Archive for category: Uncategorized

On Sunday afternoon at the gym as I looked up from the bike to the bank of televisions above, all but one was talking about the death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter and the seven other unlucky souls (one TV incessantly played Law and Order reruns*). It did not matter whether the channel was on ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, or even Fox News, everyone was fixated on Kobe. Perhaps that was to be expected but what was interesting was they were all covering the story in the same way—a tragedy, obviously, but all with reverence for Kobe Bryant and respect for his many basketball accomplishments. As a lifelong Seattle Supersonic fan, I almost always rooted against Kobe on the court and was occasionally troubled by his off court behavior such as the credible allegations of rape against him in 2003. But in death, Kobe appears to have done what no one else has—temporarily united the country, as usually when I look at the gym’s TVs they are all covering completely different worlds–Fox, MSNBC and CNN were identical.** Plus, in listening and reading about Kobe in recent days it appears he learned and grew from his past transgressions and acted in some ways to atone for them,*** including in his stellar support of women’s basketball. And so we find ourselves finally, belatedly cheering for him, a man who continued to learn and improve, which is better than most of us do. And we root for China to behave better in possible epidemics, boo corruption around the world and take a timeout to compare China and America’s trade with the world. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, taking last minute clutch shots on international information and data.*At this point we suspect the Law and Order universe is part of Scientology or some other cult, what else could explain its ubiquitousness?

***Though perhaps the woman in Colorado may understandably not be satisfied

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

Love in the Time of Corona

The woman we were meeting with, after shaking our hand, began coughing and sneezing, and now we hope our flu shot really worked. But while it is true, as health authorities remind us, that currently the regular old flu is currently killing far more people, the corona virus we warned readers about way back on January 9th is nothing to, uh, sneeze at. That’s partly because China’s honesty with information is a bit like the woman we met with—we’d prefer they’d been more upfront about the problem before shaking the world’s hands.  In the initial stages of the emergence of the virus, China was more interested in controlling the spread of information than the spread of the virus. For nearly a month after it was clear there was a new virus and that it could be transmitted person-to-person, China worked to prevent such information getting to its own citizens (though it appears on January 8 they did inform WHO). Probably due to pressure from China, WHO did not initially assess the risk as “high” but rather as only “moderate.” They continue to prevent Taiwan’s participation with WHO. This is a good illustration of the challenge we discuss in our upcoming book of China’s interest in transforming the international world order into one with Chinese characteristics. Now the heavy government pendulum of China has swung towards ruthlessly controlling movements of people to abate the spread of the virus. Perhaps this is the right course of action, and certainly it is an open question of how prepared the U.S. is for such a disease outbreak, but China’s infusing global organizations the world relies on with their authoritarian culture, is a trend the world needs to recognize and address.

The Good, The Bad and The Corrupt

Last week while you were buying the last N95 mask left on the shelf and switching channels from the impeachment hearings, Transparency International released their 2019 report on corruption around the world. Their index rates countries on their perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 to 100 with 100 being squeaky clean and 0 as corrupt as a White House impeachment lawyer. Europe was the least corrupt region according to their rankings and Sub-Saharan African the most corrupt. 22 countries have improved their scores since 2012 and 21 countries have gotten worse, including Canada and the United States. The three countries which improved the most are Greece, Guyana and Estonia. Scan the top and bottom ten below for the cleanest and dirtiest countries.

China Vs. U.S. Trade With World

In our forthcoming book about how China has changed and how the U.S. and world should address this, we note the extraordinary success of China’s economy, and how important it is to the world economy. Visual Capitalist illustrates this with a graphic showing how the U.S. was the main trading partner to the world in 1980 and today China is. They note that “…before 2000, the U.S. was at the helm of global trade, as over 80% of countries traded with the U.S. more than they did with China. By 2018, that number had dropped sharply to just 30%, as China swiftly took top position in 128 of 190 countries.”  Trade is also a much larger component of world GDP today at 59 percent compared to 1980 when it accounted for only 20 percent of GDP. When grappling with concerns about the authoritarian nature of China and its interest in infusing the previous international rule-of-law order into one with Chinese characteristics, any strategy must understand China’s economic power and influence.

