Taking the Law Too Far

In civilised societies, as we know, the function of the law is to help those who can afford to pay for it. Nevertheless, there are certain benighted realms, far from the British mainland, where such enlightened values have yet to be properly understood; which no doubt explains why some greasy dago seems to think that the force of law should apply even to such paragons as transnational corporations and high-finance muggers. "Humanitarian and economic crises cause more deaths around the world than all of the genocides we have documented," said Baltasar Garzón, making a grotesque claim of moral equivalence between the grim crimes of foreigners and the cheery buccaneering and barnstorming of wealth creators. Garzón has something of a record when it comes to bullying the downtrodden and unfortunate: it was he who ordered the 1998 arrest of Margaret Thatcher's chum Augusto Pinochet, thus violating the holy sanctuary conferred upon that famous vanquisher of Old Labour values by the Reverend Blair.