Opponent: Troy Independent AP | Judge: Nethmin Liyange
1AC - Vulnerability 1NC - K mad blackness CP recognition 1AR - all 2NR - K mad blackness 2AR - Vulnerability - mad blackness
USC
5
Opponent: Harvard Westlake AL | Judge: David Dosch
1AC - Vulnerability 1NC - Cap K 1AR - all 2NR - Cap 2AR - perm with net benefit
USC
Octas
Opponent: Able2Shine MC | Judge: Panel
1AC - Vulnerability 1NC - Duality K rest same
USC
Quarters
Opponent: Stockdale GS | Judge: Panel
1AC - Capitalism 1NC - Baudrillard rest same
USC
Semis
Opponent: Malborough JH | Judge: Panel
1AC - Qatar 1NC - T nebel K postwork CP unions 1AR - all 2NR - CP unions 2AR - Case CP
Yale
2
Opponent: American Heritage Broward JA | Judge: Amulya Natchukuri
1AC - Virtue Ethics 1NC - T must reduce - Kant 1AR - I meet on T - Kant Turns - Skep triggers on Kant 2NR - T 2AR - Same
Yale
4
Opponent: Lexington JB | Judge: Anand Rao
1AC - Virtue Ethics 1NC - Util - WTO credibility DA 1AR - All 2NR - All 2AR - All
Yale
6
Opponent: Byram Hills SH | Judge: Eric Endsley
1AC - Weheliye 1NC - Util - Innovation DA - Cap K 1AR - All 2NR - Cap 2AR - Weheliye
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Cites
Entry
Date
Cites Note
Tournament: Blue Key | Round: Octas | Opponent: Strake Jesuit VM | Judge: Panel Cites haven't been working since the middle of blu key. The alienation AC is open sourced under blue key octos. Lmk if you need me to send you the cites.
11/6/21
Contact Info
Tournament: Contact Info | Round: Finals | Opponent: You | Judge: Hi, I'm Noam! I use He/Him pronouns.
I'd prefer if you contacted me by phone (773-619-1893) Facebook and email (noamlevinsky@yahoo.com) also work.
Please let me know if there's anything I should do to make our round more accessible that isn't a well-known circuit norm, because I don't always check my opponent's wiki page.
Empathy is the first question of ethics. In order to have a moral obligation to accept or reject the resolution, we must first have moral obligations towards the other. Before debating normative ethics, we must first find the procedure through which we give the other moral value. We must center policy that enables people to recognize the humanity of the other.
The concept of the human is a relational subjectivity created in the context of a "we." Our relations to one another determine whose lives are recognizable as fully human. Therefore, life is constituted via our political relationships derived from vulnerability, not just our biological functions.
Butler 1 (2004) Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, Print. (p.20) Park City NL I propose to start, and to end, with the question of the human AND question of being vulnerable because it determines who counts under any other framework.
A politics of grief is crucial to collective consciousness, class or otherwise, because it de-privitizes our phenomenological experience of politics and everyday life. This ensures we recognize others as human and address their struggles.
Butler 2 Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life AND undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something.
A politics of vulnerability determines our relations to one another and is therefore crucial to making decisions that prioritize human life and prevent violence. I control a key meta-ethical question of how we identify evil and suffering.
Butler 3 Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, Print. (p.30-1) Park City NL Let us return to the issue of grief, to the moments in which one AND vulnerable than others, and thus certain human lives are more grievable than others
We can only grieve violence by decentering our narcissistic first-person representations of it. Listening to narratives of the victimized is necessary to engage in a politics of grief. Thus, the role of the judge is to vote for the debater who best uses decentered narratives to support their side of the resolution. Anything else justifies the status quo model of debate where we read statsitics about mass death but never engage with stories of loss, creating political apathy and moral complacency.
Butler 4 Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, Print. Park City NL The point 1 would like to underscore here is that a frame for understanding violence AND and cultivate another sense of a culturally and religiously diverse global political culture?
Literary narratives can form communities beyond the boundaries of recognizability and enable us to grieve the losses of those we are seemingly disconnected with. A literature that builds concept of shared destiny and responsibility can push a politics of vulnerability based in collective struggle.
Darda 14 DARDA, JOSEPH. "Precarious World: Rethinking Global Fiction in Mohsin Hamid’s ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist.’" Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 47, no. 3, University of Manitoba, 2014, pp. 107–22, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44029864. Park City NL The idea of global literature has provoked no small amount of uncertainty and anxiety among AND rather what narratives tell us about the moral underpinnings of private space appropriation.
Part 2: Arrakis
For citation purposes, this narrative is based on Dune, by Frank Herbert. We were never told the about the early history of Arrakis. It wasn’t important; all that mattered was the spice. Arrakis is a desert planet – inhospitable to most life, but rich in spice, a psychoactive drug with clairvoyant powers. The ruling houses fight over who controls the spice trade: the brutal Harkkonens? The noble Atreides? The powerful imperium? No matter who, three things are constant: The biggest profits go to the CHOAM company and its shareholders, who really own the spice. The space guild demands spice to enlighten its navigators, no matter the cost. The Fremen, Arrakis’ native people, are ignored in favor of profit at best, and terrorized at worst. Chani tells Paul that "You were not born to the spice as we were!" Colonists from across the galaxy will only understand Arrakis as a resource, not as a living planet with people who depend on it. All the Fremen have known is suffering! The problem on Arrakis is not one ruling dynasty, but the history of colonialism that continues no matter who leads. The Harkonnens lead ethnic cleansing campaigns, sending ornithopters to gun down any Fremen spotted out in the open. But the Atreides were just as bad, only more clever. Duke Leto was kind, but only because he wanted to conscript the Fremen. When he honored Stilgar, there was no respect, only the cunning ambition of a colonizer scrambling for more raw materials to be sacrificed. Paul led the Fremen against the Harkkonens, but only to secure his own place on the throne, and he married the princess Irulan instead of his desert concubine, Chani. Neither great house cared about plans to terraform Arrakis – the loss of spice fields was too high a price to pay for Fremen lives. Even Pardot-Kynes was an offworld savoir pushing his own ecological agenda on a sovereign people! Just as trans-Atlantic colonialism can’t be explained as a wrongdoing of the British or Spanish empire, colonialism on Arrakis cannot be explained as a fault of one great house. The problem is buried deep in the spice sands that are appropriated for filthy profits. The root of every colonialism on Arrakis was profit for corporations that owned outer space. The great houses may have been the faces of colonialism, but the real motivators were the CHOAM corporation and the space guild. Both of these organizations had a monopoly on physical outer space and were seeking to milk every ounce of money from it. The private ownership of outer space in Dune drives endless violence, structural and explicit, on Arrakis. Thus, I affirm resolved: the appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust. Private appropriation of outer space never helps the homeworld working classes: the farmers of Caladan live in poverty no matter which great house has Arrakis. But worse, those who live and work in outer space are constantly exploited for the sake of profit, but worse than workers at home, because they are out of sight and out of mind: their lives are ungrievable. Is all this worth it for a few aristocrats’ profit? No! When we consider the plight of the colonized, the advance of space colonization must be stopped. Jessica was right that "Mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping."
I get 1AR Theory – anything else justifies infinite 1NC abuse which outweighs on magnitude Permissibility and Presumption affirm You instinctively assume things are good or true – people are innocent until proven guilty and you believe my name is Noam I debated better if it’s a tie because I dealt with a 7-4-6-3 time skew and you had reactivity advantage Interpretation: Debaters must check their 1NC theory interpretations in cross-examination before reading them. To clarify, debaters must ask if their opponent wants to engage in a theory debate or strike the violating arguments from the flow. Violation: It’s pre-emptive, but you violate if you read a shell without asking Standard: Substance education – checking in CX means we avoid theory debates that neither debater want, so we can spend more time on substance. Substance education is a voter and comes 1st because it’s the most exportable benefit of debate – we can always apply knowledge of the world around us.
1AC – Commons
====The political status quo of empire maintains capitalist accumulation and biopolitical production with extreme violence – look to oil wars in the middle-east and agricultural interventions in Central America. Such violence will only persist when space becomes profitable: wars will be fought over asteroids and exoplanets that have economic resources.==== Connell 12 ~Raewyn, sociology at the University of Sydney. 2012. "The Poet of Autonomy: Antonio Negri as a Social Theorist," https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.985.4088andrep=rep1andtype=pdf~~ Negri describes a power structure that operates on a world scale, but has no AND easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."
The commons are disappearing! Land is incorporated in private or public regimes while neoliberalism privatizes social productions and thought. Our lives may be defined by the absence of common wealth, but it still can be found. Locating politics in the social and material commons opens the way for a truly participatory democratic movement. Thus, the role of the ballot is to preserve the commons.
War, suffering, misery, and exploitation increasingly characterize our globalizing world. AND affirm Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.
Extractivism is a dominant economic activity that draws upon common resources like minerals, care, and knowledge for wealth accumulation. This robs the commons of its potential for political change – social and physical energies are drawn into property relations instead of being used for anti-capitalist projects. Only collective owenership of the commons can pave the way for social movements that challenge capitalism. AND this is an independent reason to affirm: any privatization of space will destroy it physically and socially
Hardt and Negri 20 Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. "Empire, Twnety Years On." 2020. https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii120/articles/empire-twenty-years-on.pdf Park City NL Analysis of the mixed constitution of global governance needs to be complemented by investigation of AND potential for autonomy—the potential to create social relations beyond capitalist rule.
The push against private space appropriation is one backed by victims of empire in the global south – solidarity against empire requires affirmation of the resolution. Viewing space as a commons lets us conceive of resource distribution beyond the colonial mechanisms of the nation state.
Levine 15 Nick Levine, MPhil candidate in history of science at the University of Cambridge, 3-21-2015, "Democratize the Universe," Jacobin, https://jacobinmag.com/2015/03/space-industry-extraction-levine The privatization of the Milky Way has begun. Last summer, the bipartisan ASTEROIDS AND twenty-first century. It’s time to start building a democratic futurism.
