Islamophobia Security Af

Notes
Ill make the notes short. The af argues that islamophobia and a fear of
terrorism securitize/shape our surveillance policies in a bad way because
terrorism really isn't a threat and Muslims (or other brown people)
shouldnt be blamed for it because theyre Muslim or brown. The af would
establish a strict scrutiny standard based on religion and color
(race/national origin/ethnicity are GENERALLY already protected under it
but the af says wed apply it to surveillance too).

Whats a strict scrutiny standard?

The 1AC argues that under a strict scrutiny standard, if there is conclusive evidence
that a policy, in this case surveillance, disproportionately affects a certain group
(based on the standards outlined in the plan text) then it would become
unconstitutional (the aff argues that theres excessive surveillance on Muslims and
those perceived to be Muslim so the aff would change this).
-

Sachin Mahajan

1AC (Security)

Advantage
Welcome to the modern security apparatus, a militaristic police
state, a world where mass scrutinizing surveillance on millions of
innocent people runs rampant, a world where the identifying as
Muslim necessitates racist violence and police brutality regardless
of your skin color. Yet given the topic and the iniquities of the state,
the modern surveillance regime, can be atoned for through negative
state action, therefore we conclude that: The United States federal
government should establish a strict scrutiny standard for domestic
surveillance based on race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, and
color.
Ghughunishvili 10 (Irina Ghughunishvili, Masters in International Relations and European Studies from
the Central European University, Securitization of Migration in the United States after 9/11: Constructing Muslims
and Arabs as Enemies, 2010, SMahajan)

securitization theory is comprised by speech act,

acceptance of the audience and facilitating conditions or other nonsecuritizing actors contribute to a successful securitization. The causality or a oneAs provided by the Copenhagen School

way relationship between the speech act, the audience and securitizing actor, where politicians use the speech act
first to justify exceptional measures, has been criticized by scholars, such as Balzacq. According to him, the onedirectional relationship between the three factors, or some of them, is not the best approach. To fully grasp the
dynamics, it will be more beneficial to "rather than looking for a one-directional relationship between some or all of
the three factors highlighted, it could be profitable to focus on the degree of congruence between them.26 Among
other aspects of the Copenhagen School's theoretical framework, which he criticizes, the thesis will rely on the
criticism of the lack of context and the rejection of a 'one-way causal relationship between the audience and the

The process of threat construction, according to him, can be clearer if

external context, which stands independently from use of language, can
be considered.27 Balzacq opts for more context-oriented approach when it comes
actor.

down to securitization through the speech act, where a single speech

does not create the discourse, but it is created through a long process,
where context is vital .28 He indicates: In reality, the speech act itself, i.e.
literally a single security articulation at a particular point in time, will at
best only very rarely explain the entire social process that follows from it .
In most cases a security scholar will rather be confronted with a process of
articulations creating sequentially a threat text which turns sequentially into a
securitization.29 This type of approach seems more plausible in an empirical study, as it is more
likely that a single speech will not be able to securitize an issue, but it is a
lengthy process, where a the audience speaks the same language as the
securitizing actors and can relate to their speeches. One of the main objections was
directed at the limitation of speech act as a primary or sole securitizing method. Bigo and Huysmans both brought
to light the need to go beyond the mere speech act approach to securitization and look at alternative ways in which
issues can be constructed as existential threats. Drawing on Foucault and Bourdieu, Bigo's approach in addition to
the speech act, stresses the significance of the institutionalization of the field of security.30

Bigo uses

migration as an example of a threat in an attempt at developing a more

coherent theoretical framework, since migration can serve as a clear

example of how threats are constructed through speech act as well as in

every day practice, whether through border patrol, visa regulation, and
other surveillance techniques . Bureaucratic routines, for example, border patrolling,
show the efects of securitization that become 'continuous rather than
exceptional.'31 Both scholars include institutionalization of the field of security and the construction of
threats in various practices. Surveillance networks and data-mining help build a
'security state' where everyone is under surveillance . Securitization of migration in
Europe has been discusses by numerous critical security-studies scholars in the past decade or more and the
general consensus has been that migration to the Western European countries has been increasingly framed as
existential threat to European societies. The problem was being linked to various problems such as jobs, housing,
and welfare system, in addition to more intangible things like societal values, identity and cultural homogeneity. 32

When considering migration

in the light of securitization theory, Bigo argues that other mechanism
such as bureaucratic procedures (exclusion vs. inclusion), profiling of groups (e.g.
These types of societal problems are fought through migration control.

migrants)

and particular security technologies

(e.g. visa, identity control and registration)

can be tools in an attempt to categorize and formulate 'the others," which

are potential threats to the security of a society . The author adds that securitization,
which is part of everyday practices, technologies, which are continuous and not exceptional like the speech act, are
created through political struggles.34

Securitization of migration , according to him, is the

result and not the cause of the development of technologies of control

and surveillance . Risk profiling, visa regulations, border-control,
designation of international and non-territorial spaces in airports and
ways in which the division between societies are placed in opposition with
migrants. Bigo explains the fear, anxiety and the risk that migration causes
among people is due to the conception of the state as an entity that
contains the polity. It is the fear of losing control that drives politicians and political elite to maintain
clearly defined territorial boundaries.36 Politicians try to provide security to a nation
who feels psychological unease that follows inflows of migration . In a
democratic system, the speech act is used by the governing elite in a way to justify the existential measures. Bigo
stresses governmentality part of securitization, where political elite makes an illusion of providing security and
protection to the public, in an attempt to conceal their failures.37 In line with Bigo's conceptualization of security,

security is never innocent or neutral . The idea later in the

chapter is challenged by scholars, such a Boswell, who argues that political elite could be, but is not
always pursuing power maximization. Now that the theoretical framework and its criticisms have
Huysmans argues that enunciating

been established, it is important to turn to how the theory and its adjustments are helpful in explaining the
amalgam of between securitization of migration and terrorism in speech act and policies and every-day practices.
The question addressed in the following part is whether anti-terrorist agenda proved to be a tool for more austere
forms of migration control and how the threat was constructed in the European context. This will provide a basis to
expand the theoretical framework to the United States case. 1.3 Securitization, Migration and Terrorism Nexus in
the European Union As mentioned in the introduction, securitization of migration and its connection with terrorism

Unlike
in the United States, which is proud to present itself as the 'a country of
migrants' and thus frame the issue as only effecting 'social problems and not identity, the
securitization of migration to the European Union has been observed for
decades now and has been constructed both as a threat to the identity as
well as being linked to drug trafficking, housing, jobs, and so on. The big question for the
has been analyzed extensively in the European context and to a very limited extent in the United States.

security studies scholars addressed in the aftermath of 9/11 was to what

extent these trends changed . The primary question posed was if the
catastrophic events formed a link between migration and terrorism, where
anti-terrorist agenda was used in order to justify tightening measured
against migrants (a pre-existing desire). And if this was the case, what was the process and how does the
securitization theory explain the newly-emerging dynamics. Some of the works done in linking migration and
terrorism in the European Context belong to Huysmans, Andrew Neal, Christina Boswell and Georgios Karyotis.
Huysmans looks at securitization of migration and asylum policy through speech act in the British parliamentary

there was a securitization move present in the

debate in the aftermaths of the 9/11 attacks towards linking migration
and terrorism, soon afterwards, the reluctance to link the two became
obvious and soon subsided all together. Karyotis, looking at both speech act and practices in the EU, argues
debated. He concludes that although

that in the EU 9/11 attacks did not initiate new insecurities, or uncertainties in connection with the migration policy,
but the actions and the framing was the continuation of the trend that existed prior to the attacks/' In line with this
argument, but stressing the continuous nature of security construction in the EU before and after 9/11, Christina
Boswell argues that the link was short- lived. Looking at securitization of migration after 9/11 in the European
context, Boswell contends the orthodox notion that there was a tight link between migration and terrorism.40
According to her, several factors served as obstacles in connecting irregular migrants and new entrants to
terrorism, since an overview of public debate and policy practice remained unchanged by the anti-terrorist agenda.
The same thing could be said about what was taking place on a policy level. There was an attempt at establishment
of counter-terrorism agenda through, for example, data gathering of migrants, both on the EU and national
levels.41 The policy has been the most prevalent in the establishment of monitoring and gathering data on
migrants. She points out that, paradoxically, migration policy has been used for fighting terrorism than other way
around.42 Andrew Neal has a similar point when addressing the issue of securitization and risk at the EU border. He
argues that European external borders agency FRONTEX, is not the manifestation of institutionalization of linkage
between migration and terrorism after 9/11 and subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, but rather the failure
of making such an association.43 How can this be explained? Firstly, Boswell finds the answer in that the most of
the terrorist suspects were EU nationals and thus there was little possibility to associate them with migrants. In a

in order to explain the absence of the link

between migration and terrorism, she emphasizes the inability for the
security studies literature to fully address the dynamic involved in legitimization
of security- practices through the speech act that has emerged since September
11, 2001. This is due to two factors: the lack of an adequate theory of organizational action and the ambiguity
larger overview of the securitization theory,

of the differentiation between system of politics (political parties concerned with legitimizing and mobilizing people
for state action) and administration (policy practice).44 The first point refers to the Bigo's and Anastassia Tsoukala's
idea that political parties and politicians are power-maximizers necessarily driven by self-interest, of increasing their
power by creating the illusion that they are providers of security and protection.4"1 The second point that she
criticizes is that in the process of legitimizing their action, politicians try to avoid scrutiny, or 'freeing themselves
from the requirement of public legitimization' thus there is no necessity of justification of all the measures taken in

the relationship between system of

politics and administration, as framed by the securitization theory, fails to see
alternative ways of framing issue, since public legitimization does not
have to serve as a precondition for securitization practices .46 She criticizes the
one-way flow of practice and the speech act. Policies can be implemented without being
discussed in public and the causality between the speech act and the
practices should not be confined to a one-way relationship . In the EU context, "a
tackling an 'existential' problem. Finally, she concludes that

resistance to securitization within parts of the administration could make politics cautious about adopting
securitization discourse, as this could create unmanageable public expectations.'47 Lastly, Andrew Neal also
criticizes causality between speech act and practice, as, 'much of what is done in the EU in the name of security is
quiet, technical and unspectacular, in and just as much does not declare itself to be in the name of security at all
'48 The perceptions of the dynamics proposed by the Boswell and Neal will In the further assessment of the
dynamics between the audience and the securitizing actor in the United States. 1.4 Terrorism and Migration in the
United States In his opening chapter of his latest book The Maze of Fear, John Tirman quotes Oscar Handlin, who in
his 1951 succinctly summarized the nature of migration to the United States, identifying it with the American
identity. In his 1951 book, Vie Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that made the American People' he
writes: 'Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America/ he wrote. 'Then I discovered that the

migration to the United States has

not been as strongly- constructed as a threat to national identity , as in the case
of the European Union. Did anything change in the aftermath of 9/11? Migration to
the United States and the connection with terrorism has not been broadly
the discussed in the light of securitization theory . There are few who address the issue of
immigrants were American history. As mentioned above,

securitization after 9/11, but they are not addressing the link between the two. Tirman describes the ways in which
the conception of migration changes, since the 9/11 attacks.

In the United States, migration

has long been connected to security, but mainly

it

was considered to be a

threat to "social' security , (jobs, welfare, housing, etc.) After the attacks, however,
terrorism was framing the discourse and practices about migration . He
underlines: 'The fear-thus far, unfounded-that al Qaeda will sneak across the
'unguarded' 2,000 mile border accounts for the urgency. In fact, the House bill is
called the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration
Control Act of 2005. Immigration to the United States and the connection with terrorism has not been
broadly the discussed in the light of securitization theory. There are few who address the issue of securitization after
9/11, but they are not directly addressing the link between securitization, migration and terrorism. Although not

Bryan Mabee's succinct analysis concerning

discourse part of securitization that came prior to the establishment the Department of Homeland
Security. He utilizes speech act of securitization theory in order to assess the
way in which security changed in the aftermath of 9/11, and how the
threats were presented with the establishment of the Homeland Security .
Basing theoretical framework both on speech act and practices, he argues that the terrorism has
dealing with the issue specifically,

an enormous influence on the policy-making and the war on terror was

often quotes as a mean of justifying 'out of the ordinary' measures . His
analysis, however, excludes the discussion of migration and terrorism per se. Existential threats, special nature of

A dramatic change of the way security is viewed in the United

States. The question that I would like to ask is whether after 9/11,
migrants have been securitized (through the speech act and practices) in connection
with terrorism. If they have been, how did and is the process taking place and what are the dynamics
between the audience, the securitizing actors and the policies. The connection between
migration and terrorism will be the most obvious in analyzing Muslim and
Arab migrants and to United States. Gerstle point out that 'the link (migration security)
stems from the profiles of the nineteen attackers in those four airplanes . All
the threats.

of them were in the United States on temporary visas, three of which had expired. All of them were from the Middle
East, mostly Saudi and Egyptian, and

all of them were Muslim .01 The question that I am

posing is to what extend this has triggered the construction of Muslim

and Arab migrants to the United States as existential threat . The case is
interesting for the securitization theorists, as the established speech act
tried to 'desecuritize' or bring the Muslim Arab identity and their
migration back to the normal politics, while among all the immigrants, institutional practices
and newly adopted legal systems were targeting Arab and Muslims specifically. It is peculiar that the
anti- Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment grew so much amongst the

American people that they were ready to justify profiling among of these
groups of migrants.

And Status quo surveillance policies create a chilling efect on

Muslim American populations. Only adopting a strict scrutiny
standard for domestic surveillance solves.
Shahabuddin 15 (Madiha Shahabuddin, JD, Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law, May 2015;
BA, University of California, Irvine, "The More Muslim You Are, the More Trouble You Can Be: How Government
Surveillance of Muslim Americans Violates First Amendment Rights, Chapman Law Review 18 Chap. L. Rev. 577,
Spring, 2015, SMahajan)

Muslim American Associational Rights Infringed The jurisprudence on

associational rights discussed above provides a few key methods of first
assessing whether government conduct rises to the kind of level that
merits strict scrutiny, and then deciding whether the compelling interest and
narrowly tailored elements of the strict scrutiny test itself are met . As established by
case law, government conduct that may have the efect of curtailing the
freedom to associate should be subjected to strict scrutiny .108 Such
efects have included economic reprisal, loss of employment, threat of
physical coercion, and other manifestations of public hostility . 109 The
Ninth Circuit provided more relevant examples of suppression of religious
expression, including (1) withdrawal by congregants from actively
participating, (2) decline in financial support or donations, (3) congregants
reluctance in seeking religious counseling or being open during prayer , (4)
diversion of clergies or religious leaders time from congregation duties
to dealing with the efects of surveillance, and (5) fear or apprehension of
conversations being

bugged ( recorded ),

which have a negative impact on

congregants morale.110 Muslim American surveillance has exhibited

similarly chilling efects

on mosque-goers,

demonstrating the need for strict

scrutiny application of the government programs aimed at widespread

Muslim surveillance . Like the curtailment the Court found in Patterson, Muslim Americans in
regions like the East Coast have also sufered from the loss of business; diminished
or afected employment opportunities;111 other manifestations of public
hostility such as stigma;112 and the enabling or furthering justification of
hate crimes against Muslims113 because of the specter left upon the Muslim community in the
wake of media reports of NYPD surveillance.114 Moreover, the surveillance of Muslims has
placed a particularly ominous mark on the community through the
governments use of informants to infiltrate mosques, Muslim Student
Associations on college campuses, and the Muslim community in general.

And The states justifications for mass Muslim surveillance and

viewing the entire population as terrorists is a rhetorical tool to
paper over the violence of US militarism that occurs on a daily basis.
The terror expert industry is not academic but political. View their
evidence with skepticism.
Greenwald 12 (Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Greenwald is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and
is the author of three New York Times Bestselling books: two on the Bush administration's executive power and
foreign policy abuses, and his latest book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, an indictment of America's two-tiered
system of justice. Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in
the nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the winner of
the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of
Bradley Manning. The sham terrorism expert industry,
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/15/the_sham_terrorism_expert_industry/, 8/15/12, SMahajan)

the most pernicious attribute of this terror expert industry , the aspect that
requires much more attention, is its pretense to non-ideological, academic
But

objectivity . In reality, these terror experts, almost uniformly, have a deeply

ideological view a jingoistic, highly provincial understanding of what
Terrorism is

They generally fixate on Muslims to the exclusion of all other forms

of Terror. In particular, the idea that the U.S. or its allies now commit Terrorism is
taboo, unthinkable. Their views on what Terrorism is track the U.S.
Governments and, by design, justify U.S. government actions. They are not
experts as much as they are ideologues, rank propagandists, and
servants of Americas establishment power centers. The reason the term terrorism
and is not.

experts deserves to be put in quotation marks is not as some ad hominem insult (something the mavens of the
terror expert clique are incapable of understanding, as they demonstrated with their ludicrously personalized
outrage when I applied this critique to one of their industrys most cherished Patron Saints, Will McCants). Rather,

the very concept of Terrorism is

inherently empty, illegitimate, meaningless. Terrorism itself is not an objective
term or legitimate object of study, but was conceived of as a highly politicized instrument and has
its because as Ive written about many times before

been used that way ever since. The best scholarship on this issue, in my view, comes from Remi Brulin, who
teaches at NYU and wrote his PhD dissertation at the Sorbonne in Paris on the discourse of Terrorism. When I

it was pushed by Israel in the

1960s and early 1970s as a means of universalizing its conflicts (this isnt our
fight against our enemies over land; its the Entire Worlds Fight against The Terrorists!). The term was
then picked up by the neocons in the Reagan administration to justify their covert
wars in Central America (in a test run for what they did after 9/11, they continuously exclaimed: were
fighting against The Terrorists in Central America, even as they
themselves armed and funded classic Terror groups in El Salvador and
Nicaragua). From the start, the central challenge was how to define the term so
as to include the violence used by the enemies of the U.S. and Israel ,
while excluding the violence the U.S., Israel and their allies used, both
interviewed him in 2010, he described the history of the term

historically and presently . That still has not been figured out, which is why there is no fixed,
accepted definition of the term, and certainly no consistent application. Brulin details the well-known game-playing
with the term: in the 1980s, Iraq was put on the U.S. list of Terror states when the U.S. disliked Saddam for being
aligned with the Soviets; then Iraq was taken off when the U.S. wanted to arm Saddam to fight Iran; then they were
put back on again when the U.S. wanted to attack Iraq. The same thing is happening now with the ME
K: now
that theyre a pro-U.S. and pro-Israel Terror group rather than a Saddam-allied one, they are magically no longer
going to be deemed Terrorists. That is what

Terrorism is: a term of propaganda, a means

of justifying ones own state violence not some objective field of

discipline in which one develops expertise . This flaw in the concept of terrorism
expertise is not a discrete indictment of specific scholars, but is a fundamental flaw plaguing
the entire field. Even the most decorated and honored terrorism experts
are little more than ideological propagandists , because thats what the term necessarily
entails. Today, Brulin wrote the following to me regarding U.S. Reagan-era policy in
Central America namely, supporting Terror groups (death squads) while
denouncing Terrorism and the specific terrorism expert often held up as the fields most
prestigious, Bruce Hoffman: One obvious question comes to mind: how do terrorism experts deal with US policies
in Salvador during the 1980s? A comprehensive analysis of the two major terrorism studies journals, Studies on
Conflict and Terrorism (simply titled Terrorism until 1992) and Terrorism and Political Violence shows that
overall these journals have dealt with this issue by being silent about it. More precisely, several authors in fact
absolutely accept that the concept of state terrorism is a valid one, and that acts by death squads clearly fall
under that definition also. They simply never deal with this issue in the context of the real world policies of the
United States and of the Reagan years in particular, a silence all the more surprising than Reagan was the first
American President to develop a discourse on terrorism. Reacting to Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Exum wrote:
Greenwald makes it seem as if states are never mentioned as terrorist actors, but there is a lot of literature on the
use of coercive violence by states and state terrorism. This is true of course, but at least when it comes to the
conflict of El Salvador studied here, and to US policies in that country, those who did write about this issue have
never been published in the major terrorism studies journals. Exum then adds: Bruce Hoffman published this
book in 1999. Im pretty sure those two guys are terrorism experts without the scare quotes. In Inside Terrorism,
to his merit, Hoffman devotes a full chapter to the question of the definition of terrorism. What follows in the rest
of his book is naturally dependent on what he decides to include and not include in his definition of terrorism.
Here is, in full, how Hoffman deals with the issue of death squads (emphasis added): The

use of socalled death squads (often off-duty or plain-clothes security or police officers) in conjunction
with blatant intimidation of political opponents , human rights and aid workers, student
groups, labor organizers, journalists and others has been a prominent feature of the rightwing military dictatorships that took power in Argentina, Chile and Greece
during the 1970s and even of elected governments in El Salvador, Guatemala,
Colombia and Peru since the mid-1980s. But these state-sanctioned or explicitly
ordered acts of internal political violence directed mostly against domestic
populations that is, rule by violence and intimidation by those already in power against their own citizenry
are generally termed terror in order to distinguish that phenomenon
from terrorism, which is understood to be violence committed by non-state entities. (Bruce Hoffman,
Inside Terrorism, 27). Sadly, Hoffman does not tell his readers who at the time termed acts by death squads
terror, or who wishes to do so in order to distinguish this phenomenon from terrorism. Not only is this
argument rather less than convincing, but most crucially no one in Washington, at the time, ever used this
argument, and this for obvious reasons. Indeed, as Hoffman himself notes, the death squads, even in elected
governments like El Salvador, were state-sanctioned, precisely what the Reagan administration kept denying at
the time. Furthermore, Hoffmans argument makes no sense in the historical context: can one imagine the Reagan
administration defending US aid to El Salvador as part of the fight against terrorism while stating that the ties
between that State and the death squad posed no problem because they merely fell under the concept of
terror? Thus, the role of terrorism experts cannot simply be described as blindly accepting of the official

As the case of El Salvador

demonstrates, what they have done is to invent arguments aimed at
discourse on terrorism, although this is already a strong critique.

excluding from discussion specific issues , while hiding or being completely

silent about the actual debates that took place on this topic at the very
heart of Washington. In so doing, they have allowed a terrorism discourse to
developed and become hegemonic despite the many internal
inconsistencies that have been at its heart from the very beginning . Finally,
one will note that Hoffman, in Inside Terrorism, makes no mention of the Contras and their support by the Reagan

administration. This is a difficult decision to explain, since aid to the Contras falls under the concept of state
sponsored terrorism, the validity of which is accepted by all experts. Here, Hoffman uses the technique used by so
many other terrorism experts in this case: he simply decides to not write about it, with no explanation given.

The entire field is one huge efort to legitimize U.S. state violence and
delegitimize the violence by its enemies

(along those lines: the court-martial of accused Fort

Hood shooter Nidal Hasan began today, and I asked earlier today on Twitter whether this attack constituted
Terrorism given that it targeted a military base and soldiers of a nation at war. My mere asking of this question
sparked all sorts of intense outrage from the predictable natsec D.C. mavens: Of course its Terrorism, as Hasan
killed unarmed people including one civilian, exclaimed people who would never, ever dare apply the Terrorism
label to the civilian-devastating U.S. attack on Iraq or the use of American drones and cluster bombs to kill innocent
civilians by the dozens; that is the discourse of Terrorism: violence by Muslims against a U.S. military base during a
time of war qualifies, but violence by the U.S. Government against thousands of innocent Muslim civilians never
could). Brulin is far from alone among scholars in recognizing the true purpose of this sham discipline. Harvards
Lisa Stampnitzky, whom I interviewed several months ago, is also a leading scholar on the exploitation of Terrorism
and the field that calls itself terrorism experts. In a superb journal article in Qualitative Sociology, she documents
that Terrorism has proved to be a highly problematic object of expertise; in particular, Terrorism studies fails to
conform to the most common sociological notions of what a field of intellectual production ought to look like, and
has been described by participants and observers alike as a failure. She notes that the harshest condemnations
have come from those who work in this academic discipline: Terrorism researchers have characterized their field as
stagnant, poorly conceptualized, lacking in rigor, and devoid of adequate theory, data, and methods. That includes
Bruce Hoffman himself, who, she notes, wrote: Fifteen years ago, the study of terrorism was described by perhaps
the worlds preeminent authority on modern warfare as a huge and ill-defined subject [that] has probably been
responsible for more incompetent and unnecessary books than any other outside the field of sociology. It attracts
phonies and amateursas a candle attracts moths [T]errorism research arguably has failed miserably.
Stampnitzky adds: More than 15 years after this assessment, descriptions of the field are rife with similar claims.
Indeed, her forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press is entitled Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented
Terrorism and, in her words, it explains how political violence became terrorism, and how this transformation led
to the current war on terror. For that reason, she argues in her dissertation, those who would address terrorism
as a rational object, subject to scientific analysis and manipulation, produce a discourse which they are unable to
control, as attempts at scientific discourse are continually hybridized by the moral discourse of the public sphere, in
which terrorism is conceived as a problem of evil and pathology. Indeed, she explains in her journal article, One of
the most oft-noted difficulties has been the inability of researchers to establish a suitable definition of the concept
of terrorism itself. In a recently published journal article in International Security, entitled The Terrorism
Delusion, Professors John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart (cited by Walt) extensively document what a fraud the
concept of Terrorism has become over the last decade. Specifically, the

exaggerations of the
threat presented by terrorism and then on the distortions of perspective
these exaggerations have inspired distortions that have in turn inspired
a determined and expensive quest to ferret out, and even to create, the
nearly nonexistent. Richard Jackson is a Professor at the The National Centre for Peace and Conflict
Studies in New Zealand. He has written volumes on the fraud of terrorism expertise and the propagandistic
purpose of this field of discipline. He has documented that most self-proclaimed terrorism experts simply ignore
the primary cause of the violence they claim to study: most

terrorism scholars, politicians

and the media dont seem to know that terrorism is most often caused by
military intervention overseas, and not religion, radicalization, insanity,
ideology, poverty or such like even though the Pentagon has known it for years. In one article
entitled 10 Things More Likely to Kill You Than Terrorism, he notes that The chances of you dying
in a terrorist attack are in the range of 1 in 80,000, or about the same
chance of being killed by a meteor, and that bathtubs, vending machines,
and lightning all pose a greater risk of death . In a book critiquing the terrorism expert
field, Jackson argued that most of what is accepted as well-founded knowledge in terrorism studies is, in fact,
highly debatable and unstable. He therefore scorns almost four decades of so-called Terrorism scholarship as
based on a series of virulent myths, half-truths and contested claims that are plainly biased towards Western
state priorities. To Jackson, terrorism is a social fact rather than a brute fact and does not exist outside of the
definitions and practices which seek to enclose it, including those of the terrorism studies field. In sum, it means
whatever the wielder of the term wants it to mean: something that cannot be the subject of legitimate expertise.
* * * * * There is no term more potent in our political discourse and legal landscape than Terrorism.

It

shuts down every rational thought process and political debate the
minute it is uttered. It justifies torture
process-free- assassinations

and rampant secrecy

(we have to get information from the Terrorists); due-

even of our own citizens

(Obama has to kill the Terrorists);

(the Government cant disclose what its doing or have courts rule on its legality

because the Terrorists will learn of it), and it sends people to prison for decades (material supporters of Terrorism).

this central, all-justifying word is simultaneously the

most meaningless and therefore the most manipulated . It is, as I have noted before, a
word that simultaneously means nothing yet justifies everything. Indeed, thats the point : it is such a
useful concept precisely because its so malleable, because it means
It is a telling paradox indeed that

whatever those with power to shape discourse want it to mean . And no faction
has helped this process along as much as the group of self-proclaimed terrorism experts that has
attached itself to think tanks, academia, and media outlets. They enable pure political
propaganda to masquerade as objective fact, shining brightly with the
veneer of scholarly rigor . The industry itself is a fraud, as are those who
profit from and within it.

And Anti-Muslim sentiment shapes US foreign policy---notions of

western superiority are a critical tool that drum up support for
broader militarism.
Kumar 13 (Deepa Kumar, is an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at the
Rutgers University. She is the author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and Outside the Box: Corporate
Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike being interviewed by Jessica Desvarieux, The Real News Network, Twelve
Years Post 9/11, Islamophobia Still Runs High, http://truth-out.org/video/item/18759-twelve-years-post-9-11islamophobia-still-runs-high)

it is true that larger numbers of conservative voters

are racist. They are racist not just in terms of their attitude towards Arabs and South Asians, but also to a
KUMAR: Absolutely not. I think

whole host of other groups. So it's true that this idea sort of concentrated within those ranks. But in fact

Islamophobia is far more systemic than that . That is to say, the idea of a
Muslim enemy, the idea of a terrorist enemy is one that actually goes back
a couple of decades but was brought to light after 9/11 by the political
elite, by our political leaders. So in fact it is built into the system of U.S. foreign policy
in this country. And to simply look at the far right and to ignore the fact
that it has larger implications in terms of justifying U.S. foreign policy
would be really to have only an incomplete picture of what is at work in
this form of racism. DESVARIEUX: Okay. Let's talk about the mass media and how they depict Islam since
9/11. Can you describe for us how the mass media has depicted Islam? KUMAR: Well, basically, the trauma
of 9/11, the fact that, you know, 3,000 Americans died meant that it enabled the U.S. media to
actually draw on stereotypes that have been, you know, propped up by
Hollywood, by the news media, and so on for a few decades before that. And
that was the idea that these are crazy, irrational people. They are all
apparently driven by Islam to violence. And so we should lock them up, we
should be suspicious of them, we should detain them at airports, and so
on and so forth. And so that's what you saw in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. And this show called 24,
which your viewers may know, is--it's about a lot of things [incompr.] that it's about

justifying the building of a national security state and justifying

practices like torture and so on and so forth.

DESVARIEUX: Okay. And also the story of the

day, of course, is Syria, and everyone's attention is drawn to Syria. Can you describe for us just how does
Islamophobia play a role in any of the arguments for intervention in Syria, really? KUMAR: Okay. It doesn't play a
direct role in that. It is--the

idea of humanitarianism has a long history in the

United States. The idea that there are victims all over the world, that the
U.S. government has then got to make war in order to, you know, somehow
defend them, this goes back all the way to the Spanish-American war of 1898,
which was supposed to be about rescuing Cubans. And similarly, you see these sorts of
justifications given. You know, Vietnamese need to be defended. In Iraq, it was babies,
apparently, who were being bayoneted in Kuwait , and therefore the U.S.
needed to intervene and defeat Iraq in 1991. So this idea of humanitarianism has a long
history within the foreign policy establishment. But what makes it particularly potent in this
case is that after 9/11 what you see is the Bush administration projecting
this idea of clash of civilizations , which is basically the notion that we in
the West are democratic, we are rational, we are civilized, we are , you know,
all things wonderful, and they in the East are barbaric, they're
misogynistic, and so on and so forth, and therefore we have an obligation,
what used to be called the white man's burden, to go of and rescue them.
And so you see some of that language, which is the idea that Arabs cannot bring democracy by themselves, they
cannot make change, and so we need to intervene. So

it's a combination both of the victim

narrative, which has a long history, combined with this language of clash
of civilizations.

DESVARIEUX: Okay. And how does this fit into domestic policy? How do they work

Islamophobia into domestic policy? KUMAR: Right. I mean, the comparison I make in the book and that I'm actually

the U.S. government, and U.S. imperialism in

particular, always needs an enemy . That is, when there is no humanitarian
working on in the next book is that

cause, an enemy is an extremely useful way to justify wars abroad , as

well as the policing of dissent at home . So, for instance, during the Cold War we had been
menacing enemy of the Soviet Union, against whom both a hot and a Cold War had to be waged. And, of course,
this justified, then, McCarthyism, because there's always a reflection of the external enemy inside, and these people
have to be rounded up, blacklisted, and so on and so forth. So that's the logic back then, and, of course, it was

we have the same sort of thing. After 9/11, the

war on terror comes into being precisely about fighting endless wars.
Remember, back in 9/11 the Bush administration was going to start with
Afghanistan, go to Iraq, and then Iran, Syria, and so on and so forth . It didn't
work out that way. But the idea was to drum up this fear of this menacing
entirely about a politics of fear. Today

terrorist enemy , which justified wars all over the world in order to gain
the U.S.'s interest in [incompr.] particularly in the oil-rich region in the Middle
East. You asked me about domestic politics. Always there was a reflection of the domestic in terms of the
international threat. And so what you've seen is innocent Muslims--and often actually not even Muslims, people
from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, some of them Sikhs, some some of them Hindus, some of them
Christians, and so on, being racially profiled because that is the logic that comes out of this. I have a whole chapter
in the book about how the legal system has been reworked so as to justify things like indefinite detention, things
like torture, things like deportation. And, frankly, the infiltration of agents into our schools, into my school, into

colleges, and so forth. So, you know,

it's truly horrific the extent to which Muslim

Americans and people who look Muslim have been demonized since 9/11.

And This dehumanization of foreign populations establishes

continuous cycles of violence---the way we discuss this issue
matters
Collins 2 (John Collins, Associate professor of Global Studies at St. Lawrence, Visiting Professor of Sociology at
St. Lawrence University, Collateral Language, p. 6-7, The Real Effects of Language, 2002)
As any university student knows, theories about the social construction and social effects of language have

Conservative critics often argue that

those who use these theories of language (e.g., deconstruction) are just talking
about language, as opposed to talking about the real world. The essays in this book, by
contrast, begin from the premise that language matters in the most concrete, imbecome a common feature of academic scholarship.

mediate way possible: its use, by political and military leaders, leads
directly to violence in the form of war, mass murder (including genocide),
the physical destruction of human communities, and the devastation of
the natural environment. Indeed, if the world ever witnesses a nuclear
holocaust, it will probably be because leaders in more than one country have
succeeded in convincing their people, through the use of political
language, that the use of nuclear weapons and, if necessary, the
destruction of the earth itself, is justifiable. From our perspective, then, every act of
political violencefrom the horrors perpetrated against Native Americans to the murder of political
dissidents in the Soviet Union to the destruction of the World Trade Center, and now the bombing of Afghanistan

is intimately linked with the use of language. Partly what we are talking about
here, of course, are the processes of manufacturing consent and shaping
peoples perception of the world around them; people are more likely to
support acts of violence committed in their name if the recipients of the
violence have been defined as terrorists, or if the violence is presented
as a defense of freedom.

Media analysts such as Noam Chomsky have written eloquently about

the corrosive effects that this kind of process has on the political culture of supposedly democratic societies. At the
risk of stating the obvious, however, the most fundamental effects of violence are those that are visited upon the

the language that shapes public opinion is the same language

that burns villages, besieges entire populations, kills and maims human
bodies, and leaves the ground scarred with bomb craters and littered with
land mines. As George Orwell so famously illustrated in his work, acts of violence can easily
be made more palatable through the use of euphemisms such as
pacification or, to use an example discussed in this book, targets. It is important to point out, however,
that the need for such language derives from the simple fact that the
violence itself is abhorrent. Were it not for the abstract language of vital interests and
surgical strikes and the flattering language of civilization and just wars, we would be
less likely to avert our mental gaze from the physical efects of violence.
objects of violence;

Yet the surveillance its self isn't the only issue, the paranoid
mindset driving U.S policies creates a drive for certainty and eternal
security which causes endless global warfare.
Burke, 7 (Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of New South Wales at Sydney, Anthony,
Johns Hopkins University Press, Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason, Project Muse)

the causes of war -- and thus aims to generate lines of action and
critique for peace -- that cuts beneath analyses based either on a given sequence of events,
threats, insecurities and political manipulation, or the play of institutional, economic or political
interests (the 'military-industrial complex'). Such factors are important to be sure, and should not be
discounted, but they flow over a deeper bedrock of modern reason that has not only
This essay develops a theory about

come to form a powerful structure of common sense but the apparently solid ground of the real itself. In this light,
the two 'existential' and 'rationalist' discourses of war-making and justification mobilised in the Lebanon war are

they mobilise forms of

knowledge and power together; providing political leaderships, media,
citizens, bureaucracies and military forces with organising systems of
belief, action, analysis and rationale. But they run deeper than that. They are truthsystems of the most powerful and fundamental kind that we have in
modernity: ontologies, statements about truth and being which claim a
rarefied privilege to state what is and how it must be maintained as it is. I
more than merely arguments, rhetorics or even discourses. Certainly

am thinking of ontology in both its senses: ontology as both a statement about the nature and ideality of being (in
this case political being, that of the nation-state), and as a statement of epistemological truth and certainty, of
methods and processes of arriving at certainty (in this case, the development and application of strategic
knowledge for the use of armed force, and the creation and maintenance of geopolitical order, security and national
survival). These derive from the classical idea of ontology as a speculative or positivistic inquiry into the
fundamental nature of truth, of being, or of some phenomenon; the desire for a solid metaphysical account of
things inaugurated by Aristotle, an account of 'being qua being and its essential attributes'.17 In contrast, drawing
on Foucauldian theorising about truth and power, I see ontology as a particularly powerful claim to truth itself: a
claim to the status of an underlying systemic foundation for truth, identity, existence and action; one that is not
essential or timeless, but is thoroughly historical and contingent, that is deployed and mobilised in a fraught and
conflictual socio-political context of some kind. In short, ontology is the 'politics of truth'18 in its most sweeping and

ontological certainty and completion as particularly problematic for

takes the form of the existential and rationalist
ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational
hegemony and closure that limits debate and questioning, that confines it
within the boundaries of a particular, closed system of logic , one that is grounded
powerful form. I see such a drive for

a number of reasons. Firstly, when it

in the truth of being, in the truth of truth as such. The second is its intimate relation with violence: the dual

we are
witness to an epistemology of violence (strategy) joined to an ontology of
violence (the national security state). When we consider their relation to war, the two
ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone (and doubly in combination) tends
both to quicken the resort to war and to lead to its escalation either in
scale and duration, or in unintended efects. In such a context violence is not so much a
ontologies represent a simultaneously social and conceptual structure that generates violence. Here

tool that can be picked up and used on occasion, at limited cost and with limited impact -- it permeates being. This
essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state (by way of the political philosophy of Thomas
Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the
geopolitical thought of Henry Kissinger), showing how they crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support
and justification, especially in the thought of Clausewitz. This creates both a profound ethical and pragmatic

their militaristic force -- they embody and

reinforce a norm of war -- and because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an
'enframing' image of technology and being in which humans are merely
utilitarian instruments for use, control and destruction, and force -- in the
problem. The ethical problem arises because of

words of one famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of as a 'power to hurt'.19 The pragmatic problem arises

because force so often produces neither the linear system of effects imagined in strategic theory nor anything we
could meaningfully call security, but rather turns in upon itself in a nihilistic spiral of pain and destruction. In the era
of a 'war on terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah
Arendt (that violence collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn
against those that wield them') take on added significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and
being are made to coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no
longer recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance'. 21 What I am
trying to describe in this essay is a complex relation between, and interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But
it is not my view that these are distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in the social field named by
security, statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually referring back on each other, like
charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of knowledge with particular systemic roles
and intensities of claim about truth, political being and political necessity. Positivistic or scientific claims to
epistemological truth supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and political action, which in turn support
larger ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them into a common horizon of certainty that is
one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity. Here it may be useful to see ontology as a more totalising
and metaphysical set of claims about truth, and epistemology as more pragmatic and instrumental; but while a
distinction between epistemology (knowledge as technique) and ontology (knowledge as being) has analytical
value, it tends to break down in action.

The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic

foreign policy doctrine) claims positivistic clarity about techniques
of military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve
a desired end, an end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national
existence, security, or order. However in practice, technique quickly passes into
ontology. This it does in two ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an
ontology of insecure national existence which itself admits no questioning.
The nation and its identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict,
and the resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate of its
perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of
science and

effects (power) for an ultimate purpose (securing being) that it must always assume. Second, strategy as a
technique not merely becomes an instrument of state power but ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man'
as a maker and user of things, including other humans, which have no essence or integrity outside their value as
objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology immediately becomes technique,
immediately being. This combination could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, whose obvious
strategic failure for Israelis generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation
of the IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on
brigade-sized manoeuvres in the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next
war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the
shame and restore to the army the "deterrent power" that was lost on the battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In

'the next war is seen as a natural phenomenon,

like tomorrow's sunrise.' The danger obviously raised here is that these
dual ontologies of war link being, means, events and decisions into a
single, unbroken chain whose very process of construction cannot be
examined. As is clear in the work of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action that is
war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S. neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did in his 2002
West Point speech, that 'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs
the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be detached
from strong ontologies of the insecure nation-state . This is the direction taken by much
'Israeli public discourse', he remarked,

realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush administration's 'war on terror' Reframing such concerns in

obsessive ontological commitments have led to

especially disturbing 'problematizations' of truth. However such rationalist critiques rely
Foucauldian terms, we could argue that

on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to disentangle strategic from existential reason, and to open
up choice in that way. However without interrogating more deeply how they form a conceptual harmony in

tragically violent
'choices' will continue to be made The essay concludes by pondering a normative problem that
arises out of its analysis: if the divisive ontology of the national security state and
the violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have , as Heidegger suggests,
Clausewitz's thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of politics and war --

come to define being and drive 'out every other possibility of revealing
being', how can they be escaped? How can other choices and alternatives
be found and enacted? How is there any scope for agency and resistance
in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of the
political -- needs to be respected and understood. However, we are far from powerless in the face of them. The
need is to critique dominant images of political being and dominant ways
of securing that being at the same time, and to act and choose such that we bring into the
world a more sustainable, peaceful and non-violent global rule of the political.

