Global-Local K
1NC
Islamophobia is engrained within American culture. Changing government policies is
ineffective, can’t lead to broader change, and only serves to distance Americans from
their own Islamophobia.
Sheehi 11 (Stephen, March 9, 2011. “Don’t Blame the Kingdom for Islamophobia, Blame the Kingdom.” Shehi is a professor of Middle
East studies at the College of William and Mary. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/840/dont-blame-the-king-for-islamophobia-blamethe-kin // EMS).
To approach the current hearings on “radicalization” of American Muslims along partisan boundaries is
to deflect from the depths to which Islamophobia is engrained within American political culture. That
Geller had to “beg” to be included in the CPAC convention and attack paleo-conservatives such as Grover Norquist suggest that the Republican
Party realizes the liability of the visibility of Tea Bag xenophobia.¶
Blaming opportunistic and predatory Islamophobes is a
convenient means to distance the American mainstream from their own Islamophobia. King’s hearings are
dangerous not for their demonizing of Muslims but because they further mainstream these predators and offer them a prominent political
platform and the credibility that comes with it.¶ However, the difference between good ole’ fashioned Muslim and Arab hating and
Islamphobia as a mass cultural phenomenon is that the latter is a fully fledged ideological component of American
culture that has flowered since the end of the Cold War to accommodate US power in a unipolar world.
Consequently, Islamophobia permeates all spectra of American culture. Juan Williams’ honesty that Muslims make him
nervous, Howard Dean accusing Islam of being “stuck in the 12th century,” and Obama’s clear distaste for the “wisdom” of Park 51mosque show
how Democrats share their counterparts’ suspicion of Muslims.¶ In the media,
discussion of Muslims and Islam is, at best,
infused with the Good Muslim-Bad Muslim dichotomy that poses patriotic loyalty against religious
identity. While highlighting the psychological instability of white terrorists and ignoring the white supremacy beliefs of anti-government
militias, cable news obsesses over “home grown terrorism,” perpetuating the stereotype of the “Muslim threat” and, therefore, legitimizing it as
Islamophobia is not only a set of misrepresentations, misunderstandings and
intolerance by overt racists and the religiously bigoted. It is a culture formation that has been activated
for ideological reasons. As such, the shared Islamophobia of both parties translates into very real effects
for Muslims. For example, municipal police hire Islamophobe charlatans to train them to identify home grown threats using outlandishly
a valid analytical topic.¶
racist anti-Muslim literature. As a consequence, not only do police profile and target anyone who might look like their version of a Muslim but
they under report hate crimes against Muslim and Arab Americans.
The 1AC is an act of world ordering – images of disempowering structures produce a
vision of the world that negates activism at the level of the self. The I-In-Relationship
is a necessary starting point for changing larger structures
Jayan Nayar, Law—University of Warwick, 1999 “SYMPOSIUM: RE-FRAMING INTERNATIONAL LAW
FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: Orders of Inhumanity ,” 9 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 599
Despite the fixation of the beneficiaries of ordered worlds, even the ordered "critic," with the prescribed languages, visions and possibilities of
human socialities, other realities of humanity nevertheless persist. Notwithstanding the globalization of social concern and the
transnationalization of professionalized critique and reformatory action, struggles against violence remain energized, persistent and located.
They are waged through the bodies of lives lived in experiential locations against real instruments of terror, functioning within embodied sites
of violence. Non-information and non-representation of the existence of such struggles, and non-learning of the wisdoms thus generated do
not negate their truths or the vibrancy of their socialities. 51 "We"
are participants in ordered worlds, not merely
observers. The choice is whether we wish to recognize our own locations of ordered violence and
participate in the struggle to resist their orderings, or whether we wish merely to observe violence in
far-off worlds in order that our interventionary participation "out there" never destabilizes the ground
upon which we stand. I suggest that we betray the spirit of transformatory struggle, despite all our
expressions of support and even actions of professionalized expertise, if our own locations, within which
are ordered and from which we ourselves order, remain unscrutinized. And so, what might I contribute
to the present collective exercise toward a futuristic imaging of human possibilities? I am unsure. It is
only from my view of the "world," after all, that I can project my visions. These visions do not go so far
as to visualize any "world" in its totality; they are uncertain even with regard to worlds closer to home,
worlds requiring transformatory actions all the same. Instead of fulfilling this task of imagining future
therefore I simply submit the following two "poems." [*629] Changing the "I" of the World: The Essential
Message of Mahatmas?" We are today bombarded by images of our "one world." We speak of the
world as "shrinking" into a "global village." We are not all fooled by the implicit benign-ness of this
image of "time-space" contracted--so we also speak of "global pillage." This astuteness of our
perceptions, however, does not prevent us from our delusion of the "global;" the image of the "global"
world persists even for many activists amongst us who struggle to "change" the world. This is recent
delusion. It is a delusion which anesthetizes us from the only world which we can ever locate ourselves
in and know--the worlds of "I"-in relationships. The "I" is seldom present in "emancipatory" projects to
change the world. This is because the "relational I"-world and the "global"-world are negations of one
another; the former negates the concept of the latter whilst the latter negates the life of the former.
And concepts are more amenable to scrutiny than life. The advance in technologies of image-ing enables
a distanciation of scrutiny, from the "I"-world of relationships to the "global"-world of abstractions. As
we become fixated with the distant, as we consume the images of "world" as other than here and now,
as we project ourselves through technological time-space into worlds apart from our here and now, as
we become "global," we are relieved of the gravity of our present. We, thus, cease the activism of self
(being) and take on the mantle of the "activist" (doing). This is a significant displacement. ¶ 1NC¶ That
there is suffering all over the world has indeed been made more visible by the technologies of imageing. Yet for all its consequent fostering of "networks," images of "global" suffering have also served to
disempower. By this, we mean not merely that we are filled with the sense that the forces against which
the struggle for emancipations from injustice and exploitation are waged are pervasive and, therefore,
often impenetrable, but, more importantly, that it diverts our gaze away from the only true power that
is in our disposal--the power of self-change in relationships of solidarities. ¶ The "world," as we perceive
it today, did not exist in times past. It does not exist today. There is no such thing as the global "one
world." The world can only exist in the locations and experiences revealed through and in human
relationships. It is often that we think that to change the world it is necessary to change the way power
is exercised in the world; so we go about the business of exposing and denouncing the many power
configurations that dominate. Power indeed does lie at the core of human misery, yet we blind
ourselves if we regard this power as the power out there. Power, when all the complex networks of its
reach are untangled, is personal; power does not exist out there, [*630] it only exists in relationship. To say the word,
power, is to describe relationship, to acknowledge power, is to acknowledge our subservience in that relationship. There can exist no power if
the subservient relationship is refused--then power can only achieve its ambitions through its naked form, as violence. Changing
the
world therefore is a misnomer for in truth it is relationships that are to be changed. And the only
relationships that we can change for sure are our own. And the constant in our relationships is
ourselves--the "I" of all of us. And so, to change our relationships, we must change the "I" that is each of
us. Transformations of "structures" will soon follow. This is, perhaps, the beginning of all emancipations.
This is, perhaps, the essential message of Mahatmas.
Reject the 1AC in order to politicize our own relationships with structures – this is the
first step towards liberation
Nayar, Law—University of Warwick, 1999 “SYMPOSIUM: RE-FRAMING INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR THE
21ST CENTURY: Orders of Inhumanity ,” 9 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 599
So, back to the question: to what extent, for this, "our world," do we contemplate change when "we"
imagine transformed "world-orders?" In addition to the familiar culprits of violent orderings, such as
government, financial institutions, transnational corporations, the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO
(as significant culprits they indeed are), do we, in our contemplations of violent orders, vision our
locations within corporate "educational" institutions as "professional academics" and "researchers," our
locations within corporate NGOs as "professional activists," our locations within "think-tanks" and
"research organizations" as "professional policy-formulators," and whatever other locations of elite
"expertise" we have been "trained" to possess, as ordered sites, complicit and parasitic, within a violent
"world-order"? Do we see in our critiques of world-orderings, out there, the orderings we find, right
here, in our bodies, minds, relationships, expectations, fears and hopes? Would we be willing to see
"our (ordered) world" dismantled in order that other worlds, wherein our "privileges" become
extinguished, may flourish? These concerns are, then, I believe, the real complexities of judgment and
action. Consideration should be given, not only to those of the political-structural, so often honed in on,
but also to the [*628] issue of the political-personal, which ultimately is the "unit" of "worlds" and of
"orders." If "globalization," as a recent obsession of intellectual minds, has contributed anything to an
understanding of the ways of the "world," I suggest, it is that we cannot escape "our" implication within
the violence of "world (mis)orders." IV. A WORLD FOR TRANSFORMATION: TWO POEMS Despite the
fixation of the beneficiaries of ordered worlds, even the ordered "critic," with the prescribed languages,
visions and possibilities of human socialities, other realities of humanity nevertheless persist.
Notwithstanding the globalization of social concern and the transnationalization of professionalized
critique and reformatory action, struggles against violence remain energized, persistent and located.
They are waged through the bodies of lives lived in experiential locations against real instruments of
terror, functioning within embodied sites of violence. Non-information and non-representation of the
existence of such struggles, and non-learning of the wisdoms thus generated do not negate their truths
or the vibrancy of their socialities. n51 "We" are participants in ordered worlds, not merely observers.
The choice is whether we wish to recognize our own locations of ordered violence and participate in the
struggle to resist their orderings, or whether we wish merely to observe violence in far-off worlds in
order that our interventionary participation "out there" never destabilizes the ground upon which we
stand. I suggest that we betray the spirit of transformatory struggle, despite all our expressions of
support and even actions of professionalized expertise, if our own locations, within which are ordered
and from which we ourselves order, remain unscrutinized.
2NC Extensions
Government reform doesn’t solve- Islamaphobia is psychological, not just a system of
concrete policies.
Kundnani 14 (Arun, March 28 2014, “No NSA Reform Can Fix the American Islamophobic Security Complex.” Kundnani is the author
of “The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror” and teaches at New York University.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/28/nsa-reform-american-islamophobic-surveillance-complex // EMS).
Better oversight of the sprawling American national security apparatus may finally be coming: President
Obama and the House Intelligence Committee unveiled plans this week to reduce bulk collection of telephone records. The debate opened up
by Edward Snowden's whistle-blowing is about to get even more legalistic than all the parsing of hops and stores and metadata.¶ These
reforms may be reassuring, if sketchy. But for those living in so-called "suspect communities" –
Muslim Americans, left-wing campaigners, "radical" journalists – the days of living on the receiving end of
excessive spying won’t end there.¶ How come when we talk about spying we don't talk about the lives of ordinary people being
spied upon? While we have been rightly outraged at the government's warehousing of troves of data, we have been less interested in the
consequences of mass surveillance for those most affected by it – such as Muslim Americans.¶ In writing my book on Islamophobia and the War
on Terror, I spoke to dozens of Muslims, from Michigan to Texas and Minnesota to Virginia. Some told me about becoming aware their
mosque was under surveillance only after discovering an FBI informant had joined the congregation. Others spoke about federal agents turning
up at colleges to question every student who happened to be Muslim. All of them said they
felt unsure whether their
telephone calls to relatives abroad were wiretapped or whether their emails were being read by
government officials.¶ There were the young Somali Americans in Minnesota who described how they and their friends were
questioned by FBI agents for no reason other than their ethnic background. Some had been placed under surveillance by a local police
department, which disguised its spying as a youth mentoring program and then passed the FBI intelligence on Somali-American political
opinions.¶ There were the Muslim students at the City University of New York who discovered that fellow students they had befriended had
been informants all along, working for the New York Police Department's Intelligence Division and tasked with surveilling them. There was
no reasonable suspicion of any crime; it was enough that the targeted students were active in the
Muslim Students Association.¶ And then there was Luqman Abdullah, a Detroit-based African-American imam, whose mosque was
infiltrated by the FBI, leading to a 2009 raid in which he was shot and killed by federal agents. The government had no evidence of any terrorist
plot; the sole pretext was that Abdullah had strongly critical views of the US government.¶ These are the types of people whom the National
Security Agency can suspect of being two "hops" away from targets. These are the types of "bad guys" referred toby outgoing NSA director
Keith Alexander.
Ten years ago, around 100,000 Arabs and Muslims in America had some sort of national
security file compiled on them. Today, that number is likely to be even higher.¶ A study published last year by
the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition documented the effects of this kind of mass surveillance. In targeted communities, a
culture of enforced self-censorship takes hold and relationships of trust start to break down. As one
interviewee said: "You look at your closest friends and ask: are they informants?"¶ This is what real
fear of surveillance looks like: not knowing whom to trust, choosing your words with care when
talking politics in public, the unpredictability of state power. Snowden has rightly drawn our attention to the power of
what intelligence agencies call "signals intelligence" – the surveillance of our digital communications – but equally important is "human
intelligence", the result of informants and undercover agents operating within communities.¶ Underpinning
all the surveillance
of Muslim Americans is an assumption that Islamic ideology is linked to terrorism. Yet, over the last 20 years,
far more people have been killed in acts of violence by right-wing extremists than by Muslim American citizens or permanent residents. The
huge numbers being spied upon are not would-be terrorists but law-abiding people, some of whom have "radical" political opinions that still
ought to be protected by the First Amendment to the constitution. Just the same, there are plenty of other minority Americans who are not
would-be "home-grown" terrorists – but they still live in fear that they might be mistaken as one.¶ So let's reform the NSA and its countless
collections. But let's
not forget the FBI's reported 10,000 intelligence analysts working on counterterrorism and the15,000 paid informants helping them do it. Let's not forget the New York Police
Department's intelligence and counter-terrorism division with its 1,000 officers, $100m budget and
vast program of surveillance. Let's not forget the especially subtle psychological terror of being
Muslim in America, where, sure, maybe your phone calls won't be stored for much longer, but there's
a multitude of other ways you're always being watched.¶
World-ordering is the ordering of worlds – a civilizing mission that subdues assimilates
and eradicates the other
Jayan Nayar, Law—University of Warwick, 1999 “SYMPOSIUM: RE-FRAMING INTERNATIONAL LAW
FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: Orders of Inhumanity ,” 9 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 599
[*606] Distinguishing these two meanings of "order" provides us with radically opposed directions of
analysis and orientations for future imagings of social relations. Although the rhetoric of world-order
would focus on visions of some projected "world" that provides the aspiration for collective endeavors,
"order" does not come to be without necessary "ordering;" the "world" of "world-order" has not come
to be without the necessary ordering of many worlds. The ordering and the ordered, the world of order
and the ordered world, all are inextricable parts of the past and the present of "civilization." Despite the
vision of world-order founded on a notion of a universal society of humankind aspiring toward a
universal common good, (first given meaning within a conceptual political-legal framework through the
birth of the so-called "Westphalian" state system n14 ), the materialities of "ordering" were of a
different complexion altogether. Contrary to the disembodied rhetoric of world-order as bloodless
evolution, the new images of the world and languages of "globality" did not evolve out of a sense of
"hospitality" n15 to the "other," the "stranger." Rather, the history of the creation of the postWestphalian "world" as one world, can be seen to be most intimately connected with the rise of an
expansionist and colonizing world-view and practice. Voyages of "discovery" provided the necessary
reconnaissance to image this "new world." Bit by bit, piece by piece, the jigsaw of the globe was
completed. With the advance of the "discoverer," the "colonizer," the "invader," the "new" territories
were given meaning within the hermeneutic construct that was the new "world." [*607] The significance
of this evolution of the world does not, however, lie merely in its acquiring meaning. It is not simply the
"idea" of the world that was brought to prominence through acts of colonization. The construction of
the "stage" of the world has also occurred, albeit amid the performance of a violent drama upon it. The
idea of a single world in need of order was followed by a succession of chained and brutalized bodies of
the "other." The embodied world that has been in creation from the "colonial" times to the present
could not, and does not, accommodate plurality. The very idea of "one world" contains the necessary
impetus for the absorption, assimilation, if not destruction, of existing worlds and the genocide of
existing socialities. This violence of "order-ing" within the historical epoch of colonialism is now plainly
visible. Through "colonialism" was reshaped the material basis of exchange that determined human
relationships. Put differently, the very idea of what is "human" was recast by the imposed value-systems
of the "civilizing" process that was colonialism. To be human, to live, and to relate to others, thus, both
lost and gained meaning. Lost were many pre-colonial and indigenous conceptions of human dignity, of
subsistence, production, consumption, wealth and poverty. Gained was the advent of the human "self"
as an objective "economic" agent and, with it, the universals of commodification as the basis for human
relations. Following this transformation of the material political-economy of the colonized, or "ordered,"
colonialism entrenched the "state" as the symbolic "political" institution of "public" social relations. The
effect of this "colonization of the mind" was that the "political-economic" form of social organization-the state--was universalized as common, if not "natural," resulting in a homogenization of "political"
imagination and language. Thus, diversity was unified, while at the same time, unity was diversified. The
particularities and inconveniences of human diversity--culture and tradition--were subordinated to the
"civilized" discourse of secular myths (to which the "rule of law" is central), n16 while concurrently,
humanity was formally segregated into artificial "states," enclosures of mythic solidarities and common
destinies. This brief remembering of colonialism as an historic process, provides us with the most explicit
lessons on the violence of the "ordering" of "worlds." From its history we see that an important feature
of ordering prevails. The world of those who "order" is the destruction of the "worlds" of those ordered.
So many ideologies of negation and (re)creation served to justify this "beginning"--terra nullius, the
"savage" native, the "civilizing mission." n17 The [*608] "world," after all, had to be created out of all
this "unworldly" miasma, all for the common good of the universal society of humankind. Although
historical colonialism as a formal structure of politico-legal ordering of humanity has come and gone, the
violence of colonization is very much a persistent reality. A striking feature of historical world-orderings
was the confidence with which the "new world" was projected upon human imagination. Colonialism
was not a tentative process. The "right" of colonization, both as a right of the colonizer and as a right
thing to do by the colonizer, was passionately believed and confidently asserted. Thus, for the most part,
this "right" was uncontested, this confidence unchallenged. "World-order" today is similarly asserted
with confidence and rectitude. Contemporary world-orderings, consistent with those of the past, are
implemented using a range of civilizational legitimization. With the advent of an ideology of "humanity,"
a "post-colonial" concession to human dignity demanded by the previously colonized, new languages of
the civilizational project had to be conceived of and projected. "Freed" from the brutalities of the order
of historical colonialism, the "ordered" now are subjected to the colonizing force of the "post-colonial,"
and increasingly, globalization-inspired ideologies of development and security. Visible, still, is the
legitimization of "order" as coercive command through the rhetoric of "order" as evolutionary structure.
A speech is not capable of divorcing you from a liberal society that has overdetermined your identity.
Alcoff 5, Linda, Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, Visible
Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (Studies in Feminist Philosophy) [Paperback])//AG
This moment crystallizes for me the effect of social identity, precisely because it is so obvious that global
capital and neocolonial political formations had over- determined that encounter between the U.S.
soldiers and my father. My argument in this book begins from the premise that structural power
relations such as those created by global capital are determinate over the meanings of our identities,
the possibilities of social interaction, and the formations of difference. Nonetheless, the focal point of
power most often today operates precisely through the very personal sphere of our visible social
identities. This should be no surprise, given that capitalism was a racial and gender system from its
inception, distributing roles and resources according to identity markers of status and social position
and thus reenforcing their stability. Social identities such as race, ethnicity, and gender remain the most
telling predictors of social power and success, predicting whether one works in the service sector, the
trades, or the managerial class, whether and how much profit can be had by selling one’s home, how
likely one is to be incarcerated, how likely one is to suffer sexual or domestic violence, and even how
high one is likely to score on the SAT. Such facts do not displace the importance of class; rather, they
reveal that class works through, rather than alongside, the ca- tegories of visible identity.
Islamophobia PIC
1NC
We advocate for the entirety of the 1AC replacing the word “Islamophobia” with
“Islamoprejudice”
The term “Islamophobia” conceals that discrimination against Muslims constitutes a
long-standing tradition in Western countries and implies that the religion is the target
of discrimination, when in reality it is the people.
Imhoff and Recker 12 (Roland and Julia, “Differentiating Islamophobia: Introducing a New Scale to Measure Islamoprejudice
and Secular Islam Critique,” August 17, Political Psychology. Imhoff is an assistant professor of social psychology/cognition at the University
of Cologne.
http://www.academia.edu/545302/Differentiating_Islamophobia_Introducing_a_new_scale_to_measure_Islamoprejudice_and_Secular_Isl
am_Critique // EMS).
In 1998, the British non-governmental organization Runnymede Trust provided a definition of Islamophobia that equated
it with closed(vs. open) views of Islam (Commissionon BritishMuslimsandIslamophobia,1998).According tothisdefinition, theeightmain features ofIslamophobia
are views of theIslam as (1)monolithic, (2)separate from and(3) inferior toWesterncultures. Islam isseenas (4)“anenemy” andas (5) amanipulative political ideology. Criticism of the
West is(6)a priori rejected,(7) discriminationagainst Muslims is justified, and (8) Islamophobia is seen as natural. This definition remainsthemostambitious effort to explicitly define
Islamophobia. Useof the termhas becomewidespread, and yetits definition is highly contested. Two particular criticismsareregularly raised. Oneclaims that
Islamophobia is an expendable neologism that merely describes a rather well-known phenomenon of prejudice and
discrimination against immigrants(particularly from Muslim countries).Theother,moreintransigent, objection denounces Islamophobia as a
discursiveweapon intended to silence well-justified critique ofIslamic practices and dogmas. We will briefly outline these two critical positions below
beforeintroducing our empirical approachto the question.¶ OldWine ina New Bottle¶ Criticsof the term haveclaimed thatIslamophobia is a highly popular, new
phrase for a rather old phenomenon: racism.In thisunderstanding, the new label Islamophobia would conceal that
discrimination and prejudice against immigrants – also but not exclusively from predominantly Muslim countries –
constitute a long-standing tradition in many Western countries.Thus, Islamophobia ischaracterized as neologismforracism(Love, 2009;
Semati,2006). Halliday(1999) arguedthat, in contrast to what the term Islamophobiasuggests, “the enemy is not a faith or a culture but a people”(p. 898).
Thus, Salaita (2006) proposed the term anti-Arab racism as amoreaccurate replacement for Islamophobia. At the sametime, several scholars have argued that religious categories
have not only replaced ethniccategoriesas thesalient part of immigrant self-concepts, but alsoaspolitical categories(Modood& Ahmad,2007). However, the term
Islamophobia implies that Islam as a religion is the target of discriminatory practice, when in fact it is individuals who suffer
discrimination. Oneofthemost prominent manifestations of such a view was expressed in the Manifesto signed by twelveintellectuals andinitially
published in theFrenchweeklyCharlieHebdo in Feburary 2006 (HirsiAli, Chafiq, Fourest, Levy, Manji, Mozzafari etal., 2006). According to theEnglish translation, there is nouse for the
neologism of Islamophobia asit “confuses criticism ofIslam as areligionandstigmatization of those whobelieve in it”
Islamoprejudice is better able to capture the religious, ethnic, and racial aspects of
anti-Muslim discrimination.
Imhoff and Recker 12 (Roland and Julia, “Differentiating Islamophobia: Introducing a New Scale to Measure Islamoprejudice
and Secular Islam Critique,” August 17, Political Psychology. Imhoff is an assistant professor of social psychology/cognition at the University
of Cologne.
http://www.academia.edu/545302/Differentiating_Islamophobia_Introducing_a_new_scale_to_measure_Islamoprejudice_and_Secular_Isl
am_Critique // EMS).
Considering this wide range of interpretation of what Islamophobia is –froma descriptiveterm forhatred directed againstIslamtoa denunciatory
catchworddirectedagainst thosewhoexpress legitimate criticism ofIslam –it seems highly desirable to provide an operational definition that clearly
distinguishes a prejudiced view of Islam from criticism of Islam motivated by universalistic, secular, and
democratic convictions. Such a differentiation is needed in order to facilitate both research and discussion.Wesuggestthatthe
neologism Islamophobia may concealmore than it illuminatesand thusdevelopeda scalethatincorporates both understandings –prejudiced and
secular views – but clearly differentiates between them. Islamophobia as adescriptive term of prejudicedor “closedviews” (Commission onBritish Muslims
andIslamophobia, 1998)of Islam is a misnomer when describing prejudice against rather than an actual fear of Islam (foranIslamophobia
definition actually referring to afear ofIslam seeLee,Gibbons, Thompson, & Timani, 2009). Likewise, otherproposals like the term anti-Arab racism(Salaita, 2006) seem misleading as
Arabsare onlyone smallminority intheglobalcommunity of Islam (Ummah). Despitegeneral agreementwith thedefinitionprovidedby the RunnymedeTrust, we propose to
refer to such prejudiced views of Islam with the term¶ Islamoprejudice¶ rather thanIslamophobia.Tosupporttheusefulnessofthis conceptit
needs to beshown that it is an internallyconsistent concept, hasany incrementalvalueaboveand beyondexisting prejudicescales, and thatit is not just a denunciatory term fora secular
critique of Islam.
2NC Extensions
Your first question should be the way that language is used – it’s the most concrete,
immediate way to target and challenge oppression
Collins and Glover 2 (John Collins, Ass. Prof. of Global Studies at St. Lawrence, and Ross Glover,
Visiting Professor of Sociology at St. Lawrence University, 2002, Collateral Language, p. 6-7, The Real
Effects of Language)
As any university student knows, theories about the “social construction” and social effects of language have become a common feature of
academic scholarship. Conservative
critics often argue that those who use these theories of language (e.g.,
“just” talking about language, as opposed to talking about the “real world.” The essays in this book,
by contrast, begin from the premise that language matters in the most concrete, immediate way possible: its use,
by political and military leaders, leads directly to violence in the form of war, mass murder (including
genocide), the physical destruction of human communities, and the devastation of the natural
environment. Indeed, if the world ever witnesses a nuclear holocaust, it will probably be because leaders in
more than one country have succeeded in convincing their people, through the use of political language, that
the use of nuclear weapons and, if necessary, the destruction of the earth itself, is justifiable. From our
perspective, then, every act of political violence—from the horrors perpetrated against Native Americans to the murder of political
dissidents in the Soviet Union to the destruction of the World Trade Center, and now the bombing of Afghanistan—is intimately linked
with the use of language. Partly what we are talking about here, of course, are the processes of “manufacturing
consent” and shaping people’s perception of the world around them; people are more likely to support
acts of violence committed in their name if the recipients of the violence have been defined as
“terrorists,” or if the violence is presented as a defense of “freedom.” Media analysts such as Noam Chomsky have
deconstruction) are
written eloquently about the corrosive effects that this kind of process has on the political culture of supposedly democratic societies. At the
risk of stating the obvious, however, the most fundamental effects of violence are those that are visited upon the objects of violence; the
language that shapes public opinion is the same language that burns villages, besieges entire
populations, kills and maims human bodies, and leaves the ground scarred with bomb craters and
littered with land mines. As George Orwell so famously illustrated in his work, acts of violence can easily be made more
palatable through the use of euphemisms such as “pacification” or, to use an example discussed in this book, “targets.”
It is important to point out, however, that the need for such language derives from the simple fact that the violence
itself is abhorrent. Were it not for the abstract language of “vital interests” and “surgical strikes” and the flattering language of “civilization” and ‘just” wars, we would be less likely to avert our mental gaze from the physical
effects of violence.
“Islamophobia” ascribes a mental disability to bigots, while in reality it is a learned
prejudice.
Blumenfeld 12 (Warren J, “The Associated Press and Terms Like ‘Homophobia,’” December 5, HuffPost.com. Blumenfeld is a
contributor to the Huffington Post and is a social justice educator at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with a focus on multicultural
and queer studies. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-j-blumenfeld/the-associated-press-and-terms-likehomophobia_b_2235169.html // EMS).
The Associated Press (AP) revealed recently that its new stylebook will no longer include the words "homophobia" and "Islamophobia" in
political or social contexts. AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn told Politico that the terms
are "just off the mark" and
seem "inaccurate."¶ In psychology a "phobia" generally refers to an irrational fear, as in agoraphobia
(a fear of open or public spaces) or phasmophobia (a fear of ghosts), for example. Minthorn justified AP's decision
by asserting, "It's
ascribing a mental disability to someone, and suggests a knowledge that we don't
have."¶ Though the terms "homophobia" and "Islamophobia" have adequately communicated their intended meanings, the person who
coined the term "homophobia" in his 1972 book Society and the Healthy Homosexual, Dr. George Weinberg, did actually consider people who
feared and hated homosexuals as having a psychological problem, in stark contrast to the then-prevailing notion that it was homosexuality that
constituted a psychosexual malady.¶ Oddly, though, and for entirely different reasons, I agree with the AP that the
terms
"homophobia" and "Islamophobia" (and "biphobia" and "transphobia," for that matter) are imprecise at best, so I, too,
find them problematic. What we have been calling "homophobia" and "Islamophobia" are, in reality, not
irrational fears. In fact, they are not irrational at all but socially taught and learned attitudes (prejudices)
and behaviors (acts of discrimination). They stand not merely in the realm of psychological disorders
but as forms of oppression on multiple levels, including the individual/interpersonal, institutional and
societal/cultural (Hardiman & Jackson 1997), as do other forms of oppression, such as racism, sexism, classism,
ableism, ageism, adultism, ethnocentrism, looksism and others. These stand as "isms" rather than as
"phobias."¶ Written in the form of a mathematical equation, O = P + SP, we can chart oppression (O) as constituting prejudice (P) plus
the social power (SP) to enforce that prejudice upon members of minoritized groups (Howard 2006). If we understand this symbolic depiction
to explain oppression, then we can clearly recognize that the term "reverse oppression" represents a contradiction, or an inaccuracy at best.¶
The usage of the term ‘Islamophobia’ is inappropriate, bolsters anti-semitism, causes
homogenization and essentialism, hinders freedom of expression, and generalizes the
concept of Islam based oppression
Lorente 10 (Javier Rosón Lorente, PhD. in Social Anthropology from the University of Granada and is
currently researcher at Casa Árabe e Instituto Internacional de Estudios Árabes y del Mundo Musulmán
(Spain). Discrepancies Around the Use of the Term “Islamophobia”, The Omar Khayyam Center for
Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science, HUMAN ARCHITECTURE: JOURNAL OF THE
SOCIOLOGY OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE, VIII, 2, FALL 2010, 115-128)
As mentioned above, there is another order of criticism or discrepancy toward the term Islamophobia,
which though fully linked to ethnic, religious and cultural aspects, is in itself used as individual criticism
over the use of this terminology. Such is firstly the case of ‘etymological/ terminological criticism.’ From
this viewpoint, the terms ‘anti-Muslim racism,’ ‘anti- Arab’ or even ‘intolerance against Muslims’ 18 are
clearer than the term Islamophobia for various reasons. On the one hand, use of the word ‘phobia’ in
the concept is not considered appropriate, as it would imply the existence of a sort of mental illness
(phobia: obsessive aversion to someone or something and/or compulsive irrational fear); on the other,
the term Islamophobia is not considered ‘ideal,’ for there is no specific rejection of Islam as a religion,
but rather a rejection of Muslim individuals or collectives or those defined as such. This kind of criticism
even makes an analogy between the word Islamophobia and the word ‘anti-Semitism,’ arguing that
from a grammatical standpoint anti-Semitism should signify a prejudice against Semitic peoples in
general, even though it is exclusively used to refer to hostility against the Jews. In this regard, the
grammatically incorrect Islamophobia would require the 150 years which the term ‘anti-Semitism’
needed to become grammatically acceptable, except that Jews recognize themselves and are recognized
as being a single ethnic group, contrary to the case of Muslims. Parallel to this, inclusion of the word
‘Islam’ in the word Islamophobia raises another kind of discrepancy: based on an undeniable question,
the religious, racial, cultural and ethnic diversity of the groups ‘supposedly’ the object of Islamophobia,
the term Islamophobia homogenizes everything associated to Islam and therefore to Muslims. In this
homogenization process the diversity of communities and individuals is essentialized, and distinct and
differentiated processes are eventually included in a same concept. It is held in turn that widespread use
of the term Islamophobia by distinct communities may also essentialize internal plurality at local,
regional, national and international level. Other terms which semantically attempt to approach the
national particularities or ‘realities’ (besides the more extended ‘anti-Arab anti-Muslim racism’) are
becoming alternative though critical lines vis-à-vis usage of the term Islamophobia. For example
‘Islamfeindichkeit’ in the German context literally means hostility to Islam, or its rejection, but not
phobia in the sense of fear, or ‘maurofobia/morofobia’ in the Spanish case. Second, we should look at
‘criticism’ linked to the ‘identity-building process’ which initially does not reject use of the term, but
does question the generalization and value of same, as well as its ability to describe the social reality in a
non-essentialized manner. This criticism is meant to show both the use and abuse of a terminology—
Islamophobia—which we ourselves have constructed. This identity-building presumes that the term
Islamophobia is not put up in a ‘one-way’ manner addressed to Muslim communities and/or individuals,
but rather that the prejudice we are dealing with is very likely two-way. According to this thesis, the
term Islamophobia is not complete, given that to understand it we should delve into the contemporary
public discussion regarding ‘Islam’ and ‘West,’ and also delimit the confusing ‘inter-relational’ debate
being generated. From this point of view both sides have a tendency to essentialize from the ‘Muslim’
and ‘Western’ standpoint both the Muslim population and the rest of the non- Muslim population. On
the one hand there is widespread social ‘alarmism’ based on the ‘threat’ of how Islam presents the
Western world19, and on the other, how from the West20 it is presented to Muslims. The
‘simplification’ from the West’s viewpoint involves a number of prejudices regarding many aspects
associated to the world around Islam: to think that all (or most) Muslims are terrorists; to consider
widespread the ‘degree of aggressiveness’ disseminated by news media with respect to Arab countries;
to think that the universal denial of human rights encompasses the whole Arab world; and to think that
the billion Muslims, their social and ethnic groups, are all the same. Likewise and bilaterally there is a
process of essentialization by Muslims vis-à-vis the West—the a priori Muslim ‘simplification’ of a
comprehensive and uniform ‘West,’ along with the stereotyped idea of a single unitary and universal
Muslim identity extended to all Muslims, their holy texts and their culture21. In this regard, before the
distinct processes of Western social and religious intolerance, processes whose tangible result is seen in
conflicts which reject the ‘other’ and are in turn the root of Islamophobia, an endless number of
responses to social exclusion have been generated, such as signs of power loss and de-structuring of the
bases of identitary thought, beyond the ‘hardening’ of Western ideological postures and the root of the
very concept of Islamophobia. Thirdly, we encounter criticism or discrepancies which consider use of the
term Islamophobia to be unmerited, along with its respective symbolic burden, as it ‘hinders’ the
freedom of expression of certain sectors and/or social players. This debate initially emerged as criticism
of the Runnymede Trust report. Those who currently hold up the lack of freedom of expression to justify
the insistence or imprecision of the term Islamophobia make biased use of the sectors, Muslim or not:
for example, the Mohammed caricatures controversy (2005), the film Fitna (by Dutch far-right MP Geert
Wilders) or the theatre play The Satanic Verses using the book of the same title by Salman Rushdie,
which opened in Germany on 30 March 2008, etc. These and other social players hold that the charge of
Islamophobia hampers their freedom of expression. They ironically point to the ‘freedom of expression’
enjoyed by people who want to condemn or denounce discourses and acts, such as the ‘Islamophobia
Award’ granted by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a British organization. On this point, we must
note that freedom of expression, albeit vital for democratic life, should not be deemed an absolute
universal value. It should be wielded within established legal frameworks and under the appropriate
ethical and legal responsibility of the different social players involved. This means that Islamophobic
speeches cannot be justified through recourse to the protection of fundamental rights.22 In fourth and
last place we should take into account differences regarding the term Islamophobia in the framework of
‘ideological discourse.’ This criticism is grounded in the eagerness of researchers and/or academics to
demonstrate that Islamophobia exists in the society they are studying; they go so far as to generalize
and make universal considerations with no criteria whatsoever regarding both the phenomenon and the
distinct readings associated to same. This generalization causes the term Islamophobia to lose its
original meaning, distorting the observed reality. From this point of view criticism is addressed to our
inability to differentiate between discourse and practice—at the level of discourse not everything can or
should be called Islamophobia. This implies veiled criticism of how the term Islamophobia has grouped
such a variety of forms of discourse and acts, aiming to show that any act marked as Islamophobic
proceeds from a same ideological core23, which has distorted and/or lost its original meaning. This
‘criticism’ aims to show that indiscriminate use of this terminology is not positive and that ‘not all
Islamophobic acts or incidents are Islamophobia.’ To avoid this ‘generalization,’ it holds that all the
observable and related nuances of acts marked as Islamophobic must be studied in depth, as it would be
wrong to have to choose between Islamophobia or ‘nothing.’ To that end, it proposes distinguishing, per
national specificity, between academic discussions about Islam and modernity; public debates about
whether Islam recognizes the principle of separation of church and state; the public clamour which
essentializes Islam; and the forms of inciting hatred, such as discourse associated to the death of Theo
van Gogh, etc.
