1ac - inequality 1nc - Spec Strikes Bizcon Police PIC Consult ICJ Case 1ar - all pics bad condo 2nr - police pic 2ar - pics bad
Berkeley
3
Opponent: Coppell RM | Judge: Skye Spindler
1ac - cap aff 1nc - aspec T-fw Asteroid Mining DA Transition Wars DA Case 1ar - all 2nr - T-Fw 2ar - all
Harvard Westlake
5
Opponent: Brentwood AR | Judge: Diana Alvarez
1ac - cap 1nc - aspec innovation da asteroids pic nasa da case w mining IVI 1ar - all 2nr - pic case w IVI 2ar - all
Harvard-Westlake
1
Opponent: Marlborough YN | Judge: Joshua Michael
1ac - global commons 1nc - Extra T Private T Mining DA Reg Treaty CP Case 1ar - all 2nr - ET DACP Case turns 2ar - case DACP
Harvard-Westlake
3
Opponent: Karan Shah | Judge: Joshua StPeter
1ac - disclose cites debris 1nc - T-space T-the T-general principle Mining DA No RVI Hedge Case 1ar - disclose cites all grammar DA case 2nr - T-General Principle Disclose cites Grammar DA case 2ar - Disclose cites T-general Principle
Harvard-Westlake
5
Opponent: Brentwood AR | Judge: Diana Alvarez
1ac - cap 1nc - aspec asteroid pic nasa da innovation da 1ar - all condo 2nr - pic case turns condo 2ar - all
Heritage Hall
2
Opponent: Kyra Terez | Judge: Leah
1ac - lay 1NC - weed pic weed DA must spec IPRs innovation da 2nr - weed pic weed da
JW Patterson
2
Opponent: William B Travis KT | Judge: Leah Clark-Villanueva
1ac - covid 1nc - spec iprs weed pic weed da biotech case 1ar - rvi case 2nr - the weed combo case 2ar - rvi
JW Patterson
3
Opponent: Cabot JB | Judge: Shawn Rafferty
Wholesome lay round
JW Patterson
5
Opponent: Harvard-Westlake AL | Judge: Lawson Hudson
1ac - hwl lio aff 1nc - t med Grove biotech da case 1ar - all 2nr - t med case 2ar - all
JW Patterson
Octas
Opponent: Cabot JO | Judge: Panel
Opponent didn't show up
Jack Howe
1
Opponent: Marlborough GA | Judge: Saketh Kotapati
1ac - vaccine col aff 1nc - t reduce RR Cp BioD DA Consult WHO CP Case 1ar - all 2nr - consult cp case 2ar - all
Jack Howe
4
Opponent: Millard North YL | Judge: Joseph Barquin
1ac - asian rage 1nc - tfw cap case 1ar - imp turns on t all 2nr - cap collapse 2ar - t rvi impact turns
Jack Howe
6
Opponent: Harvard-Westlake ML | Judge: Benjamin Cortez
1ac - lio case 1nc - treduce spec iprs innovation midterms da 1ar - all 2nr - midterms (i screwed up we dont talk abt it) 2ar - absolutely wrecking me case all
Loyola Invitational
4
Opponent: Proof DR | Judge: Brett Cryan
1a-evergreening 1n - t reduce fda cp heg k case 1ar - all 2n - tkcase 2a - all
Loyola Invitational
6
Opponent: LNU PD | Judge: Jared Croitoru
1ac - covid 1nc - disc bioweapons cp spec ipr heg K case 1ar - all 2nr - disclosure case 2ar - disclosure case
1ac - Covid 1nc - Disclosure T reduce Heg K Case 1ar - All 2nr - TK Case 2ar - All
ODI
1
Opponent: Adaolisa | Judge: Ananya Natchukuri
1AC - China 1NC - Nebel Xi Innovation Case 1AR - Nebel Xi Innovation 2NR - Nebel Xi Case 2ar - Nebel Xi
ODI
4
Opponent: Bryce Ownby | Judge: Amulya Natchukuri
1AC - Whole Rez 1NC - Abusive Dyslexia Spike Theory Indian Ocean DA Case 1AR - All 2NR - No RVIs Indian Ocean DA Case 2AR - yes RVIs
Palm Classic
6
Opponent: Lexington AR | Judge: Wyatt Hattfield
1ac - jesus affirms 1nc - ok i legit extemped a "say pls" shell and jesus negates 1ar - all 2nr - jesus negates 2ar - jesus affirms (no OS for this as i quite literally extemped the entire 1nc)
Palm Classic
3
Opponent: Harker AV | Judge: Gordon Krauss
1ac - harker asteroid aff 1nc - Extra T Mining DA Case 1ar - all 2nr - T Case 2ar - all
Palm Classic
1
Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: James Stuckert
1ac - megaconstellations 1nc - T-Approp T-subsets T-NSDA Precision Ag Africa CP Case 1ar - all no multi shell RVIs 2nr - T-NSDA covered 1ar offense 2ar - the legendary RVI!
Peninsula
2
Opponent: Immac MF | Judge: Joseph Barquin
1ac - china 1nc - T-the T-private Xi DA Deterrence DA case 1ar - all 2nr - deterrence da case 2ar - all
Peninsula
5
Opponent: HWL ML | Judge: David Dosch
1ac - cap 1nc - ASPEC Cyber DA Nasa DA Mining DA Mining PIC Inequality DA case 1ar - all 2nr - inequality case 2ar - all
Peninsula
Doubles
Opponent: Sequoia AS | Judge: Panel
1ac - debris 1nc - Space T T - The advantage CP Ag DA Case 1ar - all condo 2nr - rvi on condo case 2ar - all
Peninsula
3
Opponent: HWL LD | Judge: Valorie Lam
1ac - cap 1nc - ASPEC T-Private Innovation DA Mining PIC Nasa DA Case 1ar - all 2nr - mining pic case 2ar - all
Puget Sound
2
Opponent: Garrett Lee | Judge: David McGinnis
1ac - trad 1nc - util internet da concon global internet da case 1ar - all but cp 2nr - GI Da cp case 2ar - all
Puget Sound
4
Opponent: Yash Kulkarni | Judge: Greg Stevens
1ac - lay 1nc - Nasa DA Internet DA Global Internet DA Innovation DA Case 1ar - all 2nr - nasa Global internet case 2ar - all
Puget Sound
5
Opponent: Jay Namdhari | Judge: Zach Reshovsky
1ac - PTD 1nc - Extra T Xi DA Case 1ar - all 2nr - Extra T Case turns 2ar - RVI
Puget Sound
Quarters
Opponent: Rahul Penumetcha | Judge: Panel
1ac - Boeing 1nc - New Affs Bad T-General principle Korsgaard NC Truth Testing Util K Case 1ar - all 2nr - T-GP Util K Case 2ar - all
Puget Sound
Semis
Opponent: Graham Johnstone | Judge: Panel
1ac - SV 1nc - Nasa DA Global Internet DA Case 1ar - all 2nr - all 2ar - all
TOC
9
Opponent: wg374yf2q0h | Judge: the muffin man
yeet
TOC
2
Opponent: Harvard-Westlake IC | Judge: Nick Fleming
1ac - starlink 1nc - new affs bad T-Subsets ADR CP Hindi CP Xi Disad case 1ar - all 2nr - T Case 2ar - T Case
UK Season Opener
4
Opponent: Larry A Ryle JG | Judge: Saketh Kotapati
1ac - trad 1nr - sorry im evil spec iprs disclosure RR CP biotech da apoc reps K case 1ar - all 2nr - Disc presumption trigger 2ar - all
UK Season Opener
5
Opponent: Ramsay DF | Judge: Anand Rao
1ac - structural viol 1nc - util spec ipr WEED PIC WEED DISAD wholesome biotech da apoc reps K case 1ar - extinction impact turn 2nr - extinction is bad and all that also extend weed pic 2ar - all
UK Season Opener
1
Opponent: Acton-Boxborough Isha Agarwal | Judge: Anna Dean
1ac - covid 1nc - T-Med T-Reduce Royalty Rates CP Biotech DA Apocalyptic Reps K Case 1ar - All 2nr - T-Reduce CP-DA Case 2ar - all
USC
2
Opponent: Marlborough TZ | Judge: Ben Cortez
1ac - Prison Strikes 1nc - Abolition K Case 1ar - all 2nr - all 2ar - all
USC
4
Opponent: Hwl AD | Judge: Diana Alvarez
1ac - Squid Games 1nc - Congress CP w ASPEC Teachers DA Case turns 1ar - all 2nr - ASPEC voter on perm cp case 2ar - perm case
USC
6
Opponent: HWL AL | Judge: Vanessa Nguyen
1ac - inequality 1nc - baudy case 1ar - all 2nr - all 2ar - all
USC
Octas
Opponent: HWL JH | Judge: Panel
1ac - Brazil 1nc - Lula Ptx DA T-"a" case turns 1ar - all 2nr - T Case turns 2ar - t case
To modify or delete round reports, edit the associated round.
Cites
Entry
Date
0 - Accessibility Inclusion
Tournament: Tournament | Round: Finals | Opponent: Opponent | Judge: Judge Please let me know what I can do to meet your accessibility standards before round.
9/4/21
0 - Contact Info
Tournament: Tournament | Round: Finals | Opponent: Opponent | Judge: Judge Contact me at pradhanrishit@gmail.com, or 661-497-7055
9/4/21
0 - Help Me
Tournament: Tournament | Round: Finals | Opponent: Opponent | Judge: Judge Hello, My name Is Rishit Pradhan I am bad at hearing stuff over my garbage internet so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE slow down during rebuttals and speak louder. I'll tell you this in round too but if I forget please don't just go out there and pull a lightning McQueen.
Also I am bad at seeing stuff and my eyes hurt if you make ur font too small to make It bigger please I have no preferences on font type but Calibri is pretty fire.
On underviews and other stuff like that don't Make it insanely dense because then I'll be sad because I physically can't comprehend it. Instead like make it spread out or something.
Content Warnings: Give content warnings for SA and graphic descriptions of violence
Be nice in CX I hate it when my opponent is mean I'm literally only at this tournament for fun let me have fun.
I am Coached by JARED BURKE, JONATHAN MEZA, and Crystal Huddleston, if I do something sus you can contact them from their tab paradigm to complain.
9/4/21
0 - Important note for TOC Opponents or anyone else
Tournament: TOC | Round: 9 | Opponent: wg374yf2q0h | Judge: the muffin man my wiki quite literally crashed massively whilst trying to upload rounds so many things aren't showing up that should be. if u are reading any disclosure related shell, run it through me 30 min before rounds otherwise this'll act as terminal defense to your shell.
if you seek to know anything about any round, i will provide it to you and disclose properly.
if ur a novice reading this and want to know anything about my rounds please lmk at my email and i will do my best to help you and provide you with the right resources.
4/23/22
0 - Navigation
Tournament: ODI | Round: 1 | Opponent: Adaolisa | Judge: Ananya Natchukuri 0 - info 1 - interps 2 - case positions 3 - Ks 4 - Disads SO - Septober ND - Novdec JF - JanFeb (TOC) MA - Mapril
7/26/21
0 - Note on Cites
Tournament: Harvard-Westlake | Round: 3 | Opponent: Karan Shah | Judge: Joshua StPeter My cites are broken you can check round reports to see how I argue but i am unable to properly cite as it crashes my computer.
Their failure to specify an agent is a voting issue – makes mechanism counterplans and agent-based disads impossible – it’s a voter for fairness because the 1AR can spike out of DAs and CPs, which kills clash and nuance. Means stick them with governments implementing the plan – that’s normal means since it’s what the literature assumes and what most disad links are about
1~ Interp – Unjust refers to a negative action – it means contrary.
Black Laws No Date "What is Unjust?" https://thelawdictionary.org/unjust/Elmer Contrary to right and justice, or to the enjoyment of his rights by another, or to the standards of conduct furnished by the laws.
The Last line of 1AC Babcock definitively proves the violation – the aff creates things external to the resolution like limited use of private property, tradable property rights, and the creation of a management regime in outer space
Babcock 19 ~Hope M. Babcock, Professor Babcock served as general counsel to the National Audubon Society from 1987-91 and as deputy general counsel and Director of Audubon's Public Lands and Water Program from 1981-87. Previously, she was a partner with Blum, Nash and Railsback, where she focused on energy and environmental issues, and an associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby and MacRae where she represented utilities in the nuclear licensing process. From 1977-79, she served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy and Minerals in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Professor Babcock has taught environmental and natural resources law as a visiting professor at Pace University Law School and as an adjunct at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Catholic University, and Antioch law schools. Professor Babcock was a member of the Standing Committee on Environmental Law of the American Bar Association, and served on the Clinton-Gore Transition Team, 2019, Syracuse Law Review, https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2201~~ simha The PTD offers both an approach for managing an open access commons and a gap AND regime from another, private property, enabled by application of the PTD.
Here's another recutting of babcock that proves they require a ton of steps external to the plan
Babcock 19 (, H., 2019. THE PUBLIC TRUST DOCTRINE, OUTER SPACE, AND THE GLOBAL COMMONS: TIME TO CALL HOME ET. ~online~ Lawreview.syr.edu. Available at: https://lawreview.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/H-Babcock-Article-Final-Document-v2.pdf~~#page=67 ~Accessed 15 December 2021~ Professor Babcock served as general counsel to the National Audubon Society from 1987-91 and as deputy general counsel and Director of Audubon's Public Lands and Water Program from 1981-87. Previously, she was a partner with Blum, Nash and Railsback, where she focused on energy and environmental issues, and an associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby and MacRae where she represented utilities in the nuclear licensing process. From 1977-79, she served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy and Minerals in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Professor Babcock has taught environmental and natural resources law as a visiting professor at Pace University Law School and as an adjunct at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Catholic University, and Antioch law schools. Professor Babcock was a member of the Standing Committee on Environmental Law of the American Bar Association, and served on the Clinton-Gore Transition Team.)-rahulpenu Definitions of space sustainability The Secure World Foundation defines space sustainability as "ensuring that AND these technological developments are discussions and documented publicly to the greatest extent."64
2~ Violation – a~ The Aff is a positive action – it creates a new concept for Space i.e. the treating of Space under the public trust doctrine b~ the aff creates a new property rights regime to manage private property claims
3~ Standards –
a~ Limits – making the topic bi-directional explodes predictability – it means that Aff's can both increase non-exist property regimes in space AND decrease appropriation by private actors – makes the topic untenable.
b~ Ground – wrecks Neg Generics – we can't say appropriation good since the 1AC can create new views on Outer Space Property Rights that circumvent our Links since they can say "Public Trust" approach solves.
Independently - the Plan is both Extra-T - since it establishes a new property rights regime AND Effects-T - since the creation of new property rights regimes ISNT INTRINSICALLY a reduction on Private Property in Space, it involves actions like creating a governance system AND redistribution/cooperation which is the I/L to their advantages - both of which are voters for Limits and Predictability – independently their plan text allows them to delink out of all core generics like space mining good or bad since you can just shift the way that private property rights works
Fairness is a voting issue because debates a game and needs fair rules to evaluate it and educations a voting issue because it's the only reason for why this activity is useful in the first place
4~ TVA – just defend that space appropriation is bad.
a~ Topicality is Drop the Debater – it's a fundamental baseline for debate-ability.
b~ Use Competing Interps – 1~ Topicality is a yes/no question, you can't be reasonably topical and 2~ Reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation.
c~ No RVI's - 1~ Forces the 1NC to go all-in on Theory which kills substance education, 2~ Encourages Baiting since the 1AC will purposely be abusive, and 3~ Illogical – you shouldn't win for not being abusive.
4/16/22
1 - JF - Extra-T v2
Tournament: Harvard-Westlake | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough YN | Judge: Joshua Michael
1~ Interp – Unjust refers to a negative action – it means contrary.
Black Laws No Date "What is Unjust?" https://thelawdictionary.org/unjust/Elmer Contrary to right and justice, or to the enjoyment of his rights by another, or to the standards of conduct furnished by the laws.
2~ Violation – The Aff is a positive action – it creates a new concept for Space i.e. the treating of Space as a "Global Commons".
3~ Standards –
a~ Limits – making the topic bi-directional explodes predictability – it means that Aff's can both increase non-exist property regimes in space AND decrease appropriation by private actors – makes the topic untenable.
b~ Ground – wrecks Neg Generics – we can't say appropriation good since the 1AC can create new views on Outer Space Property Rights that circumvent our Links since they can say "Global Commons" approach solves.
4~ TVA – just defend that space appropriation is bad.
a~ Topicality is Drop the Debater – it's a fundamental baseline for debate-ability.
b~ Use Competing Interps – 1~ Topicality is a yes/no question, you can't be reasonably topical and 2~ Reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation.
The meta-ethic is procedural moral realism - substantive realism holds that moral truths exist independently of that in the empirical world. Prefer procedural realism –
~1~ Uncertainty – our experiences are inaccessible to others which allows people to say they don't experience the same, however a priori principles are universally applied to all agents.
~2~ Naturalistic fallacy – experience only tells us what is since we can only perceive what is, not what ought to be, this means experience may be generally useful but should not be the basis for ethical action.
~3~ Induction – it's logically incoherent because it's own method presupposes it's justification which proves predictions fail - fails
Practical Reason is that procedure. To ask for why we should be reasoners concedes its authority since it uses reason – anything else is nonbinding and arbitrary. Aggregation is nonsensical since a~ it impedes on one persons ends for another and b~ assumes everyone values the same thing.
Moral law must be universal—our judgements can't only apply to ourselves any more than 2+2
4 can be true only for me – any non-universalizable norm justifies someone's ability to impede on your ends.==== Korsgaard '83 (Christine M., "Two Distinctions in Goodness," The Philosophical Review Vol. 92, No. 2 (Apr., 1983), pp. 169-195, JSTOR) ~brackets for gendered language~ The argument shows how Kant's idea of justification works. It can be read as AND -and, in general, to make the highest good our end.
Thus the standard is consistency with the categorical imperative. To clarify, consequences don't link to the framework.
Prefer additionally –
~1~ Kantian theory has the best tools for fighting oppression through combatting ethical egoism and abstraction
Farr 02 ~Arnold (prof of phil @ UKentucky, focusing on German idealism, philosophy of race, postmodernism, psychoanalysis, and liberation philosophy). "Can a Philosophy of Race Afford to Abandon the Kantian Categorical Imperative?" JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 33 No. 1, Spring 2002, 17–32 LEX JB~ One of the most popular criticisms of Kant's moral philosophy is that it is too AND equally deplorable to reject the categorical imperative without first exploring its emancipatory potential.
~2~ Enterprise – we are composed of different practical identities, but reason unifies them and allows us to shift and act upon different enterprises. Consequentialist frameworks cannot produce unified moral actions.
I negate the resolution
1~ Libertarianism mandates a market-oriented approach to space—that negates
Broker 20 ~(Tyler, work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review and the University of Memphis Law Review.) "Space Law Can Only Be Libertarian Minded," Above the Law, 1-14-20, https://abovethelaw.com/2020/01/space-law-can-only-be-libertarian-minded/~~ TDI The impact on human daily life from a transition to the virtually unlimited resource reality AND fidelity to a set of laws made possible, in such an existence.
Interpretation: Debaters must not break new affs if the advocacy text is not disclosed 30 min before round
Violation: u said its new
Standards:
1~ Clash- Not disclosing incentivizes surprise tactics and poorly refined positions that rely on artificial and vague negative engagement to win debates. Their interpretation means that negatives are forced to rely on generics that don't link or barely link instead of smart contextual strategies destroying nuanced argumentation.
2~ Resource Disparities – Their interpretation means only giant prep squads or schools with generations of prep could engage effectively since small school debaters don't have prep that links to every possible aff from Rawls to Non-T to Wynter to a hyper specific policy aff.
Fairness –
Ed —
Paradigm Issues:
Use Competing Interps on New Affs Bad –
A. It's a yes/no question on disclosing a new aff since you can't disclose half a plantext "States ought to eliminate" means nothing.
B. Reasonability changes every round and forces the judge to intervene to determine what is reasonable.
No RVIs
A.Encourages debaters to read New Affs just to bait the shell and win on the RVI – kills substance
Discourages checking real abuse since debaters will think they will lose to the RVI
Drop the Debater
A.Our interp affects their entire 1AC since we couldn't prepare for any argument – so drop the argument doesn't make sense.
4/16/22
1 - JF - New Affs Bad v2
Tournament: TOC | Round: 2 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake IC | Judge: Nick Fleming Check OS Cites Broken
a) Prep Skew - debaters running abusive positions will always be prepared for theory because they know coming into the round what they'll need to defend. Allowing debaters to run RVIs and go all-in for theory solidifies the advantage of the one committing the abuse. Prep skew harms fairness – if one debater has more prep, then the round is structurally favors one debater
b) Denies the antecedent - you shouldn't win because you're fair – logic comes first – all arguments in debate must be logical to have weight
c) Norming – RVIs disincentivize the checking of abuse because we are deterred from reading theory if we know that we will lose on theory 75 of the time against someone who's better at it – norming outweighs otherwise debate will die out because of abuse prolif
d) Substantive education – RVIs incentivize debaters going all-in on theory and ignoring substance – this directly decreases topic-specific education which outweighs because the topic only lasts two months and is the only portable knowledge we'll gain from debate
e) ~1AR counterinterp specific~ – No RVIs for 2N counterinterps – devasting 4-6 time skew means that the aff will be behind on every theory debate – no RVIs means that we get to check 1N abuse while not having to be afraid of losing on theory and no 1AR I-meets they can spam untrue I meets and make 2nr impossible
4/16/22
1 - JF - T-Appropriation
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 1 | Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: James Stuckert Cites broken can show proof
Interpretation – topical affirmatives defend the resolution as a general principle. To clarify, a general principle necessitates that you defend that the plan is a good idea in the abstract and don't defend implementation and PICs don't negate.
Outweighs – It's literally on the LD ballot which means whenever a judge submits the ballot it's what they contractually abide by – operating outside of the rules would forfeit the judge's ability to submit a decision – that flips reasonability because rules are most predictable because they're procedures to debating.
(2) Fairness – it prevents abusive PICs out of certain parts of the plan that are abusive because it steals aff ground by isolating a hyperspecific DA to the plan – solves topic education to read it as a DA and has the net benefit of critical thinking because you need to win the DA actually outweighs the plan
(3) Phil education – it encourages philosophical analysis and prevents messy enforcement and process debates where you just focus on the post-fiat implications – we'll impact turn policy debate a) it's nonunique through forums of CX and PF b) philosophical policy is better because you can find the best possible idea, not the most common c) phil education outweighs because it's unique to LD and controls the internal link to other education through philosophical justification
Interpretation – topical affirmatives defend the resolution as a general principle. To clarify, a general principle necessitates that you defend that the plan is a good idea in the abstract and don't defend implementation and PICs don't negate.
Outweighs – It's literally on the LD ballot which means whenever a judge submits the ballot it's what they contractually abide by – operating outside of the rules would forfeit the judge's ability to submit a decision – that flips reasonability because rules are most predictable because they're procedures to debating.
(2) Fairness – it prevents abusive PICs out of certain parts of the plan that are abusive because it steals aff ground by isolating a hyperspecific DA to the plan – solves topic education to read it as a DA and has the net benefit of critical thinking because you need to win the DA actually outweighs the plan
(3) Phil education – it encourages philosophical analysis and prevents messy enforcement and process debates where you just focus on the post-fiat implications – we'll impact turn policy debate a) it's nonunique through forums of CX and PF b) philosophical policy is better because you can find the best possible idea, not the most common c) phil education outweighs because it's unique to LD and controls the internal link to other education through philosophical justification
4/16/22
1 - JF - T-Private
Tournament: Harvard-Westlake | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough YN | Judge: Joshua Michael
Interpretation- Debaters must defend the resolution resolved: The Appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.
Violation- their actor is governments- cross and the internals of the goehring card proves- they'll say they don't say governments in the plan text but all of their evidence is in the context of governments doing more regulation in space
Bierson 21, Marshal Bierson, Topic Analysis by Marshal Bierson, Victory Briefs, Marshall is currently completing his PhD in Philosophy at Florida State University. His primarily studies the intersection of ethics and the nature of persons. Outside of Academia, Marshall also directs curricular design for high school debate camps with the Victory Briefs Institute. I have a pdf, r0w@n Normally this distinction between morality and justice does not matter very much. But this AND show that the act of appropriation itself wrongs anyone or violates any rights.
1~ Semantics outweigh:
A~ 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
B~ Jurisdiction — you can't vote affirmative if they haven't affirmed
C~ 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.
2~ Limits:
A~ Quantitative – there are tens of of thousands of affs because they can call anything that makes it harder for companies in space as turning away from appropriation
B~ Qualitative – they take away generic turns like appropriations good and functionally jettison "private entities" from the topic, which shifts away from the core topic lit – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
Interpretation: the affirmative must only defend that the appropriation of space by private entities is unjust.
China's "private" sector companies aren't private
Olson 20 ~Stephen Olson, research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation. "Are Private Chinese Companies Really Private?" The Diplomat, 9-30-2020, accessed 1-14-2022, https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/are-private-chinese-companies-really-private/~~ HWIC China has often been criticized for a lack of transparency, especially with regard to AND estimated to be about 3 percent of China's GDP) to Chinese companies.
Negate – they skirt the core controversy of the topic which is national vs private space activities – kills stasis point and pre-round prep and means we lose access to generics that rely on the motives of private companies differing from national interest proven by the fact that their advantage is functionally China space good/bad – competing interps and DTD on T, it's a question of models and we indict their advocacy
Interpretation: Topical affirmatives must defend the appropriation of outer space
Outer space starts 10k miles above the surface of earth – that's where earth atmosphere ends
National Geographic No Date ~National Geographic Society, "Atmosphere," https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/atmosphere/~~ Sachin Earth's atmosphere stretches from the surface of the planet up to as far as 10 AND gravity is so small here that molecules of gas escape into outer space.
Violation: 340 miles is less than the 372 miles necessary to be considered outer space; all spacecraft that cause debris through constellations are below this height
Vote neg:
1~ Limits and ground: the aff interpretation explodes the topic to allow any aff about space generally which structurally alters the neg research burden because there's a qualitative difference between outer space and the atmosohere. Means we get no ground bc of how unpredictable the AC could be from round to round – kills core neg generics like space col bad and mining that don't link if you specify a part of space
2~ Precision – Justifies the aff arbitrarily doing away with words in the resolution which gives way to affs about anything which obliterates neg prep.
Private multi-actor fiat is a voter —- proven by them spiking out of the enforcement question in CX
Even if they win their interp pragmatically true, you only have jurisdiction to vote on topical advocacies, you can't vote affirmative if they haven't affirmed.
Fair and Ed
1nc theory first, matter of sequentiality, we had to be abusive because aff was abusive
Use competing interps - Topicality is a binary question, you can't be reasonably topical and it invites a race to the bottom of intervention
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.
No RVIS – it's your burden to be topical
4/16/22
1 - JF - T-Subsets Small
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 1 | Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: James Stuckert Cites broken can show proof
4/23/22
1 - JF - T-Subsets v2
Tournament: TOC | Round: 2 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake IC | Judge: Nick Fleming Check OS Cites Broken
Interp – "the" is a definite article that refers to one group. Affs must not specify a subset of appropriation by private entities and PICS don't negate
Rinnert et al 86, Professor Emeritus at Hiroshima City University, Paper presented at the Japan Association of Language Teachers' International Conference on Language Teaching and Learning (Teaching the English Article System, Nov 1986, Speeches/Conference Papers (150) — Reports - Descriptive (141) — Tests/Evaluation Instruments (160)) KD PRINCIPLE 4 MODIFIERS BEFORE AND AFTER THE NOUN Very often, the uniqueness of the AND for such people. (See Appendix B, exercises 15-18.)
Vote neg—
1~ Limits— hundreds of types of appropriation that the aff can pick from and limitless combinations underlimits the topic and destroys neg prep since there's no unifying DA against mining, space tourism, satellites, space col, and debris — aff gets infinite prep and sets terms for debate so DAs and PICs are inherently reactive and its absurd to say potential neg abuse justifies the aff being flat-out non-T— limits outweighs – reciprocal prep burden and allows for nuanced engagement
2~ Textuality is an independent voter—it determines which interps your ballot can endorse by providing the only salient focal point for debates
4/16/22
1 - JF - TFramework
Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 3 | Opponent: Coppell RM | Judge: Skye Spindler Cites Broken on my computer, once lizzie fixes it'll all be good
The role of the ballot is to determine the truth or falsity of the resolution.
~1~ Linguistics – five dictionaries define to negate as to deny the truth of and affirm as to prove true. That outweighs – a) Controls the internal link to predictability and prep which is key for clash and substantive education b) Key to jurisdiction since the judge can only endorse what is within their burden c) Even if another role of the ballot is better for debate, that is not a reason it ought to be the role of the ballot, just a reason we ought to discuss it.
~2~ Every statement is a question of truth – for example, saying "the res is false" is the same as saying, "it is true that the res is false." That means other ROTBs collapse to truth testing.
~3~ Inclusion – their ROTB excludes all strategies but theirs, which is bad for inclusive debates because people without comprehensive debate knowledge are shut out of your scholarship which turns their ROTB.
~4~ Isomorphism – ROTBs that aren't phrased as binaries maximize leeway for interpretation as to who is winning offense. Scalar framing mechanisms necessitate that the judge has to intervene to see who is closest at solving a problem. Truth testing is a binary of truth or falsity – there isn't a closest estimate.
Presumption and Permissibility negates:
~1~ The res says they have to prove obligation. Permissibility is sufficient to negate because you can't be obligated and lack an obligation simultaneously.
~2~ Moral statements are more often false than true since I can prove something false in infinite ways but true in only one.
Zeno's – If you want to move from x to y, you need to move halfway from x to y, and halfway of halfway, and so on infinitely which means that it's impossible to move from x to y. Vote neg since the idea of doing something is incoherent.
Good Samaritan – If you say that you want to solve x problem, it's a necessary precondition that x exists which means that any person who wants to solve x must advocate for x to occur. Means affirming negates you want nukes to exist. This is a logical extension of "if p is good, and p is only good because of q, then q is good."
Regress – if I question x, and you respond with y, then I can question y and create an infinite chain of reasoning – negate since the starting point of knowledge is indeterminate and thus we can't know what is true.
