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Formula 1 Ethihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2021 Qualifying Results
One of China’s largest and most pervasive surveillance networks got its start in a small county about seven hours north of Shanghai. In 2013, the local government in Pingyi County began installing tens of thousands of security cameras across urban and rural areas — more than 28,500 in total by 2016. Even the smallest villages had at least six security cameras installed, according to state media.
Those cameras weren’t just monitored by police and automated facial recognition algorithms. Through special TV boxes installed in their homes, local residents could watch live security footage and press a button to summon police if they saw anything amiss. The security footage could also be viewed on smartphones. In 2015 the Chinese government announced that a similar program would be rolled out across China, with a particular focus on remote and rural towns. It was called the “Xueliang Project,” or Sharp Eyes, a reference to a quote from communist China’s former revolutionary leader Mao Zedong who once wrote that “the people have sharp eyes” when looking out for neighbors not living up to communist values. Sharp Eyes is one of a number of overlapping and intersecting technological surveillance projects built by the Chinese government over the last two decades. Projects like the Golden Shield Project, Safe Cities, SkyNet, Smart Cities, and now Sharp Eyes mean that there are more than 200 million public and private security cameras installed across China. Every five years, the Chinese government releases a plan outlining what it looks to achieve in the next half-decade. China’s 2016 five-year plan set a goal for Sharp Eyes to achieve 100% coverage of China’s public spaces in 2020. Though publicly available reports don’t indicate whether the program has hit that goal — they suggest that the country has gotten very close. China’s modern surveillance scheme started in 2003, according to Dahlia Peterson, research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, with the creation of the Golden Shield Project. The Golden Shield Project, run by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), is, in part, responsible for the country’s strict internet censorship. But the program also included physical surveillance. The MPS created databases that included 96% of China’s citizens, with one titled the National Basic Population Information Database. That database includes household registration information, called “hukou,” as well as information on past travels and criminal history, according to a report from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Local population databases were also created, according to a paper published in the American Journal of Political Science. These local databases allowed for blacklists, which barred the use of public transportation. Police would be dispatched if someone who had been blacklisted tried to book a bus, train, or airline ticket. Following Golden Shield, China launched two other surveillance projects focused on the installation of cameras. Safe Cities, launched in 2003, focused on disaster warnings, traffic management, and public security. SkyNet focused on installing cameras connected to facial recognition algorithms. “Chinese state-run media has claimed Skynet can scan the entire Chinese population in one second with 99.8 percent accuracy, yet such claims ignore glaring technical limitations,” Peterson wrote. Observers should take these figures with a grain of salt: Accurate and up-to-date information about China’s surveillance initiatives isn’t easily available, and what is publicly known is mainly generated by academics and journalists with some access to government officials or surveillance equipment manufacturers. It’s also unclear which cameras are exclusively viewed by village, city, and provincial governments, and which feed data back to the central government. Just like Golden Shield, the SkyNet program still exists today, and benefits from 16 years of A.I. research, as well as the tech industry’s boom. According to the New York Times, SkyNet data is used at building complexes that use facial recognition to open security gates. The photos from those security gates are then shared with local police to build a database of the local population. Recently the Central Bank of Ireland joined the ranks of sovereign gold buyers, adding 2 tonnes of gold to its monetary gold reserves in 2 months, consisting of a tonne of gold bought in each of September and October 2021. While in relative terms, the actual quantity of gold added by the Irish central bank was quite small, in percentage terms it was very substantial, since in August Ireland only held 6 tonnes of gold (supposedly held at the Bank of England), and as of the end of October Ireland now holds 8 tonnes of gold, i.e. a 33% increase (and a significant number for those in the know). These latest monetary gold purchases by Ireland’s central bank are also notable because it’s not often that a central bank that is:
What sparked the Central Bank of Ireland to add to its monetary gold reserves is unclear, because like all Euro puppet central banks and BIS lackeys, the Irish central bank thinks that it does not need to be democratically accountable when it comes to monetary gold. On a Need to Know Basis – And you don’t need to know! When asked by Bloomberg’s reporter last week as to why the Bank had bought 2 tonnes of gold, a Central Bank of Ireland official replied that the Irish central bank’s gold transactions “are commercially sensitive and no further comment can be made at this time”. But why would an EU vassal central bank feel the need to say that buying a modicum of physical gold was ‘commercially sensitive’? Probably it’s what they’ve been told to say by the ECB or BIS, but beyond this maybe it’s because they want to the buy the ultimate monetary asset, gold, while hoping that no one will notice. But why would an EU vassal central bank feel the need to say that buying