Opponent: Hamilton Independent GB | Judge: Nae Edwards
1ac - cap 1nc - t-fw extra t rem pic case 1ar - all 2nr - t-fw rem pic case 2ar - all
CPS
4
Opponent: Aragon ZA | Judge: Alexandra Mork
1ac - PTD 1nc - innovation da india soft power pic mining DA case 1ar - all condo 2nr - innovation DA case condo 2ar - case da
Damus
1
Opponent: Harker DA | Judge: Claudia Ribera
1ac - Democracy AC 1nc - cap k dedev democracy bad case 1ar - all 2nr - dedev case 2ar - all
Damus
5
Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: Asher Towner
1ac - Prison AC 1nc - Nebel T t workers scr 69 cp util case 1ar - all semantics voter 2nr - semantics voter scr 69 cp case 2ar - case cp
Damus
4
Opponent: Harker SS | Judge: Tarun Ratnasabapathy
1ac - Democracy 1nc - police pic cap k dedev case 1ar - all 2nr - police pic case 2ar - all
Glenbrooks
1
Opponent: Bronx Science NK | Judge: Andrew Qin
1ac - alienation 1nc - econ da police pic comparative worlds util v2 case 1ar - spec status no paradigm issues case pic 2nr - multiple shells bad pic util case shells 2ar- spec status case multiple shells bad
Glenbrooks
3
Opponent: Harker DV | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1ac - EU 1nc - t-a case turns (nato bad eu collapse good democracy bad) 1ar - all 2nr - democracy bad nato bad 2ar - all
Glenbrooks
6
Opponent: Scarsdale SV | Judge: Chris Castillo
1ac - kant afc tricks 1nc - police pic util v2 comparative worldscase 1ar - indexicals case pic 2nr - comparative worlds util pic case indexicals 2ar - indexicals case
Greenhill
2
Opponent: Strake Jesuit KS | Judge: Matt Moorhead
1ac - Kant w util advantages 1nc - consult util case 1ar - util advantages consult condo consult cp bad 2nr - all 2ar - case consult cp
Greenhill
4
Opponent: Holy Cross ND | Judge: Ishan Rereddy
1ac - Necropolitics 1nc - t - fw cap k new affs bad case 1ar - all 2nr - t-fw 2ar - t-fw case
Greenhill
5
Opponent: Southlake Carrol AS | Judge: Claudia Ribera
1ac - Cannabis 1nc - T-Medicine Consult WHO Cap K case 1ar - all 2nr - Cap K case 2ar - All
Harvard Westlake
1
Opponent: Greenhill NT | Judge: Leah Villanueva
1ac - space colonization 1nc - china pic xi DA india soft power pic util case 1ar - all condo pics 2nr - condo pics india soft power pics case 2ar - case
Harvard Westlake
5
Opponent: Harker PG | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1ac - mining 1nc - rem pic water DA t - appropriation case 1ar - all 2nr - pic case 2ar - all
Harvard Westlake
4
Opponent: Westwood VS | Judge: Tarun Ratnasabapathy
1ac - india 1nc - disclosure case 1ar - all 2nr - all 2ar - all
Harvard Westlake
Doubles
Opponent: Strake Jesuit KS | Judge: Panel
1ac - Kant disclosure shell 1nc - rem pic asteroid mining da util case disclosure 1ar - all pics bad condo 2nr - da pics bad condo case disclosure 2ar - pic da disclosure
1ac - rawls 1nc - econ da police pic util case 1ar - all 2nr - pic util case 2ar - all
Longhorn Classic
3
Opponent: Cypress Woods AZ | Judge: Elmer Yang
1ac - contracts 1nc - disclosure util econ da v2 new affs bad case 1ar - disclosure new affs bad rvi 2nr - disclosure rvis bad debate ended after the 2nr
Longhorn Classic
6
Opponent: Westwood AG | Judge: Aaron Barcio
1ac - turtle island 1nc - t fw nebel workers util case 1ar - all 2nr - nebel workers t fw case 2ar - all
Loyola
3
Opponent: Memorial BD | Judge: Pheonix Pittman
1ac - Prag uv 1nc - Util Consult Comparative Worlds 1ar - condo consult bad afc must spec advocacy text consult util comparative worlds case 2nr - all 2ar - afc uv
Loyola
6
Opponent: Sequoia AS | Judge: Ronak Ahuja
1ac - Cannabis 1nc - T Cap K Advantage CP Case 1ar - all 2nr - T 2ar - T
Loyola
1
Opponent: OA Independent DM | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1ac - Vaccines 1nc - T Consult WTO CP Cap K 1ar - All 2nr - Consult CP 2ar - All
1ac - Racialized Medicines 1nc - distribution cp fisheries da util v3 consult cp case 1ar - all 2nr - distribution cp fisheries DA cutil v3 case 2ar - all
Meadows
3
Opponent: Marlborough MJ | Judge: Joel Lemuel
1ac - MSF ac 1nc - distribution cp v2 fisheries da util consult cp case 1ar - condo and consult bad all 2nr - condo consult bad fisheries DA util case 2ar - framing case da
Meadows
5
Opponent: Salado HF | Judge: Diana Alvarez
1ac - Covid waivers 1nc - innovation da eu cp remdesvir pic util case 1ar - all 2nr - eu cp da util case 2ar - all
Nano Nagle
1
Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Parth Misra
1ac - evergreening 1nc - nebel t consult who biotech da case 1ar - all 2nr - consult who case 2ar - all
Nano Nagle
3
Opponent: Dwight Englewood EK | Judge: Nick Fleming
1ac - Tripps novel pandemic ac 1nc - nebel t Remdesivir pic consult who cp innovation da case 1ar - all 2nr - consult who cp case 2ar - all
Nano Nagle
Doubles
Opponent: Prospect ST | Judge: Panel
1ac - virtue ethics 1nc - fisheries DA consult who cp util case 1ar - consult who cp util case 2nr - da util case 2ar - all
Nano Nagle
5
Opponent: Solebury LN | Judge: Vishan Chaudhary
1ac - evergreening 1nc - consult who innovation DA fishing da case 1ar - all 2nr - fishing da case 2ar - all
Peninsula
2
Opponent: Plano East Senior RP | Judge: Claudia Ribera
1ac - lunar heritage 1nc - new affs bad t-outer space transhumanism K case 1ar - all 2nr - t outerspace 2ar - t outerspace
Peninsula
3
Opponent: OCSA AK | Judge: Forrest Fulgenzi
1AC - fem 1nc - t-fw starklink pic util case 1ar - all 2nr - pic util case 2ar - all
Peninsula
6
Opponent: West Ranch SV | Judge: Ben Cortez
1ac - ptd 1nc - extra t xi da asteroid mining da case 1ar - all rvi 2nr - asteroid mining da case rvi 2ar - case da
St Marks
1
Opponent: Harker DS | Judge: Colton Gilbert
1ac - eu 1nc - t wto nebel t fisheries DA dedev case 1ar - all 2nr - t wto 2ar - t wto
St Marks
3
Opponent: Marlborough TZ | Judge: Leah Villanueva
1ac - whole res 1nc - consult who innovation da fisheries case 1ar - all 2nr - consult who case 2ar - all
St Marks
Doubles
Opponent: Marlborough WR | Judge: Panel
1ac - covid 1nc - Distribution cp fisheries DA innovation DA util case 1ar - all 2nr - Distribution cp fisheries DA util case 2ar - innovation da all
St Marks
6
Opponent: Harker SS | Judge: Chris Castillo
1ac - eu 1nc - t - wto consult cp fisheries da case 1ar - all 2nr - case 2ar - case
USC
1
Opponent: Harvard Westlake JH | Judge: Anthony Winchell
1ac - Brazil 1nc - truckers pic t - a ptx da case 1ar - all 2nr - case 2ar - case
1ac - incarcerated workers 1nc - t-a abolition K t-workers case 1ar - all grammar DA 2nr - grammar da k case 2ar - case k
USC
5
Opponent: Able2Shine MC | Judge: Devane Murphy
1ac - duality 1nc - t-fw extra t util truckers pic case 1ar - all independent voter 2nr - extra t util case independent voter 2ar - case extra t util
x
1
Opponent: x | Judge: x
x
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 Riley (she/her)
phone: 8186916116 (preferred!!!! my email is being slow) facebook: Riley Rees (please friend me first!) email: rrees2023@ihs.immaculateheart.org (PLS DONT USE THIS MY EMAIL HAS BEEN SUPER SLOW JUST USE IT FOR EMAIL CHAINS!!!!!)
Please note that my cites don't always work but I have everything opensourced
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Scarsdale SV | Judge: Chris Castillo cites not working check os
11/21/21
1 - Disclosure Theory
Tournament: Longhorn Classic | Round: 3 | Opponent: Cypress Woods AZ | Judge: Elmer Yang 1NC Interpretation: Debaters must disclose all positions they have read open sourced on the 2021-2022 NDCA wiki.
Violation: you didn’t, I have screenshots
Net benefits:
Education
a. Evidence Quality – Disclosure creates a public information database which streamlines case writing and encourages debaters to find the best evidence on the topic. b. Incentivizes Research – Disclosure allows debaters to craft specific responses to their opponent’s positions which promotes deep discussion. c. Argument Responsibility – Disclosure discourages cheap shot strategies which rely on obfuscation to win rounds. 2. Evidence Ethics – Full text disclosure allows debaters to ensure that evidence has been accurately tagged and cut. 3. Accessibility
a. Resource Inequality – Full text disclosure puts everyone on an equal playing field by ensuring that debaters with fewer resources can still access evidence cut from expensive online libraries and databases.
b. Prep Burden – Larger schools have the ability to scout more rounds at tournaments by virtue of the fact that they have larger teams and more connections on the circuit. Disclosure solves because it gives everyone access to the same intelligence.
Voter: Fairness, Education
12/4/21
1 - Extra Topicality
Tournament: USC | Round: 5 | Opponent: Able2Shine MC | Judge: Devane Murphy 1NC – Extra T Interpretation: Debaters may not garner offense from extra-topical planks of the plan.
Violation: the aff fiats a “perspective of an Earth Centered Conscientization”
Net benefits: First, Limits – Their interpretation justifies a near infinite amount of affirmatives. Each extra-topical plank changes the nature of the affirmative and requires starkly different case negs. There are also no predictable parameters to dictate what plank will be added. Limits are best for education: A. Iterative content mastery: debaters learn best from successive strategic iterations of argument production. Engaging in debates about the same core issues challenges students to innovate based on feedback. B. Prep: nuanced research requires a stasis point. A large caselist results in shallow debates and pushes argumentation to the fringes. This prevents rigorous argument testing. Second, Ground – Extra topicality allows the aff to construct Frankenstein affs with planks that circumvent core negative arguments and artificially inflate solvency. Empirically proven in this debate – their plan is designed to avoid solvency deficits about Ground is vital to produce fair debates – it ensures both sides have valuable and defensible ideas to forward.
Vote on fairness it’s axiomatically necessary to determine the better debater. Vote on education it’s the reason schools fund debate. Use competing interpretations – it deters future abuse by creating consistent norms that debaters can be held to in the future. Drop the debater - dropping the arg is severance, it shifts the debate in the 1ar, mooting 7 minutes of offense.
12/12/21
1 - New Affs Bad
Tournament: Longhorn Classic | Round: 3 | Opponent: Cypress Woods AZ | Judge: Elmer Yang 1NC – New Affs Bad Interpretation: Debaters must disclose new affirmatives on the wiki 30 minutes before they are read in round. Violation: You didn’t Net benefits - 1 - Testing: There are hundreds of potential aff positions, disclosure of the aff directs pre-round prep which ensures the debate is about the substance of the position as opposed to generics, which is key to nuanced clash and in depth debate. Their interpretation forces the negative to read frivolous theory or kritiks with overly broad points of disagreement with the aff.
2 - New does not mean better: Your interp encourages debaters to try to win rounds with surprise strategies as opposed to well researched positions, which kills predictability and iterative content mastery.
Vote on fairness because it is axiomatically necessary to determine the better debater over the better cheater
Vote on education because it is the reason why schools fund debate
Use competing interps: Reasonability is arbitrary which invites judge intervention or random unjustified thresholds. Competing interpretations deters future abuse by creating consistent norms that debaters can be held to in the future.
Drop the debater: Dropping the arg is the equivalent of severance because it allows them to shift to a different position in the 1ar, which moots 7 minutes of 1nc offense. Deters future abuse the greatest incentive in debate is competitive success so debaters won’t read positions if they can’t win on them.
First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything.
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 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.
Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally 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 I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists.
AND
why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27
Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 ~Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority." Global Policy (2012)~ These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.
Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 ~Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.~, Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential riskâ€"positive or negativeâ€"is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything.
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 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.
Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally 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 I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists.
AND
why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27
Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 ~Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority." Global Policy (2012)~ These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.
Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 ~Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.~, Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential riskâ€"positive or negativeâ€"is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
Actor-specificity: side constraints freeze action because government policies always require trade-offs since they have finite resources—the only justifiable way to resolve those conflicts is by benefiting everyone. Actor-specificity first — different agents have different ethical obligations.
No intent-foresight distinction – if we foresee a consequence, then it is intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen
Lexical pre-requisite: Threats to life preclude the ability for moral actors to effectively utilize and act upon other moral theories
Reject calc indicts: Empirically denied—both individuals and policymakers carry out effective cost-benefit analysis which means even if decisions aren’t always perfect it’s still better than not acting at all
Don’t vote on permissibility and presumption because there’s always a risk of offense, but they negate:
We presume statements false absent an active reason to think otherwise – proven by conspiracy theories
Statements are more often false than true because any part can be false – this means you negate in the absence of offense
The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing—we’ll concede util its just a matter of what impacts should come first.
Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 ~Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority." Global Policy (2012)~ These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.
Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 ~Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.~, Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential riskâ€"positive or negativeâ€"is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
Actor-specificity: side constraints freeze action because government policies always require trade-offs since they have finite resources—the only justifiable way to resolve those conflicts is by benefiting everyone. Actor-specificity first — different agents have different ethical obligations.
No intent-foresight distinction – if we foresee a consequence, then it is intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen
Lexical pre-requisite: Threats to life preclude the ability for moral actors to effectively utilize and act upon other moral theories
Reject calc indicts: Empirically denied—both individuals and policymakers carry out effective cost-benefit analysis which means even if decisions aren’t always perfect it’s still better than not acting at all
First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything.
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 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.
Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 ~Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority." Global Policy (2012)~ These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.
Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 ~Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.~, Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential riskâ€"positive or negativeâ€"is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
Actor-specificity: side constraints freeze action because government policies always require trade-offs since they have finite resources—the only justifiable way to resolve those conflicts is by benefiting everyone. Actor-specificity first — different agents have different ethical obligations.
No intent-foresight distinction – if we foresee a consequence, then it is intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen
Lexical pre-requisite: Threats to life preclude the ability for moral actors to effectively utilize and act upon other moral theories
Reject calc indicts: Empirically denied—both individuals and policymakers carry out effective cost-benefit analysis which means even if decisions aren’t always perfect it’s still better than not acting at all
Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 ~Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority." Global Policy (2012)~ These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.
Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 ~Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.~, Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential riskâ€"positive or negativeâ€"is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
11/7/21
JF - CP - China PIC
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 1 | Opponent: Greenhill NT | Judge: Leah Villanueva CP: States except for the Peoples Republic Of China ought to extend the non-appropriation principle of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 to private entities.
1/15/22
JF - CP - India Soft Power PIC
Tournament: CPS | Round: 4 | Opponent: Aragon ZA | Judge: Alexandra Mork 1NC CP: States except for The Republic of India ought to expand the Public Trust Doctrine to reduce private actor space appropriation of Outer Space. India space participation is crucial to India’s soft power – independently Indian norm setting curbs Chinese militarization Castro ’17. Bhavani Castro Fellow of Indian Studies at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, 03-03-2017, "Why India Should Help Shape Norms for Outer Space Activities," The Diplomat, https://thediplomat.com/2017/03/why-india-should-help-shape-norms-for-outer-space-activities/ TDI The past years have been groundbreaking for the Indian Space Program. In 2014, its first interplanetary mission, Mangalyaan, entered into Mars orbit, putting the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) into the select group of space agencies to reach Mars, and the first one to succeed entering its orbit in the first attempt. In 2015, the agency launched its first space observatory, Astrosat, aimed to observe distant planets and astronomical objects, a first-class technology mastered by few countries. Last year, India also set a record by launching 20 satellites at once, many from other countries. However, India could go one step further in the space business and engage in a much more rewarding activity for its ambitions: taking the lead in shaping norms for outer space activities. As the ISRO achieved a new world record in February – the launching of 104 satellites on a single rocket – Prime Minister Narendra Modi should consider giving new focus to the diplomacy surrounding the use of space. India has not been very active in the ongoing international efforts to update the outer space regime. It has not supported the European Union’s proposal for a Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities, and it also watched silently while China and Russia joined efforts to issue a draft for a treaty on the prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space. However, if India aims for greater recognition in the international scenario, it is about time to take a more proactive stance on the creation of new norms and rules in global governance. The existing international space regime includes several outdated treaties – mainly the Outer Space Treaty from 1967 and the Moon Treaty from 1979. These documents do not deal with urgent issues for today’s space exploration, including the prohibition of non-nuclear weapons tests in space and the creation of risky debris from the destruction of old satellites. The entrance of new actors, specifically in the space communications industry, makes it increasingly difficult to coordinate the positioning of new satellites in an already overcrowded orbit. Moreover, it is still unknown how those new actors – including China and India – will behave in space: whether they will choose to follow the peaceful use of space, or whether militarization will be their path. It is crucial for India to work actively for new norms in the current scenario because of a variety of reasons. First, India needs to consider its national security interests. The vacuum created by the slow growth of the US and Russia on space capabilities is being filled by China, whose intentions are not entirely clear. In 2007, Beijing launched an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) to destroy an old satellite. This move, not previously notified to the international community, not only produced thousands of harmful debris in orbit, but also evidenced China’s growing military capacity. If India wants to curb potentially harmful Chinese activities in outer space, it needs to endorse rules that fit its national interests. India also needs to promote the regulation of space activities to enhance its cooperation with other space-faring nations – possibly including China, if the two countries decide for cooperation instead of competition. Vital sectors of the economy, as finance and communications, are dependent on space technologies, which makes cooperation essential for countries in a globalized world. India is proud of the indigeneity of its space technology, but it is about time to engage in technology sharing and commercial agreements with other countries. Space technologies are economic stimulants and useful tools in communication, resource management, and disaster prevention activities, all of which are essential assets for emerging economies like India. More importantly, engaging in and committing to the creation of a new space governance framework would project India as an agenda-setter in a field of increasing importance for international relations. As in other realms of global governance, the future of space research is in the hands of Asia. India can promote the creation of a more comprehensive regime for the use of outer space in a variety of ways. It is possible, for example, to start discussions within organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. India can also actively engage with existing forums, such as the UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space and ongoing discussions held by the European Union on the creation of a code of conduct. The Outer Space Treaty will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year; 2017 might be a good year for India to start an active campaign for an upgrade in the space regime. It might be difficult for India to build a new international institution or create legally binding treaties, but it can work on the promotion and creation of new conventions, cooperation agreements, and consensual norms. Private sector is key Rajagopalan ’20 Dr Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi., 5-24-2020, "India’s Space Programme: A role for the private sector, finally?," ORF, https://www.orfonline.org/research/indias-space-programme-a-role-for-the-private-sector-finally-66661/ NChu India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced last week that India’s private sector will play a key role in augmenting India’s space programme, and that the government intends to share the facilities of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) with the private sector. This announcement was part of the Narendra Modi government’s call for new and bold reforms in an effort to promote its ‘self-reliant India’ mission. It is the fourth segment of the Rs 20 lakh crore Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan special economic stimulus. Sitharaman’s announcement entails a role for the private sector, possibly with the goal of greater investments in technology development and acquisition, capacity-building and space exploration, including planetary exploration. The minister, while announcing these reforms, appeared to understand that the private sector can help augment India’s space capability. While praising the work done by ISRO, she also pointed out that the private sector is also doing a lot of work in developing space technology. She also acknowledged that the existing regulations prevent private entities from using or even testing their products. Therefore, to level the playing field, the government “will make a provision for the private sector to benefit from the assets which are available to ISRO and for India (in general) to benefit from.” The minister also said the new reforms would allow the private sector to play an active role in “satellites, launches and space-based services”. But as always, implementation is key. Properly executing these reforms will require enabling policies and appropriate regulatory frameworks. That the new reforms will allow private sector players to use ISRO facilities is a big deal. This indeed must be music to the ears of commercial players who have been seeking to get a fair share of the pie in terms of manufacturing of satellites and propellant technologies, among other areas. It should not be too difficult for India’s private space sector because there is a sizeable talent pool available outside ISRO. More importantly, the entry of the private sector, as in the telecom sector, can bring several advantages in terms of cost and access. Following the announcement, ISRO tweeted that it will follow the government’s guidelines to allow the private sector to undertake space activities in the country. Though this did not seem particularly welcoming of the government’s initiative, ISRO’s support is critical to making it a success. ISRO has in the last few years been opening up to the Indian private space sector in a gradual manner – mostly as a matter of compulsion because ISRO simply does not have the in-house capacity to address India’s growing requirements. Today, the Indian space programme is not just about civilian applications for remote-sensing, meteorology and communication, as in the early decades. India’s space sector and its requirements have grown enormously in the last decade to include television and broadband services, space science and exploration, space-based navigation and, of course, defence and security applications. Among others, Ambassador Rakesh Sood has articulated the need for legislation to facilitate ISRO’s partnership with industries and entrepreneurs. Narayan Prasad and Prateep Basu, two prominent faces in the Indian space start-up segment, have argued that despite ISRO’s successes, “India’s space competitiveness has suffered from the absence of a globally reputed, private space industry.” The private sector, especially the NewSpace industry and start-ups, have an advantage in terms of low-cost operations, which itself should be a big incentive for the government to make it an active stakeholder. A certain amount of democratisation of space technology with the participation of the private sector can ensure costs are kept low. And expanding the number of stakeholders will also ensure more transparency and better accountability and regulatory practices. This has been missing in India’s space sector. The same agency has undertaken promotion, commercialisation and regulatory functions – which is not healthy. Following the minister’s announcement, I spoke to a few key players in the private sector to capture their sense of the reforms in the pipeline. Sadly, the general mood is not one of excitement but rather to wait and watch. To them, as stated earlier, the key is implementation. One of them, who did not wish to be named, argued that unless there is a conducive structure for the private sector to engage with, the announcement is more lip service. Narayan Prasad said that there need to be basic changes for the reforms to be effective. The private sector is particularly concerned about issues such as sharing intellectual property for products developed by the private sector. Prasad argued that IP-centric policymaking has to be taken for real reform. Right now, ISRO thinks they will use the suppliers only as manufacturing or services partners. So all IP is controlled by ISRO and suppliers just replace ISRO technicians and production facilities. This means most suppliers have no real IP of their own, and just depend on cost plus contracts from ISRO for business. The only way to change that is to create reforms where local industry can invest in building their own IP and/or products that can match global standards. This in turn means that policymakers will need to view industry as more than sweatshops and look at what steps can be taken for IP/product development by private industry. This is the only way to integrate India’s private sector into the global supply chain. Prasad adds that if ISRO is serious about partnering with the private sector, it must spell out the requirements and select the best available. Several private-sector actors have articulated the need for an independent regulator. This is an area that has been a common thread in many of my conversations with Indian entrepreneurs. Rohan M. Ganapathy, CEO and CTO of Bellatrix Aerospace in Bengaluru, also made a strong case for an autonomous regulator, and acknowledged a need for the government to clarify RandD risk funding, which is crucial to realise new technologies. It is not that ISRO has not engaged the private sector. ISRO has long been associated with private firms like Larsen and Toubro, Godrej and Walchand Nagar Industries. It is just that the mode of participation envisaged through the new reforms is very different. The current mode of work, more of an outsourcing model, is becoming inadequate. In the last few years, because of significant capacity deficit, ISRO began to work with a few in the private sector such as the Bengaluru-based Alpha Design Technologies, contracted to build satellites. Similarly, Bellatrix Aerospace began to work with ISRO on advanced in-space propulsion systems. But these remain exceptions. But ISRO does recognise the new compulsions and has been trying to change. The newly formed commercial enterprise called the NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), under the Department of Space, is an initiative to engage the private sector. NSIL is meant to help the private sector with transfer of some technologies to the private sector, especially the small satellite launch vehicle that is being developed and even the older PSLV. But the pace of ISRO’s engagement with the private sector needs to quicken. Followed up effectively, the new government initiatives could help. Indeed, ISRO needs to expand its operations significantly if it has to remain competitive, both from a domestic and international outlook. The Indian space programme has several advantages, the most important being cost: the ability to provide reliable launches in a cost-effective manner is a big advantage. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle remains a tried and tested launch vehicle and has managed to remain the cheapest for launching small satellites into space. But competition in this sector is picking up. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and start-ups from China want a share of the global commercial market, estimated to be worth around $350 billion (Rs 26.46 lakh crore). If ISRO does not improve its launch infrastructure and increase the number of launches, it will be at a disadvantage. And despite India’s cost advantages, it has a mere 2 share of this, worth $7 billion. India can gain significantly if ISRO and the country’s private space sector can cooperate effectively and synergistically. This requires the government to actually act on the initiatives it announced. China is ramping up aggression in outer space Broad 21 (William J, is a science journalist and senior writer.) "How Space Became the Next ‘Great Power’ Contest Between the U.S. and China," 1-24-2021 updated 5-6-2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/trump-biden-pentagon-space-missiles-satellite.html TDI For years, the Chinese studied — with growing anxiety — the American military, especially its invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The battlefield successes were seen as rooted in space dominance. Planners noted that thousands of satellite-guided bombs and cruise missiles had rained down with devastating precision on Taliban forces and Iraqi defenses. While the Pentagon’s edge in orbital assets was clearly a threat to China, planners argued that it might also represent a liability. “They saw how the U.S. projected power,” said Todd Harrison, a space analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “And they saw that it was largely undefended.” China began its antisatellite tests in 2005. It fired two missiles in two years and then made headlines in 2007 by shattering a derelict weather satellite. There was no explosion. The inert warhead simply smashed into the satellite at blinding speed. The successful test reverberated globally because it was the first such act of destruction since the Cold War. The whirling shards, more than 150,000 in all, threatened satellites as well as the International Space Station. Ground controllers raced to move dozens of spacecraft and astronauts out of harm’s way. The Bush administration initially did little. Then, in a show of force meant to send Beijing a message, in 2008, it fired a sophisticated missile to shoot down one of its own satellites. Beijing conducted about a dozen more tests, including ones in which warheads shot much higher, in theory putting most classes of American spacecraft at risk. China also sought to diversify its antisatellite force. A warhead could take hours to reach a high orbit, potentially giving American forces time for evasive or retaliatory action. Moreover, the speeding debris from a successful attack might endanger Beijing’s own spacecraft. In tests, China began firing weak laser beams at satellites and studying other ways to strike at the speed of light. However, all the techniques were judged as requiring years and perhaps decades of development. Then came the new idea. Every aspect of American space power was controlled from the ground by powerful computers. If penetrated, the brains of Washington’s space fleets might be degraded or destroyed. Such attacks, compared with every other antisatellite move, were also remarkably inexpensive. In 2005, China began to incorporate cyberattacks into its military exercises, primarily in first strikes against enemy networks. Increasingly, its military doctrine called for paralyzing early attacks. In 2008, hackers seized control of a civilian imaging satellite named Terra that orbited low, like the military’s reconnaissance craft. They did so twice — first in June and again in October — roaming control circuits with seeming impunity. Remarkably, in both cases, the hackers achieved all the necessary steps to command the spacecraft but refrained from doing so, apparently to reduce their fingerprints. Chinese aggression makes escalation inevitable – draws in other powers Fabian 19 Christopher David Fabian, Bachelor of Science, United States Air Force Academy. (“A Neoclassical Realist’s Analysis Of Sino-U.S. Space Policy”, University of North Dakota Scholarly Commons, January, Available Online at: https://commons.und.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3456andcontext=theses Second, Chinese strikes on U.S. space assets must not result in uncontrolled escalation. The advantage of possessing soft-kill technology is the suitability for low-intensity conflicts, while the use of destructive/non-reversible attacks will not be constrained during high-intensity conflicts.234 The use of exclusively non-lethal versus a combination of lethal and non-lethal capabilities can serve as strategic signaling about the phase of combat. However, due to a capability and vulnerability gap, combined with a lack of credible retaliatory threat, a tit-for-tat strategy along a clearly defined escalation ladder may not be a legitimate strategy for the Sino-U.S. relationship. 235 Counterspace action intended to have a tactical/operational effect may cross American strategic red lines, resulting in unintended escalation. For example, an attack on American overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) sensors would degrade their capability to detect conventional medium range ballistic missiles, with targets in the first island chain also interfering with the early detection of nuclear capable ICBMs launched against the U.S.236 Concerningly enough, there is evidence that the implication of interfering with or destroying strategically important U.S. capabilities has only been appreciated on the tactical and operational levels within the Chinese military. 237 Similarly, a Chinese attack on U.S. space systems at the outset of a low-grade conflict could raise the likelihood of a “space Pearl Harbor,” which could, in turn, provoke the United States to contemplate pre-emptive attacks or horizontal escalation on the Chinese mainland.238 In addition, commercial-military integration and combined efforts may result in escalation with third parties. A significant portion of U.S. military communication and imaging capabilities are purchased from commercial companies or provided by allied nations, meaning that to adequately degrade U.S. military capabilities, an attack on non-military and/or non-U.S. assets is required.
12/18/21
JF - CP - Starlink PIC
Tournament: Peninsula | Round: 3 | Opponent: OCSA AK | Judge: Forrest Fulgenzi 1NC CP: The private appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust besides Space X’s Starlink Starlink is key to rural broadband expansion Weinschenk 2/25 (Carl, IT and telecom journalist for Telecompetitor, Teleco Transformation, and IT Business Edge) “Report: Starlink Looks Very Promising for Rural Broadband,” Telecompetitor, 2/25/2021 JL SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband service has the potential to be a game changer for rural broadband, according to an analysis by PCMag of Starlink speeds. The analysis is based on beta tester data exclusively provided to it by Ookla Speedtest. The site looked at data from rural, suburban and urban areas. Among its more than 10,000 users in its semi-public beta were “a perplexing” number in urban and suburban areas where a variety of high-speed options already are available. The story cites Chicago, Seattle and Minneapolis as places where there were testers, despite readily available alternatives. The site compared download speeds against other fixed service providers in 30 counties with at least 30 samples in any month from December 30 to February 24. The counties in which the fixed providers had the biggest speed advantage over Spacelink were urban or suburban: Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties, CA; Cook County, IL; King County, WA and Washington County, MN. It is in rural areas that Starlink shines, according to the research. The five counties in which Starlink had the biggest download speed advantage over the fixed group were rural: Vilas County, WI; Ravali County, MT; Waldo County, ME; Okanogan County, WA and Lamoile County, VT. The number of counties in which Starlink beat the fixed providers and those in which the fixed providers beat Starlink appeared to be about equal, as was the speed differential. “Our own analysis shows that Starlink will make the biggest difference in rural, low-density, low-population counties with few options other than lower-quality satellite services,” wrote Sascha Segan, author of the PCMag article about Startlink rural speeds. Broadband is key to precision agriculture transition ABI 19 (American Broadband Initiative, a leading force in driving changes across Federal Agencies to identify and remove barriers to broadband access and leverage public assets and resources to expand our Nation’s broadband infrastructure capacity.) “A Case for Rural Broadband,” The United States Department of Agriculture, 4/2019 BC HOW E-CONNECTIVITY WILL TRANSFORM THE BUSINESS OF AGRICULTURE Across the agricultural production cycle, farmers and ranchers can implement digital technologies as other modern businesses are doing, enhancing agriculture by driving decision-making based on integrated data, automating processes to increase operational efficiency, improving productivity with tasks driven by real-time insights, augmenting the role of management in the business of farming, and creating new markets with extended geographic reach. These patterns of digital transformation create fundamental shifts in agricultural production, developing new ways of working that make the industry more productive, attractive, and financially sustainable for farmers and ranchers. Tech companies which stand to benefit from industry transformation continue to capitalize on these shifts by developing new technologies, which according to one recent study, may help position themselves to capture a portion of an estimated $254 billion to $340 billion in global addressable digital agriculture market.13 BUSINESS MANAGEMENT shifts decisionmaking from instinct to integrated data Precision Agriculture is transforming the way producers collect, organize, and rely on information to make key decisions. Traditionally, producers’ long-term experiences have created a competitive advantage: years of experiments have produced insights and instincts about the land they have farmed and the animals they have raised. But the volume of data that is possible to collect today can accelerate that learning curve, helping producers learn faster and more rapidly adapt to market shifts—particularly on new fields and with new animals—and creating more nuanced insights, enabling them to act on leading indicators. This creates a disparity between producers who can utilize high-speed Internet service and those who cannot. Examples include the ability to do the following: create decision tools to help farmers and ranchers estimate the potential profit and economic risks associated with growing one particular crop over another • decide which fertilizer is best for current soil conditions • apply pesticides in targeted areas of the field, to control pests rather than applying pesticides over the entire field • use limited water resources more effectively • respond to findings of sensors that monitor animal health and nutrition Better choices about what, where, and when to plant, fertilize, and harvest—or breed, feed, and slaughter—can drive above-average returns by removing unrecognized inefficiencies and scaling insights. DIGITIZATION shifts supply chain management and resource allocation from generic to precise Precision Agriculture helps make the business of farming more efficient by minimizing inputs— such as raw materials and labor—and maximizing outputs. For example, previous research has found that 40 percent of fields are over-fertilized, which not only inflates the cost of inputs but also results in 15 percent–20 percent yield loss suffered from improper fertilizer application.14 Precise application of inputs, such as fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides, allows farmers to adjust inputs to location-based characteristics and use exact amounts needed, which saves money and increases sustainability due to more efficient resource stewardship. Improved fertilizer, soil, and water use can significantly improve water quality with less runoff and reduce climate gas emissions, which is important since agriculture accounts for 10-15 percent of worldwide emissions.15 Despite reductions in necessary inputs, Next Generation Precision Agriculture helps maintain or increase yields, leading to significant gains in efficiency14. Real-time insights also improve logistics. When growing melons, for instance, real-time data can help farmers overcome challenges in storing and shipping their products. Melons should be stored in an optimal refrigeration environment to minimize spoilage, and real-time precision sensors can reduce spoilage by alerting staff to suboptimal variations in temperature and humidity, allowing the execution of remedies before major losses occur. When refrigerated storage is full or the market price is at a peak, the “Internet of Things” can provide real-time information about where trucks are located and locating customers to market products to help make the sale. LABOR EFFICIENCY boosts productivity by automating routine processes and enabling real-time response Connected devices equip farmers with a clear picture of their operations at any moment, making it possible to prioritize tasks more effectively and triage the most pressing issues. While routine inspection and scouting has typically been a regular part of farm management and has increased farm profitability14, connected technologies can track, sense, and flag where a producer should focus their time and attention that day. Similarly, e-connectivity has allowed rural farms to access new training resources and high-skilled labor that has not been previously available. the strength to continue aiding the South, perhaps it will be able to curb mass starvation and avoid the horrendous violence that consumes starving countries. Unproductive agriculture is the largest threat to global biodiversity Aldred 16 (Jessica, the deputy and production editor of theguardian.com/environment and writes on wildlife and conservation.) “Agriculture and overuse greater threats to wildlife than climate change – study”, The Guardian 8/10/2016 BC Agriculture and the overexploitation of plants and animal species are significantly greater threats to biodiversity than climate change, new analysis shows. Joint research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday found nearly three-quarters of the world’s threatened species faced these threats, compared to just 19 affected by climate change. It comes a month before the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) hosts its annual summit in Hawaii to set future priorities for conservation. The team from the University of Queensland, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the IUCN assessed 8,688 near-threatened or threatened species on the IUCN’s “red list” against 11 threats: overexploitation, agricultural activity, urban development, invasion and disease, pollution, ecosystem modification, climate change, human disturbance, transport and energy production. It found that 6,241 (72) of the studied species were affected by overexploitation – logging, hunting, fishing or gathering species from the wild at rates that cannot be compensated for by reproduction or regrowth. These included the Sumatran rhinoceros, western gorilla and Chinese pangolin – all illegally hunted for their body parts and meat – and the Bornean wren babbler, one of 4,049 species threatened by unsustainable logging. Some 5,407 species (62) were threatened by agriculture alone. The cheetah, African wild dog and hairy-nosed otter are among the animals most affected by crop and livestock farming, timber plantations and aquaculture.
