1nc
Cap
Their focus on subjective flashpoints of violence creates a stop-gap in thought which
distracts us from attempts to solve the root cause of all violence - Capital
Zizek, ’08 (Slavoj, senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and a professor at the
European Graduate School, Violence, p. 1-4)
If there is a unifying thesis that runs through the bric-a-brac of reflections on violence that follow, it is that a similar paradox holds true for
violence. At the forefront of our minds, the obvious signals of violence are acts of crime and terror, civil
unrest, international conflict. But we should learn to step back, to disentangle ourselves from the
fascinating lure of this directly visible “subjective” violence, violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent. We
need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts. A step back enables
us to identify a violence that sustains our very efforts to fight violence and to promote tolerance. This is the
starting point, perhaps even the axiom, of the present book: subjective violence is just the most visible portion of a
triumvirate that also includes two objective kinds of violence. First, there is a “symbolic” violence
embodied in language and its forms, what Heidegger would call “our house of being.” As we shall see later, this violence is not
only at work in the obvious—and extensively studied—cases of incitement and of the relations of social domination reproduced in our habitual
speech forms: there is a more fundamental form of violence still that pertains to language as such, to its imposition of a certain universe of
Second, there is what I call “systemic” violence, or the often catastrophic consequences of the
smooth functioning of our economic and political systems. The catch is that subjective and objective
violence cannot be perceived from the same standpoint: subjective violence is experienced as such
against the background of a non-violent zero level. It is seen as a perturbation of the “normal,” peaceful
state of things. However, objective violence is precisely the violence inherent to this “normal” state of
things. Objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very zero-level standard against which we
perceive something as subjectively violent. Systemic violence is thus something like the notorious “dark
matter” of physics, the counterpart to an all-too- visible subjective violence. It may be invisible, but it has to be taken
into account if one is to make sense of what otherwise seem to be “irrational” explosions of subjective
violence. When the media bombard us with those “humanitarian crises” which seem constantly to pop up all over the world, one should
meaning.
always bear in mind that a particular crisis only explodes into media visibility as the result of a complex struggle. Properly humanitarian
considerations as a rule play a less important role here than cultural, ideologico-political, and economic considerations. The cover story of Time
magazine on 5 June 2006, for example, was “The Deadliest War in the World.” This offered detailed documentation on how around 4 million
people died in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the result of political violence over the last decade. None of the usual humanitarian uproar
followed, just a couple of readers’ letters—as if some kind of filtering mechanism blocked this news from achieving its full impact in our
symbolic space. To put it cynically, Time picked the wrong victim in the struggle for hegemony in suffering. It should have stuck to the list of
usual suspects: Muslim women and their plight, or the families of 9/11 victims and how they have coped with their losses. The Congo today has
effectively re-emerged as a Conradean “heart of darkness.” No one dares to confront it head on. The death of a West Bank Palestinian child, not
to mention an Israeli or an American, is mediatically worth thousands of times more than the death of a nameless Congolese. Do we need
further proof that the
humanitarian sense of urgency is mediated, indeed overdetermined, by clear political
considerations? And what are these considerations? To answer this, we need to step back and take a look
from a different position. When the U.S. media reproached the public in foreign countries for not displaying enough sympathy for the
victims of the 9/11 attacks, one was tempted to answer them in the words Robespierre addressed to those who complained about the innocent
victims of revolutionary terror: “Stop shaking the tyrant’s bloody robe in my face, or I will believe that you wish to put Rome in chains.”1
There are reasons for looking at the
problem of violence awry. My underlying premise is that there is something inherently mystifying in a direct
confrontation with it: the overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy with the victims inexorably
function as a lure which prevents us from thinking. A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence
Instead of confronting violence directly, the present book casts six sideways glances.
must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in
its horror. A distinction needs to be made, as well, between (factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any
other narrative of a trauma) truthful is its very factual unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her
painful and humiliating experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us
suspicious of its truth. The problem here is part of the solution: the very factual deficiencies of the traumatised subject’s report on her
experience bear witness to the truthfulness of her report, since they signal that the reported content “contaminated” the manner of reporting
it. The same holds, of course, for the so-called unreliability of the verbal reports of Holocaust survivors: the witness able to offer a clear
narrative of his camp experience would disqualify himself by virtue of that clarity.2 The only appropriate approach to my subject thus seems to
be one which permits variations on violence kept at a distance out of respect towards its victims.
It is not possible to solve any situation without solving them all - only a
criticism which attacks the universality of capitalism can solve inevitable
extinction
Zizek, ’89
(Slavoj, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies, The Sublime Object of Ideology, page 3-4)
It is upon the unity of these two features that the Marxist notion of the revolution, of the revolutionary situation, is founded: a
situation of metaphorical condensation in which it finally becomes clear to the everyday
consciousness that it is not possible to solve any particular question without solving them all - that is,
without solving the fundamental question which embodies the antagonistic character of the social
totality. In a 'normal', pre-revolutionary state of things, everybody is fighting his own particular
battles (workers are striking for better wages, feminists are fighting for the rights of women, democrats for political and social
freedoms, ecologists against the exploitation of nature, participants in the peace movements against the danger of war, and so
on). Marxists are using all their skill and adroimess of argument to convince the participants in these particular struggles that
the only real solution to their problem is to be found in the global revolution: as long as social relations are
dominated by Capital, there will always be sexism in relations between the sexes, there will always be
a threat of global war, there will always be a danger that political and social freedoms will be
suspended, nature itself will always remain an object of ruthless exploitation. . . . The global
revolution will then abolish the basic social antagonism, enabling the formation of a transparent,
rationally governed society.
Our alternative is to completely withdraw from the ideology of capital - this
opens up the space for authentic politics
Johnston ’04 (Adrian, interdisciplinary research fellow in psychoanalysis at Emory, The Cynic’s Fetish: Slavoj Zizek and the Dynamics of
Belief, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society)
Perhaps the absence of a detailed political roadmap in Žižek’s recent writings isn’t a major shortcoming.
Maybe, at least for the time being, the most important task is simply the negativity of the critical struggle, the
effort to cure an intellectual constipation resulting from capitalist ideology and thereby to truly open up
the space for imagining authentic alternatives to the prevailing state of the situation. Another definition of
materialism offered by Žižek is that it amounts to accepting the internal inherence of what fantasmatically appears as an external deadlock or
hindrance ( Žižek, 2001d, pp 22–23) (with fantasy itself being defined as the false externalization of something within the subject, namely, the
illusory projection of an inner obstacle, Žižek, 2000a, p 16). From
this perspective, seeing through ideological fantasies
by learning how to think again outside the confines of current restrictions has, in and of itself, the
potential to operate as a form of real revolutionary practice (rather than remaining merely an instance of
negative/critical intellectual reflection). Why is this the case? Recalling the analysis of commodity fetishism, the social
efficacy of money as the universal medium of exchange (and the entire political economy grounded upon it) ultimately
relies upon nothing more than a kind of ‘‘magic,’’ that is, the belief in money’s social efficacy by those
using it in the processes of exchange. Since the value of currency is, at bottom, reducible to the belief
that it has the value attributed to it (and that everyone believes that everyone else believes this as well), derailing
capitalism by destroying its essential financial substance is, in a certain respect, as easy as dissolving the
mere belief in this substance’s powers. The ‘‘external’’ obstacle of the capitalist system exists exclusively
on the condition that subjects, whether consciously or unconsciously, ‘‘internally’’ believe in it –
capitalism’s life-blood, money, is simply a fetishistic crystallization of a belief in others’ belief in the
socio-performative force emanating from this same material. And yet, this point of capitalism’s frail vulnerability is
simultaneously the source of its enormous strength: its vampiric symbiosis with individual human desire, and the fact that the late-capitalist
cynic’s fetishism enables the disavowal of his/her de facto belief in capitalism, makes it highly unlikely that people can simply be persuaded to
stop believing and start thinking (especially since, as Žižek claims, many of these people are convinced that they already have ceased believing).
Or, the more disquieting possibility to entertain is that some people today, even if one succeeds in
exposing them to the underlying logic of their position, might respond in a manner resembling that of
the Judas-like character Cypher in the film The Matrix (Cypher opts to embrace enslavement by illusion rather than cope
with the discomfort of dwelling in the ‘‘desert of the real’’): faced with the choice between living the capitalist lie or
wrestling with certain unpleasant truths, many individuals might very well deliberately decide to accept
what they know full well to be a false pseudo-reality, a deceptively comforting fiction (‘‘Capitalist commodity
fetishism or the truth? I choose fetishism’’).
Erasure
CP Text: The United States Federal Government should place the marijuana
criminalization under erasure and cease enforcement.
Keep it on the books – erasure pardons and whitewashes our collective colonial
history – the impact is modern colonialism.
Baudrillard ‘3 /Jean, Fragments, 106-111/
On the necessity of Evil and Hell There is no longer any irrevocable damnation today. There is no longer any hell. We may concede that we are
still within the mongrel concept of Purgatory, but virtually everything falls within the scope of redemption. It is clearly from such an evangelism
that all the manifest, promotional signs of well-being and fulfilment derive that are offered us by a paradisaical society subject to the Eleventh
Commandment ('Be happy and give all the signs of contentment!') - the one that cancels out all others. But we can also read this
demand
for salvation and universal atonement in the way that not only all current violence and injustices, but
also, retrospectively, all the crimes and contradictory events of the past are now coming in for
condemnation. The French Revolution is put in the dock and slavery is condemned, along with original sin and battered
wives, the ozone layer and sexual harassment. In short, the pre-trial investigation for the Last Judgement is
well under way. We are condemning, then pardoning and whitewashing, our entire history,
exterminating the Evil from even the tiniest crevices in order to present the image of a radiant universe,
ready to pass into the next world. A gigantic undertaking. One that is inhuman, superhuman, too human? As Stanislaw Lee says, 'We no doubt
have too anthropomorphic a view of man.' And why feed this
eternal repentance factory, this chain reaction of bad
conscience? Because everything has to be saved. This is what we have come to today: everything will be
redeemed, the entire past will be rehabilitated, polished to the point of transparency. As for the future, there's
even better in store, and even worse: everything will be genetically modified to achieve biological perfection and the democratic perfection of
the species. Salvation, which was defined by the equivalence of merit and grace, will, once the abscess of evil and hell has been drained, be
defined by the equivalence between genes and performance. Actually, once happiness becomes purely and simply the general equivalent of
salvation, there is no further reason for heaven. No heaven without hell, no light without darkness. No one can be saved if no one is damned
(by definition, but we also know this intuitively: where would the elect find pleasure, except in the contemplation of God, were it not for the
spectacle of the damned and their torment?). And once everyone is virtually saved, no one is. Salvation no longer has any meaning. This is the
fate in store for our democratic enterprise: it is vitiated from the outset by the neglect of necessary discrimination, by the omission of evil. We
therefore need an irrevocable presence of Evil, an Evil with no possible redemption, a definitive discrimination, a perpetual duality of Heaven
and Hell, and even in a way a predestination to Evil, for no destiny can be without some predestination. There is nothing immoral in this. By the
rules of the game there is nothing immoral in some losing and others winning, nor even in everyone losing. What would be immoral would be
for everyone to win. Now, this is the contemporary ideal of our democracy: that everyone be saved. And this is possible only at the cost of a
perpetual upping of the stakes, of endless inflation and speculation, since ultimately happiness is not so much an ideal relationship to the world
as a rivalry with, and a victorious relation to, others. And this is good: it means that the hegemony of Good, of the individual state of grace, will
always be thwarted by some challenge or passion, and that any kind of happiness, any kind of ecstatic state, can be sacrificed to something
more vital, which may be of the order of the will, as Schopenhauer has it, or of power, or of the will to power in Nietzsche's conception, but
something which, in any event, is of the order of Evil, of which there is no definition, but which may be summed up as follows: that which,
against any happy intended purpose [destination heureuse}, is predestined to come to pass. Beneath its euphoric exaltation, this imperative of
optimum performance, of ideal achievement, certainly bears evil and misfortune within it, then, in the form of a profound disavowal of such
fine prospects, in the form of a secret, anticipated disillusion ment. Perhaps even this
is again just a collective form of
sacrifice - a human sacrifice, but a disembodied one, distilled into homeopathic doses. Wherever humans are
condemned to total freedom or to ideal fulfilment, this subversion seeps in - this automatic abreaction to their own
good and their own happiness. When they are ordered to get the maximum efficiency and pleasure out of themselves, they remain out of sorts
and live a split existence. In this strange world, where everything is potentially available (the body, sex, space, money, pleasure) to be taken or
rejected en bloc, everything is there; nothing has disappeared physically, but everything has disappeared metaphysically. 'As if by magic or
enchantment', you might say. Only the fact is, it is more by disenchantment. Individuals, such as they are, are becoming exactly what they are.
