Restoration 10:10

"I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric" said President George Bush. The US leader is regretting the choice of words he used to deal with Osoma Bin Laden and the Iraq situation. Perhaps he could have spoken differently when challenging Iran over the issue of its uranium enrichment. ‘Bring them on’, ‘dead or alive’, 'all options are on the table' are just some of the phrases fired in the important global debate  about the Middle East problems. George is not the only leader to speak imprudently either. The newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad coined a phrase that he might regret. "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.” This was misunderstood as ‘Israel must be wiped off the map’. But apparently it means ‘this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time". Either way it sounds as though Mahmoud is looking for a final solution to a problem in Jerusalem. Whoops did I say ‘final solution’? Sorry that phrase sends tingles down my spine. It reminds me of another politician who wanted to permanently deal with Jews. His name was Hitler. He was adamant that the European Jewish community vanish from the pages of time. Consequently people were brought alive on trains to concentration camps. And there an unimaginable number of men women and children ended up dead. Of course George Bush didn’t really mean bring them on dead or alive. The USA has been misunderstood that’s all. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wouldn’t dream of wiping Israel off the map. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are only for domestic purposes. We believe them; don’t we?

Poole Borough Council in Dorset England has come under criticism for spying on a family to find out if they were lying about living in a school catchment area. The family were put under surveillance in their home as well as having their daily movements monitored. The spying has been described as ‘ridiculously disproportionate’. But is it? Perhaps you haven’t noticed yet, but we’re living in a spy culture? One week previously BT were forced to admit that they had been spying on 36,000 broadband customers. Social networking sites like FaceBook and Myspace are being trawled by Canadian civil servants to look for any evidence of benefit fraud.

"Facebook or MySpace, yeah, depending on what kind of allegations are brought to our attention, we might use that to follow up on a complaint," said a Provincial Government spokesman. Let’s face it, covert surveillance is a normal part of everyday life. Local councils, commercial companies, customs and tax departments are all infiltrating our private lives and extracting information for their own purposes. But before we get paranoid about the Big Brother State, we should consider a recent Oxford report. It says that online spousal spying is wide spread. One in five married UK couples admits to electronic snooping on their spouses. Is everyone just nosey or doesn’t anyone trust anyone anymore?