5: Why I’m Protesting on Waitangi Day for the First Time
“It doesn’t mean anything to me,” said Dad. “If I’m home, choice, it’s a day off from work.” I try to look casual but he can tell I want some story of Hone Heke resistance from his youth. I can’t really blame him though. When I ask myself the same question—What does Waitangi Day mean to me?— I come up empty-handed.
Growing up Māori in far North Queensland, I was never exposed to Waitangi Day. My only understanding of commemorative holidays was drawn from the rampant White nationalism that dominated “Australia” Day and the subjugation of indigenous history. Invasion Day engineered my anti-antipoedean-nationalism. Coming home to Aotearoa, I was unsurprised to find Waitangi Day was marred with the same problem.
I’ve never spent Waitangi Day in Waitangi. Some years I have worked but the last three years I have watched the Superbowl. I’m not sure why I felt the need to escape to something so foreign as gridiron.
The decline of Te Reo Māori. Shorter lifespans. Over-representation in prison population. Poverty twice that of Pākehā. Higher infant mortality rates. Higher unemployment rates. Lower income. Can I stop now?
Vice News
4: Defiant Iran holds military drills after US sanctions
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps launched military drills on Saturday, in defiance of newly imposed sanctions put forward by the United States.
In a statement posted on its official website, the elite military body said the manoeuvres in the northeastern province of Semnan were aimed at demonstrating Iran’s “complete preparedness to deal with the threats” and “humiliating sanctions” from the White House.
“We are working day and night to protect Iran’s security,” head of Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace unit, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said to a local news agency, as reported by Reuters news agency.
“If we see smallest misstep from the enemies, our roaring missiles will fall on their heads.”
Aljazeera
3: Travel ban: US temporarily suspends order as Trump derides judge
The federal government said on Saturday it will comply with a federal judge’s temporary halt on Donald Trump’s travel ban, restoring travel for refugees and for people from seven Muslim-majority countries, even as the president berated the judge personally on Twitter.
In a series of tweets early in the morning after Friday’s ruling by the Seattle judge James Robart, the president wrote: “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”
Trump also wrote: “When a country is no longer able to say who can, and who cannot , come in & out, especially for reasons of safety &.security – big trouble!”
He added: “Interesting that certain Middle-Eastern countries agree with the ban. They know if certain people are allowed in it’s death & destruction!”
The Guardian
2: THE FBI IS BUILDING A NATIONAL WATCHLIST THAT GIVES COMPANIES REAL TIME UPDATES ON EMPLOYEES
THE FBI’S RAP BACK program is quietly transforming the way employers conduct background checks. While routine background checks provide employers with a one-time “snapshot” of their employee’s past criminal history, employers enrolled in federal and state Rap Back programs receive ongoing, real-time notifications and updates about their employees’ run-ins with law enforcement, including arrests at protests and charges that do not end up in convictions. (“Rap” is an acronym for Record of Arrest and Prosecution; ”Back” is short for background). Testifying before Congress about the program in 2015, FBI Director James Comey explained some limits of regular background checks: “People are clean when they first go in, then they get in trouble five years down the road [and] never tell the daycare about this.”
A majority of states already have their own databases that they use for background checks and have accessed in-state Rap Back programs since at least 2007; states and agencies now partnering with the federal government will be entering their data into the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) database. The NGI database, widely considered to be the world’s largest biometric database, allows federal and state agencies to search more than 70 million civil fingerprints submitted for background checks alongside over 50 million prints submitted for criminal purposes. In July 2015, Utah became the first state to join the federal Rap Back program. Last April, aviation workers at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport and Boston Logan International Airport began participating in a federal Rap Back pilot program for aviation employees. Two weeks ago, Texas submitted its first request to the federal criminal Rap Back system.
The Intercept
1: DHS WALKS BACK IMMIGRATION DIRECTIVES AS MUSLIM BAN CHAOS CONTINUES
LESS THAN ONE week after senior leadership at the Department of Homeland Security issued a policy guidance that threatened to bring much of the government’s asylum and refugee work to a grinding halt, a new directive issued to employees appears to reverse key elements of the procedures U.S. immigration officials are expected to follow. The contradictory directives came as government agencies struggled to interpret and implement the Trump administration’s travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries — a broad and ambiguous order that is already facing legal challenges in several federal courts across the country.
According to an internal memo issued Thursday by Lori Scialabba, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the portion of Trump’s controversial ban pertaining to the issuance of visas and other benefits to immigrants from the targeted countries “does not affect USCIS adjudication of applications and petitions filed for or on behalf of individuals in the United States regardless of their country or nationality.”
The new memo, obtained by The Intercept, stands in direct contradiction to the earlier DHS guidance, which effectively blocked U.S. immigration officials from issuing decisions in any adjustment of status cases for nationals of the banned countries — including applications for permanent residency and naturalization by individuals already in the United States.
The Intercept
