For fuck’s sake.

Another Journalist Swallowed Into The Gulag

Jawed Ahmad. A journalist for a Canadian TV network who has been held for four months without being charged has been designated an unlawful enemy combatant, the U.S. military said Wednesday.Ahmad, 22, who is also known as Jojo Yazemi, was detained Oct. 26 at a NATO air base in the southern city of Kandahar, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based group. He was later transferred to a detention center at the U.S. military base in Bagram, north of Kabul.

“CTV news continues to be deeply concerned about Jojo Yazemi’s well-being and we are continuing to work all diplomatic channels available to find out additional information and get Jojo his due process,” Robert Hurst, president of CTV News, said in a statement.

PJ, which said Tuesday that it received a letter from the Pentagon on Feb. 22 about Ahmad being held as an enemy combatant, demanded that U.S. authorities disclose evidence and specify charges against him.

“Although the Pentagon has made a very serious assertion, it has yet to disclose any supporting evidence. And despite holding Jawed Ahmad for four months, authorities have yet to charge him with a crime,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “We urge military officials to either charge Jawed Ahmad with a recognizable criminal offense or, if they have no intention of doing so, to release him immediately.”

One moment he was a human being with rights, now he is an”unlawful enemy combatant” some mysterious undefined state of unbeing the Empire uses to turn human beings into…what exactly? Puppets for the rack? Gulag livestock? What stops them from doing it to us?

War Criminal Loses Job

After this–

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.’“

Scumbag war criminal Haynes got the boot-

Having thoroughly exposed the preconceived notion of guilt in the Commissions, which infects the whole of the administration’s post-9/11 detention policies (in the tribunals at Guantánamo, for example, condemned by former insiders for being designed to rubberstamp the detainees’ designation as “enemy combatants” without testing the “evidence”), Col. Davis’ next trick was to declare, the day after, that he would appear as a defense witness for Salim Hamdan at his next pre-trial hearing in April. “I expect to be called as a witness,” he explained, adding, “I’m more than happy to testify,” and describing his decision, ominously for the administration, as “an opportunity to tell the truth.”

The final blow to the Commissions — for now, at least — came yesterday, when, without even attempting to address Col. Davis’ allegations, the Pentagon abruptly announced that William Haynes was resigning as Chief Counsel, “to return to private life.” A spokeswoman said that he had discussed leaving the administration “some months ago” and had “decided to accept an offer to work in the private sector.”

I don’t think because he was revealed to be an evil man, but because his exposure revealed the evil of a lot of other criminals.