Martin Panek

The Israeli-Palestinian war has stirred emotions well beyond the Levant. However, we should approach the censorship of public speech with a cooler head. The British Home Secretary has warned that waving the Palestinian flag might be deemed a criminal act. France has banned pro-Palestinian protests, and so has Germany. The Chief Minister of an Indian state directed the police to address pro-Palestinian statements on social media.

The US Federal Reserve System (Fed) has announced that it will raise interest rates. They have been at zero since the start of the pandemic and since the last recession in 2009, they hit their highest level in 2019. But even in 2019, they were very low, with an effective rate of about 2.5%.

On January 20, 2021, the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic approved an amendment to the Food Act proposed by the SPD, which implements an unprecedented anti-market measure in the form of food sales quotas into Czech legislation.

It is not very often that the Liberální Institut can praise a politician for something. The happier I am that I can do so today, because an entourage of Czech senators - headed by the President of the Senate, Miloš Vystrči, - went in their official capacity to the Republic of China – the country generally known as Taiwan.

In the year of the COVID-19 crisis, Czechs must endure one more month of work for the state. After June 24, 2020, they will start earning money for themselves. Until then, for 175 days, they only work for the state. This is the least free year since 2000.

This year, Prague will be celebrating the 30th spring since the fall of communism. It will also welcome a number of well-known friends of liberty as guests of Liberal Institute and Czech Students for Liberty.

Hearings, even outside the grilling season, are done in a similar fashion. When a committee invites a guest for an “exchange of views”, the way it is handled in the committee is by and large the same. MEPs are lectured by the Committee Chair how to use their five-minute slot and how to ask a question.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Chairman of the European Research Group on the House of Commons, claimed that this treaty would make the UK a vassal state. It is difficult to not agree with him. The last treaties that gave jurisdiction to foreign courts were the aforementioned 19th-century treaties with China.

On June 23, 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU. If Czechs and Slovaks were able to separate an entire country, Czechoslovakia, in six months, surely Whitehall and Berlaymont can find a way to separate one EU member state sooner than in six years.

I’m writing this article from the point of view of a Czech libertarian. It’s meant for foreigners, not necessarily libertarians, to get a better grasp of Czech politics than what they can get from their usual sources of information.