Fusion Centers
Notes
There are two different versions of the affirmative.
The first version of the affirmative says that fusion centers are targeting the #BlackLivesMatter
movement; we think that’s bad.
The second version of the affirmative says that fusion centers over-saturate law enforcement
with information – that trades off with counter-terrorism efforts and stops cloud computing.
If you are reading the terrorism advantage, a lot of the terrorism mechanics are in the Terror DA
toolbox.
Fusion Center FYI
Here is what Fusion Centers Do
Justin Lewis Abold, Ray Guidetti, and Douglas Keyer June 2012 Strengthening the Value of
the National Network of Fusion Centers by Leveraging Specialization: Defining “Centers of
Analytical Excellence” The Journal of the NPS Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Fusion centers are multiagency task forces designed for receiving, gathering, analyzing, and
disseminating information and intelligence among constituencies that have a law enforcement,
counter terrorism, public safety, or homeland security mission or focus.3 The purpose of a fusion center is to
aid law enforcement, homeland security, public safety, and private sector entities in better
understanding their environments as they relate to the risk and threat of crime, terrorism, and
other crises. Additionally, fusion centers are intended to serve as the primary focal point for
information sharing among broad jurisdictions where multiple entities reside, such as a state or Urban Area
Security Initiative (UASI) region.¶ The catalyst behind the concept of fusion centers stemmed from the general
admission, following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, that the nation’s law enforcement community’s
information sharing and intelligence capability necessary to inform decision-makers about the threat of terrorism was
both ineffective and inefficient.4 The fusion center concept started as grassroots efforts in jurisdictions like Arizona, Georgia, New
York, and the Los Angeles region to fill the void of combining information and intelligence sources at the local level to ferret out terrorist activity,
thereby underpinning a national effort to share information that could be used in overall preparedness efforts. Today,
there are seventyseven fusion centers designated by governors across the nation that integrate all aspects of
public safety information.5 While their origin may have been rooted in counter terrorism, state
and local officials have come to find fusion centers to be of equal importance for assessing crime
and other homeland security trends or issues.¶ The federal government quickly realized the significance of the fusion center
as a keystone in its national effort to share information needed to guard against terrorism and respond to national crises. The National Network of
Fusion Centers was erected to bolster this much-needed capability.6 While the identification of the network itself may have stemmed from an informal
designation given to the collaboration among federal interagency partners with state, local, tribal, and territorial partners, today it is used to formally
recognize this national partnership. Moreover, it is this formal recognition that underpins a programmatic effort by the Department of Homeland
Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis (DHS I&A) to follow guidance derived from the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) established by the
United States Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Under that authority, DHS I&A in cooperation with the Department of Justice’s
(DOJ) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provides coordinated support to recognized fusion centers in a given area across the nation. DOJ has
recognized the usefulness of fusion centers for identifying terrorist and criminal trends and processing suspicious activity reports in state and local
jurisdictions. It is the recognition of these two federal departments that has fueled the growth of fusion centers since the concept first came to the fore
early in the millennium.¶ The “National Network of Fusion Centers” has been embraced by the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice as a focal
point of collaboration in support of federal counterterrorism efforts and other homeland security priorities. In fact, the
2010 National
Security Strategy of the United States specifically cites fusion centers as a central element in
preventing future acts of terrorism. Simply put, this decentralized and organically developed network
is a national asset, and sustainment of that asset is a shared responsibility across all levels of
government. In the absence of fusion centers, there is no other nationwide mechanism for
leveraging the breadth and depth of more than two million public safety practitioners in every
corner of the country for homeland security purposes. Notably, as seasoned intelligence experts and information analysts
from all levels of government will concede, some of the most important information and actionable intelligence that we depend on to protect the
country flows up, not down – the knowledge is collected at a granular State or local level and then fused to permit all levels of government to act
decisively in the protection of Americans. That is a central purpose for the fusion centers, and one that has been well-served by their existence. 7¶
Despite the fact that state and local law enforcement and homeland security professionals mainly staff fusion centers, these centers are also comprised
of personnel and systems from the federal government. The DHS and FBI footprints within fusion centers serve as gateways to the intelligence
community for state, local, and private sector entities. State and local fusion center analysts conduct assessments and produce intelligence products
related to state and local level threats and risks that otherwise would not be addressed by federal authorities. This information is shared nationally, and
provided to the federal government and the intelligence community to answer standing information needs related to homeland security.¶ While each
fusion center enterprise may differ on how they refer to their respective intelligence product frameworks ,
the key assumption is that
finished intelligence informs state and local decision-makers about the threat environment in a
manner that supports planning, operations, resource allocation, and training. Achieving this
dynamic requires fusion centers to answer four very important questions for their consumers:¶
What has happened?¶ What is happening?¶ What is about to happen?¶ What could happen?8¶ In
answering the above four questions, fusion centers across the network likely arrange their
intelligence products in four distinct categories: investigative support/research products,
situational awareness reports, analyses, and forecasts.9 Investigative support/research products focus on past and
current events and issues that require additional information for decision makers and investigators to better understand or to assist with the describing
evidence of a crime. Situational awareness reports aim specifically at answering the question of what is happening in a particular environment or what
is about to happen. Analytical products go a step further and determine the impact of an event, threat, or issue on a particular environment or
constituency. Finally, forecasting products seek to answer the question of what may happen in the future that will require a policy decision, operations
response, or resource allocation.¶ Each fusion center is responsible for determining who within their area of responsibility (AOR) requires information
and intelligence products that address threat and risk related to crime, counter terrorism, and homeland security. These constituencies include law
enforcement, public safety, emergency management, government, and private sector personnel and organizations. While the intelligence and
information products created are based on the needs of the requestor, the decision maker individual fusion centers aim to inform runs the gamut from
line level police, investigators, fire, and EMS personnel to mayors and governor; from attorney generals and homeland security advisors to state police
superintendents to municipal police chief; from private sector security managers to emergency management and risk mitigation planners.10 Each of
these decision makers requires a different type of product or service from the fusion center to inform them about threat, risk, and problems within the
environment.
PLAN TEXT
Plan: The United States Federal Government should substantially curtail
its fusion center domestic surveillance.
Solvency
1AC
Contention ___ : Solvency
Fusion Center’s Oversaturate Organizations with too much information – this
makes the effective utilization of that information impossible
Jesse Walke, Author Extraordinaire, 10/3/2012, "Fusion Centers: Expensive, Practically Useless,
and Bad for Your Liberty," Reason, http://reason.com/blog/2012/10/03/fusion-centersexpensive-practically-use
fusion centers pepper the law-enforcement landscape
shadowy intelligence-sharing shops
heavily funded by the federal Department of
Homeland Security.
When a report's recommendations include a plea for the DHS to
"track how much money it gives to each fusion center," you know you're dealing with a system
that has some very basic problems After reviewing 13 months' worth of
output
the centers' reports were "oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering
citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published
public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism." One report offered the vital
intelligence that "a certain model of automobile had folding rear seats that provided access to
the trunk without leaving the car,"
Others highlighted illegal
activities by people in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database, which
sounds useful until you hear just what those people did that attracted the centers' attention.
One man was caught speeding. Another shoplifted some shoes. TIDE itself, according to the
Senate report, is filled not just with suspected terrorists but with [and] their "associates," a term
broad enough to rope in a two-year-old boy. Nearly a third of the reports
contained no useful information
"overstepped legal boundaries" in disturbing
ways: "Reporting on First Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to violence or
criminality; reporting on or improperly characterizing political, religious or ideological speech
that is not explicitly violent or criminal; and attributing to an entire group the violent or criminal
acts of one or a limited number of the group's members."
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has just released a report [pdf] on the "
--
" that
run on the state and local level but
It is a devastating document.
.
the fusion centers'
, Senate investigators
concluded that
a feature deemed notable because it "could be useful to human traffickers."
were not even circulated after they were written, sometimes
because they
, sometimes because they
(One analyst, for example, felt the need to note that a Muslim community group's list of recommended
readings included four items whose authors were in the TIDE database.) Interestingly, while the DHS usually refused to publish these problematic reports, the department also retained them for an "apparantly indefinite" period. Why did the centers churn out so
much useless and illegal material? A former employee says officers were judged "by the number [of reports] they produced, not by quality or evaluations they received." Senate investigators were "able to identify only one case in which an official with a history of
. Other issues identified in the Senate report: •
Some of the fusion centers touted by the Department of Homeland Security do not, in fact,
exist. • Centers have reported threats that do not exist either. An alleged Russian "cyberattack"
turned out to be an American network technician accessing a work computer remotely while on
vacation. • DHS "was unable to provide an accurate tally of how much it had granted to states
and cities to support fusion centers efforts." Instead it offered "broad estimates of the total
amount of federal dollars spent on fusion center activities from 2003 to 2011, estimates which
ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion."
A center in San Diego "spent nearly $75,000 on 55 flat-screen televisions," according to
the Senate report
officials said they displayed calendars, and were used for
'watching the news.
2010 assessment
of state and local fusion centers conducted at the request of DHS found widespread deficiencies
in the centers' basic counterterrorism information-sharing capabilities,"
DHS did not share
that report with Congress or discuss its findings publicly. When the Subcommittee requested the
assessment as part of its investigation, DHS at first denied it existed, then disputed whether it
could be shared with Congress, before ultimately providing a copy.
serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his mistakes." Specifically, he had to attend an extra week of training
When you aren't keeping track of how much you're spending, it becomes hard to keep track of what that money is being spent on. All sorts of dubious
expenses slipped by.
. "When asked what the televisions were being used for,
'open-source monitoring.' Asked to define 'open-source monitoring,' SD-LECC officials said they meant
'" The report is also filled with signs of stonewalling. A "
for example. "
" And then there's the matter of mission creep. Many centers have adopted an
"all-crime, all-hazards" approach that shifts their focus from stopping terrorism and onto a broader spectrum of threats. You could make a reasonable case that this is a wiser use of public resources -- terrorism is rare, after all, and the DHS-driven movement away
At any rate, the DHS should
stop citing the centers as a key part of America's counterterrorism efforts if those centers have
found better (or easier) things to do than trying to fight terror.
from the all-hazards approach in the early post-9/11 years had disastrous results. Unfortunately, the leading "hazards" on the fusion centers' agenda appear to be drugs and illegal aliens.
Defunding fusion centers is key to end unnecessary tracking of social
movements
Suraj Sazawal is the Communications/Research Coordinator for the Charity and Security
Network May 27, 2014, Time To Close Fusion Centers
http://www.defendingdissent.org/now/news/time-to-close-fusion-centers/
Adding to the long list of troubling intelligence-collecting activities carried out by fusion centers, a
new report from the
how the Department of Homeland Security coordinated
with local law enforcement across the country to monitor the Occupy movement in 2011 and 2012.¶
Based on thousands of government emails and documents the PCJF obtained through freedom of information requests, the
report describes a nationwide, coordinated effort by federal and local officials along with
military agencies and private security contractors to monitor “all manner of peaceful and lawful
political activity that took place during the Occupy movement, from protests and rallies to meetings and educational
lectures.Ӧ Numbering almost 80 across the country, fusion centers were created in the wake of the
September 11, 2001 attacks to address concerns that local, state and federal authorities were not
effectively sharing information about potential terrorist threats. Over a decade later, they have become
bloated centers, lacking a clear mandate and sufficient oversight. Despite receiving upwards of
$1.4 billion in state and federal Homeland Security funds, a bipartisan Senate investigation found that the
intelligence they produce is “of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes
endangering citizens’ civil liberties.” And now there’s more evidence of them collecting
intelligence on peaceful protesters. [find links to additional reports below]¶ ¶ Take Action ButtonWe’re partnering with
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) reveals
RootsAction to petition Congress to take action to close Fusion Centers. Please add your voice, and share!¶ The documents, many of
which are partially redacted, reveal a surprising degree of coordination between local authorities and fusion centers. For example,
the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center, acting on a request from police chiefs to “identify, research and document trends or
activities that may threaten public safety,” produced a bulletin detailing the “tactics and strategies” employed by Occupy activists
nationwide. Included in this bulletin were reports about Las Vegas “activists staging sit-ins” and free speech protesters in Long
Beach, California being arrested for staying in a park past its 10pm closing time. The report also notes that Occupy activists had
momentarily interrupted a speech by President Obama in November of 2011.¶ According to the New York Times, among the most
active centers tracking Occupy activities was a Boston-area fusion center which “issued scores of bulletins listing hundreds of events
including a protest of ‘irresponsible lending practices,’ a food drive and multiple ‘yoga, faith & spirituality’ classes.”¶ Law
enforcement in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and
Washington, D.C., participated in similar monitoring activities.¶ “The U.S.
Fusion Centers are using their vast
counter-terrorism resources to target the domestic social justice movement as a criminal or
terrorist enterprise,” PCJF Executive Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard said in a press release. “This is an abuse of
power and corruption of democracy.Ӧ In one of the more bizarre examples of mission creep revealed by these
documents, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), whose official mission is to “address the entire spectrum of chemical,
biological, radiological, nuclear and high yield explosive threats,” was tracking and sharing intelligence on Occupy activities.
According to PCJF:¶ “This Pentagon agency that exists to counter threats from weapons of mass destruction circulated material on
Occupy including, for example, one document with the subject line: “FW: Alert Update! Chicago … What Police Should Be Learning
From The Occupy Protests.” This document shows in an email chain that this article was initially circulated through the subscription
website activistmap.com, which is billed as the “Domestic Terrorism Tracking System.” The keywords associated with this Domestic
Terrorism Tracking System include: anarchist(s), animal rights, environmentalist, protesters, socialist(s), communist(s), civil
disobedience, social justice and global justice, among others.” (emphasis added)¶ “[T]he Fusion Centers are a threat to civil liberties,
democratic dissent and the social and political fabric of this country,” said Carl Messineo, PCJF Legal Director. “The
long passed for the centers to be defunded.”
time has
Extensions
Defund Fusion Centers Solves
Fusion centers must be defunded and ended
Hilliard, Messineo ’14 [May 23, 2014, GlobalResearch, Mara Verheyden-Hillard cofounder
of the Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense & Education Fund, Attorney for the
International Action Center, Anti-war activist, Carl Messineo cofounder of the Partnership for
Civil Justice Legal Defense and Education Fund; “The Hidden Role of the Fusion Centers in the
Nationwide Spying Operation against the Occupy Movement and Peaceful Protest in America”,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-role-of-the-fusion-centers-in-the-nationwide-spyingoperation-against-the-occupy-movement-and-peaceful-protest-in-america/5383571]
Until now the role of the Fusion Centers in their application of anti-terrorism authority and resources has been shrouded in secrecy.
In 2012, the
Senate issued an investigative report on the Fusion Centers that The Washington Post described as
revealing “pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions.” The Department of Homeland
Security immediately dismissed and “condemned the report and defended the fusion centers, saying the Senate
investigators relied on out-of-date data,” from 2009 and 2010, and prior years of materials. The public was not privy to the records
underlying that investigation, however, the documents that the Senate reviewed predated the documents that the Partnership for
Civil Justice Fund has obtained and made public. The newly
released documents show that the Department of
Homeland Security’s representations were far from true, that the conduct of the Fusion Centers continued unabated.
The American people can now see for themselves how the U.S. government and the Department of Homeland Security
are spending hundreds of millions of dollars of their money in Fusion Center operations. These
documents, along with materials previously released by the PCJF that exposed the FBI and other domestic intelligence and law
enforcement agencies’ targeting of Occupy, reveal a U.S. surveillance-industrial apparatus charging forward in
willful disregard for the fundamental civil liberties and political freedoms of the people. Targeting a
peaceful social justice movement as a criminal or terrorist enterprise is incompatible with a constitutional
democracy. These documents show that the Fusion Centers constitute a menace to democracy. This gross
misuse of U.S. taxpayers’ money also demonstrates that the Fusion Centers are a colossal rat
hole of waste. The Fusion Centers should be defunded and ended immediately. Coinciding with the
publication of these new documents and this report, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has initiated a
nationwide campaign to End the Fusion Centers! The campaign includes a mass email and letter-writing effort to
President Obama and all members of Congress calling on them to defund and end the Fusion Centers. As part of the End the Fusion
Centers campaign and to broaden awareness of the dangers posed by the Fusion Centers, the PCJF has also made the new
documents fully available to the public and to the media in searchable format at BigBrotherAmerica.org. Although the Fusion
Centers’ existence is justified by the DHS as a necessary component in stopping terrorism and violent crime, the documents
show that the Fusion Centers in the Fall of 2011 and Winter of 2012 were devoted to unconstrained
targeting of a grassroots movement for social change that was acknowledged to be peaceful in
character.
Getting Rid of Fusion Centers Key
Getting Rid of “Fusion Centers” solves, government would eliminate a waste of
time, money, and resources
Walker ’12 "Fusion Centers: Expensive, Practically Useless, and Bad for Your Liberty."
Reason.com. N.p., 03 Oct. 2012. Web. 22 June 2015.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has just released a
report [pdf] on the "fusion centers" that pepper the law-enforcement landscape -- shadowy
intelligence-sharing shops run on the state and local level but heavily funded by the federal
Department of Homeland Security. It is a devastating document. When a report's recommendations
include a plea for the DHS to "track how much money it gives to each fusion center," you know you're dealing with a system that has
some very basic problems.¶ After
reviewing 13 months' worth of the fusion centers' output, Senate
investigators concluded that the centers' reports were "oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely,
sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken
from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism." One
report offered the vital intelligence that "a certain model of automobile had folding rear seats that provided access to the trunk
without leaving the car," a feature deemed notable because it "could be useful to human traffickers." Others highlighted illegal
activities by people in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database, which sounds useful until you hear just what
those people did that attracted the centers' attention. One man was caught speeding. Another shoplifted some shoes. TIDE itself,
according to the Senate report, is filled not just with suspected terrorists but with their "associates," a term broad enough to rope in
a two-year-old boy.¶ Nearly a third of the reports were not even circulated after they were written, sometimes because they
contained no useful information, sometimes because they "overstepped legal boundaries" in disturbing ways: "Reporting on First
Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to violence or criminality; reporting on or improperly characterizing political,
religious or ideological speech that is not explicitly violent or criminal; and attributing to an entire group the violent or criminal acts
of one or a limited number of the group's members." (One analyst, for example, felt the need to note that a Muslim community
group's list of recommended readings included four items whose authors were in the TIDE database.)
Interestingly, while
the DHS usually refused to publish these problematic reports, the department also retained
them for an "apparantly indefinite" period.¶ Why did the centers churn out so much useless
and illegal material? A former employee says officers were judged "by the number [of reports]
they produced, not by quality or evaluations they received." Senate investigators were "able to identify only
one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his mistakes." Specifically, he had
to attend an extra week of training.¶ Other issues identified in the Senate report:¶ • Some of the fusion centers touted by the
Department of Homeland Security do not, in fact, exist.¶ • Centers have reported threats that do not exist either. An alleged Russian
"cyberattack" turned out to be an American network technician accessing a work computer remotely while on vacation.¶ •
DHS
"was unable to provide an accurate tally of how much it had granted to states and cities to
support fusion centers efforts." Instead it offered "broad estimates of the total amount of
federal dollars spent on fusion center activities from 2003 to 2011, estimates which ranged
from $289 million to $1.4 billion."¶ When you aren't keeping track of how much you're spending, it becomes hard to
keep track of what that money is being spent on. All sorts of dubious expenses slipped by. A center in San Diego "spent
nearly $75,000 on 55 flat-screen televisions," according to the Senate report. "When asked what the
televisions were being used for, officials said they displayed calendars, and were used for 'open-source monitoring.' Asked to define
'open-source monitoring,' SD-LECC officials said they meant 'watching the news.'"¶ The report is also filled with signs of
A "2010 assessment of state and local fusion centers conducted at the request of
DHS found widespread deficiencies in the centers' basic counterterrorism information-sharing
capabilities," for example. "DHS did not share that report with Congress or discuss its findings publicly. When the
stonewalling.
Subcommittee requested the assessment as part of its investigation, DHS at first denied it existed, then disputed whether it could be
shared with Congress, before ultimately providing a copy."¶ And
then there's the matter of mission creep.
Many centers have adopted an "all-crime, all-hazards" approach that shifts their focus from
stopping terrorism and onto a broader spectrum of threats. You could make a reasonable case that this is a
wiser use of public resources -- terrorism is rare, after all, and the DHS-driven movement away from the all-hazards approach in the
early post-9/11 years had disastrous results. Unfortunately, the leading "hazards" on the fusion centers' agenda appear to be drugs
At any rate, the DHS should stop citing the centers as a key part of America's
counterterrorism efforts if those centers have found better (or easier) things to do than trying
to fight terror.
and illegal aliens.
2AC AT: Cant Stop Collection
Even if the affirmative cant stop data collection, the plan is key to prevent
federal agencies from passing on intel to local law enforcement
Kayyali ’14 [April 7, 2014, Nadia Kayyali former 2012 Bill of Rights Defense Committee Legal
Fellow, board member of the National Lawyers Guild S.F. Bay Area chapter, member of
Electronic Frontier Foundation activism team, “Why Fusion Centers Matter: FAQ”, Electronic
Frontier Foundation, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centers-matter-faq]
While NSA surveillance has been front and center in the news recently, fusion centers are a part
of the surveillance state that deserve close scrutiny. Fusion centers are a local arm of the socalled "intelligence community," the 17 intelligence agencies coordinated by the National
Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The government documentation around fusion centers is
entirely focused on breaking down barriers between the various government agencies that
collect and maintain criminal intelligence information. Barriers between local law enforcement
and the NSA are already weak. We know that the Drug Enforcement Agency gets intelligence
tips from the NSA which are used in criminal investigations and prosecutions. To make matters
worse, the source of these tips is camouflaged using “parallel construction,” meaning that a
different source for the intelligence is created to mask its classified source. This story
demonstrates what we called “one of the biggest dangers of the surveillance state: the
unquenchable thirst for access to the NSA's trove of information by other law enforcement
agencies.” This is particularly concerning when NSA information is used domestically. Fusion
centers are no different. In fact, in early 2012, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
approved the sharing of raw NSA data with the NCTC. The intelligence community overseen by
the NCTC includes the Department of Homeland Security and FBI, the main federal fusion center
partners. Thus, fusion centers—and even local law enforcement—could potentially be
receiving unminimized NSA data. This runs counter to the distant image many people have of
the NSA, and it's why focusing on fusion centers as part of the recently invigorated conversation
around surveillance is important.
Fusion Centers Key to Data Collection
Fusion centers key to data collection
O’Hara 12 [O’Hara, Michael. “DHS ‘fusion centers’ portrayed as pools of ineptitude and civil
liberties intrusions.” October 2, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/dhsfusion-centers-portrayed-as-pools-of-ineptitude-and-civil-libertiesintrusions/2012/10/02/10014440-0cb1-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html]
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a nationwide "homeland security"/"counter terrorism" apparatus emerged. Components of
this apparatus include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism
Center, and state/regional "fusion centers." Fusion centers, by and large, are staffed with personnel working in "counter terrorism"/ "homeland
security" units of municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/public safety/"counter terrorism" agencies. To a large degree, the
"counter terrorism" operations of municipal, county, state and tribal agencies engaged in fusion centers are financed through a number of U.S.
Department of Homeland Security grant programs. Initially, fusion
centers were intended to be intelligence sharing
partnerships between municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/"counter terrorism" agencies, dedicated solely
to the dissemination/sharing of "terrorism"-related intelligence. However, shortly following the
creation of fusion centers, their focus shifted from this exclusive interest in "terrorism," to one
of "all hazards"-- an umbrella term used to describe virtually anything (including "terrorism")
that may be deemed a "hazard" to the public, or to certain private sector interests. And, as has been
mandated through a series of federal legislative actions and presidential executive orders, fusion centers (and the "counter terrorism" entities that they
are comprised of) work-- in ever closer proximity.
Fusion centers collect massive amounts of data
Electronic Privacy Information Center 7 [ “National Network” of Fusion Centers Raises
Specter of COINTELPRO.” June 2007.
https://epic.org/privacy/surveillance/spotlight/0607/#_ftn3]
A “fusion center,” according to the Department of Justice, is a “mechanism to exchange information and intelligence, maximize
resources, streamline operations, and improve the ability to fight crime and terrorism by analyzing data from a variety of sources,”
which includes private sector firms and anonymous tipsters.[3] When local and state fusion centers were first created, they were
purely oriented toward counterterrorism, but, over
time and with the escalating involvement of federal officials, fusion
centers “have increasingly gravitated toward an all-crimes and even broader all-hazards
approach.”[4] The expansion of fusion center goals and increasing interaction with federal and
private sector entities leads to a massive accumulation of data, raising questions of possible
misuse or abuse. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeks to create a “national network” of local and state fusion
centers, tied into DHS’s “day-to-day activities.” This national network combined with the Department of Homeland
Security’s plan to condition grant funding based on fusion center “compliance” with the federal agency’s priorities inculcates
DHS with enormous domestic surveillance powers and evokes comparisons the publicly
condemned domestic surveillance program COINTELPRO. “Fusion centers” collect an enormous
amount of data from law enforcement agencies, “public safety components, including fire,
health, transportation, agriculture, and environmental protection,” and private sector
organizations.[5] A few state fusion centers had begun operations before September 11, 2001, but afterward, the number of
centers grew rapidly.
Fusion Centers Are Key Data Collection Centers
Stone 15 Stone, Adam, January 23, 2015 National Fusion Center Model Is Emerging, Fusion
centers are evolving into horizontal communication hubs between states,
http://www.emergencymgmt.com/safety/National-Fusion-Center-Model-Is-Emerging.html
Denial-of-service telephone attacks on 911 centers in Louisiana aren’t typically the sort of thing to make alarm bells ring in Kentucky.
Yet that’s exactly what happened in one recent episode, when bad actors started blocking emergency calls and analysts in
Louisiana’s fusion center quickly passed the word to their counterparts in Kentucky. “We got that out to our 911 centers in the next
hour, and almost right away we started hearing that our 911 centers were experiencing the same thing,” said Mary Cope
Halmhuber, director of the Kentucky Intelligence Fusion CenterThat swift heads-up from a neighboring state helped the Kentucky
fusion center contain what might have been a big problem. This kind of interstate cooperation typifies today’s emerging fusion
center. Initially formed after 9/11 as a means to coordinate local, state and federal intelligence, fusion
centers have
increasingly become hubs for cooperative information-sharing, not just vertically — from states
up to federal authorities — but also horizontally, with data moving between states. While some
interstate efforts have existed from the start, lately there has been a push to formalize these ties. This is most visible in the 20142017 National Strategy for the National Network of Fusion Centers, published recently by a collaborative of interested groups.
Fusion centers came into being as a way to ensure that security information could percolate up
from the local level to federal authorities. At the same time, these centers have broken ground in
their ability to share information from state to state — a trend that has become increasingly
visible. Consider a few recent accomplishments, as reported in the Department of Homeland Security 2013 Fusion Center Success
Stories: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., brought in the Central Florida Intelligence
Exchange on a case involving an individual wanted for production of child pornography. The exchange notified the Tennessee Fusion
Center and Georgia Information Sharing and Analysis Center, and the suspect was arrested by the Georgia State Patrol.
2AC AT: Fusion Centers Good / Effective
DHS response to Senate attacks is a lie
Smith ’12 [Oct 3, 2012, Network World, Ms. Smith Senior Director of Circulation citing Senate
report on fusion centers, “Fusion centers don't find terrorists, filled with 'crap' that violates
privacy”, http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223243/microsoft-subnet/fusion-centersdon-t-find-terrorists--filled-with--crap--that-violates-privacy.html]
The Senate report continually blasted DHS fusion centers. A spokesman for Napolitano immediately
blasted back, calling the report "out of date, inaccurate and misleading." Oh really? Let's follow the money—not that
it's easy to do since no one seems to know exactly how much has been dumped into fusion centers. The Senate investigation
revealed that in the
Homeland Security's counterterrorism mission, it spent between $289 million
and $1.4 billion in state and local fusion centers. They are primarily operated through grants provided by DHS'
Federal Emergency Management Agency. However, FEMA officials say they have no mechanism in place to
accurately account for the total amount of grant funding spent toward fusion center support. That's not
the only confusion since one chapter is devoted to how some DHS-recognized fusion centers don't even exist! A case study was
conducted on some fusion centers that used DHS grant funds for what DHS called "must-have" basics for intelligence. Without
constantly throwing dollar amounts at you, here's
a tiny portion of what the federal money (your tax dollars at
work) purchased. According to the Senate investigative report, fusion center funds were spent: In Arizona: Chevrolet
Tahoes which were later given away to other agencies in Arizona; a surveillance monitoring wiretap room; 42"
flat-screen TVs In Cleveland, Ohio, the fusion center spent $15,848 to buy the medical examiner
"ruggedized Toughbook laptop computers." When asked why, the fusion center "responded
that the laptops were for processing human remains in the aftermath of a mass casualty event
in the Cleveland area." In San Diego, fusion center funds bought: a covert, wireless audio/video recorder with a "shirtbutton camera"; an ultra-low-light "pinhole" VGA camera; an ultra-low-light shirt-button camera "with interchangeable tops." But
because that surveillance equipment was "simply too complicated for our customers to use," the San Diego "fusion center received
other undercover surveillance devices," including: "A camera hidden in a hat and one disguised as a water bottle." Software,
LCD monitors and computers would seem perhaps a reasonable intelligence sharing expense, but the San
Diego fusion center purchased: 116 computers, monitors and related equipment, even though there
are only 80 full-time employees. That was topped by buying 55 flat-screen TVs supposedly justified
because they "displayed calendars" and were used for "open-source monitoring" which they later
admitted was also called "watching the news." The D.C. fusion center ripped through $2.7 million in Homeland
Security grants to upgrade: an electronic records management system; data mining software; and an Automated License Plate
Recognition system (LPR system). But wait, it was not for the fusion center; it was purchased for the local cops. The LPR system was
later dropped, in favor of buying: more "analytic software;" "sophisticated cell phone tracking devices;" and "handheld citation
issuance units and accessories" all to enhance the capabilities of the D.C. police department. That doesn't count the money spent on
computers, laptops, LCD Status Boards, CCTVs or paying cellular provider fees. Regarding "troubling" reports that some fusion
centers may have violated the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. citizens: DHS personnel "are prohibited from collecting or maintaining
information on U.S. persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the U.S. Constitution, such as the First
Amendment protected freedoms of religion, speech, press, and peaceful assembly and protest. The Privacy Act prohibits agencies
from storing information on U.S. persons' First Amendment-protected activities if they have no valid reason to do so. Yet of all those
SARs because you might be a domestic terroist if, the Senate panel wrote, "The apparent
indefinite retention of
cancelled intelligence reports that were determined to have raised privacy or civil liberties concerns appears contrary to
DHS's own policies and the Privacy Act." After promising the condition of anonymity, NBC News spoke with a Homeland
Security official who said "the department has made improvements to the fusion centers and that the skills of
officials working in them are 'evolving and maturing'." Not matured, after nine years and hundreds
of millions, if not billions of dollars later? This was only a fraction of the 141-page Senate
investigation report which basically concluded that fusion centers are filled with 'crap'
suspicious activity reports that are not helping the counterterrorism mission one little bit, but
that are violating Americans' civil liberties and privacy.
*** Fusion Centers – Version #1
Black Lives Matter Advantage
1AC
Advantage ____ : Black Lives Matter
The Black Lives matter movement, centered around raising visibility around the
issues of racialized violence, is gaining momentum against anti-blackness
Paschel 14 (Tianna, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, “The Making of a
Grassroots Movement against Anti-black Racism” in Insurgency: The Black Matter(s) Issue Dept.
of African American Studies | University of California, Berkeley
http://www.thediasporablackmattersissue.com/ December 23, 2014
the recent waves of protest from Ferguson to Oakland to New York represent
the emergence of a grassroots movement against anti-black racism,
unprecedented in recent decades. Beyond the sheer size and number of protests, their locus has also been somewhat surprising given what we
First,
know about social movements. Rather than emerging from established civil rights organizations or black political elites that have long considered themselves the spokespersons of the black
this movement has radiated out from the outraged and grieving families
and communities of the black men killed by the police. In taking their struggle
to the streets, these communities have targeted state institutions as well as
ordinary Americans who have passively watched as black people experience
racialized violence. What is most remarkable about the protests in Ferguson, in
particular, is how collective pain and indignation itself has called so many people to
the street, night after night, in the face of an increasingly militarized police
force and largely outside of “respectable” black middle class institutions. Indeed, while in some cases, traditional civil rights institutions have helped to shine a spotlight on these
community,
injustices, their involvement has largely happened after mobilization was well underway. Moreover, amidst debates on the right as to whether these deaths were racially motivated at all,
some traditional black leaders have tried to discipline protesters and emphasize personal responsibility as a potential remedy to the ills facing black communities. This was best captured in Al
Sharpton’s eulogy at Mike Brown’s funeral, which spoke not only about racialized state violence, but the need for blacks to “clean up” their communities and embrace being successful. The
family of Akai Gurley, another unarmed black man gunned down by the NYPD in a dark stairwell, refused to let Sharpton speak at his memorial service. In this sense, recent mobilization must
The second root of such
organizing both on the streets and on the internet is black youth-led social
movement organizations and networks such as Black Lives Matter, We Charge Genocide and Black Youth
Project 100 (BYP100), to name a few. All of them have emerged in recent years around the question of racialized
police violence as well as other issues facing black people . In so doing, they have not
only mobilized and raised visibility around these issues, but have also produced
important written analyses of the situation. They have insisted that we
understand these murders as systemic rather than episodic, as endemic rather
than aberrations to an otherwise post-racial society and state apparatus. These
organizations have also been emphatic about contextualizing these horrific
events along a spectrum of state violence that black people, and particularly
poor black people experience every day in the form of surveillance, hyper
criminalization and mass incarceration.We Charge Genocide – a grassroots Chicago-based organization that emerged in the wake of the
be understood as having its roots in spontaneous, grassroots action that has become increasingly coordinated.
killing of Dominique “Damo” Franklin and that works to equip individuals and communities to “police” the police– took its name from a 1951 Petition with the same name. Originally submitted
to the UN General Assembly submitted by the Civil Rights Congress, the petition documented 153 racial killings and was signed by W.E.B. Dubois and Paul Robeson, among many others. Its
authors held that “the oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated against and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent,
conscious, unified policies of every branch of government.” In a similar vein, the youth organizing with We Charge Genocide, along with the parents of Mike Brown made similar statements on
state violence against black communities in front of the UN Committee on Torture in Geneva in November of this year. The parallels between these two moments of black resistance in both
domestic and international space are many. These similarities caution us to resist the temptation to demarcate the current moment as constituting a new kind of racial violence.The third
aspect of this movement that is important to underscore is that it is not a white movement. If you have participated in recent protests, or even seen footage of them, you have likely noticed
that many of those organizing for racial justice and against anti-black racism are not black. In fact, a great deal of the images circulating in the newspapers in cities like New York and in the
Bay Area show a great deal of white, likely middle class liberal whites marching and “dying in”. On the one hand, it is significant moment when whites chant “black lives matter”. This is
especially the case when we consider that much of the racialized violence perpetuated against black people (though not all) has happened at the hands of white police officers who refuse to
see black people as fully human. Having participated in some of the protests myself, I have to admit that watching black people being joined by other people of color and white people yell
“black lives matter” gave me a little bit of renewed hope about the possibilities of breaking through the ideological force of “post-racial” America. On the other hand, the participation and
visibility of white protestors has been highly problematic. Social Justice Blogger Tam highlighted this best in a recent post entitled “Dear White Protesters”: “As a Black person in this country,
I am well aware that the streets belong to white people. I am not empowered or made more safe by hundreds of white people chanting that the streets belong to them. The street in Ferguson
where Mike Brown was murdered and lay dead for 4.5 hours should have belonged to him, but it didn’t. He’s dead. He’s not coming back. That’s because the streets belong to white people.”
Indeed, the impulse of many white protestors throughout the United States has not been to simply stand in solidarity with black communities and others affected directly by racialized state
violence, but to appropriate that suffering, to “give voice” to black people, to be at the center of the movement.These tensions were accentuated in a recent protest organized by black
students at the University of Chicago where students called on everyone to march, but only allowed black students to “die in”. This was a strategic decision that was an important one
because it reaffirmed the fact that it is blackness itself that made Eric Garner and Mike Brown susceptible to what Achille Mbembe calls “necropolitics” or the “contemporary forms of
Yet while it is important
that black bodies remain at the center of this movement, it makes sense that
we would not necessarily be there. Indeed, the same de-facto mandate of the
subjugation of life to the power of death” that “profoundly reconfigure the relations among resistance, sacrifice, and terror”.
police to serve and protect white people (and perhaps more importantly, white property) that led to the
deaths of these black men is what makes whites so comfortable showing their
outrage in public spaces, that affords them the privilege of feeling relatively
safe while protesting, that prompts them to taunt police. As such, while broad-based cross-racial solidarity
can certainly shape the sustainability and outcomes of this movement, there must also be a critical reflection among white protestors, as well as the movement more generally, about the
ways in which whiteness is being articulated in it.Finally, it is important to note that while many protestors have made it clear that this is about black
lives mattering, in much of the actual
discourse and political practices, a concern for black men’s lives have eclipsed that of black people on the whole. This has led to a de-emphasis of the ways that racialized state violence
affect black women. More importantly, the effective erasure of black girls and women from the popularized slogan “black lives matter” has also rendered invisible the stories of black women
such as Tarika Wilson, Miriam Carey and Yvette Smith, all of whom were also brutally killed by the police. As a result, we have to ask ourselves why the stories of black men are the only ones
Ultimately, we are experiencing a special
moment in black resistance. While the dynamics of mobilization that have
coalesced under #blacklivesmatter are still somewhat nascent, they arguably
started with mobilization around the deaths of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin
years before. Of course, the racial violence to which they speak has an even
longer and deeper history. What one senses as people have taken to the streets
is a cumulative and collective sense of pain and outrage over the continual
disrespect of black life and suffering. The haunting expression “I can’t
breathe” that Eric Garner whispered while being choked to death by the NYPD
has had deep resonance with black people as a metaphor to our suffering. It
expresses a collective awareness that behind the brutal killing of Mike Brown
are hundreds of other black women and men that black people have yet to be
guaranteed the basic rights to life and dignity. The media has disparagingly
called some of the mobilization around Ferguson as riots. While I do not share this analysis entirely, it makes
that compel people to march, why their names are the only ones that are remembered.
sense that a people who feel like they can’t breathe might turn to riots, a strategy some scholars have aptly argued is the last weapon of the truly dispossessed.
The Department of Homeland Security, is using ‘Fusion Centers’ in order to
constantly monitor the BLM protesters.
Daniel Rivero, Journalist Extraordinaire, 4/16/2015, "Counter-terrorism police might be
tracking your #BlackLivesMatter tweets," Fusion, http://fusion.net/story/121695/counterterrorism-police-might-be-tracking-your-blacklivesmatter-tweets/
counter-terrorism officials have been called on to monitor Black Lives Matter
The emails and other documents
illustrate specific internal communications
Reminder for Tonight and this week: Do Not Advise Protesters That
We Are Following Them on Social Media,”
We want to continue
tracking the protesters as much as possible. If they believe we are tracking them, they will go
silent,”
Oakland police flagged a local church
“situational awareness” tag for state authorities to potentially
monitor
Newly released emails show that
protests in
California.
, released by the Bay Area’s East Bay Express,
between the California Highway Patrol and its “Terrorism Liaison Officers.” “
read the subject line of an internal email obtained by the publication. “
the note read in part. Other emails show that counter-terrorism officials were at times embedded with protesters in Oakland. Another shows
visit by Michael Brown Sr., father of the late Ferguson, Mo. teenager, with a
. The obvious should be stated. If you publish something on social media that is publicly viewable, then people will view it and take it into account, including officers of the law. The assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn last December
was announced over social media before it occurred, and authorities took notice. “If you see something on social media that is a threat against a police officer, call 911 immediately,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said after the incident. “We cannot take this lightly,”
he said. Oakland protest in December, after a grand jury did not indict police for the death of Eric Garner in NYC. Photo: Getty Images Oakland protest in December, after a grand jury did not indict police for the death of Eric Garner in NYC. Photo: Getty Images But
many things remain unclear about social media monitoring programs like the one in California. “We don’t know as much about the [California] program as we should,” Nadia Kayyali, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the East Bay Express. “We
did not have any policies regarding its
monitoring of social media they search for any and all ‘open source,’ or publicly available,
information related our public safety assessments
It’s the coordination [of the tracking] that’s disturbing,”
Everything’s totally fusion center-oriented and the information is going very high up Fusion
centers are real time “receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information”
hubs, whose stated purpose is to facilitate communication between local, state, and federal law
don’t know what their standards are, their policies with respect to limits and privacy.” A California Highway Patrol official told the Express that it
, but that
“”
.” The paper also with some of the activists it found counter-terrorism officials were tracking, like Twitter user
@DomainAwareness, a digital privacy activist who asked not to be identified. “
the Twitter user said.
“
.”
enforcement agencies in the event of a major terrorist attack or catastrophic natural disaster,
according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
. DHS grants fund the centers’ equipment and facilities, though operations are often left in control of local
officials. Several of the emails released from East Bay Express originated inside of the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a fusion center which the paper says “connects police agencies from Monterey County to the Oregon border.”
They’ve built this big network and they have tremendous resources,
fusion centers to monitor Black Lives Matter protests
“
” commented @DomainAwareness about the
use of the
. Unfortunately, at least one alleged terrorist plot has been planned in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests. In
November, two members of the St. Louis chapter of the New Black Panthers were busted by the FBI when they allegedly bought pipe bombs from undercover agents, which they planned to use against “people, buildings, vehicles and property” during the unrest that
was sweeping the region at the time. The duo was formally indicted for the alleged plot in early April. They have both pleaded not guilty. Three days after they were arrested, a grand jury made its announcement not to press charges against former Ferguson police
officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. Riots and violence spread through St. Louis and the city of Ferguson after the announcement. Richard Callahan, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, said that the disruption of the plot
“saved some lives” of both protesters and law enforcement.
This unique form of surveillance against the BLM protesters, as well as similar
political and social protests, creates a “chilling effect” that ceases all forms of
resistance activism
Bondgraha ’15 "Counter-Terrorism Officials Helped Track Black Lives Matter Protesters." East
Bay Express. N.p., 15 Apr. 2015. Web. 22 June 2015.
On December 9, 2014, at 4:48 p.m., an internal email with the subject line, "Reminder for Tonight and this week: Do Not Advise Protesters That We Are Following Them on Social Media," circulated among dozens
of California Highway Patrol commanders. The message read: "A quick reminder ... as you know, our TLO [Terrorism Liaison Officers]
officers are actively following
multiple leads over social media." The note continued, "this morning, we found posts detailing protesters' interaction with individual officers last night. In the posts,
protesters are stating that we (CHP) were claiming to follow them on social media. Please have your personnel refrain from such comments; we want to continue tracking the protesters as much as possible. If they
In recent years, police agencies throughout the United States have
scoured social media as part of criminal investigations. But the police are also watching social
media to spy on political protesters, especially those they suspect will engage in acts of civil
disobedience. During the recent Black Lives Matter protests, local and state police agents
monitored protesters on social media and activist websites. Several hundred CHP emails obtained by the Express show
that social media is now a key source of intel for the police when monitoring political protests.¶
But the emails raise serious questions, say civil libertarians and some of the activists whose
posts were harvested as intel. How do police monitor social media? Do they store data or track particular people? Are agencies
believe we are tracking them, they will go silent."¶
over-reacting and wasting resources? And why are counter-terrorism police involved?¶ The TLOs tasked by the CHP with monitoring Black Lives Matter protesters on social media are employed by different local
agencies and serve as points of contact for matters regarding terrorism. The role was created after 9/11, and the officers communicate through networks coordinated by fusion centers, such as the Northern
California Regional Intelligence Center, or NCRIC, which connects police agencies from Monterey County to the Oregon border. ¶ "We don't know as much about the TLO program as we should," said Nadia Kayyali,
an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We don't know what their standards are, their policies with respect to limits and privacy."¶ The Twitter user @domainawareness, whose tweets were collected
by the police and used as intel, reviewed some of the CHP emails that we obtained. "It's the coordination that's disturbing," said @domainawareness, whom the Express has agreed to not identify. "Everything's
totally fusion center-oriented and the information is going very high up."¶ An email sent on December 12 illustrates how counter-terrorism officials working out of fusion centers helped CHP monitor protesters.
At 12:12 p.m. that day, Elijah Owen, a senior intelligence advisor with the California State Threat Assessment Center (Cal STAC) sent CHP officer Michael Berndl a copy of a protest flier calling for a speak-out and
march against the CHP the next day. "Just so it's on your folks' radar," wrote Owen. Cal STAC officers appear in other CHP emails as sources of information, or recipients of intel gathered by the Oakland Police
There are CHP officers in
the center, but it's a task force environment. We assess threats. Transnational crime.
Terrorism." Hopkins said Cal STAC is a fusion center like NCRIC, except that its main focus is assessing
strategic threats to the state of California. Hopkins said he could not comment on any emails
sent by his subordinate because he hasn't seen them.¶ "They've built this big network and they
have tremendous resources," said @domainawareness about the involvement of fusion centers in monitoring the Black Lives Matter protests. "But they don't
have enough to do, so they're using this to watch political protesters. It's mission creep."¶ Kayyali added:
Department, Alameda County Sheriff's Office, and other agencies. ¶ "We are not the CHP," Matthew Hopkins the deputy commander of Cal STAC told me. "
"There's this mystique around doing surveillance and intel-gathering, and they're not really thinking about the usefulness of what they're doing, and why they're doing it."¶ Another email circulated among CHP
commanders on December 11 included a two-page brief on the department's undercover operations in Oakland and Berkeley in which at least four CHP officers were "[e]mbedded with protesters." According to
"Up to this point, ISU TLO officers obtained
intelligence on protesters through social media regarding dates, times, and locations of planned
protests and of intentions to disrupt Bay Area freeways," explained the CHP brief.¶ The document includes screenshots of tweets, including three
the brief, these were Terrorism Liaison Officers from CHP's Investigative Services Unit (ISU). ¶
from East Bay resident Noura Khouri who took part in the protests. Khouri had tweeted two days before, "Since were dreaming @thehoopoe how about the bay bridge shut down + port shut down + general strike
#shutitdown <3." On December 9 Gareth Lacy, a press officer with Caltrans forwarded to CHP commanders a similar tweet composed by @reclaimuc which stated: "may 2, 1992: UC berkeley and berkeley high
students occupy bay bridge after acquittal of cops who beat Rodney king." Records show that CHP interpreted social media postings like these as evidence that the Bay Bridge was going to be shut down by
protesters.¶ Acting on this fear, on December 12, CHP Assistant Chief Paul Fontana wrote his commanders requesting special response teams from other divisions. "I would also like to request SWAT," wrote
Fontana, referring to the heavily armed special weapons and tactics team.¶ In an interview, Khouri characterized the reaction of CHP to the protests as extreme and ironic. "These protests initially formed as a
direct result of police abuses," said Khouri. "I personally have stopped using Facebook for my political expression because of my deep concern for privacy, and law enforcement using it as a tool of political
."¶ The CHP emails show that police were monitoring almost anything related to the Black
Lives Matter movement. For example, Maria Dominguez helped organize a "Human Rights Day Vigil" with the nonprofit Ella Baker Center of Oakland on December 10 at the Alameda
repression
We're always cautious of not putting anything
online that would raise interest of law enforcement." Dominguez was surprised when she got a
phone call from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.¶ "When organizers get a call, it is chilling," said
County Administration Building. "I posted our event on Indybay," said Dominguez in an interview. "
Dominguez. "The unsaid thing was, 'warning there's going to be a lot of police there, so if you're planning anything out of line, watch out.'" ¶ Other police agencies flagged Dominguez's event as a threat. In an
email with the subject line "RE: Social Media Update," CHP Investigator Timothy Randall emailed half a dozen other officers on December 10, including CHP Chief Avery Browne, and included a screenshot of
it's a
virtual version of stop and frisk," said Dominguez. "My name is Maria Dominguez. I'm a Latina, and the Ella Baker Center, it's racialized — it's named after a Black woman."¶
Dominguez's event posting from Indybay. "Supposed to be just a 'vigil' but it is occurring in Oakland," wrote Randall. ¶ I asked Dominguez why law enforcement might single out her event. "Maybe
The Oakland Police Department also monitored the Twitter accounts and Facebook postings of Black Lives Matter protesters in December. One "situational awareness" update that OPD sent to the CHP listed a
candlelight vigil by Lake Merritt, a Berkeley City Council meeting, and a visit by Mike Brown, Sr. to a San Francisco church as events to monitor. ¶ I called Sergeant Randal Bandino, one of the OPD officers sharing
these emails, to ask about how OPD monitors social media. Bandino said he personally isn't involved and can't speak to OPD's practices and policies. But he added, "It's nothing special. What we're looking at is
what's open to the public."¶ Deputy Alameda County Sheriff David Darrin also said he couldn't speak about how his agency monitors social media, referring me instead to the sheriff's official spokesperson. Darrin
is also an intelligence officer with the NCRIC fusion center. On December 7, Darrin shared Facebook events advertising upcoming marches "to protest the police riot in Berkeley" with his NCRIC colleague Nicholas
Silva. Silva, a CHP officer, forwarded the information on to CHP investigators. ¶ CHP spokesperson Brandie Dressel wrote in an email to me that the CHP has no policies governing the monitoring of social media,
but that officers "search for any and all 'open source,' or publicly available, information related our public safety assessments." According to Dressel, the CHP doesn't keep any of this data. As to why Terrorism
Liaison Officers were leading the CHP's effort to monitor Black Lives Matter protesters, Dressel wrote, "CHP TLOs can at times be assigned to gather intelligence and provide logistical support for a reasonable and
clearly articulated law enforcement purpose."¶ The emails obtained by the Express from CHP were originally part of a Public Records Act request made by San Francisco resident Michael Petrelis. Petrelis said he
asked for the records because he was concerned about CHP's use of less-than-lethal weapons and armed undercover agents. Petrelis also said he is not surprised to see the extensive monitoring of social media by
the police. "I come out of Act Up in NYC," said Petrelis. "The cops came to our meetings and they picked up all the lit. ¶ "My experience in organizing is that cops are watching you," he continued. "
In the
Tech Age, you have to always think the cops are reading this."
Independently, the surveillance of this movement reinforces the social
hierarchies present in the United States, and perpetuates gratuitous violence.
Malkia Amala, Activist Extraordinaire, 3/30/2015, "Black America's State of Surveillance," No
Publication, http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-statesurveillance
Ten years ago
my mother, a former Black Panther, died from complications of
sickle cell anemia Weeks before she died, the FBI came knocking at our door, demanding that
my mother testify in a secret trial proceeding against other former Panthers or face arrest. My
mother, unable to walk, refused. The detectives told my mother as they left that they would be
watching her
My mother died just two weeks later
Files obtained during a break-in at an FBI office in
1971 revealed that African Americans
didn’t have to be perceived as dissident to
warrant surveillance just had to be black
the same philosophy
use of
surveillance technologies
across the United States.
black people
and other people of color have lived for centuries with surveillance practices aimed at
maintaining a racial hierarchy
We need to
understand that data has historically been overused to repress dissidence, monitor perceived
criminality, and perpetually maintain an impoverished underclass
, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday,
.
. They didn’t get to do that.
. My mother was not the only black person to come under the watchful eye of American law
enforcement for perceived and actual dissidence. Nor is dissidence always a requirement for being subject to spying.
, J. Edger Hoover’s largest target group,
. They
. As I write this,
by local law enforcement agencies
is driving the increasing adoption and
Today, media reporting on government surveillance is laser-focused on the revelations by
Edward Snowden that millions of Americans were being spied on by the NSA. Yet my mother’s visit from the FBI reminds me that, from the slave pass system to laws that deputized white civilians as enforcers of Jim Crow,
. It’s time for journalists to tell a new story that does not start the clock when privileged classes learn they are targets of surveillance.
. In an era of big data, the Internet has increased the speed and secrecy of data
collection. Thanks to new surveillance technologies, law enforcement agencies are now able to collect massive amounts of indiscriminate data. Yet legal protections and policies have not caught up to this technological advance. Concerned advocates see mass
Targeted surveillance is an obvious answer—it may be discriminatory,
but it helps protect the privacy perceived as an earned privilege of the inherently innocent. The
trouble is, targeted surveillance frequently includes the indiscriminate collection of the private
data of people targeted by race but not involved in any crime
we are watched, either as criminals or as consumers
surveillance as the problem and protecting privacy as the goal.
. For targeted communities, there is little to no expectation of privacy from government or
corporate surveillance. Instead,
. We do not expect policies to protect us. Instead, we’ve birthed a complex and coded
culture—from jazz to spoken dialects—in order to navigate a world in which spying, from AT&T and Walmart to public benefits programs and beat cops on the block, is as much a part of our built environment as the streets covered in our blood. In a recent address,
New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton made it clear: “2015 will be one of the most significant years in the history of this organization. It will be the year of technology, in which we literally will give to every member of this department technology that
would’ve been unheard of even a few years ago.” Predictive policing, also known as “Total Information Awareness,” is described as using advanced technological to ols and data analysis to “preempt” crime. It utilizes trends, patterns, sequences, and affinities found in
In a racially discriminatory criminal
justice system, surveillance technologies reproduce injustice.
data to make determinations about when and where crimes will occur. This model is deceptive, however, because it presumes data inputs to be neutral. They aren’t.
Instead of reducing discrimination, predictive policing is a face of what author Michelle Alexander
calls the “New Jim Crow”—a de facto system of separate and unequal application of laws, police practices, conviction rates, sentencing terms, and conditions of confinement that operate more as a system of social control by racial hierarchy than as crime prevention
This approach to policing places an undue focus on quality of
life crimes—like selling loose cigarettes, the kind of offense for which Eric Garner was choked to
death
predictive policing is just high-tech racial profiling—indiscriminate
data collection that drives discriminatory policing practices
or punishment. In New York City, the predictive policing approach in use is “Broken Windows.”
. Without oversight, accountability, transparency, or rights,
. As local law enforcement agencies increasingly adopt surveillance technologies, they use them in three
primary ways: to listen in on specific conversations on and offline; to observe daily movements of individuals and groups; and to observe data trends. Police departments like Bratton’s aim to use sophisticated technologies to do all three. They will use technologies
like license plate readers, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation found to be disproportionately used i n communities of color and communities in the process of being gentrified. They will use facial recognition, biometric scanning software, which the FBI has now
rolled out as a national system, to be adopted by local police departments for any criminal justice purpose. They intend to use body and dashboard cameras, which have been touted as an effective step toward accountability based on the results of one study, yet
storage and archiving procedures, among many other issues, remain unclear. They will use Stingray cellphone interceptors. According to the ACLU, Stingray technology is an invasive cellphone surveillance device that mimics cellphone towers and sends out signals to
trick cellphones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information. When used to track a suspect’s cellphone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby. The same is true of domestic
drones, which are in increasing use by U.S. law enforcement to conduct routine aerial surveillance. While drones are currently unarmed, drone manufacturers are considering arming these remote-controlled aircraft with weapons like rubber bullets, tasers, and tear
They will use fusion centers
arm of the intelligence community
gas.
. Originally designed to increase interagency collaboration for the purposes of counterterrorism,
these have
instead
become the local
. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation, there are currently seventy-eight on record. They are the clearinghouse for increasingly used “suspicious activity reports”—
These reports and other collected data
are often stored in massive databases like e-Verify and Prism
Just as stop and frisk legitimized an
initial, unwarranted contact between police and people of color, almost 90 percent of whom
turn out to be innocent of any crime
fusion centers target communities of
color
This is the future of policing in America, and it
should terrify you as much as it terrifies me
the most terrifying aspects of high-tech surveillance is the invisibility of
those it disproportionately impacts
described as “official documentation of observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity.”
. As anybody who’s ever dealt with gang databases knows, it’s almost impossible to get off a
federal or state database, even when the data collected is incorrect or no longer true. Predictive policing doesn’t just lead to racial and religious profiling—it relies on it.
, suspicious activities reporting and the dragnet approach of
. One review of such reports collected in Los Angeles shows approximately 75 percent were of people of color.
