It’s involved a lot of work from a lot of people, but the Cato Institute’s Center for Promotion of Human Rights is pleased to announce six new projects, involving seven languages, to promote libertarian ideas and policies around the world. The ideas of liberty are now being promoted by the Cato Institute in:
Arabic
Spanish
Russian
Kurdish
Persian
Chinese
Portuguese
French
English
and throughout Africa in English, Swahili, Portuguese, French, and Arabic
And…coming soon, Azeri!
(Cato is already working in one of the most hostile of environments: American universities.)
The projects involve book publishing, syndication of articles to newspapers and magazines, podcasting, websites, video, seminars for students, policy conferences, lecture tours, public forums, and much, much more.
I was in London last week and sat next to John Fund of the Wall Street Journal at the Stockholm Network dinner where I presented an award. He discussed our programs in his WSJ column:
While the Stockholm Network focuses on Europe, that doesn’t mean that free-market think tanks in developing countries are being ignored. This week the Cato Institute is launching a series of international Web sites to build support for the ideas of liberty and to promote the work of local think tanks. Web sites in French, Portuguese, Chinese, Kurdish, African languages and Persian will join existing Cato Web sites in Russian, Spanish and Arabic.
The project is the work of Tom Palmer, who 20 years ago as a young libertarian scholar smuggled photocopiers into the Soviet Bloc so dissidents could produce their own samizdat publications. “In many countries there is a clear need for private efforts not subject to or tied to any government entity,” he told me. “Clearly, the government-led efforts aren’t doing such a hot job of promoting the ideas of liberty at the moment.”
Free Order….in Portuguese
I continue to be amazed by your work, Dr. Palmer.
Congratulations to you and your co-workers in these undertakings.
Congratulations Dr.Palmer!
Azeri coming… Lucky Azerbaidjan and all who speak Azeri.
Congrats!
Fantastic work! Cato folks and all who contributed should be proud. It’s an impressive accomplishment.
You’ve done good, Dr. Palmer.
Excellent news Tom, congratulations!
…and yes, Azeri coming soon too.
Hi Tom,
Well done on the news. On another note, how did you smuggle in the photocopiers?
Luggage and boxes. Even then, desktop photocopiers were not very large. We’ll have to talk about it sometime.
Did you see this? http://blog.mises.org/archives/007539.asp
What an idiot.
What a great achievement this is. You are to be congratulated.
And pay no mind to the idiots.
Uh…didn’t Tibor Machan write a book with “Human Rights” in the title, like, 30 years ago? I hope no one whined about it then. Or is he a cryptosocialist too?
Anyway, great work. Let’s hope it spreads the ideas of liberty (and obsoletes Voice of America).
These are excellent projects, and deserve to be promoted. I’ve heard students from Africa, China, and the former Soviet Union all say the same thing when they first come across Bastiat, or the Austrians, or similar writers: “This stuff is astounding. Why haven’t these ideas been spread here before? If only people understood these ideas, things could be so different here.”
Cato’s international efforts are the kinds of activities that make me happy to donate, it’s money well spent. I encourage every reader of your blog to send in a few dollars, rubles, etc. to help out.