1NC
1
Aff must specify what the “US” means and what “legalize means”Key to clash- encourages depth and engagement which is key to decisionmaking
and critical thinking
it’s key to nuanced debates over marijuana – reparations, regulation by states,
regulation by federal government, taxing- it’s a legal topic so you need to
prioritize debates over process and mechanism even if you don’t like those in
general--topic specific education outweighs because it’s the only unique benefit
to this year
Research and statiscs prove clarity is key to education and learning
Clarity is the strongest predictor of student success--strong statistical support
CONSTANCE V. HINES et al University of South Florida DONALD R.
CRUICKSHANK and JOHN J. KENNEDY The Ohio State University. “Teacher Clarity
and Its Relationship to Student Achievement and Satisfaction” American Educational
Research Journal Spring 1985, Vol. 22, No. I, Pp. 87-99 DOI:
10.3102/00028312022001087
Relationships between the clarity behaviors of teachers and the dual outcome measures
of student achievement and satisfaction were examined. Relatively reliable measures
of clarity (both of a low-inference and high-inference nature) on 32 preservice
teachers who taught the same lesson within a smalt-group laboratory setting were
generated by (a) trained observers, fb) participating students, and (c) the teachers
themselves. The high and relatively low-inference measures of teacher clarity
correlated highly, and both were significantly and positively related to post
instructional measures of student achievement and student satisfaction . A
number of specific clarity behaviors have been identified that appear to be strongly
and directly linked to desirable student outcomes.
Research on teacher clarity and its antithesis, teacher vagueness, has been
accumulating since clarity was identified as the most promising teacher-effects
variable by Rosenshine and Furst (1971) in their review of 50 process-product studies.
Good and Grouws (1977), for example, reported that general clarity of instruction
(process) was one of the effective correlates of student achievement (product) in
their observational study of fourth-grade mathematics instruction. Evans and Guymon
(1978). in a study of the effects of clarity of explanation on student learning and student
perceptions of teacher effectiveness, found clarity to be a significant correlate of
student achievement. Research on inhibitors of teacher clarity (e.g.. the use of
vague terms and mazes) has shown that examined inhibitors were negatively
correlated with student achievement, and that clear teaching discourse was
positively related to achievement (Land & Smith, 1979; Smith, 1977; Smith &
Edmonds, 1978).
Vote neg to protect predictable pre-round prep, clash and education
2
The aff is controlled by walking dildos and approaches the public sphere with
male privilege by assuming a gender - neutral political subject. This renders the
female body invisible
Fraser 90 (Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique
of Actually Existing Democracy”, Social Text, No 25/26 (1990), pp. 60-61, Duke
University Press, jstor.org/stable/466240 // candle)
Now, let me juxtapose to this sketch of Habermas's account an alternative account that I
shall piece together from some recent revisionist historiography. Briefly, scholars like
Joan Landes, Mary Ryan, and Geoff Eley contend that Habermas's account idealizes the
liberal public sphere. They argue that, despite the rhetoric of publicity and
accessibility, that official public sphere rested on, indeed was importantly
constituted by, a number of significant exclusions. For Landes, the key axis of
exclusion is gender; she argues that the ethos of the new republican public sphere
in France was constructed in deliberate opposition to that of a more womanfriendly salon culture that the republicans stigmatized as "artificial," "effeminate,"
and "aristocratic." Consequently, a new, austere style of public speech and
behavior was promoted, a style deemed "rational," "virtuous," and "manly." In this
way, masculinist gender constructs were built into the very conception of the
republican public sphere, as was a logic that led, at the height of Jacobin rule, to the
formal exclusion from political life of women.4 Here the republicans drew on
classical traditions that cast femininity and publicity as oxymorons; the depth of such
tradi- tions can be gauged in the etymological connection between "public" and "pubic,"
a graphic trace of the fact that in the ancient world possession of a penis was a
requirement for speaking in public. (A similar link is preserved, incidentally, in the
etymological connection between "testi- mony" and "testicle.")5 Extending Landes's
argument, Geoff Eley contends that exclusionary operations were essential to liberal
public spheres not only in France but also in England and Germany, and that in all these
countries gender exclusions were linked to other exclusions rooted in processes
of class formation. In all these countries, he claims, the soil that nourished the
liberal public sphere was "civil society," the emerging new congeries of voluntary
associations that sprung up in what came to be known as "the age of societies." But this
network of clubs and associations-philan- thropic, civic, professional, and cultural-was
anything but accessible to everyone. On the contrary, it was the arena, the training
ground, and eventually the power base of a stratum of bourgeois men, who were
coming to see themselves as a "universal class" and preparing to assert their
fitness to govern. Thus, the elaboration of a distinctive culture of civil society and of
an associated public sphere was implicated in the process of bourgeois class
formation; its practices and ethos were markers of "distinction" in Pierre Bourdieu's
sense,6 ways of defining an emergent elite, setting it off from the older aristocratic elites
it was intent on displacing, on the one hand, and from the various popular and plebeian
strata it aspired to rule, on the other. This process of distinction, more- over, helps
explain the exacerbation of sexism characteristic of the liberal public sphere; new
gender norms enjoining feminine domesticity and a sharp separation of public
and private spheres functioned as key signifiers of bourgeois difference from both
higher and lower social strata. It is a measure of the eventual success of this
bourgeois project that these norms later became hegemonic, sometimes imposed
on, sometimes embraced by, broader segments of society.7 Now, there is a remarkable
irony here, one that Habermas's account of the rise of the public sphere fails fully to
appreciate.8 A discourse of publicity touting accessibility, rationality, and the
suspension of status hierarchies is itself deployed as a strategy of distinction. Of
course, in and of itself, this irony does not fatally compromise the discourse of
publicity; that discourse can be, indeed has been, differently deployed in different
circumstances and contexts. Nevertheless, it does suggest that the relationship
between publicity and status is more complex than Habermas intimates, that
declaring a deliberative arena to be a space where extant status distinctions are
bracketed and neutralized is not sufficient to make it so.
Violence should be understand as a continuum that affects all women – it has
been constructed as the norm in relationships between men and women. It is
the expectation that there will be violence. There no longer remains a
distinction between abused and non-abused. Violence against women
represents sexual terrorism, a war on women where bodies are the physical
territory upon which war is fought. This turns all impacts.
Ray 97 (Amy E. Ray, “The Shame Of It: Gender-Based Terrorism In The Former
Yugoslavia And The Failure of International Human Rights Law To Comprehend The
Injuries,” The American University Law Review. Vol 46. , pp. 835-838,
http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1380&context=aulr,
// candle)
Transforming the human rights concept from a feminist perspective. . . relates
women's rights and human rights, looking first at the violations of women's lives
and then asking how the human rights concept can change to be more responsive
to women}50 In order to reach all of the violence perpetrated against the women of the
former Yugoslavia that is not committed by soldiers or other officials of the state, human
rights law must move beyond its artificially constructed barriers between "public" and
"private" actions: A feminist perspective on human rights would require a
rethinking of the notions of imputability and state responsibility and in this sense
would challenge the most basic assumptions of international law. If violence
against women were considered by the international legal system to be as shocking as
violence against people for their political ideas, women would have considerable support
in their struggle. . .. The assumption that underlies all law, including international
human rights law, is that the public/private distinction is real: human society, human
lives can be separated into two distinct spheres. This division, however, is an
ideological construct rationalizing the exclusion of women from the sources of
power.260 The international community must recognize that violence against women
is always political, regardless of where it occurs, because it affects the way
women view themselves and their role in the world, as well as the lives they lead
in the so-called public sphere.261 When women are silenced within the family, their
silence is not restricted to the private realm, but rather affects their voice in the
public realm as well, often assuring their silence in any environment*63 For women
in the former Yugoslavia, as well as for all women, extension beyond the various
public/private barriers is imperative if human rights law "is to have meaning for women
brutalized in less-known theaters of war or in the by-ways of daily life."263 Because, as
currently constructed, human rights laws can reach only individual perpetrators during
times of war, one alternative is to reconsider our understanding of what constitutes "war"
and what constitutes "peace."861 When it is universally true that no matter where in
the world a woman lives or with what culture she identifies, she is at grave risk of
being beaten, imprisoned, enslaved, raped, prostituted, physically tortured, and
murdered simply because she is a woman, the term "peace" does not describe her
existence.265 In addition to being persecuted for being a woman, many women
also are persecuted on ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation, or other
grounds. Therefore, it is crucial that our re-conceptualization of human rights is not
limited to violations based on gender.266 Rather, our definitions of "war" and "peace"
in the context of all of the world's persecuted groups should be questioned.
Nevertheless, in every culture a common risk factor is being a woman, and to
describe the conditions of our lives as "peace" is to deny the effect of sexual
terrorism on all women.267 Because we are socialized to think of times of "war"
as limited to groups of men fighting over physical territory or land, we do not
immediately consider the possibility of "war" outside this narrow definition except
in a metaphorical sense, such as in the expression "the war against poverty."
However, the physical violence and sex discrimination perpetrated against women
because we are women is hardly metaphorical. Despite the fact that its prevalence
makes the violence seem natural or inevitable, it is profoundly political in both its
purpose and its effect. Further, its exclusion from international human rights law is no
accident, but rather part of a system politically constructed to exclude and silence
women.168 The appropriation of women's sexuality and women's bodies as
representative of men's ownership over women has been central to this
"politically constructed reality."*69 Women's bodies have become the objects
through which dominance and even ownership are communicated, as well as the
objects through which men's honor is attained or taken away in many cultures.
Thus, when a man wants to communicate that he is more powerful than a woman,
he may beat her. When a man wants to communicate that a woman is his to use as he
pleases, he may rape her or prostitute her. The objectification of women is so
universal that when one country ruled by men (Serbia) wants to communicate to
another country ruled by men (Bosnia-Herzegovina or Croatia) that it is superior
and more powerful, it rapes, tortures, and prostitutes the "inferior" country's
women. 271 The use of the possessive is intentional, for communication among men
through the abuse of women is effective only to the extent that the group of men
to whom the message is sent believes they have some right of possession over
the bodies of the women used. Unless they have some claim of right to what is
taken, no injury is experienced. Of course, regardless of whether a group of men
sexually terrorizing a group of women is trying to communicate a message to another
group of men, the universal sexual victimization of women clearly communicates to
all women a message of dominance and ownership over women. As Charlotte
Bunch explains, "The physical territory of [the] political struggle [over female
subordination] is women's bodies."272
Our Alternative is a castration of the system – separating us from the
phallocentric logic of the polis. A method of radical female revolution through a
lesbian separatist society refuses male presence.
Only reclaiming the notion of lesbianism beyond mere sexual classification
breaks from the norms imposed by male hegemony and exposes the
dehumanizing understanding of woman as an object to be fucked by man. To
reclaim lesbianism is to reject the demands of the male cultural system and to
create and celebrate the bonds of the female world.