And Policy framing of security concerns disregards the way that

securitization creates enmity which is the roots cause of war and
causes extinction
Mack 91 (John, Doctor of Psychiatry and a professor at Harvard University, The Enemy System
http://www.johnemackinstitute.org/eJournal/article.asp?id=23 *Gender modified)

The threat of nuclear annihilation has stimulated us to try to understand

what it is about (hu)mankind that has led to such self-destroying
behavior . Central to this inquiry is an exploration of the adversarial
relationships between ethnic or national groups. It is out of such
enmities that war, including nuclear war should it occur, has always arisen.
Enmity between groups of people stems from the interaction of psychological,
economic, and cultural elements. These include fear and hostility (which are often
closely related), competition over perceived scarce resources,[3] the need for
individuals to identify with a large group or cause,[4] a tendency to disclaim
and assign elsewhere responsibility for unwelcome impulses and intentions, and
a peculiar susceptibility to emotional manipulation by leaders who play upon our
more savage inclinations in the name of national security or the national interest. A full
understanding of the "enemy system"[3] requires insights from many
specialities, including psychology, anthropology, history, political science, and the humanities. In their
statement on violence[5] twenty social and behavioral scientists, who met in Seville, Spain, to
examine the roots of war, declared that there was no scientific basis for
regarding (hu)man(s) as an innately aggressive animal, inevitably
committed to war. The Seville statement implies that we have real choices . It also points
to a hopeful paradox of the nuclear age: threat of nuclear war may have provoked our
capacity for fear-driven polarization but at the same time it has inspired
unprecedented eforts towards cooperation and settlement of
diferences without violence. The Real and the Created Enemy Attempts to explore
the psychological roots of enmity are frequently met with responses on
the following lines: "I can accept psychological explanations of things,
but my enemy is real. The Russians [or Germans, Arabs, Israelis, Americans] are
armed, threaten us, and intend us harm. Furthermore, there are real
diferences between us and our national interests, such as competition
over oil, land, or other scarce resources, and genuine conflicts of values
between our two nations. It is essential that we be strong and maintain a balance
or superiority of military and political power, lest the other side take

advantage of our weakness". This argument does not address the

distinction between the enemy threat and one's own contribution to that
threat -by distortions of perception, provocative words, and actions. In short, the enemy is real,
but we have not learned to understand how we have created that
enemy, or how the threatening image we hold of the enemy relates to
its actual intentions. "We never see our enemy's motives and we never labor to
assess his will, with anything approaching objectivity ".[6] Individuals may have little to do
with the choice of national enemies. Most Americans, for example, know only what has been reported in the

We are largely unaware of the forces that

operate within our institutions, afecting the thinking of our leaders and
ourselves, and which determine how the Soviet Union will be
represented to us. Ill-will and a desire for revenge are transmitted from one generation to another,
and we are not taught to think critically about how our assigned
mass media about the Soviet Union.

enemies are selected for us.

In the relations between potential adversarial nations there will

have been, inevitably, real grievances that are grounds for enmity. But the attitude of one people towards
another is usually determined by leaders who manipulate the minds of citizens for domestic political reasons

in times of
conflict between nations historical accuracy is the first victim. [8] The Image
of the Enemy and How We Sustain It Vietnam veteran William Broyles wrote: " War begins in the
which are generally unknown to the public. As Israeli sociologist Alouph Haveran has said,

mind, with the idea of the enemy. "[9] But to sustain that idea in war and
a nation's leaders must maintain public support for the massive
expenditures that are required. Studies of enmity have revealed
susceptibilities, though not necessarily recognized as such by the governing elites that provide raw
material upon which the leaders may draw to sustain the image of an
enemy.[7,10] Freud[11] in his examination of mass psychology identified
the proclivity of individuals to surrender personal responsibility to the
leaders of large groups. This surrender takes place in both totalitarian and democratic societies,
peacetime

and without coercion. Leaders can therefore designate outside enemies and take actions against them with little

psychological mechanisms that

impel individuals to kill or allow killing in their name, often with little
questioning of the morality or consequences of such actions. Philosopher and
opposition. Much further research is needed to understand the

psychologist Sam Keen asks why it is that in virtually every war "The enemy is seen as less than human? He's
faceless. He's an animal"." Keen tries to answer his question: " The

image of the enemy is not only

is society's most powerful weapon. It enables
people en masse to participate in acts of violence they would never consider doing
the soldier's most powerful weapon; it

as individuals".[12] National leaders become skilled in presenting the adversary in dehumanized images. The
mass media, taking their cues from the leadership, contribute powerfully to the process.

And Prefer our disjunctive scenarios to their short-term

conjunctive scenarios.
Yudkowsky 06 (Eliezer, 8/31/. Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence Palo Alto, CA. Cognitive
biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks, Forthcoming in Global Catastrophic Risks, eds. Nick Bostrom
and Milan Cirkovic, singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf.)

The conjunction fallacy similarly applies to futurological forecasts .

Two
independent sets of professional analysts at the Second International Congress on Forecasting were asked to rate,
respectively, the probability of "A complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the USA and the Soviet

Union, sometime in 1983" or "A Russian invasion of Poland, and a complete suspension of diplomatic relations
between the USA and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983". The second set of analysts responded with
significantly higher probabilities. (Tversky and Kahneman 1983.) In Johnson et. al. (1993), MBA students at
Wharton were scheduled to travel to Bangkok as part of their degree program. Several groups of students were
asked how much they - 6 - were willing to pay for terrorism insurance. One group of subjects was asked how
much they were willing to pay for terrorism insurance covering the flight from Thailand to the US. A second group
of subjects was asked how much they were willing to pay for terrorism insurance covering the round-trip flight. A
third group was asked how much they were willing to pay for terrorism insurance that covered the complete trip to
Thailand. These three groups responded with average willingness to pay of $17.19, $13.90, and $7.44

According to probability theory, adding additional detail onto a

story must render the story less probable. It is less probable that Linda is a feminist bank
teller than that she is a bank teller, since all feminist bank tellers are necessarily bank tellers. Yet human
psychology seems to follow the rule that adding an additional detail can
make the story more plausible. People might pay more for international diplomacy intended to
respectively.

prevent nanotechnological warfare by China, than for an engineering project to defend against nanotechnological
attack from any source. The second threat scenario is less vivid and alarming, but the defense is more useful
because it is more vague. More valuable still would be strategies which make humanity harder to extinguish
without being specific to nanotechnologic threats - such as colonizing space, or see Yudkowsky (this volume) on AI.
Security expert Bruce Schneier observed (both before and after the 2005 hurricane in New Orleans) that the U.S.
government was guarding specific domestic targets against "movie-plot scenarios" of terrorism, at the cost of
taking away resources from emergency-response capabilities that could respond to any disaster. (Schneier 2005.)
Overly detailed reassurances can also create false perceptions of safety: "X is not an existential risk and you don't
need to worry about it, because A, B, C, D, and E"; where the failure of any one of propositions A, B, C, D, or E
potentially extinguishes the human species. "We don't need to worry about nanotechnologic war, because a UN
commission will initially develop the technology and prevent its proliferatin until such time as an active shield is
developed, capable of defending against all accidental and malicious outbreaks that contemporary nanotechnology

Vivid, specific scenarios can

inflate our probability estimates of security, as well as misdirecting
defensive investments into needlessly narrow or implausibly detailed risk
scenarios. More generally, people tend to overestimate conjunctive
probabilities and underestimate disjunctive probabilities . (Tversky and Kahneman
1974.) That is, people tend to overestimate the probability that , e.g., seven
events of 90% probability will all occur. Conversely, people tend to
underestimate the probability that at least one of seven events of 10%
probability will occur. Someone judging whether to, e.g., incorporate a new startup, must evaluate the
is capable of producing, and this condition will persist indefinitely."

probability that many individual events will all go right (there will be sufficient funding, competent employees,
customers will want the product) while also considering the likelihood that at least one critical failure will occur (the
bank refuses - 7 - a loan, the biggest project fails, the lead scientist dies). This may help explain why only 44% of
entrepreneurial ventures3 survive after 4 years. (Knaup 2005.) Dawes (1988) observes: 'In their summations
lawyers avoid arguing from disjunctions ("either this or that or the other could have occurred, all of which would

Rationally, of course, disjunctions are

much more probable than are conjunctions.' The scenario of humanity
going extinct in the next century is a disjunctive event. It could happen
as a result of any of the existential risks discussed in this book - or some other cause which
lead to the same conclusion") in favor of conjunctions.

none of us foresaw. Yet for a futurist, disjunctions make for an awkward and unpoetic-sounding prophecy.

And Constructivism provides the best explanation for IR realism

ignores discursive efects
Brunnee & Toope 12 (Jutta Brunnee, Professor of Law and holds the Metcalf Chair in Environmental
Law at the University of Toronto, and Stephen J Toope, the 12th President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of
British Columbia, PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge, "Constructivism and International Law," in Interdisciplinary
Perspectives on International Law and International Relations: The State of Art, edited by Jeffrey Dunoff and Mark
Pollack, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2088132, 2012)

Constructivist scholars
reject the dominant assumption of contemporary IR theory that the interests
II. The Emergence of Constructivist Thought in International Relations Theory

of states and other actors are formed prior to social interaction. Instead, constructivists
claim that identity formation is relational and occurs before , or at least
concurrently with, interest formation (Hurd 2008). Interests are therefore defined
both in material and non-material terms. While acknowledging the importance of power and
material interests, constructivists focus attention upon the role that culture,
ideas, institutions, discourse, and social norms play in shaping identity
and influencing behaviour . For this reason, constructivist thought is especially
compelling when seeking to explain the constitution of actors, institutions
and social structures, and their change over considerable periods of time (Ruggie 1986).
Constructivism emerged in IR scholarship as a reaction, as a means of
incorporating learning from cognate disciplines and as an expression of hope. The
reaction was to the powerful strains of neo-realism and neo-liberalism in
American IR theory. According to John Ruggie, these two dominant strains share a
commitment to neo-utilitarian explanations of behaviour . For neo-utilitarians,
ideational factors, when they are examined at all, are rendered in strictly
instrumental terms , useful or not to self-regarding individuals (units) in the pursuit
of typically material interests, including efficiency concerns (1998: 855). For constructivists, ideas
and norms seemed to have more salience, and a diferent pattern of influence,
than the neo-utilitarians would allow. Contemporaneously, critical and post-modern scholars in
international relations began to draw upon philosophical approaches and social theories that were influential in
other social science disciplines. These included the language turn in philosophy (especially Foucault, Derrida, Rorty,
and Searle) and structuration in sociology (especially Giddens). In an influential 1988 publication, Keohane grouped
all adherents to critical and post-modern approaches together as reflectivists and contrasted them to
rationalists (1988). However, at roughly the same time, Kratochwil and Ruggie showed that neo-utilitarians

regime
theory claimed that regimes were composed of principles, norms, rules,
and decision-making procedures. Principles, norms, and rules are all ideas that must be
shared, Kratochwil and Ruggie argued, and for IR to address them it had to incorporate,
at least to some degree, a theory of how ideas exist and a methodology focused on interpretation
(1986). Constructivists attempted to bridge the divide between neo-utilitarians and their critics, and
show in methodologically-robust ways how ideas and identities matter in
themselves were incorporating idea-focused explanatory elements into their approaches. In particular,

international politics.

Even in early theoretical forays, leading constructivist scholars argued that

social theory could explain everything

no

(Wendt 1999; Fearon and Wendt 2002). Jeffrey Checkel

has produced some of the most influential explorations of the relationship between rationalism and constructivism.

constructivist mechanisms such as persuasion and learning that

lead to changes in identities and interests with rationalist factors , such as the
He contrasted

mobilization of domestic and international pressure. Checkel then identified conditions that could lead to persuasion
and learning rather than the strategic adoption of norms (2001). He has also suggested that there are three generic
mechanisms for socialization, which include strategic calculation as well as role-playing and moral suasion (2005).
The hope associated with constructivism derives from its emergence just as the Cold War was ending and the future

Neither neo-realism nor institutionalism

had been able to predict or explain the relatively peaceful dissolution of the
Soviet bloc. Substantial systemic change occurred without a
correspondingly significant change in the distribution of capabilities. As Price and ReusSmit argue, [t]hough critical theorists had been making their case well before, international change
proved a more efective catalyst of theoretical change than the dialectical
of East-West relationships was being reconsidered.

interplay of competing theoretical perspectives (1998: 265). These events may have assisted constructivisms
rise, but we argue that constructivism is not uncritically hopeful , and that it has survived the
pessimistic turn in world affairs linked to the events of September 11, 2001. The term constructivism was coined
by Nicholas Greenwood Onuf (1989), but some of the key tenets of the constructivist worldview were present as
early as the 1950s in the security communities work undertaken by Karl Deutsch and his students (1957).
Constructivism also finds deep roots in broader social theory, especially the work of Max Weber. From Weber,

the social world is constructed by intersubjective

understandings. These understandings are neither external to individuals, that is purely
material, nor are they simply inside the heads of individuals and purely subjective. The work of John
constructivists draw the insight that

Searle, building on Weber, has also been influential. Searle argues that facts are not all material, instead
distinguishing amongst brute facts, social facts and institutional facts. For Searle institutional

facts
exist only within systems of constitutive rules (1995: 28). In a constitutive rule, a new
status is assigned to something (e.g. paper becomes money). Because the material features are
insufficient to guarantee success in function paper does not declare itself to be money
there must be continued collective acceptance or recognition of the validity of
the assigned function; otherwise the function cannot be successfully performed
(1995: 45). In society, Searle describes a Background that shapes all decision making. Constructivists sometimes
call this Background shared understandings (Ruggie 1998), habitus (Kratochwil 1989) or habits (Hopf
2010). The work of sociologist Anthony Giddens (1984) and other structurationists has been extremely influential

neither agents (meaning actors within a given setting) nor social

structures are logically pre-existent or determining; each is constituted
(Bhaskar 1979). For structurationists,

through interaction with the other . Both structure and agency are created in
large measure by ideas, not only by material facts. As argued by Alexander Wendt, all
social structures are inseparable from the reasons and selfunderstandings that agents bring to their actions (1987: 359). One of the major
theoretical controversies within constructivism today relates to the power of shared understandings to shape the
perceptions and decisions of social actors. How does one understand the balance between the explanatory power of
structure, including structures of ideas and discourse, and of agency? Do people retain significant agency over their
own behavior, or do they tend to replicate intersubjective habits, discursive patterns, or pre-existing practices?
Commonly in the literature, disagreements over these questions are phrased in terms of competing logics. At
first, the contrast was made, borrowing from the work of March and Olsen (1998: 952), between logics of
consequences (instrumentalism) and appropriateness (morality and ethics). More recently, scholars have described
logics of arguing (rational oppositional discourse) (Risse 2000), of practicality (practice) (Pouliot 2008), of purposive
role playing (Checkel 2005), of habit (unreflective action) (Hopf 2010), and of emotion (Mercer 2010). The logic of
arguing is one example of constructivist work that draws on the thinking of Jrgen Habermas. Constructivists have
used Habermas concepts of communicative action and discourse ethics to test the existence of genuine
persuasion and moral decision-making in international politics (see Price 2008; Deitelhoff and Mller 2005). While
early contributions to constructivist thought focused primarily upon the evolution of intersubjective understandings

recent work has begun to emphasise more strongly the role of

practice, what actors actually do. Early constructivist thinkers suggested that social structures
shaped by ideas,

cannot exist without instantiation in practices, but they did not explain what counts as practice, or how we should
study such practices (Wendt 1994). They suggested only that practice should encompass both material acts and
rhetorical commitments (Kratochwil 1989; Onuf 1982). The focus on practice was influenced by American

Bourdieu who
argued against rational choice theory, suggesting instead that social agents
act through implicit practical logica practical sense (1977). Bourdieus insights have been pursued
philosophical pragmatism (Dewey 1988; Rorty 1989), and by the work of social theorist Pierre

most systematically by Emanuel Adler, who focuses attention upon communities of practice (2005: 15-27),
furthering the work of social learning theorists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (Wenger 1998). For Adler,

peoples understandings of the world, and of themselves, are produced and

reproduced through continuous interactions and negotiation of meanings
(2005: 52-53; Adler and Pouliot 2011). Inherent in this account is the proposition that it is through their
participation in social practice that actors generate and maintain

collective understandings

(Adler 2005: 55-56). Constructivists do not argue that culture, ideas,

social structures
constrain , enable and constitute actors in their choices, and thus help to
shape world politics (Ruggie 1998: 869). The resistance to direct causal explanation of behaviour is
shared knowledge, and social norms operate as direct causes of action. Rather,

one of the reasons that constructivists and other IR theorists sometimes engage in dialogues of the deaf. For
realists and rational institutionalists cause and hence prediction are the very points of theorizing. But

constructivists are more inclined to describe social interactions that

shape, mould or constrain choice, rather than cause action. How does this shaping take
place? The clearest attempts to address the how questions are found, not in the theory of constructivism, but in
empirical work grounded in constructivist predispositions. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink provide a
thorough catalogue of first-generation constructivist explanations of normative influence, derived from a wide

More recent work by Autesserre (2009), Deitelhoff (2009),

and Orchard (2010) furthers the attempt to show how norms evolve and gain
traction. Some constructivist empiricists have focused on what they call the norm cascade, when norm
entrepreneurs succeed in promoting normative evolution, and adoption
reaches a tipping point where norms become widely accepted and fully
socialized (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). Other focus upon how norms can entrap actors (Keck and
variety of empirical studies (1998: 892-912).

Sikkink 1998). Most recently, a new generation of empiricists has explored constructivist political economy,
examining cases that reveal how ideas and identities shape the global economy (Hall 2008; Weaver 2008; Abdelal,
Blyth and Parsons 2010).

And The framing behind our advocacy is key---the enduring efect

of the plan is not linked to a one-shot policy action but how it
changes the dominant culture of decision-making.
Bleiker 3 (Roland Bleiker, Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland Discourse and
Human Agency Contemporary Political Theory. Avenel: Vol. 2, Iss. 1; pg. 25, 2003)
Confronting the difficulties that arise with this dualistic dilemma, I have sought to advance a positive concept of
human agency that is neither grounded in a stable essence nor dependent upon a presupposed notion of the
subject. The ensuing journey has taken me, painted in very broad strokes, along the following circular trajectory of
revealing and concealing: discourses are powerful forms of domination. They frame the parameters of thinking
processes. They shape political and social interactions. Yet, discourses are not invincible. They may be thin. They
may contain cracks. By moving the gaze from epistemological to ontological spheres, one can explore ways in
which individuals use these cracks to escape aspects of the discursive order. To recognize the potential for human
agency that opens up as a result of this process, one needs to shift foci again, this time from concerns with Being to
an inquiry into tactical behaviours. Moving between various hyphenated identities, individuals use ensuing mobile
subjectivities to engage in daily acts of dissent, which gradually transform societal values. Over an extended period
of time, such tactical expressions of human agency gradually transform societal values. By returning to
epistemological levels, one can then conceptualize how these transformed discursive practices engender processes

I have used everyday forms of resistance to illustrate how

discourses not only frame and subjugate our thoughts and behaviour, but
also ofer possibilities for human agency. Needless to say, discursive
dissent is not the only practice of resistance that can exert human agency.
There are many political actions that seek immediate changes in policy or
institutional structures, rather than 'mere' shifts in societal
consciousness. Although some of these actions undoubtedly achieve
results, they are often not as potent as they seem. Or, rather, their
enduring efect may well be primarily discursive, rather than institutional .
Nietzsche (1982b, 243) already knew that the greatest events 'are not our loudest
but our stillest hours.' This is why he stressed that the world revolves 'not
around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new
of social change.

values.' And this is why, for Foucault too, the crucial site for political
investigations are not institutions, even though they are often the place
where power is inscribed and crystallized. The fundamental point of
anchorage of power relations, Foucault claims, is always located outside
institutions, deeply entrenched within the social nexus. Hence, instead of
looking at power from the vantage point of institutions, one must analyse
institutions from the standpoint of power relations (Foucault, 1982, 219-222).

Case Backlines

Extra 1AC Cards

And The question isn't only one of appearance, Osman Ahmeds
story shows how the state doesnt discriminate just on the color of
ones skin; rather the issue is discrimination of the Muslim identity.
These post 9/11 politics are grounded in the racist paranoia of the
Muslim which has been used to justify racist violence and
psychological trauma against minorities
Kundnani 15 (Arun Kundnani, research fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. He is a
writer, activist, and a professor at NYU, The Muslims are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War
on Terror, pg, 149-158, 1/6/15, SMahajan)

as it was becoming clear that Barack Obama

was headed for victory in the presidential election, Osman Ahmed received a
phone call from his cousin to say her seventeen-year-old son, Burhan Hassan,
was missing. We went to hospitals and police stations and couldnt find anything. Around midnight, we
During the evening of November 4, 2008,

stopped, and slept, and thought, because of the election, he might have gone to a friends home, to watch the
results. [His] mum of course could not sleep. At seven in the morning, we reported to the police station that our

Ahmed was told that two other Somali-American families in

Minneapolis had reported their children missing that morning. He started
to contact other families to try to find out whether anyone knew more.
One family went to their sons apartment and found a flight itinerary
listing all of the missing children bound for Somalia. They realized that
their sons had gone to fight for al-Shabaab (the youth in Arabic), the Somali insurgent
child was missing.

movement. Ahmed reflected: We never thought he would go back home, from where we fled civil war and chaos.

The
family spent the following months working closely with the FBI to try to
locate Burhan and facilitate his return to the US . Osman Ahmed appeared on national
That never came to our mind, that one day he would go back to Somalia and start fighting. It was a surprise.1

television to draw attention to the case and in March 2009 testified at a US Senate Homeland Security Committee

Then, in May, Burhan called his mother. If I

come back to America, he asked, will they arrest me and put me in
Guantnamo? She tried her best to reassure him and send him money to
leave Somalia. It seemed as if he had decided to leave al-Shabaab.2 But the
family was told the following month that Burhan had been killed , most likely to
prevent him from becoming an intelligence source for the US government.3
Ahmed says: We used any efort, any money we had, any relatives back
home to get him back. By the time we convinced him to come back, and
sent him the money to buy a ticket and go across the border, they found
out, and they killed him immediately, because he was an asset to the US
government.4 Burhan was one of twenty-one young men thought to have traveled from Minnesotas Twin
hearing on al-Shabaab recruitment in America.

Cities between 2007 and 2009 to attend training camps in Somalia run by al-Shabaab, which was designated a
foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department in February 2008. Recruits from Minneapolis were

In October,
Shirwa Ahmed, a twenty-six-year-old former college student in
Minneapolis, carried out a suicide attack in northern Somalia, killing
twenty-two peoplewhich the FBI claimed was the first time a US citizen had
carried out a terrorist suicide bombing. Mohamoud Hassan, who had studied engineering at
reported to have been involved in an ambush of Ethiopian troops in the summer of 2008.

the University of Minnesota and been vice president of the Minnesota Somali Student Union, was reported killed in
September 2009, ten months after traveling to Somalia; he was the fifth from Minneapolis to die. He was twentythree years old.5 He was buried alongside his friend, Troy Kastigar, who had also been killed fighting for al-Shabaab.

Kastigar was a young white man who grew up in suburban Hennepin County, became friendly with Somalis in
Minneapolis, converted to Islam, and called himself Abdirahman.

In response to the

disappearances, the FBI launched Operation Rhino, its largest terrorism

investigation since 9/11 . Bureau director Robert Mueller announced that Somalis were being
Senator Joseph Lieberman warned that the missing
Somalis might "return to the US at any timefully radicalized and trained
in the tactics of terrorto launch attacks herebringing to our cities the suicide bombings
and car bombings we have so far escaped."6 It was reasonable to ask whether alradicalized in Minnesota.

Shabaab 's American recruits presented a threat to the US , given the organization's
acknowledged links to al-Qaeda.

But the

available

evidence indicated al-Shabaab was

exclusively focused on the regional war in East Africa , and its foreign recruits were
useful for local propaganda purposes rather than as potential perpetrators of terrorist attacks in the West. Asked

E. K. Wilson, who leads a team of FBI

agents in the Minneapolis field office responsible for investigating terrorist threats from the Horn of Africa,
told me: "There's no real information, no credible intelligence that it is in
the works, or imminently in the plans, or it's going to take place ."7
Nevertheless, many attempted to talk up the threat. Tellingly, Congressman Peter King
about the possibility of an al-Shabaab attack on the US,

told a committee hearing on Muslim radicalization in July 2011 that to think of al-Shabaab as only engaging in
attacks in East Africa was "a failure of imagination"; the ability to conjure fear scenarios was prized above evidencebased analysis.8 Counterterrorism officials refer to the period immediately following a terrorist attack, when
investigators rush to identity the perpetrators and prevent any follow-up incidents, as the "postboom" moment.

From late 2008 onward federal agents were in postboom mode regarding
Somali Americans, even though there had been no incidents within the US .
The Somali communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were besieged.9 Those who had volunteered
to fight in Somalia may have been combatants only in a distant civil war ,
with no intention of attacking the US, but under American law they were guilty of
terrorism, because al-Shabaab was a proscribed organization. By extension, anyone assisting
others to travel to Somalia to volunteer for al-Shabaab by, for example, giving them
money, could face charges of material support for terrorism . On this basis, federal
agents claimed a wide-ranging pretext to place themselves everywhere
that young Somalis gatheredon college campuses and in high schools, shopping malls, and
librariesto question them about those who had disappeared. Agents talked their way
into homes without warrants, staked out mosques, and sought to recruit
informants . Somali students reported being approached by FBI agents in
campus libraries or receiving phone calls from agents instructing them to
leave classes in order to answer questions.10 To students at the University of Minnesota it
appeared that FBI agents were compiling a list of Muslim students on campus
and questioning them one by one about their identities, religious beliefs,
and political opinions.11 Somali Americans were stopped at airports and
questioned for hours by officials of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In
2010, an of-duty TSA officer assaulted a Somali man in Minneapolis, saying
that he hated Muslims and that Somalis should go back to Africa . He had
threatened another Somali man with a loaded gun on a separate
occasion.12 A few miles south of Minneapolis, at the Mall of America, where young Somalis often

security guards stopped and questioned an

average of twelve hundred individuals a year as part of a counterterrorism
initiative in which they shared information with law enforcement
authorities. The mall staf collected personal information, including birth
hung out, especially during Eid celebrations,

dates, ethnicity, and names of employers, along with surveillance images,

all of which were then passed to the FBI via the local fusion center, a federally
funded hub where surveillance data from various official and private
sources is collated. Those questioned in nearly two-thirds of the cases
were described as African American, people of Asian or Arabic descent , or
other minorities.13 Meanwhile, sending money to family members in Somalia became harder, as local banks came
under government pressure to refuse to handle transactions with the country. In 2012, Somali Americans in
Minneapolis protested outside branches of Wells Fargo after it refused to process wire transfers to Somalia, leaving
no financial institutions in Minnesota willing to handle such transactionsat a time when a devastating famine was
hitting thousands of families dependent on remittances from the diaspora.14 Race, Rights, and Radicals The Somali
population in the Twin Cities is the largest in North America; thirty thousand people of Somali ancestry live in
Minnesota, according to surveys carried out between 2008 and 2010.15 The heart of the Somali community in
Minneapolis is the Cedar- Riverside neighborhood east of the downtown area, which is known as Little Mogadishu.
The tower blocks of Riverside Plaza, with their signature Mondrian-style colored panels, house more than three
thousand Somalis in cramped conditions.16 In St. Paul, two thousand people, the majority Somali, live at the Skyline
Tower on St. Anthony Avenue; it is a similarly brutal concrete high-rise, appropriately nicknamed the Titanic. Somalis
started arriving in Minnesota in the late 1980s, and the numbers increased in the following decade, as that
country's civil war raged. Many families spent years in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp before becoming among the
select few given admittance to the US. Minnesota has a history of refugee settlement, and it became the principal
location for Somalis settling in the US. But the public assistance available to refugees since the 1990s has declined,
affecting access to adequate housing, food, and health care. There is a local stereotype that Somali refugees are
lazily relying on welfare payments rather than searching for work, but it is inaccurate. Many families have a single
parent struggling with mental health problems resulting from the civil war. Surveys carried out at the beginning of
the twenty-first century found 37 percent of Somali women and 25 percent of Somali men in the Twin Cities had
been tortured before arriving in the US and suffered ongoing physical and psychological problems as a result. More

their poverty is rooted in a lack of job opportunities coupled with

discrimination. As researcher Ihotu Ali of Columbia University put it in a 2011 study, Somalis in
generally,

Minnesota "are beginning to feel the wall and feel that they can't advance
and move up ... It's like they're learning what institutional racism is."
That racism also takes violent forms . Shortly after 9/11, a sixty-six-yearold Somali man was assaulted while waiting at a bus stop, and later died
in the hospital.17 As the federal investigation into the missing young men developed, dozens of friends and
associates of those who had disappeared were subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury. The mass
questioning by federal investigators gave rise to an atmosphere of fear,
uncertainty, and confusion among Somalis in the Twin Cities. Nimco Ahmed, a SomaliAmerican community organizer who now works for the Minneapolis City Council, remembers a group of young
college students she knew who were subpoenaed. They just didn't know what to do. These kids were just in school.
A lot of them knew that some of their friends ended up in Somalia, but they just didn't know how, when, why.

People had a big phobia about what the FBI is. All of a sudden we became the
target of the country. We were just the center of all investigation , and all types
of people were told they had to talk to the FBI. So it was just a moment where everybody was just
scared.18 Technically, most of the FBI interviews were voluntary, but those targeted were led to believe they
were compulsory. The vague parameters of the legislation on material support of
terrorism meant it was difficult to know whether speaking openly about
contacts with the missing Somalis might be self-incriminating, and giving
misleading information to the FBI could itself result in a conviction for the
ofense of making false statements to a federal agent . As part of the investigation,

Abdow Munye Abdow, a twenty-six-year-old Somali American from Minnesota, was questioned at his place of work;
he was later convicted of making false statements to FBI agents about who was in a car with him on a drive to San
Diego. He received an eight-month sentence.19 "There was just a broad sense of mistrust of the US government in
general, and specifically of a national security agency like the FBI," notes special agent E. K. Wilson. In early 2009,
the local branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the national Muslim civil rights organization,
began to assist Somalis who were looking for advice on how to handle the FBI's questioning. "It was especially
important during that time for individuals to know and assert their constitutional rights," recalls Lori Saroya,
executive director of CAIR's Minnesota office. We did training sessions across Minnesota, reaching over 30,000
Somalis. Our message was simple: "If you have information on any criminal activity taking place in your community,
this is the time to speak out; you need to report it. But you need to protect and educate yourself too." CAIR
organized an attorney-referral network so that those being interviewed could have legal representation. "Having an
attorney present was a safe way for community members to help with the investigation," says Saroya.20 But CAIR's
provision of legal representation in FBI interviews provoked condemnation from the organization's enemies in
Washington. Congressman Peter King accused CAIR of fostering a policy of noncooperation with the FBIevidence,
he said, of a general lack of Muslim-American cooperation with law enforcement.21 The question of whether
attorneys could be present at interviews touched a raw nerve, because it threatened to set limits on what kinds of
investigations the FBI could conduct. Applying the FBI's model of radicalization implied widening them beyond
cases of suspected criminal activity and tracking individuals who displayed the indicators that they might be drifting
toward becoming extremists. But a competent lawyer would resist the kind of informal questioning of young
people's religious and political opinions that was aimed at detecting would-be radicals, on First Amendment
grounds; broad-based questions about their social networks and everyday life would also likely be challenged. The
presence of an attorney in interviews forced investigators to focus narrowly on terrorism rather than on the wide
gamut of potential radicalization indicators. The families affected by the disappearances faced a difficult dilemma.
Should they work with the FBI to try to locate their sons, only for them to possibly receive lengthy jail sentences
upon their return to America, or were there other ways to track down their children and help them leave al-Shabaab
without involving the US government? After all, some of the young men who left in 2007 had grown disillusioned
with the movement in Somalia and quietly returned to the US of their own accord. Stoked by the sense of fear,
conflicts erupted in the community over this question, and over the wider one of whether the government could be
trusted to treat Somalis fairly. Previous experience suggested not.

After 9/11, police officers

would drive around the Somali neighborhoods in Minneapolis, pick young

kids up of the streets, take them to an alley across the city, beat them
up, racially abuse them, and say things such as: "Fuck Islam ." Somalis got used to
police officers descending en masse onto the community over the smallest of altercations and using excessive

Community activists had been trying to address these issues for years ,
using the conventional community liaison channels, and some progress had been made. But,
unsurprisingly, suspicion of law enforcement agencies remained high .22
force.

2AC Surveillance is Securitized

U.S surveillance policies securitize Muslims and Arabs
Ghughunishvili 10 (Irina Ghughunishvili, Masters in International Relations and European Studies from
the Central European University, Securitization of Migration in the United States after 9/11: Constructing Muslims
and Arabs as Enemies, 2010, SMahajan)

The re-emergence of racial profiling in the federal law enforced after 9/11 ,
according to Tumlin, has been the core of the immigration and immigrants policy. Not all citizens are
equally considered to be suspect of terrorist acts, immigrants from
nations with purported ties to al Qaeda.* This type of profiling merges
immigration with nationality, religion and terrorism and targets
immigrants from nations with sizable Muslim populations for selective
enforcement of immigration laws. The combination of Muslim/Arab identity
and immigrant status already signifies danger of terrorism ; 'immigration status
alone, without these nationality or religion plus factors, does not trigger heightened scrutiny/126 Conclusion It is

9/11 marked a further securitization of migration in the

Western countries, based on the fear of terrorism. As argued by Boswell, Neal, and
being argued that

Huysmans, the public discourse, and to some extend institutional practices was not include the linkage of migration

In the United States, 9/11 marked the

migration/terrorism nexus became apparent both in speech act as well as
in institutionalized practices. Looking closely to the institutionalized practices, it becomes
evident that Muslims and Arabs were more severely targeted than any other
migrants through newly-implemented policies and every-day practices. Their
construction as the 'others,' is obvious in the way the audience perceived
the issue. The linkage between terrorism and the Muslim other, on the other hand, was completely absent
and terrorism in the European Union.

from the discourse. Even more, President Bush on many- occasions tried to de-securitize the Muslim 'other,' in
reference to ethnicity and religion, and urged the public to do the same. How can this development be explained by

According to the securitization theory propounded by the

Copenhagen School, the speech act is crucial to legitimize the
constitutional exceptionalism of special policies ; it has to make an audience 'tolerate
violations of rules that would otherwise be obeyed.* This is true especially in liberal democracies. Although
there are places where the violation of rights is accepted and where acts
performed on the account of security do not require legitimization, this is
not characteristic of democratic systems. I2S The thesis put this claim under the question
the Copenhagen School?

mark. In the context considered dint the thesis, the dynamics between the audience and the actor do not play out
in this one-way causal relationship. What we have witnessed in the case of Muslim and Arab non-citizens is that
there is a gap between the speech acts (where the linkage of Arab/Muslim migrants to terrorism was absent) and
the policies targeting Arab and Muslim immigrants and framing them as potential terrorists are contradictory. This
required re-conceptualization of the securitization theory of the Copenhagen School. In order to understand the
absence of speech act, it might be necessary to consider the context, which according to Matt Macdonald remains
under-theorized by the Copenhagen School. It should also kept in mind how the American identity and the shift in
more liberal understanding of what being American means, influences how much can be articulated about *the

In addition, it will be helpful to look at the context of discourse ,

as mentioned by Balzacq, where Muslims and Arabs have been constructed as
threats and this is embedded the discourse for decades and
simultaneously in the public consciousness. Simultaneously, it is also important
to mentions that the relationship between speech act and practice, where
speech act is legitimizes practices, does not necessarily have to be a oneway-directional relationship. Boswell mentions 'administrative agencies may adopt securitarian
other1 in public.

practices without a prior green light from political discourse, as indeed the case of data utilization at EU level
implies.'12'' Thus, Copenhagen School's securitization theory should be extended to look at more flexible way of

it will be helpful
it the theory will look closely at how one issue for example migration leads
to securitization of another issue (Muslim/Arab identity), because as the
case demonstrated, especially in liberal democratic societies, the actor will try and avoid targeting
specific type of migrants explicitly, but can perform securitization in practice.
threat construction that is available among the second generation theorists. In addition,

Islamophobic security politics justify mass Muslim surveillance

Smith 11 (David Smith, Equal Justice AmeriCorps Legal Fellow, Inner City Law Center, Homeless Veterans
Project; J.D. U.C.L.A. School of Law, David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, M.P.P. U.C.L.A. School
of Public Affairs Many thanks to Ash Baili for her guidance and invaluable feedback on this Article. Thanks also to
Devon Carbado and Eugene Volokh for reviewing and providing feedback on various sections and to the staff of the
Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law for helpful comments and editing on earlier drafts, Presumed Suspect:
Post-9/Il Intelligence Gathering, 11 UCLA J. Islamic & Near E. L. 85 2011-2012 , Hein Online, 2011, SMahajan)

the FBI "racializes" the Muslim community as a

security threat, and as inherently untrustworthy and foreign. Put differently,
government actors surveil the Muslim community precisely be-cause it
This Article further argues that

views the Muslim community as a national security threat . The government does
not seek cooperation from a perceived enemy. Nor does it seek cooperation from a perceived untrustworthy source.

the First Amendment right to associate protects

groups from being categorized as a national security threat solely based
on membership in that group. Indeed, the very foundation of the right to
associate serves to prevent the government from burdening groups based
on stereotypes and assumptions. The right to associate prevents the
government from presuming a group's guilt based on unspoken stereotypes
about that group.58 In particular, the Supreme Court noted in NAACP v. Button that it
was important to take race into account when weighing the burdens on a
group's right to associate. The court in Button stated, "[w]e cannot close our eyes to the fact that
Second, the Article claims that

the . . .. civil rights movement has engendered the intense resentment and opposition of the politically dominant

racial attitudes are an important factor in

considering whether or not the government has placed an unconstitutional
burden on the right to associate. For example, in Button and similar cases, the government acted
as if NAACP members were inherently subversive without any factual basis for arriving at this conclusion. NAACP
v. Button is relevant today. Just as NAACP members were viewed as inherently subversive in NAACP
v. Button, the government today appears to treat Muslims as inherently violent
or inherently prone to terrorism. This view leads the government to surveil or
white community." 59 In other words,

interrogate Muslim individuals without a factual basis indicating

wrongdoing. Simply being Muslim creates the presumption of terrorism ;
this presumption can only be rebutted by Muslim individuals' and groups' acquiescence
to surveillance. 6 0 Put differently, the FBI, and indeed the general public, expects the
Muslim community to subject itself to surveillance. Refusal to do so suggests
that there is "something to hide." Take for example, a police officer who asks a person if he can
search the person's bag. The officer is suspicious that the person is carrying an illegal substance. According
to common expectations in this situation, an innocent person should consent to a
search, and a guilty person should not.6 1 Legally, however, a person is still presumed
innocent if he or she does not consent to that search. 62 In other words, the police search implies a person's
presumed guilt. Consenting to the search rebuts that presumed guilt regardless of if the person is legally allowed to
refuse. Similarly,

in the surveillance context, the FBI expects the Muslim

community to subject itself to surveillance to rebut the same presumed

guilt; this expectation exists whether or not it is legally necessary or
appropriate.

2AC Solvency Advocate

Only the af decreases racist surveillance on Muslim American
populations without jeopardizing crime enforcement.
Shahabuddin 15 (Madiha Shahabuddin, JD, Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law, May 2015;
BA, University of California, Irvine, "The More Muslim You Are, the More Trouble You Can Be": How Government
Surveillance of Muslim Americans Violates First Amendment Rights, Chapman Law Review 18 Chap. L. Rev. 577,
Spring, 2015, SMahajan)

The government

- both federal and local -

should stop the practice of widespread,

suspicionless surveillance of Muslim Americans

informant sting operations.

in the form of mosque infiltration and

Community and grassroots activists, legal civil rights

groups, and Muslim American leaders are all calling for the end of such a
practice . n171 Choosing to spy on Muslims simply because [*605] they are
Muslim and attend a mosque is based upon a faulty n172 and invidious
presumption that terrorist threats only come from Muslims , and namely those
Muslims who are more "religious." n173 Such a presumption must be retracted in order
for the government's approach to be narrowly tailored. Moreover, the current
surveillance techniques have not proved efective in achieving their
stated goals . In 2012, Assistant Chief Thomas Galati of the NYPD himself attested under oath that
during the more than six years of its implementation, the surveillance
program did not yield a single lead, nor did it spark the need to initiate
any terror investigations. n174 There are also limits to how useful a tool surveillance can be for crime
prevention. n175 Myers argues that gang injunctions, which literally criminalize
associative behaviors such as walking down the street or riding in a car with
another individual who is suspected to be a gang member, are unconstitutional for
the same reasons that Muslim surveillance is: there are other reasonable alternatives to
achieving the government's goal of fighting gang violence. n176 The criteria that law enforcement use to label
someone a gang member has been seen as too subjective, arbitrary, and burdensome of expressive rights, such as
the ability to wear a certain colored t-shirt, sport a tattoo, or speak with another person on the street. n177

These are much like the [*606] "indicators" law enforcement use to label
Muslims as terrorist threats because of their garb, physical appearance, or
political ideologies. Thus, Myers's call for "tighter and more definite
standards, like beyond a reasonable doubt" for law enforcement to meet
before subjecting an individual to closer scrutiny within the gang injunction context also
applies to Muslim surveillance. n178 In the early 1990s, Irving A. Spergel, an expert on gangs, also
suggested that gang intervention programs for youth should focus on those who "are already engaged in lawviolating behaviors." n179 The latter idea is key in implementing a successful approach, for then it means the

Such
a standard, albeit simple, does not infringe upon free exercise,
association, or speech rights, but still does ofer a basic minimum
standard to follow, creating something closer to a "bright line" rule.
Approaches such as the ones suggested for the gang context may equally apply to the Muslim
surveillance issue, for the government should operate upon more than an
individual's mere adherence to Islam to target them. This will also be more
narrowly tailored to achieve the government's purpose of protecting
government's method will truly be narrowly tailored to achieve the government's national security interest.

against domestic terrorism, because it will attempt to target real criminals,

rather than everyday mosque congregants.