One of the more troubling aspects of our times is the fetish against the free press, including too often by the current U.S. President. So we are only offering constructive criticism not attacking the media when we write that Reuters owes its readers an explanation for its Wednesday, January 8 (Seattle Times) article reporting that a “Canadian security source” asserted the Ukraine airliner was not shot down by a missile but instead was a matter of technical issues. Reuters reporter, David Ljunggren, claimed this source thought “there was some evidence one of the plane’s engines had overheated.” Shortly, thereafter, Reuters followed up with another article stating, “Five security sources—three Americans, one European and one Canadian—told Reuters the initial assessment of Western intelligence agencies was that the plane had suffered a technical malfunction and had not been brought down by a missile.” We understand initial information is often wrong but anyone with half a brain knew from the beginning that mechanical problems were not the cause of the crash. Even our quarter size, non-aerospace, non-Iran expert brain knew this article was BS that very night (our “security sources,” i.e. our spouse, can confirm this). So the question is who were these “intelligence” and “security” sources? Were they really in a position to know? Were they feeding Reuters false information on purpose? Did Reuters stop to think how illogical the assertion was that the plane exploded and then crashed due to mechanical failure? Reuters owes its readers a forensics accounting of how they got this article so wrong. Their reporting was rebroadcast throughout the night and even the next morning by everyone from NPR to other distinguished publications with potentially troubling ramifications for Boeing and others. As Tom Cruise yelled in A Few Good Men, we want answers…and in this case we can handle the truth. And we present the truth to you today on world GDP growth since 1950, an update on a still underrated country and the continued success of Vietnam. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, the first quarter Houston Texans, the second quarter Kansas City Chiefs of international news and data.

We would be remiss if we did not note the passing of another New Orleans music icon last week—5th Ward Weebie. A rapper, and major foundation of the New Orleans Bounce scene (a form of hip hop, where twerking originated). He is featured in Trombone Shorty’s Buckjump. RIP. (Mailchimp is having troubles loading videos so we can only link to Buckjump)

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

2020 is Better Than 1950

In our upcoming speech on globalization and inequality, one of the points we make is the world is much better today than it was 70 years ago. Inequality is a challenge but as we work to fix that problem we shouldn’t destroy what helped the world succeed the last 70 years. To that point, Our World in Data graphically shows this in the chart below (click on the chart to enlarge and see each country better). What it shows is that the average person in the world today is now 4.4 times richer than they were in 1950. Almost every country in the world is wealthier today than in 1950 with nine countries now 15 times wealthier than they were 70 years ago. Unfortunately, nine countries are poorer today than they were in 1950. Any guesses who they are? But shifting back to the winners, Taiwan, which recently re-elected their President, had an income of $1400 in 1950. Today, Taiwanese are among the richest in the world. We will have more to say about Taiwan in our upcoming book about China and the U.S. Stay tuned!

Somewhat Underrated Country Update

Since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Prize, I suppose we can’t call Ethiopia the most underrated country in the world, but it is still somewhat underrated. For example, did you know Ethiopia had the second highest rate of GDP growth last year? Yep, Ethiopia grew at 10.6 percent in 2019, just behind Nauru* and continued a 13 year run of high rates of economic growth. But it is not all rosy news. Ethiopia’s inflation rate reached 19 percent in 2019, much higher than previous years. Its unemployment rate has also increased significantly in recent years, and its exports have slowed. These headwinds are why the World Bank is predicting Ethiopia will only grow at 6.3 percent in 2020. We shall see. In the meantime, the reformist minded Abiy is still planning on elections for this May and June. This coming year could be a pivotal one for our underrated country.

