1ac - large sats v9 1nc - case 1ar - case 2nr - case 2ar - case
California Invitational Berkeley Debate
1
Opponent: Harker AV | Judge: Gerard Grigsby
1ac - large sats v8 1nc - t appropriation asia weather cp case 1ar - all condo 2nr - t 2ar - t
California Invitational Berkeley Debate
4
Opponent: Archbishop Mitty AP | Judge: Vishan Chaudhary
1ac - large sats v9 w ozone 1nc - t appropriation authoritarianism da starlink cp case 1ar - all pics bad 2nr - cp da case 2ar - pics bad case cp da
California Invitational Berkeley Debate
5
Opponent: Able2Shine MC | Judge: Nethmin Liyanage
1ac - large sats w collisions and ozone 1nc - setcol k case 1ar - all 2nr - case 2ar - case
California Round Robin
1
Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Sam Larson, Joshua StPeter
1ac - large sats v8 no grids and ozone 1nc - adv cp xi da india da comsmobiopolitics k case 1ar - all condo 2nr - k 2ar - case k
California Round Robin
3
Opponent: Southlake Carroll EP | Judge: Wesley Loofbourrow, Candis Tate
1ac - the senate 1nc - science k t must be real t cant spec appropriation adv cp case 1ar - all 2nr - k case 2ar - case k
California Round Robin
7
Opponent: Saratoga AG | Judge: Wesley Loofbourrow, Gordon Krauss
1ac - large sats v8 no grids no ozone sino india 1nc - t cant spec appropriation cyber da xi da starship da pca cp case 1ar - all condo no alt agent non resolutional fiat 2nr - pca cp case 2ar - case cp
Golden Desert Debate Tournament at UNLV
1
Opponent: Peninsula JX | Judge: Chris Castillo
1ac - large sats v9 osource 1nc - innovation da case 1ar - case da 2nr - da case 2ar - case da
Golden Desert Debate Tournament at UNLV
4
Opponent: West Des Moines Valley JL | Judge: Michelle Blanchard
1ac - lay whole res 1nc - lay tragedy of the commons nc 1ar - all 2nr - all 2ar - all
Golden Desert Debate Tournament at UNLV
6
Opponent: King AT | Judge: Jonathan Meza
1ac - large sats v8 1nc - extra t kant nc apoc reps k case 1ar - all 2nr - nc case 2ar - case nc
Golden Desert Debate Tournament at UNLV
Octas
Opponent: Harker RT | Judge: Andrew Halverson, Chris Castillo, Madeleine Conrad-Mogin
1ac - large sats v8 1nc - t appropriation adv cp space col da case 1ar - all rvi condo bad 2nr - space col da adv cp 2ar - case cp da
Greenhill Fall Classic
2
Opponent: Westwood ST | Judge: Nick Fleming
1ac - euphoric trips v7 1nc - must fiat immediate action t medicine infrastructure ptx da case 1ar - all 2nr - must fiat immediate action case 2ar - case must fiat immediate action
Greenhill Fall Classic
3
Opponent: Harrison AA | Judge: Varad Agarwala
1ac - euphoric trips v7 1nc - t reduce t medicine environmentalism da infra ptx da case 1ar - all 2nr - environment da case 2ar - infra ptx da enviroment da
Greenhill Fall Classic
6
Opponent: Lexington BF | Judge: Sam Anderson
1ac - euphoric trips v8 1nc - must spec enforcement t t medicine t reduce infrastructure ptx da wto legitimacy da case 1ar - all 2nr - must spec enforcement 2ar - must spec enforcement
Greenhill Fall Classic
Doubles
Opponent: Lexington AK | Judge: Gordon Krauss, Serena Lu, Ishan Rereddy
1ac - jordan 1nc - new affs bad t medicine cant spec states kant case 1ar - new affs bad t medicine cant spec states kant 2nr - t medicine kant 2ar - kant t medicine
1ac - large constellations v14 1nc - must defend a government action t appropriation asia disaster pic buddhism k case 1ar - all pics bad condo bad 2nr - asia disaster pic case 2ar - case pic
Loyola Invitational
2
Opponent: Dulles TY | Judge: Pheonix Pittman
1ac - euphoric trips v2 1nc - truth testing kant cant spec medicine reduce isn't future case 1ar - all 2nr - kant case 2ar - case kant
Loyola Invitational
1
Opponent: LNU PD | Judge: Nathan Russell
1ac - euphoric trips v1 1nc - democratic plurilateral agreement pic 1ar - all 2nr - pic case 1ar - case pic
1ac - euphoric trips v3 1nc - t medicine cap k opioids adv cp consult who 1ar - all condo 2nr - t 2ar - t
Loyola Invitational
Octas
Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Nathan Russell, David Dosch, Lena Mizrahi
1ac - euphoric trips v4 1nc - t cant spec medicines t reduce t medicine us pic infrastructure da us bank adv cp monism nc cap k case 1ar - all condo 2nr - infrastructure da adv cp case 2ar - condo all
Loyola Invitational
Octas
Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Nathan Russell, David Dosch, Lena Mizrahi
1ac - euphoric trips v4 1nc - t cant spec medicines t reduce t medicine us pic infrastructure da us bank adv cp monism nc cap k case 1ar - all condo 2nr - infrastructure da adv cp case 2ar - condo all
Loyola Invitational
Quarters
Opponent: San Mateo YR | Judge: Tom, Neville Pittman, Phoenix Dosch, David
1ac - euphoric trips v5 1nc - t reduce t medicine t vagueness innovation da infrastructure da case 1ar - all 2nr - infrastructure da case 2ar - case da
Loyola Invitational
Semis
Opponent: Diamond Bar NC | Judge: David Dosch, Danielle Dosch, Gordon Krauss
1ac - euphoric trips v6 1nc - t reduce t medicines infrastructure case 1ar - all 2nr - t reduce 2ar - t
Mid America Cup
1
Opponent: Scarsdale DH | Judge: Aryan Jasani
1ac - biopiracy v3 1nc - weheliye k case 1ar - case k 2nr - k case 2ar - case k
Mid America Cup
5
Opponent: Sidwell SW | Judge: Chris Castillo
1ac - jordan 1nc - informatics k case 1ar - all condo 2nr - k case 2ar - condo
Mid America Cup
4
Opponent: Strake Jesuit VC | Judge: Breigh Plat
1ac - biopiracy v4 1nc - t cant spec medicine kant nc case 1ar - t kant must read cp must read condo must spec advocacy afc 2nr - t 2ar - t
1ac - biopiracy v2 1nc - t cant spec medicine science diplomats discussion cp innovation da case 1ar - all condo private actor fiat bad fiating compliance bad 2nr - cp case 2ar - case cp
1ac - biopiracy v2 1nc - enforcement spec innovation da framing case 1ar - all indp voter on t 2nr - innovation da case 2ar - case da
Mid America Cup RR
1
Opponent: Murphy Independent AW | Judge: Jayanne Forrest, Eric He
1ac - jordan 1nc - t medicine t must defend all wto states reps k case 1ar - all condo 2nr - reps k case 2ar - case k
Nano Nagle Classic
2
Opponent: Harker MK | Judge: Amy Nyberg
1ac - jordan v2 1nc - cap k case 1ar - all 2nr - k case 2ar - case k
Nano Nagle Classic
6
Opponent: Saratoga AG | Judge: Vishan Chaudhary
1ac - jordan 1nc - t ip t cant spec member nations cap k innovation adv cp case 1ar - all condo 2nr - t cant spec member nations 2ar - t
Nano Nagle Classic
3
Opponent: Marlborough AK | Judge: Emmiee Malyugina
1ac - jordan 1nc - innovation t plural adv cp case 1ar - all condo alt agent bad 2nr - cp innovation case 2ar - case cp da
Nano Nagle RR
4
Opponent: Sage MP | Judge: David Dosch
1ac - jordan v3 1nc - anti realism nc case 1ar - case nc 2nr - nc 2ar - nc
Nano Nagle RR
Semis
Opponent: Harker AR | Judge: David Dosch, Felicity Park, Margaret Strong
1ac - jordan v3 1nc - t plural t ip case 1ar - all 2nr - case 2ar - case
Nano Nagle RR
1
Opponent: Immaculate Heart BC | Judge: Nick Fleming
1ac - jordan v3 1nc - t wto t cant spec ip cap k case 1ar - all condo 2nr - t wto 2ar - t
National Debate Coaches Association National Championships
2
Opponent: Harker PG | Judge: Gerard Grigsby
1ar - large sats v15 1nc - extraeffects t t cant spec appropriation t outer space military communication da 6g da case 1ar - all 2nr - t cant spec appropriation 2ar - t cant spec appropriation
National Debate Coaches Association National Championships
4
Opponent: Strake Jesuit NW | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1ac - large sats w collisions 1nc - t body ptx kant case 1ar - all 2nr - t body ptx 2ar - t
National Debate Coaches Association National Championships
5
Opponent: Strake Jesuit JS | Judge: Ari Davidson
1ac - megaconstellations w collisions and ozone 1nc - psycho k t must be a policy asia weather pic case 1ar - all 2nr - k 2ar - case k
National Debate Coaches Association National Championships
1ac - large sats v15 1nc - orbital fees cp must spec number of sats t outer space cyberattacks da sbsp pic case 1ar - all condo 2nr - sbsp pic case 2ar - case pic
Palm Classic
2
Opponent: Immaculate Heart MF | Judge: Ben Erdmann
1ac - large sats (ozone astronomy collisions) 1nc - taiwan da democracy da case 1ar - all 2nr - democracy da case 2ar - case da
Palm Classic
4
Opponent: Harker AA | Judge: Lena Mizrahi
1ac - large sats v12 1nc - t appropriation internet da space col da case 1ar - all 2nr - t 2ar - t
Palm Classic
6
Opponent: Harker RM | Judge: Felicity Park
1ac - large sats v12 1nc - t appropriation t cant spec appropriation adv cp internet da case 1ar - all condo utopian fiat 2nr - cp da 2ar - case cp da
Palm Classic
Doubles
Opponent: BASIS Independent Silicon Valley Independent SK | Judge: Annabelle Long, Spencer Paul, Jonathan Meza
1ac - large sats v9 no grids 1nc - precision ag t appropration adv cp case 1ar - all condo 2nr - rvi on condo cp case 2ar - case cp
Palm Classic
Octas
Opponent: Honor VD | Judge: Jonathan Meza, Courtney Coffman, Dhruv Ahuja
1ac - large sats v9 no grid 1nc - setcol k must say the aff at the flip case 1ar - all 2nr - k case 2ar - case k
Peninsula Invitational
1
Opponent: Proof DR | Judge: Ben Cortez
1ac - large sats v3 1nc - precision ag da military tech da cyber security da adv cp case 1ar - all condo 2nr - cp cyber security da 1ar - case cp da
Peninsula Invitational
3
Opponent: Harvard-Westlake JK | Judge: Yoyo Lei
1ac - large sats v3 1nc - heg da asats adv cp ozone adv cp casae 1ar - all 2nr - caseda 2ar - caseda
Peninsula Invitational
6
Opponent: Catonsville AT | Judge: Lawrence Zhou
1ac - large sats v5 1nc - asats cp appropriation cp burdens nc case 1ar - all condo 2nr - asats cp 2ar - case cp
Peninsula Invitational
Semis
Opponent: Southlake Carroll PK | Judge: Madeleine Conrad-Mogin, Truman Le, Gordon Krauss
1ac - large sats v6 wo astronomy w ozone 1nc - adv cp t appropriaton precision ag da case 1ar - all utopian fiat bad unified sa condo bad alt non reoslutional agent fiat 2nr - cp da 2ar - case cp da
Peninsula Invitational
Octas
Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Nathan Russell, Madeleine Conrad-Mogin, Annabelle Long
1ac - large sats v7 1nc - t outer space t appropriation disclose new advs must defend a policy action consult nato cp broadband da xi da case 1ar - all condo bad pics bad 2nr - xi da case 2ar - broadband da case xi da
Peninsula Invitational
Doubles
Opponent: Stockdale RP | Judge: Ben Cortez, Gordon Krauss, Saketh Kotapati
1ac - large sats v6 1nc - t outer space t cant spec appropriation us adv cp precision ag da case 1ar - all condo 2nr - rvi on condo case 2ar - case
Tournament of Champions
2
Opponent: Harker MK | Judge: Victor Chen
1ac - megaconstellations (ozone debris astronomy) 1nc - 6g da adv cp asia disaster pic case 1ar - all condo bad pics bad 2nr - adv cp 6g da case 2ar - pics bad case cp da
Tournament of Champions
3
Opponent: Scripps Ranch AS | Judge: Animesh Joshi
1ac - large satellites with collisions 1nc - deleuze nc simulacra k util k t must defend general principle t must spec private entities case 1ar - all must not violate own interps dispo bad 2nr - util k nc 2ar - case k nc
Tournament of Champions
5
Opponent: Monta Vista KR | Judge: Indu Pandey
1ac - constellations w astronomy collision ozone 1nc - t appropriation starship da security k cyber da case 1ar - all condo 2nr - k 2ar - case k
Tournament of Champions
Semis
Opponent: Harker AR | Judge: He, Eric Morbeck, Gabriel Chen, Victor
1ac - orbital ads 1nc - un tax cp t appropriation case 1ar - all condo bad 2nr - cp case 2ar - case cp
debateLA Challenge
1
Opponent: Westwood PM | Judge: Alexandra Mork, Claudia Ribera
1ac - large sats 1nc - trophicality aspec new affs security k env process cp case 1ar - all condo 2nr - aspec new affs case 2ar - condo aspec new affs
debateLA Challenge
4
Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Chris Theis, Rodrigo Paramo
1ac - large sats v2 1nc - adv cp warming da blast shielding dust bomb cp case 1ar - all condo 2nr - case 2ar - condo
1ac - large sats v3 1nc - t appropriation pla da taiwan da hotlines cp 1ar - all condo 2nr - pla case 2ar - case pla
To modify or delete round reports, edit the associated round.
Cites
Entry
Date
0 - Contact Info
Tournament: x | Round: 1 | Opponent: x | Judge: x Hi! I'm Aly (they/them or she/her) -- email me (alyssa@vbm.com) or message me on Facebook (friend request first) for disclosure or if you have any questions about what I will read or have read.
4/26/22
0 - Navigation
Tournament: x | Round: 1 | Opponent: x | Judge: x 0 - Top Level 1 - Theory Generics 2 - K Generics 3 - Misc Generics ie Util FW SO - September/October ND - November/December JF - January/February
4/26/22
0 - Note - Content Warnings
Tournament: x | Round: 1 | Opponent: x | Judge: x I'll try to give content warnings for topics that I think are sensitive, but please let me know if there is anything on my wiki that would trigger you or make you uncomfortable and I'll modify stuff. Please give content warnings before the round if possible.
4/26/22
1 - Disclosure Interps
Tournament: x | Round: 1 | Opponent: x | Judge: x Interp – Debaters must disclose all possible disclosure theory interps on the 2021-22 NDCA LD wiki at least 30 minutes before the round.
Interpretation: Debaters must create a separate citation for each constructive position on their 2021-22 NDCA LD wiki page. To clarify, you can't make cite entries labelled by round like "R1 Yale NC" or put multiple under one heading.
Interp: For each position on their corresponding 2021-22 NDCA LD wiki page, debaters must disclose a summary of each analytic argument in their cases. To clarify – you don’t have to include the full text of each, you just have to substitute them with a few words that summarize the thesis of the argument i.e. ‘actor specificity’ rather than ‘analytic’.
Interpretation: Debaters must disclose all constructive positions in cite boxes on the 2021-22 NDCA LD wiki. To clarify, they can’t put “see open source.”
Interpretation: If debaters disclose full text, they must not post the full text of the cards in the cite box, but must upload an open source document with the full text of their cards. To clarify, you don’t have to disclose highlighting or underlining, you just need an open source document with minimally the full, un-underlined text of cards
Interp: Debaters must disclose round reports on the 2021-22 NDCA LD wiki for every round they have debated this season. Round reports disclose which positions (AC, NC, K, T, Theory, etc.) were read/gone for in 2NR.
Interp – debaters must disclose all cards read on case on open source with highlighting on the 2021-22 NDCA LD wiki after the round in which they read them and before the next round they debate.
4/26/22
1- Must Disclose Open Source
Tournament: Golden Desert Debate Tournament at UNLV | Round: 1 | Opponent: Peninsula JX | Judge: Chris Castillo
Underview
Interpretation: Debaters must disclose all constructive positions on open source with highlighting on the 2021-22 NDCA LD wiki after the round in which they read them and before the next round they debate.
Violation – they don’t and didn’t send when I asked
1~ Debate resource inequities—you’ll say people will steal cards, but that’s good—it’s the only way to truly level the playing field for students such as novices in under-privileged programs who can’t bypass paywalled articles.
2~ Evidence ethics – open source is the only way to verify pre-round that cards aren’t miscut or highlighted or bracketed unethically. That’s a voter – maintaining ethical ev practices is key to being good academics and we should be able to verify you didn’t cheat
3~ Depth of clash – it allows debaters to have nuanced researched objections to their opponents evidence before the round at a much faster rate, which leads to higher quality ev comparison – outweighs cause thinking on your feet is NUQ but the best quality responses come from full access to a case.
DTD on AC theory – no arg, ci bc enough time, no RVIs – spend 7 min and moot 5:30 of ac offense
I affirm: The appropriation of outer space by private entities via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit is unjust.
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to ut-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Adv – 1
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – 2
Desire to protect profitable LEO constellations leads states to militarize outer space—specifically with ASATs.
Bernat 19 "The Inevitability of Militarization of Outer Space" Pawel Bernat ~Assistant Professor, Polish Air Force University~ Safety and Defense 5(1) (2019) 49–54 https://philarchive.org/archive/BERTIO-52 SM Currently, the dominant interpretations of this article argue that the placement of conventional weapons
AND
, will gain have access to them (Bernat, Posluszna, 2018).
China, Russia, and the US are developing dual use co-orbital ASATs that can stalk and attack other satellites using rendezvous and proximity operations – they make miscalculation highly likely
Chow ’17 - independent policy analyst with over 25 years as a senior physical scientist specializing in space and national security. He holds a PhD in physics from Case Western Reserve University and an MBA with distinction and PhD in finance from the University of Michigan. Brian G Chow, "Stalkers in Space: Defeating the Threat," Strategic Studies Quarterly 11, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 82-116, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-11'Issue-2/Chow.pdf. Abstract Since 2008, China has been developing a new co-orbital antisatellite
AND
measures for US response are essentially the same for both China and Russia.
Space is offense dominant
====Grego ’18 – senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, PhD in experimental physics at the California Institute of Technology. Laura Grego, "Space and Crisis Stability," Union of Concerned Scientists, March 19, 2018, https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/7804-grego-space-and-crisis-stabilitypdf==== Why crisis stability? For the foreseeable future, military tensions between the United States, China, and Russia are likely to remain high, as are those between China and India. Even absent intentional confrontation, regional problems, such as those in the Baltics and East and South Asia, have the potential to draw these actors into conflict. Thus, it is imperative to pay attention to any pathways that could lead an actor considering crossing the nuclear threshold, or approaching it very closely. The United States and Russia continue to retain large nuclear arsenals on high alert1 .
AND
less than early stages of an all-out assault on US interests.
Unknown legal thresholds for escalation make inadvertent escalation highly likely
MacDonald ’18 – senior director of the Nonproliferation and Arms Control Project with the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, Adjunct Lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Bruce MacDonald, "Chapter 2. Space and Escalation" in Outer Space; Earthly Escalation? Chinese Perspectives on Space Operations and Escalation, A Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Periodic Publication, August 2018, https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SMA-White-Paper'Chinese-Persepectives-on-Space'-Aug-2018.pdf Another dimension of the problem is the issue of the scale of the attack,
AND
potentially hostile acts—or in fact be used to commit hostile acts.
FW – Normal
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable.
Moen 16 ~Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo "An Argument for Hedonism" Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281~ SJDI, brackets in original Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic
AND
places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
2~ No act-omission distinction –
A~ Psychology – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission.
1/14/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v10
Tournament: Barkley Forum for High Schools | Round: 5 | Opponent: Lynbrook SK | Judge: Rachel Ding
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not appropriate outer space via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Starlink sucks – capacity limits, line of sight, cost.
Bode 21 "Starlink Reviews Show The Limitations Of Musk's Broadband Play" May 28, 2021, Karl Bode ~Freelance writer, editor, and analyst with over two decades of experience writing about consumer protection, net neutrality, telecom, online advertising, media consolidation, monopoly power, and the streaming video space. My work has appeared at The Verge, Techdirt, Ars Technica, DSLReports, Medium's OneZero, and Vice's Motherboard.~ https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210518/09565246820/starlink-reviews-show-limitations-musks-broadband-play.shtml SM So we've already noted several times that while Elon Musk's Starlink internet broadband service will
AND
impact business interests (shipping, nautical) far more than residential broadband.
Starlink trades off with more effective fiber optic internet – cost is the biggest barrier, not physical capability.
deploy…~Satellite internet~ doesn’t scale as favorably as wired broadband does.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
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and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Interconnectedness and surface area
Graczyk et al 21, Rafal, Paulo Esteves-Verissimo, and Marcus Voelp. "Sanctuary lost: a cyber-physical warfare in space." arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05878 (2021). (University of Luxembourg, Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) - CritiX group)Elmer NewSpace is on course of enabling satellites to become interconnected, creating orbital networks with
AND
37~, and most likely will become even more significant in the future.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
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two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Astronomy
Constellations sabotage modern astronomy – tweaks like DarkSats don’t solve. That guts asteroid detection and preparedness.
-Reed. "It’s just the sheer numbers that are worrying me."
Asteroids threats are existential – increasingly likely
Spencer ’18 - senior editor for Salon. He manages Salon's science, tech, economy and health coverageKeith Spencer, "The Asteroids Most Likely to Hit Earth," Salon, January 14, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/the-asteroids-most-likely-to-hit-earth/. Like earthquakes and volcanoes, the most frightening thing about asteroid strikes is their inevitability
AND
which are actually quite simple if done far enough in advance of impact.
FW – Normal
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable.
Moen 16 ~Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo "An Argument for Hedonism" Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281~ SJDI, brackets in original Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic
AND
places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity – Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action – private entities have a responsibility to preserve the commons.
2~ Lexical pre-requisite – threats to bodily security preclude the ability for moral actors to effectively act upon other moral theories since they are in a constant state of crisis that inhibits the ideal moral conditions which other theories presuppose
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.
3/25/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v12
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 4 | Opponent: Harker AA | Judge: Lena Mizrahi
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not appropriate outer space via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
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and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
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affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
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Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Interconnectedness and surface area
Graczyk et al 21, Rafal, Paulo Esteves-Verissimo, and Marcus Voelp. "Sanctuary lost: a cyber-physical warfare in space." arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05878 (2021). (University of Luxembourg, Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) - CritiX group)Elmer NewSpace is on course of enabling satellites to become interconnected, creating orbital networks with
AND
37~, and most likely will become even more significant in the future.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Astronomy
Constellations sabotage modern astronomy – tweaks like DarkSats don’t solve. That guts asteroid detection and preparedness.
-Reed. "It’s just the sheer numbers that are worrying me."
Asteroids threats are existential – increasingly likely
Spencer ’18 - senior editor for Salon. He manages Salon's science, tech, economy and health coverageKeith Spencer, "The Asteroids Most Likely to Hit Earth," Salon, January 14, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/the-asteroids-most-likely-to-hit-earth/. Like earthquakes and volcanoes, the most frightening thing about asteroid strikes is their inevitability
AND
which are actually quite simple if done far enough in advance of impact.
Independently, astronomy is key to avert solar flares which are coming now and wreck the grid.
have the opportunity to know when "the big one" is coming.
Grid collapse cascades—-extinction
Alice Friedemann 16. Transportation expert, founder of EnergySkeptic.com and author of "When Trucks Stop Running, Energy and the Future of Transportation," worked at American Presidential Lines for 22 years, where she developed computer systems to coordinate the transit of cargo between ships, rail, trucks, and consumers, citing Dr. Peter Vincent Pry. Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a Congressional advisory board dedicated to achieving protection of the United States from electromagnetic pulse and other threats. Dr. Pry is also the director of the United States Nuclear Strategy Forum, an advisory body to Congress on policies to counter weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Pry has served on the staffs of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the U.S. from an EMP Attack, the House Armed Services Committee, as an intelligence officer with the CIA, and as a verification analyst at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. (1/24/16, "Electromagnetic pulse threat to infrastructure (U.S. House hearings)" http://energyskeptic.com/2016/the-scariest-u-s-house-session-ever-electromagnetic-pulse-and-the-fall-of-civilization/. Modern civilization cannot exist for a protracted period without electricity. Within days of a
AND
could create anarchic conditions that would profoundly challenge the existence of social order.
Causes nuclear meltdowns—-overcomes resilience and ends civilizations
be halted). Runaway meltdowns would be enough to end things pretty quickly.
Adv – Ozone
Mega-constellations destroy the ozone layer.
Pultarova 21 "Air pollution from reentering megaconstellation satellites could cause ozone hole 2.0" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, June 7, 2021 https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere SM Aaron Boley — an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British
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poised to make the same type of mistake by our use of space."
Ozone hole recovering now but depletion causes extinction.
to limit the amount of ozone-depleting substances belched out by mankind.
FW
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events, situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic rewards. Pleasure, as the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable ~10~. Pleasure is a passive reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends. However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure ~14~. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction, homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in their pursuit. ~15~. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers ~16~ which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons ~17–19~ despite the notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO Charles Darwin and other biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and its basic principles found various mechanisms that steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us "what we are," i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness; yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact, Richard Dawkins stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life ~20~. Only genes that lead to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate, distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward functions have evolved to help individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any small edge will ultimately result in evolutionary advantage ~21~, additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment. Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence, under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine ~22~. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the "Brain Reward Cascade" (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms may play a role ~23~. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these systems promoting hypodopaminergia ~24~. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce healthy behavioral changes, including stress management ~25~. The work of Esch and Stefano ~26~ concerning the link between compassion and love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion, can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades ~26–37~, but comparative anatomical and neurobiological function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends ~38~. However, it is not entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear ~39~. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of pleasure ~40~. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called "REWARD" involves a well-known dopamine pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum (VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the "Feel Good" response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined the term "Reward Deficiency Syndrome" (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the "Brain Reward Cascade" that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors ~3,6,41~. Furthermore, ordinary "liking" of something, or pure pleasure, is represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for "sweet"; and in Greek, hodone is the term for "pleasure." Thus, the word Hedonic is now referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to optimism as a dopaminergic response ~42~. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions like panic and fear, as discussed above ~43~. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: "liking," "learning," and "wanting" ~3~. That is, dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli ~44~. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or "wanting" hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards ~45~. Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic "high" that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy, disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation ~46~. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease ~47~. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions ~48~. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. ~48~ suggested based on review that whereas the gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between "stages," and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially "pleasure" has led to confusion concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) ~49~. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence for our concerns was discovered ~50~ In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. ~50~ small case found various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from Yale, stated: "Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees." This may explain why the behavior of humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: "It might also shed light on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction)." Remarkably, this research finding emerged from an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247 specimens of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This may explain what often motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit ~51~. In similar work, Volkow and Bale ~52~ proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
2/13/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v13
Tournament: King Round Robin | Round: 1 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit JX | Judge: Brianna Aaron, Danielle Dosch
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not appropriate outer space via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
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and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
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affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
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Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
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it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Interconnectedness and surface area
Graczyk et al 21, Rafal, Paulo Esteves-Verissimo, and Marcus Voelp. "Sanctuary lost: a cyber-physical warfare in space." arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05878 (2021). (University of Luxembourg, Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) - CritiX group)Elmer NewSpace is on course of enabling satellites to become interconnected, creating orbital networks with
AND
37~, and most likely will become even more significant in the future.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
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two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
FW – Fancy
Moral realism must start by being mind-independent – realism wouldn’t make sense if there were a plethora of moral truths contingent on the agent’s cognitively predisposed capacity because then moral truths wouldn’t exist outside of the ways we cohere them. Thus, moral naturalism is true.
Synthetic a posteriori moral naturalism is the basis of realist ethics:
A~ The normative supervenes on the natural – natural facts like whether brains develop to permit rationality or subjectivity determine whether non naturalist moral facts can be premised on things like capacity for reason
Lutz and Lenman 18. Lutz, Matthew and Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/naturalism-moral/.Massa The first argument against normative non-naturalism concerns normative supervenience. The normative supervenes
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, this is a heavy mark against non-naturalism (McPherson 2012).
That outweighs other metaethical justifications– controversy prevents acting on moral laws, but lack of philosophical controversy on the correlation between moral and natural facts indicates naturalism guides action.
B~ The problem of disagreement – resolving a priori conflicts requires indicting the epistemological basis of one’s judgement with a reliable process for deriving moral truths which is impossible given widespread moral disagreement about non verifiable a priori truth – grounding ethics with verifiable natural facts solve
Next, phenomenal introspection can bridge the gap from experiential natural facts to moral truths and necessitates hedonism. When I observe a lemon’s yellowness shifting my visual fields from darker to lighter shades, I can introspect on that experience and identify brightness as an intrinsic property of seeing a lemon. Similarly, when I feel pleasure, I can introspect on the shift in hedonic tones and identify that goodness is an intrinsic property of the pleasure that was increased.
This connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
The Darwinian dilemma bridges the is ought gap and takes out their theory. Moral beliefs we hold shift as we evolve which means either moral facts have changed which contradicts moral realism or evolution has randomly just now led us to moral truth. The latter is statistically impossible since evolution doesn’t track morality – there is no pressure to identify moral truths that have no bearing on survival and reproduction.
Hedonism escapes this dilemma through the byproduct hypothesis since natural selection proves the reliability of phenomenal introspection. When we introspect for survival on data from our eyes or ears, such as whether one sees or smells food or a predator, we use the same part of the brain that introspects on hedonic tones and identifies their moral relevance. The ability to correctly identify moral truths is evolutionarily advantageous if and only if that ability is a byproduct of a different trait that enables survival and reproduction.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism. Prefer it:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Governments must aggregate because their policies benefit some and harm others so the only non-arbitrary way to prioritize is by helping the most amount of people
Mack 4 ~(Peter, MBBS, FRCS(Ed), FRCS (Glasg), PhD, MBA, MHlthEcon) "Utilitarian Ethics in Healthcare." International Journal of the Computer, the Internet, and Management Vol. 12, No.3. 2004. Department of Surgery. Singapore General Hospital.~ SJDI Medicine is a costly science, but of greater concern to the health economist is
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the utility and any non-utility aspects of the situation are ignored.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction for governments – deliberating over an action requires analysis of foreseen consequences which could be prevented which makes them intrinsic to state action
C~ Governments aren’t singular rational agents which makes theories about individuals irrelevant – only consequentialism solves by analyzing ends divorced from an actor
2~ No act-omission distinction – governments are culpable for omissions cuz their purpose is to protect the constituency – otherwise they would have no obligation to make murder illegal. Actor spec o/w – different agents have different ethical standings that affect their obligations and considerations.
3~ Extinction comes first – moral theories converge
Pummer 15 ~Theron, Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford. "Moral Agreement on Saving the World" Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. May 18, 2015~ AT There appears to be lot of disagreement in moral philosophy. Whether these many apparent
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be acting very wrongly." (From chapter 36 of On What Matters)
4~ Degrees of wrongness - only util can account for degrees of wrongness, telling someone their shirt looks nice when it doesn’t is better than telling a slave owner where a runaway slave is which means aggregation controls the internal link to your fw
Sinnott-Armstrong 92 ~Walter, professor of practical ethics. "An Argument for Consequentialism" Dartmouth College Philosophical Perspectives. 1992.~ A moral reason to do an act is consequential if and only if the reason
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explain moral substitutability if it claims that properties like this provide moral reasons.
Method
Focus on large scale catastrophes is good and they outweigh – appeals to social costs, moral rules, and securitization play into cognitive bias and flawed risk calculus – 2020 is living proof
Weber 20 (ELKE U. WEBER is Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.), November-December 2020 Issue, "Heads in the Sand," Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-10-13/heads-sand mvp We are living in a time of crisis. From the immediate challenge of the
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to dislodge it, even when cost-benefit analysis argues for change.
Evaluate the plan before discourse—-focusing on their theory and requiring the Aff to defend every assumption collapses global progress
David A. Lake 14. University of California, San Diego, USA. "Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of the Great Debates and the rise of eclecticism in International Relations." European Journal of International Relations 19(3) 567–587 More important, as Kuhn (1970) first argued, progress is only possible
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but theory — in the plural — lives. Long may they reign.
No chance any grab for power succeeds– reform is all we’ve got
Fredrik deBoer 16, Limited-Term Lecturer, Introductory Composition at Purdue Program, 3/15/16, "c’mon, guys," http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/03/15/cmon-guys/ I could be wrong about the short-term dangers, and the stakes are
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, unsexy work of building coalitions and asking people to climb on board.
3/26/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v14
Tournament: King Round Robin | Round: 3 | Opponent: Harker DS | Judge: Abhinav Sinha, Rodrigo Paramo
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not engage in the exclusive and permanent use of Low Earth Orbit via Large Satellite Constellations.
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines density thresholds for exclusive use via LSCs
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Preliminary estimates of the density threshold for exclusive use occur on a system-by-system basis and range from 11-17 kilometers – collisions are a mathematical certainty outside this threshold
Liang et al. 21 J. Liang, A. U. Chaudhry and H. Yanikomeroglu, "Phasing Parameter Analysis for Satellite Collision Avoidance in Starlink and Kuiper Constellations," 2021 IEEE 4th 5G World Forum (5GWF), 2021, pp. 493-498, doi: 10.1109/5GWF52925.2021.00093. mvp In this work, we investigate the phasing parameter for two biggest upcoming satellite constellations
AND
the intra-constellation collisions between satellites in these constellations can be avoided.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
AND
Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Interconnectedness and surface area
Graczyk et al 21, Rafal, Paulo Esteves-Verissimo, and Marcus Voelp. "Sanctuary lost: a cyber-physical warfare in space." arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05878 (2021). (University of Luxembourg, Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) - CritiX group)Elmer NewSpace is on course of enabling satellites to become interconnected, creating orbital networks with
AND
37~, and most likely will become even more significant in the future.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Astronomy
Constellations sabotage modern astronomy – tweaks like DarkSats don’t solve. That guts asteroid detection and preparedness.
-Reed. "It’s just the sheer numbers that are worrying me."
Space based astronomy fails
Siegel 2/4 "Ask Ethan: Do we still need ground-based astronomy?" Ethan Siegel is a Ph.D. astrophysicist and author of "Starts with a Bang!" February 4, 2022 https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/ground-based-astronomy/ SM So why not just put everything in space, then? After all, we
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then launch, commission, and calibrate the observatory it’s a part of.
Asteroids threats are existential – increasingly likely
Spencer ’18 - senior editor for Salon. He manages Salon's science, tech, economy and health coverageKeith Spencer, "The Asteroids Most Likely to Hit Earth," Salon, January 14, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/the-asteroids-most-likely-to-hit-earth/. Like earthquakes and volcanoes, the most frightening thing about asteroid strikes is their inevitability
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which are actually quite simple if done far enough in advance of impact.
They obliterate the earth – definitely causes extinction
McGuire 2 (Bill, Professor of Geohazards at University College London and is one of Britain's leading volcanologists, A Guide to the End of the World, p. 159-168) The Tunguska events pale into insignificance when compared to what happened off the coast of
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, wc could do little about a new comet heading in our direction.
Adv – Ozone
Mega-constellations destroy the ozone layer.
Pultarova 21 "Air pollution from reentering megaconstellation satellites could cause ozone hole 2.0" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, June 7, 2021 https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere SM Aaron Boley — an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British
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poised to make the same type of mistake by our use of space."
Ozone hole recovering now but depletion causes extinction.
to limit the amount of ozone-depleting substances belched out by mankind.
FW – Tiny
The introspective connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Evolution proves the reliability of phenomenal introspection – when we introspect on data from our eyes or ears, such as whether one sees or smells food or a predator, we use the same part of the brain that introspects on hedonic tones and identifies their moral relevance.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
3/26/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v15
Tournament: National Debate Coaches Association National Championships | Round: 2 | Opponent: Harker PG | Judge: Gerard Grigsby
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not engage in the exclusive and permanent use of Low Earth Orbit via Large Satellite Constellations.
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines density thresholds for exclusive use via LSCs
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Preliminary estimates of the density threshold for exclusive use occur on a system-by-system basis and range from 11-17 kilometers – collisions are a mathematical certainty outside this threshold
Liang et al. 21 J. Liang, A. U. Chaudhry and H. Yanikomeroglu, "Phasing Parameter Analysis for Satellite Collision Avoidance in Starlink and Kuiper Constellations," 2021 IEEE 4th 5G World Forum (5GWF), 2021, pp. 493-498, doi: 10.1109/5GWF52925.2021.00093. mvp In this work, we investigate the phasing parameter for two biggest upcoming satellite constellations
AND
the intra-constellation collisions between satellites in these constellations can be avoided.
Appropriation means exclusive and permanent control over a region of space; the plan only bans mega constellations that rise to that level.
Trapp 13, Timothy Justin. "Taking up Space by Any Other Means: Coming to Terms with Nonappropriation Article of the Outer Space Treaty." U. Ill. L. Rev. (2013): 1681. (JD Candidate at UIUC Law School)Re-cut by Elmer The issues presented in relation to the nonappropriation article of the Outer Space Treaty should be clear.214 The ITU has, quite blatantly, created something akin to "property interests in outer space."215 It allows nations to exclude others from their orbital slots, even when the nation is not currently using that slot.216 This is directly in line with at least one definition of outer-space appropriation.217 ~Start Footnote 217Id. at 236 ("Appropriation of outer space, therefore, is ‘the exercise of exclusive control or exclusive use’ with a sense of permanence, which limits other nations’ access to it.") (quoting Milton L. Smith, The Role of the ITU in the Development of Space Law, 17 ANNALS AIR and SPACE L. 157, 165 (1992)). End Footnote 217~ The ITU even allows nations with unused slots to devise them to other entities
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the Bogotá Declaration were try3ing to accomplish, albeit through different means.219
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
AND
Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Interconnectedness and surface area
Graczyk et al 21, Rafal, Paulo Esteves-Verissimo, and Marcus Voelp. "Sanctuary lost: a cyber-physical warfare in space." arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05878 (2021). (University of Luxembourg, Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) - CritiX group)Elmer NewSpace is on course of enabling satellites to become interconnected, creating orbital networks with
AND
37~, and most likely will become even more significant in the future.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Astronomy
Constellations sabotage modern astronomy – tweaks like DarkSats don’t solve. That guts asteroid detection and preparedness.
-Reed. "It’s just the sheer numbers that are worrying me."
Asteroids threats are existential – increasingly likely
Spencer ’18 - senior editor for Salon. He manages Salon's science, tech, economy and health coverageKeith Spencer, "The Asteroids Most Likely to Hit Earth," Salon, January 14, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/the-asteroids-most-likely-to-hit-earth/. Like earthquakes and volcanoes, the most frightening thing about asteroid strikes is their inevitability
AND
which are actually quite simple if done far enough in advance of impact.
They obliterate the earth
– definitely causes extinction
McGuire 2 (Bill, Professor of Geohazards at University College London and is one of Britain's leading volcanologists, A Guide to the End of the World, p. 159-168) The Tunguska events pale into insignificance when compared to what happened off the coast of
AND
, wc could do little about a new comet heading in our direction.
Adv – Ozone
Mega-constellations destroy the ozone layer.
Pultarova 21 "Air pollution from reentering megaconstellation satellites could cause ozone hole 2.0" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, June 7, 2021 https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere SM Aaron Boley — an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British
AND
poised to make the same type of mistake by our use of space."
Ozone hole recovering now but depletion causes extinction.
to limit the amount of ozone-depleting substances belched out by mankind.
FW – Tiny
The introspective connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Evolution proves the reliability of phenomenal introspection – when we introspect on data from our eyes or ears, such as whether one sees or smells food or a predator, we use the same part of the brain that introspects on hedonic tones and identifies their moral relevance.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
4/9/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v2
Tournament: debateLA Challenge | Round: 4 | Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Chris Theis, Rodrigo Paramo
1AC
Plan
I affirm: The appropriation of outer space by private entities via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit is unjust.
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
AND
Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Space Militarization
Desire to protect profitable LEO constellations leads states to militarize outer space—specifically with ASATs.
Bernat 19 "The Inevitability of Militarization of Outer Space" Pawel Bernat ~Assistant Professor, Polish Air Force University~ Safety and Defense 5(1) (2019) 49–54 https://philarchive.org/archive/BERTIO-52 SM Currently, the dominant interpretations of this article argue that the placement of conventional weapons
AND
, will gain have access to them (Bernat, Posluszna, 2018).
China, Russia, and the US are developing dual use co-orbital ASATs that can stalk and attack other satellites using rendezvous and proximity operations – they make miscalculation highly likely
Chow ’17 - independent policy analyst with over 25 years as a senior physical scientist specializing in space and national security. He holds a PhD in physics from Case Western Reserve University and an MBA with distinction and PhD in finance from the University of Michigan. Brian G Chow, "Stalkers in Space: Defeating the Threat," Strategic Studies Quarterly 11, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 82-116, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-11'Issue-2/Chow.pdf. Abstract Since 2008, China has been developing a new co-orbital antisatellite
AND
measures for US response are essentially the same for both China and Russia.
Unknown legal thresholds for escalation make inadvertent escalation highly likely
MacDonald ’18 – senior director of the Nonproliferation and Arms Control Project with the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, Adjunct Lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Bruce MacDonald, "Chapter 2. Space and Escalation" in Outer Space; Earthly Escalation? Chinese Perspectives on Space Operations and Escalation, A Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Periodic Publication, August 2018, https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SMA-White-Paper'Chinese-Persepectives-on-Space'-Aug-2018.pdf Another dimension of the problem is the issue of the scale of the attack,
AND
potentially hostile acts—or in fact be used to commit hostile acts.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
FW – Normal
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
===Method===
Evaluate the plan before discourse—-focusing on their theory and requiring the Aff to defend every assumption collapses global progress
David A. Lake 14. University of California, San Diego, USA. "Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of the Great Debates and the rise of eclecticism in International Relations." European Journal of International Relations 19(3) 567–587 More important, as Kuhn (1970) first argued, progress is only possible
AND
but theory — in the plural — lives. Long may they reign.
I affirm: The appropriation of outer space by private entities via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit is unjust.
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Ozone
Mega-constellations destroy the ozone layer.
Pultarova 21 "Air pollution from reentering megaconstellation satellites could cause ozone hole 2.0" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, June 7, 2021 https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere SM Aaron Boley — an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British
AND
poised to make the same type of mistake by our use of space."
Ozone hole recovering now but depletion causes extinction.
to limit the amount of ozone-depleting substances belched out by mankind.
FW
This connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
The standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
===Method===
Psychoanalysis pathologizes oppression. There is no single symbolic order. Engaging in politics can create fissures in libidinal investment.
Nancy FRASER 13. Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and Professor of Philosophy, The New School. Fortunes of Feminism. Verso Books. 140-9. Modified for ableist language. Let me begin by posing two questions: What might a theory of discourse contribute
AND
as Other, but never anything that could count as a social agent.
Evaluate the plan before discourse-
—focusing on their theory and requiring the Aff to defend every assumption collapses global progress
David A. Lake 14. University of California, San Diego, USA. "Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of the Great Debates and the rise of eclecticism in International Relations." European Journal of International Relations 19(3) 567–587 More important, as Kuhn (1970) first argued, progress is only possible
AND
but theory — in the plural — lives. Long may they reign.
Scenario planning is pedagogically valuable—-analyzing how policies might be otherwise and imagining the consequences is vital to critical reflexivity—-deconstructs cognitive biases and flawed ontological assumptions, and empowers creativity and flexibility in thinking and advocacy.
Barma et al. 16. Naazneen Barma, Ph.D. Political Science, UC-Berkeley, Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School; Brent Durbin, Ph.D. Political Science, UC-Berkeley, Professor of Government, Smith College; Eric Lorber, J.D. UPenn, Ph.D. Political Science, Duke, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher; Rachel Whitlark, Ph.D. Political Science, GWU, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard; "‘Imagine a World in Which’: Using Scenarios in Political Science," International Studies Perspectives, 17(2), p.1-19, http://www.naazneenbarma.com/uploads/2/9/6/9/29695681/using'scenarios'in'political'science'isp'2015.pdf Over the past decade, the "cult of irrelevance" in political science scholarship
AND
analysts from anticipating and understanding the pivotal junctures that arise in international affairs.
1/30/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v4
Tournament: Harvard Westlake Debates | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harker DV | Judge: Andrew Gong
1AC
Plan
I affirm: The appropriation of outer space by private entities via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit is unjust.
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Squo debris is goldilocks – current orbital debris deters space aggression, but adding more generates more risk than reward
Miller 21 ~Gregory D., PhD PSci from Ohio State University, Prof and Chair of Dept of Spacepower and Director of Space Scholars program at Air Command and Staff College~. "Deterrence by Debris: The Downside to Cleaning up Space." Space Policy, Vol 58, Nov 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2021.101447 TG The danger of kinetic strikes increasing orbital debris is a common theme in the literature
AND
more states develop space capabilities and as states develop more nonkinetic ASAT capabilities.
Adv – Space Militarization
Desire to protect profitable LEO constellations leads states to militarize outer space—specifically with ASATs.
Bernat 19 "The Inevitability of Militarization of Outer Space" Pawel Bernat ~Assistant Professor, Polish Air Force University~ Safety and Defense 5(1) (2019) 49–54 https://philarchive.org/archive/BERTIO-52 SM Currently, the dominant interpretations of this article argue that the placement of conventional weapons
AND
, will gain have access to them (Bernat, Posluszna, 2018).
China, Russia, and the US are developing dual use co-orbital ASATs that can stalk and attack other satellites using rendezvous and proximity operations – they make miscalculation highly likely
Chow ’17 - independent policy analyst with over 25 years as a senior physical scientist specializing in space and national security. He holds a PhD in physics from Case Western Reserve University and an MBA with distinction and PhD in finance from the University of Michigan. Brian G Chow, "Stalkers in Space: Defeating the Threat," Strategic Studies Quarterly 11, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 82-116, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-11'Issue-2/Chow.pdf. Abstract Since 2008, China has been developing a new co-orbital antisatellite
AND
measures for US response are essentially the same for both China and Russia.
Space is offense dominant which structurally increases first strike and use or lose pressures – only the plan restores crisis stability
Grego ’18 – senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, PhD in experimental physics at the California Institute of Technology. Laura Grego, "Space and Crisis Stability," Union of Concerned Scientists, March 19, 2018, https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/7804-grego-space-and-crisis-stabilitypdf Why crisis stability? For the foreseeable future, military tensions between the United
AND
less than early stages of an all-out assault on US interests.
Unknown legal thresholds for escalation make inadvertent escalation highly likely
MacDonald ’18 – senior director of the Nonproliferation and Arms Control Project with the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, Adjunct Lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Bruce MacDonald, "Chapter 2. Space and Escalation" in Outer Space; Earthly Escalation? Chinese Perspectives on Space Operations and Escalation, A Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Periodic Publication, August 2018, https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SMA-White-Paper'Chinese-Persepectives-on-Space'-Aug-2018.pdf Another dimension of the problem is the issue of the scale of the attack,
AND
potentially hostile acts—or in fact be used to commit hostile acts.
Adv – Ozone
Mega-constellations destroy the ozone layer.
Pultarova 21 "Air pollution from reentering megaconstellation satellites could cause ozone hole 2.0" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, June 7, 2021 https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere SM Aaron Boley — an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British
AND
poised to make the same type of mistake by our use of space."
Ozone hole recovering now but depletion causes extinction.
to limit the amount of ozone-depleting substances belched out by mankind.
FW – Normal
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
1/15/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v5
Tournament: Peninsula Invitational | Round: 6 | Opponent: Catonsville AT | Judge: Lawrence Zhou
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not appropriate outer space via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
globalization and inequality can now be seen in almost every aspect of life.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
AND
Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Starlink trades off with more effective fiber optic internet – cost is the biggest barrier, not physical capability.
deploy…~Satellite internet~ doesn’t scale as favorably as wired broadband does.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Space Militarization
Desire to protect profitable LEO constellations leads states to militarize outer space—specifically with ASATs.
Bernat 19 "The Inevitability of Militarization of Outer Space" Pawel Bernat ~Assistant Professor, Polish Air Force University~ Safety and Defense 5(1) (2019) 49–54 https://philarchive.org/archive/BERTIO-52 SM Currently, the dominant interpretations of this article argue that the placement of conventional weapons
AND
, will gain have access to them (Bernat, Posluszna, 2018).
China, Russia, and the US are developing dual use co-orbital ASATs that can stalk and attack other satellites using rendezvous and proximity operations – they make miscalculation highly likely
Chow ’17 - independent policy analyst with over 25 years as a senior physical scientist specializing in space and national security. He holds a PhD in physics from Case Western Reserve University and an MBA with distinction and PhD in finance from the University of Michigan. Brian G Chow, "Stalkers in Space: Defeating the Threat," Strategic Studies Quarterly 11, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 82-116, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-11'Issue-2/Chow.pdf. Abstract Since 2008, China has been developing a new co-orbital antisatellite
AND
measures for US response are essentially the same for both China and Russia.
Space is offense dominant which structurally increases first strike and use or lose pressures – only the plan restores crisis stability
Grego ’18 – senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, PhD in experimental physics at the California Institute of Technology. Laura Grego, "Space and Crisis Stability," Union of Concerned Scientists, March 19, 2018, https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/7804-grego-space-and-crisis-stabilitypdf Why crisis stability? For the foreseeable future, military tensions between the United
AND
less than early stages of an all-out assault on US interests.
Unknown legal thresholds for escalation make inadvertent escalation highly likely
MacDonald ’18 – senior director of the Nonproliferation and Arms Control Project with the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, Adjunct Lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Bruce MacDonald, "Chapter 2. Space and Escalation" in Outer Space; Earthly Escalation? Chinese Perspectives on Space Operations and Escalation, A Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Periodic Publication, August 2018, https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SMA-White-Paper'Chinese-Persepectives-on-Space'-Aug-2018.pdf Another dimension of the problem is the issue of the scale of the attack,
AND
potentially hostile acts—or in fact be used to commit hostile acts.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
FW
The standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
Method
Evaluate the plan before discourse—-focusing on their theory and requiring the Aff to defend every assumption collapses global progress
David A. Lake 14. University of California, San Diego, USA. "Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of the Great Debates and the rise of eclecticism in International Relations." European Journal of International Relations 19(3) 567–587 More important, as Kuhn (1970) first argued, progress is only possible
AND
of the world. Just wait long enough. Stranger things will happen.¶
1/23/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v6
Tournament: Peninsula Invitational | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Stockdale RP | Judge: Ben Cortez, Gordon Krauss, Saketh Kotapati
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not appropriate outer space via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit
To clarify, private entities are the sole actors of the plan – we do not defend a treaty or any alteration of international law Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
AND
Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Starlink trades off with more effective fiber optic internet – cost is the biggest barrier, not physical capability.
deploy…~Satellite internet~ doesn’t scale as favorably as wired broadband does.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Astronomy
Constellations sabotage modern astronomy – tweaks like DarkSats don’t solve. That guts asteroid detection and preparedness.
-Reed. "It’s just the sheer numbers that are worrying me."
Asteroids threats are existential – increasingly likely
Spencer ’18 - senior editor for Salon. He manages Salon's science, tech, economy and health coverageKeith Spencer, "The Asteroids Most Likely to Hit Earth," Salon, January 14, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/the-asteroids-most-likely-to-hit-earth/. Like earthquakes and volcanoes, the most frightening thing about asteroid strikes is their inevitability
AND
which are actually quite simple if done far enough in advance of impact.
Adv – Ozone
Mega-constellations destroy the ozone layer.
Pultarova 21 "Air pollution from reentering megaconstellation satellites could cause ozone hole 2.0" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, June 7, 2021 https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere SM Aaron Boley — an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British
AND
poised to make the same type of mistake by our use of space."
Ozone hole recovering now but depletion causes extinction.
to limit the amount of ozone-depleting substances belched out by mankind.
FW
The introspective connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Evolution proves the reliability of phenomenal introspection – when we introspect on data from our eyes or ears, such as whether one sees or smells food or a predator, we use the same part of the brain that introspects on hedonic tones and identifies their moral relevance.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Evaluate the plan before discourse—
David A. Lake 14. University of California, San Diego, USA. "Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of the Great Debates and the rise of eclecticism in International Relations." European Journal of International Relations 19(3) 567–587 More important, as Kuhn (1970) first argued, progress is only possible
AND
but theory — in the plural — lives. Long may they reign.
Focus on large scale catastrophes is good and they outweigh – appeals to social costs, moral rules, and securitization play into cognitive bias and flawed risk calculus – 2020 is living proof
Weber 20 (ELKE U. WEBER is Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.), November-December 2020 Issue, "Heads in the Sand," Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-10-13/heads-sand mvp We are living in a time of crisis. From the immediate challenge of the
AND
to dislodge it, even when cost-benefit analysis argues for change.
