Human Rights

From the Washington Post: "Asked Thursday whether he could envision a situation in which the United States would take military action in Syria without U.N. authorization, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said, 'No, I cannot envision that because, look, as secretary of defense, my greatest responsibility is to make sure when we deploy our men and women in uniform and put them at risk, we not only know what the mission is, but we have the kind of support we need to accomplish that mission.'"

In this video, obtained by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Saudi women blasts religious police for harassing her in a public mall for wearing nail polish:

Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident who briefly took refuge in the U.S. embassy, recently expressed his hope that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would rescue him. "My fervent hope is that it would be possible for me and my family to leave for the U.S. on Hillary Clinton’s plane," Chen told the Daily Beast.

Of the books I have read about China, The Corpse Walker, which I reviewed for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is one of my favorites. Written by Liao Yiwu, The Corpse Walker contains stories about the strange mix of people Liao met while traveling around China and serving time in jail for writing and recording a poem commemorating the victims of the Tiananmen massacre.

Bashar al-Assad’s security forces have brazenly slaughtered more than 10,000 Syrian civilians, and injured or detained tens of thousands more, since the anti-regime protests began in March 2011.

An essay in the latest issue of Foreign Policy by Egyptian-born activist and journalist Mona Eltahawy, “Why Do They Hate Us? The real war on women is in the Middle East,” couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time.

The Chinese Communist party’s preoccupation with its leadership transition, expected to be made final next fall when Xi Jinping becomes general secretary, should not dissuade the U.S. from making a “strong intervention at the highest level” regarding Tibet, according to Lodi Gyari, who spoke yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Yesterday, the White House’s Atrocities Prevention Board held its first meeting. Chaired by NSC staffer Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, the board will “coordinate action across the entire government on stopping genocide and liaise with the NGO community.”

Here's video from Homs, documenting yet more violations of the Kofi Annan-brokered Syrian ceasefire that the Obama administration is celebrating:

Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan sought a ceasefire in Syria between forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the opposition. The Obama administration insists that the ceasefire is holding. "What we saw in the last day or so was a very fragile truce emerge, a very fragile first step," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said yesterday in a press briefing.

In April 2009, four months after taking office, President Obama wooed Latin American leaders and liberal elites at the Summit of the Americas by apologizing for decades of U.S. foreign policy and promising a new era of cooperation. Obama said:

During the decades of international sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, successive U.S. administrations yearned for regime change.