At the same time, the analysis showed, anthropogenic climate change – including increases in storms, flooding, extreme temperatures or extreme drought and sea-level rise – is currently affecting just 19 of species listed as threatened or near-threatened, and was ranked seventh among the 11 threats. Hooded seals are among the 1,688 species affected. These have declined by 90 in the north-eastern Atlantic Arctic over the past few decades as a result of extensive declines in regional sea ice, and the availability of sites for resting and raising pups. The common hippopotamus and leatherback turtle are also being affected by climate-related droughts and high temperatures. The analysis comes a month before representatives from government, industry and NGOs meet in Hawaii for the annual IUCN World Conservation Congress. High on the agenda will be defining a sustainable path for translating climate and development agreements – including the 2015 Paris agreement – into conservation actions. But the authors say it is crucial that efforts to address climate change do not overshadow more immediate priorities for the survival of the world’s flora and fauna. Delegates must focus on proposing and funding actions that deal with the biggest threats to biodiversity, they urge. “Addressing these old foes of over-harvesting and agricultural activities are key to turning around the biodiversity extinction crisis,” said lead author, Sean Maxwell of the University of Queensland, Australia. “This must be at the forefront of the conservation agenda.” But the authors say there are solutions to alleviate the harm caused by overexploitation and agricultural activities, such as sustainable harvest regimes, hunting regulations and no-take marine protected areas, international forums such as Cites and public education to reduce demand. Dr James Watson, co-author of the study from the WCS and the University of Queensland, said: “History has taught us that minimising impacts from over-harvesting and agriculture requires a variety of conservation actions but these can be achieved. “Actions such as well-managed protected areas, enforcement of hunting regulations, and managing agricultural systems in ways that allow threatened species to persist within them, all have a major role to play in reducing the biodiversity crisis. These activities need to be well funded and prioritised in areas that will reduce threat.”
Technological advancements in agriculture solves – they increase biodiversity and prevent environmental damage Capgemini 18 (Capgemini is a French multinational corporation that provides consulting, technology, professional, and outsourcing services.) “Saving the planet with digital farming – our discussion with Tobias Menne (Global Head Digital Farming, BASF)” Capgemini, 5/25/2018 BC Digital farming matters. Why? Because farmers are tasked with feeding a growing world population, expected to reach 10 billion by 2057 according to the UN, while dealing with the consequences of climate change. To achieve that, they need to embrace the digitization of agriculture. I recently sat down with Tobias Menne, head of Global head Digital Farming at BASF to discuss this important topic within modern agronomics. In the final blog of this two-part series, we discuss the immense potential of digital farming. What can change and will it change? The end of information asymmetry In the previous blog, we defined digital farming as the gathering, combining, and sharing of relevant and scalable data to optimize and transform agronomics. The immense amounts of data offer insight, understanding, and quick learnings. This way it can help to battle global food and climate challenges. Tobias elaborates: “What digital farming offers is insight into what is happening on the field. To understand whether or not a certain weed or disease is a threat to the crop. And all this information is available through smartphones, at a very low price point.” Digital farming is particularly revolutionary for farmers in Africa and South East Asia where over 80 of farmers are small holders. Tobias: “These farmers not only gain a lot because they generally are further away from agronomic optimum compared to larger farms in the West. They mostly benefit because digital technology removes the information asymmetry that currently plagues them.” Take the Himalayas, for instance. Because of limited biology training and a lack of qualified people in rural areas, farmers are often unaware of the types of weeds that grow on their fields. Thanks to digital farming, this is changing rapidly. Farming with confidence Digitalization transforms decision-making practices in agronomics. “In the past, farmers invested heavily in labor or crop protection to improve their agronomic situation,” Tobias explains. “They still need to do that. The difference, however, is that now they can be really sure that what they are doing is the right thing. So rather than increasing investments, they simply make smarter decisions. This is why digitization is so powerful.” “Farmers will be able to embrace new technology much more confidently than in the past. And they can better deal with new weather phenomena and new situations. Because they profit from the learnings of other farmers around them.” “Climate change makes farm life more daring and more challenging. That requires much better information on how to farm, what actions to take. Due to climate change we see weeds entering new territories. We already observe the migration of insects, for instance. Digitalization enables us to learn quicker, to combat those new developments.” In other words: digital farming allows adaptable farming. Farmers can anticipate new situations better and faster. A true necessity in this time of climate change. Save the planet Because farmers can farm with more confidence, they are also able to grow a greater variety of crops. This will increase global biodiversity. “Farming is often criticized for its perceived low level of biodiversity,” Tobias says. “You see a lot of corn and soy, and not a lot of variation within those crops. Industrial farming is so homogeneous because farmers wanted to reduce their complexity of decision making. If we start to trust systems for good agronomic decision making, adding crops and increasing functional biodiversity will no longer drive up the complexity of farms.” This means that niche crops like cassava, quinoa, and buckwheat will become more widespread. And that, in turn, means we will find more diverse products in our local shops. Digital farming can decrease the negative impact of farming tremendously. Next to improved biodiversity and water quality, the use of fewer crop protection products is beneficial for the environment. Tobias gives an example: “I’m excited about smart sprayers. In the near future, these will go over the field and identify each weed with their camera. Their nozzles only open when they detect certain weeds. This will not only reduce the amount of product used per square meter, it also allows for species of rare weeds to be preserved.” Trust me, I’m a farmer As consumers we want to have food that is healthy for us, that has not impacted the environment in a negative way, that ideally was grown in our vicinity, and that is tasty. More importantly, we want to trust the information farmers, distributors, and retailers provide about our food. Through transparency, digitalization can increase or rebuild that trust. “I would love to buy the fresh produce”, Tobias says, “knowing that I am contributing to a healthy community in the areas where it was grown. At the moment, I have little opportunity to do so. Sure, I can buy Fair Trade coffee or bananas, but for other products this is really challenging. I believe we can use digital farming to create more transparency on where food comes from and how it empowers the community that produce it.” By reducing the impact farming has on the environment, digital farming can have a positive impact on consumers’ perception of food and food production, contribute to a healthy ecosystem, and offer insight into the food production chain. Continued biodiversity loss causes extinction Corbett 20 (Jessica, a staff writer for Common Dreams) Internally cites IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, an intergovernmental organization established to improve the interface between science and policy on issues of biodiversity and ecosystem services.) “World Leaders Urged to 'Act Now' to Save Biodiversity” EcoWatch, 2/19/2020 BC Ahead of government negotiations scheduled for next week on a global plan to address the biodiversity crisis, 23 former foreign ministers from various countries released a statement on Tuesday urging world leaders to act "boldly" to protect nature. "It is clear to us... that climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the excessive exploitation of natural resources are now threatening millions of species with extinction and jeopardizing the health of our planet," says the statement. "The loss and degradation of nature jeopardizes human health, livelihoods, safety, and prosperity. It disproportionately harms our poorest communities while undermining our ability to meet a broad range of targets set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals." "The world has a moral imperative to collaborate on strong actions to mitigate and adapt to the current climate change and biodiversity crisis. Ambitious targets for conservation of land and ocean ecosystems are vital components of the solution," the statement continues. "Humanity sits on the precipice of irreversible loss of biodiversity and a climate crisis that imperils the future for our grandchildren and generations to come. The world must act boldly, and it must act now." A U.N. report released in May 2019 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that, as Common Dreams reported at the time, "human exploitation of the natural world has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction—with potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization." That report and a growing body of scientific research on rapidly declining biodiversity has led scientists and policymakers alike to raise the alarm about the consequences of not acting ambitiously enough to address what experts have called the "sixth mass extinction." U.N. biodiversity chief Elizabeth Maruma Mrema told the Guardian last month that humanity risks being left to contend with an "empty world." The new statement from diplomats came before the Feb. 24–29 meeting of the Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which was recently moved from Kunming, China to Rome, Italy due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. The event will build on an August 2019 meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. A third meeting in Cali, Colombia is planned for July.
1/22/22
JF - DA - Asteroid Mining DA
Tournament: CPS | Round: 4 | Opponent: Aragon ZA | Judge: Alexandra Mork 1NC – DA Climate change makes water shortages inevitable – that causes hydro-political conflict escalation which goes nuclear Harvey 8/17 (Fiona, the Guardian's environment correspondent, won the Foreign Press Association award for Environment Story of the Year and the British Environment and Media Awards journalist of the year) “Global water crisis will intensify with climate breakdown, says report,” The Guardian, 8/17/2021 JL Mark’s words should be a call to attention, and a call to action. The plight of farmers in Australia illustrates a larger reality: As planetary temperatures continue to increase and rainfall patterns shift due to human-caused climate disruption, our ability to grow crops and have enough drinking water will become increasingly challenged, and the outlook is only going to worsen. The most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warned of increasingly intense droughts and mass water shortages around large swaths of the globe. But even more conservative organizations have been sounding the alarm. “Water insecurity could multiply the risk of conflict,” warns one of the World Bank’s reports on the issue. “Food price spikes caused by droughts can inflame latent conflicts and drive migration. Where economic growth is impacted by rainfall, episodes of droughts and floods have generated waves of migration and spikes in violence within countries.” Meanwhile, a study published in the journal Global Environmental Change, looked at how “hydro-political issues” — including tensions and potential conflicts — could play out in countries expected to experience water shortages coupled with high populations and pre-existing geopolitical tensions. The study warned that these factors could combine to increase the likelihood of water-related tensions — potentially escalating into armed conflict in cross-boundary river basins in places around the world by 74.9 to 95 percent. This means that in some places conflict is practically guaranteed. These areas include regions situated around primary rivers in Asia and North Africa. Noted rivers include the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus, the Nile, and the Ganges-Brahmaputra. Consider the fact that 11 countries share the Nile River basin: Egypt, Burundi, Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. All told, more than 300 million people already live in these countries, — a number that is projected to double in the coming decades, while the amount of available water will continue to shrink due to climate change. For those in the US thinking these potential conflicts will only occur in distant lands — think again. The study also warned of a very high chance of these “hydro-political interactions” in portions of the southwestern US and northern Mexico, around the Colorado River. Potential tensions are particularly worrisome in India and Pakistan, which are already rivals when it comes to water resources. For now, these two countries have an agreement, albeit a strained one, over the Indus River and the sharing of its water, by way of the 1960 Indus Water Treaty. However, water claims have been central to their ongoing, burning dispute over the Kashmir region, a flashpoint area there for more than 60 years and counting. The aforementioned treaty is now more strained than ever, as Pakistan accuses India of limiting its water supply and violating the treaty by placing dams over various rivers that flow from Kashmir into Pakistan. In fact, a 2018 report from the International Monetary Fund ranked Pakistan third among countries facing severe water shortages. This is largely due to the rapid melting of glaciers in the Himalaya that are the source of much of the water for the Indus. To provide an idea of how quickly water resources are diminishing in both countries, statistics from Pakistan’s Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry from 2018 show that water availability (per capita in cubic meters per year) shrank from 5,260 in 1951, to 940 in 2015, and are projected to shrink to 860 by just 2025. In India, the crisis is hardly better. According to that country’s Ministry of Statistics (2016) and the Indian Ministry of Water Resources (2010), the per capita available water in cubic meters per year was 5,177 in 1951, and 1,474 in 2015, and is projected to shrink to 1,341 in 2025. Both of these countries are nuclear powers. Given the dire projections of water availability as climate change progresses, nightmare scenarios of water wars that could spark nuclear exchanges are now becoming possible.
Asteroid mining solves water access – only NEOs are sufficiently proximate and hydrated – independently, storing launch fuel on asteroids reduces space debris – turns case Tillman 19 (Nola Taylor, has been published in Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, Scientific American, New Scientist, Science News (AAS), Space.com, and Astrobiology magazine, BA in Astrophysics) “Tons of Water in Asteroids Could Fuel Satellites, Space Exploration,” Space, 9/29/2019 JL When it comes to mining space for water, the best target may not be the moon: Entrepreneurs' richest options are likely to be asteroids that are larger and closer to Earth. A recent study suggested that roughly 1,000 water-rich, or hydrated, asteroids near our planet are easier to reach than the lunar surface is. While most of these space rocks are only a few feet in size, more than 25 of them should be large enough to each provide significant water. Altogether, the water locked in these asteroids should be enough to fill somewhere around 320,000 Olympics-size swimming pools — significantly more than the amount of water locked up at the lunar poles, the new research suggested. Because asteroids are small, they have less gravity than Earth or the moon do, which makes them easier destinations to land on and lift off from. If engineers can figure out how to mine water from these space rocks, they could produce a source of ready fuel in space that would allow spacecraft designers to build refuelable models for the next generation of satellites. Asteroid mining could also fuel human exploration, saving the expense of launching fuel from Earth. In both cases, would-be space-rock miners will need to figure out how to free the water trapped in hydrated minerals on these asteroids. "Most of the hydrated material in the near-Earth population is contained in the largest few hydrated objects," Andrew Rivkin, an asteroid researcher at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Research Laboratory in Maryland, told Space.com. Rivkin is the lead author on the paper, which estimated that near Earth asteroids could contain more easily accessible water than the lunar poles. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, more than 5,200 of the objects launched into space are still in orbit today. While some continue to function, the bulk of them buzz uselessly over our heads every day. They carry fuel on board, and when they run out, they are either lowered into destructive orbits or left to become space junk, useless debris with the potential to cause enormous problems for working satellites. Refueling satellites in space could change that model, replacing it with long-lived, productive orbiters. "It's easier to bring fuel from asteroids to geosynchronous orbit than from the surface of the Earth," Rivkin said. "If such a supply line could be established, it could make asteroid mining very profitable." Hunting for space water from the surface of the Earth is challenging because the planet's atmosphere blocks the wavelength of light where water can be observed. The asteroid warming as it draws closer to the sun can also complicate measurements. Instead, Rivkin and his colleagues turned to a class of space rocks called Ch asteroids. Although these asteroids don't directly exhibit a watery fingerprint, they carry the telltale signal of oxidized iron seen only on asteroids with signatures of water-rich minerals, which means the authors felt confident assuming that all Ch asteroids carry this rocky water. Based on meteorite falls, a previous study estimated that Ch asteroids could make up nearly 10 of the near-Earth objects (NEOs). With this information, the researchers determined that there are between 26 and 80 such objects that are hydrated and larger than 0.62 miles (1 km) across. Right now, only three NEOs have been classified as Ch asteroids, although others have been spotted in the asteroid belt. Most NEOs are discovered and observed at wavelengths too short to reveal the iron band that marks the class. Carbon-rich asteroids, which include Ch asteroids and other flavors, are also darker than the more common stony asteroids, making them more challenging to observe. Although Ch asteroids definitely contain water-rich minerals, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will always be the best bet for space mining. It comes down to risk. Would an asteroid-mining company rather visit a smaller asteroid that definitely has a moderate amount of water, or a larger one that could yield a larger payday but could also come up dry? "Whether getting sure things with no false positives, like the Ch asteroids, is more important or if a greater range of possibilities is acceptable with the understanding that some asteroids will be duds is something the miners will have to decide," Rivkin said. In addition to estimating the number of large, water-rich asteroids might be available, the study also found that as many as 1,050 smaller objects, roughly 300 feet (100 meters) across, may also linger near Earth. Their small bulk will make them easier to mine because their low gravity will require less fuel to escape from, but they will produce less water overall, and Rivkin expects that the handful of larger space rocks will be the first targets. "It seems likely that the plan for these companies will be to find the largest accessible asteroid with mineable material with the expectation that it will be more cost-effective than chasing down a large number of smaller objects," Rivkin said. "How 'accessible' and 'mineable material' and 'cost-effective' are defined by each company is to be seen."
12/18/21
JF - DA - Innovation
Tournament: CPS | Round: 4 | Opponent: Aragon ZA | Judge: Alexandra Mork 1NC US leads the private space sector now but other countries sectors are growing— US private sector is key to growth Harding 7/16 (Luke, a Guardian foreign correspondent. His book Shadow State is published by Guardian Faber. Click here for Luke's public key) “The space race is back on – but who will win?” The Guardian, 7/16/21. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/the-space-race-is-back-on-but-who-will-win RR Half a century on, space has opened up. It is less ideological and a lot more crowded. About 72 countries have space programmes, including India, Brazil, Japan, Canada, South Korea and the UAE. The European Space Agency is active too, while the UK boasts the most private space startups after the US. Space today is also highly commercial. On Sunday Richard Branson flew to the edge of space and back again in his Virgin Galactic passenger rocket. On Tuesday, Branson’s fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos is due to travel in his own reusable craft, New Shepard, built by the Amazon founder’s company Blue Origin and launched from west Texas. Non-state actors play an increasingly important role in space exploration. Elon Musk’s SpaceX vehicles have made numerous flights to the International Space Station (ISS), and since last year they have transported people as well as cargo. Later this year Musk is due to send his own all-civilian crew into orbit – though he isn’t going himself. Even so, space still reflects tensions on Earth. “Astropolitics follows terrapolitics,” says Mark Hilborne, a lecturer in defence studies at King’s College London. Up there anything goes, he adds. “Space governance is a bit fuzzy. Laws are few and very old. They are not written for asteroid mining or for a time when companies dominate.” The biggest challenge to US space supremacy comes not from Russia – heir to the Soviet Union’s pioneering space programme, which launched the Sputnik satellite and got the first human into space in the form of Yuri Gagarin – but from China. In 2011 Congress prohibited US scientists from cooperating with Beijing. Its fear: scientific espionage. Taikonauts are banned from visiting the ISS, which has hosted astronauts from 19 countries over the past 20 years. The station’s future beyond 2028 is uncertain. Its operations may yet be extended in the face of increasing Chinese competition. In its annual threat assessment this April, the office of the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) described China as a “near-peer competitor” pushing for global power. It warns: “Beijing is working to match or exceed US capabilities in space to gain the military, economic, and prestige benefits that Washington has accrued from space leadership.” The Biden administration suspects Chinese satellites are being used for non-civilian purposes. The People’s Liberation Army integrates reconnaissance and navigation data in military command and control systems, the DNI says. “Satellites are inherently dual use. It’s not like the difference between an F15 fighter jet and a 737 passenger plane,” Hilborne says. Once China completes the Tiangong space station next year, it is likely to invite foreign astronauts to take part in missions. One goal: to build new soft-power alliances. Beijing says interest from other countries is enormous. The low Earth orbit station is part of an ambitious development strategy in the heavens rather than on land – a sort of belt and rocket initiative. According to Alanna Krolikowski, an assistant professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, a “bifurcation” of space exploration is under way. In one emerging camp are states led by China and Russia, many of them authoritarian; in the other are democracies and “like-minded” countries aligned with the US. Russia has traditionally worked closely with the Americans, even when terrestrial relations were bad. Now it is moving closer to Beijing. In March, China and Russia announced plans to co-build an international lunar research station. The agreement comes at a time when Vladimir Putin’s government has been increasingly isolated and subject to western sanctions. In June, Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping renewed a friendship treaty. Moscow is cosying up to Beijing out of necessity, at a time of rising US-China bipolarity. These rival geopolitical factions are fighting over a familiar mountainous surface: the moon. In 2019 a Chinese rover landed on its far side – a first. China is now planning a mission to the moon’s south pole, to establish a robotic research station and an eventual lunar base, which would be intermittently crewed. Nasa, meanwhile, has said it intends to put a woman and a person of colour on the moon by 2024. SpaceX has been hired to develop a lander. The return to the moon – after the last astronaut, commander Eugene Cernan, said goodbye in December 1972 – would be a staging post for the ultimate “giant leap”, Nasa says: sending astronauts to Mars. Krolikowski is sceptical that China will quickly overtake the US to become the world’s leading spacefaring country. “A lot of what China is doing is a reprisal of what the cold war space programmes did in the 1960s and 1970s,” she said. Beijing’s recent feats of exploration have as much to do with national pride as scientific discovery, she says. But there is no doubting Beijing’s desire to catch up, she adds. “The Chinese government has established, or has plans for, programmes or missions in every major area, whether it’s Mars missions, building mega constellations of telecommunications satellites, or exploring asteroids. There is no single area of space activity they are not involved in.” “We see a tightening of the Russia-China relationship,” Krolikowski says. “In the 1950s the Soviet Union provided a wide range of technical assistance to Beijing. Since the 1990s, however, the Russian space establishment has experienced long stretches of underfunding and stagnation. China now presents it with new opportunities.” Russia is poised to benefit from cost sharing, while China gets deep-rooted Russian technical expertise. At least, that’s the theory. “I’m sceptical this joint space project will materialise anytime soon,” says Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Centre. Gabuev says both countries are “techno-nationalist”. Previous agreements to develop helicopters and wide-bodied aircraft saw nothing actually made, he says. The Kremlin has been a key partner in managing and resupplying the ISS. US astronauts used Russian Soyuz rockets to reach the station, taking off from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, after the Space Shuttle programme was phased out. But this epoch seems to be coming to an end as private companies such as SpaceX take over. “I expect US-Russian relations to get worse,” Gabuev says, adding that Americans “no longer need” Russia’s help. Moscow’s state corporation for space activities, Roscosmos, has faced accusations of being more interested in politics than space research. Last month the newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that Roscosmos’s executive director of manned space programmes, former cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, had been fired. His apparent crime: questioning an official decision to shoot a film on the Russian section of the ISS. The film, Challenge, is about a female surgeon operating on a cosmonaut in space, and has been backed and financed by Roscosmos . It stars Yulia Peresild, who is due to head to space in October with director Klim Shipenko. The launch seems timed to beat Tom Cruise, who is due to shoot his own movie on board the ISS with director Doug Liman. Krikalev, who spent more than 800 days in space and was in orbit when the USSR collapsed, apparently told Roscomos’s chief, Dmitry Rogozin, that the film was pointless. Rogozin – its co-producer – has called on the west to drop sanctions in return for Russia’s cooperation on space projects. Putin, Rogozin’s boss, appears to not be very interested in other planets, though, and is more concerned with nature and the climate crisis these days. “Space is one of the areas that has traditionally transcended politics. The Mir space station worked at a time of east-west tensions. There was symbolic cooperation. Whether this will continue in the future is really up for debate,” Hilborne says. “The US is very sensitive about what happens in space.” Most observers think the US will remain the world’s pre-eminent space power, thanks to its innovative and flourishing private sector. China’s Soviet-style state programme appears less nimble. Despite ambitious timetables, and billions spent by Beijing, it is unclear when – or even if – an astronaut will return to the moon. The 2030s, perhaps? Will they be American or Chinese? Or from a third country? It may well be that the first person to boldly go again doesn’t merely represent a nation or carry a flag. More likely, they will emerge from a lunar lander wearing a spacesuit with a SpaceX logo on the back – a giant leap not only for mankind, but for galactic marketing. Private space is key to space innovation. Jaeger 4/12 (Micheal, a partner and patent attorney in the Electronics, Computing and Physics group at European intellectual property firm, Withers and Rogers looks at what a commercial approach to innovation could mean for the space sector.) “Exploring a new approach to innovation in the space sector,” Aerospace manufacturing, 4/12/21. https://www.aero-mag.com/exploring-a-new-approach-to-innovation-in-the-space-sector RR Historically, the space sector has relied largely on grants provided by governments and other public bodies to carry out RandD activity. This has directed the focus of innovators to specific research programmes, rather than encouraging more cross-fertilisation of ideas and open innovation. However, increasing private sector investment in recent years has paved the way for more commercially-minded SME innovators. The self-serving nature of many space industry research programmes, which are set up to meet the needs of specific government-backed briefs, has discouraged start-ups and other new entrants from getting involved. While this approach offered innovators some clear benefits, as they could be certain that they would have the funding they needed to complete their project, there were some significant downsides too. For example, without a more diverse ‘ecosystem’ made up of entrepreneurs and private investors, there was little incentive for innovators to take the risk of participating in a new initiative if it lacked a reliable source of funding. For many years, this reluctance to take risks resulted in low levels of patent-filing activity, compared to some other fields of tech, as government funding did not require proof of innovative credentials. Inventions were created to order, to meet a research programme’s specific brief, rather than for commercial gain. Attitudes towards innovation in the global space industry are evolving, however. Sometimes referred to as ‘Space 2.0’, there is a clear move away from purely research-based activities, and greater consumer awareness of research in areas such as space travel, led by some high-profile entrepreneurs, has helped to generate wider interest in this field of RandD. According to UKSpace, the UK’s space industry is worth £14.8 billion to the economy and the Government has set its sights on capturing 10 of the global space market by 2030. This ambitious goal could not be achieved without the involvement of innovative SMEs and private investors, adding value to public-funded research programmes. Although government funding will remain key to innovators in the space industry, there are now a growing number of dedicated private sector funds and support structures. These include Seraphim, a global leader in SpaceTech investment, and the Catapult network, which assists thousands of innovative businesses across the UK and includes a dedicated Satellite Applications Catapult. Satellites are a major focus of attention for SME innovators, with many businesses now recognising the commercial potential of nanosatellites, which are commonly launched to low Earth orbit. Previously, satellites were mainly used by large telecommunications companies, and the size of the satellites required large and expensive rockets to launch them. However, nanosatellites mean much smaller rockets can be used, reducing the amount of infrastructure needed and lowering launch costs significantly. Nanosats can also be built to fulfil specific applications, allowing organisations to develop satellites to meet their particular needs. For example, Earth observation satellites can utilise different electromagnetic spectrums to record photographic data, which can then be used to inform research programmes or leveraged commercially. Climate change is high on the global agenda, so being able to view the Earth’s CO2 emissions from space, and identify major sources, holds considerable value. Planet, a real-time Earth observation company, has taken this approach and now has over 200 active nanosatellites in space. Known as ‘Doves’, they make up the world’s largest constellation of Earth-imaging satellites, providing transformative data for a variety of industry sectors, from agriculture to finance. Planet has been able to launch satellites quickly and cost effectively by using inexpensive electronics and innovative design, meaning it can now build and launch satellites faster than any other company or government in the world. New space research solves climate change— climate mapping Derr 9/17 (Emma, EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST at NEI) “Space is Crucial to Understanding Climate Change,” NEI, 9/17/21. https://www.nei.org/news/2021/space-is-crucial-to-understanding-climate-change RR Space developments in the last two decades have greatly contributed to our understanding of our planet’s climate. Satellite imaging, space exploration, and new technologies give us an idea of the big picture and how we can adapt to address climate change. For example, satellites in space have played a critical role in our understanding of the causes of global warming by providing us with a large body of data to examine the variations in the Earth’s orbit. Data from these capabilities were essential inputs into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent report that focused on how the physical science of climate change informs likely impacts under five different emissions scenarios. The report also found that climate change is happening quicker than we thought, making the need to reduce emissions imminent. To address this, space infrastructure such as positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) can help identify efficient transportation routes and sources of emissions, ultimately aiding mitigation efforts. Time Progression of the Ozone Hole Over Antarctica This series of images shows the size and shape of the thinning ozone layer over Antarctica each year from 1979-2019. Red and yellow areas indicate the ozone hole. Credit to nasa.gov. NASA’s Earth System Observatory, the next generation of Earth science satellites that will launch in the next decade, reflect the importance of Earth imaging. This constellation of satellites is designed to provide information about our planet ranging from the location of forest fires to the sea level rise to our agricultural processes. It will be able to collect data at the regional and local levels and connect critical interactions between the atmosphere, land, ocean and ice, significantly bolstering our understanding of the Earth’s climate. Another large focus of the initiative is predicting severe weather and answering questions surrounding aerosols, which are particles in the atmosphere that are a key source of uncertainty in predicting climate change. Alongside adding funding to FEMA, the Biden Administration announced the development of the Earth System Observatory, indicating its support for the program in understanding how climate change is impacting communities. Space exploration is foundational to climate science because it provides us with more information about the Earth, our solar system and the role of gases in our atmosphere, and nuclear energy has played an important role powering our missions into space. In 1969, NASA launched Nimbus III, a nuclear-powered spacecraft, that is the first U.S. satellite to gather vital oceanographic data, such as measurements of sea ice and the ozone layer. The spacecraft also measured atmospheric temperature, water vapor and ozone, as well as the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching our atmosphere from the sun. Cassini, a nuclear-powered probe into Saturn and its moons, released the Huygens probe which collected important data about what earth may have looked like in its state before humans evolved. The mission revealed Titan to be one of the most Earth-like worlds we’ve encountered and has shed light on the history of our home planet. Nuclear energy has powered dozens of interplanetary missions, which have gathered critical information about our universe. These make up some of the most successful and inspiring missions in U.S. space exploration history. Climate and space technologies build off of each other, as evidenced by solar photovoltaic panels first gaining a foothold in the space industry. Nuclear energy can be positioned to experience such a catalyst with new investments in nuclear space technologies. As climate change intensifies, space exploration and Earth observation will become increasingly important to gathering critical data. We must meet the moment by investing in these missions and recognizing nuclear power’s important role in space technologies. Warming causes extinction Ramanathan et al. 17 Veerabhadran Ramanathan is Victor Alderson Professor of Applied Ocean Sciences and director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, Dr. William Collins is an internationally recognized expert in climate modeling and climate change science. He is the Director of the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division (CESD) for the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Prof. Dr Mark Lawrence, Ph.D. is scientific director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Örjan Gustafsson is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Analytic Chemistry at Stockholm University, Shichang Kang is Professor, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, and Molina, M.J., Zaelke, D., Borgford-Parnell, N., Xu, Y., Alex, K., Auffhammer, M., Bledsoe, P., Croes, B., Forman, F., Haines, A., Harnish, R., Jacobson, M.Z., Lawrence, M., Leloup, D., Lenton, T., Morehouse, T., Munk, W., Picolotti, R., Prather, K., Raga, G., Rignot, E., Shindell, D., Singh, A.K., Steiner, A., Thiemens, M., Titley, D.W., Tucker, M.E., Tripathi, S., and Victor, D., authors come from the following 9 countries - US, Switzerland, Sweden, UK, China, Germany, Australia, Mexico, India, “Well Under 2 Degrees Celsius: Fast Action Policies to Protect People and the Planet from Extreme Climate Change,” Report of the Committee to Prevent Extreme Climate Change, September 2017, http://www.igsd.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Well-Under-2-Degrees-Celsius-Report-2017.pdf TDI Climate change is becoming an existential threat with warming in excess of 2°C within the next three decades and 4°C to 6°C within the next several decades. Warming of such magnitudes will expose as many as 75 of the world’s population to deadly heat stress in addition to disrupting the climate and weather worldwide. Climate change is an urgent problem requiring urgent solutions. This paper lays out urgent and practical solutions that are ready for implementation now, will deliver benefits in the next few critical decades, and places the world on a path to achieving the longterm targets of the Paris Agreement and near-term sustainable development goals. The approach consists of four building blocks and 3 levers to implement ten scalable solutions described in this report by a team of climate scientists, policy makers, social and behavioral scientists, political scientists, legal experts, diplomats, and military experts from around the world. These solutions will enable society to decarbonize the global energy system by 2050 through efficiency and renewables, drastically reduce short-lived climate pollutants, and stabilize the climate well below 2°C both in the near term (before 2050) and in the long term (post 2050). It will also reduce premature mortalities by tens of millions by 2050. As an insurance against policy lapses, mitigation delays and faster than projected climate changes, the solutions include an Atmospheric Carbon Extraction lever to remove CO2 from the air. The amount of CO2 that must be removed ranges from negligible, if the emissions of CO2 from the energy system and SLCPs start to decrease by 2020 and carbon neutrality is achieved by 2050, to a staggering one trillion tons if the carbon lever is not pulled and emissions of climate pollutants continue to increase until 2030. There are numerous living laboratories including 53 cities, many universities around the world, the state of California, and the nation of Sweden, who have embarked on a carbon neutral pathway. These laboratories have already created 8 million jobs in the clean energy industry; they have also shown that emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants can be decoupled from economic growth. Another favorable sign is that growth rates of worldwide carbon emissions have reduced from 2.9 per year during the first decade of this century to 1.3 from 2011 to 2014 and near zero growth rates during the last few years. The carbon emission curve is bending, but we have a long way to go and very little time for achieving carbon neutrality. We need institutions and enterprises that can accelerate this bending by scaling-up the solutions that are being proven in the living laboratories. We have less than a decade to put these solutions in place around the world to preserve nature and our quality of life for generations to come. The time is now. The Paris Agreement is an historic achievement. For the first time, effectively all nations have committed to limiting their greenhouse gas emissions and taking other actions to limit global temperature change. Specifically, 197 nations agreed to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” and achieve carbon neutrality in the second half of this century. The climate has already warmed by 1°C. The problem is running ahead of us, and under current trends we will likely reach 1.5°C in the next fifteen years and surpass the 2°C guardrail by mid-century with a 50 probability of reaching 4°C by end of century. Warming in excess of 3°C is likely to be a global catastrophe for three major reasons: • Warming in the range of 3°C to 5°C is suggested as the threshold for several tipping points in the physical and geochemical systems; a warming of about 3°C has a probability of over 40 to cross over multiple tipping points, while a warming close to 5°C increases it to nearly 90, compared with a baseline warming of less than 1.5°C, which has only just over a 10 probability of exceeding any tipping point. • Health effects of such warming are emerging as a major if not dominant source of concern. Warming of 4°C or more will expose more than 70 of the population, i.e. about 7 billion by the end of the century, to deadly heat stress and expose about 2.4 billion to vector borne diseases such as Dengue, Chikengunya, and Zika virus among others. Ecologists and paleontologists have proposed that warming in excess of 3°C, accompanied by increased acidity of the oceans by the buildup of CO2 , can become a major causal factor for exposing more than 50 of all species to extinction. 20 of species are in danger of extinction now due to population, habitat destruction, and climate change. The good news is that there may still be time to avert such catastrophic changes. The Paris Agreement and supporting climate policies must be strengthened substantially within the next five years to bend the emissions curve down faster, stabilize climate, and prevent catastrophic warming. To the extent those efforts fall short, societies and ecosystems will be forced to contend with substantial needs for adaptation—a burden that will fall disproportionately on the poorest three billion who are least responsible for causing the climate change problem. Here we propose a policy roadmap with a realistic and reasonable chance of limiting global temperature to safe levels and preventing unmanageable climate change—an outline of specific science-based policy pathways that serve as the building blocks for a three-lever strategy that could limit warming to well under 2°C. The projections and the emission pathways proposed in this summary are based on a combination of published recommendations and new model simulations conducted by the authors of this study (see Figure 2). We have framed the plan in terms of four building blocks and three levers, which are implemented through 10 solutions. The first building block would be fully implementing the nationally determined mitigation pledges under the Paris Agreement of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In addition, several sister agreements that provide targeted and efficient mitigation must be strengthened. Sister agreements include the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol to phase down HFCs, efforts to address aviation emissions through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), maritime black carbon emissions through the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and the commitment by the eight countries of the Arctic Council to reduce black carbon emissions by up to 33. There are many other complementary processes that have drawn attention to specific actions on climate change, such as the Group of 20 (G20), which has emphasized reform of fossil fuel subsidies, and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). HFC measures, for example, can avoid as much as 0.5°C of warming by 2100 through the mandatory global phasedown of HFC refrigerants within the next few decades, and substantially more through parallel efforts to improve energy efficiency of air conditioners and other cooling equipment potentially doubling this climate benefit. For the second building block, numerous subnational and city scale climate action plans have to be scaled up. One prominent example is California’s Under 2 Coalition signed by over 177 jurisdictions from 37 countries in six continents covering a third of world economy. The goal of this Memorandum of Understanding is to catalyze efforts in many jurisdictions that are comparable with California’s target of 40 reductions in CO2 emissions by 2030 and 80 reductions by 2050—emission cuts that, if achieved globally, would be consistent with stopping warming at about 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Another prominent example is the climate action plans by over 52 cities and 65 businesses around the world aiming to cut emissions by 30 by 2030 and 80 to 100 by 2050. There are concerns that the carbon neutral goal will hinder economic progress; however, real world examples from California and Sweden since 2005 offer evidence that economic growth can be decoupled from carbon emissions and the data for CO2 emissions and GDP reveal that growth in fact prospers with a green economy. The third building block consists of two levers that we need to pull as hard as we can: one for drastically reducing emissions of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) beginning now and completing by 2030, and the other for decarbonizing the global energy system by 2050 through efficiency and renewables. Pulling both levers simultaneously can keep global temperature rise below 2°C through the end of the century. If we bend the CO2 emissions curve through decarbonization of the energy system such that global emissions peak in 2020 and decrease steadily thereafter until reaching zero in 2050, there is less than a 20 probability of exceeding 2°C. This call for bending the CO2 curve by 2020 is one key way in which this report’s proposal differs from the Paris Agreement and it is perhaps the most difficult task of all those envisioned here. Many cities and jurisdictions are already on this pathway, thus demonstrating its scalability. Achieving carbon neutrality and reducing emissions of SLCPs would also drastically reduce air pollution globally, including all major cities, thus saving millions of lives and over 100 million tons of crops lost to air pollution each year. In addition, these steps would provide clean energy access to the world’s poorest three billion who are still forced to resort to 18th century technologies to meet basic needs such as cooking. For the fourth and the final building block, we are adding a third lever, ACE (Atmospheric Carbon Extraction, also known as Carbon Dioxide Removal, or “CDR”). This lever is added as an insurance against surprises (due to policy lapses, mitigation delays, or non-linear climate changes) and would require development of scalable measures for removing the CO2 already in the atmosphere. The amount of CO2 that must be removed will range from negligible, if the emissions of CO2 from the energy system and SLCPs start to decrease by 2020 and carbon neutrality is achieved by 2050, to a staggering one trillion tons, if CO2 emissions continue to increase until 2030, and the carbon lever is not pulled until after 2030. This issue is raised because the NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) accompanying the Paris Agreement would allow CO2 emissions to increase until 2030. We call on economists and experts in political and administrative systems to assess the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of reducing carbon and SLCPs emissions beginning in 2020 compared with delaying it by ten years and then being forced to pull the third lever to extract one trillion tons of CO2 The fast mitigation plan of requiring emissions reductions to begin by 2020, which means that many countries need to cut now, is urgently needed to limit the warming to well under 2°C. Climate change is not a linear problem. Instead, we are facing non-linear climate tipping points that can lead to self-reinforcing and cascading climate change impacts. Tipping points and selfreinforcing feedbacks are wild cards that are more likely with increased temperatures, and many of the potential abrupt climate shifts could happen as warming goes from 1.5°C in 15 years to 2°C by 2050, with the potential to push us well beyond the Paris Agreement goals. Where Do We Go from Here? A massive effort will be needed to stop warming at 2°C, and time is of the essence. With unchecked business-as-usual emissions, global warming has a 50 likelihood of exceeding 4ºC and a 5 probability of exceeding 6ºC in this century, raising existential questions for most, but especially the poorest three billion people. A 4ºC warming is likely to expose as many as 75 of the global population to deadly heat. Dangerous to catastrophic impacts on the health of people including generations yet to be born, on the health of ecosystems, and on species extinction have emerged as major justifications for mitigating climate change well below 2ºC, although we must recognize that the uncertainties intrinsic in climate and social systems make it hard to pin down exactly the level of warming that will trigger possibly catastrophic impacts. To avoid these consequences, we must act now, and we must act fast and effectively. This report sets out a specific plan for reducing climate change in both the near- and long-term. With aggressive urgent actions, we can protect ourselves. Acting quickly to prevent catastrophic climate change by decarbonization will save millions of lives, trillions of dollars in economic costs, and massive suffering and dislocation to people around the world. This is a global security imperative, as it can avoid the migration and destabilization of entire societies and countries and reduce the likelihood of environmentally driven civil wars and other conflicts. Staying well under 2°C will require a concerted global effort. We must address everything from our energy systems to our personal choices to reduce emissions to the greatest extent possible. We must redouble our efforts to invent, test, and perfect systems of governance so that the large measure of international cooperation needed to achieve these goals can be realized in practice. The health of people for generations to come and the health of ecosystems crucially depend on an energy revolution beginning now that will take us away from fossil fuels and toward the clean renewable energy sources of the future. It will be nearly impossible to obtain other critical social goals, including for example the UN agenda 2030 with the Sustainable Development Goals, if we do not make immediate and profound progress stabilizing climate, as we are outlining here.