1/28/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v7
Tournament: Peninsula Invitational | Round: Octas | Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Nathan Russell, Madeleine Conrad-Mogin, Annabelle Long
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not appropriate outer space via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
AND
Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Starlink trades off with more effective fiber optic internet – cost is the biggest barrier, not physical capability.
deploy…~Satellite internet~ doesn’t scale as favorably as wired broadband does.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Sino-India
China backlash to Starlink escalate tensions and repression – causes Sino-Indian war
Goodwins 21 "Starlink's latent China crisis could spark a whole new world of warcraft" Rupert Goodwins ~British writer, broadcaster and technology journalist, Executive Editor @ ZDNet UK~, March 15, 2021 https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/15/starlink'china'crisis/ SM Let's skip forward to the end of 2022, when the majority of the 10k
AND
The real shoot-em-ups may be on their way. ®
Sino-India war goes nuclear.
Rachman 20 "Erosion of nuclear deterrence makes India-China relations critical" GIDEON RACHMAN ~Gideon Rachman became chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times in July 2006. He joined the FT after a 15-year career at The Economist, which included spells as a foreign correspondent in Brussels, Washington and Bangkok.~ September 7, 2020 https://www.ft.com/content/311694ac-d1a4-4d92-a850-97e161ad887c SM Erosion of nuclear deterrence makes India-China relations critical Countries with nuclear weapons
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the event of an invasion by India that would otherwise lead to defeat.
Adv – Astronomy
Constellations sabotage modern astronomy – tweaks like DarkSats don’t solve. That guts asteroid detection and preparedness.
-Reed. "It’s just the sheer numbers that are worrying me."
Asteroids threats are existential – increasingly likely
Spencer ’18 - senior editor for Salon. He manages Salon's science, tech, economy and health coverageKeith Spencer, "The Asteroids Most Likely to Hit Earth," Salon, January 14, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/the-asteroids-most-likely-to-hit-earth/. Like earthquakes and volcanoes, the most frightening thing about asteroid strikes is their inevitability
AND
which are actually quite simple if done far enough in advance of impact.
Astronomy is key to avert solar flares which are coming now and wreck the grid.
have the opportunity to know when "the big one" is coming.
Grid collapse cascades—-extinction
Alice Friedemann 16. Transportation expert, founder of EnergySkeptic.com and author of "When Trucks Stop Running, Energy and the Future of Transportation," worked at American Presidential Lines for 22 years, where she developed computer systems to coordinate the transit of cargo between ships, rail, trucks, and consumers, citing Dr. Peter Vincent Pry. Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a Congressional advisory board dedicated to achieving protection of the United States from electromagnetic pulse and other threats. Dr. Pry is also the director of the United States Nuclear Strategy Forum, an advisory body to Congress on policies to counter weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Pry has served on the staffs of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the U.S. from an EMP Attack, the House Armed Services Committee, as an intelligence officer with the CIA, and as a verification analyst at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. (1/24/16, "Electromagnetic pulse threat to infrastructure (U.S. House hearings)" http://energyskeptic.com/2016/the-scariest-u-s-house-session-ever-electromagnetic-pulse-and-the-fall-of-civilization/. Modern civilization cannot exist for a protracted period without electricity. Within days of a
AND
could create anarchic conditions that would profoundly challenge the existence of social order.
Causes nuclear meltdowns—-overcomes resilience and ends civilizations
be halted). Runaway meltdowns would be enough to end things pretty quickly.
FW
The standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
The introspective connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Evolution proves the reliability of phenomenal introspection – when we introspect on data from our eyes or ears, such as whether one sees or smells food or a predator, we use the same part of the brain that introspects on hedonic tones and identifies their moral relevance.
1/28/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v8
Tournament: Barkley Forum for High Schools | Round: 2 | Opponent: Coppell RM | Judge: Madeleine Conrad-Mogin
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not appropriate outer space via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
affordable access, but also the process through which people gain that access.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Astronomy
Constellations sabotage modern astronomy – tweaks like DarkSats don’t solve. That guts asteroid detection and preparedness.
-Reed. "It’s just the sheer numbers that are worrying me."
Asteroids threats are existential – increasingly likely
Spencer ’18 - senior editor for Salon. He manages Salon's science, tech, economy and health coverageKeith Spencer, "The Asteroids Most Likely to Hit Earth," Salon, January 14, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/the-asteroids-most-likely-to-hit-earth/. Like earthquakes and volcanoes, the most frightening thing about asteroid strikes is their inevitability
AND
which are actually quite simple if done far enough in advance of impact.
Independently, astronomy is key to avert solar flares which are coming now and wreck the grid.
have the opportunity to know when "the big one" is coming.
Grid collapse cascades—-extinction
Alice Friedemann 16. Transportation expert, founder of EnergySkeptic.com and author of "When Trucks Stop Running, Energy and the Future of Transportation," worked at American Presidential Lines for 22 years, where she developed computer systems to coordinate the transit of cargo between ships, rail, trucks, and consumers, citing Dr. Peter Vincent Pry. Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a Congressional advisory board dedicated to achieving protection of the United States from electromagnetic pulse and other threats. Dr. Pry is also the director of the United States Nuclear Strategy Forum, an advisory body to Congress on policies to counter weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Pry has served on the staffs of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the U.S. from an EMP Attack, the House Armed Services Committee, as an intelligence officer with the CIA, and as a verification analyst at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. (1/24/16, "Electromagnetic pulse threat to infrastructure (U.S. House hearings)" http://energyskeptic.com/2016/the-scariest-u-s-house-session-ever-electromagnetic-pulse-and-the-fall-of-civilization/. Modern civilization cannot exist for a protracted period without electricity. Within days of a
AND
could create anarchic conditions that would profoundly challenge the existence of social order.
Causes nuclear meltdowns—-overcomes resilience and ends civilizations
be halted). Runaway meltdowns would be enough to end things pretty quickly.
FW
The introspective connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Evolution proves the reliability of phenomenal introspection – when we introspect on data from our eyes or ears, such as whether one sees or smells food or a predator, we use the same part of the brain that introspects on hedonic tones and identifies their moral relevance.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
No act-omission distinction –
A~ Psychology – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission.
B~ Actor specificity – governments are culpable for omissions cuz their purpose is to protect the constituency – otherwise they would have no obligation to make murder illegal. Only util can escape culpability in the instance of tradeoffs – i.e. it resolves the trolley problem cuz a deontological theory would hold you responsible for killing regardless. Actor spec o/w – different agents have different ethical standings that affect their obligations and considerations.
Method
Focus on large scale catastrophes is good and they outweigh –
appeals to social costs, moral rules, and securitization play into cognitive bias and flawed risk calculus – 2020 is living proof
Weber 20 (ELKE U. WEBER is Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.), November-December 2020 Issue, "Heads in the Sand," Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-10-13/heads-sand mvp We are living in a time of crisis. From the immediate challenge of the
AND
to dislodge it, even when cost-benefit analysis argues for change.
No chance any grab for power succeeds –
leftist hackers get bodied by the NSA – reform is all we’ve got
Fredrik deBoer 16, Limited-Term Lecturer, Introductory Composition at Purdue Program, 3/15/16, "c’mon, guys," http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/03/15/cmon-guys/ I could be wrong about the short-term dangers, and the stakes are
AND
, unsexy work of building coalitions and asking people to climb on board.
1/28/22
JF - AC - Large Satellites v9
Tournament: Barkley Forum for High Schools | Round: 3 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit JW | Judge: Rishi Mukherjee
1AC
Plan
Plan: Private entities ought not appropriate outer space via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit
Takaya et al 18 "The Principle of Non-Appropriation and the Exclusive Uses of LEO by Large Satellite Constellations" Yuri Takaya-Umehara ~Visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo since April 2017. She was affiliated to the Kobe University to provide a course on space law to post-graduate students (2011-2017). She chairs a working group on the formulation of global norms in space law organized by the Keio University since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. degree at the IDEST of Paris XI University in France, LL.M. at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.~ Quentin Verspieren ~Ph.D. in public policy @ The University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor of Space Policy @UTokyo, General Manager, Global Strategy @ArkEdge Space Inc., Associate Research Fellow @ESPI~ Goutham Karthikeyan ~The University of Tokyo and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS-JAXA)~ 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328094878'The'Principle'of'Non-Appropriation'and'the'Exclusive'Use'of'LEO'by'Large'Satellite'Constellations SM LSC = large satellite constellations Outlines "L"SC thresholds By investigating
AND
and in translating such definition into a clear regulation or code of conduct.
Privatization is driving uncontrolled satellite internet constellations that profit at the expense of cooperation and sustainability – perpetuates internet inequality.
Song and Bloom 20 "Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem" Steve Song is a Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation where he works to promote policy and regulation that will increase equitable and affordable access to communication in rural and underserved regions of the world. Peter Bloom is a community digital defense activist and the founder and General Coordinator of Rhizomatica, an international non-profit that helps communities build their own communications infrastructure. He is a former Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and was named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review and appeared on Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list in 2015. November 14, 2020 https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/big-tech-is-leading-the-new-space-race-heres-why-thats-a-problem/ SM Big Tech is leading the new space race. Here's why that's a problem
AND
how those are used to competitive advantage in other areas of their businesses.
Constellations couldn’t support more than 1 user for every 10 km2 – only useful in extremely remote areas.
Ogutu and Oughton 21 "A Techno-Economic Cost Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper" Osoro B. Ogutu and Edward J. Oughton ~O. Ogutu is with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University; E. Oughton is an assistant professor with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, George Mason University~ August 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9568932 SM At maximum network density, each Starlink satellite covers approximately 101,000 km2,
AND
Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper respectively in the busiest hour of the day.
Starlink trades off with more effective fiber optic internet – cost is the biggest barrier, not physical capability.
deploy…~Satellite internet~ doesn’t scale as favorably as wired broadband does.
Adv – Collisions
Satellite internet constellations accelerate collision risks – more close encounters and less transparency means bad decisions are inevitable.
Pultarova 21 "SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says" Tereza Pultarova ~Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.~, August 18, 2021 https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise SM SpaceX Starlink satellites responsible for over half of close encounters in orbit, scientist says
AND
be and what it is going to do in the next few days."
LEO collisions due to constellations take out ISR and other military assets – debris cascades into different altitudes and triggers Kessler Syndrome.
Wong 19 "Congested Outer Space: Increased Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Could Hamper Military Space Operations" 2019 Arthur Wong ~Strategic Development of Forces Division, SHAPE. Prior to working at SHAPE he has worked at NATO HQ, within the Defence Investment Division on interoperability for NATO’s multinational battlegroups.~ https://www.japcc.org/congested-outer-space/ SM Since the production of a large number of small satellites in a factory environment will
AND
it is expected to stay in orbit for the next 150 years.21
Collisions with early warning satellites causes miscalc and goes nuclear – magnified by the Kessler effect
Blatt 20 ~Talia, joint concentration in Social Studies and Integrative Biology at Harvard, specialization in East Asian geopolitics and security issues~ "Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Emerging Space Arms Race," Harvard International Review, May 26, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerging-space-arms-race/ TG Despite their deterrent functions, ASATs are more likely to provoke or exacerbate conflicts than
AND
and its allies do not want China to successfully close off the region.
Independently causes cyberwar and satellite hacking which escalates.
areas like cybersecurity that are secondary to actually getting these satellites in space.
Interconnectedness and surface area
Graczyk et al 21, Rafal, Paulo Esteves-Verissimo, and Marcus Voelp. "Sanctuary lost: a cyber-physical warfare in space." arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05878 (2021). (University of Luxembourg, Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) - CritiX group)Elmer NewSpace is on course of enabling satellites to become interconnected, creating orbital networks with
AND
37~, and most likely will become even more significant in the future.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Adv – Astronomy
Constellations sabotage modern astronomy – tweaks like DarkSats don’t solve. That guts asteroid detection and preparedness.
-Reed. "It’s just the sheer numbers that are worrying me."
Asteroids threats are existential – increasingly likely
Spencer ’18 - senior editor for Salon. He manages Salon's science, tech, economy and health coverageKeith Spencer, "The Asteroids Most Likely to Hit Earth," Salon, January 14, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/the-asteroids-most-likely-to-hit-earth/. Like earthquakes and volcanoes, the most frightening thing about asteroid strikes is their inevitability
AND
which are actually quite simple if done far enough in advance of impact.
Independently, astronomy is key to avert solar flares which are coming now and wreck the grid.
have the opportunity to know when "the big one" is coming.
Grid collapse cascades—-extinction
Alice Friedemann 16. Transportation expert, founder of EnergySkeptic.com and author of "When Trucks Stop Running, Energy and the Future of Transportation," worked at American Presidential Lines for 22 years, where she developed computer systems to coordinate the transit of cargo between ships, rail, trucks, and consumers, citing Dr. Peter Vincent Pry. Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a Congressional advisory board dedicated to achieving protection of the United States from electromagnetic pulse and other threats. Dr. Pry is also the director of the United States Nuclear Strategy Forum, an advisory body to Congress on policies to counter weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Pry has served on the staffs of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the U.S. from an EMP Attack, the House Armed Services Committee, as an intelligence officer with the CIA, and as a verification analyst at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. (1/24/16, "Electromagnetic pulse threat to infrastructure (U.S. House hearings)" http://energyskeptic.com/2016/the-scariest-u-s-house-session-ever-electromagnetic-pulse-and-the-fall-of-civilization/. Modern civilization cannot exist for a protracted period without electricity. Within days of a
AND
could create anarchic conditions that would profoundly challenge the existence of social order.
Causes nuclear meltdowns—-overcomes resilience and ends civilizations
be halted). Runaway meltdowns would be enough to end things pretty quickly.
FW
The introspective connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Evolution proves the reliability of phenomenal introspection – when we introspect on data from our eyes or ears, such as whether one sees or smells food or a predator, we use the same part of the brain that introspects on hedonic tones and identifies their moral relevance.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
No act-omission distinction –
Psychology – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission.
Method
No chance any grab for power succeeds
Fredrik deBoer 16, Limited-Term Lecturer, Introductory Composition at Purdue Program, 3/15/16, "c’mon, guys," http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/03/15/cmon-guys/ I could be wrong about the short-term dangers, and the stakes are
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, unsexy work of building coalitions and asking people to climb on board.
3/25/22
JF - AC - Lay
Tournament: Golden Desert Debate Tournament at UNLV | Round: 4 | Opponent: West Des Moines Valley JL | Judge: Michelle Blanchard
"The eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace."
Because I agree with former President John F. Kennedy, that space is the final frontier, but must guarantee safety and liberty, I proudly affirm the resolution Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.
First, I would like to offer some definitions.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines private as "Affecting or belonging to private individuals, as distinct from the public generally. Not official."
This means that even if there are some benefit to appropriation, it is definitionally unfair which means they aren’t distributed properly.
FW
I value morality per the usage of the word ought in the resolution implies a moral action.
Thus, the value criterion is maximizing expected wellbeing, meaning that we should prioritize the impacts that help the most people and prevent the most harm.
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable – they’re where we reach the end of the line in matters of value
Moen 16 ~Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo "An Argument for Hedonism" Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281~ Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic
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places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.
Prefer additionally — Governments have to use util since collective actions necessarily benefit some people while hurting others either due to resource tradeoffs or scope of effect.
My first Contention is that Private Space Enterprises are Unsustainable
First, the commercial Space Industry requires an enormous increase in launches – that causes pollutants and warming.
Katharine Gammon, a science journalist with degrees from MIT and Princeton, reports in 2021 that Katharine Gammon 7-19-2021 "How the billionaire space race could be one giant leap for pollution" https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires-space-tourism-environment-emissions (I’m an award-winning independent science journalist based in Santa Monica, California. My interests range from culture and nature in public lands to the lives of scientists to the complexity of baby brains. Before I became a professional journalist, I served in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria, and attended MIT and Princeton University.)Elmer Last week Virgin Galactic took Richard Branson past the edge of space, roughly
AND
to act is now – while the billionaires are still buying their tickets."
Public launches are goldilocks, but Commercialization increases it ten-fold which overwhelms alt-causes – specifically decks the Ozone Layer.
understanding of the effect these billionaire astronauts will have on our planet’s atmosphere.
Second, unregulated commercialization triples debris and renders satellites unusable.
Christopher Fabian, techologist and founder for techologyand finanice inativites at UNICEF writes in 19 (Christopher; January 2019; B.S. from the United States Air Force Academy, thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a M.S. from the University of North Dakota, approved by the Faculty Advisory Committee and in coordination with Dr. Michael Dodge, David Kugler, and Brian Urlacher; University of North Dakota Scholarly Commons, "A Neoclassical Realist’s Analysis Of Sino-U.S. Space Policy," https://commons.und.edu/theses/2455/) b. Defect/Defect The ubiquity of space technology has also yielded the negative
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to be addressed before any of these proposed solutions can realistically be enacted.
Earth observation satellites key to warming adaptation
Elisa Alonso communications consultant for a climate resilance organization writes in 18 ~(Elisa Jiménez Alonso, communications consultant with Acclimatise, climate resilience organization) "Earth Observation of Increasing Importance for Climate Change Adaptation," Acclimatise, May 2, 2018, https://www.acclimatise.uk.com/2018/05/02/earth-observation-of-increasing-importance-for-climate-change-adaptation/~~ TDI Earth observation (EO) satellites are playing an increasingly important role in assessing climate
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climate information that can inform climate risk management and make it more effective.
Third, Unchecked Commercial Appropriation causes Space Conflicts due to conflicting goals.
ensure that the advantages derived from space exploration allow humanity to continue evolving.
Fourth, unregulated commercial mining exacerbates resource inequalities on Earth.
Anastasia Bendebury, the Adjunct Instructor of Biology at the University of Portland, clarifies in 2020 that ~Michael Shilo Delay (Ph.D in Biophysics from Columbia University) and Anastasia Bendebury (Adjunct Instructor of Biology at the University of Portland). "Is space mining the eco-friendly choice?". Astronomy. November 11, 2020. Accessed 1/7/22. https://astronomy.com/news/2020/11/is-space-mining-the-eco-friendly-choiceXu~ The race to build an industrial foundation in space has already begun, too:
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the burden will be on us to prevent ecological mistakes of previous generations.
2/6/22
JF - AC - Orbital Ads
Tournament: Tournament of Champions | Round: Semis | Opponent: Harker AR | Judge: He, Eric Morbeck, Gabriel Chen, Victor cites broken
4/26/22
JF - AC - The Senate
Tournament: California Round Robin | Round: 3 | Opponent: Southlake Carroll EP | Judge: Wesley Loofbourrow, Candis Tate
1AC
Adv – The Senate
Plan: The appropriation of outer space by the Trade Federation via orbital blockade of Naboo is unjust.
The blockade kickstarts Palpatine’s creation of a galactic fascist regime – the relationship is causal
little trouble installing himself as Emperor and reshaping the galaxy in his image.
Only blockade escalates to a failed invasion – the Trade Federation wouldn’t violate Republic law by invading Naboo unless it was already forced to illegally kill the Republic’s Jedi envoy sent to observe the blockade
department to invade and occupy Naboo, they don't really have a choice.
Lack of a Republic response to the invasion causes queen Amidala to give current leadership a vote of no confidence and put Palpatine into power
Wookieepedia, "Invasion of Naboo," https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Invasion'of'Naboo mvp Exasperated by the Republic's inefficiency and corruption, Amidala shocked the Senate by moving for a vote of no confidence in the leadership of Chancellor Valorum, as it had been suggested to her by Palpatine himself. The proposal caused an uproar in the Senate, with many senators calling to proceed to the vote immediately, while Amedda vainly called for order.~3~ Within hours, Amidala's motion of no confidence was passed and Valorum removed from power
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corruption; Bail Antilles and Ainlee Teem were nominated as well.~3~
That greenlights Palpatine to begin restructuring the Republic into the Galactic Empire. Invasion also creates the Separatist alliance which starts the Clone Wars, accelerating the Republic’s collapse.
Wookieepedia, "Invasion of Naboo," https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Invasion'of'Naboo mvp The Federation and Valorum were faced with most blame for the invasion, and every subsequent anti-Republic speech called out the "debacle at Naboo."~6~ Following the invasion, the Federation's monopoly on shipping in the Outer Rim Territories was broken. This, combined with Valorum Shipping's loss of prestige due to scandals and Chancellor Valorum's truncated term, allowed Eriadu Mining and Shipping to prosper.~9~ Upon his appointment to Chancellor, Palpatine had promised the galaxy that Gunray, his
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revenge on Kenobi, blaming the Jedi Padawan for his misfortune.~22~
Preventing the empire’s creation is an ethical D rule – planetary destruction, imperialism, slave labor, and forced sterilization
Rudoy 19 Matthew Rudoy, 8-30-2019, "Star Wars: The 10 Worst Things The Empire Has Ever Done," ScreenRant, https://screenrant.com/star-wars-worst-things-empire-ever-done/ mvp The Galactic Empire is the original evil in Star Wars. Emperor Palpatine and Darth
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height of the Empire's evil and further united the Rebellion against their enemy.
The Clone Wars alone kills billions
Golden 15 Christie Golden 7-7-2015 "Dark Disciple" Ask me and I’ll give you the PDF, it’s a good read. (Absolute Star Wars Expert Second Only to Max Perin)Elmer For years, the galaxy-wide conflict known as the Clone Wars has raged
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the numbers of the fallen. But this—" He shook his head.
FW
Moral Realism is true – there is an ethical truth that exists permanently and metaphysically in all hypothetical worlds - regressive moral debates always terminate in an end line objective value or devolve to skeptical conclusions that are repugnant for their inability to condemn things
The normative supervenes on the natural – natural facts like whether brains develop to permit rationality or subjectivity determine whether non naturalist moral facts can be premised on things like capacity for reason
The introspective connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Evolution proves the reliability of phenomenal introspection – when we introspect on data from our eyes or ears, such as whether one sees or smells food or a predator, we use the same part of the brain that introspects on hedonic tones and identifies their moral relevance.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
====Effective sci-fi narratives are crucial to global progress - empirics based thinking leads us facing backwards into an increasingly technological time period==== Hollinger 10, Veronica. "A History of the Future: Notes for an Archive." Science Fiction Studies 37.1 (2010): 23-33. (Professor of Cultural Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, co-editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies, past chair of the Cultural Studies Program and past Director of Trent's MA Program in Theory, Culture and Politics) I take it for granted that a history of sfs futures would be a cultural
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those perfect, ceaseless machines will try to repair her—" (45).
Dialogue over sci-fi creates more productive and educational communication models within public dialogue
Sweet 3, Derek R. Star Wars in the public square: The Clone Wars as political dialogue. Vol. 50. McFarland, 2015. (an associate professor of communication studies at Luther College and writes, primarily, about the intersection of rhetoric, popular culture, and politics.)Elmer Keeping this in mind, Bakhtin describes the traditional sender/receiver, speaker/
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of thinking about discourse, deliberation, and debate in the public square.
Objective reality is inconclusive – the future is based off of different perceptions of the world, so the star wars galaxy exists
. But Wigner, and his friend, would surely not be surprised.
The status quo results in the collapse of all political action - only a reinvigoration of science fiction stories can create new paradigms and possibilities
McCalmont 12 Jonathan McCalmont 10-3-2012 "Laziness and Irony: How Science Fiction Lost the Future" ruthlessculture.com/2012/10/03/cowardice-laziness-and-irony-how-science-fiction-lost-the-future/ (Film Critic and Author)Re-cut by Elmer While many of these books are excellent examples of their styles of writing, I
AND
, science fiction can provide humanity with its first draft of future history.
Creative engagement with political decisionmaking is critical to human survival
Stannard 6 Matt Stannard 4-18-2006 "Deliberation, Democracy and Debate" http://theunderview.blogspot.com/2006/04/deliberation-democracy-and-debate.html (Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Wyoming)Re-cut by Elmer The complexity and interdependence of human society, combined with the control of political decisionmaking
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which they may personally disagree, is one way to resist this colonization.
The continual settler drive to secure its own health has resulted in a system of global biopiracy wherein western transnational corporations have targeted traditional medicine used by tribes in places like Northeast India, establishing patents on biological resources and indigenous medicine for their own profit. Biopiracy renders these indigenous knowledges and communities as only sites for extraction of knowledge, wealth, and resources, which has spread to the global south and is only increasing in speed due to the genomics revolution.
Bhattacharya 14 ~Sayan Battacharya, Department of Environmental Studies at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, India~, "Bioprospecting, biopiracy and food security in India: The emerging sides of neoliberalism", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, SciPress Ltd, pg. 49-54, 2014 SLC PK 2. BIODIVERSITY, BIOPROSPECTING AND BIOPIRACY Historically there has been prolific scientific interest
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rights of the farming community over the genetic wealth used in agriculture.17
Western intellectual property rights protections are structurally opposed to traditional indigenous medicines, causing continual cooption for modern pharmaceuticals while leaving the communities from which they’re derived in the dust.
Eiland 08 ~Dr. Eiland received a doctorate in Oriental Archaeology from Oxford University and an LLM from the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center~, "Patenting Traditional Medicine", Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and Co. KG, pg. 7-10, 2008 SLC PK Traditional medicines (TM)1 can form the basis of modern pharmaceuticals. Depend
AND
critics, it has devastating effects on the TK of other nations.1
The move to biopiracy adds new energy and technology to the settler project of terra nullius, putting every part of the world into the project of dispossession.
Sharma and Campbell 99 ~Sharma is a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto and an Associate Professor of the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai’I at Manoa. Allison Campbell is an American Chemist known for work on biomineralization, biomimetics, biomaterials, and bioactive coatings for medical implants.~ "Vandana Shiva on Sexual Economics, Biopiracy and Women's Ongoing Resistance to Colonialism", Atlantis, Volume 23.2, Spring/Summer 1999 SLC PK Q. 1 Some feminists talk about globalization as a new phenomenon. You talk
AND
in highly intensive interaction with ourselves and with the rest of the world.
Thus, we affirm – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to end the use of intellectual property protections by non-Indigenous groups for medicines derived from indigenous knowledge.
Indigenous peoples have made it clear—IPR is an active threat to traditional medicine which treats natives as an expense rather than a priority. Prefer indigenous scholarship—conversations over IPR on traditional knowledge have actively and historically excluded native voices which ignores the material implications they have on the lives and livelihoods of natives.
IPCB et al. 06 ~The IPCB is organized to assist indigenous peoples in the protection of their genetic resources, indigenous knowledge, cultural and human rights from the negative effects of biotechnology. Llamado de la Tierra is comprised of indigenous peoples throughout the world who are experienced in cultural and intellectual property policies and laws in the context of the indigenous struggle for de-colonisation and self-determination. The International Indian Treaty Council serves as an advocate for the human rights of Indigenous Peoples locally, nationally, and internationally.~ "Joint Statement of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB), Call of the Earth/Llamado de la Tierra (COE), and International Indian Treaty Council (IITC)", International IP Policy News, 6-12-06, https://www.ip-watch.org/2006/12/06/inside-views-indigenous-groups-tell-wipo-dont-patent-our-traditional-knowledge/SLC PK Mr. Chairman, we have some general comments regarding document 10/5 on
AND
out in the human rights arena. Thank you for your indulgence.
When biopiracy tries to patent indigenous medicine, it also demonstrates a renewed interest in nature and a certain type of knowledge. This interest destabilizes the nature/culture binary as fixed by the enlightenment, showing that nature is of value. This becomes a locus to debunk settler myths and disrupt the equation of modernity. Legal and political moves against biopiracy such as the plan are key to solvency—anything else fails to rupture the western representation of the helpless native which is necessary for real justice.
Curbishley 15 ~Liddy Scarlet Curbishley in a Thesis submitted for the Masters of Humanities in Gender Studies at Utrecht University~, "Destabilizing the Colonization of Indigenous Knowledge In the Case of Biopiracy", August 2015 SLC PK Throughout this exploration of the colonization of indigenous knowledges through acts of biopiracy I have
AND
Gaard, 2010: 13) has on vulnerable individuals and the environment.
Every facet of foreign policy is indebted to settler colonialism—IR’s erasure of indigenous peoples through casting them as domestic, primitive, and landless creates complicity in the destruction of indigenous life and governance.
King 17 (Hayden King, Gchi'mnissing Anishinaabe writer and educator based in the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto., 7-31-17, The erasure of Indigenous thought in foreign policy, https://www.opencanada.org/features/erasure-indigenous-thought-foreign-policy/, JKS) This type of arrangement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians might be conceptualized as
AND
. And so, foreign policy is itself a manifestation of settler colonialism.
Debate’s fixation on extinction narratives centers a notion of universal humanity that allows for dehumanization and erasure of native relationality to nature. Settlers attach themselves to the thrill of abjection in order to distance themselves from the violence of settler colonialism and the ethical imperative to work against it.
Mitchell 17 ""Decolonizing against extinction part II: Extinction is not a metaphor – it is literally genocide" Audra Mitchell ~settler currently living and working on the Ancestral and Treaty lands of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Haudenosaunee (Six Nations of the Grand River) and Anishinaabe (Mississaugas of the New Credit) peoples. Prof. Mitchell holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Political Ecology at the Balsillie School of International Affairs~, September 27, 2017, https://worldlyir.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/decolonizing-against-extinction-part-ii-extinction-is-not-a-metaphor-it-is-literally-genocide/ SM Extinction is not a metaphor… Extinction has become an emblem of Western,
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relations, worlds and peoples that are targeted by these discourses and practices.
In settler research spaces we have a responsibility and role of the ballot to center indigenous knowledge, and to contribute to unsettling the academy—our work connects different discussions of indigeneity and decolonization to the rest of the globe.
Sium et al 12 (Aman Sium, Chandni Desai, Eric Ritskes, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Sium identifies as being Tigrinya, indigenous, African, and Eritrean, Ritskes is Zhaganash, Towards the ‘tangible unknown’: Decolonization and the Indigenous future, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society ¶ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. I-XIII, JKS) Decolonization does not exist without a framework that centers and privileges Indigenous life, community
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teach it to behave" (Alfred, 2009a, p. 37).
9/17/21
SO - AC - Biopiracy v2
Tournament: Mid America Cup RR | Round: 2 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit KS | Judge: Deserea Niemann, Holden Bukowsky
1AC
1AC
The continual settler drive to secure its own health has resulted in a system of global biopiracy wherein western transnational corporations have targeted traditional medicine used by tribes in places like Northeast India, establishing patents on biological resources and indigenous medicine for their own profit. Biopiracy renders these indigenous knowledges and communities as only sites for extraction of knowledge, wealth, and resources, which has spread to the global south and is only increasing in speed due to the genomics revolution.
Bhattacharya 14 ~Sayan Battacharya, Department of Environmental Studies at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, India~, "Bioprospecting, biopiracy and food security in India: The emerging sides of neoliberalism", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, SciPress Ltd, pg. 49-54, 2014 SLC PK 2. BIODIVERSITY, BIOPROSPECTING AND BIOPIRACY Historically there has been prolific scientific interest
AND
rights of the farming community over the genetic wealth used in agriculture.17
Western intellectual property rights protections are structurally opposed to traditional indigenous medicines, causing continual cooption for modern pharmaceuticals while leaving the communities from which they’re derived in the dust.
Eiland 08 ~Dr. Eiland received a doctorate in Oriental Archaeology from Oxford University and an LLM from the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center~, "Patenting Traditional Medicine", Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and Co. KG, pg. 7-10, 2008 SLC PK Traditional medicines (TM)1 can form the basis of modern pharmaceuticals. Depend
AND
critics, it has devastating effects on the TK of other nations.1
The move to biopiracy adds new energy and technology to the settler project of terra nullius, putting every part of the world into the project of dispossession.
Sharma and Campbell 99 ~Sharma is a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto and an Associate Professor of the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai’I at Manoa. Allison Campbell is an American Chemist known for work on biomineralization, biomimetics, biomaterials, and bioactive coatings for medical implants.~ "Vandana Shiva on Sexual Economics, Biopiracy and Women's Ongoing Resistance to Colonialism", Atlantis, Volume 23.2, Spring/Summer 1999 SLC PK Q. 1 Some feminists talk about globalization as a new phenomenon. You talk
AND
in highly intensive interaction with ourselves and with the rest of the world.
Thus, we affirm – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to end the use of intellectual property protections by non-Indigenous groups for medicines derived from indigenous knowledge.
To clarify, these are the 159 countries that are currently member states
Indigenous peoples have made it clear—IPR is an active threat to traditional medicine which treats natives as an expense rather than a priority. Prefer indigenous scholarship—conversations over IPR on traditional knowledge have actively and historically excluded native voices which ignores the material implications they have on the lives and livelihoods of natives.
IPCB et al. 06 ~The IPCB is organized to assist indigenous peoples in the protection of their genetic resources, indigenous knowledge, cultural and human rights from the negative effects of biotechnology. Llamado de la Tierra is comprised of indigenous peoples throughout the world who are experienced in cultural and intellectual property policies and laws in the context of the indigenous struggle for de-colonisation and self-determination. The International Indian Treaty Council serves as an advocate for the human rights of Indigenous Peoples locally, nationally, and internationally.~ "Joint Statement of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB), Call of the Earth/Llamado de la Tierra (COE), and International Indian Treaty Council (IITC)", International IP Policy News, 6-12-06, https://www.ip-watch.org/2006/12/06/inside-views-indigenous-groups-tell-wipo-dont-patent-our-traditional-knowledge/SLC PK Mr. Chairman, we have some general comments regarding document 10/5 on
AND
out in the human rights arena. Thank you for your indulgence.
When biopiracy tries to patent indigenous medicine, it also demonstrates a renewed interest in nature and a certain type of knowledge. This interest destabilizes the nature/culture binary as fixed by the enlightenment, showing that nature is of value. This becomes a locus to debunk settler myths and disrupt the equation of modernity. Legal and political moves against biopiracy such as the plan are key to solvency—anything else fails to rupture the western representation of the helpless native which is necessary for real justice.
Curbishley 15 ~Liddy Scarlet Curbishley in a Thesis submitted for the Masters of Humanities in Gender Studies at Utrecht University~, "Destabilizing the Colonization of Indigenous Knowledge In the Case of Biopiracy", August 2015 SLC PK Throughout this exploration of the colonization of indigenous knowledges through acts of biopiracy I have
AND
Gaard, 2010: 13) has on vulnerable individuals and the environment.
Debate’s fixation on extinction narratives centers a notion of universal humanity that allows for dehumanization and erasure of native relationality to nature. Settlers attach themselves to the thrill of abjection in order to distance themselves from the violence of settler colonialism and the ethical imperative to work against it.
Mitchell 17 ""Decolonizing against extinction part II: Extinction is not a metaphor – it is literally genocide" Audra Mitchell ~settler currently living and working on the Ancestral and Treaty lands of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Haudenosaunee (Six Nations of the Grand River) and Anishinaabe (Mississaugas of the New Credit) peoples. Prof. Mitchell holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Political Ecology at the Balsillie School of International Affairs~, September 27, 2017, https://worldlyir.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/decolonizing-against-extinction-part-ii-extinction-is-not-a-metaphor-it-is-literally-genocide/ SM Extinction is not a metaphor… Extinction has become an emblem of Western,
AND
relations, worlds and peoples that are targeted by these discourses and practices.
The battle for self-determination does not end with the 1AC, but you should refuse the seductive call to abandon the specific struggles against IP when faced with clear and attainable goals posed by activists
Whyte 16 (Kyle Powys – Potawatomi, Timnick Chair of the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy @ Michigan State University, "Indigenous Peoples, Climate Change Loss and Damage, and the Responsibility of Settler States", "Indigenous Environmental Movements and the Function of Governance Institutions." (2016): 563-580~, JKS) I understand indigenous peoples to encompass the roughly 370 million persons whose communities governed themselves
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are designed, articulated, and arranged strategically to carry out the function.
In settler research spaces we have a responsibility and role of the ballot to center indigenous knowledge, and to contribute to unsettling the academy—our work connects different discussions of indigeneity and decolonization to the rest of the globe.
Sium et al 12 (Aman Sium, Chandni Desai, Eric Ritskes, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Sium identifies as being Tigrinya, indigenous, African, and Eritrean, Ritskes is Zhaganash, Towards the ‘tangible unknown’: Decolonization and the Indigenous future, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society ¶ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. I-XIII, JKS) Decolonization does not exist without a framework that centers and privileges Indigenous life, community
AND
teach it to behave" (Alfred, 2009a, p. 37).
Prioritize burden of proof over burden of refutation – starting disad risk close to 0 because of implicit assumptions models predictions more accurately and opens debate to discussions of systemic racialized violence
Cohn 13 – Nate, journalist, covers elections, polling and demographics for The Upshot, a Times politics and policy site. Previously, he was a staff writer for The New Republic. Before entering journalism, he was a research assistant and Scoville Fellow at the Stimson Center. "Improving the Norms and Practices of Policy Debate" November 24, 2013. IB So let me offer another possibility: the problem isn’t the topic, but modern
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of evidence, since they can’t really address the probability of nuclear war.
9/24/21
SO - AC - Biopiracy v3
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 1 | Opponent: Scarsdale DH | Judge: Aryan Jasani
1AC
The continual settler drive to secure its own health has resulted in a system of global biopiracy wherein western transnational corporations have targeted traditional medicine for their own profit. Biopiracy renders these indigenous knowledges and communities as only sites for extraction.
Bhattacharya 14 ~Sayan Battacharya, Department of Environmental Studies at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, India~, "Bioprospecting, biopiracy and food security in India: The emerging sides of neoliberalism", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, SciPress Ltd, pg. 49-54, 2014 SLC PK 2. BIODIVERSITY, BIOPROSPECTING AND BIOPIRACY Historically there has been prolific scientific interest
AND
rights of the farming community over the genetic wealth used in agriculture.17
IP protections are structurally opposed to indigenous medicines, causing continual cooption for modern pharmaceuticals.
Eiland 08 ~Dr. Eiland received a doctorate in Oriental Archaeology from Oxford University and an LLM from the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center~, "Patenting Traditional Medicine", Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and Co. KG, pg. 7-10, 2008 SLC PK Traditional medicines (TM)1 can form the basis of modern pharmaceuticals. Depend
AND
critics, it has devastating effects on the TK of other nations.1
The move to biopiracy adds new energy and technology to the settler project of terra nullius, putting every part of the world into the project of dispossession.
Sharma and Campbell 99 ~Sharma is a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto and an Associate Professor of the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai’I at Manoa. Allison Campbell is an American Chemist known for work on biomineralization, biomimetics, biomaterials, and bioactive coatings for medical implants.~ "Vandana Shiva on Sexual Economics, Biopiracy and Women's Ongoing Resistance to Colonialism", Atlantis, Volume 23.2, Spring/Summer 1999 SLC PK Q. 1 Some feminists talk about globalization as a new phenomenon. You talk
AND
in highly intensive interaction with ourselves and with the rest of the world.
Thus, we affirm – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to end the use of intellectual property protections by non-Indigenous groups for medicines derived from indigenous knowledge.
To clarify, these are the 159 countries that are currently member states
IPR is an active threat to traditional medicine which treats natives as an expense rather than a priority. Prefer indigenous scholarship—conversations over IPR on traditional knowledge have excluded native voices.
IPCB et al. 06 ~The IPCB is organized to assist indigenous peoples in the protection of their genetic resources, indigenous knowledge, cultural and human rights from the negative effects of biotechnology. Llamado de la Tierra is comprised of indigenous peoples throughout the world who are experienced in cultural and intellectual property policies and laws in the context of the indigenous struggle for de-colonisation and self-determination. The International Indian Treaty Council serves as an advocate for the human rights of Indigenous Peoples locally, nationally, and internationally.~ "Joint Statement of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB), Call of the Earth/Llamado de la Tierra (COE), and International Indian Treaty Council (IITC)", International IP Policy News, 6-12-06, https://www.ip-watch.org/2006/12/06/inside-views-indigenous-groups-tell-wipo-dont-patent-our-traditional-knowledge/SLC PK Mr. Chairman, we have some general comments regarding document 10/5 on
AND
out in the human rights arena. Thank you for your indulgence.
The battle for self-determination does not end with the 1AC, but you should refuse the seductive call to abandon the specific struggles against IP when faced with clear and attainable goals posed by activists
Whyte 16 (Kyle Powys – Potawatomi, Timnick Chair of the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy @ Michigan State University, "Indigenous Peoples, Climate Change Loss and Damage, and the Responsibility of Settler States", "Indigenous Environmental Movements and the Function of Governance Institutions." (2016): 563-580~, JKS) I understand indigenous peoples to encompass the roughly 370 million persons whose communities governed themselves
AND
are designed, articulated, and arranged strategically to carry out the function.
Debate’s fixation on extinction narratives centers a notion of universal humanity that allows for dehumanization and erasure of native relationality to nature.
Mitchell 17 ""Decolonizing against extinction part II: Extinction is not a metaphor – it is literally genocide" Audra Mitchell ~settler currently living and working on the Ancestral and Treaty lands of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Haudenosaunee (Six Nations of the Grand River) and Anishinaabe (Mississaugas of the New Credit) peoples. Prof. Mitchell holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Political Ecology at the Balsillie School of International Affairs~, September 27, 2017, https://worldlyir.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/decolonizing-against-extinction-part-ii-extinction-is-not-a-metaphor-it-is-literally-genocide/ SM Extinction is not a metaphor… Extinction has become an emblem of Western,
AND
relations, worlds and peoples that are targeted by these discourses and practices.
Settler colonialism is deeply engrained in Western culture and reflects in the universalist logic of non-naturalistic ethics – their philosophy gets appropriated to justify extermination of Indigenous peoples because of its cultural starting point.
John Hinkinson – Editor at Arena, an Australian maganzine. "Why Settler Colonialism?" Arena. 2012. https://arena.org.au/why-settler-colonialism/ JJN Settler colonialism as a practice is a subset of colonial history, one where the
AND
settler colonialism for granted, practices that arguably define the underside of modernity.
In settler research spaces we have a responsibility and role of the ballot to center indigenous knowledge, and to contribute to unsettling the academy—our work connects different discussions of indigeneity and decolonization to the rest of the globe.
Sium et al 12 (Aman Sium, Chandni Desai, Eric Ritskes, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Sium identifies as being Tigrinya, indigenous, African, and Eritrean, Ritskes is Zhaganash, Towards the ‘tangible unknown’: Decolonization and the Indigenous future, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society ¶ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. I-XIII, JKS) Decolonization does not exist without a framework that centers and privileges Indigenous life, community
AND
teach it to behave" (Alfred, 2009a, p. 37).
Prioritize burden of proof over burden of refutation – starting disad risk close to 0 because of implicit assumptions models predictions more accurately and opens debate to discussions of systemic racialized violence
Cohn 13 – Nate, journalist, covers elections, polling and demographics for The Upshot, a Times politics and policy site. Previously, he was a staff writer for The New Republic. Before entering journalism, he was a research assistant and Scoville Fellow at the Stimson Center. "Improving the Norms and Practices of Policy Debate" November 24, 2013. IB So let me offer another possibility: the problem isn’t the topic, but modern
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of evidence, since they can’t really address the probability of nuclear war.
9/25/21
SO - AC - Biopiracy v4
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 4 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit VC | Judge: Breigh Plat
1AC
The continual settler drive to secure its own health has resulted in a system of global biopiracy wherein western transnational corporations have targeted traditional medicine for their own profit. Biopiracy renders these indigenous knowledges and communities as only sites for extraction.
Bhattacharya 14 ~Sayan Battacharya, Department of Environmental Studies at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, India~, "Bioprospecting, biopiracy and food security in India: The emerging sides of neoliberalism", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, SciPress Ltd, pg. 49-54, 2014 SLC PK 2. BIODIVERSITY, BIOPROSPECTING AND BIOPIRACY Historically there has been prolific scientific interest
AND
rights of the farming community over the genetic wealth used in agriculture.17
IP protections are structurally opposed to indigenous medicines, causing continual cooption for modern pharmaceuticals.
Eiland 08 ~Dr. Eiland received a doctorate in Oriental Archaeology from Oxford University and an LLM from the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center~, "Patenting Traditional Medicine", Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and Co. KG, pg. 7-10, 2008 SLC PK Traditional medicines (TM)1 can form the basis of modern pharmaceuticals. Depend
AND
critics, it has devastating effects on the TK of other nations.1
The move to biopiracy adds new energy and technology to the settler project of terra nullius, putting every part of the world into the project of dispossession.
Sharma and Campbell 99 ~Sharma is a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto and an Associate Professor of the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai’I at Manoa. Allison Campbell is an American Chemist known for work on biomineralization, biomimetics, biomaterials, and bioactive coatings for medical implants.~ "Vandana Shiva on Sexual Economics, Biopiracy and Women's Ongoing Resistance to Colonialism", Atlantis, Volume 23.2, Spring/Summer 1999 SLC PK Q. 1 Some feminists talk about globalization as a new phenomenon. You talk
AND
in highly intensive interaction with ourselves and with the rest of the world.
Thus, we affirm – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to end the use of intellectual property protections by non-Indigenous groups for medicines derived from indigenous knowledge.
To clarify, these are the 159 countries that are currently member states
IPR is an active threat to traditional medicine which treats natives as an expense rather than a priority. Prefer indigenous scholarship—conversations over IPR on traditional knowledge have excluded native voices.
IPCB et al. 06 ~The IPCB is organized to assist indigenous peoples in the protection of their genetic resources, indigenous knowledge, cultural and human rights from the negative effects of biotechnology. Llamado de la Tierra is comprised of indigenous peoples throughout the world who are experienced in cultural and intellectual property policies and laws in the context of the indigenous struggle for de-colonisation and self-determination. The International Indian Treaty Council serves as an advocate for the human rights of Indigenous Peoples locally, nationally, and internationally.~ "Joint Statement of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB), Call of the Earth/Llamado de la Tierra (COE), and International Indian Treaty Council (IITC)", International IP Policy News, 6-12-06, https://www.ip-watch.org/2006/12/06/inside-views-indigenous-groups-tell-wipo-dont-patent-our-traditional-knowledge/SLC PK Mr. Chairman, we have some general comments regarding document 10/5 on
AND
out in the human rights arena. Thank you for your indulgence.
The battle for self-determination does not end with the 1AC, but you should refuse the seductive call to abandon the specific struggles against IP when faced with clear and attainable goals posed by activists
Whyte 16 (Kyle Powys – Potawatomi, Timnick Chair of the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy @ Michigan State University, "Indigenous Peoples, Climate Change Loss and Damage, and the Responsibility of Settler States", "Indigenous Environmental Movements and the Function of Governance Institutions." (2016): 563-580~, JKS) I understand indigenous peoples to encompass the roughly 370 million persons whose communities governed themselves
AND
are designed, articulated, and arranged strategically to carry out the function.
Debate’s fixation on extinction narratives centers a notion of universal humanity that allows for dehumanization and erasure of native relationality to nature.
Mitchell 17 ""Decolonizing against extinction part II: Extinction is not a metaphor – it is literally genocide" Audra Mitchell ~settler currently living and working on the Ancestral and Treaty lands of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Haudenosaunee (Six Nations of the Grand River) and Anishinaabe (Mississaugas of the New Credit) peoples. Prof. Mitchell holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Political Ecology at the Balsillie School of International Affairs~, September 27, 2017, https://worldlyir.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/decolonizing-against-extinction-part-ii-extinction-is-not-a-metaphor-it-is-literally-genocide/ SM Extinction is not a metaphor… Extinction has become an emblem of Western,
AND
relations, worlds and peoples that are targeted by these discourses and practices.
Settler colonialism is deeply engrained in Western culture and reflects in the universalist logic of non-naturalistic ethics – their philosophy gets appropriated to justify extermination of Indigenous peoples because of its cultural starting point.
John Hinkinson – Editor at Arena, an Australian maganzine. "Why Settler Colonialism?" Arena. 2012. https://arena.org.au/why-settler-colonialism/ JJN Settler colonialism as a practice is a subset of colonial history, one where the
AND
settler colonialism for granted, practices that arguably define the underside of modernity.
In settler research spaces we have a responsibility and role of the ballot to center indigenous knowledge, and to contribute to unsettling the academy—our work connects different discussions of indigeneity and decolonization to the rest of the globe.
Sium et al 12 (Aman Sium, Chandni Desai, Eric Ritskes, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Sium identifies as being Tigrinya, indigenous, African, and Eritrean, Ritskes is Zhaganash, Towards the ‘tangible unknown’: Decolonization and the Indigenous future, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society ¶ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. I-XIII, JKS) Decolonization does not exist without a framework that centers and privileges Indigenous life, community
AND
teach it to behave" (Alfred, 2009a, p. 37).
Prioritize burden of proof over burden of refutation – starting disad risk close to 0 because of implicit assumptions models predictions more accurately and opens debate to discussions of systemic racialized violence
Cohn 13 – Nate, journalist, covers elections, polling and demographics for The Upshot, a Times politics and policy site. Previously, he was a staff writer for The New Republic. Before entering journalism, he was a research assistant and Scoville Fellow at the Stimson Center. "Improving the Norms and Practices of Policy Debate" November 24, 2013. IB So let me offer another possibility: the problem isn’t the topic, but modern
AND
of evidence, since they can’t really address the probability of nuclear war.
Ideal theory is a form of abstraction away from the material violence of settler colonialism – their view from nowhere is not only useless but actively props up settlerism.
Nichols 13 Nichols, R. (2013). Indigeneity and the Settler Contract today. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 39(2), 165–186. doi:10.1177/0191453712470359 SM Throughout the 20th century, of course, these ‘high theories’ of human development
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reformulate some modified version of analytic contract theory in relation to indigenous peoples.
The current WTO patent system is locking in global cannabis monopolies.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM B. How the Patent Has Become a Tool for Globalization The trade-
AND
, the inventor could create an economic climate close to a global monopoly.
Thailand proves – the world is trending towards legalization but big pharma patents lock in cannabis monopolies and crowd out local growth.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM The reason the Thai public was so concerned over the cannabis patents filed by Otsuka
AND
, as a resolution to the Canadian recusal from the UN Single Convention.
Big pharma leverages cannabis patents to block out competition and secure monopoly – decks medical marijuana access
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM B. Cannabis Patents and Pharmaceutical Companies Patent protection is a key component of
AND
of wealthy, powerful entities to ensure smaller entities are not marginalized.219
Monopolies kill cannabis biodiversity which throttles medical marijuana advances and industry innovation.
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM A. Biodiversity Implications for Cannabis Strain Patents Biodiversity, or biological diversity,
AND
effects on that country's biodiversity and its rights to that biodiversity.2 50
Monopolies kill market growth and disincentivize innovation.
over the long-term as well as ongoing innovation and product accessibility.
Medical marijuana is key to resolving opioid pain reliever prescriptions – biggest internal link to addiction and overuse
Blake 20 ~Dwight K Blake, Founder of American Marijuana, 15 years of experience in mental health counseling and addiction treatment.~ "Medical marijuana reduces opioid prescribing rate," American Marijuana, March 24, 2020, https://americanmarijuana.org/medical-marijuana-solution-to-opioid-epidemic/ ~note: charts/images omitted~ TG Medical Marijuana as A Painkiller Marijuana contains many Cannabinoids including CBD or Cannabidiol and
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have shown an average reduction rate of opioid consumption by 5.21.
The opioid crisis risks massively destructive terrorism – synthetic opioids can be weaponized and spread
Morell 17 (Michael Morell, the former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is one of our nation's leading national security professionals, with extensive experience in intelligence and foreign policy. During his 33-year career at CIA, Michael served as Deputy Director for over three years, served twice as Acting Director, served for two years as the Director of Intelligence, the Agency's top analyst, and for two years as Executive Director, the CIA's top administrator.)("The Opioid Crisis Becomes a National Security Threat", July 26, 2017, https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column'article/opioid-crisis-becomes-national-security-threat) On October 23, 2002, dozens of armed Chechen terrorists seized a Moscow theater
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– particularly when it is so easy to see what might be coming.
Developments and attacks are coming now – spurs inter-state wars AND non-state actors which ensure escalation – taboo eroded, empirics prove, tech and motive are here
Henry de Quetteville et al 18. Special Correspondent @Telegraph, Technology. Former foreign correspondent in France, the Balkans and the Middle East., citing James Giordano, professor of neurology, chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program, and co-director of the O’Neill-Pellegrino Program in Brain Science and Global Health Law and Policy at Georgetown University Medical Center. He is an member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s panel on neuroethics, legal, and social issues, and serves as a senior science advisory fellow to the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. His latest book is Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense: Practical Considerations, Neuroethical Concerns (CRC Press), citing Gavin Williamson, UK Secretary of Defense, citing Aimen Dean, also known as Ramzi is a Bahrainian man who was a founding member of al-Qaeda. In 1998, he joined the Secret Intelligence Service and became an MI6 spy, citing Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert and chief operating officer of SecureBio Limited. He was formerly a British Army officer for 23 years and commanding officer of the UK's CBRN Regiment and NATO's Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, August 3, 2018, "The rise of biological and chemical weapons After Salisbury, how ready is the UK?", https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rise-of-biological-chemical-weapons/. Rez With nerve agents having been deployed in Syria, Malaysia and Salisbury, the 100
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total? $26.2 billion per 100,000 persons exposed.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
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two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Chemical WMDs cause extinction – one incident is enough
Gander 18, Kashmira. Citing the Global Catastrophic Risks Foundation’s Global Challenges Annual Report, edited by Martin Rees, UK Astronomer Royal, and Co-founder, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and whose section on chemical warfare was reviewed by Angela Kane, Senior Fellow at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, visiting Professor at Sciences Po Paris, and former High Representative for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations. 10-31-2018. "Experts reveal the nine most likely ways the world will end." Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/how-will-world-end-experts-reveal-9-most-likely-ways-humans-will-be-wiped-out-1194616. Rez. Humanity being annihilated by chemical weapons or the molten lava of a supervolcano may sound
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it could "cause a pandemic of unprecedented proportions," the report stated.
Plan – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to delay patent enforcement for cannabis.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Includes enforcement and duration A simple solution to the problem is this: if
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be achieved through controlling varying means and portions of the patent application process.
