My name is Chris van Veel. I'm a past president of Wonka and I co-chair this session with Professor Amanda Bernard, who I introduce and give the floor in a moment. Professor Bernard has a long contribution to Wonka and in addition to that, only a couple of days got a very special award from the Australian National University. The Chancellor's Award, something that is special in itself, but particularly special for someone from general practice. I don't think it has happened ever before. I will coordinate the discussions and we will have three presentations, discussions at the end of the three presentations. And in the meantime, please use the Q&A box to post questions so that you don't forget it. I will pick them up. And during the discussions, please use the raise hand button if you want to intervene. That will be my contribution now, Professor Bernard, over to you. Thank you very much indeed, Chris. And again, my welcome to everybody from all over the world. We have a very distinguished panel of speakers today and I'd like to start by introducing Professor Shabia Musa. Shabia has been recently the Wonka Africa President and he's now a member at large on Wonka Council. Those of you who don't know Professor Musa, where he's from South Africa, where he has been involved in family practice and policy and changes to the health system for many, many years. He's been deeply involved in the development and research around family medicine and community orientated primary care in Africa. And I invite Shabia now to start his presentation. My name is Shabia Musa. I'm the President of Wonka Africa. I'm outgoing. I'm going to share with you the achievements of Wonka Africa over the last three years. Important elements of these achievements are the Wonka membership, Wonka Africa Conference, the Working Parties and SIGS, communication and finance, the academic focus and stakeholder engagement, where I think we've done pretty well. Membership has grown from, in 2018, from eight paid up members to 12 paid up members in 2021. We've added Cameroon, Botswana, Liberia, Zambia and I think considering the number of potential members across the continent, I think that we still have a long way to go. But this is not bad in achievement of building up membership by 50%. I think just to give you an understanding, there are 40 academic departments across 25 countries and departments of family medicine often lay the basis long term for member organizations of Wonka Africa. So I think great things are in store for Africa. In terms of the Wonka Africa Conference, it's a very important opportunity to be able to do advocacy locally and in Kampala in Uganda 2019. We had our conference there which had high level involvement of not only country stakeholders but also WHO Afro presence, which was a very important milestone for us. There were pre-conferences for everyone, as well as for the women's group and PrimaFamil. And PrimaFamil, I think, will be continually given that opportunity to have that pre-conference. I think the conference itself not only did it link up with WHO, but it brought us income where others have not really done very well before that. In terms of outcomes, I think the Kampala statement was an important document and it one really good looks at it on the Wonka Africa website. You'll see there in fact charts of what we have been busy with over the last three years. I think everybody needs to remember that there is going to be the next Wonka Africa Conference in Abuja, Nigeria 2022. So I hope to see you there. In terms of working parties, AFRI1 has been very vibrant. One of the young doctor movements and they have been very active with the pre-conference as well as with their chat groups on WhatsApp. They have also been very strong academically with the African Research Consortium, African Research Collaborative as well as the MCQs that they're developing and using amongst each other. Women in Family Medicine, certainly the women in Africa have been very busy with the pre-conference as well. They have their own lists of and communicate through that, but a lot of this is global participation in Africa. It's been somewhat challenged, especially with the COVID-19. I think there are many working parties and special interest groups, but participation in them is very difficult to assess because the working parties and SIGs don't seem to be able to share their information with us. But we have some knowledge of working parties where there's some activity, particularly mental health, rural environment and emergency medicine. But I think that this is an important step for the next Executive Committee to address. Communication in Wonka has been good and it's become consistent with the Wonka Africa website, which has been there for quite a while and provides a good portal and information for happenings around Wonka in Africa. I think emails have been going out regularly, giving people an understanding of what's been happening from myself as the President. And I think we've used the opportunity to cross-post important information on Facebook and Twitter. And there's some YouTube channel as well with some very useful resources capturing happenings within Wonka Africa. I think the family doctor today has always been an opportunity for advocacy and there are member organizations have shared their happenings on the World Wonka Facebook site. I think the important thing that has been there always for Wonka Africa is the President's Fund. It certainly emphasizes, supports the equity drive by Wonka to provide such a much larger amount to Wonka in Africa. And certainly I've been reluctant to use that for travel and certainly with the COVID, the opportunity has been for much more virtual meetings, virtual happenings. And this has really enabled us to build on it as you'll see with strong stakeholder engagement that we've been able to achieve. I think the Wonka resolution, Wonka Africa resolution to add $1 per member organization to their fees and to get that bill by the Secretary has really helped us build from nothing in 2018 to $6000 in 2021 and lays the basis for some strong action and we hope that there will be great thought given by the Wonka Africa Executive on how time can be thought of it. I think we've been able to commit to pre-funding loans for regional conferences. I think we've done it for Africa, I assume it's available for others, but when you consider that there are a handful of family physicians and some of the smaller new members, we don't want them to be prejudiced and for conferences to go to larger countries but that they have this ability to use the conference to shift the equation in their country. And so we have gotten this commitment to pre-funding of $5,000 to $10,000 based on a clear budget that's prepared. So I think this lays the basis for a great deal more movement of the conferences around African countries, especially new member organizations. I think a pleasing achievement has been the academic focus in Wonka Africa where the African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine is now the official journal of Wonka Africa. Editorials are also being used in the journal itself and Prima Famed is also the official academic of Wonka Africa and we basically sit on each other's executive committees and this has helped to build a lot stronger collaborations. Stakeholder engagement has been a particularly important issue for the Wonka Africa Executive and I think we have not been a success in negotiations except around key governance issues. We have tried to link up with Wonka world at executive advocating for the issues of low middle income countries as is typical in Africa and also to link up with other similar regions. We have tried to reach out to South America, North America and I have reached out to the Caribbean, South Asia. And I think that it's important that we build up stronger relationships for similar contexts so that we can help each other out. Certainly we need to get the working parties and special interest groups much more involved in the conversation in Wonka Africa. And we've done that through the WHO, AFRO and also especially the AFRO PhD. So in terms of Africa PhD and WHO AFRO let me just share a little bit more. WHO AFRO we in fact have been attending the regional committee meetings and tried to help you know ministers and their Quotery of understanding what family doctors are and what we want to achieve within the context of primary health care in Africa and stressing teamwork and the value of family doctors. And I think that that conversation I think has been helped considerably by the MOU between Wonka and WHO AFRO which has led to an agreement between WHO AFRO and Wonka Africa where Dr. Prostitutu Massime was being engaged in our conference and then various other engagements that are then arranged for us to get the signed document committing the WHO AFRO to engage with Wonka at meetings and also to introduce our member organizations to their WHO country representatives. And this has been achieved across Africa. The take up has not been as robust though our member organizations have not been doing as well. So these are the agreements that we would in fact present at a meeting which is a high level management meeting including the WHO country reps. We've not had that opportunity I think largely because of the COVID-19 challenge. But we have been able to get the Wonka Africa member organizations introduced to country representatives. And I think the six areas of collaboration that were identified and committed to and circulated all these WHO country representatives in Africa was that we need to build relationships and mutual understanding to strengthen the district health service through family physicians to improve the quality of PHC and district health service and to connect WHO resources with the training of family physicians and primary care research. We've not been able to take that much further largely because Dr. Tunisi resigned or retired at the end of November last year and then with the COVID there was much too difficult to get much done. But I think that we've used the last one of strengthening the development of Afro-PHC as a forum for primary health care. And I think that they have been somewhat forthcoming in supporting this effort. So let me talk a little bit about Afro-PHC. It is basically an African forum for primary health care. It was suggested by Jan de Maasner of the European Forum for Primary Care at the Wonka Africa Conference in Kampala 2019 in a workshop with the WHO Afro representative Dr. Tunisi there where we explored how we might strengthen collaborations between WHO Afro and Wonka Africa. And this idea then went further. In 2019 we basically developed a concept document that spoke to the Astana declaration in 2019 and the high level meeting at the time in 2019 and basically brought together a range of stakeholders from across the disciplines in Africa. And we were very fortunate that we had engaged with the African Interprofessional Education Network as well as a hike to be able to bring together various stakeholders as we have seen in this list of supporting organizations. And then from there we've had a number of webinars in 2020 where we tried to get the different members of the primary care team to share a bit about themselves on different occasions. Unfortunately we didn't get a strong mix of the people so nurses listened to nurses and it went like that. But I think it's there on record and I think it's a very useful set of introductions. What we did then is we were planning a workshop in June of 2020 but that got scattered by the Wonka the COVID-19. And as a result we planned a virtual workshop in September 9 to 11 of September and it was the first shot at us trying a online virtual meeting. It was very strongly interactive. We were very fortunate in having a huge amount of interest and huge participation in that meeting from a wide variety of people. And I think emerging with a consensus that the primary