Aid That Does Not Help – The Chronicle Review

Can foreign aid, poorly executed, do more harm than good?

Christopher J. Coyne’s claim that almost all humanitarian projects are ill-conceived, ill-executed, and ill-advised cannot fail to affront. After all, many thousands of Americans rush to help people hit by natural disasters and other overwhelming events.

Nor will it please U.S. government officials who justify interventions—including military ones—as essential for democracy, free markets, and human rights.

Whether in countries torn by civil strife, such as Syria, or ones shattered by an earthquake, such as Haiti, “what are the limits on what we can do?” asks Coyne, a professor of economics at George Mason University.

via Aid That Does Not Help – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Brazil Looks to Break from U.S.-Centric Internet | TIME.com

Can Brazil build a non-US -based internet?

While Brazil isn’t proposing to bar its citizens from U.S.-based Web services, it wants their data to be stored locally as the nation assumes greater control over Brazilians’ Internet use to protect them from NSA snooping.

The danger of mandating that kind of geographic isolation, Meinrath said, is that it could render inoperable popular software applications and services and endanger the Internet’s open, interconnected structure.

The effort by Latin America’s biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from U.S. spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say.

via Brazil Looks to Break from U.S.-Centric Internet | TIME.com.