This is a pre-requisite to effectively challenging anti-Muslim violence
Edvardsson 08 (Linda Edvardsson, “Islamophobia – Features of Islamophobia and Strategies against
it” Malmö University Department of International Migration and Ethnic Relations IMER 91-120 Fall 2008
Master Thesis)
There is ultimately a need to address Islamophobia; both on a social level and also within a legal
discourse and this need have descriptively been told by two imams alongside a theoretical foundation.
The imams have demonstrated that ‘bad news’ and negative images are in fact causing more disfavour
than what everyday life might do. The media can therefore become a dual force in which negative
images are flourishing and being rooted, yet at the same time a constitution that can cause the
opposite. This relationship is depending on which news that is more favoured in that given time and/or
place that one is referring to. In Sweden it has been demonstrated through both the imam’s voices and
a theoretical framework that Islamophobia is not so obvious and a prominent feature in everyday life,
rather, lies beneath the surface and are characterised in Swedish media. Yet, mental and physical
damage cannot be excluded.168 For instance, one of the imams stated that it is always a struggle to tell
the truth about Islam and also mentioned the segregation within Swedish labour market and housing.
The imam also spoke of the importance of what is prioritised by the police and other authorities and
that this eventually decides if, how and when Islamaphobia can be prevented and eliminated.169 Both
the imams did not identify that Islamophobia is so apparent in Sweden, in contrast to other countries.
Yet underline that Islamophobia could have crucial effects on both Muslims and the society in general.
For instance, they both mention the incident with the Danish newspaper and media’s role whereas
Muslims ought not to react against these kinds of things, instead work as good ambassadors or good
employees.170 One of the imams mentioned that there are differences between those acts against
Islam itself and those acts that are against the Muslims.171 Hitherto, this research mainly underlined
the phobia against the religious practice rather than ‘the ethnic phobia’; although, the need to address
Islamophobia must maybe start with a separation between what we mean with the concept
Islamophobia. In order to address more specifically the acts that is carried out. Higher attention must
therefore be drawn to if Islamophobic acts are anticipated against one’s ethnic or religious belonging.
Ergo a separation must maybe be realised, before Islamophobia can be solved. In this manner, an
extension of Islamophobia such as, Muslimophobia might be plausible as it depicts a phobia against
one’s ethnic belonging. This phobia might reveal a fear or hostility against Muslim culture, countries,
lifestyles, traits etcetera. This extension of Islamophobia, Muslimophobia, can perhaps make it easier
to erase some misunderstandings thus easier being decreased and grasped which methods that ought
to be used more specifically. After all, within the racialisation process it can be evident that the religion
Islam and its various ethnic followers are categorised as one group and/or one identity. It also portrays a
discourse in which all groups become homogenous and static hence neglect perspectives that sees
ethnicity and culture as dynamic elements. Strategies and efforts against Muslimophobia can therefore
reduce influences and stereotypes caused by, for instance, the essentialist view. This also emphasises
the need to divide what the struggle is against more detailed. Then it might be easier to solve those
effects caused by Islamophobia and implement new laws that react against it more effectively. After
all, Karaman revealed experiences where some situations had been hard to interpret as Islamophobia or
a dangerous and reckless game by some teenagers; as misunderstandings can easily cause more damage
than good. However, clearly it has been verified that there is a need to address Islamophobia both
within the media, the labour market, housing, medical care, schools and so forth. Most importantly, as
the imams also declared, it is maybe time to embrace and highlight the positive attributes of Islam and
the Muslim population instead of always doing the opposite.
Tag doe
Duss 13 (Matthew Duss. “Denying the Existence of Islamophobia.” January 10, 2013. http://think
progress.org/security/2013/01/10/1427861/denying-the-existence-of-islamophobia/)
I’m hesitant to wade into a discussion on a book I haven’t yet read, but Jonathan Schanzer’s review of
Nathan Lean’s “The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims” in today’s
Wall Street Journal makes some pretty big claims about the term “Islamophobia” itself, so I’ll confine my
comments to those. “In reality,” Schanzer writes, “Islamophobia is simply a pejorative neologism
designed to warn people away from criticizing any aspect of Islam”: Those who deploy it see no
difference between Islamism — political Islam and its extremist offshoots — and the religion
encompassing some 1.6 billion believers world-wide. Thanks to this feat of conflation, Islamophobia
transforms religious doctrines and political ideologies into something akin to race; to be an
“Islamophobe” is in some circles today tantamount to being a racist. First, while Schanzer severely
overstates it, the problem of conflation is real. I noted this in my critical review of scholar Deepa
Kumar’s “Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire,” in which I wrote, “The problem with defining
Islamophobia as broadly as Kumar does is that it threatens to divest the term of meaning”: It is possible
to condemn terrorism committed by Muslims in the name of religion, or to have serious concerns over
the development of pluralistic democracy under Islamist-controlled governments, without being antiIslam. What defines Islamophobia is the belief that terrorist violence is somehow inherent to Islam, or
that democracy is incompatible with correct Islamic practice. In uncovering Islamophobia here, there,
and everywhere, Kumar unfortunately gives form to the straw man arguments of actual Islamophobes,
who often cry that they are being silenced for voicing any criticism of Muslims. Having said that,
Schanzer’s assertion about all of “those who deploy” the term is indefensibly broad. I doubt the Muslims
of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, or Temecula, California, or South Arlington, Texas, or of the other
American mosques that have endured bigoted attacks in recent years would agree with Schanzer’s
blithe dismissal of Islamophobia as “simply a pejorative neologism designed to warn people away from
criticizing any aspect of Islam.” Do some use accusations of Islamophobia to stifle legitimate criticism
of Islam? Yes, certainly, just as some use accusations of anti-Semitism to stifle legitimate criticism of
Israel (as we’ve seen in the recent smear campaign against Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel).
But the fact that some use such accusations cynically and recklessly doesn’t mean that Islamophobia and
anti-Semitism aren’t real existing problems. As my co-authors and I noted in our 2011 report, “Fear,
Inc,” the term Islamophobia shouldn’t be used lightly. We defined it as “an exaggerated fear, hatred,
and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias,
discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political, and
civic life.” We also showed that there is a well-funded network of scholars and activists committed to
promoting this fear, hatred, and hostility. People can disagree on how serious or widespread a problem
Islamophobia actually is in the U.S. (my own view is that it is now on the wane), but Schanzer’s
argument that the whole thing is simply an invention of scheming Islamists and Arab governments is
obvious nonsense.
Labeling discussion of terror as ‘Islamophobic’ stifles discourse about terrorism and
problematic parts of extremism
Spencer 11 (Robert Spencer. “A Response to Matt Duss: A Defamation By Any Other Name.” October
19, 2011. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/280529/response-matt-duss-defamation-any-othername-robert-spencer)
Indicative of Matt Duss’s dishonesty in his response to the article I co-wrote with David Horowitz about
the manipulative neologism “Islamophobia” is his initial labeling of us as “anti-Muslim activists” and his
characterization of our work as “the dissemination of hateful anti-Muslim ideas.” This appellation is not
only inaccurate; it is highly defamatory, as it is intended to mislead Duss’s readers into assuming that we
oppose a group of people out of sheer racism or bigotry, rather than opposing a radically intolerant and
oppressive ideology. In reality, neither David Horowitz nor I are “anti-Muslim,” as I have stated many
times. It is neither “anti-Muslim” nor “hateful” to stand for human rights for all people, including
Muslims, and to defend the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for
women, all of which are denied under traditional forms of sharia. Duss claims that we are part of “an
organized campaign to spread misinformation about the religious faith of millions of Americans” —
while denying that he is “peddling ‘conspiracy theories’” about us. He makes much of the fact that the
reliably Leftist Anti-Defamation League has smeared us also, asking rhetorically, “Should the AntiDefamation League also be lumped among the ‘jihadist apologists’?” Why not? Why should it be
surprising that an organization that consistently follows a far-Left political line would follow it in this
also? Above all, like the CAP report itself, Duss does not and cannot provide any evidence either that an
“organized campaign to spread misinformation” exists, or that anything that Horowitz or I or any of the
other targeted “Islamophobes” have said is false. He does try, however. He quotes, as if it is selfevidently false, my statement that Islam “is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and
tradition of warfare against unbelievers,” but offers no refutation of it. If Duss can produce evidence of
another major world religion with a developed doctrine or tradition of warfare against unbelievers (the
Crusades, for those who may wish to toss them in here, did not proceed on the basis of any such
Christian doctrine; no sect of Christianity ever taught as a matter of faith that believers were obligated
to make war upon unbelievers), or that the sects of Islam and schools of Islamic law do not contain such
developed doctrines and traditions, I will duly retract. But with Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious
institution in Sunni Islam, endorsing (as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni
community”) a manual of Islamic law that declares that Muslims must wage war “upon Jews, Christians,
and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax,” Duss may find such a
refutation rough going. Duss shows a similar lack of knowledge of Islamic doctrine and law when he
attempts to refute my statement that “there is no form of sharia that does not contain . . . [the] death
penalty for apostasy” by asserting that I am “obviously ignorant of the manner in which Islam is
practiced by millions of sharia-adherent Muslims in the United States.” The ignorance is his: more
Muslims in the U.S. do not adhere to sharia in its fullness, as no less an authority than the Ground Zero
Mosque imam Faisal Abdul Rauf recently affirmed when he said that “the only truly clashing area”
between Islamic law and modern Western society “is the penal code, and no Muslim has the intention
of introducing that to America.” So if Rauf affirms that Muslims in America do not adhere to the sharia
penal code, and Duss affirms that Muslims in America are “sharia-adherent,” whom should we believe? I
will go with the internationally renowned imam over the non-Muslim Leftist ideologue, thank you. And
as for whether or not there is actually a form of sharia, that is, a school of Islamic jurisprudence, that
does not teach that apostates deserve death, I challenge Duss to find it. But he will search in vain. Duss
then claims that “the unmistakable implication of these claims is that all observant Muslims should be
viewed with suspicion simply by virtue of being observant Muslims,” and that “that’s obviously
Islamophobic.” In reality, the unmistakable implication of these facts is only that there are aspects of
traditional Islamic law that are incompatible with constitutional values. Here again, Rauf himself says
nothing less. Is he, too, an “Islamophobe”? In concluding his new smear piece, Duss complains that
National Review published our article in the first place, and pleads that we be read out of honorable
American conservatism. Here he exposes his real agenda in all its ugliness. Duss’s Center for American
Progress, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and other leftist and Islamicsupremacist groups are conducting an ongoing campaign to discredit and marginalize everyone who
dares to stand up against the jihad and Islamic supremacism. They are bent on destroying every last
individual who does not adopt a warmly positive stance toward the spread of sharia in the West and all
other manifestations of the advancing jihad. The stakes are very high. If we don’t resist this Islamic
supremacist thuggery, Duss and his Islamic-supremacist allies will succeed in stamping out all discussion
of the truth about Islam and jihad, thereby rendering us mute and defenseless before its advance. That’s
why we have to resist now, at every step, and continue to expose this propagandistic “Islamophobia”
campaign.
Metal Detectors PIC
1NC
The United States Federal Government should substantially curtail its domestic
surveillance conducted by the Transportation Security Administration with the
exception of metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs.
Metal detectors and explosive sniffing dogs solve for terrorism while eliminating full
body scanning
Levi 15 (Levi, Ned [Ned S. Levi has traveled the world as an engineer and business executive. He is the founder of NSL Associates, a Tech
Consulting company, as well as a professional photographer, and writes about travel photography in the NSL Photography blog.]. 6/8/2015,
“TSA Security Test Results: Replace Humans with Machines,” Consumer Travel, accessed: 7/21/2015.
http://consumertraveler.com/columns/getting-there/new-dhs-directives-wont-solve-tsas-failures/)//ALepow
TSA needs to recognize that passenger screening will never be perfect, and it doesn’t
have to be. Strategically, passenger screening only has to be reasonably good to stop
terrorists. When there’s a better than even chance they’ll get caught, terrorists won’t
try to pass through airport security checkpoints, but will use other means to access
airplanes, or move on to other targets. Moreover, knives and guns are much less of a problem than explosives, which
can be more devastating to a flight, and more likely to go undetected by our current airport checkpoint systems. In part, what makes this true is
what TSA calls its “twentieth security layer”: passengers. Since 9/11, passengers have shown they are prepared to take on terrorists in-flight,
TSA needs to dump the seriously flawed full-body MMW
scanners, go back to magnetometers, and add low-tech, but effective, explosives
sniffing dogs to the security mix. Beyond these two major changes to TSA systems,
better training and even raising the minimum hiring standards for TSOs couldn’t hurt,
but if TSA is to really improve their effectiveness, they’ve got to overhaul their systems,
which primarily depend on security checkpoints at US airports. Currently, of TSA’s $7.3B
budget, $4.5B is spent on airport screening. That’s about 62 percent of their total
budget, much of it spent looking for pocket knives, large shampoo bottles and
toothpaste tubes, and even toy ray-guns carried by ordinary passengers, not terrorists.
TSA should be focusing on intelligence. They should be focusing on the terrorists when
they are planning their attacks. They should be utilizing their resources to keep
terrorists far from airports. Intelligence should comprise the vast majority of TSA’s
budget. When TSA confiscates a 5-ounce container of shampoo, they’ve failed because they spent their time hunting down a false alarm.
and have been successful subduing them.
When intelligence stops a terror plot like the British did in 2006, stopping terrorists who were planning to blow up seven airplanes with liquid
explosives, that’s a success.
2NC Extensions
TSA prescreening programs based on the Customs and Border Protection’s Global
Entry Program eliminates BDO and SPOT programs in airports while effectively
stopping terrorists
Peterson 12 (Peterson, Barbara [Barbara Peterson is senior correspondent for aviation at Conde Nast Traveler and the author of BLUE
STREAK: Inside JetBlue, the Upstart that Rocked an Industry, published by Penguin Portfolio (hardcover, 2004; paperback, 2006). She is the
winner of the Lowell Thomas Award for Investigative Reporting and the Gene DuBois Award for Excellence in Travel and Aviation Reporting.].
11/8/2012, “How to Fix the TSA,” Popular Mechanics, accessed: 7/21/2015. http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a8258/how-to-fix-thetsa-14553186/)//ALepow
One Size Does Not Fit All Ruth Sherman, 88, of Sunrise, Fla., is not what most people think of when they imagine a security risk.
Yet on Nov. 28, 2011, TSA agents at New York's JFK airport took the wheelchair-bound Sherman to a private screening room to examine a bulge
in her colostomy bag. The following day at the same terminal, Lenore Zimmerman, 85, of Long Beach, N.Y., who weighs less than 110 pounds
and also uses a wheelchair, was subjected to what she calls a strip search, including the removal of her back brace. The TSA apologized for
improperly examining the elderly women's medical devices but disputed that Zimmerman was strip-searched. Just two weeks before these
incidents, a congressional committee had noted, "[The] TSA has failed to develop an effective, comprehensive plan to evolve from a one-size-
Frisking innocent people is eroding
public support for airport security. We could restore common sense to checkpoints by
instituting a risk-based system. "If the TSA had the courage to do data-based screening,"
Robert Poole, a transportation analyst at the Reason Foundation, says, "you could reduce the body scans, pat
downs, and shoe removals." Two TSA prescreening programs currently expedite passage
through airport checkpoints, but neither is a true trusted-traveler setup, which would
include biometric IDs, background checks, and other data to identify low-risk fliers. Secure
fits-all operation—treating all passengers as if they pose the same risk..." The Fix:
Flight compares passenger manifests with watch lists, while PreCheck, which operates at selected checkpoints in 23 U.S. airports, relies on
airline-provided frequent-flier rolls for its members, who retain shoes, belts, and jackets while moving through checkpoints. A better idea:
The TSA should come up with a true vetting system modeled on the Customs and Border
Protection's Global Entry program, which allows citizens and permanent residents who
clear background checks and pay a $100 fee, good for five years, to bypass immigration
and customs lines. Members must also have an in-person interview and get
fingerprinted. The TSA program would be voluntary, which would placate some privacy
watchdogs. And, unlike PreCheck, which has been criticized for inconsistency, this
system would be a more predictable way to move proved, low-risk travelers through
security.
TSA baggage screening remains noninvasive to passengers while greatly reducing the
risk of terrorism
Peterson 12 (Peterson, Barbara [Barbara Peterson is senior correspondent for aviation at Conde Nast Traveler and the author of BLUE
STREAK: Inside JetBlue, the Upstart that Rocked an Industry, published by Penguin Portfolio (hardcover, 2004; paperback, 2006). She is the
winner of the Lowell Thomas Award for Investigative Reporting and the Gene DuBois Award for Excellence in Travel and Aviation Reporting.].
11/8/2012, “How to Fix the TSA,” Popular Mechanics, accessed: 7/21/2015. http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a8258/how-to-fix-thetsa-14553186/)//ALepow
Danger in the Hold In the early hours of Oct. 29, 2010, a police forensics team boarded a Philadelphia-bound UPS cargo plane at East Midlands
Airport in England. The police were acting on a tip from Saudi Arabia, where intelligence sources alerted them to a bomb on board. The
technicians delicately opened the flagged parcel, which was addressed to a Chicago synagogue, and discovered it contained a printer. Police
and military explosives experts examined the machine for hours before concluding there was nothing dangerous about it. But later that day,
authorities in Dubai discovered a bomb in a similar printer on a FedEx plane. The East Midlands officials then took another look and discovered
that the printer's cartridge contained enough PETN to bring down the plane. By removing the cartridge from the printer during the
examination, investigators had inadvertently defused the device—just 3 hours before it was set to explode. If the plane had followed its original
schedule, the alarm clock in a mobile phone attached to the cartridge would have triggered the bomb, likely over the eastern seaboard of the
U.S. This kind of plot also threatens passenger planes, which carry about 40 percent of all air cargo in their lower holds. Members of a Yemenbased al-Qaida affiliate sent the two printer bombs. The one found in Dubai had traveled on two passenger planes without detection before
being loaded onto the FedEx jet. "It is well-known in security circles that the biggest threat to aviation right now is a flight into the United
States, originating from a point overseas, using a hidden bomb," says Steve Elson, a former Navy SEAL who was a member of the Federal
The Aviation and Transportation
Security Act of 2001, which created the TSA, stipulated that by the end of 2002 all
checked bags had to be screened for explosives. The TSA installed minivan-size CTX
(computed tomography X-ray) machines in airport lobbies as a short-term measure, but
airports were expected eventually to integrate CAT-scan-like explosive-detection
systems into the regular baggage-handling apparatus. Ideally, these inline systems
screen and sort baggage in a single pass. It's estimated this one change would save the
TSA nearly $470 million over five years in staffing costs, as well as greatly reduce
screener injuries (and hence turnover) and would eliminate large concentrations of
people clustered around lobby-based EDS machines, which are potential targets for
suicide bombers. A recent congressional investigation by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, however, notes
that fewer than half of the nation's 35 largest airports have inline setups. Further, the
report revealed that millions of dollars worth of inline machines are gathering dust in
TSA warehouses. The TSA needs to deploy them. In May the TSA set a deadline of Dec. 3, 2012, for passenger air
carriers to conduct 100 percent cargo screening on international flights bound for the U.S. The TSA must adopt an aggressive
role to establish this system effectively or it could fail as it did with inline screening. And
total screening should extend to air-cargo flights. The specter of a massive freighter detonating over a major
Aviation Administration's covert "red team" that tested airport checkpoints. The Fix:
airport should be all the encouragement aviation haulers need to make flights safe. Insurance companies can offer discounts for increased
security, and the TSA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology could vet technology for making this process timely and costeffective.
Ending the list of banned items, allowing liquids, encouraging BDO programs based in
science, eliminating baggage fees, and randomizing security makes security flexible
and responsive to terrorist while ending programs such as SPOT and body imaging
technology
Hawley 12 (Hawley, Kip [Kip Hawley is a former head of The Transportation Security Administration and is the Author of the book
"Permanent Emergency: Inside the TSA and the Fight for the Future of American Security," to be published April 24 by Palgrave Macmillan.].
4/15/2012, “Why Airport Security is Broken—And How to Fix it,” The Wall Street Journal, accessed: 7/21/2015.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303815404577335783535660546)//ALepow
Airport security has to change. The relationship between the public and the TSA has
become too poisonous to be sustained. And the way that we use TSA officers—as little more than human versions of
our scanners—is a tremendous waste of well-trained, engaged brains that could be evaluating risk rather than looking for violations of the
Standard Operating Procedure.
What would a better system look like? If politicians gave the TSA
some political cover, the agency could institute the following changes before the start of
the summer travel season: Embracing risk could reduce the hassle of today's airport
while making us safer at the same time. JOSH COCHRAN 1. No more banned items: Aside from
obvious weapons capable of fast, multiple killings—such as guns, toxins and explosive
devices—it is time to end the TSA's use of well-trained security officers as kindergarten
teachers to millions of passengers a day. The list of banned items has created an "Easter-egg hunt" mentality at the
TSA. Worse, banning certain items gives terrorists a complete list of what not to use in their next attack. Lighters are banned? The next attack
2. Allow all liquids: Simple checkpoint signage, a small software update
and some traffic management are all that stand between you and bringing all your
liquids on every U.S. flight. Really. 3. Give TSA officers more flexibility and rewards for
initiative, and hold them accountable: No security agency on earth has the experience
and pattern-recognition skills of TSA officers. We need to leverage that ability. TSA
officers should have more discretion to interact with passengers and to work in looser
teams throughout airports. And TSA's leaders must be prepared to support initiative even when officers make mistakes.
Currently, independence on the ground is more likely to lead to discipline than reward. 4. Eliminate baggage fees: Much
of the pain at TSA checkpoints these days can be attributed to passengers overstuffing
their carry-on luggage to avoid baggage fees. The airlines had their reasons for
implementing these fees, but the result has been a checkpoint nightmare. Airlines might
increase ticket prices slightly to compensate for the lost revenue, but the main impact
would be that checkpoint screening for everybody will be faster and safer. 5. Randomize
security: Predictability is deadly. Banned-item lists, rigid protocols—if terrorists know
what to expect at the airport, they have a greater chance of evading our system. In
will use an electric trigger.
Richmond, Va., we tested a system that randomized the security procedures encountered by passengers (additional upper-torso pat-downs, a
thorough bag search, a swab test of carry-ons, etc.), while not subjecting everyone to the full gamut. At other airports, we tried out a system
called "Playbook," which gave airports a virtual encyclopedia of possible security actions and let local law-enforcement, airport and TSA officials
Implemented nationally, this approach would give to
the system as a whole a value greater than the sum of its parts—making it much harder
for terrorists to learn how to evade our security protocols. To be effective, airport
security needs to embrace flexibility and risk management—principles that it is difficult
for both the bureaucracy and the public to accept. The public wants the airport
experience to be predictable, hassle-free and airtight and for it to keep us 100% safe.
But 100% safety is unattainable. Embracing a bit of risk could reduce the hassle of
today's airport experience while making us safer at the same time.
choose a customized set of counterterror measures.
Intelligence gathering before airport security is the best way to solve terror—it’s a
question of data gathering rather than invasive personal searches
Schneier 10 (Schneier, Bruce [Bruce Schneier is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and the chief technology officer of the computersecurity firm Co3 Systems.]. 12/2/2010, “Why the TSA Can’t Back Down,” The Atlantic, accessed: 7/21/2015.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/12/why-the-tsa-cant-back-down/67337/)//ALepow
The truth is that exactly two things have made air travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing cockpit doors and convincing passengers they need to
The TSA should continue to screen checked luggage. They should start screening
airport workers. And then they should return airport security to pre-9/11 levels and let
the rest of their budget be used for better purposes. Investigation and intelligence is
how we're going to prevent terrorism, on airplanes and elsewhere. It's how we caught
the liquid bombers. It's how we found the Yemeni printer-cartridge bombs. And it's our best chance at
stopping the next serious plot. Because if a group of well-planned and well-funded
terrorist plotters makes it to the airport, the chance is pretty low that those blue-shirted
crotch-groping water-bottle-confiscating TSA agents are going to catch them. The agents
are trying to do a good job, but the deck is so stacked against them that their job is
impossible. Airport security is the last line of defense, and it's not a very good one.
fight back.
“Puffer machines” do not involve body-imaging technology and are able to
successfully detect explosive materials
Carmichael 10 (Carmichael, Scott [Scott Carmichael is a staff writer for Gadling.com focusing in travelling and airport security.].
1/28/2010, “Airport Security—What Works and What Does Not?” Gadling.com, accessed: 7/21/2015. http://gadling.com/2010/01/28/airportsecurity-what-works-and-what-does-not/)//ALepow
The “puffer machine” was supposed to be the ultimate in airport
security. You step into the machine, it blows puffs of air on you, and “smells” for
explosives. It all sounds like the perfect solution. These machines were in place at
several airports on a trial basis before they were all removed due to “unforeseen technical problems”. Millions were
invested in the devices, which are now probably collecting dust in a storage facility. High
profile research labs are still working on better solutions, and there are several very
promising technologies in the very early stages of development. Sadly, without some
really serious government money, those machines won’t be at your local airport any
time soon.
Passenger puffer machine
Model Minority K
1NC
The US categorization of Muslims as either “good” or “bad” is a particular formation of
the model minority stereotype. The Affirmatives redemption of “bad” Muslims into
the category of “good” Muslims perpetuates the dichotomy, making hyper-visible
those who do not conform to the ideal societal position ascribed to them
Jackson and Kim 11(John L. Jackson is Dean of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy
and Practice. He also is the Richard Perry University Professor of Communication, Africana Studies, and
Anthropology in the Standing Faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication and the Standing
Faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences. David K. Kim is a Professor of Religious Studies , Chair of the
Religious Studies Department , and Associate Professor in American Studies at Connecticut College.
“Race, Religion, and Late Democracy”
https://books.google.com/books?id=f0dcGarZj0AC&pg=PA192&lpg=PA192&dq=model+minority+islam&
source=bl&ots=pbOVG4ECMU&sig=9zhvyJBJAVBhK9WBJQnAdzJBr3U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDAQ6AEwA
moVChMItd_zq6jixgIVgZeACh3IeABK#v=onepage&q=model%20minority%20islam&f=false)
Asian Americans as model minorities operated to discipline African Americans as an example of racial
success, yet the emphasis on minority status reaffirmed the super position of whites. Unlike the use of
the foreignness trope to serve foreign policy, the model minority trope is domestic and serves to
discipline African Americans. The model minority is also a pan-Asian category: it is applied to most Asian
Americans, not limited to a particular national origin. Together, the two tropes offer a more complete
racial landscape for Asian Americans. The “good Asian” performs racially as a model minority,
assimilated and successful. But if there is resistance to racial subordination organized through ethnic or
group identity, those ethnic excesses can be labeled as foreign. Labeling a racial performance as foreign
is an invitation to discrimination and disciplinary actions against the “bad Asian.” Furthermore, in the
case of conflict with an Asian nation, the raced bodies of Asian Americans are available through the
trope of foreignness as a mobilization point for Americans. “Good Muslim” Corresponding to the Asian
American model minority, we can see the emergence of the ”good Muslim” and “bad Muslim”
stereotypes. While the “Muslim terrorist” is now well established, the scripting of the “good Muslim” is
a work in progress. The new republican majority in Congress is holding congressional hearings on the
threat of “Islamic radicalization.” The first noncongressional witness to testify was Zuhdi Jasser, A
Republican and self-identified Muslim; founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, he is
politically active and appears often in conservative media. He is reported as “calling on Muslim leaders
to aggressively oppose a “culture of separatism” and urges Islamic clerics “to disavow scripture that
belittles non-Muslims and women and to renounce a role for Islam in the government” (Boorstein
2011). Jasser’s appearances on controversial television commentator Glen Beck’s show suggest that this
is not a doctrinal or sectarian dispute among Islamic faithful. This is an example of the crafting of the
“model minority” for the racial category of Muslims. We should expect continued efforts to create a
script for the proper racial performance of the “good Muslim.” The emergence of the possibility of the
“good Muslim” suggests that the Muslim racial category will follow the dual track of Asian American
racialization with two different ascribed racial sterotypes: the Muslim terrorist and the good Muslim.
The Muslim terrorist is an extreme example of the foreignness trope, providing a domestic body in the
service of our foreign military operations in Iraw and Afghanistan. For those Americans who are
collected in then Muslim category, the disciplinary function of the “good Muslim” corresponding to the
“model minority” is available for use against Muslims or those with Asiatic brown bodies who protest or
disagree with American domestic or foreign policy. The loose framework for the Muslim racial category
and its racial trope, the “Muslim terrorist,” makes organizing difficult. Mosques offer important centers
for faith and community. But it is unclear how a faith-based community can organize to include nonMuslims against a racial trope. One promising development was the support given by Asian Americans
to the victims of hate crimes after 9/11. The racial category of Asian Americans as a panethnic group
could, over time, encompass faith-based communities. The implications of the racialization of Islam for
American foreign policy considerations are less ambiguous but more discouraging. The racialization of
Islam through the Muslim racial category seems to be following the model of Asian American
racialization. There is a simplistic duality. One side is the bad Muslim, the “Muslim terrorist,” useful to
further American foreign policy goals. On the other side is the good Muslim, assimilating to conventional
American secular ideals. While that awkward binary may be adequate for domestic racial politics, it is
clearly inadequate to address Islam and democracy in the world today. The democratic upheavals in
North Africa and the Arab world are far more complex and subtle than the gross categories offered by
American racialization.
Thus we advocate a counterhegemonic storytelling of the myth of the model minority.
Challenging this racism is key to solving for the institutional discrimination of POC and
creating real social change.
Caroline Hargreaves, 2010, "How Important is Discourse to Social Change? Case: Micro-blogging
Community Tumblr," London School of Economics and Political Science
https://www.academia.edu/1635691/How_Important_is_Discourse_to_Social_Change_Case_Microblogging_Community_Tumblr
Discourse can be described as a set of values and beliefs that informs our social responses and actions, More
importantly, a thorough understanding of the discursive forces that shape our social fabric presents a
valuable opportunity and instrument for resistance groups to challenge dominant discourses. Foucault's
famous work on the relationship between power and knowledge brings the debate to another level, where
discourses serve as the meeting place of these two forces. This conception opens up possibilities to bring about
change, as power in a Foucauldian perspective is ubiquitous and operates without agency, beyond traditional
notions of the state and through culturally embedded factors. Foucault rejects the liberal notion that knowledge
can flourish only in the absence of power (see Evans, 2005), which allows alternative discursive methods onto the
scene. These can challenge the way in which relations and structures of power are embedded in
everyday life by providing alternative values and norms as well as morally validating the identities and
perspectives of those oppressed by the existing relations and structures of power (Stammers, 1999).
This is why much attention should be paid (by actors seeking to challenge the status quo) towards discourse
in particular in terms of locating both opportunities and constraints for social change. As argued by
Hacking (1999:58) "Politics, ideology and power matter more than metaphysics to most advocates of construction.
Talk of construction tends to undermine the authority of knowledge and categorization. It challenges complacent
ways of doing things not by refuting or proposing better, but by ‘unmasking’." This will reveal how categories of
knowledge are used in power relationships and towards moulding the global society in a particular way.
With reference to the discourse of human rights, Hunt (1990) argues that the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony make it possible to advance
a positive evaluation certain strategies within progressive politics. The 'discursive war of position' is here seen as taking practical measurements to bring about shifts
and modifications in popular consciousness. In discourse specifically, Mouffe (2005:18) explains that "[e ]very
hegemonic order is susceptible
of being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices, i.e. practices which will attempt to disarticulate the
existing order so as to install other forms of hegemony." Hegemony then becomes a process that
generates a question of culturally altering social consciousness, reworking what already exists and
introducing elements that transcend dominant narratives of issues and movements. Without going too
far into the reasons behind resisting the mainstream media logic, the main concerns are to what extent
this logic can be seen as representative of the larger voice of society, locally and globally. Mass culture
has been perceived to be an instrument of ideological dominance over ‘social consciousness’ (see
Gramsci, 1971), or what Hirst (1976:386) later labeled the ‘imaginary’, shaping social subjects.
Discourses are therefore not deliberately created narratives, but rather ideological extensions of the
hegemonic forces in play on both macro- and micro levels of society. The democratic deficits inherent in a
media system dominated by corporate and commercial structures are apparent alongside inequalities of access,
representation and ideological power (Carroll and Hackett, 2006 ). At every point in history when a larger
minority has felt oppressed by a smaller majority, revolutions have taken place, often manifested in
large social movements. Melucci (1996:84) also takes the constructivist approach and writes that at the core of social movements is the construction
of collective identity, an interactive process that addresses the question of how a collective becomes a collective. Since our identities and cultures
are ultimately shaped through cognitive perceptions and flows of information, its democratization is
integral to the collective welfare and progression. Collective action therefore becomes a way of communicating a message to
the rest of society. As argued by Faiclough and Wodak (1997: 258), discourse is “constitutive both in the sense that it helps
to sustain and reproduce the social status quo, and in the sense that it contributes to transforming it.”
From the mere conception of ideas to the distribution of messages through e.g. self-mediation, policy-makers, marketing-companies, social
movements and NGOs, the significance
of discourse to progressive social change is clear.
2NC Extensions
Hypervisible bodies are simultaneously marginalized and rendered invisible through
specular abstraction by the privileged observer
Traise Yamamoto, 2000, "In/Visible Difference: Asian American Women and the Politics of Spectacle
on JSTOR," Race, Gender & Class Journal,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41675310?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
You will find, this season, signs of yourself everywhere, but while Asian fashion accessories can be worn "as accents or top-to-toe" ( Marie Claire , 134) in order to
achieve that eponymous "China Girl" look, not a single Asian American model is to be found in these pages. Inclusion of "Asianness" expands style horizons, extends
Such magazines perfectly emblematize
the function of difference in this age of spectacle and multi –cultural display, and the ways in which the
appearance of inclusion (as well as the inclusion of appearance) substitutes specular, commodified
representations for structural visibility as national subjects. The insidiousness of difference as spectacle
is that it is just as often used to lay claim to a supposed ideology of inclusion, as it is to demarcate the
boundaries beyond which colored bodies may not go. This was made all too clear by the now infamous cover of the March 24th,
the fashion frontier, but Asian bodies remain firmly on the other side of the geo-sartorial border.
1997, issue of National Review magazine, which depicts Al Gore and Bill and Hilary Clinton as a Chinese monk, peasant and Maoist, respectively. Outfitted with cues,
slanted eyes, and the requisite buck teeth, the three Manchurian Candidates" (the lead article's title) are a stark figuration of what it means to be hyper visible as a
racialized object - the parsed, exaggerated and fetishized signs of which circulate in a discursive and representational arena in which the
Asian American
body, like all bodies of color in the United States, is primarily useful as ideological cultural capital. French
political theorist Guy DeBord asserts that "The Spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image " (1 965/1 997), and these magazines
collectively display that the ideological work of demarcating and delimiting national subjects is enacted through infinitely manipulable images of Asianness, which
run the gamut from politically-charged yellowface to fashionable chinoiserie. In both cases, signs of Asianness, orientaba, mark the cutting edge of or transgression
beyond the border of normative whiteness. Lauren Beriant, among others, has argued that national
identity is formulated through the
ways in which historical or "everyday" persons are abstracted and "reconstituted as a collective subject,
or citizen" (1991). That is, the individual person "acquires a new body by participation in the political
public sphere. The American subject is privileged to suppress the fact of his historical situation in the
abstract 'person': but then, in return, the nation provides a kind of prophylaxis for the person, as it
promises to protect his privileges," one effect of which "is to appear to be disembodied or abstract while
retaining cultural authority" ( 1 99 1 a). Yet, this process of privileged abstraction implicitly assumes a
subject whose particularities of race, gender, class and sexuality are coded as normative and therefore
invisible. The male, white, heterosexual and propertied subject is structurally visible in direct proportion
to that subject's invisibility as a site of marked embodiment. But what obtains for those whose marked
particularity remains, in a sense, uncollectible, unabstractable, who are marked "as precisely not abstract, but as
imprisoned in the surplus embodiment of a culture that values abstraction" (1991a). Women, people of color,
the poor, the queer are subject to an enforced embodiment wherein the particularity of their hypervisible bodies defines their status as the obverse of American ideality, or more accurately as the
obverse upon which the idea of American national identity depends.
The myth of model minority demonizes and makes other POCs hyper visible by
reinforcing existing racial prejudices—countering this stereotype is a prerequisite to
any aff solvency
Noy Thrupkaew, 3-25-2002 "The Myth of the Model Minority," American Prospect,
http://prospect.org/article/myth-model-minority AC
The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC), an advocacy group in Washington, estimates that
more than 2.2 million Southeast Asians now live in the United States. They are the largest group of
refugees in the country and the fastest-growing minority. Yet for most policy makers, the plight of the
many Mali Keos has been overshadowed by the well-known success of the Asian immigrants who came
before and engendered the myth of the "model minority." Indeed, conservatives have exploited this
racial stereotype -- arguing that Asians fare well in the United States because of their strong "family
values" and work ethic. These values, they say, and not government assistance, are what all minorities
need in order to get ahead. Paradoxically, Southeast Asians -- supposedly part of the model minority -may be suffering most from the resulting public policies. They have been left in the hands of
underfunded community-assistance programs and government agencies that, in one example of wellintentioned incompetence, churn out forms in Khmer and Lao for often illiterate populations. But fueled
by outrage over bad services and a fraying social safety-net, Southeast Asian immigrants have started to
embrace that most American of activities, political protest -- by pushing for research on their
communities, advocating for their rights, and harnessing their political power. The model-minority myth
has persisted in large part because political conservatives are so attached to it. "Asian Americans have
become the darlings of the right," said Frank Wu, a law professor at Howard University and the author
of Yellow: Race beyond Black and White. "The model-minority myth and its depiction of Asian-American
success tells a reassuring story about our society working." The flip side is also appealing to the right.
