Executive action

The inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes today heard there were “chaotic” scenes in the police control room coordinating the pursuit that ended with him being shot dead.

A detective superintendent from special branch, identified only as Brian, said he was not even aware the Brazilian electrician had been identified as the failed suicide bomber Hussain Osman.

The officer, who was in control of administrative tasks in the control room, said: “I was certainly aware that a male had been shot. The fact that he was unidentified, from what I could gather from the room, was how it felt at the moment.”

(Guardian)

Gordon Brown claims that the expropriation was necessary because Iceland planned to default on British Icesave accounts. […]

Brown’s response? To seize the UK assets, not of the bank that ran Icesave, but of a wholly unrelated bank, Kaupthing, thereby collapsing it. Icelanders, who had been expecting to negotiate a guarantee to British depositors – eventually agreed on Monday – were stunned. They couldn’t bring themselves to believe that the leader of a country they admired would destroy their last solvent bank simply to give himself what Labour MPs have since called “his Falklands moment”.

(Daniel Hannan, Times)

At least they shot de Menezes in the head. For a business whose bank has been terminated on executive orders, the experience is rather like how I imagine it feels to drown in your own blood.

Of course if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. The government is benevolent, and always acts in the best interests of everyone. Foreigners are a threat. We must remember that. The government says so. So it must be true.