Radicalesbians 1970 [Radicalesbians, 1970, “The Woman Identified Woman,”
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/womid // candle]
What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of
explosion. She is the woman who, often beginning at an extremely early age, acts in
accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human
being than her society - perhaps then, but certainly later - cares to allow her. These
needs and actions, over a period of years, bring her into painful conflict with people,
situations, the accepted ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, until she is in a state
of continual war with everything around her, and usually with herself. She may not
be fully conscious of the political implications of what for her began as personal
necessity, but on some level she has not been able to accept the limitations and
oppression laid on her by the most basic role of her society--the female role. The
turmoil she experiences tends to induce guilt proportional to the degree to which she
feels she is not meeting social expectations, and/or eventually drives her to question and
analyze what the rest of her society more or less accepts. She is forced to evolve her
own life pattern, often living much of her life alone, learning usually much earlier
than her "straight" (heterosexual) sisters about the essential aloneness of life
(which the myth of marriage obscures) and about the reality of illusions. To the extent
that she cannot expel the heavy socialization that goes with being female, she can
never truly find peace with herself. For she is caught somewhere between accepting
society's view of her - in which case she cannot accept herself - and coming to
understand what this sexist society has done to her and why it is functional and
necessary for it to do so. Those of us who work that through find ourselves on the other
side of a tortuous journey through a night that may have been decades long. The
perspective gained from that journey, the liberation of self, the inner peace, the
real love of self and of all women, is something to be shared with all women because we are all women. It should first be understood that lesbianism, like male
homosexuality, is a category of behavior possible only in a sexist society
characterized by rigid sex roles and dominated by male supremacy. Those sex
roles dehumanize women by defining us as a supportive/serving caste in relation to the
master caste of men, and emotionally cripple men by demanding that they be alienated
from their own bodies and emotions in order to perform their economic/political/military
functions effectively. Homosexuality is a by-product of a particular way of setting up
roles (or approved patterns of behavior) on the basis of sex; as such it is an inauthentic
( not consonant with "reality") category. In a society in which men do not oppress
women, and sexual expression is allowed to follow feelings, the categories of
homosexuality and heterosexuality would disappear. But lesbianism is also different
from male homosexuality, and serves a different function in the society. "Dyke" is
a different kind of put-down from "faggot", although both imply you are not playing
your socially assigned sex role. . . are not therefore a "real woman" or a "real man. " The
grudging admiration felt for the tomboy, and the queasiness felt around a sissy boy point
to the same thing: the contempt in which women-or those who play a female role-are
held. And the investment in keeping women in that contemptuous role is very
great. Lesbian is a word, the label, the condition that holds women in line. When a
woman hears this word tossed her way, she knows she is stepping out of line. She
knows that she has crossed the terrible boundary of her sex role. She recoils, she
protests, she reshapes her actions to gain approval. Lesbian is a label invented by
the Man to throw at any woman who dares to be his equal, who dares to challenge
his prerogatives (including that of all women as part of the exchange medium among
men), who dares to assert the primacy of her own needs. To have the label applied
to people active in women's liberation is just the most recent instance of a long history;
older women will recall that not so long ago, any woman who was successful,
independent, not orienting her whole life about a man, would hear this word. For in this
sexist society, for a woman to be independent means she can't be a woman - she
must be a dyke. That in itself should tell us where women are at. It says as clearly as
can be said: women and person are contradictory terms. For a lesbian is not
considered a "real woman. " And yet, in popular thinking, there is really only one
essential difference between a lesbian and other women: that of sexual orientation
- which is to say, when you strip off all the packaging, you must finally realize that
the essence of being a "woman" is to get fucked by men. "Lesbian" is one of the
sexual categories by which men have divided up humanity. While all women are
dehumanized as sex objects, as the objects of men they are given certain
compensations: identification with his power, his ego, his status, his protection (from
other males), feeling like a "real woman," finding social acceptance by adhering to her
role, etc. Should a woman confront herself by confronting another woman, there
are fewer rationalizations, fewer buffers by which to avoid the stark horror of her
dehumanized condition. Herein we find the overriding fear of many women toward
being used as a sexual object by a woman, which not only will bring her no maleconnected compensations, but also will reveal the void which is woman's real situation.
This dehumanization is expressed when a straight woman learns that a sister is a
lesbian; she begins to relate to her lesbian sister as her potential sex object,
laying a surrogate male role on the lesbian. This reveals her heterosexual
conditioning to make herself into an object when sex is potentially involved in a
relationship, and it denies the lesbian her full humanity. For women, especially
those in the movement, to perceive their lesbian sisters through this male grid of
role definitions is to accept this male cultural conditioning and to oppress their
sisters much as they themselves have been oppressed by men. Are we going to
continue the male classification system of defining all females in sexual relation to some
other category of people? Affixing the label lesbian not only to a woman who
aspires to be a person, but also to any situation of real love, real solidarity, real
primacy among women, is a primary form of divisiveness among women: it is the
condition which keeps women within the confines of the feminine role, and it is
the debunking/scare term that keeps women from forming any primary
attachments, groups, or associations among ourselves.
case
Pandemics
burnout
The Independent 3 [UK “Future Tense: Is Mankind Doomed?”,
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0725-04.htm 7/25/03]
Maybe - though plenty of experienced graduate students could already have a
stab. But nature knows that infectious diseases are very hard to get right. Only
HIV/Aids has 100 per cent mortality, and takes a long time to achieve it. By
definition, lethal diseases kill their host. If they kill too quickly, they aren't passed on;
if too slowly, we can detect them and isolate the infected. Any mutant smallpox or
other handmade germ would certainly be too deadly or too mild. And even Sars
killed fewer people worldwide than die on Britain's roads in a week. As scares go, this
one is ideal - overblown and unrealistic.
Risk is decreasing, its hype and cures solve
Ridley 8/17/12 [Matt Ridley, columnist for The Wall Street Journal and author of
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, “Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why
You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times,”
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/all/]
The emergence of AIDS led to a theory that other viruses would spring from tropical rain
forests to wreak revenge on humankind for its ecological sins. That, at least, was the
implication of Laurie Garrett’s 1994 book, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a
World Out of Balance. The most prominent candidate was Ebola, the hemorrhagic fever that starred
in Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone, published the same year. Writer Stephen King called the book
“one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.” Right on cue, Ebola appeared again in the
Congo in 1995, but it soon disappeared. Far from being a harbinger, HIV was the only new
tropical virus to go pandemic in 50 years .¶ In the 1980s British cattle began dying from mad
cow disease, caused by an infectious agent in feed that was derived from the remains of other
cows. When people, too, began to catch this disease, predictions of the scale of the epidemic
quickly turned terrifying: Up to 136,000 would die, according to one study. A pathologist warned
that the British “have to prepare for perhaps thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of
cases of vCJD [new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human manifestation of mad cow]
coming down the line.” Yet the total number of deaths so far in the UK has been 176, with
just five occurring in 2011 and none so far in 2012.¶ In 2003 it was SARS, a virus from civet cats,
that ineffectively but inconveniently led to quarantines in Beijing and Toronto amid predictions
of global Armageddon. SARS subsided within a year, after killing just 774 people. In 2005 it
was bird flu, described at the time by a United Nations official as being “like a combination of
global warming and HIV/AIDS 10 times faster than it’s running at the moment.” The World Health
Organization’s official forecast was 2 million to 7.4 million dead. In fact, by late 2007, when the
disease petered out, the death toll was roughly 200. In 2009 it was Mexican swine flu. WHO
director general Margaret Chan said: “It really is all of humanity that is under threat during a
pandemic.” The outbreak proved to be a normal flu episode.¶The truth is, a new global
pandemic is growing less likely, not more . Mass migration to cities means the
opportunity for viruses to jump from wildlife to the human species has not risen and has
possibly even declined, despite media hype to the contrary. Water- and insect-borne
infections—generally the most lethal—are declining as living standards slowly improve. It’s
true that casual-contact infections such as colds are thriving—but only by being mild enough
that their victims can soldier on with work and social engagements, thereby allowing the virus
to spread. Even if a lethal virus does go global, the ability of medical science to sequence
its genome and devise a vaccine or cure is getting better all the time.
Instability
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/Inter-American 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 short-term 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-inthe-drug-wars ac 6-24
Full commercial legalization of cannabis, or some alternative short of full
commercialization, such as lawful production for personal use or by user cooperatives,
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.
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.
econ
no revenues--price decrease offsets
NAME: KEVIN A. SABET 13 * BIO: * Director of the Drug Policy Institute and Assistant
Professor in the Division of Addiction Medicine, University of Florida; Ph.D., Social
Policy, Oxford University (Marshall Scholar); Senior Policy Advisor in the Obama
Administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2009-2011; co-founder, with
Patrick J. Kennedy, of Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana). “Article: A New
Direction? Yes. Legalization? No. Drawing on Evidence to Determine Where to Go in
Drug Policy” Copyright (c) 2013 University of Oregon Oregon Law Review 2013 Oregon
Law Review 91 Or. L. Rev. 1153
In essence, honest drug policy analysis forces us to draw on limited evidence and
decide what matters more. Since the recent discourse in the United States has shifted
considerably toward legalizing drugs, this Article will examine some key premises of
support for legalization. Readers can decide for themselves if the data is convincing
enough to resist such a policy change or not. My take is that while the current drug
control system is not perfect, it is much [*1156] more desirable than legalization,
which needlessly puts our public health and safety at risk. n8 I Legalization
Would Increase Drug Use, and Thus Harm In 2010, when a team of five RAND
researchers analyzed California's 2010 effort to legalize marijuana, they concluded that
the pre-tax price of the drug could plummet (as much as eighty percent ) and
therefore marijuana consumption could increase. n9 This was based on a scenario
where the federal government did not intervene and indoor home-production would be
allowed. That sharp drop in price complicates any attempts to predict the actual
revenues that will result from marijuana taxes. Furthermore, the fall in price will
hinder efforts to collect those revenues as a black market springs up to take
advantage of the gap between the taxed price of pot and the real production cost
of pot. n10 This corroborated everything economics has taught us about how
price correlates with use (and why Big Tobacco and the Liquor Lobby fight price hikes
aggressively). There is strong evidence to indicate that rates of drug use are
inversely proportional to the price of drugs. For example, Americans who came of
age in the 1980s were significantly more likely to initiate marijuana use than those
in the 1990s, when price increased. The case is the same for adults and marijuana
use; fewer people use marijuana when the price is higher. n11 Why would the
price of drugs fall so dramatically? Drugs are inherently not expensive; both
cocaine and heroin are agricultural products that require minimal and inexpensive
chemical processing to produce the street form of the drugs, and marijuana is strictly
agricultural. n12 But producing, manufacturing, distributing, and purchasing illegal
drugs are inherently risky, and so people have to be paid for that risk. One of the
principle purposes of prohibition is to [*1157] increase the price of a drug that
would otherwise be cheap. This makes them less attractive to users who, as just
discussed, are sensitive to price. Drugs are expensive because of the risk
producers and traffickers take to get their product to market, and because lowerlevel dealers are also trying to make a profit, further raising the price. In addition,
cocaine and heroin are not produced in the United States, therefore increasing the price
because of the necessary trafficking. n13
No impact to economic decline – prefer new data
Daniel Drezner 14, IR prof at Tufts, The System Worked: Global Economic Governance
during the Great Recession, World Politics, Volume 66. Number 1, January 2014, pp.