*Who knew there was a country called Nauru? Did C.S. Lewis make this up? Talk about underrated. 

Vietnam’s Continued Rise

We head back to Vietnam in a month and a half, and as always, are looking forward to it. No country has gained more from the U.S. – China trade war than Vietnam. In fact, as you see in the chart below, no country received more manufacturing foreign investment than Vietnam since 2014. On our trip to Vietnam last year we saw some of this investment up close, including a shoe factory that moved there from China in 2015. GDP in Vietnam grew at 7 percent in 2019 and the country is likely to see strong growth this year too. Our biggest fear for Vietnam is Trump will discover it and start imposing tariffs on goods coming from there. For anyone who cares about trying to reform China, this would be one of the most short-sighted policies possible. Which is why we worry it will happen. In the meantime, Vietnam’s strong economy is also illustrated by the number of foreign retailers interested in entering the market or expanding their presence there. Japanese and Korean retailers such as Uniqlo and Lotte both have big plans there. That’s another data point, perhaps even more significant than GDP, of Vietnam’s success. It remains one of the four most important countries in the world, as we explain in our upcoming book.

For reasons we don’t entirely understand, our gym plays old Law and Order episodes on the TV continuously. Last week while on a stationary bike we glanced up at the TV and two cops were sitting in their car, one of them reading a News of the World or some such tabloid with a lurid, over the top headline. The TV cop seemed half interested in the tabloid and half in whatever his partner was saying.  As we pedaled faster, it occurred to us that today’s world is one big tabloid writ large thanks to the Internet. Where once we were exposed to headlines only occasionally, perhaps while standing in line at the grocery store, now we are bombarded with outlandish claims, titillating tales and bombastic news at all times of the day, throughout the weeks, months and years. Through social media and other platforms, everybody is a National Enquirer headline writer nowadays, as well as a Weekly World reader, whether we want to be or not. There are not more crazy things happening today than in the past, we’re just seeing them more often and this vast trove of dubious information passes across our gaze magnitudes more often. What this means for law and order we are not certain but we do know the earth is greener than it was twenty years ago, there is much more debt around the world and we will never grow tired of Japan’s drone dog mascot. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, whose new year’s resolution is never to make 2020 hindsight jokes this year.

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

The Earth is Greener

As 2019 departed, the year-end summations in the news tended to emphasize all the bad trends and events of last year so what better way to start 2020 then to remind us that many things are getting better, including the greening of the earth by the two most populous countries—China and India. Yes, according to a new analysis of satellite data by NASA, “the world is literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago.” There are more trees and plants covering the planet than there were in 2000 thanks to tree planting policies in China and agricultural efforts in India. In fact, India and China are using the same amount of land to grow food but production is way up as is total green leaf area. NASA says there is an important lesson to be learned from all of this: “Once people realize there’s a problem, they tend to fix it. In the 70s and 80s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss wasn’t good; in the 90s, people realized it; and today things have improved.” China and India have all kinds of problems and are making serious mistakes in a number of spheres, but they have done some good things too. Let’s hope they continue to learn lessons, as must we all.

We Are In Your Debt

Yes there are more plants and trees than 20 years ago but there is also more debt. A graphic from Visual Capitalist shows the United States has the largest percent of debt worldwide at 31 percent, followed by Japan (17%) and China (nearly 10%). China’s debt is likely undercounted in this graphic but even undercounted Chinese debt has grown two trillion in the last few years. Regionally, Asia accounts for the largest percentage of world debt, followed by North America. Forgetting percentages for a moment, the total debt increase over the last twenty years is immense, some of which may have been warranted due to climbing out of the Great Recession (and yet debt keeps going up whether an economy is strong or not—it’s as if Keynes has gone on a 24-7 bender).  In 2000, worldwide debt was estimated at around $20 trillion. Today, it’s up to $69 trillion so debt has tripled in 20 years. If plants and trees had tripled in that time frame, we’d have less of a climate change crisis. More green trees less red debt?

