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No veto proof majority for Iran sanctions now but it is within grasp. It’s a top
priority for the GOP and Obama’s lobbying is empirically critical to prevent it
Everett, 12/29/14 (Burgess, “GOP to move on Iran sanctions legislation,” http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/gop-senateiran-sanctions-bill-113852.html, JMP)
Congressional Republicans are setting
up early challenges to President Barack Obama in January,
preparing to move forward quickly on new Iran sanctions legislation following on the heels of a vote on a bill
approving the Keystone XL Pipeline.
The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to vote on legislation that would impose additional economic penalties on Iran in the
first few weeks of next year, according to Republican senators and aides. The starting point would be a bill written a year ago by
Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) that managed to accrue the support of 60 senators in both parties despite
opposition from the White House.
Kirk and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said over the weekend that an Iran vote could occur in January after a vote on Keystone,
which is the first bill the Republican Senate will take up and is also opposed by President Barack Obama.
Republican leaders have not yet finalized their legislative schedule, but the bipartisan Iran proposal is supported by incoming
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and all of his leadership team. And taking a confrontational stance
toward Iran as diplomatic negotiations continue with a group of Western nations appears to be top of mind for the
new Senate Republican majority.
“It’s an important issue, a priority , and has wide bipartisan support in the Senate,” said McConnell spokesman
Don Stewart on Monday.
The Republican House overwhelmingly passed a sanctions bill targeting Iran’s energy industry in 2013, though that legislation was
never taken up by the Senate.
The Kirk-Menendez legislation would tighten economic sanctions on Iran if the country walks away from ongoing negotiations over
nuclear enrichment or reneges on an interim agreement that has frozen some of Iran’s nuclear activities in return for unwinding
some sanctions. In November, Western and Iranians negotiators extended that interim deal until July as they attempt to hammer out
a permanent deal that would curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions and relax sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy and isolated the
country globally.
A separate bill written by Graham and incoming Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) would require Congress
to approve of any final deal and could figure into the GOP’s plans next year.
“You will see a very vigorous Congress when it comes to Iran. You will see a Congress making sure that sanctions are real and will
be reimposed at the drop of a hat. You will see a Congress wanting to have any say about a final deal,” Graham said at a weekend
press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A dozen returning Senate Democrats officially signed on in support of the Kirk-Menendez
legislation in 2014, though President Barack Obama’s administration convinced other on-the-fence
members to hold off public support after warning that voting on that legislation could upset ongoing
negotiations. While the Kirk-Menendez legislation could very well accrue 60 votes to clear the Senate in the new Congress,
Democratic aides on Monday declined to estimate the level of enthusiasm for fresh sanctions in the new year.
Indeed, the largest challenge for both supporters of Iran sanctions and the Keystone pipeline is
building
veto-proof levels of support in Congress that would require dozens of Democrats in the House
and Senate to oppose the White House. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in November that new
penalties during negotiations would be “counterproductive.”
Garnering 67 votes in the Senate for the Kirk-Menendez bill could be a steep task , given the defeat of
several moderate Democratic supporters, opposition from Obama and lack of unanimous support
in the GOP. But Kirk said on Sunday in an interview with Fox news that he expects “really bipartisan votes”
and predicted having a “shot of even getting to a veto-proof majority in the Senate.”
Plan costs capital, tradesoff with rest of agenda
David Downs, journalist, “What Obama and the Feds Will Do about Washington and Colorado Legalization—Expert Analysis,”
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONCILE, 11—13—12, http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2012/11/13/what-obama-and-the-feds-will-doabout-washington-and-colorado-legalization-expert-analysis/
Perhaps. But there are plenty of other caveats to consider. As much as he may want to reform drug laws on a
personal level, Obama is nonetheless hampered by the heritage of an ugly racial history entwined
with those same laws since their inception (see discussion above). Given this history, the president would risk
an extraordinary level of political capital on any proposed easing of federal law through legislative channels;
and other issues, such as healthcare, the environment, and above all jobs appear to rank higher on his list of
legislative priorities.
That directly trades-off with the political capital necessary to prevent a veto
override on Iran and sustain the deal. Failure will spur prolif and war with Iran.
Beauchamp, 11/6/14 --- B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from Brown University and an M.Sc in International
Relations from the London School of Economics, former editor of TP Ideas and a reporter for ThinkProgress.org. He previously
contributed to Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish at Newsweek/Daily Beast, and has also written for Foreign Policy and Tablet magazines,
now writes for Vox (Zack, “How the new GOP majority could destroy Obama's nuclear deal with Iran,”
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/6/7164283/iran-nuclear-deal-congress, JMP)
There is one foreign policy issue on which the GOP's takeover of the Senate could have huge ramifications, and beyond just the
US: Republicans are likely to try to torpedo President Obama's ongoing efforts to reach a nuclear deal
with Iran. And they just might pull it off.
November 24 is the latest deadline for a final agreement between the United States and Iran over the latter's nuclear program.
That'll likely be extended, but it's a reminder that the negotiations could soon come to a head. Throughout his presidency,
Obama has prioritized these negotiations ; he likely doesn't want to leave office without having made a deal.
Congress doesn't like the deal, or just wants to see Obama lose, it has the power to torpedo
it by imposing new sanctions on Iran. Previously, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used procedural powers to stop
this from happening and save the nuclear talks. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may not be so kind, and he may
have the votes to destroy an Iran deal. If he tries, we could see one of the most important
legislative fights of Obama's presidency.
But if
Why Congress can bully Obama on Iran sanctions
At their most basic level, the international negotiations over Iran's nuclear program (they include several other nations, but the US is
the biggest player) are a tit-for-tat deal. If Iran agrees to place a series of verifiable limits on its nuclear development, then the United
States and the world will relax their painful economic and diplomatic sanctions on Tehran.
"The regime of economic sanctions against Iran is arguably the most complex the United States and the international community
have ever imposed on a rogue state," the Congressional Research Service's Dianne Rennack writes. To underscore the point,
Rennack's four-page report is accompanied by a list of every US sanction on Iran that goes on for 23 full pages.
The US's sanctions are a joint Congressional-executive production. Congress puts strict limits on Iran's ability to export oil and do
business with American companies, but it gives the president the power to waive sanctions if he thinks it's in the American national
interest. "In the collection of laws that are the statutory basis for the U.S. economic sanctions regime on Iran," Rennack writes, "the
President retains, in varying degrees, the authority to tighten and relax restrictions."
The key point here is that Congress gave Obama that power — which means they can take it back.
"You could see a bill in place that makes it harder for the administration to suspend sanctions,"
Ken Sofer, the Associate Director for National Security and International Policy at the Center for
American Progress (where I worked for a little under two years, though not with Sofer directly), says. "You could also see a
bill that says the president can't agree to a deal unless it includes the following things or [a bill] forcing a congressional vote on any
deal."
Imposing new sanctions on Iran wouldn't just stifle Obama's ability to remove existing sanctions,
it would undermine Obama's authority to negotiate with Iran at all, sending the message to Tehran
that Obama is not worth dealing with because he can't control his own foreign policy.
So if Obama wants to make a deal with Iran, he needs Congress to play ball . But it's not clear that Mitch
McConnell's Senate wants to.
Congress could easily use its authority to kill an Iran deal
To understand why the new Senate is such a big deal for congressional action on sanctions, we have to jump back a year.
In November 2013, the Obama administration struck an interim deal with Iran called the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA). As part of the
JPOA, the US agreed to limited, temporary sanctions relief in exchange for Iran limiting nuclear program components like uranium
production.
Congressional Republicans, by and large, hate the JPOA deal. Arguing that the deal didn't place sufficiently serious limits on Iran's
nuclear growth, the House passed new sanctions on Iran in December. (There is also a line of argument, though often less explicit,
that the Iranian government cannot be trusted with any deal at all, and that US policy should focus on coercing Iran into submission
or unseating the Iranian government entirely.) Senate Republicans, joined by more hawkish Democrats, had the votes to pass a
similar bill. But in February, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid killed new Iran sanctions, using the Majority Leader's power to block
consideration of the sanctions legislation to prevent a vote.
McConnell blasted Reid's move. "There is no excuse for muzzling the Congress on an issue of this importance to our own national
security," he said. So now that McConnell holds the majority leader's gavel, it will remove that procedural roadblock that stood
between Obama and new Iran sanctions.
To be clear, it's far from guaranteed that Obama will be able to reach a deal with Iran at all; negotiations could fall apart long before
they reach the point of congressional involvement. But if he does reach a deal, and Congress doesn't like the terms, then they'll be
able to kill it by passing new sanctions legislation, or preventing Obama from temporarily waiving the ones on the books.
no mistake — imposing new sanctions or limiting Obama's authority to waive the current
ones would kill any deal. If Iran can't expect Obama to follow through on his promises to relax
sanctions, it has zero incentive to limit its nuclear program. "If Congress adopts sanctions," Iranian Foreign
And make
Minister Javad Zarif told Time last December, "the entire deal is dead."
Moreover, it
could fracture the international movement to sanction Iran . The United States is far
from Iran's biggest trading partner, so it depends on international cooperation in order to ensure
the sanctions bite. If it looks like the US won't abide by the terms of a deal, the broad-based
international sanctions regime could collapse . Europe, particularly, might decide that going along with the
sanctions is no longer worthwhile.
"Our ability to coerce Iran is largely based on whether or not the international community thinks that we are the ones that are being
constructive and [Iranians] are the ones that being obstructive," Sofer says. "If they don't believe that, then the international
sanctions regime falls apart."
This could be one of the biggest fights of Obama's last term
It's true that Obama could veto any Congressional efforts to blow up an Iran deal with sanctions.
But a two-thirds vote could override any veto — and, according to Sofer, an override is entirely within
the realm of possibility.
"There are plenty of Democrats that will probably side with Republicans if they try to push a harder line on Iran," Sofer says. For a
variety of reasons, including deep skepticism of Iran's intentions and strong Democratic support for Israel, whose government
opposes the negotiations, Congressional Democrats are not as open to making a deal with Iran as
Obama is. Many will likely defect to the GOP side out of principle.
The real fight, Sofer says, will be among the Democrats — those who are willing to take the
administration's side in theory, but don't necessarily think a deal with Iran is legislative priority
number one, and maybe don't want to open themselves up to the political risk. These Democrats
"can make it harder: you can filibuster, if you're Obama you can veto — you can make it impossible for a full
bill to be passed out of Congress on Iran," Sofer says. But it'd be a really tough battle, one that would consume
a lot of energy and lobbying effort that Democrats might prefer to spend pushing on other issues.
"I'm not really sure they're going to be willing to take on a fight about an Iran sanctions bill," Sofer concludes. "I'm not really sure that
the Democrats who support [a deal] are really fully behind it enough that they'll be willing to give up leverage on, you know,
unemployment insurance or immigration status — these bigger issues for most Democrats."
So if
the new Republican Senate prioritizes destroying an Iran deal, Obama will have to fight very
hard to keep it — without necessarily being able to count on his own party for support. And the
stakes are enormous: if Iran's nuclear program isn't stopped peacefully, then the most likely
outcomes are either Iran going nuclear, or war with Iran .
The administration believes a deal with Iran is their only way to avoid this horrible choice. That's
why it's been one of the administration's top priorities since day one. It's also why this could become one of the
biggest legislative fights of Obama's last two years.
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The United States should to prohibit marijuana in the United States in accordance
with the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
The United States should propose an amendment to the Single Convention on
Narcotic Drugs that allows amendment parties to experiment with conditional
marijuana legalization in accordance with the ultimate aims of the treaty, to be
made binding upon the U.S. in the event of amendment acceptance.
In the event of the amendment’s rejection, the United States should maintain
prohibitions on marijuana necessary for compliance with the Convention.
Counterplan solves and alone is necessary to preserve the treaty system
Wells C. Bennett, fellow, Brookings Institution and John Walsh, Washington Office on Latin America, “Marijuana Legalization Is
an Opportunity to Modernize International Drug Treaties,” Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings, 10—14, p. 1.
Two U.S. states
have legalized recreational marijuana, and more may follow; the Obama administration has
conditionally accepted these experiments. Such actions are in obvious tension with three international treaties that
together commit the United States to punish and even criminalize activity related to recreational marijuana. • In essence, the
administration asserts that its policy complies with the treaties because they leave room for flexibility and
prosecutorial discretion. That argument makes sense on a short-term , wait-and-see basis, but it will
rapidly become implausible and unsustainable if legalization spreads and succeeds. • To avoid a
damaging collision between i nternational law and changing domestic and international consensus on
marijuana policy, the U nited S tates should seriously consider narrowly crafted treaty changes. It and
other drug treaty partners should begin now to discuss options for substantive alterations that
create space within international law for conditional legalization and for other policy experimentation that
seeks to further the treaties’ ultimate aims of promoting human health and welfare. • Making narrowly crafted treaty
reforms, although certainly challenging, is not only possible but also offers an opportunity to
demonstrate flexibility that i nternational law—in more areas than just drug policy—will need in a
changing global landscape. By contrast, asserting compliance while letting treaties fall into
desuetude could set a risky precedent , one that—if domestic legalization proceeds—could harm
i nternational law and come back to bite the U nited S tates.
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The aff guts the entire treaty system—reverses Obama progress
David Bewley-Taylor, senior lecturer, Department of Political and Cultura Studies, Swansea University, INTERNATIONAL
DRUG CONTROL: CONSENSUS FRACTURED, 2012, p. 315-316.
Another strategy would be for Parties to simply ignore the treaties or certain parts of them. In this way, they could
institute any policies deemed to be necessary at the national level, including for example the regulation of the cannabis
market and the introduction of a licensing system for domestic producers. Disregarding all or selected components of the
treaties, however, raises serious issues beyond the realm of drug control. The possibility of nations
unilaterally ignoring drug control treaty commitments could threaten the stability of the entire treaty
system. As a consequence states may be wary of simply opting out. Drawing on provisions within the 1969 Vienna Convention on
the Law of Treaties, some international lawyers argue that all treaties can naturally cease to be binding when a fundamental change
of circumstances has occurred since the time of signing or when an ‘error’ of fact or situation at the time of conclusion has later been
identified by a party.89 Both are lines of reasoning pursued in 1971 by Leinwand in relation to removing cannabis from the Single
Convention. Bearing in mind the dramatic changes in circumstances in the nature, extent and understanding of the ‘world drug
problem’ since the 1960s, the fundamental change of circumstances approach could be applied to the drug conventions or parts
thereof. It has been noted how this doctrine of rebus sic stantibus has largely fallen into misuse, probably due to the general
availability of the option to denounce. That said, the case for both this and ‘error’ at time of founding may be useful rationales for
reform-minded states to note when pursuing the denunciation option. Once again the selective application of such principles
alone would call into question the validity of many and varied treaties. This remains an area of
concern for many, particularly European, states that in general maintain a high regard for international law. This
stands in stark contrast to the selective approach towards international law displayed by the administration of George W. Bush,
particularly during its first term. Such disdain for multilateralism generated an atmosphere within which reformist states may have
been able to defend a simple disregard for parts of the drug control treaties. As the most capable and energetic supporter of the
GDPR, the USA was still best placed to enhance the benevolent appeal of the control system and where
necessary dispense costs for defection beyond those of the reputational variety. Nonetheless, such a position would have been
difficult to sustain when defecting states could justify action on the grounds that they were merely emulating the habits of a
hegemony. The likelihood of any significant state simply disregarding the international legal framework for the control of drugs has
always been slim. Yet the election of Barack Obama and a resultant re-engagement with the UN made this possibility
even slimmer. In an effort to rebuild bridges with the organization, the Obama administration has in many ways attempted to
reverse the policies of its predecessor.90
Treaty abrogation breaks the foundations of international law and global norms
David A. Koplow, Professor, Law, Georgetown University, “Indisputable Violations: What Happens When the United States
Unambiguously Breaches a Treaty?” THE FLETCHER FORUM OF WORLD AFFAIRS, v. 37 n.1, Winter 2013, p. 69-70.
So what? Why
does it matter that the U nited S tates violates treaties, and occasionally does so without a shred
of legal cover? Perhaps that is the realpolitik privilege of the global hegemon: to be able to sustain hypocrisy, asserting that its
unique international responsibilities and its “exceptional” position in the world enable the United States explicitly to welch on its
debts, fudge on its obligations, and adopt a “do as we say, not as we do” approach with other countries.
However, there is a cost when the world’s strongest state behaves this way. One potential danger is that other
countries may mimic this disregard for legal commitments and justify their own cavalier attitudes
toward i nternational law by citing U.S. precedents. Reciprocity and mutuality are fundamental tenets
of international practice; it is foolhardy to suppose that other parties will indefinitely continue with treaty
compliance if they feel that the U nited S tates is taking advantage of them by unilateral avoidance of
shared legal obligations. So far, there has not been significant erosion of the treaties discussed in the three examples. The United
States and Russia will fall years short of compliance with the CWC destruction obligations, but other parties, with the notable
exception of Iran, have reacted with aplomb, comfortable with the two giants’ unequivocal commitment to eventual compliance.
Likewise, the VCCR is not unraveling, even if other states lament the asymmetry in consular access to detained foreigners. And
while many states pay their UN dues late and build up substantial arrearages, that recalcitrance seems to stem more from penury
than from a deliberate choice to follow the U.S. lead. But that persistent flouting undermines the treaties—and by
extension, it jeopardizes
the entire fabric of i nternational law. Chronic noncompliance— especially ostentatious,
unexcused, unjustified noncompliance— also sullies the nation’s reputation and degrades U.S. diplomats’
ability to drive other states to better conform with their obligations under the full array of treaties and
other international law commitments from trade to human rights to the Law of the Sea. The United States depends upon the
international legal structure more than anyone else: Americans have the biggest interest in promoting a stable, robust, reliable
system for international exchange. It is shortsighted and self-defeating to publicly and unblushingly undercut the system that offers
the United States so many benefits. It is especially damaging when, following an indisputable violation, the United States
acknowledges its default, participates in an international dispute resolution procedure, and apologizes—but then continues to violate
the treaty. The CWC implementation bodies, the International Court of Justice, and even the UN General Assembly and Security
Council are unable to effectively do much to sanction or penalize the mighty United States, but it is still terrible for U.S. interests to
disregard those mechanisms.
Norm-based coop key to great power peace—extinction otherwise
Graeme P. Herd, Head, International Security Programme, Geneva Center for Security Policy, “Great Powers: Toward a
‘Cooperative Competitive’ Future World Order Paradigm?” GREAT POWERS AND STRATEGIC STABILITY IN THE 21ST
CENTURY, 2010, ed. G.P. Herd, p. 197-198.
Given the absence of immediate hegemonic challengers to the US (or a global strategic catastrophe that could trigger US
precipitous decline), and the need to cooperate to address pressing strategic threats - the real question is what will be the
nature of relations between these Great Powers? Will global order be characterized as a predictable
interdependent one-world system, in which shared strategic threats create interest-based incentives and functional
benefits which drive cooperation between Great Powers? This pathway would be evidenced by the emergence of a global
security agenda based on nascent similarity across national policy agendas. In addition. Great Powers would seek
to cooperate by strengthening multilateral partnerships in institutions (such as the UN, G20 and regional
variants), regimes (e.g., arms control, climate and trade), and shared global norms, including international law.
Alternatively, Great Powers may rely less on institutions, regimes and shared norms, and more on increasing
their order-producing managerial role through geopolitical-bloc formation within their near neighborhoods. Under such
circumstances, a re-division of the world into a competing mercantilist nineteenth-century regional order
emerges 17 World order would be characterized more by hierarchy and balance of power and zero-sum principles
than by interdependence. Relative power shifts that allow a return to multipolarity - with three or more evenly matched powers occur gradually. The transition from a bipolar in the Cold War to a unipolar moment in the post-Cold War has been crowned,
according to Haass, by an era of non-polarity, where power is diffuse — "a world dominated not by one or two or even several states
but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power"18 Multilateralism is on the rise,
characterized by a combination of stales and international organizations, both influential and talking shops, formal and informal
("multilateralism light"). A dual system of global governance has evolved. An embryonic division of labor emerges, as groups with no
formal rules or permanent structures coordinate policies and immediate reactions to crises, while formal treaty-based institutions
then legitimize the results.'9 As powerfully advocated by Wolfgang Schauble: Global cooperation is the only way to
master the new, asymmetric global challenges of the twenty-first century. No nation can manage these tasks on its
own, nor can the entire international community do so without the help of non-state, civil society actors. We must work together to
find appropriate security policy responses to the realities of the twenty-first century.20 Highlighting the emergence of what he terms
an "interpolar" world - defined as "multipolarity in an age of interdependence" — Grevi suggests that managing existential
interdependence in an unstable multipolar world is the key.21 Such complex interdependence generates shared
interest in cooperative solutions, meanwhile driving convergence, consensus and accommodation between
Great Powers.22 As a result, the multilateral system is being adjusted to reflect the realities of a global age - the rise of
emerging powers and relative decline of the West: "The new priority is to maintain a complex balance between multiple states."23
The G20 meeting in London in April 2009 suggested that great and rising powers will reform global financial architecture so that it
regulates and supervises global markets in a more participative, transparent and responsive manner: all countries have contributed
to the crisis; all will be involved in the solution.24
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Marijuana legalization props up violent neoliberalism
Calhoun, 14 (Ryan, “Weed Legalization As Privatization, Disempowerment” http://c4ss.org/content/23632)
The beginning of this year saw the first fully-fledged legal weed markets open in America in nearly a century. Lines formed, similar
those for a midnight movie premiere. Giddy stoners stood in shops in amazement at the ease, variety and quality of the shopping
experience. Of course, this is not the introduction of a free market in marijuana. Rather, it is the state-
controlled dream of political progressives who have been pushing for a government overhaul of
the weed market for quite some time. At the root of this movement is an ethos of paternalism and extortion.