With no transcendence and no image, they pursue their lives like a function that is useless in respect of another world, irrelevant even in their
own eyes. And they do what they do all the better for the fact that there is no other possibility. No instance, no essence, no personal substance
worthy of singular expression. They
have sacrificed their lives to their functional existences. They coincide with the
exact numerical calculation of their lives and their performances. An existence fulfilled, then, but one at the same
time denied, thwarted, disavowed. The culmination of a whole negative counter-transference. This imperative of optimum
performance at the same time comes into internal contradiction with the democratic moral law which ordains that everyone be perpetually reset to equality and everything re-set to zero, on the pretext of democracy and an equal sharing of opportunity and advantage. Given the
prospect of salvation for all and universal redemption, no one has the right to distinguish himself, no one has the right to captivate [siduire}.
For justice to be done, all privilege must disappear; it is for all to rid themselves voluntarily of any
specific qualities, to become once again an elementary particle2 - collective happiness, based on levelling down and
repentance, leading to the coming of the lowest common denominator and basic banalities. This is like a
reverse potlatch, with everyone outdoing each other in minimalism and victimhood, while fiercely cultivating their tiniest
differences and cobbling together their multiple identities. Repentance and recrimination are all part of the same
movement: recrimination means going back over the crime to correct its course and effects. This is what we are doing in going
back over the whole of our history, over the criminal history of the human race, to do penance here and
now as we await the Last Judgement. For God is dead, but his judgement remains. Which explains the immense
syndrome of resipiscence and (historical) rewriting (with the future genetic and biological rewriting of the species still to come) that has seized
the twentieth century's end; with an eye, as ever, to deserving salvation and - with the prospect of the final accounting before us - to
presenting the image of an ideal victim. Naturally, we are not speaking of a real trial or of genuine repentance. It
is a matter of fully
enjoying the spectacle of one's own misfortune: 'Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the
Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic
pleasure of the first order' (Walter Benjamin).3 This is but the latest episode in a heart-rending process of revisionism - running down not just
the history of the twentieth century, but all the violent events of past centuries, to subject them to the new jurisdiction of human rights and
crimes against humanity (just as every action today is subjected to the jurisdiction of sexual, moral or political harassment). As part of the same
trend by which all works of art (including the human genome) are listed as world heritage sites, everything
is put on the list of
crimes against humanity. The latest episode, then, of this revisionist madness has been the proposal to condemn slavery and the slave
trade as crimes against humanity. An absurd proposal to rectify the past in terms of our Western humanitarian
consciousness or, in other words, in terms of our own criteria, in the purest traditions of colonialism. This
imperialism of repentance really is the limit! The idea is, in fact, to enable the 'peoples concerned' to put this tragedy behind
them thanks to this official condemnation and, once their rights have been restored and they have been recognized
and celebrated as victims, to complete their work of mourning and draw a line under this page of their
history in order to become full participants in the course of modernity. It might be seen, then, as a kind of successful
psychoanalysis. Perhaps the Africans will even be able to translate this moral acknowledgement into damage
claims, using the same monstrous measure of equivalence from which the survivors of the Shoah have been able to benefit. So we shall
go on compensating, atoning and rehabilitating ad infinitum, and we shall merely have added to raw
exploitation the hypocritical absolution of mourning; we shall merely, by compassion, have transformed
evil into misfortune. From the standpoint of our recycled humanism, the whole of history is pure crime - and,
indeed, without all these crimes there quite simply would be no history: 'If we eliminated the evil in man,' wrote Montaigne, 'we
would destroy the fundamental conditions of life.' But, on this basis, Cain killing Abel is already a crime against humanity and almost a genocide (there were only two of them!), and isn't original sin already a crime against humanity? All this is absurd, all this
humanitarian, retrospective fakery is absurd. And it all stems from the confusion between evil and misfortune. Evil is the world
as it is and as it has been, and one may look upon this with lucidity. Misfortune is the world as it never should have been - but in the
name of what? - in the name of what should be, in the name of God or a transcendent ideal, of a Good it would be difficult indeed to
define. We may take a criminal view of crime - that is the tragic view - or we may take a recriminatory view - and that is the
humanitarian view, the pathos-laden, sentimental view, the view which constantly calls for reparation.
We have here all the ressentiment dredged up from the depths of a genealogy of morals, and requiring
in us reparation for our own lives. This retrospective compassion, this conversion of evil into misfortune
is the twentieth century's most flourishing industry. First as a mental blackmailing operation, to which we
all fall victim, even in our actions, from which we can now hope only for the lesser evil (keep a low profile, do everything in such a way as
anyone else could have done it - decriminalize your existence!). Then
as a profitable operation with gigantic yields, since
misfortune (in all its forms: from suffering to insecurity, oppression to depression) represents a symbolic capital, the
exploitation of which - even more than the exploitation of happiness - is endlessly profitable from the economic
standpoint. It's a gold-mine, as they say, and there is an inexhaustible source of ore, because the seam lies within each of us. Misfortune
commands the highest prices, whereas evil cannot be traded. It is impossible to exchange. To transcribe evil into misfortune and
then to transcribe misfortune into commercial, or spectacular, value - most often with the collusion or
assent of the victim himself. But the victim's collusion with his own misfortune is part of the ironic
essence of Evil. It is what brings it about that no one wants his own good, and nothing is for the best in
the best of all worlds
Modernity is essentially biopolitical – it can only construct security through ongoing
war through inclusion and exclusion – this politics is actually anti-political violence
that designates the very chains of life and death it made in the first place –
extermination becomes inevitable as modernity chases its own tail.
Balibar 2004 (Professor of Philosophy, Etienne, We, The People of Europe? p.125-30)
In such conditions, we can incline toward divergent conclusions. Either we can think that the multifaceted phenomenon of mass violence and
extreme violence has generally replaced politics, including internal and external relationships of forces among states, or we fully take into
account the fact that the fields of politics
and violence—a violence that seems to lack rational organization, not excepting selfdestruction—are no longer separated . They have progressively permeated one another. It is precisely in such conditions that
something called “humanitarian action” or “intervention,” both “private” and “public,” has become the necessary supplement of politics. I
cannot discuss all the aspects of this mutation, but I would like briefly to address three questions that seem to me to have an importance for
the concept of politics itself. Are We Facing an “Unprecedented” Spread of Extreme Violence (or Violence of the Extremes)? I should like to be
very careful on this point, which raises a number of discussions ranging from the issue of “old and new wars” to the highly sensitive moral
questions of why and how to “compare genocides” in history. Perhaps what is unprecedented is basically the
new visibility of extreme
violence, particularly in the sense that modern techniques of media coverage and broadcasting and the transformation of images—in
the end, as we could see for the first time on a grand scale during the Gulf War, of the production of “virtual reality”—transform
extreme violence into a show , and display this show simultaneously before a world audience. We also know that the effect of such
techniques is, at the same time, to uncover some violent processes, or scenes of horror (truly horrifying, such as hundreds of mutilated children
in Angola or Sierra Leone), and to cover up others (equally horrifying, such as babies starving in Baghdad). We suspect that powerful
ideological biases are at work when the coverage of extreme violence gives credit to such simplistic ideas as the
political transition from the “equilibrium of terror” during the Cold War to the “competition among victims,” by way of the
undifferentiated uses of the legal and moral but hardly political notion of “crimes against humanity.” In the end, we become aware of the fact
that talking about and showing the images of everyday horror produces, particularly in the relatively wealthy and protected regions of
reinforcing the idea that humankind as such is really
divided into qualitatively different cultures or civilization, which, according to one political scientist, could only produce
a “clash” among them. I am aware of all these difficulties, but I would maintain that a reality lies behind the notion of something
“unprecedented.” Perhaps it is simply the fact that a number of heterogeneous methods or processes of extermination (by which I
mean eliminating masses of individuals inasmuch as they belong to objective or subjective groups) have themselves become
“globalized ,” that is, operate in a similar manner everywhere in the world at the same time, and so progressively form a “chain ,”
humanity, a very ambivalent effect: raising compassion but also disgust,
giving full reality to what E.P. Thompson anticipated twenty years ago with the name “exterminism.” In this series of connected processes, we
must include, precisely because they are heterogeneous—they do not have one and the same “cause,” but they produce cumulative effects:1.
Wars (both “civil” and “foreign,” a distinction that is not easy to draw in many cases, such as Yugoslavia or Chechnya).2. Communal rioting,
with ethnic and/or religious ideologies of “cleansing.”3. Famines and other kinds of “absolute” poverty produced by the ruin
of traditional or nontraditional economies.4. Seemingly “natural” catastrophes, which in fact are killing on a mass scale because they
are overdetermined by social, economic, and political structures, such as pandemics (for example, the difference in the distribution of AIDS and
the possibilities of treatment between Europe and North America on the one side, Africa and some parts of Asia on the other), drought, floods,
or earthquakes in the absence of developed civil protection. In the end it would be my suggestion that the
“globalization” of various
kinds of extreme violence has produced a growing division of the “globalized world” into life zones and death
zones . Between these zones (which indeed are intricate and frequently reproduced within the boundaries of a single country or city) there exists a decisive and fragile superborder,
which raises fears and concerns about the unity and division of mankind—something like a global and local “enmity line,” like the “amity line” that existed in the beginning of the modern
European seizure of the world. It is this superborder, this enmity line, that becomes at the same time an object of permanent show and a hot place for intervention but also for
nonintervention. We might discuss whether the most worrying aspect of present international politics is “humanitarian intervention” or “generalized nonintervention,” or one coming after
the other. Should We Consider Extreme Violence to be “Rational” or “Functional” from the Point of View of Market Capitalism (the “Liberal Economy”)? This is a very difficult question—in fact,
I think it is the most difficult question—but it cannot be avoided; hence it is also the most intellectually challenging. Again, we should warn against the paralogism that is only too obvious but
nonetheless frequent: that of mistaking consequences for goals or purposes. (But is it really possible to discuss social systems in terms of purposes? On the other hand, can we avoid reflecting
on the immanent ends, or “logic,” or a structure such as capitalism?) It seems to me, very schematically, that the difficulty arises from the two opposite “global effects” that derive from the
emergence of a chain of mass violence—as compared, for example, with what Marx called primitive accumulation when he described the creation of the preconditions for capitalist
accumulation in terms of the violent suppression of the poor. One kind of effect is simply to generalize material and moral insecurity for millions of potential workers, that is, to induce a
massive proletarianization or reproletarianization (a new phase of proletarianization that crucially involves a return of many to the proletarian condition from which they had more or less
escaped, given that insecurity is precisely the heart of the “proletarian condition”).