The Building Blocks Approach The 2015 Paris Agreement, which went into effect November 2016, is a remarkable, historic achievement. For the frst time, essentially all nations have committed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions and take other actions to limit global temperature and adapt to unavoidable climate change. Nations agreed to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels” and “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century” (UNFCCC, 2015). Nevertheless, the initial Paris Agreement has to be strengthened substantially within fve years if we are to prevent catastrophic warming; current pledges place the world on track for up to 3.4°C by 2100 (UNEP, 2016b). Until now, no specifc policy roadmap exists that provides a realistic and reasonable chance of limiting global temperatures to safe levels and preventing unmanageable climate change. This report is our attempt to provide such a plan— an outline of specifc solutions that serve as the building blocks for a comprehensive strategy for limiting the warming to well under 2°C and avoiding dangerous climate change (Figure 1). The frst building block is the full implementation of the nationally determined mitigation pledges under the Paris Agreement of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and strengthening global sister agreements, such as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol to phase down HFCs, which can provide additional targeted, fast action mitigation at scale. For the second building block, numerous sub-national and city scale climate action plans have to be scaled up such as California’s Under 2 Coalition signed by 177 jurisdictions from 37 countries on six continents. The third building block is targeted measures to reduce emissions of shortlived climate pollutants (SLCPs), beginning now and fully implemented by 2030, along with major measures to fully decarbonize the global economy, causing the overall emissions growth rate to stop in 2020-2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Such a deep decarbonization would require an energy revolution similar to the Industrial Revolution that was based on fossil fuels. The fnal building block includes scalable and reversible carbon dioxide (CO2 ) removal measures, which can begin removing CO2 already emitted into the atmosphere. Such a plan is urgently needed. Climate change is not a linear problem. Instead, climate tipping points can lead to self-reinforcing, cascading climate change impacts (Lenton et al., 2008). Tipping points are more likely with increased temperatures, and many of the potential abrupt climate shifts could happen as warming goes from 1.5°C to 2°C, with the potential to push us well beyond the Paris Agreement goals (Drijfhout et al., 2015). In order to avoid dangerous climate change, we must address these concerns. We must act now, and we must act fast. Reduction of SLCPs will result in fast, near-term reductions in warming, while present-day reductions of CO2 will result in long-term climate benefts. This two-lever approach—aggressively cutting both SLCPs and CO2 –-will slow warming in the coming decades when it is most crucial to avoid impacts from climate change as well as maintain a safe climate many decades from now. To achieve the nearterm goals, we have outlined solutions to be implemented immediately. These solutions to bend down the rising emissions curve and thus bend the warming trajectory curve follow a 2015 assessment by the University of California under its Carbon Neutrality Initiative (Ramanathan et al., 2016). The solutions are clustered into categories of social transformation, governance improvement, market- and regulation-based solutions, technological innovation and transformation, and natural and ecosystem management. Additionally, we need to intensely investigate and pursue a third lever—ACE (Atmospheric Carbon Extraction). While many potential technologies exist, we do not know the extent to which they could be scaled up to remove the requisite amount of carbon from the atmosphere in order to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, and any delay in mitigation will demand increasing reliance on these technologies. Yet, there is still hope. Humanity can come together, as we have done in the past, to collaborate towards a common goal. We have no choice but to tackle the challenge of climate change. We only have the choice of when and how: either now, through the ambitious plan outlined here, or later, through radical adaptation and societal transformations in response to an ever-deteriorating climate system that will unleash devastating impacts—some of which may be beyond our capacity to fully adapt to or reverse for thousands of years. 2. Major Climate Disruptions: How Soon and How Fast? “Without adequate mitigation and adaptation, climate change poses unacceptable risks to global public health.” (WHO, 2016) The planet has already witnessed nearly 1°C of warming, and another 0.6°C of additional warming is currently stored in the ocean to be released over the next two to four decades, if climate warming emissions are not radically reduced during that time (IPCC, 2013). The impacts of this warming on extreme weather, droughts, and foods are being felt by society worldwide to the extent that many think of this no longer as climate change but as climate disruption. Consider the business as usual scenario: 15 years from now: In 15 years, planetary warming will reach 1.5°C above pre-industrial global mean temperature (Ramanathan and Xu, 2010; Shindell et al., 2012). This exceeds the 0.5°C to 1°C of warming during the Eemian period, 115,000– 130,000 years ago, when sea-levels reached 6-9 meters (20-30 feet) higher than today (Hansen et al., 2016b). The impacts of this warming will affect us all yet will disproportionately affect the Earth’s poorest three billion people, who are primarily subsistence farmers that still rely on 18th century technologies and have the least capacity to adapt (IPCC, 2014a; Dasgupta et al., 2015). They thus may be forced to resort to mass migration into city slums and push across international borders (U.S. DOD, 2015). The existential fate of lowlying small islands and coastal communities will also need to be addressed, as they are primarily vulnerable to sea-level rise, diminishing freshwater resources, and more intense storms. In addition, many depend on fsheries for protein, and these are likely to be affected by ocean acidifcation and climate change. Climate injustice could start causing visible regional and international conficts. All of this will be exacerbated as the risk of passing tipping points increases (Lenton et al., 2008). 30 years from now: By mid-century, warming is expected to exceed 2°C, which would be unprecedented with respect to historical records of at least the last one million years (IPCC, 2014c). Such a warming through this century could result in sea-level rise of as much as 2 meters by 2100, with greater sea-level rise to follow. A group of tipping points are clustered between 1.5°C and 2°C (Figure 2) (Drijfhout et al., 2015). The melting of most mountain glaciers, including those in the Tibetan-Himalayas, combined with mega-droughts, heat waves, storms, and foods, would adversely affect nearly everyone on the planet. 80 years from now: In 80 years, warming is expected to exceed 4°C, increasing the likelihood of irreversible and catastrophic change (World Bank, 2013b). 4ºC warming is likely to expose as much as 75 of the global population to deadly heat (Mora et al., 2017). The 2°C and 4°C values quoted above and in other reports, however, are merely the central values with a 50 probability of occurrence (Ramanathan and Feng, 2008). There is a 5 probability the warming could be as high as 6°C due to uncertainties in the magnitude of amplifying feedbacks (see Section 4). This in turn could lead to major disruptions to natural and social systems, threatening food security, water security, and national security and fundamentally affecting the great majority of the projected 11.2 billion inhabitants of the planet in 2100 (UN DESA, 2015). 3. What Are the Wild Cards for Climate Disruption? Increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases radiative forcing (the difference between the amount of energy entering the atmosphere and leaving) and thus increases the global temperature (IPCC, 2013). However, climate wild cards exist that can alter the linear connection with warming and anthropogenic emissions by triggering abrupt changes in the climate (Lenton et al., 2008). Some of these wild cards have not been thoroughly captured by the models that policymakers rely on the most. These abrupt shifts are irreversible on a human time scale (100 years) and will create a notable disruption to the climate system, condemning the world to warming beyond that which we have previously projected. These climate disruptions would divert resources from needed mitigation and upset mitigation strategies that we have already put in place.
Unmasking Aerosol Cooling: The frst such wild card is the unmasking of an estimated 0.7°C (with an uncertainty range of 0.3°C to 1.2°C) of the warming in addition to mitigating other aerosol effects such as disrupting rainfall patterns, by reducing emissions of aerosols such as sulfates and nitrates as part of air pollution regulations (Wigley, 1991; Ramanathan and Feng, 2008). Aerosol air pollution is a major health hazard with massive costs to public health and society, including contributing to about 7 million deaths (from household and ambient exposure) each year (WHO, 2014). While some aerosols, such as black carbon and brown carbon, strongly absorb sunlight and warm the climate, others refect sunlight back into space, which cools the climate (Ramanathan and Carmichael, 2008). The net impact of all manmade aerosols is negative, meaning that about 30 of the warming from greenhouse gases is being masked by co-emitted air pollution particles (Ramanathan and Carmichael, 2008). As we reduce greenhouse gas emissions and implement policies to eliminate air pollution, we are also reducing the concentration of aerosols in the air. Aerosols last in the atmosphere for about a week, so if we eliminate air pollution without reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases, the unmasking alone would lead to an estimated 0.7°C of warming within a matter of decades (Ramanathan and Feng, 2008). We must eliminate all aerosol emissions due to their health effects, but we must simultaneously mitigate emissions of CO2 , other greenhouse gases, and black carbon and co-pollutants to avoid an abrupt and very large jump in the near-term warming beyond 2°C (Brasseur and Roeckner, 2005). 2. Tipping Points: It is likely that as we cross the 1.5°C to 2°C thresholds we will trigger so called “tipping points” for abrupt and nonlinear changes in the climate system with catastrophic consequences for humanity and the environment (Lenton, 2008; Drijfhout et al., 2015). Once the tipping points are passed, the resulting impacts will range in timescales from: disruption of monsoon systems (transition in a year), loss of sea ice (approximately a decade for transition), dieback of major forests (nearly half a century for transition), reorganization of ocean circulation (approximately a century for transition), to loss of ice sheets and subsequent sea-level rise (transition over hundreds of years) (Lenton et al., 2008). Regardless of timescale, once underway many of these changes would be irreversible (Lontzek et al., 2015). There is also a likelihood of crossing over multiple tipping points simultaneously. Warming of close to 3°C would subject the system to a 46 probability of crossing multiple tipping points, while warming of close to 5°C would increase the risk to 87 (Cai et al., 2016). Recent modeling work shows a “cluster” of these tipping points could be triggered between 1.5°C and 2°C warming (Figure 2), including melting of land and sea ice and changes in highlatitude ocean circulation (deep convection) (Drijfhout et al., 2015). This is consistent with existing observations and understanding that the polar regions are particularly sensitive to global warming and have several potentially imminent tipping points. The Arctic is warming nearly twice as quickly as the global average, which makes the abrupt changes in the Arctic more likely at a lower level of global warming (IPCC, 2013). Similarly, the Himalayas are warming at roughly the same rate as the Arctic and are thus also more susceptible to incremental changes in temperature (UNEP-WMO, 2011). This gives further justifcation for limiting warming to no more than 1.5°C. While all climate tipping points have the potential to rapidly destabilize climate, social, and economic systems, some are also self-amplifying feedbacks that once set in motion increase warming in such a way that they perpetuate yet even more warming. Declining Arctic sea ice, thawing permafrost, and the poleward migration of cloud systems are all examples of self-amplifying feedback mechanisms, where initial warming feeds upon itself to cause still more warming acting as a force multiplier (Schuur et al., 2015).
12/18/21
JF - DA - Xi
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 1 | Opponent: Greenhill NT | Judge: Leah Villanueva 1NC Xi is consolidating unprecedented political power – that’s only possible with strong PLA support Chang 21 (Gordon, columnist, author and lawyer, has given briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the CIA, and the State Department, JD from Cornell Law School) “China Is Becoming a Military State,” Newsweek, 1/14/2021 JL At this moment, the Communist Party is taking back power from all others in society, including the State Council, and the military is gaining influence inside Party circles. Why is the People's Liberation Army making a comeback? The answer lies in succession politics. Xi Jinping was selected the top leader because he was not identified with any of the main factional groupings—like the Communist Youth League of Hu Jintao or the Shanghai Gang of Jiang—that dominated Party politics. Xi, in short, was the least unacceptable choice to the Party's squabbling factional elders. Xi, once chosen, apparently decided that in order to rule, he needed a base, so he made certain officers the core of his support. As longtime China watcher Willy Lam told Reuters in 2013, Xi Jinping's faction is the military. And with the help of the military, Xi has accumulated almost unprecedented political power, ending the Party's two-decade-old consensus-driven system and replacing it with one-man rule. As Wang, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, notes, Xi, with the amendments to the National Defense Law, is demonstrating his power of "leading everything and everyone." He is wrapping that effort in a "rule by law" move that is formalizing his perch at the top of the Chinese political system. How is Xi using his newfound power? There is a hint in the National Defense Law amendments. These changes, Fisher tells us, "increase the powers of the CMC to mobilize the civilian sector for wartime and to better authorize the CMC to engage in foreign military exercises to defend China's 'development interests.'" As such, the changes "point to China's ambition to achieve 'whole nation' levels of military mobilization to fight wars, and give the CMC formal power to control the future Chinese capabilities for global military intervention." "The revised National Defense Law also embodies the concept that everyone should be involved in national defense," reports the Communist Party's Global Times, summarizing the words of an unnamed CMC official. "All national organizations, armed forces, political parties, civil groups, enterprises, social organizations and other organizations should support and take part in the development of national defense, fulfill national defense duties and carry out national defense missions according to the law." That sounds like Xi is getting ready to pick even more fights with neighbors—and perhaps the United States. On January 5, he ordered People's Liberation Army generals and admirals to be prepared to "act at any second." Why would Xi want to start a war? "This is really indicative of there being instability in China, and Mr. Xi seeking to consolidate power around himself. ...The new National Defense Law essentially removes the alternative power base of the premier of the State Council, in this case Li Keqiang, from interfering with Mr. Xi's own power ambitions," said Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute to John Batchelor, the radio host, earlier this month. As Burton noted, the amendments to the National Defense Law undermine Premier Li Keqiang, the head of the State Council and long-standing rival to Xi. "I think this really gives the green light for him to dispatch the military on any pretext that he feels is necessary to defend his power," Burton says. "China is becoming a military state." The plan alienates the PLA – they view space dominance as the linchpin of China’s legitimacy – specifically, public-private tech development is key Economic Times 20 (Economic Times, Indian daily newspaper, internally cites Dean Cheng, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, former analyst in the International Security and Space Program at the Office of Technology Assessment, BA in Politics from Princeton University) “China attempting to militarize space as it seeks to modernize its military power,” 8/31/2020 JL The Jamestown Foundation, a US think-tank, hosted a webinar on August 19 entitled "China's Space Ambitions: Emerging Dimensions of Competition." One presenter, Dean Cheng, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, noted that Beijing's space programme is linked to China's central concept of comprehensive national power. "This is basically how the Chinese think about how they rack and stack, how they compare with other countries." China recognises that military power is important, but it is not the only factor in being a great power. Cheng drew a parallel with the former USSR, where military power alone did not ensure survival of that communist state. Other comprehensive national power factors are political unity, economic power, diplomatic strength, science and technology, and even culture. "Space touches every one of these aspects in comprehensive national power, and that is a part of why Chinese see space as so important." Indeed, a strong space industrial complex will generate benefits that ripple through the rest of China's economy. Furthermore, he said space achievements "promote pride within China, especially for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ... It's symbolic of how far China has come," he said, and "it gives the CCP legitimacy". China is pushing into space services, including satellite launches, satellite applications and Earth observation/satellite imagery for others. Satellite customers include Belarus, Laos, Pakistan and Venezuela, for example, attracting hard currency and influence. Cheng said most underestimate the impact this has, as such countries grow almost totally dependent on Chinese equipment, assets and training over time. Incidentally, China could have manufactured back doors into these systems for foreigners to allow it access. Mark Stokes, Executive Director at the US-based Project 2049 Institute think-tank, said in the same webinar that PLA requirements have always been fundamental to development of Chinese space capabilities. Potential PLA space missions in support of joint warfighting in a crisis include targeting (battlefield surveillance, electronic reconnaissance and ocean surveillance), communications, PNT services (obtaining target data, navigation information, navigation support and timing services), space jamming (encompassing space communications, radar, electro-optical and PNT) and space protection. Stokes said the end of 2015 was "significant" for Chinese space efforts because consolidation of end-users under the PLA's Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) occurred, specifically within the Space Systems Department. In terms of developing and meeting requirements, the PLASSF is now "much more efficient," the American analyst posited. Indeed, China created its space force in 2015, just a few months after Russia. After formally establishing its Space Force in December 2019, the US is still getting its equivalent off the ground. Cheng said both China and Russia have been pushing to militarise space, even though such a term is probably meaningless given that 95 per cent of space technology has dual applications for both military and civilian use. Certainly, outer space can no longer be viewed as a sanctuary. Stokes said that "not much has changed really in terms of the space launch infrastructure and the launch, tracking and control of space ... but they are now integrated with end-users, and that is going to have an effect on making the whole system more efficient." China has freedom of action in space, and the creation of the PLASSF and consolidation of space/counter-space research, development and acquisition, as well as training and operations, have benefitted from a single integrated command. The PLA's ability to interfere with American military operations in places like Taiwan will continue to grow yearly. Cheng said, "The Chinese see future war as revolving around joint operations, which are not just land, air and sea forces." They also include the outer space and electronic warfare domains, which are necessary for information dominance." China, therefore, wishes to deny an adversary like the US the use of space, plus it needs to give the Chinese military every advantage. China has therefore developed the ability to target hostile space-based assets (from the ground or space) and their all-important data-links. Indeed, jamming and electronic warfare complement anti-satellite weapons (which China has already tested), any of which can achieve effective mission kills against US and allied satellites. Stokes has not yet ascertained which agency is responsible for satellite kinetic kills, but it could well be the PLA Rocket Force, which is traditionally very tightly controlled by the Central Military Commission. A detailed report entitled China's Space and Counter-space Capabilities and Activities, prepared for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, was published on March 30. Its authors, Mark Stokes, Gabriel Alvarado, Emily Weinstein and Ian Easton, summarised China's counter-space capabilities as follows. "China has an operational counter-space capability that will evolve through 2020 and out to 2035. These capabilities include anti-satellite kinetic kill vehicles (KKV) and space electronic countermeasures ... On the non-kinetic side, the PLA has an operational ground-based satellite electronic countermeasures capability designed to disrupt adversary use of satellite communications, navigation, search and rescue, missile early warning and other satellites through use of jamming." China obtained its first ground-based satellite jammers from Ukraine in the late 1990s, but it has developed its own solutions since then. "The PLA is capable of carrying out electronic countermeasures to disrupt, deny, deceive or degrade space services. Jamming prevents users from receiving intended signals and can be accomplished by attacking uplinks and downlinks. The PLA and defence industry are developing and deploying jammers capable of targeting satellite communications over a large range of frequencies, including dedicated military communication bands. The PLASSF also has advanced cyber capabilities that could be applied in parallel with counter-space operations." Nonetheless, the report asserted that the US still assumed a technological lead in space. "China also is carrying out research, development and testing on potential space-based counter-space systems. The PLASSF and defense industry have carried out advanced satellite maneuvers and are likely testing orbital technologies that could be applied to counter-space operations." The PLASSF Network Systems Department probably oversees satellite jamming operations. That factionalizes the CCP and emboldens challenges to Xi – the PLA is increasingly powerful and not unconditionally subservient Simpson 16 (Kurtis, Centre Director with Defence Research and Development Canada, has been conducting research on China’s leadership, Communist Party politics, the People’s Liberation Army and foreign policy for over 30 years,Master’s Degree and a Ph.D from York University, previously served as an intelligence analyst at the Privy Council Office and leader of the Asia Research Section at the Department of National Defence’s Chief Defence Intelligence (CDI) organization) “China’s Re-Emergence: Assessing Civilian-Military Relations In Contemporary Era – Analysis,” Eurasia Review, 12/21/2016 JL Paralleling divided loyalties between Chinese Party, military and government bodies, one must also recognize that within each, factions exist, based upon generational, personal, professional, geographic, or institutional allegiances.19 These minor fault lines are most pronounced during crises, and they continue independent of professionalization.20 As was demonstrated by the civil-military dynamics of the Chinese government’s suppression of student demonstrators, both divisions and allegiances of interests emerged with respect to how to contain this situation and factional interests largely determined which troops would carry out the orders, who commanded them, what civilian Party leaders supported the actions, and who would be sanctioned following the mêlée. A consequence of factionalism within the PLA is that the Party’s control mechanisms (particularly because rule of law and constitutional restraints on the military are weak) needs to be robust to control not only a single military chain of command but (particularly during crises) perhaps more than one. This is not likely the case. A review of the evidence indicates the military’s influence, on the whole, is increasing, and the Party’s control decreasing. On one level, the Party clearly controls the military as the Central Military Commission or CMC (the highest military oversight body in the PRC) is chaired by a civilian, President Xi Jinping. Moreover, the PLAs representation on formal political decision-making bodies (such as the Politburo Standing Committee, the Politburo, the Central Committee, and the NPC) has decreased over the years, but this does not necessary equate to a reduced level of influence. For example, the two Vice-Chairman of the CMC are now military generals, as are the remaining other eight members. Irrespective of institutional membership, military leaders retain considerable say. Personal interactions and informal meetings with senior party elites provide venues to sway decisions. They do, also, hold important places on leading small groups dedicated to issues like Taiwan and other security questions, such as the South China Seas.21 In a similar vein, other methods of Party influence, as exercised through political commissars, party committees, and discipline inspection commissions are no longer empowered to enforce the ideological dictates of a paramount leader. In the face of diffuse reporting chains, competing allegiances, and often effective socialization by the military units they are supposed to be watching over, most do not provide the Party guardian and guidance function once so pervasive. While perhaps overstated, Paltiel’s observation that “…China’s energies over the past century and half have given the military a prominent and even dominant role in the state, preempting civilian control and inhibiting the exercise of constitutional authority” is likely now truer than ever before in history.22 While still loyal to the party as an institution, the PLA is not unconditionally subservient to a particular leader and retains the resources to enter the political arena if (at the highest levels) a decision is made to do so. The civilian-military trend lines evident in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution affirm that the symbiotic nature of the Party-PLA relationship has morphed in important respects since the late 1960s. The promotion of professionalism, a reduced role for ideological indoctrination, an increasing bifurcation of civil-military elites, and growing state powers (complete with divided loyalties and continued factionalism) has complicated the political landscape informing how the CCP interacts with the PLA. If, as postulated, we have moved from a fused, ‘dual role elite’ model to one of ‘conditional compliance’ in which the military actually holds a preponderance of the power capabilities and where its interests are satisfied through concessions, bargaining, and pay-offs, empirical evidence should reflect this. A review of China’s three major leadership changes since the transition from the revolutionary ‘Old Guard’ to the modern technocrats confirms this. Formally anointed and legitimized by Deng in 1989, Jiang assumed leadership without military credentials and few allies, viewed by many as a ‘caretaker’ Party Secretary in the wake of the Tiananmen Massacre. Despite his limitations, Jiang was well versed in the vicissitudes of palace politics. Informed by a high political acumen, he immediately promoted an image as an involved Commander-in-Chief, personally visiting all seven military regions, a sign of commitment not made by either the likes of Mao or Deng. Symbolic gestures like this were bolstered by his providing incentives to the PLA, such as: consistent raises in the defence budget; funds for military modernization; as well as equipment, logistics, and augmented RandD.23 Referred to as the ‘silk-wrapped needle,’ Jiang marshalled Party resources to not only reward, but to punish.24 His institutional authority over appointments enabled him to manipulate factions, dismiss those who opposed him, enforce new rigid retirement standards, and promote loyalists. A delicate equilibrium was established during the early-1990s until his semi-retirement in 2004,25 where Jiang guaranteed military priorities such as supporting ‘mechanization’ and an ‘information-based military’ (promoting the concept of RMA with Chinese characteristics) in exchange for the PLA backing of his legacy contributions to Marxist Leninist Mao Zedong thought with the enshrinement of his “Three Represents” doctrine. Like Jiang, Hu Jintao’s succession was the product of negotiation, compromise, and concessions. While neither opposed by the PLA, nor supported by the military ‘brass,’ Hu was a known commodity, having served as Vice-President (1998) and CMC Vice-Chairman since 1999. He was deemed acceptable until proven otherwise. In the shadow of Jiang (who retained the position of CMC Chair until 2004), Hu did not exert the same kind of influence in, nor engender the same kind of deference from, China’s military, but equally proved capable of fostering a pragmatic relationship with the army which ensured its interests, and in so doing, legitimized his leadership position. Ceding much of the military planning and operational decisions to the PLA directly, Hu played to his strengths and focused upon national security issues (such as the successful resolution of SARs in China), which bolstered his credibility as a populist leader among the masses, indirectly increasing his power within both the military and the Party. Additionally, he focused upon foreign military security affairs (most notably, North Korea-US negotiations), which enabled him to link his personal political agenda with the military’s latest ambitions. In according the military a distinct place in China’s national development plan, supporting China’s rise, and ensuring its vital interests, Hu recognized the military’s evolving requirement to ‘go global’ and its worldwide interests in non-combat operations, such as peacekeeping and disaster relief, as well as stakes in the open seas, outer space, and cyberspace as interest frontiers with no geographic boundaries.26 Under the slogan of ‘China’s historical mission in the new phase of the new century’ and his acquiescence to the PLA’s stated requirements ‘to win local wars under modern conditions’ by funding new technology acquisition, Hu received the army’s formal recognition for his contributions to military thought based upon “scientific development” which informed a “strategic guiding theory,” resulting in a new operational orientation for China’s military. Emulating his predecessor, Hu won ‘conditional compliance’ from the PLA by successfully bartering military needs and wants for the army’s support and endorsement of his political tenure. This was not done outside of self-interest. Hu, as did Jiang, skillfully coopted, fired, and promoted select Generals to serve his greater ends, and he did this through varied means. Ultimately, however, it was done in a manner acceptable to the military. Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, while replicating the ‘horse-trading’ of Jiang and Hu, marks a fundamental departure in leadership style. Often described as a transformative leader, Xi is openly critical of his predecessors and rails against earlier periods where reform stalled and corruption grew.27 An advocate of ‘top-level design,’ incrementalism is being supplanted by a massive attempt to centralize all aspects of the CCP’s power, which includes a major restructuring of the economy, government, administration, and military. Nicknamed “the gun and the knife” as a slight for his attempts to simultaneously control the army, police, spies, and the ‘graft busters,’ Xi’s power appears uncontested at present. Nevertheless, he is also viewed as ‘pushing the envelope too far’ and endangering the equilibrium which has been established between the Party and PLA over the past 25 years. For example, only two years into his mandate, he fostered a Cult of Personality, “the Spirit of Xi Jinping” which was officially elevated to the same standing as that of Mao and Deng, by comparison, foundational figures in Chinese history. His open attacks of political ‘enemies’ (most notably Zhou Yongkang, a Politburo Standing Committee member and former security czar) breeds fear among almost every senior official, all of whom are vulnerable on some point. Equally true, an unprecedented anti-corruption campaign is inciting comrades to turn on comrades, not unlike a massive game of prisoner’s dilemma. Nowhere is the pressure for reform greater than in the PLA. Xi advocates administering the army with strictness and austerity, promoting frugality and obedience. At his direction, “mass-line educational campaigns” designed to “rectify work style” through criticism and self-criticism are being implemented.28 Ideological and political building is now equated with army building, as a means of ensuring the Party’s uncontested grip over the troops ideologically, politically, and organizationally. Select military regions (those opposite Taiwan and adjacent to the South China Seas) and commanders from those regions are witnessing favoritism and promotion at the expense of others. Moreover, a new “CMC Chairmanship Responsibility System” has been instituted, which directly calls into question the support of some of Xi’s senior-most generals. A ‘hardliner’ by nature, Xi recognizes that he must earn the support of the PLA. New military priorities he supports include: accelerating modernization; Joint Command and C4ISR; training; talent management, as well as equipment and force modernization. That said, his goal of achieving the Chinese dream of building a “wealthy, powerful, democratic, civilized, and harmonious socialist modernized nation” by 2021, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP, is exceptionally ambitious. It will require endless commitments to competing interests in a period of economic stagnation and global economic downturn. Should the PLA come to believe they are not first in line for government largess, support for Xi could erode very quickly.29 CCP instability collapses the international order – extinction Perkinson 12 (Jessica, MA in international affairs from American University) “The Potential for Instability in the PRC: How the Doomsday Theory Misses the Mark,” American University School of International Service, 2012 JL Should the CCP undergo some sort of dramatic transformation – whether that be significant reform or complete collapse, as some radical China scholars predict2 – the implications for international and US national security are vast. Not only does China and the stability of the CCP play a significant role in the maintenance of peace in the East Asian region, but China is also relied upon by many members of the international community for foreign direct investment, economic stability and trade. China plays a key role in maintaining stability on the Korean Peninsula as one of North Korea’s only allies, and it is argued that instability within the Chinese government could also lead to instability in the already sensitive military and political situation across the Taiwan Strait. For the United States, the effect of instability within the CCP would be widespread and dramatic. As the United States’ largest holder of US treasury securities, instability or collapse of the CCP could threaten the stability of the already volatile economic situation in the US. In addition, China is the largest trading partner of a number of countries, including the US, and the US is reliant upon its market of inexpensive goods to feed demand within the US. It is with this in mind that China scholars within the United States and around the world should be studying this phenomenon, because the potential for reform, instability or even collapse of the CCP is of critical importance to the stability of the international order as a whole. For the United States specifically, the potential - or lack thereof - forreform of the CCP should dictate its foreign policy toward China. If the body of knowledge on the stability of the Chinese government reveals that the Chinese market is not a stable one, it is in the best interests of the United States to look for investors and trade markets elsewhere to lessen its serious dependence on China for its economic stability, particularly in a time of such uncertain economic conditions within the US. Independently, Xi will lash out to preserve cred in the SCS – US draw-in ensures extinction Mastro 20 (Oriana Skylar, Assistant Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute) “Military Confrontation in the South China Sea,” Council on Foreign Relations, 5/21/2020 JL The risk of a military confrontation in the South China Sea involving the United States and China could rise significantly in the next eighteen months, particularly if their relationship continues to deteriorate as a result of ongoing trade frictions and recriminations over the novel coronavirus pandemic. Since 2009, China has advanced its territorial claims in this region through a variety of tactics—such as reclaiming land, militarizing islands it controls, and using legal arguments and diplomatic influence—without triggering a serious confrontation with the United States or causing a regional backlash. Most recently, China announced the creation of two new municipal districts that govern the Paracel and Spratly Islands, an attempt to strengthen its claims in the South China Sea by projecting an image of administrative control. It would be wrong to assume that China is satisfied with the gains it has made or that it would refrain from using more aggressive tactics in the future. Plausible changes to China’s domestic situation or to the international environment could create incentives for China’s leadership to adopt a more provocative strategy in the South China Sea that would increase the risk of a military confrontation. The United States has a strong interest in preventing China from asserting control over the South China Sea. Maintaining free and open access to this waterway is not only important for economic reasons, but also to uphold the global norm of freedom of navigation. The United States is also at risk of being drawn into a military conflict with China in this region as a result of U.S. defense treaty obligations to at least one of the claimants to the contested territory, the Philippines. China’s ability to control this waterway would be a significant step toward displacing the United States from the Indo-Pacific region, expanding its economic influence, and generally reordering the region in its favor. Preventing China from doing so is the central objective of the U.S. National Security Strategy and the reason the Indo-Pacific is the U.S. military’s main theater of operations. For these reasons, the United States should seek ways to prevent Chinese expansion, ideally while avoiding a dangerous confrontation and being prepared to deftly manage any crises should they arise. China considers the majority of the South China Sea to be an inalienable part of its territory. Exercising full sovereignty over this area is a core component of President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream.” China does not accept or respect the sovereignty claims of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, or Vietnam in this region. Although China has been cautious in pressing its claims thus far, three developments could convince Xi that China should be more assertive. Xi could feel compelled to accelerate his timeline in the South China Sea to maintain his consolidated position within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), particularly if the political situation in Hong Kong worsens, peaceful reunification with Taiwan becomes less likely, or domestic criticism of his management of the novel coronavirus outbreak increases. With China’s economic growth for 2020 projected to hit only 1.2 percent—the lowest since the mid-1970s—Xi could find it necessary to demonstrate strength while Beijing deals with internal fallout from the pandemic. China has already declared two new administrative districts in the South China Sea in April 2020 and has escalated its criticism of U.S. freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the area. Moreover, with expectations that the first stage of China’s military modernization efforts will be completed in 2020, Xi could become more confident that China would succeed in pressing its claims militarily, especially if the United States is distracted internally with managing the coronavirus pandemic or its aftermath.