4/16/22
1 - ND - Spec Strikes
Tournament: Badgerland | Round: 2 | Opponent: Jerry Sun | Judge: Nicholas Wallenburg Interpretation: The affirmative debater must specify the type of strikes they defend in a delineated text in the 1AC. Violation: they didn’t Standards – 1 Topic lit – strikes are the core question of the topic and there’s no consensus on normal means so you must spec. Law Library “Strike”, N.D., https://law.jrank.org/pages/10554/Strike-Status.html, Law Library, This law and legal reference library provides free access to thousands of legal articles, covering important court cases, historical legal documents, state laws and statutes, and general legal information. Popular articles include Landlord and Tenant Relationship, Health Insurance Law and Employment Law. The legal reference database also covers historically important court cases such as the Ulysses obscenity trial, Plessy vs. Ferguson, Roe vs. Wade and many others. All of the legal information on this website was professionally written and researched, and each law article has been carefully selected -- all to create the most comprehensive legal information site on the web. Read more: Law Library - American Law and Legal Information - JRank Articles https://law.jrank.org/#ixzz6yOIvCHj7 SS Strikes can be divided into two basic types: economic and unfair labor practice. An economic strike seeks to obtain some type of economic benefit for the workers, such as improved wages and hours, or to force recognition of their union. An unfair labor practice strike is called to protest some act of the employer that the employees regard as unfair. A Lexicon of Labor Strikes Over the years different types of labor strikes have acquired distinctive labels. The following are the most common types of strikes, some of which are illegal: Wildcat strike A strike that is not authorized by the union that represents the employees. Although not illegal under law, wildcat strikes ordinarily constitute a violation of an existing collective bargaining agreement. Walkout An unannounced refusal to perform work. A walkout may be spontaneous or planned in advance and kept secret. If the employees' conduct is an irresponsible or indefensible method of accomplishing their goals, a walkout is illegal. In other situations courts may rule that the employees have a good reason to strike. Slowdown An intermittent work stoppage by employees who remain on the job. Slowdowns are illegal because they give the employees an unfair bargaining advantage by making it impossible for the employer to plan for production by the workforce. An employer may discharge an employee for a work slowdown. Sitdown strike A strike in which employees stop working and refuse to leave the employer's premises. Sitdown strikes helped unions organize workers in the automobile industry in the 1930s but are now rare. They are illegal under most circumstances. Whipsaw strike A work stoppage against a single member of a bargaining unit composed of several employers. Whipsaw strikes are legal and are used by unions to bring added pressure against the employer who experiences not only the strike but also competition from the employers who have not been struck. Employers may respond by locking out employees of all facilities that belong to members of the bargaining unit. Whipsaw strikes have commonly been used in the automobile industry. Sympathy strike A work stoppage designed to provide AID AND COMFORT to a related union engaged in an employment dispute. Although sympathy strikes are not illegal, unions can relinquish the right to use this tactic in a COLLECTIVE BARGAINING agreement. Jurisdictional strike A strike that arises from a dispute over which LABOR UNION is entitled to represent the employees. Jurisdictional strikes are unlawful under federal LABOR LAWS because the argument is between unions and not between a union and the employer. This acts as a resolvability standard. Debate must make sense and be comparable for the judge to decide which means it’s an independent voter and outweighs. Extempt 2 Prep skew – I don’t know what they will be willing to clarify until CX which means I could go 6 minutes planning to read a disad and then get screwed over in CX when they spec a different type of strike. This means that CX can’t check because the time in between is when I should be formulating my strat and waiting until then is the abuse. Key fairness because I won’t be able to use the strat I formulated if you skewed my prep and will have a time disadvantage
Drop the debater – a deter future abuse and b set better norms for debate. Competing interps – a reasonability is arbitrary and encourages judge intervention since there’s no clear norm, b it creates a race to the top where we create the best possible norms for debate. No RVIs – a illogical, you don’t win for proving that you meet the burden of being fair, logic outweighs since it’s a prerequisite for evaluating any other argument, b RVIs incentivize baiting theory and prepping it out which leads to maximally abusive practices
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake NL | Judge: Donny Peters Interpretation: Debaters must disclose frameworks and advocacy texts to their opponents through any means thirty minutes before round.
Violation: they didn’t – – check the doc
Engagement – disclosure allows in-depth preparation before the round which checks back against unpredictable positions and allows debaters to effectively write case negs and blocks—allows for reciprocal engagement where each side has an equal opportunity to prepare. Engagement outweighs on uniqueness – only it shifts debate from a monologue to dialogue, without engagement debate becomes Original Oratory. a) Small School Inclusion – Big schools will always get your docs through having a lot of judges, competitors, and coaches with connections to other judges only disclosure allows small schools equal access. b) Reciprocity - They have infinite prep before round to make the perfect aff – only disclosure allows us to have a crumb of the amount of time they had. Reciprocity outweighs because it controls the internal link to fairness – irreciprocal burdens create inherent advantages. 2. Academic Ethics—disclosure deters mis-cutting, power-tagging, abuse of brackets and ellipses, and plagiarism – makes it harder to beat evidence because I can’t find all the issues in-round—independent voter for academic honesty—it’s a real-world norm and debate loses all educational value if we can just make up cards. I cannot go through all their cards in four minutes and still manage to craft an NC and answers. I cannot check in round. Academic Ethics outweighs because it controls entry to universities and higher learning – biggest internal link to education, universities will kick you out if you are academically dishonest. Fairness is a voter because debate is a competitive activity with a winner and a loser – Force them to answer as to why it’s a competition. Education is a voter because schools, educational institutions, pay for it. No RVIs because its illogical – you wouldn’t win chess for playing properly – Prefer logic for it’s a litmus test for other arguments Prefer competing interps because a) reasonability is a race to the bottom pushing the limits on how much abuse is justifiable b) reasonability is subjective and invites judge intervention Drop the debater cuz disclosure is constitutive of the whole aff
10/30/21
1 - SO - Spec IPRs
Tournament: UK Season Opener | Round: 4 | Opponent: Larry A Ryle JG | Judge: Saketh Kotapati 1NC – SPEC IPRs
Interp – The affirmative debater must specify which Intellectual property rights they reduce in a delineated Plan text in the 1AC Violation – They don’t There are different entities within “intellectual property rights” Stallman 15 Did you say "intellectual property"? It's a seductive mirage - gnu project - free software foundation. andnbsp;A GNU headandnbsp;. (n.d.). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html. CB DM It has become fashionable to toss copyright, patents, and trademarks—three separate and different entities involving three separate and different sets of laws—plus a dozen other laws into one pot and call it “intellectual property”. The distorting and confusing term did not become common by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it. The clearest way out of the confusion is to reject the term entirely. Prefer-
Shiftiness—Lacking of definition, the aff is vague. Leads to ability to shift advocacies. CX doesn't check because a. they can be sketchy and b. it kills pre-round prep 2. Ground- Hurts my strategy since I’ll err on the side of caution, especially hurts CPs and DAs that may apply to one type of test but not others. Fairness-restricts the choices that the neg has. 3. Clash—Not defining means I don’t know what to run in-round which kills high-quality engagement—absent clash debate becomes two ships passing in the night which is irresolvable—also means vote neg on presumption b/c the aff gets circumvented. Clash key to fairness- if aff gets circumvented, then the aff gets additional route to ballot. Education- allows for critical thinking skills and argument generation. 4. Good Norms- the other side would justify an infinite number of affirmatives because the definition is vague. Fairness- leads to unpredictability which forces underplaying and shallower debates. Voters Fairness because its constitutive of debate DTD – a) norms b) prevents abuse CI- a) judge intervention b) arbitrary brightline No RVI- a) time skew b) chilling effect No 1AR theory- creates 7-6 time skew CX Doesn’t Check a topic ed: asking a million questions about the advocacy means that we don’t get to discuss the central issues of the case or the warrants, that’s what makes the case true b They can shift out in CX as I ask disad questions, which is the abuse of my shell. c Infinitely regressive – this justifies the aff just saying “if you don’t understand the Plan – ask me about it in cross-x” d Not verifiable. We can’t know if they would have actually specified. People are trained in CX to be shady as possible- no way I could get an actual concession. e Prep skew –I don’t know what they will be willing to clarify until CX which means I could go 6 minutes planning to read a disad and then get screwed over in CX when they spec something else – means CX can’t check.
10/30/21
1 - SO - T-Medicines
Tournament: UK Season Opener | Round: 1 | Opponent: Acton-Boxborough Isha Agarwal | Judge: Anna Dean Interpretation: The aff must defend that member nations reduce intellectual property protections for all medicines Violation: They specify medicines as COVID Vaccines The upward entailment test and adverb test determine the genericity of a bare plural Leslie and Lerner 16 Sarah-Jane Leslie, Ph.D., Princeton, 2007. Dean of the Graduate School and Class of 1943 Professor of Philosophy. Served as the vice dean for faculty development in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, director of the Program in Linguistics, and founding director of the Program in Cognitive Science at Princeton University. Adam Lerner, PhD Philosophy, Postgraduate Research Associate, Princeton 2018. From 2018, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Center for Bioethics at New York University. Member of the Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab. “Generic Generalizations.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. April 24, 2016. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/generics/ TG
Generics and Logical Form In English, generics can be expressed using a variety of syntactic forms: bare plurals (e.g., “tigers are striped”), indefinite singulars (e.g., “a tiger is striped”), and definite singulars (“the tiger is striped”). However, none of these syntactic forms is dedicated to expressing generic claims; each can also be used to express existential and/or specific claims. Further, some generics express what appear to be generalizations over individuals (e.g., “tigers are striped”), while others appear to predicate properties directly of the kind (e.g., “dodos are extinct”). These facts and others give rise to a number of questions concerning the logical forms of generic statements. 1.1 Isolating the Generic Interpretation Consider the following pairs of sentences: (1)a.Tigers are striped. b.Tigers are on the front lawn. (2)a.A tiger is striped. b.A tiger is on the front lawn. (3)a.The tiger is striped. b.The tiger is on the front lawn. The sentence pairs above are prima facie syntactically parallel—both are subject-predicate sentences whose subjects consist of the same common noun coupled with the same, or no, article. However, the interpretation of first sentence of each pair is intuitively quite different from the interpretation of the second sentence in the pair. In the second sentences, we are talking about some particular tigers: a group of tigers in (1b), some individual tiger in (2b), and some unique salient or familiar tiger in (3b)—a beloved pet, perhaps. In the first sentences, however, we are saying something general. There is/are no particular tiger or tigers that we are talking about. The second sentences of the pairs receive what is called an existential interpretation. The hallmark of the existential interpretation of a sentence containing a bare plural or an indefinite singular is that it may be paraphrased with “some” with little or no change in meaning; hence the terminology “existential reading”. The application of the term “existential interpretation” is perhaps less appropriate when applied to the definite singular, but it is intended there to cover interpretation of the definite singular as referring to a unique contextually salient/familiar particular individual, not to a kind. There are some tests that are helpful in distinguishing these two readings. For example, the existential interpretation is upward entailing, meaning that the statement will always remain true if we replace the subject term with a more inclusive term. Consider our examples above. In (1b), we can replace “tiger” with “animal” salva veritate, but in (1a) we cannot. If “tigers are on the lawn” is true, then “animals are on the lawn” must be true. However, “tigers are striped” is true, yet “animals are striped” is false. (1a) does not entail that animals are striped, but (1b) entails that animals are on the front lawn (Lawler 1973; Laca 1990; Krifka et al. 1995). Another test concerns whether we can insert an adverb of quantification with minimal change of meaning (Krifka et al. 1995). For example, inserting “usually” in the sentences in (1a) (e.g., “tigers are usually striped”) produces only a small change in meaning, while inserting “usually” in (1b) dramatically alters the meaning of the sentence (e.g., “tigers are usually on the front lawn”). (For generics such as “mosquitoes carry malaria”, the adverb “sometimes” is perhaps better used than “usually” to mark off the generic reading.) It applies to “Medicines” – adding “generally” to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because the res never specified further Vote negative: 1 Precision – they justify arbitrarily mooting words in the resolution at their own whim in order to justify some potentially good interp. Semantics outweighs: a Lexical priority – it doesn’t matter if their interp if the debate is not pertinent i.e. it might me more educational for me to study for AP physics, outweighs since the topic constrains what pragmatics are relevant. 2 Limits and ground – their model allows affs to defend any medicine which explodes neg prep bc theres an infinite amount I can’t prepare for, like covid-19 vaccines, influenza, common colds, Marijuana, etc. and they all bracket out different DA’s 3 TVA: Read a whole res aff with the same advantage Voters Fairness because its constitutive of debate DTD – a) norms b) prevents abuse CI- a) judge intervention b) arbitrary brightline No RVI- a) time skew b) chilling effect No 1AR theory- creates 7-6 time skew
10/30/21
1 - SO - T-Reduce
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake NL | Judge: Donny Peters Interpretation: “reduce” indicates permanency. The aff may not defend suspensions on intellectual property rights
Reduce indicates permanency – it’s distinct from “suspend” Prefer our evidence – legal and should o/w all other definitions. This is the only legal interpretation of reduce in the court system which means that it applies to all legal implementations of the plan Reynolds 59 – Judge (In the Matter of Doris A. Montesani, Petitioner, v. Arthur Levitt, as Comptroller of the State of New York, et al., Respondents NO NUMBER IN ORIGINAL Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, Third Department 9 A.D.2d 51; 189 N.Y.S.2d 695; 1959 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 7391 August 13, 1959, lexis) Section 83's counterpart with regard to nondisability pensioners, section 84, prescribes a reduction only if the pensioner should again take a public job. The disability pensioner is penalized if he takes any type of employment. The reason for the difference, of course, is that in one case the only reason pension benefits are available is because the pensioner is considered incapable of gainful employment, while in the other he has fully completed his "tour" and is considered as having earned his reward with almost no strings attached. It would be manifestly unfair to the ordinary retiree to accord the disability retiree the benefits of the System to which they both belong when the latter is otherwise capable of earning a living and had not fulfilled his service obligation. If it were to be held that withholdings under section 83 were payable whenever the pensioner died or stopped his other employment the whole purpose of the provision would be defeated, i.e., the System might just as well have continued payments during the other employment since it must later pay it anyway. *13 The section says "reduced", does not say that monthly payments shall be temporarily suspended; it says that the pension itself shall be reduced. The plain dictionary meaning of the word is to diminish, lower or degrade. The word "reduce" seems adequately to indicate permanency.
Violation –they violate because COVID-19 patent waivers are temporary – hold the line – don’t let them shift out by saying that they defend permanency, they should’ve specced that in the 1ac and their advantages say nothing about the permanent benefits of having waivers
Melimopoulos, 21 (Elizabeth Melimopoulos, 6-29-2021, accessed on 8-15-2021, Al Jazeera, "Explainer: What are patent waivers for COVID vaccines?", https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/29/explainer-what-are-covid-vaccine-patent-waivers) What does an IP waiver do? A waiver temporarily “removes” the intellectual protections provided by the WTO Vote neg – 1 – Limits – they can cherrypick from multiple timeframes which means that a) they shift out of multiple DAs by saying the patents will be gone by then which moots neg offence and b) non-permanency kills NCs and Ks because they can just delink in the 1ar and forces us to start over c) this links to fairness and ed because we can’t have proper educative clash and they moot offence 2 – Predictability – Not following the resolution legally allows them to come up with whatever plan they want and a) that destroys our ability to predict because they can just go with something random and there is no way we can prep for that before the first tourney on the topic
Extend paradigm issues from disclosure shell.
10/30/21
1 - SO - TFW
Tournament: Jack Howe | Round: 4 | Opponent: Millard North YL | Judge: Joseph Barquin Our interpretation is the topic should determine the division of aff and neg ground – winning that *CLEAR NEGATIVE POSITION* should always be sufficient condition for voting negative – hold the line, CX and the 1AC prove there’s no I-meet.
“Resolved” means to enact a policy by law. Words and Phrases ’64 (Words and Phrases; 1964; Permanent Edition) Definition of the word “resolve,” given by Webster is “to express an opinion or determination by resolution or vote; as ‘it was resolved by the legislature;” It is of similar force to the word “enact,” which is defined by Bouvier as meaning “to establish by law”. Violation: They did not affirm the topic or defend hypothetical implementation
The Role of the Ballot is to vote for whoever does the better debating – any alternative framework must explain why we switch sides, why there has to be a winner and a loser, and why there are structural rules. The frame for evaluating offense is that debate is a game and we’re all here to win – that means procedural questions come first.
Standards: Limits and Clash – abdicating government actions sanctions picking any interpretation for debate – incentivizes retreat from controversy and forces the neg to first characterize the aff and then debate it which eliminates the benefit of preround research. A common point of engagement ensures effective clash, which is a linear impact – negation is the necessary condition for distinguishing debate from discussion, but negation exists on a sliding scale. The topic of discussion is up to the affirmative, but depth and nuanced engagement is determined by negative ground. Any impact intrinsic to debate, not just discussion, comes from negation because it starts the process of critical thinking, reflexivity, and argument refinement.
10/30/21
1 - Util NC
Tournament: Puget Sound | Round: 2 | Opponent: Garrett Lee | Judge: David McGinnis
The standard is act hedonistic util. Prefer –
1 – Pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses – robust neuroscience.
Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines AND these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
2 – No intent-foresight distinction – if I foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of my deliberation since its intrinsic to my action
3 – Actor spec – governments lack wills or intentions and inevitably deals with tradeoffs – outweighs because agents have differing obligations.
4 – No act omission distinction – choosing not to act is an action in of itself since you had to make an active decision to omit. Walking past a drowning baby and choosing not to save it is a cognitive decision you were faced with and you actively decided to keep walking b) warranting a distinction gives agents the permissible choice of omitting from any ethical action since omissions lack culpability.
No calc indicts – a) no philosophy actually says that consequences don't matter at all since otherwise it would indict every theory since they use causal events to understand how their ethics have worked in the past and through the justification of premises b) we don't need consequences – winning hedonism proves we're the only one with impacts to it which means risk of offense framing is sufficient c) they're blippy nibs that set the aff at an unfair advantage since they only have to win one while we have to beat them all – voting issue for fairness
Extinction first –
1 – Forecloses future improvement – we can never improve society because our impact is irreversible which proves moral uncertainty
2 – Turns suffering – mass death causes suffering because people can't get access to resources and basic necessities
3 – Objectivity – body count is the most objective way to calculate impacts because comparing suffering is unethical
TJFs: Even if you don't buy util substantively – prefer it theoretically because its best for the debate space which O/w's
A~ Predictable literature — util ensures that we have a wide breadth of literature about the topic to read because contention level arguments are centered around current events and substantive. Outweighs because of accessibility – it might be difficult for debaters to access paywalled philosophical journals and to make sense of them, but general topic literature like news and op eds are easily accessible.
B~ Topic ed — util ensures topical research and debate because we have to analyze the consequences of the plan versus the neg advocacy. Outweighs on reversibility – we can learn about ur fw anywhere outside the round but topical debate happens these two months.
CP: The appropriation of outer space by private entities except for asteroid mining is unjust
Commercial mining solves extinction from terror, war, and disease and is evenly distributed
Pelton 17-(Director Emeritus of the Space and Advanced Communications Research Institute at George Washington University, PHD in IR from Georgetown).. Pelton, Joseph N. 2017. The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon! Springer. Accessed 8/30/19. Are We Humans Doomed to Extinction? What will we do AND space defense, mediated by global space agreements, are part of this new pathway to the future.
4/16/22
2 - JF - Global ConCon
Tournament: Puget Sound | Round: 2 | Opponent: Garrett Lee | Judge: David McGinnis
States ought to call a global constitutional convention and establish a constitution reflecting intergenerational concern with exclusive authority to ban appropriation of outer space by private entities and bind participating bodies to its result
That solves the aff – it addresses shared anxieties while building political consensus
Gardiner 14 1 ~Stephen M. Gardiner, Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington, Seattle, "A Call for a Global Constitutional Convention Focused on Future Generations," 2014, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 28, Issue 3, pp. 299-315, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0892679414000379, EA~ A Constitutional Convention In my view, the above line of reasoning leads naturally AND do better, would be a central issue for discussion by the convention.
It spills over to foster broader intergenerational representation, but independence is key
Gardiner 14 2 ~Stephen M. Gardiner, Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington, Seattle, "A Call for a Global Constitutional Convention Focused on Future Generations," 2014, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 28, Issue 3, pp. 299-315, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0892679414000379, EA~ One set of guidelines concerns how the global constitutional convention relates to other institutions. The first guideline concerns relative independence: (1) Autonomy: Any global constitutional convention should have considerable autonomy from other institutions, and especially from those dominated by factors that generate or facilitate the tyranny of the contemporary (and the perfect moral storm, more generally). Thus, for example, attempts should be made to insulate the global constitutional convention AND waste) but also the need to identify similar threats before they arise.
Proactive measures mitigate a laundry list of emerging catastrophic risks – extinction
Beckstead et al. 14 ~Nick Beckstead, Nick Bostrom, Niel Bowerman, Owen Cotton-Barratt, William MacAskill, Sean O hEigeartaigh, Toby Ord, * Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, Director, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, Global Priorities Project, Centre for Effective Altruism; Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Global Priorities Project, Centre for Effective Altruism; Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk; Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, "Policy Brief: Unprecedented Technological Risks," 2014, The Global Priorities Project, The Future of Humanity Institute, The Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, and The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Unprecedented-Technological-Risks.pdf, Accessed: 03/13/21, EA~ In the near future, major technological developments will give rise to new unprecedented risks AND in the near future, even if no such breakthroughs currently appear imminent.
Maintaining sustainable use of outer space is key to future generations
Islam 18 ~Mohammad Saiful Islam, Mohammad works for the Institute of Advanced Judicial Studies and the Beijing Institute of Technology. 4-27-2018, "The Sustainable Use of Outer Space: Complications and Legal Challenges to the Peaceful Uses and Benefit of Humankind," Beijing Law Review, https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=85201 accessed 12/12/21~ Adam 4.2. Ensure the Rights of Future Generations in Outer Space Sustainable AND over-exploitation of resources and environmental havoc (Fountain, 2002) .
4/16/22
2 - JF - Hindi CP
Tournament: TOC | Round: 2 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake IC | Judge: Nick Fleming Check OS Cites Broken
4/23/22
2 - JF - Reg Treaty CP
Tournament: Harvard-Westlake | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough YN | Judge: Joshua Michael
Nations ought to establish a treaty which
coordinates travel and limits traffic in busy orbits,
limits the creation of debris,
prohibits deployment and testing of weapons in space
creates an independent international agency to review and approve mining and space colonies
Ramin Skibba 7/22https://undark.org/2021/07/22/its-time-for-a-new-international-space-treaty/ (Ramin Skibba is an astrophysicist turned science writer and freelance journalist who is based in San Diego. He has written for The Atlantic organization, Slate, Scientific American, and Nature, among other publications.) ~AB~ The Biden administration has so far focused its space policy not on treaties but on AND have one atmosphere, one moon, and one night sky to cherish.
transparently develop, deploy, and demonstrate a debris removal system, with external non-military verification, through government contracts to the private sector funded by charging fees and service fees that removes US debris and compensates other nations for removing their debris;
institute debris remediation guidelines that clarify US intentions as peaceful, declare the US will not intentionally damage any satellites, publicize all planned debris removal operations in advance, and provide transparency by broadcasting all non-critical SSA data pertaining to active debris removal operations;
and, employ a satellite resilience strategy that disaggregates satellite infrastructure, builds in redundancies, and develops backup systems.
Unilateral ADR solves the case.
Ansdell '10 (Megan; graduate student in the Master in International Science and Technology Policy program at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley's Center for Integrative Planetary Science, Flatiron Research Fellow at the Simons Foundation; January 2010; "Active space debris removal: Needs, implications, and recommendations for today's geopolitical environment"; https://jpia.princeton.edu/sites/jpia/files/space-debris-removal.pdf; Journal of Public and International Affairs, Vol. 21; accessed 10/27/19; TV) VI. U.S. Leadership by Example Need to Initiate Unilateral Action International AND debris and ensure the sustainable development of the near-Earth space environment.
US declarations are credible and disaggregation solves escalation.
Grego and Wright '10 (Laura; is a senior scientist in the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS); David; is a senior scientist and co-director of the UCS Global Security Program; Securing the Skies: Ten Steps the United States Should Take to Improve the Security and Sustainability of Space; Union of Concerned Scientists; https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nwgs/securing-the-skies-full-report-1.pdf; accessed 8/26/19; MSCOTT) Step 1. Elaborate on the administration's National Space Policy and publicly articulate its approach AND also that the attacker would still bear the consequences of such an action.
4/22/22
2 - ND - Congress CP
Tournament: USC | Round: 4 | Opponent: Hwl AD | Judge: Diana Alvarez Check OS
12/12/21
2 - ND - Police PIC
Tournament: Badgerland | Round: 2 | Opponent: Jerry Sun | Judge: Nicholas Wallenburg Counterplan: A just government ought to recognize the unconditional right of workers to strike except for police officers. Police Strikes are used to combat racial progress and attempts to limit police power. Making them legal and easier only make progress much harder. Andrew Grim 2020 What is the ‘blue flu’ and how has it increased police power? https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/01/what-is-blue-flu-how-has-it-increased-police-power/ But the result of such protests matter deeply as we consider police reform today. Historically, blue flu strikes have helped expand police power, ultimately limiting the ability of city governments to reform, constrain or conduct oversight over the police. They allow the police to leverage public fear of crime to extract concessions from municipalities. This became clear in Detroit more than 50 years ago. In June 1967, tensions arose between Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and the Detroit Police Officers Association (DPOA), which represented the city’s 3,300 patrol officers. The two were at odds primarily over police demands for a pay increase. Cavanagh showed no signs of caving to the DPOA’s demands and had, in fact, proposed to cut the police department’s budget. On June 15, the DPOA escalated the dispute with a walkout: 323 officers called in sick. The number grew over the next several days as the blue flu spread, reaching a height of 800 absences on June 17. In tandem with the walkout, the DPOA launched a fearmongering media campaign to win over the public. They took out ads in local newspapers warning Detroit residents, “How does it feel to be held up? Stick around and find out!” This campaign took place at a time of rising urban crime rates and uprisings, and only a month before the 1967 Detroit riot, making it especially potent. The DPOA understood this climate and used it to its advantage. With locals already afraid of crime and displeased at Cavanagh’s failure to rein it in, they would be more likely to demand the return of the police than to demand retribution against officers for an illegal strike. The DPOA’s strategy paid off. The walkout left Detroit Police Commissioner Ray Girardin feeling “practically helpless.” “I couldn’t force them to work,” he later told The Washington Post. Rather than risk public ire by allowing the blue flu to continue, Cavanagh relented. Ultimately, the DPOA got the raises it sought, making Detroit officers the highest paid in the nation. This was far from the end of the fight between Cavanagh and the DPOA. In the ensuing months and years, they continued to tussle over wages, pensions, the budget, the integration of squad cars and the hiring of black officers. The threat of another blue flu loomed over all these disputes, helping the union to win many of them. And Detroit was not an outlier. Throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, the blue flu was a ubiquitous and highly effective tactic in Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago, Newark, New York and many other cities. In most cases, as author Kristian Williams writes, “When faced with a walkout or slowdown, the authorities usually decided that the pragmatic need to get the cops back to work trumped the city government’s long term interest in diminishing the rank and file’s power.” But each time a city relented to this pressure, they ceded more and more power to police unions, which would turn to the strategy repeatedly to defend officers’ interests — particularly when it came to efforts to address systemic racism in police policies and practices. In 1970, black residents of Pittsburgh’s North Side neighborhood raised an outcry over the “hostile sadistic treatment” they experienced at the hands of white police officers. They lobbied Mayor Peter F. Flaherty to assign more black officers to their neighborhood. The mayor agreed, transferring several white officers out of the North Side and replacing them with black officers. While residents cheered this decision, white officers and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which represented them, were furious. They slammed the transfer as “discrimination” against whites. About 425 of the Pittsburgh Police Department’s 1,600 police officers called out sick in protest. Notably, black police officers broke with their white colleagues and refused to join the walkout. They praised the transfer as a “long overdue action” and viewed the walkout as a betrayal of officers’ oath to protect the public. Nonetheless, the tactic paid off. After several days, Flaherty caved to the “open revolt” of white officers, agreeing to halt the transfers and instead submit the dispute to binding arbitration between the city and the police union. Black officers, though, continued to speak out against their union’s support of racist practices, and many of them later resigned from the union in protest. Similar scenarios played out in Detroit, Chicago and other cities in the 1960s and ’70s, as white officers continually staged walkouts to preserve the segregated status quo in their departments. These blue flu strikes amounted to an authoritarian power grab by police officers bent on avoiding oversight, rejecting reforms and shoring up their own authority. In the aftermath of the 1967 Detroit walkout, a police commissioner’s aide strongly criticized the police union’s strong-arm tactics, saying “it smacks of a police state.” The clash left one newspaper editor wondering, “Who’s the Boss of the Detroit Police?” But in the “law and order” climate of the late 1960s, such criticism did not resonate enough to stir a groundswell of public opinion against the blue flu. And police unions dismissed critics by arguing that officers had “no alternative” but to engage in walkouts to get city officials to make concessions. Crucially, the very effectiveness of the blue flu may be premised on a myth. While police unions use public fear of crime skyrocketing without police on duty, in many cases, the absence of police did not lead to a rise in crime. In New York City in 1971, for example, 20,000 officers called out sick for five days over a pay dispute without any apparent increase in crime. The most striking aspect of the walkout, as one observer noted, “might be just how unimportant it seemed.” Today, municipalities are under immense pressure from activists who have taken to the streets to protest the police killings of black men and women. Some have already responded by enacting new policies and cutting police budgets. As it continues, more blue flus are likely to follow as officers seek to wrest back control of the public debate on policing and reassert their independence. Those strikes cement a police culture which leads to endless amounts of racist violence and the bolstering of the prison industrial complex – turns aff Chaney and Ray 13, Cassandra (Has a PhD and is a professor at LSU. Also has a strong focus in the structure of Black families) , and Ray V. Robertson (Also has a PhD and is a criminal justice professor at LSU). "Racism and police brutality in America." Journal of African American Studies 17.4 (2013): 480-505. SMdo I really need a card for this Racism and Discrimination According to Marger (2012), “racism is an ideology, or belief system, designed to justify and rationalize racial and ethnic inequality” (p. 25) and “discrimination, most basically, is behavior aimed at denying members of particular ethnic groups’ equal access to societal rewards” (p. 57). Defining both of these concepts from the onset is important for they provide the lens through which our focus on the racist and discriminatory practices of law enforcement can occur. Since the time that Africans African Americans were forcibly brought to America, they have been the victims of racist and discriminatory practices that have been spurred and/or substantiated by those who create and enforce the law. For example, The Watts Riots of 1965, the widespread assaults against Blacks in Harlem during the 1920s (King 2011), law enforcement violence against Black women (i.e., Malaika Brooks, Jaisha Akins, Frankie Perkins, Dr. Mae Jemison, Linda Billups, Clementine Applewhite) and other ethnic women of color (Ritchie 2006), the beating of Rodney King, and the deaths of Amadou Diallo in the 1990s and Trayvon Martin more recently are just a few public examples of the historical and contemporaneous ways in which Blacks in America have been assaulted by members of the police system (King 2011; Loyd 2012; Murch 2012; Rafail et al. 2012). In Punishing Race (2011), law professor Michael Tonry’s research findings point to the fact that Whites tend to excuse police brutality against Blacks because of the racial animus that they hold against Blacks. Thus, to Whites, Blacks are viewed as deserving of harsh treatment in the criminal justice system (Peffley and Hurwitz 2013). At first glance, such an assertion may seem to be unfathomable, buy that there is an extensive body of literature which suggests that Black males are viewed as the “prototypical criminal,” and this notion is buttressed in the media, by the general public, and via disparate sentencing outcomes (Blair et al. 2004; Eberhardt et al. 2006; Gabiddon 2010; Maddox and Gray 2004; Oliver and Fonash 2002; Staples 2011). For instance, Blair et al. (2004) revealed that Black males with more Afrocentric features (e.g., dark skin, broad noses, full lips) may receive longer sentences than Blacks with less Afrocentric features, i.e., lighter skin and straighter hair (Eberhardt et al. 2006). Shaun Gabiddon in Criminological Theories on Race and Crime (2010) discussed the concept of “Negrophobia” which was more extensively examined by Armour (1997). Negrophobia can be surmised as an irrational of Blacks, which includes a fear of being victimized by Black, that can result in Whites shooting or harming an AfricanAmerican based on criminal/racial stereotypes (Armour 1997). The aforementioned racialized stereotypical assumptions can be deleterious because they can be used by Whites to justify shooting a Black person on the slightest of pretense (Gabiddon 2010). Finally, African-American males represent a group that has been much maligned in the larger society (Tonry 2011). Further, as victims of the burgeoning prison industrial complex, mass incarceration, and enduring racism, the barriers to truly independent Black male agency are ubiquitous and firmly entrenched (Alexander 2010; Chaney 2009; Baker 1996; Blackmon 2008; Dottolo and Stewart 2008; Karenga 2010; Martin et al. 2001; Smith and Hattery 2009). Thus, racism and discrimination heightens the psychological distress experienced by Blacks (Robertson 2011; Pieterse et al. 2012), as well as their decreased mortality in the USA (Muennig and Murphy 2011). Police Brutality Against Black Males According to Walker (2011), police brutality is defined as “the use of excessive physical force or verbal assault and psychological intimidation” (p. 579). Although one recent study suggests that the NYPD has become better behaved due to greater race and gender diversity (Kane and White 2009), Blacks are more likely to be the victims of police brutality. A growing body of scholarly research related to police brutality has revealed that Blacks are more likely than Whites to make complaints regarding police brutality (Smith and Holmes 2003), to be accosted while operating driving a motorized vehicle (“Driving While Black”), and to underreport how often they are stopped due to higher social desirability factors (TomaskovicDevey et al. 2006). Interestingly, data obtained from the General Social Survey (GSS), a representative sample conducted biennially by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago for the years 1994 through 2004, provide further proof regarding the acceptance of force against Blacks. In particular, the GSS found Whites to be significantly (29.5 ) more accepting of police use of force when a citizen was attempting to escape custody than Blacks when analyzed using the chi-squared statistical test (p The average Southern policeman is a promoted poor White with a legal sanction to use a weapon. His social heritage has taught him to despise the Negroes, and he has had little education which could have changed him….The result is that probably no group of Whites in America have a lower opinion of the Negro people and are more fixed in their views than Southern policeman. (Myrdal 1944, pp. 540–541) Myrdal (1944) was writing on results from a massive study that he undertook in the late 1930s. He was writing at a time that even the most conservative among us would have to admit was not a colorblind society (if one even believes in such things). But current research does corroborate his observations that less educated police officers tend to be the most aggressive and have the most formal complaints filed against them when compared to their more educated counterparts (Hassell and Archbold 2010; Jefferis et al. 2011). Tonry (2011) delineates some interesting findings from the 2001 Race, Crime, and Public Opinion Survey that can be applied to understanding why the larger society tolerates police misconduct when it comes to Black males. The survey, which involved approximately 978 non-Hispanic Whites and 1,010 Blacks, revealed a divergence in attitudes between Blacks and Whites concerning the criminal justice system (Tonry 2011). For instance, 38 of Whites and 89 of Blacks viewed the criminal justice system as biased against Blacks (Tonry 2011). Additionally, 8 of Blacks and 56 of Whites saw the criminal justice system as treating Blacks fairly (Tonry 2011). Perhaps most revealing when it comes to facilitating an environment ripe for police brutality against Black males, 68 of Whites and only 18 of Whites expressed confidence in law enforcement (Tonry 2011). Is a society wherein the dominant group overwhelming approves of police performance willing to do anything substantive to curtail police brutality against Black males? Police brutality is not a new phenomenon. The Department of Justice (DOJ) office of Civil Rights (OCR) has investigated more than a dozen police departments in major cities across the USA on allegations of either racial discrimination or police brutality (Gabbidon and Greene 2013). To make the aforementioned even more clear, according to Gabbidon and Greene (2013), “In 2010, the OCR was investigating 17 police departments across the country and monitoring five settlements regarding four police agencies” (pp. 119–120). Plant and Peruche (2005) provide some useful information into why police officers view Black males as potential perpetrators and could lead to acts of brutality. In their research, the authors suggest that since Black people in general, and Black males in particular, are caricatured as aggressive and criminal, police are more likely to view Black men as a threat which justifies the disproportionate use of deadly force. Therefore, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that police officers’ decisions to act aggressively may, to some extent, be influenced by race (Jefferis et al. 2011). The media’s portrayals of Black men are often less than sanguine. Bryson’s (1998) work in this area provides empirical evidence that the mass media that has been instrumental in portraying Black men as studs, super detectives, or imitation White men and has a general negative effect on how these men are regarded by others. Such characterizations can be so visceral in nature that “prototypes” of criminal suspects are more likely to be African-American (Oliver et al. 2004). Not surprisingly, the more Afrocentric the African-American’s facial features, the more prone he or she is expected to be deviant (Eberhardt et al. 2006). Interestingly, it is probable that less than flattering depictions of Black males on television and in news stories are activating pre-existing stereotypes possessed by Whites as opposed to facilitating their creation. According to Oliver et al. (2004), “it is important to keep in mind that media consumption is an active process, with viewers’ existing attitudes and beliefs playing a larger role in how images are attended to, interpreted, and remembered” (p. 89). Moreover, it is reductionist to presuppose that individual is powerless in constructing a palatable version of reality and is solely under the control of the media and exercises no agency. Lastly, Peffley and Hurwitz (2013) describe what can be perceived as one of the more deleterious results of negative media caricatures of Black males. More specifically, the authors posit that most Whites believe that Blacks are disproportionately inclined to engage in criminal behavior and are the deserving on harsh treatment by the criminal justice system. On the other hand, such an observation is curious because most urban areas are moderate to highly segregated residentially which would preclude the frequent and significant interaction needed to make such scathing indictments (Bonilla-Silva 2009). Consequently, the aforementioned racial animus has the effect of increased White support for capital punishment if questions regarding its legitimacy around if capital punishment is too frequently applied to Blacks (Peffley and Hurwitz 2013; Tonry 2011). Ultimately, erroneous (negative) portrayals of crime and community, community race and class identities, and concerns over neighborhood change all contribute to place-specific framing of “the crime problem.” These frames, in turn, shape both intergroup dynamics and support for criminal justice policy (Leverentz 2012).
