Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Of
T
Domestic surveillance means the gathering of intelligence
about US citizens
Small 8
Matthew L. Small, Presidential Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, Student at the United
States Air Force Academy, now serves as an Operational Analyst at the United States Air Force, 2008 (His
Eyes are Watching You: Domestic Surveillance, Civil Liberties and Executive Power During Times of National
Crisis, Paper Published by the Center for the Study of the Presidency, Available Online at
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf, Accessed 07-11-2015, p. 2-3)
Before one can make any sort of assessment of domestic surveillance policies, it is
Cap K
Capitalism is regulated and under surveillance now
Raban 12
Ofer Associate Professor of Law, Elmer Sahlstrom Senior Fellow, University of Oregon., 2012, Capitalism,
Liberalism, and the Right to Privacy, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2069647, AB)
First, modern capitalism recognizes the legitimacy of regulations aimed at
parties (say, the costs of pollution), undersupply or overuse may ensue. In such instances
the government may intervene so as to correct these distortions through
subsidies or penalties, or even by assuming the role of an owner and
distributor of goods and services (as in public goods and common resource goods
things like clean water or highways).5 Although economists often disagree as to what is or is not a market
failure, the validity of the concept as a basis for government regulation is, for
the most part, beyond dispute.6 Capitalism has come to recognize that a free
economy is not always self-correcting and that the invisible hand of the
market may sometimes itself need a guiding hand. Unlike the creation and enforcement
of a free economic sphere and the remedying of market failures, both of which are justified on the ground
that they promote economic efficiency, the last category of legitimate state intervention has different
concerns. It involves instances where the value of economic efficiency yields to
(1) maintaining a free economic sphere where individuals can make free
economic choices; (2) addressing market failures; or (3) serving moral,
political, or social purposes that take priority (in specific contexts) over economic
efficiency. In the absence of any such justification, capitalism dictates a default position of
governmental noninterference in the economy.
merchant princes. The world is their oyster. They have fabulous salaries with massive
share options. If share prices are artificially inflated, they can unload them on the market and become
broadly coincided with the breakthrough of liberal democracy. Social reform was in the air. Towards the end
of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, socialism made an impact not through revolution but by
reforms within the existing system. As Europe moved to the left after the Second World War, socialists and
social democrats in government enshrined in law the postwar consensus of the mixed economy, social
welfare, social justice and neo-Keynsianism. This consensus also embraced the parties of European
conservatism. American capitalism had a different culture. Red in tooth and claw with
a kind of frontiersman or cowboy culture. The conflict between American labour and the
bosses was bloody and vicious. The Pinkerton detective agency, so beloved of Western movies, was
actually an armed strike-breaking organisation. Workers on strike, in self defence, armed themselves.
Industrial struggles were replete with murders, assassinations, broken heads and hearts. Organised
crime infiltrated key labour unions and laundered its money on Wall Street.
The Kennedy family link with the Mafia was no one-off. Socialism never had a mass influence in the US,
though there were social democratic elements in Roosevelts New Deal. In the latter part of the 20th
century, the dominant ideological economic faction in America was the Chicago School led by Milton
Friedman, a fundamentalist free marketeer. He was Thatcher and Clintons economic guru. During the
years in opposition, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown spent a lot of time in the States sitting at the feet of the
Clintonites and became fully paid up advocates of unbridled free market capitalism. It is this
model, endorsed by Britains two governing parties, that
is threatening to undermine
American capitalism.
and as good' for others in appropriation could always be met even when there was no unappropriated land left, as the productivity of the land
put to useful work would always create better opportunities for those coming later. Smiths 'invisible hand' thesis was also dependent upon the
scarcity we return to the classical problems of political theory that 400 years of abnormal abundance has shielded us from (Ophuls, 1977:
the commons" is simply a special version of the general political dynamic of Hobbes' "state of nature"' (Ophuls, 1977; 148).
Competition over scarce resources leads to conflict , even when all those
involved realise that they would be collectively better off if they could cooperate, 'to bring about the tragedy of the commons it is not necessary that men be bad, only that they not be actively good' (Ophuls,
1977: 149). It is this Hobbesian struggle that may impose 'intolerable strains on the representative political apparatus that has been
hoped, although as we have seen not for terribly good reasons, that this coercion can be agreed democratically),
see in the following paragraphs, this faith in the ability of the state to institute centralised controls that would be obeyed by its citizens is one
of the areas that has attracted fierce criticism from contemporary green political theorists.
or taxes or both will be required to: (1) raise market prices for carbon-based
energy in developed countries, (2) encourage the development of new
innovations to lower the cost of energy worldwide to what is becoming
referred to as the "China price," or (3) a combination of both . As Nancy Sullivan
said, "Business will not do it without government. Government will not do it
without business ."
The discussion also turned to one of timing , with Chris McFadden teeing up the issue by saying,
"Global warming will not 'stop'until all accessible hydrocarbons have been consumed. Our present day efforts only affect
basis. As Ulysses U. Pardey put it, "When companies have to play by the same rules, then fair competition can take
placeterms and conditionsfor all concerned industries worldwide seems to be a must."
The one question that is within the realm of management is what role, if any, business leadership should
be playing in this debate? Should it be arguing for government to step aside and let free markets prevail?
Or should it be asking governments to set the rules of competition on CO2 emissions sooner rather than
later so that businesses can plan and react accordingly? What do you think?
Original Article
The debate over global warming appears to have passed a tipping point. We can debate just when it happened.
But it was probably sometime before Al Gore's film won the Academy Award. From now on, we can expect to be
long-term effects on those living in lowlying areas along coastlines, those attempting to grow crops in rapidly
shifting climates, those living along the equator as opposed to temperate
climes (being addressed by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as this article hits the Internet), and
bombarded with almost daily news articles about its
even those getting ready to drill for oil in open water that the polar ice caps still cover. The list goes on and on. Within the
past few days, Thomas Friedman, the journalist and best-selling author of The World Is Flat, intimated in an interview with
of money made or lost for a long time on the effort to combat global warming. It raises the question, of course, of whether
the free market has the patience for investments that may not pay out for many years. The end value may be huge (even
infinite?), but the discounted value of it may be modest.