1/15/22
JF - T - Appropriation
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 5 | Opponent: Harker PG | Judge: Gordon Krauss 1NC – T Interpretation: “Appropriation of outer space” by private entities refers to the exercise of exclusive control of space. TIMOTHY JUSTIN TRAPP, JD Candidate @ UIUC Law, ’13, TAKING UP SPACE BY ANY OTHER MEANS: COMING TO TERMS WITH THE NONAPPROPRIATION ARTICLE OF THE OUTER SPACE TREATY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW Vol. 2013 No. 4 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 217The ITU even allows nations with unused slots to devise them to other entities, creating a market for the property rights set up by this regulation.218 In some aspects, this seems to effect exactly what those signatory nations of the Bogotá Declaration were trying to accomplish, albeit through different means.219
Private appropriation of extracted space resources is distinct from appropriation “of” outer space. Despite longstanding permission of appropriation of extracted resources, sovereign claims are still universally prohibited. Abigail D. Pershing, J.D. Candidate @ Yale, B.A. UChicago,’19, "Interpreting the Outer Space Treaty's Non-Appropriation Principle: Customary International Law from 1967 to Today," Yale Journal of International Law 44, no. 1 II. THE FIRST SHIFT IN CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW’S INTERPRETATION OF THE NON-APPROPRIATION PRINCIPLE Since the drafting of the Outer Space Treaty, several States have chosen to reinterpret the non-appropriation principle as narrower in scope than its drafters originally intended. This reinterpretation has gone largely unchallenged and has in fact been widely adopted by space-faring nations. In turn, this has had the effect of changing customary international law relating to the non-appropriation principle. Shifting away from its original blanket application in 1967, States have carved out an exception to the non-appropriation principle, allowing appropriation of extracted space resources.53 This Part examines this shift in the context of the two branches of the United Nation’s customary international law standard: State practice and opinio juris. A. State Practice The earliest hint of a change in customary international law relating to the interpretation of the non-appropriation clause came in 1969, when the United States first sent astronauts to the moon. As part of his historic journey, astronaut Neil Armstrong collected moonrocks that he brought back with him to Earth and promptly handed off to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as U.S. property.54 Later, the USSR similarly claimed lunar material as government property, some of which was eventually sold to private citizens. 55 These first instances of space resource appropriation did not draw much attention, but they presented a distinct shift marking the beginning of a new period in State practice. Having previously been limited by their technological capabilities, States could now establish new practices with respect to celestial bodies. This was the beginning of a pattern of appropriation that slowly unfolded over the next few decades and has since solidified into the general and consistent State practice necessary to establish the existence of customary international law. Currently, the U.S. government owns 842 pounds of lunar material.56 There is little question that NASA and the U.S. government consider this material, as well as other space materials collected by American astronauts, to be government property.57 In fact, NASA explicitly endorses U.S. property rights over these moon rocks, stating that “lunar material retrieved from the Moon during the Apollo Program is U.S. government property.”5 The U.S. delegation’s reaction to the language of the 1979 Moon Agreement further cemented this interpretation that appropriation of extracted resources is a permissible exception to the non-appropriation clause of Article II. Although the United States is not a party to the Moon Agreement, it did participate in the negotiations.59 The Moon Agreement states in relevant part: Neither the surface nor the subsurface of the moon, nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or nongovernmental organization, national organization or nongovernmental entity or of any natural person.60 In response to this language, the U.S. delegation made a statement laying out the American view that the words “in place” imply that private property rights apply to extracted resources61—a comment that went completely unchallenged. That all States seemed to accept this point, even those bound by the Moon Agreement, is further evidence of a shift in customary international law.62 B. Opinio Juris: Domestic Legislation Domestic law, both in the United States and abroad, provides further evidence of the shift in customary international law surrounding the issue of nonappropriation as it relates to extracted space resources. Domestic U.S. space law is codified at Section 51 of the U.S. Code and has been regularly modified to expand private actors’ rights in space.63 Beginning in 1984, the Commercial Space Launch Act provided that “the United States should encourage private sector launches and associated services.”64 The goal of the 1984 Act was to support commercial space launches by private companies and individuals.65 It did not, however, specifically discuss commercial exploitation of space. The first such mention of commercial use of space appeared in 2004, with the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act.66 This Act specifically aimed at regulating space tourism but did not explicitly guarantee any private rights in space.67 The most significant change in U.S. space law came with the passage of the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (SPACE) Act in 2015. As incorporated into Section 51 of the Code, this Act provides: A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States.68 Whereas the idea that private corporations might go into space may have seemed far-fetched to the drafters of the Outer Space Treaty, the SPACE Act of 2015 was the first instance of a government recognizing such a trend and officially supporting private companies’ commercial rights to space resources under law. With the new 2015 amendment to Section 51 in place, U.S. companies can now rest assured that any profits they reap from space mining are firmly legal—at least within U.S. jurisdictions. Although the United States was the first country to officially reinterpret the non-appropriation principle, other countries are following suit. On July 20, 2017, Luxembourg passed a law entitled On the Exploration and Utilization of Space Resources with a vote of fifty-five to two.69 The law took effect on August 1, 2017.70 Article 1 of the new law states simply that “space resources can be appropriated,” and Article 3 expressly grants private companies permission to explore and use space resources for commercial purposes.71 Official commentary on the law establishes that its goal is to provide companies with legal certainty regarding ownership over space materials—a goal that the commentators regard as legal under the Outer Space Treaty despite the non-appropriation principle.72 The next country to enact similar legislation may be the United Arab Emirates (UAE). According to the UAE Space Agency director general, Mohammed Al Ahbabi, the UAE is currently in the process of drafting a space law covering both human space exploration and commercial activities such as mining.73 To further this goal, in 2017 the UAE set up the Space Agency Working Group on Space Policy and Law to specify the procedures, mechanisms, and other standards of the space sector, including an appropriate legal framework.74 C. Opinio Juris: Legal Scholarship Other major space powers are also considering similar laws in the future, including Japan, China, and Australia. 75 Senior officials within China’s space program have explicitly stated that the country’s goal is to explore outer space and to take advantage of outer space resources.76 The general international trend clearly points in this direction in anticipation of a potential “space gold rush.” 7 Mirroring the shift in State practice and domestic laws, the legal community has also changed its approach to the interpretation of the nonappropriation principle. Whereas at the time of the ratification of the Outer Space Treaty the majority of legal scholars tended to apply the non-appropriation principle broadly, most legal scholars now view appropriation of extracted materials as permissible.78 Brandon Gruner underscores that this new view is historically distinct from prior legal interpretation, noting that modern interpretations of the Outer Space Treaty’s non-appropriation principle differ from those of the Treaty’s authors.79 In contrast to earlier legal theory that denied the possibility of appropriation of any space resources, scholars now widely accept that extracting space resources from celestial bodies is a “use” permitted by the Outer Space Treaty and that extracted materials become the property of the entity that performed the extraction.80 Stressing the fact that the Treaty does not explicitly prohibit appropriating resources from outer space, other authors conclude that the use of extracted space resources is permitted, meaning that the new SPACE Act is a plausible interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty.81 However, scholars have been careful to cabin the extent to which they accept the legality of appropriation. For instance, although Thomas Gangale and Marilyn Dudley-Rowley acknowledge the legality of private appropriation of extracted space resources, they nonetheless emphasize that “ownership of and the right to use extraterrestrial resources is distinct from ownership of real property” and that any such claim to real property is illegal.82 Lawrence Cooper is also careful to point out this distinction: “the Outer Space Treaties recognize sovereignty over property placed into space, property produced in space, and resources removed from their place in space, but ban sovereignty claims by states; international law extends this ban to individuals.”83 Although there remain some scholars who still insist on the illegality of the 2015 U.S. law and State appropriation of space resources generally,84 their dominance has waned since the 1960s. These scholars are now a minority in the face of general acceptance among the legal community that minerals and other space resources, once extracted, may be legally claimed as property. 85 Taken together, the elements described above—statements made in the international arena, de facto appropriation of space resources in the form of moon rocks, the adoption of new national policies permitting appropriation of extracted space resources, and the weight of the international legal community’s opinion— indicate a fundamental shift in customary international law. The Outer Space Treaty’s non-appropriation clause has been redefined via customary international law norms from its broad application to now include a carve-out allowing appropriation of space resources once such resources have been extracted.
Violation: the aff only ends asteroid mining – that’s distinct from broadly banning sovereignty of outer space
Standards: 1) Limits – their interpretation means that affs about any outer space activity would be topical: mining, photography, sending rovers, collecting ice cores, launching satellites, deflecting debris, can’t sell rocks on EBAY, etc. This explodes neg prep burdens since outer space activity is so vague – no generics exist to answer both the photography and the rovers aff, so affs would just win with a tiny impact every round 2) Ground – allowing debates about extracting any space resource denies the neg links to core generics like space democracy bad, space colonization good, the moon pic, the property rights NC, etc. – that kills clash by forcing negatives to the fringes of argumentation that disagree with everything and kills fairness by giving the aff a major prep advantage since they only need to frontline the few negative arguments that link to their aff.
Fairness and education are voters – debate’s a game, and fairness is necessary to determine the winner of the game, and education is the reason why schools fund debate. Drop the debater – dropping the argument doesn’t rectify abuse since winning T proves why we don’t have the burden of rejoinder against their aff. Use competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention since there’s no consensus as to what’s reasonable. No RVIs – fairness and education are logical litmus tests and they incentivize baiting theory and prepping it out which turns substance crowdout
1/16/22
JF - T - Outerspace
Tournament: Peninsula | Round: 2 | Opponent: Plano East Senior RP | Judge: Claudia Ribera 1NC – Shell Interpretation: outer space consists of regions outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies Tanabe 19 (Rosie, updater and writer at NWE) “Outer space,” New World Encyclopedia, 1/8/2019 JL Outer space (often called space) consists of the relatively empty regions of the universe outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies. Outer space is used to distinguish it from airspace and terrestrial locations. There is no clear boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space, as the density of the atmosphere gradually decreases as the altitude increases.
The moon has an atmosphere— Siegal 21(Ethan, a Ph.D. astrophysicist and author of "Starts with a Bang!" He is a science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. He has won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for his blog, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics.) “The “airless” Moon really does have an atmosphere, after all,” Big Think, November 17, 2021. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/airless-moon-atmosphere/ RR And yet, the Moon actually does have an atmosphere: one that’s measurable and detectable. In addition, it has something even better than an atmosphere: an atmospheric “tail” made of sodium atoms. Here’s the fascinating science behind our lunar companion’s tenuous, but nonnegligible, atmosphere, which we mustn’t ignore any longer.
Violation: Lunar Heritage Sites are located on the moon, not in outer space. Nasa 13 (Nasa, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is America’s civil space program and the global leader in space exploration. The agency has a diverse workforce of just under 18,000 civil servants, and works with many more U.S. contractors, academia, and international and commercial partners to explore, discover, and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity. With an annual budget of $23.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2021, which is less than 0.5 of the overall U.S. federal budget, NASA supports more than 312,000 jobs across the United States, generating more than $64.3 billion in total economic output (Fiscal Year 2019).) “Lunar Heritage Sites,” NASA, 12/13/13. https://moon.nasa.gov/resources/53/lunar-heritage-sites/ RR
This graphic highlights locations on the moon NASA considers "lunar heritage sites" and the path NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory spacecraft will take on their final flight.
Navigators on the GRAIL team have designed an end of mission plan that rules out the extremely remote possibility of either of the two GRAIL spacecraft impacting near any of these historic locations. The Apollo 11, 12, 14, 16 and 17 landing sites are indicated with green circles. The Surveyor sites are indicated with yellow squares. The Soviet Union's Luna and Lunakhod landing sites are indicated with red diamonds and red triangles, respectively.
The ground tracks for the Ebb and Flow spacecraft during their final half-orbits are shown in blue and red.
Standards: 1) Limits – their interpretation means that they allow for the elimination of private appropriation on earth, asteroids, galaxies, comets, mars etc. This explodes neg prep burdens since outer space activity is so vague – no generics exist to answer both the earth and the moon aff, so affs would just win with a tiny impact every round 2) Ground – allowing debates about celestial bodies denies the neg links to core generics like space democracy bad, space colonization good, the moon pic, the property rights NC, etc. – that kills clash by forcing negatives to the fringes of argumentation that disagree with everything and kills fairness by giving the aff a major prep advantage since they only need to frontline the few negative arguments that link to their aff.
Fairness and education are voters – debate’s a game, and fairness is necessary to determine the winner of the game, and education is the reason why schools fund debate. Drop the debater – dropping the argument doesn’t rectify abuse since winning T proves why we don’t have the burden of rejoinder against their aff. Use competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention since there’s no consensus as to what’s reasonable. No RVIs – fairness and education are logical litmus tests and they incentivize baiting theory and prepping it out which turns substance crowdout
CP: The United states shoul implement the SCR-69 for all states.
CLI 20 ~(CLI, California Legislative information),"SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION" , https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill'id=201920200SCR69, Introduced by Senator Bradford August 14, 2019, AMENDED IN SENATE JANUARY 23, 2020~ SS Relative to prisoner compensation. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST SCR 69, as amended
AND
associated primarily with poverty, employment, housing, and family differences; and
Solves the aff but avoids the case turns.
11/7/21
ND - CP - Truckers PIC
Tournament: USC | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake JH | Judge: Anthony Winchell 1NC – CP CP Text - The Federative Republic of Brazil ought to: - recognize an unconditional right of non-Trucker workers to strike. - make striking by all Trucker workers a federal crime and implement penalties modelled after New York City Taylor Law including two-for-one fines, lifetime bans from federal jobs, and jail time. Trucker Strikes obliterate Food Security and turns the Economy. Woody 18 Katherine Woody 7-3-2018 "Economic Impact of the Brazilian Trucker Strike" https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/report/downloadreportbyfilename?filename=Economic20Impact20of20the20Brazilian20Trucker20Strike_Brasilia_Brazil_7-3-2018.pdf (Agricultural Attaché at US Foreign Agriculture Service)Elmer Report Highlights: On May 21, 2018, hundreds of thousands of Brazil’s nearly 2 million truck drivers began an 11-day strike to protest high diesel prices, a move that slowed Brazil’s economy, crippled transportation-dependent industries, and caused estimated losses of US$ 1.75 billion to Brazil’s agricultural sector. A month after Brazil’s longest trucker strike (and one of the country’s most effective strikes in history), transportation and logistics challenges still persist for Brazil’s exporters, as shipments of Brazilian commodities are still delayed, supply chains are still experiencing bottlenecks, and debate and uncertainty about Brazil’s transportation policies and prices continue to plague the agricultural sector Background On May 21, 2018, hundreds of thousands of Brazil’s nearly 2 million truck drivers began an 11-day strike to protest high diesel prices, a move that slowed Brazil’s economy, crippled transportation-dependent industries, and caused estimated losses of US$ 1.75 billion to Brazil’s agricultural sector. Truck drivers parked their rigs along roads across the country, refusing to make deliveries of cargo and creating roadblocks on more than half of Brazil’s 500 busiest highways. Within a few days, the effects of the strike were widespread and painful, as gas stations ran out of fuel, drivers waited for hours in lines for what small fuel supplies remained, supermarket shelves began to empty and some stores rationed perishable products, and airports began cancelling flights as fuel supplies dwindled. Virtually all segments of Brazil’s agricultural sector were affected in some way, but livestock and poultry operations were particularly hard hit by feed delivery disruptions, idled slaughterhouses, export stoppages, and ultimately the culling of tens of millions of animals. A month after Brazil’s longest trucker strike (and one of the country’s most effective strikes in history), transportation and logistics challenges still persist for Brazil’s exporters, as shipments of Brazilian commodities are still delayed, supply chains are still experiencing bottlenecks, and debate and uncertainty about Brazil’s transportation policies and prices continue to plague the agricultural sector. The truckers’ rebellion was particularly painful for Brazil because the country lacks extensive rail and waterway infrastructure to transport goods, instead relying on trucks to carry more than 90 percent of all freight (excluding crude oil and iron ore). Additionally, Brazil’s limited road infrastructure meant that it was easy for striking truckers to create massive bottlenecks by setting up roadblocks along major roads, many of which are only one lane in each direction. Unlike the United States, where many agricultural goods are transported to export terminals by railways or river barges, Brazil’s farmers are dependent on trucks to move their goods within the domestic market and to ports for sale to the international market. The effects of the strike were wide-ranging, especially as gas stations ran out of fuel, supermarket shelves began to empty of fresh foods, and ports ran low on commodities to load for export. At the Port of Paranagua in the state of Paraná, one of the main soybean routes was interrupted. At the beginning of the strike, authorities warned that the blockage obstructed the arrival of a thousand soybean trucks per day in the terminal. According to the Sao Paulo State Supermarket Association (APAS), Brazilian retailers lost R$1.3 billion due to shortages of perishable items. In Sao Paulo alone, supermarkets losses were estimated at R$400 million. Causes The strike was spurred by rapidly rising fuel prices (diesel prices were up 43 percent since July 2017), combined with the effects of the Brazil real continuing to weaken against the U.S. dollar. Last year, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, changed its pricing policies allow daily fluctuations of fuel prices pegged to the international oil market and scrapped subsidies that had kept domestic fuel prices lower. Most Brazilian truck drivers are largely self-employed and daily increases in fuel costs had begun to cut deeply into their incomes. Brazilian citizens of all economic classes supported the truck drivers, and by the eighth day of the strike, 87 percent of the population approved of the strike and sympathized with what many saw as another example of the injustice of government taxes, according to one public opinion poll by Brazilian firm Datafolha. However, the same firm on June 11 published results of a separate opinion poll that showed that 69 percent of Brazilians thought the trucker strike was harmful for the Brazilian economy. The survey also showed that Brazilians want more control of gas and fuel prices. Even before the strike, high fuel prices were affecting the competitiveness of Brazilian agricultural exports. Brazil’s transportation lobby, the National Confederation of Transport, estimated that before the strike Brazilian diesel prices were about 15 higher than in the United States, and argued that diesel fuel in Brazil was more expensive than in similarly developed countries such as Mexico and Russia. Roughly half of the Brazilian fuel price paid by consumers goes to government taxes. A study by the College of Agriculture at the University of Sao Paulo (ESALQ) found that farmers were paying an average of 9.05 reals (US$ 2.42) more per ton than early 2017 to transport oilseeds and grains from Mato Grosso to the Port of Santos in Sao Paulo. ESALQ estimated that in 2017, the cost to move Brazilian agricultural goods around the country reached 120 billion reals, with 87.5 percent going to transportation costs. Diesel prices at the pump in the major agriculture-producing states of Mato Grosso, Sao Paulo, and Paraná increased by 13-15 percent between January 2017 and May 2018, according to the ESALQ study. Resolution As the strike dragged on Brazilian President Michel Temer authorized intervention by military and federal police to clear roadblocks and begin escorting some trucks to their destinations, especially rigs carrying fuel to airports and other strategic locations. Desperate to jumpstart the country’s economy, Brazilian officials met with the leaders of several trucker unions, but a deal with union leaders to temporarily cut fuel prices was rejected by large numbers of independent truckers, who used social media apps to coordinate their response and garner public support for the continued strike. On the ninth day of the strike, the Brazilian government agreed to reduce diesel prices by 0.46 reals per liter, hold prices stable for 60 days, reduce tolls for large trucks, and suspend or eliminate some taxes in an effort to coax drivers back to the roads. The measures largely worked, with most truckers returning to the road and deliveries of food, fuel, and medicine beginning to flow again, albeit at a slower, more unreliable pace. Still, the concessions reportedly cost the Brazilian government 9.5 billion reals (US$ 2.48 billion) and contributed to the resignation of the Petrobras CEO. Market analysts have revised upward Brazil’s budget deficit for the year, now estimated at R$151 billion (US$ 40 billion), up more than R$12.5 billion (US$ 3.3 billion) from the previous month’s estimate due to the increased cost of fuel subsidies agreed to under negotiations to end the strike. Effects Although goods of all kinds, including agricultural products, started flowing again by the beginning of June, the strike left lasting scars on the Brazilian economy. Forecasters are estimating total losses of between US$ 25-30 billion to Brazil’s economy as a result of the strike. Brazil’s National Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA) estimated losses to the agricultural sector due to the trucker strike at 6.6 billion reals (about US$ 1.75 billion). CNA also estimated that it could take Brazilian agricultural producers 6 months to a year to recover fully from the effects of the strike. Brazil’s central bank released its June report and cut projected 2018 GDP growth to 1.6 percent. One of the Brazilian government’s concessions to end the strike, a minimum freight rate guaranteed to truckers, is continuing to wreak havoc on the agricultural industry. The policy, which was implemented by presidential decree on May 30, was immediately criticized by a number of transportation-dependent industries, chief among them agriculture. CNA argued that the policy is unconstitutional and completely upends logistics for agricultural producers, many of whom have already concluded marketing contracts for 2018 crops. CNA reports that soy and corn producers and traders are already paying an additional R$ 500 million (US$ 132 million) for transportation every day, for a total of more than R$ 10 billion (US$ 2.65 billion) so far. Analysis by CNA forecasts that the policy is increasing freight rates by approximately 50-150 percent throughout the country, with Brazil’s powerhouse agricultural region in the interior of the country being hit the hardest. CNA and other players in the agricultural sector have challenged the measure in court through more than 50 lawsuits. Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux has been trying to mediate a solution satisfactory to both the transportation sector and the agricultural and industrial sectors dependent on those services. In the meantime, he suspended the pending lawsuits and left in effect the minimum freight rate table published on May 30 by the National Agency for Terrestrial Transportation (ANTT). President Temer has said he will abide by the court’s decision, truck drivers have threatened to strike again if the minimum price policy is invalidated. ANTT has publically estimated that judicial proceedings will continue through at least early August. Count Justice Fux confirmed that a new round of negotiations on this topic is scheduled for August 27, after the Supreme Court recess. The Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA) has warned that the lack of certainty over truck freight rates has hindered transportation of commodities to the ports and subsequently caused shipping delays. Nearly two weeks after the end of the strike, MAPA Minister Blairo Maggi told reporters, “There are a lot of products waiting for transportation. We should be moving 450,000 tons of goods to ports every day, but we are not.” He also noted that the situation has affected forward sales of agricultural commodities since traders cannot accurate price the contracts without knowing how much will need to be spent on transportation. CNA argues that since the policy went into effect, productivity of Brazil’s agricultural sector has slowed by half, as producers have slowed the volume of shipments they are sending to ports while they wait for a resolution. Meanwhile, the number of ships waiting to load at Brazilian ports has continued to grow. According to shipping agency Williams, the number of ships berthed and loading in mid-June was about 40 percent lower than the same period last year, while the ship line-ups had grown to be about 60 percent larger than 2017, with as many as 70 ships waiting, according to some industry sources. CNA estimated that the shipping delays have cost about R$ 135 million (US$ 36 million) in demurrage charges for ships that have been delayed in loading at Brazilian ports. Moreover, the problems created by continued uncertainty about the policy are expected to worsen as Brazil’s second-crop corn harvest progresses. Brazil’s second-crop corn is currently less than 10 percent harvested, but limited silo capacity in the country means that commodities must generally start flowing to the ports as it comes out of the ground. With a record soybean crop this year and slow delivery to the ports in June, Brazilian corn will be forced to compete with soy for transportation and storage capacity, and freight rates are expected to rise as more Brazilian corn comes onto the market. Impact on the Agricultural Sector Livestock Swine and Poultry: The most significant losses from the strike were born by the chicken and pork production sector. Shortages of fuel and animal feed affected farms and feedlots, while slaughterhouses idled their production lines when transportation to the ports was cut off and refrigerated warehouses filled to capacity. Analysts estimated a loss of R$4 billion (US$ 1.05 billion) in exports, with 120,000 metric tons of chicken and pork meat not exported because of the strike. The Brazilian Association of Animal Protein reported that the strike caused the closure of 137 poultry plants and 30 swine slaughterhouses, forcing 220,000 industry workers to go on temporary leave. As feed rations ran low, some poultry operations were only feeding birds once every 48 hours, considered starvation rations, according to MAPA Minister Maggi. Particularly worrisome for the world’s largest exporter of chicken was the fact that poultry operations were forced to cull an estimated 70 million birds (about 7 percent of Brazil’s flock of 1 billion birds), bringing the level of chicks on breeder farms down to their lowest levels in a decade. Minister Maggi called on President Temer during the strike to ensure security forces were escorting trucks of feed rations to poultry farms. By mid-June, all affected processing plants had resumed operations, according to the Brazilian Association of Animal Protein. However, the disruption in supply was expected to cause a spike in Brazilian chicken prices as the sector could take more than 2 months to fully recover. Wholesale prices for frozen chicken in Brazil were up more than 40 percent. Moreover, Rabobank revised downward their forecast of the Brazilian poultry sector to an estimated 3 percent decline for the year (down from a forecasted 2-percent expansion). Cattle: The trucker strike came at a very unfortunate time for the beef sector. With the beginning of winter in Brazil, cattle on pasture begin to lose weight and needed to be sent to slaughter, but the strike forced the closure of virtually all of Brazil’s more than 100 cattle slaughterhouses. Most of the losses in the beef industry occurred not through the mortality of animals on farm, but rather through estimated lost exports of R$ 620 million (US$ 164 million). More than 40,000 metric tons of beef were unable to reach ports, and the domestic market saw an uncalculated amount of beef spoiled on the road as an estimated 3,750 refrigerated trucks sat idle during the strike, according to meatpacking trade association ABIEC. The industry calculates total losses to the sector could reach R$ 8 billion (US$ 2.1 billion). ABIEC noted that 90 percent of animal protein production was interrupted. On a positive note for beef producers, some analysts expect beef prices to rise in response to lower chicken meat volumes. Dairy Dairy producers across Brazil were severely affected by the transportation paralysis, with news media depicting dire scenes of the disposal of hundreds of millions of liters of milk by farmers who could not store their perishable products. The discarded milk alone was valued at more than R$ 1 billion (US$ 260 million). Milk supply in Brazil is expected to decline 9 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2018 as a consequence of the strike. Moreover, production will take a while to recover and will likely drop 6 percent year-over-year in the third quarter. Market analysts evaluate that milk prices paid to producers are expected to peak in the third quarter of 2018. Following 12 months of low profitability, farmers and processors were forced at a particularly difficult time to absorb the losses caused by the May strike. Grains and Oilseeds When the strike began in late May, Brazil’s soybean harvest was nearly finished and the harvest for second-crop “safrinha” corn was just beginning. The largest producing area for both of these crops is Brazil’s center-west region in the interior of the country, located very far from points of export in Brazil’s southeast and north arc regions. Loading at some of Brazil’s largest soybean-exporting ports, including Santos, Paranagua, Rio Grande, and Santarem, ground to a halt during the strike, as on-port stocks emptied and roadblocks kept trucks from delivering commodities for export. Most export terminals ran out of soybeans for shipment about 8 days into the strike, with soybeans reportedly arriving to the Port of Paranagua in Paraná state on the afternoon of the tenth day when trucks were able to reach the port complex for the first time since the strike had begun. Trucks reportedly unloaded more than 40,000 tons of soybeans at the port in the first 24 hours after the strike concluded. The Port of Santos, Latin America’s largest port, was also idled when trucks could no longer make deliveries. Cargo transported by rail were unaffected by the strike, but this makes up only a small portion of exports from the Port of Santos. Brazil’s soybean crushers association, ABIOVE, reported that all 63 of Brazil’s soy-crushing facilities came to a standstill during the strike due to a lack of supplies. The Mato Grosso Institute for Agricultural Economics (IMEA) reported that the corn harvest stalled out as fuel supplies in the state ran low. The aftermath of the strike and uncertainty about the minimum freight rate have stifled forward sales for soybeans, with traders complaining that they are unable to accurately set prices for futures contracts without a reliable estimate of transportation costs. As of late June, some of the country’s largest grain traders have virtually stopped buying soybeans and corn for export, even though IMEA reported that about one-third of Mato Grosso’s safrinha corn is still unsold. Grain and oilseed traders are also reportedly delaying picking up commodities from farmers’ storage facilities while they angle to avoid paying rapidly rising freight rates and wait to see what happens to the government’s minimum transportation price policy. This could be a major problem for a country whose agricultural producers have a lack of on-farm storage and will be faced with tough decisions of where to place safrinha corn. Brazil’s National Association of Cereal Exporters estimated that as of mid-June, about 10 million tons of soybeans were paralyzed in the interior of the country while more than 50 vessels were waiting to be loaded at ports. CNA reported that exports of at least 6.8 million tons of soybeans and soybean meal have been delayed due to surging freight prices under the government’s minimum price policy. Meanwhile, the number of trucks arriving at the Port of Santos was down more than 20 percent from a month earlier, despite abundant soybean supplies in the country ready for export. At the Port of Paranagua, truck volume was down more than 10 percent and while the port has been receiving enough soybean volume to load waiting vessels, it has not been able to begin rebuilding its 1.5 million metric tons of on-port stocks, which were completely depleted during the 11-day strike. This makes the port particularly vulnerable if there is a second truck driver strike if the government’s minimum freight rate policy is rescinded. The backlog of ships at Brazil’s ports are not merely waiting to load commodities for export; they are waiting to unload cargoes of agricultural inputs, especially fertilizer needed by Brazil’s farmers for the wheat planting currently underway, as well as preparing fields for soybean planting, which will commence in a few months. CNA estimated that about 35 ships are currently lined up and waiting to unload fertilizer at Brazilian ports, more than half at the Port of Paranagua in the state of Paraná in southern Brazil. According to Brazil’s Fertilizer Blenders Association, 60 percent of fertilizer deliveries have been delayed as a result of the backlog. Sugarcane and Ethanol The strike began just as the harvest kicked off in the world’s largest sugarcane-growing regions, Brazil’s center-south. Progress on the sugarcane harvest slowed as fuel supplies dwindled and at least 220 sugar mills were forced to close, according to trade group Forum National Sucroenergetico. Meanwhile, UNICA, Brazil’s Sugar Growers Association, reported that 150 sugar mills closed in the state of Sao Paulo alone, where 60 percent of Brazil’s sugar and ethanol production occurs. The state of Sao Paulo produces about 150,000 tons of sugar and 100 million liters of ethanol daily, and the sugar industry in that state suffered losses in revenue of about US$ 48 million daily during the strike. The disruption caused international sugar futures to rise as sugar exports were unable to reach the ports. Once fuel supplies began flowing again, harvest and crushing operations were able to quickly get back up to speed. Losses in the sector are calculated at R$ 740 million (US$ 196 million). However, this calculation does not include lost/delayed sales of ethanol stored at the mills for exports or use in the domestic market, as no data of this type has been released. Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of sugar, with more than 20 million tons exported in the previous season. Coffee Brazil is the world’s largest coffee grower and exporter, and the trucker strike hit just as the country’s main Arabica harvest was commencing, which caused international Arabica futures prices to increase by about 2 percent. According to Brazil’s Coffee Exporters Council (CeCafe), the strike affected issuance of export certificates and delayed shipments, but CeCafe noted that most sales were already concluded and overall exports for the season are expected to remain at roughly the same levels estimated before the strike. According to the Brazilian Coffee Industry Association, coffee producers lost an estimated R$ 70 million (US$ 18.5 million) per day during the protests, while CeCafe estimated export losses and extra port costs of R$ 560 million (US$ 148 million). Seafood Brazil’s seafood industry was affected by a disruption of deliveries between producers and processing centers, according to trade group Peixe BR. The state of Paraná is Brazil’s largest producer of fish, raising more than 100,000 tons of tilapia last year, while the state of Sao Paulo has seen rapid growth of the industry, producing more than 65,000 tons of tilapia last year. These two states’ aquaculture sectors were the hardest hit, according to Peixe BR. At one point during the strike, a large, multi-commodity agricultural cooperative in southern Brazil, was forced to halt tilapia processing operations when truck drivers blocked roadways and cut off supplies for processing, as well as the route for distributing the final product. Fruits and Vegetables As a result of the strike, many of Brazil’s wholesale markets saw supplies of fresh products dwindle and spoilage of other products in cases where usual customers were unable to make routine purchases. The Sao Paulo Warehouse Company (CEAGESP), Latin America’s largest and the world’s third-largest wholesale market, reported losses of nearly R$ 100 million (US$ 26 million) of fruits, vegetables, and nuts, including imported products. During a normal day, CEAGESP would normally see about 1,800- 2,000 trucks come and go from the market with fresh and perishable products. However, during the strike this was reduced to less than 100 trucks per day. In addition to losses of perishable products, the prices of remaining products sored because CEAGESP prices serve as a reference for states in Brazil. Supermarkets The Brazilian Supermarket Association (ABRAS) reported total losses of R$ 2.7 billion (US$ 712 million) due to the truckers strike. In addition to losses with fresh, frozen, and perishable products, ABRAS reported shortages of other consumer goods that could not be delivered to stores. According to the Sao Paulo State Supermarket Association, in Sao Paulo alone supermarkets losses reached R$ 400 million (US$ 105 million). The Counterplan shuts down Trucker Strikes. Bauernschuster et Al 17, Stefan, Timo Hener, and Helmut Rainer. "When labor disputes bring cities to a standstill: The impact of public transit strikes on traffic, accidents, air pollution, and health." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 9.1 (2017): 1-37. (Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, University of Passau, Innstra)Elmer New York City's Taylor Law, which was put into effect in response to a transit strike in 1966, represents an example of a particularly draconian measure. Under Section 210, the law prohibits any strike or other concerted stoppage 01 worn or slowdown by public employees (Division of Local Government Services 2009). Instead, it prescribes binding arbitration by a state agency to resolve bargaining deadlocks between unions and employers. Violations against the prohibition on strikes are punishable with hefty penalties. The fine for an individual worker is twice the striking employee's salary for each day the strike lasts. In addition, union leaders face imprisonment. Since its inception in 1967, the Taylor Law has generated a lot of controversy. To proponents, it was successful in averting several potential transit strikes that would have imposed significant costs on the city and its inhabitants (OECD 2007). Indeed, New York City has only seen two transit strikes over the past four decades—in 1980 and in 2005. In both cases, harsh monetary penalties were imposed on workers and unions. The 2005 transit strike additionally led to the imprisonment of a union leader, and saw the Transport Workers Union (TWU) filing a formal complaint with the ILO. Since then, the ILO has urged the United States government to restore the right of transit workers to strike, arguing that they do not provide essential services justifying a strike ban (Committee on Freedom of Association 2011, 775). So far, the Taylor Law has not been amended in this direction. Brazil key to Global Food Supply Moreira 21 Assis Moreira 7-5-2021 "Brazil to remain world leader in food supply, OECD and FAO say" https://valorinternational.globo.com/agribusiness/news/2021/07/05/brazil-to-remain-world-leader-in-food-supply-oecd-and-fao-say.ghtml (Geneva Correspondent on Agribusiness)Elmer Brazil will continue to increase its role as a major global food supplier, including in products such as beef and even with a slower pace of growth in demand from China. These projections are in the report on agricultural outlook 2021-2030 released Monday by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). China will continue to have enormous influence on agricultural markets. The Chinese deficit in agricultural trade has grown to $86 billion in 2020 from $2.6 billion in 2000. For the next ten years, Beijing will continue to expand imports, but at a slower pace due to lower population growth, saturation in consumption of some commodities, and efficiency gains in its own production. In addition, the Chinese market will pose tougher competition as trade tensions with the United States ease. The report predicts that China could once again become the main market for U.S. agricultural exports. In this scenario, abundant land and water will make Brazil the dominant producer, and Latin America as a whole will see its agricultural production grow by 14 over the next ten years. The net value of the region’s exports is expected to expand by 31 — just over half the rate achieved between 2011 and 2020. By 2030, the region will continue to grow its share of global markets for key commodities. It may have 63 of world soybean exports, 56 of sugar exports, 44 of fish, 42 of beef exports, and 33 of chicken shipments. Food insecurity spurs conflict and on face kills millions of innocents. FDI 12 (Future Directions International, a Research institute providing strategic analysis of Australia’s global interests; citing Lindsay Falvery, PhD in Agricultural Science and former Professor at the University of Melbourne’s Institute of Land and Environment, “Food and Water Insecurity: International Conflict Triggers and Potential Conflict Points,” http://www.futuredirections.org.au/workshop-papers/537-international-conflict-triggers-and-potential-conflict-points-resulting-from-food-and-water-insecurity.html)//Elmer There is a growing appreciation that the conflicts in the next century will most likely be fought over a lack of resources.¶ Yet, in a sense, this is not new. Researchers point to the French and Russian revolutions as conflicts induced by a lack of food. More recently, Germany’s World War Two efforts are said to have been inspired, at least in part, by its perceived need to gain access to more food. Yet the general sense among those that attended FDI’s recent workshops, was that the scale of the problem in the future could be significantly greater as a result of population pressures, changing weather, urbanisation, migration, loss of arable land and other farm inputs, and increased affluence in the developing world.¶ In his book, Small Farmers Secure Food, Lindsay Falvey, a participant in FDI’s March 2012 workshop on the issue of food and conflict, clearly expresses the problem and why countries across the globe are starting to take note. .¶ He writes (p.36), “…if people are hungry, especially in cities, the state is not stable – riots, violence, breakdown of law and order and migration result.”¶ “Hunger feeds anarchy.”¶ This view is also shared by Julian Cribb, who in his book, The Coming Famine, writes that if “large regions of the world run short of food, land or water in the decades that lie ahead, then wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow.” ¶ He continues: “An increasingly credible scenario for World War 3 is not so much a confrontation of super powers and their allies, as a festering, self-perpetuating chain of resource conflicts.” He also says: “The wars of the 21st Century are less likely to be global conflicts with sharply defined sides and huge armies, than a scrappy mass of failed states, rebellions, civil strife, insurgencies, terrorism and genocides, sparked by bloody competition over dwindling resources.”¶ As another workshop participant put it, people do not go to war to kill; they go to war over resources, either to protect or to gain the resources for themselves.¶ Another observed that hunger results in passivity not conflict. Conflict is over resources, not because people are going hungry.¶ A study by the International Peace Research Institute indicates that where food security is an issue, it is more likely to result in some form of conflict. Darfur, Rwanda, Eritrea and the Balkans experienced such wars. Governments, especially in developed countries, are increasingly aware of this phenomenon.¶ The UK Ministry of Defence, the CIA, the US Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Oslo Peace Research Institute, all identify famine as a potential trigger for conflicts and possibly even nuclear war.
12/11/21
ND - DA - Brazilian ptx
Tournament: USC | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake JH | Judge: Anthony Winchell 1NC – DA Lula wins now but its close---insert chart. Spigariol 11-3 (, A., 2021. Lula still polling first for 2022, but no longer pulling away. online The Brazilian Report. Available at: https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2021/11/03/lula-polling-first-bolsonaro-2022/ Accessed 21 November 2021.)-rahulpenu Lula still polling first, but no longer pulling away Lula’s support slipped by a single point compared with late September, with Mr. Bolsonaro polling at a stable 28 percent. Center left candidate Ciro Gomes is the only “third-way option” above the 10-percent mark, with others at 4 percent or less. The pollster included a scenario with former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, poised to join the center-right Podemos party, reportedly with presidential ambitions. However, the former federal judge managed no more than 8 percent of support.
Bolsonaro is making key changes. AP 11-10 (,Associated Press, 2021. Bolsonaro Joins a Centrist Party in Brazil Ahead of 2022 Re-election Bid. online Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/10/world/americas/brazil-bolsonaro-liberal-party.html Accessed 21 November 2021.)-rahulpenu Bolsonaro Joins a Centrist Party in Brazil Ahead of 2022 Re-election Bid President Jair Bolsonaro, who has not belonged to any political party for two years, is joining the centrist Liberals, they said on Wednesday. BRASILIA, Brazil — After going two years without belonging to a political party, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil sealed an agreement with the centrist Liberal Party to back his 2022 re-election bid, according to a party statement released on Wednesday. The decision followed a meeting between Mr. Bolsonaro and the Liberal Party leader, Valdemar Costa Neto, in Brasília, the capital, the statement said. The president’s formal enrollment in the party’s ranks will take place on Nov. 22. Joining one of the parties that form part of the so-called Cenbtrao group seems to signal that Mr. Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist, is shifting course from his 2018 campaign strategy, when he criticized the group’s old-school political practices. In early polls ahead of the October 2022 vote, Mr. Bolsonaro trails former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftist who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010. The Liberal Party, or P.L., is known along with other Centrao parties for ideological malleability, often exchanging support for government appointments and earmarks. Mr. Bolsonaro was affiliated with such parties during most of his seven terms as a federal lawmaker, but cast himself as a political outsider during his 2018 presidential campaign. He vowed then not to embrace the horse trading that benefited entrenched actors and enabled corruption. “It is very symbolic how Bolsonaro has started to play the traditional game of Brazilian politics,” said Maurício Santoro, a political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “The P.L. is helping Bolsonaro survive.” When Mr. Bolsonaro ran in 2018, it was under the banner of the Social Liberal Party, which he left one year after his election victory amid disagreements with its leadership over funding and regional nominations. He set out to forge his own party, but failed to garner enough signatures and has been without a political home since. The presidential press office didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press to confirm the P.L.’s statement. Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Bolsonaro had said in a radio interview that there was a “99.9 percent chance” he would join the P.L. Reports that Mr. Bolsonaro was seeking a Centrao party to sponsor his re-election bid had already generated commentary from analysts that he was departing from his prior anti-establishment stance. As rumors of his agreement with the P.L. intensified this week, comments criticizing Mr. Costa Neto, the party leader, were deleted from the social media accounts of some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s family members. Editors’ Picks ‘When Are You Getting Married?’ Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well’ and the Weaponization of Memory The Real Surprise of ‘Passing’: A Focus on Black Women’s Inner Lives Mr. Bolsonaro himself has previously said that Mr. Costa Neto was corrupt, noted Carlos Melo, a political analyst and professor at Insper University in São Paulo. In 2012, Mr. Costa Neto, then a lawmaker, was convicted of corruption and money laundering in a vast vote-buying scandal that almost brought down Mr. da Silva’s administration. He served time in prison. Over the past year, Mr. Bolsonaro has turned to the Centrao for political shelter from increasing pressure on his administration, including more than 100 impeachment requests, a Senate investigation into his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his plunging popularity. In August, he appointed a senator from the Centrao to be his chief of staff. “If you take away the Centrao, there’s the left,” the president told a small conservative news outlet, Jornal da Cidade Online, on Tuesday. “So where do I go?”