Because Asian Americans' success stems from their strong families and their dedication to education
and hard work, conservatives say, then the poverty of Latinos and African Americans must be explained
by their own "values": They are poor because of their nonmarrying, school-skipping, and generally lazy
and irresponsible behavior, which government handouts only encourage.
Specifically, model minority obscures the identity of Southeast Asians and increase
their vulnerability to poverty and similar problems faced by black and Latino
communities
Noy Thrupkaew, 3-25-2002 "The Myth of the Model Minority," American Prospect,
http://prospect.org/article/myth-model-minority AC
What most dramatically skews the data, though, is the fact that about half the population of Asian (or, more precisely, Asian-Pacific Islander)
Americans is made up of the highly educated immigrants who began arriving with their families in the 1960s. The
plight of refugees
from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, who make up less than 14 percent of Asian Americans, gets lost in
the averaging. Yet these refugees, who started arriving in the United States after 1975, differ markedly from the professional-class Chinese
and Indian immigrants who started coming 10 years earlier. The Southeast Asians were fleeing wartime persecution and
had few resources. And those disadvantages have had devastating effects on their lives in the United
States. The most recent census data available show that 47 percent of Cambodians, 66 percent of Hmong (an ethnic group that lived in the
mountains of Laos), 67 percent of Laotians, and 34 percent of Vietnamese were impoverished in 1990 -- compared with 10 percent of all
Americans and 14 percent of all Asian Americans. Significantly,
poverty rates among Southeast Asian Americans were
muchhigher than those of even the "nonmodel" minorities: 21 percent of African Americans and 23 percent of
Latinos were poor. Yet despite the clear inaccuracies created by lumping populations together, the federal government still groups Southeast
Asian refugees under the overbroad category of "Asian" for research and funding purposes. "We've labored under the shadow of this model
myth for so long," said KaYing Yang, SEARAC's executive director. "There's so little research on us, or we're lumped in with all other Asians, so
people don't know the specific needs and contributions of our communities." To get a sense of those needs, one has to go back to the
beginning of the Southeast Asian refugees' story and the circumstances that forced their migration. In 1975, the fall of Saigon sent shock waves
throughout Southeast Asia, as communist insurgents toppled U.S.-supported governments in Vietnam and Cambodia. In Laos, where the CIA
had trained and funded the Hmong to fight Laotian and Vietnamese communists as U.S. proxies, the communists who took over vowed to
purge the country of ethnic Hmong and punish all others who had workedwith the U.S. government. The first refugees to leave Southeast Asia
tended to be the most educated and urban, English-speakers with close connections to the U.S. government. One of them was a man who
wishes to be identified by the pseudonym John Askulraskul. He spent two years in a Laotian re-education camp -- punishment for his ability to
speak English, his having been educated, and, most of all, his status as a former employee of the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID). "They tried to brainwash you, to subdue you psychologically, to work you to death on two bowls of rice a day,"
Askulraskul told me recently. After being released, he decided to flee the country. He, his sister, and his eldest daughter, five and a half years
old, slipped into the Mekong River with a few others. Clinging to an inflated garbage bag, Askulraskul swam alongside their boat out of fear that
his weight would sink it. After they arrived on the shores of Thailand, Askulraskul and his daughter were placed in a refugee camp, where they
waited to be reunited with his wife and his two other daughters. It was not to be. "My wife tried to escape with two small children. But my
daughters couldn't make it" -- he paused, drawing a ragged breath -- "because the boat sank." Askulraskul's wife was swept back to Laos, where
she was arrested and placed in jail for a month. She succeeded in her next escape attempt, rejoining her suddenly diminished family.
Eventually, with the help of his former boss at USAID, they moved to Connecticut, where Askulraskul found work helping to resettle other
refugees. His wife, who had been an elementary-school teacher, took up teaching English as a second language (ESL) to Laotian refugee
children. His daughter adjusted quickly and went to school without incident. Askulraskul now manages a project that provides services for atrisk Southeast Asian children and their families. "The job I am doing now is not only a job," he said. "It is part of my life and my sacrifice. My
daughter is 29 now, and I know raising kids in America is not easy. I cannot save everybody, but there is still something I can do." Like others
among the first wave of refugees, Askulraskul considers himself one of the lucky ones. His education, U.S. ties, and English-language ability -everything that set off the tragic chain of events that culminated in his daughters' deaths -- proved enormously helpful once he was in the
United States. But the majority of refugees from Southeast Asia had no such advantages. Subsequent waves frequently hailed from rural areas
and lacked both financial resources and formal schooling. Their psychological scars were even deeper than the first group's, from their longer
years in squalid refugee camps or the killing fields. The ethnic Chinese who began arriving from Vietnam had faced harsh discrimination as well,
and the Amerasians -- the children of Vietnamese women and U.S. soldiers -- had lived for years as pariahs. Once here, these refugees often
found themselves trapped in poverty, providing low-cost labor, and receiving no health or other benefits, while their lack of schooling made
decent jobs almost impossible to come by. In 1990, two-thirds of Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong adults in America had less than a high-school
education -- compared with 14 percent of whites, 25 percent of African Americans, 45 percent of Latinos, and 15 percent of the general AsianAmerican population. Before the welfare-reform law cut many of them off, nearly 30 percent of Southeast Asian Americans were on welfare -the highest participation rate of any ethnic group. And having such meager incomes, they usually lived in the worst neighborhoods, with the
attendant crime, gang problems, and poor schools. But shouldn't the touted Asian dedication to schooling have overcome these disadvantages,
lifting the refugees' children out of poverty and keeping them off the streets? Unfortunately, it didn't. "There is still a high number of dropouts
for Southeast Asians," Yang said. "And if they do graduate, there is a low number going on to higher education." Their parents' difficulty in
navigating American school systems may contribute to the problem. "The parents' lack of education leads to a lack of role models and guidance.
Without those things, youth can turn to delinquent behavior and in some very extreme cases, gangs, instead of devoting themselves to
education," said Narin Sihavong, director of SEARAC's Successful New Americans Project, which interviewed Mali Keo. "This underscores the
need for Southeast Asian school administrators or counselors who can be role models, ease the cultural barrier, and serve as a bridge to their
parents." "Sometimes families have to choose between education and employment, especially when money is tight," said Porthira Chimm, a
former SEARAC project director. "And unfortunately, immediate money concerns often win out." The
picture that emerges -- of
high welfare participation and dropout rates, low levels of education and income -- is startlingly similar
to the situation of the poorest members of "nonmodel" minority groups. Southeast Asians, Latinos, and
African Americans also have in common significant numbers of single-parent families. Largely as a result of the
killing fields, nearly a quarter of Cambodian households are headed by single women. Other Southeast Asian families have similar stories.
Sihavong's mother, for example, raised him and his five siblings on her own while his father was imprisoned in a Laotian re-education camp. No
matter how "traditional" Southeast
Asians may be, they share the fate of other people of color when they are
denied access to good education, safe neighborhoods, and jobs that provide a living wage and benefits.
But for the sake of preserving the model-minority myth, conservative policy makers have largely ignored
the needs of Southeast Asian communities. One such need is for psychological care. Wartime trauma and "lack of English
proficiency, acculturative stress, prejudice, discrimination, and racial hate crimes" place Southeast Asians "at risk for emotional and behavioral
problems," according to the U.S. surgeon general's 2001 report on race and mental health. One random sample of Cambodian adults found that
45 percent had post-traumatic stress disorder and 51 percent suffered from depression. John Askulraskul's past reflects trauma as well, but his
education, English-language ability, and U.S. connections helped level the playing field. Less fortunate refugees need literacy training and
language assistance. They also need social supports like welfare and strong community-assistance groups. But misled by the model-minority
myth, many government agencies seem to be unaware that Southeast Asians require their services, and officials have done little to find these
needy refugees or accommodate them. Considering that nearly two-thirds of Southeast Asians say they do not speak English very well and
more than 50 percent live in linguistically isolated ethnic enclaves, the lack of outreach and translators effectively denies them many public
services. The problem extends beyond antipoverty programs, as Mali Keo's story illustrates. After her husband left her, she formed a
relationship with another man and had two more children. But he beat the family for years, until she asked an organization that served
Cambodian refugees to help her file a restraining order. If she had known that a shelter was available, she told her interviewer, even one
without Khmer-speaking counselors, she would have escaped much earlier. Where the government hasn't turned a blind eye, it has often
wielded an iron fist. The welfare-reform law of 1996, which cut off welfare, SSI, and food-stamp benefits for most noncitizens -- even those who
are legal permanent residents -- sent Southeast Asian communities into an uproar. Several elderly Hmong in California committed suicide,
fearing that they would become burdens to their families. Meanwhile, the
lack of literacy programs prevented (and still
does prevent) many refugees from passing the written test that would gain them citizenship and the
right to public assistance.
Politics
1NC
Obama can hold off a veto now – but his political capital is key
Walsh and Barrett 7/16 (Deirdre, Senior Congressional Producer for CNN, Ted, senior congressional
producer for CNN Politics, “WH dispatches Joe Biden to lock down Iran deal on Capitol Hill,” CNN,
7/16/2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/politics/iran-deal-white-house-democratscongress/)//duncan
Two days after the Iran deal was unveiled, the Obama administration's sales job is in full swing.¶ Vice
President Joe Biden traveled to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to convince House Democrats to support the
deal, while a small group of senators were invited to the White House to get their questions answered directly from officials who sat across
from the Iranians at the negotiating table. Biden meets with Senate Democrats of the Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday.¶ House
lawmakers said Biden was candid about the strengths and weaknesses of the compromise deal. One described his behind closed doors pitch.¶
"I'm going to put aside my notes and talk to you from my heart because I've been in this business for 45 years," Biden said in his opening
comments, according to Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-New Jersey, who attended the session.¶ "I'm not going to BS you. I'm going to tell you exactly what
I think," the vice president reportedly said.¶ Obama
got a boost from the leader of his party in the chamber when
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi formally announced Thursday that she was backing the deal.¶ SInce Republicans in the
House and Senate are firmly against the Iran nuclear deal -- announced by President Barack Obama on Tuesday -- the
administration is cranking up its campaign to sway concerned Democrats to back the agreement. ¶ Under
legislation that allows Congress to review the agreement, the White House needs to secure enough votes from
members of his own party to sustain the President's promised veto on an resolution of disapproval -- 145 in the House
and 34 in the Senate.¶ After the session with Biden, several House Democrats stressed that while the process is just
beginning, right now the administration likely has the votes to sustain the President's veto on a
resolution to block the deal.¶ "I'm confident they will like it when they understand it all," the vice president told reporters on his
way into the session, beginning what will be a two month campaign culminating in a vote, expected in September.¶ Democrats, both for
and against the deal, praised Biden's presentation.¶ "Joe Biden was as good as I've seen him," Rep. John Larson, DConnecticut, told CNN. "I thought he did an excellent job."¶ Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar said Biden is a "master of detail" and
helped clarify some concerns he had about the verification provisions in the deal, but he still planned to carefully study it and said
he was undecided.¶ Pascrell also cited the verification issue as a potential sticking point but said he is leaning 'yes' on the agreement.¶
"On our side of the aisle there is concern and skepticism shared by a number of members but an openness to
be persuaded if the facts take them that way," Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia said. "I think (Biden) made some real progress
on behalf of the administration today."¶ But Democratic Rep. Steve Israel of New York, a former member of Democratic leadership, told
reporters he wasn't sold yet.¶ "For me, I still have some very significant questions with respect to lifting of the embargo on conventional arms.
And missiles. The (International Atomic Energy Agency) verification process for me is not any time anywhere, I think there are some very
significant delays built into that," Israel said.¶ Larson noted that both Biden's
presentation, along with Hillary Clinton's a day earlier,
who he said spoke favorably about the deal, helped lay the groundwork for most Democrats to back the White
House.¶ At the same time on Wednesday that the President held a news conference trying to persuade the public he had brokered an strong
and effective deal with Iran, Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and a handful of other senators, were in a separate part of the
White House meeting with some of the President's top negotiators, who had just returned from Vienna.¶ "I was very satisfied with an awful lot
of the answers we received," Manchin told CNN.¶ The
intimate meeting for senators was another example of the
White House's effort to shore up support in the Senate where leaders believe as many as 15
Democrats could oppose the deal. If they did, it could provide Senate Republicans the votes needed to
override a veto of the disapproval resolution and scuttle the deal.¶ But Manchin, a centrist who has close
relations with senators on both sides of the aisle, said at this point he has not detected major blowback
from Senate Democrats to the deal.¶ "At caucus yesterday I didn't get a reading there is hard, hard opposition. I did not," he said.¶
In fact, Manchin said he thought Republicans actually might struggle getting the 60 votes they will need to pass the disapproval resolution,
much less the dozen or so votes that might be needed to sustain a veto.¶ One
key senator whose position will be closely
monitored by the White House and his colleagues from both parties on the Hill, is Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the third-ranking
Democrats who is poised to become the Democratic leader in the next Congress. Schumer has many Jewish voters in his state
who are wary of the impact of the Iran agreement on the security of Israel. Schumer said he is skeptical
of the deal and won't decide whether to support it before doing his homework.¶ "I will sit down, I will read the agreement thoroughly and
then I'm gonna speak with officials -- administration officials, people all over on all different sides," he said when asked about his decisionmaking process. "Look, this is a decision that shouldn't be made lightly and I am gonna just study this agreement and talk to people before I do
anything else."¶ Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, a leading critic of the agreement with Iran, said "the
pressure will be enormous
from the administration," as it tries to keep Democrats from defecting. As chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, McCain said he intends to hold hearings to demonstrate what he calls the "fatal flaws" in the deal.¶ House conservatives
speaking at a forum sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, one after another ripped the Iran deal. But they
conceded that ultimately they may not be able to block it.¶ "The game is rigged in favor of getting this
done" Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said.
Obama supports current surveillance of Muslims- Recent meeting with Muslim
activists proves he’s more concerned with domestic counterterrorism.
Ackerman 14 (Spencer, “White House Iftar Dinner Guests Press Obama on Surveillance of Muslims,
TheGuardian.com Ackerman is the national security editor for the Guardian US, they were the senior
writer at WIRED and the senior reporter at the Washington Independent.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/16/white-house-iftar-obama-surveillance-muslims //
EMS).
Attendees of a White House dinner this week celebrating a Muslim holiday attempted to leverage
their direct interaction with Barack Obama into a presidential commitment to discuss widespread and
controversial surveillance of their communities.¶ They left feeling they had Obama's interest, but not
much more.¶ Less than a week after the Intercept, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, showed US Muslim activists
and attorneys had been targeted for surveillance, Obama gathered legislators, diplomats and US Muslim community
leaders to the White House on Monday night for an Iftar dinner, the sunset meal during Ramadan. In remarks released by the White House,
Obama stressed the value of pluralism, sidestepping the surveillance controversy.¶ Not everyone was
satisfied with the omission.¶ Some of the people who attended were signatories of a letter sent to the White House in the wake of
the Intercept story urgently requesting a meeting with Obama. Without that commitment yet in hand, took the opportunity to raise the issue
with Obama personally at the Monday dinner.¶ "I
specifically asked the president if he would meet with us to
discuss NSA spying on the American Muslim community. The president seemed to perk up and proceeded to
discuss the issue, saying that he takes it very seriously," said Junaid Sulahry, the outreach manager for Muslim Advocates, a legal and civil rights
group.¶ Obama was non-committal, Sulahry said, but displayed "a clear willingness to discuss the issue."¶ Hoda Elshishtawy, the
national policy analyst for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said that she brought it up as part of a "table-wide discussion" on post-9/11
surveillance of US Muslims.¶ "Our communities can't be seen as suspects and partners at the same time," Elshishtawy said.¶ That tension
has plagued the Obama administration's domestic counterterrorism – or, as it prefers, "countering violent
extremism" – for its entire tenure. The departments of justice and homeland security lead outreach efforts in Muslim and other local
communities, stressing vigilance against radicalizing influences and dialogue with law enforcement.¶ Yet Muslim communities
labor
under widespread suspicion of incubating terrorism. Surveillance from law enforcement and US
intelligence is robust, from the harvesting of digital communications to the recruitment of informants
inside mosques. The Federal Bureau of Investigation compiles maps of Muslim businesses and
religious institutions, without suspicion of specific crimes.¶ The mixed message comes amidst the
freight of a foreign policy featuring drone strikes in Muslim countries, a reluctance to foreclose on
indefinite detention that functionally is only aimed at Muslims, and difficulty concluding the war in
Afghanistan – all of which have strained relations with American-Muslim communities.¶
Failure will spur prolif and war with Iran – the plan tanks Obama’s ability to hold off
Congress
Beauchamp 14 (Zack – B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from Brown University and an M.Sc in
International Relations from the London School of Economics, former editor of TP Ideas and a reporter
for ThinkProgress.org. He previously contributed to Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish at Newsweek/Daily
Beast, and has also written for Foreign Policy and Tablet magazines, now writes for Vox , “How the new
GOP majority could destroy Obama's nuclear deal with Iran,”
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/6/7164283/iran-nuclear-deal-congress,)
There is one foreign policy issue on which the GOP's takeover of the Senate could have huge ramifications, and beyond just the US:
Republicans are likely to try to torpedo President Obama's ongoing efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran.
And they just might pull it off. November 24 is the latest deadline for a final agreement between the United States and Iran over the
latter's nuclear program. That'll likely be extended, but it's a reminder that the negotiations could soon come to a head. Throughout his
presidency, Obama has prioritized these negotiations; he likely doesn't want to leave office without having made a deal.
But if Congress doesn't like the deal, or just wants to see Obama lose, it has the power to torpedo it by
imposing new sanctions on Iran. Previously, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used procedural powers to stop this from happening
and save the nuclear talks. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may not be so kind, and he may have the votes to
destroy an Iran deal. If he tries, we could see one of the most important legislative fights of Obama's
presidency. Why Congress can bully Obama on Iran sanctions At their most basic level, the international negotiations over Iran's nuclear
program (they include several other nations, but the US is the biggest player) are a tit-for-tat deal. If Iran agrees to place a series of verifiable
limits on its nuclear development, then the United States and the world will relax their painful economic and diplomatic sanctions on Tehran.
"The regime of economic sanctions against Iran is arguably the most complex the United States and the international community have ever
imposed on a rogue state," the Congressional Research Service's Dianne Rennack writes. To underscore the point, Rennack's four-page report is
accompanied by a list of every US sanction on Iran that goes on for 23 full pages. The US's sanctions are a joint Congressional-executive
production. Congress puts strict limits on Iran's ability to export oil and do business with American companies, but it gives the president the
power to waive sanctions if he thinks it's in the American national interest. "In the collection of laws that are the statutory basis for the U.S.
economic sanctions regime on Iran," Rennack writes, "the President retains, in varying degrees, the authority to tighten and relax restrictions."
The key point here is that Congress gave Obama that power — which means they can take it back. "You
could see a bill in place that makes it harder for the administration to suspend sanctions," Ken Sofer, the
Associate Director for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress
(where I worked for a little under two years, though not with Sofer directly), says. "You could also see a bill that says the president can't agree
to a deal unless it includes the following things or [a bill] forcing a congressional vote on any deal." Imposing
new sanctions on Iran
wouldn't just stifle Obama's ability to remove existing sanctions, it would undermine Obama's authority
to negotiate with Iran at all, sending the message to Tehran that Obama is not worth dealing with
because he can't control his own foreign policy. So if Obama wants to make a deal with Iran, he needs
Congress to play ball. But it's not clear that Mitch McConnell's Senate wants to. Congress could easily use its authority to kill an Iran
deal To understand why the new Senate is such a big deal for congressional action on sanctions, we have to jump back a year. In November
2013, the Obama administration struck an interim deal with Iran called the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA). As part of the JPOA, the US agreed to
limited, temporary sanctions relief in exchange for Iran limiting nuclear program components like uranium production. Congressional
Republicans, by and large, hate the JPOA deal. Arguing that the deal didn't place sufficiently serious limits on Iran's nuclear growth, the House
passed new sanctions on Iran in December. (There is also a line of argument, though often less explicit, that the Iranian government cannot be
trusted with any deal at all, and that US policy should focus on coercing Iran into submission or unseating the Iranian government entirely.)
Senate Republicans, joined by more hawkish Democrats, had the votes to pass a similar bill. But in February, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid
killed new Iran sanctions, using the Majority Leader's power to block consideration of the sanctions legislation to prevent a vote. McConnell
blasted Reid's move. "There is no excuse for muzzling the Congress on an issue of this importance to our own national security," he said. So
now that McConnell holds the majority leader's gavel, it will remove that procedural roadblock that stood between Obama and new Iran
sanctions. To be clear, it's far from guaranteed that Obama will be able to reach a deal with Iran at all; negotiations could fall apart long before
they reach the point of congressional involvement. But if he does reach a deal, and Congress doesn't like the terms, then they'll be able to kill it
by passing new sanctions legislation, or preventing Obama from temporarily waiving the ones on the books. And make no
mistake —
imposing new sanctions or limiting Obama's authority to waive the current ones would kill any deal. If
Iran can't expect Obama to follow through on his promises to relax sanctions, it has zero incentive to
limit its nuclear program. "If Congress adopts sanctions," Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told Time last December, "the entire
deal is dead." Moreover, it could fracture the international movement to sanction Iran. The United States is far
from Iran's biggest trading partner, so it depends on international cooperation in order to ensure the
sanctions bite. If it looks like the US won't abide by the terms of a deal, the broad-based international
sanctions regime could collapse. Europe, particularly, might decide that going along with the sanctions is no longer worthwhile.
"Our ability to coerce Iran is largely based on whether or not the international community thinks that we are the ones that are being
constructive and [Iranians] are the ones that being obstructive," Sofer says. "If they don't believe that, then the international sanctions regime
falls apart." This could be one of the biggest fights of Obama's last term It's
true that Obama could veto any Congressional
efforts to blow up an Iran deal with sanctions. But a two-thirds vote could override any veto — and,
according to Sofer, an override is entirely within the realm of possibility. "There are plenty of Democrats that will probably
side with Republicans if they try to push a harder line on Iran," Sofer says. For a variety of reasons, including deep skepticism of Iran's
intentions and strong Democratic support for Israel, whose government opposes the negotiations, Congressional Democrats are
not as open to making a deal with Iran as Obama is. Many will likely defect to the GOP side out of
principle. The real fight, Sofer says, will be among the Democrats — those who are willing to take the
administration's side in theory, but don't necessarily think a deal with Iran is legislative priority number
one, and maybe don't want to open themselves up to the political risk. These Democrats "can make it
harder: you can filibuster, if you're Obama you can veto — you can make it impossible for a full bill to be passed out of
Congress on Iran," Sofer says. But it'd be a really tough battle, one that would consume a lot of energy and
lobbying effort that Democrats might prefer to spend pushing on other issues. "I'm not really sure they're going
to be willing to take on a fight about an Iran sanctions bill," Sofer concludes. "I'm not really sure that the Democrats who support [a deal] are
really fully behind it enough that they'll be willing to give up leverage on, you know, unemployment insurance or immigration status — these
bigger issues for most Democrats." So if
the new Republican Senate prioritizes destroying an Iran deal, Obama will
have to fight very hard to keep it — without necessarily being able to count on his own party for
support. And the stakes are enormous: if Iran's nuclear program isn't stopped peacefully, then the
most likely outcomes are either Iran going nuclear, or war with Iran. The administration believes a deal
with Iran is their only way to avoid this horrible choice. That's why it's been one of the administration's
top priorities since day one. It's also why this could become one of the biggest legislative fights of Obama's last two years.
Nuke war
Stevens 13 (Philip Stevens, associate editor and chief political commentator for the Financial Times,
Nov 14 2013, “The four big truths that are shaping the Iran talks,”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af170df6-4d1c-11e3-bf32-00144feabdc0.html)
six-power negotiations with Tehran to curb Iran’s
nuclear programme may yet succeed or fail. But wrangling between the US and France on the terms of an acceptable deal should not allow the trees to
obscure the forest. The organising facts shaping the negotiations have not changed.¶ The first of these is that Tehran’s acquisition of a bomb would be more
than dangerous for the Middle East and for wider international security. It would most likely set off a nuclear arms race that
would see Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt signing up to the nuclear club. The nuclear non-proliferation
treaty would be shattered. A future regional conflict could draw Israel into launching a pre-emptive nuclear
strike. This is not a region obviously susceptible to cold war disciplines of deterrence.¶ The second ineluctable
reality is that Iran has mastered the nuclear cycle. How far it is from building a bomb remains a subject of debate. Different intelligence agencies give
The who-said-what game about last weekend’s talks in Geneva has become a distraction. The
different answers. These depend in part on what the spooks actually know and in part on what their political masters want others to hear. The progress of an Iranian warhead programme is
one of the known unknowns that have often wreaked havoc in this part of the world.¶ Israel points to an imminent threat. European agencies are more relaxed, suggesting Tehran is still two
years or so away from a weapon. Western diplomats broadly agree that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not taken a definitive decision to step over the line. What Iran has been seeking is what
diplomats call a breakout capability – the capacity to dash to a bomb before the international community could effectively mobilise against it.¶ The third fact – and this one is hard for many to
swallow – is that neither a negotiated settlement nor the air strikes long favoured by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, can offer the rest of the world a watertight insurance
policy.¶ It should be possible to construct a deal that acts as a plausible restraint – and extends the timeframe for any breakout – but no amount of restrictions or intrusive monitoring can
bombing Iran’s nuclear sites could certainly delay the
programme, perhaps for a couple of years. But, assuming that even the hawkish Mr Netanyahu is not proposing permanent war against Iran, air strikes would
not end it.¶ You cannot bomb knowledge and technical expertise. To try would be to empower those in
Tehran who say the regime will be safe only when, like North Korea, it has a weapon. So when Barack Obama says the US will never allow
Iran to get the bomb he is indulging in, albeit understandable, wishful thinking.¶ The best the international community can hope for is that,
in return for a relaxation of sanctions, Iran will make a judgment that it is better off sticking with a
threshold capability. To put this another way, if Tehran does step back from the nuclear brink it will be because of
its own calculation of the balance of advantage.¶ The fourth element in this dynamic is that Iran now has a leadership that,
faced with the severe and growing pain inflicted by sanctions, is prepared to talk. There is nothing to say that Hassan Rouhani, the president,
offer a certain guarantee against Tehran’s future intentions.¶ By the same token,
is any less hard-headed than previous Iranian leaders, but he does seem ready to weigh the options.
2NC Extensions
Obama will fight the plan- It undermines administration’s counterterrorism efforts
Ackerman 14 (Spencer Ackerman: National security editor for Guardian, “White House Iftar dinner
guests press Obama on surveillance of Muslims”, The Guardian, 7/16/2014,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/16/white-house-iftar-obama-surveillance-muslims,
Accessed: 7/17/14, RRR)
Attendees of a White House dinner this week celebrating a Muslim holiday attempted to leverage their direct interaction
with Barack Obama into a presidential commitment to discuss widespread and controversial surveillance of
their communities.¶ They left feeling they had Obama's interest, but not much more.¶ Less than a week after the Intercept, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden,
showed US Muslim activists and attorneys had been targeted for surveillance, Obama gathered legislators, diplomats and US Muslim community leaders to the White House on Monday night
Obama stressed the value of pluralism, sidestepping
the surveillance controversy.¶ Not everyone was satisfied with the omission.¶ Some of the people who attended were
for an Iftar dinner, the sunset meal during Ramadan. In remarks released by the White House,
signatories of a letter sent to the White House in the wake of the Intercept story urgently requesting a meeting with Obama. Without that commitment yet in hand, took the opportunity to
raise the issue with Obama personally at the Monday dinner.¶ "I specifically asked the president if he would meet with us to discuss NSA spying on the American Muslim community. The
president seemed to perk up and proceeded to discuss the issue, saying that he takes it very seriously," said Junaid Sulahry, the outreach manager for Muslim Advocates, a legal and civil rights
group.¶ Obama was non-committal, Sulahry said, but displayed "a clear willingness to discuss the issue."¶ Hoda Elshishtawy, the national policy analyst for the Muslim Public Affairs Council,
said that she brought it up as part of a "table-wide discussion" on post-9/11 surveillance of US Muslims.¶ "Our communities can't be seen as suspects and partners at the same time,"
That tension has plagued the Obama administration's domestic counterterrorism – or, as it
prefers, "countering violent extremism" – for its entire tenure. The departments of justice and homeland security lead outreach efforts in
Elshishtawy said.¶
Muslim and other local communities, stressing vigilance against radicalizing influences and dialogue with law enforcement.¶ Yet Muslim communities labor under widespread suspicion of
The
Federal Bureau of Investigation compiles maps of Muslim businesses and religious institutions, without
suspicion of specific crimes.¶ The mixed message comes amidst the freight of a foreign policy featuring drone strikes in Muslim countries, a reluctance to foreclose on
incubating terrorism. Surveillance from law enforcement and US intelligence is robust, from the harvesting of digital communications to the recruitment of informants inside mosques.
indefinite detention that functionally is only aimed at Muslims, and difficulty concluding the war in Afghanistan – all of which have strained relations with American-Muslim communities.¶
Some of those community leaders have already come under fire for attending the White House dinner. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee urged a boycott over the
surveillance and administration support for Israel during the current Gaza offensive, rejecting what it called "normalization of the continuous breach of our fundamental rights."¶
Representatives of organizations that rejected the boycott argued that they can exercise greater influence through access than through rejection.¶ "Our strategy is to worth through the
The White House declined comment on what it called "private
conversations at a closed press event."
system," said Farhana Khera, Muslim Advocates' executive director.¶
Obama will oppose the plan – the White House funds NYPD’s Muslim surveillance
programs.
Sullivan 12 (Eileen, “Report: White House Helped Pay for NYPD Muslim Surveillance Programs,” February 27, Sullivan is a journalist
and AP reporter focusing on current events and politics. http://www.officer.com/news/10634052/report-white-house-helped-pay-for-nypdmuslim-surveillance-programs // EMS).
Millions of dollars in White House money has helped pay for New York Police
Department programs that put entire American Muslim neighborhoods under surveillance.¶ The money is
part of a little-known grant intended to help law enforcement fight drug crimes. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush and
Obama administrations have provided $135 million to the New York and New Jersey region through the High Intensity
¶ WASHINGTON --
Drug Trafficking Area program, known as HIDTA.¶ Some of that money — it's unclear exactly how much because the program has little
oversight — has
paid for the cars that plainclothes NYPD officers used to conduct surveillance on Muslim
neighborhoods. It also paid for computers that store even innocuous information about Muslim
college students, mosque sermons and social events.¶ When NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly was filled in on these
efforts, his briefings were prepared on HIDTA computers.¶ The AP confirmed the use of White House money through secret police documents
and interviews with current and former city and federal officials. The AP also obtained electronic documents with digital signatures indicating
they were created and saved on HIDTA computers. The
National Drug Control Policy.¶ The
HIDTA grant program is overseen by the White House Office of
disclosure that the White House is at least partially paying for the NYPD's
wholesale surveillance of places where Muslims eat, shop, work and pray complicates efforts by the
Obama administration to stay out of the fray over New York's controversial counterterrorism programs.
The administration has championed outreach to American Muslims and has said law enforcement should not put entire communities under
suspicion.¶ The
Obama administration, however, has pointedly refused to endorse or repudiate the NYPD
programs it helps pay for. The White House last week declined to comment on its grant payments.¶
Terror DA
1NC
Terror risk is high- maintaining current surveillance is key
Inserra, 6-8-2015
David Inserra is a Research Associate for Homeland Security and Cyber Security in the Douglas and Sarah
Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute
for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation, 6-8-2015, "69th Islamist Terrorist
Plot: Ongoing Spike in Terrorism Should Force Congress to Finally Confront the Terrorist Threat,"
Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/06/69th-islamist-terrorist-plotongoing-spike-in-terrorism-should-force-congress-to-finally-confront-the-terrorist-threat
On June 2 in Boston, Usaamah Abdullah Rahim drew a knife and attacked police officers and FBI agents,
who then shot and killed him. Rahim was being watched by Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task Force as he
had been plotting to behead police officers as part of violent jihad. A conspirator, David Wright or
Dawud Sharif Abdul Khaliq, was arrested shortly thereafter for helping Rahim to plan this attack. This
plot marks the 69th publicly known Islamist terrorist plot or attack against the U.S. homeland since 9/11,
and is part of a recent spike in terrorist activity. The U.S. must redouble its efforts to stop terrorists
before they strike, through the use of properly applied intelligence tools. The Plot According to the criminal
complaint filed against Wright, Rahim had originally planned to behead an individual outside the state of Massachusetts,[1] which, according to
news reports citing anonymous government officials, was Pamela Geller, the organizer of the “draw Mohammed” cartoon contest in Garland,
Texas.[2] To this end, Rahim had purchased multiple knives, each over 1 foot long, from Amazon.com. The
FBI was listening in on
the calls between Rahim and Wright and recorded multiple conversations regarding how these weapons
would be used to behead someone. Rahim then changed his plan early on the morning of June 2. He planned to go “on vacation
right here in Massachusetts…. I’m just going to, ah, go after them, those boys in blue. Cause, ah, it’s the easiest target.”[3] Rahim and Wright
had used the phrase “going on vacation” repeatedly in their conversations as a euphemism for violent jihad. During this conversation, Rahim
told Wright that he planned to attack a police officer on June 2 or June 3. Wright then offered advice on preparing a will and destroying any
incriminating evidence. Based on this threat, Boston police officers and FBI agents approached Rahim to question him, which prompted him to
pull out one of his knives. After being told to drop his weapon, Rahim responded with “you drop yours” and moved toward the officers, who
then shot and killed him. While Rahim’s brother, Ibrahim, initially claimed that Rahim was shot in the back, video surveillance was shown to
community leaders and civil rights groups, who have confirmed that Rahim was not shot in the back.[4 ] Terrorism Not Going Away This
69th
Islamist plot is also the seventh in this calendar year. Details on how exactly Rahim was radicalized are still forthcoming,
but according to anonymous officials, online propaganda from ISIS and other radical Islamist groups are the
source.[5] That would make this attack the 58th homegrown terrorist plot and continue the recent trend
of ISIS playing an important role in radicalizing individuals in the United States. It is also the sixth plot or attack
targeting law enforcement in the U.S., with a recent uptick in plots aimed at police. While the debate over the PATRIOT Act and the USA
FREEDOM Act is taking a break, the terrorists are not. The result of the debate has been the reduction of U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism
Other
legitimate intelligence tools and capabilities must be leaned on now even more. Protecting the Homeland To
capabilities, meaning that the U.S. has to do even more with less when it comes to connecting the dots on terrorist plots.[6]
keep the U.S. safe, Congress must take a hard look at the U.S. counterterrorism enterprise and determine other measures that are needed to
improve it. Congress should: Emphasize community outreach. Federal grant funds should be used to create robust community-outreach
capabilities in higher-risk urban areas. These funds must not be used for political pork, or so broadly that they no longer target those
communities at greatest risk. Such capabilities are key to building trust within these communities, and if the United States is to thwart lone-wolf
terrorist attacks, it must place effective community outreach operations at the tip of the spear. Prioritize local cyber capabilities. Building cyberinvestigation capabilities in the higher-risk urban areas must become a primary focus of Department of Homeland Security grants. With so
much terrorism-related activity occurring on the Internet, local law enforcement must have the constitutional ability to monitor and track
violent extremist activity on the Web when reasonable suspicion exists to do so. Push the FBI toward being more effectively driven by
intelligence. While the FBI has made high-level changes to its mission and organizational structure, the bureau is still working on integrating
intelligence and law enforcement activities. Full integration will require overcoming inter-agency cultural barriers and providing FBI intelligence
personnel with resources, opportunities, and the stature they need to become a more effective and integral part of the FBI.
Maintain
essential counterterrorism tools. Support for important investigative tools is essential to maintaining the
security of the U.S. and combating terrorist threats. Legitimate government surveillance programs are
also a vital component of U.S. national security and should be allowed to continue. The need for
effective counterterrorism operations does not relieve the government of its obligation to follow the
law and respect individual privacy and liberty. In the American system, the government must do both
equally well. Clear-Eyed Vigilance The recent spike in terrorist plots and attacks should finally awaken
policymakers—all Americans, for that matter—to the seriousness of the terrorist threat. Neither fearmongering
nor willful blindness serves the United States. Congress must recognize and acknowledge the nature and
the scope of the Islamist terrorist threat, and take the appropriate action to confront it.
