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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Ellen Brown: How Wisconsin Could Turn Austerity into Prosperity

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose recently proposed bill to gut benefits, wages, and bargaining rights for unionized public workers inspired weeks of protests in Madison, has justified the move as necessary for balancing the state's budget. But is it?

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Huffington’s Plunder

I was in New York City on Thursday night at the Brecht Forumto discuss with the photographer Eugene Richards his powerful new book “War Is Personal” when I was approached for an interview by a blogger for The Huffington Post. I had just finished speaking with another blogger who had recently graduated from UC Berkeley.

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Did Arianna Huffington just sell out her fellow progressives?

Did Arianna Huffington just sell out her fellow progressives? In the literal sense, she undoubtedly has: The sale of Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million (including a large pile of cash going to Huffington herself) means this powerful liberal voice is formally joining the "corporate media" its writers have long disparaged.

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The Controversial Huffington Post-AOL Merger: 7 Questions That Matter

News that the Huffington Post had been bought by AOL, a company with more than $2.5 billion in revenue, for $315 million, almost all in cash, was quite a shock -- to the chattering classes, to millions of HuffPo's readers and to commenters. It was also a shock to the site's thousands of bloggers, who have been providing free content for the privilege of being part of the public discourse and promoting their efforts at a place they knew to be independent and welcoming of strong opinions.

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