‘In an innovative society, people must be free to take unpopular positions, disagree with conventional wisdom, know they are safe to challenge abuses of authority’: Hillary Clinton affirmed her support for dissidence and human rights protection in a speech at Moscow State University.  ‘That’s why attacks on journalists and human rights activists are such a great concern, because it is a threat to progress‘, she is quoted as saying in the New York Times.  Click here for a video of Clinton discussing these issues on Russian radio.  Activists were reportedly disappointed to see a statue of ‘gay icon‘ Walt Whitman unveiled by the US Secretary of State alongside gay-demonizing Mayor Yury Luzhkov, with no mention of rights for homosexuals in Russia.