. Unfortunately, it probably doesn’t, because my life is at far greater risk than the lives of white Americans, especially those reporting on the issue
in the media or advocating in the halls of power. One of
. The NSA and FBI have engaged local law enforcement agencies and electronic surveillance technologies to spy on Muslims living in the United States. According to FBI
training materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau taught agents to treat “mainstream” Muslims as supporters of terrorism, to view charitable donations by Muslims as “a funding mechanism for combat,” and to view Islam itself as a “Death Star” that must
be destroyed if terrorism is to be contained. From New York City to Chicago and beyond, local law enforcement agencies have expanded unlawful and covert racial and religious profiling against Muslims not suspected of any crime. There is no national security
reason to profile all Muslims. At the same time, almost 450,000 migrants are in detention facilities throughout the United States, including survivors of torture, asylum seekers, families with small children, and the elderly. Undocumented migrant communities enjoy
few legal protections, and are therefore subject to brutal policing practices, including illegal surveillance practices. According to the Sentencing Project, of the more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, more than 60 percent are racial and ethnic
minorities. But by far, the widest net is cast over black communities. Black people alone represent 40 percent of those incarcerated. More black men are incarcerated than were held in slavery in 1850, on the eve of the Civil War. Lest some misinterpret that statistic
as evidence of greater criminality, a 2012 study confirms that black defendants are at least 30 percent more likely to be imprisoned than whites for the same crime. This is not a broken system, it is a system working perfectly as intended, to the detriment of all. The
NSA could not have spied on millions of cellphones if it were not already spying on black people, Muslims, and migrants. As surveillance technologies are increasingly adopted and integrated by law enforcement agencies today, racial disparities are being made
invisible by a media environment that has failed to tell the story of surveillance in the context of structural racism. Reporters love to tell the technology story. For some, it’s a sexier read. To me, freedom from repression and racism is far sexier than the newest
gadget used to reinforce racial hierarchy. As civil rights protections catch up with the technological terrain, reporting needs to catch up, too. Many journalists still focus their reporting on the technological trends and not the racial hierarchies that these trends are
enforcing. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” Journalists have an obligation to tell the stories that are hidden from view. We are living in an incredible time, when migrant activists have blocked
deportation buses, and a movement for black lives has emerged, and when women, queer, and trans experiences have been placed right at the center. The decentralized power of the Internet makes that possible. But the Internet also makes possible the high-tech
We can help black lives matter by ensuring that technology is not
used to cement a racial hierarchy that leaves too many people like me dead or in jail Our
communities need partners, not gatekeepers. Together, we can change the cultural terrain that
makes killing black people routine
We can change
the story on surveillance to raise the voices of those who have been left out
surveillance that threatens to drive structural racism in the twenty-first century.
.
. We can counter inequality by ensuring that both the technology and the police departments that use it are democratized.
. There are no voiceless people, only those that ain’t
been heard yet. Let’s birth a new norm in which the technological tools of the twenty-first century create equity and justice for all—so all bodies enjoy full and equal protection, and the Jim Crow surveillance state exists no more.
The status quo movement is shifting towards #AllLivesMatter and away from
#BlackLivesMatter – This is an imposition of post-racial politics that acts as an
erasure of racial violence and hollows out the movement – only a recentering
#BlackLivesMatter in the campaign is key to prevent this shift
Arielle Newton, Editor-in-Chief December 1, 2014 WHAT YOU MEAN BY #ALLLIVESMATTER
http://blackmillennials.com/2014/12/01/what-you-mean-by-alllivesmatter/
the most infuriating adaptation is #AllLivesMatter, a whitewashed faux sentiment that coopts the crux of this growing racial justice movement. I’d imagine that when people tweet and post using #AllLivesMatter, they’re
trying to project an understanding that everyone should be treated with decency and respect.¶ #AllLivesMatter is a capture of
colorblindness that goes against the purpose of #BlackLivesMatter. As Black Americans in the racial justice struggle and
promoters of the roots embedded in #BlackLivesMatter, we already know and agree that all lives matter. But we also know that injustices stemming from
police brutality and the conglomerate criminal justice system, does not marginalize against all
lives … but Black lives, almost exclusively.¶ Every 28 hours, a Black person is killed by police or vigilantes. Black people are trapped in prisons at
Perhaps
alarming rates. Black people are less likely to graduate from college, but are more likely to graduate with over $25,000 in student loan debt. Black people are more likely to
suffer from HIV, diabetes, and other serious health issues. The socioeconomic ills are widespread and numerous in the Black community.¶ And despite the hardships that we
face, we recognize that our ills are not happenstance or coincidence. They’re the product of elaborate designs instituted by white supremacy and patriarchy. Our hardships stem
When we say #BlackLivesMatter, we are
speaking about the unique hardships that the Black community faces. We are speaking directly about a heritage that
remains intact despite racist violence directed at us. To say #AllLivesMatter is an affront to Black heritage, people, and
culture and does nothing but take away from the potent truth that the Black existence
deserves ample recognition.¶ Arthur ChuYes, all lives matter in ideology. But all lives don’t matter in practice. Should society and history tell us, Black
from institutional racism—the policies and practices that purposely disadvantage Black communities.¶
lives don’t matter. When the murder of an unarmed teenager goes unpunished, and is further justified, all lives don’t matter. When a white man shoots up a movie theater, kills
#AllLivesMatter is a cheap attempt to neutralize the fact
that certain injustices and brutality are experienced by those with darkened skin. Please do not reshape the
12 people, terrorizes a nation, and is still alive … all lives don’t matter.¶
narrative in attempt to remain colorblind.
Now is the Key time – mobilization of the movement is key to counter media reframing of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
William Lynch Vice President, New Business Initiatives LLC : 01/08/2015 Stop Slandering 'Black
Lives Matter' http://www.huffingtonpost.com/-william-lynch-iii/stop-slandering-black-livesmatter_b_6437730.html
On December 20, New York City suffered an incredible tragedy: Depraved, cowardly madman Ismaaiyl Brinsley murdered NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. There is
not a scintilla of justification for Brinsley's actions, and it shall always be a sad chapter of our city's history. ¶ However, what has concerned me and many others is that some
folks are attempting to coopt this tragedy to slander the Black Lives Matter movement and
quash any attempt at reforms or accountability. Patrolmen's Benevolent Association president
Patrick Lynch (no relation to me) was quick to blame seemingly all critics of law enforcement when he declared, "There's blood on many hands tonight." He then
called for an end to the Black Lives Matter movement when he said, "It must not go on, it cannot be tolerated." Fraternal
Order of Police national president Chuck Canterbury gave a similar response, imploring us to
end criticism of law enforcement officers and regard their work as performed perfectly: "Enough is enough. There's nothing wrong with the
¶
way cops do their jobs that won't be fixed when politicians suck it up and attack the problems that breed poverty and crime." (Granted, I give him props for that last part.)¶
The editorial board at the New York Post also came down hard on demonstrators and critics of law
enforcement in reaction to the two murdered officers:¶ Clearly, the protesters -- egged on by politicians and professional activists -- have engaged in a warped campaign to fuel
anger at cops. Even before Saturday's slaying of these officers, some protesters had become violent and attacked cops. ¶ "What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it?
For weeks, our elites have
validated the "anger" of the protesters who have been taking over streets, bridges and tunnels. However, the Black Lives
Matter movement has always been overwhelmingly committed to nonviolence. This started back in August at
Now!" some chanted last week.¶ Now they've got their wish.¶ Less than two days later the editorial board was at it again: ¶
¶
the time of the "We Will Not Go Back" march, which I helped organize with my friend Al Sharpton, along with several labor unions. In the days leading to the march, Sharpton
penned a blog post on The Huffington Post expressing his support for police and for nonviolence: ¶ The moment we lose our pledge to a non-violent movement, we become part
of what we claim to be fighting. Do not allow this to happen; we must remain dedicated to a higher moral commitment. ... As I have often stated, not all police officers are bad.
In fact, I believe most of them truly are doing their best to protect people and reduce crime. ¶ The reverend reiterated this at the August rally:¶ We are not here to cause
violence. ... We are not against police. Most police do their job. But those that break the law must be held accountable. ... We are for police.¶ This was not simply empty rhetoric:
There was not a single arrest at the August march. ¶ Nor were there any incidents at last month's Harlem vigil, whose scope was expanded to also be a vigil for the murdered
cops. At the event, participants politely obliged with the requests of NYPD officers, who reciprocated with thank-yous. During the vigil event, one speaker proclaimed, "We're
not anti-police; we're anti-police-brutality. Every cop isn't bad." And, for those of you who gripe that black folks ignore the issue of crime among ourselves, during the service
following the vigil, Eric Garner's nephew gave a speech declaring, "I truly believe that when anybody gets murdered, by a police officer or by one of our kind, we should take the
the news media has been hard at work tracking down the handful of protesters
and others who did or even wrote something violent in order to stereotype the entire Black
Lives Matter movement as violent. And when there isn't something, the news media has resorted to
doctoring footage to make it look like a protester is calling for killing police when she was actually protesting peacefully. The Post has been at the forefront of
same stance."¶ Nevertheless,
¶
this tactic. For example, a columnist wrote an op-ed entitled, "Thought those anti-cop [sic] protesters were peaceful? Think again." He goes on to cite a single violent incident in
which Eric Linsker attempted to throw a garbage can and then attacked two cops trying to arrest him, while a few other protesters intervened physically.¶ I do not condone this
action, but nevertheless this columnist apparently could only find one incident involving violence. And the Post's own video of the incident shows, by my count, seven or eight
people being physical, where the physicality is mostly tugging at the officers trying to detain one person. Moreover, Linsker's attorney later described the attempted throwing of
this single incident was enough for
the Post to typify the entire demonstration as violent by using the headline "Poet accused of
assaulting cops during 'peaceful' protest," as opposed to something more accurate like "Poet accused of assaulting cops during otherwise
the garbage can as being that he picked up a garbage can, then put it down at the behest of police. ¶ However,
peaceful protest."¶ The same columnist also pointed to video of a few dozen protesters calling for dead cops, albeit while engaging in a nonviolent march. A quick glance of the
video shows a few dozen people, maybe 40 tops, which he somehow estimates it to be "hundreds if not thousands." ¶ Based on this evidence, the columnist declares, "Let's
make believe that only an itsy-bitsy handful of those anti-police protesters disrupting the city are hell-bent on mayhem." That statement is quite ironic because, although I was
never that good at math, by my calculations about 50 people out of thousands actually is an itsy-bitsy handful.¶ And when editorial boards and Patrick Lynch are lambasting
critics of law enforcement, they may want to take note of the number of conservative commentators who denounced the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner case. This
includes FOX News commentators Charles Krauthammer and Andrew Napolitano, who respectively called the decision not to indict as "totally incomprehensible" and "a grievous
wrong." That might have made for some awkward moments at the holiday party of the News Corporation, which owns the Post and FOX News, if anyone at the paper's editorial
board bumped into Krauthammer or Napolitano, considering that the board implied their co-workers are among the "elites" who "validated the 'anger' of the protesters" and
But you know what? Let's do an intellectual exercise and take as fact that the
Black Lives Matter movement is violent based on the Post's standards. Now, let's apply that logic
consistently. How about sports fans who loot and riot after games, whether their team wins or loses? Last year, fans at
helped incite Ramos' and Liu's murders.¶
the University of Arizona rioted and attacked police after their basketball team lost in the March Madness tournament. This past October, fans at West Virginia University
"celebrated" their football team's upset victory over Baylor by setting fires and damaging property. Even worse, one person was actually killed in a soccer riot in Spain last
November, as reported by the Post.¶ But did the paper accompany the article with an op-ed entitled, "Thought sports fans were peaceful? Think again"? Have there been calls
for all sporting events to be held in empty arenas? Or that no one should ever again peacefully celebrate or lament the outcome of a sporting event? The next time a New York
Let's also apply this logic to
typify law enforcement officers based on the actions of a few. New York Magazine compiled a list of comments in response to
sports franchise wins a championship (God willing), will the Post publish an editorial saying we not have a victory parade? ¶
Garner's murder. These comments were posted on the police message boards Thee RANT and PoliceOne. Both message boards require users to provide documentation in order
to be verified as police officers before they can post.¶ Here are some of the lowlights of message board postings by verified law enforcement officers in response to Garner's
homicide. All spelling and grammatical mistakes in the original:¶ Tough shit and too damn bad.¶ I guess it's the best thing for his tribe. He probably never worked a legit job. They
city will pay off the family and they will be in Nigggaaa heaven for the rest of their lives!!¶ If the fat fuk just put his hands behind his back none of this would have escalated into
what it did.¶ The cities of America are held hostage by the strong-arm tactics of the savages¶ After the grand jury decided not to indict Officer Pantaleo, forum users expressed
similar sentiments:¶ I WILL DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO KEEP MY 2 SONS FROM EVER, EVER BEING LEOS [law enforcement officers]...I will not let my sons be sacraficed for
ungrateful, spoiled, hateful animals.¶ Thank the good Lord it happened in the Isle of Staten where there are still some working class white folks. ¶ F u c k Black America, their
equal or worse than whites, when speaking of Racism... ¶ F u c k Diversity, it's not working and never will work...Diversity only accomplishes one thing, Lazy, Dumb idiots who
don't care about any Position they attain, You Listening Mr. President ?¶ And this, ahem, insensitivity is not limited to message boards. There was also this police charity event in
California last month, hosted by retired LAPD officer Joe Myers, with an estimated 25 to 30 LAPD officers in attendance. The event included a performance by former federal
investigator Gary Fishell, who mocked Michael Brown's death with a song parody of "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" where "Michael" replaced "Leroy." Reportedly no one at the event
voiced any objection to the song, whose lyrics included the following:¶ And Michael looked like some old Swiss cheese¶ His brain was splattered on the floor¶ And he's dead,
dead Michael Brown¶ Deadest man in the whole damn town¶ So is all of this conclusive evidence that all law enforcement officers are racist? Of course not. Because this all adds
up to a handful of disparate anecdotes from a minute fraction of police. And that's exactly my point: Do not characterize any broad cross-section of people -- be it cops,
protesters, or anyone else -- based on cherry picking what a few of them do or say.¶ You know what? I'll hold my nose and empathize with the Post a little bit. I hope their
editors and columnists are slandering the Black Lives Matter movement because somewhere deep, deep down inside they think it's for a good end, misguided though it may be.
But we cannot and will not
allow any smears to quash the movement to end excessive force by a small percentage of law
enforcement officers. This is a critical juncture, one where folks are more vocal than ever before
about criminal justice reform, and the horrific murders of two NYPD officers must not be a
strawman for ending any type of reform. We've gained too much momentum to let that
happen.
Heck, I'll even concede that Patrick Lynch's job is to advocate for his membership, not to be polite or strive for accuracy. ¶
Without the success of the BLM movement, the anti-black violence prevalent in
society makes reconciliation impossible – we must act as soon as possible.
Brady 12 [Nicholas Brady, activist scholar, executive board member of Leaders of a Beautiful
Struggle, BA in philosophy from Johns Hopkins, PhD student at the University of California-Irvine
Culture and Theory program, 10-26-12, “The Flesh Grinder: Prosecutorial Discretion and the
Terror of Mass Incarceration,”
http://academia.edu/2776507/The_Flesh_Grinder_Prosecutorial_Discretion_and_the_Quotidia
n_Terror_of_Mass_Incarceration]
The recent murder of Trayvon Martin brought the national conversation back to a topic that had
been repressed for the myth of a post-racial America propagated since the election of Barack
Obama to the presidency: the fundamental openness of the black body to wanton and excessive
abuse and “premature death” (Gilmore, 28). That the national narrative around Martin’s death, even
the narratives built by black political and civil leaders, only had Emit Till to compare his death to
is example par excellance of the complete lack of any language we have to discuss the
machinations that make a phrase such as “black death” into a redundancy. Trayvon Martin was
not a singular case but was one of 120 black people killed extra-judicially (by police officers, security officials, and
vigilante justice-seekers) in 2012 between January and July . That every 36 hours on average a black life is
taken extra-judicially means that Trayvon Martin is not exceptional, but we do not have a
language to deal with either the exceptional or the quotidian. Into the abyss, though the demand for justice, something
productive happened: the rallying cry for justice made an invisible and ethereal part of the justice system into something a little more material. The call to arrest
and charge George Zimmerman brought our attention to the role of the Prosecutor in the
criminal punishment system. After the protests, statement from the President, and daily media blitzes, a special prosecutor was assigned to the case to
meet the calls for justice. Angela Corey would become the face for an area of the law that is both ubiquitous and unthought. It seems she understood this for her statement,
before officially giving the charge, set up a context for evaluating prosecutors, ¶ The Supreme Court has defined our role as Proscutors [as] not only “ministers of justice” but
“seekers of the truth.”… Every single day our prosecutors across this great country handle difficult cases and they adhere to that same standard: a never ending search for the
truth and a quest to always do the right thing for the right reason. There is a reason cases are tried in a court of law and not in the court of public opinion or the media. Because
details have to come out in excruciating and minute fashion. Detail by detail, bit of evidence by bit of evidence. And it is only then, when the Trier of fact whether judge or jury,
gets all the details that then a decision can be rendered. ¶ Corey is laboring to legitimize a system that took weeks to actually arrest George Zimmerman, yet this labor represses
Marissa Alexander. Alexander is a mother who was convicted of attempted
murder because she shot a warning shot at the father of her children who has admitted to
beating her on several occasions before. Alexander was arrested on spot and charged within
days in a case where the “stand your ground” defense was also being called upon. This supposed
her own case history, for example the case of
contradiction of methods that meet different bodies is the norm of the criminal punishment system, and this paper will attempt to string out some parts of the structure that
make it so. ¶ In many disciplines there has been renewed attention given to mass incarceration. Yet, in spite of the growing level of multidisciplinary scrutiny on police
surveillance and violent gulags, a major actor has slipped through virtually untouched in the humanities' attention to prisons. This major actor, regularly described in criminology
and legal scholarship as the most powerful agent in the criminal punishment system, is the Prosecutor. The office of the prosecutor exists in a place where matter doesn't
the prosecutor’s agency is assembled where black matter no longer matters and
where what matters, the happenings of the human and the quest for civil justice, can only be
produced through the quotidian grinding and destruction of black flesh.¶ This paper will seek to shine a light, or
matter. Or put differently,
better yet a shadow, on the white knights of the justice system. While one would think they know the job of a Prosecutor given its ubiquity on television crime dramas and
movies, the mundaneness of their actual day-to-day activities are mystified by television's fascination with the drama of the trial, whether fictional or "real." In fact, it is rare that
you will find a prosecutor who takes even 10 percent of their cases to trial. Over 90 percent of cases are settled through a plea bargain where the defendant will agree to plead
guilty usually for the guarantee of less time, parole, or a lighter charge. As one law professor put it, the plea bargain is not an addendum to the criminal justice system, it is the
criminal justice system (Scott and Stuntz, 1912). In spite of its centrality, there is little literature on the inner-workings of the plea bargain outside of schematic analysis in
criminology. Instead of focusing on the theatrics of the trial, this paper will analyze the day-to-day grind of the plea bargain in order to explicate the quotidian terror that lies at
the heart of prosecutorial discretion. ¶ From day-to-day a Prosecutor can be working on anywhere between 20 to 100 cases at a time (Heumann, 98). While a Prosecutor is given
wide discretion to charge a case the way they want, there are hierarchies that determine the norms and procedures of each office. There are the district attorneys that the
general population votes into office and the deputy attorneys that answer directly to him or her. Underneath them are the line prosecutors who work on the majority of the
cases but whose decisions generally follow the established protocols of the veteran prosecutors and deputies. New prosecutors often come straight from law school with lofty
dreams of becoming courtroom heroes only to learn that their job is much more akin to assembly-line justice. Legal scholar Abraham Blumberg describes this as the, “emergence
of ‘bureaucratic due process,’… consist[ing] of secret bargaining sessions [and] employing subtle, bureaucratically ordained modes of coercion and influence to dispose of large
case loads” (Blumberg, 69). ¶ While each office is different from the next, there is a stunning amount of unity at the procedural level. Deputy district attorneys will reject thirty
to forty percent of cases the police send to them on face. The remaining 60 percent are considered suspects that are, according to the evidence provided, conclusively guilty. For
the Prosecutor, these cases would be slam-dunk wins in front of a jury (Lewis, 51). This begs the question: What is the dividing line between cases that are charged and cases
In terms of drug crimes,
according to a comprehensive report by Human Rights Watch, blacks are 14 percent of drug
users, but are 37 percent of people arrested for drug possession, and are anywhere between 45
to 60 percent of those charged . These strings of numbers reveal an anti-black trajectory: the
cases that the Prosecutor overwhelmingly pursues are black cases, the ones he drops are
overwhelmingly non-black. A defense attorney called these for-sure-guilty cases “born dead.”
This is a curious phrase, but when considering the historic connection between blackness and
crime dating back to the inception of the national polity through slavery, the defense attorney’s
phrasing gets us to a much more paradigmatic argument. Walt Lewis, a Los Angeles prosecutor, describes a
“criminal justice” continuum where bodies are transformed from being “free” to being
“incarcerated” (Lewis, 20). One is first arrested by the police and becomes a “suspect.” If the
prosecutor decides to charge, then you go from being a “suspect” to a “defendant.” Finally if
you are found guilty, you go from being a “defendant” to a “convict.” This process describes a
temporality that transforms the “human” into the incarcerated “inhuman.” As violent as this
process can be, the black’s fate is fundamentally different and more terrifying. The black is
arrested, charged, and convicted at disproportionate rates because we were never actually
“suspects” or “defendants.” Instead, we were always criminals, always already slaves-in-waiting.
Instead of a continuum, the black body floats in a “zone of non-being” where time and
transformation lose all meaning. Cases involving black bodies do not need to be rock-solid in
that get dropped by Prosecutors? ¶ Some statistics on the racial component of sentencing might lead us to an answer.
terms of facts for their bodies have already been marked by the law as criminal (Fanon, 2). Thus cases
involving black bodies are always for-sure victories, are always already “born dead.” ¶ In an interesting
case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court titled United States versus Armstrong, a group of black defendants levied a critique similar to this paper’s argument . A
group of black men were brought on charges of possessing 50 grams of crack cocaine. Unlike a normal
defense where the details of the state’s accusation would be called into question, the defense instead argued that the prosecution
selectively charges black people in cases involving crack cocaine. The first argument of the defense was that the majority of
crack cocaine users in California are actually whites, not black people. The second argument of the defense used testimonies from government lawyers to prove that of all 841
cases the state brought against people possessing crack cocaine, all of them were black. Using these two claims, the defense said there was adequate proof to show that
prosecutors were using unconstitutional means, racial markers, to select who would be charged and who wouldn’t be charged. According to past rulings by the Supreme Court, if
selective prosecution can be proven then that is adequate grounds to vacate the sentence, even if the defendants were caught “red-handed.” Against this defense, the
prosecution counter-argued that it does not selectively prosecute based on race, but instead on fact and circumstance. The district court that initially heard the appeal ruled that
the state should turn over records of the 841 cases in question to prove who was right in the dispute. The state refused to reveal its documents and instead appealed the
the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the
prosecution for a few reasons. The first reason Rehnquist gave was that it is not in the best interest of
the government’s war on crime to monitor prosecutors. Rehnquist argued that the prosecutor must have the freedom to operate
in the way she sees fit. The second and most important reason Rehnquist gave was by far the most
explicitly racist and I will quote it in full: quote “a published 1989 Drug Enforcement
Administration report concluded that "[l]arge scale, interstate trafficking networks controlled by
Jamaicans, Haitians and Black street gangs dominate the manufacture and distribution of
crack.… [and] the most recent statistics of the United States Sentencing Commission… show
that: More than 90% of the persons sentenced in 1994 for crack cocaine trafficking were black.”
. The Supreme Court answered the defendant’s accusation of selective prosecution by arguing that such a prosecution strategy is legitimate because it can be verified through
statistics that black people are the major users and distributors of crack cocaine. To word it differently, the Supreme Court ruled that it was in
the state’s interest to terrorize black communities because we are the most heinous drug users
in the country. To be black is to be marked as a danger that must be controlled, seized, and
incarcerated. Prosecutors act within and perpetuate this matrix of violence that precedes
discourse. When a Prosecutor sees a case with a black body, he knows the same statistic the
Supreme Court quoted and he knows, if not consciously then unconsciously, that this case is
already done, already guilty, already “born dead.”
decision all the way up to the Supreme Court. Overturning the district and federal circuit court,
The Success of the Movement is key because it represents an opportunity to
reshape the way individuals understand racial dynamics in the status quo –
instead of viewing violence against minority populations as isolated moments,
the plans empathetic politics would help create an understanding of how these
moments are part of a larger narrative of prejudice in the United States
Strabuk 14 (Alexa, Media analyst from The Student Life Pomona Opinions Editorial Board and
Opinions Editor, 12-5-14, “Responding to Misleading Media Narratives in the Wake of Ferguson,
Staten Island”, http://tsl.pomona.edu/articles/2014/12/5/opinions/5845-responding-tomisleading-media-narratives-in-the-wake-of-ferguson-staten-island)
Last week, a Missouri grand jury voted not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of
Michael Brown. This week, a grand jury in New York voted not to indict police officer Daniel
Pantaleo for the killing of Eric Garner. None of these incidents was an isolated event. The
deaths of these men and the decisions not to indict their killers are a manifestation of
systemic social problems in the United States. In Claremont, students organized a march as a
sign of solidarity with the Ferguson community and as a call to action against the broader
problem of institutionalized racism in the United States, as Jazmin Ocampo reports (See News,
page 1). We applaud those students for acting on their beliefs: for not remaining in silence, or
limiting dissent to Tweets and Facebook posts. While social media does provide a venue for
raising awareness, we believe that change will require much more effort. As part of that effort,
we should all do what we can to keep educating ourselves about what happened and is
happening in Ferguson and in New York and the reality of institutionalized racism in the
United States. Self-education has not been made easier by unprofessional media coverage of
Ferguson. One of the most common trends in major news organizations' coverage of this issue
has been the overemphasis on incidents of violence and theft and the downplaying of peaceful
protests. At best, we consider this coverage to be underinformed; at worst, it is irresponsible
and dangerously misleading. As student journalists, we believe in the value of thorough and
objective reporting. But navigating the modern deluge of hastily written and re-reported news
can be daunting. For those seeking quality reporting on the events in Ferguson, or on national
issues like structural racism and police militarization, we encourage you to look beyond the
dominant headlines and seek out diligent, on-the-ground reporting. We also recommend
turning to organizations that emphasize the perspectives and experiences of people of color
because too many news organizations are overwhelmingly white. As the attention span of the
national media wanes—and it is already waning—find the authors, the publications and the
websites that give context to these momentary events. Whatever articles you read, question
them. Attune yourself to sensational buzzwords, hasty generalizations and simple narratives.
These are complex issues that deserve complex treatment, and we must use our capacity for
understanding to its fullest, especially when the narratives involved have too often been
silenced or ignored. Beyond education, we hope that students continue to take action within
this community, and we challenge others to aid in tackling the problems that pervade our
nation. And we hope that those who have been moved by these events will not allow time or
diminishing media focus to obscure the ways that national problems become individual
tragedies. There are many lessons to be learned from the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric
Garner. Only through perseverance—in observation, in education and in action—will we truly
learn.
That’s necessary to create a paradigmatic shift in the ways that the education
system approaches understandings of race relations in the United States
Chandler and McKnight 9
(Prentice Chandler – Ph.D from the University of Alabama, Assistant Professor of Social Studies
Education and Critical Race Theory, and Douglas McKnight - Ph.D. Louisiana State University,
professor of Educational Leadership, Policy and Technology Studies and Social and Cultural
Studies, “The Failure of Social Education in the United States: A Critique of Teaching the National
Story from "White" Colourblind Eyes,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, v7 n2 p217248 Nov 2009)
studies, given its disciplinary inclusive nature, has from its inception as an academic field in the late 1800s, the potential to become a critical tool to
explain how attitudes and beliefs about race have often led to anti-democratic exercises, such as
the marginalization and oppression of non-whites within the US (Bell, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Nelson & Pang, 2001;
Parker, 2001; Santora, 2001). To view the field in such a way precludes teachers, especially white teachers, from hiding behind the belief
that they are but telling a neutral, factual story of historical events. This ―neutral‖ narrative actually privileges a
The social
monocultural perspective (Geher, 1993) that makes itself visible (i.e. Anglo-European culture) and all other perspectives invisible or visible only on the periphery as a warning to
These peripheral forms of existence that counter the dominant white culture are
considered a threat against true ―Americans‖ (white, conservative, patriarchal, heterosexual, etc) and are to be ―warred
against, as evident in US cable television shows such as O’Reilly Factor and Hannity (both on Fox News Channel) and both of which have large audiences.¶ Within
the institution of schooling and in the academic research, social studies has historically tended
to ignore the theme of race in relation to the national narrative, specifically glossing over how some
members of society not part of the Anglo-European, middle class, protestant temperament (Greven,
1977) have been silenced or relegated to victim status in the telling of the story. An effect is that races other than
white (i.e. African-Americans, Native Americans) are depicted as groups acted upon by the
forces and personalities of history rather than as actors within history. Simply, the ―white male‖
character is preserved as the main protagonist of the national story, which is presented within
the curriculum and in textbooks as a chronological, linear story of great moral, political, technological,
economic and even spiritual progress.¶ However, an analysis of the social studies field has exhibited a dearth of research into how race
the dominant culture.
permeates how the national story is told in the curriculum and classroom (Chandler, 2007). In effect, mainstream social studies research perceives race in terms of a series of
cause and effect events rather than as a persistent subtext of the whole narrative that has to a large degree defined US society and perpetuated a condition of being white as a
Social studies as a discipline tends
to approach race in US history as a problem dealt with and solved during the past, such as the
Civil War (white man as the ―great liberator‖) and again in the Civil Rights era (with the curriculum privileging
the peaceful, or sanitized, version of the African-American voice, such as civil rights leader Martin Luther King, instead of the more
threatening voice of Malcolm X). After each event, race disappears within the textual landscape of the
―American‖ story and so from the minds of students, making social studies a ―poor resource for enabling students to develop a discourse of contemporary race and
form of property that provides special privileges (Harris, 1993; McIntosh, 1990; Solomon, Portelli, Daniel, & Campbell, 2005).
ethnic relations that addresses institutional racism, structural inequality, and power‖ (Wills, 2001, p. 43). In constructing the social studies and the story of the US in this way, the
interactions between groups of people are hidden in plain sight, removed from the
narrative and from analysis (Wills, 2001).¶ In an effort to address these issues, this article will explore the lack of research on the issue of race in social
important
studies research and textbooks in relation to the US. We do not attempt to draw conclusions beyond the US because of our focus on national narratives and how those
narratives play out in a racialized context, hence, precluding any claims beyond that particular context. We will interrogate the possible reasons why race, which should be an
emphasized area of US social studies research and curriculum in both schools and in teacher preparation, is subsumed within a colour-blind framework rather than from a
critical race theory (Harris, 1993) or critical multiculturalism (McCarthy, 1994) perspective that interrogates the racial component in ¶ Since its inception as a formal field of
Social studies, in the broadest sense, is the
preparation of young people so that they posses the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for
active participation in society‖ (Ross, 2001, p. 21).¶ This preparation involves the creation of narratives within social studies that carry certain moral
goals of directing students to a model of what their relationship to the greater society should look like (Morrissett, 1981). As Geher identifies: ―The success of
the monocultural ideal was closely tied to the emerging role of the United States as a
hegemonic power. This is expressed ideologically in the common pronouncement that the United States unified the West, completed the course of Western
study, the expressed goal of the social studies has been that of citizenship education (Shaver, 1981). ―
development, and set global standards of civilization in fierce rivalry with the Soviet Union‖ (1993, p. 509). In essence, the national narrative has always embodied some form of
progress toward some great end or perfection.
The archetype of US exceptionality brings forth the following ideas social studies teachers‘
pedagogy: (1) God is on our side, (2) civilization has been created from the wilderness, (3) Europeans have created order where disorder existed before, and (4) hard
work, merit, and virtuous character pay off (Loewen, 1995). ―For these unexcelled blessings, the pupil is urged to follow in the footsteps of his forbears, to offer unquestioning
Hence, the history written has been a form of
mytho-history constructed for individuals to embody (Geher, 1993; McNeill, 1986). For the colonial Puritans, it was the ―errand into
obedience to the law of the land, and to carry on the work begun‖ (Pierce, 1926, p. 113).¶
the wilderness‖ and a ―city upon the hill‖ (Bercovitch, 1975); for the next era it was Enlightenment Progress; then Manifest Destiny; to the more recent belief in the US as the
The theme of US exceptionalism, and its subsequent protection of all the
material rewards that its people feel they deserve, undergirds all of the mainstream stories as
told through the social studies. However, conflict arises over the responsibility of social studies educators beyond that point: whether such narratives
moral arbiter and protector of the world.
need to be merely recited, as in a history teacher‘s lecture pulled directly from a textbook or from pre-packaged curricula resources; or to tell the story, analyze it historically and
interpret to what degree it has and continues to match concrete reality. Shaver (1981) defines the basic dilemma in this way: ―How can the school contribute to the continuity
of the society by preserving and passing on its traditions and values the telling of the national narrative. while also contributing to appropriate social change by helping youth to
question current social forms and solutions‖ (p. 125)? Given Shaver‘s (1981) acknowledgement of such foundational concerns, it is difficult to explain why social studies research
has largely ignored race as a major persistent theme within the national story (Marri, 2001; Marshall, 2001; Pang, Rivera, & Gillette, 1998; Tyson, 2001). In fact an excellent
recent work that appears to be an exception to the problem of race in relation to education in general in the US, Ross & Pang‘s (2006) edition of Race, Ethnicity and Education,
actually confirms the problem. Those involved in the social studies scholarship in these important volumes have removed themselves from the mainstream of NCSS -- given its
complete resistance to any such discussion of race -- and are now situated on the periphery so as to find any space to inquire into such controversial issues. Mainstream social
studies research has failed to confront directly the issue of race in any meaningful way.¶ Telling is a review of the social studies literature from 1973 to the present in the
premier US social studies research journal, Theory and Research in Social Education (TRSE), subsidized by NCSS, reveals a lack of scholarly inquiry into the different issues of race.
Noticeably absent are the issues of race as a subject matter in the social studies curriculum, as well as how race shapes the classroom as a cultural space in which ―whiteness‖ is
privileged. In Ehman‘s (1998) extensive review of TRSE from 1973-1997, only 6% dealt with ―social problems and controversial issues,‖ of which race would be a part. An
analysis of the years after 1997 to the present found the same persistent lack of research in general confronting ―controversial issues‖ in TRSE, and in specific lack of racial
analysis (Chandler, 2007). Nelson & Fernekes (1996) found that NCSS has a long history of not taking stands on significant social conflicts between those privileged within the
dominant culture and those oppressed by it:¶ The National Council for the Social Studies‘ record on civil rights can only be characterized as negligent at best and indifferent at
worst. NCSS largely ignored the civil rights movement and in the process demonstrated indifference toward a social crisis of immense significance, one that challenged the very
basis of democratic institutions and posed difficult questions for educators who daily had to confront the gap between the stated ideals and social experience. (p. 98)¶ Two
recent volumes of social education research are instructive in how race is either situated on the margins or is sanitized and hidden within the large framework of colour-blind
multiculturalism and diversity (further examined below). Critical Issues in Social Studies Teacher Education (Adler, 2004) and Critical Issues in Social Studies Research for the 21st
Century (Stanley, 2001) present race as a topic on the periphery of social studies thought and research. Of the 33 chapters that constitute these two volumes, written by the
foremost scholars in the field of social studies research, five address the issue of race mostly as a subset of either urban and/or global education or as just one piece of
multicultural education. The one chapter that examines race as an unavoidable thematic within the national narrative is Santora‘s (2001) work on cross-cultural dialogue. From
socially constructed notions of race and whiteness define what the
dominant culture believes is ―normality,‖ which in turn perpetuates the privileging of
―whiteness‖ within education. Santora‘s analysis complements Nelson and Pang‘s (2001) findings of how within the social studies curriculum the
this perspective, she addresses how
national narrative fails to match the material reality of social studies classrooms. They identified that while the ―root ideas of liberty, justice, and equality‖ (Nelson & Pang,
2001, p. 144) were spoken the actions of teacher and student betrayed the sentiment by failing to interrogate the contradictions that existed between words and deeds. ―This
that justice and equality are not the standards of US society, no
matter the credo‖ (Nelson & Pang, 2001, p. 144).¶ While the mainstream social studies is quick to transmit the story of colonial resistance, the virtues of
is a sobering and disquieting scenario, one that illustrates
republicanism, superiority of ―American‖ culture and Manifest Destiny, race and its central role in the creation of the US is disregarded (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Lybarger,
The danger of this is that a failure to confront the legacy of race in the US will preclude
students from understanding how racial injustice continues even as legislative attempts at
redress, such as affirmative action, are struck down as unnecessary in the present age. This leads to an absence of examining race
within the social studies as an important determinant of US past, present and future. In fact, Nelson &
Pang (2001) found in examination of the social studies curriculum and practice a field characterized by ―dullness, vapidity,
absolutism, censorship, and inaccuracy in the promotion of patriotic nationalism and
conservative social values‖ (p. 152) that fails to interrogate claims of US moral certitude and self-righteousness.¶ This is even more problematic given the
broad and powerful critique by Critical Race Theory (CRT), revealing how US history is a story of racialization in which the
freedom of some was preserved through the enslavement and oppression of others through
legal means (Dixon & Rousseau, 2005; Harris, 1993; Roithmayer, 1999). Domestic and foreign policy of the US have been predicated on
racial notions; from Native genocide, to African enslavement, to Jim Crow legislation, to Manifest Destiny (i.e. empire building), the history of the US is
tied to the manifestation of racism and racist regimes (Howard, 2001). Also missing is any analysis on the interaction between the
1991).
races. The social studies is the one discipline that could provide students with a language to ―develop a discourse of contemporary race and ethnic relations that addresses
institutional racism, structural inequality, and power‖ (Wills, 2001, p. 43). Instead, the social studies mentions certain groups of people (i.e. women, Native Americans, African
This gives the impression
that either oppression does not exist or that nothing can be done about it because history is
perceived as pre-determined and progressive. In fact, case studies with white high school social studies teachers found that these teachers
Americans) without any reference to the superstructure of oppression that causes their situation and/or respective actions.
tended to mention certain facts involving those of non-Anglo European backgrounds (e.g. Civil Rights, Slavery, battles with Native American tribes). However, no context was
ever provided concerning the tension of how race and racial attitudes generated a condition in which those groups claiming to celebrate and represent the best of US identity
(e.g. equality, individual freedom, liberty, democracy) could in the same moment engage in acts of oppressing others who, while non- Anglo, wanted to embody the same
national identity (Chandler, 2007).
Racism is an A Priori Impact
Memmi 2000, Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ Unv. Of Paris 2000, Albert-; RACISM,
translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission,
probably never achieved, yet for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without
surcease and without concessions. One cannot be indulgent toward racism. One cannot even
let the monster in the house, especially not in a mask. To give it merely a foothold means to
augment the bestial part in us and in other people which is to diminish what is human. To
accept the racist universe to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice, and violence. It
is to accept the persistence of the dark history in which we still largely live. It is to agree that
the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which [person] man is not [themself] himself
an outsider relative to someone else?). Racism illustrates in sum, the inevitable negativity of the
condition of the dominated; that is it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human condition.
The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the
prologues to the ultimate passage from animality to humanity. In that sense, we cannot fail to
rise to the racist challenge. However, it remains true that one’s moral conduct only emerges
from a choice: one has to want it. It is a choice among other choices, and always debatable in
its foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice to conduct
oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order for which racism is the
very negation. This is almost a redundancy. One cannot found a moral order, let alone a
legislative order, on racism because racism signifies the exclusion of the other and his or her
subjection to violence and domination. From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little
religious language, racism is “the truly capital sin.”fn22 It is not an accident that almost all of
humanity’s spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers.
It is not just a question of theoretical counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows or
strangers. It is not just a question of theoretical morality and disinterested commandments.
Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such sentiments. All
things considered, we have an interest in banishing injustice, because injustice engenders
violence and death. Of course, this is debatable. There are those who think that if one is strong
enough, the assault on and oppression of others is permissible. But no one is ever sure of
remaining the strongest. One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All unjust society
contains within itself the seeds of its own death. It is probably smarter to treat others with
respect so that they treat you with respect. “Recall,” says the bible, “that you were once a
stranger in Egypt,” which means both that you ought to respect the stranger because you were
a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming once again someday. It is an ethical and a
practical appeal – indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be. In short, the refusal of
racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical morality. Because, in the end, the ethical
choice commands the political choice. A just society must be a society accepted by all. If this
contractual principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot.
If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace. True, it is a wager, but the stakes are
irresistible.
Fusion Centers Target Social Movements
Fusion Centers Target The Black Lives Matter Movement
Activist Groups, and African Americans in particular, are considered ‘domestic
terrorist’ activities, and are heavily monitored.
Lee Fang, Journalist Extraordinaire, 3/12/2015, "Why Was an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force
Tracking a Black Lives Matter Protest?," Intercept,
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/12/fbi-appeared-use-informant-track-black-livesmatter-protest/
Members of an FBI Joint
Terrorism Task Force tracked
The email from
Minnesota, email obtained by The Intercept shows.
the time and location of
a Black Lives Matter protest
last December at the Mall of America in Bloomington,
David S. Langfellow, a St. Paul police officer and member of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, informs a fellow task force member from the Bloomington police that “CHS
an FBI special agent and
Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor
was CC’d on the email.
The FBI characterizes them as “our nation’s front line on
terrorism.”
“Our system disproportionately targets,
profiles and kills black men and women, that’s what we are here talking about,”
We wanted to show people who have the everyday luxury of just living their lives that they
need to be aware of this, too.” According to an FBI spokesman, Langfellow’s Confidential Human
Source was “a tipster with whom Mr. Langfellow is familiar,” who contacted him “after the
tipster had discovered some information while on Facebook” that “some individuals may engage
in vandalism”
There is no mention of potential vandalism anywhere in the email
chain, and no vandalism occurred
just confirmed the MOA protest I was taking to you about today, for the 20th of DEC @ 1400 hours.” CHS is a law enforcement acronym for “confidential human source.” Jeffrey VanNest,
at the FBI’s Minneapolis office,
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces are based in 104 U.S. cities and
are made up of approximately 4,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officials.
Activists had planned the protest at the mall to call attention to police brutality against African Americans.
organizer Michael McDowell told a reporter
at the time. “
at the Mall of America protest. Upon receiving the email, Bloomington police officer and task-force member Benjamin Mansur forwarded it to Bloomington’s then-Deputy Police Chief Rick Hart, adding “Looks like it’s going to be
the 20th…” It was then forwarded to all Bloomington police command staff.
at the Mall of America protest. The FBI spokesman emphasized that “As for any ‘FBI interest’ in the Black Lives Matter campaign, the FBI had (has) none,” and “makes
certain its operational mandates do not interfere with activities protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” The spokesman acknowledged that vandalism does not fall under the Memorandum of Understanding establishing the parameters under
Asked why , the Joint Terrorism
Task Force supervisor, was CC’d on Langfellow’s email, the spokesman responded “I don’t
know”
The fact that they’re spending resources in this manner reflects poor
leadership and is something that they should really take a hard look at.”
FBI
connected organizations such as
Greenpeace and the Catholic Worker movement
as domestic terrorism cases
Joint
Terrorism Task Force, was in charge of a 2008 raid on the home of St. Paul activists ahead of that
year’s Republican Party Convention that led to a lawsuit that the city settled for $50,000.
FBI engaged in well-known, ugly mistreatment of African American activists in particular
FBI and law enforcement generally of law enforcement agents seeing challenges to the
status quo as threats to security
FBI field office in 1971 showed the Bureau was
keeping literally every black student at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania under surveillance.
which local police officers are detailed to Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the task force mission of “prevention, preemption, deference and investigation of terrorist acts.”
VanNest
but speculated it was “as a matter of courtesy.” “Clearly it’s inappropriate to be using the Joint Terrorist Task Force to monitor activists [and] the use of a CHS seems extremely inappropriate,” said Michael German, a fellow at New York University’s
Brennan Center for Justice and former special agent with the FBI. “
The FBI has been criticized in the recent past for its actions
regarding domestic advocacy groups. A 2010 report by the Department of Justice Inspector General found the
opened investigations
to
that classified possible “trespassing or vandalism”
. The
report also found the FBI’s National Press Office “made false and misleading statements” when questioned by the media about documents obtained by public records requests. Langfellow himself, while working as a member of a
Further in the past,
the
. “There’s a long
history in the
,” said German. Documents stolen from an
After the December 20 Mall of America protest, the city of Bloomington charged 11 protestors with six separate criminal misdemeanors, including unlawful assembly, and is seeking thousands of dollars in restitution. Jordan Kushner, one of the activist’s defense
attorneys, says the city has alleged $25,000 in police costs and that he also received a letter from the Mall of America seeking $40,000 for mall security costs, raising overall restitution to $65,000. As reported by the Star Tribune, emails released earlier this week
reveal apparent coordination between Sandra Johnson, the Bloomington city attorney, and Kathleen Allen, the Mall of America’s corporate counsel. “It’s the prosecution’s job to be the enforcer and MOA needs to continue to put on a positive, safe face,” Johnson
wrote to Allen two days after the protest, encouraging the mall company to wait for a criminal charge from the city before pursuing its own lawsuit. “Agree — we would defer any civil action depending on how the criminal charges play out,” Allen wrote back. “That’s
pretty unprecedented to use a criminal proceeding for a corporation to collect their costs, costs for policing and protest,” said Kushner. “It’s not like people stole from them or damaged belongings.” Nekima Levy-Pounds, a professor of law at the University of St.
Thomas in St. Paul and one of the Black Lives Matter defendants, said she found parallels between the conduct of law enforcement in Minnesota and the tactics used against civil rights protesters a generation ago. “I think it’s relevant,” she said, adding that in both
instances, officers attempted to “curb nonviolent peaceful protests and to violate people’s rights to free speech.”
Fusion Centers Target Minorities (General)
The nature of our surveillance system targets minorities on social media
Fuchs 15 [Fuchs, Christian. “Towards a theoretical model of social media surveillance in
contemporary society.” http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/surv.pdf 6/23/15 IH]
The focus on fighting and preventing terrorism and the creation of a culture of categorical suspicion is one of the societal contexts
of social media surveillance. Social media contain
a lot of data about personal interests and social
relations. The police and secret services have therefore developed a special interest in being
able to monitor social media usage, as evidenced by the existence of the global PRISM internet surveillance program.
Police surveillance of social media in the situation of post-9/11 categorical suspicion can easily result in the
constant monitoring of social media activities of citizens and the police assumption that all users
are actual or potential criminals and terrorists until proven innocent. There is also the danger that social
media surveillance conducted by the police is especially directed towards groups that already
face discrimination in Western societies, like immigrants, people of color, people of Arabic or
African background, the poor, the unemployed, or political activists, and that thereby
stereotypes and discrimination are deepened and reified. A second societal implication of surveillance is the
actual or potential fostering of social sorting as a specific form of discrimination. Oscar H. Gandy (1993) has in this context coined
the notion of the panoptic sort. It is a system of power and disciplinary surveillance that identifies, classifies, and assesses
(Gandy, 1993, p. 15). David Lyon (2003b) considers Gandy’s notion of the panoptic sort in relation to computers and the internet
as social sorting. In newer works, Gandy (2009) has pointed out the connection of social sorting and cumulative disadvantages:
“Cumulative disadvantage refers to the ways in which historical disadvantages cumulate over time, and across categories of
experience” (Gandy, 2009, p. 12). Thus, membership in a targeted group as well as other kinds of disadvantage become a
dominant factor in determining future negative social outcomes: “People
who have bad luck in one area, are
likely to suffer from bad luck in other areas as well” (Gandy, 2009, p. 116). 128 This means that if you have
dark skin, are poor, live in a deprived neighborhood, have become unemployed or ill, etc., you
are more likely to be discriminated against and flagged as a risk group by data mining and other
social sorting technologies. The arbitrary disadvantages an individual has suffered then cumulate and result in further
disadvantages that are enforced by predictive algorithms which calculate based on certain previous behavior that an individual is
part of a risk group and should therefore be discriminated against (by not being offered a service, being offered a lower quality
service at a higher price – e.g., in the case of a loan or mortgage –, by being considered as a criminal or terrorist, etc.). “Once
they have been identified as criminals, or even as potential criminals, poor people, and black people
in particular, are systematically barred from the opportunities they might otherwise use to improve their
status in life” (Gandy, 2009, p. 141). Social media profiles are a historical accumulation and storage of online behavior and
interests. Social media tend to never forget what users are doing online, but tend to keep profiles of personal data and thereby
provide a foundation for the algorithmic or human analysis of who belongs to a so-called risk group and should be treated in a
special way. Commercial social media surveillance uses specific data from social media profiles for targeting advertising and
providing special offers. As a result, privileged groups tend to be treated differently than the poor and outcast. Another effect of
commercial social media surveillance is that consumer culture and the fostering of a world that is based on the logic of
commodities has become almost ubiquitous on the internet. If state intelligence agencies obtain access to social media profile
data and combine such data with state-administered records (such as databases covering crime, welfare and unemployment
benefits, health records, etc.), then discrimination based on cumulative disadvantages can be advanced. The quality of social
media to cover and store data about various social roles and social activities that converge in social media profiles allows
commercial and state surveillance to use social media data for advancing discrimination that is based on algorithmic profiling and
predictions as well as the networking of data from various sources. Data
collection on commercial social media is
permanent, constant, totalizing, and works in real time and covers a lot of activities in various everyday social roles of
billions of humans worldwide. The potential for unfair treatment and racist, classist, sexist, or other
forms of discrimination are thereby greatly enhanced.
Fusion Centers Focus on Movements
Fusion centers anti-terrorism efforts directed at peaceful social movements
Hilliard, Messineo ’14 [May 23, 2014, GlobalResearch, Mara Verheyden-Hillard cofounder
of the Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense & Education Fund, Attorney for the
International Action Center, Anti-war activist, Carl Messineo cofounder of the Partnership for
Civil Justice Legal Defense and Education Fund; “The Hidden Role of the Fusion Centers in the
Nationwide Spying Operation against the Occupy Movement and Peaceful Protest in America”,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-role-of-the-fusion-centers-in-the-nationwide-spyingoperation-against-the-occupy-movement-and-peaceful-protest-in-america/5383571]
This report, based on documents obtained
by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, provides highlights and
analysis of how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-funded Fusion Centers used their vast anti-terrorism and
anti-crime authority and funds to conduct a sprawling, nationwide and hour-by-hour surveillance effort that
targeted even the smallest activity of peaceful protestors in the Occupy Movement in the Fall and Winter of
2011. It is being released in conjunction with a major story in the New York Times that is based on the 4,000 pages of government
documents uncovered by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) during a two-year long investigation. The newly
published documents reveal the actual workings of the Fusion Centers – created ostensibly to
coordinate anti-terrorism efforts following the September 11, 2001, attacks – in collecting and providing
surveillance information on peaceful protestors. The new documents roll back the curtain on the Fusion Centers and
show the communications, interactions and emails of a massive national web of federal agents,
officials, police, and private “security” contractors to accumulate and share information,
reporting on all manner of peaceful and lawful political activity that took place during the Occupy Movement
from protests and rallies to meetings and educational lectures. This enormous spying and monitoring apparatus
included the Pentagon, FBI, DHS, police departments and chiefs, private contractors and
commercial business interests. There is now, with the release of these documents, incontrovertible
evidence of systematic and not incidental conduct and practices of the Fusion Centers and their personnel to
direct their sights against a peaceful movement that advocated social and economic justice in
the United States. It bears noting also that while these 4,000 pages offer the most significant and largest window
into the U.S. intelligence and law enforcements’ coordinated targeting of Occupy, they can only be a portion of what is likely
many more tens of thousands of pages of materials generated by the nationwide operation.
Fusion Centers are targeting social movements
Lazare 2014, Sarah Lazare (Writer for Common Dreams), Revealed: Gov't Used Fusion Centers to Spy on Occupy, 23 May
2014, http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/05/23/revealed-govt-used-fusion-centers-spy-occupy. PE
"The U.S. Fusion Centers are using their vast counter-terrorism resources to target the domestic
social justice movement as a criminal or terrorist enterprise," PCJF Executive Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
stated. "This is an abuse of power and corruption of democracy."¶ "Although the Fusion Centers’ existence is
justified by the DHS as a necessary component in stopping terrorism and violent crime, the documents show that the
Fusion Centers in the Fall of 2011 and Winter of 2012 were devoted to unconstrained targeting
of a grassroots movement for social change that was acknowledged to be peaceful in character,"
the report states.¶ Police chiefs of major metropolitan areas used the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center to produce regular
reports on the occupy movement.¶ Furthermore, "The
Boston regional intelligence center monitored and
cataloged Occupy-associated activities from student organizing to political lectures," according to the
report. That center also produced twice-daily updates on Occupy activities.¶ The New York Times notes:¶ The Boston
Regional Intelligence Center, one of the most active centers, issued scores of bulletins listing
hundreds of events including a protest of “irresponsible lending practices,” a food drive and
multiple “yoga, faith & spirituality” classes.¶ Nationwide surveillance has included extensive
monitoring of social media, in addition to a variety of spying methods used across Fusion
Centers.¶ "[T]he Fusion Centers are a threat to civil liberties, democratic dissent and the social and
political fabric of this country," said Carl Messineo, PCJF Legal Director. "The time has long passed for the
centers to be defunded."
Surveillance to seek out terrorism actually seeks normal citizens
Hussain & Greenwald 2014, Murtaza Hussain (journalist and political commentator. His work focuses on human
rights, foreign policy, and cultural affairs), Glenn Greenwald (journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times
best-selling books on politics and law), MEET THE MUSLIM-AMERICAN LEADERS THE FBI AND NSA HAVE BEEN SPYING ON, 8 July
2014, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under-surveillance/. PE
But a three-month investigation by The Intercept—including interviews with more than a dozen current and former federal law
enforcement officials involved in
the FISA process—reveals that in practice, the system for authorizing
NSA surveillance affords the government wide latitude in spying on U.S. citizens.¶ The five
Americans whose email accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly
exemplary lives. All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and none advocates
violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the
government and the press. Some have even climbed the ranks of the U.S. national security and foreign
policy establishments.¶ “I just don’t know why,” says Gill, whose AOL and Yahoo! email accounts were
monitored while he was a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. “I’ve done everything in my life to
be patriotic. I served in the Navy, served in the government, was active in my community—I’ve
done everything that a good citizen, in my opinion, should do.”
Fusion Centers Violate Liberty
Fusion Centers target mischaracterize innocent activities as a way to unjustly
track individuals
Thomas S. Neuberger, is a Wilmington attorney and a long-term board member of the
Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the defense of civil liberties and
human rights April 16, 2015 Special to The News Journal 2:10 a.m. EDT Delaware's Fusion
Center poses threat to liberty
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/04/15/local-fusion-centerposes-threat-liberty/25838549/
It is bad news for freedom here in Delaware now that the New Castle County police have their own Fusion
Center. Virtually
every state now has one in operation or formation after more than $1.4 billion dollars of
Homeland Security money was spent to create 77 of them nationwide to assist in the overstated war on
terror.¶ Their purpose is to enlist local police and first responders (known as Terrorism Liaison Officers or TLOs)
to spy on fellow citizens and report back to interconnected government agencies such as the
FBI, CIA, NSA and multi-state police forces on "suspicious activity" or movements, which we old timers
used to consider normal everyday activity.¶ The local spies then report back to the "fusion centers" where the
information goes out to all the government computers now active nationwide in tracking our
movements, emails, phone calls, letters, Facebook posts, etc. to see if any person is worth
tracking down.¶ Robert O'Harrow, an investigative journalist for The Washington Post, concluded they are little more
than "pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions." In 2012 the Senate Permanent Subcommittee
on Investigations in a bipartisan report concluded that these Homeland Security Department fusion centers achieve very little to
fight terrorism and suffer from a lack of oversight and wasteful spending of "hundreds of millions of dollars," such as flat-screen TVs,
$6,000 laptops and even SUVs used for commuting.¶ DELAWAREONLINE¶ NCCo unveils high-tech incident response center¶ Many
innocent constitutionally protected activities are flagged by fusion centers for follow up by our new Big
Brothers in the federal intelligence community.¶ David Rittgers of the Cato Institute reported in 2011 that among the many
innocent people and groups labeled suspicious and targeted for surveillance are pro-choice
advocates, pro-lifers, environmental activists, Tea Party members, Second Amendment rally
attendees, third-party voters, Ron Paul supporters, anti-death penalty advocates, and antiwar
protesters. Historically black or Christian evangelical colleges, universities and religious
institutions also have been considered by fusion centers to be potential hubs of extremism and
terrorist activity. One report warned of a "Russian cyberattack" which turned out to be nothing more than someone accessing
his work computer remotely.¶ Commentator John W. Whitehead has observed that "you're bound to end up with a few
legitimate leads on 'terrorist' activity if you classify unemployment as a cause for suspicion,
which is actually one of the criteria used by" fusion centers. "The problem with tracking innocent
behavior is that more often than not innocent people will be investigated for heinous crimes."¶
He gives the example of a police officer reporting a man seen purchasing liquid chlorine bleach and ammonia on consecutive days.
Up the fusion center chain of command this suspicious activity went, but the subsequent investigation revealed that the man only
was trying to kill gophers on a gold course with chlorine gas.¶ The
ACLU also has warned that the partnership
between local police and fusion centers skates alarmingly close to illegal unreasonable searches,
lacks transparency, and often just flouts the Bill of Rights altogether.¶ Last, it has been reported that
officials at fusion centers lack basic training in intelligence gathering, let alone protecting citizen
civil rights and liberties.