This process is contemporary with an increased mobility of
capital and also humans , and so it takes place across borders. But, seen historically, it can also be distributed among
several political varieties:1. In the “North,” it involves a partial or deep dismantling of the social policies and the institutions of social citizenship
created by the welfare state, what I called the “national social citizenship,” and therefore also a violent transition from welfare to workfare,
from the social state to the penal state (the United States showing the way in this respect, as was convincingly argued in a recent essay by
LoicWacquant).2. In the “South,” it involves destroying and inverting the “developmental” programs and policies, which admittedly did not
suffice to produce the desired “takeoff” but indicated a way to resist impoverishment.3. In the “semiperiphery,” to borrow Immanuel
Wallerstein’s category, it was connected with the collapse of dictatorial structure called “real existing socialism,” which was based on scarcity
and corruption, but again kept the polarization of riches and poverty within certain limits. Let me suggest that a common formal feature of all
these processes resulting in the reproletarianization of the labor force is the fact that they
suppress or minimize the forms and
possibilities of representation of the subaltern within the state apparatus itself , or, if you prefer, the
possibilities of more or less effective counterpower. With this remark I want to emphasize the political aspect of processes that, in the first
instance, seem to be mainly “economic.” This political aspect, I think, is even more decisive when we turn to the other scene, the other kind of
result produced by massive violence, although the mechanism here is extremely mysterious. Mysterious but real, unquestionably. I am
thinking of a much more destructive tendency, destructive not of welfare or traditional ways of life, but of the social bond itself and, in the end,
of “bare life.” Let us think of Michel Foucault, who used to oppose two kinds of politics: “Let live” and “let die.” In the face of the cumulative
effects of different forms of extreme violence or cruelty that are displayed in what I called the “death zones” of humanity, we are led to admit
that the
current mode of production and reproduction has become a mode of production for elimination, a
reproduction of populations that are not likely to be productively used or exploited but are always already superfluous, and
therefore can be only eliminated either through “political” or “natural” means—what Latin American sociologists provocatively call
poblacionchatarra, “garbage humans,” to be “thrown” way out of the global city. If this is the case, the question arises
once again: what is the rationality of that? Or do we face an absolute triumph of irrationality. My suggestion would be: it is economically
irrational (because it amounts to a limitation of the scale of accumulation), but it is politically rational—or, better said, it can be interpreted in
political terms. The fact is that history does not move simply in a circle, the circular pattern of successive phases of accumulation. Economic
and political class struggles have already taken place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the result of limiting the possibilities of
exploitation, creating a balance of forces, and this event remains, so to speak, in the “memory” of the system. The system (and probably also
some of its theoreticians and politicians) “knows” that there is no exploitation without class struggles, no class struggles without organization
and representation of the exploited, no representation and organization without a tendency toward political and social citizenship. This is
precisely what current capitalism cannot afford: there is no possibility of a “global social state” corresponding to the “national social states” in
some parts of the world during the last century. I mean, there is no political possibility. Therefore there is political resistance, very violent
indeed, to every move in that direction. Technological revolutions provide a positive but insufficient condition for the deproletarianization of
the actual or potential labor force. This time, direct political repression may also be insufficient. Elimination or extermination has to take place,
“passive” if possible, “active” if necessary; mutual elimination is “best,” but it has to be encouraged from outside. This is what allows me to
suggest (and it already takes me to my third question) that if the “economy of global violence” is not functional (because its immanent goals are
indeed contradictory), it remains in a sense teleological: the same populations are massively targeted (or the reverse: those populations
that are targeted become progressively assimilated, they look “the same”). They are qualitatively “deterritorialized,” as Gilles Deleuze would
say, in an intensive rather than extensive sense: they “live”
on the edge of the city under the permanent threat of
elimination; but also, conversely, they live and are perceived as “nomads,” even when they are fixed in their homelands, that is,
their mere existence, their quantity, their movements, their virtual claims of rights and citizenship are perceived as a
threat for “civilization.” In the End, Does “Extreme Violence” Form a Global System”? Violence can be highly “unpolitical”—this is
what I wanted to suggest—but still form a system or be considered “systematic” if its various forms reinforce each other, if they contribute to
creating the conditions for their succession and encroachment, if in the end they build a chain of “human(itarian) catastrophies” where actions
to prevent the spread of cruelty and extermination, or simply limit their effects, are systematically obstructed. This teleology without an end is
exactly what I suggested calling, in the most objective manner, “preventative counterrevolution” or, better perhaps, “preventative
counterinsurrection.” It is only seemingly “Hobbesian,” since the
weapon used against a “war of all against all” is another
kind of war (Le Monde recently spoke about Colombia in terms of “a war against society” waged by the state and the Mafiosi together). It
is politics as antipolitics, but it appears as a system because of the many connections between the
heterogeneous forms of violence (arms trade indispensable to state budgets with corruption; corruption with criminality; drugs, organ,
and modern slave trade with dictatorships; dictatorships with civil wars and terror); and perhaps also, last but not least, because there is a
politics of extreme violence that confuses all the forms to erect the figure of “evil” (humanitarian intervention sometimes participates in that)
and because there is an economics of extreme violence, which makes both coverage and intervention sources of profitable business. I spoke of
a division between zones of life and zones of death, with a fragile line of demarcation. It was tantamount to
speaking of the “totalitarian” aspects of globalization. But globalization is clearly not only that. At the moment at which
humankind becomes economically and, to some extent, culturally “united,” it is violently divided
“biopolitically .”
A politics of civility (or a politics of human rights) can be either the imaginary substitute of the destroyed unity, or the set
of initiatives that reintroduce everywhere, and particularly on the borderlines themselves, the issue of equality, the horizon of political action.
Healthcare DA
Obamacare is advancing public health readiness now
Logiurato, Business Insider political reporter, 2014
(Brett, “Major New Study Says Obamacare Is Working — Even For Republicans”, 7-10,
http://www.businessinsider.com/study-obamacare-reduces-uninsured-rate-2014-7, ldg)
The Affordable Care Act has been successful at achieving some major goals in the first year of its full
implementation, according to a new study from The Commonwealth Fund. There are three important findings from the study:
The uninsured rate is dropping, most people like their new insurance plans (even Republicans!), and most people
are finding it easy to visit a doctor. The study found the uninsured rate in the U.S. declined by one-quarter
over the last nine months, which included the law's first, six-month open-enrollment period in which individuals could sign up for private insurance
plans through exchanges established by the law. From the July-to-September 2013 period to the April-to-June 2014 period, the uninsured rate of people between
the ages of 19-64 dropped from 20% to 15%, according to the study. The research found 9.5 million people gained insurance, either through the exchanges or
through the law's expansion of the federal Medicaid program. The
decline in uninsured was seen across different age groups
and races, though the drop was disproportionately high among the young (-10%) and Latinos (-13%). It was disproportionately low among African-Americans
— the decline was only 1%. The findings show the law has been successful at reducing the uninsured rate among the poor — which was, of course, one of its main
goals: Expectedly, there is a significant difference in the reduction of uninsured between states that have expanded Medicaid and those that have not. According to
the study, the uninsured rate among residents who make up to 100% of the federal poverty level fell from 28% to 17% in the 25 states that have expanded Medicaid
(plus the District of Columbia). In the 25 states that haven't, the rate only fell from 38% to 36%. Among
those who have become newly
insured, the vast majority say they are "better off" and like their plans. In total, 58% of respondents with new plans said they
are "better off" than before — including 61% who were previously uninsured. Seventy-nine percent of those who were previously uninsured said they were either
"somewhat" or "very satisfied" with their new plans. Even 74% of Republicans say they're at least somewhat satisfied with their new plans. Significantly,
most people who gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act said they couldn't have accessed
care they have received since obtaining insurance: Finally: About one-fifth of people who have signed
up for a new plan have attempted to find a new primary care or general doctor, and most — 75% —
have said the process is at least "somewhat easy." Two-thirds of those who found a primary-care doctor got an appointment within
two weeks. Thirty-seven percent of people said their new plans included "most" of the doctors they wanted (about 39% don't yet know).
Marijuana legalization wrecks public health-much worse than tobacco
Evans, former Rutgers law professor, 2013
(David, "The Economic Impacts Of Marijuana Legalization", The Journal of Global Drug Policy and
Practice, Dec 30 2013,
www.globaldrugpolicy.org/Issues/Vol%207%20Issue%204/The%20Economic%20Impacts%20of%20Marij
uana%20Legalization%20final%20for%20journal.pdf)
A number of studies have noted significant correlations between marijuana use and many severe health
and social problems (35). The negative impact of expanded marijuana use will have a severe and pervasive
impact on public health from which there will be no turning back. Studies show impacts from marijuana use such as
immune system damage, (36) birth defects, (37) infertility, (38) cardiovascular disease, (39) stroke, (40)
and testicular cancer (41). Researchers have also found that chronic exposure to marijuana smoke can increase the risk
of developing respiratory obstruction, emphysema, lung cancer, collapsed lungs, and bullous lung disease ("bong
A recent study shows that marijuana smoke has ammonia levels 20 times higher than tobacco
smoke. Marijuana has hydrogen cyanide, nitric oxide, and aromatic amines at 3-5 times higher than
tobacco smoke (43). Another study shows that that marijuana smokers face rapid lung destruction - as much as 20
years ahead of tobacco smokers (44). A recently released study shows that marijuana damages DNA and
that it is toxic to the body (45). One of the earliest findings in marijuana research was the effect on various immune
functions. Cellular immunity and pulmonary immunity are impaired, and an impaired ability to fight
infection is now documented in humans. Researchers have found an inability to fight herpes infections and a blunted response to therapy for genital warts in
patients who consume marijuana. Abnormal immune function is the cornerstone of problems with AIDS. This impairment
leaves the patient unable to fight certain infections and fatal diseases. The potential for these complications exists in all forms of
administration of marijuana (46).
lung") (42).
Resilient public health systems are key to prevent infectious disease spread and
bioterrorism
Zhang, Harvard Political Review, 2013
(Audrey, “National Health, National Security”, 12-10, http://www.iop.harvard.edu/national-healthnational-security, ldg)
More than civil defense alone, public
health promotes the economic productivity and stability of our country. A
salmonella outbreak or an aggressive flu season may at first seem less threatening than the prospects of a terrorist attack. But as the panic over the outbreak during
the shutdown suggested, the
greater probability of an outbreak’s occurrence, its greater geographical reach, and
its unpredictable spread all make the relative risk and impact of such infectious disease threats worthy
of the government’s attention. While the estimates of the costs of the salmonella outbreak have not yet been calculated, recent studies suggest
that the aggregated costs of foodborne illness in the United States come to $77.7 billion per year. Other
seasonal illnesses, such as influenza, cost a similar $71 to 167 billion per year in the form of healthcare
costs and lost economic productivity. Predictably, the system is at a substantial disadvantage to respond to
such large crises when clinics are understaffed, drugs are in short supply, and hospital beds are
unavailable—as happens when investments in public health are diminished. In response, Andrew Price-Smith, a professor at Colorado College, suggested in
an interview with the HPR, “what you actually have to do is invest not in a militarized public health system, but in things like resilience
within our medical infrastructure.” Such investments in health infrastructure would allow for greater
capacity to respond to generalized public health threats, whether they come in the form of natural
disaster, bioterror, or contagion. An additional place federal investments in public health can occur is in structures of governance, such as the
NIH, the CDC, and the FDA, which function simultaneously as scientific research and consumer protection agencies. In the absence of strong leadership from a
deeply divided House and Senate, these regulatory agencies are likely to play a growing role in driving initiatives in public health—assuming they receive adequate
funding and support to enforce their rulings.
Bioterror leads to extinction
Anders Sandberg 8, is a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity
Institute at Oxford University; Jason G. Matheny, PhD candidate in Health Policy and Management at
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and special consultant to the Center for Biosecurity at
the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Milan M. Ćirković, senior research associate at the
Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and assistant professor of physics at the University of Novi Sad in
Serbia and Montenegro, 9/8/8, “How can we reduce the risk of human extinction?,” Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists,http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/how-can-we-reduce-the-risk-ofhuman-extinction
The risks from anthropogenic hazards appear at present larger than those from natural ones. Although great progress has been made in
reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world, humanity
is still threatened by the possibility of a global
thermonuclear war and a resulting nuclear winter. We may face even greater risks from emerging
technologies. Advances in synthetic biology might make it possible to engineer pathogens capable of
extinction-level pandemics. The knowledge, equipment, and materials needed to engineer pathogens are more accessible than
those needed to build nuclear weapons. And unlike other weapons, pathogens are self-replicating, allowing a
small arsenal to become exponentially destructive. Pathogens have been implicated in the extinctions of many wild
species. Although most pandemics "fade out" by reducing the density of susceptible populations, pathogens with wide host
ranges in multiple species can reach even isolated individuals. The intentional or unintentional release of engineered pathogens with
high transmissibility, latency, and lethality might be capable of causing human extinction. While such an event seems unlikely
today, the likelihood may increase as biotechnologies continue to improve at a rate rivaling Moore's Law.
Case
Phytoremediation
No meltdowns --- backup power
Spencer 11 (Jack Spencer, Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation “U.S. Nuclear Policy After Fukushima: Trust But Modify,” 5/18/11) http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/us-nuclearpolicy-after-fukushima-trust-but-modify
One of the problems with the emerging dialogue is that some
commentators and U.S. policymakers have assumed
that America’s nuclear industry and regulatory bodies and policies mirror those of Japan. They do not.
The United States has an effective, multifaceted regulatory regime that has already addressed many
of the mistakes and weaknesses that Fukushima seems to have exposed, including earthquake and
tsunami preparedness and the modification of older reactors to meet new and evolving safety
standards. On the other hand, the accident should raise serious questions about America’s lack of nuclear-waste disposal plans.
Earthquakes and Tsunamis
While building nuclear plants to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis (and other severe natural phenomena) is a new issue for many
Americans, the
U.S. nuclear industry and U.S. nuclear regulators have spent a great deal of time
developing specific protocols for just such events. American regulators mandate that all U.S.
reactors be built not only to withstand the most powerful earthquake ever recorded for their
respective sites, but also to withstand the strongest earthquakes that geologists think are possible
for each site. Current earthquake, tsunami, and flooding regulations are now under review, as indicated
by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
As these reviews are conducted, the NRC and policymakers must ensure that additional regulations promote true safety, not just the
perception of safety. Further, policymakers must recognize that plant
owners and operators are highly motivated to
maintain safe operations and are in many ways better prepared to ensure public health and safety
than federal regulators. Under current U.S. policy, the plant operators are primarily responsible
for plant safety. That is why the best approach will be for nuclear regulators to set and enforce high
standards—and allow plant operators in the industry to determine how best to meet them.
The Mark I Containment System
According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, 23 U.S. boiling-water reactors share the same basic containment design, the Mark I, as the
Fukushima reactors.[1] At first glance, this is troubling, especially in light of past NRC studies that had identified problems with the containment
systems of those reactors. Often
ignored, however, are the significant safety modifications made to these
designs as a result of ongoing assessments of reactor safety.