care team must be composed of the diversity of healthcare workers from community health workers to specialists. But that this process needs to be peeled slowly as one unpacks the layers of teamwork that might exist in primary care in Africa. We were then very fortunate in getting high level WHO speakers to a workshop on UHC in December of last year where Dr. Surya Deleel, a PhD coordinator, director at the WHO and Mr. Jim Campbell came through and were part of a workshop exploring the PhD teamwork issues essentially and how we might take that forward. And I think that we merged with both the virtual workshop and this meeting with an Afro PhD statement that was endorsed widely and that spells it out how we might move forward. It lacked some clarity but it said we need to build the primary care team in Africa and we said we needed to build the ideas much more better as we proceed. So in 2020 we set out a whole range of workshops again using the virtual format and you can see it went through a number of different issues that are important to developing a position paper on building the primary care team for UHC in Africa. Certainly human resource management issues were not clear enough. We also talked about the development of PhD clinicians, the academic development. Also the supporting of community health workers and health promotion, the funding payment reforms that we need or are happening in Africa. Exploring complexity in the primary care setting in Africa and getting people to understand and interact with those issues. Exploring how we might build PhD teamwork broadly but also how do we get primary care being taught at undergraduate level across the board in all kind of healthcare cadres. We also collaborated with Wonka on a number of occasions including quality safety, rural primary care and even digital health which is our next workshop in a few days time. So we in fact launched the Afro PhD in April of 2021 and we hope that this will be a way we get go forward. The in fact election happened with a very diverse set of members from 40 African countries which is enormous when you compare with other pan African organizations. And in fact the executive board is a very diverse set with family physicians, nurses, doctors which are public health youth activists, economists and IT as well. So I think there's a diversity. It certainly needs much more diverse set of people from the professions and I think that will hope will come in time. But also it represents the diversity with people from all parts of Africa, even though we had and we could potentially have had North Africa as one of the members of the board as well, but from East West Central and Southern Africa. In terms of Afro PhD, we have in fact said that, you know, even though these were individuals, some representing organizations on the board, we really wanted to keep that broad organizational support. And we've gone out deliberately looking for supporting organizations across the board in Africa and have 31 of them and out of which we have selected a board of 30 and I think that list of 31 is going to grow as we proceed further. And we've in fact, as you can see, stressed on finding organizations that are mostly pan African or global to support the effort in African the African forum for primary care. And I think to give strong emphasis to and support to any document or position paper on building the African primary care team for USC. I think the ideas that are coming forward, building on the objectives of the African forum for primary care, primary care is to build strong country level chapters and regional chapters that can take this and down to the ground and get them interacting with governments and to really make a dent on the equation within African primary care across the continent. With that, thank you very much. I think that there's plenty more information on the Wonka Africa website as well as the Afro PhD website simply Google them and you should find them. Thank you. I hope this has been useful. Thank you very much indeed Shabir. I think we were just a reminder that we will be having discussions at the end of all these talks. And I think I'm just about ready to introduce our next speaker so again thank you for that talk which illustrates a number of the complexities, but also, and challenges that are faced in global health in your region but also the range of Africa is responding to these. So our next speaker I would like to introduce is Dr Rahman Kumar. Dr Kumar is currently president of the Academy of Family Physicians in India. And I first got to know about him when he's in involvement as a young doctor in Wonka in the spice route, and he was the young doctors representative on Wonka executive, and most recently has been the Wonka South Asian president. Dr Kumar has a distinguished and very innovative career and he describes himself as a physician family doctor entrepreneur professional leader and journal editor which I think is an idea of his range of activities. He has a long standing interest in making a contribution to developing innovative healthcare solutions, health policy development, medical education reforms and the strengthening of primary care. So welcome and thank you very much Dr Rahman Kumar. Namaste. My name is Dr Rahman Kumar. I'm the president of Wonka South Asia region. So I'm here today to give you an overview of the achievements that we have covered during past three years in Wonka South Asia region. We all know we have been passing through a huge pandemic and the reason why we are doing this session online and not face to face. And I bring my greetings from India, from whole South Asia, all member organizations to the council member, member organizations or Wonka leaders across world. And as you know, Wonka South Asia is a relatively small region from Wonka's perspective, but we have around a quarter of human population of Earth. And we have unique challenges of global disparities, inequities in qualities, unmet needs and underdeveloped status of family medicine and primary care. And this true three years have been really challenging from the perspective of pandemic. And as you can see, this is the area, the region that I'm talking about. We have Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives. And we have five countries, but we have more than seven. It's total eight member organizations in our region. I'll give you an update of the number of member organizations we have in our region. So first one is Academy of Family Physicians of India. It is in alphabetical order, College of General Practitioners, Sri Lanka, College of Family Medicine, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Academy of Family Physicians, Bangladesh College of General Practitioners, General Practitioners Association of Nepal, Indian Medical Association, College of General Practitioners and Pakistan Society of Family Physicians. And we also have Bhutan in our region, but they do not have any association. So academic members. And as of now, we do not have any active members from Maldives. So we are trying to recruit them into Wonka once we have sufficient of a members from there. And this is our executive committee myself as president. Then we have Secretary Rukupar Maniprasad, President-elect Tarik Aziz and other executive members. You can see the names of different countries of our region. And you can see member organizations representatives of Wonka Council and Executive. This is from our CEO meeting. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to meet face to face afterwards. And I'll talk briefly because like rest of the world, we have been also challenged with this pandemic and given our population and difficult situations, which are unique to our region of high population, high population density, poor financial conditions in our region. We were indeed challenged all our regions and I can only say proudly that family physicians in our region too were at the forefront of fighting the global pandemic of COVID. And we had the first wave, which was not that severe, but all of the region countries were severely impacted by second wave of COVID pandemic. It was by the time vaccinations started, but now slightly the situation is becoming better and the situation seems to be slightly under control. And travel restrictions and flu cases are being removed. In this image, you can see the current situation globally and situation in South Asia. So it looks improved at the moment as compared to many parts of the world, especially, you know, even US and Russia. But it was a very, very bad situation couple of months before around May and April of this year. And gradually there is a take off COVID vaccination. If I talk from India's perspective, we have more than 1 billion people vaccinated for first dose. And we have around 370 million people fully vaccinated. So vaccination coverage, more or less average is around 25%. I'm talking about the fully vaccinated population. And this, it was challenging though for us to continue as a team because we were not able to meet face to face, but we tried to do online meetings. And this is one of our is getting meetings video conferencing in 2020. And we also published a Solidarity Statement on COVID-19 pandemic by South Asian Family Physician on the forum of Wonka, South Asia region. And all our leaders from South Asia were signatory and authors of this statement and was published in Journal of Family and Primary Care. We continued our academic activities. And one of the testimonies is Wonka World Rural Health Conference HACA 2020. And in spite of the COVID challenge, it was temporarily postponed for some time and finally we decided to do it in a hybrid model. And it was nicely done. It was spread over few weeks starting in November and closing in February 2021. And we had some excellent academic deliberations this conference. So really happy for this event. And this was the second successive event after Wonka Rural New Delhi. This was the second one. So I'm sure this will give an impetus, a support to the rural Wonka from the low and middle income countries perspective. And we also continued other academic activities. You can see one from South Asia Young Doctors Group Spice Root where we had a celebrated mental health day. And it was challenging in the terms that we were not able to meet face to face. But on the positive side, we were able to do many of the online webinars and we were able to do it more together on online digital mode due to the pandemic. And these were the, you know, academics activities that we proposed during, but some of them were not fulfilled to the optimal desire level. And we wanted to South Asia lecture series, preparatory development workshops, and these all are work in progress. So I would briefly talk about provides for family medicine, the shift in South Asia. And in India, we had good success. Family medicine has been mandated by the National Medical Commission through an act of parliament. So it is mandatory for all medical schools to have department of family medicine. And now we have initiation of process of inclusion of family medicine specialist for employment at a specialist position public health system of India. And we had established a specialist board in family medicine, the National Board of Examination, where we kind of re-aligned our whole national curriculum of family medicine to the needs of India and define family medicine in a very, very different way. In Pakistan, it is already a recognized department and efforts are on to establish departments of family medicine across all medical schools. A new diploma program family medicine has been launched in collaboration with WHO. And they also have launched a family medicine journal in Pakistan. In Nepal, most of the medical colleges have now established department of general practice and emergency medicine. This is how it is named there because of the special needs of different terrain. Most of the specialist in general practice have been duly integrated into health system. So they have good progress from that perspective. In Sri Lanka, also academics is very strong and they have been promoting academic family medicine discipline. And regularly, they were able to do their academic programs even during the COVID pandemic. And departments of family medicine exists at various universities. Recently, they also have been trying to look at the undergraduate curriculum and integrate family medicine component into it. It is a very, very good positive sign. From Bangladesh, the Wonka Rural Conference has strengthened the support for family medicine and rural practice. And diploma in family medicine program has been offered for several years now. And because of this Wonka Rural Conference, I'm sure there will be more interest from the young doctors at Christmas into family medicine groups. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care continued publication. And we also published a statement in South Asia. While Family Doctors Day was celebrated across the region, you can see images from different parts of our region. Bangladesh, India. And this one event was organized by Bangladesh, where I was invited one of the speakers along with other professional leaders of South Asia. And we also tried to collaborate with other Wonka regions during the past two, three years. We had leadership and entrepreneurship workshops with Raja Kumar moment. We also did a research group workshop with Philippines Academy of Family Physicians Residents Organization and Myanmar's Primary Care Research Unit. We also had a Wonka Africa South Asia Primary Care Dialogue, which was organized on 22nd of October 2020. And most recently we had a discussion with India and Mexico Forum Dialogue. And you can see the pictures of it, the basic medical research workshop. And this one is from India, Mexico Dialogue. Spice food has been buzzing with activities and they have been doing regular webinars, online webinars and online academic activities. And they also applied the first virtual FM 360 essay program. I also got opportunity to represent South Asia in the Wonka WHO Regional Committee meetings twice. And the first one was in Bangkok and most recent was in Nepal. And you can see this meeting from Nepal. It was conducted virtually. And you can see the regional director Dr. Poonam, Heather Bal Singh. And from there, they also issued a statement because we are still passing through COVID pandemics. And lastly, the priorities has been to address COVID pandemic. But other issues and agenda related to global health is being tried to address in our region. These are the scholarships and awards in our region. Dr. Jyothi Ramik Parik Award South Asia Spice Food Delegates for Tending Conferences and MRCGP International Policy for Returning Conferences are being offered in our region. And we tried to communicate through multiple channels, mostly digital, WhatsApp groups we have in our region, Facebook page, Facebook group webinars, online panel discussions. And most recently, we launched our website during a recent Wonka Council meeting. So we are trying to bring all our activities to this website. And we hope that profiling our region on a website would help us advance the agenda of family events in primary care in our region. We also have initiated a program called Family Management Hall of Fame, where we try to recognize the efforts and contributions of the stalwarts from our region. And the first one would be Dr. Prakash Chandra Bhatla, who is one of the founders of, not only is the father of medicine in India and South Asia, but also is one of the founders of Wonka movement. He was instrumental in setting up Wonka meeting before when it was formally launched in Australia. There was a meeting in Delhi which was organized by him. So we would recognize these stalwarts through Family Management Hall of Fame. I will publish the brief profiles in the Family Management and Primary Care Journal. So I thank you all for giving time to this report. And I'm sure we will make greater progress after the pandemic is over. And this pandemic also has opened many new avenues of collaboration, partnerships and academic advancement. And we will surely win over this situation. And I wish best of achievements, happiness to all member organizations, all over family doctors fraternity, all over the world. And thank you very much for listening to this program. Thanks a lot. Namaste. Thank you very much indeed, Dr. Kumar, for that very interesting overview of the activities that have taken place in South Asia, despite the many, many challenges that your region has faced with the COVID pandemic. Before we move on to the next presentation, I'd just like to remind all the participants that after these presentations, we have a panel discussion. And we really welcome your questions coming into the Q&A box. We have some coming in already, but we would like some more. I'm sure for you like these presentations have, for me, raised many questions that we would like to have the opportunity of picking the brains of these eminent speakers and discussing the challenges of global health and how Wonka can contribute to that. So our next speaker is Professor Mengqi Li, who has been Wonka Asia Pacific Region President for two terms, and is now the Distinguished Chair, Professor and Senior Consultant Physician and the former Superintendent of Changshan Medical University and Taichang Hospital in the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taiwan. Professor Mengqi Li has published more than 100 scientific papers on family medicine, community medicine, geriatrics and medical education, and has been a very revered and leader in the Asia Pacific Region. So I'd like to introduce Professor Mengqi Li now to give his presentation. Hi, dear Wonka colleagues and the friends. I'm Professor Mengqi Li, the President of Wonka Asia Pacific Region. It's my great honor to share with you the talk on the overview of Asia Pacific Regional Achievement. Wonka Asia Pacific Region is a very huge region across the northern and southern hemisphere of the Earth, and it is composed of 21 member organizations to serve about 2.2 billion people in this region. Wonka was founded in Melbourne, Australia in APR in 1972, and there have been five Wonka presidents from the Wonka Asia Pacific Region. You may know Michael, Dana, Mary-Weir. Also, there have been three CEO Wonka CEO from the Asia Pacific Region, and again, you may know Fab, Dr. Fab, and Dr. Low, Mary-Weir. Wonka Yajakuma Movement is one of the leading young doctor movement among the Wonka 7 regions. They are active and they do a very good job, and we nurture a lot of young doctors to be the future leader in the Asia Pacific Region. A variety of very important Wonka Working Party are led by the Asia Pacific Region CARDS. For example, Professor Goodyear Smith from New Zealand, she is now the chair of the Wonka Working Party on Research. We are grateful to the Taiwan Association of Fine Medicine in offering the Taiwan Fine Medicine Research Award and to provide financial support to the worldwide young doctors to deliver their research results and to travel to the World Wonka Conference for more than 10 years already. Wonka Asia Pacific Region is a very active and continuous promoting the fine medicine in this region, and we have very good communication with the governmental sector in this region, including Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Myanmar. Particularly, APR has continuously promote fine medicine development in China since the late 1980s, and it's my great privilege that I was the first Wonka Asia Pacific Region scholar to travel to China and work in there with their Ministry of Health and the many University Departments of General Parties together to promote general practice. So far, there have been 400,000 qualified general practitioners in China to serve about 1 billion people in that country. APR always take part in Wonka publication, books, journals, and Wonka news, and in my turn of the Asia Pacific Region President, I begin to serve Wonka news to translate the English Wonka news into Chinese version to serve the reader and the colleagues from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore, many many of the colleagues they use the Chinese. Okay, what's the next for the Asia Pacific Region? We still have a lot of work to do. And we require undergraduate education and post-graduate education training on fine medicine for every country in Asia Pacific Region, just like have been done in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan. Some of our member organization countries still not have required course and we urge each country to start their required undergraduate education on fine medicine and post-graduate year training on fine medicine. We recommend every member organization countries should have established national board of fine medicine and established accreditation system for training program like which have been done very well in our region like Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines. And to achieve care for all, health for all, we believe a national health insurance program for everyone is necessary and as a target goal for each member organization country to establish. And we really want the most large number of family doctor to care the most huge number of people where and provide them a good quality of life and not more than good quality of care in our region. One car AC Pacific Region work very close with WHO, especially Western Pacific Region office in promoting the primary healthcare and universal healthcare. And we also like have the international collaboration, especially we will make good friend and good collaboration with the region in need. For example, I have been invited as a visiting professor in Africa, in Akara and in South Africa. And I also been the consultant for our mid-perience primary healthcare high level meeting. So APR will continue this international collaboration. Thanks for your attention and the further and the future cooperation with the one car AC Pacific Region. It's really my great honor and a privilege to be the president of the one car AC Pacific Pacific Region since the year 2016 till now. It's my great honor. Keep well, God bless you and have a nice practice and life. Bye-bye. Thank you very much, Professor Min Chi Lee. That was a for for your talks about Asia Pacific Region and your initiatives there in collaborations. We're now moving on to our panel discussion. And I'm going to hand over to my co-chair, Professor Chris Van Weel to lead this discussion. Thank you very much, Amanda. I do not yet see any hands raised or questions on the Q&A, but therefore I have selected a couple of questions and probably want to put to all three of the panelists as a start. You all have talked about your relation with WHO, which I think is a very important part of global health development. And now, of course, Wonka has contacts with WHO at different levels in Geneva and you at the regional levels. Can you tell us anything of how, say, the central collaboration of Wonka in Geneva is related and how does it feed into your regional collaborations? Because in the end, much of what WHO can bring should be done on the regional level that is sensitive to special needs, to special cultural, economical and other circumstances. And maybe as you both have, and I don't see Professor Meng-Chi Li, but if he is in, he can join in. But may I start with Professor Moser? You already have unmuted so you can step in. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Chris. I think that certainly the agreement between Wonka and WHO, the MOU that was signed in 2019 or 2018, actually served very well. I think it created a platform for the region to actually sort of take note. I know that in the discourse at Geneva that the African director general or the general, the African director wasn't very forthcoming, but we were able to pick up the conversation and fortunately get some traction. Unfortunately, in the experience we've had, you know, it then gets sent to some sort of lower level official. And, you know, we were fortunate in having Dr. Prosper Tumisime, who was very personable and came to our conference and liaised with us, but it never went further. And I think that to me I've raised it on numerous occasions, but, you know, at an executive level, but I think it's quite challenging to get sort of recourse at that level. So I think it is a problem for us. It needs a much sort of stronger relationship than just the MOU. I think the MOU is simply paper, it helps, but it does not cement a relationship which, you know, happens on the ground and needs accountability as well at a high level. Thank you. Kumar, yes. South Asia region and basically the Wonka CRO, Southeast Asian region covers almost two of the Wonka regions, the APR and the SAR region. So, you know, there's a bit of challenge. How do we cover all countries? You know, given that I represent only South Asia, we have other countries like Philippines, Thailand, which are not part of our region. This is one. Also challenging the sense that our region, South Asia, traditionally we had the selective primary care programs for decades, vertical health programs, disease based, and now the discussion is coming up on universal health coverage.  And that is one of the blocks where we face, you know, even at WHO level because even if the talk of the comprehensive primary healthcare is going on, there is no parallel discussion on dismantling or you know, what to do with the vertical program. So at the moment we are on the double burden of, you know, selective primary care and also commitment for the comprehensive primary care. And there's no clarity at that level and it does not trickle down from the top also. And it is more tilted towards not based on its system which is, you know, family doctor oriented or team which is, you know, which has family doctorate the center and having other professionals around. So that is again a challenge because lastly the discussions are going towards having the primary care managed entirely by the nurse practitioners in that, you know, political discussion. We are doing, you know, our bit of advocacy mostly with the governments because if you go through WHO it does not give any additional strength to us to, you know, pressurize any of the other institutions nationally in the regions because there is no clarity from WHO side on having role of family doctors clear. So that is again a problem. But in general, you know, it is good to be part of the WHO regional committees because we know how the things are unfolding globally in terms of global health discussions what are the key priorities areas. And lastly, you know, it's a situation where the WHO says that, you know, we help and assist the member organizations, they may intend to address the governments, the health ministers and functionaries. But at the other times, you know, when we talk to the government, they say that, you know, we try to do what comes through WHO. So, you know, that is again a problem. But we have to keep on staring through this, you know, what we want, you know, primary care team which has and the doctor because this is important in terms of the referral system which is not downregulated entirely. Okay. Yeah, I understand. And I think there is a lot to gain from interaction between what is taking place in Geneva and what is experienced in the regions and also probably, and both of you were, and Professor Manchili as well was mentioning it, the importance of collaboration between regions. We have one structure in which we have a central one kind of looks like every region is a way to download activities. I think there is much to say for being guided by principles that develop in the regions and that is, if you may allow me to go on because I don't see Professor Manchili in our panel. But it triggered, for me, the question, Rama, you were saying well top down is not the key to success. And I heard a lot from Shabir talking about developing the primary healthcare team and using education, trying to get professionals talking to each other rather than to their own group. How would that work in your region? And do you have experience with that? Shabir, maybe you then can comment on ways forward to make professionals talk to other disciplines rather than to their own. But first, Rama. We, when we do our conferences in our region and also the Wonka activities, for example, we have 15 Paul's Rural Conference in Delhi. We do engage with other professionals and our conferences even when we do over the national ones are open to all, you know, not just family doctors but to other public health professionals and other vocationally trained persons such as nurse practitioners, community health workers, even citizens we try to engage so that we get our voice integrated with what we demand on behalf of community in terms of comprehensive primary healthcare.  So I still find it a challenging thing, but we have to continue to work on that. But we are very much open to other professional practitioners and having partnership with them, especially in the context of rural remote areas, even, you know, it's a teamwork, we all understand and we're committed to this team development. Okay, yes, you can't change the world overnight. So, but Shabir, maybe you can, I'm quite sure you have been thinking of how can we make professionals better talk to other disciplines. Ah, there we have Professor Meng Chili as well, but Shabir, you continue and then we go over to Professor Meng Chili. You're on mute, Shabir. Yeah, I think you're muted. Yeah, thank you. So we've got contraction as Wonka Africa, much more than as, as, you know, in Afro PhD than in itself. And I think that was quite an amazing, you know, under sort of revelation for me, certainly. In Wonka Africa, we've strengthened the primary prima famide and work with them and have lots of people together in the same space, and it developed quite a, actually quite a large network of support systems for education and research. When we pull the Afro PhD together and got people talking to each other, invariably the issue of education became our strong point that you know what, we would be very helpful in terms of building up the education of other cadres, clinical officers, etc. And, and I think that that is an opportunity. Unfortunately, family physicians are kind of feeling very threatened. So the instinct is no no we have too much on our plates for us as well. So, and I think that's a really failed opportunity. We need to really look at how we can collaborate how we can work with each other. And one of the things we've done in Afro PhDs to pull together the potential diploma in family medicine which could be done not only by GPs who are often neglected by family physicians, but also clinical officers and, and nurse clinicians. And I think that's one really useful opportunity that I think WHO would certainly welcome. And I think we're getting all sorts of years better than we used to from WHO than than when we were talking as Wonka. Thank you. Professor Mancili, I'm happy to see you on. Yeah, yeah, some problem. Some problem in the link, sorry. But we had a, in the panel, and I, maybe you can also comment on that. It was my, the last point we addressed was moving from discipline specific family medicine into a comprehensive multidisciplinary team based primary care. And how is that in your region?  Yeah, yeah, we, in AC Pacific region, we highlight two way to achieve the comprehensive care for the people for the family and for the community. The first one is integration of care and the multidisciplinary care team. And the second way is through the technology information system, because the information system in AC Pacific region is very strong and popular. So no, no matter use the, the, the, the ICT or AIOT or use the Theta medicine, and it's good for not only the urban, but also suburban or rural area. And because of we have very good infrastructure infrastructure of the informatics system in from the Japan, North South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, Australia, they all have very good informatics system. So we, we, we would like to highlight use of the high technology informatics system to enhance the collaboration multidisciplinary work together. And the first one is the integration. And we think the hospital care show outreach to the community and work together with the community healthcare provider, especially the, the family doctor or general practitioner together. But also again, the information information system as a platform to link the hospital and the primary care provider is also important. We have very good experience in Taiwan, because the older primary care team, they has back up by the community hospital or the regional hospital, and they shared together the same informatics platform. So they can see the hospital data or image report or discharge report from the platform together, and they can use the mutual referral system from the platform. So I think in, in summary, in AC Particle region, we have two main ambition. One is the highlight the integration of the hospital and the community healthcare together. And the second is the use the, the information system high tech to, to help in achieving the working together. Thank you. Okay, thank you, President Mancili. As we are running to the end of this meeting, I, before I hand back to Professor Barnard for her comments, I see we have Judith Menden with a beautiful picture, but not yet participating in the discussions here on the meeting. And I was wondering, Judith, do you want to give a comment on what you've heard in this session? If so, please unmute your microphone. And if nothing is coming, I think I better hand over to Professor Barnard to, as we are the last minutes of this meeting, please, can you, can you finish it off? Yes. I certainly will. So thank you very much. And I would just like to echo your thoughts in thanking all of you for those presentations. I think we've all got a very much clearer idea of the activities in your Wonka regions. The links, as we've talked about in the panel discussion with WHO, what I thought was interesting in those two was the focus on as a count not as well as looking at communicating with our professional colleagues, but the way in which over the time your regions have strengthened family medicine training at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and involved family medicine in research and other scholarly activities. So I think we've got a really good idea of the enormous work that you have done as individuals. But as we always know, there are always huge teams of people working, whether they're our family doctors or they're our multi-disciplinary teams. So I'd just like to close by thanking you all very much and congratulating all the regions on the work that you have done and the way that you have worked with Wonka in making some of the challenges about global health. So thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. On this Wednesday, January 10th, I hope everybody's having a great week and continue to have a great week. All right, we are going to roll into our news roundup and we're going to start with a big finance story that I think everybody's waiting for. I don't know, I have not seen the breaking news with regard to this. Maybe there was breaking news, but not yet, no breaking news yet. So anyway, today the SEC, the Security Exchange Commission is supposed to approve a Bitcoin ETF, an exchange traded security, exchange traded fund, that's what the F, for there would be backed by Bitcoin. So the idea here is that you could buy the ETF, the ETF would track the performance of Bitcoin, and of course the ETF would use your money supposedly to buy Bitcoin and therefore would always have the money to pay you. But it means that you could speculate on the price of Bitcoin without owning any Bitcoin. You