Fusion centers violate personal civil liberties
Patin 2012, Gregory Patin (B.A. in political science from U.W. - Madison and a M.S. in management from Colorado Technical
University), Fusion centers: Invading your privacy at your expense, 14 Oct 2012, Examiner, http://www.examiner.com/article/fusioncenters-invading-your-privacy-at-your-expense. PE
Like so many post-9/11 surveillance laws passed under the vague guise of “national security,”
these fusion centers violate the civil liberties of ordinary Americans that should be guaranteed by the Bill of
Rights and other laws. An entire section of the Senate report is dedicated to Privacy Act violations and the collection of information
completely unrelated to any criminal or terrorist activity in the HIRs.¶ The
Senate report and the activity of fusion
centers makes it clear that these facilities are designed to spy on American citizens, invading
their privacy while doing nothing to stop terrorism. With all the talk in the Presidential
campaigns about frivolous spending, perhaps these worthless facilities should be addressed,
instead of Medicare or Social Security
Surveillance Stops Movements
Surveillance Stops Movements
Unwarranted surveillance leads to fear and failure within organizations
Starr et. Al 8 [Starr, A. "The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and
Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis." The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and
Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis. Springer Science, 10 July 2008. Web. 22 June 2015.]
A number of legal cases have connected the right of association with the right to be free from
unwarranted government surveillance. In NAACP v. Alabama, 357 US 449, 462 (1958), the
Supreme Court held that compelled disclosure of an advocacy group’s membership list would be
an impermissible restraint on freedom of association, observing that the “inviolability of privacy
in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of
association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.” The Court recognized that
the chilling effect of surveillance on associational freedom “may induce members to withdraw
from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their
beliefs,” (357 US at 463; also see Zweibon v. Mitchell, 516 F.2d 594 [D.C. Cir. 1975]), a point
echoed by the courts in subsequent decisions: Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 US 516 (1960)
asserted that tapping a political organization’s phone would provide its membership list to
authorities, which is forbidden. Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 US 479 (1965) asserted that
organizations had been harmed irreparably when subjected to repeated announcements of
their 254 Qual Sociol (2008) 31:251–270 subversiveness, which scared off potential members
and contributors. Judge Warren wrote in USA v. Robel, 389 US 258, 264 (1967): “It would indeed
be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of…those
liberties…which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile” (Also see Christie 1972). The
difficulty with much of the litigation to date is problematized in Laird v. Tatum 408 US 1 (1972).
In that case, the plaintiff objected to the chilling effect on First Amendment rights by the mere
existence of a government surveillance program, but did not allege any specific harm to himself
as a result of the program except that he “could conceivably” become subject to surveillance
and therefore have his rights potentially chilled. In the recent case of ACLU v. NSA, F. Supp. 2d
754 (E.D. Mich. 2006) (since vacated by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals), District Judge Anna
Diggs Taylor rejected the government’s invocation of Laird in defense of its warrantless
domestic eavesdropping programs, noting that the plaintiffs in that case (journalists, scholars,
and political organizations) had demonstrated actual and not merely hypothetical harm as the
result of unwarranted surveillance. We now know more about surveillance than how victims feel
about it; we also know a good deal about its intents. Cunningham explains that intelligence
operations can serve two goals, investigation of federal crimes and (the more controversial)
precautionary monitoring through information gathering about organizations.
Counterintelligence operations may take a preventative goal, to “actively restrict a target’s
ability to carry out planned actions” or may take the form of provocation for the purpose of
entrapment of targets in criminal acts. (2004, p. 6) Some of the “normal intelligence” activities
undertaken by the FBI outside of official COINTELPRO which nevertheless have a preventative
counterintelligence function are: harassment by surveillance and/or purportedly criminal
investigations, pressured recruitment of informants, infiltration, break-ins, and labeling or
databasing which harms the group’s reputation impacting its ability to communicate with the
media, draw new members, and raise funds, “exacerbat[ing] a climate in which seemingly all
mainstream institutions opposed the New Left in some way.” In addition, infiltrators acting as
agent provocateurs is, inexplicably, a part of normal intelligence operations (pp. 180– 214). Can
these kinds of operations be understood as violations, not only of individuals’ political rights, but
against associations themselves? Since associations and social movements work for decades,
they have interests separate from their participants. Previous literature shows that knowledge
(or fear) of surveillance and infiltration forces organizations to direct their energies toward
defensive maintenance and away from the pursuit of broader goals. (Boykoff 2006; Cunningham
2004; Davenport 2005; Flam 1998; Goldstein 1978; Marx 1970, 1974, 1979, 1988) Alternately,
activists may respond by turning from overt collective forms of resistance toward more covert,
individualistic forms of resistance (Davenport 2006, Johnston 2005, Zwerman et al. 2000) or to
the emergence of more militant, even violent, factions (della Porta 1995). Organizations’
funding, relationships with other groups, the press, and the public may be affected as well (Marx
1970, 1974, 1979, 1988; US Congress 1976; Theoharis 1978; Churchill and Vander Wall 1988;
Davenport 2006; Klatch 2002; Schultz and Schultz 2001).
Surveillance hurts the effectiveness of advocacy organizations
Starr et. Al 8 [Starr, A. "The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and
Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis." The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and
Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis. Springer Science, 10 July 2008. Web. 22 June 2015.]
Surveillance impacts the culture of protest by reducing the quality and quantity of political discourse:
“We’re scared to be able to openly and honestly talk about issues in our community, state using that info to crush legitimate
movements.” A middle-aged man in a peace group told us “my mom is scared to talk to me on the phone...What is she allowed to
say and not any more.” Another peace
group reported that before they found out about the extent of surveillance
we sometimes talk in code, more cryptic, share less information. We're all
a bit more reserved in terms of our speech.” An activist explains “I don't like even talking about politics with
them because I don't want to get either of us confused in each others business. If someone is being watched for
something i'm not being watched for, I don't want to talk about politics with those people.”
Another activist the impact of surveillance on the exercise of assembly rights. 9.17.07 . 17 says “People are scared of the
implications of just being radical. There’s almost no space that we consider safe…People just
stopped expressing those views entirely.” We found three distinct impacts of reduced discourse.
The first is elimination of what is called “cross-pollination”: “It was nice to be able to tell stories of like I
worked with this organization and can I help you build... Here’s what we did that you all might be able to do... Now ...you
can’t help them out, you can’t tell them stories of things you’ve done before. Because if they were a snitch
you’d be in a really bad situation.” A second aspect of reduced discourse is secretive planning. As
mentioned above, organizations are communicating much less and across fewer media. “There isn’t that constant
discussion, which can be really beneficial. Then you get everybody’s opinion if you can talk to everyone.” This
interviewee went on to explain how discourse is intentionally reduced as a protective measure: “Here, we
they were under “we used to be a lot closer. Now
can only talk about what’s going on here. Next week we can’t talk about this any more. And we can’t talk about something else
until it’s sure who’s going to be part of it....” Another interviewee summed it up: secretive
planning is a disaster in
community building, “we couldn’t think creatively.” If actions cannot be discussed later on, then the strategy of the
movement no longer moves forward. The third aspect of reduced discourse is the lack of debriefing. Secretive planning is just one
has in fact caused security culture to
replace organizing culture, with devastating impacts. The hallmarks of organizing culture are
inclusivity and solidarity. The hallmarks of security culture are exclusion, wariness, withholding
of many dimensions of what activists call “security culture”. Surveillance
information, and avoiding diversity. “It’s hard to build when you’re suspicious.” Another activist jokingly described
security culture as the “icemaker”, which has replaced the “icebreaker”. S/he went on: “Like handing out a signup sheet. If people
feel like that’s going to get in the hands of the government that means that people are not only afraid to sign up, but afraid of
asking for it.” A new activist described the experience this way: “What’s the opposite of unites? When I’m suspicious or they are,
it creates a tension, conscious or not, about who people are and what their intentions are.” Our interviewees were very
conscious of the effects of the cultural shift. “People perceived us as not inclusive because we were so scared.” An
activist described their group as showing “paranoia, freakiness, and unwelcomingness that results from the fear...” Another
admitted “There’s not as many people involved, there’s not as many voices in the decision making, there’s not as many people
from different walks of life.” An activist explained, with alarm, that security “was the first thing we talked about, even before our
name or what we're going to do.” Another interviewee pointed out that security culture has
become so common
that people are using it for actions that don’t need to be protected. “There’s confusion over what actions
need to be clandestine and what doesn't.” We noticed in implementing security in this project that it took a lot of energy simply
to distinguish when we needed to be secure and when we didn’t. Security culture also involves speaking in code, which,
interviewees joked, made communication nearly impossible in some circumstances, particularly when organizers try to
communicate with more peripheral people. Interviewees also described the effect it has on themselves as organizers: “I had to
learn not to welcome people and not give out information... I’m interested in community building, and then you’re taught to be
suspicious and not welcome people it’s antithetical to your theory of change. Another explains when I see people I don’t know I
get excited. when I saw the undercovers I was amazed that we had attracted folks that don’t fit in, and I was sad when I found
out they were the impact of surveillance on the exercise of assembly rights. 9.17.07 . 18 undercovers.” Another interviewee
described how people who fit too well are suspicious as well as people who don’t fit in. S/he described someone who has been
softly excluded from the group: ”It makes me suspicious of people who are potential friends and allies, in ways that don't make
me comfortable.” Prior research has documented that inducing paranoia is in fact one of the goals of surveillance [Churchill and
Vander Wall 2002; Marx 197]. “It’s just constant…When someone new shows up, the whole meeting changes .”
This is a
limitation on association rights.
Surveillance scares away activists
Starr et al. ’06 Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez, Randall Amster, Lesley Wood. “The impact of
surveillance on the exercise of political rights: an interdisciplinary analysis 1998-2006”
http://www.trabal.org/texts/assembly091707.pdf. Amory Starr is a Ph.D. in Sociology (Political
Economy) from the University of California, Santa Barbara (advisors Richard Flacks, Mark
Juergensmeyer) and a Masters in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She
has written 4 books and directed a documentary on the NAFTA.
We have seen that current
surveillance is an alarming threat to mobilizations, and thus to the exercise
of constitutionally protected rights to assembly and association. Our findings about the post-Seattle era are consistent with
studies of previous activist eras. Current surveillance is both qualitatively and quantitatively comparable, with the enhancements of technology and
Congressional leniency apparent. In only one qualitative dimension does our data diverge from previous findings, which is that we did not find the
customary dualism in which hardcore activists become more militant while others become more moderate. [Lichbach 1987, White 1989, Tarrow 1998,
Zwerman & Steinhoff 2005]. Instead we
found signs of pervasive pacification. In lieu of going “underground” to continue their
actions [Davenport 2006; Johnston 2005], activists are evading the surveillance net by dropping out of social
connections entirely while organizations are abandoning “grey area” activities like civil disobedience
and moving toward doing educational and permitted activities. Nevertheless, many activists have in fact redoubled their efforts to promote social
change through nonviolent “grey area” methods, a sentiment reflected by Father Roy Bourgeois of the School of the Americas Watch: “The spying is an
abuse of power and a clear attempt to stifle political opposition, to instill fear. But we aren’t going away” (Cooper & Hodge). In Arizona, a group of
nonviolent activists who had been under surveillance by terrorism agencies went to the FBI headquarters and “turned themselves in” as a symbolic act
of defiance and as a demonstration of their unwillingness to abandon their efforts (World Prout Assembly). Thus, while there may be a sense of fear
among many activists, there is also is a demonstrable spirit of rededication to the myriad causes that social movements undertake. We are interested in
the persistent attempt to rationalize surveillance and repression. Scholars of social movements should take note of the implications for consciousness
of the state and forms of repression. We observed age and class distinctions here. While some organizations edit and re-edit their press releases,
younger activists know you don’t have to do anything at all to be targeted. The lack of understanding from the elder progressive community has led to
a rationalization of repression, taking the form of blaming young people for their own repression (particularly for “provoking” police actions at
protests); limiting support for “Green Scare” defendants; and providing little collective concern for defending people from illegal investigations, and
absurd indictments, bonds, and sentences. Rationalization collaborates in the creeping criminalization of dissent and political activity. However,
conservative decisions on the part of activists and organizations are highly understandable in light of the costs of surveillance to membership,
fundraising, family life, and organizational resources. An
organization which was illegally searched spent more
than 1500 hours of volunteer time dealing with the fallout for their membership and relations with other organizations. They
finally filled a lawsuit for damages, which took 5 years to resolve. Databasing increases information collected, with no opportunity to purge, correct
errors, or challenge interpretations. An interviewee notes that even requesting to see your government file is treated as an admission of guilt. It will be
the “first entry in new files… i’ve been doing something that makes me believe that you may have reason to monitor me.” Activists who viewed a lot of
released files noted that “the redaction was deliberately inept”, which has a further counterinsurgent function. There is no mechanism of accountability
for false accusations, improper or unwarranted investigations, or erroneous surveillance. Entry of a presumed relationship between two organizations
proliferates to everyone with even remote links. Rapid information sharing between jurisdictions, (including internationally) exponentially increases the
impact of tags. Cultural changes resulting in the loss of history and process have major implications for social movements and the study of their
processes and outcomes. Driven
culture, organizations
by creeping criminalization (we do not know what will be illegal next year), as part of security
do not create archives and do not take meeting notes, and activists often do not keep
diaries. Moreover, our interviewees explained that strategic and ideological dialogue is greatly reduced. Not wanting to be implicated or to implicate
others, political actions are now planned and undertaken in a bubble of time never to be referred to again, with colleagues who will scatter
immediately, never referring to one another or what they learned from the action. In addition, people are reluctant to discuss their political ideas,
reducing the quantity and quality of political discourse and ideological development. Surveillance of educational events also makes it more difficult to
spread analysis and theory.
Protests Good
#BlackLivesMatter Key
#Blacklivesmatter is essential to humanize black people, expose the nascent
anti-black violence of the U.S., and create the political possibilities of justice
and solidarity
Craven 2015 (Julia, Staff Reporter at Huffington Post on race relations Please Stop
Telling Me That All Lives Matter in the Huffington Post online January 25, 2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-craven/please-stop-telling-me-th_b_6223072.html
When I say "Black lives matter," it is because this nation has a tendency to say otherwise.
Racial discrimination does affect all minorities but police brutality, at such excessive rates,
does not. A black person is killed extrajudicially every 28 hrs, and Black men between ages
19 and 25 are the group most at risk to be gunned down by police. Based on data from the
Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, young Blacks are 4.5 times more likely to be killed
by police than any other age or racial group.African-Americans have comprised 26 percent
of police shootings though we only makeup 13 percent of the U.S. population, based on data spanning
from 1999 to 2011.In the 108 days since Mike Brown was killed by Darren Wilson and left on display in the middle of the street for four and a half hours,
at least seven Black males have been shot and killed by law enforcement officers
.Officers are provided the unrestricted
right to use force at their discretion -- and will not hesitate to do so -- and Black bodies are
more susceptible to greeting the business end of those state-issued firearms. Multiple
factors such as clothing, location and individual behavior determine who gets stopped by
the police and when, according to Jack Glaser, an associate professor at University of California-Berkeley's Goldman School
of Public Policy."The way the process works ... is if you take two equivalent people -- a young
white man and a young black man -- who are dressed identically, the black man would still
have a greater chance of being stopped," Glaser said. "And it's because his race is a basis of
suspicion and it interacts with those other qualities in a way that makes them all seem more
suspicious because it biases the judgment of everything."Granted, extrajudicial killings have dropped 70 percent in
the last 40 to 50 years. Nearly 100 young black men were killed annually by police in the late 1960s, and these young men also comprised 25 percent of
police killings between 1968 and 1974.Shootings fell to 35 per year in the 2000s though the risk is still higher for Black Americans than it is for whites,
Latinos and Asians. My people are killed at 2.8 times the rate of white non-Latinos and 4.3 times the rate of Asians.I say all of this to say, though it has
become less prevalent,
police brutality has never affected another racial group like it affects us.Race
brings on individual issues for each minority group. Saying "all lives matter" causes erasure
of the differing disparities each group faces. Saying "all lives matter" is nothing more than
you centering and inserting yourself within a very emotional and personal situation without
any empathy or respect. Saying "all lives matter" is unnecessary. Non-black kids aren't
being killed like black kids are. Of course I'd be just as pissed if cops were gunning down white kids. Duh, but they aren't. White
assailants can litter movie theaters and bodies with bullets from automatic weapons and be apprehended alive but black kids can't jaywalk or have toy
There is seemingly no justice for Black life in America. An unarmed Black
body can be gunned down without sufficient reasoning and left in the middle of the street
on display for hours -- just like victims of lynching. Strange fruit still hangs from our nations
poplar trees. Lynching underwent a technological revolution. It evolved from nooses to guns
and broken necks to bullet wounds. Police brutality is a BLACK issue. This is not an ill
afflicting all Americans, but that does not mean you cannot stand in solidarity with us. But
standing with us does not mean telling us how we should feel about our community's
marginalization. Standing with us means being with us in solidarity without being upset
that this is for OUR PEOPLE -- and wanting recognition for yours in this very specific
context.Telling us that all lives matter is redundant. We know that already. But, just know,
police violence and brutality disproportionately affects my people. Justice is not applied
equally, laws are not applied equally and neither is our outrage.
guns in open carry states?
The Black Lives Matter Movement is key to countering racialized violence
Nasir14 (Na’ilah Suad, Associate Professor of African American Studies, “Killing Us Slowly: Slow
Death by Educational Neglect” in Insurgency: The Black Matter(s) Issue Dept. of African
American Studies | University of California, Berkeley
http://www.thediasporablackmattersissue.com/ December 23, 2014
This is an unprecedented moment in our nation’s history. 2014 marks an apex of unpunished, state-
sanctioned violence against Black people, and an historical moment where Black
communities all over the country, in the face of the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner,
Tamir Rice, and countless others, have stood up together in protests and die-in’s and
boycotts to express our collective anguish. These deaths at the hands of police violence have
touched a nerve, in part because every Black person I know, rich or poor, young or old, men and women, in all parts of
the country have a personal story of police abuse and violence (whether it be symbolic violence or physical violence). Being
harassed and unfairly treated by police is an experience that unites Black people
domestically and globally, and the heart-breaking deaths we have seen recently make
dramatically salient the way that Black lives are undervalued. The hashtag,
#BlackLivesMatter, is a rallying call to notice and resist the multiple ways our society has
undervalued Black lives.While the recent deaths certainly underscore the unacceptable
levels of implicit and explicit racism against Black people globally, they are but one aspect of
how our society communicates and reinforces the message that Black lives do not matter. As
a scholar of education, I find also appalling the way our educational system dampens the spirits and potential of Black kids in daily
mundane interactions in far too many schools and classrooms.I was talking recently about this with a teacher at one of my children’s
schools. My children attend Berkeley Public Schools, which have a long history of being progressive with respect to school
desegregation, and which are quite (purposefully) racially and socio-economically diverse. However, like school districts across the
country, opportunities to learn are not evenly distributed across racial groups in the schools. At the school one of my children
attends, the achievement levels (as measured by standardized test scores) of Black and Latino students are lower than that of white
and Asian students, as is the case in every school in Berkeley and most in the Bay Area and the nation. This teacher made the point
that if the achievement patterns were reversed, with white students “underachieving” the school and the district would not stand
for it. We reflected together on how schools have a collective level of acceptance for the “underachievement” of Black students, but
if white students were to “underachieve” at the same levels, the system itself would certainly be declared broken. In other words,
not doing well in school is only normalized for students of color—when it happens to white students the very system itself is viewed
as not doing what it is designed to do. This is a form of acceptable death, the death of intellectual potential, which our society does
not question and continues to perpetuate. It is active educational neglect.One of the key processes that support systems of
schooling that do not allow Black students to reach their full potential are the overtly racist systems of discipline and punishment in
schools. This is where the core concerns of the BlackLivesMatter movement and my focus on schools align. Many have written about
the multiple ways that Black students, boys and girls, are more harshly disciplined, and are more likely to be kicked out of class,
suspended, and expelled, most often for infractions like “disrespect” or other ambiguous offenses. The
propensity to
discipline Black children and adolescents in schools is deeply tied to the anti-black racism
prevalent in our society, and the ways that such racism spawns explicit and implicit bias.
The ease with which teachers and administrators punish Black children, and the ease with
which we accept that some children (Black ones) are more likely to “underachieve” in
school reflect a set of assumptions and implicit biases that tend to go unnoticed and
invisible. It is the same implicit and explicit bias that causes police officers to be comfortable
attributing criminality to Black bodies, and for our criminal just system to fail to punish the
police officers that kill Black men and women. At the root of both is a form of
dehumanization that argues there is no value to be found in Black life, or in Black
minds.Thus, the BlackLivesMatter movement is a call to rehumanization. It is a grassroots
movement led by a generation that understands that the call for acknowledging the
humanity of Black people is far too important to rest with one charismatic leader. And it is a
movement that rests on more than a set of action items. It is a massive effort to stir the
consciousness of our nation, to wake up to the brutality that continues in mundane and
dramatic ways every single day.
#AllLivesMatter is Bad
Utterances of “All Lives Matter” are the wrong starting point and never account
for black lives. This obscures the critical conversations needed to speak back
against anti-black forces and dangerous forms of whiteness.
Yancy & Butler 2015 ( George professor of philosophy at Duquesne University; Judith
Maxine Elliot Professor in the department of comparative literature and the program of critical
theory at the University of California, Berkeley) What’s Wrong With ‘All Lives Matter’? in New
York Times January 12, 2015 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-wrongwith-all-lives-matter/?_r=1
J.B.: Racism has complex origins, and it is important that we learn the history of racism to know
what has led us to this terrible place. But racism is also reproduced in the present, in the prison
system, new forms of population control, increasing economic inequality that affects people of
color disproportionately. These forms of institutionalized destitution and inequality are
reproduced through these daily encounters — the disproportionate numbers of minorities
stopped and detained by the police, and the rising number of those who fall victim to police
violence. The figure of the black person as threat, as criminal, as someone who is, no matter where he is going, already-on-theway-to-prison, conditions these pre-emptive strikes, attributing lethal aggression to the very figure who suffers it most. The lives taken
in this way are not lives worth grieving; they belong to the increasing number of those who are understood as ungrievable, whose lives
are thought not to be worth preserving.But, of course, what we are also seeing in the recent and continuing assemblies, rallies and
vigils is an open mourning for those whose lives were cut short and without cause, brutally extinguished. The practices of public
mourning and political demonstration converge: when lives are considered ungrievable, to grieve them openly is protest. So when
people assemble in the street, arrive at rallies or vigils, demonstrate with the aim of opposing this
form of racist violence, they are “speaking back” to this mode of address, insisting on what
should be obvious but is not, namely, that these lost lives are unacceptable losses.On the one
hand, there is a message, “Black Lives Matter,” which always risks being misheard (“What?
Only black lives matter?”) or not heard at all (“these are just people who will protest anything”). On the other
hand, the assembly, even without words, enacts the message in its own way. For it is often in public spaces where such
violence takes place, so reclaiming public space to oppose both racism and violence is an act that
reverberates throughout the public sphere through various media. G.Y.: I’ve heard that some white people have held
signs that read “All Lives Matter.”J.B.: When some people rejoin with “All Lives Matter” they
misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives
matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter which is precisely why it
is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the
way they deserve. Whiteness is less a property of skin than a social power reproducing its
dominance in both explicit and implicit ways. Claiming that “all lives matter” does not
immediately mark or enable black lives only because they have not been fully recognized as
having lives that matter. I do not mean this as an obscure riddle. I mean only to say that we cannot have a raceblind approach to the questions: which lives matter? Or, which lives are worth valuing? If we
jump too quickly to the universal formulation, “all lives matter,” then we miss the fact that black
people have not yet been included in the idea of “all lives.” That said, it is true that all lives
matter (we can then debate about when life begins or ends). But to make that universal
formulation concrete, to make that into a living formulation, one that truly extends to all
people, we have to foreground those lives that are not mattering now, to mark that exclusion,
and militate against it. Achieving that universal, “all lives matter,” is a struggle, and that is part
of what we are seeing on the streets. For on the streets we see a complex set of solidarities across color lines that seek
to show what a concrete and living sense of bodies that matter can be.
#AllLivesMatter is an erasure of racial justice from the movement
Julia Craven Staff Reporter, The Huffington Post, Updated: 01/25/2015 Please Stop Telling Me
That All Lives Matter 11/25/2014 11:43 pm EST http://www.huffingtonpost.com/juliacraven/please-stop-telling-me-th_b_6223072.html
When I say "Black lives matter," it is because this nation has a tendency to say otherwise. Racial
discrimination does
affect all minorities but police brutality, at such excessive rates, does not.¶ A black person is killed
extrajudicially every 28 hrs, and Black men between ages 19 and 25 are the group most at risk to be gunned down by
police. Based on data from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, young Blacks are 4.5 times more likely to be killed by police
than any other age or racial group.¶ African-Americans have comprised 26 percent of police shootings though we only makeup 13
percent of the U.S. population, based on data spanning from 1999 to 2011.¶ In the 108 days since Mike Brown was killed by Darren
Wilson and left on display in the middle of the street for four and a half hours, at least seven Black males have been shot and killed
by law enforcement officers.¶ Officers
are provided the unrestricted right to use force at their
discretion -- and will not hesitate to do so -- and Black bodies are more susceptible to greeting the
business end of those state-issued firearms.¶ Multiple factors such as clothing, location and
individual behavior determine who gets stopped by the police and when, according to Jack Glaser, an
associate professor at University of California-Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.¶ "The way the process works ... is if you
take two equivalent people -- a young white man and a young black man -- who are dressed identically, the black man would still
have a greater chance of being stopped," Glaser said. "And it's because his race is a basis of suspicion and it interacts with those
other qualities in a way that makes them all seem more suspicious because it biases the judgment of everything."¶ Granted,
extrajudicial killings have dropped 70 percent in the last 40 to 50 years. Nearly 100 young black men were killed annually by police in
the late 1960s, and these young men also comprised 25 percent of police killings between 1968 and 1974.¶ Shootings fell to 35 per
year in the 2000s though the risk is still higher for Black Americans than it is for whites, Latinos and Asians. My people are killed at
2.8 times the rate of white non-Latinos and 4.3 times the rate of Asians.¶ I say all of this to say, though it has become less prevalent,
police brutality has never affected another racial group like it affects us.¶ Race brings on individual issues for each minority group.
Saying "all lives matter" causes erasure of the differing disparities each group faces. Saying
"all lives matter" is nothing more than you centering and inserting yourself within a very
emotional and personal situation without any empathy or respect. Saying "all lives matter" is
unnecessary:¶ "#AllLivesMatter because I don't see race ����❤️" Erasure is not progressive. This isn't something to be proud of.¶
— rosemary l'étrangère (@whoisroseama) November 25, 2014¶ Non-black kids aren't being killed like black kids are. Of course I'd be
just as pissed if cops were gunning down white kids. Duh, but they aren't. White assailants can litter movie theaters and bodies with
bullets from automatic weapons and be apprehended alive but black kids can't jaywalk or have toy guns in open carry states?¶ There
is seemingly no justice for Black life in America. An unarmed Black body can be gunned down without sufficient reasoning and left in
the middle of the street on display for hours -- just like victims of lynching.¶ Strange fruit still hangs from our nations poplar trees.
Lynching underwent a technological revolution. It evolved from nooses to guns and broken necks to bullet wounds.¶ Police
brutality is a BLACK issue. This is not an ill afflicting all Americans, but that does not mean you
cannot stand in solidarity with us. But standing with us does not mean telling us how we should
feel about our community's marginalization. Standing with us means being with us in solidarity
without being upset that this is for OUR PEOPLE -- and wanting recognition for yours in this very specific context.
#AllLivesMatter prioritizes white lives over black lives – this is an erasure of
difference that hollows out the movement
Nazar Aljassar | Mar 24 2015 Stop saying “All Lives Matter”
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/03/aljassar-stop-saying-all-lives-matter
When I march in protest with my peers and say “black lives matter,” I do so because there is no shortage of Americans who believe
that black lives are disposable. The
wanton use of excessive force by police officers against young black
males is well-documented: despite comprising 13 percent of the national population, black
Americans are victims of roughly one in four police shootings. In our own community, we have seen one of
our black students, Martese Johnson, bloodied by Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control agents whose racial biases, implicit or explicit,
likely affected their ill disposition towards him — and even if they didn’t in this instance, the possibility of prejudice alone illustrates
just how heavily race hangs over the heads of those who regularly run into racism. I say “black lives matter” because America has
declared open season against young black males, and I
am embittered by disrespectful University students who
insist on replacing “black lives matter” with “all lives matter.”¶ “All lives matter” masquerades
as a good-natured mantra that unites different communities against injustice and all of its
manifestations; beneath a superficial level, it is an insensitive appropriation of a phrase
created by black Americans in search of solidarity following the tragedies that have befallen young black males.
A friend explained it to me as analogous to an individual approaching a charity bake sale for cancer and imploring the organizers to
consider the struggles that other patients face. Those
who say “all lives matter” hijack an expression that
affirms black lives in a world where cultural and institutional practices disadvantage them. These
individuals subsume struggles specific to black Americans under a broader, whitewashed vision
for equality and racial colorblindness that is more palatable to non-black Americans.¶ I don’t mean to
accuse all who have said “all lives matter” of co-opting a phrase that does not belong to them. Those who say “all lives
matter” may not be aware of the implications of those words and may have just picked up the
phrase from social media, unlike those who pretend racism in law enforcement does not exist.
The latter are the kind of people who say that they “don’t see race,” the kind of people who rear their ugly heads each time a black
body bears the brunt of violence. These
are the people who drown out black voices through
whitewashing; by saying “all lives matter,” they create a more sanitized view of social
inequalities.¶ Expressing the slogan that emerged from the shooting of Michael Brown in
Ferguson as “all lives matter” places non-black Americans at the center of a tragedy that does
not bear any consequences for them. “All lives matter” diminishes the racial element of the
issues that permeate the American criminal justice system. The application of justice in our
nation is unequal, so it only makes sense that we direct our concern towards affirming the value
of black lives. “Since this country's founding the law has been used to protect the life, liberty, and property of white men, yet
that same law has been warped and manipulated to disenfranchise black people from those basic rights,” University NAACP Chapter
President Vj Jenkins said. “While [some white men and women] see the police and see safety, a person to call to for aid, so many of
my people see the lessons history has taught them. They see Brown v. Mississippi where police officers hung a man by a tree and
beat him until he confessed to a crime he did not commit.Ӧ Injustices associated with law enforcement affect all, but black
Americans are by far the greatest victims. It would be dishonest to neglect differences in the way black and non-black bodies are
treated by American institutions. The
very fact that certain people are able to ignore racial disparities
and declare that all lives matter demonstrates that not all lives matter the same. According to
Jenkins, “[Black Americans] have been brutalized in a manner not befitting of wild animals. History has told us that our lives mean
nothing.Ӧ I
would love to live in a racially colorblind world where all lives matter. But this world
does not exist. Race matters, and so for as long as injustice threatens justice, I will choose the
side of the oppressed. For as long as strange fruit continues to hang from America’s poplar trees,
I will assert that black lives matter.
AT: But You Are White / Kick White People Out
White allies can be invested in demonstrations against anti-black racism that
can recede whiteness in order to engage in a cross racial struggle of solidarity.
Yancy & Butler 2015 ( George professor of philosophy at Duquesne University; Judith
Maxine Elliot Professor in the department of comparative literature and the program of critical
theory at the University of California, Berkeley) What’s Wrong With ‘All Lives Matter’? in New
York Times January 12, 2015 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-wrongwith-all-lives-matter/?_r=1
Whiteness is not an abstraction; its claim to dominance is fortified through daily acts which may
not seem racist at all precisely because they are considered “normal.” But just as certain kinds of
violence and inequality get established as “normal” through the proceedings that exonerate police
of the lethal use of force against unarmed black people, so whiteness, or rather its claim to privilege, can be
disestablished over time. This is why there must be a collective reflection on, and opposition to, the way whiteness takes hold of our
ideas about whose lives matter. The norm of whiteness that supports both violence and inequality insinuates itself into the normal and
the obvious. Understood as the sometimes tacit and sometimes explicit power to define the boundaries of kinship, community and
nation, whiteness inflects all those frameworks within which certain lives are made to matter less than others.It is always possible to
do whiteness otherwise, to engage in a sustained and collective practice to question how racial differentiation enters into our daily
evaluations of which lives deserve to be supported, to flourish, and which do not. But it is probably an error, in my view, for white
people to become paralyzed with guilt and self-scrutiny.
The point is rather to consider those ways of valuing
and devaluing life that govern our own thinking and acting, understanding the social and
historical reach of those ways of valuing. It is probably important and satisfying as well to let
one’s whiteness recede by joining in acts of solidarity with all those who oppose racism. There
are ways of fading out whiteness, withdrawing its implicit and explicit claim to racial
privilege.Demonstrations have the potential to embody forms of equality that we want to see
realized in the world more broadly. Working against those practices and institutions that refuse to
recognize and mark the powers of state racism in particular, assemblies gather to mourn and resist
the deadly consequences of such powers. When people engage in concerted actions across racial
lines to build communities based on equality, to defend the rights of those who are
disproportionately imperiled to have a chance to live without the fear of dying quite suddenly at
the hands of the police. There are many ways to do this, in the street, the office, the home, and in
the media. Only through such an ever-growing cross-racial struggle against racism can we begin
to achieve a sense of all the lives that really do matter.
That’s Irrelevant – It is not a question of whether or not white individuals can
ally with social movements – its only a question of whether they re-center the
discussion around themselves like the #AllLivesMatter movement
Christian Piatt 02/15/2015 The Death of Jordan Baker and Why "All Lives Matter" Isn't Enough
Rather than "Black lives matter," they argue, we should say "All
lives matter." So why is this inappropriate? There are a
number of reasons, actually.¶ First, these cries are direct responses to the loss of black lives. It's a nonviolent
corporate response to power that was wielded violently. It's a response to a judicial system that historically incarcerates black men
at a rate staggeringly higher than their white counterparts, for the same crimes. It's
a response of a community
conditioned to fear the very ones sworn to protect them. Such grief, despair and helplessness demands a
response from within us. WE MATTER is a call to be recognized, valued and cared for. ¶ Second, there is no implication
in the phrase "Black lives matter" that they matter any more than any other lives. Rather, it's a
response to a societal phenomenon that seems, if without words, to say those black lives matter
less. It's a call to nonviolent resistance, in the spirit of King, Gandhi, and even Jesus.¶ Third, the co-opting of
"Black lives matter" into "All lives matter" touches a deep historical nerve, of which those with
racial privilege may not be aware. But as the old saying goes, ignorance is no excuse. Granted, the practice of slavery by
means of force is no longer legal in our culture, but it has not stopped the dominant culture from taking valuable contributions to
American society and co-opting it, adapting it and quite often profiting greatly from it. From science and literature to the arts and
entertainment, the pattern is well established.¶ So
it's understandable if African-Americans bristle at the
perhaps well-intended desire of others to change their call for equality and justice into
something broader, and therefore, absent of it's particular potency for the situation at hand.¶
Rather than resisting or trying to change such cries, there is an opportunity for those of us in historically
privileged and powerful positions in the culture to listen, learn and better understand the
longing behind the words. The responsibility is on us to help make room for such voices, to
help amplify them and to use what power and privilege we have to exact the kind of change
that, ultimately would lead to a society in which chants as "Black lives matter" would no longer
be necessary.
White allies are good as long as they aren’t central features of the movement
Julie Walker is a New York-based freelance journalist March 17 2015 #BlackLivesMatter
Founders: Please Stop Co-opting Our Hashtag
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/03/_blacklivesmatter_founders_please_stop_co
_opting_our_hashtag.html
Meanwhile, Garza said she is looking for more “white co-conspirators” to help with unification
efforts. “I think we spend a lot of time figuring out how to move white people, and just because
of the social power dynamics, I don’t think that we’re best positioned to do that,” Garza said. “I
think other white folks who are invested in dismantling systems of oppression are best
positioned to engage with other white people.”
AT: It Will Be Coopted
Cooptation is Irrelevant – Adding more voices is key to raising awareness, even
if some of them are initially disingenuous
Theodore R. Johnson is a writer, doctoral candidate, and former White House Fellow.
December 12 2014 Don't Let "Black Lives Matter" Become Another Ice Bucket Challenge
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120575/black-lives-matter-i-cant-breathe-are-not-nextice-bucket-challenge
Lives Matter" is not a motto. "Hands Up, Don’t Shoot" is not an
advertising catchphrase. These declaratives are pleas for justice. And die-ins and traffic-defying
protests are serious political actions, not merely photo ops. The movement is not for sale or to win popularity
contests. ¶ ¶ It was inevitable that Black Lives Matter, once it became widespread, would attract people
who simply want to be a part of a social movement, whatever it may be. But even these bandwagon
activists can be leveraged. The ice bucket challenge, after all, brought in $115 million for the
ALS Association.¶ ¶ Black Lives Matter is less about raising money than raising awareness,
continuing the debate, and demanding action. Even if the movement's less committed
participants are effectively free advertising, their presence can widen support. It's a truism of
civil disobedience that sometimes quantity is a more persuasive argument than reason. But the
¶ ¶ "I
Can’t Breathe" is not a promotional tool. "Black
most important characteristic is always purity of conviction.
Now is the Key Time
Revolutionary Politics are key to changing institutions of power
The Amendment Gazette January 1, 2015 Standing on the Edge of Next American
Revolution http://www.amendmentgazette.com/2015/01/01/sparking-third-americanrevolution/
This revolution has already begun for many, not most, people. The Next American Revolution will not be a solitary
journey; far from it. Demonstrations, protests, marches and disruption of business as usual have
already shaken the nation, but the movement for racial justice has not yet reached the
momentum and visibility of either Occupy Wall Street or the tea party in their heydays. The list of
critical issues above strongly suggests that the United States is sliding toward fascism. Genuine democrats and
republicans who believe in self-government in a democratic republic must support a revolutionary movement
and come to distrust the elites in both major parties who back the corporate interests (profit and
survival) over the public interests (peace, democratic policy making, keeping the Earth habitable, etc). What, then, will
spark a revolutionary movement to outlaw plutocracy, abolish the corporate-state, establish
political equality and save the world from the ravages of war and predatory, transnational
corporate capitalism, i.e., the neo-liberal world order we call corporate feudalism? That question is impossible to answer. It
could come from an article on a blog; but were it that simple, the Next American Revolution would have been sparked by Chris
Hedges’ essays on Truthdig by now. Perhaps it will be triggered by another Wall St.-induced financial crash. Perhaps a flood of
independent politicians will somehow manage to win office, including the White House, a pipe dream in this era of legalized
corruption and multimillion dollar campaigns. Perhaps a public space will be occupied again (Occupy Congress?), or enough people
will come to realize that the Framers’ republic has been transformed into an oligarchic, corporate-empire and rise up in rebellion in
time. Perhaps the left will learn to work with the right on the issues of mutual agreement. (See first video in the “Further viewing”
section below for elaboration on that version of the Next American Revolution.)¶ How this
revolution will be waged is
open to tactics employed by the dispossessed, the oppressed, the disgruntled and the rest of
those involved. The revolutionaries must be nonviolent, or else they risk pushing the U.S. government into full-blown, fascist
police state in reaction to them. In all likelihood, any violence will be initiated by the police. Revolutionary activists can
use the freedoms we still have left: assembly, petition, speech, theater, the ballot box and civil
disobedience — all employing a variety of tactics. “What Makes Nonviolent Movements Explode?” reviews the
tactics of disrupting business as usual and need for “personal sacrifice.” Will enough folks sacrifice some time they normally spend
watching television, exercising, reading, etc? It’s worth taking the time to read as a companion piece to this call for civil
participation. Revolution
must become part of many more people’s lives until the American
corporate-state is returned to We the People.
Hashtag Activism is Effective
“Hashtag Activism” proves to be valuable and influential
Olin 14 [Olin, Laura. “#BringBackOurGirls: Hashtag Activism Is Cheap–And That’s a Good
Thing.” May 9 2014. http://time.com/94059/bringbackourgirls-hashtag-activism-is-cheap-andthats-a-good-thing/. 6/23/15 IH]
“Where are the stolen girls of Nigeria? And why don’t we care more?” BoingBoing.net asked on April 30th, two weeks after more
than 300 girls were kidnapped from their school dormitory in Nigeria. The next day, a group of African American women on Twitter
wondered what the coverage would look like if hundreds of white girls had gone missing: “There’d already be a Lifetime movie in the
works.” Seven days later, virtually no news-consuming person in the West could be ignorant of the story, Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan had been forced to commit more resources toward the search, and the U.S., France, and the U.K. had all
promised aid as well. What changed in those seven days? The unserious-sounding but ultimately serious answer seems to be: a
hashtag campaign. #BringBackOurGirls
started in Nigeria on April 23rd by desperate parents and activists
who didn’t believe their president when he said he was taking action to recover the kidnapped girls. They wanted to put
pressure on the government to do more. They tried everything they could think of to raise awareness of the
kidnappings within and beyond Nigeria. One of those things was #BringBackOurGirls. It worked, likely beyond anything
they’d imagined or hoped for. Encapsulating both a story and a cause in just four words, the hashtag at first began to take
hold on Twitter only within Nigeria. Activists wrote it on signs to bring to street protests. Then it began to spread within Africa.
April 30th, two weeks after the kidnapping, was a turning point. News broke that the terrorist group that took the girls, Boko
Haram, planned to sell them into forced marriages for $12 apiece. Over the next few days, #BringBackOurGirls
went
from 10,000 mentions a day to 100,000 or 200,000. It jumped oceans, and thousands of non-Africans began
using it. As often happens, celebrities got involved, to dubious effect: Kim Kardashian, Christiane Amanpour, Chris
Brown–with no apparent recognition of hypocrisy–and, mostly recently, Anne Hathaway. Two weeks after its first use,
#BringBackOurGirls had gathered 2 million mentions. In recent days, #BringBackOurGirls has verged into feeling
like Twitter’s cause célèbre, something people participate in regardless of whether they know the larger context or the
campaign’s aims.
Critics have begun dismissing it as empty online activism that won’t, in the end, bring back
#BringBackOurGirls
has felt like one of the first Twitter causes that has a chance of actually changing outcomes,
the girls. We can’t know if the hashtag will ultimately help deliver the girls back their parents. But
especially since former and current Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry got involved and Michelle Obama tweeted
a photo of herself holding a sign with #BringBackOurGirls written on it in big block letters. Secretary Kerry followed up his tweet
with an announcement that the State Department would send military and law enforcement personnel to help advise Nigerian
officials in the search for the girls. The First Lady’s photo led to another, even more widespread round of media coverage: the
New York Post, for example, ran the tweet as the full cover of their front page with the headline, “YES, MICHELLE!” But beyond
that, the First Lady’s participation felt like a public rebuke of President Jonathan and his wife Patience, who has faced criticism for
reportedly ordering the arrest of activists protesting the government’s response to the kidnappings and even accusing protesters
of making up the abductions. Ignore millions of regular people participating in a hashtag campaign? Sure. Ignore Michelle
Obama? Two Secretaries of State? However
trivial hashtags can feel, their most basic function is as a tool
for focusing attention. Crucially, they’re also free and open to anyone to use. So desperate
Nigerian parents, without extraordinary power or resources can draw the kind of attention that
leads to real pressure and real power. That feels a little bit world-changing. And activists who started the hashtag
have gotten out of it exactly what they’d hoped for. In the space of a week, they made it impossible for President Jonathan to
continue chalking up their daughters’ abduction as the latest Boko Haram atrocity to be grimly accepted and eventually
forgotten. It’s not everything, but it’s
before it wasn’t talking about them at all.
a start. And the world is now talking about 276 stolen girls in Nigeria when
Impacts
Sexton
Social death is gratuitous violence; this is violence that is unwarranted, created
through ontological destruction. There is a qualitative ontological distinction
between CONTINGENT violence and GRATUITIOUS violence. We are controlling
the uniqueness of the impacts and control the FRAMING of all other impacts
Jared Sexton 2010 (“‘The Curtain of the Sky’: An Introduction” in Critical Sociology 36; 11.
Jared Sexton, Associate Professor of African-American studied and Critical Theory at the UCIrvine)
To suffer the loss of political sovereignty, the exploitation of labor, the dispossession of land and
resources is deplorable; yet, we might say in this light that to suffer colonization is unenviable
unless one is enslaved. One may not be free, but one is at least not enslaved. More simply, we might say of
the colonized: you may lose your motherland, but you will not ‘lose your mother’ (Hartman 2007). The latter condition, the ‘social death’
under which kinship is denied entirely by the force of law, is reserved for the ‘natal alienation’
and ‘genealogical isolation’ characterizing slavery. Here is Orlando Patterson, from his encyclopedic 1982 Slavery and
Social Death:nI prefer the term ‘natal alienation’ because it goes directly to the heart of what is critical in the slave’s forced alienation,
the loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending generations. It also has the important nuance of a loss of native status, of
deracination. It was this alienation of the slave from all formal, legally enforceable ties of ‘blood,’ and from any attachment to groups or localities other
than those chosen for him [sic] by the master, that gave the relation of slavery its peculiar value to the master. The slave was the ultimate human tool,
as imprintable and as disposable as the master wished. And this was true, at least in theory, of all slaves, no matter how elevated. (Patterson 1982: 7–8)
True even if elevated by the income and formal education of the mythic American middle class, the celebrity
of a Hollywood icon, or the political position of the so-called Leader of the Free World.4 The alienation and
isolation of the slave is not only vertical, canceling ties to past and future generations and rendering thereby the notion of
‘descendants of slaves’ as a strict oxymoron. It is also a horizontal prohibition, canceling ties to the slave’s contemporaries as well.
Reduced
to a tool, the deracination of the slave, as Mannoni and Fanon each note in their turn, is total, more fundamental
even than the displacement of the colonized, whose status obtains in a network of persecuted
human relations rather than in a collection or dispersal of a class of things. Crucially, this total deracination is strictly
correlative to the ‘absolute submission mandated by [slave] law’ discussed rigorously in Saidiya Hartman’s 1997 Scenes of Subjection: the slave estate is
the most perfect example of the space of purely formal obedience defining the jurisdictional field of sovereignty (Agamben 2000). Because the forced
submission of the slave is absolute, any signs whatsoever of ‘reasoning … intent and rationality’ are [is] recognized‘solely in the context of
criminal liability’. That is, ‘the slave’s will [is] acknowledged only as it [is] prohibited or punished’ (Hartman 1997: 82, emphasis added). A
criminal will, a criminal reasoning, a criminal intent, a criminal rationality: with these erstwhile human capacities construed as indices of culpability
before the law, even the potentiality of slave resistance is rendered illegitimate and illegible a priori. The disqualification of black resistance by the logic
of racial slavery is not unrelated to the longstanding cross-racial phenomenon in which the white bourgeois and proletarian revolutions on both sides of
the Atlantic can allegorize themselves as revolts against slavery, while the hemispheric black struggle against actually existing slavery cannot authorize
itself literally in those same terms. The latter must code itself as the apotheosis of the French and American revolutions (with their themes of JudeoChristian deliverance) or, later, the Russian and Chinese revolutions (with their themes of secular messianic transformation)or, later still, the broad anticolonial movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America of the mid-20th century (with their themes of indigenous reclamation and renaissance).5 One of
the defining features of contemporary political and intellectual culture remains this metaphoric transfer that appropriates black suffering as the
template for non-black grievances, while it misrecognizes the singularity of black struggles against racial slavery and what Loïc Wacquant calls its
‘functional surrogates’ or what Hartman terms its ‘afterlife’. Put differently,
‘the occult presence of racial slavery’ continues
to haunt our political imagination: ‘nowhere, but nevertheless everywhere, a dead time which never arrives
and does not stop arriving’ (Marriott 2007: xxi). Hartman’s notion of slavery’s afterlife and Wacquant’s theorization of slavery’s functional surrogates
are two productive recent attempts to name the interminable terror of slavery, but we
are still very much within the crisis of
language – of thinking and feeling, seeing and hearing – that slavery provokes. Both scholars challenge the
optimistic idea of a residual ‘legacy’ of slavery, precisely because it requires the untenable demarcation of an historic end in Emancipation. The
relations of slavery live on, Hartman might say, after the death knell of formal abolition, mutating into ‘the burdened
individuality of freedom’. The functions of the chattel system are largely maintained, Wacquant might say, despite
the efforts of Reconstruction, preserved in surrogate institutional form under Jim Crow, the
ghetto, and the prison. Slavery lives on, it survives, despite the grand attempts on its institutional life forged by the international
movements against slavery, segregation and mass imprisonment (Davis 2003).But what if slavery does not die, as it were,
because it is immortal, but rather because it is non-mortal, because it has never lived, at least not in the psychic life of power?
What if the source of slavery’s longevity is not its resilience in the face of opposition, but the obscurity of its
existence? Not the accumulation of its political capital, but the illegibility of its grammar? On this account, for
those that bear the mark of slavery – the trace of blackness – to speak is to sound off without
foundation, to appear as a ghost on the threshold of the visible world, a spook retaining (only) the negative
capacity to absent thepresence, or negate the will to presence, of every claimto human being, even perhaps the fugitive movement of stolen life
explored masterfully by Fred Moten (2008). We might rethink as well the very fruitful notion of ‘fugitive justice’ that shapes the prize-winning 2005
special issue of Representations on ‘Redress’. Co-editors Saidiya Hartman and Stephen Best are posing the right question: ‘How does one
compensate for centuries of violence that have as their consequence the impossibility of restoring a prior existence, of giving back what
was taken, of repairing what was broken?’ (Hartman and Best 2005: 2)That is to say, they are thinking about ‘the question of slavery in
terms of the incomplete nature of abolition’, ‘the contemporary predicament of freedom’ (2005: 5, emphasis added). Yet, the notion
subsequently developed of a fugitive life ‘lived in loss’ – spanning the split difference between grievance and grief, remedy and redress,
law and justice, hope and resignation – relies nonetheless on an outside, however improbable or impossible, as the space of possibility,
of movement, of life. Returning to our schematization of Fanon, we can say that the outside is a concept embedded in the problématique of
colonization and its imaginary topography, indeed, the fact that it can imagine topographically at all.But, even if the freedom dreams of the black
radical imagination do conjure images of place (and to do here does not imply that one can in either sense of the latter word: able or permitted); what
both the fact of blackness and the lived experience of the black name for us, in their discrepant registers, is an anti-black world for which there is no
outside. ‘The language of race developed in the modern period and in the context of the slave trade’ (Hartman 2007: 5). And if that context is our
context and that context is the world, then this is the principal insight revealed by the contemporary predicament of freedom: there is
no such thing as a fugitive slave.To
be sure, Humans do not live under conditions of equality in the
modern world. In fact, modernity is, to a large degree, marked by societies structured in
dominance: [hetero]patriarchy and white supremacy, settler colonialism and extra-territorial
conquest, imperialist warfare and genocide, class struggle and the international division of
labor. Yet, for Wilderson, there is a qualitative difference, an ontological one, between the
inferiorization or dehumanization of the masses of people ‘in Asia…in America and the islands of the sea’,
including the colonization of their land and resources, the exploitation of their labor and even
their extermination in whole or in part, and the singular commodification of human being
pursued under racial slavery, that structure of gratuitous violence in which bodies are rendered
as flesh to be accumulated and exchanged.
Social Death
Anti-Blackness is the Controlling Impact for how we should interpret all forms
of violence
Crockett 14 ( J’Nasah , writer, performer, and cultural worker who focuses on Black
cultural production and Black radical traditions. “Raving Amazons”: Anti-blackness and
Misogynoir in Social Media June 30,2014https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/ravingamazons-antiblackness-and-misogynoir-in-social-media.
Anti-blackness, in a rough-hewn nutshell, is the structuring logic of the modernity and the
foundation of the contemporary world we live in. It is the glue and the string running through our
conceptions of what it means to be free, what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be a
legitimate and productive member of society, what it means to be Human, and what it means to
be the anti-Human. Anti-blackness is the structural positioning of the Black (“the Black” here being
a marker for a certain type of subjectivity comparable to Marx’s “the worker” – shoutout Frank
Wilderson) as an object that is fungible and able to be accumulated like any other wicket churned
out by the process of capitalism; it is the fact of Black folks being open to perpetual and gratuitous
violence that needs no definitive prior provocation or “reason;” the “reason” is the fact of
Blackness (see:getting shot for walking home with some Skittles, getting shot while being handcuffed
in the backseat of a car, getting shot for calling 911, being beaten for staring at someone in a
“dehumanizing” way, and on and on).It is, to echo Hartman, the afterlife of slavery: a logic that
collapses the past and the present and places violence towards the Black within a range of
acceptable daily practices. Certainly anti-blackness is attitudinal – see the libidinal economy, i.e. the systems of
desire and instincts and fantasies and repulsion around skin tone, hair types, bodies that makes itself apparent in Eurocentric beauty
standards or the fact that lighter-skinned African American women receive shorter prison sentences than their darker-skinned
counterparts. But
that’s how logic and structures operate, they imbue everything that springs forth
from them. Our lives and societies (because when we speak of the afterlife of race-based chattel slavery, Arab and transAtlantic, we are speaking of the entire world) are fundamentally shaped by it, not only institutionally, but also
at the level of the everyday, including crossing the street. So of course it makes itself apparent in the supposedly
brave new world (so different from any world that came before!) of social media.I myself joined both Twitter and Tumblr back in
2009, after experiences stretching back to high school with BlackPlanet.com, Myspace, Livejournal, and of course Facebook. With
Twitter and Tumblr, however, I joined after spending a year or two lurking on the edges of a particular group of (mostly) women of
color, and moving onto social media around the same time they did allowed me to connect with them in ways I wasn’t able to when
the main platform was, say, WordPress. For us, and for the many Black women I have since connected and built with since 2009,
social media offers us yet another way to build our “beloved communities,” to extend the networks of love, camaraderie, and joyous
support that have long existed in our meatspace communities – hair salons, churches, Black student unions, kitchen tables, etc.
Social media also becomes a central site for much of our activism, from the multinational #BringBackOurGirls hashtag to holding
media outlets accountable for publishing blatant racism. We are also theory houses, circulating and challenging discourses and
practices that negatively impact our lives as Black women, and making critical connections that are often missing from the media
that surrounds us. I can’t help but see historical parallels to, say, early 20th century Pullman Porters secretly distributing copies
of The Chicago Defender to the Black folks they came across. What we’re doing is nothing new, but being on social media means
that this networking is happening in the public eye. I also can’t help but see historical parallels in the multiple forms of anti-black
The topic of surveillance in social media has
been a hot one lately, but many discussions on it stop and end at the Edward Snowden/NSA type
revelations over post-9/11, post-War on Terror invasions of privacy at the hands of an overzealous
government. However, if we were to extend the idea of policing and surveillance further back in
time, and expand it beyond the trope of it being primarily carried out by government employees, it
becomes apparent that surveillance has already been a central part of the experience of Black
women on Twitter. Recall that in the U.S., the police have their roots in slave patrols; policing and
management of the potentially unruly Black bodies underlies the call for law and order and the
backlash Black women have received on social media over the past few years.
constituent need for police. To quote Wilderson again, in society there is a “fundamental anxiety
over where is the Black and what is he or she doing,” and in an anti-black world, every non-Black is
deputized to patrol and manage the Blacks.
Blackness is social death and unimaginable exclusion
Vargas and James ‘13 [João Costa and Joy, University of Texas and Williams University,
Refusing Blackness-as-Victimization: Trayvon Martin and the Black Cyborgs, Chapter 14 in
Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations ed. George
Yancy and Janine Jones]
What happens when, instead of becoming enraged and shocked every time a black person is
killed in the United States, we recognize black death as a predictable and constitutive aspect of
this democracy? What will happen then if instead of demanding justice we recognize (or at least
consider) that the very notion of justice-indeed the gamut of political and cognitive elements
that constitute formal, multiracial democratic practices and institutions-produces or requires
black exclusion and death as normative? To think about Trayvon Martin's death not merely as a
tragedy or media controversy but as a political marker of possibilities permits one to come to
terms with several foundational and foretold stories, particularly if we understand that death or
killing to be prefigured by mass or collec- tive loss of social standing and life. One story is of
impossible redemption in the impossible polis. It departs from, and depends on, the position of
the hegemonic, anti-black-which is not exclusively white but is exclusively non-black-subject and
the political and cognitive schemes that guarantee her ontology and genealogy. Depending on
the theology, redemption requires deliverance from sin, and/or deliverance from slavery. 1
Redemption is a precondition of integration into the white-dominated social universe2
Integration thus requires that the black become a non-slave, and that the black become a nonsinner. The paradox or impossibility is that if blackness is both sin and sign of enslavement, the
mark of "Ham,'; then despite the legal abolition of juridical enslavement or chattel slavery or the
end of the formal colony, the sinner and enslaved endure; and virtue requires the eradication of
both. If we theorize from the standpoint say of Frantz Fanon, through the lens of the fiftieth
anniversary of the English publication, The Wretched of the Earth (or Ida B. Wells's Southern
Horrors, Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark, Frank Wilderson's Jncognegro, etc.), we can follow
a clear heuristic formulation: from the perspective of the dominant, white-inflected gaze and
predisposition, blacks can be redeemed neither from sin nor from slavery. 3 For a black person
to be integrated, s/he must either become non-black, or display superhuman and/or
infrahuman qualities. (In Fanonian terms she would become an aggrandized slave or
enfranchised slave-that is, one who owns property still nonetheless remains in servitude or
colonized.) The imagination, mechanics, and reproduction of the ordinary polis rely on the
exclusion of ordinary blacks and their availability for violent aggression and/ or premature death
or disappearance (historically through lynching and the convict prison lease system, today
through "benign neglect" and mass incarceration). The ordinary black person can therefore
never be integrated. The "ordinary negro" is never without sin. Thus, to be sinless or angelic in
order to be recognized as citizenry has been the charge for postbellum blackness. Throughout
the twentieth century, movements to free blacks from what followed in the wake of the
abolition of chattel slavery ushered in the postbellum black cyborg: the call for a "Talented
Tenth" issued by white missionaries and echoed by a young W. E. B. Du Bois, Bayard Rustin's
imploring a young Martin Luther King Jr. to become "angelic" in his advocacy of civil rights and
to remove the men with shotguns from his front porch despite the bombings and death threats
against King, his wife Corella, and their young children. The angelic negro/negress is not
representative and his or her status as an acceptable marker for U.S. democracy is predicated
upon their usefulness for the transformation of whiteness into a loftier, more ennobled
formation. This performance or service of the angelic black would be resurrected in the
reconstruction of Trayvon Martin as a youth worthy of the right to life, the right of refusal to
wear blackness as victimization; the right to fight back. That is, the right to the life of the polis;
so much of black life, particularly for the average fellah, is mired in close proximity to the
graveyard, hemmed in by the materiality of social margins and decay, exclusion and violence.