Cases involving Muslim Americans should warrant strict scrutiny

PARVARESH 14 [ROMTIN, J.D., University of Southern California; B.A., B.S.,
University of California, Berkeley, PRAYER FOR RELIEF: ANTI-MUSLIM
DISCRIMINATION AS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW
REVIEW, 2014, http://lawreview.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/Parvaresh-FinalPDF.pdf] alla
the New York City Police Department (NYPD) made national and
international headlines when its secret surveillance of Muslims across the
New York City area was discovered. 2 Under the guise of counterterrorism,
the NYPD monitored the daily lives of thousands of Muslims for about a
decade, 3 using techniques such as taking photographs, collecting license plate numbers at
mosques, and utilizing informants known as mosque crawlers to infiltrate
Muslim organizations. 4 From recording sermons to monitoring businesses and grade schools, the NYPD
targeted individuals not because of a reasonable suspicion that they
specifically were linked to terrorism, but rather because of one common
characteristic: they were or were believed to be Muslim . As one might expect, the
police surveillance program has come under fire, as it chills religious
In late 2011,

participation and casts innocent Muslims as potential terror suspects . 5 In

mid-2012, a group of Muslim plaintifs filed suit in federal court challenging the
NYPDs program. 6 Though their complaint alleged First Amendment violations,
including violations of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, their
likelihood for success may be hampered: Recent findings indicate that Muslim
plaintifs as a class are less likely to succeed on First Amendment
challenges relative to other religious groups. 7 Indeed, in early 2014, the case was
dismissed on standing and pleading grounds,8 and it was under appeal in
the Third Circuit as of August 2014. Of greater interest, however, is the
plaintifs additional claim for violation of the Equal Protection Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment. This claim, too, faces a doctrinal obstacle
religion is not a suspect classification and is thus not subject to strict
scrutiny . Only classifications based on race and national origin are suspect
and thus warrant strict scrutiny ; 9 by contrast, religion, more so than race
or national origin, appears to be the primary, if not sole, basis for the NYPDs
surveillance. This Note, however, does not look to resolve the constitutionality of the NYPD surveillance
program. Rather, it explores an idea impliedly raised by the case: the intersection
of race and religion in post-9/11 America. For instance, one way the NYPD lawsuit plaintiffs
might have bolstered their case would have been to frame the alleged equal protection
violations in the context of race, and thus have the NYPDs actions analyzed
under strict scrutiny a historically tough burden for the government to
meet. 10 The question then becomes whether anti-Muslim discrimination could
be interpreted as a form of racial discrimination . This Note therefore seeks to place

anti-Muslim discrimination into current legal understandings of race . It argues

that, in some instances, anti-Muslim discrimination should be treated as racial
discrimination .11 In short, because Muslims, along with Middle Easterners and
South Asians, have increasingly become racialized in both the immediate
and prolonged aftermath of 9/11, they now warrant additional legal
protection given the various forms of discrimination they experience in
both private and public contexts. Opening racial discrimination claims to
them would be one way to provide such relief.

And Modern surveillance policies disproportionately afect all

Muslim American populations and even those who are perceived to
be Muslim.
Figueroa 12 (Tiffani B. Figueroa, associate in Morrison Foersters Litigation Department, J.D. magna cum
laude from Hofstra University School of Law, "ALL MUSLIMS ARE LIKE THAT": HOW ISLAMOPHOBIA IS DIMINISHING
AMERICANS' RIGHT TO RECEIVE INFORMATION, Hofstra Law Review, Winter 2012, SMahajan)

the fear of Muslims or those perceived as Muslim has

resulted in the government's failure to protect Americans' First
Amendment right to receive information. n332 The strict scrutiny test [*499]
that courts normally employ when assessing the content-neutrality of a
regulation on speech has not been efective in light of the increased development of
Islamophobia. n333 Following the 9/11 attacks, Islamophobia has impacted
the free speech rights of Muslims and the mobility of foreign scholars, as well as the right to
receive information for all Americans. n334 "In an age of official insecurity and anxiety, the
most difficult constitutional problem may not be controlling arbitrariness in permitting, but
compensating for a chronic tendency to overestimate the likelihood of any
damage to public security from public exercises of freedom of speech." n335 Given the current
state of events and the vulnerability of the right to receive information, a
new standard to deal with the right to receive information in times of political
controversy is required. In order to resolve this issue of dealing with national security and the right to receive
information, courts should adopt a specific test under First Amendment speech
analysis where: (1) there is a political conflict and (2) there is a clear
group that society and the government targets because of the conflict . As
discussed earlier, the government may restrict the content of speech in certain
situations; however, it cannot favor one viewpoint over another. n336 The test
As discussed above,

will essentially focus on the effects of a regulation on speech when a specific group is targeted by the government

Once the court determines there is a disparate impact on a

certain group, the court will then resolve the issue as to whether the
government has curtailed the right to receive information through this
disproportionate treatment of the specified group. By first looking at the effects of a
action. n337

government action, courts will provide a framework for which they can work through their First Amendment

When dealing with political conflicts, such as [*500] the war on

terror, there are often certain groups that are discriminated against through
practices that seem constitutional. Such discrimination is not only
overlooked, but it has a subsequent efect on all Americans who are willing
to explore diferent ideas other than those the government makes readily
analysis. n338

available. n339 The government's actions discussed above, such as dealing with speech at a
protest, n340 forcing a woman to remove her hijab in prison, n341 and revoking
the visas of foreign scholars n342 serve as examples. These actions appear
to be neutral; however, the efects of the actions unevenly target one
particular group: Muslims and those perceived as Muslim . n343 It is
important that the courts look beyond the language of the laws or
government actions in order to gauge whether the government is in fact
practicing viewpoint discrimination and violating the First Amendment
right to receive information for Americans. n344 When looking at the effects of government
actions: A law [may] not discriminate against a particular viewpoint on its
face, and there [may be] no evidence of an improper legislative purpose in
enacting the law. Within that framework of facial neutrality, however, we must examine
restrictions on speech with particular care when their efects fall unevenly
on diferent viewpoints and groups in society. n345 Looking at the efects of
regulation on speech is something that the Supreme Court itself has taken
into consideration when looking at the right to receive information . n346 As
determined in Martin v. Struthers, n347 the Court explained that, " in considering legislation which
thus limits the dissemination of knowledge, we must "be astute to
examine the efect of the challenged legislation' and must "weigh the
circumstances and appraise the substantiality of the reasons advanced in
support of the regulation.'" n348 Courts have taken a similar stance in other cases. n349 The [*501]
bottom line is: courts must look at the efects of government regulations
because laws that have a disparate impact on one viewpoint run the risk
of being viewpoint-based . n350 As in the case of Islamophobia, it is easy to
target a specific group because some Americans automatically associated
the 9/11 hijackers with all Muslims and those perceived as Muslim . n351
in the interest of national security, the government at times partook
in practices that people may view as discriminatory. The government
failed to protect the free speech rights of Muslims as a targeted group, and these
actions subsequently harmed the right to receive information for
Americans. Although the government's purpose in enforcing the laws
discussed in this Note was not to close of Muslim ideas, the efects may show
otherwise. n352 Justice Antonin Scalia stated, "the vice of content-based legislation - what renders it
deserving of the high standard of strict scrutiny - is not that it is always
used for invidious, thought-control purposes, but that it lends itself to use
for those purposes." n353 "Unavoidable targeting" stemming from a government regulation
is included within this "vice of content-based legislation." This phenomenon may
shine light on what has occurred following the 9/11 attacks. By employing an efects test in the
First Amendment analysis, courts will more efficiently investigate whether
there is viewpoint discrimination afecting the right to receive information
since the courts must first establish if a government action falls
disproportionately on a specific group. n354 [*502] VI. Conclusion Surely, the government has
a highly supported interest in protecting the United States at all times. However, protection should not
ensue at the expense of severely limiting civil liberties and substantially
Similarly,

restricting the marketplace of ideas. In times of political strife, such as

facing terrorism today, the courts' current approach to dealing with First
Amendment violations of the right to receive information fails to protect
civil liberties. By looking at the discriminatory efects of regulations on
speech, the court can protect a thriving marketplace of ideas.

2AC Surveillance Racist

Race and surveillance are produced ethnographically and
heterogeneously in tandem. This constant production and
reproduction serves only to maintain a colonial, and neoliberal
social order
Kundnani and Kumar 11 [Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political
violence, and surveillance. Author ofThe Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and
the domestic War on Terror, Teaches at NYU, PHD. From LMU, Deepa Kumar is an associate
professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author
of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Race, surveillance, and empire Sept. 2011, via
ISR, Issue 96] N.H

The argument is divided into two parts. The first identifies a number of
moments in the history of national security surveillance in North America,
tracing its imbrication with race, empire, and capital, from the settlercolonial period through to the neoliberal era. Our focus here is on how
race as a sociopolitical category is produced and reproduced historically in
the United States through systems of surveillance. We show how
throughout the history of the United States the systematic collection of
information has been interwoven with mechanisms of racial oppression .
From Anglo settler-colonialism, the establishment of the plantation system, the postCivil War reconstruction era,
the US conquest of the Philippines, and the emergence of the national security state in the post-World War II era, to

racialized surveillance has enabled the

consolidation of capital and empire. It is, however, important to note that the
production of the racial other at these various moments is conjunctural
and heterogenous. That is, the racialization of Native Americans, for instance, during the settler-colonial
neoliberalism in the post-Civil Rights era,

period took different forms from the racialization of African Americans. Further, the dominant construction of
Blackness under slavery is different from the construction of Blackness in the neoliberal era; these ideological shifts

In short, empire and capital, at various

moments, determine who will be targeted by state surveillance, in what
ways, and for how long. In the second part, we turn our attention to the current conjuncture in which
are the product of specific historic conditions.

the politics of the War on Terror shape national security surveillance practices. The intensive surveillance of Muslim
Americans has been carried out by a vast security apparatus that has also been used against dissident movements
such as Occupy Wall Street and environmental rights activists, who represent a threat to the neoliberal order. This is
not new; the process of targeting dissenters has been a constant feature of American history. For instance, the Alien
and Sedition Acts of the late 1790s were passed by the Federalist government against the Jeffersonian
sympathizers of the French Revolution. The British hanged Nathan Hale because he spied for Washingtons army in
the American Revolution. State surveillance regimes have always sought to monitor and penalize a wide range of

Our
focus here is on the production of racialized others as security threats
and the ways this helps to stabilize capitalist social relations.
dissenters, radicals, and revolutionaries. Race was a factor in some but by no means all of these cases.

Surveillance is a racist deployment: fails to focus on central

questions of race and empire
Kundnani and Kumar 11 [Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political
violence, and surveillance. Author ofThe Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and
the domestic War on Terror, Teaches at NYU, PHD. From LMU, Deepa Kumar is an associate
professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author
of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Race, surveillance, and empire Sept. 2011, via
ISR, Issue 96] N.H

In what follows, we argue that the debate on national security surveillance

that has emerged in the United States since the summer of 2013 is
woefully inadequate, due to its failure to place questions of race and
empire at the center of its analysis. It is racist ideas that form the basis
for the ways national security surveillance is organized and deployed,
racist fears that are whipped up to legitimize this surveillance to the
American public, and the disproportionately targeted racialized groups
that have been most efective in making sense of it and organizing
opposition. This is as true today as it has been historically: race and state
surveillance are intertwined in the history of US capitalism. Likewise, we
argue that the history of national security surveillance in the United
States is inseparable from the history of US colonialism and empire.

NSA surveillance in particular targets brown bodies without

condition; spills over into broader state and public racialization
Kundnani and Kumar 11 [Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political
violence, and surveillance. Author ofThe Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and
the domestic War on Terror, Teaches at NYU, PHD. From LMU, Deepa Kumar is an associate
professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author
of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Race, surveillance, and empire Sept. 2011, via
ISR, Issue 96] N.H
Beginning in June 2013, a series of news articles based on whistle-blower Edward Snowdens collection of
documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) took the world by storm. Over the course of a year, the

What
became clear was that the NSA was involved in the mass collection of
online material. Less apparent was how this data was actually used by the
NSA and other national security agencies. Part of the answer came in July 2014 when Glenn
Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain published an article that identified specific targets of NSA
surveillance and showed how individuals were being placed under surveillance
despite there being no reasonable suspicion of their involvement in
criminal activity.1 All of those named as targets were prominent Muslim
Americans. The following month, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux published another story for The
Snowden material provided a detailed account of the massive extent of NSAs warrantless data collection.

Intercept, which revealed that under the Obama administration the number of people on the National
Counterterrorism Centers no-fly list had increased tenfold to 47,000. Leaked classified documents showed that

the NCC maintains a database of terrorism suspects worldwidethe

Terrorist Identities Datamart Environmentwhich contained a million
names by 2013, double the number four years earlier, and increasingly includes biometric
data. This database includes 20,800 persons within the United States who
are disproportionately concentrated in Dearborn, Michigan, with its
significant Arab American population.2 By any objective standard, these were major news
stories that ought to have attracted as much attention as the earlier revelations. Yet the stories barely registered in
the corporate media landscape. The tech community, which had earlier expressed outrage at the NSAs mass
digital surveillance, seemed to be indifferent when details emerged of the targeted surveillance of Muslims. The
explanation for this reaction is not hard to find. While many object to the US government collecting private data on

Muslims tend to be seen as reasonable targets of suspicion. A

July 2014 poll for the Arab American Institute found that 42 percent of
Americans think it is justifiable for law enforcement agencies to profile
Arab Americans or American Muslims.3
ordinary people,

Modern surveillance within an American political framework goes

beyond simple gaze: it informs and enacts the very political
frameworks which racially demarcate society
Finn 11 [Rachel L. Finn, Department of Sociology at The University of Manchester, Research
regards constructions of South Asian womens identity within American discourses on culture, race,
ethnicity, class, gender, etc. w/ discursive frameworks read through postcolonial theory, feminist
theory, migration theory, and cultural studies Surveillant Staring: Race and the everyday surveillance
of South Asian women after 9/11] N.H

South Asian college womens accounts of being subject to

surveillance within an American political framework that encourages a
consistent awareness of terrorism. In doing so, it links Surveillance
Studies with a postcolonial studies discussion of racialized belonging.
These young women are subject to and subjects of a particular type of
surveillance that racializes them in two ways. Firstly, it excludes them
from belonging in the USA by reinforcing a construction of them as a
potential terrorist and dangerous Other that is constructed in opposition
to white and American subjectivity. Secondly, this practice of
surveillance also serves to create and inscribe the borders of a South
Asian racial subjectivity in the USA, where the heterogeneity contained within the category is
sometimes subordinated to a shared experience of surveillance. The experience of surveillance
also implicates other bodily features in addition to race, such as beards,
and cultural artifacts like the hijab. Because these cultural markers
engender a suspicion that the person is separating themselves from
American, they act as an additional layer through which the Other is
signified, and concurrently interact with race to invoke surveillance . Thus, this
article considers the social efects of these practices of everyday surveillance for
individuals experience of identity, where surveillance emerges as a
practice of racialization that reiteratively enacts the social exclusion of
those racialized outside of whiteness.
This article explores

2AC Starting Point

The starting point of the debate must revolve around the
inseparably securitized, racialized, and colonial production of the
enemy, the monster: the terrorist
Kundnani and Kumar 11 [Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political
violence, and surveillance. Author ofThe Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and
the domestic War on Terror, Teaches at NYU, PHD. From LMU, Deepa Kumar is an associate
professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author
of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Race, surveillance, and empire Sept. 2011, via
ISR, Issue 96] N.H

In what follows, we argue that the debate on national security surveillance

that has emerged in the United States since the summer of 2013 is
woefully inadequate, due to its failure to place questions of race and
empire at the center of its analysis. It is racist ideas that form the basis
for the ways national security surveillance is organized and deployed,
racist fears that are whipped up to legitimize this surveillance to the
American public, and the disproportionately targeted racialized groups
that have been most efective in making sense of it and organizing
opposition. This is as true today as it has been historically: race and state
surveillance are intertwined in the history of US capitalism. Likewise, we
argue that the history of national security surveillance in the United
States is inseparable from the history of US colonialism and empire.

2AC Framing
Institutional structures of domination create everyday holocausts
you should reject singular focused impacts in favor of working
against the ongoing extinctions of people of color This is the only
ethical question and controls the proximity and conditions for all of
their impacts.
Omolade 89 (1989, Barbara Omolade is a historian of black women for the past twenty years and an
organizer in both the womens and civil rights/black power movements, We Speak for the Planet in Rocking the
ship of state : toward a feminist peace politics, pp. 172-176)

eforts by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear
testing, stockpiling, and weaponry, while still protecting their own arsenals and selling arms to
countries and factions around the world, vividly demonstrate how "peace" can become an
abstract concept within a culture of war. Many peace activists are similarly
Recent

blind to the constant wars and threats of war being waged against people
of color and the planet by those who march for "peace" and by those they
march against. These pacifists , like Gorbachev and Reagan, frequently want
people of color to fear what they fear and define peace as they define it.
They are unmindful that our lands and peoples have already been and are
being destroyed as part of the "final solution" of the "color line." It is
difficult to persuade the remnants of Native American tribes , the
starving of African deserts , and the victims of the Cambodian "killing
fields" that nuclear war is the major danger to human life on the planet
and that only a nuclear "winter" embodies fear and futurelessness for
humanity . The peace movement sufers greatly from its lack of a historical
and holistic perspective, practice, and vision that include the voices and
experiences of people of color; the movement's goals and messages have
therefore been easily coopted and expropriated by world leaders who
share the same culture of racial dominance and arrogance . The peace
movement's racist blinders have divorced peace from freedom, from
feminism, from education reform, from legal rights, from human rights,
from international alliances and friendships, from national liberation,
from the particular

and the general

(human being). Nevertheless, social movements such as the civil rights-black power
movement in the United States have always demanded peace with justice, with
liberation, and with social and economic reconstruction and cultural freedom at home
and abroad. The integration of our past and our present holocausts and our
struggle to define our own lives and have our basic needs met are at the
(for example, black female, Native American male)

core of the inseparable struggles for world peace and social betterment.
The Achilles heel of the organized peace movement in this country has always been its whiteness. In this multi-

racial and racist society, no allwhite movement can have the strength to bring about basic changes. It is axiomatic
that basic changes do not occur in any society unless the people who are oppressed move to make them occur. In
our society it is people of color who are the most oppressed. Indeed our entire history teaches us that when people
of color have organized and struggled-most especially, because of their particular history, Black people-have moved
in a more humane direction as a society, toward a better life for all people.1 Western man's whiteness, imagination,
enlightened science, and

movements toward peace have developed from a culture

and history mobilized against women of color . The political advancements

of white men have grown directly from the devastation and holocaust of
people of color and our lands . This technological and material progress has been in direct
proportion to the undevelopment of women of color. Yet the dayto- day survival, political
struggles, and rising up of women of color, especially black women in the United States,
reveal both complex resistance to holocaust and undevelopment and often
conflicted responses to the military and war. The Holocausts Women of color are
survivors of and remain casualties of holocausts , and we are direct victims
of war -that is, of open armed conflict between countries or between factions within the same country. But
women of color were not soldiers, nor did we trade animal pelts or slaves
to the white man for guns, nor did we sell or lease our lands to the white
man for wealth. Most men and women of color resisted and fought back ,
were slaughtered , enslaved , and force marched into plantation labor
camps to serve the white masters of war and to build their empires and
war machines. People of color were and are victims of holocausts -that is, of
great and widespread destruction, usually by fire. The world as we knew
and created it was destroyed in a continual scorched earth policy of the white
man. The experience of Jews and other Europeans under the Nazis can teach us the value of understanding the
totality of destructive intent, the extensiveness of torture, and the demonical apparatus of war aimed at the human
spirit. A Jewish father pushed his daughter from the lines of certain death at Auschwitz and said, "You will be a
remembrance-You tell the story. You survive." She lived. He died. Many have criticized the Jews for forcing non-Jews
to remember the 6 million Jews who died under the Nazis and for etching the names Auschwitz and Buchenwald,

women of color, we, too, are "remembrances" of all

the holocausts against the people of the world. We must remember the
names of concentration camps such as Jesus, Justice, Brotherhood, and
Terezin and Warsaw in our minds. Yet as

Integrity , ships that carried millions of African men, women, and children
chained and brutalized across the ocean to the "New World." We must
remember the Arawaks, the Taino, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the
Narragansett, the Montauk, the Delaware, and the other Native American
names of thousands of U.S. towns that stand for tribes of people who are
no more. We must remember the holocausts visited against the Hawaiians,
the aboriginal peoples of Australia, the Pacific Island peoples, and the
women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . We must remember the
slaughter of men and women at Sharpeville, the children of Soweto, and
the men of Attica. We must never, ever, forget the children disfigured, the
men maimed, and the women broken in our holocausts-we must
remember the names, the numbers, the faces, and the stories and teach
them to our children and our children's children so the world can never

forget our sufering and our courage. Whereas the particularity of the Jewish holocaust under the Nazis is
over, our holocausts continue . We are the madres locos (crazy mothers) in the
Argentinian square silently demanding news of our missing kin from the
fascists who rule. We are the children of El Salvador who see our mothers
and fathers shot in front of our eyes . We are the Palestinian and
Lebanese women and children overrun by Israeli, Lebanese, and U.S.
soldiers . We are the women and children of the bantustans and refugee
camps and the prisoners of Robbin Island . We are the starving in the
Sahel , the poor in Brazil , the sterilized in Puerto Rico.

We are the brothers and

sisters of Grenada who carry the seeds of the New Jewel Movement in our hearts, not daring to speak of it with our
lipsyet. Our holocaust is South Africa ruled by men who loved Adolf Hitler, who have developed the Nazi techniques
of terror to more sophisticated levels. Passes replace the Nazi badges and stars. Skin color is the ultimate badge of
persecution. Forced removals of women, children, and the elderly-the "useless appendages of South Africa"-into
barren, arid bantustans without resources for survival have replaced the need for concentration camps. Black sexsegregated barracks and cells attached to work sites achieve two objectives: The work camps destroy black family
and community life, a presumed source of resistance, and attempt to create human automatons whose purpose is
to serve the South African state's drive toward wealth and hegemony. Like other fascist regimes, South Africa
disallows any democratic rights to black people; they are denied the right to vote, to dissent, to peaceful assembly,
to free speech, and to political representation. The regime has all the typical Nazi-like political apparatus: house
arrests of dissenters such as Winnie Mandela; prison murder of protestors such as Stephen Biko; penal colonies
such as Robbin Island. Black people, especially children, are routinely arrested without cause, detained without
limits, and confronted with the economic and social disparities of a nation built around racial separation. Legally
and economically, South African apartheid is structural and institutionalized racial war. The Organization of African
Unity's regional intergovernmental meeting in 1984 in Tanzania was called to review and appraise the
achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women. The meeting considered South Africa's racist apartheid
regime a peace issue. The "regime is an affront to the dignity of all Africans on the continent and a stark reminder
of the absence of equality and peace, representing the worst form of institutionalized oppression and strife."
Pacifists such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi who have used nonviolent resistance charged that
those who used violence to obtain justice were just as evil as their oppressors. Yet all successful revolutionary
movements have used organized violence. This is especially true of national liberation movements that have
obtained state power and reorganized the institutions of their nations for the benefit of the people. If men and
women in South Africa do not use organized violence, they could remain in the permanent violent state of the slave.
Could it be that pacifism and nonviolence cannot become a way of life for the oppressed? Are they only tactics with
specific and limited use for protecting people from further violence? For most people in the developing communities
and the developing world consistent nonviolence is a luxury; it presumes that those who have and use nonviolent
weapons will refrain from using them long enough for nonviolent resisters to win political battles. To survive,
peoples in developing countries must use a varied repertoire of issues, tactics, and approaches. Sometimes arms
are needed to defeat apartheid and defend freedom in South Africa; sometimes nonviolent demonstrations for
justice are the appropriate strategy for protesting the shooting of black teenagers by a white man, such as
happened in New York City.

Peace is not merely an absence of 'conflict that enables

white middleclass comfort , nor is it simply resistance to nuclear war and

war machinery . The litany of "you will be blown up, too" directed by a
white man to a black woman obscures the permanency and
institutionalization of war, the violence and holocaust that people of color
face daily . Unfortunately, the holocaust does not only refer to the mass murder
of Jews, Christians, and atheists during the Nazi regime; it also refers to the
permanent institutionalization of war that is part of every fascist and
racist regime. The holocaust lives. It is a threat to world peace as
pervasive and thorough as nuclear war.

Policy Implementation Key

Policy action is key to actualizing change
Figueroa 12 [Tiffani B. Figueroa, associate in Morrison Foersters Litigation
Department, J.D. magna cum laude from Hofstra University School of Law, "ALL
MUSLIMS ARE LIKE THAT": HOW ISLAMOPHOBIA IS DIMINISHING AMERICANS' RIGHT
TO RECEIVE INFORMATION, Hofstra Law Review, Winter 2012] alla
Muslims have an established place in America now, 9/11 changed
things with the increase of Islamophobia.167 A phobia is defined as "a
lasting abnormal fear or great dislike of something."' 168 Generally,
Islamophobia is defined as "an irrational distrust, fear or rejection of the
Muslim religion and those who are (perceived as) Muslims.' 169 Directly
following 9/11, anti-Muslim violence, hate crimes, and discrimination
increased in the United States. 170 Indeed, Islamophobia is not a new phenomenon springing
Although,

directly from the 9/11 attacks.171 Professor Christopher Allen stated, "Islamophobia is undeniably 'rooted' in the
historical inheritance of a conflictual relationship that has developed over many centuries involving the overlap of
religion, politics and warfare."'' 72 There has been a constant conflict between the "West" and Islam.173 This
conflict spans over several events including the threat to Christendom prior to the eleventh century, followed by the
Crusades and colonialism. 1 74 However, contemporary Islamophobia in the United States presented itself as early
as the 1990s.175 A report prepared for the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1999 showed that Muslims in
America "felt there was both latently and openly a form of Islamophobia and racial and religious intolerance in
American society.' ' 176 Hostility led to "stereotyped and distorted" portrayals of Islam in the news prompted by
events like the 1990 Gulf War against Iraq and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.77 Some Muslims felt
the worst discrimination emerged from entertainment media, which depicted Muslims as terrorists.178 Furthermore,
Muslims reported several incidents of hate crimes during 1996 and 1997: the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination
Committee reported twenty-two incidents of hate crimes, fifty-five cases of workplace discrimination, and twenty-

Islamophobia became
more prevalent following the 9/11 attacks. 180 In response to the attacks,
President Bush launched the "war on terror," which he described as a
crusade. 8' This characterization presented the issue in a religious light
and negatively portrayed Islam. 1 82 Muslims or those perceived as
Muslim, mainly Sikhs and South Asians, became scapegoats for 9/11
because people viewed this group as having a shared nationality or
religion with the hijackers and Al-Qaeda members. 183 This was very easy
to do since Muslims in America are generally structurally excluded , due to
two cases of discrimination relating to government agencies. 179 Nonetheless,

lack of representation in government, and are culturally viewed as

outsiders . 8 4 .Though Muslim-Americans, like many cultural groups in
the United States, faced discrimination since they settled in the United
States, 185 it was particularly true after 9/11 that a drastic increase in
hate crimes occurred.186 As Armardeep Singh wrote: What distinguishes a bias or
hate crime from others is not the act itself--e.g. murder or assault-but the
racial, ethnic, religious, gender, or sexual orientation animus that propels
its commission. While typically directed at a particular individual-often randomly chosen hate crimes are
motivated by anger toward an entire community distinguished by specific shared characteristics. While the bias
that motivates a hate crime may be unusual in its ferocity, it is rooted in a
wider public climate of discrimination, fear, and intolerance against
targeted communities, which may also be echoed in or enhanced by
public policy . 1 87

AT: Util
Traditional risk assessment strips us of our relations to others and
our dignitythis obscures how structural violence contributes to
large-scale destruction

OBrien 2kPhD, environmental scientist and activist (Mary, 2000, MIT Press,
Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative to Risk Assessment,
Gigapedia, p. xvii-xviii,)

This book is based on the understanding that it is not acceptable for

people to tell you that the harms to which they will subject you and the
world are safe or insignificant. You deserve to know good alternatives to
those harms, and you deserve to help decide which alternative will be
chosen. Underlying this book, however, is a less explicitly stated personal
belief, namely that we humans will never dredge up enough will to alter
our habitual, destructive ways of behaving toward each other and the
world unless we simultaneously employ information and emotion and a
sense of relationship to othersother species, other cultures, and other
generations. Using information while divorced from emotion and using
information while insulated from connection to a wide net of others are
how destruction of the Earth is being accomplished. Risk assessment of
narrow options is a classic example of using certain bits of information in
such a way as to exclude feeling and to artificially sever connections of
parts to the whole. Risk assessment rips you (and others) out of
connection to the rest of the world and reduces you (if you are even
considered at all in the risk assessment) to a number. You are then
consigned to damage or death or risk, depending on how your number
is shuffled around in models, assumptions, and formulas and during risk
management. Assessment of the pros and cons of a range of reasonable alternatives allows the
connections to remain. The cultural emotions connected to a given alternative, for instance, can be a pro or a con,
and may be both, depending on which sector of the community you inhabit. An advantage or a disadvantage of a

Risk assessment is one of

the major methods by which parts (corporations such as Monsanto or
Hyundai, private landowners, industrial nations) can act on their wants
at the expense of wholes (e.g., whole communities and countries, or the
seventh generation from now) without appearing to be doing so. Risk
assessment lets them appear simply scientific or rational as they
numerically estimate whether or how many deaths or what birth defects
will be caused, and ignore other regions of human experience that also
matter to people. Always, some groups of humans will be trying to
exercise their power at the expense of the whole. Decisions arrived at by
risk assessment can be homicidal, biocidal, and suicidal, but they are
made every day. Risk assessment is a premier process by which
illegitimate exercise of power is justified. The stakes of installing
alternatives to risk assessment, therefore, are the whole Earth (just as are
the stakes of fashioning democratic control over corporations, or of
given alternative can be social, religious, economic, scientific, or political.

requiring changes in behavior of those who have wreaked irreparable

damage). Installing alternatives assessment is one step in the struggle to
use information, feeling, and a sense of relationship to others to stop
socioenvironmental madness.

AT: Thayer
Thayer exaggerates and misinterprets scientific evidence
Busser 06 (Mark Busser, Master's Candidate Dept of Poli Sci York University, YCISS Working Paper No. 40 The
Evolution of Security: Revisiting the Human Nature Debate in International Relations, August 2006)

According to Thayer, the goal of evolutionary theory is to understand the ultimate

causes of behaviour, and because these causes are testable they provide a solid foundation for
a realist approach to the study of politics.32 This description oversimplifies the goals of
evolutionary science and conflates evolutionary theory writ large with the specific intentions
and goals of sociobiology, a controversial field . Furthermore, Thayer exaggerates the
scientific consensus about sociobiology within evolutionary studies, as Duncan Bell and Paul
MacDonald have noted.33 This is not a minor point, for while his argument seeks to unify the natural and
social sciences, Thayer has selectively chosen his scientific sources (both social and natural),
read them selectively, and turned a blind eye to alternative explanations and
interpretations. His article rests on two major claims, both underpinned by arguable sociobiological
evidence. The first argument Thayer puts forward is that natural selection favours egoistic
individuals over altruistic ones. Following evolutionary theory, he recalls that a member of a species is relatively
fit in biological terms if it is better able to survive and reproduce than other members of the same community or
species. For Thayer, this underscores the important concept of the survival of the fittest. He suggests that since
what is most important is relative, not absolute fitness, it is only logical to emphasize a competitive aspect to
evolution within groups.In a hostile environment where resources are scarce and thus survival precarious,
organisms typically satisfy their own physiological needs for food, shelter, and so on before assisting others.34
Thayer conveys a simple version of basic principles within evolutionary science, but delves into a scientific niche by

Thayer asserts that because

selfishness in genes increased fitness, the same sort of selfishness has spread to
behaviour patterns in modern animals, including humans.35 Shaw and Wong, for example, suggest that
incorporating Richard Dawkins controversial selfish gene theory.

altruism and nepotism can be explained through the concept of inclusive fitness, wherein natural selection favours
specific genes that cause individuals to act on behalf of their gene pool. The authors use complex mathematical
experiments to construct models of evolutionary humankind and explain its likely behaviours as individualistic

To prove
classical realisms theory of a natural human tendency towards domination, Thayer
points to the dominance hierarchies observed in many social animals. The ubiquity of
rational choices.The second argument in Thayers essay deals with domination and hierarchy.

hierarchical, alpha-male-dominated social orders suggests to Thayer that such a pattern of organization contributes
to fitness because the alternative is perpetual conflict over resources. Dominance hierarchies, he argues, avoid
conflict because weaker members submit resources to dominant members instead of engaging in costly conflicts.37
According to Edward O. Wilson, humans naturally evolve a mental framework for engaging in dominance
hierarchies. Human beings, Wilson suggests, Are absurdly easy to indoctrinate they seek it.38 Thayer suggests
that survival in a hostile world produces a fear of ostracism and a desire for the protection of a group, and argues
that conformity to a dominance hierarchy lowers conflict and keeps groups together. This, in turn, results in the

The broad goal of Thayers paper is to unite his two

arguments to demonstrate that universal biological impulses drive human beings
towards war. His argument revolves around the idea of an evolved human antipathy towards difference. Thayer
clash of opposing hierarchical societies.

suggests that xenophobia and ethnocentrism would have been helpful attributes to groups seeking to protect
limited resources, and concludes that given the contribution of xenophobia and ethnocentrism to fitness during
human evolution, ethnic conflict is likely to be a recurring social phenomenon. Therefore ethnic conflict, like war and
peace, is part of the fabric of international politics.39 While Thayer acknowledges that culture and religion can
dampen or exacerbate xenophobia and ethnocentrism, he still argues that these phenomena are an integral part of
an evolved biological human nature. In this he follows Edward O. Wilson, who has argued that war as we know it is
the evolutionary result of a phenomenon known as kin selection. This refers to the particular selective mechanism
whereby genetic relatives affect each others evolutionary fitness through interactions that make survival of the
relatives as well of the gene or trait encouraging such interactions more likely. According to Wilson, the continual
processes of kin selection have encouraged warlike behaviours because of various competitive advantages to
violent ethnocentrism.40 With this starting point, Thayer, Shaw and Wong attempt to explain a human propensity
for warfare in terms of central tendencies in aggression and lethal conflict, which [they] maintain have been
adapted to serve humans in hunter/gatherer groups for 99 percent of humanitys existence.41 To prove this claim,

Shaw and Wong attempt to formalize a cost-benefit analysis model supported by the concept of inclusive fitness.
Theoretical decisions are mapped out in terms of mathematical probabilities to show how aggressive tendencies
would lend individuals communities relative fitness and encourage such traits to be passed along. Responding

Bell and Paul MacDonald have expressed concern at the

intellectual functionalism inherent in sociobiological explanations , suggesting that too
often analysts choose a specific behaviour and read backwards into evolutionary
epochs in an attempt to rationalize explanations for that behaviour . These
arguments, Bell and MacDonald write, often fall into what Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould have
called adaptionism, or the attempt to understand all physiological and behavioural
traits of an organism as evolutionary adaptations.42 Arguments such as these are
hand-crafted by their makers, and tend to carry forward their assumptions and
biases. In an insightful article, Jason Edwards suggests that sociobiology and its successor,
evolutionary psychology, are fundamentally political because they frame their
major questions in terms of an assumed individualism . Edwards suggests that the main
question in both subfields is: given human nature, how is politics possible ?43 The
problem is that the givens of human nature are drawn backward from common
knowledges and truths about humans in society, and the game-theory experiments which
seek to prove them are often created with such assumptions in mind . These arguments
are seen by their critics as politicized from the very start. Sociobiology in particular has been widely
interpreted as a conservative politico-scientific tool because of these basic
assumptions, and because of the political writings of many sociobiologists.44 Because sociobiology
naturalizes certain behaviours like conflict, inequality and prejudice , Lewontin et al.
suggest that it sets the stage for legitimation of things as they are. 45 The danger inherent in
directly to Thayer, Duncan

arguments that incorporate sociobiological arguments into examinations of modern political life, the authors say, is

such arguments naturalize variable behaviours and support discriminatory

political structures. Even if certain behaviours are found to have a biological drives behind them,
dismissing those behaviours as natural precludes the possibility that human
actors can make choices and can avoid anti-social, violent, or undesirable
action.46 While the attempt to discover a geneticallydetermined human nature has usually been justified under
that

the argument that knowing humankinds basic genetic programming will help to solve the resulting social problems,

discourse about human nature seems to generate self-fulfilling prophesies

by putting limits on what is considered politically possible . While sociobiologists
tend to distance themselves from the naturalistic fallacy that what is is what should be, there is still a problem
with employing adaptionism to explain how existing political structures because conclusions tend to be drawn in

Too firm a
focus on sociobiological arguments about natural laws draws attention away from
humanitys potential for social and political solutions that can counteract and
mediate any inherent biological impulses, whatever they may be. A revived classical
realism based on biological arguments casts biology as destiny in a manner that
parallels the neo-realist sentiment that the international sphere is doomed to
everlasting anarchy. Jim George quotes the English School scholar Martin Wight as writing that hope is not
terms of conclusions that assert what must be because of biologicallyingrained constraints.47

a political virtue: it is a theological virtue.48 George questions the practical result of traditional realsist claims,
arguing that the suggestion that fallen mans sinful state can only be redeemed by a higher power puts limitations
on what is considered politically possible. Thayers argument rejects the religious version of the fallen man for a
scientific version, but similar problems remain with his scientific conclusions. (9-13)

AT: Booth
Booths emancipation essentializes politics and ignores theory
Waever 11 -- Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political
Science, University of Copenhagen, and director of Centre for Advanced Security
Theory (Ole, 10/21/2011, "Politics, security, theory," Security Dialogue 42(4-5),
Sage)

One version of the politics of theorizing argues that a particular theory should take a stance on various issues or
provide standards of judgement for specific cases. Within new security theories, this is a position most strongly

with critical security studies (Booth, 2005, 2007), where the aspiration is to
produce in terms of emancipation a standard for measuring various concrete policies and actions.
Such an approach is problematic for at least two reasons: First, it reduces politics to
associated

outcomes . It is an exercise in comparative statics. What can be judged

with the kinds of criteria proposed are aspirations, outcomes or states of being (is
this imagined or real society a good one?), whereas policies are always relational, their
efects and implications contingent on other actors and the overall
constellation of actors, and therefore not amenable to such types of assessment (Arendt,
1958); a policy is not good per se and for all times; the quality of a policy
depends on who else is involved, doing what (Arendt, 1968: 1138). Accordingly, the
Boothian approach can at best compare societies, but not political acts .
Second, with this approach,

theory becomes dependent on a prior political

programme. It is only after a vision of how to improve the human lot has been constructed that the political
stance of the theory is derived (for such a political programme a very attractive one, I might add see Booth,

the theorist acquires not the kind of politics

appropriate for and peculiar to academic theory but rather a political reflection
that really belongs to another kind of actor, a political party this approach does not
assess what theory does as theory, but how it relates to a political position.
2007: 1136, 395470). As a result,

AT: Cant apply strict scrutiny

You must weigh disparate impacts EVEN IF they were not the intent
of the policy
Figueroa 12 [Tiffani B. Figueroa, associate in Morrison Foersters Litigation
Department, J.D. magna cum laude from Hofstra University School of Law, "ALL
MUSLIMS ARE LIKE THAT": HOW ISLAMOPHOBIA IS DIMINISHING AMERICANS' RIGHT
TO RECEIVE INFORMATION, Hofstra Law Review, Winter 2012] alla
As

in the case of Islamophobia, it is easy to target a specific group because

some Americans automatically associated the 9/11 hijackers with all

Muslims and those perceived as Muslim. 3 1 Similarly, in the interest of
national security, the government at times partook in practices that
people may view as discriminatory. The government failed to protect the
free speech rights of Muslims as a targeted group, and these actions
subsequently harmed the right to receive information for Americans.
Although the government's purpose in enforcing the laws discussed in this
Note was not to close of Muslim ideas, the efects may show otherwise .352
Justice Antonin Scalia stated, "[t]he vice of content based legislation-what
renders it deserving of the high standard of strict scrutiny-is not that it is
always used for invidious, thought-control purposes, but that it lends
itself to use for those purposes . 353 "Unavoidable targeting" stemming
from a government regulation is included within this "vice of contentbased legislation." This phenomenon may shine light on what has occurred
following the 9/11 attacks. By employing an efects test in the First
Amendment analysis, courts will more efficiently investigate whether
there is viewpoint discrimination afecting the right to receive information
since the courts must first establish if a government action falls
disproportionately on a specific group.354

