How the US is exporting bad food and eating habits around the world

In his last episode of the season of his show Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj looks at how the US, through the World Trade Organization, bullies other countries to force them to open their markets to unhealthy foods exported by the US so that the problems associated with such foods that we are so familiar with in the US, like diabetes, are now increasing globally.

At the end of the show, he spends a few minutes giving advice on how to deal with all the problems that his show raises and he recommends that each person focus on just a few things to act and be activists on, so as to avoid being overwhelmed into a state of inaction on everything.

Trump’s deranged rally speech

Seth Meyers describes the rally that Trump held while the impeachment process was going on, where he went on a tirade against dishwashers, showers, sinks, toilets, and other household items.

It seems to me that the places that Trumps lives in, which proudly bear his name, have the lousiest appliances. How many people have exploding dishwashers or showers that give out four drops of water or toilets that must be flushed ten times?

Weaponizing big philanthropy

On his show Patriot Act Hasan Minhaj brilliantly “dissects how the ultra-rich use philanthropy to get richer, distract from the injustices on which they built their fortunes, and dictate politics and policy.”

He interviews Anand Giridharadas, author of the book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. He has been calling for big taxes on the income and wealth of the ultra-rich as a way of eliminating the massive and growing wealth inequality.

The rising Asian-American presence in US politics

In a recent episode of his show Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj looked at the increased role that Asian-Americans are playing in US politics along with their rise in numbers, and that this demographic has been a key factor in changing some congressional districts from Republican to Democratic and that they could play a significant role in the 2020 elections. He says that Andrew Yang’s candidacy is one sign of this. He also talked with Cory Booker who has apparently had a lot of success reaching out to the Asian-American bloc.

But against this is the fact that their views are not homogeneous and indeed a large number of Indian-Americans have supported the Modi-Trump rightwing nationalistic program. One thing that surprised me was Minhaj pointing out that Asian-Americans tend to be below average in voter registration and actual voting.

Minhaj also traced the history of immigration laws such as the notorious Chinese exclusion act of 1882 and the 1924 law that largely shut down immigration from non-white countries before it was changed in 1965 following passage of the Civil Rights Act.

You can see the full show.

Samantha Bee updates us on impeachment

I have to say that I find the whole thing utterly depressing, especially watching the craven subservience of the Republicans to Donald Trump. To add to that is the fact that Democrats are now painting a picture of the FBI as if it were an impartial, purely investigative body of great integrity and ignoring its ugly history of multiple violations of people’s civil rights and outright racism, even if it may or may not have done bad things in this particular case.

Vote for Labour tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the general election in the UK where the Labour party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn have been subject to a massive smear campaign. Not being British, my views count for little but here is a cartoon by another non-Britisher, an Australian cartoonist who goes under the pen-name ‘first dog on the moon’, that quite nicely sums up my feelings.

As the cartoonist rightly points out, “You know you’re not legally required to like Jeremy Corbyn in order to vote for him right?”