Yukimuri the Drone Dog!

But enough for worries this week (there will be plenty of time for that the rest of 2020), let’s get back to good news and that means the revelation of Yukimuru the Drone Dog. Americans love dogs. British love dogs. Everyone loves dogs. But perhaps only the Japanese would create a drone dog mascot. Via the remarkable @MondoMascots, a Twitter account which tracks Japanese mascots, we learned of Yukimuru, a drone mascot created by the town of Uji in the Kansai region of Japan. According to Nextweb.com, the drone dog is named after “an actual historic dog named Yukimaru, the companion of imperial Prince Shotoku, who ruled from 574-622 and created Japan’s first political constitution.” Unlike Black Mirror’s drone dogs, this one is cute and represents democracy not dystopia.

【FLYING DOG DRONE】Yukimaru Skywalker Takes a Stroll – The World’s First Character Mascot Drone!(?) 49,721 views https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png 0 0 admin https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png admin2020-01-02 11:00:542020-01-09 23:45:04Earth is Greener, We Are In Your Debt, and Yukimuri the Drone Dog Big Business in 2008 and 2018, Rwanda on the Rise, and Imprisoned Journalists December 19, 2019/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by admin Earlier this week we found ourselves driving after midnight out of Bellingham to Seattle. We’ve made this drive eleven thousand four hundred fifty three and a half times (we once got stuck in a snow storm) over the years. Many years ago when driving south it was a quiet ride all the way until Everett (about 20 miles north of Seattle for our non-Puget Sound area readers). Over the last five years we now find ourselves mired in traffic the entire drive, distracting us from the amazing natural beauty just south of Bellingham. But until this week it had been a while since we made the drive so late at night. For the first twenty-five miles no head beams blinded us from behind, no red tail lights distracted ahead. We devoured open road and on a bright moon-lit night, the trees glimmered, Lake Samish shimmered and the clarifying horns of Satchmo guided us on our way. It is a more prosperous, healthy world we inhabit, but it is also easy to long for the quiet days gone by. We are tempted to find a job working graveyard to bring them back to life but then the Staunton Lick shuffled onto our playlist and we returned to the world to compare big business today and ten years ago, the surprising success of Rwanda, and who jails the most journalists. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, wishing you and yours an internationally happy holidays. Lemon Jelly – The Staunton Lick 40,111 views Like the good Brit/Canadian we are not, INTN takes Boxing Day off next week. We’ll see you in 2020. Without further ado, here’s what you need to know. Big Business in 2018 and 2008 As we near the end of the teens (tens?), and prepare for 2020 (how did that happen?!!), let’s examine changes in the list of the largest companies in the world from over the last ten years. The handy list below shows the largest companies in 2008 compared to 2018. Interestingly and not surprisingly because historically these lists change quickly, there is only one that was in the top ten in 2008 that was still one of the largest companies in 2018, Microsoft. Perhaps they should have been broken up after all…of course, where they derive their revenue today is far different from 2008–they are practically a new company compared to ten years ago. China has two fewer companies in the top ten than ten years ago, both of which are Internet based businesses. In fact, seven of the ten companies in the 2018 list are technology companies, although Amazon could be classified any number of ways. We expect the list in 2028 will be just as different as 2018 is to 2008 no matter whether or not Elizabeth Warren gets her wish to break up big companies such as Facebook. Rwanda on the Rise We’ve talked up Ethiopia a fair amount here as the most underrated country in the world. Rwanda is also too often ignored, one of a number of African countries that are increasingly locations for manufacturing and fast growing economies. Last week, it was announced that Rwanda’s economy grew over 11 percent in the third quarter year over year. It is expected that the Rwandan economy for all of 2019 will grow at a rate of over 8 percent. Since the end of the civil war in 1994, poverty has decreased in Rwanda 40 percent. In October, an iPhone manufacturing plant opened in the capital Kigali. Rwanda has many challenges (don’t we all?), but it’s one of a number of potential African Lions lurking in the world’s tall grass. Information Wants to Be Jailed We hope that 2020 will be a better year for journalists than 2019 was. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “For the fourth consecutive year, at least 250 journalists are imprisoned globally.” China, which likes to be number one in everything, beat out Turkey to rank first on the list with 48 journalists currently imprisoned there. But Turkey was no slouch, just behind at 47, followed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea. CPJ points out that while most of these journalists were jailed for so-called “anti-state” activities, the fun new trend is for journalists to be arrested and imprisoned for producing “false news.” Thanks be to the impeached for that, I suppose. Last minute addendum: This morning while driving in the dark to our office we listened to a new special episode of the podcast In The Dark. It is easy to make fun of reporters these days, especially political ones, but so much of journalism is more than about presidential politics. Madeleine Baran and the rest of the In the Dark Team make a real impact on our world. The wrongfully convicted Curtis Flowers is out of jail because of a hard working group of reporters. Those that imprison journalists deserve our ridicule and scorn. Journalism like In the Dark, deserve our support.  https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png 0 0 admin https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png admin2019-12-19 11:00:372020-01-09 16:37:26Big Business in 2008 and 2018, Rwanda on the Rise, and Imprisoned Journalists What We Think About China, Checking Your Blood, and Eat to Win December 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by admin Who is the best person in the world you may be asking yourself? Well, if you weren’t before you are now that we’ve posed the question. Some would pick Greta Thunberg. Others would choose a recent Nobel Peace prize winner or a medical researcher who cured some disease. We’re here to tell you the best person in the world is the trombone player for the touring version of Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Ronell Johnson. We were first blown away (all pun intended) by him at a show last year. Though he’s clearly eaten a beignet or two, we don’t understand how he’s not skinny as a rail since he was constantly moving, bopping, dancing and lifting his horn up while on stage. We originally thought he must sit quietly when not performing, but no, in the fun documentary, A Tuba to Cuba, which chronicles Preservation’s trip to Cuba to examine the common roots of New Orleans and Cuban music, Ronell’s wife says he is the most joyful person in the world and that everyone loves him. He’s a solar panel of a human being, lighting up every room he enters, making it a better, more rousing place than how he found it. So if the world ever gets you down, if you’ve got the holiday blues, just think of Ronell, and as the song below, instructs, Keep Your Head Up. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, your tuba of international information, sousaphone of international data. Who is Learning? We work with colleges often nowadays so have a bias to the importance of education. So does the World Bank, which last year launched a Human Capital Project to measure education “not by years in school or degrees earned, but by actual learning outcomes” based on harmonizing test scores from countries all over the world. They recently released the latest data which analyzing is a learning experience in itself. The country with the highest score, that is the country with the students with the highest levels of learning outcomes, is Singapore, followed by Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Finland. Our American readers will note they don’t see the United States in the top 20 list below—that’s because it is ranked 22nd. That’s not the top percentile but it is higher than the UK, Spain, Italy, France and China. Vietnam, also not in the top twenty, still scores high for a developing country at 27th. Peruse the full list and increase your learning outcomes. Top 20 from World Bank’s Human Capital Index https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png 0 0 admin https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png admin2019-11-21 11:00:192019-11-30 19:45:20Chinese Prisoners Dilemma, Peak Oil by 2035, & Who is Learning International Need to Know Your weekly source of essential, under the radar, international information and data. Subscribe Archives Over 300 International Need to Know newsletters. 