123-164
The final significant outcome addresses a dog that hasn't barked: the effect of the Great
Recession on cross-border conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis,
multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis would lead states to increase their use
of force as a tool for staying in power.42 They voiced genuine concern that the global
economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict—whether through greater
internal repression, diversionary wars, arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power
conflict. Violence in the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea, and even
the disruptions of the Occupy movement fueled impressions of a surge in global public
disorder. The aggregate data suggest otherwise , however. The Institute for Economics
and Peace has concluded that "the average level of peacefulness in 2012 is
approximately the same as it was in 2007."43 Interstate violence in particular has declined
since the start of the financial crisis, as have military expenditures in most sampled
countries. Other studies confirm that the Great Recession has not triggered any increase
in violent conflict, as Lotta Themner and Peter Wallensteen conclude: "[T]he pattern is
one of relative stability when we consider the trend for the past five years."44 The
secular decline in violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been
reversed. Rogers Brubaker observes that "the crisis has not to date generated the surge
in protectionist nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might have been expected."43
US economy decoupled from the world
Charles Hugh Smith,Of Two Minds, 1-6-12, p. Lexis
It's possible that the U.S. economy can keep logging positive statistics even as
the global economy spiralsinto depression. Never mind that gasoline
consumption has plummeted or that savings have dropped or that austerity and
higher debt service payments insure a deep recession in Europe; and who
cares about China's real estate bubble popping? None of that matters here--or
so it seems. Heck, maybe we've entered a new golden era of low volatility; that's
possible, too. Everything's fixed, and the U.S. has successfully decoupled from
the rest of the global economy. Based on sentiment and volatility readings,
those are the consensus views .Reportedly16 out of 16 stock market mavens see
nothing but rally ahead--and we all know unanimity is astonishingly accurate in
predicting stock prices. The U.S. dollar has traded on a see-saw with equities for
years; recently, both equities and the dollar have surged. So either the see-saw
has broken or this is the mother of all divergences.
biod
1. No extinction from loss of bio-diversity
Easterbrook, 03 – senior fellow at the New Republic, 03 [“We're All Gonna Die!”,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/doomsday.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=]
If we're talking about doomsday - the end of human civilization - many scenarios
simply don't measure up. A single nuclear bomb ignited by terrorists, for example, would
be awful beyond words, but life would go on. People and machines might converge in ways
that you and I would find ghastly, but from the standpoint of the future, they would
probably represent an adaptation. Environmental collapse might make parts of the
globe unpleasant, but considering that the biosphere has survived ice ages, it
wouldn't be the final curtain. Depression, which has become 10 times more prevalent in
Western nations in the postwar era, might grow so widespread that vast numbers of people
would refuse to get out of bed, a possibility that Petranek suggested in a doomsday talk at
the Technology Entertainment Design conference in 2002. But Marcel Proust, as miserable
as he was, wrote Remembrance of Things Past while lying in bed.
2. Tech solves
Stossel, 07 Journalist, winner of the Peabody Award, anchors ABC News, 07 [John,
“Environmental Alarmists Have It Backwards”,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/how_about_economic_progress_da.ht
ml]
Watching the media coverage, you'd think that the earth was in imminent danger -that human life itself was on the verge of extinction. Technology is fingered as the perp.
Nothing could be further from the truth. John Semmens of Arizona's Laissez Faire
Institute points out that Earth Day misses an important point. In the April issue of The
Freeman magazine, Semmens says the environmental movement overlooks how
hospitable the earth has become -- thanks to technology. "The environmental
alarmists have it backwards. If anything imperils the earth it is ignorant
obstruction of science and progress. ... That technology provides the best option for
serving human wants and conserving the environment should be evident in the progress
made in environmental improvement in the United States. Virtually every measure
shows that pollution is headed downward and that nature is making a comeback."
(Carbon dioxide excepted, if it is really a pollutant.) Semmens describes his visit to historic
Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, an area "lush with trees and greenery." It wasn't
always that way. In 1775, the land was cleared so it could be farmed. Today, technology
makes farmers so efficient that only a fraction of the land is needed to produce much more
food. As a result, "Massachusetts farmland has been allowed to revert back to forest."
Human ingenuity and technology not only raised living standards, but also
restored environmental amenities. How about a day to celebrate that? Yet, Semmens
writes, the environmental movement is skeptical about technology and is attracted
to three dubious principles: sustainable development, the precautionary principle,
and stakeholder participation. The point of sustainable development, Semmens says, "is
to minimize the use of nonrenewable natural resources so there will be more left for future
generations." Sounds sensible -- who is for "unsustainable" development? But as the great
economist Julian Simon often pointed out, resources are manmade, not natural. Jed
Clampett cheered when he found oil on his land because it made him rich enough to move
to Beverly Hills. But his great-grandfather would have cursed the disgusting black gunk
because Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner hadn't yet discovered that kerosene could be
distilled from it. President Bush chides us for our "addiction to oil." But under current
conditions, using oil makes perfect sense. Someday, if we let the free market operate,
someone will find an energy source that works better than oil. Then richer future
generations won't need oil. So why deprive ourselves and make ourselves poorer with
needless regulation now? Anyway, it's not as if we're running out of oil. That's one of the
myths I expose in my new book, "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity". If the price of a
barrel of oil stays high, entrepreneurs will find better ways to suck oil out of the ground. At
$50 a barrel, it's even profitable to recover oil that's stuck in the tar sands in Alberta,
Canada. Those tar sands alone contain enough oil to meet our needs for a hundred years.
The precautionary principle, popular in Europe, is the idea that no new thing should
be permitted until it has been proved harmless. Sounds good, except as Ron Bailey
of Reason writes, it basically means, "Don't ever do anything for the first time."
Stakeholder participation means that busybodies would be permitted to intrude on private
transactions. Semmens's example is DDT, which for years would have saved children from
deadly malaria, except that "'stakeholders' from the environmental quarter have prevailed
on governments to ban the trade in this product." The first victims of these principles are
the poor. We rich Westerners can withstand a lot of policy foolishness. But people in the
developing world live on the edge, so anything that retards economic progress -- including
measures to arrest global warming -- will bring incredible hardship to the most vulnerable
on the planet. If we care about human life, we should celebrate Economic Progress Day.
3. Biodiversity is bad –
heg
ONE--heg is unsustainable
Christopher Layne, Professor, National Security, Texas A&M University, “This Time It’s
Real: The End of Unipolarity and Pax Americana,” INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
QUARTERLY, 2012, Wiley, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.14682478.2011.00704.x/full, accessed 6-9-12.
Before the Great Recession’s foreshocks in fall 2007, most American security studies
scholars believed that unipolarity—and perforce American hegemony—would be
enduring features of international politics far into the future. However, in the Great
Recession’s aftermath, it is apparent that much has changed since 2007. Predictions of
continuing unipolarity have been superseded by premonitions of American
decline and geopolitical transformation. The Great Recession has had a two-fold
impact. First, it highlighted the shift of global wealth—and power—from West to East, a trend
illustrated by China’s breathtakingly rapid rise to great power status. Second, it has raised
doubts about the robustness of US primacy’s economic and financial underpinnings. This
article argues that the unipolar moment is over, and the Pax Americana—the era of
American ascendancy in international politics that began in 1945—is fast winding down .
This article challenges the conventional wisdom among International Relations/Security
Studies scholars on three counts. First, it shows that contrary to the claims of unipolar
stability theorists, the distribution of power in the international system no longer is unipolar.
Second, this article revisits the 1980s’ debate about American decline and demonstrates
that the Great Recession has vindicated the so-called declinists of that decade. Finally, this
article takes on the institutional lock-in argument, which holds that by strengthening the
Pax Americana’s legacy institutions, the United States can perpetuate the essential
elements of the international order it constructed following World War II even as the
material foundations of American primacy erode.
TWO, turn—regionalization
a. Decline spurs it, more stable than dominance
Leon T. Hadar, Cato Institute, "Welcome to the Post-Unipolar World: Great for the U.S.
and for the Rest," HUFFINGTON POST, 7--8--10,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11967
Moreover, in the context of the evolving international system under which America is gradually losing its post-Cold War unipolar status, trying to reset U.S.
relationship with Russia as part of an overall policy to improve ties with other rising global players, like China, India, Brazil and Turkey makes a lot of sense. This is
a cost-effective strategy that could help Washington win support from Russia for policies that actually strengthen U.S. national security and economic interests. At
the same time, the fact that Georgia is also improving its ties with Iran and Turkey — and Russia — should not be considered a "loss" for Washington. By
establishing close economic ties with Iran and Turkey, Georgia is helping facilitate economic cooperation in the region that could lead to diplomatic collaboration
and provide for more stability in the Caucasus and the Middle East. Why should Washington be opposed to such a process that brings more economic prosperity
and secure a regional stable balance of power? Georgia may or may not regain control of its lost territories, not unlike, say, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Serbia,
etc., who seemed to have been able to cope with their territorial contraction. But the U.S. does not have the strategic interest or the moral obligation to change the
new status quo, or for that matter, to invite Georgia to join NATO — remind me again why that organization still exists? — and commit American military power to
provide that country with what would amount to disincentives for improving its relations with its close neighbors. In a way, the collapse of the American-controlled
unipolar system — and before that, the end of the bipolar system of the Cold War — should help us recognize that
international relations have
ceased to be a zero-sum-game
under which gains of other global powers become by definition a loss for America, and vice versa. It was
inevitable that former members of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc like Ukraine, Poland, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia will try to stabilize their diplomatic
and economic ties with Russia, while at the same time deterring powerful Russia by expanding cooperation with other players: Poland with Ukraine with Germany;
Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia with Turkey and Iran, and all of these countries with the U.S and the European Union (EU). Similarly, Washington should
welcome — not discourage — the growing diplomatic and economic role that Turkey is playing in the Middle East, which could help bring stability to Iraq (and allow
for American military to start withdrawing from there), moderate the policies of Iran (and prevent a military conflict with the U.S.), encourage negotiations between
Israel and Syria, and lead eventually to the creation of a more stable Middle East where Turkey, Iran, the Arabs states and Israel will be more secure and
prosperous. It is not surprising those representatives of economic and bureaucratic interests in Washington, and some of America's client states that draw benefits
from American interventionist policy, operate under
the axiom that the U.S. should always be prepared to "do
something" to "resolve" this or that conflict, here, there, and everywhere. That kind of never-ending American interventionism only
discourages regional powers, counting on Washington to come to their aid, from actually taking
steps to resolve those conflicts that end-up drawing-in other regional and global players, ensuring
that America will never leave Japan and Korea (to help contain China), Iraq (to deter Iran), Afghanistan (to deal with Pakistan). And that is exactly what the pro-
, the notion that American
hegemony is a precondition for global peace and security and that Washington needs therefore to extend its military
commitments in Europe, the Middle East, Caucus, East Asia and elsewhere is not very practical — America does not have the
resources in order to play that ambitious role — and is not very helpful, considering the most recent U.S. experience in the Middle East. The U.S. should
not retreat from the world. But by embracing a policy of "constructive disengagement" from some parts of the world,
America could help itself and the rest of the world.
interventionists in Washington want when they suggested that America is the "indispensable power." In any case
b. Solves terror, war, climate change
Krishnan Srinivasan, "International Conflict and Cooperation in the 21st Century," THE
ROUND TABLE v. 98 n. 400, 2--09, pp. 37-47.