Private appropriation of space instead of treating it as a global commons amplifies inequality on Earth.
Private control of space inevitably leads to exploitation.
Spencer ‘20
Spencer, Keith A. ~senior editor at Salon~"Against Mars-a-Lago: Why SpaceX's Mars Colonization Plan Should Terrify You." Salon, Salon.com, 7 Jan. 2020, https://www.salon.com/2017/10/08/against-mars-a-lago-why-spacexs-mars-colonization-plan-should-terrify-you/. When CEO Elon Musk announced last month that his aerospace company SpaceX would be sending cargo missions to Mars by 2022 — the first step in his tourism-driven colonization plan — a small cheer went up among space and science enthusiasts. Writing in the New York Post, Stephen Carter called Musk’s vision "inspiring," a salve for politically contentious times. "Our species has turned its vision inward; our image of human possibility has grown cramped and pessimistic," Carter wrote: "We dream less of reaching the stars than of winning the next election; less of maturing as a species than of shunning those who are different; less of the blessings of an advanced technological tomorrow than of an apocalyptic future marked by a desperate struggle to survive. Maybe a focus on the possibility of reaching our nearest planetary neighbor will help change all that." The Post editorial reflected a growing media consensus that humankind’s ultimate destiny is the colonization of the solar system — yet on a private basis. American government leaders generally agree with this vision. Obama egged on the privatization of NASA by legislating a policy shift to private commercial spaceflight, awarding government contracts to private companies like SpaceX to shuttle supplies to the International Space Station. "Governments can develop new technology and do some of the exciting early exploration but in the long run it's the private sector that finds ways to make profit, finds ways to expand humanity," said Dr. S. Pete Worden, the director of the NASA Ames Research lab, in 2012. And in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Vice President Mike Pence wrote of his ambitions to bring American-style capitalism to the stars: "In the years to come, American industry must be the first to maintain a constant commercial human presence in low-Earth orbit, to expand the sphere of the economy beyond this blue marble," Pence wrote. One wonders if these luminaries know their history. There has be no instance in which a private corporation became a colonizing power that did not end badly for everyone besides the shareholders. The East India Company is perhaps the finest portent of Musk’s Martian ambitions. In 1765, the East India Company forced the Mughal emperor to sign a legal agreement that would essentially permit their company to become the de facto rulers of Bengal. The East India Company then collected taxes and used its private army, which was over 200,000 strong by the early 19th century, to repress those who got in the way of its profit margins. "It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath," writes William Dalrymple in the Guardian. "It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history." The East India Company came to colonize much of the Indian subcontinent. In the modern era, an era in which the right of corporations to do what they want, unencumbered, has become a sacrosanct right in the eyes of many politicians, the lessons of the East India Company seem to have been all but forgotten. As Dalrymple writes: Democracy as we know it was considered an advance over feudalism because of the power that it gave the commoners to share in collective governance. To privately colonize a nation, much less a planet, means ceding governance and control back to corporations whose interest is not ours, and indeed, is always at odds with workers and residents — particularly in a resource-limited environment like a spaceship or the red planet. Even if, as Musk suggests, a private foundation is put in charge of running the show on Mars, their interests will inherently be at odds with the workers and employees involved. After all, a private foundation is not a democracy; and as major philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation illustrate, often do the bidding of their rich donors, and take an important role in ripening industries and regions for exploitation by Western corporations. Yet Mars’ colonization is a bit different than Bengal, namely in that it is not merely underdeveloped; it is undeveloped. How do you start an entirely new economy on a virgin world with no industry? After all, Martian resource extraction and trade with Earth is not feasible; the cost of transporting material across the solar system is astronomical, and there are no obvious minerals on Mars that we don’t already have in abundance on Earth. The only basis for colonization of Mars that Musk can conceive of is one based on tourism: the rich pay an amount — Musk quotes the ticket price at $200,000 if he can get 1 million tourists to pay that — that entitles them to a round-trip ticket. And while they’re on Mars and traveling to it, they luxuriate: Musk has assured that the trip would be "fun." This is what makes Musk’s Mars vision so different than, say, the Apollo missions or the International Space Station. This isn’t really exploration for humanity’s sake — there’s not that much science assumed here, as there was in the Moon missions. Musk wants to build the ultimate luxury package, exclusively for the richest among us. Musk isn’t trying to build something akin to Matt Damon’s spartan research base in "The Martian." He wants to build Mars-a-Lago. And an economy based on tourism, particularly high-end tourism, needs employees — even if a high degree of automation is assumed. And as I’ve written about before, that means a lot of labor at the lowest cost possible. Imagine signing away years of your life to be a housekeeper in the Mars-a-Lago hotel, with your communications, water, food, energy usage, even oxygen tightly managed by your employer, and no government to file a grievance to if your employer cuts your wages, harasses you, cuts off your oxygen. Where would Mars-a-Lago's employees turn if their rights were impinged upon? Oh wait, this planet is run privately? You have no rights. Musk's vision for Mars colonization is inherently authoritarian. The potential for the existence of the employees of the Martian tourism industry to slip into something resembling indentured servitude, even slavery, cannot be underestimated. We have government regulations for a reason on Earth — to protect us from the fresh horror Musk hopes to export to Mars. If he's considered these questions, he doesn't seem to care; for Musk, the devil's in the technological and financial details. The social and political are pretty uninteresting to him. This is unsurprising; accounts from those who have worked closely with him hint that he, like many CEOs, may be a sociopath. Even as a space enthusiast, I cannot get excited about the private colonization of Mars. You shouldn’t be either. This is not a giant leap for mankind; this is the next great leap in plutocracy. The mere notion that global wealth is so unevenly distributed that a small but sufficient sum of rich people could afford this trip is unsettling, indicative of the era of astonishing economic inequality in which we suffer. Thomas Frank, writing in Harpers, once wrote of a popular t-shirt he sighted while picnicking in a small West Virginia coal town: "Mine it union or keep it in the ground." The idea, of course, is that the corporations interested in resource extraction do not care whatsoever about their workers’ health, safety, or well-being; the union had their interests at heart, and was able to negotiate for safety, job security, and so on. I’d like to see a similar t-shirt or bumper sticker emerge among scientists and space enthusiasts: "Explore Mars democratically, or keep it in the sky."
Treating space as a commons is key to human survival because it ensures that an escape to space is equitable.
Fisk N.D. - L. A. Fisk ~President of the Committee on Space Research, chartered by the International Council for Scientific Unions~, "Space as a Global Commons," UNOOSA (Web). ND. Accessed Dec. 13, 2021. https://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/hlf/1st'hlf'Dubai/Presentations/26.pdf AT There is an urgency to consider and act on this issue. • With each passing year, our technological civilization becomes increasingly dependent on the satellites in orbit. • The primal threats to our civilization – global climate change and space weather – can only be understood, and dealt with by using the global perspective of observations from space. • We need to recognize also that we are extending the human presence, whether through robotic spacecraft or eventually with humans, throughout our solar system. And we have a commitment as a civilization to behave responsibility in this endeavor. To protect the environments we will explore, and to protect ourselves against any contamination of our planet that results from this exploration. Space as a Global Commons It follows therefore that, given the centrality of space for the future of our civilization, we need to have policies and practices in place, which are shared by all spacefaring nations, that will allow and encourage each and every nation that desires to and has the capability to use and to explore space for peaceful purposes, to do so. We thus need to recognize, encourage, and enable space as a global commons. A ‘commons’ in the English language is a piece of land owned by and used by all members of a community, as in a pasture used by all residents of a village. Many nations of the world view space as a global commons, a resource not owned by any one nation but crucial to the future of all humankind.
1AC – Advantage
Private companies are cramming satellites into the Earth’s orbit which are quickly becoming defunct pieces of "space junk."
Therese Wood, 20 - ("Who owns our orbit: Just how many satellites are there in space?," World Economic Forum, 10-23-2020, 12-8-2021, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/visualizing-easrth-satellites-sapce-spacex)//AW There are nearly 6,000 satellites circling the Earth, but only 40 are operational. Satellites are a vital part of our infrastructure, helping us to use GPS, access the internet and support studies of the Earth. Out of the 2,666 operational satellites circling the globe in April 2020, 1,007 were for communication services. 446 are used for observing the Earth and 97 for navigation/ GPS purposes. Over half of satellites in space are non-operational. For centuries, humans have looked to space and the stars for answers. The fascination is more than philosophical—it’s coupled with the need to solve problems here on Earth. Today, there are seemingly countless benefits and applications of space technology. Satellites, for instance, are becoming critical for everything from internet connectivity and precision agriculture, to border security and archaeological study. Right now, there are nearly 6,000 satellites circling our tiny planet. About 60 of those are defunct satellites—space junk—and roughly 40 are operational. As highlighted in the chart above, The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), determined that 2,666 operational satellites circled the globe in April of 2020. Over the coming decade, it’s estimated by Euroconsult that 990 satellites will be launched every year. This means that by 2028, there could be 15,000 satellites in orbit. Nearly 10,000 satellites will be launched form 2019-2028. Image: Visual Capitalist With SpaceX’s planned Starlink constellation of 12,000 satellites and Amazon’s proposed constellation in the works, the new space race continues its acceleration. Let’s take a closer look at who operates those satellites and how they apply their technology. Technology with a purpose Humans have long used space for navigation. While sailors once relied on the stars, today we use satellites for GPS, navigation, and various other applications. More than half of Earth’s operational satellites are launched for commercial purposes. About 61 of those provide communications, including everything from satellite TV and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity to global internet. Over 1,000 satellites are for communication purposes. Image: Visual Capitalist Second to communications, 27 of commercial satellites have been launched for Earth Observation (EO) purposes, including environmental monitoring and border security. Commercial satellites, however, can serve multiple purposes. One week, a satellite may be ‘tasked’ to image a contested border. It could later be tasked to monitor the reclamation of a mining site or even the aftermath of a natural disaster. 54 of operational satellites are for commercial use. Image: Visual Capitalist Government and civil purposes make up 21 of all of Earth’s operational satellites, and military purposes come in at 13. Who owns Earth’s orbit? Space operators SpaceX—founded by Elon Musk—is not only a disruptive launch provider for missions to the International Space Station (saving NASA millions). It’s also the largest commercial operator of satellites on the planet. With 358 satellites launched as of April, part of SpaceX’s mission is to boost navigation capabilities and supply the world with space-based internet. While the company operated 22 of the world’s operational satellites as of April, it went on to launch an additional 175 satellites in the span of one month, from August to September 2020.
