During recent testimony in front of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee Secretary of State Clinton made a splash when she commented, "I remember having an Afghan general tell me that the only thing he thought about Americans is that all the men wrestled and the women walked around in bikinis because the only TV he ever saw was Baywatch and World Wide Wrestling.” She went on to comment about the effect American media has on the image of the U.S. abroad. Predictably, the significance of her remarks were lost in the usual cacophony of howls about Al Jazeera and Russian media.

I read the news on a friend’s Facebook page (one of my primary sources of news and analysis out of Egypt these days), that a coalition of Egyptian youth groups had rejected an invitation to meet with U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Thank you, Aaron. And thanks to all of the volunteers past and present for answering the call to service. I’m honored to be part of the Peace Corps’s golden anniversary and to celebrate all its contributions to the world.

In her time as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has made supporting internet freedom a core tenet of U.S. foreign policy. Two major speeches, months of debate, and a wave of Middle East protests making use of online technologies later, it’s clear that discussion about internet freedom as a U.S. foreign policy priority is here to stay.

There continues to be an ongoing debate about how to regulate the Internet. This conundrum arises from two questions. Is the Internet a platform for old ideas to be transformed in a new medium, or rather a medium for all-together new paradigms of thought?

APDS Blogger: Melanie Ciolek

The sudden onset of the Arab spring and winter has reminded us yet again that America doesn't run the world. And the country must be wary, in the elegant phrasing of the late Reinhold Niebuhr, of its own dreams of managing history.