One thing we do know. There is no question that when Americans put their
talent, effort, and money behind an idea, remarkable things happen faster
than anyone expected. Wind power (regardless of what you think of it) in Texas is a good
example. In 1999, under then-Governor George W. Bush, incentives were
put in place for the development of wind power with the goal of producing
2,000 megawatts of generating capacity in ten years. The goal was achieved
in five years. So Texas has renewed the incentives and raised the goal to 5,000 megawatts. I wouldn't bet against
that goal being exceeded as well. Or consider Shuji Nakamura, the Japanese developer
of light-emitting diodes that one day may provide energy-efficient sources of light. He moved to
the U.S. where people were most interested in his work , as documented in a new book,
Brilliant.
Extinction
Sharma 10
(Rajeev Sharma, journalist-author who has been writing on international relations, foreign policy, strategic
affairs, security and terrorism for over two decades, 2/25/2010, "Climate Change = War?" The Diplomat,
http://thediplomat.com/2010/02/25/climate-change-war/)
it is an often overlooked
fact that climate change has the potential to create border disputes that in some
cases could even provoke clashes between states . Throw into the mix three
nuclear-armed nations with a history of disagreements, and the stakes of
any conflict rise incalculably . Yet such a scenario is becoming increasingly
likely as glaciers around the world melt, blurring international boundaries.
For all the heat generated by discussions of global warming in recent months,
The chastened United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, still doesnt dispute that glaciers
draft resolutions in their respective parliaments for fresh border demarcations after alpine glaciers started melting
unusually quickly. And in Africa, meanwhile, climate change has caused rivers to change course over the past few years.
Many African nations have rivers marking international boundaries and are
understandably worried about these changing course and therefore cutting
into their borders. Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan are just some of
the African countries that have indicated apprehension about their
international boundaries. But it is in Asia where a truly nightmarish
scenario could play out between India, Pakistan and China nuclear
weapon states that between them have the highest concentration of glaciers
in the world outside the polar regions. A case in point is the Siachen Glacier
in the Karakoram range, the largest glacier outside the polar region, which
is the site of a major bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan.
According to scientific data, Siachen Glacier is melting at the rate of about
110 meters a yearamong the fastest of any glaciers in the world. The
glaciers melting ice is the main source of the Nubra River, which itself
drains into the Shyok River. These are two of the main rivers in Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir. The
Shyok also joins the Indus River, and forms the major source of water for
Pakistan. It is clear, then, why the melting of glaciers in the Karakoram
region could have a disastrous impact on ties between India and Pakistan.
French geologists have already predicted the Indus will become a seasonal river by 2040, which would unnerve Pakistan
as its granary basket, Punjab, would become increasingly drought-prone and eventually a desertall within a few
Case
Solvency
The af is radical individualism standing in solidarity
with Wilson is a straightforwardly predictable quest for
youthful celebrity where the af posits themselves as
the: Honey Boo Boo of the Second Amendment brigade,
where securing your personal liberty is a priori issue
#1. This neoliberalism par none means that they can
never solve for the abuses of capitalism because theyre
too busy trying to become internet folk heros than
solve material problems. Every argument about printing
your own gun is just the neoliberal drive for individualism
co-opting your af. Also, this specifically indicts Zizek.
Pugh 2010
Newcastle Postcolonial Geographer (Jonathan, The Stakes of Radical Politics have Changed: Post-crisis,
Relevance and the State, Globalizations, March-June, ebsco)
In this polemical piece I have just been talking about how, following an ethos of radicalism as withdrawal from the state,
some from the radical Left were incapable of being able to respond to the
new stakes of radical politics. In particular, they were not found at the state,
where the passive public turned to resolve the crisis. I will now go on to
examine how in recent years significant parts of the radical Left have also
tended to prioritise raising awareness of our ethical responsibilities, over
capturing state power. I am going to say that it is important to create this awareness. However, in an effort
to draw attention to the stakes of politics as we find them now, post-2008, I will also point out that we should not place
too much faith in this approach alone. Against the backdrop of what I have just been saying, it is important to remember
that while much attention is focused upon President Obama, in many other parts of the world the Right and
fundamentalism are gaining strength through capturing state power. The perception that the USA has changed is
Obamas election and a near depression, neo-liberalism continues to be implemented through a world spanning apparatus
of governmental and intergovernmental organisations, think tanks and trans-national corporations (Massey, 2009;
Castree, 2009). The power of the Right in countries like Iran, while checked, remains unchallenged by the Left.
