A few blocks from the White House, what the State Department defines as a modern form of slavery is taking place every night in the form of sex trafficking. A CNN series — called The Freedom Project – recently highlighted the trafficking network, a multi-million dollar business thriving on women and children, most of whom are immigrants. “If President Obama had walked out his front door at two or three in the morning, he would go two blocks away, and he would see traffickers forcing girls and women out into …
June 10 marked an important step forward in Colombia’s efforts to build enduring democratic security and pursue justice: Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, signed the Victims’ and Land Restitution Law. In the past, violence perpetrated primarily by paramilitary groups and guerrillas displaced 4 million Colombians, forcing them off as much as 16 million acres of land. The Victims’ Law has the potential to provide aid to those who have lost relatives or a significant amount of land as a result of violence in the past. The reparations will vary depending …
The Obama Administration recently made its strongest statement yet in support of free trade agreements. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on the challenges of implementing trade agreements: It does mean you have to take on entrenched interests and respond to concerns about new competition, while making the case over and over again as to why the people in your country will benefit from expanded trade. I know this is difficult. Although I am out of politics now, I understand how hard it is to tell a longtime supporter something …
Just weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton complained to Congress that America is losing the information war against Al Qaeda, China and Russia, it appears that Clinton’s own State Department is one of the impediments to success. For more than 18 months, the State Department has hoarded nearly $30 million, appropriated by Congress for Internet freedom measures across the globe. While that money sits in a State Department bank account, repressive regimes are blocking Internet access and restricting information. China and Russia have even developed their own English-language broadcasts. What’s …
March 8, 2011, marked the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which the U.N. commemorated following its annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The U.S. State Department spared few bells and whistles in its celebration of this milestone. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton penned an opinion piece published on the Bloomberg Newswire on “investing in women” as a strategy for economic growth. With its melodramatic title, “Women’s Work-More Earn-Less Plan Hurts,” the op-ed relied on fuzzy numbers and typical liberal assumptions, touting U.S. efforts to …
Hillary Clinton will be feted this Friday at a “world summit” event hosted by Tina Brown, the editor in chief of Newsweek. This week Brown relaunched the magazine with a cover story featuring Hillary as one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World.” Clinton and other public figures such as Christiane Amanpour and Nancy Pelosi as well as pop culture icons like Mia Farrow and Susan Sarandon own the message on strong women. They embody the identification of so-called “women’s issues” with left-leaning politics. But conservatives don’t have to …
News flash: “We are in an information war, and we’re losing that war.” This source for this conclusion was not one of the at least 15 reports on U.S. public diplomacy that have appeared over the last decade; it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2. For years, the State Department has been in denial, and Clinton’s admission of failure is therefore particularly welcome. Maybe we can now have an adult conversation about what needs to be done to reverse the …
Today, representatives of Iran and the P5 + 1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) convened for talks on Iran’s nuclear program in Geneva. These are the first face-to-face talks on that subject for 14 months. Iran’s unpredictable regime broke off talks last year after initially accepting “in principle” a nuclear deal that would have sent much of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium out of the country in exchange for more highly enriched uranium to fuel the Tehran research reactor. This time around, Western diplomats …
On the way to a defense ministerial in Bolivia, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was asked about Iran’s growing presence in South America, particularly in Bolivia and Venezuela. He answered most cautiously: Bolivia, obviously, can have relationships with any country in the world that it wishes to. … But I think Bolivia needs to be mindful of the number of United Nations Security Council resolutions that have been passed with respect to Iran’s behavior. Gates said exactly what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last year. Nevertheless, at the defense …
In their most recent op-ed in The Washington Post. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates assert that “Until a new treaty comes into force, our inspectors will not have access to Russian missile silos and the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals will lack the stability that comes with a rigorous inspection regime.” Obviously, this is an effort by the Obama Administration to push the Senate to vote on the treaty during the “lame duck” session of the current Congress. But there are many reasons why …