12/9/21
2 - SO - BWC CP
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 6 | Opponent: LNU PD | Judge: Jared Croitoru CP – States should comply with the biological weapons convention Solvency advocate is 1AC Lentoz evidence that says the Biological weapons convention is what protects the world from the risk of biological weapons
10/30/21
2 - SO - Royalty Rates CP
Tournament: UK Season Opener | Round: 1 | Opponent: Acton-Boxborough Isha Agarwal | Judge: Anna Dean CP Text: Vaccine developers should enter into binding contractual agreements with generic producers to ensure the quality of generic products and establish royalty rates on generic sales. The member nations of the WTO should publicly declare their support of legitimate compulsory licensees in the cases where voluntary requests have been ignored. Silverman 3/15 Rachel Silverman is a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development where she leads policy-oriented research on global health financing and incentive structures. Silverman’s current research focuses on the practical application of results-based financing; global health transitions; efficient global health procurement; innovation models for global health; priority-setting for UHC; alignment and impact in international funding for family planning; and strategies to strengthen evidence and accountability. BA with distinction in international relations and economics from Stanford University.) “Waiving vaccine patents won’t help inoculate poorer nations” Washington Post, PostEverything Perspective, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/03/15/vaccine-coronavirus-patents-waive-global-equity/ RM There are better options than broadly waiving IP rules — notably, encouraging (and pressuring) vaccine manufacturers to cooperate and share knowledge with partners across the globe. Voluntary licensing is one route: It’s a common arrangement in which developers enter into binding contractual agreements with generic producers. Generic manufacturers get permission, know-how and assistance from the patent-holder to produce the vaccine for sales in specified markets; in exchange, the patent-holder can ensure quality of the generic product and may receive royalties on its sales, usually representing less than 10 percent of sales value. These royalties may be lower than the profit margin on direct sales; for example, Pfizer expects a 25 to 30 percent profit on its vaccine sales, or roughly $5 for every $19.50 dose. (The U.S. government has agreed to buy 300 million doses at that price.) But voluntary licensing deals offer a new revenue stream that would otherwise be captured by competitors — not to mention good publicity. Already, voluntary licensing deals from AstraZeneca and Novavax are facilitating large-scale production in India, Japan and South Korea; many of the resulting vaccines are destined for lower-income countries through Covax. The best route to vaccine equity involves creating the conditions to facilitate more of these voluntary deals. How can governments and activists help push things in the right direction? By lifting the export curbs on materials such as filters and bioreactor bags intended to protect domestic supply, countries can help lubricate supply chains, creating a better environment for cross-national collaboration. Governments and development-finance institutions can invest to build up the capabilities of potential vaccine manufacturing plants, making it easier for originators to say yes. Domestically, the Biden administration did something like this when it invested $269 million under the Defense Production Act to prepare Merck’s manufacturing facilities to produce the Johnson and Johnson vaccine — a crucial plank of the joint production deal announced this month. Similar efforts are underway abroad. On March 12, for example, the “Quad” — the United States, India, Japan and Australia — announced a joint pledge to produce and disseminate 1 billion vaccine doses; as part of this effort, the Biden administration announced that it would help finance an Indian generic manufacturer to make coronavirus vaccines, including the Johnson and Johnson product. The contractual language of licensing deals can explicitly protect IP from broader dissemination, helping originators feel more comfortable sharing commercially valuable information. Sticks as well as carrots can facilitate partnerships. Under existing World Trade Organization rules, countries already have the right to issue “compulsory licenses” in certain cases pertaining to public health, allowing them to produce or import generic health products without permission from the patent-holder. Advocates correctly point out that countries face potential retaliation from industry and wealthy governments when they try to use these tools — a strong disincentive. (In 2006-2007, Thailand’s use of compulsory licenses to access more affordable AIDS drugs led the United States to revoke preferential trade status for some Thai exports.) This should change. The Biden administration and other global leaders should make clear that they will support legitimate compulsory licensees of coronavirus vaccines in cases where a valid voluntary license request has been rejected or ignored. But compulsory licensing is vastly inferior to voluntary deals in the case of vaccines, because with the former the generic producer would still need to figure out how to make the vaccines without the originator’s assistance — again, an extraordinarily difficult task. It is useful mainly as a threat held in reserve, paired with the “carrots” of subsidies to local plants and so on. Firms may choose to play ball on voluntary licensing deals rather than face a mess of legal challenges and bad publicity. This month, for example, Canadian biotech firm Biolyse Pharma publicly requested a voluntary license to manufacture the Johnson and Johnson vaccine for global distribution. If Johnson and Johnson is unwilling, Biolyse made clear in its announcement, the company will appeal to the Canadian government for a compulsory license. The ball is now in Johnson and Johnson’s court — but this seems like the type of offer it should choose to accept, both for the global good and its self-interest. Scaling up vaccine production is an imperative for equitable global access and an end to the pandemic. But it is smart incentives for sharing knowledge, not the wholesale elimination of intellectual-property rights, that will get us to the finish line.
10/30/21
2 - SO - WEED PIC
Tournament: UK Season Opener | Round: 5 | Opponent: Ramsay DF | Judge: Anand Rao Counterplan text: The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines except for cannabis, medical marijuana, and medicines containing chemicals from cannabis.
It competes – weed is a medicine and is used in medicine WebMD 20 WebMD Medical Reference, WebMD is an American corporation known primarily as an online publisher of news and information pertaining to human health and well-being. The site includes information pertaining to drugs. It is one of the top healthcare websites by unique visitors. It was founded in 1998 by internet entrepreneur Jeff Arnold., August 20, 2020, "Medical Marijuana FAQ,", WebMD LLC, https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/medical-marijuana-faq, 8-21-2021 WHS MR What is medical marijuana? Medical marijuana uses the marijuana plant or chemicals in it to treat diseases or conditions. It's basically the same product as recreational marijuana, but it's taken for medical purposes. The marijuana plant contains more than 100 different chemicals called cannabinoids. Each one has a different effect on the body. Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) are the main chemicals used in medicine. THC also produces the "high" people feel when they smoke marijuana or eat foods containing it. What is medical marijuana used for? Researchers are studying whether medical marijuana can help treat a number of conditions including: Alzheimer's disease Appetite loss Cancer Crohn's disease Diseases effecting the immune system like HIV/AIDS or Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Eating disorders such as anorexia Epilepsy Glaucoma Mental health conditions like schizophrenia and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Multiple sclerosis Muscle spasms Nausea Pain Seizures Wasting syndrome (cachexia) But it’s not yet proven to help many of these conditions, with a few exceptions, Bonn-Miller says. "The greatest amount of evidence for the therapeutic effects of cannabis relate to its ability to reduce chronic pain, nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy, and spasticity tight or stiff muscles from MS," Bonn-Miller says. How does it help? Cannabinoids -- the active chemicals in medical marijuana -- are similar to chemicals the body makes that are involved in appetite, memory, movement, and pain. Limited research suggests cannabinoids might: Reduce anxiety Reduce inflammation and relieve pain Control nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy Kill cancer cells and slow tumor growth Relax tight muscles in people with MS Stimulate appetite and improve weight gain in people with cancer and AIDS Can medical marijuana help with seizure disorders? Medical marijuana received a lot of attention a few years ago when parents said that a special form of the drug helped control seizures in their children. The FDA recently approved Epidiolex, which is made from CBD, as a therapy for people with very severe or hard-to-treat seizures. In studies, some people had a dramatic drop in seizures after taking this drug. Has the FDA approved medical marijuana? The cannabidiol Epidiolex was approved in 2018 for treating seizures associated with two rare and severe forms of epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome. In addition, the FDA has approved two man-made cannabinoid medicines -- dronabinol (Marinol, Syndros) and nabilone (Cesamet) -- to treat nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy. The cannabidiol Epidiolex was approved in 2018 for treating seizures associated with two rare and severe forms of epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome. How do you take it? To take medical marijuana, you can: Smoke it Inhale it through a device called a vaporizer that turns it into a mist Eat it -- for example, in a brownie or lollipop Apply it to your skin in a lotion, spray, oil, or cream Place a few drops of a liquid under your tongue How you take it is up to you. Each method works differently in your body. "If you smoke or vaporize cannabis, you feel the effects very quickly," Bonn-Miller says. "If you eat it, it takes significantly longer. It can take 1 to 2 hours to experience the effects from edible products."
The safety of the space is prima facie – we don't know who's winning if people can't engage. Anything that doesn't immediately denounce atrocities excludes people who have and can experience them.
Teehan Ryan Teehan ~NSD staffer and competitor from the Delbarton School~ – NSD Update comment on the student protests at the TOC in 2014. Massa Honestly, I don't think that 99 of what has been said in this AND to ask yourselves whether you can justify making debate unsafe for certain people.
Utilitarian calculus fails to account for moral atrocities.
Jeffrey Gold, Utilitarian and Deontological Approaches to Criminal Justice Ethics Massa According to utilitarianism, an action is moral when it produces the great-est AND we are always treating the victim as a means to our own ends.
Util justifies horrific conclusions, since no state of affairs could be intrinsically bad from its standpoint – it also literally doesn't believe in rights.
Vallentyne, Peter. Against Maximizing Act-Consequentialism. 2006, mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/10174/AgainstMaximizingActConsequentialism.pdf?sequence=1. Massa If core consequentialism is true, then any action with maximally good consequences (in AND slightly happier. This would be sacrificing her for the benefit of others.
Utilitarianism is the logics of eugenics—-ableist notions of health determine the value of life that was used to justify the holocaust
Davis, L. (2021). Lennard J. Davis is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the departments of English, Disability Studies and Human Development, and Medical Education. ~In the Time of Pandemic, the Deep Structure of Biopower Is Laid Bare. Critical Inquiry, 47, S138 - S142.~KPOO-CJK In regard to disability, the ableism that puts on a compassionate mask in milder AND , a liberatory approach will only be partial—and far from impartial.
The alt is to vote neg – it's as simple as not to vibe with oppression – as an educator it's your job to dismiss racist, sexist, homophobic, and ableist discourse that kills the spirit of marginalized debaters.
4/16/22
3 - ND - Abol K
Tournament: USC | Round: 2 | Opponent: Marlborough TZ | Judge: Ben Cortez Check OS
12/12/21
3 - ND - Baudrillard
Tournament: USC | Round: 6 | Opponent: HWL AL | Judge: Vanessa Nguyen Check OS
12/13/21
3 - SO - Apocalyptic Disease Reps K
Tournament: UK Season Opener | Round: 1 | Opponent: Acton-Boxborough Isha Agarwal | Judge: Anna Dean Apocalyptic pandemic reps lock in a neoliberal risk society of anxiety and health inequality that spreads disease. Independently, the aff masks health neoliberalism by spreading vaccine arms races horizontally instead of vertically. Mannathukkaren 14 (Nissim Mannathukkaren, Dept. Chair and Associate Prof. of International Development Studies @ Dalhousie University, “Pandemics in the age of panic,” November 22, 2014, http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/social-media-should-be-a-positive-force-and-public-health-systems-should-focus-on-prevention-of-epidemics/article6624674.ece) *Evidence is edited to correct gendered language* If natural disasters induce panic, so do pandemics. In recent years, we have seen a series of pandemics: AIDS, avian influenza, SARS and H1N1. Now, we are in the midst of an epidemic, Ebola, which — according to experts — can acquire pandemic proportions. Natural disasters and pandemics have existed in the pre-modern era as well but what is remarkable is that, in the modern era, the attitudes towards hazards — both natural and man-made — have drastically changed. Panic is the order of the day, especially in sanitised spaces of the developed West. Medical scholars, Luc Bonneux and Wim Van Damme, term panic itself as a pandemic. As they point out, in 1999, Belgium slaughtered seven million chicken and 60,000 pigs when dioxin, a cancer-causing chemical, entered animal feed. Not one person died from dioxin poisoning. In 2005, the chief avian flu coordinator of the UN predicted that 150 million people could be killed by the flu. However, in 10 years, it has killed less than 400 people. The same apocalyptic predictions were made about BSE/CJD, SARS, and H1N1 as well. Media coverage and the responses of governments and people to Ebola and recent pandemics tell us an important and paradoxical truth: we might be living in an era that is the apogee of human scientific advancements but this has not necessarily mitigated our fears and panic about potential dangers. This has led theorists to argue that we live in a ‘risk society’, a society that generates a lot of risks precisely because it is obsessed with, as the sociologist Anthony Giddens puts it, “the aspiration to control and particularly with the idea of controlling the future.” Traditional cultures did not have a notion of risk as diseases and natural disasters were taken for granted and were attributed to God or fate. Interestingly, many of the risks in the modern era, as Giddens elaborates, are manufactured by the “very progression in human development, especially by the progression of science and technology.” Diseases caused by industrial pollution, natural disasters caused by environmental destruction, man-made disasters like Bhopal gas tragedy, Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents, and latrogenesis — adverse effects caused by medical intervention and modern medicines — are examples of these manufactured risks. In the U.S., scholars estimate that 2,25,000 deaths annually are due to latrogenic causes, and is the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer! Thus, science and technology itself generates new uncertainties as it banishes old ones and fear of the unknown cannot be eliminated by further scientific progress. We have to read the coverage of, and response to, Ebola in this wider context of a risk society. Politics of fear, panic, and scaremongering are inevitable outcomes of such a society. Look at the panic around Ebola in the U.S., where so far not one citizen has died of the disease. A nurse returning after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone has won a court order against a mandatory quarantine order imposed by the state. Australia and Canada have imposed visa ban on citizens travelling from the affected countries, violating WHO’s International Health Regulations. Renowned journalist Simon Jenkins argues that “we have lost control of the language of proportion” in responding to Ebola and other pandemics. Similarly, other journalists have severely criticised the media’s coverage of Ebola. The scaremongering is seen in absurd and irresponsible statements like Ebola is ‘the ISIS of biological agents!’ One major responsibility of the mainstream media, other than providing detailed and proper information about the disease itself, is to enlighten the public about the socio-economic and political conditions that govern health and healthcare systems in various societies, which in turn impact the origin and spread of pandemics. Without educating the public about the root causes that condemn the poorer parts of the world to bear the brunt of global pandemics, the media becomes a handmaiden of the powers — developed countries and pharmaceutical corporations — that control global health. This lack of knowledge about larger forces also adds to risks and the resultant panic. Thus, in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the media’s role in the investigation of allegations of whether it was a false pandemic was nothing to be proud of. The head of health at the Council of Europe had raised questions about the role of pharmaceutical corporations in the declaration of H1N1 as a pandemic. Later, an investigation by the British Medical Journal found that medical experts advising WHO on H1N1 had financial ties with pharmaceutical companies producing the vaccine for the pandemic. As all the developed countries stocked up on the vaccines, reportedly, the pharmaceutical companies made profits ranging from $ 7-10 billion. In this context, the media’s role in the coverage of pandemics raises questions. Where are the stories in the media about the lack of vaccines for Ebola, 40 years after the disease emerged? Or about the drug firms now in the race to produce a vaccine (the share prices of one of the companies ahead in the race have shot up exponentially)? While certain prominent Western media houses have definitely pushed the panic button with regard to Ebola, the hard data about the overall coverage as studied by the Foreign Policy magazine indicates that it is not the case. But this study is merely restricted to the English language coverage. Further, the mainstream media has failed miserably in countering the serious issue of the racialisation of Ebola (as with AIDS before) as an African disease caused and spread merely by its cultural practices. In a risk society, we have to confront new unknowns too, like social media and its impact. One media source called Ebola ‘the first major outbreak in the era of social media’. But, in the coverage of the outbreak, social media has reportedly been a negative force spreading misinformation and rumours that, in some cases, even led to deaths due to dangerous treatments administered.
The alternative is to adopt a social medicine approach to health. Mohan J. DUTTA 15, Professor and Head of the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, Adjunct Professor of Communication at the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University Neoliberal Health Organizing, 2015, p. 231-234 Latin American social medicine depicts a distinct and long strand of theorizing of health systems that challenges the liberal capitalist organizing of health, grounded in the organizing principles of social medicine and noting END PAGE 231 that changing the overarching structures is central to transforming the conditions of poor health (Waitzkin, 1991, 2011; Waitzkin and Modell, 1974). That health is constituted within broader social conditions is the basis for research, teaching, clinical practice, and activism in socialist medicine, with early roots in Latin America. Social medicine thus connects health, healing, and health care delivery to the politics of social change and structural transformation, clearly voicing an activist agenda directed at transforming the unequal social conditions. One of the earliest influences of social medicine was evident in the work of the medical student activist Salvador Allende, who would later become the president of Chile. In his book The Chilean Medico-Social Reality, Allende (1939) outlined the social conditions in Chile that resulted in poor health outcomes, emphasizing the broader conditions of foreign debt dependence, underdevelopment, international dependence, and resource consolidation in the hands of the local elite. Proposing social rather than medical solutions to health, Allende emphasized “income redistribution, state regulation of food and clothing supplies, a national housing program, and industrial reforms to address occupational health problems” (Waitzkin, 2011, p. 160). In his political life, Allende sought reforms in the Chilean national health service, complemented by reforms in the housing and nutrition areas, efforts at national income redistribution, and minimizing the role of multinational corporations. The individualized model of public health that sees health and illness as a dichotomy is interrogated by the framework of social medicine that suggests that health and illness exist in a dialectical relationship that is dynamic and is continually shifting on the basis of social conditions, structures, cultural practices, economic production, reproduction, marginalizing practices, and processes of political participation. Thus, interventions in social medicine point toward the necessity for transforming the underlying relationships of production and resource distribution, resisting the public health narrative of interventions as mechanisms for improving economic productivity. Taking a social-class-driven approach to health inequities, Latin American social medicine sees the problems with health being situated within means of economic production, patterns of ownership of means of production, and control over productive processes. Therefore, health is approached from the framework of transforming the processes of economic production and labor processes. The dominant framework of health as integral to growth and economic productivity is questioned by the framework of social medicine that situates the relationship between health and illness amid the very processes of economic organization, distribution of economic resources, and the pervasive effects of social class on health services and health outcomes. END PAGE 232 The innovations in organizing of health structures in Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Bolivia, and Venezuela offer invaluable insights about the possibilities of alternative organizing that seek to redo the entire structure of social organizing that constitute health. The strong health indicators in Cuba demonstrate the effectiveness of a health system that is committed to addressing the structural determinants of health, creating equitable contexts for the realization and delivery of health (Campion and Morrissey, 2013). Social medicine research has looked at the relations among work, reproduction, the environment, and health, describing in-depth the material conditions that constitute health. For instance, researchers studying health in Mexico within the context of unions and local communities have documented health problems that relate to work processes and the environment. Similarly, researchers in Chile have documented the relations between gender, work, and environmental conditions. A key strand of social medicine examines the relationship between violence and health, connecting violence to poverty, the structures of organizing, and the inequities in ownership of processes of economic production. Investigations of violence attached to the U.S.-supported dictatorship in Chile, the violence connected to narcotics traffic and paramilitary operations, and the violence within the broader structures of the state-imperial networks draw linkages to the broader political economic configurations of neoliberalism. Emerging from the broader framework of social medicine, the Barrio Adentro movement in Venezuela, started by former president Hugo Chavez, offers insights into structures and processes of alternative organizing of health, connecting local community structures, community ownership, and community solutions with state infrastructures and state-driven public health resources and solutions (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs, 2009; Muntaner et al., 2006; Waitzkin, 2011). The state-driven referendum by the Chavez government to create public health infrastructures and structures of delivery of integrated family medicine, build preventive infrastructures, and develop community health resources in extremely marginalized communities is supported by massive mass-based participation in popular politics and widespread community participation in developing local community infrastructures, community-based resources of problem solving, and community decision-making capacities. The community health centers built within the barrios serve approximately 250 families and are staffed with one integrated family care doctor, one community health worker, and one health promoter. The community health centers are stocked with medical supplies. The health team not only provides health care but also conducts health surveys in the communities and makes home visits for patients that are too ill to travel to the health centers. The Barrio Adentro is integrated with other missiones addressing education, food insecurity, housing, and END PAGE 233 unemployment, addressing health within a broader structural context (Muntaner et al., 2006). Local community participatory processes are connected with state-driven processes of building community health infrastructures at the local level. The narrative of Barrio Adentro offers an alternative to the neoliberal narrative of the community in mainstream health communication and yet is marked by its absence from disciplinary discourses. Similarly, social medicine and its tradition of addressing the structural contexts of health is marked by its absence from the dominant discourses of health communication. A review of the two major collections of health communication scholarship, The Routledge Handbook of Health Communication and The Handbook of Global Health Communication, depicts the marked absence of the Latin American innovations of social medicine from the discursive space. Opportunities for resistance to neoliberal organizing of health structures and the invitation to imagine alternative possibilities is grounded in materially grounded concrete politics of popular participation in supporting state policies for building public health and health care infrastructures, complemented by local processes of participation in the creation of health solutions.
As the debate on global warming continues, according to data, the last six years have been the warmest on record. Global warming is melting ice, and sea levels have been increasing. The changing climate is causing more and more wildfires, which are leading to other related damage. At the same time, increased flooding is causing large-scale devastation. One question that arises is how much environmental damage have humans already done? A recent study compared the natural biomass on Earth to the mass produced by humans and found humans produce a mass equal to their weight every week. This human-made mass is mainly for buildings, roads, and plastic products. In the early 1900s, human-made mass was about 3 of the global biomass. Today both are about equal. Projections say by 2040, the human-made mass will be triple that of Earth’s biomass. But, slowing down human activity that causes such production may be difficult, given it is considered part of our growth as a civilization. Emerging pathogens Although we are made up of human cells, we have almost ten times that of bacteria just in our guts and more on our skin. These microbes not only affect locally but also affect the entire body. There is a balance between the good and bad bacteria, and any change in the environment may cause this balance to shift, especially on the skin, the consequences of which are unknown. Although most bacteria on and inside of us are harmless, gut bacteria can also have viruses. If viruses don’t kill the bacteria immediately, they can incorporate into the bacterial genome and stay latent for a long time until reactivation by environmental factors, when they can become pathogenic. They can also escape from the gut and enter other organs or the bloodstream. Bacteria can then use these viruses to kill other bacteria or help them evolve to more virulent strains. An example of the evolution of pathogens is the cause of the current pandemic, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Several mutations are now known that make the virus more infectious and resistant to immune responses, and strengthening its to enter cells via surface receptors. The brain There is evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 can also affect the brain. The virus may enter the brain via the olfactory tract or through the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) pathway. Viruses can also affect our senses, such as a loss of smell and taste, and there could be other so far unkown neurological effects. The loss of smell seen in COVID-19 could be a new viral syndrome specific to this disease. Many books and movies have described pandemics caused by pathogens that wipe out large populations and cause severe diseases. In the essay, the author provides a hypothetical scenario where a gut bacteria suddenly starts producing viral proteins. Some virions spread through the body and get transmitted through the human population. After a few months, the virus started causing blindness, and within a year, large populations lost their vision. Pandemics can cause other diseases that can threaten humanity’s entire existence. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this possibility to the forefront. If we continue disturbing the equilibrium between us and the environment, we don’t know what the consequences may be and the next pandemic could lead us to extinction.