2AC Stuf

Definiton
Surveillance is government eforts to gather information about
people prefer its in context of the Af
Shahabuddin 2/16 cites Cristopher Slobogin, PhD and law professor at the
University of Florida (Madiha; February 16, 2015; The More Muslim You Are, the
More Trouble You Can Be: How Government Surveillance of Muslim Americans2
Violates First Amendment Rights;
https://www.chapman.edu/law/_files/publications/clr-18-shahabuddin.pdf)//CC
Professor Christopher Slobogin defines surveillance as government eforts to
gather information about people from a distance, usually covertly and
without entry into private spaces. 21 Surveillance as a general phenomenon is then
broken down into three categories: 1) communications surveillance, which is
the real-time interception of communications; 2) physical surveillance, which is the real-time
observation of physical activities; and 3) transaction surveillance, which is the accessing [of]
recorded information about communications, activities, and other transactions. 22 According to
Slobogin, since 9/11, the United States government has been obsessed, as
perhaps it should be, with ferreting out national security threats , but more than
occasionally it has also visited significant intrusion on large numbers of
law-abiding citizens sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not. 23 Within the context of
national security, intelligence gathering24 of pattern occurrences in
neighborhoods and communities is intended to analyze broad or
meaningful trends as a means of assessing the validity and likelihood of a national
security threat.25

Counterplans

Top level

AT: Process CP
Focusing on process rather than the content of our af creates
necessarily exclusionary and authoritarian politics
Kulynych 97 (Kulynych, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Winthrop University, 1997 [Jessica,
Performing Politics," Polity, Winter, v.XXX, n.2, p. 315-330)

Political scientists have traditionally understood political

participation as an activity that assures individual influence over the
political system, protection of private interests, system legitimacy, and perhaps even self-development.
II. Disciplining Habermas

Habermas and Foucault describe the impact of the conditions of postmodernity on the possibility for efficacious
political action in remarkably similar ways. Habermas describes a world where the possibilities for efficacious
political action are quite limited. The escalating interdependence of state and economy, the expansive increase in

the increasingly technical nature of political decisionmaking,

and the subsequent colonization of a formerly sacred private sphere by a
ubiquitous administrative state render traditional modes of political
participation unable to provide influence, privacy, legitimacy, and self-development.' As the
bureaucratization,

state is forced to take an ever larger role in directing a complex global, capitalist, welfare state economy, the scope
of administration inevitably grows. In order to fulfill its function as the manager of the economy, the administrative
state must also manage the details of our lives formerly considered private. Yet, as the state's role in our "private"
lives continues to grow, the public has become less and less interested in government, focusing instead on personal
and social mores, leisure, and consumption. Ironically, we have become less interested in politics at precisely the
same moment when our lives are becoming increasingly "politicized" and administered. This siege of private life
and the complicity of this ideology of "civil privatism" in the functioning of the modern administrative state makes a
mockery of the idea that there exist private interests that can be protected from state intervention.4 Correlatively,
the technical and instrumental rationality of modem policymaking significantly lessens the possibility for public

is exacerbated by the
added complexity of a political system structured by hierarchical gender
and racial norms. Nancy Fraser uses Habermas's analysis of the contemporary situation to demonstrate
how the infusion of these hierarchical gender and racial norms into the functioning
of the state and economy ensures that political channels of
communication between citizens and the state are unequally structured
and therefore cannot function as mechanisms for the equal protection of
interests.' Accordingly, theorists are much less optimistic about the
possibilities for citizens to acquire or develop feelings of autonomy
and efficacy from the attempt to communicate interests to a system
that is essentially impervious to citizen interests, eschews discussion of
influence on state policy.5 The difficulty of participation in Habermas's world

long-term goals, and requires exclusively technical and

instrumental debate . Similarly, Foucault's complex genealogical descriptions of disciplinary power
networks challenge the traditional assumption that political power is located primarily in the formal apparatus of
the state. The traditional understanding of political participation tells us nothing about what types of political action
are appropriate in a world where power is typically and predominantly disciplinary, productive, and normalizing. As
long as we define the purpose of participation only in terms of influence, privacy, legitimacy, and self-development,
we will be unable to see how political action can be effective in the contemporary world. While separately both
Habermas and Foucault challenge the traditional understanding of participation, their combined insights further and
irrevocably extend that challenge. Theoretical focus on the distinctions between Habermas and Foucault has all too
often obscured important parallels between these two theorists. Specifically, the HabermasFoucault debate has
underemphasized the extent to which Habermas also describes a disciplinary society. In his descriptions of
bureaucracy, technocracy, and system colonization, Habermas is also describing a world where power is productive
and dispersed and where political action is constrained and normalized. Habermas, like Foucault, describes a type
of power that cannot be adequately characterized in terms of the intentions of those who possess it. Colonization is

not the result of conscious intention, but is rather the unintended consequence of a multitude of small adjustments.
The gender and racial subtexts infusing the system are not the results of conscious intention, but rather of implicit
gender and racial norms and expectations infecting the economy and the state. Bureaucratic power is not a power
that is possessed by any individual or agency, but exists in the exercise of decisionmaking. As Iris Young points out,
we must "analyze the exercise of power [in contemporary societies] as the effect of often liberal and humane
practices of education, bureaucratic administration, production and distribution of consumer goods, medicine and
so on."' The very practices that Habermas chronicles are exemplary of a power that has no definitive subject. As
Young explains, "the conscious actions of many individuals daily contribute to maintaining and reproducing
oppression, but those people are simply doing their jobs or living their lives, and do not understand themselves as
agents of oppression."" Colonization and bureaucratization also fit the pattern of a power that is not primarily
repressive but productive. Disciplinary technologies are, as Sawicki describes, not ... repressive mechanisms ...
[that] operate primarily through violence ... or seizure ... but rather [they operate] by producing new objects and
subjects of knowledge, by inciting and channeling desires, generating and focusing individual and group energies,
and establishing bodily norms and techniques for observing, monitoring and controlling bodily movements,
processes, and capacities. The very practices of administration, distribution, and decisionmaking on which
Habermas focuses his attention can and must be analyzed as productive disciplinary practices. Although these
practices can clearly be repressive, their most insidious effects are productive. Rather than simply holding people
back, bureaucratization breaks up, categorizes, and systemizes projects and people. It creates new categories of
knowledge and expertise. Bureaucratization and colonization also create new subjects as the objects of
bureaucratic expertise. The social welfare client and the consumer citizen are the creation of bureaucratic power,
not merely its target. The extension of lifeworld gender norms into the system creates the possibility for sexual
harassment, job segregation, parental leave, and consensual corporate decisionmaking. Created as a part of these
subjectivities are new gestures and norms of bodily behavior, such as the embarrassed shuffling of food stamps at
the grocery checkout and the demeaning sexual reference at the office copier. Bodily movements are monitored
and regularized by means of political opinion polls, welfare lists, sexual harassment protocols, flex-time work
schedules, and so forth. Modern disciplinary power, as described by Foucault and implied by Habermas, does not
merely prevent us from developing, but creates us differently as the effect of its functioning. These disciplinary
techniques not only control us, but also enable us to be more efficient and more productive, and often more
powerful. Focusing on the disciplinary elements of the Habermasian critique opens the door for exploring the
postmodern character of Habermasian politics. Because Habermas does describe a disciplinary world, his
prescription for contemporary democracy (discursive politics) ought to be sensitive to, and appropriate for, a
disciplinary world. Foucault's sensitivity to the workings of disciplinary power is central to the articulation of a
plausible, postmodern version of discursive politics. In the following discussion I will argue for a performative
redefinition of participation that will reinvigorate the micro-politics demanded by Foucault, as well as provide a
more nuanced version of the discursive politics demanded by Habermas. III. Habermas and Discursive Participation
Habermas regards a public sphere of rational debate as the only possible foundation for democratic politics in the
contemporary world. For Habermas, like Schumpeter, democracy is a method. Democracies are systems that
achieve the formation of public opi nion and public will through a correct process of public communication, and
then "translate" that communicative power into administrative power via the procedurally regulated public spheres
of parliaments and the judiciary. The extent to which this translation occurs is the measure of a healthy
constitutional democracy. Thus, the "political public sphere" is the "fundamental concept of a theory of democracy."
In this discursive definition of democracy, political participation takes on a new character. Participation equals
discursive participation; it is communication governed by rational, communicatively achieved argument and
negotiation. Habermas distinguishes two types of discursive participation: problem-solving or decision-oriented
deliberation, which takes place primarily in formal democratic institutions such as parliaments and is regulated or
governed by democratic procedures; and informal opinion-formation, which is opinion-formation "uncoupled from
decisions ... [and] effected in an open and inclusive network of overlapping, subcultural publics having fluid
temporal, social and substantive boundaries."" In many ways this two-tiered description of discursive participation
is a radically different understanding of political participation, and one better suited to the sort of societies we
currently inhabit. Habermas moves the focus of participation away from policymaking and toward redefining
legitimate democratic processes that serve as the necessary background for subsequent policymaking. While only a
limited number of specially trained individuals can reasonably engage in decisionmaking participation, the entire
populous can and must participate in the informal deliberation that takes place outside of, or uncoupled from,
formal decisionmaking structures. This informal participation is primarily about generating "public discourses that
uncover topics of relevance to all of society, interpret values, contribute to the resolution of problems, generate
good reasons, and debunk bad ones."" Informal participation has two main functions. First, it acts as a "warning
system with sensors that, though unspecialized, are sensitive throughout society."" This system communicates
problems "that must be processed by the political system."" Habermas labels this the "signal" function. Second,
informal participation must not only indicate when problems need to be addressed, it must also provide an
"effective problematization" of those issues; As Habermas argues, from the perspective of democratic theory, the
public sphere must, in addition, amplify the pressure of problems, that is, not only detect and identify problems but
also convincingly and influentially thematize them, furnish them with possible solutions, and dramatize them in
such a way that they are taken up and dealt with by parliamentary complexes." Informal participation is crucial
because it is the source of both legitimacy and innovation in formal decisionmaking. As long as decisionmaking is

open to the influence of informal opinion-formation, then state policies are legitimate because they are grounded in
free and equal communication that meets the democratic requirement of equal participation. Informal participation
originating in the public sphere is also the resource for innovative descriptions and presentations of interests,
preferences, and issues. If they ignore informal participation, state decisionmakers have no connection to the
center of democracy: the political public sphere. Habermas's description of discursive participation is also novel and
effective due to its broad construal of the participatory act. Participation is defined very broadly because the
concept of the public sphere remains quite abstract. The public sphere is a "linguistically constituted public space."
16 It is neither an institution nor an organization. Rather, it is a "network for communicating information and points
of view [which are] ... filtered and synthesized in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified
public opinions." ''' Public spheres are defined not by a physical presence but rather by a "communication
structure." According to Habermas, "the more they detach themselves from the public's physical presence and
extend to the virtual presence of scattered readers, listeners, or viewers linked by public media, the clearer
becomes the abstraction that enters when the spatial structure of simple interactions is expanded into a public
sphere." 'I In other words, actually being present in a "concrete locale" is unnecessary for the existence of a public
sphere, and hence unnecessary for active participation. Participation is not limited to large, organized discussions in
formal settings; it also includes "simple and episodic encounters" in which actors "reciprocally [attribute]
communicative freedom to each other."19 This abstraction makes participation easier and extremely inclusive. As
Habermas describes, "every encounter in which actors do not just observe each other but take a second-person
attitude, reciprocally attributing communicative freedom to each other, unfolds in a linguistically constituted public
space." 20 Thus, the concerns that political scientists have had about unequal resource distribution and its effect on
one's capability to act are mitigated in Habermas's broad definition of discursive participation. Even though limited
resources may prevent active interventions in decisionmaking and policymaking processes, for Habermas the
"communicative structures of the public sphere relieve the public of the burden of decision-making."" In a similar
vein, Habermas does not limit participation to a specific set of activities, but defines it procedurally or contextually.
Participation is not limited to traditional activities such as voting, campaigning, or letter-writing, but is instead
designated by the discursive quality of the activity. In other words, it is not the intent to influence policy that
defines participation, but rather the communication structure in which the activity takes place. That communication
structure must be equitable and inclusive, social problems must be openly and rationally deliberated, and they
must be thematized by people potentially affected. However, Habermas's discursive formulation is inadequate
primarily because it does not explicitly and rigorously attend to the disciplinary effects of contemporary societies
explained so creatively by Foucault. Habermas has been routinely criticized for ignoring the productive nature of
contemporary power. His juxtaposition of system and lifeworld in The Theory of Communicative Action relies on a
separation of good power from bad (communicative power v. steering media), and posits an ideal speech situation
freed from the distortions of power." More importantly, Habermas's theorization of discursive participation is
exceedingly abstract and does not adequately attend to the ways in which power informs discourse. A number of

women and men do not stand in equal

relationship to language. For example, Linda Zerilli argues that discursive space is a
"fraternal community of unique and symbolic dimensions."23 Women utilize language in
this discursive world "whose `common' and symbolic language ... enables
one user to understand what another is saying; just as it compels each
speaker to constrain [themselves] within the limits of an existing political
theorists have effectively argued that

vocabulary ."24 In this case the content of speech is systematically limited in

direct violation of the required conditions for the ideal speech situation . The
foundations of communication are not the ideal equal relationships that Habermas imagines,
but are instead an exclusive, learned, and gendered, symbolic heritage. As Carole
Pateman points out, women enter into public discussion on a very tenuous plane. The symbolic heritage
that defines the meaning of key communicative concepts such
as consent systematically excludes women from the category of
individuals capable of consenting. 11 The mere existence of a debate over whether "no means
no" with regard to consensual sexual relations and rape is a manifestation of this heritage. Women can hardly be
seen as equal participants when they do not have the same opportunity to express their intent. Certainly, one might
suggest that the above cases are really just failures of speech, and, therefore, not a critique of ideal speech as it is
formulated by Habermas. Indeed Seyla Benhabib reformulates Habermas's speech act perspective to make it
sensitive to the above critique. She argues that feminists concerned with the discourse model of democracy have
often confused the historically biased practices of deliberative assemblies with the normative ideal of rational
deliberation." She suggests that feminists concerned with inequities and imbalances in communication can actually
benefit from the Habermasian requirement that all positions and issues be made " `public' in the sense of making

[them] accessible to debate, reflection, action and moral-political transformation."" The "radical proceduralism of
the discourse model makes it ideally suited to identify inequities in communication because it precludes our

Even such a sophisticated and

sensitive approach to ideal speech as Benhabib's cannot cleanse communicative action
of its exclusivity. It is not only that acquiring language is a process of
mastering a symbolic heritage that is systematically gendered, but the
accepting unexamined and unjustified positions."

entire attempt to set conditions for "ideal speech" is inevitably

exclusive. The model

of an ideal speech situation

establishes a norm of rational

interaction that is defined by the very types of interaction it excludes . The

norm of rational debate favors critical argument and reasoned debate
over other forms of communication.29 Defining ideal speech
inevitably entails defining unacceptable speech. What has been defined
as unacceptable in Habermas's formulation is any speech that is not intended to
convey an idea. Speech evocative of identity, culture, or emotion has no necessary place in the ideal
speech situation, and hence persons whose speech is richly colored with rhetoric, gesture, humor, spirit, or

a definition of
citizenship based on participation in an ideal form of interaction can
affectation could be defined as deviant or immature communicators. Therefore,

easily become a tool for the exclusion of deviant communicators from the
category of citizens. This sort of normalization creates citizens as subjects of
rational debate. Correlatively, as Fraser explains, because the communicative
action approach is procedural it is particularly unsuited to address issues
of speech content." Therefore, by definition, it misses the relationship
between procedure and content that is at the core of feminist and
deconstructive critiques of language. A procedural approach can require
that we accommodate all utterances and that we not marginalize speaking
subjects. It cannot require that we take seriously or be convinced by the
statements of such interlocutors. In other words, a procedural approach does
not address the cultural context that makes some statements convincing
and others not . I would suggest that Habermas recognizes this problem, but has yet to explicitly theorize
it. As I noted above, Habermas requires that informal discursive participation not only identify problems but also
"convincingly and influentially thematize them." A thematization is legitimate, Habermas argues, only when it
stems from a communicative process that "develops out of communication taking place among those who are
potentially affected."" Thus, the extent to which a position is convincing seems to rely primarily on whether the
affected parties have had a say in its articulation (a procedural requirement). What Habermas does not explicitly
recognize is that whether a problem is convincingly thematized is not just a matter of utilizing corect procedure.

Neurotically reacting to assert control in the face of the unknown

strives for the impossibility of perfect order through ever more
insidious systems of control this impulse is at the heart of fascism
and denies the beautiful mysteries of existence
Gordon 2003 (Kerry, PhD psychology of philosophy and director of a research center on chaos/uncertainty,
The Impermanence of Being: Toward A Psychology Of Uncertainty Journal of Humanistic Psychology; 43; 96)

I have a recurring dream: I am lost at sea. Murderous waves crash down, a gale howls. Barely able
to stay afloat, I thrash about, panic-stricken. Without direction, I have no idea how to get
to safety. The feeling is utter chaos. Desperate, Im bailing like a madman,
trying to empty the ocean with a bucket. I am, as Alice would say, running twice as hard as I
can to stay exactly where I am. Through my confusion and despair, I hear whispered words, Lord help me for my
boat is so small and your sea is so immense. This is the point when I inevitably wake up. Naturally, I am
greatly relieved that it has only been a dream, until it dawns on me that theres not much difference between my

Making my way through the day, I am indeed overwhelmed

by a sea of detail that I cant ever seem to get a handle onfamily, finances, health,
dreaming and waking life.

joball the variables of my life rushing toward me in flood of chaotic uncertainty. This is not my beautiful life.

Where are the security and order that was promised me? All my carefully
constructed truths, everything I have counted on and identified with,
seems suddenly false or lost or changing. And when I pick up the morning newspaper, theres
more. Not only my life but the whole world seems to be deconstructing. Im back in
my dreamdrowning in a sea of uncertainty. Having practiced for many years as a
psychotherapist, I have good reason to believe that I am not alone in my anxiety; it is common to a great majority
of those of us living in the modern industrialized world. In Care of the Soul, one of the most widely read books of the
past decade, psychologist Thomas Moore (1992) lists emptiness, a loss of core values, and the general malaise of
meaninglessness as hallmarks of our culture. It is hard to deny Moores assertion. Only pick up a copy of Time

Everywhere we look, images of discord and dissent

remind us that the political, economic, and social structures we once held
as inviolable are rapidly eroding. Our typical response to chaos is an
instinctual drive to impose order and regain control. Our fear of uncertainty often
impels us toward irrational and sometimes bizarre behavior. As in my dream where I am trying
to empty the ocean with a bucket, such neurotic activity does little to
assuage our anxiety and may even serve to increase it. And neither should we
imagine that only individuals can be affected in this way. Stalinism, Nazism, McCarthyism, and
fundamentalism of all stripes are examples of the kind of irratio nality of
which institutions and governments are capable in the name of order. Rollo
magazine or turn on the TV.

May (1977) stated that totalitarianism may be viewed as serving a purpose on a cultural scale parallel to that in
which a neurotic symptom protects an individual from a situation of unbearable anxiety (p. 12). His further

in the desperate need for relief from

anxiety (May, 1977, p. 12) suggests that perhaps, in the end, it is precisely our resistance to
chaos and uncertainty and our almost pathological need to impose order
where there may, in fact, be none at all, that is the cause of so much of our
dis-ease. I am reminded of the words of systems theorist Kenneth Boulding, who warned that we always
run into the temptation of imposing an order on the universe which may
not really be there (Stamps, 1980, p. i).
statement that people grasp at political authoritarianism

The case is a disad their focus on process destroys the product

Oenen 06 (Gijs van Oenen is senior lecturer in practical philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Erasmus
University Rotterdam, Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam in 1994. Next to the Erasmus University, he has been
affiliated with the University of Amsterdam, Webster University Leiden, and the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture
and Urban Design. A Machine That Would Go of Itself: Interpassivity and Its Impact on Political LIfe Gijs Van Oenen.
Theory & Event. Baltimore: 2006. Vol. 9, Iss. 2;1 pgs 40)
32. These employees thus had become more flexible and more passive at the same time. Their flexibility enabled

they had lost touch with

any particular product they happened to create. While the employees fitted the system of
production better than ever before, they were more than ever detached from the
them to manufacture many different kinds of products, but simultaneously

product that this system was meant to realize in the first place . Here we see
the quintessential movement expressed by the concept of interpassivity : an
increased amount of 'interactivity', that is to say, an optimized interaction between human and system functions in
the production process, is accompanied by a loss of involvement and interest in the product itself. 33.

This

understanding of interpassivity differs from, but accords well with the views espoused by Zizek
and Pfaller. For instance, it fits Zizek's observation of the loss of 'substance ': series of
products are nowadays deprived of their 'malignant properties', that is to say of their substance,
the hard resistant kernel of the Real: cofee without cofeine, cream
without fat, beer without alcohol, politics as expert administration, that is,
without politics.15 My account also confirms Pfallers and Zizeks thesis that interpassivity implies an
increase in activity. In interpassive 'mode' we do indeed exhibit increased activity ,
but this activity expresses a shift of involvement , or 'interest', from product to
process. In its radical form, interpassivity even implies that the product is
being replaced (we might say 'negated') by the process. The product, once the original goal
and purpose of the process, has become superfluous; it is no longer especially
needed or valued. What is valued, on the contrary, is the ability to be involved in the
production process. 34. The whole notion of 'involvement', however, has itself been affected by this
development. The commitment has become procedural rather than substantial .
To a certain extent, this is inherent in the flexibility they are expected to exhibit. Skills are no longer connected to
specific products; the most important skill of modern workers is the ability to 'interact', or be interactive', in a
variety of different processes. 35. Let me summarize my theses concerning the way interpassivity affects our

we do not much care (anymore) about

the end result of the productive process we are involved in. We just do not
get around to consummating the product of our involvement . Second, and more
precisely, our activity and our 'interest' shifts towards the earlier or preceding
phases of the process. Our passivity concerning the product is compensated for by our increased
contemporary lives, in the sphere of labor. 36. First,

(inter-)activity in the process of production. Third, the process of interactivity itself suffices; the reception and
appreciation of the product is taken over, or preempted, by the process of production, or 'provision'.

AT: FISC CP

2AC
CP doesnt solve the af but strict scrutiny means that FISC cant
circumvent the af
Greenwald and Hussain 14 (Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Greenwald is a former Constitutional and
civil rights litigator and is the author of three New York Times Bestselling books: two on the Bush administration's
executive power and foreign policy abuses, and his latest book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, an indictment of
America's two-tiered system of justice. Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential
political commentators in the nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent
Journalism, and is the winner of the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the
arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Mannin, Murtaza Hussain, Journalist @ the intercept MEET THE MUSLIMAMERICAN LEADERS THE FBI AND NSA HAVE BEEN SPYING ON, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/undersurveillance/, 2014, SMahajan)

The FISA process was enacted in 1978 in response to disclosures that J. Edgar
Hoover and a long line of presidents from both parties had used U.S. intelligence
agencies to spy on dissidents and political enemies. Intended to allow
authorities to covertly investigate suspected spies or terrorists on U.S. soil, the
surveillance is often used simply to gather intelligence , not to build a criminal case.
The law was revised in 2008in part to place limits on the controversial
program of warrantless wiretaps initiated by George W. Bush after 9/11, and in part to
legalize the programs warrantless eavesdropping on Americans when
they speak with foreign surveillance targets. Under current law, the NSA may
directly target a U.S. person (an American citizen or legal permanent resident) for
electronic surveillance only with a warrant approved by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court. Because the FISC operates in complete
secrecyonly the Justice Department and the FBI are permitted to attend
its proceedings on domestic surveillanceit is impossible to assess how
the court applies the standard of probable cause in cases of suspected
terrorism or espionage. But its rulings are notoriously one-sided: In its 35year history, the court has approved 35,434 government requests for
surveillance, while rejecting only 12. Law enforcement officials familiar with the FISA process
told The Intercept that the FISCs high approval rate is the result of a thorough vetting process that weeds out weak
applications before they reach the court. The system, they added, seeks to balance what they consider to be the
essential role of surveillance in protecting national security with the civil liberties of potential targets. The NSA
issued a statement that reads in part: No U.S. person can be the subject of FISA surveillance based solely on First
Amendment activities, such as staging public rallies, organizing campaigns, writing critical essays, or expressing

legal experts have long expressed concern that the

secretive nature of the FISA process makes it impossible to know what
level of evidence is actually used to authorize surveillance, precisely what it means
to be an agent of a foreign power, or whether there is any efective oversight to
protect civil liberties. We have very little idea what this probable cause
standard means in individual FISA cases, says Patrick Toomey, a staff attorney for the
National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. No FISA application or order has
ever been publicly disclosed, even to a criminal defendant or his lawyer in
cases where the government later brings charges based on that FISA
surveillance. A former Justice Department official involved in FISA policy in the Obama Administration says
personal beliefs. But

the process contains too many internal checks and balances to serve as a rubber stamp on surveillance of
Americans. But the former official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about FISA matters,

there are significant problems with the process. Having no one

present in court to contest the secret allegations can be an invitation to
acknowledges that

overreach. There are serious weaknesses, the former official says. The lack of transparency and adversarial
processthats a problem. Indeed, the governments ability to monitor such high-profile
Muslim-Americanswith or without warrantssuggests that the most
alarming and invasive aspects of the NSAs surveillance occur not
because the agency breaks the law, but because it is able to exploit the
laws permissive contours . The scandal is what Congress has made legal, says Jameel Jaffer, an
ACLU deputy legal director. The

claim that the intelligence agencies are complying

with the laws is just a distraction from more urgent questions relating to
the breadth of the laws themselves .

Top Level

Framework
Our advocacy is important in this space---interrogating
Islamophobia in educational settings establishes a critical
consciousness that enables larger political projects
Housee 12 (Shirin Housee, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Jan. 4, works at the School of Humanities,
Languages and Social Sciences, University of Wolverhampton, UK Whats the point? Anti-racism and students
voices against Islamophobia, Volume 15, Issue 1)

Having reflected on the two seminar sessions on Islamophobia and the student
comments, I am convinced that the work of anti-racism in university classrooms is
fundamentally important . As one student said racism is real. Through racism people
sufer physically, psychologically, socially, educationally and politically.
Our work in university classrooms is just the beginning of this challenge
against racisms and other oppressions. Classroom discussions and general
teaching form a very important contribution to this work of anti racism in
education. There are no short cuts or painless cuts; the work of anti-racism is a difficult
one. As educators we should make use of classroom exchanges; students
engaged learning could be the key to promoting anti-racism in our class. My goal is
to teach in a way that engages students and leads them to reflect on the socio-economic political/religions issues
that surrounds theirs (our) lives. This article argues for making anti-racist thinking possible in class.

The

student voice, that critiques mainstream thinking as found in the media

and elsewhere, is a starting point for this political work. I argue that teaching
and learning in our classroom should encourage the critical consciousness
necessary for pursuing social justice . Whilst I acknowledge the limits of
doing anti-racist campaign in university spaces, I argue that this is a good
starting point . And who knows, these educational exchanges may become (as with
my own story)

the awakening for bigger political projects against injustices in

our society . In conclusion I endorse social justice advocates, such as Cunningham

(cited in Johnson-Bailey 2002, 43) who suggest that educators re-direct classroom
practices and the curriculum, because: if we are not working for equity in our
teaching and learning environments, theneducators are inadvertently
maintaining the status quo . In conclusion I argue that a classroom where critical
race exchanges and dialogues take place is a classroom where students
and teachers can be transformed. Transformative social justice education
calls on people to develop social, political and personal awareness of the
damages of racism and other oppressions. I end by suggesting that in the current
times of Islamophobic racism, when racist attacks are a daily occurrence ,
in August and September 2010 alone,

physically attacked
therefore,

nearly 30 people have been racially abused and

(Institute of Race Relations 2010).

The point of studying racism,

is to rise to the anti-racist challenge , and for me, a place to start this

campaign is within Higher Education Institutions , optimistic as it might sound, I believe,

as asserted by Sheridan (cited in Van Driel 2004) that: Education can enlighten students and
promote positive attitudes. Education settings can be the first arena in
which battles can be fought against Islamophobia. It is to education that
our attention should be directed . (162)

Chow

2AC Frontline
Just because we cant know what it feels like to be the other doesnt
mean we cant understand the experiences of the other

Simpson 01 (Lorenzo Charles- Professor of philosophy at the State University of

New Work; 2001; The Unfinished Project: Toward a Postmetaphysical Humanism;
105; https://books.google.com/books?
id=a9G7VOKNTlQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=young&f=false)
Young, therefore, illegitimately conflates the quite reasonable claim that "I
cannot know what it feels like to be you" with the claim that "I cannot
understand you." She seems to interpret understanding to refer to the idea of empathic understanding or
empathic identification, ideas that Hans-Georg Gadamer so trenchantly criticized Wilhelm Dilthey and Friedrich

to under-stand another is not

necessarily to "feel with" that other, but rather to understand the
descriptions under which she places actions, events, and situations. My
understanding of the other is linguistically enabled. The diference of
diferent life histories is what we attempt to bridge by the back and forth
of hermeneutic dialogue, which is always open to revision and on the
lookout for premature closure. In addition to conflating empathic identification with understanding,
Schlcicrmacher for promoting. As I have maintained,

much of Young's argument here is predicated upon the view that advo-cates of symmetry and reciprocity think that
imagining oneself in the position of others is sufficient.17 But this is, of course, precisely what motivated Habermas,
for example, to dialogize Kantian ethics. If the other is not talking back, what else can I do but project?

The 1AC is necessary to provide a counterhegemonic perspective on

islamophobia understanding the historical instance of social
violence is necessary to confront distancing from communities out
there as well as understand our own privileges in this space we
are a necessary starting point for resistance
Clark 07 (Clark N, 2007 Living through the tsunami: vulnerability and generosity
on a volatile earth Geoforum 38 11271139)
In the process of excavating overlooked convergences of physical and social forces, Davis (2001) also opens a
window on human suffering of almost unspeakable scales and intensities.

Sufering we might say,

that can and should be made more visible, but which nonetheless defies
comprehension. And it is in this regard that, without necessarily
returning to a deterministic or transparent model of the social, we might
revisit the notion of a generative but enigmatic opening of selves: one
that happens upstream of the emergence of discernible socio-cultural
identities and structures. Levinass English translator, Alphonso Lingis, an innovative theorist of
corporeal existence in his own right, has sought to merge the idea a constitutive vulnerability and receptivity to
other beings with an ontology of carnal openness to an excessive materiality. In a fertile fusion of ideas from

human beings acquiring their sensibilities and

dispositions not only from other people and other life-forms but also from
their encounters with a geophysical otherness. Emotions, he muses (2000, p. 18): get
Levinas and Bataille, Lingis has

their force from the outside, from the swirling winds over the rotating planet, the troubled ocean currents, the
clouds hovering over depths of empty outer space, the continental plates shifting and creaking EVectively, Lingis

Levinass epiphany of the shimmer of

infinity glimpsed in the face of the other, in favour of more earthy
excesses. We face each other, he announces, as condensations of earth,
light, air, and warmth1 (1994, p. 122). His is a vision of geomorphological processes, elemental
reactions and cosmic energies not as the arche or substrate of identity but as active, ongoing forces
of diferentiation: a perspective which appears to be less a smuggling
back in of environmental determinism than an abyssal opening of alterity
into a groundless materiality (see Kearnes, 2003). Or what we might see as Derridas (1981, pp.
sheds the residual religious overtones from

333334) sense of the: bottomless, endless connections andthe indeWnitely articulated regress of the beginning
pushed to its logical outcome. And just as the generosities of intercorporeality keep their secrets, their
incalculable remainder, so too would it seem that the gifts of materiality retain their enigma, their elemental

it might be said
that when a you and an I face each over the insuperable divide of the
tsunami or any other disaster, large or small we not only enact
something entirely novel, we also each bring with us the residue of our
past calamities. We are the storms we have weathered, the quaking of the
earth we have ridden out, the infections we have stomached. We are an
immensity of small sedimentary changes, punctuated by episodes of upheaval. And we are also the
bodying forth of all the guidance and help that has allowed us to live
through the tsunami, droughts, fires and hurricanes of our past,
generosities that may have enabled some of us to live on at the expense
obscurity (Diprose, 2002, p. 54; Iyer, 2002, p. 10). Taking our cues from Lingis, then,

of others.

It is not simply that these traces may be too deeply buried to unearth, too snarled to tease out

and untangle. It is also that they are as much about what is not there, what will never be, as they are about truths
hidden within.

Who we are, what we have become, the relations that have

shaped us, are haunted by absences, by the non-relation we have with all
those others who could not be-together with us: the ones who did not survive or never
had a chance to be born, the communities that were extinguished, the evolutionary lineages that Xickered out.
This is the past that was never present: the past (that) once was its future possibles, not those that can be
realized but those that could have been realized (Wyschogrod, 1998, p. 173).

Reading and responding to particular stories to engender a sense of

compassion avoiding paternalism and making long-term efective
policies.
Porter 2006 (Elisabeth, head of the School of International Studies at the
University of South Australia, Can Politics Practice Compassion? hypatia 21:4,
project muse)
Second, to be attentive requires a careful, sensitive listening to sufferers' voices in order to discern their needs .

Listening assumes a willingness to accept that others' stories affect one's life. In our
rapid-paced world, the art of listening, hearing, and attending to each other has
diminished; it is an art that needs to be restored. We should never assume we know
people's needs without listening to their stories . Arendt wrote strongly, "Compassion speaks only
to the extent that it has to reply directly to the sheer expressionist sound and gestures through which suffering
becomes audible and visible" (1973, 86). However, she suggested that the cry of suffering requires swift, direct
action, so political processes of persuasion, negotiation, and compromises are inappropriate. I disagree with Arendt

All those working in refugee rights, whether in advocacy groups, political parties, law reform, NGOs, or the
United Nations, adopt political processes of debate and persuasion in order to respond
here.

perceptively to peoples' stories about their needs . Listening involves a willingness to be

attentive. It does not presuppose empathy, but it does require us to be open to "the possibility that what we hear

Truth is often hard to digest. In conflict

societies, "the importance of sharing stories about pain and fear is a crucial starting
point to building trust between adversaries as 'both sides' come to realize that there
is common ground in the shared nature of pain and suffering and the desire for
reconciliation" (Porter 2003a, 262). Those who commit acts of terror, or, as asylum seekers, put themselves at
will require change from us" (Bickford 1996, 149).

the mercy of unseaworthy vessels, or self-harm as detainees, often despair deeply of being heard without resorting
to desperate measures or horrific acts. Within multicultural democracies, there is a responsibility to listen and to

The duty to listen includes being exposed to "unsavoury views like religious
beliefs we disagree with, cultural practices we do not understand, and stories of
torture and suffering that are painful to absorb. The duty to respond includes replies
to uncomfortable findings like the Amnesty International Human Rights' criticism of Australia's detention,
respond.

particularly of children" (Porter 2003b, 14).28 Refugee advocacy groups have ongoing contact with asylum seekers
and engage in regular dialogue with government departments. These groups demonstrate capacities for empathy,

Without compassionate listening

there can be little understanding of others' needs. I include here the indirect
"listening" that occurs when we are trying to understand the plight of those with
whom we do not have personal contact, but about whom we read books and
articles, scour the internet for information, network in coalitions and at conferences,
and exchange emails in order to hear different voices. Many women's coalitions and
peace builders rely on this compassionate listening in order to build trust. Thinking
concretely about peoples' differing needs and questioning how they may be met
introduces questions of value into the broad international context. "Questioning who is and
listening, and tolerance, which facilitate democratic persuasion.29

who is not cared for in the world will force us to explore the role of social relations and structural constraints in

Thus dialogue with

sufferers, or, where access is denied, their representatives or advocates, is crucial in order
to decide, given our many differences, what a compassionate response might be,
and, perhaps more important, how to procure the necessary resources to respond
adequately. For example, a central issue in international ethics is humanitarian intervention and the question of
determining who can and cannot lead a dignified and fulfilled life" (Robinson 1999, 31).

when the UN Security Council should authorize overriding a state's sovereignty in order to assist the plight of
people suffering from a dictatorship, political tyranny, genocide, or "ethnic cleansing." As Robinson (1999) also

to think compassionately, the international community should not wait until

emergencies eventuate as with Rwanda in 1994, but listen to early warning cries.
Being prepared to listen depends on the nature of relationships within the
international community, as well as the background context and the reasons for contemplating
argues,

intervention. The means of intervention has degrees of morality, where "clearly persuasion is preferable to
coercion, positive sanctions to negative ones, diplomatic pressure to embargoes and blockades, economic sanctions
to war, warning shots, or attacks on criminal leaders to indiscriminate bombing on their population" (Hassner 1998,

Attentive listening to discern what sufferers themselves believe they need

affirms their agency and should lead to compassionate, wise responses . Compassionate,
Wise Responses Third, in addition to attentiveness and listening, compassionate responses should be
part of political practices. While clearly there are limits on the extent to which we
really can identify with others' suffering, the politically compassionate react with
feelings whenever we hear of suffering and with practical responses whenever
possible. Admittedly, we prioritize instances of those who are closest to us or instances that, for various reasons,
24).

move us emotionally. Political care is the hallmark of a decent society that accepts the moral responsibility to
protect the dignity of all citizens and persons within its borders. Political care is the demonstration of compassionate
decency by committed citizens, political representatives, and political leaders who collectively strive for an inclusive
polity that is responsive to peoples' needs. While this perspective strives to improve the well-being of all people, not
only women, it is distinctively feminist in stressing the relational aspects of politics and in building on women's
traditional experience of compassionate care. For example, despite the awful situation in detention camps in

Australia, the suggestion by men and women to accommodate people in community housing while their claims are

Those with power to make

decisions have a responsibility to examine how they contribute to political
structures that exclude, marginalize, and cause suffering. The capacity for feeling
pain at the distress of others and imaginatively responding draws us together in
communities. Yet we often avoid being emotionally outraged at injustice because if
we are moved by compassion it compels us to act. We cannot always act; we all have limited
resources. However, as Naomi Klein argues, we should "refuse to engage in a calculus of
suffering" (Klein 2002, 148). Klein is responding to claims from the Left that the post-9/11 outpouring of
processed is ignored, yet clearly is a viable compassionate alternative.

compassion was disproportionate and, given the atrocities happening elsewhere in the world, racist. Her response is

Anyone who claims to be compassionate and abhors injustice and suffering

should not be miserly in their compassion. "Surely the challenge is to attempt to
increase the global reserves of compassion rather than parsimoniously police them"
valid.

(Klein 2002, 148). Kathleen Barry (2002) also argues for the importance of "non-selective compassion." By this, she

the lesson we should learn from 9/11 is attentiveness to the plight of all
who are victims through no fault of their own. For people living in occupied
territories, areas of armed conflict, or violently divided societies, everyday life is full
of terror, fear, violence, shootings, and bombings . For asylum seekers living in detention camps,
means that

everyday life also is miserable. Whenever we feel some of their pain, we empathetically imagine a little of what it
might be like to be a sufferer because of political harshness, and we have begun the process of compassion.
Whenever governments, states, and international organizations resist revenge attacks, preemptive strikes, and
state-sponsored terrorism, or refuse to sell arms, they move closer to some understanding of what minimizing
suffering entails. A humane yet rigorous asylum policy can balance state security and the need to protect borders,
with human security and the need to protect refugee conventions.

Recognizing individuals as both victims and more than victims can

transcend the dilemma of victimhood
Levit 96 (Nancy, 1996 Associate Professor at UMKC Law, April, 43 UCLA L. Rev.
1037, lexis)
The purpose of examining the various ways in which legal doctrines and the legal
system disadvantage men is not to thrust men into victimhood. n75 Professor
Martha Minow has cautioned about the dilemma of victimhood: On the one hand,
failure to acknowledge victimization "countenances oppression." On the other hand,
speaking in terms of victimization may promote passivity, helplessness, and
blaming behavior on the part of victims. n76 As a partial resolution of the dilemma,
Minow suggests "treating all participants as more than mere victims and more than
mere perpetrators, recognizing the capacity of the most victimized for choice,
redressing the structures of constraint, and treating responsibility not as blame but
as the ability to respond ...." n77

Gender

Kumar And Kundani

Perm do both: The Surveillant gaze is as racialized as it is gendered,
our analysis is neither competitive nor mutually exclusive
Kundnani and Kumar 11 [Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political
violence, and surveillance. Author ofThe Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and
the domestic War on Terror, Teaches at NYU, PHD. From LMU, Deepa Kumar is an associate
professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author
of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Race, surveillance, and empire Sept. 2011, via
ISR, Issue 96] N.H
The various measures that the US national security system has adopted in recent years flow from an analysis of
Muslim radicalization, which assumes that certain law-abiding activities associated with religious ideology are

the
radicalization model claims to be able to predict which individuals are not
terrorists now but might be at some later date. Behavioral, cultural, and
ideological signals are assumed to reveal who is at risk of turning into a
terrorist at some point in the future.59 For example, in the FBIs radicalization model, such
indicators of extremism and potential violence. Following the preventive logic discussed above,

things as growing a beard, starting to wear traditional Islamic clothing, and becoming alienated from ones former
life are listed as indicators, as is increased activity in a pro-Muslim social group or political cause.60 Thus,

signifiers of Muslimness such as facial hair, dress, and so on are turned

into markers of suspicion for a surveillance gaze that is also a racial (and
gendered) gaze; it is through such routine bureaucratic mechanisms that
counterterrorism practices involve the social construction of racial others.