The plan solves by reigning in monopolies without killing innovation.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Patents may still be sought and possibly even acquired if the government so chooses.
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cannot monopolize their innovations, and are thus placed on an equal footing.
Framing
Synthetic a posteriori moral naturalism is the basis of ethics:
A~ The normative supervenes on the natural – natural facts like whether brains develop to permit rationality or subjectivity determine whether non naturalist moral facts can be premised on things like capacity for reason
Lutz and Lenman 18. Lutz, Matthew and Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/naturalism-moral/.Massa The first argument against normative non-naturalism concerns normative supervenience. The normative supervenes
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, this is a heavy mark against non-naturalism (McPherson 2012).
Next, phenomenal introspection can bridge the gap from experiential natural facts to moral truths and necessitates hedonism. When I observe a lemon’s yellowness shifting my visual fields from darker to lighter shades, I can introspect on that experience and identify brightness as an intrinsic property of seeing a lemon. Similarly, when I feel pleasure, I can introspect on the shift in hedonic tones and identify that goodness is an intrinsic property of the pleasure that was increased.
This connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism. Prefer –
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction for governments – deliberating over an action requires analysis of foreseen consequences which could be prevented which makes them intrinsic to state action
C~ Governments aren’t singular rational agents which makes theories about individuals irrelevant – only consequentialism solves by analyzing ends divorced from an actor
2~ No act-omission distinction – governments are culpable for omissions cuz their purpose is to protect the constituency – otherwise they would have no obligation to make murder illegal. Actor spec o/w – different agents have different ethical standings that affect their obligations and considerations.
The current WTO patent system is locking in global cannabis monopolies.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM B. How the Patent Has Become a Tool for Globalization The trade-
AND
, the inventor could create an economic climate close to a global monopoly.
Thailand proves – the world is trending towards legalization but big pharma patents lock in cannabis monopolies and crowd out local growth.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM The reason the Thai public was so concerned over the cannabis patents filed by Otsuka
AND
, as a resolution to the Canadian recusal from the UN Single Convention.
Big pharma leverages cannabis patents to block out competition and secure monopoly – decks medical marijuana access
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM B. Cannabis Patents and Pharmaceutical Companies Patent protection is a key component of
AND
of wealthy, powerful entities to ensure smaller entities are not marginalized.219
Monopolies kill cannabis biodiversity which throttles medical marijuana advances and industry innovation.
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM A. Biodiversity Implications for Cannabis Strain Patents Biodiversity, or biological diversity,
AND
effects on that country's biodiversity and its rights to that biodiversity.2 50
Monopolies kill market growth and disincentivize innovation.
over the long-term as well as ongoing innovation and product accessibility.
Medical marijuana is key to resolving opioid pain reliever prescriptions – biggest internal link to addiction and overuse
Blake 20 ~Dwight K Blake, Founder of American Marijuana, 15 years of experience in mental health counseling and addiction treatment.~ "Medical marijuana reduces opioid prescribing rate," American Marijuana, March 24, 2020, https://americanmarijuana.org/medical-marijuana-solution-to-opioid-epidemic/ ~note: charts/images omitted~ TG Medical Marijuana as A Painkiller Marijuana contains many Cannabinoids including CBD or Cannabidiol and
AND
have shown an average reduction rate of opioid consumption by 5.21.
The opioid crisis risks massively destructive terrorism – synthetic opioids can be weaponized and spread
Morell 17 (Michael Morell, the former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is one of our nation's leading national security professionals, with extensive experience in intelligence and foreign policy. During his 33-year career at CIA, Michael served as Deputy Director for over three years, served twice as Acting Director, served for two years as the Director of Intelligence, the Agency's top analyst, and for two years as Executive Director, the CIA's top administrator.)("The Opioid Crisis Becomes a National Security Threat", July 26, 2017, https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column'article/opioid-crisis-becomes-national-security-threat) On October 23, 2002, dozens of armed Chechen terrorists seized a Moscow theater
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– particularly when it is so easy to see what might be coming.
Developments and attacks are coming now – spurs inter-state wars AND non-state actors which ensure escalation – taboo eroded, empirics prove, tech and motive are here
Henry de Quetteville et al 18. Special Correspondent @Telegraph, Technology. Former foreign correspondent in France, the Balkans and the Middle East., citing James Giordano, professor of neurology, chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program, and co-director of the O’Neill-Pellegrino Program in Brain Science and Global Health Law and Policy at Georgetown University Medical Center. He is an member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s panel on neuroethics, legal, and social issues, and serves as a senior science advisory fellow to the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. His latest book is Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense: Practical Considerations, Neuroethical Concerns (CRC Press), citing Gavin Williamson, UK Secretary of Defense, citing Aimen Dean, also known as Ramzi is a Bahrainian man who was a founding member of al-Qaeda. In 1998, he joined the Secret Intelligence Service and became an MI6 spy, citing Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert and chief operating officer of SecureBio Limited. He was formerly a British Army officer for 23 years and commanding officer of the UK's CBRN Regiment and NATO's Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, August 3, 2018, "The rise of biological and chemical weapons After Salisbury, how ready is the UK?", https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rise-of-biological-chemical-weapons/. Rez With nerve agents having been deployed in Syria, Malaysia and Salisbury, the 100
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total? $26.2 billion per 100,000 persons exposed.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
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two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Chemical WMDs cause extinction – one incident is enough
Gander 18, Kashmira. Citing the Global Catastrophic Risks Foundation’s Global Challenges Annual Report, edited by Martin Rees, UK Astronomer Royal, and Co-founder, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and whose section on chemical warfare was reviewed by Angela Kane, Senior Fellow at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, visiting Professor at Sciences Po Paris, and former High Representative for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations. 10-31-2018. "Experts reveal the nine most likely ways the world will end." Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/how-will-world-end-experts-reveal-9-most-likely-ways-humans-will-be-wiped-out-1194616. Rez. Humanity being annihilated by chemical weapons or the molten lava of a supervolcano may sound
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it could "cause a pandemic of unprecedented proportions," the report stated.
Plan – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to delay patent enforcement for cannabis.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Includes enforcement and duration A simple solution to the problem is this: if
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be achieved through controlling varying means and portions of the patent application process.
Counter solvency advocate: medical marijuana is dangerous therefore innovation is bad
The plan solves by reigning in monopolies without killing innovation.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Patents may still be sought and possibly even acquired if the government so chooses.
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cannot monopolize their innovations, and are thus placed on an equal footing.
Framing
Synthetic a posteriori moral naturalism is the basis of ethics:
A~ The normative supervenes on the natural – natural facts like whether brains develop to permit rationality or subjectivity determine whether non naturalist moral facts can be premised on things like capacity for reason
Lutz and Lenman 18. Lutz, Matthew and Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/naturalism-moral/.Massa The first argument against normative non-naturalism concerns normative supervenience. The normative supervenes
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, this is a heavy mark against non-naturalism (McPherson 2012).
B~ The problem of disagreement –
resolving a priori conflicts requires indicting the epistemological basis of one’s judgement with a reliable process for deriving moral truths which is impossible given widespread moral disagreement about non verifiable a priori truth – grounding ethics with verifiable natural facts solve
Copp 7, D. Why Naturalism? Morality in a Natural World, 33–54. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511497940.003 Massa Suppose, for example, that I witness a bullfight and observe that many thousands
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disagreement would not undermine the credibility of the proposition to an ideal thinker.
Next, phenomenal introspection can bridge the gap from experiential natural facts to moral truths and necessitates hedonism. When I observe a lemon’s yellowness shifting my visual fields from darker to lighter shades, I can introspect on that experience and identify brightness as an intrinsic property of seeing a lemon. Similarly, when I feel pleasure, I can introspect on the shift in hedonic tones and identify that goodness is an intrinsic property of the pleasure that was increased.
This connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
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these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism. Prefer –
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction for governments – deliberating over an action requires analysis of foreseen consequences which could be prevented which makes them intrinsic to state action
C~ Governments aren’t singular rational agents which makes theories about individuals irrelevant – only consequentialism solves by analyzing ends divorced from an actor
ows
2~ No act-omission distinction – governments are culpable for omissions cuz their purpose is to protect the constituency – otherwise they would have no obligation to make murder illegal. Actor spec o/w – different agents have different ethical standings that affect their obligations and considerations.
9/5/21
SO - AC - Euphoric TRIPS v3
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 6 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart RR | Judge: Ronak Ahuja 1AC Advantage The current WTO patent system is locking in global cannabis monopolies. Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM B. How the Patent Has Become a Tool for Globalization The trade-offs have been deemed beneficial by most of the international community, judging by the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement, whereby any signatory must institute a patent system to their national order.57 This requirement was seen to advance the benefits that intellectual property brings to markets and provide assurance for companies who depend upon intellectual property (for our purposes, patents) that they will be protected.58 Thus, investment and commercial activity can now more easily flow into countries where before the lack of protection rendered prospective costs of business prohibitive.59 The TRIPS Agreement imposed strong, uniform requirements upon signatory countries that went a long way towards its goal of globalization, and unlike most international treaties, required enforcement mechanisms with teeth.60 The most relevant requirement here is that the member patent office examining the patent may not discriminate "as to the place of invention, the field of technology and whether products are imported or locally produced."61 This requirement allows great freedom to engage in business within member countries, and prevents a patent office from giving any advantage to its own citizens that it would not give to a foreigner, unless allowed under other treaties.62 Further, if a patent is secured in the relevant country, a business does not need to set up a subsidiary within that country to obtain protection.63 To assist actors whose businesses cross international borders, the PCT was enacted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to reduce barriers when seeking protection for inventions.64 The PCT, while a treaty in name, acts more like an organization; as the WIPO describes the PCT: The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) assists applicants in seeking patent protection internationally for their inventions, helps patent Offices with their patent granting decisions, and facilitates public access to a wealth of technical information relating to those inventions. By filing one international patent application under the PCT, applicants can simultaneously seek protection for an invention in a very large number of countries.65 Importantly, filing an application to the PCT does not grant a patent international reach; the inventor must file a patent application and await approval in each jurisdiction they wish to pursue, and patents are still enforceable only in the countries where they are obtained.66 Rather, filing your invention to the PCT, and denoting the countries where you seek patent protection, means that the PCT will provide information on the timeframe and likelihood of a patent being granted in that jurisdiction, along with certain assistance that varies based on the jurisdiction sought.67 C. How Companies Can Utilize Patents Internationally Both the TRIPS Agreement and the PCT reduce barriers to transferring business across national boundaries by easing the transference of the intellectual property needed. The PCT acts merely as a helping hand and information collection tool, while the TRIPS Agreement acts to ensure that intellectual property will operate largely the same from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and, importantly, will be protected with uniform minimum standards. Without commenting on the desirability of this uniform treatment throughout varying economies, it has never been easier for businesses to use their intellectual property to enter international markets.68 In fact, under the TRIPS Agreement and PCT, companies can file a patent in a country where they have no connections,69 acquire a patent, and simply license the technology to (or bring infringement suits against) companies in the member country without needing to ever establish a presence.70 Notably, the PCT and many countries’ patent systems require you to file your patent application within a restricted timeframe after it is first disclosed.71 Thus, this transportation of patent rights must be loosely simultaneous throughout jurisdictions. However, the fact still remains that sophisticated actors who utilize the protections of the TRIPS Agreement can now acquire a monopoly to practice an invention in any country that is a signatory to the TRIPS Agreement or PCT. This usually reaches far short of global domination since companies generally file only in jurisdictions where they expect the benefit of using the patent to outweigh the cost of applying for one.72 However, if the inventor files a patent in every country that has a viable market for that invention, especially if only a few markets exist, the inventor could create an economic climate close to a global monopoly. Big pharma leverages cannabis patents to block out competition and secure monopoly – decks medical marijuana access Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM B. Cannabis Patents and Pharmaceutical Companies Patent protection is a key component of the United States legal system. On principle, we should compensate and reward those who have rightfully invented something, as well as incentivize and stimulate further innovation. The marijuana industry has been historically composed of people who believe in the cause, the plant, and the health benefits it brings. Yet, many of the field's "new players" are getting involved with a specific 89 business purpose in mind. Cannabis patents are one way to normalize and bring the industry to the mainstream, but the winners in the patent system are often those who are first and have the most money.'90 It's no secret why everyone wants a piece of the marijuana industry pie: according to an April 2018 report by Grand View Research, Inc., the global legal marijuana market is projected to be worth $146.4 billion by 025.'9' The report additionally found that in 2016, medical marijuana emerged as the largest segment of the industry and is estimated to be valued at $100.03 billion by 2025.192 One way to obtain a monetary stake in the medical marijuana market is to use the patent process to acquire ownership over a particular strain and its seeds.' 93 This limited monopoly ensures that the patent holder "is the only one who can make or sell the product, or license other people to do so."'94 However, there are so many unanswered questions that surround IP protection of a federally illegal substance, it is unclear if the patents will be upheld.'9 5 If cannabis patents are upheld in federal courts, it is possible that a handful of companies could be in a position to demand licensing fees from the rest of the industry.1 96 This incentive is particularly appealing to major multinational pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma) and is already being capitalized on today. For example, pharmaceutical firms are already seven of the top ten cannabis patent holders in Canada.' 97 These patents, filed prior to the country's full legalization of marijuana, would have been difficult to enforce prior to legalization.' 9 8 However, after Canada legalized marijuana on October 17, 2018, the patents became fully enforceable and gave the companies a key strategic advantage over non-patent holders in the ever- increasingly competitive market.' 99 The biggest concern is that Big Pharma companies will harness their powerful lobbies and seemingly bottomless payrolls to engage in patent blitzes. In other words, they will try to enlarge their patent portfolios and subsequent ownership of marijuana strains and their ancillary byproducts, such as oils, to marginalize competitors. In the United States, the FDA plays a crucial role in approving and 201 regulating medications for public use. Big Pharma requires the FDA's approval to bring their products to the public market, and it's no secret that Big Pharma's influence on the agency has accrued over many decades and billions of dollars spent.2 0 2 The current FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently slammed Big Pharma and accused drugmakers of using "gaming tactics" to stall the introduction of generic versions of biologic drugs, "a move that cost the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars last year. "203 One of these tactics is to engage in patent blitzes, or evergreening, right before a drug's patent protection (and subsequent market exclusivity 20 4 period) expires. "In the pharmaceutical trade, when brand-name companies patent 'new inventions' that are really just slight modifications of old drugs, it's called 'evergreening. "'205 Evergreening occurs because once a drugmaker's patent on a particular drug expires, the door is open for other producers to bring generic versions of the drug to market.206 Patents in patent blitzes are often granted for even the most trivial improvements and innovations related to existing drugs.207 The purpose of evergreening is two-fold: first, to extend the commercial dominance of brand-name drugs, and second, to tie up producers of the generic drugs in 2 08 costly, time-consuming litigation. Evergreening prevents a generic drug's market entry and further extends Big Pharma's monopolies.2 09 A prime example of recent evergreening is when Mylan hiked the price of its life-saving epinephrine injectable drug, EpiPen, by more than 400.210 After Teva Pharmaceuticals gained approval from the FDA for the first generic version of EpiPen, Mylan sued them for patent infringement, although epinephrine alone was already a generic drug.2 1 Mylan settled and kept "Teva off the EpiPen market until 2015."212 Much like AbbVie's battle with AmGen over a generic version of the former's costly biologic drug Humira, Big Pharma's inclination to place company profits over the needs and desires of patients could continue with cannabis strain patents. 2 13 This will ultimately affect cost and access to medical marijuana products. Thanks to shifting public opinion and state legalization, a growing number of cannabis patent applications have been filed with the USPTO and it is very likely they will be granted. Although marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, the premature filings signal hope that sometime in the near future, the federal government will reconsider its stance on cannabis, and make medical and recreational marijuana use legal from sea to shining sea.215 Companies with a large numb1er of cannabis strain patents, such as BioTech, could become an even bigger national player in the field of cannabis strain patents as they acquire more market share. Overall, if Big Pharma obtains exclusive rights to use, produce, and sell particular cannabis strains, together with their large influence over the FDA and other government regulatory bodies, they can control public access and maintain already robust profit margins.217 Not surprisingly, Big Pharma is not the only industry chasing profits from marijuana IP rights. Smaller breeders, including scientists who alter the plant for medicinal purposes, worry that large bioagricultural companies like Monsanto and Syngenta will hoard cannabis-based patents and deploy their massive economic power to position themselves as another dominant force in the market.218 in short, an open and accessible marketplace for cannabis products, especially for medicinal use, depends on tracking the patent activity of wealthy, powerful entities to ensure smaller entities are not marginalized.219 Monopolies kill cannabis biodiversity which throttles medical marijuana advances and industry innovation. Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM A. Biodiversity Implications for Cannabis Strain Patents Biodiversity, or biological diversity, is an ongoing controversy in the marijuana patent industry. Like comprehensive research on the benefits and drawbacks of medical marijuana, "empirical analysis on biodiversity in the patent system is limited."2 2 2 Biodiversity is a broad term but is generally defined as "biological diversity in an environment as indicated by numbers of different species of plants and animals." 23 Increasingly, however, countries and companies are asserting IP rights in native flora, 224 impacting global biodiversity. "Historical documents from around the world, some dating as far back as 2900 B.C., tell us that cannabis has lived alongside humans for thousands of years, cultivated for food, fiber, and fodder, as well as for religious and medicinal purposes." 2 5 The fear is that without a wide variety of cannabis strains available for breeding and growing, production and processing of the plant will inevitably consolidate into the hands of large conglomerates.22 6 The United States and Thailand are signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Biodiversity Convention), a multilateral treaty committed to sustainable development. The Biodiversity Convention's goals include "conserving biological diversity, promoting the sustainable use of its components, and the fair use and equitable sharing of benefits from biological resources."228 The Biodiversity Convention requires signatories to enforce regulations on plant patent applications and mandates that new patent applications include the plant's genetic resources and evidence of local use if they seek to patent the plant in a certain country. This is the chief reason behind the Biodiversity Sustainable Agriculture Food Sovereignty Action Thailand's (Biothai) call for careful scrutiny of recently filed foreign cannabis patents in the country, as discussed in greater detail in the next Section. Since medical marijuana is now legal for use and manufacture in Thailand, the mere implication that fabled Thai marijuana strains, such as "Northern Lights," could be available on the global market has generated 23 much buzz. 1 Like Cuban cigars or French champagne, Thai marijuana is known for its potency and quality.232 Thailand's marijuana is apure sativa landrace strain, meaning it is a local strain of cannabis that has adapted to Thailand's native environment and conditions over time. Environment plays a key role in the THC, CBD, and terpene quality and quantity and is part of what makes landrace strains so unique. For example, the marijuana plants and seeds that are indigenous to the tropical jungles of Thailand are bred to preserve their naturally occurring high THC levels.235 As more cannabis strain patents are granted worldwide, it is possible that growers will be increasingly dependent on seed makers that hold patents on certain types of seeds and methods used to produce them. As a result, growers will be subject to agreements and royalties and will be charged licensing fees for use of the seeds. A healthy number and variety 236 of available cultivars are vital for advancing cannabis legalization and the industry’s continued growth. From an agricultural perspective, the patent system encourages a consolidation and reduction of variety in order to enhance and maximize profits. This can be seen in today's staple crops, such as com, soy, and wheat, where fewer cultivars exist than they did decades ago.23 9 Other crops globally consumed today, such as fruits 240 and vegetables, are likely grown from patented varieties or cultivars. As a result, agricultural biodiversity has diminished due to the introduction and consolidation of genetically modified, patented varieties, and it is highly likely the cannabis industry could see a similar fate.24 1 Cannabis biodiversity will be threatened if there are fewer available cultivars and, thus, fewer strain options.2 42 Fewer available strains could also lead to limited consumer experiences and patient treatment options. This notion, coupled with already limited clinical and scientific research, could significantly throttle advances in medical marijuana availability and use.2 43 The corporatization of the industry, thanks to patent law, could see smaller growers and businesses merging into giant conglomerates, with 2 the profits being held in the hands of a very few. 4 In short, the "winners" of the cannabis patent wars will dominate the industry post-prohibition.2 45 Some argue that expanding strain patents could have the opposite effect and allow researchers and physicians to "correctly identifty~, dos~e~, and perhaps even personalize prescriptions for particular strains in the future" to treat specific ailments.24 6 Patents are a hallmark of innovation, and with wide access to more and better cannabis strains, there could be innovation advances in the industry as a whole.2 47 However, the reality is that cannabis patents are likely to be held by large corporations, given what we have seen before with the United States government and the FDA's involvement.24 8 Both medical marijuana patients and recreational marijuana users are strain-driven. While the current cannabis landscape is rich with hundreds of different varieties, strain patents could lead to a "locked genetic landscape where innovation becomes rare and costly."2 4 9 Further, a monopoly on the local strains of one country could have disastrous effects on that country's biodiversity and its rights to that biodiversity.2 50 Monopolies kill market growth and disincentivize innovation. Gunelius 20 "How Big Business, Monopolies and Stacked Licenses Impact the Marijuana Industry," February 7, 2020, Originally published 3/4/17, Susan Gunelius is President and CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc. https://www.cannabiz.media/blog/how-big-business-monopolies-and-stacked-licenses-impact-the-marijuana-industry SM However, the continued growth and development of big businesses with deep pockets in the cannabis industry has many people worried that the result of continued mergers and acquisitions will be monopolies, lower quality products, and a shift of revenues away from mom and pop businesses in local communities to out-of-state (or out of country) corporations. The Start of Monopolies and Oligopolies in the Cannabis Industry Monopolies and oligopolies are already developing in the cannabis industry — not just in terms of big businesses usurping smaller businesses but also in terms of state regulations that allow vertical integration, which leads to markets dominated by one or a few players that control the cultivation, processing, and sale of cannabis products. To clarify, all but two states (Louisiana and Washington) with active medical or recreational cannabis programs allow or require vertical integration of the cannabis supply chain. Cannabiz Media defines the related cannabis license structures as follows: Fully stacked licenses: A single licensed business can or is required to handle all operations from seed to sale in a fully vertically integrated structure. Partially stacked licenses: A single licensed business can or is required to handle more than one operation but not all operations from seed to sale. Unstacked licenses: Different businesses handle different operations across the supply chain from seed to sale. For example, in Minnesota, the state’s medical marijuana program requires full vertical integration with only one type of license – the Medical Cannabis Manufacturer license. Currently, only two of these licenses are allowed in the state to grow, process, and sell (at four dispensaries each) cannabis. Other states, like Colorado and Oregon, have ceased to award additional licenses to some cannabis businesses in the past thereby creating oligopolies. In California, oligopolies are forming in a different way. Regulations passed leading up to opening the state’s adult-use market in 2018 allowed large businesses to exploit a loophole and obtain as many cultivator licenses as they could afford. Across the country, smaller cannabis businesses are struggling to compete with other bigger cannabis companies. In Maryland, large out-of-state companies (including several well-known cannabis companies that are publicly traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange) have been quietly taking control of multiple marijuana dispensaries through management agreements or acquisition plans that circumvent the state’s regulations limiting ownership to one dispensary. The concern about monopolies and oligopolies in the cannabis industry was in the Florida news extensively throughout 2019 when a Florida court ruled that the state’s required vertical integration was unconstitutional. The Future of Marijuana and Big Business Bottom line, whenever every business that wants to be in an industry cannot enter the market, competition will not flourish. The result is the same whether businesses are shut out due to state regulations or because big businesses have deeper pockets and force smaller players to leave. Either way, the result is the same. Fewer players equals less competition which usually leads to higher prices and limited market growth. As Sean Williams of The Motley Fool warned back in 2017, "The culprit for the substantial drop in marijuana prices appears to be big businesses infiltrating the industry and flooding the market with product. As with any industry, if big business can push the little guy out, they’ll have considerably more liberties down the road to raise their prices back up and capture a juicier margin, along with greater market share." Only free competition ensures fair prices and market growth over the long-term as well as ongoing innovation and product accessibility. Medical marijuana is key to resolving opioid pain reliever prescriptions – biggest internal link to addiction and overuse Blake 20 ~Dwight K Blake, Founder of American Marijuana, 15 years of experience in mental health counseling and addiction treatment.~ "Medical marijuana reduces opioid prescribing rate," American Marijuana, March 24, 2020, https://americanmarijuana.org/medical-marijuana-solution-to-opioid-epidemic/ ~note: charts/images omitted~ TG Medical Marijuana as A Painkiller Marijuana contains many Cannabinoids including CBD or Cannabidiol and THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol. But contrary to the latter, topical CBD, particularly CBD oil, manages and reduces pain, inflammation, discomfort, and a variety of other health conditions. As of 2020, medical marijuana is legal in over 20 states in the USA since it was first decriminalized in Nevada in 2001. But in 2017, it was found that chronic pain was the most common qualification condition among patients who are licensed to use marijuana medically, accounting for almost 62 of nearly 1 million medical cannabis patients (representing an average of 33 to 73 each year from 1999 to 2016). Opioid Crisis Opioid is a group of chemically similar drugs containing prescription pain relievers and heroin. A good example of these includes hydrocodone (Vicodin®), oxycodone (OxyContin®), and morphine. This is what makes it one of the main contributing factors to the opioid crisis. According to SAMHSA, approximately over in 2018, 10 million people aged 12 or older in 2018 have misused opioids. About 9.4 million of those have misused pain relievers exclusively while the remaining 506,000 have misused pain relievers and heroin use in the previous year. On a similar note, a little over 300,000 people have also misused heroin exclusively out of the 800,000 people who misused heroin in 2017. From 1999 to 2017, it was found that there were about 400,000 people who died from overdoses of any, prescription, and illicit opioids. Medical Marijuana: A Potential Opioid Crisis Solution So how exactly is medical marijuana a potential solution to the opioid crisis? Here’s where things get really interesting… Our Study We’ve selected 19 states where medical marijuana is legal then compared the opioid prescribing rate 1 year before and after medical marijuana was legalized in the state. Here is what we found: Out of the 19 states, 15 have shown a fall of opioid prescribing rate 1 year after legalization of medical marijuana, and only 4 have increased in usage, namely: New Jersey, New Mexico, Michigan, and Arizona. Interestingly, the state with the highest fall of opioid prescribing rate among the 19 states was Ohio, from an average opioid prescribing rate of 82.7 down to 63.5, totaling 19.2 decreased prescribing rate after marijuana legalization. The state with the second-highest fall of opioid prescribing rate was Pennsylvania, from an average opioid prescribing rate of 75.5 down to 57.7, a total of 17.8 decreased prescribing rate after marijuana legalization. New Mexico and New Jersey had the least number of increase in opioid prescribing rate of the 4 mentioned states, with only 2.4 and 1.6 increase in usage after marijuana legalization, respectively. Here is the full data of our study: Data source: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/maps/rxrate-maps.html, National Drug Use and Health Subtance Abuse; Mental Health Administration To support our point of view, let’s compare this to similar studies: Other studies In an article published on Harvard Health Publishing, M.D Peter Grinspoon has shown "access to medical marijuana can reduce opioid consumption". A study conducted by Hefei Wen, Ph.D and Jason M. Hockenberry, Ph.D as of May 2018 showed that from 2011 to 2016, adult-use marijuana laws and medical marijuana laws were associated with lower opioid prescribing rates for Medicaid enrollees: 6.38 and 5.88 lower, respectively, compared with states without medical cannabis laws. In October 2014, Marcus A. Bachhuber, Brendan Saloner, Ph.D, Chinazo O. Cunningham, MD, MS, and Colleen L. Barry, Ph.D, MPP also conducted a study to determine the association between the presence of state medical cannabis laws and opioid analgesic overdose mortality. The report concluded: Between 1999 to 2010, states with medical cannabis laws (Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Vermont) had a 24.8 lower mean annual opioid overdose mortality rate compared with states without medical cannabis laws. Although they still claim "further investigation is required to determine how medical cannabis laws may interact with policies aimed at preventing opioid analgesic overdose." It has to be noted that fewer annual drug doses were also being prescribed per physician in the U.S from 2010-2013: In the given period, there were 1,826 fewer doses of drugs per year per physician treating pain than in states without medical marijuana laws. Moreover, there were 562 and 541 fewer annual doses of drugs per year per physician to treat anxiety and nausea, respectively. In summary, 78 of the states (where medical marijuana is legal) have shown an average reduction rate of opioid consumption by 5.21. Neg studies are bunk – misclassified the existence of medical marijuana in states Sullum 19 ~Jacob, Cornell University BA in Economics and Psychology, Senior Editor at Reason, writer for WSJ and NYT, spoke on drug policy at International Conference on Drug Policy.~ "Does Medical Marijuana Reduce Opioid-Related Deaths or Not?" Reason, June 11, 2019, https://reason.com/2019/06/11/does-medical-marijuana-reduce-opioid-related-deaths-or-not/ TG When Shover et al. limited their analysis to states that only allow medical use of low-THC cannabis extracts, they found a negative correlation with opioid-related deaths. Looking just at states with "comprehensive medical cannabis law~s~," they found a positive correlation. In states that have legalized cannabis for recreational as well as medical use, there was a negative correlation. Only the second result was statistically significant, and barely so. Nevertheless, this is not the pattern you would expect to see if increased legal access to marijuana had a measurable impact on deaths involving opioids, either negative or positive. Shover et al.'s method differs in a potentially important way from the approach taken in two other studies suggesting that access to medical marijuana reduces opioid-related mortality. While Shover et al., like Bacchuber et al., focus on states with medical marijuana laws, the two other studies asked whether patients actually had ready access to cannabis. A 2018 study, reported in the Journal of Health Economics, found that merely having a medical marijuana law was associated with lower rates of opioid-related death until 2010. After that there was no apparent benefit from medical marijuana laws per se, but states with "legally protected and operational dispensaries" continued to see reductions, suggesting that "broader access to medical marijuana facilitates substitution of marijuana for powerful and addictive opioids." That study was based on data through 2013, so Shover et al.'s analysis includes four more years. A 2019 study, reported in the Economics Bulletin, likewise found that "states with active legal dispensaries see a drop in opioid death rates over time." That study covered 1999 through 2015, ending two years before Shover et al.'s analysis does. In addition to covering more years, Shover et al. define medical marijuana access more broadly than those two earlier studies did. While Shover et al. distinguish between states with "low-THC-only medical cannabis law~s~" (where CBD oil is legal, sometimes only notionally, for a short list of conditions) and states with "comprehensive medical cannabis law~s~" (where a broader range of cannabis products are legal for a broader range of conditions), they implicitly treat passage of such laws as equivalent to legal access, which is often misleading. Shover et al.'s data set, for example, indicates that they counted Arizona, where the first medical marijuana dispensary did not open until December 2012, as a state with a "comprehensive medical cannabis law" from 2011 through 2017. Arkansas, where the first dispensary opened last month, gets credit for such a law in 2017 and part of 2016. Hawaii is listed as a state with a comprehensive law from 2001 on, but legal sales did not begin there until 16 years later. There are similar issues with Shover et al.'s treatment of other states, including Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, and Massachusetts. In short, Shover et al. classify states based on their enactment of medical marijuana laws, even though legal sales may not begin until years later. That makes sense insofar as they are seeking to replicate the results of Bachhuber et al.'s study, which took the same approach. But it could easily muddy the picture of what happens when medical marijuana is legally available. The opioid crisis risks massively destructive terrorism – synthetic opioids can be weaponized and spread Morell 17 (Michael Morell, the former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is one of our nation's leading national security professionals, with extensive experience in intelligence and foreign policy. During his 33-year career at CIA, Michael served as Deputy Director for over three years, served twice as Acting Director, served for two years as the Director of Intelligence, the Agency's top analyst, and for two years as Executive Director, the CIA's top administrator.)("The Opioid Crisis Becomes a National Security Threat", July 26, 2017, https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column'article/opioid-crisis-becomes-national-security-threat) On October 23, 2002, dozens of armed Chechen terrorists seized a Moscow theater and took some 850 people hostage. Because of the layout of the theater, the number of extremists, and the large amount of explosives in their possession, a SWAT-type raid was out of the question. When two of the hostages were murdered almost three days into the crisis, the Russian government chose to pump an incapacitating agent into the theater via the air vents. But the agent was too toxic, and while all the extremists were killed, so too were some 130 of the hostages. The Russians have never publicly identified the particular chemical agent used, but it is widely believed to have been carfentanil. Fast forward to June 2016, when authorities in Vancouver, Canada seized one kilogram of carfentanil. The agent was sent via mail from China to an address in Canada, and it was hidden in a package that was declared on a customs form to be printer accessories. It was the largest seizure of carfentanil to date. Carfentanil, a synthetic opioid, is highly toxic. The drug is 10,000 times stronger than morphine and 5,000 times more potent than heroin. Only 20 micrograms, roughly the size of a grain of salt, can be fatal. The seizure in Vancouver was enough to kill 50 million people – every man, women, and child in Canada. Carfentanil was developed in the 1970s as a tranquilizer for large animals – elephants and hippos. Dr. Rob Hilsenroth, the executive director of the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians said last year that carfentanil is so powerful that zoo officials wear protective gear "just a little bit short of a hazmat suit" when sedating animals because even one drop in a person’s eye or nose can be fatal. The extreme lethality of carfentanil has led most countries to classify it as a chemical weapon. It is banned from the battlefield under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Andrew Weber, President Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Program, said it plainly and simply last year: "It’s a weapon." So, what is a chemical weapon doing on the streets of Canada – and the U.S.? Over the past year, drug dealers have learned that they can cut carfentanil into the heroin they sell to increase the "high" and to increase profits, as heroin is 15 times more expensive than carfentanil. In a public warning last fall, the Drug Enforcement Administration said "carfentanil is surfacing in more and more communities" and that it "has been linked to a significant number of overdose deaths in various parts of the country." The drug is largely produced in China by thousands of small chemical firms and shipped either through Mexico and Canada to the United States or directly through the mail system, often after an order is placed online. It is also produced by drug cartels in Mexico (with key ingredients imported from China). China, working with the United States, is now regulating carfentanil production and export, but the large number of producers there means the problem has only been reduced, not resolved. There are signs that the production of carfentanil could be moving here as well, particularly after the Chinese government’s crack down. Some of equipment used to make carfentanil in China has been found in the United States. And the key ingredient to fentanyl – a less potent cousin of carfentanil – has also been discovered in the U.S., suggesting that fentanyl is being manufactured here. In May, federal agents in Massachusetts seized 50 kilograms of a key chemical used to make fentanyl. The public discussion about – and the government focus on – carfentanil is all about the dangerous role it plays in the contemporary drug epidemic – with good reason. Drug overdoses, with a growing number caused by carfentanil, are now the leading cause of death from injury in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle accidents, suicides, and homicides. Some police and paramedics have themselves overdosed after coming into contact with carfentanil. But the drug also constitutes a significant threat to national security. It is a weapon of mass destruction. Indeed, carfentanil is the perfect terrorist weapon. It is readily available in large quantities. It comes in several forms – including tablets, powder, and spray. It can be absorbed through the skin or through inhalation. It acts quickly. And, it is deadly. Peter Ostrovsky, a senior official of the Immigration and Customs Service, said last fall, "Could it be weaponized? Yeah, it could be weaponized." In short, a single terrorist attack using carfentanil could kill thousands of Americans. And, there has been little focus on the drug as a terrorist weapon. In the Director of National Intelligence’s 2017 Worldwide Threat hearings, the issue of synthetic opioids was treated as part of the international drug problem, not as a terrorism risk. No one from either the Obama or Trump administrations has spoken publicly about the threat. The same is true for Congress. There has been little to no work by think tanks or the media on the terrorism risks. This needs to change. There needs to be an NSC-directed policy and strategy on getting our arms around the national security risks of carfentanil – including increasing the focus of the Intelligence Community as well as the law enforcement and homeland security communities. There needs to be a focus by Congress, in part, to oversee the work of the Executive Branch. There needs to be work done at the state and local level that is integrated with what is happening at the federal level. There is a great deal to do. Both al Qaeda and ISIS have said they are interested in acquiring weapons of mass destruction and that they would use them if they acquired them. Osama bin Laden called it a religious duty to do so. ISIS has used chemical weapons on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. And now such a weapon is easily available to them. It would be a terrible tragedy if foreign terrorists were to use the consequences of our own domestic drug problem against us – particularly when it is so easy to see what might be coming. Developments and attacks are coming now – spurs inter-state wars AND non-state actors which ensure escalation – taboo eroded, empirics prove, tech and motive are here Henry de Quetteville et al 18. Special Correspondent @Telegraph, Technology. Former foreign correspondent in France, the Balkans and the Middle East., citing James Giordano, professor of neurology, chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program, and co-director of the O’Neill-Pellegrino Program in Brain Science and Global Health Law and Policy at Georgetown University Medical Center. He is an member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s panel on neuroethics, legal, and social issues, and serves as a senior science advisory fellow to the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. His latest book is Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense: Practical Considerations, Neuroethical Concerns (CRC Press), citing Gavin Williamson, UK Secretary of Defense, citing Aimen Dean, also known as Ramzi is a Bahrainian man who was a founding member of al-Qaeda. In 1998, he joined the Secret Intelligence Service and became an MI6 spy, citing Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert and chief operating officer of SecureBio Limited. He was formerly a British Army officer for 23 years and commanding officer of the UK's CBRN Regiment and NATO's Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, August 3, 2018, "The rise of biological and chemical weapons After Salisbury, how ready is the UK?", https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rise-of-biological-chemical-weapons/. Rez With nerve agents having been deployed in Syria, Malaysia and Salisbury, the 100 year taboo on the use of chemical weapons is in danger of collapse. The stakes could not be higher as gene-editing technologies put a new generation of bio-weapons within reach of almost anyone. The small town of Melksham, in rural Wiltshire, is an unlikely location for one of the world’s largest producers of gas masks. Yet there, next to Farmers’ Roundabout, is a warehouse containing a production line that can turn out a quarter of a million masks a year. Models include the FM54, a sinister-looking bit of kit used by the SAS. This is Avon Protection, originally founded in the late 19th century as a tyre factory but which, come the First World War, spotted a new market for its rubber presses. Today, business is booming. Orders are flooding in from the US military and the MoD. A contract is up for grabs from Canada’s army. India is keen. ‘All this CW has been good for us,’ says an executive. By CW he means chemical warfare. And it’s true. On Avon’s factory floor, permeated by the distinctive smell of its essential raw material, blue and yellow presses relentlessly inject molten rubber into dense matt-metal moulds. Every four minutes a new mask emerges, ready to be trimmed and equipped with tubes, visors and filters. Amid the beauty of Melksham’s peaceful surroundings, these blank-eyed robo-humanoid visors, worthy of Darth Vader, are the starkest possible reminder that 100 years after we thought we had said goodbye to all that, a new age of poison weapons is upon us. It is an era in which a series of unprecedented plots and attacks – from England to Australia – has projected this darkest of the arts of war far from the traditional battlefield. They have seen an airport departure lounge and a medieval cathedral city in the West Country laced with the deadliest toxic chemicals, upsetting a diplomatic and military status quo established in the wreckage of the First World War, and blowing away one of armed conflict’s weightiest taboos like a breeze dispersing clouds of mustard gas over the trenches of the Western Front. Worse, some fear that with emerging threats from DIY bioweapons, this may just be the beginning. The new age of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has been decades in the making. As Aimen Dean, MI6’s mole in al-Qaeda, recounts in his new book Nine Lives, Osama bin Laden’s terror group plotted to smear deadly chemicals on the door handles of luxury cars in Britain in the late 1990s. After 9/11, Dean delivered intelligence that Abu Khabab, an al-Qaeda weapons engineer, had managed to develop a viable poison-gas device destined for New York’s subway system. The plot never came to fruition. Terrorists continue to fantasise about striking fear into civilian populations with chemical and biological weapons. Last August, intelligence agencies in Australia intercepted an Isil plot that allegedly would have involved the release of toxic hydrogen sulphide gas. And just last month, German authorities arrested Seif Allah Hammami, a 29-year-old Tunisian who had apparently managed to manufacture significant quantities of ricin, a bioweapon first developed by the US during the First World War. But it is in Syria that the century-old toxic taboo has truly been blown away. Since 2012, chlorine and sarin gas have repeatedly been dropped from the jets and helicopters of the Assad regime, as well as fired in warheads attached to artillery rockets. Isil too has deployed gas in Syria – both in contravention of the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare – known in short as the Geneva Protocol – which was first signed in 1925. The Protocol was an attempt to ensure that the horrors of the Great War were never repeated, yet in Syria today, just as on the Western Front then, chemical munitions have targeted networks of trenches housing enemy fighters. Bashar al-Assad spent four year besieging Aleppo with conventional weapons. When, in December 2016, he started using chemicals instead, the city fell in just over two weeks. Little matter that all too often they hit civilians too, as shown by heartbreaking images of choking, gagging, foaming men, women and children broadcast around the world. Ghouta in 2013 remains the deadliest single attack, almost unimaginable in scale. The final death toll has never been pinned down, but the US administration estimates almost 1,500 were killed. Hundreds more have died in over three dozen subsequent attacks in Syria that the world knows of. Having been unleashed anew in Syria in 2012, it was only five years before these weapons were deployed – in February 2017 – in an exclusively civilian arena. The scene was the budget-airline terminal at Kuala Lumpur airport. Just as sarin is many times more toxic than chlorine, so VX is many times more toxic than sarin. And it was VX that was used to assassinate Kim Jong-nam, exiled half-brother of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, when two women smeared the agent on his body in what they claim to have thought was a prank. Currently on trial, they could face the death penalty if their story is not believed. But even that brazen attack was as nothing to what unfolded in Salisbury on 4 March this year, when the Russian military officer turned British spy Sergei Skripal and his daugher Yulia were found unconscious on a bench. Skripal was a victim of Novichok, a nerve agent that is perhaps 1,000 times more toxic than sarin. Invisible and deadly, it brought a menace to Britain’s streets that most of us never imagined we would have to consider – let alone experience. And that shock only deepened when, earlier this month, and out of the blue, Charlie Rowley, 45, and Dawn Sturgess (who died last weekend), 44, also fell victim to Novichok in Amesbury, just down the road from Salisbury. On top of the attacks in Syria and the killing of Kim Jong-nam, the targeting of the Skripals and its protracted consequences made a devastating conclusion inescapable: a century after Wilfred Owen wrote of ‘Gas, gas’ and of the victim ‘yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime’, the use of chemical weapons had become normal again. It is easy to see why. Toxic chemicals are the perfect weapon for our fake news world, where everything is disputable, objective truth malleable or elusive, blame and attribution hard to pin down. Take the Skripal attack: afterwards Russia’s propaganda machine went into overdrive, peddling countless claims and counterclaims of its own: that the British state was itself responsible; that Yulia and her father were sedated and poisoned. Spinning this web of ambiguity was all the easier because of the absence of any international body empowered to attribute responsibility for attacks. The independent Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) identified the Novichok in Salisbury, but pointing to its source was not within its remit. Moscow’s media trumpeted its failure to do so as exculpation anyway. For a former superpower like Russia, chemical weapons offer an alluring asymmetry too, helping to level the playing field against the better-financed, better-equipped militaries of NATO. ‘We’re in a position now where we’re going into a new Cold War,’ says Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former commander of the British Army’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment (CBRN), which, ironically, was disbanded in 2011, a year before WMD were first deployed in Syria. ‘While we overmatch Russia in most areas, in chemical weapons their offensive capability more than overmatches us. If Russia did decide broadly to hit us with this stuff, we’d be found wanting.’ Novichok, which de Bretton-Gordon describes as ‘the world’s blue riband nerve agent’, was developed in Shikhany, a town on the Volga that houses a military research establishment. Experts estimate that Russia has perhaps a few tons of it, enough ‘to carry out assassinations but not to wage war’. Still, only tiny doses are needed to block a crucial enzyme – acetylcholinesterase – which breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. When that happens, large branches of the nervous system become overexcited and ultimately shut down. ‘The first thing that happens is bowel and bladder incontinence,’ says Stefano Costanzi, associate professor in the department of chemistry at American University in Washington, DC, and an expert in the effects of chemical weapons. ‘Eventually that is followed by the collapse of the nervous system, with death typically resulting from respiratory failure and seizures.’ How long that takes depends on exposure and dose. It can be minutes. Dr Stephen Jukes, intensive care consultant at Salisbury District Hospital, where the Skripals were treated (and where Rowley and Sturgess were taken), has described trying ‘all our therapies’ to keep Sergei and Yulia alive. Due to an astonishing coincidence, two doctors on duty had just returned from a course at Porton Down, Britain’s world-leading equivalent to Shikhany, when the pair were brought in. Recognising what looked like symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning, they made sure to include diazepam and atropine in their battery of treatments – the drugs compensate for some of the effects of acetylcholinesterase blockage – and plunged the Skripals into an artificial coma to prevent brain damage. Then it was a question of waiting. ‘It is key to keep the victims alive long enough for their bodies naturally to restore their ability to break down acetylcholine,’ says Costanzi. Dr Jukes says that hospital staff did indeed wait, but more in hope than expectation. ‘When we first realised this was a nerve agent, we were expecting them not to survive,’ he told the BBC. His colleague Dr Duncan Murray attributed the fact that the Skripals did pull through to ‘very good, generic, basic critical care’. But simple good fortune, like the fact that Porton Down is just down the road from Salisbury, played a big part too. ‘There are only 10 or so countries in the world that could have possibly responded to the Skripal attack,’ one British official told me. ‘And even then we were very lucky.’ Soldiers march across Kim Il Sung Square, North Korea. The country is known to hold stocks of VX nerve agent as well as long range nuclear missiles Lucky, and stretched to the absolute limit. Lorna Wilkinson, nursing director at the hospital, has said that when policeman Nick Bailey was also admitted with symptoms of poisoning similar to the Skripals’ ‘there was a real concern as to how big this could get’. She and fellow medical staff worried that it could become ‘all-consuming and involve many casualties’. According to de Bretton-Gordon, even containing the attack as it was required the deployment of ‘every bit of this country’s military establishment’. So could Britain cope with a bigger attack? Responsibility for responding to major disasters in Britain lies with the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) in the Cabinet Office, which liaises with intelligence agencies and the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT) at the Home Office to draw up the National Risk Register Of Civil Emergencies (NRR) – a list of 80 or so critical threats to the country, from flooding to a collapse of the national grid to cyber attacks. The NRR distinguishes between natural hazards or accidents, and malicious attacks, and even produces a table ranking these threats by their impact severity and likelihood, both on a scale of 1 to 5. The table makes it easy to see, for example, that the natural disaster the CCS is most worried about is a pandemic flu outbreak, which is given a 5 impact rating, and a 4 for its relative likelihood of occurring in the next five years. When it comes to malicious acts, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) attacks are deemed the most severe threat to this country. ‘Larger-scale incidents could include… much greater numbers of casualties and widespread, long-term impacts of a magnitude above all others,’ the cheery document suggests. As one British diplomatic source puts it, ‘We assumed that the use of chemical weapons by states had drawn to an end. But their repeated use in Syria ate away at that. Then the sheer recklessness of the Skripal attack shocked not just us but a lot of our allies around the world.’ And it’s not just states. Aimen Dean has called Salisbury a ‘big neon advertisement’ to jihadists about the potency of chemical attacks. British efforts to reverse this normalisation of WMD have included participating with the US and France in air strikes in Syria in April, aimed at redrawing some Obama-era ‘red lines’ that were blurred by six years of unpunished chemical attacks by the Assad regime. At the same time Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, has pledged £48 million to build a new chemical weapons defence centre at Porton Down, and elements of de Bretton-Gordon’s disbanded CBRN regiment are being reconstituted. Quietly, this summer, the British Government has also pursued a high-stakes diplomatic gambit to ensure chemical attacks are no longer easy to get away with, by granting the OPCW powers to attribute blame for chemical attacks. Russia has repeatedly blocked such moves, but last month a special session of OPCW member states was convened and despite Russian pressure, 106 members turned up and 82 voted in favour of granting the OPCW powers ‘to identify the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons’ – initially in Syria alone but then, so Britain hopes, around the world. ‘The taboo against the use of these weapons is breaking down and today the OPCW has not just the power to say the chemical weapons have been used, but can also point the finger at whoever did it,’ the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said afterwards. If the worst came to the worst, however, and a major attack did unfold, Britain would fall back on the Reserve National Stock, a chain of warehouses filled with antidotes and drugs for use in the event of a catastrophic WMD event. It was established in the 1970s after the eradication of smallpox, when dumps of the smallpox vaccine were maintained just in case the disease re-emerged. In 1995, after sarin terror attacks on the Tokyo subway launched by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, nerve-gas antidotes were added. Following 9/11, countermeasures for anthrax were also included; then, in 2003, the nerve agent response was upgraded with better drugs and personal-protection gear. Critical chemical- and biological- weapon treatments are strategically positioned around the country, with the aim of getting essential supplies to almost any affected location within five hours. The kind of items in the stock is made clear in an NHS England document, identified with the bland ‘Gateway Reference Number 03088’. ‘1. Nerve agent antidote pod to treat 90 people. 2. Obidoxime further treatment for nerve agent poisoning. 3. Dicobalt edetate pod for treatment of cyanide poisoning in 90 people. 4. Botulinum antitoxin... Antibiotic pods (oral ciprofloxacin) to treat 250 adults for 10 days… with post-exposure prophylaxis for anthrax, plague or tularaemia…’ You get the picture. The Reserve National Stock is kept under review, to ensure it contains the right kit and drugs to meet current threats. But that also begs a question: will it be able to respond to threats in the future? For no sooner have WMD resurfaced than the nature of the threat they pose is changing. Today, for example, biological pathogens can be modified to ‘improve’ their lethality using gene-editing techniques such as Crispr-Cas9. Because of their ease of use, these techniques – more usually lauded for their medical applications – have been described by James Clapper, America’s national intelligence director until last year, as weapons of mass destruction, as they do not require a vastly sophisticated lab. ‘It makes it easy for individuals to operate outside a formal institutional setting,’ says James Giordano, professor of neurology and biochemistry at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC. ‘Crispr lends itself to biohacking.’ Biohacking sounds subversive, but in fact is merely the name given to the growing trend for DIY bioengineering, carried out by amateurs with no malicious intent, usually on entirely benign organisms, such as yeast. Take a turn off the stalls of Shepherds Bush Market in west London, for example, and you will come across 45 purple and pink shipping containers. This is Open Cell, where biotech innovators can rent access to lab equipment like a thermal cycler (to reproduce DNA) for a few hundred pounds a month. Open Cell has the relaxed campus feel common to many collaborative working spaces of which entrepreneurs are fond. Except here, budding young companies are working on encouraging flies to do the pollinating work of bees, say, or exploiting potato waste to make chipboard-like material. It is a sign of London’s thriving biotech start-up scene. But it is also a sign of how biotech is breaking out of the state- or university-run lab. ‘That is exactly our passion,’ says Open Cell’s co-founder, biotechnologist Thomas Meany. He makes plain that security is a top concern, pointing to CCTV on site and constant threat assessments, as well as vetting of potential tenants. ‘We work with organisms you might find in your tummy or on your skin,’ he says. ‘We don’t use anything that could be potentially hazardous.’ Nevertheless, Open Cell is part of what Giordano calls ‘an increasingly global independent DIY movement’ in biotech. ‘It is not a Wild West of biohacking cowboys,’ he says. ‘But the ubiquity of these techniques now means people may drift outside the norm of a community through a "let’s see what happens" spirit. They may not be operating with controls to see something bad coming then mitigate it if it happens. Then of course other groups may simply not care – they want to see if they can do something a bit disruptive. They might say, "Let see if we can build something that will make people sick."’ Such people, Giordano says, could find themselves the tools of states looking to sow chaos but not take any blame. ‘They could create bio-agents that are not even categorised by the biological weapons convention because they are new. You could take something common like E.coli and make it more pathogenic.’ He points to the case last year of two academics at the University of Alberta in Canada who ordered segments of horsepox DNA – related to smallpox – off the internet, and put them together so they became infectious. What particularly shocked peers was that the pair then published their work – effectively unveiling a deadly recipe. ‘You shake your head and wonder how it happened,’ says Giordano. ‘Before gene editing, of course, that’s not such a problem. But now putting out these types of recipes creates real problems because they will be read outside institutions where regulations are very stringent. I am very concerned about the external community. This is new territory. It needs to be surveillable and enforceable.’ Or as Clapper put it in his Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community: ‘Given the broad distribution, low cost, and accelerated pace of development of this ~gene-editing~ technology, its deliberate or unintentional misuse might lead to far-reaching economic and national security implications.’ What people like Clapper fear is a genetically modified pox threat outpacing efforts to contain it, creating a pandemic which could kill not thousands but, in the doomsday scenario, millions. Last year Bill Gates said a bioweapon strike represented a bigger than nuclear attack, and put the potential death toll at 30 million. The economic fallout would also be catastrophic. This is hard to calculate, but in a paper some 20 years ago the Center for Disease Control in America tried to estimate the cost of containing an anthrax-based bioterror attack. The total? $26.2 billion per 100,000 persons exposed. Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be? We are not talking enough about the climatic effects of nuclear war. The "nuclear winter" theory of the mid-1980s played a significant role in the arms reductions of that period. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, this aspect of nuclear war has faded from view. That’s not good. In the mid-2000s, climate scientists such as Alan Robock (Rutgers) took another look at nuclear winter theory. This time around, they used much-improved and much more detailed climate models than those available 20 years earlier. They also tested the potential effects of smaller nuclear exchanges. The result: an exchange involving just 50 nuclear weapons — the kind of thing we might see in an India-Pakistan war, for example — could loft 5 billion kilograms of smoke, soot and dust high into the stratosphere. That’s enough to cool the entire planet by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.25 degrees Celsius) — about where we were during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Growing seasons could be shortened enough to create really significant food shortages. So the climatic effects of even a relatively small nuclear war would be planet-wide. What about a larger-scale conflict? A U.S.-Russia war currently seems unlikely, but if it were to occur, hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average temperatures would drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years — temperatures last seen during the great ice ages. Meanwhile, smoke and dust circulating in the stratosphere would darken the atmosphere enough to inhibit photosynthesis, causing disastrous crop failures, widespread famine and massive ecological disruption. The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs. Many people are concerned about North Korea’s advancing missile capabilities. Is nuclear war likely in your opinion? At this writing, I think we are closer to a nuclear war than we have been since the early 1960s. In the North Korea case, both Kim Jong-un and President Trump are bullies inclined to escalate confrontations. President Trump lacks impulse control, and there are precious few checks on his ability to initiate a nuclear strike. We have to hope that our generals, both inside and outside the White House, can rein him in. North Korea would most certainly "lose" a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die, including hundreds of thousands of Americans currently living in South Korea and Japan (probable North Korean targets). Such vast damage would be wrought in Korea, Japan and Pacific island territories (such as Guam) that any "victory" wouldn’t deserve the name. Not only would that region be left with horrible suffering amongst the survivors; it would also immediately face famine and rampant disease. Radioactive fallout from such a war would spread around the world, including to the U.S. It has been more than 70 years since the last time a nuclear bomb was used in warfare. What would be the effects on the environment and on human health today? To my knowledge, most of the changes in nuclear weapons technology since the 1950s have focused on making them smaller and lighter, and making delivery systems more accurate, rather than on changing their effects on the environment or on human health. So-called "battlefield" weapons with lower explosive yields are part of some arsenals now — but it’s quite unlikely that any exchange between two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs. Chemical WMDs cause extinction – one incident is enough Gander 18, Kashmira. Citing the Global Catastrophic Risks Foundation’s Global Challenges Annual Report, edited by Martin Rees, UK Astronomer Royal, and Co-founder, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and whose section on chemical warfare was reviewed by Angela Kane, Senior Fellow at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, visiting Professor at Sciences Po Paris, and former High Representative for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations. 10-31-2018. "Experts reveal the nine most likely ways the world will end." Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/how-will-world-end-experts-reveal-9-most-likely-ways-humans-will-be-wiped-out-1194616. Rez. Humanity being annihilated by chemical weapons or the molten lava of a supervolcano may sound like the plots of Hollywood disaster movies, but they are in fact among the very real ways mankind could be wiped out according to research. The Global Challenges Foundation—an organization which aims to reduce the global issues which we all face—highlighted the most probable scenarios to finish off the human race in its annual Global Catastrophic Risks report. To compile the document, researchers assessed scientific papers and consulted academics. Martin Rees, the U.K.’s Astronomer Royal, and co-founder of the Cambridge Center for the Study of Existential Risk, warned in the report that while most of us are worried about familiar risks like air crashes "we’re in denial about some emergent threats—the potential downsides of fast-developing new technologies and the risk of crossing environmental 'tipping points.' "These may seem improbable, but in our interconnected world, their consequences could cascade globally, causing such devastation that even one such incident would be too many," said Rees. The likelihood that nuclear war could break out is higher than it was a decade ago, the experts warned. In the wake of the Hiroshima bombing which killed up to 150,000 people in the immediate aftermath, "the world has lived in the shadow of a war unlike any other in history," they said. Weapons with the highest yield have the power to obliterate 80 to 90 percent of lifeforms, including humans, in a 1-4 kilometer radius. With around 7,000 warheads each, the U.S and Russia have the biggest arsenals, with the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel confirmed or believed to possess some form of nuclear device. A nuclear war could not only wipe out lives and cities, and leave behind the threat of radioactive disease, but the resulting fallout could trigger a mini ice-age. Biological and chemical warfare GettyImages-672115 A member of the German Chemical Corps, a part of the German military that specializes in anti-nuclear, chemical and biological weapons operations, holds up a rapid tester whose two red lines indicate a positive result for chemical contamination during a demonstration at battalion headquarters November 19, 2001 in Sonthofen, Germany. The Global Challenges Foundations highlighted chemical warfare as a potential threat to human existence. SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES Compared with other traditional means of attack, biological and chemical weapons are relatively cheap to make. And technological advances in genetic engineering and synthetic biology make it easier than ever to alter micro-organisms in potentially dangerous ways. If these tiny living things were ever to be released out of a controlled laboratory, by mistake or nefariously, it could "cause a pandemic of unprecedented proportions," the report stated. Plan – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to delay patent enforcement for cannabis. Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Includes enforcement and duration A simple solution to the problem is this: if a nation, or jurisdiction, provides for some new use of cannabis, be it medicinal, recreational, or scientific, the legislation or decision doing so should be accompanied by a law stating that patents may not be enforced as they relate to the subject matter legalized (cannabis strains, methods for ingesting/using, etc.) for some determinate amount of time, after which, patents may be acquired.105 This, at first glance, may seem to some patent attorneys to be a drastic solution as opposed to, for example, compulsory licensing106 or some other means that does not abscond with the rights demanded by international agreements. In support of my proposal, I will first explain why banning enforcement for a certain period yet keeping patent acquisition is desired, rather than banning patent acquisition altogether, as a means of highlighting the benefits that will accrue from the proposed change. Second, I will argue that imposing patent enforcement during the beginning stages of a jurisdiction’s cannabis market development is difficult to justify, as the incentives that patent enforcement are supposed to bring about already exist in great strength, leaving little for the patent sacrifice to provide. Footnote 105: There are many aspects of this solution that this note will not address. One of those aspects is the exact duration. All that is addressed is that duration should be less than the full term of a patent for reasons advanced herein. Further, it is assumed that the exact suitable duration is better adjusted to the economic capabilities of the relevant jurisdiction than uniformly imposed. Another aspect is how the solution should be implemented. This effect, of a patent being filed but not yet enforceable for a significant portion of its term of protection, is not uncommon in the pharmaceutical world where a drug may take ten to fifteen, even eighteen years to get approved, and is only enforceable for the remainder of the twenty years since it was filed, leaving possibly two years to do. Therefore, the solution proposed may occur on its own in some medicinal cannabis markets that have long drug patent examination periods, such as Thailand, specifically. That is why the solution proposed does not come with a specified form of implementation; the same goal may be achieved through controlling varying means and portions of the patent application process. The plan solves by reigning in monopolies without killing innovation. Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Patents may still be sought and possibly even acquired if the government so chooses. In this way, examiners will not introduce a new subject matter eligibility analysis changing the fundamental scheme of patentability. Rather, examiners will process the patent as normal, under conditions that actors within the patent system understand, reducing frustration with changing subject matter eligibility rules that are already ambiguous.107 Further, if the promulgating body determines that the window invalidating patent enforcement should be shorter than the patent term would last, there is a benefit for all actors involved. The reasoning supporting a patent enforcement ban rather than a patent acquisition ban rests on five principles. First, the entity filing the patent will still receive monopoly protection for its invention, albeit with a shorter window than usual. Thus, the incentive to file a patent and disclose the invention to the public still exists, and in a lucrative market such as that for cannabis, a smaller window of monopoly can be compensated by the higher value of that window, which could bring the perceived benefit from a patent back to usual levels.108 Second, if the invention is conceived during the enforcement ban, patent acquisition would allow inventions to be processed just as patents. By allowing patent processing before and after the ban, the legal regime will reduce administrative costs and increase legal certainty.109 By comparison, a system where patent acquisition is prohibited until after the ban would only result in a complex scheme whereby prior use, prior art, and other novelty requirements are handled. Third, if actors are utilizing technology under such currently unenforceable but soon-to-be enforceable patents, they will have clear notice when they must cease such infringing action, and either close their doors or develop a compliant way of doing business. Thus, actors in the market can establish themselves and then innovate their own means of carrying out business or license it from those who do. This is the exact action patents are meant to incentivize, innovating new solutions to problems, even if the problem here is merely a legal one.110 Fourth, after the cannabis market sustains established actors, the cannabis market may find that the benefits of promoting more actors in the market111—the purpose of barring patent enforcement—are once again outweighed by the value of the incentives that the patent system provides.112 Setting a time period for when patent enforcement will return ensures that the market is not devoid of the incentives once the initial "green rush"113 wears off. Fifth, this solution bans foreign monopolies, not foreign participation. This solution does not inhibit foreign companies from moving their business to local markets if the legal regime allows.114 With the ability to move their intellectual property portfolio, foreign companies can still acquire a trademark and operate their business plan, benefitting from the experience acquired in the prior years of operation. Foreign participants, just like domestic participants, cannot monopolize their innovations, and are thus placed on an equal footing. FW Moral realism must start by being mind-independent – realism wouldn’t make sense if there were a plethora of moral truths contingent on the agent’s cognitively predisposed capacity because then moral truths wouldn’t exist outside of the ways we cohere them. Thus, moral naturalism is true. Evolution – only a naturalistic understanding of the world explains it. Lutz and Lenman 18. Lutz, Matthew and Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/naturalism-moral/.Massa The second argument against moral non-naturalism concerns moral epistemology. According to evolutionary debunking arguments, our moral beliefs are products of evolution, and this evolutionary etiology of our moral beliefs serves to undermine them. Exactly why evolution debunks our moral beliefs is a matter of substantial controversy, and the debunking argument has been interpreted in a number of different ways (Vavova 2015). Sharon Street, whose statement of the evolutionary debunking argument has been highly influential, holds that debunking arguments make a problem for all versions of moral realism—her paper is entitled "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value." But according to another popular line of argument, these debunking arguments are only problems for moral non-naturalism. The fundamental worry is that our moral beliefs are the product of evolutionary facts rather than moral facts. If this is so, this would serve to debunk our moral beliefs, either because it is a necessary condition on justified belief that you take your beliefs to be explained by the facts in question (Joyce 2006, Ch. 6; Bedke 2009; Lutz forthcoming) or else because the non-naturalist is left with no way to explain the reliability of our moral beliefs (Enoch 2009, Schechter 2017). But if moral naturalism is true, the realist needn’t grant the skeptic’s premise that our moral beliefs are the product of evolutionary facts rather than moral facts. If moral facts are natural, then we needn’t see moral facts as being contrary to natural, evolutionary facts. The moral facts might be among these evolutionary facts that explain our moral beliefs. If, for instance, to be good just is to be conducive to social cooperation, then an evolutionary account that says that we judge things to be good only when they are conducive to social cooperation would not debunk any of our beliefs about goodness. This account would, instead, provide a deep vindication of those beliefs (Copp 2008). Naturalism demands empirical facts that are physically verified from science which only a theory of pain and pleasure can provide – robust neuroscience proves Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events, situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic rewards. Pleasure, as the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable ~10~. Pleasure is a passive reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends. However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure ~14~. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction, homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in their pursuit. ~15~. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers ~16~ which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons ~17–19~ despite the notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO Charles Darwin and other biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and its basic principles found various mechanisms that steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us "what we are," i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness; yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact, Richard Dawkins stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life ~20~. Only genes that lead to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate, distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward functions have evolved to help individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any small edge will ultimately result in evolutionary advantage ~21~, additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment. Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence, under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine ~22~. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the "Brain Reward Cascade" (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms may play a role ~23~. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these systems promoting hypodopaminergia ~24~. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce healthy behavioral changes, including stress management ~25~. The work of Esch and Stefano ~26~ concerning the link between compassion and love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion, can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades ~26–37~, but comparative anatomical and neurobiological function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends ~38~. However, it is not entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear ~39~. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of pleasure ~40~. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called "REWARD" involves a well-known dopamine pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum (VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the "Feel Good" response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined the term "Reward Deficiency Syndrome" (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the "Brain Reward Cascade" that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors ~3,6,41~. Furthermore, ordinary "liking" of something, or pure pleasure, is represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for "sweet"; and in Greek, hodone is the term for "pleasure." Thus, the word Hedonic is now referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to optimism as a dopaminergic response ~42~. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions like panic and fear, as discussed above ~43~. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: "liking," "learning," and "wanting" ~3~. That is, dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli ~44~. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or "wanting" hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards ~45~. Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic "high" that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy, disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation ~46~. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease ~47~. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions ~48~. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. ~48~ suggested based on review that whereas the gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between "stages," and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially "pleasure" has led to confusion concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) ~49~. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence for our concerns was discovered ~50~ In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. ~50~ small case found various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from Yale, stated: "Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees." This may explain why the behavior of humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: "It might also shed light on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction)." Remarkably, this research finding emerged from an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247 specimens of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This may explain what often motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit ~51~. In similar work, Volkow and Bale ~52~ proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS. Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism. Prefer – 1~ Actor specificity – A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action. B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen. 2~ No act-omission distinction – A~ Psychology – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission. B~ Actor specificity – governments are culpable for omissions cuz their purpose is to protect the constituency – otherwise they would have no obligation to make murder illegal. Only util can escape culpability in the instance of tradeoffs – i.e. it resolves the trolley problem cuz a deontological theory would hold you responsible for killing regardless. Actor spec o/w – different agents have different ethical standings that affect their obligations and considerations. Method We should use debate to hash out what alternative foreign policies look like. Scenario planning is more effective than pure resistance AND there is a unique opening for ideas to take hold—-our method provides necessary preparation. Loren Dejonge Schulman 18, Deputy Director of Studies and Leon E. Panetta Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security., 12-4-2018, "Policy Roundtable: The Future of Progressive Foreign Policy – Texas National Security Review," Texas National Security Review, https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-the-future-of-progressive-foreign-policy/~~#'ftn75 In his essay on what a progressive national security agenda should look like, Van Jackson proposes to stretch the common progressive position of anti-militarism to a more realist platform of military "sufficiency." In doing so, he brings attention to a serious gap in current defense politics. The stilted and superficial dialogue that passes for national security debate in American politics includes an active constituency for a "military first" (or military friendly) foreign policy, reflexively applying military tools to problems abroad and inflating defense spending. There is also a weaker constituency, most present outside government, for a "military last" or "anti-militarist" policy, which would cut defense spending and end wars with similar reflexivity. Outside the apolitical "blob" of Washington, there is little interest in publicly debating the prudence or effectiveness of these agendas. The left, regardless of its broader "theory of security," could fill some of this vacuum — and it is better situated to do so than conventional wisdom might suggest.70 Democrats Drowning at the Water’s Edge For the last two decades, there has been little political opportunity to question America’s role in the world. With some exception, relevant defense and security policies have been open to even less scrutiny. Questions about the ethical or effective application of force, the size of the defense budget, the success of a given military strategy, the utility of specific weapons platforms, and the return on investment from security cooperation are, at best, diversions. Anyone who attempts to challenge the status quo risks being greeted with political attacks about lacking patriotism or not supporting American troops.71 But at a time of frequent missteps abroad on the part of the Trump administration, the space to question America’s foreign policy traditions may be widening. The inability to pose legitimate questions about security policy is a particular flavor of political correctness, and because of it, the Democratic Party has all but disappeared in defense policy and politics.72 The last two years have seen more than a dozen pieces on the left’s lack of branded national security ideas.73 Michael Walzer has attributed this gap to an intentional abstention: The default position of the left is that "the best foreign policy is a good domestic policy."74 Jackson highlights modest resourcing and under-representation as justifications for the left’s notable lack of a "theory of security" and the general subsuming of the debate under a big-tent "third way" liberalism. Traditional Democrats in the national security community (including me) have bristled at these criticisms, but would be hard-pressed to offer a distinctive and coherent political viewpoint. Some see the Democratic Party’s lack of a defined national security policy as something to celebrate. Declaring that politics "stops at the water’s edge" of national security is a winning Bingo option at any think tank event. But this dictum stifles debate about the national interest and the proper application of national resources. Consequently, there are moral and political questions on defense and interventions abroad that have no meaningful forum. This gap is particularly felt on Capitol Hill, where in the past security-minded Democrats have found political safe-harbor in a Republican-lite national security agenda — essentially blank-check support for Republicans on defense with, at most, a raised eyebrow from time to time. These policy positions require little analytical effort or political capital, and let Democrats occasionally posture as morally superior by emphasizing "non-military tools" of foreign policy. The opposite alternative of a more rigid pacifism and anti-militarism, though common in the grassroots progressive community, has no consistently organized political presence on the Hill and thus also escapes thorough interrogation.75 For those outside the Beltway, opposition to all things military offers the refuge of principle without critical justification or analysis. For many Democrats, the Obama model was a strangely tolerable middle ground: a bipartisan budget mess made while a "responsible" president ramped up security interventions in enough secrecy to avoid nagging scrutiny or self-examination. Re-Politicizing Defense Despite the valiant efforts of some individuals, there is no political home for responsible defense debate, oversight, and accountability.76 Yet, with determination, the left might find a real foothold in defense policy — without compromising progressive values. To be clear: There is substantial work to be done on figuring out what cohesive view of America’s role in the world the left can tolerate and advance. There is even greater work to be done on determining how to renew, reuse, and reform international institutions.77 But any such agendas would be well served by embracing a set of principles that make clear-eyed debate and evaluation of defense policy and execution an asset, not an unforgiveable sin. Critical analysis of defense affairs is too often left to the technocratic and comparatively powerless "blob," which can write a mean op-ed or tweet, but has limited ability to engage the American people on its will and interests. And although Congress has willfully declawed itself so that it cannot maintain meaningful oversight of national security,78 its ability to stage and amplify policy debate for the American people is without parallel, and it has tremendous latent potential to restore greater balance in civil-military relations. Congress’s absence and the associated de-politicization of national security affairs is costly. For instance, the American public is deeply ambivalent about the 17-year conflict in Afghanistan and generally ignorant of the widespread activities of the war on terror.79 This is unsurprising: Congress, too, is disaffected, often ignorant of where the U.S. military is even engaged,80 and has made little headway into questioning or shaping this intervention. The most substantive and serious debate about executive war authorities and the effectiveness of U.S. counterterrorism strategy has resulted in little more than a reauthorization proposal that still failed to move forward.81 Too many examples of political leaders’ stand-off or superficial approach to defense policy and execution abound. Military superiority is generally viewed as sacrosanct, placed on "so high a pedestal as to render real debate meaningless."82 That reverence infantilizes defense budget debates. Thanking troops for their service is a politicized ritual that divorces politicians and their constituents from the intent and costs of that service. With decisions on the needs of the U.S. military and sustaining legacy systems openly linked to the economies of congressional districts, it’s understandable that skeptics of utilizing military tools have been unwilling to evaluate their merits. These must all change. While, at its worst, the political right treats the use of force abroad as a metric of patriotism and the size of the force as the measure of one’s love of America, the political left ought to draw from its skepticism toward intervention and its faith in institutions to advance a more rational and accountable approach to national security. For years, Robert Farley has highlighted that "progressives consistently underestimate the importance of discussions about military doctrine and technology,"83 taking what Michael Walzer calls "shortcuts"84 in their critiques of defense policy that relieve them from contributing to key debates. Instead of excusing themselves, the left should instead propose legitimate questions about major shifts in force employment and development: Will it work? What are its goals? What is the U.S. national security apparatus learning? Why didn’t it work? Were U.S. objectives wrong? What did America change when it didn’t work? Will America do it again? What could be improved? What should America do now? Joining the Conversation Jackson’s notion of what a progressive "wager" on national security might look like in practice is useful, filling the gap between the "Republican-lite" default and the stubbornness of anti-militarism. But the left’s diversity of thought can accommodate a wider playing field of potential alternative approaches to security than even he proposes. A true pacifist movement on the Hill and on the campaign trail, dedicated to the advancement of non-military approaches but premised on analysis and logical arguments, would be a serious advancement in national security and should be welcomed by the most ardent military advocates. Likewise, a more prudent middle ground approach — one that is skeptical of, but open to, military might and intervention and demands a better return on investment of national security tools — should play a more prominent political role. The full range of the left’s national security spectrum should forcefully engage in oversight of the rationale for and quality of American forces and interventions abroad. The left should therefore consider adopting a series of principles on defense matters — including criteria for the use of force — that apply to the military-friendly and anti-militarist left alike. In practice, this means acknowledging that there are valid political positions on matters of defense that lie somewhere in between "yes, and" and "no never" and that trivializing them is harmful to America’s national security. There are alternatives to today’s counterterror strategy and it would not be an insult to the military to debate them. It’s entirely legitimate to study whether the military is equipped to face today’s threats without being accused of retreating from the world or starting with an artificial budget cut. It’s sensible to consider whether the planned growth of ground forces, a 350-ship Navy, or a 386-squadron Air Force are the right investments or political benchmarks.85 These questions involve choices and values and should not be avoided under the umbrella of a supposed technocratic bipartisan agreement. Just as important, it’s essential that the left avoid becoming a caricature of itself that promotes simplistic and superficial positions that set rigid, unserious standards. The left may not agree on the size or purpose of the military, but it can agree America should strive for informed oversight and accountability. The bumper sticker of such principles is simple: Ask informed questions,86 illuminate and demand accountability for failures, encourage fresh thinking, and bring the American people into the discussion without fear. That this is so simple is an embarrassment to the present state of the "debate." In detail, these principles should include: Building the right force driven by security interests, not an inherently smaller force driven by an allergy to size. Arguing that the U.S. military is too large without clarifying what it should be expected to do and how is, at best, a lazy and an ill-informed reaction to sticker shock. There are valid questions — and a range of plausible answers — about the appropriate mission and scope of America’s forces, and a worthwhile dialogue to be had on where risks in force structure should reside. Exploring fully how threat assessments impact military roles, missions, and investments. A rigid antipathy to conflict and intervention, or to the military itself, leaves the left out of conversations that determine how and where America spends its blood and treasure, and precludes the defense establishment from tackling questions important to the left (e.g., what does a world of accelerating climate change require of the U.S. military?). The left’s absence from attempts to set the analytic agenda for defense policy is dangerous. Engaging in more practical conversations about how military capabilities might be used, where, and why. Military platforms carry within them assumptions about the nature of U.S. strategy and interests that are poorly articulated in today’s defense authorizing environment. Most detailed political debate today emphasizes the cost of military platforms, or their associated acquisition processes, or, for legacy systems, the industrial base. As Robert Farley noted in 2011, "Analysts, institutions, and politicians tend to respond to the arguments they see, rather than those that they don’t."87 Recruiting, retaining, and promoting the military and civilian skill sets and imagination necessary for today’s and tomorrow’s security challenges. The mish-mash of human capital and talent management processes of today’s Department of Defense, paired with a legacy focus on capacity, the booming costs of military personnel, a growing civil-military divide, and a growing gap in the military’s high-technical skills, spell a looming disaster for future military manpower. The left must treat this as a strategic priority rather than a mere bureaucratic matter. Increasing transparency to the public on the manner, costs, risks, intent, and success or failure of military interventions. As I wrote with Alice Friend, the current approach of military secrecy and unwillingness to pursue an "airing of grievances" about past strategic and operational failure "assumes that domestic support for U.S. military engagements can be sustained in an information vacuum. It draws on a reservoir of public faith in the military while also limiting the public’s ability to make an informed decision. This is a losing gamble."88 The left should reset this dynamic. Deliberately connecting debates on America’s capabilities and political investments in preventing and resolving conflicts to the more mature debates on how to prepare to fight the nation’s wars. Diplomacy, development, economics, and intelligence demand modernization just as military forces do, and they need to be far better at measuring and communicating their value. The left should push the political dialogue on these matters beyond mere talking-points. Ensuring that any military action America does engage in has clear goals, is limited in scope, is sustainable for the duration, and is assessed in terms of fully-burdened costs to the military, the broader national security community (intelligence analysts, diplomats, aid workers, contractors, and more), U.S. allies, and local populations. Exploring these matters is not pedantic or risky in the face of threats. It is the only responsible option, and the left should force these discussions. Sustaining engaged and thoughtful interest, oversight, and civil skepticism of all military and non-military intervention activities abroad. The beginning of an intervention should not be the high point of political energy. It is shameful that the progress of the war in Afghanistan, the viability of the U.S. counterterrorism strategy, the occasional airstrikes in Syria, and much more escape serious oversight. Advancing civil-military relations with respectful skepticism of military employment; unconditional support for service members, families, and veterans; and resolve to right wrongs of past failures. The left — in all its forms — should embrace the necessity of active participation and serious debate beyond the water’s edge. That’s how to make national security more democratic, transparent, and therefore accountable. What could be more progressive than that?
9/6/21
SO - AC - Euphoric TRIPS v4
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: Octas | Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Nathan Russell, David Dosch, Lena Mizrahi
1AC
Advantage – Cannabis
The current WTO patent system is locking in global cannabis monopolies.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM B. How the Patent Has Become a Tool for Globalization The trade-
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, the inventor could create an economic climate close to a global monopoly.
Thailand proves – the world is trending towards legalization but big pharma patents lock in cannabis monopolies and crowd out local growth.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM The reason the Thai public was so concerned over the cannabis patents filed by Otsuka
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, as a resolution to the Canadian recusal from the UN Single Convention.
Big pharma leverages cannabis patents to block out competition and secure monopoly – decks medical marijuana access
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM B. Cannabis Patents and Pharmaceutical Companies Patent protection is a key component of
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of wealthy, powerful entities to ensure smaller entities are not marginalized.219
Monopolies kill cannabis biodiversity which throttles medical marijuana advances and industry innovation.
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM A. Biodiversity Implications for Cannabis Strain Patents Biodiversity, or biological diversity,
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effects on that country's biodiversity and its rights to that biodiversity.2 50
Monopolies kill market growth and disincentivize innovation.
over the long-term as well as ongoing innovation and product accessibility.
Medical marijuana is key to resolving opioid pain reliever prescriptions – biggest internal link to addiction and overuse
Blake 20 ~Dwight K Blake, Founder of American Marijuana, 15 years of experience in mental health counseling and addiction treatment.~ "Medical marijuana reduces opioid prescribing rate," American Marijuana, March 24, 2020, https://americanmarijuana.org/medical-marijuana-solution-to-opioid-epidemic/ ~note: charts/images omitted~ TG Medical Marijuana as A Painkiller Marijuana contains many Cannabinoids including CBD or Cannabidiol and
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have shown an average reduction rate of opioid consumption by 5.21.
The opioid crisis risks massively destructive terrorism – synthetic opioids can be weaponized and spread
Morell 17 (Michael Morell, the former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is one of our nation's leading national security professionals, with extensive experience in intelligence and foreign policy. During his 33-year career at CIA, Michael served as Deputy Director for over three years, served twice as Acting Director, served for two years as the Director of Intelligence, the Agency's top analyst, and for two years as Executive Director, the CIA's top administrator.)("The Opioid Crisis Becomes a National Security Threat", July 26, 2017, https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column'article/opioid-crisis-becomes-national-security-threat) On October 23, 2002, dozens of armed Chechen terrorists seized a Moscow theater
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– particularly when it is so easy to see what might be coming.
Developments and attacks are coming now – spurs inter-state wars AND non-state actors which ensure escalation – taboo eroded, empirics prove, tech and motive are here
Henry de Quetteville et al 18. Special Correspondent @Telegraph, Technology. Former foreign correspondent in France, the Balkans and the Middle East., citing James Giordano, professor of neurology, chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program, and co-director of the O’Neill-Pellegrino Program in Brain Science and Global Health Law and Policy at Georgetown University Medical Center. He is an member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s panel on neuroethics, legal, and social issues, and serves as a senior science advisory fellow to the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. His latest book is Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense: Practical Considerations, Neuroethical Concerns (CRC Press), citing Gavin Williamson, UK Secretary of Defense, citing Aimen Dean, also known as Ramzi is a Bahrainian man who was a founding member of al-Qaeda. In 1998, he joined the Secret Intelligence Service and became an MI6 spy, citing Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert and chief operating officer of SecureBio Limited. He was formerly a British Army officer for 23 years and commanding officer of the UK's CBRN Regiment and NATO's Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, August 3, 2018, "The rise of biological and chemical weapons After Salisbury, how ready is the UK?", https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rise-of-biological-chemical-weapons/. Rez With nerve agents having been deployed in Syria, Malaysia and Salisbury, the 100
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total? $26.2 billion per 100,000 persons exposed.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
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two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Chemical WMDs cause extinction – one incident is enough
Gander 18, Kashmira. Citing the Global Catastrophic Risks Foundation’s Global Challenges Annual Report, edited by Martin Rees, UK Astronomer Royal, and Co-founder, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and whose section on chemical warfare was reviewed by Angela Kane, Senior Fellow at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, visiting Professor at Sciences Po Paris, and former High Representative for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations. 10-31-2018. "Experts reveal the nine most likely ways the world will end." Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/how-will-world-end-experts-reveal-9-most-likely-ways-humans-will-be-wiped-out-1194616. Rez. Humanity being annihilated by chemical weapons or the molten lava of a supervolcano may sound
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it could "cause a pandemic of unprecedented proportions," the report stated.
Plan – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to delay patent enforcement for cannabis.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Includes enforcement and duration A simple solution to the problem is this: if
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be achieved through controlling varying means and portions of the patent application process.
Counter solvency advocate: medical marijuana is dangerous therefore innovation is bad
The plan solves by reigning in monopolies without killing innovation.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Patents may still be sought and possibly even acquired if the government so chooses.
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cannot monopolize their innovations, and are thus placed on an equal footing.
Framing
Synthetic a posteriori moral naturalism is the basis of ethics:
A~ The normative supervenes on the natural – natural facts like whether brains develop to permit rationality or subjectivity determine whether non naturalist moral facts can be premised on things like capacity for reason
Lutz and Lenman 18. Lutz, Matthew and Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/naturalism-moral/.Massa The first argument against normative non-naturalism concerns normative supervenience. The normative supervenes
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, this is a heavy mark against non-naturalism (McPherson 2012).
B~ The problem of disagreement –
resolving a priori conflicts requires indicting the epistemological basis of one’s judgement with a reliable process for deriving moral truths which is impossible given widespread moral disagreement about non verifiable a priori truth – grounding ethics with verifiable natural facts solve
Copp 7, D. Why Naturalism? Morality in a Natural World, 33–54. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511497940.003 Massa Suppose, for example, that I witness a bullfight and observe that many thousands
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disagreement would not undermine the credibility of the proposition to an ideal thinker.
Next, phenomenal introspection can bridge the gap from experiential natural facts to moral truths and necessitates hedonism. When I observe a lemon’s yellowness shifting my visual fields from darker to lighter shades, I can introspect on that experience and identify brightness as an intrinsic property of seeing a lemon. Similarly, when I feel pleasure, I can introspect on the shift in hedonic tones and identify that goodness is an intrinsic property of the pleasure that was increased.
This connection between pain and pleasure and phenomenal conceptions of intrinsic value and disvalue is irrefutable – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
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these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism. Prefer –
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction for governments – deliberating over an action requires analysis of foreseen consequences which could be prevented which makes them intrinsic to state action
C~ Governments aren’t singular rational agents which makes theories about individuals irrelevant – only consequentialism solves by analyzing ends divorced from an actor
ows
2~ No act-omission distinction – governments are culpable for omissions cuz their purpose is to protect the constituency – otherwise they would have no obligation to make murder illegal. Actor spec o/w – different agents have different ethical standings that affect their obligations and considerations.
9/6/21
SO - AC - Euphoric TRIPS v5
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: Quarters | Opponent: San Mateo YR | Judge: Tom, Neville Pittman, Phoenix Dosch, David
1AC
Advantage
The current WTO patent system is locking in global cannabis monopolies.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM B. How the Patent Has Become a Tool for Globalization The trade-
AND
, the inventor could create an economic climate close to a global monopoly.
Thailand proves – the world is trending towards legalization but big pharma patents lock in cannabis monopolies and crowd out local growth.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM The reason the Thai public was so concerned over the cannabis patents filed by Otsuka
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, as a resolution to the Canadian recusal from the UN Single Convention.
Big pharma leverages cannabis patents to block out competition and secure monopoly – decks medical marijuana access
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM B. Cannabis Patents and Pharmaceutical Companies Patent protection is a key component of
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of wealthy, powerful entities to ensure smaller entities are not marginalized.219
Monopolies kill cannabis biodiversity which throttles medical marijuana advances and industry innovation.
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM A. Biodiversity Implications for Cannabis Strain Patents Biodiversity, or biological diversity,
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effects on that country's biodiversity and its rights to that biodiversity.2 50
Only growth of legalized cannabis markets decks illegal imports and cartel revenues
Bier 18 David J. (David J. Bier is a research fellow with a focus on immigration at the Cato Institute. He is an expert on legal immigration, border security, and interior enforcement.', 12-19-2018, "How Legalizing Marijuana Is Securing the Border: The Border Wall, Drug Smuggling, and Lessons for Immigration Policy," Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/how-legalizing-marijuana-securing-border-border-wall-drug-smuggling-lessons mvp Legalized markets directly affect the illegal markets for marijuana. Not only is it easier
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Patrol agents or a wall to interdict drug smuggling between ports of entry.
Cartels are driven by cash flows from illegal drug markets – tackling demand-side is key
Mexican cartels and the violence they instigate raises international peace and security concerns.
Latin American instability goes nuclear
Krepinevich and Lindsey 13 ~Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. is the President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which he joined following a 21- year career in the U.S. Army. He has served in the Department of Defense, on the personal staff of three secretaries of defense, the National Defense Panel, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Joint Experimentation, and the Defense Policy Board. He is the author of 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century and The Army and Vietnam. A West Point graduate, he holds an M.P.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University—AND—Eric Lindsey is an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). His primary areas of interest concern U.S. and world military forces, both current and prospective, and the future strategic and operational challenges that the U.S. military may face. Since joining CSBA in 2009, Eric has contributed to a number of CSBA monographs. He most recently co-authored The Road Ahead, an analytical monograph exploring potential future challenges and their implications for U.S. Army and Marine Corps modernization. In conjunction with his research and writing, Eric has helped design and conduct dozens of strategic and operational-level wargames exploring a wide variety of future scenarios. He holds a B.A. in military history and public policy from Duke University and is pursuing an M.A. in strategic studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). "Hemispheric Defense in the 21ST Century, 2013~ As the previous chapter demonstrates, for the past two hundred years the principal cause
AND
Russia may be interested in cultivating and supporting Latin American proxies as well.
Independently turns every scenario – Mexico collapse triggers international retrenchment and great power war with China and Russia
Dr. R. Evan Ellis 12/9/16, a research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region, Ph.D. in political science with a specialization in comparative politics"Strategic Insights: Thinking Strategically About Latin America and the Caribbean", Strategic Studies Institute, http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/index.cfm/articles/Thinking-Strategically-About-Latin-America-Caribbean/2016/12/09 As noted previously, there is arguably no region (including Asia) upon which
AND
U.S. adversaries in Latin America permitted them to do so.
Cannabis innovation is key to sustainable water use and efficiency
or compost tea – but also record the amounts applied to the crop.
Water scarcity causes Russia-China nuclear war
Michael T. Klare 20, professor emeritus of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, DC, "How Rising Temperatures Increase the Likelihood of Nuclear War", Nation, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nuclear-defense-climate-change/ Severe water scarcity in northern China could prompt yet another move with nuclear implications:
AND
almost certainly prompt fierce Russian resistance and the possible use of nuclear weapons.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Plan – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to delay patent enforcement for cannabis.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Includes enforcement and duration A simple solution to the problem is this: if
AND
be achieved through controlling varying means and portions of the patent application process.
The plan solves by reigning in monopolies without killing innovation.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Patents may still be sought and possibly even acquired if the government so chooses.
AND
cannot monopolize their innovations, and are thus placed on an equal footing.
FW
Moral realism must start by being mind-independent – realism wouldn’t make sense if there were a plethora of moral truths contingent on the agent’s cognitively predisposed capacity because then moral truths wouldn’t exist outside of the ways we cohere them. Thus, moral naturalism is true.
Evolution – only a naturalistic understanding of the world explains it.
Lutz and Lenman 18. Lutz, Matthew and Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/naturalism-moral/.Massa The second argument against moral non-naturalism concerns moral epistemology. According to evolutionary
AND
, instead, provide a deep vindication of those beliefs (Copp 2008).
Pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience proves
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
2~ No act-omission distinction –
A~ Psychology – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission.
B~ Actor specificity – governments are culpable for omissions cuz their purpose is to protect the constituency – otherwise they would have no obligation to make murder illegal. Only util can escape culpability in the instance of tradeoffs – i.e. it resolves the trolley problem cuz a deontological theory would hold you responsible for killing regardless. Actor spec o/w – different agents have different ethical standings that affect their obligations and considerations.
1/30/22
SO - AC - Euphoric TRIPS v6
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: Semis | Opponent: Diamond Bar NC | Judge: David Dosch, Danielle Dosch, Gordon Krauss
1AC
Advantage
The current WTO patent system is locking in global cannabis monopolies.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM B. How the Patent Has Become a Tool for Globalization The trade-
AND
, the inventor could create an economic climate close to a global monopoly.
Thailand proves – the world is trending towards legalization but big pharma patents lock in cannabis monopolies and crowd out local growth.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM The reason the Thai public was so concerned over the cannabis patents filed by Otsuka
AND
, as a resolution to the Canadian recusal from the UN Single Convention.
Big pharma leverages cannabis patents to block out competition and secure monopoly – decks medical marijuana access
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM B. Cannabis Patents and Pharmaceutical Companies Patent protection is a key component of
AND
of wealthy, powerful entities to ensure smaller entities are not marginalized.219
Monopolies kill cannabis biodiversity which throttles medical marijuana advances and industry innovation.
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM A. Biodiversity Implications for Cannabis Strain Patents Biodiversity, or biological diversity,
AND
effects on that country's biodiversity and its rights to that biodiversity.2 50
Only growth of legalized cannabis markets decks illegal imports and cartel revenues
Bier 18 David J. (David J. Bier is a research fellow with a focus on immigration at the Cato Institute. He is an expert on legal immigration, border security, and interior enforcement.', 12-19-2018, "How Legalizing Marijuana Is Securing the Border: The Border Wall, Drug Smuggling, and Lessons for Immigration Policy," Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/how-legalizing-marijuana-securing-border-border-wall-drug-smuggling-lessons mvp Legalized markets directly affect the illegal markets for marijuana. Not only is it easier
AND
Patrol agents or a wall to interdict drug smuggling between ports of entry.
Cartels are driven by cash flows from illegal drug markets – tackling demand-side is key
Mexican cartels and the violence they instigate raises international peace and security concerns.
Latin American instability goes nuclear
Krepinevich and Lindsey 13 ~Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. is the President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which he joined following a 21- year career in the U.S. Army. He has served in the Department of Defense, on the personal staff of three secretaries of defense, the National Defense Panel, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Joint Experimentation, and the Defense Policy Board. He is the author of 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century and The Army and Vietnam. A West Point graduate, he holds an M.P.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University—AND—Eric Lindsey is an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). His primary areas of interest concern U.S. and world military forces, both current and prospective, and the future strategic and operational challenges that the U.S. military may face. Since joining CSBA in 2009, Eric has contributed to a number of CSBA monographs. He most recently co-authored The Road Ahead, an analytical monograph exploring potential future challenges and their implications for U.S. Army and Marine Corps modernization. In conjunction with his research and writing, Eric has helped design and conduct dozens of strategic and operational-level wargames exploring a wide variety of future scenarios. He holds a B.A. in military history and public policy from Duke University and is pursuing an M.A. in strategic studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). "Hemispheric Defense in the 21ST Century, 2013~ As the previous chapter demonstrates, for the past two hundred years the principal cause
AND
Russia may be interested in cultivating and supporting Latin American proxies as well.
Independently turns every scenario –
Mexico collapse triggers international retrenchment and great power war with China and Russia
Dr. R. Evan Ellis 12/9/16, a research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region, Ph.D. in political science with a specialization in comparative politics"Strategic Insights: Thinking Strategically About Latin America and the Caribbean", Strategic Studies Institute, http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/index.cfm/articles/Thinking-Strategically-About-Latin-America-Caribbean/2016/12/09 As noted previously, there is arguably no region (including Asia) upon which
AND
U.S. adversaries in Latin America permitted them to do so.
Independently, cartels work with terrorists to get nuclear weapons into the United States that allows for nuke terror.
Richey 17 (Warren Richey, Staff writer, "Terror and the Mexican Border: How Big a Threat?", He covered the oil industry for the English-language Saudi Gazette in Jeddah and Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and federal courts and agencies for the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida. In more than 20 years at the Monitor, Warren has worked as a local, national, and foreign correspondent, 1/15/17, https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2017/0115/Terror-and-the-Mexico-border-How-big-a-threat)//KP+AKIM) Islamic militants purchase a nuclear device from a sympathetic official in Pakistan and ship the
AND
mass-casualty atrocities in Berlin, Brussels, Nice, and Paris.
Terrorists get and detonate nuclear weapons – they have means, motive, and opportunity – most recent and predictive evidence that takes into account technological advances
Bunn et al 19 – Matthew Bunn is a Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the faculty leader of the Project on Managing the Atom. Nickolas Roth is a Research Associate at the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. William H. Tobey is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. ("Revitalizing Nuclear Security in an Era of Uncertainty", Harvard Belfer Center for International Affairs, Jan 2019, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/matthew'bunn/files/bunn'revitalizing'nuclear'security'in'an'era'of'uncertainty'2019.pdf) The risk that terrorists could get and use a nuclear bomb—turning the heart
AND
this uncertain future, continuous and determined efforts to improve security remain essential.
Cannabis innovation is key to sustainable water use and efficiency
or compost tea – but also record the amounts applied to the crop.
Water scarcity causes Russia-China nuclear war
Michael T. Klare 20, professor emeritus of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, DC, "How Rising Temperatures Increase the Likelihood of Nuclear War", Nation, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nuclear-defense-climate-change/ Severe water scarcity in northern China could prompt yet another move with nuclear implications:
AND
almost certainly prompt fierce Russian resistance and the possible use of nuclear weapons.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Plan – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to delay patent enforcement for cannabis.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Includes enforcement and duration A simple solution to the problem is this: if
AND
be achieved through controlling varying means and portions of the patent application process.
The plan solves by reigning in monopolies without killing innovation.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Patents may still be sought and possibly even acquired if the government so chooses.
AND
cannot monopolize their innovations, and are thus placed on an equal footing.
FW
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable.
Moen 16 ~Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo "An Argument for Hedonism" Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281~ SJDI, brackets in original Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic
AND
places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
2~ No act-omission distinction –
A~ Psychology – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission.
The current WTO patent system is locking in global cannabis monopolies.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM B. How the Patent Has Become a Tool for Globalization The trade-
AND
, the inventor could create an economic climate close to a global monopoly.
Thailand proves – the world is trending towards legalization but big pharma patents lock in cannabis monopolies and crowd out local growth.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM The reason the Thai public was so concerned over the cannabis patents filed by Otsuka
AND
, as a resolution to the Canadian recusal from the UN Single Convention.
Big pharma leverages cannabis patents to block out competition and secure monopoly – decks medical marijuana access
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM B. Cannabis Patents and Pharmaceutical Companies Patent protection is a key component of
AND
of wealthy, powerful entities to ensure smaller entities are not marginalized.219
Monopolies kill cannabis biodiversity which throttles medical marijuana advances and industry innovation.
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM A. Biodiversity Implications for Cannabis Strain Patents Biodiversity, or biological diversity,
AND
effects on that country's biodiversity and its rights to that biodiversity.2 50
Only growth of legalized cannabis markets decks illegal imports and cartel revenues
Bier 18 David J. (David J. Bier is a research fellow with a focus on immigration at the Cato Institute. He is an expert on legal immigration, border security, and interior enforcement.', 12-19-2018, "How Legalizing Marijuana Is Securing the Border: The Border Wall, Drug Smuggling, and Lessons for Immigration Policy," Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/how-legalizing-marijuana-securing-border-border-wall-drug-smuggling-lessons mvp Legalized markets directly affect the illegal markets for marijuana. Not only is it easier
AND
Patrol agents or a wall to interdict drug smuggling between ports of entry.
Cartels are driven by cash flows from illegal drug markets – tackling demand-side is key
Mexican cartels and the violence they instigate raises international peace and security concerns.
Latin American instability goes nuclear
Krepinevich and Lindsey 13 ~Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. is the President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which he joined following a 21- year career in the U.S. Army. He has served in the Department of Defense, on the personal staff of three secretaries of defense, the National Defense Panel, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Joint Experimentation, and the Defense Policy Board. He is the author of 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century and The Army and Vietnam. A West Point graduate, he holds an M.P.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University—AND—Eric Lindsey is an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). His primary areas of interest concern U.S. and world military forces, both current and prospective, and the future strategic and operational challenges that the U.S. military may face. Since joining CSBA in 2009, Eric has contributed to a number of CSBA monographs. He most recently co-authored The Road Ahead, an analytical monograph exploring potential future challenges and their implications for U.S. Army and Marine Corps modernization. In conjunction with his research and writing, Eric has helped design and conduct dozens of strategic and operational-level wargames exploring a wide variety of future scenarios. He holds a B.A. in military history and public policy from Duke University and is pursuing an M.A. in strategic studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). "Hemispheric Defense in the 21ST Century, 2013~ As the previous chapter demonstrates, for the past two hundred years the principal cause
AND
Russia may be interested in cultivating and supporting Latin American proxies as well.
Independently turns every scenario –
Mexico collapse triggers international retrenchment and great power war with China and Russia
Dr. R. Evan Ellis 12/9/16, a research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region, Ph.D. in political science with a specialization in comparative politics"Strategic Insights: Thinking Strategically About Latin America and the Caribbean", Strategic Studies Institute, http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/index.cfm/articles/Thinking-Strategically-About-Latin-America-Caribbean/2016/12/09 As noted previously, there is arguably no region (including Asia) upon which
AND
U.S. adversaries in Latin America permitted them to do so.
Lack of cannabis biodiversity is vulnerable to wipeout which decks innovation, and wrecks ag nutrition and biodiversity writ large
Hunt 20 ~Dale, PhD Biology from UC San Diego, JD in Intellectual Property Law from UC Berkeley, Founder and Senior Attorney at Planet and Planet Law Firm, Founder and CEO at Breeder’s Best~ "Biodiversity in Commercial Cannabis: Why It Matters," Cannabis Business Times, August 7, 2020, https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/biodiversity-in-commercial-cannabis-why-it-matters/ ~brackets in original~ TG The limitation of a monoculture is that it’s a total commitment to one strategy.
AND
nutrients reduces insect herbivore performance" published in the journal Nature in 2016.
Biodiversity loss causes extinction – also multiplies threats of escalation
Torres 16 ~Phil Biologist, conservationist, science advocate and educator. 2 years based in Amazon rainforest, now exploring science around the world. "Biodiversity Loss: An Existential Risk Comparable to Climate Change" http://futureoflife.org/2016/05/20/biodiversity-loss/~~ According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the two greatest existential threats to human
AND
as one of the most significant contemporary risks to human prosperity and survival.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
AND
two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Plan – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to delay patent enforcement for cannabis.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Includes enforcement and duration A simple solution to the problem is this: if
AND
be achieved through controlling varying means and portions of the patent application process.
The plan solves by reigning in monopolies without killing innovation.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Patents may still be sought and possibly even acquired if the government so chooses.
AND
cannot monopolize their innovations, and are thus placed on an equal footing.
FW
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable.
Moen 16 ~Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo "An Argument for Hedonism" Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281~ SJDI, brackets in original Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic
AND
places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
2~ No act-omission distinction –
A~ Psychology – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission.
Method
We should use debate to hash out what alternative foreign policies look like. Scenario planning is more effective than pure resistance AND there is a unique opening for ideas to take hold—-our method provides necessary preparation.
Loren Dejonge Schulman 18, Deputy Director of Studies and Leon E. Panetta Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security., 12-4-2018, "Policy Roundtable: The Future of Progressive Foreign Policy – Texas National Security Review," Texas National Security Review, https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-the-future-of-progressive-foreign-policy/~~#'ftn75 In his essay on what a progressive national security agenda should look like, Van
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transparent, and therefore accountable. What could be more progressive than that?
1/30/22
SO - AC - Euphoric TRIPS v8
Tournament: Greenhill Fall Classic | Round: 6 | Opponent: Lexington BF | Judge: Sam Anderson
1AC
Advantage
The current WTO patent system is locking in global cannabis monopolies.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM B. How the Patent Has Become a Tool for Globalization The trade-
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, the inventor could create an economic climate close to a global monopoly.
Thailand proves – the world is trending towards legalization but big pharma patents lock in cannabis monopolies and crowd out local growth.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM The reason the Thai public was so concerned over the cannabis patents filed by Otsuka
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, as a resolution to the Canadian recusal from the UN Single Convention.
Big pharma leverages cannabis patents to block out competition and secure monopoly – decks medical marijuana access
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM B. Cannabis Patents and Pharmaceutical Companies Patent protection is a key component of
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of wealthy, powerful entities to ensure smaller entities are not marginalized.219
Monopolies kill cannabis biodiversity which throttles medical marijuana advances and industry innovation.
Barnett 20 Hailey A. Barnett ~J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2017, Communication, cum laude, Texas AandM University.~, "High Risk, High Reward: Patent Law's Effects on the Medical Marijuana Industry," Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 22 (2020): 125-164 https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tuljtip22anddiv=8andid=andpage= SM A. Biodiversity Implications for Cannabis Strain Patents Biodiversity, or biological diversity,
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effects on that country's biodiversity and its rights to that biodiversity.2 50
Monopolies kill market growth and disincentivize innovation.
over the long-term as well as ongoing innovation and product accessibility.
Cannabis industry drives African econ recovery.
Kafeero 7/2 "Business is starting to trump morality in Africa’s cannabis industry" Stephen Kafeero is a Ugandan investigative journalist, He has practiced since 2010 contributing to different publications. He is an Open Society Foundation fellow for Investigative Journalism at University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and is a candidate for an MA in Journalism and Media Studies. July 2, 2021 https://qz.com/africa/2028012/africas-cannabis-industry-is-set-to-boom-due-to-legalization/ SM The prospect of legalized cannabis in Africa, unimaginable less than a decade ago,
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, Nigeria, Morocco, Malawi, Ghana, eSwatini, and Zambia.
Ensuring a localized industry rather than foreign exploitation is key.
Fried 19 "The African Cannabis Economy" Carey Fried ~Marketing VP at iCAN~, October 10, 2019 https://www.canna-tech.co/cannatech/african-cannabis-economy/ SM Africa’s cannabis industry and the circular economy Cannabis legalization trends are sparking hope.
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need to have a long-term focus on value addition and research."
That’s key to preventing terror.
Ray 1/11 "Does Africa Matter to the United States?" Charles A. Ray ~a member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, served as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe~ January 11, 2021 https://www.fpri.org/article/2021/01/does-africa-matter-to-the-united-states/ SM The population of African countries is also overwhelmingly young. Approximately 40 of Africans
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political climate of Libya also pose a threat to sub-Saharan Africa.
Causes terrorist CBW usage.
Fyanka 20 Bernard B. Fyanka (epartment of History and International Studies, Redeemer’s University) (2020): Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism: Rethinking Nigeria’s counterterrorism strategy, African Security Review, DOI: 10.1080/10246029.2019.1698441 (SGK) The most commonly used non-conventional weapons are chemical or biological in nature.
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where the use of biochemical weapons is the norm rather than the exception.
, vital soil that can better address our current environmental and agricultural crises.
Warming causes extinction
Pester 21 (Patrick, staff writer for Live Science. His background is in wildlife conservation and he has worked with endangered species around the world. Patrick holds a master's degree in international journalism from Cardiff University in the U.K. and is currently finishing a second master's degree in biodiversity, evolution and conservation in action at Middlesex University London. Citing Luke Kemp, a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom AND Michael Mann, PhD, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State. "Could climate change make humans go extinct?" https://www.livescience.com/climate-change-humans-extinct.html August 30, 2021)DR 21 According to Mann, a global temperature increase of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (
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. If we act boldly now, we can avoid the worst impacts."
Plan – the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to delay patent enforcement for cannabis.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Includes enforcement and duration A simple solution to the problem is this: if
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be achieved through controlling varying means and portions of the patent application process.
The plan solves by reigning in monopolies without killing innovation.
Kellner 21 "Mitigating the Effects of Intellectual Property Colonialism on Budding Cannabis Markets" Hughie Kellner ~Hughie Kellner came from the small farm town of Uvalde, Texas and received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Hughie will deploy his physics degree while prosecuting patents in the Frankfurt am Main, Germany office of Leydig, Voit, and Mayer. After Hughie’s first year at Maurer, he worked for a law firm in Thailand as a Stewart Fellow.~ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Vol. 28 ~#1 (Winter 2021) https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss1/9/ SM Patents may still be sought and possibly even acquired if the government so chooses.
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cannot monopolize their innovations, and are thus placed on an equal footing.
FW
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
2~ No act-omission distinction –
3~ Evolution – only a naturalistic understanding of the world explains it.
Lutz and Lenman 18. Lutz, Matthew and Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/naturalism-moral/.Massa The second argument against moral non-naturalism concerns moral epistemology. According to evolutionary
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, instead, provide a deep vindication of those beliefs (Copp 2008).
9/19/21
SO - AC - Jordan
Tournament: Greenhill Fall Classic | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Lexington AK | Judge: Gordon Krauss, Serena Lu, Ishan Rereddy
1AC
1AC - Advantage
Current TRIP-plus data exclusivity standards in Jordan devastate healthcare accessibility and the economy.
Barqawi 19 "The access to medicine puzzle: scaling back the negative effects of the Jordan–US Free Trade Agreement" Laila Barqawi ~Lecturer of University of Central Lancashire, Preston (UCLAN)~. Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, Volume 14, Issue 9, September 2019, Pages 678–686, https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpz080 SM Jordanian officials have started to recognize the negative impact of data exclusivity as can be
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cost consumers in Jordan’s retail market US$ 18 million in 2004.11
Data exclusivity is the key internal link to blocking generic competition, economic growth, and affordable healthcare – case study proves.