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3 - SO - Cap
Tournament: Jack Howe | Round: 4 | Opponent: Millard North YL | Judge: Joseph Barquin Questions of method are a prerequisite – Capitalism excludes alternative viewpoints from debate by characterizing them as “unsuccessful”, creating pedagogical hegemony – insulating itself from criticism. Questioning this framework is key to prevent intellectual stagnation and true transformative policy. Gunder and Hiller 09 (Michael, Auckland University senior planning lecturer, Jean Hillier, Associate Dean, Discipline Leader and Chair, Sustainability and Urban Planning at RMIT U, Planning in Ten Words or Less: A Lacanian Entanglement with Spatial Planning pgs 111-2, 2009) VM The hegemonic network, or bloc, initially shapes the debates and draws on appropriate policies of desired success, such as the needs of bohemians, knowledge clusters, or talented knowledge workers, as to what constitutes their desired enjoyment (cobblestones, chrome and cappuccinos at sidewalk cafes) and what is therefore lacking in local competitiveness. In tum, this defines what is blighted and dysfunctional and in need of economic, spatial planning, or other, remedy. Such an argument is predicated on a logic, or more accurately a rhetoric, that a lack of a particular defined type of enjoyment, or competitiveness (for surely they are one and the same) is inherently unhealthy for the aggregate social body. Lack and its resolution are generally presented as technical, rather than political issues. Consequently, technocrats in partnership with their "˜dominant stakeholders` can ensure the impression of rationally seeking to produce happiness for the many whilst, of course, achieving their stakeholders' specific interests (Gunder and Hillier 2007a, 469). The current "˜post-democratic` milieu facilitates the above through avoidance of critical policy debate challenging favored orthodox positions and policy approaches. Consideration of policy deficiencies, or alternative solutions, are eradicated from political debate so that while "˜token institutions of liberal democracy' are retained conflicting positions and arguments are negated (Stavrakakis 2003, 59). Consequently, "˜the safe names in the field who feed the policy orthodoxy are repeatedly used or their work drawn upon. by different stakeholders. while more critical voices are silenced by their inability to shape policy debates' (Boland 2007, 1032). The economic development or spatial planning policy analyst thus continues to partition reality ideologically by deploying only the orthodox "˜successful' or "˜best practice' economic development or spatial planning responses. This further maintains the dominant, or hegemonic, status quo while providing "˜a cover and shield against critical thought by acting in the manner of a "buffer" isolating the political held Rom any research that is independent and radical in its conception as in its implications for public policy' (Wacquant 2004, 99). At the same time, adoption of the hegemonic orthodoxy tends to generate similar policy responses for every competing local area or city-region. largely resulting in a zero-sum game (Blair and Kumar 1997). LINKS
Identity Politics Identity politics are anti-radical – no revolutionary potential to disrupt capitalism or change class politics Herod 7 (James, graduate of Columbia University and social activist, “Getting Free”, p. 33-4) VM The so-called new social movements, based on gender, racial, sexual, or ethnic identities, cannot destroy capitalism. In general, they haven’t even tried. Except for a tiny fringe of radicals in each of them, they have been attempting to get into the system, not overthrow it. This is true for women, blacks, homosexuals, and ethnic (including Anative) groups, as well as many other identities old people, people with disabilities, mothers on welfare, and so forth. Nothing has derailed the anticapitalist struggle during the past quarter century so thoroughly as have these movements. Sometimes it seems that identity politics is all that remains of the left. Identity politics has simply swamped class politics. The mainstream versions of these movements (the ones fighting to get into the system rather than overthrow it) have given capitalists a chance to do a little fine-tuning by eliminating tensions here and there, and by including token representatives of the excluded groups. Many of the demands of these movements can be easily accommodated. Capitalists can live with boards of directors exhibiting ethnic, gender, and racial diversity as long as all the board members are procapitalist. Capitalists can easily accept a rainbow cabinet as long as the cabinet is pushing the corporate agenda. So mainstream identity politics has not threatened capitalism at all. The radical wings of the new social movements, however, are rather more subversive. These militants realized that it was necessary to attack the whole social order in order to uproot racism and sexism problems that could not be overcome under capitalism since they are an integral part of it. There is no denying the evils of racism, sexism, and nationalism, which are major structural supports to ruling-class control. These militants have done whatever they could to highlight, analyze, and ameliorate these evils. Unfortunately, for the most part, their voices have been lost in all the clamor for admittance to the system by the majorities in their own movements. Capitalism causes inevitable crises which culminate in genocide and a war against alterity Internationalist Perspective 2K (Internationalist Perspective 36, Winter 2000, Internationalist Perspective, “Capitalism and Genocide,” http://internationalist-perspective.org/IP/ip-archive/ip-archive.html)VM The basis upon which such a pure community is constituted, race, nationality, religion, even a categorization by "class" in the Stalinist world, necessarily means the exclusion of those categories of the population which do not conform to the criteria for inclusion, the embodiments of alterity, even while they inhabit the same geographical space as the members of the pure community. Those excluded, the "races" on the other side of the biological continuum, to use Foucauldian terminology, the Other, become alien elements within an otherwise homogeneous world of the pure community. As a threat to its very existence, the role of this Other is to become the scapegoat for the inability of the pure community to provide authentic communal bonds between people, for its abject failure to overcome the alienation that is a hallmark of a reified world. The Jew in Nazi Germany, the Kulak in Stalinist Russia, the Tutsi in Rwanda, Muslims in Bosnia, blacks in the US, the Albanian or the Serb in Kosovo, the Arab in France, the Turk in contemporary Germany, the Bahai in Iran, for example, become the embodiment of alterity, and the target against which the hatred of the members of the pure community is directed. The more crisis ridden a society becomes, the greater the need to find an appropriate scapegoat; the more urgent the need for mass mobilization behind the integral state, the more imperious the need to focus rage against the Other. In an extreme situation of social crisis and political turmoil, the demonization and victimization of the Other can lead to his (mass) murder. In the absence of a working class conscious of its historic task and possibilities, this hatred of alterity which permits capital to mobilize the population in defense of the pure community, can become its own impetus to genocide. The immanent tendencies of the capitalist mode of production which propel it towards a catastrophic economic crisis, also drive it towards mass murder and genocide. In that sense, the death-world, and the prospect of an Endzeit cannot be separated from the continued existence of humanity's subordination to the law of value. Reification, the overmanned world, bio-politics, state racism, the constitution of a pure community directed against alterity, each of them features of the economic and ideological topography of the real domination of capital, create the possibility and the need for genocide. We should have no doubt that the survival of capitalism into this new millenium will entail more and more frequent recourse to mass murder.
Identity Historical Materialism The alt is to adopt a historical materialist approach that acknowledges that racial and gender difference is rooted in the capitalist system of exploitation. Scatamburlo-D’Annibale and McLauren 03, V. and Peter McLaren, “The Strategic Centrality of Class in the Politics of ‘Race’ and ‘Difference’”, UCLA, 2003, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/mclaren/mclaren20and20valerie.pdfVM A historical materialist approach adopts the imperative that categories of difference are social/political constructs that are often encoded in dominant ideological formations and that they often play a role in "moral" and "legal" state-mediated forms of ruling. It also acknowledges the "material" force of ideologies—particularly racist ideologies—that assign separate cultural and/or biological essences to different segments of the population that, in turn, serve to reinforce and rationalize existing relations of power. But more than this, a historical materialist understanding foregrounds the manner in which differ- ence is central to the exploitative production/reproduction dialectic of capital, its labor organization and processes, and the way labor is valued and enumer- ated. The real problem is the internal or dialectical relation that exists between capital and labor within the capitalist production process itself—a social rela-tion in which capitalism is intransigently rooted. This social relation—essential or fundamental to the production of abstract labor—deals with how already existing value is preserved and surplus value is created. If, for example, the process of actual exploitation and the accumulation of surplus value are to be seen as a state of constant manipulation and as a realization process of con- crete labor in actual labor time—within a given cost-production system and a labor market—we cannot underestimate the ways in which difference—racial as well as gender difference—is encapsulated in the production/reproduction dialectic of capital. It is this relationship that is mainly responsible for the ineq- uitable and unjust distribution of resources. Hence, we applaud E. San Juan's goal of racial/ethnic semiotics that is "committed to the elimination of the hegemonic discourse of race in which peoples of color are produced and reproduced daily for exploitation and oppression under the banner of individualized freedom and pluralist, liberal democracy" (1992, p. 96).
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3 - SO - Grove K
Tournament: JW Patterson | Round: 5 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake AL | Judge: Lawson Hudson International relations is the royal science of imperialism – the affirmative engineers sustainability through a reformist, mutating logic of violence. Grove 19 Jairus, PoliSci at the University of Hawai’i. 2019. “Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics in the Anthropocene.” pat Re-Cut Justin Because I wanted this book to inspire curiosity beyond the boundaries of international relations (ir), I considered ignoring the field altogether, removing all mentions of ir or ir theory. However, upon closer reflection, I have decided to keep these references as I think they are relevant for those outside the discipline and for those who, like myself, often feel alienated within its disciplinary boundaries. In the former case, it is important to know that, unlike some more humble fields, ir has always held itself to be a kind of royal science. Scholarship in ir, particularly in the United States, is half research, and half biding time until you have the prince’s ear. The hallowed names in the mainstream of the field are still known because they somehow changed the behavior of their intended clients—those being states, militaries, and international organizations. Therefore, some attention to ir is necessary because it has an all-too-casual relationship with institutional power that directly impacts the lives of real people, and ir is all too often lethal theory. As an American discipline, the political economy of the field is impossible without Department of Defense money, and its semiotic economy would be equally dwarfed without contributory figures like Woodrow Wilson, Henry Kissinger, and Samuel Huntington. The ubiquity of Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis and Kissinger’s particular brand of realpolitik are undeniable throughout the field, as well as the world. Each, in their own way, has saturated the watchwords and nomenclature of geopolitics from an American perspective so thoroughly that both political parties in the United States fight over who gets to claim the heritage of each. Although many other fields such as anthropology and even comparative literature have found themselves in the gravitational pull of geopolitics, international relations is meant to be scholarship as statecraft by other means. That is, ir was meant to improve the global order and ensure the place of its guarantor, the United States of America. Having spent the better part of a decade listening to national security analysts and diplomats from the United States, South Korea, Japan, Europe, China, Brazil, and Russia, as well as military strategists around the planet, I found their vocabulary and worldview strikingly homogeneous. If this seems too general a claim, one should take a peek at John Mearsheimer’s essay “Benign Hegemony,” which defends the Americanness of the ir field. What is most telling in this essay is not a defense of the U.S. as a benign hegemonic power, which Mearsheimer has done at length elsewhere. Rather, it is his vigorous defense that as a field, ir theory has done well by the world in setting the intellectual agenda for global challenges, and for creating useful theoretical approaches to addressing those problems. For Mearsheimer, the proof that American scholarly hegemony has been benign is that there is nothing important that has been left out. A quick scan of the last ten or twenty International Studies Association conferences would suggest otherwise. That issues like rape as a weapon of war, postcolonial violence, global racism, and climate change are not squarely in the main of ir demonstrates just how benign American scholarly hegemony is not. As one prominent anthropologist said to me at dinner after touring the isa conference in 2014, “it was surreal, like a tour through the Cold War. People were giving papers and arguing as if nothing had ever changed.” These same provincial scholars aspire and succeed at filling the advisory roles of each successive American presidency. One cannot help but see a connection between the history of the ir field, and the catastrophes of U.S. foreign policy during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. One could repeat the words of the anthropologist I mentioned to describe the 2016 presidential campaign debates over the future of U.S. foreign policy: it is as if “nothing had ever changed.” And yet these old white men still strut around the halls of America’s “best” institutions as if they saved us from the Cold War, even as the planet crumbles under the weight of their failed imperial dreams. If international relations was meant to be the science of making the world something other than what it would be if we were all left to our own worst devices, then it has failed monumentally. The United States is once again in fierce nuclear competition with Russia. We are no closer to any significant action on climate change. We have not met any of the Millennium Development Goals determined by the United Nations on eradicating poverty. War and security are the most significant financial, creative, social, cultural, technological, and political investments of almost every nation-state on Earth. The general intellect is a martial intellect. Despite all this failure, pessimism does not exist in international relations, at least not on paper. The seething doom of our current predicament thrives at the conference bar and in hushed office conversations but not in our research. In public, the darkness disavowed possesses and inflames the petty cynicisms and hatreds that are often turned outward at tired and predictable scapegoats. After the fury of three decades of critique, most ir scholars still camp out either on the hill of liberal internationalism or in the dark woods of political realism. Neither offers much that is new by way of answers or even explanations, and each dominant school has failed to account for our current apocalyptic condition. One is left wondering what it is exactly that they think they do. Despite the seeming opposition between the two, one idealistic about the future of international order (liberals) and the other self-satisfied with the tragedy of cycles of war and dominance (realists), both positions are optimists of the positivist variety. For both warring parties, ir optimism is expressed through a romantic empiricism. For all those who toil away looking for the next theory of international politics, order is out there somewhere, and dutifully recording reality will find it—or at least bring us closer to its discovery. For liberal internationalism, this will bring the long-heralded maturity of Immanuel Kant’s perpetual peace. For second-order sociopaths known as offensive realists, crumbs of “useful strategic insight” and the endless details that amplify their epistemophilia for force projection and violence capability represent a potential “advantage,” that is, the possibility to move one step forward on the global political board game of snakes and ladders. Still, the cynicism of ir always creeps back in because the world never quite lives up to the empirical findings it is commanded to obey. Disappointment here is not without reason, but we cynically continue to make the same policy recommendations, catastrophe after catastrophe. I have an idea about where ir’s recent malaise comes from. I think it is a moment, just before the awareness of the Anthropocene, after the Cold War and before September 11, when the end of everything was only a hypothetical problem for those of a certain coddled and privileged modern form of life. The catastrophe of the human predicament was that there was no catastrophe, no reason, no generation-defining challenge or war. Now the fate of this form of life is actually imperiled, and it is too much to bear. The weird denial of sexism, racism, climate change, the sixth extinction, and loose nukes, all by a field of scholars tasked with studying geopolitics, is more than irrationalism or ignorance. This animosity toward reality is a deep and corrosive nihilism, a denial of the world. Thus ir as a strategic field is demonstrative of a civilization with nothing left to do, nothing left to destroy. All that is left is to make meaning out of being incapable of undoing the world that Euro-American geopolitics created. Emo geopolitics is not pretty, but it is real. The letdown, the failure, the apocalypse-that-was-not finally arrived, and we are too late. Still, the United States of America continues to follow the advice of “the best and the brightest,” testing the imperial waters, not quite ready to commit out loud to empire but completely unwilling to abandon it. Stuck in between, contemporary geopolitics—as curated by the United States—is in a permanent beta phase. Neuro-torture, algorithmic warfare, drone strikes, and cybernetic nation-building are not means or ends but rather are tests. Can a polis be engineered? Can the human operating system be reformatted? Can violence be modulated until legally invisible while all the more lethal? Each incursion, each new actor or actant, and new terrains from brains to transatlantic cables—all find themselves part of a grand experiment to see if a benign or at least sustainable empire is possible. There is no seeming regard for the fact that each experiment directly competes with Thomas Jefferson’s democratic experiment. One wonders if freedom can even exist anywhere other than temporarily on the fringe of some neglected order. Is this some metaphysical condition of freedom, or is the world so supersaturated with martial orders that the ragged edges between imperial orders are all that we have left? It feels like freedom’s remains persist only in the ruins of everything else. No space is left that can be truly indifferent to the law, security, or economy. Such is the new life of a human in debt. The social contract has been refinanced as what is owed and nothing more: politics without equity. Inequity without equality. What about the impending collapse of the post–World War II order, the self-destruction of the United States, the rise of China and a new world order? If humanity lasts long enough for China to put its stamp on the human apocalypse, I will write a new introduction. Until then, we live in the death rattle of Pax Americana. While I think the totality of this claim is true, I do not want to rule out that many of us throughout the world still make lives otherwise. Many of us even thrive in spite of it all. And yet, no form of life can be made that escapes the fact that everything can come to a sudden and arbitrary end thanks to the whim of an American drone operator, nuclear catastrophe, or macroeconomic manipulation like sanctions. There are other ways to die and other organized forms of killing outside the control of the United States; however, no other single apparatus can make everyone or anyone die irrespective of citizenship or geographic location. For me, this is the most inescapable philosophical provocation of our moment in time. The haphazard and seemingly limitless nature of U.S. violence means that even the core principles of the great political realist concepts like order and national interest are being displaced by subterranean violence entrepreneurs that populate transversal battlefields, security corridors, and border zones. Mercenaries, drug lords, chief executive officers, presidents, and sports commissioners are more alike than ever. Doomsayers like Paul Virilio, Lewis Mumford, and Martin Heidegger foretold a kind of terminal and self-annihilating velocity for geopolitics’ technological saturation, but even their lack of imagination appears optimistic. American geopolitics does not know totality or finality; it bleeds, mutates, and reforms. Furthermore, the peril of biopolitics seems now almost romantic. To make life live? Perchance to dream. The care and concern for life’s productivity is increasingly subsumed by plasticity—forming and reforming without regard to the telos of productivity, division, or normative order. There are, of course, still orders in our geoplastic age, but they are almost unrecognizable as such. When so many citizens and states are directly invested in sabotaging publicly stated strategic ends, then concepts like national interest seem equally quaint. We are witnessing creative and horrifying experiments in the affirmative production of dying, which also deprive those targeted and in some cases whole populations from the relief of death. To follow Rucker, I want to try to see the world for what it is. We can only say that tragedy is no longer a genre of geopolitics. Tragedy redeems. The occluded character of contemporary geopolitics shoehorned into experience produces the feeling that there is no relief, no reason, no victory, no defeats, and no exit within the confines of national security’s constricted world. This is not tragedy: it is horror. We live in an age of horror that, like the victims of gore movies who never quite die so that they can be tortured more, furthers our practice of collective violence and goes on for decades as a kind of sustainable warfare.
The affirmative greenlights themselves as the moral savior but hides a history of imperialism – the 1ACs reform is empty and coopted by capitalist imperialist logic which justifies colonialism and reinforces racial difference. Vanni 21 Amaka; Dr. Vanni joined the School of Law in September 2020 as a Lecturer in Law. Her main area of research is international economic law, with a focus on intellectual property law, international trade law, global economic governance, law and development. Dr. Vanni obtained both her PhD and LLM degrees in International Economic Law from the University of Warwick, where her doctoral thesis was awarded the 2018 SIEL–Hart Prize in International Economic Law. She has BA(Hons) in International Relations and Politics from Keele University, where was awarded the Vice-Chancellor Partial Scholarship (2004-2007). Dr. Vanni currently teaches the undergraduate and postgraduate modules in intellectual property law. She is the current president of the African International Economic Law Network (AfIELN), editor of the African Journal of International Economic Law and a contributing editor of Afronomicslaw.org, the leading blog on the International Economic Law landscape as it relates to Africa and the Global South. Dr. Vanni is also a member of the IEL Collective, and a theme lead on philanthropic and social financing for the New Frontiers in International Development Finance (Nef Def) project, a multi-institutional collaborative effort. Research interests Dr. Vanni’s research interests lie at the intersection of international economic law (IEL), law and development, global political economy, and global governance. Dr. Vanni’s research adopts critical analysis, empirical methods and sociolegal approach in her examination and study of IEL, particularly intellectual property. As a result, her work focuses on the constitutive power of international economic law, norms, and practices to affect social relations and everyday life, especially in the developing world where this impact is felt more starkly. Her work is also attentive to how various actors (both state and non-state) and local culture interact with IEL. Dr. Vanni’s award winning book ‘Patent Games in the Global South: Pharmaceutical Patent Law-Making in Brazil, India and Nigeria’ (Hart, 2020) provides fresh theoretical insights into global intellectual property regimes with focus on the role of history, social networks and how relationships between a variety of actors shape the framing of, and subsequently the responses to, national implementation of international patent law. Further publications focus on pharmaceutical patent and access to medicines, the growing influence of global philanthropic actors in international economic regimes, and IP and technology start-ups in emerging markets; “On Intellectual Property Rights, Access to Medicines and Vaccine Imperialism,” Twail Review; 3/23/21; https://twailr.com/on-intellectual-property-rights-access-to-medicines-and-vaccine-imperialism/ Justin Supporters and opponents of a TRIPS waiver for the COVID-19 vaccines (February 2021) Despite calls to make COVID-19 vaccines and related technologies a global public good, western pharmaceutical companies have declined to loosen or temporarily suspend IP protections and transfer technology to generic manufacturers. Such transfer would enable the scale-up of production and supply of lifesaving COVID-19 medical tools across the world. Furthermore, these countries are also blocking the TRIPS waiver proposal put forward by South Africa and India at the WTO despite being supported by 57 mostly developing countries. The waiver proposal seeks to temporarily postpone certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for treating, containing and preventing the coronavirus, but only until widespread vaccination and immunity are achieved. This means that countries will not be required to provide any form of IP protection on all COVID-19 related therapeutics, diagnostics and other technologies for the duration of the pandemic. It is important to reiterate the waiver proposal is time-limited and is different from TRIPS flexibilities, which are safeguards within the Agreement to mitigate the negative impact of patents such as high price of patented medicines. These safeguards include compulsory licenses and parallel importation. However, because of the onerous process of initiating these flexibilities as well as the threat of possible trade penalties by the US through the United States Trade Representative (USTR) “Special 301” Report targeting countries even in the absence of illegality, many developing countries are reluctant to invoke TRIPS flexibilities for public health purposes. For example, in the past, countries such as Colombia, India, Thailand and recently Malaysia have all featured in the Special 301 Report for using compulsory licenses to increase access to cancer medications. It is these challenges that the TRIPS waiver seeks to alleviate and, if approved, would also provide countries the space, without fear of retaliation from developed countries, to collaborate with competent developers in the RandD, manufacturing, scaling-up, and supply of COVID-19 tools. However, because this waiver is being opposed by a group of developed countries, we are grappling with the problem of artificially-created vaccine scarcity. The effect of this scarcity will further prolong and deepen the financial impact of this pandemic currently estimated to cost USD 9.2 trillion, half of which will be borne by advanced economies. Thus, in opposing the TRIPS waiver with the hopes of reaping huge financial rewards, developed countries are worsening pandemic woes in the long term. Perhaps it is time to reorient our sight and call the ongoing practices of buying up global supply of vaccine what it truly is – vaccine imperialism. Another kind of scarcity caused by vaccine nationalism has also reduced equitable access. Vaccine nationalism is a phenomenon where rich countries buy up global supply of vaccines through advance purchase agreements (APA) with pharmaceutical companies for their own populations at the expense of other countries. But perhaps it is time to reorient our sight and call the ongoing practices of buying up global supply of vaccine what it truly is – vaccine imperialism. If we take seriously the argument put forward by Antony Anghie on the colonial origins of international law, particularly how these origins create a set of structures that continually repeat themselves at various stages, we will begin to see COVID-19 vaccine accumulation not only as political, but also as imperial continuities manifesting in the present. Take, for instance, the report released by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center that shows that high-income countries have already purchased nearly 3.8 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses. Specifically, the United States has secured 400 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and has APAs for more than 1 billion doses from four other companies yet to secure US regulatory approval. The European Union has similarly negotiated nearly 2.3 billion doses under contract and is negotiating for about 300 million more. With these purchases, these countries will be able to vaccinate their populations twice over, while many developing states, especially in Africa, are left behind. In hoarding vaccines whilst protecting the IP interests of their pharmaceutical multinational corporations, the afterlife of imperialism is playing out in this pandemic. Moreover, these bilateral deals are hampering initiatives such as the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX) – a pooled procurement mechanism for COVID-19 vaccine – aimed at equitable and science-led global vaccine distribution. By engaging in bilateral deals, wealthy countries impede the possibility of effective mass-inoculation campaigns. While the usefulness of the COVAX initiative cannot be denied, it is not enough. It will cover only the most vulnerable 20 per cent of a country’s population, it is severely underfunded and there are lingering questions regarding the contractual obligations of pharmaceutical companies involved in the initiative. For instance, it is not clear whether the COVAX contract includes IP-related clauses such as sharing of technological know-how. Still, even with all its faults, without a global ramping-up of production, distribution and vaccination campaigns via COVAX, the world will not be able to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and its growing variants. Health inequity and inequalities in vaccine access are not unfortunate outcomes of the global IP regime; they are part of its central architecture. The system is functioning exactly as it is set up to do. These events – the corporate capture of the global pharmaceutical IP regime, state complicity and vaccine imperialism – are not new. Recall Article 7 of TRIPS, which states that the objective of the Agreement is the ‘protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights to contribute to the promotion of technological innovation and to the transfer and dissemination of technology’. In similar vein, Article 66(2) of TRIPS further calls on developed countries to ‘provide incentives to enterprises and institutions within their territories to promote and encourage technology transfer to least-developed country’. While the language of ‘transfer of technology’ might seem beneficial or benign, in actuality it is not. As I discussed in my book, and as Carmen Gonzalez has also shown, when development objectives are incorporated into international legal instruments and institutions, they become embedded in structures that may constrain their transformative potential and reproduce North-South power imbalances. This is because these development objectives are circumscribed by capitalist imperialist structures, adapted to justify colonial practices and mobilized through racial differences. These structures are the essence of international law and its institutions even in the twenty-first century. They continue to animate broader socio-economic engagement with the global economy even in the present as well as in the legal and regulatory codes that support them. Thus, it is not surprising that even in current global health crisis, calls for this same transfer of technology in the form of a TRIPS waiver to scale up global vaccine production is being thwarted by the hegemony of developed states inevitably influenced by their respective pharmaceutical companies. The ‘emancipatory potential’ of TRIPS cannot be achieved if it was not created to be emancipatory in the first place. It also makes obvious the ways international IP law is not only unsuited to promote structural reform to enable the self-sufficiency and self-determination of the countries in the global south, but also produces asymmetries that perpetuate inequalities. Concluding Remarks What this pandemic makes clear is that the development discourse often touted by developed nations to help countries in the Global South ‘catch up’ is empty when the essential medicines needed to stay alive are deliberately denied and weaponised. Like the free-market reforms designed to produce ‘development’, IP deployed to incentivise innovation is yet another tool in the service of private profits. As this pandemic has shown, the reality of contemporary capitalism – including the IP regime that underpins it – is competition among corporate giants driven by profit and not by human need. The needs of the poor weigh much less than the profits of big business and their home states. However, it is not all doom and gloom. Countries such as India, China and Russia have stepped up in the distribution of vaccines or what many call ‘vaccine diplomacy.’ Further, Cuba’s vaccine candidate Soberana 02, which is currently in final clinical trial stages and does not require extra refrigeration, promises to be a suitable option for many countries in the global South with infrastructural and logistical challenges. Importantly, Cuba’s history of medical diplomacy in other global South countries raises hope that the country will be willing to share the know-how with other manufactures in various non-western countries, which could help address artificial supply problems and control over distribution. In sum, this pandemic provides an opportune moment to overhaul this dysfunctional global IP system. We need not wait for the next crisis to learn the lessons from this crisis.
Voting negative adopts failed IR for a dose of pessimism – at the end of the world, all we can do is hope to be buried alive together. Grove 19 Jairus, PoliSci at the University of Hawai’i. 2019. “Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics in the Anthropocene.” pat Re-Cut Justin Failed ir affirms the power of this kind of negative thinking as an alternative to the endless rehearsing of moralizing insights and strategic foresight. The negative is not “against” or reacting to something. Rather, it is the affirmation of a freedom beyond the limits of life and death. That is, it is making a life by continuing to think about the world, even if that thinking is not recuperative, and even if nothing we think can save us. In the face of it all, one celebrates useless thinking, useless scholarship, and useless forms of life at the very moment we are told to throw them all under the bus in the name of survival at all costs. This is a logic referred to lately as hope and it is as cruel as it is anxiety inducing. Hope is a form of extortion. We are told that it is our obligation to bear the weight of making things better while being chided that the failure of our efforts is the result of not believing in the possibility of real change. In such an environment, pessimism is often treated as a form of treason, as if only neoliberals and moral degenerates give up—or so goes the op-ed’s insisting upon the renewed possibility of redemption. In response to these exhortations, pessimism offers a historical atheism, both methodologically and morally. The universe does not bend toward justice. Sometimes the universe bends toward the indifference of gravity wells and black holes. Affirming negativity, inspired by Achille Mbembe, is grounds for freedom, even if that freedom or relief is only fleeting and always insecure. I am not arrogant enough to think a book can attain freedom of this sort, but this book is inspired by refusals of critique as redemption in favor of useless critique and critique for its own sake. That the pursuit of knowledge without immediate application is so thoroughly useless, even profane, is a diagnosis of our current moment. The neoliberal assault on the university is evidence of this condition, as is the current pitch of American politics. Our indifference as intellectuals to maximizing value has not gone unnoticed. We are still dangerous, worthy of vilification, of attack, sabotage, and derision because we fail so decadently. We are parasites according to Scott Walker, Donald Trump, and the rest. So be it. We are and shall remain irascible irritants to a worldwide assault on thinking that is well underway and facing few obstacles in other jurisdictions. What would failed scholarship do? Learn to die, learn to live, learn to listen, learn to be together, and learn to be generous. These virtues are useless in that they do not prevent or manage things. They do not translate into learning objectives or metrics. Virtues of this order are selfsame, nontransferable experiences. They are meaningful but not useful. These are luxurious virtues. Like grieving or joy, they are ends unto themselves. But how will these ideas seek extramural grants, contribute to an outcomes-based education system, or become a policy recommendation? They will not, and that is part of their virtue. Even if there is no straight line to where we are and where we ought to be, I think we should get over the idea that somehow the U.S. project of liberal empire is conflicted, or “more right than it is wrong,” or pragmatically preferable to the alternatives. I hope this book can contribute to the urgent necessity to get out of the way by reveling in the catastrophic failure that should inspire humility but instead seems to embolden too many to seek global control yet again. Demolition may be an affirmative act if it means insurgents and others can be better heard. And yet this may fail too. If we can accomplish nothing at all, we can at least, as Ta-Nehisi Coates and other pessimists have said, refuse to suborn the lie of America any longer. Telling the truth, even if it cannot change the outcome of history, is a certain kind of solace. In Coates’s words, there is a kind of rapture “when you can no longer be lied to, when you have rejected the dream.” Saying the truth out loud brings with it the relief that we are not crazy. Things really are as bad as we think. If there are those of us who want to break from this one-hundred-year-old race to be the next Henry Kissinger, then why do we continue to seek respect in the form of recognizable standards of excellence? I am not sure where the answer finally lies, but I do know that professionalization will not save us. To appear as normal and recognizably rigorous will not be enough to stave off the neoliberal drive to monetize scholarship, or to demand of us strategically useful insights. The least we can do in the face of such a battle is to find comfort in meaningful ideas and the friendships they build rather than try to perform for those we know are the problem. Some will ask, who is this “we” or is that “they”—where is your evidence? More will know exactly what I am talking about. The virtues I seek are oriented toward an academy of refuge, a place we can still live, no matter how dire the conditions of the university and the classroom. It is not the think tank, boardroom, or command center. We are, those of us who wish to be included, the last of the philosophers, the last of the lovers of knowledge, the deviants who should revel in what Harney and Moten have called the undercommons. In one of his final lectures, Bataille speaks of the remnants of a different human species, something not quite so doomed, something that wasted its newly discovered consciousness and tool-being on the art that still marks the walls of prehistoric caves. This lingering minor or vestigial heritage is philosophy’s beginning. Philosophy survives war, atrocity, famine, and crusades. Thinking matters in a very unusual way. Thinking is not power or emancipation. Thinking matters for a sense of belonging to the world, and for believing in the fecundity of the world despite evidence to the contrary. How do you get all this from pessimism, from failure? Because willing failure is a temptation, a lure to think otherwise, to think dangerous thoughts. Pessimism is a threat to indifferentism and nihilism in the sense of the phenomenon of Donald Trump. Pessimism is a provocation and an enemy of skepticism, particularly of the metaphysical variety. It is not redemption from these afflictions, but in pessimism there is solace in the real. To put it another way, to study the world as it is means to care for it. The exhortation that our care or interest should be contingent on how useful the world is and how much of it conforms to our designs is as much opposed to care as it is to empiricism. We can study airports, poetry, endurance races, borders, bombs, plastic, and warfare, and find them all in the world. To consider the depth of their existence can be an invitation to the world rather than a prelude to another policy report. One cannot make a successful political career out of such pursuits, but you might be able to make a life out of it, a life worth repeating even if nothing else happens. At the end of Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, we are presented with the Fantastic Mr. Fox’s toast as an exemple of something meaningful in these dark times of ours. They say all foxes are slightly allergic to linoleum, but it’s cool to the paw—try it. They say my tail needs to be dry cleaned twice a month, but now it’s fully detachable—see? They say our tree may never grow back, but one day, something will. Yes, these crackles are made of synthetic goose and these giblets come from artificial squab and even these apples look fake—but at least they’ve got stars on them. I guess my point is, we’ll eat tonight, and we’ll eat together. And even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt the five and a half most wonderful wild animals I’ve ever met in my life. So let’s raise our boxes—to our survival. Halberstam says of this queer moment: Not quite a credo, something short of a toast, a little less than a speech, but Mr. Fox gives here one of the best and most moving—both emotionally and in stop-motion terms—addresses in the history of cinema. Unlike Coraline, where survival is predicated upon a rejection of the theatrical, the queer, and the improvised, and like Where the Wild Things Are, where the disappointment of deliverance must be leavened with the pragmatism of possibility, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a queerly animated classic in that it teaches us, as Finding Nemo, Chicken Run, and so many other revolting animations before it, to believe in detachable tails, fake apples, eating together, adapting to the lighting, risk, sissy sons, and the sheer importance of survival for all those wild souls that the farmers, the teachers, the preachers, and the politicians would like to bury alive. Although not as much fun as Halberstam’s monument to low theory, Savage Ecology is for all the other wild animals out there studying global politics. May we be buried alive together.