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 Buy Now © 2022 Gittes Global Scroll to top Preservation Hall Jazz Band – Keep Your Head Up [OFFICIAL VIDEO] 19,730 views Without further ado, here’s what you need to know. What We Think About China In our upcoming book about the U.S. and China (it will be required reading for INTN readers—there will be a test), we discuss alliances. The latest Pew Global survey of people’s opinions on China shows that given the world’s worries about China, there are increased possibilities to create alliances to mitigate some of China’s challenging practices. Eight countries have seen double digit decreases in their favorability rankings of China. Indonesia, Canada and Sweden all have 17 percent decreases. Canadians, of course, surely have taken note that two of their citizens have been held incommunicado for more than a year in retaliation for Canada’s justice system using the rule of law to adjudicate Huawei’s CFO, who is out on bail living in one of her two mansions in Vancouver, BC with full access to lawyers, Tim Horton’s and hockey on demand. The Pew Global survey was conducted before China announced retaliation for Sweden’s Minister of Culture attending an awards ceremony honoring the bravery of a Chinese-Swede journalist now imprisoned in China. We’re guessing China’s popularity has decreased even more since the survey. China’s party-state aggressive behavior may seed its own destruction. We’re Checking Your Blood, We’re Checking it Twice… When we come home from an international trip using our Global Entry status, we now have to place our fingers on a scanner that checks our fingerprints. Besides being a good way to transmit disease, we find the increasing use of biometric data annoying which probably indicates we are old and easily annoyed–but even so right to be concerned. Which countries are most invasive in their use of biometric data? Comaratech analyzed 50 countries and to no one’s surprise China is the most invasive user of biometric data. Number two is Malaysia, followed by Pakistan, the good ole USA and then a four-way tie for fifth among India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan. Biometric data will perhaps make security more efficient and, well, secure, but we wonder if all the trade-offs have been properly assessed. 5 Worst Countries for Invasive Use of Biometric Data 5 Best Countries (least invasive use) Eat To Win Earlier this week we tried to carve a chicken. We watched a Youtube video first to make sure we got it right. Let’s just say our carving of the chicken bore little resemblance to the instructional video by the chef. Which got us to thinking as we prepare to spend a holiday season eating, which world city has the best restaurants (given our carving skills, we’re looking to eat out more)? We’ve often told people Tokyo is one of the best cities to eat in and data proves us right. Tokyo tops the list of cities with the most Michelin star restaurants, topping out at 234. Paris is second but given its population is six times smaller than Tokyo’s, Paris is pound for chicken pound arguably greater than Tokyo. Rounding out the top five are Milan, Vienna and London. Whet your lips with the full list below. https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png 0 0 admin https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png admin2019-12-12 11:00:122020-01-09 16:33:14What We Think About China, Checking Your Blood, and Eat to Win Chinese Prisoner Dilemma Escalates, Clean Energy Is Saving Us, and South Korean Inequality December 5, 2019/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by admin After seeing a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the new movie about a journalist’s relationship with Mr. Rogers, we read the most recent article of the real life inspiration for the journalist in the movie. Tom Junod notes many people ask him what Fred Rogers would say about Donald Trump. Junod asserts Mr. Rogers would say what he said about many problematical or complicated people, “He would say that Donald Trump was a child once too.” We should have thought about that when playing basketball with our eight-year-old niece and seven-year-old nephew late Thanksgiving day afternoon. The basket was set to nine-feet-tall at their request. At one point my nephew commanded me, “Play hard mode,” by which he meant I should try to beat him, not go easy on him, as if I were a setting on a basketball video game. We were reluctant to do so but he kept repeating it so finally we drove past him and leapt up to dunk the ball as we once could have done easily on a nine-foot hoop.  When we landed, barely having put the ball through the basket, pain shot through our good knee, it felt like we had suffered a hernia down somewhere below our gut which may have been a manifestation of all the Louisiana cornbread stuffing, mac and cheese and sweet potato pie we had just eaten, and marshaled all our energy to not crumple to the ground in agony. While our nephew trash talked us a bit, we tried to maintain our dignity, and transitioned to soft mode. Painfully dribbling the ball, looking at our young nephew, we wanted to say, “We were once a child too.” Today, as we rub our knee wistfully recalling our youth, we try to remember that the Chinese authorities forcibly harvesting organs were once children, that children are counting on us to implement clean energy technology to ward off the worst effects of climate change and that South Korean children hope for less inequality. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, Knives Out to find the most important happenings around the world. Without further ado, here’s what you need to know. Chinese Prisoners Dilemma Escalates The last time we gathered in this space, we questioned our doubts about accusations that China is harvesting organs from political prisoners. We did so after reading data analysis of China organ transplants showing official Chinese transplant numbers are made up. Now comes news that gives us even more pause. An International Tribunal assembled by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) has gathered evidence and listened to witnesses (all of which are available on a website to allow others to make their own analysis). The Tribunal’s conclusion?  “On the basis of all direct and indirect evidence, the Tribunal concludes with certainty that Forced organ harvesting has happened in multiple places in the PRC and on multiple occasions for a period of at least twenty years and continues to this day.” Rarely have we seen a more chilling and damning conclusion of a country’s current day practices. Along with the atrocities in Xinjiang against Uyghurs (one of the groups allegedly targeted for forced organ harvesting), the practice of forced organ harvesting is causing us to reassess how the world should relate with China. The principal group targeted so far for forced organ harvesting is the Falun Gong, a religious group deemed a cult by China’s government. One of the many pieces of evidence presented at the Tribunal was the fact that imprisoned Falun Gong have their blood tested and organs examined and other prisoners do not.* Blood testing is needed so that donor and recipients can be matched. The world faces important choices on how best to confront this conclusion. The worst option is to ignore it. *Falun Gong have been targeted but it appears Uyghurs are being prepped: “Ethan Gutman gave evidence to the Tribunal in December 2018 stating that ‘over the last 18 months, literally every Uyghur man, woman, and child – about 15 million people – have been blood and DNA tested, and that blood testing is compatible with tissue matching.’” Clean Energy is Already Saving Us At dinner recently, a friend told us of their Gen Z son who believes the world is doomed due to climate change, and believes we are fated to starve and burn up in ten to twenty years’ time. Maybe it is the contrarian in us but while everyone else goes all doom and gloom, we don’t exactly see sunshine but certainly abundant rays of hope. Advances in clean energy may already have mitigated the worst case scenarios for future warning. The world is currently tracking for warming of 1.5 – 2.5 Celsius which is far less than the UN’s worst case scenarios, and that is due to current installations of clean energy technology. And, although a few weeks ago we noted our over optimism that the world was reaching peak oil emissions, others believe we are now near it. “Over the past 5 years, the global economy grew by 3.5% per annum, but emissions grew by only 0.8% per annum. One more push during the next decade, and we’ll set off on the down-slope.” Would we feel better if the U.S. president believed in climate change and took steps to prevent it? You bet. But there’s hope yet, Gen Z. (“Okay Boomer,”—our Millennial editor.) Parasite and South Korean Inequality Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, we watched the movie Parasite, a parable of South Korean income inequality by the director Bong Joon-Ho. It is one of the best movies of the year—unpredictable with 3-D characters (the useful kind, not the Marvel movie 3-D you pay four dollars extra to see). Although we do look forward to someday seeing a movie allegory about how a market-driven economy raised living standards in South Korea (and elsewhere) to remarkable heights in forty years, concerns about inequality are understandable in South Korea. It has one of the higher levels of income inequality among developed countries with rising poverty levels in recent years, especially among the elderly. This is all made worse by a population aging as quickly as Japan’s and stark gender inequality. South Korea has made remarkable economic progress in the last 50 years. But it is currently facing serious economic and sociological challenges, the only upside of which is to spur great cinema like Parasite. Gini Coefficient of OECD Countries https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png 0 0 admin https://gittesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/logo-02-300x54.png admin2019-12-05 11:00:072020-01-09 16:28:31Chinese Prisoner Dilemma Escalates, Clean Energy Is Saving