The new world order of the first half of the present century will be one of peaceful mutual accommodation between the big powers located in the East and West,
North and South. The priority for these powers will be for economic progress and regional order, with defence expenditure being used to build technological
capacity for deterrence against the other big powers and as an enabler for their self-appointed but globally recognized role as regional enforcers. In this neoHobbesian world system, the lesser states will come to their own bilateral arrangements with the local regional hegemon upon whom they will be dependent not
only for their security but for economic, technical and trading facilitation. Some of these lesser entities will enjoy economic prosperity, depending on their ability to
maintain internal cohesion, to turn globalization to their advantage, and to control the socio-economic consequences of climate change, but they will not be able to
mount a challenge to the hierarchical nature of international society. They will have far greater recourse to the United Nations than the major powers, who will
prefer to apply unilateral methods with the connivance and consent of their peers. The debate between Westphalian national sovereignty and the right to intervene
to breach the sovereignty of other states on the grounds of preventing threats to international peace and security will not be resolved. Political and economic
inequality between nations will be drawn in ever sharper focus. Regional institutions will be dominated by the local big power. Reform of the United Nations will be
incomplete and unappealing to the vast majority of member states. The world’s hegemonic powers will lose faith in the Security Council as an effective mechanism
to deliberate issues of peace and security. World bodies will be used for discussion of global issues such as the environment and climate change, pandemic
disease, energy and food supplies, and development, but resulting action will primarily devolve on the big powers in the affected regions. This will particularly be
the case in the realm of peace and security in which only the
obligation,
regional hegemon will have the means, the will and the
,
for the sake of its own status and security to ensure resolution or retribution as each case may demand. Even in a globalized
world, regional and local action will be the prime necessity and such action will be left to the power best equipped to understand the particular circumstances,
Conflict will be contained and localized. There
will be no menace of war on a world-wide scale and little fear of international terrorism. Privateenterprise terrorist actions will continue to manifest political, social and economic frustrations, but they will be parochial, ineffective
and not state-sponsored. There will be far less invocation of human rights in international politics, since these will be identified with a western
select the appropriate remedy and execute the action required to administer it.
agenda and western civilization: there will be an equal recognition of community rights and societal values associated with Eastern and other traditions. Chinese
artists, Indian entrepreneurs, Russian actors, Iranian chefs, South African song-writers and Brazilian designers will be household names; models on the fashion
cat-walk and sporting teams from all major countries will be distinctly multi-racial, reflecting the immigration to, but also the purchasing power of, the new major
Climate change will be an
acknowledged global challenge and all countries, led by the regional hegemons, will undertake
binding restraints on carbon emissions. The world will become acutely conscious of the essentiality of access to fresh water. The
pace of technological innovation will accelerate at dizzying speed, further accentuating inequalities. There will be very rapid steps taken
to develop alternative sources of energy in the face of dwindling and costly oil supplies. Western industrialized nations, to remain
powers. National populations will show evidence of mixed race more than ever before in history.
competitive, will vacate vast areas of traditional manufacturing in favour of new technologies and green engineering. The world will be a safer and stable place until
one of the hegemons eventually develops an obvious ascendancy first regionally, then continentally and finally globally over all the others.
c. warming causes Extinction
Ronnie Cummins and Will Allen, Organic Consumers Association, "Climate
Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century," 2--14--10,
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/14-6
. Leading climate scientists such as James Hansen are literally shouting at the top of their lungs that the
world needs to reduce emissions by 20-40% as soon as possible, and 80-90% by the year 2050, if we are to
avoid climate chaos, crop failures, endless wars, melting of the polar icecaps, and a disastrous
rise in ocean levels. Either we radically reduce CO2 and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e, which includes all GHGs, not just
CO2) pollutants (currently at 390 parts per million and rising 2 ppm per year) to 350 ppm, including agriculture-derived methane and nitrous oxide pollution, or
else survival for the present and future generations is in jeopardy. As scientists warned at Copenhagen, business
The hour is late
as usual and a corresponding 7-8.6 degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperatures means that the carrying capacity of the Earth in 2100 will be reduced to one
billion people. Under this hellish scenario
, billions will die of thirst, cold, heat, disease, war, and starvation.
THREE--no offense, states can handle their own security
Leon T. Hadar, research fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute, "Saving U.S.
Mideast Policy," NATIONAL INTEREST, 7--1--11,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13259, accessed 9-4-11.
To do so, however, requires abandoning the mindset that any significant change in the
foreign-policy status quo would signal isolationism and lead in short order to global
chaos. Unless one assumes that there are no other capable powers in the world whose
interests overlap with those of the United States — or, alternatively, that those nations
would be catatonic and not seek to maintain stability in their own regions despite an
obvious security interest in doing so — the thesis of global chaos absent perpetual U.S.
hegemony is utter nonsense . America's allies and clients free ride on Washington's
security exertions because it is convenient for them to do so, not because they have no
alternative. The member states of the E uropean U nion, for example, are certainly capable
of handling any likely security problems that might emerge in their neighborhood. It is
preposterous to assert that the EU, an entity that has both a larger population and a larger
economy than the United States, cannot deal with new troubles in the Balkans — the most
likely arena for instability.
2NC
The affirmative’s approach to politics guarantees genocide and extinction—
they sexualize places and ignore the roots of the problem. Plan focus on
terminal war impacts masks structural violence- causes extinction
Pandey 6 (Anupam, thesis submitted to faculty of graduate studies and research in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctorate of philosophy department of political
science Carleton university, Forging bonds with women, nature and the third world: an
ecofeminist critique of international relations, pg. 17-18)
Despite the fact that many significant critiques have made their presence felt, the
discipline of IR continues to be dominated by the sub-field of military security.
The chief reason for the same is the preponderance of the Realist paradigm which
needs to be situated within the circumstances of the historical legacy and birth
of IR, the Cold War, the emergence of a single hegemon post-Cold War, the
renewed threat of terrorism, etc. Thus, concepts of balance of power,
deterrence, sovereignty, etc. have come to occupy the central and vast majority
of space in the subject matter of the discipline. Both theory and practice have
served to reinforce each other and this partnership has served to marginalize all other
issues which are regarded as “normative” concerns to the margins of the IR. Thus,
issues such as Third World debt and poverty are relegated to the realm of “low
politics” and hence put on the backburner, while matters pertaining to state
security, wars, weaponisation and sovereignty are studied as an integral part of
the “high politics” which deserve salience. However, the more recent innovation
of human security studies is relevant to the Third World by sheer dint of its
subject matter which explores human vulnerability across the globe that could
be the result of natural or man-made disasters. Simon Dalby states that
traditionally there have been two elements to human security — freedom from fear
and freedom from want but over the years, the former element has overshadowed the
latter (2002: 7). Further, he quotes the UNDP Human Development Report (1994) to
define human security. Thus, issues of poverty, disease, hunger, famines,
financial crises feature prominently here under the overarching topics of
freedom from want and hunger (Thomas and Wilkins 2004). In the coming century,
the six great threats to human security are unchecked rise in population,
disparities in economic opportunities, excessive international migration,
environmental degradation, drug trafficking and international terrorism (Dalby
2002: 8). It becomes clear that these threats are the result of actions of millions
of people rather than deliberate actions of specific states. Therefore, the
concept of security must change from the realist, statist and militarist
preoccupations to include human welfare. Despite the fact that the approach is
holistic in its understanding of world affairs and emancipatory in terms of its agenda,
its drawback lies in that it largely espouses a liberal humanitarian framework rather
than a radical departure from existing structural constraints.
The only way to take back our wombs is to cut off the penis that controls us –
voting negative to reject their framework dissolves our relationship to
dominance and removes the power from the game. This is the only way true
debate and progression can occur
Hoagland 95 (Sarah Lucia Hoagland is a Professor of Philosophy and Women's
Studies at Northeastern, Bernard Brommel Distinguished Research Professor, and
Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Women's Studies and Latino/Latin American Studies,
Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. “Separating from Heterosexuality” article is
featured in “Feminism and Community”, pp. 273-274)
I want to suggest that it is crucial to acknowledge withdrawal, separatism, as an option if we
are to engage in moral revolution. Separation is a central option both as a political
strategy and as a consideration in individual relationships. We may withdraw from
a particular situation when it threatens to dissolve into a relationship of
dominance and subordination. And we may withdraw from a system of dominance
and subordination in order to engage in moral revolution. To withdraw from a system, a
conceptual framework, or a particular situation is to refuse to act according to its rules. A system
can only function if there are participants. A king can direct his domain only if most everyone else
acknowledges him as king, if the couriers carry his messages.2 If the messengers dump their messages and go on to
some- thing else, not only is the king's communication interrupted, so is his status, for the couriers are no longer focused
on him and are therefore declaring themselves no longer couriers. If enough couriers lay down their messages, the king
will not be able to amass sufficient power to force those messengers to again focus on him. When we separate,
when we withdraw from someone's game plan, the
game becomes meaningless, at least to some extent,
ceasing to exist for lack of acknowledgment. Of course if a tree falls in the forest, there are sound
waves, whether or not there are human or other animal ears, or whether there are any other sorts of mechanisms in
addition to the king's own ears to detect them. But if the listeners, the messengers, have withdrawn,
then the sound waves can't be translated or even acknowledged. Thus the
messages of the king in a certain respect make no sense, and in a certain respect have ceased
to exist. So has the king ... as a king.