China's space strategies strengthen deterrence now. PLA deterrence is key to joint operations, which ensure Chinese modernization beyond space.
Cheng 11 Dean Cheng is a Research Fellow in Chinese Political and Security Affairs in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation. August 16, 2011. “China’s Space Program: A Growing Factor in U.S. Security Planning” China’s Space Program: A Growing Factor in U.S. Security Planning (indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com) Accessed 12-17 gord0 China’s space efforts are not simply the actions of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or efforts AND (zhitian quan) through a combination of space offensive and defensive operations.
Private entities key – Xi needs them for innovation and modernization
Patel 21 ~Neel V. Patel, Neel is a space reporter for MIT Technology Review. 1-21-2021, "China's surging private space industry is out to challenge the US," MIT Technology Review, https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/21/1016513/china-private-commercial-space-industry-dominance/ accessed 12/14/21~ Adam recut gord0 Until recently, China's space activity has been overwhelmingly dominated by two state-owned AND the space industry's new need for mass production of satellites and rockets alike.
Chinese military modernization functions as a deterrent for nuclear war with the US
Cimbala 15 Stephen J Cimbala, Professor of Political Science at PSU Brandywine. Summer 2015. “Chinese Military Modernization” Chinese Military modernization: Implications for Strategic Nuclear Arms Control (af.edu) Accessed 12-18 gord0 China’s political and military objectives in Asia and worldwide differ from those AND priority targets while avoiding mass killing and fruitless attacks on enemy strongholds.7
4/22/22
4 - JF - Global Internet DA
Tournament: Puget Sound | Round: 2 | Opponent: Garrett Lee | Judge: David McGinnis
Internet is open to massive vulnerabilities now
Griffiths 19 James Griffiths 7-26-2019 "The global internet is powered by vast undersea cables. But they're vulnerable." https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html (CNN Analyst)ELmer Hong Kong (CNN) - On July 29, 1858, two steam- AND . "You'd be focusing on the hardest aspect of disrupting a network."
SpaceX satellites are key to internet access
James Pethokoukis 11/30 ~James Pethokoukis, a columnist and an economic policy analyst, is the Dewitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he writes and edits the AEIdeas blog and hosts a weekly podcast, "Political Economy with James Pethokoukis." He is also a columnist for The Week and an official contributor to CNBC. "Why a SpaceX bankruptcy would hurt the global poor" Faster, Please! November 30, 2021 https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-why-a-spacex-bankruptcy-would-hurt I don't have enough deep knowledge about SpaceX's business or financials to reliably gauge the AND there will be a lot less global poverty here on Earth than otherwise.
Internet access checks multiple existential threats
Eagleman '10 ~Dr. David; 11/9/2010; PhD in Neuroscience @ Baylor University, Adjunct Professor of Neoroscience @ Stanford University, Former Guggenheim Fellow, Director of the Center for Science and Law, BA @ Rice University; "Six Ways The Internet Will Save Civilization"; https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apocalypse-no~~ Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. AND to suggest that the net may just be the technology that saves us.
4/16/22
4 - JF - Inequality DA
Tournament: Peninsula | Round: 5 | Opponent: HWL ML | Judge: David Dosch
SpaceX satellites are key to solving inequality globally – empirics prove
James Pethokoukis 11/30 ~James Pethokoukis, a columnist and an economic policy analyst, is the Dewitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he writes and edits the AEIdeas blog and hosts a weekly podcast, "Political Economy with James Pethokoukis." He is also a columnist for The Week and an official contributor to CNBC. "Why a SpaceX bankruptcy would hurt the global poor" Faster, Please! November 30, 2021 https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-why-a-spacex-bankruptcy-would-hurt I don't have enough deep knowledge about SpaceX's business or financials to reliably gauge the AND there will be a lot less global poverty here on Earth than otherwise.
Matthews 18 Dylan Matthews 10-26-2018 "How to help people millions of years from now" https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/26/18023366/far-future-effective-altruism-existential-risk-doing-good (Co-founder of Vox, citing Nick Beckstead @ Rutgers University)Re-cut by Elmer If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions AND far future, then effective altruism just becomes plain ol' do-goodery.
4/16/22
4 - JF - Internet DA
Tournament: Puget Sound | Round: 2 | Opponent: Garrett Lee | Judge: David McGinnis
John Castellaw 17. 36-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Founder and CEO of Farmspace Systems LLC, "Opinion: Food Security Strategy Is Essential to Our National Security," 5/1/17, https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/9203-opinion-food-security-strategy-is-essential-to-our-national-security The United States faces many threats to our National Security. These threats include continuing AND and agricultural prosperity while materially contributing to our Nation's and the world's security.
4/16/22
4 - JF - Mining DA
Tournament: Harvard-Westlake | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough YN | Judge: Joshua Michael
Recent moves by NASA put Asteroid Mining solely in the hands of the private sector.
Glester 18, Andrew. ~Andrew Glester is the host of the Physics World podcast and the Cosmic Shed podcast, which explores the way science and storytelling collide. He is also the co-ordinator of the Space Universities Network~ "The Asteroid Trillionaires." PhysicsWorld, 11 June 2018, https://physicsworld.com/a/the-asteroid-trillionaires/. ~GHS-AA~ "I'll make a prediction right now. The first trillionaire will be made in AND -field-sized asteroid could contain as much as $50bn of platinum.
Asteroid mining is key to solving water crises
Tillman 19 (Nola Taylor Tillman is a Freelance Science Writer at Redd Infinity. Graduate of Agnes Scott College.), "Tons of Water in Asteroids Could Fuel Satellites, Space Exploration", Space, 9-29-19, https://www.space.com/water-rich-asteroids-space-exploration-fuel.html NT When it comes to mining space for water, the best target may not be AND be duds is something the miners will have to decide," Rivkin said.
Water Wars cause:
a~ Indo-Pak War – goes Nuclear
Klare 20 — Five College professor emeritus of peace and world security studies, and director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies (PAWSS), holds a B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of the Union Institute. (Michael; Published: 2020; "Climate Change, Water Scarcity, and the Potential for Interstate Conflict in South Asia"; Journal of Strategic Security 13, No. 4, Pages 109-122; https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.13.4.1826 Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol13/iss4/8)//CYang Interstate conflict over water might occur, the ICA indicated, when several states rely AND global agriculture—an outcome with enormous implications for American national security.30
Recent moves by NASA put Asteroid Mining solely in the hands of the private sector.
Glester 18, Andrew. Andrew Glester is the host of the Physics World podcast and the Cosmic Shed podcast, which explores the way science and storytelling collide. He is also the co-ordinator of the Space Universities Network "The Asteroid Trillionaires." PhysicsWorld, 11 June 2018, https://physicsworld.com/a/the-asteroid-trillionaires/. GHS-AA "I'll make a prediction right now. The first trillionaire will be made in AND -field-sized asteroid could contain as much as $50bn of platinum.
Asteroid mining is key to solving water crises
Tillman 19 (Nola Taylor Tillman is a Freelance Science Writer at Redd Infinity. Graduate of Agnes Scott College.), "Tons of Water in Asteroids Could Fuel Satellites, Space Exploration", Space, 9-29-19, https://www.space.com/water-rich-asteroids-space-exploration-fuel.html NT When it comes to mining space for water, the best target may not be AND be duds is something the miners will have to decide," Rivkin said.
Water Wars cause Indo-Pak War which goes Nuclear
Klare 20 — Five College professor emeritus of peace and world security studies, and director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies (PAWSS), holds a B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of the Union Institute. (Michael; Published: 2020; "Climate Change, Water Scarcity, and the Potential for Interstate Conflict in South Asia"; Journal of Strategic Security 13, No. 4, Pages 109-122; https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.13.4.1826 Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol13/iss4/8)//CYang Interstate conflict over water might occur, the ICA indicated, when several states rely AND global agriculture—an outcome with enormous implications for American national security.30
4/16/22
4 - JF - Mining DAv3
Tournament: Peninsula | Round: 5 | Opponent: HWL ML | Judge: David Dosch
Climate change makes water shortages inevitable – that causes hydro-political conflict escalation which goes nuclear
Jamail 19 ~(Dahr, writes for Truthout about climate change issues, recipient of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, frequent guest on Democracy Now!) "The World Is on the Brink of Widespread Water Wars," Truth Out, 2/11/2019~ JL Mark's words should be a call to attention, and a call to action. AND 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 AND and 'cost-effective' are defined by each company is to be seen."
NASA is preserving resources by leveraging private partnerships
Miriam Kramer 21, author of Space, "NASA's plans for the future hinge on the success of private companies," Axios, 12-7-2021, https://www.axios.com/nasa-private-spaceflight-plans-5a5710e6-5223-4da3-8c5d-5a712e1d862e.html The private space players who will drive NASA's plans for the coming decade are declaring AND of commercial space companies to start designing and building privately operated space stations.
Plan forces trade-offs that crush effective Earth sciences —- risks catastrophic climate change
Haymet 7 (Tony, Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography – University of California, San Diego, Mark Abbott, Dean of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science – Oregon State University, and Jim Luyten, Acting Director – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "The Planet NASA Needs to Explore", Washington Post, 5-10, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902451.html) Decades ago, a shift in NASA priorities sidelined progress in human space exploration. AND afford to be so starry-eyed that we overlook our own planet.
Warming is inevitable but adjusting government policy can address the worst effects – specifically, for sea level rise.
Eric Holthaus 15, editor at rollingstone magazine citing James Hansen, former NASA climatologist, "The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Here," Rolling Stone, accessed 10-23-2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-point-of-no-return-climate-change-nightmares-are-already-here-20150805 On July 20th, James Hansen, the former NASA climatologist who brought climate change AND economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization."
NASA is preserving resources by leveraging private partnerships
Miriam Kramer 21, author of Space, "NASA's plans for the future hinge on the success of private companies," Axios, 12-7-2021, https://www.axios.com/nasa-private-spaceflight-plans-5a5710e6-5223-4da3-8c5d-5a712e1d862e.html The private space players who will drive NASA's plans for the coming decade are declaring AND of commercial space companies to start designing and building privately operated space stations.
Haymet 7 (Tony, Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography – University of California, San Diego, Mark Abbott, Dean of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science – Oregon State University, and Jim Luyten, Acting Director – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "The Planet NASA Needs to Explore", Washington Post, 5-10, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902451.html) Decades ago, a shift in NASA priorities sidelined progress in human space exploration. AND afford to be so starry-eyed that we overlook our own planet.
Warming is inevitable but adjusting government policy can address the worst effects – specifically, for sea level rise.
Plan forces spending trade-offs that crush effective Earth sciences —- risks catastrophic climate change
Haymet 7 (Tony, Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography – University of California, San Diego, Mark Abbott, Dean of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science – Oregon State University, and Jim Luyten, Acting Director – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "The Planet NASA Needs to Explore", Washington Post, 5-10, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902451.html) Decades ago, a shift in NASA priorities sidelined progress in human space exploration. AND afford to be so starry-eyed that we overlook our own planet.
NASA Earth Science is crucial to climate adaptation:
1 – Their satellites collect data on sea level rise and tracking sea rise that is crucial to adapting communities to the impacts of climate change – that's Haymet
2 – They monitor coastal waters and crop stress to maximize water usage and crop growth
Andrea Thompson 17, Associate Editor, Sustainability at Science American, 3-31-2017, "'Critical' NASA Climate Missions Targeted in Budget Cuts," Climate Central, https://www.climatecentral.org/news/critical-nasa-climate-missions-budget-cuts-21299 In a budget otherwise scant on specifics, four climate-related NASA satellite missions AND the U.S. and around the world, several scientists said.
3 – They improve weather forecasting and natural disaster prediction and relief
Starlink is key to Precision Ag – key to food sustainability and increasing food supply to account for exponential population growth. Takes out Song and Bloom.
Greensight 21 3-15-2021 "Can Starlink Save the World by Connecting Farms?" https://www.greensightag.com/logbook/can-starlink-save-the-world-by-connecting-farms/ (Data Management Consulting Firm)Elmer GreenSight innovates in a number of different areas, but one of the areas we AND advancing access to precision agriculture globally and contributing to solving global food challenges.
Cribb 19 Julian Cribb 8-23-2019 "Food or War" https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/food-or-war/hotspots-for-food-conflict-in-the-twentyfirst-century/1CD674412E09B8E6F325C9C0A0A6778A (principal of Julian Cribb and Associates who provide specialist consultancy in the communication of science, agriculture, food, mining, energy and the environment. , His published work includes over 8000 articles, 3000 media releases and eight books. He has received 32 awards for journalism.)Elmer Future Food Wars The mounting threat to world peace posed by a food, climate AND only affects the Africans. The consequences will impact everyone on the planet.
Xi's regime is stable now, but its success depends on strong growth and private sector development.
Mitter and Johnson 21 ~Rana Mitter and Elsbeth Johnson, Rana Mitter is a professor of the history and politics of modern China at Oxford. Elsbeth Johnson, formerly the strategy director for Prudential PLC's Asian business, is a senior lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management and the founder of SystemShift, a consulting firm. May-June 2021, "What the West Gets Wrong About China," Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/2021/05/what-the-west-gets-wrong-about-china accessed 12/14/21~ Adam In China, however, growth has come in the context of stable communist rule AND University thanks to social mobility and the party's significant investment in scientific research.
Xi has committed to the commercial space industry as the linchpin of China's rise – the plan is seen as a complete 180
Patel 21 ~Neel V. Patel, Neel is a space reporter for MIT Technology Review. 1-21-2021, "China's surging private space industry is out to challenge the US," MIT Technology Review, https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/21/1016513/china-private-commercial-space-industry-dominance/ accessed 12/14/21~ Adam Until recently, China's space activity has been overwhelmingly dominated by two state-owned AND for the commercial space sector as it tries to expand," he says.
Shifts in regime perception threatens CCP's legitimacy from nationalist hardliners
Weiss 19 Jessica Weiss 1-29-2019 "Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises: Evidence from China" http://www.jessicachenweiss.com/uploads/3/0/6/3/30636001/19-01-24-elite-statements-isq-ca.pdf (Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University)Elmer Public support—or the appearance of it—matters to many autocracies. As AND to it more directly than even the U.S. government."11
Xi will launch diversionary war to domestic backlash – escalates in multiple hotspots
Norris 17, William J. Geostrategic Implications of China's Twin Economic Challenges. CFR Discussion Paper, 2017. (Associate professor of Chinese foreign and security policy at Texas AandM University's Bush School of Government and Public Service)Elmer Populist pressures might tempt the party leadership to encourage diversionary nationalism. The logic of AND resource is directed shifts away from industrial and export production toward domestic consumption.
Kulacki 20 ~Dr. Gregory Kulacki focuses on cross-cultural communication between the United States and China on nuclear and space arms control and is the China Project Manager for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, 2020. Would China Use Nuclear Weapons First In A War With The United States?, Thediplomat.com, https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/would-china-use-nuclear-weapons-first-in-a-war-with-the-united-states/~~ srey Admiral Charles A. Richard, the head of the U.S. Strategic AND during a military crisis, but it would make one far less likely.
The commercial space sector is one of the PLAs central goals – the plan is a 180.
Bartholomew and Cleveland 19 – Carolyn and Robin, 4/25/19, Chairmen and Vice Chairmen. Section is written from Michael A. McDevitt, US Congressperson, ~"HEARING ON CHINA IN SPACE: A STRATEGIC COMPETITION?," https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/transcripts/April20252C20201920Hearing20Transcript2028229.pdf~~ Justin As the Chairman said, China is determined to become a leading space power, AND and is prepared to use cyberattacks against U.S. space systems.
That triggers backlash – they don't support restrictions on the space sector and will do everything to convince leaders not to do the plan – independently, is a reason the plan gets circumvented
Cheng 14 ~Dean Cheng, Senior Research Fellow in the Asia Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, Former Senior Analyst at the China Studies Division of the Center for Naval Analyses, Former Senior Analyst with Science Applications International Corporation, "Prospects for U.S.-China Space Cooperation", Testimony before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, 4/9/2014, https://www.heritage.org/testimony/prospects-us-china-space-cooperation~~ At the same time, space is now a sector that enjoys significant political support AND —with a real likelihood that the PLA would be one of them.
An unhinged PLA triggers Himalayan war – goes global
Chellaney 17 ~Dr. Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, PhD in International Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, "Why the Chinese Military's Rising Clout Troubles Xi Jinping", The National, 9/9/2017, https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/why-the-chinese-military-s-rising-clout-troubles-xi-jinping-1.626815?videoId=5754807360001~~ China's president Xi Jinping has stepped up his domestic political moves in the run- AND as a praetorian state are real and carry major implications for international security.
Extinction.
Caldicott 17 – Helen, 2017, Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility ~"The new nuclear danger: George W. Bush's military-industrial complex," The New Press~Elmer The use of Pakistani nuclear weapons could trigger a chain reaction. Nuclear-armed AND nuclear winter would ensue, meaning the end of most life on earth.
4/22/22
4 - ND - BC DA
Tournament: Badgerland | Round: 2 | Opponent: Jerry Sun | Judge: Nicholas Wallenburg Business Confidence high now – best surveys. ICAEW 8-20 8-20-2021 "Business confidence remains at record high as economy gets sales boost" https://www.icaew.com/about-icaew/news/press-release-archive/2021-news-releases/business-confidence-remains-at-record-high-as-economy-gets-sales-boost (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales)Elmer Friday 20 August 2021: Business confidence has hit a record high for the second quarter in a row, a survey of chartered accountants published today has found. Business confidence at record high for second consecutive quarter, ICAEW survey finds Strong sales growth projections key to confidence boost Companies face new challenges as economy reopens Business confidence has hit a record high for the second quarter in a row, a survey of chartered accountants published today (FRIDAY 20 AUGUST 2021) has found. Sentiment tracked by ICAEW’s Business Confidence Monitor™ (BCM) found optimism at 47 on the quarterly index, its highest level since the survey was launched in 2004 and surpassing the previous record set last quarter. 1 The optimism was shared by businesses of all sizes across all sectors, nations and regions in the UK. The record reading was a likely reflection of the expectation of strong sales growth in the year ahead, especially in the domestic market where a record rise of 7.4 is predicted over the coming 12 months. Companies also expect a sharp boost in export sales, which will rebound to pre-pandemic rates of increase. 2 However, the likelihood of confidence remaining positive is highly dependent on the COVID-19 situation not deteriorating further, ICAEW said. Decisions on interest rates, the winding down of support schemes, such as furlough, could also have an impact on future business sentiment. Office for National Statistics figures published last week showed that Britain’s economy grew 4.8 between April and June, below the 5 that the Bank of England had forecast. Michael Izza, ICAEW Chief Executive, said: “Business confidence has now hit record levels for two quarters in a row - companies are clearly benefitting from rising customer demand as the economy reopens and life begins to return to normal. The high level of optimism is unsurprising but it remains vulnerable to a possible resurgence of COVID-19 as we head into the autumn. “While confidence is high across all sectors, with companies reporting record expectations for domestic sales growth, they also told us they face challenges from skills shortages, wage increases and rising costs. “This is a crucial stage for the economy. Despite having to cope with the winding down of government financial support and possible interest rate rises, businesses are definitely bouncing back, but finances are fragile and any additional costs could threaten the recovery.” Corporate optimism, specifically investment, drives self-sustaining recovery. Van der Welle 7-7 Peter Van der Welle 7-7-2021 “How capex holds the key to a self-sustaining economic recovery” https://www.robeco.com/latam/en/insights/2021/07/how-capex-holds-the-key-to-a-self-sustaining-economic-recovery.html (Strategist within the Global Macro team, M.A. in Economics from Tilburg University)Elmer Title: How capex holds the key to a self-sustaining economic recovery. Capital expenditure to fix supply shortages and meet burgeoning demand is seen figuring strongly in the post-Covid recovery. Author and summary omitted. Companies are expected to invest heavily in new equipment and capacity as they seek to meet the pent-up demand released from economic reopening. “The world is emerging from the pandemic, and much of the focus has been on the release of huge pent-up demand for goods and services that have been inaccessible for much of the past year,” says Peter Van der Welle, strategist with Robeco’s multi-asset team. “But there is a bigger issue regarding the ability of companies to supply these goods and services, due to the supply side constraints that have emerged through economic reopening. We believe this is powering a resurgence in capital expenditure by companies, and those which are investing in new equipment to meet greater demand will be the more sought after stocks.” Capex intentions Van der Welle says this trend can already be seen in the US Federal Reserve’s Capex Intentions Index, which shows that steep year-on-year increases in capital expenditures are planned. “So, that's promising for a near-term rebound in the capex cycle,” he says. “The market has already picked up on that theme because you can see a clear outperformance of capex-intensive stocks compared to the broader market year to date.” Fiscal dominance Van der Welle says five elements support the multi-asset team’s view that capex will rise from here onwards. “The first is the overarching macroeconomic picture in that we are increasingly moving towards an environment of fiscal dominance and away from one that has been monetary-led via quantitative easing,” he says. “Central banks have pursued very easy monetary policies, but they have hit the nominal lower bounds with regard to policy rates.” “This is a hard constraint because real rates are difficult for central banks to push even lower than they are nowadays, given the strong consensus among both central bankers and market participants that inflation is transitory.” Big spending plans For stimulus, fiscal policy is better suited to address the negative supply shock that Covid-19 has posed. Fiscal dominance can be seen in the huge infrastructure spending planned in the US, with the USD 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan already in motion, and the USD 2 trillion American Jobs Plan going through Congress. In Europe, the disbursement of the EUR 750 billion EU Recovery Fund is due to start later in July. “An era of fiscal dominance is able to say goodbye to the secular stagnation thesis, which holds that the economy is suffering from under-investment,” says Van der Welle. “Under-investment due to insufficient demand, which was the biggest problem after the global financial crisis, has become less likely.” “We saw very subdued consumption growth both in the US and elsewhere between 2009 and 2019. That story is reversing in the US. Households’ income has been supported by fiscal policy during the Covid-19 recession, while burgeoning consumer demand in the reopening phase could prove to be more sticky as employment prospects continue to improve in the medium term.” Tobin’s Q looks good A third reason to expect higher capex is driven by ‘Tobin’s Q’ – the market value of a company divided by its assets' replacement cost. If this ratio is above one, then corporates have an incentive to invest directly in the underlying assets rather than buying another company at market value to acquire the same assets. The Tobin’s Q ratio is currently at 1.7 for the US. “So it's very expensive to do MandA, and it is wiser for corporates to invest in the underlying capital goods themselves,” Van der Welle says. “We should therefore expect a gradual move away from MandA activity towards companies making direct investments in capital goods.” Supply-side constraints The fourth element is the severe supply-side constraints seen in the global economy, as capacity shut down during the pandemic. “This is reflected in the ISM Prices Paid Index, which reached an all-time high in June in reflection of rampant shortages of raw materials and labor,” says Van der Welle. “Clearly the issue today following the pandemic is not demand related, but supply related. This will also trigger more awareness to push the productivity frontier and incentivize capital expenditure.” Less reliance on labor The fifth element is the partial substitution from labor to capital in the US against the backdrop of lingering labor shortages. “A decline in the labor force participation rate shows that people are not quickly returning to the labor force, as they have been disincentivized by the subsidies and pay checks they have gained from the stimulus plans, and/or structural changes in their work/life balance due to the pandemic,” says Van der Welle. “When the cost of labor becomes more expensive, substituting labor with capital becomes more attractive for employers. Typically, the inflection point for capex intentions becoming positive is when unit labor costs rise by more than 2 year on year, which is the case today.” Capex will lengthen the earnings cycle Regarding earnings, there is a significant relationship between capex intentions and productivity, though the lag from intending to invest to actually getting a realized productivity gain is quite long – up to several years. Higher capex that eventually brings higher productivity growth will sustain the earnings cycle, Van der Welle says. Higher productivity gives corporates more pricing power because they suppress unit labor costs, and that means profit margins can stay elevated for longer. Business confidence is the best indicator for growth. Khan 20, Hashmat, and Santosh Upadhayaya. "Does business confidence matter for investment?." Empirical Economics 59.4 (2020): 1633-1665. (Economics Professor at Carleton University)Elmer Abstract Business confidence is a well-known leading indicator of future output. Whether it has information about future investment is, however, unclear. We determine how informative business confidence is for investment growth independently of other variables using US business confidence survey data for 1955Q1–2016Q4. Our main findings are: business confidence has predictive ability for investment growth; (ii) remarkably, business confidence has superior forecasting power, relative to conventional predictors, for investment downturns over 1–3-quarter forecast horizons and for the sign of investment growth over a 2-quarter forecast horizon; and (iii) exogenous shifts in business confidence reflect short-lived non-fundamental factors, consistent with the ‘animal spirits’ view of investment. Our findings have implications for improving investment forecasts, developing new business cycle models, and studying the role of social and psychological factors determining investment growth. Introduction Business confidence is a well-known leading indicator of future output, especially during economic downturns, and receives attention from the media, policymakers and forecasters. Somewhat surprisingly, the direct link between business confidence and investment has not yet been investigated. Our paper fills this gap. We provide a quantitative assessment of the information in business confidence for future investment growth, after controlling for the conventional determinants such as user cost, output, cash flow and stock price. Understanding the predictive power of business confidence is valuable along three dimensions. First, it can help forecasters and policymakers improve their investment forecasts. Second, it can provide a rationale for explicitly including business confidence—either as causal or as anticipatory—in theoretical models of business cycles. Third, it can help motivate studies on the how investment managers’ social and psychological circumstances influence investment decisions over and beyond rational cost-benefit analyses.Footnote1 We consider the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)’s business confidence index for the USA as a measure of business confidence and ask the following three questions.Footnote2 Does business confidence have independent information about future business investment growth? Does it have forecasting power for investment downturns? Does it help in making directional forecasts—the positive or negative movements in the trajectory of investment growth? Previous literature that used business confidence has primarily studied its predictive properties for variables other than investment. Heye (1993) examines the relationship between business confidence and labour market conditions in the USA and other industrialized countries. Dasgupta and Lahiri (1993) show that business sentiments have explanatory power of forecasting business cycle turning points. Taylor and McNabb (2007) find that business confidence is procyclical and plays an important role in forecasting output downturns. Although we focus on business confidence, our paper is related to a large body of previous research that has studied consumer confidence or sentiment and its ability to forecast macroeconomic variables. Leeper (1992) finds that consumer sentiment does not help predict industrial production and unemployment, especially when financial variables are taken into account. On the other hand, Matsusaka and Sbordone (1995) reject the hypothesis that consumer sentiment does not predict output. Carroll et al. (1994), Fuhrer (1993), Bram and Ludvigson (1998), Ludvigson (2004) and Cotsomitis and Kwan (2006) find that the consumer attitudes have some additional information about predicting household spending behaviour. Lahiri et al. (2016) employ a large real-time dataset and find that the consumer confidence survey has important role in improving the accuracy of consumption forecasts. Christiansen et al. (2014) find that consumer and business sentiments contain independent information for forecasting business cycles. Barsky and Sims (2012) find that consumer confidence reflects news about future fundamentals and a confidence shock has a persistent effect on the economy. More recently, Angeletos et al. (2018) quantify the role of confidence for business cycle from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. They construct a measure of confidence within a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) framework by taking the linear combination of the VAR residuals that maximizes the sum of the volatilities of hours and investment at frequencies of 6–32 quarters. Their measure likely captures a mixture of consumer and business confidence and is, therefore, distinct from the survey-based measure that we use in our analysis. We find that business confidence leads US business investment growth by one quarter. It leads structures investment, which is one of the major components of business investment, by two quarters. Our empirical analysis shows that investors’ confidence has statistically significant predictive power for US business investment growth and its components (equipment and non-residential structures) after controlling for other determinants of investment. To better gauge the role of business confidence for investment growth, we also perform Out-Of-Sample (OOS) test for 1990Q1–2016Q4. Our findings suggest that the OOS test results are similar to the in-sample test results.Footnote3 While, as we found, business confidence has predictive power for total investment, it may also contain additional information on the trajectory of investment as captured by downturns and directional changes. This information would be of interest to policymakers in assessing the economy’s near-term outlook, over and above the general ability of business confidence to forecast investment. Indeed, we find that contemporaneous correlation between business confidence and investment growth rises during NBER recession dates. This property of the data suggests that it is worthwhile to explore the forecasting ability of business confidence for investment downturns and directional changes. Towards this end, we define investment downturns as business investment growth below the sample average for more than two consecutive quarters.Footnote4 Using a static probit forecasting model, we assess the OOS forecasting ability of business confidence for investment downturns for 1990Q1–2016Q4. A key finding of this approach in the literature is that term spread and stock price contain information for forecasting US recessions (Estrella and Mishkin 1998; Nyberg 2010; Kauppi and Saikkonen 2008). We follow a similar approach and find that business confidence has statistically significant forecasting power for investment downturns over 1–4-quarter forecast horizons in the US economy. It has stronger forecasting ability than the traditional predictors such as term spread, credit spread and stock price at 1–3-quarter forecast horizons. We also find strong evidence that the business confidence has good incremental predictive power for investment downturns over 1–4-quarter forecast horizons, controlling for other predictors of downturns. Economic decline results in multilateral breakdown that causes state collapse, conflict, climate change, and Arctic and Space War. McLennan 21 – Strategic Partners Marsh McLennan SK Group Zurich Insurance Group, Academic Advisers National University of Singapore Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, University of Pennsylvania, “The Global Risks Report 2021 16th Edition” “http:www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Global_Risks_Report_2021.pdf Re-cut by Elmer Forced to choose sides, governments may face economic or diplomatic consequences, as proxy disputes play out in control over economic or geographic resources. The deepening of geopolitical fault lines and the lack of viable middle power alternatives make it harder for countries to cultivate connective tissue with a diverse set of partner countries based on mutual values and maximizing efficiencies. Instead, networks will become thick in some directions and non-existent in others. The COVID-19 crisis has amplified this dynamic, as digital interactions represent a “huge loss in efficiency for diplomacy” compared with face-to-face discussions.23 With some alliances weakening, diplomatic relationships will become more unstable at points where superpower tectonic plates meet or withdraw. At the same time, without superpower referees or middle power enforcement, global norms may no longer govern state behaviour. Some governments will thus see the solidification of rival blocs as an opportunity to engage in regional posturing, which will have destabilizing effects.24 Across societies, domestic discord and economic crises will increase the risk of autocracy, with corresponding censorship, surveillance, restriction of movement and abrogation of rights.25 Economic crises will also amplify the challenges for middle powers as they navigate geopolitical competition. ASEAN countries, for example, had offered a potential new manufacturing base as the United States and China decouple, but the pandemic has left these countries strapped for cash to invest in the necessary infrastructure and productive capacity.26 Economic fallout is pushing many countries to debt distress (see Chapter 1, Global Risks 2021). While G20 countries are supporting debt restructure for poorer nations,27 larger economies too may be at risk of default in the longer term;28 this would leave them further stranded—and unable to exercise leadership—on the global stage. Multilateral meltdown Middle power weaknesses will be reinforced in weakened institutions, which may translate to more uncertainty and lagging progress on shared global challenges such as climate change, health, poverty reduction and technology governance. In the absence of strong regulating institutions, the Arctic and space represent new realms for potential conflict as the superpowers and middle powers alike compete to extract resources and secure strategic advantage.29 If the global superpowers continue to accumulate economic, military and technological power in a zero-sum playing field, some middle powers could increasingly fall behind. Without cooperation nor access to important innovations, middle powers will struggle to define solutions to the world’s problems. In the long term, GRPS respondents forecasted “weapons of mass destruction” and “state collapse” as the two top critical threats: in the absence of strong institutions or clear rules, clashes— such as those in Nagorno-Karabakh or the Galwan Valley—may more frequently flare into full-fledged interstate conflicts,30 which is particularly worrisome where unresolved tensions among nuclear powers are concerned. These conflicts may lead to state collapse, with weakened middle powers less willing or less able to step in to find a peaceful solution.