Perm do both: our criticism covers the politics of empire that enact
the gendered securitization of arab women- no reason why we
cannot accommodate a feminist criticism
Kundnani and Kumar 11 [Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political
violence, and surveillance. Author ofThe Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and
the domestic War on Terror, Teaches at NYU, PHD. From LMU, Deepa Kumar is an associate
professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author
of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Race, surveillance, and empire Sept. 2011, via
ISR, Issue 96] N.H

unprecedented mass deportation of more than two million people

during the Obama presidency is one form taken by this post-racial
racialized securitization. Over the last two decades, the progressive criminalization of undocumented
The

immigrants has been achieved through the building of a militarized wall between Mexico and the United States,
hugely expanding the US border patrol, and programs such as Secure Communities, which enables local police
departments to access immigration databases. Secure Communities was introduced in 2008 and stepped up under
Obama. It has resulted in migrants being increasingly likely to be profiled, arrested, and imprisoned by local police
officers, before being passed to the federal authorities for deportation. Undocumented migrants can no longer have
any contact with police officers without risking such outcomes. There is an irony in the way that fears of illegal
immigration threatening jobs and the public purse have become stand-ins for real anxieties about the neoliberal
collapse of the old social contract: the measures that such fears lead to racialization

and
criminalization of migrantsthemselves serve to strengthen the neoliberal
status quo by encouraging a precarious labor market. Capital, after all,
does not want to end immigration but to profit from a vast exploitable
labor pool that exists under precarious conditions, that does not enjoy the
civil, political and labor rights of citizens and that is disposable through
deportation.66 What brings together these diferent systems of racial

oppressionmass incarceration, mass surveillance, and mass deportation

is a security logic that holds the imperial state as necessary to keeping
American families (coded white) safe from threats abroad and at home.
The ideological work of the last few decades has cultivated not only racial
security fears but also an assumption that the security state is necessary
to keep us safe. In this sense, security has become the new psychological
wage to aid the reallocation of the welfare states social wage toward
homeland security and to win support for empire in the age of
neoliberalism. Through the notion of security, social and economic anxieties generated by the unraveling of
the Keynesian social compact have been channeled toward the Black or Brown street criminal, welfare recipient, or
terrorist. In addition, as Susan Faludi has argued, since 9/11, this homeland in need of security has been
symbolized, above all, by the white domestic hearth of the prefeminist fifties, once again threatened by mythical

That this idea of the homeland

coincides culturally with the denigration of capable women, the
magnification of manly men, the heightened call for domesticity, the
search for and sanctification of helpless girls points to the ways it is
gendered as well as racialized.67
frontier enemies, hidden subversives, and racial aggressors.

Wilderson

2AC Wilderson
1. Framework -- the af should be able to weigh the benefits of
implementation otherwise it moots the 1AC and kills topic
education
2. Their revolution fails
Flaherty 05 (http://cryptogon.com/docs/pirate_insurgency.html USC BA in International Relations, researcher
in political affairs, activist and organic farmer in New Zealand In order to understand the national security
implications of militant electronic piracy, an examination of conventional insurgency against the American
Corporate State is necessary.)

Any violent insurgency against the

ACS is sure to fail and will only serve to enhance the state's power . The major
flaw of violent insurgencies, both cell based (Weathermen Underground, Black
Panthers, Aryan Nations etc.) and leaderless (Earth Liberation Front, People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals, etc.) is that they are attempting to attack the system using the same
tactics the ACS has already mastered: terror and psychological operations.
The ACS attained primacy through the effective application of terror and psychological operations. Therefore, it
has far more skill and experience in the use of these tactics than any
upstart could ever hope to attain.4 This makes the ACS impervious to
THE NATURE OF ARMED INSURGENCY AGAINST THE ACS

traditional insurgency tactics . - Political Activism and the ACS Counterinsurgency Apparatus
The ACS employs a full time counterinsurgency infrastructure with
resources that are unimaginable to most would be insurgents. Quite simply,
violent insurgents have no idea of just how powerful the foe actually is.
Violent insurgents typically start out as peaceful, idealistic, political activists. Whether or
not political activists know it, even with very mundane levels of political activity, they are engaging in low intensity
conflict with the ACS. The U.S. military classifies political activism as low intensity conflict. The scale of warfare
(in terms of intensity) begins with individuals distributing anti-government handbills and public gatherings with antigovernment/anti-corporate themes. In the middle of the conflict intensity scale are what the military refers to as
Operations Other than War; an example would be the situation the U.S. is facing in Iraq. At the upper right hand
side of the graph is global thermonuclear war. What is important to remember is that the military is concerned with
ALL points along this scale because they represent different types of threats to the ACS. Making distinctions
between civilian law enforcement and military forces, and foreign and domestic intelligence services is no longer

all national security assets would be brought to

bear against any U.S. insurgency movement. Additionally, the U.S. military established
NORTHCOM which designated the U.S. as an active military operational area.
Crimes involving the loss of corporate profits will increasingly be treated as acts of
terrorism and could garner anything from a local law enforcement
response to activation of regular military forces. Most of what is commonly referred to as
necessary. After September 11, 2001,

political activism is viewed by the corporate state's counterinsurgency apparatus as a useful and necessary
component of political control. Letters-to-the-editor... Calls-to-elected-representatives... Waving banners... Third
party political activities... Taking beatings, rubber bullets and tear gas from riot police in free speech zones...
Political activism amounts to an utterly useless waste of time, in terms of tangible power, which is all the ACS
understands. Political activism is a cruel guise that is sold to people who are dissatisfied, but who have no concept

Counterinsurgency teams routinely monitor these

activities, attend the meetings, join the groups and take on leadership
roles in the organizations. It's only a matter of time before some individuals determine that political activism is a
of the nature of tangible power.

honeypot that accomplishes nothing and wastes their time. The corporate state knows that some small percentage
of the peaceful, idealistic, political activists will eventually figure out the game. At this point, the clued-in activists
will probably do one of two things; drop out or move to escalate the struggle in other ways. If the clued-in activist

drops his or her political activities, the ACS wins. But what if the clued-in activist refuses to give up the struggle?
Feeling powerless, desperation could set in and these individuals might become increasingly radicalized.

Because the corporate state's counterinsurgency operatives have

infiltrated most political activism groups, the radicalized members will be
easily identified, monitored and eventually compromised/turned, arrested or
executed. The ACS wins again.

3. Their desire to ignore the consequences of their advocacy

causes alt failure ---must evaluate consequences of proposals
Bracey 6 (Christopher A. Bracey, Associate Professor of Law, Associate Professor of African & African American
Studies, Washington University in St. Louis, September, Southern California Law Review, 79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1231, p.
1318, 2006)

reducing conversation on race matters to an ideological contest allows

opponents to elide inquiry into whether the results of a particular preference
policy are desirable. Policy positions masquerading as principled ideological
stances create the impression that a racial policy is not simply a choice
among available alternatives, but the embodiment of some higher moral
principle. Thus, the "principle" becomes an end in itself, without reference to
outcomes. Consider the prevailing view of colorblindness in constitutional
discourse. Colorblindness has come to be understood as the embodiment
of what is morally just, independent of its actual effect upon the lives of racial minorities. This explains
Second,

Justice Thomas's belief in the "moral and constitutional equivalence" between Jim Crow laws and race preferences,
and his tragic assertion that "Government cannot make us equal [but] can only recognize, respect, and protect us
as equal before the law." 281 For Thomas, there is no meaningful difference between laws designed to entrench

Critics may point out

that colorblindness in practice has the efect of entrenching existing racial
disparities in health, wealth, and society. But in framing the debate in purely
ideological terms, opponents are able to avoid the contentious issue of
outcomes and make viability determinations based exclusively on whether
racially progressive measures exude fidelity to the ideological principle of
colorblindness. Meaningful policy debate is replaced by ideological
exchange, which further exacerbates hostilities and deepens the cycle of
resentment.
racial subordination and those designed to alleviate conditions of oppression.

4. Their alternative doesnt do anything for muslims whove

been racially profiled and discriminated against which is
impacted by all of our 1AC
5. Uniting diferent coalitions is necessary to overcome white
supremacy
Bell Hooks 3, social critic extraordinaire, Beyond Black Only: Bonding Beyond
Race, http://prince.org/msg/105/50299?pr
African Americans have been at the forefront of the struggle to end racism
and white supremacy in the United States since individual free black immigrants and the larger body of enslaved blacks first landed here. Even

though much of that struggle has been directly concerned with the plight
of black people, all gains received from civil rights work have had
tremendous positive impact on the social status of all non-white groups in this
country. Bonding between enslaved Africans, free Africans, and Native Americans is well documented. Freedom fighters from all groups (and certainly there were many traitors in all
three groups who were co-opted by rewards given by the white power structure) understood the importance of solidarity-of struggling against the common enemy, white supremacy.

The enemy was not white people. It was white supremacy . Organic freedom
fighters, both Native and African Americans, had no difficulty building coalitions with those
white folks who wanted to work for the freedom of everyone. Those early
models of coalition building in the interest of dismantling white
supremacy are often forgotten . Much has happened to obscure that history. The construction of reservations (many of which were and are
located in areas where there are not large populations of black people) isolated communities of Native Americans from black liberation struggle. And as time
passed both groups began to view one another through Eurocentric
stereotypes, internalizing white racist assumptions about the other . Those
early coalitions were not maintained . Indeed the bonds between African Americans struggling to resist racist domination, and all
other people of color in this society who suffer from the same system, continue to be fragile, even as we all remain untied by ties, however frayed and weakened, forged in shared antiracist struggle.

Collectively,

within the United States people of color strengthen our capacity to

resist white supremacy when we build coalitions . Since white supremacy emerged here within the context of
colonization, the conquering and conquest of Native Americans, early on it was obvious that Native and African Americans could best preserve their cultures by resisting from a

The concrete practice of solidarity between the two groups

has been eroded by the divide-and-conquer tactics of racist white power and
standpoint of political solidarity.

by the complicity of both groups. Native American artist and activist of the Cherokee people Jimmie Durham, in his collection of essays A Certain Lack of Coherence, talks about the
1960s as a time when folks tried to regenerate that spirit of coalition: In the 1960s and 70s American Indian, African American and Puerto Rican activists said, as loudly as they could,
This country is founded on the genocide of one people and the enslavement of another. This statement, hardly arguable, was not much taken up by white activists. As time passed, it
was rarely taken up by anyone. Instead the fear that ones specific group might receive more attention has led to greater nationalism, the showing of concern for ones racial or ethnic

Bonds of solidarity between

people of color are continuously ruptured by our complicity with white
racism. Similarly, white immigrants to the United States, both past and present, establish their right to citizenship within white supremacist society by asserting it in daily life
plight without linking that concern to the plight of other non-white groups and their struggles for liberation.

through acts of discrimination and assault that register their contempt for and disregard of black people and darker-skinned immigrants mimic this racist behavior in their interactions
with black folks. In her editorial On the Backs of Blacks published in a recent special issue of TIME magazine Toni Morrison discusses the way white supremacy is reinscribed again and
again as immigrants seek assimilation: All immigrants fight for jobs and space, and who is there to fight but those who have both? As in the fishing ground struggle between Texas and
Vietnamese shrimpers, they displace what and whom they canIn race talk the move into mainstream America always means buying into the notion of American blacks as the real
aliens. Whatever the ethnicity or nationality of the immigrant, his nemesis is understood to be African AmericanSo addictive is this ploy that the fact of blackness has been abandoned
for the theory of blackness. It doesnt matter anymore what shade the newcomers skin is. A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door. Often
people of color, both those who are citizens and those who are recent immigrants, hold black people responsible for the hostility they encounter from whites. It is as though they see
blacks as acting in a manner that makes things harder for everybody else. This type of scapegoating is the mark of the colonized sensibility which always blames those victimized rather
than targeting structures of domination. Just as many white Americans deny both the prevalence of racism in the United States and the role they play in perpetuating and maintaining
white supremacy, non-white, non-black groups, Native, Asian, Hispanic Americans, all deny their investment in anti-black sentiment even as they consistently seek to distance
themselves from blackness so that they will not be seen as residing at the bottom of this societys totem pole, in the category reserved for the most despised group. Such

jockeying for white approval and reward obscures the way allegiance to
the existing social structure undermines the social welfare of all people of
color . White supremacist power is always weakened when people of color
bond across diferences of culture, ethnicity, and race . It is always
strengthened when we act as though there is no continuity and overlap in
the patterns of exploitation and oppression that afect all of our lives. To
ensure that political bonding to challenge and change white supremacy will not be cultivated among diverse groups of people of color, white ruling groups pit us against one another in a
no-win game of who will get the prize for model minority today. They compare and contrast, affix labels like model minority, define boundaries, and we fall into line. Those rewards
coupled with internalized racist assumptions lead non-black people of color to deny the way racism victimizes them as they actively work to disassociate themselves from black people.

Even though progressive people of color consistently critique these standpoints, we have yet to build a
contemporary mass movement to challenge white supremacy that would
draw us together. Without an organized collective struggle that
consistently reminds us of our common concerns, people of color forget.
This will to disassociate is a gesture of racism.

Sadly forgetting common concerns sets the stage for competing concerns. Working within the system of white supremacy, non-black people of color often feel as though they must
compete with black folks to receive white attention. Some are even angry at what they wrongly perceive as a greater concern on the part of white of the dominant culture for the pain of
black people. Rather than seeing the attention black people receive as linked to the gravity of our situation and the intensity of our resistance, they want to make it a sign of white
generosity and concern. Such thinking is absurd. If white folks were genuinely concerned about black pain, they would challenge racism, not turn the spotlight on our collective pain in
ways that further suggest that we are inferior. Andrew Hacker makes it clear in Two Nations that the vast majority of white Americans believe that members of the black race represent
an inferior strain of the human species. He adds: In this view Africans-and Americans who trace their origins to that continent-are seen as languishing at a lower evolutionary level than
members of other races. Non-black people of color often do not approach white attention to black issues by critically interrogating how those issues are presented and whose interests
the representations ultimately serve. Rather than engaging in a competition that sees blacks as winning more goodies from the white system than other groups, non-black people of
color who identify with black resistance struggle recognize the danger of such thinking and repudiate it. They are politically astute enough to challenge a rhetoric of resistance that is
based on competition rather than a capacity on the part of non-black groups to identify with whatever progress blacks make as being a positive sign for everyone. Until non-black people

of color define their citizenship via commitment to a democratic vision of racial justice rather than investing in the dehumanization and oppression of black people, they will always act
as mediators, keeping black people in check for the ruling white majority. Until racist anti-black sentiments are let go by other people of color, especially immigrants, and complain that
these groups are receiving too much attention, they undermine freedom struggle. When this happens people of color war all acting in complicity with existing exploitative and oppressive

As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be

pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist
domination must work harder to divide and conquer . The most recent effort to undermine progressive
structures.

bonding between people of color is the institutionalization of multiculturalism. Positively, multiculturalism is presented as a corrective to a Eurocentric vision of model citizenship
wherein white middle-class ideals are presented as the norm. Yet this positive intervention is undermined by visions of multiculturalism that suggest everyone should live with and
identify with their own self contained group. If white supremacist capitalist patriarchy is unchanged then multiculturalism within that context can only become a breeding ground for
narrow nationalism, fundamentalism, identity politics, and cultural, racial, and ethnic separatism. Each separate group will then feel that it must protect its own interests by keeping
outsiders at bay, for the group will always appear vulnerable, its power and identity sustained by exclusivity. When people of color think this way, white supremacy remains intact.

For even though demographics in the United States would suggest that in the
future the nation will be more populated by people of color, and whites
will no longer be the majority group, numerical presence will in no way
alter white supremacy if there is no collective organizing, no eforts to
build coalitions that cross boundaries . Already, the white Christian Right is targeting large populations of people of color to
ensure that the fundamentalist values they want this nation to uphold and represent will determine the attitudes and values of these groups. The role Eurocentric Christianity has played
in teaching non-white folks Western metaphysical dualism, the ideology that under girds binary notion of superior/inferior, good/bad, white/black, cannot be ignored. While progressive
organizations are having difficulty reaching wider audiences, the white-dominated Christian Right organizes outreach programs that acknowledge diversity and have considerable
influence. Just as the white-dominated Christian church in the U.S. once relied on biblical references to justify racist domination and discrimination, it now deploys a rhetoric of
multiculturalism to invite non-white people to believe that racism can be overcome through a shared fundamentalist encounter. Every contemporary fundamentalist white maledominated religious cult in the U.S. has a diverse congregation. People of color have flocked to these organizations because they have felt them to be places where racism does not exist,
where they are not judged on the basis of skin color. While the white-dominated mass media focus critical attention on black religious fundamentalist groups like the Nation of Islam, and
in particular Louis Farrakhan, little critique is made of white Christian fundamentalist outreach to black people and other people of color. Black Islamic fundamentalism shares with the
white Christian Right support for coercive hierarchy, fascism, and a belief that some groups are inferior and others superior, along with a host of other similarities. Irrespective of the
standpoint, religious fundamentalism brainwashes individuals not to think critically or see radical politicization as a means of transforming their lives. When people of color immerse
themselves in religious fundamentalism, no meaningful challenge and critique of white supremacy can surface. Participation in a radical multiculturalism in any form is discouraged by

Progressive multiculturalism that encourages and promotes coalition building between people of
color threatens to disrupt white supremacist organization of us all into
competing camps. However, this vision of multiculturalism is continually undermined by greed, one group wanting rewards for itself even at the expense of
religious fundamentalism.

other groups. It is this perversion of solidarity the authors of Night Vision address when they assert: While there are different nationalities, races and genders in the U.S., the supposedly
different cultures in multiculturalism dont like to admit what they have in common, the glue of it all-parasitism. Right now, theres both anger among the oppressed and a milling

A based identity
politics of solidarity that embraces both a broad based identity politics
around, edging up to the next step but uncertain what it is fully about, what is means. The key is the common need to break with parasitism.

which acknowledges specific cultural and ethnic legacies, histories , etc.

as it simultaneously promotes a recognition of overlapping cultural
traditions and values as well as an inclusive understanding of what is
gained when people of color unite to resist white supremacy is the only
way to ensure that multicultural democracy will become a reality .

6. Anti-blackness as the root cause of Islamophobia is

ahistorical---its the other way around
Charoenying 8 (Timothy Charoenying, Citing Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Professor at Cal-Berkeley,
"Islamophobia & Anti-Blackness: A Genealogical Approach", Fall, crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia-antiblackness-genealogical-approach)

The year 1492 marked a major turning point in the trajectory of Western
Civilization. Elementary age children are taught this as the year Columbus famously crossed the Atlantic. An equally
significant event that year, was the Spanish conquest of al-Andalusa Moorish
province on the southern Iberian peninsula established eight centuries earlierand more
importantly, the last major Muslim stronghold on the European continent.
Critical race scholars have argued that these two events would not only
shift the geopolitical balance of power from the Orient to the Occident,
but fundamentally alter conceptions about religious and racial identity .

According to Nelson Maldonado-Torres, of the University of California, Berkeley, the expulsion of

the Moors from continental Europe marked a transition from an age of
imperial relations between Christian and Muslim empires, to an age of
European colonial expansion throughout the known world . The discovery of godless
natives in the Americas would also inspire the great debates between Las Casas and Seplveda in 1550 on the nature of the human

Such a geopolitical and philosophical shift, Maldonado-Torres argues, would lead to a

Eurocentric, re-categorization of humanity based upon religousand
ultimately racialdiferences. Maldonado-Torres has proposed that anti-black racism is
soul.

not simply an extension of some historical bias against blacks , but rather,
is an amalgam of old-world Islamophobia linked to the history of the
Iberian peninsula, and to the notion of souless beings embodied in popular
conceptions about the indigenous natives of the Americas. These beliefs
would contribute to an ideological basis for, and justification of, colonial conquests
in the name of cultural and religious conversion, as well as pave the way
for the enslavement and human trafficking of sub-Saharan Africans.

Radical negativity is wrong --- positive reforms are possible

Michael Omi 13, and Howard Winant, Resistance is futile?: a response to Feagin
and Elias, Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 36, Issue 6, p. 961-973, 2013 Special
Issue: Symposium - Rethinking Racial Formation Theory
racial conflict, both within (and
against) the state and in everyday life, is a fundamentally political process. We think that they would also
accept our claim that the ongoing political realities of race provide extensive evidence that people of colour in the
USA are not so powerless, and that whites are not so omnipotent , as Feagin and
We suspect that if pressed, Feagin and Elias would concur with our judgement that

Elias's analysis suggests them to be. Racial formation theory allows us to see that there are contradictions in racial oppression. The

white racism is unstable and constantly challenged,

from the national and indeed global level down to the personal and intra-psychic conflicts that we
all experience, no matter what our racial identity might be. While racism largely white continues to flourish, it is
not monolithic. Yes, there have been enormous increases in racial inequality in recent years. But movementbased anti-racist opposition continues, and sometimes scores victories.
Challenges to white racism continue both within the state and in civil
society. Although largely and properly led by people of colour, anti-racist movements also incorporate whites such as Feagin
and Elias themselves. Movements may experience setbacks, the reforms for which
they fought may be revealed as inadequate, and indeed their leaders may
be co-opted or even eliminated, but racial subjectivity and self-awareness,
unresolved and conflictual both within the individual psyche and the body
politic, abides. Resistance is not futile.
racial formation approach reveals that

7. Wildersons scholarship isnt intended to preclude goaloriented political change

Wilderson 10 (Frank b. WildersonIII, Prof at UC Irvine, speaking on a panel on literary activism at the
National Black Writers Conference, March 26, "Panel on Literary Activism", transcribed from the video available at
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/222448, begins at roughly 49:10)
Typically what I mean when I ask myself whether or not people will like or accept my reading, what I'm really trying
to say to myself whether or not people will like or accept me and this is a difficult thing to overcome especially for a
black writer because

we are not just black writers, we are black people and

as black

we live every day of our lives in an anti-black world. A world that

defines itself in a very fundamental ways in constant distinction from us,
we live everyday of our lives in a context of daily rejection so its
understandable that we as black writers might strive for acceptance and
appreciation through our writing, as I said this gets us tangled up in the result. The lessons we have
people

to learn as writers resonate with what I want to say about literature and political struggle. I am a political writer

my writing is self consciously about radical change but when I

have worked as an activist in political movements, my labor has been
intentional and goal oriented. For example, I organized, with a purpose to say free
Mumia Abu Jamal, to free all political prisoners , or to abolish the prison industrial
complex here in the United States or in South Africa, I have worked to abolish apartheid
and unsuccessfully set up a socialist state whereas I want my poetry and my
fiction, my creative non fiction and my theoretical writing to resonate with and to impact and
impacted by those tangible identifiable results , I think that something really debilitating will
happen to the writing, that it the writing will be hobbled if and when I become clear in
the ways that which I want my writing to have an impact on political
struggle what I am trying to say when I say that I want to be unclear is I
don't want to clarify, I do not want to clarify the impact that my work will have or
should have on political struggle, is that the relationship of literature to struggle
which is to say

is not one of causality but one of accompaniment , when I write I want to hold my
political beliefs and my political agenda loosely. I want to look at my political life the way I might look at a solar

I might be able to liberate my

imagination and go to places in the writing that I and other black people go to all the
time the places that are too dangerous to go to and too dangerous to speak
about when one is trying to organize people to take risk or when a
political organization is presetting a list of demands, I said at the beginning this is an
eclipse which is to say look indirectly, look arie, in this way

anti-black world. Its anti black in places I hate like apartheid South Africa and apartheid America and its anti-black

I've been involved with some really radical

political movements but none of them have called for an end of the world
but if I can get away from the result of my writing, if I can think of my
writing as something that accompanies political struggle as opposed to
something that will cause political struggle then maybe just maybe I will be able to explore
in the places I don't hate such as Cuba,

forbidden territory, the unspoken demands that the world come to an end, the thing that I cant say when I am
trying to organize maybe I can harness the energy of the political movement to make breakthroughs in the
imagination that the movement can't always accommodate, if its to maintain its organizational capacity.

8. Pessimism DA:
a. Rejecting political activism ignores successful black
movements and destroys black agency
Driver 11 (Justin is an Assistant Professor, University of Texas School of Law. In 2004, he graduated from
Harvard Law School, where he was an Articles Editor and Book Reviews Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Driver
served as a law clerk to Judge Merrick B. Garland, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,
and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (ret.) and Justice Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court of the United States. His
principal research interests include constitutional law, constitutional theory, and the intersection of race with legal
institutions, Rethinking the Interest-Convergence Thesis, 105 Northwestern University Law Review 149,
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/v105/n1/149/LR105n1Driver.pdf)

The interest-convergence thesis accords an almost complete

absence of agency to two groups of actors who exercise a great deal of control
regard-ing the advancement of black interests: the black citizenry and the white
judiciary." By implicitly encouraging black citizens to await the magical moment
when their interests converge with the white majority, the interest-convergence
thesis sharply discounts the capacity of black people to partic-ipate in their own
uplift. Conversely, by reducing white judges to mere functionaries who do the bidding of the white establishment,
C. Lack of Agency

the interest-convergence thesis simultaneously diminishes the culpability of white judges who exercise their
authority to maintain the existing racial hierarchy and denies the credit owed to white members of the judiciary who
challenge that hierarchy. 1. Black Citizens.-The

interest-convergence theory's assertion that

blacks are permitted to advance only when white interests permit them to do so
offers an inaccurately anemic conception of the ability of black people to create
change on their own behalf. The theory's emphasis on for-tune and happenstance
illuminates the theory's low regard for black agen-cy .'4 ' Although Professor Bell briefly
acknowledges that black people are not in fact inanimate objects, he makes it clear that their actions play an extremely limited role in shaping racial reality. Professor Bell writes: Blacks are not neutral observers in their
subordinate status, but even their most strenuous efforts seldom enable them to break free of a social physics in
which even the most blatant discrimination is ignored or rationalized until black peti-tions find chance harmony with
white interests. Racial justice, then, when it comes, arrives on the wings of racial fortuity rather than hard-earned

Rather than black advancement

being principally driven by canny litigation strategies, political mobilization, or other
modes of self-assertion, interest convergence instead views black people as mere
"fortuitous beneficiaries" and instructs them to expect (even fleeting) advances
toward racial equality only if they possess the good luck to have their interests be
perceived as aligning with those of whites.'43 The interest-convergence theory
entitle-ment. Its departure, when conditions change, is preordained.'42

risks reducing black people to the role of bystanders to the events of

American history, individuals who occasion- ally get swept up in the current of world affairs but have a
negligible role in shaping those affairs. So limited is their ability to shape their own realities, so complete is their
subordination, that, in the absence of racial fortuity. struggling against the prevailing racial order constitutes an
exercise in fu- tility. In a passage that illuminates blacks' supposed inability to shape the world around them,
Professor Bell contends: "It is as though black people are trapped in a giant, unseen gyroscope. Even their most
powerful exer- tions fail either to divert the gyroscopic prison from its preplanned equili- brium, or to alter its
orientation toward dominance for whites over blacks."'" Black people, however, are not trapped in invisible

Even in the context of the brutally dehumanizing institution of slavery, black people were able to exercise various modes of re-sistance
and exert at least some control within their thoroughly unenviable environments .'45
More recently, the civil rights movement-with both its legal component conceived of by Charles
gyroscopes. Nor are they potted plants.

Hamilton Houston" and the di-rect action component principally identified with Martin Luther King Jr. ' 4 7-

demonstrates that black people can assert their rights and succeed in bringing
about real racial change even in the face of stifling racial oppres-sion. Rather than
waiting for fortune to smile upon them, these black people-and many more over the
centuries-took fortune into their own hands and helped bend history to their will.
Viewing African-Americans as mere "fortuitous beneficiaries" who are trapped in a "preplanned equili-brium"
improperly suggests that the decisions and actions of black people are far less important, tending toward the
irrelevant, in comparison with what whites deem permissible. In this manner, an absolutist conception of interest

The interest-convergence
theory's minimization of black agency also may have the regrettable effect of
undermining the achievement of individ-ual blacks . In the event that a black person should
convergence may place an artificial limit upon what black people can achieve.

achieve distinction in the professional world, interest convergence suggests that the white establish-ment permitted
that black person's achievement as a small concession ne-cessary to advance white interests and maintain racial
order.'48 "Successful blacks serve white interests by providing the rationalizing link between the nation's espousal
of racial equality and its practice of racial dominance," Professor Bell has written. "The unspoken and totally

facetious maxim is that with self-improvement, the opportunity is available for all blacks to be successful."' 49 While
it would certainly go too far to suggest that black people exercise no control whatsoever regarding their
occupational fates under the interest-convergence theory, the talent of the black individuals, say, in the laboratory
or in the archives would appear to be relatively incon-sequential in comparison to the white interests that select a

The interest-convergence theory might be understood as

viewing a successful individual black person less as a role model and more as a
mirage-an illusion that succeeds principally in legitimating black subordination . so To
be sure, the interest-convergence theory does not wholly remove all traces of black agency. When the theory
does allow for black agency, how-ever, the amount of influence accorded black
people over their own fates is a decidedly marginal phenomenon. In his analysis of
Brown, for instance, Professor Bell observes that the NAACP's brief in the case , in
addition to the Solicitor General's amicus brief, argued that invalidating segregated schools could
aid the nation in waging the Cold War."' Similarly, Profes-sor Bell praises the efforts
of the lawyers who won Grutter and Gratz for trumpeting the importance of
diversity in an effort to appeal to the interest-convergence impulse.' 2 Interestsmall number of blacks to succeed.

convergence theory puts forth a severely crabbed understanding of what black individuals and other advocates of
black advancement can do to achieve racial uplift. Appealing to interest-convergence sentiments is surely a

Because notions of interest

can be so complex and varied,' it seems misguided to appeal only to an extremely
narrow conception of self-interest. Confining black agency to operating within the interest-convergence
valuable tool, but it should not be re-garded as the only tool that is available.

paradigm artificially serves to constrain ra-cial possibilities.

b. Even if it is true, saying equality is impossible destroys black

agency and worsens racism
Powell 91 (john a. powell is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties
and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is the
Executive Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, which supports research to generate specific
prescriptions for changes in policy and practice that address disparities related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual
orientation, disability, and socioeconomics in California and nationwide. In addition to being a Professor of Law and
Professor of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor powell
holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellors Chair in Equity and Inclusion. Racial Realism or Racial Despair, 24 Conn. L.
Rev. 533 (1991), http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/facpubs/538)
lll. RACIAL REALISM: Hope and Despair The goal of Racial Realism is to free blacks from the elusive dream of

Bell wishes to wake us from the "We have a dream" mentality of the
1960s." It is obvious that he uses this lan- guage to challenge both the false
consciousness of the black community and the Civil Rights Movement. But it is not at all
clear who suffers from this illusion, or even what the illusion is. Bell argues most force- fully against
formal equality and abstract legal principles. But he does not try to show--nor do I believe he can
show--that there is wide- spread attachment to such concepts in the black community. Certainly the black
community does not believe in the inevitability of equality. Its members live the
statistics that Bell cites. Racial Realism, then, would strip away the idea of equality-but it would still leave un- touched the structure--and presence-of racism that
dominates black life. "Do the Right Thing,"43 Spike Lee's film, captures the sense of the black community's
equality. Professor

attitude toward rights in America. During one scene, there is a confrontation in a lower-middle-class black community, between Buggin Out, one of the local blacks, and Cliton, a white yuppie who is unknown in the neighborhood.
The yuppie accidentally rolls his bicycle over Buggin Out's new, hip Air Jordan sneakers. When Buggin Out
challenges Cliton and asks him why he has a house in Bug- gin Out's neighborhood, and on his side of the block,
Cliton answers that this is a free country and he can live where he pleases. Buggin Out's response: "A free country?

The idealism of Racial Realism

suggests that if we free ourselves from the false theory of equality, we will not
Awww Shit! I should fuck you up just for that stupid shit alone."

suffer from despair-even though our children will continue to die from disease or
gun play, and our lives will continue to be circumscribed by white domination . Despite claims to the contrary, this in fact seems to be a message of de- spair rooted in "idealism." The most
despairing part of Racial Realism is not its attack on equality, but the claim that
there is no hope in transforming racial domination in our society. Bell contends that
there has not been, nor will there ever be, any improvement in the subjugation of
blacks be- cause of the power relation between blacks and racist whites . Accord- ing to
Bell's perception, blacks are viewed as simply ineffective and un- able to influence their own lives. We can never
hope to be more than simple pawns in the hands of powerful whites. The efforts by blacks to change this situation

How
can this be a message of hope? In fact, this conception is disempowering . Bell
greatly exaggerates the power of whites and undervalues the power of blacks . While it
are absorbed by whites, who merely appear to accommodate these efforts without changing the status quo."

is undoubtedly true that conservative whites, and the Republican Party in particular, have used racism to
consolidate power for their own interest, it is not true that blacks are powerless or that whites are all powerful .

Indeed, the example Bell gives of the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the
Supreme Court-to demonstrate blacks' lack of power-can eas- ily be re-interpreted
as an indication of blacks' affirmative power. The nomination of Thomas by
President Bush was a cynical move that nonetheless recognized that blacks could
influence the outcome of these events. Thomas' judicial record on civil rights was
sparse. But piecing together Thomas' writing and speeches, it seems clear he will
not be sympathetic to many civil rights claims. I agree with Bell that Thomas does
not have the interest of blacks at heart. During the Sen- ate confirmation hearings, Thomas went to
great lengths to obscure his stance on key civil rights issues. Without clarifying his position, he ulti- mately was
confirmed by the Senate to the Supreme Court--by the smallest margin in history. Almost everyone recognized that
the posi- tion the black community took on the nomination would be important. It seems fairly obvious that one of

The black
community supported Thomas' nomination by almost two-to-one. The support from
the black community was critical to his success. I believe that if there had been a
consensus in the black community in opposi- tion, as there was with Bork, there
would be no Justice Thomas today. Bell might be able to show that blacks either
misused their power to support Thomas or that blacks were manipulated. But even
the ac- knowledgement that the White House felt the need to manipulate sug- gests
the recognition of power.46 Because Bush and other powerful conservative whites
won in the Thomas nomination, Bell can argue that blacks would have been powerless to stop Bush. However, this position is incorrect. " There are many examples of
blacks influencing events to defeat conservative white interests. A recent example
is the passage of the 1991 Civil Rights Bill." Despite strong and vocal opposition
from conservative whites, including President Bush, blacks were able to prevail in
getting the 1991 Civil Rights Bill passed." While it is true that racism is often used
both to resolve white conflicts and to resist change that would benefit blacks, it is
wrong to suggest that blacks are merely pawns in the hands of powerful whites.
Blacks in America may not be able to control their destiny, but often we have been able to influence
events to our advantage in the face of powerful white opposition. Even as slaves,
the reasons Thomas obscured his position on civil rights was to avoid losing black support."

blacks were able to influence events central to their lives. At the beginning of
the Civil War, for example, Lincoln was determined to limit the war issue to
preservation of the Union. But black slaves and freed blacks were able to undermine
this effort and to commit the country to a position on slavery ." To the freed slave and the
slave master, this cannot be dismissed as an "irrelevance." It cannot be proven through

a mere litany of examples that blacks one day will be treated as equals in America.
Indeed, Bell has tried to anticipate any counter-examples to his position that there
will be no improvement in the status quo by dismissing any apparent victory as "no
more than temporary peaks of progress, short lived victories that slide into
irrelevance."51 Racial Realism attributes to blacks what one writer calls "surplus powerlessncss."52 But
there is something urgently wrong with the position Racial Realism suggests-that
blacks are pow- erless. It is not only wrong, it is a position of despair, robbing blacks
of all hope53 of changing the conditions of subjugation and domination. And Bell's
insistence that history supports his position is false.54 Though historically the power
equation between blacks and whites has not been even close to "equal ,""55 blacks
have influenced and even de- feated powerful white interests. There is a tension, if not a
contradiction, between Bell's claim that blacks are powerless and that the condition of domination has not changed
and will not change, and his assertion that the attachment to equality has limited the struggle against racial
domination. The impli- cation of the second proposition is that, in some way, there must be a method of successful
struggle against racial domination. If blacks give up the attachment to equality, Bell seems to suggest that this
might produce an improvement in the black condition. The contradiction is not avoided, however, by calling for a
shift in the psychological state of blacks, by reducing their "despair." As one nears the end of Racial Realism,
Professor Bell takes a surprising turn. His analysis pushes toward despair, cynicism and apa- thy. While he accepts
the immutability of the bleak status quo, he is not ready to accept apathy. He calls for continued struggle based on
a qualified existentialism. He challenges blacks to continue to struggle without what he sees as the false hope of

While there is something quite beautiful, and even spiritual,

about Bell's existentialist position that we must be willing to struggle without the
comfort of hope, this call suffers from the same fate as much of existentialism. It is
difficult for most people to sustain without more . Professor Bell seems to recognize this and
qualifies this position by try- ing to give more. Bell suggests that blacks should struggle not for
change, but to harrass white people. This qualification not only fails to give the call
to struggle a more solid grounding, it also destroys the beauty of his exis- tentialist
call. This new grounding for struggle is delivered through Mrs. McDonald. She is a humble, poor, elderly black
improving race subordination.

woman, who struggles against rich, powerful, racist white men. Without the hope of change she continues her
struggle, but as she puts it. "I am an old woman. I lives to harass white follks."56 There is something appealing
about Mrs. McDonald, but it is not that she lives to harass white people. It is that she is harassing power- ful, rich,
racist white men. Indeed, if Bell had told us of a powerful black who lived to harass weak, vulnerable, white

To sustain a struggle, there must be a sense of

for what and against what we are struggling. In our society, where racial domination
persists, we have reason to struggle against the status quo of racial subordination
and for our individual and collective humanity .
children, we would find such a figure repugnant.

c. Pessimism towards progressivism inverts the error and makes

racism worse
Jones 99 (Richard Wyn Jones is at Cardiff University, where he is currently a Professor of Politics. Professor
Wyn Jones is the former Director of the Institute of Welsh Politics and professor in critical security studies at
Aberystwyth University. Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory 1999. ISBN 1-55587-335-9 (hc. :alk. paper) ON-LINE
ED.: Columbia International Affairs Online, Transcribed, proofread, and marked-up in HTML, September 1999.)
An even more troubling feature of Adorno and Horkheimers analysis is the downplaying of individual responsibility that is implicit in
their argument. If Auschwitz is the inevitable outcome of enlightenment, and if instrumental rationality is too powerful to resist, then
can we expect an individual Nazi to act in a different fashion? In the hermetic society the individual is a mere cipher, and if this is

These questions highlight an

ethical lacuna at the heart of Dialectic of Enlightenment. Despite the obvious intentions of the authors, their
analysis generates a logic that renders them unable to diferentiate meaningfully
between diferent actions in the political realm. If nothing complicitous with this world can
the case, can any individual really be blamed for his or her behavior?

how
are we to evaluate eforts at securing change in contemporary society? Let us
consider the ending of apartheid in South Africa. Although the citizens of that
country cannot be adjudged to be free after the overthrow of the apartheid system,
surely they are freer. Although the establishment of liberal democracy there ofers no
panacea, it is a better system than the totalitarian one that it has
have any truth, then surely everything that exists in the real world must be judged equally untrue or false. But if this is so,

replaced.