about radical political activist protests, such as the 2003 anti-war march, anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation protests,
the huge march to Make Poverty History at the end of 2005, involvement in the World Social Forums or the radical jihad of
when the early Marx critiqued German Idealism, we should now be drawing attention to the pitfalls of the flights to ethics
today. He says: In the case of the German bourgeoisie, Marx concludes that it is their weakness and fragmentation,
squeezed between the remnants of the ancien regime and the developing industrial proletariat, which explains their
ideological flight into values. Rather than take on political responsibility for overthrowing the old order, the German
bourgeoisie denied their specific interests and idealised progress in the otherworldly terms of abstract philosophy,
recoiling from the consequences of their liberal aspirations in practice. (Chandler, 2007, p. 717) Today we are witnessing a
Kants cosmopolitanism. While I think we should not attack the ethical turn for its values, as many of these around
environmental issues and human rights are admirable,
says that many of us (he is of course writing for the Left) feel
that we are unable to make a real difference through representational politics on a larger scale,
important to the Left in recent years. He
when it comes to the big political problems of life. Zizek (2008, p. 453) talks of this feeling that we cannot ever predict
the consequences of our acts; that nothing we do will guarantee that the overall outcome of our interactions will be
satisfactory. And he is right to make this point. Today, our geographical imaginations are dominated by a broader sense
awareness instead. Whereas in the past power was something to be won and treasured, something radicals could use to
implement a collective ideology, today, with the risk posed by representation in fragmented societies, top-down power
Reagan, Thatcher, the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, multi-national banks, and the G20, as just some of many examples,
step back. The new social movements of previous decades have, in general, been effectively recuperated by the existing
system of capital, by satisfying them in a way that neutralised their subversive potential. This is how capital has
maintained its hegemonic position in post-Fordist societies. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2005) explain how capitalists
of networked control. And so, in this way, we see that the relationship between new social movements and capital has
been productive. In turn, and this is the important point I want to make about the present moment, clearly the stakes of
radical politics have now changed once more. As discussed earlier, it would now seem that post-Fordist society is actually
impression that imagination flourishes on an unmediated experience with an unnuanced 'oneness.' Thus is social nature essentially dissolved
into biological nature; innovative humanity, into adaptive animality; temporality, into precivilizatory eternality; history, into an archaic cyclicity.
could claim social relevance and weight precisely for its uncompromising
commitment to emancipation -- not outside of history, in the realm of the subjective, but within history, in the realm
of the objective. The great cry of the First International -- which anarcho-syndicalism and anarchocommunism retained after Marx and his
supporters abandoned it -- was the demand: 'No rights without duties, no duties without rights.' For generations, this slogan adorned the
mastheads of what we must now retrospectively call social anarchist periodicals. Today, it stands radically at odds with the basically egocentric
the 'sovereign individual' of laissez-faire individualism. Detached from its social moorings, it achieves not autonomy but the heteronomous
'selfhood' of petty-bourgeois enterprise.
Indeed, far from being free, the ego in its sovereign selfhood is bound hand and foot to the seemingly anonymous laws of the marketplace
the laws of competition and exploitation which render the myth of individual freedom into another fetish concealing the implacable laws of
capital accumulation.
lifestyle anarchism
is a 'narcotizing' self-deception
That
itself
can best be seen in Max Stirner's
The Ego and His Own, where the ego's claim to 'uniqueness' in the temple of the sacrosanct 'self' far outranks John Stuart Mill's liberal pieties.
Indeed, with Stirner, egoism becomes a matter of epistemology. Cutting through the maze of contradictions and woefully incomplete
statements that fill The Ego and His Own, one finds Stirner's 'unique' ego to be a myth because its roots lie in its seeming 'other' society
itself. Indeed: 'Truth cannot step forward as you do,' Stirner addresses the egoist, 'cannot move, change, develop; truth awaits and recruits
ego itself a claim so all-encompassing as to exclude the social roots of the self and its formation in history.
Nietzsche, quite independently of Stirner, carried this view of truth to its logical conclusion by erasing the facticity and reality of truth as such:
'What, then, is truth?' he asked. 'A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms in short, a sum of human relations, which
Nietzsche
contended that facts are simply interpretations; indeed, he asked, 'is it necessary to posit an
have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically.' [39] With more forthrightness than Stirner,
interpreter behind the interpretations?' Apparently not, for 'even this is invention, hypothesis.' [40] Following Nietzsche's unrelenting logic, we
are left with a self that not only essentially creates it own reality but also must justify its own existence as more than a mere interpretation.
Such egoism thus annihilates the ego itself, which vanishes into the mist of Stirner's own unstated premises.
an anarchism that seeks to avoid the shoals of sheer solipsism on the one
hand and the loss of the 'self' as a mere 'interpretation' one the other must
become explicitly socialist or collectivist. That is to say, it must be a social
anarchism that seeks freedom through structure and mutual responsibility,
not through a vaporous, nomadic ego that eschews the preconditions for
social life.
Stated bluntly: Between the socialist pedigree of anarcho-syndicalism and anarchocommunism (which have never denied the importance of
self-realization and the fulfillment of desire), and the basically liberal, individualistic pedigree of lifestyle anarchism (which fosters social
ineffectuality, if not outright social negation), there exits a divide that cannot be bridged unless we completely disregard the profoundly
different goals, methods, and underlying philosophy that distinguish them. Stirner's own project, in fact, emerged in a debate with the
socialism of Wilhelm Weitling and Moses Hess, where he invoked egoism precisely to counterpose to socialism. 'Personal insurrection rather
than general revolution was [Stirner's] message,' James J. Martin admiringly observes [41] a counterposition that lives on today in lifestyle
anarchism and its yuppie filiations, as distinguished from social anarchism with its roots in historicism, the social matrix of individuality, and its
commitment to a rational society.
The very incongruity of these essentially mixed messages, which coexist on every page of the lifestyle 'zines,' reflects the feverish voice of the
intermingled with 'sorcery,' is producing a dreamlike absorption with spirits, ghosts, and Jungian archetypes rather than a rational and
dialectical awareness of the world.
Characteristically, the cover of a recent issue of Alternative Press Review (Fall 1994), a widely read American feral anarchist periodical, is
adorned with a three-headed Buddhist deity in serene nirvanic repose, against a presumably cosmic background of swirling galaxies and New
a graphic
cries out: 'Life Can Be Magic When We Start to Break Free' (the A in Magic is circled) to
which one is obliged to ask: How? With what? The magazine itself contains a deep ecology essay by
Age paraphernalia an image that could easily join Fifth Estate's 'Anarchy' poster in a New Age boutique. Inside the cover,
Glenn Parton (drawn from David Foreman's periodical Wild Earth) titled: 'The Wild Self: Why I Am a Primitivist,' extolling 'primitive peoples'
whose 'way of life fits into the pre-given natural world,' lamenting the Neolithic revolution, and identifying our 'primary task' as being to
''unbuild' our civilization, and restore wilderness.' The magazine's artwork celebrates vulgarity human skulls and images of ruins are very
much in evidence. Its lengthiest contribution, 'Decadence,' reprinted from Black Eye, melds the romantic with the lumpen, exultantly
concluding: 'It's time for a real Roman holiday, so bring on the barbarians!'