Malpani 09 "All costs, no benefi ts: How the US – Jordan free trade agreement affects access to medicines" Rohit Malpani ~a senior campaigns advisor at Oxfam America. He currently manages Oxfam International’s access-to-medicines campaign~. 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1741-1343 Journal of Generic Medicines Vol. 6, 3, 206–217 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.851.5138andrep=rep1andtype=pdf SM HOW TRIPS-PLUS RULES HAVE RESTRICTED GENERIC COMPETITION IN JORDAN SINCE 2001 Since
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have received an additional 3 years of monopoly protection for new indications. 4
Data exclusivity creates monopolies that guts access to affordable medicine – data proves.
Armouti and Nsour 16 "Data Exclusivity for Pharmaceuticals: Was It the Best Choice for Jordan Under the U.S.- Jordan Free Trade Agreement?" WAEL ARMOUTI ~LL.M in intellectual property law, Faculty of Law, the University of Jordan (Amman, Jordan), Legal Affairs Director at Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA).~ AND MOHAMMAD F.A. NSOUR ~Lawyer and associate law professor at the University of Jordan.~ OREGON REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ~Vol. 17, 259 2016~ https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/20019/Nsour.pdf?sequence=1andisAllowed=y SM In order to control diseases, people must be able to access affordable medicines.
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with a 2 million JD saving.258 Chart 2 represents this saving.
Data exclusivity stymies the generic market which is key to the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry. That spills over to neighboring countries and the Jordanian economy writ large.
Armouti and Nsour 16 "Data Exclusivity for Pharmaceuticals: Was It the Best Choice for Jordan Under the U.S.- Jordan Free Trade Agreement?" WAEL ARMOUTI ~LL.M in intellectual property law, Faculty of Law, the University of Jordan (Amman, Jordan), Legal Affairs Director at Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA).~ AND MOHAMMAD F.A. NSOUR ~Lawyer and associate law professor at the University of Jordan.~ OREGON REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ~Vol. 17, 259 2016~ https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/20019/Nsour.pdf?sequence=1andisAllowed=y SM Since 2001, no real foreign investments from originator companies in Jordan have materialized.
AND
, the decrease in pharmaceutical industry export will affect the Jordanian economy.278
Jordan generic pharmaceutical industry is key to economic growth and Middle East healthcare.
from Hamzah or from another royal rival who has yet to reveal himself.
Jordan instability due to economic failure spills over regionally – independently ruins Israel-Jordan peace treaty.
Al-Shami et al 4/13 "Jordan’s Thorny Spring Spells Trouble for the Middle East" Farah Al-Shami, Research Fellow, Arab Reform Initiative (ARI), Tuqa Nusairat, Deputy Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East - Atlantic Council, Paolo Maggiolini, Associate Researcher, Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and Lecturer in History of Islamic Asia, Catholic University of Milan, Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Director - The Intelligence Project, Brookings, April 13, 2021 https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/jordans-thorny-spring-spells-trouble-middle-east-30024 SM Jordan's image, painstakingly built by the country’s authorities as an oasis of relative stability
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to survival of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty which is deeply unpopular."
Instability spills over to Israeli security crises specifically.
Solomon 4/6 "Instability in neighboring Jordan is ‘bad news’ for Israel" Ariel Ben Solomon ~Middle East Correspondent for the Jerusalem Post~, Apr 6, 2021 https://www.jns.org/instability-in-neighboring-jordan-is-bad-news-for-israel/ SM Instability in neighboring Jordan is ‘bad news’ for Israel For the past several
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not in the offing, instability in Jordan is bad news for Israel."
Collapse of Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty causes Middle East war.
a locally produced ICU bed, massively cheaper than those imported from abroad.
Failure to contain the pandemic causes Middle East escalation – multiple hotspots.
Alaaldin 20 "COVID-19 will prolong conflict in the Middle East" Ranj Alaaldin ~visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and nonresident fellow in the Foreign Policy program. He's also the director of a Carnegie Corporation project on proxy warfare in the Middle East.~, April 24, 2020 https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/04/24/covid-19-will-prolong-conflict-in-the-middle-east/ SM CONFLICTS AROUND THE REGION In Libya, as Frederic Wehrey and others have pointed
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which houses 70,000 refugees, including ISIS combatants and their families.
Middle East turmoil goes nuclear.
Silverstein 4/23 "Iran-Israel tensions: The threat of nuclear disaster looms large," Richard Silverstein ~writes the Tikun Olam blog, devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state~, 23 April 2021 https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/iran-israel-tensions-threat-nuclear-war-looms-large SM Israel had a near-miss of potentially catastrophic proportions on Thursday. As it
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will fight with F-35s, ballistic missiles and possibly nuclear weapons.
Regional war escalates quickly and draws in Russia and the US.
to escalation there, and perhaps even military intervention by the United States.
Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited
Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be
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two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
Plan: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan ought to reduce data exclusivity for medicines.
Barqawi 19 "The access to medicine puzzle: scaling back the negative effects of the Jordan–US Free Trade Agreement" Laila Barqawi ~Lecturer of University of Central Lancashire, Preston (UCLAN)~. Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, Volume 14, Issue 9, September 2019, Pages 678–686, https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpz080 SM We now examine each of the JFDA’s recommendations:
‘Shortening the
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authority, ending the protection referred to in Article 89 shall be justified.
Reducing data exclusivity revives the generic market which boosts accessible healthcare and the economy.
Alawi and Alabbadi 15 Investigating the Effect of Data Exclusivity on the Pharmaceutical Sector in Jordan Rand Alawi ~Pharmacist, MBA, Faculty of Business, The University of Jordan~ and Ibrahim Alabbadi ~ Associate Professor, MBA, PhD, Biopharmaceutics and Clinical Pharmacy Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, The University of Jordan Jordan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Volume 8, No. 2, 2015 https://journals.ju.edu.jo/JJPS/article/view/9377/4480 SM On the other hand, medicines prices have continued to rise in Jordan after IP
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medicine with no generic equivalent was resulted from the enforcement of data exclusivity.
1AC – Framing
Naturalism is true – evolution.
Lutz and Lenman 18. Lutz, Matthew and Lenman, James, "Moral Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/naturalism-moral/.Massa The second argument against moral non-naturalism concerns moral epistemology. According to evolutionary
AND
, instead, provide a deep vindication of those beliefs (Copp 2008).
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines
AND
these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
Thus, the standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism.
Prefer additionally:
1~ Actor specificity –
A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action.
B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen.
2~ No act-omission distinction –
A~ Psychology – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments decide not to act which means being presented with the aff creates a choice between two actions, neither of which is an omission.
B~ Actor specificity – governments are culpable for omissions cuz their purpose is to protect the constituency – otherwise they would have no obligation to make murder illegal. Only util can escape culpability in the instance of tradeoffs
– i.e. it resolves the trolley problem cuz a deontological theory would hold you responsible for killing regardless. Actor spec o/w – different agents have different ethical standings that affect their obligations and considerations.
9/24/21
SO - AC - Jordan v2
Tournament: Nano Nagle Classic | Round: 3 | Opponent: Marlborough AK | Judge: Emmiee Malyugina 1AC Advantage Current TRIP-plus data exclusivity standards in Jordan devastate healthcare accessibility and the economy. Barqawi 19 "The access to medicine puzzle: scaling back the negative effects of the Jordan–US Free Trade Agreement" Laila Barqawi ~Lecturer of University of Central Lancashire, Preston (UCLAN)~. Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, Volume 14, Issue 9, September 2019, Pages 678–686, https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpz080 SM Jordanian officials have started to recognize the negative impact of data exclusivity as can be seen through the Jordan’s food and drug administration’s (JFDA) submissions to the UN High Level Panel below. We explore their workability in an attempt to scale back the negative effects of TRIPS-plus and data exclusivity. Data exclusivity operates as a ‘wholly distinct form of intellectual property rights and could not be overcome by a compulsory license.’2 Furthermore, TRIPS protects only ‘undisclosed data’ to prevent ‘unfair commercial use’; it does not confer either exclusive rights or an automatic period of marketing monopoly.3 TRIPS does not define what constitutes ‘commercial use’.4 There have been arguments for data exclusivity in that it incentivizes innovation in the field of pharmaceutical drugs and assists pharmaceutical companies in recouping the costs of clinical trials and clinical trial data transparency.5 These arguments have been refuted on the basis that a few years of patent protection is adequate to recover the cost of clinical trials as US companies, for example, have made an excess of USD 1 billion on 55 ‘blockbuster’ drugs in 2013.6 As part of Jordan’s WTO’s accession package, Jordan agreed to block registration and marketing approval of generic medicine for five years, ‘even when no patents exist’.7 This has been implemented through the Trade Secrets and Unfair Competition Draft Law, which had been referred to Parliament in November 19998 and is now Article 8 of Jordan’s Law No 15 of 2000 on Unfair Competition and Trade Secrets (UCTS).9 This is clearly TRIPS-plus in nature. Moreover, restrictions by JUSFTA also require three further years for data exclusivity for new uses, which clearly is an e xcessive form of protection for an existing TRIPS-plus condition. The effect of this restricted use of data exclusivity is evidenced by the 103 registered medicines which were launched since 2001 and had no patent protection in Jordan; of these, at least 79 per cent had no competition from a generic equivalent as a consequence of data exclusivity.10 This suggests that data exclusivity limits competition. Beyond implications for competition, there are financial effects as well. For example, an analysis funded by the Medicines Transparency Alliance estimated that the delayed market entry of generics resulting from TRIPS-plus requirements in JUSFTA cost consumers in Jordan’s retail market US$ 18 million in 2004.11 Data exclusivity is the key internal link to blocking generic competition, economic growth, and affordable healthcare – case study proves. Malpani 09 "All costs, no benefi ts: How the US – Jordan free trade agreement affects access to medicines" Rohit Malpani ~a senior campaigns advisor at Oxfam America. He currently manages Oxfam International’s access-to-medicines campaign~. 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1741-1343 Journal of Generic Medicines Vol. 6, 3, 206–217 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.851.5138andrep=rep1andtype=pdf SM HOW TRIPS-PLUS RULES HAVE RESTRICTED GENERIC COMPETITION IN JORDAN SINCE 2001 Since the US – Jordan FTA was formally enacted on 17 December 2001, TRIPS-plus rules have given multinational pharmaceutical companies more tools to prevent generic competition with their products. In fact, most pharmaceutical companies have not bothered to apply for patent protection for medicines launched onto the Jordanian market. Instead, multinational drug companies rely on TRIPS-plus rules, in particular, data exclusivity, to prevent generic competition for many medicines. A. Patenting practices of foreign drug companies in Jordan since 2001 Numerous medicines marketed in Jordan after enactment of the FTA were not patented by multinational pharmaceutical companies. Working with the Jordan Patent Office and a local patent law fi rm, Oxfam analysed 108 medicines launched onto the Jordanian market since 2001. These medicines represent 42 per cent of all new medicines with no generic equivalent launched from 2002 until mid-2006, and more than 70 per cent of sales of new medicines with no generic equivalent. Of 108 medicines registered and launched by 21 multinational pharmaceutical companies since 2001 that currently enjoy a market monopoly in Jordan, only five medicines have product patent protection. 1 According to local industry and government officials, most multinational companies decided not to file patent applications after the US – Jordan FTA was signed because: (1) Jordan is not a member of the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT), thereby making patent filings expensive, complicated and time-consuming for new medicines; (2) many medicines without a generic equivalent would have qualified for little or no patent protection in Jordan owing to the original patent filing date; and (3) pharmaceutical companies concluded that data exclusivity effectively prevents generic competitors from entering the market for 5 years following registration of the originator medicine. In fact, of the 21 multinational drug companies, only three bothered to patent medicines that they launched onto the Jordanian market by mid-2006. The other multinational drug companies chose to rely on data exclusivity to enforce at least a 5-year market monopoly for medicines that were launched onto the Jordanian market by mid-2006. 2 Data exclusivity creates a new system of monopoly power, separate from patents, by blocking the registration and marketing approval of generic medicines for 5 or more years, even when no patent exists. Drug regulatory authorities are prevented from using the clinical trial data developed by the originator company to establish the safety and efficacy of a medicine in order to approve the marketing of a generic medicine that has already been shown to be equivalent to the original one. This delays or prevents generic competition. The TRIPS Agreement protects only ‘undisclosed data ’to prevent ‘ unfair commercial use ’ ; it does not confer either exclusive rights or a period of marketing monopoly. Earlier studies indicate that enforcing data exclusivity results in significant price increases for medicines. 3 Data exclusivity prohibits generic competition for a specified period of time. The alternative would be for generic manufacturers to repeat clinical trials of medicines to prove their safety and efficacy. However, doing this would violate medical ethics because clinical trial methodologies would require some patients to be given placebos. Giving placebos when the safety and clinical validity of the medicine being tested is already established and is unethical. In recent years multinational drug companies have started to file patent applications for drug precursors that will eventually be launched on the Jordanian market. It generally requires between 8 and 10 years to obtain a medicine to the market from the time the patent application is fi led. Data exclusivity will ensure that even if a patent application is rejected, the pharmaceutical company can secure at least 5 years of monopoly protection. Data exclusivity prevents generic competition independent of patent protection Multinational pharmaceutical companies have prevented generic competition for many medicines by solely enforcing data exclusivity provisions in Jordan ’ s IP law. This is because companies can rely upon data exclusivity more easily than patent protection to deny generic competition. Patent offices apply rigorous standards and impose safeguards to ensure that only innovative medicines are granted a monopoly. On the contrary, a pharmaceutical company merely has to submit clinical trial data to obtain a 5-year market monopoly. According to Oxfam ’ s analysis of 103 medicines registered and launched since 2001 that currently have no patent protection in Jordan, at least 79 per cent have no competition from a generic equivalent as a consequence of data exclusivity. Jordanian generic manufacturers expressed frustration at the data exclusivity law because multinational pharmaceutical companies can rely upon data exclusivity to preclude generic competition. A generic competitor could replicate these medicines, in the absence of a data exclusivity law, shortly after the medicine’s launch on the domestic market. Although data exclusivity was imposed as a result of the US – Jordan FTA and WTO accession, the TRIPS-plus measures benefit many other countries ’multinational drug companies. At least 21 US, European Union (EU), and Swiss drug companies have taken advantage of the benefits of data exclusivity. TRIPS-plus rules, although imposed by the US FTA, benefit all drug companies because developing countries must alter their national IP laws to fully implement TRIPS-plus rules. Thus, all pharmaceutical companies marketing medicines in a developing country, including European companies, benefit from these changes, and benefit from US efforts to impose TRIPS-plus rules elsewhere. Consequences of data exclusivity on public health Generic competition drastically reduces medicine prices. Multinational pharmaceutical companies that enforce data exclusivity for their clinical trial data in Jordan can prevent the onset of generic competition for 5 years, even without a patent on the medicine. In contrast, nearby Egypt has not introduced data exclusivity and other TRIPS-plus rules, and multinational pharmaceutical companies have only received patent protection for medicines from 2005 onwards. Thus, most medicines currently sold on the Egyptian market have no form of monopoly protection (and therefore may have multiple generic competitors). Heart disease and diabetes are serious public health problems in both Jordan and Egypt. Jordan had approximately 195,000 cases of diabetes in 2000, while Egypt, a more populous country, had an estimated 2.6 million cases. Similarly, according to 2002 WHO (World Health Organization) estimates, heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in both countries. A comparison of prices for five best-selling medicines that treat diabetes and cardiovascular disease in Jordan and Egypt illustrates the enormous disparity between the costs of the originator medicine in Jordan (with no generic competitor available solely because of data exclusivity) against the lowest-priced generic equivalent in Egypt (where price reductions owing to generic competition are unrestricted) (see Table 1 ). These new medicines are significantly more expensive in Jordan than in Egypt. If TRIPS-plus rules had been present in Egypt, local manufacturers could not have driven down the prices for these medicines through generic competition, and the prices for these medicines would have been much higher. The result would have been increased healthcare costs and less medical treatment, especially for poor people. Three years of additional data exclusivity for new uses of old medicines Article 4 of the US – Jordan FTA requires Jordan ’ s drug regulatory authority to provide three additional years of data exclusivity when a drug manufacturer discovers a new use for a previously known chemical entity. There is considerable disagreement between the multinational pharmaceutical industry and the Jordanian government about which medicines can receive additional monopoly protection. Pharmaceutical companies have argued that a ‘ new use ’would broadly include new therapeutic indications, formulas, dosage forms and formulations. Therefore, companies have attempted, including through use of litigation and lobbying of the US Trade Representative ’ s office, to extend data exclusivity to trivial modifications of a medicine, such as arguing that a higher dosage of an existing medicine would qualify as a ‘ new use ’ . On the contrary, the government argued that a ‘ new use ’only extends, at a maximum, to new indications for old medicines. Despite this narrow definition, at least 25 medicines have received an additional 3 years of monopoly protection for new indications. 4 Data exclusivity creates monopolies that guts access to affordable medicine – reverse causal data proves. Armouti and Nsour 16 "Data Exclusivity for Pharmaceuticals: Was It the Best Choice for Jordan Under the U.S.- Jordan Free Trade Agreement?" WAEL ARMOUTI ~LL.M in intellectual property law, Faculty of Law, the University of Jordan (Amman, Jordan), Legal Affairs Director at Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA).~ AND MOHAMMAD F.A. NSOUR ~Lawyer and associate law professor at the University of Jordan.~ OREGON REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ~Vol. 17, 259 2016~ https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/20019/Nsour.pdf?sequence=1andisAllowed=y SM In order to control diseases, people must be able to access affordable medicines. International human rights have stated that access to affordable medicine, health facilities and services should be accessible to all without discrimination.240 Instead of enabling this internationally mandated access to affordable medicines, the data exclusivity approach operates by delaying the entrance of generic (affordable) medicines into the market, which has the consequence of increasing the monopoly duration of the originator companies.241 Under this regime, prices of medicine will increase by 20, according to the pricing regulations which give the generic product a maximum of 80 of the originator product’s price. Also, after the entrance of the generic product, some originators decrease their prices.242 According to an Oxfam report, data exclusivity has contributed to the problem by comparing the prices of selective medicines between Jordan and Egypt. This comparison illustrates the fact that prices in Jordan are much higher than Egypt, which is not currently implementing data exclusivity protection.243 Dr. Michael P. Ryan has responded to this Oxfam report, indicating that Jordanian prices are similar to prices in Saudi Arabia, and the pricing is according to the pricing regulation at the JFDA.244 Dr. Ryan did not take into account, however, the fact that for more than five years only the originator product will be present on the market. Another proponent of data exclusivity, the former PhRMA chairman in Jordan, posits that data exclusivity has helped the originator companies to provide people around the world with new molecules and has ultimately led to better health.245 Jordanians obtain medicine through either the public or private system. The public insurances cover 55 of the Jordanian population,246 and this system buys the medicines through tenders announced by the Joint Procurement Department (JPD). Data exclusivity’s effect on the prices is very obvious when one looks at the assigned prices for the tenders. The government is obliged to buy the originator product for almost six years with no competition from the generic product.247 After the approval of a generic product, the originator product price will come down. The JAPM has conducted an analysis study of the official tender (JPD) prices in 2009, 2010 and 2011.248 This study showed the cost savings for the government after the availability of the local generic products.249 The prices of the local generic products in 2009 and 2010 JPD tenders for ten therapeutic groups were less than the second bidders, at $25 million JPD. Table 1 illustrates the savings that resulted from buying local generic products, as compared to the originator prices for these two years.250 After the introduction of the local generic products in the JPD tender, the originator companies have reduced their products prices. The originators price reduction in twelve therapeutic groups was around 14 million JD in 2010 tender and around 1.7 million JD in 2011 tender compared to their prices for the year before local generic products were introduced. Table 2 illustrates the difference in prices bid by originator companies before and after the participation of Jordanian pharmaceutical companies in tenders of the same products.252 The study concluded that there was a reduction in the government’s spending on pharmaceuticals in the public health sector after the generic product was made available.254 This will lead to better utilization of our limited resources.255 Also, the JAPM has conducted an analysis of the price of a cancer product in public tenders. The 2009 tender price of this drug was 170.960 JD, while in the same year the generic product was registered with a public price of 86.700 JD. Thus, the price of the generic product was half the tender price. In 2010 tender, the originator product’s tender price was 56.000 JD, nearly 33 of the previous year’s tender price. Additionally, the JAPM has analyzed the prices of six products from the same therapeutic category in the 2010 tender. Here, the originator product’s price was 3128290 JD while the local generic product’s price for the same category was 1084806. That is, the percentage reduction on government spending due to the availability local generic product is more than 71, with a 2 million JD saving.258 Chart 2 represents this saving. Data exclusivity stymies the generic market which is key to the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry. That spills over to neighboring countries and the Jordanian economy writ large. Armouti and Nsour 16 "Data Exclusivity for Pharmaceuticals: Was It the Best Choice for Jordan Under the U.S.- Jordan Free Trade Agreement?" WAEL ARMOUTI ~LL.M in intellectual property law, Faculty of Law, the University of Jordan (Amman, Jordan), Legal Affairs Director at Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA).~ AND MOHAMMAD F.A. NSOUR ~Lawyer and associate law professor at the University of Jordan.~ OREGON REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ~Vol. 17, 259 2016~ https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/20019/Nsour.pdf?sequence=1andisAllowed=y SM Since 2001, no real foreign investments from originator companies in Jordan have materialized. There are two types of investment that have been introduced. The first is the expansion of originator companies’ scientific offices, which has had a negative impact on the local industry due to the aggressive sales tactics employed by these companies, those with which the local industry cannot compete. The other type of investment is contract manufacturing with local industry, manifested as secondary packaging only without any transfer of product know-how. The reason for this was to obtain a higher public price for the originator product, based on considering Jordan as country of origin. This is evident when we compare the Jordanian situation with that in neighboring country Egypt, which has many originator companies with manufacturing sites therein.261 Dr. Ryan has responded to the dearth of investment in the country by claiming that Jordan is a small pharmaceutical market in the region and that there is no reason to invest in manufacturing capacity. Additionally, he claims that medical tourism had grown due to implementation strong IPR.262 This position was confirmed by the ex-chairman of PhRMA in Jordan, who insisted that hospitals, doctors and pharmacies have benefited from health tourism due to drug availability.263 Furthermore, Originator companies are now conducting clinical trials in Jordan Research Centers because of the availability of a strong IPR environment.264 3. Promotion of Pharmaceutical Local Industry The pharmaceutical industry is one of the leading industries in Jordan. There are sixteen private companies.265 The number of employees includes approximately 5,500 directly employed workers and 5,000 indirectly employed workers, with 99 of this employment being Jordanian. The percentage of females employed is 37, 67 of which have university degrees.266 This sector is characterized as the highest-paid sector in Jordan.267 The investment in this sector is around $1 billion U.S. dollar and another $1 billion U.S. dollar in branches which are 17 branches in 8 countries.268 Eighty-one percent of local production is exported to 60 countries because of the high quality reputation of the local pharmaceutical industry, and it is considered number one between the Arab countries.269 Chart 3 represents the export of the local industry between 2004-2013.270 Five companies have either a European GMP or U.S. FDA approval.271 Pharma ex-chairman has stated that after data exclusivity, the local companies have upgraded their quality levels and they are now exporting their products to the European Union and United States.272 The JAPM has replied to this point that the local companies have taken this step regardless data exclusivity.273 The Jordanian pharmaceutical industry is considered to be a generic industry, one which does not involve innovation products. Few Jordanian companies have patents in this field, and the existing patents are mostly related to new techniques of old chemical entities, rather than to a new chemical entity. This lack of patents issued on the basis of innovation is due to insufficient financial resources for conducting the clinical trials that are required for new chemical entities, and also due to there being no foreign investment to support the local research and development or to strengthen the companies’ infrastructure.274 Additionally, the local pharmaceutical industry faces many obstacles in their bid to export to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Egypt; these countries tend to protect their own local industry.275 Additionally, as per the Secretary General of the JAPM, the enforcement of the data exclusivity approach has compounded the problem faced by Jordan’s pharmaceutical industry. Delaying the registration of the local generic product in Jordan, the country of origin, to around six years after the registration of the originator product consequently delays the generic product’s registration in export countries as well. Some countries request the marketing of the product in its country of origin for at least one year before submission of its registration file like Saudi Arabia. Additionally, other countries like Saudi Arabia price the generic products in descending order, so delaying the registration file submission will lead to a lower price, a price which might be untenable. Adding to this conundrum, a late market entry also has the effect of decreasing market share. Contrary to the situation in Jordan, the generic pharmaceutical industries of other countries like Israel and India have evolved to counter the effects of data exclusivity. These countries have set legislation in such a way as to promote their generic industry.276 For example, Israel registers a generic product during the exclusivity period of the originator product for the purposes of export.277 Beyond merely stymieing the growth of the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry, the constraints of the data exclusivity approach could have farther-reaching economic implications. Consequently, the decrease in pharmaceutical industry export will affect the Jordanian economy.278 Pharma growth is under-performing and unsustainable now – only a strong generic market can underpin long-term success. Data exclusivity hinders market development and broader Middle East healthcare – Jordanian exports are key. Cochrane 16 "Jordan's Pharmaceutical Sector Punches Above Its Weight" June 6, 2016 ~Paul Cochrane is an independent journalist. He has written for over 80 publications worldwide, covering business, media, politics and culture in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. He is the co-director of a documentary on the political-economy of water in Lebanon - We Made Every Living Thing from Water (on Vimeo). He is also a media commentator, and has appeared on Al Jazeera Arabic, Al Jazeera English, CBS-NYC radio, Canada's CTV and CBC Radio, Press TV, Etejah TV, Future TV, Al Manar, Sahar TV, Today FM Ireland, and South Korea's TBS eFHM radio. Paul has a BA in International History and International Politics from Keele University, UK, and a MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the American University in Beirut (AUB), Lebanon.~ http://backinbeirut.blogspot.com/2016/06/jordans-pharmaceutical-sector-punches.html SM Jordan may be small in population terms, but it packs a hefty punch in the Middle East pharma manufacturing sector With a population of just 6.6 million, Jordan may be a small country but it is one of the largest pharma manufacturers in the Middle East. A key reason for this is that production is export focused, particularly in the generics sector. The country’s manufacturing sector, with an annual turnover of US$500m, had been steadily growing at 8–10 per year until 2012, according to the Jordanian Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Medical Appliances (JAPM). But since the ‘Arab Spring' of 2011, exports have slowed due to instability in the region, notably the conflict in neighbouring Syria. Development is also being hindered because Jordan, unlike some of its regional competitors, notably Iraq and Iran, abides by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and data exclusivity. Since becoming a member of the WTO in 2000 and signing a free trade agreement with the USA in the same year, Jordanian companies have not developed any significant new medicines. That said, Jordan’s domestic pharma market is growing. According to UK- based BMI Research, the total market, including imports, reached Jordanian Dinars JOD643m ($905m) in 2014, and is forecast to grow by 6.4 in 2015, to JOD683m ($962m). Samer Al-Ansari, Marketing Director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at Hikma, one of the region’s leading pharma manufacturers and exporters, established in Jordan and listed on the London Stock Exchange, says the total market grew by 9.4 in 2014, while according to BMI generic growth was 10.5. Driving sales is burgeoning population growth, at 4.2, further boosted by the influx of Syrian refugees: 937,830 were registered as of 2015, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Demand comes from the UN and other agencies supporting the refugees, and the market’s value is increasing due to the entry of patented products with high prices as well as an increase in generics, said Al-Ansari. However, aid agencies import medicines and individual refugees have low purchasing power. ‘Bluntly, demand for pharmaceuticals did not reflect the 15 rise in the population. Refugees are buying in small quantities, and only the essentials,’ said Mohammad Shahin, CEO of the Jordan Sweden Medical and Sterilisation Company (JOSWE), and Chairman of JAPM. The Jordanian healthcare sector is heavily supported by the government, with the ministry of health providing insurance to 40 of the population, followed by state health services organisation Royal Medical Services (RMS) covering 27.5, according to the Jordan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (JJPS). Government healthcare spending is on the rise, projected to go from JOD1.86bn ($2.62bn) in 2014, to JOD1.97bn ($2.78bn) in 2015, a 6.2 increase, according to BMI Research. In 2016, compulsory health insurance is scheduled to be introduced to cover all Jordanians. If such a move happens, it is expected to be a boost for pharmaceutical sales. ‘The goal is to have local insurance companies support the private sector, but so far it has been only discussions, nothing has been agreed on yet. But you see that Jordan is moving towards the privatisation of healthcare, and wants to boost medical tourism,’ said Al-Ansari. Jordan has 16 pharmaceutical firms, which manufacture mostly generics or branded generics, bulk antibiotics and cancer-related treatments. The market is dominated by Hikma, followed by Dar Al Dawa, Arab Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, JOSWE, Pharma International and United Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. ‘Local companies supply around 20 of total domestic consumption, and the rest is imported,’ said Shahin. More than 70 of Jordanian pharma production is for export, to more than 65 countries, primarily in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Regional instability has had a negative impact on exports, affecting the country’s overall economy, which is expected to grow by just 2.5 in 2015, according to the International Monetary Fund. ‘Our export markets are challenged to Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as to Yemen and Sudan. You can anticipate issues in one or two countries but not four surrounding countries all having problems,’ said Hana Uraidi, CEO of the Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation (JEDCO). Financing has also been complicated by the instability, while credit lines are under pressure. ‘It’s hard to get extended credit lines as insurance companies are seeing Jordan as higher risk, so traders have to pay up front, and we have a cash problem. If we take out loans it affects overall costs and profits. Before, we thought the situation would calm down after two or three years, but the government is now forecasting problems for 10 years,’ she added. The closure of the Syrian border has hit the pharmaceutical sector particularly hard, as it was a major transit route for exports to Lebanon, and on to Turkey and northern Iraq, while the western Iraqi border has also been closed due to the presence of Islamic State. Companies are managing, however, to export to Kurdish Iraq and Baghdad, avoiding areas controlled by IS, while the central Iraqi government is still delivering drugs. ‘Overall exports are down by around 10–15 on 2014. It is not only neighbouring countries that have affected us, the whole region is affected, and in certain countries it is not clear who is in control. Payments are another problem,’ said Shahin. JOSWE expects a drop of 10 in its sales this year, with its business evenly split between local sales and exports. Syria was not an export market for Jordanian manufacturers prior to the conflict as the country was practically self-sufficient in pharmaceutical production. But although the Syrian sector has been ravaged by war it has started exporting to the Arab Gulf and north Africa, according to Shahin, which has detracted from Jordan’s export competitiveness due to low prices. Looking ahead, it may be generics that really underpin the Jordanian pharma sector’s success. WTO membership and its US trade deal have forced the country’s pharma sector to be transparent about producing generics and original research is still at an emerging stage due to a lack of investment, according to a 2015 article in the JJPS. The Jordanian Scientific Research Support Fund inked four agreements with public and private universities to develop pharmaceutical and medical research projects, worth $479,660 in September 2015, but it is not expected to cause any major upturn in the overall sector given the large investments elsewhere in the world. ‘We had hoped when we signed the WTO and IPR agreements that there would be a transfer of technology and know-how from multinationals to the local industry, but it’s been an unfulfilled promise,’ said Shahin. Currently, local producers engage in contract manufacturing for global majors, which contributes to less than 5 of the sector’s overall revenue, according to the JJPS. The rest of production is generics under licence, with most licensing agreements still in effect signed before 1999. Heightened competition Due to data exclusivity and a lack of diversification, there is heightened competition among manufacturers, while JAPM estimates that few companies are operating at more than 40 of installed capacity. ‘Pharmaceutical companies are all making the same product, and each product has 15 or 20 competitors, while some have 50 or even 100 if we include imports as well,’ said Shahin. Such products include second-, third- and fourth-generation generics. To bolster business, JOSWE has started producing generics not in the market, but few others have followed the same route. ‘JAPM is trying to advise companies not to add more similar generic products but to create variety and products not in the market,’ added Shahin. The overcrowded generics market has led to a domestic price war, with companies trying to sell the same generics at a price 20 lower than the originator drug. Companies are also having to make their generic products known in the market. ‘In the EU or the US you can sell a generic by its scientific name, but in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) it is branded generics, so you have to build up a brand name,’ said Al- Ansari. The fact that the writ of TRIPS does not run across Jordan’s region is a problem: ‘You find firms in such countries registering more products than us as they are not as strict in protecting IPR agreements,’ said Shahin. Egypt, for instance, has no TRIPS-Plus provisions, mandating more data exclusivity in its IPR law, yet it has had more foreign investment in its pharma industry, boosting competition for Jordan. Price controls in Saudi Arabia to protect domestic production, and protectionism in Algeria to encourage pharmaceutical manufacturing are also affecting Jordanian exports. The JJPS noted that data exclusivity related to TRIPS affected Jordanian exporters, as they ‘will be out of their export markets for at least seven years – five years’ protection due to data exclusivity, one year registration time in Jordan and at least one year registration in the export market’. Scenario 1 Economic stagnation structurally locks in instability in Jordan. Wolf 4/14 "A Hashemite Family Reunion Can’t Hide Jordan’s Woes" Albert B. Wolf, an associate research fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS and an assistant professor of political science at the American University of Central Asia. April 14, 2021 https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/14/jordan-abdullah-hamzah-hashemite-family-reunion-cant-hide-economic-woes/ SM A Hashemite Family Reunion Can’t Hide Jordan’s Woes Making nice after an alleged coup attempt obscures serious challenges, including water scarcity, a refugee crisis, and unhelpful neighbors. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is no stranger to royal intrigues and attempted coups. The first 20 years of the late King Hussein’s rule was wracked with coup plots, assassination attempts, and a civil war with the country’s large Palestinian population. Most recently, the former crown prince and half-brother of King Abdullah II, Prince Hamzah, was accused of engaging in sedition and placed under the "protection of the king" (i.e., house arrest) until the two made a joint appearance on Sunday. On Monday, the prince pledged his allegiance to the incumbent monarch and seemingly defused the latest royal tempest. But his display of deference doesn’t mean the end of instability in Jordan. This episode is a symptom of the challenges Abdullah has faced since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, not the problem itself. It is unlikely to be the last challenge the king faces to his rule unless Jordan’s economy undergoes significant economic reforms—quickly. Jordan has experienced multiple bouts of protests that were brought on by economic downturns (including during the Arab Spring and the COVID-19 pandemic) and were met with a combination of changes in economic tactics and giveaway programs, repression, and government reshuffles. This plot supposedly came from within the royal court, giving a tabloid quality to a security threat, especially after the prince made his house arrest all the more unusual by issuing a personal statement online. However, Hamzah’s alleged plan to overthrow Abdullah is a distraction from Jordan’s ongoing strategic and economic problems that do not have readily apparent solutions. Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, described the latest royal feud as the "most serious political crisis" Jordan has faced in 50 years. Regional experts have heard these warnings before. However, Abdullah’s combination of political savvy and luck in negotiating the challenges he has faced since the outbreak of the Arab Spring does not mean he will continue be lucky in the future. Domestic stability cannot be taken for granted. Tourism, Jordan’s biggest industry, ground to a halt after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. It had accounted for $5.8 billion in revenues in a $43 billion economy in 2019, but Jordan could not allow tourists back into the country as COVID-19 spread. Furthermore, remittances, which had accounted for $3.7 billion in 2018, were estimated to drop by nearly 20 percent for the entire region in 2020. Two weeks ago, protests broke out in Amman along with other cities because of the deaths of six people from COVID-19 at government hospitals. The cause was low oxygen supplies. However, the literature on comparative authoritarianism shows that protests may provide elites with opportunities to reveal their preferences and split from the incumbent regime. Should more protests occur due to the worsening economic situation, water shortages, the coronavirus crisis, or the strains of hosting a large refugee population, a window of opportunity may open for Prince Hamzah or another opportunistic contender for the throne. (According to Jordan’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, 34 percent of the population are refugees, most of whom are Palestinian. The U.N. refugee agency counts 663,210 Syrians who have registered as refugees—while the Jordanian government counts more than 1.3 million.) Many commentators and Jordan watchers have expressed shock and surprise at Hamzah’s open criticism of Abdullah. However, the more shocking display has been the public outpouring of criticism of the incumbent monarch. Popular radio programs have reported regular call-ins criticizing Abdullah, blaming him for the country’s poor economic performance and corruption. Prior to the pandemic, the country had less than 2 percent annual growth, and nearly 1 in 4 adults were unemployed. Some Jordanians who have been left behind economically felt that Hamzah used the language of the Arab street to speak to people’s needs in order to advance his own interests. Even Jordanian Finance Minister Mohamad al-Ississ reportedly said, "Unemployment is this country’s greatest problem." Official figures put unemployment at 24 percent currently. Jordan’s supposed regional allies are not helping. The kingdom is surrounded by "frenemies" like Israel and Saudi Arabia, which, despite benefiting from the stability and cooperation of the Hashemite royal family, tend to engage in behaviors that undermine its steadiness. These frenemies’ behaviors exacerbate Jordan’s domestic political tensions. One of the most significant issues is water. Access to water is a problem for many Jordanians—and water theft is a big business that the state has failed to address. While water consumption continues to rise, an agreement with Israel’s government over providing an additional 8 million cubic meters remains elusive. Because of these problems, ordinary Jordanians are at the mercy of water thieves who drill untapped reservoirs without the permission of the state and charge what they want to people currently unserved and underserved by the state. Jordan has made clear it hopes to build a canal to the Red Sea or Dead Sea to ameliorate these problems, but, so far, it has been unable to cut a deal with Israel. There are rumors—and this time they are just that, rumors—that Saudi Arabia was involved in the alleged plot to overthrow Abdullah. It is important to note that once details of the arrests of Hamzah and others had leaked, most countries issued statements of support for Abdullah. However, some in Jordan fear that the Saudis are interested in a peace deal with Israel in order to displace the Hashemites as the guardians of Al-Aqsa Mosque and take over custodianship of Jerusalem’s holy places. The royal family’s latest feud is an allegory for Jordan’s ongoing economic and strategic problems. Should they continue, it is highly likely that this moderate ally of the United States and the West will find itself convulsed by domestic challenges again in the future. This could come in at least two forms: The first is another civil conflict with Jordan’s large Palestinian population. The second could be another challenge for the throne, possibly from Hamzah or from another royal rival who has yet to reveal himself. Economic dependency on the US is a ticking time bomb – it makes instability structurally inevitable absent a domestic economic boost. Younes 18 "Jordan’s economic crisis threatens political stability" Ali Younes, 14 Feb 2018 https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2018/2/14/jordans-economic-crisis-threatens-political-stability SM Jordan’s economic crisis threatens political stability Anger simmers after the government hiked taxes between 50-100 percent on key food staples such as bread. Angry at the decision to increase food prices last month, restive Jordanians are demanding the government’s resignation and the dissolution of parliament. Last month, the government implemented a tax rise of between 50-100 percent on key food staples such as bread, in order to decrease its $700m budget deficit. Jordan’s debt has now reached $40bn and its debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio has reached a record 95 percent, up from 71 percent in 2011. The economic crunch that squeezes the country will be particularly acute this year, after Jordan’s Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) allies – Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait – did not renew a five-year financial assistance programme with Amman worth $3.6bn that ended in 2017. The United States is now the only donor that has committed itself to support Jordan. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed a five-year $6.375bn ($1.275bn a year) aid deal with Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi. This surpassed the previous agreement of about $1bn a year, signed with the previous US administration, by about 27 percent, and increased in length from three years to five. A US State Department statement said $750m was earmarked annually for economic support funds and $350m for the military. It was unclear what the remaining $175m would be used for. "As part of this bilateral understanding, Jordan has committed to prioritise economic and security sector reforms that aim to support Jordanian self-reliance," it said. During a joint press conference in Amman, Tillerson said the increase would support Jordan’s security roles in fighting terrorism and the conflict in Syria. However, even with the increased flow of US aid that has funded budgets and projects since the 1950s, it remains to be seen if Jordan’s economy will stabilise, according to analysts. Hussam Abdallat, a political activist and former government official, told Al Jazeera the American assistance won’t benefit ordinary Jordanians. "American aid to Jordan is useless to the average Jordanian; most of it goes to support the Jordanian military – which serves American interests, not Jordan’s – and the rest goes back to the US through US companies working in Jordan," Abdallat said. Any US aid that is not directly budgeted for economic development is "meaningless", he added. Regional stability Journalist Salameh Aldarawi, editor of Maqar online newspaper, told Al Jazeera that Jordan’s economic problems are directly related to political stability in the region. Aldarawi, who writes on the Jordanian economy, said devastating wars in neighbouring Syria and Iraq – the country’s biggest trading partners – have curtailed economic growth. The harsh measures taken by the government will not improve economic stability and will only hurt the most vulnerable people in Jordanian society, he said. "Prices and tax hikes are only hurting the poor and the middle class, especially in the absence of wage increases or social safety nets," Aldarawi said. "These measures will only provide temporary quick fixes, not a long-term, strategic solution." He said tackling corruption was imperative, along with fixing the "collapsed education and healthcare systems. "The government must start with fighting entrenched and endemic corruption within its ranks, recover billions of dollars of embezzled public funds, ~and~ create equality among the different segments of the population, especially towards those who pay more taxes but get fewer services and privileges," said Aldarawi. ‘Economic disaster’ Abdallat, who leads several activist groups demanding political and economic reform, said Jordan’s political elite must be held accountable for their actions that have driven the country to the edge of financial ruin. "People are protesting in several areas in the country and demanding the resignation of the government and the parliament, who are responsible for the economic disaster we are in now," he said. In Amman, where nearly half of Jordan’s 9.9 million population resides, criticism of government policies has spread over social media, but, so far, not significantly to the streets. Analysts say that, unlike residents of the capital, people in the southern and northern provinces are more dependent on government largesse and employment and will suffer greater hardship when the government is no longer able to meet their needs. "At this rate, I am afraid that we will end up with a revolt of the hungry," said Abdallat. Hussein Mahadeen, a professor of social development at Mutah University in Kerak, south of Amman, said Jordan has a foreign aid dependency problem because of its political and social structure. Mahadeen said Jordan is still transitioning from its tribal society roots into a semi-modern state. "Lacking solid legal and civic institutions, to safeguard the rights and liberties of citizens and their ability to contest government decisions, is a major impediment towards its political and economic development," he told Al Jazeera. "The Jordanian society, for several reasons, is not mature enough socially and politically to be able to mount a serious challenge to the state’s ability to impose strict economic measures." ‘Violent revolt’? For many decades, foreign aid and remittances from expatriate Jordanians in the Gulf region were the mainstays of the Jordanian economy that kept the country afloat. This, however, created dependency, and a succession of Jordanian governments failed to take measures to wean the country off foreign assistance and become self-reliant, according to Mahadeen. Jordan’s main problem is it hasn’t progressed and developed beyond its "functional state" roots,that is a state created to perform certain functions on behalf of others, after its creation by the British, after defeating the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he said Abdallat – who has been imprisoned several times for his criticism of the government – said he was concerned the economic situation facing Jordan could result in an uprising. "If the current economic crisis persists, it might lead to a revolt, and I am afraid it will be a violent one," he said. Jordan instability due to economic failure spills over regionally – independently ruins Israel-Jordan peace treaty. Al-Shami et al 4/13 "Jordan’s Thorny Spring Spells Trouble for the Middle East" Farah Al-Shami, Research Fellow, Arab Reform Initiative (ARI), Tuqa Nusairat, Deputy Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East - Atlantic Council, Paolo Maggiolini, Associate Researcher, Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and Lecturer in History of Islamic Asia, Catholic University of Milan, Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Director - The Intelligence Project, Brookings, April 13, 2021 https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/jordans-thorny-spring-spells-trouble-middle-east-30024 SM Jordan's image, painstakingly built by the country’s authorities as an oasis of relative stability within a turbulent Middle East, took a hit on April 3, when former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Hussein was accused of cooperating with "foreign entities" to destabilize the state. The incident, widely presented as a family disagreement, resulted in the arrest of eighteen people and Hamzah's oath of allegiance to the Crown and the Constitution two days later. While investigations are still ongoing, the recent controversy comes as an unexpected novelty for the country. Since the Hashemite kingdom's origins, Jordan has always been seen as an island of stability in an otherwise unstable neighbourhood. At the same time, King Abdullah II has long been held in high regard in the United States, as Washington has relied on his steadying influence and views him as a highly reliable partner. Today, Amman remains one of the United States’ closest allies in the region, especially in counterterrorism operations and intelligence-sharing in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Nevertheless, despite its apparent stability, the country faces substantial socio-economic challenges. Jordan has been hard hit by the coronavirus (it ranks among the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates per capita in the region), while its unemployment rate reached one-fourth of the population in 2020. Furthermore, the country is currently home to over 660,000 Syrian refugees while also hosting a large community of Palestinian refugees. Hence, coming at a particularly uncertain moment for the country and combined with pre-existing structural problems, the tensions within the ruling family risk detracting attention from long-needed socio-economic reforms. Jordan’s uneasy geopolitical position "The kingdom of Jordan has so far been spared a visit by the Arab Spring, apart from several random and discontinuous waves of protests. For years now, economic demands have been growing and calls for less corruption, and more transparency have been rising. Against this backdrop, the ruling family is not only facing challenges on the economic front but also subtle opposition from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been very active in other countries visited by the Arab Spring as well. Moreover, Iran and its hegemony over Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon puts Jordan in a difficult geopolitical position that requires close collaboration with GCC countries to counterbalance, especially that these countries are also ruled by monarchies. Thus, at the moment, the ruling family is trying to avoid having these geopolitical challenges spill into the local political scene and cause a serious threat to its rule via a combination of chaos and uprisings." Farah Al-Shami, Research Fellow, Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) Amman’s economy needs less foreign loans and more support for structural reforms "One positive spill-over from the incident might be bringing Jordan back to the radar of its foreign allies, who tend to take the stability in the country for granted and have been ignoring quieting of Jordanians dissatisfied with dire economic situation in the country, further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. What Jordan needs, however, is not more loans – its foreign debt already amounts to over 90 of its GDP – but development aid and technical assistance in implementation of wise economic reforms that would not further harm the already impoverished population. Austerity is not an answer at a time when the cost of living is growing, remittances – falling, and officially one in four (and realistically more) Jordanians is out of work." Katarzyna Sidlo, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Department, Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) Jordan’s social mobilization limbo and the risk of a security clampdown "Jordan, a resource-poor country that was initially lauded for containing COVID-19, has struggled to manage the economic fallout. Remittances and tourism have declined as has assistance from neighboring Gulf countries. With many businesses in ruins due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the government has to do more to ensure social safety net programs help vulnerable populations climb out of economic despair. The government is also struggling to support the nearly one million refugees in the country. While Jordanians have been protesting for months, recent events involving Prince Hamzah are likely to make Jordanians think twice before going out into the streets. The government must act fast to address economic challenges while avoiding a security clampdown that could make matters worse." Tuqa Nusairat, Deputy Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East - Atlantic Council Jordan-Israel relations must refocus on shared interests and avoid political calculus "While it is still difficult to establish the extent of the alleged coup plot in Jordan, what seems particularly intriguing are the allegations of foreign meddling. Ten years ago, while protests and dissents were mushrooming, Amman was counting on Saudi aid and Israel’s implicit support. Today, while regional powers, including both countries, are voicing support for the king, Amman is becoming increasingly concerned that the rapprochement between Riyadh and Tel Aviv can be to the detriment of its legitimacy. The recent incident at the Israeli-Jordan border and the allegations pointing to Israel and Saudi Arabia are only the most recent episodes in a stream of tensions developing since 2017. These are like a wake-up call. Jordan-Israel relations have always been based on solid shared interests and not on political calculus. It is of utmost importance to recognize this for the future of the region and the security of both countries." Paolo Maggiolini, Associate Researcher, Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and Lecturer in History of Islamic Asia, Catholic University of Milan The US and international support for Amman is essential to preserve the region’s stability "The Biden administration is facing an unexpected crisis in Jordan where King Abdallah faces unprecedented divisions within the ruling family exacerbated by foreign meddling, the pandemic and recession. At risk is the stability of the lynchpin of the region. Saudi support for Prince Hamzah’s challenge to the King raises serious questions about the reckless and dangerous behaviour of the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. Biden has moved quickly to signal support for Abdallah. He needs to rally international help for Jordan’s weak economy and deep structural problems. Keeping Jordan stable is critical to survival of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty which is deeply unpopular." Instability spills over to Israeli security crises specifically. Solomon 4/6 "Instability in neighboring Jordan is ‘bad news’ for Israel" Ariel Ben Solomon ~Middle East Correspondent for the Jerusalem Post~, Apr 6, 2021 https://www.jns.org/instability-in-neighboring-jordan-is-bad-news-for-israel/ SM Instability in neighboring Jordan is ‘bad news’ for Israel For the past several years, Jordan has come under increasing strain due to wars in bordering Iraq and Syria, which has led to many refugees resettling in Jordan. Combine a population holding divergent loyalties with a poor economic situation, and the result has been unrest. (April 6, 2021 / JNS) The arrest last weekend of nearly 20 people, including former Crown Prince Hamza bin Hussein, by Jordanian authorities in what is being viewed by some as a coup attempt has led to fears over the stability of the strategic Arab state. Jordan, a key U.S. and Israeli ally, is important for Israel’s national security because it serves as a buffer against radical forces from within the country as well as those further east, Israeli Middle East experts told JNS. "The border with the Hashemite Kingdom is Israel’s longest, and Jordan serves as a friendly buffer on the east," affirmed Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies. "We should not forget that the territories east of Jordan until the border of India are in the hands of rulers under Islamist influence." On Saturday, Jordan’s official media outlet denied reports that Prince Hamza had been arrested, claiming that the prince had instead been asked to stop "movements and activities that are used to target" the kingdom’s stability and security. Other key figures were also detained, including at least one other Jordanian royal, as well as tribal leaders and members of the country’s political and security establishment. Prince Hamza, the eldest son of the late King Hussein and his American-born fourth wife, Queen Noor, and the half-brother of King Abdullah, said he would defy his house arrest conditions, adding to the intrigue behind what was reported as an attempt to destabilize the country. "For sure, I won’t obey when they tell you that you cannot go out or tweet or reach out to people but are only allowed to see the family. I expect this talk is not acceptable in any way," Hamza said on Monday in a recording released by Jordan’s opposition, reported Reuters. According to the report, Prince Hamza had visited tribal gatherings in recent weeks, where the government and the king had been openly blasted. Middle East expert Hillel Frisch, a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, told JNS, "I don’t think this is the beginning of the fall of King Abdullah. All the key actors are behind him." "Nevertheless, this is the first serious fissure in the royal family, which if it did not enjoy total unity was always sufficiently disciplined to keep major differences within the family," he said. "What happened in Jordan seems to be a result of dynastic struggles within the ruling royal family." "A mainstay of Hashemite rule always lay in that it was more united than any other political actor in Jordan," added Frisch. "This may no longer be the case." Indeed, Abdullah has ruled the country since King Hussein’s death in 1999 and has cultivated a very close relationship with the United States. Hamza has had a strained relationship with his half-brother, who stripped him of his title in 2004 and later appointed his own son as crown prince. Nevertheless, Hamza has held multiple positions within the monarchy, including in the army, and commands a loyal following in Amman, where he often styles himself after his late father. At the same time, for the past several years, Jordan has come under increasing strain due to wars in bordering Iraq and Syria, which has led to many refugees resettling in Jordan. The country has most recently has been hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The United States is "closely following" the situation in Jordan following reports of an alleged coup plot involving the former Jordanian crown prince, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Sunday. The action against Hamza comes a few weeks after the Jordanian government publicly acknowledged a new defense agreement with the United States that allows free entry for American forces. It boosts Israel’s unstable eastern neighbor, providing a base from which U.S. forces can potentially act in Syria, Iraq and Iran. The defense pact’s timing—coming soon before the government crackdown—shows how dependent Jordan is on outside support. Weak national identity leads to instability Jordan is estimated to have more than half of its population of Palestinian origin, with many from the West Bank, which Jordan occupied between 1949 and 1967, in addition to a significant Muslim Brotherhood presence. These are ingredients for instability. Add to this the fact that the Jordanian state has a weak sense of national identity, as it and other Arab states were created by Western European powers after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. A journal article by Linda L. Layne titled "The Dialogics of Tribal Self-Representation in Jordan," published in 1989 in the American Ethnologist, explains how the state sought to cultivate a national identity around disparate tribes. "The symbolization of tribes has been facilitated by the Jordanian government’s policy over the last several decades to unify and integrate individual tribal identities into one broad tribal identity, that is, to promote Bedouinism in a general way rather than encouraging each tribe to maintain and develop its own individual identity," she wrote. One question that gets to the root of the matter is how "Jordanian" its citizens actually feel. Palestinian, tribal and Islamist elements are less loyal to the state than their ideology or kinship networks. In the Middle East, loyalty tends to be to one’s family and tribe. The Jordanian regime keeps its grip on power thanks to military and economic aid, mainly by the United States and the Gulf states. Indeed, America is Jordan’s biggest supporter with more than $1.5 billion in aid in 2020, including $425 million in military assistance. The poor economic situation combined with a heterogeneous population with divergent loyalties has led to frequent unrest among a vehemently anti-Israel population. As Frisch noted, "even though the rise of a radical regime was not in the offing, instability in Jordan is bad news for Israel." Collapse of Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty causes Middle East war. Lazaroff 20 "Will annexation destroy Israeli-Jordanian peace, set kingdom aflame?" Tovah Lazaroff is the Deputy Managing Editor of The Jerusalem Post May 1, 2020 https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/will-annexation-destroy-israeli-jordanian-peace-set-kingdom-aflame-626104 SM The possible collapse of the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty and potential destruction of a stable regional ally, the Hashemite Kingdom, is one of the stronger arguments against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex West Bank settlements this year. The 1994 peace treaty with Jordan, as well as the 1979 treaty signed with Egypt, have been a foundation cornerstone of Israeli regional security and gateway to the Arab world. The value of the two treaties, in an otherwise hostile region, has only increased in relation to the growing threats from Iran and ISIS and other Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups. So the idea of an Israeli plan, either unilateral or in conjunction with the US, that would risk those treaties and the stability of Israel, after a decade of regional turmoil, has to give one pause. "Unilateral annexation will damage stability in the Middle East" and harm Israel, said former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Ami Ayalon. "The peace treaty with Egypt and the peace treaty with Jordan are in a way the two cornerstones of our ~regional~ policy and our security for the last 30 to 40 years," he said. A retired admiral, Ayalon is among a group of more than 220 former security officers who have embarked on a campaign against the move through the group Commanders for Israel’s Security. Last week, he and two other high-level former security officials, Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Gadi Shamni and former Mossad director Tamir Pardo, published an article in US-based Foreign Policy magazine, warning about the implications to Jordan and Egypt. There are many rational reasons for the two countries to maintain ties with Israel, Ayalon told The Jerusalem Post. Egypt relies on Israel for intelligence and security cooperation when it comes to fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS in Sinai. Jordan has water and gas deals with Israel. Both countries also rely heavily on financial assistance from the United States, which is tied to the peace deals. Still, those factors would not be enough to offset the danger to the Kingdom from the street, Ayalon said. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, however, regional leaders cannot afford to ignore public opinion, particularly on a topic where emotions run high, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said. Rulers in both Egypt and Jordan "have to listen to the voices of the street because they understand that power," he said. Egyptian President Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has more flexibility than Jordan’s King Abdullah, Ayalon said. Jordan is home to a large number of Palestinians, and there are also many young people who are radicalized, Shamni said. "They will never accept Jordanian silence with regards to annexation," he said. "To survive, the king will have to take extreme steps that might even severely damage the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement." Throughout the years, Israeli actions in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza have had a destabilizing influence, Ayalon said. "But there is a huge difference between incremental change" and a large unilateral act, such as annexation, particularly one that is against the declared will of all Arab leaders, he said. Shamni, who was also Israel’s former military secretary to the US and a military adviser to former prime minister Ariel Sharon, said the plan creates unnecessary turmoil and security problems. At issue is Israel’s eastern border, which is its calmest out of the five borders, he said. There are hostilities along the Lebanese, Syrian and Gaza borders, and even the Egyptian border can be problematic because of terrorist groups in the Sinai Desert, he said. But the combined efforts of Israeli and Jordanian security forces have kept violence at bay, Shamni said. Jordan acts as an additional security buffer for Israel and provides a strategic safeguard against terrorism and other security threats, he said. Jordan’s location, bordering Iraq on the other side, makes peaceful relations with Israel particularly significant, he added. Coordination with Jordan is crucial for Israel’s safety along this critical stretch, Shamni said. Scenario 2 Healthcare infrastructure key to COVID management. OECD 20 OECD ~Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development~ "COVID-19 crisis response in MENA countries", 06 November 2020 https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=129'129919-4li7bq8asvandtitle=COVID-19-Crisis-Response-in-MENA-Countriesand'ga=2.237304256.1316433697.1631849561-29263471.1631849561 SM The revival in COVID-19 cases that followed the gradual easing of restrictions and reopening of the economy in several MENA countries, similarly to elsewhere in the world, is putting to the test the capacity of healthcare systems throughout the region to deal with a second wave of the pandemic. Two main trends are emerging, with on the one hand, a number of countries where precautionary measures and enforcement seem to have succeeded in flattening the curve, and, on the other hand, countries where limited capacity to enforce physical distancing and overstrained healthcare systems are making it increasingly challenging for governments to control the situation. Challenges to health systems and health sector resilience MENA countries’ containment efforts have proved particularly important in light of the region’s varying levels of health system preparedness. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the extent of the healthcare sector’s resilience across MENA economies. Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries and Jordan GCC economies have undertaken substantial investments in healthcare infrastructure, alongside efforts to increase the number of doctors and nursing personnel. While the GCC remains behind the global average in healthcare expenditure, budget allocations have been increasing significantly. This has considerably improved the quality of healthcare services in the region. In an assessment of COVID-19 preparedness published mid-March by the WHO, which ranked countries on a scale of 1 (no capacity) to 5 (sustainable capacity), all GCC countries except Qatar scored either 4 or 5. Despite accounting for close to half of the COVID-19 regional cases, GCC governments have succeeded in bringing the outbreak under control in their countries, displaying recovery rates significantly higher than the global average5. This results from a strategy based on prevention, strict control measures adopted and effectively enforced early on, and important means allocated to case detection and tracking. The UAE and Bahrain are among global leaders in terms of testing, ranking respectively first and third for the number of new tests per 1,000 people as of late September.6 Countries have also made available significant financial and material resources for COVID-19 treatment to avoid overwhelming health services, including by building dedicated treatment facilities, such as in the UAE. Jordan, which has an overall weaker health system and lower level of COVID-19 preparedness, managed to adopt a strategy similar to that of GCC countries. This has so far proved to be effective, although at high economic and societal cost. As a result of a swift government reaction and effective implementation of lockdown measures enabled by the state’s high enforcement capacity, COVID-19 infection and mortality rates in Jordan have remained consistently low. The government has also significantly scaled up its testing capacity to reach 70,000 tests per 1 million inhabitants in August, more than three times the test ratio recommended by the WHO. As of October 14, cases are on the rise again and curfews are being re-introduced. Developing MENA economies (Maghreb, Egypt) Developing MENA economies have been suffering from low health expenditures, human resource shortages in the health care sector and lack of medical equipment. Total health expenditure per capita in most MENA countries is significantly below averages for countries in similar income categories. Furthermore, the number of physicians per 1,000 inhabitants in the region is much below the WHO recommended threshold of 4.45 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 population, and as low as 0.72 and 0.79 in Morocco and Egypt respectively.7 The limited capacity of health systems to handle a large-scale outbreak prompted governments to adopt strict containment measures. However, while these measures contributed to limit the number of COVID-19 infections and related deaths in the first few months following the outbreak, the progressive de-confinement was accompanied by a rapid rise in cases, further straining countries’ health systems. In most countries, this is largely due to large religious gatherings, wedding celebrations and other social events where control measures were not sufficiently applied.8 Loosening compliance with preventive measures and difficulty to enforce physical distancing in large, densely populated cities (e.g. Cairo) have raised concerns over the evolution of the situation. As of October, international and social media, as well as NGOs reported that hospitals were struggling to manage the growing influx of COVID-19 patients, with some reaching full capacity, while healthcare professionals have pointed out to the lack of necessary medical equipment, doctors, medical personnel and ICU beds to deal with a second wave of such magnitude. This also challenging the massive testing strategy, as testing sites are becoming increasingly saturated. In some countries, observers have pointed to an ill-managed re-opening of international borders, while emerging social movements within the medical personnel risks adding pressure to an already tense health sector. Fragile and conflict-affected countries Lebanon had initially managed to contain the first COVID-19 wave by adopting strong containment measures early on with high levels of compliance from the population. However, following the explosion in the port of Beirut on 4 August, which destroyed half of the city’s medical centres and left three of its hospitals "non-functional" according to the WHO, the health situation has gotten largely out of control. Reported numbers of COVID-19 cases and related deaths have been rising at unprecedented speed, sparking worries regarding the capacity of ICU and dedicated facilities to absorb the second wave, as many are already at capacity treating those wounded in the blast. In the current emergency setting, with adherence to public health measures being compromised, the rise in cases shows no sign of slowing down. At the same time, possibilities for re-implementing strict containment measures are constrained by the economic crisis. Indeed, the two-week lockdown which had been announced after the explosion was eased prematurely due to economic pressures. In other fragile and conflict-affected countries, the COVID-19 outbreak poses a major challenge given damages to health systems.9 In emergency settings, where availability of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services is scarce, applying preventive measures to limit the spread of the disease has proved difficult. Countries where healthcare facilities have been partially destroyed during the war and governance remains extremely fragile and uncoordinated in certain areas, and lack the necessary capacity to respond to the crisis in terms of medical facilities, equipment and personnel. In Syria, the WHO10 estimates that 70 of health care workers have left the country as migrants or refugees, while only 64 of hospitals and 52 of primary health care centres remain fully operational. One possible explanation for the low number of COVID-19 cases reported in these countries at the beginning of the pandemic is the fact that, due to lack of bed capacity or difficulty to reach hospitals, people often die at home.11 In addition, the lack of testing capacity has resulted in months of under-reporting, in particular in Syria and Yemen. The situation has worsened over the summer, with numbers of COVID-19 cases and related deaths rapidly growing. At the same time, enforcement of containment measures has proved difficult in the context of already fragile economic situations, which cannot afford the necessary restrictions to limit the spread of the virus. Developments in the MENA health systems and health policies In some MENA countries, COVID-19 vaccine developments are likely to rapidly boost the supply and infrastructure of the healthcare industry. For example, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Morocco have partnered with foreign countries (notably China and Israel) and private companies alike to support vaccine research, and have engaged into advanced trial phases. Phase III trials started in the UAE in July12 and in Saudi Arabia in August for vaccines developed by two Chinese companies, respectively Sinopharm and CanSino Biologics. Egypt has also engaged in a partnership with China for the development and distribution of two COVID-19 vaccines developed by Sinopharm. This could lead to a reinforced China-MENA collaboration in this field13. With more investment (both public and private) in healthcare provision, opportunities for the private sector to support the development of health systems will increase14. In the Gulf, the surge in demand – driven by ageing populations, mandatory health insurance and high levels of lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes – along with new government strategies and regulatory reforms are propelling private investment in the healthcare industry. In particular, a recent report produced by Mashreq and Frost and Sullivan found that the COVID-19 crisis had considerably boosted investments in digitisation and telehealth. The research estimates annual investment in digital infrastructure in the GCC to grow by 10 to 20 over the next two years, while teleconsultations are expected to be multiplied by four by Q4 2020.15 In Morocco, a HealthTech startup of the research and development centre MAScIR is now capable of producing 1 million RT-PCR tests per month, and a public-private partnership between the Ministry of Industry and various private sector actors has allowed to develop a locally produced ICU bed, massively cheaper than those imported from abroad. Failure to contain the pandemic causes Middle East escalation – multiple hotspots. Alaaldin 20 "COVID-19 will prolong conflict in the Middle East" Ranj Alaaldin ~visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and nonresident fellow in the Foreign Policy program. He's also the director of a Carnegie Corporation project on proxy warfare in the Middle East.~, April 24, 2020 https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/04/24/covid-19-will-prolong-conflict-in-the-middle-east/ SM CONFLICTS AROUND THE REGION In Libya, as Frederic Wehrey and others have pointed out, the pandemic has provided a boost to militias, providing an opportunity for them to channel medical aid to their fighters and instrumentalize the crisis to reward and reinforce patronage networks and favored communities. Troublingly, Libya’s hospitals are routinely targeted by rocket attacks, exacerbating the situation. In Yemen, militias loyal to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) stormed into the southern port of Aden and stole medical aid donated by the World Health Organization (WHO), including nine ambulances destined for the health ministry. The conflict in Yemen has involved indiscriminate attacks that have devastated medical facilities and water supplies, contributing to what the international community has described as the world’s greatest man-made humanitarian crisis, including the worst cholera outbreak in modern history. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has reinforced its status as an alternative to the Lebanese state by committing close to 5,000 doctors, medics, and nurses to fight the pandemic. In Iraq, ISIS has ramped up its attacks in northern Iraqi villages and is moving to exploit Baghdad’s growing list of crises — ranging from the escalation between the U.S. and Iran, the decline in oil prices, and country-wide protests. During a public health crisis, ISIS can revive itself and expand its influence by catering to the needs of local communities in ways other authorities — like the Baghdad government — have not. At a minimum, Baghdad’s failures allow ISIS to position itself as a viable alternative. Combined with its current campaign of fear and intimidation, targeted assassinations, and extortion, this provides it with a patchwork, under-ground infrastructure of influence that establishes a launching pad from which to seize towns and cities in the manner it did in June 2014. In Syria, the civil war has shattered formal governing structures, and the Assad regime and Russia have moved to obliterate hospitals from the outset of the nine-year conflict. Syria is effectively three countries: regime-controlled territories, the Kurdish northeast, and Idlib in the northwest, which has 1.4 doctors per 10,000 people and only 100 ventilators. COVID-19 increases the prospects of another refugee wave that stretches the capacity of neighboring countries like Turkey and Lebanon to meet the humanitarian needs of these refugees. It also puts increased pressure on Western-aligned groups like the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), on which the West depends to maintain combat operations against ISIS and manage prison cells for detained ISIS combatants. The SDF also hosts refugee camps like Al-Hol, which houses 70,000 refugees, including ISIS combatants and their families. Middle East turmoil goes nuclear. Silverstein 4/23 "Iran-Israel tensions: The threat of nuclear disaster looms large," Richard Silverstein ~writes the Tikun Olam blog, devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state~, 23 April 2021 https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/iran-israel-tensions-threat-nuclear-war-looms-large SM Israel had a near-miss of potentially catastrophic proportions on Thursday. As it has done hundreds of times in the past decade, the Israeli air force attacked Iranian bases inside Syria. In response, Syrian forces fired anti-aircraft missiles of a rather primitive Soviet model, one of which overflew its target and landed some 30 kilometres from Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Israel said recently that it was bolstering its defences around Dimona for just such an eventuality. Although an Iranian general taunted Israel, implying that Iran had some responsibility for the attack, that doesn’t appear to be the case. But the missile landing inside Israel does show that if Iran wanted to attack Dimona, it has the capacity. And despite Israel’s best efforts, an Iranian missile could hit its target. With that, one of the worst nuclear disasters in the region’s history could unfold, including a Chernobyl-type radioactive leak that could endanger not only all of Israel, but also many of its neighbours. A US general has assured a Senate committee that the Syrians weren’t intending to attack Israel. Rather, a misguided missile meant to target an Israeli warplane overshot its target. He blamed it on "incompetence", as if that was supposed to be somehow reassuring; rather, it only reinforces how easy it is even for a mistake to cause a nuclear disaster. Campaign of terror Certainly, if either Israel or Iran wanted to bomb each other’s nuclear facilities, they could do so successfully. An Israeli attack would probably cause less catastrophic damage, but only because Iran’s nuclear programme is not nearly as developed as Israel’s. An Iranian direct hit on Dimona would cause incalculable damage due to the plutonium reactor at the facility. Nor does this happen in a vacuum: Israel has maintained a decade-long campaign of terror attacks on Iranian military bases and nuclear scientists. Most recently, it bombed the Natanz nuclear facility, destroying the power generation source and damaging older-generation centrifuges. It also attacked an Iranian Revolutionary Guard spy ship off the Yemeni coast this month. Iran has responded in its own limited way, restrained by its need to maintain good relations with nuclear-deal signatories. For Israel, the attacks are a low-risk proposition. It defies US opposition (if there is any) with a wink and a nod, and the attacks look good on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s résumé. To weather his corruption trial and retain public support, he needs external enemies (and internal enemies, but that’s a different story). Iran provides these in spades. Eliminating Israeli leverage The US could exert control over this scenario by eliminating Israeli leverage. If it agreed to lift sanctions in exchange for Iran’s return to low levels of uranium enrichment, as designated in the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, Israel’s rejectionist approach would become moot. The problem is that US President Joe Biden is running scared from Republican opposition to any nuclear deal with Iran. Besides, he has designated the Middle East a low priority for his administration. There is some faint hope in the US announcement that it is ready to lift a partial set of sanctions. However, the list on offer is quite limited, and will certainly not satisfy the Iranians. Such half-measures present an example of the limitations of the Biden approach. He should instead make a full-throated commitment to end this dithering once and for all. Israel is mounting a full-court press this coming week as it sends its Mossad and military intelligence chiefs, along with its army chief of staff, to Washington in an attempt to influence nuclear negotiations as they enter what may be a final stage. According to Haaretz, army chief of staff Aviv Kochavi "will also raise other issues, including Iran’s military expansion in Syria and the instability of Lebanon. Israel is concerned about the possibility that Hezbollah will try to ~foment~ conflict with Israel." The hypocrisy of Israel’s refusal to acknowledge its own massive military interventions in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and even Iraq, while decrying Iran’s involvement in Syria, is almost breathtaking. There is next to no chance that any of this will enter into the considerations of negotiators in Vienna. Unlike Israel, they are interested in doing a nuclear deal, not engaging in wishful thinking. Combustible Middle East mix Returning to the Biden administration’s global goals, the Middle East doesn’t care about presidential priorities. It contains a combustible mix of corrupt elites and overbearing dictators who do not shirk from causing mayhem in their domains. And one of them, perhaps a desperate Israeli prime minister or an ageing ayatollah eager to preserve his honour and legacy, could inadvertently (or intentionally) set the entire region aflame. If Biden doesn’t act quickly and decisively, there is a sizeable risk that another missile from one country or the other will hit a target and cause devastation. That would mark a point of no return, like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which led to World War One. The difference is that in 1914, armies fought with guns, bayonets and artillery. Today, they will fight with F-35s, ballistic missiles and possibly nuclear weapons. Regional war escalates quickly and draws in Russia and the US. Hour 18 (Maj. Nadav Ben Hour, a visiting military fellow with The Washington Institute, "The Great Middle Eastern War of 2019," 8/20, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-great-middle-eastern-war-of-2019) MULTIPLE ACTORS, FRONTS, AND DOMAINS The potential for yet another war—one of unprecedented scope and complexity—is an outcome of the Syrian civil war, which has enabled Iran to build a military infrastructure in Syria and to deploy its Shi’a "foreign legion" to Israel’s borders. War is now possible on multiple fronts and in far-flung theaters, fought on land, in the air, at sea, and in information and cyber domains by fighters from Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Yemen. The widened scope of a possible war will create new military options for Iran and Hezbollah, and stretch Israeli capabilities to their limits. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said as much, though perhaps with some exaggeration, when he warned in June 2017 that "if an Israeli war is launched against Syria or Lebanon it is not known that the fighting will remain Lebanese-Israeli, or Syrian-Israeli," and "this could open the way for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of fighters from all over the Arab and Islamic world to participate." Likewise, IRGC Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari stated in November 2017 that, "The fate of the resistance front is interwoven and they all stand united, and if Israel attacks a part of it, the other component of the front will help it." Such a war is most likely to occur as a result of unintended escalation, after another Iranian action against Israel from Syria, or after an Israeli strike in Lebanon or Syria (for example, against missile production facilities). It could start as a result of a U.S. and/or Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program. It might even come about as a result of a conflict that starts in the Gulf but that reaches Israel’s borders—perhaps as a result of Iranian diversionary moves (much as Saddam Hussein tried in 1991 to derail the U.S. military campaign to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait by launching missiles at Israel). A new northern war could resemble one of several scenarios: Lebanon War Plus. A war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, in which Iranians, thousands of foreign Shi’a fighters, and even Hamas (which has established a limited military presence in southern Lebanon) also participate. The Syrian front remains relatively quiet, with Israel acting there on a limited basis to interdict the movement of fighters and capabilities into Lebanon. War in Syria. A war between Israeli and Iranian forces, Shi’a militias (including Hezbollah fighters), and perhaps even elements of the Syrian military, fought on Syrian territory. The Lebanese front remains relatively quiet. Should Syrian ground forces get drawn into combat, however, Russia might intervene to protect its client. A Two-Front War. A war in Lebanon and Syria between Israeli and Iranian troops, Hezbollah, Shi’a militias, and perhaps even elements of the Syrian military, in which both sides treat Lebanon and Syria as a single, unified theater of operations. All three of these scenarios entail a potential for escalation or spillover into secondary fronts or theaters, and the involvement of additional actors: Additional Fronts/Theaters. A war in Lebanon and/or Syria might prompt: attacks on Israel from Gaza, unrest in the West Bank, or terrorist attacks in Israel; Houthi attacks on Israeli interests (such as Israeli maritime traffic in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait), or Israeli strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen; missile attacks on Israel by Shi’a militias in Iraq, and Israeli counterstrikes. Some of these militias have already warned that the latter could trigger attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq. Israel vs. Iran. During fighting in Syria or Lebanon, Israel attacks Iran to strike a blow against the central pillar of the enemy coalition, and to thereby influence the course of the war. Alternatively, Iran augments attacks on Israel from Syria or Lebanon with attacks from its own territory, perhaps after suffering heavy losses in Syria. These could take the form of air or missile strikes and/or destructive cyberattacks on military targets and critical infrastructure. A Regional War? A low-probability/high-impact scenario in which a conflict in the Levant morphs into a regional war involving Saudi Arabia and perhaps the United Arab Emirates as well. Israel responds to attacks on its critical infrastructure with air strikes or cyberattacks on Iran’s oil industry or even its nuclear facilities—with the encouragement and perhaps logistical assistance of Gulf Arab states. Iran retaliates against Israel, but also conducts missile strikes, sabotage, or cyberattacks on Arab oil facilities across the Gulf, leading to escalation there, and perhaps even military intervention by the United States. Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be? We are not talking enough about the climatic effects of nuclear war. The "nuclear winter" theory of the mid-1980s played a significant role in the arms reductions of that period. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, this aspect of nuclear war has faded from view. That’s not good. In the mid-2000s, climate scientists such as Alan Robock (Rutgers) took another look at nuclear winter theory. This time around, they used much-improved and much more detailed climate models than those available 20 years earlier. They also tested the potential effects of smaller nuclear exchanges. The result: an exchange involving just 50 nuclear weapons — the kind of thing we might see in an India-Pakistan war, for example — could loft 5 billion kilograms of smoke, soot and dust high into the stratosphere. That’s enough to cool the entire planet by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.25 degrees Celsius) — about where we were during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Growing seasons could be shortened enough to create really significant food shortages. So the climatic effects of even a relatively small nuclear war would be planet-wide. What about a larger-scale conflict? A U.S.-Russia war currently seems unlikely, but if it were to occur, hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average temperatures would drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years — temperatures last seen during the great ice ages. Meanwhile, smoke and dust circulating in the stratosphere would darken the atmosphere enough to inhibit photosynthesis, causing disastrous crop failures, widespread famine and massive ecological disruption. The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs. Many people are concerned about North Korea’s advancing missile capabilities. Is nuclear war likely in your opinion? At this writing, I think we are closer to a nuclear war than we have been since the early 1960s. In the North Korea case, both Kim Jong-un and President Trump are bullies inclined to escalate confrontations. President Trump lacks impulse control, and there are precious few checks on his ability to initiate a nuclear strike. We have to hope that our generals, both inside and outside the White House, can rein him in. North Korea would most certainly "lose" a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die, including hundreds of thousands of Americans currently living in South Korea and Japan (probable North Korean targets). Such vast damage would be wrought in Korea, Japan and Pacific island territories (such as Guam) that any "victory" wouldn’t deserve the name. Not only would that region be left with horrible suffering amongst the survivors; it would also immediately face famine and rampant disease. Radioactive fallout from such a war would spread around the world, including to the U.S. It has been more than 70 years since the last time a nuclear bomb was used in warfare. What would be the effects on the environment and on human health today? To my knowledge, most of the changes in nuclear weapons technology since the 1950s have focused on making them smaller and lighter, and making delivery systems more accurate, rather than on changing their effects on the environment or on human health. So-called "battlefield" weapons with lower explosive yields are part of some arsenals now — but it’s quite unlikely that any exchange between two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs. Plan: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan ought to reduce data exclusivity for medicines. Barqawi 19 "The access to medicine puzzle: scaling back the negative effects of the Jordan–US Free Trade Agreement" Laila Barqawi ~Lecturer of University of Central Lancashire, Preston (UCLAN)~. Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, Volume 14, Issue 9, September 2019, Pages 678–686, https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpz080 SM We now examine each of the JFDA’s recommendations:
‘Shortening the term of data exclusivity for new chemical entity: neither TRIPS nor Jordan-US FTA request the five years.’14 As mentioned above, Jordan has gone beyond its TRIPS obligations to provide five years of protection for data exclusivity.15 To this effect, Jordan should repeal Article 8 of Jordan’s Law No 15 on Unfair Competition and Trade Secrets Law, which reduces data exclusivity protection to 3years as per JUSFTA. Jordan should continue its efforts to redefine what constitutes a New Chemical Entity (NCE), started with a circular dated 16 June 2009 by the JFDA’s director general: A New Chemical Entity is the pharmaceutical product that contains active moiety or moieties that is responsible for physiological or pharmacological effect whereby no more than eighteen months have elapsed from the date of first registration of any of its ingredients (components) singly or collectively in any country in the world irrespective of any difference in, including but not limited to, type of salt, ester, isomer, complex or other derivative. A pharmaceutical product shall be considered to have the same chemical entity even if there is a difference in polymorph, metabolite, enantiomer, solvate, size of particles, formulation, combination, or method of use, pharmaceutical dosage form or concentration.16 Jordan has also excluded isomers and new crystalline forms from its NCE definition.17 Further suggestions on how to restrict the definition of an NCE are offered below. 2. ‘Start date of data exclusivity: a country can consider that the start date for granting data exclusivity is the first registration of the product worldwide.’18 Jordan’s start date of data exclusivity is the date of first registration of a medicine in Jordan. This is pursuant to Article 4.22 of JUSFTA. Jordan could amend its laws to reflect the above recommendation, as other countries have done. For instance, Peru’s Legislative Decree allows five-year term of data exclusivity protection ‘to start concurrently from the date the product is approved in other countries with high sanitary monitoring or approval regime.’19 Jordan could attempt to go farther in decreasing the existing negative effect of data exclusivity specifically as per the Chilean example by amending its national laws to limit pharmaceutical data protection availability to the year following grant of marketing approval, which means that the drugs’ test data not marketed within the year are not protected so that the period of protection for the pharmaceutical test data starts early.20 3. ‘JFDA should examine the test data protection conditions before granting data exclusivity: Then, JFDA can issue a protection certificate confirming complaint of data exclusivity conditions’21 The JFDA, in its capacity to register drugs,22 does not scrutinize test data protection and check whether it has been granted previously or not,23 instead relying on the applicant’s declaration.24 This recommendation requires specialized patent examiners that will be able to assess and examine test data protection conditions to grant data exclusivity. 4.‘Undisclosed test data: this should be defined in the registration criteria and JFDA should examine this condition by requesting a certificate from the originator company declaring that the submitted test data have not been published by any means or in any way. If the data become non-confidential, then the JFDA has the right to end the data exclusivity period.’25 The JFDA, currently, requests that clinical trials of phase III be published. This does not fulfil the requirement of data confidentiality under Article 39.3 of TRIPS.26 To this effect, JFDA grants five years of data exclusivity without checking ‘whether data submitted for regulatory approval has been previously disclosed.’27 The JFDA, however, assesses ‘the published data of Phase III’.28 Undisclosed clinical trial data is a universal issue and various initiatives have been put in place to tackle this.29 A study conducted recently has shown that only ‘57 of clinical trial results for a new drug are made publicly available’.30 Jordan may implement national laws to state that if a summary of clinical studies ‘or of information in scientific literature’ is publicly available then this is ‘sufficient to consider the test data as disclosed’.31 For instance, in accordance with a policy applied since January 2015 by the European Medicines Agency, the information about clinical studies cannot be considered ‘commercial confidential information’.32 While ‘clinical reports may not be used to support a MAA ~marketing authorisation application~/ extensions or variations to a MAA nor to make any unfair commercial use of the clinical reports’,33 the restriction does not change the nature of the information as disclosed to the extent that it is publicly available.34 In this context, Jordan could argue that such disclosures are sufficient to negate data exclusivity to a drug. 5. ‘Considerable efforts: this should be defined in the registration criteria and JFDA should examine this condition by requesting evidence from the originator company to show that the generation of the submitted test data involved considerable efforts by reporting the cost and the period involved in the generation of the submitted test data.’35 Jordan does not examine the considerable effort element36 or have a definition37 for it despite it being a requirement of Article 39.3 TRIPS. The JFDA should define this and require the originator company to submit a declaration or certificate stating how conditions are fulfilled. This recommendation is straightforward and is in line with other countries policies such as Peru. Peru’s Legislative Decree protects cases if ‘generating it has involved considerable efforts’ and therefore the submission of undisclosed test data is ‘necessary to determine the safety and efficiency of such product’.38 This has been applied by Colombia’s Decree 2085 of 2002, which introduced seven exceptions. The most relevant to this recommendation states that ‘protection does not apply to: 1. Test data that are already in the public domain or have not involved considerable effort from the patent applicant to produce’.39 The benefit of fulfilling this recommendation is that Jordan will be able to ‘protect information against unfair commercial use’ as stipulated in Article 4.22 of JUSFTA,40 finally giving useful meaning to an ambiguous term. Achieving this will be in line with Article 39.3 of TRIPS as well as an advantage to use Article 4.22 of JUSFTA. 6. ‘Data exclusivity term should not extend beyond the patent term’. 41 A study on medicine affordability in Jordan concluded that medicine prices required review to provide inexpensive medication to the poor.42 Almost 32 per cent of the Jordanian population is not insured and will have to finance its own needs.43 A further issue highlighted in the study is that ‘the government is purchasing originator brands where lower-priced generics are available, which points to a lack of efficiency’.44 This clearly warrants a reviewing exercise by the JFDA to examine existing patented medications. JFDA should then produce a list of available alternatives. JFDA has been implementing a ‘standing operating policy’ which welcomes generic applications from an innovator during the final year of protection to allow prompt registration of affordable generic drugs.45 This policy, if applied effectively, could also ensure that data exclusivity terms will not extend beyond the patent term. 7. ‘Allow registration of the generic product for the purposes of export’.46 This recommendation is straightforward and is self-explanatory. Israel, for example, has removed its trade barriers and now allows for a generic product to be registered during the exclusivity period of the originator product for the purposes of export.47 8. ‘Grounds for revocation of the data exclusivity period: such as anti-competitive practices of the originator company: high prices, delay in marketing the product more than six months from approval date, stop marketing for more than six months or insufficient marketing of the product’.48 As mentioned previously, JUSFTA is the only FTA which does not stipulate grounds for pre-grant or limit grounds of revocation.49 This should be defined within Jordan’s national legislation because the status quo means that originator companies will not be penalized for various unlawful acts. The author would add to the recommendation that grounds of revocation should include acts of inequality, misrepresentation and fraud, as per the Bahrain-US FTA (BUSFTA). 50 9. ‘Waive data exclusivity protection in cases of compulsory licensing: in case of the issuance of a compulsory license, the generic company is still required to submit clinical trials. Therefore, data exclusivity should be waived in such cases’. 51 Jordan’s regulations could provide that ‘data exclusivity shall have no effects against a compulsory licensee granted for any of the grounds established under the applicable patent law, or against persons authorized to undertake a governmental non-commercial use of the patented product’.52 Furthermore, Malaysia adopted similar stances to mitigate the effects of data exclusivity as per section 5 of Malaysia’s 2011 Directive of data exclusivity, entitled ‘Non-Application of Data Exclusivity’, according to which: ‘Nothing in the Data Exclusivity shall: apply to situations where compulsory licenses have been issued or the implementation of any other measures consistent with the need to protect public health and ensure access to medicines for all; or prevent the Government from taking any necessary action to protect public health, national security, non-commercial public use, national emergency, public health crisis or other extremely urgent circumstances declared by the government.’53 10. ‘Waive data exclusivity in cases of emergency and public interest.’54 Colombia succeeded in including a clause in its Decree 2085 of 2002 which states that ‘protection does not apply to: ~~ 4. Information whose disclosure is necessary to protect the public interest’.55 This is an important waiver to include in Jordanian legislation because access to medicine is a human right, as stipulated within various international documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 at Article 25,56 the preamble57 and Article 158 of 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organisation and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.59 It is arguable that TRIPS and TRIPS-plus clauses are in conflict with human rights clauses; however, this issue is beyond the scope of this article.
‘Waive data exclusivity for products intended for the treatment of life-threatening diseases.’60 The above waivers in the JFDA’s recommendations could be included in Jordan’s national legislation laws as exceptions to limit the effects of data exclusivity.61 Similar waivers are embodied within the Chilean legislation, which excluded certain areas from the scope of protection. One example is Article 91 of the Chilean Industrial Property Law, which states: The protection of this Paragraph shall not apply when: ~~ (b) For reasons of public health, national security, non-commercial public use, national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency declared by the competent authority, ending the protection referred to in Article 89 shall be justified. Reducing data exclusivity revives the generic market which boosts accessible healthcare and the economy. Alawi and Alabbadi 15 Investigating the Effect of Data Exclusivity on the Pharmaceutical Sector in Jordan Rand Alawi ~Pharmacist, MBA, Faculty of Business, The University of Jordan~ and Ibrahim Alabbadi ~ Associate Professor, MBA, PhD, Biopharmaceutics and Clinical Pharmacy Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, The University of Jordan Jordan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Volume 8, No. 2, 2015 https://journals.ju.edu.jo/JJPS/article/view/9377/4480 SM On the other hand, medicines prices have continued to rise in Jordan after IP rules, but Jordan was not able to use TRIPS safeguards to reduce their cost. Also, Jordanian generic companies have not developed any new medicines since the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). While new medicines were frequently unavailable or unaffordable in Jordan(14). The research-based pharmaceutical industry claims that data exclusivity provides incentives for companies to generate the necessary data, since without marketing exclusivity, brand-name companies would not want to conduct expensive preclinical tests and clinical trials(15). The argument that data exclusivity laws will encourage the introduction of new medicines into the market betrays a misunderstanding of their implications. In fact, there is a possibility that data exclusivity would actually provide incentives to delay the entry of new products for multinational companies would prefer to keep prices high in developed markets by delaying their entry into the developing world at lower prices(16). The tension between patent law and public health concerns such as access to medicine has long been an issue of much debate. The requirement of patent protection for pharmaceutical products and various other relevant provisions under the TRIPS agreement signifies this tension as they have created considerable difficulties for developing countries acquiring the medicines needed to address their public health concerns, despite the flexibilities that had been built into the agreement. Hence, the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health has been adopted in 2001 to address this issue, hoping to provide relief to this tension between public health policies and intellectual property rights legislations. Nevertheless, this tension seems to have been further heightened with the proliferation of the FTAs, through which developed countries such as the US and the EU have introduced TRIPS-plus obligations that go beyond the minimum standards set by TRIPS, further exacerbating the tension. Over the years, these TRIPSplus FTAs have been much criticized for their possible conflict with TRIPS norms and their potential negative impact on access to medicines. Data exclusivity did not affect only Jordan, but also its export market, as the local Jordanian manufacturers will be out of their export markets at least for 7 years;(5 years protection due to data exclusivity, 1 year registration time in Jordan and at least one year registration in export market). One of the perceived gains of data exclusivity is an increase in foreign direct investment in the pharmaceutical sector and the arrival of newer medicines for Jordanian patients, but in reality this did not happen, most licensing agreements in effect today were signed before 1999, and transfer little know-how to local manufacturers. Furthermore, Egypt, in contrast to Jordan, has no TRIPS-Plus provisions in its IPR law yet still enjoys a significant amount of foreign investment in its pharmaceuticals industry. Conclusion This study indicated that data exclusivity for the pharmaceutical products seems likely to generate negative impacts on Jordan in terms of higher drug prices. It is also suggested that data exclusivity, on one hand, would have no relation whatsoever to the rate of RandD and foreign investment, but, on the other hand, is likely to impede the industrial development process of the country. Additional expenditure for medicine with no generic equivalent was resulted from the enforcement of data exclusivity. Framing The standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism. Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. Moen 16 ~Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo "An Argument for Hedonism" Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281~ SJDI, brackets in original Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. "Pleasure" and "pain" are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: "What for?" This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: "To buy soda." This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: "What is buying the soda good for?" This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: "Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it." If I then proceed by asking "But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?" the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: "We never ask ~a man~ what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself."4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says "This is painful!" we never respond by asking: "And why is that a problem?" We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. Actor specificity – A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action. B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen. Method Focus on large scale catastrophes is good and they outweigh – appeals to social costs, moral rules, and securitization play into cognitive bias and flawed risk calculus – 2020 is living proof Weber 20 (ELKE U. WEBER is Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.), November-December 2020 Issue, "Heads in the Sand," Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-10-13/heads-sand mvp We are living in a time of crisis. From the immediate challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic to the looming existential threat of climate change, the world is grappling with massive global dangers—to say nothing of countless problems within countries, such as inequality, cyberattacks, unemployment, systemic racism, and obesity. In any given crisis, the right response is often clear. Wear a mask and keep away from other people. Burn less fossil fuel. Redistribute income. Protect digital infrastructure. The answers are out there. What’s lacking are governments that can translate them into actual policy. As a result, the crises continue. The death toll from the pandemic skyrockets, and the world makes dangerously slow progress on climate change, and so on. It’s no secret how governments should react in times of crisis. First, they need to be nimble. Nimble means moving quickly, because problems often grow at exponential rates: a contagious virus, for example, or greenhouse gas emissions. That makes early action crucial and procrastination disastrous. Nimble also means adaptive. Policymakers need to continuously adjust their responses to crises as they learn from their own experience and from the work of scientists. Second, governments need to act wisely. That means incorporating the full range of scientific knowledge available about the problem at hand. It means embracing uncertainty, rather than willfully ignoring it. And it means thinking in terms of a long time horizon, rather than merely until the next election. But so often, policymakers are anything but nimble and wise. They are slow, inflexible, uninformed, overconfident, and myopic. Why is everyone doing so badly? Part of the explanation lies in the inherent qualities of crises. Crises typically require navigating between risks. In the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers want to save lives and jobs. With climate change, they seek a balance between avoiding extreme weather and allowing economic growth. Such tradeoffs are hard as it is, and they are further complicated by the fact that costs and benefits are not evenly distributed among stakeholders, making conflict a seemingly unavoidable part of any policy choice. Vested interests attempt to forestall needed action, using their money to influence decision-makers and the media. To make matters worse, policymakers must pay sustained attention to multiple issues and multiple constituencies over time. They must accept large amounts of uncertainty. Often, then, the easiest response is to stick with the status quo. But that can be a singularly dangerous response to many new hazards. After all, with the pandemic, business as usual would mean no social distancing. With climate change, it would mean continuing to burn fossil fuels. But the explanation for humanity’s woeful response to crises goes beyond politics and incentives. To truly understand the failure to act, one must turn to human psychology. It is there that one can grasp the full impediments to proper decision-making—the cognitive biases, emotional reactions, and suboptimal shortcuts that hold policymakers back—and the tools to overcome them. AVOIDING THE UNCOMFORTABLE People are singularly bad at predicting and preparing for catastrophes. Many of these events are "black swans," rare and unpredictable occurrences that most people find difficult to imagine, seemingly falling into the realm of science fiction. Others are "gray rhinos," large and not uncommon threats that are still neglected until they stare you in the face (such as a coronavirus outbreak). Then there are "invisible gorillas," threats in full view that should be noticed but aren’t—so named for a psychological experiment in which subjects watching a clip of a basketball game were so fixated on the players that they missed a person in a gorilla costume walking through the frame. Even professional forecasters, including security analysts, have a poor track record when it comes to accurately anticipating events. The COVID-19 crisis, in which a dystopic science-fiction narrative came to life and took everyone by surprise, serves as a cautionary tale about humans’ inability to foresee important events. Not only do humans fail to anticipate crises; they also fail to respond rationally to them. At best, people display "bounded rationality," the idea that instead of carefully considering their options and making perfectly rational decisions that optimize their preferences, humans in the real world act quickly and imperfectly, limited as they are by time and cognitive capacity. Add in the stress generated by crises, and their performance gets even worse. Because humans don’t have enough time, information, or processing power to deliberate rationally, they have evolved easier ways of making decisions. They rely on their emotions, which serve as an early warning system of sorts: alerting people that they are in a positive context that can be explored and exploited or in a negative context where fight or flight is the appropriate response. They also rely on rules. To simplify decision-making, they might follow standard operating procedures or abide by some sort of moral code. They might decide to imitate the action taken by other people whom they trust or admire. They might follow what they perceive to be widespread norms. Out of habit, they might continue to do what they have been doing unless there is overwhelming evidence against it. Not only do humans fail to anticipate crises; they also fail to respond rationally to them. Humans evolved these shortcuts because they require little effort and work well in a broad range of situations. Without access to a real-time map of prey in different hunting grounds, for example, a prehistoric hunter might have resorted to a simple rule of thumb: look for animals where his fellow tribesmen found them yesterday. But in times of crisis, emotions and rules are not always helpful drivers of decision-making. High stakes, uncertainty, tradeoffs, and conflict—all elicit negative emotions, which can impede wise responses. Uncertainty is scary, as it signals an inability to predict what will happen, and what cannot be predicted might be deadly. The vast majority of people are already risk averse under normal circumstances. Under stress, they become even more so, and they retreat to the familiar comfort of the status quo. From gun laws to fossil fuel subsidies, once a piece of legislation is in place, it is hard to dislodge it, even when cost-benefit analysis argues for change. Apocalyptic images challenge dominant power structures – they contest the implausibility of inequitable structures producing catastrophe and generate imagination of futures of social justice outside of current narratives Jessica Hurley 17, Assistant Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, "Impossible Futures: Fictions of Risk in the Longue Durée", Duke University Press, https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-literature/article/89/4/761/132823/Impossible-Futures-Fictions-of-Risk-in-the-Longue Squo power structures (i.e. what the K criticizes) paint themselves as stable/inevitable to project their power and maintain dominance Questioning that stability thru extinction narratives questions squo world orders bc it calls into ques the idea of squo world stability which allows us to envision alternative worlds/future i.e. one where it fails and causes extinction Justifies extinction focus and preventing extinction in the name of changing those squo structures If contemporary ecocriticism has a shared premise about environmental risk it is that genre is the key to both perceiving and, possibly, correcting ecological crisis. Frederick Buell’s 2003 From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century has established one of the most central oppositions of this paradigm. As his title suggests, Buell tells the story of a discourse that began in the apocalyptic mode in the 1960s and 70s, when discussions of "the immanent end of nature" most commonly took the form of "prophecy, revelation, climax, and extermination" before turning away from apocalypse when the prophesied ends failed to arrive (112, 78). Buell offers his suggestion for the appropriate literary mode for life lived within a crisis that is both unceasing and inescapable: new voices, "if wise enough will abandon apocalypse for a sadder realism that looks closely at social and environmental changes in process and recognizes crisis as a place where people dwell" (202-3). In a world of threat, Buell demands a realism that might help us see risks more clearly and aid our survival. Buell’s argument has become a broadly held view in contemporary risk theory and ecocriticism, overlapping fields in the social sciences and humanities that address the foundational question of second modernity: "how do you live when you are at such risk?" (Woodward 2009, 205).1 Such an assertion, however, assumes both that realism is a neutral descriptive practice and that apocalypse is not something that is happening now in places that we might not see, or cannot hear. This essay argues for the continuing importance of apocalyptic narrative forms in representations of environmental risk to disrupt conservative realisms that maintain the statusquo. Taking the ecological disaster of nuclear waste as my case study, I examine two fictional treatments of nuclear waste dumps that create different temporal structures within which the colonial history of the United States plays out. The first, a set of Department of Energy documents that use statistical modeling and fictional description to predict a set of realistic futures for the site of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico (1991), creates a present that is fully knowable and a future that is fully predictable. Such an approach, I suggest, perpetuates the state logics of implausibility that have long undergirded settler colonialism in the United States. In contrast, Leslie Marmon Silko’s contemporaneous novel Almanac of the Dead (1991) uses its apocalyptic form to deconstruct the claims to verisimilitude that undergird state realism, transforming nuclear waste into a prophecy of the end of the United States rather than a means for imagining its continuation. In Almanac of the Dead, the presence of nuclear waste introjects a deep-time perspective into contemporary America, transforming the present into a speculative space where environmental catastrophe produces not only unevenly distributed damage but also revolutionary forms of social justice that insist on a truth that probability modeling cannot contain: that the future will be unimaginably different from the present, while the present, too, might yet be utterly different from the real that we think we know. Nuclear waste is rarely treated in ecocriticism or risk theory, for several reasons: it is too manmade to be ecological; its catastrophes are ongoing, intentionally produced situations rather than sudden disasters; and it does not support the narrative that subtends ecocritical accounts of risk perception in which the nuclear threat gives rise to an awareness of other kinds of threat before reaching the end of its relevance at the end of the Cold War.2 In what follows, I argue that the failure of nuclear waste to fit into the critical frames created by ecocriticism and risk theory to date offers an opportunity to expand those frames and overcome some of their limitations, especially the impulse towards a paranoid, totalizing realism that Peter van Wyck (2005) has described as central to ecocriticism in the risk society. Nuclear waste has durational forms that dwarf the human. It therefore dwells less in the economy of risk as it is currently conceptualized and more in the blown-out realm of deep time. Inhabiting the temporal scale that has recently been christened the Anthropocene, the geological era defined by the impact of human activities on the world’s geology and climate, nuclear waste unsettles any attempt at realist description, unveiling the limits of human imagination at every turn.3 By analyzing risk society through a heuristic of nuclear waste, this essay offers a critique of nuclear colonialism and environmental racism. At the same time, it shows how the apocalyptic mode in deep time allows narratives of environmental harm and danger to move beyond the paranoid logic of risk. In the world of deep time, all that might come to pass will come to pass, sooner or later. The endless maybes of risk become certainties. The impossibilities of our own deaths and the deaths of everything else will come. But so too will other impossibilities: talking macaws and alien visitors; the end of the colonial occupation of North America, perhaps, or a sudden human determination to let the world live. The end of capitalism may yet become more thinkable than the end of the world. Just wait long enough. Stranger things will happen. The 1AC isn’t reformism – it doesn’t conflate change with progress or validate legal institutions – it’s a tactical intervention that reduces violence while exposing the contradictions within law which is necessary in conjunction with other methods. Spade 13 Dean Spade, associate professor of law @ Seattle University, "Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform" Signs Vol. 38, No. 4, Summer 2013 What intersectional politics demands Social movements using critical intersectional tools are making demands that are often difficult for legal scholars to comprehend because of the ways that they throw US law and the nation-state form into crisis. Because they recognize the fact that legal equality contains and neutralizes resistance and perpetuates intersectional violence and because they identify purportedly neutral administrative systems as key vectors of that violence, critical scholars and activists are making demands that include ending immigration enforcement and abolishing policing and prisons. These demands suggest that the technologies of gendered racialization that form the nation cannot be reformed into fair and neutral systems. These systems are technologies of racialized-gendered population control that cannot operate otherwise—they are built to extinguish perceived threats and drains in order to protect and enhance the livelihood of the national population. These kinds of demands and the analysis they represent produce a different relation to law reform strategies than the national narrative about law reform suggests, and different than what is often assumed by legal scholars interested in the field of "equality law." Because legal equality "victories" are being exposed as primarily symbolic declarations that stabilize the status quo of violence, declarations from courts or legislatures become undesirable goals. Instead, law reform, in this view, might be used as a tactic of transformation focused on interventions that materially reduce violence or maldistribution without inadvertently expanding harmful systems in the name of reform. One recent example is the campaign against gang injunctions in Oakland, California. A broad coalition—comprising organizations focused on police violence, economic justice, imprisonment, youth development, immigration, gentrification, and violence against queer and trans people—succeeded in recent years in bringing significant attention to the efforts of John Russo, Oakland’s city attorney, to introduce gang injunctions (Critical Resistance 2011). The organizations in this coalition are prioritizing anticriminalization work that might usually be cast as irrelevant or marginal to organizations focused on the single axis of women’s or LGBT equality. The campaign has a law reform target in that it seeks to prevent the enactment of certain law enforcement mechanisms that are harmful to vulnerable communities. However, it is not a legal-equality campaign. Rather than aiming to change a law or policy that explicitly excludes a category of people, it aims to expose the fact that a facially neutral policy is administered in a racially targeted manner (Davis 2011; Stop the Injunctions 2011). Furthermore, the coalition frames its campaign within a larger set of demands not limited to what can be won within the current structure of American law but focused on population-level conditions of maldistribution. The demands of the coalition include stopping all gang injunctions and police violence; putting resources toward reentry support and services for people returning from prison, including fully funded and immediate access to identity documents, housing, job training, drug and alcohol treatment, and education; banning employers from asking about prior convictions on job applications; ending curfews for people on parole and probation; repealing California’s three-strikes law; reallocating funds from prison construction to education; ending all collaborations between Oakland’s government and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); providing affordable and low-income housing; making Oakland’s Planning Commission accountable regarding environmental impacts of development; ending gentrification; and increasing the accountability of Oakland’s city government while augmenting decision-making power for Oakland residents (Stop the Injunctions 2011). These demands evince an analysis of conditions facing vulnerable communities in Oakland (and beyond) that cannot be resolved solely through legal reform since they include the significant harm inflicted when administrative bodies like ICE and the Planning Commission implement violent programs under the guise of neutral rationales. These demands also demonstrate an intersectional analysis of harm and refuse logics of deservingness that have pushed many social movements to distance themselves from criminalized populations. Instead, people caught up in criminal and immigration systems are portrayed as those in need of resources and support, and the national fervor for law and order that has gripped the country for decades, emptying public coffers and expanding imprisonment, is criticized.Another example of intersectional activism utilizing law reform without falling into the traps of legal equality is activism against the immigration enforcement program Secure Communities. Secure Communities is a federal program in which participating jurisdictions submit the fingerprints of arrestees to federal databases for an immigration check. As of October 2010, 686 jurisdictions in thirty-three states were participating.12 Diverse coalitions of activists and organizations around the United States launched organizing campaigns to push their jurisdictions to refuse to participate. Organizations focused on domestic violence, trans and queer issues, racial and economic justice, and police accountability, along with many others, have joined this effort and committed resources to stopping the devolution of criminal and immigration enforcement. Their advocacy has rejected deservingness narratives that push the conversation toward reform for "good, noncriminal" immigrants. These advocates have won significant victories, convincing certain jurisdictions to refuse to participate and increasing understanding of the intersecting violences of criminal punishment and immigration enforcement.13 This work also avoids the danger of expanding and legitimizing harmful systems that other legal reform work can present. It is focused on reducing, dismantling, and preventing the expansion of harmful systems.14 I offer these examples not because they are perfect—certainly a significant range of tactics and strategies are part of each of these campaigns, and, with detailed analysis, we might find instances of co-optation, deservingness divides, and other dangers of legal reform work occurring even as some are avoided and rejected. However, these examples are indicative of resistance to limitations of legal equality or rights strategies. These demands exceed what the law recognizes as viable claims. These campaigns suggest that those who argue that a politics based on intersectional analysis is too broad, idealistic, complex, or impossible—or that it eliminates effective immediate avenues for resistance—are mistaken. Critical political engagements are resisting the pitfalls of rights discourse and seeking to build broad-based resistance formations made up of constituencies that come from a variety of vulnerable subpopulations but find common cause in concerns about criminalization, immigration, poverty, colonialism, militarism, and other urgent conditions. Their targets are administrative systems and law enforcement mechanisms that are nodes of distribution for racialized-gendered harm and violence, and their tactics seek material change in the lives of vulnerable populations rather than recognition and formal inclusion. Their organizing methods mobilize directly affected communities and value horizontal structures, leadership development, mutual aid, democratic participation, and community solutions rather than top-down, elite-imposed approaches to political transformation. These analytical and practical methods owe a great deal to women-of-color feminist formations that have innovated and continue to lead inquiry and experimentation into transformative social justice theory and practice.15
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SO - AC - Jordan v3