But although Adorno and Horkheimer as individuals would almost certainly have rejoiced in the downfall of the

as theoreticians they seem to be unable to provide us with any

grounds for favoring one particular set of social institutions over another. Here
apartheid system,

we have a bizarre inversion of

the

relativism

to which contemporary poststructuralist approaches

are prone. By arguing that there are no grounds to choose between different accounts of reality, poststructuralists are inevitably
forced to accept that all accounts of a given reality are true. They can make no judgment on these claims that is not arbitrary (Norris

by arguing that everything in the world is equally

false, Adorno and Horkheimer can make no judgment as to why we might prefer some forms of
behavior and some set of practices over others. Here the impasse into which the analysis of Dialectic of
Enlightenment leads its authors stands in bold relief. The determinism and reductionism of their argument
is ultimately paralyzing. It was, of course, Antonio Gramsci who popularized the injunction that all those intent on changing
1992; Hunter and Wyn Jones 1995). Similarly,

society should attempt to face the world with a combination of pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. This position
has much to commend it given the propensity of radicals to view society with rosetinted glasses. However, the limitations of this

the pessimism is so
thoroughgoing that it becomes absolutely debilitating. Any attempt to
challenge the status quo already stands condemned as futile . The logical
outcome of this attitude is resignation and passivity . Adorno attempted to make a virtue of
position are nowhere better illustrated than in Dialectic of Enlightenment, in which

the detached attitude that he and Horkheimer adopted toward the political struggles of their own age by claiming: If one is
concerned to achieve what might be possible with human beings, it is extremely difficult to remain friendly towards real people.
However, considering that it is only real people who can bring about a better society, Adornos complex form of misanthropy
ultimately leads only to quiescence (Wiggershaus 1994: 268). Thus, despite the clear similarities in the influences and interests of

the resignatory passivity of the authors of Dialectic of

Enlightenment led them to a position on political practice far more akin to that of Oswald Spengler or Arthur
the founding fathers of critical theory and Gramsci,

Schopenhauer than to that adopted by the Sardinian Marxist Gramsci, even as he languished in a fascist prison. In view of the
traditional Marxist emphasis on the unity of theory and practice, it is hardly surprising that Adorno and Horkheimers rejection of any
attempt to orient their work toward political activity led to bitter criticism from other radical intellectuals. Perhaps the most famous
such condemnation was that of Lukcs, who acidly commented that the members of the Frankfurt School had taken up residence in
the Grand Hotel Abyss. The inhabitants of this institution enjoyed all the comforts of the bourgeois lifestyle while fatalistically
surveying the wreckage of life beyond its doors. Whereas Lukcss own apologias for Stalinism point to the dangers of subordinating
theoretical activity to the exigencies of daytoday practical politics, Adorno and Horkheimer sunder theory and political practice

ill suited to
any social theory that aspires to realworld relevance . Furthermore, the critical
theorists position on political practice is based on an underestimation of
the potential for progressive change that exists even in the most administered societies. It is
completely, impoverishing the theoretical activity itself. Their stance leads to an aridity and scholasticism

instructive to contrast the attitude of Adorno and Horkheimer with that of Raymond Williams, who delivers the following broadside
against high culture Marxists such as the members of the Frankfurt School: When the Marxists say that we live in a dying culture,
and that the masses are ignorant, I have to ask them... where on earth they have lived. A dying culture, and ignorant masses, are
not what I have known and see. (R. Williams 1989: 8) As I will discuss in Chapter 6, the evidence suggests that Williams is closer to
the truth.

People acting both individually and collectively, through

social movements

state institutions , can actually influence the world around them in a

progressive direction. Adorno and Horkheimers pessimism is unwarranted.
and

Kumar and Kundani

The racialized notions of security and exclusion that we critique are
the root cause of the Ks violence, that means 1. We arent mutually
exclusive and 2. The perm is preferable
Kundnani and Kumar 11 [Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political violence, and
surveillance. Author ofThe Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror, Teaches
at NYU, PHD. From LMU, Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers
University. She is the author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Race, surveillance, and empire Sept.
2011, via ISR, Issue 96] N.H

the production of the racial other at these

various moments is conjunctural and heterogenous. That is, the racialization of Native
It is, however, important to note that

Americans, for instance, during the settler-colonial period took different forms from the racialization of African

the dominant construction of Blackness under slavery is

diferent from the construction of Blackness in the neoliberal era; these
ideological shifts are the product of specific historic conditions. In short,
empire and capital, at various moments, determine who will be targeted
by state surveillance, in what ways, and for how long. In the second part, we turn our
Americans. Further,

attention to the current conjuncture in which the politics of the War on Terror shape national security surveillance

The intensive surveillance of Muslim Americans has been carried

out by a vast security apparatus that has also been used against dissident
movements such as Occupy Wall Street and environmental rights activists,
who represent a threat to the neoliberal order. This is not new; the
process of targeting dissenters has been a constant feature of American
history. For instance, the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 1790s were passed by the Federalist government
practices.

against the Jeffersonian sympathizers of the French Revolution. The British hanged Nathan Hale because he spied

State surveillance regimes have always

sought to monitor and penalize a wide range of dissenters, radicals, and
revolutionaries. Race was a factor in some but by no means all of these
cases. Our focus here is on the production of racialized others as
security threats and the ways this helps to stabilize capitalist social
relations. Further, the current system of mass surveillance of Muslims is
analogous to and overlaps with other systems of racialized security
surveillance that feed the mass deportation of immigrants under the
Obama administration and that disproportionately target African
Americans, contributing to their mass incarceration and what Michelle
Alexander refers to as the New Jim Crow.4 We argue that racialized groupings
are produced in the very act of collecting information about certain groups
deemed as threats by the national security statethe Brown terrorist,
the Black and Brown drug dealer and user, and the immigrant who
threatens to steal jobs. We conclude that security has become one of
the primary means through which racism is ideologically reproduced in the
post-racial, neoliberal era. Drawing on W. E. B. Duboiss notion of the
psychological wage, we argue that neoliberalism has been legitimized in
part through racialized notions of security that ofer a new psychological
wage as compensation for the decline of the social wage and its
reallocation to homeland security.
for Washingtons army in the American Revolution.

More Specific ev
Perm do both: the systems of mass surveillance we critique overlap
with other racialized security surveillances
Smith 2013 [Andrea Smith, Proffessor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Cal Riverside,
intellectual, feminist, activist, co-founder of INCITE and focuses on Women of Color particularly Native American
Women; The Problem With Privilege; August 14th http://andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/the-problem-withprivilege-by-andrea-smith/] N.H

mass surveillance of Muslims is analogous to and

overlaps with other systems of racialized security surveillance that feed the
mass deportation of immigrants under the Obama administration and that disproportionately target
African Americans, contributing to their mass incarceration and what Michelle
Alexander refers to as the New Jim Crow.4 We argue that racialized groupings are
produced in the very act of collecting information about certain groups
deemed as threats by the national security statethe Brown terrorist,
the Black and Brown drug dealer and user, and the immigrant who
threatens to steal jobs. We conclude that security has become one of
the primary means through which racism is ideologically reproduced in the
post-racial, neoliberal era. Drawing on W. E. B. Duboiss notion of the psychological wage, we
argue that neoliberalism has been legitimized in part through racialized
notions of security that ofer a new psychological wage as compensation
for the decline of the social wage and its reallocation to homeland
security.
Further, the current system of

There is not a linear relationship between the two oppressions,

rather, they come to configure each other under state surveillance
Kundnani and Kumar 11 [Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political violence, and
surveillance. Author ofThe Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror, Teaches
at NYU, PHD. From LMU, Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers
University. She is the author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Race, surveillance, and empire Sept.
2011, via ISR, Issue 96] N.H

vast expansion of state surveillance in the 1960s was a response to the

new militancy of the movements against the imperialist war in Vietnam
and for civil rights and Black liberation. Initially, security officials assumed the Civil Rights
The

movement in the South, the campus protests, and the Black insurrections in northern cities were the result of a

informants and electronic monitoring were deployed to try

to identify the hidden agitators thought to be manipulating events behind
the scenes. But it soon became apparent that these movements were manifestations
of a new kind of politics that could not be understood according to the
conspiratorial calculus of front groups and fellow travelers;
surveillance therefore had to be widened to monitor ordinary participants,
particularly in Black communities, in what was increasingly seen as a
popular insurgency. Even then, the hope was that new electronic technologies would be the answer.
communist conspiracy;

National security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski commented in 1970 that technology would make it possible to assert
almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date files, containing even personal

The expansion
of the surveillance state in the twentieth century was one aspect of a
wider penetration of the state into the lives of Americans. Working class struggle
had somewhat unexpectedly driven this expansion: the state responded by taking on a
mediating role between labor and capital, ofering a measure of protection
from the ravages of a market economy through Keynesian economics and the creation of a
welfare state after the New Dealalbeit one that was underdeveloped compared to Western Europe. State
managers sought to stabilize capitalism by imposing a degree of
rationality on the system through regulating the economy and providing social services, all of
which required a greater penetration of the state into civil society.48 In the new era of neoliberal
capitalism that began in the 1970s, ruling elites sought to break this social
contract, which rested on the premise that, if the working class played by
the rules, it could see increases in wages and living conditions. From the 1970s onwards, this arrangement
information about the . . . behavior of the citizen, in addition to the more customary data.47

was undone. Alongside, there were also the beginnings of a contraction of the social wage of welfare provisions,
public housing, education, and healthcare. The end result was growing inequality and a new regime of the one

The state responded to the permanent joblessness, ghettoization,

and stigmatization that neoliberalism produced among the poor by turning
to policies of mass criminalization and incarceration. Thus, the neoliberal
onslaught went hand in hand with securitization. As Loc Wacquant writes, since the civil
percent.

rights era

Neg State Action Good

Plan is Negative State Action. Were not Pro-state per se. We are
Anti-Anti State.
Barbrook 97 (Dr. Richard, School of Westminster, Nettime, More Provocations, 6-5,
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9706/msg00034.html)
I thought that this position is clear from my remarks about the ultra-left posturing of the 'zero-work' demand. In

we have real social problems of deprivation and poverty which, in part, can
only be solved by state action. This does not make me a statist, but
rather an anti-anti-statist. By opposing such intervention because they
are carried out by the state, anarchists are tacitly lining up with the
neo-liberals. Even worse, refusing even to vote for the left, they
acquiese to rule by neo-liberal parties. I deeply admire direct action
movements. I was a radio pirate and we provide server space for anti-roads and environmental
movements. However, this doesn't mean that I support political
abstentionism or, even worse, the mystical nonsense produced by Hakim Bey. It is great for artists and
Europe,

others to adopt a marginality as a life style choice, but most of the people who are economically and socially
marginalised were never given any choice. They are excluded from society as a result of deliberate policies of

During the
'70s, I was a pro-situ punk rocker until Thatcher got elected. Then we learnt the hard way that
voting did change things and lots of people sufered if state power was
withdrawn from certain areas of our life, such as welfare and employment. Anarchism can be a
deregulation, privatisation and welfare cutbacks carried out by neo-liberal governments.

fun artistic pose. However, human suffering is not.

Our heuristic teaches a toolkit of tactics navigating the State can

sometimes be an important one.
Guante 13 Guante, Opine Session, Minnesota's co-op op-ed page, October 28, 2013. Russell
Brand, Ty Moore and the Difference Between Voting as a Strategy and Voting as a Tactic. Guante, real
name Kyle Myhre, is a mixed-race poet and hip hop artist, two-time National Poetry Slam champion,
social justice activist, educator and writer. He and/or his work has appeared on MSNBC, Racialicious,
Feministing, MPR, the Progressive, City Pages Artists of the Year list and URB Magazines Next
1000 list. Guante also founded the MN Activist Project and Hip Hop Against Homophobia concert
series, writes articles at Opine Season and elsewhere, and facilitates writing/performance workshops
for youth. Available at: http://opineseason.com/2013/10/28/russell-brand-ty-moore-and-the-differencebetween-voting-as-a-strategy-and-voting-as-a-tactic/
Like many of us, I learned as a teenager that voting was the single most important thing a person who cared about
creating change could do. In social studies and history classes, protest movements were generally referred to as
things that happened in the past, and that today, we could only engage in the political process by casting a vote
every few years. In college, I learned that this wasnt true. I learned that real change happens because of
organized social and political movements on the ground that put pressure on politicians or even work outside

Voting (particularly in a two-party system

was treated as a distraction, a way for the
powers-that-be to co-opt struggles and ultimately weaken them. Both
existing power structures to create positive, sustainable change.
dominated by corporate money and power)

viewpoints find avatars in this recently-viral debate between comedian Russell Brand and journalist Jeremy Paxman.
Brand argues that to vote is to be complicit in a system that does not care about common people, while Paxman
continually returns to the point that voting is just how democracy works.

to unlearn this either/or framework.

It took a long time for me

Both sides of the debate are easy to embrace (one is

practical and realistic, the other beautiful and revolutionary) and simultaneously easy to denounce (one represents
drone-like assimilation into a harmful system, the other pie-in-the-sky abstract idealism). And both sides are flawed.

it boils down to strategy vs. tactics. If you care about , for example,
environmental justice, or the prison industrial complex, or combating poverty, voting for the right
For me,

candidate is not a winning strategy. Challenging massive, entrenched systems takes mass movements
encompassing an array of tacticseducational campaigns, media campaigns, direct action, marches, rallies,

that doesnt mean that

electoral politics cant be one facet of this larger strategy . Running for
office, attempting to influence people already in power and voting can all
be useful tools when incorporated tactically and intentionally into a movement. Elections represent a few
boycotts, canvassing, building trust and community, and much more. But

important opportunities. First, theyre winnable. Even small victories are something concrete and energizing, which
helps sustain larger movements (when these victories are put in a means-to-an-end context and not treated as
ends themselves). Second, theyre a great media force-multiplier: because so many people still see voting as the
primary way to get involved, a specific candidate can sometimes spread the word about an issue further than a
broader activist campaign can; they may even be able to mobilize people who wouldnt otherwise get involved.
Finally, elections can put good people into positions of power. Were not just talking
about the president herethis is about school boards, city councils, state reps and more. Local elections are a
power bottleneck, and

it just makes tactical sense to take advantage of them. This

year, Im particularly excited about Ty Moores city council campaign here

in Minneapolis. Moore is a committed activist , with experience working on the ground
with Occupy Homes MN and a wide range of other struggles. He has so much experience, in fact, that when I
first heard he was running, part of me asked wont this distract from the other
good work hes involved in? But seeing how his campaign has grown, witnessing
the community support that has blossomed around it, and talking to
Moore himself, Ive become convinced that his bid for city council really
illuminates a lot of what Im writing about here. Occupy Homes MN is one of the most
inspiring activist campaigns Ive ever seen, and in their endorsement of Moore they stated: As our movement

it is critical for us to transform our grassroots demands into concrete

policy change. Having a grassroots champion like Ty on the city council
grows,

can help us turn Minneapolis into a nationwide leader in policies to

ensure safe afordable quality housing

is a human right for all and that we have democratic

control of our homes. Voting can matter. Getting good people into office can matter. Neither Moore himself nor
Occupy Homes MN are nave enough to believe that getting Moore elected will be any kind of magic key; but they
can see the possibilities. And those possibilities are worth fighting for. Voting by itself is never going to change the
world, but neither is anything by itself. Movements are big, complex, multi-layered organisms. If we care about
creating change, we have to reject the narrow views of how change happens, and embrace every opportunity to
make our communities and our world better.

AT: Sexton
Sexton is wrong---Anti-blackness as the root of all oppression is selfreferential and requires ignoring mass evidence to the contrary--critiques of multiculturalism are a reason to be weary of its
dangers, not a reason to focus on blackness to the exclusion of
other forms of violence
Paul Spickard 9, University of California, Santa Barbara, Amalgamation Schemes:
Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism (review) American Studies - Volume
50, Number 1/2, Spring/Summer 2009, pp. 125-127
One of the major developments in ethnic studies over the past two decades has been the idea (and sometimes the advocacy) of
multiraciality. From a theoretical perspective, this has stemmed from a post-structuralist attempt to deconstruct the categories
created by the European Enlightenment and its colonial enterprise around the world. From a personal perspective, it has been driven
by the life experiences in the last half-century of a growing number of people who have and acknowledge mixed parentage. The
leading figures in this scholarly movement are probably Maria Root and G. Reginald Daniel, but the writers are many and include
figures as eminent as Gary Nash and Randall Kennedy. A small but dedicated group of writers has resisted this trend: chiefly Rainier
Spencer, Jon Michael Spencer, and Lewis Gordon. They have raised no controversy, perhaps [End Page 125] because their books are
not well written, and perhaps because their arguments do not make a great deal of sense. It is not that there is nothing wrong with
the literature and the people movement surrounding multiraciality. Some writers and social activists do tend to wax rhapsodic about
the glories of intermarriage and multiracial identity as social panacea. A couple of not-very-thoughtful activists (Charles Byrd and
Susan Graham) have been coopted by the Gingrichian right (to be fair, one must point out that most multiracialists are on the left).
And, most importantly, there is a tension between some Black intellectuals and the multiracial idea over the lingering fear that, for
some people, adopting a multiracial identity is a dodge to avoid being Black. If so, that might tend to sap the strength of a
monoracially-defined movement for Black community empowerment. With Amalgamation Schemes, Jared Sexton is trying to
stir up some controversy. He presents a facile, sophisticated, and theoretically informed intelligence, and he picks a fight from the
start. His title suggests that the study of multiraciality is some kind of plot, or at the very least an illegitimate enterprise. His tone is
angry and accusatory on every page. It is difficult to get to the grounds of his argument, because the cloud of invective is so thick,

writing is abstract, referential, and at key points vague . For

Sexton (as for the Spencers and Gordon) race is about Blackness, in the United States and around the world.
That is silly, for there are other racialized relationships . In the U.S., native
peoples were racialized by European intruders in all the ways that Africans
were, and more: they were nearly extinguished. To take just one example from many around the world,
Han Chinese have racialized Tibetans historically in all the ways (including
slavery) that Whites have racialized Blacks and Indians in the U nited States. So
there is a problem with Sexton's concept of race as Blackness. There is also a
and because his

problem with his insistence on monoraciality. For Sexton and the others, one cannot be mixed or multiple; one must choose ever and

to insist that it is the only

possibility flies in the face of a great deal of human experience, and it
only to be Black. I don't have a problem with that as a political choice, but

ignores the history of how modern racial ideas emerged . Sexton does
point out, as do many writers, the flawed tendencies in multiracial advocacy mentioned in the
second paragraph above. But he imputes them to the whole movement and to the subject of
and that is not a fair assessment . The main problem is that Sexton argues from
conclusion to evidence, rather than the other way around . That is, he begins with the

study,

conclusion that the multiracial idea is bad, retrograde, and must be resisted. And then

he cherry-picks his

evidence to fit his conclusion. He spends much of his time on weaker writers such as Gregory Stephens and
Stephen Talty who have been tangential to the multiracial literature. When he addresses stronger figures like Daniel, Root, Nash, and
Kennedy, he carefully selects his quotes to fit his argument, and misrepresents their positions by doing so. Sexton also makes some
pretty outrageous claims. He takes the fact that people who study multiracial identities are often studying aspects of family life
(such as the shaping of a child's identity), and twists that to charge them with homophobia and nuclear family-ism. That is simply
not accurate for any of the main writers in the field. The same is true for his argument by innuendo that scholars of multiraciality

sometimes Sexton simply resorts to ad

hominem attacks on the motives and personal lives of the writers
somehow advocate mail-order bride services. And

themselves. It is a pretty tawdry exercise. That is unfortunate, because Sexton appears bright and might have written a
much better book detailing his hesitations about some tendencies in the multiracial movement. He might even have opened up a
new direction for productive study of racial commitment amid complexity. Sexton does make several observations that are worth
thinking about, [End Page 126] and surely this intellectual movement, like any other, needs to think critically about itself. Sadly, this
is not that book.

Their indicts of multiculturalism get coopted by the right to justify

Islamophobia and Western racism
Dr. Amir Saeed 8, Ph.D. professor of media and cultural studies at University of
Sunderland, May 2008, "Islamophobia and Capitalism," Thinking Thru Islamophobia,
Symposium Papers, Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies,
www.academia.edu/2657806/On_conceptualising_Islamophobia_antiMuslim_sentiment_and_cultural_racism
Simultaneously

cultural racism is evident with politicians questioning the

success of a multicultural society . The moral panic surrounding the events of

9/11, and 7/7 have led to a right-wing led debate under the guise of community
cohesion that have suggested a return to core national values /culture (note
that the debates suggest the lack of precise meanings for these terms; national and culture) alongside
stricter immigration and policing controls . Recently a new dominant neoright wing discourse has been formulated that questions the whole
concept of multiculturalism . What makes this diferent from previous right
wing criticism of multiculturalism is that much of this criticism is coming
from previously centre left commentators . Much of this language has taken
even the more sinister view of questioning the need of immigration,
questioning minority communities and questioning the actual benefits of a
multicultural society. Furthermore much of the blame for the failure of
multiculturalism has been attached to Muslims incompatibility to live
within the democratic principles of the West.

Neolib/Cap

2AC Neolib
We the surveillance that we critique
Smith 2013 [Andrea Smith, Proffessor of Media and Cultural Studies at University
of Cal Riverside, intellectual, feminist, activist, co-founder of INCITE and focuses on
Women of Color particularly Native American Women; The Problem With Privilege;
August 14th http://andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/the-problem-withprivilege-by-andrea-smith/] N.H
Further, the current system of

mass surveillance of Muslims is analogous to and

overlaps with other systems of racialized security surveillance that feed the
mass deportation of immigrants under the Obama administration and that disproportionately
target African Americans, contributing to their mass incarceration and what
Michelle Alexander refers to as the New Jim Crow.4 We argue that racialized groupings are
produced in the very act of collecting information about certain groups
deemed as threats by the national security statethe Brown terrorist,
the Black and Brown drug dealer and user, and the immigrant who
threatens to steal jobs. We conclude that security has become one of
the primary means through which racism is ideologically reproduced in the
post-racial, neoliberal era. Drawing on W. E. B. Duboiss notion of the psychological wage,
we argue that neoliberalism has been legitimized in part through racialized
notions of security that ofer a new psychological wage as compensation
for the decline of the social wage and its reallocation to homeland
security.

2AC Universal Cap

The afs challenge to racist surveillance politics creates an ideal
intersectional space to build coalitions against racial violence--PARTICULAR projects are key
Wing 12 (Adrien Katherine Wing, is a Bessie Dutton Murray Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of
Iowa College of Law. A.B. Princeton, 1978; M.A. UCLA, 1979; J.D. Stanford, 1982, Spring 2003, Civil Rights in the
Post 911 World: Critical Race Praxis, Coalition Building, and the War on Terrorism, 63 La. L. Rev. (2003),
http://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5987&context=lalrev&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A
%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fq%3Dguantanamo%2B%2522critical%2Brace%2Btheory
%2522%26btnG%3D%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%252C5%26as_vis%3D1#search=%22guantanamo%20critical
%20race%20theory%22

Because of the various problems with coalition building, several scholars do

not endorse it. For example, Delgado advocates laboring within your own group
for the social justice goals you support. "For some projects, justice turns out to be a solitary though heroic quest,
and the road to justice is one that must be traveled alone, or with our deepest, most trusted companions."' 4

Haunani-Kay Trask states that real organizing of native Hawaiians takes

place outside of coalitions.205 She supports Malcolm X's claims that whites need to
tackle racism within their own communities, rather than in coalition ." "Work in
conjunction with us-each working among our own kind."207 Despite the frictions and problems
between various traditional and nontraditional groups, coalition building
can be a useful tool of critical race praxis in the current period. African
Americans have been used to being the dominant minority in the United States,
able to keep their concerns at the center of the civil rights movement .
Latinos are now surpassing Blacks numerically,208 and are the majority in California
already.2 They will be 25% of the U.S. population by 2050.210 Blacks will have to learn to work
in coalition with Latinos to ensure that Black concerns are not lost in a
new dispensation of "favored minority." While the Latinos are becoming the majority
minority, they are not as politically organized as the Blacks yet, with many being
recent immigrants or noncitizens, who may not speak English. 21 ' Thus in some
instances, Latinos will need to learn from African Americans, and with them, to
achieve various goals. Coalition is good for Asians because although they score
higher on standardized tests and have a higher income level than the other minority groups, history has
already shown that they remain regarded as perpetual foreigners,1 2 once
subject to internment . 3 Native Americans constitute only two million
people," 4 and can benefit from linking with the larger groups , some of whom
may resent those tribes, who now profit from gambling casino wealth." 5 Arabs and Muslims need to
join in coalition with the other groups because they are too small and too
recent as immigrants in comparison to the other groups to go it alone . As
the current personification of evil of the moment, they need to draw upon
the resources of other groups for support. Coalition building does not happen in
a vacuum. It

must coalesce around particular projects where there is

commonality of interest . For instance, Frank Valdes has noted that Latinos and Asians share a
common interest in legal issues that involve "immigration, family, citizenship, nationhood, language, expression,
culture, and global economic restructuring."216

Racial profiling is a potential issue for

cooperation as it afects all the major minority groups . I will use it for illustrative
purposes in the remainder of this section, even though it is only one of various issues that could be the basis for
coalition building. Asian scholars have noted how both the recent mistreatment of Chinese American scientist Dr.

the interning of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in

could both be regarded as cases of racial profiling.218 Kevin
Johnson has called for Asians and Latinos to form political coalitions to
challenge arbitrary INS conduct . 21 He also wants Blacks and Latinos to form
coalitions to work on issues of racial profiling , as well.22 In the war against
Wen Ho Lee 2 17 and
World War II

terrorism, racial profiling is particularly afecting Blacks, Latinos and

South Asians who look Arab, creating an ideal intersectional issue for
coalition building .22 ' Coalescing around profiling in these times will not be
easy. In his timely book, Justice at War: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights in a Time of Crisis, Richard Delgado, a
founder of CRT, queries, "Will the establishment insist on Americanism and toeing the line
in the war on terrorism, and demand that minorities demonstrate loyalty,
in return for a symbolic concession or two?.. .Will it choose one minority
group for favored treatment, in hope of keeping the others in line ."2'22 There
are several foreseeable scenarios in this regard. For example, the Bush administration could
reconfigure rather than terminate various federal affirmative action
programs after an expected hostile Supreme Court decision in the upcoming Michigan cases,223 to
attempt to ensure Black support for the war eforts. The administration's rejection of
the pro-affirmative action position of the University of Michigan may have attracted some Asian support.224 The
perpetuation of the forty year old blockade against Cuba despite U.S. business
opposition ensures Cuban American loyalty,225 and the rumored appointment
of a Hispanic for the next U.S. Supreme Court vacancy may attract other
Latinos.22 ' Delgado wonders whether people of color will "be able to work
together toward mutual goals --or [ will] the current factionalism and
distrust continue into the future , with various minority groups competing
for crumbs while majoritarian rule continue[s] unabated? 22

DA

Generic Ks of DA

2AC Bilgin
Focus on short-term impacts is epistemologically bankrupt greater
attention to structural conditions and root causes is key.
Bilgin & Morton 4 (Pinar, Associate Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University, & Adam
David, Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University, Politics, 24(3),
From Rogue to Failed States? The Fallacy of Short-termism, p. 176-178)

Calls for alternative approaches to the phenomenon of state failure are often met with the
criticism that such alternatives could only work in the long term whereas
something needs to be done here and now . Whilst recognising the need for immediate action,
it is the role of the political scientist to point to the fallacy of shorttermism in the conduct of current policy. Short-termism is defined by Ken Booth (1999, p. 4) as
approaching security issues within the time frame of the next election, not the next generation. Viewed as such, shorttermism is the enemy of true strategic thinking. The latter requires
policymakers to rethink their long-term goals and take small steps
towards achieving them. It also requires heeding against taking steps that
might eventually become self-defeating. The United States has presently fought three wars against
two of its Cold War allies in the post-Cold War era, namely, the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Both
were supported in an attempt to preserve the delicate balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War policy
of supporting client regimes has eventually backfired in that US policymakers now have to face the instability they have caused.
Hence the need for a comprehensive understanding of state failure and the role Western states have played in failing them through
varied forms of intervention. Although some commentators may judge that the road to the existing situation is paved with good

a truly strategic approach to the problem of international terrorism requires a more

sensitive consideration of the medium-to-long-term implications of state building in different
parts of the world whilst also addressing the root causes of the problem of state failure. Developing
intentions,

this line of argument further, reflection on different socially relevant meanings of state failure in relation to different time
increments shaping policy-making might convey alternative considerations. In line with John Ruggie (1998, pp. 167170), divergent
issues might then come to the fore when viewed through the different lenses of particular time increments. Firstly, viewed through
the lenses of an incremental time frame, more immediate concerns to policymakers usually become apparent when linked to
precocious assumptions about terrorist networks, banditry and the breakdown of social order within failed states. Hence relevant
players and events are readily identified (al-Qaeda), their attributes assessed (axis of evil, strong/weak states) and judgements
made about their long-term significance (war on terrorism). The key analytical problem for policymaking in this narrow and blinkered
domain is the one of choice given the constraints of time and energy devoted to a particular decision. These factors lead

policymakers to bring conceptual baggage to bear on an issue that simplifies but

also distorts information . Taking a second temporal form, that of a conjunctural time frame, policy
responses are subject to more fundamental epistemological concerns. Factors
assumed to be constant within an incremental time frame are more
variable and it is more difficult to produce an intended efect on ongoing
processes than it is on actors and discrete events. For instance, how long should the war on
terror be waged for? Areas of policy in this realm can therefore begin to become more concerned with the underlying forces that

Within an
epochal time frame an agenda still in the making appears that requires a
shift in decision-making, away from a conventional problem-solving mode
wherein doing nothing is favoured on burden-of-proof grounds, towards a risk-averting mode, characterised by prudent
contingency measures. To conclude, in relation to failed states, the latter time frame entails
reflecting on the very structural conditions shaping the problems of failure
shape current trajectories. Shifting attention to a third temporal form draws attention to still different dimensions.

raised throughout the present discussion, which will demand lasting and delicate attention from practitioners across the academy
and policymaking communities alike.

2AC Complexity
Complexity means make linear predictions fail
Taleb & Blythe 11 (Nassim Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York Universitys
Polytechnic Institute. Mark Blythe, Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University, The Black Swan
of Cairo How Suppressing Volatility Makes the World Less Predictable and More Dangerous,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67741/nassim-nicholas-taleb-and-mark-blyth/the-black-swan-of-cairo,
May/June 2011)

surprise the permanent condition of the U.S. political and economic elite? In 20078,
when the global financial system imploded, the cry that no one could have
seen this coming was heard everywhere, despite the existence of
numerous analyses showing that a crisis was unavoidable. It is no surprise that one
hears precisely the same response today regarding the current turmoil in the Middle East. The critical
Why is

issue

is the artificial suppression of volatility the ups and downs of lifein

the name of stability. It is both mis- guided and dangerous to push unobserved risks
further into the statistical tails of the probability distribution of outcomes and
in both cases

allow these high-impact, low-probability tail risks to disappear from

policymakers fields of observation . What the world is witnessing in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya
is simply what happens when highly constrained systems explode .
Complex systems

that

have artificially suppressed volatility tend to

become extremely fragile , while at the same time exhibiting no visible

risks. In fact, they tend to be too calm and exhibit minimal variability as silent risks accumulate beneath the
surface. Although the stated intention of political leaders and economic policymakers is to
stabilize the system by inhibiting fluctuations, the result tends to be the opposite.
These artificially con- strained systems become prone to Black Swans
that is, they become

extremely vulnerable to large-scale events

statistical norm and were largely unpredictable to a given set of observers.

that lie far from the

Such environments

eventually experi- ence massive blowups, catching everyone o-guard and

undoing years of stability

or, in some cases,

ending up far worse than they

were in their initial volatile state . Indeed, the longer it takes for the blowup
to occur, the worse the resulting harm

in both economic and political systems. Seeking to

restrict variability seems to be good policy (who does not prefer stability to chaos?), so it is with very good
intentions that policymakers unwittingly increase the risk of major blowups . And it
is the same misperception of the properties of natural systems that led to both the economic crisis of 20078 and

to make systems robust,

all risks must be visible and out in the open fluctuat nec mergitur(it fluctuates but does not sink)
the current turmoil in the Arab world. The policy implications are identical:

goes the Latin saying. Just as a robust economic system is one that encourages early failures (the concepts of fail
small and fail fast), the U.S. gov- ernment should stop supporting dictato- rial regimes for the sake of
pseudostability and instead allow political noise to rise to the surface. Making an economy robust in the face of
business swings requires allowing risk to be visible; the same is true in politics. SEDUCED BY STABILITY Both the
recent financial crisis and the current political crisis in the Middle East are grounded in the rise of complexity,
interdependence, and unpredictability. Policymakers in the United Kingdom and the United States have long
promoted policies aimed at eliminating fluctuation no more booms and busts in the economy, no more Iranian
surprises in foreign policy. These policies have almost always produced undesirable outcomes. For example, the
U.S. banking system became very fragile following a succession of pro- gressively larger bailouts and government

interventions, particularly after the 1983 rescue of major banks (ironically, by the same Reagan administration that
trum- peted free markets). In the United States, promoting these bad policies has been a bipartisan eort
throughout. Republicans have been good at fragilizing large corpora- tions through bailouts, and Democrats have
been good at fragilizing the government. At the same time, the financial system as a whole exhibited little volatility;
it kept get- ting weaker while providing policymakers with the illusion of stability, illustrated most notably when Ben
Bernanke, who was then a member of the Board of Gover- nors of the U.S. Federal Reserve, declared the era of the
great moderation in 2004. Putatively independent central bankers fell into the same trap. During the 1990s, U.S.
Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan wanted to iron out the economic cycles booms and busts, and he sought to
control economic swings with interest-rate reductions at the slightest sign of a downward tick in the economic data.
Furthermore, he adapted his eco- nomic policy to guarantee bank rescues, with implicit promises of a backstopthe
now infamous Greenspan put .

These policies proved to have grave delayed side

efects . Washington stabilized the market with bailouts and by allowing

certain com- panies to grow too big to fail. Because policymakers
believed it was better to do something than to do nothing, they felt
obligated to heal the economy rather than wait and see if it healed on its
own. The foreign policy equivalent is to support the incumbent no matter what. And just as banks took wild risks
thanks to Greenspans implicit insurance policy, client governments such as Hosni Mubaraks in Egypt for years
engaged in overt plunder thanks to similarly reliable U.S. support. Those who seek to prevent volatility on the
grounds that any and all bumps in the road must be avoided paradoxically increase the probability that a tail risk
will cause a major explosion. Consider as a thought experiment a man placed in an artificially sterilized
environment for a decade and then invited to take a ride on a crowded subway; he would be expected to die

preventing small forest fires can cause larger forest fires to

become devastating. This property is shared by all complex systems . In the
quickly. Likewise,

realm of economics, price con- trols are designed to constrain volatility on the grounds that stable prices are a good
thing. But although these controls might work in some rare situations,

the long-term efect of any

such system is an eventual and extremely costly blowup

costs can far exceed the benefits accrued.

whose

cleanup

The risks of a dictatorship, no matter how

seemingly stable, are no dierent, in the long run, from those of an artificially controlled price. Such attempts to
institutionally engineer the world come in two types: those that conform to the world as it is and those that attempt
to reform the world. The nature of humans, quite reasonably, is to in- tervene in an eort to alter their world and the

government interventions are laden with unintended

and unforeseenconsequences, particularly in complex systems, so humans must work
with nature by tolerating systems that absorb human imperfections rather
than seek to change them. Take, for example, the recent celebrated documentary on the financial
outcomes it produces. But

crisis, Inside Job, which blames the crisis on the malfea- sance and dishonesty of bankers and the incompetence of
regulators. Although it is morally satisfying, the film naively over- looks the fact that humans have always been
dishonest and regulators have always been behind the curve. The only dierence this time around was the
unprecedented magnitude of the hidden risks and a mis- understanding of the statistical properties of the system.
What is needed is a system that can prevent the harm done to citizens by the dishonesty of business elites; the
limited competence of forecasters, economists, and statisticians; and the imperfections of regulation, not one that
aims to eliminate these flaws. Humans must try to resist the illusion of control: just as foreign policy should be
intelligence-proof (it should minimize its reliance on the competence of information-gathering organizations and the
predictions of experts in what are inherently unpredictable domains), the economy should be regulator-proof,
given that some regulations simply make the system itself more fragile. Due to the complexity of markets, intricate
regulations simply serve to generate fees for lawyers and profits for sophisticated derivatives traders who can build
complicated financial products that skirt those regulations. DONT BE A TURKEY The life of a turkey before
Thanksgiving is illustrative: the turkey is fed for 1,000 days and every day seems to confirm that the farmer cares
for ituntil the last day, when confidence is maximal. The turkey problem occurs when a naive analysis of
stability is derived from the absence of past variations. Likewise, confidence in stability was maximal at the onset of
the financial crisis in 2007. The turkey problem for humans is the result of mistaking one environment for another.

The linear domain is

characterized by its predictability and the low degree of interaction among its
components, which allows the use of mathematical methods that make forecasts reliable. In complex
systems, there is an absence of visible causal links between the elements,
Humans simultaneously inhabit two systems: the linear and the complex.

masking a high degree of interdependence and extremely low

predictability. Nonlinear elements are also present, such as those commonly known, and generally misunderstood, as tipping points. Imagine someone who keeps adding sand to a sand
pile without any visible consequence, until suddenly the entire pile
crumbles. It would be foolish to blame the collapse on the last grain of
sand rather than the structure of the pile, but that is what people do
consistently , and that is the policy error . U.S. President Barack Obama may
blame an intelligence failure for the gov- ernments not foreseeing the
revolution in Egypt (just as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter blamed an intelligence
failure for his administrations not fore- seeing the 1979 Islamic
Revolution in Iran), but it is the suppressed risk in the statis- tical tails that
mattersnot the failure to see the last grain of sand . As a result of complicated
interdependence and conta- gion eects, in all man-made complex systems, a small number of possible events
dominate, namely, Black Swans. Engineering, architecture, astronomy, most of physics, and much of common
science are linear domains. The complex domain is the realm of the social world, epidemics, and economics.
Crucially, the linear domain delivers mild variations without large shocks, whereas the complex domain delivers
massive jumps and gaps. Complex systems are misunderstood, mostly because humans sophistication, obtained
over the history of human knowl- edge in the linear domain, does not transfer properly to the complex domain.

Humans can predict a solar eclipse and the trajectory of a space vessel,
but not the stock market or Egyptian political events. All man-made complex systems
have commonalities and even universalities. Sadly, deceptive calm (followed by Black Swan surprises) seems to be
one of those properties. THE ERROR OF PREDICTION As with a crumbling sand pile, it would be foolish to attribute
the collapse of a fragile bridge to the last truck that crossed it, and even more foolish to try to predict in advance

The system is responsible, not the compo- nents . But

after the financial crisis of 20078, many people thought that predict- ing the subprime
meltdown would have helped. It would not have , since it was a symptom
which truck might bring it down.

of the crisis, not its underlying cause. Likewise, Obamas blaming bad intelligence for his administrations failure to predict the crisis in Egypt is symptomatic of both
the misunderstanding of complex systems and the bad policies involved .
Obamas mistake illustrates the illusion of local causal chainsthat is,
confusing catalysts for causes and assuming that one can know which
catalyst will produce which eect.

The final episode of the upheaval in Egypt was unpredictable

for all observers, especially those involved. As such, blam- ing the ciais as foolish as funding it to forecast such
events. Governments are wasting billions of dollars on attempting to predict events that are produced by
interdependent systems and are therefore not statistically understandable at the individual level. As Mark
Abdollahian of Sentia Group, one of the contractors who sell predictive analytics to the U.S. government, noted
regarding Egypt, policymakers should think of this like Las Vegas. In blackjack,

if you can do four

percent better than the average, youre making real money. But the
analogy is spurious. There is no four percent better
money wasted but

on Egypt. This is not just

the construction of a false confidence based on an erroneous

focus . It is telling that the intelligence analysts made the same mistake as the risk-management systems that
failed to predict the economic crisisand oered the exact same excuses when they failed. Political and economic
tail events are unpredictable, and their probabilities are not scientifically measurable. No matter how many

humans will never

be able to turn politics into the tractable random- ness of blackjack. Most
dollars are spent on research, predicting revolutions is not the same as counting cards;

explanations being oered for the current turmoil in the Middle East follow the catalysts as causes confusion. The

riots in Tunisia and Egypt were initially attributed to rising commodity prices, not to stifling and unpopular
dictatorships. But Bahrain and Libya are countries with high gdps that can aord to import grain and other
commodities. Again, the focus is wrong even if the logic is comforting.

It is the system and its

fragility, not events, that must be studied what physicists call percolation theory, in
which the proper- ties of the terrain are studied rather than those of a single element of the terrain.

When

dealing with a system that is inherently unpredictable, what should be

done?

Dierentiating between two types of countries is useful. In the first, changes in government do not lead

to meaningful dierences in political outcomes (since political tensions are out in the open). In the second type,
changes in govern- ment lead to both drastic and deeply unpredictable changes. Consider that Italy, with its muchmaligned cabinet instability, is economi- cally and politically stable despite having had more than 60
governments since World War II (indeed, one may say Italys stability is because of these switches of government).
Similarly, in spite of consis- tently bad press, Lebanon is a relatively safe bet in terms of how far governments can
jump from equilibrium; in spite of all the noise, shifting alliances, and street protests, changes in government there
tend to be comparatively mild. For exam- ple, a shift in the ruling coalition from Christian parties to Hezbollah is not
such a consequential jump in terms of the countrys economic and political stability. Switching equilibrium, with
control of the government changing from one party to another, in such systems acts as a shock absorber. Since a
single party cannot have total and more than temporary control, the possibility of a large jump in the regime type is
constrained. In contrast, consider Iran and Iraq. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and Sad- dam Hussein both

In Iran, when the shah was toppled, the

shift of power to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a huge, unforeseeable
jump. After the fact, analysts could construct convincing accounts about
how killing Iranian Communists, driving the left into exile, demobilizing
the demo- cratic opposition, and driving all dissent into the mosque had
made Khomeinis rise inevitable. In Iraq, the United States removed the lid and was actually
surprised to find that the regime did not jump from hyperconstraint to something like France. But this was
constrained volatility by any means necessary.

impossible to predict ahead of time due to the nature of the system itself.
What can be said, however, is that

the more constrained the volatility, the bigger the

regime jump is likely to be . From the French Revolution to the triumph of

the Bolsheviks, history is replete with such examples, and yet somehow
humans remain unable to process what they mean . THE FEAR OF RANDOMNESS Humans
fear randomnessa healthy ancestral trait inherited from a dierent environment. Whereas in the past, which was a
more linear world, this trait enhanced fitness and increased chances of survival, it can have the reverse eect in
todays complex world, making volatility take the shape of nasty Black Swans hiding behind deceptive periods of

This is not to say that any and all volatility should be

embraced. Insurance should not be banned, for example. But alongside the
catalysts as causes confusion sit two mental biases: the illusion of
control and the action bias ( the illusion that doing something is always
great moderation.

better than doing nothing ). This leads to the desire to impose man-made
solutions.