This framework is another link—it’s patriarchal censorship that silencing the
feminist worldview—this independently warrants a negative ballot to fight
against gendered censorship
Mojab 02 (Shahrzad Mojab is director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute and
an Associate Professor in the Department of Adult Education and Psychology at
University of Toronto, Canada; SECTION 5: INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE ,
“Information, Censorship, and Gender Relations in Global
Capitalism:”, Information for Social Change 1, pp. 66-68)
It is important to know more about the ties that bind censorship to gender. Even
when one barrier is removed, others emerge to ensure the reproduction of the
status quo. For instance, after decades of struggle, beginning in late nineteenth century, legal barriers to women’s
access to parliament and political office were removed in the West and, later, in many non-Western states. This was
achieved, not simply through access to information, but rather due to women's determination to create knowledge and
consciousness, and engage in mobilizing and organizing (sit-ins, demonstrations, picketing, leafleting, singing, etc.) in
schools, homes, streets, churches, and university campuses. However, states and state- centred politics
continue to be male-centred. Even when women have a proportionate participation in the parliament, there
is no guarantee that they would all advocate feminist alternatives to an androcentric agenda; and this is the case for the
simple reason that women can be as patriarchal in their politics as some men are. A more adequate approach to the
understanding of censorship is, I believe, to see it not as an irrational practice, as a mischievous attitude, or a technical
problem of obstructing channels of communication. Censorship is an integral part of the exercise
of gender power, class power, and the powers of the nation, ethnicity, religion and
governance. Not only does it deny women access to information, but also limits
their participation in the creation of knowledge, and denies them the power to
utilize knowledge. If in pre-modern times the church was the major player in creating knowledge, today the
market produces, disseminates, and utilizes much of the knowledge, which has
achieved the status of a commodity. Knowledge is "intellectual property." Even
the knowledge created in public and semi-public institutions such as universities
is increasingly geared to the agenda of the market, and serves the promotion of
market interests. Moreover, Western states primarily entertain the market as the lifeline of economy, culture and
society. They increasingly aim at giving all the power to the market. In dictatorial regimes, however, the state still plays a
prominent role in censoring the creation and dissemination of knowledge. From Peru to Turkey, to Iran and to China,
states suppress activists, journalists, libraries, bookstores, print and broadcast
media, satellite dishes and the Internet. They often do so by committing violence
against the citizens and the communication systems they use. Although we may find
much gender-based subtlety in the techniques of limiting women's access to
information. I believe that the subtlest censorship is denying feminist knowledge a
visible role in the exercise of power. The state, Western and non-Western, rules
through privileging androcentric knowledge as the basis for governance. The conduct
of national censuses, for instance, continues to be based on androcentric worldviews in spite of devastating feminist
critique. To give another example, women are now recruited into Western armies in combat functions, but states
continue to ignore feminist and pacifist knowledge that challenges the very
phenomenon of war and violence (Cynthia Enloe, 2000). Women themselves can be and, often, are part
of the problem. In the absence of feminist consciousness, they generally act as participants in the reproduction of
patriarchal gender relations. In Islamic societies, when men engage in the "honour" killing of their wives, daughters or
sisters, sometimes mothers participate in or tolerate the horrendous crime (Mojab. 2002). The democratisation of gender
relations is a conscious intervention in a power structure that is closely interlocked with the powers of the state, class,
race, ethnicity, religion and tradition. For both women and men, challenging patriarchy means defying
one's own values, worldviews, emotions, and traditions. At the same time, it involves
risk taking including, in some situations, loss of life. Women's full access to androcentric knowledge will not disturb
the status quo. I argue that, in the absence of feminist consciousness, women may even
act as ministers of propaganda and censorship. They will not be in a position to
exercise the democratic right to revolt against oppressive rule. In the West,
feminist knowledge cannot be suppressed through book-burning, jailing, torture,
and assassination. Censorship is conducted, much more effectively, by stigmatizing and
marginalising feminist knowledge as 'special interest," while androcentrism is promoted as the
norm, the canon, and "human nature." That is why, I contend, that if we fill all the media institutions with female managers
and staff, if we give all educational institutions to women, or hand over all high-rank military positions to women, the
androcentric world order with its violence, war, poverty, and degenerating environment will continue to function.
Globalization, as it is understood in mainstream media and in state discourses, is nothing new; it emerged with the rise of
capitalism; the main engine of globalization is the capitalist market, and it is promoted and planned by capitalist states
through various organs such as the G8, World Bank, European Union. World Trade Organization, International Monetary
Fund, etc. The impact of this globalization on women has been largely negative, especially in the developing world.
Millions of girls aged 5 to 15 are recruited into the global prostitution market. Millions more leave their families and
countries to raise some income as maids. However, other forms of globalization or, rather, internationalization have been
in the making. For instance, feminism has evolved as an international movement in spite of the opposition of
conservatives in many parts of the world. It has been able to put women's demands on the agenda of states and
international organs such as the United Nations. Media are also important actors in globalisation. Women have had more
presence in the media both as producers and as targets or sources of entertainment and information programming. There
is considerable progress, for instance, in the production of women and feminist press in many developing countries. The
Internet and desktop publishing present new opportunities for more media activism. Egypt has a women's television
channel. Focusing on the question of censorship, the crucial issue is freedom of speech not only
for women but also more significantly, for feminists and feminist knowledge.
Feminist knowledge and consciousness is the primary target of censorship. Do the
globalizing media allow women of the developing countries to learn about the achievements of Western women in fighting
patriarchy? Do women of the West learn from the struggles of women in India, Jamaica or Saudi Arabia? Do the global
media allow women everywhere to know about the Beijing Conference and its aftermath? Do they disseminate adequate
and accurate information about the World March of Women? My answers are rather in the negative. The cyberspace is
much like the realspace that creates it. The fact that many individual women or groups can set up their websites does not
change power relations in the realspace. The negative stereotyping of women, for instance, cannot change without the
dissemination of feminist consciousness among both men and women. Even if stereotyping is eliminated, gender
inequality will persist. 'Gender-based
censorship" cannot be overcome as long as gender
relations remain unequal and oppressive. It can, however, be reduced or made
less effective. While the concept 'gender-based censorship* is useful, it should be broadened to include
"censorship of feminist knowledge." The following are just a few ideas about what we may do: A) Creating theoretical and
empirical knowledge about gender-based censorship, and especially the censorship of feminist knowledge and feminist
movements. B) Disseminating this knowledge and awareness among citizens. Using this knowledge for the purpose of
dismantling patriarchal power. Knowledge makes a difference when it is put into practice. C) Making this knowledge
available to policy makers and integrating it into policy making in the institutions of the market, the state, and non-state
and non-market forces. These goals will not be achieved in the absence of feminist and
women's movements. If censorship is not a mistake, but rather it is an organ for
exercising gender and class power, resistance to it too, should be a part of the
struggle for a democratic regime.
LS is a form of politics
McCrossin 99 (Julie is an Australian radio broadcaster, journalist, comedian and
campaigner for women's and gay rights. “Women, wimmin, womyn, womin, whippets On Lesbian Separatism”, http://www.takver.com/history/womyn.htm)
I associate the idea that lesbianism is the "ultimate feminism" with "lesbian separatism". For some women the slogan has
changed from "Every woman can be a lesbian" to "Every woman should be a lesbian." A British view, " We should
refuse to be fucked by men. We should be celibate or lesbian . . . For me fighting
patriarchy is primary and the all pervasive ideology of heterosexuality is one of
the biggest weapons men have." (11) Another British woman, "I do think that heterosexual women
collaborate in their own and other women's oppression."( 12) From Blatant Lesbianism, "You want all women
to be lesbian? Well, obviously yes .... You reach a political position, one that you
believe to be the best and that offers the ultimate solutions." (13) And later in the same
Sydney magazine, ". . . its the idea of lesbianism being a conscious political choice,
giving up heterosexual protection and privilege and committing our primary
energies - emotional intellectual and sexual - to other women as the most effective means of
undermining the male-dominated system that oppresses all women - its this idea
that is challenging and therefore threatening."( 14)
This debate is about methods - we question the assumption that the public
sphere is capable of making politics that benefit all. Perm is another
assimilation tactic to quell dissent against male domination. The belief that
they can steal our method is reason enough to reject them.
Hoagland 95 (Sarah Lucia Hoagland is a Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies
at Northeastern, Bernard Brommel Distinguished Research Professor, and Professor
Emerita of Philosophy, Women's Studies and Latino/Latin American Studies,
Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. “Separating from Heterosexuality” article is
featured in “Feminism and Community”, pp. 278-279)
In general, the system of the fathers designates as evil what it can tolerate and uses it as a safety valve. When things
threaten to get out of hand, those in power can then scapegoat that which they designate as evil to explain why that which
they designate as good —marriage, business, education, religion, medicine, for example — isn't working. And this
suggests that withdrawal from and change in central values, rather than evil, are the real threats to the traditional
framework of ethics and politics. Upon examining the system, we may find we actually agree with the underlying value
and structure. Alternatively, we may find we disagree significantly with it but judge that it is the best structure around or
that the existing structure is better than no structure or better than the risk involved in creating a new one. We might
even feel
that a new structure would be preferable but that the current situation is a
crisis which needs immediate relief, even though this results in incomplete
solution and cooptation. After all, working to create a new value system hardly solves an immediate problem
of starvation. But
what is missing from the focus of traditional ethics as well as from
lesbian community ethics is acknowledgment that these choices involve
agreement with the system in certain key ways, acknowledgment that such
agreement is a choice, and acknowledgment that there is another choice. What is
missing from traditional ethics is acknowledgment that there are ethical choices
at this level, that participation is one of those choices, and that separation — at the
very least from the belief system — is another. Now beyond noting that withdrawal or separation
is a crucial moral option, I want to suggest that such a choice is central to lesbian moral
agency. What I am calling separation or withdrawal is not a set of rules we live up to, particularly
in an attempt to be purists. It is rather a general approach to the world which involves
various choices in various circumstances, choices which depend on various
factors but which are choices from a lesbian center.
They have the wrong focus – the aff is looking outside to the USFG, not the way
the debate space functions. There is an accessibility disadvantage to the aff
because they do nothing for women here in this space
Whitmore 9 (Whit is the Assistant Debate Coach at the University of Michigan and
Woodward Academy, “The Success of Women in Debate: Are We Slipping?”,10/16/09,
http://the3nr.com/2009/10/06/the-success-of-women-in-debate-are-we-slipping/)
The Success of Women in Debate: Are We Slipping? I decided to write this because I noticed a consistent theme in many of my conversations and thoughts this
Yes, there are
examples of women who have achieved success in recent history and who are successful today. My point
is not that there aren’t any; it is rather that there are too few. I guess the best way to describe my feelings on this issue is confusion. I don’t
weekend at the Kentucky tournament. I want to go ahead and dismiss some of the excuses before I continue any further.
understand why this issue has to keep coming up. I know the solutions aren’t perfect, but we’ve at least sketched out some reasonable steps that everyone should
be taking to improve the situation (make debate a less hostile environment and work to build and preserve self-esteem and confidence). I guess I have a two part
One of the major
conversational topics was speaker points. I don’t think we need to lay the blame on the 100 point scale. I think the
newness of the 100 point scale just refocused attention on an issue that has always been with us. Only three women received a
speaker award (given to the top 20) at Kentucky. NONE were in the top ten. I realize it is unrealistic to expect
question. Is it that these methods are no longer as effective, or have we just stopped doing them enough?
parity in terms of success in numbers until we see parity in terms of participation, but there is an added oddity to these numbers. This was the break down: 1-10: 0
women 11-20: 3 women 21-30: 5 women 31-50: 1 woman Does this bunching of women around and just below the speaker award cut off point suggest something
Georgia State
only 5 women in the top 40.
of a speaker award glass ceiling?
didn’t show quite the same breakdown, but still
Gonzaga was somewhat better. I counted at least 10 women in the top 50 (apologies for an inaccurate count as some of the names were unfamiliar to me).