Alas, the barbarians are already here and the 'Roman holiday' in today's American cities flourishes on crack, thuggery, insensitivity, stupidity,
primitivism, anticivilizationism, antirationalism, and a sizable dose of 'anarchy' conceived as chaos. Lifestyle anarchism must be seen in the
present social context not only of demoralized black ghettoes and reactionary white suburbs but even of Indian reservations, those ostensible
centers of 'primality,' in which gangs of Indian youths now shoot at one another, drug dealing is rampant, and 'gang graffiti greets visitors
even at the sacred Window Rock monument,' as Seth Mydans reports in The New York Times (March 3, 1995).
Thus, a widespread cultural decay has followed the degeneration of the 1960s New Left into postmodernism and of its counter'culture into
Agambens conception of the exceptionbeing-the-rule for reconfiguring conceptions of politics in a biopolitical age comes at a serious cost,
though. It inserts both a diagnosis of our time and a conceptual apparatus for
rethinking politics that has no place for the category that has been central to
the modern democratic tradition: the political significance of people as a multiplicity of
Deploying the jargon of exception and especially
social relations that condition politics and that are constituted by the mediations of various objectified forms and
Even if one
would argue that Agambens framing of the current political conditions are
valuable for understanding important changes that have taken place in the twentieth century and
that are continuing in the twenty first, they also are to a considerable extent depoliticizing .
Agambens work tends to guide the analysis to unmediated, factual life. For example,
processes (for example, scientific knowledge, technologies, property relations, legal institutions...).
some draw on Agamben to highlight the importance of bodily strategies of resistance. One of the key examples is
individual refugees protesting against their detention by sewing up lips and eyes. They exemplify how individualized
naked life resists by deploying their bodily, biological condition against sovereign biopolitical powers (for example, Edkins
refugees have no political significance without being mediated by public media, intense mobilizations on refugee and
asylum questions, contestations of human rights in the courts, etc. It is these mediations that are the object and
Liberalism
No biopolitics impact --- democracy checks
Dickinson 4
(Edward R. Professor of History at UC Davis, Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our
Discourse About Modernity, in Central European History, Volume 37, Issue 1, March 2004,
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?
fromPage=online&aid=2758180&fileId=S0008938900002776)
And it is, of course, embedded in a broader discursive complex (institutions, professions, fields of social, medical, and
psychological expertise) that pursues these same aims in often even more effective and inescapable ways.89 In short, the
And it is
certainly fruitful to view them from this very broad perspective . But that
analysis can easily become superficial and misleading , because it
obfuscates the profoundly different strategic and local dynamics of power in
the two kinds of regimes. Clearly the democratic welfare state is not only
formally but also substantively quite different from totalitarianism. Above all,
with more authoritarian states, including the National Socialist state, but also fascist Italy, for example.
that leads from economistic population management to mass murder. Again, there is always the potential for such a
discursive regime to generate coercive policies. In those cases in which the regime of rights does not successfully produce
there are
political and policy potentials and constraints in such a structuring of
biopolitics that are very different from those of National Socialist Germany.
Democratic biopolitical regimes require , enable, and incite a degree of selfdirection and participation that is functionally incompatible with
authoritarian or totalitarian structures. And this pursuit of
biopolitical ends through a regime of democratic citizenship does appear,
historically, to have imposed increasingly narrow limits on coercive policies,
and to have generated a logic or imperative of increasing liberalization .
health, such a system can and historically does create compulsory programs to enforce it. But again,
Despite limitations imposed by political context and the slow pace of discursive change, I think this is the unmistakable
message of the really very impressive waves of legislative and welfare reforms in the 1920s or the 1970s in Germany.90
Of course it is not yet clear whether this is an irreversible dynamic of such systems. Nevertheless, such regimes are
characterized by sufficient degrees of autonomy (and of the potential for its expansion) for sufficient numbers of people
that I think it becomes useful to conceive of them as productive of a strategic configuration of power relations that might
fruitfully be analyzed as a condition of liberty, just as much as they are productive of constraint, oppression, or
Power is a set of social relations, in which individuals and groups have varying degrees of autonomy and effective
subjectivity. And discourse is, as Foucault argued, tactically polyvalent. Discursive elements (like the various elements
of biopolitics) can be combined in different ways to form parts of quite different strategies (like totalitarianism or the
democratic welfare state); they cannot be assigned to one place in a structure, but rather circulate. The varying possible
constellations of power in modern societies create multiple modernities, modern societies with quite radically differing
potentials.91
bio-political
machinery does not want to threaten him, but to encourage him, with all its
material spiritual capacities, to live healthily , to live long and to live
happily even when, in biological terms, he should have been dead long ago.115 This is because biopower is not bloody power over bare life for its own sake but pure power
over all life for the sake of the living. It is not power but the living, the
condition of all life individual as well as collective that is the measure of the success of
bio-power.