Increasing space debris levels will inevitably set off a chain of collisions.
Chelsea Muñoz-Patchen, 19 - ("Regulating the Space Commons: Treating Space Debris as Abandoned Property in Violation of the Outer Space Treaty," University of Chicago, 2019, 12-6-2021, https://cjil.uchicago.edu/publication/regulating-space-commons-treating-space-debris-abandoned-property-violation-outer-space)//AW Debris poses a threat to functioning space objects and astronauts in space, and may cause damage to the earth’s surface upon re-entry.29 Much of the small debris cannot be tracked due to its size and the velocity at which it travels, making it impossible to anticipate and maneuver to avoid collisions.30 To remain in orbit, debris must travel at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour.31 At this speed even very small pieces of debris can cause serious damage, threatening a spacecraft and causing expensive damage.32 There are millions of these very small pieces, and thousands of larger ones.33 The small-to-medium pieces of debris "continuously shed fragments like lens caps, booster upper stages, nuts, bolts, paint chips, motor sprays of aluminum particles, glass splinters, waste water, and bits of foil," and may stay in orbit for decades or even centuries, posing an ongoing risk.34 Debris ten centimeters or larger in diameter creates the likelihood of complete destruction for any functioning satellite with which it collides.35 Large nonfunctional objects remaining in orbit are a collision threat, capable of creating huge amounts of space debris and taking up otherwise useful orbit space.36 This issue is of growing importance as more nations and companies gain the ability to launch satellites and other objects into space.37 From February 2009 through the end of 2010, more than thirty-two collision-avoidance maneuvers were reportedly used to avoid debris by various space agencies and satellite companies, and as of March 2012, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) had to take shelter three times due to close calls with passing debris.38 These maneuvers require costly fuel usage and place a strain on astronauts.39 Furthermore, the launches of some spacecraft have "been delayed because of the presence of space debris in the planned flight paths."40 In 2011, Euroconsult, a satellite consultant, projected that there would be "a 51 increase in satellites launched in the next decade over the number launched in the past decade."41 In addition to satellites, the rise of commercial space tourism will also increase the number of objects launched into space and thus the amount of debris.42 The more objects are sent into space, and the more collisions create cascades of debris, the greater the risk of damage to vital satellites and other devices relied on for "weather forecasting, telecommunications, commerce, and national security."43 The Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines44 were created by UNCOPUOS with input from the IADC and adopted in 2007.45 The guidelines were developed to address the problem of space debris and were intended to "increase mutual understanding on acceptable activities in space."46 These guidelines are nonbinding but suggest best practices to implement at the national level when planning for a launch. Many nations have adopted the guidelines to some degree, and some have gone beyond what the guidelines suggest.47 While the guidelines do not address existing debris, they do much to prevent the creation of new debris. The Kessler Syndrome is the biggest concern with space debris. The Kessler Syndrome is a cascade created when debris hits a space object, creating new debris and setting off a chain reaction of collisions that eventually closes off entire orbits.48 The concern is that this cascade will occur when a tipping point is reached at which the natural removal rate cannot keep up with the amount of new debris added.49 At this point a collision could set off a cascade destroying all space objects within the orbit.50 In 2011, The National Research Council predicted that the Kessler Syndrome could happen within ten to twenty years.51 Donald J. Kessler, the astrophysicist and NASA scientist who theorized the Kessler Syndrome in 1978, believes this cascade may be a century away, meaning that there is still time to develop a solution.52
It cascades with catastrophic results including nuclear war, mass starvation, and economic destruction.
Les Johnson 13, Deputy Manager for NASA's Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Co-Investigator for the JAXA T-Rex Space Tether Experiment and PI of NASA's ProSEDS Experiment, Master's Degree in Physics from Vanderbilt University, Popular Science Writer, and NASA Technologist, Frequent Contributor to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Sodety and Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Space Society, the World Future Society, and MENSA, Sky Alert!: When Satellites Fail, p. 9-12 ~language modified~ Whatever the initial cause, the result may be the same. A satellite destroyed in orbit will break apart into thousands of pieces, each traveling at over 8 km/sec. This virtual shotgun blast, with pellets traveling 20 times faster than a bullet, will quickly spread out, with each pellet now following its own orbit around the Earth. With over 300,000 other pieces of junk already there, the tipping point is crossed and a runaway series of collisions begins. A few orbits later, two of the new debris pieces strike other satellites, causing them to explode into thousands more pieces of debris. The rate of collisions increases, now with more spacecraft being destroyed. Called the "Kessler Effect", after the NASA scientist who first warned of its dangers, these debris objects, now numbering in the millions, cascade around the Earth, destroying every satellite in low Earth orbit. Without an atmosphere to slow them down, thus allowing debris pieces to bum up, most debris (perhaps numbering in the millions) will remain in space for hundreds or thousands of years. Any new satellite will be threatened by destruction as soon as it enters space, effectively rendering many Earth orbits unusable. But what about us on the ground? How will this affect us? Imagine a world that suddenly loses all of its space technology. If you are like most people, then you would probably have a few fleeting thoughts about the Apollo-era missions to the Moon, perhaps a vision of the Space Shuttle launching astronauts into space for a visit to the International Space Station (ISS), or you might fondly recall the "wow" images taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. In short, you would know that things important to science would be lost, but you would likely not assume that their loss would have any impact on your daily life. Now imagine a world that suddenly loses network and cable television, accurate weather forecasts, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation, some cellular phone networks, on-time delivery of food and medical supplies via truck and train to stores and hospitals in virtually every community in America, as well as science useful in monitoring such things as climate change and agricultural sustainability. Add to this the ~disabling~ crippling of the US military who now depend upon spy satellites, space-based communications systems, and GPS to know where their troops and supplies are located at all times and anywhere in the world. The result is a nightmarish world, one step away from nuclear war, economic disaster, and potential mass starvation. This is the world in which we are now perilously close to living. Space satellites now touch our lives in many ways. And, unfortunately, these satellites are extremely vulnerable to risks arising from a half-century of carelessness regarding protecting the space environment around the Earth as well as from potential adversaries such as China, North Korea, and Iran. No government policy has put us at risk. It has not been the result of a conspiracy. No, we are dependent upon them simply because they offer capabilities that are simply unavailable any other way. Individuals, corporations, and governments found ways to use the unique environment of space to provide services, make money, and better defend the country. In fact, only a few space visionaries and futurists could have foreseen where the advent of rocketry and space technology would take us a mere 50 years since those first satellites orbited the Earth. It was the slow progression of capability followed by dependence that puts us at risk. The exploration and use of space began in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. The United States soon followed with Explorer 1. Since then, the nations of the world have launched over 8,000 spacecraft. Of these, several hundred are still providing information and services to the global economy and the world's governments. Over time, nations, corporations, and individuals have grown accustomed to the services these spacecraft provide and many are dependent upon them. Commercial aviation, shipping, emergency services, vehicle fleet tracking, financial transactions, and agriculture are areas of the economy that are increasingly reliant on space. Telestar 1, launched into space in the year of my birth, 1962, relayed the world's first live transatlantic news feed and showed that space satellites can be used to relay television signals, telephone calls, and data. The modern telecommunications age was born. We've come a long way since Telstar; most television networks now distribute most, if not ali, of their programming via satellite. Cable television signals are received by local providers from satellite relays before being sent to our homes and businesses using cables. With 65 of US households relying on cable television and a growing percentage using satellite dishes to receive signals from direct-to-home satellite television providers, a large number of people would be cut off from vital information in an emergency should these satellites be destroyed. And communications satellites relay more than television signals. They serve as hosts to corporate video conferences and convey business, banking, and other commercial information to and from all areas of the planet. The first successful weather satellite was TIROS. Launched in 1960, TIROS operated for only 78 days but it served as the precursor for today's much more long-lived weather satellites, which provide continuous monitoring of weather conditions around the world. Without them, providing accurate weather forecasts for virtually any place on the globe more than a day in advance would be nearly impossible. Figure !.1 shows a satellite image of Hurricane Ivan approaching the Alabama Gulf coast in 2004. Without this type of information, evacuation warnings would have to be given more generally, resulting in needless evacuations and lost economic activity (from areas that avoid landfall) and potentially increasing loss of life in areas that may be unexpectedly hit. The formerly top-secret Corona spy satellites began operation in 1959 and provided critical information about the Soviet Union's military and industrial capabilities to a nervous West in a time of unprecedented paranoia and nuclear risk. With these satellites, US military planners were able to understand and assess the real military threat posed by the Soviet Union. They used information provided by spy satellites to help avert potential military confrontations on numerous occasions. Conversely, the Soviet Union's spy satellites were able to observe the United States and its allies, with similar results. It is nearly impossible to move an army and hide it from multiple eyes in the sky. Satellite information is critical to all aspects of US intelligence and military planning. Spy satellites are used to monitor compliance with international arms treaties and to assess the military activities of countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Figure 1.2 shows the capability of modem unclassified space-based imaging. The capability of the classified systems is presumed to be significantly better, providing much more detail. Losing these satellites would place global militaries on high alert and have them operating, literally, in the blind. Our military would suddenly become vulnerable in other areas as well. GPS, a network of 24-32 satellites in medium-Earth orbit, was developed to provide precise position information to the military, and it is now in common use by individuals and industry. The network, which became fully operational in 1993, allows our armed forces to know their exact locations anywhere in the world. It is used to guide bombs to their targets with unprecedented accuracy, requiring that only one bomb be used to destroy a target that would have previously required perhaps hundreds of bombs to destroy in the pre-GPS world (which, incidentally, has resulted in us reducing our stockpile of non-GPS-guided munitions dramatically). It allows soldiers to navigate in the dark or in adverse weather or sandstorms. Without GPS, our military advantage over potential adversaries would be dramatically reduced or eliminated.