Allowing Institutional racism allows for the dehumanization of blacks
Blow 9(CHARLES M. BLOW , Times’s visual Op-Ed columnist, conducts a discussion about all
things statistical — from the environment to entertainment — and their visual expressions.,
Cites studies written by Phillip Atiba Goff¶ The Pennsylvania State University¶ Jennifer L.
Eberhardt¶ Stanford University¶ Melissa J. Williams¶ University of California, Berkeley¶ Matthew
Christian Jackson¶ The Pennsylvania State University ‘Not Yet Human’¶ February 25, 2009
http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/not-yet-human/, //AR)
Those following the New York Post cartoon flap might find this interesting.¶ Six
studies under the title “Not Yet
Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences” were
published in last February’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.¶ Among the relevant findings:¶ Historical representations
explicitly depicting Blacks as apelike have largely disappeared in the United States, yet a
mental association between
Blacks and apes remains. Here, the authors demonstrate that U.S. citizens implicitly associate
Blacks and apes.¶ And …¶ After having established that individuals mentally associate Blacks and apes, Study 4 demonstrated
that this implicit association is not due to personalized, implicit attitudes and can operate beneath conscious awareness. In Study
5, we demonstrated that, even controlling for implicit anti-Black prejudice, the implicit
association between Blacks and apes can lead to greater endorsement of violence against a
Black suspect than against a White suspect. Finally, in Study 6, we demonstrated that subtle media
representations of Blacks as apelike are associated with jury decisions to execute Black
defendants.This may provide some context for considering the motives of the cartoonist and his editors, and for understanding
the strong public reaction.
Institutional Racism Bad
Racism has allowed blacks to be categorized into negative stereotypes making
it impossible for prosperity
Kaplan 9(Karen Kaplan | Kaplan is a Times staff writer, Racial stereotypes and social status,
December 9 2008 http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/09/science/sci-race9, //AR
Barack Obama's election as president may be seen as a harbinger of a colorblind society, but a new study
suggests that
derogatory racial stereotypes are so powerful that merely being unemployed makes people
more likely to be viewed by others -- and even themselves -- as black.¶ In a long-term survey of 12,686
people, changes in social circumstances such as falling below the poverty line or being sent to
jail made people more likely to be perceived by interviewers as black and less likely to be seen
as white. Altogether, the perceived race of 20% of the people in the study changed at least once over a 19-year period, according
to the study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.¶ "After [junk bond financier] Michael Milken
goes to prison, he'll be no more likely to say he's a black person or any less likely to say he's a white person," said Amon Emeka, a
social demographer at USC who was not involved in the study. "[U.S. Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas might say he's
transcended race, but he wouldn't say that he's a white person, and certainly no one on the planet would say he's a white person."¶
Researchers have long recognized that a person's race affects his or her social status, but the
study is the first to show that social status also affects the perception of race.¶ "Race isn't a
characteristic that's fixed at birth," said UC Irvine sociologist Andrew Penner, one of the study's authors. "We're
perceived a certain way and identify a certain way depending on widely held stereotypes
about how people believe we should behave."¶ Penner and Aliya Saperstein, a sociologist at the University of
Oregon, examined data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Though the ongoing
survey is primarily focused on the work history of Americans born in the 1950s and 1960s, participants have also provided
interviewers with information on a variety of topics, including health, marital status, insurance coverage and race.¶ On 18 occasions
between 1979 and 1998, interviewers wrote down whether the people they spoke with were "white," "black" or "other."¶ The
researchers found that people whom the interviewers initially perceived as white were
roughly twice as likely to be seen as nonwhite in their next interview if they had fallen into
poverty, lost their job or been sent to prison. People previously perceived as black were twice
as likely to continue being seen as black if any of those things had happened to them.¶ For
example, 10% of people previously described as white were reclassified as belonging to another race if they became incarcerated.
But if they stayed out of jail, 4% were reclassified as something other than white.¶ The
effect has staying power.
People who were perceived as white and then became incarcerated were more likely to be
perceived as black even after they were released from prison, Penner said.¶ The racial
assumptions affected self-identity as well. Survey participants were asked to state their own race when the study
began in 1979 and again in 2002, when the government streamlined its categories for race and ethnicity.¶ Of the people who said
they were white in 1979 and stayed out of jail, 95% said they were white in 2002. Among those who were incarcerated at some
point, however, only 81% still said they were white in 2002.¶ The
results underscore "the pervasiveness of racial
stratification in society," said Emeka. "The fact that both beholders and the observers of blackness
attach negative associations to blackness speaks volumes to the continuing impact of racial
stratification in U.S. society."¶ But Robert T. Carter, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia Teachers
College in New York who studies race, culture and racial identity, said he wasn't convinced that stereotypes had the power to
change the perception of race.¶ "It's not social status that shapes race, it's race that shapes social status," he said. "Stratification on
the basis of racial group membership has been an integral part of our society since prior to the inception of the United States. It's
been true for hundreds of years."¶ To see if the changes were the result of simple recording errors made when interviewers filled
out their surveys, the researchers checked how often a participant's gender changed from one year to the next. They found changes
in 0.27% of cases, suggesting that interviewers weren't being sloppy.¶ They also looked for subjects who were interviewed by the
same person two years in a row. Even in those cases, the results were the same.¶ The researchers are examining whether other
social stereotypes have a similar effect on perceived race. People who have less education, live in the inner city instead of the
suburbs and are on welfare are more likely to be seen as black, Saperstein said.¶ "The data is really interesting, but it doesn't allow
us to say what was going on in these people's heads," she said. "Our story is consistent with the story that there's implicit prejudice."
Racism must be rejected in every instance
Barndt 91 (Joseph R. Barndt co-director of Ministry Working to Dismantle Racism "Dismantling
Racism" p. 155
To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and limitations, ghettos and prisons.
The prison of racism confines us all, people of color and white people alike. It shackles the victimizer
as well as the victim. The walls forcibly keep people of color and white people separate from each other; in our separate
prisons we are all prevented from achieving the human potential God intends for us. The limitations imposed on
people of color by poverty, subservience, and powerlessness are cruel, inhuman, and unjust; the
effects of uncontrolled power, privilage, and greed, whicha are the marks of our white prison, will
inevitably destroy us as well. But we have also seen that the walls of racism can be dismantled. We
are not condemned to an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of freedom.
Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be
destroyed. You and I are urgently called to joing the efforst of those who know it is time to tear
down, once and for all, the walls of racism. The danger point of self-destruction seems to be drawing
even more near. The results of centuries of national and worldwide conquest and colonialism, of
military buildups and violent aggression, of overconsumption and environmental destruction may
be reaching a point of no return. A small and predominantly white minority of the global population
derives its power and privelage from the sufferings of vast majority of peoples of all color. For the
sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.
Racism Bad
Racism is the lynchpin of the modern biopolitical state, spawning the worst
excesses of biopower. The aff is the path to eugenic control and genocide to
legitimate state action
Mendieta 02 [Eduardo Mendieta, SUNY at Stony Brook, ‘To make live and to let die’ –Foucault on Racism; Meeting of the Foucault Circle
APA Central Division Meeting, Chicago, April 25, 2002]
I have thus far discussed Foucault’s triangulation between the discourses of the production of truth, the power that these discourse enact and make available to
social agents, and the constitution of a political rationality that is linked to the invention and creation of its horizon of activity and surveillance. I want now to focus
on the main theme of this courses’ last lecture. This theme discloses in a unique way the power and perspicacity of Foucault’s method. The theme concerns the
kind of power that biopower renders available, or rather, how biopolitics produces certain power effects by thinking of the living in a novel way. We will approach
whereas the power of the sovereign under Medieval and early Modern times
was the power to make die and to let live, the power of the total state, which is the biopower
state, is the power to make live and to let die. Foucault discerned here a telling asymmetry. If the sovereign exercised his power
the theme by way of a contrast:
with the executioner’s axe, with the perpetual threat of death, then life was abandoned to its devices. Power was exhibited only on the scaffold, or the guillotine –
its terror was the shimmer of the unsheathed sword. Power was ritualistic, ceremonial, theatrical, and to that extent partial, molecular, and calendrical. It was also
a power that by its own juridical logic had to submit to the jostling of rights and claims. In the very performance of its might, the power of the sovereign revealed
its limitation. It is a power that is localized and circumscribed to the theater of its cruelty, and the staging of its pomp. In contrast, however,
the power of
the biopower state is over life [expand]. And here Foucault asks “how can biopolitics then reclaim the power over death?” or rather,
how can it make die in light of the fact that its claim to legitimacy is that it is guarding, nurturing,
tending to life? In so far as biopolitics is the management of life, how does it make die, how does it kill? This is a similar question to the one that
theologians asked about the Christian God. If God is a god of life, the giver of life, how can he put to death, how can he allow death to descend upon his gift of life –
in order to re-claim death, to be able to inflict
death on its subjects, its living beings, biopower must make use of racism; more precisely,
racism intervenes here to grant access to death to the biopower state. We must recall that the
political rationality of biopower is deployed over a population, which is understood as a
continuum of life. It is this continuum of life that eugenics, social hygiene, civil engineering, civil medicine,
military engineers, doctors and nurses, policeman, and so on, tended to by a careful management of roads,
why is death a possibility if god is the giver of life? Foucault’s answer is that
factories, living quarters, brothels, red-districts, planning and planting of gardens and recreation centers, and the gerrymandering of populations by means of
Biopolitics is the result of the development and
maintenance of the hothouse of the political body, of the body-politic. Society has become the
vivarium of the political rationality, and biopolitics acts on the teeming biomass contained
within the parameters of that structure built up by the institutions of health, education, and production. This is where
racism intervenes, not from without, exogenously, but from within, constitutively. For the
emergence of biopower as the form of a new form of political rationality, entails the inscription
within the very logic of the modern state the logic of racism. For racism grants, and here I am quoting:
“the conditions for the acceptability of putting to death in a society of normalization. Where
there is a society of normalization, where there is a power that is, in all of its surface and in first
instance, and first line, a bio-power, racism is indispensable as a condition to be able to put to
death someone, in order to be able to put to death others. The homicidal [meurtrière] function
of the state, to the degree that the state functions on the modality of bio-power, can only be
assured by racism “(Foucault 1997, 227) To use the formulations from his 1982 lecture “The Political Technology of Individuals” –which incidentally,
roads, access to public transformations, placement of schools, and so on.
echo his 1979 Tanner Lectures –the power of the state after the 18th century, a power which is enacted through the police, and is enacted over the population, is a
“since the population is nothing more than
what the state takes care of for its own sake, of course, the state is entitled to slaughter it, if
necessary. So the reverse of biopolitics is thanatopolitics.” (Foucault 2000, 416). Racism, is the
thanatopolitics of the biopolitics of the total state. They are two sides of one same political
technology, one same political rationality: the management of life, the life of a population, the
power over living beings, and as such it is a biopolitics. And, to quote more directly,
tending to the continuum of life of a people. And with the inscription of racism within the state
of biopower, the long history of war that Foucault has been telling in these dazzling lectures has made a new turn:
the war of peoples, a war against
invaders, imperials colonizers, which turned into a war of races, to then turn into a war of
classes, has now turned into the war of a race, a biological unit, against its polluters and threats.
Racism is the means by which bourgeois political power, biopower, re-kindles the fires of war
within civil society. Racism normalizes and medicalizes war. Racism makes war the permanent
condition of society, while at the same time masking its weapons of death and torture. As I
wrote somewhere else, racism banalizes genocide by making quotidian the lynching of suspect
threats to the health of the social body. Racism makes the killing of the other, of others, an
everyday occurrence by internalizing and normalizing the war of society against its enemies. To
protect society entails we be ready to kill its threats, its foes, and if we understand society as a
unity of life, as a continuum of the living, then these threat and foes are biological in nature.
Racism Outweighs Nuclear War
Racism outweighs nuclear war
Mohan 93 (Brij, Professor at LSU, Eclipse of Freedom p. 3-4)
Metaphors of existence symbolize variegated aspects of the human reality. However, words can
be apocalyptic. "There are words," de Beauvoir writes, "as murderous as gas chambers" (1968:
30). Expressions can be unifying and explosive; they portray explicit messages and implicit
agendas in human affairs and social configurations. Manifestly the Cold War is over. But the
world is not without nuclear terror. Ethnic strife and political instabilities in the New World
Order -- following the dissolution of the Soviet Union -- have generated fears of nuclear
terrorism and blackmail in view of the widening circle of nuclear powers. Despite encouraging
trends in nuclear disarmament, unsettling questions, power, and fear of terrorism continue to
characterize the crisis of the new age which is stumbling at the threshold of the twenty-first
century.The ordeal of existence transcends the thermonuclear fever because the latter does not
directly impact the day-to-day operations if the common people. The fear of crime, accidents,
loss of job, and health care on one hand; and the sources of racism, sexism, and ageism on the
other hand have created a counterculture of denial and disbelief that has shattered the façade
of civility. Civilization loses its significance when its social institutions become
counterproductive. It is this aspect of the mega-crisis that we are concerned about.
Framing Contention
1AC
Contention ___: Framing
Education in academic settings is necessary – you should prioritize our
discussions
Giroux 12 [Henry, Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies
Department, “Beyond the Politics of the Big Lie: The Education Deficit and the New Authoritarianism” June 6, 2012 http://truthout.org/opinion/item/9865-beyond-the-politics-of-the-big-lie-the-education-deficit-and-the-new-authoritarianism]
one of the paradoxes of education [is] that precisely at the point when you
begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society. It is your
responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person. "(43) What Baldwin
recognizes is that learning has the possibility to trigger a critical engagement with oneself, others
and the larger society - education becomes in this instance more than a method or tool
for domination but a politics, a fulcrum for democratic social change. Tragically, in our current climate
He goes on to argue "that
"learning" merely contributes to a vast reserve of manipulation and self-inflicted ignorance. Our education deficit is neither reducible to the failure of particular types of teaching
nor the decent into madness by the spokespersons for the new authoritarianism. Rather, it is about how matters of knowledge, values and ideology can be struggled over as
Surviving the current education deficit will depend on progressives using
history, memory and knowledge not only to reconnect intellectuals to the everyday
needs of ordinary people, but also to jumpstart social movements by making education
central to organized politics and the quest for a radical democracy.
issues of power and politics.
Structural violence outweighs – it creates the necessary conditions for all “large
scale” impacts to occur
Scheper-Hughes and Burgois, Professors of Anthropology at UC Berkeley and
UPenn write in 2004
[Prof of Anthropology @ Cal-Berkely, and Bourgois Professors of Anthropology @ UPenn, Nancy and Philippe,
Introduction: Making Sense of Violence, in Violence in War and Peace, pg. 19-22]
This large and at first sight “messy” Part VII is central to this anthology’s thesis. It encompasses everything from the routinized, bureaucratized, and utterly banal violence of children dying of hunger and maternal
despair in Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33) to elderly African Americans dying of heat stroke in Mayor Daly’s version of US apartheid in Chicago’s South Side (Klinenberg, Chapter 38) to the racialized
class hatred expressed by British Victorians in their olfactory disgust of the “smelly” working classes (Orwell, Chapter 36). In these readings violence is located in the symbolic and social structures that
overdetermine and allow the criminalized drug addictions, interpersonal bloodshed, and racially patterned incarcerations that characterize the US “inner city” to be normalized (Bourgois, Chapter 37 and
Wacquant, Chapter 39). Violence also takes the form of class, racial, political self-hatred and adolescent self-destruction (Quesada, Chapter 35), as well as of useless (i.e. preventable), rawly embodied physical
Close attention to the
“little” violences produced in the structures, habituses, and mentalites of everyday life shifts our attention to pathologies of
class, race, and gender inequalities. More important, it interrupts the voyeuristic tendencies of “violence studies” that risk publicly humiliating the powerless who are
suffering, and death (Farmer, Chapter 34). Absolutely central to our approach is a blurring of categories and distinctions between wartime and peacetime violence.
often forced into complicity with social and individual pathologies of power because suffering is often a solvent of human integrity and dignity. Thus, in this anthology we are positing a violence continuum
comprised of a multitude of “small wars and invisible genocides” (see also Scheper- Hughes 1996; 1997; 2000b) conducted in the normative social spaces of public schools, clinics, emergency rooms, hospital
wards, nursing homes, courtrooms, public registry offices, prisons, detention centers, and public morgues. The violence continuum also refers to the ease with which
humans are capable
of reducing the socially vulnerable into expendable nonpersons and assuming the license - even the duty - to kill, maim, or soul-murder.
We realize that in referring to a violence and a genocide continuum we are flying in the face of a tradition of genocide studies that argues for the absolute uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust and for vigilance with
respect to restricted purist use of the term genocide itself (see Kuper 1985; Chaulk 1999; Fein 1990; Chorbajian 1999). But we hold an opposing and alternative view that, to the contrary, it is absolutely necessary
to make just such existential leaps in purposefully linking violent acts in normal times to those of abnormal times. Hence the title of our volume: Violence in War and in Peace. If (as we concede) there is a moral
there is), an even greater risk lies in failing to
sensitize ourselves, in misrecognizing protogenocidal practices and sentiments daily enacted as normative behavior by “ordinary” good-enough citizens. Peacetime
risk in overextending the concept of “genocide” into spaces and corners of everyday life where we might not ordinarily think to find it (and
crimes, such as prison construction sold as economic development to impoverished communities in the mountains and deserts of California, or the evolution of the criminal industrial complex into the latest
peculiar institution for managing race relations in the United States (Waquant, Chapter 39), constitute the “small wars and invisible genocides” to which we refer. This applies to African American and Latino youth
mortality statistics in Oakland, California, Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York City.
These are “invisible” genocides not because they are secreted away or hidden from view,
but quite the opposite. As Wittgenstein observed, the things that are hardest to perceive are those which are right before our eyes and therefore taken for granted. In this regard, Bourdieu’s partial and unfinished
theory of violence (see Chapters 32 and 42) as well as his concept of misrecognition is crucial to our task. By including the normative everyday forms of violence hidden in the minutiae of “normal” social practices in the architecture of homes, in gender relations, in communal work, in the exchange of gifts, and so forth - Bourdieu forces us to reconsider the broader meanings and status of violence, especially the links
between the violence of everyday life and explicit political terror and state repression, Similarly, Basaglia’s notion of “peacetime crimes” - crimini di pace - imagines a direct relationship between wartime and
war crimes are merely ordinary, everyday crimes of public consent
applied systematic- ally and dramatically in the extreme context of war. Consider the parallel uses of rape during peacetime and wartime, or the family
peacetime violence. Peacetime crimes suggests the possibility that
resemblances between the legalized violence of US immigration and naturalization border raids on “illegal aliens” versus the US government- engineered genocide in 1938, known as the Cherokee “Trail of Tears.”
Peacetime crimes suggests that everyday forms of state violence make a certain kind of domestic peace possible. Internal “stability” is purchased with the currency of peacetime crimes, many of which take the
form of professionally applied “strangle-holds.” Everyday forms of state violence during peacetime make a certain kind of domestic “peace” possible. It is an easy-to-identify peacetime crime that is usually
maintained as a public secret by the government and by a scared or apathetic populace. Most subtly, but no less politically or structurally, the phenomenal growth in the United States of a new military,
postindustrial prison industrial complex has taken place in the absence of broad-based opposition, let alone collective acts of civil disobedience. The public consensus is based primarily on a new mobilization of an
old fear of the mob, the mugger, the rapist, the Black man, the undeserving poor. How many public executions of mentally deficient prisoners in the United States are needed to make life feel more secure for the
affluent? What can it possibly mean when incarceration becomes the “normative” socializing experience for ethnic minority youth in a society, i.e., over 33 percent of young African American men (Prison Watch
it is essential that we recognize the existence of a genocidal capacity among otherwise good-enough humans and that we need to exercise a
defensive hypervigilance to the less dramatic, permitted, and even rewarded everyday acts of violence that render
participation in genocidal acts and policies possible (under adverse political or economic conditions), perhaps more easily than we would like to recognize. Under the
2002). In the end
violence continuum we include, therefore, all expressions of radical social exclusion, dehumanization, depersonalization, pseudo-speciation, and reification which normalize atrocious behavior and violence toward
others. A constant self-mobilization for alarm, a state of constant hyperarousal is, perhaps, a reasonable response to Benjamin’s view of late modern history as a chronic “state of emergency” (Taussig, Chapter 31).
We are trying to recover here the classic anagogic thinking that enabled Erving Goffman, Jules Henry, C. Wright Mills, and Franco Basaglia among other mid-twentieth-century radically critical thinkers, to perceive
the symbolic and structural relations, i.e., between inmates and patients, between concentration camps, prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes, and other “total institutions.” Making that decisive move to
recognize the continuum of violence allows us to see the capacity and the willingness - if not enthusiasm - of ordinary people, the practical technicians of the social consensus, to enforce genocidal-like crimes
mass violence and genocide are born, it is ingrained in the common
sense of everyday social life. The mad, the differently abled, the mentally vulnerable have often fallen into this category of the unworthy living, as have the very old and infirm,
against categories of rubbish people. There is no primary impulse out of which
the sick-poor, and, of course, the despised racial, religious, sexual, and ethnic groups of the moment. Erik Erikson referred to “pseudo- speciation” as the human tendency to classify some individuals or social
groups as less than fully human - a prerequisite to genocide and one that is carefully honed during the unremark- able peacetimes that precede the sudden, “seemingly unintelligible” outbreaks of mass violence.
Collective denial and misrecognition are prerequisites for mass violence and genocide. But so are formal bureaucratic
structures and professional roles. The practical technicians of everyday violence in the backlands of Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33), for example, include the clinic doctors who prescribe powerful
tranquilizers to fretful and frightfully hungry babies, the Catholic priests who celebrate the death of “angel-babies,” and the municipal bureaucrats who dispense free baby coffins but no food to hungry families.
Everyday violence encompasses the implicit, legitimate, and routinized forms of violence inherent in particular social, economic, and political formations. It is close to what Bourdieu (1977, 1996) means by
“symbolic violence,” the violence that is often “nus-recognized” for something else, usually something good. Everyday violence is similar to what Taussig (1989) calls “terror as usual.” All these terms are meant to
reveal a public secret - the hidden links between violence in war and violence in peace, and between war crimes and “peace-time crimes.” Bourdieu (1977) finds domination and violence in the least likely places in courtship and marriage, in the exchange of gifts, in systems of classification, in style, art, and culinary taste- the various uses of culture. Violence, Bourdieu insists, is everywhere in social practice. It is
misrecognized because its very everydayness and its familiarity render it invisible. Lacan identifies “rneconnaissance” as the prerequisite of the social. The exploitation of bachelor sons, robbing them of autonomy,
independence, and progeny, within the structures of family farming in the European countryside that Bourdieu escaped is a case in point (Bourdieu, Chapter 42; see also Scheper-Hughes, 2000b; Favret-Saada,
1989). Following Gramsci, Foucault, Sartre, Arendt, and other modern theorists of power-vio- lence, Bourdieu treats direct aggression and physical violence as a crude, uneconomical mode of domination; it is less
efficient and, according to Arendt (1969), it is certainly less legitimate. While power and symbolic domination are not to be equated with violence - and Arendt argues persuasively that violence is to be
understood as a failure of power - violence, as we are presenting it here, is more than simply the expression of illegitimate physical force against a person or group of persons. Rather, we need to understand
violence as encompassing all forms of “controlling processes” (Nader 1997b) that assault basic human freedoms and individual or collective survival. Our task is to recognize these gray zones of violence which are,
by definition, not obvious. Once again, the point of bringing into the discourses on genocide everyday, normative experiences of reification, depersonalization, institutional confinement, and acceptable death is to
help answer the question: What makes mass violence and genocide possible? In this volume we are suggesting that mass violence is part of a continuum, and that it is socially incremental and often experienced by
perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders - and even by victims themselves - as expected, routine, even justified. The preparations for mass killing can be found in social sentiments and institutions from the family,
They harbor the early “warning signs” (Charney 1991), the “priming” (as Hinton, ed., 2002 calls it), or the “genocidal continuum” (as we
that push social consensus toward devaluing certain forms of human life and lifeways from the refusal of social support and humane care to
to schools, churches, hospitals, and the military.
call it)
vulnerable “social parasites” (the nursing home elderly, “welfare queens,” undocumented immigrants, drug addicts) to the militarization of everyday life (super-maximum-security prisons, capital punishment; the
technologies of heightened personal security, including the house gun and gated communities; and reversed feelings of victimization).
Low probability should be no probability – don’t fall for cognitive biases that
make the neg’s internal link chains appear coherent
Sunstein, Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago writes in
2002
[Cass, Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, Law School and Department of Political
Science, Probability Neglect: Emotions, Worst Cases, and Law, http://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/1121/SunsteinFINAL.pdf]
If someone is predisposed to be worried, degrees of unlikeliness seem to provide no comfort, unless one can prove that harm is absolutely impossible, which itself is not possible.1 [
A]ffect-rich
outcomes yield pronounced overweighting of small probabilities . . . .2 On Sept. 11, Americans entered a new and frightening
geography, where the continents of safety and danger seemed forever shifted. Is it safe to fly? Will terrorists wage germ warfare? Where is the line between
reasonable precaution and panic? Jittery, uncertain and assuming the worst, many people have answered these questions by forswearing air travel, purchasing gas masks
and radiation detectors, placing frantic calls to pediatricians demanding vaccinations against exotic diseases or rushing out to fill prescriptions for Cipro, an antibiotic most experts consider an unnecessary defense
against anthrax.3 I. RISKS, NUMBERS, AND REGULATION Consider the following problems: • People live in a community near an abandoned hazardous waste site. The community appears to suffer from an
unusually high number of deaths and illnesses. Many members of the community fear that the hazardous waste site is responsible for the problem. Administrative officials attempt to offer reassurance that the
likelihood of adverse health effects, as a result of the site, is extremely low.4 The reassurance is met with skepticism and distrust. • An airplane, carrying people from New York to California, has recently crashed.
Although the source of the problem is unknown, many people suspect terrorism. In the following weeks, many people who would otherwise fly are taking trains or staying home. Some of those same people
acknowledge that the statistical risk is exceedingly small. Nonetheless, they refuse to fly, in part because they do not want to experience the anxiety that would come from flying. • An administrative agency is
deciding whether to require labels on genetically modified food. According to experts within the agency, genetically modified food, as such, poses insignificant risks to the environment and to human health. But
many consumers disagree. Knowledge of genetic modification triggers strong emotions, and the labeling requirement is thought likely to have large effects on consumer choice, notwithstanding expert claims that
people tend to focus on the
are not closely attuned to the probability that harm will occur. At the
individual level, this phenomenon, which I shall call “probability neglect,” produces serious difficulties of various sorts, including excessive worry and
unjustified behavioral changes. When people neglect probability, they may also treat some risks as if they were nonexistent, even
the danger is trivial. How should we understand human behavior in cases of this sort? My principal answer, the thesis of this Essay, is that when intense emotions are engaged,
adverse outcome, not on its likelihood. That is, they
though the likelihood of harm, over a lifetime, is far from trivial. Probability neglect can produce significant problems for law and regulation. As we shall see, regulatory agencies, no less than individuals, may
neglect the issue of probability, in a way that can lead to either indifference to real risks or costly expenditures for little or no gain. If agencies are falling victim to probability neglect, they might well be violating
relevant law.5 Indeed, we shall see that the idea of probability neglect helps illuminate a number of judicial decisions, which seem implicitly attuned to that idea, and which reveal an implicit behavioral rationality
in important pockets of federal administrative law. As we shall also see, an understanding of probability neglect helps show how government can heighten, or dampen, public concern about hazards. Public-
spirited
political actors, no less than self-interested ones, can exploit probability neglect so as to promote attention to problems that may or may not deserve
public concern. It will be helpful to begin, however, with some general background on individual and social judgments about risks. A. Cognition On the conventional view of rationality, probabilities matter a great
deal to reactions to risks. But emotions, as such, are not assessed independently; they are not taken to play a distinctive role.6 Of course, people might be risk-averse or risk-inclined. For example, it is possible that
people will be willing to pay $100 to eliminate a 1/1000 risk of losing $900. But analysts usually believe that variations in probability should matter, so that there would be a serious problem if people were willing
to pay both $100 to eliminate a 1/1000 risk of losing $900 and $100 to eliminate a 1/100,000 risk of losing $900. Analysts do not generally ask, or care, whether risk-related dispositions are a product of emotions
or something else. Of course, it is now generally agreed that in thinking about risks, people rely on certain heuristics and show identifiable biases.7 Those who emphasize heuristics and biases are often seen as
attacking the conventional view of rationality.8 In a way they are doing just that, but the heuristicsand- biases literature has a highly cognitive focus, designed to establish how people proceed under conditions of
uncertainty. The central question is this: When people do not know about the probability associated with some risk, how do they think? It is clear that when people lack statistical information, they rely on certain
heuristics, or rules of thumb, which serve to simplify their inquiry.9 Of these rules of thumb, the “availability heuristic” is probably the most important for purposes of understanding risk-related law.10 Thus, for
example, “a class whose instances are easily retrieved will appear more numerous than a class of equal frequency whose instances are less retrievable.”11 The point very much bears on private and public
responses to risks, suggesting, for example, that people will be especially responsive to the dangers of AIDS, crime, earthquakes, and nuclear power plant accidents if examples of these risks are easy to recall.12
This is a point about how familiarity can affect the availability of instances. But salience is important as well. “The impact of seeing a house burning on the subjective probability of such accidents is probably
greater than the impact of reading about a fire in the local paper.”13 So, too, recent events will have a greater impact than earlier ones. The point helps explain much risk-related behavior. For example, whether
people will buy insurance for natural disasters is greatly affected by recent experiences.14 If floods have not occurred in the immediate past, people who live on flood plains are far less likely to purchase
insurance.15 In the aftermath of an earthquake, the proportion of people carrying earthquake insurance rises sharply—but it declines steadily from that point, as vivid memories recede.16 For purposes of law and
regulation, the problem is that the availability heuristic can lead to serious errors of fact, in terms of both excessive controls on small risks that are cognitively available and insufficient controls on large risks that
are not.17 The cognitive emphasis of the heuristics-and-biases literature can be found as well in prospect theory, a departure from expected utility theory that explains decision under risk.18 For present purposes,
what is most important is that prospect theory offers an explanation for simultaneous gambling and insurance.19 When given the choice, most people will reject a certain gain of X in favor of a gamble with an
expected value below X, if the gamble involves a small probability of riches. At the same time, most people prefer a certain loss of X to a gamble with an expected value less than X, if the gamble involves a small
probability of catastrophe.20 If expected utility theory is taken as normative, then people depart from the normative theory of rationality in giving excessive weight to lowprobability outcomes when the stakes are
high. Indeed, we might easily see prospect theory as emphasizing a form of probability neglect. But in making these descriptive claims, prospect theory does not specify a special role for emotions. This is not a
puzzling oversight, if it counts as an oversight at all. For many purposes, what matters is what people choose, and it is unimportant to know whether their choices depend on cognition or emotion, whatever may
be the difference between these two terms. B. Emotion No one doubts, however, that in many domains, people do not think much about variations in probability and that emotions have a large effect on
judgment and decisionmaking.21 Would a group of randomly selected people pay more to reduce a 1/100,000 risk of getting a gruesome form of cancer than a similar group would pay to reduce a 1/200,000 risk
of getting that form of cancer? Would the former group pay twice as much? With some low-probability events, anticipated and actual emotions, triggered by the best-case or worst-case outcome, help to
determine choice. Those who buy lottery tickets, for example, often fantasize about the goods associated with a lucky outcome.22 With respect to risks of harm, many of our ordinary ways of speaking suggest
strong emotions: panic, hysteria, terror. People might refuse to fly, for example, not because they are currently frightened, but because they anticipate their own anxiety, and they want to avoid it. It has been
suggested that people often decide as they do because they anticipate their own regret.23 The same is true for fear. Knowing that they will be afraid, people may refuse to travel to Israel or South Africa, even if
they would much enjoy seeing those nations and even if they believe, on reflection, that their fear is not entirely rational. Recent evidence is quite specific.24 It suggests that people greatly neglect significant
differences in probability when the outcome is “affect rich”—when it involves not simply a serious loss, but one that produces strong emotions, including fear.25 To be sure, the distinction between cognition and
emotion is complex and contested.26 In the domain of risks, and most other places, emotional reactions are usually based on thinking; they are hardly cognition-free. When a negative emotion is associated with a
certain risk—pesticides or nuclear power, for example—cognition plays a central role.27 For purposes of the analysis here, it is not necessary to say anything especially controversial about the nature of the
emotion of fear. The only suggestion is that when emotions are intense, calculation is less likely to occur, or at least that form of calculation that involves assessment of risks in terms of not only the magnitude but
also the probability of the outcome. Drawing on and expanding the relevant evidence, I will emphasize a general phenomenon here: In political and market domains, people often focus on the desirability of the
outcome in question and pay (too) little attention to the probability that a good or bad outcome will, in fact, occur. It is in such cases that people fall prey to
probability neglect, which is
a form of quasi-rationality.28 Probability neglect is especially large when people focus on the worst possible case or otherwise are subject to strong emotions. When such
it is not fully
rational to treat a 1% chance of X as equivalent, or nearly equivalent, to a 99% chance of X, or even a 10% chance of X. Because
properly treated as
emotions are at work, people do not give sufficient consideration to the likelihood that the worst case will actually occur. This is quasi-rational because, from the normative point of view,
people suffer from probability neglect, and because neglecting probability is not fully rational, the phenomenon I identify raises new questions about the widespread idea that ordinary people have a kind of rival
rationality superior to that of experts.29 Most of the time, experts are concerned principally with the number of lives at stake,30 and for that reason they will be closely attuned, as ordinary people are not, to the
issue of probability. By drawing attention to probability neglect, I do not mean to suggest that most people, most of the time, are indifferent to large variations in the probability that a risk will come to fruition.
Large variations can, and often do, make a difference—but when emotions are engaged, the difference is far less than the standard theory predicts. Nor do I suggest that probability neglect is impervious to
circumstances. If the costs of neglecting probability are placed “on screen,” then people will be more likely to attend to the question of probability.31 In this light it is both mildly counterintuitive and reasonable,
for example, to predict that people would be willing to pay less, in terms of dollars and waiting time, to reduce lowprobability risks of an airplane disaster if they are frequent travelers. An intriguing study finds
exactly that effect.32 For similar reasons, market pressures are likely to dampen the impact of probability neglect, ensuring that, say, risks of 1/10,000 are treated differently from risks of 1/1,000,000, even if
individuals, in surveys, show relative insensitivity to such differences. Acknowledging all this, I emphasize three central points. First, differences in probability will often affect behavior far less than they should or
than conventional theory would predict. Second, private behavior, even when real dollars are involved,33 can display insensitivity to the issue of probability, especially when emotions are intensely engaged. Third,
and most important, the demand for legal intervention can be greatly affected by probability neglect, so that government may end up engaging in extensive regulation precisely because intense emotional
reactions are making people relatively insensitive to the (low) probability that the relevant dangers will ever come to fruition. C. Law It is not at all clear how the law should respond to probability neglect. But at a
minimum, the phenomenon raises serious legal issues in administrative law, at least under statutes banning agencies from acting unless they can show a “significant risk”34 or can establish that the benefits of
regulation outweigh the costs.35 If agencies are neglecting the issue of probability (perhaps because the public is doing so as well), they may well be acting unlawfully. Indeed, the law of judicial review shows an
inchoate understanding of probability neglect, treating it as a problem for which judicial invalidation is a solution.36 The only qualification is that the relevant law remains in an embryonic state. There is much to
be done, especially at the agency level, to ensure that government is alert to the probability that harm will actually occur. Outside of the context of administrative law, an understanding of probability neglect will
help us to make better predictions about the public “demand” for law. When a bad outcome is highly salient and triggers strong emotions, government will be asked to do something about it, even if the
probability that the bad outcome will occur is low. Political participants of various stripes, focusing on the worst case, are entirely willing to exploit probability neglect. Those who encourage people to purchase
lottery tickets, focusing on the best case, do the same. An understanding of probability neglect simultaneously helps show why jurors, and ordinary officials, are not likely to be moved much by a showing that
before the fact, the harm was not likely to occur. For many people, what matters is that the harm did occur, not that it was unlikely to do so before the fact. For law, many of the most difficult questions are
normative in character: Should government take account of variations in the probability that harms will occur? Should government respond to intense fears that involve statistically remote risks? When people
suffer from probability neglect, should law and policy do the same thing? At first glance, we might think that even if people are neglecting probability, government and law at least should not—that the tort system
and administrators should pay a great deal of attention to probability in designing institutions. If government wants to insulate itself from probability neglect, it will create institutions designed to ensure that
genuine risks, rather than tiny ones, receive the most concern. Such institutions will not necessarily require agencies to discuss the worst-case scenario.37 And if government is attempting to increase public
concern about a genuine danger, it should not emphasize statistics and probabilities, but should instead draw attention to the worst-case scenario. If government is attempting to decrease public concern with a
risk that has a tiny probability of coming to fruition, it may be ineffective if it emphasizes the issue of probability; indeed, it may do better if it changes the subject or stresses instead the affirmative social values
associated with running the risk.38 On the other hand, public fear, however unwarranted, may be intractable, in the sense that it may be impervious to efforts at reassurance. And if public fear is intractable, it will
cause serious problems, partly because fear is itself extremely unpleasant and partly because fear is likely to influence conduct, possibly producing wasteful and excessive private precautions. If so, a governmental
response, via regulatory safeguards, would appear to be justified if the benefits, in terms of fear reduction, justify the costs. II. PROBABILITY NEGLECT: THE BASIC PHENOMENON When it comes to risk,
a key
question is whether people can imagine or visualize the worst-case outcome.39 When the worst case produces intense fear, surprisingly
little role is played by the stated probability that that outcome will occur.40 An important function of strong emotions is thus to drive out quantitative
judgments, including judgments about probability, by making the best case or the worst case seem highly salient.41 But it is
important to note that probability neglect can occur even when emotions are not involved. A great deal of evidence shows that whether or not emotions are involved, people are relatively insensitive to
differences in probabilities, at least when the relevant probabilities are low. A. Insensitivity to Variations Among Low Probabilities Do people care about probability at all? Of course they do; a risk of 1/100,000 is
significantly less troublesome than a risk of 1/1000. But many people, much of the time, show a remarkable unwillingness to attend to the question of probability. Several studies show that when people are
seeking relevant information, they often do not try to learn about probability at all. One study, for example, finds that in deciding whether to purchase warranties for consumer products, people do not
spontaneously point to the probability of needing repair as a reason for the purchase.42 Another study finds that those making hypothetical, risky managerial decisions rarely ask for data on probabilities.43 Or
consider a study involving children and adolescents,44 in which the following question was asked: Susan and Jennifer are arguing about whether they should wear seat belts when they ride in a car. Susan says that
you should. Jennifer says you shouldn’t . . . . Jennifer says that she heard of an accident where a car fell into a lake and a woman was kept from getting out in time because of wearing her seat belt . . . . What do
you think about this?45 In answering that question, many subjects did not think about probability at all.46 One exchange took the following form: A: Well, in that case I don’t think you should wear a seat belt. Q
(interviewer): How do you know when that’s gonna happen? A: Like, just hope it doesn’t! Q: So, should you or shouldn’t you wear seat belts? A: Well, tell-you-the-truth we should wear seat belts. Q: How come? A:
Just in case of an accident. You won’t get hurt as much as you will if you didn’t wear a seat belt. Q: Ok, well what about these kinds of things, when people get trapped? A: I don’t think you should, in that case.47
These answers might seem odd and idiosyncratic, but we might reasonably suppose that some of the time, both children and adults focus primarily on bad scenarios, without thinking a great deal about the
question of probability. Many studies find that significant differences in low probabilities have little impact on decisions. This finding is in sharp conflict with the standard view of rationality, which suggests that
people’s willingness to pay for small risk reductions ought to be nearly proportional to the size of the reduction.48 Perhaps these findings reflect people’s implicit understanding that in these settings, the relevant
probability is “low, but not zero,” and that finer distinctions are unhelpful. (What does a risk of 1/100,000 really mean? How different is it, for an individual, from a risk of 1/20,000 or 1/600,000?) In an especially
striking study, Kunreuther and his coauthors found that mean willingness to pay insurance premiums did not vary among risks of 1/100,000, 1/1,000,000, and 1/10,000,000.49 They also found basically the same
willingness to pay for insurance premiums for risks ranging from 1/650, to 1/6300, to 1/68,000.50 The study just described involved a “between subjects” design; subjects considered only one risk, and the same
people were not asked to consider the various risks at the same time. Low probabilities are not likely to be terribly meaningful to most people, but most educated people would know that a 1/100,000 risk is worse
than 1/1,000,000 risk. When low-probability risks are seen in isolation and are not assessed together, we have an example of the problem of “evaluability.”51 For most people, most of the time, it is very difficult
to evaluate a low probability, and hence isolated decisions will pick up small or no variations between people’s assessments of very different risks. But several studies have a “within subjects” design, exposing
people simultaneously to risks of different probabilities, and even here, the differences in probabilities have little effect on decisions. An early study examined people’s willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce various
fatality risks. The central finding was that the mean WTP to reduce such risks was, for over 40% of the respondents, unaffected by a large variation in the probability of harm, even though expected utility theory
would predict significant effects from such variations.52 A later study found that for serious injuries, WTP to reduce the risk by 12/100,000 was only 20% higher than WTP to reduce the same risk by 4/100,000,
even though standard theory would predict a WTP three times as high.53 These results are not unusual. Lin and Milon attempted to elicit people’s willingness to pay to reduce the risk of illness from eating
oysters.54 There was little sensitivity to variations in probability of illness.55 Another study found little change in WTP across probability variations involving exposure to pesticide residues on fresh produce.56 A
similar anomaly was found in a study involving hazardous wastes, where WTP actually decreased as the stated fatality risk reduction increased.57 There is much to say about the general insensitivity to significant
variations within the category of low-probability events. It would be difficult to produce a rational explanation for this insensitivity; recall the standard suggestion that WTP for small risk reductions should be
roughly proportional to the size of the reduction.58 Why don’t people think in this way? An imaginable explanation is that in the abstract, most people simply do not know how to evaluate low probabilities. A risk
of 7/100,000 seems “small”; a risk of 4/100,000 also seems “small.”59 Most people would prefer a risk of 4/100,000 to a risk of 7/100,000, and I have noted that joint evaluation improves evaluability, which would
otherwise be extremely difficult.60 But even when the preference is clear, both risks seem “small,” and hence it is not at all clear that a proportional increase in WTP will follow. As suggested by the findings of
Kunreuther and his coauthors, it is likely that in a between-subjects design, WTP to eliminate a risk of 4/100,000 would be about the same as WTP to eliminate a risk of 7/100,000, simply because the small
difference would not matter when each risk is taken in isolation.
no risk of nuclear war — mutually assured destruction and economic
interdependence
Aziz, 3/14 - the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an
associate editor atPieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared on Business Insider, Zero
Hedge, and Noahpinion. (John, “Don't worry: World War III will almost certainly never happen”,
The Week, http://theweek.com/article/index/257517/dont-worry-world-war-iii-will-almostcertainly-never-happen)
Next year will be the seventieth anniversary of the end of the last global conflict. There have been points on that timeline — such as the Cuban missile
crisis in 1962, and a Soviet computer malfunction in 1983 that erroneously suggested that the U.S. had attacked, and perhaps even the Kosovo War in
1999 — when a global conflict was a real possibility. Yet today — in the shadow of a flare up which some are calling a new Cold War between Russia
and the U.S. — I believe the
threat of World War III has almost faded into nothingness. That is, the
probability of a world war is the lowest it has been in decades, and perhaps the lowest it has ever been since the dawn
of modernity. This is certainly a view that current data supports. Steven Pinker's studies into the decline
of violence reveal that deaths from war have fallen and fallen since World War II. But we should not just
assume that the past is an accurate guide to the future. Instead, we must look at the factors which have led to the reduction in war and try to conclude
whether the decrease in war is sustainable. So what's
changed? Well, the first big change after the last world war was the
arrival of mutually assured destruction. It's no coincidence that the end of the last global war
coincided with the invention of atomic weapons. The possibility of complete annihilation
provided a huge disincentive to launching and expanding total wars. Instead, the great powers
now fight proxy wars like Vietnam and Afghanistan (the 1980 version, that is), rather than letting their
rivalries expand into full-on, globe-spanning struggles against each other. Sure, accidents could happen, but
the possibility is incredibly remote. More importantly, nobody in power wants to be the cause of Armageddon. But
what about a non-nuclear global war? Other changes — economic and social in nature — have
made that highly unlikely too. The world has become much more economically interconnected
since the last global war. Economic cooperation treaties and free trade agreements have
intertwined the economies of countries around the world. This has meant there has been a huge rise in the volume of
global trade since World War II, and especially since the 1980s. Today consumer goods like smartphones, laptops, cars, jewelery, food, cosmetics,
and medicine are produced on a global level, with supply-chains criss-crossing the planet. An example: The
laptop I am typing this on is the cumulative culmination of thousands of hours of work, as well as resources and manufacturing processes across the
globe. It incorporates metals like tellurium, indium, cobalt, gallium, and manganese mined in Africa. Neodymium mined in China. Plastics forged out of
oil, perhaps from Saudi Arabia, or Russia, or Venezuela. Aluminum from bauxite, perhaps mined in Brazil. Iron, perhaps mined in Australia. These raw
materials are turned into components — memory manufactured in Korea, semiconductors forged in Germany, glass made in the United States. And it
takes gallons and gallons of oil to ship all the resources and components back and forth around the world, until they are finally assembled in China, and
shipped once again around the world to the consumer. In
a global war, global trade becomes a nightmare. Shipping
becomes more expensive due to higher insurance costs, and riskier because it's subject to
seizures, blockades, ship sinkings. Many goods, intermediate components or resources — including energy supplies like coal and oil,
components for military hardware, etc, may become temporarily unavailable in certain areas. Sometimes — such as occurred in the Siege of Leningrad
during World War II — the supply of food can be cut off. This is why countries hold strategic reserves of things like helium, pork, rare earth metals and
oil, coal, and gas. These
kinds of breakdowns were troublesome enough in the economic landscape of
the early and mid-20th century, when the last global wars occurred. But in today's ultraglobalized and ultra-specialized economy? The level of economic adaptation — even for large countries like
Russia and the United States with lots of land and natural resources — required
to adapt to a world war would be
crushing, and huge numbers of business and livelihoods would be wiped out. In other words, global trade interdependency has
become, to borrow a phrase from finance, too big to fail.
nuclear war doesn’t cause extinction
Seitz 06 - former associate of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard
University’s Center for International Affairs (Russell, “The' Nuclear Winter ' Meltdown
Photoshopping the Apocalypse”,
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2006/12/preherein_honor.html)
history is full of prophets of doom who fail to deliver, not all are
without honor in their own land. The 1983 'Nuclear Winter " papers in Science were so politicized that even the eminently liberal President of The
Council for a Liveable World called "The worst example ofthe misrepesentation of science to the public in my
memory." Among the authors was Stanford President Donald Kennedy. Today he edits Science , the nation's major arbiter of climate science--and policy. Below, a
All that remains of Sagan's Big Chill are curves such as this , but
case illustrating the mid-range of the ~.7 to ~1.6 degree C maximum cooling the 2006 studies suggest is superimposed in color on the Blackly Apocalyptic predictions published
in Science Vol. 222, 1983 . They're worth comparing, because the range of soot concentrations in the new models overlaps with cases assumed to have dire climatic
"Apocalyptic predictions require, to be taken seriously,higher
standards of evidence than do assertions on other matters where the stakes are not as great." wrote Sagan in Foreign Affairs , Winter 1983 -84. But that
"evidence" was never forthcoming. 'Nuclear Winter' never existed outside of a computer
except as air-brushed animation commissioned by the a PR firm - Porter Novelli Inc. Yet Sagan predicted "the extinction of the human species " as
consequences in the widely publicized 1983 scenarios --
temperatures plummeted 35 degrees C and the world froze in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Last year, Sagan's cohort tried to reanimate the ghost in a machine antinuclear activists invoked in the depths of the Cold War, by re-running equally arbitrary scenarios on a modern interactive Global Circulation Model. But the Cold War is history
simulations that they do not reproduce the apocalyptic
results of what Sagan oxymoronically termed "a sophisticated one dimensional model." The subzero 'baseline case' has melted
down into a tepid 1.3 degrees of average cooling- grey skies do not a Ragnarok make . What remains is just not the
stuff that End of the World myths are made of. It is hard to exaggerate how seriously " nuclear winter "was once taken by policy analysts
in more ways than one. It is a credit to post-modern computer climate
who ought to have known better. Many were taken aback by the sheer force of Sagan's rhetoric Remarkably, Science's news coverage of the new results fails to graphically
compare them with the old ones Editor Kennedy and other recent executives of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, once proudly co-authored and
You can't say they didn't try to reproduce this Cold War icon. Once again, soot from
imaginary software materializes in midair by the megaton , flying higher than Mount Everest . This is not physics, but a crude
helped to publicize.
exercise in ' garbage in, gospel out' parameter forcing designed to maximize and extend the cooling an aeosol can generate, by sparing it from realistic attrition by rainout in
Despite decades of progress in modeling atmospheric chemistry , there is none in
this computer simulation, and ignoring photochemistry further extends its impact. Fortunately , the history of science is as hard to erase as it is easy to
ignore. Their past mastery of semantic agression cannot spare the authors of "Nuclear Winter Lite " direct comparison of their new results and their old. Dark smoke
clouds in the lower atmosphere don't last long enough to spread across the globe. Cloud droplets and
rainfall remove them. rapidly washing them out of the sky in a matter of days to weeks- not long enough to sustain a global pall. Real
the lower atmosphere.
world weather brings down particles much as soot is scrubbed out of power plant smoke by the water sprays in smoke stack scrubbers Robock acknowledges this- not even a
single degree of cooling results when soot is released at lower elevations in he models . The workaround is to inject the imaginary aerosol at truly Himalayan elevations pressure altitudes of 300 millibar and higher , where the computer model's vertical transport function modules pass it off to their even higher neighbors in the stratosphere ,
The new studies like the old suffer from the disconnect between a
desire to paint the sky black and the vicissitudes of natural history. As with many exercise in worst case models both at
invoke rare phenomena as commonplace, claiming it prudent to assume the worst. But the real world is subject to Murphy's lesser known
second law- if everything must go wrong, don't bet on it. In 2006 as in 1983 firestorms and forest fires that send smoke into the
stratosphere rise to alien prominence in the modelers re-imagined world , but i the real one remains a very different
place, where though every month sees forest fires burning areas the size of cities - 2,500 hectares or larger ,
stratospheric smoke injections arise but once in a blue moon. So how come these neo-nuclear winter models feature so
where it does not rain and particles linger..
much smoke so far aloft for so long?
Extensions
Structural Violence First
You should privilege everyday violence for two reasons- A) social bias
underrepresents its effects B) its effects are exponential, not linear which
means even if the only causes a small amount of structural violence, its
terminal impacts are huge
Nixon ‘11
(Rob, Rachel Carson Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Slow Violence
and the Environmentalism of the Poor, pgs. 2-3)
Three primary concerns animate this book, chief among them my conviction that we urgently
need to rethink-politically, imaginatively, and theoretically-what I call "slow violence." By
slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed
destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically
not viewed as violence at all. Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is
immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting into instant
sensational visibility. We need, I believe, to engage a different kind of violence, a violence
that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its
calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales. In so doing, we also
need to engage the representational, narrative, and strategic challenges posed by the
relative invisibility of slow violence. Climate change, the thawing cryosphere, toxic drift,
biomagnification, deforestation, the radioactive aftermaths of wars, acidifying oceans, and a
host of other slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes present formidable
representational obstacles that can hinder our efforts to mobilize and act decisively. The long
dyings-the staggered and staggeringly discounted casualties, both human and ecological that
result from war's toxic aftermaths or climate change-are underrepresented in strategic
planning as well as in human memory. Had Summers advocated invading Africa with
weapons of mass destruction, his proposal would have fallen under conventional definitions
of violence and been perceived as a military or even an imperial invasion. Advocating
invading countries with mass forms of slow-motion toxicity, however, requires rethinking our
accepted assumptions of violence to include slow violence. Such a rethinking requires that
we complicate conventional assumptions about violence as a highly visible act that is
newsworthy because it is event focused, time bound, and body bound. We need to account
for how the temporal dispersion of slow violence affects the way we perceive and respond to
a variety of social afflictions-from domestic abuse to posttraumatic stress and, in particular,
environmental calamities. A major challenge is representational: how to devise arresting
stories, images, and symbols adequate to the pervasive but elusive violence of delayed
effects. Crucially, slow violence is often not just attritional but also exponential, operating
as a major threat multiplier; it can fuel long-term, proliferating conflicts in situations where
the conditions for sustaining life become increasingly but gradually degraded.
Prioritizing everyday violence is key - responding to it later causes error
replication and movement burn out, only re-orienting focus away from macrolevel violence produces sustainable political coalitions
Cuomo ’96
(Chris, Prof. of Political Science @ U of Cincinnati, “War is not just an event: reflections on
the significance of everyday violence”, Hypatia, vol. 11, no. 4 Fall (1994))
Theory that does not investigate or even notice the omnipresence of militarism cannot
represent or address the depth and specificity of the everyday effects of militarism on
women, on people living in occupied territories, on members of military institutions, and on
the environment. These effects are relevant to feminists in a number of ways because
military practices and institutions help construct gendered and national identity, and because
they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman entities and communities during
peacetime. Lack of attention to these aspects of the business of making or preventing
military violence in an extremely technologized world results in theory that cannot
accommodate the connections among the constant presence of militarism, declared wars,
and other closely related social phenomena, such as nationalistic glorifications of
motherhood, media violence, and current ideological gravitations to military solutions for
social problems. Ethical approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and
military practices are woven into the very fabric of life in twenty-first century technological
states lead to crisis-based politics and analyses. For any feminism that aims to resist
oppression and create alternative social and political options, crisis-based ethics and politics
are problematic because they distract attention from the need for sustained resistance to
the enmeshed, omnipresent systems of domination and oppression that so often function as
givens in most people's lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the false
belief that the absence of declared armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is
particularly easy for those whose lives are shaped by the safety of privilege, and who do not
regularly encounter the realities of militarism, to maintain this false belief. The belief that
militarism is an ethical, political concern only regarding armed conflict, creates forms of
resistance to militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control. Antiwar resistance is then
mobilized when the "real" violence finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege is directly
threatened, and at that point it is difficult not to respond in ways that make resisters drop all
other political priorities. Crisis-driven attention to declarations of war might actually keep
resisters complacent about and complicitous in the general presence of global militarism.
Seeing war as necessarily embedded in constant military presence draws attention to the
fact that horrific, state-sponsored violence is happening nearly all over, all of the time, and
that it is perpetrated by military institutions and other militaristic agents of the state.
systemic impacts outweigh their extinction impacts
Martin, 84 - physicist whose research interests include stratospheric modelling. He is a
research associate in the Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Australian National
University, and a member of SANA. (Brian, “Extinction politics”, SANA Update, May,
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/84sana1.html)
There are quite a number of reasons why people may find a belief in extinction from nuclear war
to be attractive
implicit Western chauvinism The effects of global
nuclear war would mainly hit the population of the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union.
This is quite unlike the pattern of other major ongoing human disasters of starvation, disease,
poverty and political repression which mainly affect the poor, nonwhite populations of the Third
World. The gospel of nuclear extinction can be seen as a way by which a problem for the rich
white Western societies is claimed to be a problem for all the world. Symptomatic of this
orientation is the belief that, without Western aid and trade, the economies and populations of
the Third World would face disaster this is only Western self-centredness. Third World
populations would in many ways be better off without the West
A related factor linked with nuclear extinctionism is a belief that
nuclear war is the most pressing issue facing humans. I disagree, both morally and politically,
with the stance that preventing nuclear war has become the most important social issue for all
humans
concern over the actuality of massive suffering and millions of deaths
resulting from poverty and exploitation can justifiably take precedence over
nuclear war. Nuclear war may be the greatest threat to the collective lives of those in the rich,
white Western societies but, for the poor, nonwhite Third World peoples, other issues are more
pressing.
to give precedence to nuclear war as an issue is to assume that nuclear war can
be overcome in isolation from changes in major social institutions, including the state,
capitalism, state socialism and patriarchy. If war is deeply embedded in such structures - as I
would argue then to try to prevent war without making common cause with other social
movements will not be successful politically
.[8] Here I will only briefly comment on a few factors. The first is an
. But
Actually,
: the pressure to grow cash crops of sugar, tobacco and so on would be reduced, and we
would no longer witness fresh fish being airfreighted from Bangladesh to Europe.