Us, and South Korean Inequality Chinese Prisoners Dilemma, Peak Oil by 2035, & Who is Learning November 21, 2019/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by admin Twenty-years ago this week in a room on the 37th floor of the Sheraton Hotel during the WTO meetings in Seattle, we looked down at Donald Trump-supporters running rampant on the streets of Seattle as the governor of Washington state announced a state of emergency on television. Earlier that morning we braved the line of protesters with our seven-months pregnant colleague. The protesters, who were violent from the beginning, despite how they were depicted in the media at the time and in books and movies since, shoved our pregnant colleague who was trying to cross the street to get to a meeting. I was one of the staff helping to organize the WTO meetings in Seattle. At one point during the week I caused a U.S. State Department official to cry. Ordinarily I would feel bad about causing someone to weep openly but if you knew what the State Department official had done you might weep yourself. Donald Trump-supporters controlled the streets that day and have set the agenda for trade policy ever since. It took the protesters 17 years to gain complete control of the levers of power when they elected Donald Trump and made their dreams and wishes official U.S. trade policy. Pulling out of trade agreements, increasing tariffs on foe and ally alike, trashing the WTO and tearing down the post-World War II liberal economic order have all been accomplished. Donald Trump won in November 1999 and thus far is winning today. We take to the streets worrying that organ harvesting rumors in China are true, marveling that peak oil usage may be occurring and puzzling over education outcomes around the world. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, taking Thanksgiving off next week to eat our award-winning Louisiana cornbread stuffing, but back the week after. Without further ado, here’s what you need to know. The Chinese Prisoner’s Dilemma  Generally we like our fiction grounded in reality and become annoyed when a TV show or movie makes it difficult to suspend disbelief. We’re like that with the real world too which is why we’ve refrained from writing about the allegations that China is harvesting organs from political prisoners—it seemed too crazy to believe. But a new study analyzing the data of China’s organ transplants gives us pause. By way of background, after international complaints that China was using prisoners to harvest organs for transplant surgery, China claimed to be using a new system in 2010 to prevent such abuse (they always denied killing prisoners, political or not, just to take their organs, though there have been accusations of that as well). Official Chinese statistics claim “volunteer deceased donors went from 34 to 6316 annually,” apparently proving that China was no longer using prisoners’ organs. However, three authors, including Matthew Robertson, published a paper in BMC Medical Ethics Journal that claims this “data is manipulated, and done in the crudest of ways: …it appears that all of this data was manufactured using the mathematics one learns in high school: a quadratic equation.” Yes they used math we learned in 8th grade to gin up data making it look like they were no longer harvesting organs from prisoners. Matthew Robertson concludes, “The goal of these elaborate efforts appears to have been to create a misleading impression to the international transplantation community about the successes of China’s voluntary organ donation reform and to neutralize the criticism of activists who allege that crimes against humanity have been committed in the acquisition of organs for transplant.” This is something to keep an eye on, eyes that have not been harvested from prisoners. Peak Oil by 2035? It’s been a while since we’ve written about peak oil—not the idea we are running out of it but instead that we are close to maxing out our use of it. Two years ago it seemed that the U.S. was near peak oil usage with American oil consumption essentially flat for three years, but alas the last two years have seen U.S. oil usage increase. Even when the U.S. was providing hope, world oil usage continued to increase each year. But via Kevin Drum we read that one of the world’s main oil producers, Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, believes peak oil demand will occur in 2035. That’s still 13 years from now which is too long a time period to address climate change concerns, but still remarkably soon. It may be statistical noise but the rate of world oil usage increase has been deceasing since 2014. In two weeks we’ll discuss how clean energy already appears to be warding off the worst estimates of climate change—the world is not going as badly as you think, unless you’re a San Antonio Spurs fan like us.