Treating space as a commons solves orbital debris. States already agree to a limited regime of this type.
Silverstein and Panda ‘3/9 - Benjamin Silverstein ~research analyst for the Space Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MA, International Relations, Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs BA, International Affairs, George Washington University~ and Ankit Panda ~Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. AB, Princeton University~, "Space Is a Great Commons. It’s Time to Treat It as Such." Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Web). March 9, 2021. Accessed Dec. 13, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/03/09/space-is-great-commons.-it-s-time-to-treat-it-as-such-pub-84018 AT The failure to manage Earth orbits as a commons undermines safety and predictability, exposing space operators to growing risks such as collisions with other satellites and debris. The long-standing debris problem has been building for decades and demands an international solution.¶ Competing states need to coalesce behind a commons-based understanding of Earth orbits to set the table for a governance system to organize space traffic and address rampant debris. New leadership in the United States can spur progress on space governance by affirming that Earth orbits are a great commons. So far, President Joe Biden and his administration have focused on major space projects, but a relatively simple policy declaration that frames Earth orbits as a great commons can support efforts to negotiate space governance models for issues like debris mitigation and remediation. The Biden administration can set the stage to pursue broad space policy goals by establishing a consensus among states, particularly those with the most invested in Earth orbits, that space is a great commons.¶ THE PRESSING NEED FOR SPACE GOVERNANCE¶ The Earth orbits that provide the majority of benefits to states and commercial ventures represent only a tiny fraction of outer space as a whole. Competition for the limited volume of these Earth orbits is especially fierce since two satellites cannot be in the same place at the same time and not all orbits are equally useful for all missions. The number of objects residing in Earth orbits is now at an all-time high, with most new objects introduced into orbits at altitudes of between 400 and 700 kilometers above sea level. Millions of pieces of debris in Earth orbits pose a threat to continuing space operations. For instance, the final U.S. space shuttle missions faced 1-in-300 odds of losing a space vehicle or crew member to orbital debris or micrometeoroid impacts.¶ Collisions with fragments of orbital litter as small as a few millimeters across can ruin satellites and end missions. Current technologies cannot track all of these tiny pieces of debris, leaving space assets at the mercy of undetectable, untraceable, and unpredictable pieces of space junk. Some researchers have determined that the debris population in low Earth orbit is already self-sustaining, meaning that collisions between space objects will produce debris more rapidly than natural forces, like atmospheric drag, can remove it from orbit.¶ States—namely the United States, Russia, China, and India—have exacerbated this debris accumulation trend by testing kinetic anti-satellite capabilities or otherwise purposefully fragmenting their satellites in orbit. These states, along with the rest of the multilateral disarmament community, are currently at an impasse on establishing future space governance mechanisms that can address the debris issue. A portion of this impasse may be attributable to disparate views of the nature of outer space in the international context. Establishing a clear view among negotiating parties that Earth orbits should be treated as a great commons would establish a basis for future agreements that reduce debris-related risks.¶ Beyond debris-generating, kinetic anti-satellite weapons tests, revolutionary operating concepts challenge existing space traffic management practices. For instance, commercial ventures are planning networks of thousands of satellites to provide low-latency connectivity on Earth and deploying them by the dozens. States are following this trend. Some are considering transitioning away from using single (or few) exquisite assets in higher orbits and toward using many satellites in low Earth orbits. These new operational concepts could lead to an increase in collision risks.¶ Without new governance agreements, problems related to debris, heavy orbital traffic, and harmful interference will only intensify. Debris in higher orbits can persist for a century or more. The costs of adapting to increasingly polluted orbits would be immense, and the opportunity costs would be even higher. For instance, all else being equal, hardening satellites against collisions increases their mass and volume, in turn raising launch costs per satellite. These costs, rooted in a failure to govern space as a commons, will be borne by all space actors, including emerging states and commercial entities.¶ EXISTING FORMS OF SPACE GOVERNANCE¶ A well-designed governance system, founded on a widespread understanding of Earth orbits as a great commons, could temper these risks. Currently, space is not wholly unregulated, but existing regulations are limited both in scope and implementation. Many operators pledge to follow national regulations and international guidelines, but decentralized accountability mechanisms limit enforcement. These guidelines also do not cover the full range of potentially risky behaviors in space. For example, while some space operators can maneuver satellites to avoid collisions, there are no compulsory rules or standards on who has the right of way.¶ At the interstate level, seminal multilateral agreements provide some more narrow guidance on what is and is not acceptable in space. Most famously, the Outer Space Treaty affirms that outer space "shall be free for exploration and use by all states without discrimination of any kind" and that "there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies." Similar concepts of Earth orbits being a great commons arise in subsequent international texts. Agreements like the Liability Convention impose fault-based liability for debris-related collisions in space, but it is difficult to prove fault in this regime in part because satellite owners and operators have yet to codify a standard of care in space, and thus the regime does not clearly disincentivize debris creation in orbit. Other rules of behavior in Earth orbits have been more successful in reducing harmful interference between satellite operations, but even these efforts are limited in scope.¶ States have acceded to supranational regulations of the most limited (and thus most valuable) Earth orbits. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) coordinates, but does not authorize, satellite deployments and operations in geosynchronous orbits and manages radiofrequency spectrum assignments
1/7/22
JF - Cybernetics v1
Tournament: Harvard | Round: 2 | Opponent: King CP | Judge: Henry Eberhart
1AC
The world computer structures postmodernity – qualities become quantities as racial capitalism creates information and maps codes onto people. Information is not neutral, but produced by white supremacist and capitalist ideology. When this information is plugged into algorithms, the result is profit for some and dispossession for the rest. Global crises are not independent events, but codified by profit algorithms.
Beller 1 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 6-11. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Taking the notion that Capital was always a computer as a starting point (Dyer AND by the increasingly complex and variegated calculus of profit and thus of domination.
The world computer alienates labor as data, turning life activity into bits for the market in the colonial dehumanization of the digital subject. Our consciousness is enclosed by the technical profit-motive, stealing from the oppressed their forms of collectivity and democracy. It’s not over yet, but capitalism saps our political capacity every time it encloses our communication.
Beller 2 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 119-122. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Let’s now rewrite the general formula for capital as M–I–C– AND (2012) terms, "the right not to be a perpetrator."
Information is gathered in the sociohistorical context of computational racial capitalism – knowledge is stained by a logic of commodification. Without first addressing the computational roots of postmodern knowledge, information is merely a fetish. This socially conditioned information is the OS of racial capitalism: allocating resources and violence unequally throughout the world.
Beller 3 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 36-38. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Digital culture and what we recognize as digitization (dc2) emerges within the framework AND highly mediated port- folios in the same sordid marketplace—of knowledge.
Ontological claims project capitalist informatics onto beings – data and quantities are fitted to the metaphysical subject to alienate and exploit them.
Beller 4 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 49-50. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL But are fascists really people? We demand the right to wonder if anyone is AND no wonder the oppressed called Pinochet’s brutal fascist sup- porters "mummies."
Information alienates us via colonization and extraction, but we refuse to think about its material sources, letting it control our thought. This relegates us to the factory code, where we think in production.
Beller 5 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 6-11. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Categoricality, abstraction, computability, and the horizon of omniscience become the basic architecture AND screen death in pursuit of pure production! Long live the factory code.
The computational mode of thought colonizes all meaning, expression, and thought. The only way to resist is to interrogate computational informatics that dominate under racial capitalism and support it. The role of the ballot is to endorse a critical poetics that disavows the capture of expressivity and overflows meaning into the utopian not-yet. This robs racial capital of its computational power and restores political potency.
Beller 6 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 53-54. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL As the factory code morphs into social codes and computer code and into "the AND of anarchocommunism in ungovernable and utopian pursuits of the not-yet.13
This methodology moves beyond politics to evade capture by communicative capital – liberatory movements must dwell in the nonrepresentable, the borderlands, the undercommons, the dead and the dispossessed.
Beller 7 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 133-134. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Subsumption is the measuring; the remainder, the innumerable, is what is not AND to~ signify on the dead and the dispossessed—as we must.
The cosmic scale of new imperialism demands a reformatting of ontology to enable extraction and abstraction. Just as earth-bound imperialism legitimizes itself with violence, space colonization creates new information about being, knowing, and producing that extends violent relationships into outer space in order to outsource capitalism off-world. The impacts are not only ontological and epistemic, but physical: the world computer creates information that conditions our being and action. The extension of computational racial capitalism into outer space brings militarization, neo-apartheid, and worker exploitation. Thus, I affirm resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.
Beller 8 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 43-44. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL While computational racial capital may appear in the guise of its many instances (e AND world computer, its merciless calculus of profit and its suppression of noise.
The drive to space colonization quantizes human life by overcoming any qualitative barriers and prepares outer space for algorithmic extraction.
Dunker and Hui 20 (Anders Dunker and Yuk Hui; 6/9/20; LA Review of Books; "On Technodiversity: A Conversation with Yuk Hui"; accessed 12/11/21; https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/on-technodiversity-a-conversation-with-yuk-hui/**; Anders Dunker is a Norwegian writer and journalist, currently living in Los Angeles; Yuk Hui currently teaches at the City University of Hong Kong. He did his Ph.D. thesis at Goldsmiths College in London, postdoctoral studies in France, and Habilitation thesis in Germany, and since 2012 he has taught at the Leuphana University and Bauhaus University in Germany) RC/HB What about people who want to develop new technologies in order to establish a new AND follow Dao, as a philosophy of nature and a philosophy of life.
