MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Thoth, God of Knowledge)It is important to note, particularly given the predictions of an increasing shortage of fresh water due to global warming, that the Great Lakes (fly over country) contain 1/5th of the world's non-saltwater supply.  If these five large bodies of water, along with the thousands of smaller lakes in the upper Midwest and lower cental Canada, are polluted, the North American fresh water reserve will be devastated.

This brings us to the curious three-eyed walleye found in Lake Nipissing, a large lake in Ontario that is in the Great Lakes Basin, which Vice.com describes as:

Home to more than 4,000 species, including 100 rare plants and animals, many of which are on the brink of extinction. It stretches 244,000 square kilometers, holds 5,000 tributaries and 30,000 islands. In short, the basin is the largest freshwater ecosystem on earth. And it’s under attack.

Indeed - not to pile on the likely pending catastrophe of an eco-spheric breakdown due to toxic emissions that will cause havoc in the oceans, send global temperatures soaring, kill off an enormous number of species and cause mass migration - our fresh water is at risk, the Vice article points out, due to the ecological altering reality of daily sewage contamination.

STEVEN JONAS MD, MPH FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Warner/Reprise)Pete Seeger, as almost every reader of these pages will know, passed away at the age of 94 on Jan. 27, 2014. Pete was a great folksinger, explorer of US music, and song writer. In his younger days he was also a great banjo picker, and learned how to play the 12-string guitar (a difficult instrument in its own right) from the legendary Afro-American blues singer Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. He worked with one of the founding US folklorists, Alan Lomax, as well as his with his father, Charles Seeger and his step-mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger (mother of Pete's step-sister, the folk singer Peggy Seeger). And of course he was a close colleague of the iconic Woody Guthrie.

But in this space, I am not going to write about Pete the musician. This column is about Pete and the Blacklist, one of the darkest marks on 20th century US history, and quite different from the current TV show, "The Blacklist." I was lucky enough to have heard Pete in concert in Carnegie Hall, New York City, singing with The Weavers in the late 1940s, before they were blacklisted. I had a brief personal contact with him during the blacklist-time. One way that performers like himself earned a living during that time was to do private performances in the homes of progressives. And so, in the early '50s my mother hired Pete to sing at a birthday party for me, in our home. (Either the year before that or the year afterwards, for my birthday she hired another great, and black-listed, US folk singer, and composer, Earl Robinson. He is perhaps best-known for writing "Ballad for Americans" for yet another great, black-listed personage, the singer-actor Paul Robeson.)

I next saw Pete at one of his "coming-out parties" as the blacklist was fading in the late 50s. He was hired to sing in a dorm living room at Vassar College, where my girl-friend at the time was a student. I have heard him concerts several times since. Finally, by happenstance I went to what was likely his last concert, with Woody's son Arlo, at Carnegie Hall, New York City, on December 30, 2013.

EUGENE ROBINSON ON BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Scifi.com)Let me go out on a limb: The Malaysian airliner did not get sucked into a black hole, vanish over the Indian Ocean equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle or crash-land on the spooky island from "Lost."

Those "theories" were actually discussed on CNN this week. Host Don Lemon dismissed them as "preposterous" before asking one of his assembled "expert" guests -- there were six of them waiting expectantly in their boxes on the screen -- whether, you know, such ideas really were so preposterous.

At which point the nonstop coverage of this tragedy entered the Twilight Zone.

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is pretty close to a pure mystery. The news media -- especially the cable television networks -- have responded with an orgy of what can only be called pure speculation. Far too often, as every journalist knows, the facts get in the way of a good story. In this case, there aren't any indisputably consequent facts except one: On March 8, a jetliner with 239 people aboard went missing.

On second thought, I guess there's one other fact that matters: The mystery is so compelling that people can't seem to get enough of it. CNN has soared to the top of the cable news ratings -- at times besting even behemoth Fox News -- by covering the story ceaselessly, and by that I mean you wonder when the anchors get a chance to go to the bathroom.

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: PressReleaseFinder)It's really not an unusual occurence in our world of corporate influence on public policy: A man or woman expert in a field gets a consulting fee from an industry accused of causing harm -- and just "coincidentally" the credentialed individual testifies before legislative bodies in support of a specific corporate position.

After all, just look at the climate-denying scientists who have received some sort of economic gain from the fossil fuel industry.  

These relatively few members of the scientific community provide a tremendous public relations tool to corporations emitting carbon dioxide.  That is because the mainstream media presents almost all issues as a point/counterpoint debate, even if the vast majority of scientists have established that climate change is an established fact and threatens an ecospheric catastrophe.

The Chicago Tribune exposed one small part of "the expert for sale" scam a couple years back in an investigative report on a state of Washington surgeon. In a follow-up story last week, The Tribune reported:

In a stern rebuke of a noted surgeon, the state of Washington has issued disciplinary charges against Dr. David Heimbach, who told lawmakers misleading stories about fatally burned babies while testifying in favor of flame retardants.

Medical licensing authorities allege that Heimbach, whose activities were exposed in a 2012 Tribune investigation, fabricated testimony, failed to disclose his ties to the chemical industry and falsely presented himself as an unbiased burn expert when he was in fact collecting $240,000 from flame retardant manufacturers.

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Murrur)With a column vigorously supporting Vladimir Putin's anti-gay crusade in Russia, Evangelist Franklin Graham finds himself edging closer to inheriting the mantle of Fred Phelps, rather than that of his father, Billy Graham.

In the column, titled "Putin's Olympic Controversy," Graham not only declares his support Putin's treatment of gays in Russia, he also maintains that the Russian leader is handling gay issues better than President Barack Obama.

