Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre or horrific, police shot, injured, and arrested a man today on the Greek isle of Santorini after he decapitated his girlfriend and walked through the streets with her head.

After the police responded to calls from residents, the man threw the head into a police car, stole a police jeep, and tried to flee. A chase ensued, ending with the jeep crashing into a motorcycle on which two female doctors were riding. Both were badly hurt.

The man’s name, nor that of his victims, has yet been released.

Mark Twain once opined - “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t”. Man did he hit the nail on the head.

Today’s New York Times includes a crucial piece about US media manipulation entitled Behind Military Analysis, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand…

“In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.”

We live a new era of propaganda, one in which governments have unprecedented access to the media and exploit that access to not only further their agendas but to convolute information. That is, in and of itself, contradictory to the purpose of a free and unhindered fourth estate, and is, in truth, no different than those governments that overtly control media to ensure that dissent is curbed and the control of information remains tightly controlled. Interestingly, they represent the same governments and regimes that are routinely condemned by the likes of the United States for doing so.

The trick to getting away with it is not in the stealth of the practice itself, but the public’s belief that they live in a society in which such a thing is perceived impossible. That, in truth, is the reason why its success and influence is so profound – when people don’t believe that they are being lied to then what reason do they have to question anything?

This speaks to a much greater reality. That to confront the corruption of something considered unspotted is to bring into question its base purity, which would require the populace of any nation to seriously examine their own role in the allowance of the usurpation of those principles on which their governments were founded. In that regard, many Americans are simply not prepared to do it, preferring to labour under the comfortable misconception that theirs is a nation in which such a thing could never happen.

And that is precisely why it does.

I watched Atonement last night. It was excellent. Then I tossed and turned until almost seven. It’s almost five now; I’ve been up for about an hour and a half. No matter how hard I try I can’t sleep.

I scan the daily’s, various other resource sites; it’s all the same shade of gray. I attempt to write something but then stop a few paragraphs in realizing that I’ve said it before. The stories are the same; they’ve only shifted slightly by the smallest of degrees. I could comment on Tibet, but is anyone really all that surprised at what is transpiring there given the history of China’s occupation of it? I could comment on the startling number of sexual assaults by military personnel recently released in a Department of Defense report, but would anyone be truly surprised by it? I could comment on the fact that President Bush said on Wednesday in a broadcast on Radio Farda that Iran has a right to develop nuclear power for non-military use and that the White House had to then do damage control and claim that he was speaking in ‘shorthand’. Again, would anyone be particularly shocked?

The list goes on, and it leads to the same sort of commentary that I have been writing for the last seven years. If it’s not abundantly apparent to most of you by now that there’s more to most things than meets the eye then I’m not sure how much more browbeating is required to get that point across. It’s all out there for you to discover. The pieces to the puzzle are strewn about the table; you just have to have the desire to put them together. If you don’t have the desire then you forfeit the right to be shocked and appalled when things of an unsettling nature come to light. That’s how the responsibility of living in a free society works – or at least it used to.

I’m in Boston right now. In this very city, centuries ago, the British government passed a law that decreed that any British solider found guilty of an offense was to be transported to England to stand trial because of the obvious ‘bias’ of New England courts. In essence, it all but stripped the courts of Massachusetts of their authority. That act led to the formation of a contingent from this State joining the Congress that was formed in Philadelphia to address grievances to the crown. That Congress would eventually adopt a declaration of independence penned to defy the immovable position of the British government with regards to the colonies. Before its creation, American forces were already engaged in fighting the British. Following it, they would remain at war with the British until the intervention of the French would help them secure victory.

Given that, put into modern context, no US soldier can be tried by the Iraqi or Afghan governments for a crime committed against Iraqi or Afghan civilians. The United States also does not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court. Both positions exist so that US personnel are not subjected to the ‘bias’ of foreign courts.

Now, you can turn on HBO, watch John Adams, and swoon at the legendary tale of the creation of this country. But do not let its modern hypocrisies escape you when you do. And in doing so, place into context the frustration of those currently occupied by American forces that feel powerless to forge their own destinies.

Numerous things of interest this morning.

First, from The London Times, a report of an alarming nature regarding the selling out of Brewster Jennings, the CIA front used by Valerie Plame, by an individual within the US State Department.

The unrest in Kenya continues to spread.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has rebuffed US proposals to increase the US military presence in Pakistan by way of unilateral covert CIA operations or joint operations with Pakistani forces.

Despite various scandals last year involving private contractors, US officials are currently attempting to ensure that private civilian contractors continue to retain legal immunity from Iraqi law. Officials have also demanded that US troops continue to be immune from local laws and retain the ability to arrest and detain Iraqi citizens.

The Egyptian government is going to continue to allow Gazans to cross the border unhindered so that they might have access to supplies. The Egyptian government has also said that it will meet with the leadership of Hamas in an attempt to rectify the situation.

Joshua Frank details Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey.

Naomi Klein on Why The Right Loves A Disaster.

US Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has suggested that he may never provide an answer as to whether waterboarding is, in fact, torture.

Barak Obama wins South Carolina primary in commanding fashion. Super Tuesday is going to be interesting.

The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have now reached $11 billion dollars a month.