. Surely, in the Third World,
the possibility of a similar death toll from
In political terms,
[9] -
. This means that the antiwar movement needs to link its strategy and practice with other movements such as the feminist movement, the
workers' control movement and the environmental movement. A focus on nuclear extinction also encourages a focus on appealing to elites as the means to stop nuclear war, since there seems no other means for quickly overcoming the danger. For example, Carl
Sagan, at the end of an article about nuclear winter in a popular magazine, advocates writing letters to the presidents of the United States and of the Soviet Union.[10] But
then appealing to elites has no chance of success
decades.
if war has deep institutional roots,
. This has been amply illustrated by the continual failure of disarmament negotiations and appeals to elites over the past several
Utilitarianism is Bad
Utilitarianism is a flawed system. It is impossible to measure and to predict the
benefits and/or harms resulting from a course of action or a moral rule.
McCarthy and Lysaught 7 What’s wrong with utilitarianism?, “The Moral Course of Thinking” in Gathered for the
Journey: Moral Theology in Catholic Perspective, Rapids: Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007.
http://theophilogue.com/2009/11/19/utilitarianism-what-is-it-why-does-it-not-work/
McCarthy and Lysaught rehearse some of the standard criticisms of utilitarianism, for which I have given my own articulation and creative
names. They run as follows: The Inevitability of Arbitrariness—It has
no way to objectively determine the nature,
importance, and value of consequences. To put it another way: How do we know what are “good” and “bad” consequences?
What consequences count most? Whose opinion of what are “good” consequences and what
are “bad” consequences counts most? Failure to give coherent and rational criterion for
answering such questions spells decisive defeat for the whole theory of exclusive utilitarianism.
It seems to need something else to help it out. That is why I personally think that the utilitarian factor is legitimate when considered as part of the
Contrary
Intuition—It often undermines our common sense and moral intuitions, often demanding
certain actions that rub our conscience the wrong way. For example, what if I knew I could cheat on my wife with my
picture, but exclusive utilitarianism always leads to arbitrary judgment of consequences, and therefore arbitrary ethics. The
female boss without her ever finding out in order to get a raise, which would have “good” consequences for my family (less financial stress, my wife
could cut back to part time to spend more time with the kids, the kids could benefit from more parental care, I could save more money for the kids for
utilitarianism tells me it’s [works] like a math
problem (good consequences = good action). The Omniscience Requirement— sometimes it is
impossible to know the totality of the potential (much less the actual) consequences of one’s
actions. Sometimes what looks to us to be a disaster turns out to be a blessing in disguise? We get fired only to later realize that
the new job we attain as a consequence pays better and is more enjoyable. On the flip side, sometimes we think
something is going to turn out great, but in the end is a big letdown. If these small scale experiences in the
college, etc.)? My gut tells me: Don’t do this, it is wrong, wrong, wrong. But
lives of ordinary people demonstrate how difficult it is to know the consequences of certain actions—how much more difficult must
it be for people whose decisions effect an entire nation (e.g. the President) to judge the full weight of the consequences of their
decisions?
Utilitarianism can justify any barbarity
Anderson, National Director of Probe Ministries International 2004 “Utilitarianism:
The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number” http://www.probe.org/theology-andphilosophy/worldview--philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-for-thegreatestnumber.html
One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means" mentality. If any
worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, a true ethical foundation is lost. But we all
know that the end does not justify the means. If that were so, then Hitler could justify the
Holocaust because the end was to purify the human race. Stalin could justify his slaughter of
millions because he was trying to achieve a communist utopia. The end never justifies the
means. The means must justify themselves. A particular act cannot be judged as good simply
because it may lead to a good consequence. The means must be judged by some objective and
consistent standard of morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of minorities if
the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number. Americans in the eighteenth century
could justify slavery on the basis that it provided a good consequence for a majority of
Americans. Certainly the majority benefited from cheap slave labor even though the lives of
black slaves were much worse. A third problem with utilitarianism is predicting the
consequences. If morality is based on results, then we would have to have omniscience in order
to accurately predict the consequence of any action. But at best we can only guess at the future,
and often these educated guesses are wrong. A fourth problem with utilitarianism is that
consequences themselves must be judged. When results occur, we must still ask whether they
are good or bad results. Utilitarianism provides no objective and consistent foundation to judge
results because results are the mechanism used to judge the action itself.inviolability is
intrinsically valuable.
Their framework condones mass slaughter – Util normalizes atrocities
Jim Holt, New York Times, August 5, 1995 “Morality, Reduced To Arithmetic”
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/05/opinion/morality-reduced-to-arithmetic.html
Can the deliberate massacre of innocent people ever be condoned? The atomic bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, resulted in the deaths of 120,000 to 250,000 Japanese by incineration and radiation
poisoning. Although a small fraction of the victims were soldiers, the great majority were noncombatants -- women, children, the
aged. Among
the justifications that have been put forward for President Harry Truman’s decision
to use the bomb, only one is worth taking seriously -- that it saved lives. The alternative, the reasoning goes, was
to launch an invasion. Truman claimed in his memoirs that this would have cost another half a million
American lives. Winston Churchill put the figure at a million. Revisionist historians have cast doubt on such numbers. Wartime
documents suggest that military planners expected around 50,000 American combat deaths in an invasion. Still, when Japanese
casualties, military and civilian, are taken into account, the overall invasion death toll on both sides would surely have ended up
surpassing that from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Scholars will continue to argue over whether there were other, less catastrophic ways
to force Tokyo to surrender. But given the fierce obstinacy of the Japanese militarists, Truman and his advisers had some grounds for
believing that nothing short of a full-scale invasion or the annihilation of a big city with an apocalyptic new weapon would have
succeeded. Suppose they were right. Would
this prospect have justified the intentional mass killing of the
people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? In the debate over the question, participants on both sides
have been playing the numbers game. Estimate the hypothetical number of lives saved by the
bombings, then add up the actual lives lost. If the first number exceeds the second, then
Truman did the right thing; if the reverse, it was wrong to have dropped the bombs. That is one
approach to the matter -- the utilitarian approach. According to utilitarianism, a form of moral
reasoning that arose in the 19th century, the goodness or evil of an action is determined solely
by its consequences. If somehow you can save 10 lives by boiling a baby, go ahead and boil that
baby. There is, however, an older ethical tradition, one rooted in Judeo-Christian theology, that takes a quite different view. The
gist of it is expressed by St. Paul’s condemnation of those who say, “Let us do evil, that good may come.” Some actions, this tradition
holds, can never be justified by their consequences; they are absolutely forbidden. It is always wrong to boil a baby even if lives are
saved thereby. Applying this absolutist morality to war can be tricky. When enemy soldiers are trying to enslave or kill us, the
principle of self-defense permits us to kill them (though not to slaughter them once they are taken prisoner). But what of those who
back them? During World War II, propagandists made much of the “indivisibility” of modern warfare: the idea was that since the
enemy nation’s entire economic and social strength was deployed behind its military forces, the whole population was a legitimate
target for obliteration. “There are no civilians in Japan,” declared an intelligence officer of the Fifth Air Force shortly before the
Hiroshima bombing, a time when the Japanese were popularly depicted as vermin worthy of extermination. The boundary between
combatant and noncombatant can be fuzzy, but the distinction is not meaningless, as the case of small children makes clear. Yet is
wartime killing of those who are not trying to harm us always tantamount to murder? When naval dockyards, munitions factories
and supply lines are bombed, civilian carnage is inevitable. The absolutist moral tradition acknowledges this by a principle known as
double effect: although it is always wrong to kill innocents deliberately, it is sometimes permissible to attack a military target
knowing some noncombatants will die as a side effect. The doctrine of double effect might even justify bombing a hospital where
Hitler is lying ill. It does not, however, apply to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Transformed into hostages by the technology of aerial
bombardment, the people of those cities were intentionally executed en masse to send a message of terror to the rulers of Japan.
The practice of ordering the massacre of civilians to bring the enemy to heel scarcely began with Truman. Nor did the bomb result in
casualties of a new order of magnitude. The earlier bombing of Tokyo by incendiary weapons killed some 100,000 people. What
Hiroshima and Nagasaki did mark, by the unprecedented need for rationalization they presented, was the
triumph of utilitarian thinking in the conduct of war. The conventional code of noncombatant immunity -- a
product of several centuries of ethical progress among nations, which had been formalized by an international commission in the
1920’s in the Hague -- was swept away. A simpler axiom took its place: since war is hell, any means necessary may be used to end, in
Churchill’s words, “the vast indefinite butchery.” It is a moral calculus that, for all its logical consistency, offends our deep-seated
intuitions about the sanctity of life -- our conviction that a person is always to be treated as an end, never as a means. Left up to the
warmakers, moreover, utilitarian calculations are
susceptible to bad-faith reasoning: tinker with the
numbers enough and virtually any atrocity can be excused in the national interest. In January, the
world commemorated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where mass slaughter was committed as an end in itself -the ultimate evil. The moral nature of Hiroshima is ambiguous by contrast. Yet in the postwar era, when governments do not
hesitate to treat the massacre of civilians as just another strategic option, the
bomb’s sinister legacy is plain: it has
inured us to the idea of reducing innocents to instruments and morality to arithmetic.
No Risk of Wars
No Risk of Great Power Wars
Goldstein, 9/10- ‘11 (Joshua- professor emeritus of international relations at American
University and author of the forthcoming book “winning the war on war”, “Think Again:
War”, Foreign Affairs)
So far they haven't even been close. In fact, the
last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade
in the past 100 years, based on data compiled by researchers Bethany Lacina and Nils
Petter Gleditsch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Worldwide, deaths caused directly
by war-related violence in the new century have averaged about 55,000 per year, just over
half of what they were in the 1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold
War (180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in World War II. If you
factor in the growing global population, which has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the
decrease is even sharper. Far from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War
ended have been an era of rapid progress toward peace.Armed conflict has declined in large part
because armed conflict has fundamentally changed. Wars between big national armies all
but disappeared along with the Cold War, taking with them the most horrific kinds of mass
destruction. Today's asymmetrical guerrilla wars may be intractable and nasty, but they
will never produce anything like the siege of Leningrad. The last conflict between two great
powers, the Korean War, effectively ended nearly 60 years ago. The last sustained territorial war between
two regular armies, Ethiopia and Eritrea, ended a decade ago. Even civil wars, though a
persistent evil, are less common than in the past; there were about a quarter fewer in 2007
than in 1990. If the world feels like a more violent place than it actually is, that's because
there's more information about wars -- not more wars themselves. Once-remote battles
and war crimes now regularly make it onto our TV and computer screens, and in more or
less real time. Cell-phone cameras have turned citizens into reporters in many war zones.
Societal norms about what to make of this information have also changed. As Harvard
University psychologist Steven Pinker has noted, "The decline of violent behavior has been
paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence," so that we see today's
atrocities -- though mild by historical standards -- as "signs of how low our behavior can
sink, not of how high our standards have risen."
There is an almost zero probability for great power shoot out- our evidence
indicts all of the negatives impact scenarios
Fettweis, ‘8 (Christopher J.- PoliSci Proff @ Tulan University and Former Proff of U.S.
foreign policy and Grand strategy @ naval war college, “Losing Hurts Twice as Bad”, W.W.
Norton & Company, p.190-94)
One can be fairly confident in making such an assertion in part because of what might be the single most significant yet underreported trend in world politics: The
world is significantly more peaceful at the beginning of the
twenty-first century than at any time in recorded history. Although conflict and chaos may
dominate the headlines, the incidence of warfare has dropped to remarkably low levels. A
far greater percentage of the worlds people live in societies at peace than at any other time in history. Not only is the
current era markedly better in most measurable categories of international security than
ever before, but it is growing more stable as time goes by. At the very least, to a growing number
of experts, a major clash of arms does not seem plausible. Major war may well have become
obsolete. Rather than a “clash of civilizations” a “coming anarchy,” or a step “back to the future” toward
multipolarity and instability, the new century may well prove to be far more peaceful than
any previous one. The number and intensity of all kinds of conflict, including interstate wars, civil
wars, and ethnic conflicts, declined steadily throughout the 1990s and into the new decade. This
period of peace may be due to some combination of nuclear weapons, complex economic interdependence, the
spread of democracy, or , as many scholars believe, a simple change in ideas about what is worth fighting
for. These days, not much may be left. This rather bold and perhaps counterintuitive claim may seem a bit
utopian to those familiar with the long, dismal history of warfare. Is not war an innate part of human nature,
an outgrowth of our passions and imperfections, like murder? Not necessarily, say many of the scholars.
After all, murder is an act of the individual, often of passion rather than reason: war is a
rational act of state, a symptom of the broader practices of the international system of
states. War is an institution, a tradition of dispute resolution, a method countries have
chosen to employ when their interests diverge. Granted, it has been with us since the beginning of time, but
as political scientists John Mueller has noted, “unlike breathing, eating or sex, war is not something that is
somehow required by the human psyche, by the human condition , or by the forces of
history.” The eminent military historian John Keegan reports being “impressed by the
evidence that mankind, wherever it has the option, is distancing itself from the institution
of warfare.” If keegan is impressed, then maybe we should be, too. Overall, as the table below shows, international and
internal conflicts has steadily declined since the end of the cold war. Despite perceptions that the current wars “on terror” and
in Iraq may have created, the world is a much safer place that it was in prior generations. There
remains a human
(and perhaps particularly American) tendency to replace one threat with another, to see
international politics as an arena of dangerous competition, but this perception simply no
longer matches the facts. The evidence is apparent on every continent. At the beginning of 2008,
the only conflict raging in the entire western hemisphere was the ongoing civil war in Colombia, but even that was far less sever
than it was a decade ago. Europe,
which of course has been the most war-prone continent for
most of human history, was entirely calm, without even the threat of interstate conflict. The situations in
Bosnia and Kosovo were not settled, but they were at least stable for the moment. And in contrast to 1914, the great
powers have shown no eagerness to fill Balkan power vacuums- to the contrary, throughout the
1990’s they had to be shamed into intervention, and were on the same side when they did. The entire Pacific Rim was currently
experiencing no armed conflict. Even in the Middle East, where Iraq continued to burn, a tenuous peace was holding between
Arabs and Israelis, terrorism not withstanding, and no other wars seemed imminent. This
trend was even visible in
Africa where , despite a variety of ongoing serious challenges, levels of conflict were the lowest they have ever been in the
centuries of written history we have about the continent. Darfur and the Congo were the only real extended tragedies still
underway; the intensity of the internal conflicts simmering in Algeria, Somalia, Senegal, and a couple of other places is in all
cases lower than a decade ago. This can all change quite rapidly – Ethiopia and Eritrea might soon decide to renew their
pointless fighting over uninhabitable land, for instance, or Kenya could melt down into chaos – but right now, the continent
seems more stable than it has ever been. West Africa is quiet, at least for the moment, as is all of Southern Africa,
despite the criminally negligent governance of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. None of this is to suggest that these places are
without problems, of course. But given the rapid increase in the world population and number of countries (the League of
Nations had 63 members at its peak between the wars, while the United Nations currently has 192), one might expect a great
deal more warfare than there currently is. We
also are witnessing record low levels of the secondary
symptoms of insecurity, such as arms races, military rivalry, and “cold” wars. Either we are
merely experiencing another of the worlds occasional peaceful periods (and it would be by far the most remarkable such period
ever), or something
about the nature of international politics has changed, and for the better.
The twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented pace of evolution in all areas of human
endeavor, in science and medicine, transportation and communication, and even in religion. In such an
atmosphere, perhaps it is not difficult to imagine that attitudes toward the venerable
institution of warfare may also have experiences similarly rapid evolution, to the point
where its obsolescence could become plausible, even probable, in spite of thousands of years of violent
precedent. Perhaps the burden of proof should be on those who say that our rules of governing
war cannot change, and that it will someday return with a vengeance. Overall, although
the idea that war is becoming obsolete is gaining ground in academic circles, it has yet to
make much headway in those of policymaking. One need not be convinced of its wisdom, however, to
believe that the United States is an extremely safe country, or at the very least that its basic existence does not depend on an
active presence abroad. No
matter what happens in the far corners of the globe, it would seem,
America is going to survive the coming century quite well. Even those who actively support
internationalism have a hard time demonstrating that there foreign adventures are truly
necessary to assume the basic security of the United States. The benefits of activist strategies must
therefore manifestly outweigh the costs, since the United States could easily survive inaction, no matter
how dire any future situation appears.
War Focus Bad
The exclusive definition of war as something that occurs between lily white
sovereign states rejects the hundreds of colored wars that happen against the
state because they are seen as “Hiccups” in the system
Krishna 01 [Sankaran Krishna dept of political science @ university of hawii @ manoa, “Race,
Amnesia, and the Education of International Relations”, October-December 2001,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3225/is_4_26/ai_n28886581/]
The list does not include the periods 1815-1839 or 1882-1914, nor any of similar activities
engaged in by European powers other than the British, such as France, Germany, Spain,
Portugal, Italy, and Belgium. In thinking of what it is that allows these numerous and violent
encounters between different peoples to fall out of the history of international relations, it
becomes obvious that a certain principle of abstraction is at work here, centering on the
concept of "sovereignty." Wars are defined exclusively as the acts of sovereign powers on each
other in a tradition that goes back a long way in IR discourse, whereas the impressive list above
constitutes merely encounters between various forms of quasi states, native principalities,
warlords, tribes, territories, and puppet regimes, on the one hand, and a sovereign state, on the
other. Such encounters can hence be excised from the genealogy of international relations.
Thus, the Revolt of 1857 that swept across northern India, resulted in tens of thousands of
deaths, and at one point looked likely to bring a forcible end to the British Raj there, does not
count: it is not between two settled sovereign bounded entities that mutually recognize each
other as authentic states. Rather, it is seen as a hiccup in the pacification of empire, a mere
"Mutiny" as it came to be called, a "domestic" issue that is by its very definition incapable of
altering the Hundred Years' Peace. The operation of this abstraction of sovereignty to deny the
bloody history of the nineteenth century is no aberration. The same sovereign definition of
"war" informs J. David Singer's voluminous data-gathering enterprise on conflict; it underlies the
effort by Bueno de Mesquita to assess the rational utility calculations of war initiators; it allowed
Rudy Rummell to claim that "democracies" rarely, if ever, initiate wars with each other or
produce genocides; and for still others to claim (against all the evidence of the incredibly
sanguinary twentieth century) that the Cold War brought stability and peace to the world order.
(7) By deftly defining international as the encounter between sovereign states, much of a violent
world history is instantly sanitized. A recent study by Bernard Nietschmann finds that of the 120
wars that were ongoing in 1987, only 4 were between sovereign states, and the vast majority of
insurgencies and civil wars were unnoticed because "the media and academia are anchored in
the stat e. Their tendency is to consider struggles against the state to be illegitimate or invisible.
. . . They are hidden from view because the fighting is against peoples and countries that are
often not even on the map." (8) Among other things, what this sovereigntist abstraction
accomplishes is simple: the loss of lives during encounters between states and nonsovereign
entities is of no consequence. It needs to be mentioned that the overwhelming number of these
casualties were either brown or black, while sovereignty remained lily-white. The overwhelming
discursive logic of the discipline is oriented toward securing the state against any other forms of
belonging. (9)
This actively sanctions and justifies global violence and genocide
Krishna 01 [Sankaran Krishna dept of political science @ university of hawii @ manoa, “Race,
Amnesia, and the Education of International Relations”, October-December 2001,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3225/is_4_26/ai_n28886581/]
This article argues that the discipline of international relations was and is predicated on a
systematic politics of forgetting, a willful amnesia, on the question of race. Historically, the
emergence of a modern, territorially sovereign state system in Europe was coterminous with,
and indissociable from, the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the "new" world, the
enslavement of the natives of the African continent, and the colonization of the societies of
Asia. Specifically, I will argue that the discipline of international relations maintains its
ideological coherence via two crucial strategies of containment that normalize the coeval
emergence of modern sovereignty and dispossession on a global scale: these strategies are
"abstraction" and "redemption." In this article, I flesh out the argument vis-a-vis "abstraction";
for, reasons of space, however, I can have no more than an adumbrated discussion of
"redemption." First, IR discourse's valorization, indeed fetishization, of abstraction is premised
on a desire to escape history, to efface the violence, genocide, and theft that marked the
encounter between the rest and the West in the post-Columbian era. Abstraction, usually
presented as the desire of the discipline to engage in theory-building rather than in descriptive
or historical analysis, is a screen that simultaneously rationalizes and elides the details of these
encounters. By encouraging students to display their virtuosity in abstraction, the discipline
brackets questions of theft of land, violence, and slavery--the three processes that have
historically underlain the unequal global order we now find ourselves in. Over attention to these
details is disciplined by professional practices that work as taboo: such-and-such an approach is
deemed too historical or descriptive; that student is not adequately theoretical and
consequently is lacking in intellectual rigor; so-and-so might be better off specializing in
comparative politics or history or anthropology; such-and-such a question does not have any
direct policy relevance; and so on. A second strategy of containment in IR discourse is the idea
of deferred redemption. This operates by an eternal deferment of the possibility of overcoming
the alienation of international society that commenced in 1492. While "realistically" such
overcoming is regarded as well-nigh impossible, its promise serves as the principle by which
contemporary and historical violence and inequality can be justified and lived with. Redemptive
strategies of containment are reflected in a wide variety of IR discourses: Kant's idea of
perpetual peace as consequent upon international war and dispersion; the possibility of an
international community epitomized in organizations such as the United Nations; the promise of
international socialism; the discourse of capitalist modernization on the Rostowian model; and
more recently, the "end of history" under the regime of globalization. All these strategies hinge
on the prospect of deferred redemption: the present is inscribed as a transitional phase whose
violent and unequal character is expiated on the altar of that which is to come.
*** Fusion Centers – Version #2
Counter Terrorism Advantage
1AC
Advantage ___: Terrorism
Nuclear Terror in a Year – They Have the Means and Motivation
PressTV 25 2015 Foreign Policy Mon May 25, 2015 ISIL planning ‘nuclear attack inside US next
year’: Report http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/05/25/412751/ISIL-nuclear-attack-US-nextyear-report
The ISIL terrorist group claims that it has enough money to buy a nuclear weapon from Pakistan
and carry out an attack inside the United States next year.¶ The group said in an article in its English-language
online magazine Dabiq that the weapon could be smuggled into the United States via its southern border
with Mexico.¶ British journalist John Cantlie wrote in the article ISIL “has billions of dollars in the bank, so they
call on their wilayah (Province) in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers
with links to corrupt officials in the region.”¶ “The weapon is then transported overland until it
makes it to Libya, where the mujahidin move it south to Nigeria,” the journalist said.¶ He added that “drug
shipments from Columbia bound for Europe pass through West Africa, so moving other types of
contraband from East to West is just as possible.Ӧ Cantlie continued the weapon and accompanying radicals
would then move up through Central America and Mexico before entering the US.¶ "From there it's a quick hop
through a smuggling tunnel and hey presto, they're mingling with another 12 million 'illegal'
aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk," he wrote.¶ "Perhaps such a scenario is far-fetched but it's the
sum of all fears for Western intelligence agencies and it's infinitely more possible today than it was just one
year ago,” Cantlie said.
They Will Use WMDs
By Theodore Schleifer, CNN May 12, 2015 Former CIA official: ISIS terrorist attack in U.S. is
possible http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/12/politics/michael-morell-isis-attack-osama-bin-laden/
Islamic militants have the ability to direct individuals to conduct small-scale attacks in the United
States and could pose an even greater threat in the future, according to the former deputy
director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Michael Morell, a longtime intelligence analyst who served as
acting director of the agency after the resignation of David Petraeus in 2012, warned that if ISIS
was allowed to take refuge in Iraq and Syria, they could orchestrate an attack in the United States.
The group has claimed responsibility for a recent attack in Garland, Texas, where police killed two gunmen. RELATED: Former CIA
official takes aim at politicians Morell told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead" that it
is "not far-fetched" that ISIS or
other terrorist groups could gain access to weapons of mass destruction. "That would be the
nightmare scenario: a terrorist attack, here in the United States, here in New York, another major city, that
involved either chemical, biological or other nuclear weapons," he said. Morell also disputed a report this
week by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh that a walk-in informant tipped the United States off to the location of
Osama bin Laden before the American military killed him. "I can't tell you that somebody didn't walk into a station somewhere and
say 'I know where Osama bin Laden is.'" Morell said. "But I can guarantee you that no one walk in ever provided information that
actually led us to Osama bin Laden."
Oversaturation of information makes tracking these threats impossible
Thomas ’15 [Kansas City Star, Judy L. Thomas writer for Kansas City Star,
http://projects.kansascity.com/2015/domestic-terrorism/#/story/18859890]
But as Islamic extremists continue to wage attacks, the
focus and some funding for preventing terrorism at home
have dissolved: ▪ The 78 “fusion centers” promoted by the Department of Homeland Security to be the
centerpiece of terror intelligence in the wake of 9/11 has disrupted a system of police work that
previously had been effective. ▪ Despite hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars pumped into them, the centers
are largely autonomous and operated by disparate agencies that sometimes don’t even cooperate with one
another. ▪ The fusion center victories the DHS touts often have little to do with domestic terrorism. In fact,
many of them involve drug busts, fugitive apprehension or natural disaster responses. ▪ The FBI, which operates more
than 100 terrorism task forces, also has struggled to track domestic terrorism for a variety of reasons,
including clashes with fusion centers, critics say. ▪ Congress has eliminated funding for a Justice Department program that
provides anti-terrorism training and resources to thousands of law enforcement officers. The FBI acknowledges the agency turned its
attention to foreign terrorists after 9/11. “Our efforts today remain very heavily focused in the area of the international terrorism
threat, but we have an active domestic terrorism program as well,” said spokesman Paul Bresson. “Over the course of time, it has
been critical for the FBI to be agile to respond to all emerging threats, regardless of where they originate. And that is what we have
done extremely well over our 107-year history.” A
DHS spokesman said his agency, too, was continuing to
give domestic terrorism the attention it needs. Homeland Security “protects our nation from all threats, whether
foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence,” S.Y. Lee said in an email last month. The agency
“does not concentrate on any particular group or ideology,” Lee said. Yet all the while, those
who monitor domestic
terrorism say the threat continues to mount. “We are five years into the largest resurgence of
right-wing extremism that we’ve had since the 1990s,” said Mark Pitcavage, director of
investigative research for the Anti-Defamation League, which trains more than 10,000 law
enforcement officers a year about domestic terrorism, extremism and hate crimes. From 2009 through July
2014, Pitcavage said, authorities were involved in 46 shootouts with domestic extremists. “When it comes to domestic
extremism, what tends to happen is that a lot of it goes under the radar, and a lot — including murders
and what you would think would be major incidents — only gets reported locally and regionally,” Pitcavage said. “So unless it
happens in your backyard, the average American doesn’t quite realize how much of this is happening.”
Dirty bombs go nuclear---high risk of theft and attacks escalate
Dvorkin 12 (Vladimir Z., Major General (retired), doctor of technical sciences, professor, and senior fellow at the
Center for International Security of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian
Academy of Sciences. The Center participates in the working group of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear
Terrorism, 9/21/12, "What Can Destroy Strategic Stability: Nuclear Terrorism is a Real Threat,"
belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22333/what_can_destroy_strategic_stability.html)
Hundreds of scientific papers and reports have been published on nuclear terrorism. International conferences have been held on
this threat with participation of Russian organizations, including IMEMO and the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies.
Recommendations on how to combat the threat have been issued by the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear
Catastrophe, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Russian-American Elbe Group, and other organizations. The UN
General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism in 2005 and cooperation
among intelligence services of leading states in this sphere is developing.¶ At the same time, these
efforts fall short for a
number of reasons, partly because various acts of nuclear terrorism are possible. Dispersal of
radioactive material by detonation of conventional explosives (“dirty bombs”) is a method that
is most accessible for terrorists. With the wide spread of radioactive sources, raw materials for
such attacks have become much more accessible than weapons-useable nuclear material or
nuclear weapons. The use of “ dirty bombs ” will not cause many immediate casualties, but it will result into
long-term radioactive contamination, contributing to the spread of panic and socio-economic
destabilization .¶ Severe consequences can be caused by sabotaging nuclear power plants,
research reactors, and radioactive materials storage facilities. Large cities are especially
vulnerable to such attacks. A large city may host dozens of research reactors with a nuclear
power plant or a couple of spent nuclear fuel storage facilities and dozens of large radioactive
materials storage facilities located nearby. The past few years have seen significant efforts made to enhance
organizational and physical aspects of security at facilities, especially at nuclear power plants. Efforts
have also been made
to improve security culture. But these efforts do not preclude the possibility that well-trained
terrorists may be able to penetrate nuclear facilities .¶ Some estimates show that sabotage of a
research reactor in a metropolis may expose hundreds of thousands to high doses of radiation.
A formidable part of the city would become uninhabitable for a long time.¶ Of all the scenarios, it is
building an improvised nuclear device by terrorists that poses the maximum risk. There are no
engineering problems that cannot be solved if terrorists decide to build a simple “gun-type”
nuclear device. Information on the design of such devices, as well as implosion-type devices, is
available in the public domain. It is the acquisition of weapons-grade uranium that presents the sole serious obstacle.
Despite numerous preventive measures taken, we cannot rule out the possibility that such materials can be bought on
the black market. Theft of weapons-grade uranium is also possible . Research reactor fuel is
considered to be particularly vulnerable to theft, as it is scattered at sites in dozens of countries.
There are about 100 research reactors in the world that run on weapons-grade uranium fuel,
according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).¶ A terrorist “gun-type” uranium
bomb can have a yield of least 10-15 kt, which is comparable to the yield of the bomb dropped
on Hiroshima . The explosion of such a bomb in a modern metropolis can kill and wound
hundreds of thousands and cause serious economic damage. There will also be long-term
sociopsychological and political consequences.¶ The vast majority of states have introduced unprecedented
security and surveillance measures at transportation and other large-scale public facilities after the terrorist attacks in the United
States, Great Britain, Italy, and other countries. These measures have proved burdensome for the countries’ populations, but the
public has accepted them as necessary. A
nuclear terrorist attack will make the public accept further
measures meant to enhance control even if these measures significantly restrict the democratic
liberties they are accustomed to. Authoritarian states could be expected to adopt even more
restrictive measures.¶ If a nuclear terrorist act occurs, nations will delegate tens of thousands of their
secret services’ best personnel to investigate and attribute the attack. Radical Islamist groups
are among those capable of such an act. We can imagine what would happen if they do so, given the antiMuslim sentiments and resentment that conventional terrorist attacks by Islamists have
generated in developed democratic countries. Mass deportation of the non-indigenous
population and severe sanctions would follow such an attack in what will cause violent protests
in the Muslim world. Series of armed clashing terrorist attacks may follow. The prediction that
Samuel Huntington has made in his book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order” may come true. Huntington’s book clearly demonstrates that it is not Islamic extremists that are the cause of the
Western world’s problems. Rather there is a deep, intractable conflict that is rooted in the fault lines that run between Islam and
Christianity. This is especially dangerous for Russia because these fault lines run across its territory.
To sum it up, the political leadership of Russia has every reason to revise its list of factors that could undermine strategic
stability. BMD does not deserve to be even last on that list because its effectiveness in repelling massive missile strikes will be
extremely low. BMD systems can prove useful only if deployed to defend against launches of individual ballistic missiles or groups of
such missiles. Prioritization of other destabilizing factors—that could affect global and regional stability—merits a separate study or
studies. But even without them I can conclude that nuclear terrorism should be placed on top of the list.
The threat of
nuclear terrorism is real, and a successful nuclear terrorist attack would lead to a radical
transformation of the global order .
All of the threats on the revised list must become a subject of thorough studies
by experts. States need to work hard to forge a common understanding of these threats and develop a strategy to combat them.
Independently causes extinction via retaliation
Ayson 10 - Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New
Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington (Robert, July. “After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack:
Envisaging Catalytic Effects.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 33, Issue 7. InformaWorld.)
But these two nuclear worlds—a non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchange—are not necessarily separable. It is just
some sort of terrorist attack , and especially an act of nuclear terrorism, could precipitate a chain of
events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more of the states that
possible that
possess them. In this context, today’s and tomorrow’s terrorist groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state
possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising
the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the
superpowers started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew about
nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem. It may require a considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where
an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United
States, it might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be
fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in supporting that
sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how
might the United States react if it was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from Russian
stocks,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of that nuclear material to a particular
country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation by Michael May et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion
would be “spread over a wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and collectable, and a wealth of information can
be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and, most important … some indication of where the nuclear material
came from.”41 Alternatively, if the act of nuclear terrorism came as a complete surprise, and American officials refused to believe that a terrorist group
was fully responsible (or responsible at all) suspicion would shift immediately to state possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United
Kingdom and France, and probably Israel and India as well, authorities in Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North Korea,
perhaps Iran if its program continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at
what stage would Russia and China be definitely ruled
out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular, if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of
existing tension in Washington’s relations with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded
between these major powers, would officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst? Of
course, the chances of this occurring would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of limited armed conflict with
Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war, as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present
time. The reverse might well apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of heightened tension or even limited
conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible
perpetrator or encourager of the attack? Washington’s
early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil might also raise
the possibility of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise
and confusion during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president might be
expected to place the country’s armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert. In such a
tense environment, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just possible that Moscow and/or China
might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force (and possibly nuclear force) against them. In
that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might grow, although it must be admitted that any preemption would
probably still meet with a devastating response. As part of its initial response to the act of nuclear terrorism (as discussed earlier) Washington might
decide to order a significant conventional (or nuclear) retaliatory or disarming attack against the leadership of the terrorist group and/or states seen to
support that group. Depending on the identity and especially the location of these targets, Russia and/or China might interpret such action as being far
too close for their comfort, and potentially as an infringement on their spheres of influence and even on their sovereignty. One far-fetched but perhaps
not impossible scenario might stem from a judgment in Washington that some of the main aiders and abetters of the terrorist action resided
somewhere such as Chechnya, perhaps in connection with what Allison claims is the “Chechen insurgents’ … long-standing interest in all things
nuclear.”42 American pressure on that part of the world would almost certainly raise alarms in Moscow that might require a degree of advanced
consultation from Washington that the latter found itself unable or unwilling to provide. There is also the question of how other nuclear-armed states
respond to the act of nuclear terrorism on another member of that special club. It could reasonably be expected that following a nuclear terrorist
attack on the United States, bothRussia and China would extend immediate sympathy and support to Washington and would work alongside the United
States in the Security Council. But there is just a chance, albeit a slim one, where the support of Russia and/or China is less automatic in some cases
than in others. For example, what would happen if the United States wished to discuss its right to retaliate against groups based in their territory? If, for
some reason, Washington found the responses of Russia and China deeply underwhelming, (neither “for us or against us”) might it also suspect that
they secretly were in cahoots with the group, increasing (again perhaps ever so slightly) the chances of a major exchange. If the terrorist group had
some connections to groups in Russia and China, or existed in areas of the world over which Russia and China held sway, and if Washington felt that
Moscow or Beijing were placing a curiously modest level of pressure on them, what conclusions might it then draw about their culpability.
Even Limited Casualties Are Sufficient to Trigger the Impact
NTI ’11 Citing Vahid Majidi. Feb. 17 “FBI Official Sees 100% Likelihood of WMD Strike on U.S.” The Nuclear Threat Initiative works to strengthen
global security by reducing global threats, Vahid Majidi is an FBI senior official. http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/fbi-official-sees-100-likelihood-of-wmdstrike-on-us/
Newsmax cited the case of Roger Bergendorff, who in 2008 was sentenced to 42 months in prison for possession of the lethal toxin ricin (see GSN, Nov.
18, 2008). A
WMD event with limited casualties could still produce terrible psychological effects, Majidi
singular lone wolf individual can do things in the dark of the night with access to a
laboratory with low quantities of material and could hurt a few people but create a devastating
effect on the American psyche," he said. A would-be attacker working alone remains a major
concern, while intelligence agencies in the United States and abroad have established strategies for
identifying schemes developed by terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, according to Majidi. Majidi said his office is
pursuing strategies for identifying preparation of novel bioterrorism materials. " We are not sitting on our hands waiting to
predict what will happen based on what happened yesterday,” Majidi said. "You can design an organism de novo
said. "A
that never existed before. While there is no known articulated threat, this is something that we feel is a technology or science that potentially can be
misused, either accidentally or on purpose."
The Plan is Necessary to Shift From Mass Surveillance to Targeted Surveillance
Omtzigt and Schirmer 15 (Pieter and GÜNTER, “Mass surveillance: wrong in practice as well as principle,” Open
Democracy, Feb 23, 2015, Accessed May 20, 2015, https://www.opendemo...-principle)//
two solid empirical studies
have shown that mass
surveillance has not proved effective in the prevention of terrorist attacks, whereas targeted
surveillance has. These studies have shown that those,
who insist on
collecting “the whole haystack” are not really helping the fight against terrorism
if you target everything, there’s no
target”.
. In short, mass
surveillance may actually help terrorists because it diverts limited resources away from
traditional law enforcement, which gathers more intelligence on a smaller set of targets
. By flooding the system with
false positives, big-data approaches to counter-terrorism actually make it harder to identify and
stop the real terrorists before they strike.
In fact,
on either side of the Atlantic, cited in the report of the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee,
like the former NSA director, General Keith Alexander,
. Jim Sensenbrenner, a veteran Republican
member of Congress, pointed out that “the bigger haystack makes it harder to find the needle”. And Thomas Drake, a former NSA executive turned critic, said that “
An analysis of the Boston marathon bombing in April 2013 showed that alarm signals pointing to the future perpetrator were lost in a mass of alerts generated by tactics that threw the net too widely
. In both the Boston and
Paris cases, the perpetrators had been on the radar of the authorities for some time, but the relevant intelligence was not followed up properly because it was drowned in a mass of data
That Makes FBI Surveillance Efficient and Effective – Only Way to Stop
Terrorist Plots
Schmidt ’15 "Report Credits F.B.I. With Progress Since 9/11, but Says More Is Needed." The
New York Times. The New York Times, 25 Mar. 2015. Web. 24 June 2015.
The F.B.I. has made great strides since the Sept. 11 attacks but urgently needs to improve its intelligence capabilities, hire more linguists
and elevate the stature of its analysts to counter the rapidly evolving threats to the United States, according to a report released on Wednesday. The report by the F.B.I. 9/11
Review Commission said the bureau had prevented catastrophic terrorist attacks but needed
to improve its ability to collect information from people and to efficiently analyze it, contending that the
bureau lags “behind marked advances in law enforcement capabilities.” “This imbalance needs urgently to be addressed to meet growing and increasingly complex national security threats, from adaptive and
increasingly tech-savvy terrorists, more brazen computer hackers and more technically capable, global cyber syndicates,” the report said. The 2004 report of the national Sept. 11 Commission and subsequent
the report released Wednesday was far less critical. Rather than a
rebuke, it amounts to a status-check on the F.B.I. transformation that began in 2001. Today’s
bureau bears little resemblance to that organization, and some of the areas cited for
reviews called for major changes to the F.B.I., but
improvement are markedly better than they were years ago. For instance, the 2004 report said that
two-thirds of the bureau’s analysts were qualified to perform their jobs. The latest report, by contrast, said, “The
training and professional status of analysts has improved in recent years.” And while the report said the F.B.I. needed
more translators, it was much less critical of the bureau’s foreign language ability than previous reports were. Many of the report’s recommendations related to issues that the F.B.I.’s director, James B. Comey, has
the F.B.I.’s transformation from a law enforcement agency to an
created a high-level executive position to oversee a branch division meant to
expand the use of intelligence across all investigations. He has also said that raising the profile of
analysts, and strengthening their relationships with agents, are among his chief priorities. “I think this is a moment
of pride for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Comey said Wednesday at a news conference in Washington. “An outside group of some of our nation’s most important leaders and thinkers has stared hard at
us and said, ‘You have done a great job at transforming yourself.’ They’ve also said what I’ve said around the country: ‘It’s not good enough.’” He
raised since he took over the bureau in September 2013. For instance, Mr. Comey has said that one of his biggest priorities is continuing
intelligence operation. Last year, he
added, “There are a lot of ways you can be even better.” The review commission was created by Congress in 2014 to assess the bureau’s progress since the attacks. In particular, the panel examined the extent to
“Many of the findings and recommendations in this
report will not be new to the F.B.I.,” the latest report said. “The bureau is already taking steps to address
them. In 2015, however, the F.B.I. faces an increasingly complicated and dangerous global threat environment that will demand an accelerated commitment to reform. Everything is
moving faster.” The principal authors of the report were Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University; Edwin Meese III, the former attorney general; and Timothy J.
which the F.B.I. had put into effect the recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission.
Roemer, a former House member from Indiana and former ambassador to India. The panel was particularly critical of how the F.B.I. treats its analysts. It said that “despite its stated intentions to address concerns
from its analysts,” the bureau did not regard them as a “professional work force” that needed to be continually trained and educated. It said analysts needed to “be empowered to question special agent’s
The F.B.I. is far better at sharing information with other government agencies
than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks, the report said. But it needs to improve how it communicates
with local law enforcement
operational assumptions.”
authorities and the private sector. “Looking ahead, the F.B.I. will be increasingly dependent upon all domestic and foreign partnerships to succeed in its critical and
growing national security missions — including against the rapidly evolving cyber and terrorist threats,” the report said.
Cutting Fusion Centers Solves
AT: Fusion Centers Key to Stop Terrorism
FBI Programs Will Fill in and they are more efficient
David Inserra, 4-15-2015, "Time to Reform the U.S. Counterterrorism Enterprise—Now,"
Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/04/time-to-reform-theus-counterterrorism-enterprisenow
In the aftermath of 9/11, DHS was created to ensure that silos of information are broken down, and that counterterrorism agents are able to use the best intelligence proactively. While great strides have been made in this direction, DHS’s role in the intelligence and
fusion centers “often produced irrelevant,
useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS and many produced no intelligence
reporting whatsoever
fusion centers were not meaningfpully
contributing to counterterrorism measures and may have even been harming efforts
the fusion centers serve cities or regions already
covered by 104 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and 56 Field Intelligence Groups (FIGs),
which play a similar role to that of fusion centers. This broad duplication of efforts results in an
inefficient and counterproductive use of counterterrorism funds.
information-sharing arenas remain limited. In 2012, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee found that
.” It also provided multiple assessments and examples that show
.[1] More recent reports also
show fusion centers to have mixed results.[2] Meant to serve as hubs of sharing between federal, state, and local officials,
78
often
[3]
In 2013, the DHS Inspector General (IG) reported that DHS’s Homeland Security
Information Network (HSIN)—designed to share sensitive but not classified information with federal, state, local government, and private-sector partners—was only being used by a small percentage of all potential partners. State and local officials stated that one
reason for not using HSIN was that “the system content was not useful.”[4] Since the IG report came out, however, HSIN has successfully migrated to an updated system and is seeking to add desired content from DHS components.[5] At around 40,000 active users
at the end of 2013, HSIN is far short of its 2015 objective of 130,000.[6] Furthermore, a RAND report sponsored by DHS found that HSIN was only a somewhat useful source of information.[7]
Fusion Centers Don’t Solve Counter Terror
Fusion Centers are inefficient mechanisms for data collection – This circumvents
their ability in counter terror operations
Michael German, Policy Counsel for National Security, ACLU Washington Legislative Office,
and Jay Stanley, Public Education Director, ACLU Technology and Liberty Program, 2007
December “What’s Wrong With Fusion Centers?”
https://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/privacy/fusioncenter_20071212.pdf
New institutions like fusion
centers must be planned in a public, open manner, and their¶ implications for privacy and other key
values carefully thought out and debated. And like¶ any powerful institution in a democracy, they must be constructed in a
carefully bounded¶ and limited manner with sufficient checks and balances to prevent abuse.¶
Unfortunately, the new fusion centers have not conformed to these vital requirements.¶ Since no
two fusion centers are alike, it is difficult to make generalized statements about¶ them. Clearly not all fusion centers are engaging in
improper intelligence activities and¶ not all fusion center operations raise civil liberties or privacy concerns. But some do,¶ and the
lack of a proper legal framework to regulate their activities is troublesome. This¶ report is intended to
serve as a primer that explains what fusion centers are, and how¶ and why they were created. It details potential problems fusion
centers present to the¶ privacy and civil liberties of ordinary Americans, including:¶ • Ambiguous Lines of Authority. The
participation of agencies from multiple¶ jurisdictions in fusion centers allows the authorities to
manipulate differences in¶ federal, state and local laws to maximize information collection while
evading¶ accountability and oversight through the practice of “policy shopping.”¶ r¶ i¶ v¶ a¶ t¶ e¶ S¶ e¶ c¶ t¶ o¶ r¶ P¶ a¶
r¶ t¶ i¶ c¶ i¶ p¶ a¶ t¶ i¶ o¶ n¶ . Fusion centers are incorporating private-sector¶ corporations into the
intelligence process, breaking down the arm’s length¶ relationship that protects the privacy of
innocent Americans who are employees¶ or customers of these companies, and increasing the risk of a data breach.¶ •¶ M¶
i¶ l¶ i¶ t¶ a¶ r¶ y¶ P¶ a¶ r¶ t¶ i¶ c¶ i¶ p¶ a¶ t¶ i¶ o¶ n¶ . Fusion centers are involving military personnel in law¶ enforcement activities in
troubling ways.¶ •¶ D¶ a¶ t¶ a¶ F¶ u¶ s¶ i¶ o¶ n¶ =¶ D¶ a¶ t¶ a¶ M¶ i¶ n¶ i¶ n¶ g¶ . Federal
fusion center guidelines
encourage whole¶ sale data collection and manipulation processes that threaten privacy.¶ •¶ E¶ x¶ c¶ e¶ s¶
s¶ i¶ v¶ e¶ S¶ e¶ c¶ r¶ e¶ c¶ y¶ . Fusion centers are hobbled by excessive secrecy, which¶ limits public
oversight, impairs their ability to acquire essential information and¶ impedes their ability to fulfill
their stated mission, bringing their ultimate value¶ into doubt.¶ The lack of proper legal limits on the new fusion
centers not only threatens to undermine¶ fundamental American values, but also threatens to turn them into wasteful
and misdirected¶ bureaucracies that, like our federal security agencies before 9/11, won’t
succeed¶ in their ultimate mission of stopping terrorism and other crime.
Fusion centers hinder war on terror
Smith ’12 [Oct 3, 2012, Network World, Ms. Smith Senior Director of Circulation citing Senate
report on fusion centers, “Fusion centers don't find terrorists, filled with 'crap' that violates
privacy”, http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223243/microsoft-subnet/fusion-centersdon-t-find-terrorists--filled-with--crap--that-violates-privacy.html]
Another chapter on how-it-hindered counterterrorism cited an example of the "Russian
'cyberattack' in Illinois" where the hacker allegedly cracked into the utility control system.
According to the red-alert fusion center report, the hacker "sent commands which caused a
water pump to burn out." The Department of Defense said such cyberattacks would be treated
as "acts of war" and the FBI launched an investigation. However, according to the report: "In
truth, there was no intrusion, and DHS investigators eventually concluded as much. The so-
called "intrusion" from Russia was actually an incident of legitimate remote computer access by
a U.S. network technician who was working while on a family vacation. Almost no part of the
initial reports of the incident had been accurate - not the fusion center report, or DHS's own
intelligence report, or its intelligence briefing. The only fact they got right was that a water
pump in a small Illinois water district had burned out. That is just one of several examples. The
Senate investigation found that: claims made by DHS did not always fit the facts, and in no case
did a fusion center make a clear and unique intelligence contribution that helped apprehend a
terrorist or disrupt a plot. Worse, three other incidents examined by the Subcommittee
investigation raised significant concerns about the utility of the fusion centers, and raised the
possibility that some centers have actually hindered or sidetracked federal counterterrorism
efforts.
Data Collection Through Fusion Centers Cant Solve Counter Terrorism
Walker ’12 "Fusion Centers: Expensive, Practically Useless, and Bad for Your Liberty."
Reason.com. N.p., 03 Oct. 2012. Web. 22 June 2015.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has just released a
report [pdf] on the "fusion centers" that pepper the law-enforcement landscape -- shadowy
intelligence-sharing shops run on the state and local level but heavily funded by the federal
Department of Homeland Security. It is a devastating document. When a report's recommendations
include a plea for the DHS to "track how much money it gives to each fusion center," you know you're dealing with a system that has
some very basic problems.¶ After
reviewing 13 months' worth of the fusion centers' output, Senate
investigators concluded that the centers' reports were "oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely,
sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken
from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism." One
report offered the vital intelligence that "a certain model of automobile had folding rear seats that provided access to the trunk
without leaving the car," a feature deemed notable because it "could be useful to human traffickers." Others highlighted illegal
activities by people in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database, which sounds useful until you hear just what
those people did that attracted the centers' attention. One man was caught speeding. Another shoplifted some shoes. TIDE itself,
according to the Senate report, is filled not just with suspected terrorists but with their "associates," a term broad enough to rope in
a two-year-old boy.¶ Nearly a third of the reports were not even circulated after they were written, sometimes because they
contained no useful information, sometimes because they "overstepped legal boundaries" in disturbing ways: "Reporting on First
Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to violence or criminality; reporting on or improperly characterizing political,
religious or ideological speech that is not explicitly violent or criminal; and attributing to an entire group the violent or criminal acts
of one or a limited number of the group's members." (One analyst, for example, felt the need to note that a Muslim community
group's list of recommended readings included four items whose authors were in the TIDE database.)
Interestingly, while
the DHS usually refused to publish these problematic reports, the department also retained
them for an "apparantly indefinite" period.¶ Why did the centers churn out so much useless
and illegal material? A former employee says officers were judged "by the number [of reports]
they produced, not by quality or evaluations they received." Senate investigators were "able to identify only
one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his mistakes." Specifically, he had
to attend an extra week of training.¶ Other issues identified in the Senate report:¶ • Some of the fusion centers touted by the
Department of Homeland Security do not, in fact, exist.¶ • Centers have reported threats that do not exist either. An alleged Russian
"cyberattack" turned out to be an American network technician accessing a work computer remotely while on vacation.¶ •
DHS
"was unable to provide an accurate tally of how much it had granted to states and cities to
support fusion centers efforts." Instead it offered "broad estimates of the total amount of
federal dollars spent on fusion center activities from 2003 to 2011, estimates which ranged
from $289 million to $1.4 billion."¶ When you aren't keeping track of how much you're spending, it becomes hard to
keep track of what that money is being spent on. All sorts of dubious expenses slipped by. A center in San Diego "spent
nearly $75,000 on 55 flat-screen televisions," according to the Senate report. "When asked what the
televisions were being used for, officials said they displayed calendars, and were used for 'open-source monitoring.' Asked to define
'open-source monitoring,' SD-LECC officials said they meant 'watching the news.'"¶ The report is also filled with signs of
A "2010 assessment of state and local fusion centers conducted at the request of
DHS found widespread deficiencies in the centers' basic counterterrorism information-sharing
capabilities," for example. "DHS did not share that report with Congress or discuss its findings publicly. When the
stonewalling.
Subcommittee requested the assessment as part of its investigation, DHS at first denied it existed, then disputed whether it could be
shared with Congress, before ultimately providing a copy."¶ And
then there's the matter of mission creep.
Many centers have adopted an "all-crime, all-hazards" approach that shifts their focus from
stopping terrorism and onto a broader spectrum of threats. You could make a reasonable case that this is a
wiser use of public resources -- terrorism is rare, after all, and the DHS-driven movement away from the all-hazards approach in the
early post-9/11 years had disastrous results. Unfortunately, the leading "hazards" on the fusion centers' agenda appear to be drugs
At any rate, the DHS should stop citing the centers as a key part of America's
counterterrorism efforts if those centers have found better (or easier) things to do than trying
to fight terror.
and illegal aliens.
Fusion Centers Wont Stop the Next Attack
Fusion Centers Are Not Equipped To Stop the Next Major Terrorist Attack
Sosadmin ‘15 "So-called 'counterterror' Fusion Center in Massachusetts Monitored Black
Lives Matter Protesters." So-called 'counterterror' Fusion Center in Massachusetts Monitored
Black Lives Matter Protesters. N.p., 28 Nov. 2014. Web. 24 June 2015.
Law enforcement officials at the Department of Homeland Security-funded “Commonwealth Fusion Center” spied on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of Black Lives Matter protesters in Boston earlier this
week, the Boston Herald reports.¶ The reference to the so-called ‘fusion’ spy center comes at the very end of a news story quoting Boston protesters injured by police in Tuesday night’s demonstrations, which
was possibly the largest Ferguson related protest in the country the day after the non-indictment of Darren Wilson was announced.¶ The state police Commonwealth Fusion Center monitored social media, which
. There are nearly 100 fusion centers
nationwide, and two in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth Fusion Center in Maynard is run by the Massachusetts State Police. The Boston Regional Intelligence
Center, also known as the ‘BRIC’, is located at Boston Police Department headquarters in Roxbury and run by the BPD. Both fusion centers were
established with funds from the Department of Homeland Security, and rely heavily on federal
‘counterterrorism’ grants.¶ Fusion centers have long come under fire from congressional leaders and democracy
advocates as being largely wasteful, duplicative of other local/federal counterterrorism efforts, and
violative of civil rights and civil liberties. In Boston, the ACLU disclosed internal ‘intelligence files’ showing that BRIC officials used their
provided “critical intelligence about protesters’ plans to try to disrupt traffic on state highways,” state police said
federally-funded ‘counterterrorism’ infrastructure to monitor peaceful protesters including Veterans for Peace and CODEPINK, labeling them as domestic extremists and
Fusion center
officials in Pennsylvania got caught spying on anti-fracking activists, apparently in league with
natural gas companies. An Arkansas fusion center director told the press his spy office doesn’t
monitor US citizens, just anti-government groups—however that’s defined. Washington state
fusion centers have insinuated that activism is terrorism.¶ There are many, many other examples nationwide of these so-called
fusion centers getting caught red handed monitoring protest movements and dissidents, conflating First Amendment protected speech with crime or terrorism. The
fusion centers, meanwhile, have never once stopped a terrorist attack. It’s not clear what
beyond monitoring dissidents and black people—through so-called ‘gang’ databases—these
fusion centers actually do. We here in Boston know one thing for sure: they don’t stop terrorism.¶ Some
homeland security threats. The Boston fusion center even kept track of the political activities of Marty Walsh, currently the city’s mayor.
people might say that ‘counterterrorism’ analysts at the Commonwealth Fusion Center should be monitoring the tweets and Facebook posts of Black Lives Matter activists, if
those activists intend to shut down highways.¶ We can agree to disagree about that, but please don’t say these fusion centers are primarily dedicated to stopping terrorism
when they are doing things like this. Stopping traffic for a few hours is civil disobedience, not terrorism. A supposed anti-terrorism center has no business monitoring public
social media accounts looking for ‘intelligence’ about civic protest movements.
Info Gathering  Intel Gap
Fusion centers create information redundancies that offset the programs
effectiveness
Inserra 2015, David Inserra Research Associate, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, 15 April 2015,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/04/time-to-reform-the-us-counterterrorism-enterprisenow. PE
In 2012, the
Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee found that fusion
centers “often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS and many
produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever.” It also provided multiple assessments and examples that show fusion
centers were not meaningfully contributing to counterterrorism measures and may have even
been harming efforts.[1] More recent reports also show fusion centers to have mixed results.[2] Meant to serve as hubs of
sharing between federal, state, and local officials, the 78 fusion centers often serve cities or regions already
covered by 104 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and 56 Field Intelligence Groups (FIGs), which
play a similar role to that of fusion centers.[3] This broad duplication of efforts results in an
inefficient and counterproductive use of counterterrorism funds.
Accurate Intel Key
Fusion Centers’ emphasis on data collection creates a need in the haystack
scenario that makes the identification and prevention of terror threats
impossible – reverting to old anti-terror methods is key
WashingtonsBlog May 7, 2015 by NSA Admits It Collects Too MUCH Info to Stop Terror
Attacks
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/nsa-admits-it-collects-too-much-info-to-stopterror-attacks.html
Top security experts agree that mass surveillance is ineffective … and actually makes us MORE
vulnerable to terrorism.¶ For example, the former head of the NSA’s global intelligence gathering
operations – Bill Binney – says that the mass surveillance INTERFERES with the government’s
ability to catch bad guys, and that the government failed to stop 9/11, the Boston Bombing, the
Texas shootings and other terror attacks is because it was overwhelmed with data from mass
surveillance on Americans.¶ Binney told Washington’s Blog:¶ A good deal of the failure is, in my opinion, due to bulk data. So, I am
calling all these attacks a result of “Data bulk failure.” Too much data and too many people for the 10-20 thousand
analysts to follow. Simple as that. Especially when they make word match pulls (like Google) and get dumps of data selected from close to 4
billion people.¶ This is the same problem NSA had before 9/11. They had data that could have prevented 9/11 but did not
know they had it in their data bases. This back then when the bulk collection was not going on. Now the problem is orders of
magnitude greater. Result, it’s harder to succeed.¶ Expect more of the same from our deluded government that thinks more data improves
possibilities of success. All this bulk data collection and storage does give law enforcement a great capability to retroactively analyze anyone they want.
