Tuesday Readings: November 22, 2016

It’s Tuesday, which means it’s been two weeks since Donald Trump was elected president.

Trump’s infrastructure plan is a “trap,” Common Dreams reporter Nadia Prupis writes.

Because the plan prioritizes investors and tax breaks, rather than subsidizing projects and repairing public infrastructure, “there is simply no guarantee that the plan will produce any net new hiring,” Klain wrote. “Investors may simply shift capital from unsubsidized projects to subsidized ones and pocket the tax breaks on projects they would have funded anyway.”

The president-elect’s real plans are taking shape. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach met with Trump over the weekend and inadvertently flashed some documents he brought. This is not good.

The document calls for updating and reintroducing the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. The program was implemented in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but largely suspended in 2011.

“All aliens from high-risk areas are tracked,” the document reads.

The document mirrors what Kobach told Reuters in the days after the election. In an interview with the news service, he said an immigration policy group might recommend reinstating the NSEERS system, which would act as a registry of immigrants.

A world away in Myanmar, the government’s military (Tatmadaw) is raining death onto Rohingya Muslims. The descriptions from The Myanmar Observer are horrifying and clearly genocide. President Obama pledged to lift all sanctions against the Myanmar government this September.

Tatmadaw soldiers charged into Ra Bai La where they fell upon villagers who did not manage to flee the area. Arifa Begum (d/o Oli Hossain) told our sources her baby was thrown into the fire, as her house was burned. Our correspondent says at least one more infant child was thrown into the fire after being grabbed from the mother.

Meanwhile in North Dakota, Shadowproof reports that police decided to up their brutality and assault protestors with hoses blasting cold water in freezing temperatures. They also fired rubber bullets into the crowd of water protectors.

On November 20, according to a press statement from the Sacred Stone Camp, water protectors attempted to remove “burnt military vehicles” that police “chained to barriers weeks ago,” which were blocking traffic on Highway 1806. The effort was undertaken with a semi-truck, and water protectors hoped to “clear the road to improve access to the camp for emergency services.”

Police responded with an incredible show of force, using multiple so-called “non-lethal” tools in their arsenal to pummel water protectors. Particularly unsettling was the blasting of water at water protectors when the temperature dropped to 26 degrees Fahrenheit. There were multiple complaints of people suffering from the early onset of hypothermia.

And Donald Trump met with Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Monday. Gabbard has been floated as a possible presidential candidate due to her support for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary by people who have no understanding of her actual political positions.

At first glance Gabbard, who is from Hawaii and is the first Hindu member of the US Congress, seems an unlikely counsellor. She resigned from the Democratic National Committee to back Vermont senator Sanders and formally nominatedhim for president at the party convention in July, crediting him with starting a “movement of love and compassion”, although by then Clinton’s victory was certain.

But the Iraq war veteran has also expressed views that might appeal to Trump, criticising Obama, condemning interventionist wars in Iraq and Libya and taking a hard line on immigration. In 2014, she called for a rollback of the visa waiver programme for Britain and other European countries with what she called “Islamic extremist” populations.

In October last year she tweeted: “Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did. #neverforget911.” She was then among 47 Democrats who joined Republicans to pass a bill mandating a stronger screening process for refugees from Iraq and Syria coming to the US.

Enjoy your Tuesday.