Weed must only be legal under the condition that the government can act as “partner” and that it be
put in the hands of “responsible” retailers. And thus, Big Marijuana is born. Marijuana’s legalization seems much more
like neoliberal privatization of markets than true liberation of them. While I do not question the decency of these
first major marijuana retailers, there are legitimate concerns. Those most victimized by the state’s rabid
oppression of marijuana markets will find themselves very often out of luck, as extensive
background checks are required by law, and any drug felony charge is enough to exclude
individuals from operating as vendors. TakePart magazine notes in an article that even as weed is legalized,
those in prison for the crime of possessing or selling marijuana will remain there. While new
businesses boom with customers, those who formerly tried to compete in this market remain locked up in cages. The drug war
has affected millions during its hellish tear through Americans’ lives and culture, but it has always been particularly
racialized and classist. This leaves many black, Hispanic and poor individuals with a permanent hex
affixed to them that these laws do not address. Like with the beltway libertarian conception of privatization,
legalization picks the winners of the weed market from those who were lucky enough to not find
themselves on the wrong side of the law and who already have access to the capital to invest into
this expensive business. Legalization, at its best, functions as an opposition to continued state violence against drug users and
possessors. It is therefore troubling that we find even after this so-called legalization, many remain shackled
both by the pre-existing landscape of the market and by new regulations which prohibit them from
participating in it. It is never by the political means we realize our freedom, but only a hold-back of even worse oppression. We
fight an uphill battle against the incredible damage the state does. And now facing the age of Big Marijuana,
we might be shocked to find the sorts of restrictions many established pot shops favor. In order to delegitimize street
dealers, we have to treat them as inherently dangerous and volatile.
Neoliberalism causes extinction- collapse is coming and resiliency has
disappeared
Robinson, 14 -- UC-Santa Barbara sociology professor
(William I., Prof. of Sociology, Global and International Studies, and Latin American Studies, @ UC-Santa Barbara, “Global
Capitalism: Crisis of Humanity and the Specter of 21st Century Fascism” The World Financial Review)
Most commentators on the contemporary crisis refer to the “Great Recession” of 2008 and its aftermath. Yet the causal
origins of global crisis are to be found in over-accumulation and also in contradictions of state
power, or in what Marxists call the internal contradictions of the capitalist system. Moreover, because the system is now
global, crisis in any one place tends to represent crisis for the system as a whole. The system cannot
expand because the marginalisation of a significant portion of humanity from direct productive participation, the downward pressure
on wages and popular consumption worldwide, and the polarisation of income, has reduced the ability of the world market to absorb
world output. At the same time, given the particular configuration of social and class forces and the
correlation of these forces worldwide, national states are hard-pressed to regulate transnational
circuits of accumulation and offset the explosive contradictions built into the system. Is this crisis cyclical,
structural, or systemic? Cyclical crises are recurrent to capitalism about once every 10 years and involve
recessions that act as self-correcting mechanisms without any major restructuring of the system. The recessions
of the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and of 2001 were cyclical crises. In contrast, the 2008 crisis signaled the slide into a structural
crisis. Structural crises reflect deeper contra- dictions that can only be resolved by a major restructuring of the system. The
structural crisis of the 1970s was resolved through capitalist globalisation. Prior to that, the structural crisis of the 1930s was
resolved through the creation of a new model of redistributive capitalism, and prior to that the struc- tural crisis of the 1870s resulted
in the development of corpo- rate capitalism. A systemic crisis involves the replacement of a system by an
entirely new system or by an outright collapse. A structural crisis opens up the possibility for a
systemic crisis. But if it actually snowballs into a systemic crisis – in this case, if it gives way either to capitalism being
superseded or to a breakdown of global civilisation – is not predetermined and depends entirely on the response of social and
This is an historic moment of
extreme uncertainty, in which collective responses from distinct social and class forces to the
crisis are in great flux. Hence my concept of global crisis is broader than financial. There are multiple and
mutually constitutive dimensions – economic, social, political, cultural, ideological and ecological,
not to mention the existential crisis of our consciousness, values and very being. There is a crisis of social
polarisation, that is, of social reproduction. The system cannot meet the needs or assure the survival of millions of
people, perhaps a majority of humanity. There are crises of state legitimacy and political authority, or of hegemony and
domination. National states face spiraling crises of legitimacy as they fail to meet the social grievances of
local working and popular classes experiencing downward mobility, unemployment, heightened insecurity and greater
hardships. The legitimacy of the system has increasingly been called into question by millions,
perhaps even billions, of people around the world, and is facing expanded counter-hegemonic challenges.
political forces to the crisis and on historical contingencies that are not easy to forecast.
Global elites have been unable counter this erosion of the system’s authority in the face of worldwide pressures for a global moral
economy. And a canopy that envelops all these dimensions is a crisis of sustainability rooted in an
ecological holocaust that has already begun, expressed in climate change and the impending
collapse of centralised agricultural systems in several regions of the world, among other indicators. By a crisis of
humanity I mean a crisis that is approaching systemic proportions, threatening the ability of billions of people to
survive, and raising the specter of a collapse of world civilisation and degeneration into a new “Dark Ages.”2
This crisis of humanity shares a number of aspects with earlier structural crises but there are also several features unique to the
present: 1. The system is fast reaching the ecological limits of its reproduction. Global capitalism
now couples human and natural history in such a way as to threaten to bring about what would be
the sixth mass extinction in the known history of life on earth.3 This mass extinction would be caused not by a natural
catastrophe such as a meteor impact or by evolutionary changes such as the end of an ice age but by purposive human activity.
According to leading environmental scientists there are nine “planetary boundaries” crucial to
maintaining an earth system environment in which humans can exist, four of which are
experiencing at this time the onset of irreversible environmental degradation and three of which
(climate change, the nitrogen cycle, and biodiversity loss) are at “tipping points,” meaning that these processes
have already crossed their planetary boundaries. 2. The magnitude of the means of violence and social control is
unprecedented, as is the concentration of the means of global communication and symbolic
production and circulation in the hands of a very few powerful groups. Computerised wars, drones, bunker-buster
bombs, star wars, and so forth, have changed the face of warfare. Warfare has become normalised
and sanitised for those not directly at the receiving end of armed aggression. At the same time we have
arrived at the panoptical surveillance society and the age of thought control by those who control global flows of communication,
images and symbolic production. The world of Edward Snowden is the world of George Orwell; 1984 has arrived; 3. Capitalism
is reaching apparent limits to its extensive expansion. There are no longer any new territories of
significance that can be integrated into world capitalism, de-ruralisation is now well advanced,
and the commodification of the countryside and of pre- and non-capitalist spaces has intensified,
that is, converted in hot-house fashion into spaces of capital, so that intensive expansion is reaching depths never before seen.
Capitalism must continually expand or collapse. How or where will it now expand? 4. There is the rise of a
vast surplus population inhabiting a “planet of slums,”4 alienated from the productive economy,
thrown into the margins, and subject to sophisticated systems of social control and to destruction
- to a mortal cycle of dispossession-exploitation-exclusion. This includes prison-industrial and
immigrant-detention complexes, omnipresent policing, militarised gentrification , and so on; 5. There
is a disjuncture between a globalising economy and a nation-state based system of political
authority. Transnational state apparatuses are incipient and have not been able to play the role of what
social scientists refer to as a “hegemon,” or a leading nation-state that has enough power and authority to organise and stabilise
the system. The spread of weapons of mass destruction and the unprecedented militarisation of
social life and conflict across the globe makes it hard to imagine that the system can come under
any stable political authority that assures its reproduction. Global Police State How have social and political
forces worldwide responded to crisis? The crisis has resulted in a rapid political polarisation in global society. Both right and leftwing forces are ascendant. Three responses seem to be in dispute. One is what we could call “reformism from above.” This elite
reformism is aimed at stabilising the system, at saving the system from itself and from more radical re- sponses from below.
Nonetheless, in the years following the 2008 collapse of the global financial system it seems these reformers are unable (or
unwilling) to prevail over the power of transnational financial capital. A second response is popular, grassroots and leftist resistance
from below. As social and political conflict escalates around the world there appears to be a mounting global revolt. While such
resistance appears insurgent in the wake of 2008 it is spread very unevenly across countries and regions and facing many problems
and challenges. Yet another response is that I term 21st century fascism.5 The ultra-right is an insurgent force in
many countries. In broad strokes, this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with
transnational capital and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of the
global working class – such as white workers in the North and middle layers in the South – that are now
experiencing heightened insecurity and the specter of downward mobility. It involves militarism,
extreme masculinisation, homophobia, racism and racist mobilisations, including the search for
scapegoats, such as immigrant workers and, in the West, Muslims. Twenty-first century fascism
evokes mystifying ideologies, often involving race/culture supremacy and xenophobia, embracing
an idealised and mythical past. Neo-fascist culture normalises and glamorises warfare and social
violence, indeed, generates a fascination with domination that is portrayed even as heroic.
Our alternative is to completely withdraw from the ideology of capital - this opens
up the space for authentic politics
Johnston, 4 (Adrian, interdisciplinary research fellow in psychoanalysis at Emory, The Cynic’s Fetish: Slavoj Zizek and the
Dynamics of Belief, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society)
Perhaps the absence of a detailed political roadmap in Žižek’s recent writings isn’t a major
shortcoming. Maybe, at least for the time being, the most important task is simply the negativity of the
critical struggle, the effort to cure an intellectual constipation resulting from capitalist ideology
and thereby to truly open up the space for imagining authentic alternatives to the prevailing state
of the situation. Another definition of materialism offered by Žižek is that it amounts to accepting the internal inherence of what
fantasmatically appears as an external deadlock or hindrance ( Žižek, 2001d, pp 22–23) (with fantasy itself being defined as the
false externalization of something within the subject, namely, the illusory projection of an inner obstacle, Žižek, 2000a, p 16). From
this perspective, seeing through ideological fantasies by learning how to think again outside the
confines of current restrictions has, in and of itself, the potential to operate as a form of real
revolutionary practice (rather than remaining merely an instance of negative/critical intellectual reflection). Why is this the
case? Recalling the analysis of commodity fetishism, the social efficacy of money as the universal
medium of exchange (and the entire political economy grounded upon it) ultimately relies upon nothing more
than a kind of ‘‘magic,’’ that is, the belief in money’s social efficacy by those using it in the
processes of exchange. Since the value of currency is, at bottom, reducible to the belief that it has
the value attributed to it (and that everyone believes that everyone else believes this as well), derailing capitalism
by destroying its essential financial substance is, in a certain respect, as easy as dissolving the
mere belief in this substance’s powers. The ‘‘external’’ obstacle of the capitalist system exists
exclusively on the condition that subjects, whether consciously or unconsciously, ‘‘internally’’
believe in it – capitalism’s life-blood, money, is simply a fetishistic crystallization of a belief in
others’ belief in the socio-performative force emanating from this same material. And yet, this point of
capitalism’s frail vulnerability is simultaneously the source of its enormous strength: its vampiric symbiosis with individual human
desire, and the fact that the late-capitalist cynic’s fetishism enables the disavowal of his/her de facto belief in capitalism, makes it
highly unlikely that people can simply be persuaded to stop believing and start thinking (especially since, as Žižek claims, many of
these people are convinced that they already have ceased believing). Or, the more disquieting possibility to
entertain is that some people today, even if one succeeds in exposing them to the underlying
logic of their position, might respond in a manner resembling that of the Judas-like character
Cypher in the film The Matrix (Cypher opts to embrace enslavement by illusion rather than cope with the discomfort of
dwelling in the ‘‘desert of the real’’): faced with the choice between living the capitalist lie or wrestling with
certain unpleasant truths, many individuals might very well deliberately decide to accept what
they know full well to be a false pseudo-reality, a deceptively comforting fiction (‘‘Capitalist commodity
fetishism or the truth? I choose fetishism’’).
Cartels
Drug war violence declining
By Karla Zabludovsky covers Latin America for Newsweek. “Murders in Mexico Down From Height of the Drug War, But
Violence Persists” Filed: 7/23/14 at 6:42 PM http://www.newsweek.com/murders-mexico-down-height-drug-war-violence-persists260990
Some of the Mexican states where drug war–related violence has been most intense, like
Coahuila, Guerrero and Tamaulipas, showed a decreased homicide rate . In Durango, part of the
Mexican “golden triangle,” an area notorious for drug trafficking, homicides decreased by nearly
half in 2013 as compared to the previous year.¶ ADVERTISEMENT¶ It is unclear what percentage of recorded
homicides are related to organized crime since the government modified the classification in October, doing away with a separate
category for drug war–related deaths, instead lumping them all together.¶ Aware of the war weariness felt among
many in Mexico, Pena Nieto ran on the promise that, if elected, his government would shift the
focus from capturing drug kingpins, like Calderon had, to making daily life for ordinary Mexicans
safer.¶ "With this new strategy, I commit myself to significantly lowering the homicide rate, the number of kidnappings in the
country, the extortions and the human trafficking," wrote Pena Nieto in a newspaper editorial during his presidential campaign.¶
Since taking office in December 2012, Pena Nieto has largely eliminated talk of security from his
agenda except when large outbreaks of violence have forced him otherwise, focusing instead on
the economy and his legislative reforms , including sweeping overhauls to education and energy. And while the
country appears to be less violent now than during Calderon’s war on drugs, the climate of press freedom, according to the
Committee to Protect Journalists, remains “perilous.”
Legalization destabilizes mexico- causes cartel lashout and diversification
Chad Murray et al 11, Ashlee Jackson Amanda C. Miralrío, Nicolas Eiden Elliott School of International Affairs/InterAmerican Drug Abuse Control Commission: Capstone Report April 26, 2011 “Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations and
Marijuana: The Potential Effects of U.S. Legalization”
Mexican DTOs would likely branch into other avenues of crime . Perhaps the most obvious shortterm effect of marijuana legalization is that this would rob the Sinaloa and Tijuana cartels of up to
half of their total revenue.117 The economic strain placed on the Sinaloa cartel and Tijuana cartel
may not necessarily help Mexico in the short term . The short-term effects of legalization could
very well create chaos for Mexico. “The cartels compensate for their loss of drug revenue by
branching out into other criminal activities-- kidnapping , murder-for-hire, contraband , illegal ¶ 29 ¶
immigrant smuggling , extortion, theft of oil and other items, loan-sharking, prostitution , selling
protection, etc .”118 This means that if the social and economic environment remains the same
then “they are not going to return to the licit world .”119 If the Sinaloa cartel and the Tijuana cartel
turn towards activities like kidnapping, human trafficking and extortion, it could lead to a spike in
violence that would prove to be destabilizing in those organizations‟ areas of operation. ¶ The
Sinaloa cartel and Tijuana cartel might splinter into smaller groups. In addition, the loss of
more than 40% of revenue would probably force them to downsize their operations. Like any
large business going through downsizing, employees will likely be shed first in order to maintain
profitability.120 These former DTO operatives will likely not return to earning a legitimate income,
but rather will independently find new revenue sources in a manner similar to their employers.
Therefore it is possible that the legalization of marijuana in the United States could cause
territories currently under the control of the Sinaloa cartel and Tijuana cartel to become more
violent than they are today. This is troubling, as Sinaloa, Baja California, Sonora, and Chihuahua
states are already among the most violent areas of Mexico.121
Legalizing doesn’t solve violence
By Mark Kleiman 11 Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los
Angeles. “Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars” Smarter Policies for Both Sides of the Border” Foreign Affairs,
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 ISSUE, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68131/mark-kleiman/surgical-strikes-in-the-drug-wars
ac 6-24
Full commercial legalization of cannabis, or some alternative short of full commercialization, such as lawful
would shrink the revenue of the Mexican trafficking
organizations by approximately one-fifth , according to Beau Kilmer and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation:
not a dramatic gain but certainly not trivial. Whether trafficking violence would be reduced by a
comparable amount is a question for speculation, with no real evidence either way. Mexican drug
traffickers would be left with plenty to fight over and more than enough money to finance their
combat.
production for personal use or by user cooperatives,
**No oil shocks-several factors check.
Whitehouse 10 (12-19, Mark, deputy bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal “Oil Prices Seen as a Threat Again”,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025762319723364.html
In the physical market, oil producers have ample capacity to keep prices in check. The International Energy
Agency estimates spare capacity among Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at 6.4% of global demand, nearly double
the level of late 2007. As of the end of November, the world had enough oil in its inventories to cover
demand for 20 days without drying out pipelines and refineries, according to data provider Oil Market
Intelligence. That's up from 14 days in November 2007. Thanks to the added inventories, "the broader economy is now
more insulated from oil shocks" than it was back in 2008, says Philip Verleger, an energy economist at the
University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business. While many see speculative investment as a source of
volatility, it might actually help prevent a spike, says Mr. Verleger. By pushing up the price of oil to be
delivered in future months, investors have made it more attractive for traders to buy oil now and
hold it for future sale. That, in turn, keeps inventories higher, providing a cushion that can limit price
swings in the event of sudden changes in supply and demand. If the price of oil does rise further,
it won't necessarily do economic damage. For one, the price spike of 2008 led many people and
companies to cut back on energy consumption, a shift that could make them more resilient to
price increases this time around. Beyond that, oil-price increases can have little to no impact if they
correspond to a decrease in the value of the dollar against other currencies. Because oil is bought
and sold in dollars, it doesn't become more expensive for most of the world's buyers unless the
price increase exceeds the drop in the dollar. And in the U.S., the export boost from a cheaper
dollar can create more jobs, offsetting the pain of higher prices at the gas pump .
**No Latin America war or escalation
Cardenas, Brookings Senior Fellow, 3-17, 2011, (Mauricio, "Think Again: Latin America", Foreign Policy, PAS)
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/03/17/think_again_latin_america
Although some fear the Mexican drug violence could spill over into the southern United States, Latin America poses little
to no threat to international peace or stability. The major global security concerns today are the proliferation of
nuclear weapons and terrorism. No country in the region is in possession of nuclear weapons -- nor has
expressed an interest in having them. Latin American countries, on the whole, do not have much
history of engaging in cross-border wars. Despite the recent tensions on the Venezuela-Colombia border, it should be
pointed out that Venezuela has never taken part in an international armed conflict. Ethnic and religious conflicts are
very uncommon in Latin America. Although the region has not been immune to radical jihadist attacks -- the 1994 attack on a
Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, for instance -- they have been rare. Terrorist attacks on the civilian population have
been limited to a large extent to the FARC organization in Colombia, a tactic which contributed in large part to the organization's
loss of popular support.
WOD
Their authors are making premature conclusions—the drug war can be revamped
at any time and its still being fought over drugs besides marijuana
Miron 14 Jeffrey Miron is Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard
and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, Cato Institute, January 27, 2014, “Is the War on Drugs Over?”,
http://object.cato.org/publications/commentary/war-drugs-over
In December 2013, Uruguay legalized marijuana, Earlier, in 2012, Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana under
the laws of their states, and 21 additional states and the District of Columbia have now decriminalized or allowed medical use of
marijuana. Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, and the Netherlands has practiced de facto
legalization for marijuana for decades. More broadly, many countries have de-escalated their “Wars on Drugs.” Indeed,
President Obama hinted strongly in a recent interview that he supports marijuana legalization.
Legalization advocates, therefore, are feeling optimistic: Many expect full legalization, at least for marijuana, within a
few years.
This euphoria is understandable, but premature .
Legalizers are correct that prohibition is a terrible approach to balancing the costs of drug abuse against the costs of policies that
attempt to reduce drug abuse.
Prohibition drives drug markets underground, thereby generating violence and corruption. Participants in black markets cannot
resolve their disputes with courts and lawyers, so they resort to violence instead.
Prohibition makes quality control difficult, so the incidence of accidental poisonings and overdoses is higher than in a legal market.
People who purchase alcohol know what purity they are getting; people who purchase cocaine or heroin do not.
Prohibition spreads HIV. Elevated drug prices incentivize injection (users get a big bang for the buck), while fostering restrictions on
clean needles. Users therefore share dirty needles, which accounts for a large fraction of new HIV infections in the United States.
Prohibition harms those who use drugs despite prohibition, since they risk arrest and imprisonment in addition to the negatives of
drug use itself.
Prohibition encourages racial profiling and other infringements on civil liberties. Neither party to a drug transaction wants to notify
the police, who therefore use more intrusive tactics in the attempt to enforce the law.
Prohibition wastes criminal justice resources and prevents collection of taxes on the production or purchase of drugs, thus adversely
impacting government budgets.
And abundant evidence from America’s experiment with Prohibition, from state decriminalizations, and medicaliziations; from
comparisons across countries with weak versus strong prohibition regimes; and from experience with other prohibited commodities
suggests that prohibitions generates only moderate reductions in drug use. Some of that reduction, moreover, is a cost of
prohibition, not a benefit—since many people consume drugs without ill effects on themselves or others.
Prohibition is therefore a terrible policy, even if one endorses government attempts to reduce drug use. Prohibition has large costs
with minimal “benefits” at best in terms of lower use.
So legalizers are right on the merits, and recent opinion polls show increasing public support for legalization (at least for marijuana).
But the negatives of prohibitions have been widely understood at least since the 1933 repeal of
alcohol prohibition, yet this has not stopped the U.S. from pushing drug prohibition both at home
and abroad.
In addition, further progress toward legalization faces serious impediments.
The first is that recent de-escalation of the Drug War addresses marijuana only . Yet much prohibitioninduced harm results from prohibitions of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. Public opinion is less open to
legalizing these drugs.
Even worse, drug warriors might respond to marijuana legalization by ramping up hysteria toward
still-prohibited drugs ,
increasing prohibition-induced ills in those markets. The public would then observe increased drug-market violence in the wake of
marijuana legalization, which would appear to show that legalization causes violence.
A different worry is that while public opinion currently swings toward legalizations, public opinion can change. And marijuana
remains illegal under federal law, so a new president could undo President Obama’s “hands off”
approach.
Perhaps the greatest threat to legalization is that many people—including some legalizers—believe policy can eliminate the black
market and its negatives while maintaining strict control over legalized drugs. That is why recent legalizations include restrictions on
production and purchase amounts, retail locations, exports, sales to tourists, high taxes, and more.
If these restrictions are so weak that they rarely constrain the legal market, they do little harm. But if these restrictions are serious,
they re-create black markets.