Greenspans actions were harmful, but it would have been hard to justify inaction in a democracy

where the incentive is to always promise a better outcome than the other guy, regard- less of the actual, delayed
cost. Variation is information. When there is no variation, there is no information. This explains the cias failure to
predict the Egyptian revolution and, a generation before, the Iranian Revolutionin both cases, the revolutionaries
themselves did not have a clear idea of their relative strength with respect to the regime they were hoping to
topple. So rather than sub- sidize and praise as a force for stability every tin-pot potentate on the planet, the U.S.
government should encourage countries to let information flow upward through the transparency that comes with
political agitation. It should not fear fluc- tuations per se, since allowing them to be in the open, as Italy and
Lebanon both show in dierent ways, creates the stability of small jumps. As Seneca wrote in De clementia,
Repeated punishment, while it crushes the hatred of a few, stirs the hatred of all . . . just as trees that have been
trimmed throw out again countless branches. The

imposition of peace through repeated

punishment lies at the heart of many seemingly intractable conflicts,

including the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate. Further- more,

dealing with seemingly reliable high-

level officials rather than the people themselves prevents any peace
treaty signed from being robust . The Romans were wise enough to know that only a free man
under Roman law could be trusted to engage in a contract; by extension, only a free people can be trusted to abide
by a treaty. Treaties that are negotiated with the consent of a broad swath of the populations on both sides of a
conflict tend to survive.

Just as no central bank is powerful enough to dictate

stability, no superpower can be powerful enough to guarantee solid peace
alone. U.S. policy toward the Middle East has historically, and especially
since 9/11, been unduly focused on the repression of any and all political
fluctuations in the name of preventing Islamic fundamentalism a trope
that Mubarak repeated until his last moments in power and that Libyan leader
Muammar al-Qaddafi continues to emphasize today, blaming Osama bin Laden for what has befallen him. This
is wrong. The West and its autocratic Arab allies have strengthened
Islamic funda- mentalists by forcing them underground, and even more so
by killing them.

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau put it, A little bit of agitation gives motivation to the soul, and

what really makes the species prosper is not peace so much as freedom. With freedom comes some unpredictable
fluctuation. This is one of lifes packages:

stability without volatility.

there is no freedom without noiseand no

2AC Fear of Death

Politics of paranoia generate fear of death which shape our
reactions to conflicts in a uniquely calculative way this makes ALL
life disposable and eliminates personal valuethe terminal impact
is authentic existence.
Park 06 (James, Philosophy Professor at the University of Minnesota, Our Existential Predicament: Loneliness
Depression Anxiety and Death)

Our fundamental absurdity is disclosed when the mad rush called life stops ,
when our eyes pierce thru the fog of busyness, and our spirits rebel against the cardboard explanations of the

How chancy, contingent, accidental, and inconsequential we are ! We

find ourselves plopped into an ordered but meaningless universe as if we
woke up after the instructions for the game of life had already been givenand now we don't know how
to play! The little humorous absurdities of life have grown fat by eating up the certainties of the past, leaving us
in the midst of limitless, overwhelming absurdity. Felt another way, our Existential Predicament is
terrifying insecurity complete shakiness and lack of stability in everything.
We try to protect and shield ourselves thru elaborate security operations :
jobs, insurance, savings; marriage, family, friends. But if our uneasiness is existential, these
security games are never sufficient which may lead us to ever more
desperate scrambling for invulnerability. Or the little disappointments of life, like jagged
world.

rocks in the river, may tear our rubber rafts of illusion, sinking us into bottomless despair. However, such

experiences of existential absurdity, insecurity, and despair can also open

us to a new sensitivity and depth within ourselves. Initially what seems to be
unredeemable suffering can be turned toward positive purpose in Authentic Existence and beyond
thatused as an opening to Existential Freedom: Where once we were almost pulled to
pieces by absurdity, we now find ourselves filled with inward peace , harmony,
and coherence. Even tho the world and our ordinary lives remain as absurd as ever, inwardly we have become

Thru fumbling, somewhat random eforts, we have

finally hit upon the correct posture-of-being that allows us to become
ultimately safe and secure. This restful strength does not come from efforts to achieve security but
only when we completely abandon our defensive techniques. Put another way, we become
Existentially Free by giving up our attempts to cure our Existential Malaise, by allowing
ourselves to sink into despair, hoping beyond reason that we will sink thru the bottom of
despair into inexplicable hope, joy, peace, and fulfillment . We cannot explain this
fulfilled, satisfied, complete.

deep change. We only know that once we were distorted by absurdity, shaken by insecurity, and drowning in
despair. But now we are resting harmoniously in peace and inner coherence, relying confidently on our new-found
strength, stability, and security, and floating serenely on a surprising hope and joy.

1AR Abandon War

Deterrence mean nuke war is impossible however threats of nuclear
annihilation serve justify the security apparatus.
Baudrillard 81 (Jean, Simulacra and Simulation: The Orbital and the Nuclear, 1981)
the balance of terror is never anything
but the spectacular slope of a system of deterrence that has insinuated
itself from the inside into all the cracks of daily life. Nuclear suspension only
serves to seal the trivialized system of deterrence that is at the heart of
the media, of the violence without consequences that reigns throughout
the world, of the aleatory apparatus of all the choices that are made for us. The most insignificant
of our behaviors is regulated by neutralized, indiferent, equivalent signs,
by zero-sum signs like those that regulate the "strategy of games " (but the true
equation is elsewhere, and the unknown is precisely that variable of simulation which makes of the
atomic arsenal itself a hyperreal form, a simulacrum that dominates
everything and reduces all "ground-level" events to being nothing but
ephemeral scenarios, transforming the life left us into survival, into a
stake without stakes - not even into a life insurance policy: into a policy
that already has no value). It is not the direct threat of atomic destruction that paralyzes our lives, it
is deterrence that gives them leukemia. And this deterrence comes from that fact that
even the real atomic clash is precluded - precluded like the eventuality of the real in a system
of signs. The whole world pretends to believe in the reality of this threat (this is
The apotheosis of simulation: the nuclear. However,

understandable on the part of the military, the gravity of their exercise and the discourse of their "strategy" are at

but it is precisely at this level that there are no strategic stakes. The
whole originality of the situation lies in the improbability of destruction.
Deterrence precludes war - the archaic violence of expanding systems.
Deterrence itself is the neutral, implosive violence of metastable systems
or systems in involution. There is no longer a subject of deterrence, nor an
adversary nor a strategy - it is a planetary structure of the annihilation of
stakes. Atomic war, like the Trojan War, will not take place. The risk of
nuclear annihilation only serves as a pretext, through the sophistication of
weapons (a sophistication that surpasses any possible objective to such
an extent that it is itself a symptom of nullity), for installing a universal
security system, a universal lockup and control system whose deterrent
efect is not at all aimed at an atomic clash (which was never in question,
except without a doubt in the very initial stages of the cold war, when one
still confused the nuclear apparatus with conventional war) but, rather, at
the much greater probability of any real event, of anything that would be
an event in the general system and upset its balance. The balance of
terror is the terror of balance. Deterrence is not a strategy, it circulates
and is exchanged between nuclear protagonists exactly as is international
capital in the orbital zone of monetary speculation whose fluctuations
suffice to control all global exchanges. Thus the money of destruction
(without any reference to real destruction, any more than floating capital
has a real referent of production) that circulates in nuclear orbit suffices
to control all the violence and potential conflicts around the world. What is
hatched in the shadow of this mechanism with the pretext of a maximal,
stake),

"objective," threat, and thanks to Damocles' nuclear sword, is the

perfection of the best system of control that has ever existed. And the
progressive satellization of the whole planet through this hypermodel of
security.

Security impacts preserve the illusion that actual war is still a

possibility.
Baudrillard 95 (Jean, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995)
We are in neither a logic of war nor a logic of peace but in a logic of deterrence
which has wound its way inexorably through forty years of cold war to a denouement in our current events; a
logic of weak events, to which belong those in Eastern Europe as well as the Gulf War. Peripeteias of an
anorexic history or an anorexic war which can no longer devour the enemy because it is incapable of conceiving the
enemy as worthy of being challenged or annihilated and God knows Saddam Hussein is worthy of neither

It is the de-intensified state of war, that

of the right to war under the green light of the UN and with an abundance
of precautions and concessions. It is the bellicose equivalent of safe sex:
make war like love with a condom! On the Richter scale, the Gulf War would not even reach two
or three. The build-up is unreal, as though the fiction of an earthquake were created by manipulating
challenge nor annihilation and thus devours itself.

the measuring instruments. It is neither the strong form nor the degree zero of war, but the weak or phthisical [sic]

the asymptotic form which allows a brush with war but no encounter,
the transparent degree which allows war to be seen from the depths of
the darkroom. We should have been suspicious about the disappearance
of the declaration of war, the disappearance of the symbolic passage to
the act, which already presaged the disappearance of the end of
hostilities, then of the distinction between winners and losers (the winner
readily becomes the hostage of the loser: the Stockholm syndrome), then
of operations themselves. Since it never began, this war is therefore interminable. By dint of
dreaming of pure war, of an orbital war purged of all local and political peripeteias,
we have fallen into soft war, into the virtual impossibility of war which
translates into the paltry fantasia where adversaries compete in deescalation, as though the irruption or the event of war had become
obscene and insupportable, no longer sustainable, like every real event
moreover. Everything is therefore transposed into the virtual, and we are
confronted with a virtual apocalypse, a hegemony ultimately much more
dangerous than real apocalypse. The most widespread belief is in a logical progression from
degree,

virtual to actual, according to which no available weapon will not one day be used and such a concentration of force

Our virtual has

definitively overtaken the actual and we must be content with this extreme
virtuality which, unlike the Aristotelian, deters any passage to action. We are no longer
in a logic of the passage from virtual to actual but in a hyperrealist logic of the deterrence
of the real by the virtual. In this process, the hostages are once again revealing.
Extracted like molecules in an experimental process, then distilled one by one in the exchange, it is their
virtual death that is at issue, not their real death. Moreover, they never die: at
best they disappear. There will never be a monument to the unknown
hostage, everyone is too ashamed of him: the collective shame which attaches to the
hostage reflects the absolute degradation of real hostility (war) into
cannot but lead to conflict. However, this is an Aristotelian logic which is no longer our own.

virtual hospitality (Saddam Husseins guests). The passage to action

suffers widespread infamy: it supposedly corresponds to a brutal lifting of repression ,
thus to a psychotic process. It seems that this obsession with the passage to action today governs all our

with every real violence, with every

pleasure which is too real. Against this obsession with the real we have
created a gigantic apparatus of simulation which allows us to pass to the
act in vitro (this is true even of procreation). We prefer the exile of the virtual, of
which television is the universal mirror, to the catastrophe of the real. War has not
escaped this virtualisation which is like a sur-gical operation, the aim of
which is to present a face-lifted war, the cosmetically treated spectre of
its death, and its even more deceptive televisual subterfuge (as we saw at
Timisoara). Even the military has lost the privilege of use value, the privilege of real war . Deterrence has
passed by that way and it spares no one. No more than the politicians, the
military personnel do not know what to make of their real function, their
function of death and destruction. They are pledged to the decoy of war as
the others are to the decoy of power.
behaviour: obsession with every real, with every real event,

AT: Environment DA
Environmental apocalypticism causes eco-authoritarianism and
mass violence against those deemed environmental threats also
causes political apathy which turns case

Buell 3 Frederickcultural critic on the environmental crisis and a Professor of English at Queens College and
the author of five books, From Apocalypse To Way of Life, pages 185-186

crisis discourse thus sufers from a number of liabilities.

First, it seems to have become a political liability almost as much as an
asset. It calls up a fierce and efective opposition with its predictions;
worse, its more specific predictions are all too vulnerable to refutation by
events. It also exposes environmentalists to being called grim doomsters
and antilife Puritan extremists. Further, concern with crisis has all too
often tempted people to try to find a total solution to the problems
involved a phrase that, as an astute analyst of the limitations of crisis
discourse, John Barry, puts it, is all too reminiscent of the Third Reichs
infamous final solution .55 A total crisis of societyenvironmental
Looked at critically, then,

crisis at its gravestthreatens to translate despair into inhumanist

authoritarianism ;

more often, however, it helps keep merely dysfunctional authority in place. It thus leads, Barry suggests, to the

it depoliticizes people

belief that only elite- and expert-led solutions are possible.56 At the same time
, inducing them to accept
their impotence as individuals; this is something that has made many people today feel, ironically and/or passively, that since it makes no difference at
all what any individual does on his or her own, one might as well go along with it. Yet another pitfall for the full and sustained elaboration of
environmental crisis is, though least discussed, perhaps the most deeply ironic. A problem with deep cultural and psychological as well as social effects,

the worse one feels environmental crisis is, the

more one is tempted to turn ones back on the environment. This means,
preeminently, turning ones back on natureon traditions of nature feeling, traditions of knowledge
it is embodied in a startlingly simple proposition:

about nature (ones that range from organic farming techniques to the different departments of ecological science), and traditions of nature-based

If nature is thoroughly wrecked these days, people need to delink

from nature and live in postnaturea conclusion that, as the next chapter shows, many in U.S. society drew at the end of the millenium.
Explorations of how deeply nature has been wounded and how intensely vulnerable to and dependent on human actions it is can
thus lead, ironically, to further indiference to nature-based environmental issues,
not greater concern with them. But what quickly becomes evident to any reflective consideration of the difficulties of
crisis discourse is that all of these liabilities are in fact bound tightly up with one specific notion of
environmental crisiswith 1960s- and 1970s-style environmental apocalypticism . Excessive concern about them does not recognize that
activism.

crisis discourse as a whole has significantly changed since the 1970s. They remain inducements to look away from serious reflection on environmental
crisis only if one does not explore how environmental crisis has turned of late from apocalypse to dwelling place. The apocalyptic mode had a number of
prominent features: it was preoccupied with running out and running into walls; with scarcity and with the imminent rupture of limits; with actions that
promised and temporally predicted imminent total meltdown; and with (often, though not always) the need for immediate

total

solution . Thus doomsterism was its reigning mode; eco-authoritarianism was a grave
temptation; and as crisis was elaborated to show more and more severe deformations of nature,
temptation increased to refute it, or give up, or even cut of ties to clearly
terminal nature.

The doctrine of continued re-engineering of nature results in more

insidious destructive practices that make their impacts inevitable--unforeseen non-linearities ensure the af fails and causes extinction
Backhaus 9 (Gary Backhaus Phil @ Loyola Maryland, "Automobility: Global Warming as Symptomatology"
April 2009, www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/2/187)
Many

environmental thinkers have questioned the

presupposed tenets, e.g., the

doctrine of linear progress , on which Gore bases his belief in the success of a
scientific/technological solution to global warming and environmental problems in general. "Professional
ecologists such as Frank Egler have countered that

'Nature is not only more complex than

we think , it is more complex than we can think

[6]'". I

believe that a

commitment to sustainability must recognize limits to human cognition

and thus must take a radically diferent approach. This does not mean that science
and technology have reduced roles, but that their roles must be based on a new attitude of respectful humility
[7].

The manipulation and appropriation of nature must no longer be our

technological goals . Rather, we should be modifying our own

societal/cultural forms , which include science and technology, to live in greater harmony within the
context of natural conditions and agencies. Sciences and technologies that apprehend those conditions can

Neither science nor

technology needs to challenge natural processes; it rather needs to
challenge us to live more responsibly. The chauvinist worldview with its doctrine of reactive
serve to help us become much more respectful of natural conditions.

reparation when it comes to environmental degradation, no longer can be promoted as a viable behavioral

We can no longer appropriate nature and then deal with the so

called "unintended side-efects"a dealing that amounts to a continual
process.

re-engineering of nature, which leads to consequences that

dangerously exceed our powers of forecasting . But a new pro-activity
conducive to sustainability should be more focused on changing our
relation to nature, not so much on changing nature . Gore's critical
analysis merely focuses on wiser uses of technology ; he does not call
into question radically enough the doctrine of forcing nature to serve
us

and does not clearly advocate a science and technology that serves nature as first priority.

This can

be accomplished only by fundamental transformations in human

interpretative praxes . In practical language the transformation advocated here means that we
dramatically minimize our ecological footprints, which entails new geo- economic/political/social spatial

Cultural transformation
for sustainability requires a new epistemological basis that recognizes
productions, concerning which science and technology play a vital role.

the ontological structure of sustainable ecology as having priority over

human intention s such that we eliminate certain of our expressivities and objectivations, rather
than continuing with the manipulation of nature to accommodate our
intentions a move away from anthropocentric hegemony to a model of
human contextualization that leads away from a worldview that

presupposes the culture/nature dualism.

Bio-regionalists have called for new and radical

political changes such as the re-construction of political boundaries to be correlative with biospheric boundaries
so that the political domain becomes interfused with the natural domain in an organic development pattern [8].
Forms of human life then are organized in context with natural ecologiesan interrelation for mutual benefit.

This ecological rootedness to a place, to its place-character or genius loci as the key to ecological
bounded praxes, must be accomplished without the fascist tendencies of
race/nation imperialisms of the past , which are avoidable through the
political tactics of decentralization and networking and the value of
diversity within local-bounds. Gore champions the democratic process but really offers no
proposals that would restructure political bodies in a way that would support the implementation of
sustainability. A society that culturally and politically does not attune its practices to place-bound ecologies and

to call into
question the geography of automobility requires thinking about how the
task to de-structure automobility might show us how to re-structure life
toward the goal of sustainability. There is still another point germane to the issue of
automobility which shows the non-viability of Gore's shallow ecology. Peak oil theorists are
issuing very serious warnings concerning non-renewable energy consumption [9].
Hypothetically, if we could immediately solve the global warming (climate
change) problem in Gore's shallow, technological sense, then we would
nevertheless still be in the most utterly grave circumstances concerning
energy. Even if it were possible to solve the problem of global warming
with the use of alternative energy sources, there still would remain an
energy crisis both in terms of shortages and implementations that carry
many unwanted so-called side-efects. A policy of sustainability would
entail tackling the energy crisis directly, not because of its link to the
their interrelations does not merit the accolade of supporting sustainability. As I will show,

global warming problem ; sustainability entails more dramatic

measures, necessary curbs on modern excesses promoted by neo-liberal
economic globalization and the social structures that it constructs,
concerning which Gore's sanguine liberal-based ideology is not prepared to face. My fundamental
criticism , however, is that Gore sees global warming as the problem
rather than as a symptom of a much deeper flaw/problematic in culture,
this delimits his thinking to remain within a shallow ecological
viewpoint, foiling an analysis that would develop toward a viable
sustainability. His focus on global warming limits his solution to the
environmental crisis to a shallow technological fix. Sure he advocates a change in
and

forms of life, but these are merely a function of , or the requirement for,
theimplementation of technologies that will save us and the planet . In this
way his thinking remains within the modern scientistic attitude that in a
deep or foundational sense has led to the predicament in which we find
ourselves [10]. The eforts to dominate nature, dominations implemented
through modern technological praxes, have led to drastic changes to
the planet as a whole in an extremely short time. We now see that those changes, based on

considering our needs only (the mentality of natural resources to be ordered about on our terms),

destroying the life of, and on, the planet.

are

AT: War Impact DA

The concern with regulating war sees it as an isolatable event that
can be defined and managed this approach makes it impossible to
deal with the pervasive efects of everyday militarism
Cuomo 96 (Chris, prof of womens studies @ UGA, War is Not Just an Event: Reflections on the Significance of
Everyday Violence, Hypatia 11:4, Women and Violence, Autumn, pp. 30-45)

Philosophical attention to war has typically appeared in the form of

justifications for entering into war, and over appropriate activities within war. The
spatial metaphors used to refer to war as a separate, bounded sphere
indicate assumptions that war is a realm of human activity vastly
removed from normal life, or a sort of happening that is appropriately conceived apart
from everyday events in peaceful times. Not surprisingly, most discussions of the
political and ethical dimensions of war discuss war solely as an event-an occurrence, or
collection of occurrences, having clear beginnings and endings that are typically marked
by formal, institutional declarations. As happenings, wars and military activities can be seen as
motivated by identifiable, if complex, intentions, and directly enacted by individual and collective decision-makers

questions about war that are of interest to feministsincluding how large-scale, state-sponsored violence afects women and members
of other oppressed groups; how military violence shapes gendered, raced,
and nationalistic political realities and moral imaginations; what such violence consists of and
why it persists; how it is related to other oppressive and violent institutions
and hegemonies- cannot be adequately pursued by focusing on events.
These issues are not merely a matter of good or bad intentions and identifiable
decisions. In "Gender and 'Postmodern' War," Robin Schott introduces some of the ways in which war is
currently best seen not as an event but as a presence (Schott 1995). Schott argues
and agents of states. But many of the

that postmodern understandings of persons, states, and politics, as well as the high-tech nature of much
contemporary warfare and the preponderance of civil and nationalist wars, render an event- based conception of
war inadequate, especially insofar as gender is taken into account. In this essay, I will expand upon her argument
by showing that accounts of war that only focus on events are impoverished in a number of ways, and therefore
feminist consideration of the political, ethical, and onto- logical dimensions of war and the possibilities for
resistance demand a much more complicated approach. I take Schott's characterization of war as presence as a
point of departure, though I am not committed to the idea that the constancy of militarism, the fact of its
omnipresence in human experience, and the paucity of an event-based account of war are exclusive to

Theory that does not investigate or

even notice the omnipresence of militarism cannot represent or address the depth
and specificity of the every- day efects of militarism on women, on people living
in occupied territories, on members of military institutions, and on the
environment. These effects are relevant to feminists in a number of ways because military practices and
contemporary postmodern or postcolonial circumstances.1

institutions help construct gendered and national identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural

Lack of attention to these aspects of

military violence in an extremely technologized world results in
theory that cannot accommodate the connections among the constant presence of
militarism, declared wars, and other closely related social phenomena, such as nationalistic glorifications of
nonhuman entities and communities during peacetime.
the business of making or preventing

motherhood, media violence, and current ideological gravitations to military solutions for social problems. Ethical
approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and military practices are woven into the very fabric of
life in twenty-first century technological states lead to crisis-based politics and analyses. For any feminism that
aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and political options,

politics are problematic because they distract

crisis-based ethics and

from the need for

attention

sustained resistance to the enmeshed, omnipresent systems of

domination and oppression that so often function as givens in most people's
lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the false belief
that the absence of declared armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is
particularly easy for those whose lives are shaped by the safety of privilege, and who do not regularly encounter
the realities of militarism, to maintain this false belief. The belief that militarism is an ethical, political concern only
regarding armed conflict, creates forms of resistance to militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control.

Antiwar resistance is then mobilized when the "real" violence finally occurs,
or when the stability of privilege is directly threatened, and at that point it is difficult not to respond in ways that

Crisis-driven attention to declarations of

war might actually keep resisters complacent about and complicitous in the general
presence of global militarism. Seeing war as necessarily embedded in constant
military presence draws attention to the fact that horrific, state-sponsored
violence is happening nearly all over, all of the time, and that it is
perpetrated by military institutions and other militaristic agents of the state. Moving
away from crisis-driven politics and ontologies concerning war and military violence also enables
consideration of relationships among seemingly disparate phenomena, and therefore can shape more
nuanced theoretical and practical forms of resistance. For example, investigating the
make resisters drop all other political priorities.

ways in which war is part of a presence allows consideration of the relationships among the events of war and the
following: how militarism is a foundational trope in the social and political imagination; how the pervasive presence
and symbolism of soldiers/warriors/patriots shape meanings of gender; the ways in which threats of statesponsored violence are a sometimes invisible/sometimes bold agent of racism, nationalism, and corporate
interests; the fact that vast numbers of communities, cities, and nations are currently in the midst of excruciatingly
violent circumstances. It also provides a lens for considering the relationships among the various kinds of violence
that get labeled "war." Given current American obsessions with nationalism, guns, and militias, and growing hunger
for the death penalty, prisons, and a more powerful police state, one cannot underestimate the need for
philosophical and political attention to connections among phenomena like the "war on drugs," the "war on crime,"
and other state-funded militaristic campaigns. I propose that the constancy of militarism and its effects on social
reality be reintroduced as a crucial locus of contemporary feminist attentions, and that feminists emphasize how
wars are eruptions and manifestations of omnipresent militarism that is a product and tool of multiply oppressive,

this shift because it

better allows consideration of the efects of war and militarism on women,
subjugated peoples, and environments. While giving attention to the constancy of militarism
corporate, technocratic states.2 Feminists should be particularly interested in making

in contemporary life we need not neglect the importance of addressing the specific qualities of direct, large-scale,

But the dramatic nature of declared, large-scale conflicts

should not obfuscate the ways in which military violence pervades most
societies in increasingly technologically sophisticated ways and the significance of military institutions and
everyday practices in shaping reality. Philosophical discussions that focus only on the ethics
declared military conflicts.

of declaring and fighting wars miss these connections, and also miss the ways in which even
declared military conflicts are often experienced as omnipresent horrors. These approaches also leave
unquestioned tendencies to suspend or distort moral judgment in the face of
what appears to be the inevitability of war and militarism. Just-war theory is a
prominent example of a philosophical approach that rests on the assumption that
wars are isolated from everyday life and ethics. Such theory, as developed by St. Augustine,
Thomas Aquinas, and Hugo Grotius, and as articulated in contemporary dialogues by many philosophers, including
Michael Walzer (1977), Thomas Nagel (1974), and Sheldon Cohen (1989), take the primary question concerning the

They therefore take

as a given the notion that war is an isolated, definable event with clear
boundaries. These boundaries are significant because they distinguish the
circumstances in which standard moral rules and constraints, such as
ethics of warfare to be about when to enter into military conflicts against other states.

rules against murder and unprovoked violence , no longer apply. Just-war

theory assumes that war is a separate sphere of human activity having its
own ethical constraints and criteria and in doing so it begs the question of
whether or not war is a special kind of event, or part of a pervasive
presence in nearly all contemporary life. Because the application of just-war
principles is a matter of proper decision- making on the part of agents of the state, before wars occur, and
before military strikes are made, they assume that military initiatives are distinct
events. In fact, declarations of war are generally over-determined escalations of preexisting conditions. Justwar criteria cannot help evaluate military and related institutions, including their
peacetime practices and how these relate to wartime activities, so they cannot address the ways in
which armed conflicts between and among states emerge from omnipresent, often violent, state militarism. The
remarkable resemblances in some sectors between states of peace and states of war remain completely untouched
by theories that are only able to discuss the ethics of starting and ending direct military conflicts between and

Applications of just-war criteria actually help create the illusion

that the "problem of war" is being addressed when the only
considerations are the ethics of declaring wars and of military violence within the
boundaries of declarations of war and peace. Though just-war considerations
among states.

might theoretically help decision-makers avoid specific gross eruptions of

military violence, the aspects of war which require the underlying
presence of militarism and the direct effects of the omnipresence of militarism
remain untouched . There may be important decisions to be made about when and how to fight
war, but these must be considered in terms of the many other aspects of contemporary
war and militarism that are significant to nonmilitary personnel, including
women and nonhumans.

Militarism is a fundamentally unsustainable system that is the root

cause of all extinction threats and ensures mass structural violence
non-violence is the only possible response
Kovel 2 (Joel, The United States Military Machine, http://www.joelkovel.org/americanmilitary.htm)
I want to talk to you this evening about war - not the immediate threat of us war
against Iraq, but about how this conflict is an instance of a larger
tendency toward war-making endemic to our society. In other words, the phrase
from the folksong, I aint gonna study war no more, should be rethought. I think we do have to study
war. Not to make war but to understand more deeply how it is put
together
by

and about the awful choices that are now being thrust upon us. These remarks have been stimulated

recent events , which have ancient roots , but have taken on a new shape since the collapse

of the Soviet Union, the rise of the second Bush administration, and the inception of the so-called War on Terror.

The shape is that of permanent warfare- war-making that has no

particular strategic goal except total us dominance over global society.
Hence, a war without end and whose internal logic is to perpetuate itself.
We are, in other words, well into World War III , which will go on whether or not
any other state such as Iraq is involved. It is quite probable that this administration will go to war

in Iraq, inasmuch as certain very powerful people crave it. But it is not necessarily the case, given the fact that the
war against Iraq is such a lunatic proposal that many other people in high places are against it and too many people

And while war against Iraq is a very serious matter that needs
to be checked by massive popular resistance, equally serious are the structures now in
place in the United States dictating that whether or not the war in Iraq
takes place, there will be another war to replace it , and others after that, unless
are marching against it.

some very basic changes take place. America Has Become a War-Making
Machine The United States has always been a bellicose and expansive
country, built on violent conquest and expropriation of native peoples. Since the forming of the
American republic, military interventions have occurred at the rate of about once a year. Consider the case of
Nicaragua, a country utterly incapable of being any kind of a threat to its giant northern neighbor. Yet prior to the
Sandinista revolution in 1979 (which was eventually crushed by us proxy forces a decade later), our country had
invaded Nicaragua no fewer than 14 times in the pursuit of its imperial interests. A considerable number of
contemporary states, such as Britain, South Africa, Russia, and Israel, have been formed in just such a way. But one
of the special conditions of the formation of America, despite its aggressivity, was an inhibition against a military

Washington warned us against

having a standing army, and indeed the great bulk of us interventions prior to World War II were done
machine as such. If you remember, no less a figure than George

without very much in the way of fixed military institutions. However, after WWII a basic change set in. War-weary
America longed for demobilization, yet after a brief beginning in this direction, the process was halted and the

policy planners knew quite

that massive wartime mobilization had been the one measure that finally lifted
America out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. One of the lessons of that time was that
permanent warfare state started to take shape. In part, this was because
well

propounded by the British economist John Maynard Keynes, to the effect that capitalist societies could ameliorate
chronic [economic] crises by infusions of government spending. The Great War had certified this wisdom, and

permanent military expenditure readily became the received wisdom. This

was greatly reinforced by the drastic realignment of capitalist power as a
result of the war. America was essentially the only capitalist power in 1945 that did not lay in ruins and/or
have its empire shattered. The world had been realigned and the United States had
assumed a global imperial role. Policy planners like George Kennan lucidly realized that this
meant safeguarding extreme inequalities in wealth, which implied a permanent garrison to preserve the order of
things. The notion was especially compelling given that one other state, the Soviet Union, had emerged a great
power from the war and was the bellwether of those forces that sought to break down the prevailing distribution of
wealth. The final foundation stone for the new military order was the emergence of frightful weapons of mass

These
factors crystallized into the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, and , domestically,
into those structures that gave institutional stability and permanence to the
system: the military-industrial complex (mic). Previously the us had used militarism to secure
destruction, dominance over which became an essential element for world hegemony. The Iron Triangle

economic advantage. Now, two developments greatly transformed our militarism: the exigencies of global
hegemony and the fact that militarism became a direct source of economic advantage, through the triangular
relations of the mic with the great armament industries comprising one leg, the military establishment another, and
the state apparatus the third, profits, power, and personnel could flow through the system and from the system.
Clearly, this arrangement had the potential to greatly undermine American democracy. It was a national security
state within the state but also extended beyond it into the economy and society at large, virtually insulated from
popular input, and had the power to direct events and generate threats. Another conservative war hero-become-

Eisenhower, warned the nation in a speech in 1961 against the emerging

permanent war machine, but this time, the admonitions were not heeded.* The
machine made a kind of war against the Soviet system for 35 years.
Although actual guns were not fired between the two adversaries, as many as 10
million people died in its varied peripheral conflicts, from Korea to Vietnam,
Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. The Cold War divided the world into
bipolar imperial camps, directed by gigantic superpowers that lived off each others hostility. It was a
president, Dwight

terrible war whose immense sufering took place largely outside the view
of the American people , but it also brought about an uneasy kind of
stability in the world order, in part through the standoff in nuclear weapons. During the Ford and
Carter administrations, another great crisis seized the world capitalist economy. Having matured past the rebuilding
that followed the world war, a period of stagnation set in, which still has the global economy in its grip despite
episodic flashes of vigor. Predictably, a spate of militarism was central to the response. A Second Cold War took
place under Reagan, featuring an accelerated nuclear arms race, which was deliberately waged so as to encourage
Soviet countermeasures in the hope that this would cause breakdown in the much weaker, bloated, and corrupt
Russian system. The plan worked splendidly: by 1989-91, the mighty Soviet empire collapsed, and the bipolar world
order became unipolar, setting a stage for the current phase. The fall of the Soviet Union was widely expected to
bring a peace dividend. This would have been the case according to the official us line, parroted throughout the
media and academe, that our military apparatus was purely defensive (after all, we have no Department of War,
only one of "Defense") and reactive to Soviet expansionism and military/nuclear threat. As this was no longer a
factor, so the reasoning wentindeed, as the us now stood bestride the world militarily as had no power since the

logic predicted a general diminution in American

militarism after 1991, with corresponding benefits to society . The last
decade has at least settled this question, for the effect on us aggression, interventionism, and
the militarization of society has been precisely the opposite. In other
words, instead of braking, the machine accelerated. Removal of Soviet power did not
Roman Empireconventional

diminish Americas imperial appetite: it removed inhibitions on its internally driven expansiveness. As a result,

enhanced war-making has replaced the peace dividend. The object of this machine
has passed from dealing with Soviet Communism to a more complex and dispersed set of oil wars (Iraq I and now
II), police actions against international miscreants (Kosovo), and now the ubiquitous War Against Terror, aimed
variously at Islamic fundamentalists, Islam as a whole, or anybody irritated enough with the ruling order to take up

The comparison with the Roman Empire is here very

exact. As the eminent economist and sociologist Joseph Schumpeter described Rome in
1919: There was no corner of the known world where some interest was
not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were
some kind of arms against it.

those of Romes allies. And if Rome had no allies existed, the allies would be invented. The fight was always
invested with the order of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors.

The logic of

constant threat meshes with that of ruthless expansion , which we see everywhere
in this epoch of unipolar world dominion. Currently, the military budget of the us is 334 billion dollars. The budget
for the next fiscal year is 379 billion dollars- an increase of more than 10 percent. By 2007, the projected military
budget of the us is to be an astounding 451 billion dollars: almost half a trillion dollars, without the presence of
anything resembling a conventional war.

The present military budget is greater than the

sum of all other military budgets. In fact, it is greater than the entire
federal budget of Russia, once America's immortal adversary, and comprises more than
half - 52 percent of all discretionary spending by the us government. (By comparison,
education accounts for 8 percent of the federal budget.) A considerable portion of this is given over to "military
Keynesianism," according to the well-established paths of the mic. Thus, although in the first years after the fall of
the ussr certain firms like General Dynamics, which had played a large role in the nuclear arms race, suffered
setbacks, that problem has been largely reversed for the entire class of firms fattening at the trough of militarism. It
is fair to say, though, that the largesse is distributed over a wider scale, in accordance with the changing pattern of
armaments. us Armies Taking Root Everywhere From having scarcely any standing army in 1940, American armies
now stand everywhere. One feature of us military policy since WWII is to make war and then stay where war was
made, rooting itself in foreign territory.

Currently, the us has military bases in 113

countries , with 11 new ones formed since the beginning of the War Against Terror. The us now has bases in
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kurdistan,

military tension.

encircling China and creating new sources of

On these bases, the us military has erected some 800,000 buildings. Imagine that:

800,000 buildings in foreign countries that are now occupied by us military establishments.

And America

still maintains large forces in Germany, Japan, and Korea, with tens of
thousands of troops permanently on duty (and making mischief, as two us servicemen
recently ran over and killed two Korean girls, provoking massive demonstrations). After the first Gulf War the us
military became installed in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, in which latter place it currently occupies one quarter of the
country - 750 square miles devoted to military activity. This huge investment is no doubt determined by proximity
to Iraq. Again, after going to war in Kosovo, the us left behind an enormous base in a place called Bondsteel.

These self-expanding sites of militarism are permanent goads to terrorist

organizations. Recall that one of Osama bin Laden's professed motivations for alQaeda's attacks on American facilities was the presence of us bases in his home
country of Saudi Arabia. The bases are also permanent hazards to the
environment - indeed, the us, with some 800,000 buildings on these
military sites, is the world's largest polluter and the largest consumer of
fossil fuels. With territorial expansion of the us military apparatus, there is a corresponding expansion of
mission. For instance, in Colombia, where billions of us dollars are spent in the "War on Drugs," us troops are now
being asked to take care of pipelines through which vital oil reserves are passing. In addition, the War on Drugs is
now subsumed into the War Against Terror.

The signifier of Terror has virtually unlimited

elasticity, for once an apparatus reaches the size of the us military

machine, threats can be seen anywhere.

With the inauguration of the new hard-line

president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, the us authorized the use of 1.7 billion dollars in military aid hitherto limited to
anti-drug operations for direct attacks on deeply entrenched farc guerrillas. This redirection of aid came after
Colombian officials and their American supporters in the Congress and Bush administration argued that the change
was needed as part of the global campaign against terrorism. Within this overall picture, American armed forces are
undergoing a qualitative shift of enormous proportion. In words read by President Bush: Our forces in the next
century must be agile, lethal, readily deployable, and must require a minimum of logistical support. We must be
able to project our power over long distances in days or weeks rather than months. On land our heavy forces must
be lighter, our light forces must be more lethal. All must be easier to deploy. Crossing Weapons Boundaries - Both
Nuclear and Conventional As a result, many boundaries and limits of the bipolar era have been breached. For
example, the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons had always constituted a radical barrier. The
standoff between the us and the ussr was epitomized by mind-numbing hydrogen bomb-missiles facing each other
in a scenario called Mutual Assured Destruction.In short, a strategic condition of deterrence prevailed, which

deterrence no longer
inhibits us nuclear weaponry, and the weapons themselves have
made nuclear weapons seem unthinkable. With the demise of the ussr,

proliferated downward, becoming miniaturized and increasingly tactical

rather than strategic. Meanwhile, the genie of the weapons industries has developed
ever more destructive conventional weapons. These include nonexplosive devices of awesome power, such as laser beams, microwaves,
and large-scale climate manipulation, along with a new generation of
super-powerful explosive devices. Thus the strongest non-nuclear
weapons are now considerably more lethal than the least powerful nuclear
weapons, making the latter thinkable and eliminating a major barrier
against their employment. These so-called conventional bombs have
already been used, for example, in Afghanistan, where the us employed a
gigantic explosive weapon, called a Bunker Buster to root out al-Qaeda
combatants in underground bunkers. They are based upon the daisy
cutter, a giant bomb about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and capable
of destroying everything within a square kilometer. Significantly, the model used in
Afghanistan, the B61-11, already employs nuclear technology, the infamous

depleted uranium warhead , capable by virtue of its extreme density, of great penetrating power.
Depleted uranium (du) is a by-product of the nuclear power industry (chiefly
being U-238 created in the extraction of U-235 from naturally occurring uranium ore). Over 500,000 tons of deadly
du have accumulated and 4-5,000 more tons are being produced every year. Like all products of the nuclear power
industry, du poses immense challenges of disposal. It has this peculiar property of being almost twice as dense as
lead and it is radioactive with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Wherever depleted uranium is used, it has another
peculiar property of exploding, vaporizing at 56 degrees centigrade, which is just like a little more than half the way

So it is very volatile, it explodes, it forms dust and powders

that are inhaled, disburses widely, and produces lethal cancers, birth
defects, and so forth for 4.5 billion years. In the case of depleted
uranium, the challenge of disposal was met by incorporating the refuse
from the peaceful branch of nuclear technology into the war-making
branch. Already used in anti-tank projectiles in the first Iraq war (approximately 300
tons worth) and again in Yugoslavia (approximately 10-15 tons were used in each of the various
Yugoslav wars), it is presumed, although the defense department coyly denies it, that this
material was also used in the Afghanistan war. Depleted uranium has
spread a plague of radioactivity and further rationalized the use of nuclear weapons as such.
Consequently, the B61-11 is about to be replaced with the BLU113, where
the bunker buster will now be a small nuclear weapon, almost certainly speartipped with du. Pollutants to Earth and Space To the boundaries crossed between nuclear and non-nuclear
to boiling water.

weapons, and between the peaceful and militaristic uses of atomic technology, we need to add those between

The administration is
poised to realize the crackpot and deadly schemes of the Reagan administration to militarize space
and to draw the rest of the world into the scheme , as client and victim. In November
earth and its lower atmosphere on the one hand, and space on the other.

