The Progressive Puppy

CNN Rejects Ad Criticizing Coal Industry

On the landing page of The Reality Coalition an adorable canary flits across a darkened screen and crashes into these ominous words from the EPA:  "Burning coal is a leading source of global warming pollution."  Site visitors are invited to click on an arrow for "More Reality."  A second click revives the stunned bird.  It takes off again and - CRASH - collides with this warning from the US Department of Energy:  "Burning coal is the dirtiest way we produce electricity."  The flash animation is simple but effective.  Watch it here.

So now Oscar-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Cohen have created their own anti-coal ad that wittily skewers the coal industry’s desperate and misleading green propaganda campaign - and CNN rejected the ad!  Apparently the so-called "Most Trusted Name In News" receives significant financial backing from those whose livelihood depends on blackening our skies. 

This is the TV spot CNN doesn't want you to see:

Holocaust Denying Twins put on Hate List

They put up huge signs in Framingham, Massachusetts that show a mock "Mexifornia" driver's license with the image of a stereotypical Mexican bandit wearing an oversized sombrero. The license has a scrawled "X" instead of a signature. The signs were described as "race baiting" by the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Since at least 2001, they have actively promoted Holocaust denial across the web using the handles "jjrizo" and "JoRiz," encouraging budding white supremacists to visit a curiously amateurish website called Nazi Gassings Never Happened.  The website asserts "No one was ever killed in gas chambers, and there was NO program to physically exterminate all the Jews!"

Not satisfied with supporting fascism and inciting hatred against immigrants, Joe and Jim Rizoli last year joined forces with the Phelps-esque operation Mass Resistance to engage in some all-American gay bashing...

The brothers infiltrated Massachusetts' Youth Pride Festival to take "undercover" video (a la Porno Pete Labarbera) from which they edited all but the most salacious content. They hurriedly posted these "shocking" scenes online. 

Joe is a bus driver.  Jim runs a carpet-cleaning business. Their organization, Concerned Citizens and Friends of Illegal Immigration Law Enforcement, has now been added to SPLC's ever growing list of Hate Groups in the United States.  From Southern Poverty Law Center:  Jim and Joe Rizoli think of themselves as a couple of "wicked pissahs."  That's Boston-area lingo for righteous guys who stir up trouble. Righteous or not, the 54-year-old twins are stirring up plenty of trouble in this small city about 20 miles west of Boston.  Framingham has 67,000 residents, 20% of whom are Brazilian, representing the largest per capita Brazilian community of any municipality in America. Some of the Brazilians in Framingham are in the country illegally, some have work visas, some were born in the United States and others are naturalized citizens. The Rizolis scorn them all.  "Framingham has been turned into a Brazilian slave camp," Jim Rizoli told reporters in 2006. His brother Joe, the more belligerent of the pair, has repeatedly declared, "Framingham has been raped by Brazilians."

When he's not cleaning carpets, Jim spews his venom on a weekly internet program called "The Weekly Show with Jim Rizoli."  In a typical episode, Rizoli airs an obviously fake phone call from "a Brazilian girl" who accuses him of being a racist.  Then the caller launches into a anti-white tirade, screaming, "Illegals are going to keep coming to this country! We have the power! We are the power! You are nothing!"  In a Mafioso accent almost as unintelligible as that of the person he got to stage the call, Rizoli uses the fabricated remarks to slander Brazilians, liberals, and non-whites everywhere. Then he shows viewers photos of unattractive females who may or may not be from Brazil.  This gives him an opportunity to crack crude jokes about how ugly these women are.  (You can see the video here.)

The concept of the "Evil Twin" is found in many fictional genres.  He - or she - usually exists as a counterpart to their equally virtuous double.  But two evil twins?  That's a right-wing American nightmare.  

ProPup World - Ancient Footprints, Modern War

The earliest known footprints showing evidence of modern human foot anatomy and gait have been discovered in Kenya.  (And no, Governor Palin, they weren't walking alongside dinosaurs.)  The 1.5 million-year-old prints display signs of a pronounced arch and short, aligned toes, in contrast to older finds in the area.  Apparently fossil records of foot and hand bones are rare.  Professor Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University has a simple explanation for this: "The reason is that carnivores like to eat hands and feet.

President Barack Obama has stated that he will permanently end combat operations in Iraq within 18 months.  The announcement is drawing positive reactions from troops, and concern from Congressional Democrats. Over at Huffington Post, Gail McGowan Mellor has written an intriguing beginning for a four part series entitled Getting Out of Iraq: Exactly What Are We Fighting?