State Inevitable
The state intervening in your life is inevitable, so its only
a question of if we make it better
Nozick 74
Professor, Harvard University, Ph.D., Princeton, Fullbright Scholar, Oxford, (Robert, Anarchy, State, and
Utopia, pages 14-17, published 1974, Blackwell publishing)//AD
People sometimes now do take their disputes outside of the state's legal
system to other judges or courts they have chosen, for example, to religious courts. 5 If all parties to a dispute find
some activities of the state or its legal system so repellent that they want nothing to do with it, they might agree to forms
of arbitration or judgment outside the apparatus of the state. People tend to forget the possibilities of acting
independently of the state. (Similarly, persons who want to be paternalistically regulated forget the possibilities of
contracting into particular limitations on their own behavior or appointing a given paternalistic supervisory board over
themselves. Instead, they swallow the exact pattern of restrictions a legislature happens to pass. Is there really someone
who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of
people who constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?) Diverse forms of judicial adjudication, differing from
the particular package the state provides, certainly could be developed. Nor do the costs of developing and choosing
these account for people's use of the state form. For it would be easy to have a large number of preset packages which
enforces the results of certain arbitration procedures, people may come to agree--supposing they abide by this
agreement-without any actual direct contact with what they perceive to be officers or institutions of the state. But this
holds as well if they sign a contract that is enforced only by the state.) Will protective agencies require that their clients
renounce exercising their right of private retaliation if they have been wronged by nonclients of the agency? Such
protective agency would not wish at that late stage to get drawn into the messy affair by having to defend its client
against the counterretaliation. Protective agencies would refuse to protect against counterretaliation unless they had first
given permission for the retaliation. (Though might they not merely charge much more for the more extensive protection
policy that provides such coverage?) The protective agencies need not even require that as part of his agreement with the
agency, a client renounce, by contract, his right of private enforcement of justice against its other clients. The agency
need only refuse a client C, who privately enforces his rights against other clients, any protection against
counterretaliation upon him by these other clients. This is similar to what occurs if C acts against a nonclient. The
additional fact that C acts upon a client of the agency means that the agency will act toward C as it would toward any
relatively simple if the agencies reach the same decision about the disposition of the case. (Though each might want to
exact the penalty.) But what happens if they reach different decisions as to the merits of the case, and one agency
attempts to protect its client while the other is attempting to punish him or make him pay compensation? Only three
One of the
agencies always wins such battles. Since the clients of the losing agency are ill protected in conflicts
with clients of the winning agency, they leave their agency to do business with the winner. 6 2. One agency has
its power centered in one geographical area, the other in another . Each wins the
possibilities are worth considering: I. In such situations the forces of the two agencies do battle.
battles fought close to its center of power, with some gradient being established. 1 People who deal with one agency but
live under the power of the other either move closer to their own agency's home headquarters or shift their patronage to
In neither of these
two cases does there remain very much geographical interspersal. Only one
protective agency operates over a given geographical area . 3 The two agencies fight
the other protective agency. (The border is about as conflictful as one between states.)
evenly and often. They win and lose about equally, and their interspersed members have frequent dealings and disputes
with each other. Or perhaps without fighting or after only a few skirmishes the agencies realize that such battling will
occur continually in the absence of preventive measures. In any case, to avoid frequent, costly, and wasteful battles the
two agencies, perhaps through their executives, agree to resolve peacefully those cases about which they reach differing
judgments.
They agree to set up, and abide by the decisions of, some third judge
or court to which they can turn when their respective judgments differ . (Or they
might establish rules determining which agency has jurisdiction under which circumstances.) 8 Thus emerges a
system of appeals courts and agreed upon rules about jurisdiction and the
conflict of laws. Though different agencies operate, there is one unified
federal judicial system of which they all are components . In each of these cases, almost
all the persons in a geographical area are under some common system that
judges between their competing claims and enforces their rights. Out of
anarchy, pressed by spontaneous groupings, mutual-protection
associations, division of labor, market pressures, economies of scale, and
rational self-interest there arises something very much resembling a minimal state or a group of
geographically distinct minimal states. Why is this market different from all other markets? Why would a virtual monopoly
arise in this market without the government intervention that elsewhere creates and maintains it? 9 The worth of the
product purchased, protection against others, is relative: it depends upon how strong the others are. Yet unlike ocher
Baudrillard
Hyperreality theory is wrong
Hobbs 07
(Mitchell, Lecturer and PhD Candidate (Sociology and Anthropology), The University of Newcastle,
Australia, REFLECTIONS ON THE REALITY OF THE IRAQ WARS: THE DEMISE OF BAUDRILLARDS SEARCH
FOR TRUTH?, Fall, 2007, http://www.tasa.org.au/conferences/conferencepapers07/papers/379.pdf)
As has been noted by Barry Smart (2000) (and others), Baudrillards theorising, which has its roots in neo-Marxism,
eventually led him to the proposition that if current sociological critique was incapable of ascertaining truth because
reality was being superseded by de-contextualised images (or, rather, signs), then a new system of social inquiry was
needed, one capable of breaking out of the endless cycle of simulacra and the intellectual inertia brought about by the
into a clear over-existence which is incompatible with that of the real (Baudrillard cited in Smart, 2000:464).
KELLNER Although Baudrillards work on simulation and simulacra is valuable in highlighting the relationship
between the mass media and reality, and, in particular, the ways in which media content (images and narratives) come to
undermined the media theories of Marshall McLuhan, albeit in a different form (Kellner, 1989:73-74). Although Kellner
(2003:32) believes that Baudrillards pre-1990s works on the consumer society, on the political economy of the sign,
simulation and simulacra, and the implosion of [social] phenomenon are useful and can be deployed within critical social
theory, he prefers to read Baudrillards later, more controversial and obscure, work as science fiction which anticipates
The rejection of positivism which is a central element of recent critiques of mainstream IR has tended to extend
to rejection of the notion and possibility of science itself. Science, often written in quotation marks science, is
seen as inherently part of the project of Enlightenment-modernity , a mode of
technical instrumental knowledge which is necessarily a means of control
and domination of both society and nature 22 . An important component of the critique of the
positivist orthodoxy is exposure of its coincidence with the interests of the powerful . Dominant
ideas and methods which rest on claims of value-free scientificity and neutrality are shown to mask or legitimise the
interests of the powerful and the exercise of power and domination . The very claim to be able to produce value-free, neutral
scientific truth is rejected in a world of inherently conflicting interests. Instead, the illusion of objectivism must be replaced with the recognition that knowledge is always
constituted in reflection of interests (Ashley 1981: 207).