Tournament: USC | Round: 4 | Opponent: Hwl AD | Judge: Diana Alvarez Check OS
12/12/21
4 - SO - BioD DA
Tournament: Jack Howe | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough GA | Judge: Saketh Kotapati The COVID epidemic has exposed massive flaws in biosecurity, lack of public health compliance, anti-vaxxers, and PPE shortages have shown unique vulnerabilities – the US is specifically exposed Lyon 21 (Regan Lyon; 7/1/21; Military Medicine, Volume 186, Issue7-8, July-August 2021, Pages 193-196; “The COVID-19 Response Has Uncovered and Increased Our Vulnerability to Biological Warfare”; accessed 8/13/21; https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/186/7-8/193/6135020; Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School) HB *We do not endorse the ableist language of the card* INTRODUCTION Biological warfare has been an unlikely, but serious, concern for military operations and national security. The 2018 National Biodefense Strategy (NBS) articulated a collaborative plan to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats to the USA.1 The NBS highlights recent, isolated outbreaks of Systemic Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Ebola, and Zika viruses as warnings to nation states and justification for enhanced biological threat responses. Although these events are not considered deliberate threats, clandestine bioweapon programs and terrorist groups seeking such programs are known to exist and capitalize on such natural outbreaks.1 The NBS’s emphasis on prevention and response drives the requirement to enhance biological weapon deterrence and defense strategies to avert the employment of biological weapons on U.S. civilians or military personnel.1 The public health crisis that ensued with SARS-associated coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has highlighted our nation’s bioweapon vulnerabilities on the international stage and has the potential for disastrous effects on national security. Previous questions regarding how the USA would respond to a large biological outbreak (or biological weapon) have now been answered for potential adversaries across the world. The ambiguity of both our capabilities and weaknesses, which provided deterrence to adversarial employment of biological weapons before the pandemic, no longer exists. This article will provide an overview on biological weapons and the concepts of deterrence and defense in the context of bioterrorism. Then, it will analyze how the national personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage, public resistance to public health measures, the anti-vaccination movement, and USNS (United States Navy Ship) Comfort deployment to New York City have increased our vulnerability to bioterror attack by impacting our deterrence and defense measures. Finally, it will offer recommendations to restore our bioterrorism security after the detrimental effects from the events unfolding in the USA. BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS REGULATIONS, DETERRENCE, AND DEFENSE Even though biological warfare is considered a “weapon of mass destruction” and is prohibited by a treaty drafted by the 1972 United Nations Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), not all adversaries adhere to these standards. Terrorist groups and covert operations have utilized biological weapons for small operations because the actors, by nature, are either non-eligible to ratify the treaty or would not do so if they could. Although there have been no intentional large-scale attacks, especially by adversarial nation states, this is not guaranteed to be the case in the future.2 The BWC does not prohibit ratified nations from having pathogens or toxins for peaceful purposes, such as the development of vaccines. After the natural outbreak of smallpox and its subsequent eradication accomplished by the World Health Organization in 1980, less virulent poxviruses have continued to be used in a variety of laboratories for research and development of vaccines for a variety of diseases.3 The original, more deadly strain of smallpox has been retained at two facilities in Russia and Atlanta.4 Because smallpox’s virology makes it an ideal biological weapon, the samples in Atlanta and Russia offer defense through researching countermeasures should an attack occur and simultaneously provide a repository from which a biological weapon can be acquired. “Deterrence” and “defense” are two concepts which are typically described in terms of nuclear warfare, but they can also be applied to national security from a biological attack.5 Deterrence is the ability to prevent an adversary from taking some action during peacetime.5 For biological warfare deterrence, vaccines and preventative medicine measures prevent susceptibility to a microbe. For a largely vaccinated and/or health-conscious population, the costs of production, storage, and dissemination of a bioweapon greatly outweighs the rare chance of the target contracting the disease. New Zealand’s robust public health measures, citizen compliance, and continued efforts to sustain a caseload under 20 since April is a strong deterrent for biological attack.6 Defense mechanisms decrease the effectiveness of the attack, putting a high cost-to-benefit burden on the adversary.5 A defense measure for bioterrorism would be an adequate medical treatment response to casualties of the bioweapon, decreasing mortality and the overall effectiveness of the weapon. COVID-19 PANDEMIC ANALYSIS The novel SARS-CoV-2 has several characteristics of an ideal biological weapon, including high transmission rate, long incubation period, airborne transmission, and significant morbidity/mortality.7 In fact, early in the pandemic, suspicion was cast that the virus was being developed as a biological weapon by a laboratory in Wuhan, China.8 Although these allegations have been deemed conspiracy theories as a result of misinformation operations, the resulting pandemic and the panicked public share similarities to a bioterror attack. The events occurring within the USA during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic create a global narrative on how we respond to a biological crisis. The 2018 NBS emphasized the continued threat of biological weapons to national security and identified the need to deter and defend against bioterrorism acts.1 This section will analyze events in the USA during the pandemic, how they bolstered or negated our current bioterrorism deterrence or defense strategies, and offer areas for improvement to restore our bioterror security. Personal Protective Equipment Shortage The 2018 NBS mandates having a robust mobilization of PPE for frontline healthcare workers and an adequate communication plan on preventative health measures for the general public in the event of an attack.1 The ability to provide sufficient quantities of PPE for medical personnel is a vital defense tactic as it increases the efficiency of the healthcare system to treat casualties in response to a biological outbreak. Having the ability to mobilize these resources to hospitals strengthens bioterror deterrence by demonstrating to a potential adversary that a bioterror attack would have a limited effect on a population given the healthcare preparedness. As conflicting information was published across multiple media platforms from January to March, panic spread that the virus was more dangerous than originally believed. Citizens flooded stores in town and online, buying “essential items” in preparation for a lockdown. Items such as masks, gloves, and sanitizers were out of stock everywhere, including healthcare supply chains. More importantly, citizens heard N95 masks could prevent contracting the virus, suddenly increasing N95 demand.9 Demand exceeded supply quickly, and healthcare workers began complaining of the nation-wide shortage of appropriate PPE required to care for infected patients.10 The inability to acquire necessary PPE supplies due to crippled supply chains and general public hoarding caused a ripple effect within the healthcare system. As a result, hospitals began to institute resource conservation measures, attempting to extend the life of supplies intended for one-time use. These PPE conservation measures, however, were interpreted by some healthcare workers as putting their lives in jeopardy and instigated lobbying and campaigning for government involvement. News reports flourished of disgruntled healthcare workers who were at risk of infection due to a lack of PPE. Such reports of general public hoarding, inadequate PPE logistical chains, and inappropriate PPE conservation measures by hospitals demonstrate the USA’s poor public health response. The NBS calls for an extensive mobilization of adequate PPE in response to a biological outbreak to decrease the pathogen spread, minimize its effects, and improve our resiliency.1 The capability to decrease the pathogen’s effects increases an attacker’s “sunk costs” should they choose to release a biological weapon. An impaired, or presumably impaired, capability adversely affects our defense strategy. In addition, the decrease in cost-to-risk ratio impairs our deterrence measures by showing worsened biological denial. The rapid healthcare PPE disappearance secondary to pandemic panic demonstrated a critical vulnerability in one of the most important defense strategies for a bioterror attack. To improve our defense capability, our healthcare workers must have an adequate supply of PPE, which can be mobilized expeditiously. Bioweapons have a high transmission rate and are easily disseminated, which make airborne and droplet transmission favorable. Public health experts should retrospectively analyze the types and amounts of PPE utilized in areas highly impacted by SARS-CoV-2. With these data, models can be created to make recommendations for phase-based mobilization of PPE and to determine the size of stockpile needed for immediate release. Government agencies need to establish agreements with PPE manufacturers to prioritize production in declared biological emergencies. Anti-Vaccination Movements Non-compliance with recommended public health and protective measures, including vaccines, also cripples our nation’s biodefense. Public health measures such as social distancing, aggressive sanitation, and mask mandates are examples of defense tactics for the COVID-19 pandemic. The individualistic U.S. culture fueled widespread non-compliance with these measures and has had significant effect on our ability to “flatten the curve” compared to other countries.11 The preference for “freedom…without interference from the state” is present in 58 of U.S. citizens, compared to 30-38 of European countries.11 The USA’s inability to uniformly employ these measures and decrease the virus spread compared to other countries signals to adversaries a weakness in our defense to decrease the effects of a biological outbreak. Furthermore, the speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 vaccines suggest an inevitable resistance to receiving the vaccine when available. Resistance to vaccinations is nothing new and caused challenges for vaccination against smallpox in the 19th-century U.K. epidemic.12 Then in 2019, the U.S. measles outbreak was amplified by anti-vaxxer campaigns.13 Since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, social media posts have warned that future coronavirus vaccines contain either tracking devices for the U.S. government or toxic chemicals.13,14 This unopposed and contagious anti-vax movement directly affects future biological deterrence because our adversaries know that the population will not be universally compliant with vaccination and will be susceptible to certain pathogens. Recent polls indicate that one-third of U.S. citizens,14 compared to 14 of U.K. citizens,12 would avoid receiving a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, even if available and affordable. A poor vaccination rate increases a population’s disease susceptibility and decreases biological weapon deterrence by denial. The anti-vaccination movement has caught traction from massive information operations and propaganda on multiple media platforms. Since May 2020, anti-vaxxers have been propagating lies about the side effects of the coronavirus vaccine, but as of June, the Centers for Disease Control, which is responsible for vaccine education, had only a “plan” to counter such anti-vaccine campaigns.14 When the first vaccines were being administered to healthcare workers in the USA in December 2020, multiple social media efforts were started to promote the vaccine.15 Hashtags such as #vaxup, #IGotTheShot, #vaccineswork, and many more were used with social media posts of doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel receiving their vaccine.16 Some posts continued with threads of updates on any side effects encountered to quell public concerns. Information operations such as these may be more effective to counter the anti-vaccination propaganda than government-sponsored campaigns and require further research by public health officials.
Patents are the key to preventing bioweapon development – they prevent technology from being accessible to hostile state and non-state actors Finlay 10 (Brian Finlay; Summer 2010; The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, “The Bioterror Pipeline: Big Pharma, Patent Expirations, and New Challenges to Global Security”; accessed 8/13/21; Brian Finlay is a senior associate at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, where he directs the Managing Across Boundaries Program. He has worked at the Brookings Institution, the Century Foundation, and Canadas Laboratory Center for Disease Control/Health Canada; pages 54-58; ask me for the pdf) HB NEW CHALLENGES: THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION AND THE ROLE OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR Myriad private sector actors, ranging from single-employee enterprises to major multinational pharmaceutical giants dominate today's biopharmaceutical marketplace. Privately owned companies not only develop, produce, and operate the lion's share of biological industrial equipment, but carry out the greatest share of the scientific research and development for the relevant technologies, goods, and methods of application. University and other non-profit research is often commercially-funded, and many governments around the globe have built public-private partnerships, even in some of the most sensitive areas of biotechnology, to capitalize on cost reductions and innovation. According to a recent Ernest and Young study of the industry, today more than 80 percent of biotechnology firms-and, thus, the technologies they innovate-are in the hands of the private sector." In the United States, the industry's compound annual growth rate has historically hovered around 15 percent, yielding aggregate revenues of more than $70 billion in 2008.18 With fortunes to be made, unprecedented new applications to be discovered, and practically unlimited possibilities for growth, the biopharmaceutical industry has swelled dramatically over the past decade. It is estimated that the biotech sector supports about 3.2 million jobs across the U.S. economy-a little more than one job for every 100 Americans.' 9 In Europe, publicly traded biotech companies' revenues increased 17 percent in one year, from f9.6 billion in 2007 to £11.2 billion in 2008. And although the recent global financial crisis had a negative impact, the product pipelines of European industry are growing across all phases of clinical development.20 By virtually any measure, the United States and Europe remain unmatched global hubs for biotechnological investment and innovation. For national security analysts, this reality has long provided some measure of comfort. Although the system of security assurances mandated by technologically advanced (principally Western) governments is far from a panacea against biothreats, the absence of similarly robust legal barriers in many countries raises serious international security concerns. 2' For instance, although the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Singapore have all introduced strict regulations on pathogenic agents that may be of interest to committed bioterrorists, most countries have not. Similarly, export controls and enforcement over many sensitive technologies are often extremely lax, particularly in countries of the Global South.22 And because terrorists and proliferant states may shop for pathogens and dual-use production technologies where controls are the weakest, this uneven patchwork of regulations leaves open a significant gap in global biosecurity standards.23 It was in this porous regulatory environment that President Obama released his National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats in November 2009. His plan cited both unparalleled innovations in the life sciences and imperfections in existing control regimes as the principle motivations for a new strategy that seeks to prevent biotechnology products from being used for harmful purposes.24 However, while the President's plan presented a more forward-leaning agenda to counter the rising risk of proliferation by explicitly leveraging public health in support of international security, at its root, the strategy extends the traditional state-centric approaches to a problem that is increasingly one of the private sector. A proper approach to the issue-and its solution set-must place industry at its epicenter. In short, the Obama strategy exemplifies the continued mismatch between governments' near singular focus on regulation of the industry on the one hand, and the elusive nature of privately-driven biotech innovation on the other. Beyond encouraging the industry to adopt more stringent security standards in the public interest, governments have generally proven bereft of innovative ideas that more directly link these measures to the private sector's enlightened self-interest. This mismatch is aggravated by the reality that the biotech and pharmaceutical community stands on the brink of yet another grand transformation that will render traditional control efforts, however effective they may have proven in the past, even more anachronistic. Over the course of the coming decade, the traditional drug development strategies employed so successfully by Western biopharmaceutical companies in the past will run headlong into two realities that will fundamentally alter biopharmaceuticals' business model: continued and rampant globalization of the life sciences and big pharma's patent expiration challenges. These forces will have profound implications on the future of drug development and the internationalization of intellectual property. Further, it threatens to open a new era of biological weapons proliferation by pushing bio-innovation into regions that are ill-prepared to manage the leakage of sensitive knowledge and equipment to those intent on developing biological weapons. Accelerating Globalization of the Life Sciences As globalization began to take firm root in the 1980s, virtually every industrial sector across the Western world sought to capitalize upon its underlying forces to promote efficiency and financial gain. Conceptions of tightly integrated firms whose product development was bound by national borders gave way to an internationalization of RandD, production, and supply chains. Expedited global trade, hastened by advances in everything from information to transportation technologies, allowed profit and efficiency to be maximized through outsourcing, off-shoring, supply-chaining, and other activities that drove intellectual and manufacturing capacity far beyond Western shores. The corresponding transfer of information, processes, and technology generated new local enterprises, including subsidiary operations that collaborated with or competed for global market share. This dynamic, in turn, created a virtuous cycle that accelerated the biotechnological competencies of these new markets. Soon, states that were seen to have lacked the indigenous expertise to perform complex RandD and manufacturing operations began to develop advanced, competitive industrial sectors.25 By the late 1990s, the spread of biotechnological knowledge and equipment allowed even more companies, universities, and research institutes around the world to benefit from advances in the life sciences. Today, developing countries nurture competitive industrial sectors that challenge traditional suppliers in Western Europe. According to the United Nations, many developing countries, including Argentina, Brazil, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Mexico, and South Africa are already approaching the leading edge of biotechnological applications and have "significant" research capacity in the biosciences.26 In aggregate, this can only be seen as a significant boon to global development. As in the North, the developing South is putting these biotech capacities to work for peaceful purposes. Recent technological breakthroughs are indicative of this new geographic diversity of biological talent: the first vaccine against meningitis B was developed in Cuba; South Africa was the first country involved in HIV-C strain preventive treatment; India is the world's largest producer of the hepatitis B vaccine; and China was the first country to license gene therapy.27 Meanwhile, biotechnology is providing an infusion of high-skilled, stable, and lucrative jobs, and endowing struggling economies with critical growth and diversification. For the security conscious, however, the globalization of biotechnology has also expanded the locus of the bioproliferation challenge from technologically advanced countries of the North into far-flung places around the globe.28 Thus, even as humankind reaps the benefits of the biotech revolution, governments around the world are increasingly challenged by the confluence of rapidly advancing science and technology and by globalization itself. High technical hurdles to isolation and weaponization of dangerous pathogens once confined fears about the development and use of biological weapons to advanced industrial states. But now, the spread of dual-use biotechnologies means that a growing number of countries-and even terrorist groups-may gain access to the capacities necessary to develop a bioweapon.
Bioweapons destroy biodiversity – targeting, interspecies spread, and fungal adaptation Abboud 18 (Nura Abboud; 9/22/18; EcoMENA; “Catastrophic Impacts of Biological Warfare on Biodiversity”; accessed 8/15/21; https://www.ecomena.org/impacts-of-biological-warfare-on-biodiversity/; Nura A. Abboud is an environmental activist and Founder of the Jordanian Society for Microbial Biodiversity (JMB), the only NGO in the Middle East concerning the microbial biodiversity. Nura specializes in molecular biology, biological sciences, microbial biodiversity, genetic fingerprinting and medical technologies. Her vision is to establish an eco-research center in the astonishing desert south of Jordan. She has received several scholarships and awards including honorary doctorate in Environmental leadership) HB Biological weapons are considered the most dangerous of all known weapons of mass destruction. They are used to deliberately cause epidemics among humans; destroy the environmental components, including water, air, and soil; and target crops and livestock. Examples of diseases used in biological warfare include anthrax, smallpox, plague, cholera, and avian flu. In addition to the catastrophic effects of biological warfare on the biodiversity and the environment, their danger lies in their low cost and rapid spread, as well as their easy preparation, transport, and use. Unlike nuclear and chemical bombs, biological bombs are without odor or color and therefore cannot be detected. Additionally, bioweapons are dangerous because of their effects on untargeted organisms in a military attack, and the clinical symptoms they create may be difficult to distinguish from normal diseases. Bioweapon pathogens remain in nature for several years and are able to survive in harsh environmental conditions. Threat to Natural Resources Bioweapons spread germs that contaminate air, food, water, and the environment, causing epidemiological diseases for different living organisms. Air: A wide variety of germs can contaminate air and are used in biological warfare. Fungi are the most common, and they travel by air over long distances to infect healthy plants. Food: Food contamination is also one of the most powerful methods used to carry out biological warfare attacks. Disease is transmitted either directly to humans through contaminated food or drink or indirectly by hosts. Water: Water can spread a number of lethal infectious agents as well. For example, one gram of Clostridium tetani poison is able to kill eight million people within six hours. Threats to Biodiversity Diseases are one of the main drivers of extinction in endangered species; therefore, disease control is fundamental to preserve biodiversity. Despite the presence of vaccines and drugs for most bioweapons, they may not be available in adequate quantities to cope with an epidemiological disease outbreak. Biological attacks pose a threat to naturally rare wild plants and animals and to species whose natural habitats have been degraded by human activities. Furthermore, diseases that humans, domestic animals, and domestic plants have been able to develop immunity to can be fatal in wild animals and plants. Bioweapons are not only having direct effects on the genetic biodiversity of indigenous species but also are having direct and indirect catastrophic effects on vital plant and animal communities. Threats to Animal Biodiversity Conservation of livestock breeds is essential to maintaining genetic diversity, which in turn is vital to increasing the ability of living organisms to adapt to environmental changes. The danger of bioweapons regarding animal biodiversity is summarized in three main points: The direct impact of diseases on wild species Some deadly diseases in humans or domestic animals can infect wild animals. For instance, an epidemic destructive impact on endangered species is reflected in the effects of Canine distemper, a natural viral disease that infects wild dogs and wild animals belonging to the same group. Canine distemper was also developed in bioweapon laboratories. Over the past decade, the spread of this disease has resulted in habitat loss and in the extinction of a large number of wild species in North America. Additionally, it led to the elimination of about one-third of the lion population in Tanzania and had serious impacts on the endangered leopard population. Invasive species The history of rinderpest in Africa provides a model for predicting the potential effects of lethal diseases on wild species and livestock. In 1887, European colonial armies introduced the rinderpest virus to Africa through imported cattle, which led to a rinderpest outbreak among domestic cattle breeds and wild species, killing an estimated 90–95 of African cattle and buffaloes within three years. To control the epidemic, African herds and buffaloes have been destroyed in most parts of Africa. Despite efforts to combat rinderpest over the past century, the disease is still strong, and its outbreak in the region occurs frequently. Elimination of animal species, hosts, and vectors Threatened species may be destroyed in areas that have been subjected to biological attacks with the aim of eradicating the disease. For example, in the United States, programs to control brucellosis in livestock have resulted in killing large numbers of wild animals, including the Bison and the white tailed deer. Threats to Plant Biodiversity Microbes can be used in crop destruction. For instance, “Rice blast” is a disease affecting rice and therefore leads to crop destruction and genetic changes in the plant. Conclusion and Recommendations The discussion about controlling destructive bioweapons is growing, as they pose a vast danger to both humanity and the environment alike. Any failure to prevent biological attacks can lead to the deterioration of genetic diversity in animals and plants, the extinction of endangered species, and the destruction of human livelihoods and traditional cultures. Biotechnology has increased the economical value of genetic diversity of living organisms; hence, it has increased the risk of eliminating genetic diversity through the use of GMO bioweapons. Most of all, the environment will be the silent victim of this war.
Biodiversity loss causes extinction—turns and outweighs everything Torres 16 (Phil Biologist, conservationist, science advocate and educator. 2 years based in Amazon rainforest, now exploring science around the world. “Biodiversity Loss: An Existential Risk Comparable to Climate Change” http://futureoflife.org/2016/05/20/biodiversity-loss/) The repercussions of biodiversity loss are potentially as severe as those anticipated from climate change, or even a nuclear conflict. For example, according to a 2015 study published in Science Advances, the best available evidence reveals “an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.” This conclusion holds, even on the most optimistic assumptions about the background rate of species losses and the current rate of vertebrate extinctions. The group classified as “vertebrates” includes mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and all other creatures with a backbone. The article argues that, using its conservative figures, the average loss of vertebrate species was 100 times higher in the past century relative to the background rate of extinction. (Other scientists have suggested that the current extinction rate could be as much as 10,000 times higher than normal.) As the authors write, “The evidence is incontrovertible that recent extinction rates are unprecedented in human history and highly unusual in Earth’s history.” Perhaps the term “Big Six” should enter the popular lexicon—to add the current extinction to the previous “Big Five,” the last of which wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But the concept of biodiversity encompasses more than just the total number of species on the planet. It also refers to the size of different populations of species. With respect to this phenomenon, multiple studies have confirmed that wild populations around the world are dwindling and disappearing at an alarming rate. For example, the 2010 Global Biodiversity Outlook report found that the population of wild vertebrates living in the tropics dropped by 59 percent between 1970 and 2006. The report also found that the population of farmland birds in Europe has dropped by 50 percent since 1980; bird populations in the grasslands of North America declined by almost 40 percent between 1968 and 2003; and the population of birds in North American arid lands has fallen by almost 30 percent since the 1960s. Similarly, 42 percent of all amphibian species (a type of vertebrate that is sometimes called an “ecological indicator”) are undergoing population declines, and 23 percent of all plant species “are estimated to be threatened with extinction.” Other studies have found that some 20 percent of all reptile species, 48 percent of the world’s primates, and 50 percent of freshwater turtles are threatened. Underwater, about 10 percent of all coral reefs are now dead, and another 60 percent are in danger of dying. Consistent with these data, the 2014 Living Planet Report shows that the global population of wild vertebrates dropped by 52 percent in only four decades—from 1970 to 2010. While biologists often avoid projecting historical trends into the future because of the complexity of ecological systems, it’s tempting to extrapolate this figure to, say, the year 2050, which is four decades from 2010. As it happens, a 2006study published in Science does precisely this: It projects past trends of marine biodiversity loss into the 21st century, concluding that, unless significant changes are made to patterns of human activity, there will be virtually no more wild-caught seafood by 2048. 48 of the world’s primates are threatened with extinction. Catastrophic consequences for civilization. The consequences of this rapid pruning of the evolutionary tree of life extend beyond the obvious. There could be surprising effects of biodiversity loss that scientists are unable to fully anticipate in advance. For example, prior research has shown that localized ecosystems can undergo abrupt and irreversible shifts when they reach a tipping point. According to a 2012 paper published in Nature, there are reasons for thinking that we may be approaching a tipping point of this sort in the global ecosystem, beyond which the consequences could be catastrophic for civilization. As the authors write, a planetary-scale transition could precipitate “substantial losses of ecosystem services required to sustain the human population.” An ecosystem service is any ecological process that benefits humanity, such as food production and crop pollination. If the global ecosystem were to cross a tipping point and substantial ecosystem services were lost, the results could be “widespread social unrest, economic instability, and loss of human life.” According to Missouri Botanical Garden ecologist Adam Smith, one of the paper’s co-authors, this could occur in a matter of decades—far more quickly than most of the expected consequences of climate change, yet equally destructive. Biodiversity loss is a “threat multiplier” that, by pushing societies to the brink of collapse, will exacerbate existing conflicts and introduce entirely new struggles between state and non-state actors. Indeed, it could even fuel the rise of terrorism. (After all, climate change has been linked to the emergence of ISIS in Syria, and multiple high-ranking US officials, such as former US Defense Secretary Chuck Hageland CIA director John Brennan, have affirmed that climate change and terrorism are connected.) The reality is that we are entering the sixth mass extinction in the 3.8-billion-year history of life on Earth, and the impact of this event could be felt by civilization “in as little as three human lifetimes,” as the aforementioned 2012 Nature paper notes. Furthermore, the widespread decline of biological populations could plausibly initiate a dramatic transformation of the global ecosystem on an even faster timescale: perhaps a single human lifetime. The unavoidable conclusion is that biodiversity loss constitutes an existential threat in its own right. As such, it ought to be considered alongside climate change and nuclear weapons as one of the most significant contemporary risks to human prosperity and survival.
