Analyses
Ramin Jahanbegloo: “The Iranian People Are Tired of Dying Because of the Ayatollahs”
Giancarlo Bosetti 21 June 2025
Ramin Jahanbegloo, one of Iran’s preeminent intellectual figures, attends the conference ‘Peace, Democracy and Human Rights in Asia’ held under the auspices of former Czech president Vaclav Havel on September 11, 2009, in Prague. Other guests of this conference are Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, former President of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Frederik Willem de Klerk, Rabiya Kadeer, head of the World Uighur Congress, Robert Menard of France, former Secretary-General of Reporters Without Bord and others philosophers and disidents.AFP PHOTO MICHAL CIZEK (Photo by MICHAL CIZEK / AFP)
  • Egypt, Repression of Dissent and Free Speech Continues
    Federica Zoja 12 February 2014
    The weekly magazine The Economist reported on the current repression in Egypt, a country addressing the effects of a second lethal revolutionary euphoria, saying, “the re-emboldened security services have increasingly been hammering the whole gamut of opposition, from secular reformers to every type of Islamist.” The enthusiasm, with decisive support provided by the army, that had resulted in the overthrow of the Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on July 30 2013, must now deal with an abrupt awakening.
  • No to Thomas Friedman’s “Same War, Different Country”
    Mohammed Hashas 9 September 2013
    Thomas Friedman wrote on New York Times on 07 September 2013 a piece entitled “Same War, Different Country”, in which he justifies the US (coming) intervention in Syria after the Assad army has been accused of using chemical weapons against civilians on 21 August 2013. While Assad’s brutal force has clearly caused terrible damage to the country and its people since 2011, I seize the occasion to make few notes about Friedman’s reasoning for going into a war for that matter. Some earlier solution could have been found, any time before August 2013. A military intervention does not seem the right solution, and the reasoning that fuels it seems the most inadequate and unreasonable.
  • Presidential Elections in Iran. All Set to Choose Ahmadinejad’s Successor
    Antonella Vicini 14 June 2013
    After the final frantic hours of election campaigning, Tehran and the rest of the country now await voting results. Since 8 a.m. over 50 million people have been called upon to choose between six candidates, Said Jalili, Baqer Qalibaf, Ali Akbar Velayati, Hassan Rouhani, Mohsen Rezaei and Mohammad Gharazi. Of these, according to Interior Ministry data published on Sunday, 1.5 million will be voting for the very first time, meaning they turned eighteen after June 2009. There are 60,000 polling station and in Tehran, which has 14 million inhabitants in its constituency, there are 6,000 polling stations set up in mosques, schools, banks and even mobile ones with 12,000 booths.
  • Safe to speak? The challenges of democracy and press freedom in Turkey
    Emanuela Pergolizzi 5 June 2013
    On March 18 a symbolic funeral march was staged in front of Turkey’s historic left-wing newspaper, the Milliyet, for the silent “death” of one of its most honorable authors. Hasan Cemal, 69 years, “dies” as a provocative columnist after having defended the disclosure of the minutes from a meeting between the representatives of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and PKK’s leader Abdullah Öcalan. The leaked record helped the nationalist front to criticize the government’s negotiation with the Kurdish leader. “If this is journalism, down with it!” cried Prime Minister Erdoğan, and the writer was suddenly suspended.
  • Orientalism in Africa? The ICC and the case of Laurent Gbagbo
    Nicoletta Fagiolo 30 May 2013
    Let us imagine for a moment that at the November 1945 Nuremburg trials, which were held so as to condemn those responsible for instigating World War II and the Holocaust, a Prosecutor decided, by distorting the historical account of the wars’ events, to press charges for crimes against humanity during WWII against Franklin Delano Roosevelt[1]. There were surely crimes committed by American soldiers fighting the Nazi regime, yet would this make Roosevelt a just target for crimes committed during World War II? A similar historical and thus juridical incoherence is currently being played out at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague in the case the Prosecutor vs Laurent Gbagbo.
  • The Global Great Game and Dialogue through Nongovernmental Actors
    Raffaele Marchetti, Luiss University 22 May 2013
    In the world there are four and only four great powers. They are China, the EU, Russia, and the USA. Beyond the traditional economic and military capabilities, what makes an important power a great power is, arguably, its ability to project a world vision. A precondition for this is the ability to formulate a master frame of world order. I claim that, as of today, only four great powers have developed a fairly sophisticated model of world order and have attempted, with a certain degree of success, to spread its content worldwide so to make their national normative projection global.
  • placeholder
    Migration and Identities in the Globalized World
    Zygmunt Bauman 13 May 2013
    Claiming that reason and our normative concepts change together with the human practices and the challenges that the human condition and social reality are positing, Zygmunt Bauman maintains that politics today has to accommodate the fact of multiculturalism brought about by globalization. Given the changing patterns of global migration, diasporas and communities nowadays extend over many sovereign territories and bring to the political agenda the issue of ‘art of living with a difference’. The challenge we are facing is to balance the yearning for individual freedom of self-creation with its in-built inconclusiveness, uncertainty, hesitation and contradictions under the liquid-modern conditions with the equally strong desire of security that only communities can offer. The answer to this challenge is the creation of a truly global public space, in which we can renegotiate our multiple identities and restructure networks on the basis of global interdependencies and interactions.
  • placeholder
    Translating Truth
    Maeve Cooke, University College Dublin 9 April 2013
    The article considers the role of translation in encounters between religious citizens and secular citizens. It follows Habermas in holding that translations re-articulate religious contents in a way that facilitates learning. Since he underplays the complexities of translation, it takes some steps beyond Habermas towards developing a more adequate account. Its main thesis is that the required account of translation must keep sight of the question of truth. Focusing on inspirational stories of exemplary figures and acts, it contends that a successful translation makes truth appear anew; further, that it is the central role of truth in translation that enables the prospect of learning from the inspirational messages of religion. By highlighting truth as the point of continuity between intercultural learning and learning from religion, it provides support for the thesis that encounters between religious and secular citizens are a subset of intercultural encounters and, as such, contexts of possible mutual learning.
  • Egypt, A Chronicle from Port Said
    Giuseppe Acconcia 18 March 2013
    Shortly after the celebrations of the Egyptian popular uprisings’ second anniversary, the announcement of the verdict of the death penalty for 21 thugs and Green Eagles, supporters of the al-Masry football club, led to harsh reactions in Port Said. They were charged for armed murders, robbery, intimidation and of having planned the 2012 massacre of the al-Ahly supporters. Tens of people were killed, clashes broke out between relatives of the people sentenced and the police and the Port Said prison was besieged. However, among the people sentenced there were no police officers. Henceforth the Egyptian Courts have been very indulgent with policemen, including the six officials from the Interior Ministry, accused of having ordered to shut out demonstrators during the 2011 upheaval.
Load more
SUPPORT OUR WORK

 

Please consider giving a tax-free donation to Reset this year

Any amount will help show your support for our activities

In Europe and elsewhere
(Reset DOC)


In the US
(Reset Dialogues)


x