Strike crackdowns is prompting polling for Lula---the plan’s radical change is key to building Bolsonaro voter popularity. Castanheira 10-14 (, T., 2021. São Paulo teachers and public employees strike against attack on pensions. online World Socialist Web Site. Available at: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/15/braz-o15.html Accessed 21 November 2021.)-rahulpenu The criminal agreement between the Unions’ Forum and the government for the unsafe return to in-person classes included the requirement that educators pay back the hours spent on strike. Therefore, teachers are now working grueling overtime, exposing themselves even more to the risk of infection with the coronavirus in order not to have their salaries cut. This situation, which threatens teachers with having their salaries completely cut off if they join the new strike, is seen by many workers as the opportunity the government saw to advance its attacks. In the face of these threats, the broad participation of workers in the strike movement is a direct response to the terrible social crisis facing the entire Brazilian working class. With millions having fallen into poverty in Brazil since last year, workers are seeing their purchasing power violently eroded by high inflation, especially in food and fuel prices. Recently, strikes in defense of wages have broken out at General Motors in São Paulo, at the Jurong shipyard in Espírito Santo, among metalworkers in Paraná, and app delivery workers in several Brazilian cities. The World Socialist Web Site interviewed workers participating in Wednesday’s protest in São Paulo. Leandro, who works at a Child Education Center (CEI), serving children under the age of 2, explained to the WSWS what led him to the demonstration. “We who work double shifts, 12 hours a day, pay the maximum income tax rate of 27.5 percent of our salaries and another 14 percent in pension contributions,” he said. “In other words, almost half of what I earn is only for taxes. They want to raise this even more. And after I retire, even though I would have contributed for more than 40 years, I will continue to pay the same tax rate. Today, this percentage is only charged on monthly salaries exceeding 6,433 reais (US$ 1,166). With this new change, it will be charged of everyone who earns more than a minimum wage (US$200).” Leandro’s wife, Kauane, an educator at an Early Childhood Education School (EMEI), serving children from 2 to 6 years old, added that it is inconceivable for “a 60-year-old teacher to remain in an early childhood education classroom, with toddlers as the new bill imposes. They won’t have the physical or psychological structure to cope with that.” She also noted that “in the last four years we have been without any wage adjustment, not even for inflation. But our latest struggles have been only against the removal of rights. We are losing right after right. We see all the services being scrapped, there is no investment in health care. We are treated as numbers. If something happens to us, tomorrow they’ll put someone new in our place. We are not seen as human beings, who have families.” Kauane and Leandro have children, one of them with asthma, and are seriously concerned about the unsafe reopening of schools. On Wednesday, hours before the demonstration, São Paulo Governor João Doria (PSDB) announced the mandatory return to in-person classes in state schools with 100 percent occupation of classrooms, eliminating any mandatory distancing between students. Later that day, Mayor Nunes announced the same measure will be followed by municipal schools. “Now we’ve had the news that they’re going to fully open schools and we have a very big concern, especially for the children who have not been vaccinated,” said Kauane. “As long as it is not safe and I can, my children will stay at home. But we know that this is not a reality for everyone. There are younger children whose parents need to work, and there are many parents who have no one to leave their children with.” Sheila, a kindergarten teacher, declared that the strike movement is also “in the name of quality public education.” She and her school colleagues denounced the homicidal operation of schools in São Paulo. “How can we take 1-year-old babies, who are just starting to walk, and have distancing? It was really a reckless act by the mayor,” she declared. “In the beginning there were only a few children, but now it is practically full,” said Sheila. “As soon as he approved 60 percent of occupancy of the CEIs several children in our CEI had COVID. Only 10 days went by, and children already started to show basic symptoms like coryza, malaise. Now I ask myself, how could we guarantee the safety of such small children? Infection was inevitable.” Sheila said that “in other CEIs near ours, some teachers died of COVID but were not counted. At no time were infections of teachers and children with COVID mentioned by the media. It was simply, ‘teachers return, the families need it,’ they never worried about infections.” The same situation was denounced by educators in Elementary Schools (EMEFs). Márcia, an art educator on the east side of São Paulo, described the situation as “chaos.” She said: “Every week, in my school two or three people are dismissed because of COVID, employees and children. They dismiss only those in the same classroom, but we, who are ‘specialist teachers’ and teach all the classrooms, are not dismissed. These are super unhealthy conditions.” The demonstration had a significant participation by retired teachers and employees, who will immediately suffer a 14 percent cut in their income with the approval of the bill. Amalia, a retired English teacher, declared: “I’ve been in these movements for 40 years and there are few times I haven’t participated. Municipal teachers are always overwhelmed, for lack of staff in the schools, lack of salaries.” “City councilors should have the role of defending us against authoritarian government projects, but what happens is that we have to fight against both the government and the councilors,” she continued. “The public service is scrapped, everyone says that. In my opinion, the intention of these governments is to privatize them. Meanwhile, we pay absurd taxes that nobody can explain. What I’m looking to learn is what the state is for.” Tatiana, an English teacher working with Márcia, said that “as long as these people are in power, I think it’s very difficult for us to solve these problems. Until we have a really popular government, for the workers, there isn’t much of a perspective.” Talking about the latest strikes, she said that “the performance of the union was sad. It is the same thing that I saw with the São Paulo state teacher’s union, APEOESP in the 2015 90-day strike. I saw them ending the strike despite the vote to continue it, and here it was the same thing. I think it’s sad, because we don’t know who is really on our side.” The unions and political parties linked to them, principally the PT and the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), are once again striving to divert workers from confronting the capitalist system which is responsible for the successive attacks on public employees and the working class as a whole. These political forces advance as the only viable strategy for the workers’ movement the pressuring of “indecisive council members” to “flip their vote.” In their speeches, the union officials claimed that councilors who vote against the workers should face a settling of scores in the next elections: in 2024! This criminal proposition unequivocally exposes the reactionary character of the trade unions and the pseudo-left, who work to disarm the working class in face of the bourgeois state. Other union leaders who took the stage also claimed that the election of a new PT government headed by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the real solution to workers’ problems. This perspective is a complete fraud. Lula is openly working to reestablish his corrupt alliances with the right-wing parties and to present himself to the capitalist class as their best representative to contain an imminent social explosion in Brazil and defend their economic interests against the working class. São Paulo municipal workers can advance their struggle only by breaking the political control of their movement by the unions, the PT and its pseudo-left satellites. They cannot accept new betrayals, and having their strikes broken through the same antidemocratic maneuvers used in 2019 and earlier this year! Workers in São Paulo must orient themselves not to the bourgeois state, but to their fellow workers throughout Brazil and internationally who face the same attacks from the capitalist class. A rank-and-file workers’ rebellion is already taking place around the world. On October 1, parents and rank-and-file workers called an independent strike against the unsafe reopening of schools, receiving global support. A second strike has been called for October 15. Across the United States, the strongest wave of strikes in decades is erupting, with workers rejecting rotten contracts promoted by the unions and the companies. Brazilian workers must unite their struggles with this global movement, building independent rank-and-file committees in every workplace and joining the Rank-and-File Committee for Safe Education in Brazil (CBES-BR). The CBES-BR calls upon all workers to participate in the event How to end the pandemic: The case for eradication that will be held October 24 by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and the WSWS.
And, Lula is hope for workers---plan is a 180. Fogel 21 (, B., 2021. Brazil: Lula’s Return Means There Is Finally Some Hope for Workers. online The Wire. Available at: https://thewire.in/world/brazil-lulas-return-means-there-is-finally-some-hope-for-workers Accessed 21 November 2021.)-rahulpenu Brazil: Lula’s Return Means There Is Finally Some Hope for Workers Despite being imprisoned for nearly two years, the centre-left leader enjoys far more popularity than President Jair Bolsonaro, who he could take on in the next elections. On March 8, Brazilian Supreme Court judge Luiz Edson Fachin ruled to annul all of the former president Lula da Silva’s convictions. Fachin said that the court that convicted Lula in the southern city of Curitiba did not have the legal authority to convict Brazil’s first Workers’ Party (PT) president. As such, he must be retried by a federal court in the capital city of Brasília. The most important effect of the overturning is that it restores Lula’s political rights, allowing him to run in next year’s presidential election. Under Brazil’s Ficha Limpa (“Clean Slate”) law — ironically passed by the PT government — politicians convicted of crimes or impeached are unable to run for elected office. Lula was convicted of money laundering and corruption in 2016 for making improvements to a beachfront apartment he never lived in and served 580 days in prison before being released on appeal in November 2019. The case against Lula was always weak, but it didn’t stop him from getting convicted due to the fact that Sergio Moro, the judge hearing the trial, was illegally colluding with prosecutors to make a case against the former labour leader. His conviction was the crowning achievement of Brazil’s historic Operação Lava Jato (“Operation Car Wash”) investigation, but we now have clear evidence that prosecutors and judges conspired to imprison him explicitly to prevent him from competing in the 2018 elections, which saw the election of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Lula’s legal team declared on Twitter that “The decision that today affirms the incompetence of the Federal Justice of Curitiba is the recognition that we have always been correct in this long legal battle.” Another twist in this saga is possible that is the Supreme Court still has to affirm this ruling, and another court could convict him again. But, for now, the centre-left Lula is back. Lula versus Bolsonaro Lula’s return to the political arena has already sent shock waves throughout Brazil, and judging by the latest polling, he is still the most popular politician in Brazil even after being imprisoned and years of media smears. And while he may not have the historic approval ratings he enjoyed after leaving office, his PT is still the largest party in the country. A recent poll published in the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper found that 50 of those surveyed would definitely or probably vote for Lula as opposed to 38 for Bolsonaro. Lula’s disapproval rate of 44 is also lower than any of the other potential candidates such as right-wing São Paulo governor João Doria and the vacuous TV personality Luciano Huck. In fact, Lula was the only one of the 10 candidates surveyed that outperformed Bolsonaro. Brazil’s centre-right is also in full-on panic mode as their own electoral chances are going to sink rapidly. Despite their official opposition to Bolsonaro, many of them would prefer a second term of the far-right president to a PT government. The “moderates” have been vainly searching for somebody — a Brazilian Macron — who can pose as the leader of the broad front for democracy against Bolsonaro, while pursuing the more or less same economic agenda as Brazil’s president. For all the moderate opposition’s talk about democracy, it is unlikely that they would back a centre-left candidate in the second round against Bolsonaro. Brazil’s centrists not only removed Dilma Rousseff from office in 2016 but helped elect Bolsonaro in his contest against the PT’s Fernando Haddad. Some of the names being floated as potential candidates like former health minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta served in Bolsonaro’s cabinet and others like Doria and Huck supported Bolsonaro in 2018. Bolsonaro himself shrugged off the news, claiming that “I believe that the Brazilian people don’t even want to have a candidate like this in 2022, much less think of the possibility of electing him.” The manufactured disasters of the Bolsonaro government could make many who voted against the PT in 2018 or voted null consider Lula as a viable alternative candidate in 2022. It’s telling, though, that Brazil’s stock market fell by 4, and the real slipped to record lows against the dollar following the news of the verdict. Investors apparently were not too worried about the apocalyptic COVID-19 death numbers coming out of Brazil — but the return of Lula led to full-on panic. Last week was the deadliest week for the country since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with a record 1,910 deaths recorded on Thursday alone. Brazil has recorded over 265,000 deaths and 11 million cases. Intensive care wards across the country are fast running out of space, cities are running out of vaccines, and government appears to be encouraging the virus to rage out of control. The department of health is warning that Brazil could see as many as three thousand deaths per day in the coming weeks, and the country still lacks a national vaccination campaign. Health experts are warning the effects of letting a pandemic spread uncontained in such a large country could even threaten the global COVID-19 vaccination campaign as the virus mutates and new variants emerge. Bolsonaro’s latest gambit involves pushing an untested nasal spray as the latest miracle cure. All the while, he continues to attack public health responses and incite his supporters against anyone who tries to control the spread of COVID-19. Congress has so far done almost nothing to hold Bolsonaro and his government accountable for its homicidal response to the pandemic. Despite Bolsonaro’s murderous response to the COVID-19 crisis, open criminality, and the fact that Lula presided over one of the greatest economic booms in Brazilian history, big capital, much of the mainstream media, and Brazil’s centrists continue to depict Lula and Bolsonaro as two sides of the same coin. This type of mendacious “pox on both sides” type of politics is backed up by the united hostility to the Left among Brazil’s respectable opposition and the forces that back Bolsonaro.
American democracy is systematically blamed for liberal erosion under 4 more years of Bolsonaro---spills over and decimates US democratic institutions. Adler and Long 11-15 (, D. and Long, G., 2021. We need a new observatory of democracy in the Americas | David Adler and Guillaume Long. online the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/15/organization-of-american-states-democracy-observatory Accessed 21 November 2021 David Adler is the general coordinator of the Progressive International. Guillaume Long is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and former foreign minister of Ecuador.)-rahulpenu We need a new observatory of democracy in the Americas On 20 October, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, traveled to Ecuador to set out a vision for democracy in the Americas. Over the past five years, the hemisphere has suffered an assault on its democratic institutions, as political leaders from Donald Trump to Jair Bolsonaro have adopted a new authoritarian playbook: lies, violence, repression, and more lies. Two-thirds of US citizens now believe that democracy is under threat, while a majority of Brazilians fear a military dictatorship will return to the country. “We find ourselves in a moment of democratic reckoning,” announced Blinken. But the Biden administration continues to put the US on the wrong side of this reckoning. Consider Blinken’s recent trip. In Quito, he lavished praise on President Guillermo Lasso in the same week that Lasso declared a nationwide state of emergency to intimidate critics of his government and distract from an investigation into alleged tax fraud following his appearance in the Pandora Papers leak. In Bogotá hours later, Blinken applauded the democratic credentials of the Colombian president, Iván Duque – “We have no better ally on the full range of issues that our democracies face in this hemisphere,” Blinken said – while his government stands accused of targeting protesters and allowing an unprecedented number of assassinations of Indigenous, Black, and peasant leaders to take place under his watch. The US government is complicit in these attacks on democracy, not only as an “ally” but also as a leading member of the Organization of American States (OAS). Just two days after Blinken’s South America jaunt, the governments of Bolivia, Argentina, and Mexico held their own event at the Washington DC headquarters of the OAS to discuss the organization’s controversial role in the 2019 Bolivian election. The experts’ findings were clear – and damning: while the OAS found no evidence of fraud in the election of President Evo Morales, it lied to the public and manipulated its own findings to help depose him. “It was later reported that the US representative to the OAS actually pressured and steered the observation mission to reach a determination of fraud,” testified Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Bolivia is not an isolated case. In Haiti, for example, the anti-democratic interventions of the OAS stretch over decades. In 2000, the OAS observer mission concluded that the Haitian election had been a “great success” only to change its position under pressure from Washington to claim it was illegitimate. The goal was evident: “to dislodge the Aristide administration”, as Dr Paul Farmer, deputy special envoy for Haiti at the United Nations, testified to Congress. Then, 10 years later, the OAS intervened again to reverse the result of the 2010 presidential election on the basis of faulty statistical methods. It is difficult to overstate the destabilizing consequences of these interventions. Juan Gabriel Valdés, the former head of the UN in Haiti, recently described the 2010 OAS decision as “the origin of the present tragedy” in the country. The OAS, then, is no longer a credible observer of democracy in the Americas – particularly under the present leadership of Luis Almagro, which has been described as the “worst in history”. In the eyes of several member states, the institution is too beholden to US interests to provide an effective defense of democratic institutions, leading some to call for “autonomous” organizations to contest it. “The world is currently going through a very worrying moment, where attacks on democratic institutions happen with frightening frequency,” said Brazil’s former foreign minister Celso Amorim. “The creation of an international electoral observatory – popular and non-partisan – will fill an important gap in defense of democracy and human rights.” What would such an observatory do? Three capacities are critical. The first would be to organize delegations to countries where democratic institutions are clearly under threat – both by domestic actors and international observers like the OAS. Bringing together data scientists and parliamentary representatives, these delegations would provide independent analysis of the electoral process and a defense against false narratives that threaten to derail it. The goal is not only to observe how votes are cast and counted; it is also to observe the observers. The second critical capacity would be to launch investigations of unlawful interventions in the democratic process. Over the course of the last decade, the dominant mechanism of democratic undoing has been legal, namely the weaponization of the judicial system to intimidate, exclude, and even incarcerate political opponents – a tactic known across Latin America as legal warfare, or “lawfare”. Deploying a global network of legal experts, a new observatory could challenge these tactics to help ensure a free and fair democratic process. The third and final capacity of the new observatory would be communications. In the technological era, bad information often travels faster than good. Big tech platforms such as Facebook not only serve to disseminate false stories and stir civic conflict; evidence suggests that their executives intervene to favor some candidates and ban others from the platform altogether. In the context of such bias, this new observatory would need to build an autonomous communications infrastructure to ensure that the findings of its delegations and investigations are rapidly spread, widely read, and well understood. The call for a new observatory could not be more urgent. Contentious elections lie just on the horizon in 2022. In May, Colombia will head to the polls after a year of roiling protests against government violence, corruption, and a failed pandemic response. Five months later, Jair Bolsonaro will face Lula da Silva after profiting from his flagrant persecution on the road to the presidency in 2018. Bolsonaro and his allies in Congress have already pushed a legislative package to rewrite Brazil’s electoral laws, while parroting lies about potential fraud in the country’s electoral system. Meanwhile, back in Washington DC, Secretary Blinken is moving ahead with plans for a Summit for Democracy. Convening leaders from “a diverse group of the world’s democracies” in early December, the summit aims to encourage commitments to fight corruption and respect human rights – an opportunity, as the White House press release suggests, to “speak honestly about the challenges facing democracy so as to collectively strengthen the foundation for democratic renewal”. But the crisis of democracy will not be solved by summitry alone. We cannot delegate “democratic renewal” to our presidents, nor to the OAS that claims to represent them. We need an observatory to defend democracy from the bottom up – an institution with the capacity and credibility to fight authoritarian tactics and even the playing field for democracy to flourish. That fight starts now.
Internationalism grounded in democratic norms averts a laundry list of existential catastrophes. Brooks 14 Rosa; November 14; Professor of Law at Georgetown University, Senior Fellow with the New America and Arizona State University Future of War Project, former Senior Advisor at the U.S. State Department; Foreign Policy, “Embrace the Chaos,” https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/11/14/embrace-the-chaos/; RP – recut rahulpenu I. The Character of the Mess Defining the character of the current mess is the easy part. Briefly: • The last century’s technological revolutions have made our world more globally interconnected than ever. • Power (along with access to power) has become more democratized and diffuse in some ways, but more concentrated in other ways. • For most individuals around the globe, day-to-day life is far less dangerous and brutal than in previous eras; for the species as a whole, however, the risk of future global catastrophe has increased. • The continuously accelerating rate of technological and social change makes it increasingly difficult to predict the geopolitical future. Nothing is particularly original about these observations; they’re repeated in some fashion in every major national strategic document produced over the last decade. They probably teach this stuff to kindergarteners now. Indeed, we’ve heard it all so often that it’s tempting to dismiss such claims as meaningless platitudes: Been there; theorized that. Can we get please get back to foreign-policy business as usual? No, we can’t. Not if we want our children and grandchildren to live decent lives. If we care about the future at all, we need to do more than prattle on at cocktail parties about globalization, interconnectedness, complexity, danger, and uncertainty. We need to feel these seismic changes in our bones. So bear with me. Let’s try to breathe some life into the clichés. I’ve written about these issues before (here and here), and at risk of being both a narcissist and a broken record, I’ll quote myself: The world has grown more complex. Believe it. The world now contains more people living in more states than ever before, and we’re all more interconnected. A hundred years ago, the world population was about 1.8 billion, there were roughly 60 sovereign states in the world, the automobile was still a rarity, and there were no commercial passenger flights and no transcontinental telephone service. Fifty years ago, global population had climbed to more than 3 billion and there were 115 U.N. member states, but air travel was still for the wealthy and the personal computer still lay two decades in the future. Today? We’ve got 7 billion people living in 192 U.N. member states and a handful of other territories. These 7 billion people take 93,000 commercial flights a day from 9,000 airports, drive 1 billion cars, and carry 7 billion mobile phones around with them. In numerous ways, life has gotten substantially better in this more crowded and interconnected era. Seventy years ago, global war killed scores of millions, but interstate conflict has declined sharply since the end of World War II, and the creation of the United Nations ushered in a far more egalitarian and democratic form of international governance than existed in any previous era. Today, militarily powerful states are far less free than in the pre-U.N. era to use overt force to accomplish their aims, and the world now has numerous transnational courts and dispute-resolution bodies that collectively offer states a viable alternative to the use of force. The modern international order is no global utopia, but it sure beats colonial domination and world wars. In the 50 years that followed World War II, medical and agricultural advances brought unprecedented health and prosperity to most parts of the globe. More recently, the communications revolution has enabled exciting new forms of nongovernmental cross-border alliances to emerge, empowering, for instance, global human rights and environmental movements. In just the last two decades, the near-universal penetration of mobile phones has had a powerful leveling effect: All over the globe, people at every age and income level can use these tiny but powerful computers to learn foreign languages, solve complex mathematical problems, create and share videos, watch the news, move money around, or communicate with far-flung friends. All this has had a dark side, of course. As access to knowledge has been democratized, so too has access to the tools of violence and destruction, and greater global interconnectedness enables disease, pollution, and conflict to spread quickly and easily beyond borders. A hundred years ago, no single individual or nonstate actor could do more than cause localized mayhem; today, we have to worry about massive, bioengineered threats created by tiny terrorist cells and globally devastating cyberattacks devised by malevolent teen hackers. Even as many forms of power have grown more democratized and diffuse, other forms of power have grown more concentrated. A very small number of states control and consume a disproportionate share of the world’s resources, and a very small number of individuals control most of the world’s wealth. (According to a 2014 Oxfam report, the 85 richest individuals on Earth are worth more than the globe’s 3.5 billion poorest people). Indeed, from a species-survival perspective, the world has grown vastly more dangerous over the last century. Individual humans live longer than ever before, but a small number of states now possess the unprecedented ability to destroy large chunks of the human race and possibly the Earth itself — all in a matter of days or even hours. What’s more, though the near-term threat of interstate nuclear conflict has greatly diminished since the end of the Cold War, nuclear material and know-how are now both less controlled and less controllable. Amid all these changes, our world has also grown far more uncertain. We possess more information than ever before and vastly greater processing power, but the accelerating pace of global change has far exceeded our collective ability to understand it, much less manage it. This makes it increasingly difficult to make predictions or calculate risks. As I’ve written previously: We literally have no points of comparison for understanding the scale and scope of the risks faced by humanity today. Compared to the long, slow sweep of human history, the events of the last century have taken place in the blink of an eye. This should … give us pause when we’re tempted to conclude that today’s trends are likely to continue. Rising life expectancy? That’s great, but if climate change has consequences as nasty as some predict, a century of rising life expectancy could turn out to be a mere blip on the charts. A steep decline in interstate conflicts? Fantastic, but less than 70 years of human history isn’t much to go on…. That’s why one can’t dismiss the risk of catastrophic events such as disastrous climate change or nuclear conflict as “high consequence, low probability.” How do we compute the probability of catastrophic events of a type that has never happened? Does 70 years without nuclear annihilation tell us that there’s a low probability of nuclear catastrophe — or just tell us that we haven’t had a nuclear catastrophe yet?… Lack of catastrophic change might signify a system in stable equilibrium, but sometimes — as with earthquakes — pressure may be building up over time, undetected…. Most analysts assumed the Soviet Union was stable — until it collapsed. Analysts predicted that Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak would retain his firm grip on power — until he was ousted. How much of what we currently file under “Stable” should be recategorized under “Hasn’t Collapsed Yet”? This, then, is the character of world messiness in this first quarter of the 21st century. So on to the next question: Where, in all this messiness, does the United States find itself? II. The United States in the Mess: Goodbye, Lake Wobegon? For Americans, the good news is that the United States remains an extraordinarily powerful nation. The United States has “the most powerful military in history,” Obama declared in a recent speech. Measured by sheer destructive capacity, he is surely right. The United States spends more on its military than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and India combined. The U.S. military can get to more places, faster, with more lethal and effective weapons, than any military on Earth. The United States also manages to gobble up a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth and resources. By the year 2000, wrote Betsy Taylor and Dave Tilford, the United States, with “less than 5 percent of the world’s population,” was using “one-third of the world’s paper, a quarter of the world’s oil, 23 percent of the coal, 27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the copper.” In 2010, Americans possessed 39 percent of the planet’s wealth. The bad news for Americans? U.S. power and global influence have been declining. In part, this is because various once-weak states have been growing stronger, and in part, it’s because no state can be as autonomous today as it might have been in the past. The United States’ geographical position long helped protect it from external interference, while its strong military and economy enabled it to dominate or control numerous less powerful states. But globalization has reduced every state’s autonomy, creating collective challenges — from climate change to the regulation of capital — that no state can fully address on its own. U.S. power and global influence have also declined in absolute terms, as America’s own political and economic health has been called into question. The United States now has greater income inequality than almost every other state in the developed world — and most states in the developing world. American life expectancy ranks well below that of other industrialized democracies, and the same is true for infant mortality and elementary school enrollment. Meanwhile, the United States has the world’s highest per capita incarceration rate, and on international health and quality-of-life metrics, the United States has been losing ground for several decades. This domestic decline jeopardizes the country’s continued ability to innovate and prosper; it also makes American values and the American political and economic systems less appealing to others. Worse, the political system that Americans rely on for reform and repair seems itself to be broken; the federal government shutdown in 2013 offered the world a striking illustration of U.S. political dysfunction. Add to this the divisive national security policies of George W. Bush’s administration — many of which were continued or expanded by the Obama administration — and it’s no surprise that the United States has recently become less admired and less emulated around the globe, reducing American “soft power.” No matter how you slice it, it comes to the same thing: Compared with 30 years ago, the United States today has a greatly reduced ability to control its own destiny or the destiny of other states. The United States still has unprecedented power to destroy (Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden both discovered this, to their detriment). But the country’s capacity for destruction is not equaled by its capacity to shape the behavior of other states or their populations, and the United States has less and less ability to insulate itself from the world’s woes. Unfortunately, American political leaders share a bipartisan inclination to deny these realities. Mostly, they succumb to the Lake Wobegon effect: “Declinism” and “declinist” have entered the American political vocabulary, but only as purely pejorative terms. This is both stupid and dangerous. How can we adapt our global strategy to compensate for the ways in which U.S. power has been declining if we refuse to admit that decline? Continued U.S. decline is certainly not inevitable, and some argue that the United States is in fact poised for an economic and political resurgence. There is no way to know for sure — but it’s worth recalling that, historically, every significant empire has eventually declined. Are we prepared to bet that the United States will prove an exception? There is also no way to know for sure what form continued or eventual U.S. decline will take. We don’t know whether it will be fast or slow; we don’t know whether the American Empire is in for a hard landing or a soft one. Will the United States crash, like the former Soviet Union? Or will a slow decline in power leave the country an intact and influential nation, like the United Kingdom? Will America’s future be more like Canada’s present, or more like Brazil’s? III. Behind the Veil of Ignorance: Uncertainty as Lodestone We don’t know what America’s future will look like, and we can make fewer and fewer geopolitical predictions with confidence. The world has changed too much and too fast for us to accurately assess the probabilities of many types of future events. Perhaps this is why it’s so tempting for Americans to stay in Lake Wobegon, with eyes closed and fingers crossed. Uncertainty is frightening. But paradoxically, this very uncertainty should be a lodestone, pointing realists and idealists alike toward a sensible, forward-looking global strategy. In fact, radical uncertainty can be a powerful tool for strategic planning. That may seem oxymoronic, but consider one of the 20th century’s most influential thought experiments: In his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, philosopher John Rawls famously sought to use a hypothetical situation involving extreme uncertainty to derive optimal principles of justice. Imagine, said Rawls, rational, free, and equal humans seeking to devise a set of principles to undergird the structure of human society. Imagine further that they must reason from behind what Rawls dubbed a “veil of ignorance,” which hides from them their own future status or attributes. Behind the veil of ignorance, wrote Rawls, people still possess general knowledge of economics, science, and so forth, and they can draw on this knowledge to assist them in designing a future society. Their ignorance is limited to their own future role in the society they are designing: “no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like.” If we were collectively designing social structures and rules, but could not know our own individual future positions in that social structure, what structures and rules would we come up with? Applying a version of decision theory, Rawls concluded that in the face of such radical uncertainty, rational, free, and equal beings behind the veil of ignorance would be drawn toward a “maximin” (or “minimax“) rule of decision, in which they would seek to minimize their losses in a worst-case scenario. Since those behind the veil of ignorance don’t know whether they’ll be among the haves or among the have-nots in the society they are designing, they should seek to build a society in which they each will be least badly off — even the luck of the draw leads them to start with the fewest advantages. Rawls posited that such a rule of decision should lead those behind the veil of ignorance to support two core principles: the first relating to liberty (“each person should have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others”), and the second relating to social and economic goods. (Social goods should be distributed equally, unless an unequal distribution would serve the common good and be “to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged,” while “offices and positions should remain open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.”) This is in some ways intuitive: On a national level, it is the reason Americans across the political spectrum continue to express substantial support for the maintenance of unemployment benefits, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and so on. Any one of us might someday face a job loss or illness; nearly all of us will eventually face old age. We know we might someday need those benefits ourselves. In the face of uncertainty about the future, we all recognize the value of insurance, savings, and at least some minimal social safety net. In the international arena, the same is true. This has obvious implications for global strategy. Empires, like individuals, can sink into poverty, illness, or simple old age — and in an era of uncertainty, empires, like individuals, would do well to hedge against the possibility of future misfortune. Indeed, two decades after the publication of A Theory of Justice, Rawls sought to apply a form of this thought experiment to derive the core principles that he believed would characterize a just global order. His arguments are complex, and I can’t do justice to them here — but fortunately, unlike Rawls, I am not interested in coming up with abstract principles of global justice. My less lofty agenda is limited to arguing that a crude version of Rawls’s thought experiment can help us delineate the contours of a sensible U.S. global strategy — a “maximin” strategy that is well-suited to protecting the interests of the United States and its people, both in today’s messy world and in a wide range of future messes. Here’s my thought experiment. Imagine a crude version of Rawls’s veil of ignorance, with only the United States behind it. This veil of ignorance doesn’t require us to disavow what we know of history (America’s or the world’s), nor does it require us to disavow what we know of recent trends, present global realities, U.S. values, or our current conception of the good. It only hides our future from us: Behind this veil of ignorance, we don’t know whether energy, food, water, and other vital resources will be scarcer or more plentiful in the decades to come; we don’t know whether global power will be more or less centralized; we don’t know whether new technologies and new forms of social organization will make existing technologies and institutions obsolete. Most of all, we don’t know whether, in the decades to come, the United States will be rich or poor, weak or strong, respected or hated. For that matter, we don’t know whether the United States — or even the form of political organization we call the nation-state — will exist at all a century or two from now. In the face of such radical uncertainty, what kind of grand strategy should a rational United States adopt? Of course, this shouldn’t really be called a “thought experiment” at all: The United States already operates behind a veil of ignorance, if we could only bring ourselves to admit it. We know the past; we have a reasonable understanding of recent trends; we know that the world is messy and dangerous; we know that the potential for rapid and potentially catastrophic change is real; and we know that our ability to predict future changes and quantify various risks is profoundly limited. This knowledge is profoundly unsettling. Thus, we try our best to know and not know, at the same time: We speak glibly of complexity, accelerating change, danger, and uncertainty, but then fall back into the comfortable assumption that continued U.S. global dominance is a given and that catastrophic change is unlikely to occur. As long as we remain willfully ignorant of the veil of ignorance that hangs over us, we can avoid asking hard questions and making harder choices. But this is shortsighted and dangerous. Empires that refuse to accept reality tend to rapidly decline. A clear-eyed acceptance of uncertainty and risk is the surest route to a more secure future. Instead of blinding us or paralyzing us, the uncertainty of our future should motivate us to engage in more responsible strategic planning. If the United States can manage to be as rational as Rawls’s hypothetical decision-makers, it should adopt a similar maximin rule of decision: It should prefer international rules and institutions that will maximize America’s odds of thriving, even in a worst-case future scenario. In fact, we should wish for international rules and institutions that will be kindest to the individuals living in what is now the United States and their descendants, even if the United States should someday cease to exist entirely. Could happen, folks. Look around you. Do you see the Roman Empire, or the Aztec Empire, or the Ottoman Empire? IV. From Messiness to Strategy: A Preliminary Sketch This has urgent implications for U.S. strategic planning. Precisely because U.S. global power may very well continue to decline, the United States should use the very considerable military, political, cultural, and economic power it still has to foster the international order most likely to benefit the country if it someday loses that power. The ultimate objective of U.S. grand strategy should be the creation of an equitable and peaceful international order with an effective system of global governance — one that is built upon respect for human dignity, human rights, and the rule of law, with robust mechanisms for resolving thorny collective problems. We should seek this not because it’s the “morally right” thing for the United States to do, but because a maximin decision rule should lead us to conclude that this will offer the United States and its population the best chance of continuing to thrive, even in the event of a radical future decline in U.S. wealth and power. But, one might argue, the United States already tries to promote such a global order — right? Sure it does — but only inconsistently, and generally as something of an afterthought. We pour money into our military and intelligence communities, but starve our diplomats and development agencies. We fixate on the threat du jour, often exaggerating it and allowing it to distort our foreign policy in self-destructive ways (cf. Iraq War), while viewing matters such as United Nations reform or reform of global economic institutions or environmental protection rules as tedious and of low priority. If we take seriously the many potential dangers lurking in the unknowable future, however, fostering a stronger, fairer, and more effective system of international governance would become a matter of urgent national self-interest and our highest strategic priority — something that should be reflected both in our policies and in our budgetary decisions. An effective global governance system would need to be built upon the recognition that states remain the primary mode of political and social organization in the international sphere, but also upon the recognition that new forms of social organization continue to evolve and may ultimately displace at least some states. An effective and dynamic international system will need to develop innovative ways to bring such new actors and organizations within the ambit of international law and institutions, both as responsible creators of law and institutions and as responsible subjects.
12/11/21
ND - DA - Econ v2
Tournament: Longhorn Classic | Round: 1 | Opponent: Cypress Woods SL | Judge: Collin Goemmer cites not working check os
12/4/21
ND - Econ DA v1
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Bronx Science NK | Judge: Andrew Qin
1NC - Off
Econ is back on track but risk of collapse
The World Bank 6/8 ~(The World Bank, The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects.), "The Global Economy: on Track for Strong but Uneven Growth as COVID-19 Still Weighs", The World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2021/06/08/the-global-economy-on-track-for-strong-but-uneven-growth-as-covid-19-still-weighs, JUNE 8, 2021~ SS A year and a half since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,
AND
policy response provided it is temporary and inflation expectations remain well-anchored.
The plan kills the economy and stifles growth
Epstein 20 ~(Richard A. Epstein,Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow),"The Decline Of Unions Is Good News.", Hoover Institution https://www.hoover.org/research/decline-unions-good-news, January 27, 2020~ SS This continued trend has elicited howls of protest from union supporters who, of course
AND
more than shrink overall wealth by directing social resources to less productive ends.
Economic decline causes global nuclear war
Tønnesson 15 ~(Stein, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo; Leader of East Asia Peace program, Uppsala University) "Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace," International Area Studies Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. 297-311, 2015~ SJDI Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to
AND
each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.
Nuclear war causes extinction – famine and climate change
Starr 15 ~(Steven, Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility) "Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction," Federation of American Scientists, 10/14/2015~ DD While it is impossible to precisely predict all the human impacts that would result from a nuclear winter, it is relatively simple to predict those which would be most profound. That is, a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Following the detonation (in conflict) of US and/or Russian launch-
AND
few remaining survivors be able to survive in a radioactive, toxic environment?