TSA is key to protect against dangerous weapons, explosives, and innovate in security technologies.
John S. Pistole, 3-5-2012, "Counterterrorism, Risk-Based Security and TSA’s Vision for the Future of
Aviation Security," Transportation Security Administration,
https://www.tsa.gov/press/speeches/counterterrorism-risk-based-security-and-tsa%E2%80%99s-visionfuture-aviation-security
Remember
that before September 11, 2001, there was:¶ No cohesive system in place to check passenger
names against terrorist watch lists in advance of flying;¶ Only limited technologies in place for
uncovering a wide array of threats to passengers or aircraft;¶ No comprehensive federal requirements to
screen checked or carry-on baggage;¶ Minimal in-flight security on most flights; and,¶ From a
coordination standpoint, before 9/11 there was a lack of timely intelligence-sharing, in both directions
— from the federal level down to the individual airports, as well as from an individual airport up to the
national level.¶ I came to TSA more than a year and a half ago, having worked the previous 26 years in a variety of positions within the FBI.
That experience with a range of partners inside the law enforcement and intelligence communities helped shape my approach to solidifying
TSA’s place within the national counterterrorism continuum.¶ Every day, we strive to ensure our operational planning and decision making
process is timely, efficient and as coordinated as possible — and critically, based on intelligence. We work to share critical information with key
industry stakeholders whenever appropriate, and we are constantly communicating with our frontline officers through shift briefings held
several times a day.¶ Thanks to the effective partnerships we’ve forged with industry stakeholders, with our airline and airport partners, and
with law enforcement colleagues at every level, TSA
has achieved a number of significant milestones during its first
10 years of service.¶ These include matching 100 percent of all passengers flying into, out of, and within
the United States against government watch lists through the Secure Flight program.¶ It includes
screening all air cargo transported on passenger planes domestically and, as you know, we work closely
with our international partners every day to screen 100% of high-risk inbound cargo on passenger
planes. We’re also working hard with these same partners to screen 100% of allinternational inbound
cargo on passenger planes by the end of this year.¶ And it also includes improving aviation security
through innovative technology that provides advanced baggage screening for explosives.¶ Since their inception
in 2005 through February 2012, we have also conducted more than 26,000 Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response or VIPR operations. We
have 25 multi-modal VIPR teams working in transportation sectors across the country to prevent or disrupt potential terrorist planning
activities.¶ Additionally, since 2006, TSA
has completed more than 190 Baseline Assessments for Security
Enhancement for transit, which provides a comprehensive assessment of security programs in critical
transit systems.¶ We are seeing the benefits of how these important steps — combined with our multiple layers of security including
cutting-edge technology — keep America safe every day.¶ Since our standup in 2002, we have screened nearly six billion passengers. Our front
line officers have detected thousands of firearms and countless other prohibited items and we have prevented those weapons from entering
the cabin of an aircraft.¶ In
fact, more than 10 years after 9/11, TSA officers still detect, on-average, between
three and four firearms every day in carry-on bags at security checkpoints around the country.¶
Deploying advanced, state-of-the-art technologies continue to factor significantly into our multi-layered
approach to transportation security. In particular, we continue to see the efficacy of Advanced Imaging Technology, or AIT,
machines at hundreds of passenger security checkpoints around the United States.¶ From February 2011 to June 2011, the Office of the
Inspector General (OIG) assessed the manner in which TSA inspects, maintains and operates backscatter units used in passenger screening.¶
The OIG found that TSA was in compliance with standards regarding radiation exposure limits and safety
requirements. As a result of intensive research, analysis, and testing, TSA concludes that potential health risks from screening with
backscatter X-ray security systems are minuscule.¶ While there is still no perfect technology, AIT gives our officers the best
opportunity to detect both metallic and non-metallic threats including improvised explosive devices
such as the device Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate on Christmas Day, 2009.¶ As
manufacturers continue enhancing the detection capability and strengthening the privacy features of their machines, we maintain the ability to
upgrade the software used on them to stay ahead of the rapidly shifting threat landscape. Maintaining a high level of adaptability enables us to
keep an important technological advantage.¶ Throughout
2011, this and other technologies helped our officers
detect hundreds of prohibited, dangerous, or illegal items on passengers.¶ These “good catches” as we call them,
illustrate how effective our people, process and technology are at finding concealed metallic and non-metallic items concealed on a passenger
or in their bags.¶ In an ongoing effort to help educate the traveling public, we highlight many of these good catches every week in blog posts
uploaded to TSA.gov. I hope some of you have seen these. They have included incidents of items concealed in shoes, to weapons hidden in a
hollowed out book, to ceramic knives, to exotic snakes strapped to a passenger’s leg. As strange as some of these tales may be, they are a stark
reminder that now — more than 10 years after the September 11, 2001, attacks — people are still trying to bring deadly weapons onto aircraft.
And our officers are detecting numerous weapons every day and keeping them off of planes.¶ Less than one month ago in fact, over Presidents
Day weekend in February, our officers detected 19 guns in carry-on bags at various checkpoints around the country. In
total, 1,306 guns
were detected at airport checkpoints in 2011.
A terrorist attack would crush the economy
Bandyopadhyay et al 15 -- Subhayu Bandyopadhyay is Research Officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and Research Fellow at IZA, Bonn,
Germany. Todd Sandler is Vibhooti Shukla Professor of Economics and Political Economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Javed Younasis Associate Professor of
Economics at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. “The Toll of Terrorism”
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/06/bandyopa.htm
*modified for ableist language*
New technology has lowered transportation costs and increased trade and capital flows across nations. But the
same technology that has fostered international economic growth has also allowed terrorism to spread
easily among countries whose interests are tightly interwoven. Terrorism is no longer solely a local issue. Terrorists can
strike from thousands of miles away and cause vast destruction. The effects of terrorism can be terrifyingly
direct. People are kidnapped or killed. Pipelines are sabotaged. Bombers strike markets, buses, and
restaurants with devastating effect. But terrorism inflicts more than human casualties and material losses. It can
also cause serious indirect harm to countries and economies by increasing the costs of economic
transactions—for example, because of enhanced security measures to ensure the safety of employees and customers or higher
insurance premiums. Terrorist attacks in Yemen on the USS Cole in 2000 and on the French tanker Limburg in 2002 seriously damaged that country’s shipping industry. These attacks
contributed to a 300 percent rise in insurance premiums for ships using that route and led ships to bypass Yemen entirely (Enders and Sandler, 2012). In this article we explore the economic
It can take myriad forms, but we focus on three: national income losses and growth-[slowing]retarding
effects, dampened foreign direct investment, and disparate effects on international trade.
burden of terrorism.
2NC Extensions
High risk of terrorism – TSA surveillance is key to target the most dangerous
perpetrators
Herrige ’14 (Catherine; 12/17/14; Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel, cites Former Head of TSA, John Pistole; “TSA
head: Threat from terrorism worse now but US better able to combat it”; http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/17/tsa-head-threat-fromterrorism-worse-now-but-us-better-able-to-combat-it/)
The outgoing and longest-serving head of the Transportation Security Administration says the threat
from terrorism is worse now than when he took the job four years ago, but the U.S. is better positioned
to combat foreign plots.¶ "The threat today is unfortunately more expansive than what it was four-and-ahalf years ago," John Pistole told Fox News during an interview before he leaves at the end of the month, concluding 31
years of government service -- including 27 at the FBI, where he rose to the rank of deputy director.¶ "With that being said,
we also have better insights into who the potential bombers are," he added.¶ From Pistole’s unique position at the TSA
and FBI, he watched Al Qaeda's strategy evolve from the 9/11 attacks that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, to the failed underwear bomb
plot to bring down a jet on Christmas Day 2009 and the non-metallic explosive devices buried in cargo a year later.¶ Although
Al Qaeda
experimented in 2012 with surgically implanted bombs before apparently abandoning the idea as
impractical, Pistole suggested they are now focused on devices held close or strapped to the body.¶
"That is one of things that concerns us, how well do they design, construct and then conceal," he said.¶
Pistole will become president of his alma mater, Anderson University in Anderson, Ind., this spring.¶ Fox News asked Pistole
whether the threat to American aviation had diminished since August, when the U.S. launched a
bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and the Al Qaeda-led "Khorasan" group. ¶ Khorasan contains
long-time associates of Usama bin Laden, including Sanafi al-Nasr and Muhsin al-Fadhli, as well as a handful of operatives trained by the Yemeni
bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, who specializes in non-metallic bombs that traditional airport screening can miss.¶ "Without
going into
details about what that may look like from a classified intelligence perspective, we do remain concerned
that there is active plotting going on," Pistole said.¶ And with new information that the French bomb maker
David Drugeon likely survived a U.S. air strike last month, Pistole added, "there is concern that there are
still individuals out there who have not only the ability to do that, but also the intent to use that on a
flight to Europe or the US."¶ The TSA administrator also described classified procedures that track foreign fighters, based on their
travel history, before they check in at overseas airports for U.S.-bound flights.¶ "There are individuals we are concerned about
and we are again looking at if they make travel reservations, then they of course receive proper
scrutiny," Pistole said.¶ The continued threat from groups like Khorasan explains why procedures, implemented in July, requiring passengers
to turn on their phone and computers at some airports, remain in place. As the holiday travel season begins, TSA officials say they are
not expecting big changes at the checkpoints, but if there are changes, they will be driven by new and
specific intelligence.¶ Pistole said the transition from a one-size-fits-all approach after 9/11 to a riskbased strategy -- driven by intelligence -- is one of the TSA workforce's accomplishments.¶ "I think that's been
one of the biggest changes. ...We're more efficient. Complaints are down. Wait times are down," he said.¶ Data
provided by the TSA showed that over Thanksgiving, more than 12.5 million passengers were screened, a 1.3
percent increase from 2013, with nearly 50 percent of these passengers getting expedited screening.¶ Nationwide, TSA said 99.6
percent of passengers waited in a line for less than 20 minutes.¶ Pistole was in Australia days before the hostage situation
unfolded in Sydney last weekend, telling Fox it fit the profile of a classic lone wolf attack. "I am not
aware of any intelligence about it as of last week, there was no talk about something like that," he said.¶ But
it’s not that kind of attack that keeps Pistole up at night.¶ "My greater concern, rather than just a lone wolf, is
simultaneous attacks such as you saw on 9/11 ... with that being said, we also have better insights into
who the potential bombers are," he said.
Topicality
PRISM
1. Interpretation—domestic surveillance is the acquisition of nonpublic
information regarding US citizens
Small 8 MATTHEW L. SMALL. United States Air Force Academy 2008 Center for the Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Presidential Fellows Program paper "His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic
Surveillance, Civil Liberties and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis"
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf
Before one can make any sort of assessment of domestic surveillance policies, it is first necessary to narrow the
scope of the term “domestic surveillance.” Domestic surveillance is a subset of intelligence gathering.
Intelligence, as it is to be understood in this context, is “information that meets the stated or
understood needs of policy makers and has been collected, processed and narrowed to meet those
needs” (Lowenthal 2006, 2). In essence, domestic surveillance is a means to an end; the end being
intelligence. The intelligence community best understands domestic surveillance as the acquisition of
nonpublic information concerning United States persons (Executive Order 12333 (3.4) (i)). With this
definition domestic surveillance remains an overly broad concept. This paper’s analysis, in terms of President
Bush’s policies, focuses on electronic surveillance; specifically, wiretapping phone lines and obtaining caller
information from phone companies. Section f of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 defines electronic surveillance as:
[T]he acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire or radio
communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person who is in the
United States, if the contents are acquired by intentionally targeting that United States person, under
circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law
enforcement purposes;
2. Violation—PRISM conducts surveillance of people throughout the world.
Rosebach et al 13 (Marcel Rosebach, Holger Stark, and Jonathan Stock, “Prism Exposed: Data Surveillance with Global
Implications,” Spiegel Online. Roseblach is a journalist at Spiegel Online and graduated from Hamburg University with a degree in journalism
and political science. After graduated they attended the Henri Nannen School of Journalism.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/prism-leak-inside-the-controversial-us-data-surveillance-program-a-904761.html // EMS).
South of Utah's Great Salt Lake, the National Security Agency (NSA),
a United States foreign intelligence service, keeps
watch over one of its most expensive secrets. Here, on 100,000 square meters (1,100,000 square feet) near the US military's Camp Williams, the NSA is
constructing enormous buildings to house superfast computers. All together, the project will cost around $2 billion (€1.5 billion) and the computers will be capable
of storing a gigantic volume of data, at least 5 billion gigabytes. The energy needed to power the cooling system for the servers alone will cost $40 million a year. ¶
Former NSA employees Thomas Drake and Bill Binney told SPIEGEL in March that the facility would soon store personal data on
people from all over
the world and keep it for decades. This includes emails, Skype conversations, Google searches, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, bank transfers -- electronic
data of every kind.¶ They have everything about you in Utah," Drake says. "Who decides whether they look at that data? Who decides what they do with it?"
Binney, a mathematician who was previously an influential analyst at the NSA, calculates that the
servers are large enough to store the
entirety of humanity's electronic communications for the next 100 years -- and that, of course, gives his former colleagues plenty of
opportunity to read along and listen in.¶ James Clapper, the country's director of national intelligence, has confirmed the existence of a large-scale surveillance
program. President Barack Obama further explained that Congress authorized the program -- but that American
citizens are exempt from it.¶
A top-secret document published last week by the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian shows where the NSA may be getting the majority of its data. According
to the document, which was allegedly leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, the intelligence agency began seeking out direct access to servers
belonging to American Internet companies on a wide scale in 2007. The first of these companies to come onboard was Microsoft. Yahoo followed half a year later,
then Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype and AOL. The most recent company to declare its willingness to cooperate was Apple, in October 2012, according
to the secret government document, which proudly states that this access to data is achieved "directly from the servers" of the companies.¶ The companies in
question denied that claim on Friday. But if what the document says is true, the NSA has the potential to know what every person in the world who uses these
companies' services is doing, and that presumably
includes millions of Germans.¶ 'Total Surveillance of Germans is Inappropriate'¶ On Monday,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed through a spokesman that she plans to discuss the NSA's controversial data surveillance program with President
Obama during his visit to Berlin next week. A spokesperson for the German Justice Ministry also said that talks are currently underway with US authorities. The
discussions will include implications to Germany and "possible impairment of the rights of German citizens." ¶ German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has
called for "clear answers" from the companies implicated in the document, and the German Green Party has demanded that the government investigate the
circumstances of Prism immediately.¶ "Total surveillance
of all German citizens by the NSA is completely disproportionate,"
Volker Beck, secretary of the Green Party group in parliament, said on Monday. The party has proposed that the topic be discussed at next week's parliamentary
session.¶
Voting issue:
A. Limits—the affirmative allows the curtailment of information gathering on nonUS citizens—this explodes the number of topical affs and the negs research
burden
B. Ground—they kill neg offense like international CPs and can spike out of links
Strict Scrutiny
1. “Its” indicates possession.
Oxford Dictionary 14 (Oxford Dictionary, “its,”
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/its, accessed 7/2/14)
its¶ Top 1000 frequently used words¶ Syllabification: its¶ Pronunciation: /its /¶ DETERMINER¶ 1Belonging
to or associated with a thing
previously mentioned or easily identified:¶ turn the camera on its side¶ he chose the area for its atmosphere
2. Violation: they reduce NYPD surveillance – Love their solvency advocate talks
about strict scrutiny in the context of ending NYPD mosque surveillance.
3. The Affirmative Interp is bad for debate
Limits are necessary for negative preparation and clash, and their interpretation
makes the topic too big. Including the NYPD as an actor adds THOUSANDS of different
actors and affirmatives.
4. T is a voter because the opportunity to prepare promotes better debating
Curtail
1. “Curtail” means to restrict
Webster’s 15 – Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th Ed., “curtail”,
http://www.yourdictionary.com/curtail
verb
To curtail is defined as to restrict something, stop something or deprive of something.
An example of curtail is when a town wants to stop drunk driving.
2. Violation - “Restrictions” are direct governmental limitations –
Viterbo 12 (Annamaria, Assistant Professor in International Law – University of Torino, PhD in
International Economic Law – Bocconi University and Jean Monnet Fellow – European University
Institute, International Economic Law and Monetary Measures: Limitations to States' Sovereignty and
Dispute, p. 166)
In order to
distinguish an exchange restriction from a trade measure, the Fund chose not to give relevance
to the purposes or the effects of the measure and to adopt, instead, a technical criterion that focuses on
the method followed to design said measure.
An interpretation that considered the economic effects and purposes of the measures (taking into account the fact that the measure was
introduced for balance of payments reasons or to preserve foreign currency reserves) would have inevitably extended the Fund's jurisdiction to
trade restrictions, blurring the boundaries between the IMF and the GATT. The result of such a choice would have been that a quantitative
restriction on imports imposed for balance of payments reasons would have fallen within the competence of the Fund.
After lengthy discussions, in 1960 the IMF Executive Board adopted Decision No. 1034-(60/27).46 This Decision clarified that the
distinctive feature of a restriction on payments and transfers for current international transactions is "whether it
involves a direct governmental limitation on the availability or use of exchange as such*.47 This is a limitation
imposed directly on the use of currency in itself, for all purposes.
3. The plan does not curtail – enacting Strict Scrutiny Standards may have an effect of
possibly curtailing surveillance in the distant future, but it does not have a direct
effect as of the 1ac plantext of curtailing surveillance much less restricting it.
Assess whether the means themselves are a limit---allowing actions that effect a
reduction ruins precision
Randall 7 (Judge – Court of Appeals of the State of Minnesota, “Dee Marie Duckwall, Petitioner,
Respondent, vs. Adam Andrew Duckwall, Appellant”, 3-13,
http://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/court-of-appeals/2007/opa0606 95-0313.html#_ftnref2)
[2] When referring to parenting time, the
term "restriction[,]" is a term of art that is not the equivalent of
"reduction" of parenting time. "A modification of visitation that results in a reduction of total visitation time, is not
necessarily a restriction' of visitation.' Danielson v. Danielson, 393 N.W.2d 405, 407 (Minn. App. 1986). When determining
whether a reduction constitutes a restriction, the court should consider the reasons for the change as
well as the amount of the reduction." Anderson v. Archer, 510 N.W.2d 1, 4 (Minn. App. 1993).
4. Voting issue--Limits---allowing effectual reductions explodes the topic. Any action can potentially
result in less surveillance. Limits are key to depth of preparation and clash. They get
more ground to weigh as offense against counterplans or to link turn DAs like politics,
at the expense of negative preparation, because it’s impossible to research every
single non-topical trick the aff could deploy. That crushes competitive equity which
comes first because debate is a game. It’s very unlikely that a direct effect of the plan
is a curtailment of surveillance, hold them to a very high standard.
Case
Islamophobia
Frontline – 1NC
Their impacts are overblown – the majority of Muslims do not feel impacted by
surveillance policies – we have poll data
Sidhu 7 — (Dawinder S. Sidhu, Associate Professor of Law, B.A. 2000 from University of Pennsylvania,
M.A. 2003 from Johns Hopkins University, J.D. 2004 from The George Washington University, Member
of the Maryland Bar, served as a fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, received a
Distinguished Service Award, taught at the Georgetown University Law Center and University of
Baltimore School of Law, held visiting research posts at the Oxford University Faculty of Law and
Georgetown University Law Center, held fellowships at Harvard University and Stanford University
research centers, presented at various law schools, including the University of Pennsylvania Law School
and Stanford Law School, participated in programs at leading think tanks, such as the Aspen Institute
and Council on Foreign Relations, served as a legal observer of the military commissions at Guantanamo,
cited by the Solicitor General of the United States and U.S. Department of Justice, cited in briefs
submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States, 2007, “The Chilling Effect of Government
Surveillance Programs on the Use of the Internet by Muslim-Americans,” 7 U. Md. L.J. Race, Religion,
Gender & Class, Available online at
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/margin7&collection=journals&page=375)
Identity: Of the 311 respondents, all identified themselves as Muslims.83
General Internet Usage: A vast majority of respondents (80.1%) used the Internet prior to 9/11, while the rest did not. After 9/11, the Internet
usage of the respondents increased 7.7%, with 87.8% stating that they have used the Internet after the terrorist attacks, while only 11.9%
reporting that they have not. The trend towards greater Internet usage continued, as 90.4% of respondents note that they "currently use" the
Internet, and only 9.3% state that they do not.
Views Regarding Government Surveillance: 71.7%
of respondents believe (48.9% strongly, 22.8% somewhat) that
the government is currently monitoring the activities of Muslims in the United States. By contrast, only 4.2%
(1.6% somewhat and 2.6% strongly) disbelieve that such monitoring is taking place. Similarly, 70.7% of respondents believe (45.0% strongly,
25.7% somewhat) that the government is currently monitoring the Internet activities of Muslims in the United States. Only 4.8% disbelieve
(2.9% somewhat, 1.9% strongly) that such monitoring is taking place.
Alterations in Behavior--Generally:
86.8% of respondents said they have not changed at all their general
activities after 9/11 due to a concern that the government may be monitoring their activities. Only
11.6% of respondents changed their general activities (6.1% made slight changes, 2.3% made moderate
changes, 1.6% made many changes, 1.6% made significant changes) due to this concern.
65.9% of respondents stated that they were not personally aware of any other Muslims in the United
States who changed, in any way, their general activities after 9/11, because of a concern that the
government may be monitoring their activities. 25.4% of respondents stated they were personally aware of any other
Muslims in the United States who changed, in any way, their general activities after 9/11, because of a concern that the government may be
monitoring their activities.
Alterations in Behavior-Internet Usage: 89.1%
of respondents said they have not changed their Internet usage at
all-the sites they visit or the amount of time they spend on the Internet-after 9/11 due to a concern that
the government may be monitoring their activities. Only 8.4% of respondents changed their Internet usage (3.9% made
slight changes, 1.6% made moderate changes, 1.9% made many changes, 1.0% made significant changes) due to this concern. Of those who
stated that they have made changes in their Internet usage, 57.6% noted that they did not visit websites after 9/11, because of a concern that
the government may be monitoring their online activities.
77.2% of respondents stated that they were not personally aware of any other Muslims in the United
States who changed, in any way, their Internet usage after 9/11, because of a concern that the
government may be monitoring their activities. 11.9% of respondents stated they were personally aware of any other Muslims
in the United States who changed, in any way, their Internet usage after 9/11, because of a concern that the government may be monitoring
their activities. Of these respondents, 45.6% stated that they are personally aware of other Muslim-Americans who have not visited certain web
sites after 9/11, because of a concern that the government may be monitoring their online activities.
Islamophobia IS messed up – that’s undeniable – but it’s equally undeniable that
almost all terrorists ARE Muslim, making it the most effective method to combat
terrorist operations – this evidence is comparative.
McMillen 06 (Lucas McMillen, University of St. Thomas, “Eye on Islam: Judicial Scrutiny Along the
Religious Profiling/Suspect Description Reliance Spectrum”,
[http://ir.stthomas.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1107&context=ustlj)
Immediately after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Attorney
General John Ashcroft converted the Federal Bureau of
Investigation into a counterterrorism agency: "That day, in those early hours," said Ashcroft in a 2002 press conference announcing the
Bureau's reorientation, "the prevention of terrorist acts became the central goal of the law enforcement and national
security mission of the FBI."l But, while Ashcroft may have properly redirected the FBI toward confronting the primary threat to United States safety
and security, his identification of our enemy was not as particular as it could have been. In 2004, the 9/11 Commission
aimed for further clarity: [T]he enemy is not just "terrorism," some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy.
The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist
terrorism-especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology. 2 Indeed, no characteristic unites
the perpetrators of recent terrorist acts so much as their Muslim identity. Middle Eastern nationality
may be thought to provide the link, but this trait proves to be underinclusive: to name just a few
examples, Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," is a Muslim who was born and educated in the United
Kingdom,3 as were the four July 7th London Underground bombers.4 Zacarias Moussaoui, the only
person to be charged and convicted by United States courts in connection with the September 11th
terrorist attacks, is a French Muslim.5 Earnest James Ujaama, an indicted al-Qaeda associate, is a
Muslim convert who was born in Denver and raised in Seattle.6 Furthermore, of the twenty-six terrorists
currently on the FBI's Most Wanted List, three are from the Philippines; two are from Kenya; one, Abdul
Rahman Yasin, is from Indiana-all are Muslims.7 Nor does Arab ethnicity serve as a reliably accurate
terrorist-identifying characteristic: on December 5th, 2005, a white woman who was raised as a Catholic in
Belgium became the first European Muslim suicide bomber when she detonated herself in Baquba.8
Indeed, the use of stereotype-defying terrorist operatives is entirely consistent with al-Qaeda's expressed intent to employ deceptive tactics in carrying out its
attacks.9 Of course, the
one characteristic that Islamist radicals cannot obscure by selective conscription is
Islamic identity. Accordingly, Muslim identity should be considered the attribute that correlates most
positively with terrorist involvement; or, in the words of Abdel Rahman aI-Rashed, the general manager of Al-Arabiya, a top pan-Arab
television station in the Middle East,10 "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists. but it is equally certain,
and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims."11 Our question then becomes, what is the proper role for
Muslim identity in our law-enforcement offIcials' preventive counterterrorism efforts? It is a question that calls for a survey of our Constitution as well as our
conscience, as the answer may compel us to contemplate taking permissible but regrettable measures against a particular religious group. In 1785, James Madison
wrote: "[A just government] will be best supported by protecting every citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person
and his property."12 But
what shall be done when those two ideals are incompatible, when protecting persons
and their property requires the government to take action that may infringe on others' religious
enjoyment? We are faced with bad (ostracizing Muslims) and worse (suffering another terrorist attack)
choices, a predicament expressed in the dour words of the reliably relevant Winston Churchill, who, speaking
in a different context, said, "We seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that
we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later on even more adverse terms than at
present." 13 To assist legal and law enforcement authorities in avoiding both Shame and War, this Article will aim to provide a legal framework allowing law
enforcement officials greater flexibility in targeting religious groups. In doing so, it will focus exclusively on religious-group targeting and will not address the related
issues of racial and ethnic profiling, which have been adequately covered by other commentators. I will begin by discussing the difference between acts of religious
profiling and acts of suspect description reliance, and then discuss how most acts of religious-group targeting can be plausibly characterized as either. Finally, I
will recommend that courts adopt a view toward religious-group targeting that allows law-enforcement
officials greater flexibility in countering the Islamist terrorist threat.
No solvency – Muslims don’t know if they’re being surveyed, circumvention is
inevitable, and islamophobia is too engrained.
Kundani 14 (Arun Kundani, The Guardian, March 28, 2014, “No NSA Reform can fix the American Islamophobic
Surveillance Complex”, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/28/nsa-reform-americanislamophobic-surveillance-complex)
Better oversight of the sprawling American national security apparatus may finally be coming: President
Obama and the House Intelligence Committee unveiled plans this week to reduce bulk collection of
telephone records. The debate opened up by Edward Snowden's whistle-blowing is about to get even more legalistic than all the parsing of hops and
stores and metadata.¶ These reforms may be reassuring, if sketchy. But for those living in so-called "suspect
communities" – Muslim Americans, left-wing campaigners, "radical" journalists – the days of living on
the receiving end of excessive spying won’t end there.¶ How come when we talk about spying we don't
talk about the lives of ordinary people being spied upon? While we have been rightly outraged at the government's warehousing of
troves of data, we have been less interested in the consequences of mass surveillance for those most affected by it – such as Muslim Americans.¶ In writing my
book on Islamophobia and the War on Terror, I
spoke to dozens of Muslims, from Michigan to Texas and Minnesota to
Virginia. Some told me about becoming aware their mosque was under surveillance only after
discovering an FBI informant had joined the congregation. Others spoke about federal agents turning up
at colleges to question every student who happened to be Muslim. All of them said they felt unsure
whether their telephone calls to relatives abroad were wiretapped or whether their emails were
being read by government officials.¶ There were the young Somali Americans in Minnesota who
described how they and their friends were questioned by FBI agents for no reason other than their
ethnic background. Some had been placed under surveillance by a local police department, which disguised its spying as a youth mentoring program and
then passed the FBI intelligence on Somali-American political opinions.¶ There were the Muslim students at the City University of New York who discovered that
fellow students they had befriended had been informants all along, working for the New York Police Department's Intelligence Division and tasked with surveilling
them. There was no reasonable suspicion of any crime; it was enough that the targeted students were active in the Muslim Students Association.¶ And then there
was Luqman Abdullah, a Detroit-based African-American imam, whose mosque was infiltrated by the FBI, leading to a 2009 raid in which he was shot and killed by
federal agents. The government
had no evidence of any terrorist plot; the sole pretext was that Abdullah had
strongly critical views of the US government.¶ These are the types of people whom the National
Security Agency can suspect of being two "hops" away from targets. These are the types of "bad guys" referred toby outgoing
NSA director Keith Alexander. Ten years ago, around 100,000 Arabs and Muslims in America had some sort of national security file compiled on them. Today, that
number is likely to be even higher.¶ A study published last year by the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition documented the effects of this kind of mass
surveillance. In targeted communities, a culture of enforced self-censorship takes hold and relationships of trust start to break down. As
one interviewee
said: "You look at your closest friends and ask: are they informants?"¶ This is what real fear of
surveillance looks like: not knowing whom to trust, choosing your words with care when talking politics
in public, the unpredictability of state power. Snowden has rightly drawn our attention to the power of what intelligence agencies call
"signals intelligence" – the surveillance of our digital communications – but equally important is "human intelligence", the result of informants and undercover
agents operating within communities.¶ Underpinning all the surveillance of Muslim Americans is an assumption that Islamic ideology is linked to terrorism. Yet, over
the last 20 years, far more people have been killed in acts of violence by right-wing extremists than by Muslim American citizens or permanent residents. The huge
numbers being spied upon are not would-be terrorists but law-abiding people, some of whom have "radical" political opinions that still ought to be protected by the
First Amendment to the constitution. Just the same, there are plenty of other minority Americans who are not would-be "home-grown" terrorists – but they still live
in fear that they might be mistaken as one. So
let's reform the NSA and its countless collections. But let's not forget the
FBI's reported 10,000 intelligence analysts working on counter-terrorism and the15,000 paid informants
helping them do it. Let's not forget the New York Police Department's intelligence and counter-terrorism
division with its 1,000 officers, $100m budget and vast program of surveillance. Let's not forget the
especially subtle psychological terror of being Muslim in America, where, sure, maybe your phone calls
won't be stored for much longer, but there's a multitude of other ways you're always being watched.¶
Alt cause – state and local enforcement means the impact is inevitable
AP 12 (Samantha Henry, Matt Appuzzo, Wayne Perry, reporters for the Associated Press, American
multinational nonprofit news agency, 2012, “New Jersey Muslims Angry Over NYPD Surveillance
Findings,” The Huffington Post, May 25, Available online at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/new-jersey-muslims-cangry-nypdsurveillance_n_1545319.html)
Muslim leaders in New Jersey say they are angry but uncertain what their next step will be after the
state's attorney general found that New York City police did not violate any laws in its surveillance of
Muslim businesses, mosques and student groups in New Jersey. Several mosque leaders who attended a meeting
Thursday with Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa said they were shocked he found no violation of state criminal or
civil laws by the NYPD in operations that many Muslims considered unjustified surveillance based solely
on religion. "This is a big violation of our civil rights, and we need to go to our communities and explain
it?" Imam Mohammad Qatanani, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County said Thursday as he left the meeting. Qatanani
said he would not tell his congregants to stop collaborating with law enforcement, but added, "We need from them to show us
the same seriousness and honesty in building bridges with the Muslim community." Chiesa had been asked by
Gov. Chris Christie, who appointed him, to look into operations in New Jersey that were part of a widespread NYPD program to
collect intelligence on Muslim communities both inside New York and beyond. Undercover officers and
informants eavesdropped in Muslim cafes and monitored sermons, even when there was no evidence of
a crime. They infiltrated Muslim student groups, videotaped mosque-goers or collected their license plate numbers as they prayed. The
result was that many innocent business owners, students and others were cataloged in police files. The interstate surveillance
efforts, revealed by The Associated Press earlier this year, angered many Muslims and New Jersey
officials. Some, like Newark Mayor Cory Booker and the state's top FBI official, criticized the tactics. Others, like Christie, focused more on
the fact that the NYPD didn't tell New Jersey exactly what it was up to. In response, Chiesa launched what he described
as a fact-finding review. Further, authorities found that New Jersey has no laws barring outside law
enforcement agencies from secretly conducting operations in the state, representatives of the
attorney general's office told the AP. However, New York police have agreed to meet with New Jersey law enforcement regularly
to discuss counterterrorism intelligence and operations, the attorney general said.
Aff can’t solve — Anti-Arab sentiment is entrenched in mainstream media and history
Salaita 6 — Steven George Salaita, scholar, author and public speaker, received his B.A. in political
science from Radford University in 1997, his M.A. in English from Radford in 1999, and completed his
Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma in Native American studies with a literature emphasis, became an
assistant professor of English at University of Wisconsin in Whitewater, where he taught American and
ethnic American literature until 2006, associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, won a 2007
Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for writing the book Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where It
Comes from and What it Means for Politics Today, 2006 (“9/11, Anti-Arab Racism, and the Mythos of
National Pride,” Beyond Orientalism and Islamophobia, Fall, Available online at
https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_centennial_review/v006/6.2salaita.pdf)
My second observation that anti-Arab
racism is not confined to the political right also is worth analysis .
Racism, as writers from Elizabeth Cook-Lynn to bell hooks have illustrated, is never limited to particular social or discursive
movements, nor is it ever rooted in consistent sites of cultural or linguistic production. Any
comprehensive survey of popular opinion in the United States over the past decade (a time frame that
purposely straddles 9/11) will demonstrate that the blatant anti-Arab racism of the political right is,
using a vocabulary appropriate to specific political agendas, reinscribed continually in the discourse, or
at least the ethos, of mainstream and progressive media. For instance, leftist liberal publications such as Dissent, Tikkun,
and MoveOn.org have been guilty of expressing racist attitudes either in the form of support for Palestinian dispossession or by totalizing all
Arabs and Muslims as potential terrorists; or the racism arrives subtly by precluding Arabs from speaking on their own behalf. A
similar
guilt is shared by mainstream (supposedly liberal) publications such as the New York Times, Newsweek,
Los Angeles Times, and Slate.com, which, given their corporate obligations, cannot realistically be
expected to attack anti-Arab racism when it is so fundamental to the interests of American capitalism
(and to the survival of the publications). Of major concern to this essay is the recognition that, in keeping with the seminal work of Louis
Althusser and Terry Eagleton, we
cannot seriously interrogate racism by attributing it solely to one political
ideology without analyzing how the racism is interpolated through a multitude of discourses at the
benefit of various ideologies. Beyond this intercultural observation, we can say that anti-Arab racism has specific
historical dimensions that render it unique even as it has been an inheritor of countless tensions and
anxieties. Some of those dimensions—travel narratology, Orientalist scholarship, imperialism—have been discussed by others in some
detail; the dimension I invariably find most interesting is the relationship of anti-Arab racism with settler colonization, both in the New World
and Holy Land. This
relationship indicates that a centuries-old Holy Land mania in the United States not only
facilitated what Cook-Lynn (2001) calls “anti-Indianism,” but has allowed the antiIndianism to evolve
into support for a new Messianic conquest that positions today’s Arabs in a fascinating theological
continuum. If Natives were the first victims of racism in North America, then Arabs, the new schematic evildoers, are merely the latest to
be the first.
Security Good
Security endorsement is necessary to explore human becoming and open space for life
possibilities
Booth 05 (Ken – visiting researcher – US Naval War College, Critical Security Studies and World Politics, p. 22)
The best starting point for conceptualizing security lies in the real conditions of insecurity suffered by people and collectivities. Look around.
some degree of insecurity, as a life-determining condition, is universal. To the extent
an individual or group is insecure, to the extent their life choices and changes are taken away; this is
because of the resources and energy they need to invest in seeking safety from domineering threats–
whether these are the lack of food for one’s children, or organizing to resist a foreign aggressor. The corollary of the relationship
between insecurity and a determined life is that a degree of security creates life possibilities. Security
might therefore be conceived as synonymous with opening up space in people’s lives. This allows for
individual and collective human becoming–the capacity to have some choice about living differently–consistent with
the same but different search by others. Two interrelated conclusion follow from this. First, security can be understood as an
What is immediately striking is that
instrumental value; it frees its possessors to a greater or lesser extent from life-determining constraints and so allows different life possibilities
security is not synonymous simply with survival. One can survive without being secure (the
experience of refugees in long-term camps in war-torn parts of the world, for example). Security is therefore more than mere
animal survival (basic animal existence). It is survival-plus, the plus being the possibility to explore human
becoming. As an instrumental value, security is sought because it free people(s) to some degree to do
other than deal with threats to their human being. The achievement of a level of security–and security is
always relative – gives to individuals and groups some time, energy, and scope to choose to be or become,
other than merely surviving as human biological organisms. Security is an important dimension of the process
by which the human species can reinvent itself beyond the merely biological.
to be explored. Second,
Realism
Realism and securitization are inevitable
Thayer 04 – Thayer has been a Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University and has taught at Dartmouth College and the University of Minnesota (Darwin and International Relations: On the
Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict, University of Kentucky Press, 2004, pg. 75-76)
The central issue here is what causes states to behave as offensive realists predict. Mearsheimer advances a powerful argument that anarchy is the fundamental
cause of such behavior. The
fact that there is no world government compels the leaders of states to take steps
to ensure their security, such as striving to have a powerful military, aggressing when forced to do so,
and forging and maintaining alliances. This is what neorealists call a self-help system: leaders of states arc forced
to take these steps because nothing else can guarantee their security in the anarchic world of international relations. I argue that evolutionary theory
also offers a fundamental cause for offensive realist behavior. Evolutionary theory explains why
individuals are motivated to act as offensive realism expects, whether an individual is a captain of industry or a conquistador.