Legalizers must accept that, under legalization, drug use will be more open and some people will misuse. The incidence of use and
abuse might be no higher than now; indeed, outcomes like accidental overdoses should decline. But legalizers should not
oversell, since that risks a backlash when negative outcomes occur.
None of this is meant to deny that recent policy changes constitute real progress. But these gains
will evaporate unless the case for legalization includes all drugs and is up front about the
negatives as well as the positives.
Relations are high and unbreakable. Cuba.
FT 12-21 (Financial Times, December 21, 2014 4:35 pm “Obama’s Cuba-led pivot in Latin America”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/12422c40-8777-11e4-bc7c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Mx42oWaD
Dilma Rousseff, the
Brazilian president, spoke for many when she remarked last week that US President Barack
Obama’s move to improve relations with Cuba was “a moment that marks a change in
civilisation ”.¶ For more than half a century, Washington’s squeeze on Havana has poisoned its
relations with the region. It often led even US allies to take the side of the Castro brothers, under the rubric that
“Washington may be my friend, but they are my brothers”. Mutual US-Cuban hostility also widened hemispheric
fractures. The two countries took opposite sides in Central America in the 1980s and, in 1971, a visit to Chile by Fidel Castro
foreshadowed Augusto Pinochet’s US-supported coup. Today, however, detente between US and Cuba has the potential to force a
profound realignment of American relations.¶ Rapprochement
vaporises a rhetorical bludgeon that US critics
have routinely used to cudgel Washington. That is especially important given China’s growing
regional presence. It also helps to neutralise anti-US sentiment routinely wheeled out to mask
local failings. At next year’s Summit of the Americas in Panama, which both the US and Cuba will
attend, Latin Americans will now hopefully focus more on Cuba’s baleful human rights record. ¶ It
also drives a wedge between Cuba and its closest regional ally, Venezuela, while undermining the
kind of “ anti-yanqui” bombast that Caracas regularly spouts to deflect attention from its
deepening economic crisis. At the start of the week, President Nicolás Maduro was exhorting his fellow Venezuelans to
take to the streets against the yanqui menace. By Wednesday, however, he was gushing about Mr Obama’s “gesture of greatness”
towards Cuba.¶
There are already some signs of change elsewhere .
In Colombia, the Cuba-mediated peace talks with Marxist FARC guerrillas took an unusual turn
last week when the rebels offered Bogotá a unilateral ceasefire. The rebels perhaps drew the lesson from the
18-months of backdoor negotiations that led to Washington and Havana’s agreement that diplomacy, not confrontation, is the best
way to resolve differences — a lesson Colombian opponents to the peace deal should also heed. ¶ Old ways, of course, die hard.
Evo Morales, Bolivia’s leftist leader, last week claimed the fall in global oil prices was a US-led conspiracy to destabilise Venezuela.
Indeed, it is ironic that the day after making his historic Cuba announcement, Mr Obama signed into law a bill that sanctions
Venezuelan officials charged with human rights abuses. This may well provide Caracas with an unfortunate opportunity to saturate
its already propaganda-filled airways. Yet the sanctions are limited to specific officials, not the country as a whole. Moreover, the bill
itself does not impose sanctions—only the US president can do that. So far he has not.¶ Over his two terms, Mr Obama
has patiently recast US relations towards the hemisphere for the better. He has acted on
immigration; on narcotics, by reframing the “war on drugs” as a public health issue; and now on
Cuba. These are three of the biggest irritants in north-south relations.
Plan doesn’t solve OAS cred- opinions split and many are against legalization
McDonald, 14 – Bloomberg reporter in Guatemala
[Michael, "Drug War Debate Divides Latin America, U.S. at OAS Summit," Bloomberg, 9-19-14, www.bloomberg.com/news/201409-19/drug-war-debate-divides-latin-america-u-s-at-oas-summit.html, accessed 10-26-14]
“There is no common position, least of all in the Americas,” Ecuador President Rafael Correa said during
a visit to Guatemala last month. “The strategy against drugs has been a disaster. Things are being discussed now that used to be
taboo.” In a report published this month, Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos, who once led security operations supported by
the U.S.-funded “Plan Colombia” counter-narcotics program, called for a fresh debate over how to fight illegal drugs. “The world
needs to discuss new approaches,” he wrote in the report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, whose members include
former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “If that means
legalizing, and the world thinks that’s the solution, I will welcome it.” Costa Rican president Luis Guillermo Solis in June called for a
debate on legalization, adding that “it’s not an issue we can solve right now.” Former Mexico President Vicente Fox has called the
current approach toward illegal drugs “useless” and a “total failure.” ‘Simplistic’ Approach William Brownfield, the U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, called legalization “simplistic” during a trip to Panama this
week, and the White House this month identified 22 countries as major illicit drug-producing or drug-transit countries, 17 of which
are in Latin America or the Caribbean. “The United States is committed to monitoring the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and
Washington and share our findings with allies in the hemisphere,” Brownfield said today. “We shouldn’t embrace ideas that haven’t
yet been proven and risk greater addiction to substances. We must approach this problem in a practical way.” In a statement this
week, the White House said “International cooperation remains the cornerstone for reducing the threat posed by the illegal narcotics
trade and related crimes carried out by criminal organizations.” Coca Production Illegal production of coca, the main ingredient in
cocaine, is at its lowest level since estimates were collected in 1990, the U.S. said. The U.S. is the single-biggest consumer of
cocaine, while nearly all coca production takes place in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. U.S. funding for anti-narcotics operations in
Latin America and the Caribbean could fall by as much as 29 percent in 2015, including cuts to security initiatives such as Plan
Colombia, the Merida Initiative for Mexico and the Central American and Caribbean Regional Security Initiatives, according to a
report this month by the Congressional Research Service. At a meeting of the OAS General Assembly in June 2013, member
states called drugs a “public health problem” that must be accompanied by a “human rights perspective,” while
demanding stronger efforts to fight the supply and demand of illicit drugs. “There are still a lot of
countries that associate drugs with violence and there is a fear that legalization could lead to more
violence,” OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said in a phone interview. “We have to be flexible. Things
don’t change overnight.”
Alt cause- detention centers crush OAS cred
Traver, 10-3 -- Efe reporter
[Albert, Agencia EFE, S.A. is a Spanish international news agency, "OAS panel urges U.S. to close immigration detention centers,"
Fox News Latino, 10-3-14, latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/10/03/oas-panel-urges-us-to-close-immigration-detention-centers/,
accessed 10-26-14]
The Inter-American Human Rights Commission, a body of the Organization of American States, has asked the U.S.
government to close detention centers for undocumented immigrants. The request followed commissioners'
four-day visit to the U.S-Mexico border to assess the situation of families and children streaming north from Central America. U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement currently operates migrant detention facilities in Karnes City, Texas; Artesia, New Mexico;
and Leesport, Pennsylvania. ICE recently announced the opening of a new, 2,400-bed detention center in Dilley, Texas, raising the
agency's total holding capacity to nearly 4,000. Chile's Felipe Gonzalez, one of the vice chairs of the OAS rights
panel, told Efe after visiting South Texas that the opening of detention facilities is "a step backward" in U.S.
immigration policies and "an inappropriate response" to the humanitarian crisis on the border. The detention of
immigrants, particularly minors, violates fundamental human rights , Gonzalez said. After the closing in
2009 of the T. Don Hutto detention center - located in a former prison in Texas - ICE had no facilities to house detained migrant
families. But a massive wave of border crossings over the past year led the U.S. government to establish new detention facilities for
families. More than 66,000 unaccompanied minors and a similar number of people in family groups have entered the United States
via Mexico in the past year, most of them fleeing poverty and violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. "The detention of
migrants should be the exception, not the rule," Gonzalez said, lamenting that the practice has become "very common" in the United
States and might become a permanent policy. "There are signs that the United States may again detain children
with families, a practice it had abandoned," he said. "As long as the government believes this will dissuade (the migrants) the
practice will continue." During their tour in South Texas, Gonzalez and his fellow commissioners heard accounts
from detained migrants of sexual abuse, malnutrition and other problems inside the detention
centers, as well as the separation of family members in different units of the same center. The
commissioners also received complaints about a lack of due process guarantees for migrants
seeking asylum.
**Industrialization makes the impact inevitable
Red Orbit ‘9 Red Orbit. “Economic Demands Threaten Amazon”. Ferbuary 19, 2009.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1642296/economic_demands_threaten_amazon/
The Amazon continues to lose more forest due to excess strain from accelerating rates of
industrialized growth in the region, according to a report issued by the United Nations on Wednesday.
Supported by the UN Environment Program and the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), the GEO Amazonia
report shows troubling signs of deforestation due to poorly planned human settlements . As of
2005, “857,666 square kilometers of the forest had been transformed, reducing vegetation cover
by approximately 17 percent, equal to two-thirds of Peru or 94 percent of Venezuela,” according to the UN. Since then, the
rate of deforestation has decreased. However, an additional 11,224 square kilometers (4,333 square miles) of forest disappeared in
Brazil in 2007. Deforestation in the region is being driven by foreign markets’ conquests for timber,
cash crops and beef, and unprecedented levels of pollution, according to the report, which used
data from more than 150 experts in eight nearby countries. “Our Amazonia is changing at an accelerated rate
with very profound modifications in its ecosystems,” the eight Amazonian countries declared in the GEO Amazonia report. The
region today holds some 35 million people, nearly 65 percent of them in cities, including three with more than one million
inhabitants, according to the AFP. The report recommended that Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and
Venezuela should take part in a coordinated effort for sustainable use of the iconic rainforest’s ecosystems. " If the loss of
forests exceeds 30 percent of the vegetation cover, then rainfall levels will decrease," the report
said. "This will produce a vicious circle that favors forest burning, reduces water vapor release
and increases smoke emissions into the atmosphere."
AIDS decreasing—contained in 20 years
Kelland 14 7/16 (Kate, contributor, Kate, Global AIDS epidemic can be controlled by 2030, U.N. says
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/us-health-hiv-unaids-idUSKBN0FL0RX20140716>, TF)
New HIV infections and deaths from AIDS are decreasing , the United Nations said on Wednesday, making it
possible to control the epidemic by 2030 and eventually end it " in every region, in every
country".¶ "More than ever before, there is hope that ending AIDS is possible. However, a business-as-usual
approach or simply sustaining the AIDS response at its current pace cannot end the epidemic," the U.N. AIDS program UNAIDS
said in a global report issued ahead of an AIDS conference in Melbourne, Australia next week. ¶ It said the number of people
infected with HIV was stabilizing at around 35 million worldwide. The epidemic had killed some 39 million of
the 78 million people it has affected since it began in the 1980s.¶ "The AIDS epidemic can be ended in every region,
every country, in every location, in every population and every community," Michel Sidibe, the director of
UNAIDS, said in the report. "There are multiple reasons why there is hope and conviction about this goal."¶ The human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS can be transmitted via blood, breast milk and by semen during sex, but can be kept
in check with cocktails of drugs known as antiretroviral therapy or ART. ¶ UNAIDS said that at the end of 2013, some 12.9 million HIV
positive people had access to antiretroviral therapy - a dramatic improvement on the 10 million who were on treatment just one year
earlier and the only 5 million who were getting AIDS drugs in 2010.¶ Since 2001, new HIV infections have fallen by 38 percent, it
said. AIDS
deaths have fallen 35 percent since a peak in 2005.¶
"The world has witnessed extraordinary changes in the AIDS landscape. There have been more achievements in the past five years
than in the preceding 23 years," the report said.¶ The U.N. report said ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 would mean the
spread of HIV was being controlled or contained, and that the impact of the virus in societies and
in people's lives had been reduced by significant declines in ill health, stigma, deaths and the
number of AIDS orphans.¶ "It means increased life expectancy, unconditional acceptance of people's diversity and rights,
and increased productivity and reduced costs as the impact diminishes."¶ According to UNAIDS, $19.1 billion was available from all
sources for the AIDS response in 2013, and the estimated annual need by 2015 is currently between $22 billion and $24 billion.¶
Sidibe said the international community should seize the opportunity to turn the epidemic around.¶ "We have a fragile five-year
window to build on the rapid results that been made," he said. "If we accelerate all HIV scale-up by 2020, we will be on track
to end the epidemic by 2030. If not, we risk significantly increasing the time it would take - adding a decade, if not more."¶
He said controlling the epidemic by 2030 would avert 18 million new HIV infections and 11.2 million AIDS deaths between 2013 and
2030.¶ In 2011, U.N. member states agreed to a target of getting HIV treatment to 15 million people by
2015. As countries scaled up treatment coverage, and evidence showed how treating HIV early also reduces its spread, the World
Health Organization (WHO) set new guidelines last year, expanding the number of people needing treatment by more than 10
million.¶ Jennifer Cohn, medical director of the access campaign for the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said millions of
HIV positive people still do not get the drugs they needed.¶ "Providing life-saving HIV treatment to nearly 12 million people in the
developing world is a significant achievement, but more than half of people in need still do not have access," she said. "We know
that early treatment helps prevent transmission of HIV and keeps people healthy; we need to respond to HIV in all contexts and
make treatment accessible to everyone in need as soon as possible."
**No extinction
Card is in general disease 1NC
Posner 5—Senior Lecturer, U Chicago Law. Judge on the US Court of Appeals 7th Circuit. AB from Yale and LLB from Harvard.
(Richard, Catastrophe, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4150331/Catastrophe-the-dozen-most-significant.html)
Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of
its existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been enormously destructive
plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to destroying the entire
human race. There is a biological reason . Natural selection favors germs of limited lethality; they
are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do
not kill their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet
infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet there is no danger that AIDS will destroy the entire
human race . The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would cause the extinction of the human race is probably
even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric times, when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited
the spread of disease), despite wider human contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease.
2NC
Globalization makes extinction inevitable- positive feedbacks create a cascade of
destruction - only massive social reorganization can produce sustainable change
Ehrenfeld, 5 -- Rutgers biology professor
(David, “The Environmental Limits to Globalization”, Conservation Biology Vol. 19 No. 2, ebsco)
The overall environmental changes brought about or accelerated by globalization are, however, much easier to
describe for the near future, even if the long-term outcomes are still obscure. Climate will continue to change rapidly (Watson
2002); cheap energy and other resources (Youngquist 1997; Hall et al. 2003; Smil 2003), including fresh water (Aldhous 2003; Gleick
2004), will diminish and disappear at an accelerating rate; agricultural and farm communities will deteriorate
further while we lose more genetic diversity among crops and farm animals (Fowler & Mooney 1990; Bailey & Lappé 2002;
Wirzba 2003); biodiversity will decline faster as terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are damaged (Heywood 1995);
harmful exotic species will become ever more numerous (Mooney & Hobbs 2000); old and new diseases of
plants, animals, and humans will continue to proliferate (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 1995-present; Lashley & Durham
2002); and more of the great ocean fisheries will become economically—and occasionally biologically—extinct (Myers &
Worm 2003). Although critics have taken issue with many of these forecasts (Lomborg 2001; Hollander 2003), the critics' arguments seem
more political than scientific; the data they muster in support of their claims are riddled with
errors, significant omissions, and misunderstandings of environmental processes (Orr 2002). Indeed,
these environmental changes are demonstrably and frighteningly real. And because of these and related changes, one social prediction can be made
with assurance: globalization
is creating an environment that will prove hostile to its own survival.
This is not a political
statement or a moral judgment. It is not the same as saying that globalization ought to be stopped. The enlightened advocates of globalization claim that globalization could give the poorest residents of the poorest countries a chance to enjoy a decent income. And the enlightened opponents of globalization assert that the damage done by globalization
to local communities everywhere, and the increasing gap it causes between the rich and the poor, far outweigh the small amount of good globalization may do. The debate is vitally important, but the fate of globalization is unlikely to be determined by who wins it. Al Gore remarked about the political impasse over global warming and the current rapid
melting of the world's glaciers: “Glaciers don't give a damn about politics. They just reflect reality” (Herbert 2004). The same inexorable environmental reali ty is even now drawing the curtains on globalization. Often minimized in the United States, this reality is already painfully obvious in China, which is experiencing the most rapid expansion related to
globalization. Nearly every issue of China Daily, the national English-language newspaper, features articles on the environmental effects of globalization. Will efforts in China to rein in industrial expansion, energy consumption, and environmental pollution succeed (Fu 2004; Qin 2004; Xu 2004)? Will the despe rate attempts of Chinese authorities to
mitigate the impact of rapid industrialization on the disastrously scarce supplies of fresh water be effective (Li 2004; Liang 2004)? The environmental anxiety is palpable and pervasive. The environmental effects of globalization cannot be measured by simple numbers like the gross domestic product or unemployment rate. But even without suc h
. Among the environmental impacts of
globalization, perhaps the most significant is its fostering of the excessive use of energy, with the
attendant consequences. This surge in energy use was inevitable, once the undeveloped four-fifths of the
world adopted the energy-wasting industrialization model of the developed fifth , and as goods that once
summary statistics, there are so many examples of globalization's impact, some obvious, some less so, that a convincing argument about its effects and trends can be made
were made locally began to be transported around the world at a tremendous cost of energy. China's booming production, largely the result of its
surging global exports, has caused a huge increase in the mining and burning of coal and the building of giant dams for more electric power, an
increase of power that in only the first 8 months of 2003 amounted to 16% (Bradsher 2003; Guo 2004). The many environmental effects of the coal
burning include, most importantly, global warming. Fossil-fuel-driven
climate change seems likely to result in a rise
in sea level, massive extinction of species, agricultural losses from regional shifts in temperature
and rainfall, and, possibly, alteration of major ocean currents, with secondary climatic chang e.
Other side
effects of coal burning are forest decline, especially from increased nitrogen deposition; acidification of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems from nitrogen and sulfur compounds; and a major impact on human health from polluted air. Dams, China's alternative method of producing electricity without burning fossil fuels, themselves cause massive
environmental changes. These changes include fragmentation of river channels; loss of floodplains, riparian zones, and adjacent wetlands; deterioration of irrigated terrestrial environments and their surface waters; deterioration and loss of river deltas and estuaries; aging and reduction of c ontinental freshwater runoff to oceans; changes in nutrient
cycling; impacts on biodiversity; methylmercury contamination of food webs; and greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs. The impoundment of water in reservoirs at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere has even caused a small but measurable increase in the speed of the earth's rotation and a change in the planet's axis (Rosenberg et al. 2000;
Vörösmarty & Sahagian 2000). Moreover, the millions of people displaced by reservoirs such as the one behind China's Three Gorges Dam have their own environmental impacts as they struggle to survive in unfamiliar and often unsuitable places. Despite the importance of coal and hydropower in China's booming economy, the major factor that
enables globalization to flourish around the world—even in China—is still cheap oil. Cheap oil runs the ships, planes, trucks, cars, tractors, harvesters, earth-moving equipment, and chain saws that globalization needs; cheap oil lifts the giant containers with their global cargos off the container ships onto the waiting flatbeds; cheap oil even mines and
processes the coal, grows and distills the biofuels, drills the gas wells, and builds the nuclear power plants while digging and refining the uranium ore that keeps them operating. Paradoxically, the global warming caused by this excessive burning of oil is exerting negative feedback on the search f or more oil to replace dwindling supplies. The search for
Arctic oil has been slowed by recent changes in the Arctic climate. Arctic tundra has to be frozen and snow -covered to allow the heavy seismic vehicles to prospect for underground oil reserves, or long-lasting damage to the landscape results. The recent Arctic warming trend has reduced the number of days that vehicles can safel y explore: from 187 in
Globalization affects so many environmental systems in so many ways that negative
interactions of this sort are frequent and usually unpredictable.
1969 to 103 in 2002 (Revkin 2004).
Looming over the global economy is the imminent disappearance of cheap oil. There is some debate about when global oil
production will peak—many of the leading petroleum geologists predict the peak will occur in this decade, possibly in the next two or three years (Campbell 1997; Kerr 1998; Duncan & Youngquist 1999; Holmes & Jones 2003; Appenzeller 2004; ASPO 2004; Bakhtiari 2004; Gerth 2004)—but it is abundantly clear that the remaining untapped reserves
and alternatives such as oil shale, tar sands, heavy oil, and biofuels are economically and energetically no substitute for the cheap oil that comes pouring out of the ground in the Arabian Peninsula and a comparatively few other places on Earth (Youngquist 1997). Moreover, the hydrogen economy and other high-tech solutions to the loss of cheap oil
Even energy conservation,
which we already know how to implement both technologically and as part of an abstemious
lifestyle, is likely to be no friend to globalization, because it reduces consumption of all kinds, and
consumption is what globalization is all about
are clouded by serious, emerging technological doubts about feasibility and safety, and a realistic fear that, if they can work, they will not arrive in time to rescue our globalized industrial civilization (Grant 2003; Tromp et al. 2003; Romm 2004).