11/20/21
ND - K - Abolition K
Tournament: USC | Round: 3 | Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: Samantha McLoughlin 1NC – K The affirmative’s faith in reform of the US carceral regime legitimizes and strengthens a fundamentally violent and racialized paradigm of social control Roberts 19 (Dorothy E. Roberts -- George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology + University of Pennsylvania; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights + University of Pennsylvania Law School; Professor of Africana Studies and Professor of Sociology + University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences, “The Supreme Court 2018 Term”, “Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism”, Number I, Volum 133, November 2019, pgs. 12-40) The United States stands out from all nations on Earth for its reliance on caging human beings.52 In the last forty years, the U.S. incarcerated population exploded from about 500,000 to more than two million.53 The U.S. federal and state governments lock up more people and at higher rates than do any other governments in the world, and they do so today more than they did at any other period in U.S. history.54 Most people sentenced to prison in the United States today are from politically marginalized groups — poor, black, and brown.55 Not only are black people five times as likely to be incarcerated as white people,56 but also the lifetime probability of incarceration for black boys born in 2001 is estimated to be thirty-two percent compared to six percent for white boys.57 The female incarceration rate has grown twice as quickly as the male incarceration rate over the past few decades, and black women are twice as likely as white women to be behind bars.58 This astounding amount of human confinement should not be seen as an unfortunate consequence of crime prevention policies or as an isolated blemish on America’s otherwise fair system of criminal justice.59 Rather, prisons are part of a larger system of carceral punishment that legitimizes state violence against the nation’s most disempowered people to maintain a racial capitalist order60 for the benefit of a wealthy white elite.61 The prison industrial complex emerged in the second half of the twentieth century from the merger of social welfare programs and crime control policies.62 As Professor Elizabeth Hinton documents in From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, Democrats and Republicans in the 1960s and 1970s paired federal assistance to urban neighborhoods of color with surveillance, militarized policing, harsh sentencing laws, and prison expansion, based on shared assumptions of innate black criminality.63 Thus, “the roots of mass incarceration had been firmly established by a bipartisan consensus of national policymakers in the two decades prior to Reagan’s War on Drugs in the 1980s.”64 The astronomical expansion of prisons in the last forty years occurred during a process of government restructuring that transferred services from the welfare state to the private realm of market, family, and individual. The United States set the global trend in cutting social programs while promoting free-market conditions conducive to capital accumulation, resulting in one of the slowest growth rates of spending on basic social needs.65 Beginning with “Reaganomics” — the Reagan Administration’s economic policy based on tax cuts, business deregulation, and reductions in federal spending — and extending to the Clinton Administration’s restructuring of welfare, the United States underwent a period of intensified privatization.66 Government policymakers coupled this neoliberal dismantling of the social safety net with intensified carceral intervention in poor communities of color.67 The consolidation of corporate power in recent decades depended not only on increased market-based privatization but also on increased punitive control of marginalized people who are excluded from the market economy because of racism.68 In sum, beginning in the 1960s, U.S. policymakers have supported elites by intensifying carceral measures in order to address the social problems and quell the unrest generated by racial capitalism.69 As Professor Dan Berger explains: “Carceral expansion is a form of political as well as economic repression aimed at managing worklessness among the Black and Brown (and increasingly white) working class for whom global capitalism has limited need.”70 Thus, the relationship between racial capitalism and carceral punishment extends far beyond extracting profits from prison labor and private prisons, which does not characterize most of the prison industrial complex’s operation.71 Rather, prisons are the state’s response to social crises produced by racial capitalism, such as unemployment and unhealthy segregated housing, and to the rebellions waged by marginalized people who suffer most from these conditions.72 The physical expansion of prisons is facilitated by criminalizing subordinated people so that caging them seems ordinary and natural. Indeed, Critical Resistance co-founder Provost Julia Chinyere Oparah identifies as a key “logic of incarceration”73 the “racialization of crime” so that crime is associated with dangerous and violent “black, indigenous, immigrant, or other minority populations.”74 Longstanding stereotypes of black criminality are marshalled to turn everyday black life into criminal activities.75 For example, order-maintenance policing relies on an association between the identification of lawless people and racist notions of criminality to legitimize routine police harassment and arrest of black people.76 Likewise, during the “crack epidemic” of the Reagan era, the longstanding devaluation of black motherhood was crucial to converting the “public health problem of drug use during pregnancy into a crime, addressed by arresting and imprisoning black women rather than providing them with needed health care.”77 Not only does the prison industrial complex serve as the state’s solution to economic and social problems, but carceral approaches to these problems are also ever more common beyond prisons. I described this carceral expansion in a recent issue of this law review: All institutions in the United States increasingly address social inequality by punishing the communities that are most marginalized by it. Systems that ostensibly exist to serve people’s needs — health care, education, and public housing, as well as public assistance and child welfare — have become behavior modification programs that regulate the people who rely on them, and these systems resort to a variety of punitive measures to enforce compliance.78 Public welfare programs are increasingly entangled with criminal law enforcement.79 People who receive Medicaid or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families are subjected to intense surveillance by government agents as a condition of obtaining aid — and if they refuse aid, they are further subjected to child protective services investigations.80 Homelessness, public school misbehavior, and health problems are all criminalized by calling police officers as the first responders to deal with problems that arise in these contexts.81 The prison, foster care, and welfare systems operate together to form a cohesive punitive apparatus that punishes black mothers in particular.82 At the same time, repressive fetal protection laws and abortion restrictions coalesce to criminalize pregnancy itself;83 immigration law makes entering the United States without documentation a crime;84 and militarized border security results in deportation, family separation, and detention in prisons and squalid concentration camps.85 As carceral logics take over ever-expanding aspects of our society, so does the cruelty that government agents visit on people who are the most vulnerable to state surveillance and confinement. Torture has been accepted as a technique of racialized carceral control.86 The nation’s public schools, prisons, detention centers, and hospitals serving poor people of color are marked not only by stark inequalities but also by dehumanizing bodily neglect and abuse committed by police officers and guards.87 Further, as Rodríguez explains, “incarceration as a logic and method of dominance is not reducible to the particular institutional form of jails, prisons, detention centers, and other such brick-and-mortar incarcerating facilities.”88 Although prison abolitionists work to end prisons, their ultimate aspiration is to end carceral society — a society that is governed by a logic of incarceration. B. Abolition Praxis: Past, Present, Future Prison abolition theory has past, present, and future aspects, each of which animates activism simultaneously.89 Prison abolitionists look back to history to trace the roots of today’s carceral state to the racial order established by slavery and look forward to imagine a society without carceral punishment.90 Both are critical motivations for abolishing the prison industrial complex. The case for abolition that is grounded in history and politics provides a compelling framework for understanding the need to eradicate the entire carceral punishment system as well as for identifying strategies to accomplish that goal. Indeed, we can see the extreme cruelty and degradation that characterize today’s penitentiaries, police forces, and executions as the inevitable result of a racially subordinating system.91
Slavery Origins. — Many prison abolitionists have found the roots of today’s criminal punishment system in the institution of chattel slavery.92 Even before I thought of myself as a prison abolitionist, my analysis of current criminal justice issues consistently led me to a discussion of slavery. Whether interrogating racism in the prosecution of black women for pregnancy-related crimes,93 the disproportionately high placement of black children in foster care,94 the high rates of incarceration in black neighborhoods,95 police torture of black suspects,96 or gang-loitering policing,97 I found it essential to understand these practices as originating in the enslavement of black people. That analysis helped me to see how these practices emanated from a carceral system that continues to perpetuate black people’s subjugated status and, ultimately, to conclude the carceral system cannot be fixed — it must be abolished.98 The pillars of the U.S. criminal punishment system — police, prisons, and capital punishment — all have roots in racialized chattel slavery.99 After Emancipation, criminal control functioned as a means of legally restricting the freedoms of black people and preserving whites’ dominant status.100 Through these institutions, law enforcement continued to implement the logic of slavery — which regarded black people as inherently enslaveable with no claim to legal rights101 — to keep them in their place in the racial capitalist hierarchy.102 (a) Police. — The first police forces in the United States were slave patrols.103 Beginning in the early 1700s, southern white men formed armed groups that entered slaveholding properties and roamed public roads to ensure that enslaved people did not escape or rebel against their enslavers.104 Slave patrols monitored enslaved people to prevent them from engaging in forbidden activities such as “harboring weapons or fugitives, conducting meetings, or learning to read or write.”105 They also used the threat of violence to intimidate enslaved workers into obedience to enslavers.106 Enslaved people who were caught planning resistance, running away, or defying the slave codes enacted to restrict them were subjected to violent punishments such as beatings, whippings, mutilation, and forced sale away from their families.107 Modern police forces are descendants of armed urban patrols like the Charleston City Guard and Watch, which was established as early as 1783 to constantly monitor and inspect both enslaved and free black residents to “minimize Negro fraternizing and, more especially, to prevent the growth of an organized colored community.”108 Enslaved people who worked on plantations and farms were under the “immediate control and discipline of their respective owners,” who were often aided by hired overseers.109 The overseers’ job was to enforce enslaved workers’ total subjugation to enslavers by violently reprimanding perceived disobedience and failures to meet productivity quotas.110 The violence overseers inflicted on enslaved workers reflected a fundamental aspect of carceral punishment that survives today: the purpose of punishing black people was to reinforce their subjugation to white domination. Hence, enslaved people were punished for committing offenses defined as insubordination to enslavers, but were also punished regardless of their culpability for an offense. The celebrated abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery in Maryland in 1838, 111 emphasizes this point in his portrayal of the overseers he encountered while in captivity. His description of Austin Gore, an overseer who served Colonel Edward Lloyd on a plantation where Douglass spent two years of his childhood, is especially illuminating.112 Gore was an ideal overseer because he “was one of those who could torture the slightest look, word, or gesture, on the part of the slave, into impudence, and would treat it accordingly.”113 Douglass elaborates: There must be no answering back to him; no explanation was allowed a slave, showing himself to have been wrongfully accused. Mr. Gore acted fully up to the maxim laid down by slaveholders, — “It is better that a dozen slaves suffer under the lash, than that the overseer should be convicted, in the presence of the slaves, of having been at fault.” No matter how innocent a slave might be — it availed him nothing, when accused by Mr. Gore of any misdemeanor. To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty.114 An enslaved man named Demby learned the price of refusing to submit to Gore’s rule.115 When Demby plunged into a creek to escape being beaten, Gore shot him dead with a musket.116 Although slave law occasionally permitted the application of criminal homicide to convict slaveholders who killed their slaves, it exonerated those who killed slaves who resisted the slaveholders’ lawful authority.117 A “hostile attitude” or resistance to corporal punishment on the part of enslaved people like Demby provided legal justification for killing them.118 The status of enslaved Africans as the property of their white enslavers meant that, from the enslavers’ perspective, black people were a perpetual threat to white people’s property — a threat seen as so great it necessitated employing armed forces to maintain order among the enslaved.119 In the aftermath of Emancipation, when slaveholders’ human property was no longer protected by slave law, “a new set of innovations and regulations had to emerge, again under the rubric of policing.”120 Like overseers and slave patrols, Jim Crow police and private citizens who abetted them used terror primarily to enforce racial subjugation, not to apprehend people culpable for crimes.121 Take, for example, coercive interrogation techniques, now known as “the third degree,” that have become a staple of modern policing.122 The first stage of lynching, typically carried out with the participation or sanction of the police, was often “extracting a confession by whipping or burning the accused.”123 Prior to Miranda v. Arizona, 124 which barred the admissibility of presumptively coerced confessions, southern police routinely used torture to force blacks to confess to crimes.125 For example, in Brown v. Mississippi, 126 three black tenant farmers were convicted for murdering a white planter; the sole evidence before the jury consisted of their confessions.127 Those confessions were obtained through police torture, including the repeated hanging and whipping of one of the defendants until he confessed to a dictated statement.128 The other two defendants’ confessions were similarly coerced and tailored.129 When overturning the convictions, the Supreme Court observed that “the signs of the rope on one defendant’s neck were plainly visible during the so-called trial.”130 Even after the civil rights movement, “police torture of suspects continues to be a tolerated means of confirming the presumed criminality of blacks.”131 For example, from the 1970s to the 1990s, white police officers in Chicago engaged in systematic torture of black residents.132 Under the command of Lieutenant Jon Burge, police coerced dozens of confessions from suspects by beating them, burning them with radiators and cigarettes, putting guns in their mouths, placing plastic bags over their heads, and delivering electric shocks to their ears, noses, fingers, and genitals.133 Burge’s reign of torture was known and condoned by police officers, the State’s Attorney’s office, judges, and doctors at Cook County Hospital.134 Racialized terror that bridged slave patrols, lynchings, and police whippings remained a feature of policing in the post– Civil Rights Era criminal punishment system.135 Police also serve as an arm of the racial capitalist state by controlling black and other marginalized communities through everyday physical intimidation and by funneling those they arrest into jails, prisons, and detention centers.136 Numerous studies conducted throughout the nation demonstrate that police engage in rampant racial profiling.137 The increasing militarization of police forces accentuates their role as an occupying force in communities of color and on Indian reservations.138 Police harassment and violence against residents in poor, nonwhite neighborhoods is routine.139 Police “brutality” is a misnomer because it suggests police violence is exceptional. Mariame Kaba, the founding director of Project NIA,140 explains she “retired the term ‘police brutality’” because “it is meaningless, as violence is inherent to policing.”141 Similarly, Professor Micol Seigel calls policing “violence work.”142 Police normally treat residents in communities of color in an aggressive fashion — shouting commands, handcuffing even children, throwing people to the ground, and tasing, beating, and kicking them.143 For young men of color, the risk of being killed by the police is shockingly high and police use of force is among the leading causes of death.144 Black women, women of color, and queer women are especially vulnerable to gendered forms of sexual violence at the hands of police.145 These violent tactics are not in response to violent crime. Indeed, police officers actually spend a small fraction of time stopping violent offenders.146 Most of the time, officers are engaged in patrolling ordinary people who are simply going about their everyday activities, generating high-volume arrests for petty infractions.147 Like the Black Codes and the slave codes before them, order maintenance policies give police wide discretion to control black people’s presence on public streets.148 Law enforcement continues to enforce the logic of slave patrols, to view black people as a threat to the security of propertied whites, and to contain the possibility of black rebellion.149 To Professor Fred Moten, police officers killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner because these black men represented “insurgent black life,” which “constituted a threat to the order that police represent and . . . are sworn to protect.”150 There are numerous examples of state officials dispatching police to silence black protest, including the assassination of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton by the Chicago Police Department and the military-style assault on protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown.151 The recent spate of “BBQ Beckys” — white residents who call 911 on black men, women, and children engaged in harmless public activities like barbequing in a park or selling bottled water on a sidewalk152 — spotlights the role of police to keep black people in their place for the benefit of white citizens.153 Abolitionists also include state surveillance — another descendant of the slave patrol154 — as a major component of carceral punishment.155 Today’s computerized predictive policing is a high-tech version of vague loitering and vagrancy laws, which historically gave “‘license to police officers to arrest people purely on the basis of race-based suspicion’ by categorically identifying black people as lawless apart from their criminal conduct.”156 I previously described the situation in this law review as follows: Law enforcement agencies nationwide collect and store vast amounts of data about past crimes, analyze these data using mathematical algorithms to predict future criminal activity, and incorporate these forecasts in their strategies for policing individuals, groups, and neighborhoods. Judges use big-data predictive analytics to inform their decisions about pretrial detention, bail, sentencing, and parole. Automated risk assessments help to determine whether or not defendants go to prison, the type of facility to which they are assigned, how long they are incarcerated, and the conditions of their release.157 Some proponents of artificial intelligence claim these technologies help people make more objective decisions that are not tainted by human biases.158 However, predictive algorithms have been revealed to “disproportionately identify African Americans as likely to commit crimes in the future.”159 This is because “crime data collection reflects discriminatory policing. . . . Police routinely bias data collection against black residents by patrolling their neighborhoods with far greater intensity than white neighborhoods.”160 Risk assessment models that import institutionally biased data become a “self-fulfilling feedback loop” where the prediction ensures future detection.161 The rise of computerized risk assessments in the carceral punishment system reinforces the detachment of punishment from culpability and furthers the criminalization of whole communities. Computerized predictions identify people for government agencies to regulate from the moment of birth, without any regard to their actual responsibility for causing social harm: police gang databases have included toddlers.162 Thus, the state uses artificial intelligence and predictive technologies to reproduce existing inequalities while creating new modes of carceral control and foreclosing imagination of a more democratic future.163 (b) Prisons. — During the slavery era, prison populations were composed almost exclusively of white people.164 When slavery was abolished, the demographics of prisons shifted dramatically.165 Southern law enforcement began to charge formerly enslaved African Americans with crimes and incarcerate them in growing numbers.166 Imprisonment and the convict leasing system maintained black people’s status as a disenfranchised and involuntary labor force for whites.167 In its 1871 decision Ruffin v. Commonwealth, 168 the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed the similar status of slave and prisoner when it ruled that an incarcerated convict was “for the time being the slave of the State. He is civiliter mortuus; and his estate, if he has any, is administered like that of a dead man.”169 Likewise, black people convicted of petty offenses were “sold as punishment for crime” at public auctions as if they were still enslaved.170 A key assertion of prison abolition theory is that criminalization of black people following Emancipation served to maintain the racial capitalist system that had been built on slavery.171 In an interview published in 2005, Professor Angela Y. Davis explained her ideas on the link between slavery and prison abolition: Now I am trying to think about the ways that the prison reproduces forms of racism based on the traces of slavery that can still be discovered within the contemporary criminal justice system. There is, I believe, a clear relationship between the rise of the prison-industrial-complex in the era of global capitalism and the persistence of structures in the punishment system that originated with slavery.172 In other words, the criminalization and imprisonment of black people following the Civil War are a critical link in the historical chain that ties the prison industrial complex to slavery. Criminal punishment was a chief way the southern states nullified the Reconstruction Amendments, reinstated the white power regime, and made free blacks vulnerable to labor exploitation and disenfranchisement. Following the formal abolition of slavery, southern states targeted black men, women, and children for imprisonment by passing criminal laws known as Black Codes, modeled after the slave codes, which prohibited their freedom of movement, contract, and family life.173 Between 1865 and 1866, legislatures “enacted harsh vagrancy laws, apprenticeship laws, criminal penalties for breach of contract, and extreme punishments for blacks, all in an effort to control black labor.”174 Black people who were out of work or simply present in public without adequate reason were routinely arrested for vagrancy, giving white officials license to jail them.175 Blacks were also arrested and given long sentences for petty offenses that whites engaged in without consequence. Writing in 1893, journalist and activist Ida B. Wells gave the example of twelve black men who were imprisoned in South Carolina “on no other finding but a misdemeanor commonly atoned for by a fine of a few dollars, and which thousands of the state’s inhabitants white are constantly committing with impunity — the carrying of concealed weapons.”176 As the Court’s Timbs v. Indiana177 decision last Term discussed, Black Codes also employed economic sanctions to consign blacks to a form of debt slavery that coerced them into onerous involuntary labor.178 In the decades after Reconstruction, fines kept many formerly enslaved people in forced servitude to white landowners.179 Activist Mary Church Terrell warned in 1907 that the peonage system kept black people perpetually enslaved. “There are scores, hundreds perhaps, of coloured men in the South to-day who are vainly trying to repay fines and sentences imposed upon them five, six, or even ten years ago,” she wrote.180 By compelling emancipated blacks to work for whites in payment of debts on threat of incarceration, the law substituted the unconstitutional system of chattel slavery with a legal system of peonage.181 Also adjoined to these forms of legally enforced servitude was the practice of systematically forcing black prisoners to toil on chain gangs and leasing black convicts as labor to planters and companies. By making free black people criminals, white authorities could compel them to work against their will in a system that not only constituted “slavery by another name,”182 but also was so violent that it was “worse than slavery.”183 Between 1865 and 1880, every former Confederate state except Virginia established a system of leasing large numbers of black prisoners to railroads, coal mines, and other industries that were rebuilding infrastructures devastated by the Civil War.184 Private lessees had complete custody and control of prisoners and were motivated to maximize their profits by extracting as much labor as possible with little incentive to preserve prisoners’ welfare or lives.185 The result was rampant punishment, torture, and killing of prisoners with complete impunity.186 State exploitation of prison labor reinforced a gendered and sexualized form of white domination of black women.187 Black women were not protected by Victorian norms of femininity, which shielded most white women from the degradation of carceral violence and forced labor.188 To the contrary, black women were far more likely than white women to be arrested for violating racialized gender standards by engaging in behavior deemed to be masculine, like public quarreling.189 The wildly disparate treatment of white women and black women arrested for similar crimes is mind-boggling: for example, “between 1908 and 1938, only four white women were ever sentenced to the chain gang in Georgia, compared with almost two thousand Black women.”190 Recent investigations by Professors Sarah Haley and Talitha LeFlouria provide critical documentation of the previously unacknowledged extent of black women’s involvement in convict leasing, chain gangs, and forced domestic labor, dramatically expanding our understanding of antiblack violence and carceral control during the Jim Crow era.191 Haley frames the common practice of chain-gang overseers whipping black female convict laborers as “sexualized gender- and racespecific rituals of violence marking the convict camp as a pornographic site” and producing a spectacle of gendered racial terror.192 Newspapers also routinely vilified black women accused of crimes.193 Black women resisted in multiple ways, including as organized club women, blues lyricists, and incarcerated petitioners and saboteurs.194 Violence against enslaved and incarcerated black women was essential to preserving the racial capitalist state.195 This state, in turn, constructed an ideology of black female depravity and deviance,196 which undergirds black women’s higher rates of incarceration to this day.197 I have emphasized how during the slavery and Jim Crow eras, state agents meted out punishment to black people without regard to their guilt or innocence. Criminalizing black people entailed both defining crimes so as to make black people’s harmless, everyday activities legally punishable and punishing black people regardless of their culpability for crimes. Thus, for more than a century, vague vagrancy and antiloitering ordinances have given police officers license to arrest black people for standing in public streets — with no attention to whether or not their presence caused any harm to anyone.198 The purpose of carceral punishment was to maintain a racial capitalist order rather than to redress social harms — not to give black people what they deserved, but to keep them in their place. Today, the state still aims to control populations rather than judge individual guilt or innocence, to “manage socialinequalities” rather than remedy them.199 A large body of social scienceliterature explains criminal punishment as a form of social control of marginalized people.200 Professor Issa Kohler-Hausmann, for example, argues that New York City criminal courts that handle misdemeanors “have largely abandoned the adjudicative model of criminal law administration — concerned with deciding guilt and punishment in specific cases” — and instead follow a “managerial model — concerned with managing people through engagement with the criminal justice system over time.”201 By marking people for involvement in “misdemeanorland,” forcing them to engage in burdensome procedural hassles, and requiring them to engage in disciplinary activities,202 this gargantuan branch of the criminal punishment system exerts social control over the city’s black communities, with no real regard for residents’ culpability for crime. The explosion in imprisonment of African Americans at the end of the twentieth century represents the continuation of trends that originated even before the century’s start. In describing the rise of convict leasing, W.E.B. Du Bois notes a fundamental feature of post-slavery carceral punishment: the disconnect between the rise of prisons and crime rates. “The whole criminal system came to be used as a method of keeping Negroes at work and intimidating them,” Du Bois writes in Black Reconstruction. 203 “Consequently there began to be a demand of jails and penitentiaries beyond the natural demand due to the rise in crime.”204 In a complement to Du Bois’s observations about the economic motivations for incarcerating black people, Professor Alex Lichtenstein argues that social and political forces also produce higher incarceration rates: Stable incarceration rates appear in periods of white racial hegemony and a stable racial order, such as that secured by slavery in the first half of the 19th century or Jim Crow during the first half of the 20th. Correspondingly, sudden rises in incarceration, especially of minorities, tend to appear one generation after this racial hegemony has been cracked, as in the first and second Reconstructions of emancipation and civil rights.205 Thus, the skyrocketing prison population in the second half of the twentieth century cannot be explained solely as a response to increases in crime.206 Prison expansion instead reflects a response to the needs of rising neoliberal racial capitalism that addresses growing socioeconomic inequality with punitive measures.207 The disconnect between social harm and carceral punishment is evident not only in state regulation of marginalized people but also in the immunity granted to state agents who commit social harms.208 For reasons both legal and political, police,209 prosecutors,210 and corporate executives211 generally avoid criminal liability even for inflicting serious harm. As I have explored previously, “current legal doctrine condones police violence and makes individual acts of abuse — even homicides — appear isolated, aberrational, and acceptable rather than part of a systematic pattern of official violence.”212 Prosecutors who have used unconstitutional methods for obtaining wrongful convictions have not been criminally prosecuted themselves.213 Few corporate executives have been charged with crimes for actions that caused billions of dollars in losses during the financial crisis of 2008. 214 Moreover, government officials responsible for devastating environmental harms, such as lead-poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, typically escape criminal prosecution.215 In sum, criminal law treats prisons as essential to prevent or redress crimes committed by economically and racially marginalized people but unnecessary to address even greater social harms inflicted by the wealthy and powerful. The criminal punishment system extends its subordinating impact beyond prison walls by imposing collateral penalties that deny critical rights and resources to formerly incarcerated people.216 Felon disenfranchisement laws, for example, restrict incarcerated people’s ability to vote during their sentences and after they are released,217 and significantly dilute black political power.218 The stigma of conviction, imposition of fines and fees, and exclusion from public benefits inflict a nearly insurmountable burden on people caught in the carceral web.219 The association between slavery and prison makes these deprivations seem natural — despite the injustice of punishing people beyond the sentence they served and in a way that bears no relation to the crimes they committed. Just as it seemed unremarkable that enslaved people could not vote because they were not citizens, so today many people think: “Of course prisoners aren’t supposed to vote. They aren’t really citizens any more.”220 Thus, the inherent denial of citizenship rights to enslaved people is mirrored in the unquestioned denial of those rights to incarcerated people. (c) Death Penalty. — Capital punishment, like police and prisons, has its roots in slavery and the preservation of white supremacy.221 State executions have persisted in the United States because they function similarly to the extreme punishments inflicted on enslaved people and the state-sanctioned lynchings that replaced these punishments after Emancipation.222 As Davis points out, “the institution of slavery served as a receptacle for those forms of punishment considered to be too uncivilized to be inflicted on white citizens within a democratic society.”223 Historically, race-based criminal codes imposed the death penalty on enslaved individuals for many more offenses than they did for whites.224 Blacks were “commonly hanged” for “rape, slave revolt, attempted murder, burglary, and arson.”225 Moreover, condemned slaves were subjected to extra cruelty through what Professor Stuart Banner calls “super-capital punishment” — burning them alive at the stake.226 Executions were also made especially degrading by displaying slaves’ severed heads on poles in front of the courthouse, or allowing their corpses to decompose in public view.227 After Emancipation, white southerners began ritualistically kidnapping and killing black people to publicly reinforce white supremacy.228 In 1893, Ida B. Wells observed that “the Convict Lease System and Lynch Law are twin infamies which flourish hand in hand in many of the United States.”229 Public torture proclaimed white dominion overblack people, repudiated blacks’ citizenship status,230 and “literally reinstated black bodies as the property of whites that could be chopped to pieces for their entertainment.”231 Many lynchings were of black men accused of breaching racialized sexual boundaries by raping or disrespecting white women.232 However, the majority of terroristic murders between 1890 and 1920 were intended to facilitate white theft of black people’s property.233 As Frederick Douglass observed in 1893, displaying insolence was sufficient excuse for lethal victimization: The crime of insolence for which the Negro was formerly killed and for which his killing was justified, is as easily pleaded in excuse now, as it was in the old time and what is worse, it is sufficient to make the charge of insolence to provoke the knife or bullet. This done, it is only necessary to say in the newspapers, that this dead Negro was impudent and about to raise an insurrection and kill all the white people, or that a white woman was insulted by a Negro, to lull the conscience of the north into indifference and reconcile its people to such murder. No proof of guilt is required. It is enough to accuse, to condemn and punish the accused with death. 234 Here, Douglass links his childhood observations of overseers’ punishment of enslaved blacks to the lynchings of emancipated blacks occurring after the Civil War. The same logic of slavery that called for punishment of black insubordination to enforce white supremacy, regardless of culpability for a crime, was revived in lynching and persists in the modern prison industrial complex. The hundreds of “public torture lynchings” that were a feature of southern society until almost 1940235 call into question the dominant narrative that as civilizations have evolved, punishments have become more humane.236 Instead, southern whites sent a message through medieval forms of punishment: Archaic forms of execution involving torture, burning, and mutilation . . . showed that “regular justice” was “too dignified” for black offenders. The public torture of blacks accused of offending the racial order demonstrated whites’ unlimited power and blacks’ utter worthlessness. This nation’s rights, liberties, and justice were meant for white people only; blacks meant nothing before the law.237 Lynchings were the terrorist counterpart to state-supported debt peonage, convict leasing, disenfranchisement, and segregation laws that kept blacks subject to white domination.238 Lynching black people was not an exception to the law; it was part of the administration of justice and the larger system of legally sanctioned racial control.239 In the mid-twentieth century, the practice of lynching black people was replaced by the practice of subjecting them to the death penalty.240 These legally sanctioned hangings, which deliberately resembled lynchings of the past,241 purported to punish black men for raping white women.242 New methods of execution were also implemented: in the 1950s in Mississippi, crowds of white onlookers gathered at southern courthouses to witness the electrocutions of black men in portable electric chairs that traveled from town to town.243 After one such killing in Mississippi in 1951, the crowd on the lawn outside the courthouse “burst into cheers, then crushed forward in an effort to glimpse the corpse as it was removed from the building.”244 There was a smooth transition from lynching to state execution because “a culture that carried out so much public unofficial capital punishment could hardly grow squeamish about the official variety.”245 Capital punishment continues to function as it did in the slavery and Jim Crow eras to reinforce the subordinated status of black people.246 Today, states primarily use lethal injection in an attempt to make capital punishment “more palatable,”247 on the logic that this method bears less resemblance to lynching than electrocution or hanging.248 The fact that lethal injection carries its own risks of inflicting pain249 has not undermined its constitutional status: last Term, in Bucklew v. Precythe, 250 a divided Court was unmoved by evidence that Missouri’s lethal injection protocol would inflict cruel and unusual punishment on a prisoner, reasoning that “the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee . . . a painless death.”251 Although Bucklew was white, the Court’s decision upheld lethal state violence that is disproportionately imposed on black men accused of killing white people.252 Like the torture rituals of lynching, the death penalty survives in modern America as an uncivilized form of punishment because it continues to represent white domination over black people. 2. Not a Malfunction. — A first step to demonstrating the political illegitimacy of today’s carceral punishment system is finding its origins in the institution of slavery. A second step is understanding that prisons, police, and the death penalty function to subordinate black people and maintain a racial capitalist regime. Efforts to fix the criminal punishment system to make it fairer or more inclusive are inadequate or even harmful because the system’s repressive outcomes don’t result from any systemic malfunction.253 Rather, the prison industrial complex works effectively to contain and control black communities as a result of its structural design. Therefore, reforms that correct problems perceived as aberrational flaws in the system only help to legitimize and strengthen its operation. Indeed, reforming prisons results in more prisons.254 3. A Society Without Prisons. — An essential component of prison abolitionist theory is the principle that eliminating current carceral practices must occur alongside creating a radically different society that has no need for them.255 Prison abolitionists frequently define their work as consisting of two simultaneous activities, one destructive and the other creative. “It’s the complete and utter dismantling of prisons, policing, and surveillance as they currently exist within our culture,” Kaba explains.256 “And it’s also the building up of new ways of . . . relating with each other.”257 This duality is essential to abolition both because prisons will only cease to exist when social, economic, and political conditions eliminate the need for them and because installing radical democracy is crucial to preventing another white backlash and reincarnation of slavery-like institutions in response to the abolition of current ones.258 Moreover, the success of nonpunitive approaches developed by abolitionists for addressing human needs and social problems can be a compelling reason to abandon current dehumanizing and ineffective practices.259 Above all, it is their vision of a world without prisons that gives abolitionists their lodestar. Abolitionists are working toward a society where prisons are inconceivable — a world where its inhabitants “would laugh off the outrageous idea of putting people into cages, thinking such actions as morally perverse and fatally counterproductive.”260 Because the current carceral system is rooted in the logic of slavery, abolitionists must look to a radically different logic of human relations to guide their activism.261 That guiding philosophy cannot be invented theoretically, but must emerge from the practice of collectively building communities that have no need for prisons. Citing Du Bois’s critique of the post-Emancipation period in Black Reconstruction, Davis attributes the rise of prisons to the failure to institute a revolutionary “abolition democracy” that incorporated freed African Americans into the social order.262 Slavery could not be truly and comprehensively abolished without economic redistribution, equal educational access, and voting rights. In Davis’s words, “DuBois . . . argues that a host of democratic institutions are needed to fully achieve abolition — thus abolition democracy.”263 Understanding that prisons are not primarily designed to protect people from crime, but rather to address human needs and social problems with punitive measures, opens the possibility that we can eradicate prisons by addressing these needs and problems in radically different ways.264 Maintaining the prison system inevitabilizes racialized violence - any attempt of a reform fails because it is embedded in the logic of incarceration McLeod 15 (Allegra M. McLeod -- Georgetown University Law Center, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2502andcontext=facpub, UCLA Law Review, Pgs. 1185-1199) Alongside imprisonment’s general structural brutality, abolition merits further consideration as an ethical framework because of the racial subordination inherent in both historical and contemporary practices of incarceration and punitive policing. Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow popularized a critique of incarceration as a means of racialized social control in the United States, but Alexander’s account was preceded and accompanied by earlier historical, psychological, literary, and sociological studies focused on how maintaining social order through incarceration emerged as a way to preserve the power relationships inherent in slavery and Jim Crow; these studies further demonstrate how punitive policing and imprisonment continue to be haunted at their very core by a dehumanizing inheritance of racialized violence.128 These various accounts elucidate how in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War the ascription of criminal status—leading to the classification and separation of citizens and the curtailment of their rights of citizenship—served as an instance of the process Reva Siegel has called “preservation through transformation,” defined as the evolution of a mode of status-enforcing state action in response to contestation of the status’ earlier manifestations (in this case, chattel slavery and later de jure racial segregation).129 Because this history of slavery and Jim Crow’s afterlife in criminal punishment practices is already addressed elsewhere, here I will only briefly examine the racially subordinating structure of punitive policing and imprisonment insofar asit isrelevant to an abolitionist framework and ethic.130 The significance of this material from an abolitionist standpoint is that it further underscores the constitutive role of degradation in core U.S. incarceration and punitive policing structures, as they fail to treat targeted persons as fully human and thus deserving of equal dignity and regard. Understanding practices of punitive policing and imprisonment as a legal and political technology developed, in large part, both through and for degradation and racial subordination calls for greater scrutiny of these techniques. In particular, critical analysis must attend to whether the purported ambitions of these techniques are meaningfully achieved and separable so as to disconnect the present applications of punitive policing and incarceration from their brutal racialized pasts. In this Subpart, I argue that the racial legacies of incarceration and punitive policing infect these practices to their core by shaping the tolerated range of violence in criminal law enforcement contexts, as well as by coloring basic perceptions of and ideas about criminality and threat. The racialized dimensions of punitive policing and incarceration are not, of course, merely historical; they are vividly present in, among other places, the continued killings of African American men by white police officers.131 As recently as the 1990s, some Los Angeles police officers referred to cases involving young African American men as “N.H.I.” cases, standing for “no humans involved.”132 In 2003, after a Las Vegas police officer shot and killed a black man named Orlando Barlow, who was on his knees, unarmed, and attempting to surrender, an investigative series by the Las Vegas Review-Journal revealed that the officers in the unit celebrated the shooting by ordering t-shirts portraying the officer’s gun “and the initials B.D.R.T. (Baby’s Daddy Removal Team)—a racially charged term and reference to Barlow, who was watching his girlfriend’s children before he was shot.”133 The acronym B.D.R.T. continues to circulate in police culture, as do the associated racially subordinating associations directed at African American men. For example, online stores that sell police-themed clothing continue to market B.D.R.T. t-shirts, and, in 2011, officers with the Panama City, Florida, Police Department adopted the acronym for their kickball police league team.134 Whereas Alexander argues the legacy and persistence of these dynamics require a social movement to markedly reduce incarceration and disproportionate minority confinement, my analysis entails in addition (or instead) that the structural character of these racial legacies requires a movement committed to the thoroughgoing replacement (and elimination) of these imprisonment and punitive policing practices with other social regulatory frameworks, along with a critique and rejection of many of criminal law administration’s ideological entailments.135 The racialized constitution of imprisonment and punitive policing began in the South even before the Civil War, though in the pre–Civil War period the relatively small population of Southern prison inmates were primarily white, as most African Americans were held in slavery.136 Although the legal institution of slavery was abolished with the end of the Civil War, the work necessary to incorporate former slaves as political, economic, and social equals was neglected, and in many instances actively resisted.137 In particular, criminal law enforcement functioned as the primary mechanism for the continued subordination of African Americans for profit.138 During Reconstruction, Southern legislatures sought to maintain control of freed slaves by passing criminal laws directed exclusively at African Americans.139 These laws treated petty crimes as serious offenses and criminalized certain previously permissible activities, but only for the “free negro.”140 Specific criminalized offenses included “mischief,” “insulting gestures,” “cruel treatment to animals,” “cohabitating with whites,” “keeping firearms,” and the “vending of spirituous or intoxicating liquors.”141 These “Black Codes” were adopted by legislatures in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas.142 These laws quickly expanded Southern inmate populations and transformed them from predominantly white to predominately African American.143 Convict leasing was exempted from the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on slavery, which outlawed involuntary servitude except in the case of those “duly convicted.”144 Criminal law enforcement was then used to return African Americans to the same plantations on which they had labored as slaves, as well as to condemn thousands to convict leasing operations, chain gangs, and prison plantations.145 Even before the Civil War, penitentiaries in the North contained a disproportionate number of African Americans, many of them former slaves.146 New York legislated the emancipation of slaves and the founding of the state’s first prison on the same date in 1796.147 In Alexis de Tocqueville’s and Gustave de Beaumont’s classic 1883 account, On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France, the two wrote: “In those Northern states in which there exists one Negro to thirty whites, the prisons contain one Negro to four white persons.”148 There are many similarities in form between slavery and the early Northern penitentiaries. Both subordinated their subjects to the will of others, and Southern slaves and inmates alike followed a daily routine dictated by white superiors.149 Both forced theirsubjects to rely on whitesfor the fulfillment of their basic needs for food, water, and shelter. Both isolated them in a surveilled environment. The two institutions also frequently forced their subjects to work for longer hours and less compensation than free laborers.150 Although the basic structure of Northern prisons that purported to rehabilitate through a routine of solitude and discipline may seem at first blush quite removed from the dehumanizing and violent dynamics that characterized the Southern convict experience, one dehumanizing feature remained markedly constant: Even in rehabilitative contexts in the North, the penitentiary aimed to strip and degrade the inmate of his former self so as to reconstitute his being according to the institution’s preferred terms. And as commentators, such as Charles Dickens, noted at the time, the “slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain” entailed by this form of incarceration could be “immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”151 In the Reconstruction era South, whether sentences were short or long, convicted persons, especially African Americans, were routinely conscripted into vicious conditions of forced labor.152 For example, although the sentence for the crime of intermarriage in Mississippi was confinement in the state penitentiary for life, convictions were often punishable by a fine not in excess of fifty dollars.153 If a person was unable to pay, that person could be hired out to any white man willing to pay the fine.154 Preference was given to the convict’s former master, who was permitted to withhold the amount used to pay the fine from the convict’s wages.155 This common practice resulted in situations where freedmen would spend years, even entire lifetimes, working off their debt for a small criminal fine.156 By contrast to this sort of peonage and criminal surety operation, the convict lease operated through a bidding system wherein companies would offer a set amount of money per day per convict, and the highest bidder would win custody of the group of convicts and be entitled to their labor.157 Leased convicts worked on farms, constructed levees, plowed fields, cleared swampland, and built train tracks across the South.158 They moved from work site to work site, usually in a rolling iron cage, which also served as their living quarters during jobs.159 Convict lessors justified their use of convict labor because they claimed free labor was prohibitively costly; but as bidding expanded, the daily price of a convict’s labor increased and free labor began to compete.160 Eventually, it was this trend toward parity in the cost of free and convict labor, more than any outrage at the brutal exploitation of the convict lease, which led to the abolition of the lease and its replacement by the chain gang.161 Chain gangs, unlike the convict lease, worked on maintaining public roads and performed other hard labor in the public rather than private sector.162 State prisons also directly used African Americans for their labor, working prisoners in the fields for profit and holding them at night in wagons that were guarded by white men with rifles and dogs.163 Some prisons were actually constructed on former plantations, and consisted of vast tracts of land used for farming; white prisoners were appointed to serve as guards or trusties, assistants to the regular prison administrators.164 The state prison plantations could even generate considerable profit. For instance, in 1917, Parchman Prison farm in Mississippi contributed approximately one million dollars to the state treasury through the sale of cotton and cotton seed, almost half of Mississippi’s entire budget for public education that year.165 By 1917, African Americans still represented some ninety percent of the prison population in Mississippi.166 The most dehumanizing abuses in these various settings were directed exclusively at African Americans.167 Southern states enacted statutes to prohibit the confinement of white and African American prisoners in shared quarters. In 1903, Arkansas, for example, passed a law declaring it“unlawful for any white prisoner to be handcuffed or otherwise chained or tied to a negro prisoner.”168 It is thus that the practices of U.S. criminal law administration were forged through the racial dehumanization of African American people.169 Whereas the connections between slavery and the Northern penitentiary were further removed, the penal state in the South preserved and expanded the African American captive labor force and maintained racial hierarchy through actual incarceration or threat of criminal sanctions, as well as through the conditions of confinement. As recently as 1970, in Holt v. Sarver, 170 a District Court in Arkansas upheld the brutal exploitation of working convicts (almost all of whom were African American), concluding that the “Thirteenth Amendment’s exemption manifested a Congressional intent not to reach such policies and practices.”171 The awful mistreatment directed at convicted persons under the convict lease, chain gang, and prison plantations of the South was in these ways inextricably tied to the afterlife of slavery and the failures of abolition as a positive program of the formW.E.B. Du Bois envisioned. In the Northern and the Western United States, prisons were used for solitary work and sought to reform inmates with a strictly controlled routine of labor and bible study. Prisoners were still usually segregated by race; African Americans were often relegated to substandard locations.172 Leasing was applied almost exclusively to African Americans convicted of crimes, because the Leasing Acts set aside prison sentences for persons serving ten or more years, and white convicts generally received more significant sentences because the courts rarely punished whites for less serious crimes.173 Very few whites convicted for petty criminal offenses were sent to prison, and when such sentencing occurred, whites routinely received quick pardons from the governor.174 Beyond criminal punishment, criminal law administration was also entwined with practices of racial subordination through lynching. Even in the North, lynch mobs would gather by the thousands outside the jailhouse or courthouse and wait until African Americans were released from pretrial detention.175 In some cases, criminal law enforcement officials themselves actively participated in the lynch mobs.176 Further instances of the direct entwinement of criminal law administration and overt racial violence abound throughout the twentieth century. Notable examples include the Scottsboro Boys Cases of the 1930s.177 The Scottsboro Cases involved the hurried convictions of nine young African American men, all sentenced to death by white jurors.178 The limited procedural protections afforded to these young men—the mob-dominated atmosphere surrounding their convictions, the denial of the right to counsel until the eve of trial rendering any assistance necessarily ineffective, and the intentional exclusion of blacks from the grand and petit juries that first indicted and later convicted the young men179—and their challenges to the U.S. Supreme Court arguably mark the birth of constitutional criminal procedure.180 This entwinement of racialized violence and the criminal process runs from the 1930s through the end of the twentieth century. It is prominently illustrated by, among other similar episodes, the brutal torture perpetrated against countless African American men over two decades, from the 1970s to 1990s, by white Chicago police officer John Burge and his deputies, who used suffocation, racial insults, burning, and electric shocks to coerce confessions, ultimately leading then-Illinois Governor George Ryan to commute all death sentencesi n the state.181 These uses of criminal law administration as a central means of resisting the abolition of slavery, Reconstruction, and desegregation, continue to inform criminal processes and institutions to this day by enabling forms of brutality and disregard that would be unimaginable had they originated in other, more democratic, egalitarian, and racially integrated contexts. As W.E.B. Du Bois predicted, this legacy of managing abolition and reconstruction in large part by invoking criminal law in racially subordinating ways, contrasted sharply with a different abolitionist framework, one that would have incorporated freed-persons into a reconstituted democracy: “If the Reconstruction of the Southern states, from slavery to free labor, and from aristocracy to industrial democracy, had been conceived as a major national program of America, whose accomplishment at any price was well worth the effort, we should be living today in a different world.”182 Our historical inheritance and this legacy illuminates the connection between the abolitionist path not taken in the aftermath of slavery and what ought to be an abolitionist ethos in reference to practices of prison-backed criminal regulation today. Instead, as the American economy underwent a shift from industrial to corporate capitalism in the 1970s, resulting in the erosion of manufacturing jobs occupied by poor and working class people in the inner cities, especially African Americans, a distinct underclass emerged, with few options for survival other than low wage work, welfare dependence, or criminal activity.183 This transformation in the U.S. economy contributed substantially to the emergence of a population that would be permanently unemployed or underemployed.184 In turn, federal, state, and local governments invested greater resources in coercive mechanisms of social control,185 prioritizing criminal law enforcement over other social projects, such as urban revitalization and expanded social welfare and education spending.186 In 1972, just before the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals published the 1973 report noted at the beginning of this Article, there were 196,000 inmates in all state and federal prisons in the United States—a population housed in conditions that the Commission believed justified a ten year moratorium on prison construction.187 By 1997, however, the prison population had surged to 1,159,000188 and in 2002 there were a record 2,166,260 people housed in U.S. prisons and jails.189 This rapidly increasing population was characterized, as we now well know, by glaring racial asymmetries: As of 1989, one in four African American men were in criminal custody of some sort.190 In certain municipalities, the imprisonment rates for African Americans were even more striking. In 1991 in Washington D.C., 42.5 percent of young African American men were in correctional custody on any given day.191 In Baltimore during 1990, 56 percent of the city’s African American males between ages eighteen and thirty-five were either in criminal justice custody or wanted on warrants.192 By 2004, more than 12 percent of African American men nationally between the ages of twenty-five to twenty-nine were incarcerated in prison or jail.193 Although rates of incarceration and disproportionate minority confinement have declined very modestly in recent years because of fiscal crises at both the state and federal level, as well as a global decrease in crime, African American men remain subject to criminal confinement and arrest at ratest hat far exceed their representation in the population.194 Prisoners are generally no longer subjected to chain gangs or hard physical labor for profit, although these practices persisted in certain jurisdictions through the end of the twentieth century.195 Currently, another form of incarceration and punitive policing has emerged, one that effectuates the mass containment and exercises mass racial discipline, leading to the elimination of large numbers of poor and especially poor African American people from the realm of civil society. A felony conviction, disproportionately meted out to African Americans, Latinos, and indigent whites, results in a permanent loss of voting rights in most states, employment bars in numerous professions, and a lifetime ban on federal student aid, among other damaging consequences.196 These consequences further exacerbate the physically segregative effects of incarceration post-release, inhibiting opportunities for meaningful integration available to persons and communities most affected by incarceration.197 These consequences of conviction constitute a basic denial of equal citizenship, and, as such, conviction recreates the civil death associated with enslavement. Further, the criminal process still operates on a for-profit model importantly distinct, but not entirely removed from, earlier systems of confinement for profit that were the direct outgrowth ofslavery.198 Prisoners’ labor does not itself directly provide a significant source of profit to a lessor or single business as it once did. Instead, large-scale incarceration—marked by prisoners’ suffering, dehumanization, and violence—generates a market for the construction of facilities to house approximately two million prisoners and jail inmates; the technology and mechanisms to maintain almost seven million persons under criminal supervision; and the employment of thousands of prison guards, prison staff, probation and parole officers, and other penal professionals.199 The large sums of money poured into prisons and criminal surveillance have drawn major firms and a variety of Wall Street financiers to prison construction.200 Underwriting prison construction through private finance and the sale of tax-exempt bonds has served as a lucrative undertaking in itself.201 Though only used to manage a small portion of detention facilities, private corrections corporations, such as Corrections Corporation of America and Wackenhutt, submit bids to governments to manage different detention systems, especially immigration detention, and guarantee to provide these services at a lower cost than the state is able to deliver.202 Additionally, vendors of everything from stand alone cells, hand and foot cuffs, razor wire, and shank proof vests make considerable profits from prisons.203 A single contract to provide prisoners in the state of Texas with a soy-based meat substitute, awarded to VitaPro Foods, went for $34 million per year.204 The profits for phone service inside prison walls make food contracts seem insignificant.205 Meanwhile, prisoners continue to serve as a captive labor force, working for approximately one dollar per hour, and often less.206 Numerous firms use prisoners as a component of their workforce in the United States, as do government entities that use prison labor to manufacture products that are then sold to other government agencies.207 Although prisoners are no longer forced to work by or for the state (as they were in the South well into the twentieth century), the perverse profit motive that spurred the convict lease system with all its horror might be understood in historical context as preserved yet transformed in these various other guises. Criminal fines and fees generate substantial additional revenue for the criminal process itself and for certain municipalities and other jurisdictions.208 And the grossly disproportionate number of African Americans imprisoned, arrested, criminally fined, and stopped by police further accentuates the associations between earlier forms of racialized penal subordination for profit and the contemporary racial dynamics of criminal law administration.209 The deep, structural, and both conscious and unconscious entanglement of racial degradation and criminal law enforcement presents a strong case for aspiring to abandon criminal regulatory frameworks in favor of other social regulatory projects, rather than aiming for more modest criminal law reform. Multiple studies have confirmed the implicit, often immediate, and at times unconscious associations made between African Americans, criminality, and threat.210 These associations, borne of this history, continue to be reproduced by these structures and by the development of punitive policing and incarceration practices that treat certain people as not fully human. To provide but a few examples, psychologists Jennifer Eberhardt, Philip Atiba Goff, and their collaborators studied how individuals in various scenarios determine who “looks like a criminal.”211 Perhaps not surprisingly, controlling for other factors, the study’s subjects chose people who looked African American, particularly those who looked more “stereotypically” African American and those coded as having more “Afrocentric” features.212 In a similar study, psychologists Brian Lowery and Sandra Graham studied subjects’ responses to juvenile arrestees. When the study’s subjects were primed to understand the youth as African American, the juveniles were judged to be more blameworthy and deserving of harsher and more punitive treatment.213 Consciously expressed egalitarian racial beliefs did not significantly moderate the effects of implicit biasin these contexts.214 Conscious and unconscious biases on the part of police officers often have lethal outcomes. Shooter and weapons biases, for instance, are well-documented. In researching how subjects behave in simulated video game shooting settings, multiple studies have found that the likelihood of shooting a suspect who is armed or possesses a device other than a gun significantly increases when the suspect is African American and decreases when the suspect is white.215 This is true both for white and African American shooters.216 Similarly, psychologist Philip Atiba Goff and his colleagues, in a study examining archival material from actual death penalty cases in Pennsylvania, found that defendants depicted as implicitly “apelike” were more likely to be executed than those who were not; African Americans were more likely to be depicted as implicitly “apelike” than whites.217 Judges, jurors, and prosecutors in related studies likewise reflect considerable racial bias in their determinations at numerous criticalstages of the criminal process.218 The landscape of contemporary criminal law enforcement is thus, in significant and fundamental respects, part of the afterlife of slavery and Jim Crow, and this legacy is deeply implicated in criminal law’s persistent practices of racialized degradation. Perceptions of criminality, threat, and the prevalence of violence, informed by these racialized material histories and dehumanizing associations, operate at all levels of criminal law administration, often without the relevant actors’ awareness. This suggests something of how difficult it would be to remove racialized violence from prison-backed policing and imprisonment while retaining these practices as a primary mechanism of maintaining social order. The racialized degradation associated with criminal regulatory practices, then, compels an abolitionist ethical orientation on distinct and additional grounds apart from the general dehumanizing structural dynamics addressed in the preceding Subpart, particularly insofar as there are other available means of accomplishing crime-reductive objectives. If we are indeed committed to democratic and egalitarian values, the need to scrutinize closely the other purported purposes of the criminal process presses with increasing urgency. So, too does the question of whether there are alternative regulatory frameworks and approaches that might achieve similar ends with less racially encumbered and violent consequences. The alternative is an abolitionist politics that prioritizes rebuilding the communities that have been victimized by the Prison Industrial Complex Roberts 17 (Dorothy E., an acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law, joined the University of Pennsylvania as its 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School where she holds the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander chair. She is also founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science and Society in the Center for Africana Studies.) “DEMOCRATIZING CRIMINAL LAW AS AN ABOLITIONIST PROJECT,” Scholarly Commons North Western, 2017. https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=andhttpsredir=1andarticle=1300andcontext=nulr RR The anti-democratic function of criminal law suggests that a reformist approach is inadequate to democratize it. Improving procedures within a system designed to exclude black people from political participation may obscure its anti-democratic aspects or even make it operate more efficiently. Making law enforcement appear more legitimate to black people so they are more willing to obey the law mistakes the problem as one of black law breaking rather than white supremacy. It is nonsensical to believe an anti-democratic system can be fixed by ensuring greater obedience from the very people it is designed to subordinate. As I have written: “developing a norm of trust in repressive agencies would be pathetic and self-defeating.”33 Rather, my analysis of criminal law’s antidemocratic function suggests the need for an abolitionist approach. My criminal law scholarship has not claimed that criminalizing pregnant black women, loitering laws, order-maintenance policing, mass incarceration, capital punishment, and police terror enforce a democratic system in a discriminatory manner. Rather, I have argued that these institutions enforce an undemocratic racial caste system originating in slavery. Making criminal law democratic, then, requires something far more radical than reducing bias or increasing inclusion in this antidemocratic system. Democratizing criminal law requires dismantling its anti-democratic aspects altogether and reconstituting the criminal justice system without them. I therefore have joined calls for an abolitionist approach.34 Approaching the democratization of criminal law as an abolitionist project means releasing the stranglehold of law enforcement on black communities that currently excludes residents from democratic participation so they have more freedom to develop their own democratic alternatives for addressing social harms. Such efforts include: (a) ending police stop and frisk practices, bail, monetary sanctions, restrictions on felons’ voting rights, and other collateral penalties; (b) drastically reducing the numbers of incarcerated people by repealing harsh mandatory minimums for violent crimes, eliminating incarceration for nonviolent offenses, giving amnesty to those currently locked up under draconian laws, and decriminalizing drug use and possession and other conduct that poses little harm to others; and (c) holding police and other law enforcement agents accountable for brutality and rights violations.35 An abolitionist project thus requires envisioning a radically different approach to crime that creates alternatives to prison as the dominant means of addressing social harms and inequities.36 Additionally, abolition must be accompanied with “a redirection of criminal justice spending to rebuild the neighborhoods that they have devastated,” as well as “a massive infusion of resources to poor and low-income neighborhoods to help residents build local institutions, support social networks, and create social citizenship.”37 In the domestic violence context, black feminists have begun to think through what abolition means. The experience of black women at the intersection of the criminal justice system and other punitive state institutions has generated their exploration of approaches to domestic violence that do not rely on law enforcement for protection.38 Black feminists are developing an anti-carceral approach that places domestic violence in a broader context of inequitable social structures, tying intimate violence to state violence. They recognize that the U.S. law enforcement system has not only locked up enormous numbers of black people, but also often harms black victims of domestic abuse when police arrest, injure, or kill black women who summon them for help.39 In response, they have proposed community-based responses that address the social underpinnings of violence and that hold community members accountable without subjecting them to state violence.40 The black feminist strategy for addressing domestic violence suggests the possibility of taking an abolitionist approach to criminal law without sacrificing protection from violence in black communities. Finally, democratizing criminal law must be explicitly anti-racist in order to contest the white supremacist ideology that maintains its antidemocratic function. A majority of white Americans acquiesce in or support the anti-democratic features of the U.S. criminal justice system because these features prop up the unequal U.S. racial order. They are willing to tolerate intolerable amounts of state violence against black people because their white racial privilege protects them from experiencing this violence themselves and because they see this violence as necessary to protect their own privileged racial status.41 Link Wall Links:
158 Such transparent and legitimated bargaining benefits both inmates and prisons as a whole. .By initiating peaceful protests such as work stoppages, all inmates are able “to solve problems, maximize gains, articulate goals, develop alternative strategies, and deal with administrators without resorting to force or violence.”159 And by permitting peaceful strikes, prison administrators “provide inmates with a channel for airing grievances and gaining official response . . . giving the institution a kind of safety-valve for peaceful, rather than violent, change”160 2. Prisons are rooted in slavery and allows for the criminalization of POC- means reform can’t solve and inequality inevitable. Eisen 20 Lauren-Brooke Eisen director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program where she leads the organization’s work to end mass incarceration, 20 - ("Covid-19 Highlights the Need for Prison Labor Reform," Brennan Center for Justice, 4-17-2020, accessed 11-4-2021, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/covid-19-highlights-need-prison-labor-reform)//ML Congress must amend the language of federal employment protections to explicitly extend to work behind bars.¶ Forced labor in prisons has its roots in the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, when Southern planters faced the need to pay the labor force that had long worked for free under brutal conditions to produce the economic capital of the South.¶ Though the 13th Amendment abolished “involuntary servitude,” it excused forcible labor as punishment for those convicted of crimes. As a result, Southern states codified punitive laws, known as the Black Codes, to arbitrarily criminalize the activity of their former slaves. Loitering and congregating after dark, among other innocuous activities, suddenly became criminal. Arrest and convictions bound these alleged criminals to terms of incarceration, often sentenced to unpaid labor for wealthy plantation owners.¶ 3. Incarcerated workers prefer abolitionists movements—their ev— immac reads green Kelly 18 Kim Kelly is a freelance journalist and organizer based in Philadelphia. Her work on labor, class, politics, and culture has appeared in the New Republic, the Washington Post, the Baffler, and Esquire, among other publications, and she is the author of FIGHT LIKE HELL, a forthcoming book of intersectional labor history. “How the Ongoing Prison Strike is Connected to the Labor Movement”. 9-4-2018. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/labor-day-2018-how-the-ongoing-prison-strike-is-connected-to-the-labor-movement. Accessed 11-1-2021; MJen The striking prisoners of today have released a a list of ten demands. which calls for improvements to the current living conditions in prisons, increased rehabilitation programs, educational opportunities, and specific policy goals. This essentially articulates the idea of non-reformist reforms, a central plank of prison abolition. By illuminating the barbarity of the current prison system and calling for its abolishment while advocating for an improvement in current conditions, they are—to paraphrase French socialist André Gorz—asking not for what can be achieved within a current system, but for what should be possible. 4. The aff’s view that prison labor can be a source of dignity is a form of cruel optimism and an ethical investment in violent carceral logic Harvard Law Review, 19 - ("Striking the Right Balance: Toward a Better Understanding of Prison Strikes," Harvard Law Review 03/8/2019, accessed 10-28-2021, https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/03/striking-the-right-balance-toward-a-better-understanding-of-prison-strikes/)//ML A prison strike also represents a critical way by which inmates can express themselves.163 First, as alluded to above, a strike allows inmates to claim and communicate an identity — as more than just marginalized, ignored convicts with little to no self-determination, but instead as workers and human beings entitled to basic dignity. Such collective actions represent the “performative declaration and affirmation of rights that one does not (yet) have.”164 And, as Professor Jocelyn Simonson discusses, these strikes are collective contestations to “demand dignity, calling attention to the ways in which prisoners are treated as less than human and in the process reclaiming their own agency.”
Democracy is a form of bourgeois politics designed to suppress the proletariat – it upholds the illusion that the exploited have a say in how they are ruled
ICC 15 ~(The ICC was founded in January 1975 by different political groups which had arisen in the wake of the historic revival of the working class at the end of the 1960s that uses Marxism as effective weapon of the proletarian struggle for emancipation while at the same time reaffirming the communist political positions which have been settled once and for all by the experience of the workers' movement.) "Proletarian politics against bourgeois electoralism" International Communist Current, 3/15~ BC The workers’ movement and bourgeois democracy Electoralism, the parliamentary system, is a
AND
the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state. Amos 5/3/15
Unions give the illusion that workers have a say in fighting capitalism— but really strikes are a proponent of wage labor and the employer-employee relationship.
Eidlin 20 ~(Barry Eidlin, assistant professor of sociology at McGill University and a former head steward for UAW Local 2865.), "Why Unions Are Good — But Not Good Enough", JACOBIN, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/marxism-trade-unions-socialism-revolutionary-organizing, 01.06.2020~ SS For socialists, unions are paradoxical organizations. On the one hand, unions are
AND
worker organization, whether called unions or something else, has been essential.
Capitalism is unsustainable and causes extinction – resource scarcity, environmental degradation, war
Trainer ’16 (Ted; 5/10/16; Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, leading proponent of de-growth and sustainability issues; Resilience; "Sustainability – The Simpler Way perspective"; http://www.resilience.org/articles/General/2016/07'July/Sustainability20The20Simpler20Way20Perspective.pdf; DOA: 7/15/17) Firstly let’s set the scene; The deteriorating state of the planet. The resource
AND
small fraction of our present rich world levels, with no economic growth.
The alternative is to reorient political organizing away from the electoral system – only the alt provides the invisibility needed to construct alternative imaginaries
Araujo et al 17 ~(Erin, of the Memorial University of Newfoundland) Ferretti (Federico Ferretti, of the University College Dublin) Ince (Anthony, of Cardiff University) Mullenite (Joshua, Florida International University) Pickerill (Jenny, of the University of Sheffield) Rollo (Toby, of the University of British Columbia) White (Richard, Sheffield Hallam University) "Beyond Electoralism: Reflections on anarchy, populism, and the crisis of electoral politics" ACME, 12/20/2017~ BC In a world seemingly intent on supporting fascism, racism, misogyny, patriarchy,
AND
, and if we are slowly but surely building new alliances of solidarity.
Interpretation: the affirmative may not spec a government
1~ The letter "A" is an indefinite article that modifies "just government" – the resolution must be proven true in all instances, not one particular instance
CCC ND Capital Community College ~a nonprofit 501 c-3 organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation~, "Articles, Determiners, and Quantifiers", http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/determiners/determiners.htm~~#articles AG The three articles — a, an, the — are a kind of adjective
AND
the former (see beagle sentence) refers to all members of that class
2~ Government is an indefinite singular– the aff may not defend a specific set of governments
Nebel 20 ~Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs. He writes a lot of this stuff lol – duh.~ "Indefinite Singular Generics in Debate" Victory Briefs, 19 Sept 2020. no url AG I agree that if "a democracy" in the resolution just meant "one
AND
This suggests that "a democracy" in the resolution is not existential.
It applies to government:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that China ought to have the unconditional right to strike does not entail that those governments ought to have the unconditional right to strike.
Adverb test – adding "usually" to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because a recognition is universal and permanent
Violation – they only defend the United States
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh:
T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here
Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution
It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
Standards:
Limits – there are 195 affs accounting for hundreds of governments— unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs.
Banerjee 4/12 ~(Vasabjit Banerjee, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Mississippi State University),"How many states and provinces are in the world?" , The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/how-many-states-and-provinces-are-in-the-world-157847, April 12, 2021~ SS There are 195 national governments recognized by the United Nations, but there are as
AND
Zambia has provinces, and Japan has prefectures – among many other names.
Ground – spec guts core generics like the econ DA which rely on all governments having the unconditional right to strike because individual governments don’t have an impact on the global economy as a whole – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start
Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical
Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation
No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly
Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater
Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
11/7/21
ND - T - Nebel Workers
Tournament: Longhorn Classic | Round: 6 | Opponent: Westwood AG | Judge: Aaron Barcio T-Nebel Interpretation: workers are a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that A just government should recognize an unconditional right to strike for a subset of workers. Nebel 19 Jake Nebel Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs. , 8-12-2019, "Genericity on the Standardized Tests Resolution," Briefly, https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/08/12/genericity-on-the-standardized-tests-resolution/ SM Both distinctions are important. Generic resolutions can’t be affirmed by specifying particular instances. But, since generics tolerate exceptions, plan-inclusive counterplans (PICs) do not negate generic resolutions. Bare plurals are typically used to express generic generalizations. But there are two important things to keep in mind. First, generic generalizations are also often expressed via other means (e.g., definite singulars, indefinite singulars, and bare singulars). Second, and more importantly for present purposes, bare plurals can also be used to express existential generalizations. For example, “Birds are singing outside my window” is true just in case there are some birds singing outside my window; it doesn’t require birds in general to be singing outside my window. So, what about “colleges and universities,” “standardized tests,” and “undergraduate admissions decisions”? Are they generic or existential bare plurals? On other topics I have taken great pains to point out that their bare plurals are generic—because, well, they are. On this topic, though, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced. Let’s see why. 1.1 “Colleges and Universities” “Colleges and universities” is a generic bare plural. I don’t think this claim should require any argument, when you think about it, but here are a few reasons. First, ask yourself, honestly, whether the following speech sounds good to you: “Eight colleges and universities—namely, those in the Ivy League—ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions. Maybe other colleges and universities ought to consider them, but not the Ivies. Therefore, in the United States, colleges and universities ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions.” That is obviously not a valid argument: the conclusion does not follow. Anyone who sincerely believes that it is valid argument is, to be charitable, deeply confused. But the inference above would be good if “colleges and universities” in the resolution were existential. By way of contrast: “Eight birds are singing outside my window. Maybe lots of birds aren’t singing outside my window, but eight birds are. Therefore, birds are singing outside my window.” Since the bare plural “birds” in the conclusion gets an existential reading, the conclusion follows from the premise that eight birds are singing outside my window: “eight” entails “some.” If the resolution were existential with respect to “colleges and universities,” then the Ivy League argument above would be a valid inference. Since it’s not a valid inference, “colleges and universities” must be a generic bare plural. Second, “colleges and universities” fails the upward-entailment test for existential uses of bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Lima beans are on my plate.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some lima beans on my plate. One test of this is that it entails the more general sentence, “Beans are on my plate.” Now consider the sentence, “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” (To isolate “colleges and universities,” I’ve eliminated the other bare plurals in the resolution; it cannot plausibly be generic in the isolated case but existential in the resolution.) This sentence does not entail the more general statement that educational institutions ought not consider the SAT. This shows that “colleges and universities” is generic, because it fails the upward-entailment test for existential bare plurals. Third, “colleges and universities” fails the adverb of quantification test for existential bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Dogs are barking outside my window.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some dogs barking outside my window. One test of this appeals to the drastic change of meaning caused by inserting any adverb of quantification (e.g., always, sometimes, generally, often, seldom, never, ever). You cannot add any such adverb into the sentence without drastically changing its meaning. To apply this test to the resolution, let’s again isolate the bare plural subject: “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” Adding generally (“Colleges and universities generally ought not consider the SAT”) or ever (“Colleges and universities ought not ever consider the SAT”) result in comparatively minor changes of meaning. (Note that this test doesn’t require there to be no change of meaning and doesn’t have to work for every adverb of quantification.) This strongly suggests what we already know: that “colleges and universities” is generic rather than existential in the resolution. Fourth, it is extremely unlikely that the topic committee would have written the resolution with the existential interpretation of “colleges and universities” in mind. If they intended the existential interpretation, they would have added explicit existential quantifiers like “some.” No such addition would be necessary or expected for the generic interpretation since generics lack explicit quantifiers by default. The topic committee’s likely intentions are not decisive, but they strongly suggest that the generic interpretation is correct, since it’s prima facie unlikely that a committee charged with writing a sentence to be debated would be so badly mistaken about what their sentence means (which they would be if they intended the existential interpretation). The committee, moreover, does not write resolutions for the 0.1 percent of debaters who debate on the national circuit; they write resolutions, at least in large part, to be debated by the vast majority of students on the vast majority of circuits, who would take the resolution to be (pretty obviously, I’d imagine) generic with respect to “colleges and universities,” given its face-value meaning and standard expectations about what LD resolutions tend to mean.
It applies to workers:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that governments ought to recognize a right for one type of workers does not entail that those governments ought to recognize the right for all workers 2. Adverb test – adding “usually” to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because a recognition is universal and permanent
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh: a. T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here b. Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution c. It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
2. Limits – there are countless affs accounting for thousands of types of workers– unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs
3. Ground – spec guts core generics like the cap K or the econ DA that rely on recognizing rights for all workers because individual jobs don’t affect the economy broadly – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
4. TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical 3. Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation 4. No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly 5. Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater 6. Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
Interpretation: A worker is an employee that works under a contract for employment.
Quest n.d. ~(Quest, based in Leicestershire, but covering the whole of the UK, is a specialist and training solutions, delivering bespoke professional services with resounding results. With over two decades of experience, Quest make it their responsibility to fully understand your specific needs before personalising a tailored solution to ensure that your HR, Health and Safety and training solution complements your business plan and achieves your goals.) "Employees and Workers: The Difference Between a Worker and an Employee" Quest. N.d.~ AW A worker is defined as either an employee working under a Contract for Employment or
AND
Services and such workers are often referred to as non-employee workers.
Violation: Prisoners don’t have employment contracts—they’re working as a form of punishment.
Zatz 13 ~(Noah, Professor of Law at UCLA) "Employment Without Contract? Prison Laborers as Statutory Employees" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Law and Society Association 2013-12-16~ AT Paid labor by prisoners is an increasingly important part of incarceration in the U.
AND
of constituting and bounding "the market" as a distinct social field.
Standards:
1~ Limits— Allowing Affs about workers without contracts justifies the slavery, child labor, human trafficking, and indentured servants AC — incentives reading any aff about forced labor that negs don’t have prep on— a~ incentivizes running to the margins in order to cut fringe affs— that destroys iterative content mastery which is key to education. B~ explodes the negs prep burden to prep for hundreds amounts of affs due to different circumstances that result in forced labor.
There are hundreds of affs under their interp— they allow for any instance of forced labor in any of these countries— means that they explode limits.
ILO No Date ~(International Labor Organization, The only tripartite U.N. agency, since 1919 the ILO brings together governments, employers and workers of 187 member States , to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men.) "Statistics on forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking," ILO, No Date, https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/policy-areas/statistics/lang—en/index.htm~ RR Global estimates on forced labour
Global estimates 2012: Results and Methodology
AND
and estimation methodologies which could be used to develop surveys in the future.
2~ Ground— all the neg can say against the aff is exploitation good— their interp skirts links to the Workforce DA, Business Confidence DA, Cap K because the workers Affs under their interp are about do not participate in the formal economy. We even lose access to the Kant and Contracts NC which all assume an injury to legally recognized contracts.
3~ TVA solves— read as an advantage to a US specific aff.
Cross apply Paradigm issues from above.
11/7/21
ND - T - T Workers v2
Tournament: USC | Round: 3 | Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: Samantha McLoughlin 1NC-Off Interpretation: A worker is an employee that works under a contract for employment voluntarily and for remuneration Quest n.d. (Quest, based in Leicestershire, but covering the whole of the UK, is a specialist and training solutions, delivering bespoke professional services with resounding results. With over two decades of experience, Quest make it their responsibility to fully understand your specific needs before personalising a tailored solution to ensure that your HR, Health and Safety and training solution complements your business plan and achieves your goals.) “Employees and Workers: The Difference Between a Worker and an Employee” Quest. N.d. AW A worker is defined as either an employee working under a Contract for Employment or someone who works under a contract other than a Contract of Employment and is offering his personal service in return for remuneration to the employer who is not his/her client or customer. These contracts are commonly called Contracts for Services and such workers are often referred to as non-employee workers. Workers are employees or individuals with an independently established trade Kuykendall and Vierra 10/21 (Dale R., a Principal in the Sacramento, California, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. His practice focuses on advising and counseling employers in the hiring, supervision and termination of employees.) (Sierra, an Associate in the Sacramento, California, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. She represents management in civil litigation and administrative proceedings involving employment law matters, including discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, benefits, and a wide range of wage and hour issues. She litigates in federal and state courts, including class and representative actions, and represents employers in administrative proceedings. She also provides preventive advice and counsel on best practices.) “AB 5 Past and Present – What You Need to Know,” The National Law Review, 10/21/21. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/ab-5-past-and-present-what-you-need-to-know RR At the end of 2020, it seemed the legislature, the courts, and even California voters wanted to move away from the independent contractor test codified in Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5). However, during 2021, the pendulum seems to have swung back in favor of AB 5 and its guidelines on classifying workers as employees versus independent contractors. In 2019, the Legislature passed AB 5 to add Section 2750.3 to the Labor Code, adopting and expanding the common law “ABC Test” to define “employee” not just for purposes of the Wage Orders, but also for purposes of the Labor Code and the Unemployment Insurance Code. Under the AB 5-enhanced version of the ABC Test, a worker is presumed to be an employee, unless the hiring entity can establish that: (A) The person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; (B) The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and (C) The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed. A worker cannot be classified as an independent contractor under the ABC Test unless all three factors are met, or unless one of the exemptions established by AB 5 is satisfied.
Violation: Prisons don’t have employment contracts—they do not work in a labor market through free contract Zatz 13 (Noah, Professor of Law at UCLA) “Employment Without Contract? Prison Laborers as Statutory Employees” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Law and Society Association 2013-12-16 AT Paid labor by prisoners is an increasingly important part of incarceration in the U.S. Prison laborers repeatedly have sought legal redress for violations of labor and employment laws, including minimum wage and antidiscrimination protections. Courts then have had to decide whether these protections apply to this form of work, and they have struggled to square the existence of an exchange of labor and economic benefits with an impulse to distinguish a distinctly non-economic field of punishment from a fundamentally economic employment relationship. For the most part, prison laborers have been denied "employee" status on the ground that they do not work in a labor market organized through free contract. This identification of statutory employment rights with individual employment contracts is ironic because, in other contexts, labor and employment statutes often are understood as repudiating contractual orderings. This paper explores how legal classification as "employment" serves not simply as the basis for a regulatory intervention in the labor market but also as a means of constituting and bounding "the market" as a distinct social field. Courts agree Wu and Brady 20 (Cindy and Prue, Legal Interns at Corporate Accountability Lab.) “IF PRISON WORKERS ARE ESSENTIAL, WE SHOULD TREAT THEM LIKE IT: PRISON LABOR IN THE US, PART I,” Corperate Accountability Lab, 8/5/20. https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2020/8/5/if-prison-workers-are-essential-we-should-treat-them-like-it-prison-labor-in-the-us-part-i RR Besides being excluded from minimum wage laws, prison laborers also lack important worker protections. Federal courts have held that prison laborers are not “employees” under the meaning of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes wage and overtime pay standards. The guarantees of the National Labor Relations Act also do not extend to incarcerated workers, effectively barring them from unionizing. Prisoners laborers can be forced to work without remediation McGrew and Hanks 17 (Annie, a special assistant for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress.) (Angela, the Associate Director for Workforce Development Policy on the Economic Policy team at the Center for American Progress.) “It’s Time to Stop Using Inmates for Free Labor,” Talk Poverty, 10/20/17. https://talkpoverty.org/2017/10/20/want-prison-feel-less-like-slavery-pay-inmates-work/ RR Inmates are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires that workers are paid at least the federal minimum wage. That makes it completely legal for states to exploit inmates for free or cheap labor. More than half of the 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons work while incarcerated, and the vast majority only make a few cents per hour.
