It is obvious that the majority of Malaysian politicians underestimated how dependent they have become on computers and at the same time how ignorant they are of their vulnerability in the struggle between the 'truth' and their power in the very process of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) they have promoted.

Being politicians, most are interested in power, not truth. Hence, they placed top priority on their image-building through publicity campaigns. In reality their bottom-line was not transparency, but the mundane need for political support.

The trend of blogging was never really anticipated, because their whole focus was centred on revenue and ringgit-sense and because everyone else in the developed world was jumping onto this new system of wealth creation.

You can bet your last ringgit that only a rare species of Malaysian politicians and bureaucrats foresaw that the blog would churn out Internet users grasping the truth and criticising the power system.

The news dailies were doing alright, politicians felt comfortable being quoted by them like parrots and hardly raising any intellectual conversations that were not within their controls.

The blog was a Martian or an extraterrestrial and most politicians were shortsighted in regards to its potential use.

Thus, politicians and bureaucrats suddenly found themselves vulnerable to this avalanche of public opinion via crisscrossing blog sites - a 'silent mode' that blinds any political target. To politicians, it is a silent killer.

Imagine how dictators would react to this speedy mode of dissemination of views and opinions, spreading at ten times the rate of a forest fire.

When politicians lose the how and when of techniques manipulating their own propaganda, they press the panic button in retaliation. They will use the OSA, the ISA, sedition laws and other what not to regain their lost power ground.

When their self-interests are threatened, they raise their power points higher, citing threats and crying foul. Politics is about power, not truth. Smart politicians would use the same mode to intelligently refute the views of bloggers, but how many of those are there in this country?

Many politicians don't really understand what intellectual freedom is. They cannot react when their minds are closed.

That takes us to the next level of the double standard syndrome. Intellectual freedom is like flying a kite. Politicians are telling us to fly a kite in our living rooms, setting the rules at ceiling height and constraining our space.