2/19/22
JF - Cybernetics v2
Tournament: TOC | Round: 1 | Opponent: James Stuckert | Judge: Sequoia AS
1AC
The world computer structures postmodernity – qualities become quantities as racial capitalism creates information and maps codes onto people. Information is not neutral, but produced by white supremacist and capitalist ideology. When this information is plugged into algorithms, the result is profit for some and dispossession for the rest. Global crises are not independent events, but codified by profit algorithms.
Beller 1 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 6-11. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Taking the notion that Capital was always a computer as a starting point (Dyer AND by the increasingly complex and variegated calculus of profit and thus of domination.
Computational racial capitalism faces a systemic crisis rooted in insurmountable political and ecological obstacles. This crisis will end in apocalypse if the system keeps extending itself.
Robinson 14 Robinson, William. "Global Capitalism: Crisis of Humanity and the Specter of 21st Century Fascism." 2014. Cambridge University Press. https://robinson.faculty.soc.ucsb.edu/Assets/pdf/Crisis20of20Humanity.pdf William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global and international studies, and AND the system can come under any stable political authority that assures its reproduction.
The world computer alienates labor as data, turning life activity into bits for the market in the colonial dehumanization of the digital subject. Our consciousness is enclosed by the technical profit-motive, stealing from the oppressed their forms of collectivity and democracy. It’s not over yet, but capitalism saps our political capacity every time it encloses our communication.
Beller 2 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 119-122. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Let’s now rewrite the general formula for capital as M–I–C– AND (2012) terms, "the right not to be a perpetrator."
Information is gathered in the sociohistorical context of computational racial capitalism – knowledge is stained by a logic of commodification. Without first addressing the computational roots of postmodern knowledge, information is merely a fetish. This socially conditioned information is the OS of racial capitalism: allocating resources and violence unequally throughout the world.
Beller 3 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 36-38. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Digital culture and what we recognize as digitization (dc2) emerges within the framework AND highly mediated port- folios in the same sordid marketplace—of knowledge.
The computational mode of thought colonizes all meaning, expression, and thought. The only way to resist is to interrogate computational informatics that dominate under racial capitalism and support it. The role of the ballot is to endorse a critical poetics that disavows the capture of expressivity and overflows meaning into the utopian not-yet. This robs racial capital of its computational power and restores political potency.
Beller 4 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 53-54. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL As the factory code morphs into social codes and computer code and into "the AND of anarchocommunism in ungovernable and utopian pursuits of the not-yet.13
This methodology moves beyond politics to evade capture by communicative capital – liberatory movements must dwell in the nonrepresentable, the borderlands, the undercommons, the dead and the dispossessed.
Beller 5 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 133-134. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL Subsumption is the measuring; the remainder, the innumerable, is what is not AND us to signify on the dead and the dispossessed—as we must.
Computational racial capitalism extends into outer space indefinitely, chasing raw materials, tourism revenue, violent sci-fi plotlines and and a spirit of adventure. Never mind the murdered and the dispossessed, there are profits to predict and asteroids to colonize!
Metzger: Hey, let's look on the sunny side of the street: don't you ever forget that you're the best equipped in the solar system. You've all got double protection with reinforced ends, a lifetime supply of hard to beat, maximum throw weight, and the latest in fall fashions with matching accessories. And most important, you're all fighting for something bigger and better than your own meaningless desires and needs. Our goal here is nothing short of unlimited growth potential. If we succeed here today, then huge vistas will open up before us: the entire consumer sector will be ours for the taking. 100 market share for Dimensions X-prime through Omega Slash Asterisk Ampersand. With options for total buyout of the outer rim quadrants and complete franchising rights. So this is it. These are our objectives:
An entire Squadron of invisible ginks have infiltrated sector X-ray George Bongo Zip. They must be routed from their positions before the Holy Fire of Brotherly Love Can vaporize them and seal in flavorful juices. 2. At least a dozen squawk nozzle overthrow modem vectors have been sighted on the sidereal Horizon. So you'll need to have your praying hands set on stun and don't hesitate to use the neural Joy probe if the situation warrants. Remember, it's either you or them. 3. And lastly, near the serum processing plant, we've got a glandular assault team positioned, but the enemy has their throbbing thrill Dart that's the Crux of the perimeter and a handsome new ashtray with pictures of their honeymoon and a set of fancy martini glasses. So let me hear it: No bugs, no pigs, no slugs No things that crawl or hop No blood without a wound No shoes on holy ground Eight tiny reindeer on the roof You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry A jolly old man with a beard and a whip And a string of frozen drool hanging from his lip. Hello, our name is Legion, and we’ll be your pastoral counselor today. LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!
The production of comprehensible information about outer space fuels the real appropriation and extraction of the cosmos. The creation of impact scenarios, policy plans, and ethical statements supplies computational capitalism with the attention it needs to keep the world computer running. Thus, I refuse the world computer’s production of information about the cosmos in favor of a critical poetics of outer space.
Beller 6 Beller, Jonathan. "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism." Duke University Press, 2021. Pages 140-142. I don’t have a link but you can ask for the pdf. Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Park City NL However, before moving to examples of interest to revolutionary sensibili- ties and of AND the leveraged production of more information, as money or whatever acceptable form.
Space will not be another mine, another commercial sci-fi film, another nuke war scenario that outweighs the k. Our attention draws away from capitalist informatics and towards a cosmic future, an unknown future that cannot become a risk to be managed. Thus, I affirm that the appropriation of outer space, both expressively and materially, by private entities is unjust. This is not the world computer’s cosmos, this is ours. Earthbound oppression won’t disappear in space, but we still must imagine a utopian not-yet in which space is liberatory. It’s hard down here. It’s hard up there. But it’s not over yet.
Sun Ra: In some far off place Many light years in space I'll wait for you
Where human feet have never trod Where human eyes have never seen I'll build a world of abstract dreams And wait for you
In tomorrow's realm We'll take the helm of a new ship Like the lash of a whip We'll start on the way And safely journey To a new shore
4/23/22
ND - Alienation
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 2 | Opponent: Bergen County Academies AK | Judge: Patrick Fox Cites not working - see open source or ask me to send the doc with different formatting
11/6/21
ND - Capitalism
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 5 | Opponent: DTHS HV | Judge: Zac Davis
1AC
1. Capitalism is unsustainable – causes environmental crisis, fascism, violence, instability, and over-commodification
Robinson 14 William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global and international studies, and Latin American studies, at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Among his many books are Promoting Polyarchy (1996), Transnational Conflicts (2003), A Theory of Global Capitalism (2004), Latin America and Global Capitalism (2008), and Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (2014), crisis Global Capitalism: Crisis of Humanity and the Specter of 21st Century Fascism, http://www.worldfinancialreview.com/?p=1799, Bingham-MB The New Global Capitalism and the 21st Century Crisis The world capitalist system is arguably AND in which humanity is no longer at war with itself and with nature.
2. Capitalism destroys commodifies every aspect of human life and restricts our freedom to engage in social activities.
Shaviro 15 (Steven Shaviro is an American academic, philosopher and cultural critic whose areas of interest include film theory, time, science fiction, panpsychism, capitalism, affect and subjectivity. He earned a PhD from Yale in 1981. "No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism" https://track5.mixtape.moe/qdkkdt.pdf cVs) ParCit NL The problem may be summarized as follows. Capitalism has indeed created the conditions for AND easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."
3. Endless economic growth under capitalism is actively destroying the climate – socialist alternatives are necessary to solve warming.
Dawson 19 Dawson, Ashley. "We Can’t Beat Climate Change Under Capitalism. Socialism Is the Only Way." 15 April, 2019. In These Times. https://inthesetimes.com/article/socialism-anti-capitalism-economic-reform ASHLEY DAWSON is the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in AND it, "To reclaim our future, we must change the present."
As an educator, the role of your ballot is to link your social location to the broader struggle against capitalism. To clarify, vote for the debater who presents the best strategy to combat capitalism. Educational spaces like debate are uniquely key to creating future revolutionaries, and judges are responsible for facilitating the conversations that create class-consciousness.
McLaren and Farahmandpur ‘01 Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur 2001 (Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies at Cambridge University, Ramin Farahmandpur, Phd at Portland State University, "TEACHING AGAINST GLOBALIZATION AND THE NEW IMPERIALISM: TOWARD A REVOLUTIONARY PEDAGOGY," Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 2, March/April 2001) Feng This requires that students are able to see themselves in relation to their role as AND abstract phil – outweighs because debate is useless if people can’t access it.
Advocacy
I affirm Resolved: "A just government ought to recognize the unconditional right of workers to strike."
Strikes are an articulation of worker power over production – they halt the operation of capitalist society and refuse capitalist organization of labor
Tronti 1966 "Workers and Capital." Tronti, Mario. 1966. https://libcom.org/book/export/html/42233 Mario Tronti was the principal theorist of the radical political movement of the 1960s known AND the proletariat is constituted as a class in the face of the capitalist.
Worker recognition of the power of refusal is the starting point for political organizing – tactics combined with mass passivity bring capital to its knees. History proves – Bolshevik and Spanish revolutionaries came from the trade union movement and organized into militant revolutions.
Tronti 1966 "Workers and Capital." Tronti, Mario. 1966. https://libcom.org/book/export/html/42233 Mario Tronti was the principal theorist of the radical political movement of the 1960s known AND now it has been exercised by the capitalist class, through its State.
Collective trade union movements organized into socialist parties succeed – Greece proves.
Dean 16 Dean, Jodi. Crowds and Party. United Kingdom, Verso, 2016. I don’t have a link just ask for the document. Jodi Dean is an American political theorist and professor in the Political Science department at AND the party unleashes is the power we already have to change the world.