. In a keynote address to the American Geological Society, a noted expert on electric power networks, Richard Duncan (2001), predicted widespread, permanent electric blackouts by 2012,
and the end of industrial, globalized civilization by 2030. The energy crunch is occurring now. According to Duncan, per capita energy production in the world has already peaked—that happened in 1979—and has declined since that date. In a more restrained evaluation of the energy crisis, Charles Hall and colleagues (2003) state that: The world is not
about to run out of hydrocarbons, and perhaps it is not going to run out of oil from unconventional sources any time soon. What will be difficult to obtain is cheap petroleum, because what is left is an enormous amount of low -grade hydrocarbons, which are likely to be much more expensive financially, energetically, politically and especially
environmentally. Nuclear power still has “important…technological, economic, environmental and public safety problems,” they continue, and at the moment “renewable energies present a mixed bag of opportunities.” Their solution? Forget about the more expensive and dirtier hydrocarbons such as tar sands. We need a major public policy intervention
. But I do not see renewable energy coming in
time or in sufficient magnitude to save globalization. Sunlight, wind, geothermal energy, and biofuels, necessary as they
are to develop, cannot replace cheap oil at the current rate of use without disastrous environmental side effects. These renewable
alternatives can only power a nonglobalized civilization that consumes less energy
to foster a crash program of public and private investment in research on renewable energy technologies. Perhaps this will happen—necessity does occasionally bring about change
(Ehrenfeld 2003b). Already, as the output of the giant
Saudi oil reserves has started to fall (Gerth 2004) and extraction of the remaining oil is becoming increasingly costly, oil prices are climbing and the strain is being felt by other energy sources. For example, the production of natural gas, which fuels more than half of U.S. homes, is declining in the United States, Canada, and Mexico as wells are
exhausted. In both the United States and Canada, intensive new drilling is being offset by high depletion rates, and gas cons umption increases yearly. In 2002 the United States imported 15% of its gas from Canada, more than half of Canada's total gas production. However, with Canada's gas production decreasing and with the “stranded” gas
reserves in the United States and Canadian Arctic regions unavailable until pipelines are built 5–10 years from now, the United States is likely to become more dependent on imported liquid natural gas (LNG). Here are some facts to consider. Imports of LNG in the United States increased from 39 billion cubic feet in 1990 to 169 billion cubic feet in
2002, which was still <1% of U.S. natural gas consumption. The largest natural gas field in the world is in the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Gas is liquefied near the site of production by cooling it to −260°F (−162°C), shipped in special refrigerated trains to waiting LNG ships, and then transported to an LNG terminal, where it is off-loaded, regasified,
and piped to consumers. Each LNG transport ship costs a half billion dollars. An LNG terminal costs one billion dollars. There are four LNG terminals in the United States, none in Canada or Mexico. Approximately 30 additional LNG terminal sites to supply the United States are being investigated or planned, including several in the Bahamas , with
pipelines to Florida. On 19 January 2004, the LNG terminal at Skikda, Algeria, blew up with tremendous force, flattening muc h of the port and killing 30 people. The Skikda terminal, renovated by Halliburton in the late 1990s, will cost $800 million to $1 billion to replace. All major ports in the United States are heavily populated, and there is strong
From LNG to coal gasification to oil shale to
nuclear fission to breeder reactors to fusion to renewable energy, even to improvements in
efficiency of energy use (Browne 2004), our society looks from panacea to panacea to feed the
ever-increasing demands of globalization. But no one solution or combination of solutions will suffice to
meet this kind of consumption. In the words of Vaclav Smil (2003): Perhaps the evolutionary imperative of our
species is to ascend a ladder of ever-increasing energy throughputs, never to consider seriously
any voluntary consumption limits and stay on this irrational course until it will be too late to
salvage the irreplaceable underpinnings of biospheric services that will be degraded and
environmental opposition to putting terminals at some sites in the United States. Draw your own conclusions about LNG as a source of cheap energy (Youngquist & Duncan 2003; Romero 2004).
destroyed by our progressing use of energy and materials. Among the many other environmental
effects of globalization, one that is both obvious and critically important is reduced genetic and
cultural diversity in agriculture. As the representatives of the petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries' many subsidiary seed
corporations sell their patented seeds in more areas previously isolated from global trade, farmers are dropping their traditional
crop varieties, the reservoir of our accumulated genetic agricultural wealth, in favor of a few,
supposedly high-yielding, often chemical-dependent seeds. The Indian agricultural scientist H. Sudarshan (2002) has
provided a typical example. He noted that Over the last half century, India has probably grown over 30,000 different, indigenous varieties or landraces
of rice. This situation has, in the last 20 years, changed drastically and it is predicted that in another 20 years, rice diversity will be reduced to 50
varieties, with the top 10 accounting for over three-quarters of the sub-continent's rice acreage. With
so few varieties left, where will
conventional plant breeders and genetic engineers find the genes for disease and pest resistance,
environmental adaptations, and plant quality and vigor that we will surely need? A similar loss has been
seen in varieties of domestic animals. Of the 3831 breeds of ass, water buffalo, cattle, goat, horse, pig, and sheep recorded in the twentieth century, at
least 618 had become extinct by the century's end, and 475 of the remainder were rare. Significantly, the countries with the highest ratios of surviving
breeds per million people are those that are most peripheral and remote from global commerce (Hall & Ruane 1993).
globalization, remoteness is no longer tenable .
Unfortunately, with
Here is a poignant illustration. Rural Haitians have traditionally raised a morphotype of long-snouted, small black pig known as the Creole pig. Adapted to the Haitian climate, Creole
pigs had very low maintenance requirements, and were mainstays of soil fertility and the rural economy. In 1982 and 1983, most of these pigs were deliberately killed as part of swine disease control efforts required to integrate Haiti into the hemispheric economy. They were replaced by pigs from Iowa that needed clean drinking water, roofed pigpens,
and expensive, imported feed. The substitution was a disaster. Haitian peasants, the hemisphere's poorest, lost an estimated $600 million. Haiti's ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (2000), who, whatever his faults, understood the environmental and social effects of globalization, wrote There was a 30% drop in enrollment in rural schools… a
dramatic decline in the protein consumption in rural Haiti, a devastating decapitalization of the peasant economy and an incalcul able negative impact on Haiti's soil and agricultural productivity. The Haitian peasantry has not recovered to this day…. For many peasants the extermination of the Creole pigs was their first experience of globalization. The
. The globalization of food has led to the introduction of “highinput” agricultural methods in many less-developed countries, with sharply increasing use of
fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, irrigation pumps, mechanical equipment, and
energy. There has been a correspondingly sharp decline in farmland biodiversity—including birds,
sale of Mexican string beans and South African apples in Michigan and Minnesota in January is not without consequences
invertebrates, and wild crop relatives—much of which is critically important to agriculture through ecosystem services or as reservoirs of useful genes
(Benton et al. 2003). The combination of heavy fertilizer use along with excessive irrigation has resulted in toxic accumulations of salt, nitrates, and
pesticides ruining soils all over the world, along with the dangerous drawdown and contamination of underground reserves of fresh water (Hillel 1991;
Although population growth has been responsible for some of this
agricultural intensification, much has been catalyzed by globalization (
Kaiser 2004; Sugden et al. 2004).
Wright 1990). Aquaculture is another agriculture-related activity. Fish and shellfish farming—much
of it for export—has more than doubled in the past 15 years. This industry's tremendous requirements for fish meal and fish oil to use as food and its degradation of coastal areas are placing a great strain on marine ecosystems (Naylor et al. 2000). Other unanticipated problems are occurring. For instance, the Scottish fisheries biologist Alexander
Murray and his colleagues (2002) report that infectious salmon anemia … is caused by novel virulent strains of a virus that has adapted to intensive aquacultural practices and has exploited the associated [ship] traffic to spread both locally and internationally…. Extensive ship traffic and lack of regulation increase the risk of spreading disease to animals
. The reduction of diversity in agriculture is paralleled
by a loss and reshuffling of wild species. The global die-off of species now occurring,
unprecedented in its rapidity, is of course only partly the result of globalization, but globalization
is a major factor in many extinctions. It accelerates species loss in several ways. First, it increases the numbers
of exotic species carried by the soaring plane, ship, rail, and truck traffic of global trade. Second, it is responsible for the
adverse effects of ecotourism on wild flora and fauna (Ananthaswamy 2004). And third, it promotes the
development and exploitation of populations and natural areas to satisfy the demands of global trade, including, in
raised for aquaculture and to other animals in marine environments…. [and underscore] the potential role of shipping in the global transport of zoonotic pathogens
addition to the agricultural and energy-related disruptions already mentioned, logging, over-fishing of marine fisheries, road building, and mining. To
give just one example, from 1985 to 2001, 56% of Indonesian Borneo's (Kalimantan) “protected” lowland forest areas—many of them remote and
Surely one of the most
significant impacts of globalization on wild species and the ecosystems in which they live has
been the increase in introductions of invasive species (
sparsely populated—were intensively logged, primarily to supply international timber markets (Curran et al. 2004).
Vitousek et al. 1996; Mooney & Hobbs 2000). Two examples are zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha), which came to the Great Lakes in the mid-1980s
in the ballast water of cargo ships from Europe, and Asian longhorn beetles (Anoplophera glabripennis), which arrived in the United States in the early 1990s in wood pallets and crates used to transfer cargo shipped from China and Korea. Zebra mussels, which are eliminating native mussels and altering lake ecosystems, clog the intake pipes of
waterworks and power plants. The Asian longhorn beetle now seems poised to cause heavy tree loss (especially maples [Acer sp.]) in the hardwood forests of eastern North America. Along the U.S. Pacific coast, oaks (Quercus sp.) and tanoaks (Lithocarpus densiflorus) are being killed by sudden oak death, caused by a new, highly invasive fungal
Estimates of the annual cost of the damage
caused by invasive species in the United States range from $5.5 billion to $115 billion. The zebra mussel
disease organism (Phytophthora ramorum), which is probably also an introduced species that was spread by the international trade in horticultural plants (Rizzo & Garbelotto 2003).
alone, just one of a great many terrestrial, freshwater, and marine exotic animals, plants, and pathogens, has been credited with more than $5 billion of
damage since its introduction (Mooney & Drake 1986; Cox 1999). Invasive
species surely rank among the principal
economic and ecological limiting factors for globalization. Some introduced species directly affect
human health, either as vectors of disease or as the disease organisms themselves .
For example, the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), a vector for dengue and yellow
fevers, St. Louis and LaCrosse encephalitis viruses, and West Nile virus, was most likely introduced in used truck tires imported from Asia to Texas in the 1980s and has spread widely since then. Discussion of this and other examples is beyond the scope of this article. Even the partial control of accidental and deliberate species introductions requires
stringent, well-funded governmental regulation in cooperation with the public and with business. Many introductions of alien species cannot be prevented, but some can, and successful interventions to prevent the spread of introduced species can have significant environmental and economic benefits. To give just one example, western Australia has
shown that government and industry can cooperate to keep travelers and importers from bringing harmful invasive species across their borders. The w estern Australian HortGuard and GrainGuard programs integrate public education; rapid and effective access to information; targeted surveillance, which includes preborder, border, and postborder
activities; and farm and regional biosecurity systems (Sharma 2004). Similar programs exist in New Zealand. But there is only so much that governments can do in the face of massive global trade. Some of the significant effects of globalization on wildlife are quite subtle. Mazzoni et al. (2003) reported that the newly appearing fungal disease
chytridiomycosis (caused by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis), which appears to be the causative agent for a number of mass die-offs and extinctions of amphibians on several continents, is probably being spread by the international restaurant trade in farmed North American bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana). These authors state: “Our findings suggest that
Even more unexpected findings were described in 2002 by
Alexander et al., who noted that expansion of ecotourism and other consequences of
globalization are increasing contact between free-ranging wildlife and humans, resulting in the
first recorded introduction of a primary human pathogen , Mycobacterium tuberculosis, into wild populations of banded
international trade may play a key role in the global dissemination of this and other emerging infectious diseases of wildlife.”
mongooses (Mungos mungo) in Botswana and suricates (Suricata suricatta) in South Africa. The known effects of globalization on the environment are
numerous and highly significant. Many others are undoubtedly unknown. Given these circumstances, the first question that suggests itself is: Will
The principal environmental side
effects of globalization—climate change, resource exhaustion (particularly cheap energy), damage
to agro-ecosystems, and the spread of exotic species, including pathogens (plant, animal, and
human)—are sufficient to make this economic system unstable and short-lived. The socioeconomic
consequences of globalization are likely to do the same. In my book The Arrogance of Humanism (1981), I claimed that our ability to
manage global systems, which depends on our being able to predict the results of the things we do,
or even to understand the systems we have created, has been greatly exaggerated. Much of our alleged control
is science fiction; it doesn't work because of theoretical limits that we ignore at our peril. We live in a dream world in which reality
globalization, as we see it now, remain a permanent state of affairs (Rees 2002; Ehrenfeld 2003a)?
testing is something we must never, never do, lest we awake. In 1984 Charles Perrow explored the reasons why we
have trouble predicting what so many of our own created systems will do, and why they surprise us so unpleasantly while we think we are managing
them. In his book Normal Accidents, which does not concern globalization, he listed the critical characteristics of some of today's complex systems.
They are highly interlinked, so a change in one part can affect many others, even those that seem
quite distant. Results of some processes feed back on themselves in unexpected ways . The controls of
the system often interact with each other unpredictably. We have only indirect ways of finding out what is happening inside the system. And we have
an incomplete understanding of some of the system's processes. His example of such a system is a nuclear power plant, and this, he explained, is why
I would argue that globalization is a
similar system, also subject to catastrophic accidents, many of them environmental—events that
we cannot define until after they have occurred, and perhaps not even then. The comparatively few
system-wide accidents in nuclear plants cannot be predicted or eliminated by system design.
commentators who have predicted the collapse of globalization have generally given social reasons to support their arguments. These deserve some
consideration here, if only because the environmental and social consequences of globalization interact so strongly with each other. In 1998, the British
political economist John Gray, giving scant attention to environmental factors, nevertheless came to the conclusion that globalization is unstable and
will be short-lived. He said, “There is nothing in today's global market that buffers it against the social strains arising from highly uneven economic
result, Gray states, is that “The combination of [an]
unceasing stream of new technologies, unfettered market competition and weak or fractured
social institutions” has weakened both sovereign states and multinational corporations in their
ability to control important events. Note that Gray claims that not only nations but also multinational corporations, which are widely
development within and between the world's diverse societies.” The
touted as controlling the world, are being weakened by globalization. This idea may come as a surprise, considering the growth of multinationals in the
past few decades, but I believe it is true. Neither
governments nor giant corporations are even remotely capable
of controlling the environmental or social forces released by globalization ,
without first controlling globalization itself. Two of the social critics of globalization
with the most dire predictions about its doom are themselves masters of the process. The late Sir James Goldsmith, billionaire financier, wrote in 1994, It must surely be a mistake to adopt an economic policy which makes you rich if you eliminate your national workforce and transfer production abroad, and which bankrupts you if you continue to employ
your own people…. It is the poor in the rich countries who will subsidize the rich in the poor countries. This will have a serious impact on the social cohesion of nations. Another free-trade billionaire, George Soros, said much the same thing in 1995: “The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences.
Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime.” How much more powerful these statements are if we factor in the environment! As globalization collapses, what will happen to people, biodiversity, and ecosystems? With respect to people, the gift of prophecy is not required to answer this question. What will happen depends on
where you are and how you live. Many citizens of the Third World are still comparatively self-sufficient; an unknown number of these will survive the breakdown of globalization and its attendant chaos. In the developed world, there are also people with resources of self-sufficiency and a growing understanding of the nature of our social and
environmental problems, which may help them bridge the years of crisis. Some species are adaptable; some are not. For the nonhuman residents of Earth, not all news will be bad. Who would have predicted that wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo), one of the wiliest and most evasive of woodland birds, extinct in New Jersey 50 years ago, would now be
found in every county of this the most densely populated state, and even, occasionally, in adjacent Manhattan? Who would have predicted that black bears (Ursus americanus), also virtually extinct in the state in the mid-twentieth century, would now number in the thousands (Ehrenfeld 2001)? Of course these recoveries are unusual—rare bright spots
in a darker landscape. Finally, a few ecological systems may survive in a comparatively undamaged state; most will be stressed to the breaking point, directly or indirectly, by many environmental and social factors interacting unpredictably. Lady Luck, as always, will have much to say. In his book The Collapse of Complex Societies, the archaeologist
Joseph Tainter (1988) notes that collapse, which has happened to all past empires, inevitably results in human systems of lower complexity and less specialization, less centralized control, lower economic activity, less information flow, lower population levels, less trade, and less redistribution of resources. All of these changes are inimical to
globalization. This less-complex, less-globalized condition is probably what human societies will be like when the dust settles. I do not think, however, that we can make such specific predictions about the ultimate state of the environment after globalization, because we have never experienced anything like this exceptionally rapid, global environmental
damage before. History and science have little to tell us in this situation. The end of the current economic system and the transition to a postglobalized state is and will be accompanied by a desperate last raid on resources and a chaotic flurry of environmental destruction whose results cannot possibly be told in advance. All one can say is that the
surviving species, ecosystems, and resources will be greatly impoverished compared with what we have now, and our descendants will not thank us for having adopted, however briefly, an economic system that consumed their inheritance and damaged their planet so wantonly. Environment is a true bottom line—concern for its condition must trump all
purely economic growth strategies if both the developed and developing nations are to survive and prosper. Awareness of the environmental limits that globalized industrial society denies or ignores should not, however, bring us to an extreme position of environmental determinism. Those whose preoccupations with modern civilization's very real social
problems cause them to reject or minimize the environmental constraints discussed here (Hollander 2003) are guilty of seeing only half the picture. Environmental scientists sometimes fall into the same error. It is tempting to see the salvation of civilization and environment solely in terms of technological improvements in efficiency of energy extraction
and use, control of pollution, conservation of water, and regulation of environmentally harmful activities. But such needed developments will not be suffici ent—or may not even occur—without corresponding social change, including an end to human population growth and the glorification of consumption, along with the elimination of economic
Integrated change that
combines environmental awareness, technological innovation, and an altered world view is the only
answer to the life-threatening problems exacerbated by globalization (Ehrenfeld 2003b).
mechanisms that increase the gap between rich and poor. The environmental and social problems inherent in globalization are c ompletely interrelated—any attempt to treat them as separate entities is unlikely to succeed in easing the transition to a postglobalized world.
Profit-first causes extinction- try or die for move toward the commons
Smith, 7 -- UCLA history PhD
(Richard, “The Eco-suicidal Economics of Adam Smith”, June, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 18.2, JSTOR)
So there you have it: insatiable growth and consumption is
destroying the planet and dooming humanity- but without
ceaselessly growing production and insatiably rising consumption, we would be even worse off . Such is the
lunatic suicidal logic of capitalist economics. Adam Smith's fatal error was his assumption that the "most effectual" means of
promoting the public interest of society is to just ignore it and concentrate instead on the pursuit of economic self-interest. In the 18th century, this
narcissistic economic philosophy had little impact on the natural world. Today it has a huge impact and is, moreover, totally at odds with the world's
scientific bodies who are crying out for a PLAN to stop global warming and save nature. Capitalist Limits to Corporate Environmentalist!! Corporations
aren't necessarily evil, but corporate managers are legally responsible to their owners, the shareholders, and not to society. This means that the
critical decisions about production and resource consumption -decisions that affect our health and
survival-are mainly the private prerogative of large corporations and are often only marginally under the control of
governments. The blunt reality of this situation was well summed up by Joel Bakan in his recent book (and film), The Corporation: Corporations are
created by law and imbued with purpose by law. Law dictates what their directors and managers can do, what they cannot do, and what they must do.
And, at least in the United States and other industrialized countries, the corporation, as created by law, most closely resembles Milton Friedman's ideal
model of the institution: it compels executives to prioritize the interests of their companies and shareholders above all others and forbids them from
being socially responsible - at least genuinely so.38 So when
corporate and societal interests conflict, even the
"greenest" of corporate CEOs often have no choice but to make decisions contrary to the interests
of society. British Petroleum's CEO, Lord John Browne, is good example. In the late 1990s, Browne had an environmental epiphany, broke ranks
with oil industry denial, and became the first oil company executive to warn that fossil fuels are accelerating global warming. BP adopted the motto
"Beyond Petroleum" in its advertisements, painted its service stations green and yellow, and bought a boutique solar power outfit. But under Browne,
BP has spent far more
on advertising its green credentials than it invests in actual green power production. Fully 99 percent of its investments still go into fossil fuel
exploration and development, while solar power is less than 1 percent and seems to be declining. 9 In 1999, BP spent $45 million to buy the solar
power outfit Solarex. By comparison, BP paid $26.8 billion to buy Amoco in order to enlarge its oil portfolio. BP's 2004 revenues topped $285 billion,
while its solar power sales were just over $400 million. In February 2006, Browne told his board that the company had more than replenished its
marketed output in 2005 with new proven reserves of oil and gas, and that "with more than 20 new projects due on stream in the next three years, and
assuming the same level of oil price, the annual rate of increase should continue at some 4 percent through 2010."40 So, far from shifting to renewable
sources of energy, BP is not only expanding its output of fossil fuels but increasing its overall reliance on fossil fuel sources of profit. BP now
possesses proven reserves of 19 billion barrels produced in 23 countries, and the company currently explores for oil in 26 countries. Given the proven
and stupendous profits of oil production versus the unproven profitability of alternative energy, how can Brown go "green" in any serious way and
remain responsible to his owner-investors?41 Were he to do so, he would soon be out of a job.42 Ecosocialism or Collapse
If we're going to
stop the capitalist economic locomotive from driving us off the cliff , we are going to have to
fundamentally rethink our entire economic life, reassert the visible hand of conscious scientific, rational economic planning,
and implement democratic control over our economies and resources. We're going to have to construct an entirely
different kind of economy, one that can live within its ecological means. Such an economy would have to be based around at least the
following principles: An Ecosocialist Economy of Stasis First, in a world of fast-diminishing resources, a sustainable global economy can only be based
to survive , humanity will have to impose drastic fixed limits
on development, resource consumption, the freedom to consume , and the freedom to pollute. Given
on near-zero economic growth on average. That means that
existing global inequities and the fact that the crisis we face is overwhelmingly caused by overconsumption in the industrialized North, equity can only
be achieved by imposing massive cutbacks in the advanced countries combined with a program of rational planned growth to develop the Third World,
with the aim of stabilizing at zero growth on average. This will require drastically cutting back many lines of production, closing down others entirely,
and creating socially and environmentally useful jobs for workers made redundant by this transition. This will also require physical rationing of many
Human survival will thus require a profound rethinking
of our most fundamental ideas-bourgeois ideas-of economic freedom. For too long, many Americans, in particular, have
critical resources on a per capita basis for every person on the planet.
come to identify their notion of "freedom," if not their very being and essence, with insatiable consumption-unlimited freedom of "choice" in what to buy.
