links for 2010-02-18

While Ms Wenberg accepted the Government’s apology she believed more should have been done.
“The apology was nice to hear but it is not enough for the suffering we went through,” she said.
“After 60 years my sister and I met our family but we didn’t ever really fit in and it was hard for us.”
Ms Wenberg believes the stolen generation should receive compensation for their “emotional suffering”.

"On Sunday, one named @chaseronio likened the director to no less than Martin Luther King Jr. in a tweet: 'Ur the MLK of fatties.'
“'I have a Dream,' Smith twittered back with deadpan aplomb. 'And two lunches (meatball parm & Trix). And a couple of Twinkies. And a Diet Coke.'"

Eriel Deranger of the Fort Chipewan First Nation and a campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network, highlighted the role of Olympic Sponsors in destroying Native lands and disrespecting Indigenous rights. "I come here today as a tar sands impacted community member and as a tar sands campaigner. We see that the leading sponsors of the 2010 Winter Olympics are also complicit in the Alberta Tar Sands and the destruction and devastation of my people's territories."

"Did Gray have any qualms, I wondered, about setting up a scenario where Butler’s character targets an African American mayor (Viola Davis) for assassination? In a climate where people fret over the safety of our first black president, it’s hard to imagine that Gray wouldn’t have reservations about such a scene.
“'Race never even came into play, 'he said. 'We thought we would hire the strongest candidate for the role [of the mayor], and we did.  We thought it would be different. It had nothing to do with race or politics, and it’s really kind of interesting that people read into it that way.'"

"As for his David Duke comment, Mayer was pondering the discrepancy between his dating history, which has been exclusively white, and the attraction he feels for women of different races. He wasn’t embracing Duke, or racism; he was noticing a dating pattern that, among white guys, isn’t at all unusual."

"He found a stupid way to make valuable points. If he’d just left out one forbidden word and an ill-advised reference to a white supremacist (who I don’t want to promote by naming), Mayer might be up for an NAACP Image Award."