10/30/21
4 - SO - Biotech DA
Tournament: UK Season Opener | Round: 1 | Opponent: Acton-Boxborough Isha Agarwal | Judge: Anna Dean Biotech RandD is set for high growth and investment now NASDAQ 8/9 NASDAQ is a stock market index that includes almost all stocks listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and SandP 500, it is one of the three most-followed stock market indices in the United States. This article was written by NASDAQ contributors and published on CNBC. The editorial staff of CNBC did not contribute to the creation of this study.) “Why the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index is poised for a run of sustainable growth” CNBC, NASDAQ, 8/9/2021, https://www.cnbc.com/advertorial/2021/08/09/why-the-nasdaq-biotechnology-index-is-poised-for-a-run-of-sustainable-growth-.html RM Between the recent bio innovation success stories in the battle against Covid-19 and the technology-driven advances ushering in new efficiencies for research and development (RandD), the biotech industry has never been more relevant. As home to more than 265 companies, the pioneering Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (NBI) has long been committed to providing healthcare’s innovators with access to the capital they need to keep moving forward. Now, investors have access to the Index’s companies through a new ETF, the Invesco Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBBQ). Launched in 1993, in the wake of the original “biotech revolution” led by the discovery of recombinant DNA, NBI® remains the most representative index in the space. In fact, 98 of all U.S. listed biotech companies are listed on Nasdaq. When considering the massive growth taking place in the sector, it’s no surprise that NBI has outperformed both the SandP 500 (SPX) and Health Care Select Sector Index (IXVTR) in certain market environments. According to Mark Marex, Index RandD Senior Specialist for Nasdaq who recently compiled an in-depth report on the NBI, global events and digital acceleration have contributed to the Index’s recent strong performance; and Nasdaq’s dedication to maintaining a true benchmark for technology-driven healthcare innovation has provided a framework for growth. Building the ideal benchmark Given the existence of pureplay biotech firms, hybrid biopharmaceutical companies, and less RandD-intensive pharmaceutical manufacturers, creating a single benchmark that truly captures the biotech sector and the symbiotic relationships among its players is no easy task. One of the unique aspects of NBI, versus biotech-focused indexes created by other index providers, is its subsector classifications split between Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals. As of June 30, 2021, ICB (FTSE Russell’s Industry Classification Benchmark) classified 222 NBI companies as Biotechnology and 47 as Pharmaceuticals. The resulting split by index weight is approximately 65 and 35, respectively, which illustrates the major difference between the two groups: Pharmaceutical companies tend to be much larger than Biotechnology firms. This split within a single index provides advantages for investors: While offering some exposure to more established pharmaceutical companies, it also includes RandD-heavy biotech firms that over time may transition into biotech-driven pharma companies. That’s exactly what happened this year when NBI’s largest company, Amgen (AMGN / $144Bn), was reclassified by ICB from Biotechnology to Pharmaceuticals. By retaining firms as they straddle the two classifications over the course of their lifecycle, NBI presents potential growth advantages when compared with index providers that focus rigidly on one classification versus the other. Home to world-changing breakthroughs Nasdaq’s vision for the Index has served it well, both in terms of its longevity and its current role as a champion of the companies paving the way for a post-pandemic world through their technological advances and life-saving treatments. The broad reach of NBI constituents across multiple fronts in the fight against Covid-19, for example — from diagnosis to vaccines and treatment —demonstrates the strength of its core approach. NBI companies including Gilead and Regeneron made headlines for their successes during the pandemic with antiviral therapeutics and antibody-based therapeutics for high-risk patients. But it’s the stunning success of m-RNA vaccine technology from Moderna and BioNTech, two NBI companies, that most clearly showcase the home run potential among the biotech entrepreneurs in the space. And while NBI is currently up 8.2 YTD on a price-return basis (as of June 30) versus a broader market gain of 14.4 by SPX, the SandP Biotechnology Select Industry Index (SPSIBI) is down 3.7. It’s worth noting that in 2020, NBI outperformed SPX with a price gain of 25.7 versus 16.3, respectively. This shows the resilience of the NBI and the inherent strength of its current mix of companies. The possibilities of accelerated RandD As a whole, the life-changing work being done by NBI constituents requires enormous amounts of RandD. In 2020, RandD expenses for the entire group totaled $68.5Bn, nearly 31 of these companies’ revenue totals. Two-thirds of NBI’s firms reported RandD expenses that exceeded their revenues For several NBI companies, however, these massive investments provided tangible benefits in the fight against Covid-19. Undoubtedly, years of back-end work and minimal profits ultimately helped deliver the very products that are now driving historic returns. Psychologically, their breakthroughs demonstrated the enormous potential of science and technology to serve humankind. Looking ahead, revolutions in Mapping and Engineering processes, boosted by rapid advancements in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, are fostering a true fusion of Biology and Technology that could transform the traditionally costly and labor-intensive RandD function. Some research estimates these advances could reduce the failure rate of drugs by up to 45 and shorten drug trials by up to 50. The result could be even more breakthroughs, performed much more efficiently, greatly increasing the returns on biopharmaceutical RandD. Even a conservative interpretation of the above numbers would significantly reduce RandD costs and boost the market capitalization of therapeutics companies from the current $2Tn up to $9Tn as soon as 2024, according to estimates from ARK Financial. Meanwhile, increasingly cost-effective human genomics could revolutionize several other industries, from agriculture to biofuels. By any measure, there is much to be excited about across the spectrum of biotech — especially coming out of a global pandemic. And while no person, nor index, can truly predict what the future holds, chances are strong that companies sitting within NBI will have a hand in leading the way. “For investors, the Index already serves as a fascinating lens through which to view human society’s scientific and technological advancements,” says Mark Marex. “To me, it’s very exciting to ponder what the researchers, scientists, and business leaders in this space will accomplish next.” IPR protections are key to sustain healthcare investments and manufacturing. Independently, it’s key to broader vaccine production. Roberts 6/25/21 James M. Roberts is a Research Fellow for Economic Freedom and Growth at the Heritage Foundation. Roberts' primary responsibility as one of The Heritage Foundation's lead experts in economic freedom and growth is to edit the Rule of Law and Monetary Freedom sections of Index of Economic Freedom. An influential annual analysis of the economic climate of countries throughout the world, the Index is co-published by Heritage and The Wall Street Journal.) “Biden’s OK of Global Theft of America’s Intellectual Property is Wrong, Dangerous.” 6/25/2021, The Heritage Foundation, Commentary—Public Health RM Last month, President Biden advocated removing international intellectual property rights (IPR) protections for American-made COVID-19 vaccines. Foreign companies may take the president’s policy as a green light to produce reverse-engineered, counterfeit substitutes. The best way to prevent and treat new diseases is to ensure that private American pharmaceutical companies continue their innovative research and vaccine production. Three U.S. companies—Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson—created and manufactured the world’s most effective mRNA COVID vaccines in record time. An increasing majority of Americans have now been inoculated, but much of the developing world remains in desperate need of vaccines. Americans naturally want to help. The question is how. Last month, President Biden advocated removing international intellectual property rights (IPR) protections for American-made COVID-19 vaccines. This, he said, would help make the vaccines more plentiful and available in needy countries. It’s a short-sighted approach and doomed to fail. Mr. Biden wants to waive the World Trade Organization’s “Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights” (TRIPS) agreement for U.S. vaccines and let foreign countries issue “compulsory licenses“ allowing their domestic pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the medicines without adequately compensating the companies that invented them. Practically speaking, countries such as India and South Africa are unlikely to manufacture the vaccines. They lack an advanced infrastructure for cold supply-chain distribution and many other crucial resources required by these products’ capital-intensive, state-of-the-art manufacturing process. But the Biden policy is bad for many other reasons. Developing breakthrough medications takes tremendous ingenuity and immense financial investments. It’s an extraordinarily high-risk endeavor, and the prospect of making a profit is what convinces private companies to undertake those risks. Signaling that the United States will not fight to defend their intellectual property rights actively undermines innovation and manufacturing in American health care and medicines. It also erodes patient protections by undermining quality control. Foreign companies may take the president’s policy as a green light to produce reverse-engineered, counterfeit substitutes. Already there are reports of ineffective and even dangerous counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines being sold around the world. Those pushing to break U.S. pharmaceutical patents say they want to do so for altruistic reasons. Consequently, they also insist that the prices for the medications be set far below their actual value. But history shows us that forcing private companies to provide vaccines at an “affordable price,” regardless of the cost to the companies, actually impedes the manufacture of high-quality vaccines. Moreover, it inhibits the future development of vaccines needed to meet as-yet-unknown diseases. Washington first imposed vaccine price controls as part of Hillary Clinton’s 1993 healthcare-for-all crusade. As the Wall Street Journal later noted, it was a body blow to the U.S. vaccine industry. Ironically, government-decreed prices left the companies unable to produce enough vaccines to meet Mrs. Clinton’s admittedly admirable goal of universal immunization of children. Since then, U.S. firms have largely eschewed the vaccine market because they could not recoup their RandD and manufacturing costs and earn enough profit to fund future innovation. Ultimately, compulsory licensing legalizes the theft of intellectual property. Recognizing this, senators from both sides of the aisle have joined with other government officials and industry leaders to call on the administration to reverse this bad decision. The U.S. patent protection system has served the nation well since its founding. It is and has been a bulwark of American prosperity, but the strength of that protection has been weakening in the past few decades. Compulsory licensing contributes to the erosion of that protection. As the U.S. and the rest of the world emerge from the pandemic, it is clear that more innovative medicines and vaccines will be needed for future protection from viruses and other emerging biological threats. The best way to prevent and treat those new diseases is to ensure that private American pharmaceutical companies continue their innovative research and vaccine production. That way, U.S.-manufactured vaccines can be made available to all Americans quickly. And governments can subsidize their export and sale to other countries far more effectively and less expensively than through compulsory licensing schemes. Meanwhile, let’s hope Mr. Biden listens to the more reasonable and less-agenda driven voices in this debate and reverses course on the TRIPS waiver. COVID was a precursor to deadlier pandemics—vaccine production will determine everything. Lander 8/4/21 Eric Lander, President Biden’s Science Advisory and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) “Opinion: As bad as Covid-19 has been, a future pandemic could be even worse—unless we act now” 8/4/21, The Washington Post RM Coronavirus vaccines can end the current pandemic if enough people choose to protect themselves and their loved ones by getting vaccinated. But in the years to come, we will still need to defend against a pandemic side effect: collective amnesia. As public health emergencies recede, societies often quickly forget their experiences — and fail to prepare for future challenges. For pandemics, such a course would be disastrous. New infectious diseases have been emerging at an accelerating pace, and they are spreading faster. Our federal government is responsible for defending the United States against future threats. That’s why President Biden has asked Congress to fund his plan to build on current scientific progress to keep new infectious-disease threats from turning into pandemics like covid-19. As the president’s science adviser, I know what’s becoming possible. For the first time in our history, we have an opportunity not just to refill our stockpiles but also to transform our capabilities. However, if we don’t start preparing now for future pandemics, the window for action will close. Covid-19 has been a catastrophe: The toll in the United States alone is more than 614,000 lives and has been estimated to exceed $16 trillion, with disproportionate impact on vulnerable and marginalized communities. But a future pandemic could be even worse — unless we take steps now. It’s important to remember that the virus behind covid-19 is far less deadly than the 1918 influenza. The virus also belongs to a well-understood family, coronaviruses. It was possible to design vaccines within days of knowing the virus’s genetic code because 20 years of basic scientific research had revealed which protein to target and how to stabilize it. And while the current virus spins off variants, its mutation rate is slower than that of most viruses. Unfortunately, most of the 26 families of viruses that infect humans are less well understood or harder to control. We have a great deal of work still ahead. The development of mRNA vaccine technology — thanks to more than a decade of foresighted basic research — was a game-changer. It shortened the time needed to design and test vaccines to less than a year — far faster than for any previous vaccine. And it’s been surprisingly effective against covid-19. Still, there’s much more to do. We don’t yet know how mRNA vaccines will perform against other viruses down the road. And when the next pandemic breaks out, we’ll want to be able to respond even faster. Fortunately, the scientific community has been developing a bold plan to keep future viruses from becoming pandemics. Here are a few of the goals we should shoot for: The capability to design, test and approve safe and effective vaccines within 100 days of detecting a pandemic threat (for covid-19, that would have meant May 2020); manufacture enough doses to supply the world within 200 days; and speed vaccination campaigns by replacing sterile injections with skin patches. Diagnostics simple and cheap enough for daily home testing to limit spread and target medical care. Early-warning systems to spot new biological threats anywhere in the world soon after they emerge and monitor them thereafter. We desperately need to strengthen our public health system — from expanding the workforce to modernizing labs and data systems — including to ensure that vulnerable populations are protected. And we need to coordinate actions with our international partners, because pandemics know no borders. These goals are ambitious, but they’re feasible — provided the work is managed with the seriousness, focus and accountability of NASA’s Apollo Program, which sent humans to the moon. Importantly, these capabilities won’t just prepare us for future pandemics; they’ll also improve public health and medical care for infectious diseases today. Preparing for threats is a core national responsibility. That’s why our government invests heavily in missile defense and counterterrorism. We need to similarly protect the nation against biological threats, which range from the ongoing risk of pandemics to the possibility of deliberate use of bioweapons. Pandemics cause massive death and disruption. From a financial standpoint, they’re also astronomically expensive. If, as might be expected from history and current trends, we suffered a pandemic of the current scale every two decades, the annualized cost would exceed $500 billion per year. Investing a much smaller amount to avert this toll is an economic and moral imperative. The White House will put forward a detailed plan this month to ensure that the United States can fully prepare before the next outbreak. It’s hard to imagine a higher economic or human return on national investment. Ecosystem sensitivity from climate change means future pandemics will cause extinction—assumes COVID Supriya 4/19 Lakshmi Supriya got her BSc in Industrial Chemistry from IIT Kharagpur (India) and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech (USA). She has more than a decade of global industry experience working in the USA, Europe, and India. After her Ph.D., she worked as part of the RandD group in diverse industries starting with semiconductor packaging at Intel, Arizona, where she developed a new elastomeric thermal solution, which has now been commercialized and is used in the core i3 and i5 processors. From there she went on to work at two startups, one managing the microfluidics chip manufacturing lab at a biotechnology company and the other developing polymer formulations for oil extraction from oil sands. She also worked at Saint Gobain North America, developing various material solutions for photovoltaics and processing techniques and new applications for fluoropolymers. Most recently, she managed the Indian RandD team of Enthone (now part of MacDermid) developing electroplating technologies for precious metals.) “Humans versus viruses - Can we avoid extinction in near future?” News Medical Life Sciences, 4/19/21, https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210419/Humans-versus-viruses-Can-we-avoid-extinction-in-near-future.aspx RM Expert argues that human-caused changes to the environment can lead to the emergence of pathogens, not only from outside but also from our own microbiome, which can pave the way for large-scale destruction of humans and even our extinction. Whenever there is a change in any system, it will cause other changes to reach a balance or equilibrium, generally at a point different from the original balance. Although this principle was originally posited by the French chemist Henry Le Chatelier for chemical reactions, this theory can be applied to almost anything else. In an essay published on the online server Preprints*, Eleftherios P. Diamandis of the University of Toronto and the Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, argues that changes caused by humans, to the climate, and everything around us will lead to changes that may have a dramatic impact on human life. Because our ecosystems are so complex, we don’t know how our actions will affect us in the long run, so humans generally disregard them. Changing our environment Everything around us is changing, from living organisms to the climate, water, and soil. Some estimates say about half the organisms that existed 50 years ago have already become extinct, and about 80 of the species may become extinct in the future.
10/30/21
4 - SO - Innovation DA
Tournament: Jack Howe | Round: 6 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake ML | Judge: Benjamin Cortez Current WTO legislation on IP rights promotes innovation Ezell et al 4/29 Jaci McDole, Stephen Ezell Stephen Ezell is vice president, global innovation policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). He focuses on science and technology policy, international competitiveness, trade, manufacturing, and services issues. 4/29/21, “Ten Ways IP Has Enabled Innovations That Have Helped Sustain the World Through the Pandemic” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, https://itif.org/publications/2021/04/29/ten-ways-ip-has-enabled-innovations-have-helped-sustain-world-through DD AG Although anti-IP proponents have attacked biopharmaceutical manufacturers particularly hard, the reality is all IP-protected innovations are at risk if these rights are ignored, or vitiated. Certain arguments have shown a desire for the term “COVID-19 innovations” to include everything from vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and PPE to biotechnology, AI-related data, and educational materials.14 This could potentially open the floodgates to invalidate IP protection on many of the innovations highlighted in this report. However, much of the current discussion concerning IP focuses almost entirely on litigation fears or RandD incentives. Although RandD is an important aspect of IP, as previously mentioned, these discussions ignore the fact that IP protection can be—and often is—used for other purposes, including generating initial capital to create a company and begin manufacturing and, more importantly, using licensing agreements and IP to track the supply chain and ensure quality control of products. In 2018, Forbes identified counterfeiting as the largest criminal enterprise in the world.15 The global struggle against counterfeit and non-regulated products, which has hit Latin America particularly hard during the pandemic, proves the need for safety and quality assurance in supply chains.16 Some communities already ravaged by COVID-19 are seeing higher mortality rates related to counterfeit vaccines, therapeutics, PPE, and cleaning and sanitizing products.17
Polish authorities discovered vials of antiwrinkle treatment labeled as COVID-19 vaccines. 18 In Mexico, fake vaccines sold for approximately $1,000 per dose.19 Chinese and South African police seized thousands of counterfeit vaccine doses from warehouses and manufacturing plants.20 Meanwhile, dozens of websites worldwide claiming to sell vaccines or be affiliated with vaccine manufacturers have been taken down.21 But the problem is not limited to biopharmaceuticals. The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center has recovered $48 million worth of counterfeit PPE and other products.22 Collaborative efforts between law enforcement and manufacturers have kept numerous counterfeits from reaching the population. In countries with strong IP protection, the chances of counterfeit products reaching the market are significantly lower. This is largely because counterfeiting tends to be an IP-related issue, and these countries generally provide superior means of tracking the supply chain through trademarks, trade secrets, and licensing agreements. This enables greater quality control and helps manufacturers maintain a level of public confidence in their products. By controlling the flow of knowledge associated with IP, voluntary licensing agreements provide innovators with opportunities to collaborate, while ensuring their partners are properly equipped and capable of producing quality products. Throughout this difficult time, the world has seen unexpected collaborations, especially between biopharmaceutical companies worldwide such as Gilead and Eva Pharma or Bharat Biotech and Ocugen, Inc. Throughout history, and most significantly in the nineteenth century through the widespread development of patent systems and the ensuing Industrial Revolution, IP has contributed toward greater economic growth.23 This is promising news as the world struggles for economic recovery. A 2021 joint study by the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO) shows a strong, positive correlation between IP rights and economic performance.24 It states that “IP-owning firms represent a significantly larger proportion of economic activity and employment across Europe,” with IP-intensive industries contributing to 45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) (€6.6 trillion; US$7.9 trillion).25 The study also shows 38.9 percent of employment is directly or indirectly attributed to IP-intensive industries, and IP generates higher wages and greater revenue per employee, especially for small-to-medium-sized enterprises.26 That concords with the United States, where the Department of Commerce estimated that IP-intensive industries support at least 45 million jobs and contribute more than $6 trillion dollars to, or 38.2 percent of, GDP.27 In 2020, global patent filings through the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system reached a record 275,900 filings amidst the pandemic, growing 4 percent from 2019.28 The top-four nations, which accounted for 180,530 of the patent applications, were China, the United States, Japan, and Korea, respectively.29 While several countries saw an increase in patent filings, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia both saw significant increases in the number of annual applications, with the top two filing growths of 73 percent and 26 percent, respectively.30 Reductions in protections kill medical innovation, economic growth, and knowledge building for the future McDole and Ezell 04/29 – Jaci McDole is a senior policy analyst covering intellectual property (IP) and innovation policy at ITIF. She focuses on IP and its correlations to global innovation and trade. Her work includes ITIF’s Innovate4Health Initiatives (2017–2019) and A Covid-19 TRIPS Waiver Makes No More Sense for Copyrights Than It Does for Patents (2021). McDole comes to ITIF from the Institute for Intellectual Property Research, an organization she cofounded to study and further robust global IP policies. Stephen J. Ezell is ITIF vice president for Global Innovation Policy. He focuses on science, technology, and innovation policy as well as international competitiveness and trade policy issues. He is the coauthor of Innovating in a Service Driven Economy: Insights Application, and Practice (Palgrave McMillan, 2015) and Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage (Yale 2012). The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational institute focusing on the intersection of technological innovation and public policy. Recognized by its peers in the think tank community as the global center of excellence for science and technology policy, ITIF’s mission is to formulate and promote policy solutions that accelerate innovation and boost productivity to spur growth, opportunity, and progress; April 29, 2021; “Ten Ways IP Has Enabled Innovations That Have Helped Sustain the World Through the Pandemic”; https://itif.org/publications/2021/04/29/ten-ways-ip-has-enabled-innovations-have-helped-sustain-world-throughadvay Innovation can—and does—happen anywhere and at any time. As society ground to a halt in 2020, innovators around the world worked tirelessly to develop treatments, vaccines, and solutions to COVID-19 pandemic-related challenges. From personal protective equipment (PPE) to treatments and vaccines to autonomous delivery robots to remote and social distancing solutions for the workplace, intellectual property (IP) played an indispensable role in enabling research, development, and commercialization of many of the innovations meeting the challenges of the pandemic. IP enables start-ups to gain access to much-needed capital. IP gives innovators the confidence to invest in research and development (RandD) and provides incentives for commercialization. Indeed, it is difficult to innovate without the protection of ideas. Despite this, some—particularly anti-business IP opponents—have blamed IP rights for a host of problems, including limited access to therapeutics, vaccines, and biotechnology. They offer seemingly simple solutions—weaken or eliminate IP rights—and innovation will flow like manna from heaven. Eliminating IP rights might accelerate the diffusion of some pre-existing innovations, but it would absolutely limit future innovations. Innovators, a bit like Charlie Brown kicking the football held by Lucy, would be wary of trusting governments who might say, “Well, this time we won’t take away your IP rights, so go ahead and invest large amounts of time and money.” Given the nature of COVID-19, nations around the world cannot afford to take this risk. Future pandemics and other challenges for which we will need to rely on IP-protected innovations to overcome are near certain to arise. Moreover, the blame game usually ignores the real, underlying problems. For access to innovations to fight COVID-19, especially biotechnology, vaccines, and therapeutics, the underlying problems are regulatory delays and a lack of adequate and appropriate manufacturing infrastructure.1 The lack of infrastructure has resulted in supply chain bottlenecks in places where few are currently equipped to handle the manufacturing requirements.2 Meanwhile, regulatory delays have prevented vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics from entering certain markets.3 To better understand the role of IP in enabling solutions related to COVID-19 challenges, this report relies on 10 case studies drawn from a variety of nations, technical fields, and firm sizes. This is but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. From a paramedic in Mexico to a veteran vaccine manufacturing company in India and a tech start-up in Estonia to a U.S.-based company offering workplace Internet of Things (IoT) services, small and large organizations alike are working to combat the pandemic. Some have adapted existing innovations, while others have developed novel solutions. All are working to take the world out of the pandemic and into the future. The case studies are: Bharat Biotech: Covaxin Gilead: Remdesivir LumiraDX: SARS-COV-2 Antigen POC Test Teal Bio: Teal Bio Respirator XE Ingeniería Médica: CápsulaXE Surgical Theater: Precision VR Tombot: Jennie Starship Technologies: Autonomous Delivery Robots Triax Technologies: Proximity Trace Zoom: Video Conferencing As the case studies show, IP is critical to enabling innovation. Policymakers around the world need to ensure robust IP protections are—and remain—in place if they wish their citizens to have safe and innovative solutions to health care, workplace, and societal challenges in the future. THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN RandD-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES Intangible assets, such as IP rights, comprised approximately 84 percent of the corporate value of SandP 500 companies in 2018.4 For start-ups, this means much of the capital needed to operate is directly related to IP (see Teal Bio case study for more on this). IP also plays an especially important role for RandD-intensive industries.5 To take the example of the biopharmaceutical industry, it is characterized by high-risk, time-consuming, and expensive processes including basic research, drug discovery, pre-clinical trials, three stages of human clinical trials, regulatory review, and post-approval research and safety monitoring. The drug development process spans an average of 11.5 to 15 years.6 For every 5,000 to 10,000 compounds screened on average during the basic research and drug discovery phases, approximately 250 molecular compounds, or 2.5 to 5 percent, make it to preclinical testing. Out of those 250 molecular compounds, approximately 5 make it to clinical testing. That is, 0.05 to 0.1 percent of drugs make it from basic research into clinical trials. Of those rare few which make it to clinical testing, less than 12 percent are ultimately approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).7 In addition to high risks, drug development is costly, and the expenses associated with it are increasing. A 2019 report by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions concluded that since 2010 the average cost of bringing a new drug to market increased by 67 percent.8 Numerous studies have examined the substantial cost of biopharmaceutical RandD, and most confirm investing in new drug development requires $1.7 billion to $3.2 billion up front on average.9 A 2018 study by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness found similar risks and figures for vaccines, stating, “In general, vaccine development from discovery to licensure can cost billions of dollars, can take over 10 years to complete, and has an average 94 percent chance of failure.”10 Yet, a 2010 study found that 80 percent of new drugs—that is, the less than 12 percent ultimately approved by the FDA—made less than their capitalized RandD costs.11 Another study found that only 1 percent (maybe three new drugs each year) of the most successful 10 percent of FDA approved drugs generate half of the profits of the entire drug industry.12 To say the least, biopharmaceutical RandD represents a high-stakes, long-term endeavor with precarious returns. Without IP protection, biopharmaceutical manufacturers have little incentive to take the risks necessary to engage in the RandD process because they would be unable to recoup even a fraction of the costs incurred. Diminished revenues also result in reduced investments in RandD which means less research into cancer drugs, Alzheimer cures, vaccines, and more. IP rights give life-sciences enterprises the confidence needed to undertake the difficult, risky, and expensive process of life-sciences innovation secure in the knowledge they can capture a share of the gains from their innovations, which is indispensable not only to recouping the up-front RandD costs of a given drug, but which can generate sufficient profits to enable investment in future generations of biomedical innovation and thus perpetuate the enterprises into the future.13 1 Turns their disease impact – future pandemics are more likely and more deadly which makes innovation key to stop destruction Ceballos 5/27 Gerardo Ceballos PhD, Dr Gerardo Ceballos is an ecologist and conservationist at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. He is particularly recognized for his influential work on global patterns of distribution of diversity, endemism, and extinction risk in vertebrates. He is also well-known for his contribution to understanding the magnitude and impacts of the sixth mass extinction., 5/27/21, “THE SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY”, Population Matters, https://populationmatters.org/news/2021/05/sixth-mass-extinction-and-future-humanity DD AG Somewhere, sometime in late 2019, a coronavirus from a wild species, perhaps a bat or a pangolin, infected a human in China. This could have been an obscure event, lost without trace in the annals of history, as it is very likely this has occurred many times in the last centuries. But this particular event was somehow different. The coronavirus became an epidemic first and a pandemic later. Covid-19 became the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu in 1918. The horrific human suffering it has caused, and its economic, social and political impacts, are still unraveling. The reason Covid-19 and more than forty other very dangerous viruses, such as Lassa fever, HIV and Ebola, have jumped from wild animals to humans in the last four decades is the destruction of natural environments and the trafficking and consumption of wild animals. The wildlife trade is to satisfy the insatiable and extravagant demand for these species in the Asian market, in countries such as China, Vietnam and Indonesia. The illegal wildlife trade is a gigantic business. It is as lucrative as the drug trade, but without the legal implications. The immense appetite of China and other Asian societies for exotic animals has promoted exponential growth in trade and profits. Wild and domestic animals sold in “wet markets” are kept in unsanitary and unethical conditions. There, feces, urine and food waste from cages at the top spill into cages at the bottom, creating the perfect conditions for viruses to leap from wild animals to domestic animals and humans. Thousands of wildlife species or their products are traded annually. Wildlife trade is one of several human impacts, including habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, toxification and invasive species, that have caused the extinction of thousands of species and threaten many more. Indeed, most people are unaware that the current extinction crisis is unprecedented in human history. Extinction occurs when the last individual of a species dies. The UN recently estimated that one million species, such as the panda, the orangutan and the Sumatran rhino, are at risk of extinction. The second finding is that population extinctions, which are the prelude to species extinctions, are occurring at very fast rates (Ceballos et al., 2017). Around 32 percent of a sample of 27,000 species have declining populations and have experienced massive geographic range contractions. Population extinctions are a very severe and widespread environmental problem which we have called “Biological Annihilation”. Finally, our third finding indicates that the magnitude of the extinction crisis is underestimated because there are thousands of species on the brink of extinction (Ceballos et al., 2020). Those species will likely become extinct in the near future unless a massive conservation effort is launched soon. Many times, people have asked me why we should care about the loss of a species. There are ethical, moral, philosophical, religious and other reasons to be concerned. But perhaps the one that is most tangible for most people is the loss of ecosystem services, which are the benefits that humans derive from the proper function of nature. Ecosystem services include the proper mix of gases in the atmosphere that support life on Earth, the quantity and quality of water, pollination of wild crops and plants, fertilization of the soil, and protection against emerging pests and diseases, among many others. Every time a species is lost, ecosystem services are likely to erode and human well-being is reduced. The loss of so many ecosystems and species is pushing us towards the point of collapse of civilization. The good news is that there is still time to reduce the current extinction crisis. The species and ecosystems that we manage to save in the next 10 – 15 years will define the future of biodiversity and civilization. What it is at stake is the future of mankind.
10/30/21
4 - SO - Lay Counterfeits
Tournament: JW Patterson | Round: 3 | Opponent: Cabot JB | Judge: Shawn Rafferty Strong trademark protection under intellectual property rights is the best defense against counterfeit drugs. Powell, February 2010 (Adam – Research Fellow for the Law and Bioscience Project, J.D. Candidate at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, Benchmark Legislation: A Measured Approach in the Fight Against Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals, Hastings Law Journal, p. Lexis-Nexis)
Traditionally, the first line of defense for pharmaceutical companies is a portfolio of strong intellectual property rights. Much of the legislation and criminal sanctions discussed below depend on pharmaceutical companies adequately protecting their intellectual property. This provides the company with private redress as well as the ability to fully utilize government aid and criminal prosecution. Some forms of intellectual property are uniquely suited for preventing counterfeit drugs from entering the market. Antoinette Konski, an expert in global intellectual property protection, asserts that, while patents are considered the first line of defense, they are actually less practical at enforcing rights against counterfeiters than other types of intellectual property protection. n122 Patent protection rewards innovation and generally grants the patent holder a right to exclude others from manufacturing, using, importing, selling, or offering for sale an exact or close copy of a patented technology. n123 However, patent protection is relatively ineffective for *766 patented drugs because counterfeiters do not copy the active ingredient and usually replace it with a cheaper ingredient. n124 Additionally, generic drug manufacturers, who often manufacture drugs after the patent term expires, have no recourse through the patent system. n125 By contrast, trademarks seek to protect exactly what counterfeiters target: brand recognition. For this reason, Konski argues that trademark protection is the most valuable type of intellectual property that can be used to combat counterfeiting. n126 A pharmaceutical company may obtain a trademark on the color or shape of pills as well as brand names, designs, and symbols. n127 This allows pharmaceutical manufacturers, including generic drug companies, to register and protect all unique aspects of their products. In contrast to most patent lawsuits, in many countries the trademark owner can have counterfeit goods, documents, and equipment immediately seized after bringing suit. n128 Furthermore, if a person knowingly infringes a trademark in the process of trafficking counterfeit drugs, criminal sanctions are increased from a maximum of three years in prison to a maximum of ten years in prison. n129 In addition, obtaining and enforcing trademark rights is typically much less costly and time-consuming than patent prosecution and infringement actions. n130 This unique combination makes trademarks particularly well suited as a first line of defense for drug manufacturers. Copyrights only protect works of authorship such as literary, musical, dramatic, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, cinematic, and architectural works. n131 As a result, only package inserts may be protected and are of little use in preventing the drug from reaching the public. n132 In the world of counterfeit drugs, that amounts to virtually no protection. Thus, in addition to educating customers, pharmaceutical companies can best protect their intellectual property and ensure maximum punishments for criminals by maintaining strong trademarks. Next is harmonization. IPR harmonization undermines the ability to market counterfeit drugs. Ferrill, Spring 2007 (Elizabeth – Law Clerk to the Honorable Liam O’Grady, Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Clearing the Swamp for Intellectual Property Harmonization: Understanding and Appreciating the Barriers to Full TRIPS Compliance for Industrializing and Non-Industrializing Countries, University of Baltimore Intellectual Property Law Journal, p. Lexis-Nexis)
In 1994, the Agreement on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was created. n2 TRIPS requires all 150 members n3 of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to provide minimal standards of protection for intellectual property (IP). n4 TRIPS is part of the larger WTO framework that promotes trade liberalization. n5 Through a series of *138 agreements designed to lower trade tariffs and eliminate other barriers to trade, the WTO strives to improve standards of living of all members, expand production of and trade in goods and services, and sustain development, especially in developing countries worldwide. n6 Most economists view trade liberalization as a means to wealth maximization. n7 If each country produces what it is best at producing, then output of efficiently produced products is higher worldwide. n8 Hence, countries that are the most efficient producer of a certain good would produce that good and trade with other countries for those goods it produces more efficiently, all without the cost of trade barriers. n9 Yet, countries are reluctant to unilaterally lower their trade barriers. n10 To avoid this problem, the WTO established rules for reciprocal *139 lowering of trade barriers. n11 In the realm of intellectual property, harmonization, defined as the standardization of intellectual property laws, is analogous to trade liberalization. If every country were to respect and protect the intellectual property rights of all other countries, inventors and creators would have the maximum incentive to create, mutually benefiting the world. More than a decade after its ratification, there remains tension and widespread noncompliance with TRIPS, as many countries continue to not enforce foreign IP rights, despite the potential benefits of harmonization. Counterfeiting, n12 which could be mitigated by such enforcement, costs the world economy about $ 600 billion annually and includes a multitude of products, such as pharmaceuticals, DVDs, software, toys, spare parts for cars and aircraft, and apparel. n13 This prompts the question of why complying with TRIPS and curbing counterfeiting and pirating has been so difficult over the past decade. There are a number of possible explanations. Counterfeit drugs bolster antibiotic resistance. Washington Post, 2/5/2013 (How fake drugs cause the spread of untreatable TB in developing countries, p. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/02/05/how-fake-drugs-cause-the-spread-of-untreatable-tb-in-developing-countries/)
Tuberculosis, a disease that destroys lung tissue, is more commonly associated with the Victorian era than with the modern age. Today, TB can be cured with several heavy rounds of antibiotics, but the emergence of drug-resistant strains of the disease in India and other countries around the world have raised alarm among health workers. One culprit in the rise of untreatable TB is counterfeit drugs, which can undermine treatment efforts by packing insufficient active ingredients to fully kill off bacteria, breeding new, stronger super-strains of the disease. Though the scourge of counterfeit malaria drugs has shaken up the public health world in recent years, researchers are now turning their attention to fake TB drugs, as well, as cases of drug-resistant TB have emerged in both the developing world and in higher-income cities such as London and Moscow. A new study published in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease found that 16.6 percent of tuberculosis drugs in Africa, 10.1 percent in India and 3.9 percent in other middle-income countries were “failures,” meaning they had less than 80 percent of the active ingredient necessary to treat the disease. “The biggest determinant of drug quality is wealth of the country,” said one of the study’s lead authors, Roger Bate, an economist who researches international health policy with the American Enterprise Institute. The study analyzed drugs in 17 countries — those that are home to about 60 percent of the world’s total cases of multidrug resistant TB. Over the past five years, teams of researchers have been purchasing antibiotics at random pharmacies in each of the countries and testing the medicines’ active ingredients. (To find the samples for middle-income countries, researchers visited Bangkok, Beijing, Istanbul, Moscow and Sao Paulo.) When patients take these fake drugs, they remain sick longer or die. In some patients, germs multiply and morph into new strains, making them harder and more expensive to treat.