can speculate on the price of Bitcoin without owning any Bitcoin. So you don't have to go through the trouble of creating a crypto wallet and doing everything you need to do in order to get Bitcoin. You can just buy the ETF and the ETF will go up and down, the value of the ETF will go up and down based on the price of Bitcoin. And when you sell the ETF, you get cash and that cash, the price at which you sell it will reflect the price of Bitcoin when you sell it. There are at least eight different companies competing to offer Bitcoin ETF and they are competing on price. Now what do you mean by competing on price? Bitcoin price is set. They are competing on the fee that they take. They can do this for free, right? So in order to, when you buy the ETF, you're going to have to, you will pay a monthly fee for the period where you hold the ETF. The monthly fee varies right now between zero for the first six months. The best deal I can see right now is zero for the first six months and then 0.21% after six months. That's being offered by AUK Invest. Bitwise is giving you two months free and then 0.2%, a little lower than AUK in the long run. But you get more free at AUK. Other funds are also giving you six months free. Ice shares actually gives you 12 months free and then 0.25% and then others are not giving anything free, at least not for now. Although I think they'll have to, otherwise how can they compete? But I see two, four, six, eight, 10, 11 different firms offering Bitcoin ETFs. The Bitcoin price has gone up quite a bit in recent weeks in anticipation for this. This will allow a lot of institutional money, a lot of people who, again, don't want to bother with actually owning the cryptocurrency, don't want to bother with securing it, don't want to have to bother with creating wallets and all of that. They can, in spite of that, they can buy the ETF and they can buy Bitcoin this way. There was a fake post yesterday that, I guess, the SEC Twitter account was hacked and there was a fake post yesterday that resulted in Bitcoin jumping significantly up and then as soon as they discovered it was fake crashing significantly down. Anyway, what this basically is, and the reason people are excited about it beyond the fact that more people will be able to participate, although if you listen to Peter Schiff, he's arguing that as soon as the ETF comes out, there'll be a price spike and then everybody will sell and Bitcoin will collapse. So it'll be interesting to see if his prediction about Bitcoin is right. He's been wrong so far, mostly wrong on Bitcoin. What this is as a sanction by the SEC that Bitcoin is, if you will, a legit asset. This doesn't make Bitcoin money. Bitcoin is not money. Bitcoin, I don't think, is going to be money maybe one day in some distant future. But Bitcoin is not money. Bitcoin is a speculative asset. I don't know how to value the speculative asset. I don't understand where it gets its value. I don't understand what value it provides. And I know some of the things that I know what it does. I know some of the value it provides. I don't understand the valuation, how you translate it into valuation. Certainly not at the current prices. It doesn't really make any sense to me. But if it ever becomes money, if it becomes the dominant money in the world, then it's way underpriced. Then it's worth, I think closer to a million dollars, Bitcoin. If it ever becomes money on a global scale, I don't see that happening. Certainly not anytime soon. Certainly not in my lifetime. But who knows? I could be wrong. I've been often wrong. But anyway, this is exciting, particularly for those of you who invest in Bitcoin. This is clear legitimization. This clearly puts Bitcoin into one of the asset classes that institutional investors are going to look at, and that people with diversified portfolios will look at. And you'll probably see an increase in the kind of average investor's Bitcoin allocation, because they can do it now so easily and so cheaply through the ETF.  They're supposed to decide today. So any minute now, you could see a decision. And of course, the suspense, part of the suspense is around the stock market movement of both Bitcoin and then the ETFs once they list the ETF. So a lot of action in the Bitcoin space in the next few days. Just because it's relevant to this, J-Doc says, wait for Bitcoin, it's hard for asset managers to not notice Bitcoin anymore. It's slowly becoming mainstream and accepted. Yeah, as a speculative asset. And the question is, it's not income producing. It's not revenue producing. It's not dividend producing. What is it producing? And then the question is going to be for all asset managers, how do you value this asset? How do you price it, given that it's not producing a cash flow off of what you price this asset? And that's going to be the big question for asset managers moving forward.   Why not? Even if I don't understand it, it might as well be in it. So if it goes up to a million, I get to benefit from the upside. Of course, it could also go down quite a bit. J-Doc says, fun fact, for any four-year period, portfolios of 2% Bitcoin, 98% cash would exceed 100% exposure to S&P, but with much lower volatility. I mean, I'd want to see those numbers. I want to make sure that those four-year periods are rolling four-year periods. I guess it's possible, particularly given the extraordinary success of Bitcoin early on. I wonder if from the peak, when did it peak in 2021, if that is true? Now, that's why it's a four-year period, because you don't have 2025 yet, so you don't know what the four-year period that starts if you bought it at the peak in 2021 would be. Probably not exceed S&P 500, at least as of now. I'm always suspicious of stats like that. I could probably create a million statistics like that. There's something that mutual fund managers always list that I think is really, really important. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Why four years? I know why not two years, because two years Bitcoin underperforms dramatically from 2021. Three years, it probably underperforms dramatically from 2021. Four years escapes that. Five years, I'm not sure why not five years. Five years probably holds, but you just don't get many data points. Also, Bitcoin is an asset, a young asset, so there's not a lot of history around it, right? Not a lot of history for Bitcoin. So, you know, the market's pricing it the way the market is. Those people who have dared to short Bitcoin, which I have not done, mostly have taken massive hits other than between 2021 and 2022. They have taken massive hits and lost a lot of money. I am well experienced in losing a lot of money, shorting, and particularly, I know now never to short a speculative asset, something that people get very emotional, very excited and very passionate about, and it can go up through the roof and you can lose everything. You can lose gazillions of dollars. With a short position, there's no limit to how much money you can lose. When you buy something, the most you can lose is what you invested in it. With a short, you can lose many, many, many multiples of what you invested, what you shorted. So, beware short sellers. That's why markets are asymmetrical. Anyway, that's for another time. We can talk about that. All right. What else is in the news? Well, big news out of Ecuador. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Ecuador. Ecuador is a country in Latin America. It borders with, on the one side, I think it borders with Peru. Yeah, it borders with Peru. And I think on the other side, it borders with Colombia. Is that right? I think that's right. Ecuador is, you know, the Galapalus Islands are part of Ecuador. Ecuador has two pretty well-known cities that I've been to. Once, I've given talks in Quito, I think San Francisco University in Quito, and I give talks in a couple of places in Guayaquil. Ecuador is in the midst of a massive spike in violence that has been occurring for the last year or so, primarily as a consequence of massive increase in activity by various drug gangs, drug cartels. There are at least 12 official recognized gangs in Ecuador. And violence has gone through the roof.  Part of what's going on here is, I mean, this is pretty simple. As long as there is massive demand for illegal drugs in the United States, there will arise illegal groups, groups that deal in these illegal drugs and use violence as a means because it's illegal and that's all they have in order to facilitate the demand from the United States. The demand in the United States is massive for these drugs. El Salvador, which used to be the most violent place on planet Earth, had this just massive rate of homicide, has been completely, not completely, but mostly pacified. Mostly pacified by the president, by the harsh regime he has put together in terms of incarcerating gang members. As a consequence, the drug activity and with it the murders and the violence have moved elsewhere. Costa Rica, which used to be this incredibly safe place, has now experienced a spike in gang violence. Mexico, which has always been violent, is now even more violent. And Ecuador is seeing a massive spike in violence. So when you have this illegal drug that has to get somebody's going to facilitate the movement, somebody's going to facilitate their movement. And that movement is, and if it's not in El Salvador, if those gangs are neutralized, then gangs will pop up elsewhere to facilitate that movement and bring the violence, the relevant violence with them. So Ecuador has just experienced this explosion of violence. And in the last few days, a couple of the leading gang members who were incarcerated and were put in jail have disappeared. In other words, escaped the custody. As a consequence of their escape, the gangs feel completely emboldened and feel like they are in control in Ecuador. And violence in the streets of Ecuador has exploded. A TV station in Guayaquil was taken over. Hostages were taken by one of the gangs. Ecuadorian security forces ultimately secured the TV stations and freed the hostages. But all over Ecuador, particularly in Quito and in Guayaquil, there is a massive spike in violence and the gangs are just rampaging through these cities. As a consequence, the president of Ecuador has declared an emergency situation. He has deployed the military. He assigned an executive, whatever emergency thing, which allows the military to function within Ecuador itself. And the Ecuadorian military is in the streets with armored vehicles with troops of both Quito and Guayaquil. I expect them to round up thousands of these gang members. They might mimic what was done in El Salvador, basically look for anybody with gang paraphernalia, tattoos, symbolism, and round them up. It's going to be a fight because these gang members are ready, so there's going to be literally warfare in the streets. The president, in order to declare this emergency situation, identified the 12 gangs as terrorist organizations. So now they are treated as domestic terrorists. And there's in a sense a kind of a, I wouldn't say civil war, but there's real battles. There's real shooting. There's real violence going on in Ecuador right now in an attempt to pacify these gangs. They need to do something.  