Circus elephants are performing in Great Britain for the first time in ten years.  Animal activists aren't happy.  (Neither, I suspect, are the elephants.)

Twelve months after a major Chinese crackdown on ethnic unrest in Tongren, inhabitants of the mountainous region are marking their normally joyous Losar celebration (Tibetan New Year) by memorializing those who died in last year’s conflict.  Tibetans yearning for the return of the exiled Dalai Lama have forsaken dancing for prayer vigils.  Town squares are deserted.  End-of-year partying has ceased.  The Chinese government is properly pissed about this lack of merry-making, and authorities have stepped up security across Tibet.  (I can see surly soldiers with raised weapons shouting: "Now dance, you monks! Dance!")

Heather Sharp at the BBC has a disturbing piece about ordinary Gaza youths who have considered joining militant organizations in response to Israel's unconscionable treatment of Palestinian civilians during recent attacks on their homeland.  Meanwhile, Israel appears poised to move even further to the right politically, which doesn't bode well for peace in the region.  And a Spanish court has decided to launch an investigation against senior Israeli officials over alleged war crimes.
 
Passengers flying on Ryanair airlines may soon be obliged to insert a British pound coin before they can gain access to in-flight toilets.  (As goes Ireland, so goes the world?)

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has dismissed the possibility of foreign mediation over Georgia's separatist Abkhazia region.  But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will soon be meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.  (Perhaps she can show them the error of their ways.)

As rioting in Lahore continues for the third straight day, opposition leader Nawaz Sharif is warning  the West that political chaos might embolden Islamic militants already threatening a nuclear-armed Pakistan.  (Murky innuendo from an embittered politician.)

Survivor Recap Episode 3: Two Coaches Too Many

In a "new twist" to this season's Survivor Tocantins,  Exile Island will be visited by two opposing tribe members concurrently, and it's up to them to figure out whether or not they want to share clues to the location of the Hidden Immunity Idol.  Brendan and Taj once again make the trek, and their pretend bonding from last week seems to have evolved into real bonding...

Tribe Timbira returns from Tribal Council where Candace was voted off because of her negative attitude.  Under the eerie glow of night-vision cameras, hairstylist Errin tries to minimize her association with the group's first ousted member.  Coach loftily asserts that Errin has just insulted her tribe members' intelligence.  She has made her bed, Coach sez, and now she's gonna have to lie in it.  Which she does, it being bedtime and everything.  The following morning Errin is still obsessing about her outcast status.  She steadfastly vows "to turn the girl that maybe is kind of on the outs a little bit into something that's absolutely the opposite of that."  (I wonder if she says to her clients at the hair salon, "I'm going to turn your hair that maybe kind of sucks a little bit into something that's absolutely the opposite of that.")  Meanwhile, U.S. Army Sergeant Jerry is having severe stomach cramps.  (From eating Timbira's tiny ration of beans, he insists.)  Amiable Jerry attempts to conceal the extent of his suffering.  "I never like to show weakness anywhere I go," he says, all the while moving lethargically around camp.

Members of the Jalapao tribe decide to embark on a fishing expedition.  (One must assume that last week's feast of termites wasn't adequately sustaining.)  Using a large net won in a previous award challenge, the teammates Cast Their Net Upon The Waters - and pull out of the river what look like two GloFish from my aquarium.  They have somewhat better luck with hooks and traditional fishing poles.  JT ("I'm not a dumb hillbilly") proves his homespun savvy by suggesting that the minnows they just caught be used as bait.  The strategy pays off, and soon his tribe is enjoying a non-insect repast.  Real Estate Agent Joe proclaims, "That fish tasted just like Victory!"  (And these beans tasted like Hope!  And this rice tasted like Success!)

For this week's reward challenge, blindfolded tribe members must make their way through a maze while "callers" from each team stand on pedestals and guide them to their destination.  Jalapao's caller is Joe, and his calm direction soon propels his team to fish - I mean to victory.  Timbira's caller is self-described people person Debbie, who shrieks - absolutely shrieks - instructions to her confused tribe mates.  (According to her Survivor bio, Debbie is a middle school principle. This explains a lot.)  There's more, after the jump...