But 50 styles of blue jeans, 16 models of SUVs and endless choices in "consumer electronics" will all have dramatically less value when Bloomingdales
is under water, Florida disappears beneath the waves, malarial mosquitos blanket Long Island beaches, and the U.S. is overrun with desperate
environmental refugees from the South. Once we as a society finally admit the "inconvenient truth" that we have no choice but to drastically cut
production and severely reduce consumer choice, it will also become apparent that we have to put in place a planned economy that will meet our
needs and those of future generations as well as the other species with whom we share the planet. A Restructured Economy of Production for Social
Need and for Use Second, we need to massively restructure the global economy. Enormous sectors in the global capitalist economy-plastics,
packaging, much of the manufactured consumer electronics, petrochemical-based and other synthetic products, many pharmaceuticals, all genetically
modified foods, and the vast and ever-growing production of arms-are either completely unnecessary or waste increasingly scarce resources and
produce needless pollution.44 Our parents did without nearly all of this before WWII, and they were not living in caves. Many lines of production and
most retail industries are built around unnecessary replacement and designed-in obsolescence. How much of the American economy from cars and
appliances to clothes is purposefully designed to be "consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate"46 so the
cycle of waste production can begin all over again? How much of the planet's natural resources are consumed every year in completely unnecessary
annual model changes, fashion updates, and "new and improved" products whose only purpose is simply to sell and sell again? If a global population
of 6 to 9 billion people is going to survive this century, what choice do we have but to reorganize the global economy to conserve what shrinking natural
resources we have left, reorient production for need rather than profit, design products to last as long as possible, enforce as close to total recycling as
possible, and aim for as close to zero pollution as is possible? A Socialist Economic Democracy Third: an ecosocialist democracy. Endless growth or
stasis? Resource exhaustion or conservation? Automobilization of the planet or enhanced public transport? Deforestation or protection of the wild
forests? Agro poisons or organic farming? Hunt the fish to extinction or protect the fisheries? Raze the Amazon forest to grow MacBurgers or promote
a more vegetarian diet? Manufacture products designed to be "used up, burned up, consumed as rapidly as possible" or design them to last, be
repaired, recycled and also shared? Enforce private interests at the expense of the commons or subordinate private greed to the common good? In
Who can make these critical economic and
in society's interest and in the interest of preserving a habitable planet? In Adam Smith's
view, which is still the operable maxim of modern capitalists and neoliberal economists, we should all
just "Look out for Number 1," and the common good will take care of itself. If Smith were right, the common good
would have taken care of itself long ago, and we wouldn't be facing catastrophe. After centuries of Smithian
economics, the common good needs our immediate and concentrated attention. Corporations can't make such decisions in
the best interests of society or the future , because their legal responsibility is to their private owners. The only way
such decisions can be scientifically rational and socially responsible is when everyone who is
affected participates in decision-making. And time is running out. We don't have 20 or 30 years to wait for Ford and GM to figure
today's globalized world, decisions about such questions will determine the fate of humanity.
moral decisions
out how they can make a buck on electric cars. We don't have 60 or 70 years to wait while investors in coal-powered power plants milk the last profits
out of those sunk investments before they consider an alternative. Humanity is at a crossroads. Either we find a way to move toward a global economic
democracy in which decisions about production and consumption are directly and democratically decided by all those affected, or the alternative will be
the continuing descent into a capitalist war of all-against-all over ever-diminishing resources that can only end in the collapse of what's left of civilization
and the global ecology. To be sure, in an economic democracy, society would sometimes make mistakes in planning. We can't have perfect foresight,
Either we democratize
or we face ecological and social
and democracies make mistakes. But at least these would be honest mistakes. The conclusion seems inescapable:
the economy , construct the institutions of a practical working socialist democracy,
collapse.
Neoliberalism commodifies environmental destruction-means it can’t self-correct
Foster et al., 10 -- Oregon sociology professor
(John, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth, pg 69-72)
A peculiarity
of capitalism, brought out by the Lauderdale Paradox, is that it feeds on scarcity. Hence,
Although it
is often supposed that increasing environmental costs will restrict economic growth, such costs
continue to be externalized under capitalism on nature (and society) as a whole. This perversely provides new prospects
for private profits through the selective commodification of parts of nature (public wealth. All of this points to the fact that there is
no real feedback mechanism, as commonly supposed, from rising ecological costs to economic
crisis, that can be counted on to check capitalism's destruction of the biospheric conditions of civilization and life
nothing is more dangerous to capitalism as a system than abundance. Waste and destruction are therefore rational for the system.
itself. By the perverse logic of the system, whole new industries and markets aimed profiting on
planetary destruction, such as the waste management industry and carbon trading, are being opened up. These new markets
are justified as offering partial, ad hoc "solutions" to the problems generated nonstop by capital's laws of motion.38 The growth of natural
scarcity is seen as a golden opportunity which to further privatize the world's commons. This tragedy
of privatization of the commons only accelerates the destruction of the natural environment, while enlarging the system that weighs
upon it. This is best illustrated by the rapid privatization of fresh water, which is now seen as a new mega-market for global accumulation. The drying up and contamination of fresh water diminishes public wealth,
creating investment opportunities for capital, while profits made from selling increasingly scarce water are recorded as contributions to income and riches. It is not surprising, therefore, that the UN Commission on
Sustainable Development proposed, at a 1998 conference in Paris, that governments should turn to "large multinational corporations" in addressing issues of water scarcity, establishing "open markets" in water
rights. Gerard Mestrallet, CEO of the global water giant Suez, has openly pronounced: "Water is an efficient product. It is a product which normally would be free, and our job is to sell it. But it is a product which is
absolutely necessary for life." He further remarked: "Where else [other than in the monopolization of increasingly scarce water resources for private gain] can you find a business that's totally international, where
the prices and volumes, unlike steel, rarely go down?"39 Not only water offers new opportunities for profiting on scarcity. This is also the case with respect to fuel and food. Growing fuel shortages, as world oil
demand has outrun supply—with peak oil approaching—has led to increases in the prices of fossil fuels and energy in general, and to a global shift in agriculture from food crops to fuel crops. This has generated
a boom in the agrofuel market (expedited by governments on the grounds of "national security" concerns). The result has been greater food scarcities, inducing an upward spiral in food prices and the spiking of
world hunger. Speculators have seen this as an opportunity for getting richer quicker through the monopolization of land and primary commodity resources.40 Similar issues arise with respect to carbon-trading
schemes, ostensibly aimed at promoting profits while reducing carbon emissions. Such schemes continue to be advanced even though experiments in this respect have thus far failed to reduce emissions. Here,
At all times, ruling-class circles actively work to
prevent radical structural change in this as in other areas, since any substantial transformation in
social-environmental relations would mean challenging the treadmill of production and launching
an ecological-cultural revolution. Indeed, from the standpoint of capital accumulation, global warming and desertification are
the expansion of capital trumps actual public interest in protecting the vital conditions of life.
blessings in disguise, increasing the prospects of expanding private riches. We are thus driven back to Lauderdale's question: "What opinion," he
asked, "would be entertained of the understanding of a man, who, as the means of increasing the wealth of... a country should propose to create a
scarcity of water, the abundance of which was deservedly considered one of the greatest blessings incident to the community? It is certain, however,
that such a projector would, by this means, succeed in increasing the mass of individual riches."41 Numerous
ecological critics have,
of course, tried to address the contradictions associated with the devaluation of nature by
designing new green accounting systems that would include losses of "natural capital."42
Although such attempts are important in bringing out the irrationality of the system, they run into
the harsh reality that the current system of national accounts does accurately reflect capitalist
realities of the non-valuation/undervaluation of natural agents (including human labor power). To alter this, it is
necessary to transcend the system. The dominant form of valuation in our age of global ecological crisis is a true
reflection of capitalism's mode of social and environmental degradation—causing it to profit on the
destruction of the planet. In Marx's critique, value was conceived of as an alienated form of wealth.43 Real wealth came from nature and
labor power and was associated with the fulfillment of genuine human needs. Indeed, "it would be wrong," Marx wrote, "to say that labour which
produces use values is the only source of the wealth produced by it, that is of mater, wealth Use-value always comprises a natural element... Labour is
a natural condition of human existence, a condition of material interchange [metabolism] between man and nature." From this slant point, Lauderdale's
paradox was not a mere enigma of economic analysis but rather the supreme contradiction of a system that, as Marx stressed, developed only by
"simultaneously undermining the origin sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker."44
Consumption outpaces efficiency gains, innovation is only used to further profit
Foster et al., 10 -- Oregon sociology professor
(John, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth, pg 69-72)
Ecological modernization theorists simply added to this the corporate green-washing claim that
the eco-modernizing tendencies intrinsic to capitalism or "the market system" allowed the
"expansion of the limits" of growth. Ecological modernization, according to its leading advocate, Arthur Mol, is the belief that "an
environmentally sound society" can be created without reference to "a variety of other social criteria and goals, such as the scale of production, the
capitalist mode of production, workers' influence, equal allocation of economic goods, gender criterion, and so on. Including the latter set of criteria
might result in a more radical programme (in the sense of moving away from the present social order), but not necessary a more ecologically radical
programme." As another leading ecological modernization theorist, Maarten Hajer, has acknowledged, ecological modernization "does not call for any
structural change but is, in this respect, basically a modernist and technocratic approach to the environment that suggests that there is a technoinstitutional fix for the present problems." For this reason, ecological modernization sees no reason to address the reality of capitalism. In Hajer's
words, "It is ... obvious that ecological modernization ... does not address the systemic features of capitalism that make the system inherently wasteful
and unmanageable."76 This
rigid notion of ecological modernization as a mere correction in the original
modernizing tendency of society leaves little room for considerations of social inequality. Additionally,
ecological modernization thinkers do not normally address the larger problems of the global
ecological crisis, such as global warming, or the forms taken human-nature interactions.77 Rather than engaging in an overarching critique
of the historical relation between society and nature, the increasingly dominant ecological modernization perspective takes all of this for granted. It
begins and ends with the notion of techni (technics), which is both cause and effect, problem and
solution: at most a question of technological innovation coupled with the appropriate forms of
ecological management. Ecological modernization is thus all about the development and management of green technologies (techniques),
displacing the old, environmentally harmful operations. Entrepreneurs are deemed to be an important driver of this transition, as they respond to
increasing environmental consciousness among the public and pursue important innovations as far as products and technologies. "The basic notion of
the ecological modernization processes," as the principal sociological advocates of this perspective state, is "aimed at 'regaining one of the crucial
design faults of modernity'" through technological innovation.78 The
standard way in which to square the expanding
circle (or spiral) of capitalist production is to bring in the black box of technology as constituting
the solution to all problems. Yet, technology cuts both ways. "The assumption of some critics that
technological change is exclusively a part of the solution and no part of the problem," Herman Daly
writes, "is ridiculous on the face of it and totally demolished by the work of Barry Commoner [in The
Closing Circle] (1971). We need not accept Commoner's extreme emphasis on the importance of the problem-causing nature of post-World War II
technology (with the consequent downplaying of the roles of population and affluence) in order to recognize that recent technological change has been
more a part of the problem than of the solution."79 To be sure, technological change is a necessary part of any ecological solution. But
ecological modernizers in sociology and sustainable-developers in mainstream economics go
beyond this by arguing that technology can work magic: "dematerializing" economic production
so that the capitalist economy can then walk on air (or create a "weightless society"), thereby continuing its relentless
expansion— but with a rapidly diminishing effect on the environment. Needless to say, such technological fantasies have no basis in reality.80 Still,
technological optimism is pervasive in the ecological literature (and especially among ecological modernization theorists). All sorts of "positive-sum"
and "win-win" technical fixes are proposed. Hajer speaks confidently of the "technicisation of ecology" as the answer to the ecological crisis. In this
view, "microelectronic technologies are presented as the solution for the juggernaut effect'" of capitalism.81 Technological
change is
promoted in an attempt to argue that social relations (of power and property) can remain the same—
whereas it is merely values, consciousness, and knowledge that change, and that direct
technological innovation. Such views are worse than those of necromancers of old, since they wish away all
pretenses to a scientific understanding in the name of science. Not only are the basic physics of
thermodynamics set aside, but the way in which technology is embedded within the social system is also
ignored.82 The notion that economic production in general under the present system can continually expand without ecological waste and
degradation (the dematerialization hypothesis) goes against the basic laws of physics. As the brilliant ecological economist Nicholas GeorgescuRoegen wrote: "Had economics recognized the entropic nature of the economic process, it might have been able to warn its co-workers for the
betterment of mankind—the technological sciences—that 'bigger and better' washing machines, automobiles, and superjets must lead to 'bigger and
Although new technologies (and indeed much older technologies) can accomplish
great things in terms of reducing the environmental impact per unit of production, the scale
effects of economic expansion generally override any energy/environmental savings (a
phenomenon known as the Jevons Paradox).84 Since 1975 the amount of energy expended per
dollar of GDP in the United States has decreased by half, marking an increase in energy efficient by that amount. But
at the same time the overall consumption of energy by U.S. society has risen by some 40 percent. New
environmental technologies are adopted not on the basis of their value in creating a sustainable
relation to the environment but on the basis of the profit considerations of corporations, which rarely
converge with ecological requirements. As economist Juliet Schor notes, "Firms are reluctant to install technologies whose
gains they cannot capture. A decentralized system of solar and wind, for example, may have technical
superiorities such as avoiding the power loss that accompanies long-distance power generation in centralized facilities. But if the
technologies are small-scale and easy to replicate, large firms have difficulty capturing the profits that make
investments desirable."86 Indeed, the single-minded goal of technological innovation under capitalism is
expansion of production, profits, accumulation, and wealth for those at the top , not protection of the environment.
According to Donella Meadows and her co-authors in The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update: "If a society's implicit goals are to
exploit nature, enrich the elites, and ignore the long term, then that society will develop
technologies and markets that destroy the environment, widen the gap between the rich and the
poor, and optimize for short-term gains. In short, that society develops technologies and markets that
hasten a collapse instead of preventing it."87
better' pollution."83
Policy fixes cannot resolve structural problems in the capitalist
system—their solvency claims actively exclude anti-capitalist
discourses—ensures serial policy failure
Wolff 8 — Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2008 (“Policies to "Avoid" Economic
Crises,” MR Zine—a publication of The Monthly Review, November 6th, Available Online at
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wolff061108.html, Accessed 11-19-2008)
The whole idea of policy is bizarre. The "right policy" represents an absurd claim that this or that
law or regulation can somehow undo the many different factors that cumulatively produced this
crisis. Policies are "magic potions" offered to populations urgently demanding solutions to real
problems. Whether cynically advocated for ulterior motives or actually believed by the politicians,
promoters, and professors themselves, policy is the secular cousin of religion.¶ These days, the conservative policy
amounts, as usual, to "let the private economy solve the problems" and "minimize state intervention because it only makes matters
worse." Conservatives protect the freedoms of private enterprise, market transactions, and the wealthy from state regulations and
controls and from taxes. The liberals' policy, also as usual, wants the state to limit corporate behavior, control and shape market
transactions, and tilt the tax system more toward benefiting middle and lower income groups. ¶ Both policies can no more
overcome this economic crisis than they overcame past crises. Historically, both conservative
and liberal policies fail at least as often as they succeed. Which outcome happens depends on all
the factors shaping them and not on the policy a government pursues. Yet, both sides endlessly
claim otherwise in desperate efforts at self-justification. Each side trots out its basic philosophy –
dressed up as "a policy to achieve solutions." Conservatives and liberals keep debating. Today's
crisis simply provides an urgent sort of context for the old debate to continue. Each side hopes to
win converts by suggesting that its approach will "solve the economic crisis" while the other's
approach will make it worse. Thus the liberals displaced the conservatives in the depths of the
Great Depression, the reverse happened in the recession of the 1970s, and the liberals may now
regain dominance. In no instance were adopted policies successful in solving the crises in any
enduring way. The unevenness and instability of capitalism as a system soon brought another
crisis crashing down on our economy and society.¶ The basic conservative message holds that the current
economic crisis is NOT connected to the underlying economic system. The crisis does NOT emerge from the structure of the
corporate system of production. It is NOT connected to the fact that corporate boards of directors, responsible to the minority that
owns most of their shares, make all the key economic decisions while the enterprise's employees and the vast majority of the
citizenry have to live with the consequences. The very undemocratic nature of the capitalist system of production is NOT related to
crisis in the conservative view. The basic liberal message likewise disconnects today's crisis from the capitalist production system.
Rather, each side insists that all crises would have been and would now be "avoidable" if only the
right policy were in place.¶ Conservatives and liberals share more than a careful avoidance of
connecting the crisis to the underlying capitalist system. They are also complicit in blocking
those who do argue for that connection from making their case in politics, the media, or the
schools. While conservative and liberal policies do little to solve crises, the debate between them
has largely succeeded in excluding anti-capitalist analyses of economic crises from public discussion.
Perhaps that exclusion – rather than solving crises – is the function of those endlessly rehashed
policy debates between liberals and conservatives.
Economic inequality is the root cause of war-exacerbates and triggers all
proximate causes
Staples, 2k
-- International Network on Disarmament and Globalization chair
(Steven, “The relationship between globalization and militarism”, Social Justice, 27.4, proquest)
Economic inequality is growing; more conflict and civil wars are emerging.
It is important to see a connection between these two situations. Proponents of
global economic integration argue that globalization promotes peace and economic development of the Third World. They assert that "all boats rise with the tide" when investors and corporations make higher profits. However, there is precious little evidence that this is true and substantial evidence of the opposite. The United Nation's Human
Development Report (U.N. Development Programme, 1999: 3) noted that globalization is creating new threats to human security. Economic inequality between Northern and Southern nations has worsened, not improved. There are more wars being fought today -- mostly in the Third World -- than there were during the Cold War. Most are not wars
The mainstream media frequently oversimplify the causes of these wars,
underlying source of such conflicts
is economic in nature. Financial instability, economic inequality, competition for resources, and
environmental degradation -- all root causes of war -- are exacerbated by globalization. The Asian
financial meltdown of 1997 to 1999 involved a terrible human cost. The economies of Thailand, South
Korea, and Indonesia crumbled in the crisis.
. Political upheaval and conflict ensued,
costing thousands of lives. Meanwhile, other countries watched as their neighbors suffered the
consequences of greater global integration. In India, citizens faced corporate recolonization, which spawned a nationalistic
political movement. Part of the political program was the development of nuclear weapons -- seen by many as the
internationally accepted currency of power. Nuclear tests have put an already conflict-ridden region on the brink of nuclear war. 2.
Globalization Fuels the Means to Wage War The world economic system promotes military economies over
civilian economies, pushing national economic policies toward military spending . The World Trade
Organization (WTO), one of the main instruments of globalization, is largely based on the premise that the only legitimate
role for a government is to provide for a military to protect the interests of the country and a police force to ensure order
within. The WTO attacks governments' social and environmental policies that reduce corporate
profits,
between countries, but are civil wars where the majority of deaths are civilians, not soldiers.
with claims they are rooted in religious or ethnic differences. A closer inspection reveals that the
These countries, previously held up by neoliberal economists as the darlings of globalization, were reduced to riots and financial ruin. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stepped in to
rescue foreign investors and impose austerity programs that opened the way for an invasion by foreign corporations that bought up assets devalued by capital flight and threw millions of people out of work
and it has succeeded in having national laws that protect the environment struck down. Yet the WTO gives exemplary protection to government actions that develop, arm, and deploy armed forces and supply a military establishment. Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) allows governments free
reign for actions taken in the interest of national security. For example, in 1999 a WTO trade panel ruled against a Canadian government program that provided subsidies to aerospace and defense corporations for the production of civi lian aircraft. Within weeks, the Canadian military announced a new $30 million subsidy program for the same Canadian
The
$309-billion U.S. military budget dwarfs the budgets of all its potential enemies combined, and
with the collapse of the Soviet Union the U.S. faces no imminent military challengers. This large
budget is, for all practical purposes, a corporate subsid y. Because the corporations involved happen to be building
weapons, the subsidy is protected under GATT's Article XXI. The use of military spending to develop a country's
industrial and economic base has not been lost on Third World countries.
corporations, but this time the money was for production of new weapons (Canadian Press, 1999). In this case, the government was forced down the path of a military economy. Contrast this WTO ruling with the billions of dollars the Pentagon gives to American weapons corporations for developing and producing military aircraft.
Though struggling to lift itself from apartheid-era poverty and accompanying social
problems, South Africa is spending billions of dollars on aircraft, warships, and even submarines in an effort to develop its economy. South Africa stipulated that the arms it buys must be partially manufactured in South Africa. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel explained that the increase in military spending would allow "the National Defence Force to
upgrade equipment, while providing a substantial boost to South African industry, foreign investment, and exports" (Engelbrecht, 1999). South Africa's performance requirements would be wide open to WTO challenges if they were for building schools, hospitals, transportation infrastructure, or virtually anything except weapons. South Africa is about to
make the same mistake Northern industrialized countries made: it is creating new military projects that will become dependent on perpetual government funding, drawing money away from essential social programs.
When the current weapons orders
have been filled and government funding dries up, weapons corporations will have to find new
customers to maintain current job levels, driving the arms trade and potentially causing a whole
new arms race in the region.
Globalization
and the transnationalization of defense/military corporations have replaced the military-industrial
complex of the Cold War economy with a military-corporate complex of the new global economy
The Military-Corporate Complex Since the end of the Cold War, President Eisenhower's 1960s-era military-industrial complex has been fundamentally challenged by globalization. Globalization has weakened the powers of the nation-state, while
freeing corporations to move profits and operations across national boundaries. Defense/military contractors, once considered part of the national industrial base and regulated and nurtured as such, are becoming detached from the nation-state and are able to pursue their interests independently.
