Top 5 Things wrong with US AID Social Media Plot Against Cuba

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/04/things-social-against.html

Top 5 Things wrong with US AID Social Media Plot Against Cuba
By Juan Cole | Apr. 4, 2014

~snip~

1. The operation will make developing countries who need US economic aid chary about accepting it from USAID, since leaders will fear that the agency may be trying to overthrow them.

2. The US just gave fodder to conspiracy theories in places like Egypt, where the 2011 overthrow of dictator Hosni Mubarak is often blamed by the Egyptian Right wing on American covert intervention. Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey tried to ban Twitter over such suspicions of outside manipulation. The US is undermining pro-democracy movements among young people around the world.

3. Egypt, Russia and other authoritarian states have been prosecuting NGOs for accepting monetary aid from outside the country. This operation will confirm those countries in their suspicion of US government grants to rights groups, thus damaging the latter and strengthening paranoid policies in the Global South as well.

4. The US government had no business gathering personal data like cell phone numbers from its faux Twitter. The NSA has already deeply harmed the internet with its massive electronic surveillance, including of Americans residing in the US. The internet requires a certain amount of public trust to function and the US government is undermining it.