a modicum of physical gold was ‘commercially sensitive’? Probably it’s what they’ve been told to say by the ECB or BIS, but beyond this maybe it’s because they want to the buy the ultimate monetary asset, gold, while hoping that no one will notice. Ireland’s Gold Purchase Data Looking quickly at the data behind the latest gold buying by the Irish central bank, what can we see? Before the gold buying in September and October 2021, Ireland claimed to hold 193,693 fine troy ounces of gold. As the latest Central Bank of Ireland annual report for m2020 - 2021 states, this consist of. “Gold and gold receivables [in the form of] coin stocks held in the Central Bank, together with gold bars held at the Bank of England.” Ongoing stress in China’s property sector is likely to slow down the country’s economic growth next year, a government think-tank has warned. The world’s second-largest economy is expected to have expanded by about 8 percent this year, according to the annual blue book on the economy from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a top government think-tank. It warned that the property downturn was likely to persist and weigh on the expenditures of local governments next year. China’s economy is expected to grow about 5.3 percent in 2022, bringing the average annual growth rate forecast for 2020-2022 to 5.2 percent, CASS said on Monday.
Advisers to the government will recommend that authorities set a 2022 economic growth target lower than the target set for 2021 – or “above 6 percent” – Reuters reported, amid growing headwinds from a property downturn, weakening exports and strict COVID-19 curbs that have impeded consumption. It urged the central government to proactively engineer a soft landing for the property sector, to avoid failed land auctions in big cities and to fend off risks of quickly falling property prices in smaller cities, the report said. China’s move to wean property developers away from rampant borrowing has translated into loan losses for banks and pain in credit markets, as cash-strapped builders fall into distress, increasing risks across the economy. Property behemoth China Evergrande is facing one of the country’s largest defaults, prompting the authorities to step in and oversee risk management at the company.
2021 Formula 1 World Championship Drivers' Standings
Peng Shuai has been “disappeared” by the Chinese Communist Party that holds a monopoly on government power and financial success in the nation. Peng is one of the top female tennis stars in China. It can be assumed she’s being dealt with similarly to other critics of the state like billionaire Jack Ma who went missing for months only to pop up acting like a grey shell of his former self and abstaining from normal business.
A few weeks ago Peng posted to the social network Wiebo accusing a former deputy prime minister of China of sexually assaulting her and a host of other manipulative and unethical behavior. The social media website, closely controlled by the CCP, deleted her post within minutes and Peng hasn’t been seen publicly since. The editor in chief of China’s central news agency posted videos of a forlorn-looking Peng having dinner with her friends several days ago. If you believe those videos are organic, please find my email on my author page because I have an Ostrich farm in Altoona to sell you. If the CCP can abduct and beat down the most famous people in China, then what hope does an ordinary citizen have to disobey the regime? My heart goes out to the Chinese people, but this isn’t exactly breaking news, this is normal operating procedure for a system driven by fear of dissent. My alma mater Loras College, like thousands of other colleges, has a deal with Nike to supply sports gear and branded merchandise. Nike is well known for using abusive labor practices. More than 20 years ago, a Catholic soccer coach at St. John’s University in Minnesota resigned from his position in order to investigate where his team's practice gear was made. Proving the sweat shop rumor true, the coach documented his findings in the documentary “Behind the Swoosh.” Nothing has really changed since it’s premiere. American celebrities are still honored to partner with the brand and there is no guarantee that other brands like Adidas, Under Armor or any other mass produced sports label is producing in an ethical way. I’ve been stewing for years over how personally responsible I am for what’s happening there, considering how many products I own and continue to buy with suspicious production practices. Although there are many options available, they similarly come from unfamiliar countries with reports of poor working conditions. How am I supposed to investigate every product I buy? I can avoid certain brands, but does that even make a difference if the industry standard is to contract with dubious foreign factories? If the consumer on an individual level isn’t responsible for these labor practices, then is our government? Or foreign governments? These are questions that swirl in my head whenever I click “buy now” on Amazon. Setting aside the politically contentious option of production isolation or employing a massive staff of American foreign inspectors, using the market has proven to be an effective way to pressure reform. Public shame is powerful and we should lean in to cancel culture to affect change abroad. Open source information - basically watching social media for leaked videos - is a major tool for this movement. H&M was “canceled,” for using cotton sourced from Uighur slave camps in China and it now has an branded ethical cotton line. Companies, even those with a market stake in China, ultimately are focused on profit. Cancel culture has resulted in social justice for some brands. Now, thanks to accessible information on production practices and with the internet making political organizing easier than ever, consumers have the ability to incentivise fair trade more than ever before. Reposting videos or articles and refraining from buying suspiciously produced items when possible is more powerful than we realize.