There are two kinds of conflation which are embedded within this critical stance. The
first conflates the contents of natural scientific knowledge with the uses to which it is
put in society. Much scientific knowledge, in both natural and social sciences, has indeed been
produced by and in the explicit interests of the powerful, an integral part of the construction and maintenance
of unequal and oppressive social orders, and the administration of accumulation and imperialism. But it is important not to
conflate the contents of knowledge with its social conditions of production
and use . When scientific knowledge is developed for and utilised in the service of oppression or
commercial profit as opposed to the increased satisfaction of human needs ,
the oppression results from social forces, not from the cognitive properties of
scientific knowledge 23:
Even assuming all the results of a research project are objectively true, the area chosen for investigation may be determined by contentious ideological assumptions or
practical interests. Thus it is likely that drug companies have concentrated on artificially synthesized drugs to the detriment of research into those occurring naturally in
In a world
where science was funded with a view to satisfying human needs and
conserving planetary resources, quite different discoveries might be made
neither more or less objective than the findings of modern science, but
useful for different purposes. (Collier 1994: 180; see also Collier 1979).
The second conflation reduces scientific method to a positivist approach ,
equating positivist social science with social science per se with technical instrumentality. It is often asserted that the problem
with positivist IR is that it applies the method of natural sciences or the scientific method
to the study of social phenomena 24 . This is a mischaracterisation of the real
nature of the problem, which is that positivism first misunderstands the method of natural
plants; and it is certain that military might and commercial profit are the chief determinants of which secrets of nature get uncovered.
science, and then applies these misunderstood methodological principles to the study of social phenomena (Bhaskar 1997). Recognition of this enables us to
retrieve the possibility of a particular form of social inquiry which can be called scientific or objective from abandonment along with positivism 25 .
Critiques of positivism are correct to question these assumptions about knowledge and the world, but they are not
correct in equating this with scientific method. Positivism consists of philosophers misunderstanding of the actual
practice of natural science. The practice of experiment is central to the method of some natural sciences. A scientific
experiment involves establishing closure: creating an artificial environment where the external and internal conditions are controlled so as to isolate particular features and
causal properties and necessary ways-ofare real because they have the capacity to bring about change, given appropriate conditions and inputs,
but are not empirical they cannot be seen, only the effects of their operation
can be seen. This non-positivist, philosophical realist theory of science ,
epistemology and ontology is very different from the positivist misunderstanding of scientific method and explanation. Scientific
theories and the discovery of natural laws refer to real properties and causal powers of structured entities, not
empirical events and regularities (Bhaskar 1997).
What are the implications of this non-positivist theory of science for social inquiry? The fact of human
reflexivity rules out the possibility of experiment and prediction in social
inquiry, because it is impossible to establish closure in the social world 26 . Ideas are causally efficacious: through informing
mechanisms. This enables scientists to discover about aspects of reality which are not empirical : the
operating of specific mechanisms in nature which
social action ideas have causal efficacy in codetermining or influencing what actually happens, including (usually as an unintended outcome) the reproduction of social
This means that ideas are part of the object of social inquiry, as is foregrounded by all variants of so-called reflexive approaches in International
Relations (Keohane 1988). When we study society part of what we study includes the ideas that are held in that society. But we also study other aspects of
relations.
society which are irreducible to ideas or individuals real but non-empirical structures of social relations, historically-specific socially-produced material conditions, and so
on.
This non-positivist theory of knowledge and the world gives rise to a notion of objectivity which does not entail the positivist commitment to value-free neutrality.
Philosophical realism holds that the world consists of natural and social objects or entities which exist and have particular properties and causal powers independently of
what, if anything, is known about them 27 . Knowledge about different aspects of the material and social world can be non-existent, partial, more or less adequate, more or
less right or wrong. This informs a notion of objectivity which refers to what is the case, regardless of what is thought or believed to be the case:
The first and central use of the word objectivity is to refer to what is true
independently of any subject judging it to be true . To say that it is an
objective fact that the Earth is the third planet from the Sun is to say that
this is so whether or not anyone knows or believes it, or even is able to
formulate the statement. To say that kindness is an objective value is to say that it is a value, whether or not anyone judges it to be a value;
it would be a value even if the whole of society regarded it as a culpable weakness and it was only practised shamefacedly as a private foible. (Collier 2003: 134-5).
It is
possible to acknowledge that knowledge is always inherently fallible and
socially constructed while retaining a notion of the objective reality which
ideas are about. This allows commitment to judgemental rationality the possibility of judging between different ideas on the basis of their relative
This notion of objectivity does not entail a belief that human beings can acquire absolute truth and certain knowledge about either social or natural phenomena.
adequacy, in terms of their relation to objective reality 28 . In social inquiry objectivity does not imply some form of external position of independence outside society 29 .
All knowledge is socially produced; but all knowledge is also about something which exists independently of the knowledge about it. (This is the case even for knowledge
about ideas).
The common-sense view pervading recent discussions of epistemology, ontology and methodology in IR asserts that
objectivity implies value-free neutrality. However, objective social inquiry
has an inherent tendency to be critical , in various senses. To the extent that objective
knowledge provides a better and more adequate account of reality than
other ideas, such knowledge is inherently critical (implicitly or explicitly)
of those ideas . 30 In other words critical social inquiry does not (or not only)
manifest its criticalness through self-claimed labels of being critical or
siding with the oppressed, but through the substantive critique of
prevailing ideas . Objective social knowledge constitutes a specific form of
criticism: explanatory critique . The critique of dominant ideas or ideologies is
elaborated through providing a more adequate explanation of aspects of the
world, and in so doing exposing what is wrong with the dominant ideology .