. This is
based upon the dominance of corporate interests over those of the state. The weakened state is no longer able to reign in weapons corporations and is trapped increasingly by corporate interests: greater military spending, state subsidies, and a liberalization of the arms trade. Increased military production and the proliferation of weaponry take place
without considering the costs of militarization to international diplomacy and peace. In many industrialized nations, governm ent military spending has increased since the end of the Cold War. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAe Systems (formerly British Aerospace), Raytheon, Thomson-CSF, and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace are all part of the militarycorporate complex. Formerly national in orientation, these corporations have become transnational, with enormous revenues and tremendous economic and political power. Boeing alone has global sales of over $50 billion and has swallowed up several competitors to become the world's largest maker of military aircraft, including advanced fighters,
bombers, helicopters, and missiles. Boeing is the largest U.S. exporter, with customers in 145 countries, employees in more than 60 countries, and operations in 27 U.S. states. Worldwide, over 200,000 people receive paychecks from Boeing. Weapons corporations on both sides of the Atlantic have been merging at an unprecedented rate in recent
years. In the U.S., Boeing has merged with McDonnell Douglas, Hughes Helicopters, and Rockwell International; Lockheed with Martin Marietta and General Dynamics; Northrop with Grumman and Westinghouse; and Raytheon with Hughes Aerospace & Defense and Texas Instruments Defense. In Europe, British Aerospace has taken over GEC
Marconi, and France's Aerospatiale Matra has merged with Germany's DaimlerChrysler Aerospace and Spain's CASA. Weapons corporations are merging to compete more forcefully for a dominant share of the lucrative but highly competitive global arms market. In 1998, arms imports amounted to $22 billion, with Third World countries accounting for
. Until the late 1990s, transatlantic mergers of defense/military contractors had been
prohibited by governments due to national security concerns . In 1999, however, the Pentagon admitted that U.S. and
over half of this market
European mergers were inevitable and accorded national treatment to BAe Systems, allowing it to be awarded military contracts as if it were an
American corporation. These
mergers produce ever-larger and more powerful weapons-producing
corporations. These newly merged corporations are able to greatly influence, even dictate,
government defense and military policy.
Government regulations have been weakened or removed altogether. For example, export controls designed to prevent weapons from being sold to countries at war or to countries that violate human rights
are narrowly interpreted so that they do not interfere with corporate profits. Foreign embassies and trade missions abroad are used to aid arms sales. 3. The Threat of Military Force Is Used to Protect Corporate Interests According to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, "the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.
McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps" (Friedman, 1999). Friedman illuminates the strategic relationship that exists between corporations and militaries.
As
globalization extends the reach of corporate interests around the world, a matching military
capacity must be deployed to protect those interests.
This is the underlying reason the U.S. military maintains the capacity to wage two major wars in different regions of the world simultaneously. There is nothing
new about Friedman's "hidden fist." Military supremacy has always been a prerequisite for economic integration into a sphere of influence or an empire. One can see this in the settling of the New World, when the network of military forts and outposts suppressed First Nations peoples and opened North America for settlers, prospectors, and industry
barons. Outer space is the next frontier to be made safe for corporations, according to U.S. military strategists. In Vision for 2020, the U.S. Space Command revealed that the "U.S. Space Command [is] dominating the space dimensions of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment" (United States Space Command, 1997). Conclusion
Globalization is driving a global war economy and creating the conditions for tremendous loss of
human life. Many writers and researchers have documented the decline in human rights, social justice,
environmental standards, and democracy caused by globalization . The inevitable outcome of
globalization will be more wars -- especially in the Third World where globalization has its harshest effects. Meanwhile, the elites of the
industrialized world are confident that the global economy will continue to provide them with wealth created from the resources and labor of the Third
World. Their technologically advanced militaries will protect them and their investments, insulating them from the violent effects of globalization.
Value to life outweighs- neoliberalism renders have-nots disposable
Giroux, 8 -- McMaster cultural studies professor
(Henry, “Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neoliberalism in the New Gilded Age”, Social Identities; Sep2008, Vol. 14
Issue 5, p587-620, ebsco)
Any attempt to address the current biopolitics of neoliberalism and disposability must begin by decoupling
what has become a powerful hegemonic element in neoliberal rationality the presupposition that the market
is synonymous with democracy and the final stage in ‘the telos of history’ (Davis, 2008). Against this ideological subterfuge, it is
crucial for intellectuals and others not only to reveal neoliberalism as a historical and social construction, but also to make clear the various ways in
which its regime of truth and power is being resisted by other countries, particularly as ‘its magic seems to have faded in the laboratories of the south,
especially in Latin America, where once Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Ecuador were crowded together as its poster children’ (Martin, 2007, p. 20).
Equally important
is the necessity to make visible and critically analyze the matrix of ideological and
economic mechanisms at work under neoliberalism and how the latter are producing a growing
inequality of wealth and power throughout the globe. And, yet, revealing the underlying material relations of power,
institutions, and political rationality at work in the biopolitics of neoliberalism while important is not enough. What must also be
addressed in resisting the biopolitics of neoliberalism is its concerted assault on the very
possibility of politics, democracy, and the educational conditions that make them possible.
Central to such a challenge is the necessity to address how neoliberalism as a pedagogical practice and a
public pedagogy operating in diverse sites has
succeeded in reproducing in the social order a kind of
thoughtlessness, a social amnesia of sorts, that makes it possible for people to look away as an
increasing number of individuals and groups are made disposable , relegated to new zones of
exclusion marked by the presupposition that life is cheap, if not irrelevant, next to the needs of
the marketplace and biocapital. Of course, there is more at stake here than providing a genealogy of neoliberal economics, politics, and
hegemony, there is also, as Zygmunt Bauman (2004, 2005, 2006) has pointed out, a need to situate the biopolitics of neoliberalism within a growing
economy of individuation and privatization, the current collapse of the social state, the transfer of power to larger global political forces, the death of
Under the reign of neoliberalism
and its rabid market fundamentalism, society is no longer protected by the state. As neoliberalism
reproduces with deadly results the multi-leveled economies of wealth and power, it also
decouples economics from public life and morality from market forces, and in doing so creates
long term projects that embrace a democratic future, and a dissolution of all democratic social forms.
with little opposition endless numbers of disposable populations who are stripped of their most
basic rights and relegated to the axis of irrelevance.
Logic of disposablility creates priming that psychologically structures escalation
Scheper-Hughes, ‘4 -- Prof of Anthropology @ Cal-Berkely
(Nancy and Philippe Bourgois, Prof of Anthropology @ UPenn, Introduction: Making Sense of Violence, in Violence in War and
Peace, pg. 19-22)
This large and at first sight “messy” Part VII is central to this anthology’s thesis. It encompasses everything from the routinized, bureaucratized, and
utterly banal violence of children dying of hunger and maternal despair in Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33) to elderly African Americans
dying of heat stroke in Mayor Daly’s version of US apartheid in Chicago’s South Side (Klinenberg, Chapter 38) to the racialized class hatred expressed
by British Victorians in their olfactory disgust of the “smelly” working classes (Orwell, Chapter 36). In these readings violence is located in the symbolic
and social structures that overdetermine and allow the criminalized drug addictions, interpersonal bloodshed, and racially patterned incarcerations that
characterize the US “inner city” to be normalized (Bourgois, Chapter 37 and Wacquant, Chapter 39). Violence also takes the form of class, racial,
political self-hatred and adolescent self-destruction (Quesada, Chapter 35), as well as of useless (i.e. preventable), rawly embodied physical suffering,
Absolutely central to our approach is a blurring of categories and
distinctions between wartime and peacetime violence. Close attention to the “little” violences
produced in the structures, habituses, and mentalites of everyday life shifts our attention to
pathologies of class, race, and gender inequalities. More important, it interrupts the voyeuristic tendencies of “violence
and death (Farmer, Chapter 34).
studies” that risk publicly humiliating the powerless who are often forced into complicity with social and individual pathologies of power because
suffering is often a solvent of human integrity and dignity. Thus, in this anthology we are positing a violence continuum comprised of a multitude of
“small wars and invisible genocides” (see also Scheper- Hughes 1996; 1997; 2000b) conducted in the normative social spaces of public schools,
clinics, emergency rooms, hospital wards, nursing homes, courtrooms, public registry offices, prisons, detention centers, and public morgues. The
violence continuum also refers to the ease with which humans are capable of reducing the
socially vulnerable into expendable nonpersons and assuming the license - even the duty - to kill,
maim, or soul-murder. We realize that in referring to a violence and a genocide continuum we are flying in the face of a tradition of
genocide studies that argues for the absolute uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust and for vigilance with respect to restricted purist use of the term
genocide itself (see Kuper 1985; Chaulk 1999; Fein 1990; Chorbajian 1999). But we hold an opposing and alternative view that, to the contrary, it
is
absolutely necessary to make just such existential leaps in purposefully linking violent acts in
normal times to those of abnormal times. Hence the title of our volume: Violence in War and in Peace. If (as we concede) there
is a moral risk in overextending the concept of “genocide” into spaces and corners of everyday life where we might not ordinarily think to find it (and
there is), an even greater risk lies in failing to sensitize ourselves, in misrecognizing
protogenocidal practices and sentiments daily enacted as normative behavior by “ordinary” goodenough citizens. Peacetime crimes, such as prison construction sold as economic development to impoverished communities in the
mountains and deserts of California, or the evolution of the criminal industrial complex into the latest peculiar institution for managing race relations in
constitute the “small wars and invisible genocides” to which we refer. This
These are
“invisible” genocides not because they are secreted away or hidden from view, but quite the
opposite. As Wittgenstein observed, the things that are hardest to perceive are those which are right before
our eyes and therefore taken for granted. In this regard, Bourdieu’s partial and unfinished theory of violence (see Chapters 32
the United States (Waquant, Chapter 39),
applies to African American and Latino youth mortality statistics in Oakland, California, Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York City.
and 42) as well as his concept of misrecognition is crucial to our task. By including the normative everyday forms of violence hidden in the minutiae of
“normal” social practices - in the architecture of homes, in gender relations, in communal work, in the exchange of gifts, and so forth - Bourdieu forces
us to reconsider the broader meanings and status of violence, especially the links between the violence of everyday life and explicit political terror and
state repression, Similarly, Basaglia’s notion of “peacetime crimes” - crimini di pace - imagines a direct relationship between wartime and peacetime
violence. Peacetime
crimes suggests the possibility that war crimes are merely ordinary, everyday
crimes of public consent applied systematically and dramatically in the extreme context of war .
Consider the parallel uses of rape during peacetime and wartime, or the family resemblances between the legalized violence of US immigration and
naturalization border raids on “illegal aliens” versus the US government- engineered genocide in 1938, known as the Cherokee “Trail of Tears.”
Peacetime crimes suggests that everyday forms of state violence make a certain kind of domestic peace possible. Internal “stability” is purchased with
the currency of peacetime crimes, many of which take the form of professionally applied “strangle-holds.” Everyday forms of state violence during
peacetime make a certain kind of domestic “peace” possible. It is an easy-to-identify peacetime crime that is usually maintained as a public secret by
the government and by a scared or apathetic populace. Most subtly, but no less politically or structurally, the phenomenal growth in the United States
of a new military, postindustrial prison industrial complex has taken place in the absence of broad-based opposition, let alone collective acts of civil
disobedience.
The public consensus is based primarily on a new mobilization of an old fear of the mob, the
mugger, the rapist, the Black man, the undeserving poor. How many public executions of mentally
deficient prisoners in the United States are needed to make life feel more secure for the affluent?
What can it possibly mean when incarceration becomes the “normative” socializing experience for ethnic minority youth in a society, i.e., over 33
percent of young African American men (Prison Watch 2002). In the end it
is essential that we recognize the existence of a
genocidal capacity among otherwise good-enough humans and that we need to exercise a
defensive hypervigilance to the less dramatic, permitted, and even rewarded everyday acts of
violence that render participation in genocidal acts and policies possible (under adverse political or economic
conditions), perhaps more easily than we would like to recognize. Under the violence continuum we include, therefore, all
expressions of radical social exclusion, dehumanization, depersonal- ization, pseudospeciation,
and reification which normalize atrocious behavior and violence toward others. A constant selfmobilization for alarm, a state of constant hyperarousal is, perhaps, a reasonable response to
Benjamin’s view of late modern history as a chronic “state of emergency” (Taussig, Chapter 31). We are trying
to recover here the classic anagogic thinking that enabled Erving Goffman, Jules Henry, C. Wright Mills, and Franco Basaglia among other midtwentieth-century radically critical thinkers, to perceive the symbolic and structural relations, i.e., between inmates and patients, between concentration
Making that decisive move to recognize the
continuum of violence allows us to see the capacity and the willingness - if not enthusiasm - of
ordinary people, the practical technicians of the social consensus, to enforce genocidal-like
crimes against categories of rubbish people. There is no primary impulse out of which mass
violence and genocide are born, it is ingrained in the common sense of everyday social life. The
mad, the differently abled, the mentally vulnerable have often fallen into this category of the
unworthy living, as have the very old and infirm, the sick-poor, and, of course, the despised racial,
religious, sexual, and ethnic groups of the moment. Erik Erikson referred to “pseudo- speciation” as the human tendency to
camps, prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes, and other “total institutions.”
classify some individuals or social groups as less than fully human - a prerequisite to genocide and one that is carefully honed during the unremark-
Collective denial and
misrecognition are prerequisites for mass violence and genocide . But so are formal bureaucratic structures and
able peacetimes that precede the sudden, “seemingly unintelligible” outbreaks of mass violence.
professional roles. The practical technicians of everyday violence in the backlands of Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33), for example,
include the clinic doctors who prescribe powerful tranquilizers to fretful and frightfully hungry babies, the Catholic priests who celebrate the death of
Everyday violence
encompasses the implicit, legitimate, and routinized forms of violence inherent in particular
social, economic, and political formations. It is close to what Bourdieu (1977, 1996) means by “symbolic violence,” the violence
“angel-babies,” and the municipal bureaucrats who dispense free baby coffins but no food to hungry families.
that is often “nus-recognized” for something else, usually something good. Everyday violence is similar to what Taussig (1989) calls “terror as usual.”
All these terms are meant to reveal a public secret - the hidden links between violence in war and violence in peace, and between war crimes and
“peace-time crimes.” Bourdieu (1977) finds domination and violence in the least likely places - in courtship and marriage, in the exchange of gifts, in
systems of classification, in style, art, and culinary taste- the various uses of culture. Violence, Bourdieu insists, is everywhere in social practice. It is
misrecognized because its very everydayness and its familiarity render it invisible. Lacan identifies “rneconnaissance” as the prerequisite of the social.
The exploitation of bachelor sons, robbing them of autonomy, independence, and progeny, within the structures of family farming in the European
countryside that Bourdieu escaped is a case in point (Bourdieu, Chapter 42; see also Scheper-Hughes, 2000b; Favret-Saada, 1989). Following
Gramsci, Foucault, Sartre, Arendt, and other modern theorists of power-vio- lence, Bourdieu treats direct aggression and physical violence as a crude,
uneconomical mode of domination; it is less efficient and, according to Arendt (1969), it is certainly less legitimate. While power and symbolic
domination are not to be equated with violence - and Arendt argues persuasively that violence is to be understood as a failure of power - violence, as
we are presenting it here, is more than simply the expression of illegitimate physical force against a person or group of persons. Rather, we need to
understand violence as encompassing all forms of “controlling processes” (Nader 1997b) that assault basic human freedoms and individual or
collective survival. Our task is to recognize these gray zones of violence which are, by definition, not obvious. Once again, the point of bringing into the
discourses on genocide everyday, normative experiences of reification, depersonalization, institutional confinement, and acceptable death is to help
answer the question: What makes mass violence and genocide possible? In this volume we are suggesting that
mass violence is part of
a continuum, and that it is socially incremental and often experienced by perpetrators,
collaborators, bystanders - and even by victims themselves - as expected, routine, even justified.
The preparations for mass killing can be found in social sentiments and institutions from the family, to schools, churches, hospitals, and the military.
They
harbor the early “warning signs” (Charney 1991), the “priming” (as Hinton, ed., 2002 calls it), or the “genocidal continuum” (as we call
it) that push social consensus toward devaluing certain forms of human life and lifeways from the refusal of
social support and humane care to vulnerable “social parasites” (the nursing home elderly, “welfare queens,” undocumented immigrants, drug addicts)
to the militarization of everyday life (super-maximum-security prisons, capital punishment; the technologies of heightened personal security, including
the house gun and gated communities; and reversed feelings of victimization).
3. The K is a disad to excluding the alt- they preclude critical knowledge
production
Gunder et al., 9 -- Aukland University senior planning lecturer,
(Michael, Planning in Ten Words or Less: A Lacanian Entanglement with Spatial Planning pgs 111-2)
The hegemonic network, or bloc, initially shapes the debates and draws on appropriate policies of
desired success, such as the needs of bohemians, knowledge clusters, or talented knowledge workers, as to what constitutes
their desired enjoyment (cobblestones, chrome and cappuccinos at sidewalk cafes) and what is therefore lacking in local competitiveness.
In sum, this defines what is blighted and dysfunctional and in need of economic, spatial planning,
or other, remedy. Such an argument is predicated on a logic, or more accurately a rhetoric, that a lack of a
particular defined type of enjoyment, or competitiveness (for surely they are one and the same) is inherently unhealthy for the
aggregate social body. Lack and its resolution are generally presented as technical, rather than political
issues. Consequently, technocrats in partnership with their "˜dominant stakeholders` can ensure
the impression of rationally seeking to produce happiness for the many whilst, of course, achieving their
stakeholders' specific interests (Gunder and Hillier 2007a, 469). The current "˜post-democratic` milieu facilitates
the above through avoidance of critical policy debate challenging favored orthodox positions and
policy approaches. Consideration of policy deficiencies, or alternative solutions, are eradicated from
political debate so that while "˜token institutions of liberal democracy' are retained conflicting positions and
arguments are negated (Stavrakakis 2003, 59). Consequently, "˜the safe names in the field who feed the policy
orthodoxy are repeatedly used or their work drawn upon. by different stakeholders. while more critical voices are
silenced by their inability to shape policy debates' (Boland 2007, 1032). The economic development or
spatial planning policy analyst thus continues to partition reality ideologically by deploying only the
orthodox "˜successful' or "˜best practice' economic development or spatial planning responses. This
further maintains the dominant, or hegemonic, status quo while providing "˜a cover and shield
against critical thought by acting in the manner of a "buffer" isolating the political held Rom any research that is independent and radical in
its conception as in its implications for public policy' (Wacquant 2004, 99). At the same time, adoption of the hegemonic
orthodoxy tends to generate similar policy responses for every competing local area or city-region. largely resulting
in a zero-sum game (Blair and Kumar 1997).
They lead to the McDonaldization of weed: corporate capture on a grand scale
Crawford ‘13
(Seth S., Assoc. Prof. of Sociology @ Oregon State U., “The Political Economy of Medical Marijuana” pp. 144-151)
In the time between starting this study and preparing to defend it, marijuana
laws in the United States took an unexpectedly
radical turn. In the November 2012 election, Washington and Colorado voters passed the first initiatives
legalizing recreational use and possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and over. Both have stopped arresting
and prosecuting individuals for possessing small amounts of the drug, though no official system of supply or distribution has been established yet.
Government committees in both states are investigating possible avenues for commercialization, but
the structure of the new
marijuana marketplace will be strongly influenced by the federal response . The electoral wins were
strong; Washington’s I-502 passed with 55% of the vote 33, and Colorado’s Amendment 64 garnered 54.8% (more than re-elected President
Obama)34. The newfound support for legalization has forced elected officials to seriously consider a topic that, historically, was easily derided; for
example, in 2009, during an online “town hall” meeting, the most popular questions (voted on by participants) directed at President Obama dealt with
marijuana reform—his response was telling (Sarno 2009): Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was
voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy—(laughter)—and job creation. And I don't know
what this says about the online audience -- (laughter)—but I just want—I don't want people to think that—this was a fairly popular question; we want to
make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy—(laughter)—to grow our economy. (Applause.) The president
If the reaction is a
retrenchment of previous policies, marijuana producers following state law will be targeted by
arrest and asset forfeiture just like medical growers in recent years (Crombie 2012); however, if the federal policy
allows this experiment to go forward uninterrupted, a new, legitimate market will supplant the
current quasi-illegal one. At least one legal scholar (Mikos 2009) argues that the Supreme Court’s anti-commandeering rulings prevent
and federal agencies now confront a situation where laughter will not resolve or clarify the federal position.
the federal government from forcing their state and local counterparts to enforce the prohibition, so long as they “do not actively assist marijuana users,
What dynamics can we
expect from a newly legitimated marijuana market? With an opportunity to shape the market for decades to come, what
policy path should states follow? The case of alcohol re-legalization in America is illustrative in many ways and
problematic in others. In pre-prohibition years (1865-1920), the brewing industry was dichotomized between
large, national shippers of beer (e.g. Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, Anheuser-Busch, Lemp, and Christian Moerlein) and a diverse
population of local producers (Stack 2000). During this time, beer was distributed in kegs and consumed primarily in saloons, which
growers, and so on—they may continue to look the other way when their citizens defy federal law” (1424).
were often controlled by local breweries (Stack 2000). Between 1865 and 1895, national shippers grew in prominence through vertical and horizontal
integration, technological advances (i.e. pasteurization, refrigerated rail cars, automated bottling machines), advertising, and a five-fold increase in per
capita consumer demand (Stack 2000). From 1895 to 1920, however, local producers—who widely varied in their productive capacity—began
undercutting the profits of national shippers with their cheaper product (due to lower transportation costs) (Stack 2000). Local
prohibition
laws also played a role in this process; by 1910, 17% of US lived in dry states and 48% lived in states, counties, or municipalities that
strictly regulated or prohibited the sale of alcohol (Brewers Almanac 1979). These market closures placed national shippers under duress, as a
significant source of their profits were cut off by the emerging prohibition regime; however, local
breweries in wet states prospered
in these times, increasing their market share to 72% of the US production total by 1905 (Stack 2000).