Underview
I get 1AR theory. Otherwise, the 1NC can be infinitely abusive which outweighs on magnitude. 2. Interpretation: Debaters must check their theory interpretations in cross-examination before reading them. To clarify, debaters must ask if their opponent wants to engage in a theory debate or strike the violating arguments from the flow. Violation: It’s pre-emptive, but you violate if you read a shell without asking Standard: Substance education – checking in CX means we avoid theory debates that neither debater want, so we can spend more time on substance. Substance education is a voter and comes 1st because it’s the most exportable benefit of debate – we can always apply knowledge of the world around us. The same paradigm issues for 1AR theory apply because the time skew is still true. 3. Permissibility affirms. A) a debate being a moral wash means that I debated better because I had to deal with procedural disadvantages like a time skew. B) We assume that something is good or true before we know if it is. For example, you assume that my name is actually Noam and our legal system assumes that people are innocent until proven guilty.
4. Post-modernism critiques injustice without providing feasible solutions – this makes resistance impossible and reifies capitalism. Post-modernist kritiks can’t solve case and reject the most important anti-capitalist strategies.
Cole 13 School of Education, University of Brighton, 2003 (Mike Cole, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Sep., 2003), pp. 487-500 "Might It Be in the Practice That It Fails to Succeed? A Marxist Critique of Claims for Postmodernism and Poststructuralism as Forces for Social Change and Social Justice" JSTOR; Whereas for Marxists the possibility of postmodernism leading to social change is a non sequitur AND intellectuals with revolutionaries is the only responsible way to engage in the university.
11/6/21
ND - Pettit Lay
Tournament: Blue Key | Round: 4 | Opponent: Coral Springs LV | Judge: Jose Denis
1AC – Pettit
I affirm resolved: A just government ought to recognize the unconditional right of workers to strike.
Framing
Every person must recognize their ability to pursue their desires and ethical goals as a necessary good not contingent on the will of others. We must recognize our right to act autonomously in order to be moral agents.
Alan Gewirth writes in 1984, Alan (1984) "The Ontological Basis of Natural Law: A Critique and an Alternative," American Journal of Jurisprudence: Vol. 29 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ajj/vol29/iss1/5 *bracketed for gendered language* Let me briefly sketch the main line of argument that leads to this conclusion. AND consistency with the material consideration of the generic features and rights of action.
This has 2 important implications:
1. Agency is inescapable since to engage in any enterprise is to engage in agency.
2. Agency is a precondition to be able to act ethically because it requires you recognize yourself as the cause of your own actions.
Therefore, my value is freedom.
There are two models of freedom—the non-interference model and the non-domination model. The non-interference model holds that freedom is violated if someone is actually interfered with, whereas the non-domination model holds that freedom is violated if it is possible for someone to be arbitrarily exploited by an institution.
You should prefer non-domination – the non-interference model can’t ground political legitimacy as it would reject all use of the state. That’s obviously bad because we need limited government authority to protect our freedoms.
Dr. Phillip Pettit of Princeton University argues in 2012 that Philip Pettit, "Legitimacy and Justice in Republican Perspective" Current Legal Problems, 2012 One of the reasons why the legitimacy issue may generally be ignored in the contemporary AND some more repressive law or custom, or arbitrary despotism or chaos’.31
By distinguishing between arbitrary and non-arbitrary interference, the non-domination model can ground political legitimacy and justify state interference. However, it still prevents the state from oppressing its citizens.
Pettit continues that Philip Pettit, "Legitimacy and Justice in Republican Perspective" Current Legal Problems, 2012 But while the conception of freedom as non-interference makes it impossible to argue AND , I turn to a consideration of this challenge in the final section.
Thus, my value criterion is consistency with freedom as non-domination.
To clarify, it’s not a question of maximizing non-domination in certain instances, but rather having institutional constraints that prevent domination.
Prefer additionally –
Topic specificity – the framework of non-domination was specifically intended to answer the question of how a just government should distribute rights. Therefore, when discussing this resolution, we should prefer my framework because it’s tailored to be used in debates like this one. It strikes a middle ground between non-interference and frameworks that don’t consider freedom. It’s important to have rights under the model of non-domination, but governments can still coerce people when necessary.
Contention 1 is the inherent domination of labor
Workers do not truly make free contracts of labor – the labor market is fundamentally coercive because workers only choice other than labor is starvation. This doesn’t mean work is bad, but it does mean that workers must have methods of maintaining their freedom.
Dr. Alex Gourevitch of Brown University argues in 2016:
Gourevitch, Alex. "Quitting work but not the job: Liberty and the right to strike." Perspectives on Politics 14.2 (2016): 307. Yoaks The problem with the real freedom of contract view is that it is based on AND to make contracts ... they would be too free to need contracts." 57
The right to strike is a means of reversing employer domination – it challenges the structural relationship between employer and employed and turns the dominating power dynamic on its head.
Gourevitch continues:
Gourevitch, Alex. "Quitting work but not the job: Liberty and the right to strike." Perspectives on Politics 14.2 (2016): 307. Yoaks This is not just a dramaturgical fact about strikes, though the drama has, AND is why they may not take jobs that striking workers refuse to perform.
Contention 2 is specific workplace exploitation
Workplaces are a site of personal domination that transfer worker liberty to managerial and discretion according to exploitative contracts – strikes challenge this
Gourevitch furthers:
Gourevitch, Alex. "Quitting work but not the job: Liberty and the right to strike." Perspectives on Politics 14.2 (2016): 307. Yoaks So the point about structural domination was that workers might be forced to make a AND contract and property that supports the manager’s authority in the first place.75
A broad unconditional right to strike should be understood as a right against domination and protects self-determination. Denying workers the ability to strike is a violation of non-domination.
Gourevitch asserts in a 2018 article that:
Gourevitch, Alex. "The right to strike: A radical view." American Political Science Review 112.4 (2018): 905-917. Yoaks The radical view has a number of advantages over the liberal and social democratic accounts AND locations of dominations, but strikes can help workers fight for their freedom.
Migrants and domestic workers are exempt from Qatar’s right to strike – recent reforms structurally exclude them.
Amnesty International 20 Amnesty International. "REALITY CHECK 2020: COUNTDOWN TO THE 2022 WORLD CUP MIGRANT WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN QATAR." https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1339196/download Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with AND out to ensure representation of domestic workers and secure their place during negotiations.
Qatari migrant workers are exploited and denied basic rights because of the kafala system that denies them organization rights.
Human Rights Watch 19 Human Rights Watch. "Qatar: Migrant Workers Strike Over Work Conditions." 8 August 2019. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/08/qatar-migrant-workers-strike-over-work-conditions Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York AND The government should respond by ensuring greater protections for workers under Qatari law."
The prohibition against migrant and domestic strikes results in labor struggles being defeated easily – this deters more strikes from occurring and enables labor exploitation.
Illegal strikes have worked – they encourage wage recovery, absconding rights, and labor law enforcement. Right to strike is key to broaden the scale of these actions.
GCR Staff 19 Staff, Global Construction Review. "Strikes in Qatar: Foreign workers break law to protest over withheld wages." 22 August 2019. Global Construction Review. https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/strikes-qatar-foreign-workers-break-law-protest-ov/ GCR provides news and analysis to help business leaders and policy makers understand the forces AND the Qatari government makes good on its promise to repeal the kafala system."
Solvency
Plan text: The State of Qatar should recognize an unconditional right to strike, including for migrant workers and domestic workers. PICs affirm because an exception to a statement doesn’t disprove it, just like penguins don’t disprove that birds can fly. The PIC means the plan is a good idea but with an exception.
The legal framework already exists to decriminalize leaving work and recognize the right to organize – the Shura Council and Council of Ministers have can easily pass the plan.
1. Actor Specificity on aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
2. Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything.
3. Only consequentialism explains degrees of wrongness—if I break a promise to meet up for lunch, that is not as bad as breaking a promise to take a dying person to the hospital. Only the consequences of breaking the promise explain why the second one is much worse than the first.
4. Inclusion – any offense functions under consequentialism and it’s the first framework novices learn
The standard is minimizing structural violence. Prefer addressing the struggles of oppressed groups because we’re cognitively biased against them: we must morally include marginalized communities in order to fight for justice. This justifies reading the plan because we need to elevate the struggles of Qatar’s migrant workers.
Winter and Leighton 1999 ~Deborah DuNann Winter, Psychologist that specializes in Social Psych, Counseling Psych, Historical and Contemporary Issues, Peace Psychology. Dana C. Leighton, PhD graduate student in the Psychology Department at the University of Arkansas. Knowledgable in the fields of social psychology, peace psychology, and justice and intergroup responses to transgressions of justice~ "Peace, conflict, and violence: Peace psychology in the 21st century." Pg 4-5 ghs Finally, to recognize the operation of structural violence forces us to ask questions about AND thinking can be fostered by relationships, communication, and appreciation of diversity.
Frame the round through prioritizing structural, slow impacts because they’re difficult to identify and challenge, which makes it important to discuss them in educational spaces.
Davies 19 Davies, Thom. "Slow Violence and Toxic Geographies: ‘Out of Sight’ to Whom?" Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, (April 2019). https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654419841063. Park City NL Assistant geography professor @ university of Nottingham. Time is enjoying increased attention within AND ‘formless threat’ but can be a very real and often tangible brutality.
Prioritize probability because high-magnitude impacts can’t be calculated – mathematics proves. They treat infinitely unlikely events as important because of the compounding effects of link chains.
Kessler 08 (Oliver; April 2008; PhD in IR, professor of sociology at the University of Bielefeld, and professor of history and theory of IR at the Faculty of Arts; Alternatives, Vol. 33, "From Insecurity to Uncertainty: Risk and the Paradox of Security Politics" p. 211-232) The problem of the second method is that it is very difficult to "calculate AND prevail than in situations where security problems can be assessed with relative certainty.
