Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

"If you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear" is the mantra of the proponents of the surveillance society. It's rubbish of course as we all have things to hide such as our bank account or credit card details! Privacy International's 2007 survey gave the UK the lowest privacy ranking in the EU putting it in the 'endemic surveillance' category alongside Russia and Singapore. So do we good citizens actually need to worry?

"And when no elite existed, one could always be imported from elsewhere. Cyrus [the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire], even as he flattered the Babylonians with the attentions he paid to Marduk [Babylonian God], had not ignored the yearnings of the city's deportees, exiles such as the Judaeans, brought to Babylon decades previously - for the Persians had recognised in these wretched captives, and in their homesickness, a resource of great potential.

Correction to the much quoted

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, has not "called for Israel to
be wiped off the map" (Holocaust denial writer jailed for five years,
page 21, February 16). The Farsi phrase he employed is correctly
translated as "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the
page of time". He was quoting a statement by Iran's first Islamist
leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

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