The tide turned with national prohibition (1920-1933), forcing most local producers into liquidating
their production facilities; the national shippers turned to producing bottles of 0.5% alcohol “near beer” (which did not generate much
profit, but allowed the large firms to maintain their productive capacity), canned malt extract (sold to quasi-illegal small-scale brewers), and “medicinal
Production of intoxicating liquors shifted to a cottage
industry of small-scale producers and resulted in higher-potency concoctions—the alcohol industry, for a
short time, became a decentralized, democratic (albeit illegal) affair (Levine and Reinarman 2004). When prohibition was finally
beer” licensed by the federal government (Plavchan 1969).
lifted in 1933, the large breweries were strategically positioned to re-enter the marketplace. New
regulations prohibited alcohol manufacturers from owning saloons or bars, and individuals were banned from creating their own alcohol (a change from
pre-prohibition days); this had a dramatically negative effect on home production and sales of kegged beer, giving the large, shipping breweries a
distinct competitive advantage—bottled
beer sales skyrocketed and, with it, control over the beer
marketplace was ceded to large manufacturers (Cochran 1948). An inexorable march towards oligopolic
control was carried out in the intervening decades by the largest firms; by 1982, only 67 breweries produced
beer in the US (Gisser 1999) and today, two firms— Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors—control 80% of the
domestic beer market (Rosenbaum et al. 2009). Despite concentrated control of the marketplace, craft breweries—owing their
origins to the re-legalization of home brewing in 1977—have exploded in recent years, leading to a diversity of small firms even under oligopolic
conditions (Carroll 2000). While this new diversity has not lead to a dramatic change in market share controlled by the top
producers, it has tapped states into the revenue stream of craft beer sales and helped re- democratize beer production in an important way (Carroll
2000). The
data collected in this study and others (Weisheit 1992; DeCorte 2010) suggest that the current
marijuana market structure is populated by many growers who produce and sell in small
quantities, with a tiny minority of growers producing large amounts. This mirrors the known structure of alcohol production during prohibition, with
an important caveat: even with the rise of medical production in key states, industrial producers of
marijuana are not waiting in the wings to meet demand following the repeal of prohibition, even at the state level. The
lessons gleaned from the tradition of tight control in the alcohol industry suggest that restrictive
rules—especially at the outset of legalization—will have a profound influence on market structure,
with oligopolic control ceded to a handful of firms (through official licensure, firms’ ability to invest, and
the early adoption of legalization by particular states). The historically specific rate of consolidation will
obviously vary, but the tendency of mature capitalist economies is towards monopolization in key
sectors (Sweezy 1942; Baran and Sweezy 1966; Veblen 1904, 1923; Heffernan 2000). Oligopolic control presents important
ramifications for specific industries, workers within those industries, consumers, and the
underlying natural systems required to produce particular products —essential elements of these problematics are
addressed by the Treadmill of Production (ToP) theory. ToP was first proposed by Schnaiberg (1980) and focuses on the
consequences of the production of goods and services in the capitalist world economy.
Schnaiberg posited that capital-intensive producers create consumer goods (and manufacture buyers’
consent through advertising and political maneuvering) at whatever rate is necessary to expand production and grow
rates of profit. In a general sense, the theory is one of crisis; the necessity for constant growth in production leads to unsustainable
consumption of natural resources, which in turn undermines the foundations for all production (nature and labor). In many ways, ToP is an empirical
and ecologically-oriented explication of the underconsumption/overaccumulation school of Marxian crisis theory (Gould et al. (2004)). Buttel calls ToP
the “single most important contribution sociological concept and theory to have emerged within North American environmental sociology” because it is
“based in sociological reasoning and is not a biological or ecological analysis” (Buttel 2004: 323). ToP locates the roots of social and environmental
exploitation within the capitalist production process. This has been critiqued for its glossing over of the accumulation process as the motive social force
within capitalism (Wright 2004)—some have even said it should be renamed to the “Treadmill of Accumulation” (Foster 2004). However, by
demonstrating that capitalism is a social system that deals with the contradictions it generates through further expansion (in production, extraction, and
exploitation of labor), the ToP school levies a lasting critique at any conception of “green capitalism,” while bringing an ecological element to Marxian
crisis theories. The
nature and history of capitalism , as developed through ToP theory, suggests that the
legalization of marijuana will wrest control from small artisan producers and turn it over to large
firms (
mark
Heffernan 2000; Baran and Sweezy 1966; Foster, McChesney, and Jonna 2011). The
legalization of marijuana—in this lens—is
both an economic and social loss for many communities, but especially those with long traditions
of illegal growing; even if traditional “hot spots” of production (Northern California and Southern Oregon, for
example) become legal cannabis production centers, the economic benefits will disproportionately
accrue in the hands of corporate owners and politically disenfranchise small marijuana farmers
(Lewontin 2000). ToP theory, in addition to highlighting the inevitable capture of surplus generated from marijuana production by large firms,
suggests that legalization will follow a path of profit maximization to the detriment of nature; the
loss of genomic diversity is of particular concern with marijuana, as a capitalist approach to its
production will focus on yield, maturation time, and ease of harvest (and Glenna 2006). Many scholars of
marijuana botany suggest that specific policy decisions during prohibition were already
responsible for several radical changes in this domesticated plant (Clarke 1993; Hillig and Mahlberg 2004; Hillig 2005). In
particular, the tall, long-flowering, narrow leaf cannabis indica varieties (known colloquially as “sativas”) were
crossed with short, fast-flowering, broad leaf cannabis indica (“indicas”) to facilitate indoor growing
after US and Mexican authorities adulterated outdoor crops in Mexico with Paraquat in the late 1970s (Clarke 1993; Landrigan et al. 1983). In addition
to altering the physical stature and maturation time, this
selective breeding regime led to significant changes in the
chemical profile of commercially available marijuana; as predicted by the “iron law of drug prohibition,” THC
concentrations and overall potency increased (Thornton 1991). Similarly, the infusion of broad leaf genes into narrow leaf
varieties produced plants with much higher cannabidiol (CBD) ratios than previously seen in domestic marijuana (Clarke 1993). Other chemical
changes—which, to this point, have been unelaborated—undoubtedly occurred, as users’ accounts of shifting phenomenological experiences induced
by marijuana was altered; older varieties of the drug tended to influence perception, whereas newer varieties have a strong impact on motor
coordination (Clarke 1993; King 2001). At this point, it is unknown whether or not legalization will have a more profound effect than prohibition did, but
the prohibition years helped to demonstrate how versatile marijuana can be when subjected to the whims of human ingenuity (Pollan 2001)—ToP
theory suggests that a legalized production regime will influence marijuana breeding efforts
towards strictly profit-oriented goals (Gould et al. 2004). Steps must be made to preserve the remaining genetic diversity of this
species before capitalism casts non-profitable traits and expressions on the funeral pyre of progress.
Consumers also stand to lose in some troubling ways. The modernization of marijuana production by
industrial capitalism will—if it follows the rationalized developmental path (Weber 2002) of other products—be conducted
according to the principles of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control —or what Ritzer (1996)
terms “McDonaldization”. “McDonaldized” marijuana and its production would adhere to the following
principles: (1) production will occur at very large scales and with the use of advanced technology
(farming combines, automated trimming machines, industrial vacuum-packing, genetically engineered seed, etc.) to achieve high efficiency in pursuit of
maximum profitability (Ritzer 1996: 35); (2) production
and sales will be dictated by the quantitative aspects
(calculability) of profits, costs, and total volume sold, as opposed to qualitative considerations or for public benefit (Ritzer 1996: 59); (3) finished
products will be predictable, both in physical consistency and, as much as possible, in phenomenological experience (Ritzer 1996: 80;
Merleau-Ponty 2002); and (4) control over the individuals participating in the production process will be
exercised to the point where their actions are vapidly machinelike (Ritzer 1996: 101). Marijuana users
will have little choice in the matter, since oligopolic markets sell their goods through advertising rather
than following actual consumer preference (Gould et al. 2004). After the dust has settled on the
nationwide marijuana legalization debate, future policy battles will be over non-commercial
personal production (reminiscent of the home brewers movement) and limited commercial production by small
artisan growers, though, in all likelihood, this will be—much like the microbrewery movement spawned by
creative, entrepreneurial home brewers—relatively insignificant in terms of corporate profits. Artisan growing
will enable small producers to take advantage of the grape-like terroir influences that induce positive
manifestations of marijuana traits (Clarke 1993); it will also provide an outlet and expression for the art of marijuana
growing, allowing the continued cultural transmission of location and experiential-specific knowledge, which cannot be expressed through
rationalized, industrial production. Despite their limited financial impact, artisan cannabis producers—or, alternatively, “micro-weederies”—will fill an
important niche in the market (Swaminathan 1995), enable more local decisionmaking and economic benefit (Ostrom 2010), help protect cannabis’
genomic diversity (Clarke 1993), and provide users with the peak expression of marijuana’s potential.
Corporate marijuana will destroy global sustainablity
Fine 13 – Freelance journalist for such organizations as the Washington Post, Salon, U.S. News and World Report, Sierra,
Wired, Outside, National Public Radio, and many other venues
[Doug Fine, “Can the Cannabis Economy Be Ecologically Sustainable?” Huffington Post, Updated: March 17, 2013, p.
http://tinyurl.com/qzfwoqd]
Because of this isolation, prohibition, and now, cultural tradition, Northern California's remote Emerald
Triangle is poised to provide a model for a sustainable post-prohibition cannabis industry. In particular, this
model, which was institutionalized in a landmark cannabis farmer permitting program by the Sheriff's Department in Mendocino
County in 2011, can provide a farmer-owned, outdoor cultivation playbook to counter some of the grow
room-based models that are in danger of becoming institutionalized in the first U.S. states to re-legalize full adult use of the
plant. "This is part of the larger food revolution we're seeing everywhere," the overalls-wearing Fuzzy told me during
what became a sodden farmer caucus during a break between speakers at the Cup, contemplatively stroking his red chest length
beard. While thick, icy raindrops fell quite audibly from redwood eaves all around me, I thought about my own produce shopping
preferences. I wouldn't buy a spear of supermarket hothouse broccoli when there's a local organic heirloom variety available at the
weekend farmer's market. This kind of conversation was the explicit reason why I had jetted into the ankle-soaking winter puddles
and moss-covered power lines of Redway, Calif. to give my own talk at The Cup: I believe that figuring out how to keep
the cannabis industry decentralized, farmer-controlled and sustainable once prohibition ends is a key
piece in the "allow my kids to inherit an inhabitable planet" puzzle. I'm a sustainability journalist and solarpowered goat rancher who's just reported just from the front lines of the Drug War for a year. We're talking about the United
States' number one crop, already worth $35 billion per year, according to ABC News. We don't have the time or
resources to initiate any more carbon intensive industries. The good news is that cannabis is now, in 2013, in the blueprint phase. I
think we're three to five years from full federal cannabis legalization. That's enough planning time. What can be done to make sure
the planet's greenest industry is born Green? It's about incorporating sustainable cannabis methods no matter how and where the
plant is cultivated -- and this includes the industrial side (hemp) in places like North Dakota. If I weren't already driving on vegetable
oil and being routinely outwitted by goats, I would have become aware of the sustainable cannabis imperative when Nobel Laureate
Evan Mills, a researcher on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team that won the prize, approached
me after a live event I was doing in support of my recent book, Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic
Revolution. As a follow-up project to his UN panel work, Mills had in 2011 published a much-discussed report on the energy demand
of California's (mostly indoor-grown) cannabis industry (which he concluded is responsible for 3 percent of all of California's energy
use). Our email dialogue since meeting has been spirited: as a guy who has visited probably three dozen cannabis farms, both
indoor and outdoor, in the course of my research, I find myself with notes on farming techniques that not only help with
my own tomatoes and beans, but which represent the cutting edge of an agricultural sector
mark
that Michael Pollan describes as including "the best farmers of my generation." Yet exchanges with Mills
always force me to more critically ask questions like, "Is that farmer's drip irrigation technique really sustainable?" and "Does the
Mendocino County, California locavore permitting program that worked so well locally scale to mass industrial sizes?" Although I
followed intentionally sustainable cannabis farmers in my book, I'd have to be blind not to be aware that a segment of the outdoor
farming community in the U.S. and Mexico requires as much education as indoor gardeners do when it comes to issues like
waterway diversion and pesticide use. The truth is, most farmers here in the Emerald Triangle get it. A third generation Humboldt
County farmer named Mike told me as he stared admiringly at the rows of finalist buds behind the glass display at the Emerald
Cup's straw bale-lined Growers' Tent, "The plants adapt to the climate. Why wouldn't I use God's own sun instead of a generator?"
Case in point, this year's winner of the Emerald Cup grand prize (a trip to Jamaica), Leo Bell of nearby Laytonville (for his
"exceptionally smooth, enticing and very sticky...nasturtium-scented" Chem Dawg strain, according to judges), noted in his victory
speech that during the 2012 growing season (a region-wide vintage said to be the best in a decade and a half), "I watered by hand,
and gave my heart to these plants, five (pause while choked up) hours every day." Now, if all of humanity's agricultural
engineers operated according to such principles, climate change would be a much more relaxed
discussion. This moment presents the opportunity for the cannabis industry to chart the very best
course, or the very worst.
Reorienting US consumer markets ensures planetary survival
Altieri 8—Professor of agroecology @ University of California, Berkeley
[Miguel Altieri (President, Sociedad Cientifica LatinoAmericana de Agroecologia (SOCLA), “Small farms as a planetary ecological
asset: Five key reasons why we should support the revitalization of small farms in the Global South,” Food First, May 9, 2008, p.
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2115]
The Via Campesina has long argued that farmers need land to produce food for their own communities and for their country and for this reason has
advocated for genuine agrarian reforms to access and control land, water, agrobiodiversity, etc, which are of central importance for communities to be
able to meet growing food demands. The Via Campesina believes that in order to protect livelihoods, jobs, people's food security and health, as well as
the environment, food
production has to remain in the hands of small- scale sustainable farmers and
cannot be left under the control of large agribusiness companies or supermarket chains. Only by changing
the export-led, free-trade based, industrial agriculture model of large farms can the downward spiral of poverty,
low wages, rural-urban migration, hunger and environmental degradation be halted. Social r
mark
ural movements embrace the concept of food sovereignty as an alternative to the neo-liberal approach
that puts its faith in inequitable international trade to solve the world’s food problem. Instead, food sovereignty focuses on local autonomy, local
markets, local production-consumption cycles, energy and technological sovereignty and farmer to farmer networks. This global movement, the Via
Campesina, has recently brought their message to the North, partly to gain the support of foundations and consumers, as political pressure from a
wealthier public that increasingly depends on unique food products from the South marketed via organic, fair trade, or slow food channels could
marshal the sufficient political will to curb the expansion of biofuels, transgenic crops and agro-exports, and put an end to subsidies to industrial
farming and dumping practices that hurt small farmers in the South. But can these arguments really captivate the attention and support of northern
consumers and philanthropists? Or is there a need for a different argument—one that emphasizes that the very quality of life and food security of the
populations in the North depends not only on the food products, but in the ecological services provided by small farms of the South. In fact, it is herein
argued that the
functions performed by small farming systems still prevalent in Africa, Asia and Latin
America—in the post-peak oil era that humanity is entering—comprise an ecological asset for humankind and
planetary survival. In fact, in an era of escalating fuel and food costs, climate change, environmental degradation, GMO pollution and
corporate- dominated food systems, small, biodiverse, agroecologically managed farms in the Global South are the only viable form of agriculture that
will feed the world under the new ecological and economic scenario. There are at last five reasons why it is in the interest of Northern consumers to
support the cause and struggle of small farmers in the South: 1. Small farmers are key for the world’s food security While 91% of the planet’s 1.5 billion
hectares of agricultural land are increasingly being devoted to agro-export crops, biofuels and transgenic soybean to feed cars and cattle, millions
of small farmers in the Global South still produce the majority of staple crops needed to feed the
planet’s rural and urban populations. In Latin America, about 17 million peasant production units occupying close to 60.5 million
hectares, or 34.5% of the total cultivated land with average farm sizes of about 1.8 hectares, produce 51% of the maize, 77% of the beans, and 61% of
the potatoes for domestic consumption. Africa has approximately 33 million small farms, representing 80 percent of all farms in the region. Despite the
fact that Africa now imports huge amounts of cereals, the majority of African farmers (many of them women) who are smallholders with farms below 2
hectares, produce a significant amount of basic food crops with virtually no or little use of fertilizers and improved seed. In Asia, the majority of more
Small
increases in yields on these small farms that produce most of the world´s staple crops will have
far more impact on food availability at the local and regional levels, than the doubtful increases predicted for
distant and corporate-controlled large monocultures managed with such high tech solutions as
genetically modified seeds. 2.Small farms are more productive and resource conserving than large-scale monocultures Although the
conventional wisdom is that small family farms are backward and unproductive, research shows that small farms are much
more productive than large farms if total output is considered rather than yield from a single crop. Integrated farming
than 200 million rice farmers, few farm more than 2 hectares of rice make up the bulk of the rice produced by Asian small farmers.
systems in which the small-scale farmer produces grains, fruits, vegetables, fodder, and animal products out-produce yield per unit of single crops such
as corn (monocultures) on large-scale farms. A large farm may produce more corn per hectare than a small farm in which the corn is grown as part of a
polyculture that also includes beans, squash, potato, and fodder. In polycultures developed by smallholders, productivity, in terms of harvestable
products, per unit area is higher than under sole cropping with the same level of management. Yield
advantages range from 20
percent to 60 percent, because polycultures reduce losses due to weeds, insects and diseases,
and make more efficient use of the available resources of water, light and nutrients. In overall output, the diversified farm
produces much more food, even if measured in dollars. In the USA, data shows that the smallest two hectare farms produced $15,104 per hectare and
netted about $2,902 per acre. The largest farms, averaging 15,581 hectares, yielded $249 per hectare and netted about $52 per hectare. Not only do
small to medium sized farms exhibit higher yields than conventional farms, but do so with much lower negative impact on the environment. Small farms
are ‘multi-functional’– more productive, more efficient, and contribute more to economic development than do large farms. Communities
surrounded by many small farms have healthier economies than do communities surrounded by depopulated, large
mechanized farms. Small farmers also take better care of natural resources, including reducing soil
erosion and conserving biodiversity. The inverse relationship between farm size and output can be attributed to the more efficient
use of land, water, biodiversity and other agricultural resources by small farmers. So in terms of converting inputs into outputs, society would be better
off with small-scale farmers. Building strong rural economies in the Global South based on productive small-scale farming will allow the people of the
South to remain with their families and will help to stem the tide of migration. And as
population continues to grow and the amount of
small farm structure may become central to feeding
the planet, especially when large- scale agriculture devotes itself to feeding car tanks. 3. Small traditional and biodiverse farms are
models of sustainability Despite the onslaught of industrial farming, the persistence of thousands of hectares under traditional
agricultural management documents a successful indigenous agricultural strategy of adaptability and resiliency. These microcosms of
farmland and water available to each person continues to shrink, a
traditional agriculture that have stood the test of time, and that can still be found almost untouched since 4 thousand years in the Andes, MesoAmerica,
Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, offer
promising models of sustainability as they promote biodiversity, thrive
sustain year-round yields even under marginal environmental conditions. The local knowledge
accumulated during millennia and the forms of agriculture and agrobiodiversity that this wisdom has nurtured, comprise a
Neolithic legacy embedded with ecological and cultural resources of fundamental value for the
future of humankind. Recent research suggests that many small farmers cope and even prepare for climate
change, minimizing crop failure through increased use of drought tolerant local varieties, water
harvesting, mixed cropping, opportunistic weeding, agroforestry and a series of other traditional
techniques. Surveys conducted in hillsides after Hurricane Mitch in Central America showed that farmers
using sustainable practices such as “mucuna” cover crops, intercropping, and agroforestry suffered less “damage” than
their conventional neighbors. The study spanning 360 communities and 24 departments in
Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala showed that diversified plots had 20% to 40% more topsoil,
greater soil moisture, less erosion, and experienced lower economic losses than their conventional neighbors.
without agrochemicals, and
This demonstrates that a re-evaluation of indigenous technology can serve as a key source of information on adaptive capacity and resilient
capabilities exhibited by small farms—features of strategic importance for world farmers to cope with climatic change. In addition, indigenous
technologies often reflect a worldview and an understanding of our relationship to the natural world that is more realistic and more sustainable that
those of our Western European heritage. 4. Small farms represent a sanctuary of GMO-free agrobiodiversity In general, traditional small scale farmers
grow a wide variety of cultivars . Many of these plants are landraces grown from seed passed down from generation to generation, more genetically
heterogeneous than modern cultivars, and thus offering greater defenses against vulnerability and enhancing harvest security in the midst of diseases,
pests, droughts and other stresses. In a worldwide survey of crop varietal diversity on farms involving 27 crops, scientists found that considerable crop
genetic diversity continues to be maintained on farms in the form of traditional crop varieties, especially of major staple crops. In most cases, farmers
maintain diversity as an insurance to meet future environmental change or social and economic needs. Many researchers have concluded that this
varietal richness enhances productivity and reduces yield variability. For example, studies by plant pathologists provide evidence that mixing of crop
species and or varieties can delay the onset of diseases by reducing the spread of disease carrying spores, and by modifying environmental conditions
so that they are less favorable to the spread of certain pathogens. Recent research in China, where four different mixtures of rice varieties grown by
farmers from fifteen different townships over 3000 hectares, suffered 44% less blast incidence and exhibited 89% greater yield than homogeneous
fields without the need to use chemicals. It is possible that traits important to indigenous farmers (resistance to drought, competitive ability,
performance on intercrops, storage quality, etc) could be traded for transgenic qualities which may not be important to farmers (Jordan, 2001). Under
this scenario, risk could increase and farmers would lose their ability to adapt to changing biophysical environments and increase their success with
relatively stable yields with a minimum of external inputs while supporting their communities’ food security. Although there is a high probability that the
introduction of transgenic crops will enter centers of genetic diversity, it is crucial to protect areas of peasant agriculture free of contamination from
GMO crops, as traits important to indigenous farmers (resistance to drought, food or fodder quality, maturity, competitive ability, performance on
intercrops, storage quality, taste or cooking properties, compatibility with household labor conditions, etc) could be traded for transgenic qualities (i.e.