My argument is that anarchy is even more important than most scholars of international relations recognize. The human environment of
evolutionary adaptation was anarchic; our ancestors lived in a state of nature in which resources were
poor and dangers from other humans and the environment were great—so great that it is truly remarkable that a
mammal standing three feet high—without claws or strong teeth, not particularly strong or swift—survived and evolved to become what we consider human.
Humans endured because natural selection gave them the right behaviors to last in those conditions. This
environment produced the
behaviors examined here: egoism, domination, and the in-group/out-group distinction. These specific
traits arc sufficient to explain why leaders will behave, in the proper circumstances, as offensive
realists expect them to behave. That is, even if they must hurt other humans or risk injury to
themselves, they will strive to maximize their power, defined as either control over others (for example, through wealth or
leadership) or control over ecological circumstances (such as meeting their own and their family's or tribes need for food, shelter, or other resources).
AT – Threatcon -> War
Construction of threats does not cause wars
Kaufman 09 (Stuart J, Prof Poli Sci and IR – U Delaware, “Narratives and Symbols in Violent
Mobilization: The Palestinian-Israeli Case,” Security Studies 18:3, 400 – 434)
Even when hostile narratives, group fears, and opportunity are strongly present, war occurs only if these
factors are harnessed. Ethnic narratives and fears must combine to create significant ethnic hostility
among mass publics. Politicians must also seize the opportunity to manipulate that hostility, evoking hostile narratives
and symbols to gain or hold power by riding a wave of chauvinist mobilization. Such mobilization is often spurred by
prominent events (for example, episodes of violence) that increase feelings of hostility and make chauvinist
appeals seem timely. If the other group also mobilizes and if each side’s felt security needs threaten the
security of the other side, the result is a security dilemma spiral of rising fear, hostility, and mutual threat that results
in violence. A virtue of this symbolist theory is that symbolist logic explains why ethnic peace is more
common than ethnonationalist war. Even if hostile narratives, fears, and opportunity exist, severe violence
usually can still be avoided if ethnic elites skillfully define group needs in moderate ways and collaborate
across group lines to prevent violence: this is consociationalism. 17 War is likely only if hostile narratives, fears, and
opportunity spur hostile attitudes, chauvinist mobilization, and a security dilemma.
AT – CTS
Critical terror studies are garbage
Jones and Smith 9 – * University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia AND ** King's College,
University of London, London, UK (David and M.L.R.,“We're All Terrorists Now: Critical—or
Hypocritical—Studies “on” Terrorism?,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 32, Issue 4 April 2009 ,
pages 292 – 302, Taylor and Francis)
The journal, in other words, is not intended, as one might assume, to evaluate critically those state or non-state actors that might have recourse to terrorism as a
strategy. Instead, the
journal's ambition is to deconstruct what it views as the ambiguity of the word “terror,”
its manipulation by ostensibly liberal democratic state actors, and the complicity of “orthodox”
terrorism studies in this authoritarian enterprise. Exposing the deficiencies in any field of study is, of course, a legitimate scholarly
exercise, but what the symposium introducing the new volume announces questions both the research agenda and academic integrity of journals like Studies in
Conflict and Terrorism and those who contribute to them. Do these claims, one might wonder, have any substance?¶ Significantly, the original proposal circulated
by the publisher Routledge and one of the editors, Richard Jackson,
suggested some uncertainty concerning the preferred title of the journal. Critical
Studies on Terrorism appeared last on a list where the first choice was Review of Terror Studies. Evidently, the concision of a review fails to capture the critical
perspective the journal promotes. Criticism, then, is central to the new journal's philosophy and the adjective connotes a distinct ideological and, as shall be seen,
far from pluralist and inclusive purpose. So, one might ask, what exactly does a critical approach to terrorism involve?¶ What it Means to be Critical¶ The editors
and contributors explore what it means to be “critical” in detail, repetition, and opacity, along with an excessive fondness for italics, in the editorial symposium that
introduces the first issue, and in a number of subsequent articles. The editors inform us that the study of terrorism is “a growth industry,” observing with a mixture
of envy and disapproval that “literally thousands of new books and articles on terrorism are published every year” (pp. l-2). In adding to this literature the editors
premise the need for yet another journal on their resistance to what currently constitutes scholarship in the field of terrorism study and its allegedly uncritical
acceptance of the Western democratic state's security perspective.¶ Indeed, to be critical requires a radical reversal of what the journal assumes to be the typical
perception of terrorism and the methodology of terrorism research. To focus on the strategies practiced by non-state actors that feature under the conventional
denotation “terror” is, for the critical theorist, misplaced. As the symposium explains ,
“acts of clandestine non-state terrorism are
committed by a tiny number of individuals and result in between a few hundred and a few thousand
casualties per year over the entire world” (original italics) (p. 1). The United States's and its allies' preoccupation with terrorism is, therefore,
out of proportion to its effects.1 At the same time, the more pervasive and repressive terror practiced by the state has been “silenced from public and … academic
discourse” (p. 1).¶ The
complicity of terrorism studies with the increasingly authoritarian demands of Western,
liberal state and media practice, together with the moral and political blindness of established terrorism
analysts to this relationship forms the journal's overriding assumption and one that its core contributors repeat ad nauseam.
Thus, Michael Stohl, in his contribution “Old Myths, New Fantasies and the Enduring Realities of Terrorism” (pp. 5-16), not only discovers ten “myths” informing the
understanding of terrorism, but also finds that these myths reflect a “state centric security focus,” where analysts rarely consider “the violence perpetrated by the
state” (p. 5). He complains that the press have become too close to government over the matter. Somewhat contradictorily Stohl subsequently asserts that media
reporting is “central to terrorism and counter-terrorism as political action,” that media reportage provides the oxygen of terrorism, and that politicians consider
journalists to be “the terrorist's best friend” (p. 7).¶ Stohl further compounds this incoherence, claiming that “the media are far more likely to focus on the
destructive actions, rather than on … grievances or the social conditions that breed [terrorism]—to present episodic rather than thematic stories” (p. 7). He argues
that terror attacks between 1968 and 1980 were scarcely reported in the United States, and that reporters do not delve deeply into the sources of conflict (p. 8). All
of this is quite contentious, with no direct evidence produced to support such statements. The “media” is after all a very broad term, and to assume that it is
monolithic is to replace criticism with conspiracy theory. Moreover, even if it were true that the media always serves as a government propaganda agency, then by
Stohl's own logic, terrorism as a method of political communication is clearly futile as no rational actor would engage in a campaign doomed to be endlessly
misreported.¶ Nevertheless, the
notion that an inherent pro-state bias vitiates terrorism studies pervades the
critical position. Anthony Burke, in “The End of Terrorism Studies” (pp. 37-49), asserts that established analysts like Bruce Hoffman “specifically exclude
states as possible perpetrators” of terror. Consequently, the emergence of “critical terrorism studies” “may signal the end of a particular kind of traditionally statefocused and directed 'problem-solving' terrorism studies—at least in terms of its ability to assume that its categories and commitments are immune from challenge
and correspond to a stable picture of reality” (p. 42).¶ Elsewhere, Adrian Guelke, in “Great Whites, Paedophiles and Terrorists: The Need for Critical Thinking in a
New Era of Terror” (pp. 17-25), considers British government-induced media “scare-mongering” to have legitimated an “authoritarian approach” to the purported
new era of terror (pp. 22-23). Meanwhile, Joseba Zulaika and William A. Douglass, in “The Terrorist Subject: Terrorist Studies and the Absent Subjectivity” (pp. 2736), find the War on Terror constitutes “the single,” all embracing paradigm of analysis where the critical voice is “not allowed to ask: what is the reality itself?”
(original italics) (pp. 28-29). The construction of this condition, they further reveal, if somewhat abstrusely, reflects an abstract “desire” that demands terror as “an
ever-present threat” (p. 31). In order to sustain this fabrication: “Terrorism experts and commentators” function as “realist policemen”; and not very smart ones at
that, who while “gazing at the evidence” are “unable to read the paradoxical logic of the desire that fuels it, whereby lack turns toexcess” (original italics) (p. 32).
Finally, Ken Booth,
in “The Human Faces of Terror: Reflections in a Cracked Looking Glass” (pp. 65-79),
reiterates Richard Jackson's contention that state terrorism “is a much more serious problem than nonstate terrorism” (p. 76).Yet, one searches in vain in these articles for evidence to support the
ubiquitous assertion of state bias: assuming this bias in conventional terrorism analysis as a fact
seemingly does not require a corresponding concern with evidence of this fact, merely its continual
reiteration by conceptual fiat. A critical perspective dispenses not only with terrorism studies but also
with the norms of accepted scholarship. Asserting what needs to be demonstrated commits, of course, the elementary logical fallacy petitio
principii. But critical theory apparently emancipates (to use its favorite verb) its practitioners from the
confines of logic, reason, and the usual standards of academic inquiry.¶ Alleging a constitutive weakness in established
scholarship without the necessity of providing proof to support it, therefore, appears to define the critical posture . The unproved “state
centricity” of terrorism studies serves as a platform for further unsubstantiated accusations about the
state of the discipline. Jackson and his fellow editors, along with later claims by Zulaika and Douglass,
and Booth, again assert that “orthodox” analysts rarely bother “to interview or engage with those
involved in 'terrorist' activity” (p. 2) or spend any time “on the ground in the areas most affected by conflict” (p. 74). Given that Booth and Jackson
spend most of their time on the ground in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, not a notably terror rich environment if we discount the operations of Meibion Glyndwr who
would as a matter of principle avoid pob sais like Jackson and Booth, this seems a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. It also overlooks the fact that Studies in
Conflict and Terrorism first advertised the problem of “talking to terrorists” in 2001 and has gone to great lengths to rectify this lacuna, if it is one, regularly
publishing articles by analysts with first-hand experience of groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah.¶ A consequence of avoiding primary research,
it is further alleged, leads conventional analysts uncritically to apply psychological and problem-solving approaches to their object of study. This propensity, Booth
maintains, occasions another unrecognized weakness in traditional terrorism research, namely, an inability to engage with “the particular dynamics of the political
world” (p. 70). Analogously, Stohl claims that “the US and English [sic] media” exhibit a tendency to psychologize terrorist acts, which reduces “structural and
political problems” into issues of individual pathology (p. 7). Preoccupied with this problem-solving, psychopathologizing methodology, terrorism analysts have lost
the capacity to reflect on both their practice and their research ethics.¶ By contrast, the critical approach is not only self-reflective, but also and, for good measure,
self-reflexive. In fact, the editors and a number of the journal's contributors use these terms interchangeably, treating a reflection and a reflex as synonyms (p. 2). A
cursory encounter with the Shorter Oxford Dictionary would reveal that they are not. Despite this linguistically challenged misidentification, “reflexivity” is made to
do a lot of work in the critical idiom. Reflexivity, the editors inform us, requires a capacity “to challenge dominant knowledge and understandings, is sensitive to the
politics of labelling … is transparent about its own values and political standpoints, adheres to a set of responsible research ethics, and is committed to a broadly
defined notion of emancipation” (p. 2). This covers a range of not very obviously related but critically approved virtues. Let us examine what reflexivity involves as
Stohl, Guelke, Zulaika and Douglass, Burke, and Booth explore, somewhat repetitively, its implications.¶ Reflexive or Defective? ¶ Firstly, to
challenge
dominant knowledge and understanding and retain sensitivity to labels leads inevitably to a fixation
with language, discourse, the ambiguity of the noun, terror, and its political use and abuse. Terrorism, Booth
enlightens the reader unremarkably, is “a politically loaded term” (p. 72). Meanwhile, Zulaika and Douglass consider terror “the dominant tropic [sic] space in
contemporary political and journalistic discourse” (p. 30). Faced with the “serious challenge” (Booth p. 72) and pejorative connotation that the noun conveys,
critical terrorologists turn to deconstruction and bring the full force of postmodern obscurantism to bear on its use. Thus the editors proclaim that terrorism is “one
of the most powerful signifiers in contemporary discourse.” There is, moreover, a “yawning gap between the 'terrorism' signifier and the actual acts signified” (p. 1).
“[V]irtually all of this activity,” the editors pronounce ex cathedra, “refers to the response to acts of political violence not the violence itself” (original italics) (p. 1).
Here again they offer no evidence for this curious assertion and assume, it would seem, all conventional terrorism studies address issues of homeland security.¶ In
keeping with this critical orthodoxy that he has done much to define, Anthony Burke also asserts the “instability (and thoroughly politicized nature) of the unifying
master-terms of our field: 'terror' and 'terrorism'” (p. 38). To address this he contends that a critical stance requires us to “keep this radical instability and inherent
politicization of the concept of terrorism at the forefront of its analysis.” Indeed, “without a conscious reflexivity about the most basic definition of the object, our
discourse will not be critical at all” (p. 38). More particularly, drawing on a jargon-infused amalgam of Michel Foucault's identification of a relationship between
power and knowledge, the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School's critique of democratic false consciousness, mixed with the existentialism of the Third Reich's favorite
philosopher, Martin Heidegger, Burke “questions the question.” This intellectual potpourri apparently enables the critical theorist to “question the ontological status
of a 'problem' before any attempt to map out, study or resolve it” (p. 38).¶ Interestingly, Burke, Booth, and the symposistahood deny that there might be objective
data about violence or that a properly focused strategic study of terrorism would not include any prescriptive goodness or rightness of action. While a strategic
theorist or a skeptical social scientist might claim to consider only the complex relational situation that involves as well as the actions, the attitude of human beings
to them, the critical theorist's radical questioning of language denies this possibility.¶
The critical approach to language and its
deconstruction of an otherwise useful, if imperfect, political vocabulary has been the source of much
confusion and inconsequentiality in the practice of the social sciences. It dates from the relativist pall that French radical
post structural philosophers like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, cast over the social and historical sciences in order to demonstrate
that social and political knowledge depended on and underpinned power relations that permeated the landscape of the social and reinforced the liberal democratic
state. This
radical assault on the possibility of either neutral fact or value ultimately functions unfalsifiably,
and as a substitute for philosophy, social science, and a real theory of language.¶ The problem with the critical
approach is that, as the Australian philosopher John Anderson demonstrated, to achieve a genuine study one must either investigate the facts that are talked about
or the fact that they are talked about in a certain way. More precisely, as J.L. Mackie explains, “if we concentrate on the uses of language we fall between these two
stools, and we are in danger of taking our discoveries about manners of speaking as answers to questions about what is there.”2 Indeed, in
so far as an
account of the use of language spills over into ontology it is liable to be a confused mixture of what
should be two distinct investigations: the study of the facts about which the language is used, and the
study of the linguistic phenomena themselves.¶ It is precisely, however, this confused mixture of fact
and discourse that critical thinking seeks to impose on the study of terrorism and infuses the practice of
critical theory more generally. From this confused seed no coherent method grows.¶ What is To Be Done?¶ This
ontological confusion notwithstanding, Ken Booth sees critical theory not only exposing the dubious links between
power and knowledge in established terrorism studies, but also offering an ideological agenda that
transforms the face of global politics. “[C]ritical knowledge,” Booth declares, “involves understandings of the social world that attempt to stand
outside prevailing structures, processes, ideologies and orthodoxies while recognizing that all conceptualizations within the ambit of sociality derive from particular
social/historical conditions” (original italics) (p. 78). Helpfully, Booth, assuming the manner of an Old Testament prophet, provides his critical disciples with “bigpicture navigation aids” (original italics) (p. 66) to achieve this higher knowledge. Booth promulgates fifteen commandments (as Clemenceau remarked of Woodrow
Wilson's nineteen points, in a somewhat different context, “God Almighty only gave us ten”). When not stating the staggeringly obvious, the Ken Commandments
are hopelessly contradictory. Critical
theorists thus should “avoid exceptionalizing the study of terrorism,”3
“recognize that states can be agents of terrorism,” and “keep the long term in sight.” Unexceptional
advice to be sure and long recognized by more traditional students of terrorism. The critical student, if
not fully conversant with critical doublethink, however, might find the fact that she or he lives within
“Powerful theories” that are “constitutive of political, social, and economic life” (6th Commandment, p.
71), sits uneasily with Booth's concluding injunction to “stand outside” prevailing ideologies (p. 78).¶ In his
preferred imperative idiom, Booth further contends that terrorism is best studied in the context of an “academic international relations” whose role “is not only to
interpret the world but to change it” (pp. 67-68). Significantly, academic—or more precisely, critical—international relations, holds no place for a realist
appreciation of the status quo but approves instead a Marxist ideology of praxis. It is within this transformative praxis that critical theory situates terrorism and
terrorists.¶ The political goals of those non-state entities that choose to practice the tactics of terrorism invariably seek a similar transformative praxis and this leads
“critical global theorizing” into a curiously confused empathy with the motives of those engaged in such acts, as well as a disturbing relativism. Thus, Booth again
decrees that the gap between “those who hate terrorism and those who carry it out, those who seek to delegitimize the acts of terrorists and those who incite
them, and those who abjure terror and those who glorify it—is not as great as is implied or asserted by orthodox terrorism experts, the discourse of governments,
or the popular press” (p. 66). The gap “between us/them is a slippery slope, not an unbridgeable political and ethical chasm” (p. 66). So, while “terrorist actions are
always—without exception—wrong, they nevertheless might be contingently excusable” (p. 66). From this ultimately relativist perspective gang raping a
defenseless woman, an act of terror on any critical or uncritical scale of evaluation, is, it would seem, wrong but potentially excusable.¶ On the basis of this
worrying relativism a further Ken Commandment requires the abolition of the discourse of evil on the somewhat questionable grounds that evil releases agents
from responsibility (pp. 74-75). This not only reveals a profound ignorance of theology, it also underestimates what Eric Voeglin identified as a central feature of the
appeal of modern political religions from the Third Reich to Al Qaeda. As Voeglin observed in 1938, the Nazis represented an “attractive force.” To understand that
force requires not the abolition of evil [so necessary to the relativist] but comprehending its attractiveness. Significantly, as Barry Cooper argues, “its attractiveness,
[like that of al Qaeda] cannot fully be understood apart from its evilness.” 4¶ The line of relativist inquiry that critical theorists like Booth evince toward terrorism
leads in fact not to moral clarity but an inspissated moral confusion. This is paradoxical given that the editors make much in the journal's introductory symposium of
their “responsible research ethics.” The paradox is resolved when one realizes that critical moralizing demands the “ethics of responsibility to the terrorist other.”
For Ken Booth it involves, it appears, empathizing “with the ethic of responsibility” faced by those who, “in extremis” “have some explosives” (p. 76). Anthony Burke
contends that a critically self-conscious normativism requires the analyst, not only to “critique” the “strategic languages” of the West, but also to “take in” the “side
of the Other” or more particularly “engage” “with the highly developed forms of thinking” that provides groups like Al Qaeda “with legitimizing foundations and a
world view of some profundity” (p. 44). This additionally demands a capacity not only to empathize with the “other,” but also to recognize that both Osama bin
Laden in his Messages to the West and Sayyid Qutb in his Muslim Brotherhood manifesto Milestones not only offer “well observed” criticisms of Western
decadence, but also “converges with elements of critical theory” (p. 45). This is not surprising given that both Islamist and critical theorists share an analogous
contempt for Western democracy, the market, and the international order these structures inhabit and have done much to shape.¶ Histrionically Speaking¶ Critical
theory, then, embraces relativism not only toward language but also toward social action. Relativism and the bizarre ethicism it engenders in its attempt to
empathize with the terrorist other are, moreover, histrionic. As Leo Strauss classically inquired of this relativist tendency in the social sciences, “is such an
understanding dependent upon our own commitment or independent of it?” Strauss explains, if it is independent, I am committed as an actor and I am
uncommitted in another compartment of myself in my capacity as a social scientist. “In that latter capacity I am completely empty and therefore completely open to
the perception and appreciation of all commitments or value systems.” I go through the process of empathetic understanding in order to reach clarity about my
commitment for only a part of me is engaged in my empathetic understanding. This means, however, that “such understanding is not serious or genuine but
histrionic.”5 It is also profoundly dependent on Western liberalism. For it is only in an open society that questions the values it promotes that the issue of empathy
with the non-Western other could arise. The critical theorist's explicit loathing of the openness that affords her histrionic posturing obscures this constituting fact.¶
On the basis of this histrionic empathy with the “other,” critical theory concludes that democratic states “do not always abjure acts of terror whether to advance
their foreign policy objectives … or to buttress order at home” (p. 73). Consequently, Ken Booth asserts: “If terror can be part of the menu of choice for the
relatively strong, it is hardly surprising it becomes a weapon of the relatively weak” (p. 73). Zulaika and Douglass similarly assert that terrorism is “always” a weapon
of the weak (p. 33).¶ At
the core of this critical, ethicist, relativism therefore lies a syllogism that holds all
violence is terror: Western states use violence, therefore, Western states are terrorist. Further, the
greater terrorist uses the greater violence: Western governments exercise the greater violence.
Therefore, it is the liberal democracies rather than Al Qaeda that are the greater terrorists.¶ In its desire to
empathize with the transformative ends, if not the means of terrorism generally and Islamist terror in particular, critical theory reveals itself as a form of Marxist
unmasking. Thus, for Booth “terror has multiple forms” (original italics) and the real terror is economic, the product it would seem of “global capitalism” (p. 75).
Only the engagee intellectual academic finding in deconstructive criticism the philosophical weapons that reveal the illiberal neo-conservative purpose informing
the conventional study of terrorism and the democratic state's prosecution of counterterrorism can identify the real terror lurking behind the “manipulation of the
politics of fear” (p. 75).¶ Moreover, the resolution of this condition of escalating violence requires not any strategic solution that creates security as the basis for
development whether in London or Kabul. Instead,
Booth, Burke, and the editors contend that the only solution to “the
world-historical crisis that is facing human society globally” (p. 76) is universal human “emancipation.”
This, according to Burke, is “the normative end” that critical theory pursues. Following Jurgen Habermas, the godfather of critical theory, terrorism is really a form of
distorted communication. The solution to this problem of failed communication resides not only in the improvement of living conditions, and “the political taming of
unbounded capitalism,” but also in “the telos of mutual understanding.” Only through this telos with its “strong normative bias towards non violence” (p. 43) can a
universal condition of peace and justice transform the globe. In
other words, the only ethical solution to terrorism is
conversation: sitting around an un-coerced table presided over by Kofi Annan, along with Ken Booth,
Osama bin Laden, President Obama, and some European Union pacifist sandalista, a transcendental
communicative reason will emerge to promulgate norms of transformative justice. As Burke enunciates, the panacea
of un-coerced communication would establish “a secularism that might create an enduring architecture of basic shared values” (p. 46).¶ In the end, uncoerced norm projection is not concerned with the world as it is, but how it ought to be. This not only
compounds the logical errors that permeate critical theory, it advances an ultimately utopian agenda
under the guise of soi-disant cosmopolitanism where one somewhat vaguely recognizes the “human
interconnection and mutual vulnerability to nature, the cosmos and each other” (p. 47) and no doubt
bursts into spontaneous chanting of Kumbaya.¶ In analogous visionary terms, Booth defines real security as emancipation in a way that
denies any definitional rigor to either term. The struggle against terrorism is, then, a struggle for emancipation from the oppression of political violence everywhere.
Consequently, in this Manichean struggle for global emancipation against the real terror of Western democracy, Booth
further maintains that
universities have a crucial role to play. This also is something of a concern for those who do not share
the critical vision, as university international relations departments are not now, it would seem, in
business to pursue dispassionate analysis but instead are to serve as cheerleaders for this critically
inspired vision.¶ Overall, the journal's fallacious commitment to emancipation undermines any ostensible claim to pluralism and diversity. Over
determined by this transformative approach to world politics, it necessarily denies the possibility of a
realist or prudential appreciation of politics and the promotion not of universal solutions but pragmatic
ones that accept the best that may be achieved in the circumstances. Ultimately, to present the world how it
ought to be rather than as it is conceals a deep intolerance notable in the contempt with which many of
the contributors to the journal appear to hold Western politicians and the Western media.6¶ It is the
exploitation of this oughtistic style of thinking that leads the critic into a Humpty Dumpty world where
words mean exactly what the critical theorist “chooses them to mean—neither more nor less.”
However, in order to justify their disciplinary niche they have to insist on the failure of established
modes of terrorism study. Having identified a source of government grants and academic perquisites, critical studies in fact does not deal with the
notion of terrorism as such, but instead the manner in which the Western liberal democratic state has supposedly manipulated the use of violence by non-state
actors in order to “other” minority communities and create a politics of fear.¶ Critical Studies and Strategic Theory—A Missed Opportunity¶ Of course, the doubtful
contribution of critical theory by no means implies that all is well with what one might call conventional terrorism studies. The subject area has in the past produced
superficial assessments that have done little to contribute to an informed understanding of conflict. This is a point readily conceded by John Horgan and Michael
Boyle who put “A Case Against 'Critical Terrorism Studies'” (pp. 51-74). Although they do not seek to challenge the agenda, assumptions, and contradictions
inherent in the critical approach, their contribution to the new journal distinguishes itself by actually having a well-organized and well-supported argument. The
authors' willingness to acknowledge deficiencies in some terrorism research shows that critical
self-reflection is already present in
existing terrorism studies. It is ironic, in fact, that the most clearly reflective, original, and critical contribution in the first edition should come from
established terrorism researchers who critique the critical position.¶ Interestingly, the specter haunting both conventional and critical terrorism studies is that both
assume that terrorism is an existential phenomenon, and thus has causes and solutions. Burke makes this explicit: “The inauguration of this journal,” he declares,
“indeed suggests broad agreement that there is a phenomenon called terrorism” (p. 39). Yet this is not the only way of looking at terrorism. For a strategic theorist
the notion of terrorism does not exist as an independent phenomenon. It is an abstract noun. More precisely, it is merely a tactic—the creation of fear for political
ends—that can be employed by any social actor, be it state or non-state, in any context, without any necessary moral value being involved.¶ Ironically, then,
strategic theory offers a far more “critical perspective on terrorism” than do the perspectives advanced
in this journal. Guelke, for example, propounds a curiously orthodox standpoint when he asserts: “to describe an act as one of terrorism, without the
qualification of quotation marks to indicate the author's distance from such a judgement, is to condemn it as absolutely illegitimate” (p. 19). If you are a strategic
theorist this is an invalid claim. Terrorism
is simply a method to achieve an end. Any moral judgment on the act is
entirely separate. To fuse the two is a category mistake. In strategic theory, which Guelke ignores, terrorism does not, ipso facto,
denote “absolutely illegitimate violence.”¶ Intriguingly, Stohl, Booth, and Burke also imply that a strategic understanding forms part of their critical viewpoint.
Booth, for instance, argues in one of his commandments that terrorism should be seen as a conscious human choice. Few strategic theorists would disagree.
Similarly, Burke feels that there does “appear to be a consensus” that terrorism is a “form of instrumental political violence” (p. 38). The problem for the
contributors to this volume is that they cannot emancipate themselves from the very orthodox assumption that the word terrorism is pejorative. That may be the
popular understanding of the term, but inherently terrorism conveys no necessary connotation of moral condemnation. “Is terrorism a form of warfare, insurgency,
struggle, resistance, coercion, atrocity, or great political crime,” Burke asks rhetorically. But once more he misses the point. All
violence is
instrumental. Grading it according to whether it is insurgency, resistance, or atrocity is irrelevant. Any
strategic actor may practice forms of warfare. For this reason Burke's further claim that existing
definitions of terrorism have “specifically excluded states as possible perpetrators and privilege them as
targets,” is wholly inaccurate (p. 38). Strategic theory has never excluded state-directed terrorism as an object of study, and neither for that matter,
as Horgan and Boyle point out, have more conventional studies of terrorism.¶ Yet, Burke offers—as a critical revelation—that “the strategic intent behind the US
bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia, Israel's bombing of Lebanon, or the sanctions against Iraq is also terrorist.” He continues: “My point is not to remind us
that states practise terror, but to show how mainstream strategic doctrines are terrorist in these terms and undermine any prospect of achieving the normative
consensus if such terrorism is to be reduced and eventually eliminated” (original italics) (p. 41). This is not merely confused, it displays remarkable nescience on the
part of one engaged in teaching the next generation of graduates from the Australian Defence Force Academy. Strategic theory conventionally recognizes that
actions on the part of state or non-state actors that aim to create fear (such as the allied aerial bombing of Germany in World War II or the nuclear deterrent
posture of Mutually Assured Destruction) can be terroristic in nature.7 The problem for critical analysts like Burke is that they impute their own moral valuations to
the term terror. Strategic theorists do not. Moreover, the statement that this undermines any prospect that terrorism can be eliminated is illogical: you can never
eliminate an abstract noun.¶ Consequently, those
interested in a truly “critical” approach to the subject should perhaps
turn to strategic theory for some relief from the strictures that have traditionally governed the study of
terrorism, not to self-proclaimed critical theorists who only replicate the flawed understandings of
those whom they criticize. Horgan and Boyle conclude their thoughtful article by claiming that critical terrorism studies has more in common with
traditional terrorism research than critical theorists would possibly like to admit. These reviewers agree: they are two sides of the same coin.¶ Conclusion¶ In the
looking glass world of critical terror studies the conventional analysis of terrorism is ontologically challenged, lacks self-reflexivity, and is policy oriented. By contrast,
critical theory's ethicist, yet relativist, and deconstructive gaze reveals that we are all terrorists now and must empathize with those sub-state actors who have
recourse to violence for whatever motive. Despite their intolerable othering by media and governments, terrorists are really no different from us. In fact, there is
terror as the weapon of the weak and the far worse economic and coercive terror of the liberal state. Terrorists therefore deserve empathy and they must be
discursively engaged.¶
At the core of this understanding sits a radical pacifism and an idealism that requires not
the status quo but communication and “human emancipation.” Until this radical post-national utopia
arrives both force and the discourse of evil must be abandoned and instead therapy and un-coerced
conversation must be practiced. In the popular ABC drama Boston Legal Judge Brown perennially
referred to the vague, irrelevant, jargon-ridden statements of lawyers as “jibber jabber.” The
Aberystwyth-based school of critical internationalist utopianism that increasingly dominates the study of
international relations in Britain and Australia has refined a higher order incoherence that may be
termed Aber jabber. The pages of the journal of Critical Studies on Terrorism are its natural home.
Internal Link Defense
Aff can’t resolve how deeply islamophobia has engrained itself in the American
psyche.
Ali 12 (Yaser, Managing Attorney at Yaser Ali Law and J.D at University of California, Berkeley - School
of Law, “Shariah and Citizenship—How Islamophobia Is Creating a Second-Class Citizenry in America”,
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, 8-1-2012,
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4176&context=californialawreview)
One would assume that anti-Muslim sentiment reached its high water mark after 9/11. To the contrary,
however, it has increased dramatically in the third phase of Islamophobia, which began during President
Obama’s 2008 campaign. If Volpp’s contentions about Muslims’ being relegated to second-class citizenship were true in 2002, then
today that distinction has crystallized even further.136 Whereas a vast majority of the incursions in the second phase
occurred under the umbrella of national security, Islamophobia has now evolved beyond simply
encouraging profiling and other surveillance techniques aimed at Muslims under the professed interests
of national security. An institutionalized version of Islamophobia in this third phase now focuses on the "creeping threat of Shariah" and,
in the process, more explicitly threatens the foundational conceptions of citizenship described by Professor Bosniak. Further, while citizens
enjoy some fundamental level of respect for their individual beliefs and practices, this is no longer the
case with regard to Muslims, both in journalism and politics today. Whereas it is widely recognized as socially
unacceptable to be openly disparaging toward minority groups, the privilege reflected in that norm is increasingly denied to Muslims. In this
third phase of Islamophobia, mainstream discourse now explicitly challenges the notion that American
Muslims deserve the same liberal notions of rights that other citizens enjoy. One might surmise that since the
contours of this phase cannot easily be demarcated, the third phase is in fact a difference in degree rather than in kind. It is true that
unlike the transition from the first to the second phase, there is no single demonstrable event or tipping
point that represents the transition from the second to third period; however, there was a gradual progression that
increased in intensity since the presidential campaign of 2008 when the term "Muslim" was actually converted into a slur,
as political opponents "accused" then-Senator Obama of secretly being a Muslim. The suggestion that a
Muslim citizen would be less suited for office represents the deep-seated fear and mistrust of Muslims
in the American consciousness. President Obama's opponents recognized this fact and knew that it would be a powerful tool for
discrediting him. Yet what was perhaps most striking about the "allegations" was not the partisan claims themselves, but the responses that
President Obama and other government leaders offered. Obama
felt compelled to reject the "accusations," doing his
best to distance himself from the Muslim community and choosing not to make any campaign stops in
mosques or meet with any Muslim organizations during the campaign (despite making numerous stops at churches
and synagogues). President Obama did not state, that although he was not a Muslim, there was nothing
wrong with Muslims per se. Instead, he reiterated the bias by referring to the accusations on his website
as a "smear." Further, during one campaign rally, his aides asked two young Muslim women dressed in
headscarves to exit the stage area where he would be speaking. Arguably, the pervasiveness of such
insidious discourse from the President helped normalize the notion to the public that American
Muslims are not "citizens," but indeed "others."
Circumvention
Generic
State-centric curtailment will inevitably fail—circumvention, increase in suppression,
and extension of power
Schriefer, 10—advocacy director at Freedom House and contributor to New York Times (Paula,
11/9/10, "The Wrong Way to Combat 'Islamophobia'", New York Times,
www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/opinion/10ihtedschriefer.html?_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Opinion&action=keypress&region=Fixe
dLeft&pgtype=article)//twemchen
This week, member states of the United Nations will vote on what has become an annual resolution, “On Combating Defamation of Religions,”
put forward by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of 57 states with large Islamic populations. The resolution condemns what it
calls “defamation of religions” — a vague notion that can perhaps best be described as a form of expression that offends another’s religious
sensibilities — and urges countries to enact laws that prohibit such forms of expression. The resolutions are part of a larger and dangerous
campaign to create a global blasphemy law to combat what Muslim leaders refer to as “Islamophobia.”
Such a campaign is deeply flawed from a human rights perspective, both in its equation of religious
discrimination (a legitimate human rights violation) with the vague concept of defamation, as well as in the
proposed remedy of imposing legal limits on freedom of expression. A recent Freedom House report looking at
blasphemy laws in seven countries documents the negative impact of such laws on a range of fundamental human rights, while noting how
such laws actually contribute to greater interfaith strife and conflict. Because no one can agree on what constitutes blasphemy, laws
that
attempt to ban it are themselves vague, highly prone to arbitrary enforcement and are used to stifle
everything from political opposition to religious inquiry. Particularly when applied in countries with
weak democratic safeguards — e.g., strong executives, subservient judiciaries, corrupt law enforcement
— blasphemy laws do nothing to achieve their supposed goals of promoting religious tolerance and harmony
and instead are disproportionally used to suppress the freedom of religious minorities or members of the
majority religion that hold views considered unorthodox. In Pakistan, for example, Christians and Ahmadiyya (Muslims who do not believe
Muhammad was the final prophet) make up only 2 percent of the population, but have been the target of nearly half of the more than 900
prosecutions for blasphemy in the past two decades. The remaining prosecutions have been made against Muslims themselves, often simply as
an easy way to settle personal scores that have nothing to do with religion. Mere accusations of blasphemy have led to mob violence in which
people have been maimed or killed and whole communities devastated. The governments of countries that already have such problematic laws
on the books are precisely those countries leading the charge to create an international blasphemy law through the United Nations. The
motivations of states like Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — countries with appalling records on religious freedom and broader human rights
— are unquestionably hypocritical and have more to do with their desire to score points with unhappy domestic populations and religious
extremists than the desire to foster religious tolerance. Support for blasphemy laws is high among the general public in the Islamic world. Even
the staunchest advocates of human rights in the Middle East, individuals who are openly critical of their corrupt and authoritarian leaders, balk
at the idea that the publication of the Danish cartoons or the burning of a Koran should be protected forms of freedom of expression. In a part
of the world where one’s religion is as key to one’s identity as nationality and race, most people simply view such forms of expression as a
bigoted attack on their very existence. Such views are bolstered by the need to better address the real issues of discrimination and violence
against individuals because of their religious beliefs, even in established democracies.