Rejecting reform condescendingly asserts the possibility of radical change is better than the certainty of real improvement. Reform also paves the way for radical changes.
Delgado 1987 - Delgado, Richard ~teaches civil rights and critical race theory at University of Alabama School of Law. He has written and co-authored numerous articles and books~, "The Ethereal Scholar: Does Critical Legal Studies Have What Minorities Want?", Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Law Review, 1987 Critical scholars reject the idea of piecemeal reform. Incremental change, they argue, AND whether total change, when it comes, will be what we want.
Underview
I get 1AR theory – anything else justifies infinite 1NC abuse which outweighs on magnitude. It’s drop the debater because dropping the argument makes the time investment pointless – only way to deal with neg abuse No RVIs because the 2NR will brute force it for 6 minutes and the 2ar can’t respond Competing interps because reasonability lets the 2NR define the brightline in a way that favors them – the 2AR is too short to use a new brightline Don’t evaluate disadvantages with an extinction impact Ethics – Qatar is actively choosing to oppress migrant workers. Apply a VERY high standard of proof to any rationalization of that policy. Compound Probability - Multiplied probabilities of long link chains have negligible net probabilities. Decision Gridlock – Every course of action or inaction has a negligible possibility of causing extinction. This makes it impossible to prioritize averting existential risk because doing so would risk extinction. The role of the ballot is to determine the desirability of implementing the plan. Predictability – other models are unpredictable because they’re less common, making it impossible to engage with positions because there are no limits to restrict prep. Prep burdens are unreasonably high and engagement can’t happen – especially true for small school debaters. Outweighs: Fairness – your opponent can’t respond when the k is unpredictable – kills fairness. That’s a voter because fairness is a core assumption of debate and we stop participating if it’s unfair. Clash – a lack of predictability kills topic research and preparation for opposing positions. Makes debates seem like two ships passing in the night and disincentives in-depth research. Kills education because discussion and reading are how we learn. That’s a voter because education’s the only external benefit of debate.
12/13/21
ND - Vulnerability
Tournament: Blue Key | Round: 1 | Opponent: Lexington EY | Judge: Breigh Platt
1AC
Overview
I get 1AR Theory – anything else justifies infinite 1NC abuse which outweighs on magnitude Permissibility and Presumption affirm You instinctively assume things are good or true – people are innocent until proven guilty and you believe my name is Noam I debated better if it’s a tie because I dealt with a 7-4-6-3 time skew and you had reactivity advantage Interpretation: Debaters must check their 1NC theory interpretations in cross-examination before reading them. To clarify, debaters must ask if their opponent wants to engage in a theory debate or strike the violating arguments from the flow. Violation: It’s pre-emptive, but you violate if you read a shell without asking Standard: Substance education – checking in CX means we avoid theory debates that neither debater want, so we can spend more time on substance. Substance education is a voter and comes 1st because it’s the most exportable benefit of debate – we can always apply knowledge of the world around us.
Framework
Empathy is the first question of ethics. In order to have a moral obligation to accept or reject the resolution, we must first have moral obligations towards the other. Before debating normative ethics, we must first find the procedure through which we give the other moral value. We must center policy that enables people to recognize the humanity of the other.
The concept of the human is a relational subjectivity created in the context of a "we." Our relations to one another determine whose lives are recognizable as fully human. Therefore, life is constituted via our political relationships derived from vulnerability, not just our biological functions.
Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, Print. (p.20) I propose to start, and to end, with the question of the human AND question of being vulnerable because it determines who counts under any other framework.
A politics of grief is crucial to collective consciousness, class or otherwise, because it de-privitizes our phenomenological experience of politics and everyday life. This ensures we recognize others as human and address their struggles.
Butler 2 Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life AND undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something.
My standard is consistency with a politics of vulnerability that determines our relations to one another and is therefore crucial to making decisions that prioritize human life and prevent violence. I control a key meta-ethical question of how we identify evil and suffering.
Butler 3 Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, Print. (p.30-1) Let us return to the issue of grief, to the moments in which one AND , and thus certain human lives are more grievable than others Prefer:
1. Rights discourse - a politics of vulnerability is a necessary approach to the question of rights because it prevents their de-politiczing affect. Grief ensures an affective attachment to one another as the ruled, as workers, and the collectively passionate in the face of inequality.
Butler 4 Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, Print. (p.25) I am arguing, if I am "arguing" at all, that we AND in lives that are not are own, irreversibly, if not fatally.
2. Subjectivity - vulnerability in the face of loss is a core component of subject formation. In order to recognize that one is part of a "we," they must lose something that changes their supposedly isolated "I." We do not need to know what we have lost to participate in a politics of grievability. Relationality is the starting point. An accurate notion of the subject is a prerequisite to ethics because we must tailor obligations to the obligated.
Butler 5 Butler, Judith. Researcher and Professor at UC Berkeley (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, Print. (p.22) Something takes hold of you: where does it come from? What sense does AND code. Exportability matters because it determines what we actually learn from debate.
Contention
I affirm resolved: A just government ought to recognize the unconditional right of workers to strike.
Class violence is rampant and strikes are method of grieving that violence with other workers from across the world. When faced with oppression and exploitation, workers do not seek security or stability, they collectively grieve their loss. They enter mutually vulnerable relationships on the picket line.
Striking itself is an act of communal vulnerability: Emotional vulnerability to those you walk with and those who support you. Physical vulnerability to cars and security guards. Economic vulnerability when you don’t get paid. Strikers engage in a politics of vulnerability when they stand and support each other in the face of capitalist violence. They do not know if the results will be good or stable, but they embrace the loss as they take to the streets.
AND , and solidarity and that fuel feeds our souls and fires our determination.
10/29/21
SO - Virtue Ethics
Tournament: Yale | Round: 2 | Opponent: American Heritage Broward JA | Judge: Amulya Natchukuri Overview
I get 1AR theory. Otherwise, the 1NC can be infinitely abusive which outweighs on magnitude. 2. Permissibility and presumption affirm. A) a debate being a tie means that I debated better because I had to deal with procedural disadvantages like 7-4 and 6-3 time skews along with your reactivity advanatge. B) We assume that something is good or true before we know if it is. For example, you assume that my name is actually Noam and our legal system assumes that people are innocent until proven guilty. 3. Interpretation: Debaters must check their theory interpretations in cross-examination before reading them. To clarify, debaters must ask if their opponent wants to engage in a theory debate or strike the violating arguments from the flow. Violation: It’s pre-emptive, but you violate if you read a shell without asking Standard: Substance education – checking in CX means we avoid theory debates that neither debater want, so we can spend more time on substance. Substance education is a voter and comes 1st because it’s the most exportable benefit of debate – we can always apply knowledge of the world around us.
Framework
Teleology is the starting point of ethics – we must first ask what is good, or what is the goal of being. The goal of ethics is to reach an end that is only good for its own sake. Kraut 18 Kraut, Richard, "Aristotle's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/aristotle-ethics/. The principal idea with which Aristotle begins is that there are differences of opinion about AND evaluative role, and are not simply descriptions of someone's state of mind.
Thus, the meta-ethic is orienting towards Eudaimonia – the condition of flourishing or living well.
Inescapability – Eudaimonia is the inescapable end goal of humanity. Living well is good for its own sake – making it the highest good. We don’t live well as a means of achieving some other end. Every action we take is in some way aimed at living well.
Sharpe 13 Matthew Sharpe. 27 Nov 2013,Stoic virtue ethics from: The Handbook of Virtue Ethics, Routledge, Accessed on: 24 Jun 2020https:www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315729053.ch3: However austere we may find Stoicism, it remains a eudaimonistic philosophy. As in AND DLVII 86) and redirects our first, animal impulses (see below).
Other moral systems collapse into Eudaimonian ethics – obligations to do certain things only exist because they help achieve Eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is the end of ethics. Kraut 18 Kraut, Richard, "Aristotle's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/aristotle-ethics/. The principal idea with which Aristotle begins is that there are differences of opinion about AND caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence. .
Eudaimonia is only achievable via virtuous action Kraut 18 Kraut, Richard, "Aristotle's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/aristotle-ethics/. No one tries to live well for the sake of some further goal; rather AND we ourselves share much of the responsibility for acquiring and exercising the virtues.
The standard is consistency with the golden mean – acting virtuously by tacking between excess and deficiency of virtue. Only this form of virtuous action achieves eudemonia. Kraut 18 Kraut, Richard, "Aristotle's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/aristotle-ethics/. Aristotle describes ethical virtue as a “hexis” (“state” “condition” AND extreme, and Aristotle does not intend to deny this. Prefer:
Bindingness - By default virtue ethics is more binding than other moral theories because a. virtues form the foundation of goodness and morality and b. the more virtue determines the strength of moral obligation. Virtue or goodness comes before obligation or right action. Hijacks any other framework because we need to define virtue to create obligations.
2. Constitutivism - Virtue ethics is constitutive to debate, as by debating we are exercising intellectual courage and gaining understanding. Only virtue ethics is capable of explaining why intellectual understanding is good. Any other moral framework would not justify debate, destroying the activity
Greco 11 https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/epistemology-virtue/#Ske The approach's significance is not limited to solving the value problem. It is also plausible that the successful exercise of intellectual courage is also valuable for its own sake, and also constitutive of the best intellectual life. And there is a long tradition that says the same about wisdom and the same about understanding. This suggests that there are a plurality of intellectual virtues, and their successful exercise gives rise to a plurality of epistemic goods. The best intellectual life — intellectual flourishing, so to speak — is rich with all of these (Greco 2004, Riggs 2003, Sosa 2003, Zagzebski 1996). For criticism of this line, and an alternative approach to the value problem within a VE framework, see Pritchard 2010. a. Philosophy Education – the use of virtue ethics enables us to discuss policy decisions under b. AND c. small literature base makes it easier for small schools to complete adequate research.