Ecuador was doing quite well. I mean, it wasn't booming, but it was doing quite well before this explosion of violence and they need to quash this. They need to destroy it. Of course, if they destroy it in Ecuador, the violence will just move somewhere else. And the reality is, and nobody wants to admit this and nobody wants to deal with this, the reality is that as long as the United States keeps drugs like heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, and the rest of them illegal, South America from Mexico-South will continue to experience massive amounts of violence. By the way, and the United States will too, that is whatever violence we have in the U.S., much of it is caused by our drug laws, much of it is caused by gang warfare between drug sellers and distributors. So if you want to solve these violence problems, the ultimate solution is legalizing drugs. Legalizing drugs in America, the more we legalize, I mean, we've kind of legalized part, but not really because we tax it so heavily and regulate it so heavily. But what really needs to happen is a legalization of all, all these drugs. And yeah, it's the United States drug laws are the cause of much of this problem. Of course, the rest of Latin America doesn't want to have different drug laws because they'll piss off the Americans. Imagine Mexico legalized drugs, which I think this president is threatening to do. I mean, America would go apoplectic. Vivec would invade tomorrow. So, yeah, I like Ecuador. I know people from Ecuador. Ecuador has a vibrant free market community in Ecuador. Enrand is, is read in Ecuador quite extensively. And I hope, I hope Anastos here is in Ecuador. He's listening to the show right now and he's in Ecuador. I really hope the Ecuadorian government can get this under control.  Violence, gang warfare, horrors in the streets. All right, let's see. Number of reports, number of reports out in the economic press, the financial press, about the fact that really the world, really the entire world is in a, in a state of stagnation. Really, since, if you include COVID and since COVID, the world economy is dragging. It's got some of the lowest growth rates we've seen in many, many, many decades. For a long time, the story, the economic story of the world was that much of the developing world was growing at super high rates. The United States was doing relatively well. Europe was growing a little bit. But the world was generally on a, on a, on a trajectory. People coming out of poverty because of this and, and the economic future looked bright. A lot of this is not, it was reversed during COVID and then coming out of COVID. The, just the, the economy is tepid and the economy is tepid. For the reasons I've been saying, we're going to face stagnation. I've been saying it for the last 15 years. It's because of increased government intervention and abandonment of what the left calls neoliberal and the right called neoliberal policies and abandonment of free trade and abandonment of, of markets and over reliance and government stimuli, government regulations, government control, over dependence on, well, dependence, not any dependence is over dependence on central bank stimulus, both in Europe, in the United States, in China and elsewhere. And this is, this is placed a drag on the entire world gone. Also from the rest of the world is a model is a belief. Oh, we should all become America because America is not America anymore. So the belief was we should be like America. We should lower tariffs. We should lower taxes. We should lower regulations. We should, we should, we should strive towards more freedom free markets. That is gone. That kind of went away after the great financial crisis. And really the world does not recovered its faith. Faith is the wrong word, belief, trust in markets in whatever remnants of capitalism it is.  And China is facing a real slowdown in economic growth, possibly zero economic growth or maybe even a recession. Europe right now is probably as a European Union is probably in a recession. UK is probably in a recession. China might be in a recession. Of course, the actual numbers were never, were never knows. And the reality is that the Chinese economy is dragging. The Chinese economy is in crisis more than dragging. It's got a real estate crisis, but it's got a massive debt crisis. And the debt is far bigger than anybody else that people feared. Every day, more revelations about debt at the local government level, at the municipal, at the regional province government levels is revealed. There's so much that was done off balance sheet that is not clearly reported. And this is a massive drag on the Chinese economy on top of more regulations, more controls. She's increased authoritarianism and increased central planning. We'll get to an example of that in a minute. And you're really seeing China become a drag on the world economy. Indeed, the only economy in the world right now that's doing, I don't know, OK, not great, but OK is the United States. That is the reality. If you look at GDP numbers, if you look at any, you look at employment numbers by any objective parameters, objective parameters that everybody recognized when Trump was president. But for some reason, nobody looks at when Biden is president. But every objective parameter, the United States is the only economy in the world right now of a major economy doing OK. China is dragging. Europe is in a recession. And the UK is in a recession. And, you know, the challenge in China is only going to get deeper because it's going to combine increased regulation, increased control, increased involvement of the central bank and of Chinese authorities with a shrinking number of young people in kind of the working age youth, the shrinking number of babies. China is going to be one of the fastest shrinking countries in the world. It could have its population in a few decades. And that is all a recipe for massive economic decline. Another reason why I don't worry too much about China. I was going to say something about China. Yes, a demographic decline. Yeah, anyway, so massive challenges on a global scale economically. And again, the US economy somehow is chugging along, chugging along. China is looking more and more and more like or even worse than Japan did in coming out of the big crash in the early 1990s or the late 80s in Japan, i.e. decades of stagnation. China is worse because the population shrinkage is going to be even faster than the population shrinkage in Japan. One more Chinese story. You know, in 1978, when Dengchapeng in the early 80s, late 70s, early 80s, when Dengchapeng came to power in China, he basically identified the area close to Hong Kong. He made a circle around it and he basically said, I want to see what will happen if we just leave this area in a sense alone. If we allow foreign capital to come in, if we don't regulate it, if we don't control it, if we just let markets function in this area, what will happen? And the consequence was the creation of one of the most dynamic cities in the world, where a lot of the Chinese high tech is based, where Apple iPhones are built, or at least one of the places. Anyway, Xinjiang became a city of, I don't know, 12 million. Next to Xinjiang, other Guangzhou became a massive city of even more than 12 million. Dongguan is another city of 8 to 10 million. Anyway, the whole region exploded with productive activity. Many cities were created out of nothing. Dongguan, there was no city there. Xinjiang, there was no city there. Guangzhou, there was a city that just exploded in terms of size. Well, Xi is trying to do, is trying to mimic this in a sense. He went to a map and he drew a circle around an area not too far from Beijing. Beijing is, the city is too big.  Traffic jams in Beijing are just unbelievable. And he made a circle around this place and he said, we're going to create a new modern, dynamic, exciting city here. And through massive central planning, a city was built. A city was built in this area. It's supposed to be a high-tech metropolis. It's called Xinjiang, something like that, X-I-O-N-G-A-N. Well, it's not north of Beijing, I'm wrong. It's south of Beijing. It's just south of Beijing. And the idea was to build a city, to build office space, to build residential, and if you build it, they will come. And it would be a model city. It wouldn't have traffic jams. It would be beautifully laid out. It would have parks. It would have everything. And indeed, the city has been built. It's massive. It's got all these kind of minion buildings. It's got a whole office park. It's got a whole area for high-tech companies to be in. It's cost. They've spent $85 billion building this city. Which is maybe the most expensive infrastructure project that Chinese have ever engaged in. The only problem with the city is nobody lives there. Nobody lives there. China probably does not need a new city with a population that's starting to shrink, or it's already shrinking. The reality is that nobody wants the city. Nobody lives in the city. For Beijing, Beijing University said they're going to relocate to this place, but who knows if that's going to happen, when it's going to happen. There's an amazing high-speed railway station that basically is empty. Nobody goes there. Nobody leaves from there. The streets are empty. The homes are empty. The buildings are empty. Everything is just empty. And this exemplifies the change in China. When Deng was in China, basically you draw an area and allow freedom there, and then you don't micromanage it. You don't centrally plan it. You let it thrive. And that was, those were the boom years for China, 80s, 90s, and the first decade of the 2000s. Since Xi has come to power, there's been more and more and more control regulations, central planning. And as a consequence of that control, regulation, and central planning, as a consequence of that, you get empty cities. I mean empty cities on a scale we've never seen before, even not in China. By the way, for those of you who claim that I'm saying that the economy in the United States is a consequence of Biden, I've never said that. And by the way, the reality is that I didn't think the good economy under Trump was a consequence of Trump. I didn't think the great economy we had in the 1890s was a consequence of Bill Clinton. I didn't think that the economy under Bush was a consequence of Bush. I don't think presidents have that much influence on the economy during their reign. They get a lot of credit for it. And the funny thing is, I'm sure Scott, when Trump was president, you gave him full credit for the greatest economy in human history. Biden has a decent economy going and nobody gives him credit. I don't give either of them credit. Indeed, the economy would be a lot better today, if not for Biden. And Trump's economy was never very impressive, never impressive at all. And it could have been really impressive if he'd done the right things. So I don't give presidents credit for the economy, but I call it like it is. Like the numbers are the numbers. The reality of what's going on is the reality of what's going on. But so many people out there, so many people out there, have lost the ability to be objective about anything. Everything they look at, they look at with political glasses. The same number, if Trump gets it, oh, it's great. If Biden gets it, oh, it's terrible. Because one is Republican and one is Democrat. Oh, the other way around. Oh, the other way around. Same thing other way around. The same numbers that Obama got that were fantastic when Trump got, oh, it's a terrible economy. It's both sides, but there's no objectivity out there. All there is, all there is, is political hackery and political absolutely unbelievable distortions. All right, let's see. The president deserves a very small share of credit blame, very small in my view. Mostly they can really screw things up. And granted, Biden is really screwing things up. But not for now. For now, most of Biden's screw-ups we will pay for in four years, five years, 10 years, we will pay for over time. We will pay for the fact that, but, you know, we will pay for the fact that we had the Inflation Reduction Act, which was bipartisan. We'll pay for the fact for the CHIP Act, which was bipartisan. We will pay for these things, but it takes a long time for us to feel the pain of those things. But no, very few presidents benefit. Even when you deregulate, the benefits of deregulation happen much later. So when, you know, a lot of the credit that Ronald Reagan got for a good economy really belongs to Jimmy Carter. But Jimmy Carter never experienced the benefits of the deregulation he did. It only came later. When Trump deregulated, I said over and over again, it's meaningless because it's done at the regulatory ages. As soon as another regime comes, another administration comes, they'll flip it. So it doesn't have lasting impact. And that has turned out to be exactly true. The bad stuff that Trump did, tariffs and stuff like that, Biden has kept in place. So Biden's really, really bad. He's a terrible economic president. But the economy's doing okay. It's pretty amazing. In spite of Biden, there's a good economy.  