2002, Bush proposed that nato allies build missile defense systems, with components purchased, needless to add,
from Boeing, Raytheon, etc, even as Congress was approving a fiscal 2003 defense budget containing $7.8 billion
authorization for missile defense research and procurement, as part of the $238 billion set aside for Star Wars over
the next 20 years. The administration now is poised to realize the crackpot and deadly schemes of the Reagan

A new
missile defense system bureaucracy has risen. It is currently developing such wild items
administration to militarize space and to draw the rest of the world into the scheme, as client and victim.

as something called brilliant pebbles which involves the release of endless numbers of mini satellites into outer
space. All of this was to protect the world against the threat of rogue states such as North Korea. As the Seattle
Times reported, the us expects the final declaration to, express the need to examine options to protect allied
forces, territories, and population centers against the full range of missile threats. As an official put it, "This will
establish the framework within which nato allies could work cooperatively toward fielding the required capabilities.
With the us withdrawal this year from the anti-ballistic treaty with Russia, it is no longer a question of whether
missile defenses will be deployed. The relevant questions are now what, how, and when. The train is about to pull
out of the station; we invite our friends, allies, and the Russian Federation to climb on board." The destination of this
train is defensive only in the Orwellian sense, as the missiles will be used to defend us troops in the field. In other
words, they will be used to defend armies engaged in offensive activities. What is being defended by the Strategic
Defense Initiative (sdi), therefore, is the initiative to make war everywhere. Space has now become the ultimate
battlefield. And not just with use of these missiles. The High Frequency Active Aural Research Program (haarp) is

This amounts to weather warfare: deliberately manipulating

climate to harm and destroy adversaries. A very dubious enterprise, to say
the least, in an age when global warming and climate instability are
also part of sdi.

already looming as two of the greatest problems facing civilization.

The chief

feature is a network of powerful antennas capable of creating controlled local modifications of the ionosphere and
hence producing weather disturbances and so forth. All of these technical interventions are accompanied by many
kinds of institutional and political changes. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, nasa, for instance,
is now a partner in the development of this strategic defense initiative. The very way in which the United Nations
was drawn into the resolution in the war against Iraq is a breach and a violation of the original un Charter, which is
to never make war, never to threaten to make war on any member state. The un was a peacemaking institution, but
now the Super power has forced it into its orbit. The scrapping of the abm and other elements of the treaty

structure (non- proliferation, test-ban) that had organized the world of the Cold War is one part of a process of

It also creates an atmosphere of

general lawlessness in the world. This is felt at all levels, from the rise of
an ultra-militarist clique in the White House to the formal renunciation of no-firstuse nuclear strategy, the flouting of numerous un regulations, the doctrine of pre-emptive war,
and, as the logical outcome of all these developments, the condition of Permanent War and
its accompaniment of general lawlessness, media slavishness, and a wave of repression for
shedding whatever might inhibit the cancerous growth of militarism.

whose parallel we have to go back to the Alien and Sedition acts of the 1790s, or Trumans loyalty oaths of 1947.

Militarism cannot be reduced to politics, economics, technology, culture,

or psychology. All these are parts of the machine, make the machine go
around, and are themselves produced by the actions of the machine.

There

is no doubt, in this regard, that the machine runs on natural resources (which have to be secured by economic,
political, and military action), and that it is deeply embedded in the ruling corporate order. There is no contradiction
here, but a set of meshing parts, driven by an insensate demand for fossil fuel energy. As a man from Amarillo,
Texas put it when interviewed by npr as to the correctness of Bushs plan to go to war in Iraq: I agree with the
president, because how else are we going to get the oil to fly the F-16s?

We go to war, in other words, to

get the oil needed to go to war. A Who's Who List of MIC Beneficiaries The fact that our
government is front-loaded with oil magnates is another part of the machine. It is of interest, therefore, that Unocal,
for example, celebrated Condoleezza Rices ascendancy to the post of National Security Advisor by naming an oil
tanker after her. Or that Dick Cheney, originally a poor boy, became a rich man after the first Gulf War, when he
switched from being Secretary of Defense, in charge of destroying the Kuwait oil fields, to ceo of a then-smallish
company, Halliburton, in charge of rebuilding the same oil fields. Or that G.W. Bush himself, aside from his failed
venture with Harken Oil, is scion of a family and a dynasty that controls the Carlyle Group, founded in 1987 by a
former Carter administration official. Carlyle is now worth over $13 billion and its high officials include President
Bush I, his Secretary of State (and fixer of the coup that put Bush II in power) James Baker, Reagans Secretary of
Defense Frank Carlucci, former British Prime Minister John Major, and former Phillipine President Fidel Ramos,
among others. The Carlyle Group has its fingers everywhere, including defense, where it controls firms making
vertical missile launch systems currently in use on us Navy ships in the Arabian sea, as well as a range of other
weapons delivery systems and combat vehicles. And as a final touch which the worlds people would be much
better off for knowing, there are very definite connections between Carlyle and the family of Osama bin Laden - a
Saudi power whose fortunes have been fused with those of the United States since the end of World War II. Thus the
military-industrial complex lives, breathes, and takes on new dimensions. There is a deep structural reason for the
present explosion of us militarism, most clearly traceable in the activities of Vice President Cheney, made clear in
the energy report that he introduced with the generous assistance of Enron executives in May 2001. According to
the report, American reliance on imported oil will rise by from about 52 percent of total consumption in 2001 to an
estimated 66 percent in 2020. The reason for this is that world production, in general, and domestic production in
particular are going to remain flat (and, although the report does not discuss this, begin dropping within the next 20
years). Meanwhile consumptionwhich is a direct function of the relentless drive of capitalism to expand commodity
productionis to grow by some two- thirds. Because the usage of oil must rise in the worldview of a Cheney, the us
will actually have to import 60 percent more oil in 2020 to keep itself going than it does today. This means that
imports will have to rise from their current rate of about 10.4 million barrels per day to about 16.7 million barrels
per day. In the words of the report: The only way to do this is persuade foreign suppliers to increase their
production to sell more of their output to the us. The meaning of these words depends of course on the
interpretation of persuade, which in the us lexicon is to be read, I should think, as requiring a sufficient military
machine to coerce foreign suppliers. At that point they might not even have to sell their output to the us, as it
would already be possessed by the superpower. Here we locate the root material fact underlying recent us
expansionism. This may seem an extravagant conclusion. However an explicit connection to militarismand
Iraqhad been supplied the month before, in April 2001, in another report prepared by James Baker and submitted
to the Bush cabinet. This document, called Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, concludes
with refreshing candor that the us remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, Iraq remains a destabilizing influence
to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East, Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a
willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets,
therefore the us should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and
political diplomatic assessments. Note the absence of reference to weapons of mass destruction, or aid to

the
fundamental structural dilemma driving the military machine pertains to
the contradictions of an empire that drives toward the invasion of all
terrorism, convenient rationalizations that can be filled in later. Clearly, however things turn out with Iraq,

social space and the total control over nature.

Since the former goal meets up with

there is no
recourse except the ever-widening resort to force. But this, the military monster
itself, ever seeking threats to feed upon, becomes a fresh source of
danger, whether of nuclear war, terror, or ecological breakdown. The
situation is plainly unsustainable, a series of disasters waiting to happen.
unending resistance and the latter crashes against the finitude of the material world,

It can only be checked and brought to rationality by a global uprising of people who
demand an end to the regime of endless war. This is the only possible
path by which we can pull ourselves away from the abyss into which the
military machine is about to plunge, dragging us all down with it.

Terror DA

2AC Generic
Discourse of terrorism is constructed and creates a self fullfiling
prophecy that turns the DA
Jackson 07 (Richard, Centre for International Politics University of Manchester Religion, Politics and
Terrorism: A Critical Analysis of Narratives of Islamic Terrorism,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/researchgroups/cip/publications/documents/Jackson_
000.pdf, 2007)

The Islamic terrorism discourse is also proving to be counter-productive in

terms of its efects on the counter-terrorism campaign. This is primarily
because the discourse restricts the legitimate knowledge that is allowed
to inform policy debate while simultaneously establishing the parameters
of legitimate action. Thus, within the confines of discussion about how to
deal with religiously-inspired, murderous Islamic extremists for example, the
possibility of diplomacy or policy reform appears both nonsensical and
illegitimate, while racial profiling, surveillance of mosques and schools, a shoot-to-kill policy,
control orders, restrictions on Islamic preachers, shutting down extremist websites and bookshops, banning radical groups, Islamic youth outreach

and prosecuting the glorification of terrorism, all appear

reasonable. The main problem is that the central terms and narratives
the accepted knowledge underpinning these policies is, as I have demonstrated,
highly dubious. Based on a misdiagnosis of the nature and causes of
contemporary political violence therefore, it is safe to predict that these
policies are going to be largely inefective, a waste of limited resources and in some cases,
counter-productive particularly when innocent Muslims are publicly victimised
by them. The discourse is also counter-productive in other ways, not least because it
actually assists certain terrorist groups to promote their message that there is a
fundamental conflict between Islam and the West. In addition, the
language of fanatical, murderous, suicidal Islamic terrorists functions to
amplify rather than allay the fear that terrorist acts aim to create because
it reinforces the impression that the attackers are inhuman killing
machines who cannot be deterred or reasoned with. More broadly, there is little
doubt that Western counter-terrorism policies in the war on terrorism,
based in large part on the logic of the Islamic terrorism discourse, are
intensifying cycles of violence and instability : the Iraq invasion, the
destruction of Falluja, the Abu Ghraib abuses, the Guantanamo prison
camp, the practice of extraordinary rendition and public support for
Israels war against Lebanon among others are creating further political
grievances which will more than likely lead to further campaigns of
terrorism.
programmes

Islamophobic policies are the root cause of terrorism

Sidanius et al 15 (Jim Sidanius, Professor in the departments of Psychology and African and African
American Studies at Harvard University, Ph.D. at the University of Stockholm. Nour Kteily, Assistant Professor of
Management and Organizations @ Northwestern University, B.Sc. with First Class Honors from McGill University, his
PhD in social psychology from Harvard University, and received a Postdoctoral Award from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council in Canada. Shana Levin, Professor of Psychology @ Claremont McKenna and George R.
Roberts Fellow, B.A., University of California, Berkeley, Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa; M.A., Ph.D.,
University of California, Los Angeles. Felicia Pratto, Psychology & Quantitative Methods B.S from Carnegie Mellon

University, University of Connecticut Department of Psychology Intergroup Relations Lab. Milan Obaidi, Ph.D.
Student at the Department of Social & Political Science, European University Institute, Florence. Support for
asymmetric violence among Arab populations: The clash of cultures, social identity, or counterdominance?
http://gpi.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/04/27/1368430215577224.full.pdf+html, 2/3/15, SMahajan)

A second explanatory framework that has been proposed to account for

support of asymmetric violence among Arab populations is the
counterdominance narrative (Mostafa & Al-Hamdi, 2007; Sidanius et al., 2004; Tessler & Robbins,
2007; Thomsen, Obaidi, Sheehy-Skeffington, Kteily, & Sidanius, 2014). This view argues that, rather than being
driven by symbolic value clashes,

asymmetric violence is primarily motivated by a

desire to resist what are perceived to be political acts of domination and

oppression . This perspective is consistent with the focus on realistic (rather than symbolic) threats
highlighted by realistic group conflict theory which argues that conflicts of interest and competition over real
resources are the primary engine in intergroup hostility (e.g., Bobo & Hutchings, 1996; Sherif, 1966; see also

Thus far, survey research among Arab

populations has shown strong support for the counterdominance
framework (Haddad & Khashan, 2002). For example Tessler and Robbins (2007) found that
Stephan, Diaz-Loving, & Duran, 2000).

support for terrorist violence against the United States was associated
with disapproval of American foreign policy and domestic political
institutions that supported this policy

among Algerians and Jordanians

degree of religious fervor or embrace of political Islam

not to their

(see also Mueller, 2013;

Nesser, 2006; but see Neuberg et al., 2014). Sidanius et al. (2004) found that Lebanese university students
interpreted the 9/11 attacks as having been motivated by antidominance rather than clash of civilizations concerns.

In a study across several Arab nations, Mostafa and Al-Hamdi (2007) found
evidence strongly supportive of the antidominance thesis rather than the
clash of civilizations thesis. Moreover, in a comprehensive empirical study of
suicide terrorism, Pape
suicide attacks is

(2006)

argues that the root cause of

resistance to foreign occupation,

antidominance perspective .

consistent with the

support for

2AC Epistemology Bias

All of their impact evidence is alarmist and epistemically baised.
Terror threats are LITERALLY manufactured by the FBI to justify
racist surveillance policies.
Greenwald 15 (Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Greenwald is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is
the author of three New York Times Bestselling books: two on the Bush administration's executive power and foreign
policy abuses, and his latest book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, an indictment of America's two-tiered system
of justice. Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in the
nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the winner of the
2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of
Bradley Manning. WHY DOES THE FBI HAVE TO MANUFACTURE ITS OWN PLOTS IF TERRORISM AND ISIS ARE SUCH
GRAVE THREATS? https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/,
2/26/15 SMahajan)

this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the overwhelming

majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over the last
decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month after the FBI manipulated a
20-year-old loner who lived with his parents into allegedly agreeing to join
an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol these cases follow a very clear pattern: The
known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a now-familiar FBI
pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror
In this regard,

attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping
its own plots. First, they target a Muslim: not due to any evidence of
intent or capability to engage in terrorism, but rather for the radical
political views he expresses . In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the
FBI is a very young (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of mastering
basic life functions, let alon
e carrying out a serious terror attack, and has no known
involvement with actual terrorist groups. They then find another Muslim
who is highly motivated to help disrupt a terror plot : either because theyre
being paid substantial sums of money by the FBI or because (as appears to be the
case here) they are charged with some unrelated crime and are desperate to
please the FBI in exchange for leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the
informant a detailed attack plan, and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry
it out, and the informant then shares all of that with the target . Typically, the
informant also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry out the FBI-designed plot. In
some instances where the target refuses to go along, they have their
informant ofer huge cash inducements to the impoverished target. Once they
finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last minute, arrests
the target, issues a press release praising themselves for disrupting a
dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited the operatives for), and the DOJ and
federal judges send their target to prison for years or even decades (where they are
kept in special GITMO-like units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad and
permissive interpretation of entrapment that it could almost never be successfully invoked. Once again,

we

should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and women of the
FBI for saving us from their own terror plots . One can, if one really wishes, debate
whether the FBI should be engaging in such behavior. For reasons I and many others have repeatedly argued,

these cases are unjust in the extreme: a form of pre-emptory prosecution

where vulnerable individuals are targeted and manipulated not for any
criminal acts they have committed but rather for the

bad

political views

they have expressed . They end up sending young people to prison for decades for crimes which even
their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the
absence of FBI trickery. Its hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a justifiable tactic, but Im certain there are

Were
constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of homegrown terrorists, lone wolf extremists and ISIS . So intensified are these official
people who believe that. Lets leave that question to the side for the moment in favor of a different issue.

warnings that The New York Times earlier this month cited anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the
growing ISIS threat and announce the prospect of a new global war on terror. But

how serious of a

threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if the FBI continually has to
resort to manufacturing its own plots by trolling the Internet in search of
young

drifters

and/or the mentally ill

whom they target, recruit and then

manipulate into joining ? Does that

not, by

itself, demonstrate how over-

hyped and insubstantial this threat actually is ? Shouldnt there be actual plots, ones
that are created and fueled without the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to

This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement

Agency (DEA) constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it simultaneously uses
pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people hooked on drugs so that
they can arrest the addicts theyve created and thus justify their own
warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation, just by the way, is not all
that far of from what the other federal law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually
doing). As we noted the last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively pressuring U.S.
stopping?

allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded

Threats that are real, and substantial, do not need

to be manufactured and concocted. Indeed, as the blogger Digby, citing Juan Cole,
recently showed, run-of-the-mill lone wolf gun violence is so much of a
around as proof of the grave threat.

greater threat to Americans than domestic terror by every statistical

metric

that its almost impossible to overstate the disparity: In that regard,

it is not difficult to

understand why domestic terror and homegrown extremism are

things the FBI is desperately determined to create . But this FBI terror-plot
concoction should , by itself, suffice to demonstrate how wildly exaggerated
this threat actually is . That is the FBIs terrorism strategy keep fear
alive and it drives everything they do .

1AR Epistemology Bias

More ev that terror threats are manufactured
Ackerman 14 (Spencer Ackerman, National security editor for Guardian US, Government agents 'directly
involved' in most high-profile US terror plots, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agentsdirectly-involved-us-terror-plots-report, 7/21/14, SMahajan)

Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United

States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or
informants, a new report says. Some of the controversial "sting" operations "were
proposed or led by informants", bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom
obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist. The lengthy report,
released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US
criminal justice system's ability to respect civil rights and due process in
post-9/11 terrorism cases. It portrays a system that features not just the
sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial
detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots . "In some
cases the FBI may
have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by
suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to
act," the report alleges. Out of the 494 cases related to terrorism the US has tried
since 9/11, the plurality of convictions 18% overall are not for thwarted plots but for
"material support" charges, a broad category expanded further by the 2001 Patriot Act that permits
prosecutors to pursue charges with tenuous connections to a terrorist act or group. In one such incident,
the initial basis for a material-support case alleging a man provided "military
gear" to al-Qaida turned out to be waterproof socks in his luggage . Several
cases featured years-long solitary confinement for accused terrorists
before their trials. Some defendants displayed signs of mental incapacity.
Jurors for the 2007 plot to attack the Fort Dix army base, itself influenced by government informants, were
anonymous, limiting defense counsel's ability to screen out bias . Human Rights
Watchs findings call into question the post-9/11 shift taken by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies toward
stopping terrorist plots before they occur.

While the vast majority of counterterrorism

tactics involved are legally authorized , particularly after Congress and successive
administrations relaxed restrictions on law enforcement and intelligence agencies for counterterrorism, they
suggest that

the governments zeal to protect Americans has in some cases

morphed into manufacturing threats .

2AC Terror DA (Nuke)

Threat of nuclear terrorism authorizes a blank check of militarism
Masco 06 (Joseph Masco, Prof. of Anthro @ U-Chicago, The Nuclear Borderlands, p. 328-332, 2006)
The post-Cold War period ended after September 11, 2001, with the formal
conversion of the United States to a counterterrorism state . Americans who once
thought the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed their relationship to the bomb were, after the
terrorist strikes on September 11, once again witness to an escalating discourse of nuclear terror: the airwaves
were filled with stories of vulnerability, of unsecured ports through which a terrorist nuclear device could be
smuggled, of unprotected nuclear power plants open to suicide attacks by airplane, of radiological dirty bombs,
which might contaminate major U.S. cities, rendering them uninhabitable. A newly formed Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) soon launched the first civil defense campaign in more than a generation, seemingly designed more
to maintain nuclear fear than reduce it. The Ready.Gov campaign officially advised citizens to stockpile potassium
iodide pills to deal with potential radioactive poisoning, while doing their best to avoid contact with an exploding
nuclear device (see Figure 8.1). Meanwhile, a new Homeland Security Advisory System kept Americans at a state of
"elevated" to "high" risk of terrorist attack, institutionalizing a new kind of official terror, buttressed by frequent

when
asked in their first debate to identify the single greatest threat to the
national security of the United States, both presidential candidates agreed
it was the atomic bomb: Senator Kerry put it in the context of "nuclear proliferation," while President
Bush stated the greatest danger to the United States was nuclear
weapons "in the hands of a terrorist enemy."1 In the new century, nuclear
insecurity once again formally linked the foreign and the domestic under
the sign of apocalyptic nuclear risk, creating a political space in which
anything seemed possible. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, for example, made a case
speculations from the DHS and FBI about possibly imminent catastrophic attacks. By the fall of 2004,

for war with Iraq simply by stating that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."2 In doing so, she

mobilized the threat of an imaginary Iraqi nuclear arsenal to enable the

most radical foreign policy decision in modern American history: a
"preventative" war, which involved invading another country to eliminate a nuclear threat before it
actually existed.3 In a few short years, nuclear fear writ large was politically mobilized
into an enormously productive force in the United States, enabling a reconfiguration of U.S. military affairs
(embracing covert action on a global scale), a massive bureaucratic reorganization of federal
institutions (the Department of Homeland Security), a reconfiguration of civil liberties and
domestic policing laws (the U.S.A. Patriot Act), and an entirely new concept of war
(preemption. All of these projects were pursued in the name of a "war" on
"terror," which was energized by an explicit nuclear discourse after the
September 11 attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York. The post-Cold War period (1991-2001), thus',
concluded with the official transformation of the United States from a countercommunist to a counterterrorist state,
a conversion that would not have been possible in its speed, scale, or lack of debate without a discourse of nuclear
terror. Given the scale of this transformation, it is difficult now to remember a time, only a few years ago, when it
was difficult to focus American public attention on the bomb. Looking back on when I started researching this book
in the mid-1990s, public reactions to nuclear weapons from the early post-Cold War moment now appear quite
strange. Outside of New Mexico, a description of this book project, for example, often produced puzzled looks from
U.S. citizens, and statements that suggested for many Americans the bomb had already become a thing of the past,
of historical interest but not an ongoing political concern. A common response was surprise that Los Alamos
National Laboratory (LANL) was "still" involved in nuclear weapons work, and/or "shock" that the United States
remained committed to the bomb after the demise of the Soviet Union. This immediate psychological effort to
declare the bomb history in the wake of the Cold War is as remarkable as the feverish nuclear discourses following

these
psychosocial strategies reveal the American cultural tradition of
approaching the bomb either as a banal object, not worthy of attention, or as a hysterical
the decidedly non-nuclear September 11 attacks, and is part of the same structural logic:

threat, requiring a total mobilization of the imagination. This banal/apocalyptic

dual structure works to deny the U.S. commitment to the bomb by either
cloaking it in a normative everyday space or by displacing attention onto solely external
nuclear threats. In both instances, the internal politics and effects of the U.S. nuclear arsenal are erased,
even as the core relevance of U.S. nuclear weapons to everyday American life is powerfully revealed by a bomb
that is either all too absent or all too present.

No nuclear terrorism no capability nor intent- reject their alarmism

Gavin et. al, 2010, Francis J. Gavin is Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and Director of the
Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University
of Texas at Austin, 2010, International Security, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Winter 2009/10), pp. 737 2010 by the President
and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Same As It Ever Was Nuclear
Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2010.34.3.7

The possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States

is widely believed to be a grave, even apocalyptic, threat and a likely
possibility, a belief supported by numerous statements by public ofcials. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
Nuclear Terrorism.

inevitability of the spread of nuclear terrorism and of a successful terrorist attack have been taken for granted.48 Coherent
policies to reduce the risk of a nonstate actor using nuclear weapons clearly need to be developed. In particular, the rise of the
Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear technology network should give pause.49 But again, the news is not as grim as nuclear alarmists
would suggest. Much has already been done to secure the supply of nuclear materials, and relatively simple steps can produce
further improvements. Moreover,

there are reasons to doubt both the capabilities and

even the interest many terrorist groups have in detonating a nuclear
device on U.S. soil. As Adam Garnkle writes, The threat of nuclear terrorism is very
remote .50 Experts disagree on whether nonstate actors have the scientific, engineering, financial, natural resource,
According to terrorism expert
Robin Frost, the danger of a nuclear black market and loose nukes from
Russia may be overstated. Even if a terrorist group did acquire a nuclear
weapon, delivering and detonating it against a U.S. target would present
tremendous technical and logistical difficulties.51 Finally, the feared nexus
between terrorists and rogue regimes may be exaggerated. As nuclear proliferation
expert Joseph Cirincione argues, states such as Iran and North Korea are not the most
likely sources for terrorists since their stockpiles, if any, are small and
exceedingly precious, and hence well-guarded.52 Chubin states that there is no
security, and logistical capacities to build a nuclearuu bomb from scratch.

reason to believe that Iran today, any more than Sadaam Hussein earlier,
would transfer WMD [weapons of mass destruction] technology to
terrorist groups like al-Qaida or Hezbollah.53 Even if a terrorist group
were to acquire a nuclear device , expert Michael Levi demonstrates that
efective planning can prevent catastrophe: for nuclear terrorists, what
can go wrong might go wrong , and when it comes to nuclear terrorism,
a broader, integrated defense, just like controls at the source of weapons
and materials, can multiply, intensify, and compound the possibilities of
terrorist failure, possibly driving terrorist groups to reject nuclear terrorism altogether. Warning of
the danger of a terrorist acquiring a nuclear weapon, most analyses are
based on the inaccurate image of an infallible tenfoot-tall enemy. This

type of alarmism, writes Levi, impedes the development of thoughtful strategies that could deter, prevent, or
mitigate a terrorist attack: Worst-case estimates have their place, but the possible
failure-averse, conservative, resource-limited ve-foot-tall nuclear
terrorist, who is subject not only to the laws of physics but also to
Murphys law of nuclear terrorism, needs to become just as central to our
evaluations of strategies.54 A recent study contends that al-Qaidas
interest in acquiring and using nuclear weapons may be overstated . Anne
Stenersen, a terrorism expert, claims that looking at statements and
activities at various levels within the al-Qaida network, it becomes clear
that the networks interest in using unconventional means is in fact much
lower than commonly thought.55 She further states that CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, and
nuclear] weapons do not play a central part in al-Qaidas strategy.56 In the
1990s, members of al-Qaida debated whether to obtain a nuclear device.
Those in favor sought the weapons primarily to deter a U.S. attack on alQaidas bases in Afghanistan. This assessment reveals an organization at
odds with that laid out by nuclear alarmists of terrorists obsessed with
using nuclear weapons against the United States regardless of the
consequences. Stenersen asserts, Although there have been various
reports stating that al-Qaida attempted to buy nuclear material in the
nineties, and possibly recruited skilled scientists, it appears that al-Qaida
central have not dedicated a lot of time or efort to developing a high-end
CBRN capability.... Al-Qaida central never had a coherent strategy to
obtain CBRN: instead, its members were divided on the issue, and there
was an awareness that militarily efective weapons were extremely
difficult to obtain .57 Most terrorist groups assess nuclear terrorism through the lens of their political goals and
may judge that it does not advance their interests.58 As Frost has written, The risk of nuclear
terrorism, especially true nuclear terrorism employing bombs powered by
nuclear fission, is overstated , and that popular wisdom on the topic is
significantly fiawed .59

2AC Terror DA (Cyber)

Cyber-terror rhetoric is alarmist
Eriksson & Giacomello 6 (Johan Eriksson, Associate Professor of Political Science at Sodertorn
University College and Researcher at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Stockholm. Giacomello
Giampiero, Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Dipartimento di Politica, Istituzioni, Storia, Universita
di Bologna, "The Information Revolution, Security, and International Relations: (IR) Relevant Theory?" Int'l Political
Science Review 27, July 2006)

cyber-threats have achieved an indisputable salience in

post-cold-war security thinking, particularly among analysts and makers of
defense and security policy. Critical infrastructure protection, information warfare, infor
mation operations,' information assurance, cyber-terrorism, Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) , and
similar buzzwords are common currency in policy documents , defense bills, and
security doctrines of the early 21st century. While conventional forces and military
budgets have been generally downsized following the end of the cold war, the new
emphasis on information security and cyber-threats are a noteworthy exception. In North
America, Europe, Russia, China, and other parts of the world, governments are setting up new
units and employing personnel for monitoring, analyzing, and countering the perceived risks
and threats of the global network society. The conception of cyber-threats
has grown out of the fear of increased vulnerability and loss of control
that presumably is the result of moving from an industrial to an information
society (Alberts, 1996a, 1996b; Alberts and Papp, 1997; Henry and Peartree, 1998; O'Day, 2004). Without the
Whether hype or reality,

development of global computer networks and communications, cyber-threats would be difficult to imagine except
as science fiction. Notions of cyber-threats have originated in both the private and public sphere, among military as
well as civilian actors. In the business community and within the police, cyber-crime has become a particularly
salient threat image. Within the military-bureaucratic establishment, perceived threats have been framed as
information warfare, information operations, cyber terrorism, and cyber-war. Among computer scientists,
technicians, and network operators, threat images are usually much narrower, with an emphasis on computer
network attacks, exploits, and disruptions (implying an adversary) and on structural vulnerabilities such as software
conflicts and other bugs which can lead to systems crashes (for example, the Year 2000 or 'Y2K" computer bug).
Images of cyber-threats typically involve a very broad range of adversaries and targets, including both state and
non-state actors (Campen et al., 1996; Erbschloe, 2001; Furnell, 2002; Henry and Peartree, 1998; Herd, 2000;
Khalilzad et al., 1999; O'Day, 2004; Polikanov, 2001; Schwartau, 1996; Yourdon, 2002). States are still typically seen
as the single most important type of potential enemy, able to neutralize effectively the critical infrastructures of
another country (for example, by shutting down telecommunications), but non-state actors are gaining attention as
well. A study by the National Research Council argues that "Tomorrow's terrorist may be able to do more with a
keyboard than with a bomb" (Bendrath, 2001; Denning, 2001a: 282).5 Former US Homeland Security Director Tom
Ridge (2002) observed that "Terrorists can sit at one computer connected to one network and can create world
havoc - [they] don't necessarily need bombs or explosives to cripple a sector of the economy, or shutdown a power

rhetorical dramatization is characteristic of the entire discourse

on information security and cyber-threats. The common view is that as societies and governments are
grid." Such

becoming more reliable with respect to information technology, they are also becoming more vulnerable to all sorts

The most cataclysmic dramatization in the literature is that of an

"electronic Pearl Harbor" (Bendrath, 2001; Everard, 2000; Forno, 2002; O'Day, 2004; Schwartau, 1997;
of cyber-threats.

Smith, 1998).6 According to the "electronic Pearl Harbor" scenario, phone systems could collapse, subway cars
suddenly stop, and the money of thousands of people become inaccessible as banks and automatic teller machines

In such an apocalyptic vision, overall critical infra structures

would be disrupted to the point that society and government would lose the
ability to function normally. The evocative image of an "electronic Pearl Harbor" was immediately
stop functioning.

adopted in the US media and in certain circles of policy makers (Bendrath, 2003). Former Deputy Defense Minister
John Hamre argued that "We're facing the possibility of an electronic Pearl Harbor ...

There is going to be

an electronic attack on this country some time in the future " (CNN, 1997). Some
commentators have argued that the "electronic Pearl Harbor" scenario is highly unlikely, and is more about fear-

cyber-terrorism, defined as
is extremely unlikely.7 Few, if any,
cyber-attacks could be characterized as acts of terrorism. Even the US Naval War
College, in cooperation with the Gartner Group, concluded that an "electronic Pearl Harbor,"
although theoretically possible, was highly unlikely: "There are far simpler and less costly ways to attack
mongering than sober analysis. For example, Denning (2001b) argues that
digital attacks causing physical destruction and human deaths,

critical infrastructure, from hoax phone calls to truck bombs and hijacked airliners" (The Economist, 2002: 19).
Information operations are seen not merely as a means of improving or complementing physical attack, but as a
means of replacing physical destruction with electronic (Denning, 1999; Harshberger and Ochmanek, 1999: 12;
O'Day, 2004). Denial-of-service attacks and the defacing of web pages certainly can have material consequences.
For firms operating with online transactions, the result can be huge financial losses.8 Nevertheless, the major
impact is symbolic and the main effect is humiliation. To a large degree, cyber-attacks are attacks with and against
symbols and images. Net-defacing, in particular, is a means for attacking symbols, something which is being done
on an everyday basis by "hacktivists" on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the China-Taiwan conflict, and
the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland.9 Most observers focus on the transnational and network-based
character of cyber-threats (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1999, 2001; Deibert and Stein, 2003; Henry and Peartree, 1998;

Adversaries are typically

seen as operating in loosely organized networks consisting of relatively
independent nodes of individuals, groups, organizations, or even states, capable of
quickly assembling and dispersing, even long before an attack has been discovered. In
Keohane and Nye, 1998; O'Day, 2004; Pfaltzgraff and Shultz, 1997). ?

particular, network actors capable of using such means can resort to "asymmetric warfare" (Applegate, 2001;
Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001; De Borchgrave et al., 2000; Erbschloe, 2001; Herd, 2000; O'Day, 2004; Sofear and

they
can inflict serious damage by attacking and exploiting the vulnerabilities of
information systems by resorting to cyber-attacks (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1999, 2001; Cordesman, 2002).
Goodman, 2001). Although they might be incapable of engaging states in a conventional military conflict,

The widely acknowledged framing of cyber-threats implies that boundaries are dissolved between the international
and the domestic, between civil and military spheres, between the private and public, and between peace and war.

this framing suggests that not only the security of information

systems is challenged, but also, and more fundamentally, the sovereignty of states
If taken seriously,

(Everard, 2000; Fountain, 2001; Giacomello, 2005; Giacomello and Mendez, 2001; Rosecrance, 1999). Cyber-threats
challenge primarily internal sovereignty (effec tive control of the national territory and of the people living within it),
but not necessarily external sovereignty (the formal recognition of independence by other states) (compare
Philpott, 2001). At stake are not only the tangible and intangible values of information, but also the ability of
governments to control the course of events. In conclusion, while there is a growing body of specialized literature
dealing with the manifold aspects of digital-age security,

there is also an alarmist tendency in this

literature. Furthermore, this literature is policy oriented and hardly ever involves the application or
development of theory.

2AC Terror DA (Bio)

Bioterror discourse is grounded in a sense of vulnerability that turns
the advantage alt is key to solve
Kittelsen 9 (Researcher for the Security programme @ the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo
(Sonja, Conceptualizing Biorisk: Dread Risk and the Threat of Bioterrorism in Europe, Security Dialogue vol. 40, no.
1, February)

The dread that the prospect of bioterrorism elicits thus not only compounds the
distinction between actual and imagined threat, but also challenges the
conventional spatio-temporal relationship between threat and security,
in that it reinforces a sense of imminence and pervasiveness of possible
attack. Its imperceptible nature means that insecurity can exist
independent of an actual attack occurring, the mere threat of infection and
contagion carrying the capacity to evoke a heightened sense of fear long
before and well after an attack has been identified as ever having taken place. In the absence of
fact about a threat that deliberately evades detection, the demand on
governments to act proactively has become all the more salient, and
providing for security has taken a precautionary turn. Strategies aimed at
mitigating the threat of bioterrorism have thus involved attempts at
delineating security through spatio-temporal techniques that involve
intervening in the present in order to avoid the potential for serious and
irreversible damage in the future. They constitute an attempt at
rearticulating the boundary between secure and insecure space
through the active act of anticipation. Inherent in such an anticipatory logic,
however, is an in-built vulnerability, in that this logic is necessarily informed by
the subjective insecurities that the threat of bioterrorism elicits. It
simultaneously functions within and constitutes a product of the dread
that the threat of bioterrorism evokes, and accordingly does not so much serve
to reduce the threat of bioterrorism as it serves to mitigate the efects of what
is considered an inevitable occurrence. It there- by runs the risk of
perpetuating insecurity to the extent that it facilitates threat through its
enactment. Engaging with the threat of bioterrorism, then, neces- sarily requires
recognizing how the same logic that informs the dread that bioterrorism
elicits also serves to inform the security practices pursued to confront it .
Just as the molecular body is no longer conceptualized as a unified whole, so too is Europe less a self-contained

Mitigating the threat of bioterrorism, then,

necessitates explor- ing the ways in which security practices and
perceptions of threat interact with each other and with the more tangible
aspects of the threat of bioterror- ism to make Europe not only vulnerable
to biological insecurity, but also a producer and perpetuator of it . This article
entity than a site of circulation and exchange.

argues that it is by conceptualizing bioterrorism through the notion of dread risk that this self-perpetuation of
vulnerability and threat can be exposed and the necessary inroads provided by which to engage more critically with
the threat of bioterrorism, its produc- tion and perpetuation, as well as with the constitution of security itself.

1AR Terror Race K

Terror discourse allows for US expansionism and racism
Bartolucci 12 (research fellow and lecturer in the politics of terrorism at Bradford University (Valentina,
12/15/12, "Terrorism rhetoric under the Bush Administration: Discourses and effects," Journal of Language and
Politics 11(4), EBSCO)
Beck (2002, 44) writes that in approaching terrorist activities the main question is: who defines the identity of a
transnational terrorist? and he answers Neither judges, nor international courts, but powerful governments and

The governmental
discourse on terrorism has been adopted and reframed by political
leaders in diferent areas of the world with several efects. The more or less
explicit association of terrorism with everything in some way related to
Islam(ism) and Muslim occurring in the discourse has had efects for instance in the
way members of Islamist movements and parties have been looked at and
identified as risk groups to be kept under control . Furthermore, the discourse
has been adopted by several states, such as Morocco, the U.S., and Spain, to further
domestic agendas, in terms of security enhancement and territorial expansion ,
and to control dangerous groups and individuals . Around the world, states have
been used the mentioned discourse to target internal opponents and disrupt
individuals and groups by linking them to the terrorism scare. Indicative examples are
discussed in this article to be further addressed in future research. In the U.S. and elsewhere, the
discourse on terrorism has allowed an increase in the power of the commander-in-chief and a
dramatic reduction in possibilities of dissent . Mayer reports that under the Bush
administration, only a few in the Congress wanted to run the political risk of
opposing the administration on an issue that could make them appear to be pro-terrorism (2008, 315). Far
stronger measures have then been invoked and tolerated in the name of
states. They empower themselves by defining who is their terrorist enemy, their bin Laden.

security , ranging from an unprecedented limitation of personal freedoms

to a bureaucratisation of torture (Ibid). In many countries, like Russia, China, Israel and India, the
move has been to link their own local problems with terrorism to the wider framing of a global terrorism to be
fought to maintain world security (Buzan 2006). Several states all around the world, among which Israel, Russia
and Spain, have pursued their own war on terrorism with renewed vigour, or opportunistically used the atrocities
and associated fears as a pretext to curb civil liberties and human rights, and not least in the United States itself

Targets of this discourse have been those that in some way were
perceived as a potential or real threat to their governments: such as Islamists, Muslims,
political opponents and immigrants. Effects toward Muslims In the United States, Muslims, already
vulnerable to racism and political discrimination prior to the September 11, 2001 events,
became even greater targets of harassment: in the following three days, more than 200
violent attacks against Muslim Americans were recorded (Gerges 2003, 80). Communities ended up
being divided between moderates and radicals, friends and enemies, a problematic division because
(Anderson 2003, 35).

in practice, the dividing line between extremists and moderates is not only context specific but also highly
porous (Jackson 2007, 413). According to public opinion polls, a large percentage of Americans supported the idea

Reports of the
harassment of Muslims (and those resembling them) and attacks on mosques began
almost immediately. In some cases, Sikhs were killed. They had been mistaken, because of their beards and
that Islam encouraged violence more than other religions (Woods 2007, 7).

turbans, for Muslims (see also Stoddard and Cornwell 2002). Immediately after the attacks, there were personal
verbal and physical attacks against Muslims, Muslim Americans and those who looked Arab or Muslim Distrust
and suspicion were also cast on recent arrivals who entered the United States, legally or illegally, from Mexico,
Bosnia, Somalia, Russia and eastern European countries (Brunn 2003, 3). Anti-Muslim bias clearly emerged when
noted legal personalities advocated the official use of torture in dealing with Muslims (Ahmed 2003, 40).

Furthermore, Arabs have continued to be associated with Muslims. Brunn (2003, 4) reports that the number of
violent incidents against Arab Americans (or those perceived as such) was 172 in the year before 11 September and
over 600 the following year, and Collins and Glover (2002, 5) point out that by early November, the U.S.
Government had arrested over a thousand people, virtually all of whom were either Arab or Muslim, in most cases

the most significant detention of a racial group since the

internment of Japanese Americans during World War II
without charges. This was

Statistics
Statistics go af radical Muslim violence kills less people than nonmuslim violence.
Shane 6/24 (Scott Shane, American journalist for the new York times, Homegrown Extremists Tied to
Deadlier Toll Than Jihadists in U.S. Since 9/11, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-uschallenges-perceptions-of-top-terror-threat.html?_r=0, 6/24/15, SMahajan)

In the 14 years since Al Qaeda carried out attacks on New York

and the Pentagon, extremists have regularly executed smaller lethal
assaults in the United States, explaining their motives in online manifestoes or social media rants.
But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come
as a surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have
WASHINGTON

been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other

non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims : 48 have been killed by
extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in
Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists , according to a
count by New America, a Washington research center. The slaying of nine African-Americans
in a Charleston church last week, with an avowed white supremacist charged with
their murders, was a particularly savage case. But it is only the latest in a string of
lethal attacks by people espousing racial hatred, hostility to government and theories
such as those of the sovereign citizen movement, which denies the legitimacy of most
statutory law. The assaults have taken the lives of police officers, members
of racial or religious minorities and random civilians. Non-Muslim
extremists have carried out 19 such attacks since Sept. 11 , according to
the latest count, compiled by David Sterman, a New America program associate, and overseen by
Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks by
Islamic militants have taken place in the same period . If such numbers are new to the
public, they are familiar to police officers. A survey to be published this week asked 382 police and
sherifs departments nationwide to rank the three biggest threats from
violent extremism in their jurisdiction. About 74 percent listed
antigovernment violence, while 39 percent listed Al Qaeda-inspired
violence, according to the researchers, Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina and David Schanzer
of Duke University. Law enforcement agencies around the country have told us
the threat from Muslim extremists is not as great as the threat from rightwing extremists, said Dr. Kurzman, whose study is to be published by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and
Homeland Security and the Police Executive Research Forum. John G. Horgan, who studies terrorism at the
University of Massachusetts, Lowell, said the mismatch between public perceptions and actual cases had become
steadily more obvious to scholars. Theres

an acceptance now of the idea that the

threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown , Dr.
Horgan said. And theres a belief that the threat of right-wing, antigovernment violence has
been underestimated.