The history of the Mark I containment design in the U.S. is a testament to the effectiveness of the
American system of nuclear regulation for maintaining public health and safety. Federal regulators
identified a number of shortcomings with the original design that posed potential safety problems. The industry responded by forming a Mark I
Owners Group to determine how to change the designs to address the safety concerns; the plants were then modified accordingly.
Additional reviews led to further upgrades. For example, procedures to supply off-site power and water
to reactors and fuel pools have been developed in the event that all on-site power and backup power
is lost. Hardened containment venting has been added to every plant to ensure that pressure can be
safely released from the containment should there be a system breakdown. Recent reports indicate that a
similar modification may have been added to the Japanese reactors but could have malfunctioned.[2] Regardless, U.S. plants have the
new venting and nuclear operators should ensure that they are working properly.
No impact to meltdowns – Fukushima proves
Wheeler 12 (John Wheeler, Producer of "This Week in Nuclear"; Manager in the Nuclear Industry;
Former Senior Reactor Operator; Nuclear Workforce Planning and Workforce Development Expert,
“Whos' Really to Blame for Fukushima Health Impacts?” 3/12/12)
http://theenergycollective.com/johnwheeler/79128/anti-nuclear-hysterics-not-melted-reactors-blamefukushima-health-impacts
As is often the case, the passage of time yields clarity about events, and the nuclear power plant
accident at Fukushima is no different. It has become clear that the misinformation and hysterics by
anti-nuclear groups and individuals were mostly wrong. Their doomsday prophesizing actually
worsened human suffering and environmental impacts by contributing to unwise decisions by political
leaders in Japan and elsewhere to shut down nuclear plants. In contrast, bloggers and experts from
within the nuclear community accurately predicted outcomes and human health impacts.
As was predicted on this blog and elsewhere, the multi-barrier reactor containment design
protected the public. Contrary to claims by anti-nuclear groups, the melted cores did NOT burn through
the reactor vessels. The containment structures remained virtually intact. The damaged reactor
fuel remained inside the reactor vessels and containment systems.
Despite preposterous claims by Greenpeace and others, there were no chunks of plutonium scattered
across the countryside. Only radioactive gasses escaped over the land, and most of that gas was
short lived Iodine that has long since decayed away.
As reported on Bloomberg and other news sources, no one in the public was harmed by radiation
from the damaged reactors. A small number of plant workers received higher than normal radiation
exposures, without lasting effects. Any hypothetical future health effects will be immeasurably low
and will be indistinguishable from normal disease rates within the general population.
No one, not even the “Fukushima 50″, was exposed to life threatening amounts of radiation.
Journalists who flew across the Pacific to cover the story received more radiation exposure from
cosmic rays in flight than they received from the reactors once on the ground.
The visually spectacular hydrogen explosions of the plant buildings, while providing great fodder for
anti-nuclear rhetoric had little impact on the safety of the reactors, and harmed no one.
The unit 4 fuel storage pools did not empty of water and did not catch on fire. The fuel there
remained safely submerged and suffered no damage of any consequence.
Finally, there was no need for the 50-mile evacuation zone ordered by NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko. His
decision still has nuclear experts scratching their heads and wondering why. Jaczko’s actions
demonstrated he lacks the experience and knowledge to ask the right questions at crucial moments. In
addition, he lacked the wisdom to recognize other more credible information was available that
contradicted his view. He needlessly rushed forward with an ill-advised decision that was horribly
wrong.
This is not to imply there were no environmental or economic impacts from the reactor accident – of
course there were! The expensive cleanup in surrounding areas will take years and will cost billions.
This is but a small fraction of the total cost of recovery from the horrific earthquake and tsunami.
The earthquake and tsunami were responsible for untold human suffering and devastation. That is
where the focus of the world should have been and should continue to be. The problems at the
Fukushima nuclear plant accident have contributed needlessly to Japan’s economic burden by
prompting the irrational shutdown of nuclear plants across the country. This has caused energy
shortages and billions of dollars of additional costs from skyrocketing imports of fossil fuels. Of course,
the fossil fuels providers are scrambling to rake in tens of billions of dollars in profits.
The health effects to Japan’s population were NOT from radiation, but from stress caused by the
unfounded fear of future health effects. The responsibility for this lies squarely on anti-nuclear
activists who relished in spouting fatalistic, exaggerated claims, and on an uninformed media who
presented those claims as virtual facts while downplaying opposing views from true experts in the
field.
Cancer has no long term impact—science will solve it
Von Eschenbach 5 (Andrew C., PhD, FDA commissioner, former Director of the National Cancer Institute, "Challenge to make cancer
manageable holds promise" New York Beacon, 1/6/2005, Vol.12, Iss.1, pg.15, ProQuest)
Three decades ago, a diagnosis of cancer was considered by many to be an automatic death sentence. Today, thanks
to promising
advances in cancer research and the wonders of technology, there is hope that using new avenues of
detection and treatment using proteins and nanotechnology, among other things, cancer will become a
nonfatal disease for everyone. We are making progress. In fact, there are now 10 million cancer survivors: 30 years ago, there were
just 3 million. We believe today marks just the beginning of a new day in cancer. While medical science will always pursue a cure for this
debilitating disease, we are much closer to a time when cancer becomes a manageable disease that people can live with as diabetes and heart
disease are today. We believe that suffering
and death due to cancer will become a thing of the past. Cancer
patients are already benefiting from powerful new drugs, the advent of personalized therapies tailored
to an individual's unique genetic makeup, the application of advanced technologies to cancer research
and treatment, and innovative, new tools for predicting and detecting cancer at the earliest possible
time. People have responsibility, too. That is why we want to encourage a healthpromoting lifestyle, urging people to heed preventive advice
to eat better, exercise more and avoid tobacco. We believe so strongly in the promise of the new molecular medicine that we - the National
Cancer Institute along with Howard University Cancer Center and other partners in the cancer community-have put forward an ambitious,
unprecedented challenge goal to eliminate suffering and death due to cancer by the year 2015.
Cancer deaths are declining
Stobbe 6 (Mike, Associated Press, San Diego Union Tribune, 2/9/2006, "Annual death toll from cancer falls in U.S. for the first time since
1930" http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060209/news_1n9cancer.html)
ATLANTA–For
the first time in more than 70 years, annual cancer deaths in the United States have fallen, a
turning point in the war on cancer likely achieved by declines in smoking and better tumor detection and
treatment. The number of cancer deaths dropped to 556,902 in 2003, down from 557,271 the year before, according to a
recently completed review of U.S. death certificates by the National Center for Health Statistics. “Even though it's a small amount, it's
an important milestone,” said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. It's the
first annual decrease in total cancer deaths since 1930, according to a cancer society analysis of federal death data.
Opioids
Squo solves legalization
Firestone 7/26/14 (David, staff writer, “Let States Decide on Marijuana,” New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-let-states-decide-on-marijuana.html?op-nav)
Allowing states to make their own decisions on marijuana — just as they did with alcohol after the end of Prohibition in
1933 — requires unambiguous federal action. The most comprehensive plan to do so is a bill introduced last
year by Representative Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado, known as the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act. It
would eliminate marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, require a federal permit for growing and
distributing it, and have it regulated (just as alcohol is now) by the Food and Drug Administration and the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. An alternative bill, which would not be as effective, was
introduced by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, as the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. It would
not remove marijuana from Schedule I but would eliminate enforcement of the Controlled Substances
Act against anyone acting in compliance with a state marijuana law.¶ Congress is clearly not ready to
pass either bill, but there are signs that sentiments are changing. A promising alliance is growing on the
subject between liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans. In a surprise move in May, the House voted 219
to 189 to prohibit the Drug Enforcement Administration from prosecuting people who use medical
marijuana, if a state has made it legal. It was the first time the House had voted to liberalize a marijuana
law; similar measures had repeatedly failed in previous years. The measure’s fate is uncertain in the Senate.
Heuristics
Their ev says states won’t enforce solves now
Regulated legalization won’t solve – the black market will exploit holes and use will
increase.
Sabet, Director of the Drug Policy Institute and Assistant Professor in the Division of Addiction
Medicine, University of Florida, ’13 [Kevin, “A New Direction? Yes. Legalization? No. Drawing on
Evidence to Determine Where to Go in Drug Policy”, Oregon Law Review, Vol. 91, 2013, RSR]
In 1996, local communities throughout Holland were given the authority to decide whether coffee shops should be allowed within their
jurisdictions.81 Since then, three quarters of the nearly 500 local communities in Holland have refused to allow coffee shops to operate within
their borders at all.82 As a result, Amsterdam
became home to one-third of all coffee shops in the country
despite having only five percent of the country’s population.83 But the black market sale of marijuana
did not go away in areas with a high concentration of coffee shops legally selling pot. There are several reasons
for this and all relate to the unfailing opportunism of black market sellers in exploiting the inevitable gaps left open in any regime of legal
marijuana. For example, black market
dealers take advantage of coffee shops not being open twenty-four
hours a day to offer round-the-clock service. Black market sellers also target minors too young to legally
enter coffee shops. Additionally, while there are limits on the amount of pot a coffee shop visitor can
purchase, there is no limit on how much a customer can buy from a black market dealer in a single
transaction.84 All of these factors combined create an enforcement problem for Holland’s criminal
justice system. Predictably, as pot use was normalized by coffee shops, an increase in marijuana use among Holland’s
young people occurred. Rates of youth marijuana use more than doubled from the mid-1980s to the
mid-1990s. An analysis by a pair of researchers who are sympathetic to marijuana legalization and decriminalization found that the
percentage of eighteen- to twenty-year-olds reporting marijuana use went from fifteen percent in 1984 to forty-four percent in 1996, an
increase of 300% for that age group.85 The Dutch
always had lower rates of youth marijuana use than the United
States, but since the mid- 1990s, Dutch rates have caught up to their American counterparts. Marijuana
potency has also risen dramatically over the last decade or so. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug
Addiction has posted statistics showing that THC concentrations in marijuana sold in coffee shops more than doubled between 1999 and 2004,
from an average of 8.6% in 1999 to more than 20% in 2004.86 As
potency levels escalated, users began developing a
tolerance for the drug, requiring increasingly higher levels of THC to get the same high—a vicious cycle
that accelerates the development of dependency. Dutch citizens now are more likely to be admitted to
treatment centers for marijuana use than citizens of any other European country.87 Holland holds yet another
distinction that the pro-pot movement might wish would go away. Foreign Affairs, published by the United States-based
Council on Foreign Relations, did an analysis of Holland’s drug experiment and described how that
country’s lenient laws and status as “the drugs capital of western Europe” had turned it into “a magnet
for . . . criminal types.”88 And we are not just talking about marijuana trafficking. Law enforcement authorities in both France and
Britain estimated that eighty percent of the heroin used or seized in those countries passed through or was temporarily warehoused in
Holland.89 Dutch traffickers manufactured most of the amphetamines and ecstasy pills consumed in Europe.90 According to a British customs
official, “Holland
has become the place for drug traffickers to work . . . it’s an environment which is
relatively troublefree from a criminal’s point of view.”91 To their credit, Dutch law enforcement have begun to fund
enforcement operations and intelligence at a much higher rate now than in the past.92 Dutch officials did not predict these
effects of marijuana legalization. Nor did they predict the sharp increase in use rates, the higher rates of
dependency, the significant increase in treatment admission rates, or all the other social and public
health problems that have emerged in Holland over the years.
Government taxation of marijuana increases the cost on the government.
Sabet, Director of the Drug Policy Institute and Assistant Professor in the Division of Addiction
Medicine, University of Florida, ’13 [Kevin, “A New Direction? Yes. Legalization? No. Drawing on
Evidence to Determine Where to Go in Drug Policy”, Oregon Law Review, Vol. 91, 2013, RSR]
Many legalization advocates urge the government to “tax the hell out of” drugs,14 in order to pay for
the assumed increased use and addiction costs. That way, new users will be deterred from starting because the price would
be out of reach. The most vulnerable (i.e. the poor) would benefit from high costs, too, since one might think that those with less disposable
income can afford expensive drugs. Ironically, however, this
scenario actually exacerbates some of the worst
qualities of prohibition. High-cost drugs would ensure that an already well-established black market
would remain largely in tact. If a person can buy cocaine for ten dollars an ounce from a dealer or go to a government-sponsored
“drug store” for ten times that much, he or she would opt for the former scenario. Especially if drugs were still illegal for minors (no one has
seriously proposed legalizing marijuana or cocaine for minors), a black market would still have reasons to linger. This
is precisely what
occurred in Canada when it imposed steep taxes on cigarettes.15 In fact, today there is a thriving black
market for the highly taxed cigarettes in certain parts of the United States as criminals smuggle packs of
cigarettes from lower-taxed states to those with higher taxes. For example, New York has the highest tax on cigarettes in
the country ($4.35 per pack, with an additional $1.50 in New York City).16 As a result, it has the highest smuggling rates in the United States:
60.9% of cigarettes were smuggled into New York in 2011.17 After Massachusetts,
Florida, and Utah raised their
cigarette taxes, smuggling significantly increased.18 California Board of Equalization officials have
recently estimated that cigarette excise tax revenue evasion was $182 million in fiscal year 2005–06.19
Around fifteen percent of all cigarettes sold in that state have somehow avoided the excise taxes in
place on each pack to raise revenues for the state budget.20 This is lower than evasion rates in other countries, according
to the Chief Economist for the California Board of Equalization.21 For example, about twenty-two percent of the United
Kingdom’s domestic cigarette market now consists of smuggled cigarettes.22 In Canada, smuggled
cigarettes represented about thirty-three percent of all domestic cigarette consumption at their peak.23
In the United States, illegal drugs cost $193 billion per year in lost social costs.24 That number would no doubt
increase under legalization and then have to be distributed to the new number of total drug users.