All right. Talk about Trump. God. Did you see Trump yesterday? Give his little talk about, right after the discussion about whether he has immunity or not. Basically, Trump went out and said, I have immunity for everything. If I'm president and I go out, he didn't say this, but he implied it. If I go out and we'll get to something very similar in a minute, if I go out into Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, I'm president. I'm immune. You could impeach me. But unless you impeach me, I cannot be tried criminally. Basically, Trump said he could do anything. And basically, Trump also said, he basically said that if he loses the election in November, if he loses the election, there will be bedlam. Because of the way the Democrats are trying to manipulate the election by putting, you know, by trying him, by filing criminal procedures against him. He said, quote, it'll be bedlam in the country. It's a very bad thing. It's a very bad precedent. As we said, it's the opening of a Pandora box. And he went on to threaten that he was going to start legal proceedings against Biden as soon as he got out. Again, never, you know... The reality is that, you know, in almost all the cases where he's criminally being prosecuted, there's really, really strong evidence that suggests he's guilty. But it doesn't matter. He's already threatening violence. Violence, indeed, is rampant in our politics today. You've got massive threats, bomb threats. So you've had bomb threats in a dozen state capitals, closures because of an increased security threat measures, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Maine, Oklahoma, Illinois, Idaho, South Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Maryland, and Arizona have all seen increases in bomb threats and threats of violence that have either caused legislatures to shut down for a while or to step up security. But there was a... I mean, Trump is clearly fomenting violence, political violence in this country. Really evil, really, really bad. And the thing is this. There's a solution to this. The solution is defeat him in the primary. If he's defeated in the primary, he can't argue that the Democrats stole the election from him. He can't argue and, you know, make January 6 seem like Charles Play and maybe do something much, much worse. He can't do that if he loses the primary. All the focus of anybody, anybody who values the American system of government, anybody who values the American system of government, anybody who values that system should be doing everything they can to make sure that Trump is not the Republican nominee. Everything. There's no greater threat to liberty and freedom in this country right now than Trump becoming president. The only really way to make sure that doesn't happen is to defeat him in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and on Super Tuesday. And that depends on you more than anything else. But, yeah, I mean, you guys think Trump is... I mean, so many of you think Trump is God's gift to humanity. Oh, yeah. So in this immunity hearing... So there's a hearing in front of the D.C. District Court about whether Trump has immunity. One of the judges asked Trump's lawyer, he said, if Trump is president, gets a SEAL Team 6 to assassinate an American political adversary of Trump, you know, who's running against him in an upcoming election, would Trump have immunity against that? Would Trump not be able to be criminally prosecuted? And the attorney for Trump went back and did hard and basically said, you know, he needs to be impeached and if he's impeached, and the judge says, well, let's say he's not impeached. I want a yes and no answer. Would you say that the president has immunity from assassinating one of his political adversaries if he's not impeached? And the Trump attorney said, yes. He has immunity. And that's why I said, middle of Fifth Avenue, it's basically the same thing. All right. Quickly, reminder that this show is made possible. All my shows are made possible from contributions from you, from people like you. We have 103 people watching live, so there certainly should be some people able to do some super chat. That's one way in which you can support the show if you're listening live, if you're not listening live, or if you want to do it a different way, you can support the show a monthly with Patreon or your on bookshow.com slash membership, or you can even become a member here on the YouTube platform, but it does require action on your part. And the show, as I said, doesn't exist without support from people like you. And, yeah, today we're a little short, so let's see if we can do something about that, guys. All right, final story, kind of a funny but really, really sad story from the United Kingdom. It turns out the Nienke Kingdom, the post offices, the offices that are labeled post office are basically franchises. They are small businesses owned by small business owners that have franchised the post office from, I guess, the UK post office, the UK government. Well, over the last few decades, really between 1999 and 2015, there were 983 convictions against people who managed or owned these post offices for fraud claiming that they had been skimming off the top, that the books didn't add up, they didn't match, and they were skimming. Four of the 983 people died of suicide. One of the post mistresses who owned the post office was jailed while she was pregnant. Others had to file for bankruptcy and quite a few landed up in jail, in jail. Now, I mean, if it's fraud, then it makes sense, but it's a little weird that so much fraud was being committed by people running post offices and for such a long time, wouldn't they see that others are going to jail and stop the fraud? Well, it turns out that no fraud was ever committed. No fraud was ever committed. That indeed, the numbers on the accounting did not match up because of bad software, a software glitch that basically once in a while misaligned the books and caused the appearance of fraud when no fraud actually existed. In spite of all these people being prosecuted, in court, being found guilty, sent into jail, 60 of them were convicted and had died before any conviction was overturned. Can you imagine? A computer glitch has basically responsible for 983 convictions of people. Again, whose lives are being destroyed. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is proposing legislation to parliament that ensures that convictions are scrapped and compensation is paid, which is very unusual. But you can't bring people's lives back. You can't bring their bankruptcy back. I mean, God, can you imagine sitting in jail because of an accounting glitch that nobody figured out?  But there's no way to prove it because they're accounting books. Are they accounting books? I mean, I think it's just a horror story. It's just hard to believe that it happened and that it was allowed to happen for so long and this could continue. All right, let's see. I am going to thank some people who did some stickers. Stephen Harper, Jonathan Honing, Mike Dial, Fendt Harper, Robert Nesu and Kim A. and Big Worm all did stickers. You two can do a sticker. We've got a, you know, if everybody did a sticker, even like a $2 sticker like Robert, $1.99, maybe everybody online right now, come in at $1.99 and we will easily make our target, right? So $1.99 for everybody. Let's do a little thing like Jonathan Honing got us to do $0.99 the other day. $1.99. Let's see how many of you want to participate and get contributions up. All right, Michael says, was Ayn Rand the greatest social commentator to ever live? Yeah, I think so. I think her commentary is deeper, more interesting, more philosophical. She covered so many different topics and was really, really substantive. I don't know of any social commentary that comes even close in terms of its quality. Fendt Harper, show idea. On the anniversary of free market revolution, have Don on and do an update on parts of it. Like the current number of alphabet agencies or regulations versus deregulation rate, delisting, relisting to it yesterday, great book. Oh, it's an audiobook. That's right. That's pretty cool. Thank you, Fendt Harper. Really appreciate that. Yeah, update of free market revolution would be fun. We'd have to gather those stats. Oh, people are taking me seriously on this. Thank you, guys. This is great. I and Mika did six shekel, which is something between $1 and $2. Jennifer did $2 round. Where the $99? Schaubart a $1.99. Darius $0.99. This is great. $0.99 helps. Every $1.99, every $0.99, everything like that helps. Particularly if everybody does it, then it really aggregates into a significant amount of money. All right, Michael, I don't think it's reasonable to assume everybody is a secret antisemite. I don't think most people care about Jews one way or the other. Well, I think that's probably true, but a lot of people are antisemites. A lot of people just are, and a lot of people seem to care about Jews. A lot more people care about Jews than one would expect, right? And it would be ideal if people didn't care about any group. That is that people treated other people as individuals, and there was no thinking about Jews at all one way or the other. But don't underestimate the power, significance, and prevalence of antisemitism.  Fred just did $0.99, and it's his first Super Chat ever. Thank you, Fred.  All of you have never done Super Chat. You should just do a $0.99 Super Chat right now just to get your first one in there. Robert says, I have a very optimistic view of life in the 21st century, but do you ever stop and suddenly think, what the hell, people? Trump versus Biden again? I stop and think that all the time.   It's just truly shocking. Unfortunately, what happened in 2020 is that Biden got out a huge vote. A lot of people came out to vote. We had record numbers in 2020. And the reason they came out to vote is they hated Trump and they came out to vote against Trump. So they voted for Biden, because he was the only one on the ticket. Biden took it and the Democrats interpreted it as they love the Democrats. They don't. People don't want to vote for Biden. They voted for Biden because they had no other choice. But tempt them again and they might flip on you. So Biden is the worst Democratic candidate right now. Most others could probably beat Trump. Biden probably can't. So at least right now it looks like he can't. If the economy actually strengthens this year, if we get a soft landing and a reversal and the Fed decreases interest rates this year, then who knows, all bets are off. But if things continue the way they are, it's going to be very difficult for Biden to beat Trump. And particularly in the swing states, God, I don't understand the American people making this kind of choice. So the Democratic and Republican Party. All right, there we go. Farm policy. I understand why it is just for Israel to defend itself and go scorching earth and Palestinians. But is it fair for you and Ben Shapiro to ask Americans to risk their lives in this war? I'm not asking Americans to risk their lives in this war. I'm not asking the Americans to risk their lives at all. I am asking the Americans to deploy their military in American self-interest. To preserve the shipping lanes, which I think is an American responsibility. It's what the American Navy is built for. It is part of, you know, it's always been, I and Ben was must asked, what is the, what is a farm policy under capitalism? She said, all the farm policies free trade is the facilitation of free trade. And she complimented the British for the gunboat diplomacy that opened up ports and that facilitated free movement of shipping. So I think it's in the United States, it's in your interest to open up the shipping lanes and be, I think the United States should take out Iran. But I've thought the United States should take out Iran since 1979 when Iran declared war on the United States. Iran is a real threat to the United States. It's a real threat to U.S. interests. And it's attacking Americans, making lives at stake in the Middle East right now every single day. So I'm not asking for one single American soldier to lay foot in Israel and to fight for Israel. I'm asking American soldiers to fight for America, to fight Iran and to fight and to open up the sea lanes. Fighting Iran is much more important than opening up the sea lanes. Those are American interests, direct American interests. So, and I don't think Ben Shapiro is asking any American to go out there and, you know, risk their lives for Israel. So I think that's a straw man of both my position and Ben Shapiro's position. And in terms of, you know, support of weapons and financial support, that's part of the deal America has with Israel, that it would provide that.  