The dearth of successful female debaters creates bigger issues. It becomes self
reinforcing when there are fewer successful role models available for hire as coaches
When competitive success is a necessary
perquisite for being hired, it’s difficult to find qualified applicants even when you’re actively
at both the assistant and director level as well as for lab leaders at summer institutes.
seeking them out. There are just too few to go around. I know how hard it can be to get these kinds of jobs when you weren’t well known as a successful debater,
The last major issue that
came up informally in a round was the issue of gendered language. Maybe I’m getting old, but I debated in an era
but I can’t imagine how much harder it must be for women who haven’t had/didn’t have competitive success.
where it was close to taboo. There were probably a lot of contributing factors, including the testimony of numerous women on edebate and other forums that it was
an important issue or the success that debaters like Rachel Saloom and Sarah Holbrook had running the argument, but it seemed like something that (for the most
, I am noticing the practice more each year.
part) debaters just didn’t do. However
I have to add that this is a problem I
encounter more at the high school level. This comes up in all the same ways (turning in evidence that contains gendered language, referencing arguments a
female debater made as “he said”, etc.). I think maybe we should be doing more to make young debaters aware of progress the community has made so we don’t
I hear more women in debate
say that they don’t care or are unconcerned about the issue. Let me be clear that I’m not calling for
teams to dust off their gendered language files and run them whenever the first opportunity presents itself. If this community has made
some progress in terms of being receptive to women, and if that progress means
that women no longer feel the use of gendered language affects their willingness
to participate in the activity, then that is probably a good thing. However, if it is a
problem and it does matter, say something. Whether it is a simple correction, a post-round heads up, or a formal
forget or regress. I do have one caveat about the issue of gendered language. It seems to me that
argument is up to you.
The state inevitability manipulates laws in a masculine perspective.
Rhode 94 (Deborah L, Professor of Law at Stanford University, “Feminism and the state”)
In many left feminist accounts, the state is a patriarchal institution in the sense that it reflects and
institutionalizes male dominance . Men control positions of official power and men's
interests determine how that power is exercised. According to Catharine MacKinnon, the state's
invocation of neutrality and objectivity ensures that, "[t]hose who have freedoms like equality, liberty,
privacy and speech socially keep them legally, free of governmental intrusion." n15 In this view, "the
state protects male power [by] appearing to prohibit its excesses when necessary to its
normalization." n16 So, for example, to the extent that abortion functions "to facilitate male sexual
access to women, access to abortion will be controlled by 'a man or The Man.'" n17
The economy advantage is grounded in gendered epistemology – Maximizes
competition and the supremacy of male-centered values
Nhanenge 7 [Jytte: Master of Arts at the development studies at the University of
South Africa “Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the concerns of women,, poor people
and nature into development”
http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/570/dissertation.pdf?sequence=1].
In order to support this profit-making system science developed the discipline of economics. Economics is
firmly founded on dualised values. It has therefore prioritized hard, masculine
characteristics as being mannerly in economic profit making. It has ensured that
all soft, feminine traits are considered as being subordinate and disgraceful for the
economic individual. Hence, superior reason is selected over inferior emotion,
competition over cooperation, self-interest over community-interest, maximization
over optimization, and the needs of the individual over the needs of society. The first
mentioned are superior human qualities that belong to the Ups, while the second ones are inferior traits that
relate to the Downs. This bias focus
on masculine characteristics has produced societies
that consist of rational, competing, self-interested, and profit maximizing
individuals. These individuals are often men, but may also include women, as long as they are willing
to identify with the masculine traits and behaviour. The highest goals of these individuals are profit making
for their own benefit. To maximize this objective the Ups are using the Downs as instruments.
Hence, any rational individual with respect for himself would be exploiting nature's resources
together with the free or cheap labour of women and Others. This means that all Downs are
perceived as being instruments for the profit making of the Ups.
Hegemony is a form of masculinity that seeks to oppress and dominate
Tickner 92 - a feminist international relations (IR) theorist. She is a distinguished scholar in residence at the School of
International Services, American University, Washington DC, which she recently joined after fifteen years as a Professor of
International Relations at at the University of Southern California, author of several books
(J. Ann, “Feminist Perspectives on Achieving GlobalSecurity”,Gender in InternationalRelations, 1992,
http://www.ces.uc.pt/ficheiros2/files/Short.pdf)//js
Masculinity and politics have a long and close association. Characteristics associated with
"manliness," such as toughness, courage, power, independence, and even physical strength,
have, throughout history,been those most valued in the conduct of politics, particularly
international politics. Frequently,manliness has also been associated with violence and the use
of force, a type of behavior that, when conducted in the international arena, has been
valorized and applauded in the name of defending one's country.This celebration of male power,
particularly the glorification of the male warrior, produces more of agender dichotomy than exists in reality for, as R. W.
Connell points out, this stereotypical image ofmasculinity does not fit most men. Connell suggests that what he calls
"hegemonic masculinity," a
type of culturally dominant masculinity that he distinguishes
from other subordinated masculinities, is a socially constructed cultural ideal that, while it does
not correspond to the actual personality of themajority of men, sustains patriarchal authority and legitimizes a patriarchal
political and social orderMasculinity and politics have a long and close association. Characteristics
associated with
"manliness,"such as toughness, courage, power, independence, and even physical strength, have, throughout
history,been those most valued in the conduct of politics, particularly international politics .
Frequently,manliness has also been associated with violence and the use of force, a type of behavior that, whenconducted in
the international arena, has been valorized and applauded in the name of defending one'scountry.This celebration of
male power, particularly the glorification of the male warrior, produces more of a gender
dichotomy than exists in reality for, as R. W. Connell points out, this stereotypical image ofmasculinity does not fit
most men. Connell suggests that what he calls "hegemonic masculinity," a typeof culturally dominant masculinity that
he distinguishes from other subordinated masculinities, is asocially constructed cultural ideal that, while it does not
correspond to the actual personality of themajority of men, sustains patriarchal authority and legitimizes
a
patriarchal political and social order
Steps taken to manage and control nature are reflective of societal
domination over women
Chaone 1 (Mallory is a philosophy instructor in the Environmental Ethics Program at the University of North Texas in
Denton). 2001. “Acts of Objectification and the Repudiation of Dominance Leopold, Ecofeminism, and the Ecological Narrative.”
Ethics & the Enviornment. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/v006/6.2mallory.html>
The attitude of domination and the reinforcement of a nature/culture dualism lurking in the narrative of Aldo Leopold's life and work
can be better spotted if viewed through the lens of ecofeminism. Ecofeminism
is an emerging theoretical and
praxis-oriented field which insists that there are important conceptual connections
between the oppression of women and the domination of nature. Many ecofeminists claim that what
lies at the heart of contemporary Western culture's ecodestructive practices is what Karen
Warren (1990) terms the "logic of domination"--the notion that there exist some ontological
entities that are " above " others, and that said superiority then entitles them to dominate
and oppress those "below." Because both women and nature have historically been 13 relegated
to the inferior realm of the lower, the same logic or kind of reasoning serves to justify the
oppression of both. An important corollary of the ecofeminist position is that since the domination of women
and nature is conceptually twinned, whatever serves to oppress one acts similarly on the
other. Likewise, whatever liberates nature will relieve the oppression of women as well (Davion
1994).
Disease and instability rooted in fear – Fear is the original pillar of patriarchy –
it invades the internal assessment of women, causing us to continually question
ourselves in light of men. The AFFs use of fear cause passivity in confronting
male-oriented civil society
Louise 88 (Vivienne Louise. “Fear.” For Lesbians Only, Onlywoman Press. 1988)
Upon commencement of writing a piece on lesbian separatism I was overwhelmed by numerous themes dancing soberly
in my head. The all cleansing rage pulsing through the hearts of wimmin screaming for release from the prison of selfdenial. Love of a richer and deeper kind than any professed in matrimonial terms of possession and conquest. Trust that
reaches the gutsy planes of spiritual bonding through forthright honesty. The dissipation of patriarchal illusions breaking
the shackles of a deadly contract. Decisions ushering in a new and yet very old age conversant with a natural meter and
The power to create and
decreate given the constancy of faith, clarity and balance. And fear. That all pervasive
entity rendering potential inanimate and driving forward energy into stagnant pools of
conciliation and failure. After due consideration I chose fear as the main theme recognizing its
time. Ancient truths made known today through newly awakened vehicles of memory.
relevance to all issues of lesbian separatism because of its ability to immobilize by
gradual weakening, leading to total enfeeblement . Fear is False Evidence Appearing
Real . It is the essence of fascism and the original pillar of patriarchy . Invalidation of
internal assessment abilities and total reliance on external judgment is its goal. In other
words, it is a controlling mechanism designed to destroy self belief and internal faith,
replacing them with desired approval from outside sources. Debilitation results as selflove evaporates in an atmosphere of submissive behavior. Lesbian separatism is a politic of
empowerment. It touts the values of self love and acceptance promoting creativity of spirit
and mind. It challenges demons of fear stripping those supporting realities of their intimidating
wonder and exposing them as a plague of necrophilic addiction. Radical lesbianism is the
reclama- tion of our most intimate power, the right to walk the planet free from the scourge of
patriarchal terror. As a seasoned activist I am not prepared to say that the disappearance of all men on the
planet would also mean the disappearance of patriarchy. Unfortunately there are millions of wimmin who support and
practice an ethic of top-bottom and who believe in the validity of fear. As long as trepidation is the song then dissolution
will be the dance and helter-skelter the ball at which they're played. As wimmin
in this society we are taught
to coddle and pamper our fears. We are encouraged to give in, yielding them full reign in
our free will decisions and actions. Confrontation of any sort is not supported and
acquiescence of a defenseless mode lauded. This promotes a message of weakness
and an acquiescence of powerlessness. The acceptance of passivity leads to a failing
sense of self belief and therefore a diminishing consciousness of personal power. It is at
this stage that patriarchal values set in. Subscription to these mores is enforced by
violence (mental, physical, emotional and spiritual) and promulgation of the lie that there is no relief
from this violence. Thus a map with only one dead end road is presented when there are
really many roads blocked by the sentry of fear. Above I listed several issues relating to lesbian
separatism: illusions, decisions, herstory, love, trust, rage and power. These areas and many not listed, are compromised
daily because of deep pockets of fear.
Utilitarianism re-perpetuates patriarchal hierarchies
Plumwood 2 (Val is an Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Sydney,
“Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason”, pp. 150-151)
Singer’s Minimalism is also a political position urging minimal departure from prevailing liberal, humanistic and
Enlightenment assumptions and from the present system of economic rationality.14 But surely an ecological society will
require more than minimal departures from these systems, none of which have been innocent bystanders in the
development of the rational machinery which is bringing the stripping of the planet for the benefit of a small elite of
humans to a high point of rational refinement. Singer's Utilitarianism reproduces many elements of
rationalism, including the adoption of universal, abstract mathematicallyexpressible formulae for decision, in the best universalist/impersonalist tradition.