Formula 1 STC Saudi Arabian Grand Prix 2021 Qualifying Results
It has just come to light that Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), added 26.35 tonnes of gold to its official monetary gold reserves over a 2 month period between May and June this year, in the process boosting its strategic gold holdings by 20% to a claimed 153.76 tonnes. This addition to the monetary gold holdings of the Monetary Authority of Singapore was first pointed out by the World Gold Council’s Krishan Gopaul in a 25 November tweet, following an update to Singapore’s gold holdings appearing in the IMF’s International Financial Statistics (IFS) database, a source which World Gold Council uses to keep track of central bank and sovereign gold holdings. While it’s unclear why changes to Singapore’s monetary gold holdings from May and June only made it on to the IFS database in recent days, looking more closely, the Monetary Authority of Singapore did ‘reflect’ the May and June gold purchases at the end of July and August, respectively, via updates to the MAS’ monthly “International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity” report, but did not announce or mention the additions specifically.
Before looking at how this substantial gold purchase by Singapore went unnoticed, here are the raw numbers from the MAS site itself. Up until the end of April 2021, Singapore’s central bank (MAS) had been reporting total gold holdings of 4,096,439 fine troy ounces, or 127.42 tonnes, a figure which had not changed since at least 2002 (which is as far back as World Gold Council records go). During May 2021, MAS reports that it added 527,201 ozs (16.4 tonnes) of gold, taking it’s gold holdings as of end of May to 4,623,640 ozs (143.81 tonnes). During June 2021, MAS reports that it added a further 319,801 ozs (9.95 tonnes) of gold, which increased MAS’ gold holdings as of end of June to 4,943,441 ozs (153.76 tonnes). This means that over the two months May and June 2021 inclusive, MAS purchased 847,002 fine troy ounces of gold (26.35 tonnes), and in doing so increased it’s gold holdings by 20.67%, and at the same time rising from 30th to 28th place in the world gold holding rankings. Quietly and Discreetly Each month, the World Gold Council (WGC) updates it’s World Official Gold Holdings spreadsheet (xls) in which it ranks sovereign gold holders largest to smallest based on how many tonnes of monetary gold each country holds. Looking at the latest version of this report (November), it lists Singapore in 30th position with 127.4 tonnes ‘as of August 2021’, and this spreadsheet has not yet been updated (at time of writing) to reflect the 26 tonnes of gold purchased by Singapore in May and June. The WGC ranking methodology states that: “This table was updated in November 2021 and reports data available at that time. Data are taken from the International Monetary Fund’s International Financial Statistics (IFS), November 2021 edition, and other sources where applicable. IFS data are two months in arrears, so holdings are as of September 2021 for most countries, August 2021 or earlier for late reporters”. IMF IFS data will only get updated if and when an individual country informs the IMF of a change to that country’s gold holdings. It appears then that the World Gold Council’s data for Singapore’s gold holdings is based exclusively on the IMF IFS data, and that this IFS data has for some reason only in recent days been updated to reflect Singapore’s gold purchases, which means that for some reason Singapore has only very recently informed the IMF of it’s May-June gold buying. For verification, I ran a data query in the IMF IFS database for search criteria Singapore, for each month of 2021, with the data indicator of “International Reserves and Liquidity, Reserves, Official Reserve Assets, Gold (Including Gold Deposits and, If Appropriate, Gold Swapped), Volume in Millions of Fine Troy Ounces, Fine Troy Ounces”. |
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