herbicide resistance) which are of no importance to farmers who don’t use agrochemicals . Under this scenario risk will increase and farmers will lose
their ability to produce relatively stable yields with a minimum of external inputs under changing biophysical environments. The social impacts of local
crop shortfalls, resulting from changes in the genetic integrity of local varieties due to genetic pollution, can be considerable in the margins of the
Global South. Maintaining pools of genetic diversity, geographically isolated from any possibility of cross fertilization or genetic pollution from uniform
transgenic crops will create “islands” of intact germplasm which will act as extant safeguards against potential ecological failure derived from the
second green revolution increasingly being imposed with programs such as the Gates-Rockefeller AGRA in Africa. These genetic sanctuary islands will
serve as the only source of GMO-free seeds that will be needed to repopulate the organic farms in the North inevitably contaminated by the advance of
transgenic agriculture. The small farmers and indigenous communities of the Global South, with the help of scientists and NGOs, can continue to
create and guard biological and genetic diversity that has enriched the food culture of the whole planet. 5. Small farms cool the climate While industrial
agriculture contributes directly to climate change through no less than one third of total emissions of the major greenhouse gases — Carbon dioxide
(CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), small, biodiverse organic farms have the opposite effect by sequestering more carbon in soils. Small
farmers usually treat their soils with organic compost materials that absorb and sequester carbon better than soils that are farmed with conventional
fertilizers. Researchers have suggested that the conversion of 10,000 small- to medium-sized farms to organic production would store carbon in the
soil equivalent to taking 1,174,400 cars off the road. Further climate amelioration contributions by small farms accrue from the fact that most use
significantly less fossil fuel in comparison to conventional agriculture mainly due to a reduction of chemical fertilizer and pesticide use, relying instead
on organic manures, legume-based rotations, and diversity schemes to enhance beneficial insects. Farmers who live in rural communities near cities
and towns and are linked to local markets, avoid the energy wasted and the gas emissions associated with transporting food hundreds and even
thousands of miles. Conclusions The great advantage of small farming systems is their high levels of agrobidoversity arranged in the form of variety
mixtures, polycultures, crop-livestock combinations and/or agroforestry patterns. Modeling new agroecosystems using such diversified designs are
extremely valuable to farmers whose systems are collapsing due to debt, pesticide use, transgenic treadmills, or climate change. Such diverse systems
buffer against natural or human-induced variations in production conditions. There is much to learn from indigenous modes of production, as these
systems have a strong ecological basis, maintain valuable genetic diversity, and lead to regeneration and preservation of biodiversity and natural
resources. Traditional methods are particularly instructive because they provide a long-term perspective on successful agricultural management under
conditions of climatic variability. Organized
social rural movements in the Global South oppose industrial
agriculture in all its manifestations, and increasingly their territories constitute isolated areas rich
in unique agrobiodiversity, including genetically diverse material, therefore act ing as extant
safeguards against the potential ecological failure derived from inappropriate agricultural modernization
schemes. It is precisely the ability to generate and maintain diverse crop genetic resources that offer
“unique” niche possibilities to small farmers that cannot be replicated by farmers in the North who are condemned to uniform
cultivars and to co-exist with GMOs. The “ cibo pulito, justo e buono” that Slow Food promotes, the Fair Trade coffee, bananas, and the organic
This “difference”
strategically utilized to revitalize small farming communities by exploiting
opportunities that exist for linking traditional agrobiodiversity with local/national/international markets, as
long as these activities are justly compensated by the North and all the segments of the market remain under grassroots
control. Consumers of the North can play a major role by supporting these more equitable markets
which do not perpetuate the colonial model of “agriculture of the poor for the rich,” but rather a model that promotes small
biodiverse farms as the basis for strong rural economies in the Global South. Such economies will not only provide
sustainable production of healthy, agroecologically-produced, accessible food for all, but will allow indigenous peoples and
small farmers to continue their millennial work of building and conserving the agricultural and natural
biodiversity on which we all depend now and even more so in the future.
products so much in demand by northern consumers can only be produced in the agroecological islands of the South.
inherent to traditional systems, can be
1NR
CP
The AFF won’t stabilize Afghanistan – warlords control the farms so they will still
get the profits
Adcox ‘14
Ken, is an LA police chief, Masters of Public Administration Degree, with an emphasis in Criminal Justice Administration, from the
University of Texas at El Paso, “Legalizing Marijuana as a National Security Strategy: Are you on drugs or thinking outside the
box?,” 8/6/14, https://medium.com/homeland-security/legalizing-marijuana-as-a-national-security-strategy-are-you-on-drugs-orthinking-outside-the-box-ffc9f3a5e715
Goodman may also have a point. In fact, according to the World Drug Report, which was recently produced by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime,
“Drug trafficking… is fueling a global criminal enterprise valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars that poses a growing challenge to stability and
security” and there are “more and more acts of violence, conflicts and terrorist activities fueled by drug trafficking and
organized crime” occurring throughout the world. U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also verified recently that one of the places where the illegal
drug trade has
become intrinsically linked with terrorism is Afghanistan, making it clear that it is the illegal drug trade that
is “funding insurgency, international terrorism and wider destabilization” in Afghanistan and other third-world countries. Goodman further
reasons that, since there are currently few legal means to make a living in countries like Afghanistan, providing a legitimate market for such cash crops
could mitigate instability, by depriving the country’s war-lords and criminal groups of the illegal narcotic profits they frequently use to undermine our
national security and counterterrorism objectives involving these countries. Considering that some 23 million Americans are reported to spend an
estimated $42 billion on marijuana every year, there is little doubt that the Afghan economy could benefit if Afghanis were able to legally supply their
agricultural products to legitimate private markets in the U.S. The question is though, why
we would think providing a legal
market for marijuana in Afghanistan would somehow remove the unsavory element from the
country’s drug trade. Warlords and their personal armies have a lengthy history in Afghanistan .
They are part of the Afghan DNA . Today there are more than 200 key warlords controlling various
territories in Afghanistan, with as many as 250,000 heavily armed, and often militarily experienced,
militiamen at their disposal. The formally established Afghan government, even with the assistance of the U.S., has been unable to
unarm or dismantle these groups. Why would these warlords give up the hold they currently have on the drug
trade, a trade that represents their primary source of income, power and existence. Legal or
illegal , these warlords and the unsavory characters that surround them are going to continue to
control the drug trade in Afghanistan and, if so disposed, will continue to use the proceeds from
such to finance terrorist activity and other operations creating continued instability within the
region. The only thing creating a “legal” market for Afghan’s bumper cannabis crop will do is
substantially increase the profits flowing to these groups, thereby enhancing the means they have
available to them as they remain equally as committed to fighting the West. Goodman’s reasoning is further
flawed in that it fails to consider that, while perhaps providing an economic boost to Afghans, legalizing marijuana in the U.S. may harm Americans.
The enhanced availability of drugs in the U.S. would likely create a whole new group of consumers. Legalization would not serve simply to allow
existing users to continue doing what they are doing without fear of legal ramifications, but rather increase the amount of people engaging in an activity
that is known to be harmful to both the individual user and society at large. Drugs, including marijuana, are highly addictive and study after study has
shown that marijuana use can permanently damage one’s health. Further, drug use harms not only the user, but others through increase health care
costs and the violence often associated with drug use and perpetrated by those impaired by drugs. All of these problems would undoubtedly be
exasperated by widespread legalization. In short, there exists strong arguments for and against the legalization of marijuana. Proponents argue that
the drug is no different than alcohol and has the potential to correct many of our nation’s fiscal ails, while opponents point to the great harm legalization
would do to society. Determining whether legalizing marijuana is a good idea or not is a difficult call at best, with pros and cons on both sides.
Calling for the legalization of the drug in order to improve national security, however, appears to
have little merit and should not be part of this important debate.
Afghanistan instability does not lead to Indo-Pak – doesn’t make Pakistan
aggressive and is stabilizing.
Finel ‘9 Bernard Finel, an Atlantic Council contributing editor, is a senior fellow at the American Security Project..
“Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nuclear War”. September 1, 2009. Atlantic Council.
http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/afghanistan-pakistan-and-nuclear-war
Second, the
argument relies on incoherent strategic logic. “Fixing” Afghanistan would
have no effect on the risk of nuclear war and might indeed increase it by some tiny
fraction. Lindholm and Foust seem to believe that Islamist radicals, if allowed to return to
Afghanistan, would create pressure for the Pakistani government to behave more
aggressively toward India or independently provoke a conflict between the two. The first
is almost certainly the reverse of what would occur. The second unlikely but also
unrelated to Afghanistan. Does radicalism in Afghanistan pressure Pakistan into more
extreme behavior? Clearly not. Some indiscreet Pakistani strategists consider Afghanistan as providing
strategic depth in the case of a conflict with India. The concept is fuzzy frankly, because unless the Pakistani
army plans to retreat over the border — with no infrastructure or supplies — to avoid
Indian advances, there is no compelling conventional strategic depth argument . But, on the
other hand, having as a neighbor a state that would unquestionably take Pakistan’s side in a
conflict would provide some opportunity to retreat strategic assets, leadership, and
potentially provide a base for guerrilla resistance against an Indian incursion . In short,
what a Taliban controlled Afghanistan might provide Pakistani leaders is a small
measure of reassurance that in a conflict, the Pakistani army would not find itself
crushed between an Indian advance and a closed Afghan border
. But while in a constrained and unlikely case, the “strategic depth” provided by Afghanistan could provide Pakistan with
some options in the case of an Indian attack, there is no way in which the “strategic depth” provided by Afghanistan
could aid in the development of an offensive military option against India. In short, strategic logic suggests
that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan would reduce the risk of conflict by reducing
insecurity among Pakistani elites. Because it would not provide Pakistan with any
additional offensive capabilities, it ought not increase insecurity among Indian decision
makers. Lower levels of insecurity usually result in lower levels of risk taking and less
pressure for military pre-emption in times of crisis. An Islamist — and likely anti-Indian
— regime in Afghanistan almost certainly eases the security dilemma in South Asia
rather than increasing it.
WOD
Their ev says Russsia, China, India- all wrong:
Russia
Kaiser Health News, 7 ["UNAIDS’ HIV/AIDS Estimates for Russia ‘Exaggerated,’ Country’s Top Health Official Says,"
kaiserhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/dr00049079/]
UNAIDS’ HIV/AIDS Estimates for Russia ‘Exaggerated,’ Country’s Top Health Official Says New UNAIDS figures
that indicate between 900,000 and one million people in Russia are HIV-positive are "exaggerated," Gennady Onishchenko,
the country's top health official, said on Monday, RIA Novosti reports. Onishchenko added that the "data gathering
techniques" used by the agency are not "understandable" to Russian officials (RIA Novosti, 11/26). UNAIDS in a report
released last week said that Russia represents 66% of the number of newly diagnosed HIV cases among former Soviet Union
countries. Michel Kazatchkine -- executive director of the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria -- on Monday when
discussing the Russian estimates said that UNAIDS had completed substantial work "in order to obtain objective figures,"
AFP/Yahoo! Health reports (AFP/Yahoo! Health, 11/26). Onishchenko said that Russia has registered 403,000 HIV cases since
1987, when the first case of the virus was reported in the country. " Russia is the only country which carries out
testing of risk groups," he said, adding that this year, 22 million people will be tested for HIV (RIA Novosti, 11/26). Russian
experts say the actual number of HIV-positive people in the country is about 1.3 million (AFP/Yahoo! Health, 11/26).
India
Sikora, 7 -- Daily Mail [Karol, "The Aids epidemic that never was and why political correctness influences too much medical
spending," forum1.aimoo.com/RethinkersWorldwideforum/m/News/Did-Aids-Inc-just-blink-1-1006327.html\
Billions of pounds were spent telling us we were ALL at risk from Aids. But as scientists now admit the threat was
overblown, Britain's top cancer expert attacks the political correctness that influences too much medical spending. Medical care
should always be geared to the saving and protecting of lives. Compassion in the face of any type of human suffering should be at
its core. But sadly, the vicissitudes of political correctness can dictate medical priorities. Certain diseases become
fashionable in the public consciousness and so attract more political support and attention. A classic
example of this pattern is HIV/Aids. When this burst on the scene in Britain in the early Eighties, it became the biggest health
issue facing the country, over-riding all other medical problems. Hard-hitting: An image from the Government's Aids awareness
campaign in the Eighties It monopolised ministerial attention and swallowed huge sums of public money in campaigns to raise public
awareness. The gay community, which was the most likely to be affected by Aids, was at the forefront of the pressure for vastly
increased state funding. A whiff of panic filled the air, with projections of a soaring rate of mortality from Aids before the end of the
century. The Aids terror was extended overseas. It was said that a massive pandemic, on the scale of a modern Black Death, was
sweeping through the Third World. Death, in the form of HIV/Aids, was sweeping his cruel scythe through Africa and the Indian subcontinent, extracting an unprecedented toll. Just as the Aids scare in Britain galvanised the bureaucracy of the state into expensive
action, so the international agencies, such as the UN, the World Health Organisation and a host of Third World charities, were
gripped by a sense of urgency about the need to tackle Aids. Yet it has turned out that much of this panic, however understandable,
was misplaced. In Britain, contrary to all the official propaganda of the Eighties that everyone was at risk, it turns out that the
disease has largely been confined to certain specific groups: gay men, drug users and migrants. All those with HIV and Aids, of
course, deserve all the medical support that can be given, but the truth is that the overblown panic, based more on politics than
science, led to a gross misallocation of resources. Between the early Eighties and 1993, the Government spent £900 million on
advertising, educating about and treating Aids. And the 1987 public awareness campaign - comprising the now famous Tombstone
and Iceberg leaflets and adverts, as well as a week of educational TV programmes - cost £20 million. At one stage in the early
Nineties, we had the absurdity that the number of people in Aids counselling, helplines and other jobs exceeded the conceived
number of sufferers. Moreover, for every three Aids victims there was one Aids organisation. A fortune was wasted on lecturing
people who were never at risk. Now it turns out that, to an extent, the same is true of the developing world, where the UN has
admitted that the scale of Aids has been exaggerated. An official report published yesterday shows that the grim forecasts have
been over-blown. In reality, far from seeing a remorseless rise, Aids has been on the decline for a decade.
According to the UN's latest, more honest, analysis, the number of people living with HIV has shrunk from
nearly 40 million to 33 million. Furthermore, new infections have been calculated at 2.5 million, a drop of more than 40 per cent on
last year's estimate. In India, the number of Aids sufferers has been revised downwards from six million to
three million.
China
Hayoun, 13 -- Al Jazeera ["World AIDS Day: Has China's PM made strides in HIV prevention?,"
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/1/china-hiv-aids-awarenessadvocatehujiacallsgovernmenteffortsafaca.html]
China's most widely recognized sex education and reproductive health advocate, Li Yinhe, told Al Jazeera
that the premier's round of talks with HIV/AIDS NGOs last year represented a turning point in the
government's relationship with HIV/AIDS advocates. "I think the government's has changed ... In the past (the
government) did not support (NGOs) because they conducted anti-government activities," she said. "Li Keqiang is really great,
keeping an open attitude and developing (these relationships with NGOs)," she added. Li Yinhe is a widely published
author and former professor in China, who has, in the past, taken a less confrontational tone with the government in addressing the
need for sex education and health facilities to combat sexually transmitted diseases. She said Hu, whose activity for HIV/AIDS
sufferers has essentially been outlawed since his first detention in 2002, "doesn't really know what he's talking about." Pressed for
reasons why she thought that of Hu, Li said, "I'm not very clear who he is. He must be a very young man." Still, Li believes that by
finally working together with the government, NGOs may be able to "more easily deal with this
issue."
Warming makes Amazon impacts inevitable
Pascoe 9 Owen Pascoe. 3/17/2009. “Minds frozen solid as the world warms”. Canaberra Times.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/minds-frozen-solid-as-the-world-warms/1461092.aspx
And scientists at an international scientific congress on climate change in Copenhagen last
week warned governments to prepare for temperature rises of four degrees by the end of this
century, with catastrophic effects on the planet. A four-degree temperature rise would
devastate as much as 85 per cent of the Amazon rainforest
the lungs of the planet and leave many low-lying parts of Asia and the Pacific extremely vulnerable to extensive
flooding. Dr John Church, a scientist at the The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, told the meeting
the ''most plausible'' global scenario was a total sea-level rise of one to two metres by 2100, affecting the livelihoods of
more than 600million people. Only two years ago the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was predicting
the sea level would rise less than one metre. The Amazon research, conducted by some of Britain's
leading climate experts, shows that even severe cuts in deforestation and carbon
emissions will fail to save the emblematic South American jungle, the destruction of which has
become a powerful symbol of human impact on the planet.
DTOs
It’s not sufficient to reducecartel activities
Hope 14 (Alejandro, security policy analyst at IMCO, a Mexico City research organization, and former intelligence officer, 1-2114, "Legal U.S. Pot Won’t Bring Peace to Mexico" Bloomberg Review) www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-01-21/legal-u-s-potwon-t-bring-peace-to-mexico
So does this creeping legalization
of marijuana in the U.S. spell doom for the Mexican drug cartels?
Not quite. The illegal marijuana trade provides Mexican organized crime with about $1.5 billion to
$2 billion a year. That’s not chump change, but according to a number of estimates, it represents
no more than a third of gross drug export revenue. Cocaine is still the cartels’ biggest moneymaker and the revenue accruing from heroin and methamphetamine aren’t trivial. Moreover,
Mexican gangs also obtain income from extortion, kidnapping, theft and various other types of
illegal trafficking. Losing the marijuana trade would be a blow to their finances, but it certainly
wouldn’t put them out of business. But surely Mexico would experience less violence if marijuana
was legal? Yes, to some extent, but the decline wouldn’t be sufficient to radically alter the country’s
security outlook . In all likelihood, marijuana production and marijuana-related violence are highly
correlated geographically. Marijuana output is concentrated in five states (Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa,
Michoacan and Guerrero) that accounted for approximately a third of all homicides committed in Mexico
in 2012. Assuming improbably that half of all murders in those areas were marijuana-related, we
can estimate that the full elimination of the illegal marijuana trade would reduce Mexico’s
homicide rate to 18 per 100,000 inhabitants from 22 -- still about four times the U.S. rate.
US not key—DTOs have access to global emerging markets
Carpenter 11
Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, Policy Analysis, November 15, 2011,
“Undermining Mexico’s Dangerous Drug Cartels”, No. 688, http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA688.pdf
U.S. demand is only one part of the equation . Even a dedicated drug warrior like Robert Bonner
concedes that point, noting that the major markets for the Mexican cartels “are not just in the United
States but also in Mexico itself and as far away as Europe .”29 Bonner actually understates the breadth of
the problem. The Mexican organizations are taking control of trafficking routes and gaining
access to potential markets in portions of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East , as well as in Europe .
Although the United States is the largest single retail market in the world, it is actually relatively mature,
with overall consumption not substantially different from what it was a decade or two decades ago.
The main areas of demand growth are in Eastern Europe, the successor states of the former Soviet
Union, and some portions of the Middle East and Latin America. According to the United Nations, there has been
a noticeable increase in the consumption of opiates throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia,
especially the former Soviet states. In Western Europe, the principal increase has been in the use of
cocaine.30 In the Middle East, even such a politically authoritarian and religiously conservative society as Iran is
witnessing a surge in both drug trafficking and drug use, especially of heroin. Several years ago, that problem
Yet
had already reached the point that the Supreme Leader’s representative in one province labeled drug abuse and trafficking as
Iranian society’s “thorniest problem.”31
DTOs will just become legal and have same violence
By: Vanda Felbab-Brown senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy
program at Brookings September 23, 2010 “Why Legalization in Mexico is Not a Panacea for Reducing Violence and Suppressing
Organized Crime” Brookings, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2010/09/23-mexico-marijuana-legalizationfelbabbrown?rssid=mexico&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3a%2bBrookingsRSS%2ftopics%
2fmexico%2b(Brookings%3a%2bTopics%2b-%2bMexico ac 6-21
the state does not physically control the territory where marijuana is cultivated – which in
Mexico it often does not – the DTOs could continue to dominate the newly legal marijuana fields, still
charge taxes, still structure the life of the growers, and even find it easier to integrate into the
Moreover, if
formal political system. Many oil and rubber barons started with shady practices and eventually became influential (and
sometimes responsible) members of the legal political space. But there are good reasons not to want the very
bloody Mexican capos to become legitimized.
No impact- market adaptation
Gholz and Press, associate professor Public Affairs at the U of Texas Austin and associate professor
government Dartmouth, 10 (Summer, Eugene and Daryl, “Protecting “The Prize”: Oil and the U.S. National Interest,”
Security Studies, 19:453–485 vol 3) atw
Each day, twenty-four million barrels of crude are pumped from the Persian Gulf region, most of which are loaded onto
supertankers to feed refineries around the world.8 The immediate effect of a major supply disruption in the Gulf would
leave one or more consumers wondering where their next expected oil delivery will come from. But the oil market,
like most others, adjusts to shocks via a variety of mechanisms. These adaptations do not
require careful coordination, unusually wise stewardship, or benign motives. Individuals’
drive for profit triggers most of them. The details of each oil shock are unique, so each crisis
triggers a different mix of adaptations. Some adjustments would begin within hours of a
disruption; others would take weeks or longer to implement. Similarly, some could only
supply the market for short periods of time, and others could be sustained indefinitely.
But the net result of the adaptations softens the disruptions’ effects on consumers.
Alt causes to Latin American stability that legalization of marijuana can’t solve
Robelo 13 (Daniel, Research Coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance, Oregon Law Review, 2013, “Demand Reduction or
Redirection?¶ Channeling Illicit Drug Demand¶ towards a Regulated Supply to¶ Diminish Violence in Latin America”, Hein
Online///TS)
Regulating marijuana and other drugs will by no means be a¶ panacea for the security crisis
facing many Latin American countries¶ today . Of course, there are a host of critical issues outside
the scope¶ of this Article that must be addressed, including vital institutional¶ reforms
(particularly of judicial and law enforcement institutions), as¶ well as the consideration of new
policies regarding firearms,¶ migration, money laundering, and militarization .!13 But drug¶ prohibition
remains a central cause of organized crime and violence in¶ the Americas, and prohibition-related violence and corruption¶ continue
to confound efforts at institutional reform in many¶ countries.114 Exploring regulatory alternatives to prohibition is thus ¶ essential to
finding durable solutions.