Experience with taxing alcohol and tobacco shows that any attempt to pay for lost costs through taxes
would be futile. Indeed the social costs of legalization (e.g., increased health costs, accidents,
productivity losses) outweigh any possible tax that could be levied against the drug. Drugs that are
already legal in the United States are a good example of what would happen if we thought we could
reap the financial benefits of illegal drugs: For every one dollar of revenue they produce, they each cost
the United States ten dollars in lost social costs.2
States solve – without state cooperation, the federal government can’t enforce
penalties
Mikos 12
Robert, Law Professor at Vanderbilt, JD from UMich, 12/12, [http://www.cato.org/publications/policyanalysis/limits-federal-supremacy-when-states-relax-or-abandon-marijuana-bans], “On the Limits of
Federal Supremacy: When States Relax (or Abandon) Marijuana Bans“, Policy Analysis No. 714, Page 2-3
On a more practical level, the fact that state exemptions remain enforceable is con- sequential; these
states laws, in other words, are not merely symbolic gestures. The main reason is that the federal
government lacks the resources needed to enforce its own ban vigorously: although it commands a $2
tril- lion dollar (plus) budget, the federal govern- ment is only a two-bit player when it comes to
marijuana enforcement. Only 1 percent of the roughly 800,000 marijuana cases gen- erated every year
are handled by federal au- thorities.10 The states, by virtueof their great- er law enforcement resources
(among other things), hold the upper hand. The federal ban may be strict—and its penalties severe—
but without the wholehearted cooperation of state law enforcement authorities, its im- pact on private
behavior will remain limited. Most medical marijuana users and suppliers can feel confident they will
never be caught by the federal government.11
Social costs paid by the government will increase with legalization.
Sabet, Director of the Drug Policy Institute and Assistant Professor in the Division of Addiction
Medicine, University of Florida, ‘13
[Kevin, “A New Direction? Yes. Legalization? No. Drawing on Evidence to Determine Where to Go in
Drug Policy”, Oregon Law Review, Vol. 91, 2013, RSR]
Many legalization advocates urge the government to “tax the hell out of” drugs,14 in order to pay for
the assumed increased use and addiction costs. That way, new users will be deterred from starting because the price would
be out of reach. The most vulnerable (i.e. the poor) would benefit from high costs, too, since one might think that those with less disposable
income can afford expensive drugs. Ironically, however,
this scenario actually exacerbates some of the worst
qualities of prohibition. High-cost drugs would ensure that an already well-established black market
would remain largely in tact. If a person can buy cocaine for ten dollars an ounce from a dealer or go to a government-sponsored
“drug store” for ten times that much, he or she would opt for the former scenario. Especially if drugs were still illegal for minors (no one has
seriously proposed legalizing marijuana or cocaine for minors), a black market would still have reasons to linger. This
is precisely what
occurred in Canada when it imposed steep taxes on cigarettes.15 In fact, today there is a thriving black
market for the highly taxed cigarettes in certain parts of the United States as criminals smuggle packs of
cigarettes from lower-taxed states to those with higher taxes. For example, New York has the highest tax on cigarettes in
the country ($4.35 per pack, with an additional $1.50 in New York City).16 As a result, it has the highest smuggling rates in the United States:
60.9% of cigarettes were smuggled into New York in 2011.17 After Massachusetts,
Florida, and Utah raised their
cigarette taxes, smuggling significantly increased.18 California Board of Equalization officials have
recently estimated that cigarette excise tax revenue evasion was $182 million in fiscal year 2005–06.19
Around fifteen percent of all cigarettes sold in that state have somehow avoided the excise taxes in
place on each pack to raise revenues for the state budget.20 This is lower than evasion rates in other countries, according
to the Chief Economist for the California Board of Equalization.21 For example, about twenty-two percent of the United
Kingdom’s domestic cigarette market now consists of smuggled cigarettes.22 In Canada, smuggled
cigarettes represented about thirty-three percent of all domestic cigarette consumption at their peak.23
In the United States, illegal drugs cost $193 billion per year in lost social costs.24 That number would no doubt
increase under legalization and then have to be distributed to the new number of total drug users.
Experience with taxing alcohol and tobacco shows that any attempt to pay for lost costs through taxes
would be futile. Indeed the social costs of legalization (e.g., increased health costs, accidents,
productivity losses) outweigh any possible tax that could be levied against the drug. Drugs that are
already legal in the United States are a good example of what would happen if we thought we could
reap the financial benefits of illegal drugs: For every one dollar of revenue they produce, they each cost
the United States ten dollars in lost social costs.2
And no presumption flips neg presume less change – no warrant to their nihilism claims
2nc
Erasure
2NC Management Impact
Our drive to envision and map demands unity through the exclusion of difference. By
focusing on nature’s being instead of becoming, we allowed for its continued,
managed destruction.
Halsey 2004 (Mark, Professor at Flinders University, “Environmental Visions: Deleuze and the
Modalities of Nature”. Ethics and the Environment. Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall/Winter 2004. pp. 38-39) [nagel]
The question of how
Goolengook came to be envisioned in terms of its forest(s) (as a molarized, unified
body) is an incredibly complex one. Moreover, it is a question that cannot be divorced from a consideration of the
categories, speeds, and affects which have infused Goolengook over time. It is, to be sure, a monumental socioethical moment whenever one ceases treating a space in terms of its differences and begins to speak of or envision it in terms of its similarities
or uniformities. On March 2, 1908, in accordance with the Forests Act 1907, “the discourse of the representative,” as Deleuze13 puts it,
formally took hold of Goolengook, and with it, the slow if more deliberate effacement and manipulation of its aspects continued. To say that
Goolengook suffered irrevocable harm as of 1908 is perhaps an insufficient remark. Goolengook
has never suffered or endured
harm. Rather, and more controversially, it has stood as witness to those bodies which have tried to
justify or dissent from the possibilities curtailed or preserved by the operation of various machines.14
Goolengook is part of the machinic interplay which sets in motion a series of events which are, in turn,
construed or stratified by various bodies as approximating one state of affairs over and above another.
This, however, is most certainly not to say that Goolengook has never been envisioned in terms of the harm perpetrated upon it, across it,
throughout it, and so forth. What I am suggesting is that there
is always already a cost attached to our envisionings of
earth because vision—our modes of seeing—can only bring bodies into ‘focus’ by ignoring their
differences, their ‘deep disparity.’ In the present case, such costs are borne both by the forest sector and
those committed to ‘conservation.’ Whereas the forestry machine15 charts similarities (between stands
of trees) in order to convert them into resource inventories, the conservation machine locates
similarities (across age and disturbance history) in order to constitute a plane of authenticity.16 The point is
that both strategies tend, on the whole, to be oblivious to the dangers associated with the will to
representation. One might therefore ask: What would it mean to cease mapping earth? Alternatively, what kinds of possibilities might
arise were earth to be conceived along the lines of a both/and ethic instead of an either/or dichotomy? Perhaps the point here is not
to cease mapping per se but to place into critical relief modern epistemologies governing the marking
and management of earth—to ask which bodies and processes are rendered invisible by various units of
management and at what cost such invisibility occurs.
Management exists to categorize nature through generalities that ignore constant
becoming. Regulation is the act of naming, rendering invisible potentialities.
Halsey 2004 (Mark, Professor at Flinders University, “Environmental Visions: Deleuze and the
Modalities of Nature”. Ethics and the Environment. Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall/Winter 2004. pp. 38-39) [nagel]
Deleuze and Guattari urge that we need to get rid of the tree in our heads in order to create the space to think rhizomatically (i.e., beyond
orthodoxies). In like fashion it could be said that we
need to discursively expunge the trees from forest management
areas in order to free up the modes of representation which have for so long dominated the way we
speak about various terrains (e.g., ‘This is a mountain ash forest,’ ‘This is a stand of shining gum,’ ‘This is an area dominated by
messmate,’ etc.). Of course, the point is not that such areas are nonexistent—that they lack material force.
Rather, the critical matter is that the attributes of such areas always already exceed the molar
categories of forest type, and even the higher resolution categories of ecological vegetation class, or
stand conceived by administrators. Names, it must be said, simultaneously render visible and invisible. For
this reason, the ascription of categories is inherently laden with politico-ethical overtones since each
curtails in advance the existence of other bodies—bodies which are subsequently made to fall outside
orthodox or so-called normal discursive moments or cognitive frames. The management of Goolengook,
which is, importantly, concomitant with the regulation of those bodies drawn by particular machines
over time, is and always has been about the violence of representation. From an administrative point of view it has
been vital that all ‘formal’ attempts to delineate (see) Goolengook in one fashion rather than another are conceived as both entirely natural
and wholly benign. The problem, however, is that Goolengook resists all attempts to code its aspects (whether this be the rigid codes levied
through law and science or the more supple codes pronounced by sightseers, bush walkers, and the like). The
reality of the bodies
configured by molar machines is premised upon the idea that there is an isomorphic relation between
words and things. Nietzsche and many others have challenged the correspondence theory of truth—a theory which proposes that
categorizing the world (through the auspices of positivism) is equivalent to unveiling the essence of things. In a brilliant critique of this idea,
Deleuze writes of the fundamental aporia that has existed, and will continue to do so, between naming and knowing, or between
representation and truth. As he remarks: All differences are borne by individuals, but they are not all individual differences. Under what
conditions does a difference become regarded as individual? The problem of classification was clearly always a problem of ordering differences.
However, plant and animal classifications show that we can order differences only so long as we are provided with a multiple network of
continuity of resemblance. The idea of a continuity among living beings was never distinct from that of classification, much less opposed to it. It
was not even an idea supposed to limit or nuance the demands of classification. On the contrary, it is the prerequisite of any possible
classification.28 This
tension between having to order difference while maintaining a continuity of
resemblance is, in many senses, the point at which environmental conflict emerges. The problem is that there
are, in fact, no individual differences and no single field of resemblance. However, this has not prevented modern systems of land management
acting to the contrary. Indeed, the naming of forest types, species conservation thresholds, national parks, and the like proceeds precisely
according to this logic. Again, as Deleuze puts it: We invoke a field of individuation or individuating difference as the condition of the
organisation and determination of species. However, this field of individuation is posited only formally and in general: it seems to be ‘the same’
for a given species, and to vary in intensity from one species to another. It seems, therefore, to depend upon the species and the determination
of species, and to refer us once more to differences borne by the individual, not to individual differences. In order for this difficulty to
disappear, the individuating difference must not only be conceived within a field of individuation in general, but must itself be conceived as an
individual difference. The form of the field must be necessarily and in itself filled with individual differences.29 The
primary, and one
might say, critical consequence of constructing a field of individuation (equivalent in many ways to the
plane of organization) is that it enables administrators to classify the world according to the distribution
and repetition of so-called like groups rather than, as would seem preferable, in terms of the differences
borne by individuals. This is, to be clear, an incredibly important moment in the lexical folding and demarcation of Nature. For at this
point the guiding objective of environmental administrators becomes the location and categorization of
a delimited series of attributes common to a field (of species, of classes, of types) as opposed to
establishing categories on the basis of the relations pertaining between individuals and their associated
becomings. Here, Deleuze suggests that there has perhaps been a serious misinterpretation of Darwin’s work. As he states: “Darwin’s great
novelty [. . .] was that of inaugurating the thought of individual difference. The leitmotiv of The Origin of the Species is: we do not know what
individual difference is capable of! We do not know how far it can go, assuming that we add to it natural selection. Darwin’s problem is posed in
terms rather similar to those employed by Freud on another occasion: it is a question of knowing under what conditions small, unconnected or
free-floating differences become appreciable, connected and fixed.”30 Can it really be said that we have the knowledge sufficient to discern
such conditions? I would argue that we do not, but that
present environmental regulations, (for example, those concerned with
forestry, mining, waste management, etc.) function as if such knowledge exists and that it exists
unproblematically.