But, of course,that data cannot be used in court since it was not acquired with a warrant. ¶ Binney and other high-level NSA whistleblowers noted last
year:¶ On December 26, for example, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy front-page article, quoting NSA’s former Senior Technical Director
William Binney (undersigned) and former chief of NSA’s SIGINT Automation Research Center Edward Loomis (undersigned) warning that NSA is
drowning in useless data lacking adequate privacy provisions, to the point where it cannot conduct effective terrorist-related surveillance and analysis.¶
A recently disclosed internal NSA briefing document corroborates the drowning, with the embarrassing admission, in bureaucratize, that NSA
collection has been “outpacing” NSA’s ability to ingest, process, and store data – let alone
analyze the take.¶ Indeed, the pro-spying NSA chief and NSA technicians admitted that the NSA was drowning in too much data 3 months
before 9/11:¶ In an interview, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, the NSA’s director … suggested that access isn’t
the problem. Rather, he said, the sheer volume and variety of today’s communications means
“there’s simply too much out there, and it’s too hard to understand.”¶ ***¶ “What we got was a
blast of digital bits, like a fire hydrant spraying you in the face,” says one former NSA technician with knowledge of
the project. “It was the classic needle-in-the-haystack pursuit, except here the haystack starts out
huge and grows by the second,” the former technician says. NSA’s computers simply weren’t equipped to sort through so much data
flying at them so fast.¶ And see this.¶ If more traditional anti-terror efforts had been used, these terror plots
would have been stopped.
AT: The Plan Causes “Turf Wars”
The Argument that the plan results in “turf wars” between intelligence agencies
is a non-starter - there are procedures in place for intel sharing on legitimate
threats – its only a question of whether or not we can process that information
by WashingtonsBlog in an interview with Thomas Drake, former senior NSA executive, June 13,
2014 Senior NSA Executive DEMOLISHES Intelligence Agencies’ Excuse for 9/11
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/06/senior-nsa-manager-demolishes-intelligenceagencies-excuse-911.html
The U.S. government pretended that 9/11 was unforeseeable.¶ But overwhelming evidence
shows that 9/11 was foreseeable. Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable.¶ The fallback
government position is that the problem was that intelligence agencies were prohibited by law
from sharing intelligence, because there was a “Chinese Wall” put up between agencies focusing on foreign
and domestic threats.¶ Washington’s Blog spoke with senior NSA executive Thomas Drake about this claim. ¶
9/11 was Drake’s first day on the job at the NSA. Drake was tasked with investigating what intelligence NSA had on the 9/11 plot, in order to document that 9/11 wasn’t NSA’s fault. However, Drake discovered
that NSA had a lot of information on the hijackers, and could have stopped 9/11 had it shared its data with other intelligence agencies.¶ Drake’s NSA bosses didn’t like that answer, so they removed Drake from his
A lot of people blame a “Chinese Wall”
between foreign intelligence activities and domestic intelligence activities for not sharing the
pre-9/11 data.¶ THOMAS DRAKE: That is a completely false “wall.” It was essentially to protect the status
quo, or what they call “equities.”¶ It’s not true at all.¶ WASHINGTON’S BLOG: Was it a turf war?¶ THOMAS DRAKE: Yes, it’s partly that. People have this idea that the
government is all powerful, all-knowing, and everybody is in league with each other.¶ That’s not true. In fact – in this space – you more often than not find
task of being the NSA’s investigator and spokesman regarding 9/11. ¶ Here’s what Drake told us.¶ WASHINGTON’S BLOG:
agencies at war with each other, effectively. Such that NSA is at war with Congress to keep them in the dark about what they’re really doing. ¶ “I have knowledge, you don’t.” Information is power. “If I give it to
you, then I’m giving away my power, and I’m not going to do it!” ¶ Information is a currency. “Why would I give you my money. And I don’t know what you’re going to do with it. I don’t know how you’re going to
spend it. I don’t know how you’re going to invest it. You may convert it, because money is fungible.” ¶ Information is far more fungible even than traditional definitions of money.¶ I’ve never accepted the premise
or the arguments. I’m aware that [9/11 Commissioner] Jamie Gorelick [who has potential conflicts of interest in the subject matter], for example, is a well-known defender who kept saying that the “wall” was
It is true that in
terms of separation between [domestic] law enforcement and normal causal chain of evidence,
and information that was collected for intelligence purposes. But that’s not a wall as much as it’s
due process.¶ Remember, what’s now used is parallel construction. [Background.] So, what was the wall again?¶ Intelligence is always carefully vetted for that reason. But if you’re talking U.S.
domestic law, U.S. judicial process, due process, you couldn’t just take [raw] intelligence. ¶ But here’s the kicker … If you believed that the intelligence rose to
the level someone who has a U.S. person was involved in acts or planning to harm the United States,
then the wall disappears, and there are actual procedures for that.¶ When you’re dealing with U.S.
persons, then you had these procedures in which you could actually present [evidence for the need to target
terrorists or other actual bad guys.] That was the whole thing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.¶ WASHINGTON’S BLOG: If they’re
actual bad guys, then you can go after them.¶ THOMAS DRAKE: Yes! And you had mechanisms where you actually
end up putting them on trial. You have mechanisms where you can introduce that as evidence.¶ It
there when, in fact, there wasn’t a wall.¶ And we had special procedures where you had known ways to go through the wall when it was necessary. ¶ Here’s the hypocrisy …
wasn’t like, “Oh, we can’t tell anybody.” That’s the reason they didn’t want to tell anybody … because they’re actually abusing the system.¶ There isn’t a “wall” … it’s because there’s due process. With foreign
intelligence, we had standing procedures.¶ We’ve tried bad people … in Article III courts. You didn’t have to do the rendition stuff. And you don’t have to be a U.S. citizen to be put on trial.
AT: Intel From Fusion Centers Key to Stop Terrorism
Oversaturation of information makes predicting terrorism linkages impossible
Chad Foster, chief policy analyst,The Council of State Governments and Gary Cordner,
professor, College of Justice & Safety, Eastern Kentucky University 2005 “The Impact of
Terrorism on State Law Enforcement” The Council of State Governments and Eastern Kentucky
University Joint Report
State police have many competing public safety and law enforcement priorities¶ today. As is often the case when new crimes
surface, these agencies are struggling¶ with incorporating new terrorism-related demands into the existing crime-fighting¶
framework. To this end, two views or approaches are embraced—dedicating personnel¶ for terrorism-related duties, or fully
integrating terrorism into other crime¶ prevention duties, the “all crimes” approach.¶ The dedicated-personnel model is partly
predicated on the assumption that terrorists¶ and terrorist-related activities are not closely linked to other more traditional¶
criminal activity such as financial crimes and drug smuggling. The requirements¶ for fighting terrorism are unlike those for dealing
with these other crimes.¶ Advocates of this model also argue for a separate, specialized approach because¶ the risks and stakes
associated with terrorism are extremely high, and this approach¶ prevents “mission creep” into other law enforcement priorities.
This is a valid concern,¶ especially given how agencies today measure performance through quantitative¶ factors such as number of
arrests and prosecutions. Unlike other crimes, three¶ years could pass before one state-level arrest is made related to terrorism.¶ A
preponderance of states and experts believe that a nexus does exist among¶ types of criminal activity, including
illegal drug operations, money laundering,¶ fraud, identity theft and terrorism. It is well known that some of the Sept. 11 terrorists
were cited for traffic violations prior to the attacks while others obtained¶ and used fraudulent driver’s licenses.8 Many experts
believe there to be a high¶ probability to identify terrorists through their involvement in precursor or lower level¶ criminal activity,
as was possible with the Sept. 11 terrorists. Proponents of¶ this model argue that an “all crimes” approach to terrorism prevention
should be¶ embraced by the states.¶ This
strategy ensures that possible precursor crimes are screened
and analyzed¶ for linkages to larger-scale terrorist activities. Furthermore, experts believe that¶ terrorists will
behave like fugitives if pressured by law enforcement from many¶ different levels and angles. Thus, terrorists will become vulnerable
by resorting to¶ criminal activity to support terrorist-related operations. Emergency management¶ professionals use a similar
approach, known as “all hazards,” for emergency¶ response and preparedness.¶ Although
possible, making these
linkages appears to be extremely difficult.¶ First, there is a shortage of research about the
precursor crimes-terrorism nexus.¶ Evidence is needed suggesting how certain types of crimes
are more or less prone¶ to supporting terrorism-related activities. Otherwise, law enforcement
analysts and¶ investigators are likely scanning very broadly for linkages, wasting precious time¶
and resources. More concrete evidence would help law enforcement home in on¶ those crimes that have the greatest chance
for supporting terrorist-related activities.
Terror Threat High
Nuke Terror by September
ISIS nuclear attack in September – smuggling nukes is extremely easy
Austin 6-11-15 (Jon, “Is Chuck Norris right about 'ISIS 'smuggling nuke into US for
9/11 anniversary strike?'”
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/583537/Chuck-Norris-Islamic-State-ISISnuclear-weapons-US-attack-9-11-September-11anniversary?_ga=1.138454139.910419963.1435348842)
But, a conspiracy theory put forward by Hollywood action movie legend that Islamic State (ISIS) wants
to smuggle a
nuclear weapon into America for a world-changing attack on the anniversary of 9/11, could have
some legs. It comes after the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop made similar claims AFTER Norris revealed his thoughts in a
blog. Norris said he believes the reason the
US army is mysteriously amassing in seven southern states is to
prevent ISIS smuggling a dirty bomb into the country and destroying cities. He pointed to how ISIS
sources have already claimed the group has obtained the 40kg of uranium compounds seized from Mosul
University last July. Norris said will $2billion in seized assets they had the buying power to bribe corrupt
officials in Pakistan for the remaining equipment and know how to build a bomb, which could
then be exported to Libya, onto Nigera, South American and into the US. Last night, after
www.expresss.co.uk exclusively revealed the martial arts experts' theory, it emerged Ms Bishop was saying Nato members
are growing increasingly worried about radioactive material seized by the terror group, with
fears that it could be turned into a nuclear weapon. She fears ISIS fighters have stolen or captured the toxic loot
from government-controlled research centres and hospitals across the region. The radioactive matter is thought to have been
destined for use by authorities for health and science research - but it has now fallen into the hands of ISIS radicals. The
most
likely place to get it from is Pakistan, she said. Ms Bishop claimed the jihadi organisation had recruited
"highly technically trained professionals" and was already using chlorine as a weapon. She added that ISIS was
"prepared to use any and all means, any and all forms of violence they can think of, to advance
their demented cause. "That includes use of chemical weapon." A former commander of the British army's
chemical weapons unit has also spoken out in support of the Australian foreign minister and Chuck Norris' comments, calling the
development of a dirty bomb by ISIS a "very real threat". Hamish de Bretton-Gordon also described as "worrying" reports that ISIS
fighters had got hold of chemical weapons previously controlled by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's troops. Middle East expert
Afzal Ashraf told Express.co.uk that the group's long-term plan hinged on obtaining the deadly weapon. He said: "The most likely
place to get it from is Pakistan." There are fears the group's campaign of terror could escalate in the coming month to mark the start
of Ramadan on June 18. ISIS has in the past carried out major operations to coincide with the Islamic holy month. Express.co.uk last
night revealed Norris wanted more action from US President Obama and joked the solution to defeating ISIS is to "send 'em all to
Mars". The US Air-force vet-turned martial arts expert went public with his theory following questions about the
mysterious
Jade Helm15 US military operation in seven southern US states which begins next month and
lasts until the end of September. The 75-year-old, now a Christian evangelist, believes it is a show of strength and a bid
to stop the world's deadliest Jihadist movement smuggling nuclear arms into the states to set it off around the anniversary of 9/11.
We reported this week how conspiracist website Whistleblower800 believed to have cracked what Jade Helm was all about suggesting it was to get troops ready to deal with predicted anarchy in the days before an asteroid that would wipe out the world
was about to hit from September 22 to 28. Other conspiracists have said Jade Helm is about bringing martial law in or seizing guns
from the public. Norris
agrees the world is at risk in September, but does not agree with the asteroid theory, or
any of the other Jade Helm predictions. He instead fears it could be the onset of a global nuclear war. After
serving in the air force, Norris became a martial arts expert, before starring in a slew of kung fu and action movies from 1968
onwards. He starred alongside Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon and the Missing in Action trilogy. More recently, the actor who holds
"conservative political views", had a starring role in the TV series Walker, Texas Ranger from 1993 until 2001. Writing on the WND
Commentary website, he said: "I believe Jade
Helm 15 is more than 'just a training exercise,' and I think ISIS
just gave us the clue. "I do believe, in addition to the largest domestic military training, it is also a
display of power intended for deterrence of enemies like ISIS, whom the FBI has already said
have tentacles in all 50 states. "And guess who just released its intent to smuggle nuclear
weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border? You guessed it. ISIS. "ISIS even has a nuclear plan."
Norris went onto describe a theory, based on international news and website reports and ISIS' own propaganda, which claims how
the terrorist could smuggle a warhead into America. He explained how Nigerian newspaper Premium Times reported that Nigerian
Jihadists Boko
Haram, which has pledged allegiance to ISIS, could carry out the nuclear bomb
import into the US as easy as smugglers use drug routes from east to west. He added the extremists
and "the nuke" could move through south America's porous borders to Mexico - just a short
hop into the states with a "nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car." He added: "This isn’t fiction,
fairytale or conspiracy. I’m talking about the US government not sticking its heads in the sand or at least asking us to stick
ours in it. Washington needs to quit downplaying or minimising the nuclear risk, lest we find
ourselves right back in the unprepared era of pre-9/11. "I don’t think that Jade Helm 15 is a risk to Texas or any
other state. I think ISIS is, as the FBI admitted in February. The sooner we send every last one of its members to Mars, the better off
America and this world will be. Now, there’s a covert action the military should implement. "Now look at the official military map for
Jade Helm 15 and how those military exercises’ locations in five of the seven states are a buttress against the entire length of the
southern border. "Whether or not you believe the intelligence sources of Judicial Watch and WND about ISIS collaborating with
Mexican drug cartels and the existence of ISIS terror camps just eight miles from the Texas border town of El Paso, is it a coincidence
that Jade Helm 15 exercises are just a stone’s throw away from that border crossing?" He asked if it was also a coincidence that Jade
Helm 15 incorporated the largest scale “unconventional warfare” exercises from all military branches. He added: "Is it also a
coincidence that Jade Helm 15 runs from July 15 through Sept 15, just a few days past the key terrorist date of 9/11? "I’m back to
the words of Franklin Roosevelt, who said, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that
way.”
High Probability
High probability of nuclear attack within a year
First Post 6-11-15 (“ISIS may have collected radioactive materials for nuclear
'dirty' bomb, says Australian Foreign Minister,”
http://www.firstpost.com/world/isis-may-have-collected-radioactive-materialsfor-nuclear-dirty-bomb-says-australian-foreign-minister-2291388.html, ME)
The Islamic State is believed to have collected radioactive material from hospitals and research establishments in
cities it has captured in Iraq and Syria which it could use to build a large "dirty" bomb, Australian Foreign
Minister Julie Bishop has warned. ISIS had declared its ambition to develop weapons of mass
destruction in the most recent edition of its propaganda magazine Dabiq, stating that there is an "infinitely" greater
chance of the cash-rich group smuggling its first nuclear weapon from Pakistan to attack the
US within a year. Bishop told The Australian that NATO was deeply concerned about the theft of radioactive material. "The
insurgents did not just clear out the cash from local banks," she was quoted as saying. In a speech in Perth last week, Bishop warned
that the Islamic State may be developing poison-gas weapons. Julie later told the daily that her speech was based on reports from
the Defence Department and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. By capturing territory, Islamic State, which is also known
as Da'ish, had gained access to materials normally held by governments. "That's why stopping Da'ish gaining territory is so
important," she said. The Islamic State terror group is believed to have collected radioactive material from hospitals and research
establishments in cities it has captured in Iraq and Syria, raising fears it could build a large "dirty" bomb, Bishop said. Bishop's
comments came as terrorism
specialists warned that Islamic State could carry out major attacks in
Iraq and Syria during Ramadan, which begins on June 17, and that competition among terror groups
could see al-Qaeda carry out a massive attack to restore its standing. Possible targets of Islamic State
attacks might include Baghdad International Airport or the Taji air base where Australian Army instructors train Iraqi forces, they
said. Bishop said the so-called Australia Group -- a
bloc of about 40 nations, plus the European Community, established
30 years ago to stop the spread and development of chemical, biological and radiological weapons -- was concerned enough
about the threat to dedicate a session to it at a forum in Perth last week. "This is really worrying them,"
Bishop said.
Terrorists Can Get in From Mexico
Terrorists groups from around the globe pushing past the southern borders
Wilson 15’, Read Wilson (Writer for Washington Post), Washington Post, Texas officials warn of immigrants with terrorist ties
crossing southern border, 26 Feb 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/02/26/texas-officials-warn-ofimmigrants-with-terrorist-ties-crossing-southern-border/. PE
A top Texas law enforcement agency says border security organizations have apprehended
several members of known Islamist terrorist organizations crossing the southern border in
recent years, and while a surge of officers to the border has slowed the flow of drugs and
undocumented immigrants, it’s costing the state tens of millions of dollars.¶ In a report to Texas elected
officials, the state Department of Public Safety says border security agencies have arrested several Somali immigrants crossing
the southern border who are known members of al-Shabab, the terrorist group that launched a
deadly attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, and Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, another Somalia-based group
once funded by Osama bin Laden. Another undocumented immigrant arrested crossing the border was on
multiple U.S. terrorism watch lists, the report says.¶ According to the report, one member of al-Shabab,
apprehended in June 2014, told authorities he had been trained for an April 2014 suicide attack
in Mogadishu. He said he escaped and reported the planned attack to African Union troops, who were able to stop the attack. The FBI believed
another undocumented immigrant was an al-Shabab member who helped smuggle several potentially dangerous terrorists into the U.S. ¶ [Drone strike
kills senior al-Shabab official in Somalia]¶ Authorities
also apprehended immigrants who said they were
members of terrorist organizations in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.¶ The Department of Public Safety said the report,
first published by the Houston Chronicle, was not meant for public distribution. ¶ “[T]hat report was inappropriately obtained and [the Chronicle was]
not authorized to possess or post the law enforcement sensitive document,” department press secretary Tom Vinger said in an e-mail.¶ U.S. Customs
and Border Protection did not respond to requests for comment. ¶ The
department said it had come into contact in
recent years with “special interest aliens,” who come from countries with known ties to
terrorists or where terrorist groups thrive. Those arrested include Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis,
Syrians, Libyans and Pakistanis. In all, immigrants from 35 countries in Asia and the Middle East
have been arrested over the past few years in the Rio Grande Valley.¶ The department says there is no known
intelligence that specifically links undocumented immigrants to terrorism plots, but the authors warn it’s almost certain that
foreign terrorist organizations know of the porous border between the U.S. and Mexico.¶ “It is
important to note that an unsecure border is a vulnerability that can be exploited by criminals of
all kinds,” Vinger said. “And it would be naive to rule out the possibility that any criminal
organizations around the world, including terrorists, would not look for opportunities to take
advantage of security gaps along our country’s international border.”¶ Even without the threat of foreign
terrorists making their way across the border, Texas law enforcement officials say seven of the eight major
Mexican drug cartels operate throughout Texas.¶ Those cartels have sent assassins as far north as the Dallas-Fort Worth
area to commit murders, and the drug trade is thriving. The cartels are also branching into sex trafficking, which can
present a lower risk and yield a higher profit than the drug trade, the report says. Law enforcement
officials have uncovered major trafficking rings operating in Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and several east coast cities.¶
Almost all human smuggling rings have ties to the Mexican drug cartels, the report found, and in many cases undocumented immigrants are kept
locked in small, confined spaces where they go days without food or water. Law enforcement officials found one “stash house” in the Houston area
crammed with 115 illegal immigrants.¶ The report says the Gulf, Zeta, Juarez and Sinaloa cartels have the most prominent footprints in Texas.
Officials
are also worried about the growing influence of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that
originated in Los Angeles.¶ The cartels have been “effective in corrupting U.S. law enforcement
officials at all levels,” the DPS report says.¶ But the surge of Texas DPS officers, National Guard troops and other law enforcement officials,
ordered by then-Gov. Rick Perry (R) last June, has worked to stem last year’s flood of undocumented immigrants crossing into the Rio Grande Valley.¶
[Gov. Perry to send National Guard troops to Mexican border amid migrant crisis ]¶
Border officials apprehended 313,000
immigrants in FY 2014, nearly three times the number caught in FY 2011. In recent months, that number has
diminished significantly. The report said the number of arrests per week had fallen from a high of about 6,000 to around 2,000.¶ The surge has also led
to the seizure of more than $1.8 billion worth of cartel drugs, or about 150 tons of marijuana, 588 pounds of cocaine and 320 pounds of
methamphetamines. Cartels have shifted marijuana trafficking west, from McAllen to the small towns of Escobares and Roma.¶ The cartels are sending
scouts to watch U.S. border patrol officers, and they believe the Texas border surge will end soon, once the money runs out, according to intelligence
collected by the Department of Public Safety. ¶ It is not without costs. DPS
said the state and National Guard have spent
more than $102 million deploying troops and officers and bolstering surveillance capabilities. The
state has already installed 1,224 surveillance cameras along the border, and another 4,000 cameras will be installed in the coming months. ¶ Fully
securing the border would require the constant presence of an incredible number of troops — as many as 76,000, the report found. This summer, the
surge sent about 1,000 National Guard soldiers to the border.
ISIS Can Get WMD Through Mexico
ISIS claims ability to smuggle nukes over the southern border
Blake 2015, Eben Blake (intern covering general affairs at IBTimes in New York City. He is currently pursuing a degree in
English and History at Brown University and previously worked at The Brown Daily Herald as the Arts and Culture Editor), Islamic
State Nuclear Weapons: ISIS Claims It Can Smuggle Devices Through Nigeria, Mexico To The United States, 3 June 2015, International
Business Times, http://www.ibtimes.com/islamic-state-nuclear-weapons-isis-claims-it-can-smuggle-devices-through-nigeria1950280. PE
The Islamic State group claims it could purchase a nuclear device from Pakistan and transport it
to the United States through drug-smuggling channels. The group, also known as ISIS and ISIL, would
transfer the nuclear weapon from Pakistan to Nigeria or Mexico, where it could be brought to
South America and then up to the U.S., according to an op-ed allegedly written by kidnapped
British photojournalist John Cantlie and published in Dabiq, the group's propaganda magazine.¶ The op-ed said
that Boko Haram, the Nigerian jihadist group that announced its formal allegiance to ISIS in
March, would make their efforts to transport a weapon to the U.S. much easier, reported Nigerian
newspaper Premium Times. ISIS claims the Nigerian army is in a "virtual state of collapse" because of its war against Boko Haram. ¶
While U.S. officials have dismissed the ability of the group to acquire or transport a nuclear
weapon, Indian Minister of State Defense Rao Inderjit Singh said at the Shangri-La regional
security conference in Singapore last weekend that "[w]ith the rise of ISIL in West Asia, one is afraid to an
extent that perhaps they might get access to a nuclear arsenal from states like Pakistan," Bloomberg
reported. ¶ Cantlie describes how ISIL would hypothetically call on supporters in Pakistan to "purchase a
nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region," after which
it would be "transported overland until it makes it to Libya" when "the mujahedeen move it
south to Nigeria." It would then be moved to South America in the same method that "drug
shipments bound for Europe pass through West Africa," according to Premium Times. After transporting the
device through the "porous borders of South America" to Mexico, it would be "just a quick hop through a smuggling
tunnel" to bring the nuclear bomb into America. ¶ Since his abduction in 2012, Cantlie has appeared in multiple
ISIS propaganda videos, including the series "Lend Me Your Ears."
Terrorists Can Get in from Shipping Containers
Cargo ships go virtually unchecked – easy for terroristic exploitation
Schoen 2004, John W. Schoen (reported and written about economics, business and financial news for more than 30 years),
NBC News, Ships and ports are terrorism’s new frontier, 21 June 2004, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5069435/ns/businessworld_business/t/ships-ports-are-terrorisms-new-frontier/#.VYyogHmd5g1. PE
One of the thorniest security problems involves determining just what’s inside each of the 40foot steel containers that arrive every day on cargo ships carrying as many as 4,000 containers
each.¶ Air travelers at security checkpoints have become accustomed to delays as passengers spend a few moments unpacking
laptops, removing shoes and retying them. But a comparable physical inspection of the millions of tons of
cargo that enter U.S. ports every day is simply not practical: security experts say it takes five agents roughly
three hours to fully inspect the contents of just one of those containers.¶ Can you spot the threats? The result is that only 2
percent of containerized cargo entering the country are physically inspected. And while
advanced technology scanners have helped speed those inspections, just tracking the 200
million containers that move among the world’s top seaports each year is a major undertaking.
Flynn cited one major shipper with over 300,000 containers in its inventory.¶ “It doesn’t know where 40 percent
of them are at any given time,” he said. “It takes one of their customers saying, ‘Hey I’ve got one of your boxes if you
want it back.'Ӧ Those boxes are a potentially potent weapon for terrorists Рwhether for use
smuggling weapons, explosive materials or terrorists themselves, or as a huge chemical,
biological or "dirty" bomb spreading radioactive waste. At present, though, many ports are illprepared to deal with that threat.¶ The accidental explosion of a container on the dock of the Port of Los Angeles on
April 28 underscored the problem. Gasoline fumes from a pickup truck inside the container were apparently ignited by a spark from
a battery, blowing the locked steel doors open and spilling the contents, which included 900 bottles of LPG butane gas, according to
Michael Mitre, Coast Port Security director at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.¶ “There was virtually no
response,” Mitre told a House panel on maritime security last week. “There was no evacuation. There was no shutdown of work … It
could have been something that was a biological or chemical release; it could be a radioactive release. No one knew. But at the time,
the terminal was absolutely not prepared.Ӧ Mitre said the explosion also highlights a major deficiency in container inspection.
“Export cargo
is not treated the same way as import cargo,” he said. “We have cargo coming in
through the gates that is not having to show what the contents are." As a result, terrorists inside
the U.S. would have a much easier time loading a container on an outbound shipment, he said.¶
Al Qaeda operatives have used commercial sea containers to illegally penetrate
the U.S.
DEBKA ’02 [DEBKAfile is an Israeli military intelligence website based in Jerusalem, providing
commentary and analyses on terrorism, intelligence, national security, military and international
relations, with a particular focus on the Middle East., “Stowaway Terrorists Sneak Into America
By Sea Container”, June 19, 2002]
Between 75 and 125 operatives of the fundamentalist terror network, al Qaeda, are known to
have illegally penetrated the United States in the last two months, mostly through American ports as
stowaways in commercial sea containers. Many more are estimated to have slipped through
unbeknownst to US authorities. This clandestine traffic was first exposed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue No. 39, November
30, 2001. In its latest issue, DEBKA-Net-Weekly, June 14, 2002, tracks this burgeoning menace, which is making the
United States and the world,s shipping industry increasingly susceptible to the threat of terror
attack by invaders from the sea. US port authority sources believe penetrations occurred at New
York, New Jersey, Long Beach, Miami and Savannah, Georgia, as well as Port Everglades, Florida.
Container, oil and bulk ports are especially vulnerable. Some of the stowaways arrive complete
with arms or explosives, the nature of which - conventional, radioactive, chemical or biological the US authorities are at great pains to keep dark. However, shipping sources told us witnesses had seen suspect
containers appearing to be quarantined after their al Qaeda infiltrators were killed, suggesting the suspected presence of toxic
substances. The threat applies equally to the international container traffic that carries much of the world,s lifeblood. Experts have
opined that a "dirty bomb exploding in a container at sea would stop the world,s container traffic cold until a credible security
system for sea-going containers was in place. On May 22, 2002, Fairplay International Shipping Weekly reported: "More details have
emerged about an apparent infiltration of
Islamic extremists through US ports during the past two
months." Some of the men slipped through security disguised as stevedores, according to Bob Graham, chair of the Senate select
committee on intelligence. He said he had seen reports indicating that some extremists might have been wearing safety jackets and
protective helmets to give the appearance of dockworkers. US Coast Guard officials have refused to divulge any information about
the reports, but Graham stressed: "The American people have a right to know." He said 25
extremists "entered in a
foreign country, hid out in a container and then entered the United States." In some of the
stowaway containers, US counter-terror authorities were dismayed to find uniforms of
American dockworkers and even US Coast Guards, along with the appropriate tags and ID for free access to port
facilities, including off-limits sections. Groups of 5 to 7 of these men dressed as port workers have been sighted hurrying over to
waiting vans and driving off at speed.
AT: Foreign Operations Solve Terrorism
Foreign counter-terror strategies are actually propelling violent terrorist attacks
on a global scale
Englund ’15 "The Security Paradox in Counter-terror Strategy | TRENDS." TRENDS. N.p., 12
Apr. 2015. Web. 26 June 2015
Over the past six months, terrorist violence has occurred almost simultaneously in many
regions of the world. The casual observer may be overwhelmed by these threats and demand
that “something be done” to punish those responsible and stop future acts of violence. A counterterror doctrine must simultaneously make people feel more secure and take effective actions to ensure the physical security of potential targets of terrorist violence. Sometimes things done to achieve the former
can make the latter more difficult. While “doing something” in response to violence is required, success depends on a nuanced, focused strategy that both punishes perpetrators of violence and addresses political
and economic stability in regions affected with terrorist violence. This article will explore this paradox by first examining the nature of the “just do something” response. It will then consider stability as an element
¶ The use of force to punish the perpetrators of violence is necessary, but will
always result in some collateral damage. The coalition of Arab states confronting violent
groups across the region will need to be ready to counter the inevitable propaganda used
against them by terror groups to try to discredit coalition governments. Secondly, while difficult and requiring patience
of counter-terror policy.
and a long-term commitment, a comprehensive counter-terror strategy must also address potential economic and political “root causes” of terrorist violence.¶ “Do something to stop this now”¶ A short recital of
recent events is shocking: Somalia-based al-Shabab kills 148 students at Garrissa University in Kenya. Boko Haram gunmen, dressed as preachers, kill two dozen in Nigeria. In Yemen, Houthi rebels storm the
presidential palace, and terrorists belonging to al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula free hundreds of their former colleagues from prisons there. The so-called “Islamic State” fights for control of Anbar and Salladin
provinces in Iraq. Armed groups attack resorts and military checkpoints on the Sinai Peninsula. The Taliban in Pakistan killed over 240 children in December. This surge of terror becomes even more sinister when
violence spreads to Europe and North America, as was recently realized in Paris, London, Ottawa, and as far away as Sydney, Australia. Such a litany of violence against innocents demands justice, most often called
for in its retributive form; the perpetrators of violence, their enablers and those who inspire violence need to be punished. However, a hasty, kinetic response can be counter-productive for two reasons: quick
reactions risk misperceiving the origins of the violence and result in inappropriate target selections; second, since collateral damage is almost always associated with the application of force, even the most
.¶ Democratic societies are especially susceptible
to this rational reaction to terrorist violence. Governments of these societies, under pressure
from their people, do highly visible, literally explosive things in response. Witness the recent
violence in Kenya and the response to that violence. In the early morning hours of April 2, at least four armed men entered the campus of Garissa
University College, initially took hostages, then began to murder students—reportedly focusing their violence against professed Christians—ultimately killing 148. In response Kenyan
President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed that his country would respond to the violence “in the
severest way possible.” On April 6th, Kenyan Air Force planes bombed sites in Somalia
described as al-Shabab training camps. A Kenyan military spokesman reported that, “the
bombings are part of the continued process and engagement against al-Shabab, which will go
on. This is part of continuing operations, not just in response to Garissa.” Eyewitnesses told
BBC reporters that the attacks killed at least three civilians and destroyed livestock and wells
in an area without al-Shabab presence.[1]¶ Unfortunately, this is not Kenya’s first experience with mass-casualty terrorist violence. On September 21, 2013,
al-Shabab gunmen attacked a shopping mall in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, killing sixty-seven
and wounding scores more. This attack by al-Shabab was immediately linked to Kenya’s
participation in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and by extension AMISOM’s
close relationship with the Untied States. Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications, admitted, “the fact of the matter is,
carefully planned attack can provide terror groups with ammunition for their own propaganda efforts
we’ve actually had a very aggressive effort to go after al-Shabab in Somalia, and, frankly, I think it was that pressure on al-Shabab that, in terms of their own professed motivation, led them to pursue an attack
against Kenya.”[2] Translating as “the youth,” al-Shabab was born as a youth arm of the Union of Islamic Courts that once dominated in the political vacuum of Somalia. The AMISOM mission itself was a response
to al-Shabab successes in its insurgency against Ethiopian forces that invaded Somalia in 2006 and then withdrew in 2007. By 2011, African Union forces swept al-Shabab from the Somali capital, Mogadishu.[3]¶
“an operation that was intended to
crush Islamic extremists, stabilize Somalia, and install more tractable leadership—but
accomplished the exact opposite.”[4] The implication is that the heavy-handed intervention in Somalia, in which thousands of civilians were killed or displaced, encouraged
The rise of al-Shabab in Somalia has been directly linked to the United States- backed 2006 invasion by Ethiopia, described as
a radical response. The intervention and subsequent withdrawal created the vacuum which al-Shabab filled. Since the Ethiopians unilaterally declared victory over the Islamic Courts and began to withdraw from
The conclusion of this line of analysis is
that as states like Ethopia, Uganda, and Kenya join the United States in its war on terrorism,
more lives are disrupted by enforcement actions and the greater the opportunity for radical
groups like al-Shabab to gain traction. In other words, the way in which terrorism is fought can
itself give rise to terrorism.¶ We know that the way in which we fight is connected to people’s perception of the fight. There have been several
recent studies that demonstrate statistically that, for example, the United States’ use of
remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs, or “drones”) has both increased negative perceptions of the
United States in the areas most affected by drone activity and changed the way terror groups
advertise their positions and try to gather support.[6] The utility of negative perceptions to
propaganda efforts can be considered separately from the actual effectiveness of attacks by
countries fighting a war on terrorism. In terms of effectiveness, the evidence is mixed: senior
terror group leaders who are killed are quickly replaced, but those who replace them may be
Somalia in 2007, “intense fighting, piracy, and war-enabled famines grind on, meanwhile, in a more radicalized Somalia.”[5]
less capable and experienced. Also, people who are continually in fear of being killed are less effective because they are then more cautious in how and how often they
move.¶ This is the crux of the paradox. Actions that address security threats, and strategies that can make people feel more secure, can also encourage new, different threats. The same paradox occurs in urban
But, I also know that
the men who set up those crude rockets that just sailed my direction are long gone and the
only casualties of my return fire will be innocent bystanders near the improvised launch rails
that now sit empty. The only sensible thing to do is to not return fire—the tragedy of killing
innocent civilians will be joined by damaged credibility, will invite retaliation, and may feed
enemy propaganda. Similarly, in counter-insurgency operations, actions that reduce your security in the short-term can gain trust and cooperation in the long-term. Dismounted patrols
combat. I receive rocket fire from a densely populated neighborhood. I can pinpoint the origin of the fire and I can automatically return fire on that point of origin.
(out of armored vehicles, interacting with locals) have been proven to be important in counter-insurgency operations. These options—not returning fire if fired upon, lowering your guard, reducing security in the
short term—seem counter-intuitive and are frustrating positions to be in, but these can be effective security strategies in the long-term. Clearly the application of force is necessary to remove some threats, but
force cannot be the dominant strategy.¶ As more Arab states take action against targets on the Arabian Peninsula, in Libya, and in Iraq and Syria, these Arab coalition allies will be increasingly described as dupes
and lackeys of the West or worse, as “apostate” regimes, lacking all legitimacy. The core function of military force is to kill and destroy; collateral damage is inevitable. Arab states taking action against terror
groups must steel themselves against the inevitable use of this collateral damage against them, engaging strategic communication to present effective, convincing counter-messages.
Current US counter-terror strategies are filled with a plethora of mistakes and
paradoxes
Englund ’15 "The Security Paradox in Counter-terror Strategy | TRENDS." TRENDS. N.p., 12
Apr. 2015. Web. 26 June 2015.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf was pilloried in U.S. media outlets for her
comment during an interview that the threat posed by Daesh (ISIS, ISIL, the “Islamic State”)
cannot be undone by killing fighters alone, that “we need to go after the root causes that
leads people to join these groups.” During the interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews in which Harf was interrupted multiple times, she essentially suggested that a
more effective counter-terror strategy would include addressing the “governance” of regions most affected by terrorist violence. Her comments were met with
derision and, taken out of context, they might seem naïve. Clearly a “jobs program” in Iraq
and Syria is not going to draw Daesh militants away from their jihad to lead peaceful and
productive lives. However, the essence of her message (even if delivered in a less-than-elegant way)[7] is on point and
deserves more careful consideration. The economic and political realities of the greater Middle-East and South Asia must be accounted for in any effective counterterror strategy.¶ How practical is Harf’s “root causes” suggestion? Can such “root causes” be discovered and addressed? The decision to support or join extremely violent groups to express your political will is a
highly complex one. If experts agree on one thing, it is that the factors contributing to this decision or “radicalization” are varied. Studying the decision is fraught with problems. However, a consensus has
developed around a cluster of “root causes” that can either create permissive environments for terrorist violence, or directly contribute to the radicalization of a segment of a population. These are, generally: high
unemployment, economic inequality and social exclusion among heterogeneous groups; rapid population growth (with a “bulge” of young people) accompanied by rapid urbanization; and a clash of values.[8] No
single factor can be identified as “causing” terrorism and the mix of contributing factors can vary in different contexts. However, sufficient evidence exists to recommend studying “root causes” in conjunction with
other contributing factors such as political stability. Political stability and the ability of a government to actually govern and resolve political crises are cited as belonging to its own category of attending causes.[9]¶
Thinking about “root causes” is therefore helpful in considering long-term counter-terror strategies. As is often said: “easier said than done.” Even if Harf’s “jobs” comment was in fact sensible in the long-term,
effecting such a strategy is highly complicated, involving the difficult task of identifying specific contributing or “permissive” factors, and then actually doing something to address those factors. Struggling
economies with governments whose legitimacy is sometimes challenged present a combination of factors that require attention when creating a comprehensive, coherent, and effective counter-terror strategy.¶
Conclusion¶ Effective counter-terrorism requires making people more secure from terrorist violence while also making them feel more secure. These two distinct, but clearly related, goals can sometimes put a
launching a convincing counter-attack to punish the
perpetrators and their sponsors—can lead to the rise of other threats. Equally frustrating,
sometimes reducing security in the short-term can contribute to greater security in the longterm. Finally, long-range strategies that try to sort out “root causes” of terrorism are complex
and don’t contribute to immediate security advantages, but are necessarily part of a
comprehensive strategy.¶ Clearly a civilized society cannot countenance violent barbarism,
genocide and the destruction of whole cultures, ancient or modern. The perpetrators of
violence must be punished. But states that apply force must be ready to attend to the
inevitable effects of collateral damage through effective strategic communication. They must
be willing to win the political loyalty of their people. At the same time, a comprehensive
counter-terror strategy must also include addressing the “root-causes” of terrorist violence—a
difficult task requiring patience and a long-term commitment.
government in a bind. Sometimes the things that make people feel more secure—
Terrorists can get WMDs
Nuke Threat High
Available nuclear material and terrorist motivation make nuclear terror attack
inevitable
Jaspal– Associate Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations, Quaid-i-Azam
University, Islamabad, Pakistan 12 (Zafar Nawaz, “Nuclear/Radiological Terrorism: Myth or Reality?”, Journal of
Political Studies, Vol. 19, Issue - 1, 2012, 91:111)
The misperception, miscalculation
and above all ignorance of the ruling elite about security puzzles are
perilous for the national security of a state. Indeed, in an age of transnational terrorism and
unprecedented dissemination of dualuse nuclear technology, ignoring nuclear terrorism threat
is an imprudent policy choice. The incapability of terrorist organizations to engineer fissile material does
not eliminate completely the possibility of nuclear terrorism. At the same time, the absence of an
example or precedent of a nuclear/ radiological terrorism does not qualify the assertion that the
nuclear/radiological terrorism ought to be remained a myth. Farsighted rationality obligates that
one should not miscalculate transnational terrorist groups — whose behavior suggests that
they have a death wish — of acquiring nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological material producing
capabilities. In addition, one could be sensible about the published information that huge amount of nuclear
material is spread around the globe. According to estimate it is enough to build more than 120,000
Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs (Fissile Material Working Group, 2010, April 1). The alarming fact is that a few
storage sites of nuclear/radiological materials are inadequately secured and continue to be accumulated
in unstable regions (Sambaiew, 2010, February). Attempts at stealing fissile material had already been discovered (Din &
Zhiwei, 2003: 18). Numerous evidences confirm that terrorist groups had aspired to acquire fissile
material for their terrorist acts. Late Osama bin Laden, the founder of al Qaeda stated that acquiring
nuclear weapons was a“religious duty” (Yusufzai, 1999, January 11). The IAEA also reported that “al-Qaeda was
actively seeking an atomic bomb.” Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl, a dissenter of Al Qaeda, in his trial testimony had “revealed his extensive
but unsuccessful efforts to acquire enriched uranium for al-Qaeda” (Allison, 2010, January: 11). On November 9, 2001, Osama bin
Laden claimed that “we have chemical and nuclear weapons as a deterrent and if America used them against us we reserve the right
to use them (Mir, 2001, November 10).” On May 28, 2010, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a Pakistani nuclear scientist confessed that
he met Osama bin Laden. He claimed that “I met Osama bin Laden before 9/11 not to give him nuclear know-how, but to seek funds
for establishing a technical college in Kabul (Syed, 2010, May 29).” He was arrested in 2003 and after extensive interrogation by
American and Pakistani intelligence agencies he was released (Syed, 2010, May 29). Agreed, Mr. Mahmood did not share nuclear
know-how with Al
Qaeda, but his meeting with Osama establishes the fact that the terrorist organization was in contact
with nuclear scientists. Second, the terrorist group has sympathizers in the nuclear scientific
bureaucracies. It also authenticates bin Laden’s Deputy Ayman Zawahiri’s claim which he made in December 2001: “If you have
$30 million, go to the black market in the central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist and a lot of dozens of smart briefcase
bombs are available (Allison, 2010, January: 2).” The
covert meetings between nuclear scientists and al Qaeda
members could not be interpreted as idle threats and thereby the threat of nuclear/radiological terrorism is real.
The 33Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted in 2008 that “what keeps every senior government leader awake at night is the
thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear (Mueller, 2011, August 2).” Indeed, the
nuclear deterrence strategy cannot deter the transnational terrorist syndicate from
nuclear/radiological terrorist attacks. Daniel Whiteneck pointed out: “Evidence suggests, for example, that al
Qaeda might not only use WMD simply to demonstrate the magnitude of its capability but that
it might actually welcome the escalation of a strong U.S. response, especially if it included
catalytic effects on governments and societies in the Muslim world. An adversary that prefers
escalation regardless of the consequences cannot be deterred” (Whiteneck, 2005, Summer: 187) Since
taking office, President Obama has been reiterating that “nuclear weapons represent the ‘gravest threat’ to United States and
international security.” While realizing that the US could not prevent nuclear/radiological terrorist attacks singlehandedly, he
launched 47an international campaign to convince the international community about the increasing threat of nuclear/ radiological
terrorism. He stated on April 5, 2009: “Black
market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound.
are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts
to contain these dangers are centered on a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people
and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold (Remarks by
President Barack Obama, 2009, April 5).” He added: “One terrorist with one nuclear weapon could unleash
massive destruction. Al Qaeda has said it seeks a bomb and that it would have no problem with using it. And we know that
The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists
there is unsecured nuclear material across the globe” (Remarks by President Barack Obama, 2009, April 5). In July 2009, at the G-8
Summit, President Obama announced the convening of a Nuclear Security Summit in 2010 to deliberate on the mechanism to
“secure nuclear materials, combat nuclear smuggling, and prevent nuclear terrorism” (Luongo, 2009, November 10). President
Obama’s nuclear/radiological threat perceptions were also accentuated by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution
1887 (2009). The UNSC expressed its grave concern regarding ‘the threat of nuclear terrorism.” It also recognized the need for all
States “to take effective measures to prevent nuclear material or technical assistance becoming available to terrorists.” The UNSC
Resolution called “for universal adherence to the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials and its 2005 Amendment,
and the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.” (UNSC Resolution, 2009) The United States Nuclear Posture
Review (NPR) document revealed on April 6, 2010 declared that “terrorism
and proliferation are far greater
threats to the United States and international stability.” (Security of Defence, 2010, April 6: i). The United
States declared that it reserved the right to“hold fully accountable” any state or group “that
supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction, whether by
facilitating, financing, or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts (Nuclear Posture Review Report, 2010, April: 12)”. This
declaration underscores the possibility that terrorist
states
groups could acquire fissile material from the rogue
Yes Nukes – Pakistan Will Sell
Pakistani military infiltrated by Al-Qaeda
Panda ’14 [Sept 18, 2014, Ankit Panda foreign affairs analyst, writer, and editor with expertise
in international relations, political economy, international security, and crisis diplomacy, editor
at The Diplomat, previously Research Specialist at Princeton University on international crisis
diplomacy, international security, technology policy, and geopolitics, “Al Qaeda's Worrying
Ability to Infiltrate the Pakistani Military”, The Diplomat, http://thediplomat.com/2014/09/alqaedas-worrying-ability-to-infiltrate-the-pakistani-military/]
On Saturday night, this past weekend, Al
Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) staged its first major attack within
siege to a Pakistani naval dockyard in a brazen attempt to seize the frigate, PNS Zulfiqar. While
the details of the attack have been widely reported, what is most concerning is the manner in which the attack
was carried out. AQIS managed to recruit Pakistani naval officers, allowing its agents to
infiltrate the dockyard. The group boasted about its ability to recruit inside the Pakistani
military in a statement released on September 11, three days ahead of the attack. Usama Mahmood, AQIS’s spokesperson, issued
the region, laying
a separate statement in Urdu following the attack in which he declares: “The Naval officers who were martyred on Saturday in the
attack in Karachi were al-Qaeda members. They were trying to attack American marines and their cronies.” The statement confirms
that AQIS has not abandoned Al Qaeda’s core strategy of attacking the Western governments that the group perceives as supporting
unjust and corrupt regimes in the Middle East (contrast this with ISIS,which concentrates its fight on the “close” enemy instead of
the “far” enemy). The statement after the attack detailed the attack (at least from AQIS’s perspective): “[The attackers] had taken
over control of the ship and were proceeding to attack the American carrier when they were intercepted by the Pakistan military …
These men thus became martyrs. The Pakistani military men who died defending enemies of the Muslim nation, on the other hand,
are cursed with hell.” The Pakistan Navy noted that four attackers were arrested, and Pakistani news outlets reported that among
the arrested were two naval officers. In what is very likely a first for Pakistan’s defense ministry, the defense
minister
acknowledged that insiders were culpable in enabling this attack: ”Without assistance from
inside, these people could not have breached security,” Defense Minister Khawaja Asif noted in parliament.
This attack is concerning for several reasons. First, and most obviously, it is further evidence of a long-time
concern shared by U.S. and Indian officials alike that Pakistan’s military apparatus is not immune to infiltration
by Al Qaeda and related groups. The attack will shake the United States’ (admittedly already shaky) faith in
Rawalpindi’s ability to keep its house in order. According to an anonymous Western counterterrorism official cited by the Wall Street
Journal, ”If we are to work with the Pakistan Navy, we have to be able to trust them. This attack raises a lot of questions.” This helps
explain why Al Qaeda hasn’t shied away from taking responsibility for and publicizing such a profound failure of an attack. Even
if
the attack failed, it puts the Pakistan military in a difficult place (admittedly, the Pakistani military does a
good job of doing this on its own most of the time). Interestingly, the attack took place on the same day that PNS
Zulfiqar was slated to set sail for the Indian Ocean to join an international flotilla. This suggests that
Al Qaeda’s infiltration went beyond having a naval officer unlock the gate for its operatives ahead of
an attack — the group was clearly being fed information about Pakistani military operations. ”It
appears the officers on board were to be joined by other militants who were to arrive by boat from the sea and
then stow away on board,” noted one Pakistani security official, adding that “the plan was to get close to the U.S. ships on the high
seas, and then turn the shipboard weapon systems on the Americans.” Had the attack succeeded, U.S. navy ships in the Arabian Sea
faced the prospect of a serious naval engagement — the Zulfiqar is equipped with antiship missiles with a 300 kilometer range.
Pakistan seems to have no clear plan for combing its military — particularly its navy — for Al Qaeda
sympathizers and operatives. Back in 2011, we saw that the navy was already infiltrated by officers
sympathizing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The attack on the PNS Mehran naval air base took place after failed
talks between the Pakistan navy and Al Qaeda over officers who had been arrested over suspected links to the group. As one report
back then noted, the “deeper underlying motive” for that attack was a “massive internal crackdowns on al-Qaeda affiliates within
the navy.” In the aftermath of the PNS Mehran attack, it became clear that Pakistani naval intelligence had some competence in
tracing Al Qaeda sympathizers within its own ranks. While its methods may not have been fool-proof, it was apparently successful to
the degree that it arrested Al Qaeda operatives within the navy, prompting the sequence of events that led to the 15-hour siege on
the PNS Mehran base. As the Asia Times Online notes, citing one senior navy official, Pakistan’s naval intelligence was spurred into
action by the potential negative impact that this infiltration could have on the Pakistani military’s important relationship with the
United States. Back then, when
Pakistani naval intelligence detained officers suspected of having links to
Al Qaeda, it noted that it immediately received threats from Al Qaeda cells. When it moved the
detainees to a different site, it continued receiving threats that indicated Al Qaeda knew almost
instantly where its infiltrators were being kept. “It was clear the militants were receiving good
inside information as they always knew where the suspects were being detained, indicating sizeable al-Qaeda
infiltration within the navy’s ranks,” the Asia Times Online noted. In the three years since the PNS Mehran incident
and the Pakistan navy’s failed attempts to mediate with Al Qaeda, it seems little has changed. Finally, this weekend’s attack
helps to shed some light on the role of Al Qaeda’s new wing in the Indian subcontinent. While Ayman al-Zawahiri may have declared
India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar its battlefield, logistical factors make it highly likely that Pakistan will continue to be Al Qaeda’s
primary area of focus in South Asia. While Al Qaeda’s continued operation in Pakistan was all but a certainty before this attack, what
remains uncertain is the degree to which the group has successfully infiltrated the Pakistani military.
ISIS will either build or buy nuclear weapons
Friedman and Edelman 6-11-15 (Dan and Adam, “ISIS has enough radioactive
material to make dirty bomb: report,” Daily News,
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/isis-nuclear-material-dirty-bombreport-article-1.2253492)
The montrous fiends with the
Islamic State hope to add another horrific weapon to their arsenal of
terror — a “dirty” bomb. The bloodthirsty jihadist group looted radioactive chemicals from
government labs as they rampaged across Iraq and Syria and hope to assemble explosive devices with
them, a British newspaper reported, citing Australian intelligence officials and ISIS propaganda. The
militants bragged in Dabiq, their perverted publicity magazine, that they could soon have the capability to
build or purchase nuclear weapons. A more immediate threat could be “dirty” bombs — devices that use conventional
explosives to spread radioactive or other hazardous materials. According to The Independent, Australian intelligence officials were
so concerned about the group’s intentions, they called for a meeting of the “Australia Group,” an international forum for stopping
the proliferation of chemical weapons. ISIS
“is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the
technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons,”
Julie Bishop, Australia’s minister of foreign affairs, said at the meeting, the newspaper reported, citing intelligence reports. The
renewed concerns over a potential radioactive weapon in the hands of ISIS come a year after Iraqi
officials warned the UN the group had obtained materials that could “be used in manufacturing
weapons of mass destruction."
High ranking officials agree – ISIS has the materials and motive
Batchelor 6-11-15 (Tom, “ISIS fighters plot nuclear war after they obtain
radioactive material to build dirty bomb,” Express,
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/583563/Islamic-State-radioactivematerial-nuclear-weapon)
FANATICAL jihadi group Islamic State (ISIS) has
obtained enough nuclear material to make a DIRTY BOMB, a
to the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, Nato members
are growing increasingly worried about radioactive material seized by the terror group, with
fears that it could be turned into a nuclear weapon. It is thought that ISIS fighters have stolen or
captured the toxic loot from government-controlled research centres and hospitals across the
region. The radioactive matter is thought to have been destined for use by authorities for health and science research - but it has
high ranking official has said. According
now fallen into the hands of ISIS
radicals. Ms Bishop claimed the jihadi organisation had recruited "highly technically
trained professionals" and was already using chlorine as a weapon. She added that ISIS was "prepared to use any
and all means, any and all forms of violence they can think of, to advance their demented cause.
"That includes use of chemical weapon." A former commander of the British army's chemical
weapons unit has spoken out in support of the Australian foreign minister's comments, calling the development
of a dirty bomb by ISIS a "very real threat". Hamish de Bretton-Gordon also described as "worrying" reports that ISIS
fighters had got hold of chemical weapons previously controlled by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's troops. Middle East expert
Afzal Ashraf told Express.co.uk that the
group's long-term plan hinged on obtaining the deadly weapon. He
said: "The most likely place to get it from is Pakistan." There are fears the group's campaign of
terror could escalate in the coming month to mark the start of Ramadan on June 18. ISIS has in the past
carried out major operations to coincide with the Islamic holy month.
Yes Nukes – Pakistan Will Sell
Al-Quaeda as well as the Taliban and other terrorist groups in Pakistan have the
capability to possess nuclear weapons
Mulvey ’10 [Stephen, Assistant Editor of BBC News, “Could Terrorists Get a Hold of a Nuclear
Bomb”, April 12, 2010]
In Rolf Mowatt-Larssen's view, there is "a
greater possibility of a nuclear meltdown in Pakistan than
anywhere else in the world". The region has more violent extremists than any other, the country
is unstable, and its arsenal of nuclear weapons is expanding. Once a new plutonium reactor comes on line in
the near future "smaller, more lethal plutonium bombs will be produced in greater numbers", he says.
The possibility of a Taliban takeover is, he admits, a "worst-case scenario". But the
Taliban and al-Qaeda are not the
only shadows on the Pakistani landscape. There is also the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which is
accused of carrying out the Mumbai attack in November 2008, and like the Pakistani officer corps, recruits mostly in the Punjab. "As
one senior Pakistani general once told me," wrote Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution last week, "the relationship between the
army and the Lashkar-e-Taiba is a family affair". He went on: "Pakistan has taken serious measures to protect the crown jewels of its
national security, but it lives in a perilous time. If there is a nightmare nuclear security scenario in Pakistan today it is probably an
inside-the-family-job that ends up in a nuclear armageddon in India." The point is echoed by Ian Kearns of the British American
Security Information Council (Basic), who writes of the danger that states
could use terrorist groups to attack
adversaries "by proxy", engineering nuclear security breakdowns to facilitate terrorist access to
weapons or materials. BBC correspondents say there is every indication that the Pakistani military is in total control of the
country's nuclear facilities. Though henow works in academia, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen led US efforts to determine whether alQaeda possessed a nuclear bomb, in the wake of 9/11.
He doesn't believe it does. But "the group's long-held
intent and persistent efforts to acquire nuclear and
biological weapons represent a unique means of potentially fulfilling their wildest hopes and
aspirations," he writes. Al-Qaeda's experience on the nuclear black market has taught its planners
that its best chance lies in constructing an "improvised nuclear device (IND)," he says. For this they
would need either a quantity of plutonium or 25kg-50kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU), the size of one or two grapefruits. HEU is
held in hundreds of buildings in dozens of countries. "Security measures for many of these stocks are excellent, but security for
The IAEA registered 15
confirmed cases of unauthorised possession of plutonium or HEU between 1993 and 2008, a
few of which involved kilogram-sized quantities. In most cases the quantity was far lower but in some cases the
sellers indicated there was more. (If there was, it hasn't been traced.) There is no global inventory of either
material, so no-one can be sure how much has gone missing over the years. Neither are there
agreed international standards for security and accounting of these materials. UN Security Council
others is appalling," according to a report published in 2008 by the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Resolution 1540 merely calls for "appropriate and effective" measures, without defining this in detail. "It is a stark and worrying fact,
therefore, that nuclear
materials and weapons around the world are not as secure as they should
be," writes Ian Kearns, in his Basic report.