Tournament: Nano Nagle RR | Round: 1 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart BC | Judge: Nick Fleming 1AC Advantage Current TRIP-plus data exclusivity standards in Jordan devastate healthcare accessibility and the economy. Barqawi 19 "The access to medicine puzzle: scaling back the negative effects of the Jordan–US Free Trade Agreement" Laila Barqawi ~Lecturer of University of Central Lancashire, Preston (UCLAN)~. Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, Volume 14, Issue 9, September 2019, Pages 678–686, https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpz080 SM Jordanian officials have started to recognize the negative impact of data exclusivity as can be seen through the Jordan’s food and drug administration’s (JFDA) submissions to the UN High Level Panel below. We explore their workability in an attempt to scale back the negative effects of TRIPS-plus and data exclusivity. Data exclusivity operates as a ‘wholly distinct form of intellectual property rights and could not be overcome by a compulsory license.’2 Furthermore, TRIPS protects only ‘undisclosed data’ to prevent ‘unfair commercial use’; it does not confer either exclusive rights or an automatic period of marketing monopoly.3 TRIPS does not define what constitutes ‘commercial use’.4 There have been arguments for data exclusivity in that it incentivizes innovation in the field of pharmaceutical drugs and assists pharmaceutical companies in recouping the costs of clinical trials and clinical trial data transparency.5 These arguments have been refuted on the basis that a few years of patent protection is adequate to recover the cost of clinical trials as US companies, for example, have made an excess of USD 1 billion on 55 ‘blockbuster’ drugs in 2013.6 As part of Jordan’s WTO’s accession package, Jordan agreed to block registration and marketing approval of generic medicine for five years, ‘even when no patents exist’.7 This has been implemented through the Trade Secrets and Unfair Competition Draft Law, which had been referred to Parliament in November 19998 and is now Article 8 of Jordan’s Law No 15 of 2000 on Unfair Competition and Trade Secrets (UCTS).9 This is clearly TRIPS-plus in nature. Moreover, restrictions by JUSFTA also require three further years for data exclusivity for new uses, which clearly is an e xcessive form of protection for an existing TRIPS-plus condition. The effect of this restricted use of data exclusivity is evidenced by the 103 registered medicines which were launched since 2001 and had no patent protection in Jordan; of these, at least 79 per cent had no competition from a generic equivalent as a consequence of data exclusivity.10 This suggests that data exclusivity limits competition. Beyond implications for competition, there are financial effects as well. For example, an analysis funded by the Medicines Transparency Alliance estimated that the delayed market entry of generics resulting from TRIPS-plus requirements in JUSFTA cost consumers in Jordan’s retail market US$ 18 million in 2004.11 Data exclusivity is the key internal link to blocking generic competition, economic growth, and affordable healthcare – case study proves. Malpani 09 "All costs, no benefi ts: How the US – Jordan free trade agreement affects access to medicines" Rohit Malpani ~a senior campaigns advisor at Oxfam America. He currently manages Oxfam International’s access-to-medicines campaign~. 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1741-1343 Journal of Generic Medicines Vol. 6, 3, 206–217 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.851.5138andrep=rep1andtype=pdf SM HOW TRIPS-PLUS RULES HAVE RESTRICTED GENERIC COMPETITION IN JORDAN SINCE 2001 Since the US – Jordan FTA was formally enacted on 17 December 2001, TRIPS-plus rules have given multinational pharmaceutical companies more tools to prevent generic competition with their products. In fact, most pharmaceutical companies have not bothered to apply for patent protection for medicines launched onto the Jordanian market. Instead, multinational drug companies rely on TRIPS-plus rules, in particular, data exclusivity, to prevent generic competition for many medicines. A. Patenting practices of foreign drug companies in Jordan since 2001 Numerous medicines marketed in Jordan after enactment of the FTA were not patented by multinational pharmaceutical companies. Working with the Jordan Patent Office and a local patent law fi rm, Oxfam analysed 108 medicines launched onto the Jordanian market since 2001. These medicines represent 42 per cent of all new medicines with no generic equivalent launched from 2002 until mid-2006, and more than 70 per cent of sales of new medicines with no generic equivalent. Of 108 medicines registered and launched by 21 multinational pharmaceutical companies since 2001 that currently enjoy a market monopoly in Jordan, only five medicines have product patent protection. 1 According to local industry and government officials, most multinational companies decided not to file patent applications after the US – Jordan FTA was signed because: (1) Jordan is not a member of the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT), thereby making patent filings expensive, complicated and time-consuming for new medicines; (2) many medicines without a generic equivalent would have qualified for little or no patent protection in Jordan owing to the original patent filing date; and (3) pharmaceutical companies concluded that data exclusivity effectively prevents generic competitors from entering the market for 5 years following registration of the originator medicine. In fact, of the 21 multinational drug companies, only three bothered to patent medicines that they launched onto the Jordanian market by mid-2006. The other multinational drug companies chose to rely on data exclusivity to enforce at least a 5-year market monopoly for medicines that were launched onto the Jordanian market by mid-2006. 2 Data exclusivity creates a new system of monopoly power, separate from patents, by blocking the registration and marketing approval of generic medicines for 5 or more years, even when no patent exists. Drug regulatory authorities are prevented from using the clinical trial data developed by the originator company to establish the safety and efficacy of a medicine in order to approve the marketing of a generic medicine that has already been shown to be equivalent to the original one. This delays or prevents generic competition. The TRIPS Agreement protects only ‘undisclosed data ’to prevent ‘ unfair commercial use ’ ; it does not confer either exclusive rights or a period of marketing monopoly. Earlier studies indicate that enforcing data exclusivity results in significant price increases for medicines. 3 Data exclusivity prohibits generic competition for a specified period of time. The alternative would be for generic manufacturers to repeat clinical trials of medicines to prove their safety and efficacy. However, doing this would violate medical ethics because clinical trial methodologies would require some patients to be given placebos. Giving placebos when the safety and clinical validity of the medicine being tested is already established and is unethical. In recent years multinational drug companies have started to file patent applications for drug precursors that will eventually be launched on the Jordanian market. It generally requires between 8 and 10 years to obtain a medicine to the market from the time the patent application is fi led. Data exclusivity will ensure that even if a patent application is rejected, the pharmaceutical company can secure at least 5 years of monopoly protection. Data exclusivity prevents generic competition independent of patent protection Multinational pharmaceutical companies have prevented generic competition for many medicines by solely enforcing data exclusivity provisions in Jordan ’ s IP law. This is because companies can rely upon data exclusivity more easily than patent protection to deny generic competition. Patent offices apply rigorous standards and impose safeguards to ensure that only innovative medicines are granted a monopoly. On the contrary, a pharmaceutical company merely has to submit clinical trial data to obtain a 5-year market monopoly. According to Oxfam ’ s analysis of 103 medicines registered and launched since 2001 that currently have no patent protection in Jordan, at least 79 per cent have no competition from a generic equivalent as a consequence of data exclusivity. Jordanian generic manufacturers expressed frustration at the data exclusivity law because multinational pharmaceutical companies can rely upon data exclusivity to preclude generic competition. A generic competitor could replicate these medicines, in the absence of a data exclusivity law, shortly after the medicine’s launch on the domestic market. Although data exclusivity was imposed as a result of the US – Jordan FTA and WTO accession, the TRIPS-plus measures benefit many other countries ’multinational drug companies. At least 21 US, European Union (EU), and Swiss drug companies have taken advantage of the benefits of data exclusivity. TRIPS-plus rules, although imposed by the US FTA, benefit all drug companies because developing countries must alter their national IP laws to fully implement TRIPS-plus rules. Thus, all pharmaceutical companies marketing medicines in a developing country, including European companies, benefit from these changes, and benefit from US efforts to impose TRIPS-plus rules elsewhere. Consequences of data exclusivity on public health Generic competition drastically reduces medicine prices. Multinational pharmaceutical companies that enforce data exclusivity for their clinical trial data in Jordan can prevent the onset of generic competition for 5 years, even without a patent on the medicine. In contrast, nearby Egypt has not introduced data exclusivity and other TRIPS-plus rules, and multinational pharmaceutical companies have only received patent protection for medicines from 2005 onwards. Thus, most medicines currently sold on the Egyptian market have no form of monopoly protection (and therefore may have multiple generic competitors). Heart disease and diabetes are serious public health problems in both Jordan and Egypt. Jordan had approximately 195,000 cases of diabetes in 2000, while Egypt, a more populous country, had an estimated 2.6 million cases. Similarly, according to 2002 WHO (World Health Organization) estimates, heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in both countries. A comparison of prices for five best-selling medicines that treat diabetes and cardiovascular disease in Jordan and Egypt illustrates the enormous disparity between the costs of the originator medicine in Jordan (with no generic competitor available solely because of data exclusivity) against the lowest-priced generic equivalent in Egypt (where price reductions owing to generic competition are unrestricted) (see Table 1 ). These new medicines are significantly more expensive in Jordan than in Egypt. If TRIPS-plus rules had been present in Egypt, local manufacturers could not have driven down the prices for these medicines through generic competition, and the prices for these medicines would have been much higher. The result would have been increased healthcare costs and less medical treatment, especially for poor people. Three years of additional data exclusivity for new uses of old medicines Article 4 of the US – Jordan FTA requires Jordan ’ s drug regulatory authority to provide three additional years of data exclusivity when a drug manufacturer discovers a new use for a previously known chemical entity. There is considerable disagreement between the multinational pharmaceutical industry and the Jordanian government about which medicines can receive additional monopoly protection. Pharmaceutical companies have argued that a ‘ new use ’would broadly include new therapeutic indications, formulas, dosage forms and formulations. Therefore, companies have attempted, including through use of litigation and lobbying of the US Trade Representative ’ s office, to extend data exclusivity to trivial modifications of a medicine, such as arguing that a higher dosage of an existing medicine would qualify as a ‘ new use ’ . On the contrary, the government argued that a ‘ new use ’only extends, at a maximum, to new indications for old medicines. Despite this narrow definition, at least 25 medicines have received an additional 3 years of monopoly protection for new indications. 4 Data exclusivity creates monopolies that guts access to affordable medicine – reverse causal data proves. Armouti and Nsour 16 "Data Exclusivity for Pharmaceuticals: Was It the Best Choice for Jordan Under the U.S.- Jordan Free Trade Agreement?" WAEL ARMOUTI ~LL.M in intellectual property law, Faculty of Law, the University of Jordan (Amman, Jordan), Legal Affairs Director at Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA).~ AND MOHAMMAD F.A. NSOUR ~Lawyer and associate law professor at the University of Jordan.~ OREGON REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ~Vol. 17, 259 2016~ https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/20019/Nsour.pdf?sequence=1andisAllowed=y SM In order to control diseases, people must be able to access affordable medicines. International human rights have stated that access to affordable medicine, health facilities and services should be accessible to all without discrimination.240 Instead of enabling this internationally mandated access to affordable medicines, the data exclusivity approach operates by delaying the entrance of generic (affordable) medicines into the market, which has the consequence of increasing the monopoly duration of the originator companies.241 Under this regime, prices of medicine will increase by 20, according to the pricing regulations which give the generic product a maximum of 80 of the originator product’s price. Also, after the entrance of the generic product, some originators decrease their prices.242 According to an Oxfam report, data exclusivity has contributed to the problem by comparing the prices of selective medicines between Jordan and Egypt. This comparison illustrates the fact that prices in Jordan are much higher than Egypt, which is not currently implementing data exclusivity protection.243 Dr. Michael P. Ryan has responded to this Oxfam report, indicating that Jordanian prices are similar to prices in Saudi Arabia, and the pricing is according to the pricing regulation at the JFDA.244 Dr. Ryan did not take into account, however, the fact that for more than five years only the originator product will be present on the market. Another proponent of data exclusivity, the former PhRMA chairman in Jordan, posits that data exclusivity has helped the originator companies to provide people around the world with new molecules and has ultimately led to better health.245 Jordanians obtain medicine through either the public or private system. The public insurances cover 55 of the Jordanian population,246 and this system buys the medicines through tenders announced by the Joint Procurement Department (JPD). Data exclusivity’s effect on the prices is very obvious when one looks at the assigned prices for the tenders. The government is obliged to buy the originator product for almost six years with no competition from the generic product.247 After the approval of a generic product, the originator product price will come down. The JAPM has conducted an analysis study of the official tender (JPD) prices in 2009, 2010 and 2011.248 This study showed the cost savings for the government after the availability of the local generic products.249 The prices of the local generic products in 2009 and 2010 JPD tenders for ten therapeutic groups were less than the second bidders, at $25 million JPD. Table 1 illustrates the savings that resulted from buying local generic products, as compared to the originator prices for these two years.250 After the introduction of the local generic products in the JPD tender, the originator companies have reduced their products prices. The originators price reduction in twelve therapeutic groups was around 14 million JD in 2010 tender and around 1.7 million JD in 2011 tender compared to their prices for the year before local generic products were introduced. Table 2 illustrates the difference in prices bid by originator companies before and after the participation of Jordanian pharmaceutical companies in tenders of the same products.252 The study concluded that there was a reduction in the government’s spending on pharmaceuticals in the public health sector after the generic product was made available.254 This will lead to better utilization of our limited resources.255 Also, the JAPM has conducted an analysis of the price of a cancer product in public tenders. The 2009 tender price of this drug was 170.960 JD, while in the same year the generic product was registered with a public price of 86.700 JD. Thus, the price of the generic product was half the tender price. In 2010 tender, the originator product’s tender price was 56.000 JD, nearly 33 of the previous year’s tender price. Additionally, the JAPM has analyzed the prices of six products from the same therapeutic category in the 2010 tender. Here, the originator product’s price was 3128290 JD while the local generic product’s price for the same category was 1084806. That is, the percentage reduction on government spending due to the availability local generic product is more than 71, with a 2 million JD saving.258 Chart 2 represents this saving. Data exclusivity stymies the generic market which is key to the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry. That spills over to neighboring countries and the Jordanian economy writ large. Armouti and Nsour 16 "Data Exclusivity for Pharmaceuticals: Was It the Best Choice for Jordan Under the U.S.- Jordan Free Trade Agreement?" WAEL ARMOUTI ~LL.M in intellectual property law, Faculty of Law, the University of Jordan (Amman, Jordan), Legal Affairs Director at Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA).~ AND MOHAMMAD F.A. NSOUR ~Lawyer and associate law professor at the University of Jordan.~ OREGON REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ~Vol. 17, 259 2016~ https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/20019/Nsour.pdf?sequence=1andisAllowed=y SM Since 2001, no real foreign investments from originator companies in Jordan have materialized. There are two types of investment that have been introduced. The first is the expansion of originator companies’ scientific offices, which has had a negative impact on the local industry due to the aggressive sales tactics employed by these companies, those with which the local industry cannot compete. The other type of investment is contract manufacturing with local industry, manifested as secondary packaging only without any transfer of product know-how. The reason for this was to obtain a higher public price for the originator product, based on considering Jordan as country of origin. This is evident when we compare the Jordanian situation with that in neighboring country Egypt, which has many originator companies with manufacturing sites therein.261 Dr. Ryan has responded to the dearth of investment in the country by claiming that Jordan is a small pharmaceutical market in the region and that there is no reason to invest in manufacturing capacity. Additionally, he claims that medical tourism had grown due to implementation strong IPR.262 This position was confirmed by the ex-chairman of PhRMA in Jordan, who insisted that hospitals, doctors and pharmacies have benefited from health tourism due to drug availability.263 Furthermore, Originator companies are now conducting clinical trials in Jordan Research Centers because of the availability of a strong IPR environment.264 3. Promotion of Pharmaceutical Local Industry The pharmaceutical industry is one of the leading industries in Jordan. There are sixteen private companies.265 The number of employees includes approximately 5,500 directly employed workers and 5,000 indirectly employed workers, with 99 of this employment being Jordanian. The percentage of females employed is 37, 67 of which have university degrees.266 This sector is characterized as the highest-paid sector in Jordan.267 The investment in this sector is around $1 billion U.S. dollar and another $1 billion U.S. dollar in branches which are 17 branches in 8 countries.268 Eighty-one percent of local production is exported to 60 countries because of the high quality reputation of the local pharmaceutical industry, and it is considered number one between the Arab countries.269 Chart 3 represents the export of the local industry between 2004-2013.270 Five companies have either a European GMP or U.S. FDA approval.271 Pharma ex-chairman has stated that after data exclusivity, the local companies have upgraded their quality levels and they are now exporting their products to the European Union and United States.272 The JAPM has replied to this point that the local companies have taken this step regardless data exclusivity.273 The Jordanian pharmaceutical industry is considered to be a generic industry, one which does not involve innovation products. Few Jordanian companies have patents in this field, and the existing patents are mostly related to new techniques of old chemical entities, rather than to a new chemical entity. This lack of patents issued on the basis of innovation is due to insufficient financial resources for conducting the clinical trials that are required for new chemical entities, and also due to there being no foreign investment to support the local research and development or to strengthen the companies’ infrastructure.274 Additionally, the local pharmaceutical industry faces many obstacles in their bid to export to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Egypt; these countries tend to protect their own local industry.275 Additionally, as per the Secretary General of the JAPM, the enforcement of the data exclusivity approach has compounded the problem faced by Jordan’s pharmaceutical industry. Delaying the registration of the local generic product in Jordan, the country of origin, to around six years after the registration of the originator product consequently delays the generic product’s registration in export countries as well. Some countries request the marketing of the product in its country of origin for at least one year before submission of its registration file like Saudi Arabia. Additionally, other countries like Saudi Arabia price the generic products in descending order, so delaying the registration file submission will lead to a lower price, a price which might be untenable. Adding to this conundrum, a late market entry also has the effect of decreasing market share. Contrary to the situation in Jordan, the generic pharmaceutical industries of other countries like Israel and India have evolved to counter the effects of data exclusivity. These countries have set legislation in such a way as to promote their generic industry.276 For example, Israel registers a generic product during the exclusivity period of the originator product for the purposes of export.277 Beyond merely stymieing the growth of the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry, the constraints of the data exclusivity approach could have farther-reaching economic implications. Consequently, the decrease in pharmaceutical industry export will affect the Jordanian economy.278 Pharma growth is under-performing and unsustainable now – only a strong generic market can underpin long-term success. Data exclusivity hinders market development and broader Middle East healthcare – Jordanian exports are key. Cochrane 16 "Jordan's Pharmaceutical Sector Punches Above Its Weight" June 6, 2016 ~Paul Cochrane is an independent journalist. He has written for over 80 publications worldwide, covering business, media, politics and culture in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. He is the co-director of a documentary on the political-economy of water in Lebanon - We Made Every Living Thing from Water (on Vimeo). He is also a media commentator, and has appeared on Al Jazeera Arabic, Al Jazeera English, CBS-NYC radio, Canada's CTV and CBC Radio, Press TV, Etejah TV, Future TV, Al Manar, Sahar TV, Today FM Ireland, and South Korea's TBS eFHM radio. Paul has a BA in International History and International Politics from Keele University, UK, and a MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the American University in Beirut (AUB), Lebanon.~ http://backinbeirut.blogspot.com/2016/06/jordans-pharmaceutical-sector-punches.html SM Jordan may be small in population terms, but it packs a hefty punch in the Middle East pharma manufacturing sector With a population of just 6.6 million, Jordan may be a small country but it is one of the largest pharma manufacturers in the Middle East. A key reason for this is that production is export focused, particularly in the generics sector. The country’s manufacturing sector, with an annual turnover of US$500m, had been steadily growing at 8–10 per year until 2012, according to the Jordanian Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Medical Appliances (JAPM). But since the ‘Arab Spring' of 2011, exports have slowed due to instability in the region, notably the conflict in neighbouring Syria. Development is also being hindered because Jordan, unlike some of its regional competitors, notably Iraq and Iran, abides by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and data exclusivity. Since becoming a member of the WTO in 2000 and signing a free trade agreement with the USA in the same year, Jordanian companies have not developed any significant new medicines. That said, Jordan’s domestic pharma market is growing. According to UK- based BMI Research, the total market, including imports, reached Jordanian Dinars JOD643m ($905m) in 2014, and is forecast to grow by 6.4 in 2015, to JOD683m ($962m). Samer Al-Ansari, Marketing Director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at Hikma, one of the region’s leading pharma manufacturers and exporters, established in Jordan and listed on the London Stock Exchange, says the total market grew by 9.4 in 2014, while according to BMI generic growth was 10.5. Driving sales is burgeoning population growth, at 4.2, further boosted by the influx of Syrian refugees: 937,830 were registered as of 2015, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Demand comes from the UN and other agencies supporting the refugees, and the market’s value is increasing due to the entry of patented products with high prices as well as an increase in generics, said Al-Ansari. However, aid agencies import medicines and individual refugees have low purchasing power. ‘Bluntly, demand for pharmaceuticals did not reflect the 15 rise in the population. Refugees are buying in small quantities, and only the essentials,’ said Mohammad Shahin, CEO of the Jordan Sweden Medical and Sterilisation Company (JOSWE), and Chairman of JAPM. The Jordanian healthcare sector is heavily supported by the government, with the ministry of health providing insurance to 40 of the population, followed by state health services organisation Royal Medical Services (RMS) covering 27.5, according to the Jordan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (JJPS). Government healthcare spending is on the rise, projected to go from JOD1.86bn ($2.62bn) in 2014, to JOD1.97bn ($2.78bn) in 2015, a 6.2 increase, according to BMI Research. In 2016, compulsory health insurance is scheduled to be introduced to cover all Jordanians. If such a move happens, it is expected to be a boost for pharmaceutical sales. ‘The goal is to have local insurance companies support the private sector, but so far it has been only discussions, nothing has been agreed on yet. But you see that Jordan is moving towards the privatisation of healthcare, and wants to boost medical tourism,’ said Al-Ansari. Jordan has 16 pharmaceutical firms, which manufacture mostly generics or branded generics, bulk antibiotics and cancer-related treatments. The market is dominated by Hikma, followed by Dar Al Dawa, Arab Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, JOSWE, Pharma International and United Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. ‘Local companies supply around 20 of total domestic consumption, and the rest is imported,’ said Shahin. More than 70 of Jordanian pharma production is for export, to more than 65 countries, primarily in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Regional instability has had a negative impact on exports, affecting the country’s overall economy, which is expected to grow by just 2.5 in 2015, according to the International Monetary Fund. ‘Our export markets are challenged to Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as to Yemen and Sudan. You can anticipate issues in one or two countries but not four surrounding countries all having problems,’ said Hana Uraidi, CEO of the Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation (JEDCO). Financing has also been complicated by the instability, while credit lines are under pressure. ‘It’s hard to get extended credit lines as insurance companies are seeing Jordan as higher risk, so traders have to pay up front, and we have a cash problem. If we take out loans it affects overall costs and profits. Before, we thought the situation would calm down after two or three years, but the government is now forecasting problems for 10 years,’ she added. The closure of the Syrian border has hit the pharmaceutical sector particularly hard, as it was a major transit route for exports to Lebanon, and on to Turkey and northern Iraq, while the western Iraqi border has also been closed due to the presence of Islamic State. Companies are managing, however, to export to Kurdish Iraq and Baghdad, avoiding areas controlled by IS, while the central Iraqi government is still delivering drugs. ‘Overall exports are down by around 10–15 on 2014. It is not only neighbouring countries that have affected us, the whole region is affected, and in certain countries it is not clear who is in control. Payments are another problem,’ said Shahin. JOSWE expects a drop of 10 in its sales this year, with its business evenly split between local sales and exports. Syria was not an export market for Jordanian manufacturers prior to the conflict as the country was practically self-sufficient in pharmaceutical production. But although the Syrian sector has been ravaged by war it has started exporting to the Arab Gulf and north Africa, according to Shahin, which has detracted from Jordan’s export competitiveness due to low prices. Looking ahead, it may be generics that really underpin the Jordanian pharma sector’s success. WTO membership and its US trade deal have forced the country’s pharma sector to be transparent about producing generics and original research is still at an emerging stage due to a lack of investment, according to a 2015 article in the JJPS. The Jordanian Scientific Research Support Fund inked four agreements with public and private universities to develop pharmaceutical and medical research projects, worth $479,660 in September 2015, but it is not expected to cause any major upturn in the overall sector given the large investments elsewhere in the world. ‘We had hoped when we signed the WTO and IPR agreements that there would be a transfer of technology and know-how from multinationals to the local industry, but it’s been an unfulfilled promise,’ said Shahin. Currently, local producers engage in contract manufacturing for global majors, which contributes to less than 5 of the sector’s overall revenue, according to the JJPS. The rest of production is generics under licence, with most licensing agreements still in effect signed before 1999. Heightened competition Due to data exclusivity and a lack of diversification, there is heightened competition among manufacturers, while JAPM estimates that few companies are operating at more than 40 of installed capacity. ‘Pharmaceutical companies are all making the same product, and each product has 15 or 20 competitors, while some have 50 or even 100 if we include imports as well,’ said Shahin. Such products include second-, third- and fourth-generation generics. To bolster business, JOSWE has started producing generics not in the market, but few others have followed the same route. ‘JAPM is trying to advise companies not to add more similar generic products but to create variety and products not in the market,’ added Shahin. The overcrowded generics market has led to a domestic price war, with companies trying to sell the same generics at a price 20 lower than the originator drug. Companies are also having to make their generic products known in the market. ‘In the EU or the US you can sell a generic by its scientific name, but in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) it is branded generics, so you have to build up a brand name,’ said Al- Ansari. The fact that the writ of TRIPS does not run across Jordan’s region is a problem: ‘You find firms in such countries registering more products than us as they are not as strict in protecting IPR agreements,’ said Shahin. Egypt, for instance, has no TRIPS-Plus provisions, mandating more data exclusivity in its IPR law, yet it has had more foreign investment in its pharma industry, boosting competition for Jordan. Price controls in Saudi Arabia to protect domestic production, and protectionism in Algeria to encourage pharmaceutical manufacturing are also affecting Jordanian exports. The JJPS noted that data exclusivity related to TRIPS affected Jordanian exporters, as they ‘will be out of their export markets for at least seven years – five years’ protection due to data exclusivity, one year registration time in Jordan and at least one year registration in the export market’. Scenario 1 Economic stagnation structurally locks in instability in Jordan. Wolf 4/14 "A Hashemite Family Reunion Can’t Hide Jordan’s Woes" Albert B. Wolf, an associate research fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS and an assistant professor of political science at the American University of Central Asia. April 14, 2021 https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/14/jordan-abdullah-hamzah-hashemite-family-reunion-cant-hide-economic-woes/ SM A Hashemite Family Reunion Can’t Hide Jordan’s Woes Making nice after an alleged coup attempt obscures serious challenges, including water scarcity, a refugee crisis, and unhelpful neighbors. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is no stranger to royal intrigues and attempted coups. The first 20 years of the late King Hussein’s rule was wracked with coup plots, assassination attempts, and a civil war with the country’s large Palestinian population. Most recently, the former crown prince and half-brother of King Abdullah II, Prince Hamzah, was accused of engaging in sedition and placed under the "protection of the king" (i.e., house arrest) until the two made a joint appearance on Sunday. On Monday, the prince pledged his allegiance to the incumbent monarch and seemingly defused the latest royal tempest. But his display of deference doesn’t mean the end of instability in Jordan. This episode is a symptom of the challenges Abdullah has faced since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, not the problem itself. It is unlikely to be the last challenge the king faces to his rule unless Jordan’s economy undergoes significant economic reforms—quickly. Jordan has experienced multiple bouts of protests that were brought on by economic downturns (including during the Arab Spring and the COVID-19 pandemic) and were met with a combination of changes in economic tactics and giveaway programs, repression, and government reshuffles. This plot supposedly came from within the royal court, giving a tabloid quality to a security threat, especially after the prince made his house arrest all the more unusual by issuing a personal statement online. However, Hamzah’s alleged plan to overthrow Abdullah is a distraction from Jordan’s ongoing strategic and economic problems that do not have readily apparent solutions. Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, described the latest royal feud as the "most serious political crisis" Jordan has faced in 50 years. Regional experts have heard these warnings before. However, Abdullah’s combination of political savvy and luck in negotiating the challenges he has faced since the outbreak of the Arab Spring does not mean he will continue be lucky in the future. Domestic stability cannot be taken for granted. Tourism, Jordan’s biggest industry, ground to a halt after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. It had accounted for $5.8 billion in revenues in a $43 billion economy in 2019, but Jordan could not allow tourists back into the country as COVID-19 spread. Furthermore, remittances, which had accounted for $3.7 billion in 2018, were estimated to drop by nearly 20 percent for the entire region in 2020. Two weeks ago, protests broke out in Amman along with other cities because of the deaths of six people from COVID-19 at government hospitals. The cause was low oxygen supplies. However, the literature on comparative authoritarianism shows that protests may provide elites with opportunities to reveal their preferences and split from the incumbent regime. Should more protests occur due to the worsening economic situation, water shortages, the coronavirus crisis, or the strains of hosting a large refugee population, a window of opportunity may open for Prince Hamzah or another opportunistic contender for the throne. (According to Jordan’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, 34 percent of the population are refugees, most of whom are Palestinian. The U.N. refugee agency counts 663,210 Syrians who have registered as refugees—while the Jordanian government counts more than 1.3 million.) Many commentators and Jordan watchers have expressed shock and surprise at Hamzah’s open criticism of Abdullah. However, the more shocking display has been the public outpouring of criticism of the incumbent monarch. Popular radio programs have reported regular call-ins criticizing Abdullah, blaming him for the country’s poor economic performance and corruption. Prior to the pandemic, the country had less than 2 percent annual growth, and nearly 1 in 4 adults were unemployed. Some Jordanians who have been left behind economically felt that Hamzah used the language of the Arab street to speak to people’s needs in order to advance his own interests. Even Jordanian Finance Minister Mohamad al-Ississ reportedly said, "Unemployment is this country’s greatest problem." Official figures put unemployment at 24 percent currently. Jordan’s supposed regional allies are not helping. The kingdom is surrounded by "frenemies" like Israel and Saudi Arabia, which, despite benefiting from the stability and cooperation of the Hashemite royal family, tend to engage in behaviors that undermine its steadiness. These frenemies’ behaviors exacerbate Jordan’s domestic political tensions. One of the most significant issues is water. Access to water is a problem for many Jordanians—and water theft is a big business that the state has failed to address. While water consumption continues to rise, an agreement with Israel’s government over providing an additional 8 million cubic meters remains elusive. Because of these problems, ordinary Jordanians are at the mercy of water thieves who drill untapped reservoirs without the permission of the state and charge what they want to people currently unserved and underserved by the state. Jordan has made clear it hopes to build a canal to the Red Sea or Dead Sea to ameliorate these problems, but, so far, it has been unable to cut a deal with Israel. There are rumors—and this time they are just that, rumors—that Saudi Arabia was involved in the alleged plot to overthrow Abdullah. It is important to note that once details of the arrests of Hamzah and others had leaked, most countries issued statements of support for Abdullah. However, some in Jordan fear that the Saudis are interested in a peace deal with Israel in order to displace the Hashemites as the guardians of Al-Aqsa Mosque and take over custodianship of Jerusalem’s holy places. The royal family’s latest feud is an allegory for Jordan’s ongoing economic and strategic problems. Should they continue, it is highly likely that this moderate ally of the United States and the West will find itself convulsed by domestic challenges again in the future. This could come in at least two forms: The first is another civil conflict with Jordan’s large Palestinian population. The second could be another challenge for the throne, possibly from Hamzah or from another royal rival who has yet to reveal himself. Economic dependency on the US is a ticking time bomb – it makes instability structurally inevitable absent a domestic economic boost. Younes 18 "Jordan’s economic crisis threatens political stability" Ali Younes, 14 Feb 2018 https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2018/2/14/jordans-economic-crisis-threatens-political-stability SM Jordan’s economic crisis threatens political stability Anger simmers after the government hiked taxes between 50-100 percent on key food staples such as bread. Angry at the decision to increase food prices last month, restive Jordanians are demanding the government’s resignation and the dissolution of parliament. Last month, the government implemented a tax rise of between 50-100 percent on key food staples such as bread, in order to decrease its $700m budget deficit. Jordan’s debt has now reached $40bn and its debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio has reached a record 95 percent, up from 71 percent in 2011. The economic crunch that squeezes the country will be particularly acute this year, after Jordan’s Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) allies – Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait – did not renew a five-year financial assistance programme with Amman worth $3.6bn that ended in 2017. The United States is now the only donor that has committed itself to support Jordan. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed a five-year $6.375bn ($1.275bn a year) aid deal with Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi. This surpassed the previous agreement of about $1bn a year, signed with the previous US administration, by about 27 percent, and increased in length from three years to five. A US State Department statement said $750m was earmarked annually for economic support funds and $350m for the military. It was unclear what the remaining $175m would be used for. "As part of this bilateral understanding, Jordan has committed to prioritise economic and security sector reforms that aim to support Jordanian self-reliance," it said. During a joint press conference in Amman, Tillerson said the increase would support Jordan’s security roles in fighting terrorism and the conflict in Syria. However, even with the increased flow of US aid that has funded budgets and projects since the 1950s, it remains to be seen if Jordan’s economy will stabilise, according to analysts. Hussam Abdallat, a political activist and former government official, told Al Jazeera the American assistance won’t benefit ordinary Jordanians. "American aid to Jordan is useless to the average Jordanian; most of it goes to support the Jordanian military – which serves American interests, not Jordan’s – and the rest goes back to the US through US companies working in Jordan," Abdallat said. Any US aid that is not directly budgeted for economic development is "meaningless", he added. Regional stability Journalist Salameh Aldarawi, editor of Maqar online newspaper, told Al Jazeera that Jordan’s economic problems are directly related to political stability in the region. Aldarawi, who writes on the Jordanian economy, said devastating wars in neighbouring Syria and Iraq – the country’s biggest trading partners – have curtailed economic growth. The harsh measures taken by the government will not improve economic stability and will only hurt the most vulnerable people in Jordanian society, he said. "Prices and tax hikes are only hurting the poor and the middle class, especially in the absence of wage increases or social safety nets," Aldarawi said. "These measures will only provide temporary quick fixes, not a long-term, strategic solution." He said tackling corruption was imperative, along with fixing the "collapsed education and healthcare systems. "The government must start with fighting entrenched and endemic corruption within its ranks, recover billions of dollars of embezzled public funds, ~and~ create equality among the different segments of the population, especially towards those who pay more taxes but get fewer services and privileges," said Aldarawi. ‘Economic disaster’ Abdallat, who leads several activist groups demanding political and economic reform, said Jordan’s political elite must be held accountable for their actions that have driven the country to the edge of financial ruin. "People are protesting in several areas in the country and demanding the resignation of the government and the parliament, who are responsible for the economic disaster we are in now," he said. In Amman, where nearly half of Jordan’s 9.9 million population resides, criticism of government policies has spread over social media, but, so far, not significantly to the streets. Analysts say that, unlike residents of the capital, people in the southern and northern provinces are more dependent on government largesse and employment and will suffer greater hardship when the government is no longer able to meet their needs. "At this rate, I am afraid that we will end up with a revolt of the hungry," said Abdallat. Hussein Mahadeen, a professor of social development at Mutah University in Kerak, south of Amman, said Jordan has a foreign aid dependency problem because of its political and social structure. Mahadeen said Jordan is still transitioning from its tribal society roots into a semi-modern state. "Lacking solid legal and civic institutions, to safeguard the rights and liberties of citizens and their ability to contest government decisions, is a major impediment towards its political and economic development," he told Al Jazeera. "The Jordanian society, for several reasons, is not mature enough socially and politically to be able to mount a serious challenge to the state’s ability to impose strict economic measures." ‘Violent revolt’? For many decades, foreign aid and remittances from expatriate Jordanians in the Gulf region were the mainstays of the Jordanian economy that kept the country afloat. This, however, created dependency, and a succession of Jordanian governments failed to take measures to wean the country off foreign assistance and become self-reliant, according to Mahadeen. Jordan’s main problem is it hasn’t progressed and developed beyond its "functional state" roots,that is a state created to perform certain functions on behalf of others, after its creation by the British, after defeating the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he said Abdallat – who has been imprisoned several times for his criticism of the government – said he was concerned the economic situation facing Jordan could result in an uprising. "If the current economic crisis persists, it might lead to a revolt, and I am afraid it will be a violent one," he said. Jordan instability due to economic failure spills over regionally – independently ruins Israel-Jordan peace treaty. Al-Shami et al 4/13 "Jordan’s Thorny Spring Spells Trouble for the Middle East" Farah Al-Shami, Research Fellow, Arab Reform Initiative (ARI), Tuqa Nusairat, Deputy Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East - Atlantic Council, Paolo Maggiolini, Associate Researcher, Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and Lecturer in History of Islamic Asia, Catholic University of Milan, Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Director - The Intelligence Project, Brookings, April 13, 2021 https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/jordans-thorny-spring-spells-trouble-middle-east-30024 SM Jordan's image, painstakingly built by the country’s authorities as an oasis of relative stability within a turbulent Middle East, took a hit on April 3, when former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Hussein was accused of cooperating with "foreign entities" to destabilize the state. The incident, widely presented as a family disagreement, resulted in the arrest of eighteen people and Hamzah's oath of allegiance to the Crown and the Constitution two days later. While investigations are still ongoing, the recent controversy comes as an unexpected novelty for the country. Since the Hashemite kingdom's origins, Jordan has always been seen as an island of stability in an otherwise unstable neighbourhood. At the same time, King Abdullah II has long been held in high regard in the United States, as Washington has relied on his steadying influence and views him as a highly reliable partner. Today, Amman remains one of the United States’ closest allies in the region, especially in counterterrorism operations and intelligence-sharing in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Nevertheless, despite its apparent stability, the country faces substantial socio-economic challenges. Jordan has been hard hit by the coronavirus (it ranks among the highest COVID-19 infection and death rates per capita in the region), while its unemployment rate reached one-fourth of the population in 2020. Furthermore, the country is currently home to over 660,000 Syrian refugees while also hosting a large community of Palestinian refugees. Hence, coming at a particularly uncertain moment for the country and combined with pre-existing structural problems, the tensions within the ruling family risk detracting attention from long-needed socio-economic reforms. Jordan’s uneasy geopolitical position "The kingdom of Jordan has so far been spared a visit by the Arab Spring, apart from several random and discontinuous waves of protests. For years now, economic demands have been growing and calls for less corruption, and more transparency have been rising. Against this backdrop, the ruling family is not only facing challenges on the economic front but also subtle opposition from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been very active in other countries visited by the Arab Spring as well. Moreover, Iran and its hegemony over Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon puts Jordan in a difficult geopolitical position that requires close collaboration with GCC countries to counterbalance, especially that these countries are also ruled by monarchies. Thus, at the moment, the ruling family is trying to avoid having these geopolitical challenges spill into the local political scene and cause a serious threat to its rule via a combination of chaos and uprisings." Farah Al-Shami, Research Fellow, Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) Amman’s economy needs less foreign loans and more support for structural reforms "One positive spill-over from the incident might be bringing Jordan back to the radar of its foreign allies, who tend to take the stability in the country for granted and have been ignoring quieting of Jordanians dissatisfied with dire economic situation in the country, further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. What Jordan needs, however, is not more loans – its foreign debt already amounts to over 90 of its GDP – but development aid and technical assistance in implementation of wise economic reforms that would not further harm the already impoverished population. Austerity is not an answer at a time when the cost of living is growing, remittances – falling, and officially one in four (and realistically more) Jordanians is out of work." Katarzyna Sidlo, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Department, Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) Jordan’s social mobilization limbo and the risk of a security clampdown "Jordan, a resource-poor country that was initially lauded for containing COVID-19, has struggled to manage the economic fallout. Remittances and tourism have declined as has assistance from neighboring Gulf countries. With many businesses in ruins due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the government has to do more to ensure social safety net programs help vulnerable populations climb out of economic despair. The government is also struggling to support the nearly one million refugees in the country. While Jordanians have been protesting for months, recent events involving Prince Hamzah are likely to make Jordanians think twice before going out into the streets. The government must act fast to address economic challenges while avoiding a security clampdown that could make matters worse." Tuqa Nusairat, Deputy Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East - Atlantic Council Jordan-Israel relations must refocus on shared interests and avoid political calculus "While it is still difficult to establish the extent of the alleged coup plot in Jordan, what seems particularly intriguing are the allegations of foreign meddling. Ten years ago, while protests and dissents were mushrooming, Amman was counting on Saudi aid and Israel’s implicit support. Today, while regional powers, including both countries, are voicing support for the king, Amman is becoming increasingly concerned that the rapprochement between Riyadh and Tel Aviv can be to the detriment of its legitimacy. The recent incident at the Israeli-Jordan border and the allegations pointing to Israel and Saudi Arabia are only the most recent episodes in a stream of tensions developing since 2017. These are like a wake-up call. Jordan-Israel relations have always been based on solid shared interests and not on political calculus. It is of utmost importance to recognize this for the future of the region and the security of both countries." Paolo Maggiolini, Associate Researcher, Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and Lecturer in History of Islamic Asia, Catholic University of Milan The US and international support for Amman is essential to preserve the region’s stability "The Biden administration is facing an unexpected crisis in Jordan where King Abdallah faces unprecedented divisions within the ruling family exacerbated by foreign meddling, the pandemic and recession. At risk is the stability of the lynchpin of the region. Saudi support for Prince Hamzah’s challenge to the King raises serious questions about the reckless and dangerous behaviour of the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. Biden has moved quickly to signal support for Abdallah. He needs to rally international help for Jordan’s weak economy and deep structural problems. Keeping Jordan stable is critical to survival of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty which is deeply unpopular." Instability spills over to Israeli security crises specifically. Solomon 4/6 "Instability in neighboring Jordan is ‘bad news’ for Israel" Ariel Ben Solomon ~Middle East Correspondent for the Jerusalem Post~, Apr 6, 2021 https://www.jns.org/instability-in-neighboring-jordan-is-bad-news-for-israel/ SM Instability in neighboring Jordan is ‘bad news’ for Israel For the past several years, Jordan has come under increasing strain due to wars in bordering Iraq and Syria, which has led to many refugees resettling in Jordan. Combine a population holding divergent loyalties with a poor economic situation, and the result has been unrest. (April 6, 2021 / JNS) The arrest last weekend of nearly 20 people, including former Crown Prince Hamza bin Hussein, by Jordanian authorities in what is being viewed by some as a coup attempt has led to fears over the stability of the strategic Arab state. Jordan, a key U.S. and Israeli ally, is important for Israel’s national security because it serves as a buffer against radical forces from within the country as well as those further east, Israeli Middle East experts told JNS. "The border with the Hashemite Kingdom is Israel’s longest, and Jordan serves as a friendly buffer on the east," affirmed Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies. "We should not forget that the territories east of Jordan until the border of India are in the hands of rulers under Islamist influence." On Saturday, Jordan’s official media outlet denied reports that Prince Hamza had been arrested, claiming that the prince had instead been asked to stop "movements and activities that are used to target" the kingdom’s stability and security. Other key figures were also detained, including at least one other Jordanian royal, as well as tribal leaders and members of the country’s political and security establishment. Prince Hamza, the eldest son of the late King Hussein and his American-born fourth wife, Queen Noor, and the half-brother of King Abdullah, said he would defy his house arrest conditions, adding to the intrigue behind what was reported as an attempt to destabilize the country. "For sure, I won’t obey when they tell you that you cannot go out or tweet or reach out to people but are only allowed to see the family. I expect this talk is not acceptable in any way," Hamza said on Monday in a recording released by Jordan’s opposition, reported Reuters. According to the report, Prince Hamza had visited tribal gatherings in recent weeks, where the government and the king had been openly blasted. Middle East expert Hillel Frisch, a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, told JNS, "I don’t think this is the beginning of the fall of King Abdullah. All the key actors are behind him." "Nevertheless, this is the first serious fissure in the royal family, which if it did not enjoy total unity was always sufficiently disciplined to keep major differences within the family," he said. "What happened in Jordan seems to be a result of dynastic struggles within the ruling royal family." "A mainstay of Hashemite rule always lay in that it was more united than any other political actor in Jordan," added Frisch. "This may no longer be the case." Indeed, Abdullah has ruled the country since King Hussein’s death in 1999 and has cultivated a very close relationship with the United States. Hamza has had a strained relationship with his half-brother, who stripped him of his title in 2004 and later appointed his own son as crown prince. Nevertheless, Hamza has held multiple positions within the monarchy, including in the army, and commands a loyal following in Amman, where he often styles himself after his late father. At the same time, for the past several years, Jordan has come under increasing strain due to wars in bordering Iraq and Syria, which has led to many refugees resettling in Jordan. The country has most recently has been hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The United States is "closely following" the situation in Jordan following reports of an alleged coup plot involving the former Jordanian crown prince, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Sunday. The action against Hamza comes a few weeks after the Jordanian government publicly acknowledged a new defense agreement with the United States that allows free entry for American forces. It boosts Israel’s unstable eastern neighbor, providing a base from which U.S. forces can potentially act in Syria, Iraq and Iran. The defense pact’s timing—coming soon before the government crackdown—shows how dependent Jordan is on outside support. Weak national identity leads to instability Jordan is estimated to have more than half of its population of Palestinian origin, with many from the West Bank, which Jordan occupied between 1949 and 1967, in addition to a significant Muslim Brotherhood presence. These are ingredients for instability. Add to this the fact that the Jordanian state has a weak sense of national identity, as it and other Arab states were created by Western European powers after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. A journal article by Linda L. Layne titled "The Dialogics of Tribal Self-Representation in Jordan," published in 1989 in the American Ethnologist, explains how the state sought to cultivate a national identity around disparate tribes. "The symbolization of tribes has been facilitated by the Jordanian government’s policy over the last several decades to unify and integrate individual tribal identities into one broad tribal identity, that is, to promote Bedouinism in a general way rather than encouraging each tribe to maintain and develop its own individual identity," she wrote. One question that gets to the root of the matter is how "Jordanian" its citizens actually feel. Palestinian, tribal and Islamist elements are less loyal to the state than their ideology or kinship networks. In the Middle East, loyalty tends to be to one’s family and tribe. The Jordanian regime keeps its grip on power thanks to military and economic aid, mainly by the United States and the Gulf states. Indeed, America is Jordan’s biggest supporter with more than $1.5 billion in aid in 2020, including $425 million in military assistance. The poor economic situation combined with a heterogeneous population with divergent loyalties has led to frequent unrest among a vehemently anti-Israel population. As Frisch noted, "even though the rise of a radical regime was not in the offing, instability in Jordan is bad news for Israel." Collapse of Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty causes Middle East war. Lazaroff 20 "Will annexation destroy Israeli-Jordanian peace, set kingdom aflame?" Tovah Lazaroff is the Deputy Managing Editor of The Jerusalem Post May 1, 2020 https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/will-annexation-destroy-israeli-jordanian-peace-set-kingdom-aflame-626104 SM The possible collapse of the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty and potential destruction of a stable regional ally, the Hashemite Kingdom, is one of the stronger arguments against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex West Bank settlements this year. The 1994 peace treaty with Jordan, as well as the 1979 treaty signed with Egypt, have been a foundation cornerstone of Israeli regional security and gateway to the Arab world. The value of the two treaties, in an otherwise hostile region, has only increased in relation to the growing threats from Iran and ISIS and other Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups. So the idea of an Israeli plan, either unilateral or in conjunction with the US, that would risk those treaties and the stability of Israel, after a decade of regional turmoil, has to give one pause. "Unilateral annexation will damage stability in the Middle East" and harm Israel, said former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Ami Ayalon. "The peace treaty with Egypt and the peace treaty with Jordan are in a way the two cornerstones of our ~regional~ policy and our security for the last 30 to 40 years," he said. A retired admiral, Ayalon is among a group of more than 220 former security officers who have embarked on a campaign against the move through the group Commanders for Israel’s Security. Last week, he and two other high-level former security officials, Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Gadi Shamni and former Mossad director Tamir Pardo, published an article in US-based Foreign Policy magazine, warning about the implications to Jordan and Egypt. There are many rational reasons for the two countries to maintain ties with Israel, Ayalon told The Jerusalem Post. Egypt relies on Israel for intelligence and security cooperation when it comes to fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS in Sinai. Jordan has water and gas deals with Israel. Both countries also rely heavily on financial assistance from the United States, which is tied to the peace deals. Still, those factors would not be enough to offset the danger to the Kingdom from the street, Ayalon said. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, however, regional leaders cannot afford to ignore public opinion, particularly on a topic where emotions run high, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said. Rulers in both Egypt and Jordan "have to listen to the voices of the street because they understand that power," he said. Egyptian President Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has more flexibility than Jordan’s King Abdullah, Ayalon said. Jordan is home to a large number of Palestinians, and there are also many young people who are radicalized, Shamni said. "They will never accept Jordanian silence with regards to annexation," he said. "To survive, the king will have to take extreme steps that might even severely damage the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement." Throughout the years, Israeli actions in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza have had a destabilizing influence, Ayalon said. "But there is a huge difference between incremental change" and a large unilateral act, such as annexation, particularly one that is against the declared will of all Arab leaders, he said. Shamni, who was also Israel’s former military secretary to the US and a military adviser to former prime minister Ariel Sharon, said the plan creates unnecessary turmoil and security problems. At issue is Israel’s eastern border, which is its calmest out of the five borders, he said. There are hostilities along the Lebanese, Syrian and Gaza borders, and even the Egyptian border can be problematic because of terrorist groups in the Sinai Desert, he said. But the combined efforts of Israeli and Jordanian security forces have kept violence at bay, Shamni said. Jordan acts as an additional security buffer for Israel and provides a strategic safeguard against terrorism and other security threats, he said. Jordan’s location, bordering Iraq on the other side, makes peaceful relations with Israel particularly significant, he added. Coordination with Jordan is crucial for Israel’s safety along this critical stretch, Shamni said. Jordan-Israel peace treaty is key to resolve water wars. Weinthal 20 "Don’t Politicize Water" Erika Weinthal ~professor of environmental policy and public policy at Duke University~ and Neda Zawahri ~associate professor of political science at Cleveland State University~, September 17, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/17/water-cooperation-middle-east/ SM The recently announced peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain stop short of repairing the political damage inflicted on the region and keep the door open for the possibility of future Israeli annexation of portions of the West Bank and Jordan Valley. The last few months of uncertainty over annexation come on the heels of not only a deterioration in Israel’s relationship with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority but also a crisis in critical issue areas such as water cooperation. Broadly, water cooperation is vital for fostering effective water management across borders as well as for building trust and confidence among adversaries. Recent events have only exerted greater pressure on water resource availability in the Middle East. The combination of climate change, natural aridity, an influx of refugees from conflict-torn neighboring states, an ongoing pandemic, and mismanagement of existing supplies is challenging the region’s ability to meet daily domestic water needs. The relatively small Jordan basin provides access to the only perennial river for Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories, and is also shared by Lebanon and Syria. For most of the 20th century, conflict predominantly defined relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and global leaders warned of so-called water wars in the Middle East. Instead, water has sometimes provided a glimmer of hope for bringing peace to the region. In the 1950s, after sporadic fighting over the construction of hydrological projects, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent Eric Johnston as an envoy to the region to negotiate a settlement to the Jordan River water dispute. Although the Arab League failed to accept and ratify the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan, known as the Johnston Plan, the two riparian states most dependent on the river, Israel and Jordan, attempted to comply with the agreement in exchange for U.S. funding. Israel’s capture of the Golan Heights, West Bank, and Jordan Valley in the 1967 war increased its access to the Yarmouk tributary of the Jordan River, which the Jordanian monarchy depended on. To coordinate the dredging of the Yarmouk’s sediments, Israeli and Jordanian technicians and engineers began meeting in the late 1970s in what has often been referred to as the Picnic Table Talks. Members of this informal institution negotiated the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, which dealt with all shared water systems between the signatories. Despite periodic misunderstandings or miscommunication, a relatively warm and highly effective working relationship developed whereby commissioners regularly communicated and effectively sheltered water relations from issues of high politics. Then in 2013, to manage a water deficit plaguing the basin, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority reached an understanding over a trilateral project: The Red Sea-Dead Sea project was designed to increase the supply of water to Jordan, save the ever-shrinking Dead Sea, and encourage peace and prosperity among the signatories. It was promoted as one of the few remaining opportunities for peace, as many in the basin began accepting the failure of the Oslo process. However, over the past few years, multiple factors have converged to accelerate the deterioration of Israeli-Jordanian relations, negatively impacting water cooperation. The demise of the Oslo process has caused consternation among the Palestinian population in Jordan: Because around 50 percent of the Jordanian population is of Palestinian descent and the country is host to many Palestinian refugees, the monarchy is highly sensitive to Israeli-Palestinian relations. Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017 intensified pressure on the monarchy, which sees itself as the custodian of the two Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel initially stalled negotiations, then it pulled back from the Red-Dead project over the last few years, citing high costs and pressure from environmentalists. Instead, Israel became more interested in revisiting the Mediterranean Sea to Dead Sea conveyance system, granting it complete control over the hydrological infrastructure within its territory despite prior efforts by the U.S. Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt to breathe life into the Red-Dead Project in 2017. Bilateral tensions with Jordan only mounted. As one of the most water-scarce states in the world, Jordan is predominately landlocked, economically poor, and limited in its ability to follow Israel’s use of large desalinization projects to alleviate water shortages. The Red-Dead project’s desalinization plant in Jordan’s southern port city of Aqaba and water exchanges in the densely populated north were designed to meet growing water demands. The failure to move forward on the Red-Dead project, despite years of discussion and collaboration, has only further undercut water cooperation. The Jordanian leadership also began to dismantle some symbols of cooperation from the 1994 Peace Treaty. In October 2018, Jordan refused to renew a treaty provision allowing Israeli farmers to lease and farm land along the border in areas known as Baqura and Ghamr in Arabic, and Naharayim and Tzofar in Hebrew—the former having been called the "Island of Peace." This move was promptly followed by an Israeli threat to reduce water supplies to Jordan from four to two days per week. Such politicization of water resources was unprecedented in Israeli-Jordanian politics. The chilling of relations became particularly notable in October 2019, when the 25th anniversary of the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty passed without celebration in either state. Bilateral relations were further undercut by the Middle East peace plan proposed by the Trump administration in early 2020. When unveiled, instead of any explicit recognition of Palestinian water rights that had been recognized in the interim peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, albeit never fully implemented, the proposal demanded that control of the Jordan Valley be ceded to Israel, which would, in practice, mean forgoing rights to the Jordan River. Responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s annexation proposal, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said this past June that annexation would "destroy all prospects for peace" and endanger Israeli-Jordanian relations, which had provided a bedrock of stability in the region. Jordan not only shares a long, stable border with Israel in a region plagued by conflict, but it is also the second state to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Often too understated in Israeli discourse is how critical this peace treaty and Jordanian stability are for Israel’s security. Complicating matters further is the generational shift in the policymakers managing Israeli-Jordanian water relations. The generation that met in the middle of the Yarmouk, under the watchful eyes of their well-equipped state military personnel, and afterward participated in negotiating and implementing the treaty’s water section, has retired. With it, years of social capital along with informal understanding have disappeared. Without the United States actively supporting regional water cooperation efforts, this younger generation has few opportunities to meet and use water for peace. Hope for cooperation lies with an ever-shrinking number of environmentalists who work across borders and understand that cooperation is required for managing a water system and a climate crisis. Regional nongovernmental organizations, such as Ecopeace Middle East, continue to demonstrate the benefits of cooperation and interdependence for building resilience in the face of climate change. Opportunities for expanding peace in the Middle East have been rare over the last few decades, but they should not come with a dismantling of institutions that have provided the foundation for cooperation. With the withering of Israeli-Jordanian bilateral relations, water cooperation has become politicized and vulnerable. Water-stressed Jordan still depends on Israel to secure water allocated to it by the 1994 Peace Treaty, and deteriorating ties with Israel not only put regional stability at risk but also harm Jordan’s water security. The influx of refugees, primarily from Syria, over the last decade—coupled with a pandemic—has only increased Jordan’s needs for water. Complaints have risen since the COVID-19 lockdown about water shortages, as the demand for access to water on a daily basis for hand-washing continues to increase. A 2020 rapid assessment of Jordan from the United Nations Development Program found that nearly 40 percent of the respondents were concerned about accessing clean drinking water. Climate change is likely to reduce Jordan’s freshwater availability, as temperatures are projected to rise and rainfall to diminish, resulting in prolonged droughts. In Jordan, there is unease that a shortage of water is among the factors that can contribute to the type of social unrest that brought down regimes across the Middle East during the 2011 Arab uprisings. Water wars escalate. Sachs and Huggard 20 "ISRAEL IN THE MIDDLE EAST: The next two decades" Natan Sachs ~fellow in and director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.~ Kevin Huggard ~senior research associate at the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy~ November 2020 https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FP'20201120'israel'me'sachs'huggard-1.pdf SM Increasing water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change, poses an especially stark challenge in the Middle East. Already the region the faces enormous stresses due to the lack of water resources, and water stress will continue to affect the Middle East and North Africa more than any other region. The World Resources Institute rates 17 countries as facing extreme water stress. Of them, 12 are in the Middle East and North Africa.5 While several of these countries, most notably Israel, desalinate water to meet their needs, this requires intensive energy and financial commitments not available to many countries in the region. In 2015, the World Resources Institute ranked countries by the water stress they are projected to face in 2040 — and 16 of the top 25 are in the region.6 Increasing water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change, poses an especially stark " challenge in the Middle East. The region’s essential rivers will face heightened stress from declining rainfall rates, with increasing water withdrawal driven by population growth, and, near their mouths, rising sea levels threatening salt-water inundation. A 2014 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that a "reduction in rainfall over northern Africa is very likely by the end of the 21st century."7 Modelling conducted by the Regional Initiative for the Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources and Socio-Economic Vulnerability in the Arab Region (RICCAR) show that water flow will decrease by more than 50 in the Euphrates River and by 25 in the Tigris River by 2050.8 And a 2017 World Bank report stated that the Middle East and North Africa will have the greatest expected economic losses due to waterrelated scarcity of any region, at an estimated 6 to 14 of GDP by 2050.9 The same report highlights that "flood and drought risks are increasing and are likely to harm the poor disproportionately."10 Rising sea levels pose a distinct, and potentially catastrophic, phenomenon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that sea levels in the Mediterranean will rise by 0.3 to 1 meter this century.11 Such sea-level rise in the Gulf and Mediterranean will create severe problems for many countries along these bodies of water, especially those with heavily populated, low-lying coastal regions. Egypt, with its low-lying Nile Delta, is particularly at risk.12 Close to 25 of its population of 100 million lives in the low-lying coastal zone, while 30 to 40 of its agricultural production is located in the delta.13 A 2007 World Bank report projected that a 1-meter sea-level rise would displace 10 of Egypt’s population, 14 while other estimates are even more severe.15 A 2012 report, prepared for the United Nations Development Programme, projected, that Egyptian economic losses to climate change could reach several hundred billion EGP (several dozen billion U.S. dollars) per year by 2060.16 These projections necessarily involve a high degree of uncertainty as to scope, but the severe risk is clear. In Israel, too, a large part of the population lives along the coast. While Israel would have greater capacity to mitigate the risks to infrastructure in major population centers, it is largely unprepared to do so at present and the resources required would be a major strain on the country’s finances and its institutions. The effects of these changes will not be limited to human suffering or economic damage alone. Security risks will necessarily follow.17 Looking forward, climate accelerated migration will continue to challenge Middle Eastern governments’ abilities to maintain stability as their citizens move internally, while also drawing high European interest as many leave the region. Further, competition over water resources could stoke political tensions, as with the much-discussed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam being built in Ethiopia on the Blue Nile, with effects downstream in Egypt.18 For Israel, desalination technologies have alleviated its water scarcity problem, but control of water resources remains a potential flashpoint with both Jordan and the Palestinians. In Gaza, in particular, rising levels of pollution and salinity make much of the groundwater undrinkable, greatly exacerbating the humanitarian crisis there and again raising tensions with Israel, as the authors, along with other colleagues, have detailed in much greater length elsewhere.19 Climate change is not merely a future prospect in the region. While it is outside the scope of this report to judge just how much of the post-2011 upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa can be traced to climate change, several studies have connected the region’s turmoil to climate-exacerbated stressors such as drought.20 While they may not be a primary cause of specific upheavals, climate effects will necessarily further burden overstretched institutions and government resources.