2NC Alt Solves – Strikethrough
Erasure is the process of using and erasing our language at the same time – leaving the
original text, while simultaneously displacing it, allows us to trace new origins and
read difference into the violent signification of meaning that occurs across the gap
between speech and writing
Spivak ’98 (Introduction to Jacques Derrida’s “Of Grammatology”, publ. John Hopkins University Press,
translated by Gayateri Spivak, introduction by Gayateri Spivak, 1998, p. xvi-xix) [m leap]
It is indeed an ineluctable nostalgia for presence heterogeneity a unity by declaring that a sign brings forth the presence of the signified.
Otherwise it would seem clear that the sign is the place where "the completely other is announced as such-without any simplicity, any identity,
any resemblance or continuity-in that which is not it" (69, 47).
Word and thing or thought never in fact become one.
We
are reminded of, referred to, what the convention of words sets up as thing or thought, by a particular arrangement of words. The
structure of reference works and can go on working not because of the identity between these two socalled component parts of the sign, but because of their relationship of difference. The sign marks a place of
difference. One way of satisfying the rage for unity is to say that, within the phonic sign (speech rather
than writing) there is no structure of difference; and that this nondifference is felt as self-presence in the silent and solitary
thought of the self. This is so familiar an argument that we would accept it readily if we did not stop to think about it. But if we did, we would
notice that
there is no necessary reason why a particular sound should be identical with a "thought or
thing" ; and that the argument applies even when one "speaks" silently to oneself. Saussure was accordingly obliged to point out that the
phonic signifier is as conventional as the graphic (7+51). Armed with this simple yet powerful insight-powerful enough to "deconstruct the
transcendental signified"-that
the sign, phonic as well as graphic, is a structure of difference , Derrida suggests that
what opens the possibility of thought is not merely the question of being, but also the never-annulled difference from "the completely other."
Such is the strange "being" of the sign: half of it always "not there" and the other half always "not that." The
structure of the sign is determined by the trace or track of that other which is forever absent. This other is of
course never to be found in its full being. As even such empirical events as answering a child's question or consulting the
dictionary proclaim,
one sign leads to another and so on indefinitely . Derrida quotes Lambert and Peirce: " '[philosophy
should] reduce the theory of things to the theory of signs.' . . . 'The idea of manifestation is the idea of a sign' " (72, 49), and contrasts them to
Husserl and Heidegger. On
the way to the trace/track, the word "sign" has to be put under erasure
: "the sign is
that ill-named thing; the only one, that escapes the instituting question of philosophy: 'What is . . . 7' " Derrida, then, gives the name "trace" to
the part played by the radically other within the structure of difference that is the sign. (I stick to "trace" in my translation, because it "looks the
same" as Derrida's word; the reader must remind himself of at least the track, even the spoor, contained within the French word.) In spite of
itself, Saussurean linguistics recognizes the structure of the sign to be a trace-structure. And Freud's psychoanalysis, to some extent in spite of
itself, recognizes the structure of experience itself to be a trace-, not a presence-structure. Following an argument analogical to the argument
on the sign, Derrida puts the word "experience" under erasure: As for the concept of experience, it is most unwieldy here. Like all the notions I
am using, it belongs to the history of metaphysics and
we can only use it under erasure . "Experience" has always designated the
relationship with a presence, whether that relationship had the form of consciousness or not. Yet we must, by means of the sort of contortion
and contention that discourse is obliged to undergo, exhaust the resources of the concept of experience before attaining and in order to attain,
by deconstruction, its ultimate foundation. It is the only way to escape "empiricism" and the "naive" critiques of experience at the same time
(89, 60) . Now we begin to see how Derrida's notion of "sous rature" differs from that of Heidegger's. Heidegger's Being might point at an
inarticulable presence. Derrida's
trace is the mark of the absence of a presence, an always already absent
present, of the lack at the origin that is the condition of thought and experience. For somewhat different yet
similar contingencies, both Heidegger and Derrida teach us to use language in terms of a trace-structure, effacing it even as it presents its
legibility. We
must remember this when we wish to attack Derrida or, for that matter, Heidegger, on certain sorts
of straightforward logical grounds; for, one can always forget the invisible erasure , " act as though
this makes no difference ." Derrida writes thus on the strategy of philosophizing about the trace: The value of the
transcendental arche [origin] must make its necessity felt before letting itself be erased. The concept
of the arche-trace must comply with both that necessity and that erasure . It is in fact contradictory and not
acceptable within the logic of identity. The
trace is not only the disappearance of origin, ... it means that the origin
did not even disappear, that it was never constituted except reciprocally by a non-origin, the trace,
which thus becomes the origin of the origin. From then on, to wrench the concept of the trace from the
classical scheme which would derive it from a presence or from an originary non-trace and which would
make of it an empirical mark, one must indeed speak of an originary trace or arche-trace (90, 61). At once
inside and outside a certain Hegelian and Heideggerian tradition, Derrida, then, is asking us to change certain habits of mind:
the
authority of the text is provisional, the origin is a trace; contradicting logic, we must learn to use and
erase our language at the same time.
In the last few pages, we have seen Heidegger and Derrida engaged in the process of this
curious practice. Derrida in particular is acutely aware that
it is a question of strategy. It is the strategy of using the
only available language while not subscribing to its premises , or "operat[ing] according to the vocabulary of the very
thing that one delimits." (MP 1 8, SP 147 ) For Hegel, as Hyppolite remarks, "philosophical discourse" contains "its own criticism within itself."
(SC 336, 158) And Derrida, describing
the strategy "of a discourse which borrows from a heritage the resources
necessary for the deconstruction of that heritage itself ," remarks similarly, "language bears within itself the
necessity of its own critique." (ED 416, SC 254) The remark becomes clearer in the light of writing "sous rature": ((At each step I was
obliged to proceed by ellipses, corrections and corrections of corrections, letting go of each concept at the very moment that I needed to use it,
etc."14 There is some similarity between this strategy and what Levi-Strauss calls bricolage in La pensee sauvage.15 Derrida himself remarks:
Levi-Strauss will always remain faithful to this double intention: to preserve as an instrument that whose truth-value he criticizes, conserving . .
. all these old concepts, while at the same time exposing . . . their limits, treating them as tools which can still be of use. No longer is any truthvalue [or rigorous meaning] attributed to them; there is a readiness to abandon them if necessary if other instruments should appear more
useful. In the meantime, their relative efficacy is exploited, and they are employed to destroy the old machinery to which they belong and of
which they themselves are pieces. Thus it is that the language of the human sciences criticizes itself· (ED 417; SC 255,254) One distinction
between Levi-Strauss and Derrida is clear enough. Levi Strauss's anthropologist seems free to pick his tool; Derrida's philosopher knows that
there is no tool that does not belong to the metaphysical box, and proceeds from there. But there is yet another difference, a difference that
we must mark as we outline Derridean strategy. Levi-Strauss contrasts the bricoleur to the engineer. ("The 'bricoleur' has no precise equivalent
in English. He is a man who undertakes odd jobs and is a Jack of all trades or is a kind of professional do-it-yourself man, but . . he is of a
different standing from, for instance, the English 'odd job man' or handyman." 16) The discourse of anthropology and the other sciences of man
must be bricolage: the discourses of formal logic, and the pure sciences, one presumes, can be those of engineering. The engineer's
"instrument" is "specially adapted to a specific technical need"; the bricoleur makes do with things that were meant perhaps for other ends.17
The anthropologist must tinker because, at least as Levi-Strauss argues in Le cru et Ie cuit, it is in fact impossible for him to master the whole
field. Derrida, by an important contrast, suggests that the
field is theoretically, not merely empirically, unknowable.
(ED 419 f., SC 259 f.) Not even in an ideal universe of an empirically reduced number of possibilities would
the projected "end" of knowledge ever coincide with its "means." Such a coincidence-"engineering"-is
an impossible dream of plenitude. The reason for bricolage is that there can be nothing else. No engineer can make
the "means" – the sign – and the "end" – meaning – become selfidentical. Sign will always lead to
sign, one substituting the other (playfully, since "sign" is " under erasure ") as signifier and signified in
turn. Indeed, the notion of play is important here. Knowledge is not a systematic tracking down of a truth that is
hidden but may be found. It is rather the field "of freepIay, that is to say, a field of infinite substitutions in the
closure of a finite ensemble." (ED 423, SC 260)
The strikethrough removes the term while leaving it within our collective
consciousness, reminding us things exist both virtually and actually, and allows the
term to escape its social and discursive constructions.
Halsey 2004 (Mark, Professor at Flinders University, “Environmental Visions: Deleuze and the
Modalities of Nature”. Ethics and the Environment. Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall/Winter 2004. pp. 35-36) [nagel]
As I will illustrate, these modalities
always already harbor an ethic linked to the production of a life (or lives)
and/or a death (or deaths). For instance, envisioning forest to mean “an area . . . dominated by trees having
usually a single stem and a mature stand height exceeding 5 metres”4 rather than, say, 20 meters, has
serious consequences for biodiversity, employment, resource security, research and development, and
so forth. Vision, in short, is an immanently ethical project. As Felix Guattari puts it, “The genesis of enunciation
[and thus envisioning the world] is itself caught up in the movement of processual creation.”5 This
means each of us needs to be especially wary when imagining or speaking of the environment. Every
term—forest, river, mountain, etc.—has as part of its condition an alternative array of meanings (a space where the
unseen and unsaid reside). Each term, in other words, carries with it a complex envisioning of what it is possible to know or see. I want to
suggest that in
order to develop an ethics of seeing it is necessary to invent a way of thinking-speaking that
dislodges the traditional relationships struck between word and world. For to speak firstly of Goolengook
(a location), and secondly of a forest block (a function), is to ignore the modalities of nature (of which
vision is but one) operating prior to the invocation of these terms. What I am proposing, therefore, is the invention of a term which
suspends the idea of a permanently ascribed function or set of attributes, and which resists aligning itself with the idea of an originary or pure
Nature. As a matter of strategy, then, Goolengook
forest block will be recoded as Goolengook. This use of the
strikethrough can be taken to indicate the presence-absence of the area in question through time and
space. The employment of this technique is critically important because Goolengook (minus the
strikethrough) is an invariably overcoded term within political, legal, scientific, and popular discourses. It
has, in effect, become a shorthand way of referring to something which should either be exploited for
industrial purposes or preserved for all time.6 The strikethrough reminds the reader that the world
exists both virtually (as a decoded force) as well as actually (as a categorical body). Goolengook, in other words,
subsists between and beyond the wills and epistemologies which pull it this way and that and should be
written and spoken of as such.
Modernity maps terms through their political and social location to create binaries of
usefulness. To break these constructions, we must delimit the term itself and create
new ways of envisioning natural space.
Halsey 2004 (Mark, Professor at Flinders University, “Environmental Visions: Deleuze and the
Modalities of Nature”. Ethics and the Environment. Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall/Winter 2004. pp. 38-39) [nagel]
What these passages indicate is that viewer
and object are conditioned by the particular limits ascribed to vision
from one episteme to the next. Hal Foster11 says that such limits indicate that it is more accurate to talk in
terms of visuality rather than some ahistorical or apolitical ‘envisioning’ per se. In the present context, it is fair to say
that Goolengook has been viewed predominantly through the lens of modernity. This is a lens heavily imbued
by a belief in the illuminative powers of the scientific method. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the first
chirographic records of Goolengook were those written by geologists and botanists as opposed to, say,
artists. These scientific excursions were nothing less than reconnaissance work devoted to visualizing and subsequently enunciating
Nature. More accurately, they were exercises which enabled Western eyes to gaze upon and ascribe a sense of
order to that which lay beyond civilization (or ‘settled districts’). In short, modernity requires a particular way of
seeing and not merely the fact that one sees, as if seeing is a universally consistent or ahistorical
action (Berger 1972). For Deleuze, vision and language (if, indeed, it is possible to distinguish one from the
other) have long been haunted by certain transcendental structures which limit sight. Signifier, science, ego,
God, truth, rationality, cause, effect, and so on, are the horizons (idols) which govern what it has been deemed permissible to see over the last
three centuries or so. The recurrence of such structures has meant that subjects do not envision an unfettered reality but instead interpret and
posit the world according to the “scopic regimes” that evolve across and within particular epistemes (e.g., Antiquity, Renaissance, Classicism,
Modernity).12 It
is, of course, impossible to get permanently outside these regimes which is to say that a
‘pure’ scopic moment or a ‘pure’ language capable of depicting the ‘essence’ of things does not, indeed
cannot, exist. And yet what is obvious is that the texts which relay the various sightings of Goolengook—whether they be scientific, legal,
political, or industrial—do so as if precisely the opposite were so. Of course, it would be foolish to deny that Goolengook was
looked upon differently by various groups at distinct moments. But at each point, for each lexical
folding, modern visuality has functioned as a device for delimiting what might otherwise be treated as a
flow of differential, acategorical forces. And how, specifically, was Goolengook envisioned throughout these texts? As something
beautiful, something wild, and something unique. But also as something banal, something in need of taming, and as something common (i.e., as
elsewhere represented and/or repeated). What is truly remarkable is that no
matter which group gazes upon Goolengook —
explorers, foresters, conservationists—this space is, with one notable exception, always envisaged as
something in need of alteration. Goolengook, from the very ‘first,’ is conceived either in terms of a lack
that needs filling or as a place of excess which needs to be curtailed. It is as if observing Goolengook is
equivalent to cultivating the urge to transform its dimensions which, of course, includes the process of
ascribing certain dimensions (depths, breadths, heights, objects) in the first place. Thus the ‘answer’ to the question: ‘How has
Goolengook been envisioned?’ must in some sense be concomitant with a fervent and ongoing instrumentalism. Here, nature is
conceived either as a tool in the service of ‘Man’ (e.g., timber), or where such service is deemed
inappropriate, as something to be cast out as Other, as useless, as beyond redemption (e.g., Jungle).