5. Virtue ethics are a good standard to base health ethics on – we already do it and it ensures care is high-quality Rozier, Michael. "Structures Of Virtue As A Framework For Public Health Ethics." Public Health Ethics. 2016. Web. August 20, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/phe/phv036. Virtues are not foreign concepts in the fields of medicine or public health. When AND why population level bioethics has not often sought the wisdom of virtue ethics.
Contention I affirm resolved: The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines. I affirm the whole resolution as a general principle, so PICs don’t negate, just like penguins don’t disprove that birds can fly
Open source projects promote virtuosity – they encourage professional excellence, civic cooperation, and intellectual exploration. WTO IP protections disincentivize open source. Opderbeck 07 Opderbeck, David. "A Virtue-Centered Approach To The Biotechnology Commons (Or, The Virtuous Penguin).” June, 2007. Web. August 20, 2021. https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306andconte xt=mlr. The virtue ethics notions of community and practices seem to map well onto the open AND and "sociability, camaraderie, friendship, cooperation, civic virtue." 86
2. Biotechnology access is hampered by intellectual property protections and open sourcing in a virtuous way solves all of those issues. Opderbeck 07 Opderbeck, David. "A Virtue-Centered Approach To The Biotechnology Commons (Or, The Virtuous Penguin).” June, 2007. Web. August 20, 2021. https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306andconte xt=mlr. In this vein, we can view biotechnology, like the communications networks with which AND no more noble-and no more heroic-mission than this. 108
9/18/21
SO - Weheliye
Tournament: Yale | Round: 6 | Opponent: Byram Hills SH | Judge: Eric Endsley Overview
I get 1AR theory to check infinite NC abuse – outweighs on magnitude 2. Racial others need subjectivity before we can form normative ethics. If I win that legal notions of personhood force people into either whiteness or non-humanity, then destroying those legal notions of personhood is a prerequisite to ethics. a. Ethics presupposes subjectivity – people must be considered human before they have moral obligations b. Their framework is inherently violent if it can’t consider everyone human – solving in-round violence comes before any ethical justification c. Knowledge cannot be reliable if it only comes from a white perspective – diverse viewpoints are key to sound epistemology 3. I can weigh case and cross-apply it on any flow a. Anything else incentivizes disengaging from the case flow – that kills topic education and is especially bad because we’d ignore race issues b. Timeskew – anything else moots the aff so they have a 13-7 advantage 4. Permissibility and presumption affirm a. You instinctively assume things are good or true – people are innocent until proven guilty and you believe my name is Noam b. I debated better if it’s a tie because I dealt with a 7-4-6-3 time skew and you had reactivity advantage 5. Interpretation: Debaters must check their theory interpretations in cross-examination before reading them. To clarify, debaters must ask if their opponent wants to engage in a theory debate or strike the violating arguments from the flow. Violation: It’s pre-emptive, but you violate if you read a shell without asking Standard: Substance education – checking in CX means we avoid theory debates that neither debater want, so we can spend more time on substance. Substance education is a voter and comes 1st because it’s the most exportable benefit of debate – we can always apply knowledge of the world around us.
Framework
Legal recognition of rights and personhood exclude those outside legal definitions of humanity and erase those who become human. Just as limited and genocidal court recognition of indigenous sovereignty justified the Dred Scott decision, legal rights recreate violence against vulnerable flesh and divide the oppressed into distinct groups. Legal personhood is constructed in relation to “Man,” a white, male, propertied, liberal subject. Weheliye 14 Weheliye, Alexander. “Habeas Viscus.” Pg. 57-58. Duke University Press, 2014. I don’t have a link but I can send you the pdf. Alexander Ghedi Weheliye is professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University where he teaches AND property at the same time as it fortifies the supremacy of Man.13
Recognizing citizenship as humanity allows whiteness to insert itself in legally defined color lines based on phenotypical difference – leads to non-white and legally non-human bodies existing in oppressive liminal spaces. Wynter 03 Sylvia Wynter—2003 “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 3, Number 3,257-337 The Argument proposes that the new master code of the bourgeoisie and of its ethnoclass AND we now give to the question of the who and what we are.
Pursuing recognition in liberal institutions focuses incompletely on one form of subjugation – attempts for legal inclusion only define the included as “Men” in contrast to those considered subhuman. This reifies continued violence against those not recognized as fully human by the state. Weheliye 14 Weheliye, Alexander. “Habeas Viscus.” Pg. 59-60. Duke University Press, 2014. I don’t have a link but I can send you the pdf. Alexander Ghedi Weheliye is professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University where he teaches AND movements to abolish the grounds upon which all forms of subjugation are administered.
The path forward is to embrace habeas viscus, a definition of humanity based on the flesh rather than constructs of the subject defined in relation to the law and whiteness. Habeas viscus opens avenues for guerrilla warfare as it removes politics from the realm of the Man, instead opting for a collective consciousness of the oppressed. Thus, the role of the ballot is to embrace habeas viscus. This requires a disconnection from legal recognition of personhood. Weheliye 14 Weheliye, Alexander. “Habeas Viscus.” Pg. 95-96. Duke University Press, 2014. I don’t have a link but I can send you the pdf.
Alexander Ghedi Weheliye is professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University where he teaches 2. AND 3. , Black Panther Party, and American Indian Movement have won major victories.
Advocacy I affirm that the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to abolish intellectual property protections for medicines. It’s topical – Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines reduce as “to diminish in size, amount, extent, or number,” and 0 protections is less than some protections. And, PICs don’t negate because an exception to a moral statement doesn’t disprove it, just as penguins don’t disprove that birds fly.
Intellectual property law is inherently intertwined with racial concepts of citizenship and creatorship. WTO protections attempt to include creators in the liberal order of knowledge, but end up incorporating some innovators into the category of Man while further repressing the rest. IP laws can only perceive western subjects, others cannot be creators. Combatting racist IP protections challenges racist and colonial knowledge production and creates hope for a human beyond the world of Man. Inquiry into IP racism is uniquely key to interrogating racism as a whole. Vats 20 Vats, Anjali. “The Color of Creatorship.” 29 September 2020. Stanford University Press. https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=27831andi=Excerpt20from20Introduction.html Communication professor @ Boston College Park City NL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW, the AND racial scripts and colonial relations of domination in the context of knowledge production.
It’s inextricable – IP is inherently racist, especially in the medical field – it prioritizes the Western rendition of ownership. IP laws enable western “inventors” to trample over traditional knowledge based in community history. Communities of habeas viscus are destroyed to make way for western profits.
Parthasarathy 20 Shobita Parthasarathy (is professor of public policy and director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy programme at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and author of Patent Politics), 11-2-2020, "Racism is baked into patent systems," Nature.com, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03056-z, SLC West HZ recut by Park City NL In July 1999, representatives of Amazonian Indigenous groups arrived at the headquarters of the AND intellectual-property rights that can be truly respectful across communities and cultures.
9/19/21
Theory - PICs Bad
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 2 | Opponent: Bergen County Academies AK | Judge: Patrick Fox Interpretation: Negative counterplans must propose an advocacy other than an exception to the plan. To clarify, pics are illigitimate. Violation: They pic out of _ Standards: 1Ground-The pic effective removes all aff ground by forcing me to defend a small part of the topic literature that already errs neg. This moots the entirity of the 1AC offense that doesn’t affirm the ground the pic negates, as the negative strategy agrees and coopts the rest of my offense. Ground is key to fairness because I need equal access to arguments to access the ballot, and key to education as we can only engage in a small amount of the topic lit. Writing a better AC doesn’t solve as the neg is the reactive debater and can always craft a PIC that coopts aff offense.
11/6/21
Theory - Round Reports
Tournament: USC | Round: 5 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake AL | Judge: David Dosch Interpretation: Debaters must disclose round reports for all past debates on the NDCA LD wiki prior to the round. Violation: All of their round reports say “see open source,” without any info on what they collapsed to. Standards:
Strat skew – they can see my round reports and tailor their case to my past strategies, but I can’t do the same. That destroys my ability to strategically engage in the round because I don’t have enough information to form a strategy based on possible 2NRs. Skews fairness because they will always have better strategy knowing what I collapse to. 2. Critical thinking – if I know their past collapses, then I can think strategically to craft a 1AC. That’s good for education because strategic thinking is a useful skill.
Fairness is a voter because a. The only way a judge can determine who’s better is if we enter the debate on an even playing field. b. People quit if they lose to unfair arguments so fairness is a prereq to debate’s existence.
Education is voter because: a. It’s the only portable benefit of debate. b. It’s the only reason we get funding.
Disclosure is drop the debater: dropping the arg can’t rectify past abuse because their practice wasn’t an argument
No RVI’s: a. they’re illogical – it doesn’t make sense to reward someone for not doing anything bad. People need to do good things to win. b. RVI’s chill legitimate theory, justifying even more abuse.
Competing Interps: a. Reasonability usually lacks a brightline and favors unnecessary judge intervention. b. Reasonability lets them arbitrarily choose a brightline that favors their arguments – skews fairness.
12/12/21
Theory - non black afropessimism bad
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: Quarters | Opponent: Evergreen Valley Independent SS | Judge: Panel Interpretation: Non-black people shouldn’t read afropessimism Violation: They do and it’s labeled as such on their wiki page
Standards:
Listen to to a large community of black debaters and judges – they have been advocating against non-black afropessimism for years, especially true for afropessimism debaters. Either your theory is true and we should align with black struggles against civil society and drop you, or your theory is false.
2. Co-option - afropessimism is a survival strategy used by black debaters to resist an activity full of racism – co-opting it into a strategic kritk as a non-black debater takes away its radicality and unpredictability. 3. It uses narratives of black suffering for non-black profit – that is a manifestation of the libidinal economy
And, reps come first, meaning they should lose
Probability: There’s a 50/50 chance the K is true, but theres’ 100 chance that commodifying suffering is bad
2. Reversibility: once oppressive rhetoric is used it cannot be taken back