World Leaders, Intelligence Agencies, and Nuclear Deals: Last Week In Liberty 9/11/22
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Last Week in Liberty, where we go over the news stories of the past week from a Liberty-minded perspective. We have some big ones this week, so we will jump right in:
As I’m sure you have heard, Queen Elizabeth passed away this past week at the age of 96. She had been the Queen of England for about as long as anyone can remember, which equates to 70 years. She enters into the record books as the second-longest ruling monarch in recorded history, topped only by Louis XIV, who reigned for 72 years. Those editors on Wikipedia sure are fast.
There’s nothing I can say about her or her life that hasn’t already been said in the countless opinion pieces, op-eds, and newscaster eulogies over the past several days, so I’ll just leave you with this fact I found interesting: every single iteration of James Bond, from the original books to the movies, have all served under the same Queen. I guess there’s new management in town now.
In happier news, the Saudi government is actively encouraging its citizens to snitch on their neighbors for dissident activity. In a report from The Libertarian Institute, an app called “Kollona Amn”, which roughly translates to “We Are All Security” in Arabic, is actively encouraging people to report their friends, family, and neighbors for any speech or activity that could be seen as critical of the Saudi regime. The report lists several individuals that have already been imprisoned on the basis of the app, and there will likely be many more in the days to come. Especially in the post-COVID era, it isn’t difficult to imagine how this model might be adopted by other governments around the world as well.
Shockingly (or unshockingly, depending on much you know about tech companies willingness to go along with human rights violations), the app is still listed on the Apple and Google app stores. Will they remove it? Probably not. Will they continue to turn a blind eye to invasions of privacy? Almost certainly.
In other news, US Intelligence agencies have been slowly infiltrating the ranks of social media companies. In a story from MintPress News, a recently released promotional video from Facebook, they identify a man only named as “Aaron” as their “Senior Product Policy Manager for Misinformation”. That job title alone would be Orwellian enough, but to top it all off, Aaron is a former CIA agent.
This is not an isolated incident either. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others have all been hiring individuals other the last several years with ties to intelligence agencies. Are all of these people undercover spies with secret blood oaths to the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover? Not at all. However, they come from agencies that have clear agendas and are likely to further those agendas at their new employers as well. Many of these former intelligence agency employees also occupy positions similar to Aaron’s, where they will have an instrumental hand in determining what content is allowed on these platforms. As the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story indicates, these agencies have very clear political agendas. If, hypothetically speaking, there was another Snowden-esque leak that embarrassed the intelligence agencies, its hard to believe that these former agents would have no opinions about that content being allowed on the platforms that they influence.
After rounds of negotiations, on-again and off-again talks, it seems as if the potential revival of the Iran Nuclear Deal is finally dead. Signed under Obama, and killed under Trump, the Biden Administration initially showed little interest in bringing the deal back but eventually came around to negotiations with the Iranians. At several points, a deal seemed close, but there was always one or two sticking points that both sides could not come to an agreement on. AntiWar.com reports that the US is telling the Israelis that the deal is off for good. As for the reasons why a deal could not be reached, we can only speculate. However, a smart guess would be that the Iranians wanted more assurance that the U.S. wouldn’t just pull out of the deal again as soon as a Republican president took office, which the Biden Administration would not or could not do. In any case, it seems as if the JCPOA is now DOA.
The value in the Iran Nuclear Deal was never really about preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapons program. Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and has stated multiple times they believe that nuclear weapons are a violation of Islamic Law. Should we trust them on that basis? Not at all, but they have historically made no real moves towards developing and making nukes, despite what the Israel lobby would have you believe. The value of the deal was that it took any pretense of war with Iran off the table and ensured that everyone had to play nice. Given how close the US came to war with Iran after the assassination of General Soleimani, removing the threat of war was reason enough to have the Iran Nuclear Deal in place. The world was better with it, and it doesn’t look like its ever coming back.
In economic news, the European Central Bank increased their key deposit rate in a historically large jump from 0% to .75%. For those of who without economic backgrounds, this essentially means that interest rates in the Eurozone are going to be increasing. The ECB had previously been reluctant to raise rates in the past, but appears to have changed their tune, as they signaled that additional rate hikes may be coming as well. Many had speculated that a large part of the ECB’s unwillingness to raise rates is because many European governments, such as Italy and Greece, and already drowning in debt with interest rates on their proverbial floor. If they raise rates, those governments might find themselves having to make some very difficult decisions as their cost of debt increases. In any case, it is a situation to watch, especially with Europe already being in a fragile state with the Russo-Ukraine war.
Here are a few other links from the past week that I found interesting and you might as well:
- Reason Magazine with an expose about how the FBI constantly creates the very terrorist plots they ostensibly exist to stop
- The Mercatus Center with a full study on how the 2020 bailouts to Airline companies have (like all government bailouts do) backfired and made the entire industry worse off as a result.
- Tyler Cowen argues that Imposter Syndrome is actually a good thing
Quote of the Week:
“Socialism is an alternative to capitalism as potassium cyanide is an alternative to water.” - Ludwig von Mises
That’s it for this week. If we’re all still here, I’ll be back next week. See you then, friends.