Cap
2nc/1nr -Cap K overviewThe 1AC’s false sense of urgency and myopic focus on spectacular but
particular manifestations of subjective violence prevents us from stepping
back and analyzing broader economic structures of capitalism – that’s
Zizek – the impact is extinction from war, environment, and oppression- Try
or die for the alt – Extend Johnston – The judge should individually choose
to withdraw – dis-engagement breaks down the system
Challenging global capital is the ultimate ethical responsibility. The current
order guarantees social exclusion on a global scale
Zizek and Daly 2004
(Slavoj, professor of philosophy at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana, and Glyn, Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Faculty of
Arts and Social Sciences at University College, Northampton, Conversations with Zizek, page 14-16)
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that our
ethico-political
responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of today’s global capitalism and its obscene
naturalization / anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it throughout the world. Against
the standardized positions of postmodern culture – with all its pieties concerning ‘multiculturalist’ etiquette – Zizek is arguing for a
politics that might be called ‘radically incorrect’ in the sense that it break with these types of positions 7 and focuses instead on the
very organizing principles of today’s social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and
subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has been bedeviled by an almost fetishistic economism that has tended towards political morbidity. With
the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and more recently Laclau and Mouffee, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the
transcendence of all forms of economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem that now presents itself is almost that of
the opposite fetish. That is to say, the prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a way of not engaging with
economic reality and as a way of implicitly accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian twist, the fear of
economism can end up reinforcing a de facto economic necessity in respect of contemporary capitalism (i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up
the very thing it fears). This is not to endorse any kind of retrograde return to economism. Zizek’s point is rather that in rejecting economism
we should not lose sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies of humanity and our very sense of the possible. In
particular we should not overlook Marx’s central insight that in
order to create a universal global system the forces of
capitalism seek to conceal the politico-discursive violence of its construction through a kind of
gentrification of that system. What is persistently denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is that the
gentrification of global liberal capitalism is one whose ‘universalism’ fundamentally reproduces and depends upon
a disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors of the world’s populations. In this way, neo-liberal
ideology attempts to naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning and losing as if they
were simply a matter of chance and sound judgment in a neutral market place. Capitalism does indeed create a
space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in terms of social exclusion
is exorbitant. That is to say, the
human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and degraded ‘life-chances’
cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social exclusion remains
mystified and nameless (viz. the patronizing reference to the ‘developing world’). And Zizek’s point is that this mystification is
magnified through capitalism’s profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to
redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation.
Instead of Bolshevism, the tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms of
consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek
argues for a new universalism whose primary ethical directive is to
confront the fact that our forms of social existence are founded on exclusion on a global scale. While it is
perfectly true that universalism can never become Universal (it will always require a hegemonic-particular embodiment in order to have any
meaning), what
is novel about Zizek’s universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or
reduce the status of the abject Other to that of a ‘glitch’ in an otherwise sound matrix.
This question of self-orientation comes first
Johnston ’04 (Adrian, interdisciplinary research fellow in psychoanalysis at Emory, The Cynic’s Fetish: Slavoj Zizek and the Dynamics of
Belief, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society)
The height of Zizek's philosophical traditionalism, his fidelity to certain lasting truths too precious to cast away in a postmodern frenzy, is his
conviction that no worthwhile praxis can emerge prior to the careful and deliberate formulation of a correct conceptual framework. His
references to the Lacanian notion of the Act (qua agent-less occurrence not brought about by a subject) are especially strange in light of the
fact that he seemingly endorses the view that theory must precede practice, namely, that deliberative reflection is, in a way, primary. For Zizek,
the foremost "practical" task to be accomplished today isn't some kind of rebellious acting out, which would, in the end, amount to nothing
more than a series of impotent, incoherent outbursts. Instead, given
the contemporary exhaustion of the socio-political
imagination under the hegemony of liberal-democratic capitalism, he sees the liberation of thinking
itself from its present constraints as the first crucial step that must be taken if anything is to be
changed for the better. In a lecture given in Vienna in 2001, Zizek suggests that Marx's call to break out of the sterile
closure of abstract intellectual ruminations through direct, concrete action (thesis eleven on Feuerbach--"The
philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it") must be inverted given the new
prevailing conditions of late-capitalism. Nowadays, one must resist succumbing to the temptation to
short-circuit thinking in favor of acting, since all such rushes to action are doomed; they either fail to
disrupt capitalism or are ideologically co-opted by it.
focus on particular violent acts is a lure that causes ideological mystification and
means we only address symptoms not the root cause of violence
Žižek ’8 (Slavoj, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, Big Ideas // Small Books, 2008, p. 3-8) [m leap]
Instead of confronting violence directly, the present book casts six sideways glances. There are reasons for looking
at the problem of
violence awry. My underlying premise is that there is something inherently mystifying in a direct confrontation
with it: the overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy with the victims inexorably function as a
lure which prevents us from thinking. A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition
ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror. A
distinction needs to be made, as well, between (factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any other narrative
of a trauma) truthful is its very factual unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her painful and
humiliating experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us suspicious of its
truth. The problem here is part of the solution: the very factual deficiencies of the traumatised subject's report on her experience bear witness
to the truthfulness of her report, since they signal that the reported content "contaminated" the manner of reporting it. The same holds, of
course, for the so-called unreliability of the verbal reports of Holocaust survivors: the witness able to offer a clear narrative of his camp
experience would disqualify himself by virtue of that clarity.2 The
only appropriate approach to my subject thus seems to be
one which permits variations on violence kept at a distance out of respect towards its victims. Adorno's famous saying, it
seems, needs correction: it is not poetry that is impossible after Auschwitz, but rather prose.3 Realistic prose fails, where the poetic evocation
of the unbearable atmosphere of a camp succeeds. That is to say, when Adorno declares poetry impossible (or, rather, barbaric) after
Auschwitz, this impossibility is an enabling impossibility: poetry is always, by definition, "about" something that cannot be addressed directly,
only alluded to. One shouldn't be afraid to take this a step further and refer to the old saying that music comes in when words fail. There may
well be some truth in the common wisdom that, in a kind of historical premonition, the music of Schoenberg articulated the anxieties and
nightmares of Auschwitz before the event took place. In her memoirs, Anna Akhmatova describes what happened to her when, at the height of
the Stalinist purges, she was waiting in the long queue in front of the Leningrad prison to learn about her arrested son Lev: One day somebody
in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a young woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had of course never heard me called by
name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there), "Can you describe
this?" And I said, "I can." Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.4 The key question, of course, is what
kind of description is intended here? Surely it is not a realistic description of the situation, but what Wallace Stevens called "description without
place," which is what is proper to art. This is not a description which locates its content in a historical space and time, but a description which
creates, as the background of the phenomena it describes, an inexistent (virtual) space of its own, so that what appears in it is not an
appearance sustained by the depth of reality behind it, but a decontextualised appearance, an appearance which fully coincides with real being.
To quote Stevens again: "What it seems it is and in such seeming all things are." Such an artistic description "is not a sign for something that lies
outside its form."5 Rather, it extracts from the confused reality its own inner form in the same way that Schoenberg "extracted" the inner form
of totalitarian terror. He evoked the way this terror affects subjectivity. Does this recourse to artistic description imply that we are in danger of
regressing to a contemplative attitude that somehow betrays the urgency to "do something" about the depicted horrors? Let's
think
about the fake sense of urgency that pervades the left-liberal humanitarian discourse on violence: in
it, abstraction and graphic (pseudo)concreteness coexist in the staging of the scene of violence – against
women, blacks, the homeless, gays... "A woman is raped every six seconds in this country" and "In the time it takes you to read this paragraph,
ten children will die of hunger" are just two examples. Underlying all this is a hypocritical sentiment of moral outrage. Just this kind of pseudourgency was exploited by Starbucks a couple of years ago when, at store entrances, posters greeting customers pointed out that a portion of
the chain's profits went into health-care for the children of Guatemala, the source of their coffee, the inference being that with every cup you
drink, you save a child's life. There
is a fundamental anti-theoretical edge to these urgent injunctions. There is
no time to reflect: we have to act now. Through this fake sense of urgency, the post-industrial rich,
living in their secluded virtual world, not only do not deny or ignore the harsh reality outside their area –
they actively refer to it all the time. As Bill Gates recently put it: "What do computers matter when millions are still unnecessarily
dying of dysentery?" Against this fake urgency, we might want to place Marx's wonderful letter to Engels of 1870, when, for a
brief moment, it seemed that a European revolution was again at the gates. Marx's letter conveys his sheer panic: can't the revolutionaries wait
for a couple of years? He hasn't yet finished his Capital. A
critical analysis of the present global constellation – one
which offers no clear solution, no "practical" advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of
the tunnel, since one is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing towards us – usually
meets with reproach: "Do you mean we should do nothing? Just sit and wait?" One should gather the
courage to answer: "YES, precisely that!" There are situations when the only truly "practical" thing to do is to
resist the temptation to engage immediately and to "wait and see" by means of a patient, critical
analysis. Engagement seems to exert its pressure on us from all directions. In a well-known passage from his Existentialism and Humanism,
Sartre deployed the dilemma of a young man in France in 1942, torn between the duty to help his lone, ill mother and the duty to enter the
Resistance and fight the Germans; Sartre's point is, of course, that there is no a priori answer to this dilemma. The young man needs to make a
decision grounded only in his own abyssal freedom and assume full responsibility for it.6 An obscene third way out of the dilemma would have
been to advise the young man to tell his mother that he will join the Resistance, and to tell his Resistance friends that he will take care of his
mother, while, in reality, withdrawing to a secluded place and studying... There is more than cheap cynicism in this advice. It brings to mind a
well-known Soviet joke about Lenin. Under socialism, Lenin's advice to young people, his answer to what they should do, was "Learn, learn, and
learn." This was evoked at all times and displayed on all school walls. The joke goes: Marx, Engels, and Lenin are asked whether they would
prefer to have a wife or a mistress. As expected, Marx, rather conservative in private matters, answers, "A wife!" while Engels, more of a bon
vivant, opts for a mistress. To everyone's surprise, Lenin says, "I'd like to have both!" Why? Is there a hidden stripe of decadent jouisseur
behind his austere revolutionary image? No-he explains: "So that I can tell my wife that I am going to my mistress, and my mistress that I have
to be with my wife..." "And then, what do you do?" "I go to a solitary place to learn, learn, and learn!" Is this not exactly what Lenin did after
the catastrophe of 1914? He withdrew to a lonely place in Switzerland, where he "learned, learned, and learned," reading Hegel's logic. And
this is what we should do today when we find ourselves bombarded with mediatic images of violence.
We need to "learn, learn, and learn" what causes this violence.
