Search results

This paper aims to present an overview of the current Brazilian broadband policy and identify the key factors that could contribute to its successful implementation and avoid duplication of support and infrastructure and save public money.

First, an exhaustive survey was carried out on all broadband programs active in Brazil, listing the main objectives, beneficiaries and budget. As a qualitative and quantitative method, FODG (fragmentation, overlap, duplication and gaps) analysis was applied to the 17 programs identified, and then a case study of overlapping was presented. Finally, the Monte Carlo simulation was used to estimate the potential financial benefits resulting from correcting the overlapping broadband programs.

Results show that the current broadband policy implemented in Brazil has signs of fragmentation, overlap and duplication between programs and a great focus on the dimensions of deployment and universalization of broadband service, to the detriment of those related to meaningful communication.

The scarcity and incongruity of panel data are the main research limitations for a more extensive comparative study.

The findings indicate the need to implement a national broadband strategy with a long-term vision, instrumentalized in a plan, and multisectoral and interfederative coordination based on efficient planning.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to compare broadband programs in Brazil from various perspectives of public policy and estimate financial benefits using a mathematical model.

President Bill Clinton has had many opponents and enemies, most of whom come from the political right wing. Clinton supporters contend that these opponents, throughout the Clinton presidency, systematically have sought to undermine this president with the goal of bringing down his presidency and running him out of office; and that they have sought non‐electoral means to remove him from office, including Travelgate, the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, the Filegate controversy, and the Monica Lewinsky matter. This bibliography identifies these and other means by presenting citations about these individuals and organizations that have opposed Clinton. The bibliography is divided into five sections: General; “The conspiracy stream of conspiracy commerce”, a White House‐produced “report” presenting its view of a right‐wing conspiracy against the Clinton presidency; Funding; Conservative organizations; and Publishing/media. Many of the annotations note the links among these key players.

Officially, of course, the world is now post-imperial. The Q’ing and Ottoman empires fell on the eve of World War I, and the last Leviathans of Europe's imperial past, the Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist empires, lumbered into the grave soon after. Tocsins of liberation were sounded on all sides, in the name of democracy (Wilson) and socialism (Lenin). Later attempts to remake and proclaim empires – above all, Hitler's annunciation of a “Third Reich” – now seem surreal, aberrant, and dystopian. The Soviet Union, the heir to the Tsarist empire, found it prudent to call itself a “federation of socialist republics.” Mao's China followed suit. Now, only a truly perverse, contrarian regime would fail to deploy the rhetoric of democracy.