Scenario 2 Healthcare infrastructure key to COVID management. OECD 20 OECD ~Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development~ "COVID-19 crisis response in MENA countries", 06 November 2020 https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=129'129919-4li7bq8asvandtitle=COVID-19-Crisis-Response-in-MENA-Countriesand'ga=2.237304256.1316433697.1631849561-29263471.1631849561 SM The revival in COVID-19 cases that followed the gradual easing of restrictions and reopening of the economy in several MENA countries, similarly to elsewhere in the world, is putting to the test the capacity of healthcare systems throughout the region to deal with a second wave of the pandemic. Two main trends are emerging, with on the one hand, a number of countries where precautionary measures and enforcement seem to have succeeded in flattening the curve, and, on the other hand, countries where limited capacity to enforce physical distancing and overstrained healthcare systems are making it increasingly challenging for governments to control the situation. Challenges to health systems and health sector resilience MENA countries’ containment efforts have proved particularly important in light of the region’s varying levels of health system preparedness. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the extent of the healthcare sector’s resilience across MENA economies. Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries and Jordan GCC economies have undertaken substantial investments in healthcare infrastructure, alongside efforts to increase the number of doctors and nursing personnel. While the GCC remains behind the global average in healthcare expenditure, budget allocations have been increasing significantly. This has considerably improved the quality of healthcare services in the region. In an assessment of COVID-19 preparedness published mid-March by the WHO, which ranked countries on a scale of 1 (no capacity) to 5 (sustainable capacity), all GCC countries except Qatar scored either 4 or 5. Despite accounting for close to half of the COVID-19 regional cases, GCC governments have succeeded in bringing the outbreak under control in their countries, displaying recovery rates significantly higher than the global average5. This results from a strategy based on prevention, strict control measures adopted and effectively enforced early on, and important means allocated to case detection and tracking. The UAE and Bahrain are among global leaders in terms of testing, ranking respectively first and third for the number of new tests per 1,000 people as of late September.6 Countries have also made available significant financial and material resources for COVID-19 treatment to avoid overwhelming health services, including by building dedicated treatment facilities, such as in the UAE. Jordan, which has an overall weaker health system and lower level of COVID-19 preparedness, managed to adopt a strategy similar to that of GCC countries. This has so far proved to be effective, although at high economic and societal cost. As a result of a swift government reaction and effective implementation of lockdown measures enabled by the state’s high enforcement capacity, COVID-19 infection and mortality rates in Jordan have remained consistently low. The government has also significantly scaled up its testing capacity to reach 70,000 tests per 1 million inhabitants in August, more than three times the test ratio recommended by the WHO. As of October 14, cases are on the rise again and curfews are being re-introduced. Developing MENA economies (Maghreb, Egypt) Developing MENA economies have been suffering from low health expenditures, human resource shortages in the health care sector and lack of medical equipment. Total health expenditure per capita in most MENA countries is significantly below averages for countries in similar income categories. Furthermore, the number of physicians per 1,000 inhabitants in the region is much below the WHO recommended threshold of 4.45 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 population, and as low as 0.72 and 0.79 in Morocco and Egypt respectively.7 The limited capacity of health systems to handle a large-scale outbreak prompted governments to adopt strict containment measures. However, while these measures contributed to limit the number of COVID-19 infections and related deaths in the first few months following the outbreak, the progressive de-confinement was accompanied by a rapid rise in cases, further straining countries’ health systems. In most countries, this is largely due to large religious gatherings, wedding celebrations and other social events where control measures were not sufficiently applied.8 Loosening compliance with preventive measures and difficulty to enforce physical distancing in large, densely populated cities (e.g. Cairo) have raised concerns over the evolution of the situation. As of October, international and social media, as well as NGOs reported that hospitals were struggling to manage the growing influx of COVID-19 patients, with some reaching full capacity, while healthcare professionals have pointed out to the lack of necessary medical equipment, doctors, medical personnel and ICU beds to deal with a second wave of such magnitude. This also challenging the massive testing strategy, as testing sites are becoming increasingly saturated. In some countries, observers have pointed to an ill-managed re-opening of international borders, while emerging social movements within the medical personnel risks adding pressure to an already tense health sector. Fragile and conflict-affected countries Lebanon had initially managed to contain the first COVID-19 wave by adopting strong containment measures early on with high levels of compliance from the population. However, following the explosion in the port of Beirut on 4 August, which destroyed half of the city’s medical centres and left three of its hospitals "non-functional" according to the WHO, the health situation has gotten largely out of control. Reported numbers of COVID-19 cases and related deaths have been rising at unprecedented speed, sparking worries regarding the capacity of ICU and dedicated facilities to absorb the second wave, as many are already at capacity treating those wounded in the blast. In the current emergency setting, with adherence to public health measures being compromised, the rise in cases shows no sign of slowing down. At the same time, possibilities for re-implementing strict containment measures are constrained by the economic crisis. Indeed, the two-week lockdown which had been announced after the explosion was eased prematurely due to economic pressures. In other fragile and conflict-affected countries, the COVID-19 outbreak poses a major challenge given damages to health systems.9 In emergency settings, where availability of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services is scarce, applying preventive measures to limit the spread of the disease has proved difficult. Countries where healthcare facilities have been partially destroyed during the war and governance remains extremely fragile and uncoordinated in certain areas, and lack the necessary capacity to respond to the crisis in terms of medical facilities, equipment and personnel. In Syria, the WHO10 estimates that 70 of health care workers have left the country as migrants or refugees, while only 64 of hospitals and 52 of primary health care centres remain fully operational. One possible explanation for the low number of COVID-19 cases reported in these countries at the beginning of the pandemic is the fact that, due to lack of bed capacity or difficulty to reach hospitals, people often die at home.11 In addition, the lack of testing capacity has resulted in months of under-reporting, in particular in Syria and Yemen. The situation has worsened over the summer, with numbers of COVID-19 cases and related deaths rapidly growing. At the same time, enforcement of containment measures has proved difficult in the context of already fragile economic situations, which cannot afford the necessary restrictions to limit the spread of the virus. Developments in the MENA health systems and health policies In some MENA countries, COVID-19 vaccine developments are likely to rapidly boost the supply and infrastructure of the healthcare industry. For example, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Morocco have partnered with foreign countries (notably China and Israel) and private companies alike to support vaccine research, and have engaged into advanced trial phases. Phase III trials started in the UAE in July12 and in Saudi Arabia in August for vaccines developed by two Chinese companies, respectively Sinopharm and CanSino Biologics. Egypt has also engaged in a partnership with China for the development and distribution of two COVID-19 vaccines developed by Sinopharm. This could lead to a reinforced China-MENA collaboration in this field13. With more investment (both public and private) in healthcare provision, opportunities for the private sector to support the development of health systems will increase14. In the Gulf, the surge in demand – driven by ageing populations, mandatory health insurance and high levels of lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes – along with new government strategies and regulatory reforms are propelling private investment in the healthcare industry. In particular, a recent report produced by Mashreq and Frost and Sullivan found that the COVID-19 crisis had considerably boosted investments in digitisation and telehealth. The research estimates annual investment in digital infrastructure in the GCC to grow by 10 to 20 over the next two years, while teleconsultations are expected to be multiplied by four by Q4 2020.15 In Morocco, a HealthTech startup of the research and development centre MAScIR is now capable of producing 1 million RT-PCR tests per month, and a public-private partnership between the Ministry of Industry and various private sector actors has allowed to develop a locally produced ICU bed, massively cheaper than those imported from abroad. Failure to contain the pandemic causes Middle East escalation – multiple hotspots. Alaaldin 20 "COVID-19 will prolong conflict in the Middle East" Ranj Alaaldin ~visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and nonresident fellow in the Foreign Policy program. He's also the director of a Carnegie Corporation project on proxy warfare in the Middle East.~, April 24, 2020 https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/04/24/covid-19-will-prolong-conflict-in-the-middle-east/ SM CONFLICTS AROUND THE REGION In Libya, as Frederic Wehrey and others have pointed out, the pandemic has provided a boost to militias, providing an opportunity for them to channel medical aid to their fighters and instrumentalize the crisis to reward and reinforce patronage networks and favored communities. Troublingly, Libya’s hospitals are routinely targeted by rocket attacks, exacerbating the situation. In Yemen, militias loyal to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) stormed into the southern port of Aden and stole medical aid donated by the World Health Organization (WHO), including nine ambulances destined for the health ministry. The conflict in Yemen has involved indiscriminate attacks that have devastated medical facilities and water supplies, contributing to what the international community has described as the world’s greatest man-made humanitarian crisis, including the worst cholera outbreak in modern history. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has reinforced its status as an alternative to the Lebanese state by committing close to 5,000 doctors, medics, and nurses to fight the pandemic. In Iraq, ISIS has ramped up its attacks in northern Iraqi villages and is moving to exploit Baghdad’s growing list of crises — ranging from the escalation between the U.S. and Iran, the decline in oil prices, and country-wide protests. During a public health crisis, ISIS can revive itself and expand its influence by catering to the needs of local communities in ways other authorities — like the Baghdad government — have not. At a minimum, Baghdad’s failures allow ISIS to position itself as a viable alternative. Combined with its current campaign of fear and intimidation, targeted assassinations, and extortion, this provides it with a patchwork, under-ground infrastructure of influence that establishes a launching pad from which to seize towns and cities in the manner it did in June 2014. In Syria, the civil war has shattered formal governing structures, and the Assad regime and Russia have moved to obliterate hospitals from the outset of the nine-year conflict. Syria is effectively three countries: regime-controlled territories, the Kurdish northeast, and Idlib in the northwest, which has 1.4 doctors per 10,000 people and only 100 ventilators. COVID-19 increases the prospects of another refugee wave that stretches the capacity of neighboring countries like Turkey and Lebanon to meet the humanitarian needs of these refugees. It also puts increased pressure on Western-aligned groups like the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), on which the West depends to maintain combat operations against ISIS and manage prison cells for detained ISIS combatants. The SDF also hosts refugee camps like Al-Hol, which houses 70,000 refugees, including ISIS combatants and their families. Middle East turmoil goes nuclear. Silverstein 4/23 "Iran-Israel tensions: The threat of nuclear disaster looms large," Richard Silverstein ~writes the Tikun Olam blog, devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state~, 23 April 2021 https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/iran-israel-tensions-threat-nuclear-war-looms-large SM Israel had a near-miss of potentially catastrophic proportions on Thursday. As it has done hundreds of times in the past decade, the Israeli air force attacked Iranian bases inside Syria. In response, Syrian forces fired anti-aircraft missiles of a rather primitive Soviet model, one of which overflew its target and landed some 30 kilometres from Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Israel said recently that it was bolstering its defences around Dimona for just such an eventuality. Although an Iranian general taunted Israel, implying that Iran had some responsibility for the attack, that doesn’t appear to be the case. But the missile landing inside Israel does show that if Iran wanted to attack Dimona, it has the capacity. And despite Israel’s best efforts, an Iranian missile could hit its target. With that, one of the worst nuclear disasters in the region’s history could unfold, including a Chernobyl-type radioactive leak that could endanger not only all of Israel, but also many of its neighbours. A US general has assured a Senate committee that the Syrians weren’t intending to attack Israel. Rather, a misguided missile meant to target an Israeli warplane overshot its target. He blamed it on "incompetence", as if that was supposed to be somehow reassuring; rather, it only reinforces how easy it is even for a mistake to cause a nuclear disaster. Campaign of terror Certainly, if either Israel or Iran wanted to bomb each other’s nuclear facilities, they could do so successfully. An Israeli attack would probably cause less catastrophic damage, but only because Iran’s nuclear programme is not nearly as developed as Israel’s. An Iranian direct hit on Dimona would cause incalculable damage due to the plutonium reactor at the facility. Nor does this happen in a vacuum: Israel has maintained a decade-long campaign of terror attacks on Iranian military bases and nuclear scientists. Most recently, it bombed the Natanz nuclear facility, destroying the power generation source and damaging older-generation centrifuges. It also attacked an Iranian Revolutionary Guard spy ship off the Yemeni coast this month. Iran has responded in its own limited way, restrained by its need to maintain good relations with nuclear-deal signatories. For Israel, the attacks are a low-risk proposition. It defies US opposition (if there is any) with a wink and a nod, and the attacks look good on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s résumé. To weather his corruption trial and retain public support, he needs external enemies (and internal enemies, but that’s a different story). Iran provides these in spades. Eliminating Israeli leverage The US could exert control over this scenario by eliminating Israeli leverage. If it agreed to lift sanctions in exchange for Iran’s return to low levels of uranium enrichment, as designated in the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, Israel’s rejectionist approach would become moot. The problem is that US President Joe Biden is running scared from Republican opposition to any nuclear deal with Iran. Besides, he has designated the Middle East a low priority for his administration. There is some faint hope in the US announcement that it is ready to lift a partial set of sanctions. However, the list on offer is quite limited, and will certainly not satisfy the Iranians. Such half-measures present an example of the limitations of the Biden approach. He should instead make a full-throated commitment to end this dithering once and for all. Israel is mounting a full-court press this coming week as it sends its Mossad and military intelligence chiefs, along with its army chief of staff, to Washington in an attempt to influence nuclear negotiations as they enter what may be a final stage. According to Haaretz, army chief of staff Aviv Kochavi "will also raise other issues, including Iran’s military expansion in Syria and the instability of Lebanon. Israel is concerned about the possibility that Hezbollah will try to ~foment~ conflict with Israel." The hypocrisy of Israel’s refusal to acknowledge its own massive military interventions in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and even Iraq, while decrying Iran’s involvement in Syria, is almost breathtaking. There is next to no chance that any of this will enter into the considerations of negotiators in Vienna. Unlike Israel, they are interested in doing a nuclear deal, not engaging in wishful thinking. Combustible Middle East mix Returning to the Biden administration’s global goals, the Middle East doesn’t care about presidential priorities. It contains a combustible mix of corrupt elites and overbearing dictators who do not shirk from causing mayhem in their domains. And one of them, perhaps a desperate Israeli prime minister or an ageing ayatollah eager to preserve his honour and legacy, could inadvertently (or intentionally) set the entire region aflame. If Biden doesn’t act quickly and decisively, there is a sizeable risk that another missile from one country or the other will hit a target and cause devastation. That would mark a point of no return, like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which led to World War One. The difference is that in 1914, armies fought with guns, bayonets and artillery. Today, they will fight with F-35s, ballistic missiles and possibly nuclear weapons. Regional war escalates quickly and draws in Russia and the US. Hour 18 (Maj. Nadav Ben Hour, a visiting military fellow with The Washington Institute, "The Great Middle Eastern War of 2019," 8/20, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-great-middle-eastern-war-of-2019) MULTIPLE ACTORS, FRONTS, AND DOMAINS The potential for yet another war—one of unprecedented scope and complexity—is an outcome of the Syrian civil war, which has enabled Iran to build a military infrastructure in Syria and to deploy its Shi’a "foreign legion" to Israel’s borders. War is now possible on multiple fronts and in far-flung theaters, fought on land, in the air, at sea, and in information and cyber domains by fighters from Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Yemen. The widened scope of a possible war will create new military options for Iran and Hezbollah, and stretch Israeli capabilities to their limits. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said as much, though perhaps with some exaggeration, when he warned in June 2017 that "if an Israeli war is launched against Syria or Lebanon it is not known that the fighting will remain Lebanese-Israeli, or Syrian-Israeli," and "this could open the way for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of fighters from all over the Arab and Islamic world to participate." Likewise, IRGC Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari stated in November 2017 that, "The fate of the resistance front is interwoven and they all stand united, and if Israel attacks a part of it, the other component of the front will help it." Such a war is most likely to occur as a result of unintended escalation, after another Iranian action against Israel from Syria, or after an Israeli strike in Lebanon or Syria (for example, against missile production facilities). It could start as a result of a U.S. and/or Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program. It might even come about as a result of a conflict that starts in the Gulf but that reaches Israel’s borders—perhaps as a result of Iranian diversionary moves (much as Saddam Hussein tried in 1991 to derail the U.S. military campaign to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait by launching missiles at Israel). A new northern war could resemble one of several scenarios: Lebanon War Plus. A war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, in which Iranians, thousands of foreign Shi’a fighters, and even Hamas (which has established a limited military presence in southern Lebanon) also participate. The Syrian front remains relatively quiet, with Israel acting there on a limited basis to interdict the movement of fighters and capabilities into Lebanon. War in Syria. A war between Israeli and Iranian forces, Shi’a militias (including Hezbollah fighters), and perhaps even elements of the Syrian military, fought on Syrian territory. The Lebanese front remains relatively quiet. Should Syrian ground forces get drawn into combat, however, Russia might intervene to protect its client. A Two-Front War. A war in Lebanon and Syria between Israeli and Iranian troops, Hezbollah, Shi’a militias, and perhaps even elements of the Syrian military, in which both sides treat Lebanon and Syria as a single, unified theater of operations. All three of these scenarios entail a potential for escalation or spillover into secondary fronts or theaters, and the involvement of additional actors: Additional Fronts/Theaters. A war in Lebanon and/or Syria might prompt: attacks on Israel from Gaza, unrest in the West Bank, or terrorist attacks in Israel; Houthi attacks on Israeli interests (such as Israeli maritime traffic in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait), or Israeli strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen; missile attacks on Israel by Shi’a militias in Iraq, and Israeli counterstrikes. Some of these militias have already warned that the latter could trigger attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq. Israel vs. Iran. During fighting in Syria or Lebanon, Israel attacks Iran to strike a blow against the central pillar of the enemy coalition, and to thereby influence the course of the war. Alternatively, Iran augments attacks on Israel from Syria or Lebanon with attacks from its own territory, perhaps after suffering heavy losses in Syria. These could take the form of air or missile strikes and/or destructive cyberattacks on military targets and critical infrastructure. A Regional War? A low-probability/high-impact scenario in which a conflict in the Levant morphs into a regional war involving Saudi Arabia and perhaps the United Arab Emirates as well. Israel responds to attacks on its critical infrastructure with air strikes or cyberattacks on Iran’s oil industry or even its nuclear facilities—with the encouragement and perhaps logistical assistance of Gulf Arab states. Iran retaliates against Israel, but also conducts missile strikes, sabotage, or cyberattacks on Arab oil facilities across the Gulf, leading to escalation there, and perhaps even military intervention by the United States. Nuke war causes extinction – Ice Age, famines, and war won’t stay limited Edwards 17 ~Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate~ Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards — MMG In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be? We are not talking enough about the climatic effects of nuclear war. The "nuclear winter" theory of the mid-1980s played a significant role in the arms reductions of that period. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, this aspect of nuclear war has faded from view. That’s not good. In the mid-2000s, climate scientists such as Alan Robock (Rutgers) took another look at nuclear winter theory. This time around, they used much-improved and much more detailed climate models than those available 20 years earlier. They also tested the potential effects of smaller nuclear exchanges. The result: an exchange involving just 50 nuclear weapons — the kind of thing we might see in an India-Pakistan war, for example — could loft 5 billion kilograms of smoke, soot and dust high into the stratosphere. That’s enough to cool the entire planet by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.25 degrees Celsius) — about where we were during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Growing seasons could be shortened enough to create really significant food shortages. So the climatic effects of even a relatively small nuclear war would be planet-wide. What about a larger-scale conflict? A U.S.-Russia war currently seems unlikely, but if it were to occur, hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average temperatures would drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years — temperatures last seen during the great ice ages. Meanwhile, smoke and dust circulating in the stratosphere would darken the atmosphere enough to inhibit photosynthesis, causing disastrous crop failures, widespread famine and massive ecological disruption. The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs. Many people are concerned about North Korea’s advancing missile capabilities. Is nuclear war likely in your opinion? At this writing, I think we are closer to a nuclear war than we have been since the early 1960s. In the North Korea case, both Kim Jong-un and President Trump are bullies inclined to escalate confrontations. President Trump lacks impulse control, and there are precious few checks on his ability to initiate a nuclear strike. We have to hope that our generals, both inside and outside the White House, can rein him in. North Korea would most certainly "lose" a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die, including hundreds of thousands of Americans currently living in South Korea and Japan (probable North Korean targets). Such vast damage would be wrought in Korea, Japan and Pacific island territories (such as Guam) that any "victory" wouldn’t deserve the name. Not only would that region be left with horrible suffering amongst the survivors; it would also immediately face famine and rampant disease. Radioactive fallout from such a war would spread around the world, including to the U.S. It has been more than 70 years since the last time a nuclear bomb was used in warfare. What would be the effects on the environment and on human health today? To my knowledge, most of the changes in nuclear weapons technology since the 1950s have focused on making them smaller and lighter, and making delivery systems more accurate, rather than on changing their effects on the environment or on human health. So-called "battlefield" weapons with lower explosive yields are part of some arsenals now — but it’s quite unlikely that any exchange between two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs. Plan: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan ought to reduce data exclusivity for medicines. Barqawi 19 "The access to medicine puzzle: scaling back the negative effects of the Jordan–US Free Trade Agreement" Laila Barqawi ~Lecturer of University of Central Lancashire, Preston (UCLAN)~. Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, Volume 14, Issue 9, September 2019, Pages 678–686, https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpz080 SM We now examine each of the JFDA’s recommendations:
‘Shortening the term of data exclusivity for new chemical entity: neither TRIPS nor Jordan-US FTA request the five years.’14 As mentioned above, Jordan has gone beyond its TRIPS obligations to provide five years of protection for data exclusivity.15 To this effect, Jordan should repeal Article 8 of Jordan’s Law No 15 on Unfair Competition and Trade Secrets Law, which reduces data exclusivity protection to 3years as per JUSFTA. Jordan should continue its efforts to redefine what constitutes a New Chemical Entity (NCE), started with a circular dated 16 June 2009 by the JFDA’s director general: A New Chemical Entity is the pharmaceutical product that contains active moiety or moieties that is responsible for physiological or pharmacological effect whereby no more than eighteen months have elapsed from the date of first registration of any of its ingredients (components) singly or collectively in any country in the world irrespective of any difference in, including but not limited to, type of salt, ester, isomer, complex or other derivative. A pharmaceutical product shall be considered to have the same chemical entity even if there is a difference in polymorph, metabolite, enantiomer, solvate, size of particles, formulation, combination, or method of use, pharmaceutical dosage form or concentration.16 Jordan has also excluded isomers and new crystalline forms from its NCE definition.17 Further suggestions on how to restrict the definition of an NCE are offered below. 2. ‘Start date of data exclusivity: a country can consider that the start date for granting data exclusivity is the first registration of the product worldwide.’18 Jordan’s start date of data exclusivity is the date of first registration of a medicine in Jordan. This is pursuant to Article 4.22 of JUSFTA. Jordan could amend its laws to reflect the above recommendation, as other countries have done. For instance, Peru’s Legislative Decree allows five-year term of data exclusivity protection ‘to start concurrently from the date the product is approved in other countries with high sanitary monitoring or approval regime.’19 Jordan could attempt to go farther in decreasing the existing negative effect of data exclusivity specifically as per the Chilean example by amending its national laws to limit pharmaceutical data protection availability to the year following grant of marketing approval, which means that the drugs’ test data not marketed within the year are not protected so that the period of protection for the pharmaceutical test data starts early.20 3. ‘JFDA should examine the test data protection conditions before granting data exclusivity: Then, JFDA can issue a protection certificate confirming complaint of data exclusivity conditions’21 The JFDA, in its capacity to register drugs,22 does not scrutinize test data protection and check whether it has been granted previously or not,23 instead relying on the applicant’s declaration.24 This recommendation requires specialized patent examiners that will be able to assess and examine test data protection conditions to grant data exclusivity. 4.‘Undisclosed test data: this should be defined in the registration criteria and JFDA should examine this condition by requesting a certificate from the originator company declaring that the submitted test data have not been published by any means or in any way. If the data become non-confidential, then the JFDA has the right to end the data exclusivity period.’25 The JFDA, currently, requests that clinical trials of phase III be published. This does not fulfil the requirement of data confidentiality under Article 39.3 of TRIPS.26 To this effect, JFDA grants five years of data exclusivity without checking ‘whether data submitted for regulatory approval has been previously disclosed.’27 The JFDA, however, assesses ‘the published data of Phase III’.28 Undisclosed clinical trial data is a universal issue and various initiatives have been put in place to tackle this.29 A study conducted recently has shown that only ‘57 of clinical trial results for a new drug are made publicly available’.30 Jordan may implement national laws to state that if a summary of clinical studies ‘or of information in scientific literature’ is publicly available then this is ‘sufficient to consider the test data as disclosed’.31 For instance, in accordance with a policy applied since January 2015 by the European Medicines Agency, the information about clinical studies cannot be considered ‘commercial confidential information’.32 While ‘clinical reports may not be used to support a MAA ~marketing authorisation application~/ extensions or variations to a MAA nor to make any unfair commercial use of the clinical reports’,33 the restriction does not change the nature of the information as disclosed to the extent that it is publicly available.34 In this context, Jordan could argue that such disclosures are sufficient to negate data exclusivity to a drug. 5. ‘Considerable efforts: this should be defined in the registration criteria and JFDA should examine this condition by requesting evidence from the originator company to show that the generation of the submitted test data involved considerable efforts by reporting the cost and the period involved in the generation of the submitted test data.’35 Jordan does not examine the considerable effort element36 or have a definition37 for it despite it being a requirement of Article 39.3 TRIPS. The JFDA should define this and require the originator company to submit a declaration or certificate stating how conditions are fulfilled. This recommendation is straightforward and is in line with other countries policies such as Peru. Peru’s Legislative Decree protects cases if ‘generating it has involved considerable efforts’ and therefore the submission of undisclosed test data is ‘necessary to determine the safety and efficiency of such product’.38 This has been applied by Colombia’s Decree 2085 of 2002, which introduced seven exceptions. The most relevant to this recommendation states that ‘protection does not apply to: 1. Test data that are already in the public domain or have not involved considerable effort from the patent applicant to produce’.39 The benefit of fulfilling this recommendation is that Jordan will be able to ‘protect information against unfair commercial use’ as stipulated in Article 4.22 of JUSFTA,40 finally giving useful meaning to an ambiguous term. Achieving this will be in line with Article 39.3 of TRIPS as well as an advantage to use Article 4.22 of JUSFTA. 6. ‘Data exclusivity term should not extend beyond the patent term’. 41 A study on medicine affordability in Jordan concluded that medicine prices required review to provide inexpensive medication to the poor.42 Almost 32 per cent of the Jordanian population is not insured and will have to finance its own needs.43 A further issue highlighted in the study is that ‘the government is purchasing originator brands where lower-priced generics are available, which points to a lack of efficiency’.44 This clearly warrants a reviewing exercise by the JFDA to examine existing patented medications. JFDA should then produce a list of available alternatives. JFDA has been implementing a ‘standing operating policy’ which welcomes generic applications from an innovator during the final year of protection to allow prompt registration of affordable generic drugs.45 This policy, if applied effectively, could also ensure that data exclusivity terms will not extend beyond the patent term. 7. ‘Allow registration of the generic product for the purposes of export’.46 This recommendation is straightforward and is self-explanatory. Israel, for example, has removed its trade barriers and now allows for a generic product to be registered during the exclusivity period of the originator product for the purposes of export.47 8. ‘Grounds for revocation of the data exclusivity period: such as anti-competitive practices of the originator company: high prices, delay in marketing the product more than six months from approval date, stop marketing for more than six months or insufficient marketing of the product’.48 As mentioned previously, JUSFTA is the only FTA which does not stipulate grounds for pre-grant or limit grounds of revocation.49 This should be defined within Jordan’s national legislation because the status quo means that originator companies will not be penalized for various unlawful acts. The author would add to the recommendation that grounds of revocation should include acts of inequality, misrepresentation and fraud, as per the Bahrain-US FTA (BUSFTA). 50 9. ‘Waive data exclusivity protection in cases of compulsory licensing: in case of the issuance of a compulsory license, the generic company is still required to submit clinical trials. Therefore, data exclusivity should be waived in such cases’. 51 Jordan’s regulations could provide that ‘data exclusivity shall have no effects against a compulsory licensee granted for any of the grounds established under the applicable patent law, or against persons authorized to undertake a governmental non-commercial use of the patented product’.52 Furthermore, Malaysia adopted similar stances to mitigate the effects of data exclusivity as per section 5 of Malaysia’s 2011 Directive of data exclusivity, entitled ‘Non-Application of Data Exclusivity’, according to which: ‘Nothing in the Data Exclusivity shall: apply to situations where compulsory licenses have been issued or the implementation of any other measures consistent with the need to protect public health and ensure access to medicines for all; or prevent the Government from taking any necessary action to protect public health, national security, non-commercial public use, national emergency, public health crisis or other extremely urgent circumstances declared by the government.’53 10. ‘Waive data exclusivity in cases of emergency and public interest.’54 Colombia succeeded in including a clause in its Decree 2085 of 2002 which states that ‘protection does not apply to: ~~ 4. Information whose disclosure is necessary to protect the public interest’.55 This is an important waiver to include in Jordanian legislation because access to medicine is a human right, as stipulated within various international documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 at Article 25,56 the preamble57 and Article 158 of 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organisation and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.59 It is arguable that TRIPS and TRIPS-plus clauses are in conflict with human rights clauses; however, this issue is beyond the scope of this article.
‘Waive data exclusivity for products intended for the treatment of life-threatening diseases.’60 The above waivers in the JFDA’s recommendations could be included in Jordan’s national legislation laws as exceptions to limit the effects of data exclusivity.61 Similar waivers are embodied within the Chilean legislation, which excluded certain areas from the scope of protection. One example is Article 91 of the Chilean Industrial Property Law, which states: The protection of this Paragraph shall not apply when: ~~ (b) For reasons of public health, national security, non-commercial public use, national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency declared by the competent authority, ending the protection referred to in Article 89 shall be justified. Reducing data exclusivity revives the generic market which boosts accessible healthcare and the economy. Alawi and Alabbadi 15 Investigating the Effect of Data Exclusivity on the Pharmaceutical Sector in Jordan Rand Alawi ~Pharmacist, MBA, Faculty of Business, The University of Jordan~ and Ibrahim Alabbadi ~ Associate Professor, MBA, PhD, Biopharmaceutics and Clinical Pharmacy Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, The University of Jordan Jordan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Volume 8, No. 2, 2015 https://journals.ju.edu.jo/JJPS/article/view/9377/4480 SM On the other hand, medicines prices have continued to rise in Jordan after IP rules, but Jordan was not able to use TRIPS safeguards to reduce their cost. Also, Jordanian generic companies have not developed any new medicines since the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). While new medicines were frequently unavailable or unaffordable in Jordan(14). The research-based pharmaceutical industry claims that data exclusivity provides incentives for companies to generate the necessary data, since without marketing exclusivity, brand-name companies would not want to conduct expensive preclinical tests and clinical trials(15). The argument that data exclusivity laws will encourage the introduction of new medicines into the market betrays a misunderstanding of their implications. In fact, there is a possibility that data exclusivity would actually provide incentives to delay the entry of new products for multinational companies would prefer to keep prices high in developed markets by delaying their entry into the developing world at lower prices(16). The tension between patent law and public health concerns such as access to medicine has long been an issue of much debate. The requirement of patent protection for pharmaceutical products and various other relevant provisions under the TRIPS agreement signifies this tension as they have created considerable difficulties for developing countries acquiring the medicines needed to address their public health concerns, despite the flexibilities that had been built into the agreement. Hence, the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health has been adopted in 2001 to address this issue, hoping to provide relief to this tension between public health policies and intellectual property rights legislations. Nevertheless, this tension seems to have been further heightened with the proliferation of the FTAs, through which developed countries such as the US and the EU have introduced TRIPS-plus obligations that go beyond the minimum standards set by TRIPS, further exacerbating the tension. Over the years, these TRIPSplus FTAs have been much criticized for their possible conflict with TRIPS norms and their potential negative impact on access to medicines. Data exclusivity did not affect only Jordan, but also its export market, as the local Jordanian manufacturers will be out of their export markets at least for 7 years;(5 years protection due to data exclusivity, 1 year registration time in Jordan and at least one year registration in export market). One of the perceived gains of data exclusivity is an increase in foreign direct investment in the pharmaceutical sector and the arrival of newer medicines for Jordanian patients, but in reality this did not happen, most licensing agreements in effect today were signed before 1999, and transfer little know-how to local manufacturers. Furthermore, Egypt, in contrast to Jordan, has no TRIPS-Plus provisions in its IPR law yet still enjoys a significant amount of foreign investment in its pharmaceuticals industry. Conclusion This study indicated that data exclusivity for the pharmaceutical products seems likely to generate negative impacts on Jordan in terms of higher drug prices. It is also suggested that data exclusivity, on one hand, would have no relation whatsoever to the rate of RandD and foreign investment, but, on the other hand, is likely to impede the industrial development process of the country. Additional expenditure for medicine with no generic equivalent was resulted from the enforcement of data exclusivity. Framing The standard is consistency with hedonic act utilitarianism. Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. Moen 16 ~Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo "An Argument for Hedonism" Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281~ SJDI, brackets in original Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. "Pleasure" and "pain" are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: "What for?" This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: "To buy soda." This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: "What is buying the soda good for?" This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: "Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it." If I then proceed by asking "But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?" the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: "We never ask ~a man~ what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself."4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says "This is painful!" we never respond by asking: "And why is that a problem?" We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. Actor specificity – A~ Aggregation – every policy benefits some and harms others, which also means side constraints freeze action. B~ No intent-foresight distinction – If we foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of our deliberation which makes it intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen. Method Focus on large scale catastrophes is good and they outweigh – appeals to social costs, moral rules, and securitization play into cognitive bias and flawed risk calculus – 2020 is living proof Weber 20 (ELKE U. WEBER is Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.), November-December 2020 Issue, "Heads in the Sand," Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-10-13/heads-sand mvp We are living in a time of crisis. From the immediate challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic to the looming existential threat of climate change, the world is grappling with massive global dangers—to say nothing of countless problems within countries, such as inequality, cyberattacks, unemployment, systemic racism, and obesity. In any given crisis, the right response is often clear. Wear a mask and keep away from other people. Burn less fossil fuel. Redistribute income. Protect digital infrastructure. The answers are out there. What’s lacking are governments that can translate them into actual policy. As a result, the crises continue. The death toll from the pandemic skyrockets, and the world makes dangerously slow progress on climate change, and so on. It’s no secret how governments should react in times of crisis. First, they need to be nimble. Nimble means moving quickly, because problems often grow at exponential rates: a contagious virus, for example, or greenhouse gas emissions. That makes early action crucial and procrastination disastrous. Nimble also means adaptive. Policymakers need to continuously adjust their responses to crises as they learn from their own experience and from the work of scientists. Second, governments need to act wisely. That means incorporating the full range of scientific knowledge available about the problem at hand. It means embracing uncertainty, rather than willfully ignoring it. And it means thinking in terms of a long time horizon, rather than merely until the next election. But so often, policymakers are anything but nimble and wise. They are slow, inflexible, uninformed, overconfident, and myopic. Why is everyone doing so badly? Part of the explanation lies in the inherent qualities of crises. Crises typically require navigating between risks. In the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers want to save lives and jobs. With climate change, they seek a balance between avoiding extreme weather and allowing economic growth. Such tradeoffs are hard as it is, and they are further complicated by the fact that costs and benefits are not evenly distributed among stakeholders, making conflict a seemingly unavoidable part of any policy choice. Vested interests attempt to forestall needed action, using their money to influence decision-makers and the media. To make matters worse, policymakers must pay sustained attention to multiple issues and multiple constituencies over time. They must accept large amounts of uncertainty. Often, then, the easiest response is to stick with the status quo. But that can be a singularly dangerous response to many new hazards. After all, with the pandemic, business as usual would mean no social distancing. With climate change, it would mean continuing to burn fossil fuels. But the explanation for humanity’s woeful response to crises goes beyond politics and incentives. To truly understand the failure to act, one must turn to human psychology. It is there that one can grasp the full impediments to proper decision-making—the cognitive biases, emotional reactions, and suboptimal shortcuts that hold policymakers back—and the tools to overcome them. AVOIDING THE UNCOMFORTABLE People are singularly bad at predicting and preparing for catastrophes. Many of these events are "black swans," rare and unpredictable occurrences that most people find difficult to imagine, seemingly falling into the realm of science fiction. Others are "gray rhinos," large and not uncommon threats that are still neglected until they stare you in the face (such as a coronavirus outbreak). Then there are "invisible gorillas," threats in full view that should be noticed but aren’t—so named for a psychological experiment in which subjects watching a clip of a basketball game were so fixated on the players that they missed a person in a gorilla costume walking through the frame. Even professional forecasters, including security analysts, have a poor track record when it comes to accurately anticipating events. The COVID-19 crisis, in which a dystopic science-fiction narrative came to life and took everyone by surprise, serves as a cautionary tale about humans’ inability to foresee important events. Not only do humans fail to anticipate crises; they also fail to respond rationally to them. At best, people display "bounded rationality," the idea that instead of carefully considering their options and making perfectly rational decisions that optimize their preferences, humans in the real world act quickly and imperfectly, limited as they are by time and cognitive capacity. Add in the stress generated by crises, and their performance gets even worse. Because humans don’t have enough time, information, or processing power to deliberate rationally, they have evolved easier ways of making decisions. They rely on their emotions, which serve as an early warning system of sorts: alerting people that they are in a positive context that can be explored and exploited or in a negative context where fight or flight is the appropriate response. They also rely on rules. To simplify decision-making, they might follow standard operating procedures or abide by some sort of moral code. They might decide to imitate the action taken by other people whom they trust or admire. They might follow what they perceive to be widespread norms. Out of habit, they might continue to do what they have been doing unless there is overwhelming evidence against it. Not only do humans fail to anticipate crises; they also fail to respond rationally to them. Humans evolved these shortcuts because they require little effort and work well in a broad range of situations. Without access to a real-time map of prey in different hunting grounds, for example, a prehistoric hunter might have resorted to a simple rule of thumb: look for animals where his fellow tribesmen found them yesterday. But in times of crisis, emotions and rules are not always helpful drivers of decision-making. High stakes, uncertainty, tradeoffs, and conflict—all elicit negative emotions, which can impede wise responses. Uncertainty is scary, as it signals an inability to predict what will happen, and what cannot be predicted might be deadly. The vast majority of people are already risk averse under normal circumstances. Under stress, they become even more so, and they retreat to the familiar comfort of the status quo. From gun laws to fossil fuel subsidies, once a piece of legislation is in place, it is hard to dislodge it, even when cost-benefit analysis argues for change. Apocalyptic images challenge dominant power structures – they contest the implausibility of inequitable structures producing catastrophe and generate imagination of futures of social justice outside of current narratives Jessica Hurley 17, Assistant Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, "Impossible Futures: Fictions of Risk in the Longue Durée", Duke University Press, https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-literature/article/89/4/761/132823/Impossible-Futures-Fictions-of-Risk-in-the-Longue Squo power structures (i.e. what the K criticizes) paint themselves as stable/inevitable to project their power and maintain dominance Questioning that stability thru extinction narratives questions squo world orders bc it calls into ques the idea of squo world stability which allows us to envision alternative worlds/future i.e. one where it fails and causes extinction Justifies extinction focus and preventing extinction in the name of changing those squo structures If contemporary ecocriticism has a shared premise about environmental risk it is that genre is the key to both perceiving and, possibly, correcting ecological crisis. Frederick Buell’s 2003 From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century has established one of the most central oppositions of this paradigm. As his title suggests, Buell tells the story of a discourse that began in the apocalyptic mode in the 1960s and 70s, when discussions of "the immanent end of nature" most commonly took the form of "prophecy, revelation, climax, and extermination" before turning away from apocalypse when the prophesied ends failed to arrive (112, 78). Buell offers his suggestion for the appropriate literary mode for life lived within a crisis that is both unceasing and inescapable: new voices, "if wise enough will abandon apocalypse for a sadder realism that looks closely at social and environmental changes in process and recognizes crisis as a place where people dwell" (202-3). In a world of threat, Buell demands a realism that might help us see risks more clearly and aid our survival. Buell’s argument has become a broadly held view in contemporary risk theory and ecocriticism, overlapping fields in the social sciences and humanities that address the foundational question of second modernity: "how do you live when you are at such risk?" (Woodward 2009, 205).1 Such an assertion, however, assumes both that realism is a neutral descriptive practice and that apocalypse is not something that is happening now in places that we might not see, or cannot hear. This essay argues for the continuing importance of apocalyptic narrative forms in representations of environmental risk to disrupt conservative realisms that maintain the statusquo. Taking the ecological disaster of nuclear waste as my case study, I examine two fictional treatments of nuclear waste dumps that create different temporal structures within which the colonial history of the United States plays out. The first, a set of Department of Energy documents that use statistical modeling and fictional description to predict a set of realistic futures for the site of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico (1991), creates a present that is fully knowable and a future that is fully predictable. Such an approach, I suggest, perpetuates the state logics of implausibility that have long undergirded settler colonialism in the United States. In contrast, Leslie Marmon Silko’s contemporaneous novel Almanac of the Dead (1991) uses its apocalyptic form to deconstruct the claims to verisimilitude that undergird state realism, transforming nuclear waste into a prophecy of the end of the United States rather than a means for imagining its continuation. In Almanac of the Dead, the presence of nuclear waste introjects a deep-time perspective into contemporary America, transforming the present into a speculative space where environmental catastrophe produces not only unevenly distributed damage but also revolutionary forms of social justice that insist on a truth that probability modeling cannot contain: that the future will be unimaginably different from the present, while the present, too, might yet be utterly different from the real that we think we know. Nuclear waste is rarely treated in ecocriticism or risk theory, for several reasons: it is too manmade to be ecological; its catastrophes are ongoing, intentionally produced situations rather than sudden disasters; and it does not support the narrative that subtends ecocritical accounts of risk perception in which the nuclear threat gives rise to an awareness of other kinds of threat before reaching the end of its relevance at the end of the Cold War.2 In what follows, I argue that the failure of nuclear waste to fit into the critical frames created by ecocriticism and risk theory to date offers an opportunity to expand those frames and overcome some of their limitations, especially the impulse towards a paranoid, totalizing realism that Peter van Wyck (2005) has described as central to ecocriticism in the risk society. Nuclear waste has durational forms that dwarf the human. It therefore dwells less in the economy of risk as it is currently conceptualized and more in the blown-out realm of deep time. Inhabiting the temporal scale that has recently been christened the Anthropocene, the geological era defined by the impact of human activities on the world’s geology and climate, nuclear waste unsettles any attempt at realist description, unveiling the limits of human imagination at every turn.3 By analyzing risk society through a heuristic of nuclear waste, this essay offers a critique of nuclear colonialism and environmental racism. At the same time, it shows how the apocalyptic mode in deep time allows narratives of environmental harm and danger to move beyond the paranoid logic of risk. In the world of deep time, all that might come to pass will come to pass, sooner or later. The endless maybes of risk become certainties. The impossibilities of our own deaths and the deaths of everything else will come. But so too will other impossibilities: talking macaws and alien visitors; the end of the colonial occupation of North America, perhaps, or a sudden human determination to let the world live. The end of capitalism may yet become more thinkable than the end of the world. Just wait long enough. Stranger things will happen. The 1AC isn’t reformism – it doesn’t conflate change with progress or validate legal institutions – it’s a tactical intervention that reduces violence while exposing the contradictions within law which is necessary in conjunction with other methods. Spade 13 Dean Spade, associate professor of law @ Seattle University, "Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform" Signs Vol. 38, No. 4, Summer 2013 What intersectional politics demands Social movements using critical intersectional tools are making demands that are often difficult for legal scholars to comprehend because of the ways that they throw US law and the nation-state form into crisis. Because they recognize the fact that legal equality contains and neutralizes resistance and perpetuates intersectional violence and because they identify purportedly neutral administrative systems as key vectors of that violence, critical scholars and activists are making demands that include ending immigration enforcement and abolishing policing and prisons. These demands suggest that the technologies of gendered racialization that form the nation cannot be reformed into fair and neutral systems. These systems are technologies of racialized-gendered population control that cannot operate otherwise—they are built to extinguish perceived threats and drains in order to protect and enhance the livelihood of the national population. These kinds of demands and the analysis they represent produce a different relation to law reform strategies than the national narrative about law reform suggests, and different than what is often assumed by legal scholars interested in the field of "equality law." Because legal equality "victories" are being exposed as primarily symbolic declarations that stabilize the status quo of violence, declarations from courts or legislatures become undesirable goals. Instead, law reform, in this view, might be used as a tactic of transformation focused on interventions that materially reduce violence or maldistribution without inadvertently expanding harmful systems in the name of reform. One recent example is the campaign against gang injunctions in Oakland, California. A broad coalition—comprising organizations focused on police violence, economic justice, imprisonment, youth development, immigration, gentrification, and violence against queer and trans people—succeeded in recent years in bringing significant attention to the efforts of John Russo, Oakland’s city attorney, to introduce gang injunctions (Critical Resistance 2011). The organizations in this coalition are prioritizing anticriminalization work that might usually be cast as irrelevant or marginal to organizations focused on the single axis of women’s or LGBT equality. The campaign has a law reform target in that it seeks to prevent the enactment of certain law enforcement mechanisms that are harmful to vulnerable communities. However, it is not a legal-equality campaign. Rather than aiming to change a law or policy that explicitly excludes a category of people, it aims to expose the fact that a facially neutral policy is administered in a racially targeted manner (Davis 2011; Stop the Injunctions 2011). Furthermore, the coalition frames its campaign within a larger set of demands not limited to what can be won within the current structure of American law but focused on population-level conditions of maldistribution. The demands of the coalition include stopping all gang injunctions and police violence; putting resources toward reentry support and services for people returning from prison, including fully funded and immediate access to identity documents, housing, job training, drug and alcohol treatment, and education; banning employers from asking about prior convictions on job applications; ending curfews for people on parole and probation; repealing California’s three-strikes law; reallocating funds from prison construction to education; ending all collaborations between Oakland’s government and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); providing affordable and low-income housing; making Oakland’s Planning Commission accountable regarding environmental impacts of development; ending gentrification; and increasing the accountability of Oakland’s city government while augmenting decision-making power for Oakland residents (Stop the Injunctions 2011). These demands evince an analysis of conditions facing vulnerable communities in Oakland (and beyond) that cannot be resolved solely through legal reform since they include the significant harm inflicted when administrative bodies like ICE and the Planning Commission implement violent programs under the guise of neutral rationales. These demands also demonstrate an intersectional analysis of harm and refuse logics of deservingness that have pushed many social movements to distance themselves from criminalized populations. Instead, people caught up in criminal and immigration systems are portrayed as those in need of resources and support, and the national fervor for law and order that has gripped the country for decades, emptying public coffers and expanding imprisonment, is criticized.Another example of intersectional activism utilizing law reform without falling into the traps of legal equality is activism against the immigration enforcement program Secure Communities. Secure Communities is a federal program in which participating jurisdictions submit the fingerprints of arrestees to federal databases for an immigration check. As of October 2010, 686 jurisdictions in thirty-three states were participating.12 Diverse coalitions of activists and organizations around the United States launched organizing campaigns to push their jurisdictions to refuse to participate. Organizations focused on domestic violence, trans and queer issues, racial and economic justice, and police accountability, along with many others, have joined this effort and committed resources to stopping the devolution of criminal and immigration enforcement. Their advocacy has rejected deservingness narratives that push the conversation toward reform for "good, noncriminal" immigrants. These advocates have won significant victories, convincing certain jurisdictions to refuse to participate and increasing understanding of the intersecting violences of criminal punishment and immigration enforcement.13 This work also avoids the danger of expanding and legitimizing harmful systems that other legal reform work can present. It is focused on reducing, dismantling, and preventing the expansion of harmful systems.14 I offer these examples not because they are perfect—certainly a significant range of tactics and strategies are part of each of these campaigns, and, with detailed analysis, we might find instances of co-optation, deservingness divides, and other dangers of legal reform work occurring even as some are avoided and rejected. However, these examples are indicative of resistance to limitations of legal equality or rights strategies. These demands exceed what the law recognizes as viable claims. These campaigns suggest that those who argue that a politics based on intersectional analysis is too broad, idealistic, complex, or impossible—or that it eliminates effective immediate avenues for resistance—are mistaken. Critical political engagements are resisting the pitfalls of rights discourse and seeking to build broad-based resistance formations made up of constituencies that come from a variety of vulnerable subpopulations but find common cause in concerns about criminalization, immigration, poverty, colonialism, militarism, and other urgent conditions. Their targets are administrative systems and law enforcement mechanisms that are nodes of distribution for racialized-gendered harm and violence, and their tactics seek material change in the lives of vulnerable populations rather than recognition and formal inclusion. Their organizing methods mobilize directly affected communities and value horizontal structures, leadership development, mutual aid, democratic participation, and community solutions rather than top-down, elite-imposed approaches to political transformation. These analytical and practical methods owe a great deal to women-of-color feminist formations that have innovated and continue to lead inquiry and experimentation into transformative social justice theory and practice.15