Standards: 1 Limits— Their interpretation allows for the slavery, child labor, and indentured servants aff—a incentivizes running to the margins in order to cut fringe affs which destroys iterative content mastery which is key to education. B explodes the negs prep burden to prep for hundreds amounts of affs due to different types forced labor laws. 2 Ground— all the neg can say against the aff is exploitation good—we loose core generics like the Econ DA and Kant NC which assume workers who are formally employed and use strikes to facilitate collective bargaining. 3 TVA solves— read as an advantage to a US specific aff. Cross apply paradigm issues from the T – A page.
opioid use disorder to treatment services when they are ready to seek treatment.
9/5/21
SO - CP - Consult WHO
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: OA Independent DM | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1NC
CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should enter into a prior and binding consultation with the World Health Organization over reducing intellectual property protections for medicines. Member nations will support the proposal and adopt the results of consultation.
WHO says yes – it supports increasing the availability of generics and limiting TRIPS
Hoen 03 ~(Ellen T., researcher at the University Medical Centre at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands who has been listed as one of the 50 most influential people in intellectual property by the journal Managing Intellectual Property, PhD from the University of Groningen) "TRIPS, Pharmaceutical Patents and Access to Essential Medicines: Seattle, Doha and Beyond," Chicago Journal of International Law, 2003~ JL However, subsequent resolutions of the World Health Assembly have strengthened the WHO’s mandate in
AND
access to drugs, local manufacturing capacity, and the development of new drugs
Consultation displays strong leadership, authority, and cohesion among member states which are key to WTO legitimacy
Gostin et al 15 ~(Lawrence O., Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, JD from Duke University) "The Normative Authority of the World Health Organization," Georgetown University Law Center, 5/2/2015~ JL Members want the WHO to exert leadership, harmonize disparate activities, and set priorities
AND
Organization generously, grant it authority and flexibility, and hold it accountable.
WHO is critical to disease prevention – it is the only international institution that can disperse information, standardize global public health, and facilitate public-private cooperation
Murtugudde 20 ~(Raghu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland, PhD in mechanical engineering from Columbia University) "Why We Need the World Health Organization Now More Than Ever," Science, 4/19/2020~ JL WHO continues to play an indispensable role during the current COVID-19 outbreak itself
AND
and trade restrictions. WHO coordinates and helps build capacity to implement IHR.
Extinction – defense is wrong
Piers Millett 17, Consultant for the World Health Organization, PhD in International Relations and Affairs, University of Bradford, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, "Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity", Health Security, Vol 15(4), http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/hs.2017.0028 Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity.
AND
, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-2
CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should enter into a prior and binding consultation with the World Health Organization over reducing intellectual property protections for cannabis. Member nations will support the proposal and adopt the results of consultation.
WHO says yes
WHO 06 ~(World Health Organization, specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health) "Public health, innovation and intellectual property rights," Report of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation, and Public Health, 2006~ JL Though difficult to discern from incremental innovation in practice, socalled "evergreening" is
AND
or suppression of competition and, in some cases higher prices for patients.
Consultation displays strong leadership, authority, and cohesion among member states which are key to WHO legitimacy
Gostin et al 15 ~(Lawrence O., Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, JD from Duke University) "The Normative Authority of the World Health Organization," Georgetown University Law Center, 5/2/2015~ JL Members want the WHO to exert leadership, harmonize disparate activities, and set priorities
AND
Organization generously, grant it authority and flexibility, and hold it accountable.
WHO is critical to disease prevention – it is the only international institution that can disperse information, standardize global public health, and facilitate public-private cooperation
Murtugudde 20 ~(Raghu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland, PhD in mechanical engineering from Columbia University) "Why We Need the World Health Organization Now More Than Ever," Science, 4/19/2020~ JL WHO continues to play an indispensable role during the current COVID-19 outbreak itself
AND
and trade restrictions. WHO coordinates and helps build capacity to implement IHR.
WHO diplomacy solves great power conflict
Murphy 20 ~(Chris, U.S. senator from Connecticut serving on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee) "The Answer is to Empower, Not Attack, the World Health Organization," War on the Rocks, 4/21/2020~ JL The World Health Organization is critical to stopping disease outbreaks and strengthening public health systems
AND
international anti-pandemic infrastructure without the World Health Organization at the center.
CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should enter into a prior and binding consultation with the World Health Organization over reducing intellectual property protections by implementing a one-and-done approach for patent protection s. Member nations will support the proposal and adopt the results of consultation.
WHO says yes
WHO 06 ~(World Health Organization, specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health) "Public health, innovation and intellectual property rights," Report of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation, and Public Health, 2006~ JL Though difficult to discern from incremental innovation in practice, socalled "evergreening" is
AND
or suppression of competition and, in some cases higher prices for patients.
Consultation displays strong leadership, authority, and cohesion among member states which are key to WHO legitimacy
Gostin et al 15 ~(Lawrence O., Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, JD from Duke University) "The Normative Authority of the World Health Organization," Georgetown University Law Center, 5/2/2015~ JL Members want the WHO to exert leadership, harmonize disparate activities, and set priorities
AND
Organization generously, grant it authority and flexibility, and hold it accountable.
WHO is critical to disease prevention – it is the only international institution that can disperse information, standardize global public health, and facilitate public-private cooperation
Murtugudde 20 ~(Raghu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland, PhD in mechanical engineering from Columbia University) "Why We Need the World Health Organization Now More Than Ever," Science, 4/19/2020~ JL WHO continues to play an indispensable role during the current COVID-19 outbreak itself
AND
and trade restrictions. WHO coordinates and helps build capacity to implement IHR.
WHO diplomacy solves great power conflict
Murphy 20 ~(Chris, U.S. senator from Connecticut serving on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee) "The Answer is to Empower, Not Attack, the World Health Organization," War on the Rocks, 4/21/2020~ JL The World Health Organization is critical to stopping disease outbreaks and strengthening public health systems
AND
international anti-pandemic infrastructure without the World Health Organization at the center.
10/8/21
SO - CP - Consult WHO v4
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Harker SS | Judge: Chris Castillo
1NC – Generic
CP: The EU should enter into a prior and binding consultation with the World Health Organization over reducing trade secret protections for medicines by requiring that plaintiffs prove that the acquisition, use, and disclosure of the trade secret did not pertain to revealing misconduct, wrongdoing, or illegal activity, or to protecting the general public interest. The EU will support the proposal and adopt the results of consultation.
WHO says yes
Moorthy et al 15 ~(Vasee S., malaria vaccine focal point for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Secretariat for two WHO malaria vaccine advisory committees, PhD in malaria immunology from the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford) "Rationale for WHO's New Position Calling for Prompt Reporting and Public Disclosure of Interventional Clinical Trial Results," PLOS Medicine, 4/14/2015~ JL On April 14, 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a
AND
trials is a scientific, ethical, and moral responsibility" ~2~.
Consultation displays strong leadership, authority, and cohesion among member states which are key to WHO legitimacy
Gostin et al 15 ~(Lawrence O., Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, JD from Duke University) "The Normative Authority of the World Health Organization," Georgetown University Law Center, 5/2/2015~ JL Members want the WHO to exert leadership, harmonize disparate activities, and set priorities
AND
Organization generously, grant it authority and flexibility, and hold it accountable.
WHO is critical to disease prevention – it is the only international institution that can disperse information, standardize global public health, and facilitate public-private cooperation
Murtugudde 20 ~(Raghu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland, PhD in mechanical engineering from Columbia University) "Why We Need the World Health Organization Now More Than Ever," Science, 4/19/2020~ JL WHO continues to play an indispensable role during the current COVID-19 outbreak itself
AND
and trade restrictions. WHO coordinates and helps build capacity to implement IHR.
Extinction – defense is wrong
Piers Millett 17, Consultant for the World Health Organization, PhD in International Relations and Affairs, University of Bradford, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, "Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity", Health Security, Vol 15(4), http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/hs.2017.0028 Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity.
AND
, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-2
WHO diplomacy solves great power conflict
Murphy 20 ~(Chris, U.S. senator from Connecticut serving on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee) "The Answer is to Empower, Not Attack, the World Health Organization," War on the Rocks, 4/21/2020~ JL The World Health Organization is critical to stopping disease outbreaks and strengthening public health systems
AND
international anti-pandemic infrastructure without the World Health Organization at the center.
10/24/21
SO - CP - Distribution CP
Tournament: St Marks | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Marlborough WR | Judge: Panel
1NC – Off
CP Text: the United States should
-invest $25 billion into 25 production lines dedicated solely to COVID-19 vaccines to boost global vaccine production managed by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
-distribute 8 billion doses of COVID vaccines using an equitable distribution framework prioritizing developing countries in the Global South.
The CP solves the entirety of the case and does it faster.
CP Text: the United States should significantly increase the production and distribution of medicines outlined in the affs msf 17 card. The United States should prioritize developing countries in the Global South.
The CP solves the entirety of the case and does it faster—Covid proves
CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should adopt the European Union’s proposal to:
Ensure that COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and their components can cross borders freely
Encourage producers to expand their production, while ensuring that those countries most in need of vaccines receive them at an affordable price
Facilitate the use of compulsory licensing within the WTO's existing Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
Solves vaccine access but avoids innovation
Brachmann 6/8 ~(Steve, contributor to IPWatchdog.com, Research on Point, and Main Street Host writing about technology and innovation) "EU Offers Alternative to COVID-19 IP Waiver That Supports Innovation and Addresses Supply Chain Problems," IP Watchdog, 6/8/2021~ JL The EU’s proposal to the WTO regarding COVID-19 vaccine access focuses on three
AND
continue to appear across the world, and needless human death will continue.
10/31/21
SO - CP - Remdesivir PIC
Tournament: Nano Nagle | Round: 3 | Opponent: Dwight Englewood EK | Judge: Nick Fleming
1NC – CP
CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should reduce intellectual property protections for medicines except Remdesivir.
Remdesivir patents are key to profits that enable continued production and future innovation
Mossoff 20 ~(Adam, Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, teaches a wide range of courses at the law school, including property, patent law, trade secrets, trademark law, remedies, and internet law, Visiting Intellectual Property Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, JD from the University of Chicago Law School) "US Should Not Confiscate Gilead's Remdesivir Patent," Law360, 8/21/2020~ JL These politicians allege that since the U.S. helped pay for some of
AND
cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and ultimately for pandemics like COVID-19.
Remdesivir substantially reduces COVID mortality – turns case
Antrim 7/27 ~(Aislinn, assistant editor at Pharmacy Times, BA in journalism from the University of North Carolina) "Remdesivir Associated With Reduction in Mortality Rate in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19," Pharmacy Times, 7/27/2021~ JL Three analyses of large, retrospective, real-world data sets have found that
AND
29, although this reduction was not statistically significant in the other groups.
WTO is near consensus on fisheries subsidies – success will require continued focus, flexibility, and cooperation among members
WTO 7/15 ~(World Trade Organization) "WTO members edge closer to fisheries subsidies agreement," News and Events, 7/15/2021~ JL During an all-day meeting with 104 ministers and heads of delegation, WTO
AND
no marine fisheries left to subsidise — or artisanal fishing communities to support."
IP disputes fragment WTO unity and trade off with subsidies negotiation
Patnaik 3/12 ~(Priti, journalist in Geneva, Switzerland, master’s in Development Studies from The Graduate Institute in Geneva and a master’s in Business and Economic Reporting from New York University) "Could Vaccine Nationalism Spur Disputes At The WTO?" Geneva Health Files, 3/12/2021~ JL To protect domestic manufacturers and constituencies, countries may resort to filing disputes, if
AND
will ultimately harm the legitimacy of the trading system," the person added.
Overfishing causes SCS war – WTO agreement solves
Cohen and Floyd 1/27 ~(Sam, J.D. student at Harvard Law School, BA in history from Yale University, surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy, and Steve, joint J.D./LL.M. in national security law at Georgetown University Law Center, lieutenant commander in U.S. Naval Intelligence) "Water Wars Special: How IUU Fishing Increases the Risk of Conflict, Lawfare, 1/27/2021~ JL The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has classified one-third of
AND
problems and create a binding legal framework through which members could seek relief.
SCS conflict draws in the US and goes nuclear – extinction
Carter 20 (John Carter has been an economics and finance journalist for more than 40 years. Prior to joining the South China Morning Post, he worked for Market News International for more than 33 years, first as Washington Bureau Chief, then as European Managing Editor in Frankfurt, Germany and finally as Asian Managing Editor working out of Beijing, Global Impact newsletter: escalating conflict in the South China Sea, https://www.scmp.com/economy/article/3102323/global-impact-newsletter-escalating-conflict-south-china-sea) If you want to start a world war, a good way to do it
AND
two of the world’s largest militaries will de-escalate any time soon.
10/14/21
SO - DA - Fisheries v2
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harker DS | Judge: Colton Gilbert
1NC – Shell
WTO is near consensus on fisheries subsidies – success will require continued focus, flexibility, and cooperation among members
WTO 7/15 ~(World Trade Organization) "WTO members edge closer to fisheries subsidies agreement," News and Events, 7/15/2021~ JL During an all-day meeting with 104 ministers and heads of delegation, WTO
AND
no marine fisheries left to subsidise — or artisanal fishing communities to support."
IP disputes fragment WTO unity and trade off with subsidies negotiation
Patnaik 3/12 ~(Priti, journalist in Geneva, Switzerland, master’s in Development Studies from The Graduate Institute in Geneva and a master’s in Business and Economic Reporting from New York University) "Could Vaccine Nationalism Spur Disputes At The WTO?" Geneva Health Files, 3/12/2021~ JL To protect domestic manufacturers and constituencies, countries may resort to filing disputes, if
AND
will ultimately harm the legitimacy of the trading system," the person added.
Overfishing collapses biodiversity
DUJS 12 ~(Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, official open access science journal of Dartmouth College, publishing original scientific research, multidisciplinary review articles, and science news) "The Threats of Overfishing: Consequences at the Commercial Level," 3/11/2012~ JL According to marine ecologists, overfishing is the greatest threat to ocean ecosystems today (
AND
, the extent of this damage has only recently been recognized (15).
Continued biodiversity loss causes extinction
Carrington 18 ~(Damian, the Guardian's Environment editor) "Humanity has wiped out 60 of a animal populations since 1970, report finds," The Guardian, 10/29/18~ TDI Humanity has wiped out 60 of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since
AND
no longer ignore the impact of current unsustainable production models and wasteful lifestyles."
Cancherini et al. 4/30 ~(Laura, Engagement Manager @ McKinsey and Company, Joseph Lydon, Associate Partner @ McKinsey and Company, Jorge Santos Da Silva, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, and Alexandra Zemp, Partner at McKinsey and Company), "What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?", McKinsey and Company, 4-30-2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/whats-ahead-for-biotech-another-wave-or-low-tide~~ TDI As the pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, biotech leaders were initially
AND
as multi-omics tailored diets) to a multitude of health applications.
Secondary patents are key to innovation – recouping development costs and new applications of existing medicines
Richards et al 20 ~(Kevin T., Associate Solicitor at the US Patent and Trademark Office, former legislative attorney at CRS, JD from UVA School of Law) "Drug Pricing and Pharmaceutical Patenting Practices," Congressional Research Service, 2/11/2020~ JL Defenders of evergreening respond that the term is "inherently pejorative" because it creates
AND
the brand's fixed costs for research, development, and clinical testing.168
Biopharmaceutical innovation is key to prevent future pandemics and bioterror.
Marjanovic and Feijao 20 ~(Sonja Marjanovic, Ph.D., Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Carolina Feijao, Ph.D. in biochemistry, University of Cambridge; M.Sc. in quantitative biology, Imperial College London; B.Sc. in biology, University of Lisbon.) "How to Best Enable Pharma Innovation Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis," RAND Corporation, 05-2020, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA407-1.html~~ TDI As key actors in the healthcare innovation landscape, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies have
AND
such public health threats to an even greater extent under improved innovation conditions.
Extinction – defense is wrong
Piers Millett 17, Consultant for the World Health Organization, PhD in International Relations and Affairs, University of Bradford, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, "Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity", Health Security, Vol 15(4), http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/hs.2017.0028 Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity.
AND
, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-2
10/8/21
SO - DA - Innovation v2
Tournament: Nano Nagle | Round: 3 | Opponent: Dwight Englewood EK | Judge: Nick Fleming
1NC – DA
Biotech industry strong now
Cancherini et al. 4/30 ~(Laura, Engagement Manager @ McKinsey and Company, Joseph Lydon, Associate Partner @ McKinsey and Company, Jorge Santos Da Silva, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, and Alexandra Zemp, Partner at McKinsey and Company), "What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?", McKinsey and Company, 4-30-2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/whats-ahead-for-biotech-another-wave-or-low-tide~~ TDI Belying this downbeat mood, biotech has in fact had one of its best years
AND
access to capital and leaves it with more scope to concentrate on science.
Lack of IP protection makes medical innovation prohibitively risky and expensive
Grabowski et al 15 ~(Henry, Professor of Economics, member of the faculty for the Health Sector Management Program, and Director of the Program in Pharmaceuticals and Health Economics at Duke University) "The Roles of Patents and Research And Development Incentives In Biopharmaceutical Innovation," Health Affairs, 2/2015~ JL The essential rationale for patent protection for biopharmaceuticals is that long-term benefits in
AND
protection plays a key role in funding and partnership opportunities for such firms.
MRNA solves a litany of diseases, but continued innovation is key
Gupta 5/7 ~(Swati, vice president and head of emerging infectious diseases and scientific strategy at IAVI, a nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for HIV, tuberculosis, emerging infectious diseases (including COVID-19) and neglected diseases, PhD and MPH from Yale University) "The Application and Future Potential of mRNA Vaccines," Yale School of Public Health, 5/7/2021~ JL The implications of mRNA technology are staggering. Several vaccine developers are studying this technology
AND
, but more likely to be a reality in the very near future.
10/9/21
SO - DA - Innovation v3
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 3 | Opponent: Marlborough TZ | Judge: Leah Villanueva
1NC – Shell
Biotech industry strong now.
Cancherini et al. 4/30 ~(Laura, Engagement Manager @ McKinsey and Company, Joseph Lydon, Associate Partner @ McKinsey and Company, Jorge Santos Da Silva, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, and Alexandra Zemp, Partner at McKinsey and Company), "What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?", McKinsey and Company, 4-30-2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/whats-ahead-for-biotech-another-wave-or-low-tide~~ TDI As the pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, biotech leaders were initially
AND
as multi-omics tailored diets) to a multitude of health applications.
IP protections are key to innovation – recouping startup costs and high risk of failure
Grabowski et al 15 ~(Henry, Professor of Economics, member of the faculty for the Health Sector Management Program, and Director of the Program in Pharmaceuticals and Health Economics at Duke University) "The Roles of Patents and Research And Development Incentives In Biopharmaceutical Innovation," Health Affairs, 2/2015~ JL The essential rationale for patent protection for biopharmaceuticals is that long-term benefits in
AND
protection plays a key role in funding and partnership opportunities for such firms.
Biopharmaceutical innovation is key to prevent future pandemics and bioterror.
Marjanovic and Feijao 20 ~(Sonja Marjanovic, Ph.D., Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Carolina Feijao, Ph.D. in biochemistry, University of Cambridge; M.Sc. in quantitative biology, Imperial College London; B.Sc. in biology, University of Lisbon.) "How to Best Enable Pharma Innovation Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis," RAND Corporation, 05-2020, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA407-1.html~~ TDI As key actors in the healthcare innovation landscape, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies have
AND
such public health threats to an even greater extent under improved innovation conditions.
Extinction – defense is wrong
Piers Millett 17, Consultant for the World Health Organization, PhD in International Relations and Affairs, University of Bradford, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, "Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity", Health Security, Vol 15(4), http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/hs.2017.0028 Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity.
AND
, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-2
10/16/21
SO - K - Cap K
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: OA Independent DM | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1NC
The Aff’s portrayal of a world with reduced IP protections as an "information commons" where medical inequality is solved by deregulation perpetuates the neoliberal myth of a perfect market Kapczynski 14 ~(Amy, a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership, and Faculty Co-Director of the Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency. She is also Faculty Co-Director of the Law and Political Economy Project and cofounder of the Law and Political Economy blog. Her areas of research include information policy, intellectual property law, international law, and global health.) "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY’S LEVIATHAN" Duke Law, Law and Contemporary problems, 2014. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4710andcontext=lcp~~ BC
Over the last decade or so, a powerful set of critiques has emerged to contest the dominant account just sketched out as well as the contemporary state of IP law.12 These arguments have come from many directions, some even arising from scholars who previously were champions of the dominant account.13 The most prominent and potent line of theoretical critique in the legal literature has come in the guise of arguments for free culture and the "information commons" and has been most influentially articulated by Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler.14 Both have stressed the problems with expansive exclusive rights regimes in information and have also sketched a set of actually existing alternatives to market-based exclusionary forms of information and cultural production. Lessig has written a series of influential books that have made him a "rock
AND
and reduce it to a concrete proposal that could be sold to governments.
Attempts to reform the WTO are neoliberal attempts to sustain the US regime of accumulation – the contradictions of capitalism are why credibility is low, not IP protection
Bachand 20 ~(Remi, Professor of International Law, Département des sciences juridiques, member of the Centre d’études sur le droit international et la mondialisation (CÉDIM), Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada) "What’s Behind the WTO Crisis? A Marxist Analysis" The European Journal of International Law, 8/12/2020. https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article-abstract/31/3/857/5920920?redirectedFrom=fulltext~~ BC To offer our own explanation, we must recall two aspects of our theoretical framework
AND
or at least to strongly impede the turn towards an alternative model to neoliberalism
Neoliberal exploitation causes extinction.
Clark 18 (Brett, associate professor of sociology and sustainability studies at the University of Utah; Stefano B. Longo, Assistant Professor specializing in Environmental Sociology at NC State; "Land–Sea Ecological Rifts", Land–Sea Ecological Rifts, https://monthlyreview.org/2018/07/01/land-sea-ecological-rifts/) Covering approximately 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the World Ocean is "the
AND
the contradictions of capital are central to contemporary land-sea ecological rifts.
The alternative is a global socialist movement that ends globalization
Galant 19 ~(Michael, a coordinator of the Wire Pillar of the Progressive International, former economics and trade fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, MPP from Harvard University’s Kennedy School and BA in political economy from Brown University) "The Battle of Seattle: 20 years later, it's time for a revival" Open Democracy, 11/30/2019. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/battle-seattle-20-years-later-its-time-revival/~~ BC 20 years ago today, the streets of Seattle became front lines in the global
AND
possible!" It still is – if we’re willing to fight for it.
Identity politics is the ideology of the bourgeoisie that is used to justify its own economic and political privilege and contribute to the reproduction of capitalism.
Das 20 ~(Raju, Professor, Department of Geography, York University. He teaches radical political economy, international development, state-society relations, and social struggles. He is on the editorial board of Science and Society (New York) and is also a member of its manuscript collective. He is also a member of the editorial board of Class, Race and Corporate Power, and a member of the editorial advisory board of Dialectical Anthropology.) "Identity Politics: A Marxist View" Class, Race and Corporate Power, 2020~ BC Identity politics and/as bourgeois ideology Identity politics – in terms of its
AND
its own economic and political privilege and contribute to the reproduction of capitalism.
Capitalism is responsible for the birth of racism –
WASP 15 ~(Workers and Socialist Party in South Africa affiliated to International Socialist Alternative. WASP fights to replace capitalism with a democratic socialist system that will use the wealth of society to meet the needs of its people instead of the needs of shareholders and big-business.) "Class and Race: Marxism, Racism and the Class Struggle" Workers and Socialist Party, 10/5/2015~ BC Racism is not the result of an "inevitable" racial friction between white and
AND
between opportunism and the general and vital interests of the working class movement."
Neoliberal exploitation causes extinction.
Clark 18 (Brett, associate professor of sociology and sustainability studies at the University of Utah; Stefano B. Longo, Assistant Professor specializing in Environmental Sociology at NC State; "Land–Sea Ecological Rifts", Land–Sea Ecological Rifts, https://monthlyreview.org/2018/07/01/land-sea-ecological-rifts/) Covering approximately 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the World Ocean is "the
AND
the contradictions of capital are central to contemporary land-sea ecological rifts.
The alternative is a rejection of identity politics and an affirmation of structural socialist reforms – only through participation within the state allows the proletariat fight against the capitalist class.
Day 18 ~(Meagan, a staff writer at Jacobin magazine. Her articles have also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vox, n+1, The Baffler, In These Times, Mother Jones, and elsewhere. She is the co-author with Micah Uetricht of Bigger than Bernie: How We Go From the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism and the author of Maximum Sunlight) "Why Socialists Should Fight for Structural Reforms" Democratic Socialists of America, fall 2018~ BC There is a common misconception on the radical left about reforms. If you’re serious
AND
we’ve blocked off our best avenue for making a revolution in our lifetimes.
The Aff’s portrayal of a world with reduced IP protections as an "information commons" where medical inequality is solved by deregulation perpetuates the neoliberal myth of a perfect market Kapczynski 14 ~(Amy, a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership, and Faculty Co-Director of the Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency. She is also Faculty Co-Director of the Law and Political Economy Project and cofounder of the Law and Political Economy blog. Her areas of research include information policy, intellectual property law, international law, and global health.) "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY’S LEVIATHAN" Duke Law, Law and Contemporary problems, 2014. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4710andcontext=lcp~~ BC
Over the last decade or so, a powerful set of critiques has emerged to contest the dominant account just sketched out as well as the contemporary state of IP law.12 These arguments have come from many directions, some even arising from scholars who previously were champions of the dominant account.13 The most prominent and potent line of theoretical critique in the legal literature has come in the guise of arguments for free culture and the "information commons" and has been most influentially articulated by Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler.14 Both have stressed the problems with expansive exclusive rights regimes in information and have also sketched a set of actually existing alternatives to market-based exclusionary forms of information and cultural production. Lessig has written a series of influential books that have made him a "rock
AND
and reduce it to a concrete proposal that could be sold to governments.
They defend going through the free market which allows for capitalist exploitation of products.
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 Only free competition ensures fair prices and market growth over the long-term as well as ongoing innovation and product accessibility.
Their links rely on pushing people out of the market in order to preserve neoliberal gains. Immac reads blue
equals less competition which usually leads to higher prices and limited market growth.
Legalizing cannabis is rooted in advancing neoliberal policies of pushing cartels into the free market. Immac reads blue
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
more readily identifiable — is further evidence of the effects of legalization.23
Neoliberal exploitation causes extinction.
Clark 18 (Brett, associate professor of sociology and sustainability studies at the University of Utah; Stefano B. Longo, Assistant Professor specializing in Environmental Sociology at NC State; "Land–Sea Ecological Rifts", Land–Sea Ecological Rifts, https://monthlyreview.org/2018/07/01/land-sea-ecological-rifts/) Covering approximately 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the World Ocean is "the
AND
the contradictions of capital are central to contemporary land-sea ecological rifts.
The alternative is a global socialist movement that ends globalization
Galant 19 ~(Michael, a coordinator of the Wire Pillar of the Progressive International, former economics and trade fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, MPP from Harvard University’s Kennedy School and BA in political economy from Brown University) "The Battle of Seattle: 20 years later, it's time for a revival" Open Democracy, 11/30/2019. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/battle-seattle-20-years-later-its-time-revival/~~ BC 20 years ago today, the streets of Seattle became front lines in the global
AND
possible!" It still is – if we’re willing to fight for it.
Interpretation: Medicine is a drug used in prevention
Lexico ND ~(Lexico dictionary) https://www.lexico.com/definition/medicine~~ BC The science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease (in technical use often taken to exclude surgery) ‘he made distinguished contributions to pathology and medicine’ A drug or other preparation for the treatment or prevention of disease. ‘give her some medicine’
To be a medicine a substance must meet FDA standards
way to know what kind and how much of a chemical you’re getting.
Cannabis isn’t a medicine –
Madras 16 ~(Bertha, Madras is a professor of psychobiology in the Department of Psychiatry and the chair of the Division of Neurochemistry at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University; she served as associate director for public education in the division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School.) "Opinion: 5 reasons marijuana is not medicine" The Washington Post, 4/29/2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/04/29/5-reasons-marijuana-is-not-medicine/~~ BC Yet unlike drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration, "dispensary marijuana"
AND
to rigorous, objective clinical trials nor was it widely available for scrutiny.
Prefer -
limits— expanding the topic to herbs with medicinal properties explode the topic to include unpredictable affs like chamomile, ginger, or garlic affs– makes neg prep impossible because the resolution is the only stasis point for preround prep.
any medicinal herb, always talk with your healthcare provider before taking it.
ground— defending non-medicines means that we lose links to core topic generics like econ or innovation DA - forces the neg to read Ks or CPs that are non-specific to the topic that destroys any clash about the topic.
Paradigm issues –
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start
Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation
Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater
way to know what kind and how much of a chemical you’re getting.
Cannabis isn’t a medicine –
Madras 16 ~(Bertha, Madras is a professor of psychobiology in the Department of Psychiatry and the chair of the Division of Neurochemistry at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University; she served as associate director for public education in the division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School.) "Opinion: 5 reasons marijuana is not medicine" The Washington Post, 4/29/2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/04/29/5-reasons-marijuana-is-not-medicine/~~ BC Yet unlike drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration, "dispensary marijuana"
AND
to rigorous, objective clinical trials nor was it widely available for scrutiny.
Prefer -
limits— expanding the topic to herbs with medicinal properties explode the topic to include unpredictable affs like chamomile, ginger, or garlic affs– makes neg prep impossible because the resolution is the only stasis point for preround prep.
any medicinal herb, always talk with your healthcare provider before taking it.
ground— defending non-medicines means that we lose links to core topic generics like econ or innovation DA - forces the neg to read Ks or CPs that are non-specific to the topic that destroys any clash about the topic.
Paradigm issues –
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start
Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation
Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater
Interpretation: intellectual property protections is a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that member nations of the World Trade Organization reduce a subset of intellectual property protections for medicines.
Nebel 19 Jake Nebel ~Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs.~ , 8-12-2019, "Genericity on the Standardized Tests Resolution," Briefly, https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/08/12/genericity-on-the-standardized-tests-resolution/ SM Both distinctions are important. Generic resolutions can’t be affirmed by specifying particular instances.
AND
-value meaning and standard expectations about what LD resolutions tend to mean.
It applies to IP protections:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that nations ought to reduce one type of IPP does not entail that those nations ought to reduce all kinds of IPP
Adverb test – adding "usually" to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because a reduction is universal and permanent
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh:
T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here
Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution
Only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
Limits – there are countless affs accounting for every kind of intellectual property protections, like tertiary patents, provisional patents, and design patents – unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs
Ground – spec guts core generics like innovation that rely on reducing all kinds of IP for all medicines because individual types of IP don’t substantially affect the pharmaceutical industry – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start
Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical
No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly
Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater
Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
10/8/21
SO - T - Nebel Medicines
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: OA Independent DM | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1nc Round 1
1NC
Interpretation: medicines is a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that member nations of the World Trade Organization reduce intellectual property protections for a subset of medicines.
Nebel 19 Jake Nebel ~Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs.~ , 8-12-2019, "Genericity on the Standardized Tests Resolution," Briefly, https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/08/12/genericity-on-the-standardized-tests-resolution/ SM Both distinctions are important. Generic resolutions can’t be affirmed by specifying particular instances.
AND
-value meaning and standard expectations about what LD resolutions tend to mean.
It applies to medicines:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that nations ought to reduce IPP for one medicine does not entail that those nations ought to reduce IPP for all medicines
Adverb test – adding "usually" to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because a reduction is universal and permanent
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh:
T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here
Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution
It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
Limits – there are countless affs accounting for thousands of medicines – unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs
There are over 20,000 affs
FDA 11/18 ~(U.S. Food and Drug Administration, federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Service) "Fact Sheet: FDA at a Glance," 11/18/2020~ JL There are over 20,000 prescription drug products approved for marketing. FDA
AND
drug products. There are about 300 FDA-licensed biologics products.
Ground – spec guts core generics like innovation that rely on reducing IP for all medicines because individual medicines don’t affect the pharmaceutical industry broadly – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start
Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical
Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation
No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly
Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater
Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
9/20/21
SO - T - Nebel Member Nations
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harker DS | Judge: Colton Gilbert
1NC – T
Interpretation: member nations of the World Trade Organization is a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that a subset of member nations ought to reduce IP protections for medicines.
Nebel 19 Jake Nebel ~Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs.~ , 8-12-2019, "Genericity on the Standardized Tests Resolution," Briefly, https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/08/12/genericity-on-the-standardized-tests-resolution/ SM Both distinctions are important. Generic resolutions can’t be affirmed by specifying particular instances.
AND
-value meaning and standard expectations about what LD resolutions tend to mean.
It applies to member nations:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying "US ought to reduce IPP for medicines" doesn’t entail that all nations ought to
Adverb test – adding "usually" to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh:
Topicality is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden, they agreed to debate the topic when they came to the tournament
Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution
It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement, and there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
Limits – there are countless affs accounting for any permutation of 164 member nations that are home to vastly different pharmaceutical industries and illnesses – unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs
Ground – spec guts core generics like WTO bad and the health multilateralism DA that rely on all nations reducing IP and shifts away from the core topic lit of WTO patent waivers – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
10/16/21
SO - T - WTO
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harker DS | Judge: Colton Gilbert
1NC – T
Interpretation: topical affs must fiat an action through the World Trade Organization
Member nations of the WTO make policies as a whole
a nation of vast size with a small population— Mary K. Hammond
Collective nouns are singular – this means "member nations" refers to a singular entity
MLA 3/8 ~"Should I use a singular or plural verb with a collective noun?" MLA Style Center, 3/8/2021~ JL Collective nouns, like team, family, class, group, and host,
AND
(The team collectively paints the mural, so the verb is singular.)
Violation – they don’t – EU member states are distinct from WTO member nations
Prefer
Precision – even if all EU member states are in the WTO that doesn’t mean all WTO member nations are in the EU – prefer our interp – we have evidence from the WTO that explains what coordinated action looks like and
Limits and ground – explodes the topic to include affs about any country reducing IP – only our interp ensures link magnitude by ensuring it is an international reduction for IPP for medicine which is key to generics like the innovation DA which requires reducing IP across the board, WTO bad, negotiations and politics DAs, circumvention – stretches pre-tournament neg prep too thin and precluding rigorous testing – theory and medicine spec affs solve PICs
TVA – spec a medicine
Topic ed – WTO patent waivers are the topic – their aff is just domestic policy passed in ~~state~~ – proven by their second advantage – none of their internal links are about medical trade secrets which proves their interpretation is a cheap way of getting a relations impact about any two countries – justifies the US-Mexico or China-Japan aff. Outweighs – prep is determined by the lit and we only have 2 months to debate the topic
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start
Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation
Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater
Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
10/16/21
SO - T - WTO v2
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Harker SS | Judge: Chris Castillo
1NC – T
Interpretation: topical affs must fiat an action through the World Trade Organization
Member nations of the WTO make policies as a whole
, the WTO is a member-driven, consensus-based organization.
Collective nouns are singular – this means "member nations" refers to a singular entity
MLA 3/8 ~"Should I use a singular or plural verb with a collective noun?" MLA Style Center, 3/8/2021~ JL Collective nouns, like team, family, class, group, and host,
AND
(The team collectively paints the mural, so the verb is singular.)
"The" indicates all member states.
Merriam-Webster ~Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the, ~Lex AKu used as a function word before a noun or a substantivized adjective to indicate reference to a group as a whole
Violation – they don’t – EU member states are distinct from WTO member nations
Prefer
Precision – even if all EU member states are in the WTO that doesn’t mean all WTO member nations are in the EU – prefer our interp – we have evidence from the WTO that explains what coordinated action looks like and
Limits and ground – explodes the topic to include affs about any country reducing IP – only our interp ensures link magnitude by ensuring it is an international reduction for IPP for medicine which is key to generics like the innovation DA which requires reducing IP across the board, WTO bad, negotiations and politics DAs, circumvention – stretches pre-tournament neg prep too thin and precluding rigorous testing – theory and medicine spec affs solve PICs
TVA – spec a medicine
Topic ed – WTO patent waivers are the topic – their aff is just domestic policy passed in EU– none of their internal links are about medical trade secrets which proves their interpretation is a cheap way of getting a relations impact about any two countries – justifies the US-Mexico or China-Japan aff. Outweighs – prep is determined by the lit and we only have 2 months to debate the topic
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start
Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation
Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater
Interpretation: Debaters must disclose new affirmatives on the wiki 30 minutes before they are read in round.
Violation: You didn’t I’ll insert a screenshot here:
Net benefits -
1 - Testing: There are hundreds of potential aff positions, disclosure of the aff directs pre-round prep which ensures the debate is about the substance of the position as opposed to generics, which is key to nuanced clash and in depth debate. Their interpretation forces the negative to read frivolous theory or kritiks with overly broad points of disagreement with the aff.
2 - New does not mean better: Your interp encourages debaters to try to win rounds with surprise strategies as opposed to well researched positions, which kills predictability and iterative content mastery.
Vote on fairness because it is axiomatically necessary to determine the better debater over the better cheater
Vote on education because it is the reason why schools fund debate
Use competing interps:
Reasonability is arbitrary which invites judge intervention or random unjustified thresholds.
Competing interpretations deters future abuse by creating consistent norms that debaters can be held to in the future.
Drop the debater:
Deters future abuse the greatest incentive in debate is competitive success so debaters won’t read positions if they can’t win on them.