AT: Terrorists Don’t Want WMDs
Terrorists have expressed their intent to obtain WMDs and there is a high
likelihood of WMD terrorist attack
Vahid Majidi, Assistant Director, Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, Federal Bureau of
Investigation October 18, 2011 Statement Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs, Washington, D.C. https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/ten-yearsafter-9-11-and-the-anthrax-attacks-protecting-against-biological-threats
WMD terrorism and proliferation are evolving threats to U.S. national security. In his 2010 testimony
before the Senate and the House of Representatives, the director of national intelligence stated that dozens of identified
domestic and international terrorists and terrorist groups have expressed their intent to obtain
and use WMD in future acts of terrorism. The frequency of high-profile acts of terrorism has increased over the past
decade. Indicators of this increasing threat include the 9/11 attacks, the 2001 Amerithrax letters, the possession of WMD-related
materials by Aafia Siddiqui when she was captured in 2008, and multiple attempts by terrorists at home and abroad to use
explosives improvised from basic chemical precursors. The challenge presented by these threats is compounded by the large volume
of hoax threats that distract and divert law enforcement agencies from addressing real threats. In its 2008 report World at Risk, the
Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism stated there
is a high likelihood of some type of
WMD terrorist attack by the year 2013. The U.S. Intelligence Community determined that the most probable WMD scenarios
involve the use of toxic industrial chemicals, biological toxins/poisons, or radioisotopes fabricated into an improvised dispersal
device. The
use of chemical warfare agents, biological warfare agents, and improvised nuclear
devices are other possible—though less likely—scenarios due to the difficulties in obtaining the necessary materials,
technologies, and expertise. In addition to efforts by terrorists to use WMD, multiple countries seek to expand their WMD
capabilities. For some of these countries, U.S. technologies represent the key to moving their WMD programs forward. The U.S.
faces constant attempts by foreign nations to obtain technology, knowledge, and materials for the development and production of
chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. As new technologies emerge and mature and as scientific expertise and technological
equipment become more readily available, the challenge of safeguarding these from those that would use them for nefarious
purposes is increasing exponentially. Accordingly, the U.S. government must regularly reassess its counterproliferation methods to
meet the ever-changing challenge.
AT: Terrorists Don’t Want the WMDs
Terrorists have expressed interest and have to ability to possess nuclear
weapons
Brill and Luongo ’12 [Kenneth C. and Kenneth N. respectively, Ambassador Kenneth C. Brill
was president of The Fund for Peace from 2010 to 2011. Prior to that, he had a 35-year career in
the U.S. Foreign Service. In his final Foreign Service assignment, he was the founding director of
the National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC), part of the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence. Mr. Kenneth N. Luongo is the President and founder of the Partnership for Global
Security (PGS) and the Center for a Secure Nuclear Future (CSNF). He currently co-chairs the
Fissile Materials Working Group (FMWG) and is a member of the Nuclear Security Governance
Experts Group (NSGEG). He has authored nearly 100 articles and briefed audiences around the
world on global security challenges., “Nuclear Terrorism: A Clear Danger” NY Times, March 15,
2012]
Terrorists exploit gaps in security. The current global regime for protecting the nuclear materials
that terrorists desire for their ultimate weapon is far from seamless. It is based largely on unaccountable,
voluntary arrangements that are inconsistent across borders. Its weak links make it dangerous and inadequate to prevent nuclear
terrorism. Later this month in Seoul, the more than 50 world leaders who will gather for the second Nuclear Security Summit need
to seize the opportunity to start developing an accountable regime to prevent nuclear terrorism. There
is a consensus
among international leaders that the threat of nuclear terrorism is real, not a Hollywood
confection. President Obama, the leaders of 46 other nations, the heads of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the
United Nations, and numerous experts have called nuclear terrorism one of the most serious threats
to global security and stability. It is also preventable with more aggressive action. At least four terrorist
groups, including Al Qaeda, have demonstrated interest in using a nuclear device. These groups
operate in or near states with histories of questionable nuclear security practices. Terrorists do not need to steal a
nuclear weapon. It is quite possible to make an improvised nuclear device from highly enriched
uranium or plutonium being used for civilian purposes. And there is a black market in such
material. There have been 18 confirmed thefts or loss of weapons-usable nuclear material. In 2011, the Moldovan police broke
up part of a smuggling ring attempting to sell highly enriched uranium; one member is thought to remain at large with a kilogram of
this material.
Yes WMD Attack – Experts
WMD terror attack is inevitable – experts
NTI ’11 Citing Vahid Majidi. Feb. 17 “FBI Official Sees 100% Likelihood of WMD Strike on U.S.”
The Nuclear Threat Initiative works to strengthen global security by reducing global threats,
Vahid Majidi is an FBI senior official. http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/fbi-official-sees-100likelihood-of-wmd-strike-on-us/
A senior FBI official said there is a 100 percent chance that the United States at some time will be
attacked with a weapon of mass destruction, Newsmax reported on Monday (see GSN, Feb. 14). "The notion of
probability of a WMD attack being low or high is a moot point because we know the probability
is 100 percent," FBI Assistant Director for the WMD Directorate Vahid Majidi said. "We’ve seen this in
the past, and we will see it in the future. There is going to be an attack using chemical, biological or radiological material." Majidi
said the
expected WMD attack could be carried out by an international terrorist group, a lone
actor or a criminal operation. An incident would be expected to feature a weapon less devastating than a nuclear bomb
due to the difficulty in preparing and transferring such as device. “While the net probability [of a terrorist nuclear strike] is incredibly
low, a 10 kiloton device would be of enormous consequence,” Majidi said. “So even with those enormously low probabilities, we still
have to have a very effective and integrated approach trying to fight the possibility.” When the U.S. military entered Afghanistan in
2001, personnel discovered al-Qaeda had established a "nascent" project to produce biological
and chemical warfare agents, Majidi said. The U.S. intelligence community receives hundreds of reports annually of
international extremists acquiring weapons of mass destruction, Majidi said. While such reports are consistently found not to be
credible, Majidi's office yearly probes more than 12 cases in which there was a goal of launching an unconventional weapons strike.
ISIS wants WMD
ISIS is able to get nuclear and chemical weapons, and will use them to kill large
numbers of innocents
Cirincione ’14 [Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grantmaking foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. He was
appointed to the presidency by the Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008., “ISIS will
be in position to get nuclear weapons if allowed to consolidate power, resources, says expert”
September 30, 2014]
The risk of a terrorist attack using nuclear or chemical weapons has just gone up. ISIS is willing to
kill large numbers of innocents, and it has added three capabilities that catapult the threat
beyond anything seen before: control of large, urban territories, huge amounts of cash, and a
global network of recruits. British Home Secretary Theresa May warned that if ISIS consolidates its control over the land it
occupies, “We will see the world’s first truly terrorist state” with “the space to plot attacks against
us.” Its seizure of banks and oil fields gave it more than $2 billion in assets. If ISIS could make the
right connection to corrupt officials in Russia or Pakistan, the group might be able to buy enough
highly enriched uranium (about 50 pounds) and the technical help to build a crude nuclear
device. Militants recruited from Europe or America could help smuggle it into their home nations. Or ISIS could try to build a “dirty
bomb,” conventional explosives like dynamite laced with highly radioactive materials. The blast would not kill many directly, but it
would force the evacuation of tens of square blocks contaminated with radioactive particles. The terror and economic consequences
of a bomb detonated in the financial districts of London or New York would be enormous. ISIS
could also try to get
chemical weapons, such as deadly nerve gases or mustard gas. Fortunately, the most likely source of these
terror weapons was just eliminated. The Obama administration struck a deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad that has now
destroyed the 1,300 tons of chemical bombs Assad built. Without this deal, ISIS would likely already have these weapons.
ISIS will become the first true terrorist state and will use chemical, biological,
and nuclear weapons to kill indiscriminately
Morris ’14 [Nigel, Deputy political director at The Independent, “Isis could become 'world’s
first truly terrorist state' and bomb UK with nuclear and chemical weapons, Theresa May
warns”, September 30, 2014]
Isis could acquire nuclear and biological weapons to launch attacks on Britain, the Home Secretary warned
today as she set out new measures to clamp down on extremist groups. In a speech to the Tory party conference that concentrated
almost entirely on the threat from terrorism at home and abroad, Theresa May warned that the
jihadist group could
become the “world's first truly terrorist state“ in Iraq and Syria. “If [Isis] succeed in firmly
consolidating their grip on the land they occupy in Syria and Iraq, we will see the world’s first truly terrorist state
established within a few hours flying time of our country,” she said. “We will see terrorists given the space to plot
attacks against us, train their men and women, and devise new methods to kill indiscriminately.”
“We will see the risk, often prophesied but thank God not yet fulfilled, that with the capability of a state behind them, the
terrorists will acquire chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to attack us. “We must not flinch.
We must not shy away from our responsibility. We must not drift towards danger and insecurity. While we still have the chance, we
must act to destroy them.
2AC Bioterror Add On
The risk of bioterrorism is real and high now
Saunders-Hastings 14
(Patrick, “Securitization Theory and Biological Weapons,” E-IR, Jan 8, 2014, Accessed May 20, 2015, http://www.e-ir.info...lweapons/)//AD
, a changing global and scientific landscape has led to a greater potential for the
acquisition of biological weapons capacity by terrorist groups
However
. For instance, during the Cold War, the Soviets reportedly employed
approximately 55, 000 scientists and technicians at 6 biological weapons research labs and 5 production facilities37. Among other things, smallpox was weaponized into bal listic missiles and bombs38. In 1997, the United States conducted a visit to one of
was half empty, poorly guarded
methods of biological weapons
production are now freely accessible via the Internet
recent scientific advances may support biological weapons production by
enabling the production of a higher yield of high-quality product
these
research labs
to find that the facility
, and that most of the scientists had left39. It is, therefore, possible that the biological agents, the
equipment, and the human knowledge and expertise have since fallen into the hands of rogue states or terrorist organizations. Additionally,
, and the technological requirements are not beyond the means of a determined, well-funded terrorist
organization2. Moreover,
36. They may also support more effective weaponization, by making
agents more resistant to environmental hazards or by making agents targetable against specific biochemical pathways36. As these capabilities spread across the globe, there will be a greater potential for terrorists to harness and use these techniques. While the
capabilities of terrorists to engineer biological weapons may have been overstated in the past, this can no longer be said to be the case. It has been argued that two of the preconditions for assessing the threat of bioterrorism, vulnerability to an attack and terrorist
capability, are in place; the only remaining consideration is intent40. It is important to determine whether the intent to acquire and use such weapons is present among terrorist groups. While terrorist groups have not often used biological weapons, it is unclear
whether this is due to insufficient capabilities or lack of intent1. There are a variety of reasons why they may not be interested in the use of biological weapons, including viewing such weapons as illegitimate in military combat, risks of tactical failure, perceptions of
various terrorist groups
have a
documented interest in the acquisition of biological weapons, and with advances in
biotechnology and weaponization, their use may become more attractive 2, 41. Experts
also point to a shift in terrorist intent: “post-modern” terrorism aims to inflict the
highest mortality rather than make political statements
This makes biological
weapons an attractive option for such group
biological
weapons are particularly well-suited to this form of smaller, more informed terrorist
groups
present circumstances may make the
acquisition and use of biological weapons more attractive.
high technical difficulty, and concerns about the indiscriminate nature of a biological weapons attack3. That said,
, including Aum Shinrikyo and al Qaeda,
through violence 33.
s; one estimate suggests that the cost to cause civilian casualties is only one dollar per square kilometer for biological weapons,
compared to 800 and 2000 dollars per square kilometer for nuclear and conventional weapons, respectively42. In a similar vein, the recent “war on terror” has created an increasingly decentralized terrorist threat;
28. In short, while the intent to use biological weapons has been documented in terrorist groups in the past,
Extinction—bioweapon causes global pandemic
Mhyrvold 13-postdoctoral fellow from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical
Physics at Cambridge, doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics and a master's degree in
mathematical economics from Princeton, master's degree in geophysics and space physics and a
bachelor's degree in mathematics (Nathan, “Strategic Terrorism A Call to Action,” The Lawfare Research
Paper Series Research paper, July 3, 2013, http://www.lawfarebl...3-2013.pdf)//AD
many biological agents are communicable and so can spread beyond the people
initially infected to affect the entire population. Infectious pathogens are inherently
hard to control because there is usually no reliable way to stop an epidemic once it
starts
Unfortunately,
. This property makes such biological agents difficult to use as conventional weapons. A nation that starts an epidemic may see it spread to the wrong country—or even to its own people. Indeed, one cannot target a small, well-defined population
with a contagious pathogen; by its nature, such a pathogen may infect the entire human race. Despite this rather severe drawback, both the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as Imperial Japan, investigated and produced contagious bioweapons. The logic
was that their use in a military conflict would be limited to last-ditch, “scorched earth” campaigns, perhaps with a vaccine available only to one side. Smallpox is the most famous example. It is highly contagious and spreads through casual contact. Smallpox was
eradicated in the wild in 1977, but it still exists in both U.S. and Russian laboratories, according to official statements.7 Unofficial holdings are harder to track, but a number of countries, including North Korea, are believed to possess covert smallpox cultures.
Biological weapons were strictly regulated by international treaty in 1972. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed not to develop such weapons and to destroy existing stocks. The United States stopped its bioweapons work, but the Russians cheated and kept
a huge program going into the 1990s, thereby producing thousands of tons of weaponized anthrax, smallpox, and far more exotic biological weapons based on genetically engineered viruses. No one can be certain how far either the germs or the knowledge has
spread since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Experts estimate that a large-scale, coordinated smallpox attack on the United States might kill 55,000 to 110,000 people, assuming that sufficient vaccine is available to contain the epidemic and that the vaccine
attack on the United States could
easily broaden into a global pandemic,
All it would take is for one
infected person to leave the country and travel elsewhere
infections
would most likely appear on every continent,
within two weeks. Once these
beachheads were established, the epidemic would spread almost without check because
the vaccine in world stockpiles and the infrastructure to distribute it would be
insufficient. That is particularly true in the developing world
works.8, 9 The death toll may be far higher if the smallpox strain has been engineered to be vaccine-resistant or to have enhanced virulence. Moreover,
a
smallpox
despite the U.S. stockpile of at least 300 million doses of vaccine.
. If New York City were attacked with smallpox,
except perhaps Antarctica,
, which is ill equipped to handle their current disease burden to say nothing of a
return of smallpox. Even if “only” 50,000 people were killed in the United States, a million or more would probably die worldwide before the disease could be contained, and containment would probably require many years of effort. As horrible as this would
be,
such a pandemic is by no means the worst attack one can imagine
, for several reasons. First, most of the classic bioweapons are
based on 1960s and 1970s technology because the 1972 treaty halted bioweapons development efforts in the United States and most other Western countries. Second, the Russians, although solidly committed to biological weapons long after the treaty deadline,
the science and technology of molecular biology have made
enormous advances, utterly transforming the field in the last few decades. High school
biology students routinely perform molecular-biology manipulations that would have
been impossible even for the best superpower-funded program back in the heyday of
biological-weapons research
terrorists have vastly more deadly bugs to choose from
were never on the cutting edge of biological research. Third and most important,
. The biowarfare methods of the 1960s and 1970s are now as antiquated as the lumbering mainframe computers of that era.
Tomorrow’s
will
. Consider this sobering development: in 2001, Australian researchers working on
mousepox, a nonlethal virus that infects mice (as chickenpox does in humans), accidentally discovered that a simple genetic modification transformed the virus.10, 11 Instead of producing mild symptoms, the new virus killed 60% of even those mice already immune
to the naturally occurring strains of mousepox. The new virus, moreover, was unaffected by any existing vaccine or antiviral drug. A team of researchers at Saint Louis University led by Mark Buller picked up on that work and, by late 2003, found a way to improve on
it: Buller’s variation on mousepox was 100% lethal, although his team of investigators also devised combination vaccine and antiviral therapies that were partially effective in protecting animals from the engineered strain.12, 13 Another saving grace is that the
genetically altered virus is no longer contagious. Of course, it is quite possible that future tinkering with the virus will change that property, too. Strong reasons exist to believe that the genetic modifications Buller made to mousepox would work for other poxviruses
and possibly for other classes of viruses as well. Might the same techniques allow chickenpox or another poxvirus that infects humans to be turned into a 100% lethal bioweapon, perhaps one that is resistant to any known antiviral therapy? I’ve asked this question of
experts many times, and no one has yet replied that such a manipulation couldn’t be done. This case is just one example. Many more are pouring out of scientific journals and conferences every year. Just last year, the journal Nature published a controversial study
Biotechnology is
advancing so rapidly that it is hard to keep track of all the new potential threats. Nor is it
clear that anyone is even trying. In addition to lethality and drug resistance, many other
parameters can be played with, given that the infectious power of an epidemic depends
on many properties, including the length of the latency period during which a person is
contagious but asymptomatic.
done at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in which virologists enumerated the changes one would need to make to a highly lethal strain of bird flu to make it easily transmitted from one mammal to another.14
Delaying the onset of serious symptoms allows each new case to spread to more people and thus makes the virus harder to stop. This dynamic is perhaps best illustrated by
HIV , which is very difficult to transmit compared with smallpox and many other viruses. Intimate contact is needed, and even then, the infection rate is low. The balancing factor is that HIV can take years to progress to AIDS , which can then take many more years to
kill the victim. What makes HIV so dangerous is that infected people have lots of opportunities to infect others. This property has allowed HIV to claim more than 30 million lives so far, and approximately 34 million people are now living with this virus and facing a
infect its host quickly, to generate symptoms slowly
could silently penetrate the population to unleash its
deadly effects suddenly. This type of epidemic would be almost impossible to combat
because most of the infections would occur before the epidemic became obvious.
A
terrorist group could develop
and kill a large part of humanity with it
terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some scientist may do so first and
highly uncertain future.15
A virus
genetically engineered to
—say, only after weeks or months—
and to spread easily through the air or by casual contact would be vastly more devastating than HIV . It
technologically sophisticated
Indeed,
such a virus
.
publish the details
pathogens could drive the human race to extinction a detailed species-elimination
plan of this nature was openly proposed in a scientific journal
. Given the rate at which biologists are making discoveries about viruses and the immune system, at some point in the near future, someone may create
artificial
that
. Indeed,
. The ostensible purpose of that particular research was to suggest a way to
extirpate the malaria mosquito, but similar techniques could be directed toward humans.16 When I’ve talked to molecular biologists about this method, they are quick to point out that it is slow and easily detectable and could be fought with biotech remedies. If you
Modern biotechnology will soon be capable, if it is
not already, of bringing about the demise of the human race— or at least of killing a
sufficient number of people to end high-tech civilization and set humanity back 1,000
years or more.
but keep in mind that it takes only a
handful of individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has lethal power of this potency
been accessible to so few, so easily
modern biological science has
frighteningly undermined the correlation between the lethality of a weapon and its cost
Access to extremely lethal agents—lethal enough to exterminate
Homo sapiens—will be available to anybody with a solid background in biology,
terrorists included.
A future set of terrorists could just as
easily be students of molecular biology who enter their studies innocently enough but
later put their skills to homicidal use. Hundreds of universities
have curricula
sufficient to train people in the skills necessary to make a sophisticated biological
weapon,
it seems likely
in the near future
terrorists
will
fashion a bioweapon that could kill
billions of people
challenge them to come up with improvements to the suggested attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas.
That terrorist groups could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem far-fetched,
. Even more dramatically than nuclear proliferation,
,a
fundamentally stabilizing mechanism throughout history.
The 9/11 attacks involved at least four pilots, each of whom had sufficient education to enroll in flight schools and complete several years of training. Bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering. Mohammed
Atta attended a German university, where he earned a master’s degree in urban planning—not a field he likely chose for its relevance to terrorism.
in Europe and Asia
and hundreds more in the United States accept students from all over the world. Thus
of
or even
, or even a single misanthropic individual,
overcome our best defenses and do something truly terrible, such as
that sometime
a small band
millions
. Indeed, the creation of such weapons within the next 20 years seems to be a virtual certainty. The repercussions of their use are hard to estimate. One approach is to look at how the scale of destruction
they may cause compares with that of other calamities that the human race has faced.
Yes Bioterror
Risk of Bioterror is High
Saunders-Hastings 14
(Patrick, “Securitization Theory and Biological Weapons,” E-IR, Jan 8, 2014, Accessed May 20, 2015, http://www.e-ir.info...lweapons/)//AD
the threat of biological weapons has been framed as a security
issue 4. This examines whether
the threat of a biological weapons attack has
been overstated
by drawing on securitization theory
Therefore,
essay
, and to what degree,
with respect to the government’s response
, which critically evaluates the process through which an issue
comes to be viewed through a security framework. In addition, the essay will also use the precautionary principle, described by the 1998 Wingspread Statement as the notion that “when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment,
precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically”5. Though more often applied to considerations of environmental risk, in the case of biological weapons, the principle could be used
justify caution even in the absence of consensus
due to the severity of
the consequences
the biological weapons threat has not been
overestimated the biodefense measures expressed in current policy and funding
decisions are warranted Despite measures
which may suggest
the government response is an overreaction, other characteristics of the bioweapons
threat justify its securitization and resulting prioritization in the government agenda.
the consequences
pose an existential threat
there is an
inadequate degree of preparedness
the mere possibility of an attack is enough
to warrant high spending on preventive
programs the response has been
appropriately measured given the threat.
exaggerations
in the media
is a separate issue from
government policy decisions in response to the security threat
to
surrounding the probability of an attack, simply
if an attack was to occur. It will be argued that
and that
.
such as likelihood-adjusted mortality,
U.S.
To do this,
the essay provides a discussion of how
potential
of an attack
to the United States, how
for such an event, how
and preparative
, and how
The focus will be on the United States government because it has taken such a prominent role in bioweapon securitization and biodefense
funding. A single country, the US, was chosen as a point of focus to avoid confusion due to differing levels of threat and response across countries. Additionally, any
that may exist
the public portray and view the biological weapons threat will be ignored; though this could be related to the government’s decision to securitize bioweapons, this
and is outside the scope of this paper.
how
or
Cloud Computing Advantage
1AC
Advantage ___: Cloud Computing
Bulk data collection kills U.S trust
Eoyang and Horwitz ’13 (12-20 Mieke,- the Director of the National Security Program and
Gabriel,- is the Director of the Economic Program at Third Way “NSA Snooping's Negative Impact
On Business Would Have The Founding Fathers 'Aghast'”)
The revelations about the scope and scale of NSA’s surveillance both at home and abroad have made many uneasy about the security of their data. This loss of trust could have ongoing consequences for the U.S. economy and for the future development of the
Internet. Policymakers must understand these implications as they make decisions on how to reform our surveillance efforts. First, what will this mean for American competitiveness? For years, the Internet has been largely “Made in America”, but the technical
One major
competitive global advantage for U.S. companies is that America’s openness and freedoms have
brought an implied level of trust in the security and privacy
architecture and data transcend national borders. European, Chinese, Russian, and other global competitors are vying for the billions of consumers who currently use U.S. Internet services every day—from Google to Facebook to Ebay.
of the data flowing through their servers. But when the U.S. government asserts that it can exploit
electronic data abroad for intelligence purposes, it creates an international reaction with profound economic consequences. For example, Europe’s Commissioner for digital affairs, Neelie Kroes, predicts the fallout from Snowden’s leaks will have “multi-billion Euro
consequences” for US businesses. The EU Commission’s Vice President, Viviane Reding, is pushing for Europe to adopt more expa nsive privacy laws that will help build market share for regional companies—thereby shutting American companies out.
economic consequences could be staggering
The
. Studies by leading Internet researchers at ITIF, Gartner, and Forrester examining the NSA surveillance revelations’ impact project potential
lost revenue for U.S. cloud computing companies ranging from $35 billion to $180 billion over the next three years. More than half of the overseas members of a cloud industry group, the Cloud Security Alliance, said they were less likely to use U.S. cloud providers in
the future. Ten percent of such members said they had cancelled a U.S. cloud services project as a result of the “Snowden Incident”. While the true costs of the loss of trust are hard to quantify, and will be reported in future quarters, the potential losses are
enormous. Second, what will this mean for the future of Internet governance? Since its earliest days, the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has governed the web. As the Internet has expanded, several nations, especially
China, have been pressing to end American dominance and transfer control of Internet governance to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency within the United Nations. Worse still for prospects of continued American dominance, the
NSA revelations have prompted calls for extensive regional control of the Internet. For example, Brazil, which has long called for such regional control, will host an important Internet governance conference in April that could challenge America’s role.
Unless the U.S. government takes steps to restore some degree of trust
a new
approach
could
end U.S. Internet leadership. This could leave management of the
Internet to nations like China or Russia that do not share America’s commitment to safety,
openness, competition, and growth.
, the groundswell of international interest in
to Internet governance
undermine or
Recommendations for change are coming from many corners. President Obama’s advisory group on NSA reform is calling for an end to bulk collection of Americans’
metadata and other steps to restore protections abroad. Major Internet companies have called for greater restrictions on surveillance activities, saying the balance has tipped too far from the individual. The government should heed these calls for reflection and
Without understanding the economic implications
Internet dominance and our economy could pay the price.
reform.
of our security policies and taking reasonable steps to restore trust in America’s surveillance efforts,
our
Fusion Centers steal vast amounts of data from private corporations.
American Civil Liberties Union, 2/25/2009, "What's Wrong With Fusion Centers,"
https://www.aclu.org/report/whats-wrong-fusion-centers-executive-summary
: Fusion Centers
were originally created to improve the sharing
of anti-terrorism intelligence among different
law enforcement agencies
the scope of their mission has quickly expanded
The types of information they seek for analysis has broadened
to include
but public and private sector data
These fusion centers
raise very serious privacy issues
threaten Americans' privacy at an unprecedented level
A new institution is emerging in American life
. These state, local and regional institutions
state, local and federal
. Though they developed independently and
remain quite different from one another, for many
- with the support and encouragement of the federal government - to cover "all
crimes and all hazards."
also
intelligence,
private sector.
over time
not just criminal
, and participation in these centers has grown to include not just law enforcement, but other government entities, the military and even select members of the
new
government powers and zeal in the "war on terrorism" are combining to
, over 40 of which have been established around the country,
at a time when new technology,
.
This surveillance done by the Fusion Centers undermine cloud computing
Lomas 13
(Natasha, “NSA Spying Risks Undermining Trust In U.S. Cloud Computing Businesses, Warns Kroes,” Tech Crunch, July 4, 2013,
Accessed April 8, 2015, http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/04/spying-bad-for-business/)//AD
undermining trust in U.S. cloud computing businesses, the European Commission’s vice-president, Neelie Kroes, has
calls for “clarity and transparency” from the U.S. regarding the scope and
nature of its surveillance and access to data on individuals and businesses living and conducting business in Europe in order to avoid a knock-on effect on cloud
The NSA spying scandal risks
warned in a speech today. Kroes also reiterated
businesses. Loss of Europeans’ trust could result in “multi-billion euro consequences” for U.S. cloud providers, she added. Kroes was speaking during a press conference held in
Estonia, following a meeting of the EC’s European Cloud Partnership Steering Board, which was held to agree on EU-wide specifications for cloud procurement. In her speech,
cloud computing businesses are at particular risk of fallout from a widereaching U.S. government surveillance program because they rely on their customers’ trust to
function — trust that the data entrusted to them is stored securely. Kroes said: If businesses or
part of which follows below, she argued that
governments think they might be spied on, they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it
will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your
commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes?
Front or back door – it doesn’t matter – any smart person doesn’t want the information shared
at all. Customers will act rationally, and providers will miss out on a great opportunity.
Scenario one is warming:
Cloud computing key to climate modeling
Boyce 10
[Eric, technical writer and user advocate for The Rackspace Cloud, September 14, 2010
http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2010/09/14/the-future-of-cloud-computing-the-big-25in-the-next-25/]
The promise of the cloud isn’t just about gaming and the ability to safely store all those photos that you wish you hadn’t ever taken. Many of the
most promising cloud-based applications also require massive computational power. Searching a database of
global DNA samples requires abundant, scalable processing power. Modeling protein folding is another example of how compute resources will be
used. Protein folding is linked to many diseases including Alzheimer’s and cancer, and analyzing the folding process can lead to new treatments and
cures, but it requires enormous compute power. Projects like Folding@home are using distributed computing to tackle these modeling tasks. The
cloud will offer a larger, faster, more scalable way to process data and thus benefit any heavy data
manipulation task. 6. Is it going to be hot tomorrow? Like protein folding modeling, climate simulation and forecasting
requires a large amount of data storage and processing. Recently the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) installed
a climate calculating supercomputer that is capable of analyzing 60 petabytes of data ( roughly 13 million DVD’s)
at over 158 teraflops (trillion calculations per second). In the next couple of decades, this level of computing power will be widely available
and will exist on remote hardware. Sophisticated climate models combined with never before seen
compute power will provide better predictions of climate change and more rapid early warning systems
Key to warming adaptation
Pope 10
[ Vicky Pope is the head of climate science advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre, “ How
science will shape climate adaptation plans,” 16 September 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/sep/16/science-climate-changeadaptation]
the demand for information on how climate change will affect our future outstrips the
current capability of the science and climate models. My view is that as scientists, we can provide useful information, but we
need to be clear about its limitations and strive to improve information for the future. We need to be clear about the uncertainties in our
Some would argue that
projections while still extracting useful information for practical decision-making. I have been involved in developing climate models for the last 15 years and despite their
we can quantify the risk of these outcomes
happening. These projections – the UK climate projections published in 2009 - are already forming the backbone of adaptation decisions being made in the UK for 50 to
limitations we are now able to assess the probability of different outcomes for the first time. That means
100 years ahead. A project commissioned by the Environment Agency to investigate the impact of climate change on the Thames estuary over the next 100 years concluded that
current government predictions for sea level rise are realistic. A major outcome from the scientific analysis was that the worst-case scenarios for high water levels can be
significantly reduced - from 4.2m to 2.7m – because we are able to rule out the more extreme sea level rise. As a result, massive investment in a tide-excluding estuary barrage is
unlikely to be needed this century. This will be reviewed as more information becomes available, taking a flexible approach to adaptation. The energy industry, working with the
Met Office, looked at the likely impact of climate change on its infrastructure. The project found that very few changes in design standards are required, although it did highlight
a number of issues. For instance, transformers could suffer higher failure rates and efficiency of some types of thermal power station could be markedly reduced because of
increasing temperatures. A particular concern highlighted by this report and reiterated in today's report from the Climate Change Committee - the independent body that
advises government on its climate targets - is that little is known about how winds will change in the future - important because of the increasing role of wind power in the UK
energy mix. Fortunately many people, from private industry to government, recognise the value of even incomplete information to help make decisions about the future.
Demand for climate information is increasing, particularly relating to changes in the short to medium
term. More still needs to be done to refine the climate projections and make them more usable and
accessible. This is especially true if we are to provide reliable projections for the next 10 to 30 years.
The necessary science and modelling tools are being developed, and the first tentative results are being produced. We need
particularly to look at how we communicate complex and often conflicting results. In order to explain complex science to a lay audience, scientists and journalists are prone to
progressively downplay the complexity. Conversely, in striving to adopt a more scientific approach and include the full range of uncertainty, we often give sceptics an easy route
to undermine the science. All too often uncertainty in science offers a convenient excuse for delaying important decisions. However, in the case of climate change there is
overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing — in part due to human activities — and that changes will accelerate if emissions continue unabated. In examining the
Scientists now need to press
on in developing the emerging tools that will be used to underpin sensible adaptation decisions which
will determine our future.
uncertainty in the science we must take care to not throw away what we do know. Science has established that climate is changing.
Warming is inevitable–only adaptation can prevent extinction
Romero 8
[Purple, reporter for ABS-CBN news, 05/17/2008, Climate change and human extinction--are you
ready to be fossilized? http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/05/16/08/climate-change-andhuman-extinction-are-you-ready-be-fossilized
Climate change killed the dinosaurs. Will it kill us as well? Will we let it destroy the human race? This was the grim, depressing message that hung in the
background of the Climate Change Forum hosted on Friday by the Philippine National Red Cross at the Manila Hotel. "Not one dinosaur is alive today. Maybe
someday it will be our fossils that another race will dig up in the future , " said Roger Bracke of the International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, underscoring his point that no less than extinction is faced by the human race , unless we are
able to address global warming and climate change in this generation. Bracke, however, countered the pessimistic mood of the day by saying that the
human race still has an opportunity to save itself. This more hopeful view was also presented by the four other speakers in the forum. Bracke
pointed out that all peoples of the world must be involved in two types of response to the threat of climate change: mitigation and adaptation.
"Prevention" is no longer possible, according to Bracke and the other experts at the forum, since climate change is already
happening. Last chance The forum's speakers all noted the increasing number and intensity of devastating typhoons--most
recently cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, which killed more than 100,000 people--as evidence that the world's climatic and weather
conditions are turning deadly because of climate change. They also reminded the audience that deadly typhoons have also hit the
Philippines recently, particularly Milenyo and Reming, which left hundreds of thousands of Filipino families homeless. World Wildlife Fund Climate and Energy Program head
this generation the last chance for the human race" to do something and ensure that
humanity stays alive in this planet. According to Saño, while most members of our generation will be dead by the time the worst effects of climate
Naderev Saño said that "
change are felt, our children will be the ones to suffer. How will Filipinos survive climate change? Well, first of all, they have to be made aware that climate change is a problem
that threatens their lives. The easiest way to do this – as former Consultant for the Secretariats of the UN Convention on Climate Change Dr. Pak Sum Low told abscbnews.com/Newsbreak – is to particularize the disasters that it could cause. Talking in the language of destruction, Pak and other experts paint this portrait of a Philippines hit
by climate change: increased typhoons in Visayas, drought in Mindanao, destroyed agricultural areas in Pampanga, and higher incidence rates of dengue and malaria. Sañom
said that as polar ice caps melt due to global warming, sea levels will rise, endangering coastal and low-lying areas like Manila. He said Manila Bay would experience a sea level
increase of 72 meters over 20 years. This means that from Pampanga to Nueva Ecija, farms and fishponds would be in danger of being would be inundated in saltwater. Sañom
added that Albay, which has been marked as a vulnerable area to typhoons, would be the top province at risk. Sañom also pointed out that extreme weather conditions arising
from climate change, including typhoons and severe droughts, would have social, economic and political consequences: Ruined farmlands and fishponds would hamper crop
growth and reduce food sources, typhoons would displace people, cause diseases, and limit actions in education and employment. Thus, Saño said, while environmental
protection should remain at the top of the agenda in fighting climate change, solutions to the phenomenon "must also be economic, social, moral and political." Mitigation
Joyceline Goco, Climate Change Coordinator of the Environment Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, focused her lecture on the
programs Philippine government is implementing in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Goco said that the Philippines is already a signatory to global agreements
calling for a reduction in the "greenhouse gasses"--mostly carbon dioxide, chloroflourocarbons and methane--that are responsible for trapping heat inside the planet and raising
global temperatures. Goco said the DENR, which is tasked to oversee and activate the Clean Development Mechanism, has registered projects which would reduce methane and
carbon dioxide. These projects include landfill and electricity generation initiatives. She also said that the government is also looking at alternative fuel sources in order do
reduce the country's dependence on the burning of fossil fuels--oil--which are known culprits behind global warming. Bracke however said that mitigation is not enough. "The
ongoing debate about mitigation of climate change effects is highly technical. It involves making fundamental changes in the policies of governments, making costly changes in
how industry operates. All of this takes time and, frankly, we're not even sure if such mitigation efforts will be successful. In the meantime, while the debate goes on, the effects
A few nations and communities have already begun adapting their
lifestyles to cope with the effects of climate change. In Bangladesh, farmers have switched to raising
ducks instead of chickens because the latter easily succumb to weather disturbances and immediate effects, such as floods. In Norway, houses with
elevated foundations have been constructed to decrease displacement due to typhoons. In the Philippines main body for fighting climate change,
of climate change are already happening to us." Adaptation
the Presidential Task Force on Climate Change, (PTFCC) headed by Department on Energy Sec. Angelo Reyes, has identified emission reduction measures and has looked into
what fuel mix could be both environment and economic friendly. The Department of Health has started work with the World Health Organization in strengthening its
, bringing information hatched from PTFCC’s studies down to and crafting an action plan
for adaptation with the communities in the barangay level remains a challenge. Bracke said that the Red Cross is already at the forefront of efforts to
surveillance mechanisms for health services. However
prepare for disasters related to climate change. He pointed out that since the Red Cross was founded in 1919, it has already been helping people beset by natural disasters. "The
problems resulting from climate change are not new to the Red Cross. The Red Cross has been facing those challenges for a long time. However, the frequency and magnitude of
those problems are unprecedented. This is why the Red Cross can no longer face these problems alone," he said. Using a medieval analogy, Bracke said that the Red Cross can no
longer be a "knight in shining armor rescuing a damsel in distress" whenever disaster strikes. He said that disaster preparedness in the face of climate change has to involve
people at the grassroots level. "The role of the Red Cross in the era of climate change will be less as a direct actor and increase as a trainor and guide to other partners who will
help us adapt to climate change and respond to disasters," said Bracke. PNRC chairman and Senator Richard Gordon gave a picture of how the PNRC plans to take climate
change response to the grassroots level, through its project, dubbed "Red Cross 143". Gordon explained how Red Cross 143 will train forty-four volunteers from each community
at a barangay level. These volunteers will have training in leading communities in disaster response. Red Cross 143 volunteers will rely on information technology like cellular
phones to alert the PNRC about disasters in their localities, mobilize people for evacuation, and lead efforts to get health care, emergency supplies, rescue efforts, etc.
Adaptation solves global wars
Werz and Conley 12 - Senior Fellow @American Progress where his work as member of the
National Security Team focuses on the nexus of climate change, migration, and security and
emerging democracies & Research Associate for National Security and International Policy @
the Center for American Progress [Michael Werz & Laura Conley, “Climate Change, Migration,
and Conflict: Addressing complex crisis scenarios in the 21st Century,” Center for American
Progress, January 2012]
The costs and consequences of climate change on our world will define the 21st century. Even if nations
across our planet were to take immediate steps to rein in carbon emissions—an unlikely prospect—a warmer
climate is inevitable. As the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, noted in 2007, human-created
“warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global
average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.”1 As these ill effects progress they will have serious
implications for U.S. national security interests as well as global stability—extending from the sustainability of coastal military installations to the stability of nations that lack the
as these effects accelerate,
the stress will impact human migration and conflict around the world. It is difficult to fully understand the detailed
causes of migration and economic and political instability, but the growing evidence of links between climate change,
migration, and conflict raise plenty of reasons for concern. This is why it’s time to start thinking about new and comprehensive
resources, good governance, and resiliency needed to respond to the many adverse consequences of climate change. And
answers to multifaceted crisis scenarios brought on or worsened by global climate change. As Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, argues, “The
question we must continuously ask ourselves in the face of scientific complexity and uncertainty, but also growing evidence of climate change, is at what point precaution,
In the coming decades climate change will increasingly
threaten humanity’s shared interests and collective security in many parts of the world, disproportionately affecting the globe’s least developed countries.
common sense or prudent risk management demands action.”2
Climate change will pose challenging social, political, and strategic questions for the many different multinational, regional, national, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to
improving the human condition worldwide. Organizations as different as Amnesty International, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the
International Rescue Committee, and the World Health Organization will all have to tackle directly the myriad effects of climate change. Climate change also poses distinct
Recent intelligence reports and war games, including some conducted by the U.S. Department of
Defense, conclude that over the next two or three decades, vulnerable regions (particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East,
South and Southeast Asia) will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises, and catastrophic
flooding driven by climate change. These developments could demand U.S., European, and
international humanitarian relief or military responses, often the delivery vehicle for aid in crisis situations. This report provides the foundation and
challenges to U.S. national security.
overview for a series of papers focusing on the particular challenges posed by the cumulative effects of climate change, migration, and conflict in some of our world’s most
complex environments. In the papers following this report, we plan to outline the effects of this nexus in northwest Africa, in India and Bangladesh, in the Andean region of
South America, and in China. In this paper we detail that nexus across our planet and offer wide ranging recommendations about how the United States, its allies in the global
community, and the community at large can deal with the coming climate-driven crises with comprehensive sustainable security solutions encompassing national security,
diplomacy, and economic, social, and environmental development. Here, we briefly summarize our arguments and our conclusions. The nexus The Arab Spring can be at least
partly credited to climate change. Rising food prices and efforts by authoritarian regimes to crush political protests were linked first to food and then to political repression—two
important motivators in the Arab makeover this past year. To be sure, longstanding economic and social distress and lack of opportunity for so many Arab youth in the Middle
East and across North Africa only needed a spark to ignite revolutions across the region. But environmental degradation and the movement of people from rural areas to already
overcrowded cities alongside rising food prices enabled the cumulative effects of long-term economic and political failures to sweep across borders with remarkable agility. It
does not require much foresight to acknowledge that other effects of climate change will add to the pressure in the decades to come. In particular the cumulative overlays of
climate change with human migration driven by environmental crises, political conflict caused by this migration, and competition for more scarce resources will add new
dimensions of complexity to existing and future crisis scenarios. It is thus critical to understand how governments plan to answer and prioritize these new threats from climate
No matter what steps the global
community takes to mitigate carbon emissions, a warmer climate is inevitable. The effects are already being felt
change, migration, and conflict. Climate change Climate change alone poses a daunting challenge.
today and will intensify as climate change worsens. All of the world’s regions and nations will experience some of the effects of this transformational challenge. Here’s just one
case in point: African states are likely to be the most vulnerable to multiple stresses, with up to 250 million people projected to suffer from water and food insecurity and, in
low-lying areas, a rising sea level.3 As little as 1 percent of Africa’s land is located in low-lying coastal zones but this land supports 12 percent of its urban population.4
Furthermore, a majority of people in Africa live in lower altitudes—including the Sahel, the area just south of the Sahara—where the worst effects of water scarcity, hotter
temperatures, and longer dry seasons are expected to occur.5 These developments may well be exacerbated by the lack of state and regional capacity to manage the effects of
climate change. These same dynamics haunt many nations in Asia and the Americas, too, and the implications for developed countries such as the United States and much of
Europe will be profound. Migration Migration adds another layer of complexity to the scenario.
In the 21st century the world could see
substantial numbers of climate migrants—people displaced by either the slow or sudden onset of the effects of climate change. The United
Nations’ recent Human Development Report stated that, worldwide, there are already an estimated 700 million internal migrants—those leaving their homes within their own
countries—a number that includes people whose migration isrelated to climate change and environmental factors. Overall migration across national borders is already at
approximately 214 million people worldwide,6 with estimates of up to 20 million displaced in 2008 alone because of a rising sea level, desertification, and flooding.7 One expert,
Oli Brown of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, predicts a tenfold increase in the current number of internally displaced persons and international refugees
by 2050.8 It is important to acknowledge that there is no consensus on this estimate. In fact there is major disagreement among experts about how to identify climate as a
causal factor in internal and international migration. But even though the root causes of human mobility are not always easy to decipher, the policy challenges posed by that
the International Organization for Migration produced in cooperation with the United Nations University and the Climate Change,
Environment and Migration Alliance cites numbers that range from “200 million to 1 billion migrants from
climate change alone, by 2050,”9 arguing that “environmental drivers of migration are often coupled with economic, social and developmental factors that can
movement are real. A 2009 report by
accelerate and to a certain extent mask the impact of climate change.” The report also notes that “migration can result from different environmental factors, among them
gradual environmental degradation (including desertification, soil and coastal erosion) and natural disasters (such as earthquakes, floods or tropical storms).”10 (See box on
climate change is expected to aggravate many existing
migratory pressures around the world. Indeed associated extreme weather events resulting in drought, floods,
and disease are projected to increase the number of sudden humanitarian crises and disasters in
areas least able to cope, such as those already mired in poverty or prone to conflict.11 Conflict This final layer is the most unpredictable, both within nations
page 15 for a more detailed definition of climate migrants.) Clearly, then,
and transnationally, and will force the United States and the international community to confront climate and migration challenges within an increasingly unstructured local or
regional security environment. In contrast to the great power conflicts and the associated proxy wars that marked most of the 20th century, the immediate post- Cold War
decades witnessed a diffusion of national security interests and threats. U.S. national security policy is increasingly integrating thinking about nonstate actors and nontraditional
sources of conflict and instability, for example in the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups. Climate change is among these newly visible issues sparking conflict. But
because the direct link between conflict and climate change is unclear, awareness of the indirect links has yet to lead to substantial and sustained action to address its security
the potential for the changing climate to induce conflict or exacerbate existing instability in some of the world’s
most vulnerable regions is now recognized in national security circles in the United States, although research gaps still exists in many
implications. Still
places. The climate-conflict nexus was highlighted with particular effect by the current U.S. administration’s security-planning reviews over the past two years, as well as the
Center for Naval Analysis, which termed climate change a “threat multiplier,” indicating that it can exacerbate existing stresses and
insecurity.12 The Pentagon’s latest Quadrennial Defense Review also recognized climate change as an “accelerant of instability or
conflict,” highlighting the operational challenges that will confront U.S. and partner militaries amid a rising sea level, growing extreme weather events, and other
anticipated effects of climate change.13 The U.S. Department of Defense has even voiced concern for American military installations that may be threatened by a rising sea
level.14 There is also well-developed international analysis on these points. The United Kingdom’s 2010 Defense Review, for example, referenced the security aspects of climate
change as an evolving challenge for militaries and policymakers. Additionally, in 2010, the Nigerian government referred to climate change as the “greatest environmental and
humanitarian challenge facing the country this century,” demonstrating that climate change is no longer seen as solely scientific or environmental, but increasingly as a social
and political issue cutting across all aspects of human development.15 As these three threads—climate change, migration, and conflict—interact more intensely, the
consequences will be far-reaching and occasionally counterintuitive. It is impossible to predict the outcome of the Arab Spring movement, for example, but the blossoming of
democracy in some countries and the demand for it in others is partly an unexpected result of the consequences of climate change on global food prices. On the other hand, the
interplay of these factors will drive complex crisis situations in which domestic policy, international policy, humanitarian assistance, and security converge in new ways. Areas of
Several regional hotspots frequently come up in the international debate on climate change, migration, and
conflict. Climate migrants in northwest Africa, for example, are causing communities across the region to respond in different ways, often to the detriment
of regional and international security concerns. Political and social instability in the region plays into the hands of
organizations such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And recent developments in Libya, especially the large number of weapons looted from
concern
depots after strongman Moammar Qaddafi’s regime fell— which still remain unaccounted for—are a threat to stability across North Africa. Effective solutions need not address
all of these issues simultaneously but must recognize the layers of relationships among them. And these solutions must also recognize that these variables will not always
intersect in predictable ways. While some migrants may flee floodplains, for example, others may migrate to them in search of greater opportunities in coastal urban areas.16
Bangladesh, already well known for its disastrous floods, faces rising waters in the future due to climate-driven glacial
meltdowns in neighboring India. The effects can hardly be over. In December 2008 the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., ran an
exercise that explored the impact of a flood that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring India. The result: the
exercise predicted a new wave of migration would touch off religious conflicts, encourage the spread of contagious
diseases, and cause vast damage to infrastructure. India itself is not in a position to absorb climate-induced
pressures—never mind foreign climate migrants. The country will contribute 22 percent of global population growth and have close to 1.6 billion inhabitants by 2050,
causing demographic developments that are sure to spark waves of internal migration across the country. Then there’s the Andean region of South America, where
melting glaciers and snowcaps will drive climate, migration, and security concerns. The average rate of glacial melting has doubled over the past few years,
according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service.17 Besides Peru, which faces the gravest consequences in Latin America, a number of other Andean countries will be
will put water security, agricultural production, and
power generation at risk—all factors that could prompt people to leave their homes and migrate. The IPCC report argues that the region is
especially vulnerable because of its fragile ecosystem.18 Finally, China is now in its fourth decade of ever-growing internal migration,
some of it driven in recent years by environmental change. Today, across its vast territory, China continues to experience the full spectrum of
massively affected, including Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia. This development
climate change related consequences that have the potential to continue to encourage such migration. The
Center for a New American Security recently found that the consequences of climate change and continued internal migration in China
include “water stress; increased droughts, flooding, or other severe events; increased coastal erosion and saltwater inundation; glacial melt in the Himala
as that could affect hundreds of millions; and shifting agricultural zones”—all of which will affect food supplies. 19 Pg.
1-7
Scenario two is disease:
Cloud computing key to genome sequencing and disease spread
Chansanchai 15
(Athima, “Cloud computing contributes to individually tailored medical treatments of the future,” Microsoft News, Feb 2, 2015,
Accessed April 8, 2015, http://news.microsoft.com/features/cloud-computing-contributes-to-individually-tailored-medicaltreatments-of-the-future/)//AD
in a decade – or less – it could be real science. To get to
the point where technology can give people access to their genetic profiles, cloud computing
plays a pivotal role. By putting resources to analyze genomes in the cloud, researchers can do
their work from a variety of devices, collaborate with each other more easily and save time and
money. Just a few years ago, sequencing a human genome, for example, used to cost $95 million. Now, it’s $1,000. And by 2020, it may be a matter of pennies.
Computing makes it possible to run simulations faster, which leads to more efficient lab work
that could produce scientific breakthroughs. Feng and his team at Virginia Tech have developed tools to help other
researchers and clinicians in their quests to find cures for cancer, lupus and other diseases.
For now, this level of personalized medicine is science fiction. But Feng thinks that
Genome sequencing is key to solve ABR disease
Koser et al 14
*ABR is anti-biotic resistant
*WGS is whole genome sequencing
1 Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 2Clinical Microbiology and Public Health Laboratory, Public
Health England, Cambridge, UK 3Cambridge University Hospitals National Health Service Foundation Trust, Cambridge, UK
4Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK (Claudio, “Whole-genome sequencing to control
antimicrobial resistance,” Cell Press, 2014, Elsevier, Accessed April 8, 2015, http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0168952514001140/1-s2.0S0168952514001140-main.pdf?_tid=b6aec3dc-def8-11e4-9b5b00000aab0f6c&acdnat=1428612232_7e13b78f2121498282f37bd79b933b98)//AD
WGS has become an essential tool for drug development by enabling the rapid identification of
resistance mechanisms, particularly in the context of tuberculosis (TB), which remains a global public health
emergency [15,16]. In 2005 the first published use of 454 pyrosequencing (the first second-generation WGS technology) was to identify the F0
subunit ofthe ATP synthase as the target of bedaquiline, which subsequently became the first representative of a novel class of anti-TB agents
to be approved in 40 years [16,17]. This has enabled researchers to sequence this gene in phylogenetically diverse reference
collections to ensure thatitis conserved across Mycobacterium canettii as well as the various lineages and species that comprise the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex
This represents an important step because drug candidates are usually only
tested against a small number of isolates during the early phases of drug development. Similarly, only a limited number of MTBC genotypes are
sampled in clinical trials, depending on where these are conducted [19]. As a result, intrinsically resistant strains might be missed,
ashas been the case forPA-824, ananti-TB agent in Phase III trials [19–21]. The early elucidation of resistance mechanisms using
WGS also has implications for the design of clinical trials. If resistance mechanisms are
discovered that only result in marginally increased minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) compared with the wild type MIC distributions, more frequent
(MTBC), the causative agents ofTB[18].
dosing or higher doses could be employed in clinical trials to overcome this level of resistance. Moreover, the
discovery of cross-resistance between agents using WGS can influence the choice of antibiotics
that are included in novel regimens. TB is always treated with multiple antibiotics to minimise the chance of treatment failure as a result of the
emergence of resistance during treatment [22]. Regimens that contain agents to which a single mutation confers cross-resistance should be avoided if these mutations arise
frequently in vivo. WGS has recently highlighted that this may be the case with three Phase II trial regimens that contain bedaquiline and clofazimine because the mutational
upregulation of an efflux pump confers cross-resistance to both drugs [23]. In addition to being a tool to design clinical trials, WGS has become an increasingly important tool
it is increasingly being used to distinguish exogenous reinfection from relapse of the primary infection, which
is crucial in assessing the efficacy of the drug or regimens under investigation [24,25]. Traditional epidemiological tools do not always
during clinical trials. Specifically,
provide the necessary resolution for this purpose. This is due to the fact that they only interrogate minute parts of the genome {e.g., multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of
WGS interrogates the complete (or near-complete) genetic
repertoire of an organism. Therefore, the resolution of WGS is only limited by the rate of evolution of the pathogen and will become the
gold standard for clinical trials of new antiTB agents and other infectious diseases associated with recurrent disease [27,28].
Pseudomonas aeruginosa analyses only 0.18% of the genome [26]}. By contrast,
Drug-resistant diseases cause extinction.
Davies 8—Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia
(Julian, “Resistance redux: Infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance and the future of mankind”, EMBO Rep. Jul 2008; 9(Suppl 1):
S18–S21, dml)
For many years, antibiotic-resistant
pathogens have been recognized as one of the main threats to
human survival, as some experts predict a return to the pre-antibiotic era. So far, national efforts to
exert strict control over the use of antibiotics have had limited success and it is not yet possible to achieve
worldwide concerted action to reduce the growing threat of multi-resistant pathogens: there are too many parties involved. Furthermore, the problem
has not yet really arrived on the radar screen of many physicians and clinicians, as antimicrobials still work most of the time—apart from the occasional
news headline that yet another nasty superbug has emerged in the local hospital. Legislating the use of antibiotics for non-therapeutic applications and
curtailing general public access to them is conceivable, but legislating the medical profession is an entirely different matter. In order to meet the
growing problem of antibiotic resistance among pathogens,
the discovery and development of new antibiotics
and alternative treatments for infectious diseases, together with tools for rapid diagnosis that will ensure effective and
appropriate use of existing antibiotics, are imperative. How the health services, pharmaceutical industry and
academia respond in the coming years will determine the future of treating infectious diseases. This
challenge is not to be underestimated: microbes are formidable adversaries and, despite our
best efforts, continue to exact a toll on the human race.
CASE Extensions
Cloud Computing Growing
Cloud Computing is on the rise, and is used in close to all companies.
Adam Gifford, 6-13-2015, "Rise of cloud computing liberates companies," New Zealand Herald,
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=11464358
Chief
information officers
who have spent years filling up their
data centres
are now
clearing out space
so they can do new things. That's the picture Jim Thompson, chief
. Data
centres, which are like fridges full of computers, have been changing physically anyway under
the effect of Moore's Law, which describes the steady rate at which silicon chips become
smaller, more powerful and cheaper.
That sets up the conversation for cloud computing, how to
move some application and tasks off site
. IT in the cloud is computing becoming a utility model, something you
can get in different ways
Banks want to be banks, airlines want to
be airlines. They don't want to be in the IT business, and they see the cloud as the answer to all
their problems. "You put it in the cloud and you only pay for what you want to use, you get the
elasticity you want.
engineer and vice-president for engineering and supply chain at technology vendor Unisys, brought to last week's ninth annual CIO Summit. He talked on the rise of the digital business and how that is transforming the data centre
"The fridges are getting smaller. They're more like wine cellars now," he says from his home base in Philadelphia. But while servers have got smaller, the average
enterprise has added more of them to host applications that talk to the web and mobile technology.
. The analogy Thompson uses is the early part of the industrial revolution, when factories would have their own power plants. "As the infrastructure
matured, big factories got out of the power generation business
. "Business and IT have wrestled with how to deliver technology to the enterprise.
" Thompson says it's putting even more pressure on IT departments to reduce costs. "Our friends at [analysis firm] Gartner say something like 25 per cent of IT costs have to come out by 2017, so a CIO looks at
how to deliver value to the enterprise, but also help innovate and grow and differentiate while taking costs out. "Most of these guys are also saying they are overwhelmed in one way or another, they have way more work than they can deal with." Budgets are fixed
or declining, expectations are rising, and new consumer technologies like phones and watches are demanding more of their time. "My car just told my phone I need an iWatch," jokes Thompson, but the new technology will be no joke for IT departments. Thompson
says as a rule of thumb two-thirds of spending on the data centre goes to run the operation at a steady state, 20 per cent goes towards growth and what's left must pay for any innovation in the business. The bulk of costs are in labour and software licensing. Jim
Thompson. Jim Thompson. "CIOs should look to minimise the number of vendors, maximise the licence coverage, optimise cost and as much as possible optimise staff, and use co-lo services or any kind of cloud you can. "They need to recognise where the business
differentials are,
what exactly is the secret sauce for business? Everything can go in the cloud
It's not just applications but storage and computing power that can be bought
the
else
." It's a bit like payroll, which
most organisations outsourced decades ago.
when
needed from disruptors like Amazon or Rackspace. It can be a solution or just raw assets to do testing and development. "You can't push everything into the cloud so you have to be disciplined about what you do and where," Thompson says. "You need to recognise
your differentiators, the places you want to innovate and grow. "How does IT shift its position in the enterprise from a passive supplier to a business enabler? I think there is a mindset shift that CIOs have to take in the way they operate their IT component. It
shouldn't be viewed as just a boiler in the basement that keeps the lights on. It should be used as it can be used to create differentiated business value. It's about recognising the rise of digitalisation in business." Every bit of new consumer technology influences the
way businesses have to respond. "Every business has an app now, things you never expected to produce an application for a phone now do and some are pretty worthwhile. That's what the customer expects whenever they make a transaction. "That is a stress on IT
and they need to shift the pedestrian stuff that is now consuming two-thirds of their assets. They need to take that the way of payroll. Get rid of that stuff and focus on what differentiates me and my business in the marketplace. How do I get in front of what
customers want and need?" Thompson, who has almost three decades with Unisys and holds technology patents in operating systems, storage and banking, looks back to the days when IBM and Unisys mainframes got eaten from the bottom because Intel produced
an inexpensive chip that ended up on the desktop. The days of needing big expensive computers on site doing a lot of processing are never coming back. As one of the longest surviving mainframe providers, Unisys stopped producing its own chips and now uses
Intel's X86 chip architecture. Thompson says having an enterprise standardise on an architecture like X86 makes sense. "You get agility by standardisation because as things ebb and flow, you have interchangeable parts.