It is a fact that political parties espousing
xenophobic and anti-Islamic views in Europe have gained in both popularity and representation, and
that legal policies have been enacted that most human rights organizations rightly see as restricting the fundamental
rights of Muslims to practice their religious beliefs. It is also a fact that many of the same people who defended the Danish cartoons as an
important form of free expression somehow feel perfectly justified in criticizing the plans to build an Islamic Center near the site of the World
Trade Center because it offends them. Yet hypocrisy
in Europe and the United States does not justify attempts to
bring governmental oversight into what constitutes offensive expression. Even with the best intentions,
which are often lacking, governments should never be in the business of policing speech. The tools of defeating
intolerance, including religious intolerance, start with a legislative environment that protects people’s fundamental political rights and civil
liberties, including freedom of expression. Blasphemy laws don’t work in any context and U.N. member states should reject them
unconditionally.
Circumvention – Fusion centers
*Note: don’t read against strict standards SWS version
Fusion centers monitor lawful religious activity
Patel and Price ’12 Faiza Patel serves as co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National
Security Program; Michael Price serves as counsel for the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security
Program (10/18/12, Faiza Patel, Michael Price, Brennan Center for Justice, “Fusion Centers Need More
Rules, Oversight”, https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/fusion-centers-need-more-rules-oversight)
Instead of looking for terrorist threats, fusion centers were monitoring lawful political and religious
activity. That year, the Virginia Fusion Center described a Muslim get-out–the-vote campaign as
“subversive.” In 2009, the North Central Texas Fusion Center identified lobbying by Muslim groups as
a possible threat. The DHS dismissed these as isolated episodes, but the two-year Senate investigation
found that such tactics were hardly rare. It concluded that fusion centers routinely produce “irrelevant,
useless or inappropriate” intelligence that endangers civil liberties. None of their information has
disrupted a single terrorist plot. These revelations call into question the value of fusion centers as
currently structured. At a minimum, they underscore the need for greater oversight and clearer rules on
what information fusion centers collect and disseminate. Of course, effective information sharing is
critical to national security. But as the Senate investigation demonstrates, there is little value in
distributing information if it is shoddy, biased or simply irrelevant. When fusion centers feed such
information into the echo chamber of federal databases, they only compound mistakes and clog the
system. The DHS has failed to create effective mechanisms or incentives for quality control. Instead,
fusion centers collect and share information according to their individual standards, which vary
considerably. These rules often permit information to flow to federal agencies that has no connection
to criminal activity — let alone terrorism. This creates the risk that intelligence networks will become
saturated with poor or irrelevant information as well as lend undue credibility to inaccurate data. The
Senate report showed that these risks are not just theoretical. Fusion centers need explicit and
consistent rules. The DHS should ensure that the information the centers collect and distribute is
relevant, useful and constitutional by requiring them to show some reasonable suspicion that criminal
activity is afoot. This is not a particularly high bar to clear. The reasonable suspicion standard is familiar
to every police officer. The requirement would serve as an important bulwark against privacy and civil
rights violations, but it would also keep meaningless information out of the system. Without such welldefined and familiar standards, as the Senate report demonstrates, fusion centers are left rudderless. In
addition, fusion centers must have active, independent oversight. While Congressional inquiries are
important for exposing problems, the Senate should not have been the first governmental body to take
a critical look at fusion centers. At the state and local level, there is often no mechanism to ensure that
fusion centers are generating useful information or complying with the law. At the federal level, the
DHS is responsible for verifying that the data shared by fusion centers meet certain minimum standards.
But the DHS has delegated this responsibility to the centers themselves and has not conducted
independent audits. DHS oversight has been so poor that the department could not even say how
much money it has spent on fusion centers, estimating the cost at somewhere from $289 million to $1.4
billion.
Fusion centers guarantee profiling will continue post-plan
Constitution Project ’12 The Constitution Project (8/15/12, The Constitution Project,
“RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUSION CENTERS”,
http://www.constitutionproject.org/pdf/fusioncenterreport.pdf)
2. Reports of Political, Racial and Religious Profiling Despite these constitutional principles, there have
been numerous anecdotal reports of incidents in which fusion centers have targeted individuals in the
United States for surveillance and investigation based solely on beliefs and characteristics that are
protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Although federal guidance to fusion centers
cautions against profiling, these incidents demonstrate that significant additional guidance, training and
oversight are crucial to ensure that fusion centers and other law enforcement agencies do not engage in
racial, religious and political profiling.41 Recent reports from across the country bear testament to the
potential for problematic profiling at fusion centers, particularly regarding bulletins and intelligence
reports circulated by fusion centers. These are a few examples: • The February 2009 “Prevention
Awareness Bulletin,” circulated by a Texas fusion center, described Muslim lobbying groups as
“providing an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish” and warned that “the threats to
Texas are significant.” The bulletin called on law enforcement officers to report activities such as Muslim
“hip hop fashion boutiques, hip hop bands, use of online social networks, video sharing networks, chat
forums and blogs.”42 • A Missouri-based fusion center issued a February 2009 report describing support
for the presidential campaigns of Ron Paul or third party candidates, possession of the iconic “Don’t
Tread on Me” flag and anti-abortion activism as signs of membership in domestic terrorist groups.43 •
The Tennessee Fusion Center listed a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to public
schools on its online map of “Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity.” The letter had advised
schools that holiday celebrations focused exclusively on Christmas were an unconstitutional
government endorsement of religion.44 • The Virginia Fusion Center’s 2009 Terrorism Risk
Assessment Report described student groups at Virginia’s historically black colleges as potential
breeding grounds for terrorism and characterized the “diversity” surrounding a military base as a
possible threat.45
Circumvention – NYPD
Local Surveillance like the NYPD is Islamaphobic
Kane 13 (Alex Kane is an assistant editor for the news website Mondoweiss, which covers the Israel–Palestine conflict, and
the World section editor at AlterNet. His work has also appeared in Salon, The Daily Beast’s “Open Zion” blog, Vice, BBC Persian,
+972 magazine, the Electronic Intifada, Extra!, and Common Dreams, Kane is citing the book “Enemies Within” by Matt Apuzzo
and Adam Goldman, “Alex Kane on Enemies Within : Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden’s Final Plot Against
America”, October 24th, 2013, http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/raking-the-coals-islamophobia-surveillance-targeting-andthe-nypds-secret-spying-unit)
Like the NYPD, the FBI has used its own power to pressure Muslims into becoming informants in
exchange for help. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the FBI has told Muslim-Americans
trapped abroad because of their inclusion on a no-fly list that they could get off easily — by spying on
their own communities back home in the US. For all the oversight of the FBI — something the NYPD
doesn’t have to contend with — parts of the federal agency still view Muslims as targets for spying
rather than partners in the fight against terrorism. Far from an aberration in America's post-9/11
landscape, the NYPD is merely the most extreme example of a law enforcement apparatus running
roughshod over the rights of Muslim Americans.¶ What's also missing from Apuzzo and Goldman’s
otherwise excellent exposé of the NYPD is the larger political context in which the spying took place.
The NYPD's logic is Islamophobic at its core: all Muslims are deemed potential terrorists until they're
proven not to be, an inversion of how law enforcement is supposed to work. Yet there's little
exploration of how Islamophobic discourse from the media and elected officials contribute to the
implementation and acceptance of spying targeting Muslims.¶ In the same year that Apuzzo and
Goldman began reporting on the NYPD's Intelligence Division, New York Republican Peter King set up
House hearings to probe “radicalization” among Muslim-Americans — a transparent attempt to cast
aspersions on one particular community. In 2010, anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller worked the
national media into a frenzy over what was inaccurately labeled the “Ground Zero mosque.” King, Geller
and other prominent figures who demonized Muslims directly after 9/11 opened up space for
institutions with even more power, like the police, to move a discourse of bigotry into policies of
bigotry. In an atmosphere where anti-Muslim sentiment largely went unchallenged, it's no surprise
that hardly an eye was batted when the NYPD hired CIA officials to implement an intelligence
collection program aimed at law-abiding citizens.¶ The book presents an undeniably damning portrait of
the NYPD’s surveillance operation. Now, it’s up to the courts and lawmakers to decide whether these
operations are legal or prudent. Three federal lawsuits are being pursued in reaction to Apuzzo's and
Goldman's groundbreaking investigations. The next New York City mayor will have to grapple with the
question of continuing or halting the spy operations. Judges and elected officials will have a documented
record on which to look back to decide these weighty questions in the coming months: Enemies Within.¶
Surveillance is heavily biased– It is assumed that Muslims are terrorists
Khalek 14 (Rania Khalek is an independent journalist reporting on the underclass and marginalized
communities, “How NSA Spying Impacts Muslim Communities and Cultivates Islamophobia”, January 26,
2014, http://raniakhalek.com/2014/01/26/how-nsa-spying-impacts-muslim-communities-and-cultivatesislamophobia/ -JD)
RANIA KHALEK: That’s a really good point that you make and I actually want you to touch on that a little bit more about how the
vilification and demonization of Muslims inside the United States and foreign has really been used to
justify this type of mass surveillance and in some cases it seems to have worked. All you have to do is
say terrorist, Islamic terrorism and people are like, oh okay. Could you talk a little bit about that?¶ ABBAS: I agree
wholeheartedly that the
fear of Islam, the fear of Muslims, is a notion I think has been cultivated by policy
choices at the federal level. The use of airport screenings, that inevitably cultivates and reflects the
bias that people have against Muslims, has I think created space for an anti-Muslim movement to take
root. Right after September 11, you didn’t have your Act for America’s, your David Yerushalmi’s, your Center for Security Policy’s—this
well-organized, well-financed movement dedicated towards marginalizing Muslims and that gave rise
to essentially an engine of generating ant-Muslim sentiment that creates this terrible and despicable
cycle where now you have the overt argument being made that Muslims are here in the United States to abrogate the US constitution, to
overthrow the US government and replace it with Sharia law, which couldn’t be further from the truth.¶ As the facts would have it, the
American Muslim community is a well-educated, well-integrated and looking to continue to do so in the world. You can’t identify an American
Muslim radical voice in the United States, whereas if you go to Europe, you can find people that have a platform that say despicable
objectionable things. In the US, that’s just not the case.¶ But we still have in the US, which is really exporting anti-Muslim sentiment to other
parts of the world especially Europe, we still have this fear of Islam that absolutely does give rise to justify these surveillance policies.¶
GOSZTOLA: So for people who are hearing this debate and they maybe think it’s kind of abstract, we’ve been hearing people talk about
collection of the information and then we’ve been hearing about how the information is stored. And right now when we’re talking about the
program under the Patriot Act, the Section 215 program, which is the bulk records collection of the phone records, it’s all about who’s going to
hold it, who’s going to store it, and it’s kind of like we’re not talking about the collection. I’d like you to talk about why the collection would be
really bad and I think a thing you could address is how the collection of people’s information in Muslim communities in New York is a huge deal
for them and collecting that information is the beginning of the injustice.¶ ABBAS: Absolutely. What we know a lot about now regarding the
NSA’s surveillance programs is what is collected, some of the searching mechanisms that can be utilized to sift through the collected
information. But what we
really get to see in more granular detail with the NYPD’s specifically designed
Muslim surveillance program is how indiscriminately collected information gets utilized and what
people in positions of authority that can collect such information think is an appropriate use of
taxpayer dollars. And what we find is that the NYPD thought it was absolutely worth taxpayer money to send
their agents on camping trips of 19 and 20-year-old college students. They thought it was absolutely
critical for them to map the Muslim community in Newark, New Jersey, and beyond, identifying every
halal grocery store, every halal restaurant. These things are laughable when we see them up close and in granular detail and
just like the PCLOB board has determined itself, a board that was authorized by Congress years ago, that the sifting through everybody’s
information on an ongoing basis actually is not only objectionable in itself but it’s not productive by any criteria.¶ So you have for instance
James Clapper arguing that there’s the ‘piece of mind’ quotients that is part of the benefit of their surveillance program because we’re
monitoring everything. At the very least we know that nothing is happening. But this mentality that gave rise to the NSA program is really the
objectionable thing that needs to end because it gives rise to not only indiscriminate collection of information automatically through these
telecommunications companies, but it’s also given rise to a network of 15,000 FBI informants that have saturated the Muslim community
across the country, that are sent to mosques without any type of criminal predicate just to collect information because there’s a sense that
that’s where the problem. And that’s the inevitable result of indiscriminate collection. It’s always going to be the case that indiscriminate
collection—in addition to not being productiv—will lead to despicable consequences.¶ And I’ll end my answer here.¶ The saddest thing I’ve ever
heard as a CAIR staff attorney, and I hear lots of sad things, was when a
young guy told me that when he goes to the
mosque to pray, his mom warns him to be careful. And the mom warns him to be careful because
there’s an understanding based on experience that the mosque is likely filled with informants and
infiltrators that are not there to make us any safer but there to extract information from innocent
Americans by any means necessary.¶
NYPD surveillance of Muslim communities increasing in the status quo
Martini 13 (Judge Williams Martini, United States District Court/Eastern District of New York,
6/18/2013)
As documented extensively in the NYPD's own records, its
Intelligence Division has singled out Muslim religious and
community leaders, mosques, organizations, businesses, and individuals for pervasive surveillance that
is not visited upon the public at large or upon institutions or individuals belonging to any other religious
faith. That surveillance has included the mapping of Muslim communities and their religious,
educational, and social institutions and businesses in New York City (and beyond); deploying NYPD
officers and informants to infiltrate mosques and monitor the conversations of congregants and
religious leaders without Any suspicion of wrongdoing; and conducting other forms of suspicionless
surveillance of Muslim individuals, organizations, and institutions, including through the use of
informants and monitoring of websites, blogs, and other online forums. Information collected from
these activities has been entered into intelligence databases. According to the commanding officer of
the NYPD’s Intelligence Division, its mapping activities have not generated a single lead, nor led to a
single terrorism investigation. The NYPD’s mapping efforts specifically excluded non-Muslims from law enforcement scrutiny. For example, the
Intelligence Division’s Demographics Unit mapped Iranian community institutions in one NYPD document, but specifically noted when those persons and institutions
were Jewish or Christian—not Muslim—and therefore not of interest to the NYPD. In
a report mapping the Egyptian community in
2007, the NYPD noted that Coptic Christian Egyptians were “the majority of the Egyptian community in
New York City. This report does not represent the Coptic Egyptian community and is merely an insight
into the Muslim Egyptian community of New York City.” Similarly, in its 2007 map of the Syrian
community in New York City, the NYPD stated that the community is “divided into two parts, a Jewish
Syrian and a Muslim Syrian community with the Jewish community being the larger of the two. This
report will focus on the smaller Muslim community.” Although the NYPD acknowledged the religious diversity in New York’s Albanian
population, police officials only mapped and photographed Albanian mosques for the NYPD’s Demographics Report on Albanians. The NYPD dispatched
teams of plainclothes officers known as “rakers” into neighborhoods with concentrated communities
associated with Muslim “ancestries of interest” to monitor daily life in those communities. In addition, the NYPD
has engaged informants to conduct suspicionless surveillance of Muslims. So-called “seeded” informants work or reside in certain ethnic neighborhoods and report
to the police on neighborhood happenings. “Directed”
informants gather information from locations that rakers have
identified as “hot spots,” notwithstanding the absence of any indication of criminal activity. Among the
institutions on which the NYPD has specifically focused its suspicionless surveillance are mosques, which
are central to Muslim religious life. The NYPD identified and mapped more than 250 area mosques in
New York and neighboring states. NYPD officials then determined the “ethnic orientation, leadership, and group affiliations” of each mosque,
either by surveilling it from the outside, or by entering the mosque to make those determinations. Using rakers and informants, the NYPD
identified fifty-three “mosques of concern” in which the Department placed additional informants and
plainclothes officers.
NYPD surveillance of Mosques will continue post plan.
Pilkington ‘13 (Ed, 10-24, "ACLU leads call for federal investigation of NYPD mosque surveillance,"
Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/aclu-new-york-nypd-mosques-muslims)
A coalition of 125 civil rights, religious and community groups has written to the Department of
Justice, calling for a federal investigation into the blanket surveillance of mosques and other Muslim
outlets by the New York Police Department (NYPD). The coalition, which includes the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), is calling on the attorney
general, Eric Holder, to use his powers to launch a federal civil rights investigation into NYPD practices.
Once any investigation is completed, the Department of Justice could, if it chose, take civil legal action to
put a stop to the controversial surveillance dragnet. "For over a decade, the NYPD has engaged in
unlawful religious profiling and suspicionless surveillance of Muslims in New York City," the letter
says. "The NYPD's biased policing practices hurt not only Muslims, but all communities who rightfully
expect that law enforcement will serve and protect America's diverse population equally, without
discrimination." The NYPD's focus on Muslim communities in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin
Towers, in 2001, began in 2002 and is ongoing. The city's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, and mayor,
Michael Bloomberg, have consistently defended their counter-terrorism strategy. In a series of Pulitzerprize winning articles, the Associated Press revealed details of the NYPD's joint surveillance program
with the CIA, based on the police department's internal documents. The files showed that the police
had designated entire mosques as "terrorism enterprises", allowing them to circumvent normal
constraints on surveillance. The department sent undercover officers, codenamed "rakers", into
Muslim neighbourhoods, and ran a network of informants known as "mosque crawlers" to monitor
sermons – even when there had been no evidence of criminality. One 2007 NYPD report, titled
"Radicalization in the West: the Homegrown Threat", stated that "enclaves of ethnic populations that
are largely Muslim often serve as 'ideological sanctuaries' for the seeds of radical thought". The AP also
revealed that since 2003 the NYPD has been mapping New York communities for monitoring, based
on whether the local population originates from countries with Muslim majorities.
TSA-No Enforcement
TSA regulation enforcement is ineffective- Sikh turbans are still invasively searched
despite better regulation
Leadership Conference 11
The Leadership Conference, coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations
to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States, “The Reality of Racial
Profiling”, http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/racial-profiling2011/the-reality-ofracial.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/, 2011//SRawal
Individuals wearing Sikh turbans or Muslim head coverings are also profiled for higher scrutiny at
airports. In response to criticism from Sikh organizations, the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) recently revised its operating procedure for screening head coverings at airports. The current
procedure provides that: All members of the traveling public are permitted to wear head coverings
(whether religious or not) through the security checkpoints. The new standard procedures subject all
persons wearing head coverings to the possibility of additional security screening, which may include a
patdown search of the head covering. Individuals may be referred for additional screening if the
security officer cannot reasonably determine that the head area is free of a detectable threat item. If
the issue cannot be resolved through a pat-down search, the individual will be offered the
opportunity to remove the head covering in a private screening area.63 Despite this new procedure,
and TSA's assurance that in implementing it "TSA does not conduct ethnic or religious profiling, and
employs multiple checks and balances to ensure profiling does not happen,"64 Sikh travelers report
that they continue to be profiled and subject to abuse at airports.65 Amardeep Singh, director of
programs for the Sikh Coalition and a second-generation American, recounted the following experience
in his June 2010 testimony before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties
of the House Judiciary Committee: Two months ago, my family and I were coming back to the United
States from a family vacation in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. At Fort Lauderdale Airport, not only was I
subjected to extra screening, but so was [my 18 month-old son Azaad]. I was sadly forced to take my
son, Azaad, into the infamous glass box so that he could [be] patted down. He cried while I held him. He
did not know who that stranger was who was patting him down. His bag was also thoroughly searched.
His Elmo book number one was searched. His Elmo book number two was searched. His minimail truck
was searched. The time spent waiting for me to grab him was wasted time. The time spent going
through his baby books was wasted time. I am not sure what I am going to tell him when he is old
enough and asks why his father and grandfather and soon him—Americans all three—are constantly
stopped by the TSA 100% of the time at some airports.
Government action has empirically failed to avoid racial profiling in airports individual
action is key.
Chandrasekha 3 (Charu A. Chandrasekha, Writer for Asian American Law Journal Volume 10 Issue 2
Article 4 Flying while Brown: Federal Civil Rights Remedies to Post-9/11 Airline Racial Profiling of South
Asians, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=aalj)
In response to similar incidents, less than a month after 9/11 the Department of Transportation ("DOT")
issued several strong directives banning airlines from racially profiling their customers.1 4 The DOT
instructed airlines: Do not subject persons or their property to inspection, search and/or detention
solely because they appear to be Arab, Middle Eastern, Asian, and/or Muslim; or solely because they
speak Arabic, Farsi, or another foreign language; or solely because they speak with an accent that may
lead you to believe they are Arab, Middle Eastern, Asian, and/or Muslim. This directive contained
detailed instructions for performing passenger security checks on Sikh men wearing turbans and Muslim
women wearing headcoverings to avoid violating these passengers' civil liberties and religious beliefs.16
In spite of these efforts, the airlines persisted in discriminating against South Asian passengers who
posed no apparent flight risks. 7 Some victims of these activities have sought legal redress for the harms
they suffered. Notably, in June 2002, the American Civil Liberties Union ("ACLU") and Relman &
Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based civil rights law firm, jointly filed five individual lawsuits against
American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and United Airlines on behalf of five
passengers ejected from their flights.' 8 Although the airlines contended that these passengers posed
security risks that justified denying them passage, the ACLU-Relman lawsuits allege that the removals
constituted racial profiling tantamount to illegal discrimination.' 9 This Comment will not discuss the
merits of the individual ACLU-Relman claims in detail, but rather will use the broad factual and legal
issues raised by the cases to examine the legal redress available to South Asian airline passengers who
were ejected from flights, as well as those who suffered disparate treatment but were ultimately
granted passage. It examines the viability of claims alleging violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 ("section
1981)2' and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VI")2 1 as an aspect of South Asian American
and other community responses to post 9/11 racial and ethnic violence.
The aff does nothing –The CBP, TSA, and ICE will still be allowed to use racial profilingHorwitz 14
Sari Horwitz, covers the Justice Department and criminal justice issues nationwide for The Washington Post, where
she has been a reporter for 30 years, 12-5-2014, "Racial profiling will still be allowed at airports, along border
despite new policy," Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/racial-profiling-will-still-beallowed-at-airports-along-border-despite-new-policy/2014/12/05/a4cda2f2-7ccc-11e4-84d47c896b90abdc_story.html//SRawal
In recent months, DHS
officials pushed the White House and Justice Department to allow major exclusions for prominent
DHS agencies such as the TSA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border
Protection, officials said. CBP, for instance, will still be allowed to use racial profiling when conducting
inspections at the country’s “ports of entry” and interdictions of travelers at the border, officials said.
Some DHS officials also questioned the Justice Department’s authority to set policies for a separate
federal agency. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson made the case in a series of high-level meetings, arguing that
while his department did not condone profiling, immigration and customs agents and airport
screeners needed to consider a variety of factors to keep the nation safe, according to officials familiar
with his personal efforts. TSA officials, meanwhile, argued that they should not be covered by the new
limits on the grounds that the TSA is not a law enforcement agency. “We tend to have a very specific
clientele that we look for,’’ said one federal official involved in immigration enforcement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal
deliberations. “If you look at numbers, the vast majority of people we deal with are Hispanic. Is that profiling, or just the fact that most of the people who come into
the country happen to be Hispanic?’’
Racial profiling in these agencies is still legally allowed- Muslims will be targeted
Rhodan 14
Maya Rhodan, Web Reporter at Time Magazine, 12-8-2014, "New Federal Racial Profiling Guidelines
Worry Civil Rights Groups," TIME, http://time.com/3623851/justice-department-racial-profilingmuslims-sikhs-aclu//SRawal
But some carve-outs—such
as screenings and inspections by the Transportation Security Administration
and U.S. Customs and Border Protection—have raised eyebrows among groups including the
American Civil Liberties Union, Muslim Advocates and the Sikh Coalition. “It’s baffling that even as the
government recognizes that bias-based policing is patently unacceptable, it gives a green light for the
FBI, TSA, and CBP to profile racial, religious and other minorities at or in the vicinity of the border and
in certain national security contexts, and does not apply the Guidance to most state and local law enforcement,” said Laura Murphy, the
director of ACLU’s Washington legislative office. Muslim Advocates, a faith-based legal and educational advocacy organization, echoed those
sentiments. “While these changes are welcome,” a statement reads, “it is difficult to see how the guidance will
improve the lives of law-abiding American Muslims who are singled out and targeted based on their
faith, not evidence of wrongdoing, by the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, and other law enforcement
agencies.” The Department of Justice guidelines do not apply to activities conducted by military,
intelligence or diplomatic personnel. Border screening activities are also not covered, which has been of particular concern to civil rights
groups. After 9/11, sweeping counterterrorism efforts were imposed that led Arab and Muslim Americans—and some perceived to be Muslim or Arabic such as
South Asians and Sikhs—to feel singled out and profiled by the federal government. A 2009 ACLU and Rights Working Group report found that Arabs,
Muslims and South Asians “have been disproportionately victimized through various government
initiatives” including FBI surveillance, questioning, airline profiling and no-fly lists.
Alt cause- the No Fly list disproportionally targets Muslim passengers and creates an
atmosphere of Islamophobia
Huus 11 (Kari Huus, Fulbright Scholar Taiwan, "Muslim Travelers Say They're Still Saddled with 9/11
Baggage", www.today.com/id/44334738/ns/today-today_news/t/muslim-travelers-say-theyre-stillsaddled-baggage/#.VafqhnTWKF4, 9/13/2011, // EMS)
The TSA is also required to conduct secondary screening according to two lists — the “no-fly” list and the
“selectee” list, which are provided by the Terrorism Screening Center, a division of the FBI.¶ The screening center says there are 16,000
individuals — including about 500 U.S. citizens — on the no-fly list, which bars the individuals on it from flying to,
from or within the United States. Another 16,000 are on the selectee list, which triggers secondary screening.¶ Both are subsets of
a consolidated watch list called the Terrorism Screening Database of “known or appropriately suspected terrorists.” The number of
names in the database fluctuates, but at present it names 420,000 individuals, about 2 percent of them Americans, the screening center says.
The FBI distributes relevant subsets of the database to different frontline agencies such as TSA, CBP, financial watchdogs and law enforcers.
Even people stopped for traffic violations can be quickly checked against the list.¶ Each agency “must comply
with the law, as well as its own policies and procedures to protect privacy rights and civil liberties,” the screening center said.¶ The
effectiveness of the lists came into question after an attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day 2009, when Nigerian Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, who was not on either watch list, tried to detonate plastic explosives on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Ultimately he hurt
only himself, but the scare prompted the screening center to expand the criteria it uses to populate the no-fly list.¶ By design, none of the
criteria that land an individual in the database or on the watch lists is made public.¶ “People
are put on the watch list based on
a series of criteria,” said Sheldon Jacobson, a security expert and computer science professor at University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. “Nobody really knows them. They are very secret and they keep evolving. In many ways (the
government) has to keep it private because if they give it out, people will game the system.Ӧ That
secrecy presents a conundrum for many people who believe they are on a list and do not belong
there.¶ Some of the cases involve mistaken identity because a traveler possesses a common name like
Mohammad — the Arabic equivalent of Smith. As a result, some civil rights lawyers believe that the lists affect two to three
times as many fliers as are legitimately on them.¶ Marooned One of the most chilling cases surrounding
the no-fly list is that of Gulet Mohamed, a 19-year-old American citizen of Somali heritage.¶ Mohamed
had been visiting family in Yemen and Somalia — two countries with active Islamist terrorist groups.
When he went to the Kuwait airport to extend his visa in December, he was arrested and taken to a
detention facility, where he was blindfolded, questioned and beaten by unknown agents, according to his
lawyer, Gadeir Abbas.¶ The questioners were especially interested in information about Anwar al-Awlaki, a dual U.S. and Yemeni citizen turned
Islamic extremist in Yemen, Abbas said. Mohamed insisted he had no information and, after a week, Kuwait ordered his deportation.¶ But
when he tried to board a flight to the United States, he was told he was on the no-fly list. Only after Abbas
filed a lawsuit on his behalf in January was Mohamed allowed to return home to Virginia.¶ Mohamed is pursuing a claim for damages and to be
removed from the list. The federal government wants the case thrown out on the grounds that it is irrelevant now that he is back in the U.S.
Meantime, it will not confirm if he is on the no-fly list. The lawsuit is pending, after a judge moved it to a circuit court on jurisdictional grounds.¶
“It’s this very Kafkaesque world where no one has charged (people on the list) with any crime … but they can see its effects,” said Abbas, an
attorney with CAIR. “… His case is the most heinous example of what the no-fly list can do.”¶ Other pending court cases allege that Muslim
American travelers have encountered similar violations of their rights, including some who were
forced to take thousand-mile circuitous land routes to get back into the U.S. or were stuck overseas
for weeks or months until lawyers here took up their cases.¶ The ACLU, which argues that the watch list system is unconstitutional, has
filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, the FBI and the Terrorist Screening Center naming 20 people — 18 U.S. citizens and two
permanent residents — who allegedly have been prevented from boarding airline flights to or from the U.S. The plaintiffs say they were told by
security or airline staff that their names were on the no-fly list.¶ “Thousands
of people have been barred altogether from
commercial air travel without any opportunity to confront or rebut the basis for their inclusion, or
apparent inclusion” on the no-fly list," the lawsuits says. "The result is a vast and growing list of
individuals whom, on the basis of error or innuendo, the government deems too dangerous to fly, but
too harmless to arrest.Ӧ In response, the government objected on jurisdictional grounds and argued that the policy does not violate the
constitutional rights of the travelers because “they have not been denied the right to re-enter and reside in the United States, nor have they
been denied the ability to travel.Ӧ But critics of the list note that in cases like that of the lead plaintiff, Ayman Latif, a 33-year-old U.S. citizen
and disabled Marine Corps veteran, that would have meant weeks of travel from the Middle East to the United States by sea and land, at
considerable additional expense.¶ The U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore., dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, ruling that it should go
instead to an appeals court. The ACLU is appealing that decision.¶
Islamophobia exists at every level of the airport system- changing one TSA program
can’t solve.
Bazian 14 (Hatem, “The ‘Randomness’ of Islamophobia at US Airports,” TurkeyAgenda.com. Bazian has a Ph.D in Philosophy and
Islamic Studies from UC Berkeley and is a professor and co-founder of Zaytuna College. They are also a senior lecturer at UC Berkeley.
http://www.turkeyagenda.com/the-randomness-of-islamophobia-at-us-airports-1111.html // EMS).
In June 2014,
I traveled to Qatar to attend and present a paper at a conference focusing on Arab-US
relations hosted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, right before heading to Granada, Spain, to teach a summer course on
Muslims in the West from pre-1492 to the present. The conference was well attended and had academic, non-academic, and participants from
across the Arab world, Europe and the United States.¶ While it would be worthwhile to write a summary of the conference proceedings, this
article is not about the gathering itself but the journey back, which was very eventful as
I came face to face with the
‘randomness’ of four largely printed SSSS on the face of my ticket. For those well acquainted with this procedure, it
means you have been selected to ‘randomly’ be searched, given the necessary full-body pat down or
“massage” as well as asked multiple questions at various moments by different people.¶ My initial alarm
went off when I was unable to check-in online for my flights and was directed on the computer screen at the hotel to go to the counter at the
airport in the morning as the ticket required special agent handling. Once at the Frankfurt airport in Germany, I
was asked to
accompany the agents and was subject to full body search, complete luggage check, computer and
phone turned-on and off, questions about where I traveled, whom I met and what business I had in
Qatar and Spain.¶ This process took sometime and I was close to being the last allowed to board the plane, even
though I was one of the early arrivals at the airport. The agents responsible for the secondary screening and body search
were nice throughout the process but made small talk referring to the places that I traveled to and the concern it raised, which they thought I
surely would understand considering the circumstances. I did respond by confirming that I completely understood the ‘randomness’ of
Islamophobia and the need for extra security measures for someone attending an academic conference on Arab-US relations.¶ The flight from
Frankfurt to San Francisco took 11 hours and I arrived around 7:49pm but had already prepared myself mentally for the questions to come due
to the four largely printed SSSS ‘randomly’ appearing on the face of my ticket. I was quick out of the plane and into the passport line.
Sure
enough, the process unfolded with a directive to go to another room at the end of the hall because I
was ‘randomly’ selected for the extra special secondary screening.¶ I followed the instruction and headed to the
room at the end of the hall and gave my passport and ticket to the agent who directed me to sit down and wait to be called back to the
counter. I
could only see a few Muslims in the room, a Pilipino man with his family (I do not know if he was a Muslim) and no
one else ‘randomly’ selected for this honor of questioning upon landing in San Francisco airport. In this context, one gets a clearer
image of the narrowly constructed security apparatus giving the impression of randomness but which
in reality is laser focused on Muslims. Flying while Muslim is riving or walking like Black in today’s America. How are the
names selected and what constitute a threat that warrant such secondary screening?¶ After some time
sitting and waiting, I was called-up to the counter and an interview soon got underway. I have to say part of me was laughing while the other
was getting angry at the questions and the racist nature implied in each one. I was asked the same set of
questions from the Frankfurt encounter then another line of interrogation began to unfold. “Did you meet any tribes on your travel?” I said,
“Tribes like the fans of the 49ers or the Raider’s Nation?” I asked the person doing the interrogation, “what do you mean by tribes’ as I don’t
know what you are talking about?” He responded, “you know what I mean by tribes.” I said, “no, I don’t know what you mean and when I met
people on my travel I did not ask if they belonged to a tribe and what tribe it was. I attended an academic conference on Arab-US Relations held
at the Doha’s Ritz Carlton Hotel, a Western company and they do not have an area on the registration for tribal affiliation or a tea-coffee time
to meet the local tribes.Ӧ After a back and forth on the tribe issue he
asked “whether I visited any suspicious countries
during my travel?” I asked if he could tell me what a suspicious country is so I can determine whether I did or did not undertake such a
trip since the countries I visited did not identify themselves as such at the airport or when I got the passport stamped. His response was again
“you know what I am asking!” I said, “no, I don’t know what you are talking about and need you to define what a suspicious country is then I
can answer your question.” After a back and forth on this few times he decided to drop it and went to ask questions about my work,
employment, University of California, Berkeley summer course etc. The process took a while and afterward I was directed to collect my luggage
and head to the customs section, which I thought would be easy and straightforward but it was not the case.¶ With my luggage in hand, three
custom officers directed me to place my bags on the counter and to step back so they could begin
careful examination of all my items. They went ahead and searched it carefully examining each piece
by hand and also took bomb swabs for tests. I thought this would be the end of it but I encountered another round of
questioning in the same pattern experienced in the earlier two stops. This time the focus was more on the officers wanting names of people
and my contacts on the ground in Qatar and Granada, Spain and my relationship to each.¶ I did ask if it was Qatar or Spain that was a suspicious
country to cause all this careful examination! If Qatar were the suspicious country then why would it be the case considering the U.S. Central
Command’s Forward Headquarters and the Combined Air Operations Center are located in the country and I and other US citizens should have
been warned about visiting the country in the first place and does this apply to all American civilians who work in and travel regularly to Doha!¶
What I experienced is the norm for many American Muslims traveling through US airports on
international and some also when flying domestically. The ‘random’ selection process is intended to
produce a virtual internment feeling in the American Muslim community and engender a certain level
of fear that is then cultivated to produce cooperation on a variety of domestic and international
policies.¶ More critically, the monitoring structure and the secondary screening is a form of racial
profiling based on religion but is pushed and rationalized under the war on terrorism rubric, which has
witnessed a massive abrogation of civil and human rights in the US and abroad. In a random unscientific poll of
about 10 American Muslim leaders, each one of them said they faced the same ‘random’ screening at the airport and a few even upon
returning from a State Department Public Diplomacy sponsored trip to the Muslim world. Thus, even when Muslims are working to support US
soft power project in the Muslim world they are subject to this extra special treatment at the airport. ¶ The challenge at this point is how to
confront this security structure that has become normalized and developed a large bureaucratic infrastructure around it employing hundreds of
thousands with billions allocated to sustain it. Muslims
today are living in a security fish bowl and everything they
do, be it at the individual or community levels, are being watched since they collectively have been
identified as the ‘archetypal terrorist’ and all measures are accepted in defending the society from
him/her.¶ We can ask today how it feels to be treated like a prisoner while being free: the
randomness of Islamophobia at the airport is a case in point and the current ‘war on terrorism’ has
managed to problematize and criminalize Muslims across the globe and treating all as guilty until
proven innocent.¶
Solvency
AT – Strict Scrutiny
Strict Scrutiny is inconsistent and arbitrary – status quo solves better.
Riccucci 7 (Norma Riccucci, Rutgers University, June 2007, “Moving Away From a Strict Scrutiny
Standard for Affirmative Action Implications for Public Management”,
http://arp.sagepub.com/content/37/2/123.short)
This article addresses the concept
of strict scrutiny, the burden of persuasion test used by the courts to
determine the constitutionality of affirmative action. Through a systematic analysis of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, it
illustrates that strict scrutiny has been applied in an inconsistent, arbitrary manner and, therefore,
should not serve as the basis for judicial review of affirmative action programs. It shows that the rule
of law established under the Civil Rights Act provides an equally if not more compelling basis for judging
the legality of affirmative action programs. Relying on the legal standards advanced by the courts under civil rights statutes
provides managers with greater flexibility in developing and implementing affirmative action programs. In effect, the ability of governments to
promote diversity of their workforces is greatly enhanced.