This may also entail revealing the social conditions which give rise to ideologies, thus exposing the necessary and causal relation between particular social relations and
particular ideological conceptions.
the reproduction
of those structured relations is in the interests of the powerful, whereas
In societies which are constituted by unequal structures of social relations giving rise to unequal power and conflicting interests,
transformation of existing structured relations is in the interests of the weak. Because ideas
inform social action they are casually efficacious either in securing the
reproduction of existing social relations (usually as an unintended consequence of social practice), or in informing
social action aimed at transforming social relations . This is why ideas cannot be neutral . Ideas which
provide a misrepresentation of the nature of society, the causes of unequal social conditions, and the conflicting interests of the weak and powerful, will tend to help
secure the reproduction of prevailing social relations. Ideas which provide a more adequate account of the way society is structured and how structured social relations
Exemplars of explanatory critique in International Relations are provided in the work of scholars such as Siba Grovogui, James Gathii, Anthony Anghie, Bhupinder Chimni,
Jacques Depelchin, Hilbourne Watson, Robert Vitalis, Sankaran Krishna, Michel-Rolph Trouillot 33 . Their work provides critiques of central categories, theories and
discourses in the theory and practice of IR and narratives of world history, including assumptions about sovereignty, international society, international law, global
governance, the nature of the state. They expose the ideological and racialised nature of central aspects of IR through a critical examination of both the long historical
trajectory of imperial ideologies regarding colonized peoples, and the actual practices of colonialism and decolonisation in the constitution of international orders and local
social conditions. Their work identifies the flaws in current ideas by revealing how they systematically misrepresent or ignore the actual history of social change in Africa,
the Caribbean and other regions of the Third World, both past and present during both colonial and neo-colonial periods of the imperial world order. Their work reveals
how racism, violence, exploitation and dispossession, colonialism and neo-colonialism have been central to the making of contemporary international order and
contemporary doctrines of international law, sovereignty and rights, and how such themes are glaring in their absence from histories and theories of international relations
and international history.
Baudrillard realized. On a personal level this is certainly the case. In a candid 19845 interview he reveals
that his courtship of its demon became an unlivable experience: I stopped working on simulation. I felt I was going totally
nuts (1993a: 105). The simulacrum, however, could not be so easily disposed of. Despite his desire to cast off this yoke
of simulacres and simulation (1993a: 184), the simulacrum has thrived, becoming an idea popularly and irrevocably
all other aspects of his work and career. Journalistic commentary and student texts are typical here in identifying the
simulacrum as Baudrillards sole approved project. Thus the problem of finding Baudrillards flat is turned into an obvious
and banal hook by one interviewer, who takes the opportunity to enquire whether Baudrillard himself . . . might be a
simulacrum: Does he really exist? (Leith 1998: 14). More importantly for Baudrillard, however, is the simulacral efficacy of
doubling the theoretical strategy of employing simulation which, quite naturally, has a simulacral effect. The theory of
simulation Baudrillard did not believe in has now been realized: as the Japanese interviewer makes clear, the simulacrum
even open to question but is simply our absolute banality, our everyday obscenity (Zurbrugg 1997: 11). Hence
Baudrillards emphasis upon the theoretical challenge of the simulacrum. Once realized, unless as Baudrillard hopes it
the game is over. It is, therefore, in the hyperdefence of Baudrillard that we find a means of leaving him behind. With his
is only in its contradiction that it can live as a provocation and diabolical challenge, then once it is true this ends. Kellner
and Norris, therefore, may yet prove to be Baudrillards greatest defenders. Baudrillard, of all people, should have
anticipated his disappearance, for the simulacrums demonic power rests also in its attraction for, and hold over,
humanity. Aristotle, for example, recognized this, writing of this instinctive pleasure of imitation in man, the most
imitative of living creatures (1997: 5), while Nietzsche also speaks of the delight in simulation and of its effects in
exploding as a power that pushes aside ones so-called character, ooding it and at times extinguishing it (1974: para.
361). One courts this demon, therefore, at ones own risk, as it captivates and overwhelms our personality. As the author
of the Psalms cautioned the makers and worshippers of idols, they that make them are like unto them: so is everyone
who trusteth in them (Barasch 1992: 20). The efficacy of simulation and the danger of disappearance are key themes in
Roger Caillois influential essay on animal mimicry and the mimetic instinct no less powerful in insects than in man
(Caillois 1984). The instinct of mimesis parallels primitive magic, Caillois says, though it is a mimetic spell which is too
strong for those who cast it. For the insects it is a spell which has caught the sorcerer in his own trap (1984: 27) Phylia,
for example, browse among them- selves, taking each other for real leaves (1984: 25). So, Caillois argues, simulation
absorbs the simulator, leading to their mimetic assimilation to the surroundings with a consequent psychasthenic loss
of distinction, personality, and also, in a thanatophilic movement, the loss of the signs of life itself (1984: 28, 30).
Simulation, therefore, nally overwhelms the simulator: as Caillois warns in the epigram which opens his article, Take
himself becomes this very ghost. His game with phantoms ends, as Caillois knew it would, with his own phantasmatic
transformation, with his apparitional disappearance. But this is only fitting, for in the pact with the devil it is always your
soul that is the stake.