10/30/21
4 - SO - Lay Innovation
Tournament: JW Patterson | Round: 3 | Opponent: Cabot JB | Judge: Shawn Rafferty Pharma innovation high now – monetary incentive is the biggest factor. Swagel 21 Phillip L. Swagel, Director of the Congressional budget office 4-xx-2021, "Research and Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry," Congressional Budget Office, https://www.cbo.goc/publication/57126#_idTextAnchor020 SJDA Every year, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry develops a variety of new drugs that provide valuable medical benefits. Many of those drugs are expensive and contribute to rising health care costs for the private sector and the federal government. Policymakers have considered policies that would lower drug prices and reduce federal drug expenditures. Such policies would probably reduce the industry’s incentive to develop new drugs. In this report, the Congressional Budget Office assesses trends in spending for drug research and development (RandD) and the introduction of new drugs. CBO also examines factors that determine how much drug companies spend on RandD: expected global revenues from a new drug; cost to develop a new drug; and federal policies that affect the demand for drug therapies, the supply of new drugs, or both. What Are Recent Trends in Pharmaceutical RandD and New Drug Approvals? The pharmaceutical industry devoted $83 billion to RandD expenditures in 2019. Those expenditures covered a variety of activities, including discovering and testing new drugs, developing incremental innovations such as product extensions, and clinical testing for safety-monitoring or marketing purposes. That amount is about 10 times what the industry spent per year in the 1980s, after adjusting for the effects of inflation. The share of revenues that drug companies devote to RandD has also grown: On average, pharmaceutical companies spent about one-quarter of their revenues (net of expenses and buyer rebates) on RandD expenses in 2019, which is almost twice as large a share of revenues as they spent in 2000. That revenue share is larger than that for other knowledge-based industries, such as semiconductors, technology hardware, and software. The number of new drugs approved each year has also grown over the past decade. On averace, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 38 new drugs per year from 2010 through 2019 (with a peak of 59 in 2018), which is 60 percent more than the yearly average over the previous decade. Many of the drugs that have been approved in recent years are “specialty drugs.” Specialty drugs generally treat chronic, complex, or rare conditions, and they may also require special handling or monitoring of patients. Many specialty drugs are biologics (large-molecule drugs based on living cell lines), which are costly to develop, hard to imitate, and frequently have high prices. Previously, most drugs were small-molecule drugs based on chemical compounds. Even while they were under patent, those drugs had lower prices than recent specialty drugs have. Information about the kinds of drugs in current clinical trials indicates that much of the industry’s innovative activity is focused on specialty drugs that would provide new cancer therapies and treatments for nervous-system disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. What Factors Influence Spending for RandD? Drug companies’ RandD spending decisions depend on three main factors: Anticipated lifetime global revenues from a new drug, Expected costs to develop a new drug, and Policies and programs that influence the supply of and demand for prescription drugs. Various considerations inform companies’ expectations about a drug’s revenue stream, including the anticipated prices it could command in different markets around the world and the expected global sales volume at those prices (given the number of people who might use the drug). The prices and sales volumes of existing drugs provide information about consumers’ and insurance plans’ willingness to pay for drug treatments. Importantly, when drug companies set the prices of a new drug, they do so to maximize future revenues net of manufacturing and distribution costs. A drug’s sunk RandD costs—that is, the costs already incurred in developing that drug—do not influence its price. Developing new drugs is a costly and uncertain process, and many potential drugs never make it to market. Only about 12 percent of drugs entering clinical trials are ultimately approved for introduction by the FDA. In recent studies, estimates of the average RandD cost per new drug range from less than $1 billion to more than $2 billion per drug. Those estimates include the costs of both laboratory research and clinical trials of successful new drugs as well as expenditures on drugs that do not make it past the laboratory-development stage, that enter clinical trials but fail in those trials or are withdrawn by the drugmaker for business reasons, or that are not approved by the FDA. Those estimates also include the company’s capital costs—the value of other forgone investments—incurred during the RandD process. Such costs can make up a substantial share of the average total cost of developing a new drug. The development process often takes a decade or more, and during that time the company does not receive a financial return on its investment in developing that drug. The federal government affects RandD decisions in three ways. First, it increases demand for prescription drugs, which encourages new drug development, by fully or partially subsidizing the purchase of prescription drugs through a variety of federal programs (including Medicare and Medicaid) and by providing tax preferences for employment-based health insurance. Second, the federal government increases the supply of new drugs. It funds basic biomedical research that provides a scientific foundation for the development of new drugs by private industry. Additionally, tax credits—both those available to all types of companies and those available to drug companies for developing treatmentscof uncommon diseases—provide incentives to invest in RandD. Similarly, deductions for RandD investment can be used to reduce tax liabilities immediately rather than over the life of that investment. Finally, the patent system and certain statutory provisions that delay FDA approval of generic drugs provide pharmaceutical companies with a period of market exclusivity, when competition is legally restricted. During that time, they can maintain higher prices on a patented product than they otherwise could, which makes new drugs more profitable and thereby increases drug companies’ incentives to invest in RandD. Third, some federal policies affect the number of new drugs by influencing both demand and supply. For example, federal recommendations for specific vaccines increase the demand for those vaccines and provide an incentive for drug companies to develop new ones. Additionally, federal regulatory policies that influence returns on drug RandD can bring about increases or decreases in both the supply of and demand for new drugs. Trends in RandD Spending and New Drug Development Private spending on pharmaceutical RandD and the approval of new drugs have both increased markedly in recent years, resuming a decades-long trend that was interrupted in 2008 as generic versions of some top-selling drugs became available and as the 2007–2009 recession occurred. In particular, spending on drug RandD increased by nearly 50 percent between 2015 and 2019. Many of the drugs approved in recent years are high-priced specialty drugs for relatively small numbers of potential patients. By contrast, the top-selling drugs of the 1990s were lower-cost drugs with large patient populations. RandD Spending RandD spending in the pharmaceutical industry covers a variety of activities, including the following: Invention, or research and discovery of new drugs; Development, or clinical testing, preparation and submission of applications for FDA approval, and design of production processes for new drugs; Incremental innovation, including the development of new dosages and delivery mechanisms for existing drugs and the testing of those drugs for additional indications; Product differentiation, or the clinical testing of a new drug against an existing rival drug to show that the new drug is superior; and Safety monitoring, or clinical trials (conducted after a drug has reached the market) that the FDA may require to detect side effects that may not have been observed in shorter trials when the drug was in development. In real terms, private investment in drug RandD among member firms of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), an industry trade association, was about $83 billion in 2019, up from about $5 billion in 1980 and $38 billion in 2000.1 Although those spending totals do not include spending by many smaller drug companies that do not belong to PhRMA, the trend is broadly representative of RandD spending by the industry as a whole.2 A survey of all U.S. pharmaceutical RandD spending (including that of smaller firms) by the National Science Foundation (NSF) reveals similar trends.3 Although total RandD spending by all drug companies has trended upward, small and large firms generally focus on different RandD activities. Small companies not in PhRMA devote a greater share of their research to developing and testing new drugs, many of which are ultimately sold to larger firms (see Box 1). By contrast, a greater portion of the RandD spending of larger drug companies (including those in PhRMA) is devoted to conducting clinical trials, developing incremental “line extension” improvements (such as new dosages or delivery systems, or new combinations of two or more existing drugs), and conducting postapproval testing for safety-monitoring or marketing purposes.
The aff crushes innovation in the pharma sector---incentivizes them to focus on non-important issues. Glassman 21 Amanda; 5/6/21; Executive vice president and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington and London; “Big Pharma Is Not the Tobacco Industry,” Barron, https://www.barrons.com/articles/big-pharma-is-not-the-tobacco-industry-51620315693 Justin But here is the crux of the problem: The pharmaceutical industry is not the tobacco industry. They are not merchants of death. The companies are amoral and exist to make money, but their business is not fundamentally immoral. Big Pharma (mostly) develops and sells products that people need to survive and thrive. Their products improve health and welfare. Fights over access to medicines are possible because medicines exist in the first place—medicines that were usually developed by Big Pharma. And yes, the pharmaceutical industry benefits from public subsidy and publicly financed foundational research. But the companies also put their own capital at risk to develop new products, some of which offer enormous public benefits. In fact, several of them did just that in the pandemic: invested their own money to develop patented manufacturing technologies in record time. Those technologies are literally saving the world right now. Public funding supported research and development, but companies also brought their own proprietary ingenuity and private investments to bear toward solving the world’s singular, collective challenge. Their reward should be astronomical given the insane scale of the health and economic benefits these highly efficacious vaccines produce every day. Market incentives sent a clear signal that further needed innovation—greater efficacy, single doses, more-rapid manufacturing, updated formulations, fast boosters, and others—would be richly rewarded. Market incentives could also have been used to lubricate supply lines and buy vaccines on behalf of the entire world; with enough money, incredible things can happen. But activist lobbying to waive patents—a move the Biden administration endorsed yesterday—sends exactly the opposite signal. It says that the most important, valuable innovations will be penalized, not rewarded. It tells innovators, don’t bother attacking the most important global problems; instead, throw your investment dollars at the next treatment for erectile disfunction, which will surely earn you a steady return with far less agita. It is worth going back to first principles. What problem are we trying to solve? We have highly efficacious vaccines that we would like to get out to the entire world as quickly as possible to minimize, preventable disease and deaths address atrocious inequities, and enable the reopening of society, trade, and commerce. Hundreds of millions of people have been plunged into poverty over the past year; in the developing world, the pandemic is just getting started. What is the quickest way to get this done? Vaccine manufacturing is not just a recipe; if you attack and undermine the companies that have the know-how, do you really expect they’ll be eager to help you set up manufacturing elsewhere? Is the plan to march into Pfizer and force its staff to redeploy to Costa Rica to build a new factory? Do the U.S. administration or activists care that this decision could take years to negotiate at the World Trade Organization, and will likely be litigated for years thereafter? Does it make sense to eliminate the incentive for private companies to invest in vaccine RandD or in the response to the next health emergency? And if the patent waiver is only temporary and building a factory takes months or years, will anyone bother to do so, even if they could? No, none of it makes sense. Worse still, we could solve the policy problem more easily by harnessing market incentives for the global good by ponying up cash to vaccinate the entire world. No confiscation necessary.
Pharma Innovation prevents Extinction – checks new diseases. Engelhardt 8, H. Tristram. Innovation and the pharmaceutical industry: critical reflections on the virtues of profit. M and M Scrivener Press, 2008 (doctorate in philosophy (University of Texas at Austin), M.D. (Tulane University), professor of philosophy (Rice University), and professor emeritus at Baylor College of Medicine) Many are suspicious of, or indeed jealous of, the good fortune of others. Even when profit is gained in the market without fraud and with the consent of all buying and selling goods and services, there is a sense on the part of some that something is wrong if considerable profit is secured. There is even a sense that good fortune in the market, especially if it is very good fortune, is unfair. One might think of such rhetorically disparaging terms as "wind-fall profits". There is also a suspicion of the pursuit of profit because it is often embraced not just because of the material benefits it sought, but because of the hierarchical satisfaction of being more affluent than others. The pursuit of profit in the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries is tor many in particular morally dubious because it is acquired from those who have the bad fortune to be diseased or disabled. Although the suspicion of profit is not well-founded, this suspicion is a major moral and public-policy challenge. Profit in the market for the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries is to be celebrated. This is the case, in that if one is of the view (1) that the presence of additional resources for research and development spurs innovation in the development of pharmaceuticals and med-ical devices (i.e., if one is of the view that the allure of profit is one of the most effective ways not only to acquire resources but productively to direct human energies in their use), (2) that given the limits of altruism and of the willingness of persons to be taxed, the possibility of profits is necessary to secure such resources, (3) that the allure of profits also tends to enhance the creative use of available resources in the pursuit of phar-maceutical and medical-device innovation, and (4) if one judges it to be the case that such innovation is both necessary to maintain the human species in an ever-changing and always dangerous environment in which new microbial and other threats may at any time emerge to threaten human well-being, if not survival (i.e., that such innovation is necessary to prevent increases in morbidity and mortality risks), as well as (5) in order generally to decrease morbidity and mortality risks in the future, it then follows (6) that one should be concerned regarding any policies that decrease the amount of resources and energies available to encourage such innovation. One should indeed be of the view that the possibilities for profit, all things being equal, should be highest in the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries. Yet, there is a suspicion regarding the pursuit of profit in medicine and especially in the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries.
10/30/21
4 - SO - Midterms DA
Tournament: Jack Howe | Round: 6 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake ML | Judge: Benjamin Cortez Dems win the Senate now, but it’s close---it determines the Biden presidency. Shane Goldmacher 7/17. Reporter, New York Times, “Democrats See Edge in Early Senate Map as Trump Casts Big Shadow,” The New York Times, July 17, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/us/politics/midterm-elections.html, RJP, DebateDrills. Six months into the Biden administration, Senate Democrats are expressing a cautious optimism that the party can keep control of the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections, enjoying large fund-raising hauls in marquee races as they plot to exploit Republican retirements in key battlegrounds and a divisive series of unsettled G.O.P. primaries. Swing-state Democratic incumbents, like Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, restocked their war chests with multimillion-dollar sums ($7.2 million and $6 million, respectively), according to new financial filings this week. That gives them an early financial head start in two key states where Republicans’ disagreements over former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020 are threatening to distract and fracture the party. But Democratic officials are all too aware of the foreboding political history they confront: that in a president’s first midterms, the party occupying the White House typically loses seats — often in bunches. For now, Democrats hold power by only the narrowest of margins in a 50-50 split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker to push through President Biden’s expansive agenda on the economy, the pandemic and infrastructure.
The plan is unpopular---it’s seen as soft on China. Cynthia Hicks 21. Director of Public Affairs at PhRMA focusing on polling and opinion research that supports advocacy communications and strategy. “New polling shows Americans are sounding the alarm on the TRIPS IP waiver,” PhRMA, May 14, 2021, https://catalyst.phrma.org/new-polling-shows-americans-are-sounding-the-alarm-on-the-trips-ip-waiver, RJP, DebateDrills *NOTE – the stuff after “include the following” is a picture that couldn’t be pasted. Go to the URL if you want to see it.
2. Americans are concerned that the TRIPS waiver could risk patient safety, sow public confusion, and cede America’s global innovation leadership to China. Americans worry that waiving intellectual property introduces unnecessary and dangerous risks to safety and vaccine manufacturing. The top concerns – expressed by more than six in ten voters – include the following:
Democrats and Republicans in purple states are already leaning into U.S. competition with China as a key issue in the fight to control the Senate in 2022. Why it matters: American voters hold increasingly negative feelings toward the Chinese government, particularly around bilateral economic relations and following the nation’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. President Biden also has made it clear that confronting China remains a foreign policy priority. Possibly vulnerable Democratic senators are capitalizing on the passage of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, a sweeping global competition bill focused on China that recently passed by a rare bipartisan vote. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) visited Kia’s West Point factory in Georgia to address how the bill could address the recent semiconductor shortage and avoid future plant shutdowns, like one the factory experienced. Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) wrote op-eds in their local news outlets highlighting the bill's benefits. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and state Democratic parties are calling out Republicans like Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), both of whom voted against the bill. They’ve also targeted Republicans running in open Senate seats who have expressed opposition to the bill. Meanwhile, Rubio has been making a play for China hawks in Florida, Axios’ Lachlan Markay reported last week. Rubio, who is up for re-election next year, has been sending campaign emails with subject lines such as, "Dems 3 China," and, "Is it time to stand up to Communist China?" to a list maintained by a nonprofit group called Stand Up to China. In Arizona, Republicans latched onto Kelly's ties to a Chinese tech firm last year, and it's likely they'll continue to use that strategy. The senator's team has argued he isn't beholden to Chinese authorities. Republicans have long branded Democrats as "weak" on China as a line of attack. Expect that to continue through the campaign cycle, as Democratic candidates tout the passage of the U.S. Innovation Act and reframe the narrative. They plan to focus on increasing the United States' competitive edge with China as a policy priority. What they’re saying: David Bergstein, a spokesman for the DSCC, said the campaign committee will be “reminding voters that any Republican who refused to back this critical bill was too weak to stand up to China in order to protect and grow good-paying jobs.” Chris Hartline, spokesman for the NRSC, said in a statement that "no one believes that Joe Biden and Senate Democrats will do what it takes to confront the geopolitical and economic threat posed by (President) Xi (Jinping) and the Chinese Communist Party. GOP control of the Senate will be used to usher in a new wave of Trumpism, crushing democracy. Morton Kondracke 21. Retired executive editor of Roll Call, a former "McLaughlin Group" and Fox News commentator and co-author, with Fred Barnes, of Jack Kemp: The Bleeding Heart Conservative Who Changed America. “Why Democrats Must Retain Control of Congress in 2022,” RealClearPolitics, August 4, 2021, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/08/04/why_democrats_must_retain_control_of_congress_in_2022_146189.html, RJP, DebateDrills
The 2020 election demonstrated how fragile our democracy is. As Donald Trump tried, by means both legal and illegal, to overturn the results of a free and fair election, only the courts and a thin line of courageous Republican election officials guaranteed that the peoples’ choice prevailed. But the safeguards are weaker. Although the Supreme Court upheld the last lower-court dismissal of multiple Trump-inspired lawsuits charging election fraud, in July the court upheld new voting restrictions enacted in Arizona. And many of the Republican election officials who refused to back up Trump’s bogus fraud charges have been threatened, fired, or are being challenged for reelection by Trump followers. Meanwhile, 17 Republican-controlled state legislatures have joined Arizona in making voting more difficult: In several of them, legislators are trying to seize control of election management, including power to replace county election officials or even decide how a state’s election results should be certified, regardless of the popular vote. Republicans claim they are acting restore faith in elections, but—with fraud repeatedly shown to be rare and of no effect in in 2020—Trump and his followers are really undermining faith in American elections. The result of this frenzy of activity in furtherance of Trump’s “Big Lie”—that he won the 2020 election (and that he won in a “landslide,” no less) —is that the preservation of American-style self-government depends on Democrats retaining control of Congress in 2022. Republicans have shown that they simply can’t be trusted to safeguard democracy. Donald Trump now owns the Republican Party as GOP politicians up and down the line do his bidding, out of fear or belief. Even after a mob of Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Republicans in Congress voted overwhelmingly against impeaching and convicting him for his actions and inaction. Eight GOP senators and 147 representatives voted not to certify Electoral College counts submitted by two states (had they prevailed, there would have more). Then only six GOP senators voted in favor of forming a truly bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate the insurrection, killing the proposal by filibuster. After Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi established a select committee to conduct an investigation, Republican leaders attacked her as responsible for the riot, falsely claiming she is in charge of security at the Capitol. Republicans who voted against Trump on any issue relating to Jan. 6 now face primary opponents backed by him and censure by their state parties. Rep. Liz Cheney, the most vocal Trump critic in the GOP, lost her House leadership post. Trump has even attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who criticized him after Jan. 6 but also blocked creation of the 9/11 commission. It’s classic authoritarian behavior—demanding total loyalty from his followers and total control of his faction, and assailing any rivals in power. Lately, Trump reportedly has encouraged his followers to believe he can somehow be reinstated as president later this month, and the Department of Homeland Security is concerned that the violent acts of Jan. 6 may be repeated when he’s not. The sad, but inevitable conclusion is that if Republicans take control of either chamber in Congress, they will not try to do what’s best for America as a whole. They will do what Trump tells them to do, probably starting with trying to undo everything President Biden and the Democrats in Congress have done during the previous two years. For starters, if Democrats are to prevail next November, Biden must be seen as a successful moderate-progressive president—one who can defy the historical pattern that presidential parties almost invariably lose seats in their first midterm election. The last two Democratic presidents s who launched major initiatives without GOP support, Bill Clinton (tax increases and health care reform) and Barack Obama (Obamacare and anti-recession stimulus spending), suffered historic shellackings in the ensuing midterms—54 House seats and eight Senate seats in 1994, and 63 House and six Senate seats in 2010. Biden, who has multiple big programs in his policy agenda, has smaller Democratic margins in Congress than Clinton and Obama. In other words, the Democrats must hang on to almost all of their contested districts and states. McConnell, who earned the moniker “grim reaper” for blocking Obama, was supposed to be a willing negotiating partner for Biden. Instead, the Senate Republican leader has pronounced himself “100 focused” on defeating Biden’s legislative agenda. So far, Biden has succeeded in passing a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package (with no Republican votes). He is trying to work out a bipartisan $1 trillion “physical infrastructure” package. McConnell isn’t the obstruction with this legislation, as Senate negotiators and the White House sound optimistic. But with Rep. Kevin McCarthy openly angling for Pelosi’s job, nothing is certain in the House. Trump is actively trying to scuttle infrastructure spending. He’s telling Republicans to oppose it, saying passage means letting “the Radical Left play you for weak fools and losers,” and he has threatened primary challenges against GOP legislators who support it. This, despite his promising to pass a $2 trillion bill while president (then never delivering). Republicans who support it obviously want money for roads, bridges and broadband for their constituents. But they don’t like the contents of Biden’s follow-up proposal—a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” program, which would expand Medicare, caregiving for the disabled and elderly, and child care, while funding universal pre-kindergarten, free community college, national paid family leave, and extended child tax credits. And they don’t like the corporate and capital gains tax increases Democrats propose to pay for it all. So the Democratic plan is to pass it as a “budget reconciliation” measure requiring only Democratic votes. If, next November, the GOP captures one chamber—most likely, the House—whatever Biden can get done in his first two years can’t be easily undone, but he will get nothing more passed. If the GOP gets control of both chambers, Republicans will try to reverse anything he has accomplished. He’ll have only his veto pen as protection. Stalemate from 2023 through 2024—and an unsuccessful-seeming Biden presidency—could reelect Trump (or someone backed by him), in which case constitutional norms and respect for election results and the rule of law would again be in peril.
10/30/21
4 - SO - Weed DA
Tournament: UK Season Opener | Round: 5 | Opponent: Ramsay DF | Judge: Anand Rao The weed industry is growing, but needs investors to stay afloat – patents draw in investors and help companies expand Roberts 20 Chris Roberts, An award-winning investigative reporter and covered the legalization movement and the cannabis industry with a political economy lens for more than a decade. He launched northern California’s first cannabis-centric print vertical and founded San Francisco’s first dedicated drug-policy column. His work’s been featured in VICE, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Deadspin, Observer, Curbed, Leafly News, High Times, SF Weekly, and many other places. He hold a master’s degree in politics from Columbia Journalism School, 5-28-2020, "Why Patent Cannabis? For Markets, Mostly.," Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2020/05/28/why-patent-cannabis-for-markets-mostly/, 8-21-2021 WHS MR On May 20, Charlotte’s Web, the Colorado-based CBD giant and arguably one of the biggest names in legal cannabis, announced that the company was awarded its second federal patent on a cannabis plant. Unlike the company’s 2018 plant patent on a Farm Bill-compliant high-CBD hemp cultivar—which was the first hemp strain to receive federal intellectual property protection—US Patent No. 10,653,085 is a utility patent. This means, after satisfying a more rigorous process, including dropping off thousands of seeds at an official United States depository, Charlotte’s Web now claims as its intellectual property both the cultivar of hemp the company calls CW1AS1 as well as “methods” of plant production and cannabinoid extraction. Okay! But so what? Why patent a hemp strain—why patent two? What does it all mean? Does Charlotte’s Web now have legal claim to the entire CBD game?To the last question, no. And as for what this means, for normal people and cannabis consumers, very little. For patent attorneys or competitors of Charlotte’s Web in the CBD industry, it portends a little more, but just a little. At least for now, cannabis patents like this one aren’t really intended to defend intellectual property in court—which is where a patent has its most practical value. No, this patent is probably meant for the market. Patents like this exist mostly for companies to satisfy and woo investors, for whom a company’s ability to say “Look! I have a patent” might be the difference between signing a check, or not. And like all publicly traded cannabis companies, Charlotte’s Web has a lot of spooked and angry investors who need pleasing. Patents “generate interest in the company, and are something investors would look at,” said Jonathan Hyman, an attorney and partner at the Los Angeles office of Knobbe Martens. Whether Charlotte’s Web would enforce the patent, and how, “remains to be seen,” he added. Company officials were not available to discuss the matter. In a statement provided by Sylvia Tawse, the company’s director of communications, CEO Deanie Elsner said Charlotte’ Web “will continue to pursue patent protection for unique and novel hemp genetics developed by our horticulture division.” Whether that meant there are any pretenders the company plans to sue, she did not say. Though cannabis-related patent applications have been a thing since well before legalization and have tripled since 2015, as IP Watchdog noted, the mere phrase “cannabis patent” can still be triggering in cannabis circles. Patent talk can often lead to galaxy-brain thinking like the “Monsanto is supporting legalization in order to steal cannabis” or the “Philip Morris is buying up land in Humboldt County” conspiracy theories. In the case of Charlotte’s Web, the company’s already locked up what’s probably its most valuable asset: its name. Charlotte’s Web is named for Charlotte Figi, the sufferer of childhood epilepsy who enjoyed relief from her symptoms after taking an extract of high-CBD cannabis grown by the Stanley brothers (and who died earlier this month after contracting COVID-19). The world came to know Charlotte Figi and the Stanley brothers, seven photogenic Coloradans whose first names all begin with J, after they were prominently featured in a 2014 CNN special hosted by Sanjay Gupta. A very famous children’s book and a very famous and recognizable name, the company was sure lock down the name “Charlotte’s Web” with a trademark—one the company is currently defending in federal court, after a rival company dared market CBD products called Charlotte’s Web. That’s what patents are for in terms of the law. But markets are another matter—and it’s worth observing that the company went public after securing its first patent. Like almost all publicly traded companies in the cannabis sector, Charlotte’s Web is stuck in high-loss doldrums after hitting early peaks. For the past week, shares in Charlotte’s Web have been trading in the $7 to $9 range in the Toronto Stock Exchange. That’s a big gain from the $4.24 seen at the company’s mid-March nadir, but still far below last summer’s high-water mark of $28.21, set in August. Despite being sold in more than 11,000 stores, the company still lost $1.7 million in 2020—a hit smaller than other companies in the cannabis sector, but still in the red. Patenting hemp genetics and the processes to achieve them won’t be enough to rescue the rest of the company’s lost value. But if Charlotte’s Web wants to be a global CBD brand, with product in supermarkets and convenience stores all over the globe—and why wouldn’t it?—this means something. "Having this patent, that they can wave around and say, 'Hey, we've got coverage on it, and it's the best variety of CBD rich hemp that you're going to get,’ ” said Andrew Merickel, who holds a Phd in neuroscience and is also an attorney and partner at the San Francisco office of Knobbe Martens. “That’s pretty valuable.” How valuable? That’s all up to the logic of the market. Cannabis is key to agricultural tech innovation – k2 long term sustainability and security Yamazaki 17 Kevin Yamazaki (founder and CEO of Sidebench, a leading digital product and venture studio that creates custom software and apps), 3-27-2017, "High Tech: How Marijuana Legalization Breeds Innovation," Observer, https://observer.com/2017/03/high-tech-how-marijuana-legalization-breeds-innovation/, SJBE With the competition blazing and increased legalization on the horizon, we can expect to see the weed market become a hotbed for tech innovations. Forecasts indicate that revenue in the U.S. from medical marijuana alone will reach at least $10.8 billion by 2018. When states expand to allow recreational use, this number will surely increase. As investors become more comfortable deploying capital around cannabis, tech will revolutionize the marijuana ecosystem for producers, distributors, and consumers alike. The future of marijuana innovation Innovation has begun to outpace legalization as tech organizations make groundbreaking strides in researching and developing applications for marijuana. For example, Kalytera is exploring how cannabidiol — a non-psychoactive cannabinoid with a number of potential medical applications — can be used to target diseases such as obesity and osteoporosis. The findings of such research could transform how people cope with chronic illness and pain. Companies are also experimenting with improvements in weed-growing processes. Cannabis is a finicky crop, so the ability to fine-tune growing processes could generate products far superior to today’s. Several organizations are devising smart, energy-efficient systems that automatically adjust growing environments according to changes in moisture, temperature, and sunlight. Meanwhile, data-capture technologies enable growers to identify optimal conditions for their plants, leading to larger and better-quality yields. The primary speed bump for the industry at this point is that marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I drug and is illegal at the federal level. Even if this factor doesn’t inhibit marijuana-centric technology innovation directly, it certainly has a strong indirect effect, as many potential financiers (and entrepreneurs) are scared away by either fear of prosecution or skepticism about the industry’s stability. That said, as more states allow for medical marijuana or legalize the drug entirely, the potential market size for marijuana-centric products expands as well. Perhaps more importantly, with some form of state legalization becoming the norm rather than the exception, there is a degree of safety in numbers. Assuming we see the trend of legalization for medical and recreational uses continue, production will inevitably become an even bigger business. Technology will play an increasing role in ensuring quality, consistency, and efficiency on the production side. We’re already seeing startups like Cannafuse and Teewinoit Life Sciences focusing on providing a tech-enabled scientific approach to the mass scientific production and distribution of cannabis. Advances in the irrigation systems, efficiency lamps, and data tracking processes used to grow marijuana may have far-reaching effects beyond the cannabis industry. Industrial farmers could adopt these techniques to increase their outputs and reduce energy expenses, while building managers can use them to lower energy loads from their properties. On the consumer side, the medical marijuana industry, in particular, will likely see an explosion of on-demand delivery services. Consumers are accustomed to using their smartphones to book cars, buy groceries, and mail packages. Why wouldn’t they receive their medical marijuana that way, too? Expect to see personalized services as well — think apps that recommend strains of marijuana on the basis of your preferences. Apps such as MassRoots bring the social media aspect to what is, for many people, a social product by connecting weed enthusiasts to one another through news updates and other types of content. Even Microsoft is throwing its hat into the ring with marijuana tracking software that ensures growers comply with their tax obligations and prevents legally grown pot from ending up on the black market. As the cannabis industry expands, the opportunities for growth are diverse and extensive. Tech-enabled companies will inevitably spur that growth, driving breakthroughs in medicine, crop development, and customer experiences. The momentum created by legalization will transform a once-taboo drug into a mainstream commodity, and the tech world stands to benefit enormously. Extinction – food insecurity causes conflict and goes nuclear FDI 12 FDI Team, 25 May 2012, “Food and Water Insecurity: International Conflict Triggers and Potential Conflict Points,” Future Directions International, https://www.futuredirections.org.au/publication/international-conflict-triggers-and-potential-conflict-points-resulting-from-food-and-water-insecurity/, SJBE There is little dispute that conflict can lead to food and water crises. This paper will consider parts of the world, however, where food and water insecurity can be the cause of conflict and, at worst, result in war. While dealing predominately with food and water issues, the paper also recognises the nexus that exists between food and water and energy security. 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.