1nr
Health Care DA
Actually it is pretty easy to get access to strain – specifically a recent influenza strain
causes extinction if bio terrorists obtain the information
Prado 12 (Mark Evan, a physicist in the Washington, D.C. region working for the Pentagon in advanced planning in the space program,
citing: The Office of Biological Activities (OSB), a division of the US government's National Institute of Health (NIH) which promotes science,
safety, and ethics in biotechnology, “Human Extinction by Biotechnology and Nanotechnology”, http://www.permanent.com/humanextinction-biotechnology-nano.html)
As biotechnology has advanced, so has the power of the individual. In
the past century, it took a country or rogue
organization, a lot of money, and special skills to create a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). Now, it takes
just one person, the internet, and a small cheap lab.¶ Instead of "Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)", we are
faced with "Weapons of Mass Extinction (WME)".¶ For example, in 2011, in a surprise address to the Biological Weapons
Convention in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated: "Less than a year ago, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
made a call to arms for, and I quote, 'brothers with degrees in microbiology or chemistry to develop a
weapon of mass destruction.'"Clinton-UN¶ She also officially acknowledged the generally accepted situation that "A crude but
effective terrorist weapon can be made by using a small sample of any number of widely available
pathogens, inexpensive equipment, and college-level chemistry and biology" and noted that "it is not
possible, in our opinion, to create a verification regime" for preventing biological weapons.¶ This came just
a few months after two independent developments -- a scientist in the Netherlands, and a team led
by a Japanese scientist at the University of Wisconsin -- both announced that they had created viruses
in the laboratory which are far more virulent than anything which had occurred naturally, potentially
the most deadly virus ever faced by humans. Both were created by modifying the H5N1 Bird Flu virus in
the laboratory. These scientists were apparently planning to publish their research openly soon after
Clinton's address.¶ The US government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a
division of the National Institute of Health (NIH) requested they not publish the details. The NSABB
has no legal authority, and is only an advisory organization. The authors disagreed with the decision but agreed to
adhere to it. All the authors had already received funding from the NIH and it might be presumed they would continue to receive funding...
unless they did not follow the request.¶ After also being contacted by the NSABB, the two scientific journals, Nature and Science (two highly
established journals), still planned to publish the two papers minus some of the details. The journal Science stated it would agree with the
NSABB to refrain from publishing the details only if the government created a system whereby scientists worldwide could access the details if
they had a legitimate need to know the information. However, at
least one of the scientists had already presented his
work at a major conference.SciAm-Albert¶ Indeed, the editor of Science Magazine said "“This finding shows it’s
much easier to evolve this virus to an extremely dangerous state where it can be transmitted in
aerosols [i.e., by coughing or sneezing] than anybody had recognized.” NYTimes-1220¶ In 2011, folks. Imagine, as
this news spreads around, and as technology advances even further, what the world will be like in 2020. Scientists are already saying
it's not a matter of "if" but one of "when".¶ These kinds of things cannot be kept secret. They will spread.
Indeed, such news announcements stimulate interest. You can be sure that the news media will broadcast such gains
very prominently, because it sells their service and makes them money, and can selfishly rationalize
away the greater interests of our species.¶ Keeping this kind of research secret is difficult.¶ Pharmaceutical
companies pay scientists for information and cooperation all the time. Others can pay scientists as
well. There are still many scientists who rationalize their research as "not that dangerous" and/or is
important for "defensive" purposes (kind've like other arms races) in order to promote their paid work, and
when money is offered, many people can rationalize even more. It may not matter whether the money is offered by a
pharmaceutical company or just a visiting consultant.¶ It could even be an undercover agents posing as pharmaceutical company staff, either a
front company or faked, or even a plant into a legitimate company, university, computer center, or other organization. Indeed, what
percentage of people really verify an identity on a business card, and check with the boss of the person?¶
Beyond that, people just
talk, out of ego, curiosity, open scientific dialogue, or soliciting work. Graduate students and other young people
often brag about their knowledge in casual conversations, or job interviews. It's easy to find out what research people are
doing, and people and places can be targeted undercover.¶ University laboratories, offices, and homes
are often not locked or secured well. If necessary, most locks can be picked easily by somebody
trained in standard locksmith skills. Most trash isn't shredded. Hired thieves don't even need to know what
they're stealing and can be told a ruse, but money talks. And many victim companies and laboratories
would cover up a break-in or leak, out of fear it would tarnish their reputation and reduce funding, as well as threaten
individual jobs and well being. This kind of espionage has been going on for decades by professionals, normally
undetected. It's just becoming much more deadly and easier for an individual or a small group to do
on a shoestring budget.¶ This is not news, but has been known for decades by a tiny percentage of people. What is lacking is
broader recognition, acceptance, and interest in bioweapons.¶ PERMANENT was created in 1985 while
I was working for the Pentagon in advanced planning in space "defense" systems. From also reviewing
"nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC)" weapons and other things at that time and before, it was abundantly clear to many of
us that a much greater threat to the world, actually to our species, was biological weapons. In one way, it
was good that nations were wasting their money and focus on nuclear, robotic, and more
conventional weapons, which do not create existential risks, rather than on biological weapons.¶ While it
was good experience to be working on advanced planning in the space program, there was very little interest in top government circles in space
colonization, mainly just interest in the next money contracts, and overblown fear of the Soviets at that time was a successful formula for
getting funding. Fear mongering and demonizing sells (and the secrecy and unknowns surrounding weapons programs only enhanced "what if"
fears, regardless of how dysfunction the opponent really is, information which was not leaked publicly). If you talked about mining the moon or
asteroids near Earth, most people would be disinterested and many would laugh and brush it aside.¶ It
was difficult enough to get
serious attention to PERMANENT concepts, and arguing that we have a rush deadline of doing so
before we biological weapons make us extinct -- before our own technological advances destroy us -- usually got a reinforced
brushoff and often snide remarks. I mainly stuck to the engineering and scientific studies relevant to PERMANENT, with a general theme of
space industrialization for sustainable profits, and space colonization following that.¶ The hottest topics were related to space tourism whereby
we could go to space for selfish reasons for a vacation, such as private earth launchers. Advocates of private earth launch stated that we
needed to get the cost of launch down via their private projects before space resources would become economical. (Baloney, as I discuss
elsewhere on this website.)¶ When writing the PERMANENT book, I buried the biotechnology / supervirus / extinction threats in the
Introduction (see, for example, page iii, under the section title Why. (That was published in 1998.)¶ At the turn of the millenium, I was actually
out of money, due to spending my savings to write the PERMANENT book and website for outreach, as well as the expenses of ordering
scientific publications and other important basic items, plus mailing copies of the book to wealthy people (at our expense, and we had to find
them first) ... all while forgoing many opportunities to go out and make money instead for myself. While the website attracted huge numbers of
visitors and a whole lot of traffic, not many people were willing to make any financial donation, and the overall support was very disappointing.
My dot com bubble burst.¶ So, hardly able to survive, many years of working on PERMANENT website ground to a crawl, and the rest of
PERMANENT was frozen for the most part, except for Sam Fraser's volunteer artistic overhaul in 2001. I had to go out and make money in the
usual ordinary ways in the world.¶ Some time before this, in the year 2000, I moved the extinction risk and the responsibility of our generation
up to the very top of the home page. "In all geologic time, our generation will be the one to get mankind off our lonely planetary cradle. It is a
race against time, before biotechnology makes mankind extinct, or nanotechnology destroys Earth's biosphere, suddenly." ¶ You can see a year
2000 version of this (before Sam's artistic overhaul) on the Way Back Machine's archival page on PERMANENT.¶ Then came the year 2001.
Case
No risk of meltdowns
Beller, 4 - Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Dr. Denis E, “Atomic
Time Machines: Back to the Nuclear Future,” 24 J. Land Resources & Envtl. L. 41, 2004)
No caveats, no explanation, not from this engineer/scientist. It's just plain safe! All sources of electricity
production result in health and safety impacts. However, at the National Press Club meeting, Energy
Secretary Richardson indicated that nuclear power is safe by stating, "I'm convinced it is." 45 Every
nuclear scientist and engineer should agree with that statement. Even mining, transportation, and waste
from nuclear power have lower impacts because of the difference in magnitude of materials. In
addition, emissions from nuclear plants are kept to near zero. 46 If you ask a theoretical scientist,
nuclear energy does have a potential tremendous adverse impact. However, it has had that same
potential for forty years, which is why we designed and operate nuclear plants with multiple levels of
containment and safety and multiple backup systems. Even the country's most catastrophic accident,
the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, did not injure anyone. 47 The fact is, Westerndeveloped and Western-operated nuclear power is the safest major source of electricity production.
Haven't we heard enough cries of "nuclear wolf" from scared old men and "the sky is radioactive"
from [*50] nuclear Chicken Littles? We have a world of data to prove the fallacy of these claims about
the unsafe nature of nuclear installations.
[SEE FIGURE IN ORIGINAL]
Figure 2. Deaths resulting from electricity generation. 48
Figure 2 shows the results of an ongoing analysis of the safety impacts of energy production from
several sources of energy. Of all major sources of electricity, nuclear power has produced the least
impact from real accidents that have killed real people during the past 30 years, while hydroelectric has
had the most severe accident impact. 49 The same is true for environmental and health impacts. 50 Of
all major sources of energy, nuclear energy has the least impacts on environment and health while coal
has the greatest. 51 The low death [*51] rate from nuclear power accidents in the figure includes the
Chernobyl accident in the Former Soviet Union. 52
NRC checks meltdowns
Francis 2004 David R. Francis, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, 2004 (DS) “After nuclear's
meltdown, a cautious revival” http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0329/p12s02-usec.html
Could a Three Mile Island happen again? The NRC blames that accident on "a combination of personnel
error, design deficiencies, and component failures." The event, adds an NRC fact sheet, led to
"permanent and sweeping changes in how NRC regulates its licensees - which, in turn, has reduced the
risk to public health and safety." David Lockbaum, an engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists,
agrees that the NRC has become much tougher, even before 9/11 raised the specter of terrorists flying a
jet into a nuclear power plant. Instead of inspecting nuclear plants every two years for four safety
categories, the NRC since April 2000 has been looking them over every three months for 26 or so safety
factors. "When performance starts to fall, it should show up sooner," says Mr. Lockbaum, a longtime
campaigner for reducing the risks of nuclear power.
Meltdown fears are media hype and scare tactics
Spiers, 2008 (Elizabeth, Founder of Dead Horse Media and dealbreaker.com, June 9, “The Case for
Nukes”, Fortune Magazine, FIRSTsearch)
WHEN GOLDMAN SACHS analysts suggested last week that oil could hit $200 a barrel, I expected someone somewhere to express horror at the possibility. But the
reaction was a tiny, resignation-filled sigh. Relentless
fuel-price increases have so exhausted consumers that we don't
have the energy to be outraged anymore. So we feel helpless as we watch oil sprint past the $130 mark
on its way to price-prohibitive territory and wonder whether it's too late to bring back the horse and
buggy. Our sense of helplessness is an illusion: There are things we can do. We got ourselves into this mess, mostly
through multiple administrations of politically comfortable but shortsighted decision-making. And inasmuch as we're willing to stand a
little political discomfort, we can get ourselves out.
One uncomfortable way to mitigate the energy crisis has been under our nose since the 1950s: nuclear energy. It's one
of the cleanest and most efficient alternatives to coal- and natural-gas-based electricity production, and
it's responsible for less than 20% of domestic electricity production. The most recent numbers (2006) indicate that coal-based
production was the largest contributor, at 48%. Increasingly expensive petroleum and natural gas account for 22%. All three are replaceable.
It may not be fashionable to suggest that the French know what they're doing with regard to anything but wine and cheese, but spend some time in Provence and
note the remarkably clean air and cheap electricity, 75% of which is produced by nuclear power plants. Most of the plants were built after the 1970s oil shocks that
sent France's economy into a tailspin because it was almost completely dependent on foreign oil, as we are now. Nuclear
energy doesn't produce
the air pollution that burning coal does, and even waste products are recyclable, though it hasn't been done thanks to
an also potentially shortsighted Carter-era decision to ban it over fears of nuclear terrorism.
Although the ban has been reversed, the fears still linger. But irrational
fear of improbable safety breaches is responsible for
most opposition to nuclear power in this country. The unlikely culprit? Pop culture. We've seen The China Syndrome,
and we worry that nuclear-reactor employees may be bumbling Homer Simpsons, capable of accidentally
pushing the red button. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island -- the former of which killed 36 people and the
latter of which killed none -- have become so outsized in the American imagination that our perception
of actual risk has been completely distorted. We're willing to tolerate the health risks and environmental
repercussions of other fuels to avoid the infinitesimally small and comically improbable possibility of a
catastrophic accident that resembles something out of a 1979 Jane Fonda movie, the likes of which have never happened in the history of nuclear
power.
We also cognitively associate nuclear power with bombmaking and having seen what atomic radiation can do to people; we think of it as being exponentially worse
than exposure to fire, poisonous gases, and pollution -- the likely repercussions of large-scale accidents at conventional power plants. As with anything that's exotic,
potentially dangerous, and little understood, it becomes more frightening in mythology. Silhouettes
of cooling towers on the horizon
seem sinister because we've seen the imagery from Chernobyl -- an accident that was exacerbated
because it was left burning for five days, which would never happen now.
Are there downsides? Yes. Nuclear waste has to be stored somewhere, and consistent with human behavior since the beginning of time, no one
wants it in his own backyard. But at some point we have to weigh the necessity of energy independence against
the cost of uncomfortable fixes like nuclear energy. As oil climbs to the point where no one can afford it and we're forced to stop
buying it -- what Goldman analysts euphemistically call "demand destruction," as if it were intentional -- we may find that we have no choice. We
can't afford to be afraid anymore.