Impact Framing
Default to consequentialism key to ethics
Gvosdev 05
St. Antonys College Rhodes Scholar PhD, 2005 (Nikolas, The Value(s) of Realism, SAIS Review of
International Affairs, 25.1, project muse)
its purposes within its means and its means equal to its purposes, its commitments related to its resources and its resources adequate to its commitments, it is impossible
to think at all about foreign affairs.8 Commenting on this maxim, Owen Harries, founding editor of The National Interest, noted, "This is a truth of which Americansmore
apt to focus on ends rather than means when it comes to dealing with the rest of the worldneed always to be reminded."9 In fact, Morgenthau noted that "there can be
no political morality without prudence."10 This virtue of prudencewhich Morgenthau identified as the cornerstone of realismshould not be confused with expediency.
it is more moral to fulfill one's commitments than to make "empty" promises, and to seek
solutions that minimize harm and produce sustainable results. Morgenthau
Rather, it takes as its starting point that
concluded: [End Page 18] Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp
under the
concrete circumstances of time and place.11 This is why, prior to the outbreak of fighting in the former
distinction between the desirable and the possible, between what is desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible
Yugoslavia, U.S. and European realists urged that Bosnia be decentralized and partitioned into ethnically based cantons as a way to head off a destructive civil war. Realists
felt this would be the best course of action, especially after the country's first free and fair elections had brought nationalist candidates to power at the expense of those
calling for inter-ethnic cooperation. They had concludedcorrectly, as it turned outthat the United States and Western Europe would be unwilling to invest the blood and
treasure that would be required to craft a unitary Bosnian state and give it the wherewithal to function. Indeed, at a diplomatic conference in Lisbon in March 1992, the
various factions in Bosnia had, reluctantly, endorsed the broad outlines of such a settlement. For the purveyors of moralpolitik, this was unacceptable. After all, for this
plan to work, populations on the "wrong side" of the line would have to be transferred and resettled. Such a plan struck directly at the heart of the concept of multiethnicitythat different ethnic and religious groups could find a common political identity and work in common institutions. When the United States signaled it would not
accept such a settlement, the fragile consensus collapsed. The United States, of course, cannot be held responsible for the war; this lies squarely on the shoulders of
a complicated arrangement by which the federal union of two ethnic units, the Muslim-Croat Federation, was itself federated to a Bosnian Serb republic. Today, Bosnia
requires thousands of foreign troops to patrol its internal borders and billions of dollars in foreign aid to keep its government and economy functioning. Was the aim of U.S.
policymakers, academics and journalistscreating a multi-ethnic democracy in Bosnianot worth pursuing? No, not at all, and this is not what the argument suggests. But
People are worried, now, about terror and catastrophe in ways that a short time ago would have
seemed merely fantastic. Not to say that horror and fear suffuse the culture, but they are in the ascendant. And for good reason. There
are possibilities for accident and attack, disease and disaster that would
make September 11 seem like a mosquito bite. I think we have all become more
alert to some of those possibilities, and it is wise to face them down. The idea of worst cases isnt
foreign to us. We have not , however, been given enough useful insight or guidance , either
from academics or political leaders, regarding how to do that. In this book I look the worst full in
the face. What I see is frightening but enlightening. I believe that knowing a thing
permits more comfort with that thing. Sometimes the comfort comes from greater control. Sometimes it
imagination, about politics, and about the wielding of power. We can learn about peoples capacities for despair and callousness, and for
optimism and altruism. As we learn, our possibilities for improvement increase. Worst Cases is about the human condition in the modern world.
Some say that September 11 changed everything. Thats not true. But it did imprint upon our imaginations scenes of horror that until then had
been the province of novels and movies. We now imagine ourselves in those images, and our wide-awake nightmares are worse than they
We must name, analyze, and talk about the beast. Thats our best hope, as a
society, to come to terms with the evil, the human failings, the aspects of nature,
and just plain chance that put us in harms way. Of course, talking about the worst
can be a way to scare people into accepting programs that have other ends,
and that they might not otherwise accept. The image of a nuclear mushroom cloud, for
example, can be used to justify war because the possibility is so frightening that we would do almost anything to prevent
it. The dark side of worst case thinking is apparent even at the level of personal relationships.
Unleavened by evidence or careful thought it can lead to astonishingly poor
policy and dumb decisions. No organizational culture can prevent or guard against it. The only
response that will effectively mute such abuses is one that is organized and
possessed of courage and vision. So warnings that the worst is at hand should be inspected
closely, particularly if they call for actions that would serve ends the speaker cannot or does not freely acknowledge. I acknowledge my
used to be.
ends in this book. For better or worse, I always have. Worst Cases is a book full of stories about disasters. But it is not a disaster book. It is a
book about the imagination. We look back and say that 9/11 was the worst terrorist attack ever in the United States, that the Spanish Flu of
1918, the Black Death, or AIDS was the worst epidemic ever, or that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was the Great Earthquake. Nothing
we
construct possible futures of terror and calamity: what happens if the nations power grid goes
inherent to the events requires that we adorn them with superlatives. Peoples imaginations make that happen. Similarly,
down for six months? what if smallpox sweeps the world? what if nuclear power has a particularly bad day? what if a monster tsunami slams
why I wrote Worst Cases. It is also why my tone and language are not technical. I am a sociologist, but I wrote Worst Cases so that
nonsociologists can read it.
Your Authors
Their authors are full of it their Timms card speaks for
itself (my highlighting yellow):
He spoke with great confidence and at great speed , the speed perhaps
lending his speech an air of deceptive profundity ; often, Wilson came
across as a man who has mastered the art of speaking very quickly while
saying very little. At one point he cited Jean Baudrillard, the French
Baudrillard is meaningless
Sokal and Bricmont 98
Actual scientists who do real things with actual stuff (Alan and Jean, Fashionable Nonsense Postmodern
Intellectuals Abuse of Science, Picador, pages 152-153)//AD
said and done, one wonders what would be left of Baudrillards thought if
the verbal veneer covering it were stripped away.19
predominant psychotherapy treatment paradigm taught to clinicians-in-training in psychology graduate schools. However,
when I first received psychotherapy training in the mid 1970s, by far the predominant school of psychotherapy was
psychoanalysis was laughable, and then it was ponderable. Then, unfortunately, it was
tragic -- for patients and for Western culture in general. Now psychoanalysis is just
the beginning,
laughable again. This is a good thing. At last we are in a position to do justice to Freud.