PermalinkDemocracy classics
Universality of Basic Rights
…This evening I will assume that I am having a dialogue with all my fellow human beings in the world. Whatever I say about Kenya is an application to our situation of truths which are valid everywhere. I wish to use John Rawls’s concept of “original position” in his A Theory ...
Iran’s Jewish Rorschach Test
This past March, I stood alongside hundreds of others lining Madison Avenue to watch New York’s Persian Day Parade. I am not the parade-watching type, but nostalgia for the country of my birth at times moves me to behave in uncharacteristic ways, like cheering for mediocre trumpeters and papier-mâché monuments. ...
Testimony of an Ex-Censor
In 1987, the periodical Index on Censorship published an account of how censorship works in Syria. The article was written by a journalist who had once worked as a censor in the Syrian Ministry of Information. In the article, the journalist describes the process by which the state controls all ...
The Power of the Powerless
Vaclav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, and former dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic. His involvement with the civic initiative Charter 77 brought him fame as the leader of the opposition in Czechoslovakia. “The Power ...
Election Rigging and How to Fight It
On April 22nd, 2009, Gozaar published an article by Daniel Calingaert (Deputy Director of Programs at Freedom House and Professorial Lecturer at American University in Washington D.C.) entitled “Election Rigging and How to Fight It.” Keyhan, a daily, state-run newspaper in Iran, has mentioned Daniel Calingaert and his article in ...A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray
Note: George Orwell (1903-1950) was an acclaimed British novelist and journalist. He wrote prolifically and is best remembered as the author of two influential novels of the 20th century: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Animal Farm satirizes the way in which the original ideals of the Russian Revolution were betrayed ...Bread, Freedom, and Free Enterprise
Note: Sidney Hook was a prominent intellectual and philosopher from New York, who studied under John Dewey, the founder of [the school of] pragmatism in American philosophy. Hook believed that when totalitarianism occurred, it was very likely because good men lacked the courage and conviction to stand up against it. ...How Soccer Explains the World
The following is the English introduction to Franklin Foer's book, How Soccer Explains the World. The rest of the text is hosted in Persian and can be accessed here. Franklin Foer is the editor of The New Republic (a leading weekly American magazine). He published the book How Soccer Explains the ...Economy in a Free Society
The following is the Introduction to Ezra Solomon's Economy in a Free Society. The rest of the text is in Persian and can be found here. I. Introduction What is economics? One may define it as the science that deals with the production, distribution and consumption of commodities (which includes both ...
Library highlights
Persian classics
