There have been, in recent months, since I started travelling around the states what one would consider some pretty major stories that seem to have gone untouched in the mainstream press. When I say this the story that I am mainly thinking of is the CIA operative who made a deathbed confession that named all of the major players in the JFK assassination. This wasn’t some paranoid guy who had smoked too much weed and was walking around with silver foil wrapped around his head to block out the microwave signals that were being beamed into his brain to control him –no, this was someone from within the machine.

They called him a bench-warmer, someone who would go in and scout out the set-up for those who would eventually be charged with carrying out the mission. His information constituted news from an authoritative source, but where did I have to go to find out about this piece of news? Not the New York Times but a small website where people submit articles they have either written or come across which they think should be shared with people. Thank god for the democracy of the internet, something that is under threat as we speak.

It is well documented that there are strong links between those who are in power and those who provide us with our media coverage — they would rather feed us junk-food than something substantial which might actually make us better citizens. Paris Hilton or some other “celebrity”, a word that is fast becoming synonymous with non-entity is spoon-fed to the people who once would have demanded more from their news broadcasters than a re-hash of the latest story in the lifestyle magazines. I recall on the same day that there were major events that required reporting on in Iraq that we were treated to one more non-happening in the lives of the Beckhams.

There is of course the other dynamic where if it looks like we are getting a little bit too comfortable in our homes that they have to remind us of what a big scary world it is out there and they have to tell us where on the rainbow of terror we are. Coshed or coddled, how are we ever supposed to find out what is going on in the world?

If you ever think that you read a piece of news and that it is unbiased, that it does not pin itself to some agenda that is decided by some person who is benefitting from you believing a certain piece of information, then you are naive and kidding yourself.

Assassinations and assassination attempts carried out by those forces that are considered to be the authorities can never be revealed as such within the lifetime of said bodies because it would undermine them and leave them open to question. At least they will never be unmasked by these so-called public enquiries, and so scapegoats must be found. Really think that the British secret service can admit to killing a princess if they really did it? No because chaos would ensue. So it pretrty obvious why something might get buried. It is why a politician will often float a story that is more inflammatory — to draw attention away from something that is more important. Get the crowds shouting about something and they will be unaware of the legislation that really matters slipping in under their radar. Legerdemain.