Also in the rationalist tradition is the content of the Utilitarian formula, with its
maximisations (always damaging), illusory precision, its intellectualist reduction of
ethics to a matter of rational calculation and quantification, and its corresponding
reduction of the important dimensions of decision to aspects of life supposedly
susceptible to these rational manipulations. And as we have seen, awareness, the chief ground of
ethical consideration, is one, but only one, possible variation on reason or mind, although one that modernism can tie to
preferences and hence to agency and property ownership. The most serious objection to my mind however is that any
ecological or animal ethics based on Singer's Utilitarianism is committed to a massive program
of ranking, quantification and comparison between beings and species - a
program which, as I argue in the next chapter, is unworkable, ethically repugnant,
and built on a problematic reading of equality. Theoretically, ranking comparisons and tradeoffs
between beings arc insisted upon by Utilitarianism at virtually every level. This emphasis on ranking docs not encourage
the kind of thinking that aims for mutual, negotiated outcomes, but rather ones that sanction a sacrificial order determined on the basis of greater approximations to the human.
Diseases strong enough to cause quick deaths kill their hosts too fast to spread
rapidly.
Lafee 9 (“Viruses versus hosts: a battle as old as time”, SCOTT MAY 3,
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/may/03/1n3virus01745-virusesversus-hosts-battle-old-time/?uniontrib)KM
Generally speaking, it's not in a virus's best interest to kill its host. Deadly viruses
such as Ebola and SARS are self-limiting because they kill too effectively and quickly
to spread widely. Flu viruses do kill, but they aren't considered especially deadly.
The fatality rate of the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic was less than 2.5 percent,
and most of those deaths are now attributed to secondary bacterial infections.
The historic fatality rate for influenza pandemics is less than 0.1 percent. Humans
make “imperfect hosts” for the nastiest flu viruses, Sette said. “From the point of
view of the virus, infecting humans can be a dead end. We sicken and die too soon.”
1NR
Tech solves
Stossel, 07 Journalist, winner of the Peabody Award, anchors ABC News, 07 [John,
“Environmental Alarmists Have It Backwards”,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/how_about_economic_progress_da.ht
ml]
Watching the media coverage, you'd think that the earth was in imminent danger -that human life itself was on the verge of extinction. Technology is fingered as the perp.
Nothing could be further from the truth. John Semmens of Arizona's Laissez Faire
Institute points out that Earth Day misses an important point. In the April issue of The
Freeman magazine, Semmens says the environmental movement overlooks how
hospitable the earth has become -- thanks to technology. "The environmental
alarmists have it backwards. If anything imperils the earth it is ignorant
obstruction of science and progress. ... That technology provides the best option for
serving human wants and conserving the environment should be evident in the progress
made in environmental improvement in the United States. Virtually every measure
shows that pollution is headed downward and that nature is making a comeback."
(Carbon dioxide excepted, if it is really a pollutant.) Semmens describes his visit to historic
Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, an area "lush with trees and greenery." It wasn't
always that way. In 1775, the land was cleared so it could be farmed. Today, technology
makes farmers so efficient that only a fraction of the land is needed to produce much more
food. As a result, "Massachusetts farmland has been allowed to revert back to forest."
Human ingenuity and technology not only raised living standards, but also
restored environmental amenities. How about a day to celebrate that? Yet, Semmens
writes, the environmental movement is skeptical about technology and is attracted
to three dubious principles: sustainable development, the precautionary principle,
and stakeholder participation. The point of sustainable development, Semmens says, "is
to minimize the use of nonrenewable natural resources so there will be more left for future
generations." Sounds sensible -- who is for "unsustainable" development? But as the great
economist Julian Simon often pointed out, resources are manmade, not natural. Jed
Clampett cheered when he found oil on his land because it made him rich enough to move
to Beverly Hills. But his great-grandfather would have cursed the disgusting black gunk
because Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner hadn't yet discovered that kerosene could be
distilled from it. President Bush chides us for our "addiction to oil." But under current
conditions, using oil makes perfect sense. Someday, if we let the free market operate,
someone will find an energy source that works better than oil. Then richer future
generations won't need oil. So why deprive ourselves and make ourselves poorer with
needless regulation now? Anyway, it's not as if we're running out of oil. That's one of the
myths I expose in my new book, "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity". If the price of a
barrel of oil stays high, entrepreneurs will find better ways to suck oil out of the ground. At
$50 a barrel, it's even profitable to recover oil that's stuck in the tar sands in Alberta,
Canada. Those tar sands alone contain enough oil to meet our needs for a hundred years.
The precautionary principle, popular in Europe, is the idea that no new thing should
be permitted until it has been proved harmless. Sounds good, except as Ron Bailey
of Reason writes, it basically means, "Don't ever do anything for the first time."
Stakeholder participation means that busybodies would be permitted to intrude on private
transactions. Semmens's example is DDT, which for years would have saved children from
deadly malaria, except that "'stakeholders' from the environmental quarter have prevailed
on governments to ban the trade in this product." The first victims of these principles are
the poor. We rich Westerners can withstand a lot of policy foolishness. But people in the
developing world live on the edge, so anything that retards economic progress -- including
measures to arrest global warming -- will bring incredible hardship to the most vulnerable
on the planet. If we care about human life, we should celebrate Economic Progress Day.
No impact to bio-d loss – no spillover, ecosystems adapt – their ev is bad
science
Jeremy Hance, senior writer at Mongabay citing Barry Brook, Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of
Climate Change at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of
Adelaide, and Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaide’s Environment
Institute, 3-5-2013, “Warnings of Global Ecological Tipping Points May Be Overstated”
http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0305-hance-tippingpoints.html#r2IbUBDMyux2eU7i.99
There's little evidence that the Earth is nearing a global ecological tipping point,
according to a new Trends in Ecology and Evolution paper that is bound to be controversial.
The authors argue that despite numerous warnings that the Earth is headed toward an
ecological tipping point due to environmental stressors, such as habitat loss or climate
change, it's unlikely this will occur anytime soon—at least not on land. The paper comes
with a number of caveats, including that a global tipping point could occur in marine
ecosystems due to ocean acidification from burning fossil fuels. In addition, regional tipping
points, such as the Arctic ice melt or the Amazon rainforest drying out, are still of great
concern. "When others have said that a planetary critical transition is possible/likely,
they've done so without any underlying model (or past/present examples, apart from
catastrophic drivers like asteroid strikes)," lead author Barry Brook and Director of Climate
Science at the University of Adelaide told mongabay.com. " It’s just speculation and we’ve
argued [...] that this conjecture is not logically grounded. No one has found the opposite
of what we suggested—they’ve just proposed it." According to Brook and his team, a truly
global tipping point must include an impact large enough to spread across the entire world,
hitting various continents, in addition to causing some uniform response. "These criteria,
however, are very unlikely to be met in the real world," says Brook. The idea of such a
tipping point comes from ecological research, which has shown that some ecosystems will
flip to a new state after becoming heavily degraded. But Brook and his team say that tipping
points in individual ecosystems should not be conflated with impacts across the Earth
as a whole. Even climate change, which some scientists might consider the ultimate tipping
point, does not fit the bill, according to the paper. Impacts from climate change, while global,
will not be uniform and hence not a "tipping point" as such. "Local and regional
ecosystems vary considerably in their responses to climate change, and their regime
shifts are therefore likely to vary considerably across the terrestrial biosphere," the authors
write. Barry adds that, "from a planetary perspective, this diversity in ecosystem responses
creates an essentially gradual pattern of change, without any identifiable tipping
points." The paper further argues that biodiversity loss on land may not have the largescale impacts that some ecologists argue, since invasive species could potentially take
the role of vanishing ones. "So we can lose the unique evolutionary history (bad, from
an intrinsic viewpoint) but not necessarily the role they impart in terms of ecosystem
stability or provision of services," explains Brook. The controversial argument goes
against many scientists' view that decreased biodiversity will ultimately lessen ecological
services, such as pollination, water purification, and carbon sequestration.
Decline inevitable—cred, econ, culture, military
David B. Kanin, Adjunct Professor, International Relations, Johns Hopkins University
and former senior intelligence analyst, CIA, “Managing Conflict as America Declines,”
TRANSCONFLICT, 2—18—14, http://www.transconflict.com/2014/02/managing-conflictamerica-declines-182/
The United States has no international strategy. It does produce a lot national security
documents and slogans purporting to express an international strategy. Terms like
“reset,” “pivot,” and “transatlantic renaissance” get a lot of attention but do not have any
content. No matter what how much evidence builds of declining US influence, official
rhetoric and think tank publicity tout American power, highlight the shortcomings of any
potential challenger, and assert that the rest of the world cries out for US leadership.[1]
Conventional wisdom takes comfort in statistics showing that the US remains at the top
of the heap as an economic giant and military behemoth. It also asserts the US retains
massive cultural influence.
This defensive narrative misses the point. America is in decline not because of
absolute or relative measurements, but because its material and structural struggles
are shrinking its margin for error. Preeminence once enabled this country to absorb
such costly mistakes as the Vietnam War [2] or relatively cheaper but ill-considered
overturning of governments in the Americas and Iran (and such fiascos as the Bay of
Pigs). That no longer is the case. America’s shrinking capabilities and influence lend
global significance to rudderless adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, deer-inheadlight indecision over Syria and Egypt, and over-hyped deployments of force
and diplomacy in Libya, Iran and the rest of the Middle East. Widening differences
with European allies over values and priorities also bring shrinking US clout into high
relief.
The way the United States came to global power set the context for this decline. This is
one of the few things about America that really was exceptional. During the nineteenth
century, the United States could work out sectional problems and construct a continental
wide, integrated economic engine without interference by outside powers. Then, twice in
the space of a generation, world wars of unprecedented destructiveness laid prostrate
any potential rival to US material preeminence—whether friend or foe. In a sense, 1919
marked the apogee of relative American power, given the conditions in other countries.
After 1945, the Soviet Union provided a military and ideological adversary, but never
provided a serious economic challenge. Meanwhile, the attraction of the idea that
“America” meant “opportunity” and Wilsonian rhetoric about Democracy and freedom
created what my old boss Joseph S,. Nye, Jr. termed “soft power,” the cultural attraction
that magnified the appeal of a distant and exotic New World.
To a large extent, hard power is what the US has left. Its economy remains strong and
important to global trade and finance, but the rise of other centers of money, trade,
and even innovation has reduced Washington’s ability to wield its wealth the way it
did, say, when President Eisenhower could use a threat to the pound to help bring
British and French adventurism over Suez to a halt. America’s cultural attractiveness
also has passed its peak, in part because governments and peoples elsewhere know
us a lot better than they did a hundred years ago, when the United States appeared to
others as young, vibrant, and exotically innocent. The inability of Washington’s
diplomacy to forge stable solutions acceptable to all sides to ongoing or frozen
conflicts in the Middle East, Balkans, or Northeast Asia is self-evident.
These days, there is little evidence the US can accomplish much in the world unless
it uses brute force. Since at least the American Civil War (1861-1865), the US military
has been a blunt club, pounding (or attempting to pound) enemies into submission
through the bringing to bear of enormous amounts of firepower and supporting supplies.
As a tool, the US military resembles its former Soviet/Russian adversary more
than the relatively rapier-like tool that was the Prussian/German army, which
proved more successful in short wars than in multi-year fights to the finish.