Strict scrutiny gets an unequivocal F.
Riccucci 7 (Norma Riccucci, Rutgers University, June 2007, “Moving Away From a Strict Scrutiny
Standard for Affirmative Action Implications for Public Management”,
http://arp.sagepub.com/content/37/2/123.short)
The constitutional litmus test for judging affirmative action is a failure—it gets an unequivocal “F.” It
lacks reliability, validity, and hence legitimacy, characteristics that even the most basic civil service
tests are required to demonstrate. More over, it becomes almost impossible for policymakers in
educational or employment settings to develop affirmative action policies that will meet some rule of
law, when those rules are hollow and inconstant. It must be questioned at this point in the history of affirmative action: why
does the Court continue to wrestle with appropriate standards of review, when it will ultimately
disregard those standards on a whim or apply them in an erratic, illogical manner? Perhaps strict scrutiny is
simply one area where the Court will expressly continue to “legislate from the bench.” As argued here, the framework advanced under Title VII
is much less cryptic, arcane, and mercurial, and therefore, could be applied more broadly to all questions of law concerning affirmative action
programs and policies. This will greatly facilitate the work of managers and policymakers who are striving to create culturally diverse
environments for public employees and students in public universities. As the composition of the Supreme Court has changed since the 2003
Grutter ruling, it becomes imperative for public administrators and policymakers to engage in a dialogue around the irrelevance of strict
scrutiny.
Strict scrutiny doesn’t work in context of Muslims.
Figueroa 12 (Tiffani B. Figueroa, associate in Morrison Foerster’s Litigation Department, J.D. magna
cum laude from Hofstra University School of Law, "ALL MUSLIMS ARE LIKE THAT": HOW ISLAMOPHOBIA
IS DIMINISHING AMERICANS' RIGHT TO RECEIVE INFORMATION, Hofstra Law Review, Winter 2012)
As discussed above, the
fear of Muslims or those perceived as Muslim has resulted in the government's failure
to protect Americans' First Amendment right to receive information. n332 The strict scrutiny test [*499]
that courts normally employ when assessing the content-neutrality of a regulation on speech has not
been effective in light of the increased development of Islamophobia. n333 Following the 9/11 attacks, Islamophobia
has impacted the free speech rights of Muslims and the mobility of foreign scholars, as well as the right to receive information for all
Americans. n334 "In an age of official insecurity and anxiety, the most difficult constitutional problem may not be controlling arbitrariness in
permitting, but compensating for a chronic tendency to overestimate the likelihood of any damage to public security from public exercises of
freedom of speech." n335 Given the current state of events and the vulnerability of the right to receive information, a
new standard to
deal with the right to receive information in times of political controversy is required. In order to resolve
this issue of dealing with national security and the right to receive information, courts should adopt a
specific test under First Amendment speech analysis where: (1) there is a political conflict and (2) there
is a clear group that society and the government targets because of the conflict. As discussed earlier, the government may
restrict the content of speech in certain situations; however, it cannot favor one viewpoint over another. n336 The test will essentially focus on
the effects of a regulation on speech when a specific group is targeted by the government action. n337 Once the
court determines
there is a disparate impact on a certain group, the court will then resolve the issue as to whether the
government has curtailed the right to receive information through this disproportionate treatment of
the specified group. By first looking at the effects of a government action, courts will provide a framework for which they can work
through their First Amendment analysis. n338 When dealing with political conflicts, such as [*500] the war on terror, there are often certain
groups that are discriminated against through practices that seem constitutional. Such discrimination is not only overlooked, but it has a
subsequent effect on all Americans who are willing to explore different ideas other than those the government makes readily available. n339
The government's actions discussed above, such as dealing
with speech at a protest, n340 forcing a woman to remove
her hijab in prison, n341 and revoking the visas of foreign scholars n342 serve as examples. These
actions appear to be neutral; however, the effects of the actions unevenly target one particular group:
Muslims and those perceived as Muslim. n343 It is important that the courts look beyond the language
of the laws or government actions in order to gauge whether the government is in fact practicing
viewpoint discrimination and violating the First Amendment right to receive information for Americans. n344 When
looking at the effects of government actions: A law [may] not discriminate against a particular viewpoint on its face, and there [may be] no
evidence of an improper legislative purpose in enacting the law. Within that framework of facial neutrality, however, we must examine
restrictions on speech with particular care when their effects fall unevenly on different viewpoints and groups in society. n345 Looking at the
effects of regulation on speech is something that the Supreme Court itself has taken into consideration when looking at the right to receive
information. n346 As determined in Martin v. Struthers, n347 the Court explained that, "in considering legislation which thus limits the
dissemination of knowledge, we must "be astute to examine the effect of the challenged legislation' and must "weigh the circumstances and
appraise the substantiality of the reasons advanced in support of the regulation.'" n348 Courts have taken a similar stance in other cases. n349
The [*501] bottom line is: courts must
look at the effects of government regulations because laws that have a
disparate impact on one viewpoint run the risk of being viewpoint-based. n350 As in the case of
Islamophobia, it is easy to target a specific group because some Americans automatically associated the
9/11 hijackers with all Muslims and those perceived as Muslim. n351 Similarly, in the interest of national
security, the government at times partook in practices that people may view as discriminatory. The
government failed to protect the free speech rights of Muslims as a targeted group, and these actions
subsequently harmed the right to receive information for Americans. Although the government's
purpose in enforcing the laws discussed in this Note was not to close off Muslim ideas, the effects may
show otherwise. n352 Justice Antonin Scalia stated, "the vice of content-based legislation - what renders
it deserving of the high standard of strict scrutiny - is not that it is always used for invidious, thoughtcontrol purposes, but that it lends itself to use for those purposes." n353 "Unavoidable targeting" stemming from a
government regulation is included within this "vice of content-based legislation." This phenomenon may shine light on what has occurred
following the 9/11 attacks. By employing an effects test in the First Amendment analysis, courts will more efficiently investigate whether there
is viewpoint discrimination affecting the right to receive information since the courts must first establish if a government action falls
disproportionately on a specific group. n354 [*502] VI. Conclusion Surely, the government has a highly supported interest in protecting the
United States at all times. However, protection should not ensue at the expense of severely limiting civil liberties and substantially restricting
the marketplace of ideas. In
times of political strife, such as facing terrorism today, the courts' current
approach to dealing with First Amendment violations of the right to receive information fails to protect
civil liberties. By looking at the discriminatory effects of regulations on speech, the court can protect a thriving marketplace of ideas.
Strict scrutiny can easily be circumvented that destroys the rigorousness of legal
proceedings – turns the case.
Bunker et al. 11 (MD Bunker, Clay Calvert, William C. Nevin, “Strict in Theory, But Feeble in Fact? First
Amendment Strict Scrutiny and The Protection of Speech”,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10811680.2011.603624#.VZV-0-1Vikp)
Professor Gerald Gunther
famously declared strict scrutiny to be “‘strict’ in theory and fatal in fact” in 1972.
Although Professor Gunther's pithy and influential slogan may have been a reasonably accurate characterization at that time, strict
scrutiny in the realm of the First Amendment is now much less fatal to government regulation of
expression. This article explores the beginnings of the strict scrutiny test and the underpinnings of its subsequent dilution. The article
examines the multiple ways courts can avoid applying strict scrutiny and argues that compelling state interests
are proliferating in a manner that is harmful to robust speech protection. It also critiques the lack of precision in
narrow tailoring analysis. The article concludes that First Amendment strict scrutiny has serious weaknesses that threaten
to undermine vigorous protection for expression and offers suggestions for increasing the rigor and
precision of the doctrine.
Difference between strict scrutiny and rational basis—and explanation by Justice
Kennedy
McMillen 06 (Lucas McMillen, University of St. Thomas, “Eye on Islam: Judicial Scrutiny Along the
Religious Profiling/Suspect Description Reliance Spectrum”,
[http://ir.stthomas.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1107&context=ustlj)
For the issue of religious-group targeting, of course, one must address an issue that Oneonta did not.
While Oneonta's issue of racial profiling is a Fourteenth Amendment question exclusively, the issue of
religious-group targeting-involving a potentially discriminatory infringement of religious exerciserepresents a point of convergence for the protections of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.25
When these two constitutional claims are collapsed, a court's analysis of them collapses as well, such
that a court will use the Fourteenth Amendment's analytical framework to evaluate the state's
imposition on First Amendment free exercise rights. Put another way, in reviewing a potentially
unconstitutional state infringement on free exercise, a court will evaluate the infringement with one of
two levels of scrutiny26: it will determine whether the infringement is either (1) rationally related to a
legitimate government purpose ("rational basis scrutiny"),27 or (2) whether it is necessary to achieve a
compelling government purpose ("strict scrutiny").28 The question of which level of scrutiny will be
applied is, of course, the crux of the matter, as rational basis scrutiny is enormously deferential, while
strict scrutiny has generally proven to be, to quote Professor Gunther, "strict in theory and fatal in
fact."29 1. Level of Scrutiny In Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah,30 the Court
employed the converged First-and-Fourteenth-Amendment analysis and established that its critical
question of scrutiny turns on whether government officials, in imposing upon religious exercise, have
done so with intent to suppress the targeted religion-discriminatory intent. At issue in Lukumi was the
constitutionality of the City of Hialeah's animal sacrifice prohibition, a prohibition contained in a series
of ordinances that the city's Santeria practitioners challenged as being a thinly veiled effort to curtail
their religious activities.3l Justice Kennedy, writing for the Lukumi majority, began describing the
mechanics of the Court's merged First-and-Fourteenth-Amendment analysis by discussing Employment
Division v. Smith,32 the case in which the Court gave a rational basis review to an Oregon peyote
prohibition that frustrated Native American religious practice.33 According to Kennedy, Smith
establishes the first direction that a court can take in the merged analysis: when it finds that conditions
similar to those in Smith are present-Le., when the state's action is neutrally postured towards religion-a
court should review that action with light scrutiny. To this effect, Kennedy wrote, "A law that is neutral
and of general applicability need not be justified by a compelling governmental interest even if the law
has the incidental effect of burdening a particular religious practice."34Kennedy then continued, moving
on to describe the second direction of the merged analysis, which he deemed to be the proper direction
to take in Lukumi: when a court finds that the conditions of Smith are not met, such that discriminatory
intent is the state action's raison d'etre, the state's action will be subjected to strict scrutiny. Kennedy
worded the second direction this way: "If the object of a law is to infringe upon or restrict practices
because of their religious motivation, the law is not neutral; and it is invalid unless it is justified by a
compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to advance that interest."3s Ultimately, the Court
determined that discriminatory intent lay behind Lukumi's animal sacrifice prohibition-that it "had as
[its] object the suppression of religion"-and struck it down as unconstitutional.
Squo Solves
Status quo solves – government is expanding regulations now, but local enforcement
won’t comply
Apuzzo 14 (Matt, ”U.S. to Expand Rules Limiting Use of Profiling by Federal Agents”,January 16,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/us/politics/us-to-expand-rules-limiting-use-of-profiling-byfederal-agents.html?_r=0)
The Justice Department will significantly expand its definition of racial profiling to prohibit federal
agents from considering religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation in their investigations, a
government official said Wednesday. The move addresses a decade of criticism from civil rights groups
that say federal authorities have in particular singled out Muslims in counterterrorism investigations and
Latinos for immigration investigations. The Bush administration banned profiling in 2003, but with two
caveats: It did not apply to national security cases, and it covered only race, not religion, ancestry or other factors. Since
taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been under pressure from Democrats in Congress to eliminate those provisions. “These
exceptions are a license to profile American Muslims and Hispanic-Americans,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in 2012.
President George W. Bush said in 2001 that racial profiling was wrong and promised “to end it in America.” But that was before the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11. After those attacks, federal agents arrested and detained dozens of Muslim men who had no ties to terrorism. The
government also began a program known as special registration, which required tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim men to register with the
authorities because of their nationalities. “Putting an end to this practice not only comports with the Constitution, it would put real teeth to the
F.B.I.’s claims that it wants better relationships with religious minorities,” said Hina Shamsi, a national security lawyer with the American Civil
Liberties Union. It is not clear whether Mr. Holder also intends to make the rules apply to national security investigations, which would further
respond to complaints from Muslim groups. “Adding religion and national origin is huge,” said Linda Sarsour, advocacy director for the National
Network for Arab American Communities. “But if they don’t close the national security loophole, then it’s really irrelevant.” Ms. Sarsour said
she also hoped that Mr. Holder would declare that surveillance, not just traffic stops and arrests, was prohibited based on religion. The Justice
Department has been reviewing the rules for several years and has not publicly signaled how it might change them. Mr. Holder disclosed
his plans in a meeting on Wednesday with Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, according to an official
briefed on the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.
Mr. de Blasio was elected in November after running a campaign in which he heavily criticized the Police
Department’s stop-and-frisk tactic, which overwhelmingly targets minorities and which a federal judge declared unconstitutional.
The mayor and attorney general did not discuss when the rule change would be announced, the official said. A senior Democratic congressional
aide, however, said the Obama administration had indicated an announcement was “imminent.” The
Justice Department would
not confirm the new rules on Wednesday night but released a short statement saying that the mayor
and the attorney general discussed “preventing crime while protecting civil rights and civil liberties.” In
the past, Mr. Holder has spoken out forcefully against profiling. “Racial profiling is wrong,” he said in a 2010 speech. “It
can leave a lasting scar on communities and individuals. And it is, quite simply, bad policing — whatever city, whatever state.” Officials in the
Bush administration made similar statements, however, which is why civil rights groups have eagerly waited to hear not just Mr. Holder’s
opinion, but also the rules he plans to enact.
As written, the Justice Department’s rules prohibit federal agents from
using race as a factor in their investigations unless there is specific, credible information that makes race relevant to a case. For
example, narcotics investigators may not increase traffic stops in minority neighborhoods on the belief that some minorities are more likely to
sell drugs. They can, however, rely on information from witnesses who use race in their descriptions of suspects. The
rules cover
federal law enforcement agencies such as the F.B.I. They do not cover local or state police departments.
That is significant because Muslim groups have sued the New York Police Department over surveillance
programs that mapped Muslim neighborhoods, photographed their businesses and built files on where they eat, shop and
pray. Mr. Holder’s comments about the new racial profiling rules came up in a conversation about that topic, the official said. William J.
Bratton, the city’s new police commissioner, has said he will review those practices. While
the rules directly control only federal
law enforcement activities, their indirect effect is much broader, said Fahd Ahmed, the legal director of the Queensbased South Asian immigrant advocacy group Desis Rising Up and Moving. For instance, he said, immigration bills in Congress have copied the
Justice Department profiling language. And civil rights groups can use the rules to pressure state and local agencies to change their policies.
“Federal guidelines definitely have an impact,” Mr. Ahmed said. “Local organizers can say, ‘These policies are not in line with what’s coming
from the federal level.’ ”
Squo solves – newly established SORC limits religious surveillance
Bullard ’13 (Ben Bullard; June 14, 2013; Personal Liberty; “The FBI Can Pull Back Your Curtain, But
Mosques Are Off-Limits”; http://personalliberty.com/the-fbi-can-pull-back-your-curtain-but-mosquesare-off-limits/)
Ever since Islamic groups cried out against the FBI’s semi-successful surveillance into terrorist plots that
emanated from mosques, the agency has been forced to turn its attention elsewhere in the ongoing campaign
to uncover domestic terrorism. In February 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) joined the Council for
American-Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles in filing a Federal class-action lawsuit against the FBI
for infiltrating mosques in Southern California and allegedly gathering general information without
probable cause. Regardless of the merits of that suit, the backlash over the Southern California case had a
subversive effect on Federal domestic surveillance policy. Later that same year, the Administration of
President Barack Obama established a review panel within the Department of Justice called the
Sensitive Operations Review Committee, effectively carving out special treatment for the religious,
political, journalistic and academic spheres: A sensitive investigative matter (SIM) is defined as an investigative matter
involving the activities of a domestic public official or domestic political candidate (involving corruption or a threat to the national security), a
religious or domestic political organization or individual prominent in such an organization, or the news media; an investigative matter having
an academic nexus; or any other matter which, in the judgment of the official authorizing the investigation, should be brought to the attention
of FBI Headquarters (FBIHQ) and other DOJ officials. (Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations (AGG-I Dom), Part VILN.) As a
matter of FBI policy, “judgment” means that the decision of the authorizing official is discretionary. Whether the FBI should
be indiscriminately watching any individual or affiliated group is a matter for a separate article (indeed, we’ve written several of them), and
recent scandals showing that the Nation’s vast enforcement empire is doing just that are both loathsome and alarming. But if Obama is going to
watch most of us, it’s only fair (and makes a fair amount of sense) that he watch all of us.
No Data Sharing
Federal changes don’t affect local communities – fusion centers don’t work which is
the only way for different levels of enforcement to share information.
PSI 12 (PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS, the oldest subcommittee of the U.S. Senate
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR AND
INVOLVEMENT IN STATE AND LOCAL FUSION CENTERS”, October 3, 2012 )
Sharing terrorism-related information between state, local and Federal officials is crucial to protecting
the United States from another terrorist attack. Achieving this objective was the motivation for Congress and the White House
to invest hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars over the last nine years in support of dozens of state and local fusion centers across the
United States. 1 Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lead this initiative. A bipartisan investigation by the
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found, however, that
DHS’s work with those state and local fusion centers
has not produced useful intelligence to support Federal counterterrorism efforts. The Subcommittee
investigation found that DHS-assigned detailees to the fusion centers forwarded “intelligence” of uneven
quality – 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. The Subcommittee investigation also found that DHS officials’ public claims about fusion
centers were not always accurate. For instance, DHS officials asserted that some fusion centers existed when they did not. At
times, DHS officials overstated fusion centers’ “success stories.” At other times, DHS officials failed to disclose or
acknowledge non-public evaluations highlighting a host of problems at fusion centers and in DHS’s own
operations.
Local-federal police data distribution fails—it’s too unorganized—local law
enforcement cellphone data collection is another alt cause
Ackerman 13 (Spencer, national security editor for Guardian US and won the 2012 National Magazine
Award for Digital Reporting, “Data-sharing among US law agencies amounts to 'organised chaos' –
report”, December 10, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/data-sharing-lawenforcement-organised-chaos)
The sharing
of crucial intelligence about counter-terrorism between the FBI, the Department of
Homeland Security and local police departments takes place through a patchwork process that amounts
to “organized chaos”, according to a new report. The report, released Tuesday by the Brennan Center for Justice, a public-policy
institute at New York University law school that has a track record of being skeptical of government surveillance, found inconsistent
rules, inadequate oversight, apparent wastefulness and insufficient regard for civil liberties nationwide.
“This poorly organized system not only wastes time and resources; it also risks masking reliable
intelligence that could be crucial to an investigation,” the report says, warning that a “din of data” is
overwhelming law enforcement. “There’s a lot of irrelevant information being collected,” said Michael Price, a
counsel with the Brennan Center and the author of the report. “As a result of that, it seems pretty easy for information to slip
through the cracks.” A Department of Homeland Security spokesman took vigorous exception to the report’s factual presentation and its
conclusions, saying that much of the responsibility for the patchwork rules should properly be attributed to discrepancies in laws across the 50
states and arguing that the fusion centers contribute strongly to national security while protecting civil liberties. Scrutiny
of the widereaching intelligence apparatus in federal, state and local law enforcement since 9/11 has largely taken
a backseat during the past six months’ worth of revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden about
the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities. But this week, several reports pointed to an
enormous amount of data collected by police departments – particularly from cellular towers. The
Brennan Center report examined 16
major police departments across the US, along with 19 affiliated “fusion
centers” – controversial data-sharing pools between federal, state and local agencies – and 14 of the
FBI’s joint terrorism task force partnerships with police. It found, among other problems, inconsistent
quality control, which permitted a flood of local tips – some as innocuous as “ordering food at a
restaurant and leav[ing] before the food arrives” (an example from California, according to a Fusion Center training
document obtained by the report's authors) – into fusion centers. Data like that does not meet the legal standard for
"reasonable suspicion" normally required to pursue surveillance, let alone the requirements of probable
cause. Yet it can be stored within fusion centers and accessed by a variety of law enforcement and
homeland security agencies for up to a year, the report said. Despite efforts by the Department of
Homeland Security, most of the fusion centers operate with “minimal oversight, or no oversight
whatsoever”, the report found. Out of 19 centers reviewed, only five require independent audits of
retained data. “We’re calling for clear, consistent processes and stronger standards for collecting and sharing information to reduce some
of the noise coming from this din of data,” Price said. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman contended Tuesday that the report
misrepresented the complexities of data-sharing across local, state and federal agencies, and strongly defended the relevance and performance
of fusion centers. “This report fundamentally misunderstands the role of fusion centers within our national security structure and their value to
state and local law enforcement,” said DHS press secretary Peter Boogaard. “As pointed out by congressional leaders and major law
enforcement organizations across the country, fusion centers greatly improve information sharing and co-ordination between federal, state
and local law enforcement. By receiving classified and unclassified information from the federal government and assessing its local implications,
fusion centers help law enforcement on the front lines better protect their communities from all threats, whether it is terrorism or other
criminal activities.” The FBI did not respond to a request for comment made after a media embargo on the Brennan Center report lifted.
Fusion centers have been the subject of criticism from both civil libertarians and powerful elected
officials. A 2012 investigation by the bipartisan Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations of
more than 80,000 fusion center documents could not find any contribution the centers had made to
“disrupt[ing] an active terrorist plot”. DHS disputes the results of that investigation, as do several legislators on committees
overseeing the department. Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoman who serves as the top Republican on the Senate government reform and
homeland security committee, has emerged as a leading legislative critic of fusion centers and joint terrorism task forces, for many of the same
reasons detailed in the Brennan Center report. After a government inquiry indicated many federal data-sharing efforts were duplicative, Coburn
issued a statement in April calling them “a vital component of national security”, but adding, “that is not an excuse to waste taxpayer funds”.
The Brennan Center’s report comes as police
departments’ widespread use of cellphone data is attracting new
scrutiny. On Monday, the Washington Post revealed that police departments around the country relied
9,000 times last year on so-called “tower dumps”, or data collected from cellphone signals that went to
a given cellphone tower during a certain period of time. That data necessarily includes call information
from cellphone subscribers who are never suspected of any crime. “There are serious questions about how
law enforcement handles the information of innocent people swept up in these digital dragnets,”
congressman Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who plans to introduce legislation limiting tower dumps, told the Post. Also on Monday,
USA Today reported that approximately a
quarter of police departments in the US have employed tower dumps,
and at least 25 departments around the country employ a portable piece of spoofing hardware, called a
Stingray, that tricks cellphones into thinking it is a cell tower, allowing it siphon data and send it directly
to police. And all that information is on top of the fruits of the NSA’s vast data collection efforts, which are not entirely off limits to federal
law enforcement. The controversial bulk collection of Americans’ phone data has been repeatedly described by the NSA as a tool to aid the FBI
in detecting domestic terrorism activity. NSA deputy director John C Inglis recently stated that the FBI cannot search directly through the NSA’s
data troves, but the agency shares telephone metadata with the bureau following searches through its databases based on “reasonable
articulable suspicion” of connections to specific terrorist organizations. The Brennan Center report did not specifically analyze law enforcement
tower dumps, but Price called the reports of them alarming. “This is another indication of the vast trove of information that state and local
police are collecting about law abiding Americans,” Price said. “To date, that information does not appear to be particularly useful in preventing
terror attacks.”
Fusion centers fail—local law enforcement doesn’t have oversight
Price 13 (Michael, serves as counsel for the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program,
“NATIONAL SECURITY AND LOCAL POLICE, December 10, 2013,
https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/NationalSecurity_LocalPolice_web.pdf)
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, many state
and local law enforcement agencies have assumed a critical but
unfamiliar role at the front lines of the domestic fight against terrorism. The federal government has encouraged
their participation, viewing them as a tremendous “force multiplier”2 with approximately 800,000 officers nationwide.3 Indeed, by collecting
and sharing information about the communities they serve, police departments have been able to significantly increase the data accessible to
members of the federal intelligence community.4 At the same time, however,
the headlong rush into counterterrorism
intelligence has created risks for state and local agencies, with too little attention paid to how to
manage them. Although prevention of terrorist attacks is often described as a new, post-9/11 paradigm for
law enforcement, the prevention of all crime has been a central tenet of modern policing since its debut
nearly 200 years ago.5 Intelligence activities, including the use of surveillance, undercover officers, and
informants, have helped fulfill this mandate. But due to the potential for abuse that came to light during
the 1960s and 70s, many courts and legislatures placed checks on police intelligence operations. Most
importantly, they required officers engaged in intelligence activities to have reasonable suspicion that a person or group is involved in criminal
activity before collecting, maintaining, or sharing information about them. Of course, this rule does not apply to most other police activities.
Officers responding to an emergency, for example, may record a victim’s statement or document an eyewitness account without suspecting
either individual of wrongdoing. But for many police departments, reasonable suspicion became a prerequisite for creating intelligence files.6
Since 9/11, some police departments have established counterterrorism programs to collect and share
intelligence information about the everyday activities of law-abiding Americans, even in the absence of
reasonable suspicion.7 This information is fed into an array of federal information sharing networks,
creating mountains of data.8 Whether these practices have made us safer is debatable.9 What is clear is that they raise issues of
accountability and oversight in ways that have not been given sufficient attention. The centerpiece of this new counterterrorism architecture is
a national information sharing network connecting police departments and federal agencies, known as the Information Sharing Environment
(ISE). But
there is little consistency regarding the types of information that local law enforcement agencies
collect and share with their federal counterparts. The policies and procedures governing such activities
are often opaque or unavailable to the public, while a deliberately decentralized system produces rules
that vary considerably across the country. Inconsistent rules jeopardize the quality of shared intelligence
and raise serious civil liberties concerns. In some jurisdictions, for example, police have used aggressive
information gathering tactics to target American Muslim communities without any suspicion of wrongdoing. Such
practices have not generated investigative leads or proven especially useful in preventing potential terrorist attacks.10 But they have strained
community relations with law enforcement, thereby jeopardizing the very terrorism prevention mission they are intended to accomplish.11
Many state
and local intelligence programs lack adequate oversight. While federal agencies operate under
the watch of independent inspectors general, there is often no equivalent for state and local
information sharing ventures. Very few local governments have built the kind of oversight structures that should accompany such a
significant expansion of police functions.
Multitude of barriers to data-sharing—localized law enforcement cannot effectively
model/cooperate with federal agencies
AFCEA International 7 (The Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA)
established in 1946, is a non-profit membership association serving the military, government, industry,
and academia as an ethical forum for advancing professional knowledge and relationships in the fields of
communications, information technology, intelligence, and security, “The Need to Share: The U.S.
Intelligence Community and Law Enforcement”, April 2007)
The committee believes certain steps can help the intelligence and law enforcement communities move forward in their ability to share
information and intelligence better. Communicate and Reinforce the Need for Sharing: People
have a natural tendency to resist
change. For this reason, leaders throughout the intelligence and law enforcement communities must
consistently and repeatedly deliver the message of change and ensure that everyone understands the
importance of sharing information. Analysts who have been told for years that releasing certain types
of information violates the law must now be strongly encouraged to exchange the information with
others. The new Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, has made a strong statement to all intelligence professionals with his
direction that it is not enough to share intelligence: There is a responsibility to provide it. Earn Public Trust: Abuses of the past
have made the public skeptical about the government’s role in personal lives. Yet, the public wants and
deserves a collaborative intelligence and law enforcement community effectively working together to
prevent another terrorist attack. A Markle Foundation task force7 noted, “For information sharing to succeed, there must be
trust.… Building trust requires strong leadership, clear laws and guidelines, and advanced technologies to ensure that information sharing
serves important purposes and operates consistently with American values.” The communities must ensure compliance with the law and make
the commitment visible to the public. Manage Risk: The intelligence and law enforcement communities have been risk averse in the past
regarding sharing information—often for good reasons. Today’s environment calls for a different approach. The
risk of sharing
information must be balanced against the risk of not “connecting the dots.” What is the true value of
having important information—even if it comes from a tenuous source in some cases—if the
information is never shared with others who may need it and who may add value to the information? As
a first step, local law enforcement should have a formal role and presence within the NCTC. This would
give law enforcement officials early warning about terrorist tactics used overseas before the terrorists
try to apply them in the United States, and it would help law enforcement plan and train better. Create
Clear, Understandable, and Consistent Guidelines: Many current guidelines and policies are complex, confusing, inconsistent, and make sharing
information difficult to achieve. This complexity causes delays in sharing data and undermines its utility. People are more apt to give up if the
rules are too hard to follow. Eliminate the Construct of “Data Ownership:” The
“owners” do not always appreciate why
information they control could be significant to others. For sharing to be effective, those who have a
broader picture may be the best advocates regarding what needs to be shared. For example, local and
state law enforcement, fire, and public health organizations can make a critical contribution in terms of
detection, prevention, and response. The federal intelligence or law enforcement communities may not
be taking full advantage of these capabilities and skills because they do not have a clear understanding
of what they can contribute. These individuals on the “front lines” may hold key pieces of the puzzle.
The fact that some of their information comes from an unclassified source does not automatically mean
it is not useful or important. Use Technology in a Meaningful Way: Most of the obstacles to meaningful
change in this arena are cultural, but technology still can play an important role. Most, if not all, of the
technological impediments to protecting sources and methods while enabling effective information
sharing have been solved. Technology should be embraced as a key in easing the administrative burdens of sharing information.
Emphasize Training: Effective and focused training can improve the confidence of community members and the public’s perception that
information is being handled appropriately. The right training, coupled with intelligence policies, will better enable sharing and ultimately will
help change the cultures. Share Good Ideas and Lessons Learned: The District of Columbia, among others, has taken first and useful steps. It has
initiated discussions in the law enforcement and intelligence communities to broaden understanding of what types of information are needed
and why.
Once state or local law enforcement organizations articulate and justify specific needs, and it
becomes clear the contribution they can make to mission success, the willingness to share information
will improve significantly. Other steps are possible. In the early 1980s the Drug Enforcement Agency
(DEA) partnered with local law enforcement to educate U.S. police officers on the trends, tactics, and
patterns of the South American drug cartels. As a result, local law enforcement officers knew what
behavior, precursor chemicals, and modes of transportation were associated with major trafficking and
violent crimes of the international cartels. Such partnerships work. Leaders in both communities should look to the partnership
model within the Joint Terrorism Task Force as an approach to enabling information sharing. The Director of National Intelligence has recently
created an Information Sharing Steering Committee (ISSC) and declared the ISSC will “move the Intelligence Community beyond the ‘need to
share’ philosophy and more to a ‘responsibility to provide.’”8 This commitment can steer the federal, state, and local communities closer to the
goal of a shared information environment. Conclusion Since September 11, 2001, the intelligence and law enforcement communities have
struggled to adapt to new challenges and to refocus and reorder priorities. Nonetheless, the
seam between federal, state,
and local communities has inhibited the United States’ ability to fight terrorism. Although Congress
has removed many of the existing barriers to cooperation, and limited examples of progress exist,
implementation is lagging. The key to change is strong leadership in both communities. Leaders must
understand and nurture cultural change that emphasizes a responsibility for providing information—
not just for sharing it. They must also communicate to their subordinates a willingness to accept risk in sharing data and must
deemphasize data ownership. These steps, along with clear guidelines, inter-community training, the exchange of lessons learned, and the
effective use of technology, can open doors of cooperation that have been closed for too long.
AT – Modeling
Modeling args are wrong—no correlation between grants and modeling—only our
studies include the broader law enforcement environment—other things are more
important than federal influence
Burruss et al 12 (George W. Burruss has a Ph.D. in Criminology & Criminal Justice at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale, Joseph A. Schafer has a Ph.D from Michigan State in Social Science (Criminal
Justice), Matthew J. Giblin, an associate professor and undergraduate program director in the
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Melissa R.
Haynes, Member of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, “Homeland Security in Small
Law Enforcement Jurisdictions: Preparedness, Efficacy, and Proximity to Big-City Peers”, September
2012, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/239466.pdf)
Second, much of the literature implicitly or explicitly assumes that homeland security preparedness can
be improved through funding allocations (e.g., grants), particularly from state and local governments
(Davis et al., 2006; Gerber et al., 2005). Alternatively, other writings have assumed that preparedness is
simply a byproduct of, or rational response to, the potential for a terrorist attack in a jurisdiction (Davis,
2004; Henry, 2002). What these studies tend to ignore is the larger environment. The efficacy of efforts
to enhance homeland security may not be just a function of perceived/actual risk or funding, but both of
those forces and others. For example, enhanced preparedness and innovative practices may also flow
from written products such as books and journals, as well as conferences, training, and other
professional networks and channels. These sources, as shown in a study of Illinois law enforcement
agencies, play a significant role in determining preparedness levels, independent of risk and resource
allocation (Burruss, Giblin, & Schafer, 2010). To date, however, researchers have largely ignored these
sources (termed institutional pressures) as determinants of homeland security practices. Moreover, if
these channels are salient, the proximity of small agencies to big-city peers might be irrelevant as
learning and modeling is indirect rather than direct. This omission is glaring considering that research
verifying the significance of these factors could be used to shape the diffusion of a range of innovations
across the law enforcement industry.
No federal modeling internal link—local law enforcement models regional agencies—
our ev is comparative
Burruss et al 12 (George W. Burruss has a Ph.D. in Criminology & Criminal Justice at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale, Joseph A. Schafer has a Ph.D from Michigan State in Social Science (Criminal
Justice), Matthew J. Giblin, an associate professor and undergraduate program director in the
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Melissa R.
Haynes, Member of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, “Homeland Security in Small
Law Enforcement Jurisdictions: Preparedness, Efficacy, and Proximity to Big-City Peers”, September
2012, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/239466.pdf)
Respondents were asked a range of questions designed to assess the extent to which institutional
pressures influenced their approaches to homeland security. The measures address factors that are
independent of any one person in the organization; that is, they focus on the influence of other
agencies, professional associations, and publications without addressing who within the organization
was specifically affected by these factors.10 Table 8 reports the results of a number of questions measuring
whether agency practices were influenced by the actions of their peers. In evaluating their own
homeland security performance, 25.8 percent of respondents indicated they paid significant attention
to other agencies like their own. An additional 59.8 percent of agencies paid some attention to similar agencies. Less than one
percent of responding agencies reported that they paid no attention to similar agencies in evaluating their homeland security performance.
Participating agencies were asked to what extent their agency modeled homeland security policies and practices after other agencies that they
viewed as successful. The majority of agencies indicated they did engage in such modeling often (35.3 percent) or occasionally (54.9 percent).
defining homeland security
practices and approaches agencies might be influenced by the resources offered by these other entities.
Respondents were asked to rate the influence of four sources of influence on a three-point scale from
not at all influential (0.0) to very influential (2.0). Peer agencies were reported to be the most
influential. Strong influence was also indicated for professional associations and government publications. Journal articles and books were
Other sources of institutional pressure are professional associations and relevant publications. In
the least influential, with an average rating between somewhat influential and not at all influential. Grant programs and other funding
opportunities were generally less influential. In relative terms, federal and state grant funding for equipment and training were most influential.
Private or community funding sources were least influential in formulating homeland security approaches and practices.
Alt Causes
Aff can’t resolve local policing which is more abusive – frisking and high-tech profiling
Cyril 15 (Malkia Amala, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice (CMJ) and cofounder of the Media Action Grassroots Network, a national network of 175 organizations working to
ensure media access, rights, and representation for marginalized communities, March 30, 2015, “Black
America's State of Surveillance”, http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americasstate-surveillance)
This model is deceptive, however, because it presumes data inputs to be neutral. They aren’t. In a racially discriminatory criminal justice system, surveillance
technologies reproduce injustice. 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 or punishment. In New York City, the
predictive policing approach in use is “Broken Windows.” 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. Without
oversight, accountability, transparency, or rights,
predictive policing is just high-tech racial profiling—indiscriminate data collection that drives
discriminatory policing practices. 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 in 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 gas. They
will use fusion
centers. Originally designed to increase interagency collaboration for the purposes of counterterrorism,
these have instead become the local arm of the intelligence community. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation, there
are currently seventy-eight on record. They are the clearinghouse for increasingly used “suspicious activity reports”—described as “official documentation of
observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity.” These reports and other collected data are
often stored in massive databases like e-Verify and Prism. 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. 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,
suspicious activities reporting and the dragnet approach of fusion centers target communities of color.
One review of such reports collected in Los Angeles shows approximately 75 percent were of people of color.
