Osama and the Hijacking of New York's Grief

By Alison Rose Levy

""The shock, grief and loss were overwhelming."How should we understand this latest and most troubling insight into the reality of our media ecology? In the aftermath of the resolution of the Great Birther bash-up, even as President Obama tried to lay the issue at rest by producing the document that showed, proved, verified, documented, and validated his birth in one of the great states of our disunion, it was said that its release would only fuel more debate, and convince no one. In other words, in the end, this long debated fact didn’t matter. Facts no longer seem to matter on other issues, too, as articulated in the now infamous memo issued by retiring Senator Jon Kyle whose office, when confronted with evidence that he misspoke on the matter of how much money Planned Parenthood spent on abortions—he claimed 90%, the truth was but 3%, issued an advisory that said, “The statement was not meant to be factual.” In other words, in the end, this long debated fact didn’t matter.

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Nuclear Disaster ‘Will Have Political Impact as Great as 9/11′

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima makes it hard to ignore the vulnurabilities of the technology. It could spell the end of nuclear power, German commentators argue on Monday. The government in Berlin may now cave in to mounting pressure to suspend its 12-year extension of reactor lifetimes, they say.

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