IT and that is what enables use of the cloud.
That is the new
" " Provisioning with cloud resource means it can be throttled down when needed. Unisys' main hunting ground in New Zealand i s banks, the
health sector and government agencies.
Cloud Computing is currently experiencing rapid growth, and is forecasted to
continue this growth.
Roger Strukhoff, 2-4-2015, "The Global Rise of Cloud Computing »," Cloud Tweaks,
http://cloudtweaks.com/2015/02/global-rise-cloud-computing/
rapid growth of cloud computing,
Estimates
more than $2 trillion
spent worldwide in 2014 on enterprise IT growth
projections for cloud remain healthy
optimism in the air
it’s a good time to be optimistic not just in North America, but throughout
the world as a whole.
The Global Rise of Cloud Computing Despite the
the cloud still commands a small portion of overall enterprise IT spending.
percentage between 5% and 10% of the slightly
(not including telco)
, and there is
I’ve seen put the
. Yet
. A recent roundup of projections in Forbes paints the picture. Cloud-IT The Global Picture From our
studies at the Tau Institute for Global ICT studies, we believe
There are bright spots in every region, with countries such as Jordan, Latvia, Morocco, and the Philippines joining better-known places where IT is playing an increasing role in economic development.
Research we’ve been conducting for the past several years has produced a picture of how more than 100 nations throughout the world are progressing with their overall IT infrastructure, on a relative basis. We seek to find the nations that are doing the most with
the economic resources they have, and we issue several specific groups of rankings. Given robust underlying infrastructure, and reasonable socio-economic conditions, a
nation
should be set to
benefit from the
continuing growth of cloud computing
cloud computing benefit entire nations as well as single organizations
. Training & Education Are Key education-cloud An emphasis on operating expenses instead of capital expenditure, the ability to scale (and de-scale) quickly,
and provisioning in almost real-time are aspects of
that can
. There are
significant issues of data sovereignty and security entangled in distributed cloud infrastructures that cross international borders, to be sure. But inter-governmental organizations from the European Union (EU) to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
to the East African Community (EAC) and many more are stocked with serious-minded people working to address and solve the political issues so that the technology may flow and improve the lives of their people. There will be no flow without proper, specific
education and training. Although SaaS and PaaS can insulate end-users as well as developers from the tricky particulars of dealing with the underlying infrastructure, there is tremendous complexity—and opportunity—involved in designing, deploying, and
provisioning that infrastructure. The opportunity lies in training the people of the world in the languages, frameworks, platforms, and architectures that form cloud computing in the whole.
Link
Large scale surveillance activities by the United States harms the trust in cloud
computing industries
Nerijus Adomaitis, 11-7-2013, "U.S. spying harms cloud computing, Internet freedom: Wikipedia
founder," Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/net-us-wikipedia-spyingidUSBRE9A613A20131107
The United States' large-scale surveillance
harm the U.S. cloud computing
industry
U.S. eavesdropping
poses a threat to Internet freedoms
have a big impact on
the cloud computing industry as people are afraid to put data in the U.S.
alleged
of global communications networks will badly
, the founder of Wikipedia said on Thursday. Jimmy Wales, who launched the online encyclopaedia service 12 year ago, said the
Edward Snowden, also
, revealed by leaks from former U.S. intelligence contractor
by giving an excuse to oppressive regimes to introduce more censorship. "It's going to
, but it's also devastating for the kind of work I do," Wales told
reporters after speaking at an IT event in Norway. "If you are BMW, a car maker in Germany,... you probably are not that comfortable putting your data into the U.S. any more," said the former futures trader who is still a key player at Wikipedia, one of the most
Cloud computing
adopted by big companies
popular websites in the world.
is being
to cut costs and give flexibility to their IT departments
is an umbrella term for activities ranging from web-based email to business software that is run remotely via the Internet instead of on-site. It
and governments globally
. Snowden's leaks
revealing the reach and methods of U.S. surveillance have prompted angry calls for explanations from France to Brazil. Germany has been particularly annoyed by revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitored Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"EMBARRASSING" Wales said the revelations made it more difficult to convince oppressive regimes to respect basic freedoms and privacy as Wikipedia seeks to limit censorship of its content. "They (spying revelations) give the Chinese every excuse to be as bad as
they have been... It's really embarrassing," he said. "It's an enormous problem, an enormous danger." China and countries in the Middle Eas t have been most active in filtering Wikipedia content to restrict access to certain information, Wales said. He said Wikipedia
had no plan to introduce advertising. "If we need to do that to survive, we will do what's needed to survive, but we are not discussing that," he said. "Some places have to remain free of commerce... Wikipedia is a temple for the mind," Wales said. Wikip edia has
been financed through a non-profit foundation Wikimedia, which reported revenues of $38.4 million for the fiscal year 2011-2012, including $35.1 million in donations and contributions.
Reputation of Tech Companies, including cloud computing, are taking massive
hits to their customer relations & trust.
Edward Wyatt & Claire Cain Miller, 12-9-2013, "Tech Giants Issue Call for Limits on Government
Surveillance of Users," New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/technology/tech-giants-issue-call-for-limits-ongovernment-surveillance-of-users.html?pagewanted=all
prominent technology companies, bruised by revelations of government spying on their
customers’ data and scrambling to repair the damage to their reputations, are mounting a public campaign to urge
President Obama and Congress to set new limits on government surveillance. Executive Appeal Executives from
prominent technology companies called for greater limits on government surveillance of their
users. Reports about government surveillance have shown there is a real need for greater disclosure and new limits on how
governments collect information. The U.S. government should take this opportunity to lead this reform effort and make things right. —Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Source:
Eight
Reformgovernmentsurveillance.com Bits More Tech Coverage News from the technology industry, including start-ups, the Internet, enterprise and gadgets. On Twitter: @nytimesbits. Enlarge This Image Justin
Google, called for reform of security laws worldwide, saying, “We urge the U.S.
government to lead the way.” On Monday the companies, led by Google and Microsoft, presented a plan
to regulate online spying and urged the United States to lead a worldwide effort to restrict it. They
Sullivan/Getty Images Larry Page, chief of
accompanied it with an open letter, in the form of full-page ads in national newspapers, including The New York Times, and a website detailing their concerns. It is the broadest and strongest effort by the
companies, often archrivals, to speak with one voice to pressure the government. The tech industry, whose billionaire founders and executives are highly sought as political donors, forms a powerful interest group
that is increasingly flexing its muscle in Washington. “It’s now in their business and economic interest to protect their users’ privacy and to aggressively push for changes,” said Trevor Timm, an activist at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The N.S.A. mass-surveillance programs exist for a simple reason: cooperation with the tech and telecom companies. If the tech companies no longer want to cooperate, they have a
lot of leverage to force significant reform.” The political push by the technology companies opens a third front in their battle against government surveillance, which has escalated with
recent
revelations about government spying without the companies’ knowledge. The companies have also been making technical
changes to try to thwart spying and have been waging a public-relations campaign to convince users that they are protecting their privacy. “People won’t use technology
they don’t trust,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said in a statement. “Governments have put this trust at risk, and governments need to
help restore it.” Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, AOL and LinkedIn joined Google and Microsoft in saying that they believed in governments’ right to protect their citizens. But, they said, the spying revelations
that began last summer with leaks of National Security Agency materials by Edward J. Snowden showed that “the balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the
individual.” The Obama administration has already begun a review of N.S.A. procedures in reaction to public outrage. The results of that review could be presented to the White House as soon as this week.
“Having done an independent review and brought in a whole bunch of folks — civil libertarians and lawyers and others — to examine what’s being done, I’ll be proposing some self-restraint on the N.S.A., and you
know, to initiate some reforms that can give people more confidence,” Mr. Obama said Thursday on the MSNBC program “Hardball.” While the
Internet companies fight to
maintain authority over their customers’ data, their business models depend on collecting the same information that the spy agencies want, and they have
long cooperated with the government to some extent by handing over data in response to legal requests. The new principles outlined by the companies contain little information and few promises about their own
practices, which privacy advocates say contribute to the government’s desire to tap into the companies’ data systems. “The companies are placing their users at risk by collecting and retaining so much
information,” said Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization. “As long as this much personal data is collected
and kept by these companies, they are always going to be the target of government collection efforts.” For instance, Internet companies store email messages, search queries, payment details and other personal
Each disclosure risks alienating
users, and foreign governments are considering laws that would discourage their citizens from
using services from American Internet companies. The cloud computing industry could lose $180
billion, or a quarter of its revenue, by 2016, according to Forrester Research. Telecom companies, which were not included in the proposal to Congress, have had a closer working relationship with
information to provide online services and show personalized ads. They are trying to blunt the spying revelations’ effects on their businesses.
the government than the Internet companies, such as longstanding partnerships to hand over customer information. While the Internet companies have published so-called transparency reports about
government requests, for example, the telecoms have not. “For the phone companies,” said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia studying the Internet and the law, “help with federal spying is a longstanding tradition
with roots in the Cold War. It’s another area where there’s a split between old tech and new tech — the latter taking a much more libertarian position.” The new surveillance principles, the Internet companies
said, should include limiting governments’ authority to collect users’ information, setting up a legal system of oversight and accountability for that authority, allowing the companies to publish the number and
nature of the demands for data, ensuring that users’ online data can be stored in different countries and establishing a framework to govern data requests between countries. In a statement, Larry Page, Google’s
co-founder and chief executive, criticized governments for the “apparent wholesale collection of data, in secret and without independent oversight.” He added, “It’s time for reform and we urge the U.S.
government to lead the way.” In their open letter, the companies maintain they are fighting for their customers’ privacy. “We are focused on keeping users’ data secure,” the letter said, “deploying the latest
encryption technology to prevent unauthorized surveillance on our networks, and by pushing back on government requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope.” The global principles outlined by
the companies make no specific mention of any country and call on “the world’s governments to address the practices and laws regulating government surveillance of individuals and access to their information.”
But the open letter to American officials specifically cites the United States Constitution as the guidepost for new restrictions on government surveillance. Chief among the companies’ proposals is a demand to
write “sensible limitations” on the ability of government agencies to compel Internet companies to disclose user data, forbidding the wholesale vacuuming of user information. “Governments should limit
surveillance to specific known users for lawful purposes, and should not undertake bulk data collection of Internet communications,” the companies said.
Digital surveillance hurts the cloud computing industry
Kuehner-Hebert ’15 [Katie, is a freelance writer based in California. She has
more than two decades of journalism experience and expertise in financial
writing, “U.S. Digital Surveillance Hurting Tech Sector”, June 10, 2015]
The economic impact of digital surveillance practices on the U.S. technology sector will likely far
exceed $35 billion as the government continues to fail to strengthen information security, a coalition of
tech companies warn in a new report. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, funded by Intel, Microsoft, and others, estimated in 2013 that even a modest drop in
the expected foreign market share caused by concerns about U.S. surveillance could cost
domestic cloud computing companies between $21.5 billion and $35 billion by 2016. “Since
then, it has become clear that the U.S. tech industry as a whole, not just the cloud computing
sector, has underperformed as a result” of the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, ITIF said in a report released Tuesday.
“Therefore, the economic impact of U.S. surveillance practices will likely far exceed ITIF’s initial
$35 billion estimate,” it concluded. The report faults U.S. lawmakers for fanning “the flames of discontent by championing weak information security practices.” Other countries are now
implementing protectionist policies specifically targeting information technology, using anger over U.S. government surveillance as a cover, ITIF contends. “The combined result is a
set of policies both at home and abroad that sacrifices robust competitiveness of the U.S. tech
sector for vague and unconvincing promises of improved national security,” the group wrote.
Fusion Centers, using a technology known as SAS Memex, collects and manages
data taken from private businesses.
Beau Hodai, 6-26-2015, "The Homeland Security Apparatus: Fusion Centers, Data Mining and
Private Sector Partners," PR Watch, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12122/homelandsecurity-apparatus-fusion-centers-data-mining-and-private-sector-partner
None of this activity-- let alone the bulk of Dowhan's use of social media and other means in the tracking of activists-- falls under Harrison's definition of appropriate, public safety-related, activist social media monitoring. Nevertheless, records obtained by DBA/CMD
show that Dowhan's, and ACTIC's, ability to troll Internet social media for "open source intelligence" took a massive leap forward in mid 2012. According to records obtained from AZDOHS, PPD expended $606,890.35 out of the $1,016,897 "ACTIC Intelligence Analyst
Project" SHGP funding in the purchase and installation of intelligence/investigation management software. According to AZDOHS Assistant Director of Planning and Preparedness Lisa Hansen, this funding was used to purchase a SAS Memex Intelligence Center
module. Records obtained by DBA/CMD reference this system as being an "SAS Fusion Center Solution" (which is described as including an "SAS Confidential Informant Management Module"). According to these records, PPDHDB likely commenced installation of this
analytical software
provide intelligence management and
acquisition services to
fusion centers
Memex
products are described as being software and hardware products utilized in the collection and
management of intelligence data
private businesses
system provides automated intelligence collection and
system in ACTIC in July of 2012.
The SAS Memex Intelligence Center is
produced by the North Carolina-based
firm SAS Institute, Inc., which
purchased United Kingdom-based "intelligence management solutions" software developer Memex in June of 2010. SAS/Memex purports to
more than one dozen
. According to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records associated with SAS/Memex technologies,
by military, law enforcement and
SAS Memex Intelligence Center (or "SAS Fusion Center Solution") is vague at best, it is clear that the
. Map of fusion centersWhile available information relating to the specific functions of the
collation services
to intelligence analysts by combining (or "fusing") data gleaned from both "open source" intelligence streams and traditional intelligence sources (such as confidential informants), along with information contained in
state databases (such as criminal and motor vehicle licensing/registration records), into "actionable intelligence."
Through so called “public-private” partnerships, forced through legislative
actions and executive orders, Fusion Centers ‘partner’ with private corporations
to constantly monitor their information.
Beau Hodai, 6-26-2015, "The Homeland Security Apparatus: Fusion Centers, Data Mining and
Private Sector Partners," PR Watch, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12122/homelandsecurity-apparatus-fusion-centers-data-mining-and-private-sector-partner
mandated through a series of federal legislative actions and presidential executive
orders, fusion centers
work
with private corporations with the
stated aim of protecting items deemed to be "critical infrastructure/key resources" from "all
hazards/all crimes."
Homeland Security Presidential
Directive 7
calling for "critical infrastructure identification, prioritization and protection."
protection of "critical infrastructure" through public-private partnerships
Furthermore, as has been
(and the "counter terrorism" entities that they are comprised of)
-- in ever closer proximity--
,
Public-Private Intelligence Sharing Partnerships On December 17, 2003, then-President W. Bush issued
(HSPD-7),
HSPD-7
reinforced two previously introduced directives: the
(as called
for through a section of the "U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001" entitled "Critical Infrastructure Act of 2001"), and the assessment and protection of "key resources" by U.S. DHS (as called for through the "Homeland Security Act of 2002"). As defined by the "U.S.A. Patriot Act
of 2001," items of "critical infrastructure" are defined as: "systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic
security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters." As defined by the "Homeland Security Act of 2002," "key resources" are defined as: "publicly or privately controlled resources essential to the minimal operations of the economy and
government." As stated in HSPD-7, it is a matter of national policy to protect the nation's critical infrastructure and key resources from "terrorist acts" that could-- in addition to causing general disruption of services, national governmental/economic collapse and
loss of life-- "undermine the public's morale and confidence in our national economic and political institutions." As such, Bush mandated that U.S. DHS, and other federal agencies, would work closely with members of the private sector, along with state and local
governments, in an array of initiatives intended to identify and prioritize the protection of "critical infrastructure and key resources." An example of such prioritization resultant from HSPD-7 is the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), a plan issued by U.S.
DHS that relies heavily on public-private intelligence sharing partnerships. NIPP is also used as a metric in determining amounts of U.S. DHS funding to certain public-private intelligence sharing partnerships active in fusion centers nationwide.
The Economic Impact to the Tech Sector, and specifically Cloud Computing
companies, expects to greatly exceed $35 billion by 2016, due to bulk
surveillance.
Katie Kuehner-Hebert, 6-10-2015, "U.S. Digital Surveillance Hurts Tech Sector," CFO,
http://ww2.cfo.com/information-security-risk-management/2015/06/u-s-digital-surveillancehurting-tech-sector/
he economic impact of digital surveillance practices on the U.S. technology sector
far exceed
$35 billion
coalition of tech companies
estimated in 2013
cost domestic cloud
computing companies between $21.5 billion and $35 billion by 2016. “Since then, it has become
clear that the U.S. tech industry as a whole, not just the cloud computing sector, has
underperformed as a result”
the economic
impact of U.S. surveillance practices will likely far exceed ITIF’s initial $35 billion estimate,
T
will likely
as the government continues to fail to strengthen information security, a
by Intel, Microsoft, and others,
warn in a new report. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, funded
that even a modest drop in the expected foreign market share caused by concerns about U.S. surveillance could
of the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, ITIF said in a report released Tuesday. “Therefore,
” it concluded. The
report faults U.S. lawmakers for fanning “the flames of discontent by championing weak information security practices.” Other countries are now implementing protectionist policies specifically targeting information technology, using anger over U.S. government
surveillance as a cover, ITIF contends. “The combined result is a set of policies both at home and abroad that sacrifices robust competitiveness of the U.S. tech sector for vague and unconvincing promises of improved national security,” the group wrote. According to
The Wall Street Journal, Snowden’s revelations have led to “a marketing bonanza for European software and service providers looking to compete with hard-charging U.S. rivals” such as Amazon and Microsoft. “We’ve opened floodgates to huge loss because we
haven’t changed anything about U.S. surveillance policy,” Daniel Castro, vice president of ITIF, told the WSJ. ITIF recommends, among other things, that U.S. policymakers increase transparency about U.S. surveillance activities both at home and abroad, strengthen
information security by opposing any government efforts to weaken encryption, and work to establish international legal standards for government access to data. “When historians write about this period in U.S. history it could very well be that one of the themes
will be how the United States lost its global technology leadership to other nations,” the report warns.
Warming Ext.
Impacts
Even 1% risk of our impact means you vote affirmative – the impacts are
already accelerating
Strom 7, Prof. Emeritus Planetary Sciences @ U. Arizona and Former Dir. Space Imagery Center
of NASA (Robert, , “Hot House: Global Climate Change and the Human Condition”, Online:
SpringerLink, p. 246)
Keep in mind that the current consequences of global warming discussed in previous chapters are the result of a global
average temperature increase of only 0.5 'C above the 1951-1980 average, and these consequences are beginning to
accelerate. Think about what is in store for us when the average global temperature is 1 °C higher than today. That is already in
the pipeline, and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. We can only plan strategies for dealing with the expected consequences,
and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by about 60% as soon as possible to ensure that we don't experience even higher
temperatures. There
is also the danger of eventually triggering an abrupt climate change that
would accelerate global warming to a catastrophic level in a short period of time. If that were
to happen we would not stand a chance. Even if that possibility had only a 1% chance of
occurring, the consequences are so dire that it would be insane not to act. Clearly we cannot afford to
delay taking action by waiting for additional research to more clearly define what awaits us. The time for action is now.
Solvency
Growth will radically increase adaptive capacity - their studies discount it produces huge over-estimates of warming impacts
Goklany 11 [Indur M. , science and technology policy analyst and Assistant Director of PROGRAMS
, Science and Technology
Policy for the United States Department of the Interior; was associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change off and
on for 20 years as an author, expert reviewer and U.S. delegate, December 2011, "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and
others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,"
online:http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf]
In other words, the
countries that are today poorer will be extremely wealthy (by today’s standards)
and their adaptive capacity should be correspondingly higher. Indeed, their adaptive capacity should on average far
exceed the U.S.’s today. So, although claims that poorer countries will be unable to cope with
future climate change may have been true for the world of 1990 (the base year), they are simply
inconsistent with the assumptions built into the IPCC scenarios and the Stern Review’s own (exaggerated)
analysis.¶ If the world of 2100 is as rich—and warm—as the more extreme scenarios suppose, the
problems of poverty that warming would exacerbate (i.e. low agricultural productivity, hunger, malnutrition,
malaria and other vector-borne diseases) ought to be reduced, if not eliminated, by 2100. Research shows that deaths
from malaria and other vector-borne diseases is “cut down to insignificant numbers” when a society’s annual per capita income
reaches about $3,100. 23 Therefore, even under the poorest scenario (A2), developing countries should be free of malaria well
before 2100, even assuming no technological change in the interim. ¶ Similarly, if the average net GDP per capita in 2100 for
developing countries is between $10,000 and $62,000, and technologies become more cost-effective as they have been doing over
the past several centuries, then their farmers would
be able to afford technologies that are unaffordable
today (e.g., precision agriculture) as well as new technologies that should come on line by then (e.g., droughtresistant seeds). 24 But, since impact assessments generally fail to fully account for increases in economic
development and technological change, they substantially overestimate future net damages
from global warming.
Their studies don’t assume accelerating technological change as a result of
growth—-that artificially inflates their impact
Goklany 11 [Indur M. , science and technology policy analyst and Assistant Director of PROGRAMS
, Science and Technology
Policy for the United States Department of the Interior; was associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change off and
on for 20 years as an author, expert reviewer and U.S. delegate, December 2011, "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and
others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,"
online:http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf]
The second major reason why future adaptive capacity has been underestimated (and the impacts of
global warming systematically overestimated) is that few impact studies consider secular
technological change. 25 Most assume that no new technologies will come on line, although some do
assume greater adoption of existing technologies with higher GDP per capita and, much less frequently, a modest generic
improvement in productivity. 26 Such an assumption may have been appropriate during the Medieval Warm Period, when the pace
of technological change was slow, but nowadays technological change is fast (as indicated in Figures 1 through 5) and,
arguably, accelerating. 27 It
is unlikely that we will see a halt to technological change unless so-called
precautionary policies are instituted that count the costs of technology but ignore its benefits, as
some governments have already done for genetically modified crops and various pesticides.28
This means their evidence vastly overestimate the impacts of warming
Goklany 11 [Indur M. , science and technology policy analyst and Assistant Director of PROGRAMS, Science and Technology
Policy for the United States Department of the Interior; was associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change off and
on for 20 years as an author, expert reviewer and U.S. delegate, December 2011, "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and
others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,"
online:http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf]
**We disagree with the author’s use of gendered language
So how
much of a difference in impact would consideration of both economic development and
technological change have made? If impacts were to be estimated for five or so years into the future, ignoring changes
in adaptive capacity between now and then probably would not be fatal because neither economic development nor technological
change would likely advance substantially during that period. However, the
time horizon of climate change impact
assessments is often on the order of 35–100 years or more. The Fast Track Assessments use a base year of 1990 to
estimate impacts for 2025, 2055 and 2085. 39 The Stern Review’s time horizon extends to 2100– 2200 and beyond. 40 Over such
periods one ought to expect substantial advances in adaptive capacity due to increases in economic
development, technological change and human capital. As already noted, retrospective assessments
indicate that over the span of a few decades, changes in economic development and technologies can
substantially reduce, if not eliminate, adverse environmental impacts and improve human well-being,
as measured by a variety of objective indicators. 41 Thus, not fully accounting for changes in the level of
economic development and secular technological change would understate future adaptive
capacity, which then could overstate impacts by one or more orders of magnitude if the time horizon is
several decades into the future.
Growth means even the poorest countries can successfully adapt to the IPCC’s
warmest scenario
Goklany 11 [Indur M. , science and technology policy analyst and Assistant Director of PROGRAMS
, Science and Technology
Policy for the United States Department of the Interior; was associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change off and
on for 20 years as an author, expert reviewer and U.S. delegate, December 2011, "Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and
others) Exaggerate the Impacts of Global Warming,"
online:http://goklany.org/library/Reason20CC20and20Development202011.pdf]
**We disagree with the author’s use of gendered language
It is often argued that unless greenhouse gases are reduced forthwith, the resulting GW could have severe,
if not catastrophic, consequences for people in poor countries because they lack the economic and human
resources to cope with GW’s consequences. But there are two major problems with this argument. First,
although poor countries’ adaptive capacity is low today, it does not follow that their ability to cope
will be low forever. In fact, under the IPCC’s warmest scenario, which would increase globally averaged temperature
by 4°C relative to 1990, net GDP per capita in poor countries (that is, after accounting for losses due to climate change
per the Stern Review’s exaggerated estimates) will be double the U.S.’s 2006 level in 2100, and triple that in 2200.
Thus developing countries should in the future be able to cope with climate change substantially better
than the U.S. does today. But these advances in adaptive capacity, which are virtually ignored by most
assessments of the impacts and damages from global warming, are the inevitable consequence of the
assumptions built into the IPCC’s emissions scenarios.¶ Hence the notion that countries that are
currently poor will be unable to cope with GW does not square with the basic assumptions that
underpin the magnitude of emissions, global warming and its projected impacts under the IPCC
scenarios.
Disease Ext.
Impacts
We are entering an era of global diseases that will kill humans and destroy
biodiversity
Kock 13 – R. A. Kock of the Department of Pathology and Pathobiology, Royal Veterinary
College, Hawkshead Lane Hatfield, UK (23 October 2013, "Will the damage be done before we
feel the heat? Infectious disease emergence,” Cambridge University Press 2013 Animal Health
Research Reviews 14(2); 127–132, ISSN 1466-2523, doi:10.1017/S1466252313000108, ADL)
This initial progress in resolving age-old infectious disease problems might well turn out to be a false dawn. If we take a broader view on disease at the ecosystem level, rather than human infection alone, the
There are a growing number of diseases at the interface between humans,
animals and the environment (including plants), which are having a significant impact on human wellbeing, mostly through food systems. For example, the USA has suffered a series of highly significant and costly disease epidemics in the last decade West Nile Virus (WNV) in New York
situation is not looking so promising.
City, which subsequently spread to all 48 States of the continental USA, caused mortalities and sickness in a wide range of domestic animals, wild birds and people (Kilpatrick, 2011). Although the costs are still
showed how rapidly such disease events can occur and there was nothing that could
be done to stop the epidemic. This was followed shortly after by another epidemic disease coined ‘white nose syndrome’ affecting bats (Blehert et al., 2009). This is caused by a
being calculated, WNV
fungus Geomyces destructans, most probably introduced by travelers and cavers (Warnecke et al., 2012), which, to date, has killed an estimated 6.5 million bats. The consequences are a conservation crisis and a
a global insidious
spread of a fungal disease of amphibians is resulting in an unexpected and ‘premature’ extinction crisis, long before
multi-billion dollar cost to the agricultural industry from lost predation on agricultural pests, a significant ecosystem service provided by bats (Boyles et al., 2011). Similarly,
the planet heats up (Berger et al., 1998; Rosenblum et al., 2010). Over a third of amphibian species are expected to disappear in the coming years but these extinctions are not only a result of this disease (Heard et
These taxa have provided significant unappreciated benefits to humanity through the
control of mosquitos and other vectors of serious infectious diseases. Moreover, if this is not enough, there are numerous tree
al., 2011).
diseases that are spreading globally, some fungal and others insect-based, which are devastating woodlands and individual tree species populations in North America and Europe with wide spread economic
the rapid increase in transportation networks and frequency of human and animal
movements by air and sea, a consequence of free market capitalism and globalization, has created a ‘perfect storm’ for infectious
disease emergence across ecosystems (Brown, 2004). It is rather like humans picking up Pandora’s box,
giving it a thorough shake, and then sending its contents to every corner of the earth. A
massive experiment in human-assisted pathogen evolution and spread, gives every advantage to
the microorganisms to gain access to immunologically naive hosts and for them to gain
dominance over larger organisms, the latter too sluggish in their ability to respond immunologically and adapt. This physical reassortment
and distribution of current pathogens alone could drive an era of plague and pestilence
affecting most biological taxa. Unfortunately the story does not stop here, human engineering
of landscapes and biological systems are associated with pathogen evolution and disease
emergence at the interface, but almost without exception the drivers are poorly researched (Jones et al., 2013). These events are not all new but we are only just
beginning to appreciate the extent of our influence on their occurrence. Wolfe et al., 2007 elegantly described how several
consequences. It seems
major human diseases, including smallpox, malaria, campylobacteriosis, rotavirus, measles, diphtheria, mumps, HIV-AIDS and influenza virus, are derived from our domestication of animals and/or harvesting of
wild animals over the millennia. These diseases became firmly established in humans, no longer driven or dependent on zoonotic cycles. This is on top of approximately 900 zoonotic infections recorded; of which
about 292 are significant pathogens, most associated with domestic animals but many originating from wildlife, sometimes directly (e.g. Ebola virus) (Cleaveland et al., 2001). It seems that this process is
The trend in zoonotic disease emergence
correlates with the expansion of domestic animal populations in parallel to that of human
growth. This has fundamentally altered the epidemiological environment. Paradoxically, increasing animal production for
human use, through industrialization of crop and animal agriculture, has resulted in an increasing opportunity for pathogen evolution
(Arzt et al., 2010; Jones et al., 2013). These larger epidemiological units of plants and animals, with considerable homogeneity, when densely packed (ironically
for reasons of biosecurity and production efficiency) are perfect pathogen factories. The recent ‘bird flu’ panzootic is an example of this. The emergence of the atypical, highly
accelerating, with the majority (75%) of emerging human pathogens being zoonotic (Taylor et al., 2001).
pathogenic influenza virus H5N1 was coincident with a massive expansion of the duck and poultry industry in South East Asia. Water birds are natural hosts of avian influenza viruses and are highly tolerant of
infection (Alexander, 2007). However, the growth in domestic duck farms including exploitation of semidomestic ducks in close proximity to both wild bird populations and densely packed chicken farms, created
an opportunity for the rapid evolution of this highly virulent strain of avian influenza, its amplification and spread. H5N1 was first isolated in 1997 (Xu et al., 1999) with epidemics recorded in Hong Kong in 1998
and with a significant wild bird epidemic between 2005 and 2007 (Chen et al., 2006). The infection spread rapidly across Eurasia between poultry systems and as far as Egypt (Abdelwhab and Hafez, 2011) and
Nigeria (Newman et al., 2008). Wild bird cases reported appear to be mostly during epidemics or spillover cases from poultry epidemics (Feare and Yasue´, 2006; Lebarbenchon et al., 2010; Soliman et al., 2012),
and wild bird epidemics appear to have been largely independent of domestic bird disease. The infections burned out in wildlife with no evidence of a long-term reservoir and only rare cases based on
circumstantial evidence of spillover from wild birds to poultry (Hars et al., 2008), predators (Desvaux et al., 2009; Globig et al., 2009) and humans (bird hunters) (Newman et al., 2008).
fear has been that should this virus, which rarely infects humans, evolve into a form that is highly
The great
transmissible among humans, it will then cause a severe pandemic. Whilst the immediate threat has subsided, with apparent resilience
in the wild bird populations to H5N1 increasing (Siembieda et al., 2010) and with mass vaccination and slaughter of poultry providing temporary relief, endemic foci in domestic birds still persist. This strain of virus
has been recently joined by a new, more sinister low pathogenic strain (in poultry) of H7N9, which is lethal in humans and can be transmitted more readily between humans than was the case with H5N1. The main
reason for failure to stop the emergence of these diseases is the continued expansion of agroecological systems and industry, which cause the problem in the first place. It is not always necessary to have a farm
for these spillover events, other concentrations of mixed animal species in e.g. food markets has led to emergence, exemplified by the SARS epidemic. Here a bat virus was involved, most probably spilling into a
market and replicating in (probably) a number of species, adapting and amplifying until it was established in humans and an epidemic ensued. Globally, the virus infected approximately 8000 people and caused
several hundred deaths. The remarkable fact is that this pathogen jump probably only took a period of 2–3 years (Wang et al., 2005; Zhao, 2007; Tang et al., 2009). Another important driver of disease at the
interface has been changing landscapes, with increasing incursion into and modification of diverse habitats for settlement and exploitation of resources. An example is the creation of new vector niche habitats,
mostly through urban development (Globig et al., 2009) enabling persistence and emergence of significant problems e.g. dengue fever virus; once only found in primates (Mackenzie et al., 2004). HIV is the most
famous example, where frequent spillover of SIV to humans through their exploitation of chimpanzee and gorilla for food, resulted in the establishment of human infection and adaptation of the virus (Gao et al.,
1999). However, it was not until road networks were put into the Congo basin that the epidemic really took hold. There were probably a series of stuttering epidemics until the virus entered the urban
environment and then the world. It is sobering to note that the African mortality statistics (WHO, 2012) indicate that, far from following the pattern in the Western world, the life expectancy from birth in two of
the richest nations, South Africa and Botswana, has significantly decreased between 1990 and 2010; and this was from the impact of only one emerging disease, HIV–AIDS.
What if we have
ten novel diseases occurring simultaneously?
Disease has played a role in every state collapse in history – pandemics go
nuclear
Morris, professor of history at Stanford University, 3/22/2013
(Ian, “The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations,”
Carnegie Council, Lexis)
When we look back at history
This is always in the mix
previously separate disease pools merge Epidemic diseases
lead to state failure Governments cannot cope with catastrophe on this scale The collapse of
the governments tends to breakdown in
trade
There are several periods when we get discontinuities, when we get collapses in social development scores. You can see several very clear examples on this graph.
the
when we get these great collapses in social development, every time we see the same five forces involved: Mass migrations that the societies of the day cannot cope with.
lead to huge epidemic diseases, as
get
of what happens
. The mass migrations often
d.
regularly killing half the population, it would seem, tend to
.
.
lead to
long-distance
. Famines ensue, many, many more people die. And then, always there in the mix in some way, although it varies in
every case, is climate change. It always plays into this. Now, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you these are forces that plenty of people are talking about as threats we are facing in the early 21st century. It seems to me perfectly possible that the 21st century is
the 21st century might be a rerun of what has
happened many times before but with one big difference We now have nuclear weapons
if we stumble into a collapse
we should
expect
these being used It's quite possible the 21st century will see a disaster that
dwarfs anything we have seen
going to see another collapse of the kind we have seen so many times in the past. So in some ways it's possible
—
:
people didn't have. The Romans would have loved nuclear weapons. Luckily, they didn't have them. I think
seriously
there is a possibility of
, which ancient
do
on the scale that I'm talking about here,
.
that
earlier.
Pandemics cause global civil wars – regression analysis proves
Letendre, Fincher, Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico, and Thornhill,
Department of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, 2010
(Kenneth, Corey, and Randy, “Does infectious disease cause global variation in the frequency of
intrastate armed conflict and civil war?,” Biological Reviews, p. 669)
armed conflict and civil war is of great interest
We present the parasite-stress model of
intrastate conflict
by linking frequency of
civil war to the
intensity of infectious disease across countries
High intensity of infectious disease leads to
the emergence of xenophobic and ethnocentric cultural norms These cultures suffer greater
poverty and deprivation
Resource competition
among xenophobic and ethnocentric groups within a nation leads to increased frequency of civil
war
with regression analyses We find
a direct effect of infectious disease
on intrastate armed conflict and
the incidence of civil war
Geographic and cross-national variation in
the frequency of
intrastate
a subject
. Previous theory on this
variation has focused on the influence on human behaviour of climate, resource competition, national wealth, and cultural characteristics.
, which unites previous work on the correlates of intrastate conflict
the outbreak of such conflict, including
,
of the world.
.
due to the morbidity and mortality caused by disease, and as a result of decreased investment in public health and welfare.
. We present support for the parasite-stress model
.
,
support for
support for an indirect effect of infectious disease on
the entanglements of feedback of conflict into further reduced wealth and increased incidence of disease, and discuss implications for international warfare and global patterns of wealth and imperialism.
via its negative effect on national wealth. We consider
Those go nuclear
Shehadi, Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1993
(Kamal, Ethnic Self Determination And the Break Up of States, Dec 1993, p. 81)
self-determination conflicts have direct adverse consequences on international
security As they tear nuclear states apart the likelihood of nuclear weapons falling into
hands
willing to use them or trade them to others will reach frightening levels This
likelihood increases if a conflict over self-determination escalates into a war between two
nuclear states
Ethnic conflicts spread
within a state and from one state to the next
The conflict may also spread by contagion from one country to another
This paper has argued that
.
begin to
of individuals or groups
,
,
to
the
,
. The Russian Federation and Ukraine may fight over the Crimea and the Donbass area; and India and Pakistan may fight over Kashmir.
.
may also
both
. This can happen in countries where more than one ethnic self-determination conflict is brewing: Russia, India and Ethiopia, for example.
if the state is weak politically and militarily and cannot contain the
conflict on its doorstep. Lastly, there is a real danger that regional conflicts will erupt over national minorities and borders.
Disease Sub Scenario – Economic Decline
Drug Resistance costs the world 100 trillion USD and causes extreme suffering
The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, Chaired by Jim O’Neill, Economist, December 2014
The findings in this paper are based on two of the scenarios modeled by RAND¶ Europe and KPMG. Further details of
the two studies are set out in the box on the following page and the full papers are available on our website. ¶ The two
teams modeled an increase in AMR rates from where they are today, each using their own methodology, to
understand the impact this would have on the world population and its economic output. Both studies were
hampered by a lack of reliable data, in particular regarding bacterial infections, and as a consequence they most
likely underestimate the true cost of AMR.¶ The studies estimate that, under the scenarios described below,
300 million people are expected to die prematurely because of drug resistance over the next 35
years and the world’s GDP will be 2 to 3.5% lower than it otherwise would be in 2050.¶ This means
that between now and 2050 the world can expect to lose between¶ 60 and 100 trillion USD worth of
economic output if antimicrobial drug resistance is not tackled. This is equivalent to the loss of around
one year’s total global output over the period, and will create significant and widespread human
suffering.¶ Furthermore, in the nearer term we expect the world’s GDP to be 0.5% smaller by 2020 and
1.4% smaller by 2030 with more than 100 million people having died prematurely.¶ The two
studies also show a different economic impact for each of the drug resistant infections they considered. E. coli,
malaria and TB are the biggest drivers of the studies’ results. Malaria resistance leads to the greatest
numbers of fatalities, while E. coli is the largest detractor from GDP accounting for almost half the total economic
impact in RAND’s results. Because malaria and TB vary far more by region than E. coli in the studies, they are the
largest drivers of differences between countries and regions.
Poverty is the deadliest form of structural violence – it is equivalent to an
ongoing nuclear war.
Gilligan, ‘96 [James, Former Director of Mental Health for the Massachusetts Prison
System, Violence, p.]
every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as
would be killed in a nuclear that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three
times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi
genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unenending,
in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetuated on the weak and poor ever
year of every decade, throughout the world.
In other words,
Disease Sub Scenario – CRE
It’s everywhere
Reuters 2013 Reuters is a news organization that focuses on international news, “Doctors
warned to be vigilant for warn new deadly virus sweeping the globe from Middle East”, 3/8/13,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290033/Doctors-warned-vigilant-warn-new-deadlyvirus-sweeping-globe-Middle-East.html//OF
Warnings of the deadly virus come as the CDC
announced concerns over an increasing number of infections
from a 'nightmare bacteria' found in U.S. hospitals. Public health officials have warned that in a growing number
of cases existing antibiotics do not work against the superbug, Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae
(CRE). Patients became infected with the bacteria in nearly four per cent of US hospitals and in
almost 18 per cent of specialist medical facilities in the first half of 2012, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a statement that the strongest
antibiotics 'don't work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections.' He said
scientists were 'raising the alarm' over the problem following increasing concern. Increasing numbers
of patients in US hospitals have become infected with CRE, which kills up to half of patients who get bloodstream infections from
them, according to a new CDC report. Some of the more than
70 types of Enterobacteriaceae bacteria - including E-coli have become gradually resistant over a long period of time, even to so-called, 'last resort drugs'
called carbapenem. During the last 10 years, the percentage of Enterobacteriaceae that are resistant to
these last-ditch antibiotics rose by 400 percent. One type of CRE has increased by a factor of
seven over the last decade, Fox News reports. CRE infections usually affect patients being treated for serious conditions in
hospitals, long-term acute-care facilities and nursing homes. Many of these people will use catheters or ventilators as part of their
treatment - which are thought to be used by bacteria to enter deep into the patient's body.
And it decimates the global population
Adams 7/17 Mark Adams (Citing Doctors and the CDC) is a reporter for Naturalnews.com, an
online news source specializing in medicine and natural sciences, “Drug-resistant superbug
infections explode across U.S. hospitals: 500% increase foreshadows 'new plague' caused by
modern medicine”, 7/17/14, Natural News,
http://www.naturalnews.com/046041_CRE_superbugs_drugresistant_infections_modern_plague.html#//OF
(NaturalNews) Drug-resistant
superbug infections have reached near-epidemic levels across U.S.
hospitals, with an alarming 500% increase now documented in a study just published in the August issue of
Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology (the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America). (1) Lead author of
the study, Dr. Joshua Thaden, warned "This
dangerous bacteria is finding its way into healthcare facilities
nationwide... A CRE epidemic is fast approaching... Even this marked increase likely
underestimates the true scope of the problem given variations in hospital surveillance practices." The study also
found that an astonishing 94 percent of CRE infections were caused by healthcare activities or hospital procedures. CRE superbugs
explained CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae)
is an incredibly dangerous superbug causing nearly
a fifty percent fatality rate once a patient is infected. The World Health Organization calls it "one of the
three greatest threats to human health," and all known antibiotics are useless in treating it. CRE
arose out of the systematic abuse of antibiotics by doctors, who inadvertently created the perfect breeding ground for deadly
bacteria by using narrowly-targeted chemical medications that lack the kind of full-spectrum action found in nature (in herbs like
garlic, for example). Because of their highly-targeted chemical approach, antibiotics encouraged bacteria to develop molecular
defenses that resulted in widespread resistance to Big Pharma's drugs. The situation is so bad today that the
entire
pharmaceutical industry has no drug, no chemicals and no experimental medicines which can kill
CRE superbugs. Even worse, there are virtually no new antibiotics drugs in the research pipelines, either. Drug companies have
discovered that it's far more profitable to sell "lifestyle management" drugs like statin drugs and blood pressure drugs than to sell
antibiotics which treat acute infections. Antibiotics simply aren't very profitable because relatively few people acquire such
infections. Meanwhile, everyone can be convinced they might have high cholesterol and therefore need to take a statin drug for life.
Drug companies, in other words, have all but abandoned the industry of treating infections. Instead, they now primarily engage in
the promotion of disease symptoms while selling drugs that attempt to alter measurable markers of those symptoms such as
cholesterol numbers. Even though drug companies caused the superbug pandemic that's now upon us, in other words, they have
deliberately abandoned humanity in defending against those superbugs because it's simply not profitable to do so. The end of
antibiotics has arrived: Humanity
faces a new plague caused by modern medicine The CDC has admitted that we are now
living in a "post-antibiotics era." As Infection Control Today states, "Antibiotic resistance is no longer a prediction
for the future. It is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to
affect anyone." (2) Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, associate director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, went even further
in a PBS interview, stating: (3) We've reached the end of antibiotics, period... We're here. We're in the post-antibiotic era. There are
patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something
that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can't. Keep in mind that doctors refuse to use natural substances to
treat infections, which is why they believe no defenses against superbugs exist. Their indoctrination into the world of
pharmaceuticals is so deeply embedded in their minds, in other words, that they cannot even conceive of the idea that an herb, a
food or something from Mother Nature might provide the answer to superbugs. See this Natural News article on natural antibiotics
that kill superbugs. The list includes honey. Hospitals are the perfect breeding grounds for superbugs By their very design, hospitals
are prefect breeding grounds for superbugs for six very important reasons: 1) They put all the infected people under one roof,
creating a high density infectious environment. 2) They allow doctors and medical staff to quickly and easily carry and transmit
infectious diseases to new patients. Previous studies have documented how superbugs easily ride on doctors' ties, for example, or
their mobile phones. 3) Medical staff still don't wash their hands as frequently as they should. The intense time demands placed on
them discourage careful hand washing, causing many to skip this crucial step between patient visits. 4) Hospitals almost universally
refuse to use broad-spectrum antibacterial remedies which are not drugs. Natural substances like honey and garlic show
extraordinary multi-faceted antibacterial properties, as do certain metals such as silver and copper. Yet because these substances
are not developed by pharmaceutical companies which dominate the field of medical practice, they are simply ignored even though
they could save many lives. (And a doctor who prescribes "honey" doesn't sound as amazing and all-knowing as a doctor who
prescribes "the latest, greatest laboratory breakthrough patented chemical medication.") 5) Hospital practices suppress human
immune function to the point of systemic failure. Rather than boosting immune function, conventional medical treatments such as
antibiotics and chemotherapy cause immune system failure. Hospitals lack sunlight and hospital food lacks key immune-boosting
minerals such as zinc and selenium. On top of that, most of the drugs prescribed to patients by hospitals deplete key nutrients
required for healthy immune function, leaving patients even more susceptible to superbug infections. 6) Hospital staff spread
infectious diseases to their private homes. After acquiring an infection at work (at the hospital), staffers easily spread those
infections to their own family members at home. The antibiotics plague is upon us We
are right now living through the
early stages of a global plague caused by modern medicine. The industry that created this plague is utterly
defenseless against it, leaving humanity to fight for survival in a world that's now far more dangerous than the one that
existed before the invention of antibiotics. Antibiotics have indeed saved millions of lives, and they forever have an important place
in any medical practice. Yet their careless use -- combined with medicine's willful and foolish abandonment of natural antibiotics
that work far better -- has led humanity down the path of its own destruction. Today, a
simple scrape of your arm or leg
might now be fatal. Infections that occur during routine medical procedures which would have once been considered minor
issues are now deadly. And the worst part is that the bacteria continue to evolve more elaborate defenses
against drugs while increasing their transmissibility. Human hospitals (and entire cities) are, by
design, ideal pandemic hubs that rapidly spread disease. Like it or not, humanity has created the perfect
storm for a pandemic decimation of the global population.
AT: Off-Case
AT: Politics
2AC – Fusion Centers Unpopular
Congressional leaders are strongly opposed to fusion centers and acknowledge
their misuse of funds and violation of civil liberties
PrivacySOS ’14 [November 18, 2014, “So-called 'counterterror' fusion center in
Massachusetts monitored Black Lives Matter protesters”,
https://www.privacysos.org/node/1603]
There are nearly 100 fusion centers nationwide, and two in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth Fusion Center in Maynard is run by
the Massachusetts State Police. The Boston Regional Intelligence Center, also known as the ‘BRIC’, is located at Boston Police
Department headquarters in Roxbury and run by the BPD. Both fusion
centers were established with funds from the
heavily on federal ‘counterterrorism’ grants. Fusion centers
have long come under fire from congressional leaders and democracy advocates as being largely
wasteful, duplicative of other local/federal counterterrorism efforts, and violative of civil rights and civil liberties. In
Boston, the ACLU disclosed internal ‘intelligence files’ showing that BRIC officials used their federally-funded
‘counterterrorism’ infrastructure to monitor peaceful protesters including Veterans for Peace
and CODEPINK, labeling them as domestic extremists and homeland security threats. The Boston
fusion center even kept track of the political activities of Marty Walsh, currently the city’s mayor. Fusion
Department of Homeland Security, and rely
center officials in Pennsylvania got caught spying on anti-fracking activists, apparently in league with natural gas companies. An
Arkansas fusion center director told the press his spy office doesn’t monitor US citizens, just anti-government groups—however
that’s defined. Washington state fusion centers have insinuated that activism is terrorism. There are many, many other examples
nationwide of these so-called fusion centers getting caught red handed monitoring protest movements and dissidents, conflating
First Amendment protected speech with crime or terrorism. The fusion
centers, meanwhile, have never once
stopped a terrorist attack. It’s not clear what beyond monitoring dissidents and black people—
through so-called ‘gang’ databases—these fusion centers actually do. We here in Boston know one thing
for sure: they don’t stop terrorism.
Cutting Fusion Centers Has Bipartisan Support
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations ’12 [Investigative Report Criticizes
Counterterrorism Reporting, Waste at State & Local Intelligence Fusion Centers US SENATE,
October 3, 2012 http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/investigative-report-criticizescounterterrorism-reporting-waste-at-state-and-local-intelligence-fusion-centers]
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) –
A two-year bipartisan investigation by the U. S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations has found that Department of Homeland Security efforts to
engage state and local intelligence “fusion centers” has not yielded significant useful information to
support federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts. “It’s troubling that the very ‘fusion’ centers
that were designed to share information in a post-9/11 world have become part of the problem. Instead of
strengthening our counterterrorism efforts, they have too often wasted money and stepped on
Americans’ civil liberties,” said Senator Tom Coburn (R), the Subcommittee’s ranking member who initiated the
investigation. The investigation determined that senior DHS officials were aware of the problems hampering effective
counterterrorism work with the fusion centers, but did not always inform Congress of the issues, nor ensure the problems were
fixed in a timely manner. “Unfortunately, DHS
has resisted oversight of these centers. The Department
opted not to inform Congress or the public of serious problems plaguing its fusion center and
broader intelligence efforts. When this Subcommittee requested documents that would help it identify these issues, the
Department initially resisted turning them over, arguing that they were protected by privilege, too sensitive to share, were
protected by confidentiality agreements, or did not exist at all. The American people deserve better. I hope this report will help
generate the reforms that will help keep our country safe,” Dr. Coburn said. ”Fusion centers may provide valuable services in fields
other than terrorism, such as contributions to traditional criminal investigations, public safety, or disaster response and recovery
efforts,” said Senator Carl Levin (D), Subcommittee chairman. “This investigation focused on the federal return from investing in
state and local fusion centers, using the counterterrorism objectives established by law and DHS. The report recommends that
Congress clarify the purpose of fusion centers and link their funding to their performance.” The Department
of Homeland
Security estimates that it has spent somewhere between $289 million and $1.4 billion in public
funds to support state and local fusion centers since 2003, broad estimates that differ by over
$1 billion. The investigation raises questions about the value this amount of funding and the
nation’s more than 70 fusion centers are providing to federal counterterrorism efforts.
AT: Terror DA
2AC Fusion Centers Don’t Stop Terrorism
Fusion Centers Are Not Equipped To Stop the Next Major Terrorist Attack
Sosadmin ‘15 "So-called 'counterterror' Fusion Center in Massachusetts Monitored Black
Lives Matter Protesters." So-called 'counterterror' Fusion Center in Massachusetts Monitored
Black Lives Matter Protesters. N.p., 28 Nov. 2014. Web. 24 June 2015.
Law enforcement officials at the Department of Homeland Security-funded “Commonwealth Fusion Center” spied on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of Black Lives Matter protesters in Boston earlier this
week, the Boston Herald reports.¶ The reference to the so-called ‘fusion’ spy center comes at the very end of a news story quoting Boston protesters injured by police in Tuesday night’s demonstrations, which
was possibly the largest Ferguson related protest in the country the day after the non-indictment of Darren Wilson was announced.¶ The state police Commonwealth Fusion Center monitored social media, which
provided “critical intelligence about protesters’ plans to try to disrupt traffic on state highways,” state police said
. There are nearly 100 fusion centers
nationwide, and two in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth Fusion Center in Maynard is run by the Massachusetts State Police. The Boston Regional Intelligence
Center, also known as the ‘BRIC’, is located at Boston Police Department headquarters in Roxbury and run by the BPD. Both fusion centers were
established with funds from the Department of Homeland Security, and rely heavily on federal
‘counterterrorism’ grants.¶ Fusion centers have long come under fire from congressional leaders and democracy
advocates as being largely wasteful, duplicative of other local/federal counterterrorism efforts, and
violative of civil rights and civil liberties. In Boston, the ACLU disclosed internal ‘intelligence files’ showing that BRIC officials used their
federally-funded ‘counterterrorism’ infrastructure to monitor peaceful protesters including Veterans for Peace and CODEPINK, labeling them as domestic extremists and
Fusion center
officials in Pennsylvania got caught spying on anti-fracking activists, apparently in league with
natural gas companies. An Arkansas fusion center director told the press his spy office doesn’t
monitor US citizens, just anti-government groups—however that’s defined. Washington state
fusion centers have insinuated that activism is terrorism.¶ There are many, many other examples nationwide of these so-called
fusion centers getting caught red handed monitoring protest movements and dissidents, conflating First Amendment protected speech with crime or terrorism . The
fusion centers, meanwhile, have never once stopped a terrorist attack. It’s not clear what
beyond monitoring dissidents and black people—through so-called ‘gang’ databases—these
fusion centers actually do. We here in Boston know one thing for sure: they don’t stop terrorism.¶ Some
homeland security threats. The Boston fusion center even kept track of the political activities of Marty Walsh, currently the city’s mayor.
people might say that ‘counterterrorism’ analysts at the Commonwealth Fusion Center should be monitoring the tweets and Facebook posts of Black Lives Matter activists, if
those activists intend to shut down highways.¶ We can agree to disagree about that, but please don’t say these fusion centers are primarily dedicated to stopping terrorism
when they are doing things like this. Stopping traffic for a few hours is civil disobedience, not terrorism. A supposed anti-terrorism center has no business monitoring public
social media accounts looking for ‘intelligence’ about civic protest movements.
AT: Neoliberalism
Plan Solves It
The Data collection of fusion centers is used to prop up the private sector –
means we solve the link
Torin Monahan, Associate Professor of Human and Organizational Development and Medicine
at Vanderbilt University and member of the International Surveillance Studies Network, 2011
“The Future of Security? Surveillance Operations at Homeland Security Fusion Centers” Social
Justice Vol. 37, Nos. 2–3 (2010–2011)
Thus, there
is also a neoliberal dimension to fusion centers, in that they purchase¶ data from the
private sector, sometimes hire private data analysts, and share information¶ with industry partners (Monahan,
2009). By forming information-sharing¶ partnerships, analysts at fusion centers seek to “connect
the dots” to prevent future¶ terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, government officials are very interested in figuring¶
out ways in which DHS in general and fusion centers in particular can assist the¶ private sector, presumably
by enabling and protecting the ability of companies to¶ profit financially (Monahan, 2010). As DHS
Under Secretary Caryn Wagner stated¶ in her 2010 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Homeland
Security:¶ I&A [DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis] will continue to advocate¶ for sustained
funding for the fusion centers as the linchpin of the evolving¶ homeland security enterprise. While I&A’s
support to state, local and tribal¶ partners is steadily improving, there is still work to be done in how best¶ to support the
private sector. We intend to explore ways to extend our¶ efforts in this area beyond the established relationships with the
critical¶ infrastructure sectors (Wagner, 2010; emphasis added).
Fusion centers embrace neoliberal rational
Monahan & Palmer 09’, Torin Monahan (Associate Professor of Human & Organizational Development and an
Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. His main theoreti- cal interests are in social control and institutional
transformations with new technolo- gies), Neal A. Palmer (doctoral student in the Department of Human & Organizational
Development at Vanderbilt University), Security Dialoguevol.40 ,no.6, December 2009, The Emerging Politics of DHS Fusion Centers,
http://publicsurveillance.com/papers/FC-SD.pdf. PE
Fusion centers provide a window into dominant forms and logics of contemporary
securitization. They clearly embody an all-hazards orientation that pervades emergencypreparedness discourses and operations today (Lakoff,¶ TorinMonahan&NealA.PalmerThe
Emerging Politics of DHS Fusion Centers633¶ 2006) and they develop within – and contribute to
– a risk-management approach to policing and governance that seeks to control rather than
elimi- nate threats and social problems (Simon, 2006; Wacquant, 2009). Moreover, even as
highly secretive organizations, fusion centers embrace neoliberal rationalities of privatization
and responsibilization. Public–private partner- ships are key to fusion-center operations, as is
the use of private security analysts. Whereas responsibilization is typically theorized in terms of
individuals who must consume security products and services not provided by the state (Rose,
1999; Katz, 2006; Monahan, 2009a), in this case it is state and local governments that are
burdened with unfunded mandates and concomitant pressures to staff fusion centers even
while cutting other social services. One could proffer a generous reading of mission creep by
fusion centers and say that these are laudable efforts by state agents and others to make their
work relevant to the perceived needs of their communities. Be that as it may, this article
suggests that such efforts lend themselves to the violation of civil liberties and privacy, while
rendering ambiguous laws and policies governing intelligence operations.
Fusion centers are key to a neoliberal agenda
Monahan 11’, Torin Monahan (Associate Professor of Human & Organizational Development and an Associate Professor of
Medicine at Vanderbilt University. His main theoretical interests are in social control and institutional transformations with new
technologies), The Future of Security? Surveillance Operations at Homeland Security Fusion Centers, Social Justice Vol. 37, Nos. 2–3
(2010–2011), http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/archive/120_37_2-3/120_07Monahan.pdf. PE
Thus,
there is also a neoliberal dimension to fusion centers, in that they purchase data from the
private sector, sometimes hire private data analysts, and share information with industry
partners (Monahan, 2009). By forming information-sharing partnerships, analysts at fusion centers seek to “connect the dots” to prevent future
terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, government officials are very interested in figuring out ways in which DHS in
general and fusion centers in particular can assist the private sector, presumably by enabling
and protecting the ability of companies to profit financially (Monahan, 2010). As DHS Under Secretary Caryn
Wagner stated in her 2010 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security: ¶ I&A [DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis]
will continue to advocate for sustained funding for the fusion centers as the linchpin of the
evolving homeland security enterprise. While I&A’s support to state, local and tribal partners is steadily improving, there is
still work to be done in how best to support the private sector. We intend to explore ways to extend our efforts in
this area beyond the established relationships with the critical infrastructure sectors (Wagner, 2010; emphasis added).