Alt cause – Local police is the problem—community oriented policing is failing
Jrank Law Library No Date, (,No Date,http://law.jrank.org/pages/2228/Urban-Police-Policingminority-citizens.html)
Historically, cooperation
and communication between police and minorities has been troubled. Williams
and Murphy described a history of policing shaped by the enforcement of laws that have discriminated
against minority groups, particularly African Americans. Slavery, segregation, and discrimination are historical
realities that shaped the current distrustful, strained, and often hostile relationship between police and
minority citizens. This poor relationship reached its pinnacle during the police-citizen crisis of the 1960s. The civil rights movement had
gained momentum and become more militant. Protesters gathered to demonstrate against race discrimination and injustice within the criminal
justice system. Police
officers responded to protesters with physical brutality, which increased the tension
between minorities and the police. This tension exploded in the form of riots and civil disobedience, often sparked by incidents
involving the police (Walker, 1999). As a result of several crime commission reports and research findings questioning the
effectiveness of "professional" police organizations, police organizational strategies evolved to focus on strengthening
relationships and creating partnerships between the police and citizens. Police departments attempted to improve community relations
through the creation of police-community relations units, race relations training for officers, and the hiring of more minorities and women.
Some of these techniques were relatively successful. As reported by Walker (1999), African American officers represented a majority of the
force in departments such as Detroit, Washington, and Atlanta in 1993. In addition, African Americans were selected as police chiefs in several
large departments, including New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, and others. Furthermore, by the mid-1990s, women
represented 13 percent of all officers in large police departments. Despite these advances,
police still struggle with minority
community relations. In 1993, the acquittal of four officers accused of beating Rodney King, an African American motorist in Los
Angeles, sparked race riots across the country. Other major cases of police abuse of force in the 1990s (e.g., the Louima and Diallo cases in New
26 percent of African American citizens
surveyed reported they had very little or no confidence in the police, compared to only 9 percent of
white respondents (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996). Furthermore, when asked about attitudes toward use of force, 60 percent of
whites had favorable attitudes compared to 33 percent of African Americans and 42 percent of
Hispanics (Huang and Vaughn). Serious questions regarding police discrimination remain. Studies routinely show that minorities are
overrepresented as suspects who have force used against them, and who are shot and killed by officers.
York City) further increased tension between the police and minorities. In 1996,
Worden's analysis of 1977 data showed that police were more likely to use both reasonable and unreasonable force against black male
suspects. This is also true of the use of deadly force. However, changes
in police departments' administrative policies led
to decreases in the use of deadly force by officers. In a study of the New York City Police Department, Fyfe found that
changes in the department's formal policies governing police shootings in 1972 reduced the average
numbers of shots fired by officers by 30 percent. The total number of uses of deadly force decreased by nearly 50 percent
from 1970 to 1984. In that same time period, the ratio of African Americans to whites who had deadly force used against them decreased from
six-to-one to three-to-one (Walker, 1999). Reductions in police use of deadly force toward minorities were also noted after the fleeing-felon
standard guiding police use of deadly force was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Tennessee v. Garner, 105 S. Ct. 1694 (1985).
African Americans are also disproportionately arrested more often than whites. It is unclear whether these
disparities in arrest statistics represent actual discrimination (i.e., disparity based on extra legal factors, such as race). When other factors are
taken into consideration (e.g., seriousness of the offense, the evidence available, demeanor of the suspect, etc.), it appears that arrest decisions
are influenced more by situational and legal factors than strictly race (Riksheim and Chermak). However, police
are more likely to
police inner-city neighborhoods, which are predominantly minority areas. In this sense, police may be
showing a form of contextual discrimination by heavily policing particular neighborhoods or particular
types of crimes. A concern is that police officers are profiling citizens based on race and ethnicity. The term DWB
or driving while black is a vivid descriptor of this phenomenon. Minority groups claim that police are more likely to pull
over motorists simply because of their race. In fact, studies of New Jersey State Police have shown that minorities are pulled
over disproportionately. This same argument is made in urban areas, where minorities believe they have become the targets of police
harassment through tactics of aggressive enforcement of minor crimes. Studies of police have shown that African Americans and Hispanics are
disproportionately stopped, questioned, and frisked by police (Browning et al.). Surveys of citizens
also indicated that African
Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be stopped and interrogated by police. One survey of African
American high school students revealed that 80 percent had been stopped by police and 62 percent of those
stopped said the police treated them disrespectfully (Walker, Spohn, and DeLone). At the same time, however, minority
citizens complain that police are not responding to their needs in these areas. Citizens allege that police are not providing
adequate protection or attention in their neighborhoods. According to Walker, this apparent contradiction can be
explained by "the diversity within racial and ethnic minority communities . . . . Complaints about police harassment generally come from young
males who have a high level of contact with the police. Most
members of racial minority communities, however, are
law-abiding adults with jobs and families. Like their white counterparts, they want more not less police protection" (1999, p.
222). In the 1980s, new strategies of community oriented policing have encouraged the partnership between
citizens and the police. Research has shown, however, that strategies of community policing tend to have the
strongest impact on neighborhoods where they are least needed. Satisfaction with community policing techniques is
highest in homogeneous, higher socioeconomic status communities, and lowest in heterogeneous, lower socioeconomic status communities
(Bayley, 1988). It is clear that new approaches to improve police-minority relations are needed.
Alt Cause—Underrepresentation of local minorities in the police force is a larger
problem
Badger, Keating, and Elliot 14 Emily Badger, Dan Keating, and Kennedy Elliot, (“Where minority
communities still have overwhelmingly white police”, August 14,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/14/where-minority-communities-stillhave-overwhelmingly-white-police/)
There is something unsettling about the scenes this week out of Ferguson, Mo., that goes beyond the
rare sight of military equipment on city streets or the disproportionate deployment of it. In so many of
these images, the unarmed residents are black. But almost all of the officers facing them are white. The
fatal police shooting Saturday of an unarmed black teen that set off these confrontations in a St. Louis suburb has raised questions not just
about the conduct of one officer, but the makeup of an entire police force. How
could a community that's two-thirds black
have a police force that's almost entirely white? How could such divisions ubiquitous in the 1960s persist in 2014? Across
the country, this racial imbalance is not rare. Fifty years after the Civil Rights movement called attention to the underrepresentation of minorities in police departments, the pattern is still widespread. More than three quarters of cities on
which the Census Bureau has collected data have a police presence that's disproportionately white
relative to the local population. Meanwhile, in more than 40 percent of cities, blacks are under-represented among
police officers, a Washington Post analysis of Census data revealed. While the pattern is widespread, broad variations
exist. The charts below show which cities have the greatest and smallest disparities between population and police. These numbers are
more encompassing than a mere count of officers in a municipal police department. From the point of view of
residents in each community, they reflect the larger police presence one might encounter. The center line in each chart
represents equality — or how we might expect a police force to look if it perfectly reflected the demographics of the city it serves. Non-Hispanic
white representation in most cities is above this line; in other words, the share of white police officers in Memphis or Charlotte is higher than
If we count cities within five percentage points of that line as having
relative equality, just one in 10 cities and towns in America meets that standard. If we look at the data
from the perspective of black officers, about 45 percent of cities and towns meet this definition of
equality. That number, though, is largely driven by cities with few or no black officers but also very small black populations. Remove
cities where less than 5 percent of the population is black, and 72 percent of all such places — 446 in
total — have police forces where blacks are under-represented. In the 609 communities where Hispanics
make up at least 5 percent of the population, they are under-represented among police as well in 66
percent of places. Even the best intentions by police departments won't automatically create perfect
equality because city demographics shift over time — in some places more rapidly than others. The
the share of whites living in those cities.
Department of Justice, which has filed hundreds of lawsuits against discriminatory local agencies since the 1970s, has historically looked at
demographic data like this, along with hiring and recruiting practices.
It is striking on the above charts, however, that many
of America's biggest cities are hovering more closely around equality than others. These are the same
cities where fierce battles were fought and federal lawsuits waged over unequal hiring practices after
1972, when amendments to the Civil Rights Act extended protection from discrimination to state and local government employers.
"Politicians realized that they couldn’t have an all-white police force in a city with a substantial minority population," says Richard Ugelow, who
worked on such lawsuits in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ for 29 years. "That changed the culture of the police departments and the
willingness of law enforcement, police and fire departments to become more diverse. You see that in
Chicago, New York, Atlanta, in
these large cities. They want to have a diverse workforce. You don’t have those same pressures in these smaller
communities." The public outcry and federal pressure that made such inequality so visible in Chicago —
prompting dramatic change there — hasn't historically extended to places like Ferguson, a suburb of 21,000 with 53
commissioned police officers. "It's hard for the government to bring a lawsuit," Ugelow says, "against a police force of 100 people." The above
charts show many places with either all-white or no-black police forces. Many of them are smaller cities, such as Niagara Falls, N.Y., where 20
percent of the population is black but all 250 police are white, according to the data. In Florissant, Mo., a quarter of the population is black, but
none of the 25 police are. Some
seemingly unequal communities have also experienced demographic shifts that
have exacerbated the imbalance between the police presence and the population. Ferguson is an example of
such a place: In 1990, the city was almost three-quarters white. By 2010, it was two-thirds black. Its police force today may in
some ways be a legacy of the makeup and policies of an earlier moment of time. Ugelow doubts that the picture
above is the result of intentional discrimination today — "blacks need not apply." But some of the same historic practices and
applicant tests that effectively excluded minorities may still exist in departments that never updated
their policies. During the recession, small-town police agencies that have had to cut resources may have trimmed the HR staffs and
recruitment programs that address this issue. Ugelow also worries that, since the Bush Administration, the DOJ has eased up on its civil rights
litigation. Historically, the
issue of inequality in police departments has focused on the relationship between
blacks and whites. But as the country's Hispanic population continues to grow, communities have to
take into account demographic patterns that encompass more than white and black. In San Antonio, for
instance, blacks and whites only account for one-third of the local population, and a slightly higher proportion of the police; Hispanics make up
63 percent of the population, and 58 percent of the police. As a note,
the data above draws from a special 2010 Census
count of workers in 755 cities and towns, including every place with a population of at least 50,000 at
that time. Once a decade, the Census creates this employment file for federal agencies that monitor employment practices and enforce civil
rights laws. The data include the number and demographics of police officers — counting police and
sheriff's patrol officers, and transit and railroad police — working in each city. The data do not include detectives,
security guards or parking enforcement officers.
MASSIVE alt cause—they can’t solve racial profiling by local law enforcement
agencies—comparatively more exposure to them than federal law enforcement
Harris 99 (David A., Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law at University of Pittsburgh,
“DRIVING WHILE BLACK: RACIAL PROFILING ON OUR NATION'S HIGHWAYS”, June 1999,
https://www.aclu.org/report/driving-while-black-racial-profiling-our-nations-highways)
On a hot
summer afternoon in August 1998, 37-year-old U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Rossano V. Gerald
and his young son Gregory drove across the Oklahoma border into a nightmare. A career soldier and a highly
decorated veteran of Desert Storm and Operation United Shield in Somalia, SFC Gerald, a black man of
Panamanian descent, found that he could not travel more than 30 minutes through the state without
being stopped twice: first by the Roland City Police Department, and then by the Oklahoma Highway
Patrol. During the second stop, which lasted two-and-half hours, the troopers terrorized SFC Gerald's 12-year-old son
with a police dog, placed both father and son in a closed car with the air conditioning off and fans
blowing hot air, and warned that the dog would attack if they attempted to escape. Halfway through the
episode – perhaps realizing the extent of their lawlessness – the troopers shut off the patrol car's video
evidence camera. Perhaps, too, the officers understood the power of an image to stir people to action.
SFC Gerald was only an infant in 1963 when a stunned nation watched on television as Birmingham Police Commissioner "Bull" Connor used
powerful fire hoses and vicious police attack dogs against nonviolent black civil rights protesters. That incident, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
stirring I Have a Dream speech at the historic march on Washington in August of that year, were the low and high points, respectively, of the
great era of civil rights legislation: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. How
did it come to be, then, that 35 years
later SFC Gerald found himself standing on the side of a dusty road next to a barking police dog, listening
to his son weep while officers rummaged through his belongings simply because he was black? I feel like
I'm a guy who's pretty much walked the straight line and that's respecting people and everything. We
just constantly get harassed. So we just feel like we can't go anywhere without being bothered... I'm not
trying to bother anybody. But yet a cop pulls me over and says I'm weaving in the road. And I just came
from a friend's house, no alcohol, nothing. It just makes you wonder – was it just because I'm black?" –
James, 28, advertising account executive Rossano and Gregory Gerald were victims of discriminatory racial profiling by police.
There is nothing new about this problem. Police abuse against people of color is a legacy of African
American enslavement, repression, and legal inequality. Indeed, during hearings of the National Advisory Commission on
Civil Disorders ("The Kerner Commission") in the fall of 1967 where more than 130 witnesses testified about the events leading up to the urban
riots that had taken place in 150 cities the previous summer, one of the complaints that came up repeatedly was "the stopping of Negroes on
foot or in cars without obvious basis." Significant blame for this rampant abuse of power also can be laid at the feet of the government's "war
on drugs," a fundamentally misguided crusade enthusiastically embraced by lawmakers and administrations of both parties at every level of
government. From the outset, the
war on drugs has in fact been a war on people and their constitutional rights,
with African Americans, Latinos and other minorities bearing the brunt of the damage. It is a war that
has, among other depredations, spawned racist profiles of supposed drug couriers. On our nation's
highways today, police ostensibly looking for drug criminals routinely stop drivers based on the color of
their skin. This practice is so common that the minority community has given it the derisive term,
"driving while black or brown" – a play on the real offense of "driving while intoxicated." One of the core principles of the
Fourth Amendment is that the police cannot stop and detain an individual without some reason –
probable cause, or at least reasonable suspicion – to believe that he or she is involved in criminal
activity. But recent Supreme Court decisions allow the police to use traffic stops as a pretext in order to
"fish" for evidence. Both anecdotal and quantitative data show that nationwide, the police exercise this
discretionary power primarily against African Americans and Latinos. No person of color is safe from this
treatment anywhere, regardless of their obedience to the law, their age, the type of car they drive, or
their station in life. In short, skin color has become evidence of the propensity to commit crime, and
police use this "evidence" against minority drivers on the road all the time.
NYPD is an example of local, racist policies that the plan can’t reform
AP 12 — Samantha Henry, Matt Appuzzo, Wayne Perry, reporters for the Associated Press, American
multinational nonprofit news agency, 2012 (“New Jersey Muslims Angry Over NYPD Surveillance
Findings,” The Huffington Post, May 25, Available online at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/new-jersey-muslims-cangry-nypdsurveillance_n_1545319.html)
Muslim leaders said they were told that every instance of NYPD activity in New Jersey had been justified by a lead, but that the
attorney
general would not provide any details on the nature of any of those leads, saying the fact-finding was ongoing.
Imam Mustafa El-Amin of the Newark-based Masjid Ibrahim said he was concerned that Chiesa refused to explain what
leads had been received. With the NYPD compiling a map of every mosque in Newark – including his – he said he wanted to
know about any problems or potential dangers in his mosque he might be unaware of. "We understand
the need for surveillance and security," said El-Amin, "We just don't appreciate how this was done. We
as Muslims feel we were violated, simply because we are Muslims." Several Muslim leaders at Thursday's meeting
said that they did not find the assertion that the NYPD had leads for all their operations in New Jersey
credible, adding that efforts to maintain communication between the community and law enforcement would be hurt by the findings that
the NYPD had done nothing wrong – and could keep doing what they have been doing. "It was basically an, `FYI, good Thursday afternoon, let it
die in the media before the Memorial Day weekend,'" said Mohamed El-Filali, executive director of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, across
the Hudson River from New York. If
the surveillance of every mosque, burger joint and barbershop targeted was
justified, he asked, why were no arrests made? Aref Assaf of the American Arab Forum said the attorney general
made them feel like second-class citizens. "I said to him it's not only insulting, it's offensive to our sense of
justice, that you bring us to Trenton to tell us that you accept as legal and valid the actions of the NYPD, and I will not be surprised if
you're issuing an order informing your law enforcement officials that they too can spy on American
Muslisms because if it's legal for NYPD, than it must be legal for NJ to do the same." The Muslim leaders said
they would consider all legal options, including renewed appeals for action by the U.S. Justice Department. A federal civil rights lawsuit has also
been considered.
Local police surveillance targeted at Muslims is unchangeable
Friedersdorf 13 — Conor Friedersdorf, staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and
national affairs, has a Masters degree in Journalism from New York University and a BA in Politics,
Philosophy, and Economics from Pomona college, 2013 (“The Horrifying Effects of NYPD Ethnic Profiling
on Innocent Muslim Americans,” The Atlantic, March 28, Available online at
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/the-horrifying-effects-of-nypd-ethnic-profilingon-innocent-muslim-americans/274434/)
the NYPD's clandestine spying on Muslims to the public's attention in a series of vital stories.
Starting shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, officers infiltrated Muslim communities and
spied on hundreds or perhaps thousands of totally innocent Americans at mosques, colleges, and
elsewhere. These officers "put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate,
prayed and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity," the news agency
reported, citing NYPD documents. Informants were paid to bait Muslims into making inflammatory
statements. The NYPD even conducted surveillance on Muslim Americans outside its jurisdiction,
drawing a rebuke from an FBI field office, where a top official charged that "the department's
surveillance of Muslims in the state has hindered investigations and created 'additional risks' in
counterterrorism." NYPD brass and Mayor Michael Bloomberg defend these policies as counterterrorism efforts that are necessary to
The Associated Press brought
keep New Yorkers safe. As you ponder the specific costs of these policies, as evocatively described below, keep in mind one thing about the
ostensible benefits: "In
more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on
conversations and cataloguing mosques," the Associated Press reported, "the New York Police
Department's secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism
investigation." They acknowledged, in court testimony, having generated zero leads.
Local police are oppressive – maple heights proves
Dewan 14, Shaila Dewan, Reporter for the New York Times, 2014 (Mostly White Forces in Mostly Black
Towns: Police Struggle for Racial Diversity, New York Times, September 9,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/us/for-small-police-departments-increasing-diversity-is-astruggle.html)
Maple Heights police officers with a driver stopped for a traffic violation. The department has only two black officers out of 35. Credit Michael
F. McElroy for The New York Times MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — The population of this working-class Cleveland suburb has gone from nearly all
white to two-thirds black since its mayor declared more than 35 years ago that he did not know “what a minority is.” But its police and fire
departments have not kept pace: The Maple Heights police force today still has only two black officers out of 35; the fire department is 100
percent white. Maple Heights is far from unique. Across the
country, police departments still struggle to hire and retain
minority candidates — in some cases despite great efforts, in others because of a lack of initiative. But
now, the problem has taken on new relevance since the fatal shooting of a young black man last month in
Ferguson, Mo., where just four of the 53 police officers are black, according to the police chief. Nationwide, the total
number of minority police officers has risen, but they remain heavily concentrated in larger cities, with the numbers falling off sharply in smaller
ones, like Ferguson and Maple Heights. In 1977, Maple Heights agreed to increase minorities in its police and fire departments. But officials did
not follow through. Credit Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times Data
from a federal survey of police departments in
2007, analyzed for The New York Times by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, found that nearly 400
departments, most with fewer than a hundred officers, were substantially whiter than the populations
they served. In these departments, the share of white officers was greater than the share of white residents by
more than 50 percentage points. Ferguson and Maple Heights are about the same size, just over 20,000 people, and in both, the
black population has surged in recent decades. Both cities have white mayors and largely white political leaderships. And both police
departments have fallen far short of reflecting the communities they serve — even as some of Maple Heights’s neighboring police departments
have achieved much higher levels of diversity. Critics
point to the lack of racial balance in police departments as
evidence of systemic racism. But experts say the experiences of the two towns illustrate the obstacles to achieving diversity in law
enforcement, even for departments that have made it a priority. “I see all these pundits come on the Sunday talk shows and say: ‘Of course you
can hire more black people. Of course they’re not trying,’ ” said Nelson Lim, a senior sociologist at the RAND Corporation’s Center on Quality
Policing who has consulted with departments in Los Angeles and San Diego. “But it’s very, very, very difficult.” There is little hard evidence that
diversity correlates with better performance, in part because it is difficult to control for complex variables and to know which outcomes, from
crime rates to brutality cases, to measure. In fact, one study of a Florida police department found that black officers were more likely than
white to use force against black suspects. A review of court cases going back to the early 1990s revealed only a handful of civil rights or
excessive-force cases against the Maple Heights police, two of which involved a white officer who is no longer with the department, and none
that involved a fatality like the shooting in Ferguson. Still, it
is an accepted tenet of community policing that when
departments reflect the communities they serve, they have an easier time building trust and defusing,
rather than escalating, tense situations. In Maple Heights, some residents said they would like to see more black officers, while
others said that it was the attitude, experience and training of the officer, not race, that mattered. Chris Turney, a home renovator who lives
with his wife and two daughters, said it was more important for officers to live in the city. All but one do not. “The police come here, they do
their jobs, they don’t try to get to know anybody,” said Mr. Turney, who is black. “The police don’t wave.” Hundreds
of police
departments across the nation have forces with a white percentage that is more than 30 percentage
points higher than the communities they serve. Other residents drew a contrast between police attitudes in Maple Heights
and neighboring Bedford Heights, where three-quarters of the residents, and nine of 28 police officers, are black. “Bedford’s not going to do
you like Maple,” said Carlos Walker, 41, who is black. “You have to do something real stupid for Bedford. Maple, soon as they get behind you,
you sweating.” In her 11 years as an officer in Bedford Heights, Detective Ericka Payne, who is black, has often provided backup on calls in
Maple Heights. “There
are definitely differences in the ways the departments interact with the outside
community,” Detective Payne said. “We try to be a little bit more community oriented. Because we are a little bit more diverse, we
understand those dynamics and maybe have a little bit more ease dealing with that.” Several Maple Heights officials said the diversity of the
police and fire departments had never been a major issue. It is hard to find qualified candidates of any race, said John C. Popielarczyk, who has
been with the Maple Heights Police Department since 1990 and the acting police chief since May. Maple Heights, devastated by the foreclosure
crisis, has fallen on hard times, and the police force has shrunk. And with most officers staying on the job for 25 years, Chief Popielarczyk said,
the opportunity to hire is scarce. Of eight recent hires, two were black. One, the chief said, was fired for cause before his probationary period
ended. The department has advertised in minority newspapers and changed the private company that administers its Civil Service exam in
hopes that more minority candidates would pass, he said. But he added: “The real goal of the department is to provide qualified officers who
are competent and can provide quality service regardless of race. I don’t think people really care about the color of the officer that responds;
they care that the officer responds quickly, is effective, treats them well and is respectful.” The acting fire chief, James Castelucci, said much the
same, adding that one promising black candidate withdrew when his current employer offered him more money. The obstacles to diversity are
many, Dr. Lim, the sociologist, said. Candidates usually must pass written tests, physical agility tests, psychological tests, polygraphs and
background checks, some of which can have a disparate impact on minority candidates. Qualified black candidates are sought after not just by
competing police departments, but also by employers in other industries. And some police chiefs have cited a negative attitude toward law
enforcement among blacks that hinders recruiting. Police departments have tried all kinds of remedies, from personal trainers to help with
physical fitness tests to tailored recruiting. (A RAND survey found that women were attracted to the good salaries in policing, blacks to the
profession’s prestige and Asians to the excitement of the job.) But many small departments lack the resources, or the will, to conduct an
exhaustive review of their hiring practices. In Maple Heights, job candidates are ranked by how well they score on the written exam, earning
bonus points for factors like previous training, military experience and city residency. For each opening, the candidates are considered one by
one, in order of their score. Frank Ross said he did not accept the city’s explanations for having few minority police officers. Credit Michael F.
McElroy for The New York Times Some nearby suburbs like Bedford Heights and Cleveland Heights — where about 40 percent of the residents
and 22 of 102 officers are black — do things differently. The chiefs of both departments said officials were allowed to consider the top 10
candidates on the list, which helps them hire more minority candidates. Both chiefs said their cities took an aggressive approach to diversity as
early as the 1970s. Cleveland Heights has two types of officer positions, one that requires a Civil Service exam and a college degree, and a lower
tier, called basic patrol, that does not. Once a basic patrol officer is hired, the city will reimburse tuition costs, and many eventually earn a
degree and work their way to the upper tier. The diversity of neighboring police departments poses a challenge to cities like Maple Heights, Dr.
Lim said: “If the leadership, if the police chief, is dedicated to getting more diversity in the work force, how hard is it to figure out how the other
department is doing such a good job?” Asked why Maple Heights considered only one candidate at a time, Chief Popielarczyk said: “We’ve
always done it that way. My understanding is that that’s how we’re supposed to do it.” Some Maple Heights residents have tried to persuade
the city to hire more blacks, forming a committee called the Maple Heights Citizens for Change. In 2012, Elaine Stone, a committee member
who runs a blog called the Maple Heights African American Gazette, was digging around and discovered a long-forgotten affirmative action
agreement, signed by the mayor, a citizens’ committee and a representative from the federal Justice Department in 1977. In that deal, Maple
Heights, at the time about 96 percent white, agreed that within three years minorities would make up at least 4
percent of its police and fire departments. But it soon became clear that the city was less than fully
committed to this goal. “I figure we’re all minorities,” the mayor at the time, Emil J. Lisy Jr., told reporters when he was
criticized for failing to live up to the agreement. “The first thing is to find out what a minority is, and I haven’t figured that out.” Federal officials
threatened to withhold $500,000 in funds, but backed down after the mayor submitted a 65-page response. When Ms. Stone learned about the
agreement, she contacted Frank Ross, the only surviving signer of the document. Mr. Ross was a teacher in his 20s when he
came to Maple Heights, at a time when real estate brokers steered black customers to a part of town called Presidential Row. He now lives 12
miles away, but agreed
to go to meetings of the committee, where he suggested that the group call the
Community Relations Service of the Justice Department, the same office that helped broker the earlier deal. Though
new discussions were opened between the city and the service, which provides mediation and training
to governments, residents feel the talks have stalled. Neither the mayor nor the Maple Heights legal director returned calls
for comment for this article, and the service does not publicly discuss its work. Participation by local governments is strictly voluntary. Ms.
Stone said economics, not overt racism, had kept the police and fire departments largely white. “There was white flight, but people were trying
to hold on to their jobs,” she said. “I can understand you don’t want to give up that job.” Mr.
Ross said apathy among black voters was partly
to blame for the situation. But he does not accept the city’s excuses. “They’re telling me in 40 years they can’t
find any African-American policemen?” he said. “Forty years later — it’s very emotional for me. Forty
years later, I’m still dealing with the same thing.”
NSA surveillance targets those with Arab-sounding names and those who call Middle
Eastern countries, creating an atmosphere of depression and anxiety throughout
Muslim-American communities.
Miller 13 (Anna Lekas, “If Your Name is Ahmed or Fatima, You Live in Fear of NSA Surveillance,” June 19, TheGuardian.com. Miller is a
journalist who specifically covers stories about Middle Eastern politics. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/19/nsasurveillance-muslim-arab-americans // EMS).
One of the most common responses from the 66% of American citizens in favor of the NSA's data-collection programs is, "I have nothing to
hide, so why should I have anything to fear?"¶ But what
if you have nothing to hide but are targeted as a suspect
nevertheless?¶ By that I mean, what if your name is Ahmed, Jihad, Anwar or Abdulrahman? Fatima, Rania,
Rasha or Shaima? What if some of your phone calls – which theNSA is tracking with particular interest
– are made to loved ones in Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon or Palestine? What if the
language you speak on these phone calls is not English, but Arabic, Urdu or Farsi, not because it is a special
jihadist code, but because it is your native language that you still speak in your home.¶ In other words, what if you are one of
America's 1.9 million Arab-Americans or2.8 million Muslim-Americans?¶ President Barack Obama defends the
NSA's recently revealed spying apparatus as essential to helping to prevent terrorist attacks. But how does the Obama administration define a
terrorist or terrorism? In
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia or anywhere else that is designated a "strike zone" by
the US government, subject to so-called signature strikes by drones, any military-age man – meaning
all men between the ages of 16 and 40 – are potentially categorized as a "militant".¶ If he is killed in a USauthorized drone strike, his death is recorded as a "militant" death rather than a civilian death. The rhetoric helps
to feed the victories of the war on terror as innocent civilian casualties are recorded in history as militant terrorists. A number of said
"militants" have spent significant amount of time in the west and many have family there. Sixteen-year-old
Abdulrahman alAwlaki was even a US citizen.¶ Are these innocent civilians labeled as militants the same as the terrorists Barack Obama is talking
about?¶ Back on United States soil, invasive spying and government surveillance in the name of fighting terrorism is hardly news for Arab and
Muslim-American communities. Starting
as early as 2001 – immediately following the attacks on 11 September
– the FBI began spying on Arab and Muslim communities across the United States, while the NYPD specifically
kept tabs on Arab and Muslim communities in New York City. Any mosque, local business, community or student organization run by Arabs or
Muslims – or focusing on Arab and Muslim issues – was fair game for informants to lurk, "befriend" patrons and watch. After all, any of them
could have been seasoned terrorists planning radical jihad.¶ Despite more than six years of surveillance, the NYPD program hasn't foiled any
terrorist plots, according to the Associated Press reports. The FBI claims some success stories, but it is unclear whether they come from their
specific targeting programs. What is clear is that these
programs worked to create a pervading sense of depression
and anxiety throughout the Muslim and Arab American communities and a blanket distrust of
authorities.¶ Arab and Muslim communities are hardly new to the United States. Once upon a time, the neighborhood surrounding where
the World Trade Center would later be built was known as Little Syria. Of course, these communities have since been pushed out of New York's
financial district, but still thrive in pockets of Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Dearborn and many other American cities.¶ In the Middle East, most of
the time when you mention you are from the United States, rather than spewing aspirations for radical jihad, locals will respond with, "Oh, the
United States! My cousin lives in Chicago, do you know him?"¶ Despite the perception that the United States and the Arab and Muslim world
operate in opposition to one another, the two regions are inextricably connected via the Arab and Muslim communities who immigrated, or are
the descendants of immigrants to the United States. A snippet of Arabic conversation or a phone call to Syria, Yemen or Pakistan is more likely
to be a standard family phone call than the prelude of the demise of western civilization.¶ After
all, most of us really do have
nothing to hide – so why is it that we have everything to fear?
The media causes Islamoprejudice by demonizing all Muslims and treating them as a
monolithic whole.
Harrison 06 (David, “Media ‘Contributing to Rise of Islamophobia,” TheTelegraph.com. Harrison was a journalist at The Telgraph.
They won the Paul Foot Award and the Amnesty International Press Award for journalism.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528485/Media-contributing-to-rise-of-Islamophobia.html // EMS).
“There are a few bad apples in the Muslim community who are doing terrible acts and we want to root them out," Dr Bari told The Sunday
Telegraph.¶ "But some police officers and sections of the
media are demonising Muslims, treating them as if they're
all terrorists — and that encourages other people to do the same. "If that demonisation continues, then Britain will
have to deal with two million Muslim terrorists — 700,000 of them in London," he said. "If you attack a whole community, it
becomes despondent and aggressive."¶ Mr Bari was speaking at the East London Mosque, where he is chairman, after a monthlong tour of Britain's Muslim communities, during which he said he picked up a mood of "anxiety, frustration and, especially among young
people, anger".¶ His comments come days after Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist branch, said "thousands" of
British Muslims were being watched by police and MI5 over suspected terrorist links.¶ Dr Bari, 52, who has succeeded Sir Iqbal Sacranie as the
head of the council, said: "We want to isolate the bad people and put them in the dock. But we all have to work together to do that — police,
politicians, the media and the Muslim community."¶ He did not understand why "the whole of our diverse community" was being targeted.
"When
the IRA was blowing people up, the entire Catholic population of Britain was not demonised,
so why is it happening to the Muslim community?"¶ The council leader — who took his post two days before a police raid
in east London, in which a Muslim man was shot but no charges were brought — said the media had contributed to the
demonisation by concentrating on a few extremists and ignoring the law-abiding majority.¶ He said it was
"ridiculous" that moderate Muslims had been accused of not speaking out. "When we speak we are ignored by the media,
but when Abu Hamza or Omar Bakri Mohammed say something they are all over the papers."¶ Mr Bari, a
former air force engineer in Bangladesh and now a special needs teacher in east London, said Islamophobia had increased after 9/11, 7/7, last
month's arrests over the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic aircraft, and the raids last weekend on an Islamic school in East Sussex and a
London restaurant. Seventeen people have been charged over the alleged plot and 14 were arrested in last weekend's raids¶
Media reporting paints Muslims as the dangerous other- this legitimizes anti-Muslim
violence.
Ahmed 12 (Nafeez Mosaddeq, “Time to Hold the Media Accountable for Islamophobia,” June 18, HuffPost Politics. Dr. Nafeez
Mosaddeq Ahmed is an investigative journalist, international security scholar and bestselling author. He is a regular contributor to The
Guardian, writing on the geopolitics of interconnected environmental, energy, and economic crises via his Earth Insight blog. He has also
written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New
Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, among others. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-nafeez-mosaddeq-ahmed/muslims-and-themedia_b_1682041.html // EMS).
Specialist studies
of media coverage on Islam and Muslims over the last two decades demonstrate an
overwhelming trend of negative, stereotypical and inaccurate reporting. As Jason Beattie, political editor of the
Daily Mirror, told us: "In general, though not exclusively, the portrayal of Muslims in the mainstream media has been unsatisfactory...
[including] sloppy and sometimes stereotypical reporting."¶ But this isn't because all media outlets sing from the same 'Islamophobic' hymn
sheet - far from it. Rather, poor journalistic standards in the populist tabloid press generate inaccurate reporting which tends to set the wider
news agenda in print and broadcasting by framing the 'big stories' of the day.¶ This was the case both before and after 9/11. One study of
British broadsheets in the late 1990s, for example, found
that they consistently associated the Muslim world with
"extremism and terrorism", "despotism", and "sexism"; while reporting of British Muslims focused
primarily on "Muslim violence in the public sphere", including terrorism, faith schools, and crime.¶
Another study of two liberal and conservative British broadsheets between 1994 and 1996 found that 88% of articles on Islam reported the
faith as a foreign phenomenon; and that British Muslims were most commonly linked with "fundamentalism".¶ After 9/11, and 7/7, this trend
accelerated. A study commissioned by the Greater London Authority of 352 articles over a randomly selected one week period in 2007, found
that 91%
of articles about Muslims were "negative". A wider Channel 4-commissioned survey of 974 British press articles
thirds of them to portray British Muslims as a "threat" and a "problem", with
references to "radical Muslims" outnumbering references to "moderates" by 17 to one. ¶ A further bigfrom 2000 to 2008 found two
picture University of Ottawa study of British press representations over the last 15 years found that the biggest shift in reporting after 9/11 was
to associate British Muslims with terrorism and extremism; and to associate acts of terrorism with Islamic belief. In all articles on terrorism, the
study concluded, the "Muslimness" of perpetrators of terrorism is emphasised.¶ So there
is no question about it. Reporting on
Islam and Muslims in the British media has been predominantly inaccurate, false and racist. ¶ But there is
another side to this picture which is, perhaps, even more disturbing. Correlated with the rise in negative media reporting
on Muslims, my survey of opinion poll data over the last decade illustrates a rising trend of antiMuslim sentiment in wider British society. Professor Julian Petley of the Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom points out that, "if
non-Muslims are led to believe that Muslims and Islam pose an existential threat to the 'English way of life', then this cannot but seriously
damage community cohesion." Thus, from 2001 to 2006, the number of UK non-Muslims who said they felt threatened by Islam rose from 32%t
to 53%. By 2010, a further survey found that 75% of non-Muslims now believe Islam is negative for Britain, and that Muslims do not engage
positively in society; with
63% not disagreeing that "Muslims are terrorists."¶ This has had a doublewhammy impact. On the one hand, media discrimination has contributed to the alienation of some
British Muslims. In 2007, 63% of British Muslims felt that UK media portrayals of Muslims were "Islamophobic" - and 72% of those
reported that they "don't feel a sense of belonging" to Britain. As Julian Bond, Director of the Christian Muslim Forum, explains, "even the most
engaged, integrated, and inter-faith Muslims" finds such negative media portrayals to be "wearying, frustrating and irritating".¶ On the other
hand, anti-Muslim hate crimes have risen steadily over the last decade, and are now at record levels.
Since 1999, racist offences in general have increased by fourfold - but Muslims are overrepresented as victims in these crimes. The latest Crown
Prosecution Service (CPS) figures record a rise of 45% in the number of cases referred to the CPS by police on grounds of religious hostility, and
that over most of this decade Muslims
accounted for more than 54% of religiously aggravated offences, and are
though only 3% of the population, Muslims represent a
massive 44% of those who have died in lethal racist attacks since the 1990s. And police data from two regions
over the period 2009 to 2011 documents a total of 1,200 recorded anti-Muslim hate crimes.¶ And so we come full circle: the
predominantly negative and racist reporting on Muslims in the media has promoted an increasingly
dangerous anti-Muslim mindset in British society, which in turn has led to an escalation of violent attacks
on British Muslims. As former Daily Star reporter Richard Peppiatt observes, "False and inaccurate stories about Muslims
routinely put out by the press are, in turn, routinely used as tools by far right groups to legitimise their
case and gain followers. The internet is full of forums using mainstream newspaper reporting as proof
that their hateful views about Muslims are true. Unfortunately, newspapers refuse to recognise their
role in that."¶
the largest faith group experiencing hate crimes. As of 2010,