And I think it's some of the best investment America can make. Israel is fighting an American enemy. It's fighting, and as I explained after 9-11, Gisbalah and Hamas are part of the slommest enemy that America and Europe face. Israel's failure will be the death of the West. So don't put troops on the ground, but send them weapons. I hold the same thing for Ukraine. Don't put troops on the ground, but send them weapons. They're fighting your enemy for you.  All right, we've got, let's see, Fred. Oh, way before Fred. Let's see, we've got, Jennifer, I say, Charles Badavius, we've got Fred. Also, first time Super Chat, I think I said that before. Jennifer, another $2 or $1.99 this time. Thought criminal did $2.99. Carolina from Mexico, I have no idea how much $50 Mexican pesos are. Actually, I do have an idea. No, I don't. Yal, ask a question. We'll get to that, and then Stephen did $2.  We just need another, like, $50 of those and where we need to be, which is not a lot, right? So keep it up, guys. Keep going. All right, Wesley, off topic. But South Africa is such a repulsive country, friendly with Russia, even as they accuse Israel of genocide. They were backward country during apartheid and they're backward today. Well, they're more backward today, and economically and politically, and in terms of apartheid, they were morally backward back then and they're still morally backward. It is a despicable country. It's a despicable regime. I really, really, really do hope that in the election in South Africa this year, finally, South Africans vote out ANC, the ruling party that has won every single election since the fall of apartheid. It's about time that black Africans recognize that their interests are not aligned with ANC. That ANC is just robbing them blind. It is destroying an economy that has the potential to allow South Africans, white, black, grey, purple, whatever, to thrive and the ANC is destroying their capacity, destroying the ability to do so and that they need to get rid of them. This is not about skin color. This is about individual rights and economically this is about having an economy that produces jobs and wealth. And to do that, you need to get rid of socialist ANC and bring in a political party that respects private property and respects markets, even somewhat. And there are political parties like that in South Africa. They just need to beat the ANC, which is going to be very difficult, but I hope it finally happens. Otherwise, South Africa is just a one-party state with all the corruption and authoritarianism that one-party states always result in. Stingerbell 31, hello, Iran. How much for an artwork, painting, sculpture, review? Let's say $100 for painting or sculpture for me to review it. I in America, Gaza del Linda este. I in America basically wants to flatten Gaza. By the way, you're not getting your wish. Israel is clearly slowed down. It's aggression. It's bombing a lot less. More Israeli troops are dying as a consequence. They are moving to phase three, which is more pinpoint, special forces, limited troops on the ground. It's going to cost lives, Israeli lives, but at least no Palestinian will die and Gaza won't be flattened and the world will be satisfied. But it's sad, it's tragic, it's awful, completely awful, horrible. Mitch Clouser, thank you for the $5. Adam, thank you. Thank you. So we're slowly just chipping away at everything, but we've only got three more questions to go. I know somebody wants to come in with $100 to get us over this. Robert says, YBS freedom, young animals, you can afford to super chat, but can you afford not to? That's a good question. I don't have an answer for that. Daria says, ever watch South Park, thoughts on Eric Cartman? God, I haven't watched South Park enough to have thoughts on Eric Cartman, but I've thoughts on South Park. I mean, South Park is one of the funniest things ever. I loved their thing on the Mormons, the Broadway play musical in the Mormons, that was hysterical. But anyway, a lot of South Park are very, very, very funny. But I found it too cynical. Too, and there were no positive values. Everything was made fun of. There was no limit to what was made fun of, and there was no projection of something positive, something worthwhile, something good, something you should live for. There was a lot about all the stupidity in the world, but what about all the good stuff in the world? And I didn't like that. I thought that South Park and Simpsons and all of those, all of those really badly animated and generally cynical shows, basically raised generations of cynics. I think the current generation is as bad as it is, not as much because of TikTok or because of iPhones, but I think because of all those shows that they watched, because of the cynicism of the art that they were exposed to. Trey Parker and other creators maybe were libertarians, or sometimes they called themselves libertarians, sometimes not. But that's the problem with libertarians too often, is they know exactly what they're against. They know how to make fun of the status quo. But what are they for? What are the values they're willing to fight for? What do they believe in? What is the good? And how do you project that in art? It's much easier to make fun of evil, fun of bad stuff than it is to present a positive vision of the world. That's a genius of Iron Man presenting a positive vision of the world. And they didn't do that. And I think a lot of young people have suffered from that and raised in a cynical, skeptical environment with no positive values. What was your first book of 2024? In terms of the book I read, I just finished a book on Didro, the Enlightenment figure, the Encyclopedist Didro. I just finished that book yesterday, the day before yesterday. And I started on a lecture course by Alan Kors on the Enlightenment. So I'm in the midst of that. I've got the Enlightenment project reading to still finish. I've got a few more books on that, and then I'll move to something else. Darius, you wanted to see more movies criticizing Stalin. The movie Red Sun Superman is good. What if Superman was from the Soviet Ukraine, not Kansas? That sounds pretty funny. I assume it's a comedy, but I will check that out. But then, as I said, not a lot of movies that criticize the Soviets. I was complaining about that, so I'm always eager to find a new one. Although I have a feeling this one's going to be... Well, we'll give it a shot. Richard says, thanks for running up the news every day. Thank you, Richard. I appreciate the ongoing support, the regular support you provide. That is great. Well, only $28 short of our goal. Andrew says, do you think one should consider one's work as part of one's personal life, or is work a separate mental compartment, and the rest of one's life is another, as I think most people consider it? No, I think everything should be integrated. Work is your central purpose, your personal central purpose. And that's why it's so important to find work that you love, that gratifies you, that satisfies you, that challenges you. It is you. It is part of your life. It's really, really bad to compartmentalize different parts of your life. You land up not doing well in any of them, or you land up doing well in one and then not being happy and not being having the opportunity to gain the gratification, the happiness, the pleasure from being successful, because in the other place, something else is going on that is not integrated with it. So you want an integrated life to the extent that you can. And you certainly don't want to compartmentalize. Raphael says, art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly as if they were percepts. Could you explain the psychopistemological function of art? Like in a question at the end of our news roundup? Probably not. I've got plenty of content up online to do that. I encourage you to read the romantic manifesto. But fundamentally, what art does is it takes our most abstract concepts. You know, epistemological clarity. This world is livable. This world is knowable, which is what epistemological clarity is. This world is livable. It takes these more fundamental metaphysical values, if you will. And it puts them in a concrete. It shows your painting where everything is clear and sharp and differentiate, distinguishable, and where man in the painting is efficacious and successful.  That's the world in which I live or want to live. That is those abstract concepts. I see them now. I can see what is meant by it. Now, you don't think that, but that's how you respond automatically to a sharp painting. If you respond positively, it's you saying, yes, life is, the world is knowable. It's reinforcing that in the painting. You certainly get that from like Vermeer. Life is knowable. Life is beautiful. Life is good. Light is amazing. Look at the beauty of light anyway. So it's taking abstract metaphysical concepts. Those are non-metaphysical concepts, heroism, beauty, and things like that, and presenting them in concrete form before you. The metaphysical is just the more important. It's what makes it art. Anmika said, I used to feel like we lived in South Park episodes. How I feel now I think like we live in a Raka Raka Ali song. Raka Raka Ali would be happy to hear that. That's pretty funny. Big worm. I'd recommend watching The Pod Generation. It is a science fiction take on future with tons of AI and tech, and it's very well done. Check out the trailer. I bet you could make a great show segment out of it. All right. I'm copy pasting it into my kind of to do to watch list. All right. Wes, thank you. Wes got us over the target. So we made our $250 goal. Thank you to all the superchats. Thank you to everybody who supports this show on a regular, irregular basis, whatever basis you do it, whether it's monthly superchat and everything else. Thanks for making that possible. There will be no news roundups at this time of day in the next few days. I'm traveling. I leave for the airport in a little while. I have to go pack and leave to the airport in less than an hour. I will do a show tomorrow night evening. I'll be in Colorado. I'm not sure if I'll do anything on Friday or Saturday. So probably certainly no show on Saturday because I'm flying all day. So no show Saturday. Friday, I don't know. Probably no shows Friday. I will do a show tomorrow. I'll do everything I can do to do a show. Internet, good internet, hopefully at the hotel. And then I'll probably do a show on Sunday to make it up for you. But thank you all. I will see you tomorrow. Tomorrow will be maybe a mashup of a news roundup plus. Plus some big story that we'll talk more about so it'll be a combination show. All right, see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.