The Circus Comes to Town

Although Sarah Palin won't be attending 2009's Conservative Political Action Conference, her absence hasn't dampened the spirits of the estimated 9000 right-wingers that have descended upon Washington D.C. to inject some Botox into face of the Grand Old Party.  This year's event is being held at the luxurious Omni Shoreham Hotel, which falls within mud-slinging distance of the White House.  As former Michigan Republican Party chairman Saul Anuzis smugly told The Hill:  "Whether it's the stimulus package, the bailouts, some of the other things they're proposing, the Obama administration is giving conservatives a lot to rally around.  Conservatives oftentimes rally not in favor of something, but in order to stop something."  (The GOP loves nothing more than stopping things - things like progress, equality, assistance for the poor and disadvantaged... to name but a few.)

Conference attendees will include such far right wattage as ex-U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, man-on-dog obsessing ex-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre, Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly as well as current Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), and Reps. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.).  Mitt Romney, ever optimistic, will also be there.  Oh!  And Joe the Plumber will be on hand to advise young conservatives.  (Cuz he's so cool and hip.) 

Sarah Palin claims that her onerous governing duties in Alaska prevents her from joining the red meat fest - someone must, after all, keep an eye on those pesky Russians - but she plans to send participants a taped message telling the party how to achieve total domination in America.  

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who gave Tuesday night's embarrassing "response" to Obama's televised address, will likewise not be attending.  He's jetting off to Disney World, presumably to seek advice on public speaking from Donald Duck. 

CPAC UPDATE:  The conference begins!  In a double whammy from the lunatic fringe GOP leadership at CPAC, Accuracy in Media president Cliff Kincaid, introducing Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, suggested that President Barack Obama is a communist and that he wasn't born in the United States.  The audience cheered its approval.  Then John Bolton took the stage and joked about nuking Obama's home town.  The crowd laughed and applauded.  More Botox, please.

LGBT Equality in China - a curious non-issue issue

Although China provides no legal protections for its LGBT citizens, a recent call for government recognition of same-sex unions is being met with sympathy in some quarters.  Li Yinghe of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who has repeatedly proposed legalizing gay marriage, conducted research that shows 91% of city dwellers are happy to work with gay colleagues - a higher rate than in US surveys - and that slightly over 30% of them back gay marriage.  The issue of same-sex nuptials first came before the Chinese Parliament in 2003.  The proposed legislation failed to garner enough votes to be placed on the agenda - but the fact that it was even discussed inside the Communist regime indicates that the idea isn't as far-fetched as one might think.  Although there are currently no laws in China against homosexuality, neither are there laws protecting gays from discrimination.

Li argues that Chinese culture has historically been more tolerant than that of some western nations: "We don't have religions which are absolutely against homosexuality, for example."  And, she notes, gay men and lesbians in China experience less overt hostility than in the west - and they're subject to less physical harassment.   

Although movies, TV shows, and books with gay content are occasionally still censored in China, a recent loosening of Internet restrictions has resulted in a flurry of LGBT websites popping up on China's mainland.  Er Yan, who runs a website featuring academic research on gay issues, says that LGBT equality in China will be achieved without the open activism common to the West:  "The U.S. has a strong influence across the world, and the gay rights cause in the U.S. has been at many times considered a model for other countries to follow, which some folks here really don't agree with because Chinese people are much more passive.  If you asked them in a contemporary political environment to go onto the streets and launch a demonstration, I don't think anyone would."
 
And it's worth noting that Eastern societies are sometimes sheltered from the international gay movement.  An Asian satellite TV service that reaches more than 300 million viewers in 53 countries, bleeped out the words "gay" or "lesbian" from the acceptance speeches of Sean Penn and scriptwriter Dustin Lance Black at this year's Academy Awards telecast.   Both artists had used the podium to call for equal rights for the LGBT community.  Pang Khee Teik, a prominent Malaysian arts commentator, sent letters of protest to Asian media outlets which in part read:  "As a gay man, I am truly offended.  Stop censoring the words that describe who I am."  From Raw Story:  Pang said the move "sent a message ... that gays and lesbians are still shameful things to be censored from the public's ears."  Users of Internet forums in Singapore and India also complained about the censored speeches.  Jannie Poon, STAR's Hong Kong-based spokeswoman, stressed that the company had no intention of upsetting any viewers, but said it has "a responsibility to take the sensitivities and guidelines of all our markets into consideration." 

It appears that in many Asian cultures, and particularly in China, a "Don't Ask Don't Tell" approach to LGBT issues is the established norm.  Chinese gays and lesbians will  work to achieve equality.  But they will do it in their own thoughtful and leisurely way.