News Release

December 1, 2005

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Liberty on the Web
Cato Launches Russian and Arabic Web Sites

WASHINGTON -- The Cato Institute has launched an ambitious new venture to promote individual liberty and limited government in the Russian and Arabic-speaking areas of the world. Cato.ru and Misbahalhurriyya.org (also Lampofliberty.org) are delivering the kind of information and analysis from a libertarian perspective that Cato.org has been delivering in English since 1995 and Elcato.org has been delivering in Spanish since 1998.

Both of the new web sites offer an array of commentaries, policy studies, news updates, and full-length books, such as translations of F. A. Hayek's important 1944 book The Road to Serfdom. In addition to translations of materials from English, each offers material originally written in Russian or in Arabic by libertarian commentators from the regions. The op-eds are syndicated to Russian and Arabic newspapers, which both spreads the ideas of liberty and provides a mechanism for promoting visits to the web sites. Columnists for the Cato.ru have included Yaroslav Romanchuk, a leader of the opposition in Belarus, Andrei Piyankovsky of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Moscow, and Andrei Illarionov, chief economic advisor to President Putin. Shafiq Ghabra, president of the American University of Kuwait, writes a regular column for Misbahalhurriyya.org.

All four of Cato's main web sites are frequently updated and together offer an enormous library of material on toleration, respect for individual rights, and free markets.

Cato's Russian website was made possible by a grant from the Templeton Foundation, and the Arabic website is an initiative of Cato's Jack Byrne Project on Middle East Liberty.