and the NeoCons didn't really know what to do about the internet, so wishful thinking made it unimportant. That was their critical error, because while the polls kept showing more people were still getting their news from the TV set than from computers, the margin kept getting smaller. And, the polls didn't reflect the fact that people watching the TV sets were not as mentally involved with the information flow as internet users were. While fewer in numbers, people who were getting their news from the internet were more involved with that news... and they were talking to people they knew who did not have internet feeds.

Thus it was that after the fall of Afghanistan, blogs carried the news that the new puppet-President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and the US special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, had both been part of the special oil company working group which had gone before Congress in 1998 recommending a change in the government of Afghanistan in order to facilitate the construction of a pipeline. The US mainstream media never made the connection. The blogs did, and word began to get out. And as Americans began to learn that there were things happening in the world that the TV set was not telling them, they started to ignore the TV set and pay more attention to the internet news sources.

The government and mainstream media struck back against the blogs in predictable fashion, warning parents that the internet was a haven for child molesters and suggesting that only unfit parents would ever consider the internet a trustworthy news source. Paid public relations operatives were hired to dump obvious disinformation onto the net with which to tar it, but a strange thing happened. Unlike TV, where those who have contradictory facts are successfully isolated from all the other viewers, the internet allowed readers who recognized the false information for what it was to immediately present the facts to the entire world. Unlike the tame and manicured lawn of TV, the internet became a jungle where only facts survived for very long. The government had no more luck controlling the internet than the old USSR had controlling the Samizdat; the network of FAX machines that allowed Soviet Citizens to learn the truth of what their government was doing.

All of a sudden, the ages-old mechanism of "what government says, the people think" was broken. The mainstream TV networks had lost their monopoly on the flow of information. The public was able to decide for itself what was newsworthy. The high ground in the war for the minds of America had shifted to the internet, and the US Government was losing that war.

The internet gave the country a collective memory outside government control. When Fox News ran a story blowing the lid off the largest spy ring ever found in the US, run by Israel, http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html pressure from Israeli supporters forced Fox News to remove the story from their own web site. This did not have the desired effect of erasing the story, because the story was already on dozens of blogs on the net. Worse, the Fox News removal underscored the dangerous degree to which Israel was influencing the US mainstream media, forcing into the public awareness what had previously been hidden.

Other stories, downplayed by the mainstream media, or in many cases outright ignored, came to world attention on the internet. Typical was the news that the very first people arrested on 9-11 were not Arab terrorists, but 5 Israelis, later revealed to be Mossad agents, http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html covered as employees of a moving company whose owner abandoned his business and fled to Israel. Americans began to realize that Israel still had a massive spy ring across America, http://www.la.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/74953_comment.php?theme=1 and more alarmingly, the US Government was unable to do anything about it. As was admitted in the Fox News story, evidence that linked the arrested Mossad agents to 9-11 was being classified by the United States Government. Banished from the mainstream media, this information lives on by way of the internet.

In the last several weeks, a strange phenomenon has started to happen. Mainstream news sources have become aware that they can no longer avoid reporting the unpleasant news stories, without their avoidance itself becoming news on the blogs. As a result, blogs now drive the mainstream news. The mainstream media have been maneuvered into having to make a choice between continuing to support the agenda of their owners/handlers, or saving what is left of their credibility by running the stories that the public will be aware of anyway through the internet.

While some media companies are still toeing the line, such as the Sinclair Group that ordered its ABC Affiliates not to run the Nightline Program listing the war dead, other mainstream media outlets, including Nightline and "60 minutes II" are running stories, such as the abuse of Iraqi POWs, which are clearly damaging to the administration's war efforts.

Bush and the NeoCons are in a corner. The time when they can count on the media to promote their particular point of view is fast running out. The time when the media could successfully sell a particular point of view is fast running out.

Bush may be thinking about hitting the "panic button".

What I refer to is, of course, a last ditch attempt to prop up his sagging poll numbers and revive support for the wars of conquest by staging yet another phony "terror" attack.

So, let's look at this from the NeoCon point of view. Their wars are stalled, the world knows the wars are based on lies and deceptions, and Americans are starting to resent spending their money and children's blood to conquer the Mideast for the NeoCon's masters. They NEED an event that will scare the people of the United States into accepting whatever dictates they are handed.

Therefore, when Bush hits his panic button, look for a staged terror attack involving a biological threat......to hit several cities at once coast to coast. Bush and the NeoCons will announce an immediate state of emergency, requiring suspension of all civil rights while house to house searches are made for the "terrorists", who are "known" to be in possession of more of these ampoules of germs. And because the "terrorists" are using the internet to coordinate the attacks, look for the government to shut down all parts of the internet that are not running a commercial for some corporation.

I hope I am wrong..... But the Bush Administration has shown a blind optimism as to what is really going on, preferring to see the world as they want it to be rather than it is, and I would not be surprised if a last act of desperation is forthcoming from this President.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/panicbutton.html

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