The less than stellar performance of policy makers and diplomats since the end of the
George H.W. Bush administration has accelerated the process of decline. It is
possible—even likely—that a future American administration will include individuals who
will restore a measure of American credibility. Nevertheless, not even an American Sun
Tzu would return to Washington the margin for error that was its strategic luxury. The
United States will remain important in the world, but it also will remain in decline.
Their impacts are threat inflation, creates a self fulfilling prophecy
Leon Hadar, Cato Institute, SANDSTORM: POLICY FAILURE IN THE MIDDLE EAST,
2005, p. 9-12.
Challenging the American public and policymakers to break out of the mold of obsolete and costly thinking and take a fresh look at taken-for-granted premises of
US foreign policy, in general, and in the Middle East, in particular, can sometimes be an impossible mission. To paraphrase and apply what General Douglas
MacArthur once said about old generals, aging foreign policy paradigms do not simply fade away. It takes time for great powers and their elites and publics to readjust their foreign policy paradigms to changes in the geo-strategic and geo-economic balance of power. It is usually the outcomes of international crises and
wars that make it clear that a great power lost the game, and that another great power is emerging. And even then, there could be a long lag before we recognize
the construction of a new foreign policy and the ensuing conventional wisdom about "who is up, and who is down" in the international systemm. Reading old
copies of the New York Times or other major newspapers from the late 1940s and early 1950s one could get the impression that Britain and France were still great
world powers at that time, despite the fact that World War II had decimated those two empires militarilarly and economically. It was only following the 1956 Suez
debacle, the French withdrawal from Southeast Asia and North Africa, and the loss of the last British imperial outposts in the Persian Gurf, that Britain and France
were starting to be perceived as nothing more than mid-sized European powers, occupying a space far below the American and Soviet top dogs in the global
ranking order. At the same time, the United States and the Soveiet Union, through the process of building their economic and military power through their
competition in the Middle East and elsewhere, were identified as the "superpowers" with Britain and France relegated to the role of allies of the American
superpower. The foreign policy paradigm of multipolarity was replaced with one based on the notion of bipolarity. Sheer inertia that is so much a part of human
nature may explain why we sometimes continue to obsess with that with which we are familiar and accept the status quo. Piolitical, bureaucratic, commercial and
media players have vested interests in ensuring that certain international issue-areas remain on the top of the policy agenda. These international issue-areas
it was
for the members of the inside-the-beltway crowd in Washington, ranting from the Foreign Service and the military to think tankers
to get used to the idea that the Cold War was over. They have yet to recover from their post-Cold War
continue to receive presidential attention, budget spending, and press coverage, even if most Americans cease to be affected directly by them. After all,
quite difficult
and journalists
depression, having been forced to live in a dull world without checkpoint Charlie, arms control summits, Soviet studies, and other Cold World thrills, not to mention
which explains
Enemy-Deprivation Syndrome, as
those huge budgets that went to pay for big and small wars, intelligence games, and aid packages to this or that "friendly" dictator. All of
perhaps why these former Cold War warriors seem to be afflicted by what could be described as the
they search for new "threats" to analyze, cover, and contain, whether it's China, Saddam Hussein, or Islamic terrorism. The media
and opinion makers transmit the foreign policy paradigm to the general public, who in turn absorb it as conventional
wisdom. Not surprisingly, many Americans probably assume now that the United States has always been involved in the Middle East in protecting "Oil and Israel"
and in trying to make peace between Arabs and Jews. They would probably be surprised to learn that there has never been a formal military alliance between
Israel and the United States and that Americans do not receive most of their energy imports from the Middle East. We sometimes assume that foreign
policymaking is a process in that leaders try to make decisions in a rational way, based on cost-effective calculations. It is also often assumed that political
scientists, policy analysts, and journalists help leaders make decisions by providing them with all the necessary information and "right" ideas that develop
eventually into coherent foreign policy paradigms. But there is a crucial difference between the evolution of a foreign policy paradigm and that of scientific
paradigms that Kuhn proposed. A shift in profession commitments to shared assumption, or to a scientific paradigm takes place when an anomaly "subverts the
existing tradition of scientific practice" leading to what Kuhn described as a "scientific revolution," that is, "the tradition-shattering complements to the traditionbound activity of normal science." Kuhn noted that new scientific paradigms require the reconstruction of prior assumptions and the re-evaluation of prior fact. That
can be a difficult and time-consuming process that is strongly resisted by the established scientific community. Changes in scientific paradigms take place in
response to observations of a certain reality that is not influenced directly by the work of the scientist. The scientist does not make objects gravitate to earth. He or
she can observe them doing this while recognizing that the process of observing the phenomenon will not change the physical reality. But when it comes to politics
and other areas of human action, including foreign policy, the experts who generate the paradigms that become the basis for the
formulation and implementation of policy are not only involved in a process of observing reality. In fact, by disseminating information and constructing ideas that
help shape political reality. Unlike the physical scientists, they can make objects fall. It is
their paradigms that help create the stage for international crises and encourage nations to go
to war. Discussions of US foreign policy decisions tend to create the impression that such decisions were rational responses to events beyond the control of
are then transformed into policies, these experts
the policymaker and that he or she was simply reacting to a natural phenomenaon. The terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center supposedly
came out of the clear blue sky and US policymakers were forced to come up with a policy, with military and diplomatic responses. But those who were being asked
to draw the outlines of such a policy and implement it were the same policy analysts and policymakers who had shaped the long-standing US approach in the
Middle East and shared this policy paradigm, the MEP. It was this paradigm that led to the creation of the Islamic Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, to the US military
presence in Saudi Arabia to the American support for Israel. It was those earlier US policies in the Middle East and South Asia that helped set the stage for the
events of 9/11. To put it differently, the events of 9/11 were in part a result of specific policies and the paradigms that produced them, much as the Soviet Union's
invasion of Afghanistan led to its own unraveling and the release of centrifugal forces that continue to threaten the Russian Federation. Only when the costs of
maintaining a certain foreign policy prove to be higher than its benefits in terms of national interests and as measured in lives and money, - and when that reality
becomes obvious to both the elites and the public - are policymakers forced to bid reluctant farewells to the outdated and expensive diplomatic and national
security paradigms that they took for granted. It is difficult to imagine that those who had promoted these policies and existing paradigms would have been ready
to admit after 9/11 that they observed an anomaly that subverted the existing tradition of the American MEP and were ready now to welcome a revolution in
American foreign policy, In fact, as the post-9/11 events demonstrated, when it comes to foreign policy, the tendency among practitioners is to invest even more
helps create the conditions for new international crises and wars
which require policy analysts and policymakers to continue to circle the wagons around the vulnerable
paradigm. The promotion of an even higher level of US intervention in the Middle East after 9/11 is just another example of policy analysts and makers
resources in sustaining the existing paradigm. That process
trying to protect the MEP. So it is not surprising that if and when an individual dares to challenge the MEP, to suggest that it should be reassessed and propose a
new MEP base on the notion of American disengagement front he Middle East, he or she is treated at best as a political Cassandra, or at worst as a political
extremist as an "isolationist" the term that members of Washington's foreign policy establishment usually use to bash those who disagree with them.
Disengagement from the Middle East, you say? But what about "the oil?" Or "Israel?" Or "terrorism?" The United States is supposed to "do something" about that.
At least, that is what the old MEP conditioned Americans to expect.
And, they can’t access any offense—heg has only a minimal impact on stability
Benjamin Friedman, Cato Institute, "Milittary Restraint and Defense Savings, 7--20--10,
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-bf-07202010.html
Another argument for high military spending is that U.S. military hegemony underlies
.
global stability Our forces and alliance
commitments dampen conflict between potential rivals like China and Japan, we are told, preventing them from fighting wars that would disrupt trade and cost us
more than the military spending that would have prevented war. The theoretical and empirical foundation for this claim is weak. It
overestimates
both the American military's contribution to international stability and the danger that instability
abroad poses to Americans. In Western Europe, U.S. forces now contribute little to peace, at best making
the tiny odds of war among states there slightly more so.7 Even in Asia, where there is more tension, the history
of international relations suggests that without U.S. military deployments potential rivals, especially
those separated by sea like Japan and China, will generally achieve a stable balance of power rather than fight. In
other cases, as with our bases in Saudi Arabia between the Iraq wars, U.S. forces probably create more unrest than
they prevent. Our force deployments can also generate instability by prompting states to develop nuclear weapons . Even when wars
occur, their economic impact is likely to be limited
here.8 By linking markets, globalization provides supply alternatives for the
goods we consume, including oil. If political upheaval disrupts supply in one location, suppliers elsewhere will take our orders. Prices may increase, but markets
adjust. That makes American consumers less dependent on any particular supply source, undermining the claim that we need to use force to prevent unrest in
supplier nations or secure trade routes.9 Part of the confusion about the value of hegemony comes from misunderstanding the Cold War. People tend to assume,
falsely, that our activist foreign policy, with troops forward supporting allies, not only caused the Soviet Union's collapse but is obviously a good thing even without
such a rival. Forgotten is the sensible notion that alliances are a necessary evil occasionally tolerated to balance a particularly threatening enemy. The main
justification for creating our Cold War alliances was the fear that Communist nations could conquer or capture by insurrection the industrial centers in Western
Europe and Japan and then harness enough of that wealth to threaten us — either directly or by forcing us to become a garrison state at ruinous cost. We kept
troops in South Korea after 1953 for fear that the North would otherwise overrun it. But these alliances outlasted the conditions that caused them. During the Cold
War, Japan, Western Europe and South Korea grew wealthy enough to defend themselves. We should let them. These alliances heighten our force requirements
and threaten to drag us into wars, while providing no obvious benefit.
Don't need a large military for protection--oceans, nuclear deterrenace, allies
can protect themselves
Charles Pena, Senior Fellow, Independent Institute, "Pentagon Cuts Don't Cut It. Want
to Really Save Money? Get a New Security Strategy," CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
MONITOR, 2--2--11, http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3006,
accessed 6-20-12.
We no longer need to contain the Soviet Union and there is no global-hegemonic, rivalsuperpower as its equivalent successor. There are few direct nation-state military threats that
we cannot already deter or defeat. And none have the power projection capability to threaten
the U.S. homeland. Moreover, the US strategic nuclear arsenal—even if scaled back by Mr.
Obama’s proposed New START reductions—acts as a powerful deterrent against any
countries armed with nuclear weapons (even the likes of North Korea and Iran, if the latter
ever becomes a nuclear power). Many of our allies can and should start financing their own
security instead of taking shelter under an American umbrella. The economy of the
European Union is as large or larger than the U.S. economy, yet the U.S. spends
roughly twice what our European allies spend on defense. So why are there nearly
80,000 American troops deployed in Europe when the Europeans can more than afford
to pay for their own security needs? The situation is similar in East Asia, where the U.S.
has upward of 70,000 troops deployed. Yet Japan has the third-largest economy in the
world, and South Korea’s economy (13th largest in the world) eclipses North Korea’s by
more than 30 to 1. So they, too, can afford to pay for their security needs.