Graham, the controversial preacher who now heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which was started by his father, and Samaritan's Purse, an international Christian relief organization, "praises Putin in the March issue of the group's Decision magazine for signing a bill that imposes fines for adults who promote 'propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors,'" Charisma News, an evangelical Christian news service, recently reported. The bill has unleashed numerous violent attacks on members of Russia's gay community.

As expected the media quickly picked up on Graham's assertions: Salon's headlined its story, "Franklin Graham wishes Barack Obama were more like Vladimir Putin"; Mediaite.com went with, "Rev. Franklin Graham: Obama Should Be More Like Putin on Gay Rights"; The Christian Post titled its piece, "Franklin Graham Commends Putin for Opposing LGBT Agenda in Russia, But Is Praying for Peace in Ukraine"; The Advocate declared: "Billy Graham's Son: Obama Could Learn from Putin's Homophobia" and Religion News Service headlined its story "Franklin Graham Thinks Putin's Stance On Gay Rights Is Better Than Obama's."

ROBERT C. KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: P.Lindgren)"After Russia invaded Crimea, a senior American official vowed to 'make it hurt.' More than two weeks later, Moscow has given no sign that it feels any pain, and the challenge for President Obama is whether he is willing or able to inflict enough to change the Kremlin's calculus."

This is the New York Times, of course, yet again parroting the insecure right, ignoring history and reducing the terrifying complexity of international politics – and the great global longing for peace – to a lethally simplistic game of winning and losing. It's the kind of coverage we get in every political crisis, inevitably shutting down whatever collective intelligence we're capable of manifesting and reducing the public to spectators at a geopolitical wrestling match.

Forget history; ignore reality. Once again we have good vs. evil popping up in some previously unknown corner of the world. Our side is the pro-democracy side, no matter that the neo-Nazi movement Svboda is part of the mix that overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych last month.

Voices of sanity are nowhere to be found – that is, unless one takes the trouble to look. Consider, for instance, this statement by the International Peace Bureau (reprinted at WorldBeyondWar.org):

"It should be obvious to all but the most hawkish politicians that the number one priority in the coming days and weeks must not be point-scoring and lecturing one's opponents but dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. . . . (T)here is no alternative; Russia and the West have to learn to live and talk with each other and indeed work together for mutual benefit, as well as resolving the fate of Ukraine.

"Meanwhile," the IPB statement continues, "there is much to be done at the citizen level."

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: tricky ™, Lucy.Bold, Clearly Ambiguous)ERIC ZUESSE FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Whereas belief in the human causation of global warming is overwhelmingly high among the scientists who specialize in the subject, belief in it decreases among the U.S. public to the extent that a member of the public feels confident that he or she understands it.

Among the general public, it's the people who don't feel confident about their understanding of the issue, who are in the most agreement with the scientists about it. Almost all of this latter group are Democrats. Almost all of the Republicans surveyed feel confident that they understand the issue, and they strongly disagree with the scientists about it.

Gallup headlined on March 18th, "A Steady 57% in U.S. Blame Humans for Global Warming," and noted that "Leading climate science researchers in the U.S. and globally -- including those at the International Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body that is at the forefront of climate research -- are convinced that elevated levels of carbon dioxide and other byproducts of fossil fuel use are the reason the Earth's temperature has warmed." But that's actually an understatement by Gallup, since more than 97% of the world's climatologists say that those carbon gases, which are given off by humans' burning of carbon-based fuels, are causing this planet's temperatures to rise over the long term, as those carbon gases accumulate in the atmosphere and also block the heat from being radiated back into outer space.

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: CBP Photography)If you follow the news along the US-Mexican border, it sometimes appears that the approximately 20,000 US Border Patrol agents and officers are given free reign to engage in human rights abuses and violent acts against undocumented immigrants.

That's not to say that every Border Patrol officer or agent is brutal and indifferent, but there is clear evidence that many of them act that way, and the system that keeps them in place fuels this ongoing violence.

In some ways it is shocking - and in some ways it is inevitable - that a Border Patrol officer in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas kidnapped a mother and her two 14-year-old daughters crossing the border and sexually assaulted them.

(Photo: rick / Flickr)WALTER BRASCH FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

I was resting at home when Marshbaum called to ask if I wanted to go with him to look at the lettuce.

"The supermarket's got lettuce for less than two bucks a head," he said enthusiastically.

"What's so unusual about that?"

"Because it's going to be extinct in a few weeks."

"You're buying up lettuce and selling it on eBay as antiques?" I sarcastically asked.

"Don't be ridiculous! I'm buying the best heads, storing them, and selling them for four bucks in a couple of months."

"What makes you think anyone would pay four bucks a head when they can get them now for less than two bucks?"

"Weren't you listening, Ink Breath? I said, I'll be selling them in two months. I'm buying futures. You know, like pork belly futures."

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: greensefa)In a firm act of defiance against the chemical companies turned "food engineers," this past weekend France prohibited the MON 810 GMO corn seed. According to Reuters:

The French government, which maintains that GM crops present environmental risks, has been trying to institute a new ban on GM maize (corn) after its highest court has twice previously struck down similar measures.

The decision is timed to avert any sowing of GM maize by farmers before a draft law is debated on April 10 aimed at banning planting of GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

"The sale, use and cultivation of varieties of maize seed from the line of genetically modified maize MON 810 (...) is banned in the country until the adoption, on the one hand, of a final decision, and secondly, of (EU) community action, " said a decree published on Saturday.

Annual sowing of maize in France gets under way in the second half of March.

As reported in a BuzzFlash at Truthout commentary from June of last year entitled, "Protests Force Monsanto to Abandon GMO Expansion in Europe":